Happy Birthday Tom!

I'm so mad! NBC is switching Heist and L&O. Now, I have to miss Heist because I know I can't miss Lost or VM. . . this isn't the week that VM moves to Tuesdays, is it?

Sort of.

I hope this won't exhaust or put you straight to sleep, then. I translated for you (and for practice) the "My So Called thirtysomething" thing I told you about upthread:

- It just seems like, you're agreed to have a certain personality, or something, for no reason -- just to make things easier for everyone. But when you think about it, I mean, how do you know if it's even you?

I didn't die my hair in highschool, definitely not in crimson glow. I was never in love with the most handsome boy in school, with the guitar and the car and the meaningful silences. I never built any distance from an old friend in favor of the wild girl, and I was never blind to the secret love of the neighbor boy (because nobody was ever secretly in love with me). I was different from Angela Chase in almost every way possible, and still, those were my so called life. Or, at least, that's how I felt.

And it was the first time in which a tv show made me feel such identification. As a little girl, the stories I was looking for were as far as possible from the routine, known too-well daily life. Distant worlds, magics, monsters and knights filled my imagination, as well as historical epics from all over the world, exciting discoveries and breath-taking adventures. Not just on tv, but also in book, as well as in any other imaginary outlet I could find, away from the world around me. I was looking for the different, the unfamiliar, the fascinating and exciting. I've hardly ever read any books which depicted the lives of children like me, with all the tiring details of their days, and I definitely didn't want to watch such movies or tv shows. I knew this world from my own daily life. I didn't need any story to depict it for me.

But a few years and book-cases for older children in the library later (as much as the strict librarians permitted, and sometimes even under their noses), I started to discover between the bindings and the pages the magic that is hidden in the description of the everyday life. The written word penetrated into the depths of the inner worlds of the characters, in a direct and immediate description, until I felt that I myself was inside their skin. The tapestry was sensitively woven, the focus shifted from the technical details to the emotions of the characters, their thoughts and conflicts. The word “familiar” had more meaning than the simplistic “been there done that”, but rather the much richer and deeper meaning of “am I not the only one who feels this way? How can you describe so accurately what goes on in my head and inside my guts?”

In tv it took longer. As a little girl, it seemed like there are two kinds of shows: the ones with the heroes who have unusual life, like in the adventure storybooks, and the ones which presented the everyday life, and were mostly educational and explained why you're not supposed to drink alcohol, not believe in yourself, lie to your parents and not tell the truth. In each and every story about a world I knew, I felt like I was also told how this world should be conducted and look.

Even later, when it was OK to stay up until the late hours of the night and watch the “grownups” shows, what seemed to be describing people who leave in an ordinary world, actually wasn't: cops (who catch criminals, even murderers, on a daily basis), lawyers (who change the lives of the people that the cops from the previous shows caught, without blinking), or doctors (whose effect on their patients lives is even bigger than that of the former two). Under the disguise of undecorated reality, the lives that were presented were even less ordinary than those of the crinolines-wearing, swords-yielding or conquerers of barren lands.

- And I mean this whole thing with yearbook, it's like ... if you made a book of what really happened, it'd be a really upsetting book -- you know, in my humble opinion.

(continued...)

( continues...) The distance of fiction from the dull routine isn't surprising. It was Hitchcock who already said that “Drama is like without the boring parts”. But what if it's possible to take those moment, which seem to dull and familiar, the same moments that we experienced every day, talked about with the people around us, knew well, the moments that had nothing new for us, and turn them into the heart of the matter? To find the seed of magic in the midst of the routine? For me, this contradiction is what made “My So Called Life” and later “thirtysomething” into one of the most exciting adventures of all.

The “me” whose so-called-life we see is Angela Chase, a highschool student in a typical American suburb. The show followed her schoolmates – especially the wild Rayanne, the golden-hearted Rickie, the 'good girl' Sharon and the straight-A student Brian – as well as her family members – her strict and worrying mother, her warm and agreeable father and her younger sister – and a gallery of other characters, which go in and out of the life of every girl, such as teachers, grandparents, uncles, business partners of the adults, other students in school, and one Jordan Catalano, the subject of an intense crush. Relationships are growing and developing, sometimes between the most unexpected characters, and insights, for both young and grownups, float and crystallize as a result of the simple daily events and the emotions that accompany them.

