Just an observation about the humor in Cheers versus Frasier

Two shows, a huge overlap in characters, and even in the audience, in the same universe, each show running for 11 seasons before ending their shows with true finale seasons, not just episodes, with whole episodes bringing back side characters to wrap up storylines cleanly. Even some of the staff on the show was the same, and yet, these shows are so different. One might think that this would mean that the shows would age at roughly the same rate, and that as a result, Cheers, the older show would have aged poorly in our modern era, and that Frasier would be more appealing to our modern sensibilities, but having recently re-watched both shows, it’s incredible how much the inverse is true!

But how could this be? I suspect that the simpler, more delicate way that Cheers handles social issues, and how much more grounded it is greatly contributes to the sympathy that we can actually feel for Sam, which makes us more invested in his journey. Sam’s entire life is the bar, and it is easy as such to show the audience the stakes of something, as most of his life is physicalized in the things we see in the bar, the stools, the glasses, the set itself which, unlike in Frasier is his home, gives us a different focus.

Speaking of focus, the focus of the humor I suspect is another reason that Frasier has aged so poorly, Frasier, despite his status as an elite, is buffoonish, which is a thing that these days is just tiring. This is not to say that Frasier isn’t funny. Some episodes are quite funny, and Frasier does a better job of keeping a good rhythm, especially in our modern binge streaming age, where fewer episodes feel stale or recycled. However, sometimes, the farcical nature of Frasier’s humor, which is often at the expense of the character growth he experiences can just be incredibly cringe-inducing.

While some of the jerky-frat-boy humor in Cheers isn’t incredible, the show seems very aware that Sam, while a lovable goof and a playboy, is not a role model, and he himself comes to realize this, and changes by the end of the show.

I could go on more, but that’s what I’m up for for now! I keep having this idea of watching each show simultaneously and comparing their episode numbers side by side, but that’s quite the commitment. But maybe…

Oh! And don’t forget to watch me live on twitch.tv/fenrirgochad, and ask me about my favorite episodes so I have more things to talk about.

A Review of All of AHS (so far)

Wow, so American Horror Story is 9 seasons at the moment, which is a pretty impressive run for a Netflix series. I had seen up through “Hotel” previously, but recently binge-watched the whole series up through 1984 (the most recent release as of now). I think that the series is difficult to judge overall, at least not without getting into each of the seasons first.

So a bit about the series and the format first. Each season is themed, or located around a particular location or story. Many of these themes are related to some staple of the horror genre. Most of the actors in each season play roles in other seasons, which means that each season you get to pick out the new roles that each actor plays. Personally, I really like this, it allows for actors to show a pretty broad range over the course of the series, instead of playing the same character for a long time, as you might usually see with a series that has been running about a decade. In a way, the new themes and settings keep the series fresh, and most of the stories don’t overstay their welcomes.

The first season of American Horror Story is “Haunted House”. It’s a really solid start to the series. This season introduces us to the world, and tells us a bit about how ghosts work in this series, and the importance of property lines and remains. Most of the characters feel pretty compelling, and you become invested in nearly all of the characters’ story lines. By the end of the season, it really gets your mind working about some of the possibilities, because while a lot of the stories feel wrapped up, there are a number of loose ends. If you watch the season, and don’t continue on from there, it feels like a nice, contained story.

The story takes place mostly in the then-recent 2011 Los Angeles, with some flash backs to the character’s backstories, that show the history of the horrors that have occurred within the house, and how those horrors continue to haunt the halls. More than simply bad things happening, or ghosts, there’s motivations behind a lot of the madness that is at least mostly clear and understandable. I think that what impressed me though was how many more complex issues the series touches on, giving a more thorough commentary than “school shooter bad”, starting the series’ long struggle with nature versus nurture.

As an anthology series though, the jump in themes from season one to two can be a bit jarring, as the theme goes from Haunted House, to Asylum. This second season takes place mostly in 1964 Massachusetts. The disconnect between the settings allows for your brain to disconnect your brain from the characters that the actors originally play, giving them new personas, and completely disconnecting them from the first season. It also really feels different, as there’s no ghosts in this season. There’s aliens, and Nazis, and inhumane treatment of asylum patients, serial killers, both real and framed, but no ghosts.

