LOST: Guys, Where Are We?

The title of this post is the last line spoken in the pilot, and it has led to endless discussion by fans and critics. As I said, there were some rather bizarre aspects of the island seen in the pilot, and things only seemed to get weirder. There are many other downed vehicles on the island (Danielle the French woman's [Mira Furlan] boat, the Black Rock, the propeller plane, and Desmond's [Henry Ian Cusick] sailboat), the ruins of a statue of (most likely) a man, but with only four toes, the various connections between the survivors before arriving on the island, and then there are the other groups of people. There are the Others, who are still on the island, and the DHARMA Initiative, none of whom remain, but their research centers are still intact.

The Others were hinted at throughout Season 1, and they made an appearance in the final moments of the season finale, but it wasn't until the third season when the Others finally had some light shed on them. And yet, despite the addition of two Others, Ben (Michael Emerson) and Juliet (Elizabeth Mitchell), to the cast, they still remain extremely mysterious.

There is even less information about the DHARMA Initiative, since we have never actually met a member in the present. In the episode "The Man Behind the Curtain", which featured flashbacks of Ben, we learn that before he was an Other, he was with DHARMA (sort of), and we saw him growing up in the Initiative's compound on the island. The DHARMA Initiative is a scientific expedition started by two researchers from the University of Michigan (Go Blue!) and funded by a mysterious corporation. Their research stations study unique electromagnetic fields on the island, zoology, psychology, and possibly time travel (see video).



The DHARMA Initiative eventually runs afoul of the Others, or as they are referred to by DHARMA, the Hostiles. The Others are (we think) the island's natives, and they are much more in tune with the island, similar to the Native Americans, whereas DHARMA was about studying the island. Interestingly, John Locke exhibits behavior that shows that he may be at an even higher level of harmony with the island than any of the Others.

Knowing who else is on the island is important for trying to figure out where or what the island is. I almost feel obligated to discuss the idea of the island as purgatory. This theory popped up almost immediately, and was instantly shot down by J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof. Personally, I think this would have been an interesting twist about 15 years ago, but today, things like "they were dead all along" has been done well and imitated poorly. But my Dad never gave up on the idea. And there is some evidence suggesting that all the survivors are dead. Nearly everyone who was on the plane has something they did wrong and need to repent or make peace with. Jack ratted his surgeon father out for drinking and doctoring (Scrubs reference!), leading Christian (his dad) to flying to Australia and drinking himself to death. Sawyer (Josh Holloway) was a con man and killed a man before boarding the doomed flight, Jin (Daniel Dae Kim) got involved with the Korean mafia, and Kate had a string of crimes. But in Season 3, there were two things that happened that seemingly cemented the idea that they were in fact dead. Locke's dad arrived on the island after getting in a car wreck, and he was convinced he was dead and in Hell. His belief was only strengthened when he ran into Locke, who was believed to have died on Flight 815. Meanwhile, across the island, a woman named Naomi (Marsha Thomason) parachuted onto the island after her helicopter malfunctioned. When the survivors told her who they were, she responded that Flight 815 was found, and everyone on-board was confirmed dead.

However, at the end of Season 2, Desmond's girlfriend Penelope (Sonya Walger), who is searching for him, was able to pinpoint the island's location due to a seismic event that occurred on the island. In Season 3, Charlie and Penelope actually communicated over a radio, while Jack spoke with the people on Naomi's boat, who were on their way to the island. And of course, there was the final twist of Season 3, where we learned that the off-island scenes were in fact flashforwards showing us what Jack does after he gets off the island.

So if they aren't dead, where are they? Why is it that no one can find the island unless they are picking up the ping signal emitted by the Looking Glass station? Why do so many vessels crash on the island? That one can be answered by the electromagnetic field DHARMA was studying. It was powerful enough to screw up the survivors' compasses, and it most likely was powerful enough to throw off the instruments of Danielle's boat, the Black Rock, and Naomi's helicopter. As for Flight 815 and Desmond's boat, that was just very bad luck.

Numerous theories have been thrown around. Some involve aliens, some involve time dilation bubbles. The producers say that there is a scientifically plausible explanation for what is going on, but with everything that's happened, I'm not sure that is the case. So what do I believe? Right now, I am completely at a loss for ideas. Right now, the only prediction I have is that Jack's dad Christian is the mysterious Jacob, the possibly-imaginary leader of the Others. I'm sure others have made that prediction before, but I have never heard any of my friends talk about the possibility, and I haven't visited message boards to talk about the show at length, so for me, it is an original prediction. But I believe this because Christian knew at least 4 of the Flight 815 survivors. Jack was his son, Claire (Emelie de Ravin) was his daughter (though the two don't know they're related), he flew to Australia with Ana Lucia (Michelle Rodriguez), and he met Sawyer in a bar right before he died. Also, when Jack found his coffin after crashing, it was empty. As for where or what the island is, at this point, I think that it is a very strange island in a part of the world affected by some supernatural force. Women can't give birth on the island, but cancer is (almost) non-existent. Also, there's a smoke monster. I think that the writers are going to give us some sort of pseudo-scientific explanation that delves into supernatural aspects.

Up next: LOST literature and little details...

LOST: Welcome To The Island

So let's begin at the beginning, which in the world of LOST, is not the beginning at all. The "present day" of the show has never seen the survivors off the island (there has only been one sequence that takes place in the present time frame off the island, and it was at the end of Season 2). The opening shot is of Jack Sheppard's (Matthew Fox) eye opening up for the first time on the island. The eye opening shot would become a recurring establishing shot for episodes, with the given focus character's eye opening (the idea of the "focus character" will be explained soon). Jack opens his eyes and is initially perplexed about his surroundings, a dense and quiet jungle. He finds a small bottle of alcohol in his pocket and watches a dog walk by. It isn't until he walks onto the beach that he remembers what happened. The tranquility dissolves immediately and is replaced by absolute chaos. The middle section of the airplane Jack was on is now in flames on the beach, with malfunctioning engines and debris flying everywhere. Some of the other survivors are running around like chickens with their heads cut off, others are trying to help, while some aren't doing much of anything...

Fortunately, Jack is a doctor, and is used to working under pressure. He immediately takes charge, giving orders to the people who can walk to help them better assist those who can't. This behavior and grace under fire is what helps the other survivors see Jack as a leader, and while LOST is an ensemble show with over 10 regular characters (regular here means that the actors' names appear in the "Starring" billing, but no one has been in every episode of the series), Jack is definitely the de facto main character. The rest of the two-part pilot is about establishing who a few of the characters SEEM to be and showing both the audience and the survivors that this isn't a regular island.

