The Vampire Diaries: LITERALLY Vampires with Diaries, You Guys.

Or: Reading is Fundamental?

Honestly, I feel like you know what this show already is, so let’s just start with the pilot episode and feel this shit out. See what happens…

For the first episode–and really only the first episode–fog is kind of a “thing.”

To most people this would look like two assholes just driving around on a foggy day in Virginia, until the female passenger exclaims, “What’s with all this fog!?”

The easy answer would be: “Well, it’s the mountains.”

What he actually said was: “It should clear up in a sec.”

However: the car then crashes after a silhouette pops up out of nowhere. Out of (and I’m just going to go all-in on this with italics) the fog. They hit the guy, the body goes rolling over the hood, they spin out by the side of the road and flip out, etc. And the scene that follows (with the guy unwisely getting out and the girl not getting cell reception…) is just exactly the scene you’d imagine playing out.

They both wind up vampire-ed.

We then skip to an autumnal-as-all-balls morning–the first day of school actually–narrated with brief soliloquies from our  undead sexy-eyebrow guy (Stefan Salvatore, played by Paul Wesley) and leading doe (Elena, played by Nina Dobrev). The former stares into the sunrise from a domestic rooftop and narrates how he’s come back to town after so long because he “has to know her”; the latter writes in a diary and clears up almost immediately who this mystery “her” is.

And yes, she starts her entries with “Dear diary…”

God. I don’t know. Once you glean that Elena’s parents have died in a car accident, leaving her as soul survivor, with only her younger brother and a short-lived quirky aunt in her life…well, it all plays out about as predictably as the intro.

Let’s zoom out.

There’s not much conflict over what The Vampire Diaries (Creators: Julie Plec, Kevin Williamson) is about.

According to Netflix: “Trapped in adolescent bodies, feuding vampire brothers Stefan and Damon vie for the affection of captivating teenager Elena.”

According to IMDB: “A high school girl is torn between two vampire brothers.”

(Oh, and this is the other brother in love with Elena btw:)

So of course a  smouldering cast of highschoolers (though, ‘adolescent bodies’ is descriptive of no one…)

…anda game of romantic Pong with a kind of “meh” brunette was basically what I expected going in. And it is that. Though, I will front with you: I had no idea the “Diaries” part was so literal.

But it is; The Vampire Diaries actually involves quite a lot of rigorous self-documentation, reflection, and journal-keeping. (Stefan is a boy so he calls them “journals” in the actual scenes.)

These are just Stefan’s, by the way…

Feelings are hard. JOURNAL FACE.

In fact, one of the first significant exchanges occurs after Elena leaves her diary in a cemetery. Where she was writing. In her diary.Why does she leave the diary? Because…

…the fog.

And then… 

…the raven.

By the way: ravens are also a big thing in Vampire Diaries‘ pilot episode.

Anyway, after the fogand the raven Elena runs, leaving her diary behind.

Elena doesn’t seem to realize that her diary is missing; later that night she gets ready to go out to (what becomes the equivalent of Buffy‘s token teen-hangout, The Bronze) The Grill, she’s surprised when she opens the door to find Mr. Journal-Keeping himself…

jk.

It’s this guy:

This is Elena’s surprise-face.

And then Stefan hands Elena her diary…

He assures her he didn’t read it. She is surprised and asks, “Why not?”

He says:

“Well. I wouldn’t want anyone…reading mine.“

  “You write in a journal?

“Yes, memories are important.”

…and she just eyegasms all the fuck over him.

It’s not as good as early- to mid-series True Blood, yet it’s nowhere near a bad as Twilight in that: people have sex, people get killed–a lot of them even killed by the vampires–Elena isn’t completely vacuous as a female character, and her wounded spirit results from the writers actually throwing her some super shitty curveballs.

Also there’s a plot to speak of. Sure, the plot is essentially: “everyone Elena knows, dies (including Elena herself in the current season), while dudes hit on her.” There’s a lot more reflection, handling of addiction and grief, a lot more damage accrued to contend with…and, again, it breaks the genre’s cherry of having a leading lady die/be turned into a vampire.

Turmoil occurs thusly, though the actual journals–the causation for their even being a tender, introspective side to the show–are more sparingly peppered throughout the scenes. Which by the last season are pretty overwhelmed with vampires, “originals,” magical/cursed hunters, witches, hybrids, something called “sire bonds”…

It’s not entirely vapid, just, mostly.

There aren’t “fairies,” so. There’s that.

Oh, also, to add to the “pro” category: while some immortal fellas are given sexy accents and not others, the Dreamy Dudes are all relatively in the same shape. (So’s to incur ‘hubba-hubba’ eyes evenly “across the board”:http://www.homorazzi.com/article/hottest-vampire-diaries-men-shirtless-pictures-ian-somerhalder-matt-davis-paul-wesley-steven-r-mcqueen-zach-roerig/ and so no one’s left with comparative grandpa-chest…)

Like, look at this guy:

…now this guy:

But I digress. Even while deploying some staple romanti-fantasy, there’s an odd returning factor of books/journals and even at the apex of a plot involving sexy babe…

and sexy dude with English accent…

the team gets worked up and…goes to the library to research 16th c. distribution ledgers.

Like I said: you know what this show is.But did you know it all happens in a library?

NERDS.

Just, everything happens in this library.

They flirt in the library…

They drink in the library…

Yeah, I really don’t know what else to say about this show.

Um.

Ha ha, this guy…

Not that Stefan’s so perfect. He has a really inconspicuous “daylight” ring, like something from the set of Roswell.

***

A Few Neither-Here-Nor-There One-Liners:

“It’s the fog, it’s making me all foggy”

“‘Chill it’, is that stoner talk??”

G’night folks!

THERE’S NO TIME TO EXPLAIN: The Tropes of “24” (pt. 5)

Previously, on the “Tropes of 24“:

Dom: Kiefer’s been telling the press that a 24 movie’s in the works.

Kaylen: I call him “Ol’ Kief” around friends and loved ones.

Adam: No you don’t.

Phil, from the kitchen, supposedly mopping the floor: Will you guys keep it down? I’m on the phone with Linda.

Kaylen, to no one: I thought he was mopping the floor.

Dom: I wish you all would take this more seriously.

Adam: Wait, why do I suddenly smell vanilla?

Phil, in the kitchen, speaking slowly into the phone: …then you probably should have zigged where instead you zag–hold on…Hey, c’mon, people! What’d I just say?

Dom: I’m eating yogurt, Adam.

Adam: Can I have some?

Phil, in the kitchen, into the phone: …you’re probably thinking of David Tennant.

Dom: No. This is my yogurt.

21. Startling revelations are accompanied often by a sinister, spectral HAWWWWWWRSSSHHHHH!. I’m not sure how else to describe it; I believe it is meant to be the sound of all your expectations spontaneously combusting.

