Top (Ten) Songs: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend – Season 1

Yeah, this is a case where a Top Five just can’t cut it.  For now, I’ve got it down to ten, but I may or may not be back later with more song write-ups.  (Note:  I’m including links to the videos, because the visual presentation of the songs is absolutely essential.)

“The Sexy Getting-Ready Song” – Granted, it’s more about the video than anything else, but who doesn’t love this song?  It’s a sultry number featuring Rebecca and her backup dancers body-rolling in spanx, singing about the hell women put themselves through to look sexy.  My favorite part is the rap break, where Nipsey Hussle is forever changed by all the “nasty-ass patriarchal bullshit” and realizes he has to “go apologize to some bitches.”

Best lyric:  “I’m gonna whisper your dick hard, / Whisper your dick hard - / The sexy getting-ready song…”

“Feeling Kinda Naughty” – I love this one so much, with its cutesy “girl crush” setup that takes a hard left turn into full-on Single White Female insanity.  The first time around, I was enjoying it even before the joke took off, but “I wanna lock you in a basement with soundproof walls…” just kills me.  Super catchy, and I love the craziness of Rebecca’s fantasizing.

Best lyric:  “Cook your spit into a chowder, / Dry your sweat into a powder, / Then do lines of you all through the night.”

“A Boy Band Made Up of Four Joshes” – Great concept well-executed.  Rebecca imagining Josh as a one-man boy band is incredibly apt, and I love how each “member” has his own style and personality – nice details there.  Then, of course, when you add the fact that the four identical Autotuned dreamboats are singing about Rebecca’s neuroses, it gets even better.

Best lyric:  “Baby, you can kiss all your childhood traumas goodbye. / You’re never gonna miss all that stress you’ve been keeping inside. / All your psychological problems, girl, we’re gonna solve them, / ‘Cause we’re not just a boy band made up of four Joshes. / We’re also a team licensed mental health professionals.”

“Settle for Me” – Such snappy lyrics here, and I love the Fred and Ginger feel of the number.  It sets up the Rebecca/Greg dynamic nicely, how he’s at least slightly disgusted with himself for liking her so much despite her obvious interest in Josh.  Not to mention, I love the juxtaposition of the romantic, old-Hollywood-musical style and the decidedly unromantic subject matter.

Best lyric:  Sugar jugs, I’m so bereft. / Demeaning terms are all that I have left / Of my masculinity, / So settle for me.”

“I Give Good Parent” – The visuals of Josh’s sisters posing around Rebecca with words like “POLITE” and “GOOD HYGIENE” emblazoned on their underwear cracks me up so hard, and it’s the perfect representation of this song.  Rebecca’s prim, moderately-cheesy brown-nosing pairs so fantastically with the brash posturing of the lyrics (which has some great rhymes, by the way, really clever.)

Best lyric:  “I present proper like a TED talker, / Got your current chick lookin’ like Greg Focker.”

“California Christmastime” – I love it so much.  Just a delightful group number in which everyone gets in on the action, featuring fun dancing and jokes.  I also really enjoy it for its place in the episode, with Rebecca affirming her choice to move to California; even if she moved there for Josh, it’s become more than that, which gives this snarky song a bit of a warm-fuzzy feel.

Best lyric:  “And what would Christmas be without / Historically-low mountain snow causing staggering drought? / But hey, this eggnog fro-yo’s super tight! / ‘Cause this is California, / And we do Christmas right!”

“You Stupid Bitch” – A truly powerful moment in the season.  As Rebecca sits on the floor of her apartment, surrounded by the mess she’s made of things, the self-berating that she conducts during this splashy old-fashioned diva number (think Liza or Judy) is blunt and unflinching.  I’d say almost everyone, sadly, can relate to this feeling all too well, and in Rebecca’s case, she’s so vicious to herself that it makes me scared for her.

Best lyric:  “Yes, Josh completes me, but how can that be / When there’s no me left to complete?”

“Getting’ Bi” – What a fun, terrific song.  Darryl comes out to his employees Huey Lewis-style in this peppy number that cheerfully debunks bi stereotypes and celebrates his newly-discovered orientation.  Smart and savvy, and it’s a wonderful touch to have him singing against the backdrop of the bi flag.

