Noiseless Chatter

Review: “Finale,” The Office

May 17th, 2013 | Posted by Philip J Reed in review | television | the office - (2 Comments)

Well, I didn’t expect to catch the final episode of The Office, but I did. I was looking for something to watch, saw a retrospective documentary on the show followed by a new episode, and remembered — oh yeah… — this show is ending now.

So I tuned in, and the format of the episode kind of suited the fact that I hadn’t been watching for a while. I saw a few episodes of season 9 (up to the point where one of the new guys tries to date rape Erin and nobody has a problem with that) and then tuned out. But “Finale” is structured to check in on these characters after an artificial absence. We’re catching up with everyone, even as we’re saying goodbye. The fact that there really was an absence for me might have worked in its favor, or maybe it didn’t. But it should have. It also probably should have been a little better than it was.

The episode’s central conceit is that the documentary crew has finished filming and the series has aired. Now, for whatever reason, they’re filming extra footage for the DVDs…ignore, I guess, the fact that they’ve been filming these people for nine solid years and should already have plenty of “extra footage,” but this show lost touch with any semblance of reality ages ago.

And that’s kind of the problem. At some point you either throw up your hands and say, “Okay, this show is a cartoon with an impenetrable logic of its own that shifts not only from episode to episode but often from scene to scene, and I’m fine with that,” or you stop watching completely. (I did the second thing.) “Finale” only really works, though, if you see these characters as real people that are worth caring about. The episode tries its damnedest to make that stick, but ultimately the damage has been done. These aren’t real people, or anything like real people, and no amount of end-game pathos will retroactively redeem the mess.

That’s not to say it’s bad…it’s not. As an episode of television, it’s fine. As a permanent sendoff to a particular series, it’s better than The Office deserves. But it’s still a bit of a muddle, and one that tries to punctuate a story other than the one we’ve actually been told.

Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve been tuned out for almost a full season, but I really didn’t care at all about Dwight and Angela getting married. Compared to Jim and Pam, or even Phyllis and Bob, this didn’t register as a wedding. It was just a bunch of characters together. You don’t need to have real emotion at the core of every scene in a sitcom, but you need something, and if it’s not going to be particularly funny it might as well be charming, or touching, or dramatic. This was just…there. They’re married now. And since the episode split nearly all of its time between the wedding and the “cast reunion” or however I’m supposed to refer to that, one of those things really should have gone somewhere, or had some sort of narrative arc.

I did like a few things in the episode, though. For starters, maybe it’s just me, but seeing Dwight firing people as the new boss really suggested that he might be the best man for the job after all. How many offices do you know of in real life that had almost zero employee turnover for nine years?

So seeing Kevin and Toby fired, Stanley retiring, Nellie moving, Andy and Darrell following their dreams, Creed on the run from the cops, and ultimately Jim and Pam leaving as well…that made sense. But all it does is remind us that this sort of thing never happened before, which is a problem, and is probably how The Office settled so easily into stagnation in the first place. We need shakeups like this, and they can’t always come in the final episode. The half-hearted non-explanation that Toby always blocked people getting fired in the past only raised further questions. (Such as…uh…why?)

I also liked the fact that Andy’s story saw him being buffeted by cruel public taunting due to…well…the fact that he acted like a jackass on national television and then had a breakdown. Of course, Andy already acted like a jackass on national television and then had a breakdown, again and again for years and years, which the documentary crew caught in full, but for some reason a clip of him crying on American A Capella Idol or something is what does the trick. Again, don’t ask. Just go with it, because the moment when he’s teased in a bar and Darrell asks him if that happens often is just heartbreaking enough to be worth it.

As you can see, though, I can’t even praise the things I liked about the episode without it dredging up even more I didn’t like. And that’s what The Office has always been to me: great ideas and flashes of brilliance that fizzle far too easily. Great moments are undermined by reaching for lousy gags, emotional episodes are followed by everybody in the office having a dance party for no reason, and characters that finally begin to demonstrate some growth have their personalities rewired entirely the next time we see them. It’s disarming, and it’s impossible to form a bond.

Yes, I was moved by Andy’s closing thoughts about how he used to spent all of his time missing Cornell and now he spends all of his time missing Dunder-Mifflin, and how he wished it was possible to know when you were in the good old days, but which Andy is this? The career kiss-ass? The boiler waiting to blow? The hopeless romantic? The neutered nincompoop? The conniving villain? The spineless salesman? The words have meaning of their own, but they’re emanating from an empty shell that could have — and should have — been a rich and complicated character.

I don’t know. It had its touching moments, but that’s because it’s touching by default when two people who are in love do something nice for each other, or historical antagonists let down their guard to be friendly for a change, or people look back and realize they let good things slip away. That’s not down to the writing or the acting…that’s just human nature, and not much of a compliment for the episode itself.

So much of it, even for a presumably carefully-constructed capper, just feels tossed together. I’m not sure why Ryan and Kelly had to come back if all they could think to do with the characters is pair them off and have them be miserable again. I’m also not sure why they were at the wedding of two people who were never fond of them to begin with. Nor do I know why the writers would have put them there instead of the cast panel, where they would have had a logical reason to be.

And I don’t know why the two new guys were at the panel, when people who would have been watching the show would have had a lot more questions to ask someone like Todd Packer, or Karen, or even pointless Gabe who would have had more history with the production and its larger moments.

But, above all, I’m not sure why we didn’t get to hear much from Michael Scott. Yes, he was there. Yes, it was very nice that he was Dwight’s surprise best man. However I want to know what he thinks of the documentary that aired. I’m not sure why that was skirted entirely. Presumably he’s changed a lot and is no longer like the man he once was. That’s great. But for seven years he was documented being an obnoxious, domineering, broken asshole; now that’s aired…and he has nothing to say about it? Personally I’d have been happy with him saying, “I chose not to watch” and leaving it at that. I don’t need a monologue of embarrassment, I just want to know his reaction because that would help to shape him as a character.

Of course, nobody’s been a character here for a very long time. They’re costumes and zingers, so of course they can’t tell us what they think; the writers don’t even know.

Ah well. It had Dwight treating a stripper like a waitress, and I enjoyed Meredith for the first and last time when Li’l Jakey shows up to the bachelorette party. There was also a succession of progressively better moments with Creed, who has been a lone highlight of episodes for a long, long time.

His final song, a stretch of musical gentleness, suggested a much better episode than what actually preceded it. And his little reminiscence of being hired and choosing his desk, just before being led off in cuffs, was great too.

Goodbyes are messy. I know that. Maybe that’s the one thing that did make the episode real. But since these people haven’t been people for so long, I find the sendoff to be more a wistful love letter to what should have been, rather than a fitting cap to anything that actually was.

Stewie Griffin and the Problem of Cynicism

April 16th, 2013 | Posted by Philip J Reed in family guy | personal | television - (10 Comments)

I don’t like Family Guy. You know that already. But it does, at times, manage to make me laugh. Other times it manages to insult me as a writer. With the episode “12 and a Half Angry Men,” it managed to upset me as a human being.

Now this isn’t a matter of taking offense at an off-color joke. That happens too (seriously, Family Guy, I know you find sexual assault and domestic violence to be inherently hilarious, but is it too much for you to at least try to make a joke about these things instead of just putting them on display and assuming I find them inherently hilarious too?) but in this case it was more an example of problematic cynicism, and one that’s potentially damaging to our cultural mindset.

The episode is about Mayor West being on trial for murder. The jurors all see it as an open and shut case, apart from Brian who holds out for a not guilty verdict. As might be expected he gradually sways the other jurors to his viewpoint and Mayor West goes free. Family Guy certainly wouldn’t be above suggesting that Mayor West actually did commit the crime, but I think it’s safe to say that, within the reality of the episode, he didn’t, and Brian and the others rendered a fair verdict.

However at the end of the episode, the following exchange occurs:

BRIAN: It was a pretty intense experience, but the important thing is that, in the end, justice was served.
STEWIE: All you did was let a guy go. There’s still a murderer out there.
BRIAN: Yeah but we saved an innocent man today. That’s something to feel good about.
STEWIE: Feel good about? They found eight more bodies last night. One of them was on this block. There’s a maniac out there. He’s cutting people’s power off, breaking into their homes, and slitting their throats.

