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).

Mad Men: Culture Clash

Ah, the 60s, a time of sexual revolution, rebellion, and subversive rock and roll. Or at least, that is what the decade would become known for. At the beginning of the decade, the conformism and rigidity of the 50s still reigned. Mad Men begins in 1960, and follows the life of Don Draper, an ad man with a Madison Avenue firm. Unlike Pleasantville, which points out that much of the nostalgia we have for "better days" never actually occurred, Mad Men shows us that maybe the good ol' days weren't so good after all. In Draper's New York, it is a (white) man's world where women and minorities are barely second class citizens and money not only buys everything (except happiness), but people who can do so are idolized.

The series juxtaposes Draper's separate lives at home and work to show how both areas of life were vastly different only 48 years ago. At work, the men of the Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency spend almost as much time drinking and chasing women as they do working. Higher ups like Don and partner Roger Sterling take long lunches at expensive restaurants, and pay with the company's expense account. Everyone (err, every man) has a full bar in their office, and absolutely EVERYONE always has a cigarette in their hand. Oh, and the workplace banter would probably put the place out of business in modern times after litigating all the sexual harassment suits. But make no mistake, the men of Sterling Cooper are certainly good at what they do; if they weren't, they wouldn't be able to afford all the expensive whiskey, cars, and jewelry for their wives. The women at the office are basically waitresses and servants to the guys. A secretary at Sterling Cooper takes her man's coat and hat at the beginning of the day, gets ice for meetings, and "covers" for the men when they aren't where they are supposed to be. The only woman at the office with any actual power (at least at the beginning of the series) is office manager Joan Holloway, who knows how to use her sexuality to her advantage (that was pretty much all a woman would have as leverage in the workplace back then, because a woman's talent meant nothing).

At home, Don is the king of the castle. His two children worship him and his wife dutifully does what she is told. Betty Draper makes sure to have a hearty dinner ready every night when Don comes home, and doesn't ask questions when he doesn't come home. On the subject of the Draper children, to the unassuming (modern) observer, Don and Betty would seem to be the worst parents ever. At one point, Betty reprimands her daughter for running with a plastic bag over her head. The purpose of the reprimand is that Betty doesn't want Sally to run in the house (but the suffocation risk is fine). The kids mix gin and tonics for their parents, and corporal punishment is is routine. But that is how things were done back then.

After reading that, it may seem like the term "simpler times" would apply, even if the simplicity is derived from less than desirable aspects of society. There were a lot of things going on below the surface that certainly weren't simple, and society tried to keep them below, which created a spiral of complexity. Poor mental health was seen as a sign of weakness, something to be ashamed of. Therapy was for crazies, and if a family member needed to see a psychiatrist, that was guarded information (also, the doctor-patient relationship seems to be a little different back then). Furthermore, men were expected to be "men". It was expected that young guys would get drunk and chase girls; making a fool out of oneself was a badge of honor. This comes out very effectively in two very different ways in two very different characters. Pete Campbell (played by Vincent Kartheiser, who spent a little over a year playing Connor on Angel) is an up-and-coming junior account executive who actually overdoes the man's man bit. He doesn't know when to back off, and this has created a fair amount of emnity between him and his superiors at Sterling Cooper. Maybe my desire for any one from a Joss Whedon show to be likable is painting my interpretation of him, but when Campell sets aside his machismo, he shows that he is a remarkable employee who is struggling to fit in to a culture in the only way he knows how. On the other hand, there is Sal Romano, the head of Sterling Cooper's art department. Sal is very well-liked at the office by both the men and the women. What his coworkers don't know is that he's gay, and despite a few notable hints, none of them ever suspect (at one point, the girls operating the telephones gossip about how dreamy he is). Sadly for Sal, society would reject him if he were to come out, so he pretends to be something he is not and in a series of tragic characters, his story is one of the saddest.

As I said, money buys everything on this series except for happiness. Many of the characters seemingly have everything a person could want; Don, Pete, and Roger are all married to beautiful women, have promising careers, and all the booze they can drink. Their wives are provided for and can do anything they want. But absolutely no one is happy. The men always want more and the women want their men, not the gifts that come from their absence.

Up next: Progress...

