Noiseless Chatter

Reflections on Russell Johnson’s Passing

Last week, Russell Johnson died. It was a name that I recognized, but it’s not the name I thought of when I saw his picture. I didn’t even think of the name of his character. I thought of his descriptor. This man was The Professor.

I’m not going to make the case that Gilligan’s Island was brilliant television. I will, however, stand pretty firmly in my opinion that it was good for what it was, and had probably the most perfect sitcom casting this side of Arrested Development.

His death doesn’t get me reflecting as deeply on my childhood as the death of Jerry Nelson did. But it certainly does cause me to look backward, to exhume long-ignored memories, to remember simpler times in the world of entertainment.

I wasn’t alive during the original run of Gilligan’s Island, but I’d be surprised if there was a single episode I haven’t seen. It was in near-constant syndication when I was growing up, and it was a highlight of those rare days when I managed to trick my parents into thinking I was too sick to go to school. I’d lay on the couch and watch Gilligan’s Island, Press Your Luck and assorted soap operas I couldn’t tell you the first thing about. There was a kind of escape in shows like this…Gilligan’s Island in particular. It stuck with me…and I loved it.

I don’t know what it was about that show…but I can certainly make some confident guesses. For starters, that island was beautiful. Looking back I’m sure that most of it was filmed on a set, and any location shots were certainly not filmed anywhere near the tropical paradise that I had envisioned.

Gilligan’s Island didn’t just take the teeth out of the idea of being shipwrecked…it made it seem desirable. I remember feeling bad for Gilligan when he was berated at the end of many episodes. Sure, his bumbling often kept them stranded…but why on Earth did they want to leave?

They had food and water. They had shelter. They had constantly sunny weather. They had each other. They didn’t have taxes. They didn’t have dead-end jobs. They didn’t have sour relationships and difficult relatives. They didn’t have worries. Sure, every so often some external danger would be introduced to the group dynamic, but it was always vanquished in the end. Gilligan’s Island was far from the only sitcom to reach for the reset button at the end of each episode, but it was the only one that reset things to a status quo that looked like Heaven to me.

The lapping waves. The rustling palm fronds. Gathering around a big fire to eat and listen to a radio broadcast. Sleeping in a hammock. Watching the sunset with your toes in the sand every day of your life. If I were Gilligan, my subconscious would probably squash any plans for rescue as well.

But there’s something comforting about Gilligan’s Island beyond its setting: its characterization. And that’s where Russell Johnson shined…and he arguably shined brightest.

When I say that the casting on this show was great I’m not just offering up a vague platitude. I genuinely feel it couldn’t have been better. Look at any screen grab or promotional shot from the show, and you won’t just recognize their faces; you’ll hear their voices. You’ll remember their mannerisms. You know exactly how they’ll interact with each other under any given circumstance.

The characters were rigid. At no point did they grow or evolve. Far from being a drawback, however, this was a strength; they started out so perfectly formed that there was really nowhere else to take them. Everything from their personal wardrobes to their personal weaknesses were drawn from the start. Gilligan’s Island may never have achieved greatness, but it absolutely achieved the next best thing: consistency.

I found myself relating to The Professor more than any of the other castaways as a kid. Nowadays there’s probably a bit of The Skipper in there, too, but back then it was Russell Johnson who kept me fixated on the show. As the others would — with the periodic exception of Mary Ann — succumb to some form of temptation or another, The Professor moved forward with a level head. He was on hand to explain the obstacle of the week, to outline the things the others needed to do or refrain from doing, and while it wasn’t always his hand that saved the day, it was certainly his calm, collected intellect that held them together.

He was a type, as were they all, but there’s nothing wrong with that. While nowadays the tendency is to wink and lampshade, Gilligan’s Island is a relic of a time that wasn’t afraid of looking ridiculous. I am positive that nobody who worked on the show — in any capacity — felt that it was realistic or profound in any way. And yet…there it still was. The actors and actresses were still making the enthusiastic most of their material. The opening and closing themes were still immortal. The writers were still coming up with genuinely clever material; sure, the weekly plotlines might not have been anything special (how many times was the entire episode based around a new visitor that washed up ashore?) but those plots only served as the framework upon which to hang some great lines and physical comedy. And those wardrobe people? Those wardrobe people had as much to do with defining the characters as anyone else did.

I think what I really liked about Gilligan’s Island was the fact that everybody was an equal part of this community. That held a lot of appeal to me. While in some cases their usefulness to the rest of the group was clear, in other cases it might have been a bit harder to recognize. But, ultimately, they were in this together. Tensions might run high, but they were a group. Everyone had a purpose. Everyone had a reason. And given enough time, and enough teamwork, we could get everything back to normalcy.

Neither Gilligan’s island nor Gilligan’s Island would have been the same without every one of these characters. There was a kind of comforting, rewarding stasis at work…a reassurance that though you might feel out of place in the world, there was somewhere that you would fit.

I loved The Professor. Some kids grew up idolizing Captain Kirk, or Luke Skywalker, and that’s fine.

Me? I looked up to a guy in a button-down shirt, isolated from civilization and doomed never to return, but who kept his cool, stayed productive, and retained his sanity…there on Gilligan’s island.

Rest in peace, Professor. And thank you.

ALF Reviews: “I’ve Got a New Attitude” (Season 1, Episode 15)

Well, lucky us. Kate Sr. is still around…making this her third episode. She’s actually the only side character apart from Mr. Ochmonek to reach the three episode mark, and she did them all in a row. Huh. So this must be that Kate Sr. Trilogy I’ve heard so much of nothing about.

The other side characters just get introduced, wave to the camera, and then ride off into the sunset. Technically I should be happy that Kate Sr. is still around for that reason alone; this is a kind of progress. But she still isn’t much of a character, and since the previous two episodes were practically identical in terms of their themes and conflict, I’m not especially glad to see them tapping the same well a third time.

Anyway, Willie and Kate carry boxes around while ALF lays naked on the couch watching them. If you had to distill the entire narrative essence of ALF down to three seconds of footage that would loop forever, this would have to be it.