In season two, when Nina agrees to give up the location of the bomb for full immunity, including from a crime she hadn’t yet committed, President Palmer, dumbfounded, slowly asks Nina what that crime will be. She responds, her eyes lifeless:

“The murder of Jack Bauer[!]”

HAWWWWWWRSSSHHHHH!

It’s the deeply felt rumble of a Dementor’s tummyache; a bundle of spider eggs hatching on a cymbal; the echo in one’s ears after burying one’s head in the sand; democracy giving up and rolling over in the bushes.

Or like in season six when Chloe discovers that Sexpot President Wayne Palmer negotiated with the Chinese for Jack’s release and…

…WHOASHIT, was that Stephen Merchant?

HAWWWWWWRSSSHHHHH!

22. If a woman has sex (especially with Jack Bauer) then she will die. The only real exception to this rule(/trope) is Chloe, who boffs her dashing computer simp subordinate at the beginning of season 5; turns out dude’s, as I mentioned in my first Tropes post, reluctantly working with the government conspiracy that sets in motion the season’s crisis. Poor guy is of course arrested, which means he’s pretty much minced meat, allowing the viewer to disregard the obligatory plot-point-with-a-pretty-face, erase his domestication with Chloe from every functioning dendrite, and continue following the plot’s well-laid-out twists and turns. Not to mention: Chloe’s eventually reunited with her ex-husband Morris, who can barely keep his hands off her (in public for God’s sake), and the suave baldy is horribly (awesomely) tortured with a drill before he’s summarily ejected from the series’ narrative.

What makes sense about this exception is that Chloe is never really considered a woman anyway. She’s voraciously intelligent, fiercely loyal, cunning, nearly emotionally non-existent, and, for lack of a better phrase, straight-up ballsy. These are not the attributes of a woman on 24; this is how the show portrays American man-soldiers. Since Chloe stays alive at the end of the series as opposed to getting wiped out for being even remotely feminine (see: Michelle’s murder after living in domestic bliss with Tony, though she once gruffly ran the CTU; Nadia’s disappearance from the 24 universe after Milo’s shot in place of her, his bravery inspired by a too-passionate kiss between them not “hours” before) she’s not rewarded for championing her gender so much as not acting like it.

Oh, also? In season six, Chloe explains she once dated Milo. They “saw a few good movies.” This is what Chloe remembers. But since they may’ve locked genital regions at some point, Milo’s forehead finds it’s fate with a bullet.

Meanwhile, Jack bangs Nina and she’s revealed as a homicidal terrorist; Jack bangs his wife for years and in the first season she’s murdered for overhearing Nina’s nefariousness; Jack bangs Audrey Raines and she goes crazy in Chinese prison, later pronounced catatonic; Jack bangs Renee Walker and she’s killed; Tony bangs Michelle and she’s blown up; Kim’s best friend bangs some gnarly hipster dude in the first season and her arm’s broken before she’s run down and left for dead in the street; Bill Buchanan falls in love with Karen Hayes, bangs her, and she’s functionally dropped from the show before Bill later gets blown up; etc. 4ever.

23. Job security in the CTU is pretty solid. Because bureaucracy is so thick and unyielding ’round their parts; because Chloe just always looks like that: Jack is often working against the express wishes of the CTU and the U.S. government, and often in collusion with Chloe. Inevitably, their dastardly deeds are discovered, though usually the discovery is accompanied by someone admitting Jack was right all along (whattup, President Sexy, should’ve trusted Jack before you agreed on that air assault, eh, guy?), and Chloe or her cohorts have to be reprimanded. But, since shit’s always going down, Bill Buchanan or another CTU stressball always end up blathering, “I’d fire you both right now if we didn’t need the manpower!”, using while walking purposely between one computer station and a different computer station. Yeah, whatever; I’m getting overtime today, right?

Of course, “regular life” is rarely revealed during the course of the “day”‘s run, and when it is such moments are gilded by heavy moral consequence. Take Chloe’s post-coital morning with her work friend: she tries to defend their copulation as she clumsily collects wine glasses and an empty bottle from the counter. Ah-ha! Alcohol, the culprit. Dionysian fornicating bears wicked results, lady.

24. 24‘s “contemporary” America isn’t ours, though in it we recognize that to which we may aspire.

This “America” is far form perfect. Of course: if it was, that would be–and I don’t use this word lightly–ridiculous. Yet, 24‘s America almost totally disavows partisan divides; it in fact doesn’t seem to even consider partisan alliances. We can assume the Palmers are democrats, that presidents Keeler and Logan so obviously faced down the Palmers with their republican fury, but 24 sidesteps such malice by placing the blame on the audience: you create those divides in your head, America, and those divides only distract from larger issues.

Larger issues, we learn, entail the value of human life in a rampantly corrupt international purview, entail the fringes and extent of the Individual’s prowess with love against the interests of the many–encompass, all essentially, the Battle between Good and Evil. What’s funny is that _24_ statistics would lean heavily towards the Palmers (democrats) as Good and the Logan Cabal (REPUBLICANS: BLECHH) as Evil, though the vicious patriotism of 24‘s ultimate Good (and the political preferences of its creators) suggests otherwise. But what’s even better about 24 is that it holds above the chaotic fray some chauvinistically American ideals that are, sincerely, pretty OK. In the end, we root for men that are loyal, humble, hardworking, tolerant, and–we say in awe–men that are relentless.

Men yeah. Only men. But we’ve made it this far with this show, so might as well finish up here.

24 may be a mess. Even when it’s at its most efficient. Because nothing in life could be so overexplained in black and white. Then again, nothing in life is ever so soothing as the dependable heroism of 24‘s grandest moments. When Jack Bauer jump-kicks an exploding terrorist through the back window of a commuter train, when he bites out some poor fuck’s neck to escape, when he quits heroin while enduring a day any other American would abandon around 8 that morning (even without a heroin addiction to kick)–when we witness Jack Bauer’s tireless inertia, the limitless, morally upright progress of the human condition rings calmly true. In 24‘s patterns we recognize the heartbeat of America.

Or “America.” Whatever. No shit; it feels good. Like a glass of warm milk.

notextile.

THERE’S NO TIME TO EXPLAIN: The Tropes of 24 (pt. 4)

Previously, on “The Tropes of 24“…

Dom: Now that I’m re-watching the whole series, I’m embarrassed I haven’t previously written about the heavyweights who graced the kind-of goofy first season.

Adam: Like who?

Dom: Dennis Hopper for one.

Kaylen: He’ll do anything for money…God rest his wrinkled soul.

Dom: Also? The guy who played La Bamba.

Kaylen: You mean Ritchie Valens.

Dom: No no. That’s not his name.

Kaylen: I mean, the character’s name is Ritchie Valens. La Bamba is a biopic where Lou Diamond Philips plays Ritchie Valens.

Dom: …

Kaylen: …?

