What do we want out of Randy? This week marks the sixth episode he’s been around, and within that time he’s already broken up with Max and travelled across the country for her. Neither are insignificant events by any means, and even starring in that many episodes is a feat in and of itself [Austin Falk’s faux-Irish Nashit was only in four last season]. That being said the question still remains-

The 2 Broke Girls showrunners don’t appear to have any interest in either Max or Caroline entering into a long-term relationship, so let’s assume that Randy will eventually exit the show. Besides simply being entertaining, which is and should be the baseline expectation with sitcoms, there has to be more to the men who step in and out of the girls’ lives.

Initially Ed Quinn’s character followed the same arc that Max’s past boyfriends have: as she grows closer to them the increased intimacy makes her uncomfortable, causing her to want to pull away. This week appears to have left that far behind with a casual exchange of “I love you”, and in spite of being a realistically healthy thing stable relationships do not equate to good television. While their “first fight” doesn’t amount to much, it’s the basis for it that could make Randy one of the most interesting addition to the 2 Broke Girls cast.See, as a lawyer to celebrities Randy is rich. Like, lives-walking-distance-from-the-Hollywood-sign rich. Max and Caroline’s poverty is played up from week to week, often to unrealistic extremes, so to have him be in New York City, specifically their apartment, is a big deal. As an audience we’re asked to suspend a hefty amount of disbelief by accepting the conceit that they live in a craphole [particularly difficult for me as it’s a larger living space than I’ve ever had in my adult life], but once that pill is swallowed the realities of their relationship really click into place.

At first reluctant to have him enter their living space, Max eventually gives her boyfriend the tour, pointing out everything that could kill him. What she refrains to mention is Nail Patrick Harris, a floor hazard that both her and Caroline have grown accustomed to avoiding. I don’t want to get into what obviously happens after that, but what occurs immediately after that is a lot of fun.

What Randy does next is what anyone, ludicrously wealthy or otherwise, would do. He tells Max that she doesn’t have to live this way. Which she takes as she takes all correction or judgement, which is to say not well. When he gets in touch with their landlord, a dangerous proposition given that Max and Caroline are illegal subletters, there’s the very real fear that things could fall apart around them [“I knew my apartment would be too real for you, and now it won’t even be my apartment.”].

The fix is quick, easy, and makes perfect sense, with Randy telling their landlord that he was injured on his property. This results in two months rent free, their names on the lease, and Max hammering [using the heel of a boot, not the actual tool itself] Nail Patrick Harris into the floor. Their first fight wraps up neatly, but ultimately hints at a larger conflict looming just on the horizon.

Given that both Max and Randy love each other it only makes sense that they would have to make decisions about where their relationship will lead them. While addressing safety hazards is a good first step, it’s very apparent that Randy would prefer that his girlfriend live a better existence overall. While she could probably loosen her attachment to her “terrible” apartment, the real issue is whether she can leave Caroline. Living with your friends is great, for a time, but what about when we have to move on with our lives and trade that companionship for moving in with a significant other?

Like I said, I highly doubt that Randy will be around long-term, but his very presence raises a lot of really fascinating questions that 2 Broke Girls can either answer or ignore moving forward. I’m hoping they gun for the former, personally.

Current Total: $250,072.

New Total: $250,072. They haven’t spent any of that sweet, sweet movie money yet.

The Title Refers To: Max and Caroline’s apartment can kill. It attacks Randy.

Stray Observations:

• “Sadliest, you were here with that old woman punched me in the breast and asked for change, right?”
• “All the stress of acting like your working starting to get to you?”
• “I just had what she’s having.” The cold open is all about Caroline’s orgasmic response to a shoulder massage. Oleg’s reactions really save it.
• Earl’s cousin works for a liquor distributor. Early also owes him $10K and a kidney.
• “Saw your rant on twitter last night and I agree: What sort of self-respecting Sizzler runs out of Spite?”
• Max’s apartment is BYOC. Bring Your Own Carbon Monoxide Detector. I feel like BYOCMD would be more accurate.
• “Don’t let my broad shoulders, stubble, and Adam’s apple confuse you, I am in fact a man.”
• “I’m Carrie! I’m Carrie at the prom!” Context: what Caroline looks like after being squirted with foot blood.
• The orderly at the hospital looks like Steve Agee, AKA Homeless Dave on New Girl. At the time of this writing I can’t confirm that on IMDb, though.
• If motivational newsletters are your thing, why not try “What’s Going Han?”.
• Earl gets it. “I’d rather see [Neil Patrick Harris] host something than Ricky Gervais. We get it! You’re mean, you fat bastard!”
• “The word ‘lawyer’ makes people crap their pants. It’s like the juice cleanse of professions.”
• Randy says that Max lives on an “Indian food burial ground”, which may be some of the best wordplay the show has ever featured.
• “I hate to be an Uzbeki giver but, I really miss my vibrating pearl.” Ah, casual racism.

The culture war is a conversation.

While it is ultimately a conflict, more often than not this takes the form of ideas and criticism being slung back and forth across the trenches. To be heard is a minor success, but to be actually understood is victory.

Within this conversation it’s undoubtedly artists, especially those who have garnered celebrity status, who have the most powerful voices.

In 2014 the eponymous host of The Colbert Report featured a segment on his show about “The Ching-Chong Ding-Dong Foundation for Sensitivity to Orientals or Whatever”. Given his popularity it reached far and wide, and was eventually viewed by a Twitter activist who created the hashtag #CancelColbert in response.

As it was meant to call attention to and ridicule the outrageous fact that a national sports team is named after an ethnic slur the response was out of line. It was a classic case of [obvious] satire being taken the wrong way, but by inadvertently contributing to what has been dubbed “a fake year of outrage’ this person’s misstep resulted in others who campaign for better representation and the like being worse than silenced, which is to say, ignored.

Despite calling out from what is ostensibly the same side, the misstep of a single loud voice meant that others were unheard.

The exchange between artist and critic is rarely ever an even one, and only becomes more difficult given the sensitivity surrounding such personal creative endeavours.

Lena Dunham is the star and creator of HBO’s Girls, and received enough disapproval about the lack of diversity in a show set in New York City that she was asked about it by NPR. She responded that “[she takes] that criticism very seriously,” and that very same year had Donald Glover playing Hannah’s Black boyfriend on the show.

While the presence of Sandy on the dramedy was a beneficial one, with arguments between the two capturing the tension that can be present in interracial relationships [including such exchanges as: “I never thought about the fact that you were black once.” / “That’s insane. You should, because that’s what I am.”], Glover’s character faltered in that he was very much a response to criticism.

The Season 2 premiere, bearing the painfully self-aware title “It’s About Time”, features Hannah and Sandy having sex a scant three episodes in. As a stumbling block to their relationship the character’s political conservatism is interesting, but also bears the marks of a writer being overly conscious of audience’s expectations and seeking to overturn them.

In spite of their elevated status artists are nonetheless human like the rest of us. Given that their work, and consequently their own lives, are under such scrutiny it only makes sense that their contributions to that conversation might be touchy, to put it lightly. That being said, there’s always the idea of not taking part in it at all.

As the co-creator of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Tina Fey shared in an interview with The Edit magazine that:”

“…my new goal is not to explain jokes. I feel like we put so much effort into writing and crafting everything, they need to speak for themselves. There’s a real culture of demanding apologies, and I’m opting out of that.”

At the Television Critics Association Awards the comedienne told Vox contributor Caroline Framke that:

In other words, Fey has declined to be a part of that conversation, at least as far as responding to criticism. While she is more than happy to create [which is her right and vocation as an artist] she does not express any real desire to engage with those who might be offended by her content.

While the concept of a creative who refuses to acknowledge negative responses to their art is a fascinating one, it’s also a near impossibility. Entertainment must be, by definition, entertaining, and one can only gauge their success by listening to their audience. There will always be voices of disagreement, and much of art is created with the effort to lessen the number of detractors, a portion of it is created with those voices in mind.

The issue is that, in spite of feigning disinterest in her critics, Fey takes part in creating an episode of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt that directly addresses them.

“Kimmy Goes to a Play!” is the third episode of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt‘s 2nd season, and as straightforward a message to critics as there ever could be. It feels like the singular voice of a creator speaking to those who have found her art lacking, only that instead of online critics in general the focus is turned to Asian American activists.

Before the audience even sees who these people are they’re allowed to see what they stand for, with the group in question being-

When members of RAPE are finally seen on-screen they’re portrayed as, to take a page from Tumblr user kershima’s book, “unreasonable internet jerks who aren’t interested in a conversation, just in yelling at people”.

After falling into a literal panic over not being offended by the performance like she thought she would be one of the activists has trouble breathing-

Which, and some may miss this, is a direct reference to the final words of Eric Garner, a Black man who died after being put in an illegal chokehold by an NYPD officer. The slogan “I can’t breathe” has been adopted by Black Lives Matter activists as a rallying cry and reminder that their voices will not go unheard.

Here those three words are reduced to a joke that pokes fun at the oversensitivity of Asian Americans. Not content to stop there, the show actually has that very person beamed up to who knows where mere seconds later:

The message is clear.

“You’re not interested in conversation.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You would literally cease to exist if you didn’t have something to be outraged over.”

“You ‘make a hobby of being offended, and it’s boring’.”

What’s more, by introducing the concept that the Asian American activists are protesting-

-a Black gay man playing a Japanese woman-

-and ultimately framing them as being in the wrong it excuses yellowface. The only ones who object to it being done are wilfully ignorant and almost effortlessly proven wrong, so how could the practice actually be offensive? Earlier on Titus, the character above, opines that the internet is “just anonymous hosers criticizing geniuses,” a statement that is likewise never refuted.

