I recently watched the first season of The Wire, and oh my God, it is so good! Everyone had been telling me so, and I had been all “Yeah, yeah, but I’m not into crime stories”, but then I got hooked by the second or third episode, and now I miss the characters and can’t wait till I get my hands on the rest of the series. I’ll probably write a seperate entry about the first season here. I just don’t have the time to do that right now.
Because I’m writing my thesis. Except I tend to procrastinate. In order to hinder my own procrastination and motivate myself, I made the following image in Paint (because I am a poor sucker who still does not have Photoshop):
I’ve put it up on my desktop. And somehow it just helps to have Bunk cutting the bullshit every time I open my computer. It hasn’t taken care of the problem completely (after all I am still writing this entry right now, which is an act of procrastination in and of itself), but it has helped. I find it hard not to just write the damn thesis when Bunk is telling me to do so in an interrogation room, whilst McNulty and Greggs are looking on. Although I am not sure if Bunk would call me something as nice as ”honey”. It’s entirely possible that he would call me something decidedly nastier. But let’s leave a girl her few illusions, shall we?
While we’re on the subject of kitcsh-y 80s cartoons, and because I can’t think of anything substantial to write about just now, I thought I’d share this video with you:
I’ve never actually seen G.I. Joe, but apparently the cartoon always ended with a useful Public Service Announcement. The editor of the video has selected his favourites among these, muted the sound and altered the voices. The video simply cracks me up, which is probably proof that I am not in my right mind, but there it is.
Today is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall. I wish I could tell you exactly what I was doing on November 9 1989, when I was told about the fall of the wall, and what I felt when I saw people celebrating on TV that night, but I can’t. I don’t have any memories of that day. I was six years old at the time and I guess I was simply too young to understand what was going on.
The Boyfriend and I talked about it last night and he, being a few years older than me, remembers things more clearly, although mostly what he remembers is his father being completely elated and watching television all night on that day. I guess this is very typical of my generation, the generation that were young children in the 80s: The Berliner Mauer fall was the first major historical event of our lives, but in a strange, remote vague way. Even for those of us who were old enough to understand what was going on on November 9 1989, the divided Germany had not been part of our scheme of things. We had spent our young 80s lives learning how to walk and talk and button those overalls we all wore back then regardless of our sex, and we hadn’t been longing for the collapse of the wall the way our parents had.
But the repercussions were great enough that the event didn’t go completely over my head, and the fall of the Berliner Mauer comes back to me in little fragments when I try to look back. Mostly I remember sitting in the backseat of my parents’ car, as my parents drove me and my brother to a neighbouring city on December 1989, where we would celebrate New Year’s Eve with some friends of my mother. “This may have been the most important year of your lives,” my father solemnly told me and my brother and then went on to explain to us about the wall and what it meant that it was now no longer there.
I also remember going to Germany in the summer of ‘90 with my family, and it is of course no coincidence that my parents chose to take us to our southern neighbouring country that particular year. My parents showed my brother and me both Eastern and Western Germany and the stark contrasts between them made a deep impression. We also saw parts of the old wall, and I was chilled to the bone when I saw the barbed wire and my mother told me what it was for. “Lede mur”, my brother and I started calling the wall after seeing it – “Mean wall” in Danish.
And then I have one memory of the fall of the Mauer that I hadn’t thought of for years and years until just this morning, namely the memory of a particular episode of the cartoon Alvin and The Chipmunks. My brother and I watched that cartoon religiously at one time, despite the fact that our television didn’t receive the channel that broadcast it very well. We only had two working channels back then, the Danish Public Service channel and one commercial one, but my brother and I had managed to find this third channel and it fascinated us to no end. The signal was so bad that everything we tried to watch on the channel had a double outline, making it look as if all the people on the screen were constantly haunted by an eerie ghostly doppeltgänger, but my brother and I could care less because the television broadcast a wide range of American cartoons, the likes of which we had never seen in the sober, daily 30-minute children’s programme on the public service channel that my parents let us watch. My parents disappoved of our watching these mainstream cartoons, thinking that they were in bad taste, but I guess they must have felt it would be useless to try to keep us away from it. And so ignoring the ghostly double outlines and my parents’ eyes on us, my brother and I watched Dinoriders on this channel, we watched Dungeons and Dragons, we watched Captain America. And then we watched Alvin and The Chipmunks, and I’ve forgotten every episode of that cartoon series except for one Berlin Wall episode.
When I googled ”Chipmunks Berlin Wall episode” today I found that the episode actually aired a year prior to the fall of the Mauer, but in Denmark there must have been a delay, because I know I never saw the episode until after the wall had fallen, and I could hardly believe my eyes. I don’t remember much from the story, other than the fact that it was the story of two children, a sister and a brother who had been seperated by the wall. The sister told the Chipmunks her story and how much she missed her brother, and the Chipmunks ended up doing a concert next to the Berlin Wall, singing about their hope that the wall would fall down. Amidst their singing, the wall started to crack and crumble, it fell, and the brother and sister were reunited.
My brother and I were gaping. Even at that age we felt that there was something dangerously inappropriate about a mere cartoon depicting an event that my parents had told me might be the most important event of my lifetime. But I was also deeply moved by the story. I cried when the brother and sister embraced, I thought the song was beautiful, and I think that seeing the event depicted on Alvin and the Chipmunks was one of the first things that made me realize just how big a deal the Mauer was. It was one thing that my parents were preoccupied with the wall – they were preoccupied with so many things that didn’t concern me; politics, economics, work. But the fact that the American cartoons, this childish realm that belonged so exclusively to my brother and myself, the fact that they related to the event made me begin to realize that that big, crumbling wall wasn’t just something that grown-ups in grey suits talked about dryly on the news, it was something that was going to define me and my generation and the way we would live our lives.
I don’t think I’ve ever realized how powerful that moment was to me until just this morning when I managed to find the Chipmunks clip on youtube and I damn near teared up listening to the song. In German class in school we were told about the wall endlessly and wrote essay upon essay about it, but nothing ever had as much of an impact on me as that silly cartoon episode did on that day. Is the image of Alvin and the Chipmunks breaking the wall with their singing sappy and in poor taste? Certainly! But the episode served its purpose for me back then.
Part of me just knew that I never should have written that entry about my five favourite eary Beatles sons with vocals by John Lennon. It totally launched a new round of Beatle-mania in me, and I’ve been listening to The Beatles for the past few weeks more than I’ve ever done since I was 13-14 and first discovered the band. It’s a good thing that the new opera season is slowly approaching, so that I will have something else to obsess over soon.
But then it’s been really nice to re-discover those four lads and their songs. One thing I especially enjoyed was re-discovering the documentarty series The Beatles Anthology, which I re-watched over the past week, and I thought I’d do a review here.
Telling the story of how The Beatles first got together, rose to fame, reinvented themselves, and then broke up, the series is surprisingly well executed, especially because of the way it works as a testimony to the fact that what the rest of us perceive as a glorious tale of a fabulous band’s fantastic oeuvre, must have felt like a turbulent, chaotic story to the four band members themselves who went almost directly from the streets of Liverpool to the top of the pop at an age where most of us are still figuring out what to major in at college.
Help!
The title sequence itself is obviously created with this in mind: We zoom in on The Beatles playing the song ”Help!”, only to zoom out again, making the four musicians seem smaller and smaller next to some huge characters that spell out the band’s name, while the music is graudually drowned in the noise of an audience of girls screaming at the top of their lungs.
