breakinglight11, posts by tag: tv - LiveJournal

On a recent rewatch of Bojack Horseman season 3-- I taught Bojack in my class recently, which always inspires a rewatch --it jumped out at me how much they emphasize how influenced Bojack is by the opinions of others. Basically, any time somebody tells him what they think about something he's doing, he immediately changes course in deference to that opinion. It was an immediate, obvious response, and it happened again and again across the season.

At first I thought that might be something they were presenting a recent development for Bojack as a character, but they made a point of including it even in the flashbacks to 2007. So that made me want to go back and look at earlier episodes to see if this was something as present before season 3. After looking, the answer I'd give is it's definitely always been a minor part of the character, but not nearly as strong, obvious a trait that it becomes in season 3.

It's something that makes sense for somebody as depressed and self-hating as Bojack, that he's dependent on what other people think of him and his actions for any sort of direction or confidence. But I do wonder what they were trying to suggest by giving it so much emphasis this season. I'd guess that they were suggesting a deterioration of ego, that he was growing less secure, but as I mentioned, they included it in the 2007 flashbacks too. My best supposition then is that they were not saying this is a NEW thing for Bojack, but that they were trying to DRAW MORE ATTENTION to this facet of him.

So then what does that say? That in his desperation for connection, another thing made much of in season three, makes him especially malleable to win the approval of others? I kind of like that. Or is it literally an ego deterioration-- that something about his sense of self, or at least faith in his own judgment or perceptions, has degraded? That's actually a scary proposition, that could have some pretty dire implications. I wonder if more of it will be made in season 4, as it was never really dealt with-- in fact, the season closed out with Bojack having a freakout due to sudden outside input on something he was doing.

I found out yesterday that one of my favorite contestants on RuPaul's Drag Race, Katya Zamolodchikova, is going to be in town as part of Miss Fame's, another RPDR queen, Painted by Fame tour, where she gives makeup technique demonstrations in a seminar setting. I really like Miss Fame's work, which I actually discovered on Youtube before I ever started watching the show. Miss Fame alone probably wouldn't have won me over, but the chance to learn from her skills and meet Katya was enough to get me to spend the money.

I think it will be interesting and fun. I've been trying to develop my ability with makeup, so I could learn a lot of what I'm trying for. Plus I'd love to meet Katya, who is such a creative, talented, interesting person! But the ticket was very expensive for me, much, much more than I've paid to attend anything in many years, and I'm starting to feel guilty about it. I bought it basically on impulse, and I do really want to attend it, but I'm afraid it wasn't a great idea.

Financially I'm doing better these days, thanks to getting more classes at a higher step rate due to my experience. But I worry it's allowed my usual careful budgeting to slip too much. I should be saving for the Mrs. Hawking plays, which will require some new properties due to putting on part three for the first time. If nothing else, saving money is a good idea for me always, because though I'm making more, I'm still not making much.

But I also have been thinking more about how I need to be doing things that I enjoy, if nothing else than to get myself in a less depression-inclined frame of mind. They say spending on experiences is way more satisfying in the long run than just buying stuff, even though stuff superficially "lasts" longer. I mean, the money is spent, the deed is done, I have to get over it one way or another. Maybe I shouldn't do it again in the future, but I should at this point just be thinking of it as an investment in feeling good.

I've been watching Westworld on HBO, and I intend to watch it through to the end, but I'm not very satisfied with it. I mean, besides the fact that I've always had a huge mental block against sympathizing with robots as characters, as I still basically think they're always going to just be things, it's not that fresh a robots-as-people narrative. Basically, they're gaining sentience as their programming advances, and they're probably going to make humans pay for the horrific treatment they've undergone when utilized as things. I am absolutely sure that will happen if AI ever gets advanced enough in the real world, and we've seen it in stories a million times before.

But the thing that gets at me the most is the logic behind the Westworld park itself. It's appeal is basically presented as a place to indulge your darkest urges free of consequences-- specifically, they assume, things that take the form of hurting others. The park is full of robots, not people, so you can hurt or use them in any way you want and it doesn't matter. And that's basically the reason why people like to come.

