Rip camp camp u will be missed

This Week in BL - A Lot Ended, Quite Bit Started, I got things to say about it all

Organized, in each category, by ones I'm enjoying most at the top.

Nov 2023 Wk 2

Ongoing Series - Thai

My Dear Gangster Oppa (Thurs iQIYI) 3 of 8 - This is just a great BL. So fun with few frills and paced nicely. Thai talent + Korean story is proving very harmonious for narrative flow. I’m delighted. I love that they don’t shy away from letting Tew be an actual violent criminal who is just gone and mushy for this one geeky cutie. Also I appreciate it when a show hangs a lantern on its own plot failing. In this case, the main character being drunk as a plot devise 2x in subsequent eps.

Twins the series (Fri GaGa) ep 2 of 10 - Love it. Love Spite and his chronic guilt over his younger brother, the golden child. Love that he is driven to repair for a past that no longer exists. Evil mom who cares more for what her son can do than that son, let alone his brother. The volleyball well…. erm. I played varsity (setter) so this is amusing to me but I’m not mad about it. 

I agree that this Not Me just sports and pulp. 

Last Twilight (Fri YT) 1 of 12 - JimmySea are back and is this... good? Do I like this? I don't have faith, GMMTV has been doing us dirty lately. But I think I like it! Why The Little Prince AGAIN? Ugh. 

Middleman’s Love (Fri YT & iQIYI 1 of 8 - Domundi giving us an office comedy hyung romance staring TutorYim (Cutie Pie) with NetJames (Bed Friend) and LeoTai (Friend Forever) providing support. Lets hope they stick to only 8 eps. Buckle up, I got shit talking to type.

I warned ya out the gate that this is a Cheewin comedy, so tonally it could be very OFF, and boy howdy is it EVER off. There's a place this kind of show goes where it's so cringe it's visually rotten and this one went there out that gate. Also, I'm gonna say it because no one else has, Yim is not good in this role. Comedy is HARD to do and Cheewin isn't doing this green actor any favors. He's chewing the scenery like a woodchuck after a diet.

To be fair, Tutor isn't great either, but he's been given less rope to hang himself with. Mai is currently suffering from seme obscurity: the love interest's defining characterization being = tall and handsome. (Which is not characterization... agony... glares at Cdramas.) We will see if he gets a personality, but based on past work form this director and this writer, don't bank on it.

Frankly? I'm not convinced either of them are mature enough as a pair or as actors to carry something this abrasive and to stand up to Cheewin's visual abuse of our eyeballs. I think this is going to be a rocky ride. HOWEVER, because it has tropes I'm good with (as opposed to SCOY) I'm sticking with it for now but this is gonna be ROUGH going for everyone.

Backstory: This used to be a JimmyTommy vehicle before the pair split (also prev title Middle Love). Adapted from a Y-novel. I can actually see Tommy in this role very clearly and I suspect he may have been bettern(and I am more a TutorYim fan as a pair). Also I will likely be referencing SCOY a lot while watching this because SCOY is peak Cheewin nonsense comedy but with an incredibly strong lead pair, so comparisons will be drawn.

Absolute Zero (Weds iQIYI) ep 7 of 12 - Sigh. Linguistic negotiation but for sad reasons? It fascinating but it hurts. Look, the cast is very good I just don’t like the premise.

My Universe (Sun iQIYI) The Camp Fire ep 12 of 24 - Well that was extremely odd. I’m not sure how I feel about it. If it hadn’t had the strange framework and horror component and been just a simple BL story I probably would’ve enjoyed it. Why do the pulps always  squander their best pairs? 5/10 New installment (Friends Forever) looks terrible and not BL.

Beyond The Star (Weds iQIYI) qp 1 of 8 - House of Stars meets Boyband. I am not impressed. Thailand just needs to leave everything music related to Korea. I’m enacting a ban. The framework on this is truly awful. The talent is not talented in acting let alone dance or song. I thought about sticking with it a few more eps but i putting in on hold. It’s too wooden even for me.

@heretherebedork I depend on you to report back. This is the kind of thing only you can watch. It’s like Cupid 2023. 

Ongoing Series - Not Thai

A Breeze of Love (Korea iQIYI) 1-2 of 8 - previously know as Weather Forecast Love this one popped up in MDL's currently airing, and I was like, what what? Basically: Tsundere insomniac grump and his sunshine jock ex bestie (human sleeping pill) who now hates him. Basketball is involved and I love it.

It ended, are we sad? REVIEWS

Kiseki: Dear to Me (Taiwan Viki & Gaga)

Yes, we sad! Ai Di and his dumb oversized sweaters and flappy flappy sleeves are EVERYTHING.

Final ep? Nice that the elder gays got screen time, more of this please? Sides dominated this finale, matched outfits and all. Also I’m living for the Bless this Mess shirt. Finally Taiwan gave us lots of biting and a counter lift. It’s like they know me!

Quick pitch for KDTM?  

The plot is totally ridiculous and slightly unhinged, but that’s normal for Taiwan. It involves all the tropes under a very casual framework of gay mafia gangs + food = love. Absolutely every character is queer. There’s a gum-ball machine of cameos, elder gay rep, great chemistry from all pairs, and a KILLER side couple. As a result Kiseki is a poster child for Taiwanese BL, and I happen to love Taiwanese BL. Bonus? They also managed to END IT WELL, which we cannot expect from Taiwan. 9/10 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED 

Triggers for knife play, child abuse, lingering trauma. I found both platforms did not do a great job on subs, but I will give the edge to Viki for pure usability.

You Are Mine (Taiwan Viki & Gaga)

We are more disappointed than sad.

Far be it from me to extend this show, but we should’ve had 2 episodes of quality supportive boyfriends coping with family drama before the mom-confrontation climax and defense of the ESTABLISHED relationship. Baby's little speach had no power or impact coming where it did in this narrative, even though it was sweet. And while the make-out scenes were charming it mostly jsut felt like we'd squandered this pair. This last ep was good and rewatchable, but a series cannot be judged on its last ep alone.

Finally... could have used some side dishes. My vote? Lesbian secretaries!

Conclusion 

I am sorry Taiwan, you know I love you, but I have to say it: this show was a mess of terrible pacing. And not a hot mess, sadly. I should have liked everything about this: it’s an office drama, it’s mature characters, it’s grumpy/sunshine, it’s a strong power dynamic, and it’s Taiwan - which means good chemistry. YAM was all those things and yet… something went horribly wrong with the narrative structure. You tried dears, but not hard enough. 7/10 

Bump Up Business (Korea Gaga)

Well, poop. Don’t have them speak English. Also no playing drunk. Meanwhile, all the manipulative gay drama. No kiss of course.

How do I summate this?

An idol group did the best they could with a script tailored to idols but which they were not allowed to fully realize because they are active idols in the same group. Ultimately it felt a bit like OnlyOneOf were just doing one of those Kpop skits for a variety show were two of of them dresses in drag/gay/BL and "ha ha isn't it funny?" I don’t know, it was fine? 6/10

stop wasting my time, Korea

Mr Cinderella 2 (Vietnam YT)

DNF on the advice of several of my BL spies I will not be finishing this. Apparently it pretty much ends sad. Here's an explanation.

It's Airing But...

I Cannot Reach You AKA I Can't Reach You AKA Kimi ni wa Todokanai (Japan Tues Netflix-Japan & ????) 8 eps - in classic JBL fashion, I Cannot Reach You could not be reached. I will try it when I have some time and access to my home computer.

One Room Angel (Japan Gaga) 6 eps - adaptation of Harada’s manga (which I did not like) about a clerk who's stabbed, nearly dies, and returns home to find an angel waiting for him. With only 5 eps and a good chance this won’t end happy, I'm gonna wait and let you tell me how it goes.

WAITING FOR VERDICT OR TO BINGE

What Did You Eat Yesterday Season 2 AKA Kinou Nani Tabeta? Season 2 (Japan Gaga) 10 eps - I find this series more fun to binge, so I'm waiting until it completes its run.

SHADOW (Thai Gaga) 14eps - this is a horror BL with ghosts & paranormal elements in a boarding school setting. I'm not wild about Thai horror (or horror at all). It features Singto (who did paranormal BL He's Coming to Me) opposite Fluke N (who's done a couple horror's before). Also Fiat. Dan suffers from sleep paralysis, and in his dreams he sees a shadow that suffocates him. It gets worse when he transfers schools. I'm holding off on this one and if told it's good I'll binge watch.

Next Week Looks Like This

11/15 Let's Eat Together Aki and Haru AKA Aki wa Haru to Gohan wo (Japan Gaga) - this BL movie is coming to Gaga.

11/16 PLAYBOYY (Thurs ????) 10 eps - trailer here, high heat and it's helmed by Cheewin (shudder) with screenplay by Den (Only Friends) under Copy A Bangkok. It's gonna be a shizz show people. It's predicting Thai style "dark" (War of Y) one of my least favorites. Apparently there is a "plot" but when has Cheewin ever bothered with plot? A university kid who was involved with escorts, sex-trade, porn, online hook-ups, drugs, prostitution, blackmail, revenge, and so forth goes missing. His twin (sigh) and two friends look for him.

11/17 Pit Babe (Fri iQIYI) ep 1 of 14 - high heat teaser here, based on alittlebixth's omegaverse novel #พิษเบ๊บ’ set in the world of car racing (author says show will not be omegaverse). Charlie (fresh face), a young hot nerd, approaches his driver idol (Pavel "my love" 2 Moons 2) to borrow a racing car and win one for the team. Production house is new to BL but behind the Club Friday stuff. Show stars many known actors: Nut (Oxygen), Pop (Ram in La Cuisine), Pon (Phai in Gen Y, we LOVE him), Benz (twins in En of Love: This Is Love Story).

Thailand bring the November heat, I guess?

Upcoming November BL

11/19 Bake Me Please (Sun Gaga) ep 1 of 6 - trailer here, stars Ohm (of OhmFluke) opposite Guide (bestie from IFYLITA) and possibly also Poom (well known, but not for BL). This looks like an actually gay version of Antique Bakery (play it again, BL). Still, I'm intrigued, it looks HELLA pretty.

11/22 7 Days Before Valentine (Weds ????) ep 1 of 10 - trailer here, horror-esk. Adapted from y-novel of the same name, directed by Tu (180 Degree) stars Jet (Why You… Y Me?). When you want your old love again, but fate sends you a reaper instead. All he can do for you is kill people. I'll likely give this a pass and wait to binge if safe.

11/25 The Sign (Sat ????) ep 1 of 10 - trailer here, horror-esk, but with a suspense and adult characters. Special investigators who loved each other in previous lives reunite in new bodies. Stars Billy Patchanon (BillySeng) & Babe Tanatat (new). Includes other SCOY favorites as a special investigation team. I may give this a try because I'm into the non-horror bits.

11/26 The Whisperer (Sun ????) 1 of 10 - trailer here. Thai horror BL that ALSO involves cheating (what joy is mine). He has dimples (My Ride) but I don't think even that gives me the will. Maybe a binge for me.

11/26 Cooking Crush (Sun YT) 1 of 12 - OffGun are back, trailer here. Adapted from the novel “Love Course! เสื้อกาวน์รุกเสื้อกุ๊กรับ” by iJune4S this is about Prem who runs a not-so-popular restaurant with 2 friends. About to go on a cooking competition with a huge reward, Prem gets involved with Ten, a stressed-out med student who wants Prem to teach him to cook.

11/30 For Him (Thurs ????) ep 1 of 10 - high heat trailer, I suspect iQIYI will scoop this one up. From the people who brought us Unforgotten Night (please no) based on a y-novel, man nursing a heartbreak has a one-night stand, but the other boy didn't want it to end. It looks terribly trashy so I'm in! Maybe I'll do a trash watch?

VIP Only (Taiwan) - may be delayed/canceled

Wuju Bakery AKA Space Bakery (Korea) - this one may be DOA

A Breeze of Love (Korea) - I know less than nothing about this.

Nov 2023 line up with screen caps here. Not kept updated.

Original 2023 forthcoming BL master post (see comments, some are inaccurate, NOT KEPT UPDATED).

THIS WEEK’S BEST MOMENTS

This is in the intro card of My Dear Gangster Oppa, I'm just amusing myself.

Thank you Keseki for givign this to us twice!

Also the tears! So pretty crying.

And, of course, my favorite the biting!

Have I mentioned recently how much I love Taiwanese BL?

(Last week)

Something I've noticed about this show is that there isn't any specific recurring antagonist, and that seems to be a specific choice by the writing team. A lot of sitcoms *don't* have a villain or a character who exists to create conflict at all, ensemble comedies are often driven by the core group of characters all having quirky personalities that play off of each other or any external conflict is driven by their failures to be well-adjusted to the world they live in or the comedy comes from their problems all being of their own making. That said, Shadows is going into a fourth season now, and it seems like a given at this point that there'll be a fifth, assuming the world doesn't blow up or something, and with the world within the show expanding now outside of not just Staten Island but the whole US, and with the group being split up, that dynamic is likely to change, and might even need to in order to keep the narrative momentum going smoothly. The Vampiric Council has had a recurring, threatening presence, but they sort of lurk mysteriously and ominously--we know there's some kind of long game being played there, but not quite what--and I think it needs to stay that way, at least for a while longer. Yes, they'll necessarily need to be more visible in season 4 with Nadja joining them in London, but a story like this often has, and benefits from, multiple threats coming at a group of main characters from different angles, and with our little miscreants now split up geographically, narratively, that has to be the case.

So I propose a few ideas:

An as-yet-unmet vampire hunter

So much fun chaos and conflict, especially for Guillermo. Let's have some wannabe paladin, a puritanical zealot against vampirism, who's baffled by a vampire hunter who wants to be a vampire. Maybe in their run-ins against Guillermo, they get into his head a little, too, and make him doubt himself somewhat. Heck, is there a foil to the Vampiric Council for vampire hunters, something like The Mosquito Hunters would aspire to someday be? Give me a Van Helsing Institute, one that's horrified that an actual descendant of The Man Himself is on The Other Side. Now Guillermo’s got to protect his little gaggle of bloodsucking metaphorical baby ducks from threats from BOTH sides, while having yet another internal struggle!

Nandor's two bitchy wives or one of their/his descendants

Nandor's got baggage, yo. We got a brief hint at these two and it feels like a Chekov's Gun (or maybe I just hope it is). Do we know what went on with these two? Did they run off together or something? (I read a news story about 10 years ago about a lesbian in, I believe, India who busted her girlfriend out of the ex-gay camp the girlfriend’s parents had sent her to with ninja throwing stars and they ran off together, and while I can never find the link to the story when I want it, that's sort of how I imagine these two.) Imagine if they did, and their ghosts could possess their descendants! Or did they found a convent of anti-vampire nuns, maybe, like the anti-mummy Med-Jai society that Oded Fehr’s character belongs to in The Mummy? Hey, here’s an opportunity for Nadja’s hatred of nuns to have an outlet too!