The characters we meet in the pilot may or may not be accurate representations of who they were before they got off the island. The absolute best example of this is John Locke (Terry O'Quinn), but I will not discuss him because (1) we didn't learn about his secret until a few episodes after the pilot, and (2) the reveal is one of the greatest twists in television history, in my opinion. The revelation itself coupled with the way it was shot made for a perfect "HOLY SHIT" moment that I was sadly robbed of, since I didn't start watching the show until near the end of the first season (I saw what it was on the internet). Instead, I will bring up Kate (Evangeline Lilly). When we meet her, she seems like just another scared passenger. We watch her and Jack meet and start a friendship when he tells her that he needs help sewing up a wound he received in the crash. The travel together to the cockpit, along with an musician named Charlie (Dominic Monaghan), to try and send out a radio signal to rescue planes. She seems like just a normal woman. That is, until Jack starts treating a wounded passenger, who reveals himself to be a United States Marshal, who had apprehended Kate in Australia and was bringing her back to the states to await trial. A young boy named Walt (Malcolm David Kelly) found a pair of handcuffs in the jungle, and suddenly, the audience found out who they belonged to.

Of course, the show would kind of suck if all of these character revelations were told to us (breaking the rule of "show, don't tell), and it wouldn't really make sense for people to spill their darkest secrets to strangers (Kate's secret does get told to Jack, but that is after we see it). Instead, each episode contains flashbacks. With only a few exceptions, each episode focuses on one character. Over the course of the episode, we see a series of flashbacks from their life before they got to the island that coincides with what they are dealing with on the island. With Charlie, for example, we learn that he is a drug-addicted ex-rock star, and when he starts running out of heroin on the island, his flashbacks show how his addiction began. Over the course of the series, the flashback formula has been tweaked every now and then, giving us "on-island" flashbacks for instances when characters disappear for significant periods of time, an entire flashback episode detailing what happened to the tail end of the plane (it broke into three parts), and a few interesting new designs in Season 3.

Finally, there were some events that happened in the pilot that showed that this was no ordinary island. From a mysterious creature that made an ear-splitting roar that sounds like nothing ever heard before to an encounter with a polar bear (remember that this is the south Pacific), the survivors began wondering where they were. The pilot of the plane revealed that, due to inclement weather, the plane was over 1,000 miles off course when they lost radio contact with air traffic controllers. But perhaps the strangest, and most terrifying thing of all was a transmission the survivors pick up on a radio that is being broadcast from somewhere on the island. It is a French woman asking for help, saying that "it killed them all". And it has been playing for 16 years.

Up next: where might they be?

Incompletely Lost

Until now, the stories I have discussed have been, for all intents and purposes, complete. The movies are fairly self-contained, while the television shows are over and done with. There are rumors of continuations of each show, whether as a comic book (Firefly/Serenity, and Veronica Mars), or a film (Arrested Development), but right now, their stories are over. Phillip Pullman is currently working on a book that will expand on some ideas in His Dark Materials, but it will most likely not continue Lyra and Will's story.

This brings us to LOST; I originally planned on waiting a little while to talk about this show, but it was requested to be the next topic. While this will most likely force me come back to LOST once its sixth and final season (assuming the current writers' strike doesn't alter the structure too much), there is definitely enough material to explore now.

The next series of posts will speculate as to why the survivors are on the island, what the island might be, where the show may go, and explore some of the literature referenced in the show.

Up next: Getting to the island...

His Dark Materials: The Film's Failure And What Could Have Been

So the inevitable happened for a young adult (but not really) sci-fi/fantasy series: It was adapted into a big-budget movie. New Line Cinema, the studio famous for adapting The Lord of the Rings into three of the most successful and best fantasy adaptations ever, stepped up to the challenge of turning a book series with themes sure to enrage the Catholic Church (and the church definitely was not pleased) into a bankable family film. The first thing I want to say is that New Line made sure that people remembered that they were the ones who gave us Lord of the Rings, and that we could trust that this film would be the beginning of the next great fantasy epic. All one has to do is watch the first trailer:



I was intrigued by this, but not enough to ever consider going to see the film in theaters. However, I started hearing positive buzz about the movie, with a lot of praise given to the book series it was based on, and the second trailer is what sold me (I will put it up later in the post to call attention to one of my biggest gripes with the film).

I made sure to at least have the first book read by the time I saw the movie, and I found myself enjoying the series (I was about 30 pages into The Amber Spyglass when I saw the film). I was ready for what should have been one of the best films of the year. Then it wasn't.

I don't know why I got myself so excited for a book adaptation, because I know that films that rival their written source material in quality are extremely rare (they do exist, but even The Prestige film had its fair share of differences from the book). But New Line promised that I would be seeing the next LOTR. Strangely, one of the main reasons the film didn't work is exactly why the Rings films did work; length. But I'll start by going over what worked.

The acting, effects, and set design were all great. With a budget of $180 million, the effects better be pretty good, and they are. The CGI daemons are seamlessly integrated into the environments. They look like real animals and have faces that allow for strong emotive expressions. Daemons act as their humans mirrors; if someone feels anxious but tries not to show it, that emotion manifests in the daemon's actions and expressions. The zeppelins, Lee Scoresby's airship, and the instruments at Bolvangar look great, and the Victorian steampunk costumes and sets are beautiful. The large budget also went toward hiring A-list talent like Nicole Kidman as Mrs. Coulter, Daniel Craig as Lord Asriel, and Ian McKellan as Iorek Byrnison. Personally, I thought that McKellan was a poor choice for Iorek, who gave him a Shakespearean quality that I found ill-fitting for the character. But Craig, Kidman, Sam Elliot, and Eva Green were all great in their roles, even when they had to deal with some clunky and rushed dialogue (Green suffered the worst from this; her character of Serafina Pekkala had a relatively small role in the first book, so to justify casting Green in the role, they gave her an extra scene in the middle that worked much better in the book when Pekkala was being referenced, as opposed to present). But the shining star of the cast was definitely Dakota Blue Richards, who played Lyra. This was Richards' first feature film, and she seems to have been perfectly cast. Richards expertly captures Lyra's feistyness and resourcefulness, and is able to make us adore her even when she is acting like a spoiled brat.

Sadly, the great cast and amazing effects could not carry the film that was weighed down by writing. The movie clocked in at about 2 hours, which was sadly too short to capture the spirit of this book. Running time is almost always a factor in why films cannot live up to the books they are adapted from, since the first thing that usually gets cut is character development. The Golden Compass is no different. Many of the intricacies of the plot were forced to happen quickly, before we could care about the characters involved. Iorek and Lyra barely had any time together before they were trusted companions, and its a wonder that Lyra went to live with Mrs. Coulter in the first place. While she came off as a likable role model for Lyra at their first meeting at Jordan College, every interaction after that seemed strained. There was no time to build up Coulter's mounting creepiness. Instead, she became off-putting right away.

The Magisterium also loses some of its menace due to the short run time. Instead of a sinister, behind-the-scenes organization, it was changed into an over-the-top villainous organization. People would be fools to think that this organization (which is much more Big Brother than church in the film, though one doesn't have to dig too deep to see how the film Magisterium could be linked to the church) is here to help them. The movie needed at least another half an hour, though I think that it needed three hours to be the best film it could be. However, three hour movies are not exactly family friendly (though the Harry Potter films could probably get away with it). Although, I'm not quite sure that His Dark Materials is family friendly.