Two sides; hosers and geniuses. Less a culture war than one force completely routing the other, a more powerful and pervasive voice that presents ideas without concern for those who might wish to retaliate.

At almost any point in history this would be an ugly thirty minutes of television, but it only worsens when joins the chorus that has been belting out these past decades, and in particular throughout the last week.

Last Tuesday the Doctor Strange trailer premiered, featuring Tilda Swinton as the character of The Ancient One, originally an elderly Tibetan man.

“You’re not worth offending, so instead of risking that we cast a White person. And by ‘you’ what we mean is ‘the Chinese censors and our access to that country’s very lucrative box office’.“

Then on Friday a picture of Scarlett Johannson as she’ll be appearing in Ghost in the Shell was posted online, followed soon after by news that the studio had considered altering her digitally to make her appear more Asian.

“You’re so worthless to us that we would rather alter a White woman’s face than cast an actual Asian person.”

On that very same day the 2nd season of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, with “Kimmy Goes to a Play” began streaming on Netflix.

The culture war is a conversation, and while some voices ought to be disregarded what ends up taking place, regardless of intention, is an exchange. Art is created and an audience response, and consequent art is affected in turn.

By “[opting] out” and exercising her “freedom not to care” in regards to critics, and especially those who are Asian American, Tina Fey communicates a very simple stance:

“I will continue to be heard, but I will not hear you.”

But even outside of an unwillingness to acknowledge detractors there’s a blindness and deafness to the cultural context in which her work exists. An episode in which a non-Asian person plays the role of an Asian has to occur within the same world where more White actresses playing Asian women have won Oscars than actual Asian actresses. It’s a world where rampant inequality exists in the entertainment industry in regards to Asians.

At the end of the day art is subjective, and others may have a completely different takeaway from “Kimmy Goes to a Play!”

The reality is that I can do just as much as anyone else, which is add my voice and my voice alone to the conversation.

For me, personally as an Asian-Canadian, “Kimmy Goes to a Play” feels like a gut punch.

Cue the 7th episode of 2 Broke Girls featuring Ed Quinn’s Randy and I’m feeling a lot less gracious than I was last week. While that installment focused on just how far Max’s boyfriend would go to prove his devotion to her [entering her apartment and stepping on the dangerous Nail Patrick Harris, for one] this week chooses to, well . . . do more of the same.

I actually spelled out in that review what typically happens with Max’s romantic partners, i.e. that: “as she grows closer to them the increased intimacy makes her uncomfortable, causing her to want to pull away.” While earlier episodes have revealed that Randy is just in town for the month he reveals to both girls that he’s actually considering becoming a partner at one of the law firms in the city.

This is obviously a huge step, him looking to actually work and live in NYC full-time, and as a result Max takes some drastic action. Or rather, her body does. 

That last paragraph ended a lot more dramatically than it needed to, especially before a break, but in actuality she has an excellent reason. Randy invites her along to a meeting at a very exclusive, exceptionally pretentious restaurant called Beak that serves such delicacies as “the ortolan bunting bird, roasted and eaten whole”. This cornucopia of bizarre, formerly feathered food is the tipping point to a night that already had her feeling queasy as she contemplates her relationship growing more and more serious.

Given my very recent visit to Mandarin Buffet and how a friend of mine reacted to eating too much, what Max does in the bathroom is something I can sympathize with. It’s also something that Caroline [and Caroline alone] is able to personally witness as she goes in after her friend.

After the two girls climb out of the bathroom window and escape Max fully admits to Caroline just why she thinks she’s getting so sick: “I’m not used to rich anything. And if this is Randy’s world, bird bones and pretentious people, then maybe my body’s telling me I can’t take it.” Mere moments later and he’s caught up with them, telling Max that she’s brave for accepting the invitation and that they’re different yet so right for each other.

I’m skimming over a lot, but as I mentioned it feels like more of the same. While last week I mentioned a lot of optimism over what Randy could do while on the show, those hopes didn’t come true this week. Max is still growing as a person but we’re not really sure to what end. Are were merely building up their relationship so that it hurts much more when it falls apart? Will her opening herself up stick, causing her next relationship to be that much easier? Will she simply revert back to her old self, essentially reestablishing the status quo?

Those are a lot of unanswered questions, but ultimately I’m disappointed by how simplistic the plot was. Besides what was mentioned Caroline-and-Max-are-good-friends, yet another well-worn narrative on the show, is enacted yet again when the former is the only one who enters the bathroom. This leads to Sophie and Oleg choosing them as the godparents to their children since they clearly care about one another so much.

There are only two episodes of 2 Broke Girls in its fifth season, and it remains to be seen if Randy will make it to the end, or if we’ll be given any proper resolution to the Dessert Bar they keep discussing. Either way, they’re going to need to make it big to pull viewers back in for Season 6. I’m back for it either way, but I’d prefer it to be the best it can possibly be.

Current Total: $250,072.

New Total: $250,072. That sweet, sweet movie money remains unspent.

The Title Refers To: Caroline refers to Max’s meal with Randy being emblematic of their partnership with one another. There could be a play on words with “shit hits the fan”, except that as far as I know Max only vomits and never defecates.

Stray Observations:

• Some great lines from Han in the cold open: “You know, this isn’t Hooters; the ‘V-bomb’ isn’t usually battered around the work place.”
• “Yesterday you said your cat was ‘too cool’ to hang out with me. So which is it? Because I am free tonight.”
• The live audience was pretty noisy tonight, whooping for Sophie’s pregnancy and for Max and Randy locking lips.
• Perogies and public hanging, two old Polish traditions.
• Max jokes about having venereal diseases, which is actually likely if she really were as promiscuous and irresponsible as the show keeps telling us she is.
• Randy’s trainer was in gay porn. That’s a joke that people laughed at.
• Randy himself has tickets to Hamilton in seven years.
• “We walked across a bridge for this? This is basically our apartment except our wild birds are alive.” Max is unimpressed by Beak’s decor.
• Leila, one of the partners at the law firm, shares that her wife Lei is a star on Instagram. “See, I talk about your accomplishments.”
• Apparently Orange is the New Black message boards are the new lesbian Tinder.
• I am typically not in love with Kat Dennings’ delivery, but “Can’t wait to get that bird foot in my mouth” was flawlessly spoken.
• Fifth Course: Tiny poached noisy scrub bird with fiddle ferns and fermented egg. It sounds gross so it must be good.
• “I think it’s beyond sick. I lost bone mass in there. My shoes are too big now.” Poor Max.
• “Well, if something were to happen to us, let Max do the breastfeeding, ’cause I don’t want the kid to starve.”

It’s weird to type the words “home stretch” without having my mind wander to how the the Raptors are doing in the NBA playoffs. To stick with illustrations involving my hometown’s professional sports team it doesn’t matter if the Raps beat the Miami Heat tonight, tying things up 1-1, since the goal is actually [and I’ll admit, implausibly] winning the entire thing. In a similar fashion it doesn’t actually matter if 2 Broke Girls delivered a spectacular episode or crashed and burned comedically [as per usual, it landed somewhere in the middle] since it’s the season finale that will [or won’t] draw audiences back this fall.

Choosing not to waste time on filler like last week’s episode, “And the Ten Inches” begins to actually move forward with the Dessert Bar idea that Max came up with four episodes ago. Construction is actually underway on what was once Max’s Homemade Cupcakes, with their first hiccup being that there’s definitely not enough room for both the bar and seating [more on that in “The Title Refers To” section below]. 

Angie, played by insult comedian Lisa Lampanelli, is one of the owners of the pizzeria next door and threatens to sue do to the very obvious visible damage that the renovations are causing to their back office. Randy is once again very pivotal to the plot of this episode, as he first charms his way into her letting the work to continue and then seeks to convince her to actually rent out the space by agreeing to be her date to her high school reunion.

There’s a potentially fresh conflict between Max and Caroline as the latter is the one who most supports what is essentially pimping out the Hollywood lawyer. While she’s definitely not happy about it, the backlash isn’t significant enough to really affect their relationship and instead Max directs all of her fury towards Angie. Even that is wrapped up quickly as a terrible former classmate rears her ugly head and causes the two girls to pity their adversary and continue the facade for her sake.

I could keep writing about the nature of conflicts in sitcoms and whether they can even be significant or long-running, but I feel like I need to return to Randy once more. Trust me, I’m very well-aware that much of last week’s review was dedicated to the character, but I just don’t know what to do with him! He’ll obviously feature in the season finale, but will he reappear in 2 Broke Girls Season 6? Could we possibly return to the show with Max still in a relationship and with her and Caroline running the completed Dessert Bar?

With questions as big as these surrounding 2 Broke Girls it makes sense that Sophie and Oleg’s pregnancy B plot has barely been simmering in the background. This episode even shelves Jennifer Coolidge’s character, with her doctor actually confining her to bedrest. With her being five month’s pregnant in “And the Ten Inches” [with the baby already at 15 lbs] I suppose it’s unlikely that she’ll finally give birth in the finale, but does that also mean she’ll be pregnant with the show’s return?

That’s a lot of questions, I realize, and pretty much all of them will be answered in part in next week’s season finale, “And the Big Gamble”. As it stands Caroline finally spent some of that sweet, sweet movie money, and by making that investment in her business with Max the audience is likewise being asked to care about yet another entrepreneurial endeavour [preferably while laughing laughing along the way]. While I can’t promise the latter, consider me as on board as I possibly could be for the former.

Current Total: $250,072.

New Total: $31,000. Hey, contractors aren’t cheap.

The Title Refers To: Randy takes a look at the blueprints that have been drawn up for their Dessert Bar and observes: “see the two dashes after [the ten]? Those are inches, not feet. You got ten inches.” If only Caroline hadn’t hired an architect from the casual encounters section on Craigslist.