The devil himself

So much potential here. Do you like your Satan to be a cackling horned devil? A tortured Miltonian anti-hero? A campy sneering schemer ala Al Pacino or a seductive tempter who knows exactly what you, and you alone, hunger for? A cruel puppetmaster of Fate disguised as a judgemental church lady? While my favorite Satan ever is Peter Stormare in Constantine, I strongly feel it would not be WWDITS if Satan was not played by Tim Curry again. They should also find a way to have Ozzy Osbourne cameo in this episode, maybe as like Hell’s front desk receptionist or something. Wanna bet one of our motley crew--my vote’s for Laszlo--once made a deal with Mr. Clovenfoot himself without realizing it? Or maybe Nandor’s 700 years of regret was a perfect opening for a Faustian chance to undo it all? Maybe Colin thought he could outsmart The Devil himself in a Devil Went Down To Georgia-type challenge and overestimated himself, or Nadja impulsively put up her soul or someone else’s as collateral for the power to off Lilith? How does our resident repressed Catholic boy feel about having to contend with Actual Satan? Can a vampire’s soul be endangered by The Unholy One? Woah. Throw in a soundtrack by Nick Cave and you’ve got Emmy-bait, baby.

Nandor's sire This one is my favorite option. As of the end of Season 3, we don’t know really anything about Nandor’s turning or who sired him. It’s been implied that he lost a battle and was desperate enough to eat Jahan to survive or things more generally started going south for him in terms of his empire or military campaigns and he was desperate enough to buy himself more time that he allowed himself to be vampirized--or was tricked into it--and now regrets that he’s a lot harder to kill and has eternity to live with whatever it was he has to feel bad about. But this is mostly speculation anyway and it still isn’t a lot to go on. I think Nandor’s sire coming back to haunt him in some way, even just by being present in a way that reminds Nandor of his own turning, would be a good way to externalize Nandor’s needing to come to peace with being a vampire. Maybe this sire is just out to make Nandor completely miserable for some reason, and Nandor can’t let his guard down but also can’t kill the guy because then he’ll die too. There’s an interesting metaphor! "How do you neutralize the demons within you that keep you going and without which you can’t survive?"

So yeah. Basically I wish they would hire me to be on the writing team for this show.🙃

Reading what you said re: it's not wrong to change a plan, as long as you properly adapt to it and build off cause and effect in a natural meaningful way

The classic MKEK fall-back of "this was planned from the beginning" always feels bad to me, not only because of the ready rebuttal of "if it was, then why was it set up so badly," but also because limiting yourself to a pre-determined plan from the start is actually incredibly stifling as a creative, and ultimately detrimental to your story.

You mention How I Met Your Mother as a good example of how "sticking to the plan" can be bad; so I just want to mention a show that thrived on "let the chips fall where they may," The Office. The actresses who played Pam and Angela have a podcast where they delve into each episode, talking about the behind the scenes aspects, trivia, writing choices, plot points, etc. and one thing that really stuck with me about it is that they didn't plan the ending. Even the famous romance between Pam and Jim was never 'end game' to the writers; they wanted to let the story and characters develop naturally and see where things went, and it felt more real because of it. There are scenes in the early seasons that exist solely because "that was back when they weren't sure if they would redeem Roy and have us get back together or not," or "that was back when they thought maybe Angela and Roy might get together," or "that was when they were thinking that Jim might move on once and for all and be with Karen," and that sort of thing. Pam and Jim is heralded as one of the most well-written romances in television, and it was not planned from the beginning. Another example of a great ship that wasn't end-game from the start is in Parks and Recreation between Leslie and Ben. This absolutely could not have been planned from the start, because Ben wasn't even introduced as a character until the finale of season 2.

I think you're right that a show should be allowed to develop naturally and change their minds about what they do, and I agree 100% that one of the problems with RWBY is that sometimes they'll let the story grow, but then they invariably erase that growth so that they can force in some long-outdated plan that no longer works for the story.

"It was planned from the beginning" is a terrible excuse to ruin your own story and characters, especially if your story is one in which the best parts happened because you went off-script.

All of this. There’s a lot of talk in writing circles about the planning camp vs. let the chips fall camp, but in reality any long-running story is going to need both. One of the challenges is that this combination looks very different depending on the type of story and the type of author(s) involved. There’s perhaps more wiggle room for letting the chips fall in a semi-realistic, character driven comedy series than, say, in a plot-driven action series. “I don’t know yet what sort of relationship these characters will have in three seasons time” is very different from “I don’t know what the situation with the Relics is going to look like in three seasons time.” Whether Pam and Jim get together or not, you still have a good story about their relationship, whatever that may look like. If the Relics are, say, dropped from the show completely, or retconned, or brought together and the characters have to go stupid to not do anything with them because the writers didn’t plan ahead... that’s more of a problem. So it’s this balance between what you’ve thought ahead to and what you need to accommodate. “It was planned from the beginning” can be a horrible way to treat your story if you’re introducing new elements (How I Met Your Mother), but it can also be a fantastic way to treat your story if you’re following that original path (The Good Place). Unplanned elements can be an excellent addition if the author is willing to run with them (Sasha and Tim in The Magnus Archives), or a terrible hinderance if the author is not (Maria and Pietro). Any author needs to be willing to put in that work of figuring out what elements need to be planned, when they can allow the writing to be organic, and once that organic approach reveals something, ensuring that it comes to mean something. 

RWBY feels like it’s failing on both fronts right now. The story as a whole doesn’t feel like it’s appropriately sketched out, like we’re just meandering through new plot points until it’s eventually cancelled, not navigating a broad - but still reliable - structure. We tossed out the school structure post-Volume 3, tossed out the Final Boss Salem structure with her arrival in Volume 7, and now (presumably) have tossed out the Relic structure in Volume 9, falling into a void instead of heading to Vacuo. Yet at the same time, each now plot point that’s introduced has just as much chance of getting tossed aside too. It’s not replacing A plot point with B plot point, it’s replacing it with C, then D, then E F G, sometimes within the same volume. We’ve often said that RWBY has too many cool ideas and that’s a huge part of the problem. 

Salem is here! But Ironwood is the enemy! The gorillas are back! But they don’t do anything! Ozpin is back too and Oscar is upset about it! But torture is the actual problem! Team JYR are here to save him! But that doesn’t matter! Emerald and Hazel are bad guys! But now they’re not! Redemption is compelling! But now he’s dead and she’s a fixture of the group already! Ren is upset about their choices! But now he’s got a semblance upgrade! Nora cares about the people! But now she cares about Amity! Yang fights with Ruby! But now she’s upset about Blake! Penny is framed! But now she’s the Maiden! But now she’s hacked! But now she’s human! But now she’s dead! 

There. is. so. much. going. on. A desire to let the chips fall where they may still requires restraint on the author’s part and a willingness to follow each thread once it reveals itself (unless we’re talking about a story deliberately meant to be meandering, episodic, etc.) As said, there’s nothing wrong with a lack of planning... but that sort of work does require an experienced, talented team to manage. And there is something wrong with making the story so organic that you’re coming up with new ideas every few episodes, not bothering to keep track of what came before this because it will be replaced in another few episodes too. Meanwhile, claiming that it was all “planned from the beginning” in a misguided attempt to make the whole project seem better than it actually is. At this point, RWBY is a revolving door of disjointed, unexplored ideas, held together by confident writers and a fandom inclined to carefully select the parts that do work, ignore/headcanon the rest, and claim that these pieces amount to the whole, planned, ingenious story. 

Rando Munday stuff

For new followers, on Monday sometimes I just post a ton of random OOC shit in one post like this! It’s just completely random stuff about me or stuff I’m up to, that kind of thing. -In preparation for returning to the office next month, we’re all going in to work every morning this week for training. Not looking forward to that.  - I’m glad I don’t grow out of things. I’m glad that I still love The Last Unicorn, a movie I saw when I was barely old enough to speak. I’m glad that I still love unicorns, and fantasy/horror creatures in general. I’m glad I still love stuffed animals and still give them hugs. I’m glad I still like cartoons and comic books and learning animal facts. I’m glad that my enjoyment doesn’t come with an expiration date, and that stuff that has always made me happy, keeps making me happy.  - Not only are the chinchillas much more friendly with me now, they love my dad too! Which is great, because he adores them! When I get near him while holding them, Cashmere will start trying to go to him! She loves crawling around on his shoulders. Pashmina will too but she’s far more cautious and slow about it (she’s the more nervous of the two) and will often keep one or two paws on me while she waffles on whether to go to him. But last night BOTH of them walked from my arms on to his back. Then Pashmina ambled back to me, and, without looking, my dad could tell that Cashmere was the one still on him because he’s learned how differently they move on his back/shoulders! - I’ve had like three people make fun of me for being a lesbian cliche because I like Tori Amos, and while I think it’s funny too, I also wonder, would you kids on Tumblr even get this? Like do the gay kids today know who Tori Amos even is--- - I love Bob’s Burgers and I know that’s not unusual, but like the stuff that’s funniest to me is not what I think was supposed to be funniest? Like when the grandma at Tammy’s Bat Mitzvah says “my swim instructor’s bisexual” is the fucking #2 funniest thing to me on that show, with the #1 being Gene and Bob’s exchange about whether or not Salman Rushdie wrote The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. I don’t know why but that is PEAK COMEDY to me and I go over it in my head abundantly.  - I may be introverted but I can still tell a lady at the gas station she’s wearing great lashes and another that she looks gorgeous! I normally don’t tell people they look gorgeous/pretty/etc if they’re strangers and instead keep it to things like lashes, makeup, clothes, etc (general rule is that if something is a choice, like clothing or hair, it’s okay, if it’s their body or something else beyond their control, that’s creepy, even if it’s a compliment) but in this case the latter was dressed up with like a gown and full makeup and the boy she was with had on a suit, so I think they were high schoolers stopping there for snacks on the way to a dance, so I figured it was appropriate here and she seemed happy! - I got back into reading the GOAT VALLEY CAMPGROUNDS stories, which are fantastic. They’re a first-person narrative from the POV of a campground manager at a camp where strange and ancient beings inhabit the property, and her attempts to protect campers from them, as well as simply survive. Warning, this is very dark---not only the creatures and the fates of campers horrifying, the heroine herself on more than one occasion kills another human being to ensure the greater good/survival of herself or others, and not just “bad” people either---and there’s a very Lovecraftian vibe of “there are huge and powerful horrible things here you can’t control or fight, you just have to follow these rules and hope you survive” Speaking of Lovecraftian, I saw a friend on FB talking about OLD GODS OF APPALACHIA and I have not listened to it yet but it seems like it will be my cup of tea. I have driven through old mountain roads with my family many times and felt like, this is a great setting for Lovecraft-type stories---the ancient lands, the isolation, the way small families are just scattered throughout this massive area with no phone service or internet, this is like. . ..a perfect horror setup in general, as many movies have exploited, but a perfect “scary cults and elder gods” setup. So I’m looking forward to seeing what someone else has done with it. And yes, I’m aware Lovecraft himself and his writing are full of racism and xenophobia. And to be honest, I’m not a big fan of Lovecraft himself (he’s not really a good writer imo, and my fave stories of his are the ones that AREN’T part of the Cthulu Mythos, like “Pickman’s Model”) but I love seeing what modern people who presumably (hopefully) don’t have those prejudices do with his ideas and concepts, and I think my very favorite of these is RED GOAT BLACK GOAT  by Nadia Bulkin. Set in West Java and written by an Indonesian-American woman, it’s got all my favorite Lovecraftian horror tropes with none of the shittiness, and I always have to recommend it when talking about modern takes on the genre.  - Just had to change my shirt because Dart has already made it smell like rat piss. This is my life now. These are his shirts now.

And Now

for no reason at all: all Star Trek shows ranked by me.

8. Enterprise

The 2000-Archer-Series. God, I hated that show. The first season is paaaaainfully boring, the Vulkans moved from “Well, you may not like it but logic dictates...” to “Our only motivation is to be a prick to humans”, the Cold Temporal War plot never goes anywhere. Then in season 3 or whatnot they have their big 9/11-but-in-space-attack and captain Archer decides “Torture is good, actually.” Oh and I hated the intro music.

7. Discovery

Effects and action are nifty, but the whole plot is so incredible stupid grimdark. (Mind you, I usualy like grimdark). Then they bring in the mirrorverse and it gets even grimdarker and it is all gaaarbaaage. Never made it past season 1.

6. TOS

I have not seen a lot of the original series. Sometimes I want to, but sets and storys are so cheesy at times. From what I have seen there are 3 plots that are to be combined at will: Kirk vs a godlike entity, Kirk vs a supercomputer and Kirk vs an alien planet that looks and dresses like earth in the past.

Overall it is allright I guess.

5. Voyager

Voyager is nice, stoopid action fun. The Borg stuff is nice (although they became victim to severe powercreep) and there are some episodes I think of foundly (Year of Hell is my favorite 2-parter). Seven of Nine was a shameless pandering to a demographic I was part of at the time so that was nice and the Emergency Medical Holographic program is one of the best Star Trek characters of all time, hands down. Voyagers weak sides are the writers need to return to status quo at the end of each episode and the really bland characters of Chakotay, Kim, Paris, Torres and Kess.

4. Lower Decks

I just finished this, so maybe it has an unfair advantage, but Lower Decks rules. It is the first comedy-series set in the Star Trek universe and it uses that power to follow up on (and poke fun at) a lot of stuff the other series established. It derives much of its humor from aspiring-to-greatness-and-failing and reminded me alot of Venture Brothers in that regard. Its humor starts in the ‘mean’ camp, but the show stays true to the ideals of understanding and exploration a thousend times better than Discovery did.

3. The Orville

Yes, Seth McFarlanes Star Trek parody-series is better than 60% of real, canonical Star Trek. Deal with it. Now, you might think that The Orville is obsolete with the Lower Decks, but no. First of all there is a lot more of it. Second, as much as I enjoyed Lower Decks, lets be real: Boimler is a whiny bitch no one likes and Tendi and Rutherford are essentially the same character. On the other hand every character of the Orville is unique and fleshed out, even that walking snot guy. It has an interesting universe and some episodes I cant stop thinking about (for example All the World Is Birthday Cake, about a civilisation that takes zodiac signs deadly serious). Look, lets be real: It is TNG, but with dick jokes. I love it.

2. The Next Generation

It allmost has it all: space mysteries, interesting philosophical questions, strange ideas, the wonder of exploration, compassion saves the day and a lot of meme potential. This show rules.

1. Deep Space 9

The best Trek show and one of the best SF-shows overall. It has everything that made TNG great, but improves in two major points: first of all, every character is great. Every character. No other show on this list made me so interested in the lifes of every. Single. One. Of its cast. I love the chemistry of Bashir and O’Brien, Bashir and Garak, Kira and Dax, Quork and Odo, they are all GREAT. Just the character driven stuff alone is the best Trek ever deliverd.