It seems like a recipe that's been cooked an infinite number of times already in various teen shows. But actually the show was the complete opposite. One difference lied in its point of view. It didn't try to educate the teenagers who appeared in it or watched it, and didn't push to state a message. It didn't judge the characters or their actions. Rather, it tried to mirror, as clearly as possible, real people, who react in a believable matter on actual events which an happen in the lives of nearly anybody.

Even though the little details were the focus, they were just the trigger, the means to observing the deeper meaning that resides in each of these seemingly-regular events, a meaning that so often its own simplicity and directness are what led it on, beyond the mundane, that which we are sometimes so close to it that we can't see clearly. The deep emotions that are exposed through the petty routine, the meanings beyond the gestures, the questions that actually bother all of us, that sharply float through the imaginary characters – all that find the interest and importance in the details that may be considered negligible.

In contrast with the adventure books, the show had no victory of good over evil, no forces of darkness against those of light. There were only people. Trying to do the best they can, in the various life fields, succeeding sometimes, failing sometimes, whining sometimes (on the failures as well as – in a very human way – of the successes), get hurt, forgive, talk about it (or keep it bottled up) and try to do better on the next round. The processes were slow, gradual, built in stages and lean on past developments.

The characters were also real. Just like people, even though they could be described in a couple of words, just like I did above, this sort of description is lacking and pale. Just like in life, there are no “good” or “bad” characters. They all have their advantages and their weaknesses, interwoven in each other. I could support one of them in one storyline, be against them in another, and in repeat viewing contradict my former positions. Moreover, the characters don't forget the lessons of past events, and even try to use them, or at least acknowledge them later on. A superficial description of the characters is not just lacking, but each character goes through a process, grows, changes, develops – exactly, again, like in life. Of course, not always the change is for the best. Of course, there are backwards slides. Of course, there are mistakes. But there's no standing still. Yup, just like in life, did I say that already?

(continued...)

( continues...) When I first watched “My So Called Life” I was a few years older than Angela. Not deep inside the heartahces of adolescence, still the same questions linger on, alluding solutions, even after one stops phrasing them in the most painful words of holding them at the most expose front soul' even when the wrong answers to them don't seem like the bitter end of the world anymore. It's not just in a certain age that one faces those issues, but older people, as well. They may phrase themselves in less of a “doom” manner, perhaps, but still asking answers to those same questions of self definition, the right thing to do, family, love and friendship. The search is conducted from a different point of view, that of somebody whose walked some part of the road, chosen certain paths, accumulated experience and experiences, but the answers may still be unclear.

The show focused on highschool and adolescence, stages that that vast majority of its watchers have already been through (and is currently going through), and therefore they're well known. In expanding to the adults who surround Angela's life, the show managed to show inner processes which take place through a wide range of years through a person's life, not just in a particular phase. And by going back to the narration made by a self-centered teenager, her young age gives her permission to discuss, without any embarrassment, those processes and experiences, without anybody thinking that it's wrong for the heroine to put herself in the center of the world, occasionally blind to other people's needs. Thus, a possibility emerged to focus the look in these emotions and thoughts un a more direct way than with a character in any other age.

A few years later, another show took the highschool world and managed to portray the world through it. Instead of describing the situations in a clear mirroring of reality, it chose a different path, and used the reversing of conception regarding these situations. So, when a teenager didn't go out in the evening to meet her friends, it really could be the end of the world. The show was called “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, but that's another story.

- Sometimes it seems like we're all living in some kind of prison. And the crime is how much we hate ourselves. It's good to get really dressed up once in a while. And admit the truth: that when you really look closely? People are so strange and so complicated that they're actually... beautiful. Possibly even me.

