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Scrolling through this, a few thoughts come to mind:
I forgot why I must hate Ricky Gervais.
He makes you regret sharing his views, I think, but I'm a little fuzzy on him myself; he was relevant for a hot second.
What are your thoughts on SaTC? I'm sporadically re-watching it and it seems pretty solid. Maybe comically conservative for such an "edgy" show, but nothing horrible. The writing, directing, and acting is top notch. I'm just in Season 3 at the end of the affair with Big (Mrs. Big falls down the stairs chasing Carrie).
From what I understand, Carrie completely goes off the rail in the movies, and the writing doesn't call her out, but I don't know why that should retroactively condemn the entire series; so far, I'm leaning towards the youtube media pundit set wanting morality tales instead of deeply flawed and interesting characters.
Deeply flawed and vapid, but sure. The problem is they don't get their comeuppance and their worst traits are not even played for comedy, unlike Sunny, Seinfeld, Curb, Arrested Development... It always left a bad taste in my mouth, but I didn't watch much (my mom watched it some times, those are the only times I caught it) so maybe the more problematic ones had good arcs and developed into more likeable characters. TBF, I also didn't like Breaking Bad because a terminal cancer diagnosis does not morally allow one to become a murderous drug lord, lol, and I don't wanna follow a character I can only hate. 🤷♂️
Yeah, SaTC is definitely one of those shows that farms the relatibility of its characters and errs on the side of protecting that identification over condemning the characters. It also can't go too far in that direction because there is a political project to bring independent, liberated women to the screen--though of course, centering every story around chasing men absolutely undercuts the whole thing. I agree it is flawed, but wouldn't characterize it as vapid; it's pretty sharp IMO.
I couldn't put up with BB, too intense! But I think you're probably missing out on a lot of good shows if you don't watch them because of some simplistic moral judgment you overheard, I understand the show is quite a bit more complex than "here's your free pass to be a bad guy and let's celebrate together", though ANY time violence is involved, you get chuds with no emotional depth and desperate power-craving fantasies who fall in love it with for the wrong reasons; just like there is an argument that no truly-anti-war movie has ever been made.
That’s not the plot at all. His terminal cancer diagnosis had him confront the fact that his family was in dire trouble with him gone. He used his knowledge of chemistry (as a teacher) to produce and sell a little meth, as this was his only means of helping his family. The modern equivalent of “stealing a loaf of bread”, and all that.
His whole life, he was a bit of a square loser. Society didn’t respect him or his disabled son. Once he realized what this new world allowed, he slowly was consumed by the power it gave him. This corrupted him and snowballed gradually into a murderous drug lord.
The point is, we all have the potential to become that. You see it in rich people (especially billionaires). You see it in politicians. It’s a classic tale of power corrupting, coming from a slightly different angle. The writers and cast also corrupt the viewer by slowly making them root for the anti-hero, which ought to be a reality check for those watching.
Honestly what killed that show for me was in the like second episode or whatever when his rich friend offered to just pay for the cancer treatment and Walter refused because he was too proud.
I get that that’s the point of the story, to show that he chose all of this. But it made his character just too deeply unsympathetic for me. Just take your rich friend’s money, ya jackass.
Fair, and I guess it depends on how you view the world. Me? Yeah I’m not proud, I’ll take the money. But I also know people who absolutely would not. I think it comes back to him always being disrespected by society and thinking that charity would continue that disrespect.