It's Formulaic, Watson

By Nicole Angeleen   www.nicoleangeleen.com

Have you ever thought, You know, I think I’d like to be a detective, but I don’t have the requisite preposterously tragic back story?

Happens all the time.

Good, decent people who would serve their communities with dignity and diligence think about their normal childhoods and decide to manage banks or sell shoes rather than become cops.

You see, it is ingrained into us that people become detectives because something horrifying happened in their pasts, and now they are relentless in their pursuits to track and eradicate evil.

We’re all writers here, so let’s start with books. I am not, I repeat, NOT insulting Jeffery Deaver. His books are brilliant, they always have no fewer than two twists I don’t see coming but are perfectly obvious when I review the evidence, thus passing the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle test of mystery standards. If you want to get schooled in the art of the short story, read any of Deaver’s anthologies. He is also one of the most egregious exploiters of this disturbing trend.

For your consideration, I present to you Lincoln Rhyme. You know the guy, Denzel Washington played him in “The Bone Collector.” Lincoln Rhyme is one of the most brilliant crime scene investigators ever to grace the Big Apple. Tragically, he is rendered a quadriplegic when he is crushed by a beam at a crime scene.

Maybe he can't walk the crime scene anymore, but all the ladies still come running.

Still heads above the rest even lying flat on his back, he works through his proxy (and lover) Amelia Sachs. Now, if Rhyme’s back story wasn’t enough for you, Sachs as a character is guilty of the other sin plaguing fictional detectives. See, it’s not enough for detectives simply to be good at their jobs and have mundane outside interests. There always has to be a gimmick. Sachs is a red-haired goddess, a former model, and if that weren’t enough for you, she lives with painful early-onset arthritis so she can (ironically?) be Rhyme’s arms and legs in the field.

Oh, brother.

None of this is new. Nero Wolf has his orchids. Sherlock Holmes has his violin and cocaine. Stephanie Plum has her donuts. The problem comes when writers think they can’t create compelling investigators unless they force upon them a weird eccentricity that “sets them apart” from their peers. Instead of taking the time to produce a real personality, they use this shtick to artificially cultivate one.

I’ve met cops. The ability to think critically alone would be enough to make most of them standouts. They need not be glassblowers who saw their entire families slaughtered at the hands of the Yakuza.

This accurately represents the competency level I concede to most cops.

Michael Connelly’s uber-famous Harry Bosch has a murdered mother who was a freaking prostitute, followed by a stint as a goddamn tunnel rat in Vietnam, then a wife who is an I shit you not professional poker player who is also murdered. Jesus Christ.

There's only one guy I know who has that kind of luck.

Susan Hill is an outstanding British mystery writer. Her novels are perfectly representative of the new noir. Her recurring protagonist, Simon Serrailler, is the lead detective in a moderately-sized, as-English-as-crumpets town. He looks nothing like the others in his family even though he’s a triplet (here we go); he has a disabled sister whose existence shames his wealthy father (really digging in); he’s a respected colleague but mysterious loner (fine, I guess); he often travels to mainland Europe where he is an internationally renowned artist (what?), a fact he keeps secret from almost everyone he knows (COME ON). The family stuff certainly does enough to paint the picture of Simon as a solitary, secretive man, do we need him to also be a gifted artist? No. We do not. In itself, it’s not terribly offensive, but it doesn’t propel the plot or do anything to inform about him as a character, except that he’s a high-falutin’ douche, so why go there?

Because writers feel like they have to.

This is not relegated to books. Per the aforementioned examples, it’s not even relegated to bad books. This pops up time and again on television to the point that there is almost no back story too bizarre for a TV detective. “The Mentalist” Patrick Jane does what he does, helping the CBI solve all the crimes, because his wife and daughter were murdered by a serial killer.

I ask you, is this the face of a man wracked by grief and guilt?  No.  It is not.  It is, however, the face of a man every woman reading this would bone.

I would argue Olivia Benson of “Law & Order: SVU,” the rape-iest of all the Laws & Orders, is the most famous female detective in modern television, or at least the most prolific. And why does she stick with the SVU year after year? Because her mother was a rape victim, and Olivia herself is a product of that rape.

“Southland” is by far one of my favorite crime dramas of the last ten years, but even a show that great falls back on this cliché. Ben Sherman becomes a cop because his mother is a victim of a home invasion, and now he’s all kinds of not on my watch.

Jethro Gibbs on “NCIS” is driven to find bad guys because his wife and daughter are killed by Mexican drug cartels or meth-crazed coyotes or something, I’m not sure, I have a hard time watching that stupid show. Kate Beckett from “Castle” is motivated by her mother’s unsolved murder. “Body of Proof” lead Dr. Megan Hunt saw her career in neurosurgery end with a car accident, so now all she has is her job as a medical examiner and her thirst for justice.

