Zack’s Newsletter Bonus: Long Facebook Posts Edition
Too Many Thoughts On: Willy Wonka, Why Asian Characters are Named “Alice,” Ryan From THE OFFICE, More
Sometimes I write mini-essays on Facebook analyzing something that triggered some thought. While I was stuck on hold waiting for help with HBO Max glitching (I didn’t get it), it seemed like a good idea to archive some. Here are a few recent ones, with a couple of revisions here and there. I’ll post a few videos and links to liven them up. If you find one boring, skim down to where there is another divider line, and maybe the next one will be more up your alley!
WARNING: THE FOLLOWING MAKES NO SENSE IF YOU’VE NEVER READ “CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY” OR DON'T REMEMBER IT OR AT LEAST THE GENE WILDER MOVIE
My GF is reading CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY to some kids she teaches, and noticed a potential plot hole worthy of Kevin Smith’s “Were there innocent independent contractors on the Death Star when it exploded?”
A’ight, so key difference between the book and the first movie (never saw the remake because Johnny Depp’s makeup made him look like Michael Jackson) is that they expand on the explanation of Wonka’s competition and industrial spies as the reason he's so hermetic by making one of them, Slugworth, into an actual onscreen character who tempts Charlie and the other kids to get him.Wonka samples. It turns out to be a twist at the end, but it gives Charlie a moral choice and makes him a more active character than, “Nice kid who watches while the bad kids succumb to temptation.” He makes a mistake, and is tempted to give into the offer when Wonka treats him like dirt at the end, but it's all been a test he passes and it's a happy ending. He did the unselfish thing when the other kids didn't, and therefore deserves his victory.
BUT: That's not in the book. And, as my GF pointed out, there was at least a month or two (maybe longer, I checked a summary but was too lazy to reread the book) where Wonka would have had time to study the other winners, and craft the factory tour so they would experience temptations involving gum, TV, etc., that would systematically eliminate them from the unknowing competition.
Undoubtedly, he also put the Oompa-Loompas up to some moralistic songwriting because those lyrics were PREPARED.
Charlie, though? 24 hours notice.
Now, sure, one perhaps cannot fully comprehend the breadth of Wonka’s planning and vision. And yes, Roald Dahl (who was HORRIBLE in real life, and yes, I know how the Oompa-Loompas were originally depicted as African stereotypes and still uncomfortably evoke colonial imperialism and slave labor) clearly just wanted to do a morality play where the good, put-upon kid is rewarded and the bad, spoiled kids are punished.
BUT: It's amusing to look at the original book and think that the real reason Charlie Bucket had a better experience at the chocolate factory than the other kids is because Wonka just didn't have time to think of a way to torture him.
My GF is 31 flavors of awesome.
Incidentally, looked up a summary of the 2005 film while writing this. My God, that's idiotic. Maybe it plays better on screen, but it just reads as desperate and contrived. I’m not saying I know how to do better, but Slugworth was so elegant and memorable by contrast. Man, adapting classic books is hard.
WARNING: IF THIS WHITESPLAINS ANYTHING TO ANYONE ASIAN OR FAMILIAR WITH ASIAN CULTURE, IT'S JUST ME TRYING TO INCREASE MY OWN UNDERSTANDING
Those reading this of an Asian background, or well-versed in Asian culture, you might be able to help me out here: I noticed in several TV shows, books and movies, there were Asian-American female characters named "Alice." Curious (and curiouser!) I Googled why that was a popular name with Asians and got a few different answers.
The gist was it was an anglicized name, for reasons ranging from its phonetic similarity to how some names are pronounced in Mandarin, such as "A Lis." It seemed like many Asians named "Alice" were from Chinese families and the history of China's interaction with the English-speaking world...which I know almost nothing about...indicates, according to a few articles, that many anglicized names were based on formal English names popular in the Victorian era.
One blog I read, by a teenager who had decided to go back to her Chinese birth name, said she temporarily renamed herself "Alice" when her family moved to England not just because her birth name was difficult for others to pronounce, but because England seemed like "a wonderland" to her family. I kind of liked that.
