#tbc fancasting

I was a bit taken aback this week to find that there are some folks in the TBCBC who don't like the Doc Redfern reveal - because I think it's so integral to the story, for multiple reasons.

Out of the three twists, it's the one that's surprising.

Valancy's heart - I don't go generally go into a comedy/romance novel expecting the protagonist to die, and even if I did, there have been so many references to the improvement in Valancy's health since she left the oppressions of the house in Deerwood - readers may not know exactly how this is going to be resolved, but we're expecting it to be resolved.

Barney is John Foster - Could LMM have foreshadowed this any harder? By this point in the book, I feel like dream-Barney being hit on the head with a rolling pin. We've had Expected Revelation One, I'm bracing myself for Expected Revelation Two, when...

Doc Redfern is a real person, and is Barney's dad - I thought LMM was going to zig, and she zags! This is such a great twist. It's fully earned - Doc Redfern has been a prominent, recurring presence in the story so far - but it's been so deftly camouflaged as just a running gag of the world-building.

To be sure, there is the moment in which we learn that a) Valancy voluntarily purchased for Barney a liniment she herself had previously described as "Horrid, sticky stuff!" with "the vilest smell of any liniment I ever saw" (Why would you do that, Valancy? Were you seriously going to offer to rub it on the back of the husband you're deeply in love with, after years of having to do exactly that for Cousin Stickles? Urghhh no) and b) Barney hates Redfern's Liniment so much he actually speaks harshly to her for once. If you stop and think about it, that moment is so weird that it's clearly signposting something, but the momentum of the narrative at that point is all about the passing seasons bringing us to the end of Valancy's year, so it's easy to miss it.

It's a classic comedy trope.

The son or daughter rebelling against their parents/society by falling for someone in disguise - who ultimately is revealed to be exactly the kind of person of whom their parents/society would approve - is a classic trope, seen in everything from (IIRC) Roman New Comedy to Gidget. The beauty of the trope, in terms of appealing to a broad audience, is that it allows for portrayal of rebellion against social structures, while affirming (or at least not seriously threatening) those structures in the end.

Hence, the hilarity of the Stirlings having to wrap their heads around the fact that, as a direct result of flouting all the clan's rules and strictures and expectations, Valancy has managed to outdo them all in having "fulfilled the highest Stirling aspiration, “marrying money.”" Chef's kiss.

It introduces (very necessary) conflict.

Before Doc Redfern shows up, Valancy's plan was to go back to the island and explain Dr. Trent's mix-up to Barney. Barney's plan (mild spoiler) was to go back to the island and explain his epiphany to Valancy. The stage was set for them to have some great communication as a couple but as a climax to the story? Yawn.

By showing up at the absolute worst moment, with the worst emotional intelligence imaginable (finds out his son spent $15,000 on a necklace; is then genuinely perplexed to find out Barney is living with a woman; immediately tells his new daughter-in-law that her husband used to be deeply in love with someone else who is now available), Doc Redfern:

injects necessary conflict into the structure of the story's conclusion

heightens the stakes for Valancy in her fear that Barney will think she's tricked him into a relationship

propels Valancy into discovering the John Foster twist in such a way that it has (surprise!) a completely unexpected lack of impact on her John-Foster-fangirl self

lays the groundwork for the coming revelation of Barney's issues with his family (and his mirroring of Valancy in his damage from those)

It's a breath of fresh air.

Muskoka is lovely, and so are Barney and Valancy, but even the Club was getting bored with the last few chapters before the train showed up. Doc Redfern and Henry and the glorious purple car all bring the larger outside world crashing into the story with a vengeance, and not a moment too soon. They are all delightful and must be protected.

So...fancasting.

So, let's forget about budget when fancasting Doc Redfern. This is an actor who needs to be able to play "profoundly embarrassing" and also "deeply lovable." If I had a time machine, I might think about Miss Congeniality-era William Shatner, but since I come at this from a standpoint of "Who would be the Canadian actor I would cast today?" I'm going with Enrico Colantoni.

She got a pretty green crêpe dress with a girdle of crimson beads, at a bargain sale, a pair of silk stockings, to match, and a little crinkled green hat with a crimson rose in it. [...] Valancy put on her green dress when she got home. Then she took it off again. She felt so miserably undressed in its low neck and short sleeves. And that low, crimson girdle around the hips seemed positively indecent. [...] the girdle had given her flat figure an entirely different appearance. She pulled her green crêpe from its hanger and put it on feverishly. It was nonsense to feel so—so—naked—just because her neck and arms were bare. [...] She flung on her coat and pulled the little, twisty hat over her hair.

