Hot Mess

[slightlyoffaxis]

Comments

[freakjaw]

I'm sure we'll continue to talk about it in person, but here are two things before I forget them

[slightlyoffaxis]

In both cases, with the wall and the dorm, I know the show gave answers, but in a "this happened because the show needs this to happen" kind of way. Pete the Mailman dying is named as an inciting incident in Michael moving in with George Michael, but I still don't really understand why except that it's funnier if Michael lives with George Michael. And, with the wall, you say that it's only one reversal, but it's not that simple. Lucille tells George to ask Michael who asks Lindsay to ask Herbert, etc. And Lucille says something about how they want to be in favor of the wall to build only enough of it to get paid--I remember thinking "So, wait, now you want to build half the wall?" It's a lot of talking about the wall where other jokes could go. Same with "You're out of the movie!" It's frustrating to me to have Michael go around and get everyone's signature only to rip it up. I know the writers/creators probably think that's funny in a life-is-futile kind of way, but I prefer Bob Loblaw jokes

[freakjaw]

I would never describe the dorm thing as a "this happened because the show needs this to happen" thing because I think it comes much more from character than any kind of plot machination. This might be a huge difference in how we see the Michael character, but it made perfect sense to me that he would be so oppressively involved with George Michael's college life. He's always wanted to seem like the perfect father, with a really close relationship with his son in contrast with his own father (but with the Bluth family trait of wanting to seem like something without actually really doing the things necessary to be it). I instantly bought that his loneliness and growing desperation would drive him to rededicating himself to the thing he was always so proud of, his relationship with this son

[slightlyoffaxis]

I still think that Michael's motivations for moving in with George Michael are more of stretch than you do. I think you're reading some things into Michael's character that I don't see, or I wasn't as sold on as you were. If anything, he wants to seem more like a brother to George Michael, and like a college student himself, than a perfect father. Even then, that to me is more like a situation that plays out once he's in the dorm room, not really the thing that puts him there. I just thought that reasons Michael has to leave Sudden Valley are weak (and since there were a bunch of available houses there, I always will--even with the dead mailman and lack of internet).