Some people might think an insatiable desire to find every killer regardless of the cost would lead to reckless police work.  Apparently, the United States Armed Forces believe otherwise.

In the interest of space, I’m not even going to start on movies. But if they cram these narratives into books and television shows where time is not an issue, you can only imagine how easy it is to use this trite nonsense to create “meaningful” histories in three minutes or less for the big screen.

I think part of the reason I love "The Closer" Brenda Leigh Johnson so much is because she doesn’t fall victim to this cliché. She’s just a smart, dedicated, hard-nosed detective whose only foibles are eating chocolate and carrying a big purse, which I suppose is because the boobs didn’t make it obvious enough that she’s a woman. In the absence of the heavy emotional baggage, the show itself shines because the weekly capers are allowed to be interesting in and of themselves, and the characters develop naturally through the course of the series.

The funny thing is, police work is the only profession that uniformly gets this kind of treatment from writers. You seldom see a lawyer whose mother was wrongly convicted of murdering nineteen infants, and now the attorney wants to make sure innocent until proven guilty means something in this cynical world. We just assume people become attorneys for the money, and that’s fine with everyone. It’s rare to get more of an explanation for a character becoming a doctor beyond wanting to help people, which is a perfectly serviceable motivation.

It seems inconceivable to writers that a person would become a cop because of the potential to help people, it pays well, there’s a pension, and if you put in good years, you can retire young. So once you have a character with a history Charles Dickens would qualify as “too harsh,” in order to excel at the job, he or she also has to have some kind of extraordinary talent, like she’s an author of erotic fiction (Temperance Brennan), one of the world’s greatest hackers (Lisbeth Salander), or a sexy cyborg (citation needed).

You know you want to read torture porn written by New Girl's sister.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with using this as a story device. The issue is it lets writers off the hook for creating relatable character motivation. How many of you are driven on a daily basis by a single event in your past? I hope no one answered yes. If you did, seek therapy, because that’s kind of messed up.

Too often the actual story is sacrificed to kowtow to these crazy expectations of what a detective should be. If a mystery novel doesn’t have a good mystery, no amount of piano playing, beer brewing, marathon running, psychic visioning detectives can save it. What happened to the gin soaked, grizzled veteran who does his job because it’s his fucking job, just like all of us every day? If there’s an engaging mystery at the core of the story, I don’t need my gumshoe to be a dyslexic tap dancer. Furthermore, if writers think detectives must be motivated by their pasts, we should be required to apply that to other professions. ALL other professions.

Good luck figuring out the dark secrets leading your character to kick ass at running the McDonald’s drive-thru.

Join us next time when Wayne Spencer takes us to school on a topic I am not nearly geek-chic enough to understand.

Super Action Walking Dead Mega-Rant, Go!

Everyone’s favorite show about filthy southerners living in a prison has returned from an extended mid-season break, much to the relief of viewers everywhere.  Fans eat each new installment of the series up, but just how good is it?  Here, in our first “Mega-Rant”, three of our bloggers explore the good and the bad of The Walking Dead.

Bring on the Bad Guys!

By Brian Martin

The Walking Dead has achieved something remarkable.  Not only is it the first major primetime drama series about a zombie apocalypse, but it has also won over legions of rabid fans who praise the series endlessly despite how overwhelmingly mediocre it is.  Log onto Facebook on a Sunday night or Monday morning during a season of The Walking Dead, and your newsfeed is likely to be 90% comprised of posts about the show, most of which will look something like, “OMG RICK I CAN’T BELIEVE THAT PHONE WAS RINGING AND U PICKED IT UP AND ARRRGGGGHHHH!!!”

Sure, there have been other, lousier shows that have garnered cult followings, but can we really call The Walking Dead a cult series at this point?  I’d be hard-pressed to think of a genre series as tepidly executed as The Walking Dead that has become so overwhelmingly beloved.  I don’t hate the show by any means, and I watch it religiously, but, like staging an intervention for an alcoholic family member, I’m close enough to admit that it’s got some serious flaws.  One of these flaws has been repaired considerably in the current season, but I’m afraid it might not last and, if it doesn’t, that the series will suffer tremendously for it.

If I were to ask you who the villain of The Walking Dead is, what would you say?  You might say, “The walkers!  Obviously they’re the main antagonists!  What are you, an idiot?!”  But the walkers aren’t antagonists.  They’re mindless, roving carnivores.  They harbor no ill-will toward our “intrepid” band, they’re simply running on instinct.  Is conflict created by their presence?  Certainly, but not enough to sustain a multi-season drama series.  The walkers are environmental hazards.  Calling them antagonists would be like saying the asteroid field in The Empire Strikes Back was a villain.