I was surprised to find at first that there is no narrator in the series, no steady, comforting, distinguishly English voice to guide us through the story, but I think that’s actually part of what makes the series so great: Because how could there be just one narrator of the story of four such different persons and the numerous people who surrounded them? A cacophony of voices is instead achieved as the documentary series is made up from a number of interviews with Beatles members themselves and key figures in the making of the band and their music. Brand new interviews were made with Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, and the three are mostly interviewed seperately. This is a particularly nice touch because it allows us to get - often very - different perspectives on an event.
George Martin and the fantastic stars
Another important interviewees in the programme is producer George Martin. Martin is endearing – he simply seems like such a nice person, and very knowledgable when it comes to music. If the programme introduces us to the four Beatles’ genius, it certainly also testifies to the genius of Martin, and to the importance of his intellect and down-to-earth personality. He recounts a particularly poignant (and very amusing!) anecdote at one point, when he’s trying to illustrate how innocent and ignorant he was when it came to The Beatles use of drugs: Once when Lennon had accidentally taken acid in the studio and was feeling strange, Martin took the reeling musician to the roof of the building for some fresh air, without ever realizing that Lennon was under the influence – although he did find it strange that Lennon kept staring at the stars and calling them “fantastic!”. “I suppose they would have been particularly fantastic to him…” as Martin muses.
“There are seven levels.”
The three surviving Beatles themselves, however, also seem to have developed a healthy distance to the chaos they lived through in their Beatles years. Paul McCartney obviously still has a keen eye for appearance and the theatrical (as the footage from their concerts show, he always was the one Beatle to put on the most elaborate stage show), and does a great job at imitating his and his band-mates’ high-strung earlier selves as he recounts situations from back then to the camera. An especially funny anecdote is Paul’s memory of the first time he smoked pot: He was at a party and in his stoned condition he was suddenly certain that he’d cracked the meaning of life, so he asked for paper and a pen, so that he might write it down. The next day, when he was sober, he was eager to see the note again, but somewhat taken aback that all it read was “There are seven levels.” McCartney’s delivery of the punch-line is hilarious.
If McCartney is theatrical, George Harrison and Ringo Starr both seem much more laid-back. They come off as two genuinly nice guys, and George Harrison had a wonderful sardonic humour to boot. May he rest in peace.
“The movement you need is on your shoulder”
And naturally the three ‘95 interviews with the three ex-Beatles leave a terrible void. One keeps expecting a 55-year-old John Lennon to pop up there on the screen along with the three others - it would have been so interesting to hear what he made of things all these years later, and to see what he looked like now - and of course he doesn’t. But much isn’t made of his death, and that’s a nice touch, too. After all The Beatles Anthology is a documentary about The Beatles specifically, not about the three Beatles and what they did after the band broke up. And the loss of John Lennon is present in the documentary regardless. Like when Paul McCartney talks about how he first played “Hey Jude” to John. Paul told John he wasn’t happy with the line “The movement you need is on your shoulder”, but John told him not to: That was the best part of the song – ‘95!Paul gets a little misty-eyed as he tells us this and confesses that that was one of the things that was so great about working with John, and one of the things that made him sentimental to think about now.
Original footage of Mozart’s ass-jokes
Apart from the 1995 interviews, the documentary is rich with footage from the Beatles years – perhaps almost too rich, one might argue. There are lengthy clips from concerts, and while it’s always a pleasure to hear the Beatles’ songs, it does slow down the pace of the series somewhat, and it’s these clips, in part, that make me think that the series wouldn’t be terribly interesting to anyone who wasn’t a hardcore Beatles’ fan.
But then of course one has to remember that when the series was made, this was the first time that a lot of this footage was ever published, and it was sensational at the time, I do remember that. The footage of failed takes from the studios, with John Lennon mising a note or Paul McCartney giggling his way through “And Your Bird Can Sing”, are all over the internet by now, but at that time, it was a unique look behind the scenes, like getting to peep through a hole in time and see Wordsworth strolling around in Tintern Abbey, or seeing Mozart make an ass-joke.
“Free As a Bird”
And the footage is put to great use in the end sequence of the series when we are shown the video for “Free As a Bird”, a song that John Lennon recorded, but never released, but which was refined by the three other Beatles in ‘95. The song itself is so-so. But the idea of the Fab Four performing together again is incredibly touching, and the video is just marvellous. I still remember seeing the rush of seeing that video for the first time on TV back then, and marvelling at the fact that the editing of the video actually allowed me to see the four Beatles walking in a Liverpool street, down Strawberry Fields and past the barber in Penny Lane, and – most fantastically – go through the corridor from the street into The Cavern to see The Beatles performing on stage. I’ll freely admit that the video can still make me sniffle:
Other fun things I learned from the documentary:
- the fact that The Beatles used to lie on top op each other and drink whiskey during the winter when they were touring in their first tour car, because it got so cold. HoYay!
- the fact that the three surviving Beatles all seemed to agree that John wrote “Help!” mostly because he was “getting pudgy” at the time and wasn’t feeling good about himself as a result.
- the fact that The Beatles were harassed at the Philipines because they turned down an invitation on their day off to see Imelda Marcos.
- the fact that Ringo and Paul once ran seven miles away from the set during the filming of Help!, because they were eager to smoke a joint. And the fact that the filming of the movie was pretty much sabotaged by the four Beatles’ stoned condition throughout the proces.
- the fact that Sgt. Pepper wasn’t much of a big deal to either of The Beatles. And that Ringo was downright bored during the recording of it. I always thought Abbey Road was a better album.
Last week I had coffee with a friend. This is a really sophisticated, smart friend of mine with great taste. The kind of friend I usually call up if I have two tickets for experimental theatre or a night of political debate or the like. I’m telling you this in order to set you up for the surprise I felt when she confessed to me over coffee that she has a guilty pleasure: She likes to watch Little House on the Praire episodes on youtube. A lot. And even the really bad episodes.
I can’t tell you how much this thrilled me. Both because it’s so great to find out that it’s not just me who has guilty pleasures, even level-headed people have them, and then because OMG there are Little House on the Prairie episodes on youtube?? I didn’t know that! And incidentally I’m rather fond of watching the series myself. Even the really bad episodes. I’ve always enjoyed it. If I had to make an estimation, I would say that it’s 10% sentimentality (sunny fields! Happy little girls running down those fields!) and 90% snark.
Because the snark is a constant and natural companion to this series, between Michael Landon’s glorified portrait of Charles Ingalls (who would always, always take off his shirt, thus uncovering a wax-like, bronze and toned torzo) and the unreasonably high number of children adopted by the already poor Ingalls family. And then there are the story lines. Oh, those story lines. I mean, it’s not like nothing happened in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books. And yet Michael Landon has seen it fit to come up with a number of outrageous and sometimes completely bizarre stories for his television adaptation. Take Mary for instance. In the books Mary went blind and that was pretty much it. In the series, Mary 1) goes blind 2) gets married to a blind guy 3) has a miscarriage 4) has a healthy baby boy who 5) perishes in the flames in a fire at the school for the blind that she and her blind husband has started. Crazy! Like, did Mary Ingalls really need any more angst, Michael Landon? There’s also an entire episode dedicated to a raccoon that may or may not have rabies, and an episode featuring Caroline Ingalls angsting about her meno-pause. Despite the fact that Laura Ingalls Wilder never did mention her mother’s menstrual cycles in her books.
