cellar door. it is swords you need, not gentle hearts.

Skins - Don’t you ever be any less because of anyone or anything in this world.

2012-02-16T21:19:00.002+01:00

Skins: 6x04 Franky.

Geoff: There are no dress rehearsals in life, my darling.
Franky: Then it’s a good job that I learned my lines.

There is an interesting parallel between Franky’s function in the first few episodes of last season and Alex’ last week: without Franky, there would be no group. She was the unlikely fabric that held everyone together, the stranger crashing into the established structures, questioning and reshaping everything. That’s the “fucking awesome mates” – the attempt to build something and to see potential in others instead of threats. And then there’s the other thing, the “bulimic fucking Barbie” – what bullying sometimes does to people, make them sharp and hungry for revenge and always look for weaknesses so they can hurt back if it is required, even if it’s not a conscious process, figuring out secret fears as a precaution against future pain.

Franky’s crash in the first episode (“the brakes were fucked”) was constructive, in a way – it was the beginning of something that lead to the final scene of the season finale, this awesome moment of shared joy in the face of a possibly hostile world. The same thing – even though not literally a crash – has had the opposite effect in this season. When Franky and Matty arrived in Morocco tearing each other apart, they were the first fracture, by the end of the episode, everything was in shreds, at least until Alex provided a temporary moment of shared grief that brought almost everyone together again.

Dealing with grief is one thing, but Franky (and notably still absent Matty) also have to address their guilt. Regardless of whether Franky can be made responsible for Matty’s actions (I think the answer is no), she feels like the accident was the result of a decision that she made, and she spends the entire episode denying this feeling. There’s Grace – incredibly well-used in the episode, even though it is still painful that Jessica Sula doesn’t get to play her own character anymore, only other people’s interpretation of her – who appears to haunt Franky, and from the first time (“wakey wakey, sleepy head”) she seems to be kind and yet accusing at the same time, a reminder of something Franky is desperately trying to forget but still a friend she doesn’t want to let go of.

If Luke isn’t actually a bad guy, then it’s all Matty’s fault. If Matty is entirely to blame (in their first conversation, Matty ends up somehow blaming her for everything – “If you hadn’t started flirting what that fucking psycho”), she is guilty of nothing. And if she could just not care – if she could forget – things might also stop feeling so terrible.

All of this is fine. Franky’s in an even more complicated positions because her parents (and she must have pretty much the best parents ever on Skins?) are so very understanding of her grief, and try everything to help her without pushing too hard – but they don’t know about the guilt that keeps her from seeking out anybody’s help. She can’t talk to her friends because they are still stuck in their own ways of dealing with Grace’s death, and mostly absent.

So she seeks out Luke. Which would also work, somehow, if we pretend that Liv never bothered to explain to her what she knows about him, if she doesn’t know anything about him, and if only Luke weren’t the comic villain with the evil laugh and the worst written lines, none of which explain Franky’s wide-eyed excitement over how different and interesting he is. Luke promises an easy escape, both physically and mentally, and tells her to “let that shit go” (except, “It won’t let me go”). Like the (obvious) creepy predator he is, he immediately recognizes her weakness and exploits it. He cuts her off from her friends and family, successfully suggest she change her attitude and looks, and somehow also plays into that one mysterious line from the finale about “being wrong” because she considers extreme violence beautiful, and blames the fact that people abandon her on that “wrongness”. The episode still doesn't elaborate on what her issues are, exactly – it’s a conveniently unspecified disorder providing the writers with a chance to do pretty much anything without fact-checking, which is as frustrating as it was in the fourth season.

Franky watches Luke and his gang beat up a rivalling group of drug-dealers and is immediately drawn to the violence – she ends up participating in it, and what follows is a spiral of sex and violence, already disturbing before the rape scene because Luke is brutal even in his gestures of affection, pinching, hitting, pulling her and still getting the same inexplicable reaction from her – the timid smiles in the morning when she wakes before him and he finally looks somewhat peaceful in his sleep, her public pride when he drives her to school and kisses her in front of everyone, making her a different kind of hot topic on the school yard than she is used to being, and causing her friends to wonder.

Mini: Way to go. Again.
Franky: What do you mean, again?
Mini: You’re outstanding taste in men. As if it hadn’t caused enough devastation already.
Franky: What the fuck did you just say? You think the crash was my fault, don’t you? You blame me.
Mini: What the fuck is wrong with you.

Mini – who’s been put aside for the most part of this season, so that we can’t really know if she actually blames Franky or if this is still the same fierce protectiveness (always the thin line between actually helping Franky and being possessive and keeping her from doing things because it might drive her away) from last season that made her give Matty an ultimatum – “you deserve better”. Whatever it is, it doesn’t work, and her parents also don’t get through to her – drunk Geoff, in his frustration and desperation, even utters the one line that is the absolute worst thing he could have told Franky: “A home that you should be bloody grateful for” – making her a stranger again, someone who makes other people abandon her.

She ends up seeing a counsellor just to please Jeff, but doesn’t actually say anything – but the realization that the person that she needs is Grace, and that she feels responsible for her death (she repeats I’m sorry, again and again, and finally throws a chair) doesn’t help at all, it only drives her deeper into trying to forget everything. The violence escalates. Nick tries to save her but ends up getting laughed in his face when he reveals his feelings and beaten up by Luke, who grows more erratic and controlling whenever he sees Franky talking to anybody else.

She runs away after he rapes her and pretends that nothing happened the next morning.

Luke: How is my girl today?
Franky: Leave it.
Luke: Joke. Joke. Fuck is up with you man?
Franky: Nothing. Nothing.
Luke: Stay that way.

I think it’s that moment more than anything that she realizes how wrong everything is: that Luke doesn’t understand a thing, that he wants her to be empty and without emotions, that the only way to exist the way he does, disregarding other people entirely and never facing the consequences of his actions, is to not have any human emotions.

When she sees Grace again, she reacts differently: Grace is no longer a threat or a reminder of her guilt, she is the only person Franky feels able to talk to – and yet can’t, because Grace is no longer here. “I don’t know what to do. Grace. Grace. I wanna go back. I wanna go back to when you were still here. But I can’t. Oh Gracie.” Except there are people in her life who haven’t abandoned her.

This is my favourite scene of the episode, and I wish it was all I remembered of it.

Jeff: You came right out of left field, you know? Because when we got the green light to adopt, we planned on taking on a much younger child. And then Geoff saw your photo… you, peaking out of underneath that god-awful ski hat you used to wear, remember? And the first time we saw you, sat drawing away, like you did, head down, we knew then that you were for us.
Franky: Before we even met?
Jeff: Oh yeah. Yeah. Your dad, he said that it looked like the world had already forgotten about you. And he said he wasn’t gonna let that happen. And it might not be biology, Franky, but jesus, you try telling that to my heart. You are hope. You see? That’s what you are, and don’t you ever be any less because of anyone or anything in this world, okay?

This is the armour she needs to fend off what is the actual ghost haunting her in the episode: not Grace at all, but the psychopath who has eagerly exploited her weakness, this nagging fear that people leave her because she is wrong, that she doesn’t deserve any better. Franky needs to tell him to leave – this takes away all his power – and Jeff doesn’t need to hit him after that to make him disappear. “Go home”

Random notes:

Was the “don’t you ever wonder what it all means” bit in the scenes from the last weeks actually a new sound bite, because I don’t remember it happening in any of the previous episodes? Was it Grace’s voice?

This season gives a new meaning to “insularity” – Grace is dead, Matty’s hasn’t been on the show except as a disembodied voice since the first episode, Rich has been inexplicably gone, and the episode also didn’t have a single line for Liv, Alex and… Alo, cause IT DOES NOT COUNT.

It also feels like Mini has been put on hold until her episode which is also a frustrating reminder of season four – “hey, I wonder how Emily and Naomi are doing? Oh, so they’ve basically been fighting for almost a year? But don’t worry, there’s a minute in the finale to patch it all up!!”

I don’t know if it’s because about five seconds into Luke’s EXISTENCE, BASICALLY, I got so frustrated with the entire episode that everything started to annoy me, but the music in this episode was… too much, too loud, too literal and unfitting at the same time… I don’t know. It takes a lot of effort to mess up with Marianne Faithfull and Thurston Moore but oh well. Perhaps making parts of the episode look like a violent and sex-fuelled video clip was the point and the music was meant to signify the emotional disconnect, but to me, it was mostly irritating.

Franky: You’re not gonna tell me I’m adopted.

Geoff: Oh, very good.

Jeff: Humour. In the face of… that’s very… no. No, it’s about the g-word.

Geoff: Grief.

Of course his other fucking car would be VW Golf.

Apparently, after Johnny White’s disappearance, sixteen year old kids have taken over the Bristol drug business?

The clothing department had the wardrobe thing all backwards, and I wonder if this will ever be addressed: when things go awfully, when Franky’s lost, her clothes least resemble the character that was introduced in the fifth season (I think that red dress was probably the climax of Franky pretending to be someone else to try and make her feelings disappear); when she feels more at ease, she still resembles Franky Badass.

So Nick’s in love with Franky. Since all we’d seen of this before were some hopeful and fascinated looks… I mean I guess Franky’s the only female character still available or something. I didn’t really appreciate Nick’s “duh, friendzoned” reaction (not verbatim – “what are you doing to me, Franky”) because it’s a stupid concept and also friendships are pretty cool too. And stuff. The episode should have ended with Jeff and Franky. The chronology of Franky getting raped and then realizing that Nick is A Nice Guy and deserves an apology was unfortunate, to say the least, regardless of whether the actual intent was to show that Franky made it out of the episode with one potentially healthy relationship (sort of subverted anyway because Nick doesn’t actually want A Friendship). I don’t know. I might just be bitter.

“Don’t walk away from me, Franky! Don’t you dare fucking walk away from me. From MEEEEE. FUUUUUUCK.”

Poetry man.

Bomb Girls - Nothing's what is once used to be.

2012-02-11T08:00:00.000+01:00

Bomb Girls: 1x03 How You Trust.

Lorna is fiercely protective of her family. Guarding the factory, obliterating potential dangers, making sure that the girls do their best, is, to her, the one thing she can do to keep her sons safe. This makes her the responsible, reliable matron who subtly influences management – and the passionate friend who convinces doctors to help Vera, and Akins to hire back Edith – but it also sometimes makes her lose perspective. Sometimes she mistakes “new” for “dangerous”, or equates the two, and unfortunate things happen.

The ending of Misfires already hinted that her views of Marco have changed: he isn’t really, or mostly, a threat to the war effort anymore, but this new thing that has developed between them threatens her family on a much more immediate and personal level. He fits right into that dangerous absence in her marriage – absence of intimacy, absence of sex, absence of adventure (and my favourite part about the show is that you always see both sides of the story – both the windswept romance and the quiet togetherness of the marriage, of two people who still care deeply about each other – so that your heart just inevitably breaks over everybody’s unhappiness, really).

Lorna sees a threat in Marco, so she places the Italian newspaper he is always reading outside the factory in his locker right before a military inspection, telling herself he will only get into trouble if he has actually done something wrong, except I think deep down, she hopes that this will make her problem go away.

The inspection begins a general theme of uncovering that appears in every storyline. Lorna finds Kate’s locket – the one thing she has kept, from her past – and since it reveals her true name, Lorna grows suspicious, assuming that Kate stole it. Archie discovers that Vera is hoarding sleeping pills to kill herself because she can’t imagine going back outside with her visible scars. Gladys finds several of her belongings missing and starts an adventurous detective club with Betty and Kate, only to find out eventually that the thief is a woman that James has been sleeping with.

All these discoveries tie in with other things. Before finding out about James, Gladys has to deal with her parents’ concern over one of his cousins who stepped out on his wife: she finds the idea of them worrying about such trivialities in times of war ridiculous, but their “When you occupy the top shelf, darling, people are only too eager to drag you down.” and allusions to a possible social exile will come to haunt her later in the episode. In many ways, Gladys is privileged: she doesn’t need the money she earns at the factory (in fact, she doesn’t even collect her cheques, fearing it would tip her parents off), so she can afford to stage protests – but she is also trapped in her upper class family and its obsession with social standing and reputation, and if she should choose to actively rebel against them, not just secretly, by defying their wishes, she could lose everything she knows. So when he finds out about Hazel and James, she wants to get Hazel fired, take everything she has in revenge, but her parents’ threat comes back to haunt her: Hazel has power, too. She can reveal the affair to the public and destroy the one thing the upper class values more than anything: reputation. “All have to do is stand outside the church on your wedding day, big smile, throwing rice in your face. Won’t your family love that?” But the thing is, Gladys isn’t any longer just the rich girl who will be gone after breaking a nail: she has become part of the fabric of Victory Munitions, and even though Betty would probably never, ever admit it, she’s found friends who are willing to stand up for her. They tell Hazel to switch shifts because she is no longer welcome in theirs. Dealing with James is more difficult, and it’s both the betrayal and the hypocrisy of it all, of her parents desperately trying to keep up appearances with James’ cousin at the very same time that he has proven unfaithful, and at the same time, she realizes what’s at stake.

Betty: You talk to him?
Gladys: I couldn’t. I drive a crack in that wall now, the whole thing may come crumbling down.
Betty: Well. You’re here now. That’s something.

Lorna applies the same “you have nothing to fear if you have nothing to hide” to Kate when she starts to investigate the origin of the locket, except Kate, despite not stealing it, has everything to fear – it threatens to reveal her secret identity that she has struggled so hard to keep up, that new life she has found for herself. She sends to Kate to the storeroom until the thing has cleared up, where Kate is promptly joined by another voice when she sings – and this leads to an assault by another worker and her discovery of Leon, the man who will provide her with the opportunity to sing on stage.

All these female characters attain freedom by keeping secrets. Gladys keeps her occupation a secret, for tragic Vera, the only freedom she can imagine is freedom from shame, so she stockpiles the sleeping pills and plans her suicide, Kate’s entire identity is a secret, and Betty… well, Betty is Betty. The characters need their secrets because they are the only way of getting around the barriers that society creates around them.

Lorna doesn’t realize this yet. She is busy trying to figure out Kate’s secret, and then Akins sends her to Marco’s house to deliver the last pay check to his family (she believes that he has been interned with his father). They are incredibly awkward with each other when he ends up opening the door, especially when his mother invites her to join them for dinner – pasta, which she’s never eaten before – and in the course of which she starts to question her own prejudices (and Marco’s mother teaches her about trust – how you always look someone in the eye when toasting with a glass of wine).

Marco ends up walking her home, and they enjoy the peace they have made over the fact that he is Italian when she admits that she made a mistake – and he immediately reminds her that he is also dangerous because of something completely different.

Lorna: I’m sorry. My husband he… he always tells me I’m afraid of what I don’t know.
Marco: So you came out swinging.
Lorna: Tell your mother thank you for the dinner.
Marco: You can try and hide it all you want, Lorna. I know you have a decent heart beating in there, tapping out its secret code.
Lorna: I don’t have any secrets.

The “secret code” line could easily be tacky – it’s such a randomly grand statement, in a way: it reveals that he sees through her frustration and restraint – but it also applies so perfectly to the other characters. Gladys’ secret code is about finding a purpose and a way to have a marriage that allows her to be her own person. Kate’s secret code is being free of the horrible prison her father has built around her. The tapping of Betty’s is almost deafening whenever she looks at Kate. Vera’s is more quiet: trying to escape the reflection in the mirror, except that she doesn’t realize that she can be more than just the scars on her face after she’s lived her entire life believing that the only valuable thing she has were her looks.

And finally, Lorna acquires a secret of her own: a windswept kiss.

Random notes:

I really like the conversation about the siege of Leningrad that starts the episode: Gladys argues that the rich will plant victory gardens to share with the population, the woman currently sleeping with her fiancé responds, “Yeah, because the rich like to share!”, and Kate ends with “In times of trouble, we are all the same.” – it’s pretty much the characters, in a nutshell.

Kate and Betty’s interpretation of personal space in relation to each other is just… ridiculous, really. HANDS. Betty pretending she is fixing Kate’s turban when she freaks out about the inspection because she has this instinct of immediately physically consoling her when anything is wrong. It’s even more obvious because they change visibly whenever they are in each other’s’ company: Kate doesn’t try to disappear into her sweaters, Betty loses her defensiveness.

Gladys: Don’t forget your turban.

Kate: No need. I’m down in the storeroom again today.

Gladys: I wouldn’t care for that. It’s the kind of place where murderers lurk.

Kate: Isn’t that a lovely thought.

Vera: At least you have found the bright side.

Archie: Which in your case seems to be the left side.

The fact that Kate completely fails to pick up on the fact that the guy who pretends being the mystery singer is dangerous is a reminder that she grew up completely isolated and sheltered from the world. Leon, the actual singer, clubs him over the head before the worst. The “He had it coming” after her “I didn’t invite anybody, you work here” (because that’s what the guys say, over and over again: the presence of women distracts us, it’s their fault) feels like a commentary on victim blaming.

Naturally, Betty’s reaction when she hears about the whole thing is first, you should have come to find me, second, thinly veiled jealousy (also, concern).

“It was your voice in the dark” – and it’s lovely how this idea is continued in the next few episodes, when Leon guides her towards being able to express herself on stage.

Edith: Well, let me get this right. You poured die into your own purse.

Gladys: I have confirmed reports you are inside this room!

Also, both Kate and Betty’s reactions when she comes in is priceless, because they say everything about the characters: Kate is all “Gladys, what a surprise” (happy), Betty is annoyed that her alone-time with Kate has been interrupted (“What the heck are you doing here?”) – a theme that continues throughout the next episodes (even though Betty warms to Gladys in the process).

Kate: Beats a quiet night in, don’t you think?

To Betty, it really, really, really doesn’t.

The way Gladys’ discovery of James’ infidelity played out was so great: for the most part, it was this giddy detective story, Gladys using tricks she’s learned, leading her sidekicks through the rain to confront the villain – and then suddenly, it all becomes serious when she realizes that this isn’t about stuff, it isn’t about her perfume and her shawl, but about James (and this isn’t just about the fact that she loves James, which I think she does, but also about the fact that her marriage was always the more easily attainable escape from her parents’ house, the one more secure than whatever she is slowly building in the factory).

Kate: Leon says I gotta meet some guy named Billie Holiday.

Betty: I can make the introductions.

I love all the little hints that Betty has a secret life that includes forgers, Billie Holiday, knowing where the coolest clubs in town are, and secret nods to signify membership.

Trying something new: Kate discovers Billie Holiday, Betty warms up to the idea that Gladys might make a good friend, and Lorna – and this is one of my favourite scenes of the episode – immediately takes her amazing discovery of spaghetti to her husband (“is it supposed to be so mushy?” – “It’s different, Bob. Try something new.”, because the really heart-breaking thing is that they also dearly love each other but the things that remain unsaid between them threaten to eat them up.

The choice of songs is ALWAYS perfect:

I'll never be the same
Guys have lost their meaning for me
I'll never be the same
Nothing's what it once used to be
And when the song birds that sing
Tell me it's spring
I can't believe their song
Once love was king
But kings can be wrong
I'll never be the same
There is such an ache in my heart
I'll never be the same
Since we're apart
But there's a lot that a smile can hide
And I know deep down inside
I'll never be the same
Never be the same again

Skins – If you live by this, everything’s random.

2012-02-08T22:54:00.004+01:00

Skins: 6x03 Alex.

Magic – as in magic tricks – are mostly about distracting the audience, drawing their attention away from the other hand, creating a fiction, cheating. Miracles are about seeing connections and basically, finding an easy explanation for things that are unlikely and improbably (the opening song of the episode repeats the line “When the stars align”). Gambling is about surrendering and believing that unseen forces can align and come to your help, that somehow, fortunes favours you more than whoever you’re up against. Stories – and in part I enjoyed this episode so much because of the many parallels to the previous one – can provide meaning, but they can also trap you.

Alex has a stack of cards, and on each there are six options. He surrenders to a dice, and in a way, this both forces him to act and relieves him of the responsibility to choose. His grandmother lives vivaciously through the real story of her husband, a sailor, lost at sea, but the ending of that tale was written fifty years ago. I think in a way, both of them, grandmother and grandson, have escaped into their respective ways of dealing with reality by creating a fiction because Alex’ father makes all the decision for them. He’s decided to put his mother in a home. He’s decided to make Alex his unwilling accomplice. He calls the shots, mostly from far away through the phone, and he is completely uninvolved in the emotional repercussions. Disinterested in Alex’ own life, he leaves the fall-out and the messy details for his son to sort out. So what else is there to do but re-tell the tale of the lost sailor through his post cards and diary entries and let the dice decide?

As hard as it sometimes is to deal with the consequences of questionable decisions and mistakes, life is at its worst when it deals you blows you had no part in. Grace’s death has left the group in shock – and they aren’t even necessarily torn apart by it as much as unable to process it as a group. There is a palatable lack of communication that Alex immediately notices when he is thrown, or rather throws himself fist-first, into it. Grace’s shrine looms over the cafeteria, Mini seems to be inevitably drawn to Liv but never says a word; the others sit around each other silently grieving. When Alex comes crashing into it, Liv is immediately fascinated by him. She sees the potential in introducing somebody new to the group because Liv never just sits around lets things happen – she’d rather drink a bottle of vodka to try and save a failing friendship than remain passive, or invite Franky into her relationship rather than wait for it to fall apart – and how could it possibly get worse than this?

So after knocking out Alo, he throws the dice again and ends up kissing her, which earns him a slap and her full attention. Liv’s run off with a stranger before, but this is different. With Matty, it was about running away from something, now it’s the opposite: by bringing in Alex, she thinks she can fix something that is broken.

Alex: It’s funny what you see and what you don’t see. Like you and your friends not speaking to each other.
Liv: What?
Alex: And why you’re pouring a quarter of whiskey into your coffee before moon
Liv: I’m an alkie.
Alex: And I’m a psycho.
Liv: With a magic dice?
Alex: Everything about me is magic. Yeah, you should try it. Keep things buzzy.
Liv: You reckon?
Alex: What was the name of your friend that died?
Liv: Grace.
Alex: You want to meet the wicked witch?

The wicked witch in the wardrobe is his grandmother, who immediately charms Liv, but the underlying conflict in Alex’ life is also quickly revealed. He takes care of his grandmother, but she also blames him for helping his father to send her to a home. She also tells Liv about her husband, who also liked to leave his life to be decided by fate (although the episode later reveals that throwing a coin doesn’t necessarily mean surrendering because there is always a way to get the result you want).

The first light's kissed my eyes
It's time to breathe.
The shearing wind that strips the flesh from me,
so grab your weathered skins and boots and go.
Is it the hell I fear or is it the sea?

Bonnie “Prince” Billy: Is it the Sea?

Liv hopes that Alex will change something, but at his first introduction to the group at their pub, he only manages to make Mini jealous (“You got a new friend, then? We don’t need any new friends.”). Nick tells him that he thinks he’s “cool” but tells him not to mention Grace – but Alex senses that this all goes back to Grace. It’s one of the first things he asked Liv about (“I guess you guys are a little on edge.”). The episode is about finding a way to address that grief instead of allowing it to grow into something more destructive.

For now, Alex can’t fix them. Instead, he takes Liv on a distracting adventure that involves card playing and running away from the consequences of cheating. The other thing that she wants from him that she thinks might help, he can’t offer. We see her expecting something of him – more than just a kiss on the cheek, at least – but instead he puts her in a taxi and goes off to fuck a stranger. She is furious when he finally tells her that he’s gay.

Liv: Stop it. Stop fucking with my head.
Alex: I thought maybe you knew.
Liv: You didn’t think that.
Alex: I was gonna tell you.
Liv: Spineless little shit. Can’t stand up to your dad, can’t deal with your own life. You used me.
Alex: I’ve just never had a proper mate before.
Liv: Who said I was your mate, you twat.
Mini: Who the fuck are you anyway? We don’t know you. We don’t need you.
[…]
Mini: Bit stupid.
Liv: Leave me alone.

The mandated memorial service is, in a way, also an example of characters being confronted with decisions that are being made for them. They haven’t yet found a way to deal with their grief in their own way, and now strangers – people who knew Grace so little that they actually call her “Grace Blood” – are organising the most tedious, clichéd, awful ceremony possible, co-opting their grief (“These are bloody difficult times, but if we talk about it, we’ll get through it, as a community. Together.”) with scented candles from IKEA and the worst music choice to commemorate the passing of someone who actually cared deeply about music. And, it turns out, perhaps one way of tackling grief is to at least express dissent over all of this – Franky beats up the guy (“He fucking hated you, you moron”), Liv smashes up his keyboard and flashes her tits (“What the fuck is wrong with all of you. What the fuck. You wanna remember something? You want some fond memories to wank over, well remember this! Fucking wankers.”)

Franky: I think Grace would like that.
Mini: Oh yeah. Liv’s always had top tits.

The story that Alex is telling his grandmother is nearing its end. His grandfather’s ship is filling with water – and we’ve already seen the headline from then, “lost at sea” – and the day of the inevitable move to the home is approaching. He finds her in her bed, with an empty bottle of pills on the nightstand and the final postcard of her husband.

Alex doesn’t share the group’s particular grief – he hasn’t lost Grace – but he thinks that he can help them deal with theirs if he involves them in his own way of commemorating his grandmother’s death. He rents a sailboat and takes them out to sea.

Alex: I think you all need it.
Liv: Why do you care? You didn’t even know her.
Alex: I know you. And I need a friend right now.

He asks them to help him with his grandmother – to give her the funeral she would have wanted – and they accept.

Alex: My gran didn’t wanna go where she was told. She wanted to go somewhere else instead. That’s it.
Alo: That’s it. What a relief.
Alex: You said you weren’t allowed to go to Gracie’s funeral.
Mini: You don’t get to say her name, Gay boy. This isn’t her.
Alex: Will you help me?
Alo: You gotta be kidding me.
Alex: I’m asking, okay. I’m asking for a bit of help.
Franky: Let’s do it.
Liv: Just help him, you idiots.

So they do. In the end, he throws the dice once again – six is always run away – so he and Liv jump into the water and Liv finally throws it away, because you can’t always leave your choices to chance.

Special segment: Mini.

I feel like I should have talked more about Mini but I don’t really have a working theory on what she is currently going through. The “don't come any closer / that's good enough / don't go away / I can't stand the thought” thing that is going on between her and Liv is incredibly interesting, but what exactly did Liv do to earn Mini’s resentment? Her flinch when Liv tried to console her at the pub was painful to watch. And yet there are all these little moments when Mini almost instinctively tries to help her friends – trying to calm down Liv at the ceremony, running over to help Franky.

Liv: Being angry with me isn’t… it isn’t going to change anything.
Mini: So?
Liv: So talk to me.
Mini: I don’t want to. Or even if I did, I can’t. Not without her here.

I guess the argument here is that they managed to work through their difficulties (that began way before the fifth season) with Grace’s help, that Grace almost worked like a facilitator for them, and now that she’s gone, they can’t make their relationship work – but that’s not really what I got from the season finale and the first episode? I don’t know. Maybe there’s something more profoundly wrong with Mini that will be revealed in her own episode, for now, it remains a mystery.

Random notes:

“I have to take the odds whatever they are, life’s a gamble, honey chuck, you win and you lose. but I know you’ll wait for me, until I round Cape Horn and sail into the tide to hold you tight. Always yours, William.”

Franky: If you see our friend, Tell her we miss her.

Loved the music. The cinematography was great as well. I especially enjoyed how well the distance between the characters was portrayed – that shot of Franky and Liv, sitting on opposite ends in the pub, not talking…

Doug tells Alex to “Give them a chink of light and they’ll take you to the cleaners, Boyo.” I guess that’s exactly what he does? Also his command to the rest of the troops: “Take him to your bosoms and show him a thundering good time.”

I don’t care how often you tell me to check out twitter and facebook, e4, I WILL NOT REGARD IT AS CANON UNLESS IT APPEARS ON SCREEN. I’m an old-fashioned kinda gal. I don’t know where Rich was. I assume he was invited to Grace’s funeral while everybody else was disinvited or something.

Nick’s path to success in school, and advice for Alo: “just get Franky to do it for you, everyone else does.”

Liv: She does exist, right?

Alex: I’m pretty sure she does.

META!!

Nick: Fuck it, come and gay me. You’re dancing, or what?

Alex: I don’t suppose you know kung fu?

Liv: No.

Awesome throwback to Liv’s “You’re tiny and I know karate” when she meets Matty.

Re: not sure if the whole "significance of dancing" thing is still actually a thing: Mini goes off to dance with random strangers, Alex' gran tells Liv that "It’s no fun dancing on your own.", and the whole "Mini doesn't have a lighter" sequence felt like it intentionally referenced the "come and dance" scene, because she looked at Franky, dancing with Alo and Nick, maybe remembering when Franky asked HER for a lighter and how the distance between them now would make something like that impossible. But. I don't know.

The entire scene with the random stranger revealed a side to Alex that the rest of the episode didn’t show – how he treats people he doesn’t really care about.

Alex: You need to update your profile pic.

Guy: It was a little while back.

Alex: In a galaxy far far away, yeah.

[…]

Oh, and you need to see someone about your dental hygiene problem. I’m not telling you this to be cruel, I’m telling you because it’s true.

He also makes the mistake of offering him money, mistaking Alex for a rent boy (“You’re missing the point mate. Just for a moment, everything was meaningless.”), and Alex tears the note apart (he told Nick previously he likes the feel of cash in his hand – but not like this). The scene is brilliantly mirrored later when his dad gives him money that he doesn’t want because it’s for something he doesn’t want to do (“Look, if you’re gonna get emotional over this, I’m not discussing it with you.” / “You’re not discussing it with me anyway. “)

Alex’ way of approaching life isn’t for Nick: one, hang myself, two, get into heroin. (and this is mostly played for laughs in the episode, also the sequence on the boat, his reaction to Alex' helicopter line, the captain's hat - but Nick seems well fucked up, more than everyone else but Franky).

Alex: I’m sorry.

Liv: You fucking should be.

Alex: I know. I really am. I just get in over my head sometimes.

Liv: Oh really. I practically had my tongue down your throat.

Alex: Yeah, and that was a nice thought.

Franky calls Matty and tells him to never come back.

Alex: How do we know what it said?

Liv: It said swim, sucker.

Special shout-out to Sam Jackson, Laya Lewis and Laya Lewis’ laugh, a character of its own.

Bomb Girls - You think you can win this war with lies?

2012-02-07T21:00:00.000+01:00

Bomb Girls: 1x02 Misfires.

Despite all the opportunities Victory Munitions provides, its managerial politics are still deeply rooted in the old ideas about gender roles that the female workers are up against everywhere outside their place of work as well. When one of the blue shift’s bombs misfires on the testing range, seriously injuring Archie (who previously almost got Kate fired), the group Lorna is responsible for is blamed, even though there is evidence that a male worker with a drinking problem caused the accident. Mister Akins doesn’t even consider the possibility and instead decides to have all the workers in Lorna’s shifted tested again, and fire whoever does worst, to have a scapegoat for the ministry of defence.

The accident sets a number of things into motion: the first instinct of the female workers it to blame themselves for what happened; they panic over the prospect that they might be making bad bombs without knowing, that they are an unintentional enemy from within – and then they start to voice their concerns over the working conditions in the factory, something they’ve obviously never done before, at least not to each other, since they are all surprised to find out that everybody has something to contribute to that conversation. The light is wobbly. There aren’t enough breaks during the shift. The ventilation isn’t sufficient. Gladys, thinking that standing up for her co-workers could finally make them accept her as one of their own (“Ladies, is that right? Do you find Miss Witham to be one of you?”, asked Lorna sarcastically when the shift began), voices their complaints to Akins, not realizing that she is the only one in the room who can even afford that kind of outspoken idealism; everybody is just worried that they could lose their job if they appear to oppose management (“It was just talk, Sir. Like women do.”, explains Betty to Akins).

Gladys in fighting on more than one front in this episode, as she usually does. She is trying to find a way for the female workers in the factory to stand up for their rights while she is still technically an outsider among them, and she watches James try and make a deal with a producer of tin cans who revolts her especially because he does not respect the soldiers that he is meant to feed, soldiers that she identifies with because she is working in the factory (“We are too busy building bombs that will destroy the enemy”).

Mrs Witham: There are other ways, our ways to affect an outcome. So you powder your noise and walk down stairs, you’ll titter at jokes, compliment tie clips, and charm Tank Treleven’s cold crass heart. That, dear Gladys, is your job.

This is precisely the conflict that Gladys is engaged in: the old way in which women of her social standing had power, subtly influencing their husbands’ and fathers’ decisions, always in the background, always with a smile on their face – except Gladys wants something else. She wants power of her own. She wants for the female workers in the factory to be able to stand up to management and improve the working conditions. She wants to be able to voice her opinion, especially when she has good reason to believe that her opinion is more fact-based than others at the dinner table. She wants to talk to James eye-to-eye – and that particular frustration goes back to the very first scene. The kind of influence that her mother imagines isn’t enough anymore, and Gladys literally has a new job now.

James: Your daughter reminded us all why we’re in this business. To help win a war.
Mr Witham: Well, I’m sure as hell not in it to lose.
Kate: You will if you only fight for yourself.
Mr Witham: And who are you fighting for, my dear? It’s all just a chance to play dress up for you. This week it’s Hepburn, next it’s Crawford or Greer Garson.
James: Gladys believes in the cause.
Mr Witham: Yes. As long as the cause features her in a starring role. She showed last night that she’s not a team player.