But then there is the Dominion War. A long, consistent narative (unusual for its time. TNG and Voyager always snapped back to status quo, so this was really something new for me back then). It has a lot of great action, and it touches on dark and morally ambigious matters, in a way later shows tried and failed. If you want to binge one series during the next lockdown (one coming up in germany right now) give this one a shot. Just bear with it for the first season, it gets good once Sisko gets bald.

Not Rated - The Animated Series

I have not seen it an probably never will. Animation of that era is...well, they tried their best.

People, November 30

Cover: Sexiest Man Alive Michael B. Jordan 

Page 7: Chatter -- Dolly Parton on parenthood, Jason Momoa on wearing pink, Kurt Russell on making a negative first impression with longtime love Goldie Hawn, Taylor Swift on dating Joe Alwyn, Keke Palmer on preferring leggings, Viola Davis on processing the state of the world 

Page 8: 5 Things We’re Talking About This Week -- stars prep a seasonal singalong, a Baby Yoda cocktail wins over famous fans, The Bachelor mansion hits Airbnb, Arnold Schwarzenegger heads to Netflix, Blue Ivy narrates an audiobook 

Page 11: Contents 

Page 12: Contents, Editor’s Letter 

Page 14: StarTracks -- Famous Families -- John Legend and Chrissy Teigen attended the drive-in premiere of Jingle Jangle: A Christmas Journey in L.A. with their kids Miles and Luna 

Page 15: LeBron James with mom Gloria, Gabrielle Union backyard with daughter Kaavia, Chris Hemsworth and his mother Leonie, Rupert Grint and daughter Wednesday G. Grint

Page 16: Kit Harington filmed a scene for the second season of Modern Love in Dublin, Tiger Woods awarded a green jacket to 2020 Masters champion Dustin Johnson, Patricia Clarkson showed off a shimmering gown at Housing Works’ annual Fashion for Action Benefit 

Page 17: Nashville’s Biggest Night -- Carrie Underwood and husband Mike Fisher attended the 54th annual Country Music Association Awards, Charley Pride performed with Jimmie Allen before accepting his CMA Lifetime Achievement Award, Miranda Lambert with husband Brendan McLoughlin, Maren Morris won three awards and shone a light on Black female country artists 

Page 19: Timothee Chalamet packed on some layers for a bike ride along Manhattan’s Hudson River Park, Molly Bernard and Sutton Foster and Hilary Duff during a break from filming for Younger in New York City’s Upper West Side, Mandy Moore cradled her pregnant belly at the E! People’s Choice Awards in Santa Monica, Tyler Perry at the E! People’s Choice Awards 

Page 23: Scoop -- Healing on Grey’s Anatomy -- inside Patrick Dempsey’s surprise return 

Page 24: Lena Dunham reveals her struggle with infertility and IVF 

Page 26: Heart Monitor -- Olivia Wilde and Jason Sudeikis surprise split, Ryan Cabrera and Alexa Bliss engaged, Michelle Pfeiffer and David E. Kelley happy anniversary, Kristin Cavallari and Jeff Dye dating 

Page 29: Britney Spears’ battle with her dad continues, Britney and Sam Asghari’s island getaway 

Page 30: Ciara and Russell Wilson’s new family moves, Buddy Valastro making progress after his accident 

Page 32: Rebel Wilson -- my year of health and love, Pioneer Woman Ree Drummond becomes a proud foster mom 

Page 34: Passages, Why I Care -- after losing her mother to pancreatic cancer in 2012 Mindy Kaling is raising awareness about the disease 

Page 37: Stories to Make You Smile -- there’s no debate about who won the popular vote in Rabbit Hash in Kentucky: a 6-month-old dog named Wilbur, a tiny preemie grows into a healthy 4-year-old with Superman by his side 

Page 41: People Picks -- The Flight Attendant 

Page 42: Hillbilly Elegy, Happiest Season, Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, Q&A Lindsey Vonn 

Page 43: Lego Star Wars Holiday Special, People Presents: Once upon a Main Street, Small Axe, One to Watch -- The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two’s Darby Camp 

Page 45: Books 

Page 47: Jewel -- what I know now -- she went from homelessness to pop stardom 25 years ago and now the singer gets candid about healing from her abusive childhood and finding true happiness 

Page 53: At home with The Undertaker -- the (family) man behind the WWE legend -- after 30 years in the ring Mark Calaway reflects on his career and catching up on lost time as a dad 

Page 56: At 51 Julie Loving becomes her daughter’s surrogate -- a mother’s amazing gift -- after years of struggling with infertility Breanna Lockwood thought she’d never have a child and then her mom stepped up and gave birth to a healthy baby girl 

Page 60: John Belushi -- the private world of a comedy legend -- nearly four decades after the groundbreaking actor’s tragic death at age 33 those closest to him open up about the legacy he left behind 

Page 64: Emma Stone and Ryan Reynolds -- kids asked and they answered -- the stars of The Croods: A New Age take questions from their youngest fans 

Page 66: A High School Coach’s Betrayal -- shattered justice -- Emilie Morris told police her former track coach had sexually abused her but charges were dropped when she died; now her family hopes a new TV special will bring fresh attention to the case 

Page 72: Michael B. Jordan is the Sexiest Man Alive -- he’s driven and compassionate and playful and doing more than his fair share to help change the world 

Page 83: Men of the Year -- Chris Evans 

Page 84: Harry Styles 

Page 85: Trevor Noah, Kevin Costner, Maluma, Lakeith Stanfield 

Page 86: Paul Rudd, Steve Kornacki, William Zabka, Ryan Seacrest, Darren Barnet 

Page 87: Brad Pitt, The Weeknd, Paul Mescal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II 

Page 88: Manny Jacinto, Dr. Elvis Francois, Stephen Colbert, Robert Pattinson 

Page 89: John David Washington 

Page 90: Dwayne Johnson, Lucas Bravo, Dr. Anthony Fauci 

Page 91: Pedro Pascal 

Page 92: Chris Rock, Matt Bomer, Penn Badgley, Andrew Cuomo, Justin Bieber, Jonathan Majors 

Page 98: The People Have Spoken -- readers exercised their right to vote by picking their favorites in an online poll 

* Sexiest Star Who Kept Us Smiling -- John Krasinski 

* Sexiest Small-Screen Star -- Jensen Ackles 

* Sexiest Royal -- Prince Harry 

Page 99: Sexiest International Man -- Jeon Jungkook 

* Sexiest New Dad -- Joe Jonas 

* Sexiest Happily Settled Guy -- Ryan Reynolds 

Page 100: Sexiest Sports Star -- Patrick Mahomes 

* Sexiest Social Media Star -- Shawn Mendes 

* Sexiest Brothers -- Liam Hemsworth and Chris Hemsworth

* Sexiest Netflix Heartthrob -- Noah Centineo 

Page 106: Dan Levy -- sexiest man in quarantine -- baking and jigsaw puzzles and so many Zooms: whatever quarantine had to offer the Schitt’s Creek co-creator and star tried it all 

Page 115: Hottest Couples -- these twosomes make being in love look good -- Chrissy Teigen and John Legend, Matthew and Camila McConaughey, Kevin and Eniko Hart, Katherine Schwarzenegger Pratt and Chris Pratt, Zayn Malik and Gigi Hadid, Gabrielle Union and Dwyane Wade, Jennifer Lopez and Alex Rodriguez 

Page 117: The Eyes Have It -- in the era of face masks these men are still able to flaunt their finest feature -- Idris Elba, Bradley Cooper, Jesse Williams, Mark Consuelos, Boris Kodjoe, Henry Golding, Zac Efron, Ian Somerhalder 

Page 120: A Sexy Man’s Best (Instafamous) Friend -- Nick Jonas with Gino Chopra Jonas 

Page 123: Neil Patrick Harris and David Burtka with Gidget and Spike 

Page 124: Harry Connick Jr. with Tuka 

Page 127: Cats Are Instafamous Too -- these felines and their sexy celeb owners prove they’re just as worthy of social media stardom -- Ed Sheeran with Calippo, Bobby Flay with Nacho, Keegan Allen with Tyn, Ricky Gervais with Pickle 

Page 129: Sexy at Every Age 

Page 130: Silver Foxes -- they’ve still got it -- these former cover stars are as smoldering as ever proving sexiness gets better with age -- Richard Gere, Harrison Ford 

Page 131: Pierce Brosnan, Harry Hamlin, Mark Harmon 

Page 132: All Glowed Up -- this group of guys outgrew their sweet baby faces to become dashingly handsome men -- Adam Rippon, Charlie Puth, Josh Peck, Mario Lopez, Michele Morrone, Skylar Astin 

Page 133: Orlando Bloom, Ramy Youssef, Brooklyn Beckham, Hunter Hayes, Wilson Cruz, Chase Stokes, Jordan Fisher 

Page 134: A Change of Scenery -- we’re all sick of staying home so luckily these sizzling guys have found plenty of ways to get things done outdoors -- Paul Wesley goes camping in his yard 

Page 136: Cole Hauser takes a bath 

Page 137: Common gets a shave and a haircut 

Page 138: Edgar Ramirez enjoys coffee and a book 

Page 140: Derek Hough does his laundry 

Page 143: Cutest Baby Alive -- CNN anchor Anderson Cooper’s sweet son Wyatt 

Page 151: Second Look -- Melissa McCarthy in Superintelligence 

Page 152: One Last Thing -- Kate Mara -- the actress stars in the new limited series A Teacher

SpongeGuy Reviews Every Disney Cartoon Ever!: DuckTales (2017) (3.6): “Astro B.O.Y.D!”

Now wait: What’s this, you ask? You’re supposed to do the first episode!

Well, a quick explanation: So this marathon goes faster and becomes easier to keep up with, I’m reviewing episodes when they come out as well (for things like DuckTales, Elena of Avalor, Owl House, ETC.). So that way, we can just get this done faster.

So, without further ado, DUCKTALES! WOO WOO!

DuckTales is the 2017 reboot of the original Ducktales from 1987, one in which our beloved disney ducks get deeper stories and funnier jokes. Yeah, I prefer this to the original (tho I saw only a teensie bit of the original, so that comparision will have to wait) but yeah, I like this show about DUCKS, get used to it!

And this episode is a real gem, so let’s get to it!

SUMMERY:  Huey befriends B.O.Y.D. (Noah Baird) while on a camping trip, but the latter malfunctions. When Huey takes him to the lab, Gyro recognizes B.O.Y.D. and insists that he's dangerous. Due to B.O.Y.D.'s malfunctions however, he begrudgingly takes them to Tokyolk to fix him before he becomes a threat; with Fenton providing protection. After being accosted by Inspector Tezuka (Tamlyn Tomita) and getting separated from Gizmoduck while foiling a robbery, Huey and B.O.Y.D. bond further. However, Gyro's former mentor, Dr. Akita (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), learns of the android's return and takes control of him to get revenge. While fighting Akita, Gyro remembers caring for B.O.Y.D. like a real boy, and discovers that Akita overwrote his programming and forced B.O.Y.D. to become a weapon. With Lil Bulb's help, Gyro beats Akita and reconciles with B.O.Y.D. Now in control of his programming, B.O.Y.D. starts living life for himself, while Gyro promotes Fenton.

COMEDY: 2 Out of 5

Ok, I know this seems bad: I just said this episode was a gem, yet the comedy is only a 2? Well, here’s the thing: It’s not that the comedy is bad. After all, the 2017 Ducktales is famous for having some REALLY awesome jokes (including one of my all time favorites), and in general every episode has a collection of great gags.

But it’s not that the comedy here is bad, it’s that it barely exists. Perhaps I didn’t notice a few jokes, perhaps I’m remembering wrong, but most of the episode if not all is dedicated to the story beats and action sequences, befitting for what is, in essence, a pretty heavy episode. There isn’t much time for humor, and the little there is (Gyro and Dr. Akita’s “epic” fight, Fenton constantly crashing into things, Tezuka being crazy violent, B.O.Y.D insisting on his acronym) are fine jokes, Jokes that aren’t bad in any way, jokes that are pretty good!

But they can only result in a 2 due to the utter lack of them. And this feels wrong, because the rest of the episode is totally perfect, but at least now I can get to praising it. Just remember: The episode wasn’t not funny, it just didn’t try to be. And that’s ok.

CHARACTERS: 5 Out of 5

There are 4 characters here getting a focus episode: Fenton (who was already a fave), Huey, B.O.Y.D, and Gyro. I wanna dedicated a paragraph to each to talk about how Ducktales treats ALL it’s characters with the respect and development they deserve, be it only a little or a whole lot.

Let’s start with Fenton, the focus character with the least to do and change but still with a lot to show. Fenton has four roles in this episode: To tell B.O.Y.D what he should be so that we can understand that’s not ok; to serve as a contrast to B.O.Y.D as the “good” robot; to serve as a reflection of what Gyro was, and what Gyro perhaps should encourage again, and also as a reminder to Gyro of who he was, explaining to us his treatment of Fenton; and finally, as an extra step in Fenton’s journey. In previous focus episodes Fenton wasn’t TOO keen on being Gizmoduck. It started off as an accident, turned into his destiny in “I Am GizmoDuck”, but was still a problem in the Gandra Dee episode. But now in “Astro B.O.Y.D”, Gizmoduck isn’t just a job, or an annoying side habit, it’s a privilige. Seeing Fenton so happy to go superheroing, so enthusiastic to teach someone else the job, in general just so optimistic ater recent episodes had him down on his luck shows how one of the smallest arcs in the show has been staggeringly amazing!

And that’s just Fenton, the smallest of the 4 arcs here! Let’s talk about Huey. This is Huey’s focus season, the one where he will face a challenge that may break him. So far, he hasn’t had TOO many focus episode, as we’re up to 7 and there will be about 25 episodes, but no need to fear, we’ve been slowly getting that arc. Huey has been competitive and driven so far this season, constantly needing to question things around him and constantly being asked about trust. Trust is a key theme here, and Huey falls on the trusting side, something I think he would normally do since it’s Louie’s job to be the skeptic. And it’s no surprise Huey is trusting of B.O.Y.D when they are so familar. Now, there is a reason why I like Huey’s arc in this, but I must say: I am not on the autism spectrum (at least to my knowledge), so I can’t say if this is good representation, if it even is representation. I really can’t. I have seen MANY people say that this was one hell of an autism representation, and if that’s the case, that’s great! But be it autism or not, Huey’s role in the episode as the one person who trusts B.O.Y.D is one any of the triplets would have taken, only thanks to good writing it could ONLY be Huey, since Huey gets what it’s like to be different, which he always was. He was the most mature, the “nerd”, the one who is less likely to cause shenanigans, the one whose always thinking. But what I love about him is that unlike most of these kinds of characters, he can feel too, and it’s not a joke. His compassion and trust for B.O.Y.D are lovely and I wouldn’t be shocked if this episode is instrumental in his arc.