Best lyric:  “I’m gettin’ bi, / And it’s something I’d like to demystify. / It’s not a phase; / I’m not confused; / Not indecisive; / I don’t have the ‘gotta choose’ blues.”

“Dream Ghost” – Awesomely catchy and a fun concept.  When Rebecca realizes she’s dreaming, Dr. Akopian reveals herself to be a manifestation of Rebecca’s subconscious to take her on an overly-pat but widely-troped plot device of self-discovery.  I love the meta jokes the little tangents from Dr. Akopian and the other dream ghosts about how poorly they’re paid.

Best lyric:  “I’m gonna take you / On a journey through time and space. / And in the end, you realize you knew the answer all along. / Honestly, it’s a bit of a waste / To be a / Dream ghost!”

“Oh My God I Think I Like You” – Excellent pop number about Rebecca’s sinking feeling that she’s starting to like her friend-with-benefits Greg.  The songs hits the right balance between the sexual references and Rebecca’s dismay at her growing schmoopiness.  All-around awesome.

Best lyric:  “Is there an IUD / That can stop the image of you and me / Getting married on a hillside / Surrounded by ducks, / And then we get into a rowboat…? / Oh my god!  I think I like you.”

Relationship Spotlight: Nebula & Gamora (Guardians of the Galaxy)

Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot in Guardians of the Galaxy that just feels different – than other Marvel titles as well as other space operas.  Yes, it has Marvel sensibilities and a feel not unlike Star Wars or Firefly, but it also has a tree creature that grows on command, a super-genius raccoon, and a spaceship that looks like it’s made of stone.  The relationship between Gamora and Nebula isn’t as wildly different as any of the aforementioned bits, but it too is something that really feels unlike a lot of what you see (spoilers for Gamora and Nebula.)

Both Gamora and Nebula were taken/“adopted” by the warlord Thanos, cybernetically augmented, and raised to be assassins for him.  In Gamora’s case, we know that Thanos destroyed her world and her people when she was only a child; not as much is told about Nebula, but it’s to be assumed that her capture was equal parts violent and traumatic.  In a way, they remind me a little of a combination between the wives and the War Boys on Mad Max:  Fury Road, with Thanos standing in for Immortan Joe.  They appear to have been working alongside each other and doing Thanos’s bidding for a number of years, somewhat contentiously (even though both hate Thanos, he seems to play favorites to pit them against each other.)  When he loans them out to Ronan, however, is when their paths diverge.

Now, there are familiar elements within this.  Gamora betraying Thanos and Ronan to steal the orb and keep it out of their genocidal hands has shades of Black Widow, a former baddie coming over to the side of good.  The resulting rift between the sisters, with them on different sides and having to fight one another (reluctantly on Gamora’s part,) looks a bit like Thor and Loki.  But when these separate elements are at play within the same characters, we’re given dynamics that feel distinct from either in-universe similarity.  Gamora and Nebula were raised together, yes, but by the warlord who kidnapped them and murdered their families.  If they’re expected to feel any loyalty to each other, it’s only inasmuch as it would be inconvenient to Thanos for them to be too much at odds.  And yet, he doesn’t want them to be too close, either – he prefers any antagonism they feel to be directed at each other instead of him.

But that’s the thing:  they do care about each other, at least a little.  Gamora doesn’t think twice about leaving Nebula behind when she goes rogue, but when they come up against each other in Ronan’s resulting mission to take the orb back from Gamora, Gamora repeatedly tries to reason with her sister and only fights her once it’s clear her only options are fight or die.  And while Nebula tries very hard to kill Gamora – repeatedly – she too feels as much for Gamora as she’s probably able to at this point.  Being more of a multitasker, she tries to kill Gamora and talk her around at the same time, but there is the smallest part of her that doesn’t want it to go down the way it is.  As she tells Gamora, “Of our siblings, I hated you least.”

