I have a bit of a problem with Todd VanDerWerff. He brings to mind one or two people in my life that I love dearly, but want to strangle on occasion. I like to think that if he and I were to meet, we'd hit it off immediately, and almost as immediately dissolve into an argument on why or why not The Hulk is the most important character in the Marvel Universe (i.e. because his power is limited only by his rage and how well he can control it, which in theory makes his power unlimited--something Todd VanDerWerff can NEVER UNDERSTAND). Basically we agree on a lot of things, but disagree on a lot of nitpicky details. This actually makes it a little infuriating that he seems to review all of my favorite shows at The AV Club's TV Club. Which brings us to this episode of Mad Men I just watched...
"Dark Shadows" follows an incredible stretch of Mad Men episodes (something which Mr. VDW and I wholeheartedly agree on), episodes that weave a theme through their storylines almost effortlessly. But according to his article from The AV Club, something seems to have been lost in this episode, as if Matthew Weiner, In His Infinite wisdome and God Bless His Name and Talents, forgot what he was doing for a moment and decided to plop out a mediocre episode that failed to achieve the stratospheric highs of the preterite 8 episodes. Okay, a "B" grade isn't that bad, but I think some crucial thematic points may have been overlooked.
I won't disagree that this episode is in fact "the most scattered episode yet." But in a season so single minded (thus far, anyway), any deviance from the norm could be misinterpreted as a misstep. Each episode has had it's own theme, and chooses a variety of topics to explore that theme, like an anachronistic "This American Life." So far, it's been about the Us v. Them topic of Young v. Old, the oddball 60s shouldering their way into Don Draper's (and others') periphery, forcing our leads to adapt or die; and as I've mentioned, the season has been quite single minded about that theme. What I believe is overlooked in this review of this episode is that while things may not be so black and white as Young v. Old, things are still very much Us v. Them as they ever were, and that strikes out the notion that Matthew Weiner could ever be so simple-minded as to commit to a single thematic element and stick solely to it without expanding on it in the slightest. Praise His Name.
Obviously, I'm behind here. I'm watching however many weeks past the water-cooler's "View By" date, but I'm responding as I witness it, which (somehow) keeps my opinion fresh. Again, though, I will agree that "Dark Shadows" doesn't seem quite as cohesive as former episodes, if only because the storylines are so seemingly disparate. But the thematic cohesion is just as present as it has been all season. When Don picks his own copy over the recently-realized threat Ginsberg's, it's not a Young v. Old move, it's a Me v. You move. When Betty bitchily drops the "Oh your father had a wife before me, ask his NEW wife about it, see what she tells you" bomb, it's the same thing. I suppose where the episode fails is in the dregs of detail that sift to the bottom: Pete's little daydream, Roger and Jane's post-divorce break-up sex, and Sally's continuing "I'm a big girl now" storyline all take the Us v. Them theme and dumb it down to boilerplate filler. See the bargaining between Roger and Jane for a new apartment, Sally's lashing out at Megan for being able to fake-cry and, by extension, lie (or "act" as Megan might call it), and Pete's... well, Pete just needed something to do this week. So he got a sexy scene with some side-boob. Good for Pete. All the runner stories are simply superficial plot development, but the competition element is ever-present.
It may be the simple fact that the characters have finally, for a moment, fallen out of sync with each other. Roger and Pete both had major, game-changing events occur to them recently, and their respective lives have to catch up to that this week. Don, Megan, and Betty's individual conflicts have yet to boil over (or have boiled over many times ["Yeah, you clean that carpet in your underwear while I feed you orange sherbet. Yeah."] and are still simmering dangerously hotter), and so the thematic importance of their actions this week are heightened. I suppose what I'm trying to say is that where the episode seems scattered in theme is really where the episode is scattered in level of emotion. The episode serves its function, but the highs and lows are more disparate than the harmonious resonance of the previous few weeks.
The beauty of Mad Men is that any analysis could be considered "correct." These are complex people we're dealing with, even when they act with simple pettiness and petulance. But it has always been a show defined by the episodic structure, and achieves beautiful results by treating each episode, as VDW suggests, as a short story that contributes to a larger thematic whole. I just don't think this episode is as large a thematic misstep as might be perceived. Maybe I'm being similarly petty and petulant calling out Todd VanDerWerff for being "wrong." I know you're not wrong Todd. I just have a differing opinion. Wanna fight about it? Me v. You. Sundown. Be there.
6.24.2012
Watch Me Watch: The Sopranos 1.5 -- "College"
It seems fitting that the episode I return to after an unspeakably long hiatus is titled "College." Without turning this into a diary entry, I've been struggling with the fact that without college to force me to think critically about the entertainments that I love, I may be losing the ability to do so. Of course, due to that unspeakably long hiatus, I'm probably just out of practice.
So here I am. Living in Thailand and watching copious amounts of television to pass the time in a small town. It's almost... American. But for whatever reason, I chose to watch a number of series I'd already seen before delving into the one I've put off the longest. After Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, and various others, I find myself here, at the series that (arguably) made each and every one of those possible. (See, to follow my assertions with quotes [as I was taught to do in high school, and perfected in... wait for it... college], these quotes from a primary source here and here.)
----
Any time a visual medium asks you to read something on-screen, it better be for a good reason. If it's something as relatively trivial as a plot point, then just have the character read it breathily to themselves, as we have all done when pretending we're in a movie and receiving important news via post. If it's thematically related, then you'd be wise to have the characters reading your carefully chosen text talk about it in a way obliquely referencing their personal demons or dilemma. But if you're The Sopranos, you take thematically related text (in this case, a quote from Nathaniel Hawthorne) and trust the audience to read it, get it, and apply it to characters as necessary, like a salve.
First, the plot points (to be read mentally, but breathily, if you're able): Tony and Meadow are scouting colleges, cause Tony is a good pater familias. While filling up the gas tank and puttering around Maine, Tony spots what he thinks might be a former associate-cum-narc, long ago swept away and sheltered by witness protection. Papa Soprano gives chase, all while trying to gently ease his rapidly maturing daughter into the unspoken knowledge that he is a mafioso. Simple, right?
The quote we're asked to read (along with Tony, sitting in a marble-tiled hall of an East Coast University waiting for Meadow) "No man... can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which one may be true." All we're given to chew on after reading is a dopey ADR-line--"Our most famous alumni!"--from some extra who can now say he had a line on The Sopranos despite the fact that he was only in the wide shot and we never see his face. We and Tony both are left with the (fairly obvious) implications of the line.
The central drama of this show has never really been much of a secret. But by emphasizing again and again and again--with ducks and dreams of detachable penises and therapy and lies and Hawthorne quotes--we are all but guaranteed to see a spectacular explosion. Or at least witness the giggle-inducing fun of a balloon plopping around the room as it rapidly deflates. Tony Soprano has some 'splaining to do. You can't be a family man and a Family man and keep the two mutually exclusive.
----
While these write-ups have thus far been written without any hint of foreknowledge of what comes next, the allure of serialized TV sometimes cannot be ignored, and thus I've sped ahead, all the way through into season 2 (so far). I'm not sure what voice to take as I proceed, or if I'll stick to individual episodes or more of a "this is the last chunk of story that I watched, and here's what I saw" approach. And while I wouldn't say that the last half of season 1 is boring, I will admit that the simple advent of letterboxed presentation makes me all the more excited to fast-forward to season 2 and the more polished storytelling it has thus-far provided. Of course, there's always the risk that I won't ever come back, and you'll be left here alone, abandoned, waiting to find out to which college Meadow is admitted. I'll try not to leave you out in the cold. But we might be time-traveling a bit when I get back.
So here I am. Living in Thailand and watching copious amounts of television to pass the time in a small town. It's almost... American. But for whatever reason, I chose to watch a number of series I'd already seen before delving into the one I've put off the longest. After Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, and various others, I find myself here, at the series that (arguably) made each and every one of those possible. (See, to follow my assertions with quotes [as I was taught to do in high school, and perfected in... wait for it... college], these quotes from a primary source here and here.)
----
Any time a visual medium asks you to read something on-screen, it better be for a good reason. If it's something as relatively trivial as a plot point, then just have the character read it breathily to themselves, as we have all done when pretending we're in a movie and receiving important news via post. If it's thematically related, then you'd be wise to have the characters reading your carefully chosen text talk about it in a way obliquely referencing their personal demons or dilemma. But if you're The Sopranos, you take thematically related text (in this case, a quote from Nathaniel Hawthorne) and trust the audience to read it, get it, and apply it to characters as necessary, like a salve.
First, the plot points (to be read mentally, but breathily, if you're able): Tony and Meadow are scouting colleges, cause Tony is a good pater familias. While filling up the gas tank and puttering around Maine, Tony spots what he thinks might be a former associate-cum-narc, long ago swept away and sheltered by witness protection. Papa Soprano gives chase, all while trying to gently ease his rapidly maturing daughter into the unspoken knowledge that he is a mafioso. Simple, right?
The quote we're asked to read (along with Tony, sitting in a marble-tiled hall of an East Coast University waiting for Meadow) "No man... can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which one may be true." All we're given to chew on after reading is a dopey ADR-line--"Our most famous alumni!"--from some extra who can now say he had a line on The Sopranos despite the fact that he was only in the wide shot and we never see his face. We and Tony both are left with the (fairly obvious) implications of the line.
The central drama of this show has never really been much of a secret. But by emphasizing again and again and again--with ducks and dreams of detachable penises and therapy and lies and Hawthorne quotes--we are all but guaranteed to see a spectacular explosion. Or at least witness the giggle-inducing fun of a balloon plopping around the room as it rapidly deflates. Tony Soprano has some 'splaining to do. You can't be a family man and a Family man and keep the two mutually exclusive.
----
While these write-ups have thus far been written without any hint of foreknowledge of what comes next, the allure of serialized TV sometimes cannot be ignored, and thus I've sped ahead, all the way through into season 2 (so far). I'm not sure what voice to take as I proceed, or if I'll stick to individual episodes or more of a "this is the last chunk of story that I watched, and here's what I saw" approach. And while I wouldn't say that the last half of season 1 is boring, I will admit that the simple advent of letterboxed presentation makes me all the more excited to fast-forward to season 2 and the more polished storytelling it has thus-far provided. Of course, there's always the risk that I won't ever come back, and you'll be left here alone, abandoned, waiting to find out to which college Meadow is admitted. I'll try not to leave you out in the cold. But we might be time-traveling a bit when I get back.
2.22.2012
Life and Death and Television, For Real This Time
I've been known to watch Bravo from time to time, mostly against my will, but sometimes if there's really nothing else on. The Real Housewives of [BLANK] series is a year-long revolving door of various "urban" (but really usually suburbs of the urbs, except maybe in the case of NYC) settings, most with fruit-related imagery/graphics involved. While I was never a fan of the characters, plots, setups or scenarios, I could appreciate what the series as a whole tried to do most of the time--give a maybe-slightly enhanced/exaggerated (like the housewives themselves usually) peek into wealth; explore how power and prestige can ultimately corrupt, or at least make a little bit crazy/delusional; ask the audience to either judge, laugh, both, or GTFO. These shows are pretty unapologetic, and despite the content, that can be admirable.
This article over on the AV Club highlights an extremely dark, tragic situation that arose in front of television cameras for The Real Housewives of Orange County (see? Oranges). Shows like these can be all fluff and no substance, and sometimes that's what we're looking for, no more. But when you constantly point your cameras at something, you're going to catch more than the faked, contrived, preconceived storylines that you're expecting to catch. Completely by accident, you might see something real and human and utterly devastating. I don't necessarily recommend checking out the series, but the article is worth reading if only to defend the existence of reality television and remind us that for all of our snark, reality TV personalities are people too.
This article over on the AV Club highlights an extremely dark, tragic situation that arose in front of television cameras for The Real Housewives of Orange County (see? Oranges). Shows like these can be all fluff and no substance, and sometimes that's what we're looking for, no more. But when you constantly point your cameras at something, you're going to catch more than the faked, contrived, preconceived storylines that you're expecting to catch. Completely by accident, you might see something real and human and utterly devastating. I don't necessarily recommend checking out the series, but the article is worth reading if only to defend the existence of reality television and remind us that for all of our snark, reality TV personalities are people too.
2.08.2012
Life and Death and Television
Once again proving my eerie prescience in the world of television criticism, the term I coined just a week ago--"Post-LOST America"--makes an appearance (more or less; they say "post-LOST world." I guess journalism at large is just that much more global than I am) in an actual, genuine, real-internet-world article.