Stewie continues his rant, and the episode illustrates, ultimately, that Stewie is correct. There is a murderer on the loose, and Brian shouldn’t be proud of what he accomplished. And here’s the thing: that mindset of Stewie’s, which is clearly endorsed by the episode, is a vastly destructive one.

It’s important to note the context of this exchange, which is just the latest in a long line of “let us spell out a ridiculous thing about that genre convention…” gags. Family Guy likes to poke fun at form…playing it straight (relatively) for a time, before stepping back and saying, “But wait a minute…why did that happen?”

In this case, “Why did that happen?” refers to the deliberations being seen as a success, when, ultimately, the crime remained unsolved. See what’s wrong with that? Just typing it out gives it away: those are two different things. Related, sure, but separate. The deliberations are not the criminal investigation. The jurors do not and cannot catch the bad guy. That’s not their job. That’s not what they should be doing.

Okay, fine. A mindless gag at the end of the episode that thinks it’s being clever but is actually just irrelevant. Except that I then began to see reviewers being convinced of Stewie’s viewpoint, such as in this example from The A.V. Club:

“And Stewie points out what never seems to get highlighted in all these stories: if Adam West didn’t do it, there’s a murderer still on the loose. There are more bodies. And taking too much pride in swinging a jury takes a lot of credit for what amounts to simply letting a guy go.”

No. No.

Ten trillion times…no.

It’s not “simply letting a guy go.” Conflating the role of a jury with the responsibility of cleaning up the streets is a bad thing. It’s not a clever insight, and it’s not a problem that someone takes pride in preventing an innocent man from going to jail.

In cases like this — both real and fictional — there are two things at play. (I’m assuming here that a crime was actually committed, which isn’t always the case and can therefore complicate things even futher.) One: Someone committed a crime. Two: Someone is on trial for committing that crime.

Those two things cannot be seen as the same thing. If you don’t understand the separation there, then you’re playing the wrong game. And that’s a problem.

The jurors are responsible for item two…and not at all for item one. They don’t go searching for the criminal…they assess the testimony of the defendant. That’s all they do.

Granted, I have some personal feelings on this subject. And maybe that’s why this felt so bothersome to me. But pull those out and you’re still left with a pretty clear logical conclusion: each group of people involved in this case has a job to do, and it’s the jury’s job to do theirs, only theirs, and to do it the right way.

There should be a sense of pride associated with finding someone not guilty when there is not sufficient evidence of their guilt. Because that’s doing the right thing. That’s being human. That’s taking another man’s fate into your hands, and being responsible with it.

Yes, if you find the man not guilty then that means there is still a criminal out there. But that’s not the issue the jury was assembled to address. We have a police force for that. The fact that you found a man not guilty does not mean you’ve let the world down and failed to do something constructive. You’ve prevented a potentially innocent man’s life from being ruined, or ended. Isn’t that about as constructive as one can get?

Take Stewie’s concern to its (tellingly) unspoken conclusion. He harps on Brian because Brian did nothing but “let a guy go.” So it would have been better for Brian to not let him go?

What then? Mayor West still didn’t commit the crime, which means the criminal would still be out there, racking up bodies. But it would somehow be seen as more constructive for a man to be imprisoned than not? Just so we’d have something to show for it?

Stewie often serves as a voice-box for the writing staff. Part of his role as a character now is to point out these logical inconsistencies. But that’s a role that’s far too prone to cynicism, and it’s important to not let that drift too far along, lest you lose your humanity along the way.

This isn’t an “inconsistency.” Brian didn’t “just let a guy go.” And nobody should feel unproductive for doing the right thing…even if that one right thing leaves another wrong thing unaddressed.

I guess it’s easy to play with fate as long as it’s somebody else’s. But something tells me if a member of the show’s writing staff were on trial for a crime he didn’t commit, and he was found not guilty, he wouldn’t see that as a problematic inconsistency. More likely he’d be grateful that somebody did see to it that justice was served, and I truly doubt he’d be saying with his own voice what he already said here with Stewie’s.

Because he’s one man, and the criminal is another. Their fates are not, and should never be, tethered together. If your cynicism is causing you to bind them up…then I think you’re long overdue for some serious soul searching. That’s not the world you live in. And you should be very happy about that.

In Which Tim Takes off His Microphone

I haven’t written a Valentine’s Day post (that statement will obviously be false by the time you read this), simply because I forgot to. Maybe I could have had some fun with it, but it’s now or never so I thought I’d make a little list of what I thought were some of the most romantic moments in films and television shows that I love.

But, as always, I kept getting hung up on one of them…my absolute favorite of them: Tim taking off his microphone.

I love The Office. I can’t say that enough. (But I can say it exactly as often as I hasten to add “the UK version” to that statement.) And this moment, this one moment of a minute or two throughout the whole of its 12 standard episodes and two longform Christmas specials, is exactly why I love it. It’s everything about the show that resonated with me, and it’s everything I’ve always wanted television to be.

It’s the moment when an already-beaten character lets his guard down. It’s the moment when a man at the bottom realizes — brutally, and publicly — that he still had a ways left to fall. And it’s absolutely, profoundly heartbreaking.

Yet it’d probably be my pick for the single most romantic moment of anything I’ve ever seen. Why is that?

Well, romance takes many forms. There’s the standard falling in love, yes, but there’s more than that. There’s Edward G. Robinson lighting Fred MacMurray’s cigarette at the end of Double Indemnity. There’s Shaun and Ed playing video games after a near-apocalypse in Shaun of the Dead. There’s Scoutmaster Ward reaching out to compliment a distraught young Sam on his campsite in Moonrise Kingdom. There’s — as Thomas Pynchon observes in Vineland — the persistent romance of Sylvester and Tweety. And there’s Kermit and Miss Piggy fighting over whose acting is worse and realizing, somehow, as their tempers flare most violently that, at heart, they will always love each other.

Romance is not singular, and it wears a new face in every situation. And in this case, it’s the darkly necessary heartache of Tim taking off his microphone.

Tim’s is a life of regular disappointment (at least if we are to take the documentary crew’s editing choices as faithful to reality, but that’s a subject for a whooole other post). He doesn’t like his job, lives with his parents, wants to go back to school but can’t bring himself to do it, and, above all, yearns for a woman he can’t have: Dawn, the receptionist.

In the final episode of the second series, Tim takes action. It took him that long — until the final episode of the series proper — to do something. Everything up to that moment has been vague flirtation at best, and I mean that about everything he’s done, from pursuing Dawn to quitting his job. He gestures toward what he wants, but can’t bring himself to reach.

But with Dawn leaving for America with her fiance, he takes action. For the first time that we’ve seen him, Tim attempts to take command of his own life.

And the way he does it — or, rather, the way The Office has him do it — is darkly, perfectly beautiful. In the middle of a talking-head interview, during which he attempts to convince himself — as he always attempts to convince himself — that everything is okay, he begins to stumble over his words.

He loses track of his own thoughts. He begins to question his own explanation, and it unravels entirely, to the point that he stands up, excuses himself, and walks out of the room.

This is a unique moment for the character, and it’s enhanced by the fact that it’s a unique moment for the show. The talking heads are the most structured and artificial thing about The Office; they are shot separately from the action and later edited into the finished product. They are a structural necessity, but they aren’t quite as real.

Tim’s stumbling makes it real. His words fail him, and when they do, it’s as though a spell has been broken. Tim realizes that he doesn’t have to be sequestered in a little room in an office he hates while the woman he loves drifts away forever. So he stands up. He takes control. And the camera crew follows him down a corridor we’ve never seen before. He’s broken down the barricade, and walked us into a new and more honest world. It’s a jarring moment…because it has to be.

And it gets even more jarring when Tim commits a cardinal sin of broadcasting: he takes of his microphone.

I can’t repeat that short description enough. Tim takes off his microphone.

The implications of that moment are profound. He is controlling his own destiny at this point. The documentary crew, as long as we’ve known the characters here, have been giving The Office shape but now Tim’s done something that no amount of editing could change. He’s made everything go silent.

And he stands with Dawn in the meeting room, behind closed doors. And the camera struggles to see them through the blinds. Focus is lost. Lips can’t be read, but he’s saying something to her. And she hugs him. And they separate. And she says something to him, too.