Next we have B.O.Y.D himself (or I guess just Boyd now)! Boyd is the protagonist of sorts, and I really enjoy his role here! Before this episode Boyd was just sort of a cute character we all enjoyed in that one episode with Louie and Goldie. The fandom went wild for him, and soon enough he had his own episode here, and BOY(d) did they deliver! Boyd is a Pinocchio of sorts, wishing only to be a real boy, and to have a friend. He gets one from Huey of course, but his real boy status is the true quest. The great thing about the episode is the way it portrays how we look for validation from others, and how even the people with good intentions in our lives can have bad influences. Fenton tries to help Boyd by making him a superhero, but that’s not who he is. Tezuka wants to stop Boyd because he is dangerous, as does Gyro at first, and Akita wants him to be dangerous, but Boyd doesn’t want any of those things. As Huey points out, only when Boyd was allowed to be himself, a real boy, then nothing went wrong. So often in life people try to pull us in different directions, thinking they know what’s best for us. And while guidence and validation aren’t wrong (after all It’s Gyro’s loving words that save Boyd), it’s Boyd’s decision to be himself that makes him finally happy in the end.

But of course, we can’t speak of this episode without speaking of Gyro Gearloose. Like many who had experienced at least a little DuckTales, I had enough duck knowledge to know that Gyro was a happy go lucky and optimistic inventor, more Fenton than whatever this Gyro was. I wasn’t TOO much of a duck fan to be bothered by this, and I did like some of the jokes it brought, but it DID feel a little weird to see him become a... Well, jerk. But of course, when DuckTales does something there is a reason. Just like Gandra became an actual character and just like Daisy became an actual person, so did Gyro. In fact, this episode deals with the fact that Gyro was once like Fenton: Bright eyes, optimistic, wanting nothing more than to make people happy with his work. Boyd was supposed to be a good boy, Gyro never wanted him to be a weapon. And it’s this little revelation that sheds light on his entire character: Gyro takes shit from no one because when he did he lost everything. Gyro says his inventions are wildly misunderstood because Boyd was. Gyro’s inventions keep going evil exactly because of that: Thinking that he made Boyd evil when it was Akita who changed the robot explains why they keep going wrong now. Gyro’s anger at Fenton is anger at himself, since he fears another mistake (no wonder he didn’t want Fenton to be Gizmoduck). In other words, it ALL makes sense now. And who can blame him? But, like the Gepetto he truly is, Gyro ends up caring for Boyd after all, and seemingly deciding to be less cynical about life. So, in a way, Boyd isn’t the only one that got life.

STORY AND HEART: 5 Out of 5

What I said above is probably good for this as well, so I’m not sure what to say here. I mean, I already talked about how beautiful the story is, how lovely the ideas are. THAT HUG Gyro and Boyd share is wonderful, the setting is fun, the action beats add a lot. I mean, it’s a near perfect DuckTales episode. Not much to say!

I don’t usually do this, but @suspendersofdisbelief​ thank you for gracing us with this masterpiece. I hope I did it justice.

FINAL SCORE: 12 Out of 15

If it wasn’t for the fact that I love Amphibia THAT much, and the fact that I know Ducktales gets EVEN better, this would be number 1! Anyway, next time we finally tackle the new adventures of Winnie the Pooh!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/194d3gsPrhlOsFPYsXU-lJirY4sWncrBl/edit#heading=h.dfyq7ib3oe7s

Occasionally, Dan Levy will pick up his phone and send a text: “Can you believe it?” These messages are sent to Annie Murphy or Noah Reid or Emily Hampshire or Karen Robinson, former inhabitants of Schitt’s Creek, titular town of the series Levy co-created with his identically-browed father, Eugene. What Levy can’t quite believe is that a CBC and Pop network show that aired in the U.S. after reruns of The Young and the Restless became a no-shit international phenomenon and won every major 2020 comedy Emmy from Outstanding Series to Outstanding Contemporary Costumes, plus awards for the show’s four main cast members: Levy, Levy the elder, Murphy, and Catherine O’Hara.

Not that Levy has any qualms about the best thing that’s ever happened to him. Or, more accurately, the best thing he’s ever made happen: In addition to creating, writing, and starring as skeptical scion David Rose on Schitt's Creek, Levy occasionally directed episodes and sourced many of the award-winning costumes. But the endless wretchedness of 2020 is perhaps an inopportune time to publicly garner good fortune.

“What this year has done has opened so many people's eyes to so much of the social unrest that is happening in America and really forced people to learn more,” Levy says, sitting in the bland Toronto apartment the 37-year-old is temporarily renting until he can head back to LA. “Read more. Educate themselves more. Check their privilege more. And yet…” Levy’s magnificent eyebrows unfold from a furrow of probity to an arch of delight, and his mouth into a crooked tilde of a smile. “There are moments when I think it is important for your sense of self to also be OK to say, ‘Something good happened to me this year, and I worked really hard for it.’ And so did a group of really talented people that I love. You're kind of caught in this place where only you can talk about it amongst yourselves.” Levy’s conversations with his co-stars are couched in language familiar to anyone who doesn’t want to give off the vibe of an Instagram caption on a pandemic birthday trip to a private island: "Well, obviously, you know, this is not of much significance" compared to everything else that’s going on. Still, Levy has to acknowledge that, yes, a good thing did happen; after all, he says, “You're talking about breaking records at the Emmys!”

Since he began social distancing, Levy has engaged in something like a fame-offset program, matching his good fortune by taking, publicizing, and raising money for University of Alberta’s online Indigenous Canada course. Levy’s queasiness about his success happening with a 2020 backdrop seems to stem from goodness so pervasive he’s caught himself thinking, Am I going to seem too, like, sincere? (When I ask if he believes he’s a good person, Levy frets, “Is being a good person something you can proclaim? Or is being a good person something that someone has to observe about you?”)

And Schitt’s Creek itself is an oasis of kindness — it doesn’t seem coincidental that after a slow five-season ascent, the show’s viewership exploded in its final year as we quarantined with our own bad thoughts. Levy has said that the arc of the Rose family — a “Balenciaga” to “consignment Balenciaga” to “back to current season Balenciaga” story — is based on the question, “Would the Kardashians still be the Kardashians without their money?” To Levy, the answer is obvious: Yes, and they would be better for it because, he says, “There is a love to that family.” So of course when the Roses lose the fortune amassed from a video rental empire and are forced to move to a Canadian town purchased as a novelty gift, they learn what truly matters.

Levy’s father and collaborator, Eugene, who co-wrote Christopher Guest films Best In Show and A Mighty Wind, says, “There are people who work in the world of comedy where they like to push envelopes in terms of what they can get away with, but that may come at the expense of other people. If it's at all important to you to avoid then you, you know, avoid it.” With the notable exception of programs like The Great British Bake Off — Levy, naturally, used to host the Canadian iteration — it is quite a bit more difficult to be entertaining and kind than entertaining and cruel. But Dan Levy attributes some of Schitt’s Creek’s success to what he calls “a purity to the storytelling and the show that caught people off guard because it was so unexpectedly sincere.” “There was something badass about the fact that it didn't have the kind of edge that people had often equated with cable comedies,” he says.

Making Schitt’s Creek a source of goodness and light was an unrelenting crush for Levy. “How much anger and rage do I have to repress in order to get the light out?” he says, laughing and stroking his elderly dog, Redmond, so vigorously I worry about ginger fur getting on Levy’s David Rose-appropriate black and white JW Anderson T-shirt. “Um, at times a lot.”

When Levy was working on Schitt’s Creek, he was picked up every morning at 5 a.m. and driven to set, where he would rehearse and rewrite scenes. Next was making decisions about sets and wardrobe fittings for cast members like O’Hara. Moira Rose, the actor mother of Levy’s character with a grandeur as flamboyant as her choice of syllable emphasis, might have to go to meet someone who makes her feel exposed. Levy would supervise an outfit selection that functioned as a billboard for her emotional state. “How do you express vulnerability?” Levy asks. “Well, you put more clothes on, and more aggressive clothes on, so as to armor yourself.” Levy needed to approve budgets, which didn’t increase even as the show gained more attention. He would act and sometimes direct, and then be back in wardrobe picking out the right statement necklaces for O’Hara to wear to buy a used car.

After filming ended, Levy went to the writers’ room to work for a couple more hours. He’d get home at 8 p.m., quickly eat dinner, and write until 2 a.m. on some nights. Then he’d sleep for two hours and get in the car to go back to work at 5 a.m. When shooting wrapped for the year, Levy went into post-production, spending months in windowless rooms. Once a season was finally completed, preparation would begin for the next one. Levy charged himself with making sure every detail connected to each other and tracked with the personal histories he and Eugene had written for each character before the series began. Eugene can remember only one deviation from those bios during the entire run of the show. Originally, the father of motel employee Stevie had been a roadie for Fleetwood Mac before receiving a restraining order from the band; the detail was later transferred to the father of diner waitress Twyla, who was played by Levy’s sister, Sarah. Several times during the run of the series, Levy developed anxiety so literally paralyzing that his neck would seize up, forcing him to wear a brace and receive chiropractic treatments between scenes.

“Through every phase of Schitt's Creek,” Eugene says, “Dan had a very strong sense as to what it was he wanted the show to look like and what he wanted it to sound like and what the tone of the show was going to be and what the message of the show would be. He certainly makes himself responsible to make these things happen. He doesn't go with the flow at all.”

Total control let Levy create a perfectly realized world, from the menu size in the Café Tropical to the caws in Moira’s comeback film The Crows Have Eyes III: The Crowening. But it’s perhaps not the healthiest arrangement when the confines of quarantine feel normal to you. “Over the past six years,” Levy says, “I really haven't been outside that much.”

When he was a boy, Levy became so anxious that he did not want to attend birthday parties. He did not want to go to summer camp. He did not, in fact, want to engage in any social situations. Levy’s anxiety physically manifested as iritis, an inflammation of the eye which doctors feared would eventually take his vision. It was as if the anxiety that drove Levy indoors had then decided to draw all the curtains.

“I think that came from a deep-rooted fear of knowing that I was gay and not being able to be free,” Levy says now. “By the time I got to high school, when your brain is starting to catch up to your physical impulses, it led to a very confusing time. Because on the one hand, you are now being introduced to things like self-awareness and anxiety. At the same time, you’re becoming more and more savvy when it comes to hiding it.”

The escape was theater. Levy began writing, directing, and performing in school plays, including a student-run stage adaptation of Clue produced during a teacher’s strike. “I was starting to develop a sense of confidence by way of being able to entertain people,” Levy says. “It was like a decoy version of myself that I was putting out there to not have to live with the reality that when the bullying was happening — if someone was calling me a f----t or whatever it was — they were speaking the truth.” What a cursed blessing to discover you have a gift but to understand it as a distraction from who you really are and not as a true part of yourself. No wonder that Levy says of creating a persona — naturally, in the self-distancing second person — “Your sense of self gets chipped away. You lose sight of your own value.”

Levy had a ticker of fears scrolling through his mind broadcasting what might happen if people knew who he really was: “Fear of being ridiculed. Fear of being othered. Fear of exposing something that I think a lot of high school students at the time didn't have the tools to process properly, to make it comfortable for me.”

Then, when he was 18, Levy came out. Actually, his mother, Deborah Divine, invited Levy to come out, over lunch. Levy accepted, and was accepted in return. It was one version of an inflection point that Levy has explored in some of his most impactful work. In Happiest Season, Hulu’s lesbian Christmas rom-com, Levy delivers the film’s high point in a monologue; filmmaker Clea DuVall tells me, “I cried during every take.”

“Everybody’s story is different,” Levy’s John says to Kristen Stewart’s Abby, who is planning to propose to a woman whose family doesn’t know she’s queer. “But the one thing that all of those stories have in common is that moment right before you say those words, when your heart is racing and you don’t know what’s coming next,” John goes on. “That moment’s really terrifying. And then once you say those words, you can’t unsay them. A chapter has ended and a new one’s begun, and you have to be ready for that.”

On the Schitt’s Creek episode “Meet the Parents,” David’s future in-laws discover their son Patrick is gay before he can come out to them. “Did we do something wrong, David?” Patrick’s father asks, inadvertently head-faking homophobia before saying, “The thought that Patrick was feeling like he couldn't come and talk to us about this…”

Obviously not everyone who comes out gets the response they’re hoping for. But like Patrick, Levy had a happy ending sitting in front of him: accepting and caring parents wondering when their son was going to tell them he was gay and trying to respect his timeline for doing so. When I ask Eugene if it’s painful knowing that he could have potentially alleviated the anxiety Levy was feeling by approaching him sooner, he concurs. “I would have done things so much differently, you know?” Eugene says slowly. “I would have gotten more involved in talking about what was going on.” But he doesn’t know that it would have changed anything — after all, the flow goes with Levy. “Not necessarily that we would have gotten any direct answers,” Eugene says. “You can only get back what you get back.” (Levy confirms he was not ready to discuss his sexuality before he was; despite his parents’ openness and love, he had created Schrödinger’s Eugene and Deb in his head, simultaneously welcoming him and rejecting him at the news.)

Newly out, Levy went to college and began dating. However, he says, “I was not in any place to be of great value in a relationship.” Like David Rose, Levy’s pitch tends to ascend on the back half of sentences, making him sound like he’s interrogating his own thought process. “You then get into these habits where you're dating people who are totally wrong for you because they're seeking out people who are a bit damaged,” Levy says, “and you're seeking out people who have one foot out the door so that you don't actually give yourself over in any kind of way.” (After I mention that while watching Happiest Season, I wanted Stewart’s character to dump her semi-emotionally damaging girlfriend and leave with Levy, he says, “In this conversation, I'm brought back to many a relationship [where] ‘RUN’ was just, like, the subtitle flashing for about a year and a half of my life.”)

Dating, then, became another way to keep people out. “I really got to a point where I felt like if I didn't make an active choice to pull myself out of this shell that was becoming such a comfort,” Levy says, “I would not be the adult that I want to be.” He spent a summer in England, answering phones at the ICM talent agency as exposure therapy for speaking, unscripted, to strangers. A month and a half later, he auditioned to be a host on MTV Canada. Levy says it was “the ultimate exercise in pushing myself and getting myself out there. If I could get a job on television asking other people questions — which had previously been on the top five things that I would never want to do — this could be the final kind of exercise in changing myself for the better.”

Like Levy’s high school theater work, his success as a host was a gnarled little monkey’s paw of unfortunate wish fulfillment. He was charismatic on screen and became famous enough to travel to New York on the weekends and get into the clubs he wanted to get into. Levy also pioneered the now-prevalent televised after-show with his The Hills discussion series, which exists in the same tonal universe as Schitt’s Creek: sharp enough to make you feel smart for laughing at it, but warm enough that Lauren Conrad herself was a guest.