Kate Sr. is moving out, and Willie wonders aloud if her new apartment can fit all of these boxes because it’s so small. I was going to complain about the clunkiness of Willie’s exposition, but the real problem is that Kate Sr. arrived with a briefcase, yet is somehow leaving with more than a whole apartment can potentially fit.

Also, later on we see the apartment and it’s fucking massive. It’s like a penthouse. This isn’t the only time that the episode will tell something that we can contradict as simply as by opening our eyes, and that’s puzzling to me. I can understand using a word like “small” in the script, and then seeing the set was built differently…but wouldn’t you drop the word “small” in that case? Why not make a tiny alteration to the script in service of not coming across like you aren’t paying attention to your own show?

And the more I think about it, the shittier Kate Sr. seems to me for turning up like that and just moving in. I know Estelle kicked her out (that Estelle!) but how long did she expect to keep up the lie? Did Kate Sr. intend to say every week that Estelle broke another bone? She might have been in a tight spot, but a lie like the one she told should only buy her a few days…what the hell was her long-term plan?

ALF asks Willie to lick a stamp for him, and Willie angrily replies, “Can’t you lick that yourself?” I’m only pointing this out because I’m genuinely shocked this line hasn’t made it into a Mr. Meatloaf video. What are you waiting for, internet?

It turns out that ALF ate the chocolates Willie was going to give to Kate for Valentine’s Day. So, here. This is the ALF Valentine’s Day special, I guess.

Kate Sr. enters the room and announces that the painters aren’t finished in her new apartment, so she will have to stay with the Tanners longer than expected. Oh, excellent. All three episodes of the Kate Sr. trilogy have the same premise. Exactly what I was hoping for.

ALF is tired of having Kate Sr. around, and, buddy, I am on your side. Not that the show was better without her, per se, but it was at least bad in different ways. With three episodes in a row based around the same “Kate Sr. is staying longer than expected” setup, it’s getting claustrophobic. Sure, ALF wrecking the car or Willie skydiving or the family getting stuck in an RV didn’t lead to episodes any better than these…but at least they were bad in unique and interesting directions.

I wouldn’t harp so much on the fact that three episodes in a row have the same premise, except for the additional fact that this isn’t the first time this has happened: earlier this season we had three episodes in a row about ALF falling in love. That’s two long stretches of identical plotlines, and this is only episode fifteen! It’s not bad enough that they pad out every installment of the show…they also have to pad out the season as well?

Anyway, ALF is mailing a canned ham to Sally Field. Willie comes over and tells ALF that he is not to send any meat to celebrities, and if you listen closely you can actually hear Max Wright mentally composing his suicide note.

Some guy comes in — Kate Sr.’s new neighbor, as we learn — and I could have sworn to God the family called him Wizard Beaver. Even by ALF standards though that’s absurd, so I looked him up and sure enough his name is actually Whizzer Deaver. Which…isn’t any better? Ah well; I tried.

Anyway he comes in so everyone has to pretend ALF is a chicken because WHO CARES THIS WAS A VERY POPULAR SHOW DO YOU HEAR ME

Whizzer Deaver looks kind of like the guy who played Doug on Flight of the Conchords and Gale in Breaking Bad, but I’m sure I recognize the actual actor from something I can’t put my finger on. His name is Paul Dooley and if you look him up you’ll see he’s been in about ten million things. This is unquestionably the worst.

Whizzer “Wizard Beaver” Deaver is helping Kate Sr. move her boxes into her new apartment, which will certainly make the painters very happy. He’s only in the living room for about a minute but he manages to say an incredible amount of things in that short time that make it overtly clear that he wants to plow Kate Sr. It’s actually really creepy how direct and persistent he is, but everyone acts like it’s charming and sweet.

I think the writers were going for something like William Powell playfully toying with Myrna Loy in The Thin Man, but because this is ALF and cleverness and subtlety have no place here, Whizzer Deaver seems like he’s barely able to keep himself from hopping on the couch, wetting his pants, and screaming, “I WANT TO PENETRATE YOUR DEAD WOMB.”

Whizzer and Willie go out and come back later on, laughing it up. I can’t imagine a pair of human beings with whom I’d less like to spend a night on the town. The Whiz brings Kate Sr. some flowers, but then he offers them to Kate Jr., and then he takes them back and offers them to Kate Sr. again, and I’m pretty sure we’re supposed to see him as some hilarious, smooth, middle-aged casanova. Really he’s just coming across like a horny idiot.

There’s a really strange moment when Whizzer asks if there’s anything that still needs to be moved. Kate Sr. says that all that’s left is her suitcase, and some things “over there,” indicating stage left. Yet as she does this there’s a pile of boxes visible right behind her…the same boxes Willie and Kate were moving earlier that belonged to Kate Sr. This is why the syndication edits don’t bother me. Yes, I’m sure sometimes a line is cut that makes a little more sense of things. But here we have a woman standing in shot with some boxes that we’re supposed to pretend aren’t there. If the show couldn’t couldn’t be arsed to move some boxes out of the way so that their scene made sense, I don’t have faith that another two minutes of alien hijinx would make things much better.

One of the things Kate Sr. pointed at is a clarinet in a case, which Whizzer picks up and Kate Sr. tells him to back off and takes it away from him. She then wipes his finger prints off of it, and says it belonged to her dead husband. Well, hey, that’s fine, but if she didn’t want him touching it why did she specifically point to it when he asked what needed to be moved?

Willie miraculously remembers that Whizzer Deaver is the name of a man he used to see at a club playing the clarinet. Must have been a hopping club, there, Willie. Whizzer says yes, that was him, and offers to bring his own clarinet over so the family can have a “jam session.” In my experience jam sessions don’t involve a room full of strangers staring blankly at one man huffing through a woodwind, but I’m no Whizzer Deaver.

Kate Sr. slaps down the whole idea though, making it perfectly clear that she would never, under any circumstances, go to bed with a man Willie looks up to. Her philosophy on romance is very similar to my own.

