I'm sure she'd make a really excellent mother

[geebs]

Owel, one more week to go before I'm back up in the NYC for the Holidays. And the way my schedule worked out, just got three more days (including today) of work to get through and its vay-cay time.

Finally got some time to watch the bootleg cut of Almost Famous that hippieatheart lent me. I hadn't seen the normal cut all the way through, but I knew the gist of what happenned. So I'm not sure what was exactly different. But its a pretty cool movie, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Though between this and watching Freaks and Geeks its like I'm on some sort of teen-retro kick (even though the time periods of the two things are almost a decade apart).

Thursday Night TV round-up:

A pretty hysterical ep of the office. Lots of funny moments, some sad moments, and some sweet moments. I was actually surprised, when Andy took Michael, Jim, and Dwight to Benihana's after Carol dumped Michael (again!) over the creepy Christmas card, it was actually a good idea! I guess its because they usually portray Andy and Dwight as morons, but the trip was actually good for Michael and didn't exacerbate the situation in any way.

And Pam is such a sweetie. I mean, you feel bad for her when Jim at first turns down her Christmas present of getting to play a huge trick on Dwight, but then she starts bonding with Karen (heh, and Jim does not look pleased that his two girls are getting so chummy) and its cool to see her able to hang out and have fun with some one besides Jim. But she's definitely the heart of the office. I mean, poor Toby was all depressed when Michael pissily told Dwight to take Toby's bathrobe gift from corporate, and in the end Pam gives him one. And then when they were having the party wars, and Karen tells Dwight he won the raffle and gave him the walkie talkies, and he was all excited, she realized now they were just kicking Angela when she was down and got Karen to make amends and combine the two parties

But poor Karen. That speech Jim gave Michael about "rebound girls", I'm not sure if he realized he was also talking about her, but he is. And the person on the other end of the phone who's going away with Michael, that has to be Jan!

But yes, Michael marking the one waitress with a marker to tell them apart was just about the most hysterical part of the ep.


So tonight's OC ep was the "Its a Wonderful Life" version of Chrismakkuh. So, Ryan is thinking of inviting Taylor to Chrismakkuh, but isn't sure of what that will imply given he's not sure what their relationship is yet. But then he gets a letter from Marissa that she sent the day before she left to meet up with her dad (i.e., the day she died) and somehow got lost in the mail until today and it totally freaks him out that he decides not to invite Taylor. They have an argument, and end up falling off the roof and into comas!

In the real world, they're in the hospital and The Cohens and Summer and Julie and Kaitlyn are there for them. Kaitlyn is kinda happy about this development, because they get to miss out on the holidays with Julie's white trash relatives (heh, I forgot all about them, cool callback) But Julie and Kaitlyn even track down Veronica Townsend before she leaves for Cabo and Julie threatens Veronica if she didn't come to the hospital with them (Geez, Taylor's mom is just awful!)

Ryan and Taylor, however, wake up in an alternate reality where Ryan never came to Newport (or never existed, so no one recognizes him) and Taylor is a boy (well, she's herself, but she finds Veronica with a son named Taylor instead of a daughter, ha, that's actually kinda a clever spin on her unisex name). Jimmy and Kirsten are married (though instead of being a horrible alkie, Kiki's just an ice queen bitch, which mebbe I'm not recalling s1 that well, but it didn't seem like she was on that path) as are Julie and Sandy (how would that ever happen? Sure, they say later it was a marriage of convenience so Sandy could become mayor of Newport, but it still seems kinda weird). Also about to be married? Summer (who's hanging out with Holly!) and Che, who's known as "Chester" in this universe. Seth, meanwhile, is still a loser who's even picked on by the younger Ward brothers. Oh, and Julie and Che are cheating on their respective SOs.

Heh, I'm amused by their excuse at having Che around. Taylor theorizes Ryan took the last spot at Harbor, so Che might've moved to Newport if that spot was open, but with it being closed his family went somewhere else? And that's the only time we here any sort of explanation why he's here. Hey, it sounds possible, even if its very thin. We also find out Marissa is dead here too, dying in TJ without Ryan there to rescue her (I'm still skeptical things would've played out the same way if Ryan was never around, I mean, her parents were still having problems, but I think if Ryan weren't around she wouldn't have gone to TJ, or at the very least, gone with Luke, and thus he couldn't cheat on her with Holly and be the final straw that causes her to down all those pills)

Anyways, Taylor thinks they can't get back to the real world unless they put Sandy and Kirsten and Seth and Summer back together. Though while alt-Summer is hysterical with her hip hop vapidness, I can't see why Seth would like this version of Summer. She's an idiot! So, Taylor does some scheming, and it almost works, but then she figures out, she wasn't stuck there to fix them, she was there to stand up to her mom. So, soon after laying into her mom for constantly picking on the alternate universe of her, she disappears and wakes up in the real world, leaving Ryan to fix things himself. He tells Sandy, and Kirsten and Seth and Summer how much they've meant to him and what an influence they were on his life, and apparently how much of an influence he was in their's. He still gets thrown in jail, but Sandy bails him out and it looks like things may work out.

But that's not why he's here. He goes to the lifeguard station Marissa used to hang out at and reads the letter from the real world, finally getting closure with her and allowing him to return to the real world- he wasn't meant to save her. She was on a path to self destruction he couldn't stop. But he delayed it for a while, and gave her some good times before her life was tragically cut short.

