ABC: Destiny Calls

So I bring good news and bad news with this post. As you can see, the new poster for the fifth season of LOST has been released, and I think it's pretty great. It nicely reflects the tone of the first season poster and has a side-by-side comparison of who is still lost. Also, check out this trailer:



With only two seasons to go, we'll hopefully start getting some bigger answers to questions, but I must admit that the weekly thrills are strong enough to keep me invested in this show.And now the bad news. And what bad news it is. ABC has decided to cancel Pushing Daisies, which is probably my favorite show currently in production (though I guess that isn't a proper descriptive anymore). The story of Ned the Piemaker and a girl named Chuck is one of the sweetest, funniest, and darkest worlds I have ever seen. Everything about it seemed to click with me, and, based on last year's ratings, it looked like the public at large was finally developing good taste. Sadly, there are now only about 9 episodes left, and what will become the finale apparently ends on a bit of a cliffhanger.

Bryan Fuller has said that he will do everything possible to finish the story in a movie or a comic book (he has said that he has a planned ending to Ned and Chuck's relationship), but time will tell if either of those comes to pass.

Up next: How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!...

Freaks and Geeks: The Geeks

The geeks are near the bottom of the social food chain of high school. They are small and somewhat goofy-looking. They are obsessed with science fiction, Saturday Night Live, and
Dungeons and Dragons. Most students don't give the geeks the time of day, and those that tend to be bullies who exist to make the geeks' lives hell. Unlike the freaks, the geeks want to be accepted by high school society, and they will do almost anything to be seen as cool by the social elite. Well, Neal and Sam fit that description; as I said in an earlier post, of all the characters, Bill is probably the most comfortable with himself (although there are definitely times when he wishes his life was a little different).

The geeks' path on the show follows them trying to finally be accepted. Sam longest storyline involves his unrequited crush on the beautiful cheerleader Cindy Sanders, who is one of the only girls at McKinley who actually pays any attention to Sam. She takes a liking to him early in the series, but sees him as nothing more than a friend with an insight into the male mind (she calls on him to help determine if a popular basketball player likes her). Neal tends to be at the forefront of most of their doomed endeavors to be cool; when a pretty new girl transferred to their school, she started hanging out with the geeks, and Neal devised a plan that bordered on creepy in order to keep her in the group. He also was the most ardent opponent of the trio going trick-or-treating on Halloween, out of fear of being seen (sadly, this fear was justified). However, Neal very much is a geek at heart, and was willing to act silly in order to become the school mascot (he wanted to ham the role up), and he never passed up an opportunity to play D&D.

Sadly, the geeks' lives presented them with a catch-22; on one hand, they could accept who they were and be happy enough (although they'd have to put up with bullies and celibacy for a while). Or they could try to deny who they were and be even more unhappy (and still put up with bullies and be seen as uncool). It was interesting to note that Bill was always the most reluctant to go along with Sam and Neal's attempts to be cool; watching him at the makeout party was hilarious and uncomfortable at the same time. Bill understood who he was and was content with himself. He definitely had problems to face, but they were external. Sam and Neal had a lot of internal conflict to work out before they could even consider dealing with their external problems. The biggest proof that being true to yourself is what will make you happy came near the end of the series when Sam was finally accepted into the cool crowd. He got everything he ever wanted only to learn that it was nothing like he expected and nothing he wanted after all.

Like the freaks, the geeks have to take their small victories where they can get them. Life sucked for geeks in high school, and for the most part, things did not go their way. So when good things did happen, such as their incredible play in gym softball, or when they made friends with a cute girl, they did everything they could to make the most of it. But these events were few and far between. Most of their funniest scenes were funny because of how awkward and painful things got. My prime example involves Neal's ventriloquist dummy. When Neal learned that his father was cheating on his mother, he started to use his dummy as an outlet for his anger. Neal's new "routine" was incredibly funny, but its source was incredibly painful. There's also the time Sam was duped into wearing a very unflattering jumpsuit to school (this is especially poignant for me because I did something kinda similar...).