Later on everyone’s in the kitchen. ALF is eating jellybeans or something and Willie is fixing the toaster ALF ruined by cramming a pickle in it. THIS WAS A VERY POPULAR SHOW DO YOU HEAR ME

Everbody tries to pressure Kate Sr. into having sex with the guy who helped her move, and as someone who helps old ladies move all the time, I can tell you that this is a perfectly common arrangement. She refuses, and ALF interjects that she is “saving herself for a corpse.”

He’s referring to her dead husband, who she still misses like a big fucking idiot!!! Anyway, we find out that her husband’s name was Sparky…and though I didn’t mention it and can’t remember which episode it was now, there was a joke in a previous story where Willie brought a hamster named Sparky home to ALF, and returned it immediately because ALF wanted to eat it. Needless to say, it was hilarious. But now I have to wonder why Willie named a hamster after his wife’s dead dad.

ALF reveals that he has the ability to speak with the dead, and he’s been in contact with Sparky. (The dead man, that is…not the forgotten hamster.) Hey, why not. It’s not even in the top 200 most ridiculous things I’ve heard in this show, so fine. ALF is a medium. Who cares anymore.

He proves his otherworldly communication abilities by telling everyone Sparky’s favorite food. After this air-tight evidence that ALF can communicate with the world of the dead, everyone asks ALF to channel Sparky later that night so that they can talk to him, too. I’ll give the Kate Sr. Trilogy this much credit: when her character first showed up at the house, I had no idea they were building toward a climax in which a puppet summons the ghost of her dead husband.

The next thing we see is this:

Of course. What else could it have been?

Willie asks ALF if that’s their goldfish bowl on the table, and ALF says it is, but the goldfish is fine as long as nobody flushes the toilet. I’m sure glad the writers invented a Tanner family goldfish for that joke.

Someone asks where Brian is, and there’s another zinger as we hear the toilet flush, because he took a shit onto the goldfish and killed it.

Brilliant stuff, ALF. Just pure class.

This whole scene is a perfect encapsulation of everything wrong with this show. What’s the logic here? Why are they letting ALF hold a seance in their living room? Why do they believe he’d have the ability to speak with the dead? He’s never been magical before…but all of a sudden they are willing to go along with this schtick as if it’s in any way reasonable?

I guess I’d be willing to believe that they’d tentatively let him get away with saying that everyone from Melmac can communicate with spirits, but they don’t get suspicious when the ceremony looks exactly like it does in some late-night 1950s B-movie? Isn’t that a pretty clear giveaway that this fuckdicker is just doing what he does all the time? Screwing with everyone and wrecking up their lives because they keep giving him the express opportunity to do so?

Why is nobody in this show a human being?

ALF tells everyone to join hands and close their eyes, and then he moans and groans for a while as he slips into a trance. I can honestly say that I’ve enjoyed almost nothing about revisiting this show, but this scene is ranking right up there with his music video for making me wonder why I’m doing this. I’m once again overcome with embarrassment for even having this on my computer screen. I feel like I deserve to have the principal of my old school, my boss, and every one of my ex-girlfriends walk in on me right now and see this. See that this is what’s become of me.

ANYWAY THE SEANCE IS GREAT and we find out that Kate Sr.’s last name is Halligan, which is therefore, at least presumably, Kate’s maiden name as well. I like that this awful show needs to drag us through these absurd, unbelievable situations of spirits and mysticism and occult mumbo-jumbo before it gives enough of a shit to reveal even the most basic things to us about the characters involved. We can have an episode with ALF and Willie trapped together in a car and learn literally nothing about them from anything that they say, but strap Willie to a rocket and fire him at the moon and have ALF travel through time to save him and that’ll be the scene in which we learn that Brian’s middle name is Frank.

Anyway, ALF contacts Sparky, and everyone hears his disembodied voice speaking from above. I don’t actually believe that it’s possible to communicate with spirits, or even that there are spirits, but I do know that this is emphatically not how a seance works. If we could just look up at the sky and speak verbally back and forth with dead people, not only would we not need a medium at all, but there’d be no question whatsoever about an afterlife.

Think about that. If you could walk into a room with a bunch of friends, look up at the ceiling and talk to your dead grandfather, would there be any room for questioning life after death? What’s more, it would be easy to document. Set up a camera, ship a copy to James Randi, and collect your million dollar prize. The entirety of human civilization would change, knowing that we go somewhere after we die, and that all we have to do to learn about that place and prepare for it is verbally ask a dead guy.

And yet…nobody in the Tanner family seems to react. What would you do if a ghost started talking to you? …okay, I admit, I don’t know what I’d do either. But I’d sure as hell do something. I wouldn’t sit quietly at a table and wait for him to stop so that I could get on with the rest of my night. This would be a life-defining moment, and very likely the most significant thing I’d ever witness. For the Tanners, though, this is treated like just another night in.

The lack of imagination in this show is absolutely dumbfounding.

Anyway, it’s not a real seance (which is odd since it was so very convincing), and it unravels when the voice of Sparky Halligan starts speeding up and slowing down. Willie looks under the table and finds his tape recorder, at which point he angrily shouts, “You’re a fraud!”

See? This is the problem. I know the seance was fake and therefore much of what I said above shouldn’t mean anything…but the Tanners believed it was real. They believed they were talking to a ghost and they still didn’t react. If Willie stood up and said, “I knew it…what a waste of time…” that would be one thing. Instead he reveals that he fell for it, as did everyone else, and yet they still didn’t see this as anything worth getting excited over.

I understand none of what I’m watching.

Everyone yells at ALF…but, really, shame on them for being such idiots. ALF explains that he learned all of his facts about Sparky from digging through Kate Sr.’s things, but that doesn’t explain whose voice was on the tape, nor how he knew what Sparky sounded like. Kate Sr. confirmed that it was her dead husband’s voice…so how in the world did ALF record him saying things like “I’m dead now, go sleep with that guy who played Doug on Flight of the Conchords“?

This makes no sense whatsoever. Yes, ALF can fake a seance. No, ALF cannot fake a seance using a cassette tape that can’t possibly exist and goes completely unexplained. At that point he might as well be able to actually speak to the dead. God this show is awful.

We then cut to an exterior shot of Kate Sr.’s apartment building, with a dubbed line announcing that she has a delivery.