Michael Landon on the Prairie
And then there are those episodes of the series that are just completely insane and awful, and one of those is the two-parter “Sylvia”. This episode, in which a 14-year-old girl is stalked and raped by a Walnut Grove local, is notorious among Little House fans and has even lend its name to the snarky thread in the Drama section of the Television Without Pity forums (titled “LHOTP – Pa, Ma, and that Mime that Raped Sylvia”).
I rewatched the two episodes the other day on youtube, and I thought that it might be interesting to do an analysis of the episode here.
Now, perhaps I should start with a brief summary of the episodes for those of my readers who are unfamiliar with them. The story is this: Sylvia is a buxom school girl in Walnut Grove who has blossomed somewhat early, a fact that has prompted her weird, widowed father to make her “bind herself up”: that is, to use gauze to bind up her woman attributes, because he’s paranoid and weird and thinks that being buxom and attractive means being a whore.
Even so, a creepy Walnut Grove resident has got his eyes on Sylvia. He starts stalking her and one day, as Sylvia is walking home from school, he attacks and rapes her. He’s dressed up as a mime, wearing a mask and tight black clothes (an outfit he got where exactly by the way? At the Walnut Grove Mercantile? Maybe the mercantile had a section of varieté costumes right next to their supply of beans and flour?), so Sylvia doesn’t know who he is. Devastated, Sylvia makes it home to her father who is appalled to hear of her loss of virtue. He tells her not to reveal her story to anyone.
Sylvia’s schoolmate Albert Ingalls (one of the adopted Ingalls kids that never actually existed) senses that Sylvia is upset and tries to console her, and the two youngsters fall in love. Soon, however, Sylvia starts fainting randomly, and it turns out that she is pregnant. When Albert finds out about Sylvia’s pregnancy, he is sympathetic towards her, unlike her father who isn’t convinced that Sylvia didn’t somehow lead her rapist on, and he forbids Sylvia to see Albert, and arranges for himself and Sylvia to go away to another city where noone knows of her shame. This prompts Albert to propose to Sylvia.
The engagement doesn’t please Charles and Caroline Ingalls who think that Albert is too young to be getting married, so Albert and Sylvia decide to elope. However, as Sylvia is waiting for Albert in the outskirts of the city, the mime rapist stalks her down again, and tries to attack her once more. Sylvia takes a bad fall trying to escape him, and dies from her injuries. The mime rapist turns out to be the town black smith.
I’ve seen the episode plot cited sometimes as a remarkably controversial subject matter for Little House on the Prairie, but that’s not how I see it. Quite the opposite in fact. Because one thing that really struck me upon rewatching the episodes is how entirely orthodox and reactionary the dramaturgy of those two episodes are, especially when it comes to the depiction of its main character, Sylvia, the rape victim.
In the article “Women as Children, Women as Childkillers” by Susanne Kord (an article on infanticide in German Sturm-and-Stress Literature which I read part of the research for my latest university project), Kord notices a common trait in late 18th-Century male writers’ depictions of the seduced woman: They all tend to depict the seduced woman as innocent to a degree that makes her seem child-like, in order to make the woman seem more pitiful and thus to evoke sympathy at her “fall” and subsequent misery, and so as to ensure that her character does not become a threat to the patriarchal society that she is a victim of. That’s all very well for Storm-and-Stress literature, and some brilliant literature did come out of it: Goethe’s Gretchen in Faust is among the child-like seduced women mentioned in the text.
Disturbingly, however, Michael Landon’s “Sylvia” two-parter from 1981 has a lot in common with these 18th-Century child-like seductees. The casting of Sylvia alone bears witness to this: actress Olivia Barash is the perfect mix of a child and a woman. She’s womanly buxom, but apart from this she’s presented with an very child-like personality: Cute-looking broad face, bangs cut across her forehead, small nose, and then a remarkably child-like lisp, rather like that of Cindy Brady. Add to this the fact that Olivia Barash had a career as a semi-famous child actress, and the fact that I just want to hug her, and cook her a warm meal and tug her in every time she’s on screen. Pity, sympathy and maternal instinct is what she evokes.
All this might be dismissed, I suppose, as basically irrelevant observations about how the actress portraying Sylvia happened to look, talk etc. If not for the fact that the child-like depiction of Sylvia is even more visible in the composition of the episode, especially in the point-of-view of the story.
Because, and this is my main problem with the Sylvia two-parter, the story is so much of a man’s story, it’s ridiculous. Here we have the story of a young girl who is raped and impregnated by a stranger, estranged by her father and seperated from her lover, all at the tender age of 14. And yet, as a poster on TWoP remarked once in the LHOTP thread, right from the outset of her story, all we get is a man’s point of view. Sylvia is constantly discussed throughout the episodes, and most often she’s not herself present when the discussion takes place, or even aware that she is discussed. When Dr. Baker has examined Sylvia and found out that she is pregnant, he tells Albert and we get Albert’s shocked reaction while Sylvia, who’s just learned that she’s carrying her rapist’s baby, remains dutifully off-screen. Disturbed by the news, Albert is off, not to talk to Sylvia and give her a chance to explain what happened to her, but to have a man-to-man talk with Charles Ingalls. Charles Ingalls suggests that Sylvia’s pregnancy “could have happened to her against her will” which is about the closest we ever get to someone actually saying the word “rape” in the episode. The character of Sylvia is never allowed to fully articulate to anyone what happened to her. The two times she attempts to (to her father, and later to Albert) she is overcome by tears before being able to finish the sentence.
In a discussion with Albert, (where Sylvia is of course not present) Caroline Ingalls does raise the rather interesting question: How does Sylvia feel about the fact that she’s carrying her rapist’s child? Has Albert even asked Sylvia that? Alas, the question remains unanswered as not one scene offers us an insight into Sylvia’s no doubt conflicted emotions concerning her condition.
And then the most gruelling part is the last scene of the two episodes, in which we find Sylvia dying from her injuries in her house. Sylvia’s father, Charles Ingalls, and Albert are all assembled and apparently all acutely aware that Sylvia is dying. Even so, when Albert goes to see Sylvia one last time, he lies his ass off and tells her that she is going to be fine, and in fact they’ll be getting married soon. Sylvia dies believing him, without knowing that she’s dying, and while we get to see Albert tear up several times, we never get to see Sylvia’s reaction as she becomes aware of her own tragic fate.
The irony is of course that I’m sure Michael Landon wanted this to be woman’s story, a controversial story about rape. His depiction of Sylvia’s father who is so intimidated by his daughter’s sexuality that he has her binding up her breasts is certainly an unsympathetic one. And yet the episode does nothing to challenge a patriarchal idea of woman as a weak, helpless creature unable to take control of her own destiny. It shines through even in the photography of the episodes: It’s always about the male gaze seeking out Sylvia and taking her by surprise, be it Albert and his no-good friends peeking at Sylvia through her window at the beginning of the episode, the mime staring at her from the bushes, or Dr. Baker looking up her wazoo and finding that she’s pregnant (a fact she is of course oblivious to until he tells her). We rarely see as much as one frame from Sylvia’s perspective.