Well. Even leaving aside what a morbidly cynical view of humanity is-- I don't even think that's all that representative of the way people's badness manifests. Personal I'd say most of the worst of us manifests not as sadism-- the desire to cause or the enjoyment of suffering in others --but rather as selfishness. It's not so much that you WANT other people to hurt, it's that you care so much about yourself and your own gratification that the harm you do to others doesn't matter to you. Sure, causing pain often gives us power over others, which is another thing we're all susceptible to, but again, I'd argue that you want the feeling of being powerful so much that you don't worry about causing pain. True psychopaths, who LIKE causing pain in and of itself, exist, but they're much rarer. Faced with no consequences for our actions, that morbid indifference to the feelings of others in favor of indulging the self is the true danger that is likely to come out of us.

I mean, I can imagine if I were in a scenario like this-- leaving aside the other problems with the workings of Westworld, which are beside my point here --I might have fun being the best shot in the West and beating a horde of rampaging gunslingers by being the fastest draw. That appeals to my sense of adventure and excitement, plus the thrill of being the best. I could see conceivably being so selfish that I care so about my enjoyment in that way I don't care that I subjected a bunch of people to painful death. But it adds nothing to that appeal to see the men I beat twitching and gasping in pain as they die from the bullets I put in them. I could see prioritizing my sense of fun such that I didn't care that I killed them. But having to witness their suffering is distasteful, such that the imposition of their pain is a consequence that would make my victory less fun. I think it would be to most people.

But even beyond that-- the version of the "dark urges" the park is designed to caters to? Is this totally one-note, stereotypically masculine conception. Basically, the form of indulgences it expects its guests to want are all extremely retrograde masculine fantasies, mostly sexual, violent, or a combination of the two. Sure, given how toxic they expect people to want to behave, you'd expect them to appeal to people's toxic masculinity, but there's no appeals to any impulse that are not coded masculine. It's all just about the chances for brutal violence or increasingly outre sexuality.

I can't figure out if it's intentional or not. Is it as a statement of how prevalent such fantasies are in people, or even how hypermasculinity encourages it? Or is it because the SHOW can't imagine dark impulses under any other encoding?

If it's intentional, there has yet to be any explicit acknowledgment that Westworld is designed under that assumption. I've seen no commentary on the problem of that conception. There's been no connection of the horrors being committed to the idea that they rise from hypermasculinty-- in fact, the only suggestion the show gives is that it comes from HUMANITY in general, rather than specifically from males. And I don't think depicting an idea without any form of critique, in so many words or otherwise, counts as commentary.

On top of that, most of the women characters in the show have been portrayed in really limited ways. The only female guests tend to be either wives supporting the adventures of their husbands, or else having identical dark urges to straight men. (There's been some portrayal of lesbianism, but it all smacks of "chicks that act like straight guys" rather than women attracted to other women. By contrast, the one bisexual dude's orgy? A woman riding his dick, another woman making out with him, while the one other guy... rubs his belly. Cowards.) The women host robots fall into a pretty stark virgin-whore dichotomy. Again, if there was some suggestion of critique of this, that women suffer even more when people act like objectification is just okay, then I might see it as a meaningful choice. But again, I've seen no sign of this.

So it's increasingly striking me as unintentional, which is both a staggeringly limited view of humanity-- even humanity's darkness --and also misogynist. I mean, why do women come to Westworld in this universe? Just to support their husbands' hero hypermasculine-coded hero fantasies, or if they want to indulge in THOSE EXACT SAME HYPERMASCULINE FANTASIES themselves? Is there nothing here to enjoy that's actually geared toward the interests of women-- or even the ways women specifically tend to break down? If nothing else, where are the hot male whores throwing themselves at female guests?

I'm only three episodes in. Maybe they'll deal with it. But I don't think it's been handled well so far.

I really enjoyed Luke Cage and thought it was awesome. I have a handful of criticisms, nothing major— except one thing was pretty glaring to me.