A few years later, in reruns during the morning hours, including setting of the VCR's timer and breaks for long months (whenever there was a vacation from the schools that changed the tv's schedule accordingly), I discovered the older “thirtysomething”. Those two shows shared many of the backstage crews, including producers, and some of the writers and directors, as well as the form of storytelling, the focusing in the simple everyday details, turning the thoughts and the discussions regarding them into the heart of the story, refraining from judgment, and putting the characters in the center. For me, in a reverse order from that in which they were created, and according to my own aging, “My So Called Life” gave the signal to the opening of the revolution, but “thirtysomething” set it in stone. In its first airing I was still in the age where I could understand why all these annoying grownups can't shut up already. In the reruns, however, I found reflections of my thoughts, emotions and experiences in each and every one of the characters.

In a similar way to “My So Called Life”'s focus on Angela and her point of view, the axis around which “thirtysomething” turned was Michael Steadman, an advertising man with literary ambitions which were shoved aside due to the need to support his family: his daughter and his wife Hope, who left her job as a journalist in order to become a full-time-job mother. Michael's partner, the creative and childish Elliot, is married to the quiet and motherly Nancy, and they raise two children. Garry, the ladies man and Michael's collage best friend is a literature professor who was involved in the past with Malissa, Michael's cousin and a sensitive and talented photographer. Ellyn, the career woman and Hope's childhood friend, completes the group.

(continued...)

( continues...)

“thirtysomething” doesn't have narration, which exposes the inner world of the characters. According to the characters' age, everything is less direct and exposed, but more subtle, sensitive and wide in scope. The exciting freshness component that's so dominant in adolescence is also missing, but it's exactly this – the accumulation of experiences – that enables a more sombre and layered observation in some of the themes. The characters can deal not only with their current problems and wishes, but also with the long-term results of their past choices, with the unavoidable comparisons to the people they dreamed to be when they were teenagers themselves. Beyond that, they can examine not only the difference between themselves and the realization of their dreams, but also the transformations that these dreams undergo themselves, with the continuation of maturing and balancing of needs, passions and duties, with the creation of an actual change and the acceptance of limits.

Eventually, all the characters in these two shows, each in its own way and according to its own personality, faces similar questions. Despite the differences in their daily lives, the variety of the 'outside' problems that bother them and of the sources of the melancholy brooding they all seem to be prone to, at the bottom line, they all ask themselves the “big questions”' of identity' search of love and ways to express it, family, loneliness, friendship and morales. Angela, the youngest, still hadn't lost the innocence and directness which enable her to pronounce these questions out loud' some of which she's only beginning to answer. But her search reflects more often than not the search of her parents, of the thirtysomething-ers, and my own.

- Sometimes someone says something really small and it just fits into this empty place in your heart.

As the time passed, I kept returning to Angela, Michael, their families and their friends. Each time looking with different eyes, more mature, who left some (no, not all, not entirely) of the inner conflicts behind. “My So Called Life” changed with me, when my daily life changed. For example, as an older sister to a teenage girl I could see Angela's parents problems and issues in a completely different way. And maybe when I become a mother myself, a whole new field of meaning will wait for me in “thirtysomething".

I never stopped reading stories full of faraway imagination, or sliding into distant worlds every now and then, but even in them, now, I see more than more of myself, of the issues that bother my thoughts in my everyday life, the tiny as well as monumental indecisions which appear as a result of the small details. In every beloved tv story. under various plot disguises, I now find the common denominator of inner observation, honesty, and a search which is also a purpose in and of itself. Just like Angela of the last episode couldn't go back to being the girl she was on the first one, I myself can't watch tv in the same way ever since. The discovery of magic, depth and beauty that are so close by affected the gray routine, the distant adventures, the imagination and the mirroring of reality. And this, too, is my so called life.

[Edit: oh, my, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to monopolize Natter like that. I didn't realize how long it was. Where did I think I was posting, the "Firefly" thread?]

Yeah, and just as I was rejoicing that Bones had been moved to Wednesdays at 8 PM, 'they' (ABC?) go and move The Amazing Race opposite it.

Happy birthday, Tom Scola!!!

Nilly, that was great.

I am still anxious about my Wednesday at 8 pile-up of Bones, TAR, and ANTM.

Oh yeah: Overheard for ita: [link]

Oh, Nilly, thank you. That was beautiful!