She isn’t being taken seriously at work because the others blame her for not having as much as stake as they do; she is disrespected by her parents because they are convinced that this is a game to her, so Gladys sets out to prove them wrong. She brings in a suggestion box, but it isn’t until the male workers ridicule it that Betty finally comes around to her side and gives it credibility by adding a suggestion of her own and asking the others to do the same. Gladys couldn’t achieve this because she isn’t yet “one of the gals” – but Betty is, and Lorna, in spite of criticizing them for the public display of protest (“Well, who’s playing the stupid game?”), takes the box up to the manager.

Lorna is fighting the same fight, but on a different front. She is essentially middle management, trying to affect the outcome by convincing Mr Akins that his approach is wrong and will not lead to better results. She fails. Worse, he forces her to fire Edith, one of her closest friends at the factory, who has recently lost her husband. Now that she has been made brutally aware how little influence she actually has, there are only two things to do: take part in Gladys’ effort and suggesting that Akins sends a productivity report with improvements instead of firing Edith, and finding proof that a male worker was responsible for the misfire.

Lorna: You think I enjoy doing this?
Bob: Yes, Lorna. Yes I do.

And this brings her back to Marco, and the episodes focuses on Lorna, but Marco kind of mirrors her in a way off-screen: he is aware that the female workers are not to blame for the misfire. He identified the person who is actually responsible, but his position at the factory does not allow him to change anything. When Lorna asks him to help her (“I want you to talk to our boss for some ridiculous reason you’re the only person…”), he tells her that he is “an outsider, just like you” – and kisses her. Later, when Bob questions her about her encounter with Marco, she responds with “A man like Mister Moretti should not be working at the factory. It’s a disaster waiting to happen.” – except she now has a whole lot of new reasons to be worried that have absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he is Italian.

Meanwhile, Kate tries to forge her security clearance, a document she needs to work at the factory, and Betty walks in just as she is about to give up on it (“I’m guessing crafts aren’t your bag?”).

Betty: Kate, you need this to work.
Kate: It’s not real.
Betty: Why?
Kate: Because Kate Andrews doesn’t exist.

Only a couple of days ago, Kate was so fearful and wary, and now she doesn’t even bother to lie to Betty. In part, it’s probably her anxiety over being unable to get the papers herself, so in a way, it doesn’t really matter if she will be exposed by Lorna anyway – but at the same time, Betty told her she’s make sure she was safe – and she promptly does, telling her she has a friend (Betty has the most exciting friends…) who can get her the papers, even though he might not necessarily want money as payment.

Her counterfeiting acquaintance turns out to be a photographer and he wants Kate to pose for pictures as payment for her papers – and Kate goes through with it, with Betty’s moral support (she literally shoves the photographer away when he intimated Kate and choreographs the shot herself – “Look at me, don’t worry about him. Just focus on me.”), but it triggers a horrible nightmare about her father. When the papers aren’t ready the next day, she blames Betty for “forcing” her into this, but when they finally go to pick up the security clearance, she seems stronger than ever before.

Kate: It’s my first pay check. You wanted to bleed me dry, you did it. I’m sure it’s a wonderful career you got, but like my daddy used to say, go gentle when choking the golden goose.
Photographer: Wish I’d seen fire like that last night.

He sends them home with the forged papers and the photographs. “I barely recognize myself”, says Kate, looking at them, and Betty responds with “this is a new you. And this is for you”, and gives her a piece of jewellery that she admired earlier. I think part of the beauty of this show is that the sweetness of the scene isn’t diminished by the fact that they aren’t on the same page; at least it’s not necessarily important at this point: Betty is courting Kate (compared to the straight couples on the show, in the most classically romantic way possible), Kate is infinitely happy that she has found a safe place and a friend. The problems start afterwards: for Betty, this is the beginning of something. She asks Kate to sleep over and is turned down without Kate even realizing what she is doing, exactly.

Kate: I am so lucky I met you.
Betty: You know those nightmares you’re having, if you ever wanna sleep over here…
Kate: That’s very kind. But I think I’ll be having better dreams now.
Betty: Well… that’s just grand.
Kate: It was a fun dance. There sure were some dreamboats.
Betty: Yeah, definitely.

Betty is disappointed. And this is perfectly acted, too (the delivery of “that’s just grand” always cracks me up and then I feel bad for Betty), because of course Betty is glad that Kate feels better, but this also puts her in a difficult position because “helping Kate” is such a perfect pretext (not that it isn't sincere) for getting closer to her (and later episodes continue with this tragic inside: whenever Betty helps Kate to pursue her dream or gain freedom, it also inevitably comes with the risk of driving her further away). “There sure were some dreamboats” is the ultimate pain, really. At the end, it’s just Betty and the photographs.

Random notes:

Bomb Girls just got renewed for a second season!

Gladys’ introduction into the dress code is a bit harsh: “We don’t have the time to mop up bloody bits of rich girl.” Betty, on the other hand: “Looking good, McRae”.

Betty: Why don’t you take a hike, see if there’s a Girl Scout troop around that’s short a patrol leader.

Marco tries visiting Archie in the hospital (he brings cannoli – “cheese in a donut? That’s disgusting!”) but since he’s knocked out on pain meds, he goes and sees Vera, and kind of manages to cheer her up – his “There’s first impressions. And then there’s what you make after that” also wonderfully applies to his relationship with Vera (and Vera’s with him), because they spend the entire episode rethinking their first impression of each other.

Gladys talks to Kate (currently trying to teach herself how to smoke, not very successfully) after her attempt to rally the girls fails, and Kate quotes her dad at her and tells her that “Nobody wants a Joan of Arc to lead us to battle. Let’s just keep our heads down and work.” which is really interesting because she later uses another quote from her father, except this time it actually empowers her (when she tells the fake papers guy she doesn’t have any more money for him), and Kate will be the successful Joan of Arc (and in a couple of episodes, a “hero”).

“Well, you’re Kate Andrews now. New name, new job, new life. Okay?”

This is the most literal take on the idea that the war provides an entirely new situation for some women – risk and opportunities.

Also the entire shoot has the subtext that Betty has a pretty good idea of what the soldiers would want to see.

The photographer’s little smirk at Betty when he hands Kate the photos – “Here. Gift with purchase.” is hilarious. It also fits in well with the fact that people in general seem to recognize that Betty is gay, but it’s never explicitly discussed (particularly in episode four).

James: When you add it all up, this war was the best that happened to us.

Bomb Girls - This world we live in, anything could happen.

2012-02-06T09:30:00.000+01:00

Bomb Girls: 1x01 Jumping Tracks.

Apparently I have many, many feelings about this show.

Betty: Here’s the deal, ladies: if you do fine embroidery, you can assemble a time fuse. If you sew buttons, you can thread a detonator. If you can pour tea, you can pour amatol. It’s no big whoop. Except some folks don't see it that way. These guys are crapping bullets, afraid they might not get their easy street jobs back after you've helped them win the war. You ignore them first, talk tough second, and if that doesn't work, you slap 'em silly.

Mr Witham: You girls are only filler until the boys get home. Like they’re having use us plastic instead of metal.

Bomb Girls is kind of like Game of Thrones. Marginalized characters struggle for participation, for power, for the ability to lead their lives the way they want to, or for the space to even have the ability to imagine how their lives could be different. It is completely unlike Game of Thrones too, because in a way, it’s a communal struggle, not just an individual one: a rapidly changing society adapting also to the idea that it’s not necessarily a zero-sum-game.

The relationship between the communal and the personal is one of the most exciting aspects of the show, and it already starts in the introduction: Gladys tells her now-fiancé James that they could now do more than just kiss, and he turns her down, responding that he doesn’t “wanna take something you’re not ready to give”, even though she clearly is very, very ready – but they are both trapped in the roles society assigns to them. She is meant to remain clueless and virginal until the wedding, he feels pressure to collect experiences outside their engagement so he is prepared for their wedding night – the show beautifully explores their relationship, but the frustrating inability to communicate their desires to each other because they can’t overcome these preconceived notions is right there in their very first scenes, and the precise and economic writing of the show only needs one tiny moment between them (before we even know them) to convey most of this. The show will spend the next episodes to make the viewers care about the characters as individuals and the fantastic acting turns them into complex and fascinating ones, but the first thing that really drew me in is this amazing ability to portray the conflicts that drive these relationships.

The first scenes of this episode show three of the main characters before they’ve even met each other: Gladys, daughter of a successful business man, is still trapped in her golden cage and James is both the person who may eventually free her from her parents’ house and someone who is dangerously closely connected to it at the same time, since he is working for her father. We first see Lorna at home with her husband, who, we will later find out, returned from the world war paralyzed and disillusioned, and they are fighting over whether their dinner is appropriately modest or not (later on, her opinions and contributions will be equally questioned and ridiculed by the all-male management of the factory). Kate’s (still Marion) introduction is the most dramatic: she escapes her abusive father with the help of her mother (since these early scenes are all about the relationship of the female characters to men, we see his reaction to what he considers inappropriate flirting with a stranger on the street – he advices her to “exercise the evil inside” and bruises her hand), hoping to find safety in a new identity and supporting herself by working in the bomb factory.

This is what the factory offers: a new opportunity for women to earn money, to be independent. When Gladys first enters she only works as a secretary for the manager but looks at the workers stunned and entranced – she is fascinated by idea that women contribute to the war effort, since she comes from a household where the war is mostly discussed in terms of providing a business opportunity. For Lorna and especially Kate – and Betty, who has meanwhile been introduced as Kate’s unwilling helper (when Kate tries to figure out if her door can be locked effectively, fearing her father might come and break it down, eventually), having the job is economically essential, and the prospect that this might only be temporary and will end with the war is an existential threat looming in the distance.

The women aren’t the only ones who find themselves in marginalized positions: the first episode also introduces Marco Moretti, an Italian-born materials inspector and a thorn in Lorna’s side, since she suspects him of spying for the enemy. In the end, Marco still trumps Lorna because male privilege overrules nationality, but they are both not taken seriously by the management and painfully aware of it.

The emotional centre of the show is how the main characters start supporting each other – even before they’ve formed closer friendships. Seemingly unmoveable Betty passes on a chance to have Kate fired after an accident after she begs her (“I don’t have money. My folks won’t take me back. Please. This here is all I’ve got.”) – and shows her how to avoid something like this in the future, even shooting her a smile afterwards. Later, Kate kind of gently pushes Betty into doing things she’s previously avoided – going to a club, dance in public where people can see her feet. Lorna accidentally reveals that Gladys lied to her parents about where she was going in the evening and tries to keep her alibi intact. Gladys herself feels more drawn to the “barbarians”, as her friend calls the floor workers, and ends up going out with them. Even the pushback she gets from Betty only serves to help her realize that she wants something she couldn’t articulate before: Betty dares her, and Gladys reacts, but not by drawing back.

Betty: You wanna help the war effort, princess, try not wasting silk.
Gladys: Now you sound like my mother.
Betty: No, I’m nothing like you rich gits with your big silky security blankets.
Kate. Betty!
Betty: You think you’re all brave now because you’ve walked into a factory. What have you ever done, in your whole life, one thing that has ever scared you? That’s right. Nothing.

So Gladys gives her silk stockings away and goes to make out with her Airman who is about to be shipped off soon, and then she makes the decision to defy her parents and her fiancé and build bombs because she refuses to only exist to be a good wife and birth grandsons (“I give away my precious things. Stockings to hacking canaries, fiancés to greedy fathers.”) The factory provides alternatives that didn’t exist before, even though the power structure within reflects the positions men and women occupy in society – but it also has this potential to change everything. Her father predicts that she will “walk out of the rubble, with nothing”, but what Gladys desperately wants is to have more than “marriage, fortune, reputation” because none of these things are truly her own.

James: Why do you wanna do this?
Gladys: To see what I’m capable off.
James: It’s not going to last forever. This war will end and it will all go back to normal.
Gladys: So let’s just live for now.

It’s Airman Lewis who brings up the idea that this isn’t just, or necessarily, a struggle of men against women: “We need you girls to fight with us,” he tells Gladys.

This is Lorna’s argument when she passionately argues on Vera’s behalf, after a horrible accident leaves her disfigured: they ARE fighting, they should be equal, because their effort is essential.

Lorna: You can’t let her leave here deformed, it will destroy her future.
Doctor: With limited resources, priority must be given to the soldiers.
Lorna: Vera is a solider. Vera risked her life every day to help win this war, do not turn your back on her. If you want to see our boys with bullets in your guns and bombs in your planes, you will show her the same respect. Go in there, you book the operation room and you do the surgeries, no matter how expensive or lengthy. You do your best for that girl.

Random notes:

It’s kind of absolutely fab how everyone just conveys so much about their character (before we even know anything about them) just by the way they carry themselves: Kate is all fear, always looking for potential danger, and at the same time giddy at all the new things, Gladys self-assuredness makes her odd fit as the new girl at the factory and that uneasiness is conveyed beautifully, Betty is tough and strong except when it comes to dancing and water (“water’s water”, she replies when Kate points out to her that the Sandy Shore is by a very large lake, not the sea, making German marine unlikely).

Betty: Just a poor little rich girl on a field trip. First broken nail, she’s outta here.

Gladys’ reaction to Betty’s introductory speak for the new girls is one of my favourite things about the episode. She enjoys it so much. She so much wishes she could trade places. Just in general, it’s really interesting how the show pits these two against each other, because the more often Betty calls her “princess” in the most condescending way possible (also note how it grows almost fond over the next few episodes), the more awesome.

Gladys’ decision to act against her parents’ wishes and work on the line is also her personal effort to contribute something to the war – the Airman she meets tells her that “We’re all soldiers. Every decent man in this country” – and that puts her in a position of moral authority in the arguments about the war and the military contracts on the dinner table (even though her parents still think she is just a secretary), and more importantly, that is a position that James learns to respect, too.

Betty: You’re singing?

Kate: Sorry. Bad habit. Comes from being a preacher’s daughter.

Betty: If I had a voice like that, I might actually believe in god.

I love all the scenes at the club. The music, the dancing (and fighting) are so beautifully choreographed, and it conveys this feeling that Kate, Betty and Gladys are kind of entering a new world perfectly.

“Just one of the gals!”

Betty: You dance much?

Kate: Oh. Lots. By myself.

Betty super-obviously checking out the girls at the club was also fun, and then basically staring at two girls dancing, and Kate noticing and coming to the conclusion that what Betty wants to do, secretly, is dance, which ends with a whole other wish-fulfilment thing for Betty. The scene conveys so much information: Betty knows that she’s gay (it’s not really clear how much she has ever articulated this to herself, but a later episode indicates that she has gay friends), but this time and place don’t give her any space to be “out” in any way, and Kate is naïve, but at the same time (accidentally) accommodating in exactly the way Betty needs. It’s like my favourite thing ever. DO YOU WANNA TRY A TWIRL? (… come and dance…) – She just takes her glass away and basically sweeps her off her feet.

And almost immediately afterwards, Betty reacts to other people becoming closer to her with jealousy.

One of the themes of the episode is… desire, and how it is controlled and punished by society, but also how it changes relationships: there’s Gladys, frustrated by her fiancé, ending up with the Airman (and finally doing what she thought was cruel before, promising to marry him before he ships out), Lorna, frustrated in her marriage by her husband who is struggling with his disability (and already starting her dance with Marco) and Betty, sort of anxiously but also excitedly leaning against her door after promising Kate that she’ll take care of her, knowing that she’s in way over her head.

The show could have also easily portrayed all the men as villains, but it doesn’t; James reaction to Gladys is complex, and Bob, Lorna’s husband, is caring underneath his cynical façade (he starts writing letters so that one of Lorna’s co-workers can spare her children the terrible news of their father’s death).

Gladys: I’ve never felt so alive. I’m not going back to drifting around the house all day.

Skins - Rich, I haven’t got long.

2012-02-01T17:31:00.000+01:00

Skins: 6x02 Rich.

There is an inherent danger in the romantic idea of making your life into a story, which is was what Rich proposed to Grace: sometimes, when you try and make sense of your life by fitting it into stories (and in the case of this episode, into one specific story, as written by Shakespeare), your interpretation of certain events might be flawed, and as you struggle to become the hero of that story you think you are starring in, you lose sight of what is really going on.

The story that Rich thinks he is trapped in: Grace and he are star-crossed lovers, brutally kept apart by outside forces. David Blood goes to ridiculous lengths to keep him out of Grace’s hospital room. His parents want to drag him away on a holiday to distract him and maybe find him a new, non-comatose girlfriend. His best friend doesn’t grasp the gravity of the situation and doesn’t understand why he runs off to try and see Grace (“What if today’s the day she wakes up”) instead of practising so they can start their music revolution.

Rich’s perceptions of the world match the story. He doesn’t have access to Grace’s hospital room and he hasn’t talked to her doctors, so he has no idea if she is getting better or not. David Blood has previously been established as a veritable villain who isn’t above blackmailing and threatening others to get what he wants, so he fits in well too. The only piece of the puzzle that is missing is Grace – and Rich, much later, tells Alo that “Nothing works without her, Alo, none of this.” – so when Grace unexpectedly calls him from her room as he is standing in front of the hospital, everything is arranged precisely to fit that story.

Rich: Grace?
Grace: Rich.
Rich: Grace, are you all right, can you hear me?
Grace: Why aren’t you here?
Rich: I tried. We all did. Your dad won’t let us in.
Grace: Then try harder, Richard.
Rich: What?

It’s all there. Rich is the hero trying to get to “the love of his life” (he repeats it over and over to the nurse), David Blood is the evil villain keeping them apart, first by having Rich thrown out of the hospital after he manages to infiltrate Grace’s room, then by taking her away to Zurich. The episode seems to be about uniting the two star-crossed lovers: at one point, it goes so far as to suggest that this will become a communal road trip, the gang raising money to travel to Paris and find Grace in a city of millions.

This isn’t a story about how love conquers all, or maybe it will be, at the end, but this episode doesn’t tell that story. I still haven’t decided if it works, because of course, part of the intention was to have the shocking reveal at the end for the sake of the viewers, and I think on that level the episode doesn’t entirely succeed (Although I am really interested: did any of you really think that Rich was talking to Grace? If you did, did Grace seem strange or out of character?). Rich clings to it and I think that works well, because he has limited access to information, is losing his mind and the alternative is so horrible that no one at any point of the episode even mentions that possibility (What if she isn’t getting better? What if the day of waking up never comes?). A villain is an obstacle that can be overcome with bravery, dedication, patience, heroism – but that’s not how life works (and of course obviously that’s the point where I bring up The Body, because I always do – that awful moment when you realize that the most horrible thing is not having choices, that it’s not actually a fight to be won).

Grace: I want you to think a way out of the predicament, Richard. This is your moment, to show me what you’re made of. Promise me, Rich.

The things that Grace says – and I don’t think that it makes a difference if she is meant to be Rich’s fantasy, and therefore his interpretation of her, or if this is more of a supernatural spirit thing like Tony’s descent into the underworld - work on both levels. They feed into the story, beckoning him to overcome the obstacles, to solve the problem, to prove himself – and at the same time, they hint at something more serious. They ask him to prepare, almost, for what will happen at the end of the episode.

“It’s just young love. It’s not real” says Rich’s mum – and isn’t it interesting that the comic relief character of the episode, the one that is so oddly over-the-top, brings up the concept of reality? She is referring to the validity of Rich’s feelings (and that fits the story well, too: adults not taking the young lovers seriously, telling them that it will all fade over time, as if “love” were ever something that you can put into perspective), of course, not to Grace herself, but still – it’s like Alo, later, telling Rich that he is “just seeing things” at the party and of course he means it to apply to that moment but really, it’s about all of it.

So Rich moves into the abandoned villa because David has taken his daughter to Zurich, and he watches some childhood Super 8 films of Grace, going backwards in time (and in retrospect I think we are meant to realize that they were lying around because the Bloods were watching them also, before leaving, while Grace was in the hospital), and then the episode repeats the pattern that the premiere established: he has quiet moments, trying to connect to Grace through the things that are important to her – recordings of her dancing, her music jewellery box (Für Elise, the same as the ringtone for Grace on his phone…) – and every time, something manages to break in, quite literally. First it’s Alo, arriving and gambling his way in with some weed, then it’s Mini McGuinness, then it’s band practice. It’s like that moment in Morocco, that last moment of peace, that was interrupted by the sounds of the distant party.

Grace: Rich, I tried to ring you.
Rich: When are you coming home, Grace? Because I need you.
Grace: Rich, I haven’t got long, they are moving me again, dad won’t tell me where.
Rich: Your fucking dad wants to split us up. Run away.
Grace: It’s not that simple.
Rich: Just run away.
Grace: He’s my dad.
Rich: Meet me in Paris.

Again: This is Rich interpreting it as this particular story – “your fucking dad wants to split us up” – and Grace performing both as the character he expects her to be in that context, the girl he needs to rescue – and the messenger of things to come.

Rich finally leaves the mansion and Liv provides some much-needed perspective – except she doesn’t, actually, because Liv makes it even more into a heroic-rescue story (because she’s Liv, and she doesn’t passively wait for things to happen). I love this scene because it is a tiny bit of relief from the absolute emotional horribleness of everything else – Rich going mad, the lack of connection between him and Alo – but it is also a bitter reminder that there are no simple solutions for some problems (and Liv is also voicing the audience here: can’t we go back to how we were after the almost-wedding? What happened?)

Liv: Let me get this straight: you broke into your college principal’s house, started living there and wearing his clothes?
Rich: Alo started it.
Liv: Jesus Christ! Why haven’t you rung me?
Rich: Huh?
Liv: I’ve been going off my nuts because my best friend’s been in a coma for four weeks and nobody could be arsed to ring me tell me that she left the fucking country.
Rich: I thought Mini would have told you.
Liv: Mini knows about this?! What the fuck – she can’t pick up the phone?
Rich: Maybe her mouth’s too full.
Liv: What?
Rich: Nothing.
Liv: Everything’s mental since fucking Morocco. Can’t we take her dad to court or something,
Rich: I don’t think it works like that.
Liv: What the fuck is wrong with you? I thought you were metal.
Rich: Yeah, I thought I was too.
Liv: You’re not the only one who misses her, you know. What the fuck has happened to us all? Where are my friends?

The idea that all they need to do is fill up a car with petrol and go to Paris… it’s a diversion. It plays into the idea that this is a story about defeating a foe, the story that the characters want, the story that the audience wants.

For a bit, it seems like that story might be true. Rich and Alo play to an ecstatic crowd. The house is wrecked; revenge against the villain therefore accomplished (“I hope they burn it down”, says Franky), and Rich pursues someone he saw in the crows up to Grace’s room, the only peaceful, untarnished place in the house – and there she is, waiting.

Rich: I came to find you.
Grace: After you thrashed my house.
Rich: It got out of hand.
Grace: Everything does, sooner or later.
Rich: Yeah, where is he, your dad?
Grace: I left him behind. He can’t get past things.
Rich: Like?
Grace: Like I… probably love you.
…
Rich: Here you are again.
Grace: Here I am again.

And this is the one time that Rich wakes up on his own, not because something from the outside intrudes, but peacefully, and he goes downstairs and marvels at the destruction, and his phone rings again, somewhere (how often do the characters in this episode repeat that they have no reception?)…

Rich: Hello?
Grace: I had to go.
Rich: Yeah. Why?
Grace: You know why, Rich.
Rich: No. Come back.
Grace: I can’t. Isn’t everything beautiful this morning? Everything is so beautiful.
Rich: I don’t understand.
Grace: I love you, Rich.

And then she’s gone. Rich looks at his phone and sees that it was probably broken ever since he first threw it away, and he realizes that this was a different story all along.

It wasn’t the story of the evil father, trying to keep his daughter away from the world – maybe it once was, but it isn’t now. Now, David Blood is sitting on the stairs of his wrecked home.

David: You fucked my house up I see.
Rich: Sorry. Where’s Grace gone?
David: I’m very sad to say… Actually she died yesterday afternoon.
Rich: I just spoke to her. I speak to her all the time.
David: Me too. What else is there to do?
Rich: She never woke up, did she, from the accident?
David: That’s why we went to Switzerland, to see if they could wake her up. I just wanted to try it, you know.
Rich: So all this time, she was…?
David: They said there was nobody left inside. I thought, what would she think of me for turning off the stupid machine thing. What would she think.
Rich: She would have thought that you were her dad and that’s what you were supposed to do.
[…]
Rich: She loved me. And I…
David: Yes. That’s why I’m here.

What else is there to do? You spend all this time staring at the machine and listening to doctors who repeat vague predictions over and over again, worst case scenarios and probabilities, but mostly you’re stuck with the numbers and telling yourself that you are doing everything you can just by being there. It’s fucking awful. So David’s story was taking his daughter to Switzerland and waiting for a miracle, and in the end, he was had to make that one impossible decision. And you’d think that Rich would rage and scream, but he doesn’t, because he finally understands. He tries to comfort David because at this point the only thing that they have is their shared grief.

Hey, it’s a new category called “Really, Skins?”

The thing is: I can’t write about this show if I don’t make sense of the main story. If I can’t make it work in some way, trying to figure out what the intention behind it was, at least, I cannot write about it, or else I would immediately descend into that awful place that was the second half of season four, where nothing made sense and every week trying to make sense of it was a nightmare. There were so many things about this episode that severely upset me, and not upset as in “a character I really like has died” or “I want that season five happy place back”, but upset as in angry over the fact that someone thought these aspects of the episode would not completely undermine the emotional truthfulness of the main story. And I don’t get it, because Daniel Lovett wrote Alo’s episode last season and I absolutely loved what he did with the character, it was one of my favourite episodes in a season of favourite episodes, really – but Alo in Rich’s episode makes no sense to me. I do not understand him at all. This is even more… bitter… because in a way, Rich’s story mirrors Alo’s. They both don’t understand the severity of the situation and they react to in by acting out in this childish way while… these horrible things happening are forcing them to realize that the world doesn’t actually work that way. You are not faulted by the awful parental figures and you don’t solve the issues by wrecking and destroying and breaking the rules, basically – that works when the stakes aren’t so high. Alo’s development in his episode was… acting out, inviting everyone to trash the house, and then realizing why his parents were acting this way (and I am not saying that his parents, especially his mum, were doing the right thing - this actually mirrors Rich’s story as well, because in both cases the issue is holding back information and never giving Alo or Rich a chance to understand how serious the situation is) and, as a consequence, trying to grow up. He moved that fucking rock off the field that he was told couldn’t be moved. And he spent a good part of the episode struggling with the fact that he could not communicate his sadness, his fear, his frustration to his best friend who was just… in a completely different place, and he couldn’t cross the distance.

Which is exactly what Rich was experiencing in this episode, but it’s almost like Alo never ever went through any of this. The Alo who suggests trashing the house to get back at evil David Blood, who tells Rich to just snap out of his funk, is a version of Alo that I thought had meanwhile evolved into someone else. It’s a regression. It’s fucking frustrating because – well, the episode literally evokes Sid and Tony at the concert, that moment where despite all their differences, Tony understood Sid and was the one person who could provide what he needed – but that connection is completely absent between Alo and Rich. It’s an empty moment because Alo doesn’t understand, and this isn’t just the episode basically setting everybody up to underestimate the situation – because they think Grace is awake, they think all is swell and the only obstacle is David Blood, keeping them apart – it’s something profound missing in this relationship (I don’t know… empathy? Truthfulness?).

It’s a pattern with this season (and yeah, I don’t want to bring it up again but it was one of my biggest issues with Skins US and I can’t get over it): this argument that Alo’s just being a typical teenage boy and that should explain his behaviour. Oh, his friends may need emotional support but hey, Mini’s boobs are spectacular! And she is totally into his cock! So he’ll just invite her over and they will have loud sex all over Rich’s quiet moments of sadness! Because he is a teenage boy! It feels like this invalidates the characters because the writers don’t take them seriously anymore and that’s just unfair to everyone: the actors who put so much work into them (and the acting was so good in the episode!), last season’s episodes, and the viewers.

The same thing goes for Mini, too. I am almost more frustrated with her because we are trapped so entirely outside that understanding her actions or her emotions is just… impossible, at this point. Maybe she is heading towards a massive breakdown. Maybe this will all become meaningful in retrospect eventually, but for now, it makes no sense. Grace is “her best friend”. She’s been in a coma for four weeks. So when she finds out that Grace is awake, her reaction is… “yay” and “sorry I didn’t call, I was distracted by Alo’s cock”. That’s the same character who was so fiercely protective of Franky last season, who had this intense and complicated relationship with Liv. Who are Alo and Mini now? I don’t know, and I’m forgetting why I should care if nothing from last season is still valid.

And then there’s Rich, who… I mean, there is a limit to the “he is going mad” excuse, basically. When someone you love has just spent weeks in a coma, your first reaction isn’t “cool, you’re awake, so we can have sex now?” (twice!). It just isn’t. I’m willing to give this one to Skins because maybe that’s just Rich’s brain, trying to create that “all is well” situation (but what does that say about Rich, that this is his primary concern?), but in the context of the episode (and especially the context of the reveal at the end), it’s creepy and disturbing in a way that I don’t think it was intended to be by the writers and I don’t think it fits in well with the way Grace and Rich’s relationship was portrayed previously. Remember when Skins used to find ways to write about sex in ways that were meaningful and actually added to the characterization?

Random notes:

I apologize that this is such a mess but something about this episode, and I don’t even really know what it was, was so devastating that I really did consider only writing a couple of lines and leaving it at that.

The final was beautifully acted. David Blood is a problematic character because he was introduced as such an over-the-top ridiculous foe in season four, so I think the emotional depth that Chris Addison achieved with his performance was stunning. And I loved that this moment just stripped both the characters of all their usual defences: David was finally not Professor Blood, and Rich wasn't... angry, or defiant.

Er, Franky? Is it just me or did Dakota Blue Richards even change the way she voiced the character between the season premiere and this episode, back to how she did last season? Apparently, it really was a temporary body snatcher thing.

Also, but I think that this might change by the next episode, the group scenes didn’t really fit in with what was portrayed at the end of the last episode (which I found grating because it was the only thing that really worked for me in Everyone…). There seem to be no remaining conflicts after Morocco (except that Mini is… preoccupied) except maybe a weird lack of communication between the characters (which didn’t keep them from partying together). No mention of Matty. Nick didn’t have any lines but the episode continues with the “Franky and Nick are becoming closer”.

Loads of connections to both Rich’s and Grace’s episode from last season: from Rich trying to crawl his way into the hospital room (“Are we seriously doing this again?”), the fairy tales (baby Grace tells one in the recording, Alo references Pinocchio of all things).

THE BOY HAS GOT IN AGAIN.

I liked that David Blood signed his note to the milk man with “Professor Blood”.

O’Malley. Best thing about the band, really. “You guys look so fucking lame, I’m giving it a sheen of respectability.”

Favourite Alo-Rich moment:

Rich: Music doesn’t solve anything.

Alo: Yes it does. Because you told me all my life.

This almost makes me forgive the episode for its portrayal of Alo, because in a way, this is Alo trying to make it better and it just happens to be the wrong thing, also because he doesn’t understand the situation at all (but how can he, since David Blood has made it impossible for any of them). The thing that has defined Rich is his love for music, so this realization is the perfect way to portray his utter misery – he is just encountering how seriously fucked up things can get, so the old remedies don’t work anymore. And Alo is like, no, wait, let’s try, maybe it will help, it’s the only thing I can think of doing to help, so let’s try: and it works temporarily until it doesn’t and things fall apart.

The entire scene of the group dancing to the song that Rich and Alo are playing… it’s almost like an intentional repetition of the season finale, a reminder of how things ended, that immediately leads into the complete destruction of the… togetherness and community. It’s the theme of the season in a nutshell.

“Have you found your straighteners?” Yes. Yes she has.

I kind of liked the tiny moment at the party when Mini was randomly snogging a guy and Liv realized that Alo was upset, so she dragged her away, but what I really, really want is for someone to have a conversation with Mini about what is going on with her because this lack of communication is terrible (I think I’ll get my wish next episode, by the way).

David Blood tells Rich that it’s “futile” when he calls the clinic in Zurich – it’s interesting how many different meanings things can have depending on your perspective.

“Don’t grow up, Gracie. It’s shit.”

Mini: I’m her best friend.

Rich: Well, I’m sorry. I see you managed to fill the emptiness inside though.

Mini: I wanted to fuck, he’s available.

Alo: But you like me, right?

Mini: As long as you don’t talk. But this is a secret, alright?

I don’t know what to make of this, for future reference, etc.

“Mini doesn’t want anyone to know because she’ll fuck anything, and you’re anything. It’s because you’re a fucking joke.”

“I’ll get you some biscuits. Oi, mate can we get some biscuits here please?”

I think future episodes will also not clearly distinguish between hallucinations and magic. ~vague prediction that is possibly wrong.

Note

2012-01-31T20:54:00.002+01:00

If someone wants to write me a motivational comment about reviewing this episode, that would be really, really cool, because I have to watch it at least twice and...

Reaction Post - It was a strategic move.

2012-01-30T15:45:00.002+01:00

The Good Wife: 3x14 Another Ham Sandwich.