But much of the work felt limiting. The questions he had to ask celebrities were pre-negotiated with publicists and written by producers — as Levy notes, “No one wants to sit down with someone from MTV Canada and have a revelatory chat about life.” One of his last appearances before quitting was the MTV Movie Awards red carpet. “You could see a kind of judgment in the people you're interviewing,” he says. “They're not rolling their eyes, but you can feel them thinking about rolling their eyes. And I know that a lot of the times they were questions I didn't necessarily want to be asked if I were in that situation.” Pretending to be the version of himself he thought people would accept, Levy says, “kind of just didn't feel worth it anymore.”

You know the next part. Levy realized he could keep the traits people had responded to when he performed — his charisma, his humor — add sincerity, and still be compelling. He spent half a decade grinding out something that was truly of himself. And through Schitt’s Creek Levy became, his father points out, “one of the top showrunners in the entertainment business right now.” Eugene says, “After the [Emmys] broadcast I think there were probably some executives who — if they even remember us going in to pitch the show — are probably kicking themselves.”

Based on what he does next, Levy is now in the unique position of being able to calibrate how famous he becomes. It’s evening in Toronto, and Levy mulls the question over what simply cannot be good wine; when I ask what kind it is, he says, “Red?” Levy knows he could choose to stay behind the scenes and work on the ABC Studios projects he has in development. But Levy is also in the early stages of a romantic comedy he would star in. He worries that he wouldn’t be able to handle uber-fame with the aplomb his co-star Kristen Stewart does. When they went out to a dive bar while filming in Pittsburgh, he says, “I was just so kind of in awe of her confidence and comfort in herself. She's so at ease — [I say that] as someone who I think will always be on their journey to have that for myself.”

“Dan’s assessment is actually incorrect,” Stewart says later. “But what I have done is try to keep that experience [of fame] fairly insular, not make other people I’m with take on the weight of my own self-consciousness — or, God forbid, have someone think I’m up my own ass and loving the attention. It’s easier for me to pretend [people noticing me] is not happening, even though on the inside I still feel like the world is a big school yard of giggling onlookers. Are they laughing at me? Yes, no… Who cares.”

If Levy ever does find himself in the position of being Stewart-famous, she thinks he’ll be fine. “What I did notice was how absolutely wonderful Dan is with everyone,” she says. “He is so loving and gracious towards people that recognize him. The positive force he puts out into the world is clearly reflected in how people come back at him.”

What Levy is putting out into the world next: “I would like to date more,” he says, shoulders bashfully rising ceilingward. “Circumstance plays such a huge part in what we accept for ourselves. When you're doing something that you love it’s like, ‘I have a full plate.’ Even though [Schitt’s Creek was] super intense and even though at times I need a neck brace, it was never not inspiring, and it was never not thrilling and exciting and totally satisfying. So to [want to] make space for someone else…in a way, it is the ultimate filter. You’re basically saying, do I want to carve out the space in an already full and fulfilled life for this person? And a lot of the time, the answer is no. But it only makes it that much better when the right person comes along.”

For now, Levy’s plate is full of his multiple simultaneous projects. (He says there are more than three but few enough that you could count them on both hands, though he doesn’t want to talk about them in detail until there’s actually something to talk about — if Levy follows the Schitt’s Creek model, he jokes, he’ll “get five seasons on television before anybody sees them.”) Before he begins writing, Levy must make sure his entire house is immaculate. Even today, months after the series finale of Schitt’s Creek aired, Levy is negotiating the length of the “fuck”-blocking bleeps of syndication. But as we have all learned this year, not everything is under our control, even if we are Dan Levy. Stewart remembers him panicking as he tried to decorate a new home and realized none of the furniture he bought made any sense together. “The idea of him left and right showrunning and developing and acting and writing — and then his sweater closet confounding him — was very cute,” she says.

A certain amount of acceptance will be useful as Levy figures out how to follow up a beloved hit show. “The goal was to make sure that the first season was exactly what we wanted it to be,” Levy says of his Schitt’s Creek thought process. “To use the resources that we have as best as we can to get that season out there, so that we can go to sleep at night knowing that if people don't respond to it and it gets pulled off the air, there was nothing more we could have done.” Levy leans forward with a sincerity he’d surely second-guess if he were writing this scene and explains the daunting task of living up to yourself. “That’s the goal of anything I'm gonna do from here on out. It's just, try and do the best job you can. Try to make sure that you're loving it.”

Doctor Who: What Makes a Great One-Off Character?

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Some Doctor Who characters are intended for greatness; some are intended to be killed off at the end of their first episode. Writers have a lot more control over the second than the first. What remains true for all characters, is the tension that exists between their function in the story and their potential to affect it. Even a guard who simply runs into a room to get shot could have dragged the story in another direction, should they be allowed (this stock background character was the inspiration for Terry Pratchett’s City Watch novels).

Successful one-off characters aren’t necessarily those who break away from their function, (or even those who aren’t strictly required, for example Binro the Heretic in ‘The Ribos Operation’), but those who make a story soar to another level entirely. More often, what makes them work is when their function in the story is disguised. There are plenty of ways to do this and most of them intersect: casting, costume, dialogue, performance…

Let’s first address the latter. Does the actor need to get under the skin of the character to create a nuanced and layered take that resonates utterly with the audience?

Nope. Doctor Who frequently embraces camp. Sometimes camp holds Doctor Who at gunpoint and sings piano ballads at it. The results vary. Richard Briers’ possessed Chief Caretaker in ‘Paradise Towers’ undermines the production (while not a production striving for kitchen sink realism, Briers’ parody-like performance still cuts against its Brechtian leanings) whereas Graham Crowden’s Soldeed is heightened and ridiculous among similar performances.

Other great examples of this stock character, which I am calling Ham-Err Horror without apology, include Professor Zaroff in ‘The Underwater Menace’ (intended to be driven mad by the death of his family, only for this to be cut from the script, rendering the character inexplicably inexplicable) and John Lumic from ‘Rise of the Cybermen’ (inspired to create the Cybermen by a fear of death, with actor Roger Lloyd-Pack citing Dick Cheney as an inspiration for the performance, but remembered mainly for the ripe delivery of lines such as ‘And how will you do that from beyond the grave?’).

Sometimes you don’t even need dialogue. Christopher Bowen, as Mordred in ‘Battlefield’, commits to a maniacal laugh so long that there’s a cut to another scene in the middle of it.

And yet there are places where camp or over-the-top villains work unironically, and some of the most hospitable are the Tom Baker stories of 1975-1977. Harrison Chase, Magnus Greel, Morbius, the Master… these characters fit into the Grand Guignol tradition of heightened and melodramatic performances (Just because something is dark and morbid doesn’t stop it being ludicrously tragic). As the tone of these stories is pitched at gothic melodrama though, the characters and setting cohere.

Returning to ‘Battlefield’, while there are some great individual performances from one-off characters, they’re not quite pulling in the same direction (Jean Marsh as Morgaine is playing an inter-dimensional sorceress as if it’s real, Marcus Gilbert as Ancelyn is saying ‘This is ridiculous, and that’s great’ and pulling along Angela Bruce’s Bambera in that direction too). ‘Battlefield’ is fun, but also disjointed.

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Some characters get by on the strength of costume or make-up, such as the Destroyer (also from ‘Battlefield’) or the Zygons. Broton, the latter’s leader, is a successful character who operates purely as a function rather than an individual. Played with haughty relish by John Woodnutt, Broton is a visual triumph, with the costume a collaboration between costume designer Jim Acheson, visual effects designer John Friedlander and director Douglas Camfield. At its best, ‘Terror of the Zygons’ oozes with tension and atmosphere, with some fantastic design work and enjoyable pulp runaround. This all distracts the viewer from Broton being a colossal idiot. Indulging in clichés such as explaining his entire plot, putting characters in easily escapable situations and assuming the Doctor is dead without proof, Broton has to do these for the story to unfold according to Doctor Who’s format. Fortunately few people watch ‘Terror of the Zygons’ for Broton’s unique take on planetary subjugation.

Some clichés exist specifically because that character has worked well in previous stories. Frequently in Doctor Who somebody would sacrifice themselves to save the day, someone else would comment on this, and everybody would look solemn for a few seconds before immediately moving on with their lives. ‘The Ark in Space’ features two people sacrificing themselves to save humanity, one with a quip about his union and the other fighting possession, and in 1975, a single line noting these acts was enough.

In 2005, TV had changed, and so Doctor Who threw more weight behind these deaths (boosted by Russell T. Davies’ seemingly effortless ability to generate a whole human life by adding three adjectives per character to the scripts). Jabe in ‘The End of the World’, Gwyneth in ‘An Unquiet Dead’, Pete Tyler in ‘Father’s Day’… these sacrifices were dwelt on, their weight became cumulative. From this, a subgenre of Almost Companions emerged with Lynda in ‘The Parting of the Ways’, Astrid in ‘Voyage of the Damned’ and Rita in ‘The God Complex’: all too doomed to step on board. Eventually the show acknowledged this with the Eleventh Doctor standing over the body of Lorna Bucket and observing “They’re always brave.”

Doctor Who was commentating on itself as early as its second series (in ‘The Rescue’ David Whittaker created Koquillion, a monster in a rubber suit that turned out to actually be a man in a rubber monster costume). In the 1980s, Doctor Who had become increasingly continuity-heavy, but what its final few series managed successfully was to comment on Doctor Who without making the stories’ success dependent on this. Characters such as Captain Cook offer up twisted reflections of the Doctor, with the Chief Clown, Josiah Samuel Smith and Commander Millington all tapping into the historical influences on the show, but crucially the stories still work if you’re not familiar with all this.

‘Ghostlight’, the most densely packed version of this approach,is still entertaining even if you don’t know what is going on. It’s played with such conviction and unity, with each character managing to feel both heavily symbolic but with a sense of inner-life. This is generally true of the Seventh Doctor’s era supporting characters, especially the guy who snaps “I can’t do anything without my list now can I?” in ‘The Happiness Patrol’.

But as we’ve seen, a standout character doesn’t have to be multi-faceted. Not every henchman can be Packer from ‘The Invasion’ (he’s not only sadistic and cruel, but Peter Halliday really commits to the undignified flapping when things go wrong), but most stock characters in Doctor Who work by being given ‘a bit’.

Usually this stems from their plot function. Harrison Chase, in ‘The Seeds of Doom’ is a plant collector and obsessive because the story is based around aggressive plant-creatures, and needs a simple way to bring the main human antagonist into the adventure. Here though it’s more than that. Lesser examples of this trick can be seen with Tarun Capel in ‘Robots of Death’, where his obsession with robots isn’t as unsettling as Chase’s obsession with plants (and then further down the line we have Magnus Greel in ‘Talons of Weng-Chieng’, who is evil because the story needs a bad guy). In ‘Seeds of Doom’, time is devoted to the idea of a man who considers plant life superior to humanity, and the script and actor Tony Beckley really commit to the comedy and horror of this idea. That’s his ‘bit’.

Perhaps the finest example of turning a character’s basic function into pure entertainment is Duggan in ‘City of Death’. Douglas Adams and Graham Williams, rewriting David Fisher’s scripts about aliens in Monte Carlo, took a Bulldog Drummond-inspired detective character and realised his primary function in the script was to be the muscle for the Doctor and Romana.

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There are other elements of of ‘City of Death’ that poke fun at television’s contrivances (The guard’s throwaway line saying Captain Tancredi will “be here instantly” just before the door opens, for example) and Duggan’s repeatedly punching people unconscious to move the plot along is not only revealed to be an example of Chekhov’s Gun, whereby it’s the solution to the whole story, but also the source of the best sight gag in Doctor Who when Duggan opens a wine bottle by simply smashing it open off the bar. Without providing him with much in the way of depth or backstory, by leaning into the character’s story function to almost absurd levels, ‘City of Death’ creates one of the most memorable supporting characters in Doctor Who history.

The post Doctor Who: What Makes a Great One-Off Character? appeared first on Den of Geek.

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ESSAY: How Junji Ito Exaggerated Real-World Fears to Become a True Horror Master

  I love horror. In all of its forms. Stephen King books and zombie-filled video games. Anthology TV shows and comic book adaptations. Meta, irreverent, comedy-driven slashers and arthouse foreign subtitled films. It's all wonderful and it's all for me. There are many fantastic horror and horror-adjacent titles in anime. Even genres that aren't exactly horror-driven can provide some legitimate "nightmare fuel" moments from time to time. But if there's one name that most anime fans think of when they think of horror, it's Junji Ito. Oh, and it also happens to be Junji Ito's birthday! To celebrate, let's take a look at what makes this horror master's work so horrific.

For horror movie watchers that are actually affected by the content (as opposed to just being bored or whatever) experts believe the fight or flight response is activated, resulting in one of two scenarios. Around 10 percent of those watching should feel some sense of relief — causing an association between horror and positive emotions. However, some struggle to reconcile the knowledge that what they are watching is fake with the psychological aspects of horror and will have nothing but negative emotions toward the genre.

    Why the science lesson? Because I mostly fit into that 10 percent camp. I do not have any negative emotions toward horror, quite the opposite. I can watch a scary movie and laugh. The horror family is my happy place. This is not to say that I live without fear. I'm actually quite a scaredy-cat in most situations. I'm pretty germaphobic. I'm terrified of airplanes. I once called 9-1-1 because I used to live in a rather dangerous neighborhood and a weird combination of a ceiling fan and my then-toddler son's new nightlight made some unfortunately humanoid shadows on the window (we had actually had strangers come up and tap on the windows late at night before, so this wasn't totally paranoid). And yet, there have only ever been two horror offerings that genuinely scared me: Final Destination and the Junji Ito Collection.

  Final Destination might be a pretty obvious choice. You might outrun Mr. Ghostface (and the odds ever meeting him are slim in the first place) but you can't outrun death itself  (and the odds of meeting death, well). And, hey, I was pretty young when that one came out. That makes sense. Even if the over-the-top scenes aren't very likely to actually happen (death by tea kettle, anyone?) the overarching theme, that death is inescapable, is an indisputable fact.

    So what is it about Junji Ito's work that has this same effect on me? Unless we suddenly find ourselves in some weird parallel universe, I'm never going to turn into a slug girl. Peeping toms will never have multiple rows of eyes up and down their faces. But bugs are real. Peeping toms are real (remember my dumb but very justified 9-1-1 story?). And Junji Ito knows this. He feels it. And he knows that by simply adding an extra layer of macabre (or in this case, a few extra rows of eyes) he's amplifying what makes a scenario scary.

