narrative foil thoughts for The Pitt

 

girlboss

I am really enjoying the character of Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi in season 2 of The Pitt so far. I like the way she has been framed as a foil to Robby, starting from the first episode, where she requested that he stop referring to the ER as the Pitt, as it has a negative connotation. Calling it the Pitt is part of Robby's doom-and-gloom attitude in regard to where he works. He seems to think nothing can change, nothing can get better. The ER sucks, it's chaotic, they're gonna lose people. And that's all true! But Robby is incredibly reluctant to try to change the workflow and setup, even in a way that might make things run more smoothly. He was ready to dislike Al-Hashimi as soon as he heard of her becoming his replacement, because he knew someone else would run things differently than he did.

Meanwhile, Al-Hashimi has come into the Pitt hoping to change it for the better. The problem is, with little experience in emergency medicine, there's a bit of naïvety in how she's approaching it. Take, for example, her idea for patient passports. It's a good idea in theory! But the reality is that the cases they deal with are unpredictable and the passports could end up causing more frustration. Her obsession with introducing genAI into the workplace is another part of that. Most fans had a knee-jerk reaction when she first brought it up, instantly hating her, but as she's explained her reasoning, she definitely has her heart in the right place. She wants the doctors to spend less time charting so that they have more time during the day to treat patients, and don't need to stay overtime to finish like Santos has been. Of course, as an audience we know that genAI is not going to be the solution to that problem, but again, it's good that she's trying.

I hope that, by the end of the season, she and Robby will have been able to find a way to meet in the middle. The way Robby has been so dismissive of her and what she's trying to do has been bugging me, but I'm pretty sure we're supposed to be having a lot of problems with the way he's dealing with things so far this season. Curious to see where it goes! 

I Want to Write for Murderbot

autism creature

I am on episode 7 of Murderbot and I want so badly to be a writer on this show. Basically, it’s the kind of show I want to make. It’s character-driven, funny, cynical, heartfelt sci-fi and that’s a lot of the TV show idea I’ve had in my head for a while now. Might make a post about that idea later, and will probably make a post about Murderbot once I finish it, but for now I can’t get over how tailor-made this show is for me. I want to write TV so bad, man

Average Joe Season 2 Made Me So, So Sad

A dating show should not make you this depressed.

For the past few months, I've been watching season 2 of the early 2000s dating competition show Average Joe along with Nick and Wyatt of Guilty Dogs Productions as they streamed it. We knew any reality show from this era would be rough. We had just watched the first season of Flavor of Love, which had plenty of moments that were hard to watch. But what we didn't expect is that at the end of the nine-episode season, the guys, and the entire chat, would just want to die.

Our heroine Larissa, who I do think is gorgeous.

Here is the premise of Average Joe. A smokin' hot lady is so excited to be on this dating show where a bunch of smokin' hot guys are gonna compete for her love. But what she doesn't know is, she has been TRICKED. All the contestants are actually... normal looking dudes! Can any of these "average Joes" win the heart of a beautiful supermodel?

they're just normal men

So you can already see why this show is problematic at best. Larissa is initially painted as extremely shallow. She sees all these lovely boys and feels like she's been pranked. And, to be fair, she kind of has. You sign up for a dating show, you expect hunks, not normal looking dudes. And of course, according to this show, "normal" might as well be "hideous." The opening titles include a shot of a woman kissing a frog. The show never calls them ugly, but we know what we're supposed to think.

In a predictably heart-warming storyline, however, Larissa starts to warm up to these fellas. We have an early frontrunner in Tony, who shares her love of art and has shaved cool shapes into his facial hair. (He ends up being a bust because outside of being an artist there's not much to him.) After a few episodes we think, maybe this won't be so bad. Larissa is likeable, only a couple of the dudes actually suck and most of them are voted off early. Maybe we can leave this show with a smile on our face, glad to see that a hot lady can actually love a normal man.

oh my... what could this be

And then.. the Chads appear.