But going back to length, here, in my opinion, is the worst of the movie's sins: The ending. The film ends about three chapters short of the book's ending. The film ends happily, with Lyra and Roger reunited and planning on going to see Lord Asriel, who they think will make sense of all their adventures. This ending gives us almost no reason to see the next movie except to learn what the hell Dust is, which doesn't seem like it could fill an entire movie (which it doesn't). Here's how the book ends: They go to see Asriel, near the North Pole. After giving some explanation of Dust to Lyra, he kidnaps Roger and plans to cut his daemon away. The energy released will allow Lord Asriel to create a gateway between parallel universes. Lyra realizes what is happening, chases after Lord Asriel, and witnesses her father (Asriel) cut away the soul of her best friend. The shock causes Roger to pass out and fall into a crevasse. Before Asriel departs through the gateway, Lyra watches as he and Mrs. Coulter (her mother) reunite for the first time in years, and Lyra swears that she will do everything in her power to stop her parents, and she follows her father through the gateway. Now that is an ending that will bring the audiences back for film number two!

The craziest part is that the book's ending was filmed! Just look at the second trailer:



Lyra's line about how, "I'll never be yours!" is what sold me on the movie. The obvious guess is that New Line didn't want their family movie to end with the death of a child, which doesn't make sense, since the movie has a dark undertone throughout. Footage from and references to the "real" ending appears in much of the promotional materials, including the video game (the scene where Lyra shows up showed up on YouTube).

I formulated these ideas immediately after seeing the movie, but I soon learned that my ideas were popular ones. A few weeks later, I found this article from New York Magazine saying essentially what I said. I am including it because it talks about the content of the original scripts for the film that were apparently amazing.

As usual, it is too bad that film studios sacrifice quality for business, especially since increased quality can often lead to better box office receipts. I would love to see the film with the book's ending (which director Chris Weitz and many of the actors agree with), but it seems like we will be stuck with this mediocre adaptation for the time being.

Up next: Getting LOST...

His Dark Materials: The Amber Spyglass And Its Creator

Finally, we come to the character of Dr. Mary Malone. A physicist from Will's (and our) world, she was contacted by Lyra in The Subtle Knife at the suggestion of the alethiometer. Like Lord Asriel, she is also studying Dust, but she knows it as dark matter. Lyra turns to her in an attempt to learn more about the mysterious particles, but their meeting draws the attention of Magisterium spies. By the end of the second book, Mary has fled through the window into Cittagazze to avoid the scrutiny of Lord Boreal, the man who stole the alethiometer from Lyra. With the exception of her first and final scenes in The Amber Spyglass, she spends the entire book in a universe populated by creatures called mulefa.

His Dark Materials straddles the genres of fantasy and science fiction. The first novel, in my opinion, is presented much more as fantasy with scientific elements, but scientific explanations are abundant in the second and third books (however, fantasy elements never disappear from the series). The mulefa are a prime example of science replacing fantasy elements; in the first book, the audience is supposed to suspend their disbelief about the talking polar bears and witches. But when Mary first sees the mulefa, which have diamond-shaped spines (along with most other vertebrates in this universe), she reasons that evolution in this world favored that shape of spine as opposed to the straight spine with which we are familiar.

While living among the mulefa, she learns more about Dust from them, who can see Dust with their naked eyes. The mulefa explain that Dust is being drained from their world, which will eventually lead to the death of a species of trees the mulefa depend upon for survival, since Dust helps fertilize the seeds. They don't know why the Dust level is dropping, and ask Mary to help discover the cause. This leads to the creation of the amber spyglass. The lenses are coated in an oil from the trees that allow Mary to view Dust as the mulefa do.

As a scientist and researcher in a book series promoting the virtues of science and reason, it is appropriate that Mary would create the only title object that is not controversial. The alethiometer is feared by the Magisterium because it can illuminate truths that are not its own (sorry, I paraphrased from the film right there), and the subtle knife creates spectres and is responsible for the draining Dust. Mary uses the amber spyglass to see Dust flowing out through knife windows.

And while the amber spyglass was responsible for discovering, but not curing the problem of the departing Dust, Mary was responsible for putting Lyra and Will on their paths of destiny, but it was the children who had to walk the paths. Mary is an ex-nun, who left the church when she realized that there are too many things that the church frowns upon, with romance being the catalyst. Instructed by a special computer she built in our world to communicate with Dust (similar to the alethiometer, which works because of Dust) to play the serpent or temptress to Lyra and Will, Mary allowed for the children to become the second Adam and Eve. However, this time around, humanity did not fall, but was saved by the deeds of Adam and Eve.

There is so much more to the story of His Dark Materials than what is here. I have barely spoken about Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter, two very important characters in the story, and I'm sure that a few of the things I have written about seem vague or strange if you haven't read the books. Remember that I walk a fine line between trying not to spoil everything for people who have yet to experience the stories as well as giving my interpretation of events for the people who have. I hope that if you haven't read this series yet, you will.

Up next: How the movie could have been great and why it wasn't...

His Dark Materials: The Subtle Knife And Its Bearer

In The Subtle Knife, we are introduced to Will Parry, a young boy Lyra's age from our own world. The His Dark Materials series takes place across a multiverse of worlds. As we learned at the end of The Golden Compass/Northern Lights, we learn that Lord Asriel was trying to find a way to punch a hole between worlds and explore new worlds and find new ways to study Dust. Unfortunately for Lyra, in order to create enough energy to open up the gateway, a sacrifice had to be made.

When Lyra finally found her friend Roger, he was at a Magisterium-run facility that was developed to find a way to sever the link between humans and their daemons. Scholars learned that daemons and Dust are connected, and they believe that Dust is connected with original sin (I know it sounds very complicated, and it is and I know I am in no way doing it justice, so if you haven't read the books, I'm sorry for the spoilers, but go read them anyway). Children's daemons can change form at will, but once children start to mature, their daemon settles on one form, and it begins to attract Dust. The Magisterium believes that removing the daemon while it can still change form will save the child from the stain of original sin. Meanwhile, Asriel discovered that the severing process releases enough energy to punch a hole between universes, assuming the energy is properly harnessed. To create the portal, he uses none other than Roger, which leads to his death. Enraged that Mrs. Coulter, who turns out to be her mother, would be behind daemon severing for "righteous" reasons, and Lord Asriel, who is really her father, would sacrifice her best friend, Lyra goes through Asriel's portal in an attempt to find a way to preserve Dust, which her mother and the church is trying to destroy.

So going back to Will, he lives with his mother, since his father disappeared when he was a young boy. As he grew up, Will began to realize that his mother suffered from mental illness and paranoid delusions. Or at least he thought they were delusions; she is crazy, but as I said in the last post, a group of men has been snooping around attempting to find documents about Will's missing father. After placing his mother in the care of an old acquaintance and accidentally killing one of the men, Will runs away towards Oxford University. While there, he discovers a strange window between worlds (a window much different than the one created by Roger's death), and finds a universe with a city called Cittagazze. It is here he meets Lyra, and eventually where he finds the subtle knife.