I haven't seen The River. I don't expect I will ever see The River, because I imagine it will get canceled before I even have a chance to see it. That's the state of the world we live in: Every new pilot comes with a death sentence. If not after a few episodes, then most likely after the first season. Not that this is new or anything, mind you. Series that survive beyond a year are, and always have been, rarities, but it's at least a credit to the powers that be that more and more of them are getting at least a year to try something outside of the box.
Good luck, The River, and godspeed.
I haven't seen The River. I don't expect I will ever see The River, because I imagine it will get canceled before I even have a chance to see it. That's the state of the world we live in: Every new pilot comes with a death sentence. If not after a few episodes, then most likely after the first season. Not that this is new or anything, mind you. Series that survive beyond a year are, and always have been, rarities, but it's at least a credit to the powers that be that more and more of them are getting at least a year to try something outside of the box.
Good luck, The River, and godspeed.
1.24.2012
Post-LOST America
New Year's resolutions are doomed to fail. But, like any bad decision, we make them anyway only to regret it later when our head is in the toilet/gutter/slammer. I regret letting this blog go to seed almost as much as I regret starting it. Put your name on something, "hype" it (to the extent that linking to it on a by-no-means-web-celeb-status facebook and twitter feed entails "hype") and all of sudden you have to follow up. People are depending on you. Or at least hoping to hear what you have to say about the latest episode of The Real World, or that maybe if you finally write a crappy blog post about the stupid fucking LOST finale you'll stop drunkenly ranting about/crying over/apologizing for the stupid fucking LOST finale out in the real, physical world. I got fewer comments on this blog than I have digits, but those few comments matter, dammit, and I still love TV even if writing about it on a consistent basis is actually impossible now that I live abroad where their idea of quality television is about equal to that of Mexican telenovela.
I think it's fair to say that I, like many Americans with regard to 9/11, never really "processed" the finale of LOST. I haven't read about it, revisited it, or thought about it too hard since it aired, partially out of fear that it wasn't as great as I had hoped and partially because eh, it was alright, why spend too much time thinking on it. But if I did go back to it, I can imagine that I would feel that familiar surge of potential intellectualism that used to burn within me. After that show went dark, so did my passion, for a time. I still consumed TV like a fiend, but it was somehow soulless--searching for a substitute to fill the smoke-monster shaped hole in my brain/heart/ever-lovin'-soul. I haven't found it. But that doesn't mean I'm not healing.
There were a few reasons my blog thrived for a short period of time. First, and most importantly was time. I had time to watch TV, and additionally had time to write about TV, which if you didn't know is surprisingly time consuming, what with all that mental effort spent on something rather silly if you think about it. But I soon succumbed to the darker side of the tube, the side that sucks you in, drains your life-force, and leaves you husked and searching for a fix. Consuming for the sake of consumption was the norm, and eventually you get to a point where you spend so much time watching TV you run out of time to think about what you're watching. And look at the name of this thing. You're here, conceivably, to hear me think about the crap we shove into our eyeballs and earholes. So not thinking is not an option. A second reason for said thriving is the aforementioned LOST/passion factor. Television was clipping along at a fever pitch, with (refer to my very first post here, over 2 years ago) countless masterpieces of the form airing all at the same time, live and uncut so to speak. It was enough to send me spiraling out of control, unable to tell which way was up in a tide of entertainment. For a time, the same tidal wave sustained me, but I've never been a great surfer.
So here I am, two years later, sober (metaphorically, anyway) and sorry--ready for another reboot. I'm all the way in Thailand, and there's a surprising amount of free time to be had over here. And in the spirit of the New Year, I've convinced myself of what a piece of shit I am, why don't you write more you lazy asshole, and do some push-ups while you're at it! I'm watching Carnivale again, slowly and with more careful steps than my past junkie-self, and with a little luck and determination and help from that 12-Step Higher Power I might be able to... think. But first, if you'll excuse me, I should go do some push-ups.
I think it's fair to say that I, like many Americans with regard to 9/11, never really "processed" the finale of LOST. I haven't read about it, revisited it, or thought about it too hard since it aired, partially out of fear that it wasn't as great as I had hoped and partially because eh, it was alright, why spend too much time thinking on it. But if I did go back to it, I can imagine that I would feel that familiar surge of potential intellectualism that used to burn within me. After that show went dark, so did my passion, for a time. I still consumed TV like a fiend, but it was somehow soulless--searching for a substitute to fill the smoke-monster shaped hole in my brain/heart/ever-lovin'-soul. I haven't found it. But that doesn't mean I'm not healing.
There were a few reasons my blog thrived for a short period of time. First, and most importantly was time. I had time to watch TV, and additionally had time to write about TV, which if you didn't know is surprisingly time consuming, what with all that mental effort spent on something rather silly if you think about it. But I soon succumbed to the darker side of the tube, the side that sucks you in, drains your life-force, and leaves you husked and searching for a fix. Consuming for the sake of consumption was the norm, and eventually you get to a point where you spend so much time watching TV you run out of time to think about what you're watching. And look at the name of this thing. You're here, conceivably, to hear me think about the crap we shove into our eyeballs and earholes. So not thinking is not an option. A second reason for said thriving is the aforementioned LOST/passion factor. Television was clipping along at a fever pitch, with (refer to my very first post here, over 2 years ago) countless masterpieces of the form airing all at the same time, live and uncut so to speak. It was enough to send me spiraling out of control, unable to tell which way was up in a tide of entertainment. For a time, the same tidal wave sustained me, but I've never been a great surfer.
So here I am, two years later, sober (metaphorically, anyway) and sorry--ready for another reboot. I'm all the way in Thailand, and there's a surprising amount of free time to be had over here. And in the spirit of the New Year, I've convinced myself of what a piece of shit I am, why don't you write more you lazy asshole, and do some push-ups while you're at it! I'm watching Carnivale again, slowly and with more careful steps than my past junkie-self, and with a little luck and determination and help from that 12-Step Higher Power I might be able to... think. But first, if you'll excuse me, I should go do some push-ups.
3.16.2011
The Real World Las Vegas: Life Ain't A Game, Son
But in fact, the game is inescapable, the pieces are in place, and the board is set. Let's review our game pieces:
Dustin as The White Queen and Heather as The Black Queen--These two game pieces are destined to circle each other as rams in the wild, vying for the high ground until the opportune moment to collide. Their tête à-tête is not quite adversarial, but rather one of mutual admiration--a game in the truest sense of the word. The Queens feel each other out, observe patterns of behavior, and use their unmatched mobility to test all avenues of approach as well as avoid a premature engagement. As The Black Queen said: "Dustin's got swagger for a white boy." These two will sweep across the board, ignoring all other pieces (that is, unless one stands in the way of their final showdown; see Mike Mike the Knight Knight) in a graceful dance of deception and intrigue, until finally they will ram their parts against each other, sexually.
Nany as The Black Bishop--Her zig-zagging motion between relationship and singlehood is both limiting and liberating as the indecision she's caught in enables her to blindside those around her. Sadly though, her shifting course makes her an easy target for the more transitive pieces, namely...
Adam as The Faux Pawn--Adam is the all-seeing Player posing as pawn. His game might seem obvious, but there are larger machinations at work in his scheme. In a brilliant defensive move, he yet again deceives his fellow (but really, inferior) gamepieces by stripping himself of mystique and revealing a supposed vulnerability. His prey falls for the feint of the sad story of loserdom and his cover is yet again saved. He even convinces the gameboard itself (in the form of the security officer of the Hard Rock Casino) that his actions are innocent, his playing style on the up and up, when in fact he's cheating them all. He is controlling both sides of the board, playing against himself.
Leroy and Naomi as The Rooks--Their paths, as of now, are straight lines, bouncing blindly off of borders unseen to them, as they are as yet unaware that they are playing the game. Enlightenment may eventually broaden the scope of their movement, but for now they are simply lateral. Yes, toe-sucking in a game of truth or dare is considered "lateral movement," that's just how messed up this game is.
Which brings us to Mike Mike the Knight Knight. He's physically incapable of making a straightforward move on this board. For every line he tries to make, something blocks his path and forces a jarring "L." Case in point, the game within the game, wherein the pieces gather on the battleground of Rows 3 through 6 to commence a game of chance and will, that ever-fearsome equalizer, Truth or Dare. And here is where our valiant knight makes a crucial misstep. Like stepping between a mother bear and her cub, MM the KK inadvertently puts The Black Queen into a threatened position (with his lips). The Black Queen could squash this lowly knight, easily, and both pieces know it, but The White Queen (still resting peacefully at D1, also known as the couch next to the phone) learns of the aggressive check from a passing rook (Leroy and his big mouth). The possibility of another capturing his counterpart sends him into an 8-directional rage, zagging, zigging, streaking across the board, puffing out his chest and generally acting like a silverback gorilla being challenged for the rights of the troop. Yet his perception of "disrespect" entirely negates the purpose of the game. In his own obsession The Black Queen's words, "It's a game, we're all playing, and we're all playing a little dirty." The game is meant to be played, and this perceived threat to his dominance of the board (and supposed right to the capturing of the opposing Queen) is nonexistent at best. The Black Queen takes the advantage, and moves into attack position, no longer toying around, but ready to kill (emotionally) her adversary. It'll take a lot of retracing of the game log for The White Queen Dustin to regain even footing. At this moment, he faces certain doom and potential removal from the gameboard entirely, through sheer ego-destruction.
But all pales in comparison to the string-pulling of the Player-Pawn Adam. His innocuous position as a pawn is betrayed to us, the observers, but the pieces themselves remain oblivious. Their eyes firmly affixed on the gameboard, they cannot raise their gaze to see the big round head of Adam grinning stupidly down at them, manipulating their every move. Nany may be Bishop in theory, but she is The White King in practice, since it is very obviously her fate that will decide the outcome of the game known as The motherfucking Real World. Adam may be playing both sides of the board, but his allegiance lies firmly in the blackness of his soul. His lies and misdirections may be directed at only one piece, but all on the board are affected by them. There are only so many spaces to occupy, after all.
Dustin as The White Queen and Heather as The Black Queen--These two game pieces are destined to circle each other as rams in the wild, vying for the high ground until the opportune moment to collide. Their tête à-tête is not quite adversarial, but rather one of mutual admiration--a game in the truest sense of the word. The Queens feel each other out, observe patterns of behavior, and use their unmatched mobility to test all avenues of approach as well as avoid a premature engagement. As The Black Queen said: "Dustin's got swagger for a white boy." These two will sweep across the board, ignoring all other pieces (that is, unless one stands in the way of their final showdown; see Mike Mike the Knight Knight) in a graceful dance of deception and intrigue, until finally they will ram their parts against each other, sexually.
Nany as The Black Bishop--Her zig-zagging motion between relationship and singlehood is both limiting and liberating as the indecision she's caught in enables her to blindside those around her. Sadly though, her shifting course makes her an easy target for the more transitive pieces, namely...
Adam as The Faux Pawn--Adam is the all-seeing Player posing as pawn. His game might seem obvious, but there are larger machinations at work in his scheme. In a brilliant defensive move, he yet again deceives his fellow (but really, inferior) gamepieces by stripping himself of mystique and revealing a supposed vulnerability. His prey falls for the feint of the sad story of loserdom and his cover is yet again saved. He even convinces the gameboard itself (in the form of the security officer of the Hard Rock Casino) that his actions are innocent, his playing style on the up and up, when in fact he's cheating them all. He is controlling both sides of the board, playing against himself.
Leroy and Naomi as The Rooks--Their paths, as of now, are straight lines, bouncing blindly off of borders unseen to them, as they are as yet unaware that they are playing the game. Enlightenment may eventually broaden the scope of their movement, but for now they are simply lateral. Yes, toe-sucking in a game of truth or dare is considered "lateral movement," that's just how messed up this game is.
Which brings us to Mike Mike the Knight Knight. He's physically incapable of making a straightforward move on this board. For every line he tries to make, something blocks his path and forces a jarring "L." Case in point, the game within the game, wherein the pieces gather on the battleground of Rows 3 through 6 to commence a game of chance and will, that ever-fearsome equalizer, Truth or Dare. And here is where our valiant knight makes a crucial misstep. Like stepping between a mother bear and her cub, MM the KK inadvertently puts The Black Queen into a threatened position (with his lips). The Black Queen could squash this lowly knight, easily, and both pieces know it, but The White Queen (still resting peacefully at D1, also known as the couch next to the phone) learns of the aggressive check from a passing rook (Leroy and his big mouth). The possibility of another capturing his counterpart sends him into an 8-directional rage, zagging, zigging, streaking across the board, puffing out his chest and generally acting like a silverback gorilla being challenged for the rights of the troop. Yet his perception of "disrespect" entirely negates the purpose of the game. In his own obsession The Black Queen's words, "It's a game, we're all playing, and we're all playing a little dirty." The game is meant to be played, and this perceived threat to his dominance of the board (and supposed right to the capturing of the opposing Queen) is nonexistent at best. The Black Queen takes the advantage, and moves into attack position, no longer toying around, but ready to kill (emotionally) her adversary. It'll take a lot of retracing of the game log for The White Queen Dustin to regain even footing. At this moment, he faces certain doom and potential removal from the gameboard entirely, through sheer ego-destruction.