Sadly, we will never see how the geeks would grow into themselves due to NBC's horrible handling of the show. Oh well. What we got was incredible.

Up next: Blessed are the forgetful: for they get the better even of their blunders...

Freaks and Geeks: The Freaks

The freaks are the feared outcasts of McKinley High; most of the students believe that they are a bunch of good-for-nothing burnouts who are continually hopped up on drugs and alcohol, and can snap at any moment. Granted, Kim is prone to fits of anger and Nick tends to be high most of the time, but most of these assumptions are ultimately baseless. I am reluctant to say that the freaks have merely seen more badness in the world than most of their fellow students, but everyone had problems in high school and the geeks certainly didn't exactly see the bright side of life. However, the freaks became jaded with the darkness in the world and chose to stop resisting. Daniel, for example, basically gave up trying to make something of himself after effectively being by his middle school teachers that he was unintelligent. Lindsay, on the other hand, after doing what she was told for her entire life, saw that authority doesn't always have the answers or our best interest at heart, and chose to reject it.

The freaks' path on the show is about them trying to be left alone to do their own thing. They are content to live their lives free from the constraints of society and responsibility. On Halloween, for example, when Lindsay is still adjusting to the freak lifestyle, she annoys the hell out of Kim when she continually asks what the group is going to "do" that night. Little does she realize that the freaks don't actually "do" very much. Part of the reason is that most of the freaks don't have very much spending money. Another reason is that they find most socially acceptable activities to be pretty lame. Concerts are fun (but very expensive) and movies are good every now and then, but school dances and alcohol-free parties are to be avoided at all costs. However, that doesn't mean that, in their opinion, someone is necessarily worth avoiding if they enjoy these activities. It just isn't for them.

But even more than that, many of the freaks want to be left alone because of the large burdens that they carry in secret. Daniel's father is disabled and unable to provide for the family. Daniel and his mother have to take considerable care of him, and Daniel even used school as an excuse to get out of going to the pharmacy to get his dad's medication (this says a lot because there are few things Daniel finds more pointless than school). Kim's home life isn't much better; her mother is psychotic and her relatives are violent. Nick's father, on the other hand, is very disciplined and structured, and wants his son to give up his "childish" notions of music superstardom. Drumming is a passion to Nick but a distraction to his father, and he never ceases to give Nick a hard time about concentrating on his studies. Lindsay comes from a stable family who truly support her, but they are also very traditional and cannot comprehend the changes their daughter is going through.

The freak storylines tend to be a little heavier than the geeks' stories (that doesn't mean the geeks don't have their share of pain or that the freaks aren't funny), and we watch as they deal with drug abuse, seeing their dreams slip away, and trying to establish their own identities in a world that demands conformity. Fortunately, the series never presents these issues in a "Very Special Episode" format. The characters learn and grow from their mistakes, but they also are confined by their lots in life and their drive. In an early episode, Daniel tries to convince Lindsay to help him cheat, and while the effort ends badly, it doesn't deter Daniel from cheating in the future, because cheating remains the preferable option to actually studying. Kim changes her attitude towards Lindsay from a complete bitch into an actual friend, but she retains her angry personality throughout the series. And as is true for many of us, they don't succeed in every endeavor they set out to accomplish.

That doesn't meant that things never go their way. For the most part, the freaks are comfortable with who they are. Life isn't great, but they know it could be worse, and few of them truly wish that they were treated differently at school (the same may not be true about their home lives, though). And they certainly know how to make their own fun with limited funds.

Up next: The path of Sam Weir...