My point with this entry? Well, I’m not sure I have one. Other than to say that seeing as this show is still regularly re-run and still has a devoted young audience, I think it’s important to challenge and discuss the message that an episode like this sends. As they say at Televison Without Pity: Spare the snark – spoil the networks.
And then also to send the message to young girls to say no to mimes, I suppose.
PS: As I was researching for this entry, I came across a rather funny blog named WTF Little House on the Praire by one Rube Goldberg who describes his own blog as follows: “A 21st Century look at a 20th Century interpretation of life in the 19th Century. The goal is to answer the following question: Seriously?” Check it out!
For those of my readers who master the Danish language, I’m proud to announce that I’ve been invited to be a guest writer at Overspringshandlingen.dk with a review of the fourth season of Lost. You can read the review here. A darned good season, I thought, and I hope I did justice to it with my review.
I’ve been preparing an entry on my Five Favourite Examples of Opera/Classical Music Used in the Context of Television or Movies. I’m hoping to post the list soonish, but I’m somewhat preoccupied at the moment: I’ve got an exam, then I’ve got another exam, and then I’m also moving in with The Boyfriend, so there’s a lot to look into.
In the meantime, however, I thought I’d present you with one case of classical music being downright abused by the motion picture media: The use of Chopin in Co-Ed Call Girl. For some strange reason I have actually seen this movie in its entirety once, about seven years ago. It was so ridiculously bad that it was almost entertaining. The director, obviously disagreeing with me that Tori Spelling is completely devoid of acting talent and should not have been let on 90210 to begin with, has cast Tori as the main character Joanna in this made-for-TV movie from 1996 about a young college girl who’s lured into the call girl business and ends up being in way over her head. An all-American, wholesome college guy, played by Barry Watson from that god-forsaken show 7th Heaven, helps her see the error of her ways, and the movie ends with our co-ed Traviata getting her life back on track, IIRC.
Every single scene of the movie is cheesy and lame and predictable, but the most gruelling scene, and the one that has truly stuck with me, is without doubt the scene in which a paying customer, who happens to be a classical musician of some kind (possibly a conductor), gets Joanna to strip for him while he’s playing Chopin’s Prelude in A Major on the piano.
Now, Tori Spelling stripping is never good news to me. And it seriously does not help things that what we have here may very well be Tori Spelling’s worst look to date: The bizarre platinum hair-dye and extreme make-up only serve to highlight Spelling’s, erm, unique looks, and holy Moses what is going on with that hairstyle? It looks as if all her hair has scampered to the top of her head in an attempt to avoid the Second Flood, and it does nothing for her longish face.
But what really bothers me about this scene is of course the fact that she strips to a Chopin piece. I’ve had that wonderfully sensuous prelude on CD (the excellent recording by Christina Bjørkøe) since my teens and always loved it, but ever since I saw that movie, the piece has been marred by the image of a near-naked Tori Spelling trying to convincingly convey the emotions ”Shame” and “Insecurity”.
And now I’m passing it on to all of you, because I’m evil like that.
So, I haven’t been re-capping Beverly Hills 90210 for, like, a year now, and I figured it was about time I got around to it again, especially now with the series being revived and all!
Unfortunately, my one source for watching the series has been removed; that is, the youtube poster who uploaded full episodes of the series on youtube last year has gone and had her profile deleted, so I don’t have a lot of episodes to pick from. In fact, the only episode I could find online was season 1 episode “Isn’t it Romantic?”.
But what an episode that is! As 90210 connoisseurs will be aware, this is the classic episode where Dylan smashes a potted plant at Brenda’s feet and the two of them get together. This was the one 90210 episode I had on tape when I was a kid, and I would watch it over and over again, simply because I thought that it was one of the most romantic things I had ever seen. The brooding rebel! Falling for the innocent good girl! It set a new standard for the romantic fantasies of every good little innocent girl in the early nineties, and I was no exception. I wanted someone to smash potted plants at my feet, too, dammit.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start at the beginning.
Brenda and Dylan – Young Lovers and Wearers of Ugly Outfits
The episode opens with Brenda coming home to Casa Walsh, carrying a bag, and she is met in the front yard by twin bro Brandon who’s working on his car. He’s got the television trademark oil smeared all over on his face and his arms so that we know that that’s what he’s doing. Because it is of course impossible to work on a car without getting it all over yourself, like a toddler consuming its first birthday cake. Whatever.
This first season focused a lot on the twins trying to adapt to Californian life after having spent their whole lives in Minnesota, and Brenda complains to Brandon about the weather being way too hot for winter. Brandon asks her who needs winter, and I’m inclined to agree with him, seeing as I live in a country where there’s often snow and minus degrees from November through March, but Brenda goes emo on Brandon’s pro-Califronia ass and claims that she needs a wintry season to “sulk and be depressed in”. The conversation then turns to the contents of Brenda’s bag which is apparently Dirty Dancing on tape. It turns out that Brenda has a babysitting job that night, and whenever Brenda babysits, this is what she watches. Brand-o speculates that Brenda must have the movie memorized by now, and Brenda says ”Whatever gets you through the night – isn’t that what you always say?”. She says this in a skeevily flirty way, considering that she’s talking to her brother. There is tons of weird, sexual chemistry between Shannon Doherty and Jason Priestly throughout the first seasons. I once heard a rumour that the two actors were hooking up during the first season, and I totally think that’s true.
But I digress. Brenda’s flirty remark triggers the historic moment where Dylan surprises Brenda by rolling out from under the car, Bruce Springsteen-style, Trademark!Dirt smeared all over himself. He checks Brenda out big-time and takes it upon himself to reply to Brenda’s incest-tastic remark. “That’s what I always say…” he says, while still undressing her with his eyes. Which is the only thing to do, really, because Brenda’s wearing a hideous ensemble: running shoes and white tennis socks (seck-say!!), jeans shorts and an ugly, large mint-green t-shirt that bulges out and makes it look like she’s got a huge belly, and a broad head-band with flower print on it. Not good.
Brenda’s taken by surprise by Dylan and more flirtiness ensues (Brenda: “I didn’t see you…” Dylan:”I saw you.”), but then Ma!Walsh Cindy pops her head out of the Casa and tells Brenda there’s a telephone call for her: the child she was supposed to babysit has come down with the chicken pox.
Then there’s a complete throw-away scene where Brenda calls Kelly and the two girs discuss their plans for the night. Brenda says she’s free to go out with Kelly’s “dweeb cousin” after all, but Kelly’s hooked him up with Donna instead. Brenda then emos some more about how she’s going to just stay home and sort her socks, like there hadn’t already been brought enough attention to the fact that Brenda’s wearing white tennis socks. Kelly thinks Brenda needs a bubble bath, and Brenda steps out on her balcony, eyes Springsteen!Dylan in the front yard hungrily and smirks “That’s not all I need…”. “Ew. Goodbye.” Kelly awesomely replies and hangs up. I have to say I kind of second that sentiment. I don’t see any point with this scene except to establish the fact that Brenda’s kind of needy and would like to get laid. Oh, and that she likes her socks.