Pushing Daisies: Back On Top

I'll admit that while I very much enjoyed the season premiere of Pushing Daisies, I think that part of it was just that I was so excited to have the show back. The premiere was certainly good, but was definitely not the best episode yet. The second episode was similar; very good television, but only good Pushing Daisies. This week's episode, "Bad Habits", was certainly the best of the season so far, and ranks up there with episodes like "Bitches" and "Pigeon".

This episode wraps up Olive's arc at the nunnery and takes us a step closer to resolving one of the overarching plotlines. I can't wait to see the repercussions of the final scene, because although the episode ended happily, the information will cause a lot of grief in the long run.

This episode was full of great dark humor and beautifully tragic (or tragically beautiful?) moments. Most notable for me was Olive's "final thoughts" as she fell from the bell tower (let's just say that I sympathize with her unrequited love more than I should).

Unfortunately, I've been hearing reports that ratings haven't been that good this season. PLEASE tell your friends about this show! There is no better combination of sweetness, satire, and darkness out there, and this is a show that deserves a nice long run!

Up next: Smoke gets in your eyes...

Pleasantville: Below The Surface

What happens when an idyllic town is "invaded" by the unpleasant? Terrible bloodshed has happened in the name of preserving the good old days; in the 50s and 60s, the Civil Rights Movement in America showed us what certain Americans were willing to do to maintain the status quo. And in the 30s and 40s in Germany, a man came to power to restore Germany to its former glory. The price was the lives of 12 million innocent civilians (in addition to the extraordinarily high number of soldiers). In Pleasantville, when sex and rock'n'roll (drugs were conspicuously absent) started making their influence on the town, certain people were willing to do almost anything to keep things pleasant.

More kids than adults gained color in the main part of the film (up to the courtroom scene) because kids are more willing to experiment. It was the adults who started panicking and trying to keep things pleasant, and beyond that, it was the men in positions of power who helped perpetuate the beliefs that the colorization was a fad that would "just go away". Doctors gave lame diagnoses to reassure parents that their children would soon return to normal, and the mayor makes sure to point out the downsides of the changing nature of the town (because things are no longer perfect, the high school basketball team is no longer undefeated). At first, when the changes appear to be temporary or harmless, the town elite only talk about the need for vigilance against the plague. But as time goes on, talk evolves into action.

Soon, fire and rain become threats to Pleasantville, kids start reading (HORRORS!), and the soda shop becomes a forum for controversial art. In response, the town leaders begin to perpetuate the idea that "coloreds" are different and inferior to the "true citizens of Pleasantville". There are plenty of resulting parallels to both Nazism and American racism; when David begins dating a girl who gains color before him, the guy she was plotted to get with begins treating her like she was less than human (she becomes nothing but a thing to him, and he makes a crack about her being David's "colored girlfriend"), and eventually, the Mayor creates a Code of Conduct that requires the coloreds to suppress who they have become. Book burnings and acts of vandalism against businesses of coloreds are two very powerful visual references to acts of the Nazis.

The scariest thing is that most of the people at the top, the ones pulling the strings, carried out their horrific plans with a smile on their faces. The Mayor remained extremely pleasant throughout the film; he disapproved of the vandalism against the coloreds, but he wanted the problem gone more than anyone. Here was a man who would rather enforce kindness and contentedness on people who are trying to discover the full range of emotions and mental states than accept the fact that not everyone wants to be kind and content. As the film shows, he is a very angry person deep down, and everything was easier when things were black and white.

Of course, the movie shows that even the "bad" things in life have their benefits. The first rainstorm is a treat to the citizens who choose to embrace the change, and suddenly, a colorful umbrella becomes a treasured possession. The happy times in life become appreciated because they are not a monotonous constant presence, and they can be compared to the bad aspects. If WALL-E showed us that utopia can be dangerous, Pleasantville teaches us that utopia can be boring.

Up next: This blog brought to you by Lucky Strikes...

Pushing Daisies: A Touch of Awesome

Because I am law school, my available time to do my nerdy things, like watch TV and write this blog (I've been pretty good about it lately, though) has vastly decreased. However, I am going to do everything I can to stay on top of at least one show this year, Pushing Daisies. I don't know if I'll be able to watch and/or write about it every week, but this was the first new episode we've had in many months, and I couldn't not acknowledge it!