The odds of successfully navigating post-apocalyptic Atlanta are approximately 3,720 to 1!

When you watch virtually any zombie movie, the villains aren’t zombies, they’re other people.  If there’s one thing George Romero has taught me, it’s that the biggest problem mankind faces in the apocalypse isn’t posed by supernatural creatures, but each other.  So how has the show fared with human antagonists?

Aside from one episode in the first season in which Michael “The Rook” Rooker portrayed Merle, there hasn’t been another identifiable human villain in the series.  Sure, there were a few relatively faceless members of a human gang that opened fire on Rick and Co. in season 2, but did any of them have names?

You might say, “But Shane!  Shane was a villain!”  But, no, he wasn’t an antagonist either.  During the prolonged discussion about the virtues of farm life vs. ANYTHING else that was season 2 of The Walking Dead, chances are you and your viewing buddies split comfortably into two camps: those who sided with Rick, and those who sided with Shane.  The funny thing was that the split seemed to be almost 50/50.  To those who supported Rick, Shane was a time bomb, primed to go off and get everyone killed.  For Shane fans, Rick was a pussy.

Shane, for all his head-shaving and wife-boning, wasn't necessarily malevolent.  He simply embodied the opposite characteristics of Rick, which makes him a FOIL, which is not the same thing as an antagonist.  Foils are, at best, annoyances.  They're horrible at being straight-up villains, but great for staging philosophical debates (see ALL of season 2).  As we languished through week after week of Rick vs. Shane, it wasn't a simple nod and, "Well, he DOES have a point..." that the audience was spouting, it was clenched fists and cries of, "Yeah, Shane should be leading these guys!  I HATE Rick!"  If Shane was evil and Rick was the hero, then how, exactly, would this happen?  Unless at least 50% of The Walking Dead's audience was comprised of sociopathic lunatics, it probably wouldn’t.

And now, in season 3, we mercifully have the Governor, the show’s first actual bad guy.  The Governor is a villain because, while he's clearly achieved something that SEEMS wonderful in rebuilding the community of Woodbury, we can ALL agree that we don't trust him.  He’s a nice guy, but he combs his walker-daughter’s hair at night.  He provides for his people, but murders relentlessly to do so.  He's charismatic, and far more engaging than any other character on the series, which is another tell-tale sign of a villain (especially on a show where the protagonists are generally unlikable).  Furthermore, he'd kill every last member of the principal group if he could.  Could the same be said about Shane?  And while the walkers would kill everyone, is this because they hate their guts, or because they’re hungry and want to eat their guts?

Don't let the smile fool you, people!

In no small way, the Governor has single-handedly saved The Walking Dead for me, which absolutely fills me with fear.  Not because the Governor is scarier than any walker (he is), but because I worry about what happens when he’s defeated.  If the Governor doesn't make it out of this season alive, the series risks falling right back into the narrative spiral into which it sunk during season 2, which brings us to another problem...


We're on a Road to Nowhere!

By M. Glenn Gore

The advent of DVD, Netflix, and channels brave enough to let showrunners produce seasons shorter than 22 episodes (thank you, HBO and AMC!) has allowed television to digivolve into a new, more powerful form. One capable of telling involved, long-form stories that span entire seasons, have crystal wings, and shoot lightning from their eyes. I don't really know how television shows are made.

So what does all of that have to do with The Walking Dead? 

Simple. For all its strengths, the long-form narrative has become a crutch for many shows, inviting the powers-that-be to drag them out far beyond the point where they should have ended, especially when there's no place left for the series to go. In The Walking Dead, there literally is no place to go! 

This is a world populated by the reanimated dead. What's the best-case scenario here? We cure them? Not bloody likely! Once you're stone-fucking dead, nothing shy of MAGIC will ever erase your memory of having been stone-fucking dead. So even if that did happen, all we'd end up with are billions of irreparably traumatized people who vividly recall what it felt like to be mauled to death and eat their friends and neighbors. That's not a solution; that's a punishment!

"Yay! My zombie-ism is cured! Now, has anyone seen my daugh -- Oh, no."

Let's see. What if we learn to communicate with them and somehow convince them to stop eating us every time we go to sleep? Great idea, asshat! Now you just have a bunch of rotting corpses walking around stinking up the joint. Does that sound like fun to you? And they still need to eat. How do you feed that many zombies? And, more importantly, who would want to?

My point is, there IS NO SOLUTION TO A ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE! 