Stray Observations:

• “Looks like we lost electricity. Uh-oh, all the food in the refrigerator will go worse!” Decent joke, so-so delivery.
• “Han, you look exactly like a Doozer from Fraggle Rock right now.”
• Earl asks about that “one [Kardashian] that’s a dude now” and I swear the audience was 1/3 sounds of disapproval to 2/3 laughter.
• “I’m not gay; I’m just very pro-harassment.” Say what you will about Oleg as a character, but he’s very consistent.
• “There’s so much oil in their pizza the US might invade it.” 2013 called, it wants its joke back.
• There are some pretty racist [even for this show] jokes about Italians, with Caroline mistaking Max’s “What’s your freakin’ point” for Italian before later suggesting that Randy rub parmesan behind his ears.
• “Hi, I’m Angie, but I’m thinkin’ about changing my name to yours.”
• Angelo is Angie’s twin brother, and whatever video game he plays throughout this episode production chose the old school-est saounds for.
• “I’m wearing a dress so tight you can see the kidney Angelo gave me from when I had renal failure from drinking too much Tab.”
• “Do you want to be punched in the face with my ring hand?” A so-so joke with excellent delivery.
• Earl let Buddy Holly get on that plane, but he doesn’t let it bother him. He just let it “play over and over in his mind for 60 years.”
• Sophie was so bored lying in bed that she got a degree from De Vries University.
• “I can make you look like it’s 1986. Because I lived in Poland in 2003!”
• Max tells Randy that he would’ve been in his 30s when she was in high school, which is, now that I looked up how old Ed Quinn and Kat Dennings are, surprisingly accurate.

An obvious part of my excitement for tonight’s season finale was the fact that it affords me a break from reviewing this show weekly, which is much appreciated given how busy my life has been lately. As far as the actual content of the episode there was finally finding out if Max and Randy have a future, with getting to see more Asian characters appear on the show [which I only realized when putting together the header image above] trailing far behind.

Let’s just say that I’m glad I wasn’t particularly excited about the latter. To get that out of the way before really digging into the plot points 2 Broke Girls continues to be so bad at dealing with racial minorities, particularly when it comes to Asians. This is particularly surprising when taking into account how many have been featured lately, at least in comparison to other groups. In this season alone we had a flamboyantly gay hotel manager in LA [Alec Mapa] and an anal-obsessed realtor [Camille Chen], both of whom had a decent amount of lines and screentime as side characters go.

While it is very fair to say that the majority of bit parts on 2 Broke Girls don’t allow for much more than a few quick, cheap laughs, regardless of race, the problem becomes noticeable when focusing on the main cast. Han Lee is the only Asian character among them, and can be summed up in a single word: pathetic. He exists to be the butt of every joke, and when every other Asian face can be
boiled down to “dramatic” and “really likes anal sex” the optics don’t look too great.

Joining those two is Hwang Hwang, a Korean gangster played by Jimmie Saito. He’s meant to be a threat to Han’s well-being but never actually feels dangerous, and after watching his demo reel sounds like the director told him to play it up, and then just kept repeating that over and over and over again. Anyway. This show not doing well with race. Not exactly news.

As far as the episode itself we have the girls well on their way to finishing their Dessert Bar with enough money left over for what Caroline calls a “cash cush” [which Max is disappointed to find out is not for buying kush]. Ultimately the vast majority of this is spent bailing Han out from a crushing gambling debt owed to the aforementioned Hwang. I could go into this more, but they really play up Han being a pitiful excuse for a human being, arguably past what most people would consider funny. The end result is that Max and Caroline are joint owners of the diner, with their latest business venture still becoming a reality. Their dreams haven’t actually been diverted at all, it’s just that their rainy day savings are gone.

Speaking of buying part ownership of the diner, this episode was one of the realest installments of 2 Broke Girls I’ve ever seen. Given that his return to LA is impending Randy has been trying to talk to Max about what future they have together. Upon finding out that she’s willing to invest thousands at such a short moment’s notice but can’t commit to very much at all with him he decides to head back early, buying her a ticket to visit him whenever she likes.

They part ways right outside the diner, and it’s here that Kat Dennings absolutely murders every line written for her. When Max says “We’ll figure it out, we’ll make a plan” you feel it; it’s a raw vulnerability I haven’t seen on 2 Broke Girls before now. Randy tells her that “the real distance between us is where we are in our lives” and when she responds [“What distance? I’m 3 inches away from you.”]
it elicits subdued laughter from the studio audience, muted due to the sheer emotion being portrayed.

Dennings’ delivery of “Okay, that felt really good-bye-y”, right before Randy walks down the street and hails a taxi, is allowed to stand on its own. There’s no audience reaction, no quick cuts, or even any musical accompaniment. She simply stands there for a moment before walking back inside.

As a sitcom 2 Broke Girls needs to deliver a certain number of jokes every minute, but it also needs us to care about its characters. This may be the most I have ever truly cared about Max Black, and it’s masterful work on the part of everyone involved, even Michael Patrick King who directed the episode.

It’s a fitting end to their relationship, with Max’s inability to commit torpedoing a good thing. Season 6, whenever it rolls around, should begin with the Dessert Bar up and running. I’m not sure what kinds of stories the two girls co-owning the Williamsburg Diner are going to open up, but provided that every now and then the rauncy jokes and lowbrow humour can make ways for honest emotional beats like tonight consider me fully on board for this fall. Until then, everyone!

Current Total: $31,000.

New Total: $1,000. Yeah, Han owed that guy 30 big.

The Title Refers To: How Han lost all that money: through gambling. You could say that them bailing him out was also a big risk, but it’s definitely never framed that way. It’s obviously a huge favour, just not one that appears to be particularly dangerous for Max and Caroline.

Stray Observations:

• There’s a really excellent joke somewhere in the cold open, which is about a diner with crayons and an adult colouring book. The show hits it just a little too hard to be really effective.
• “Who says that a pregnant woman can’t have sex on the kitchen floor of a diner?”
• The money spent prior to having $31K left over was spent on: a painter, an electrician, a plumber, and on bribes for the inspector.
• As small/short jokes go, this is one of the best they’ve ever done:

“Girls, I’m in a bit of hot water.”

“What happened, you fell into a teacup again?”

• The sport Han was gambling on? Women’s tennis. If only he knew which Williams sister was the good one.
• “Enigma, please.” A line that Earl, a Black man, says for laughs.
• It’s difficult for me not to compare Hwang singing Carly Rae Jepsens’ “Call Me Maybe” in a karaoke lounge to a minstrel show.
• Continuing that same show is Han singing “Last Dance” by Donna Summer in a truly craven performance. To be fair, he has until the song is over before he loses a toe due to not having the dough.
• Max had four jobs in 6th Grade and still had time to follow Smashmouth around the country [not the band, a meth head her mom really liked].
• “Hey, Bossladies.” Another line that Earl, a Black man, says to two White women, this time not for laughs.

I came to the 90’s action party late.

Sure, I watched a few Arnie movies as a kid, but those were the blatantly child-friendly movies. I’m talking Kindergarten Cop and Jingle All The Way, fun romps to be sure, but nothing to prepare me for the awakening I had last year.

It all began when John convinced me to watch his favourite films from the 90’s (and a few from the 80’s). I decided to indulge my husband’s nostalgia. How was I to know it would end in an movie obsession that would leave me with a classic-action-movie-sized hole, never to be filled? I’ve had a hard time identifying what it is about these action movies that is still so appealing, so I thought I’d write a post trying to figure it out.

They’re Intensely Optimistic

I recently watched Sicario. It was an intense action (/crime/thriller) flick that follows the story of Kate Macer “an idealistic FBI agent [who] is enlisted by a government task force to aid in the escalating war against drugs at the border area between the U.S. and Mexico”. While it was certainly a thought-provoking and well-executed film, it was also reeeaaaalllllllllyyy depressing.

Have you ever noticed that? Some of the “best” films out there also happen to be the ones that leave you feeling like you’ve been punched in the gut. Perhaps it’s the gritty realism of contemporary films that sets them apart from previous action films, but that realism also prevents them from being a true escape from real-world troubles.

If you go back and watch almost any 90’s action movie you can go into it knowing your protagonist won’t come out of his adventure emotionally scarred. Instead, you know he’ll just rampage across your screen, kicking butt and taking names.

With an endless amount of bullets.

The Good Guys are Good. The Bad Guys are Bad.

In the 80’s and 90’s, the good guy would always win, often in over-the-top ways that defied the laws of physics. Then the new millennium brought more and more self-aware action films, where loved ones could die along the way and the antagonists actually had legitimate backstories.

Action films today have to be conscious of what came before them. It’s just not advisable to ask your audience to take one-dimensional characters seriously anymore – even though the Expendables and Transformers franchises keeps on trying.

Even the superhero genre, which was able to hold onto the good guy/bad guy dichotomy a fair bit longer than other action films, is beginning to change. This year Deadpool killed it at the box office, which will probably prompt a new wave of self-aware and sarcastic superhero films.

They Offer a Wide Array of Ridiculous One-Liners

There are few times I’ve laugh harder than when I hear a line like this,

The puns are my favourite, but I thoroughly enjoy any one-liner that is both epic and ridiculous at the same time.

Yet somehow, I just don’t enjoy this type of humour when it shows up in contemporary action films. I have a deep and burning hatred for the Transformers franchise, for example, despite their use of one-liners

Although, in all honesty, my hatred for this franchise might be a result of Bay’s use of women as sex props, rather than his use of one-liners.

They Allow You to Vicariously Enjoy Being a Badass

Maybe it’s because I’m watching these movies as an adult and not a more impressionable little girl. Maybe it’s because I’ve always imagined myself as an amazing fighter in my head. But as I’ve gone back and watched these movies I’ve (almost) never envisioned myself as the female side-kick. Instead, I imagined myself as the (primarily) male protagonist, mowing down henchman after henchman with little effort.