Unlike Lyra, Will is much quieter and much less conspicuous. Will knows that he must blend in with his surroundings in order to avoid the people who are after his family secrets. He can also fend for himself. In a comical sequence, he cooks omelettes for the two of them and requests that Lyra clean up since he cooked. Lyra scoffs at this, claiming that cleaning and cooking is for servants to do. When Will lets her know how annoyed he is about that, she attempts to make an omelette herself, which she is very proud of, despite it turning out borderline inedible. Where Lyra would choose to jump into a situation with no plan but to make up a lie on the spot, Will would choose to hang back and figure out a plan of action that requires no contact with anyone else.

This brings us to the subtle knife. When a creepy stranger Lyra meets in a museum in Will's (our) world takes the alethiometer from her, he reveals to the pair that he is from Lyra's world and he will exchange the alethiometer for an object known as the subtle knife. He tells them that it can be found in Cittagazze. Will and Lyra expect an easy quest, since the only inhabitants of the city are children. The world Cittagazze is located in is plagued by creatures called spectres, which eat Dust. Since children with their shape-shifting daemons have small amounts of Dust, the spectres only prey on adults. However, upon finding the knife, it is in the possession of an elderly man, the only adult in Cittagazze. The knife is one of the only things that can repel spectres, since the blade can cut through anything. Forged centuries ago, one side of the blade is fine enough to cut through any material as if it were butter, while the other edge is so fine that it can cut through the fabric of the universe and create windows between worlds.

The knife is the perfect tool for Will, since it allows him to hide from his pursuers more completely than ever before. However, there is also a dark side to this power. The knife is dangerous both to the enemies of its bearer and the bearer itself. Will was destined to become a bearer of the knife, and all bearers are marked by the knife; all bearers lose their left ring and pinkie fingers through the fault of the knife upon acquiring it. But once the bearer has received the knife, it becomes a trump card for nearly any fight. Will was able to scare Iorek Byrnison out of a fight after slicing up a piece of the bear's armor with ease. But even worse, the knife is responsible for spectres. Slicing a hole through the fabric of the universe has a devastating effects and leads to the creation of a spectre every time a new window is cut.

The knife was created for good, but had unintended side effects. Will is a good person, but has done some unintentional bad things himself, most notably accidentally killing the man. Deep down, he is a caring person, but being constantly on the run and forced to keep his guard up has left him angry and impatient, and snapped at Lyra a lot when they first met. But like any weapon, the knife's dangerousness is dependent upon its user, just as Will learns to control his emotions as he matures.

Up next: creating the amber spyglass...

His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass And Its Reader

The first book of Pullman's His Dark Materials immediately throws us into a parallel world to our own. A few things happened differently in both the evolution of humanity as well as the timeline of history. John Calvin served as Pope, technology is much more steampunk than in our reality (though that doesn't mean that it is inferior to ours), and every human walks side by side with their soul, known as daemons, which take on animal forms. And in this world, the Catholic Church, known as the Magisterium, has a much larger influence on people's lives than it does in ours.

We are introduced to Lyra Belacqua, a feisty young girl living under the watch the Scholars of Oxford's Jordan College. Her parents died when she was a baby, and her closest surviving relative is her uncle, Lord Asriel, who is a noted explorer and iconoclast. Lyra, and her daemon Pantalaimon, have a penchant for getting in trouble and telling lies. She and her best friend Roger, the son of one of the kitchen workers at Jordan, spend their time acting like children. They have "wars" with other children, sneak off and explore the grounds of the college, and, most importantly, buck authority just for fun.

Sadly, a series of events forces Lyra and Roger to be separated, and forces Lyra to grow up much faster than she should have. A group of people have been kidnapping children and Rogoer is one of them. Meanwhile, a mysterious woman named Mrs. Coulter appears at Oxford one night and woos Lyra with promises of expeditions to the North, where her uncle is currently researching a phenomenon known as "Dust". Before Asriel left, Lyra overheard him describing the strange behavior of particles that is most prevalent in the northern region of the planet, situated right under Aurora Borealis (hence the title Northern Lights in England). Before Lyra departs with Mrs. Coulter, the Master of Jordan (the dean, or chancellor, or whatever you wish to call the highest officer of a college) bequeathes her with a golden compass-like instrument known as an alethiometer. The function of the alethiometer is to do the opposite of what Lyra does best, it tells the truth.

Lyra spends a few months with Mrs. Coulter and her creepy daemon, a laconic golden monkey (daemons can speak, and though they mainly talk to their owners, Coulter's monkey almost never says anything even to her). But when Lyra discovers that Mrs. Coulter is behind the abductions, she runs away and joins up with a tribe of people known as Gyptians (in our world, they are known as gypsies). One of the children that Lyra played with was a Gyptian boy named Billy, and together, Lyra and the Gyptians make their way north to find Roger, Billy, and the other kidnapped children.

The trip serves as a way for Pullman to deliver an immense amount of exposition. Lord Faa, the leader of the tribe, and his second-in-command, Farder Coram, explain to Lyra the mysteries of the alethiometer and tell her some disturbing information about her family. Along the way, Lyra begins to learn how to read the alethiometer through intuition, a feat thought impossible. Most alethiometer readers study for decades and even the most learned Scholars still require books to decipher the meanings of the object's symbols. All Lyra has to do is to relax her mind and let an alternative level of consciousness flow over her, and she is able to "see" the numerous meanings of each symbol.

Now, on the subject of the alethiometer, I bring up my first point of interest. The alethiometer tells the truth, but in a book series about the negative effects of dogmatic thought, I must ask, whose truth does the alethiometer tell? Does it tell the truth relative to the person reading it, or is there an absolute truth? It would seem hypocritical for Pullman to state that there is, since the villainous Magisterium is attacked for pushing their own absolute truth on the protagonists. And the truth can be a relative thing. In The Subtle Knife, Lyra asks the alethiometer whether Will Parry, her future travel companion, is a friend or foe. Since Will becomes a friend to Lyra, if a representative of the Magisterium were to ask the same question, how would the alethiometer respond? And perhaps more intriguing is the answer Lyra got. Mere hours before Lyra and Will met, Will was running away from a group of men who were trying to steal documents from his home. In an effort to evade them, Will accidentally killed one of them. When Lyra asked the alethiometer about him, instead of responding, "Friend", it told her that Will was a murderer. Lyra used this answer to reason that Will was a strong person and a worthwhile travel companion, so the alethiometer told Lyra the truth she needed to hear to bring Will along with her.

The other major point about Lyra's relationship with the alethiometer is how mismatched a pair they are. While the alethiometer must tell the truth, Lyra is much more comfortable telling lies. She makes bizarre tales almost as a sport, and has a method, and once she gets going, she gives the story everything she's got. In what was possible her most intricate and dangerous lie, she tricked the king of the (sentient) polar bears into thinking that she herself was a daemon.