But all pales in comparison to the string-pulling of the Player-Pawn Adam. His innocuous position as a pawn is betrayed to us, the observers, but the pieces themselves remain oblivious. Their eyes firmly affixed on the gameboard, they cannot raise their gaze to see the big round head of Adam grinning stupidly down at them, manipulating their every move. Nany may be Bishop in theory, but she is The White King in practice, since it is very obviously her fate that will decide the outcome of the game known as The motherfucking Real World. Adam may be playing both sides of the board, but his allegiance lies firmly in the blackness of his soul. His lies and misdirections may be directed at only one piece, but all on the board are affected by them. There are only so many spaces to occupy, after all.
3.09.2011
The Real World Las Vegas: The Dirty Boy Rules
Damn near a year since all TV across the nation went dark, plunging American denizens into a pop culture black hole that nearly sucked our blogging creativity beyond the event horizon, but thank GOD the MOTHERFUCKING REAL WORLD is back! Okay, so maybe I slacked off, maybe the loss of Lost cracked my crusty shell of television thoughts, maybe I just got a job--any of these might be a real reason that I've been absent, but here I am, hopefully permanently, or at least while The Real World Las Vegas is airing. But in the tradition of promising things that never come to fruition, I've recently watched the entirety of Dexter, of which I may have some thoughts on eventually, as well as delving into some rather good televised nature documentaries, and the place of documentary television in the cultural landscape in general (outside the rather repugnant realm of regular old "reality" TV, which is the methadone equivalent to the nice black tar heroin of actual documentary). Anyway, here we are, in Las Vegas, let's take some bets on how long my reinvigorated blogging continues.
--
The Real World of Plato consists of seven archetypes. Seven archangels if you will. At the end of all things, these Seven will persist, planting the seeds of disparity and redemption, conflict and resolution, chaos and society that feed the entire human race and build our world anew. So says Plato. These seven archetypes were once intruded upon by an eighth, an expendable--a sacrificial lamb maybe--that while adding to the overall equation, created a mathematical anomaly known as "Not Everyone Can Hook Up With Everyone." The oddity of seven is a necessity to the evolution of humanity in that the group is forced to choose uneven sides. This will become apparent. But first, The Seven, in their current incarnation:
Cool Dad--Of The Seven, one might be tempted to choose the Cool Dad as the one that will stand out from the pack, the one that will never find peace and thus spur the others to change, but one might be wrong. The one thing about this equation is that somehow it never turns out quite the same. The Cool Dad often wears khaki shorts, reads prayers aloud to the discomfort of others, and thinks always of the Grandmother of us all: Fate. Or just Grandma. Either one. The tortured psyche of the Cool Dad lies dormant, flashing only in moments of deep contemplation, severe drunkenness, or in a crucial moment of decision with a lady. His guilt is deep, catholic (in the lower-case "c" sense, i.e. universal, and also in the upper-case "c" sense, i.e. Catholic), and persistent. Grandma is the Pope!
Dustard--Dustin + Mustard = Dustard. Just to clarify that there is no slag to any mental acuity here. Though I admit, that may come to light soon enough. The Dustard is the rhythmic bouncing of arms and chest, the generic ideal of a certain type of male, identifiable only by the constant fact of toned flesh, stubble, and a Southern accent. Dustard is monogamy personified, though never initially identified as such. But where there is monogamy, there are secrets, and Dustard more likely than not will have a bomb to drop at about the half-life of The Real World (The Real World being a rapidly disintegrating element by its very nature). This particular incarnation contains a rare and unique isotope of secrecy in that deep down he betrays his mold of the male ideal by partaking in a ritual of virile nudity, disseminated to the masses. Yeah, he was naked on the Internet. Big whoop. But Dustard's secret must be kept, because the revelation will trigger the leap to next plateau of human relation for the group. But seriously, he put an ASSLOAD of mustard on that sandwich he was making. Am I the only one concerned here?
Ree Loy--Ree Loy plays an important but isolated role in The Seven known as the Single-Minded. He is obsessed with the opposite sex, and ONLY the opposite sex, for if swords were crossed, then that X would be stamped on the base of his soul, marking him for eternity. His single-mindedness will prevent him from accepting the others as his kindred, and his judgmentality will only serve to splinter the group closer to the point of no return, only to realize his misgivings and reel The Seven in more tightly than ever before. In astrological terms, he is the Aries and will identify most with the most masculine of The Seven, namely Dustard and Shy Guy, though an uncommon and unlikely relationship may form between Ree Loy and the Cool Dad, depending on the Las Vegasian circumstances.
Shy Guy--Loki. The Trickster. Even his name is a pawn on his board. The misnomer is intentional, as Shy Guy will defend to his last breath that his intentions are innocent, when in fact they are the most dastardly of the group. He seeks to bend, break, destroy what is already built. He is Mars, the God of War, the Shiva that will always be looked upon unfavorably at the end of all things despite the fact that from all destruction comes creation. He is the last wall between The Seven and their true selves. Once he is revealed for what he truly is, the others will be free to transform, transcend to their idealized selves. In his Platonic state, he finds it ironic that his current manifestation is named Adam. The Biblical irony is not lost on the Morning Star.
Julia Roberts--Sadly, Julia Roberts must be the first to be destroyed. From there all walls will crumble. She is inextricable from Shy Guy, as they were the first and only to meet, travel, and arrive together. The streets of Las Vegas have bound them. Julia Roberts hides behind a wall of exotic skin and porcelain white teeth, and what a brittle shell it will prove to be. But in reality, in The Real World, the shell was already cracked to begin with. The painful transformation in front of her was already in progress before The Seven were brought together, and her journey will be the most difficult to experience. Her aggressive significant other will prove no match for these archetypes of humanity, nor for the powers of those almighty Powers That Be, the producers.
Ri-Ri--The wild card of the group, the Joker. Her otherworldly qualities will be irresistible to many outside of The Seven, although her charms won't quite penetrate within the circle. This archangel has nothing to offer but the wonders of variance, of the happenstance of life that can be found beyond The Seven, beyond the chains of the paradigm. After the fire of Shy Guy, she will show us what it means to be truly human.
Blonde--While her role may seem simplistic, it is in fact what drives the society of mankind in every meaningful form of literature, politics, or adventure: she is The Woman. Seemingly passive, she can bend Dustard (the ideal of masculinity)'s will with a wink of an eye or bend of a knee. She is a newly awoken Sleeping Beauty, attempting to be the free spirit she so desperately wants to be, only to find that her fate has already been written. She may stray from her path at times, but there will always be something to bring her back to the fold of Seven. The generic ideal of woman, Blonde will both fulfill and surpass her epithet by showing the power of true love, the power of sheer will to survive and grow in a new world unfamiliar, and her subsequent ruination and rebirth will be glorious.
And so, welcome to the motherfucking real world. This is how it is, this is how it will always be, even long after we are gone. The plight and triumph of humanity is right in front of us.
--
So I hope that some of that either made sense up front or will make more sense as this season of The Real World forges on. The setting of which is not coincidental. The City of Sin is a perfect backdrop for these archangels to battle both outside forces and their own demons, to test themselves against themselves and stand tall as The Seven, reformed and resplendent, yet another form of the same old shit we've seen twenty-four times before. It never changes, but somehow it's always interesting. It really is the apex of humanity, now premiering on MTV!
--
The Real World of Plato consists of seven archetypes. Seven archangels if you will. At the end of all things, these Seven will persist, planting the seeds of disparity and redemption, conflict and resolution, chaos and society that feed the entire human race and build our world anew. So says Plato. These seven archetypes were once intruded upon by an eighth, an expendable--a sacrificial lamb maybe--that while adding to the overall equation, created a mathematical anomaly known as "Not Everyone Can Hook Up With Everyone." The oddity of seven is a necessity to the evolution of humanity in that the group is forced to choose uneven sides. This will become apparent. But first, The Seven, in their current incarnation:
Cool Dad--Of The Seven, one might be tempted to choose the Cool Dad as the one that will stand out from the pack, the one that will never find peace and thus spur the others to change, but one might be wrong. The one thing about this equation is that somehow it never turns out quite the same. The Cool Dad often wears khaki shorts, reads prayers aloud to the discomfort of others, and thinks always of the Grandmother of us all: Fate. Or just Grandma. Either one. The tortured psyche of the Cool Dad lies dormant, flashing only in moments of deep contemplation, severe drunkenness, or in a crucial moment of decision with a lady. His guilt is deep, catholic (in the lower-case "c" sense, i.e. universal, and also in the upper-case "c" sense, i.e. Catholic), and persistent. Grandma is the Pope!
Dustard--Dustin + Mustard = Dustard. Just to clarify that there is no slag to any mental acuity here. Though I admit, that may come to light soon enough. The Dustard is the rhythmic bouncing of arms and chest, the generic ideal of a certain type of male, identifiable only by the constant fact of toned flesh, stubble, and a Southern accent. Dustard is monogamy personified, though never initially identified as such. But where there is monogamy, there are secrets, and Dustard more likely than not will have a bomb to drop at about the half-life of The Real World (The Real World being a rapidly disintegrating element by its very nature). This particular incarnation contains a rare and unique isotope of secrecy in that deep down he betrays his mold of the male ideal by partaking in a ritual of virile nudity, disseminated to the masses. Yeah, he was naked on the Internet. Big whoop. But Dustard's secret must be kept, because the revelation will trigger the leap to next plateau of human relation for the group. But seriously, he put an ASSLOAD of mustard on that sandwich he was making. Am I the only one concerned here?
Ree Loy--Ree Loy plays an important but isolated role in The Seven known as the Single-Minded. He is obsessed with the opposite sex, and ONLY the opposite sex, for if swords were crossed, then that X would be stamped on the base of his soul, marking him for eternity. His single-mindedness will prevent him from accepting the others as his kindred, and his judgmentality will only serve to splinter the group closer to the point of no return, only to realize his misgivings and reel The Seven in more tightly than ever before. In astrological terms, he is the Aries and will identify most with the most masculine of The Seven, namely Dustard and Shy Guy, though an uncommon and unlikely relationship may form between Ree Loy and the Cool Dad, depending on the Las Vegasian circumstances.
Shy Guy--Loki. The Trickster. Even his name is a pawn on his board. The misnomer is intentional, as Shy Guy will defend to his last breath that his intentions are innocent, when in fact they are the most dastardly of the group. He seeks to bend, break, destroy what is already built. He is Mars, the God of War, the Shiva that will always be looked upon unfavorably at the end of all things despite the fact that from all destruction comes creation. He is the last wall between The Seven and their true selves. Once he is revealed for what he truly is, the others will be free to transform, transcend to their idealized selves. In his Platonic state, he finds it ironic that his current manifestation is named Adam. The Biblical irony is not lost on the Morning Star.
Julia Roberts--Sadly, Julia Roberts must be the first to be destroyed. From there all walls will crumble. She is inextricable from Shy Guy, as they were the first and only to meet, travel, and arrive together. The streets of Las Vegas have bound them. Julia Roberts hides behind a wall of exotic skin and porcelain white teeth, and what a brittle shell it will prove to be. But in reality, in The Real World, the shell was already cracked to begin with. The painful transformation in front of her was already in progress before The Seven were brought together, and her journey will be the most difficult to experience. Her aggressive significant other will prove no match for these archetypes of humanity, nor for the powers of those almighty Powers That Be, the producers.
Ri-Ri--The wild card of the group, the Joker. Her otherworldly qualities will be irresistible to many outside of The Seven, although her charms won't quite penetrate within the circle. This archangel has nothing to offer but the wonders of variance, of the happenstance of life that can be found beyond The Seven, beyond the chains of the paradigm. After the fire of Shy Guy, she will show us what it means to be truly human.