This season has a modern-day component to it, but it is scarce in comparison to the first season, but towards the end of the season, most of the pieces connect, with the past connecting to the modern day for a dramatic climax, and while not a happy ending for sure, is mostly satisfying, though the abductions of characters, and the aliens, while shown to definitely have been real, don’t get any follow-up. This was another season that really drew me in, and that I really enjoyed, though I did feel that wrapping up the story, and the epilogue bits were a bit stretched out.

After season two though, we get into season three “Coven”. This season takes place in its concurrent 2013 for the most part, with flashbacks to the 1830’s. It is in this season that we get the introduction of magic, and a glimpse into the afterlife of non-ghosts. It is in this season where pieces from the previous seasons intersect, creating what started by feeling like little callbacks, but later become important threads that arise later.

After this, the seasons continue to change settings, from a freak-show circus, to a very, very haunted hotel in California, to then Roanoke, to Cult, to Apocalypse, and then jump back in time to 1984, with a tenth season on the way. At the beginning of each season I enjoy seeing often many of the same actors play new roles, seeing their ranges, and feel a little delight when a character played by one actress encounters another character, played by the same actress, and the actress must play off of herself. I also enjoy seeing the types of horror tropes that the show both uses and subverts. The series has no problems killing off characters, so there’s an excitement knowing that all of the characters are actually at risk, and it is likely that most or all of them will die. Of course, the show also tells a great story each season, usually with some mysterious elements that will keep you engaged for each season.

Each season is so different than the others that it makes it difficult to judge the work as a whole. A few of the seasons feel a little bit padded out, but overall, the story moves at a decent pace for seasons that are well over five hours long a piece. Additionally, each season has its own statements, on morality, on good and evil, nature and nurture, and while I don’t always agree with some of the sentiments that the show settles on, but it is also pretty clear that their world isn’t exactly our world, and in fact, some of the things that people decide make sense in a world where there are witches, warlocks, ghosts, and demons.

Overall, I enjoyed the show a lot, and look forward to additional seasons, and to find out what ideas they continue to come up with, I am especially curious, as they have apparently cast Macaulay Culkin for a role in season 10. To give a score, I give the series an overall 8/10, while there are aspects that can be improved, you can tell that the people working on it care, and that a lot of hearts were put into it.

A Review of Broadchurch

I had originally seen the first several episodes of the series way back when it first was put on Netflix. I had enjoyed the series, but for some reason had set it aside for a while. This week though, I binge watched the whole three seasons available, and I’ve got some thoughts on the series.

A bit about the series. It is about a Scottish detective (David Tennant) who failed a case, being given the head of a police station in Broadchurch, a fictional British town, instead of local detective (Olivia Colman). The first season of the show involves the murder of a local boy, and the mystery surrounding the murder. This season was great. The suspicion, the drama, every time you think they have a lead pinned down, you think to yourself about all of the other suspicious people, and all of the unanswered questions.

For a mystery, it is certainly one of the more gripping stories that I’ve seen. A lot of mysteries either tend to have only a few viable theories, or the series throws insane twists that you couldn’t possibly see coming. You really learn details of the investigation alongside the detectives, and get to have fun picking apart the maddeningly vague stories that people give. Even with the obvious lying by witnesses and the holes in their stories, they don’t hone down on the possibilities of why those characters are lying, adding levels of mystery to the show. When I got near the end of the first season, I thought to myself, how could they continue from here? Could they do another murder mystery in the same small town? Could they solve the failed case from before? Could they do the trial of the murderer?

In fact, they do both of the last two options, solving the old failed case, and at the same time, going through the trial. I actually really loved this season for the fact that it was almost a critique of dramatic TV police investigations. All of those times that my critical brain, during the first season thought, “Wow, that’s great TV, but would be a nightmare if the case got to an actual courtroom, that kind of sloppy work would get a case dismissed.” It turned out that nearly all of those points come up again as points in the case, which was delightful. Additionally, solving the cold case was a fun mystery. There were some new characters introduced, and some new drama with the side effects of dealing with the events of the first season, though the amount of mystery and questions were reduced.

Season three though… I have a few issues with. In this season, with the trial completed, and the cold case solved, what is there left to do? Nothing actually, but to have another case. This time a rape case, where one of the characters from the first season is a crisis care worker, so that she can just so happen to hang around with the detectives more on this case, and so that we have an excuse to continue following the aftermath for their family, and find some way to bring them into the case. I didn’t really mind this too much though, as it was another compelling story, with another group of suspicious characters that reminded me of the swimming pool of questions I nearly drowned in in the first season.