And they leave.

And the camera is still there. And the office is still there. And his job is still there. And he’s right back where he started. He plugs his microphone in again, resigning himself to his earlier, self-constructed fate…abandoning his freedom when a moment of potential personal triumph has slipped through his fingers.

He leaves us with six words, and I break into tears every time: “She said no, by the way.”

And that is romance. Romance makes us do stupid things. It makes us behave in ways we normally wouldn’t because if we didn’t then how could we ever change? How can we ever move forward if we don’t let ourselves try to break out of the same circle now and again?

It won’t change anything, most of the time. And it can’t. Because life is circular. But, at some point, if you don’t make an effort to shift your orbit even slightly, then you have to wonder what you are doing.

And Tim made an effort to shift his orbit. Internally — though we can clearly see it in his eyes — he’s made a decision. He has to throw his weight, every ounce of it, into this. He has to try. He can’t let her go because if she goes then what will he have? If she goes, with as much as she means to him, and he lets it happen, then what hope could he have for anything? He has to do this.

And he fails. She said no, by the way.

And it’s all on camera. And it’s preserved in amber, for future generations to watch and wince through. And Tim knows that. He’s made himself into a fool. And that’s there forever.

But that’s romance. Because if he hadn’t tried, he wouldn’t have had anything. He did try, and he still has nothing. So what does that say? I don’t know, but I do know that that’s what made The Office The Office.

The show had the courage and the bravery to take even the smallest comfort away from its most likeable, relateable character. And then it had the courage and the bravery to kick him while he was down. And then it had the courage and the bravery to make it stick. Because that’s romance, too. You don’t get to turn back the clock. You don’t get to reset everything next week. You have to make these gambles…you have to throw your weight into things you know you can’t ever change…because what if, just once, you can?

Tim couldn’t, but that doesn’t make his gesture any less romantic. If anything, it gets more romantic for being doomed. After all, it doesn’t take love to move forward together…it takes love to stand up alone and make your declarations in the face of looming dissolution. It takes love to go down with a ship. It takes love to lay your feelings out in public so that they can be shattered on camera. After all, if it’s not love, then what is it?

Of course, things do work out for Tim and Dawn…at least in the sense that they get another chance in the Christmas specials. But Tim doesn’t know that now. And knowing that, however many times I watch it, doesn’t detract from that sense of devastated finality. Tim made the effort to stand up for himself, and the universe shoved him right back down in his chair.

I myself am in a relationship right now. And I myself had to watch her leave, years ago, while I was stuck in the same, regular, self-defeating circle. And I myself knew — knew — that I had to put my weight into it. That if this passed me by I could never forgive myself. I myself knew that I had to try. And I myself, metaphorically, clipped my microphone right back on after trying, so hard, and failing.

She said no, by the way.

But we had a second chance, too. And Tim’s grand gesture meant only that he was reminded of his place in the universe. That’s what I was reminded of, too.

But in both cases, something happened. A chance, a coincidence, and we got another shot.

Maybe throwing your weight against your orbit doesn’t seem to work. Maybe it even hurts. But when enough time has passed, you might find that your trajectory was changed after all. It might have taken years. It did for Tim. It did for me. But eventually you might realize that you have changed something. Some memory or dream that never quite went away when everything else did, some shadow of the future that took its time meeting up with reality. You never know the changes you’ve made in your own life…you never know, because there’s never an ending. You never “arrive” anywhere…another great theme that The Office handled so well…you just are.

And life goes on. And that can be a bad thing, or that can be the greatest, most reassuring thing imaginable.

Tim was shattered. So was I, and so were you…whoever you are. But life carries on. And what feels like an ending only feels like an ending. Because ultimately, it’s up to you to make that foolish decision. To walk into the burning house to save the one you love most. To step into the cockpit of a crashing plane because that’d be the only chance you have. To be, even on your own terms and within your own life, a hero.

That’s romance. That’s love. And it’s more painful than words have ever been able to express, which is why The Office expressed it in complete, literal silence.

But things can work out. You may always have farther to fall, but ultimately that only means that you’ve got that much more space above you that you can climb. Nobody said it would be easy. If it were easy, it wouldn’t be love.

I love you babe. Thank you for everything. I couldn’t be happier that we were able to circle back around. It’s what made this real, and I’m more grateful for that than I can even express.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Mr. Corrigan or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Johnson

Another article from Ben Gallivan, and let’s hope we get a lot more. In hono(u)r of the eighth series of Peep Show which begins tonight, here’s Ben to accomplish something I never could: write about an applicable subject in a timely way. Take it away, Ben!

It all starts quite simply; customer tentatively awaits the decision on a loan under the withering eye of the bank manager. The desperate inner thoughts of said customer for all to hear, despite the role-play scenario in front of a dozen or so colleagues.

So, Mr Corrigan… We’ve examined your loan application and I just have one question for you. Are you a pathetic, worthless punk?

In a normal situation, this would make Mark Corrigan’s heart jump into his mouth but, of course, it’s all fakery. Instead, the endless barrage of insults directed at him leads him into some kind of homoerotic fantasy. The fact that he is called a “turkey fucker” almost sends him into an orgasmic state. This, ladies and gentlemen is the power of “The Johnson.”

Carefully introduced midway through the first series of Peep Show, Alan Johnson is every employee’s worst nightmare; with the possible exception of Mark Corrigan, the Radio 4 listening, weak-tea imbibing sub who graces each episode and manages to have as much of a love/hate relationship with the viewer as his partner in crime, Jeremy Osborne. Less than a minute into Johnson’s first appearance on screen, Corrigan has already declared his love for him and due to his snail-like attempt to climb the greasy pole of personal finance at JLB, the love only grows deeper.

“Mark Makes A Friend” is the fourth episode of the first series of Peep Show — screened back in 2003 and despite notching up almost ten years and 44 episodes since it still remains a milestone, due to Alan Johnson’s introduction. Despite only being a minor character (played by the excellent Patterson Joseph), any episode that has featured him since generally stands out above many others; no mean feat given the quality of the writing throughout.

The genius of Peep Show can mostly be attributed to the minor characters. Where would the show be now if it wasn’t for Jeremy’s part-time wife and nympho Nancy, or, of course, Super Hans, who is just one dimension away from a spin-off series of his own. Over the subsequent 7 series (an eighth begins tonight), Johnson / The Johnson / Alan weaves his way through many of the most important and funniest storylines that writers Jesse Artmstrong and Sam Bain have penned.

This episode however, is one of the finest –not simply for Johnson’s introduction, but also for the sub-plot involving “the bad thing.”

Mark’s relationship with Johnson moves pretty quickly. After being trumped for a lift home from the training day by his arch-nemesis Jeff, he finds himself relishing the opportunity of spending some alone time with his new hero in the obligatory BMW. The “worst thing to happen to anyone ever” suddenly turns into the best. So much so that returning home to realise that he is now friends with the “big, black businessman” sends him once again into revelry of fantasy. There is no doubt good reason in emphasising the fact that Johnson is black –- the first black character in the show and pretty much the only black recurring character right through to the end of season seven.

Mark’s revelation to Jeremy that he has a new friend brings out the worst in the latter.

Friend? But you haven’t got a friend. Who’s your friend?

The mini-dinner party held that evening is where Mark’s obsession (and obvious embarrassment by Jez also being present) comes to the fore. Johnson makes no bones about his disdain for Jeremy — staring down at him like he is the “hippy parasite” mentioned earlier in the show — especially when presented with the fact that he “turns over when the news comes on.” Acting like an excited schoolboy with a crush, Mark shows Johnson –- or at least attempts to -– his progress with his book Business Secrets of the Pharaohs, but of course this is quashed with the “bad thing” sub-plot, rendering Mark’s laptop redundant after the previous night’s “mega-tsunami” whilst using it in the bath.

Johnson knows how to play Mark; that becomes evident as the episode progresses. A joint love of middle-of-the-road and thankfully long-forgotten dirge of The Lighthouse Family whilst letting him change gear in the “Beemer” is one such example, as is the ludicrous moustache that he attempts to grow as an homage to his new “Dad” (thankfully and quickly changed to “Daddio” when questioned). So much so, that in no time at all, Johnson has him wrapped around his little finger to such an extent that he convinces Mark to up sticks and relocate to Cardiff, leaving Jeremy to fend for himself.