Then we immediately cut to this shot, where the box is already inside her apartment and the door is closed:

This is really weird. They hired a guy to say the line about the delivery, so why didn’t they open the scene with her signing for the box or something? Why have the line spoken off-camera, and then immediately cut to the box already being inside the apartment? It’s really weird to me. There was no sound of a door opening or closing…just the unseen delivery man, and then, bam, Kate Sr. with the door closed, not even very close to the box that was just ostensibly handed to her.

But that’s not all…

Guess what’s in the box, assholes!

It’s ALF! He felt so bad about lying to manipulate her into sleeping with the neighbor she barely knows that he mailed himself to her apartment so he could continue manipulating her into sleeping with the neighbor she barely knows.

ALF gives a speech to her about moving on, and he uses the destruction of Melmac as his own personal example. While that’s meant to give Kate Sr. the strength to face life without her husband, all it really does is make ALF seem like a pretty massive dick for getting over the annihilation of his entire civilization in a couple of episodes.

There’s somebody at the door, and since there’s only one character unaccounted for it has to be Whizzer Deaver.

I know I said that name might not be any better than Wizard Beaver, but I’m starting to think it’s actually worse. If it was really Wizard Beaver then I could just assume the writers were trying to be funny, and failing as ever. It wouldn’t even stand out in the grand scheme of things. But with Whizzer Deaver were they just trying to give him a normal name? This is what they came up with? Is it that hard to call this guy Jim or something and move on? God knows we’ll never see him again.

The Deav brings her a Valentine’s Day gift, which reminds me, oh shit, this is a Valentine’s Day special. Don’t ask me how I forgot, what with all the Valentine’s Day staples we just saw, like summoning the dead, clarinet jam sessions, and shitting on goldfish. I must be thick as a brick.

Whizzer flirts some more and Kate Sr. agrees to go out to dinner with him, which seems like a great idea to me, since it’s so easy to get into restaurants at dinner time with no reservations on Valentine’s Day.

ALF for some reason sits quietly in the box while they’re gone, wondering what he’s supposed to do since there’s still a few minutes left in the episode and nobody wrote any more lines for him.

In the scene just before the credits ALF is delivered back to the Tanner house, and the same delivery man shows up to drop the box off. This time we see him, and they even made a JACKRABBIT COURIER jacket for him to wear, which means I’m even more confused about why they didn’t show him before. They had a costume for him but still just had him do some clumsy, shittily-edited overdub? I honestly feel sometimes that ALF goes out of its way to do the stupiding fucking thing possible.

Anyway great episode. 10 out of 10. Fuck you.

MELMAC FACTS: On Melmac there was a sport called Klaneball, which was like hockey but without skating or a puck. There were also four classes of postage: 1st Class, 2nd Class, Fish, and Ham. Oh, and everyone on Melmac could talk to the dead…or at least convince a family of morons that they could talk to the dead by sticking a flashlight in a fishbowl.

The Importance of Saying Something Stupid

I’ll admit this right up front: it’s not pleasant to realize that you’ve said something stupid. Especially since you’re not an idiot.

Really. You’re not. You, reading this, whomever you are: you’re not an idiot. You may do idiotic things. Your name may be attached to idiotic statements. But you’re not an idiot. This is why it stings when you do accidentally dip into idiocy. When you say something that you immediately wish you could take back. When you do something that you know immediately afterward someone as smart as you shouldn’t have done.

But, if I may be so bold…that’s a good thing. Yes. It is.

It’s a good thing to say things that you regret. Regret is a useful feeling. Yet the internet — depending upon the site, anyway — allows us to erase that regret. It’s a nice thought, but it’s unintentionally destructive. It’s healthy to want to take things back…but it’s less healthy to actually take things back.

I’m speaking of a few different things, here, but they all orbit around the same thought: when we say something that we later regret saying, it’s important to stand behind what we said. Not in the sense that we need to embrace the poor judgment that caused us to say it…but in the sense that we leave it there. With our name attached. As a reminder. To ourselves.

In the more severe example on my mind, a journalist recently shared her story about being threatened with rape on Twitter. Yes, it’s the internet, and while these things are by no means excusable it’s also a fact that the vast majority of internet threats are empty. But it went deeper than that. This person shared details about the journalist, making it clear that whether or not he’d ever follow through on this very open threat, he knew where she lived…where she went in her spare time…the names of her friends and loved ones. He’d done his homework, and that’s terrifying.

Worse, however, is that a well-intentioned friend of the journalist reported these frightening messages to Twitter, which then deleted his tweets and his account. Fair enough, except that this threw a fatal wrench into the journalist’s ability to pursue legal action; the evidence was gone. There was no investigation, because there was nothing left to investigate. Whoever this man was, and wherever he was, he’s still out there.

In the far less severe example, I posted a joke on Facebook a short while back. Somebody took offense at the joke, but made it clear through his comments — a steady stream of comments, one after the other, sometimes seconds apart — that he’d missed the intent of the joke. Other folks piped up to let him know he was taking things too seriously. I stayed out of it, but eventually betrayed my better judgment (literally dozens of his irate comments later) to let him know that he was reacting to something I didn’t say. He took the joke, twisted it into something that upset him, and reacted to that instead of what was actually said.

That’s fine. People have every right to get upset. And I’d have gladly apologized if I had actually said something that made someone else upset. The problem here was that I hadn’t actually said, or suggested, what it was that he claimed to be upset about. Eventually he must have realized this himself, because a few minutes later he went back and deleted every last one of his comments. Since there were many people engaged in the conversation at that point — and since they were both addressing the things he said and responding to the questions posed by him — anybody finding the discussion now would only see half of the conversation. The other half isn’t invisible…it isn’t silent…it simply doesn’t exist anymore.

Somewhere in the middle there are hundreds of online discussions I’ve seen where comments go missing, or are edited to say “nevermind” or something instead of what was actually there in the first place.

If these people, and the gentleman who was upset at one of my jokes, came to realize (independently or otherwise) that they don’t actually agree with what they’ve said, that’s a good thing. But deleting their contributions to the conversation is not a good thing for anybody.