While watching the episode, I started to wonder why it was exactly that I was rooting for Will to get off easily. There is a version of this story in which the perspective is slightly different and we the viewers don't immediately choose to believe that he did indeed not suspect that the judges were ruling in his favour because they expected something back. We've been expertly set up to be firmly on Will's side: we assume he didn't lie, we assume he never looked at the numbers and wondered (even though thinking of Will as naive seems kind of absurd?), we assume that Wendy Scott-Carr is the villain of the story because clearly, she's been set up to be the villain. She's out to take revenge on Peter (but not in that way the trial gave her an opportunity to). But really, the numbers, and the fact that some of the judges have previously been presented as not quite tarnish-free, kind of raise the question of whether this case should have really disappeared. I wonder if any of this will have repercussions beyond the hint at the end that Wendy isn't quite finished with Will yet (because really, this has never been about Will, and this is just Wendy, lashing out, unless she does find a way to make this about Peter in a way that works for her).

Last year's Ham Sandwich also beautifully connected many of the loose threads of the season, and this year's does so even more exquisitely. Alicia, mostly kept out of the loop by Will, finally realizes the gravity of the situation and in an impulsive move decides to go to Peter to talk to him (after Diane's: "I don't want you to feel responsible or obligated to do anything. I mean, responsible is the wrong word. We've never considered you an exstension of the State's Attorney's office and you've never acted like one so again, I leave it to you."), only to realize that she needs to make this appeal in a private setting, not in the official one.

Alicia's first conversation with Will after finding out about the grand jury is a wonderful throwback to Will's apology to her after they broke up:

Will: I'm sorry.
Alicia: No. Why? I am.
Will: I didn't tell you because I didn't want this to become...
Alicia: You did not need to explain.
Will: This is legal. It's not personal.

Will apologizes because he didn't tell her about any of this, Alicia apologizes because she assumes that the situation would be different if it wasn't for Peter - and all of this is still based on limited information. The grand jury trial is interesting because everybody goes there with the primary goal of either winning or making the implications go away, but there's a whole collection of other motivations as well: keeping the affair with Alicia a secret, winning points against Peter Florrick (Wendy), proving themselves after a potentially harmful career move (Dana) and confronting strange contradictory allegiances (Cary).
The episode was also interesting because... in a way, Kalinda only ever loses in her personal relationships. The very thing that makes her almost unbelievably powerful and omnipotent in her professional life is basically her kryptonite whenever she attempts genuine human connections - she got out of having her life exposed last season, but she did lose the one person she values most of all - and yet, there is also a potential danger in making her so infallible. It was kind of predictable that Kalinda would have a plan and eventually outplay Dana, because Kalinda doesn't do ultimatums. She fed her wrong information, she set them up for defeat, and Dana never saw it coming (and as much as I enjoy Kalinda's triumph, in a way, it also required adjusting my perception of Dana, who I always thought more apt at all of this than she turned out to be). It was beautiful to see Wendy's entire case come apart because so much of it was based on Kalinda's information, but still... there is a certain narrative danger in arguing that Kalinda's ONLY weakness is Alicia Florrick, and nobody else who is part of the game can beat her. This isn't necessarily a criticism of the episode which was one of the best of this season, in my opinion, but perhaps a cautious note for the next season (or hopefully, the next couple of seasons). I also really enjoys the way the camera often turned to Cary because he realizes that this was going awry way before everyone else and his reaction to it was to be amused rather than concerned (since he was never a fan of the whole case to begin with).
Another favourite moment of the episode: the confrontation between Peter and Alicia. I liked the moment because they are dealing with the separation so well; they don't have fights, they are extremely professional and non-confrontational (which made me like Peter for the first time since the show started): but their relationship with each other is unresolved. Peter never expressed his feelings about Alicia and Will. Alicia never expressed her feelings for Will to Peter. Their entire current peace depends on neither of them discussing their feelings.

Alicia: It keeps your hands clean at the expense of...
Peter: At the expense of who? Will?
Alicia: No. My firm.
Peter: And Will.
Alicia: Yeah. My boss.
Peter: The boss you are sleeping with.
Alicia: Peter, if that's the issue here then let's talk about it.
Peter: Of course that's the issue.
Alicia: There is nothing between us.
Peter: My god. You have changed. I used to be able to tell when you lied.
Alicia: You think I'm lying?
Peter: I think you're manipulating the truth like a pro.
Alicia: Well, you would know about pros.
Peter: Well, you got me there. What do you want, Alicia?
Alicia: I want you to stop this grand jury.
Peter: No. That's what I used to do. Things that worked but were wrong. Not doing that anymore.
Alicia: Peter your problems wasn't that you did things that were wrong, your problems was that you did things that were wrong against your family.
Peter: That may be so, but that has nothing to do with this. Will Gardner is not my family. Good night.

Alicia assumes that Peter is only pursuing the law suit because he is out to harm Will, when in fact, there is evidence to support his claim. I love Alicia's defence against Peter's attack - she still does resent what he did to the family, of course she does, so he can't win this argument that she shouldn't be sleeping with her boss. He won't protect Will just because Alicia cares about him, but in the end, he also doesn't pursue this any further when he realizes that the case is lost, and even more importantly, he resents Wendy for bringing Alicia in and trying to prove Will's failings by exposing his affair with an employee (which was a ridiculous move doomed to fail, and an interesting contrast, because Kalinda cornered comes up with plans that work perfectly, while Wendy just makes things worse with hers.) Elsbeth's grand strategy also works: subtly, she brings Peter into it again and again, and in the end, the jurors wonder who HE is, and whether they shouldn't be looking into this guy that has come up in the proceedings repeatedly, so that Peter can't help but drop the case.
Favourite part of the episode, though: Will gets off, and they are having a massive if awkward (dancing lawyers) party at L&G, and the person that calls Alicia isn't Will... it's Kalinda, testing the waters, trying to figure out where things stand. And Alicia hesitantly thanks her for calling but turns down the offer to join the party (but not because of Kalinda...) and both of them realize at the same moment that things are getting better rapidly after all the glacial movement towards each other in previous episodes.

Carrie Preston does this magical thing with Elsbeth Tascioni where we see the billion of thoughts rushing through her mind at any given point in time and then there's this moment where things connect, and she just KNOWS. She's better at this game than any other character we've previously seen and I think this is why she couldn't possibly be a regular: it's like that one super power that would just solve all the problems so you have to invent ways of making it less potent or make the character unavailable.
In a kind of useless subplot, Eli did exactly what Celeste proposed to Alicia when she was struggling with hiring Caitlin: he used her and made her life a living hell in order to get back at David Lee. I loved the resolution of the story, because there was something incredibly vile about two powerful rich men playing chess with female characters (David was using his connection to Alicia): Caitlin proved herself incredibly useful and Eli had to admit it and say "thank you".
There was something about two power-driven people competing over GLAC, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance of Chicago, but I lost interest halfway through Eli's weird, weird sex life. I wish they would find a way to involve him in the major story more instead of giving him the comic relief side-plots. Eli-Kalinda had so much potential!
"This is lacking subtlety"
Elsbeth creates an even more terrifying version of David Lee when she tells him to be charming.
Alicia's a gay icon: "Your suffering has made you iconic".
Will we see more of Dana? Hitting Kalinda, instead of trying to outplay her or score points with smart moves, kind of proved that she isn't really cut out for this game. This was also interesting because Kalinda does care to a certain extent, but not as much as she does about Will and Alicia - which Dana should have realized, because Kalinda TOLD her previously. Underestimating her capacities is never ever a good idea - as Blake Calamar well knows.
Kalinda's reaction to Will's "I owe you" was interesting, because - "No you don't" - because she did it for Alicia? Because she doesn't like the idea of "owing" favours to friends on principle because this is the one way in which she distinguishes between the job and the people she cares about?
Elsbeth immediately realizing that the whole thing was just a game to hide Will's vulnerability was also brilliant.
Cary! Cary hates the idea that Wendy uses something he told her in confidence. Cary hates that they are sinking so deep to try and win their case when they should be able to win it based on the available evidence, and he thinks that if they can't, they should just admit their defeat. Things HAVE changed. Cary enjoyed joining that State's Attorney's office precisely because it meant that he could change the story that he tells about himself - he is now one of the good guys, and Wendy is taking this away from him.
"I gotta go talk to my kids". But THEN SHE DOESN'T, when she realizes that the transcripts will not be released since Will hasn't been indicted.
Will and Diane dancing. They are truly awesome parents, in a way.
"Thank you for your service. My assistant will validate your parking." BOOM.

Skins – Life was just a ferris wheel.

2012-01-24T00:00:00.000+01:00

Skins: 6x01 Everyone.

I’ve spent almost a week watching and re-watching this episode. As a consequence, there are now three versions of this review co-existing in my head, and one of the most difficult undertakings was sorting out which one I should actually write, or how to generate a coherent culmination of the three. One is just angry ranting, basically: voicing how upset I am about all the things that didn’t work, about what felt to me were completely re-written characters, the flawed central premise of the episode. The second one, filled with “buts”: trying to make it work. Inventing what happened in these inaccessible gaps that would explain the changes (the scientific term for this is “fanwanking”, I think). The third one… well, the third one is actually just the thought that this was an Everyone, and it only set up the season, but didn’t really provide a deeper insight into the characters, the way Skins episodes usually do. Everyones are only rarely episodes that end up on my favourites-lists for precisely that reason – and the fact that season five’s is an exception to the rule didn’t exactly make this any easier.

There were things I really liked about the episode. It established very quickly that the group has grown closer over the summer – there are still smaller units within the group that have a tighter connection, but as a whole, they get along well and genuinely like each other, with many of the looming conflicts from last season resolved after the finale brought them together. Nick isn’t an outsider anymore. The girls are as close as ever. Grace and Rich arrive late and have grown into the kind of inseparable couple that still manages to remain distinctive individuals. They love each other for their differences. I think this is established particularly well when the episode contrasts it with Matty and Franky, who presumably share more interests than Grace and Rich do but have failed to find ways to productively resolve their conflicts when they aren’t on the same wave-length.

Franky and Matty

Disregarding the general question of “what happened to Franky” and “is this even Franky anymore” and “perhaps a space alien possessed Franky while they were in Tunisia?”, I really liked the way the episode introduced Matty and Franky, crashing into the holiday spirit with all their anger and frustration, screaming over the sound of the Smiths. It’s horrible, of course, because last we saw them, they were sharing smiles and the promise that things might get better for once instead of continuously worse, and we don’t get to see that, it happened during a time that will forever remain inaccessible, but the way their relationship eventually turned out is entirely believable. Matty was still mostly a mystery at the end of last season, not a fully-developed character. They both probably had very clear ideas of each other going into the relationship, based on the fact that they shared interests and tastes and a certain detachment (that Matty embraced and Franky tried to fight by forging a community for herself, with mixed results) – but trapped in a car for weeks, in another country, with nobody else to talk to, all their minor differences magnified over time. They mostly share their taste in literature, but Franky still doesn’t want to hear endless lectures on Simone de Beauvoir’s Second Sex to pass the time. They might have a lot of music in common, but not Morrissey, who Matty plays in the car and sings along to. Where Grace and Rich gently tease each other about their quirks, Franky starts a war and Matty in his frustration doesn’t know how to respond.

If there is a theme to this episode at all, it’s harmony, destroyed by things from the outside (but not always uninvited). My favourite moment: Grace and Rich, finally enjoying a bit of serenity and quiet by themselves (even if Rich is complaining of the lack of a roof over their head and water and electricity to listen to Slayer). Grace tells him to just relax and sort of enchants him with her dress (“You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”) and her singing that Françoise Hardy song. He is completely smitten – and then the music from the distance intrudes on their solitude and takes the moment away from them, because inevitably, they will end up in that jeep trailing Alo (their guide dog, imparted with super-human hearing) to seek out someone else’s party. The same thing happens again and again in the episode, until the very end, when the summer holiday seamlessly turns into Roundview, later, and everything has changed.

And now, to the central plot of the episode, the thing that objectively has to work because it sets up the season, and yet… well. For one, usually, when Skins does these dramatic storylines (and by “dramatic” I don’t mean the personal drama, the relationship drama, the identity drama, but the thriller-murder-crime stuff), something goes wrong. I am not a fan of the two “humorous” entries into this category, Mad Twatter and Johnny White, and I am even less fond of “for some reason, Bristol police is really concerned about this one teenage suicide”, “Cook becomes a fugitive” and “the psychiatrist is a psychopathic killer” (and just a general thought: the one thing that I do not want to be reminded of, if possible ever again, is the second half of season four). The one time it did work, and that was in part because the entire episode was such a trip, so the style perfectly fit the content, was Josh in Effy’s first episode. But Luke is no Josh. He is so awfully obviously the big bad man from the kind of stories that are told to kids (Don’t Take Candy From Strangers!) that Franky’s ignorance and worse, the way she falls for it, is just utterly and incredibly painful, even if we disregard (which we do because there is a special category for Franky at the end of this) that the Franky that was introduced last season with her intimacy issues and her personal boundaries would have run away halfway through their first encounter.

I think I understand the idea behind it, but it does not work with the characters and it is not well executed. Luke is the opposite of Matty, not just physically, but also in terms of resources, style, philosophy. He promises a kind of mindless refuge (and eventually, escape) instead of the analytical intense intellectual relationship that Matty wanted, the one that Franky now finds “boring”.

Matty: I’m sorry I talk too much about stuff.
Franky: It’s okay, Matty, it’s fine.
Matty: We were having a fucking classic summer holiday. So what’s going on?
Franky: Do we have to do this?
Matty: It’s us. We’re great together.
Franky: Is this what it’s like, being with someone?
Matty: You loved it. Tunisia. The beach. Making love to me.
Franky: It gets boring, Matty. All the fucking, and the talking, and just… all the stuff, okay.
Matty: That’s not fair.
Franky: What’s fair got to do with it?

I like this conversation in part because it finally provides a much-needed insight into Matty’s character and it’s so well-acted, and I like the final line too, because fairness does have absolutely nothing to do with it when a necessary emotion is absent – but I am trying to figure out how this fits in with Franky’s character, this idea that she is bored by the banal aspects of a relationship. It’s well-established that Franky has the capacity to be mean when she feels vulnerable and trapped (“I’m not a bulimic fucking Barbie”), but this goes beyond that.

She exits the conversation by running away (and refusing a kiss), goes up on a balcony and Luke, who’s spent the better part of the evening glaring at her like she’s the prey he’ll soon hunt down, talks to her.

Luke: Tell me something I don’t know, little girl.
Franky: That’s hard. You seem so wise.
Luke: Okay. Then I suggest we dance our fucking dicks off.

And then they dance. And this is where I completely lost it because fuck, this whole motif of dancing was so meaningful in the last season, and this really only works if this is Franky completely out of control, so out of control that all her instincts and issues make her act in exactly the opposite way in which she would usually act. Luke doesn’t come across as wise – he just seems creepy and stalkerish (a trait that everybody but Franky recognizes immediately, especially Mini – “Hi kids.” / “Hi, er, older dude.”)

Mini and Alo

This also feels like something that will be easier to write about once it has developed further. At the beginning of the season, I would have found a romantic relationship between these characters entirely plausible, if well-written. It wouldn’t be entirely un-founded. Personally I’d have preferred a solid friendship because when was the last time that Skins did a friendship between a female and a male character that didn’t end in a relationship (not that I don’t appreciate Chris and Jal) – I guess Naomi and Cook count, but apart from that? I like Alo a lot, but his character would have profited from being exposed to the idea that girls can be more than just wanking material.

I’m not sure where the show is going with these two now. I go back and forth on their first sex scene because on the one hand, I like that it’s from Mini’s perspective, that she figures out how to turn on the water and they have this thinly-veiled conversation about low-self-esteem and how to deal with it (what an unexpected parallel between the two!) and then she makes that choice because she feels in control of the situation and Alo doesn’t ask her to be someone she’s not (the perfect song choice also helped – Dark Dark Dark covers Elephant Micah’s Wild Goose Chase) – but on the other hand, in terms of compelling and well-executed and heart-breakingly well-acted storylines last season, Mini’s body issues were probably my absolute favourite one. Georgia Lester wrote such an incredible episode, and just magically solving all this in one sweep and arguing that all Mini needed was Alo and his secret knowledge of sex acquired during hours and hours of ultrawank (REALLY, Skins?) feels like a massive let-down. The second scene didn’t help. A random shag in front of the toilets of a massive beach party, preluded by a conversation about how Alo “banged her brains out”? “Romantic”, as Naomi would have said. How a meaningful relationship with any emotional investment (from both the viewers and the characters) could come out of this, I do not know (I have a very specific fear and fingers crossed that doesn’t happen!) It works as a platonic sexual relationship and they are kind of endearing in their mutual disregard of each other’s worst character traits, but I genuinely hope that something better will come out of this.

Evil Luke’s evil plan of evil

So, turns out that Luke is this creepy drug king pin who earns his money by hiding drugs in abandoned holiday homes and then blackmailing kids who have made questionable life choices into transporting them all over the country! He also likes to lure victims into his traps by using How To Be A Creeper 101 textbook lines.

Luke: You’re thinking, why is life so fucking predictable. You’re seventeen…
Franky: I’m 18, actually…
Luke: You’re 18. You’re gonna go back to school, gonna go back to your mum and dad.
Franky: Not exactly.
Luke: It’s all inevitable. It’s all gonna go down.
Franky: And?
Luke: You don’t owe anybody anything. You owe nothing. Come with me.
Franky: Where?
Luke: Anywhere. Till we get bored and whatever. This is real life. This is it.
Franky: And we go right now?
Luke: Right now.

I mean, I get that this was perfectly phrased to fit in with Franky’s complaint about being bored by the everyday stuff of being in a relationship, and that maybe, to Franky, the idea of running away is another attempt to deal with her issues (the exact opposite of what she tried to do at the beginning of last season, in fact). But… “it’s all inevitable”? “This is real life”? And this isn’t even the thing that I have the most issues with. The worst moment is when, after being told that something horrible is going to happen to Franky if he doesn’t deliver the drugs that Luke’s minions have hidden in his car, Matty watches Franky get in the car and drive off. At any point throughout all this, any normal person would have just stopped things, perhaps by pointing out to Franky that she was about to get in a car with a drug-smuggling psychopath (and he drives a BMW! How did you not see all of this coming?) Instead, Matty patiently waits in the car filled with drugs that would presumably disappear him in the Moroccan justice system forever if he got caught (the one thing that wasn’t completely unbelievable about all of this was that Matty ran away – he is older than the others, he is the car holder – if anything it’s a miracle that Liv and Grace somehow managed to get out of the country without any repercussions), and then, after Grace got in the car to talk to him about how his relationship is falling apart and when Liv, informed by a local that Luke is a drug-smuggling psychopath, screams “Stop them, Matty, you pussy, stop them!”, he gets into a car chase with a BMW sports car. Because that’s what you do if the episode requires you to get into a dramatic (and costly!) car crash that will leave one of your best friends in a coma and you on the run from the police.

The moment when Rich realizes, even though he is far away – Matty, running away because there really isn’t anything else he can do – and the music that will carry us over – all of this is perfect. The problem is how the episode builds up to this.

Roundview

Did anybody else get this weird feeling from the beautiful cut between Morocco and Roundview that everything before was just an absurd dream? When the camera finally reveals the Roundview assembly hall and the orchestra playing Vivaldi (Concerto for Two Mandolins in G played by marimbas?), it felt like a homecoming. The show finally looked like Skins again. The point of it was probably to contrast the sunshine and holiday! of Morocco with the terrible awakening after the car crash, the grave reality of the aftermath, but to me, it was a reminder of how good this show can be without spending massive amounts of money.

They sit spread out, with a palatable distance between them, while Doug reads out a letter from David Blood thanking the school for supporting the family, and this feels so real; the way in which they specifically are affected by this while everybody else isn’t really, the loneliness that comes with this, particularly if the group itself is also divided. Franky comes in late and sits by herself while trying to make herself invisible. She blames herself, and we don’t see that confrontation, but I think the others do, too.

Nick also carries the additional burden of dealing with the fact that his brother is on the run from the police. Josie, now with another new position at the school (“I’m your responsible adult. Obviously I have my moments, but…”) tells him that he needs to inform her if Matty calls, and she will talk to the police. Nick seems so changed, and that feeling is only amplified by the fact that he just spent months in a drug-fuelled stupor and this is the first time that we see him sober. And he seems so absolutely alone – the shot of him standing in the hallway is perfect – until Mini comes along.

Mini: You okay?
Nick: Not really.
Mini: No. She’s gonna be all right, you know?
Nick: Yeah. I know. She’ll be fine.
Matty: Why did he run like that?
Nick: Stuff in his car… I suppose. I guess he’ll explain it, I guess he was a bit obsessed with Franky.
Mini: Yeah. I wonder how that feels. Weird I suppose. This probably sounds a bit fucked coming from me but if I could help you with anything, I would, Nick.
Nick: Tell me why he doesn’t ring.
Mini: Because he loves her.

We never know if he picks up when Matty does call, but he watches Franky, who seems as alone as he is, and smiles at her because he understands. This too, seems like the beginning of something, especially with the accompanying lyrics from Scott Matthews: Your eyes are wider than before. So little has changed but your eyes now see much more.

Rich

The ending almost makes me forget my issues with the middle part of the episode. It’s a perfect portrayal of Rich’s situation, and Alex Arnold shines in these scenes. Everybody else is still basking in their misery, but he can’t, because Grace needs him. He tries to hand in her music coursework (“I’m Grace’s boyfriend Rich… Richard” – so much meaning in this simple decision that he needs to act more grown-up now), and points out to the teacher that Grace IS very talented because he uses the past tense – and then he goes to the hospital but can’t see her, because her father has decided that her friends can’t visit.

As the nurse puts in the CD with the song (“love is such a tender pain, all because of you”), we see how dire the situation is: Grace is in a coma, attached to a ventilator, and there are ill-boding CT scan images of her brain attached to the wall. Rich won’t be able to keep his promise not to change.

Unsorted thoughts on Franky:

First of, I really, really want to come back to this in a couple of weeks and think, hey, it all makes sense now. I am not giving up on the show or anything (like I ever could…), and I am curious how it all pans out, especially after those final shots of Franky in Roundview.

Yes, summers can change a lot. Not that school completely absorbs kids and keeps them from evolving, but it’s the space and freedom of summer holidays that allow leaps (at least it always felt this way to me – but then, for me, “leaps” was reading the entire works of one particular author, or finding new bands) But: the kind of issues that Franky had, that were so well-established throughout the show, wouldn’t just go away over the summer. She trusts Matty now because he gained her trust, but it took a really long time before she even let Grace, Liv and Mini close (some of my favourite intimacy-related scenes of the show are Grace in the first episode, using the lipstick on Franky’s reflection because she sensed that anything else would be crossing a line, and Liv, kissing her hand in Alo’s episode). There is no way that Franky could go from the cautious yet happy closeness of the finale to the full-on dancing with Luke (and also the kind of weird lack of personal space in all her other encounters). If anything, it’s a waste of potential by disregarding one of the best-written storylines of the last season. How do you go from the intimacy of “visible boxer line” to the random “sleeping half-naked on Mini”?

This is neither here nor there but the fact that Matty and Franky didn’t work out under the extreme circumstances of crossing a desert in a jeep isn’t exactly a good basis to find that she “can’t do” relationships. I have really good friends that I love to be around but if I were trapped with them in a car for weeks, we would probably do irreparable emotional harm to each other as well.

The clothes… okay, so it was explicitly stated in the first episode that Franky’s androgynous clothes were her choice, not something that was caused by lack of confidence or unhappiness. She wore the “oh wow look” clothes and decided that it wasn’t her, so she discarded them. And then the season in its beautiful awesome subtlety introduced the idea that the presence of Mini would influence her, but not completely change her personal style (better yet: they influenced each other!). Again, no trace of unhappiness = androgynous clothes. And now Franky comes crashing in with her new wardrobe, almost unrecognizable, but she is UNHAPPY and TRAPPED and ANGRY and FRUSTRATED, right? We never see her at the stage of the whole Tunisia adventure where she was still happy or hopeful. Then the accident happens because she’s gotten in a car with a drug-dealing psychopath and her boyfriend is on the run from the Moroccan police and one of her best friend is in a coma, so we see her… wearing clothes that kind of resemble what she used to wear at the beginning of the season. So where in all of this does the wardrobe department's problematic description of Franky's clothes fit in?

A lot happens to Franky this year. The more messed up her head is, the more her wardrobe suffers. The happier she feels, the better she looks.

As the series develops we'll see her take control of who she is. Gone are the button up shirts, Franky has started to embrace her sexuality and she's not afraid of exposing some flesh and finally being noticed by all.

Random notes:

Oh man, Liv, sunshine of my life.

Despite all this, I thought the acting was excellent. I liked many of the music choices. I feel like I need to think about this episode in the context of the season as a whole and I really, really can’t predict how this will turn out eventually, so this is it for now. I do predict however that I will at some point look back at all the potential interesting and engaging storylines that could have come out of this wonderful, almost perfect fifth season and weep, regardless whether the stories they choose to tell instead are moving and good.

Also, just as a slightly bitter side note: It felt kind of extra awful that the episode that invalidated the established non-straightness of two main characters also featured the highest count of homophobic remarks per minute. Well done, Bryan, it’s a dead end!

Mini: All right, ginger binge, which way?
Alo: I think this map might be a little bit shit.
Mini: This isn’t a map. It’s a multiple choice test for retarded twats.
Alo: Yeah. I confuse easily.
Mini: Yeah. You find the fucking airport Alo and I’ll check if my tits are still there. Teamwork, right?

I think we should just be grateful that they didn’t all die because they got lost in the desert. By the way, my parents were always really trusting that I wouldn’t get myself into massive trouble even when travelling alone but if I’d asked to go to Tunisia to just ramble the country with my girlfriend, I think they’d taken away my passport (“Okay, Styria it is!”). Franky’s parents seemed very protective and concerned, so unless she lied to them or ran away, I don’t really see how they would have allowed her to go. Also, good to see that Alo and Mini were able to afford the trip (I assume we are meant to believe that they worked highly paid jobs during the preceding weeks or something, but still… requires suspension disbelief! And I actually like it when Skins takes into account that the characters come from different economic backgrounds.)

“Rufus? No, he’s just imaginative!”

This is exactly how it would have happened: “It was all decided democratically. Mini chose her room, and we all drew lots.”

Liv’s dry “I don’t think Rider put on the water yet.” after Alo magically managed to break his neck after jumping into the barbecue pit was perfectly delivered by Laya Lewis.

Just “for your consideration” because I have to see more of Mini’s story and character this season to put it into context: Mini literally entangles herself from a half-naked Franky, passes by her naked ex-boyfriend and cleans herself before having sex with Alo. That’s like… pretty obvious symbolism, right? And it’s not like Skins doesn’t love its obvious symbolism, so I assume that this was intentional. It also sort of (mostly aesthetically, not sure if there are thematic parallels) reminded me of Cassie, magically ascending from the super-messy party entirely untarnished.

Loads of hints of doom throughout the episode regarding Rich and Grace:

Rich: If I die tomorrow, then I’d go happy.
Grace: What about me, I wouldn’t be happy?

“Is that what life’s all about then, not upsetting our boyfriends? Fuck’s sake.”

There were several very small moments of Mini saying kind of strange things about Franky that hinted that perhaps, not all is well between them after all: her exasperated “oh, the relief” when Franky told her Luke only drove her home (that sounded, well, jealous), the “I liked her better when she might or might not have been a lesbian.” That Liv answered with an agreeing “yeah”, but keep in mind that Liv is the only one in the group who actually knows of Mini’s “blatant girl crush”, and the final line to Nick, when he talked about Matty being obsessed with Franky and she responded with a very telling “Yeah. I wonder how that feels. Weird I suppose.” I don’t know if they are going anywhere with this and if yes, where, but it seems like Mini isn’t entirely over whatever the show has decided she was feeling last season.

“Responsible FANNY FUCKER.” Obviously a comic relief moment from a beloved guest star but also meaningful because Josie is completely overwhelmed by this responsibility and by the fact that something so awful has happened. Josie doesn’t swear, but when she does, it’s doubly effective.

Awesome wardrobe department moment: Mini's earrings perfectly matched the stripes on Nick's shirt.

Also, a note: I am hilariously awful at transcribing mumbly English, as proven by the upset/obsessed mishap, so this is an advance-apology for all the inevitable future mistakes.

Skins Webisodes Special - Just wait for someone real.

2012-01-23T20:45:00.004+01:00

Spoiler-cut and a friendly shout-out to the good people of e4! I am from the Internet, IT COUNTS AS A PLACE.

Episode 03: Grace, Rich

This is about as far removed from what I want to be doing as humanly possible.

There really isn't much to say except that this was utterly lovely. If anyone's relationship is likely to survive a zombie apocalypse, it's theirs.
"Oh, come on, Rich. I'm not brain dead." /rim shot /ugly crying
The episode doesn't exactly explain why they aren't in Morocco yet, but apparently Rich is working at a record store - and since Grace and he have decided to spend the summer together, she is trapped there as well. To pass the time, Rich has decided to give Grace a "zombie film education" (her "zombification"), presumably starting with the 1945 film classic Zombies on Broadway (since they are only now hitting the '90s).
They run out of booze which is the only thing that makes low-budget-film-school-project-all the zombies are played by my friends-movies bearable, and therefore decide to plunder Rich's bosses' treasure chest of mystery bottles.
Everything that happened afterwards was a beautifully executed parody of the genre.
Rich doesn't leave to save himself after Grace is bitten, drug-induced fantasy (with apparent real-life victims) or not.

Episode 02: Nick, Rider

Can't find a link to the video so here's the gist of it: In preparation for their trip to Morocco and because nothing has ever gone wrong when people tried to smuggle drugs across continents, Nick and Rider set out to score some from their friendly neighbourhood dealer. Since Mad Twatter presumably went diving in the Bristol harbour after destroying Jal's clarinet, we haven't actually seen the guy yet, but he is more on the hapless rather than psychopathic side of things. While Rider snorts some ominous birthday powder in the car, Nick tries to smoke the dealer under the table, which eventually succeeds, except that Nick has to awkwardly try and retrieve the booty from the guy's pockets while he's passed out which Rider (guided by a weird toy thingy from the car window that is talking to him due to drugs) naturally construes as giving a blow job to the dealer. They escape.

Substance: none. I mean, fun, yeah, but nothing really important was revealed about the characters, except that Nick seems a bit aimless (and constantly high - nothing has changed since the finale) now that he is no longer captain of the rugby team and is still hanging out with Rider, who is well-played but extremely irritating. Makes me wonder if he will continue to be the comic relief character throughout the series or if anything serious will come out of it (perhaps of his endless homophobic jokes?).

Episode 01: Alo, Mini, Liv

Alo is having a wank in Mini's room over a picture of Mini's mum. I like Alo, but considering that I set the bar for wank-joke tolerance really low with Skins US (hey, remember Stanley?), I think this counts as offence, rude. Hopefully it will be scrubbed from my mind once season six inevitably asks me to kind of ship Mini and Alo, which I think it might.
He is "the only virgin left in the group". In case you were wondering what Franky's been up to in Morocco (for context, this is relying heavily on interviews on spoilers, but as far as I understand, part of the group is in a band and somehow magically in Northern Africa, and Mini, Alo and Liv will soon follow. This is pure speculation, etc.)
Liv though. I guess Alo and Liv could be a thing too? Her reaction to Alo in Mini's room is amusement rather than revulsion - and she is more helpful and... "tactical".
"I don't mingle with goths". Obviously horrible things happen when Rich isn't there to judge and huff.
Liv and Mini watch the inevitable car crash as if Alo's exploit into goth territory was a programme on a nature channel.
"This is for Raven, to prove to her that gingers can be rock stars too."
"You used to baby sit me when I was ten". That went about as well as JJ's adventure.
The scene in Mini's bedroom is an awesome call-back to the scene with Liv, Nick and Mini, except that we are now in the finale-afterglow of happiness (for now, at least), so there are no complicated triangles evolving from the bird view of the sleeping arrangements. And it is also sort of a nice parallel to Mini's inability to tell her friends and Nick about not having had sex, because Alo trusts Liv enough to be honest with her.
"Just wait for someone real. I promise you, it's worth it." Aw. I think Mini's smile is a combination of many feelings: knowing that Liv is right, sort of admitting that she likes Alo (as a friend, at least, otherwise he wouldn't even be in her room), and perhaps marvelling at the fact that things are kind of okay at the moment (again, for now.)
!!!!
!!!!!

Reaction Post - That's not much of a trade-off.

2012-01-16T17:03:00.000+01:00

The Good Wife: 3x13 Bitcoin for Dummies.

Super-short because so much other stuff is going on (jfc Skins)!