So it’s this really odd, really damaged relationship where both were raised in really frakked-up circumstances and not encouraged to care about anyone, and they don’t like each other all that much, but there’s still this pull between them.  At the end of the first movie, Nebula cuts off her cybernetic hand and leaps onto a passing spacecraft rather than kill or join Gamora, and I’m rabidly curious to find out what happens next for the sisters.  I feel like we’ve only seen the smallest spark of hope for them, but that might be enough.

An Open Letter to TV Showrunners

(Spoilers for The Walking Dead, Sleepy Hollow, and Game of Thrones.)

Let me start by saying that I don’t actually watch The Walking Dead.  I never have, even though people whose TV tastes match up well with mine have recommended it.  That’s because, as I’ve said before, zombies freak me the hell out.  I was able to get through World War Z (for the sake of Peter Capaldi) by doing some serious multitasking while it was on.  I was able to see/love In the Flesh because a) it’s extraordinary, and b) it really helped that, in that show, getting bitten doesn’t turn you into a zombie.  I was able to handle Warm Bodies because it was enough of a comedy to get me through.  But that’s it.  I am nowhere near ready to handle The Walking Dead.

All that said, despite the massive deterrent, there are exactly two things that made me even consider watching that show.  The first is the good stuff I’ve heard about Michonne (I loved Danai Gurira in The Visitor,) and the second is the good stuff I’ve heard about Glenn.  And now… well, if you’re reading this, I imagine you know what happened to Glenn.  I’d heard some of the worries and speculation floating around after the season 6 cliffhanger, and on Monday morning, a post on the blog Angry Asian Man decompressed after the brutal season 7 premiere, so I know what happened.

And even though I haven’t seen a single episode of this show, it saddened me.  Obviously, it’s rough for anyone who loved the character, but I especially felt for the Asian viewers who valued Glenn as some much-needed representation and now don’t have him anymore.  In some ways, it echoed how down I felt about the season 3 finale of Sleepy Hollow, which will forever be known as The Night Those Dickwads Killed My Abbie.  Once again, not as strongly, since I didn’t know Glenn as a character myself, but within the pop culture landscape, I still recognize this character death as loss – much more of a loss than, say, Ned Stark on Game of Thrones.

I’m reminded of a passage from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, a chapter in which all of Maya’s neighbors are gathered at the store to listen to a Joe Louis fight on the radio.  In a desperate moment, when it looks like Louis could be finished, Maya thinks, “This might be the end of the world.  If Joe lost we were back in slavery and beyond help.”  Now, in that time and place, society had a lot further to go than it does now (even if we’re still not nearly as far as we should be, ) so everything is heightened, but that mindset is important to remember.  Whether you’re talking about race, sexuality, gender identity, or disability, representation matters.  It’s why I’m very worried about what the next issue of Jughead will hold, because I need my asexual Jughead and am terrified that Derek North will mess with my representation.

So, showrunners (really, writers in general, but it feels most relevant with TV,) this is what I want you to think of with your Asian characters, your Black characters, your bisexual characters, your trans characters, your Deaf characters, your characters who use wheelchairs.  There are viewers out there who are hungry for characters who look like them, who need to see some semblance of themselves reflected back at them in pop culture.  They don’t have many of those characters, and probably even fewer that are written in a way that feels honest and complex.

When straight, white, able-bodied characters die, there are hundreds upon hundreds left to choose from, left to relate to.  When a character who’s a minority – any type of minority – dies, there might only be a dozen or so left.  These characters matter so much to people.  There isn’t representation to spare.

I’m not saying don’t kill off characters who are PoC/LGBTQ/disabled.  I’m not putting a moratorium on it, honestly.  That doesn’t make sense, and it’s not fair (not to mention, sometimes these choices are dictated by an actor leaving the show rather than narrative plans.)  I’m just saying that, when you think about killing a character who belongs to one such marginalized group, think about how much that character means to people.  Think of what that character’s loss will mean.  Think about how mind-blowingly amazing the story you write would have to be in order to counteract the gut-punch of that loss.  If the story you have in mind isn’t as incredible, as impactful, as meaningful as it would need to be?  Maybe go back to the drawing board to give that character an exit worthy of how much they matter to people, or even think again about whether killing them is really in your show’s best interests.