As I said before, it doesn’t help somebody who comes to the conversation late; if that person is interested, they should be able to read what actually took place there…rather than only being able to read what’s left after somebody gathered up their toys and went home.

It doesn’t help the people whose comments still stand in the conversation, because it’s no longer a conversation. It’s a string of statements in response to something that doesn’t exist anymore. With one person deleting their contribution, they remove the context from everything else. That shouldn’t be their right to do; if somebody took the time to respond respectfully to something you said, it’s only fair to let your comments stand so that they make sense.

But, most of all, my main point is that it doesn’t help the person who deleted or edited their comments, either. Why not? Because saying something stupid and then realizing that what you’ve said is stupid is an important thing to do, and it teaches us a valuable lesson: to think before we speak.

If we can remove from the internet everything foolish that we say, there’s no reason to stop saying foolish things. It’s important that they stay there, with our names attached. It’s important that we regret saying something before we thought it through. That’s what’s going to help us the next time we think of typing something out in anger. It can give us pause. It can prevent us from leaving that threat. It can prevent us from fighting a perceived insult that didn’t exist. It can prevent us from kicking up a heated conversation that ends with us frantically scrubbing our contributions out before anyone gets a chance to see what it was we wish we didn’t say.

Making mistakes is a part of life. There are a lot of things online that I wish I didn’t say, or that I wish I’d said differently. In most of those cases, I have editing permissions and could theoretically delete them.

But why would I? The more I catch myself regretting what I’ve said, the more careful I’m going to be the next time. That’s valuable. That builds character. That builds a sense of responsibility for the words we say, and the digital legacy we leave behind.

It’s important to take responsibility for what you said. If you’ve said it and somebody’s read it, it needs to stay where it is. You did that. You might be able to erase your comment and your accountability, but you can’t erase the feelings that others had when they read what you said to them. Your responses need to stand, even if — especially if — you regret them.

Because if you delete them, or you have a moderator delete them, or a site decides of its own accord to delete them, everybody’s being done a disservice.

The fact that we can live Cher’s dream by turning back time and taking back hurtful words — our own or somebody else’s — doesn’t mean we should. It gives rise to problems of its own.

You’re accountable for what you say. Wherever you are, whomever you say it to, you are responsible for those words. If you don’t like that, then take a moment to think about what you’re saying before you post it. The correct way out of that noose is simply not to step into it in the first place.

Accountability is underrated. It has been for a long time. We need to start taking it seriously again.

So by all means, be stupid. It will happen. Say idiotic things. And when you do — which you will, which we all will — leave them just where you’ve put them. Feel free to amend an apology, but leave your original words untouched. Let yourself know that the next time you say something stupid, that’s going to stay where it is, too.

You’ll find before long that you won’t be so quick to say stupid things anymore. And that, I promise you, is an awakening worth having.

1Q84b

Toward the beginning of this month, I posted something about 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. I’d hesitate to call it a review. I’d also hesitate to call it a collection of thoughts. If anything, it’s a loose assortment of unconnected observations. Of course, at that time, I had only read the first volume.

I’ve now read the second, and I’m no closer to having my thoughts collected.

1Q84 is a deliberately confounding work. There’s nothing unique about that fact, but there is something unique in just how playfully it manages to find new ways to confound. To be frank, I’m impressed by just how consistently baffled it manages to make me when barely any passing time is unaccounted for. It doesn’t take a very skilled magician to pull off an illusion as long as he keeps you from looking in the right place. That’s basic sleight of hand, and on its own it doesn’t qualify as art. It qualifies as technique.

But keep the reader focused on every detail and still manage to pull off the same trick? That takes a master.

Murakami has every opportunity to cut away from the action when it’s time to obscure, to obfuscate. He has dual protagonists. When it’s time to confuse us about Tengo, he need simply cut to Aomame. And, of course, vice versa. And while there would be nothing wrong with that, he doesn’t do it. When our perspective shifts back we are either meticulously caught up on everything that’s passed since we last saw this character, or we repeat the last few lines of that character’s tale to fix the scene precisely as it was before we left.

That takes some guts, and the fact that it works says a lot about the trust it’s worth investing in our author.

All of this, in case you couldn’t guess, is just my way of explaining the fact that I still couldn’t tell you what 1Q84 is about. In many cases I could barely tell you what’s happening…and for a book that never leaves a detail untold, that’s incredible.

The only other book coming to mind that relates minor advancements of plot so meticulously is Ulysses, which follows two main characters as they work their way around Dublin over the course of a single day. Yet Ulysses doesn’t quite remain grounded…it flits away on overt narrative trickery, weaving dreams and fantasies and formats together into a deliberately disorienting whirl. Joyce’s arms flail as he performs his trick. He gets away with it because there’s so much you’re trying to focus on. Murakami barely moves a muscle. He lets you take your time and study anything as deeply as you like. The intense focus becomes a kind of disorientation that we’re not used to experiencing…and that’s a hell of a feat.

It’s also thematically appropriate for 1Q84, which takes for one of its themes the concept of subtle, imperceptible changes having large impacts that you only can only measure in retrospect. There’s no preparing yourself for what’s to come any more than the characters are able to prepare themselves. That’s not the way this world works.

Throughout the course of the second volume, the major event seems to be Aomame’s assassination of a man who presides spiritually over a mysterious cult. The first part of the volume builds up to the murder, the middle of the volume takes its sweet time describing that murder, and the wind-down of the novel considers thoroughly the implications of that murder.

One gets the sense by the end of volume two that it almost doesn’t matter what happens next…at least, no more than it mattered what happened last. Or what might happen a thousand years from now.

Events, however closely we study them, are pearls on a string. They are there. They are side by side. Any importance we assign to them comes from us. One day we will be gone. By default, they will all be equally important: not important at all. Aomame’s murder of a child-raping guru is described with exactly as much detail and exactly as little empathy as the breakfast she makes in the morning. One sounds more important than the other. We assign different levels of importance to each of them. But, one day, we will be gone. From enough distance to allow detachment, they are of equal importance.