In episode 10 “Take it Personal,” I did not like how they made Mariah’s crusade against Luke Cage look like a successful attempt to co-opt a movement like Black Lives Matter. Her bending people’s real lives and feelings to her own ends is appropriate for her character arc, but I don’t think the way she did it scans. They showed Mariah appealing to people who were sympathetic to a pro-black safety movement, thereby invoking the suggestion of BLM. But BLM is a movement to demilitarize the police, while Mariah was calling to arm them with experimental weaponry. And instead of facing down the social structures that systematically devalue and destroy black lives, she was attempting to take down one man, and a black man at that, who had been shown to stand up for average people and was mostly cast as a threat by an attack on cops. There is no equivalence there, so to show her efforts taking in those people suggests that the people in pro-black safety movements are easily swayed by incorrect rhetoric and corrupt leaders. I don’t think they intended that, but I find it an offensive implication.

What I would have done was had Mariah increasingly side with the system to take him down, even at the expense of the people of Harlem she used to champion. Have her use the rhetoric of “law and order” and respectability politics, saying how a dangerous person like Luke Cage damages the reputation of the black community, appealing to the fear of white people of scary powerful black men to get institutions on her side to take him down. She’s on a path to darkness anyway, so to have her go from a champion of black culture to joining with the corrupt system that harms black people in order to serve her own heads would show a nice thematic following. I think that would have been a way more effective way to show her growing corruption than to draw any kind of equivalence between the rhetoric she uses to persecute Luke and the efforts of Black Lives Matter.

The results of my (otherwise mostly pointless) labors— an early scene imagining the next-generation Frasier spinoff I was musing about, at ridiculous length, in my entry yesterday. This would be the first scene between the two main characters, cousins Freddy and David Crane, almost twenty years after the end of the previous series.

The challenge of such a show would be twofold. One, to evoke the tone and style of the comedy of Frasier without copying it exactly. And two, to update and modulate for both modern comedic tastes, as well as for significantly younger characters. Even if Freddy is in many ways my Frasier stand-in, he’s thirty-three in the near future, not the eighties like Frasier was, not to mention the fact that Frasier was over forty for most of his show.

I’m tentatively assuming the multi camera setup like Frasier had, and I’d want to use the title cards between scenes. But I’d also want to include allusions to familiar elements of the show non-literally. Like, for example, there could be a physical point of contention between Freddy and David similar to how Frasier hated Martin’s old chair in his apartment, or a similar animal companion issue the way Martin’s dog Eddie was. Maybe something with a call-in element? I don’t know. It could also be fun to have an unseen character that people talk about, like Maris on Frasier or Vera before her on Cheers.

As a side note, I’d probably have to take into account the time skip with the setting. I would probably look to how Parks and Recreation handled it for inspiration, as they incorporated it pretty well. The future-stuff also might be another source for humor.

And NBC, if you’re paying attention: PLEASE BUY THIS FROM ME TO LEGITIMIZE THIS OTHERWISE RIDICULOUS USE OF MY TIME.

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Rewatching Frasier as my current background noise while I work. It’s my favorite sitcom of its era, such that I still enjoy it even twelve years after it ended. It’s famously one of most successful sitcom spinoffs, possibly the very most, of all time. Now and then as I watch it, ideas about the show occur to me, that fact in particular has made my thoughts drift to possible further stories from there. If you don’t mind a slight spoiler, all of the characters end up with children by the end of it— Frasier already had his son Frederick, Roz had daughter Alice in season 5, and the series finale featured the birth of Niles and Daphne’s son David. Could there possibly be a show in focusing on the next generation of the Cranes?

It would be tough, of course, and not just because spinoffs seem to have a stigma as being pointless coattail-hangers. The biggest problem is the age differences between the cast characters. Freddy was born in 1989, Alice in 1998, and David in 2004, making them in 2016 ages 27, 18, and 12. Those are large enough gaps to make it so they couldn’t really be peers growing up.

So, if I were going to do it, how might I pull it off? The main theme of Frasier’s presence in both Cheers and in his own show was the conflict arising between his intellectual, upper crust delicacy and snobbery and the more down-to-earth, average sensibilities of his family and friends— but finding ways to reach out and make connections despite it. The secondary major theme, I would say, is the irony of having the drive and even talent to help other while usually not having any ability to help oneself. It would be true to that spirit to find some way to continue these into a spinoff about the next generation.