All in all, it was a pretty good ep. It coulda been better though, but they only had an hour. Its too bad they couldn't make it a two hour special, because that would have made the story a little smoother, but as it was they had too much to cram in there, so there are a few holes and things that could be better explained. They did give so closure to R/M, as it seems if Marissa was actually alive in the alt universe, he wouldn't want to leave. But with him and Taylor trying to fix the other couples, its not like Jimmy was this a-hole. At least Julie and Che were cheating on Sandy and Summer respectively. I mean, I guess one might assume he still has the financial problems, but with Kirsten to balance him out, I think he wouldn't be as bad with the money. This version of her is money-grubbing/bottom line enough that I don't think he'd be able to steal money from the Newport group. So its like, "Sandy and Kirsten, you belong together. Jimmy, since you're no longer a cast member, your feelings don't matter!" HA!

See, another hole comes in that not everyone is screwed. From that poster in the background at the mall or wherever, Johnny's still alive, and on the surfing tour (so Marissa really did ruin his life, ha!) and apparently Marissa's death caused Kaitlyn become extremely studious and get into Berkley at 15 (I'm skeptical about that, I think that was all done so Ryan would think Marissa was alive when he went to the airport and then it turns out its Kaitlyn, not Marissa). So the alt-universe isn't bad for everybody!

But it looks like Ryan and Taylor are closer after their little adventure even though they don't remember it. One thing I like about this couple is the little things- the look on Taylor's face when she lets Ryan go to the airport, to the part at the end when everyone is gathered in their hospital room and Taylor's sitting next to Ryan on the bed and he puts his arm around her waist? Cute!


More lists! I was thinking of my top 5 favorite TV shows and when I was thinking up stuff, a lot of my choices were somewhat recent. Which had me wondering if I'm picking more recent stuff because I remember them better, or if I truly felt they were better than stuff from years ago. (I also had to break up the lists into categories, as trying to pick just 5 TV shows is actually pretty hard) Take for example, my top 5 favorite sitcoms. Off the top of my head, I'd put:

1) Friends
2) Family Guy
3) Arrested Development
4) Scrubs
5) The Office

Now, there are several eps of 3 and 4 that I haven't seen, having not watched those shows until season 2 onwards. So is it really fair to put them up there? And what about classics like Wings or Married w/ Children? Seinfeld and South Park are other glaring omissions. And hey, despite how extremely formulaic Three's Company was (remember that episode where someone heard something wrong and got confused, leading to hilarity ensuing), it was still pretty funny. Hmm, that's 10. I could make it a top ten list. But then there's Frasier, Its Always Sunny in Philidelphia, and My Name is Earl. And hey, I actually liked Growing Pains, I think it was my favorite of the mid-80s to early-90s ABC sitcoms.

My top 5 dramas ended up being easier. I had to think hard about this, and used this as my criteria: 1) I had to have not missed a single ep on its first run through unless it was due to like a power/sat/cable outage or emergency, and 2) if such an outage did occur, it would cause me to be terribly vexed. The first criteria actually knocked out Dawson's Creek, as I stopped watching it for about half a season (the first half of season 6?). Again, a lot of these are recent, but I didn't really start watching hour long dramas until the advent of the WB.

1) Buffy the Vampire Slayer
2) Angel
3) Veronica Mars
4) The OC
5) Heroes

There are plenty of other shows I've watched in this category, but going by the above criteria, I guess these would be my real top 5. Oh, and I took a break in the middle of this post to go to Junior's for breakfast before it was too late and thought up another category, top 5 TV soundtracks. Not like the actual soundtrack you buy in the stores, but I guess top 5 shows, based on their musical selection week to week. The definites would be:

1) Scrubs (which is basically the same soundtrack as Garden State and The Last Kiss)
2) The OC
3) Gilmore Girls

The last two? Hmm, I haven't seen the entirety of Freaks and Geeks yet, but I like their late 70s/early 80s musical selection. Everybody Hates Chris also plays a lot of 80s classics. DC had a lot of awesomely appropriate songs during its run, and I've liked some of the stuff on Veronica Mars. Of course, I'm not a music guy, so I'm sure some people would be aghast at my choices.

Oh, and when I got to Junior's, they were out of sausage! WTF?! So, instead of a sausage, egg, and cheese biscuit, I got a bacon, egg, and cheese one. The guy said to pretend it was sausage as a joke. But you can't pretend bacon is sausage! I'm not sure which is actually the king of breakfast meats, but in terms of breakfast sandwiches, bacon is inferior to sausage.

Comments

[phatjoe.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure which is actually the king of breakfast meats, but in terms of breakfast sandwiches, bacon is inferior to sausage.

llv("WRRROOOOOOONNG!!!!!!");

If you seriously believe that, I don't think you've ever had enough bacon on a breakfast sandwich.

/joe

[geebs.livejournal.com]

I prolly haven't, but I think you would need a hell of a lot of bacon to match the meatiness of the sausage! I mean, if there are no eggs in the samich, that's fine, but with eggs, its more egg-y than meaty if you go with bacon.

[mike-b.livejournal.com]

why were the two girls who showed up to the party different than the two waitresses we saw at the restaurant? also, is it bad i thought the last segment was going to be andy paying them? i kept thinking it was going to be revealed they were hookers.

[geebs.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I was a little confused about that. It could be an even bigger elaboration on the joke that they couldn't tell the girls apart that they even took the wrong waitresses back to the party. But it might just be that they looked different because they had their hair down.

[phatjoe.livejournal.com]

I thought one of the ones they were pointing out at the restaurant clearly had partly bleached looking hair... maybe the one Andy said he would take while letting Michael have Cindy. But both of them had black hair at the party.

I like the idea of it being a joke.

/joe

family ties

[dashoka.livejournal.com]

i've always remembered like family ties more than growing pains back in the day. don't know why though. maybe because i remember it more vividly? like there are a couple of episodes of family ties that i recall very well, but growing pains memories are more vague, i just remember things like DiCaprio joining the cast at the tail end and stuff like that.