"Yes, I am the popular social networking site known as 'Bookface'."
The Office 6.06 - "Koi Pond"
I continue to be really, really pleased with the way the show is handling Jim and Michael's dysfunctional but weirdly affecting co-management of Dunder Mifflin Scranton. Then again, I've always been a big fan of their moments of friendship. Now they're both competing against and commiserating with each other, sometimes at the same time. The customer's unwillingness to work with Jim without Michael is a nice reminder that Michael is strangely clever about maintaining relationships with people; the koi pond was an unforseeable disaster. Jim's advice to Michael about owning the hilarity of falling into a koi pond as a way of deflecting mockery is sound, and it's heartwarming to see it almost work, and entirely predictable that Michael takes it too far, that once he opens the spigot of honesty about his own failings, he can't quite close it again until he's really admitted his failings, the things he tries so hard to hide most of the time. And I especially love that Jim probably really did want to prevent Michael from having to live with the humiliation of having to see that video, but that there was an undercurrent of self-interest as well. Jim let Michael fall, just like he always does; Jim's damage control on Michael's emotions is almost always after-the-fact.
Pam and Andy's cold call echoed Jim and Michael's sales call in some ways--Andy's admission that he's lonely, that all he wants in life is a family, and Pam's dawning realization at the end that she can do something about that. She's always had a soft spot for lonely people; she knows what it's like, and she knows the value of what she has now.
And how much do I love Darryl the gangster pumpkin and his pallet truck of doom, identifying Angela and Kelly as an octopus and a burn victim, getting cranky that nobody told him about their costumes and they aren't wearing labels? Thiiiiiiiiiis much.
I can now refer to my hometown as "the people's gay republic of drugifornia." Oh Jack, you have a way with words.
* * * * *
V - "Pilot"
I watched the SyFy rerun of the original V on Sunday. Nostalgia! I even read the books. At the time, V was a very, very big television event; now everybody knows the big spoiler, that the Visitors are reptiles out to eat us and steal our water, but at the time it was a shocking reveal.
So I spent the first 45 minutes of "Pilot" entertaining myself with comparisons, and what the reimagination of the original tells us about the passing of time. The original spent what felt like eons in TV time establishing the characters as the ship came in; this time around, we're thrown right into the big event, because now, television uses a specific kind of narrative shorthand. In the original, the ships appeared silently, hovering without sound; now they appear like an earthquake, shaking things off shelves, dropping planes out of skies, sowing casual, unintentional destruction; and they're shaped like rays, sleek and winged, rather than saucers. But I think the most significant difference is the way the new show handles media. This time around, the Visitors don't approach the UN first; they don't need the mediation of diplomats and reporters; Anna broadcasts directly to the people below the ships. And one of the first things the Visitors do is establish an Internet presence. It's a new media invasion, peer-to-peer. Marc Singer's character was a heroic journalist who fought for the truth; Anna easily coopts Chad by offering access.
But really, I'm making it sound more interesting than it was. The characters were flat; Anna didn't carry the menacing weight that the role calls for; thematically, it went off the rails at about the 45-minute mark, when it veered sharply from a straight-up invasion story in which people dislocated by economic problems are eager to grab at a utopian offer and into some kind of muddled statement on terrorism and health care. (Seriously; I just about spit my drink when one of the characters declaimed on the evil of the Visitor's offer of OMG HEALTH CARE FOR EVERYONE. Those bastards!) The sleeper cell thing felt tacked on, not like an organic outgrowth of what we'd seen in the first 45 minutes. The fact that the big reveal was followed up by the world's dumbest fight scene did not help. Meh.
Alan Tudyk does good evil, though. THAT guy knows how to menace.
* * * * *
Random bits make a bulleted list:
This entry was originally posted at http://danceswithwords.dreamwidth.org/142402.html (
comments). Comment at either site.