If you love Johnson that much, why don’t you marry him? Why don’t you actually screw him?

And that is where Jeremy –- as Jeremy often does -– blurts out what everyone watching is thinking and then puts Mark on the spot…right in the middle of a sushi bar, naturally. Despite his protestations out loud, Mark’s inner thoughts are exactly that. The joy of Peep Show is that you often find that there are generally two very differing points of view and that they usually come from the same person.

Johnson is an obnoxious man. There’s no denying it. Mark’s apparent love for him only partially makes up for the hatred that most of his fellow workers hold for him. The fact that one of them went home from a seminar in tears brings Sophie to protest that “It’s not a wig, Alan, that’s actually her hair,” casually dismissed by Johnson with a “Yeah, whatever.” (Possibly the first time that phrase was used in the UK and now look what’s happened.) The bar scene ends with Mark quickly ditching the thought of being with the (former) love of his life Sophie after Johnson offers the choice of sticking with “[Sophie’s] fat arse,” or teaming up with him and some “fuck-off spreadsheets,” culminating in an inner-orgasm for Mr. Corrigan.

Mark’s struggle to find out whether or not he is actually, fully completely “gay for Johnson” continues. He is ably assisted by his own Boy Wonder (Jeremy) throughout and it is via that avenue and Jez’s crippling selfishness not to want Mark to relocate that we find the truth.

After crashing Johnson’s prized BMW, the stand-off ensues in a bizarre three-way (so to speak) that begins with Mark declaring his new-found homosexual crush for his boss and ends in a quite unbelievable manner.

Johnson, naturally, rebukes Mark’s advances and departs the episode just as he entered –- the no-holds-barred businessman with no time for women, or, in this case, men. He is seemingly disgusted by the thought of it, which, if true, makes him even less likeable as a character.

Instead, whilst re-watching some of the gay porn that Mark rented from his local shop we find that it is in fact Jeremy who has crossed to the other side; the “bad thing” from the night before being grimly realised as he and Super Hans performing fellatio on each other whilst completely high on whatever they could lay their hands on.

Johnson continues this role throughout the remaining series, forming a love/hate relationship with almost everyone that he meets and even more so with the audience. The one thing that remains constant however, is that the show would be so much weaker without him.

channel 4, jeremy osborne, jez, johnson, mark corrigan, peep show

Spotting the References in Conan O’Brien’s Star Wars by Wes Anderson Sketch

On November 8, Conan O’Brien presented another batch of skits based on the concept of a new director taking over Star Wars. The moment he debuted this concept I knew Wes Anderson was coming, and, sure enough, we eventually got him. (Though, I have to admit, the Woody Allen one is still my favorite.)

Anyway, Conan’s Wes Anderson parody is very clearly the work of a true fan. It doesn’t just hit his basic themes and atmosphere — which would have been funny enough on their own — but it contains a wealth of smaller details, many of them relatively obscure. So I thought I’d take a moment to itemize all of the ones I was able to recognize. And please do let me know what I’ve missed in the comments below.

We open with the drawing of a red curtain, a clear visual reference to Rushmore. The music is also an obvious echo of Mark Mothersbaugh’s score for that film.

Once the curtains part, however, we get a reference to The Royal Tenenbaums with a formal invitation on a table, similar to what we see in that film announcing Henry and Etheline’s wedding. The title, of course, is a reference to The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou, and the font, good old Futura, is a general Wes Anderson standby.

However it’s worth noting that The Life Aquatic uses a Futura variant with hollow lettering, whereas this is solid. Therefore it actually calls to mind Fantastic Mr. Fox most of all. That’s four of his films out of the way already, so not bad!

And now we have Bottle Rocket, with a wonderfully observed riff on Dignan’s notebook of future plans…right down to the lovely touch of a rectangle around the page heading. The “chapter” caption hews most closely to being another Tenenbaums reference, though in that film our chapters are denoted by pages in a book rather than overlaid captions.

Han Solo is clearly meant to be played by Luke Wilson here. (AND EVERYWHERE.) Wilson only appeared in three of Anderson’s films and he looked quite different in each, so it’s easy to pinpoint this as being a reference to his performance in Bottle Rocket. The wallpaper is reminding me strongly of the parlor area in the Tenenbaum house, and we’ll deal with the pictures on the wall in a moment.

I’m not sure who Greedo is meant to be played by here, so please do chime in if you know.

The blazer worn by the boy and the very concept of the younger sidekick both come from Rushmore clearly enough, but the eye-patch is straight out of Moonrise Kingdom. It also took me several viewings to realize that Greedo is dressed the same as Bob Balaban’s narrator character from that film: green winter hat, red coat, white shirt, green fingerless gloves. That’s some admirable attention to details that most folks won’t even notice.

The goggles may be a reference to those worn by Max in Rushmore‘s montage of extracurricular activities.

Apart from Han’s membership card for the Junior Telescope Club — which is most likely another Rushmore reference but could also be one to The Life Aquatic — there’s more a thematic similarity to Anderson’s choice of details than anything specific. Though I do want to see a visual reference to Bottle Rocket‘s scene of Bob Mapplethorpe reaching for the car keys at the motel, I think that’s a bit of a stretch.

Might as well deal with the full room shot since we’re almost finished. I’ll admit that I want to figure out the significance of the baseball bat on the table, but I’m coming up blank. Anyone?

The paintings on the wall, particularly the one of Lord Vader with his little dog, are reminiscent of similar imposing paintings in Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic.

Otherwise I’m coming up frustratingly empty on specific references dotted about the set. I know I’m missing something…help!

Two members of Team Zissou from The Life Aquatic witness the shooting, one of whom looks like he could be a specific reference to Jason Schwartzman — particularly as Cousin Ben in Moonrise Kingdom.

The other guy is some Star Wars shit.

I don’t know what to do with the little boy poking Greedo. Did something like that happen in Rushmore after Max got beaten up?

We finally get our lone Darjeeling Limited reference as the sketch closes, with the music clearly aping “This Time Tomorrow” by The Kinks. In The Darjeeling Limited the brothers Whitman did indeed ride motorbikes, but the sidecar here — and hirsute driver — make this much more of a reference to Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Han’s exaggerated gestures are also a reference to something, though I can’t put my finger on it.

Anyway, there you have it…all the references I was able to spot in Conan O’Brien’s Wes Anderson Star Wars parody. Please let me know what else you’ve found below!

There are obviously other Wes Anderson parodies to found on youtube, and they’re all so lovingly done that I might end up pulling a couple of those apart as well, if there’s interest. Maybe I’ll even do a less terrible job.

Maybe.

Review: Red Dwarf X Episode 6: “The Beginning”

I think it says everything about Red Dwarf X that “The Beginning” floats to the top mainly because it wasn’t outright terrible.

In fact, at times, it came pretty close to being good, and it sustained that pretty-close-to-being-good level of quality about as well as “Lemons” did. That’s definitely welcome, as even though Red Dwarf X feels like an enormous misfire to me it’s nice to end on a high note.

Unfortunately that high note really is relative, as “The Beginning” is marred by the same kind of misjudgment that gave us Lister on hold in “Trojan”, Taiwan Tony in “Fathers and Suns” and the crew clowning around to silly music in the aforementioned “Lemons.”

Doug Naylor must not feel like he’s writing comedy unless somebody on set is broadly mugging, speaking with an exaggerated accent, or just generally acting like a desperate circus clown regardless of actual context. Here in “The Beginning” that’s manifested early on with Hoagy the Rouguey, or however that’s meant to be spelled, who is some kind of robot I guess who lives next door to Red Dwarf and gets the crew embroiled in his hair-brained schemes on a regular basis. Again, it sure was nice when being three million years in deep space felt different from living in an apartment building in a bustling city, but what do I know.

Poor Hoagy makes some funny faces and lets his accent drift pointlessly from Super Mario to Dr. Wily as he bothers Lister and then gets embedded in a wall. Why not, right? Lister promises he’ll be back to rescue Hoagy but for the first time all series I’m glad Doug didn’t bother to look over his first draft before shooting the episode, as the fact that we didn’t get a second helping of Hoagy is one of the best things about this one.