We’re then treated to the first appearance of prejudiced!Jim Walsh, as Jim meets up with Dylan by the car. Jim is acting all suspicious around Dylan. He tells him that he’s heard from Brandon that Dylan’s got a Porsche. “You bought it from your paper round earnings?” he snarkily asks Dylan, because having money apparently makes you a morally dubious person who’s worthy of scorn. For Chrissake, Jim, if you were so wary of people with money maybe you shouldn’t have moved to Beverly Hills in the first place. Just a thought. But Dylan’s pretty goodnatured about the whole thing and goes on to ask Jim if he may please use the shower, because he’s got Trademark!Dirt all over him. Jim agrees but not before asking Dylan whether he takes his earring out before he showers, which, what the hell? I mean, I get that they’re trying to show us that Dylan doesn’t fit in with Jim Walsh’s midwestern lifestyle, but asking Dylan about his showering habits just seems weird and vaguely like a come-on.
We cut to Brenda, who’s yelling to Brandon in the bathroom to keep the door shut while showering because it’s hot enough in the house already. She’s mortified, however, when the showerer pops out from behind the curtain and it’s not Brandon, it’s Dylan. Cue: teenage girl viewers all over the show squealing, because Dylan’s shirtless and we get to see his wet, upper body and his hair is all tousled. I have to admit that he’s looking pretty cute here. Brenda is startled and retreats out of the bathroom so that he may shower unseen.
This is where any normal high school girl (read: me at that age) would have run to her room and hid under her sheets with embarrassment, but obviously Brenda’s a stronger person than I am, because she just lingers in the hallway and continues to talk to Dylan from a distance. Luke Perry has the weirdest intonation as he asks her “So you’re into video tape, huh?”. I have no idea why he would emphasize the word “tape” like that. Surely “video tape” would have made more sense? Anyway, the two talk about movies, and Dylan smarmily shows up in the doorway up wearing nothing but a towel around his waste because the producers were aware that they depended on the rating of their female audience, and he ends up inviting Brenda to go to the movies with him and Brandon tonight. Brenda accepts and smirks to herself as she walks away.
Dylan takes Brandon and Brenda to a Marx Bros. Film Festival, because Dylan is sophisticated and worldly. So wordly in fact, that he’s approached by a slutty-looking broad in the hall before the movie starts. He’s so used to attention like this that he’s forgotten the chick’s name, otherwise he would have introduced the twins, he explains after she’s left. He’s chastised for this by Brenda, but defends himself: The name escapes him because she keeps changing her name to something exotic, because her real name is “something like Gertrude, or Beatrice or… Brenda.” Brenda then hammers what I think is a straw into his chest, because she’s feisty, despite being a Minnesota girl with a wholesome name like Brenda.
After the movie we find the three youngsters in Dylan’s hotel room where they have fastfood and Dylan impresses the twins with his subwoofers. Once again; Dylan’s rich and sophisticated and wordly and thus impressive to the twins.
We then cut to West Beverly High and the episode’s B-plot, but the youtube poster who uploaded this has apparently chosen to skip the B-plot altogether. I don’t blame him/her, I always fast-forwarded through that part myself because it was really boring and lame. But I’ll try to recap the plot all the same. From what I remember, the first scene of the B-plot goes something like this: Brenda and Steve are in health class and they are told that they are going to be getting sex ed, but the teacher needs their parents’ permission first. As Sars pointed out in her excellent recap of the 90210 recap on TWoP in these early episodes the writers were serious about sending a positive message to kids, and so I guess they didn’t feel like they could show us Brenda going out with a hot guy without also teaching their audience an important lesson on sex. Steve leans over to Brenda and asks her if she’s ever noticed that their health class teacher starts playing with his beard whenever he talks about sex. Brenda glances up at the teacher and sure enough; the teacher’s playing with his beard. Ew. Gross and kind of masturbatory.
Casa Walsh, evening. Brandon’s on the sofa wearing a robe and reading a book and doing some television trademark!Sneezing so that we know that he’s got a cold. He and Brenda had plans to go out with Dylan, but obviously now Brandon can’t go, so Brenda goes out with him alone. Jim is none too happy about this because Dylan’s father is known in financial circles as an “unethical bastard, and that’s putting it politely”. Cindy asks him why he would judge Dylan by his father to which he replies that in his experience “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.” Nice, Jim. Prejudice is not unethical at all. Cindy rolls her eyes at him, like, “Kids say the darndest things!”, when really she should have been calling him on his bigot ways.
Brenda and Dylan are at the movies, and Dylan is once more displaying his wordliness as in contrast to Brenda’s Midwestern-ness as he demonstrates to an impressed Brenda how he can tell by every couple’s body language at the movies whether they’re on dates or picked each other up or whatever. Like, we get it already, writers. Dylan’s worldy. He flirtily puts his arm around Brenda and decides that they skip the movie and do something else. “What did you have in mind?” she asks, all coy and eye-battingly, and again I’m impressed by her coolness. If that was me as a 16-year-old getting hit on by Hot Rebel Guy, you can bet I would have been tripping and falling on my ass or accidentally spitting on him or something equally embarrassing. Fictional characters have it so much easier.
What Dylan has in mind was apparently for the two of them to go back to his place! Oh my. Brenda’s obviously all for this, and the two of them are even holding hands as they enter his hotel suite. I never noticed that before. But alas, as soon as they’re inside they find that Dylan’s father is there, having a meeting with his Unethical Bastard Business Associates. I notice that Dylan’s father is played by a different actor in this episode than in the rest of the series. This one’s more sleek-looking and less rugged-criminal looking. I’m glad they recast him. Dylan’s father drags Dylan away and the two immediately get into an argument off-screen, while Brenda stands around in the hallway, looking uncomfortable. An angered Dylan rushes back into the hallway and tries to pour himself a glass of whiskey, but Brenda stops him because he’s her ride home. Dylan’s pissed and rushes out of the building with Brenda in tow.
Brenda wants to calm Dylan down and proposes a walk on the beach, which seems a little hazardous to me, considering that it’s late at night and she’s with an angry, aggressive guy she hardly knows. What do they teach her in health class sex ed anyway? Luckily, Dylan’s not in the mood for walks on the beach: ”And check out the homeless people?” he snarks, ”That’d be great!”. Brenda tries to talk to him about what happened between him and his father, but he keeps interrupting her. Brenda gets pissed and Dylan snaps “Excuse me, I’ve got a knack for interrupting things because I’ve had just about noise for one night!” (again with Perry’s random over-empasizing of certain words!). Brenda tries to get a picolo to hail a cab for her, but Dylan angrily cuts her off. “No, I want a taxi!” Brenda insists, but Dylan yells “No, just come on, dammit!!”. “Stop yelling at me!” Brenda shrieks - at which Dylan grabs a potted plant and smashes it at her feet.
Brenda is understandably freaked out by this display of violence, and she starts running away from Dylan as fast as she can. Aren’t you glad now that Dylan turned down your suggestion to take a walk on the beach, Brenda? But Dylan’s faster than her, and he catches up with her and grabs her from behind. “Let me go.” Brenda pleads, but Dylan begs of her not to leave, “I’m an idiot, please don’t go!” he says while grabbing her wrists. ”You’re scaring me!” Brenda shrieks, and Dylan lets go of her, steps away and apologizes, looking all wounded-kitten-y. “He just gets to me, he always gets to me…” Dylan weeps and falls into Brenda’s embrace. He kisses her cheek and the two end up facing each other, gazing into each other’s eyes. Fireworks. They kiss, passionately.