I continue to be really, really pleased with the way the show is handling Jim and Michael's dysfunctional but weirdly affecting co-management of Dunder Mifflin Scranton. Then again, I've always been a big fan of their moments of friendship. Now they're both competing against and commiserating with each other, sometimes at the same time. The customer's unwillingness to work with Jim without Michael is a nice reminder that Michael is strangely clever about maintaining relationships with people; the koi pond was an unforseeable disaster. Jim's advice to Michael about owning the hilarity of falling into a koi pond as a way of deflecting mockery is sound, and it's heartwarming to see it almost work, and entirely predictable that Michael takes it too far, that once he opens the spigot of honesty about his own failings, he can't quite close it again until he's really admitted his failings, the things he tries so hard to hide most of the time. And I especially love that Jim probably really did want to prevent Michael from having to live with the humiliation of having to see that video, but that there was an undercurrent of self-interest as well. Jim let Michael fall, just like he always does; Jim's damage control on Michael's emotions is almost always after-the-fact.
Pam and Andy's cold call echoed Jim and Michael's sales call in some ways--Andy's admission that he's lonely, that all he wants in life is a family, and Pam's dawning realization at the end that she can do something about that. She's always had a soft spot for lonely people; she knows what it's like, and she knows the value of what she has now.
And how much do I love Darryl the gangster pumpkin and his pallet truck of doom, identifying Angela and Kelly as an octopus and a burn victim, getting cranky that nobody told him about their costumes and they aren't wearing labels? Thiiiiiiiiiis much.
I can now refer to my hometown as "the people's gay republic of drugifornia." Oh Jack, you have a way with words.
* * * * *
V - "Pilot"
I watched the SyFy rerun of the original V on Sunday. Nostalgia! I even read the books. At the time, V was a very, very big television event; now everybody knows the big spoiler, that the Visitors are reptiles out to eat us and steal our water, but at the time it was a shocking reveal.
So I spent the first 45 minutes of "Pilot" entertaining myself with comparisons, and what the reimagination of the original tells us about the passing of time. The original spent what felt like eons in TV time establishing the characters as the ship came in; this time around, we're thrown right into the big event, because now, television uses a specific kind of narrative shorthand. In the original, the ships appeared silently, hovering without sound; now they appear like an earthquake, shaking things off shelves, dropping planes out of skies, sowing casual, unintentional destruction; and they're shaped like rays, sleek and winged, rather than saucers. But I think the most significant difference is the way the new show handles media. This time around, the Visitors don't approach the UN first; they don't need the mediation of diplomats and reporters; Anna broadcasts directly to the people below the ships. And one of the first things the Visitors do is establish an Internet presence. It's a new media invasion, peer-to-peer. Marc Singer's character was a heroic journalist who fought for the truth; Anna easily coopts Chad by offering access.
But really, I'm making it sound more interesting than it was. The characters were flat; Anna didn't carry the menacing weight that the role calls for; thematically, it went off the rails at about the 45-minute mark, when it veered sharply from a straight-up invasion story in which people dislocated by economic problems are eager to grab at a utopian offer and into some kind of muddled statement on terrorism and health care. (Seriously; I just about spit my drink when one of the characters declaimed on the evil of the Visitor's offer of OMG HEALTH CARE FOR EVERYONE. Those bastards!) The sleeper cell thing felt tacked on, not like an organic outgrowth of what we'd seen in the first 45 minutes. The fact that the big reveal was followed up by the world's dumbest fight scene did not help. Meh.
Alan Tudyk does good evil, though. THAT guy knows how to menace.
* * * * *
Random bits make a bulleted list:
- Fuschia Dunlop's Land of Plenty has immediately won a place on my short list of essential cookbooks. Everything I've made out of it so far has been absolutely amazing.
- Also amazing: Ian McDonald's River of Gods. I am particularly taken by its non-Western sensibilities, the way the characters and plot rise naturally from its setting in India rather than being imposed on it, and its vision of the future from a place where the US is just another part of the international landscape. You don't see that much in science fiction. And it's, above all else, an incredibly engaging story.
- I'm frantically trying to get ready for a long weekend in LA right now, and am glad that PHD comics has charted the entire experience for me.
- While I have mixed feelings about Barbie now that I'm an adult, I played with them avidly when I was little, and deeply wish that Mattel actually made dolls like this.
- Racoons! They look like they're thinking hard about getting on that bus.
- Don't forget that bitchinparty registration is Saturday morning!
This entry was originally posted at http://danceswithwords.dreamwidth.org/142402.html (
comments). Comment at either site.