Sarah Connor is pretty much the only female protagonist in these movies worth living vicariously through.

I’m not saying I want to bring back the action movie style of the 90’s. I actually really appreciate how film has evolved to reflect back on itself in a critical way. However, some days I just want to imagine myself as an unstoppable hero, someone who can save the day while still having fun. I’d like to introduce my kids to that imaginary world too, preferably before the more thought-provoking and gritty world of Neo and Jason Bourne.

Last Friday I asked you all to watch a short video on the concept of intertextuality, which provides the basis for this week’s post.

While Nerdwriter1, the YouTuber responsible, initially describes the device as “something in a text, in this case a movie, that is shaped by another text” he later goes a step further in making the term distinct from mere allusion. Contemporary intertextuality, which he refers to as being “weaponized”, is defined as:

“objects, people or situations explicitly meant to trigger an emotional response”

To use my own visual example, successful intertextuality results in a combination of:

and

Being able to recognize and understand the reference is important, but equally essential is having that recognization elicit feelings, whether they be of awe, or joy, or pleasant surprise. Simply identifying a shot in a film as the replication of a comic book panel matters most if you care[d] about that original work.

Nerdwriter1 cites weaponized intertextuality as providing, in many circumstances, a substitute to actual drama and strong narrative. The best example that I can think of in recent history would have to be Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which called back to so many iconic moments that it often felt like a retread.

One of many such instances was [MILD SPOILERS] the reveal of the First Order’s secret weapon, Starkiller Base. A clear riff on the Death Star in the original film, this particular WMD had the capability to destroy not one, but multiple planets. It’s the kind of creative decision one might expect from a parody sketch, but here we are-

Top image: the Death Star destroys Alderaan in Star Wars (1997). Bottom image: Starkiller Base obliterates five planets in the Hosnian system in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015).

Yet in spite of hitting so many of the same beats in many ways The Force Awakens felt new, owing much to its, no pun intended, stars. Daisy Ridley’s Rey and John Boyega’s Finn co-leading the film, as a woman and a Black man respectively, helped offset the repetitive nature of its narrative. A similar setup is presented but the pieces are very different; it’s both an old story and a new one at the same time.

At the end of the video Nerdwriter1 admits that “when cinematic storytelling is confined by an economic situation [. . .] weaponized intertextuality is going to be an inevitable byproduct,” which is to say: all we can expect for the foreseeable future [see also: capitalism]. He then lists off a number of sequels and remakes being released in 2016. Looking over the upcoming films, as well as what else has been announced or rumoured as of late, it’s difficult to ignore the presence of another trend in the entertainment industry.

Ghostbusters, which hits theatres next month, has received the most attention so far due to it having an all-female primary cast and the internet’s visceral reaction to that fact. On that same note just a few days ago Roger Friedman confirmed that Cate Blanchett, Helena Bonham Carter, and Mindy Kaling would all be joining Sandra Bullock for a female reboot of Ocean’s Eleven. There has even been discussion as far back as 2012 for a version of Expendables that swaps out the mercenary group’s collective Y chromosomes for matching Xs.

The fact of the matter is that Hollywood can’t rely on slavish shot-for-shot remakes of what once worked. There’s a limit on how far nostalgia can get you, and on top of that is the fact that screenwriters, directors, et al. have no real desire to do what’s already been done. As much as it is about making money there’s also the desire to justify the existence of their product; otherwise why not simply release a remastered edition with updated graphics?

For all that weaponized intertextuality does to bring the same old tales to the silver screen there remains a bounty of promise. It’s legitimately exciting to see that in order to see that there appears to be a movement towards familiar events enacted by fresh faces, and that many of these faces happen to belong to women and people of colour. There’s also the opportunity for modern audiences to experience stories they otherwise might not have [while always retaining the ability to delve into the original if they so wish].

If, as Nerdwriter1 says, this trend and its growth really is inevitable then I say bring it on. Bring on the remakes, the reboots, the prequels, sequels, and sidequels. If in with the old is what we’re to expect then so be it, but heap on plenty of the new as well.

And if it results in Hollywood releasing another version of The Magnificent Seven with Denzel Washington in the lead role and Byung-Hun Lee as a knife-wielding assassin then it will have justified itself, at least for 2016.

“Change is good.” That’s a slogan I very vividly remember from a McDonald’s commercial around the turn of the century. A classroom full of kindergartners is shocked to find out that the Golden Arches are now serving white meat chicken nuggets, and are silent as one of their members takes the first tentative bite. Once she speaks those three words they break out into cheers, ecstatic that their beloved nuggets are just as delicious as before. Change is good. Or, more accurately, it can be.

This past Tuesday I was going through my handful of comic book news sites only to find that Comic Book Resources [also known as CBR], the fourth and last on the list, was borderline unrecognizable. Instead of seeing-

-like I was used to, I was greeted with-

While I was taken aback by the seemingly sudden redesign, the truth is that if I’d been more observant I would have seen this coming from a long way off.

First They Came For the Columns…

I first had an inkling when Axel-in-Charge [link likely broken while they work things out], a weekly Q&A with Marvel Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso, missed several consecutive Fridays. A few users asked about its absence in the official thread from which questions were taken to no response.

Unbeknownst to me, Pipeline, a commentary and review column that had existed on CBR for almost two full decades, had jumped ship way back in July. Luckily for writer Augie Blieck the feature found a home at ComicBook.com, which he quips:

“will save your fingers from typing an extra nine characters every week to find me. You’re welcome.”

At the beginning of this month a link to the latest Tilting at Windmills was shared in the /r/comicbooks subreddit. Upon clicking on it I was surprised to see that the link directed me not to Comic Book Resources but The Beat. Brian Hibbs’ comments on the column’s move to greener pastures is much more thorough than Blieck’s, and his introductory paragraph was my first solid indicator that change might be looming on the horizon:

“Welcome to Tilting at Windmills #252. Some of you will be scratching your heads and saying ‘Wait, doesn’t this appear on Comic Book Resources?’ Yeah, it did, but CBR got sold, and the new ownership decided that ‘columns’ were not a thing that they wanted to do any longer – which, fair enough, it’s their website. Ultimately I think The Beat is going to be a better home anyway – the kind of think pieces I write are much more in sync to the commentary-focus that the Beat has.”

Joseph P. Illidge’s column The Mission, which predominantly addressed comic books and race, has updated once at the beginning of August. While sporadic, these articles are typically posted at least twice a month. The last installment of In Your Face Jam, written by CBR Assistant Editor Brett White and focusing on his personal love affair with the medium, was in June. As Hibbs stated so matter-of-factly, “‘columns’ were not a thing they wanted to do any longer.”

The one holdout appears to have been Hannibal Tabu’s The Buy Pile, which rates the week’s book releases and which has not yet missed a Thursday.

Comic Book Resources, much like fellow comic book news site Newsarama, primarily acts as a mouthpiece for the Big 2 publishers , slinging exclusive previews and interviews that smaller outfits don’t receive. That being said, the reason CBR was the last site on my rotation was because I looked forward to their content the most, that being a mix of straight news with the more opinionated columns.

As the heading of this article implies, the reason that so many of these changes were able to take place was that it happened slowly instead of all at once. One of the biggest problems, in addition to the actual redesign, which we will get to, is how editorial has chosen to respond to criticism.

That Is, If It’s Even Fair to Use Describe It As “Responding”

One of the primary reasons that CBR has felt like more of a community compared to so many other sites is its forums. In the same way that they serve as the perfect place to discuss the latest line-wide crossover event they’re also the the ideal location to discuss the Comic Book Resources makeover. User Digifiend created a discussion thread on the day the changes went live, and Managing Editor Albert Ching actually made an appearance early on.

“Hi all! We’re currently working on issues with the redesign, adding more features and smoothing things out. Thank for your patience and feedback and I’ll try to answer any questions that you may have.”

Seeing that he was happy to address any of our concerns, I leapt at the opportunity to ask him about what had happened to my favourite part of CBR-

“Hi Albert. Is it true that CBR will be doing away with all columns?”

The question was subsequently ignored. Ching later responded to another comment-

“The content of the new site is the exact same as the content of the old one.”

-which prompted me to point out that if the content was the same, what had happened to Tilting at Windmills, et al.? Another user referenced my comment, and Ching chose to address him instead of yours truly, saying:

“A shift to a new design does not mean a shift in focus. The new site literally is all of the articles from the old site moved to a new design.”

In his penultimate comment before exiting the discussion, Ching chooses to take a break from giving nonanswers to laud his own editorship to date.

“Sure, every outlet evolves over time — CBR has since its beginning. But we cover comic books and comic book culture and there’s been no mandate to shift away from that. If anything we’re covering less of the non-comic-based movies and TV shows than we used to. I remember a few years ago CBR, via Spinoff, was running articles on things like The League and Childrens Hospital. I liked both of the shows, but there was no connection to comics. No plans to drop the forums! “

On Thursday night, two days after the unannounced redesign, Ching published an article titled “Welcome to the New CBR“. In it he states that they have-

“moved to a new site design, incorporating many of the features that readers have asked for — a mobile-friendly format, responsive design and what will be an all-around more efficient and more comfortable reading experience.”

-and ending on an encouraging note:

“The site may look different, but the editorial crew driving content remains the same, as does the focus: providing the absolute best in comic book and pop culture news, analysis and commentary. I’ve never been more confident in our ability to do so.”

Just how accurate are those statements, though?

It Can’t Be Just Me, Right?

It definitely isn’t. As The Outhousers noted three days prior to Ching’s announcement, and with no shortage of sarcasm, the general consensus has not been good. Simply reading through the forum post discussing the “reboot” brings up such comments as:

“A new design looks like crap and it definitely was made in favor of tablets and phones. Disappointed.”