Freaks and Geeks: Setting the Stage

The opening scene of Freaks and Geeks establishes two things: first, the show takes place in Michigan in 1980. Second, we learn that this isn't the average show about teenagers. The first thing we see are a football player and his cheerleader girlfriend speaking in melodramatic trope while a sappy song plays in the background. But before the pair can kiss, the camera pans below the bleachers where we meet the freaks, a group of rock-and-roll-addicted burnouts who have long ago given up on their studies. As Led Zepplin plays in the background, we are introduced to Daniel, Ken, and Nick, three guys reputations as troublemakers and ne'er-do-wells. These are the people who have gone to great lengths to distance themselves from the mainstream high school social circles. Right after that, the song changes to Kenny Loggins' "I'm All Right", from Caddyshack, and we meet the geeks. Sam, Neil, and Bill are three guys who are obsessed with comedians, Star Wars, and, to an extent, gaining acceptance with the "cool kids" (this desire affects Sam and Neal, but Bill is pretty cool with who he is). These guys tend to get bullied, and right away, Sam is threatened by his nemesis. When Sam's sister Lindsay, who is both the focus of the show and a budding freak, comes to his rescue, she only makes things worse for her brother, because he had to be saved by a girl.

Thus begins one of the most realistic, funny, and tragic tales of high school woes that I've ever seen. On this show, the freaks don't always learn from the mistakes they make, and when they do, the lessons learned are not grand life lessons of the typical "very special episdoe". The geeks almost never get the girl in the end, and in the off-chance they do, they learn that there is a difference between the person they wanted and the person they got. Freaks and Geeks is about the small victories that most people had to make for themselves in the cutthroat society that is high school.

The series looks at why people acted the way they did in high school and why some stereotypes were wrong... and why others were right. Take Daniel, for example, the king of the freaks. When the series begins, he appears to be just a lazy pretty boy who chose to follow his desires to be a rock star by ignoring everything else. He can be smarmy and angry, but as the series progresses, his layers are stripped away to reveal a sad and lonely boy from a poor family that can barely make ends meet. It is true that he doesn't have a lot of intelligence, but he was also never encouraged the way people like Lindsay (who has an abundance of smarts) were. On the geek side, Neal is an annoying (in a good way for the audience) horndog who think he is 10 times cooler than he truly is. He is cynical and demeaning at times, but these are his responses to the world he has been exposed to. People don't treat him well, and he and his only two friends don't know why. His desire to be accepted stems from the anguish that comes from being forced outside, and his cynicism is a coping mechanism.

Is still find it amazing that I like this show so much, because, although I was neither a complete freak or complete geek in high school (I was closer to geek, but I had elements of both, and I like to think that I didn't truly conform to a single label), I can identify with a lot of what happened on this series. I guess I'm far enough removed from hell school... I mean high school (Buffy reference!) that I can laugh at the events of the series. And there is a lot to laugh at. But there is also a lot to cry about, and there are times when a single thing can induce both (I'm looking at you, Morty the dummy).

The Weir parents, Harold and Jean, add an adult perspective to the show. They comment on the changing times and the changes in their children. They are an interesting match; Harold is a hard-ass cynic who tries to scare his chilrden straight, while Jean is trying to hold onto the last remnants of the mother-child bond that her children are rejecting during their high school years. They are just as real as the teens on the show; they do not exist to hammer home a lesson every week, and they have their flaws and strengths.

For the most part, the lives of the freaks and the geeks take separate paths, converging through Sam and Lindsay at integral times. Therefore, I will do one post about the freaks and one about the geeks.

Up next: The path of Lindsay Weir...

Live Fast, Die Young

Up next, I am not going to focus on a theme that covers a few different topics. Instead, I am going to look at two or three worlds that I've been thinking about recently. First up is Freaks and Geeks; this has been a long time coming, and after talking about nostalgia and Biff Tannen and Back to the Future, I figured it was finally time (I considered including Freaks and Geeks in the nostalgia series, but realized that it wouldn't fit the way I wanted it to; also, Thomas F. Wilson, who played Biff, is a recurring character, so that is how he enters into it).

Sadly, as happens too often, Freaks and Geeks was an incredible series that had critical acclaim and ardent support from a small group of fans, but was canceled quickly. The show told it like it was for most people in high school (the taglines were, "Everything you remember about high school... that you wish you could forget" and "What high school was like for everyone else"), and it was both extremely funny and extremely sad. I find it very probable that many people shied away from it because they didn't want to be reminded of such hard times they may have had (also, the networked fucked up the promotion).