That's the other thing that sets Junji Ito's work apart from your standard horror fare — he genuinely fears his own creations. He has been very open about his personal fears in interviews, growing up scared of everything from war to bugs — very real things that incite fear in many people for a variety of reasons. But Junji Ito goes beyond everyday fears. Along with being a great big scaredy-cat himself, he's also very curious (you know what they say about cats and curiosity). The manga creator admits that his curiosity often gets away from him, causing him to find the morbidity in everyday situations.

    Junji Ito's morbid curiosity is most readily apparent in his iconic artwork. His art is messy, beautiful, disturbing, and fascinating — it's all the dark and light aspects of life rolled into one emotional package. It's body horror, not the gross kind you can't stand to look at but the intriguing kind you can't take your eyes off of — while being deeply disturbed by it the entire time, anyway. There's a reason that sharp-toothed cannibal made it as a successful supermodel, after all. In the end, that's what makes Junji Ito's work so effective, he takes real-world terror and exaggerates it. It's a perfect marriage of realistic threats and imaginative fantasies — so, there's something for everyone to be afraid of! Lots of people are scared of weirdos harassing them, imagine if your neighbor constantly interrupted your sleep every night even after you told them to stop. Now imagine that neighbor's window kept bulging out of their house, growing steadily closer to your own. (In the horror community the first time that window gets even a centimeter closer to yours is known as the, "Yo, you should move out of that house" moment.)

    Or, take "Gentle Goodbye" and its message of loss and the march of time. Everyone wants some kind of legacy. We all want to leave our mark. And most of us are not prepared to lose those that we love when the time comes. You would think having the ability to slowly say goodbye to your dead relatives over a long period of time would be a good thing. You can prepare for the inevitable. You can face death on your terms, more or less. But ultimately, the after images in "Gentle Goodbye" lose their charm. The still-living family members grow accustomed to their presence until the after images become afterthoughts. That's the real terror in this particular story, that we might be more forgettable than we hope. And that's the kind of thing Junji Ito is especially good at — getting to the core of what makes us afraid and why. And then taking that core and tugging and pulling at it until it becomes a bizarre, alternate-dimension version of what you thought you knew. Lots of people fear school violence and bullies, not so many people are worried about a weirdo kid with a love of voodoo. But again, this is what makes Souichi Tsujii such a compelling character. He taps into both real-world and otherworldly terrors in one conveniently horrifying package.

That's why I love this anthology so much. And it's why today I celebrate such an effective horror creator. Happy birthday, Junji Ito. Have yourself a big, ol' piece of haunted Spiral Cake. You've earned it.

        What’s your favorite scary movie? Let me know in the comments!

          Carolyn is the Crunchyroll Features Editor. She's also on Twitter and Instagram. Follow her maybe?

  Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

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Bob’s Burgers most reliable holiday  provides another lowkey enjoyable, but messy episode. Whereas the latest Simpsons strikes a really sore vocal node.

The second holiday episode of Bob’s Burgers’ 11th season, much like the previous Halloween episode, this one also fails to live up to the series’ even higher Thanksgiving standard

 That’s not to say “Diarrhea of a Poopy Kid” is not a good episode, but it does fall into the category of Bob’s Burgers episode I typically respond to the least: Character-based storytelling vignettes. The writing on these segment driven episodes tend to be looser and  playful bending the show’s reality, but much like every time the other Fox family leaves the Springfield plane of reality into a pastiche styled playground for the writers to plug the characters into.

The overall animation and visual-based gags on this episode offers some of the best moments of the season and series in general. Having the Belcher stories revolve around action movie pastiches of 90’s action movie schlock like Air Force Once, Armageddon, and late 80’s Predator  are extremely punny and really grasping hard for satire. The walk to Louise’s Breadator is succinct and makes total sense for Louise’s character to tell this kind of story, whereas Tina drawing inspiration from Air Force One for her story sags the episode down. This episode also has the gall to bring in Gayle, a character that usually elevates all of her episodes nothing much to do until the third and best segment told by Bob. Teddie is also frustratingly nowhere to be seen and Teddie is one of those characters that really only needs a small scene explaining away  his absence like in the episode “Gayle Makin’ Bob Sled,” which Variety and I consider to be among the best of Bob’s Thanksgiving episodes. 

Nitpicks and reminiscing on past glories aside, what’s most impressive about an episode as conceptual and overstuffed as this one, an episode that’s also poopy and gross-out from the very beginning, still manages to pack undeniable heart. Seeing a character as relatable and sad sack-y as Bob Belcher be passionate about his one favorite holiday reminds me of the everlasting and evergreen Ray Bradbury remark about how everyone is capable of writing poetry as long as you ask them to talk about something they are truly passionate about. Seeing how this episode climax revolves around Gene and Bob’s love of food and proves a powerful sentimental moment. Bob’s Burgers sentimentality works because the show’s core is silly absurdism, light and fluffy gross out gags and quirky twee-ness. Introducing the action movie element feels like the series trying to branch out its audience and try to catch some eyeballs of viewers looking for something more like Archer, American Dad, Rick and Morty, or even Treehouse of Horror style genre exercises.  Bob’s Burgers and action comedy feels like putting garlic pesto on cinnamon toast, but Ryan Reynolds doesn’t think so.

Yes, that’s right. The biggest news out of the Bob’s Burgers camp…probably ever…is that the Molyneux sisters, the writers of this very action packed episode, have been hand selected by Mr. Detective “VanWilder” Pickachu himself to be head writers on the upcoming third Deadpool movie. Seeing that we live in a post Russo brothers world and how Dan Harmon was conscripted to punch up Doctor Strange scripts none of this should really surprise me, but I am still very much surprised by this development. The Deadpool 3 creative team and Reynolds is still promising to deliver an R-Rated Comedy, a rating and promise that is very much why Deadpool is the sensation that it is. 

In the current media landscape the only way a big budget R-Rated comedy can get made is if it’s attached to something like a mega superhero sized brand. At this point in time Deadpool is the closest thing kids have to a Mel or Al Brooks and it is what it is. If anything Ryan Reynolds personally choosing the Molyneux sisters for a project like this makes me like Ryan Reynolds a little bit more. And he’s a man I previously had no real feelings or opinions about. The only other thing about Deadpool I know about is that the franchise has developed a particularly shitty reputation in terms of its treatment of main female characters and literally freezing them out of the plot. The future of comedy is being driven by the significant increase of women gaining these kind of writing gigs and it’s a beautiful thing to finally see witness. Especially when a company like Netflix has been really shitty to both of its own female driven comedies: Glow and Tucca and Bertie.

Sigh. I am thankful for all the sad little boys and girls wearing too much or maybe the right amount of eye shadow that will inherit this flaming Earth.

Three and half pear shaped pals out of an Oedipus Rex Complex. 

////

Nerds! Nothing but a lousy rotten sniveling dweeb! You dorkus-rex! You body pillow huffing geek get over here and let the Simpsons set some things straight for you: A Comic Book Guy driven episode of the Simpsons is often where the show goes off the rails. The Comic Book Guy marriage episode is was one of those late day Simpsons that feel like a bad piece of dreamed up fan fiction that you found on the cutting room floor. Is the show interested at all with the fact that comics and being nerdy have become as mainstream as the Bible? No? They’re still treating geek culture as some sort of low hanging piñata fruit lousy with cheap references in place of actual jokes? Good! I don’t know why I would ever allow myself to think for a second that the Simpsons would challenge its own status quo 32 seasons in, but I keep coming back. 

What I should really do is back up. The title of this episode is “Three Dreams Denied.” Ah, Dream Denial! That’s exactly what anyone watching an animated sitcom hopes for: dreams being crushed. This isn’t some kiddy Davy and Goliath feel good wholesome fable, this is the Simpsons where characters are given dreams, and those dreams get denied. The next part of the title I want to break down is the fact that there are specifically three dreams that being denied. Three! That’s a comedy number! As long as you have three of anything you’re doing comedy. Plain and simple.

During the Robert Zemeicks arc of the Blank Check podcast Griffin Newman, co-host and comedian extraordinaire and someone I generally admire a lot, has been bringing up the fact that he’s been spending a lot of his Quarantine rewatching the entirety of the Simpsons. By the episode of Used Cars Newman has already gotten past the Movie era and is in the 20th seasons. One observation he made about later day Simpsons is that these episodes have a tendency to end abruptly on a pile of unusable and reality bending plots still in the process of tying themselves up. And there’s no better/worse example of this than this episode. 

Comic Book Guy goes to a comic book convention. Bart becomes a voice actor after befriending the comic book guy’s temporary replacement. Lisa feuds over her saxophone chair in the school orchestra with a new pretty boy voiced by the underwhelming Ben Platt. One of these plots is not like the other. This used to be the signature of a quality Simpsons episode that managed to tweak and divert expectations from the typical A & B sitcom storylines. This episode fundamentally fails to deliver on any of the three storylines and what makes it worse is that it’s an intentional choice. 

Now I know I have spent this review harping on Comic Book Guy, but he’s not even why this episode for me is such an abomination. And it’s not because the cutesy, flimsy Lisa subplot either (although I do find it noxiously amusing that a week after an Yeardely Smith took issue with the Queer Interpretation of Lisa would feature her going moony eyed over a boy voiced by a defiantly queer actor), no, what tips this episode into the territory of the truly terrible for me is the Bart becomes a voice actor subplot. 

The only defining quality of season 32 that I can discern is that the flagrant trolling on behalf of the writers. Can you believe we had three vignette driven episodes of the Simpsons in a row? Can you believe we would have meta reality breaking voice actor related moments back to back? When Lisa Simpson’s voice actor Yeardley Smith voiced the real world character of herself in the previous Podcast based episode it was clumsy and awkward as hell. Having Bart become a voice actor that ends up voicing a character of the opposite gender is the sort of kind of a funny thing that resembles a joke that the latter day Simpsons revel in. The characterization of voice acting work in this episode is downright insulting and explains exactly why this show suffers. 

The character of Phil that serves as the Comic Book Guy’s replacement is a working voice actor. He let’s Bart know this by doing a series of completely basic, broad and unremarkable impersonations that Bart is seemingly impressed by. All you have to do to become a successful voice actor is do a silly voice and you’re golden. Maybe from the perspective of a series as lazy and indulgent as the Simpsons is when it comes to voice acting. The complete denial of Julie Kavner’s deteriorating voice that at this point sounds like gentle elder abuse. There are times when Kavner is downright incomprehensible at times. The other oldest member of the Simpsons voice talent, Harry Shearer was wrongheadedly trying to defend his right to voice Characters of Colors because  in his words, “the job of the voice actor is to play someone who they’re not.” Obviously these words were not spoken by someone that thinks very highly of acting either. There is no one job an actor has to do, because the job  of an actor is always changing from job to job. The character of Phil is not even attributed to anyone! I have spent over thirty minutes getting testy with IMDB search engines and reading another website’s recap and no one can tell me who did the voice of the Voice Acting Character on Simpsons. Lovely.

Much like the Comic Book Guy the Simpsons heart is in bad shape. This is a show whose entire existence seems to be made out of spite. Or to garner enough funds for Matt Groening to prevent him from ever having to serve any prison time for his exploits on the Lolita express. Great, see I’m bringing up the Lolita Express at the end of a Simpsons review. This episode really left me in a bad mood, but thankfully that’s what Bob’s Burgers is for. 

SKIP. The only people that should watch this are people teaching a screenwriting class that need examples of what happens when you break your episode by haphazardly shoving three plots into one episode. If you can’t tie up one story in a satisfying manner then you really shouldn’t be telling a story at all. There’s also one really magnificent visual joke involving Homer and beer tea that is absolutely wasted on this episode.

Pure Verhoeven.

Writer and director Jeffrey McHale talks to Dominic Corry about his new documentary You Don’t Nomi—an examination of the cult surrounding Paul Verhoeven’s 1995 “masterpiece of shit”, Showgirls—and recommends a few campy sequels to watch afterwards.

Few films have enjoyed as interesting a post-release existence as Paul Verhoeven’s 1995 film Showgirls. A classic “blank check” movie—that is, a film made with unnatural freedom thanks to a director’s prior success—Verhoeven and controversial screenwriter Joe Eszterhas attempted to build on the success of their 1992 smash Basic Instinct by upping the on-screen sauce in a riff on All About Eve, set in the “high-stakes” world of Las Vegas striptease.

Elizabeth Berkley, at the time still defined by her performance as the (mostly) virtuous Jessie in the Saturday-morning teen sitcom Saved By The Bell, led the film as Nomi Malone, a young woman who arrives in Vegas, gets work stripping in a low-rent club, then ascends to the sought-after position of lead showgirl in a big casino’s “classy” choreographed striptease show, replacing the previous star Cristal Conners (Gina Gershon).

Proudly sporting the otherwise box-office-neutering NC17 rating, Showgirls was marketed as a serious adult drama about ambition and the price of success. It was not received as such, instead met with huge amounts of ridicule by audiences and critics alike. Pick a Letterboxd review at random, and you get, for example, “Beautiful direction, so if you put it on mute, it’d probably be great. But nearly every actor is sorely miscast and the script is the hottest garbage.”

Poor Berkley received a lot of the blame, and although she continued to work, the venomous (and often misogynistic) critiques hindered her career as a big-screen leading lady.

Then something funny happened—the film was re-evaluated as a camp classic, driven largely by the queer community, who embraced its over-the-top ridiculousness. The cult has grown considerably over the years, expanding into midnight screenings and even live stage adaptations. Subsequent DVD releases have leaned into the perception by offering commentary tracks that acknowledge the movie’s glorious failings.

Showgirls’ continued presence in the culture has even seen it experience something of an artistic redemption. Its perception is now well beyond that of being simply a camp classic that is so fun because it’s so bad—it’s a genuine cultural touchstone that tells us a lot about how audiences judge films featuring overt sexuality. Indeed, among the many ironies associated with the film is that it was partially designed to highlight American sexual hypocrisy, then failed spectacularly in a manner that effectively highlighted American sexual hypocrisy.

Kyle MacLachlan and Elizabeth Berkley in ‘Showgirls’.

A brief survey of Letterboxd reviews finds plenty of fans. In a half-star review alongside the exhortation to “please for the love of God watch Showgirls”, Letterboxd member Jesse writes: “There shouldn’t be any shame in liking something you know is bad, I don’t have to try and re-codify Showgirls as a secretly good classic just because of how amazing it is. It truly deserves its cult following.” Jesse makes particular mention of the infamous swimming pool sequence, a scene “so unsexy… that it achieves camp euphoria, a pure moment of enlightened cheese that needs to be seen to be believed”.

“‘So bad it’s good’ it may be for some but I happen to be among the camp that thinks Showgirls is genuine good: a misunderstood work brimming with brilliance,” writes Jaime Rebenal, while Matt Lynch argues that it’s often mistaken for “a satire of American greed and attendant dreams of stardom, when its true target is the apparatus that sells those dreams to an endlessly returning audience of narcissistic suckers.”