So say we focused on Freddy as our new central or central-ish figure. We last saw him at age 13 or so, and though he was still a fairly young child, he had an established personality. He was in many ways like Frasier— very intelligent, academically gifted, but a bit awkward and alienated from more regular people, with a fragility due to a slightly neurotic upbringing. In that way, he could stand in as a new Frasier figure, special and advantaged in many ways, but struggling to find belonging and connection in a world he doesn’t fit into. (I have always said that was Frasier’s true driving issue— that he’s never felt like he belonged and will do just about anything to get a taste of that feeling.)

So that covers half of it, but where’s the other half—the conflict of a guy with those particular qualities and those particular emotional needs clashing with less rarified people in his life? There, it occurs to me, is where David Crane could come in.

Since he was just a baby when Frasier ended, his characterization is completely up in the air. It strikes me that he could have the opposite personality from Frederick’s. The idea came from an episode where Daphne is pregnant and Niles is worrying what if his son takes after her blue-collar side of the family and he has no ability to relate. So instead of a refined, patrician kind of person like his cousin, uncle, and father, older David could be a more typically masculine young man— tough, broey, interested in sports and cars, even rebellious, getting into trouble and not following the rules. Not only would this give him that opposition to Freddy, it would spiritually echo the central conflict from the parent show— instead of a regular-joe father struggling to get along with his snobbish sons, David is a regular-joe son who doesn’t get along with his snobbish father.

The question then would be how to get Freddy and David into a situation of appropriate proximity for this conflict to play out in a show. Freddy grew up in Boston while David is from Seattle, but their age difference presents the greatest challenge. Freddy is 15 years older than David— what scenario could put them in regular contact that also wouldn’t be a grown man fighting with a child that isn’t his? I think you’d have to cast David as something APPROACHING a peer of Freddy’s for this to work at all.

So I gave it some thought and came up with the following idea. I’d set the show in Boston in the year 2022, six years from now and nineteen years after we last saw Frasier. A 33-year-old Freddy still lives and works there. He’s in some sort of professional job that he’s kind of a workaholic at— it’s probably too cheesy to have him be a psychiatrist too, but not sure what instead, maybe adjunct professor —but he’s pretty lonely because he’s kind of awkward and doesn’t relate to other people that well. (He probably sees a psychiatrist for it!) His dating life is nonexistent. He’s in contact with his mother, who still lives in Boston but who he tries to avoid seeing, and his father, who he talks to most on the phone because he lives in San Francisco with his wife. (I decided Frasier and Charlotte work out.) He’s doing okay, but his status as a child genius led to high expectations he never could really meet, and the vague disappointment and pressure from his parents seriously stress him out.

The change comes when David shows up on his doorstep. He was never that close to his cousin David— he’s fifteen years older and lived all the way across the country —but he knows they don’t have much in common. David played varsity sports, is obsessed with working on his car, and was constantly in and out of trouble at school. Basically the polar opposite of Freddy. Last he’d heard was that Uncle Niles had pulled some strings to ensure that David got accepted to college at his alma mater, Yale. But it turns out that partway through his freshman year, David got expelled for an incident that involved a prank gone wrong. Now he’s in Boston at Freddy’s, the only person he knows on the east coast, not sure what to do with himself.

Now Freddy gets tasked by the family to keep an eye on David, help him find his way and keep him out of trouble. Maybe Freddy helps David get enrolled at another Boston-area college, one more suited to him than Yale. In the process of respectively looking out for and needing one another, they could have their high-low personality clashes, as well as find common ground and each help the other learn what they lack. The age difference could mirror the parent show’s father-son dynamic, but it’s not so extreme as to shut out also playing on a brothers dynamic.