Blonde--While her role may seem simplistic, it is in fact what drives the society of mankind in every meaningful form of literature, politics, or adventure: she is The Woman. Seemingly passive, she can bend Dustard (the ideal of masculinity)'s will with a wink of an eye or bend of a knee. She is a newly awoken Sleeping Beauty, attempting to be the free spirit she so desperately wants to be, only to find that her fate has already been written. She may stray from her path at times, but there will always be something to bring her back to the fold of Seven. The generic ideal of woman, Blonde will both fulfill and surpass her epithet by showing the power of true love, the power of sheer will to survive and grow in a new world unfamiliar, and her subsequent ruination and rebirth will be glorious.
And so, welcome to the motherfucking real world. This is how it is, this is how it will always be, even long after we are gone. The plight and triumph of humanity is right in front of us.
--
So I hope that some of that either made sense up front or will make more sense as this season of The Real World forges on. The setting of which is not coincidental. The City of Sin is a perfect backdrop for these archangels to battle both outside forces and their own demons, to test themselves against themselves and stand tall as The Seven, reformed and resplendent, yet another form of the same old shit we've seen twenty-four times before. It never changes, but somehow it's always interesting. It really is the apex of humanity, now premiering on MTV!
4.21.2010
Not Just Romantically Challenged
Sitcoms have a bad rap. Yes, most of the time they're hoary, glacially unfunny mastodons of television, but that's no reason to declare the subcategory dead. If there's one positive thing to come out of postmodernism, it's that nothing is ever too old or antediluvian to dig up, brush off and make relevant again. The sitcom will never really die. It's too massive to go extinct, like algae. Having said that,1 ABC's Romantically Challenged will not be the fittest that survives.
Using a trope that has kept fiction alive since it ran out of creation stories to tell, Romantically Challenged focuses its razor-sharp commentary on el-oh-vee-ee love. As ever-so-right troubadour James Murphy has recently said, love is a murderer, though if that was the premise of this show it might be a lot more interesting. Instead love is just that elusive unicorn that we're all hoping is real enough to spot. The cast, in the sitcom-perfect 4-pronged approach, all have different ideas on catching said unicorn, whether that be naive innocence, bitter reluctance, or boisterous carnality. Alyssa Milano is bitter2 about her luck in love, particularly a barely-referenced-except-to-serve-the-plot divorce five months ago to a man already remarrying. Sitcomically said, that's the basic premise: the perils of dating.
Sadly, at least so far, there's nothing new said about these perils here. In fact, the whole thing plays like a midseason coaster of an episode in the middle of an already moderately successful sitcom's waning golden years. To put it bluntly, it's lazy. But the problem with the whole criticism is that sitcoms are always lazy, to an extent. That's the nature of the sitcom. It's a rarified genre that allows its conventions to be used and reused ad nauseum because said conventions are societal fractals, containing infinite possibilities. There will always be a new scene to be written where two people who don't particularly get along at the moment are trapped in an elevator/stairwell/mine shaft, and infinite degrees of comedy in each new configuration. It's a beautiful mold to work from, honestly (at least to some of us), like a jazz standard. So reusing old sitcom standards isn't enough to doom Romantically Challenged.
It's the jokes. The reason that situation-comedies' "sit" portions are allowable is because there is room for experimentation within the form, i.e. how can we make this funny again? Community does this by being delightfully clever and meta. Parks and Recreation leans on the strengths of its cast. How I Met Your Mother uses strong characterizations in conjunction with a wonky framing concept that gives the writers room to experiment with presentation and structure. All of the above are good. Romantically Challenged does none of these. The characterizations are weakly standard, and there's nothing particularly groundbreaking in a concept that never goes beyond, as Buckwheat sang, wookin' pa nub in all da wong paces. If your characters are stock and your premise is stock, then guess what your show is going to turn out like?
Pilots are tricky buggers though, as most of them have the burden of introducing all the characters, all the central settings, on top of actually making some sort of self-contained conflict within the episode that exemplifies the types of conflicts we might be dealing with in future episodes. It's a tough line to walk, and Romantically Challenged I suppose you could say 'succeeds' at skirting the line by not attempting to do any of the above. I honestly couldn't tell, of the four main characters, who was dating, who (if anyone) had dated whom in the past, or who was related to whom. And that made the whole thing really really dirty-feeling. Was the guy asking about spanking advice talking to his ex-girlfriend? His sister? Or just some girl he knows somehow? Shouldn't I know by now? Well, I don't. Pilot fail. Same goes for the settings; here, the obligatory way-too-nice apartment and their "hangout" spot, which appears to be some sort of restaurant. Again, things are unclear. The plot was self-serving enough, pretty middlebrow sitcom fare,3 and I admit I chuckled slightly a few times (but only because I'm pretty liberal in what I chuckle at), but overall didn't achieve what pilots should strive to. Again, tricky buggers, but also again, laziness. Oh well.
Sitcoms have been called a dying breed in some circles, but hopefully what's actually dying out are bad sitcoms. Because for every Romantically Challenged that hopes to coast through our screens by "playing the sitcom hits" as it were, there's a Modern Family that can take the oldest of tropes and make them feel fresh, new, and relevant again. Just like stereotypes, tropes are usually tropes for a reason, but at this point shows have to do a little digging to find a new way to show that reason. And at this point, the only thing Romantically Challenged is digging is its own grave. Zing!4
Addenda
Using a trope that has kept fiction alive since it ran out of creation stories to tell, Romantically Challenged focuses its razor-sharp commentary on el-oh-vee-ee love. As ever-so-right troubadour James Murphy has recently said, love is a murderer, though if that was the premise of this show it might be a lot more interesting. Instead love is just that elusive unicorn that we're all hoping is real enough to spot. The cast, in the sitcom-perfect 4-pronged approach, all have different ideas on catching said unicorn, whether that be naive innocence, bitter reluctance, or boisterous carnality. Alyssa Milano is bitter2 about her luck in love, particularly a barely-referenced-except-to-serve-the-plot divorce five months ago to a man already remarrying. Sitcomically said, that's the basic premise: the perils of dating.
Sadly, at least so far, there's nothing new said about these perils here. In fact, the whole thing plays like a midseason coaster of an episode in the middle of an already moderately successful sitcom's waning golden years. To put it bluntly, it's lazy. But the problem with the whole criticism is that sitcoms are always lazy, to an extent. That's the nature of the sitcom. It's a rarified genre that allows its conventions to be used and reused ad nauseum because said conventions are societal fractals, containing infinite possibilities. There will always be a new scene to be written where two people who don't particularly get along at the moment are trapped in an elevator/stairwell/mine shaft, and infinite degrees of comedy in each new configuration. It's a beautiful mold to work from, honestly (at least to some of us), like a jazz standard. So reusing old sitcom standards isn't enough to doom Romantically Challenged.
It's the jokes. The reason that situation-comedies' "sit" portions are allowable is because there is room for experimentation within the form, i.e. how can we make this funny again? Community does this by being delightfully clever and meta. Parks and Recreation leans on the strengths of its cast. How I Met Your Mother uses strong characterizations in conjunction with a wonky framing concept that gives the writers room to experiment with presentation and structure. All of the above are good. Romantically Challenged does none of these. The characterizations are weakly standard, and there's nothing particularly groundbreaking in a concept that never goes beyond, as Buckwheat sang, wookin' pa nub in all da wong paces. If your characters are stock and your premise is stock, then guess what your show is going to turn out like?
Pilots are tricky buggers though, as most of them have the burden of introducing all the characters, all the central settings, on top of actually making some sort of self-contained conflict within the episode that exemplifies the types of conflicts we might be dealing with in future episodes. It's a tough line to walk, and Romantically Challenged I suppose you could say 'succeeds' at skirting the line by not attempting to do any of the above. I honestly couldn't tell, of the four main characters, who was dating, who (if anyone) had dated whom in the past, or who was related to whom. And that made the whole thing really really dirty-feeling. Was the guy asking about spanking advice talking to his ex-girlfriend? His sister? Or just some girl he knows somehow? Shouldn't I know by now? Well, I don't. Pilot fail. Same goes for the settings; here, the obligatory way-too-nice apartment and their "hangout" spot, which appears to be some sort of restaurant. Again, things are unclear. The plot was self-serving enough, pretty middlebrow sitcom fare,3 and I admit I chuckled slightly a few times (but only because I'm pretty liberal in what I chuckle at), but overall didn't achieve what pilots should strive to. Again, tricky buggers, but also again, laziness. Oh well.
Sitcoms have been called a dying breed in some circles, but hopefully what's actually dying out are bad sitcoms. Because for every Romantically Challenged that hopes to coast through our screens by "playing the sitcom hits" as it were, there's a Modern Family that can take the oldest of tropes and make them feel fresh, new, and relevant again. Just like stereotypes, tropes are usually tropes for a reason, but at this point shows have to do a little digging to find a new way to show that reason. And at this point, the only thing Romantically Challenged is digging is its own grave. Zing!4
Addenda
- Stay tuned for my long-promised Curb Your Enthusiasm/Seinfeld reunion cogitation, now that I've made my way through the latest season a second time. Thank God for HBO/Larry David's long-ass turnaround time. You may understand the placement of this footnote better upon reading that future post. ↑
- About her career? ↑
- Milano tries to start dating again 5 months after her divorce, mostly because her ex-husband sent her an invitation to his marriage, which is totally a dick move, and totally not a good reason to start dating again just for the sake of it. I suppose you would call that the A-story. The B-story was funnier, slightly, as one of the dudes finds the perfect girl with one glaring flaw (again, pretty wonted when it comes to sitcoms): she likes the dirty talk, and our gentle soul ain't the kind of man to give it to her. This was mostly funnier only because the actor had a semblance of charisma that was absent from the other ligneous cast members. C-story, also tropological sit-comedy, had the "goofball" "writer" character getting his short stories evaluated by a high school English teacher and getting a B-. The plots are relegated to a footnote because they are as inconsequential to this blog post as they were to this show. ↑
- And if you have to say "zing!" after a joke, it probably shouldn't go into your sitcom. ↑
4.19.2010
Sometimes The Blogs Just Write Themselves
These days, the only things I see that inspire me to write blogs are twofold: Lost and The Real World. And so instead of constantly writing about Lost and The Real World, I hesitated. I waited for the episode of either that best exemplified television watching at its finest. And it just so happened that The Real World's finale came first.1
This season of MTV's Ph.D-level dissertation/social experiment has proven to be a delight beyond measure after a rocky start not only for me, but for the housemates themselves. After bitter beginnings with The God Argument, The Don't-Beat-Me-I'm-Fragile Crusade, and The Nervous Breakdown, the remaining roommates have had a long enough stretch of peace to form the scar tissue of True Friendship. Through their collective sufferings and woes, these misfit toys banded together to prove to The Powers That Be that their Machiavellian meddling will not control them anymore! You couldn't buy a logline better than that. And with the clubhouse poison of Erika 'Milton Bradley' Rocker-Girl (never did find out her last name) out of the picture, the strong that survived came together tighter than drying rawhide. Their farewells were tearful, their last actions meaningful, their sorrow palpable. It was adorable. Like kids saying goodbye from summer camp adorable. They wrote on the walls, played a final (and especially 7th-grade-risque) game of truth or dare, and finally got really really fucked up (at least one of them did). And most importantly, Ol' Yellow Eyes (Callie) had an art show.
But first, some backstory from episodes lost in the abyss: The Boy Who Lies stopped lying long enough to get himself a real actual girl, not just a vagina with a torso and stems. Incredible, I know. This week we meet them in the throes of love's blossom and the wonderful Powers That Be felt them worthy for the happiest of endings. Despite initial dramatic pauses and important hesitation on whether he could handle it, Andrew agreed to have Andrea (seriously, this is not made up) move in with him, beyond the realm of The Real World, in the real world. I believe in them, their love is real.2 This newfound infatuation with the Greek goddess Andreathena, however, seriously diminishes his need to give a shit about anyone else. Callie asked him for a favor goddammit! Our Original Oh Yeah I Forgot About Her gathers the three artistes in the house--that is, herself, Andrew the cartoonist, and... Emily?... the... poet?--to display their corporate sponsored [Buy a Five Dollar Foot Long on any sub, that's right, ANY SUB. foralimitedtimeonly] personal vision of DC in a gallery. Of art. So goddamn Andrew better get goddamn painting. But in a beautiful moment of planting and pay-off, we hark back to Andrew's near-disastrous, short-lived political cartoon career. The man's a procrastinator--and I for one, can relate. I've been procrastinating this whole season.