We’ve also got some rather atypical scenes in which a group of killer Simulants on a different ship engage in comedy routines separate from the Dwarfers. It’s not often that we see other characters getting their own spotlight, free of intervention from the main characters. In fact, only two examples really occur to me: “Holoship” and “Meltdown.” In the former it was brief and for plot reasons, free of comedy and used for necessary exposition. In the latter it was indeed a comedy routine, but its corniness was offset by the impressive disorientation of having such disparate historical figures bickering as they were.

Here it’s just…filler. It’s like a supporting feature that for some reason keeps interrupting the film you paid to see. The actors aren’t particularly funny, which is fine as they could get away with being simply menacing…but the menace falls through when they’re asked to act like such imbeciles, stabbing themselves on flimsy pretenses and re-enacting the Twentiety-Century Vole sketch from Monty Python.

It’s bad. It’s very, very, obnoxiously bad. It absolutely decimates the pacing, it prevents the episode from being what should have been an effectively claustrophobic experience (Red Dwarf‘s equivalent of “Balance of Terror”), and it populates deep space with yet more side characters that really shouldn’t be getting this many lines.

But…wait. I said I liked this one, right?

Well, I did. The rest of the episode was pretty solid, particularly the Rimmer material. Poor Chris Barrie hasn’t had a real chance to shine all series. Every so often he gets an appropriately Rimmery line he can sink his teeth into, but the rest of the time he’s relegated to broadly shouting sub-par material to an audience that wants to enjoy it so much that they don’t care what he says.

Here he gets to dig more deeply. Rimmer was never one-dimensional…or, rather, he wasn’t one-dimensional for long. There was an element of tragedy behind his needy professionalism, his longing for power, and his steadfast respect for the rules and etiquette of a civilization long dead. Here, for the first time in a long time, we tapped into that tragedy. And it worked.

Rimmer’s material here with his father is everything we should have seen in “Trojan” with his brother. His emotion was real, and as a result Chris Barrie managed to dial back his performance to where it was 20 years ago. He wasn’t an actor dressed again like his most famous character…he was Rimmer. His “fear” speech at the end was a particular highlight, and not only of this episode. It was a particular highlight of this and the three series that preceded Red Dwarf X. It was a lost and damaged man who was trying his hardest, and yet seemingly still destined to fail. It was uplifting and disheartening in equal measure, clever and foolish, sincere and inappropriate. It was good writing.

And there was a lot of good writing here. I don’t know that it balanced out the bad, or what that would even mean, but it sure as heck stood out in a great way. The cockpit and Blue Midget scenes were very reminiscent of series VI, even if it overall seriously paled by comparison. Kryten’s suggestion that they look out the window was immediately the best joke in the series up until that point, and it hearkened back to an era when the comedy was organic…when the characters didn’t have to dance and hump things to get laughs…when the vending machines didn’t hurl racial slurs at us as we walked down the corridors…when the characters carried emotional baggage with them…when the crew felt not like sitcom characters but like lost adventurers trying to find their way home…when the show didn’t coast on the goodwill engendered by putting its actors in front of an audience for the first time in however long and hoping for the best…

…when Red Dwarf was good.

Because Red Dwarf was good. Red Dwarf was great. Red Dwarf was a show that mattered. It didn’t spin its wheels and pad out time with irrelevant slapstick and dead-end subplots. It didn’t take laughter or deep thought for granted. It didn’t struggle so obviously for ideas.

And “The Beginning” reminded me of that time. Not thoroughly, and not consistently, but it got me there. It reminded me of why I’m sticking with this show, and reviewing this show, even when I so clearly don’t enjoy it.

It’s because I love where this show has been. It’s because I can love it again tomorrow. It’s because no matter what else happens, these are still characters that can be redeemed. Just because Rimmer didn’t bat an eye when his brother was shot through the heart in “Trojan” didn’t mean he couldn’t be symbolically shot through his own in “The Beginning.”

One bad episode didn’t undo the possibility of that happening. Four bad episodes didn’t undo the possibility of that happening. Hell, the 23 or so bad episodes since series VI didn’t undo the possibility of that happening, and they never could.

Because these characters are always there, locked, loaded, and ready for the right material.

“The Beginning” might well represent the beginning of such a rediscovery. It’s certainly possible, because when you brush aside the abandoned plot threads and fragmented bad ideas, there’s a great concept there, and a stellar central performance that promises big things.

I know better than to get my hopes up, but it sure would be nice if this show, moving forward, managed to deliver on that promise.

Time will tell. Until then, it was nice to get a glimpse, however fleeting, of a character I once, so long ago, fell in love with.

Review: Red Dwarf X Episode 5: “Dear Dave”

November 1st, 2012 | Posted by Philip J Reed in red dwarf | review | television | the venture bros. - (2 Comments)

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from Red Dwarf X, it’s that Doug Naylor finds it hilarious when characters talk to machines with funny voices.

If there’s a second thing I’ve learned from Red Dwarf X, it’s that I don’t find it particularly hilarious when characters talk to machines with funny voices.

First, the good: there’s far less vending machine romantic mayhem in this episode than I expected. However when “the good” is just relief that the pile of shit is smaller than it could have been, “the good” really reveals itself as a relative concept indeed.

Now, the rest: it just wasn’t funny.

I wish it was.

I really, well, true, and honestly wish that I could laugh the way the studio audience was laughing, but nothing was really…you know…all that good.

Okay, fine, some more good: the dialogue wasn’t awful. It was sub-par, certainly, but not offensively bad the way the Shakespeare scene from a few episodes ago was, or as absolutely everything in the first episode of the series was. But I think there’s a world of difference between “not awful” and “good,” and “Dear Dave” didn’t seem interested in exploring that world.

The plot, as it is, kicks in around halfway through the episode when out of nowhere — and after a particularly terrible setpiece involving charades — the mail arrives. Lister finds a letter from three million years ago suggesting that he might have fathered a child. Then we forget about that for a while until it’s time to end the episode and we get a definitive answer. Spoiler: it’s the one definitive answer we could have gotten without gleaning any insight into the characters.

That’s that, then. The plot is dealt with in two scenes and maybe mentioned in two more. So what do we do the rest of the time? Have Lister hump a vending machine, have Rimmer argue with the MediBot — off-camera, thank Christ — and have Kryten take all of the toilet paper away so that The Cat can walk around for a while with shit in his crack.

If any of that sounds like classic Red Dwarf to you then congratulations, you’re in for a treat. For me, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed that Doug at last gave us a full episode about what the crew’s downtime was like…the dead space between adventures…that avenue of quiet comedy between the interesting parts of the characters’ lives that endears me so endlessly to The Venture Bros.…and it was this padded and flat.

Previous bottle episodes like “Marooned” and “Duct Soup” both dealt with extenuating circumstances. In “Marooned” we had Rimmer and Lister in a crashed Starbug, so their exchanges, though now legendary, weren’t representative of their “normal” ones. And in “Duct Soup” Doug had deliberately steered Red Dwarf into a nearby sun so that he could destroy it before it got any worse WHOOPS I MEAN KRYTEN DID THAT SUN THING FOR A DIFFERENT REASON, so, again, even though it focused on the smaller interactions between the characters it was doing so with an adventurous backdrop.

Here we don’t have that. That’s a good thing. This is a chance to learn something first-hand about the crew that we’ve only been able to guess before, which is what they do when they aren’t doing anything.

As characters, they continue to exist when the cameras aren’t rolling. They do things between episodes. Sometimes we hear about them, but usually we don’t. As characters, they live. As characters, they breathe. As characters, they are.

What “Dear Dave” cements for us is that they aren’t. They’re not characters…they’re puppets reciting lines from a lifeless script. This is their downtime, and there’s nothing for them to do. They can’t live their lives because they don’t exist unless they’re making funny faces or arguing with machines or lusting repulsively after women.

These aren’t people anymore. If they were people, we wouldn’t have to contrive ridiculous situations in which they could be caught rubbing their cocks against vending machines. What did that say about Lister’s character? What did that reveal about him? To what facet of his personality was it true? It didn’t even work in a logistical sense…how in shit’s name did he intend to pick up the vending machine while lying on top of it?