 

THE WHITE BOYS HAVE ARRIVED

In episode 3, we are treated to some of the most incredible editing you'll ever see on reality television. As Larissa and the fellas have fun on the beach, we keep cutting back to an ominously approaching yacht chock full of hunks. They proudly proclaim in their talking heads that they are here to ruin everything. Larissa will run to them immediately, grateful her prayers for a hot boy have been answered, and the Chads will destroy any chances the Joes were FOOLISH enough to think they had. They start having physical competitions that are all meant to make the Joes feel insecure. But the message of this show is that beauty is only skin deep, right? So while most of the Joes remaining are pretty chill, nice guys (except Fredo with that whole surreal sequence where they put him in a submarine to spy on Larissa), the Chads are either extremely dull or actual jerks. There's an incredible episode where Larissa disguises herself as her own mother to interview the guys, hides a camera to see what they'll say about her mother, and one of the Chads named Michael who isn't even hot fat-shames her. That guy made it to the final three Chads. It was dire.

the special effects are fantastic

By the finale, we are left with two boys. The first is Gil, a blond, blue-eyed, boring beefcake. Larissa is obviously extremely attracted to him. In the semi-finale he reveals to her that he recently hooked up with his ex. He excuses his lack of personality as him being nervous on camera, but then reveals to Larissa during his hometown visit in the finale that he wants to be an actor. Larissa tells us that he's a mystery she wants to unpack, but let's be real. There's nothing in that man's head.

honk shoo mimimi

And then we our stallion, Brian. Brian doesn't stand out much at the beginning of the season besides having the strongest Boston accent you have ever heard, but as time goes on he becomes the star of the show. He's sweet, he's funny, he gets an extremely flattering haircut partway through the season that proves he's a cutie. The only issue to me is the age gap; Larissa is I think 24 while Brian is 31. But that's not uncommon on dating shows like this, ultimately I think it's fine.

i literally love him

Larissa and Brian have multiple solo dates where they really open up to each other. Larissa has been in multiple long-term relationships that have ended poorly, while Brian has always been scared of commitment. Just compare his hometown visit to Gil's. What does Gil do with Larissa? He, uh. Shows her the construction site he works at and then immediately tells her about his acting dreams. Gil doesn't show her his favorite places in Fort Lauderdale, he takes her to some fancy resort to have dinner. Meanwhile, Brian gives her the Boston experience. He takes her to a marina to catch some lobsters. They go to Fenway Park and meet his favorite baseball player. They go get drinks with his friends, and THEN he takes her to the fancy restaurant. He clearly loves Boston, but when Larissa asks if he would move to Los Angeles to be with her, he says yes.

"I fell in love in center field at Fenway Park." - Boston Brian, my king

In the end, it's not enough. Despite everything, Larissa is clearly just not attracted to Brian as much as she is to Gil. She picks Gil, and tells him she's looking forward to learning more about him. I figured the WHOLE POINT of the show would be getting to know the guys who are competing for you, but what do I know, right?

The day love died.

Still, it's a dating show. Brian may be leaving with his precious little heart broken, but at least we will be told that this is Larissa's happily ever after. The show will PRETEND this was the correct choice. That's what dating shows do. Right? RIGHT? No. In a "shocking" twist, a week or so after the decision, Larissa informs Gil that she had dated Fabio for nine months. You remember Fabio, right? The dude who was on the cover of all those romance novels and was briefly consider like, the hottest dude in the world? The 2000s were weird. And Gil hates, HATES, that she dated Fabio. In a talking head, he informs us that any guy would be upset, and we know why. Gil, I literally don't. If anything, I'd be proud to have pulled a girl who had once dated a sex symbol! Does he think Fabio gave her an STD? Does he think Larissa is a slut for having been in a committed relationship with a guy for nine months? Whatever it was, Gil throws a tantrum and breaks up with Larissa on the spot like the manchild he is.

tfw my boyfriend dumps me because i dated Fabio???

The show lingers on Larissa, lying on a couch, as memories of her time with Brian flash before her eyes. She knows, in her heart, that she should have picked him. And then the show ends.

Never, NEVER, have I seen a dating competition show end with nobody getting what they want. I've never experienced television like this. Average Joe broke new ground in creating what was supposed to be a escapist story of love prevailing over all, of a normal little guy just like you finding true love, and yanking that all away, leaving you empty and alone. (In reality, both Brian and Larissa seem to be doing quite well for themselves, but no one knew that in 2004.) You will never be happy. No one ever will be. Love isn't real, and even if it is, you will never have it. This might be the greatest season of television ever made.

