Now I Just Want To Watch This One Again, Too.
More Pretender commentary-watching, this time on the S2 finale, "Bloodlines":
OK, the main thing I learned on this commentary is that Michael T. Weiss and Andrea Parker are hilarious. Weiss kept making fun of Jarod's penchant for staring thoughtfully/broodingly at things and the fact that, genius that he is, he apparently can't remember the plot clues on the paper in his pocket unless he looks at it every fifteen minutes. Heh. His "Do you know how many people stop me on the street and ask me, 'Have you found your mother yet?'" kind of cracked me up, too.
And Andrea Parker complains most entertainingly. "Oh, Andrea, will you please just pose for a photo of your mother? It'll never come up again..." I love her description of Angelo as "the Centre gerbil," too. It's funny 'cause it's true. She also told a story about how she made some poor little extra kid cry by being Miss Parker at him in a scene.
What else? Weiss mentioned that he was in Berlin when the Wall came down, and based some of Jarod's wide-eyed reactions on encountering various things for the first time on his observations of East Germans entering the West for the first time.
Gar the sweeper apparently got a lot of fan mail asking for him to be brought back, although they suspect it mostly came from his family.
It was mentioned that Parker's "I don't have a brother, do I?" line in season one was planted deliberately, so unless they were completely bullshitting about that, I do have to give them credit for that much continuity. Also, nothing to do with the commentary, but I suddenly realized that -- hmm, how can I put this without spoilers for the end of the series? -- I can see how a particular bit of important dialog that never made much sense to me in light of later revelations can possibly be interpreted in a way that fits well with, uh, later revelations. Which may or may not be deliberate, but which is kind of cool either way.
And, man, even with a bunch of people chatting and cracking jokes and making affectionate fun of it, this is still a remarkably powerful episode, and there were a few moments where everybody just instinctively shut up for a minute or two so we could all watch Paul Dillon act. By the way, I had completely forgotten the scene where Jarod's driving along and Angelo has his head hanging out the car window like a dog, but apparently that was all Dillon's idea. He didn't even tell anybody he was going to do it. He just did it, and it was perfect. Oh, Paul Dillon, HOW ARE YOU SO AWESOME?
And why do I still not have an Angelo icon?
OK, the main thing I learned on this commentary is that Michael T. Weiss and Andrea Parker are hilarious. Weiss kept making fun of Jarod's penchant for staring thoughtfully/broodingly at things and the fact that, genius that he is, he apparently can't remember the plot clues on the paper in his pocket unless he looks at it every fifteen minutes. Heh. His "Do you know how many people stop me on the street and ask me, 'Have you found your mother yet?'" kind of cracked me up, too.
And Andrea Parker complains most entertainingly. "Oh, Andrea, will you please just pose for a photo of your mother? It'll never come up again..." I love her description of Angelo as "the Centre gerbil," too. It's funny 'cause it's true. She also told a story about how she made some poor little extra kid cry by being Miss Parker at him in a scene.
What else? Weiss mentioned that he was in Berlin when the Wall came down, and based some of Jarod's wide-eyed reactions on encountering various things for the first time on his observations of East Germans entering the West for the first time.
Gar the sweeper apparently got a lot of fan mail asking for him to be brought back, although they suspect it mostly came from his family.
It was mentioned that Parker's "I don't have a brother, do I?" line in season one was planted deliberately, so unless they were completely bullshitting about that, I do have to give them credit for that much continuity. Also, nothing to do with the commentary, but I suddenly realized that -- hmm, how can I put this without spoilers for the end of the series? -- I can see how a particular bit of important dialog that never made much sense to me in light of later revelations can possibly be interpreted in a way that fits well with, uh, later revelations. Which may or may not be deliberate, but which is kind of cool either way.
And, man, even with a bunch of people chatting and cracking jokes and making affectionate fun of it, this is still a remarkably powerful episode, and there were a few moments where everybody just instinctively shut up for a minute or two so we could all watch Paul Dillon act. By the way, I had completely forgotten the scene where Jarod's driving along and Angelo has his head hanging out the car window like a dog, but apparently that was all Dillon's idea. He didn't even tell anybody he was going to do it. He just did it, and it was perfect. Oh, Paul Dillon, HOW ARE YOU SO AWESOME?
And why do I still not have an Angelo icon?