I also want to look at two movies, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Shawshank Redemption, both of which have been on my mind lately. Eternal Sunshine is sometimes billed as a romantic comedy, but that is a stretch. It is funny and a love story is at the center of the film, but the film examines what it means to love and what our memories mean. And Shawshank is an incredible tale of what hope can do for you.

Up next: Bad reputation...

Back To The Future: Staying The Same

First of all, if you've never seen the Back to the Future trilogy, stop whatever you are doing right now and have a marathon. I know that most of you will that I'm crazy for thinking there are people out there who've never seen these movies, but I assure you they exist. Anyway, I am including these movies in my series on nostalgia and the good ol' days not being as good as we may remember them because these movies show that things effectively stay the same across generations. Sure, technology will improve, but the problems we have now are the same problems we had 30 years ago, and will continue to be the problems we will have 30 years from now.

For the (hopefully) few of you who have not seen the trilogy, here is a brief synopsis: Marty McFly is a typical teenager from 1985. He wants to be a rock star, but his music isn't really that good. His life isn't awful, but it could certainly be better; his family lives in a run down subdivision, and none of his relatives ever really amounted to anything. His father is a timid loser who is still bullied around at work by the same guy who tormented him in high school. His mother is a heavy alcoholic who seems to have had the life sucked out of her, and his siblings are barely scraping by. Marty seems to have only two friends: his girlfriend Jennifer, who is very supportive of his dreams, even when Marty is at his wit's end, and Doc Brown, an eccentric inventor who lets Marty use his enormous stereo system to practice his music. Doc's latest invention is a plutonium-powered time traveling DeLorean.

Due to a series of unfortunate events (heh), Marty accidentally ends up driving the car back to 1955, where he encounters his teenage parents. He interferes with their first meeting, and subjects himself to his (now very attractive and sweet) mother's affections. Marty has to put things right before he returns to the future, otherwise he will cease to exist. After returning to 1985, Doc returns with the car and takes Marty to 2015 in an effort to prevent a family tragedy. While in the future, an geriatric Biff Tannen (Marty's dad's tormentor) steals the car and gives himself the means to become rich and powerful in 1985. This results in Marty and Doc's hometown becoming a hellish reflection of itself, and in an effort to repair the damage, Doc is accidentally sent back to 1885. Marty repairs the damage to the timeline and then embarks on a final journey into the old west to rescue his friend from Biff's outlaw ancestor.

At first glance, it may look like the films are a kind of anti-Pleasantville, especially the first one. During Marty's first trip in 1955, he comments on how the everything looks brand new, and everything looks cleaner. The school's lawn is litter-free (based on what I've seen on Mad Men, I think the producers got this aspect wrong) and the graffiti-covered gates to Marty's subdivision truly are brand new and pristine. However, things aren't as perfect as they seem. In 1985, Marty's mother, Lorraine, comments on how issues of sexuality were much simpler and cleaner back when she was a teen. She chastises her daughter for "chasing boys" and disapproves of Marty and Jennifer going camping together. However, she turns out to be a horny teen who tells Marty off for admonishing her for drinking and smoking. In Part II, we learn that there is a bad part of town in 1955, just like in 1985. Bullying is a problem in both eras there are assholes in both eras, as well as genuinely good people.

Even more intersesting is how the future is portrayed. Dystopian visions of the future are the prevailing vision today (Children of Men, WALL-E, Blade Runner, The Matrix, Firefly/Serenity to a degree), and don't get me wrong, I love these takes on the future, but if I were to wager a guess, I would say that Back to the Future comes closest to how things will be in 2015. I certainly don't think we'll have hoverboards and flying cars (Robert Zemeckis admitted that they did want to shy away from the dystopian view and used some retro-futurism to design 2015, which is somewhat ironic because in the same movie 2015 was featured, 1985A was depicted as a dystopia), but there are some techonologies featured in the movie that aren't so far-fetched (thumbprint IDs to open doors and pay bills, video phones, picture windows). But the true reason I see this as how the future will be is that things are exactly the same as they are in the present and past. In 2015, the McFlys are living in a run-down subdivision, just like in 1985. However, that same subdivision was supposed to be an up-and-coming gold mine in 1985, just like the place they were living in in 1985 was supposed to be in 1955.

