Our Town…ish
We get confused about what our topic is and argue about it mid-episode.
Topics Discussed and/or Spoiled
Galavant, Sleepy Hollow, Our previous episode on Endings, Our Town, Noises Off, ZIP, Parks & Recreation, Hannibal, Miskatonic Musings, Angel, About Schmidt, Breaking Bad, Dead Like Me, Pushing Daisies, American Gods, and our reading or lack thereof.
Our outro is Debs & Errol’s Narwhal Pet
Geekually Yoked is a proud member of the Crossover Nexus
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
I am doing a Kolar Numbered List (TM) because I have many, many thoughts. In fact, I have so many thoughts that I have to do this while still playing I Spy with Liza and her animal book, so if the names of random safari animals creep in, I apologize in advance.
1) I actually like “Our Town,” although only for the final act (who even remembers anything about the first two acts, anyway?). I’m really sick of things where the YOLO/carpe diem message basically demands that you live like a manic pixie dreamgirl or the kids in Dead Poets’ Society (for that matter, Robin Williams is basically a manic pixie dream professor in that one). But saying that you should carpe diem by occasionally really noticing how nice your clean sheets feel or having one day a week where you’re really mindful of your having a cup of coffee with your spouse, paying close attention to both the conversation and how good the coffee tastes? I’m on board with that. I guess I don’t feel as inundated with that message as I do with the “oh, children grow up so fast” one, so in something like Our Town it feels more like a needed reminder rather than a hammer on the head. I like the whole “beauty in the banal” thing.
2) I need to plug “Before I Fall” by Lauren Oliver again–the one I plugged last time that’s basically Mean Girls meets Groundhog Day. Because she’s already died earlier in the book and isn’t sure whether she’s ever going to make it out of this day alive, there’s a theme of transience and impermanence, but it’s subtly executed, and I really like that sometimes she’s sad and nostalgic (“Am I ever going to see my little sister grow up?”) and sometimes she’s angry (“The sky is ugly this morning. I’m never going to see a sky that isn’t ugly again, am I?”). Rachel, I really think you’d like this book.
3) A book that I’m less sure Rachel will like because it really, really hits you over the head with the impermanence theme–but DANG, it’s a beautiful book–is Station Eleven by Emily St. Vincent Mandel (if the name sounds familiar, GRRM was bringing it up a lot during the Puppies thing because it was his pick for the Hugos and didn’t make it onto the ballot). It does the whole “a plague wipes out 99% of humanity and the survivors are trying to recreate civilization” trope, but it really plays up the way people so desperately miss the things from the old world, from being able to chat with friends on social media to eating an orange if you live in Massachusetts. As the novel progresses, it makes it more explicit that you don’t have to have a “The Stand”-style plague to have your last time chatting with a friend or eating an orange; we’re ALL going to eat our last orange someday. On the one hand, it’s shamelessly emotionally manipulative. On the other hand, it made me cry, so I guess the emotional manipulation worked.
4) I have never seen a show that had a perfect ending, came back for another season, and made me happy, although they usually have a handful of good episodes left in them. Buffy had “Once More With Feeling” and a few others, and Community had G.I. Jeff and Troy and Pierce’s sendoffs, but otherwise, they would have been better off ending in seasons five and seven, respectively.