Adam: Dom, it’s probably time I tell you: I hate 24.

18. Any actor who attempts an accent will do so terribly. From Dennis Hopper’s laughable Serbian brogue to Doug Hutchison’s (oh, you know, that disgusting shell of a man who married that 16-year-old black hole of silicone and sensible human behavior) Harrison-Fordian Russian parody in Season 8, the melting pot of 24‘s America is more like a chowder one would order from a Red Lobster: a steaming facsimile of what actually comes from 70% of planet earth, and then some delicious cheddar biscuits to distract you.

But perhaps the worst offender is Kiefer himself. Jack Bauer may be a gun-toting god, but his disguises are about as convincing as Val Kilmer’s in The Saint. Coincidentally, Jack almost always sounds like this guy:

It's too early...you guys want to get zum coffee or zumzeeng??

Listen!: http://cdn.hark.com/swfs/player_fb.swf?pid=mglbbtgmll
Too early

19. Joel Surnow has no idea how to write children, adolescents, or teenagers. In fact, the whole show seems utterly clueless as to the doings of your typical unremarkable young person. Of course, Surnow’s deficiencies as a screenwriter are easily forgotten when Jack’s daughter Kim (the unrepentantly hot Elisha Cuthbert) looks the way she does and talks to everyone as if they’re stupider, less mature, and uglier than her, but more obvious is the show’s choice of music used as diegetic cues to represent a place where young people sleep, hang out, or defy their parent’s rules.

In Season 1, Kim finds her way over to bruised hoodlum-with-a-heart-of-gold Rick’s pad, all this soundtracked to Yo La Tengo, Sigur Ros…and then sometimes Drowning Pool or Disturbed. Similarly, shots of Kim’s bedroom glimpse a Linkin Park poster abutting a Built To Spill promotional dealie. The juxtaposition isn’t entirely unbelievable, but what makes more sense is believing the music supervisors and set dressers on 24 were just aiming for whatever it is the kids are into these days.

20. Just as Jack is tortured quite often, so does Jack torture lots and lots of people. I mean: lots. He tortures practically everybody. And just as one can sense a dispensable character’s impending doom as if a flower had somehow set pollen on the breeze, directing it past one’s unknowing nose, or as if one intuits a TV being on in the other room, there’s a certain, slight change of pressure in the atmosphere when Jack’s about to torture someone.

Which is when I get to stand up and yell at my television: “OH SHIT JACK’S ABOUT TO TORTURE THE MOTHERFUCKEN PRESIDENT”

Tune in for Part Five, when Dennis Hopper finally learns to love Heineken, but dies before he can proclaim it to the world.

FUCK THAT SHIT! PABST! BLUE! RIBBON!

THERE’S NO TIME TO EXPLAIN: The Tropes of 24 (pt. 3)

Previously, on “The Tropes of 24“…

Dom: I finished all eight seasons of 24, including the made-for-TV movie.

Adam: So now what?

Dom: I started over from the beginning. It’s a part of me now.

Kaylen: Maybe you should move on. I think it’s time.

Dom: That sounds like something a character with a soul patch would say.

12. All bad guys on 24 will, once revealed as despicable, transform almost instantaneously into a loathsome, inhuman, hunch-backed psychopath.

A perfect example is Charles Logan, who in Season 4 becomes the reluctant U.S. President after a missile attack on Air Force One incapacitates the current President and blows to smithereens his all-American towheaded son. Logan of course is a total sniveling pussy, but by Season 5 he’s brokering a major anti-terrorism defense treaty with the Russians and is inevitably involved in the government conspiracy that led to David Palmer’s assassination and Michelle Dessler’s death, single-handedly signing off on/orchestrating all of Christopher Henderson’s nefarious deeds, as well as the release of the Sentox nerve gas and the framing of Jack Bauer for Palmer’s murder. Once the audience understands just how deep the conspiracy goes, Logan perceptibly slumps in his chair and places the tips of his fingers together in an upside-down “V,” his jowls suddenly slackening, going all jelly. He talks in low, smoky interjections, makes overenunciated demands for “status updates” on “where Jack is,” evilly smirking like a fucking chump when his wife compliments him on a “magnificent” day. His neck cranes so that his whole upper torso becomes an evil tortoise shell. His manifestation as Richard Nixon draws to a close. His pate shines like Mr. Burns’. Oh the weight of such world-eating subterfuge.

"This lip gloss stings!!"

See also: Jack’s father; Katee Sackhoff’s CTU double-agent; Nina Meyers; Tony Almeida (who, in my rewatching of Season 1, has always sported a terrible soul patch, and so it was only a matter of time before he went crazy bonkers evil)

"I also had a vague Mexican accent I dropped for subsequent seasons. Wasn't 2001 a crazy time, America?"

13. Nothing is ever easy. Nothing. If something can possibly go wrong, not only will it, but it will be in direct response to something nice or optimistic that just occurred. This is similar to trope #10, admittedly, but is more Newtonian.

Take Jack’s attempt to tell Secretary Heller about President Logan’s involvement in the conspiracy, from Season 5:

INT. SOME DARK WAREHOUSE, ABANDONED? MEH.

Secretary Heller: I WISH I COULD SAY I’M SURPRISED BUT I CAN’T. I WATCHED CHARLES LOGAN RISE ON THE TIDE OF HIS OWN AMBITION. I WAS TERRIFIED WHEN HE TOOK THE OATH.

Relieved her dad understands, Audrey leans into Jack, sighs.

Audrey: Jack, everything’s going to be OK now.

Quick smooch, so innocent and full of hope.

And then Heller does what we knew he’d do and…

Karate chops Jack in the adam’s apple?

14. Everyone is always reminding everyone else what they should be doing, like your mom reminding you to take a scarf while you’re pulling a scarf out of the hall closet. Like: thanks for paying attention and respecting my intelligence, mom.

Audrey: Jack, make sure you get that recording.

Jack: I will.

This is after Jack is expressly leaving, which he tells everyone, to go get the fucking recording. This also emphasizes Audrey Raines’ overwhelming uselessness.

…and the audience pretty much just shuts off all higher brain function.

Here’s another exchange between Jack and Chloe; what’s funny is how Jack responds, because it may the first time his voice actually resonates with annoyance at the show’s belabored plot synopses:

Chloe: And Jack? I don’t mean to put any added pressure on you, but if you don’t have a confession by then, we’ll all be arrested and charged with treason.

Jack: Yeah. I know.

Oh, he knows, Chloe. He knows.

15. Jack Bauer is tortured quite often. I suppose it’s what happens when the drug cartel you betrayed, the Chinese, the Russians, your father, your brother, your ex-lover/partner, or even your own government typically want you dead. Sometimes Jack is sitting down when he’s tortured, and sometimes he’s hanging from a meat hook. Sometimes he’s wearing a shirt, and sometimes not. Usually he spits blood on the floor.