Bad Pluribus Discourse Made Me Like Pluribus

 

I literally cannot escape wrestling help.

This isn’t exactly a response to Lilly’s blog post about how she ultimately didn’t like Pluribus. I was gonna leave a comment on her post, but I ended up thinking of a bunch of stuff that would be too long for a comment, so here’s its own post!

SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRETY OF PLURIBUS

Not long after episode 2 of Pluribus aired, I made a post on Tumblr that I was a bit uncomfortable with the way Carol, as the only white woman among the other survivors, was the only person who actually saw that the world was worse off now that the Hivemind has taken over. I found it ridiculous that Laxmi would not be furious at her son’s entire personality being yanked from him in an instant, and it was completely cartoonish to me that Koumba’s first thought was “aw hell yeah I can have sex with so many hot women now.”

 At the end of the season, this is still a criticism I hold to be true; even with the introduction of Manousos, I find it extremely silly that that entire plane of non-white people stared dumbly at Carol when she insisted that hey, this might be a bad situation. Vince Gilligan is a great showrunner, but it’s unarguable that his track record when it comes to writing non-white people is… iffy at best.

I got a reply to that post that floored me, and I’m gonna quote it to you now.

“why is it bad though? I understand, losing (biiiiiig question mark here) individuality is scary. The art situation is going to be. weird. (Does a hivemind even need art? Like, I don't need to write a story or draw a picture for myself because I have already imagined them perfectly.) I fail to come up with more downsides. (Unless we take into consideration their weird attitude towards animals and its consequences but that will be cleared up later I assume.) Yes, it will be the end of humanity as we know it, but overall humanity will be in better shape than it's been for a century, I think. I think this is one of the topics we are invited to think over by the writers, and throwing out the concept of the hivemind without even asking "what is it like?" and acting like Carol is the only one with the Correct opinion is short-sighted.

Also we (can) approach this from an individual's point of view. Is that young girl "stupid" for wanting to join her family? The takeover has already happened, and no matter how "bad" the hivemind might be, the og humans' state of isolation from the ENTIRE humanity most likely seems to them less preferable than letting go of their individuality. It doesn't make them somehow inferior to Carol.”

When I read this I think my brain short-circuited. Like, what do you mean. What do you MEAN.

It turns out a lot of people on Tumblr are Hivemind Apologists, even by the end of the season. And not in a jokey, “I’d join the Hivemind if Zosia asked me to because she’s so hot” way, in a genuine, thoughtful way. Which felt so alien to me on a gut level. Which got me wondering why that was. Which then sent my brain into overdrive.

And when that happened, I thought, “Wait. I think I might like this show.”

I'm not trying to say that people who don't like Pluribus were just not thinking about it hard enough. It's just that watching Pluribus week to week and taking the time in between to scroll through the Tumblr tag to find the most baffling takes I could possibly imagine was super, super fun. Reading black-and-white statements about how the Hivemind is good or bad, or if Carol is more justified in sleeping with Zosia's body than Koumba sleeping with all those hot ladies, if the Hivemind is explicitly a metaphor for AI chatbots or colonization or socialism or etc, made me more inclined to analyze Pluribus in a way I might not have if I didn't feel the need to counter some opinions that came off to me as extremely strange.

In the end, I'd give Pluribus season 1 a 7/10, and I'm pretty happy about the set up for next season. I'm looking forward to Carol and Manousos maximizing their joint hater slay. I really, really hope we get more time dedicated to the other survivors. I need to know everything about that little girl in Lesotho. I hope she's asking the Hivemind to get her a unicorn or something. To me, Pluribus is not the best TV show of the year (it's The Chair Company, but I might expand on that in another post), but I like it! 

 Also, the actual main reason Carol sucks is because she's wasting those SD cards. Those things are expensive and you're out here flushing them down the toilet? Do you not know how to format those things? I think Carol might need a computer literacy class because she's out here directly hooking up her camcorder to TVs with an HDMI cable. Carol we know you have a laptop. What are you doing girl.