The Comic Book Resources Facebook page, which also sports the new look, has a section specifically for “Visitor Posts”. Those range from the aghast-

-to the conflicted-

-to the extremely direct:

I could spend the rest of the day compiling complaints, but the fact of the matter is that the new changes have not been well-received. Whereas before articles could be commented on via automatically generated forum posts it looks like that system has been done away for one that requires a Facebook log-in. Another issue is visibility when viewed on a computer, as the pared down design requires significantly more scrolling to see what’s going on. With the disgruntled masses only growing more vocal, it’s time to finally answer the question-

Okay, So What Actually Happened to Comic Book Resources?

As Hibbs said,  “CBR got sold”. To put it more specifically, they were sold by founder and former owner Jonah Weiland to Valnet Inc., the self-proclaimed “world’s leader in content creation & distribution.”

Visiting the CBR section on the website reveals their overview, which reads:

“Comic Book Resources is the premier online authority for comic book related content – and the go-to source for fans of superhero movies, TV, and books. Renowned for quality industry insights, diverse content, and an active community of readers, CBR draws the most loyal audience of any readership in its vertical.”

It’s truly ironic that the “quality industry insights” are at the lowest they’ve been for the past several years, the apparent mandate to do away with the columns acting in direct contradiction of this feature. The “active community of readers” appears to be wavering, if not plummeting, given the number of comments I’ve seen saying that they’ll be taking their internet minutes elsewhere. As far as “diverse content”, well, that appears to be making a shift in the very near future.

Bleeding Cool reported earlier today that Valnet is, to quote their Careers page, “seeking an experienced full-time Editor for its website CBR.com.”

When opening up the full job description two of the five tasks listed are:

• Responsible for planning and coordination of all list-post content.
• Forming reports based on analytics and performance of list content.

Given how many criticisms have been likening the new CBR to Buzzfeed, this is damning evidence. Newsarama Editor Chris Arrant was the first person to tweet about the job listing, with his site having no shortage of such articles. With that in mind he’s the perfect person to comment on what’s happening. He discusses the phenomenon in a few tweets with Augie Blieck, aforementioned Pipeline writer:

In his own longform article, ominously titled “The End of Big Comic Book Journalism“, Blieck thoroughly analyzes the changes made at Comic Book Resources. Definitely worth a read-through if you have the time, I wanted to spotlight just one observation he made [emphasis added]:

“This new design is clearly aimed at [mobile users].  I’m sure anyone with access to the site’s statistics will tell you that most of the traffic to CBR these days comes from mobile browsers and not laptops/desktops”

The reason I call attention to that is because when perusing the CBR Valnet page I came across a list of statistics about the comic book news site. The image on the right was one of them, and clearly read that their visitors are “50/50 Mobile Vs Desktop”. Blieck is completely accurate when he states that the redesign heavily favours those browsing on their tablets or phones, but according to Valnet themselves this accounts for only half of their current audience.

At this point in time Comic Book Resources continues to be in my rotation, though it being in last place now speaks to it being the one I’m least looking forward to, instead of first. I’ve been considering visiting it just once at the end of the day to see if I’ve missed anything, instead of intermittently throughout like the others.

While Valnet, as well as the CBR editorial staff, are clearly doing what they think is best to make the site a continued success the majority of feedback has been overwhelmingly negative. To make a comparison to the medium it reports on, their rebranding bears a number of similarities to DC’s New 52! in 2011. There’s a lack of transparency over what has and hasn’t taken place, as well as poor planning across the board. Unlike what DC did, however, this is unlikely to bring in a flood of new readers. As comic book fans know, every jumping on point is a jumping off point for someone else.

Comic Book Resources had lived up to its name for over two decades, but under new management it remains to be seen if they might be better dubbed Comic Buzz Feedsources. I know that’s a terrible joke and I don’t even feel bad about ending my article this way.

A little over three years ago, a close childhood friend contacted me because their cousin (Evan) was looking for another writer to become a regular contributor on a blog called Culture War Reporters. I jumped at the chance and, after a very serious interview with Evan and Gordon, became a regular contributor here at CWR.

I’m feeling more than a little nostalgic rereading some of those early posts and conversations with my co-writers. It’s even making me question my decision to stop writing for the blog. Despite my second thoughts and feelings of nostalgia, I’ve considered stepping down for some time now, and I’d like to share a few reasons why I feel the time is right.

1. I haven’t been dedicating the time needed to create quality posts

When I first started writing for CWR, I was so excited and nervous about my first blogging opportunity that I would write my post early in the week and return to them throughout the week to do more editing. Luckily, I was also a full-time student, so I was already spending several hours a day at my computer screen writing. It was a welcome break to stop working on homework and spend a few hours writing about whatever topic I was particularly interested in that week.

This year my schedule began to shift. I was only in school part-time and began balancing several other jobs on the side. While I still enjoyed taking time to write for CWR, I was spending much less time at my laptop and it took a conscious effort to remember to get my posts up on time. The week would often slip by and I’d wind up writing last minute, which inevitably meant lower quality writing and less time spent researching my topic. I’ve come to realize that writing just hasn’t been on the top of my priority list, and, consequently, I haven’t produced the quality of content I want to put out into the world.

2. Other passions are drawing my attention

I’ve always loved to write, and I suspect that I always will. But lately, I haven’t felt nearly as passionate about writing as I’ve felt about some of my other interests. This summer I’ve had several opportunities to teach programs or courses that took up a large portion of my time. This September, I’m going to be starting the teaching post-degree program. As I feel myself getting more and more excited about this new career direction, I can also imagine myself spending less and less time writing (especially while I continue to work on the side). Rather than produce lower quality content, I’d rather take time off from blogging until I once again feel passionate enough about my writing to spend the time needed to produce quality content.

3. I keep feeling drawn towards topics where my voice is not the one that needs to be heard

Here at CWR we have always spent a good deal of time discussing issues around race, gender, and sexuality. As a female blogger, I’ve spend a good portion of my time discussing feminism and the issues that effect me personally. Over the past few years my opinions have evolved before your eyes, and I’m constantly recognizing new opportunities to learn. One of the topics I’ve been particularly drawn to recently is the need for intersectional feminism, and a better conversation around racial struggles in general.

The thing is, I’m white. While I’m always open to join in the discussion, I’m just not sure that my opinion needs to be featured. I’m also not sure if I always have the vocabulary and life experience needed to discuss these issues. I’d rather open up the opportunity for writers of colour to share their perspective than attempt to explain a situation I’ve never experienced first hand.

While those three reasons have been a large part of my decision to step down from the blog, I’ve also had a fair bit of time to reflect on why I’m so glad I got to be a part of it for the last three years.

1. It taught me how to be disciplined with my writing practice

I have never been a particularly disciplined person. For a large portion of my education I was driven only by the pressure of a deadline. It was only in the last few years I finally learned how essential the editing and rewriting phase is to every essay and article. This blog (along with my undergrad studies) provoked me to learn better writing practices. It also forced me to meet a weekly deadline with my writing. This came in really handy when I was working on my honours thesis (something I chipped away on every week, rather than scrambling to write at the end of the semester). I hope this skill will also benefit me if/when I look to pursue writing or blogging again, sometime in the future.

2. It opened up a variety of important conversations both online and in my daily life

My opinions on social issues have shifted greatly during the last three years. Here on the blog, I’ve discussed these topics as I went through the process of learning about them. Because I have sharing my thoughts on LGBT rights and racial discrimination (for example) so publicly, it’s opened up really amazing conversations on the blog and in private with people who were looking for someone to talk to. Even when these conversations have been with individuals with a much different opinion, it has opened up an opportunity to discuss and share why I’ve changed my views. It’s also been a valuable experience for me to make a public stand in support for friends and loved ones who have felt isolated and/or judged based on their skin colour or sexual orientation.

It’s more than a little sad for me to say goodbye, but the fact that it took me over a month to even finish writing this post (due to a family emergency) has reminded me that it really is time to go. Thanks so much for those of you who engaged in discussion with me, and thanks especially to my co-writers Evan and Gordon. It’s been a slice.

This past Friday the short film Ophelia
began screening at the 2016 LA Shorts Fest. The piece touches on fear, expectation, pressure, and ambition through a the first few minutes of a job interview with the title character. I was able to view and review the film for myself not too long ago.

Answering a few questions himself is Anthony Garland, the director. Garland has acted in a number of small film and television roles, and assisted other directors in filming such music videos as Lana Del Ray’s “Summertime Sadness”.

What did you want to be when you were seven-years-old?

THAT question! … A superhero. Super strength and invulnerability would be preferable but I definitely had to be able to fly. I was obviously past the age where you know that powers don’t exist, but I remember being pretty sure that I’d be the exception. I grew up reading comics before the characters had this cinematic renaissance; that was really my education in storytelling, art direction and frame composition.

What was the strangest question you’ve ever been asked in a job interview?

I’ve actually been relatively safe in interviews and auditions thus far… I feel like I’m the one asking the strange questions a lot of the time, but that’s deliberate! Just the nature of status and hierarchy, we forget that we’re all just individuals, regardless of position, and a job interview is as much for you as it is for the people that might hire you; so questions, however wacky, are a good way to set up a back and forth rather than sitting through an interrogation, which is what most bad interviews feel like.

Do you have any strategies when it comes to interviewing for a job [or auditioning for a role]? [How do you deal with pressure?]

Sure, and maybe this comes from having a background in acting, but so long as the focus is on something external, like engaging with the person opposite you by asking those questions, or really taking them in, then there’s no space to be self conscious.

There’s a popular quote that talks about the thin line between comedy and tragedy, but I think the latter is close enough that it can be switched out for horror.