It looks like a few months have passed since Aunt Lily made her shocking revelation to Olive, and although Ned and Chuck are back on speaking terms, things aren't any less complicated at the Pie Hole. Olive's role as secret keeper for Lily (she's Chuck's mother), Chuck (she's alive), and herself (she loves Ned) is taking its toll on her, and when Aunts Lily and Vivian show up at the Hole, she nearly goes crazy. In order to keep her quiet, Lily shuttles her off to the nunnery where she went to give birth to Chuck (let's just say she has a pretty good reason to keep the maternity issue a secret from Vivian).

Meanwhile, Ned, Emerson, and Chuck are still solving mysteries together, and this week, due to Chuck's vast knowledge of bees, she takes her most active role yet by becoming the inside (wo)man at a honey-based cosmetics company. Of course, while the mysteries are fun, they are not why we watch this show. The crazy sets, great word-play, and sweetly mature double entendres make this show like nothing else on television. I commented to a friend that my love for this show may be unhealthy for a guy my age, but I don't care. It makes me smile and breaks my heart at the same time, and I like stories that make me run the emotional gamut.

Upcoming stories look like they'll expand on things that were hinted upon last year, and I cannot wait to see what happens next.

Up next: Shades of gray...

Pleasantville: The Way We Were

I remember seeing this movie back in 1998, thinking that I was going to see a comedy about two modern kids who get sucked into the world of a 50s TV show. Unfortunately, I was way too young to appreciate what the film was really about (I wasn't even in high school at the time). Pleasantville does in fact follow twins David and Jennifer, two 90's era teenagers, as they are forced to live in a 50s sitcom, and there are definitely comedic elements, but this movie is so much more than that. By forcing the real (modernity is immaterial) onto our nostalgia, we are forced to see that things probably aren't as wholesome as we choose to remember them. But if they were, who would have been happy like that?

David and Jennifer don't have the "ideal" lives. Their high school teachers warn them of the dangers that await them in the real world, while their parents are divorced and can barely stand each other. Each twin deals with their situation differently; Jennifer acts like a slut by wearing the most provocative clothing available and submitting herself to anyone in return for "popularity". David, on the other hand, retreats into Pleasantville, a sitcom from the 50s where everything is perfect and pleasant. Everyone gets along, the high school basketball team is undefeated, no one is homeless, and everyone is happy. David sees this as the perfect life, and uses it as a substitute for his own.

One fateful night, when fighting over the TV remote (the film has some interesting things to say about television, in addition to nestalgia), the twins end up breaking the remote, rendering their TV unworkable. Soon, a weird TV repair man shows up and gives them a magic remote that sucks the pair right into the world of Pleasantville, where they, along with the entire world, are shaded in black and white. Both David and Jennifer are distraught by this turn of events, but for entirely different reasons. Jennifer is put off by the way of life; she is forced to eat fatty foods and wear poodle skirts. David, however, is afraid of ruining the perfect world that he adores so much. At first, he tries to preserve Pleasantville as best he can by coaching Jennifer on what the character she is inhabiting is "supposed" to do. But David cannot possibly contain Jennifer's desires to be herself.

Before going on, let me list a few things that are unheard of in Pleasantville: toilets, fire, women's rights, rain, cursing, minorities, life outside of the town, books (or at least books with writing inside them), change, and sex. It is this last item that Jennifer introduces to the unsuspecting ingenue of a basketball team captain. Yeah, in this world, men can be ingenues too (who says there is no gender equality there?! Oh wait, I do). This one act sets off a chain reaction that forces the entire town to reevaluate what they believe in. People start realizing that they want more than what they had, whether it be because they are bored with routine, or because they realize that there is a whole range of emotions that they could be feeling.

When I wrote about WALL-E, I commented on how thin the line between utopia and dystopia is, and that sentiment is very appropriate here. Everyone thinks they're happy in the town of Pleasantville, but that is because they don't know of any other way to think. Even David quickly becomes disenchanted with the world he once saw as perfect. People may be happy, but they lack free will. But when David and Jennifer begin introducing reality to the innocent town people, color begins seeping into the black and white world.