I am curious to know more about this, just because it's, well, not something I've had to think about a lot as a white person, and it's often fascinating/saddening to learn about the origins of some cultural trends.
When I could teach in person, I'd always take attendance on the first day and ask the students something about themselves, including what they preferred to be called. If a student had a long or complicated name, I'd take a moment to go through a phonetic version with them and apologize for the inconvenience. Yes, I know about the problems instructors have had with the Vietnamese name "Phuc." Yes, my racist brain briefly chuckled when I imagined someone with that name and the last name "Yu." Yes, I felt bad after I thought that.
That's a whole other can of worms about Asian representation in media, and how a LOT of TV shows and movies still make jokes about Asian characters who speak broken English, or yell and yell in Chinese/Korean/whatever, or any number of other stereotypes. Some of these make the joke on the white characters who do the stereotyping, but the Asian characters are still presented as "other." The weird part is some Asian people I know say, "Oh, I know someone just like that!" But there's rarely any balance in the sense that these are often the ONLY Asian characters in whatever show, and that makes an impression on viewers. It's good that there's forward momentum not only in having more diversity, but also diversity WITHIN particular cultures or how, you know, people are individuals and stuff.
My final note is I was already wondering if there was a story that did a Lewis Carroll variation with an Asian character with an anglicized "Alice" name that explored the complexities of cultural conflict and the melting pot in a fantastic setting, and then I saw that "Wonderland" comment above and thought, "Man, someone really SHOULD do that!" Someone who is not me. Someone who is definitely not me. But it has so much potential.
WARNING: MORE THOUGHT THAN ANYONE HAS EVER PUT INTO A SHORT-LIVED 1998 TV SERIES THAT AIRED ON SATURDAY NIGHTS
Fox just premiered a new version of FANTASY ISLAND and I don't plan to watch unless I hear some good things. BUT: That and the ill-fated Blumhouse "horror" version from last year reminded me of the previous reboot ABC aired in 1998 with Malcolm McDowell. And you know I love him!
The series is on Tubi, with less-legal versions on YouTube, and I skimmed through some episodes because I remembered watching it and thinking, "This should really be better." And seeing it again not only reminded me why but also helped me see the show as a time capsule of the moment before TV changed forever.
(That last sentence is what's called a "hook" to get you to read the rest! WRITING!)
The thing the new FANTASY ISLAND introduced that the other revivals continue is emphasizing the darker side of the "Be careful what you wish for" elements of the original series. The trick that the original had was that the recognizable/semi-recognizable guest stars would always learn SOME kind of life lesson or catharsis from their experiences, and because it was an Aaron Spelling show, these were pretty much all happy or at least bittersweet. Note the qualifier because I haven't seen every episode of the original and I'm sure there's a blog chronicling some horrible fate suffered by a guest that caused the blogger childhood trauma. We've all been there!
But the original was the kind of thing you could watch with your parents if you stumbled across a rerun during downtime on vacation, I recognize that's a highly specific example, and go away feeling like, "That was pleasant, and wow, that Roarke guy was also Khan in Star Trek?! His accent is so cool! And Tattoo was on that Dunkin' Donuts Commercial where he went, 'The plain, the plain! No, the cinnamon, the cinnamon!' I get that now!"
Also, I admit, a highly specific example.
The new version promised a darker Roarke and an edgier island, and on that first note, it was hard to beat McDowell for casting. There was also major talent behind the scenes with Barry Sonnenfeld, who'd directed MEN IN BLACK the previous summer, as executive producer, promising some visual style.