But there isn’t a torture situation Jack can’t get out of, which is a fact because Jack always escapes the same way:

1) Jack endures for a while, but then passes out.

2) The torturer takes this as a perfect moment to switch up torture tools and maybe sharpen a scalpel, maybe wipe off a wrench, maybe prepare a solution to inject into Jack’s blood, causing excruciating pain. The torturer turns his back to Jack and hunches over his torture tool tray.

3) Jack slowly raises one eyelid. He’s faking it!

4) The torturer, emboldened by Jack’s unconsciousness, lets down his guard and leans forward to administer an injection or strap Jack in a bit tighter.

5) And… Jack awakens suddenly! He breaks the torturer’s neck with his thighs, say, or…

"You taste like a burger. I don't like you anymore."

…rips the guy’s throat out with his teeth.

16. Characters love to declare that the day, and the day’s trying situation, is finally over.

Audrey: So it’s over.

Jack: Yeah.

Of course it isn’t.

17. There is always someone on the inside.

That’s what she said?

If any character ever says, “…Someone on the inside,” take a drink.

Tune in for Part Four, when we’ll just stare into Wayne Palmer’s eyes for a while.

The state of the union is strong…

…if by “union” you mean my weiner.

THERE’S NO TIME TO EXPLAIN: The Tropes of 24 (pt. 2)

Previously, on “The Tropes of 24“…

Dom: I’m going to write 5,000 words about 24.

Adam: No one cares about that.

Kaylen: Or about you.

Dom: Then I’m going to write 24,000 words about 24. Shame spite!

3. The President never opens his own doors. Is this a real thing? I have no idea if a president on 24 has ever come into direct contact with a doorknob.

4. The music of 24 is usually on some desperate emotion-masturbating, John Williams uber-theme bent—even, on the rare occasion, subdued and searching—but almost once per episode composer Sean Callery will get bored and try his hand at something garishly out of place. Like chintzy surf-rock, or blown-out techno, shoved like a dick into the oven…the dick being Klezmer and the oven being another tracking shot of Jack stalking down a hallway.

5. Ugly women do not work in government positions of power. Ugly women aren’t terrorists or outlaws. Only wonderfully normal-looking women work at computers or desks. No one really cares how the men on 24 look unless you have a crush on Freddie Prinze Jr. or this guy:

I loved your work in Skyline.

6. Whenever Jack’s face shows anything more than cold determination, the show uncomfortably pauses on it for you to truly drink it in. Like here, from Season Seven, when a seizing Jack watches, helplessly, as Bizarro Tony Almeida walks away, having just confessed a terrible secret:

Every time this happens it is as undoubtedly flattering a shot.

7. Speaking of Bizarro Tony Almeida and Eric Balfour, if a character has a soul patch, that character either is evil or will die. This is the 24 universe correcting itself.

UPDATE 3/19/12: Guess who has a soul patch? 24 co-creator Joel Surnow:

Nice tuft.

8. Chloe gets “taken into custody” a lot. Because she always looks like she’s up to something. Which she is.

9. Heroes die heroically. I don’t know how else to say that.

10. If you think a character’s going to die, that character will die. There’s a special weightless something in the air when a character’s introduced that spells out his or her fate almost instantly.

At one point Jack and Wayne Palmer kidnap a bank manager to get into a safety deposit box at the manager’s bank. This bank manager is so obviously going to get shot—for no reason more than anticipation of the hard-earned lesson “freedom isn’t free,” par for the course by now. And then he does get shot…by our own government, and Wayne Palmer’s starting to really freak out as he yelps at Jack from the backseat of the getaway vehicle: “HE’S DEAD.” You beautiful panicking future president you, Wayne.

Later, in a shootout between Jack and one of Secretary Heller’s nameless men vs. Henderson’s elite mercenary squad, you know Heller’s nameless man’ll take a bullet to the chest—and then he does.

And so forth.

11. That Henderson fella I mentioned is absolutely owned by Peter Weller, who—if you’ve ever seen Robocop or Naked Lunch you know—can both chew the shit out of some scenery while stoically squeezing in a world’s worth of internal conflict, like his whole life depended on not pooping.

"My nephew got me this jacket. I hate it."

Be it James Cromwell as Jack’s megalomaniacal dad or Rudy Reuttiger as Lynn the tiny, squealing worm man, guest stars of a certain reknown are given free rein on 24 to go as balls-out as they please. In fact, they’re practically handed roles built for their gooberest acting chops.

Unless you’re Janeane Garofalo; in that case you kinda just squint a lot when Jack Bauer does some serious racial profiling.

Tune in for Part Three to find out just how deep the conspiracy goes…

"I don't care if you're my brother, I will eat your fucking face...DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?!?"

THERE’S NO TIME TO EXPLAIN: The Tropes of 24

I watch 24. A lot. Watching 24 is like drinking a warm glass of milk—if I knew what warm milk tasted like. I don’t, and I realize I could easily rectify this dearth of warm milk familiarity by just popping some dairy in a kettle or into the microwave or on top of the radiator, but I actually don’t want to drink any warm milk. I’d rather just watch 24, which to me represents all things soothing—the white of white noise—something I let exist while the much more complicated world/beverages spin/s endlessly about me. I also only floss while watching The League; I only watch The League when I floss. These facts feel related.

In case you’re unawares (no judgment here at Dear Matt Damon, though if you don’t know how 24 works you’re probably a dummy): Each season of 24 is 24 episodes long, each episode covering one hour in the course of a terrible day for the United States. Everything happens, we’re told, in “real time.” And it’s usually guaranteed that every “new” “day” will be worse and more harrowing than the last.

What’s great about watching a lot of 24 is that once you work out the show’s most excessive allowances for its high-concept format (how no one really eats or goes to the bathroom; how major life events happen in exactly 24 hours; how L.A. can apparently be traversed in a matter of minutes; how the Counter Terrorist Unit HQ is apparently located in the most magically convenient place in L.A. so that CTU agents can traverse all of L.A. in a matter of minutes; how Kiefer Sutherland is so obviously out of shape but no one seems concerned), it can be a lot of fun to recognize all the show’s functional patterns.

So recently, while making it through Season Five (which I will use as a perfect example of the show cranking on all cylinders, right at the height of its critical acclaim), I made a comprehensive list of 24 24 tropes with corollary explanations. My hope is that a drinking game will spawn or that, at the very least, you will ignore all of co-creator Joel Surnow’s support for Rick Santorum and give 24 the old college try. (By which I mean: you get stoned and talk through seven episodes in a row while sitting on a greasy futon where your roommate either recently had sex or masturbated.)

It probably helps to introduce some characters. Far from comprehensive, I hope the following gives you a better sense of the people at play in the list of 24. I’ve littered spoilers about willy-nilly, so…BEWARE.