As for the adventure in 1885, the trilogy once again shows that while some things may have been better about the past, we tend not to focus on the bad things that were definitely present. Doc remarks that the air seemed cleaner back then (there weren't any cars to pollute the air), and there was a bigger sense of community, because travel was so hard and there weren't places like supermarkets (it is likely that you'd spend your entire life in one city and would get to know the butcher and the mayor and the blacksmith). Then again, this sense of community probably terrified someone like Marty, who would be used to one-stop shopping and relative anonymity. Furthermore, while people decry the crime rate in the present, Marty and Doc still had to put up with the Tannen family, and in 1885, Tannen was a murderous outlaw who could actually kill someone, instead of just beating them up and calling them a butthead.

And so ends my series on nostalgia. Sorry for the long delay between posts, and I want to apologize in advance for any upcoming delays (which are inevitable). The good thing is, I know what I want to do next, so at least I won't need to take time to think about it.

Up next: My life in high school...

Mad Men: Moving Toward The Future

Holy crap, it's been a long time. There have been a few factors keeping me away for two weeks (most of them are law school-related, but eventually, I just decided to wait for the season to end and get caught up), but now I'm back, and I actually have another idea for another nostalgia world, which I will get into next. But I digress; the focus is still on Mad Men. Two seasons have been completed, and it is certainly still very much about how much different things were back in the 60s, but things are slowly starting to change around our characters, and not all of them are happy about that idea.

I'm pretty happy that I decided to wait until I had seen the end of Season 2 to do this post, because there are plenty of things that happened in the last four episodes that illustrate this point pretty well. Throughout the season, Paul Kinsey was dating a black woman, and he ended up spending some time in Mississippi with the Freedom Riders. Kinsey had to put up with a lot of ribbing from his coworkers about the futility of registering black voters, but it wasn't until after he had left the workers of Sterling-Cooper let the real barbs fly. The best remark came from Harry Crane, the new head of the television department, who complained that Kinsey's activities only stirred up trouble for the networks, which was bad for business (people don't want to watch the riots on TV). Elsewhere in Manhattan, Pete Campbell and his wife were trying to conceive a child, but Trudy turned out to be infertile. When Trudy suggested adoption, Pete couldn't fathom the idea (mainly because of how it would affect his standing in his uptight family). I had no idea about this, but apparently in the 60s, adoption was seen as a very disgusting thing, taking in someone's abandoned child. However, the attitude about it was clearly changing, because both Trudy and Pete's secretary saw it as a noble thing.

The second season also sees the beginning of the breakdown of certain sexual norms. Granted, most of the trailblazers in this area are Europeans. In Manhattan, one of the new employees at Sterling-Cooper publicly announced his homosexuality to a full break room. This prompted confused responses to his face and plenty of jokes behind his back. The best part though was the fact that Sal was present and could not find the courage to stick up for his brave colleague. Out in LA, Don met up with a group of international idle rich, who spend their time drinking, smoking, and fucking*; basically they do what all the other characters on the show do, but they don't work. It is also very likely that they experimented with other drugs, though the only evidence that I have for this is the giant needle they tried to inject Don with after he collapsed from heat exhaustion. When he asked what they were giving him, they only responded with, "Medicine". This wouldn't be the first time that Don has hung around with hippies-in-training, but his beatnik lover from Season 1 was not so financially stable. Creator Matthew Weiner has said that he wants to end the show into the 70s, so it will be interesting to watch the reactions of people like Roger Sterling and especially old-fashioned (but very awesome) Bert Cooper to these changing "values".

There are two other major changes that happened in the season finale that showed just how much things have changed since the series began, but I don't want to spoil anything. Needless to say, things will be very different for Don Draper when we see him again next year.

Up next: The more things change, the more they stay the same...


*There is a very funny site that has "truthful TV title cards", and I kind of, um, borrowed that line from the Mad Men card. I'm a big fan of the Heroes card (that show is dead to me).