No part of this works unless you find grown men grinding their genitals against machines funny. Maybe you do. I’m not judging you. But if you don’t, “Dear Dave” leaves you with some pretty slim pickings.

It just wasn’t funny. The dialogue was decent, but only decent. None of the physical comedy worked for me, and the only laugh — though I confess it was a big one — came from The Cat trying to keep Lister from picturing his ex-girlfriend with another man. Granted, that was itself a pretty direct lift from “Duct Soup,” where it was also the only funny thing in the episode, but I’ll take what I can get.

The biggest crime “Dear Dave” commits is that it’s just there. As the years go by I doubt I’ll warm up to “Trojan,” but at least I’ll remember it and think about it. “Dear Dave” doesn’t even feel like something I’ll remember next week.

Maybe one day I’ll see a clip somewhere of Lister fucking the vending machine and think, “Oh yeah…that fucking happened.”

But otherwise, I doubt it’ll leave any impression at all.

I can’t even say that this is the episode that made me realize the characters aren’t really characters anymore, because that happened around 20 episodes ago.

“Dear Dave” had every opportunity to make me reconsider that realization, though. It could have shown me that they’re still funny. They’re still real. They still have identifiable hopes and dreams, and that even if I’m not keen on their adventures anymore at least they still really are.

Instead we humped a vending machine and walked around with shit drying in our asses. And it was just as fun as it sounds.

Roll on the final episode, please.

Review: The Venture Bros., “A Very Venture Halloween”

As if only to prevent this from turning into a Red Dwarf review blog, one of my other favorite shows of all-time has decided to bless us with an early premiere: The Venture Bros. won’t be starting its fifth season until next year, but its creators — and network — were generous enough to speed up production on one episode. And though it was an 11th-hour decision to ship this one early, and it’s not technically the season premiere, it’s an absolutely perfect whetting of a Venture fan’s whistle.

It’s by no means a masterpiece, but it doesn’t aim to be. It aims to catch us unaware, and I think it does that. It aims to sell itself a bit short — it’s The Venture Bros., after all, where all of the most exciting stuff is off-camera by design — but then absolutely nails the ending, with a devastating revelation for one of the characters, and a genuinely touching speech from a character who’s far too long been kept from speechifying.

And I think it also did a great job of illustrating, by contrast, just why I’m so disappointed by the new Red Dwarf. In the case of both that show and this one, I didn’t tune in for the plots. Or even the jokes, really. I tuned in for the characters. If the plots were solid and the jokes were great — and they nearly always were, in both cases — then that was just a fantastic bonus. Really all I wanted to do was be there. I wanted to spend time with this small community, isolated in each case from the larger universe around them, immersed in their own problems, big and small, and fending for something like an understanding of who they were. In each case it’s a show about people who don’t particularly like each other, but whose enforced proximity periodically reveals itself as a kind of love. It’s a comedy of dynamics, and I like to see it unfold and explore itself.

But with Red Dwarf, I no longer feel like I’m in the company of characters. I’m in the company of scripts, and puppets that act them out. They don’t feel real to me, and they no longer act human. In the world of The Venture Bros., though, I still feel at home. They’re people. They’re rich and complicated characters that are still learning new things about themselves, which was what the most recent episode of this show took for its focus. By contrast, the most recent Red Dwarf focused on exploding testicles and didn’t so much as bat an eye when the last known female in the universe was killed. (They were mainly just disappointed they didn’t get to stick their genitals inside of her first. It was bad.)

I don’t know. The more I think about it, the more I’m willing to concede that maybe “A Very Venture Halloween” was a quiet masterpiece. A gentle piece of introspection that conceals its meaning without dulling it. It’s no coincidence that Dermott mentions It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, nor is it a coincidence that he misses that classic special’s greater moral. He dismisses it as childhood ephemera. He overlooks the larger things it has to say about faith and growing up and disappointment…because it’s a cartoon. So is The Venture Bros. And that has something to say with its own Halloween special, too.

Dermott is in a rush to grow up. Dean is not. Dean is the one who, by the end of this episode, grows up.

The plot itself is minimal, which is fine for a show like this. Again, spending time with the characters is the main draw. Nobody expects to see much in the way of action anymore…five seasons in and we’re wise to the show’s cycle of withholding. We know that we’ll catch the Venture family during its downtime, and that’s what we anticipate. The miracle is that the exact form of that downtime still manages to surprise, as it does in this episode’s glorious opening sequence, which shows us Hank and Dean through the years, attempting to give their father a Halloween fright.

It’s the final scene in this sequence that seems to button it up, but really its destination is in the scene just before it: Hank and Dean stage their own bloody, accidental deaths…and their father’s non-reaction gets them wondering. As might be expected, Dean is the one it truly haunts, and when he later meets a character called Ben, he has his question answered.

Like Hank in last season’s brilliant “Everybody Comes to Hank,” Dean here finds himself punished for pursuing — knowingly or not — the answer to a very important question about his family. Unlike Hank, Dean has no “out.” He can’t double-back on the knowledge. This is who he is…and there’s an innocence he can never reclaim for knowing it.

Elsewhere, Dr. Venture and his friends take bets on whether or not trick-or-treaters will be able to make it past the compound’s defense system, and Dr. Orpheus hosts a magic gathering. The former is strictly comic relief, but its ending is surprisingly sweet, and it overlaps the Orpheus story as well, providing an uncommonly wholesome counterpoint to Dean’s metaphysical distress.

Of course, the trick-or-treaters are still young. They’re children. Real children. Not children in the way that Hank and Dean (and Dermott) are children…the real children have their lives ahead of them. They haven’t been shaped into an image from which they’re doomed never to escape, and they haven’t lived long enough to understand betrayal. When Ben speaks to Dean, it’s clear that he cares about him. But by simply telling him the truth he as good as killed him. Dean Venture can never go back. And at this point, he may not even try.

The children know they’re wearing masks…Dean just learned he’s been wearing one his whole life. And now it’s gone.

It’s a small episode. It’s quiet. Its grandest revelation is spoken softly from one end of a sofa to the other, and the only character in a position to understand what it all means spends his night in dark introspection, standing outside of his own party, alone.

It’s actually quite beautiful, and its closing moments are absolutely perfect. It may lose something by being separated from the rest of season five, setting up themes and developments that won’t pay off for months, or it may gain from that.

It gives us time to think.

Like Dean sitting on the roof of the compound, early in the morning on November 1, we’re left with a lot to consider.

Of course, you and I will move forward just as we are, changing gradually, so slowly we might not even notice.

Dean doesn’t have that luxury. Halloween is over, and he’s been forced into adulthood with a shove. It’s time to graduate from Peanuts to The Twilight Zone. Even if we’re not ready.

Because, really, how could we ever be ready?

Review: Red Dwarf X Episode 4: “Entangled”

Hands up everyone who’s surprised that I think this episode went off the rails the moment Lister’s ballsack got wired to explode. No takers? ON WE GO THEN

I guess the upside here is that we now know “Lemons” was a one-off. A comparative breath of fresh air in the midst of a series that didn’t know what the hell it was trying to be, but was damned determined to annoy the everloving shit out of you while it tried to find out.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here, and my disappointment I guess technically qualifies as a spoiler, since the first act was actually quite good. In fact, while I didn’t need another “Lemons” per se, I actually started to believe that this episode might surpass it. After all, early disappointments in that episode had to do with far too long and unfunny exchanges (such as the Shakespeare bit) and buffoonish physical idiocy (assembling the Golden Shower or whatever the fuck). Here, the potential was there for each of these things to rear their heads again…and instead it was done right.

Rimmer delighting in the forms Lister would have to fill out was perfect character comedy. It worked. It was long, but it was funny. And the length of the exchange says a lot about his commitment to it; Rimmer isn’t a bastard for the sake of being a bastard…he’s a bastard because he is who he is…which just happens to be a bastard. A fine distinction, and one that this totally understandable character development rides nicely. After all, this is a man who is utterly sincere in wanting to protect his crew from exactly the sort of accident he caused that killed the crew. He can justify that, and he can justify it because he believes it. It’s real. He’s a human being…something he arguably hasn’t been since series VII. It’s really, really nice.

Oh, and the physical stuff…I was referring to Kryten drying spoons by farting on them, but I don’t have much to say there.