I liked the case-of-the-week, much better handled than the The Social Network rip-off. Bitcoin is an actual thing but I do not know if the legal issues described in the episode were ever discussed in court. Jason Biggs plays a lawyer representing an anonymous client who created Bitcoin and refuses to give him name to the Treasury Department. L&G takes two separate courses in defending him: one is proving in court that Bitcoin is not a currency but a commodity and therefore there is no case (this fails), the other is Kalinda trying to find the actual inventor since Treasury is going after Biggs as the creator (this also fails, entertainingly). In the end, the case is won by proving that Treasury is still trying to find the actual "Mr Bitcoin" and the lawyer is therefore not their target (or something along those lines). Kalinda's hunt and the three people who kept her on her feet was entertaining (potential Mrs Bitcoin flirted, potential Mr Bitcoin fell in love, Mr Biggs was commended in the end for being more intelligent than he looked, which was one of my favourite scenes because it is nice to see that Kalinda enjoys being up against people who are as smart and cunning as she is, at least when the stakes aren't too high).
"I recorded it by accident. Just got a new phone. And I didn't know how to turn it off."
The entire sequence of Kalinda following her spidey senses to the potential Mrs Bitcoin and the subsequent To The Toilet! was also entertaining. Is there a clause in every guest star's contract to stare at Kalinda longingly, or does it just come naturally?
Diane's reason for taking the case in spite of their decision to no longer poke the bear or maybe not stick their necks out too far (Will mixes metaphors when he's tired, poor guy) - "we swore off the ones based off idealism. This one has cash. and I know how that sounds."
"Do you guys at treasury get a lot of dates?"
"I must say, I am a sucker for Occam's razor."
Zack explains Bitcoin via a cartoon: "See mom: Pretty colors. Fun, right?"
Also in a subplot, Alicia witnesses her son and Nisa saying "I love you" to each other (which, wow, perfect mirroring of the disaster that was Will saying it accidentally and actually meaning it a couple of episodes ago!) - and tells her son not to get involved in a serious relationship while he is so young (?). Zack, after hearing her arguments and being weirded out by them (and asking Alicia if this is about race...), sneaks Nisa into his dad's apartment, obviously, except the elder Mrs Florrick is just randomly doing the dishes there because what else would she be doing now that she isn't taking care of the kids anymore. Mrs Florrick gives him the very same speech that he heard from Alicia, except her biggest issue is that Zack has ascended to a private school while poor Nisa is still stuck in public school ("So how is public school", she asked, concerned). Zack ponders this for a while and realizes that he can use this because there is barely anything that Alicia hates more than the idea of having anything in common with Peter's mum.
Relevant to current financial crisis things: "Only in America is greater abstraction more desirable"
One of Alicia's witnesses in court was the actual Jim Cramer, a guy who apparently has a show about mad money but I only know him because Jon Stewart made him look like an irresponsible fool on the Daily Show. Also, according to the prosecutor, he sometimes "clenches a knife between his teeth."
Elsbeth continues to play Wendy and Co well, actually inviting them to a very Wire-y building site for a meeting ("they found asbestos in my office!" - Oh dear, I hope Fantasia is okay!), and manages to weasel the name of three judges they're after out of Wendy. Turns out that what Wendy does when she has her back against a wall is tell Dana to start using Kalinda (is this really ALL she has?) - which Dana does, with the help of a document a certain L.A. lawyer from last episode must have sent over.
This is also interesting because obviously Wendy can't openly admit that she is really after Peter, so not only is she desperately trying not to lose the game against Elsbeth, she is also kind of playing Cary and Dana at the same time.
Diane seems genuinely concerned about him: she asks Kalinda to keep her in the loop and Kalinda immediately jumps to the conclusion that Diane wants to know "when to cut her losses", because that's the world that Kalinda inhabits, it's all a zero-sum game and MAD - "No, I wanna know when to help", assures Diane.
Kalinda is helping Will, who is quietly panicking about all of this, realizing that he might end up in jail after all ("That's making you more human", says Kalinda, "That's not much of a trade-off", he responds). He admits that a friend of his forgave his betting debts and that this might easily be construed as exchanging money for access to judges, even if he didn't think of it as corruption when it happened (which... is not a great defence). She promises to help, except...
The document Dana shows her, and threatens to release, is the very rider she and Alicia were desperately looking for last episode. The rider that may or may not have been one of the documents David made her sign as part of her divorce preparation thingy. The rider that, if the signature was in fact forged (which can easily be proven with an analysis) would mean Alicia's license and a law suit against her for perjury. So Kalinda... has a choice to make ("People always say choice when I think they mean ultimatum."). She can collect incriminating information on Will and save Alicia, or she can continue to help Will, and see Alicia's life destroyed. It's perfectly timed too, since Will just asked her to find every piece of potentially damaging information in their old case files, and she has just found a wonderful example where a bench case magically went their way ("sometimes the ball bounces funny", says Will, while Kalinda drowns in her own conflict). Elsbeth leaves the room so they can quietly disappear the file, and Kalinda walks out with it... and later, she'll give it to Dana, looking like the world is just about to end because really, it's not actually a choice when Alicia is in danger, is it (the one thing Blake Calamar got completely right: "It’s about Alicia. That’s what you care about". Except that Wendy Scott-Carr with her back against the wall is dangerous, but Kalinda... Well, Kalinda is all claws and teeth when she is in danger. Kalinda smashes windows with baseball bats and assumes a new identity - so I predict that Dana will eventually rue her sincere "thank you" before Kalinda walked out of the bar.
Out of context foreboding from the mouth of one Mr Bitcoin: "Real's gonna change. Just watch." DUM DUM DUM.
The song played in the first and the final scene is Magic Arrow by Timber Timbre (also previously used effectively on Breaking Bad).

My So-Called Life - Table of Contents

2012-01-15T20:24:00.000+01:00

Pilot
Dancing in the Dark
Guns and Gossip
Father Figures
The Zit
The Substitute
Why Jordan Can't Read
Strangers in the House
Halloween
Other People's Mothers
Life of Brian
Self-Esteem
Pressure
On the Wagon
So-Called Angels
Resolutions
Betrayal
Weekend
With Great Dreams Comes Great Responsibility

My So-Called Life - No, I meant every word.

2012-01-15T20:23:00.000+01:00

My So-Called Life: 1x19 With Great Dreams Comes Great Responsibility.

In the dream I keep having about Jordan Catalano, I'm trying to catch up with him. But it's hard, because there's something wrong with the floor. Sometimes my father is there. Sometimes my great aunt Gertrude's funeral kind of gets mixed in with it. The end of the dream is always the same: I catch up with him. I yell and scream how he hurt and betrayed me. How I can never forgive him. He just stands there like someone caught in a storm who stopped caring how wet he gets. Then I wake up. The storm of words still pounds through my body. Hatred can become like food. It gives you this energy. You can live off it.

Thus begins the final episode of My So-Called Life.

This is one of my favourite voice-overs. The dream itself is a surprisingly accurate depiction of how dreams really are: things get mixed up, people get mixed up, the impossible rooms that defy the laws of physics – and emotionally, being confronted with unresolved conflicts again and again, haunted by them until you find some way to find closure. I like that Angela admits that there is a selfish aspect to leaving this conflict unresolved too: as long as she doesn’t confront Jordan, she can bask in her hatred (the word “hate” itself seems to me like a bit of an exaggeration, but it fits Angela’s character that she would choose it), she can continue to feel like the wronged victim of Jordan’s betrayal. (and Rayanne’s – isn’t it telling that she doesn’t even mention Rayanne?)

The underlying theme of the episode is the idea that dreams reveal unresolved conflicts, desires and fears. Patty dreams of a high school sweetheart just as she fears that her marriage might be in danger (despite never openly mentioning to it). Delia dreams of Rickie and toys with the possibility of admitting her feelings.

The next step is what the characters do once they become conscious of their dreams and interpret what they might mean. Delia asks Sharon if Rickie is even available (assuming that she would know because she is, like, friends with Rayanne Graff: “I'm not friends with Rayanne Graff. I'm not!” protests Sharon). Patty calls the guy, finding a plausible excuse because she is vaguely in the restaurant business and could help Hallie and Graham, who are just facing the daunting prospect of charming investors. Angela doesn’t really do anything, but surprisingly, Jordan tries to re-connect – by telling her everything that is new in his life (Frozen Embryos is Residue now…) – and Angela tries to ignore him because she isn’t willing to confront him, and she is even less ready to pretend that they are okay, that they can just pick up where they left off. Sharon is brilliant in the scene as a supportive friend – essentially shooting him a glare of death to make him go away. Also, Sharon’s dream: “Last night, I dreamed that Rayanne Graff and I were appearing in this water ballet together, for, like, charity.” She is receiving subconscious messages about being friends with Rayanne…

Brian – Angela - Jordan

The centre of the episode is another recent and unexpected relationship, though: Brian and Jordan. Brian accidentally stumbled into helping Jordan academically and if it weren’t for Angela, they could easily be friends, because both (without articulating it, but instinctually) realize that they are different enough to provide something important for each other – and I also get the sense from their scenes that they enjoy hanging out with each other because they’ve found this common level for communication. But then there’s Angela, so things aren’t simple.

Jordan: Forget the story. I can't think about some crappy story. My life sucks too much.
Brian: How come?
Jordan: Because she hates me. And I deserve it. You know who I mean, right?
Brian: Yeah.
Jordan: Today, after Katimski's, I tried to explain to her that I was, you know, sorry, or whatever.
Brian: So, what happened?
Jordan: Nothing. Uh, I didn't know what to say.
Brian: Say you're sorry. Wait, you can go up to any girl and get her phone number, yet
you're afraid to tell Angela Chase you're sorry?
Jordan: So?
Brian: Nothing. It's just ironic.
Jordan: Well, so what? What's ‘ironic’?
Brian: Um, when you realize the, like, component of weirdness in a situation.
Jordan: Help me, Brain. Help me figure out something good to say to Angela.
Brian: No. Look, you did an undefendable thing, okay? No one can change that. I mean, you have to live with it. It's like you created your own prison, and now you have to exist in it.
Jordan: That's perfect. Give me some more stuff like that.
Brian: No. No, absolutely not. The Phonics manual does not cover that type of situation.
Jordan: The Phonics manual?
Brian: I cannot be involved. Whatever you say or don't say to Angela Chase is completely between you and her.
Jordan: Okay. Relax. I'll figure it out myself.
Brian: Fine. That's actually fine. I mean…
Jordan: Good.
Brian: You figure out what you want to say to her, and I'll do some Calculus, and we'll just work independently.
Jordan: Deal.
Brian: What have you got so far?

There is so much to this, really: There’s Brian, who sincerely likes Jordan but knows that the only way their relationship will work if they keep Angela out of this. And then he voices this feeling he has, this frustration over being trapped with all his emotions without any chance of ever articulating them to Angela, and while he provides this perfect sentence for Jordan, he realizes that this is a way to do it sneakily without suffering the consequences. If he helps Jordan, he can finally lift this burden without any fall-out and he can tell himself that he is acting altruistically, helping a friend rather than being selfish.

Jordan: I did an undefendable thing. I created my own prison. And I have to exist in it. Maybe I had a wish, or whatever, to punish you. An unconscious wish. You've heard of them, right?
Angela: Yeah, I think so. I can't believe what you just said was really amazing.
Jordan: I know.
Angela: Okay.
Jordan: Okay, what?
Angela: Okay, now we can have a serious talk.
Jordan: We just did.
Angela: Oh, come on, you can't hit a person with something that profound and expect that to be the end of the discussion.
Jordan: You can't?
[…]
Jordan: I was so close yesterday, but it wasn't enough. She's, like, starved or something. It's gotta be written down so I can't screw it up.
Brian: Well, so write her a letter.
…
Brian: No. No, I am not writing a letter to Angela Chase for you. I can't.

So Brian pens a letter, because of course he does. He also tells Rickie about the whole thing and Rickie is the emotionally most intelligent person around, so naturally he immediately exposes Brian’s hypocrisy and tells him that this isn’t selflessness.

Rickie: Brian, I don't believe this. You're using Jordan Catalano.
Brian: What? He's using me.
Rickie: Yeah, but you're using him, too. To, like, express your true feelings towards Angela. Or whatever.
Brian: Oh my God, you're right.

The realization doesn’t keep him from writing the letter though.

Dear Angela,

I know in the past I've caused you pain, and I'm sorry, and I'll always be sorry, until the day I die. And I hate this pen I'm holding, because I should be holding you. I hate this paper under my hand, because it isn't you. I even hate this letter, because it's not the whole truth.

Because the whole truth is so much more than a letter can even say. If you want to hate me, go ahead. If you want to burn this letter, do it. You could burn the whole world down. You could tell me to go to hell. I'd go, if you wanted me to. And I'd send you a letter from there.
Sincerely,
Jordan Catalano

Poor Brian. The only we he gets to apologize for the things he has done (and I think he thinks of being secretly in love with someone as a form of betrayal too) is by committing another betrayal. He witnesses the effect his words have on Angela in the most tragic way possible when she expresses that “there's so much more to this person than I ever dreamed!" (because this is basically what he has wanted Angela to realize about him for, like, forever). Jordan even tries to reveal to her that he didn’t actually write the letter but… Angela kisses him first. And Brian watches from his prison, trapped.

Rickie: Oh, so they're back together, huh?
Brian: Yep. Of course, she's still gonna die someday. We're all gonna die.
Rickie: Brian? Did you do something, or something? Brian, what did you do?
Brian: I wrote this letter... to her.
Rickie: Oh my God, and she thinks he wrote it? Brian, you have to tell her.
Brian: No, look. I mean, what difference does it make? So, they happen to be, like, together. So what? SO WHAT? I mean, if you, like, analyze why certain people end up with certain other people, it'll make you want to kill yourself.
Rickie: Tell her.
Brian: No, it wouldn't be right. See, he asked me for help. I helped him. I can't go back on that.

This is also a sign that Brian has grown up a lot this year. The person we met at the beginning of the show – well, he wouldn’t be in the position of writing the letter in the first place, but he also would have taken any chance presented to him to reveal something negative about Jordan Catalano. Brian Krakow now has friends, and he understands the value of friendship.

Patty

The episode also rather elegantly mirrors the Brian-Angela-Jordan triangle in Patty’s storyline. Not that Patty-Tony is exactly the same as Angela-Jordan – we really can’t predict how this may end, after all, considering that we still know so little about Jordan Catalano – but there is a sense that Angela, maybe for the first time, really understands something that Patty is going through when she prepares for her meeting with Tony.

Danielle: So, do you love him more than you love Dad?
Angela: Danielle!
Patty: No, honey, that's okay.
Angela: No, it's a ridiculous question.
Danielle: Well, that kind of thing gives me nightmares.
Patty: What kind of thing?
Danielle: That you and Daddy could get divorced.
Angela: Danielle, she's gonna see him for one hour, to talk about restaurants.
Patty: Angela.
Angela: Well, I mean, a person can have feelings for someone, even if they're not, like, THE person any more.
Patty: Sweetie, Tony Poole is someone that I knew long, long ago.
Angela: Long, long ago. Like a fairy tale.
Patty: That's right. But he's not who I chose to make my life with. I chose your dad.
Angela: But did you, like, love him?
Patty: I'm not sure. With Tony, it was, it was crazy. We really did some pretty crazy and wild things back then. What can I say? But, uh, it's always tempting to lose yourself with someone, who's maybe lost themselves. But eventually, you want reality.
Danielle: That makes sense.

Angela understands this idea of feelings that don’t just disappear – this is the lesson she learned two episodes ago, when all this feeling of freedom came to nothing once Jordan slept with Rayanne. Patty explanation in part maybe fits Angela’s attraction to Jordan: this idea of “losing” yourself with someone, because so much of Angela’s earlier scenes with Jordan were about how little they share, how little of the Angela we saw in all her other relationships appeared when she was with him. And Danielle is utterly brilliant in this scene too because she realizes more than Angela that Patty and Graham are having problems, because she has them more attention. It also reveals a profound difference between the sisters: Angela is surrounded by friends who have broken families, and yet takes her own for granted; Danielle constantly fears that her family might fall apart. And then, after Graham reacts indifferently to the idea of his wife going on a date with an ex-boyfriend, Hallie of all people points out to him that it would be the more considerate reaction to pretend to be jealous. Hallie may be tragically in love, but she is also a fucking awesome mate – and we never see Graham with friends (his brother doesn’t count), so it just seems like a relief that he has a different outlet to articulate his feelings. A relief that is promptly undermined when they convince the investors and embrace in a moment of happiness and there is this tiny flutter of expectancy and excitement on her face (shout-out moment for Lisa Waltz! This show had such a perfect cast) before Graham barely restrains himself from kissing her, and afterwards they both know that this maybe won’t end well after all.

Rickie

Brian: Boy, she really likes you.
Rickie: I can't even believe it. I mean, it's such, like, an unfamiliar experience. I mean, do you realize how much easier my life would be... if I could just like her back? I mean, Brian, this could be my chance. To be straight.

I’ve absolutely adored how the show handled Rickie’s sexuality, this undercurrent of sadness over watching all his friends fall in love and how he never really expressed how much harder it is for him because having a crush on Jordan Catalano comes with completely different consequences and a horrible lack of possibilities compared to Angela’s crush on Jordan, and because he could never ever tell the new guy what he feels… and then, the final episode explicitly acknowledged it.

Rickie: Delia? Maybe we should go somewhere sometime?
Delia: Okay.
Rickie: You know, like, to a movie or something.
Delia: I'd like that.
Rickie: Because, um, I, I really think that we'd be good together.
Delia: Okay, but you're gay, right?
Rickie: Well, I, you know, I…
Delia: Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't…
Rickie: No, it, it, it's okay.
Delia: That came out so rude.
Rickie: No, see I, I try not to, um no, I, don't like, uh… Yeah, I'm gay. I just don't usually say it like that.
Delia: How do you usually say it?
Rickie: I don't usually say it. I mean, I've actually never said it out loud.
Delia: Wow. I feel kind of honored. I have to be honest. I have, like, the biggest crush on you.
Rickie: Another first.
Delia: See, I've pretty much figured it out. It's partly because, I think you're the most fantastic person. Plus, you're an awesome dancer. And partly that Brian Krakow really hurt me. I mean, I'm sorry, I know he's like a friend of yours and all, but he is the most self-centered, low-down dog of all time. He uses girls, then like tosses them aside. I guess I'm just... sort of in the mood to have a crush on somebody where it can't hurt too much.
Rickie: Be my guest. Delia, if I were attracted to girls, I'd be attracted to you.

Delia is as observant and analytical (but not in the same way as Angela: not to the extent that she gets caught up in it, but that it provides her with perspective and a rationality that Angela doesn’t really have) as Rickie is. I love that she kind of navigates around the danger of Rickie using her to feel normal and then acknowledges that she is also kind of using him, as a safe crush after the disaster with Brian, and that she provides this safe environment for Rickie to come out for the first time (we don’t really know how Angela came to the assumption that he was bisexual before the pilot?).

Water ballet

I always prefer stories about friendship over pretty much everything else. Sharon and Rayanne… are the unlikeliest of friends. They are opposites of each other. They spent the first half of the season disliking each other on principle because they competed for Angela and suspected each other of taking Angela away. And then they realized that they had this one extremely important connection: being able to talk about some issues with each other that they couldn’t discuss with anyone else, and that they managed to do this without being judgemental and genuinely helping each other. They are friends already because they meet the highest standard of friendship – they are supportive of each other, protective even, occasionally, and they trust each other far enough to talk about the intimate details of their lives – and yet, they’ve both been extremely hesitant to call each other friends, mostly because they still hold on to the idea that THEY CAN’T BE FRIENDS, because Sharon would never be friends with Rayanne Graff and Rayanne would never be friends with Sharon Cherski.

Rayanne: Want to know something really laughable? I have no friends. I mean, Angela Chase. Forget it, we obviously cannot discuss that. Rickie Vasquez… totally not my friend. Tino… not dependable. You're probably thinking, ‘So what? You, like, deserve to have no friends.’ I mean, that is what you're thinking, isn't it?
Sharon: I have never met anyone like you, you know. You will say anything, and a person can say anything to you. You're just, like, non-shockable, or something. It's kind of...
Rayanne: It's refreshing, isn't it?
Sharon: Yeah, it is kind of... refreshing.
Rayanne: Refreshing.
Sharon: So you do... have a friend. I mean, maybe not the one you want, but...
Rayanne: I screwed up.
Sharon: Duh squared.

This is the moment when Sharon sees how upset Rayanne is (and she knows even before Rayanne explains herself, really), and makes the choice of comforting her and saying this one thing that she never admitted openly. And awesomely, Sharon is the one who starts playing with Rayanne’s hair, because usually Rayanne is the physical friend who immediately hugs and kisses. It’s lovely. It also made me bash my head against the wall because of all the lost potential.

Beginnings and Endings

Rickie ends up telling Angela that Brian wrote the letter. He inadvertently causes pain when Angela pretends that she knew all along and he tells her he thought she would figure it out, and she realizes that she didn’t, and wonders what it says about her in addition to the shock and pain she feels anyway.

Meanwhile, Jordan admits his feelings for Angela to Patty (because ironically – is that the right word? – Jordan ends up in front of her door while Tony cancels).

Jordan: It's like you think you're safe, or something. Because you can just walk away anytime. Because you don't, like, need her. You don't need anyone. But the thing you didn't realize is… you're wrong.

This makes me wish so much that we’d have gotten a chance to get to know Jordan better. Jordan has an abusive father. Red is so important to him because having a car in part means not being trapped in a situation that he can’t handle. He can always leave, and this is essentially how he approaches all his relationships – with one eye always on the exit, except Angela helped him face some of his issues. She got Brian to help him with school. She doesn’t constantly under-estimate him. He likes her and he needs her: but so does Brian Krakow.

Angela and Brian meet once again in front of her house, because that’s what Brian always does, both literally and symbolically: cycling around her.

Angela: Uh, Brian? Brian, look at me. That letter I told you about. Rickie said you wrote it. And I have to know because…
Brian: Know what? There's nothing to know. Okay, what, what Rickie probably meant is that, see, Jordan Catalano asked me to, like, proofread it for grammatical errors.
Angela: You proofread a love letter? Is this like a game to you?
Brian: Um, hardly.
Angela: But you admit that you were involved.
Brian: I'm not admitting anything.
Angela: This is a joke, right? That the, the two of... Oh God. I can't believe I fell for it. It's obviously a total lie.
Brian: No, I meant every word. I mean, the person who wrote it meant every word. Probably.
Angela: Brian?
Brian: I didn't write it.
Angela: But Brian, you said…
Brian: Forget what I said. Forget this whole conversation!
Angela: How?
Brian: You liked it, though, right? It made you, like, happy?
Angela: Yeah.
Brian: Because that's probably all that, you know, matters.
Angela: To who?
Brian: To, you know, the person... who wrote it.
Jordan: Angela. Hey.
Angela: Hey.
Jordan: Hey, Brain.
Brian: Hi. Hey.
Jordan: Come on, let's go. Don't worry, your mom said it's okay. See you, Brain.
Brian: See you.

And that’s how it ends. Angela shoots Brian a look from Red, a look that really says everything, and then Jordan and Angela take off and Brian is left behind alone, but maybe, just maybe, no longer trapped in a prison of his own making.

Random notes:

Jordan: Can't believe we have to use all those words in a sentence. I mean, not all in the same sentence, but, um, still.

Also, BRAIN. And I really enjoyed how Jared Leto played this too because there was always this sense that Jordan actually does this out of a very understated and subtle sense of humour – and Devon Sawa’s reaction to it, playing Brian as realizing essentially that whatever he does, Jordan isn’t going to stop calling him brain, so he doesn’t even bother correcting him and yet he still isn’t sure if Jordan is just taking the piss or dead serious. It’s hilarious.

Brian asks Sharon about Delia because apparently he has come to the conclusion that the only way to get over Angela is by being with someone else, but Sharon shoots down all his hopes. They have this really loveable sibling relationship. And Sharon’s glare of death also works perfectly on him.

Rayanne: You think I'm unhappy, me?

Rickie: Well, in my humble opinion, yes.

Rayanne: Don't say, ‘in my humble opinion’. That's Angela talk. That's how Angela Chase talks. What, are you trying to depress me? For your information, I happen to be a very happy, up person. What are you looking at?

Brian: Nothing.

Rickie: Ignore her. She's just a naturally happy, up person.

These are my notes on Patty’s dream of Tony (Angela thinks he’s cute, and “I can't trust your judgement on cuteness.”, because mum and stuff)

Why does she dream about Princess Diana.

And why is Princess Diana played by a dude.

Tony is totally a Jordan Catalano though.

Like, genetically predisposed to fall for idiots.

Things that fed into my eternal love for Sharon Cherski:

Angela: She dreamed about Rickie, my Rickie?

Sharon: So what do you think? I mean, does he ever, you know, with girls? Because she is a real sweetie.

Brian: So, what's new? I mean, is anything, like, new with anybody we both, like, know, or anything?

OH BRIAN. YOUR GIRL CRUSH IS SO BLATANT.

Also in my notes:

And as always I am entertained by the fact that nobody told Claire how to fake!kiss.

Or she chose to ignore it.

I MEAN. WATER BALLET. THEIR INITIAL CONNECTION IS OVER BEING ABLE TO TALK ABOUT SEX. PLAYING WITH HAIR. HOW COULD I POSSIBLY NOT SHIP THIS.

Also…

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

My So-Called Life - It's truly amazing. I have the power to be invisible.

2012-01-10T19:22:00.000+01:00

My So-Called Life: 1x18 Weekend.

My whole life is waiting for something to happen.

I've sort of cautiously attempted not to get too involved in the show and to and keep a critical distance, knowing fully well that this moment would come eventually: Weekend is the penultimate episode of the show, and it is in many ways a comedic break from many of the serious issues and complicated relationships without completely disregarding them for the sake of pure entertainment. And yet, I can’t completely enjoy it because I know that there is not enough time to resolve all the conflicts, that one episode from this, so many things will be left open since the gods of renewal were just as unjust and cruel in 1995 as they are now – and that attempt was futile anyway, to not let myself care too much about the characters, because the writing and the acting make it impossible not to. It’s like Skins – history teaches that caring about specific characters and relationships comes at a high risk because both have a bodycount – but the writing and the acting draws you in nevertheless, resolutions be damned, bring on the tears.

MSCL never really traps the viewer in one character’s perspective though – Angela narrates and contributes her thoughts, but she isn’t necessarily the only lens, nor was Brian in his episode. What this aspect of the show adds is an interpretation of events coming from the characters that reveals more about them – Angela’s interior monologues often said more about her situation when you paid attention to the things she didn’t say, for example. Hearing Brian’s thoughts hinted at the fact that he is just as trapped in over-analysis as Angela is, but they are sadly trapped in that awkward phase that makes it difficult to realize that someone you’ve known all your life but never really been friends with might have a similar interior life (the moment I did separates my teenage self from whatever it is I am now in my mind).

Weekend provides Danielle’s voice overs – and in addition to finally glimpsing the inner thoughts of the invisible Chase (who spends a not really surprising amount of time pondering her own invisibility: “My life is different people kicking me out of different rooms.”), it also kind of explores the well-known Chase household in a different manner. Patty treats her two daughters differently because they are of a different age: she tends to be overprotective and over-concerned about Angela (always struggling with her own recollections of being that age vs. what she thinks her actions as a mother should be), but at the same time, she under-estimates Danielle. Danielle is in a position to overhear conversations that Angela would never be able to witness (not that she would want to), and at an age where other people’s drama is more interesting than her own. She isn’t yet in the phase of self-involvement in which everything is blown out of proportion, but she does understand much more than others think. Danielle notices the tiny fractures in her parents’ marriage (as Camille’s concern about Hallie Lowenthal grows and Patty pretends that everything is fine). We don’t really know how privy she is to what is going on in Angela’s life, but presumably, she does know much more than Angela thinks.

And there is a lot to know. Rickie is still living with his English teacher. Angela and Rayanne aren’t talking to each other and Angela is trying to avoid any contact – and Rickie attempts to stay out of it (“Rayanne, don't put me in the middle of this, okay?”), but it’s not really working. The situation is more frustrating for Rayanne because she feels like she’s lost all her friends, not just one. When Patty leaves her daughters alone to go on a weekend trip with Graham, Graham’s brother and the new girlfriend (surprise!), Rayanne finds a lame excuse to come over and, in one of the most inspired plot twists to bring about a bottle episodes (technically it’s only half a bottle episode, but still…) ever, manages to cuff herself to Patty and Graham’s bed with a pair of handcuffs that Camille left Patty to “reconnect” with Graham (“Looks like I might be staying a little longer than I thought.” She tells Angela, not entirely unhappy.)

Since one of the points of bottle episodes is to explore the relationships of the characters by trapping them together without a way out (arguably, the concept is meaningless in the case of MSCL because all the show does is trap characters to observe them closely – since they can’t get out of high school until they graduate), the eventual arrival of the missing characters is inevitable. Sharon comes with her mother, who has been tasked by Patty from far away to remove the incriminating cuffs, and while Angela does her best to keep her from wandering upstairs (“Why? That is so exactly the point. Why? Because of respect, for elders, which I just feel is totally lost in, like, today's world. So, what did you need?” – she also discusses the unfairness of the 30-day exchange policy: “I MEAN, IS THAT JUSTICE?”), Sharon slowly realizes that something is amiss, especially when she witnesses the “Rayanne fainted and is suffering from a miracle sickness” charade that the others have meanwhile prepared. There is an interesting serious moment when Camille sees Rayanne – she asks Angela in private if this is “the same Rayanne that has the drinking problem”, and there is this flicker of disapproval in Angela’s face when Camille reduces Rayanne to this. She still feels protective of her and it bothers her to hear someone who has no idea what is going on talk about Rayanne like she is nothing more than a problem.

Rayanne: Rickie, will you go down and help Sharon and, uh, Danielle with lunch? I need to talk to Angela alone.
Rickie: Uh, sure.
Rayanne: Look Angela, I know we're not that close right now, but I just...
Angela: Look, I don't want to get into this right now, all right?
Rayanne: Get into what?
Angela: Some big discussion about what happened between you and Jordan Catalano. Because the truth is, is that it happened and nothing can change that. I don't want to talk about it.
Rayanne: Neither do I.
Angela: Oh, so why did you ask Rickie to leave?
Rayanne: I have to go to the bathroom. I need you to get me a jar.
Angela: I can't believe you.

This conversation is the elephant in the room that they both don’t want to talk about – Rayanne because she isn’t good at explaining her feelings to anyone, and Angela because she is still too hurt. Instead of tackling their issues, they focus on the problem at hand – the handcuffs – and of course, the person they decide to bring in is Brian Krakow (“When he walked through the door, part of his arm touched my shoulder. I thought I would faint, I mean swoon. […] He was a genius. I had goosebumps. Just watching him think.”)

Brian’s solutions: that one piece of equipment that any normal dad except his has in the garage (Graham doesn’t, though), the hardware store (on Monday), a similar pair of hand cuffs (hey! Sharon knows exactly where to get them!)

Brian: Hey, I don't even know where the Pleasure Center is.
Sharon: Don't worry. I'll show you.

Unfortunately, the other thing they find apart from a new pair of cuffs is Sharon’s boy toy, who then hilariously witnesses and misunderstands Brian’s attempts to free Rayanne (“Krakow, stop, it's too big. It won't fit.”)

Rayanne: Wait, come in.
Danielle: You're awake?
Rayanne: I can't sleep. Too bored to sleep. Could you do me a favor?
Danielle: I could for money.
Rayanne: Girl after my very own heart. Okay, here's what you do. You go down to the liquor cabinet. You give me a bottle. Anything brown. I'll give you a dollar.
Danielle: Nope.
Rayanne: Two dollars.
Danielle: It's wrong to drink.
Rayanne: You have a real miserable side to you, you know that?
Danielle: My parents say you're a bad influence. I heard them talking about the things you do. Why do you do them?
Rayanne: I don't know. See, okay, when I look at myself, I see everything in, like, slow motion, and I think, "Something has to happen." Only, it never does. So I have to make it happen.
Danielle: Wow.

Is this the first time ever that Rayanne EXPLAINED herself to anyone and tried to articulate this gnawing feeling inside of her? This reminded me so much of Cook, too – this feeling that things just have to keep moving, even when the direction is ultimately destructive. “You just burn, kid.” I think it’s telling that Rayanne never shared this with Angela, that she chooses a… stranger, because there will be no consequences if she tells Danielle. At the same time, the scene is beautiful because the episode started with Danielle articulating her frustration about how nothing ever happens - and here's Rayanne, who makes things happen, with both exciting and terrible results.

The next morning, Brian finally figures it out and manages to at least free her from the bed post, if not from the cuffs – and Rayanne immediately decides to run.

Angela: You're leaving?
Rayanne: I can still make something out of this weekend.
Angela: Don't you dare leave now.
Rayanne: Hey, come on, hands off.
Angela: My parents will never trust me again.
Rayanne: Come on, now you're crossing the line, girlfriend.
Angela: I can't believe you! You're like this curse that's just, just destroying my life! You can't just walk out and expect us to clean up after you. You're like this living, breathing bad luck omen!
Rayanne: Don't mince words! Tell me how you feel.
Sharon: Rayanne, calm down.
Rickie: Hold it together. Angela!
Angela: I can't take it anymore.
Sharon: Rayanne, just don't talk!

Again, things don’t get out of control completely because they need to clean up in time before Graham and Patty come home. It looks like the aftermath of the wild party that you would expect from teenagers being left alone.

When Rayanne finally does leave, freed from the cuffs at last because they manage to get the key from Patty unobserved, Angela and she share a moment that hints at a future reconciliation: they agree not to get in any big discussion, and part peacefully, but they’re still far from being friends again.

Patty: Go to my room, excuse me, I am an adult!

Warren: That is a judgement call, ma'am.

While the adolescents behave differently than you’d expect - the Chase’s house remains without loud music, a keg, hoards of destructive teenage vandals (Brian’s attempts to free Rayanne don’t actually count as vandalism… just lack of talent) – the cultured holiday that Patty had in mind comes apart at the seams. For one, the episode establishes a conflict between her and Neil’s new girlfriend, Cheryl – and then escalates this conflict so that Patty ends up being the only responsible adult, a role that she doesn’t even necessarily want.