There’s obviously a lot of humour that can be found in job interviews, and that actually crops up a bit in the first few minutes of the film. With that in mind, why lean more towards the other side of the coin [horror], genre-wise?

We had an opportunity to create an aesthetic that felt different to most other shorts or films out there. The crew on the short were spectacular – Dan Katz our cinematographer is world class, so is Jeremy White our production designer and his phenomenal crew, and all of them just so creative and artistic. So whereas I wouldn’t call the short a horror, we were able to shoot it like one, which plays more to themes and the internal lives of the characters. And that’s one of the best things about short films as a medium, is you can take risks with your visual expression in a way you might not be able to when you’re a young filmmaker trying to reassure and placate the financier or distributor responsible for getting your film off the ground.

As someone who’s currently low-key jobhunting I’ve come across articles that talk about the first five to ten minutes of the interview being the most important. With that in mind a short film feels like the perfect format in which to film the experience. Did you ever give any thought towards making it any longer?

Rather than filming the experience of an interview, I wanted to try and capture the essence of it and allow that to be a context for Ophelia’s story; to let there be a through-line within the parameters of an interview and all that comes with it. Someone once described an effective short as a setup/punchline, and that’s something we were trying to achieve. From the inception of the idea, we were always talking about making a ‘shorter’ short film. I have enormous respect for people that pull off those incredible thirty and forty minute shorts, but with the story we were trying to tell and some of the more ambitious elements of the shoot, it didn’t want to be much longer.

As someone who studied a good amount of Shakespeare back in the day I have to ask: was there any significance in titling your short film Ophelia?

Absolutely. I refer to her character as Ophelia, and the title is the same, but we don’t call her that by name in the actual film. Shakespeare’s Ophelia is such a tragic character, completely defined by other’s perceptions and trying so hard to be loved that she goes insane and it leads to her death. And I always felt like there was an Ophelia in all of us, and how crazy it is that so much of what we do is for the approval of other people based on abstract perceptions. Basically we’re all quite mad.

Given that you’re an actor yourself, what was it like being on the other side of the camera, both in terms of directing and then editing the shot footage?

I grew up in the theatre, so my initial experiences of acting and drama came from putting a bunch of people together on a stage and working it all out. That doesn’t really happen in TV and film for all sorts of reasons, not least of which because it’s incredibly expensive to shoot. It doesn’t make it better or worse, just the nature of the beast. Directing is the closest thing I’ve found to that working culture. Having a crew all working together to solve the problem. It’s exciting and frenetic and rewarding. I have huge respect for every last person on a film set. I also love working with actors, so from that perspective it’s a lot of fun.

Editing was something different all together. I don’t think acting gave me much, if any prep for that. Editing is HARD! I’d recommend anyone wanting to be better at filmmaking or storytelling should do it. It forces you to be so selective and specific with your choices. You cut anything extraneous, even the things your love but just aren’t working. There’s that overused expression about a film being made three times, in the script, in the camera and in the edit. But if writing is where you find and craft the story, shooting the picture is a mad dash to capture any and every interpretation of the material, then editing teaches you how to make film.

Come back tomorrow for another interview with Ali Mueller, Ophelia herself!

Season premieres are all about expectations. On one hand a show needs to be instantly recognizable, a challenge for ensembles with shifting casts [I’m looking at you, Community]. On the other hand it also needs to live up to the promise of more to come. As Max and Caroline fall to the floor in the cold open, their clothing aflame, Oleg exclaims “now scissor a little, it can’t hurt” while hosing them down. That’s the first box checked off.

As for the second, there appears to be significantly more attention paid to continuity. While 2 Broke Girls season premieres have always had to follow-up on the last episode in regards to their business, both Parts One and Two of “And the Two Openings” play out in the shadow of a character I’m pleased to see is still with us.

And what an imposing shadow it is.

That’s right, while on the business side of things the two girls are part-owners of the diner and finally looking to make the Dessert Bar a reality [a lot happened, okay] what’s really been on Max’s mind is Randy [Ed Quinn]. Compared to past love interests Deke and Nashit his connection with Dennings’ character has been both strong and, surprisingly, long-lasting. Having reviewed how Season 5 came to a close I can only take his continued presence, albeit via FaceTime, as being a net positive.

Randy’s departure from NYC led to some of the best acting I’ve ever seen on 2 Broke Girls, and demonstrated that the showrunners were willing to portray emotional beats beyond those of the titular duo with one another. It even surpassed the heart-to-heart talks Max has had with Caroline when it comes to her expressing genuine emotional vulnerability. I haven’t forgotten that this show is a comedy, and as such focused on humour, but these quieter moments really allow for a more varied pacing while also reminding us that these characters are people, too. That relationship manages to stay alive, in spite of how others refer to it, in the form of X-rated video chatting, and even that feels sexy and exciting due to Max’s enthusiasm about the activity.

Continuity is also present in the reappearance of guest stars, with street performer/puppeteer J. Petto [Andy Dick] being the first. Caroline describes him as “the puppet guy who tried to sue us two years and three businesses ago by saying we injured you,” which I find fascinating. “And the Broken Hip” was the 17th episode of Season 2, meaning that those two years on the show have spanned four actual years in real time. Regardless, it appears that the writers are taking note of past events, which adds to the feeling that these are actual lives being lived onscreen.

It’s also helpful as it helps explain the bad vibes between J. Petto and Max and Caroline. While he’s turned away as a potential bartender at their soon-to-open Dessert Bar he manages to retaliate by denying them a liquor license while working his day job. Part One wraps up with our title characters realizing that since the Dessert Bar is their severely remodelled [essentially unrecognizable as the same space] cupcake shop, which is connected to the diner, which has a liquor license, they must in turn have one and thus their problems are solved. Soon after which Sophie’s water breaks, since she was pregnant for much of last season and continues to be [at least up until Part Two].

Overall the first installment of the 2 Broke Girls Season 6 premiere hits the ground running, and builds up enough momentum to warrant a double-episode. There’s actually enough going on that squeezing all of this into a half hour time slot would feel rushed and abrupt, while never feeling like they’re padding things out too heavily, either.

The Title Refers To: The first opening is obviously that of their new business, the Dessert Bar, which does not take place in these twenty-or-so minutes.

Stray Observations:

• “I’m not used to seeing you girls in clothes. [beat] Things just sound creepier when you’re old”
• There’s a really big shakeup early on where Caroline states that they’re “just gonna look better”, ie. not wear uniforms anymore, due to their upgraded roles in the diner. Those outfits are ruined by the aforementioned fire, and thus the visual status quo is maintained.
• Not content with tearaway pants, Oleg’s underwear also features the same utility.
• Han describes Max’s breakup with Randy as “more indulgent than Beyonce’s Lemonade.”
• Caroline sticking out her tongue while slowly unfolding J. Petto’s resume is simply delightful. Beth Behrs is a large part of the reason I watch this show [the hits I get on these reviews is also sizable].

• No one knows what a Dessert Bar is, and as running jokes work it’s not too bad.
• Another running joke is the many part-time jobs Han has taken to working in order to fully buy back his diner.
• Max took the batteries out of their carbon monoxide detector. “Do your eyes feel bloodier than usual?”
• “If you didn’t want to upset me then why do you chew salad so loudly?”
• In response to Sophie saying “you get it” in reference to vibrating panties:

“I do not, and I will not act that like I might.”

“You know you’re a puzzle, that I have no interest in solving”

• Earl says that Max and Caroline are “as unlucky A F,” which stands for “as Freddy”.
• Also I didn’t mention it, but Sophie’s water breaking is out of control. It’s obviously very fake, but also gross in just how much liquid is pouring out.
• Referring to Han as a “mini driver” is the cleverest short joke this show has ever done.

Whereas “And the Two Openings: Part One” was largely occupied with the logistics of their Dessert Bar opening, “Part Two” is focused on Sophie’s childbirth. It’s the culmination of a storyline that took up much of last season, with the Eastern European couple navigating the twists and turns that come with wanting to be parents.

While that journey was a fairly comprehensive one, with the couple discussing such options as adoption due to their seeming inability to have children naturally, both Sophie and Oleg continue to be relatively flat characters. Once the  former gives birth [in a hospital and not a Polish forest, to her delight] she’s obviously overjoyed, but how being a mother will change her isn’t touched on, or even really hinted at.

She is concerned that Oleg will regret missing their daughter’s entry into the world and fakes the whole thing with Max and Caroline’s help. Their charade results in him passing out, but it’s not out of actual apprehension or nervousness about becoming a father. Instead Oleg hits the deck due to Max’s description of what’s going on in Sophie’s nether regions; the word “ooze” is used a lot.

Sophie and Oleg have never been particularly three-dimensional, but as the longest-lasting couple and now as parents they bear a lot of storytelling potential. The introduction of a child on any TV show is also a pretty big deal, and if 2 Broke Girls enters into its 7th, 8th, and even 9th seasons it remains to be seen how it will be able to balance its trademark raunchy humour with the presence of a toddler.

The second returning guest star is 2 Chainz, who Max and Caroline met on a plane once. My review of that episode is far from favourable, but it’s interesting to note that it takes place directly after the one in which Andy Dick’s J. Petto is first introduced. Having Season 6 premiere with two guest stars from Season 2 can’t be a common move in the sitcom game, and it makes one wonder why they were selected out of the handful available [though it’s not like Lindsay Lohan has anything else to do].

Similar to his first outing on 2 Broke Girls 2 Chainz is given very little to do this time around, largely due to J. Petto showing up to explain that liquor licenses do not in fact extend to all businesses on a shared property. As a result Max and Caroline’s Dessert Bar will be closed for the next 14 business days as they await their actual liquor license [because a Dessert Bar without alcohol is just . . . a bakery?]. Having put in his time 2 Chainz bounces, though Earl tagging along with him allows this episode the rare achievement of passing what I’m calling the Black Bechdel Test.