Well, okay, I can just say that it was fast and funny, very much a Futurama style joke that doesn’t overstay its welcome. So neither will I and that’s enough of that.

So far, so good. Kryten and Cat speaking in unison wasn’t particularly funny, but the reveal of the title of the book Cat is carrying is good. As in…really good. As in a very smart joke well executed. So thanks to that, I have at least a few seconds of “Entangled” that I can nominate for inclusion in a highlight reel.

Then Lister reveals that he lost a poker game to some BEGGs (don’t ask), because if it’s one thing Red Dwarf needs it’s loads of weekly side characters that make it feel like the crew is living in lower London rather than in the bowels of a mining ship lost 3 million years into deep space. The BEGGs (really, don’t ask) wired some bombs to his testes because lol bombs and testes. The first act ends there along with my dignity, because I was enjoying this and now I suddenly feel ashamed for doing so.

Act two, to put it diplomatically, is a screaming pile of shit. It opens with the crew confronting the BEGGs (honestly now…) who resemble GELFs so much in every way that there really shouldn’t be a distinction, Kryten and Cat start talking in unison again because crystals or something, the BEGGs (fuck you) all choke to death because of that I guess, though shit knows how that’s supposed to work, then a TV turns on because of course it does, and it’s showing some black and white movie obviously and the characters in that movie speak totally unrelated lines which so clearly are meant to be oblique clues to the crew about consulting the cover of the book Cat was holding which in turn provide vague guidance on how to Save Lister’s Nads.

If that feels like narrative flow to you, then being bashed over the head with a baseball bat must qualify as an at least passably written short story. It’s garbage. It eats up time. It makes no sense and serves no purpose.

Last week Doug had the crew beam into Britain even though he needed them in India. That made no sense, until it had a killer punchline, which retroactively justified an odd decision. Here we get odd decision after odd decision without much (if any) cause for laughter.

The Quest For the Non-Exploded Scrotum brings the crew to a space station where they find a lone surviving human being. Well, a monkey as the result of some off-screen (and again unnecessary) experiment but they restore her with three minutes left in the episode, which means she’s destined to be killed and nobody will give a shit. It’s like “Trojan” again, but even more jarringly awful because the big joke is that she probably would have let Rimmer cum inside of her and now he can’t do that hahahahahahahaha.

I don’t know when this show became It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia but the lack of human response in this crew is becoming pretty distracting. At least when they met Jesus they played with his dick in the service of a helpful medical procedure. It was crass, but it had a purpose. Here we’re shooting side characters and kicking them out of airlocks and not paying any mind to what that says about the crew as people. Which is fine I guess, as Doug obviously didn’t pay any mind to that either.

Or maybe they just know next week they’ll meet a whole slew of new disposable characters so nothing’s really lost.

I remember when these characters used to be people, though. The first half of this episode remembered that, too. Those were good times.

Oh well. I don’t care. We have two episodes to go and one of them is a love story starring the racist vending machines from “Fathers and Suns”.

Lucky us.

Journey Through the Past: The 1990s

Friend of the website Dave is hosting a 1990s blogfest today. He’s managed to rope quite a few great bloggers into this (complete list and his own choices here), and we’re also now selling cosmetics door to door on his behalf. The idea is to choose one thing — one anything — as your favorite thing from each year from 1990 – 1999, and write a short bit about it. He also did one for the 2000s, which was pre-Noiseless Chatter I think, but since everything released in that time period was garbage you missed nothing. (And, honestly, I’ll probably end up doing a 2000 – 2010 one just for the heck of it.) Anyway, enjoy…thanks to Dave for hosting this, and let me know what some of your own choices might have been in the comments below. Or tell me I’m wrong in a profane way…I always like that!

1990 – Vineland

I feel more than a little intellectually guilty for only including one novel in my year-by-year rundown, but I’d have to say that the 1990s weren’t particularly well served in a literary sense. Fortunately, though, the decade opens with perhaps the warmest, most welcoming book my favorite author ever wrote. Vineland takes place in 1984, but is very much a love letter to the 1960s. It introduces us to Zoyd Wheeler, a cultural isolate from that lost decade of love, sex and freedom, who’s been reduced to throwing himself through windows to keep up a stream of mental disability checks. It’s an innately comic setup, but the backward, twisting path through time, loss and inevitability is perfectly heartbreaking. Zoyd’s reliable antics, after all, began as an act of genuine desperation when his wife left him, and it’s only been the steady march of time that’s diluted them to meaningless repetitions of what once meant so much. That’s the angle Pynchon takes as he explores the effect aging has had on this world, and ours. It’s Zoyd’s daughter who pulls the narrative along — or backward — as she uncovers, thread by thread, who her mother was. And who her mother became. And, if she learns enough from what she finds, how to avoid a similar fate for herself. Pynchon’s narratives hurdle unfailingly toward doom, but Vineland is the one that reminds you that life is always worth living…regardless of where you might actually end up.

1991 – A Link to the Past

It’s a fact: the Super Nintendo is the single greatest video game console of all time. Consequently, the early to mid 1990s were a veritable goldmine for gamers. While the NES introduced us to massive numbers of endearing and enduring characters, the SNES took everything at least one step further, and managed to refine and build upon game mechanics without overcomplicating them, or losing sight of what made them work. Super Mario World, Super Metroid and Super Castlevania IV (among so many others) all represented a realization of promise, a step deeper into fantastic and complex universes that we always knew existed just below the surface. But it’s A Link to the Past that really stands out. Taking absolutely everything that worked about the first Zelda game and disposing of everything that didn’t, A Link to the Past laid the precise groundwork for every game in the series that followed, regardless of console. And while certain later entries, such as Majora’s Mask or Wind Waker, attempted to pull the series in other directions, it’s A Link to the Past that rightfully gets the credit for building the solid foundation and framework that gave those later installments the room to expand. The graphics are gorgeous, the music is great, and even if the challenge is somewhat lacking, every new secret you find on the map feels earned and satisfying. I love A Link to the Past. It’s one of perhaps two or three games in the history of the universe that does literally nothing wrong, and it’s a perfect example of what made the SNES so great.

1992 – Glengarry Glen Ross

For a movie with no action, Glengarry Glen Ross is riveting. For a movie with two locations, Glengarry Glen Ross feels enormous. And for a movie with so little at stake, Glengarry Glen Ross feels profound. It’s a story about selling real estate, and how difficult a racket that can be, but it’s also a story about despair, about self-preservation, about pride, about confidence, and about what it means to be a man. It’s all of these things, and it’s more, and the same answer is never given to the same question twice. When a nameless emissary drops by the sales office to address unsatisfactory work, he motivates the sales force by setting them at each other’s throats: the two most successful salesmen will be rewarded to varying degrees, and the other two will lose their jobs. What follows is a single, seemingly-unbroken narrative that spans the rest of that night and the next morning. To say any more than that would likely both give away too much and artificially enhance the importance of anything that happens. The magic — and the story — is all in the dialogue. Glengarry Glen Ross began as a stage play, and it shows. Its big screen adaptation does not seek to overwhelm, astonish, or impress; it seeks to focus. It seeks make you notice every shift of the eye, twitch of the finger, and speck of spittle that accompanies a profane explosion, making it feel like an even smaller and more intimate experience than the play could have ever been. It’s a film that’s terrifying, and it’s terrifying mainly because there’s nothing here to be afraid of. After all, these are just people. Highly and eternally recommended.

1993 – Mega Man X

I deliberately avoided mentioning Mega Man X when I basked in the glory of the SNES library above, simply so I could single it out here. Mega Man is unquestionably one of my favorite game series ever, and Mega Man X deviates from the classic formula just enough to justify it as a spinoff. With an increased focus on item collection, upgrades and lingering effects of defeated bosses, Mega Man X brought additional levels of non-linearity to an already legendarily non-linear experience. While the series may have gone off the rails after another four or five games (it’s debatable), the original is a stone-cold classic, with great bosses, impressive stages, and gameplay so versatile that fans, almost 20 years later, are still discovering new ways to play it. Mega Man was never about deep plot or engrossing storylines; these were action games through and through. Mega Man X wisely didn’t try to separate itself from the originals by way of an epic storyline…it simply enhanced the action, layered on new and impressive complications, and married it to a stellar soundtrack. Mega Man X is just fantastic.