Much as I like focusing on the brothers thing, which could nicely echo the best part of Frasier, I’d really love to get Alice Doyle in there, somehow. An early idea I had is that she and David ended up in Boston is that a lovesick David followed her there and she rejected him, leaving him directionless and in need of Freddy’s support. But not only might that be too much on the bad side of sitcommy, Alice is also six years older, so I don’t know If that would really make sense. But otherwise it’s a bit coincidental that they both ended up there after growing up in Seattle. There are a ton of colleges in the Boston area, so maybe I could use that to say she’s going to grad school there? I’m not sure. Also, Niles and Daphne could have had other kids in the intervening time— one episode implied to give a future glimpse of their next child, a daughter —who could maybe appear sometimes too.

It wouldn’t have any of the main Frasier cast as regulars, probably— at one point they were the best-paid actors on television, and even though they’re not the superstars they were then, they’re still probably too expensive for that. I mean, if one of them wanted to, I could probably work them in, but there would be plenty of opportunities for guest appearances. I'd love to have Lilith pop up semi-regularly as his horrifying mother. Hell, in Boston, you could even have folks from Cheers.

If I could get any of them for regular guest spots, it would be David Hyde Pierce. And not just because I adore him, though I really do. Him appearing would allow for the demonstration of the tension between him and David, a son he doesn’t really relate to and is somewhat disappointed in. It would be a fun way to harken to Martin’s relationship to Niles and Frasier without reproducing it exactly. Of course, if you have Niles, you’d need Jane Leeves to be Daphne too.

What would I call it? I guess, in keeping with precedent, the obvious title is “Freddy,” but it doesn’t have the same power as the Freddy character isn’t firmly established in viewer’s minds the way Frasier was coming off of Cheers. But what else would work? "The Cousins Crane"? "Crane Boys"? I'd want something that uses the connection to the original as marketing, but still is representative of the new piece.

The child actor who played Freddy, Trevor Einhorn, is still working as an adult. He never blew me out of the water with his acting or anything, so I don’t know if he could carry his own show, but I like the continuity of it. Though I did see him in a role on Mad Men, where he had the distinction of giving Don Draper the frankest, most on-point read he ever received— “You have no character! You’re just handsome!” —a line that one day I will include in an analytical essay on the Power of Pretty in storytelling.



For tomorrow’s entry of 31P31D, I’m going to post a scene I wrote for this. Looking at how long this got, I decided to post the musing and “pitch” information separately today. It’s not the best use of my time to work on something like this, but 31P31D require writing something. And this was on my mind right now. Though I know it’s basically a pointless exercise.

UNLESS NBC IS LISTENING. CALL ME AND WE’LL TALK.

I saw the trailer for Bojack Horseman season three-- due out this coming month on July 22nd, woohoo! --and despite having ten thousand better things to do with my time, I could not resist going over it with a fine-tooth comb for clues about the upcoming storylines that I can't wait to see.



[Slightly spoilery for seasons 1-2, with some speculation on possibilities for season 3.]It looks like Bojack, thanks to the acclaim of his performance in Secretariat, has become not only successful but cool. Even though his book made him relevant for the first time in years in season two, he was still not really all that well regarded, but it looks like Secretariat was enough to change the perception of him. In fact, he's up for an Oscar for it, which was set up at the end of the last season by the "Oscar whisperer" Ana Spanikopita taking over his campaign for it.

Bojack declares at the first word his success that he feelings "awesome," but Diane expresses doubt over whether it's really making him happy, which continues Bojack's struggle to find anything that actually does. He resents her pointing that out, but pins the possibility for meaning in his life on whether or not he wins the Oscar. Despite this increased profile, he still gets recognized for Horsin' Around, which he resents. Possibly part of a theme of how you can't outrun your past, even if you reinvent yourself as someone better?

There's a brief shot of a messed-up-looking Bojack snorting white powder, which could be coke given the character's history with it, or it could be a fake out to ratchet up the tension of the trailer. Given the show's particular style of humor, there's certainly a chance they might have a joke about snorting some other substance as if it were drugs. But it might also be an indication of a breakdown or part of a habit storyline.

Todd points out that the movie will result in countless people having the opportunity to judge him all over the country, which distresses him. Bojack has always been afraid the judgment of other people, usually being found wanting, but the idea that this is a new enough sensation for him to still be troubled by it rings a bit false to me. That's been the situation for him every time he's done a movie or television show, why would that fear become acute in this case? Perhaps because he's more proud of it, because it's more important than the dreck he did before?