About halfway through the first novel, we are introduced to Iorek Byrnison, an exiled polar bear who joins Lyra in her quest after she helps him break free from a town that has trapped him and uses him for cheap labor. Along the way, she befriends him and develops a close relationship with the bear. When she is captured by Iorek's former companions, she remembers that the king, Iofur Raknison, longs for a daemon of his own (only humans have daemons). She formulates a story about how Magisterium scientists found a way to create daemons for animals, and she is the prototype. She tells Iofur that she was given to Iorek, but she would much rather belong to a king. If Iofur can defeat Iorek in combat, she can be transferred to the king. The point of this story is so that Iofur will allow the exiled Iorek to approach the palace without the guard bears using projectile weapons to kill him, and allow for a one-on-one fight. Her ability to spin such a story causes Iorek to give her the moniker Lyra Silvertongue, which Lyra takes on as her new surname.

If all one knew about Lyra was the fact that she is a compulsive liar, it may be hard to understand how she could be (1) the protagonist of a (supposedly) children's book series (it's a children's series in the same way Harry Potter is), and (2) that she could be destined bring harmony back to the universe. I must admit that Lyra comes off as not the best role model for children, but the series is about how she matures. By the end, she is no longer able to read the alethiometer through instinct, but she has also learned how to tell the truth on her own.

Up next: the subtleness of Will Parry...

Moving To The Printed Word

After discussing three TV shows and two movies, it is time to look at a book series (though I plan on ending this set with the film adaptation of the first book, so I won't completely leave the visual world behind). Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy has recently received a lot of press coverage due to the film adaptation of the first book, The Golden Compass (in Pullman's native UK, the first book is called Northern Lights, which I think is a more appropriate title, but the US title works better for the theme of my posts). It has been attacked for being anti-Catholic and anti-religious, but there wasn't an uproar about the series until the movie was made.

My main focus is not on why people got so bent out of shape about the book's themes on the nature of religion until over ten years after they were released, but on the way the novels' characters use and relate to the title objects (the other two books in the series are called The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass). The name His Dark Materials is a reference to a line from Milton's "Paradise Lost", not any particular objects within the series (though the knife likely comes close). However, each book's title refers to an object used by one of the integral characters in the series, and the relationship between person and object is worth exploring.

Up next: Lyra Belacqua and The Golden Compass...

Arrested Development and Veronica Mars: 4 Years of Greatness

So what does a one hour drama grounded in reality and featuring a protagonist whose personality was forged in pain have to do with a half hour comedy involving some of the wackiest characters ever to grace the small screen? Surprisingly a lot, including insignificant details, witty writing, and even actors.

Let's start with each show's lifespan. Arrested Development premiered in the 2003-2004 television season, and Veronica Mars debuted the following year. This was a very important time for scripted television; reality television shows were starting to peak in their popularity (though they are far from gone four years later). Arrested was hailed as the comedy that would save the scripted sitcom. It was a single-camera documentary-style show without a laugh track that defied sitcom rules. The next year, another single-camera mockumentary appeared: The Office. That same year, Veronica was one of five new shows that restored the public's faith in dramas (the other four are LOST, Battlestar Galactica, House, and Desperate Housewives). Sadly, while these other four dramas and The Office all became critical and commercial successes, Arrested Development and Veronica Mars could never build the audiences required to stay on the air for very long.

Each show only lasted three seasons. Many of the reasons given for why each show couldn't build an audience, whether it be due to the highly serialized nature or unlikable characters (that one was lodged against Arrested), don't seem to hold up, since all five other shows were serialized, and Desperate Housewives' characters showed many of the same character traits that led to some people referring to the Bluths as "unlikeable" (one example is my mother; she loves DH, but can't stand AD due to the nature of most of the Bluths).

Sadly, we can only now wonder what would have happened if these shows had been more fortunate. So let's look at the other similarities. One of my favorite things about both shows was how the played with names. On Arrested, many of the side characters had some of the silliest names ever to grace the small screen. Names like Gene Parmesan, Cynthia Lightballoon, Bob Loblaw, J. Walter Weatherman, Annyong are intended to draw further attention to the fact that the people who inhabit the world of AD are not exactly sane or normal. Sometimes, the supporting players make the insane Bluths look downright functional.

Characters in Veronica Mars tend to get names that tie in with the episode's mystery or reflect on their characterization. For example, in one episode, the three important characters related to the mystery that week are named Rooks, Bishop, and Knight. In another, the perpetrator is named Gilbert T. Pardy, or Gil T. Pardy. Or take Tim Foyle, played by James Jordan, who acts as a foil for Veronica in the third season. Series creator Rob Thomas admits that the name was created when, in story pitching meetings. the writers wanted to create a foil character, and for a while, did not have a name for him. In scripts, they merely wrote "Foil", with every intention of giving him a non-clue name. But when someone said, "Tim Foyle", the writers thought it was too funny not to mention. Other name work in VM had to do with puns and coincidences, not unlike how names were dealt with in Arrested. Veronica MARS lived in NEPTUNE, and in Season 3, drove a SATURN (all names of Roman gods). At Neptune High, the secret society was called the Tritons (Triton was the son of Neptune), and at Hearst College, there was The Castle (William Randolph Hearst, the real-life analogue to Hearst College's fictional founder, built a castle in California). Hearst's granddaughter Patty Hearst even guest-starred in one episode and played a character named Selma (Simpsons fans know the joke here).

Both shows also used name games for episode titles. Nearly every episode of Veronica Mars was a pun on a book, film, or television show, including "Leave It To Beaver", "Cheatty Cheatty Bang Bang", "My Big Fat Greek Rush Week", "Lord of the Pi's", and "Ruskie Business". Meanwhile, many Arrested Development episodes had clever puns for titles, some of which were references like VM, some of which were puns on episode events, such as, "Pier Pressure", "Altar Egos", "The Immaculate Election", and "Prison Break-In", which had some amazing Prison Break references (my favorite involved a map on someone's body).

Both shows began referencing the other once they entered their second and third seasons. Michael Cera and Alia Shawkat, two AD regulars, showed up in the same episode of VM (but they sadly didn't have any scenes together; I was hoping that they would play lovers). A few weeks later, on Arrested, Cera's character asked Shawkat's character if she wanted to watch Veronica (the show title was bleeped, but we can hear "Ve(bleep)rs", and a subtitle "Reference to off-network teen detective show"). Unfortunately, these were in the third and final season of AD, and they were unable to have too many more references. In the third season of VM, a few more references were made, including Sheriff Lamb yelling "No touching!", a recurring line said to George Bluth, Sr. while in prison.

Both shows also dealt with the lead characters' fall from grace. The Bluths had all their accounts frozen in the pilot and became a public joke, while Veronica had to deal with her loss of status (among many other things) prior to the pilot. But what be the best similarity is how both have possible futures...

Arrested Development ended with a suggestion of a feature film, and Veronica Mars ended with the possibility of a fourth season as a retooled show. Sadly, the Veronica Mars: FBI show will probably only be seen on the third season DVD, and most likely, the film prediction at AD's end was probably nothing more than some fun by the writers, but still today, there are rumblings of both shows continuing. Numerous polls on the internet exist trying to get the AD film made, and cast members like Will Arnett have alluded to it in interviews. Meanwhile, rumors about a VM movie have started cropping up, along with talk about a comic book continuation, similar to the canonical Seasons 8 and 6 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, respectively.