1994 – Monster

So nobody likes Monster. I know that. I also know that that’s their loss. R.E.M.’s hardest rocking album might be so much of a departure from their usual sound that it’s hard to consider it a legitimate installment in their discography…but so what? It’s fantastic. When I listen to Monster — which I do for weeks at a time whenever I stumble across it again — I hear some of the best straight-up rock and roll to come out of the decade. And it’s not entirely devoid of R.E.M.’s signature songwriting, either…you just have to listen through some thrashing guitars to find it. Songs like “Strange Currencies,” “Tongue,” and “Crush With Eyeliner” are all pulled off with the band’s usual sideways insight into the human condition, with all of the disappointment and humane absurdity that implies. The band just happened to couch that insight in some brilliantly distracting, raw, unpolished instrumentation, and that brings with it a charm of its own…a little taste of R.E.M. as the up-and-coming garage band they never were. Some fans are all too eager to dismiss this brief experiment. For me it’s top shelf material, beaten only by Automatic For the People and Lifes Rich Pageant. If you’ve written it off before, it may be worth a reappraisal.

1995 – “Knowing Me Knowing Yule With Alan Partridge”

I love Alan Partridge. He ranks easily among my five favorite comic creations throughout all of human history, and that’s due in large part to the way that Steve Coogan slips — seemingly effortlessly — into Alan’s skin and becomes him. Though he started behind a sports desk and then moved into the chat-show format, there was always something more to him. He was never a “type,” and the humor was not situational; Alan was a human being, free to be himself wherever — and with whomever — he was. He was a person, a person with insecurities, interests, and a uniquely slanted perspective. “Knowing Me Knowing Yule” is a one-off special that bridges the gap between Knowing Me Knowing You With Alan Partridge and I’m Alan Partridge…two very different, but perfectly complementary, insights into this fascinating man. It’s presented as a needlessly expensive and woefully inessential yuletide installment of Alan’s chat show, and it’s what seals the casket on his broadcasting career forever. Considering that the last proper episode of Alan’s chat show saw him shooting a guest through the heart live on air, that gives you an idea of just how poorly this festive outing manages to go. It’s a great and always welcome entry into the Christmas special canon, and worth a watch at least once per year. Alan getting threatened by a transvestite, failing to properly lip-synch “The 12 Days of Christmas” and struggling desperately to halt an in-process bit of product placement never gets old. Watch it during a family gathering. Believe me, it will make you feel better about everyone you’re related to.

1996 – “22 Short Films About Springfield”

Coming at a time when The Simpsons could genuinely do no wrong, “22 Short Films About Springfield” reads like a time-capsule today. It’s a relic — and a loving, fascinating, and clever one — of a time when Springfield was more than just a sea of caricatures and types; it was a place, fully functional in and of itself. One operating under its own logic and impossible to mistake for the real world, but real in its own way all the same. It’s a half hour without plot, without intention, and without a moral…just a simple, and undoubtedly well-earned, chance to take a deep breath and survey the incredible playground the show had built up for itself by that point. The characters were so well established and the dynamics between them so fruitful that all you needed to do was let Apu take some time off, bring Reverend Lovejoy and his dog to Flanders’ front lawn, or give a stranger the chance to turn the tables on Nelson, and comedy would flow. Effortless, wonderful, eternal comedy. “22 Short Films About Springfield” floats by like a whisper, as it should. While any other show on television could work harder and harder every week to make even a fraction of the impact on the cultural landscape that The Simpsons made, The Simpsons itself didn’t seem to need to work at all. It could just step back and see what the characters were doing…and, here, that’s what it did. The Skinner / Chalmers segment will go down in history as an all-time best sequence no matter how long the show runs, but even if that clear highlight were to be somehow excised from the episode, “22 Short Films About Springfield” would still be a perfect gem. With so many forgettable seasons behind us now, the episode is almost like footage of a great civilization long gone: those of us that were there will always have this souvenir, and those who missed it will be eternally grateful for this brief — and brilliant — window into the past.

1997 – Time Out of Mind

I’ve talked a bit about Dylan’s lost years here, but I didn’t say much about what brought him back to life. Time Out of Mind is what brought him back to life. For me, it was released at the perfect time; just as I started to explore Dylan myself, this came out. Suddenly the warnings to avoid “the recent stuff” went quiet…and I do mean suddenly. Time Out of Mind is a bullet of an album…a shot through the brain that lingers and haunts and does not let go, and critics and fans alike flocked to it immediately. Time Out of Mind doesn’t feel like a comeback album…it feels like he never left. Though his youthful, nasal prophesying is replaced here by a gravelly howl, it’s Dylan to the core, providing one of his best love songs (“Make You Feel My Love”), some chillingly vague danger (“Cold Irons Bound”), and a classic meandering tale of introspection, playing Neil Young at high volumes, and ordering hard-boiled eggs at a restaurant (“Highlands”)…it’s a gloriously meandering shaggy-dog story that caps off an aimless-by-design rediscovery of who Dylan is. It would be quicker to list the things I don’t like about this album, because there really aren’t any. Songs like “Tryin’ to Get to Heaven” and the bluntly desolate “Not Dark Yet” triggered suspicions that this was Dylan’s final statement…that the man had pulled it together one last time, to end his career on a high note. He’s released four more albums of new material since then. Dylan’s going out on a high note alright…he’s just making sure to sustain it this time. On his next album, Dylan would sing “You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way.” That would have made more sense before Time Out of Mind, which disproves it conclusively.

1998 – Rushmore

There may not be much more I can say about Rushmore than what I’ve already said here, but that by no means dampens my excitement for talking about it yet again. Rushmore is, by many accounts, Wes Anderson’s best film. Anyone who says that to you, however, is lying. What it is, however, is Wes Anderson’s mission statement, and it’s a solid, fantastic, indelible one. Coming off of Bottle Rocket, Rushmore represents an almost unprecedented stylistic and qualitative step forward. It’s not a film in which Anderson finds his voice…it’s a film in which we find Anderson’s voice. The soundtrack, the costumes, the visual design, the character dynamics, the relentless attention to detail…everything here established what it meant to be “classic Anderson,” and it both defined a career and forever cemented a fanbase. It also introduced the world to Jason Schwartzman, and reintroduced the world to a penitent Bill Murray…a gift to humanity that Anderson should always be praised for. It’s one of those movies packed so densely that no two viewings have to feel the same, and there’s literally always something new to notice, tucked away in the corner of a quick shot, or hiding in plain sight while the camera dwells and your eyes wander. Rushmore is a great film, and while I enjoy it most for what it allowed Anderson to do down the line, I can never watch this one without coming away impressed all over again. And crying when Max introduces Mr. Blume to his father. Because that part’s fucking gold.

1999 – “Space Pilot 3000″

When Futurama debuted, it seemed like it was just going to be the less-deserving little brother of The Simpsons. But arriving, as it did, just at the time the elder show was losing steam, it established itself immediately as a more than worthy successor. While The Simpsons took a few seasons to establish a flow and sustainable gag-rate for itself, Futurama burgled some writers and hijacked that momentum, allowing it to fire on all cylinders right from the get-go. The result is an almost impossibly strong first season, kicked off by one of the most confident and well-handled pilots I’ve ever seen. Space Pilot 3000 has barely aged at all. While the voice actors may have still been getting a handle on things, the writing is sharp and solid, and the groundwork for countless fantastic episodes of smart science-fiction, piercing comedy and genuine emotion is laid here. There’s a long love letter to Futurama that I’d like to write, but as the years go by it keeps getting longer…eventually I’d just end up with too much to say. After all, what can I say to a show that gave me “Jurassic Bark,” “Time Keeps On Slipping,” “The Luck of the Fryrish,” “Godfellas,” “Lethal Inspection,” and so many others I love beyond words? Futurama is by no means a perfect show, but for some silly cartoon knockoff of another silly cartoon, it sure managed to exceed expectations quickly. It brought an end to the 90s, but ushered in a whole new expanse of grand adventures and brainy plotwork. Philip J Fry inadvertently froze himself, and woke up in a far stronger television landscape. Welcome to the world of tomorrow.