I feel that The Green Dress should not be as hard to fancast as I found it to be. I follow @the1920sinpictures (lovely blog, by the way), which regularly posts images of beautiful vintage dresses, and every time one comes up, I look for whether it has TGD Vibes. I don't even need it to actually be green! I'm just looking for shape, style, etc. And I tell you what, I have not had a direct hit so far.

Images under the cut - and I will go ahead and credit posts and reblogs by @the1920sinpictures for most if not all of these; I've lost track of the source for some.

As usual, it took me the weekend to catch up, but thank you, organizers, for TBCBC 2.0, and thank you, club, for all the great discussion and insights.

Thanks as well to the club for participating in the fancasting polls, whether they were for green dresses or Uncle Benjamin.

Uncle Benjamin especially - he was such a Problematic Fave for the club and I had no idea how y'all were picturing him. I was surprised and delighted to see David Hewlett win the poll, because it meant I could spend this last week imagining Uncle B's keyhole-listening and other antics as performed by this legend:

GIF credits [x] [x] [x] [x]

BONUS: because apparently there are only 20 Canadian actors and they all end up working with each other at some point, here's David Hewlett back in the day as Rodney McKay in Stargate: Atlantis, attempting to bully a tween version of Jodelle Ferland (my Canadian-actor fancast for Valancy). I say "attempting" because tween!Jodelle's character actually has the power in this situation and she is absolutely faking those tears.

So, what do we know about Olive so far?

She's "the wonder girl of the whole Stirling clan, who had everything Valancy had not—beauty, popularity, love."

She's "disgustingly healthy."

She's a good reciter and would like to be a great singer, but she's not a good dancer.

She has a tad more self-awareness than the rest of the clan.

It was quite impossible to deny that she was beautiful and effective and sometimes she was a little intelligent. Her mouth might be a trifle heavy—she might show her fine, white, regular teeth rather too lavishly when she smiled. But when all was said and done, Olive justified Uncle Benjamin’s summing up—“a stunning girl.” Rich, golden-brown hair, elaborately dressed, with a sparkling bandeau holding its glossy puffs in place; large, brilliant blue eyes and thick silken lashes; face of rose and bare neck of snow, rising above her gown; great pearl bubbles in her ears; the blue-white diamond flame on her long, smooth, waxen finger with its rosy, pointed nail. Arms of marble, gleaming through green chiffon and shadow lace. [...] Tall. Queenly. Confident. Everything that Valancy was not. Dimples, too, in cheeks and chin. [...] “And yet,” thought Valancy, summing her up with a new and merciless conclusiveness, “she’s like a dewless morning. There’s something lacking.”

Olive was standing on the steps, Olive, goddess-like in loveliness, looking down with a slight frown on her forehead. Olive, beautiful, insolent. Her full form voluptuous in its swathings of rose silk and lace. Her golden-brown hair curling richly under her big, white-frilled hat. Her colour ripe and melting. “Beautiful,” thought Valancy coolly, “but”—as if she suddenly saw her cousin through new eyes—“without the slightest touch of distinction.”

(Is it just me or do some of these descriptions almost venture into Jolene territory before Valancy pulls back and judges her?)

Anyway - a quick reminder that when fancasting, I look for Canadian actors of approximately the right age, because I'm imagining a current, small-budget CBC production. I did feel a little hesitant about trying to fancast Olive, now that the narrative is starting to get so critical even of her beauty (when being beautiful is her whole thing), but what the heck - antagonists are fun for an actor to play, yes?

I honestly didn't think I would find an Olive - and then I came across Kirsten Zien (nee Prout):

I'm not at all familiar with her filmography, but to me she's got the look. Here she is in Olive's natural habitat, i.e., getting married to a tall bland dude:

Uncle Benjamin is back! Let's celebrate Canada Day with a Hey-it's-that-Canadian-actor fancast poll!

How are we all imagining Uncle B? So far, he's sort of been the Michael Scott of the Stirling clan (as one bookclubber has pointed out, he loves getting everyone together to come up with a plan, but his plans don't actually amount to much). For all his presence in the story, though, we don't have a lot to go on by way of physical characteristics.

He's "a wealthy and childless old widower." How old is "old"? We know from Edward Beck that Valancy considers 48 to be "old", but we're not sure of the exact age "old" begins for her (though presumably it's well after 35).

He has pudgy hands: "Uncle Benjamin punished his pudgy left hand fiercely with his pudgy right." Hmm. Is this more of LMM's fatphobia? Or is it establishing Uncle B as one of those clan members who, while being visibly well-provided-for themselves, were constantly judging Valancy for being skinny while never doing anything to help her family in their straitened, penny-pinching circumstances? As a store proprietor, Uncle B was in a good position to at least bring by some bruised produce for the poor widow's household occasionally (and make a big deal out of his generosity in doing so), but we don't ever hear of him doing that.