Or, as Joe puts it, “The Rosetta Stone for understanding this entire movie (if not life itself) is the shot of Elizabeth Berkley angrily slamming a ketchup bottle on the table and causing a bright red stream of ketchup to come flying out.”

Jeffrey McHale’s ridiculously entertaining new documentary You Don’t Nomi looks at the cult of Showgirls from a multitude of angles, including the evolving critical and cultural perception of the film, how Verhoeven’s characterization of his intentions have changed over the years, the significance of the film within the LGBTQIA+ community, and how Berkley eventually emerged from the whole affair as something of a hero.

McHale makes fantastic use of footage from Verhoeven’s killer filmography to emphasize his points, alongside interviews with a variety of cultural critics. He tells the story of April Kidwell, the writer, producer and star of I, Nomi, a one-woman musical comedy about the life of Nomi Malone before and after her adventures in Showgirls. Kidwell is a fascinating presence in the film, and not just because she also played Nomi in the stage show Showgirls: The Musical! and Berkley’s character in the Saved By The Bell-inspired Bayside: The Musical!.

The twentieth-anniversary ‘Showgirls’ screening at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

The documentary features illuminating footage from the twentieth-anniversary screening of Showgirls at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles, an event that Berkley attended, where she received a rapturous response from the thousands of fans present.

McHale attended that screening, and told Letterboxd that that’s where his deeper interest in the film was properly sparked.

Jeffrey McHale: I had seen it already, ten years prior to that, but that was the first time I saw it with an audience. I think that was, officially, the largest screening of Showgirls that has happened. There were 4,000 people there. I’m not from LA, but I’ve lived in LA for the last eight years, and I’ve gone to a couple of those Hollywood Forever screenings and I don’t think anyone in our group anticipated Elizabeth Berkley showing up. It felt epic. It was a historic moment in the afterlife of Showgirls.

I didn’t walk away [from that screening] thinking ‘I should make a documentary’, but I was mostly interested in kind of finding out more. You’re always curious if you can figure anything out about the intentions or what the filmmakers had in mind, so that’s what inspired me to start consuming everything that had been written about Showgirls. I read the Adam Layman book, the book of poems, [lots of] articles, and I was just scouring the internet for reviews. And what I found was this wide range of really interesting opinions, theories and people’s relationships with the film. Everything was just so different. You set out looking for answers, and it’s not about getting the answer for it, it’s about this ever-evolving relationship that we have with this piece of art.

At what point did you come to realize the degree to which the queer community had embraced this film? As a gay man myself, it feels like it’s part of the fabric of our culture, ’90s culture. The poet Jeffrey Conway, when I interviewed him, he said it perfectly: it’s just like in your DNA, you know? It appeals to the queer culture community, you cannot explain it but you’re just kind of drawn to it. I thought that was an interesting way of describing the experience of watching something like that.

This film appears to only be widening the cult of Showgirls. It’s been a really fun project, and I’ve been blown away by the response it’s getting. I didn’t really know what the end result would be when I started. I knew that whatever you make, there will be a very vocal and excited and enthusiastic fan base. I’ve been very surprised by the broad appeal. These are people who have never seen Showgirls and are really drawn to it, and find the message and the story, the culture, and the way that we consume media, the way that we critically talk about things. It’s been a wild ride.

The twentieth-anniversary ‘Showgirls’ screening at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

You point out the hypocrisy of how audiences are willing to see Verhoeven’s films as satirical when it comes to the violence (as with Robocop and Starship Troopers), but when it comes to the sex, the audience gets prudish. Paul and Joe talked about that on a lot of their press junket interviews: America’s fine with the violence and the violence gets you rated PG13, but then you have something as human as sex, then that’s shunned and discouraged. It was interesting going back and just looking at the way in which Elizabeth was criticized. And the way that Paul was criticized. Just the way she was ripped apart for her physical features and all that, it was disgusting. I think we’ve evolved a little bit further in that sense. I don’t think that you’d see a Gene Siskel review, the way that he describes her face, those details, like comparing which one was hotter, it was like: this is what we’re reviewing? Actresses’ physical attributes? It was disgusting. I think we’ve gotten better in that sense.

How did you encounter April Kidwell? She brought a lot to the film. She was one of the later additions to the project, after we’d started reaching out to people. I knew that she was in the musical. Then I found out that she had also done Saved By The Bell. It was really interesting that she played two Elizabeth Berkley characters, to get her opinion on it. From the very first phone call, she was just so open. I was blown away by her story and how vulnerable she was, just putting herself out there. She’s been very open about her experience and the way that it was therapeutic for her. She’s the heart and soul of Nomi. She’s somebody who went through something awful, disgusting, terrible, and now she’s found power and strength, within—specifically—the character. The act of performing Nomi on stage was therapeutic for her. It was an experience that no other person I spoke with had. She’s amazing.

Gina Gershon in ’Showgirls’.

I loved how you used footage from the other Verhoeven films to provide additional commentary. How did you come to adopt that filmmaking strategy? When I went in, I didn’t how much of that would play into the narrative. I wasn’t familiar with his earlier work. But when I started to go back and watched all of his Dutch films, I was surprised by how all the dots, everything just felt like it was connecting. All these motifs and scenes and shots. And how repetitively these things popped up. So I wanted a visual way, to kind of make it a subplot, where the characters were interacting with Showgirls, where their experience paralleled the contributors, so that was a way to visually tie it back to the argument that people like to think Showgirls sits by itself outside of all of Paul’s other films, like Starship Troopers, Robocop and Total Recall, but tying it into the argument that it’s Verhoeven at his purest, [which is what] I like to think of Showgirls as.

I’m a huge Verhoeven nut and I’d always been disturbed by the dog food subplot in Spetters [in which a takeout van sells croquettes made with jelly-meat], but I had never drawn the connection to Showgirls [in which Cristal and Nomi bond over both having once been so poor that they had to survive on dog food]. I’d also never noticed how much vomiting is a recurring motif for him. Yeah! Women vomiting! It was always women that were throwing up, which is just bizarre. The doggy chow thing I thought was interesting because [initially] I felt like ‘oh this is a Joe Eszterhas bit’, something from his script that’s just bizarre and weird, but then when I saw that thread from Spetters, it was just like ‘oh my god, you’ve done the whole eating doggy chow thing before’.

I’ve always been interested in Verhoeven’s evolving description of the film himself; how he has recast history a bit to say he was in on the joke, but the funniest thing I thought he ever said about it was that he regretted not putting a serial killer plot in Showgirls, because that would’ve distracted the Americans. Had you heard that? I have yes. I think Adam Layman mentioned that. [Verhoeven]’s like: “Basic Instinct was enough of a thriller that people could watch it.” That was something I’d heard a couple of times before. I think he’d actually been considering it, like a death or a murder or something.

Thanks for making your list of Campy Sequels To Watch After Showgirls. Talk us through them. What did you make of Showgirls 2: Penny’s From Heaven? I’ve only seen clips. It’s a film that might be better in small doses, not one whole thing, because I think it’s, like, two and half hours long. I think it took me a couple of viewings to get through the whole thing. But it’s interesting because [filmmaker] Rena Riffel plays Penny/Hope in Showgirls. She wrote it, directed it and starred in it, and it follows her character playing off Nomi’s leaving Vegas to go to Hollywood. [Riffel] was in Mulholland Drive, so part of me thinks she was trying to do a David Lynch thing. Or a John Waters thing. She’s definitely very aware of the afterlife and the over-the-top campiness of it. So there’s all these little Easter eggs where she’s drawing comparisons to Showgirls. But it’s super low budget, and she kind of embraces that. I would recommend it to hard core fans of Showgirls; it’s definitely not a movie for everybody.

‘Showgirls 2: Penny’s From Heaven’, featuring writer-director Rena Riffel (right) as Penny.

Grease 2 ‘Cool Rider’—amazing. Christmas-tree dress. I like that the gender roles were flipped. And it’s a fun movie. It’s a fun movie that I always enjoyed as kid.

Gremlins 2: The New Batch That was another one that I saw late. And I mean, the musical number, Hulk Hogan, just knowing that the director went all out and didn’t hold anything back. I mean—Vegetable Gremlin? There are just so many things it in that are bizarre, and it didn’t follow the traditional 80s/90s sequel formula.

Beyond The Valley of the Dolls Yeah. You know that Roger Ebert wrote that, right? That’s another one that’s probably closer to Showgirls 2 in the Russ Meyer aesthetic of it. But these are all films that had similar [critical trajectories]—it was panned when it came out but got [a] second life. I mean not to the scale that Showgirls has, but I think people revisit it and embrace it for what it

Magic Mike XXL It feels like they’re more in on the joke, and I kind of found it more enjoyable than the first one, just because it didn’t seem like it was taking itself so seriously. And Jada Pinkett Smith is kind of playing the Matthew McConaughey role. It’s The Big Chill meets Chippendales. And as far as the dance numbers go, it feels a lot campier and they’re a little bit more aware of what’s happening. Not as much as like a failed-seriousness kind of camp, but there’s something going on there.

Final question. Showgirls: good or bad? I call it a masterpiece of shit.

‘You Don’t Nomi’ is available to stream or rent on digital and VOD services.

Short Reflection: Yama no Susume, Season 1

It can be hard to accurately judge short anime sometimes. The difference between what can be accomplished in 24-minute episodes, 12-minute episodes, 6-minute episodes and 3-minute episodes is so extraordinary that it’s unfair to hold one to another’s standards. But because most anime are 24-minute episodes, you tend to have far less context for judging the quality of shows shorter episode lengths. I have not seen very many short anime, least of all anime with episodes as short as the first season of Yama no Susume. So I don’t really have much to compare it against at its level. All I can do it take it on its own terms and appreciate what it gives me. And on that level, I’m glad to say that I really enjoyed this show. At three minutes an episode, there’s only so much it can get done, but it makes each and every one of those minutes count. If this is the quality I can look forward to when the following seasons trade up for 12 minutes an episode, I think I’m gonna be in very good hands.

The story follows Aoi and Hinata, childhood friends back in elementary school who separated for a few years before finding each other again in high school. Hinata’s big into mountain climbing, and her dad used to take her and Aoi on hikes back when they were kids. In typical cute girls fashion, they made a promise that someday, they would climb a mountain together by themselves. But then Aoi broke her leg by falling off a tall place, leaving her with an intense fear of heights and turning her into a much more introverted person. Now, she’s big into solo activities like cooking and crafts, things she can enjoy on her own without having to risk the mortifying ordeal of social interaction. But Hinata hasn’t forgotten their promise for a second. She’s gonna take Aoi mountain climbing even if she has to drag her along to do it. And despite Aoi’s protestations, she can’t help but enjoy getting swept up in her friend’s passion all over again.

Thus, the stage is set for cute comedy and wholesome bonding moments, and Yama no Susue has them aplenty. You can tell the writers did their research on mountain climbing; there’s a lot of detailed information on what equipment the characters use, what you can expect from different mountains, all the considerations that go in to embarking upon a hike. But the information never gets too dense that it overwhelms the characters. Aoi and Hinata have fantastic chemistry, and it was around episode 4 that I realized I was once again watching Yuka Iguchi play a shy girl who’s best friends with a more energetic, playful doofus. And then I realized that the show’s ED is near identical to the ED from the Symphogear OVAs, and god dammit I don’t care how much of an easy mark I am. That said, Aoi’s a more sarcastic character than Miku, and the way her banter with Hinata naturally segues from bickering to one-upsmanship to comfy companionship is endlessly charming. The whole show feels very much like a precursor to Yuru Camp, balancing character-driven gags with a genuine love for outdoor activities. You feel like you’re learning how you could enjoy mountain climbing by watching Aoi and Hinata go about it. I should also shout out the production from 8-Bit, because they do such a good job selling the moments of beautiful whimsy and snappy goofs alike. This is a damn good-looking show no matter what angle you look at it from.

But I think the real heart of this show is how it handles Aoi’s social anxiety. As a socially awkward introvert myself, I’ve seen too many shows that make alone time out to be some crippling social defect that needs to be “fixed” rather than a natural part of human interaction (looking at you, Uzaki-chan). But Yama no Susume never shames Aoi for her alone-time activities. It’s totally cool that she’s in to cooking and arts and crafts. Her journey isn’t about leaving introversion behind, it’s about learning to be more comfortable in social situations. And it’s really sweet watching her slowly break out of her shell. For such short episodes, the show packs a lot of character development into the cracks. You can actually feel Aoi become more comfortable talking to other people as the show goes on, each new experience adding new confidence to her soft-spoken voice. By the time it’s over, you can’t help but feel proud at the progress she’s made. And that’s from less than an hour of show. That, folks, is talent.

So while I’m still waiting to really fall in love with Yama no Susume, it’s definitely made a very strong first impression. I love the characters, I like the comedy, I appreciate learning about mountain climbing, and it just puts me in a very good mood. Therefore, I give the first season a score of:

7/10

And now to look forward to what future seasons will bring. See you next time!

“And you wonder why the darkness comes back at you!” – The Witchfinders

The Witchfinders is our first example of a ‘celebrity historical’ in the RTD style this year, and even has the ‘is it ghosts? No it’s an evil alien’ line of The Unquiet Dead, but this is clearly a S11 episode because the way this should go is being warped. First because the initial threat is, once again, humans, and second because the Doctor is a woman.

And this is the first time we’ve seen this all series! Until this point, the Doctor’s work in the present and past isn’t any different to when she was a bloke – despite a horde of think pieces over the years wondering, “how would a female Doctor work?” and “ah, don’t you see, Doctor Who’s format requires a white man as it assumes everyone in the past will listen”. S11 has ignored that until now and gone with the Doctor being ignored because she’s an outsider telling people what they don’t want to hear, just as she always is, and turns out this works fine after all. But here, the gender matters.

Why? Because here, the Doctor is facing the real-life butchery of women who were disliked or seen as weird. Here too, the villainous Becka Savage is driven in part by the need to retain her power in the community – “I have tried to be a benevolent leader but it’s very difficult in these times, especially for a woman,” and she means it. She has to be a relentless monster at the best of times to stay in place. Willa Twiston’s first response to the usual speech about standing up is that she can’t, she is utterly powerless and would be murdered for being ‘a witch’.

Note too how the Doctor uses the usual psychic paper and pretence at authority to sneak into place, and how this fails completely when King James – the male authority – shows up. Suddenly nobody cares. The psychic paper no longer says “Witchfinder General” but “Witchfinder Assistant” because, ho ho, a woman in charge? (And it’s interesting that Savage does see it as General)

“If we’re not being drowned, we’re being patronised to death!”

And what’s behind much of this, the episode asks? Fear.