People acquire color when they accept change; most of the Pleasantville natives do so by accepting their sexuality, but other desires allow for the change as well. Mr. Johnson, the local soda shop owner, discovers an artistic creativity in himself that makes him want something more than the duty of cooking burgers every night, while Betty Parker, the mother of David and Jennifer's characters in the show (not to be confused with their actual real-world mother) learns that her life as a housewife is boring (ok, so she also has a sexual experience serve as the catalyst for her colorization, but there was more to it than just that). David and Jennifer, though, have to find other ways of getting color, because they are already aware of their sexuality. They have to make actual changes to their own lives and cease being kids and become adults (the scene that shows the morning after David and Margaret's night at Lover's Lane, where all the other black-and-white kids gained color while David sits looking at his reflection in the pond breaks my heart every time).

And of course, the town elders (I really don't want to refer to them as the rich white men of the town, but that is who the elders would be in a 50s sitcom) want to do everything in their power to prevent these changes. Director Gary Ross correctly noted that these are the people with the most to lose because they are waited upon hand and foot by their wives and they are respected by their children (rock and roll and counterculture also begins to establish itself when David and Jennifer show up). And the parallels between real world oppression and the attempts by the "true citizens of Pleasantville" is the subject of the next post.

Up next: Struggling to remain Pleasant...

The Good Old Days Weren't Always Good

Next, I want to look at worlds that examine the past and point out that our nostalgia for simpler times is probably misplaced. To do this, I will examine Pleasantville and Mad Men, a wonderful movie and television series (if I think of anything else, I will include it as well).

Each one points out the downsides of their respective eras in different ways; Pleasantville demonstrates that the 50s weren't as idyllic as we believe them to be, no matter what old television shows like The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet might tell us. The movie is about two teenagers from the 90s being sucked into a 50s-era TV show, and completely ruining the "utopian" setting. However, in doing so, they make the characters human.

Mad Men takes place in the 60s, and is about the change from the conformist 50s to the more liberal 60s and 70s, and is examined through the eyes of advertising executives on Madison Avenue. The series looks at how these men and their families try to be happy, because they believe that they have everything, and should be happy, but under the surface, darkness lurks in everyone. The series points out the radically different cultural norms by specifically not pointing them out, leaving it up to the viewer to expect one thing, only to be amazed when the reaction defies what we consider to be morally right.

Up next: TV Land...

Futurama: The End?

So, for whatever reason, FOX lost faith in Futurama; after a few years of changing timeslots and poor promotion, the show got canceled. But then, after it became one of the most popular shows on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim, FOX commissioned four new Futurama direct-to-DVD movies (isn't it weird how this and two other FOX shows were somehow revived [Firefly and Family Guy], and it is likely that another canceled-before-its-time FOX show, Arrested Development, is getting a second chance). So far, two have been released, and while they haven't been as good as the show was at its best, they have certainly been worthwhile.

The first, Bender's Big Score, told the complicated story of the crew discovering the secret of time travel. After discovering a tattoo on Fry's ass that holds the code for opening a time sphere, a group of greedy aliens exploit it to force Bender to go back in time and steal priceless artifacts. However, as usually happens with time travel, an elaborate time loop story is created, as Fry and Bender repeatedly go back in time, creating rather insane circumstances (some of which negate the carefully plotted backstory that was established in the series, but I'm nitpicking).

The other, The Beast With A Billion Backs, deals with the final twist of Big Score. After a rift in the space-time continuum is created due to the overuse of time travel, the world is confronted with an enormous monster who offers a kind of bizarre paradise.

Big Score was very much about reintroducing us to the world of Futurama; the writers tried to squeeze in nearly every recurring character into the two-hour span, which ultimately worked against the story. It was certainly nice to see everyone again, but many of the characters seemed out of place. Beast was much more of a normal episode of the show, in the sense that the story was tighter. However, both felt like a loosely told collection of four episodes as opposed to one story (the movies will eventually be broken down into four episodes each and broadcast on Comedy Central). This isn't the worst flaw ever, but subplots seem to come and go somewhat abruptly.

Still, these movies have been fun so far, and based on the trailer for the upcoming Bender's Game, the fun will keep on coming. Based on the events of Big Score, we will get a little closure on some of the overarching plot elements (though the events of Beast somewhat ignored the Fry/Leela development in Big Score). The final movie, Into the Wild Green Yonder, is supposed to tie up all the loose ends, and based on a few things I've heard about it, it should be pretty great.

Hopefully, if everything works out, we may get a little more Futurama, but the producers have said that if Green Yonder is the last thing they do with the Futurama universe, they will be happy with the ending, and I'm guessing we will too.

Up next: Nostalgia...