Slow Motion Animatronics

It’s been a long time since I’ve been creative (or posted here). As of late, I have been adding some songs I love with scenes I love. Here is my latest where I combine the OG Rocky training montage with Meek Mill’s Dreams & Nightmares intro.

Breakfast at Timothy’s #20

The road to hate watching is paved with good intentions.

One of the biggest challenges I faced with being married and becoming a first time Dad was how my time was distributed. I was used to freedom, but for the better things in life you have to make sacrifices. For me one of those sacrifices was my independence as a television watcher. Instead I would be sharing my viewing experience with my…

Warning: This post will contain spoilers. You have been warned.

When Transparent is at it’s best is when we’re watching Maura (Jeffrey Tambor) navigate her new existence. Through this journey we see firsthand how the people who are marginalized in greater society still harness many of the same biases as the rest. As I talked about before, Maura isn’t above this. In “Best New Girl,” the show explores more of this space in a way only it can.

Mort/Maura and his friend Mark/Marcy (Bradley Whitford) go on a retreat to Camp Camellia. While driving into the campgrounds there is this giddiness going through Mort and Mark. They see other people like them and they are free and excited.

The facade slowly chips away as Marcy and Maura ride their bikes to a payphone (remember those?) to call their families. This is such a powerful scene because Maura watches as Marcy gets on the phone and lies about where he is to her wife. Then Marcy gets her son on the phone and tells her to “man-up,” the entire lie is uncomfortable for Maura and she refuses to call home. Instead she opts to call the next day.

This scene is followed up by a cookout as there was a conversation about a former member of this camp who decided to transition to woman. That was where the line was drawn as the others talked about being crossdressing men not women. Marcy rushed to co-sign this as Maura resigned to feeling sad about the predicament. This is where Maura begins to understand how she is different from these people who he thought were his peers just the day before.

“Transvestites are not transsexuals. Never the twain shall meet. They should be in a different place.”

This line was said by Marcy while in conversation with Maura and Connie (Michaela Watkins), a wife of another person at Camp Camellia. This delves into interesting territory as Marcy is obviously jealous of Maura and her attraction to Connie and Connie’s acceptance of Maura. 

There is a jealousy that exists when Connie is around Maura and Marcy. Prior to this trip, both Maura and Marcy thought they were the same. From the moment they met while looking at magazines to picking names and dressing up to Maura pushing to make this trip they were together. Now after the phone call, the conversation at the cookout and now after Connie’s visit it was obvious they couldn’t be more different.

For Marcy this was something that could be done in private. A guise that could be turned off (whether reluctantly or not) to become Mark again. For Maura she couldn’t turn it off to become Mort. For her she was fully embracing herself. That’s what made her happy, and being happy after living a lie all your life is a wonderful thing.

During the early seasons of Parks & Recreation, Leslie Knope was a bumbling screw-up in relationships. She was a good, and sweet person but ultimately she was alone. Despite being alone she had all these people she loved foremost, being her best friend, Ann Perkins (Rashida Jones). So when Ben Wyatt (Adam Scott) came along there was good reason to worry about this balance being ruined. What happened instead was the relationship became a foundation of the show and strengthened it. The same cannot be said for Arrow’s handling of the relationship between Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) and Felicity Smoak (Emily Bett Rickards).

When Felicity first appeared, she was smart (practically genius level), spunky, and awkward. She also had a(n), obvious, crush on Oliver Queen. Oliver on the other hand returned to Starling City damaged after five years where he was believed to be dead. He was now cold, and self absorbed after already having been a billionaire playboy in his former life. There was obvious chemistry between the two characters but different female counterparts occupied Oliver’s time.

This unrequited love worked so well because it appeared that Oliver didn’t see anything in a relationship with Felicity. In the first season Oliver found himself in as many relationships as Jerry in Seinfeld. Outside of the back and forths with Laurel (Katie Cassidy) and Sara Lance (Caity Lotz), they felt like bandaids meant to cover up for what he went through. None of these relationships were deep enough to penetrate the secrets he held of his five years away.

There was a perfect balance. Oliver was the team’s impulse and driving force, Felicity was the brains, and John Diggle (David Ramsey) was the heart and soul. When more characters were introduced to “Team Arrow” more characters began to be able to use the equipment that Felicity mastered. Just as the show overflowed with vigilantes they introduced that Oliver and Felicity truly loved each other.

This isn’t to say that shipping can’t work. It’s just that Arrow’s writers completely mishandled these characters. Out the window went any subtlety and nuance in handling the characters and in came out and out melodrama. Where she was once defined by her intelligence she was now defined by her love of Oliver. The result was an extremely flat character who cried every episode because she was upset with Oliver.

When Felicity seemed to return to herself was when she was connected with Ray Palmer (Brandon Routh). Palmer valued Felicity for her intelligence, when Oliver took it for granted, and he gave her purpose and agency. But in a season that was about shipping, they couldn’t just be co-workers they had to date.

When in good hands characters dating on TV shows adds to both characters, and brings new interesting things out of them. With Arrow it was a series of “will they get together” which eventually became more annoying than endearing as both characters suffered.

When watching a show we all hope for a moment. 

Not a murder, not a crime, but a moment that nails down the essence of the show. Mediocre shows do it by having the characters explain what’s happening. Shows that aspire to be great allow you to see the moment unfold. Jill Soloway’s critically acclaimed Amazon Original series Transparent wants to be in the latter category.

The show, smartly, starts with Mort Pfefferman (Jeffrey Tambor) having already made the decision to (finally) live life as her true self Maura. Instead of slowly walking through this decision making we watch as Maura slowly alerts her children to their new reality. The first three episodes move slow and outside of Tambor’s amazing work I didn’t find anything to care about. That was until the fourth episode titled “Moppa” where we got one of those “moments” I was talking about earlier.

After getting makeup done at a high end department store (think Macy’s), Maura and her daughters have to go to the bathroom. Maura stands outside the bathroom and for the first time her confidence in her womanhood is shaken. When she finally goes in alongside her daughter’s she finds herself accosted by a mother of two teenage girls who calls her “a man,” “a freak,” and “a pervert” which causes Sarah to rage in return.

It was this moment that drilled home the beating heart of the show. Why it worked so well was because they spent so much time building up Maura’s confidence. There was no moment that she felt more like a woman than when she saw herself made up in the mirror, but it was at this moment that she felt she didn’t fit in and it was crushing, and powerful all at once.

What makes this moment so interesting is Maura wants people to accept who she is but seems to be unaccepting of others. An example of this is when she screamed out “faggots” while her neighbors in her new apartment were partying. It’s these things that makes the character Maura so compelling because there’s definitely things from the outside world that she has internalized. With all those things she decided to announce to the world that she is who she is anyway. That is a much more interesting choice than it would have been had she been completely accepting.