And indeed the show LOOKED great, and McDowell had wonderful snark and occasional menace and even poignance as Roarke, but the elements that made the show distinct from the original also helped doom it, and not just in the ratings. Here’s the first episode:
Now that I'm older and took a Shakespeare course, I can recognize that the creators took more than a few cues from one of the OG magic islands, the one in THE TEMPEST. Roarke is clearly Prospero the sorcerer; he has a shapeshifting aid named Ariel (Madchen Amick from TWIN PEAKS, who clearly has SOME supernatural abilities in real life because she don't age), a large, rebellious servant named "Cal" (read: Caliban) played by Louis Lombardi from 24 and THE SOPRANOS, and one episode has Roarke reuniting with his adopted daughter Miranda. Also, Fyvush Finkel, Sylvia Sidney, and the guy who played "Gil" on FRASIER were there, but I'm too lazy to figure out their Shakespearean analogies.
The show was also more overtly magical than the original, with Roarke casually throwing about all manner of superpowers in front of the guests, but also hints at something darker. Roarke's staff were clearly not there willingly and trying to work off some kind of spiritual debt to him, with some plots involving their schemes to escape or at least enjoy the luxuries they were denied. Roarke, meanwhile, took a certain sadistic glee in trying to warn the guests how their fantasies were doomed to backfire, with that lovely McDowell smirk when they ignored him.
So you had a more interesting backdrop and characters for the setup. Unfortunately, the guests were kind of boring. There were a few recognizable faces like Alyssa Milano and (sigh) Dean Cain, but as with the revival of THE LOVE BOAT that UPN put out around the same time, they were rarely big enough to make you stop flipping channels.
And the fantasies were still predictable: A high school nerd wants the football player's glamorous life, then lives through his life as the guy washes out and is a has-been by the high school reunion before being gratefully restored to his previous life and promising the football player he'll make sure he stays in school. Is there any part of that story you didn't see coming?
There was almost no writing on this version of the show I could find, but one blogger did hit upon the key problem: By giving Roarke and company a plot that took up about 1/3 of every episode with two guest fantasies on the side, the 44 minutes of the show didn't provide room for any of the plots to develop beyond their broad outlines. They weren't necessarily BAD (well, a few were), but they weren't memorable, and if you're doing a story about a crazy reality-warping cosmic-justice life-lesson island, you need memorable.
There also wasn't -- and here's where the "before TV changed forever" bit comes in, belatedly -- any serialization or much continuity. This was the same TV season THE SOPRANOS premiered, and the same calendar year that BUFFY and SEX AND THE CITY started getting traction in the home-video marketplace, and just before the mass breakout of DVDs/DVRs/straight-up piracy. As such, there was still reason to believe a more episodic anthology format with static characters could work. And it did, in a few places, such as THE OUTER LIMITS revival on Showtime.
But the new FANTASY ISLAND often felt like it wanted to toe the line between subverting the original concept or at least playing with its cliches, as was popular with things like THE BRADY BUNCH MOVIE, while still not alienating viewers who just wanted a colorful escape with a positive life lesson.
I'm also not sure if there was pushback from the network against darker or edgier elements; the only thing I remember reading was they cut a joke from the end of the pilot where a shadowy figure whose voice means he's CLEARLY intended to be Bill Clinton is at the travel agency because he needs to get away from a mess he's in, which might be the most 1998 joke ever. At least they didn't mock poor Monica Lewinsky directly like so many others. And if I recall correctly, they just put it back at the end of one of the later episodes, when no one was watching anyway.
In terms of edginess, it's also fascinating to compare FANTASY ISLAND with CUPID, the show that followed it on Saturday nights, the Rob Thomas series with (ugh) Jeremy Piven and Paula Marshall. That too had an anthology-type premise, with Piven's supposed fallen love god trying to unite a different couple each week, and a very 1990s look with lots of flannel and coffee shop scenes. But CUPID was a little better at sneaking in darker, more subversive elements: Piven's character was played in a MIRACLE ON 34th STREET note where he might have been genuinely mentally ill, and some of the love stories ended on bittersweet/tragic notes were it was better the characters DIDN'T find their soul mate.