I know that these may sound like pipe dreams, and they most likely are, but then again, one must only look at my early posts about Firefly and Serenity to remember that nothing is impossible...

Up next: His Dark Materials and their possessors...

Veronica Mars: May We Always Be Friends

Veronica Mars was a noir show often misrepresented as a cliched teen drama. Sadly, I'm not sure how else it could have been marketed, since a noir show featuring a petite blonde teenageer as a lead is a pretty hard sell. I must admit that when I first heard of the show, I thought that the concept sounded pretty lame. But then the reviews started coming in...

Neptune, California is a city cursed without a middle class. It is home to some of the richest people in America, including a Bill Gates-esque software designer, a high-priced actor, and a real estate magnate. The children of these multi-millionaires are known as '09ers at high school because they live in the 90909 zip code area of the town. The rest of Neptune is home to lower-class laborers who work for 09er families. As Veronica points out in the pilot episode, in Neptune, your parents are either millionaires or work for millionaires. But without a middle class to buffer the relations between rich and poor, things sometimes get heated between the two groups.

And why shouldn't they? There is corruption on both sides of the socio-economic fence, and each side blames the other for their problems. The 09ers exploit everyone else and get away with murder (both literally and figuratively) due to the attitudes of local law enforcement. But this doesn't mean that the less fortunate are innocent victims. Some join gangs, others steal from their employers, but you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone in Neptune who is innocent.

That's where Veronica Mars comes in. Although the Mars family was never among the 09ers, she lived the life at one time in her life. Her father, Keith, was the sheriff of Balboa County, which Neptune was a part of, earning the family some prestige. But even more important were the members of Veronica's inner social circle. She used to date a boy named Duncan Kane, the son of the richest man in town, and her best friend was Duncan's sister, Lily. Jake Kane, Duncan and Lily's father, is a software designer who pioneered streaming video. The incredible rise in value of Kane Software stock made everyone who worked for the company richer than their wildest dreams, making Jake Kane one of the most beloved men in Neptune.

Everything changed for Veronica at the end of her sophomore year of high school. Lily was brutally murdered one afternoon, and Keith's prime suspect was Jake Kane, Lily's father. This didn't sit well with the residents of Neptune, and an emergency recall election got Keith pulled from office. His replacement, Don Lamb, was barely competent and a complete asshole to non-09ers. When Veronica stood behind her father, her so-called 09er friends turned on her. Led by Logan Echolls, Lily's on-again/off-again boyfriend and angry son of a self-centered actor, rumors about Veronica were spread by the 09ers. In an effort to prove that the harsh rumors didn't get to her, Veronica crashed an 09er party, where she was raped. These experiences left her jaded at best.

Mind you, all of those events happened before the events of the pilot and were relayed to us in flashbacks. Our first glimpses of Veronica were of an angry young girl who worked at her father's private investigation firm. As we watch her befriend both a new kid named Wallace who was duct taped to the school's flag pole as well as the biker who put him there, we begin to see troubled person she is underneath her tough exterior. The flashbacks of her hellish sophomore year coincide with the struggles of helping out both Wallace and Weevil (the biker), which end with her visit to the sheriff's office the morning after the rape. Let's just say that Lamb was less than professional.

Soon, it becomes apparent that the man that was arrested for Lily's murder is not the one who killed her. The first season follows Veronica and Keith's search for Lily's true killer, but along the way other multi-episode mysteries are introduced and investigated, including what happened to Veronica's mother after Keith was removed from office and who raped Veronica. Of course, each episode also had a self-contained mystery.

Both the overarching and self-contained mysteries shed light on various characters in the town of Neptune. One of the best parts of the show is the sheer depth of the cast of characters. Even tertiary characters get fleshed out stories and can sometimes become regular cast members (watch how Dick Casablancas starts out as a random kid in the second episode, and is listed as a regular in Season 2). But as I said, in Neptune, no one is innocent. Even characters like Keith and Veronica have their secrets, and the events of the show force people and their loved ones to deal with things that were supposed to stay buried. Greed and corruption are important motivators for people in Neptune, but since this is noir, often, some of the worst things done on the show are done due to the good intentions of the people doing the action (such as the feminists in the third season, Logan "decision" the night of Veronica's rape, and Duncan and Veronica's second season kidnapping).

Furthermore, the show likes to take stereotypes and turn them on their heads. People and groups who have negative stereotypes associated with them are often used as red herrings and initially cast in a negative light. But in Veronica Mars, nothing and no one are what/who it/they initially seem. In Neptune, cults may not be evil, fraternity boys may not be moral-less degenerates, and animal rights activists aren't all crazy.

Veronica Mars is more than just a mystery show. It is an examination into the motivations and mindsets of its inhabitants. And they were extremely diverse and entertaining. People were almost always much more than they originally seemed, and this led to some phenomenal storytelling twists.

Sadly, due both to the poor marketing and the serialized nature of the show, it was never able to build an audience. The networks it aired on (it started on UPN, but between its second and third seasons, The WB and UPN merged to form The CW) had a lot of faith in the show, and kept it on the air for three years, hoping that it would finally earn the viewership it deserved. Along the way, there were some network-mandated changes (mostly in Season 2, but the lack of overarching mystery at the end of Season 3 was the final attempt to earn viewers), but the show never lost its voice.

Interestingly enough, Arrested Development followed a very similar journey, which is the first similarity between the shows...

Up next: The Bluths and the Mars

Juno: A Brief Note

Sorry I've been gone for a while, I was out of town. Anyway, I'll get back to Arrested Development and Veronica Mars right after this brief mention of Juno. While on my trip, I saw Juno again, and it remains awesome. However, I noticed something strange. The first time I saw the movie, I was expecting Jason Bateman's character Mark to make a move on Juno, especially during the scene in the basement. The second time I saw it, I was not expecting him to make a move on her, because he doesn't (explicitly), but this time around, Mark came off as much creepier in that scene. I maintain my position that Mark did what he thought was best, but in that one basement scene, it almost seemed as if he were trying to put the moves on Juno. I found it very strange how expecting Mark to be creepy made him not so while the lack of expectation is what made him seem more creepy.

Anyway, back to Veronica...

Arrested Development: Half An Hour of Bliss

Before I get into the comparisons, I will go over each show so that the uninitiated (shame on you, and you know who you are!) will be able to better able to understand the comparisons.

Arrested Development told the story of the abysmally dysfunctional Bluth family, who have enjoyed a firm place in the upper echelon of society due to patriarch George Bluth, Sr.'s thriving development company. Starting with nothing more than a frozen banana stand, he eventually turns it into a multi-million dollar company. The first episode introduces us to George's son Michael, who is getting to take over the family business. Unfortunately, at his retirement party, George names his wife Lucille as his successor instead of Michael. Michael is upset by this for about ten minutes, but when the SEC boards the boat and arrests George, Michael's sadness is transformed into shame.

In an effort to get away from his family, who are extremely self-centered and helpless, Michael decides to take another job in Phoenix. But when his son, George Michael (played by Michael Cera!), laments that he has never been able to get to know his family, Michael decides to stay in Orange County and help save the Bluth Development Company.