Of course there is the issue that most of the performance in the film isn't actually him, but his image and voice recreated with CGI. Is he going to have pangs over the fact that he's getting credit and praise for a performance that he didn't actually give? The trailer gives no indication. I think it could go either way-- it's a good source of drama, allowing Bojack to explore the fact that he hasn't even earned the one moment of serious respect he's being given, but the fact that his replacement with CGI got treated mostly like a joke in the moment may mean they're going to gloss over it. When they say he's likely up for an Oscar, does he protest that it's not him? I can't remember, I should check the episode again. But he does later in the trailer say "I don't know if I should win Oscar. I don't know if I want to," to Ana Spanikopita. The self-loathing is still a big part of him, and it could tie back to the fraud of the performance.

Bojack backs a car, inexplicably in his house, into his pool. The mistake of a messed-up man, either chemically or emotionally, but no context is given except that it seems to be in the middle of a party. Is the car a gift? Is he responding in some way to the attention of the crowd, which historically has made him act stupid? The image is framed on his face, and the way he goes into the water recalls his plunge from the balcony into the pool in the opening credits-- depicting a moment when he is DEFINITELY not doing well.

Bojack in cars is a frequent motif in this trailer. Not sure if there's significance there. The show does take place in LA, after all. I guess they've had a lowkey presence throughout all the series so far, indicators of his wealth, his tendency to use them to run away from his problems, and his spoiled carelessness, such as how he never bothers to fix his wrecked SUV in the second season.

An interviewer-- a manatee who's probably from Manatee Fair but sadly not Christine Baranski-voiced Amanda Hannity --asks Bojack what's next for him and he panics. He doesn't want to look ahead. He want to remain in this moment because things are finally going well for him, and change risks losing that. Also, planning for the future requires work he doesn't want to do. He wants to have arrived and never have to struggle for anything ever again. A man who fears he has no future.

Princess Carolyn telling Bojack how great he is. A development I find rather disturbing. Bojack has fucked her over so many times in so many ways, I don't like seeing her pandering to his nonsense. I prefer her when she's kicking his ass in gear with tough love for at least something of her own benefit. I wonder if they're exploring the idea that, smart as she is, she's as changeable by fame and hype as anyone. That's a little disturbing but could make for interesting character stuff. But she hammers home what's wrong with him in his inability to like himself, despite the fact that he does have a lot going for him. That means it could be making a joke of how un-pepping her pep talk is. Hard to tell what's a joke and what's significant sometimes.

Bojack's house gets trashed, presumably by partying, a good visual metaphor for the destructiveness of the lifestyle.

Fans with camera phones mob him as he sports a Vincent Adultman-style trenchcoat and fedora, as well as epic bags under the eyes. Presaging a freak out, probably.

J.D. Salinger sulks in the background of a shot of Mr. Peanutbutter, making him one of the only recurring minor characters I've seen.

An electric eel tases him in the aisle of an airplane, which I find hilarious.

Mr. Peanutbutter blithely carries away his struggling, screaming accountant, saying "It's going to be great, as it always is, from my perspective." Pure humor well within the character's wheelhouse, no hinting at anything heavy. But Diane came back from Cordovia without telling him, which he basically agreed to pretend to ignore, and I doubt that will go on forever even with his obliviousness. They've been hinting that the two of them have issues despite their love for each other, and I wonder what form they're going to take in season 3. The fact that I think Diane partially likes being with him because he basically just validates her and never challenges her in any way, even when she's wrong, is something I'm expecting to blow up sooner or later. I find their relationship shockingly fascinating, like no other on television, so I look forward to how it continues.

There are some completely context-free moments of Bojack in apparently an underwater city with a bubble on his head. Maybe he's promoting his movie? I guess it's where the fish people live, and land dwellers can visit there in this manner. One shot has Bojack swimming away from what looks like an underwater exploded bubblegum factory with a tiny seahorse under his arm. Is it a child? Does he develop a relationship with it?