If there was one key difference between the two shows structure-wise, it was that CUPID only followed one guest-star plotline per week, and made that the bulk of the show, with the other characters' ongoing issues providing window dressing. It didn't have the same exotic location or big-time Hollywood power behind it, but it played better and got a cult following and even an uneven reboot a decade later...while the original still isn't on DVD or streaming anywhere YES I'M STILL BITTER. I think I found some screen-flipped eps of the original on Dailymotion recently.
But anyway, CUPID recognized how to integrate ongoing elements and characterization into plot-of-the-week episodes, which became more of the norm for shows, than FANTASY ISLAND did at doing amusing stories with static characters and a few episodic guests.
There are only two plots I found on the 1998 FANTASY ISLAND that stayed with me, and both played out almost exactly the same way! The first involves an episode where gravely-voiced comedian Ken Hudson Campbell (you've heard him even if you don't know what he looks like) plays the oafish ex of an unseen previous guest who was apparently inspired to dump him and pursue her dreams after visiting the island, and after Roarke repeatedly fails to get him to realize it was his own fault, he tells the guy he's a selfish loser who's made his own bed and turns him into a baby. Not great, but funny to see a character recognize and resist the lesson he and the audience are being hammered with, and to see Roarke genuinely unleash that McDowell menace for a Rod Serling-type comeuppance.
The other was in the second-to-last episode, which aired as a burn-off on UPN. The aforementioned Loius Lombardi Caliban character "Cal," who it's implied was some kind of criminal before, meets a pudgy Dennis the Menace type kid and ultimately encourages the kid not to make the same mistakes he did, and if you guessed the kid was actually Cal's younger self, you win. But the plot ends with Roarke transforming Cal back into his younger self, telling him he's earned a second chance, and freeing him from the island to live his life with a chance to do better. IT'S ALMOST THE SAME DAMN ENDING AS THE OTHER STORY, but it has some impact because Cal's a likable character we've gotten to know over a few episodes, and it's a genuine surprise for a regular character to exit in a subplot. My guess is the show was already canceled and they compressed his planned arc for the series, but it illustrates what could have worked better in the rest of the show, a sense of unpredictability and characterization.
ANYWAY: Having now written more words on the 1998 FANTASY ISLAND than I think anyone has ever, what I can say is that I hope the new version learned the right lessons from it, and forges its own path. But looking back at the 1998 run, it's still a memorable missed opportunity, some great talent and decent ideas stuck servicing the formula of its premise. But everyone on it's gone on to do other things, and I still hear people mention, "Right, there was some version where Malcolm McDowell played Mr. Roarke, right?" So, it came close to realizing its goals, even if the reality didn't live up to the expectation.
But that's what happens with fantasies, right?
AND NOW A PERSONAL STORY WITH NO POP-CULTURAL STUFF
I recently complained about a reservation confirmation email mishap. Yesterday, I got a reminder/confirmation for an appointment with my psychiatrist, whom I've been meeting with over video during the pandemic. The reminder said to meet at her office. My psychologist (non-pill doctor, I sometimes forget the difference as well) had started meeting in person again, so I assumed it was legit. Needless to say, I wound up having my session on Zoom in the parking lot outside her office. She moaned that she didn't know how to update the fine details in her mailing server.
I had a punchline about why I need medication, but really, I just realized how stressful the pandemic situation is for everyone, and I wanted to express empathy for not only anyone reading this who’s been massively inconvenienced by scheduling and video technology and distancing/in-person changes, but for the people who have to make those adjustments, they often weren’t trained for these circumstances and have to keep doing their regular jobs on top of that. As irritating as these things can be, offering a little compassion or forgiveness for these mistakes can make someone’s day a little better.
Reservation makers of the world, I absolve you!
MILD UPDATE: Waiting for an eye exam and the lady at the desk was on the phone dealing with cancellation, and after she hung up I said, “I know this is strange, but I appreciate you actually call people to confirm appointments because in the past 48 hours I’ve....(quick recap.” And she was in disbelief and said, “Thank you, sometimes it feels like all we do is just call and call and bother people.” Obviously, I am patting myself on the back by bragging about it, but I did want to demonstrate that a little compliment can make someone’s day better.