(I imagine I’m not the only who remembers that scene fondly, so here it is, via youtube. Thanks to youtube poster knnarmst!):
You know something, after all these years that scene still works. I hate to admit it, but it still does. Which is so weird, because it’s totally random! A potted plant being hurled to the ground and two sobbing, shrieking teenagers? Why is that hot? It’s a mystery. It’s just one of those moments, I guess. Like in Lady and the Tramp. Two Italians serenading two dogs who are rolling meatballs around on a plate with their snouts oughtn’t be romantic either, and yet it is.
The next thing we see is Dylan pulling up in front of Casa Walsh, having driven Brenda home. He’s in the middle of angsting to her about his difficult life with an absent father, and Brenda’s totally sucking it up. Dylan makes Brenda promise she won’t say anything to Brandon about his little potted-plant freak-out, and she promises. “So,” he asks her, all suavely, “are you sorry we missed the movie?” (Oh, Luke Perry, you and your wacky emphasizing of words!). “Oh yeah…” Brenda says seductively, and Dylan moves in for some more kissage.
We then cut to West Beverly High, but the youtube poster cuts it here, so I’m guessing the next scene is a B-plot one. I have no idea what happens in that scene, sorry.
Back to the A-plot. The Walsh family is having a wholesome Midwestern dinner together. Cindy is trying to convince Jim to go to a spa for the weekend, and Brenda thinks they should go, because Brandon’s working that weekend and Brenda has plans anyway. What plans? Jim asks, and Brenda reveals that she’s probably going out with Dylan. Cue to grumpy Jim who tells Brenda that he doesn’t want her dating him. Brenda tries to get Brandon to help her out, but Brandon doesn’t know what to say. Brenda says she’ll make plans with Kelly instead and leaves the table in anger. Cindy is pissed and tells Jim that she happens to like Dylan, before she leaves the table, too. Jim asks Brandon to try to break up Brenda and Dylan and man, for someone who’s supposed to be a wholesome father figure he’s really messing up big time here.
Cindy goes to see Brenda in her room and reminds Brenda that she was supposed to sign her permission to receive sex ed at school which launches a mother-daughter talk about sex. “[Sex ed] doesn’t deal with the most important stuff,” Brenda waxes poetically, “Like how it feels, in your heart, when you really want to connect with someone.” Cindy strokes Brenda’s hair and says it feels wonderful when it’s at the right time with the right person, and are they actually talking about sex here? That seems really awkward, Brenda talking to her mom about how she really wants to shag Dylan. Cindy says that there are a lot of things to a relationship, like mutual respect and whatnot, “it doesn’t have to be about sex.” “I hate to say this, mom, but it definitely has something to do with [sex]!” Brenda says. Um, ew? Enough with the sharing with your mother how much you want to get into Dylan’s pants, Brenda! Couldn’t they just talk about how Jim’s a jerk instead?
Brenda goes to Kelly’s place and complains about her family’s attitude towards Dylan. We learn that Kelly has agreed to cover for Brenda on Friday night so that Brenda can still keep her date with Dylan. Kelly offers Brenda some condoms from her stock by the bed. Brenda protests that this is all too clinical, but Kelly convinces her to take the condoms because it’s better than having to pick out names, “How about Dylan Jr? or Brendina?”. I don’t get why everyone’s acting like it’s a given that Brenda and Dylan are going to hit the sack the next time they see each other. They went out once and they’re in high school. Surely they don’t have to get at it right away? But again, the producers were all about the Positive Message to its Teenage Audience during this first season of the season and were obviously willing to sacrifice dramaturgy and continuity on the altar of the Positive Message. “If things go well, you won’t be thinking at all,” Kelly predicts, and Brenda looks pensive.
Kelly Taylor – Knows Stuff about Sex
The next day, Brenda and Dylan are being all couple-y during lunch break at school, feeding each other french fries and rolling around on the ground, kissing and mock-fighting. Brandon watches them from a distance, not happy about their promiscuous behaviour. I’d be a lot more sympathetic towards his case if he hadn’t been sexing it up at Casa Walsh with his old girlfriend Sheryl at Casa Walsh while his whole family was at home, just a couple of episodes ago.
In class, Masturbatory Beard-Fondling Teacher is trying to get his class to settle down and listen to him, so that he can tell them about the guest speaker named Stacy Sloane who is coming to “address the student body-”. “Did you say undress the student body? I’m there!” Steve lamely quibs and everyone laughs, and man, am I glad to be out of high school where lame remarks like this one were actually considered cool.
Between classes, Brandon tries to get Dylan to work on the car with him that weekend, but Dylan’s all angsty about his father and doesn’t have the time. Suddenly angry and frustrated, Brandon grabs Dylan saying “Oh, but you do have time to make out with my sister? (…) You better really like her. She’s very romantic and dreamy. (..) Dylan, she’s a virgin!” Gah! What the hell?? I know Brandon could be a douche sometimes, but this is just ridiculous. I cannot believe that he would actually stand there in a place as public as a high school hallway and talk about the status of his sister’s hymen to a guy she likes! And again, why does everyone automatically assume that Brenda and Dylan are just minutes away from doing the naked pretzel? And more importantly, why does everyone feel a compulsive need to discuss this subject all the time? I know, I know, the positive message to kids thing. It grates. Understandably, Dylan is pissed, too. “What kind of a jerk do you think I am?” he asks Brandon before he walks away.
Brandon Walsh – His Sister’s Hymen’s Keeper
We now cut to a montage of Kelly and Donna dressing up Brenda for her Big Date. Obviously the youtube poster has this episode from the released DVD because the scene has a completely different score than it had when it first aired on TV. The music for the original montage was “Doing the Do” by Betty Boo, a wonderfully cheesy early 90s rap, slightly reminiscent of the kitsch-y Wham! Rap. I guess there must have been a copyright issue or something. Too bad, because this new music is a weird, noisy guitar-riffy song that doesn’t fit the girly scenario at all. Anyway, the three girls end up contemplating the result of their stylings in the mirror and everyone’s satisfied. Brenda’s outfit is actually not horrible, when you disregard a hideous handbag with a gold chain. Very grandma. Brandon shows up in the doorway and stares at them in a really creepy way, but everyone completely ignore his stalking and glaring. Shannen Doherty does nervous-and-excited really well, and the three girls rush out while we zoom in on a sad Brandon who bids his sister’s hymen a silent goodbye.
But then it turns out that Dylan has decided to stand up Brenda. We actually see her still standing there in front of the movie theatre, waiting as the audience leaves the theatre, and I take it that this means that Brenda’s been waiting for Dylan for about two hours? Come now, Brenda, that seems a little desperate.
The next day, Brenda is staring out the window in her room, sad and depressed. Brandon offers to talk to her about it. Nobody in this episode turns down the offer to talk about sex, so the twins walk over to sit on Brenda’s bed together (oh yeah, that’s not inappropriate), and Brenda reveals that she was “ready to spend the night with him, and he didn’t show up…!”. Brenda wails that she thought she was special, and Brandon says that he thought Dylan was different, but that he obviously doesn’t let people in. What, Brandon’s pissed that Dylan didn’t elaborate on his personal tragedy after Brandon publicly accused him of trying to steal his sister’s virginity? Brenda cries that yesterday on the lawn in school they were so in sync, and that she doesn’t know what happened, but something did happen. “I need. To know. What happened.” she says. She’s a total drama queen about being stood up by a guy she’s only been out with one time, but I can appreciate the fact that that’s probably how one would react at age 16. Still, I don’t see why the producers have to underline the DRAMA with some very dramatic, serious music, like someone just died.