Love Nest on Wheels (1937)

The Educational shorts end with a bit more of a whimper than a bang.  Love Nest on Wheels isn’t bad, but it’s nothing special.  It’s most notable for copious Keaton family involvement and a number of gags cribbed from the Arbuckle-Keaton short The Bell Boy.

Buster and his hillbilly family run the crumbling Van Buren hotel.  They haven’t had a paying guest in ages and are on the verge of foreclosure when a pair of newlyweds come by.  The decrepit hotel doesn’t impress them much, but Buster has a better idea – the family is in possession of a reasonably-nice trailer, and if he can convince the newlyweds to buy it, they’ll have enough money to cover their rent.  The only problem?  The small matter of the live cow inside it.

Lots of gags from The Bell Boy here, the most prominent ones being the mule-drawn elevator (and hijinks therein) and the little overhead track for the basket carrying hot towels between the kitchen and the in-hotel barber shop (and the incidental trouble Buster gets into over it.)  While the story here is a lot more straightforward than The Bell Boy, which is tons of fun but really meandering, pretty much all of these gags are funnier in the original.  As always, there’s something to be said for the atmosphere of silent slapstick over sound slapstick, and I think the country-bumpkin shtick going on here also makes the comedy a little slower, which messes with the pacing of the gags.

However, I do appreciate that there’s quite a bit of slapstick here, even if a fair amount of it is stuff we saw to better effect in The Bell Boy.  For gags that are novel to this short, I could watch Buster failing to pull a cow out of a trailer all day, and Buster’s sister Louise has an awesome tumble out of a barber’s chair.  Additionally, the worry over the trailer builds to a really well-timed climactic sight gag.

Like Palooka from Paducah, this is another Keaton family short, and, also like the aforementioned short, it gets by in large part because of that fact.  No Joe this time around, but mother Myra, sister Louise, and brother Harry all appear in the short as members of Buster’s onscreen family (I believe this is the only time that Harry played more than an extra in any of Buster’s films, so that’s kind of neat to see.)  But the nostalgia casting doesn’t end with the Keatons.  In keeping with the Fatty Arbuckle-themed short, Arbuckle regular Al St. John plays Buster’s uncle, the guy responsible for letting the cow get into the trailer in the first place.  I have to admit, this casting sort of fascinates me.  Even knowing that it’s him, I can scarcely recognize him at all.  He looks so different than the gangly figure he cut in the Fatty Arbuckle days (I mean, I get it – those films were made 20 years before this one, but I haven’t seen anything he made in the intervening years to fill in that long gap between what he looked like in the ‘10s compared to the ‘30s.)  He acts different, too; he doesn’t pull the same goofy faces as he did in those silent shorts.  Not to mention, this is also the only time I’ve heard his voice, which is always an interesting experience when it comes to silent film actors.

Warnings

Slapstick violence.

Character Highlight: Steven Taylor (Doctor Who)

I feel like classic Who took a bit of a misstep with Steven.  He wasn’t a bad companion or anything, and he worked well enough with everyone they put him with, from Vicki to Dodo, but I dunno.  I get the sense that the show couldn’t quite decide who it wanted him to be, and his character suffered as a result.

First off, two-thirds of Steven’s stories are all or mostly made up of lost episodes, and it’s always a little tougher to connect with a companion whose adventures are mainly audio-only.  Even though I can get by pretty well between the audio track and the picture recons, it still can’t hold my attention quite as well, and you don’t get as much of a sense of what the character is really like.  I’m so grateful for the lost episodes that have been recovered in recent years, as well as the serials that have been put out with animated reconstructions to fill in the gaps.  Without these releases, I wouldn’t have as good of a sense of Ben and Polly or Victoria.  Unfortunately, much of Steven’s tenure on the show is still unavailable in its full version.

I remember being really intrigued by Steven’s introduction at the end of “The Chase.”  A space pilot from the future, stranded on a hostile planet – shades of Vicki, true enough, but it’s not quite the same situation.  When we meet Steven, he’s manic from his long period of isolation, on the whole a little unbalanced and outright giddy at seeing humans again.  And really, if the show was going to do a “future human who crash-lands on an alien world” companion origin for the second time in a row, it’d be logical enough to address how an experience like that would mess you up.  The show doesn’t really go down that road with Vicki, so it would’ve been nice to look more at the effects of Steven’s time on Mechanus, but as with Vicki, all that is dropped pretty quickly.