With that said, I did have one actual problem with this season. Pornography. There was this incredibly moralistic attitude towards porn in the show, portraying it as a gateway to degeneracy and criminal sex abuse. Now, this could be a commentary on the views of small-town folk in the UK, but it really doesn’t appear that this is the case. Now, there are instances of underage people watching and sharing porn, I get that, and there are different types of pornography, some of which is actually violent, or may even be criminal. However, the series does not distinguish between porn in magazines or produced by studios, and videos of rape being passed around by underage students. Instead it is all looked at with this moralistic view.

What’s doubly frustrating about this view is that the series contains several scenes of partial nudity, or even softcore sex scenes. While not the whole of the thing, the hypocrisy was frustrating and confusing, and I wish that they had at least made some distinction, where they could have said “I think all porn is bad, but this stuff is illegal.”. Or, “Not my thing, but this stuff is bad.” Or “Sharing porn of people you know is a bad thing, don’t do that.”

Overall, I very much enjoyed the series, and might watch “Gracepoint” later on, when I need another hit of British mystery, or David Tennant.

Movie Review of Moonwalker

My sister came over today for human interaction during the pandemic, and as she needed a wholly distracting movie, I decided to pull out all the stops, and put on Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker. This movie, which he put out in 1988, is, in a word, weird.

In fact, when summarizing the “plot” of the movie, it ends up just being a list of things that happen. Music videos after music videos, then Michael Jackson saves some kids from Joe Pesci, and turns into a robot alien before shunting the kids off into his greenroom while he does a final concert. But, to experience it, is simply baffling, especially for the unprepared.

In the hindsight of “Leaving Neverland“, along with the court cases, it really casts some of the scenes, especially the ones with children, which are just so strange, in a different light.

I think that it actually tells us a lot about Michael Jackson, his ego, the way that he compares himself to Ghandi, Jesus, and Martin Luther King Jr. But confusingly, the strange, and very childish plot, mixed with the number of music videos make me wonder who in fact the movie is targeted to, besides fans of Michael Jackson. There seems to be no unifying target age between any of the segments.

In the end, it’s a curiosity with some decent songs, including the quite snappy, Smooth Criminal music video, though the ‘interlude’ part of it is also on the spectrum of weirdness. Check it out once if you like his music, or really want to watch something bizarre.

What I’ve done this week! 7/15

It’s not exactly a week since my last update, things happen, you know how it is. One on hand, I did accomplish some of the things that I set out to do last week, and did some things that I didn’t plan to, so in all, it was still a pretty productive week, and I’m not going to beat myself up for not finishing all of it.

Surprisingly, I was barely able to keep on top of my podcasts for the week. I’m subscribed to so many that if I stop listening just a day or two, I can fall pretty far behind.

On the book front, I did it, I finally finished Utopia, and on top of that, I got through Terry Pratchett’s Wintersmith, and now I’ll make some headway on another book!

On the gaming front, I ascended in Nethack with my samurai character! It’s a thing I’m proud of

On the marble racing project, I made no direct progress, other than my indirect progress via learning 3D modeling. But that latter bit still counts as progress overall!

And on that note, below are things that I made this week! Please enjoy them!

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As for my work work, I’ve managed to put in enough hours to support myself. That I live so inexpensively certainly helps, but the money has also been pretty good in the gig delivery business, I’ve been pulling in a solid average $20/hour, though of course I’d prefer to spend that time doing, well, more of the above.

As for goals for the next week, while I managed to make some progress on some of the tutorials I’ve been watching, they are piling up faster than I can go through them, so I would like to make some more solid headway.

The still renderings that I did above took a bit of time, but if I plan out the render times better, I can have other things queued up to do in the meantime rather than simply staring at the progress bar, especially now that I know that it takes several minutes per frame at that high quality.

In one last paragraph of self praise, I’ve managed to actually make a number of posts here on my blog this week, which I am going to continue to try to maintain!

Good luck!

A movie review of a rare obscure movie gem: The Convent

In the song “Prince of E-Ville” by Combichrist, there is a breakdown wherein a couple of lines from a movie are said.

A female voice laughs, “Could you be any more Gothic-pretentious?”

Another female voice haughtily exclaims “How dare you speak to the prince of evil that way you slut!?”