This sounds like it would be the premise for a trite drama, but thanks to Arrested Develpment's cast of off-the-wall characters and lightning-quick jokes, the show became one of the best sitcoms that I have ever seen.

Michael's job is not an easy one, as he has to deal with his manipulative parents and absolutely dim-witted siblings. His older brother GOB (short for George Oscar Bluth, Jr., and pronounced like the biblical figure Job) is a crappy magician with an inferiority complex that developed from his father's mistreatment of him as a kid, while his younger brother Buster is an overgrown man-child who may be in love with their mother. And his twin sister Lindsay is a spoiled princess and self-righteous "activist" who is married to Tobias, an ex-psychiatrist who may or may not be gay and speaks in unintentional double entendres. Meanwhile, his son is rather timid and cannot speak his mind (Michael Cera tends to play very similar characters, but he plays them incredibly well), and his niece Maeby is a natural-born scam artist.

My favorite character is GOB, can make me laugh just by making a face. Also, his raspy voice has the incredible power to make anything he says absolutely hilarious. His bravado masks spinelessness that is magnified in the presence of his father, whose approval he is still trying to earn. GOB is responsible some of the greatest running gags on the show, from his catchphrase, "I've made a huge mistake" to the playing of Europe's "The Final Countdown" whenever he performs magic. Also, keep this one word in mind: Franklin. It's best not to spoil that one.

Of course, Tobias, Lindsay's husband, and Buster are close seconds in brilliance. I don't think that the writers ever conceived of the levels of strangeness Tobias would achieve by the show's end, but there was never a dull (or comfortable) moment when Tobias was around. He lost his medical license when he performed CPR on a man who wasn't really in need of it, and instead of trying to get it back, he started on a journey to become an actor. This was a journey of discovery, just not self-discovery. His family members come to think that he is gay and realize that they don't want to say anything to him, since he has a troubling habit of saying things that sound really dirty or uncomfortable, but doesn't realize it ("I blue myself"). While Tobias was at his best when he was speaking, Buster was pure gold in motion. Whether he was awkwardly walking around in a stripper outfit at a funeral, or collapsing to the floor in a panic attack, actor Tony Hale made everything Buster did hilarious. Of course, the things Buster had to say were just as amazing (and awkward) as GOB and Tobias.

Michael, although he is the straight man in this ensemble piece, still is a little too messed up to be able to function. Although he acts as the pillar of morality for the Bluth family, he often compromises his morals to help out those he loves (just watch the second episode, "Top Banana" to see what I mean) and can often be just as naive as he chastises his siblings as being (see "Family Ties").

If his family and his own flaws didn't make things hard enough for Michael, he also has to deal with even stranger guest characters. The world of Arrested Development is populated by some of the most incompetent and shallow characters this side of The Venture Bros. Let's start with Kitty, George Bluth's not-quite-right secretary. Played by Judy Greer, Kitty is introduced as a flighty woman whose appearance is off-putting at best. However, with each subsequent appearance, her looks improve until she becomes a knock-out. GOB makes reference to this when he realizes that the woman he once saw as a chore (he reluctantly slept with her to keep her from revealing family secrets) becomes someone he lusts after. But as her looks improve, so does her craziness. Eventually, she becomes unable to have a talk with Michael without flashing him.

Then there is Lucille Austero, AKA Lucille 2, played by Liza Minelli. I was actually upset when I learned that Minelli was a recurring guest actress on the show. Then I saw her, and realized that there is no one else who could play Lucille 2. Lucille 2 is simultaneously Lucille Bluth's best friend and worst enemy (frienemy?); they are social rivals who engage in cliched conversations with backhanded compliments. Of course, their game of oneupmanship escalates when Buster begins DATING Lucille 2. Yeah. It's creepy as hell, but incredibly hilarious.

Lastly (there are so many characters I could talk about, but I will stop here), there is Barry Zuckercorn, the Bluth's slimy attorney. By slimy, I don't mean that he is a manipulative jerk who will step over his own mother to win a case. I mean that he is just a creepy human being who engages in shady activities. Oh, and he's a terrible attorney. He is a lot like Lionel Hutz, the lawyer on The Simpsons who was the lowest common denominator of the legal practice. Zuckercorn tends to be a defendant in court as often as he is counsel, but the Bluths cannot seem to get rid of him.

The show's wit is incredible; Arrested Development is shot like a documentary, so there are no pauses for a laugh track between jokes. Every episode requires multiple viewings, because I guarantee that there will be jokes you miss the first time around. Sometimes they require a lot of thought (the joke about the Seaward early in Season 2) or make reference to a very obscure joke much earlier in the series (in the Season 3 premiere, the joke about, "getting Pop-pop in Reno" is only funny if you remember the origin of the joke way back in the fourth episode of Season 2).

There is also a lot of meta-humor, or jokes that are only funny if you know about events outside of the show. They can be as obvious as references to other shows ("Prison Break-In") to digs at the FOX network for cutting back the episode order to put Family Guy on instead. The show even derives humor from the production notes FOX gave the writers. In order to get more money, the network asked the writers to use product placement with the show's sponsors, such as Burger King. Let's just say that they made it REALLY obvious that they were hyping the fast food chain.

So there you have it. The quick and dirty overview of one of the funniest shows ever. Up next: the overview of Veronica Mars...

The Michael Cera Connection

I know that I said that His Dark Materials would follow Juno, but I was inspired to do a series on Arrested Development and Veronica Mars when I started rewatching the third season of the latter show. And hey, I can connect the topics through Michael Cera, who is always a delight to watch. Don't worry, His Dark Materials will be discussed, MOST LIKELY after AD and VM, but as always, things are subject to change.

Anyway, I am choosing to discuss these two shows together due to a number of similarities that I discovered with two separate friends. It started when I had a deal with one of them; I love Arrested Development and he loves The OC. Neither of us has really given the other's show much attention, so in exchange for watching the pilot of The OC (hour long), he agreed to watch the first two episodes of Arrested Development (half hours). We started pointing out a few similarities, which I sent to another friend of mine who likes both shows, but may be the only person I know who likes AD more than I do. A few days later, after much urging from me, he started watching Veronica Mars (and of the three of us, is the only person to have seen every episode of all three shows). The two of us then started bringing VM into the AD/OC discussion. I will use these posts to not only gush on these two shows that, like Firefly, were canceled too soon, but also to point out some interesting coincidences about both the subject matter and off-air logistics of the show.

Up next: a brief overview of Arrested Development...

Juno: The Title Character And Her Cheese

Ok, so first of all, doesn't it look like Ellen Page and Michael Cera are 13 in this picture?! They are, as of January 2008, 20 and 19 respectively. But damn, look at them there.

Anyway, in this last post for Juno (for now, anyway), I will address the portrayal of Juno and Paulie. As the title character, we see most of the movie through Juno's eyes. She narrates, gives commentary (the part about the true desires of jock kids was pretty funny), and provides a lens through which to view the other characters. However, she herself admits that she is too immature to deal with life just yet, so we must assume that this lens is cracked and faulty. Just because Juno may feel something doesn't mean that it is right or rational, especially when her pregnancy hormones kick in.