The way I see it is, there are only two ways out of this: Either they discover a plague that only kills zombies (I'll even humor that it dissolves them, too, just so there aren't bodies all over afterward), which is no picnic either because that just leaves a few million people who are, more than likely, unqualified to teach, hold office, grow food, draft and enforce laws, or reinstate municipal services like water and electricity. You know, all the basic cornerstones of a functioning society. Welcome to the Dark Ages, idiots. Hope you enjoy your dysentery. The other more probable solution is that everybody dies and the zombies inherit the Earth, which would be incredibly dissatisfying, not to mention a complete waste of my time.

So look, show, I don't need you to tell me what the ending is, but I do need to believe you have one, and that this isn't going to be season after season of watching these sweaty yahoos run from place to place only to stay there for six episodes and then have zombies overrun it every year. Convince me you have a plan. Convince me you have an ending.

Ohhh, don't you DARE!

Dragging something like this out without a destination only makes frothy-mouthed, torch-wielding mobs of normally civilized fans. I never met anybody (and neither have you, by the way) who ever said the words, "I just read the best story. It doesn't end!" 

To me, if you're anybody other than a boy whose just lost his horse in the Swamps of Sadness, I don't give three shits about your neverending story. You simply cannot sustain a narrative set in a world like this without it becoming boring. You're going to run out of ideas. Seriously, Season Two contained only three conversations. They were:

1 - Do you want to look for Sophia some more?

2 - You think Hershel will let us live on this bitchin' farm with him?

3 - I want to be the leader! You CAN'T be the leader. I'M the leader!

Season Two also ended the only way it could, with the farm going up in smoke, and the fact that we saw that coming from literally the moment the farm appeared is just sad. This year, the part of the farm will be played by a prison, and while the haunted house aspect of it has been fun thus far, we still have the same problem as last year. We want to stay here and somebody else wants us to... not stay here. Oh, and there are zombies, who also kinda want us to leave.

Or, at least, to come outside and stand still for a minute.

"We KNOW you're in there!"

Is it really gonna be this every year? Look for shelter, fight some zombies, find shelter, lose the shelter, fight some zombies, find some shelter, lose the shelter, and fight some zombies? I guess that's not so bad. After all, along the way you can look forward to more gripping conversations like "How long do you think we can stay here?" and "It's too bad we can't stay here anymore" and my personal favorite, "I hope nobody finds out we fucking stay here!" 

T-Dog and Lori did finally die this year, answering the prayers of every person I know, but it's time to take a good, long look in the mirror. They didn't die because the story called for it. They died because they were horrible characters disliked by the fans.

T-Dog was so devoid of personality, I imagine stereotypes hated being compared to him, and Lori was dead weight. A manipulative and selfish anchor threatening not to drag down the group, which would have been perfectly acceptable, but the show itself, which would NOT. Was there a single time you didn't groan when you realized a scene was going to be about her? I didn't think so. 

The problem is, almost all of the lame characters are dead, leaving only the cool ones. And by "cool," I mean people who do ANYTHING. Yeah, the bar is officially set that low. This would be fine, great even, if I believed for one second that this show had the balls to kill off Daryl or Michonne or Maggie. If it did, I'd probably feel better about it, but you know it doesn't. You know they won't, and it's because the viewers would never forgive them if they did. 

Safe. Safe. Safe. Not so fast, Carol.

Eventually, we're going to run out of boring, useless characters. Hershel has one leg. That guy's as good as gone. Hershel's daughter? I can't even remember her name! That means she's dead, too! Oh, and these new people? Done for! Except for Tyreese, of course, because he has a hammer. Which begs the question: How long until the guy with nunchucks shows up? When does the girl who kills zombies with Kung Fu arrive? You know this is coming. It's the only thing left they can do. 

Believe me, when this show jumps the zombie, it's going to be one for the record books. 

Word to the wise, new people. If you want to survive in The Walking Dead, get yourself a gimmick. A crossbow, a sword, Glenn, whatever. You know, something that looks good on an action figure. And do it quick. The life you save may be your own.

But maybe I'm wrong. Maybe, just maybe, I'm missing something. Maybe...

I'm Conflicted!

By Nate Bowden

I won’t claim that The Walking Dead is the greatest story ever told or the greatest show to ever air on television, but I feel pretty confident saying it’s the best thing on television right now. I say this with all the confidence of a man that has yet to watch Breaking Bad, Homeland, House of Cards or Duck Dynasty. I live for Sunday night, and those overwhelming fans are obviously sucked into something!

Interesting to hear that the Governor has saved the show for my cohort, because while the series hasn't dipped (as I feared it would) it's not soaring to new heights either. To claim the show needs a singular "I'm the bad-guy" villain to be successful is awfully simplistic. Home Improvement ran like 8 seasons, although that neighbor Wilson was always kinda shady.

"No, Mr. Grimes, I expect you to DIE!"