So then Richard Alpert sez, he sez--oh wait, what show are we on?--So then Andrew does the paintings, but he's almost late, blah blah blah, just one last bit of drama where we learn characters like Andrew have bettered themselves oh-so-slightly from "a procrastinator who turns things in late" to "a procrastinator who turns things in with just enough time to let the ink dry;" Inspector Instigator even made a last villainous showing when he decided to say to Callie The Budding Yet Fragile-To-Criticism Photographer that anybody with a finger and an eyeball can take pictures. But again, The Inspector has gone from "instigates until he makes someone cry" to "instigate until you can say sorry and sound like you mean it." That, or everyone has just learned to ignore him. But in the end (or "in the deep end" as Ty or the proverbial She might say), the art is a success, if a little damp. She even sells some photos. So naturally, it's time to celebrate.
And celebrate they do, and the best bit of drunkenness of the year manifests in the form of The Formerly Bisexual But Now Pretty Much Gay Boy tease-boxing some guy literally called Hockey Guy and getting thrown into a wall. Now his nose is all busted! On the day his dad is coming to town! So they can both go to a fancy (and probably expensive! -- my occasionally Republican and entirely fictional editor) DC dinner party, featuring Obama appearance #2!3 Oh what a Marcia Brady conundrum! But luckily, he's the kind of man who's not afraid to wear make-up. You know, like Andrew. He goes to the dinner with his dad, and they fist bump and clap hands and jump up and down screaming "Barack!" in little girl voices, and all is going just dandy until, riding the high that comes with mob mentality, the FBBNPMGB accosts the most interesting protester ever to have his face blurred on television. I had no idea the Darwinists were against gay marriage. Apparently there are evolutionary zealots as well? But back to the accosting, the Darwinist is berated without a chance to retaliate and Mike's uncomfortable dad teaches his son a valuable lesson about giving each other a chance and he makes him apologize to the now wimpering Darwinist. Parents connected with while in DC: 2 of 2 for Mike!4
That means our final Oh Yeah I Forgot About Him goes to Lenny Kravitz, who didn't do much except look like a total badass by blowing off everyone in the house in his final goodbye confessional, instead saying that he'll be most thankful for his band. Peace out Lenny!
And slowly they trickle out, and you can tell how much they love each other by how hard they hug each other, until there are none left, only the voiceover of The Formerly Bisexual But Now Pretty Much Straight Girl, summing it all up with a "What I Learned..."moment. So in the end, it turns out, we found ourselves forged together in the fires of Calamity, we found out who we really are, we found True Love. All in all, not a bad social experiment.
----------
Postscript: The Reunion Show
It was exactly what you would expect. They bickered and laughed, and talked unironically of True Friendship and Love. Also, there was swearing. Liberal amounts of Friendship swearing. But overall, the same shit happened, rehashing the Big Events of the series and reinforcing the fact that none of these people will back down. Only Erika cried (big surprise), and it seemed like everyone settled back into their original roles, pre-Finale. The Bisexual Duo voraciously defended their bisexuality, Callie was sweetly naive (though it was tantalizingly hinted at that she may be a closet hipster?! Hipsters can't be nice Cal!), and Inspector Instigator was less a Snively Whiplash-scheming sort of villain than a Dastardly and Muttley-comedic sort of villain. The guy's never going to look good when he opens his mouth. But at least Andrew's True Love has continued post-camera-bombardment.
Somewhat sadly, the most interesting part was watching Andrew fidget in the background when the spotlight wasn't on him, because who gives a shit what you're all doing now that you're not on TV anymore. It was surprisingly unjuicy and anticlimactic overall, and their bickering felt as uncomfortable as it was way back in Week One, only this time, as I said, there was Friendship swearing. Maybe I should start watching The Real World/Road Rules Challenge: Fresh Meat 2 (quite the unruly title), because it looks like those people really know how to fuck each other up.
Addenda
This season of MTV's Ph.D-level dissertation/social experiment has proven to be a delight beyond measure after a rocky start not only for me, but for the housemates themselves. After bitter beginnings with The God Argument, The Don't-Beat-Me-I'm-Fragile Crusade, and The Nervous Breakdown, the remaining roommates have had a long enough stretch of peace to form the scar tissue of True Friendship. Through their collective sufferings and woes, these misfit toys banded together to prove to The Powers That Be that their Machiavellian meddling will not control them anymore! You couldn't buy a logline better than that. And with the clubhouse poison of Erika 'Milton Bradley' Rocker-Girl (never did find out her last name) out of the picture, the strong that survived came together tighter than drying rawhide. Their farewells were tearful, their last actions meaningful, their sorrow palpable. It was adorable. Like kids saying goodbye from summer camp adorable. They wrote on the walls, played a final (and especially 7th-grade-risque) game of truth or dare, and finally got really really fucked up (at least one of them did). And most importantly, Ol' Yellow Eyes (Callie) had an art show.
But first, some backstory from episodes lost in the abyss: The Boy Who Lies stopped lying long enough to get himself a real actual girl, not just a vagina with a torso and stems. Incredible, I know. This week we meet them in the throes of love's blossom and the wonderful Powers That Be felt them worthy for the happiest of endings. Despite initial dramatic pauses and important hesitation on whether he could handle it, Andrew agreed to have Andrea (seriously, this is not made up) move in with him, beyond the realm of The Real World, in the real world. I believe in them, their love is real.2 This newfound infatuation with the Greek goddess Andreathena, however, seriously diminishes his need to give a shit about anyone else. Callie asked him for a favor goddammit! Our Original Oh Yeah I Forgot About Her gathers the three artistes in the house--that is, herself, Andrew the cartoonist, and... Emily?... the... poet?--to display their corporate sponsored [Buy a Five Dollar Foot Long on any sub, that's right, ANY SUB. foralimitedtimeonly] personal vision of DC in a gallery. Of art. So goddamn Andrew better get goddamn painting. But in a beautiful moment of planting and pay-off, we hark back to Andrew's near-disastrous, short-lived political cartoon career. The man's a procrastinator--and I for one, can relate. I've been procrastinating this whole season.
So then Richard Alpert sez, he sez--oh wait, what show are we on?--So then Andrew does the paintings, but he's almost late, blah blah blah, just one last bit of drama where we learn characters like Andrew have bettered themselves oh-so-slightly from "a procrastinator who turns things in late" to "a procrastinator who turns things in with just enough time to let the ink dry;" Inspector Instigator even made a last villainous showing when he decided to say to Callie The Budding Yet Fragile-To-Criticism Photographer that anybody with a finger and an eyeball can take pictures. But again, The Inspector has gone from "instigates until he makes someone cry" to "instigate until you can say sorry and sound like you mean it." That, or everyone has just learned to ignore him. But in the end (or "in the deep end" as Ty or the proverbial She might say), the art is a success, if a little damp. She even sells some photos. So naturally, it's time to celebrate.
And celebrate they do, and the best bit of drunkenness of the year manifests in the form of The Formerly Bisexual But Now Pretty Much Gay Boy tease-boxing some guy literally called Hockey Guy and getting thrown into a wall. Now his nose is all busted! On the day his dad is coming to town! So they can both go to a fancy (and probably expensive! -- my occasionally Republican and entirely fictional editor) DC dinner party, featuring Obama appearance #2!3 Oh what a Marcia Brady conundrum! But luckily, he's the kind of man who's not afraid to wear make-up. You know, like Andrew. He goes to the dinner with his dad, and they fist bump and clap hands and jump up and down screaming "Barack!" in little girl voices, and all is going just dandy until, riding the high that comes with mob mentality, the FBBNPMGB accosts the most interesting protester ever to have his face blurred on television. I had no idea the Darwinists were against gay marriage. Apparently there are evolutionary zealots as well? But back to the accosting, the Darwinist is berated without a chance to retaliate and Mike's uncomfortable dad teaches his son a valuable lesson about giving each other a chance and he makes him apologize to the now wimpering Darwinist. Parents connected with while in DC: 2 of 2 for Mike!4
That means our final Oh Yeah I Forgot About Him goes to Lenny Kravitz, who didn't do much except look like a total badass by blowing off everyone in the house in his final goodbye confessional, instead saying that he'll be most thankful for his band. Peace out Lenny!
And slowly they trickle out, and you can tell how much they love each other by how hard they hug each other, until there are none left, only the voiceover of The Formerly Bisexual But Now Pretty Much Straight Girl, summing it all up with a "What I Learned..."moment. So in the end, it turns out, we found ourselves forged together in the fires of Calamity, we found out who we really are, we found True Love. All in all, not a bad social experiment.
----------
Postscript: The Reunion Show
It was exactly what you would expect. They bickered and laughed, and talked unironically of True Friendship and Love. Also, there was swearing. Liberal amounts of Friendship swearing. But overall, the same shit happened, rehashing the Big Events of the series and reinforcing the fact that none of these people will back down. Only Erika cried (big surprise), and it seemed like everyone settled back into their original roles, pre-Finale. The Bisexual Duo voraciously defended their bisexuality, Callie was sweetly naive (though it was tantalizingly hinted at that she may be a closet hipster?! Hipsters can't be nice Cal!), and Inspector Instigator was less a Snively Whiplash-scheming sort of villain than a Dastardly and Muttley-comedic sort of villain. The guy's never going to look good when he opens his mouth. But at least Andrew's True Love has continued post-camera-bombardment.
Somewhat sadly, the most interesting part was watching Andrew fidget in the background when the spotlight wasn't on him, because who gives a shit what you're all doing now that you're not on TV anymore. It was surprisingly unjuicy and anticlimactic overall, and their bickering felt as uncomfortable as it was way back in Week One, only this time, as I said, there was Friendship swearing. Maybe I should start watching The Real World/Road Rules Challenge: Fresh Meat 2 (quite the unruly title), because it looks like those people really know how to fuck each other up.
Addenda
- Yeah, it came first like two weeks ago, apologies for the constant delays here. ↑
- This newfound belief in the wondrous machinations of The World's Greatest Social Experiment ties into the housemates as well, as my relationship with them grew as they grew with each other. And when clubhouse poison Erika 'Barry Bonds' Rocker-Girl left, we were all free to let loose and have fun with each other. I felt like I was 13 again. ↑
- At which point I had one of those sublime moments of realization and appreciation of the time we live in, where historic things are happening, in a country emerging from a time of hopeless dark despair and moving into a future once again filled with possibility rather than more of the same. Yes, The Real World made me remember that it's a good time to be alive. If that doesn't prove a.) the show's relevance, and b.) how far I've come in this season of nonsense, then I can't do anything more for you. ↑
- Though his political hopes might be dashed by the previously mentioned drunken tickle-fight that resulted in a nose gash, which was broadcast on national television. But then again, without the national television part, would he have had the opportunities to participate in the politicking that solidified the dream in the first place? A real monkey's paw situation indeed--wait, am I talking about Lost again? ↑
3.01.2010
Two Overly Serious Treatises
Treatise The First:
The Bachleor: Meditations on American Sexuality
White Female America was riveted as All-American-Male Jake the Bachelor chose his bride-to-be, and White Female America released a collective squeal of disgust as Jake the Bachelor chose the shrewier of two shrews. Was anyone really going to be pleased by either outcome?
In the wake of trashier cable reality shows featuring the increasingly shallow premise of "looking for love," The Bachelor now emerges as a hyper-conservative punchline in most respects. Touting everlasting heterosexual (and entirely Caucasian) love as its goal, The Bachelor peddles unnaturally straight white teeth and shallow cliches as the American ideal of love. Roses, tropical locales, flowing evening gowns, tailored suits and stilted emotions abound, and we are meant to yearn for something similar. Women swoon over large hunks of mineral ore and men on single knees, and The Bachelor presents no alternative, instead adding in helicopter rides and long-lensed cameras and a heaping sense of façade.
I find myself wondering the percentage of people who are swept up by the theatrics of network pandering compared to the percentage who are purely in it for the schadenfreude. Watching The Rejected's face contort into ugly expressions heretofore unseen on her until-now perfectly composed visage held a slight bit of satisfaction, a sort of "welcome to the real world, honey" kind of scoff at her pain, partially in self-defense because we know in our hearts (though the word "heart" is thrown around so much on The Bachelor that it's elevated to the most Platonic of ideals rather than the thing that works the hardest in our bodies to keep us alive and smiling impossibly clear-enameled smiles) that she came a helluva lot closer to that American Ideal of Romance, of being swept away by a Harlequin figure to exotic locales to be proposed to on bended knee and kissed oh-so-softly as the sun sets behind us and fade out the end. But we in the real world, watching TV with the man or woman who probably farts in bed, who proposed at Benihana when the chef flipped the ring out of the fried rice, who not-so-sadly lacks six-pack abs and a completely fabricated smile, we know it's just a dream. An impossibly white, WASPy, heterosexual, so-called "American" dream, presented to us as fact, though it's indubitably undoubtedly fiction, the most reaching definition of "reality" there ever was.