Princess Carolyn tackles Bojack in the Elefante restaurant, so at least that means she's not going to be completely taken in by his new cache.

Todd kisses a girl who looks like a female version of himself. Romance for Todd, I guess, which they've never tackled seriously before. Will it be serious this time, or played for laughs?

A flashback to the 80s where Carolyn hoses down a Bojack sprawled on the sidewalk, covered in what I would guess is his own vomit. There's also a shot of little Sara Lynn hugging him on the set of Horsin' Around, to which he reacts with surprise and uncertainty before cautiously returning it. The presence of the little seahorse makes me wonder if this is part of a storyline about Bojack connecting with a child? He mentions that he's hoping for his life to have meaning, and clearly the Oscar isn't doing it for him, but lots of people think parenthood does. Maybe that's where the seahorse child comes in?

Diane and Mr. Peanutbutter cuddle up in bed together, but Mr. Peanutbutter looks sad. I know there's conflict ahead, but is there hope for these two to figure out their relationship and make it work? I want to see them struggle, but I'm kinda rooting for them to work it out.

Princess Carolyn watches fireworks from her office window. She's alone, but she's in the place that makes her happiest. I notice she's got a lot of booze in front of her, though. A theme for the character is her inability to form meaningful, non-work relationships.

Bojack parties somewhere with a kippah on his head. Somebody's bar mitzvah? Jewish wedding? No idea of the significance, but Bojack actually looks like he's having a good time. The only overtly Jewish character I can think of off the top of my head in this is Lenny Turtletaub. Maybe a function related to him?

"It doesn't matter what we did in the past. Or how we'll be remembered. The only thing that matters is this one spectacular moment we are sharing together." Bojack says this over the last few clips starting with the 80s, ending with him in a move theater silhouetted MST3K-style against a screen with a realistic shot of space. A shockingly positive sentiment from him, presaging that he might actually make some progress this season. Also he's probably bonded with whoever it is he's saying it to, who is not clear. They are only a short, bulbous form in the chair beside him. So I think it's that little seahorse in a water helmet, which confirms my theater that Bojack will find meaning through a relationship with this child.

And that's the trailer! Miscellaneous thoughts:

No indication of a romance for Bojack. Kind of glad, as I balk at the idea of yet another woman for him. Especially given what just happened with Charlotte.

Not much of ANY one supporting character, but they all got a shot or two, so the gang will all be there.

No celebrity guest stars obvious. I think that's a classy move, though I'm curious who they're going to get.

The Oscar thing foreshadowed by the last season is clearly in full force, but NO INDICATION of the other plot thread set up for the future, the one which I AM DYING TO KNOW ABOUT. Who is Jill Pill, the mysterious playwright who knew Bojack from his "other show" which is not Horsin' Around, and wants him to come to New York to be in her new play. They're going to do that, right? I AM INSATIABLY CURIOUS and CANNOT WAIT TO SEE THAT UNFOLD. I am maddened I see no hint of it!

And that is way, way, way more thought than needed on this minute and a half long trailer.

For the past several weeks, I've done basically nothing except work and watch RuPaul's Drag Race. It comes from not leaving the house much except for job stuff and not having the energy for much beyond TV. So I've watched the seasons available through Amazon Prime of Drag Race and quite enjoyed them.

Drag has always been kind of fascinating to me. While I'm not particularly up on queer culture in any way, this part of it appeals to me because I like how it plays with the arbitrary nature of gender markers. Yeah, X, Y, and Z are traditionally considered indicators of femaleness, but look, a man can put them on just as easily! And vice versa. That kind of detachment from gender norms makes me smile. Drag is of course not the same as actual gender fluidity, but I like the idea of temporarily tossing your gender to the wind and being a different one for a while.

