| Sep. 8th, 2006 @ 12:59 am discussion about 'the office'. feel free to skip. |
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i'm fairly happy with my schedule this semester, as far as when school interacts with work and such. even without having any days off (except for the few that i've scheduled off in the future, for various reasons), it's still going to be fairly relaxed.
i only have classes on tuesday and thursday, and those are at 8 and at 1, so i'll be attending those, with my shift at the Writing Center in the interim. i have no class MWF, so i'll be working in Clinton, at least for the rest of this year, on those days. the pluses are that i can work a full 8 hour day and get off around 6 or 7 (or by 4 or 5, if i get the odd mid-shift). the minuses, obviously, are that it is in Clinton. oh well. and obviously, i'll work every saturday and sunday. this way i'll be able to carry 40 hours at Homeland, and 8 hours of work per week at the Writing Center. keeps me busy, and that's alright with me.
that gives me both tuesday and thursday nights off after 2, which will be either homework nights or crash nights (as tonight was...a 4 hour nap, while accidental, was much needed). and the good thing about being off on Thursdays is that i'll be home to see any TV that iv'e wanted to catch up on....such as tape-delayed Grey's Anatomy episodes, or the third season of 'the office'....
and oh, 'the office', what will you do now. i'm curious to see what direction they take with this season.
see, the blessing/curse for me is that i'm a devoted watcher of the original British version. i practically have all 14 episodes memorized. half of my AIM away messages are quotes from that show. i was mildly disappointed in the first season of the US version, but they have really gone off on their own and made a great show in the second. it doesn't feel so much like a re-hashing of the original, but it's own product in its own right, which is the only way to handle shows that travel overseas like this one. i remember the travesty that was NBC's attempt at 'Coupling', as well as the three or four different times they've tried to adapt 'Fawlty Towers' (honestly, you'd think that people would have learned that you can never, ever duplicate anything that John Cleese does, Monty Python-related or otherwise).
but the thing with 'the office' is that the driving force of the show is not the David Brent (uk) or Michael Scott (us) storyline....it's the Tim/Dawn (uk) and Jim/Pam (us) story. this was more subtle in the original...it took a few episodes to see how the love story sort of formed the backbone of everything. this american version makes it a bit more obvious and overt, which is forgivable, since the fickle American viewers tend to need to be force-fed (i know i'm making a broad generalization here, but the ones who really appreciate good subtlety are watching HBO, not NBC).
and since i've watched the UK version, i know how Tim/Dawn end their story. Whether they follow the same storyline in the US version remains to be seen (and i have suspicions that they will not...for both good reasons and bad). i don't think i'd care so much if it weren't such a well-cast pair on our version. with the UK, when Tim and Dawn had their 'will she/won't she' scene that ended the second series (the same as how the US version ended its second season), that was the end of the story until the Christmas special that picked up the story 3 years later. a lot of time had passed, which caused feelings to change, grow, mutate, and also gave the characters a chance to have seen the documentary....adding tension to Dawn's meeting with Tim, as well as Lee's, since he now knows everything Tim has said to and about Lee's fiancee...
but at the end of that Christmas special, the story was through. there wasn't anything else to tell. life, presumably, goes on. and Steven Merchant and Ricky Gervais felt that there wasn't anything else needed....there wasn't even any question about whether to go on or not. the story was done.
With Jim and Pam, are we going to see this storyline resolved within season 3? are we going to sit through another season of awkwardness between the two, adding a different wrinkle to the original story? (which they have stuck to fairly closely...although it has to be said that when Tim asked Dawn in the original, it had seventy-thousand times the drama that the still great Jim/Pam scene did.) i dunno. once again, it's a case where i hope that the show is ended on a high note....tell the story you came to tell, don't drag it out for the sake of the show's longevity. we dont' need another Ross and Rachel....two people who get together at the ends of seasons and then break up in season openers, getting back together during sweeps week and when ratings take a tumble. If we're going to put Jim and Pam together, do it, and then either find a way to write them together for good, or close the doors. If we're going to keep them apart, you'll get another season or two out of it, but please dont' drag it out. don't dilute what you've spent so much time building up. Choose good writing over good ratings.
one thing that is promising is that Steven Merchant and Ricky Gervais are writing at least one episode of the new season...if nothing else, it's interesting to see what they'll do with characters that are just to the left of what they brilliantly created six years ago.
oh well. sorry, long rant, not that anyone is going to bother reading anyways. i just write because i don't think anyone wants to sit and listen to me talk about it this long. this way, you have the advantage of a scroll button, and can skip past the boring parts. heh.
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and speaking of John Cleese (i'm sure i mentioned him somewhere back there..), i saw on the Onion AV club that there's a new 2-disc DVD release of A Fish Called Wanda....one of my favorite movies of all-time. I just have my standard, feature-less version from several years back, and this one has Cleese's commentary, plus some behind the scenes junk....so this is going on my Christmas list, for sure.
i think i'm gonna go watch that, and it'll take the edge off of silently cursing myself for that 4 hour nap that is now keeping me awake in the wee hours... |
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