Both Savage and King James are butchers because they’re afraid if they let their guard down, someone will get them. Savage is scared of being linked to the woman who raised her, and is afraid of the contagion she has, and is afraid of people learning she has it – afraid she is damned and thus has to curry favour with God. Willa is afraid standing up gets her killed and later denounces the Doctor under intimidation. When Yaz gives the speech about standing up to bullies, and implicitly reveals she became a policewoman to stand up to “the Izzy Flints of the world”, she mentions Flint started bullying her because she was afraid the other kids would target her otherwise. The whole town clearly fears Savage and her purges and what standing up will get you.

And the Morax’s initial rampage is pure Hammer Horror, just as the witch trial imagery is. The woods are full of unearthly mist. The mud reaches at you with tentacles and tries to fill your lungs. The dead walk, silent and pointing and not telling you why; when they approach Savage near the end, one is holding an axe and grinning. Savage’s infection is shown by her crying mud, and she wants limbs hacked off to stop it, and she goes down crying in pain and horror and feeling abandoned to Hell. This is a very, very nasty episode.

(It actually stops working as well when the Morax are revealed as just some cackling aliens and are put down with sci-fi technobabble torches. The way they defeat the baddies is set up but just can’t live up to what came before. However, this does fit the S11 themes: the Doctor says the Morax Queen is “more dangerous than Becka Savage ever was” but the human who murders thirty-six women to cover herself is far harder to fight than the alien you bonk with a torch.)

 The interesting angle is that Savage, James, Izzy Flint, and Willa when she denounces the Doctor aren’t just afraid of external threats. They are, as the Doctor snarls at Savage, “pointing the finger so nobody points it at you!” Willa does come back to the Doctor’s side. The former two do not, no matter how much the Doctor tried to get through to James. Why is the Doctor on trial, after all? She was getting too close to Savage’s real reasons, so she had to be condemned, and James goes along with it because otherwise he’s responsible for sending his guard to his death.

James is a weird part of this episode, who comes close to not working. For much of the story, he’s a big campy panto villain of a man – but one who keeps veering into moments of random pathos and then genuine nastiness. He and Savage feed each other’s nasty habits. Ryan isn’t just having comedy scenes with dealing with James’ interest in him, he’s trying to use that to get him to open up and steer him away from brutality, and he fails. During James’ scene with the Doctor, it’s implied a lot of this camp is a front – he’s making up a role to play so nobody can see the resentment and fear lurking within, and he lashes out to compensate.

The Doctor recognises this because it’s not too far off from her, and James recognises it. “It must be comforting playing that role, hiding behind a title.”  “Just as you hide behind ‘doctor’, perhaps.” S11 hasn’t gone with the ‘lonely god’, ‘oncoming storm’ stuff of McCoy onwards, but here’s our first hint that for all the low key, softly-softly, friendly-to-all Thirteenth Doctor moments, something lurks.

A final note, what has caused all this? What starts the murder and the fear and the finger-pointing and the atrocities? Becka Savage cut down her aunt’s favourite tree simply to make a point that she could. That’s all it takes.

Watch This Space: Playwrights Train for All Media

As dramatists begin to write for all media, the nation’s playwriting programs are starting to teach beyond the stage.

BY MARCUS SCOTT

In 2018, a record 495 original scripted series were released across cable, online, and broadcast platforms, according to a report by FX Networks. And with the growing popularity of streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon (not to mention new players like Disney and Apple), a whopping 146 more shows are up and running on various platforms now than were on air in 2013. So how does peak TV relate to theatre?

Once a way for financially strapped playwrights to land stable income and adequate health insurance, television has since emerged as a rewarding venue for ambitious dramatists looking to forge lifetime careers as working writers. Playwright Tanya Saracho is the current showrunner for “Vida” on Starz. Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa is the series developer of “Riverdale” and “Chilling Adventures of Sabrina.” Sheila Callaghan is executive producer of the long-running black comedy “Shameless.” Sarah Treem, co-creator and showrunner of “The Affair,” recently concluded the Rashomon-esque psychological drama in November.

To satiate demand for more content, showrunners have sought to recruit emerging playwrights to fill their writers’ rooms. It’s now common practice for them to read plays or spec scripts penned prior to a writer’s graduation.

Many aspiring playwrights have caught on, enrolling in drama school intent on flirting with virtually every medium under the umbrella of the performing arts. Several institutions around the country have become gatekeepers for the hopeful—post-graduate MFA boot camps bestowing scribes with the Aristotelian wisdom of plot, character, thought, diction, and spectacle before they’re dropped into the school of hard knocks that is the modern American writers’ room. Indeed, since our culture has emerged from the chrysalis of peak TV, playwriting programs have begun training students for a career that includes not only the stage but multiple mediums, including the screen.

Playwright Zayd Dohrn, who has served as both chair of Northwestern University’s radio/TV/film department and director of the MFA in writing for screen and stage since 2016, said versatility is the strongest tool in the kit of the program’s students.

“We offer classes in playwriting, screenwriting and TV writing, as well as podcasts, video games, interactive media, stand-up, improv, and much more,” he explained. “There’s no one way to approach the craft, and we offer world-class faculty with diverse backgrounds, professional experiences, and perspectives, so students can be exposed to the full range of professional and artistic practice.”

Dominic Taylor, vice chair of graduate studies at UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television in California, also agrees that multiplicity is the key to the survival of a working writer. “In the industries today, whether one is breaking a story in a writers’ room or writing coverage as an assistant, the ability to recognize and manipulate structure is paramount,” Taylor said. “The primary skill, aside from honing excellent social skills, would be to continue to study the forms as they emerge. Read scripts and note differences and strengths of form to the individual’s skill set. For example, the multi-cam network comedy is very different from the single-cam comedy—‘The Conners’ versus ‘Modern Family,’ let’s say. It’s not just the technology; it is the pace of the comedy.”

Taylor, a distinguished multi-hyphenate theatre artist working on both coasts, said that schools like UCLA offer a lot more than classes, including one with Phyllis Nagy (screenwriter of Carol). UCLA’s program also partners with its film school, and hires professional directors to work with playwrights to develop graduate student plays for productions at UCLA’s one-act festival, ONES, or its New Play Festival. Taylor also teaches four separate classes on Black theatre, giving students the opportunity to study the likes of Alice Childress, Marita Bonner, and Angelina Weld Grimké in a university setting (a rarity outside of historically Black colleges and universities).

Dohrn, a prominent playwright who is currently developing a feature film for Netflix and has TV shows in development at Showtime, BBC America, and NBC/Universal, said that television, like theatre, needs people who can create interesting characters and tell compelling stories, who have singular, unique voices—all of which are emphasized in playwriting training.

“Playwrights are not just good at writing dialogue—they are world creators who bring a unique vision to the stories they tell,” Dohrn emphasized. “More than anything else, a writer needs to develop his/her/their unique voice. Craft can be taught, but talent and creativity are the most important thing for a young writer.”

For playwright David Henry Hwang, who joined the faculty at Columbia University School of the Arts as head of the playwriting MFA program in 2014, success should be a byproduct, not a destination. “As a playwright, I don’t believe it’s possible to ‘game’ the system—i.e., to try and figure out how to write something ‘successful,’” he said. “The finished play is your reward for taking that journey. The thing that makes you different, and uniquely you, is your superpower as a dramatist, because it is the key to writing the play only you can write. Ironically, by focusing not on success but on what you really care about, you are more likely to find success.”

Since arriving at Columbia, one of Hwang’s top priorities was to expand the range of TV writing classes. This led to the creation of separate TV sub-department “concentrations,” housed in both the theatre and film programs. All playwriting students are required to take some television classes.

“We are at a rather anomalous moment in playwriting history, where the ability to write plays is actually a monetizable skill,” said Hwang, whose TV credits include Treem’s “The Affair.” “Playwrights have become increasingly valuable to TV because it has traditionally been a dialogue-driven medium (though shows like ‘Game of Thrones’ push into more cinematic storytelling language), and playwrights are comfortable being in production (unlike screenwriters, some of whom never go to set). Once TV discovered playwrights, we became more valuable for feature films as well.”

Playwrights aren’t the only generative theatremakers moving to the screen. Masi Asare is an assistant professor at Northwestern’s School of Communication, which teaches music theatre history, music theatre writing and composition, and vocal performance. The award-winning composer-lyricist, who recently saw her one-act Mirror of Most Value: A Ms. Marvel Play published by Marvel/Samuel French, said that the world of musical theatre is not all that different either; it’s experiencing a resurgence in both cinema and the small screen: Lin-Manuel Miranda, Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, Justin Hurwitz, and Benj Pasek and Justin Paul have all written songs that were nominated for or won Oscars. The growth of YouTube, Instagram, and Twitter have offered new ways for musical theatre graduates to market and monetize their songs and build an audience.

“The feeling that a song has to ‘work’ behind a microphone in order to be a good song is really having an impact on young writers,” said Asare. “The song must sound and look good in this encapsulated video that will be posted on the songwriters’ website and circulated via social media.” She noted that in this case, the medium of video is also changing the medium of musical theatre itself. “Certainly it may lead to different kinds of musicals—who knows? New experimentation can be exciting, but I think there is a perception that all you have to have is a series of good video clips to be a songwriter for the musical theatre, a musical storyteller. I think that does something of a disservice to rising composers and lyricists.”

Some playwriting students, of course, are not interested in learning about how to write for television. But many who spoke for this story agreed that learning about the different ways of storytelling can be beneficial. One program in particular that has its eyes on the multiplicity of storytelling mediums is the Writing for Performance program at the California Institute of the Arts. Founded by playwright Suzan-Lori Parks in 2001 as a synergy of immersive environments, visual art installation, screenplay, and the traditional stage play, the program has helped students and visiting artists alike transcend theatrical conventions. Though Parks is no longer on the CalArts faculty, her spirit still infuses the program. As Amanda Shank, assistant dean of the CalArts School of Theater, puts it, “Every time she came to the page, there was a real fidelity to the impulse of what she was trying to communicate with the play, and the form followed that. It’s not her trying to write a ‘correct’ kind of play or to lay things bare in a certain prescribed way.”

That instinct is in the life fiber of CalArts’s Special Topics in Writing, a peer-to-peer incubator for the development of new projects that grants students from across various departments the opportunity to develop and produce writing-based projects. Shank defines the vaguely titled yearlong class, which she began, as a “hybrid of a writing workshop and a dramaturgical project development space.” A playwright and dramaturg, Shank said her class was born of her experience as an MFA candidate; she attended the program between 2010 and 2013, and then noticed her fellow students’ lack of ability to fully shepherd their projects.

“I was finding a lot of students that would have an idea, bring in a few pages or even bring in a full draft, but then they would kind of abandon it,” said Shank. “I wanted a space [that would] marry generative creativity, a place of accountability, but also a place that was working that muscle of really developing a project. Because I think often as artists we look to other institutions, other people to usher our work along. Yes, you need collaborators, yes, you need organizations of supporters—but you have to some degree know how to do those things yourself.”

Program alum Virginia Grise agrees. Grise has been a working artist since her play blu won the 2010 Yale Drama Series Award. She conceived her latest play, rasgos asiaticos, while still attending CalArts. Inspired by her Chicana-Chinese family, the play has evolved into a walk-around theatrical experience with some dialogue pressed into phonograph records that accompany her great uncle’s 1920s-era Chinese opera records. After developing the production over a period of years, with the help of CalArts Center for New Performance (CNP), Grise will premiere rasgos asiaticos in downtown Los Angeles in March 2020, boasting a predominantly female cast, a Black female director, and a design team entirely composed of women of color. Her multidisciplinary work is emblematic of the direction CalArts is hoping to steer the field, with training that is responsive to a growingly diverse body of students who may not want to create theatre in the Western European tradition.

“You cannot recruit students of color into a training program and continue to train actors, writers, and directors in the same way you have trained them prior to recruiting them,” said Grise. “I feel like training programs should look at the diversity of aesthetics, the diversity of storytelling—what are the different ways in which we make performance, and how is that indicative of who we are, and where we are coming from, and who we are speaking to?”

As an educator whose work deals with Asian American identity, including the play M. Butterfly and the high-concept musical Soft Power, Hwang said that one of his goals as an educator is to train a diverse body of students and teach them how to write from a perspective that is uniquely theirs.

“If we assume that people like to see themselves onstage, this requires a range of diverse bodies as well as diverse stories in our theatres,” Hwang said. “Institutions like Columbia have a huge responsibility to address this issue, since we are helping to produce artists of the future. Our program takes diversity as our first core value—not only in terms of aesthetics, but also by trying to cultivate artists and stories which encompass the fullest range of communities, nationalities, races, genders, sexualities, differences, and identities.”

The film business could use similar cultivation. In March 2019, the Think Tank for Inclusion and Equity (TTIE), a self-organized syndicate of working television writers, published “Behind the Scenes: The State of Inclusion and Equity in TV Writing,” a research-driven survey funded by the Pop Culture Collaborative. Data from that report observed hiring, writer advancement, workplace harassment, and bias among diverse writers, examining 282 working Hollywood writers who identify as women or nonbinary, LGBTQ, people of color, and/or people with disabilities, analyzing how they fare within the writers’ room. In positions that range from staff writer to executive story editor, a nearly two thirds majority of this surveyed group reported troubling instances of bias, discrimination, and/or harassment by members of their individual writing staff. Also, 58 percent of them said they experienced pushback when pitching a non-stereotypical diverse character or storyline; 58 percent later experienced micro-aggressions in-house. The biggest slap in the face: When it comes to in-house pitches, 53 percent of this group’s ideas were rejected, only to have white writers pitch exactly the same idea a few minutes later and get accepted. Other key findings from the report: 58 percent say their agents pitch them to shows by highlighting their “otherness,” and 15 percent reported they took a demotion just to get a staff job.

But there was more: 65 percent of people of color in the survey reported being the only one in their writers’ room, and 34 percent of the women and nonbinary writers reported being the only woman or nonbinary member of their writing staff; 38 percent of writers with disabilities reported being the only one, and 68 percent of LGBTQ writers reported being the only one.

For Dominic Taylor, the lack of diversity and inclusion in TV writers’ rooms can be fought in part by opening up the curriculum on college campuses, which he has expanded since joining the faculty at UCLA. “Students need a comprehensive education,” Taylor pointed out. He noted the importance of prospective playwrights being as familiar with Migdalia Cruz, Maria Irene Fornés, James Yoshimura, Julia Cho, and William Yellow Robe as they are with William Shakespeare, and looking at traditions as vast as the Gelede Festival, the Egungun Festival, Shang theatre of China, as well as the Passion Plays of Ancient Egypt.

“All of these modes of performance predate the Greek theatre, which is the starting point for much of theatre history,” explained Taylor. “It is part of my mandate as an educator to complete the education of my students. Inclusion is crucial to that education.”

After all, with the growing variety of platforms for story and expression, why shouldn’t there also be diversity of forms and voices? Whatever the medium of delivery, these are trends worth keeping an eye on.

Marcus Scott is a New York City-based playwright, musical writer, and journalist. He’s written for Elle, Essence, Out, and Playbill, among other publications.