Patty: Well, I'm sure you could do anything you put your mind to.
Cheryl: I mean, you've got this great job, you've got this husband and children. It must be so satisfying. Like with me, there's so many, like, paths I could choose. Every single possibility of life is, like, open to me. But, you, I mean, your choices have been made. Your life is totally settled. It must really be like... comforting.
Patty: Yeah, it is.

The realization that Patty is coming to is that she probably wants some of that freedom as well – the freedom she provides for Graham, by giving him a chance to realize his dreams. The same comforting settled life can easily become a prison, and it isn’t as safe and sound as Cheryl makes it sound, considering that Graham is currently tiptoeing around the edges of an affair.

So when the children get drunk and tease the mother about how sober and serious she is, she lets all her frustration and restraint go and gets completely, spectacularly wasted, being-carried-out-of-the-restaurant-half-naked-wasted. The next morning, she regrets the spectacle she made, but she also finally at least hints at the feelings that caused it:

Patty: What about what matters to me? I mean, there I am, I'm waiting, and I'm waiting, and I'm worrying, and I'm feeling like the minutes are ticking by, and then you tell me that you're late because you had to look under her hood?
Graham: Wait a minute, what are we talking about here?

Random notes:

I grew up watching ER, so seeing Laura Innes playing pretty much the exact opposite to the stern and dry Dr Kerry Weaver was… interesting.

Angela: Mom, I've been alone with Danielle before.

Patty: Yes, and I can't help but recall the time you put her in the dryer.

Angela: Oh Mom, that was so long ago! I can't believe you're still talking about that. Anyway, she begged me to do it.

Patty: Whosever idea it was, I don't wanna come home and find anyone in an appliance.

As tragic as the whole dance that Patty and Graham do around the elephant in the room is, the subtext of their conversations about Hallie Lowenthal is still hilarious:

Patty: You looked under Hallie Lowenthal's hood?

Graham: Well, I couldn't just leave her there. You would not believe Hallie Lowenthal's engine. It is held together by string, literally.

Graham also forgot to mention that Hallie is no longer safely with fiancé.

I absolutely love that Danielle defies all expectations when it comes to her reaction to Angela’s friends: she doesn’t find Jordan attractive but has a huge crush on Brian Krakow, and Rickie is the cool friend.

Rayanne: I wouldn't mind spending a few hours here with someone special. I love sex on a different bed.

Which is of course exactly the same thing Graham said to Patty before not getting laid due to awkward sex noises from the other room.

Danielle: I'm not leaving. I live here.

Angela: Great. Wonderful. There's gotta be a key. Find it. And I'll explain this to you later. Like when you're thirty.

Angela: I'm telling you, those handcuffs do not belong to my parents.

Sharon: Of course not.

Rickie: Oh, never.

This is funny because they belong to Sharon’s parents.

Angela: Weekend from hell.

Danielle (voice over): That was the best weekend of my entire life.

Angela: By the way, thanks.

Danielle: So, what are we doing next weekend?

Angela: Danielle, we are not doing anything.

Danielle: We could see what Brian's doing.

Angela: Danielle!

Danielle: I kinda like Rayanne.

Angela: Danielle!

And in the aftermath, there’s an ominous click from the bedroom, and as old men try to catch fish, Graham begins his desperate search for wire shears.

Stay tuned for next week, when I'll drown in a puddle of my own tears.

Reaction Post - You have a failed romantic notion that what you are running here is a family.

2012-01-09T12:52:00.001+01:00

The Good Wife: 3x12 Alienation of Affection.

Wow, what a great start into the new year! This is my favourite episode of the show this season, and I am trying to figure out what exactly has changed - and if anything, it's a subtle thing. Everything just came together perfectly in the episode. The case-of-the-week was about the firm itself and connected many points previously made: the firm is struggling financially, regardless of how often Diane chooses to call it a "temporary problem", Eli doesn't play well with the other kids, David Lee doesn't care about rules, Diane, often blamed for her idealism, DOES know how to run the firm and how to deal with her partners' difficult personalities (my favourite part about this was how the partners were set up like quarrelling children and Diane as the one sensible grown-up telling them to just stop - and surprisingly, Eli and David did stop, regardless of their individual plans for revenge/taking each others' power).

Lockhart & Gardner are haunted by an old divorce case when the couple, meanwhile reconciled, decides to sue them for "alienating affection", some kind of relict from olden times when marriage was still sacred. As things progress, it turns out that loads of people in the firm have screwed up: David asked Kalinda to hire a prostitute (But not to sleep with him! Just to help him acquire a DUI! - "You have such lofty goals when you start a law firm. Dreams of fighting injustice, righting wrongs.", muses Diane), Julius messed up when he helped the wife sell the firm, Alicia (then still new at the firm) misplaced the one vital piece of paper that would solve all their problems.

The episode also succeeds at being light-hearted while shedding a foreboding and terrifying light at the practices within the firm: David Lee doesn't hesitate to perjure himself in order to stay out of trouble, and he asks her to do the same (and, because she isn't the same woman who misplaced the rider two years ago, she kind of does). He weasels a signature out of her in order to forge the document they are missing - and that whole thing just brought out the best scenes of the episode. Kalinda realizes that Alicia could end up being the one responsible and her face just tells you everything you need to know about how much she cares about her, especially when she sees Alicia's reaction to realizing that she may in fact have lost the rider, or never even signed it in the first place. She immediately (and absolutely devastatingly) insists that Alicia should lie about not remembering because there is nothing else she can do ("I'M GONNA WRITE THIS DOWN AS A YES") - but then, david ex machina and the document is found - except Alicia realizes that she didn't really sign it, that this is all part of David's game. And Kalinda realizes that Alicia realizes, and faces-wise, this whole scene is just absolutely stunning. David Lee's reaction too - he knows that Alicia knows, and he is essentially grinning inside because now he has made her complicit in this because really, nobody gets away clean in the end. Diane tells her that it's not really wrong because she doesn't REALLY know, not in the judicial sense, but they both know that it's at least morally questionable and to top things off, Cary is disposed (and expected by the opposing side to disqualify the document) and does the unexpected honourable thing, even calls them "outstanding, competent, ethical attorneys".

Alicia. Thank you
Cary: You're welcome.
Alicia: I... I don't get it.
Cary: Oh wow.
Alicia: What's so funny?
Cary: Things change.

Back in the first season, when Cary and Alicia were competing for the same spot, Alicia didn't rat him out when he came to the office high - and, wondering why Alicia wouldn't take the opportunity to destroy his chances, they had a conversation about not actually hating each other, about how this story with the scorpion that inevitably kills the frog because it's in his nature is only used to excuse bad behaviour. Maybe I've just chosen to ignore it before, but this is the first time that I really do believe that Cary enjoys being on the other side for once because it allows him not to have to make these choices. He realizes in the conversation that the document probably was forged (because why would Alicia be so grateful if she didn't doubt the provenance?). I think Cary really enjoyed walking out of that room clean, and Alicia absolutely hates that she can't.

One of those strange things that I've never explicitly mentioned: The Good Wife does quirky and weird all the time but it doesn't seem OTT. It would seem absolutely OTT in a different show, but the specific way in which the characters are strange or choose to do strange things fits perfectly into The Good Wife, without undermining the seriousness. David Lee isn't any less threatening because he occasionally wears historic uniforms. Elsbeth Tascioni isn't so good at her job despite her weirdness, she's good at it BECAUSE of them, because she is constantly under-estimated while her brain comes up with incredibly effective strategies (to think that Will has been struggling with this whole business for half a season and Elsbeth comes in and completely changes the game with one simple phone call!).
THAT OPENING SCENE! Everything about it was just beautiful. Diane in her ballet flats looking at modern art, the conversation about "the spot" (where you can see the artists' signature in just the right light"), the guy's come-back about his made-up accent he uses to "impress women in museums", and the inevitable "You've been served", repeated two more times for Alicia and Will, all of it set to upbeat classical music. The things this show has done with music and sound (mostly for comical effect)! Also, sometimes I forget that I grew up watching Christine Baranski in Cybill and how utterly brilliant she is as Diane Lockhart.
"Not to pry... did you enlist?"
Also everybody's faces in the scene with David Lee: Alicia's and Will's complete inability to take him seriously while he was wearing the uniform.
Will blabs about his issues with Wendy-Scott Carr on the phone with Diane, not knowing that Alicia is in the room too and overhearing things: right, she doesn't even know yet, does she? Did we ever really find out why he chose to keep this a secret? Because he didn't want this to be about Peter? Because he doesn't know that Alicia already knows about that money he took back in Baltimore? Anyway, when he does tell her (not exactly what is going on, but that he is in trouble), she recommends Elsbeth Tascioni.
The opposing lawyer's reaction to the cold Chicago weather was like a companion piece to this week's Portlandia ("My lily-white skins! What is that?") - Alicia argues that the infatuation with seasons is "about change", lawyer replies "yes, change. It's monstrous" - which also sort of works as commentary on Alicia's life recently (not to say that change is necessarily bad, but this episode especially pointed out how much Alicia and her circumstances changed since she was new at the firm).
Eli is an equity partner now, but his involvement in the firm (and the only thing that pries him away from his phone) is limited to an outraged "what is going on here?" when he realizes that this might cost him money.
David Lee, on his reasons for suggesting that the husband was unfaithful: "SHE WAS WANTING TO RECONCILE WITH THE BUM!". Thanks David. Not helping.
I also love that they set up Will with two lawyers who were both equally uncomfortable (the first one was just gross and smarmy, the second, though played by the always wonderful Mr Gilmore, suggested that his best-case-scenario was going to prison for two years and losing his licence) so that Elsbeth Tascioni in all her phone-kicking "the construction guys like to play tricks on me" (because of course in Elsbeth Tascioni's world, they would - random people bark at her over the intercom, after all) glory totally seems like a sound choice.
When the lawyer blamed Alicia for sharing her own personal stories with her client during the divorce, I had this immediate thought that Alicia as she is now would never make this mistake: she would try to empathize, but never reveal so much about herself. Weird - because in part this carefulness and guardedness probably comes from Kalinda.
Diane's reaction to the Australian guy successfully defending himself against a rabid opponent was a perfect call-back to her attraction to the neo-con gun expert: to quote Miranda, "I have never been so aroused" (while she tries to rationalize her reaction). One of my wishes for the remainder of the season: more Diane Lockhart. She also kind of unexpectedly saved the day since the guy decided to get in her good graces by sharing that the no-longer-ex-husband was cheating on his wife again - and those pictures finally made the lawsuit go away for good.
Eli's reaction to his confrontation with David was also amusing: basically, "I was going to leave but now that we are doing this whole macho thing of comparing how powerful we are, I am totally going to stay, like, you have no idea how much I am not going to clean out my desk".
Elsbeth Tascioni. She likes anything with bears (oh, her evil plan: indicating to a reporter that Wendy Scott-Carr was looking into the three most trustworthy judges on the bench, therefore insuring that Wendy would drown in a sea of angry phone calls with absolutely no way of getting back at her because she would need trustworthy judges for that). Because she is actually the awesomenest.
Will is finally served at the end of the episode. Wendy doesn't seem like the kind of person who gets more pleasant when with her back against the wall, so...

My So-Called Life - Sometimes it's like I really think I know her. And then it'll be like we're total strangers.

2012-01-06T17:49:00.000+01:00

My So-Called Life: 1x17 Betrayal.

Angela: I loved Jordan Catalano so much, and talked about him so much, and thought about him so much, it was like he lived inside me. Like he had taken possession of my soul or something. And then one day...I got over him! It was like Jordan Catalano had been surgically removed from my heart. And I was free!

This is perhaps one of my favourite opening scenes – the lovely moment in the last episode when Rickie, Angela and Rayanne sit in front of the TV to wait for the new year comes close, simply because it is such a bittersweet last moment of almost untarnished friendship between the three – but I like this one most for introspective, forever-caught-up-in-her-own-thoughts Angela. I always feel bad about not giving Claire Danes enough credit for her performance – it’s almost like I take it for granted because she is consistently and reliably great – but this moment of absolute giddy relief over the fact that she is free of Jordan Catalano, these few minutes of celebratory glee, highlight an Angela we’ve never really seen before: one who doesn’t hold back because she questions every single decision a hundred times, one who simply enjoys something rather than expecting something bad to happen immediately after. And what better soundtrack than the Violent Femmes’ Blister in the Sun?

Here’s something Rayanne knows, as well as many viewers: this isn’t going to last. There is no way of surgically removing emotions for somebody else so that nothing stays behind, and it’s exactly those bits and pieces that inevitably remain that cause the most damage. Angela contributes to the potential danger by becoming friends with Jordan: because before he was mostly fit and mysterious, but unknowable, he was this person Angela created in her head; but being friends with him allows her to get to know him, and surprisingly, there really is an actual person underneath. Angela soon resorts to the usual techniques: pretending to be interested in somebody else when Jordan is watching (unfortunately choosing Cory, the other guy Rickie has a crush on), repeating over and over again that she really is not interested in Jordan at all, in case you were wondering.

And what about Jordan? We never really know. Jordan doesn’t explain his feelings to other people. He presumably doesn’t spend as much time as Angela on analyzing them, but it’s clear from the way he acts around her that is upset about how things are going.

What do we know of Jordan Catalano, really? He cares deeply about his band and his car. He has a broken family and an abusive father. He uses drugs and alcohol to escape, even though he’d never consciously make the connection between the two. And what do we know of Rayanne Graff? She has a broken family, a negligent mother, an absent father, and she never ever says what she wants and instead hides behind a care-free façade, pretending that all those things that do matter to her so much – Angela’s friendship, being respected – aren’t all that important. We’ve spent so much time on discovering how incompatible Angela and Jordan are that the similarities between him and Rayanne seem like something completely unexpected, except they’ve always been there (and maybe they are one of the reasons why Angela likes them both).

Rayanne: Have as much as you want. I'm drunk.
Jordan: Yeah, me too. But not enough. So, Graff... so who are you here with?
Rayanne: If you mean, where's Angela?, she didn't come. Just like usual.
Jordan: So let me ask you something.
Rayanne: It wasn't even my idea! I auditioned for this stupid play. It was Angela's. Yeah, right, like I could be Emily.
Jordan: Emily who?
Rayanne: It's this part, in this stupid Our Town play. It was just wishful thinking. No, I could never be her. Angela could be her.
Jordan: Oh yeah?
Rayanne: She's exactly like Angela. I mean, you know, she's so innocent that she, like, doesn't know she's innocent.
Jordan: Yeah.
Rayanne: And she always says this stuff like, "My, isn't the moonlight terrible?"
Jordan: Yeah, she's always saying innocent stuff like that.
Rayanne: No, I meant, I meant... never mind.
Jordan: So, does she like that guy I keep seeing her talking to, Cory or what?
Rayanne: I don’t know, it's hard to say, you know?
Jordan: Sometimes it's like I really think I know her. And then it'll be like, like we're total strangers.
Rayanne: I know. Hey, Catalano! It's cool.
Jordan: Hi.
Rayanne: Hey.

It’s inevitable, really. The remarkable thing is that MSCL chooses to make this connection through Angela: Jordan is upset over Angela apparently moving on even though he’s never clear on how he feels about her, and Rayanne is upset because Angela is still somewhat elusive – there is this insurmountable distance between them that Rayanne thinks is caused by her own lack of innocence. And of course there’s Brian, trying to collect material for a yearbook video, accidentally filming them while they are both betraying Angela – Jordan because he has these unspoken feelings for her, and Rayanne because she knows that Angela isn’t over him, regardless of how many times she’s officially declared she is. They both love Angela, but Angela doesn’t get this darkness that connects them because she’s never been there – the horrible parents, the alcohol – and they both know she doesn’t and can’t understand this fucked-up place. They both know it’s a stupid idea, and they take forever, hesitating on the way, but eventually they end up in the car together (and of course, the next morning they both pretend they were too drunk to really remember), and Brian documents it because despite the fact that he knows he should, he can’t look away.

Brian has no intention of using this to drive a wedge between Jordan and Angela, but he also can’t keep from telling somebody else – and he tells Sharon – and Sharon tells Delia, and regardless of how well-intentioned they all might be, there is this point where a secret just has to come out because too many people know.

Sharon: I can't tell her! It's not like my place to tell her. Right?
Delia: Well, aren't you really close?
Sharon: But if I don't tell her, is that like being a friend? Is it being more of a friend to tell her, or to not tell her?
Delia: Well, I would.
Sharon: See, I can see not telling her, because if I tell her, it's almost like I'm saying, "See, I told you so about Rayanne Graff!" And that's not what I would tell her, if I told her. Is it?
Delia: No, you'd be telling her because you're...
Sharon: See, I would want to know. I mean, wouldn't you want to know?
Delia: Well, yeah, I would definitely want to know.
Sharon: Oh my god. Why did Brian Krakow have to witness this? And if Rayanne had to do this totally low life, disgusting thing, couldn't she at least have done it in private?

Would Sharon have even hesitated to tell Angela if she hadn’t sort-of kind-of befriended Rayanne in the past weeks? And I also love that it only takes one conversation to so perfectly portray what kind of person Sharon is: she considers the problem from all angles and her only goal is to figure out what would hurt less – this isn’t about alienating Angela from Rayanne so she can have her friend all to herself, this isn’t about causing pain in retribution for the weeks of abandonment. Sharon cares but she knows that there is no way she can do this without hurting someone. Brian also tells Rickie, because he’s “the only one left” (it’s one of those classic moments when Brian accidentally insults someone…). So when Angela, upon overhearing Sharon’s conversation with Delia in the restroom, comes to him to tell him how outrageous she finds all of this and how much she doesn’t believe any of it… Rickie can’t actually lie, and has to tell her that it’s all true. She later goes to Brian and asks to see the video but he refuses, just for once corretly analyzing the potential emotional fall-out of a situation and telling her it would “just make you feel worse.”

Rayanne realizes almost immediately that something is wrong because Angela starts shunning her. The first person she talks to is Sharon – because she blames Sharon for what happened, but also, Sharon is secretly the only other friend she has apart from Rickie and Angela.

Rayanne: Cherski!
Delia: Sharon, are you coming?
Rayanne: She'll be there in a minute.
Rayanne: So, congratulations, your dream came true.
Sharon: What dream?
Rayanne: Now you've got an iron-clad, perfect excuse never to talk to me again. You should be celebrating.
Sharon: You think I'm happy about this? Somebody I care about has been hurt!
Rayanne: And you just couldn't wait to go to them with the news.
Sharon: Don't turn this around on me! I said what I said to protect her.
Rayanne: Protect her. What a crock!
Sharon: That's right! So she would know. Because it's what you do when someone's your friend. You brought this on yourself.
Rayanne: And you're just so happy I did.
Sharon: No, I'm not. Not at all.

And she really, really isn’t. The best thing about this is that Sharon isn’t just upset because Angela has been hurt; she also realizes the implications of this for Rayanne, and she is sad for her too, even if she would never ever admit to it.

The next person Rayanne talks to, absurdedly, is Patty – who, quite surprisingly, understands this from a different perspective than expected (she later reveals that she has done the same to one of her friends – and it’s just the greatest thing, when two characters relate to each other who seemed so different before, because they’ve had similar experiences that set them apart from the rest).

Rayanne: But, like, if something really horrible happened...
Patty: Did something really horrible happen?
Rayanne: Yes! But I really didn't think it was. I mean, she said she was totally over him.
Patty: You mean Jordan?
Rayanne: Otherwise, I would have never done it. I mean, because it's not something that either of us really... It was just this thing. That, like, happened. He was just, like, there.
Patty: You and Jordan...
Rayanne: You hate my guts. I mean, well, I guess I would too, if I were you.
Patty: No. No, no. I don't hate you. I mean, I guess I can certainly understand how Angela feels.
Rayanne: Yeah. I've never really hurt somebody this bad before. It's hard to believe. I mean, but I guess you can't really hurt someone this bad unless you really matter to them. Please, don't tell her I was here.

Usually, Patty is always conflicted because she has this instinctual reaction to certain situations that come from having been a teenager too, and remembering all these emotions: she can emphasize with Rayanne, just as she can usually with Angela when complicated things happen to her – but with Angela, Patty always second-guesses her instincts because she knows that she has to react differently as a mother. That whole conflict doesn’t really apply here.

This is breaking up Rayanne’s world. Rickie doesn’t really want to talk to her because he sees this as fitting into her pattern of self-destruction and disregard for others (“What did you expect her to feel like?”) – so he walks away from her too. He tries to fix things by telling Angela that she can’t allow this to “control you – you’ve gotta lead your own life” – but Angela can’t react rationally. Rayanne only realizes what this means, truly, when she gets the role and has absolutely nobody to share her happiness with. She is completely alone.

Angela chases Cory in retaliation, not realizing that the only person she hurts is Rickie, and Rayanne keeps her from doing something stupid.

Rayanne: Well, I got the part. I would never have gotten it if it wasn't for you.
Angela: Look, I don't care anymore, okay? So just go away.
Rayanne: You're not the only one who got hurt.
Angela: Well, forgive me if I can't feel sorry for you, Rayanne.
Rayanne: You lost nothing, Angela. You lost a lousy, selfish friend, a guy you never really
had. You lost nothing! I lost a really good friend! I lost everything.
[…]
Rickie: I'm glad she got that part. She wanted that part.
Angela: What? Who's side are you on?
Rickie: I'm on your side! It's like, impossible to be on Rayanne's side. Even though I partly understand it.
Angela: What do you mean?
Rickie: I mean, face it. She's always partly wanted to be you. And in a way, I think this was her screwed up way of, for one night, kind of pretending she was you. I mean, I'm on your side, no question. But can I just ask you something? Why are you making this big play for Cory Hellfrick, when you know how I feel about him?
Angela: Because… I thought... I mean, you once told me that you were over him.
Rickie: But guess how I felt when you started going after him?
Angela: I don't have to guess.

Unhappiness all around. The “she’s always partly wanted to be you” is a call-back to Amber’s powerful explanation of their friendship at the beginning of the show – “She’s in love with Angela. She wants to be her.” – and of course this happens in an episode that has Rayanne literally pretending to be Angela in the play, by performing a role that she thinks resembles Angela more than it does her.

The final scene of the episode is perhaps one of my favourites over-all – Katimski asks Angela to stand in for a scene that is about Emily/Rayanne realizing what she has lost – and during the performance, they are really using the text to communicate their emotions to each other because it is the only way they can explain themselves. It’s incredibly acted, and – horribly, but also realistically – it doesn’t prove to magically heal all the wounds, because even the grandest speeches don’t have that power (this is the one lie I will never forgive Skins).

Katimski: Stop acting? Please?
Rayanne: What?
Katimski: Stop acting. There's really no need for it. You see, Emily is dead. The life she had is over. That's a pretty big deal. I mean, oh, gee whiz, she is just now realizing how precious every moment of that life really was. And that she never really appreciated what she had. Just imagine what that must feel like, Rayanne.
Rayanne / Emily: I can't go on, it goes so fast, we don't have time to look at one another. I didn't realize. So all that was going on, and we never noticed. Take me back. Back to the hill, to my grave. But first, wait! One last look. Goodbye. Goodbye, world. Goodbye, Grover's Corners. Momma and Poppa. Goodbye to clocks ticking. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it? Every minute?
Abyssinia (as Stage Manager): No. Saints and poets, maybe they do so.
Rayanne: I’m ready to go back.
Angela (as Mrs. Webb): Were you happy?
Rayanne: No. I should have listened to you. But that’s all human beings are. Just blind people.

Angela walks off, unable to forgive Rayanne, but their tears are a testament to the fact that both realize, helplessly, what they are losing. You can't ever remove another person surgically, without leaving any traces, without creating a mess.

Random notes:

Rayanne bases her interpretation of a character she is auditioning for on Angela, because she’s “sweet and innocent”. Hilariously, AJ Langer does a spot-on Claire Danes.

Angela: Rayanne, think of it this way! Acting is like lying, and who's a better liar than you?

Rayanne: I just didn't cry right. I should have cried more like you. You know? Your little... first sigh, and then, and then your like mouth collapses.

Rickie: Why are you crying like Angela?

Angela: Shut up! I do not cry like that!

My parents also play this game:

Patty: Graham, you have tons of clothes that you never wear!

Graham: Well, that doesn't mean that I never will.

Patty: Oh, I forgot! The one who has the oldest clothes when they die wins!

When Angela storms into Brian’s room and he is half-naked on the bed (a situation that could have been way, way more awkward): “People should tell people when they have visitors!”.

Brian: Yeah, I was influenced by Spielberg, um, but I think my my recent work is more like Tarantino, only less violent.

Serien des Jahres

2011-12-31T15:40:00.000+01:00

Best new show:

Game of Thrones

I read (or rather listened) to all the published books in the series this year, and was basically stunned how well the show manages to translate the complexity of the novels. I love Game of Thrones for its endless scenes of characters, explaining themselves by telling stories. The fighting is awesome too, but the element that makes it the best new show this year (and probably one of the best, altogether) is how the conflicts between the characters play out in the dialogue (and how sometimes, characters make surprising connections with each other). The show also (by design, since the POV nature of the novels is lost) achieves to make some of the characters that only become fleshed out in later books more relatable and complex in the first season that they were in the novels (especially Cersei and Jaime).

The Fades

Jack Thorne, writer of Chris’ first season episode and Naomi’s third season episode of Skins, stole my heart, ran away with it and made an amazing horror show with a body count. The Angelics are a group of humans who see dead people (the Fades), and fight them, since they are threatening to translate their inability to touch into a destructive war against humanity. There are no good or bad guys, just people with conflicting motivations. Paul is seventeen and an Angelic, with the best best friend one could possibly have (played by Daniel Kaluuya), an angry twin sister (Lily Loveless), and all the problems teenage boys have, but with the additional burden of trying to figure out what he must do with his powers. It’s sad and funny and gory and stuff and eventually became so good that I never ever wanted to watch anything mediocre again.

Homeland

The only show from the fall premieres except The Fades, which doesn’t count because it’s British, that survived the cut: has the potential to become truly intriguing and finally maybe a show that deals with the political status quo. Also, Claire Danes plays a deeply damaged woman watching a deeply damaged man (Damian Lewis) who she suspects of being a terrorist. Might be at its best when it deals with what surveillance does to both the observed and the observer.

Best shows:

This is England '88

Just watch it. Nothing I could ever say would even remotely express how good it is.

Skins

I can’t really put a finger on what exactly constitutes a perfect season of television, but Skins, season five, constitutes both a perfect season and technically a best new show, considering that Skins is, every two years, a new show. I fell in love with every single new character this season (yes, that includes the elusive and mysterious Matty Levan, despite him not having an episode of his own). Something about this group of people was so immediately loveable that the parting pain with the second gen only lasted for about two seconds (I still hold them dear to my heart but the moment Franky Fitzgerald delivered the viewers into the new generation with her eyes wide open to Be Brave, I was sold). I feel invested in every single character. What a glorious exit for Jamie Brittain.

Parks and Recreation

Trying to convey how delightful and joyous Parks and Recreation is… is Sisyphean task. Every time I feel like the show has fully fulfilled its potential, like it couldn’t possibly get any better, there is another episode that succeeds even more. I live on the afterglow of happiness Parks and Rec leaves behind like a vampire.

Justified

The first season of Justified was already pretty amazing, but the second season really positioned it as one of the best current drama shows – it reminded me of Winter’s Bone, since both are stories set in the present time but dealing with the kind of eternal issues (power, love, betrayal, greed) that could really fit into any period of time. The feeling was, of course, increased by the fact that Timothy Olyphant’s Raylan Givens seems to have fallen out of time, like he stepped into a time machine during the 1860s and is now trying to navigate a place that doesn’t really fit him anymore. Margo Martindale’s Mags (not unlike Gus in Breaking Bad) undermines the very idea of a seasonal big bad, she is like an ancient queen, quietly ruling her kingdom of rocks and pulling string to ensure that it might prove to be eternal.

Breaking Bad

I barely ever talk about this show but the fourth season was undeniably one of the most tense, suspenseful, gritty season of television I’ve ever seen. Walter is slowly turning into a horrible person, a match for all the “villains” the show introduces (“I am not in danger, Skyler. I AM the danger! A guy opens his door and gets shot and you think that of me? No. I am the one who knocks!”). The show has gotten to a point where protagonists and antagonists could switch places and it wouldn’t make any difference, morally. And, talking about villains, Gus (Giancarlo Esposito) was a revelation. AND THAT ENDING. The ending to this season is the kind of thing that people will reference, in the future. (Also, Anna Gunn, who is so horribly underappreciated for what she does with Skyler).

Warehouse 13

So this weird thing happened, towards the end of W13’s third season. I used to think of the show as the fluffy thing I could recommend to people who really don’t appreciate the Whedony happiness=death thing. I appreciate the show for its likeable characters, the dynamics of the team, the massively awesome concept (I mean, it’s a show about historical artefacts! It’s the coolest thing ever!), but I also had a preconceived notion in my head of how emotionally involved I could eventually become, and despite characters occasionally dying and then emerging, W13 never really felt like the kind of show where… much was at stake, if you will. The dramatic season finales were always brilliant and moving, but it never made me feel like something really bad might happen to these characters, and – the stakes not being high – my investment wasn’t either. And then, suddenly, bodies started piling up, and not in a required-death-of-the-week kind of way, but… more brutal, more immediate. I got this feeling that the show was escalating and changing into something new. My only reference point for this is House’s fourth season (which is the first season of the show I ever saw): I thought I had this show figured out, the procedural elements, the drama between the characters, it seemed interesting, but fairly conventional, and then the Wilson-Amber-House stuff started to happen (and later, the Thirteen stuff – The Dig is one of my favourite newer episodes), and I had to throw all my preconceived notions about how emotionally devastated the show might leave me behind.

And then the two-hour season finale of W13 happened… and HOLY FUCK. It wasn’t just H.G. Well’s arc wrapping up beautifully (though I am quite sure this won’t be the end, and I like her and Jaime Murray enough to want her to return, not just in the possible prequel), with her finding redemption and forgiveness in the ultimate sacrifice, it was CLAUDIA, slowly growing and evolving Claudia, who had finally found the familial support she’d been deprived off all her life, losing Steve. I severely underestimated the potential of this show, and I can’t wait for the next season.

The Good Wife

I’ve written about what I consider the core relationship in the show before, and despite the occasionally lacking procedural element, this is still, emotionally, an incredible show with a perfect cast.

Luther

I discovered Luther this year and the main draw, for me, is the characters and their relationship, especially the complex cat-and-mouse thing Luther and Alice play – but to me, this isn’t a police procedural at all, it is more like a superhero drama (in the Watchmen-sense of superheroism) without actual superpowers – and instead, severely damaged characters, corrupting themselves and those who surround them, mostly doing horrible things not only in the pursuit of selfish goals, but also when trying to do the right thing. This year’s season only had four episodes and a painful lack of Ruth Wilson’s Alice, but Aimee-Ffion Edewards as Jenny Jones was a revelation. And of course, there’s Idris Elba.

Pretty Little Liars

I am trying to remember when I started to think of this show as more than guilty pleasure and it really was a very subtle thing, a collection of moments that eventually made me decide that this is the best show about the challenges of being a teenager and the life-saving friendships (especially if your family is dysfunctional) that make it slightly easier that is currently on – regardless of the fact that Pretty Little Liars is also a Murder-Mystery-Show with very little chance of the mystery part actually ever coming together in a coherent way, that the plot-twists are bordering on the ridiculous – I am not even interested in who is A and who killed Alison anymore (and, I mean, really, was Twin Peaks truly about who had killed Laura Palmer, wasn’t it more about how her death impacted her community and wrecked her friends and revealed all this darkness?). I watch this show for Aria and Emily and Hanna (oh Hanna) and especially Spencer fucking Hastings, who will fuck you up if you fuck with her friends.

Raising Hope

I should have a separate column for shows that make me happy, and Raising Hope is one of those shows. It took me a while to figure out why, but there is a point in the first season when it becomes obvious that the show has a lively, beating heart, that it isn’t a caricature of lower lower lower middle-class life – and in a way, I grade other comedy shows now by whether they achieve this moment or not (because comparing them to Parks and Rec would just doom them, really). I love the relationships on this show, especially what Garret Dillahunt and Martha Plimpton manage to do with their respective characters.

Parenthood

This is a recent discovery, and I’ve never seen the first season – this does, in a way, fill the place in my heart that was previously occupied by FNL, because Parenthood does families and how they work and how they debate and how they solve conflicts incredibly well (even though it requires some suspension of disbelief that these characters never actually WORK when they are at work because a family member constantly comes in to HAVE A CONVERSATION ABOUT AN IMPORTANT ISSUE). Parenthood is what FNL would have been if characters of Gilmore Girls had constantly prodded at its characters and forced them to talk about their emotions. The acting is superb (Lauren Graham! Dax Shepard! Peter Krause playing the character most possibly different from Nate Fisher! And everyone else too, of course). The show also handles the “how to cope with having a kid that has Asperger’s” storyline incredibly well, but really, it’s Mae Whitman’s performance as Amber that brings me back every week.

Leverage

Can’t say why, this show just radiates happiness. If Parenthood and Raising Hope are about literal families, Leverage is about the artificial ones that provide an opportunity to grow and heal open wounds (for a group of, in part, fairly damaged characters). And of course there’s heisting and conning and thieving and general awesomeness, also.