Treatise The Second:
Canadian Stereotypes on the International Stage
Where most countries might try to enlighten or educate the world about their culture when offered an international audience to appeal to, Canada stands alone. And their resistance, their utter denunciation of the Chinese precedent of grandeur and majesty shows that Canada's got a lot more balls than we give them credit for, and they somehow stood up to this in the most Canadian way imaginable: pure, innocent ignorance.
Canada is the friend that will smile and laugh as you completely eviscerate his manhood through taunts and pants-ings. Canada takes the ribbings in stride, without a hint of torment or sign of the sort of bottled-up-anger warnings that signal an impending emotional explosion. Which begs the question: Do they just not realize? Oh no. They realize. And they don't give a shit.
Canada's closing ceremonies made no effort to subvert stereotypes of moose and mounties and maple leaves, instead opting to have each of those dancing to what can only be described as Canadian Pop Music, accompanied by giant inflatable beavers and Michael Buble And His Incredible Quebecois Chorus Line. It takes a serious amount of nuts (Canadians love puns) to stand up in front of all of your "friends" and say, "You know all that shit you make fun of me for? Well here it is, bigger and more incredibly 'Canadian' than your piddly little international brains could ever dream of, because if there's one thing a Canadian knows how to do, it's laugh at himself."
Canada gave the world a treat by being as absolutely Canadian as it could possibly be, with no shame. The prospect of being a dancing maple leaf girl could have brought even the most desperate Broadway wannabe to ignominious tears, but I can only guess that there was a line of Newfoundlanders and Saskatchewanians ready to don a giant symbol of their country and flap around like a cocooning caterpillar, and good for them. They showed this cocky American that they could care less what I think about them and their one-road country, and for that, I salute them.
The Bachleor: Meditations on American Sexuality
White Female America was riveted as All-American-Male Jake the Bachelor chose his bride-to-be, and White Female America released a collective squeal of disgust as Jake the Bachelor chose the shrewier of two shrews. Was anyone really going to be pleased by either outcome?
In the wake of trashier cable reality shows featuring the increasingly shallow premise of "looking for love," The Bachelor now emerges as a hyper-conservative punchline in most respects. Touting everlasting heterosexual (and entirely Caucasian) love as its goal, The Bachelor peddles unnaturally straight white teeth and shallow cliches as the American ideal of love. Roses, tropical locales, flowing evening gowns, tailored suits and stilted emotions abound, and we are meant to yearn for something similar. Women swoon over large hunks of mineral ore and men on single knees, and The Bachelor presents no alternative, instead adding in helicopter rides and long-lensed cameras and a heaping sense of façade.
I find myself wondering the percentage of people who are swept up by the theatrics of network pandering compared to the percentage who are purely in it for the schadenfreude. Watching The Rejected's face contort into ugly expressions heretofore unseen on her until-now perfectly composed visage held a slight bit of satisfaction, a sort of "welcome to the real world, honey" kind of scoff at her pain, partially in self-defense because we know in our hearts (though the word "heart" is thrown around so much on The Bachelor that it's elevated to the most Platonic of ideals rather than the thing that works the hardest in our bodies to keep us alive and smiling impossibly clear-enameled smiles) that she came a helluva lot closer to that American Ideal of Romance, of being swept away by a Harlequin figure to exotic locales to be proposed to on bended knee and kissed oh-so-softly as the sun sets behind us and fade out the end. But we in the real world, watching TV with the man or woman who probably farts in bed, who proposed at Benihana when the chef flipped the ring out of the fried rice, who not-so-sadly lacks six-pack abs and a completely fabricated smile, we know it's just a dream. An impossibly white, WASPy, heterosexual, so-called "American" dream, presented to us as fact, though it's indubitably undoubtedly fiction, the most reaching definition of "reality" there ever was.
Treatise The Second:
Canadian Stereotypes on the International Stage
Where most countries might try to enlighten or educate the world about their culture when offered an international audience to appeal to, Canada stands alone. And their resistance, their utter denunciation of the Chinese precedent of grandeur and majesty shows that Canada's got a lot more balls than we give them credit for, and they somehow stood up to this in the most Canadian way imaginable: pure, innocent ignorance.
Canada is the friend that will smile and laugh as you completely eviscerate his manhood through taunts and pants-ings. Canada takes the ribbings in stride, without a hint of torment or sign of the sort of bottled-up-anger warnings that signal an impending emotional explosion. Which begs the question: Do they just not realize? Oh no. They realize. And they don't give a shit.
Canada's closing ceremonies made no effort to subvert stereotypes of moose and mounties and maple leaves, instead opting to have each of those dancing to what can only be described as Canadian Pop Music, accompanied by giant inflatable beavers and Michael Buble And His Incredible Quebecois Chorus Line. It takes a serious amount of nuts (Canadians love puns) to stand up in front of all of your "friends" and say, "You know all that shit you make fun of me for? Well here it is, bigger and more incredibly 'Canadian' than your piddly little international brains could ever dream of, because if there's one thing a Canadian knows how to do, it's laugh at himself."
Canada gave the world a treat by being as absolutely Canadian as it could possibly be, with no shame. The prospect of being a dancing maple leaf girl could have brought even the most desperate Broadway wannabe to ignominious tears, but I can only guess that there was a line of Newfoundlanders and Saskatchewanians ready to don a giant symbol of their country and flap around like a cocooning caterpillar, and good for them. They showed this cocky American that they could care less what I think about them and their one-road country, and for that, I salute them.
2.22.2010
Recap Recap: Watch Me Watch You Watch Me Watch Others Watch
The Present
- The Real World
The Real World has been wayyy too postmodern for me. It seems like every wanton epithet I attached to each housemate is accurate to the point of insanity. These people are not people; they are avatars3 of the darkest recesses of the human experience, and they all FUCKING LIVE TOGETHER. They continue to fight about things that make us sad, instead of fighting about ridiculous nonsense that makes us laugh. Dark secrets like physical abuse, depression/suicide/homelessness, or being a horrible singer seem to come out of the woodwork over seemingly innocent things like pizza, laser tag and being bisexual, and it's really bringing me down. At least no one's been carried out on a stretcher yet. That's next week. Can't somebody just get too drunk and make out with somebody else's crush?!
- Lost
Three truths: John Locke episodes are always the best. Kate episodes are usually the worst. This season of Lost is shaping up to be a doozy.
Instead of spelling everything out for us like I imagine a lot of people wanted them to, the writing staff has chosen to be as cryptic as ever, perhaps the most they've ever been since season one, and instead of infuriating me, I'm enthralled.4 New mysteries abound, mysteries that are have been steeping in old mysteries like darjeeling and go down just as sweetly, mysteries that I am still profoundly confident will tie together in the most elaborate bow the world has ever seen. The Glimpses get more and more intriguing as things get intertwined to Crash-like levels (for better or worse), and it's beyond even any hint of possibility that they don't know exactly what they're doing. How could they not?
- The Sopranos
I sadly remain stalled at episode 4 of season 1 here, mostly because new television has dominated my attention too much to be reliving the past.5 I hope to continue on my inhuman quest to chronicle the chronicles of Tony Soprano, but only time will tell. Sadly, I sense that my initial hesitation toward the show is flaring up, because there's not much of an urge to jump back in just yet.
- Carnivàle
The same cannot be said for Carnivàle however, but since the return of Lost, there's not much room in the metaphysical sections of my brain for another show whose answers are buried in mythology and symbolism. Plus the fact that I know I'll never actually get any answers for this show makes me reluctant to get involved when there's answers to be had on another show at the moment. But at the same time, I have been endlessly intrigued by this show, and its imagery is astoundingly evocative of the time it represents. I anxiously await the day after the Lost finale, when my brain can once again handle being perplexed on this kind of level.
- Caprica
The pilot of the prequel series to Battlestar Galactica was surprisingly good, mostly because it actually managed to feel like a different show while maintaining the world already established by BSG. It's a testament to Ron D. Moore's world-building abilities that Caprica actually evokes a sense of the past of a fictional (sort of?) universe, and I'm excited to see what disturbingly close-to-home scenarios this series can give us like BSG was so good at doing. I've only seen the two hour pilot and the next episode, "Rebirth," but I'll be making sure to find time to catch up at some point soon. The acting is exceptional, especially for SyFy standards, and the themes are fascinating enough to keep me on the hook for a good while to come. Let's just hope it doesn't get canceled first.
- Archer
The only reason I even wanted to watch Archer in the first place is because of H. Jon Benjamin. I would venture to call him a "voice acting legend" but only because of the memories of giggling to the point of pain at every line Coach McGuirk uttered on Home Movies. Also, can I just say: Assy McGee. The man is funny. So the voice alone was enough to get me to watch the first two episodes, and I wasn't entirely disappointed. While not quite up to the absurdity level of Space Ghost or any of the other various Adult Swim programming he's appeared in (and really, how could it be?), the show is consistently funny, and it's good to know Aisha Tyler still has work somewhere.6 Plus, Jessica Walter (aka Lucille Bluth). Is that enough for you? No? Okay, well Adam Reed, the creator, also happened to create Sealab 20217, a show so far out there you might as well quit the race. It's got potential, and I want to see it through.
Addenda
- Any sport that requires a gun strapped to your back will be watched by me, every time. But NBC's so-called "coverage" of these Winter Games should and could be a topic here in its own right. ↑
- Which is and always will be a danger here. ↑
- No, not Avatars, though the jumps in what should be normal human logic are equally ridiculous. ↑
- Relieving my fear that I was going down the dark and dangerous path of being a fanboy. Glad to see I'm not a fanboya, just a fan. ↑
- Albeit for the first time. ↑
- I guess. ↑
- As well as Frisky Dingo, which I've never seen, but heard is similarly harebrained. ↑
- Intern wanted -- unpaid, uncredited, unappreciated, but hey, maybe you'll get to watch TV with me. But only if you pay for the pizza and beer. ↑ Additional Addenda
- Fanboy -- n. one who thinks that by merely committing unwarrented and exorbitant amounts of time to a product, brand, or work, one is somehow entitled to think that one knows better than the creators of said product/brand/work and how said p/b/w should be handled ↑
2.09.2010
Watch Me Watch: Lost 6.1 -- "LA X"
But as the 2 hours progressed, it became apparent that it was not actually a sense of disappointment, though there might have been a little, or of being spoiled, though I most definitely was in some thrust, but rather an unavoidable hazard of cliffhangers: The Momentum Killer. The season 5 finale, "The Incident," was the kind of finale that makes Lost fans Lost fans, and Lost haters Lost haters. Take the execution of the plan that's been building all season, throw in a couple of deaths, and cut us off right at the peak of the climax and there you have it. I can guarantee that when that screen went to white at the end of last season, the entire viewing audience yelled some variation of "AAAAAAGGHGHGHAAHGHGH!" at their TVs, and fell back against the couch, spent. We were almost literally blown away when the bomb went off (or did it??). And then we had to wait 8 months to find out what happened.
The writers have often said that their premieres are the 2nd half of their finales, which is a fantastic, if frustrating, strategy (like knowing how to write good transitions in term papers), but in this case I feel like it hurt them a little bit. This was the kind of finale that begged for a major sea change in the following premiere, something like the massive jump in time Battlestar managed to pull off, because by picking up exactly (EXACTLY) where they left off, they lost all sense of urgency and momentum they had built up so beautifully in "The Incident." So a lot of things I've read so far of the premiere are usually along the lines of, "The 'flash-sideways'2 bits were so much more interesting than The Temple business." This in itself is "whaaaaa?"-worthy, since we've been waiting to see The Temple since way back when Ben obliquely mentioned it in Season 3-ish. But they're right. The Glimpses, which I'm assuming is the shadowy new "narrative device" that the writers have chosen for this season, were amazing, although I don't really see how much you could call them a "narrative device" yet.3
So they might have flubbed a bit on the continuation of the drama, but premieres aren't as important as finales on Lost, so my minor complaints here are even more minor in context. Quibbles like these can be overcome quickly, and as the 2 hours romped along, I found myself getting caught up in whole new momenta; now that the finale is behind us, and the immediate repercussions have been handled (for the most part), we're free to really get our hands dirty. The premiere was an epilogue--a season 5 postscript--that prepared us for the sequel of season 6, and for all my gripes here so far, I'm on board. Maybe I'm not as bad a fan as I thought.4
Addenda
- Damn you io9! But that said, I could have done a lot worse in succumbing to spoiler temptation, because for a while there they were coming out with Brangelina-tabloid-rumor-like celerity. ↑
- Which seems to be the term being kicked around so far, but I'm going to go out on a limb and christen them Glimpses, for my own clandestine purposes. ↑
- But more on that later as the season develops. ↑
- Yes, it took me a full week to compile my thoughts about the premiere, which may say more about it than anything I've said above. It was complex, exciting, surprising, and more, which looking back on it should be more than I could have ever asked for, but I guess I'm just spoiled. That's what film school does to you. ↑
1.28.2010
The X-Files Conundrum: Why Series Finales Usually Suck, And Why I'm Confident That LOST's Probably Won't
Endings are inevitable. Things die. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone. But knowing it's coming doesn't make it any easier. Television finales are a funny breed though. They're not like the ends of movies, which are relatively the most painless in the general scheme of things, and they're not like the ends of books, which are possibly the most enjoyable in the general scheme of things1. No, witnessing the finale of a television show is more visceral, more traumatic and heartbreaking than other forms of fiction, and this is precisely why we're so often disappointed by them.