Jack Bauer

I balk at even attempting to describe Jack Bauer: he’s an Everyman as much as a superhuman exemplar of mankind’s most beloved ideals. He is our hero, and he’s a fucking mega super badass. His greatest love and his greatest enemy is the United States government, which is predominantly corrupt and just keeps shitting in his face. The harder he loves them the harder they shit in his face. Another thing Jack Bauer excels at is torturing people. He tortures a mighty number of folks.

Bill Buchanan

Bill runs the CTU in Season Five. This is a picture of him in Season Seven when he lets his hair grow a little longer to match his roguish lifestyle. He’s a real solid guy.

 Chloe O’Brian

Chloe works at the CTU as a senior data analyst or computer-whiz or something, and is always on Jack’s side. She communicates primarily through tortoise-like facial twitches and androidal explanations of technical malarkey no one ever gives a shit about. Season Five starts with her banging one of her attractive subordinates, who turns out to be working for the government conspiracy behind the season’s terrorist plot. It was a nice reveal on the show’s part that she has human genitalia.

Audrey Raines

Jack met Audrey while working for her father, the Secretary of Defense. During Season Five, Audrey is working as a DOD liaison at the CTU, pulled in for the investigation into former President David Palmer’s assassination. And yeah: David Palmer gets killed, which is absolutely heartbreaking, leaving him open to do all the Allstate commercials for which his heart desires. Audrey and Jack are in love, which means you know some terrible shit will happen to her. Everyone Jack loves is murdered (his wife), double-crosses him (old partner Nina; the government; and later both his dad and his brother), or goes fucking crazy (Audrey, who was tortured in a Chinese prison for like six months). I’m not sure what else to say about her; for a supposedly smart, resourceful bureaucrat she’s awfully useless most of the time.

Tony Almeida

I love using pictures from Season Seven, because all the main characters got out of the government and so made the hairdo/facial grooming choices they’d obviously always wanted to make. This means Tony grows a wicked goatee and scowls more than usual. Tony used to run the CTU where he fell in love with former colleague Michelle Dessler. At the beginning of Season Five, Tony is almost killed as part of a plot to blame David Palmer’s assassination on Jack Bauer, who, in order to escape imprisonment by the Chinese, faked his own death at the end of Season Four. Tony, Michelle, and Chloe are the only people who know Jack’s still alive. Michelle dies for this knowledge. Tony never smiles again and fosters an adorable beer gut.

Wayne Palmer

Wayne is David’s brother, and used to be a chief adviser in David’s administration. Wayne was there when David got snipered right between the eyes, and he later begins to suspect ill tidings afoot in the upper echelons of the government. At one point in Season Five, Wayne follows Jack on a risky mission to kidnap a bank manager (more on that later) at gunpoint, which is hilarious to remember when later Wayne becomes President in Season Six. Wayne’s also great at holding a thousand-mile stare of pure terror in his big, gorgeous eyes. Played by the sexy doctor from Parenthood who lost Jasmine romantically to motherfucking Dax Shepherd, who’s not only goofy looking but wears a fedora. One fedora per crew, unless Dax Shepherd’s in your crew, and in that case your crew should just give up and disband.

Edgar Stiles

Works with or maybe under Chloe at the CTU, maybe harbors some feelings for her, but probably just wants to be her friend since she’s practically sociopathic. He always looks like this. Always. He dies in Season Five, which you see coming, and he dies pathetically, because he’s trying to run while dying, and watching this guy run is like witnessing a five-year-old desperately shimmy out of his mother’s arms to go eat dirt from the sandbox. For some reason, the whole time I was watching this, I thought he was also the secretly gay mafioso from The Sopranos, but then I found out he actually played an FBI agent in the second and third seasons. But whatever. Those Italians, they all look the same anyway.

Samwise Gamgee

For a short while he runs the CTU, but no one takes him seriously, probably because he’s all short and gets worked up real easily. Later his junkie sister steals his CTU codecard from him, which her boyfriend then sells to the terrorists who attack the CTU with nerve gas, indirectly getting himself and Edgar and a bunch of other disposable nobodies killed. He does go out heroically, but afterwards no one remembers him and he dies in agony in the corner. PO-TA-TOES.

With that, let us begin:

1. Jack is often on his cell phone, but he’s always in a hurry—obviously—so he begins every conversation with “THERE’S NO TIME TO EXPLAIN” or the similar “I DON’T HAVE TIME TO EXPLAIN.” If he doesn’t say this then the person with which he’s conversing will ask for an explanation right off the bat, and Jack has no time for that.

2. Every episode begins with a recap of the “day’s” events, wherein main characters are introduced and their tangled fates explicated. Sometimes you may find this recap nearing five minutes long, and so you wonder if there’s any point in having watched every episode before it. But then the action begins—or continues actually—and Jack punctuates each gun battle or knife fight or fake hostage situation with a slightly condescending reminder of the direness of the situation, as if every situation on this show wasn’t already entirely tense and doom-leaden: “You understand what this means: we’re talking about taking down the President of the United States,” perhaps. It’s like when in every episode of Lost Charlie used to state expositional summaries for the audience and little else, only every character on 24 is Charlie. it gives you an idea of how stupid 24 assumes its audience to be.

For example, here’s the first scene from Episode 19, which lays out everything one needs to know up until that point:

Jack: Bill, it’s Jack.

Bill: Jack we’ve been waiting to hear from you! Did you get the recording to Secretary Heller?

Jack: I don’t have time to explain. Henderson’s got the recording. I need Chloe to help me find him but I can’t reach her.

Buchanan: Chloe’s here with me, Jack. She was arrested by Homeland Security for helping you but she managed to get away.

Jack: Put her on speaker.

(Bill puts Chloe on speaker, looks slightly miffed Jack didn’t say, “please.”)

Chloe: Jack, where are you?

Jack: I’m at Van Nuys Airfield. Chloe, listen to me. Henderson left here ten minutes ago with a recording that implicates President Logan. I need you to access CTU satellite data streams so we can find him.

Chloe: If I log-on to their system they’re going to find me eventually no matter what I do.

Jack: I don’t need you to track him for long. Do you think you can do it?

Chloe: I guess I can try to slip in through the Subnet.

Jack: Get back to me when you’re in.

Chloe: I’ll set up a BPM pathway so they can’t trace our call, but it’ll only work with the phone you’re using.

(At this point Jack’s already stopped listening; no one gives a crap how you do it, Chloe, Jack doesn’t have time for explanations.)

Tune in for Part Two to get some more tasty Chloe action…

…as well as 22 more 24 tropes.

Is that your approval I’m sensing, Chloe? Thought so.

The Perlman Cometh: S01E05 — “Masques”

Give the people what they want—that’s my motto.

As we swiftly learned on the last installment of Beauty and the Beast reviews, (‘member the original “The Perlman Cometh”) there are a startling amount of people who want this:

…and, you’re welcome.

That is not what I am here to give you, though.