Doctor Who

Okay, so… if the finale of the sixth season hadn’t been so good, Doctor Who might have gone into its very own category of “HOW DARE YOU STOP MESSING WITH ONE OF MY FAVOURITE CHARACTERS”, because this season deprived Amy Pond of her agency and Amy Pond’s ability to save the day was one of my favourite thing about the fifth season. I wouldn’t have given up on the show, but there are many, many episodes in the sixth season that I never ever want to see again (Neil Gaiman’s, naturally, isn’t among them – because that was a rather beautiful thing). I am also sort of in the group of people who believe that River Song should have remained mysterious, but in the end, it doesn’t really matter because the best thing about her is that she is played by Alex Kingston who does marvellous things. I’m not ready to say goodbye to Amy Pond.

Being Human

I’ve never been particularly interested in the mythology of Being Human, so the season-long arcs have always left me a bit disinterested, but the third season of the show had some heartbreaking moments between the four main characters – grown into a slightly dysfunctional, yet lovely family (and I can’t decide what my favourite relationship on that show is – Nina and Annie’s friendship, Mitchell and George, George and Nina…)– and then proceeded to rip them apart, until finally, one of the main characters (in a refreshingly forceful solution to his story arc) was killed off.

Saddest goodbyes:

Friday Night Lights

As is well-documented in this blog, I have a history of being discontented with series finales, regardless whether they were forced upon the producers because of bad ratings or if the creators of a show are left to their own devices to find a satisfying ending for their characters. There are only a few examples of finales that I am really happy with (regardless of how I feel about the direction of Buffy in its seventh season in general, I’ve always felt like Chosen wrapped it up perfectly, Angel is a brilliant example of a non-ending making a better ending than actual closure would have provided, but I think one of the best, so far, is Six Feet Under’s).

FNL had, in my opinion, a perfect ending. We never see the decisive game playing out – there is only a football, flying, and then a cut to the afterwards, when some of the kids are one step closer to whatever they imagined their lives to be, in the future, while other, tragically, find an escape out of Dillon that isn’t what they hoped for (and it is part of FNL’s charm that there isn’t a happy ending for all the characters – but Luke Cafferty, joining the Army was still brutal and heartbreaking). FNL was a show about football – about what it means to be part of a dream, about what Coach Taylor provided for his kids (and what they, in turn, provided for him, because ultimately he was realizing his own dream too), but, at its best, it was also about how the dream of becoming a star is only attainable for a fraction of those who pursue it, and those left behind struggle with making a life for themselves. It was a show about Dillon, a town so obsessed with football that those not part of it automatically became outsiders (and, to be honest, I sometimes wished the show would have spent more time with the characters that were not in on it). I loved this show, and how it managed to survive even with an almost entirely new cast of characters once the original team had graduated. I loved it even when it sometimes chased a ridiculous storyline (and what a great decision to pretend like that one particular thing never happened). Who would have thought that, of all people, Billy and Mindy would make such a heartbreakingly loving adoptive family? I should also somehow manage to work my appreciation for the character of Jess Merriweather into this whole thing but I can’t figure out how.

Caprica

Caprica is an example for a show that didn’t end on its own terms but made it feel like it kind of did. All the things that were highly criticized and probably resulted in lower and ultimately deadly ratings were what I loved the most about it: the slow progress, the focus on philosophy and dialogue rather than action, the tackling of complex issues (and, to me, ultimately, the fact that the show never took sides in the religious debates makes its conclusion superior to BSG’s), the way it dealt with identity and free will/programming and a civilization that was busily working on its own destruction… I loved Caprica, and I am sad that it is gone, but the last few minutes of Apotheosis were the COOLEST.

Watched for the first time:

Pushing Daisies

The Wire

Miranda

Stopped watching (sadly, some of these are shows I was genuinely excited about last year but then halfway through, I lost interest for various reasons):

The Office

Community

Californication

Fringe

Dexter

Misfits

Episodes:

Bedlam: Inmates (1x03) LILY LOVELESS!!!

BlackMirror: Fifteen Million Merits (1x02) DANIEL KALUUYA!!!

BreakingBad: Box Cutter (4x01), Crawl Space (4x11), Face Off (4x13)

Caprica:The Heavens Will Rise (1x16)

Doctor Who:The Doctor's Wife (6x04), The Girl Who Waited (6x10)

FridayNight Lights: Always (5x13)

Game ofThrones: A Golden Crown (1x06), Baelor (1x09)

Homeland:Marine One (1x12)

Justified:Bloody Harlan (2x13)

Parenthood:Nora (3x05)

Parks andRecreation: Harvest Festival (3x07), Camping (3x08), Fancy Party (3x09), TheFight (3x13), I'm Leslie Knope (4x01), Pawnee Rangers (4x04), Citizen Knope(4x10) I DON'T EVEN KNOW I CHOOSE ALL OF IT! ALL OF IT!

Skins:Franky (5x01), Mini (5x03), Alo (5x06), Everyone (5x08) and everythingin-between too.

The Fades:Episode Four. Everything else too but that one in particular.

The GoodWife: Getting Off (2x22)

The Office:Garage Sale (7x18), Goodbye, Michael (7x21)

This is England'88: ALL OF IT, but especially the third and final episode

Warehouse13: Emily Lake / Stand (4x11, 4x12)

Filme des Jahres

2011-12-31T14:36:00.000+01:00

Martha Marcy May Marlene
Blue Valentine (2010)
Beginners (2010)
Red State
Sleeping Beauty
Sucker Punch
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2
Captain America: The First Avenger

Bonus-shout-outs:

Barzakh
August
Circumstance
Dreileben
True Grit (2010)
Super 8
Restless
Submarine
Win Win
Melancholia
Kyss Mig

Not seen yet:

A Dangerous Method
Another Earth
J. Edgar
My Week With Marilyn
Pariah
The Artist
The Tree of Life
Young Adult

Musik des Jahres

2011-12-31T00:00:00.000+01:00

WILD FLAG - Wild Flag
PJ Harvey - Let England Shake

The Rural Alberta Advantage - Departing

Fleet Foxes - Helplessness Blues
Fatoumata Diawara - Fatou

Burial - Street Halo

Sleepy Vikings - They Will Find You
Bellaké Sissoko & Vincent Segal - Chamber Music

Songs:

Alina Simone - Beautiful Machine (on Make Your Own Danger)
"The stars are cold and hard."

The Rosebuds - Second Bird of Paradise (on Loud Planes Fly Low)

"I’m listening, so let’s go, sight locked, grit your teeth / I’m waiting, here I am brilliant, aim at me / Complicated dance move"

The Mountain Goats - Beautiful Gas Mask (on All Eternals Deck)

"Crash in from deep space / Shot birds falling fast / Who will be there to catch us in his jaws / When we arrive alive at last?"

The Black Keys - Run Right Back (on El Camino)
"She's the worst thing / I've been addicted to"

James Blake - Limit to Your Love (on James Blake)

"Is it truth or dare?"

Emika - Professional Loving (on Emika)
"We're sophisticated at loving. We're professional."

SBTRKT - Pharaohs (on SBTRKT)
"Head raised. Un-caged."

Feist - The Bad in Each Other (on Metals)

"We had the same feelings at the opposite time."

Laura Marling - The Beast (on A Creature I Don't Know)

"I suggest that you be grateful / That it's your blood on my hands"

Thao & Mirah - Little Cup (on Thao & Mirah)

"and you said you understood / but promises are not that good"

The Decemberists - Down by the Water (on The King is Dead)

"The season rubs me wrong / The summer swells anon / So knock me down, tear me up / But I would bear it all broken just to fill my cup / Down by the water and down by the old main drag"

Radiohead - Lotus Flower (on The King of Limbs)

"There's an empty space inside my heart / Where the weeds take root"

Burial & Four Tet & Thom Yorke - Mirror (on Ego/Mirror)

"This is where we came in."

Exitmusic - The Sea (on From Silence)

"It's the silent sea."

Noah and the Whale - Waiting for My Chance to Come (on Last Night on Earth)

"It takes real guts to be alone / going head to head with the great unknown"

Gotye (feat. Kimbra) - Somebody That I Used to Know (on Making Mirrors)

"Now and then I think of all the times you screwed me over."

tUnE-YarDs - Bizness (on w h o k i l l)
"all my wisdom departed"

Bright Eyes - Approximate Sunlight (on The People's Key)

"Used to dream of time machines / Now it's been said we're post-everything"

Also:

Laura Veirs - Tumble Bee, Kimya Dawson - Thunder Thighs, Micachu - Chopped and Screwed, Sonic Youth - Simon Werner A Disparu, 31knots - Trump Harm, The Kills - Blood Pressures, The Chemical Brothers - Hanna OST, Camille - Ilo Veyou, Sons and Daughters - Mirror Mirror, David Bazan - Strange Negotiations, Jessica Lea Mayfield - Tell Me, Adele - 21, Son Lux - We Are Rising, Gil Scott-Heron & Jamie xx - We're New Here.

2010 | 2009 |

My So-Called Life - In a way, that made me feel lonelier.

2011-12-30T20:57:00.000+01:00

My So-Called Life: 1x16 Resolutions.

I don’t know what it is about humans that makes it so important to have some kind of significant date attached to plans and resolutions. In the case of the resolutions voiced at the beginning of this episode, as the television counts down to the year 1995, you’d kind of think that most of the characters would have recognized the errors of their way earlier and perhaps chosen to change their habits accordingly, instead of waiting for the new year to come. But alas, this is the forever-miracle of humanity: doomed (and gifted!) to remember, yet yearning for that tabula rasa, that second chance, that new start that will somehow magically redeem us. The other truth: it almost never works.

The resolutions are:

What I was thinking, as like a New Year's resolution is to stop getting so caught up in my own thoughts, because I'm like way too introspective... I think… but what if not thinking turns me into this shallow person? I better rethink this becoming less introspective thing... okay, so I'll stay introspective, but I do resolve to stop doing Jordan Catalano homework.

Angela thinks too much about thinking too much, comes to the conclusion that thinking too much determines who she is, and thus concludes that she shouldn’t allow Jordan (Jordan’s, by the way, at this point of the episode: “Wait a second, isn't tonight, New Year's Eve?”) to use her.

I resolve to never again have sex with Kyle, or anyone, again, unless I really love and respect them.

Sharon resents herself for being on the other side of an asymmetric relationship: she feels like she is only using Kyle for sex, thinking that he cares more about her than he does about him (regardless of whether she’s right or not, his dog still comes first on the list of priorities).

I resolve to stop obsessing over Angela Chase.

Brian’s resolution nicely mirrors Angela’s: resolving not to think about somebody requires the same kind of impossible witchcraft that Angela would have needed to stick to her first one. It’s not possible. If it were, we’d have more movies and songs about arts and crafts (assuming that’s what people would do if they didn’t spend so much time despairing over unrequited love). What I really like about the portrayal of Brian’s feelings for Angela is that he isn’t the guy watching her from a distance, creating this idealized version of her in his head – he is right there. He witnesses Angela in her worst moments. If there ever was an idealized version of her, the image of her has long been adjusted to fit the actual Angela, and still, Brian can’t let go.

…to find some place where I like really belong.

Angela and Brian deal with emotions and feelings. MSCL always manages to portray these struggles as important and integral to being that specific age, but it also never shies away from pointing out that some of the other characters are faced with external burdens, are stuck in unbearable situations. This doesn’t diminish the validity of Angela’s introspectiveness, or Brian’s crush, it’s just important to remember that Rickie’s issue isn’t one that simply requires him to change – it requires others to step in and take responsibility because no kid should be dealing with homelessness and abuse on his own.

…to stop drinking, but this time like really stop.

And then there’s Rayanne and her personal demons – requiring both things, actually, changing herself and other people stepping up to help her – and both of these things are precarious because she’s been portrayed to easily fall back into old habits and has a negligent mother who does not realize the gravity of the situation. Also, Rayanne, despite being loud and open and never hesitating to name things, resents being helped. She dealt with the school counsellor by dismissing her issues with humour, didn’t articulate to Angela what she needed of her in terms of support to stay sober, and somehow managed to even alienate usually eternally helpful Rickie.

Patty and Graham are also slowly steering towards serious issues. Patty resolves to be less suspicious (“less judgemental, less critical, to lighten up, and above all, to be more supportive”), even though Graham seems to be hiding something – and Graham, meanwhile, isn’t even really conscious of the fact that he is hiding something, and only articulates a vague concern about talking to Hallie Lowenthal after class and not having told her once and for old that he won’t run the restaurant with her.

This is a good moment to mention that I always feel bad about often delegating Patty and Graham to the “other stuff” section, but I’ve found the slow build-up between Hallie and Graham delightful. From how the show portrays them, they are friends – and Graham needs a counterweight like Hallie, who is the opposite of Patty. But things are never simple. Graham knows that something is developing, even if he doesn’t even allow himself to openly articulate that concern in his resolution.

Sharon

Sharon runs into early difficulties with her plan when Kyle declares his love for her on the school hallways (“I don’t care who knows it!”). Because MSCL is awesome like that and willing to feed into my doomed obsession, the person she takes this problem to, even though it’s rather involuntary (as most of their interactions are, really – fate just always interferes…), is Rayanne. Rayanne is fascinated by the idea that any guy would declare his love openly and asks Sharon if this doesn’t make her happy (naturally, that’s not the word she uses – “you’re totally fulfilled, right?”) – and Sharon explains that the only reason why they are back together is because she was watching “that River Runs Through It” movie and Brad Pitt turned up so she called Kyle and they had “a better time then thy used to when she was technically supposed to love him”. Rayanne pragmatically tells her that this is nothing to be sorry about but Sharon doesn’t like using other people “because you were watching this movie”. Apart from the fact that this very nicely subverts gender stereotypes, the conversation is also hilarious because Rayanne is the only person in Sharon’s life she could have it with.

There is of course another person that can provide a perspective on the whole “using people who are more emotionally involved” thing – Brian Krakow, struggling with the fact that he has to help Jordan Catalano, his nemesis, pondering if it makes him a hypocrite if he turns Jordan down for a feeling that he can’t openly admit to. Brian does manage to get stuck with Sharon’s “I love you beary much” bear in the process, though (“cute bear, Krakow!”)

Brian: It's like I can't even like look at him so it just really boils down to respect, you know, I mean I have like zero respect for him, so, you know it's that simple, I mean, for me to tutor someone that I don't respect wouldn't that almost be like using him?
Sharon: It is definitely wrong to use people.
Brian: So you'll switch with me?
Sharon: No. No, that won't solve it, that's like the cowards' way out.
Brian: Well, I mean, I can live with that, because you know, I kind of am a coward, so…
Sharon: No. No, you have to be honest, you have to tell him that it was a mistake and that, and that you can't pretend anymore and that that whole using him thing that, and you know, you didn't want to hurt him!
Brian: I'm supposed to say all that to Jordan Catalano?

Sharon, determined to see this through finally (also because otherwise she might “end up” like Rayanne – “no offense”) but Kyle is smarter than he… seems… and suggests watching Thelma & Louise, which is a chance to marvel at a shirtless and very young Brad Pitt for some (Sharon) while others just enjoy the classic with the “really old babes” for the lesbian subtext (Sharon, in college - oh, all those seasons that never were). So it’s 7:30 instead of breaking up for good, and I think Kyle isn’t completely unaware of the fact that he is being used and maybe not entirely uncomfortable with it, because there are always compromises to ensure mental sanity in cases of unrequited love.

Angela /Jordan / Brian

Regarding Angela’s resolution: we find her in Red, doing Jordan’s homework, while he is smoking on the hood of his car and finally coming to his own resolution for the new year (slightly delayed, as expected). Jordan decides that he can’t take advantage of Angela now that they are not dating (“It would be different if we were like…” – yes, Jordan, it’s perfectly fine to have girls write your homework as long as you’re also having sex). Angela enthusiastically celebrates her own resolve and the fact that she is finally sticking to a resolution. In order to not completely destroy Jordan’s chances of ever graduating, she also signs him up (secretly) to be tutored – and of course the person chosen to help him pass English would be Brian Krakow (“are you… Brain?”).

Brian manages to cut the Gordian knot of not being able to respect Jordan Catalano (but really being jealous of Jordan Catalano because of Angela) by finding a thing to respect him for that also promises to help him get over Angela: Jordan gets phone numbers from girls as if it were the easiest thing in the world. “This is like how you live?” he says, unable to process that other people don’t only associate terrible torturous emotions with the whole dating thing.

That Restaurant Thing

The problem is: Graham and Hallie are perfectly suited for this. She has the passion and chaotic enthusiasm, he provides the level-headed analysis and realistic perspective. She finds the beautiful space for the restaurant, he takes a look at it, knows it’s perfect but also goes through the numbers to figure out whether it’s doable (and the other problem: it is doable. There are no impossible obstacles between Graham and that one thing that he really wants except that one approaching issue that he knows is there, but doesn’t really acknowledge). At the same time, he is negotiating this with Patty, who is torn between allowing Graham to realize his dream and being the voice of reason and being deeply suspicious of his relationship with Hallie. Graham is behaving like he is already involved in an affair while he is technically only planning to start a business.

Graham: Listen Patty, there's something I have to tell you... It's been kind of weighing on me...I haven't been…
Patty: Oh god.
Graham: …Completely honest, about something, and I just can’t
Patty: Oh god... Just, just say it, just say it.
Graham: I want to open this restaurant. See, I missed Angela's birth because I got stuck in that airport and I missed college, and, because I did. And, and I missed Woodstock? Twice! And I really, I just, I don't want to miss this!
Patty: I will be totally supportive.
Graham: Really?! But I thought, I mean... you mean that?
Patty: Oh yes! God yes! I will be, unbelievably, supportive!
Graham: Wait ah, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait a second! What did you think I was going to say?
Patty: Never mind!

They are already communicating about an affair before there even is an affair: and worse, once Graham goes over to the restaurant to tell Hallie that he has decided, we finally see where this might inevitably go. They too have a conversation ripe with subtext, a conversation about doing something that you really want (“you wouldn't be here if you didn't really want to be, right?” says Hallie, hopeful, and clearly not just referring to them as business partners) – and then she tells Graham that her fiancé just broke up with her, because presumably, even though Hallie doesn’t explicitly say so, her fiancé assumed that they were having an affair too. Unrequited feelings all around.

Rickie

For Rickie, the theme of the episode is a variation of the nativity story – Katimski has them read Homer’s Odyssey, and that describes his situation. He is living with the Chases and the situation seems to be ideal, especially since Rickie is a less complicated, less messy, more talented cooking-wise addition to the household than Angela and Danielle (“If only he had come into our lives when the girls were still young and impressionable”, says Graham, “he's like my mother, only mature”, responds Patty). But the danger is already looming. They know that something is wrong because Rickie’s uncle and aunt haven’t called, and Rickie knows that there is an inevitable moment in the future when somebody realizes that this isn’t just a temporary hiccup in an otherwise normal situation. “He can’t just stay here forever”, says Patty, and Rickie panics. He fears that they will get the police or some other authority involved, so he pretends that things are fine, that he can return home, that this was never really serious, even if it means that he is now on the streets and once again looking for shelter. Odysseus at least had the home that it took him forever to return to – Rickie can only wait for it to materialize out of thin air. The one person who realizes that Rickie isn’t okay is Katimski.

Rickie: Okay, well, um, you know that essay that I never handed in, about what Odysseus wants? Um, can, I get an extension on that?
Katimski: Okay...
Rickie: Beause I read it, it's about this lonely guy that wanders the world for like, many years, right?
Katimski: Right.
Rickie: And he way that, that it starts like in the middle, what's that called again, I know you told us...
Katimski: In medias res.
Rickie: Right.
Katimski: It's in the middle of things.
Rickie: Right. Because see, right know it's, it's sort of like, it's sort of like I don't have a place to live.
Katimski: Oh God. Well now, what happened?
Rickie: But I mean it's okay, it's, it's actually gonna be fine, I was staying at my friend Angela's house for a while, and they're really nice, they're this really great family, but in a way, that made me feel lonelier, and I know that sounds ungrateful…
Katimski: No, no no, I understand.
Rickie: And see, my uncle? I was living with my aunt and uncle, because, well, it's sort of a long story...

It’s a long story because really, the odyssey began long before Rickie was kicked out. Like the Odyssey, it started in medias res, before the show first picks up – with whatever tragic thing happened that made it impossible for him to grow up with his parents instead of sketchy distant relatives.

Katimski tries to help him; he asks a friend for a favour (to get Rickie a place in Pride House, a place that presumably helps LGBT homeless youths) – but there’s a waiting list, and a horrific night in a home that freaks Rickie out so badly and makes him feel so unsafe that he flees.

I absolutely adore the structure of the episode – because there is always this question looming of why Katimski doesn’t just ask Rickie to stay at his house for a bit, this was, after all, the easiest answer to Rickie’s troubles after Christmas, and Katimski behaves erratically too – not just because he is abstaining from coffee, but also because he spends this entire episode incredibly frustrated over the fact that he can’t help Rickie, and those who could don’t. We only find out why he can’t at the end of the episode – he is living with his partner, and presumably the situation of gay teachers in 1995 wasn’t safe enough for them to live openly or for parents not to freak out over the fact that he may have invited a teenage boy over who would have otherwise either spent the night outside or been beaten up for being gay in a halfway house. So he is understandably frustrated with the Chases for making Rickie leave, regardless of whether it was because of the story he told (because really, I think deep down Patty and Graham knew perfectly well that things weren’t fine, they just wanted to believe it because it would be the easier option, really).

Rickie calls Katimski from a phone booth and pretends to be at a safe place because that’s what Rickie does, always: pretend to be okay so as not to cause a fuzz, so as not to cause discomfort, even if it means that he gets hurt. But he wants and needs Katimski to ask him to stay over because he just doesn’t have the resources to help himself anymore, this is a problem that he can’t face and overcome on his own.

Rickie: Your address was in the phonebook. Sorry. It just got so hard to be alone!
Katimski: Come in.

Random notes:

I find it weird that the lessons always end right after the teacher starts to talk about the topic. I mean, what are they doing the other 40 minutes? Sing songs from Sister Act?

Jordan: You could, have sex with me though. If you really want to help. I guess that's a no.

Kyle: Hey! Ah, you must have lost this?

Sharon: Oh!

Kyle: I found it hanging from a urinal.

Jordan: You can even start with the basics, you know?

Brian: No, okay.

Jordan: I mean, even if it seems like too basic? Start with that. And then after, if you want, I can teach you how to get someone’s phone number.

Pragmatism: It’s what made America great.

Wilson Cruz!! With every episode, I am more amazed by his talent.

Mulholland Dr.

2011-12-26T20:58:00.000+01:00

Come on, it will be just like in the movies. We'll pretend to be someone else.

Where Bergman makes it impossible in Persona to clearly distinguish between dream and reality, to come to an informed decision about what the story of the film is, Lynch only seems to do the same in Mulholland Dr. Perhaps, after seeing the film for the first time, a viewer might be confused and wonder for a moment, but there are several keys that provide a basis for a coherent interpretation. The more interesting question is what the implications about the characters are if we assume that the first half of the narrative is merely the dream of a guilt-ridden woman who had her lover killed.
The first part of the film is almost conventionally telling the story of two women falling in love with each other: one is wide-eyed Betty (Naomi Watts), who has just stepped out of a plane from Canada to become an actress (and, if possible, movie star) in Hollywood, and immediately defies the cynical expectation that her dream will soon crash and burn. She moves into her aunt’s eccentric but luxurious apartment building, absolutely stuns the producers and actors with a transformative performance in an audition for her first role and is only prevented from getting an even more impressive part in a big production by a strange and vast conspiracy. The other is “Rita” – a mysterious woman (Laura Harring) who has lost her memory after a car accident and sought refuge in the very same apartment. Together, the two women try to figure out Rita’s (she takes her name from a movie poster – Rita Hayworth in “Gilda”) identity – a search that ends when they find a dead body. After they sleep together and Betty confesses that she is falling in love with Rita, they go to a club, witness a strange show that questions the reality of things (musicians appear, play their instruments or sing, then disappear from the stage as the music plays on), and then things come crashing down. A strange blue box appears that seems to fit a key that Rita had in her purse, along with a wad of cash – but before they can open it together, Betty disappears completely – and so does this reality, once Rita opens it on her own.
The shorter second part of the film provides a stark contrast to the first, both aesthetically and story-wise. Before, Mulholland Dr. was a mixture of genres: a love story, a mystery show, a venture into mob films when it followed the mis-adventures of director Adam (Justin Theroux), slowly losing control of his own production due to outside interference, one scene strangely reminiscent of Quentin Tarantino’s earlier work. Diane Selwyn (Naomi Watts) is a failed actress, desperately in love with someone who doesn’t love her back (Camille, played by Laura Harring), and finally, after an evening apparently designed to humiliate her (not only does Camille declare that she will marry the director she cheated with, she has also become the star Diane always dreamed of being, and she demonstrates that she has had similarly meaningless flings with other women), she decides to use the money she inherited from her aunt to hire a professional hit man and have Camille killed. After getting the confirmation that the task was executed, she suffers a slow break-down – daydreams about Camille being alive, panic attacks when someone knocks on her door – and finally, she kills herself.
Love is the central theme of Mulholland Dr. My first reaction to the film was clinging desperately to the idea that the first part of the movie wasn’t a dream – since the second is so utterly devastating and hopeless, a portrayal of a woman completely destroyed by unrequited love and unfulfilled hopes. In her dream, Diane re-imagines herself as Betty, a good person, someone whose naivety is never punished, someone who selflessly helps a stranger and is rewarded for the effort, someone incredibly talented and perfectly able to transform herself through performance – from the friendly Canadian girl to someone not very unlike Diane in the scene she is asked to play for the audition. Diane longs for a happy ending, for something to undo what she has done and what has been done to her – so in her dream, Camille becomes Rita, someone made innocent through loss of memory, a blank slate for her to re-create from scratch and in need of exactly the kind of help that Betty can offer. Diane’s hatred of herself goes so far that she kills someone named Diane Selwyn in her dream, and the shocking discovery of her body only strengthens the bond between Betty and Rita. The director who once did not appreciate Diane’s talent becomes an aged, washed-up man who is laughed at behind his back, the other who took Camille away a ridiculous figure caught up in a conspiracy he never understands, cheated on by his wife, beaten up, broke. The hit man she hired – the man who performed the crime she is trying to undo in her dream – is now a useless hack who can’t even get one simple job done without messing up, so that he poses no true danger.
Things are too good to be true. Everything that happens is pure wish-fulfilment, a contrast to the stark realism that follows once this fantasy is torn down. The key – is a key. The reality of what Diane did seeps into her fantasy. The blue key, signifier of Camille’s murder, appears in Rita’s purse, and once they discover what it opens (the question Diane asked the killer, after he showed her the key for the first time – that was answered with roaring laughter), the walls come tumbling down and the dream can no longer be sustained. As Diane wakes up, or perhaps dies, this world disappears. Silencio – the mysterious word spoken in the club – is the silence that follows once both the band and the tape stop playing.

2001, directed by David Lynch, starring Naomi Watts, Laura Harring, Ann Miller, Dan Hedaya, Justin Theroux, Lee Grant, Billy Ray Cyrus, Robert Forster.

My So-Called Life - That would be a different story, wouldn't it?

2011-12-24T21:22:00.000+01:00

My So-Called Life: 1x15 So-Called Angels.

I am conflicted about this episode. MSCL has pulled off the random magical realism before, when Angela ventured into the past at Halloween, but the magical aspect of this episode – played by Juliana Hatfield (of non-evil I Kissed A Girl fame) – lives off the idea that Christmas really is the only time that you can pull something like this off (because MSCL isn’t Popular – or Glee, and I take it more seriously as a show because it can’t just use every single trick in the book to make the audience gasp). I am also not sure what purpose it serves, since the central story of the episode is compelling and tragic and horrifying on its own. So-Called Angels is a re-telling of the nativity story, and the person going from door to door, asking to be let in, is a gay boy who is abused at home. Nobody cares enough or realizes the gravity of the situation to offer him shelter, so he ends up in the modern equivalent of a stable (a building not part of the home, with insufficient infrastructure to provide for human inhabitants), an unused warehouse that is occupied by countless other homeless teens.

The Scrooge of the story – even though this is probably a simplification – is Patty. Patty, from the very beginning so emerged in the politics of Christmas (her entry into the episode is complaining that she received a card from a friend she has already dismissed, and now has to respond to it – “Patty, it's a greeting card, not a dead fish”), trying to get a reluctant Graham to go to Church with her, pondering if it would be appropriate to invite poor Brian Krakow who’s parents have deserted him (“Oh, Brian's a level-headed kid. He probably likes having the place to himself”, reasons Graham, also “didn't Hannukah already happen, or something?”). But when Rickie turns up at their door, beaten up and starved but too proud to really ask for what he needs, she argues that it isn’t there place to have him stay over if his parents are expecting him. There is this horrible thing at the bottom of this that is never explicitly mentioned in the episode but implied because Brian is treated so differently from Rickie by Patty: it’s not just that Brian has always been the kid from the neighbourhood, that Brian has this weird place in their family as a kind of replacement son for Graham – Patty has always been deeply uncomfortable with the fact that Rickie is bisexual.

Patty: Were we wrong? Down there about Rickie?
Graham: No, we weren't wrong.
Patty: I mean, what do we really know about that boy, you know?
Graham: Virtually nothing.
Patty: We've never met his family, I mean, how on earth are we supposed to know what the situation is?
Graham: I know, honey. Except I think he does make you kind of uncomfortable.
Patty: What do you mean? Because he wears makeup?
Graham: No, I'm just saying… what if that was Brian Krakow with that bruise on his face? That would be a different story, wouldn't it?
Patty: Graham, you can't compare them. I mean I've known Brian Krakow since he was five years old.
Graham: I know. So have I. Now all I'm asking is - should that make a difference?
Patty: Well, maybe not. But it does.
Graham: I know.

I believe that one of the greater lies that is told about Christmas is that there is some kind of general meaning that applies to everyone. Christmas (as a tradition) is different for everybody who celebrates it: it depends on the childhood memories, on the family, on the varying rituals. For some it’s the one time of the year where the family comes together without fighting all the time, for others, it’s the opposite. Some celebrate with their extended family, others only with their parents and siblings. Some hate it, some love it, some are indifferent to it. There is no such thing as the “one” meaning of Christmas, because Christmas is an individual experience (shared between those who celebrate together) – and dominated by so many contradictory ideas (excessive shopping vs. introspection, peace and quiet, spending time with your loved ones vs. being so exhausted and frustrated and stressed that you would rather crawl into a hole and sleep until spring). But I think that there is an idea, or an ideal, about Christmas that is often alluded to but only rarely executed, and that is being generous and giving and remembering those who are less fortunate. As a realist, I sort of grudgingly know deep down that all the charity drives in part serve the purpose of soothing guilt and stuff, but if that’s the only way to make people help, so be it. Patty… Patty admits that her treatment of Rickie is unfair. It shouldn’t make a difference. He’s a kid, he is clearly desperate, he clearly needs help, even if giving that help would mean crossing comfort zones or those bloody lines that we draw about everything – when do you decide that something concerns you, that you can’t just be the passive onlooker? What makes the difference between just feeling this detached concern that generally comes with watching disconcerting news stories about tragic things happening to people, far away, and deciding that something concerns you personally and requires some kind of intervention? So what the episode does is put Patty into the position of emphasizing with Rickie. She goes to the police station and sees the pictures of the homeless teens. She is confronted by the idea that Angela could be that kid, first in theory, then in practice when Angela does disappear. She is guided by that mysterious girl on her journey, that girl who will probably work on her song for eternity, the girl who froze to death.

The other side of the story is Rickie’s. He doesn’t want to depend on the kindness of strangers, even though he is the kindest person himself. He is reluctant to ask for help from those who are reluctant to offer it.

Patty and Graham realize how serious the situation is when they overhear a conversation between Angela and Brian – she explains to him that Brian is beaten up at home, that he is now living at a warehouse and – what seems to be the most shocking thing for her to realize – that “they’re like us, […] like you forget that there’s any difference between you”. Even then, Patty’s first thought isn’t that Rickie may be in danger, but that Angela might have been just visiting there. They go to the police station to “do something” – and suddenly, this personal story becomes one about a systemic, political issue: all those pictures of missing kids on the wall, and there is nothing being done.

Patty: What exactly will happen?
Police: Depends on the circumstances. Is this kid a runaway or a throwaway?
Graham: A throwaway?
Police: See, a runaway leaves home of his own volition. A throwaway, a push out… is pushed out.
Patty: Oh, my God.
Police: Look. First off, every effort is made to restore…
Graham: Patty, we should go.
Police: Thanks for being good citizens. You got a daughter, you said?
Patty: Yes.
Police: You keep her close, okay?
Patty: Okay.
Police: Merry Christmas.

A throwaway. I think ultimately Angela’s argument that this might as well be her is flawed (it is exactly the kind of thing she WOULD say, though) – but the argument leads to a fight, “one of those fights where it seems like the fight is having you” – exactly the thing that the girl claims drove her from home later on. This idea that it only “takes a toss of the dice” for Angela to be in the same situation… I think what bothers me most about this argument and how it is used in the episode is that it takes THIS to make Patty realize she needs to help Rickie, that she needs to think of Rickie’s situation as something that could happen to her own daughter, when she should actually just help him because he is a kid and he is in desperate need of help and in an absolutely horrible situation that nobody should ever be in. She should help Rickie because she CAN help him, without much effort even. And it bothers me... because it's entirely realistic and believable.