One particularly important aspect of Petto’s announcement, besides the Dessert Bar opening being put on hold for almost three weeks, is that he also slapped them with a $25K fine. Given that Max and Caroline already dropped 3 Gs to help get Han out of his gambling debt [again, just skim my last review] they’re not in a place to pay it. With that in mind they immediately rescind full ownership of the diner to Han, which leaves him with the responsibility of footing the bill.

In the first episode we saw the girls’ apparent escape from their hideous waitress uniforms only to be seen wearing them mere minutes later. The second firmly reestablishes the status quo, albeit with Han owing quite a bit of money [and likely resulting in him keeping his half-dozen part-time gigs]. While this swift reversal may appear frustrating to some, a reestablishment to the status quo or a “familiar situation” is a facet of prototypical story structure. Dan Harmon, of Community and now Rick and Morty fame, lays it all out in a write-up titled “Story Structure 101: Super Basic Shit“. Conflict and change are essential, but ultimately so is a return to the way things were.

In that same way the Dessert Bar is a brand new business venture for Max and Caroline, but it’s really just one of a long line of brand new business ventures. Last month I came across an article that wondered “Will the ‘2 Broke Girls’ Ever Not Be Broke?“, positing that the duo might even “make millions” one day. While it concludes with the idea that their riches lie in the emotional bonds made, an idea more sickly sweet than even their cupcakes, I have to disagree. 2 Broke Girls‘ premise lies in its name, and I personally don’t believe they’ll ever make it until their last season wraps up.

For me one of the appeals of 2 Broke Girls is watching two young women try their hardest to make it in the world, and to never let their failures become setbacks. It’s cheesy and idealistic to be sure, but it also communicates the idea that it’s hard out there for everyone, sitcom characters included. While their comedy has never really been my bag that narrative does drag me back time and time again. I, for one, am interested to see how it runs its course in Season 6.

Current Total: $1,000.

New Total: $535. I can’t think of what they could have spent money on that would have cost them hundreds of dollars. Possibly on actually acquiring their liquor license?

The Title Refers To: The second of the two openings is, in all likelihood, Sophie’s vagina, through which a child exited this episode.

Stray Observations:

• “Don’t leave me in there alone, you know I see dead people!” In case you’d forgotten that Earl is old.
• Han’s part-time jobs include: flower deliveryperson, Lyft/Uber driver, drug dealer [molly specifically], and dog walker.
• Oleg sold rare porn collection to get Sophie a fancy birthing suite, which I suppose is some kind of progress.
• Sophie’s birthing snack is Let’s Potato Chips, and you would not believe how much a bag costs.
• Welcome to 2 Broke Girls, Barbara Kachinsky Golishevsky!
• The dog Han was walking “fornicated its way across Greenpoint.” To which his friends respond “Been there,” and “Done that.”
• 2 Chainz is bummed that the Dessert Bar’s opening was cancelled. “Guess I’m gonna have to grab a bottle of rose and head over to Mrs. Fields again.”

Even given the premiere’s botched opening it’s still a bit surprising that we return to see Max and Caroline’s Dessert Bar as having been open for a full week. As the girls’ most recent attempt at finally making it big I expected there to be more excitement surrounding it, yet we find that they’re still working at the diner due to their business having trouble taking off.

It’s strange to type the words “still working at the diner” since that’s such a core aspect of the show. All of CBS’s promotional material for 2 Broke Girls has them wearing their waitress uniforms and at this point doing away with them would be like having Howard Wolowitz in anything other than a turtleneck, or Barney Stinson without a suit. The fact that the premiere would even tease them leaving their mustard yellow threads behind  was jarring enough, however shortlived it was. Having them hint at moving away from the status quo in consecutive episodes may just be a coincidence, but if it shows up again next Monday something has to be up. It’s not to say that I expect the show to make any drastic moves right out the gate, but there does appear to be a testing of the waters.

All that being said, the A-plot of “And the 80’s Movie” isn’t anything to write home about. Seeking upscale clientele for the Dessert Bar they hit up the chicest spot in Williamsburg where they’re bound to find “models, gays, rich guys that want to have sex with models . . . and gays.” While Caroline starts rubbing shoulders with the aforementioned Max find a kindred spirit in a snarky female bouncer. This in turn leads to said bouncer showing up to the Dessert Bar with a crowd of rowdy, boisterous women who also happen to be members of NYC’s Elite Ladies’ Underground Arm Wrestling . . . Association [I’m not sure what the group is officially titled, they never say]. This of course is the opposite of what they wanted, and it’s up to them to figure out how to get them out of there.

A big part of these reviews has always been prodding at the gaping holes in the narrative’s logic, and this one is harder to ignore than most. It’s not so much that the group is loud [they are] and bothering other customers [they’re actively scaring them away], it’s that they aren’t technically even clientele. Caroline points out that the beer they’re drinking they brought themselves, and when she insists they order something they ask for a round of waters. This is a valid and legal reason to ask people to leave your place of business. Instead they have to arm wrestle Big Reba, because of course they do, in order to get them to leave.

In another predictable turn of events Caroline is the one to defeat the champ, not Max. The climax of the episode involves the latter motivating her friend by shouting about how awful her life has become, to which the former bumps it up to another level of overacting. 

Now don’t get me wrong, “You haven’t had sex in a year!” ain’t bad. “You chased a dollar onto the third rail of the subway and you didn’t even get it!” is actually quite funny. “You work as a waitress as a diner” is, well, a fact Caroline should be familiar with given the past few years. It’s just, “Old Navy is out of your price range!” isn’t the strongest closer.

That and, although I’ve very often cited Beth Behrs as being the comedic bright spot that makes each episode significantly more bearable, she’s a bit much here. It’s like each successive level she was being directed in a bizarro WKUK sketch where she was told to instead act “angrier and with your mouth open”.

There’s a C-plot for both Earl and Han which involves them fighting over a stool that’s not bad, especially considering that it gives 2 Broke Girls least-utilized players something to do with one another, however short that time may be. What I regretfully feel like I need to touch on [with a ten foot pole] is Sophie and Oleg’s B-plot.

Last week I wondered if the show would “be able to balance its trademark raunchy humour with the presence of a toddler”, but that question is relevant now given that I feel they’re struggling to do that with an unseen newborn. Both parents spend most of their time onscreen lusting after one another, which leads to a truly horrific scene in which they essentially use the stroller to low-key grind on one another-

I found myself mimicking Caroline’s facial expressions, but in or outside of a comedic context it’s wildly unsettling. This is the very first full episode in which Sophie and Oleg and a mother and father, respectively, and while the latter has a brief moment where he fawns over his daughter they’re largely preoccupied with trying not to bone one another. It’s certainly not the character growth I was hoping for, anyway.

All in all this episode was largely foreseeable, and doesn’t offer much promise for future installments, at least as far as what might come along next. At the very least Max and Randy have “decided to continue [their] non-exclusive long-distance sexting thing”, which has been comforting in its own way.

Current Total: $535.00

New Total: $1,050. My assumption is that the bump in funds is profit from the Dessert Bar.

The Title Refers To: Max and Caroline having to arm wrestle for control of their very own business. The latter even directly says “it’s gettin’ real 80’s movie up in here.”

Stray Observations:

• the cold open had a joke about an entire pack of dogs entering the diner and trying to have sex with Caroline. Yikes.
• That said, what were the censors even doing with this episode given that Oleg helped Max sext Randy by typing “”your testicles are two glistening Cadbury Eggs and mama’s got a sweet tooth” to which my only reaction is-

I’ve actually never seen Oreshura, I’m not some kind of anime nerd.

• In all seriousness, though, 2 Broke Girls appears to be pushing the limit on what they can get away with.
• Sophie treats the stroller with her infant child in it really roughly. Caroline quips that “there better be a cartoon baby dressed like Al Capone in that thing”, but really, yikes.
• Oleg’s erotic poetry was rejected by National Pornographic.
• “I can’t wait for you to put your butt on my butt . . . in my pants.” But really though, Max was not good at sexting.
• “Nahani and Arielle are models, they can eat whatever they want HATE THEM.”
• “It’s my cheat night, that’s why I’m with him.” Oh, those sassy gays.
• I enjoyed how they called the bouncer out for showing up in gym shorts and a SUNY Albany sweatshirt.
• “Can you unfollow a person in real life?”
• Earl flaming Han for being short is pretty hypocritical, really.
• “Find a dock or a junkyard or a Buffalo Wild Wings.” / “Who wants to drink where they work?”
• “I’m gonna tell you what I tell three tourists a day: I am not Carl Weathers.”

I need to state upfront that this post is not an all-encompassing response to the Black Lives Matter movement [which I will be shortening to “BLM”] and the concept of White privilege. The title instead refers to a blog post titled “Black Lives Matter and White Privilege”. Written by Ghanaian-Canadian Samuel Sey and appearing on his site Slow to Write, the article delved into his opinions on both topics.

Regular readers of the blog will know that I don’t often respond to other blog posts in this manner; the last time I did so was back in 2014, to the article “Meet The Poster Child For ‘White Privilege’ – Then Have Your Mind Blown”. I wasn’t able to read it without addressing, and outright dismantling, many of the arguments presented, and having read Sey’s post I found myself in a similar position.

It should be mentioned that Sey and I have vastly more in common with one another than I do with Tal Fortgang, the writer of the aforementioned article. He is a fellow Canadian, POC, and Christian, actually attending a church in Toronto [although he lives just outside it]. Sey and I also, and I believe I can say this with confidence, care about the wellbeing of the Black community in North America. With all of those similarities in place it made it that much more difficult to read his post and find myself disagreeing with so many key points.