If you recall, we took a red-hot go at democracy back in January. While I’m not going to pretend there were any sort of rules at play, there was an astonishing and not un-heartwarming outcry for Beauty and the Beast‘s Season 3 episode “BEAST BABY” (god, but I love you guys) stuffed into the “other” ballot.

The point though, kids, was to pick a Season 1 episode.

I cross my heart and promise you, dear, enthused(-ish?) reader(s?), that we will get to “Beast Baby” eventually. Like sex with Kobe Bryant, you can kick and scream all you want but: “Beast Baby,” it’s gonna happen.

In the meantime, I am delighted to inform you, hopefully-just-as-enthused reader(s?), that the winner is: “Masques.” That’s right—IT’S A METAPHORRRR. (No, but also there’s a real masque. With masks. And metaphors.)

So first thing’s first: you will notice by now (if you are actually watching these episodes on Netflix, god bless you, and also you should come over; let’s be friends?) the addition of a lengthy-even-compared-to-Ally-McBeal soft-focus intro, which lets our two characters stare into the navel of each others’ worlds and verbalize all that they see buried there, in husky romantiwhispers.

Worth it: Sweeping balcony scene of Catherine in what’s got to be the least sexy nightgown in the galaxy.

Worth it: “He comes… from a secret place.”

I’ll tell you up front that what makes this episode so funny. It breaks down three ways:

1) Fake Irish accents

2) Costumes!

Costumes that are about as equally wince-and-grin-worthy as David Lee Roth’s dance pants in the new Van Halen video.

(I just really wanted to share that with you guys. Again, you’re welcome.)

3) The sudden clarity with which our show’s target audience comes into focus.

Besides how I’m betting the majority of the audience were romantic-lit-enthusiast women of Irish descent, the episode has several crowd-pleasers thrown in. Almost as though it’s the result of their own polling/viewer-testing, “Masques” begins with a brow-perking and fanfic-inspiring scene of our buxom leading lady running to answer the door in nary but a towel and a smile…

he: comes from a secret place; she: comes on a little strong...

…to hand out treats to a trio of totally un-phased children in costumes.

Of course there were any number of other ways to establish that this episode is set on Halloween. Of course there were, but obviously this is the scenario that won the writer room coin toss. Coin toss, or however they go about writing the episode plots, I don’t know, have you ever read The Wasp Factory…? Like that, but, more insane.

So: Halloween! The night where the wall between worlds is as thin as the top of a newborn’s head—a magical night where masques aren’t to hide from one other, but rather, are portals (face portals?) to a Brigadoon-temporary world where Vincent and Catherine’s freak love is possible. In case we don’t get that this serves a double, convenient meaning,  this “wall between worlds is thinnest” line gets quoted at us roughly three times throughout the duration of the episode. And carefree carousing ensues, but not until much later.

Vincent and Catherine are off (for different reasons) to a masquerade ball where Irish author and peace activist Brigit O’Donnell (Caitlin O’Heaney, actually born in Wisconsin) is guest of honor.

Because nothing gets Halloween parties going like heart-rending reminders of the IRA conflict? Besides being a real buzz-kill, Brigit is also targeted for assassination. Because the Irish are in conflict not only with one another, but with romantic non-fiction writers? I ask because, I mean, honestly, from what I can ascertain she is an “activist” in the loosest sense of the word. I could be missing something, but all she really did was write an autobiographical romantic-tragedy to the tune of “Romeo & Juliet.” A novel, which Vincent is seen carrying around during his opening scenes.

About ten years too soon, but for a good couple moments I was thinking George R. R. Martin had slipped Vincent a copy of the graphic novel about Sparta.

Right off the bat, both father figures take care to remind us they are overprotective worry-warts who are out to kill our hero and heroine’s unconsummated sexyfuntimes together on Halloween. Catherine’s father dressed as a civil war hero…

…lectures her as she gets dressed and spins around in a corseted costume that’s a cross between Scarlet O’hara and Miss Kitty from Gunsmoke…

…on going out and seems to reiterate how much he wants her to shmooze all over high-ticket bachelors like he’s got stock in her sexlife.

Vincent’s “father,” on the other hand, after finishing up a ghost story to wide-eyed sewer children, gets a real porcupine in his bra about Vincent going out on the town.

Even though it’s Halloween and, if anything, Vincent PWNs all costumes with his melancholic jungle cat prince get-up. For many reasons, I find his father’s growing paranoia unfounded. I haven’t spent a lot of time in New York City, but in the brief days I have, I encountered at least three people way weirder than Vincent. And yes I mean you, goth kid with forehead piercing who demanded I name three Slayer albums before following me for roughly ten blocks, shouting lyrics ’til I out-jaywalked you…

Catherine and Vincent show up to the masque around the same time, but never manage to meet up there, despite their emotional bond and what have you. Instead, Catherine is distracted and spends most of the party chasing fleeting glimpses of Vincent like a spurned and suspicious Woody Allen character, always catching him as he disappears around a corner. The token “dreamy dude” Catherine dances with doesn’t really seem bothered by this, and that should have been our first tip off. Sorry, spoiler alert.

Unaware of how frazzled Catherine is getting, Vincent makes off with the guest of honor for some intimate, commiserating balcony chit-chat.

Brigit details her life, surrounded by death screams and bombs going off around her, and practically in the same breath goes from sighing, “You can’t hear the fairy music through the gunfire,” to pouty exclamation: “I’m tired of safety!” And coerces Vincent into lending her his cloak for a night on the town, which both of them seem to have a hankering for.

This is clearly a horrible idea as this sketchy fellow…

…has rented an equally sketchy clown costume…

No one will ever suspect you're the bad guy now.

…and “cleverly foiled” the door man.

By “cleverly foiled” I mean: he turned around, pretended to get in the elevator, then somehow just turned back with some other people and walked right by him? The event’s security leaves a lot to be desired, especially considering no one minds/notices this guy slinking around out back?

Creepy Irish clown man hurries to follow Vincent and Brigit, very rudely not holding the door for Catherine as she tries to ditch suspiciously-still-into-her-pirate-guy (SSIHPG).

Sure he looks creepy but who knew he was such a jerk with elevators?

With no success grabbing the elevator or losing the guy, Catherine and SSIHPG hurry off to chase down Brigit.

While walking with Brigit in the park, Vincent instantly senses creepy clown guy tailing them…

He's being so auspicious about it?

…and puts a pouncing end to it. And just as quickly, sensing Catherine and SSIHPG approaching, makes off into the night as per usual. That is okay though; SSIHPG tells them he is, surprise, an agent of Interpol and HE HAS GOT THIS. Unfortunately, as Brigit, Catherine, and unconscious-creepy-clown-guy get into a car with SSIHPG, it becomes quickly apparent that he is not an agent of Interpol at all and pistol-brandishing-creepy-clown guy was actually sent by Brigit’s dying father to keep her safe. And the real threat? SSIHPG.