No sir, He-Man may need Skeletor, but Rick Grimes is a little more complex than a man in fuzzy diapers. Literature and storytelling are filled with numerous types of conflict beyond Man v. Man. See: Man v. Nature, v. Society, v. Technology, and the all too popular Man v. Himself. Who's the villain in Charlotte's Web, or A Christmas Carol? Did we all cheer watching Brad Pitt slay the almighty dollar in Moneyball? 

The Walking Dead Season Two had conflict in a pressure cooker and it burst at the seams in the form of a barn door zombie massacre and an earth-shattering reveal! But hey, maybe they should have done more with those two dudes at the bar.

I'm guessing those two dudes at the bar probably felt that way, too.

The show is about survival, not one-upping an opponent. It portrays the struggles we endure when faced with catastrophe and how we remain ourselves, if we even can. Dale and Shane, Rick and Shane, Rick and Lori, Rick, Daryl and Merle, Shane, Carl and Lori, Hershel and the group… conflict much? The Walkers are a vicious representation of the environment that our heroes must survive in, but the show is about people.

For the love of Eternia, tell me there’s no story in that. Oh, and it's got zombies to boot!

Happily Never After...

Zombies and The Walking Dead in particular have taught me to embrace the sad ending. Guess what folks, you’re on the train to Nowheresville, but do you really want to give up your seat? An author friend of mine, Ross Campbell, introduced me to the zombie genre years ago with his OGN The Abandoned, from TokyoPop. When I read this touching story of love and friendships that ended with all but one character being killed, I said, “What the fuck? They all die? You’re a zombie as soon as you turn 23? How do you win?”

"Zombie apocalypse, dude. You don’t survive the zombie apocalypse.”

I wouldn't hear of it! At the time. Now I see the point. Until zombies stare down James Tiberius Kirk, I'm going to believe in the no-win scenario.

It's certainly no worse an idea than THIS.

After all, how we deal with death is at least as important as how we deal with life, wouldn’t you say? And the answer to that question begets more than 3 conversations. Does the show run the risk of becoming repetitive? Oh fuck yes! I haven’t seen it derail, however.

Most fanboys such as myself have heard the title of the show and its source material refers to the main characters, not the zombies. Rick, Glenn and, yes, even Daryl are dead men walking. Do the show runners know who is popular and who isn’t? They better, they’re the fucking show runners. So of course decisions are made delicately I’m sure. But I wasn’t 100% positive Daryl would be back for this second half until I saw the promo.

When War of the Worlds came out, and people were failing to remove the Thetan from his character, I heard the argument, “What makes Tom Cruise so great that he can survive this invasion anyway?” Would you tell the story of the first guy to get vaporized?

No. No, you wouldn't.

My point is that we tune in to watch certain characters follow their arcs. It takes courage to kill popular characters, but it’s not cowardly to keep them alive. It’s good for business. If Daryl Dixon were dead tomorrow, would I think twice about tuning back in? Maybe. I want Daryl to live more than I want writers to show me how brave they are. That said, if you’re gonna keep a brother alive for a while, don’t write the story that begs for him to have died. Right there with you on that one.

All we really need to do is examine the cast from Season One to Season Three and ask if we really haven’t seen enough death and sacrifice on this show. If you felt nothing when Dale was eviscerated or Sophia turned, you had nothing invested to begin with. Shane, Dale, Lori… all main characters that change the dynamic of the group once they are removed or replaced, to say nothing of secondary characters. Lest we forget that Daryl wasn’t top dog until Shane was dead.

This month’s issue of Geek Magazine has a blurb on the cover: “The Walking Dead- Who will Survive Season Three?” I have yet to read said article, but the fact that they get to ask the question suggests to me that the audience doesn’t know the answer.

Y'know, entirely.

NEXT: Nicole Angeleen has some strong words for the detective genre and the hard-boiled gumshoes who just can't seem to do their job.

Yes, the Oscars are bullshit; get over it.

by Javy Gwaltney

Hey, hey, you. Yeah, you: The fart munching douchebro wearing that horrendously knitted tuque, blabbering about the irrelevance of the Oscars. Stop talking for a second. No, really—STOP.  You’ve  been talking for weeks now, venting about how The Hobbit didn’t get a nomination.

We get it.

Now stop bullshitting everyone. You KNOW that on some fundamental level you care about the Academy Awards. Yes, yes, it’s the most grandiose circle jerk in the world, but it’s also the flavor of the month as far as universal conversation topics go. You have to be aware of its presence and, more than likely, you’re going to know the results of the show—even if you just settle for looking up the winners after the show's over. One way or another you’re going to be drawn into that conversation  at one point, whether it’s water cooler talk, blogging, or getting in screaming  matches with uninformed and tasteless plebeians.