Monday morning. Dylan is in the school computer lab, typing angrily away at a typical, big-ass 90s computer. Brandon comes up to him and asks him just what in the hell is going on with him. Apparently, stalker!Brandon has been to Dylan’s house and found out that he moved away and didn’t even leave a forwarding adress. Dylan doesn’t want to talk about it, but insists that his standing Brenda up had nothing to do with either Minnesota twin. Brandon wants Dylan to tell Brenda that. “She was so upset all weekend, she even stayed home from school today.” Again with the sharing intimate details about his sister in school. Let her have her dignity, man. From a guy whom we were supposed to believe was a talented journalist, Brandon sure didn’t have a lot of intuition in this episode.
The next scene is cut in the youtube video, but I can see that it begins with Masturbatory Beard-Fondling Teacher trying to start his car, so I think I remember where this is going: If I recall correctly, the teacher is unable to start his car, so when he sees Steve and his ‘Vette, he asks Steve if he would please do him the favour of going to pick up the guest speaker somewhere (at the airport?). Steve agrees.
From what I remember, Steve then goes to pick up the guest speaker, and she turns out to be a very pretty young woman, so Steve pretends that he’s actually a teacher at West Beverly High and flirts with her a lot. I especially remember the ending of the scene where Steve kisses Stacy Sloane’s hand and then we see Stacy Sloane standing around, gazing at him as he walks away, all impressed by his moves. Except Steve totally walks like a woman! I guess Ian Ziering is unusually hippy for a guy or something, because he kind of wriggles and waddles his way out of there, like he’s in high heels. It really ruins the mood and between the waddle and his blond mullet perm, it’s hard to believe that this pretty older woman would actually be attracted to him.
Steve Sanders – Waddler
The youtube poster is obviously as disenchanted by Steve and his waddling as I am, so he/she’s cut directly to the next scene, in which we find Brenda who’s at home in the living room, wearing her ugly jeans shorts again, this time paired with an ugly, longsleeved green shirt. She’s listening to music, and I’m almost sure that this music wasn’t in the original episode either. It seems out of sync with the scene somehow and it completely drowns out every other sound in the scene. So we can’t hear that there’s a knock on the door at some point, but obviously Brenda can, so she goes to open the door and finds Dylan there. She turns off the weird music, and Dylan awkwardly says that he’s sorry. “I know: ‘You’re an idiot’”, Brenda says, reminscing their Hot Potted Plant Moment together. “That’s not good enough this time.” She chastises him for not even explaining to her where he were and what he was doing that night, but really, he hasn’t even had the time to try to explain himself, has he? This scene isn’t very well written. Dylan cuts to the chase and reveals that he had to help his father disappear, because there’s going to be some charges against him. Fraud, things like that. He tells her that he was thinking of her the whole time and that he cares about her.The two make up and start kissing. Things heat up and they end up on the couch, making out, until they hear a car pull up and rush to the window to see who it is. I notice now for the first time that Brenda is wearing the white tennis socks again! Loose the socks, Brenda!
It’s Jim coming home! Both Dylan and Brenda completely panic and start arranging things so that it looks like Dylan is just leaving. I don’t really get this. So far I haven’t seen any indication that Dylan is aware that Jim bears a grudge against him. Oh well. I guess Brenda thought it was an appropriate topic to bring up while she was rolling around with him on that school lawn. If she has inherited any of that fine intuition that her brother’s displaying, I wouldn’t put it past her.
But Jim is not tricked by their little performance. As soon as Dylan is out the door, he asks Brenda what kind of a fool she thinks he is. I assume that’s a rethorical question, but this might be a good time for Brenda to get some things off her chest. But Jim just hands her a newspaper and tells her what she already knows, that Dylan’s father’s skipped town because of the charges against him. “You deserve better than that!” Jim yells. “Like who?” asks Brenda, “Someone straighter, someone younger, quieter?! (…) Dad, those nice boys may look mild-mannered on the outside. But mostly what they all think about is sex!” “Who said anything about sex?!” Jim says, and I have to say I’m on Jim’s side here. Nobody said anything about sex. Stop talking about sex all the time! Brenda calls Jim on the fact that when Brandon was getting it on with his girlfriend, Jim just gave him a lecture on protection, but with her sex is all about values. Which is a good point, but again, why are we talking about sex here? Jim has said plainly that he doesn’t want his daughter dating Dylan, so why don’t we start with the dating part?
Brenda Walsh – Talks about Sex a Lot
Back at school, Kelly can’t believe that Brenda actually said those things to her father. Neither can Brenda. Neither can I, but I guess I’ve established as much already. But apparently the argument ended with Jim letting Brenda see Dylan. Because nothing says “Trust me, dad” like bringing up sex in random conversation all the time.
Then we cut to the scene were the guest speaker is going to give her sex-themed lecture to the school. While the microphone is getting tested, Dylan and Brandon apologize to each other and make up. The youtube poster cuts again before we can hear the guest speaker’s lecture, which is indeed pretty stupid. From what I remember, the scene goes like this: The guest speaker starts out by talking about how she met Steve, and how he was all charming and handsome (like, yeah. If you’re into blond mullets and waddly walks). But that for the rest of her life she will have to tell interested guys like Steve an important thing about herself: That she has AIDS. Omg!!1!! Cue to shocked atmosphere at West Beverly High, as the students listen to her story about how she contracted the disease as a teenager after practising unsafe sex with her boyfriend, and now the boyfriend is dead, and she’s tired and sick and losing weight. Because sex is a serious matter, that should not be taken lightly, but should be talked about endlessly and with everyone you know, including your father and brother, from the moment you go out on a date with a person. Right, writers?
Evening at Casa Walsh. Dylan comes over to pick Brenda up, and he kisses up to Jim some while he waits for her to come down from her room. He explains to Jim that he hardly knows his criminal father, and that Brenda and Brandon are lucky to have the parents they’ve got. Then Brenda comes down, and I didn’t think that she would be able to find a more hideous outfit than the shorts-jeans-tennis-socks thing, but she proves me wrong. She’s wearing a bodystocking… in red faux-velvet. Ugh! Faux velvet is definitely a fashion faux-pas, and the bodystocking makes the otherwise prettily curvy Shannen Doherty look short and chubby.
Brenda’s sufficiently scared by the AIDS-stricken Guest Lecturer’s speech that she decides that it would probably be best if she talked about sex some more. The final scene of the episode shows Brenda and Dylan at some Beverly Hills viewpoint, and Brenda very romantically starts asking Dylan if he’s ever had unprotected sex. Dylan says ”not lately”, but yes, it has happened. It really bugs me how the writers are always writing Dylan’s character like he’s about 40 or something. From what I can gather, Dylan must be about 17 at this point. This means that he’s been sexually active for, what, two or three years? Four years at the most? Then what’s with the “not lately” thing? Three years ago that’s “lately”, I’d say. Unless they expect me to believe that Dylan was heavily experimenting as a ten-year-old or something. Again, I get it, the writers want the Dylan character to be a worldly sophisticated counterpoint to Brandon and Brenda, but they’re really taking it too far.