I've said this before, but I must warn you again, there will be spoilers in this post. The intro posts tend to be the most spoiler-free and geared toward people who haven't seen the topic of the post yet. Once I get more into things, my writings become a little more about analysis of the deeper meanings meant to help guide people who have seen the film/show/book before.

Juno's relationship with Paulie starts out prior to the film as that of a best friend. They were in a struggling band together, and while Paulie's mom may have disapproved of the off-kilter Juno, we are led to believe that they were inseparable. Of course, conception tends to change the relationship between people who are "just friends", and the two sort of grow apart through the course of the movie.

It doesn't help that Paulie is throwing himself at Juno in a very passive way, while all Juno can focus on is her pregnancy. She cannot be blamed for this, as teenage pregnancy is no light matter. But when she suggests that Paulie date some random girl, then berates him when he does, Juno proves that for as much wit and wisdom as she seems to have, she still has a long way to go to achieve maturity. I'm kind of surprised that Paulie did not say one word about hormones ("Fuck you hormones!" -Knocked Up), because she definitely exhibited some wild mood swings.

Paulie, on the other hand, needed to learn to go after what he wanted (though this may not be a sign of immaturity, but of timidity), and to learn how to pick up obvious signals. Juno's suggestion to date the other girl may have only been a sign of fear, not an actual suggestion. However, while Juno does get mad at Paulie, I do not think the audience is ever meant to dislike him the way we are kind of led to dislike Mark and/or Vanessa.

So there is Juno. There is still a lot to talk about; I didn't even mention Juno's other friend, Leah, but my discussion of the lack of good guy/bad guy dynamics is at an end. While I am moving on for now, rest assured that if I ever feel the need to talk about a topic again, I will not hesitate to return.

Up next: Comparing and contrasting Arrested Development and Veronica Mars...

Juno: Beyond Black and White

I will start my discussion of the ambiguity of the good guy/bad guy roles in Juno by looking at the relationships Juno forms with Mark and Vanessa, the couple looking to adopt her child. As I said in my last post, Vanessa is initially shown as a control freak who acts as more of a landlady or mother to Mark than a wife. Juno herself addresses that idea when she chides Mark's comment about how Vanessa "gave him a room for all of his stuff". His stuff includes his guitar, record albums, and recording equipment, which should be seen as a little strange, since we learn that Mark is a composer of advertisement jingles. Mark later states that Vanessa doesn't like it when Vanessa hates it when he watches movies or listens to music all day and doesn't "contribute" (so why does she force him to do his work in one cramped little room?).

Mark on the other hand would probably have been Juno's best friend if they went to high school together. He is exactly like Paulie, her best friend and father of her baby, in many aspects, such as interests, and possibly better in others; Mark is much more sure of himself than Paulie is, who is extremely timid. Right away, Mark and Juno hit it off, giving each other mix tapes and recommending bad horror films and punk rock bands. Strangely enough, the young Juno endorses music from the 70's, when punk was born, while Mark champions 90's punk rock bands like Sonic Youth.

For about the first half of the film, we are clearly meant to like Mark and dislike Vanessa. Mark is a cool guy who we kind of want to see break free from Vanessa's control. However, that starts to change when Juno (and us) see Vanessa at the mall with, most likely, her sister and niece. Suddenly we realize that Vanessa's obsession for a baby will be the exact quality that will make her a good mother to Juno's child. At the same time, Juno's scenes with Mark start to become a little creepy. What starts as cute banter slowly becomes strange to everyone but the two of them. Juno's parents worry that she is spending too much time with Mark, while Vanessa becomes upset whenever she sees Juno's minivan in the driveway. Sadly, everyone's fears are confirmed. Fortunately, neither one ever makes a move on the other (which was what I had predicted would happen, especially during their dance scene), but Juno causes Mark to realize that maybe he does want more out of life than to be chained to Vanessa and a new baby.

Wait. Wasn't that what we wanted Mark to realize when we first met him and Vanessa? When he tells Juno that he intends to leave Vanessa, she flips out, telling him that she has to stay with his wife for the sake of the baby. By the end of the film, Vanessa is the character the audience is sympathetic to, while Mark let Juno down.

Of course, I don't think it's that simple. Most of the people I saw the film with had this point of view, where they started out liking Mark and ended up disliking him, while they changed their opinion about Vanessa to end up liking her. For me, however, even though i initially disliked Vanessa, I ended up liking both characters. It is all about what Juno needs when. She needed someone to adopt her baby, since she clearly is too immature to raise it herself (she was mature enough to realize her immaturity), and Vanessa clearly fit the bill. But as I said, the very things that made Juno and the audience dislike her at first were what would make her a good mother. She was obsessively cleaning her home before Juno arrived, but it wasn't because she is crazy, it was because she wanted to appear immaculate so that Juno would finally grant her greatest wish, a child of her own.

On the other hand, Mark would have made a great friend to Juno. But she didn't need a friend, she needed a responsible father for her child. Mark, for all of his coolness, is probably too immature to raise a child, but that is why Juno wanted to spend time with him. But when Juno needed him most (and when her hormones were most likely at their most inconsistent), he showed her that she couldn't have him both ways. Still, I left the theater still liking Mark. We saw things through Juno's eyes, so we may see him as a flake, but maybe it was noble of him to admit his reluctance for a child BEFORE he had adopted it.

Moving on, I would like to discuss Juno's father, Mac, and step-mother, Bren. These characters didn't get quite the screen-time that Mark and Vanessa got, but there is still something to analyze. Though I never think we are meant to dislike either of them, they both display aspects of character that are very real and do not have normal good guy/bad guy cliches. Bren, for example, does show at least one line making her seem like the stereotypical "evil stepmother". Juno comments that Bren is obsessed with dogs, but we learn that the reason that there is no MacGuff family dog is that Juno is allergic. In a heated argument, Bren yells that once Juno moves out, she is going to get a dog (making Juno respond, "DREAM BIG!"). Many times in fiction, the step-parent wants to get rid of the child (see: Back to the Future Part II, The Parent Trap), but in this case, Bren was merely stating what she was going to do once Juno had left for college. And for all her scenes of anger of Juno's pregnancy (and what parent wouldn't be angry about their teenage daughter getting pregnant), she has her fair share of tender scenes with Juno. Sadly for Bren, Juno tends to focus more on the harshness, which is highlighted when she thanks Bren for backing her up at the doctor's office, stating that she is surprised to see Bren's good side for once.

As for Mac, he reacts the way a father should to his teenage daughter's pregnancy. He doesn't go ballistic and throw her out or beat up the father (but he threatens to). Instead, he shows his outrage, and then supports her decision to give up the baby for adoption. He even gives her a lift to Mark and Vanessa's and acts as the diplomat to counteract Juno's more abrasive style of talking.

Like I said, there isn't as much good/bad to examine with Juno's parents, but their humanity is worth looking at.

Up next: Juno and Paulie