As I’ve mentioned, while my sexuality is about as firmly straight as you can get, my gender has always felt sort of incidental. Sure, I am definitely a woman and I’m comfortable with that, but it’s purely descriptive. If I’d been identified as a boy by society, I don’t think I’d be any more or less comfortable. So, while my straightness feels pretty intrinsic to the person that I am, my femaleness isn't. I often wonder what I'd be like if I were a boy, though I have no actual desire to be one. But I have always wanted to drag myself out and see how "masculine" I could make myself look. I think that would be a lot of fun to play that role for a little while. The technical aspects of drag, makeup, costuming, and other sorts of design, are up my alley, especially because they present a perennially interesting concept to me-- we have a problem (we need to make a male-identified person conform to feminine markers), how do we use technical skills to solve it?

I also think it’s interesting that the artifice of it is so clearly on display. In other aspects of culture related to appearance, I think there’s a lot of tendency to mask all the work and the seams involved. Oh, this model looks this glamorous all the time. She’s this thin naturally. This makeup isn’t hard to do. When in reality such images are the result of carefully composed, edited, stage-managed presentation. Even as I’m aware of that, in my own pursuit of beauty I’ve always gone for that ideal of “naturalness,” by which I mean that I look this good without accoutrement— so I would literally wake up like this. But making that possible actually means an enormous amount of work, including diet, exercise, skin-treating, and shaving. This is my real actual body, but it is certainly not like this left to its own devices. But in drag, I find it neat how the artifice is so embraced, so much part of the game. It's an interesting comment on what gender markers even are, if the strongest ones are those that any person, regardless of how they identify, could put on.

Apparently John Bernthal's performance in Daredevil season 2 on Netflix was so well-received that fans are calling for him to get his own solo series. And that is an absolutely terrible idea.

Now, I acknowledge Bernthal was really good, and easily the best representation of the character. I like but don't love the Daredevil series-- can't really put my finger on why, because I thought I would love it, and I can't exactly articulate what doesn't satisfy me about it --but I agree that Bernthal was one of the best parts of season 2. The thing is, the Punisher doesn't work as a character unless he's not the main focus.

Think about it. He has one of the lamest, most clichéd, dated stories of current superheroes. His family was fridged and now he kills everyone. There's not that much there. Plus, he doesn't GROW. His whole concept requires him to never grow or change in any way. If he does, he... has no schtick at all. He doesn't even have an interesting personality. A protagonist has to have something, some journey, some character to him! He has nothing to sustain a series that is interesting.

The Punisher only works if he's contrasted against another, more central character. He's supposed to make a protagonist question their own position in comparison to him. He did that on Daredevil, and that's a big reason, besides Bernthal's performance, why he worked. But on his own, what the hell would the series even be about? Just him killing lots of people? If he ever stops his mission, he has no point, and if he carries his mission on, who cares? What's interesting about a dude who just murders everyone with no personality?

So yeah. Fans deserve the ear of the creators of the properties they love. But they shouldn't be catered to, because they don't always judge with artistic concerns in mind.

I really enjoy the Agent Carter TV series. I love the character of Peggy Carter, I love how Hayley Atwell plays her, and I'm really enjoying the 1940s setting and the charming supporting cast, particularly Angie, Jarvis, and Howard Stark.

(Mild spoilers ahead.)

The one problem I have is whenever they try to pair her off with anyone romantically. The trouble is... I just can't see it. Despite my intense power-shipping of Cap and Peggy as my OTP, I have reluctantly come to accept that in the wake of his seeming death, Peggy probably would be better off moving on. (I DO NOT FEEL THE SAME FOR CAP, but that is a discussion for a different day...) But with the handful of gentlemen they have floated as romantic possibilities, I cannot shake the feeling that none of them are good enough for her. She had goddamn Chris-Evans-Captain-America, already-- or very nearly, anyway! How could any normal man compare after that?

Honestly in my head canon I saw her going for a nice, sweet, charming guy who honestly didn't REALLY excite her but made her feel better in a low-key, day-to-day sense. I have a hard time buying the kind of enthusiasm she's supposedly had for the dudes they've dangled so far. Souza is nowhere near special enough for her, and Dr. Wilkes is likeable but that's it. I guess I can see her deliberately choosing some guy who made her happier than being alone...but having that kind of enthusiasm for him? I don't really see it.

I mean, I guess hamburger is better than going hungry. But you can't pretend it compares to filet mignon.