Anyway, Dylan asks Brenda if she’d like him to get tested. “Would you do that for me?” Brenda asks him, and Dylan says “I guess I’d be doing it for me.” The scene ends with Brenda angsting about how she needs for them to slow down, and again, Brenda, you’re the one who keeps bringing up sex. Dylan reassures his pushy new girlfriend, and we fade to black, and, man, this was the episode I watched over and over as a kid? Hard to believe. Apart from the Broken Potted Plant of Hotness scene, this episode is extremely clunkily written. I’m so glad that they decided to downplay the Positive Message to Kids thing in later seasons, and just focus on the teen angst soapy goodiness. Otherwise how would we ever have had awesome scenes like Jack McKay being blown up in his car by the mob?
/marie
PS: Holy Christ, I think this is possibly the longest blog entry I’ve ever written. On an episode of 90210 at that. That is kind of unsettling.
This weekend, a friend and I went to see the new X-Files movie The X-Files: I Want to Believe.
I won’t lie, I have a very big soft spot for The X-Files. Back when I was a young teen in the late ninetees, it was my favourite show in the whole world. I loved all the mystique, the occassional gore, and I loved the sinister art direction. Agent Fox Mulder was my ideal man (tortured! Quirky! Intelligent! Catcher-in-the-Rye-ishly disillusioned!), and Dana Scully was without doubt the biggest role model I ever had during my adolescense. And of course, having always been a girly girl, I just loved to speculate about when and how Mulder and Scully would finally get around to doing some smooching.
So of course my friend (also an avid X-Files viewer back in the day) and I had to go see the new movie The X-Files: I Want to Believe - out of nostalgia if out of nothing else. But I am glad to say that I found that the new movie was really, really good and that it left me with a lot more than just the satisfaction of seeing once again the two heroes of my late childhood.
Chris Carter and the Jumping of the Shark
The series’ Chris Carter has waited six years since the series ended to do this movie, and I think that more than anything it was apparent that Carter has spent these years thinking carefully about how he wanted to revive his series. As much as I loved the original series, there can be no doubt that it really crashed and burned during its final years, and when we last saw the two FBI-agents in 2001-2002 some serious shark-jumping had been done. The mythology of the series with its conspirary theories and aliens and alien virus and whatnot was getting so complicated it was nonsensical, and the Mulder/Scully relationship that had been so crucial to the series had gone from ‘Interestingly Platonic with a Heavy Sexual Undertones’ to ‘Aggravating Ambiguity with Zero Character Development’.
The X-Files 2.0
But with this new movie, Chris Carter has obviously seen the errors of his ways, and the movie is actually really, really good. In the movie, six years have passed since we last saw our heroes, and Mulder lives in obscurity and is sporting a hermit-like full beard, after having been charged by the FBI with false murder accusations. Scully is working as a doctor at a children’s hospital, and the two former agents are living together as an actual couple – bedtime conversations and petty arguments and everything.
However, the FBI, in the form of Agent Dakota Whitney (Amanda Peet), soon reaches out to Mulder once again and wish to meant fences with him when they feel that they need him on a case that deals with the unexplained – Mulder’s field of expertise. It’s the case of woman agent Bannan (Xantha Radley) who’s missing and Father Joseph (Billy Connolly), a former Catholic priest and convicted pedophile who seems to have a psychic connection to Bannan and may help the bureau find her. Mulder reluctantly agrees to take on the case – on the one condition that Scully joins him. The agents soon find themselves involved in a gruesome scheme that includes kidnapping and organ theft.
Major Grown-up Points: Mulder and Scully are all grown up and living together in the new movie. And Scully’s rockin’ some serious mature-looking camel wool. (Photo: 20th Century Fox)
The X-Files and 9/11
You will notice that there are no aliens involved in the storyline of the movie, and that is, I think, one of Chris Carter really smart moves with this movie. Back in the nineties when the X-Files series ran, its main topic was aliens, but the thing is that in this day and age nobody really wants to hear about aliens anymore. (Are you paying attention, Producers of the New Indiana Jones Movie? Because you should be.) Aliens and alien/government conspiracy theories had their hour of glory back in the nineties when, I guess, the Watergate generation was all grown up and skepticism towards authorities was at its peak.
But ever since 9/11 it is very clear, even in pop culture, that people have become preoccupied with spotting much different things in the sky than UFOs. The threat towards world peace simply doesn’t seem as invisible anymore, and if you compare a current cult series like Lost to The X-Files, Lost is permeated with fear of terrorism; the series being heavy with angsty airport scenes, getting kicked off in the pilot episode with a plane crash, and introducing protagonists who struggle to overcome the attacks a cult-like, fanatic group of people called The Others.
Post 9/11 Angst on series Lost’s Flight 815!! Good thing Jack’s last name is Shepherd! We shall not want.
In the recent Batman movie The Dark Knight (which is awesome and brilliant and should be seen by everyone), there’s an equal great amount of references to terrorism as the director has cleverly highlighted the gruesome erraticness of its chief antagonist, The Joker, while we are soothed by the small of glitter of hope found in the togetherness and good faith of the terrorized Gotham citizens.
I Want to Believe Correspondingly, in the X-Files universe of 2008, what concerns our heroes is not so much being skeptical as it is believing – having faith. Should one charish one’s faith in pursuit of a higher goal or give up and mind one’s own business? Is faith meaningful or is it nothing but the early stages of fantatism? The conflict becomes particularly poignant for Scully, who shows a partiality towards the new domestic bliss she’s found with Mulder. Scully, who’s still grieving for William, hers and Mulder’s son, whom they were forced to part with at the end of the series, is understandably and believably wondering whether she and Mulder shouldn’t hang on to that new-found bliss with everything they’ve got instead of trying to save the world?
Faith and Lurve: Dealing with the Big Questions for a living can put helluva strain on a relationship… (Photo: 20th Century Fox)
But ”Don’t give up” father Joseph tells Scully, leaving her to wonder if this is the voice of God or the Devil talking to her. Her dilemma is interestingly mirrored by the villains, who obviously shun all belief in the goodness of humanity in order to recklessly pursue their Faustian, selfish goals.
And the title “I Want to Believe”, which I thought sounded really cheesy when I first heard it, proves to be a totally appropriate title for the movie.
Dumbya at the FBI Pet peeves? Well, sure, of course I have some. Amanda Peet’s acting kind of grates. And Xzibit in the part of a grumpy FBI agent seems kind of superimposed. And at one point we see Medical Dr. Scully doing stem cell research via google.com which, WTF? But still I think The X-Files: I Want to Believe has brought 90s heroes Mulder and Scully very nicely into the 21st Century and our Post 9-11 era. In a deliciously funny little moment, Chris Carter even has Mulder and Scully staring with disbelief at the portrait of President Bush (which has replaced the Clinton portrait that decorated the walls when the two agents first met) while the X-Files signature tune plays. An unexplained phenomenon, indeed! Gillian Anderson shows herself once more as an amazing actress, delievering a recognizable Scully all the while not neglecting to show us how the character has developed since we last saw her. And David Duchovny, who usually left somewhat to be desired in his dramatic scenes back in the original run of the series, proves that he has evolved a great deal as an actor, while Billy Connolly lends sympathy and complexity to his character with his pedophile-verdict hanging from his neck like an albatross.
And my friend and I totally got warm and fuzzy and nostalgic when the theme tune first came on.