EVERYONE MAKE “OH NO” FACES!

VINCENT’S “OH NO, CATHERINE” FACE!

Now, I’ll walk you through it, but by the time Vincent shows there’s been so many people holding guns to each other, it gets about as confusing as the middle 20 segments of R. Kelly’s “In The Closet”.

The clown gets shot and is left dying in the garage, while the group is ushered by their captor over to the hotel room where Brigit’s father is staying. Even though there’s a hotel key, and people have said, “He’s in a hotel” at least a few times, just to make sure you really get that what happens next takes place inside a hotel room:

Fake hotel name, brought to you by the same creative minds behind Linda Hamilton and a sewer-dwelling lion man love story, folks.

The gun is pointed at Brigit’s dying father…

…then at Brigit to wipe the smirk off her dying father’s face as SSIHPG threatens to kill him—but only after seeing his daughter die first. (Irish people are not very original?)

Then, after Catherine busts out some street fighting moves (tossing whiskey at the guy and jumping on him) the gun is in the old man’s hands, pointed at SSIHPG…

Then Brigit, again as she pops between her dying, gun-wielding father and SSIHPG with a “NO VIOLENCE PLEASE” cry that melts her dying father’s heart. SSIHPG could have gotten off the hook right there, but no, he’s gotta pull a move that’s as dickish as it is surprisingly successful:

Come on, guy. Feel the room.

Vincent, in the nick of time, shows up and makes haste to take SSIHPG out with the usual pounce and roar medley, and leaves him in a questionably injured or dead crumpled state on the floor. There is only so much time left in Halloween and this episode, and they are going to enjoy it together, goddammit.

Issues relatively resolved, he and Catherine canoodle around NYC while everyone thinks he is in costume. This is the way the director is telling you they are looking at New York things:

After their night of being tourists (I know this is fun for Vincent but why isn’t Catherine bored out of her mind?) this guy walking by seems to take no care that they’re having a private romanticwhispers moment and decides to act as an alarm clock for their happiness.

There could be several takeaway messages from this episode, but the one that rings loudest in my mind? Don’t let your father get involved with your love life. Whether he’s in the IRA, whether he’s just nosy (Catherine), or whether your father is both exceptionally nosy and also you live with him in the sewer: it’s not a good idea.

Also, don’t be this guy:

The Perlman Cometh: Because Matt Damon Believes “Democracy Is Not A Spectator Sport”

From the bottom of my heavy heart, I say unto you: both Dom and I were late to the party, and even while Matt Damon will be in my ‘hood—like a few blocks from where I live, is how close I will be to this going down—reading live from notorious downers like Steinbeck and Howard Zinn in Zinn’s own “The People Speak!” series… well, neither of us will be there to enjoy it.

Not pictured: Noam Chomsky, who's promised them a tickle fight.

However, to celebrate our namesake’s affinity for the democratic process, I thought it’d be nice to let y’all voice what episode you’d like to see covered in the next installment of our ongoing Beauty and the Beast reviews.

You will note, gentle followers, that there’s no limit as to how many times you can vote. I’ve also included, for extra Damon-democracy points, a space to voice your preference for a mysterious “other.”

Do with that knowledge what you will.

The Perlman Cometh

or: A Dumbfounded Re-Watching of the Beauty and the Beast TV Series as an Adult. Who is Dumbfounded.

From creator Ron Koslow comes a scintillating tale of love under the duress of impossibility. Starring Linda [Fucking] Hamilton and Ron Perlman (with about 20 lbs of costume makeup lumped onto his face alone), Beauty and the Beast: a three-season drama which snagged writer/producer talent from the likes of George R. R. Martin for almost 40 episodes, won the devoted viewership of romantic saps like my mother, and even seemingly sacked the love of IMDB.com, which rates the series a solid 7.0.

IMDB’s description:  “The adventures and romance of a sensitive and cultured lion-man and a crusading District Attorney assistant.”

As a kid I remember watching the show with my mom, not understanding a number of things. Not the things that are indisputably just bonkers about the show, but things like not realizing Perlman wasn’t actually a lion-man and not understanding what was so weird about a lion-man and a finely-banged woman getting down together. Obviously once the show popped up on my Netflix, I was delighted and, like rewatching any number of childhood shows, sitting down to watch Beauty & the Beast as an adult unveiled a number of these misguided mysteries. Like, obviously, Ron Perlman is not a lion, obviously there is no way these people can get down together…and i mean never; also, last Thanksgiving could not have possibly been the first time my mom did drugs.

So, adults, join me and all my screen-grabs: it’s only the strong of stomach that can weather this barrage of ’80s romantic camp and, well, even then. Like the song goes. You’ll wanna be high for this.

***

Episode 1: Pilot/”Once Upon a Time in the City of New York”

Saddled with a high-falutin’ corporate lawyering job (that she openly decries “un-thrilling” in front of her boss-slash-father, after she walks in around noon) and a smugly coiffured cock of a boyfriend…

Played by an actual angry penis in a wig.

…who calls people a “biiiiig looooser,” our kind-hearted heroine Catherine has her share of troubles to contend with—yet, remains through it all: rosy of cheek, plucky of spirit, and awesomely feathered of bangs.

How such unlikely a love begins?

Marching out of a party—whose only purpose otherwise seems to be establishing how much a raging, sloshing, douchebucket her boyfriend is—the neighbour-dad from That ’70s Show approaches Catherine, (though he calls her “Carol”) and briefly pretends to hail her a cab…

…before shoving her into the back of a van and proceeding to waggle his chubby finger and street-urchin-sized pocketknife in front of her face. After untold/unshown accosting of our leading lady, her unconscious body is thrown out of the van and tumbles into the late night mist of Central Park.

Why he is present? Who knows! We never find out, but so enters our leading dude: Vincent (Ron Perlman), cloaked in shadows, mist, and also actual cloak. Though he later tells her there was “no time” to take her to a hospital, we watch as he scoops Catherine up, descends spiral staircases into the underground, below the sewers, past “waterfalls,” and sojourns through a labyrinth of pipes and tunnels to his under-under-underground abode. It takes a while.

This was unsettlingly enough explained to Catherine once she’s regained consciousness. Rather, it should have been really unsettling, as she’s just been kidnapped + abused and she wakes up to a strange dude’s voice telling her she isn’t in a hospital, isn’t even in Manhattan anymore—all the while blindfolded in a a full head-wrap of medical bandages and clothed in such a crudely stitched dress you can only bite your nails as to what her face looks like.