The first voice answers again incredulously, “The prince of evil? You work at fucking dairy cream.”

I heard this song in my industrial teen years, and could tell that the line must have come from a movie (in fact the whole song is actually about the movie in question). Eventually my curiosity could no longer take it, and I had to find out what movie it came from, because that short exchange was so great that I just had to know the context around it. I was not disappointed.

So after much furious googling, I finally discovered that the lines came from the horror film, The Convent. This movie ended up being my favorite horror film, once I finally managed to see it.

As far as horror plots go it’s not too complicated, a bunch of demon nuns haunt an abbey, and want to incarnate the anti-christ. A bunch of college kids go to the nunnery, and come across a few cultist kids who summon back the demon nuns. Some of the surviving kids get the survivor of the first incident to help them burn down the abbey in a blaze, though a number of the kids are of course killed.

I love this movie because of its execution, in fact, the movie is so solidly made that there is little that I can criticize about it, except for maybe that some of the sound during the transformation sequences is a little loud compared to the rest of the movie, and that the stereotypes are a little on the nose, though what one might expect from a late 90’s movie playing on 80’s tropes. The movie is not expensive, nor is it masterfully shot, but it is certainly entertaining, and contains some of the best dialogue in a horror film that I’ve seen, such as the amazing exchange. “My brother’s going to be the new anti-christ?” “Afraid so.” “Mom’s gonna be pissed!”

The effects are as good as they need to be to get the point across, with a sort of neon, glow in the dark, metal-rave aesthetic to it.

Normally, I wouldn’t bother to write about a movie like this, since it would be extremely difficult to get your hands on as an audience, but fortunately, cheaply licensed horror films are practically part and parcel of Amazon’s video service, which means that you can rent or buy this enjoyable little gem to add to your collection, or maybe just check out for a few laughs.

Review of the anime movie Redline (2009)

When I think about how much I like this movie, I’m surprised that I haven’t written a review of it before now, of course, there’s a number of movies this applies to, so I’ll be sure to do those pretty soon as well.

Redline, is quite simply a movie about a car race in space. First showing the qualifying race, the lead up to the big race, introducing the racers and setting some stakes. The last half is just the race itself, in essentially its entirety. It seems perhaps even too simple to be exciting, but the movie’s art style, with its bold lines, and beautiful and unique animation helps contribute to the engrossing world that is rapidly thrown together for your enjoyment.

Redline never overstays its welcome, clocking in at a perfectly welcome 80 minutes or so, it’s definitely no Irishman, and every minute is well-used in that time frame. This movie does well at the movie maker’s mantra, “show, don’t tell”, with mountains of details that add depth and richness to the world, even enhancing additional viewings of the movie.

My only real negative thing to say about this movie is the shoehorned in romance, which is told nearly completely in flashback, and makes the final moments of the movie feel a bit trite, and only adds additional complexity to a story that already may be on the edge of over-complexity with the whole military-robot-planet-secretly-developing-a-treaty-violating-bio-weapon bit being lightly explained as it was. The movie could have used a few minutes to explain that a bit better, or to expound on the love story, or to even give a minute or two of race epilogue, but even with that in mind, the story is quite well told, tight, and the animation and music make for a generally thrilling watch experience that I would highly recommend! You can add it to your collection on Amazon, or buy the Blu-Ray on Amazon here!

I finally saw Swiss Army Man…

Back around the time that the movie came out, I remember seeing promotional materials for it, and thinking that it looked good, if somewhat strange. Unfortunately, I was unable to see very many movies at that time, so it fell to the wayside on my watch list.

Then I saw that the movie was released on Netflix, and I got excited to finally get to see it, so I added it to my list, and then… I put it off. I’m not really sure why, though it seemed that every time that I passed it I had some excuse not to watch it then.

Well, this week, I didn’t have much excuse. During the pandemic I’ve still been working, but nearly a week of dog sitting removed any pretense of an excuse not to put it on. My regret? Taking so long to see it.

Now, this movie was strange, bizarre, sweet, creepy, funny, and most impressively an elevation of the fart joke into a work of art. I’m honestly not sure what I expected of the movie. It’s a magical-realistic movie about a man finding Daniel Radcliffe’s dead body, and using it like a Swiss army knife in various ways to help him survive, as well as deal with the issues that drove him to the wilderness in the first place.