Not that I don’t appreciate the cathartic moment at the end, when they all do end up in church, even though in a very different manner than Patty originally wanted, and Rickie becomes part of their family, at least for a moment

Random notes:

You can read more about the issue of LGBT youth homelessness here.

Danielle: Do we have to keep talking about religion? It's Christmas.

I really liked the whole background story of Graham not really willing to admit that he isn’t religious anymore (and the hints that his Catholic upbringing may have something to do with it).

In terms of gut-wrenching moments, this was early into the episode:

Rayanne: Rickie has this like tendency to get beat up, and he doesn't always love talking about it.

This moment… because Rayanne talks about this like she takes it for granted. She knows exactly what is happening to Rickie – he gets beat up by the people that are meant to take care of him, not for defying them but for being himself – and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Later, when Angela is worried about Rickie because he didn’t show up in school, Rayanne tells her that she “can't like be responsible for the whole world.” In a way, all these small things that Rayanne does and says in this episode throw a shadow over her character for the next episodes. She is supposed to care about Rickie – at least – as much as Angela does. They’ve been friends forever. Rickie is more concerned about her than about anyone else in his life. And yet, Rayanne never grasps the gravity of the situation or understands that things have gotten so bad that she can’t just pass it off as something that “just happens” to Rickie (which is a horrible thought anyway, this complacency).

Completely unrelated to the serious tone of the episode, this continues what I can’t help but call “the great romance” between Sharon Cherski and Rayanne Graff. I would ship the hell out of them if MSCL hadn’t ended 16 years ago.

Rayanne: I don't know, just - making depressed people talk to someone like you. Couldn't that like push them over the edge?

Sharon: Over the edge. That's like your address, right?

I like this entire subplot: Brian dropping out of the helpline thing with Sharon, subtly displaying all the symptoms of depression that she describes (“like total hopelessness and despair and like, loss of appetite”) without her realizing it, and Rayanne accidentally ending up at the helpline, eventually saving Brian from his Christmas funk with the prank sex-line call (it’s the only way Rayanne knows to help, but it’s effective! – “think of it this way, Steve. You still feel like crying?”).

Sharon: I mean, how do I get myself into these situations?

Rayanne: Wild guess. Stupidity?

Sharon: No, no, you're right. because I do it over and over again. I am so overextended. I mean, besides the help line, I have this whole holiday basket thing I said I'd make for this nursing home, plus I have like two million presents to wrap, not to mention the fifty thousand social events I said I'd go to, and… I have to say, you're a pretty good listener.

Rayanne: Well, I should be. Spent my whole life listening to my mom rag about her problems, of which she has, like many. Now to top it all off she's got a low-life sex maniac boyfriend like staying with us. You know it's gotten to the point, I just can't handle it. I may just as well go be somewhere else for Christmas. Like they'd notice.

Sharon: I know where you could be on Christmas.

Patty: You will not believe what Bernice and Bob Krakow did.

Graham: Oh, I know, but just that once, right? To make Brian?

Jordan reveals that he has an abusive father but he stopped beating him after Jordan threw a chair at him. I also like the unlikeliness of Jordan being the one person who helps Rickie and empathizes with him.

Persona

2011-12-23T21:37:00.000+01:00

In her essay on Bergman’s Persona, Susan Sontag argued that it makes more sense to regard the film as a “theme-and-variation narrative” than as a “linear story”. Any attempt to recount the story of the film runs into difficulties once it needs to account for the breaks or the question of what is “real” and what is a dream within the narrative. More profoundly, this approach has no answers to whether Elisabeth and Alma are two separate characters or in fact two aspects of one person suffering through some kind of a crisis.
The reason for Elisabeth Vogler’s silence is one of the many things that do not receive a definite answer in the film, even though Bergman presents several theories: the most articulate is voiced by her doctor in the beginning, right before the patient leaves with Alma, the nurse.

Don’t you think I understand? The hopeless dream of being. Not seeming, but being. Conscious at every moment. Vigilant. At the same time the chasm between what you are to others and to yourself, the feeling of vertigo and the constant desire to at last be exposed. To be seen through, cut down, perhaps even annihilated. Every tone of voice a lie, every gesture a falsehood, every smile a grimace. Commit suicide? Oh no. That’s ugly, you don't do that. But you can be immobile, you can fall silent. Then at least you don't lie. You can close yourself in, shut yourself off. Then you don't have to play roles, show any faces or make any false gestures. You think... but you see, reality is bloody-minded. Your hiding place isn't watertight. Life seeps in everything. You're forced to react. No one asks if it's real or unreal, if you're true or false. It's only in the theatre the question carries weight. Hardly even there. I understand you, Elisabeth. I understand you're keeping silent, you're immobile. That you've placed this lack of will into a fantastic system. I understand and admire you. I think you should maintain this role until it's played out, until it's no longer interesting. Then you can leave it. Just as you bit by bit leave all your other roles.

The doctor interprets Elisabeth’s silence as an attempt to lead a completely authentic life, one that lacks the pretence and falseness of both the theatrical and the real world. The sentence about reality and theatre seems to point beyond the situation itself; it is a statement about Persona as a film, perhaps even about Bergman’s notions about storytelling. The conclusion is damning, though: in this interpretation, Elisabeth is desperately trying not to play a role, to be instead of seeming, but even that inevitably becomes a performance.
The doctor sees this as a choice – visually, the film also raises the possibility that Elisabeth’s silence is a reaction to the – unspeakable – horror she witnesses. In one scene, she watches a news report on the war in Vietnam and cowers in a corner of the room, but the light of the television is inescapable. She reacts similarly distraught when she finds a photograph of a boy in the Warsaw Ghetto. Alma reads a passage from a book to her when they are at the beach (a passage presumably invented by Bergman, not actually taken from an existing text) – “the howl of our faith and doubt against the darkness and silence is one of the most awful proofs of our abandonment and our terrified unuttered knowledge.” – and when asked if she agrees with this sentiment, Elisabeth nods.
The third possible explanation comes from Alma. In a sequence that is repeated so the viewer sees both faces, both reactions, an angry Alma – angry because she feels like Elisabeth has betrayed her by sharing a secret she thought safe – the nurse tells a story, and it remains open if this is a theory she has, or something she has found out, or perhaps the whole scene is only Alma’s dream, the result of something she witnessed early into her relationship with Elisabeth (when she violently tore apart a picture of her son that was enclosed in a letter from her husband). She claims that Elisabeth, the successful artist and woman, tried to refute the claim that she lacked motherliness, became pregnant but in the course of the pregnancy more and more revolted by the idea of becoming a mother, so that her reaction to her son being born was violent rejection. In Alma’s interpretation, Elisabeth’s silence is a reaction to her inability to love her son and her son’s unconditional and unrequited love of her.
There is no definite answer to the question of why Elisabeth is silent, but the film shows what the situation she creates with her silence causes. It causes awkwardness, a necessity, in her counterpart (Sontag calls the silence a “provocation, a temptation, a trap”). From the beginning, Alma struggles to fill it, and she soon realizes that her superficial self-definition (a young nurse with a fiancé) isn’t sufficient, so her explanations and her stories become more detailed and personal as the film progresses. Alma enjoys finally being listened to rather than being the listener, but the crisis begins after Alma shares a story she has never told anyone, one she tells precisely because Elisabeth is a stranger and her silence somehow promises that it will remain a secret. This event in her life, the seduction of a young boy, the unfaithfulness to her fiancé, the eventual pregnancy and abortion, is something she is deeply ashamed of, but at the same time, it is a burden she carries alone and sharing it by telling promises some kind of relief. The nurse realizes that this promise was false when she reads a letter Elisabeth sent to the doctor in which she describes what happened and mentions that she enjoys “studying” Alma, who in turn feels betrayed and used, a feeling that escalates when she provokes Elisabeth to hurt herself on a piece of glass on the floor. The idea of reversed roles is prominent: Alma is the nurse, the care-taker, the provider, and yet, throughout their stay at the cottage, Elisabeth takes up that role when she becomes the willing listener (and is physically affectionate towards the younger woman). Elisabeth is supposed to be the patient, but she becomes active when she articulates that she regards the other woman as someone to be studied. Their struggle with their assigned roles becomes a power play about the silence itself, once it is no longer an opportunity for Alma to share her insecurities but a provocative experiment.

Must it be like this? Is it really important not to lie, to speak the truth to talk with a genuine tone of voice? Can one live at all without talking freely? Lie and deviate and evade things? Isn't it better to allow yourself to be lazy and sloppy, untruthful? Maybe you become a little better if you just let yourself be who you are. No, you don't understand. You don't understand what I'm saying. You are inaccessible. They said you were mentally healthy but your madness is the worst. You're acting healthy you do it so well everyone believes you. Everyone except me, because I know how rotten you are.

It is, in fact, broken several times throughout Persona (but again, the distinction between reality and dream is not clear, neither is whether Elisabeth in fact speaks) – once, Elisabeth tells a drunk Alma to go to bed so as not to fall asleep on the table, once, Alma forces Elisabeth to speak by threatening to throw a pan of boiling water in her face (“don’t hurt me”) and finally, when they have returned to the hospital, Alma forces her to repeat only one word: nothing.

I think I could turn myself into you. If I made a real effort. I mean inside. You could turn yourself into me just like that. Although your soul would be much too big, it would stick out everywhere.

Are Alma and Elisabeth two separate people? Is Elisabeth the vampiristic artist feeding off Alma’s experiences for her next role (or is this merely how Alma feels?) Is Alma a threatening and demanding creation of Elisabeth’s mind, an antagonist, a counterpart – or is Elisabeth the person Alma fears to become (“We'll see how long I hold out. I'll never be like you, never. I change all the time.” She declares towards the end)? Persona provides no definite answers.

1966, directed by Ingmar Bergman, starring Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullmann.

Reaction Post - I'll help.

2011-12-12T19:21:00.001+01:00

The Good Wife: 3x11 What Went Wrong.

This week, on The Good Wife: Kalinda and Alicia talked. There was no frowning. People in the vicinity of the conversation did not suffer from hypothermia. I'm sure other stuff happened as well, but...

No, but seriously. I've basically spent this entire season so far jealously watching Alicia/Will shippers rejoice (oh tumblr tracked tags, both the salt of the earth and the bane of my life). Last week, I almost felt a sense of schadenfreude when their beautiful ship sank, not because I hate the idea of Will and Alicia (their timing is awful though), but seeing others suffer as well made me feel... less lonely (less alone...). Kalinda's reaction to Alicia's glacial move towards their friendship was glorious to behold. Her face after Alicia spoke the titular lines was the Kalinda-equivalent of other people's running around flailing and screaming at the tops of their lungs (she's a ~private person).

The other remarkable thing about the episode: about halfway in I noticed that I found completely random and not very significant scenes incredibly enjoyable, and it was all because of Julianna Margulies' face, which is always excellent, but there was something about her acting in this episode... It almost felt like Alicia Florrick has finally become this new person that has been developing since last season. The cinematography also stood out (that first shot of Alicia's eyes, slowly revealing where we were, which fit Alicia's daydreaming and disorientation!).

The case-of-the-week was a little different than usual as well, since we didn't get to see the actual trial. A police woman is accused of killing her husband. While the jury deliberates, Diane and Cary (and Alicia and Dana) try to make a deal since the prosecution feels like not really having made its case - when offered a second-degree-murder-charge, the client turns the deal down - and is promptly and surprisingly unanimously convicted of first-degree-murder. Suspecting that something must have happened during deliberation and motivated by an equally appalled judge, L/G set out to stalk the jurors and find cause for a mis-trial.
Alicia's advice to the client was a good reminder of some of the themes of The Good Wife: "You know what you did. You know what you didn't know. You also sometimes that doesn't matter. It comes down to two things: the skill of your lawyers, and the jury. You have good lawyers, the trial went our way, but the jury is an unknown. They're your peers. And I've never understood my peers."
Things between Alicia and Will remain awkward, regardless of mutual exclamations of awkward-avoidance-plans. "So that's it then, isn't it. We just decided and it's so?" / "Yup. We're adults."
Remember when the kids asked Alicia what she was doing after Peter had picked them up, and she replied: laundry, missing you because "having sex with my boss" wasn't an appropriate answer? She tries the laundry-missing strategy for about five seconds before finding it unbearable (also unbearable: "history" television shows that are an excuse to show pretty people in weird costumes having sex - "Joan of Arc, as only cable can tell it" - Alicia Florrick disapproves, although the episodes left it open if she turned off the TV because she didn't want to be reminded of what she had just lost, or because it made her feel uncomfortable). Struggling to figure out what other people not currently involved in a secret affair would do with a free evening, she made a phone call: And because Owen is such an awesome character, because he is interesting and funny all on his own but also a constant reminder of who isn't getting slurry-drunk with Alicia - we finally got an insight into Alicia's feelings.

Owen: Are you in love with Will?
Alicia: I don't think I am.
Owen: Seriously?
Alicia: Seriously. I think I was in love with it. You know, the tension.
Owen: Raw, animalistic sex?
Alicia: Yeah. But I didn't like the lying, and I don't like... I mean, he's my boss.

I don't think that this is the final page of the Will-Alicia book or anything - I think that there is both the possibility of Alicia only claiming not to be in love because being in love with Will and not being able to be with Will would be so much worse than this, and she could have been in the process of falling in love with the new and improved Will Gardner, the one constantly questioning his priorities and his life choices - or maybe she just doesn't love him. But whatever it is, the important part is that Alicia needs someone sitting opposite her, asking about her feelings, making her analyse them, because otherwise, she doesn't allow herself to be aware of them. This is... an interesting thing she has in common with Kalinda, only that Kalinda is so unwilling to subject herself to questioning. Here are Alicia's options, according to Owen: if you love Will, get a job somewhere else. If things are too complicated, make them a tiny bit less fucked-up by divorcing Peter. And, most importantly: "You're lonely, that's the problem".

Alicia: It's too complicated, I don't like complications. I need friends
Owen: Then get friends, you had good friends.
Alicia: Yeah, I did, didn't I? Where are they all?
Owen: Probably on Facebook.

My favourite thing about the episode, apart from that one very obvious favourite thing, is how everything is connected. Alicia's isolation has been an issue before - she started a completely new life after starting to work for L/G, and her little trip back to the neighbourhood where she lived with Peter was a reminder that she couldn't really ever go back, not only because she wasn't welcome but also because she was becoming someone who wouldn't fit in any more. Alicia tries to escape her friendlessness but fails miserably (that friend from the past was hilarious though - things Alicia Florrick doesn't appreciate in a friend: extremely loud tales about Chinese sex cults), and at the same time, that one good friend that she so desperately needs is always kind of there, looming in the background. There's Diane, telling her to focus on her job and to become a partner because if she doesn't aim for something greater, she is bound to lose what she already has - so there is already a kind of stain on any possible future friendship between the two, because Diane expects and demands (not that I don't appreciate the final scene of them having a drink together, but this isn't the kind of friendship Alicia is in desperate need of).

Other threads finally coming together: Kalinda starts investigating the jury and is immediately warned by Dana to stop because "if any of those jurors call harassment on you, I will personally toss you in jail" - a warning that sounded anything but professional, and from the look on Kalinda's face it's clear that she is pretty much fed up with that whole triangle of doom. Eventually, it's Cary who gets to toss her in jail, and it seems that both their motivations are beyond professional. Dana even takes the case to Wendy Scott-Carr, claiming that she "may have stumbled on another judge they bribed" because he is sympathetic to L/G's attempts to overturn the verdict.
I kind of had suspicions about Wendy before the final scene, because WHY would you tell a judge that you are investigating him for being corrupt? She almost asked him to take the side of the prosecution in order to prove that he isn't. I guess The Good Wife has a classic villain again.
"How are you doing? Cause you're looking a little pale."
Friendless, Alicia accidentally finds out about Kalinda's act of super heroism last episode - she is slightly irritated that her children kept a secret from her, but in the end, it is that other, weird feeling of gratefulness that prevails and triggers a truly awesome reaction when she finds out that Kalinda is in jail. Not only does she threaten Cary personally - and effectively enough so that he actually does let her go immediately - but she also sounds a bit scary while doing it. "I am not joking, Cary. You bring Kalinda to me, now."
This is the grand moment: Kalinda is brought to Alicia, someone takes off her hand cuffs, and she just looks at her, equal parts vulnerability and defiance (I will not break, I will not make the first step, you have to), and then walks by her out of the building, to the car.

Alicia: You found Grace? You found my daughter?
Kalinda: She wasn't lost.
Alicia: You brought her home.
Kalinda: She would have come home on her own.
Alicia: You told my kids not to tell me. Why?
Kalinda: I don't want a mess.
Alicia: What mess?
Kalinda: Alicia, I haven't changed. I am the same person. I knew I could help so I helped, that's all.
Alicia: Thank you.
Kalinda: You don't have to.
Alicia: No. You didn't have to, that's why I am thanking you.
Kalinda: You're welcome.

"I am the same person". What an absolutely devastating thing to say - is Kalinda's point that she doesn't deserve forgiveness because she is still the kind of person who is capable of betrayal (or just a reminder that she is still the same Kalinda that Alicia befriended, the Kalinda that would come to the rescue without asking any questions and without expecting to gain anything from it - regardless of how Alicia's opinion of her has changed since finding out about the past)? Alicia was always the exception. Kalinda doesn't have friends, but Alicia was a friend. So when Alicia says "I'll help", and therefore brings an end to weeks and weeks of avoiding each other, the sun rises for Kalinda Sharma (and seriously, I think sometimes the clients paid the price for their lack of communications and Alicia's unwillingness to bring Kalinda into her cases...). Their scene together is a contrast to the one right after their confrontation last season, when they were so out of sync that they almost messed up exactly this kind of situation. They go to talk to a juror together (Kalinda is basically like: I am Kalinda, and this is Alicia Florrick, my colleague and almost-again-friend! Isn't she pretty?) and - because finally, they work as a team again - find the piece of information that they need.

In the end, L/G gets a re-trial because the judge friended the weird button-blogging juror on "Facebranch", because technology is relevant and stuff.
Context really is everything: Diane asks Kalinda what she is doing, Kalinda answers: "Anything you want."
Meanwhile, Alicia and Peter try to get their two kids (both the helpful hacker and the complicated Christian one) into a fancy prep school called CRAPSTONE, where I wouldn't even consider sending my kids simply because they would be ridiculed for the name alone. After a first conversation with the head mistress, Alicia realizes that Peter's job, body size and soothing voice will do the job. Basically, the scenes serve to show how well Peter and Alicia are doing together, parenting-wise. And then, right before Wendy's grand reveal (if The Good Wife were a James Bond movie, she would have delivered this message while evilly stroking a cat, or evilly twirling her moustache, or evilly patting the nuclear bomb in her secret lair...), Peter turns into that other guy again, reminding us that he does have this other side that we (and Alicia) like to forget. He blackmails the headmistress of the private school into accepting Grace and Zach, because "perusing through some of these background checks" he discovered that many of the teachers had issues (but apparently not issues severe enough to discourage him from sending his children to CRAPSTONE) - and "I'm the State's Attorney. oyu don't say no to me. And you especially don't say no to me when it concerns my children. Do you undrestand? I think the word you're looking for is yes." Which is pretty much the definition of corruption, yes? So, evil Wendy Scott-Carr currently not-so-secretly working on your evil plan to avenge your election loss: you have a point. Maybe. And dangling that carrot in front of Will's face ("You know where his weaknesses lie.")... well, I guess we'll see how principled Will is, after all.
PS: apparently it's Capstone, not CRAPSTONE. Whatever.

When Night Is Falling

2011-12-08T12:13:00.001+01:00

I can't stay and you can't leave.

When Night Is Falling is a love story. It is perhaps the ultimate love story, since it concerns itself with a woman so stuck in a particular environment that the mere appearance of somebody so absolutely different from what she is used to changes her perception of her environment, of her relationships, of her identity. Camille (Pascale Bussières) is a teacher in a Catholic college and involved with a professor on the career track - and then Petra (Rachael Crawford) bursts into her life, so consumed by the way Camille expresses her grief over losing her dog to a stranger in a Laundromat that she feels compelled to switch their laundry to ensure a second encounter. Camille is equally fascinated by the circus artist seemingly so unconstrained by conventions - and ultimately, desire and curiosity wins over keeping up the traditional life, the seemingly inevitable marriage to her boyfriend. Petra points out to her that everything, regardless of how new or exciting it is, becomes boring sooner or later - but Camille resists that notion, insisting that they can make a life for themselves.

When Night Is Falling is ultimately about freedom: The dangers involved in demanding that freedom, in choosing the more complicated option, in defying the path that has been laid out for you. Camille is forced to confront all the rules that have guided her life so far. She has to question the moral dogmas of her church, the relationship with Martin, her boyfriend, the ideas that have guided her life. Petra has to commit, which is as much a challenge as Camille's change of heart is.

Patricia Rozema's directing is just stunning. The cinematography is occasionally reminiscent of Ingmar Bergman (one scene in particular cites Persona) - and the visuals of When Night Is Falling are unusual (especially of the circus!), drawing the viewer into a different world. That one line from Mirror/Mask - about the main character wanting to run away from the circus to join real life - is turned on its head in this movie. Running away to join the circus is about finally finding real life.

1995, directed by Patricia Rozema, starring Pascale Bussières, Rachael Crawford, Henry Czerny, David Fox, Don McKellar, Tracy Wright.

Nordrand

2011-12-07T15:17:00.001+01:00

Dort. Dort ist Österreich.

I don't really remember when I first saw Barbara Albert's Nordrand, but the thing that has always stayed with me and that is just as strong when I return to the film, regardless of how my perspective on other aspects of the story has changed, is this feeling of knowing this specific place and time. The distance between the titular housing estate and where my family lived for most of my childhood is about five kilometres. In 1995 (you can pinpoint the chronology by the constant news reports on the peace talks that would eventually end the war in Bosnia), I'd just finished my first year in school, and one of those memories that only made sense years later were of a very quiet, very pale boy who joined us halfway through my last year in kindergarten. Nobody ever bothered explaining the concept of war refugees to us. Nordrand depicts the landscape of my childhood - the way the characters speak is entirely embedded in my brain, the flatness of the transdanubian urban fringe (the characters venture into the city for the New Year's Eve celebrations - the war-like fireworks, the waltzing on Stephansplatz - but most of the story takes place in the outskirts).

Albert trails several characters. Nina Proll's Jasmin and Edita Malovcic's Tamara are at the centre of the story - two girls who went to school together but lost touch, leading completely different lives until they eventually meet again in an abortion clinic. Jasmin lives with her parents in one of the many similar looking housing estates, and unlike Elin in Lasse Moodysson's Fucking Åmål, she isn't able to voice her frustration with her situation. Her attempts to break out are random and self-destructive, and her resistance against this life remains unstructured. She attempts to protect her sister from the abusive father, but ultimately, her ability to even envision a different life is limited because this is all she knows (once she articulates that living on a higher floor in the building would be great - her ideas of a better future are literally limited to the microcosm of the estate).

Tamara's reality is completely different from Jasmin's. She fled Yugoslavia as a child, her mother and brother have meanwhile returned (the unreliable phone lines only fuel her concern for them as the war escalates in its final stages), and she works as a nurse. Her boyfriend guards the border to keep refugees from entering - we follow one who manages to cross over and attempts to make a life for himself, avoiding police control, shovelling snow for a living, sleeping in a cramped refugee home - while another only sees Vienna as a stopover to America, which promises more money and better jobs. The "fringe" in the title isn't just about place, it's where most of the characters are located. Their individual strategies of coping (articulated or not articulated) are always about making do with very little resources, and the film thrives on their unexpected moments of happiness. Albert connects the stories elegantly, the unfortunate artificiality of recent films that attempt to make a point by connecting an economically diverse cast of characters is completely missing.

1999, directed by Barbara Albert, starring Nina Proll, Edita Malovcic, Astrit Alihajdaraj, Tudor Chirila, Michael Tanczos.

My So-Called Life - When she's excited like this... it's kind of dangerous.

2011-12-06T22:27:00.001+01:00

My So-Called Life: 1x14 On the Wagon.

This is kind of a dangerous time.

So, Rayanne Graff. I’ve spent so much time feeling bad about not writing more about her. It’s like… she’s always there, a presence in the background, but even when she was supposed to be the centre of attention, she wasn’t, really – which is absurd, considering how she just automatically draws all the attention. What Rayanne has been doing the entire time that Angela has hooked up with Jordan, spent awkward moments of silence with Jordan, and finally broken up with Jordan, Rayanne has remained sober. 33 days of sobriety, 33 days of counselling, 33 days of Angela avoiding her, both for Jordan and because it is difficult to find the right words when your mum has saved your best friend from dying of an overdose. This whole episode… kind of breaks me. Rayanne, on the surface, is such a loud, lively character, that it’s easy to forget that behind the façade, she never says what she really wants and needs.

Counsellor: I just need to know that you have a support system in place.
Rayanne: I don't need a support system. I got friends.
Counsellor: That's exactly why I'm raising this. I mean, didn't you mention to me that you've had some feelings of distance from your friends since, you know the incident?

The episode is unusual, too, because Angela’s voiceovers don’t really tell you much about her perspective until the very end. She is pre-occupied with Jordan and resents Rayanne for coming between them, because every time Rayanne turns up and tries to connect with Angela, Jordan disappears. At the same time, Rayanne is unable to communicate how much she needs Angela now that her sessions have ended (and she’s decided not to continue them because IT’S NOT SERIOUS, right?) – “Oh, just kidding. Get outta here! I see you too much, don't flatter yourself.” Patty and Graham see more of her – one day, she turns up at their house and Angela simply doesn’t show up, so she cooks with Graham instead and makes Patty concerned about her (who still holds a grudge because Rayanne never really thanked her for saving her life).

The Chase’s are a dire contrast to her own home: Amber’s idea of dinner are mixing a drink for herself in a blender, appetizers and left-over Chinese – and this is something MSCL always handles so incredibly well, all the things that Angela simply takes for granted, even finds grating, while her friends live in way more precarious circumstances. Amber assumes that Rayanne’s issues with Angela were caused by her (“What did you do?”) – but at least she knows her daughter well enough to realize that Angela isn’t just another friends who “come and go”, but someone “special”.

Everything Rayanne does in this episode is meant to get her closer to Angela. Trying to get into Jordan’s band – an attempt to sneak back into Angela’s life, even if it means dealing with the massive and horrible disappointment of Angela’s half-assed recommendation to Jordan. Rayanne is setting herself up for a disaster (because it’s kind of clear from the beginning that whatever she does, Angela won’t be there – regardless of whether or not she eventually becomes the lead singer of Frozen Embryos, Angela won’t be there for the grand concert, she won’t be there in the crowd to help Rayanne deal with her stage fright, with this horrible, horrible fear of failing). Rickie knows. He sees this moment coming from the beginning (“I just want to make sure you don't make this into a bigger deal than it is.”). Sharon compliments Rayanne’s singing rather surprisingly in another unexpected restroom encounter (“I’m sorry, did I say you could listen”), but as awesome as Sharon is – Rayanne cares about Angela. Angela is her notoriously absent friend.

This is one of the horrible truths about friends in high school. As intense and essential these friendships are (and remember how Angela and Rayanne started out in the beginning of the season?) – sometimes that guy just seems more important, and then you’re not there for the actual crash, but always to pick up the pieces, if that makes any sense. Angela is distracted, so she misses this moment when she still could make a difference, and all that remains to be done is deal with the aftermath.

Rayanne’s attempt at being a singer for Frozen Embryos goes awry, she runs off in panic and Rickie convinces himself that she is drinking herself to death because she is unreachable, and the day after, after a terribly humiliating encounter with Amber, Patty drives Rayanne to school and they finally have that conversation that has been looming above their heads for a whole season now.

Patty: Why didn't you tell me that you had stopped seeing your counselor?
Rayanne: I don't know. Maybe just 'cause I wanted you to think I was okay, so you wouldn't mind if I, you know, stayed friends with Angela.
Patty: I guess she means a lot to you, huh?
Rayanne: I guess that's, like, the one thing you and I have in common. Thanks for the ride, Mrs. Chase.
Patty: Rayanne?
Rayanne: Yo.
Patty: Apparently you and I are in the same karass. Call me Patty.
Rayanne: Patty, thanks. For, like... for my life.

This is all about “I have friends, I don’t need a support network”… because sometimes, friends fuck up. Angela fucks up because her priorities are all messed up due to Jordan, and Rickie can’t deal with being the only person who actually carries the burden – he is the only one realizing how awful this could get. Amber doesn’t know.

Rayanne: You didn't miss much, just me making a fool out of myself, and you've seen that plenty. Right? Anyway, I knew you wouldn't show. I can't stand these looks anymore.
Angela: What looks?
Rayanne: You and Rickie looking at me like I'm gonna lose control, like any minute I'm gonna go on some jag or something. I just can't stand knowing what you're thinking about me.
Angela: What? What am I thinking?
Rayanne: I'm messed up. That I'm too messed up for you to be my friend anymore.
Angela: Rayanne, that's not true. I never… I'm still your friend. Nothing's changed.
Angela (voiceover): But that wasn't completely true either. And we both, like, knew it.
Rayanne: Maybe it was just easier, you know? You'd come to me for advice and stuff, like you used to before.
Angela: I should've been there. Last night. I should've been there no matter what.
Rayanne: Miss you.
Angela: I know. I missed you, too.
Rayanne: Rickie, I'm sorry.
Rickie: I swear to God, I'm gonna kill you.

This tiny, tiny moment, of Angela finally acknowledging the whole situation in the voiceover, of us realizing that Angela has been thinking about this, does know that something has been wrong for quite some time, that it’s not okay that they can’t talk about this thing, about the elephant in the room, about “you almost died”. I think Angela is so preoccupied with Jordan because dealing with Jordan is way easier than facing the fact that your best friend almost killed herself, and really, who can blame Angela, becomes sometimes these things happen to us and we aren’t equipped to handle them, and the best we can do is try and grow and learn and become stronger.

Finally, Rickie, Angela and Rayanne go out, have a happy night at the movies like they should… and Rayanne has her grand moment, performing in front of an enthusiastic audience… and then she takes a swig out of a beer bottle. And Rickie knew, all this time, and Angela knows now, too, that things are never as easy as you’d like them to be.

Random notes:

Ironically, Jordan and Angela are now talking about feelings. Jordan is even calling

Angela at home to talk about his emotions. Downside: he seems way more sad about his band breaking up than about Angela dumping him (but he still “knows the combination to her locker”!).

Angela (voiceover): You need me. You must have me as your own. You can't live another second knowing others could possess me.

Jordan: I could kill Tino.

Patty face at her entrance into her kitchen with Rayanne preparing dinner was hilarious: “There is an alcoholic in our kitchen! Cooking dinner!”

The band-trash-talk had me giggling on the floor: “NOW YOU’RE GONNA EAT, THAT’S ALL YOU EVER DO, MAN.”

So apparently you can be too punk to sing I wanna be sedated. Also, I’m sorry, it’s not like I don’t appreciate Jordan Catalano’s voice, but it’s not well-suited for The Ramones. A.J. Langer, on the other hand – holy fuck. If you ever wondered how it would sound if Pattie Smith sung The Ramones – there it is.

I absolutely love Patty in this episode. She makes a really hard decision – to cross this boundary that tells her that she can’t tell another parent about how to deal with their kid (“Why, why is it that, that you can't speak to people honestly about their children?” – Graham’s response is “Nobody wants to hear they may have made a mistake with their kids. Nobody wants to be accused of not being a decent parent. I mean, it-it is, it is an unwritten law, whatever goes on in your family is your business, period. Nobody else's.”), and she is humiliated for trying. She cares about Rayanne, both because she is just a good person, so she would, and because she knows how much Rayanne means to Angela, but in the end, Amber has her grand moment of demonstrating what a good mother she is, because after all, she was there to eat raw cookie dough with her sad daughter. Except… except Rayanne has already started drinking again. Except Rickie was completely right.

Patty: Yeah, so I hear. So, um, you're certain that, that she's not drinking?

Amber: About as certain as you are that Angela and cutie-pie are just friends.

The moment when Angela finally shares her concerns about Rayanne with her parents is absolutely adorable. “It’s something between Rayanne and me I can’t even describe, but it's there, and it's been there for, like, a while, since that night when you had to drive her to the hospital. It's this thing that we never talk about.” – and Patty and Graham are too stunned about their daughter finally sharing something about her life that they can’t respond to it. Graham’s dead-pan reaction “She'll ignore you for another month just to make up for it.”

BRIAN SHOWS UP FOR RAYANNE’S CONCERT BECAUSE RICKIE ASKED HIM TO. They are like the most adorable non-couple ever.

We are between names is such a cool, hipster name for a band. Also, look, it’s ‘90s hipsters!

Rayanne: Rickie, that hurt.

Rickie: Not enough.

UGH. UGH. Fuck.

Reaction Post - This is not about work, this is about what happens after work.

2011-12-05T15:54:00.001+01:00

The Good Wife: 3x10 Parenting Made Easy.