I’m not saying you’re completely wrong, my friend, pal, my El Duderino, because there is a lot of validity to the often vitriolic criticism of this media extravaganza dressed up as critical recognition ceremony. Most of the judges for the academy awards are, in fact, mostly old white dudes, meaning that the dominating perspective belonging to the people deciding who gets what is largely patriarchal, antique, and blandly uniform. And yes, the fact that these awards are decided by people who have/are involved in the film industry as opposed to, you know, the regular viewer like you and I is kind of insulting. Apparently the majority of people who watch movies are only worthy of writing in votes for the various, inane People’s Choice awards given out by every entertainment news entity under the sun. (But then again, I guess there's the flip-side of that argument: Do you really want the bros next to you in the theater to vote Transformers for Best Picture AND HAVE THAT VOTE MEAN SOMETHING? Fucking democracy.)

And yes, yes, we could go on about this or that, but the question I want to put forth to you is when has any of this been new and why does it matter? Let’s revisit 1990 when Dances with Wolves beat out Goodfellas—yes, the Goodfellas—for Best Picture. I’m gonna let that sink in: Dances with Wolves, which has been an influential film for...James Cameron, over FUCKING GOODFELLAS, a movie that’s every facet has influenced cinema in some way.

And you know what? 23 years later, which movie is respected more? Which one has nearly unanimous praise lavished upon it whenever it’s brought up in conversation?  Here’s a comforting truth, friend: the good movies always win. Maybe not immediately, but in terms of critical appreciation and having a place in cinematic history, they win in the long run.  Think about it. Which title means more to you: Chariots of Fire or Raiders of the Lost Ark. Guess which one took home Best Picture? Or how about 2002? When Chicago beat out both The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers and The Pianist (because apparently letting an OK musical win over two masterpieces was funky fresh in Hollywood then, I guess).

Yes, all my emotional problems can be tied back to Kevin Costner somehow, okay? Satisfied now?

So yes, you're right that ultimately the Oscars don’t matter, but why are you stamping your fucking feet about them? Don’t rain on everybody’s parade just because you think you have an oh so insightful perspective about the superficial nature of these award ceremonies.  Pack away your ridiculous, indignant attitude. Relax. Have a beer. Chuckle when Robert Downy Jr. does his “I’m fucking Iron Man” smirk or guffaw at Billy Crystal when he delivers a flat joke because he’s just so goddamn lovable and you pity him. Hell, you might have a good time!

The problem with taking a frivolous event where the industry is blatantly patting itself on the back seriously isn’t with the event: it’s with you. I don’t pull down my pants and drop a deuce on the face of every football fan I come across just because I find the sport to be boring. I understand it has an appeal to people even though it’s ultimately, to me, at least, rather pointless. Plus, shitting on someone’s head without their consent is probably illegal.

 So step off the soapbox and lower your voice—yes, just like that—and chill out. Don’t try and make me feel like shit because I enjoy trivial things you highfalutin son of a bitch.

NEXT: It's time for the first-ever Ran(t)som Notes MEGA-RANT! Hold onto your fragile senses as Brian and Glenn take The Walking Dead to task for its many sins, and thrill as Nate attempts to come to the televised zombie phenomenon's defense. You don't want to miss this one!

Promoting a Pro-Princess Agenda

by Bernadette O'Keeffe

In 2012, about 20 children's films were released to the public (not counting re-released 3D-counterparts or anything rated above PG). Of those 20, only 5 of those films had female protagonists, and 2 of those films were documentaries, so I'm going to ignore those. Leaving only 3 out of 20 films in 2012 with female protagonists.  Of those female protagonists, only one of them is not royalty; and there is a problem with that.

The only non-princess of 2012! Hurray Arrietty! Hurray Miyazaki-san!

Most films made for little girls feature a princess. Now, it is not uncommon for little girls to be interested in princesses. Some would say it's even natural. But what comes to mind when a person says 'princess'? Disney, for sure. Ball gowns, crowns, Prince Charming, magic perhaps? The thing about being a princess is, there are only two ways of becoming one. She is either born into royalty or she must marry a prince. Neither way is gained truly by her own means, but by the means of others.

The same can almost be said about a prince or a king, but patriarchy dictates that they are making decisions and the ones with power. This makes a prince fundamentally different than a princess. What is also quite different between the sexes is that young boys don't need to look up to princes because there is a very wide array of protagonists for them to choose from. Male protagonists can be cars, bugs, ogres, fish, pandas, rats, toys, robots, video game characters and even young boys just like themselves. That means quite a lot, to see someone who is ordinary just like yourself on the screen doing extraordinary things.