What we’re left with is a rather ill-defined-feeling companion.  Smart enough, although after a Gallifreyan teenager, two teachers, and Vicki, Steven is probably the least intellectual companion to date when he comes onto the scene (being from the future, he probably knows quite a bit more than Ian and Barbara, but we don’t see that many instances of him solving problems with his knowledge.)  Brave, and a decent fighter, although he seems to spend more than his fair share of time getting capture and/or bested in combat (I feel like history teacher Ian is more of a badass than space pilot Steven.)  Fairly good leadership skills that crop up now and again, often in terms of wrangling one-shot characters to help out in dicey situations.  Compassionate – for a while, his time on the TARDIS is pretty rough in terms of what happens to his friends, and he feels it sharply when things go badly.

I think my main issue with Steven is that very little about him feels specific to who he is.  After his initial introduction, his background hardly comes up at all; it doesn’t inform who he is.  (In fact, the only major reference that comes to mind is when the Doctor wants him and Sara to stay in the TARDIS when they land in England in the middle of “The Daleks’ Master Plan,” saying that humans from the future wouldn’t be able to cope with mid-20^th-century air pollution.)  It feels like he does things more as the story needs him to rather than because “that’s such a Steven thing to do.”  It’s too bad, because I think there was potential in the character, but it was never fully realized.

Further Thoughts on My Blueberry Nights

In my review, I said that this film doesn’t quite work for me, and I also said I don’t know why.  Even though, on paper, it has what appears to be all the usual hallmarks of Wong Kar-wai’s work and ought to add up to his usual sensuous beauty, it doesn’t.  I still don’t know what it is that causes the film to feel off (as I’ve said, I think it must be more than just the fact that it’s in English,) but I want to try and articulate how that offness manifests itself within the film.

The best way I can describe it?  It feels like Wong Kar-wai Does Hollywood, or possibly Hollywood Does Wong Kar-wai.  Typically for me, Wong’s movies feel so real.  The casual dialogue and seeming aimlessness has such an unstudied quality to it, and the colors, camera angles, and music fill me so much that I feel immersed in the characters’ world, like I’m almost swimming through it.  The gentle connections, the pregnant pauses, the opportunities that slip just out of reach – it’s all so real.

And even when it’s not – the poetic voiceovers, the obsessive but beautiful rituals – it still feels real.  Not the way life is, but like a dream is.  These are films that get me hook, line, and sinker.  The passion overwhelms and the heartache sears.  You can practically feel the summer swelter and smell the cigarette smoke.  Works of life and dream with art wrapped around it.  Whenever I rewatch them, I’m often so still, because there’s a sort of spell in them; I don’t want to break it.

That, for me, is what My Blueberry Nights is missing.  Even though it has the same elements, it doesn’t feel right.  Even though the cast includes plenty of excellent actors, I notice them all acting here, see the strings.  Even though Wong follows his conceit of repeating the same few significant songs multiple times, I barely notice them.  Even though, on the face of it, knowing the stories of all the breakups behind the jar of discarded keys in your café is no stranger than deciding you’re moving on from your ex on a certain date and collecting cans of pineapple with that expiration date, it doesn’t feel genuine with Jeremy the way it does with Cop 223.  Everything feels a little removed, a little artificial.

It’s true that Wong’s filmmaking process is very fluid and unique, and it takes a certain type of actor to be able to work that way.  Is it just that these American and English actors can’t adjust to the improvised way he builds his stories from the ground up?  Possible, but I’m not sure.  After all, there are actors who’ve only been in a single Wong film, like Leon Lai and Michelle Reis in Fallen Angels, who’ve done just fine, and while Ziyi Zhang was a latecomer to Wong, she’s stellar in both 2046 and The Grandmaster.  If the Chinese actors can learn to work that way, why not the Brits and Americans? 

In all honesty, the film is fine.  If it weren’t a Wong movie, I might not have been so bothered by the way it holds you at arms length.  But it is, and I know all the stunning beauty and romance he’s capable of, and so I’m sad for what it might have been.