Take, for example, The X-Files. The problem with The X-Files was that even as fascinating as its themes and mysteries were, they were essentially unanswerable, because the questions embedded in its mysteries involved truths of the universe that were unknowable, at least definitively so. The fact that Fox Mulder wasn't afraid to ask said questions was part of, if not all of, the appeal, but Chris Carter and Co. painted themselves into a corner with their mythology of alien abductions and promises that the Truth IS Out There, because that meant the Truth Is Out HERE too, in the real world. So all The X-Files could do was present its own take on unraveling the enigmas of the cosmos without presenting anything as fact. And in an audience's eyes, or perhaps just in my eyes as a child when I watched the final seasons, we wonder: what's the point, really? This is the X-Files Conundrum. And though perhaps the entire point of The X-Files was that we couldn't know the answers, that the truth was just obliquely "out there" and the search would tell us more than whatever we might discover at the end of searching, the presentation of unanswerable questions with the pseudo-promise of answers we knew to be unattainable comes off as more than frustrating.
Many recent shows have fallen under The X-Files Conundrum, most notably Battlestar Galactica, whose finale2 infuriated its fans enough to nearly write off the series entirely. Again, by asking questions that inherently have no answers3, Ronald D. Moore and Co. were doomed from the start. But part of The X-Files Conundrum implies that when asking the Hard Questions, we're required to give an answer, no matter how flimsy it might be. Which brings me to Lost.
Lost's version of The X-Files Conundrum could have possibly been even more disastrous.4 It's Hard Questions are some of the Hardest there are, e.g. free will versus predetermination, science versus faith, good versus evil, much harder than simply "Does God exist?" or "Are we alone in the universe?" because these Hard Questions are even more personal, more deeply rooted in our own humanity and the essence of our society. In theory then, Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof and Co. should be even more doomed than anyone before them, because these are not just spiritual questions or questions of morality, but metaphysical ones where taking a side one way or the other not only defines the show but makes a statement about the whole of Western philosophy. Lofty goals, no? That's exactly what makes Lost so enjoyable.
There's a not-so-small contingent of people out there that would say I'm giving the show a little too much credit. It's true that the show is a mega-pastiche of an astounding number of ideas and references, some of which may not seem to jive together smoothly. But Lost can get away with it because of its scope, because this is a show that transcends just being a "show." As a piece of fiction, it compiles all of fiction before it and spits it back at us as standardly archetypal, yet astoundingly self-aware, like Odysseus reading Ulysses while the 1997 television miniseries The Odyssey (starring Armand Assante) is on in the background5. It takes the whole of history of the world and puts it in the mouths of about 16 different people, thus packing every minute gesture with so much sub(and extra-)textual meaning that our brains might as well give up. In short, it's a rich tapestry of thoughts and ideas, neatly packaged in an entertaining and creative adventure story.
The reasons, then, for the absurdly high levels of anticipation, and thus, concern, should be obvious. With so many philosophies (and pseudo-philosopher characters) duking it out, the show runs the risk of upsetting us not just by disappointing our expectations, but utterly failing to unify the theories of 5000+ years of rational thinkers. It's The X-Files Conundrum to the umpteenth power. But the answer to the Conundrum lies at the heart of the show. The characters.6 Not because the characters are particularly interesting or well-drawn or are even in such dire straights that we can't imagine what will happen to them (though some of these cases are true for some of these people), but because the Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse and Co. have pulled a clever trick on us. It's brilliant really. What they've done7 is created a philosophy of No Philosophy. The large, competing ensemble cast; the complex narrative structure, which has constantly shifted and changed through 6 seasons to highlight the complexity of the conflict itself; the mass dumping of literary Easter Eggs into every facet of the show; all of these things point to what the central tenet of the show has been all along: Nobody's ever really right. In fact, the difference between right and wrong is just as ambiguous in the context of the show as the debate between fate and free will. The big reveal of two men talking on a beach about the nature of man (vagueness intentional, as I'm not trying to ruin anything for anybody here) spells it out for us that these questions, like The X-Files's questions, can't be answered, but at least these two men are (seemingly) aware of it. The arguments over fate and free will and good and evil and the nature of morality and humanity and thought and Powers That Be have been happening for thousands of years, are happening again now, in the mouths and actions of these characters, and will continue for thousands more to come. Damon and Carlton and Co. aren't even attempting to promise answers to any questions that they didn't make up themselves8, and that is essentially, to use a Lost buzzword, their Fail Safe. I can guarantee that we will not learn who wins between fate and free will, or between good and evil, because in an age where we already know all the scenarios, where we've seen all the battles and what it would be like for each side to win, there are no answers left to give. This is the plight of postmodernity, and somehow, some way, so far, Lost has been able to sidestep it while unabashedly embracing it. And so, to paraphrase what has proven to be the most apt locution of Lost's No Philosophy philosophy: Whatever Happens, Happens.
But of course, whether or not our expectations are met, we will still feel that overwhelming sense of loss, the inescapable part of The X-Files Conundrum in which the Conundrum isn't the answers we seek, but those who sought them with us on screen. Our television shows are our escapist fantasies--rendezvous with people we understand like family and places we have come to know like our own backyards. And more than movies, which only last a couple of hours, or books, which contain much more to ponder than characters and places and plots, television shows are long-form9 adventures that invade our lives long enough that, when they're gone, we really miss them.
I've lived with Lost for a long time now, and it's been an exciting expedition for me from the beginning. There will be many more thoughts on Lost posted in this space, beginning this week with the hopefully mind-blowingly awesome premiere: LA X. The end is near, but we've still got some good times left to come, Conundrums be damned.
Addenda
- The ending of a book, especially a good book, is one of the more enjoyable things one can experience in pop culture, leaving one with both a feeling of accomplishment and the added challenge of "Okay, now that I'm done with this, what does it all mean?" Just because you've finished reading a book doesn't mean you're ever actually done with it, most of the time. ↑
- Not even the entire finale, just one scene in it, really. ↑
- A religious debate this time, rather than conspiracy theories. ↑
- So much so that it would probably have to be called The Lost Conundrum. ↑
- Odysseus, as in not the actual legendary Odysseus, but the spoiled offspring of some delusional B-list actor who thought the name Odysseus was cool.a Postmodernism! ↑
- Perhaps not the characters themselves but the way they are used in the context of the narrative, as various voices of the audience itselfb. ↑
- And what makes me think that a.) The series finale will not disappoint, and b.) The show will succeed in being the most unique, most complex achievement of American television to date. ↑
- i.e. Island mythology, which I feel will be the most satisfying of payoffs the final season has to offer, even though they're probably the easiest of the payoffs to give. ↑
- Refer to my very first post in this space for more in this regard. ↑
Additional Addenda
1.27.2010
Carnivàle 1.2 -- After The Ball Is Over
There's something particularly haunting about the sounds of Carnivàle. The lone trumpet of the soundtrack. The wind screaming like a banshee through shoddily constructed trailer walls. The shuffling of (it seems like) everyone's dejected and defeated feet. The 30s must have sucked. In fact, one of the things that Carnivàle does best is show just how badly America needed a war. The years leading up to WWII--that is, the post-Depression (the Great One, not whatever we're calling the current one), mid-Dust Bowl years--were probably some of the lowest points in American history since the Civil War. And Carnivàle seems to revel in the grime and despair of the poor Midwest, at least in its early stages, as well as constantly hinting at something bigger, something more important than ourselves, something yet to come.
The imagery of the show is obvious from the title sequence, and I've covered the light/dark, good/evil dichotomy a bit so far1, but what's really being set up here? It might be mere conjecture on my part, having only seen two episodes, but is the war that these poor carnies find themselves wrapped up in the makings of not only a "literal" (as literal as such vagueries can be) battle between "good" and "evil" but an allusion to The Great War, the one that defined our country? The parallels aren't precisely on point, but I think that in times of great despair, as Brother Justin's lunch companion more or less said, people look to things greater than themselves, men that can achieve the impossible2, and most of all, acts of heroism and leadership to assure them that, no, things aren't as shitty as they might seem, that there's somebody out there that can make things better.
It's a passive attitude to be sure, for the most part, but there are those who believe they can see the mechanisms of destiny turning, and that they can possibly dragoon them toward their own purposes, but as any staunch structuralist3 will tell you that there's no way out of what's already in place. In Carnivàle, though, it's hard to tell who's pulling the strings and who's just grabbing at the dangling ends. Is the ever elusive Management4 somehow controlling the events of young Ben Hawkins experience here at Carnivàle in a Jacob-like5 display of metaphysical prowess? Or is Management yet another cog in the machine of powers greater than ourselves, powers that Brother Justin seems to have faith in6, powers that are still ambiguous in their loyalties? Though I suppose that the Powers That Be don't have to be loyal to anyone, they choose who they want to be loyal to them.
On the surface then, this show about Good vs. Evil appears simplistic, but it's the intricacies of the events unfolding that make the war more complex. You'd think that the priest would represent the good side, and the boy with the troubled past and all the demons and scary things inside his head would be the evil, but that might just be too easy. What complicates the issue even further is the fact that our respective heroes (depending which side you're on) share the same horrifying dreams7, dreams that jolt them from their sleep but don't seem to faze them, as if they've had them their whole lives. These two are the chosen, the Creature of Light and Creature of Darkness that Samson spoke of in the prologue of the pilot, though which one is which still remains to be seen. But I would imagine that the answer isn't as simple as I would like to think. And there's no guarantees that these two men, chosen to lead, will lead their flocks to any greener pastures than the one they're in. World War II may have saved American business, but it sure did screw up the rest of the world pretty good. Like Samson says: "Things are changing. Not for the better."
Addenda
- I mean, even the actual carnival (and the show's) logo is a diamond split into light and dark, with a sun and moon adorning their respective sides. Might be of interest to note that instead of being side by side, indicating a balance of some kind, the moon/dark sits on top of the sun/light. ↑
- Babe Ruth's 700th home run is referenced multiple times in this episode, and the man himself is compared to David, of David and Goliath fame. ↑
- Or post-structuralist? I can't really tell the difference, they've both been mindfucked into nonsensical oblivion. Sorry philosophy majors, I'll do my homework next time. ↑
- i.e. the Man Behind the Curtain in the trailer with the diminutive carnival leader Samson. ↑
- This show is more or less a spiritual sister to Lost in a lot of different ways, which I'll get into more as they crop up. ↑
- Pun intended, but ironically so, because while Brother Justin appears to be the Hand of God in theory, his visions and the consequences of his actions don't paint the side of Light in a very flattering light. Confronting a man with a shameful vision of his pedophilic sins in order to intimidate him into handing over some property seems a little like overkill, especially when the poor soul commits suicide after giving in to "God's" plan. ↑
- The focus of which we learned a little more about this episode. The man being chased through the cornfield, the man in the trenches in WWI, the man attacked by the Russian bear who sits down for wine and supper with himself just might be Ben's father?? Dun Dun Dunnn... ↑
1.23.2010
The Death of Late-Night
Dear Internet...
As you are probably already aware, trouble has been afoot at NBC. For whatever reason, they decided they were more committed to Jay Leno--an aging, unfunny, and now almost universally-loathed husk of a man--than Conan O'Brien, probably one of the only people on their network that could ever manage to grab that coveted 18-34 demographic. The drama has been publicized to the max, and parodied by the parties themselves, making late-night monologues must-see TV, something I can't imagine they've ever been in my lifetime. And now it's over. The damage is done. Conan is out of a job, and Jay Leno takes back what he now has to consider a tainted throne.