1Q84 doesn’t have to work very hard to get us on Aomame’s side. We want her to kill him, and we want her to get away with it. After all, the accounts of what he’s done to a very young girl named Tsubasa — and the knowledge that there are other girls whom he abuses in the same way — are repulsive. Murakami doesn’t describe it with any more significance than he does any other kind of sex, though. In fact, in terms of narrative he assigns it less significance, as we only hear about it second-hand, through dialogue.

It’s unspeakably awful…and it remains unspoken, by the narrator at least.

Yet by the time we enter the volume’s final third, we’re not thinking of this spiritual Leader the same way. Neither is Aomame. To give it away wouldn’t spoil anything so much as it would needlessly complicate the observation. Suffice it to say that subtle changes make a world of a difference. In retrospect, anyway. After the wheels have already been set in motion. When the momentum that pulls you forward is no longer your own. When you have the knowledge you wish you had at the start, now that it’s too late to use it.

There are a lot of shifts of this kind, many of which involve the slippery concept of fiction itself. Tengo consciously conflating a visit to his dying father with a story he reads about a town of cats. The world around these characters seeming to integrate details from two fictional novels…one of which is still in the process of being written. The lyrics to “Paper Moon.” It’s not a question of how fiction manages to influence the real world, but of how deeply, how naturally, how irresistibly.

It’s tempting to read 1Q84 as a novel about itself. It’s more than tempting, actually; it’s seductive. But doing so — or doing so exclusively — robs the tale of its terrifyingly playful approach to internal resonance. The overlapping details, the historical layering, the cycling in and out of important characters, the substitution of raw emotion for uncomplicated sci-fi and then back again…a human you knew being replaced by a chrysalis that eventually opens to reveal the same human it replaced.

It’s brilliant. It’s scary. It’s unnerving. Moments of violence are weighted the same as moments of calm. Characters read Chekhov to each other at night or chain police women to beds in love hotels and strangle them. Those that seem innocent have the most dangerous motives…the creepiest ones just want to help. Cause and effect get scrambled. The good guys do awful things. They might not realize it. We might not realize it. Not until it’s too late to stop it, anyway.

Everybody’s got good intentions…it just depends upon your perspective. Subtle shifts and changes result in completely different worlds that could never be mistaken for one another.

Not that either one could possibly be more important. One day we will no longer be here.

Like the song says, it’s “just as phony as it can be.” It also says that it “wouldn’t be make believe if you believed in me.” Which sounds very nice.

The darker, unsung shadow of that line reveals that without belief, without buy-in, without the conscious decision to assign something significance, it’s nothing.

Whatever it is…or whatever it could have been…is nothing.

We don’t decide that anything is meaningless…we decide what’s meaningful. And then there’s…everything else.

1Q84 has me thinking a lot about everything else. Because all it takes is a subtle shift in perspective to reveal that it’s only a paper moon. And once you know that, there’s no way of shifting back.

…at least, not by the end of the second volume.

ALF Reviews: “A Little Bit of Soap” (Season 1, Episode 14)

I know I say this all the time, but that’s okay because I mean it all the time: this is one lousy episode. It does immediately grab my attention, however, as we open on ALF nailing a GOOD-BYE GRANDMA sign to the front door.

Does that make this episode and “Mother and Child Reunion” an unofficial two-parter? Normally I wouldn’t ask, but serialization never seemed to be something ALF was interested in. Hell, introducing characters that don’t immediately get knocked over the head with a shovel and buried forever never seemed to be something ALF was interested in. For Kate Sr. to still be hanging around…yeah, that’s definitely got my interest.

In fact, another episode with Kate Sr. takes a lot of responsibility off of the previous one. Sure, it should have been funnier, but its aimless, meandering non-plot is less important if we view “Mother and Child Reunion” as a new character’s introduction rather than a new character’s story.

Of course, in that case “Mother and Child Reunion” would have had to have said something about who Kate Sr. was as a character, and it didn’t. We didn’t even learn anything about Kate Classic. “Mother and Child Reunion” could have made for a fine setup in service of potential payoff in “A Little Bit of Soap,” but it didn’t set anything up, and there’s nothing even close to a payoff here.

Instead these are (once again) two episodes in a row about the same thing: a pair of paper-thin characters treading over the well-worn, passive-aggressive ground of every other mother / daughter pair we’ve seen on any given terrible sitcom already. There’s nothing about their relationship that has anything to do with them…they’re simply reading from a script we’ve seen performed a thousand times before.

This metaphor is more apt than you might think. Read on, friends…

Anyway, Willie comes into the room and tells ALF to stop nailing shit to the door, an exchange which he has probably had with the alien every morning since ALF arrived.

Willie’s wearing a suit, and I’m not sure why. From the context it sounds like he’s driving Kate Sr. to the airport, and though I didn’t travel much pre-911 I don’t remember it being customary to wear your prom tux while dropping family members off at the entrance.

ALF makes the kids recite a poem he wrote, which is just “Goodbye grandma, goodbye goodbye goodbye…” over and over again, but it qualifies as the best writing this show has ever had. He also prepared a travel kit for her so she won’t need to stop anywhere and therefore won’t miss her flight.

He clearly wants her to leave, but I thought the previous episode ended with them patching things up. Sure, she slapped a muzzle on his stupid face, but compared to the crap ALF puts the family through on a daily basis that’s downright friendly. I mean, seriously…if you’re going to pick the story up from where it left off last week, why pretend it didn’t leave off there last week?

His whole reason for hating Kate Sr. was that she moved in and he had to hide in the shed, or under the bed listening to Willie stammer and hesitate his way through sex with Kate. But now Kate Sr. knows he exists, so he shouldn’t have to hide in the shed anymore. The entire conflict should be resolved simply because the context has shifted, but the writers don’t seem to realize this. Instead they treat the relationship between the two characters as though nothing has changed, even though absolutely everything has changed. It’s…weird.

As it turns out, Kate Sr. isn’t leaving after all, because Estelle fucked everything up again. That Estelle!