WARNING: MAKES NO SENSE IF YOU DIDN'T WATCH THE US VERSION OF “THE OFFICE, ” THO IT SEEMS LIKE EVERYONE’S DOING THAT DURING THE PANDEMIC BECAUSE WHO EVER THOUGHT WE’D BE NOSTALGIC FOR THE WORKPLACE?
Saw a few ads for THE PREMISE, a new FX anthology series from B.J. Novak, and that's the excuse I needed to talk about something that always sticks off when I rewatch parts of THE OFFICE -- even though his character Ryan is in the opening credits from the beginning and Novak was a writer on the show, they almost never know what to do with him.
Novak openly admitted this. As early as S2, some of the cast were doing guest blogs on websites to promote the show, and Novak explained it was tricky to write for Ryan because he was set up as a more reactionary character that observed the madness in the office. Novak did a great job as a writer on the show, with his first script, "Diversity Day," the second aired episode and the one that showed the series had its own voice beyond the British original. However, you can also see the seeds of the problems with Ryan begin in that episode.
Ryan was roughly the equivalent of Ricky the new guy in the UK series, who rarely drives the plot. In the pilot, he's a good POV character who's introduced to this world at the same time as the audience and gets a sense of how the idiot boss presents himself vs. how he actually comes across. But, as many have noted, the UK OFFICE was 12 episodes and a Christmas special, and the American version was designed to run much longer. So, with a character featured in the opening credits, you needed more for him to do than being uncomfortable around everyone else.
The bit in "Diversity Day" that triggered the problems with Ryan was that they needed a Pacific Asian Indian character to slap Michael, so they got show writer Mindy Kaling, who also had a background in performing, to play Kelly for one scene, and she popped and they kept using her. Then they kept using other behind-the-scenes people for on-camera roles, like casting associate Phyllis Smith as Phyllis, or writer/producer Paul Lieberstein as Toby, and the characters stuck.
And again, this helped the show and created a larger ensemble off which to bounce gags and character moments, but again, it made a reactionary character like Ryan seem even flatter. It was ironic because Novak was the only one explicitly hired as a writer AND a regular performer, and he was the only one named in the opening credits, even though the other characters more frequently drove the stories (the post-Super Bowl episode "Stress Relief" is the only time there are extended opening credits that lists Phyllis, Angela, etc.).
So, at that point, you didn't really NEED Ryan, because he initially represented the otherwise anonymous workers who just wanted to sit back and do their jobs. Michael would drop anything to play to the cameras, Dwight was...Dwight, and Jim and Pam could be used for the love stories, as straight men, or to prank/comment on the more outrageous characters. As the background characters became less anonymous and developed their own quirks and personalities, the character whose goal was NOT to be there became more and more of an odd fit.
It was doubly ironic because not all the writer/performers WANTED to be as prominent as they were because it interfered with their writing! Toby and Kelly worked in the office annex, and Ryan was exiled there in S3 because that way, the characters didn't need to be as visible in wider shots of the office; Paul Lieberstein also explained that Michael's hatefully excluding Toby from many parties and field trips let Lieberstein stay behind to keep working behind-the-scenes (most of this I got from the “Dunderpedia” wiki, tho I’m too lazy to look up the links to articles form individual episodes). Toby's "retirement" at the end of S4 was in part because Lieberstein had moved into the top position at the show, though I need to Google to figure out if Toby's return was a network request or just the writers realizing the departure of Amy Ryan's character was all the more painful if Michael's archnemesis returned to replace her.
Regardless, Lieberstein has mentioned he wasn't comfortable performing on camera, and that's the kind of irony the show would appreciate -- the guy who doesn't WANT to be an actor stuck who gets stuck in a prominent role and can't get out of it.