He's "wheezy":

Uncle Benjamin would ask some of his abominable conundrums, between wheezy chuckles, and answer them himself. Uncle Benjamin, wheezy, pussy-mouthed. With great pouches under eyes that held nothing in reverence.

For those of you who are tempted to Google "pussy-mouthed," let me just warn you now that that is a Bad Idea. The OED suggests that it could be a corruption of "pursy-mouthed", which most likely means puckered (but coincidentally "pursy" could also mean wheezy or fat). Maybe the folks working on original drafts and translations have a better sense of this one?

He asks the same dreadful riddles over and over, but when he bothers to come up with new material he can actually be funny:

You have asked that riddle at least fifty times in my recollection, Uncle Ben. Why don’t you hunt up some new riddles if riddle you must? It is such a fatal mistake to try to be funny if you don’t succeed. “It’s a pity you couldn’t have had your premonition a little sooner,” said Uncle Benjamin drily.

And while Uncle James is the clan oracle, Uncle Benjamin does seem to be the self-proclaimed clan organizer ("Let us be calm", "We must be guided by developments", etc.) Does the rest of the clan just go along with it because of his money? Or is his busybody energy just that strong?

All that said, on to fancasting!

I have no idea how Bookclubbers are envisioning Uncle B (or how old everyone thinks "old" means), so I'm going to offer a whole range of possibilities, ordered from youngest to oldest.

Also - because I think it would be hilarious to cast a genuinely talented comic actor to deliver all of Uncle Benjamin's terrible jokes and get called out by Valancy for his lack of success at being funny, that's who I'm focusing on in this poll. (For non-Canadian bookclubbers, comedy is one of Canada's prime exports, so we're spoiled for choice here.)

Finally - while you all probably know by now that I try to keep a hypothetical modest CBC-style production budget in mind when fancasting, I'm aware that some of the "Hey, it's that guy" actors here are pretty deep cuts for bookclubbers who are not Canadian (and even for Canadians who aren't familiar with the generation of comedians who came out of the Toronto Theatresports scene / Second City / The Red Green Show), so I'm throwing in some more famous options here as well.

So, when I fancast, I try to keep it somewhat practical, i.e., what Canadian actors could a low-budget CBC miniseries potentially get (and afford) if they were casting tomorrow?

But sometimes you just have to swing for the fences.

Look, I know Pamela Anderson is probably too busy living her best life...but she is Canadian. Maybe she's a Lucy Maud fan? Maybe she would like a great opportunity to chew the scenery?

She's always sporting such a huge smile in photos these days that it's not easy to find a picture of her looking forbidding, but they do exist:

Okay, first off, what is going on with the moon in this chapter?

On one of Cissy’s wakeful nights, she told Valancy her poor little story. They were sitting by the open window. Cissy could not get her breath lying down that night. An inglorious gibbous moon was hanging over the wooded hills Cissy died a few nights after that. [...] In the eastern sky, amid the fires of sunrise, an old moon was hanging—as slender and lovely as a new moon. Valancy had never seen an old, old moon before. She watched it pale and fade until it paled and faded out of sight in the living rose of day.

Is this like Valancy leaving Chidley Corners after 11 pm, then encountering Uncle Wellington and Olive 3+ hours later, at 10 pm? I'm starting to think LMM's Muskoka is a weird Bermuda Triangle where time moves however it likes. Or maybe Valancy's rebellion against the Stirlings has set the world off-kilter or something.

Anyway.

This is the chapter where we find out that meek, quiet, biddable Cissy has an inner core of steel...because the decision she made, to give up the social, financial, and even personal support of an offer of marriage in favour of raising her child alone, out of wedlock, in the 1920s, was harder and more radical than any of the very brave things Valancy chooses to do in TBC.

So, Barney Snaith entered the chat this week, and apparently he is "an individual that could not be ignored." Are we fancasting yet?

I've said before that I think CBC missed an opportunity in the 90s with Callum Keith Rennie, and I think they may be missing another one right now with Noah Reid.

"But Oatmeal," you may say, "While it's true that as Schitt's Creek's Patrick Brewer, he proved that he can play the ultimate supportive love interest, Patrick was a business major who wore straight-leg, mid-range denim - how can Noah Reid play disreputable, rakish Barney Snaith?"

Exhibit A: "a little, whimsical grin that gave him the look of an amused gnome"

Exhibit B: "Every one knew that he was an escaped convict and a defaulting bank clerk and a murderer in hiding and an infidel"

Exhibit C: "But he still retained something a little grim about the jaw."

(Spoilery exhibits under the cut.)