ALF is pissed, in spite of the fact that this no longer affects him in any way. And so we find ourselves pretending along with the writers that last week’s conflict is still in play, even though there’s no reason it should be. It’s like doing a sequel to Casablanca that picks up right after Victor and Ilsa depart, and we follow Rick around for another hour and a half while he, for no reason at all, runs through all of the same inner conflict from the first film, somehow unaware of the fact that he already reached a decision and if he’s going to go on being conflicted about something, it needs to be something different.

I know I really drill down into and harp on these tiny things in my ALF reviews, but bad writing gets me fired up in a way that so few things can. If a wall wobbles or someone stumbles over a line, I’ll point it out and make a joke…but I won’t rant about it.

When it comes to writing, though? That’s my dog you’re kicking, pal. And you’re going to get a piece of my mind.

After the credits we start the episode proper, and there’s a long, silent view of ALF sitting on the floor, eating popcorn. Nothing is happening. He’s watching TV but we can’t see it, and there’s nothing important or funny to hear. It’s just a needless, extended shot of a puppet doing nothing.

Remember when I mentioned that I’m having to review syndication edits instead of the complete episodes? Well, scenes like this are quickly convincing me that I’m missing nothing. If they can cut three minutes out of an episode and still leave so much filler, then I find it hard to believe I’m being deprived of anything of substance.

Kate Sr. vacuums up ALF’s mess and changes the channel. ALF was watching a soap opera, but Kate Sr. wants to watch a different soap opera, so they bicker for a while about which soap opera is better.

Once again I’d like to remind you that you’re watching a show about an alien. Of course, an argument about which soap opera is better obviously stems naturally from that premise, but I figured it couldn’t hurt to remind you.

I will say that ALF gets the shoe-string, amateurish look of late 80s soap operas down very well. Then again, I doubt this was deliberate, since ALF itself is shoe-string and amateurish. Nevertheless, the stopped clock was right, and it’s only fair to tip the hat when that happens.

The name of the soap opera that Kate Sr. likes is One World to Hope For. We don’t find out the name of the soap opera ALF likes, because that would have required the writers to come up with two things in one week, and we all know that was never going to happen.

ALF complains about One World to Hope For because it’s awful, and nothing happens. He even suggests that it needs a “plot transplant.” That sure sounds familiar…I wonder if he reviews an episode on his blog once a week even though he hates it. Imagine what a loser he’d be!

Seriously, I would love for this to be a meta joke on ALF‘s part, but for that to be the case they would have had to have made the previous 13 episodes terrible on purpose, and I’m not going to give them anywhere near that much credit.

ALF says he could write a better script than that show’s lousy writers, and I get even more tempted to read this as meta commentary. It’s not, but wouldn’t it be glorious if it was? Wouldn’t it be, potentially, good? I love that ALF‘s writing staff could pen these lines without ever realizing that they applied to the very show they were working on.

Of course, yes, it’s possible that they did realize this, but in that case shouldn’t they have, y’know, started writing better shit?

Kate Jr. comes in and tells ALF and Kate Sr. to stop arguing about soap operas, and then she asks if she can move Kate Sr.’s luggage, and Jesus Lord how is this show still so padded with three minutes already missing? What could possibly have been cut? Was it three minutes of Max Wright sitting on the can?

Speak of the shitting devil! It’s the next day, I guess? I don’t know. I wrote the same paragraph about 15 times trying to figure out the span of time that passes in this episode, but I couldn’t do it, so fuck it. I have no clue when anything is meant to be happening. Done.

Anyway, Willie is on the couch, buffing his shoes like the pimp that he is. Kate Jr. comes in and puts her feet up and an ice pack on her head, because Kate Sr. is staying even longer now and it’s stressing her out. I thought this was resolved last week as well, but I guess ALF has outsmarted me by paying no heed to the things it conclusively told us had happened.

Kate Sr. is sticking around (again…this is totally separate from that time earlier in the same episode when she was sticking around) because Estelle sprained her ankle. That Estelle!

I find it tremendously interesting that ALF is so completely lacking in narrative momentum that it needs to rely on a never-seen character that might as well not exist for every one of its plot points. This show is thoroughly populated with characters so uninteresting that they can’t even pull their own story forward.

Anyway, they bitch about Kate Sr. and ALF writes everything they say in a notebook.

You know what you just saw in your head when you read that sentence? The entire rest of the episode. Yep. In that split second you did just as much creative work as the entire writing staff of ALF combined. Congratulations!

The very next scene is ALF herding everyone into the living room to watch One World to Hope For. Doesn’t Willie have a job? Why is he around watching soap operas with everyone else? Does nobody work anymore? Don’t the kids go to school?

Anyway, the reason for the alien’s excitement becomes clear when they see ALF Shumway listed on-screen as the credited writer.

This is why I was trying to figure out the time-frame. I know soap operas have relatively short turnaround times, but I’d imagine it would still take months for them to start filming the work of a new writer, especially if the scripts he’s submitting are unsolicited. Yet from certain details in the episode I think we’re supposed to believe that this happened the next day or something. I don’t know. I can’t tell. I don’t care. I don’t care I don’t care I don’t care.

Maybe they’d accept his work the next day. I won’t argue about that. It’s fucking impossible, but I won’t argue about it. Maybe they’d love it so much they’d want to shoot it as soon as possible.

Fine. But wouldn’t they have other scripts that they need to shoot and air first? Soap operas have long plot arcs by design. It isn’t like a sitcom where everything can reset the next week and stories are often written to be told out of order. Soap operas need to keep their balls in the air, so why is this one happy to drop all of its plot-threads wholecloth for the sake of producing this irrelevant script by a writer they’ve never heard of and who has no previous credits to his name?

The show starts and there are two characters on the couch recreating the conversation that Willie and Kate Jr. had in the previous scene. This is a decently funny idea…it’s not particularly original, sure, but filtering the day-to-day reality of the Tanners through ALF’s (ostensibly) well-meaning pen could lead to some great comedy. I’m reminded of that episode of The Office* when Michael is away and they find the screenplay that he wrote. It re-defines the world (and characters) around them through the magic of warped perspective, and something similar could happen here, with ALF saying nasty things about Willie or the kids via proxy.