But back to Ryan -- the only time the show seemed to have a clear idea for him, and the best work (in my opinion) that Novak did on the series was S4, where Ryan gets the job with Corporate. It's a typical "power goes to his head" arc, but it gets a lot of traction from the fact that much of the arc happens when Ryan's off-camera, and when he IS on-camera, he's either playing to the documentary by speaking in buzzwords or trying to duck the cameramen. So, there's the implication of a larger, richer, more tragic life for Ryan outside the office, similar to the ever-expanding bizarro mythology for Creed. Ah, Creed!
A good example is in Ryan's first interactions with the larger office in the second S4 ep, "Dunder Mifflin Infinity," which arguably features one of Michael's most cartoonish moments, where he drives a car into a pond following a GPS. It was based on real incidents, but it seemed too far for even Michael Scott. Still, Ryan's return to the office yields some cringe comedy gold. He clearly relishes his power over employees who (rightly) used to look down on him, but he is so insecure about exercising his authority that he commands no respect. He barely hides his anger and resentment towards Michael for previously making him do menial tasks, wasting his time, and let's face it, the constant sexual harassment, but just as he couldn't make a sale or get through his business school presentation without insulting the company, he uses the wrong wavelength to try to corral Michael and just alienates him as a jerk.
And dear god, let's not get on him hitting on Pam and then slightly covering his face as he gets away from the camera, a moment that's only slightly less awkward than Toby later putting his hand on her leg and then hopping the fence. Huh, everybody was in love with Pam, weren't they? I mean, not Angela, obviously.
The point is, the cringe elements worked because the character was familiar already, and you could say in your head, "Oh, he's probably spent his time off-camera in over his head at Corporate with all this pressure on him, and he's overcompensating by acting what he thinks an executive needs to be like, and he's flailing wildly."
Likewise, the "Night Out" episode did a good job of saying, "No one really likes him at work, he's lonely, he can barely afford the high-class lifestyle he's flaunting, and he obviously has a drug problem" just by showing you a few details and letting your imagination fill in the rest. And it plays to Novak's skills as a performer, which were mainly comic desperation, deflecting, and reaction shots. By having Ryan higher up in the company food chain, these moments could come while he was trying to assert authority vs. simply reacting to Michael, and also set the stage for his inevitable comeuppance.
The problem was, they just didn't know what to do AFTER that comeuppance. If anyone's seen any interviews where Novak indicated he WANTED to leave the character after S4, let me know. But with the character's main goal of being a big shot thwarted, he spent the rest of the series as little more than a riff on hipsters/MIllennals. He constantly got new outfits, new personalities, and the joke was how little effort he put into anything, with the meta-joke that Novak was a writer and producer on the show and deliberately making his own character worse and worse. It was also a meta-joke of, "Why is he still here?" that got more and more pointless once Michael left, to the point that Ryan and Novak were both gone in the final season.
I can't help but feel there were some missed opportunities. Aside from a hilarious deleted scene in the S5 premiere where David Wallace calls the office, is infuriated when he gets Ryan as the receptionist, and reams him out for his corporate fraud, there were few moments that explored Ryan's awareness that he'd blown it, or framed his bitterness that he was now stuck in the job he hated beyond his continuing to act superior to his coworkers.
The reason I like the S4 corporate arc is that, as I said, there are these hints of a deeper, more dramatic story along the edges. The later seasons were mostly content to paint Ryan as a douche who broke up with and got back together with the equally cartoonish Kelly on a regular basis.
And it was an adjustment that fits in with the direction the show went, where the office denizens all became increasingly cartoonish and exaggerated. The show worked best when it could combine the sweet and the sour -- the first season was too dark, the last seasons were too broad. And Ryan was kind of the biggest symbol of this -- the character left behind, going from the outsider to the outcast.
ANYWAY: Glad Novak has a new show and I hope it's good. Man, I've written way too much about Ryan but THE OFFICE is pretty popular online and someone else has probably written more. Don't bother sending me links, I'm all Ryan-ed out.
…actually, I just remembered I saw Novak do a comedy show a decade ago and THOUGHT I had a photo of me with him, but can’t find it and I KNOW that’s something I’d have posted online. Bah!
Okay, that’s more than enough! A more normal blog full of lengths to come next week.