I still struggling with thoughts about ZEP.
My grandfather had congestive heart failure. He had been sent home from the hospital the previous month and was under hospice care. When he had his final seizure, I phoned for the hospice nurse and started CPR, knowing it was pretty useless. He died underneath my hands.
Almost two years later, "The Body" aired. As I watched, it seemed like I was mentally marking off a long series of checkboxes: "Yep, that's familiar. Yep, did that. Yep, I remember that. Yep, that's what that was like." The background silence was quite effective. When the episode was over, I came away greatly impressed. It had been engaging without being painful, a difficult story well told and deeply affecting, yet it hadn't made me feel bad. On re-watch nineteen year later, I'm still impressed.
In contrast, the season finale of Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist a few nights ago was very painful to watch. I am struggling to understand why. Joyce's death was unexpected even though it had been well foreshadowed. My grandfather's death wasn't unexpected. Mitch's death was completely expected. So why did the episode hurt so much?
Perhaps it was the use of music and song and dance, even though all the numbers were very well done and fit the story-telling so well?
Perhaps it's because of the recent changes to my own sense of mortality. Maybe it's merely because I am nineteen years older now than when "The Body" aired. That's why I just re-watched it. Yet I still react differently to the two shows.
Perhaps it is because Mitch is a middle-aged white male, and I am also now a middle-aged white male? Yet I never felt like I identified with Mitch. I never felt like I identified with Joyce (or Buffy, or Zoey) either.
Yet somehow BtVS left me with awe, and ZEP left me with tears. I'm not good at tears.