But…no. There’s no twist. It’s literally a straight recitation of the conversation we just saw. There’s no attempt whatsoever to turn this into a joke on any other level. What squandered potential.

The family realizes quickly that ALF just wrote down everything they said, which comes as a shock to them despite the fact that while they were having this conversation ALF was writing down everything they said.

Kate Sr. is upset when she finds out that her character is named Dorothy, which, based on her reaction, I assume is her name. I don’t know, though. The show still hasn’t told us what her name is, so whatever connection we’re supposed to make here as viewers, it doesn’t get made.

So, yeah, the Kate Sr. character walks in on the Willie and Kate Jr. characters and joins the conversation. The Kate Jr. character tells the Kate Sr. character that she doesn’t want her to live with them forever, and the real Kate Sr., watching this, is hurt by this revelation and gets up to leave.

I don’t understand this. If all ALF did was write down exactly what happened — which the episode keeps telling us is the case — then doesn’t that mean Kate Sr. was already present for this conversation? None of these words should be new to her. If her own daughter asking her to leave didn’t hurt, why is it now suddenly unbearable to hear two fictional characters having the same exchange?

I suppose it’s possible that Kate Sr. is actually upset because ALF put such a hurtful conversation on TV, but in that case shouldn’t she be angry at him instead of her daughter? This is one of the simplest possible plots I can imagine, and yet the writers are still confusing me.

In the next scene ALF is putting together another script, but Kate Jr. tells him he needs to stop writing for soap operas, but ALF explains that for some reason the staff of that show is now relying completely on scripts appearing in their mailboxes from this mysterious writer they’ve never met who doesn’t have any understanding of the show’s characters or what they’re meant to be doing.

Then Kate Sr. reveals to her daughter that Estelle never sprained her ankle…Estelle’s just a nutbag so Kate Sr. moved out and has nowhere else to go. That Estelle!

Someone from One World to Hope For calls ALF on the phone and reminds him that they’re shooting his new script tomorrow, and he needs to have it there pronto. This is totally how TV works, btw.

Seriously, this is ridiculous. They received, filmed and aired ALF’s first script in one day, I guess, because now they need another script for tomorrow, which is insane to me. What was the crew of One World to Hope For doing? Sitting around in the dark hoping somebody watching at home would write a script for them? And after one single script they refuse to do anything but wait for that same writer to provide them another? This is absurd.

I guess One World to Hope For is the one show in history whose writing staff does even less work than ALF‘s.

ALF sits in the shed sticking clothes pins to his face. He screams and Willie comes running in to make sure he’s okay. Willie arrives very quickly so I assume he was hiding outside the door for salacious purposes that are mercifully not revealed.

ALF is fine…he’s just having trouble finishing the script, and he needs to hurry because they’re going to be shooting in a few hours. Isn’t “shooting in a few hours” too late? Won’t the actors need to learn their lines? Won’t the scenes have to be blocked and the sets have to be dressed? However small that show’s staff is, these are people who need to know what they’re doing in advance. Soap operas aren’t improvised by the production crew…that would be chaos.

WHY CAN’T THIS PLOT MAKE ANY SENSE WHATSOEVER

Willie expresses his displeasure to ALF. The Kates are fighting, and he insists that the space alien that lives in the laundry room write a script for a soap opera so that the family can watch it and feel that their problems have been resolved, which is the most roundabout, ridiculous solution to such a mundane problem that I’ve ever heard.

People fight with their parents. It happens. Very rarely do we need to count on daytime television written by extraterrestrials to repair the damage, but here we are, and for some reason that’s the only solution anyone’s thinking of.

Can’t Willie just make them sit down and talk it out? Watching ALF is like driving drunk. You keep passing these landmarks that you recognize, but you have no recollection of how you made it from one to another.

Whatever. Nobody cares. ALF’s next episode airs and it’s full of forgiveness and fence-mending. But then, all of a sudden, the Kate Sr. character says all this nasty stuff to the Kate Jr. character, who replies with some nasty stuff of her own, and everyone gets mad at ALF for writing such a shitty episode of television that didn’t fix everything.

This is probably the only time I’ll ever be on ALF’s side. Why was this their solution to the problem? Instead of banking on the healing power of soap operas they could have dealt with this crap like adults. Delegating this to ALF Shumway, amateur soap operateer, represents a madness several layers thick.

Anyway, ALF says that he didn’t write that stuff…they changed his script. Fortunately, he has multiple copies lying around just in case there was a significant alteration made to his work and he needed to stage a live reading of the pivotal scene in the Tanner living room instead. Classic alien foresight.

He hands out the scripts, and there’s a joke at Willie’s expense based on the fact that ALF didn’t give him any lines. This could well be another jab at Max Wright, who was actually upset that Paul Fusco hoarded all of the funny lines for himself and didn’t give the other actors much to work with. Either way…it’s kinda funny.

But only kinda. And it doesn’t last long. The Kates read ALF’s script to each other and we find out that Kate Sr.’s name is indeed Dorothy. Fuck that, though. I’m calling her Kate Sr.

Anyway, ALF’s script has all of the mystical healing abilities as they knew it could have, and they end up hugging and promising to never fight again, which would probably mean something if “Mother and Child Reunion” hadn’t ended the same way.

Willie celebrates with history’s most pathetic attempt at a thumbs-up.

ALF’s script really shouldn’t have moved them this way. It’s just some boilerplate nonsense about loving each other even though they drive each other crazy, and there’s a moment where Kate Sr.’s character confesses to being very sad since her husband died, which is treated as a shocking revelation. Because widows are normally extremely happy people I guess.

We also learn from the script that Kate Sr. didn’t really move out…Estelle kicked her out.

That Estelle!

Personally I think Estelle needs a spinoff. She’s the only character in the ALF universe who’s done anything, and we’ve never met her.

Needless to say, she’s my new favorite.

MELMAC FACTS: On Melmac they used accupressure to relieve writer’s block. On Earth we just tell the same story we told last week and hope nobody notices.
—–
* But not the episode where they actually see the finished film. Because that one was horse shit.