Whether it’s his soothingly brusque whisper-voice or his insistence on reading her Dickens, she allows it and seems to have no probs even letting him spoon-feed her some soup. But, while Vincent sends an orphan boy all the way to Chinatown for a cup of hot tea, Catherine takes a moment to hastily unravel her head bandages, look around in awe and “WTF” at Vincent’s oddly Renaissance-themed, library-looking hovel…

…do the inevitable “ahh, my beautiful face” clutching in a mirror, and turn around to see her rescuer-slash-captor, Vincent for what he is:

…a beautiful yet horrifying man-lion with the sumptuous hair of any given dude from the band Poison. Wearing makeshift Renaissance clothes? She throws the mirror at his head and somehow this comes as a shock to him. Folks, if you look like Ron Perlman in Beauty and the Beast, probably do not kidnap and blindfold a woman and then creep up behind her without mentioning you have a bit of a birth defect. Also, probably don’t roar and make this face:

Once everyone’s simmered down, it is impressed upon Catherine the importance of maintaining the secrecy around their weird-o Shakespearian underground, super-tedious lifestyle. Which is not only the life of Vincent, but masses of unseen sub-sewer people who communicate by tapping morse code onto a large main pipe. About as obnoxious-sounding as you’d imagine. And of course prevalent character, Vincent’s father-figure Jacob, who also dresses like a Project Runway episode where contestants are challenged with recreating the costumes of Gladiator using the clothes off a homeless person’s back. Jacob, by the way, is none too happy about Vincent’s breach of sub-sewer-protocol and instantly establishes himself as both wise overseer and constant voice of caution. (Remember Chuckie in Rugrats?)

"Make it work!"

Once Catherine grasps the alleged importance of their secrecy, Vincent escorts her to the very basement of her apartment building, where there is…not a secret entrance exactly but seriously a door-sized fucking hole that they just, like, walk through. Either NYC building managers are about as remiss as mine or these guys are the worst at being secretive and, honestly, the city as a whole doesn’t care that there’re gigantic sewer-holes in everything.

For reals:

As tough a pill as that is to swallow, even harder to digest is the magical tidbit Vincent shares as he clasps Catherine to his over-padded chest. Vincent confesses: he feels what she is feeling. Yes, even deeper and magical-er than bonds like…Stockholm syndrome?…is this connection forged between Vincent and Catherine. Besides never being able to talk to each other without saying each other’s names or speak to one another in a voice other than a Young Jeezy-like romanti-rasp, this bond plays out each time Catherine comes into danger. Danger which quickly snowballs when Catherine returns to the surface.

Yes, her scars are gone (all but one hidden on the side of her face) but back in New York she’s a changed woman. Besides taking some badass New York street-fighting defense class…

…she quickly drops her fancy corporate law job, which she seemed to be crappy at anyways, and takes a job she again never seems to actually go to, but this time at the District Attorney’s office. While she still hangs around with that dick boyfriend, she wastes no time delving into her own case against her abductors by contacting “Carol”—the intended victim. Who of course looks nothing like her. A softspoken prostitute with a black eye, Carol is basically dead the next time we see her, thanks a lot Catherine. And once Catherine stumbles over the dead hooker’s corpse, the neighbour-dad from That ’70s Show is there with some goons (what they’re called in the ’80s?) to take that meddling Catherine out for good. She fights back using her newly-acquired street moves, but not so much her lawyer-sized brain, as she picks up a little three-legged children’s stool and this decorative plate…

…to defend herself with. Instead of, you know, moving any of these heavy furniture-items in front of the door.

Soon enough her street scrappiness wears thin and she’s cornered at gunpoint by her captors. At which time Vincent gets what I’d come to fondly refer to as “bee-sting face”: whatever he’s doing, if Catherine’s in trouble, his head snaps to look upwards, wide-eyed with a gasp. There’s no way to capture that in screen-grab, you’ll just have to watch it. But enjoy this in the meantime:

Anyways, again the laws of time and space bend around Vincent as he rushes to her rescue–..-in this instance, belly-surfing a subway car…

…and bursting through a prop-door just in the nick of time with a sample roar and “pounce” claws. That seems to be all it takes, and they escape through yet another door-sized gap in the building’s basement.

Which, the police in their search even go so far as to poke their heads inside, give a “huh…,” a curious swing of the flashlight, and with a shrugging “Shit’s weird in New York, you guys” sentiment from the captain, leave.

It’s a good time to mention that for whatever questions or mysteries this re-watching has cleared up for me as an adult, it opened a big abyss of exponential WTFs. Here are a few stragglers, but by no means does this cover all the obvious, door-sized gaps in story logic:

Like, if Catherine’s eyes weren’t damaged, why when she’s released and goes to a real hospital do they again wrap her entire head in bandages, blinding her? For the sole purpose of revealing how every single scar is completely gone, except for a large one down her cheek?

Either her insurance didn't cover this last one, or late '80s plastic surgery meant pulling her face-skin over to one side and just cutting her some new eye- and mouth-holes.

Why doesn’t Vincent, when he visits Catherine on her windswept and moonlit balcony, come inside rather than risk being seen?

"I'm not really allowed on the bed..."

Other basic technical issues arise with our director and camera crew. For instance, the camera will shift from one person to another as they converse, without re-focusing. Or a seeming inability to show things like “time passing” without actual time passing. Which I’ll touch on in-depth in later posts.

From the show’s pilot one can conclude the series’ 7.0 rating and more captivating qualities lay solely in the intricacy with which these baffling and inexplicable elements weave in a tapestry as complex and campy as a girl could hope for. Just as a kitty who hugs, doesn’t demand sex, but feels what you’re feeling and reads you books is all asexual cat ladies want out of a relationship and or romantic soap opera, this show is pretty much everything I’m looking for when I go Netflix trolling. What my mother’s generation saw in it?—I have no fucking idea.

Joey Greco Looks Like… (pt. 2)

…Max Headroom’s younger brother, Chip Headroom.

…his hands were stolen from a baby chimpanzee.

…k.d. lang with a terrible secret.

…he has used the phrase “Kings of Leon’s earlier work” in more than one conversation.

…the guy on Law and Order: SVU who appears at the beginning of the episode and insists he’s not the murderer, but it turns out he’s the murderer.

…one of Elton John’s favorite “kept boys” circa 1986.

…whomever Alanis Morissette was talking about in “You Oughta Know.”

…that guy who “revealed” all of “magic’s biggest secrets” on FOX. Not Mitch Pileggi.

…he requested “Rock Me Amadeus” at every roller skating rink he frequented up until about two years ago.

…Chris Cornell at his first day of vocational school.

…his favorite movie, musical, and nickname for his genitalia? “The Lion King.”

…Fred Durst’s dad.

…Mark Ruffalo, Vampire Prince.

…Denethor, Steward of Gondor and Boy Detective.

…he bites his fingernails and spits the pieces out onto your carpet when you’re not looking.

…Edward Gorey designed him.

…Ed Hardy’s back hair.

…a discount drug mule.

…an unexpected noogie.

…a spokesperson for Mike’s Hard Lemonade.

…how Billy Corgan must feel, always.

…Nightcrawler before he got mutant powers.

…a deeply sad man.