A princess is not ordinary at all. She is (whether it is mentioned or not) the most beautiful, has the best clothes, the best place to live, all the best parts of life; and most little girls don't have that. In fact, being a princess, as it is depicted in modern day media, is very much so an escapist fantasy.

Considering that Rapunzel was being used for her hair, perhaps Disney should have mass marketed her short brown hair, as a symbol of her freedom... but then we couldn't brush her hair!

And yet, with this in mind, I would still call myself a pro-princess kind of gal. There are more facets to a princess than what we have been shown. I draw my optimism from Frances Brunett's novel, A Little Princess. It's worth noting that the protagonist, Sara Crewe, isn't really a princess; but she does come from a well-off family, is a smart, kind and handsome little girl. She is so idolized by her peers that they call her a princess. But Sara is also very self analyzing. She knows that the others see her as special, but she wonders if she would indeed be a 'princess' if she didn't have it so good. If she wasn't rich would she really be so generous?

Sara's life turns very dark when her father dies, leaving her bankrupt and employed by the cruel headmistress of her former school to pay off her debt. Sara spends the rest of the book playing pretend to cope with her reality. She believes that she really is a princess and that she must find it within herself to be kind and carry herself with integrity even if she doesn't have any material wealth to show for it. She ends up escaping the headmistress' clutches because of the friendships she forges with the people around her.

Pixar's film Brave, which came out in 2012, actually does a decent job with making a positive princess film, although I wish they would have come up with a conflict other than marriage to jump-start her inner transformation. Merida is athletic and clearly loves her family, but she is rash and doesn't really want the responsibility a being a princess. When her mother, the queen, forces Merida to do something she doesn't want to Merida places the peace of the kingdom in jeopardy to avoid it.

“The mother-daughter relationship is not often explored in this way, certainly not where the mother becomes massively powerful and also utterly helpless.” -Emma Thompson on her character Queen Elinor from “Brave.”

Although Merida's journey starts with her avoiding responsibility, her actions put her mother in danger and she soon realizes that her kingdom will fall into turmoil if she doesn't own up to her mistakes and put the needs of others in front of her own, everything will be for naught. There are some plot issues in the film that I would like to change for pacing, but overall the film does a great job dealing with what it really means to be a princess; being a source of strength for others when they cannot be for themselves. And thank goodness Pixar didn't sneak a love story subplot in there!

There should most definitely be more female protagonists in the media we consume for young girls and young boys. Boys can relate and connect to female protagonists just as well as girls do with male protagonists. We need to start having female protagonists as anyone; cars, bugs, ogres, fish, pandas, rats, toys, robots, video game characters and even young girls doing extraordinary things! And yes! We can also have princesses! We need to have princesses who care about things other than finding their true love! Why not true friendship? Or protecting her people! If we want to empower young girls we can help by empowering those they look up to!

NEXT: Javy Gwaltney guarantees that he will never win an Academy Award when he calls out the WASPy old dudes behind the Oscars for their years of shameless pandering. Reader, beware!

Not Funny "Ha Ha"

By Nicole Angeleen  www.nicoleangeleen.com

Over Christmas break, I went home to snowy Kansas, and one evening, my mother, younger brother, and I were tucked cozy around the hearth, watching “Charmed.” In this episode, the Alyssa Milano witch casts a smart spell on herself. The sister who’s not Shannen Doherty says to her, “What’s up?” Alyssa Milano, because she’s so darn smart now, smartly replies, “Oh, the Dow Jones, housing prices, and the space shuttle Discovery.” Not Shannen Doherty witch says, “Huh,” and moves on, the appropriate response.

Then my younger brother said something interesting. “If they made that joke on ‘The Big Bang Theory’ there would be, like, thirty seconds of laugh track.”


Think I'm wrong?

We are at a moment in time when there are great sitcoms on television and then there are shows written by your pun-loving uncle. There is very little in between. Since this is a writing blog, from a writer’s perspective, I’m going to tell you why. Warning: I’m going to bag on “The Big Bang Theory” a lot, not because it’s any worse than most of the other offenders, but because the show is terminally inescapable, so I can assume we’ve all seen an episode or two.

Here’s why “30 Rock” and “Community” get gold stars in being funny where shows like “The Big Bang Theory” and “Two and a Half Men” fail: the latter shows are lazy. Funny writers don’t go with the first joke that pops into their heads. The second joke is usually funnier, and the third funnier still, and when you drill down to the fifth, sixth, seventh ideas, you get down to the true essence of the joke. Great sitcoms are hysterical because they constantly surprise you. “Arrested Development” was one of the most riotous shows in history, and it was funny because you could never predict what was going to happen next; the writers didn’t say, “That’s funny enough.” Instead, they kept working until everything was as funny as it could possibly be.



It was time for Michael to do a little detective work.