This episode made me realize that the structure of this show fits the content perfectly. I assume that there is a group of viewers who watch The Good Wife for the cases-of-the-week, for the legal stuff, for the courtroom (and lately, investigative) drama - but I (and since I'm not a special little snow flake, let me pretend that I am not alone in this) watch mostly for the relationships - the cases are occasionally interesting on their own, but to me, their point is to reveal something new about the characters in how they deal with specific issues and clients and how they sometimes affect how the characters relate to each other - and sometimes, they just get in the way of things. You desperately want to see more conversations about feelings, more meaningful looks, more of those moments where a character makes a decision that is going to change, and instead you get a witty courtroom exchange on some legal technicality or Kalinda having a light-bulb-moment of finding decisive evidence or whatever, and the great emotional moment has to wait another week or maybe month or maybe it won't come until the season finale or whatever. BUT that's exactly how the characters feel, too! A relationship affects how well someone can do their job, the job affects how much time that person can spend with their family, family affects that relationship. The show makes choices about pacing the relationship-stuff and balancing the character development with the requirements of a procedural, and the characters decide what their priorities are. And then an episode like Parenting Made Easy comes along after nine episodes of quiet and subtle and glacial changes, and to me it felt like a breath of fresh air to see this one horrible thing cut through all the existing conflicts and alliances and priorities, and finally facilitate some of these radical changes (that, despite shippery shock and outrage, really have been a long time coming). It's an interesting episode on the meta level too, because it seems (and was promoted as) exactly the kind of ridiculous half-season stunt shows pull to gain a wider audience (there was even a parade of beloved guest stars returning!) and then it took about thirty minutes for the shocking! moment to arrive and it was resolved quickly and remarkably anti-climatically.

I liked the way the show introduced all those tiny bits of information that contributed to Alicia's reaction when Grace went missing. All on its own, Grace calling 12 times unsuccessfully and not being reachable on her phone wouldn't have had such an impact - and Alicia probably would have waited longer than an hour before starting the massive machine at her disposal (where other families would have to wait 24 hours, Alicia has the SA office, a super heroic private investigator and the limousine driver of the opposing lawyer!) - but then there is the fact that the white supremacist she helped keep in prison via Colin Sweeney is having witnesses killed and might be out for revenge, there's the fact that she spends her day dealing with the fall-out of crimes, and that she's just spent a day with an eerie foreboding dream about Grace being abducted in her head (and that's how dreams sometimes work: you KNOW that taking them seriously is ridiculous, but there is still this strange wariness). All those elements, coupled with Alicia's general guilt for currently not spending as much time with her children as she should, lead to her assuming that the worst has happened (the moment when she quietly whispered "please don't let it happen" to herself...).

Grace disappeared off the face of the earth for an hour to get baptised while butt-dialling her mum twelve times and the world stopped to find her - and never mind everything else that happened in the episode, because the best thing about it was how Kalinda got involved. Of course perceptive Kalinda who ALWAYS looks out for Alicia notices what is going on without being told. She overhears Zach's frantic conversations with his mum over the phone, and she steps in, the same way that Peter drops everything the moment he hears that his daughter might be in danger, the same way that Louis Canning, who also has kids, forgets about the case and offers to help Alicia when he finds out that Grace is missing. It's instinctual, in Kalinda's case (Will asks her if she has a second - and she simply walks by him, "no"). Previously, Caitlin called Kalinda to help with their case without asking Alicia first and we were treated to another frosty exchange just so that we could go into this whole thing knowing that nothing between Alicia and Kalinda has changed, that Alicia is still avoiding Kalinda at all costs, even if it means maybe not having all the necessary information to help a client. I also think that Kalinda would have been Alicia's first call after informing Peter if things were any different (and... I actually thought she would call Kalinda at some point despite of what happened, simply because Alicia knows that there is nobody more qualified to find Grace - I mean, she is the person you'd have on speed-dial in case of a zombie apocalypse, isn't she?). But Alicia didn't, so Kalinda did everything completely alone, one step ahead of the police (her entire success really depended on that one question nobody else asked Grace's friend - does she ever talk to people on the internet?). And when she found Grace and delivered her, she remained in the elevator (elevators!) and told Grace not to mention to Alicia that she was the one who found her (she literally says "I'm fine" to Grace's "But my mom will want to thank you"), because Kalinda didn't do any of this to get back into Alicia's good graces, to score points, to atone for her sins - she CARED, so she helped the best that she could, and the best that Kalinda can do is, like, be a superhero.

There is actually a really great conversation between Alicia and Grace in this episode - sadly hidden between a conversation about Leviticus and picking and choosing (that carries into the court room the next day) and getting baptised while her parents think she is getting murdered by a supremacist:

Grace: Is it about Will? Zach said he met him in the office.
Alicia: No, it's not about Will. Grace, I'm sorry it's been such a hard year. Are you good?
Grace: Yeah, I just wanna make sure that you are.
Alicia: I am. I am. There's just too many distraction right now, that's all.
Grace: Get rid of them.
Alicia: Okay. I will.

I actually like Grace and I always find this specific kind of criticism that is usually aimed at (mostly female) characters of her age questionable - what, you say, she is self-involved, has strange interests and occasionally behaves as if she were the most important person on the planet? That pretty much sounds like every single one of my friends (and yeah, me) between 13 and 17. The conversation was a reminder that Grace isn't ignorant of things going on in other people's lives (Zach is just currently in a better position, information-gathering-wise, since he apparently runs the IT department at L/G now, genius hacker that he is). Her advice is sound too: figure out what's important, and if there are things that are mutually exclusive, get rid of stuff that is less important. The episode offers Alicia more than one option, too: Louis tells her she could always work for him and be home in time to spend time with her kids. She could always have that one essential conversation with Kalinda (really, I think not talking to Kalinda and therefore talking to absolutely NO ONE about her issues is currently Alicia's core problem). Or... she could really cut the Gordian Knot, break up with Will (she almost tells Grace about Will, but stops herself), make all the issues with Diane go away, and the looming scandal, and the things she can't tell anyone. There is an intentional compare and contrast between the moment Alicia and Peter share when Grace returns safely and Alicia alone in her bedroom, staring at a piece of lingerie (that is meant to symbolize her mostly sexual relationship with Will). She doesn't even know about the investigation when she makes the decision - and it's that old timing-problem again, the one that has been haunting Will and Alicia since they first started. Will goes into the conversation troubled because he has come to the conclusion that he is willing to commit (Kalinda told him to just figure out what he wants and get it - and he did, and tries), and Alicia goes into it knowing that she will break up with him. I'm guessing that's not the last of it. Diane thinks that Will broke up with Alicia - "You did the right thing. she'll get over it." She will. Will maybe won't.

The case of the week featured Caitlin's first foray into the court room except it was only meant to be a minor arbitration hearing - until Martha, the ultimate holder of grudges (I bet Alicia is happy she didn't hire her now! See, Alicia, sometimes nepotism isn't all that bad!), arrived, meaning to showcase how much better an employee she might have been, at least until things got even more complicated and the case became a debate about whether hate speech is no longer hate speech when it is motivated by religion, and Martha's boss turned out to be Michael J. Fox' awesome Louis Canning, who, spoiler!, never really loses, ever. It's nicer to see him win when the victim of his questionable morals (well, he did wait until Grace was safe, so...) is a religiously motivated homophobe (The Good Wife enjoys casting well-known people in roles that are the radically different from their fame-making characters - this week, Jennifer Carpenter didn't say "fuck" once!).
"Well. She sure is blonde. Pretty hair."
"Remember when I told you to just give a solid performance? Forget it. Kick ass."
Also, just to be clear: I do kind of feel like eye-rolling at TGW a bit for making the whole "oh look, the blonde girl isn't incompetent" story a thing. Nobody thought so! The gross aspect of the episode was how David Lee got her the job and merit never really was an issue in the whole process, regardless of whether she was qualified or not.
Kalinda is helping Will with the investigation he already knows is now all about him, and he subtly asks her to find out if it would go away if he broke up with Alicia - after having a conversation with Diane in which she basically told him to break it off, and not just for his own good since it also affects her life and the firm.
I also really like Kalinda's wording of the question: "If you stopped being close with Alicia, would that change things?". If this were about anyone else, she wouldn't hold back.
Peter, about the investigation: "You've been giving the steering wheel, but I still put the gas in the car." I guess that answers the question of how involved he is. Wendy Scott-Carr thinks that his concern is going too lightly on the firm...
Things you shouldn't say when accused of sexually harassing a co-worker: "I'm a tactile person".
Eli spends the episode staring at ceilings and walls (he also provides a fitting metaphor for what's going on at L/G: "you have a small hairline crack right here, I think there's a hole in your air duct insulation." - and Diane tells him to play nice so that other lawyers will send their clients his way. He tries with Will, who asks for a favour back - he wants Eli to find out why Peter is investigating him personally.
More awesome symbolism humour: Wendy Scott-Carr gets Cary's cool investigator friend into the game (the guy who knows all about Leela - I wonder how that will play into future episodes), and his daughter circles Will with her tricycle on the court (where presumably most of Will's dealings take place) while he talks to him.
Making videos of yourself with your age-inappropriate friend and finding god via youtube: Grace can do it all, Alicia! Because if there is one thing that can be said about this generation of children, it's that they are really good at multitasking.
What is Dana's deal? I like her because there probably aren't that many people who could hold their own the way she does in that little game she is playing, and Monica Raymund is brilliant in the role, but I do not understand her motivation, her end game, her feelings for either Cary or Kalinda, and it's going to be hard actually caring about her character if she remains so utterly unreadable (and this is odd too, because this is basically who Kalinda used to be, just that Kalinda chose to become less of an enigma through her relationship with Alicia).

Dana: You haven't slept with Cary, have you.
Kalinda: You talk a lot about sex.
Dana: Oh, I find it interesting, don't you? Cary talks about you during sex.
Kalinda: Really.
Dana: Yeah. wanna know what he says?
Kalinda: I think you want me to know what he says.
Dana: I could go either way.
Kalinda: Yeah you could. You flirt with everyone.
Dana: It's a personal failing. We seem to share that.
Kalinda: No we don't. When I flirt, I follow through.

In the beginning of the season, I was pretty convinced that the writers and producers of the show had the opposite opinion of Cary and Kalinda, that the show was heading towards a completely different relationship between the two than this messy, awful thing that has been developing ever since Dana appeared. I have grown to like Cary, but... and this is difficult to articulate, because it is an emotional reaction to his character more than anything else - I feel like they are horribly mis-matched, Cary because he wants something out of this relationship that he isn't going to get, and Kalinda because the way Cary is trying to strip away her defences is too intrusive and can't work unless everything we have previously learned about her is wrong. I am genuinely starting to wonder how dark this storyline will be allowed to get (and "I think you want me to know what he says" - already pretty fucked up).

Sleeping Beauty

2011-12-04T12:09:00.000+01:00

I was puzzling over my end-of-the-year list of films, as you do if you are obsessed with keeping track of things, and it took me forever to decide where to put Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch. The conclusion I came to, in the end, and after long debates with people who thought it was, basically, crap, was that Snyder successfully made a movie about objectification that is severely undermined by the fact that he tried to eat his cake, too.

And along comes Julia Leigh's Sleeping Beauty, which couldn't be more aesthetically different from Sucker Punch, and yet shares many of its themes - especially the central idea of waking up / becoming aware / gaining agency.

Lucy (Emily Browning) tries to finance her life with several badly paid jobs - waitressing, a boring assistant job in an office, a horrifying gig as a lab rat for a science student that requires her to insert a tube through her mouth. Throughout this ordeal - as well as pretty much everything else that we see her do - she remains aloof and strangely elusive. The only exception is her relationship with Birdman (Ewen Leslie), an alcoholic who is drinking himself to death. She acts like a subverted mother figure; concerned and caring, delivering the morning bottle of vodka, performing in their shared games in which they pretend that they are someone else entirely, with different lives. The movie leaves their history mostly unexamined, but the extent to which she emotionally depends on that part of her life becomes clear when it breaks away.

She responds to an ad in the paper and starts to work as a different kind of waitress, for a woman who organises events for the rich who can afford everything, and eventually becomes a sleeping beauty - drugged and naked, with the promise of waking up afterwards with no memory of what happened, and more than that, refreshed, the clients are allowed to do anything they want to her (except penetration and things that leave visible scars - in one of the most uncomfortable scenes of the film, one of the clients searches for and finds a way to break the rules). She becomes that perfect, motionless female body - an object for the clients to attribute all their frustrations and fears and their shame. We witness what they do to her, as they reveal their secret desires (always with the promise of not being judged for them).

In a way, Sleeping Beauty takes the concept of Dollhouse without shying away from the true horror of the idea. The biggest lie Dollhouse ever told was that what happened inside was anything but rape, that there was an exciting, adventurous aspect to what was taken from the people in Topher's magical chair.

And then there is the subversion of the rules - Lucy realizes that she can not bear this, not knowing what is happening to her, and asks to record one of the sessions. After we've seen her willingly subject herself to the scientific experiment and meet most of her daily challenges without much emotional involvement, she tries to become aware to retain some kind of control. When this is denied to her, she breaks the rules.

Sleeping Beauty is also interesting when you search for what remains of the fairy tale (which also played a role in Dollhouse...). The princess falling asleep is meant to wait for the prince, but in Sleeping Beauty, the possible prince lies dies, or lies dormant, or maybe never even existed. The person delivering the life-saving kiss is the evil witch herself, the strangely maternal woman who makes the rules and brings sleep, and what comes after the kiss isn't a happy ending, but the terrible scream of someone who has finally waken up and become fully aware of the horror.

2011, directed by Julia Leigh, starring Emily Browning, Rachael Blake, Ewen Leslie, Peter Carroll, Chris Haywood, Hugh Keays-Byrne, Les Chantery.

The Apartment

2011-12-01T19:34:00.000+01:00

A conversation about The Apartment

B: The first thing I want to say - and in part I want to start the conversation with this because this is actually an idea that I've never really pursued, it's just the glimpse of an idea really, not fully shaped - is that The Apartment feels modern to me. This probably says more about me and the kind of expectations I have of a film that came out almost 52 years ago, at a time when both of my parents were too young to see it, than it does about Billy Wilder, but again and again, whenever I choose to see this movie, I am struck by how incredibly contemporary it seems. I would dread an actual remake of the film, despite the fact that imagining current actors and actresses in these roles can be quite fun, but I can picture this film taking place in 2011 without any major changes, except that modern technology would be all over the place and you'd have to deal with the fact that elevator girls don't exist any more (Fran Kubelik would be an underpaid intern, but she'd still face the same amount of objectification and sexualisation by her co-workers). This is particularly odd when I think about Mad Men, which sometimes really feels like it portrays a different era - I don't know if that makes any sense, but the world of Mad Men feels much more different and removed from the one I know than Wilder's in The Apartment does, and both of these narratives are meant to take place in comparable social spheres, even though the advertising business is more avantgarde than insurance. If I had to pick one piece of narrative that comes close to this film, it's Pushing Daisies.

A: And at the same time, I sometimes imagine aspects of this movie translated into current films, say, something like Garden State or really any of those "sensitive young man meets manic pixie dream girl who changes his life" and it absolutely terrifies me. I can not imagine a context in which Baxter, as a character, would work for me - I would find his little quirks unnerving. I absolutely love his character in The Apartment though, and I can't put my finger on why this film works, basically. It really shouldn't, but it does. Who would you cast as Fran Kubelik now?

B: Michelle Williams? Which is ironic because she starred in a movie called The Baxter. Oh, and Fran Kubelik is no Manic Pixie Dream Girl. If anything, she subverts the trope years before it was even invented.

A: Yes. She is the antithesis of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl. She starts as the character that may "teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures" - she basically serves as this juxtaposition to all the other people working in Baxter's building - the girl who is kind of magically saved from becoming part of the corporate world because her spelling is too bad for her to become a secretary - but this conception of her is then taking apart completely in the scene when Baxter realizes that she is one of the girls his boss took to his apartment (and this is one of my favourite scenes, actually: Baxter's face fragmented in her broken hand mirror, his expression turning from being delighted at being at the office party with her to the horrible realization that he knows absolutely nothing about her, and that she is just another one of "those girls" he's watched stumble out of his apartment in the middle of the night).

B: Right, and then it is deconstructed even more after her suicide attempt: on the surface, she's the sarcastic girl borrowing him a flower when he goes up for his big moment with the boss, but underneath, she's completely emotionally exhausted. I agree about Baxter being an unlikely character to like - and a lot of credit goes to Jack Lemmon's performance - but I think the reason why he works is because he isn't a victim. He makes these horrible choices in order to succeed, even if this is presented as more accidental than intentional in the movie. He knows that he is working his way up on the corporate ladder by providing this service to his superiors, and he only realizes that this makes him complicit in something gross when one of the people who suffer because of it is someone he cares for.

A: I think it would be wrong to argue that all the women that are taken to his apartment are victims, though. It's their choice too.

B: Yes, of course, but the moment that changes everything is when Sheldrake gives Fran money, and he doesn't even realize what he is doing - she is in love with him (which he knows, but doesn't care about), and he implies that he regards this whole thing as an exchange of goods for sex. Sheldrake uses people - he abuses his power. He asks Baxter to either continue this service that he feels uncomfortable with or lose his job. The great thing about the film is that Baxter isn't the victim in all of this because he has a choice - he can always go back to a less prestigious job in Cleveland, he wouldn't lose everything. There is a darker version of the film where Baxter makes a different decision and chooses his career over his morals.

There is also a really subtle moment early into the film when Sheldrake complains that the girls he takes out always expect him to divorce his wife - and Baxter says " No, sir, it's very unfair... Especially to your wife."

A: And the idea that there is an inherent conflict between morals and a career in a big corporation with a corrupt management definitely feels very contemporary - and this invasion of privacy, the way that the employee isn't just supposed to dedicate his work to the firm, but his entire being.

B: ...even though the way the big corporation is represented on screen is hilarious - one massive building and a room filled with people typing away in unison.

A: But the dream is still the same - corner office with windows, the view of the city.

B: I have to admit that I find Baxter impossible to dislike from the beginning of the movie, but one of the things that really gives his character depth is when he tells Fran about his suicide attempt after someone he loved left him - he bought a gun and accidentally shot himself in the knee - and it's such an understated moment because Fran thinks he is just telling her the story to make her feel better about her own botched suicide attempt...

A: Right, and a couple of scenes later, she finds the revolver, but this isn't some great reveal - no music swelling, it's not even mentioned - but WE know that this wasn't a story, that this actually happened.

B: This really changes the character for me, because in many ways, his humour, the way he reacts to everything in this nonchalant manner, is just a protective mechanism. They are both incredibly broken, but we see Baxter pretending he's not, while Fran is just so exhausted, so completely and utterly unhappy, that she can't pretend that she is okay any more.

A: This is another one of my favourite scenes. When Fran asks to take a shower in Baxter's apartment, he suddenly realizes all the dangerous things he has lying around in the apartment. I mean, a considerably part of this movie is spent fearing that she might try to commit suicide again. Wilder is a magician - by all means, this should be a horribly depressing drama, but it's not, and it doesn't feel any less serious.

B: The whole thing is mirrored nicely later on, when Fran runs into Baxter's building and thinks he has shot himself...

A: When he's actually opened a bottle of champagne. Exactly. They are both damaged goods. "Why do people have to love people anyway?"

B: On a completely different note, The Apartment also has some of the most amazing supporting characters.

A: Yes. The neighbours. The woman Baxter picks up at the bar. The pianist Fran likes so much.

B: I've used this movie to prove that I am not in fact a cynical, unemotional robot that despises love stories on principle. It's my favourite. And I don't say this lightly, because I have many movies that I like a lot and watch again and again, but this one is special.

A: Shut up and deal.

B: Exactly.

1960, directed by Billy Wilder, starring Jack Lemmon, Shirley MacLaine, Fred MacMurray, Kack Kruschen, Naomi Stevens.

Martha Marcy May Marlene

2011-11-29T12:59:00.001+01:00

Lucy, is this from the past or is this now?

In the beginning of Sean Durkin's first full-length film, we see a group of women preparing food, waiting for the men to return from their work outside, and then quietly wait for them to finish their dinner so they can finally eat whatever they left behind for them. This is only a first look at the cult-like community the titular character, played by a mesmerizing Elizabeth Olsen, runs away from shortly after, but it already hints at the horrible things that will inevitably follow as we are immersed more and more in this place that John Hawkes' charismatic and quietly threatening character runs.
What follows then is a disorienting journey through two stories: one, about how Martha came to the point of wanting to run away, the other about what comes afterwards: her sister (Sarah Paulson) picks her up and drives her to an idyllic holiday home she shares with her architect husband (Hugh Dancy). What at first appears to be the beginning of a healing process soon starts coming apart at the seams: the disjointed way in which the two stories are told simultaneously (often leaving us desperately trying to figure out where we are by Martha's clothes and the interiors of the two houses) is an reflection of Martha's own perception and her inability to fit her experiences into the world her sister now asks her to inhabit: a world in which she has been missing for two years, one that she can't and doesn't want to fit in. The film explores the process in which she was slowly brain-washed by the cult: the stripping away of her identity ("you look like a Marcy-May", says Patrick, and thus Martha ceases to exist), the erasing of her individuality (all the women in the community share clothes), the subtle way in which the women are assigned to their domestic roles while the men are allowed to express themselves artistically, the brutal way in which the women are repeatedly drugged and raped and then told that this is not horrible; that this is beautiful; that this is how they truly become part of the community - and finally, how she and everybody else was finally fully integrated into this systematic abuse by making them complicit in both the interior and the exterior violence. This process leads to Martha's inability to fit in: slowly, the patterns she has learned start to emerge, her normalcy doesn't fit into her sister's, and this inevitably leads to conflict. As brutal as the portrayal of the community is, the true eloquence and horror of the movie lies in the way it explores the hostility and violence in the seemingly normal household - her sister does not realize that Martha's behaviour is a sign of trauma and mistakes it for the same adolescent antagonism that drove them apart in the first place, her brother-in-law reacts increasingly irritated when she questions his values and finally, sitting at the head of the table (like Patrick always did) tells her that she has no right to do so as long as she lives under his roof and eats his food. When it becomes apparent that Martha's issues are more severe than expected, they drug her in order to keep her quiet and threaten to have her institutionalized.
The brutality of Martha Marcy May Marlene is that there is no way that things could possibly end well, and even though the cult is horrible and destructive, the film also makes it very clear that there are more ways to be terribly wrong. It is a thorough portrayal of a young woman falling apart as her perception of reality becomes fractured (she asks her sister if she ever experiences the inability to distinguish between reality and dream - "no", is the answer, and therein lies their essential inability to communicate with each other) - who is also afraid that her escape may only be temporary ("How far are we", she asks her sister, "from yesterday"). Even though we follow her so closely, we don't get much closer to comprehending Martha than her sister does - and Elizabeth Olsen manages the stunning task of keeping Martha inexplicable, regardless of the intimacy the camera feigns.

2011, directed by Sean Durkin, starring Elizabeth Olsen, John Hawkes, Sarah Paulson, Hugh Dancy, Brady Corbet, Louisa Krause, Christopher Abbott, Maria Dizzia, Julia Garner.

Reaction Post - What do you have that could hurt me?

2011-11-21T15:53:00.001+01:00

The Good Wife: 3x09 Whiskey Tango Foxtrot.

Sometimes I feel that there is this darker, more serious, less hopeful show lurking beneath the surface of The Good Wife that is never quite allowed to emerge because there are forces holding it back, be it that the producers of the show have a different vision, or that the network requires the core of the show to be accessible to a wider audience than that darker show could have, or simply that the world of The Good Wife isn't actually that dark place. It wasn't even the main case that reminded me of the fact this episode - the soldier sitting the bunker somewhere in Nevada, pressing a button and unleashing a drone attack on tiny people on a computer screen - but the way the Cary-Kalinda-Dana storyline is evolving. Who would have expected that the person that I would regard as most confusingly fucked-up this season wouldn't be one secretive investigator, or the guy who is running a law firm but also secretly sleeping with one of his employees, or Peter Florrick, but the guy who's been infatuated with her since day one?

I've mentioned before that I've found aspects of the season so far frustrating, but I think that this will all make a lot of sense in retrospect (arguably, the best way to watch the show would be to wait for the season to be over and then watch the whole thing in a couple of sittings, but that would require patience and the superpower to avoid spoilers). The pieces are all set for the inevitable showdown now, I think. The firm is "under attack", both because Will is now under investigation (and not because of his drug dealing client, but for his own potentially corrupt self!), Eli just lost them their most profitable client, and too many people know about Will and Alicia for this not to eventually become a public issue. Peter remains uncomfortably off-screen (regardless of whether this has to do with Chris Noth's availability or not, it is effective), which only helps to foster the eerie sense that nobody has any fucking idea what he really wants. And then there's Jackie, and the unshakable feeling that one confrontation won by Alicia isn't going to make her go away (the moment when Alicia finally shared her suspicion with her children - that Jackie is trying everything to get Peter sole custody - was one of my favourite this episode). If we're talking Whiskey Tango Foxtrot - who knows wtf is going on with Kalinda? She is playing Dana and Cary to protect Will but the absurd thing about her character is that despite all her observational skills, her perceptiveness, her incredible ability to read people and situations, she has no idea what is going on in her own head, and she can't figure out her own motivations. She is playing Cary, sure, but it is also more complicated than that, and she isn't going to figure this out unless she talks about it to someone who can give her perspective - but the only person she DOES talk to, in this episode, is Dana, who is so deeply involved in the game that she is the last person who could help. Will isn't the only person who needs to stop, but Kalinda doesn't have anyone in her life to tell her to do so, at least not until Alicia finds that a conversation with her has become inevitable.

Random notes:

This week's case: a female drone operator is accused of disregarding vital information before starting an attack and killing innocent people, which brings Will and Alicia back to military court (and the very same judge they faced last time).

Alicia, hilariously, asks about the drone pilot, because she hasn't read a newspaper in the past eight or so years and is completely misinformed and naive about the US military (file under "things I do not buy"). This was probably meant to fit into the "inapt at technology" thing the writers are trying to pull off but COME ON. I know about unmanned drones and my country's edgiest technology is whatever was tossed out by other countries 20 years ago (also, the "unmanned aerial system" thing could have tipped her off).

Alicia and Will pursue different lines of defence for their client (nobody else has been charged, sexism), but by far the most uncomfortable - and the one that ultimately failed - was the argument that she was just another soldier on the battleground, despite sitting in a trailer in the Nevada desert, and that the same rules that protect soldiers from being prosecuted for accidentally killing civilians in action should apply to her, in spite of the fact that she wasn't in danger. There are so many unresolved issues regarding the changing nature of warfare through technology - and this is one of the cases where society is hopelessly behind technological innovation. If the idea of an algorithm (termed the Kill Chain - and yes, this is a real thing) determining the value of civilians doesn't make you question some aspects of This Brave New World... We don't know if the Sergeant disregarded vital information, but the argument of the judge after finding her guilty does hold up: "The problem with the charge of scapegoating is that it doesn't acknowledge that at a certain point, you must hold people accountable."

"You wound me, Sir."

Kalinda tells Will that he can "exhale" (and "do something nice for someone" - heh) because Peter has stepped down from the investigation - and then Wendy Scott-Carr comes in (remember her - I think she was ready not play entirely fairly in her campaign against Peter?), apparently still holding a grudge and determined to make the investigation ABOUT WILL, not about Bishop, because she thinks that Will is running an operation that systematically bribes judges he plays basketball with. I assume we are meant to know that Will isn't actually doing that (unless TGW really is that other show and there will be a shocking reveal at some point).

Also, sort of discomforting foreshadowing:

Cary: Actually, the case doesn't involve his wife.

Wendy: Actually, we don't know that yet.

AND

Wendy: We know your hands are clean, Diane.

Diane: How do we know that?

Wendy: You're right. We don't know your hands are clean. You can demonstrate your hands are clean by working with us.

The bad-ass award of the week goes to Diane Lockhart, sadly underused this season so far, successfully suppressing her rage at Will in her confrontation with Wendy and then coldly and very matter-of-factly telling Will to stop sleeping with Peter's wife. "Peter Florrick is coming after you because you are sleepin with his wife. Don't lie to me. It's wrong. You are his boss. He is the State's Attorney. Even if it wasn't wrong, it's not smart. Stop sleeping with his wife, do you understand me?"

Other things that make me wish Diane Lockhart was my aunt: "WE'LL DRINK. I'll put you in a cab. You will sleep it off. You won't feel good in the morning. You'll come in late, but you will come in."

I am also curious about Cary, who seemed very hesitant to pursue the investigation but was ready to jump the train once Wendy showed up. Did he just hesitate because he thought his readiness to investigate Lockhart/Gardner would make it seem like he was still holding a grudge against them for firing him?

Alicia figures out that Jackie was looking through her files because despite being unable to find the on-switch, she apparently managed to activate the camera and make a recording of herself (okay, show, suspended disbelief - not that I know Macs or what sequence of accidental key strokes would have to be involved in this) - and her kick-ass reaction to it is changing the locks, telling her children that she thinks Jackie's agenda is winning Peter sole custody, and then confronting Jackie when she shows up at her door.

Jackie: You're hurting your children.

Alicia: I might be, but that's between me and them, and I would never take your word for it.

Jackie: They are not safe with you.

Alicia: Go ahead, Jackie, reach into that bag of tricks. What do you have that could hurt me?

[...]

Alicia: Look at me, Jackie. Look at my face. You no longer have the power to wound.

The conversation is also incredibly gratifying because Jackie's two arguments to support her "Alicia is a bad mother" theory is that Zach might be dating Eli's daughter (she is Jewish!) and Grace is locking the door when the tutor is around (she might be gay!). I sort of feel bad for Mary Beth Peil for having to play a horrible person (to me, she will always be Jen Lindley's grandmother...) - but this was Alicia being completely certain that she was doing the right thing, asserting power, and all of this while being involved in a case that she couldn't possibly win.

"Get your coat, let's buy you a car"

Eli is running a campaign in Washington to somehow fit cheese into the new "My Plate" food pyramid (is that an actual thing or just a tongue-in-cheek comment on "pizza is a vegetable"?) and meets with people from vegetable, bread and corn, proposing his very own creepy whole-food-person-idea - but eventually he loses against an opposing lobbyist (played by Amy Sedaris). I might have enjoyed this whole storyline more if her character hadn't been just another extremely capable operative using the fake naivety-strategy to appear less dangerous and win in the end because people underestimate her. Sometimes, The Good Wife forgets that there are shades of grey between Celeste and Nancy Crozier (I guess Alicia is a shade, but it would be nice to see the same complexity afforded to guest characters). The important developement: Eli uses the firm the client that would have their budget from all the horrible red that comes with being idealistic.

Kalinda hilariously fails to turn a teacher into a less attractive person for the sake of the committee, regardless of Diane's glasses.

"We need to talk to the bread people."

"When you're dead, Eli, you know what the polite thing is to do? Get a shovel."

Diane: Do men really have that much success in their lives that at the first setback that comes along, they get all weepy?

Oh. Well. Let us get into the Cary-Kalinda-Dana conundrum. Objectively, Cary and Dana have an incredibly dysfunctional relationship that they are now nourishing by using the IDEA of Kalinda. They use Kalinda to make each other jealous, they use Kalinda as some kind of gratifying fantasy. I was actually surprised at how dark this storyline is turning out to be because Cary has always been a fairly simple (I don't mean necessarily uninteresting or boring) character in terms of motivation, but now... now it seems like Cary is going a bit mental. The whole thing is fucked up already because they are all using each other in different ways - Kalinda and Dana are using each other for information (Wendy told Dana to "cultivate" her source, literally, and we don't really know Dana well enough to have any idea of how far she is willing to exploit a relationship for personal gain), Cary is using Dana to get over Kalinda, Kalinda is still kind of using Cary because she always is - and that wouldn't even necessarily be complicated if there wasn't this additional layer of emotional need that the characters themselves don't grasp.

Also, conversations I wish had never, ever happened:

Dana: It's not gonna work.

Kalinda: What's not gonna work?

Dana: Seducing me.

Kalinda: I don't wanna seduce you.

Dana: You don't?

Kalinda: No. Too easy.

Dana: Hey. What's the point anyway, I don't get it, without a penis involved that's like baseball without a bat.

Kalinda. Well you get it when you get it.

Dana: Oh, deep.

Kalinda: It's different. A woman's lips, and, and when you get a woman excited, it's not like a man.

Dana: I hope not.

Kalinda: It's not aggressive. It's slow. Suspenseful.

I know that I let one of my favourite fictional characters of all time get away with a similar inquiry ("What do lesbians do... in bed?") - but Dana is no Naomi Campbell, she is a fairly recent addition to the cast and someone we, objectively, know fairly little about, and there is still a chance that Kalinda is in over her head for the first time ever (with that one obvious exception) because things relating to Cary are complicated ("You wanna hurt Cary?" / "No"). Dana tells Kalinda that Cary is also trying to hurt her, somehow, through her, and I assume she means "by hurting Will" not "taking me away from you because you obviously care so much about me". Basically, at this point, this whole storyline could go so terribly wrong that I shudder to even think about it. Also hi, past scripts to Kalinda, "slow and suspenseful, not aggressive" doesn't exactly cover your past hook-ups. The ultimate grossness occurred when Dana used the conversation to turn on Cary (because lesbians and bisexual women and the male gaze usually don't lead to good things, see also: straight porn). Whiskey Tango Foxtrot indeed.

The musical supervisor is having loads of fun this season (Awolnation's Sail is all over this episode), and adds to the weird feeling that I've been having for a while, that The Good Wife is secretly a Showtime show hiding underneath a CBS-cloak (especially since Homeland is on the same night, and this episode weirdly felt like a companion piece).