News Satire Roundup: October 16th-October 20th

Sunday, October 16 – It has to be painful for these shows to keep ringing comedy out of this depressing election, but bless them for trying.  I appreciate John’s weekly update on how far we are below rock bottom.  This week, we were in a coffin and buried alive as Trump went all scorched earth on his own party, the media, and the women who say he sexually assaulted them.  In response to those who say neither Clinton nor Trump is worth voting for, the main story was on third-party candidates Gary Johnson and Jill Stein.  John did a nice job showing the problems with casting a “conscious vote” against both major candidates by picking either Johnson or Stein misses their ill-thought-out policies and problematic behavior, like Stein’s tendency to make nice with conspiracy theorists by noncommittally fanning the flames.  We also got a couple montages of my favorite recurring bit, The Most Patient Man on Earth listening to C-SPAN callers.

Monday, October 17 – A couple of quick blurbs to start – redubbed Jurassic Park footage reflecting the new scientific understanding that dinosaurs likely quacked instead of roared, and likening the way the U.S. treats conflict with Middle Eastern countries (Yemen, in this case) like casual dating.  Next up was Trump’s continuing insistence that the election is rigged.  Trevor very satisfying tore apart Trump’s coy “you know what I’m talking about” re:  the idea that “certain parts” of Philadelphia will have to be watched to make sure Black voters aren’t cheating.  He also looked at the similarities between Trump’s campaign and the strategies of many polarizing-but-popular reality-show contestants.  I had no idea that Russell Simmons was working on a collaborative unity project between Jewish and Muslim communities, so his interview was a nice surprise, talking about doing his part as an ally to combat Islamaphobia.

Tuesday, October 18 – After a quick montage of Black children recoiling as Trump tried to embrace them, it was onto to Melania’s defense of her husband re: the Access Hollywood tape.  Her extreme adherence to her talking points didn’t bother me, but I thought it was ridiculous that she questioned whether or not Trump knew the mic was on (so not the point.)  Trevor covered the irony of her wanting to fight cyber-bullying if she becomes First Lady, and Desi was spliced in with an escape plan for Melania.  Interesting story on WikiLeaks’s recent Clinton acquisitions.  I laughed at the “emailing recipes = dick pics for old folks” bit, and I appreciated the point about how the big secret email reveals pale in comparison to things Trump says/does in public.  Loved Uzo Aduba as the guest.  She was promoting her new film American Pastoral, but Trevor had to get some Orange is the New Black questions in as well, and she was happy to oblige.

Wednesday, October 19 – Live post-debate episode.  This might be my favorite live show of the election cycle; the commentary felt pretty sharp, more put together than initial reactions.  I loved Trevor’s remarks on a) Trump trying to pander to Latinos as he’s talking deportation, b) Clinton, despite her valid point about the Russian hacks, using Putin to evade questions about the WikiLeaks emails, and of course c) Trump refusing to state that he’ll accept the election results – shudder.  Roy had a piece on disillusionment among young Black voters.  Although it’s obviously true, I hadn’t really thought about how people under 30 have never had only white presidential candidates to choose from.  The interview with journalist Matt Taibbi was so-so.  I liked what he said about Trump’s reality TV campaign, but I can’t really buy that this is what U.S. elections will be like from here on out.

Thursday, October 20 – Jordan filled in for Trevor, who was out sick.  Personally, I’d have liked to see Hasan or Ronny take a crack at it, but Jordan was fine.  There were plenty of jokes about it – comparing Trump’s issues with the peaceful transition of power to Jordan “taking out” his fellow correspondents to get the job, admitting that Africa jokes work better when Trevor says them re: discussing Kenya’s post-election unrest – and overall, the commentary on the debate felt written for Jordan instead of just him reading Trevor’s lines.  Roy had a good field piece on the racist crap that Black journalists have to put up with on camera, swallowing their disgust so as not to be painted as “angry Black men/women.”  Some of the comments were just horrendous.  I’d been looking forward to the interview with Mike Colter, but I think it would’ve been way better with Trevor.  Jordan’s interview was pretty surfacy and felt ill-informed.