“The Big Bang Theory” never does anything you don’t see coming. You, the audience member, thinks, “Hey, I was going to say that, and it was funny!” So you leap to the conclusion you’re also funny, and that makes you feel good. The writers on “TBBT” cut and print the first joke that comes to mind as if it’s comedy gold every time, and the laugh track reinforces how goddamn funny they all are.

Think about the funny people in your life. Are they funny because they burst out with the joke everyone’s thinking, or are they funny because they say something from a perspective no one else considered? That’s why “Louie” is so funny. Not only is it the next evolutionary step in sketch comedy, it mystifies the familiar and familiarizes the strange. He’s doing something like wrapping Christmas presents for his kids, and wrapping presents, at work, in the car, we’ve all been there, when everything is awful and breaking and impossible. We go into our own darkness safely with Louis C.K. It’s the opposite of, say “The Middle” or “Mike and Molly,” where the writers present us with a potentially wacky scenario and proceed to have their characters react the same way every damn last one of us would. Basically rational people doing basically rational things are not funny, don’t think I don’t see you, “Suburgatory.”

Christmas has never been more depressing...or hilarious.

“It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” and “Curb Your Enthusiasm” are funny because they take everything to the absolute edge, and instead of stopping as the sane do, they psychotically leap into the abyss. Would you want to be in the same room as any of the characters in “Sunny” or the “CYE” version of Larry David? Doubtful, and if you do, you’ve probably been called douchebag at least twice today. “TBBT” has this gag available, Sheldon is such an Aspergian ass clown he could be hated and reviled, and that would be fun! Instead, the writers are either too cowardly to go for it or too dumb to realize what they have, so Sheldon’s constantly saying things like, “The social convention dictates I do this thing, so now I am going to do this thing…” thus relieving the writers and the audience of having to deal with the wondrous burden of a character they can’t relate to but who might actually be interesting instead of someone I just want to run over with my Corolla. Nothing infuriates me more than writers taking a gift and exchanging it for cash.

(pause for laughter)

I’ve heard the arguments that “TBBT” sucks because the nerds are pigeonholed, and they are nauseatingly stereotypical dorks, skinny and intelligent versions of “The Simpsons” Comic Book Guy. Yet I don’t think those sins are greater than “Whitney,” the commitment-phobic (though she’s been in a relationship for years), edgy (incredibly stable), awkward (beautiful) girl who could easily be switched with Zooey Deschanel in “New Girl” and not a fucking person would notice. Now they just take the clichés and that’s the title of the show, a la “Guys With Kids” and the surprisingly racist “2 Broke Girls.”  Although, in defense of "2 Broke Girls," it was nice of the casting director to give two actresses with crippling voice immodulation a chance.

Literally dozens of people suffer from this debilitating illness.

Finally, we come to your precious “Modern Family.” Yeah, I’m going there. Three economically stable, two-parent families, each with an honest to God STAY AT HOME PARENT, cannot, under any circumstances, be considered a modern family, I don’t care how many Asian babies or gays or Hispanics or Al Bundys you throw in there. Every comedy doesn’t have to be cutting edge, but let’s stop pretending “Modern Family” is the family sitcom equivalent of “The Matrix.” Over twenty years later, “Roseanne” is probably the most modern family we’ve seen in the nuclear family genre, with two fat parents, nasty, backbiting teenage daughters, a weird son who isn’t also sweet or smart, and real money problems that can’t be fixed in a half hour. That show stands the test of time in a way “Modern Family” won’t. And as much as I enjoy “Parks and Recreation,” what’s with the documentary format on all these shows? Unless we assume “Modern Family” takes place in a future where there are no more wars, genocides, or awesome sports stories, there is no logical reason why anyone would make a documentary about this incredibly conventional family. No matter how hot Sofia Vergara might be or how ceaselessly hilarious Phil Dunphy is, none of it holds up under scrutiny. This format persists because it’s easy, jokes don’t have to be made with subtlety or intelligence, instead the actors can look right at the camera and do their in-character stand-up routines.

The original cast of "Modern Family." Can you believe they cast a Methodist?

NBC, the great harbinger of less mainstream but brilliant sitcoms, put out a press release stating they’re going in a “new direction” with their sitcoms. Hopefully that means more “1600 Penn” and not “Whitney,” but that’s wishful thinking. There’s hope for cable, but that’s about it. Great sitcoms force people to think, if only a little; they do what any good work of literature should do, make you slightly uncomfortable, and you’re not subjected to any of that if you watch “Last Man Standing.” So laugh it up while you can, geniuses. The tens of us who love smart, engaging, defiant sitcoms will surely be extinct soon, courtesy of Chuck Lorre.

Up next: Bernadette O'Keeffe talks to you about chicks, man.