The movie was beautiful, funny, wholesome, and managed to nearly make me cry from its earnest and innocent perspective. Much of the movie, it’s impossible to tell if our protagonist has lost his mind, or if the body of Harry Potter is actually interacting with him. This dilemma is continued through the entirety of the movie, before it resolves at the end.

Normally, I would talk about the plot more, but it’s difficult to talk about as the movie is as much about the feelings it evokes as the story itself. I think that the way that this movie ties its elements together masterfully however, such as the music, which often includes chanting lyrics that reflect the shots or the themes of the scenes.

If you’re looking for a strange escape on Netflix and are tired of the more grounded content, Swiss Army Man should definitely be your next pandemic movie.

Another Streamed Movie Review: The Girl With All the Gifts

“The Girl With All the Gifts” was another movie that I saw on Netflix in my attempt to watch things and not become depressed in our current global state. I should really read synopses before I watch these movies. I gotta say that this one was also far more engrossing than I expected it to be. I honestly thought that it was going to be a more enclosed movie, about more abstract things like “The Platform” was, based on the opening, which has a woman teaching to a bunch of highly-restrained children. Turns out that I happened to pick a movie about a pandemic. This one was hard to watch, not because it was bad, but because of how hard it hit our conversations about the coronavirus, and how to deal with it, the race to create a vaccine, and the possible risks to participants in those trials, and the consequences of letting an infection run wild, to build herd immunity, and the risks that may also entail to society as a whole, and the opportunities that an apocalyptic event can have to shake up the institutions of society and start fresh, a movie about the struggle between old ways of doing things, and radical young generations who may want to burn down the old world.

A well-told story, visually engrossing, that deals with some now very real topics, well-acted, including solid performances from the numerous child-actors that appear, and plenty to mull over when it’s over, I find it hard not to recommend seeing this in our current state, if only to consider some of the questions that it raises, and how we see those choices in hindsight.

The Platform: A Muddled Metaphor

So, I’ve actually been pretty busy during the pandemic with working, doing my job as an essential delivery person, so I have had surprisingly little time to write much, or even to catch up on my massive to-watch list. However, I have attempted to watch a few things during my downtime. Recently, I saw The Platform on Netflix, and I have got to say that I was pretty engrossed. I expected that this movie would simply end up being background noise to my evening, but I found myself actually engrossed in the film. First, there was the dubbing, which was okay, not amazing, with what felt like stilted voice work, but this was something that I could adjust to after just a few minutes.

The premise of the movie was pretty simple, about a platform full of food that descends down a pit, with each level getting the leftovers of each of the above floors. After a month, the positions of each person are shuffled. I was totally on board with the movie so far, a pretty clear metaphor for class, with elements that help exaggerate some of the behaviors that we see. The desire to be near the top, to have the luxury of choice and abundance, those at the top who feel the fragility of their position, and seek to diminish those below them, lest they fall to their level, they gorge themselves, because they do not know where they will be a month out. Those who are lower down, where food is scarce or non-existent do what they must to survive, or die from starvation or despair. Then those who survive, if they move up, feel pity only for themselves, and refuse to consider those below them. The protagonist of the story, armed with a copy of Don Quixote , becomes an all-too-obvious messiah figure, even growing a scraggly beard, taking on the challenge of redistributing the food to those below him, riding the platform all the way to the bottom.

Now, this is where many reviews stop, covering the first hour of the movie, and praising it for what gets called “masterful allegory”, but each seems to neglect the last half hour or so of movie, and where the movie almost entirely falls apart. There are threads in the movie that are confusing, such as the Asian woman who never speaks, but murders her way through much of the movie, looking for her child. A lot of the metaphor falls apart on the descent, and leaves our protagonist at the bottom of the pit, walking off with a ghost, before the child ascends the pit, a message to the people at the top… What that message is, I honestly had no idea at this point. The whole thing gets the point across, the difficulty of redistributing resources in a society, how unfair our class structure is, and the depths of poverty that those in the middle, or those who are part of the system are unaware of, but the last third of the movie both seems to bash you over the head with its message, while at the same time throwing in so many elements and messages that the final notes of the movie are confused and unclear.

In conclusion, it is certainly an interesting movie, and worth watching for its visual style and story telling. However, I would not use this movie as my go-to allegory for class disparity, with it’s heavy-handed imagery, eventually becoming too muddled to illustrate what could have been a poignant commentary.