Watching The Tonight Show this past week, I thought to myself why anyone would not be completely confident in Conan's skills as a host or his ability to gather steam and, consequently, ratings, if only he was given a chance to grow. But then I thought to myself how many times I had actually watched Conan's Tonight Show outside of this past week. It wasn't many. Maybe it's because I haven't had TV in a while (though the internet makes that excuse pretty flimsy) or because I'm busy at 11:35 doing whatever it is I do at 11:35. I admit my failure to help Conan's cause. But no matter what I or anyone else had done, I believe the grim reality of the situation is that Conan was doomed from the start.
The credits rolled on his final show as host of The Tonight Show as Conan himself jammed out a sloppy solo to a Will-Ferrell-led "Freebird," (the symbolism of the song choice should be obvious. In fact, Neil Young's performance was appropriately threnodial as well) in a glorious synecdoche for his predicament. The solo was out of key, off beat, but he was happy and it fit just right, because as host of The Tonight Show (and Late Night before as well, even more so), Conan himself always enjoyed being off beat, off key, out of place, and that was what was refreshing after 17 years of Jaywalking. It was supposed to be a new era, a new style of late-night television, and it was exciting, like getting a new pope, a new President, or new pants. But instead, our hope in change was dashed, like when the new pope turns out to be a former Nazi, or the new President is too bogged down in politicking to accomplish what he really wants to, or no one compliments your new pants. It's a let down. In this case, it's not Conan's fault though, it's NBC's. Instead of investing in the future, they've effectively killed late night and The Tonight Show, which as Conan has more or less said is the one of, if not the most storied, prestigious, beloved staples of television there are. There aren't many of them left, and like 300-game-winning pitchers, there might not ever be another.
I hope The Tonight Show can survive this tumultuousness, and after only giving Conan 7 months to succeed, I can only hope that Jay Leno fails in 6, and we get another shot at redemption with someone, anyone, that's not Jay Leno. Conan's speech on cynicism was inspiring (and not just a little bit tear-jerking), but how can we not be cynical when we have to watch a man get everything he dreamed of only to have to taken away cruelly and remorselessly? But if even Conan can keep his head high and proud after being jerked around for months, then there's a lesson to be learned there. And where does it all go from here? Wouldn't it be wild if they offered the show to Letterman? The late night wars would come full circle, but no one at NBC has that kind of balls. And now we enter a period of mourning for the Death of Late Night, a 7 month moratorium until Conan returns in whatever form we're lucky enough to have him in. Watching his retrospective of all the fun they had in 7 months--and I was amazed at how much they actually did--I'm confident that Conan will land on his feet. But it's a damn shame it had to be this way.
Godspeed Conan. These 7 months can't go by fast enough. I'll be drinking with you in spirit.
1.17.2010
The Real World: The Weight Episode
Dear Diary,
It's me, Callie. Remember me? I'm the blonde girl. I write in you all the time. Anyway, I had an awful week. It seemed like everyone was focused on weight issues all week, and as you know diary, I hate weight issues, because I have them! It felt like everyone was talking about each other's bodies behind our backs and sneaking peeks at each other in the shower. I wonder if that glass is as clouded as I think it is. The cameramen wouldn't be in the bathroom with me otherwise, would they?
I just thought everyone knew how sensitive I am about weight and fitness, given how many interesting and varied ways we like to work out, and how often we like to do it. I mean, this week alone we went to the gym, did a kickboxing class (I think Emily and Ty liked that one a lot), and some sort of variation on Flirty Girl Fitness where we danced and laughed and shook our booties to lose our love handles. It's almost as if no one realized how often we were working out, because it seemed like every other second, there we were, back in the gym!
But then it happened Diary. Ty (the black guy, who is a lot meaner than the ones on TV. I'm from a small town!) said I couldn't be in Playboy. He totally crushed my dreams of ever being naked in a magazine! But I bet now that it's been on TV and us girls had our Really Important Talk about girls and eating disorders and things like that I'm totally gonna get a call from Hef tomorrow! I don't think Ty realizes how much of jerk he is sometimes. He says he's "never had roommates" before, but come on, I'm from a small town and even I have common social etiquette! In fact, if I had put money on it, I would have guessed Andrew would have been the one to say something totally rude and offensive, because he says rude, offensive things all the time! I wonder if he's still in love with me, because I'm just feeling so vulnerable right now Diary. These people are mostly awful, and Ty is just... I don't know, he's just an Instigator, you know? What an ass. Anyway, Ty apologized (but I didn't really understand what he meant about trying to "check" me? I guess I was getting too many compliments and he wanted to make sure I wasn't getting too cocky.) and things are okay for now. Talk to you again soon Diary!
xoxo, Callie (the blonde one, remember? The one from a small town?)
----
I found that under a pile of True Life reruns and old, musty music videos the other day. Sounds like a rough week for the housemates! And yes, you read that right, Inspector Instigator defended himself like a true sleazebag by first saying, "Hey, it's true, you can't be in Playboy, and I'm just telling the truth, so why are you mad?" and then saying Callie was getting a big head and he had to keep her in check, which is the wildest, pulled-out-of-the-deepest-recesses-of-the-ass excuse I have ever heard ever. The Virgin might be The Boy Who Lies, but The Black Guy is The Boy Who Lies To Himself. He actually tried to justify hitting a girl this week. Inspector Instigator is now officially The Villain (Boo! Hiss!).
I once again prove myself eerily prescient in my initial response to Ty as Inspector Instigator, because after setting off the Great God Debate1, I-Squared sparks off the second Big Issue Episode by making a comment about somebody's weight. So naturally, even before the fat-bomb was dropped, everyone conveniently brings up the topic of body image, independently of each other mostly. First Lenny Kravitz and The Virgin talk about who has the "best body" in the house (which, you know, is a totally non-shallow question), then Bisexual Girl and Pisco talk about how they could stand to lose a few pounds in front of Blondie, who takes issue because she is obviously the overweight one (but telegenically overweight) and hence the seed is planted. And of course it's Ty (though much like Callie in her diary, I was banking on it being Andrew, because he just doesn't know how to keep his mouth shut most of the time) who brings Callie's whole carefully crafted self-image crashing down like a fat guy falling down the steps.
And that's not all he's up to this week. The Black Guy and Bisexual Girl's relationship continued to teeter on the brink of abject destruction until Mr. Villain (Boo! Hiss!) completely loses his mind, and any semblance of what used to be just a bad relationship was replaced with a strange mother-son/therapist-patient/serial killer-victim association.2 The two eventually end up just screaming at each other in front of the rest of the housemates (who watch happily, like Romans in the Coliseum taking bets), and all those kickboxing classes come in handy when somehow they challenge each other to feats of strength, begin to wrestle, and finally stop only when Bisexual Girl spits in Ty's face. These people are delightful together, and should probably be married.3
So yes, once again the conflicts this week were mostly instigated by that Master of Inflammation, that Inspector of Instigation, our illustrious Villain (Boo! Hiss!), The Black Guy. At least until next week, when the Villain-in-Waiting, The Episcopalian (doesn't that sound like an awesome villain name?) makes the mistake of judging the Bisexual Boy by his cover. Stop being so self-aware guys, it's getting you in trouble!4
Addenda
- In another meta-tastic moment, someone even mentions the Jesus teams and how the house is already divided on the issue. Everyone is so postmodern this season!↑
- I feel the need to take the time here and address what appears to be some deep-seated insecurities in our Villain (Boo! Hiss!). It is apparent that Ty is hyper-dependent on other people to validate himself, and when they don't accommodate him, he flips faster than one of those little toy wind-up dogs. An actual exchange between Ty and BSG:
Ty: "Be honest with me!"
BSG: "I am being hon--"
Ty: "Shut up!"
He's also the biggest coward in the world, as evidenced by him meekly backing away as BSG screams at him to stop being a huge pussy and just leave her alone about whatever it is he thought she did to him. She literally chased him all the way across the room, and he didn't say a word.↑ - I should also take the time to point out BSG's own insecurities, which have been obvious since the first episode. After being raised in a cult, she escaped and became a bisexual and got some piercings.a Problem with authority much? And Ty being about the most pathetically/passively authoritative (which boggles the mind in its paradoxical complexity) person on the planet, you can see why this is a match made in hell. But what is normal reality's "hell" is reality television's heaven.↑
- Three weeks in a row now that The Girl Who Sings is an Oh Yeah, I Forgot About Her, but hey, next time don't go to bed before the spit-fight starts! Also, Lenny Kravitz, you're supposed to be the cool guy, stop making me forget about you.↑
- (Side note: she still doesn't seem all that bisexual to me, and this quote doesn't help: "He [Ty]'s going to flirt with other girls, and I'm going to flirt with other guys." Emphasis mine, and maybe a little ostensible, but the whole thing reeks of rebellious desperation to me)↑
Additional Addenda
1.13.2010
The (Belated) Real World: The Love Episode
Yes it was Love Week on The Real World: DC, that wondrous time when the housemates pair off in obviously flawed flings, some of which remain just that, flings, and others that will be painfully drawn out over the course of the season because neither party can get it through their thick heads that they are completely and utterly wrong for each other. There's something about living in a house and being televised that makes these people think they have to hook up with each other, but for God's sake, just because you live in a house together does not mean you have to bone. But alas, here we are, it's unavoidable.
The Pairs
The Pairs
- The Virgin and the Blonde One -- Kudos to the Blonde One for attaching herself to someone interesting and scraping out some screen time this week, even if all she had to do was look awkwardly around as The Boy Who Lies shoehorned his sexual intentions into every possible nook and cranny of conversation. The Virgin has drawn an unfortunate lot in life, as the boy who all girls will be friends with because he is spontaneous and goofy and "fun" but never want to be more than friends; the worst part of this lot in life being the apparent fact that he doesn't realize, after 20-odd years, that that is his lot in life. I can't imagine how many times he's laid it on too thick with a lady before The Blonde One, but it still doesn't register with him somehow. But the fact of the matter is, after a hopelessly romantic attempt to get her in the "back of the boat" (not a euphemism) during a glorious DC Independence Day fireworks show, this Love Week relationship fizzled out even before the end of the episode. The Virgin even managed to to throw his namesake into question as the first person to get minor action in the house hot tub before being viciously cockblocked by the various bitches he lives with. Poor Virgin, for staying a Virgin, and poor Blonde One, for ditching her ticket to ride and fading back into obscurity.
- The Bisexual Boy and The Episcopalian -- Ripe for failure, ripe for conflict, this one's charged both by sexual orientation and religious affiliation.1 Also, Bisexual Boy has a not-boyfriend coming to visit soon, which will undoubtedly lead to even more rolling eyes and scoffing and possible cockblocking from the Pisco, who is fast turning out to be the most annoying kind of girl there is. You know the kind. Just look at her. Obnoxious.
- The Bisexual Girl and Inspector Instigator -- If the above pairing is ripe for failure, this one is already mid-fall from the branch. The only attraction between these two people is sexual, which brings up another bit of evidence of the beautiful, beautiful casting choices by MTV: Every relationship on this show has a giant looming Issue hanging over it, and this makes me very hopeful for this season, because there are going to be a lot (a LOT) of arguments over absolutely nothing, or perhaps nothing more than deep-seated character flaws, and those arguments we all know can't be solved--they just linger in the background like the creepy guy at the party that's missing a tooth and nobody really talks to but somehow shows up in all the pictures the next day. But anyway, BSG and the Inspector are perfectly wrong for each other, because The Black Guy loves to dive into relationships and get dirty, while BSG (despite her alternate moniker of Gullibles) doesn't believe the men-folk when they talk about the L-word,2 as well as taking her rebellious streak3 to its logical conclusion and not listening to anything anyone tells her, ever (especially such logical commands as "Get into my bed" from Inspector Instigator4). Sadly, this is the one that is apparently going to be drawn out at least a little bit longer, so it's a matter of time before this one crashes and burns.
- The Oh Yeah, I Forgot About Thems -- The Girl Who Sings and Lenny Kravitz did little of note and were sadly excluded from Love Week.
----
Addenda
Addenda
- Much like the entire cast, though this is slightly subtler, given that the BSB and the Pisco are both JIMHs, but the Pisco doesn't like the BSB kissing boys, possibly because of her upbringing? ↑
- No not "lesbian," just good old "love." ↑
- Remember, she was in an almost-Cult, which brings up an interesting question: Is The Bisexual Girl bisexual for all the wrong reasons? ↑
- Who, by his own profession, likes to hear the word "no." Match made in reality TV heaven, no? ↑
- Independence Day in DC means... Block parties! Party buses! Boats! Cupcake fights! ↑
- And when I say about to go down, I mean, like, tonight. Yes, this is a week late, but I'll do my best to keep up with the Realies. I leave you with a quote from the BSG: "I was kind of surprised at how real everyone is." Welcome to The fucking Real World lady.
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