Sey begins the article by listing a few statistics about the Black community in both Toronto and Canada, seguing into the origins of the term “White privilege” [“White Privilege and Male Privilege”, an article by Peggy McIntosh published in 1988] and agreeing that the advantage is “in [his] opinion […] unquestionable.” So far so good. Where things get a little touch and go for me personally is a large chunk of the following paragraph, which reads:

“The problem with these concepts of privilege [heterosexual, cisgender, and Christian] is not necessarily with their validity—as there is some truth to them—the problem, however, is that so few are willing to admit that these privileges largely exists because of self-inflicted wounds by the unprivileged. White privilege is not the exception.”

Directly stated in the following paragraph is the perspective that BLM’s “adamant refusal to embrace the truth ensures that the self-inflicted wounds within Black Canadian and Black American communities will remain uncared for and untreated.” This is also the reason “why [Sey hates] Black Lives Matter.”

The primary evidence used concerns the BLM protest in Charlotte that occurred last month over the shooting of Keith Lamont Scott by a police officer. In particular the fact that Justin Carr, a Black man, was shot and killed by another Black man at the gathering. Sey decries BLM for a lack of outrage over this happening and mourns Carr as “seemingly just another unimportant victim of what Black Lives Matter considers a myth—Black-on-Black crime”.

Given that I had researched the movement months prior for other reasons I quickly pulled up an article-

-which listed the first of its “11 Major Misconceptions” as “The movement doesn’t care about black-on-black crime.” I’ve tried to pare down their explanation as much as possible, but only managed to cut the final three sentences [emphasis mine]:

“The idea that black-on-black crime is not a significant political conversation among black people is patently false. In Chicago, long maligned for its high rates of intraracial murder, members of the community created the Violence Interrupters to disrupt violent altercations before they escalate. However, those who insist on talking about black-on-black crime frequently fail to acknowledge that most crime is intraracial. Ninety-three percent of black murder victims are killed by other black people. Eighty-four percent of white murder victims are killed by other white people. The continued focus on black-on-black crime is a diversionary tactic, whose goal is to suggest that black people don’t have the right to be outraged about police violence in vulnerable black communities, because those communities have a crime problem. The Black Lives Matter movement acknowledges the crime problem, but it refuses to locate that crime problem as a problem of black pathology.“

Also worth noting is what exactly BLM is and was created to be. As laid out by co-founder Alicia Garza, its very inception was in response to both when “17-year-old Trayvon Martin was post-humously placed on trial for his own murder and the killer, George Zimmerman, was not held accountable for the crime he committed” and “the anti-Black racism that permeates our society and also, unfortunately, our movements.”

As “an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise” the focus of the organization is violence perpetrated by those in power against Black people. It’s not to say that intraracial crime isn’t a problem, but that it’s not the issue they’re working on addressing. Cue the [now hopefully classic] analogy in the face of “All lives matter” of someone racing down a cancer ward yelling how all diseases should be eradicated and extend it to a person accusing a diabetes fundraiser of not caring more about influenza.

My response to Sey’s follow-up comment about BLM and reverse-racism is easily summed up by a bit of stand-up from comedian Aamer Rahman:

To wit, Rahman explains that in order for reverse-racism to exist we would have to live in a sort of alternate timeline where people of colour have, throughout history, become the social, economic, and political powerhouses, leaving people of European ancestry lacking any and all of the privilege they have in this world. In other words, racism is more about power than merely disliking a particular group of people. To draw a parallel, it would be like straight people complaining about being victims of “heterophobia” in spite of the fact that they still make up the vast majority of the world’s population, as well as having accurate and positive representation in media both today and spanning back centuries.

Sey’s next point is actually the one that he dedicates the most space to, likely because he’s able to relate to it on a personal level. His assertion is that [emphasis his] “white privilege largely exists because Black lives do not matter to Black fathers” is supported by his own childhood in which he “never experienced the privilege of ever laying eyes on [his]  father”.

His statement that “absentee Black fathers produce self-inflicted wounds that cause so much pain for Black Canadians and Black Americans” isn’t really one that I can disagree with. Many studies have shown single parent households to have a negative effect on childhood development. That said, Sey never once delves into why the statistics he lists regarding family demographics are what they are.

Could the fact that there are less Black Americans born into two-parent households than White Americans bear any connection to the fact that “more than one out of every six black men who today should be between 25 and 54 years old have disappeared from daily life”? That’s 1.5 million Black men and potential fathers that are absent from the Black community, begging the question of whether or not there’s a connection between impoverished living conditions, crime, and two-parent households.

I would like to think that that factor joins a slew of others in lieu of simply laying the blame at the feet of the Black fathers who “Black lives do not matter to”.

Sey ties this back to BLM by claiming that the organization “knows [about the absence of Black fathers] too” and that “it doesn’t matter to them.” He points towards the “Black Villages” section of the Guiding Principles page on the BLM website, which reads:

“We are committed to disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, and especially ‘our’ children to the degree that mothers, parents and children are comfortable.”

My assumption, which very well may be wrong, is that Sey noted the absence of “fathers”, while “mothers” and “parents” are listed, and took it to mean that the organization doesn’t care about them. That said, I don’t see why they wouldn’t be counted among “parents”. What’s more, the idea of a community being like a village brought to my mind the early church in Acts, which was described as being “together and [having] everything in common,” their communal living emphasized by the fact that they “[sold] their property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.” Why shouldn’t the Black community, or any other, choose to live in this manner?

It’s somehow fitting, given the last time I wrote one of these blog posts, that Sey closes by using a variation of the phrase “check your privilege”. Instead of asking his White neighbours to do so, he shares that he would,

“rather encourage them to count their blessings. And while I’m at it—I’ll count mine too. Considering where and what I come from, I’ll never stop counting.”

While he elaborates on the problems both in the Black community and BLM, what Sey doesn’t do is offer any solutions. His only course of action is to encourage White people to “count their blessings”, which doesn’t at all draw back to the problem of police brutality against members of the Black community. Furthermore, he believes that the lack of privilege the community faces is largely due to “self-inflicted wounds” as opposed to any outside forces. “Physician, heal thyself,” Sey appears to be advising, to which BLM asks: “How can I heal at all while being actively beaten?”

I am invested in Max and Caroline’s relationship.

While it’s no secret that reviewing 2 Broke Girls is far from my favourite task for the week, I do care about how the show deals with the pair at its core. Strongly in its favour is the fact that the conflict that tends to arise between people of vastly different socioeconomic backgrounds is literally the premise of my favourite Arthur episode. For as much as this CBS sitcom is built on the friendship Max and Caroline share, what actually keeps both it and the narrative moving forward is the two butting heads. That said, what difference arises between the two titular leads this week?

Caroline doesn’t like having fun.

Which, to be fair, is sort of true. A much more accurate statement might be: Caroline doesn’t like having fun compared to Max. Though even then the definition of fun would need to be reduced to general debauchery [drinking, drugs, premarital sex, the sorts of activities your parents didn’t want you doing in your teens]. Having just typed out that stipulation it still doesn’t feel entirely accurate, since just last season we had the former heiress knocking back multiple tiny bottles of hotel liquor. Just trying to lay out the conflict in this episode is proving really difficult and I’m not even 300 words into this review. 

At this point you probably think I’m picking this apart too much, and a part of me agrees with you. The thing is that Caroline’s inability to enjoy herself is spelled out so explicitly in this episode, particularly when she visits her alma mater only to find out that her reputation as “Caroline ‘Buzzkill’ Channing” is still well-known throughout its halls. That’s further hammered home by her self-appointed role at a college party of keeping alcohol out of the hands of minors, halting the enjoyment of the as-of-yet-illegal marijuana, and cock blocking [as well as your preferred female equivalent] every person in sight. At one point Caroline actually says: “I have to go, I hear zippers unzipping.”

There are a number of reasons she might be acting this way. Perhaps returning to a place where she still had it all together is a distinct reminder of a better, more structured time. Maybe the reason for their trip to Wharton, giving a lecture to a business class, is what has her set to Super Responsible mode. Regardless of why, and there are a number of solid options, the episode never properly explains it.

Caroline being so anti-fun leads to Max talking her into joining the college party currently in session. That in turn results in a lot of drunken hijinks, mostly taking place on screen, as well as smooching both the floor’s RA and that RA’s fiance. Everything that happens leads to my other issue with the episode, which is that they eventually resolve things by admitting to a need for balance. Caroline is a successful business school graduate and deserves that, but she also deserves to have fun as well. She even admits, “I really did have fun, Max.” Except she doesn’t remember any of it.

Given every conversation her and Max have about the party it becomes apparent that she has zero recollection of what exactly went down. Not only does she not remember making out with anyone, let alone more than one person. Everything Caroline can recount about the previous evening is relayed through her best friend, so how can she really know whether or not she had a good time? It’s not that I think or expect 2 Broke Girls to be an after school special on the dangers of drinking, just that I wanted more out of Max and Caroline’s relationship than the former getting the latter drunk and everything being cool between them.

Considering how disappointed I am with “And the College Experience” you’d think I would’ve done what I typically do and keep things short and kind of sour. This time around I decided to tap into some of my frustrations, and continue to hope, possibly against hope, that 2 Broke Girls will buck the trend of sitcoms flanderizing its characters more and more with each passing season.

Current Total: $1,845.265

New Total: $2,710.65. I still can’t say with absolutely certainty why this total continues to increase.

The Title Refers To: The girls’ college experience.

Stray Observations:

• I would’ve expected an actual Halloween episode given when this aired, but all we get is The Great Han-dini.
• Han makes a Pokémon GO joke, because apparently it’s July 2016.
• “And they say it’s very important for a dad to bond with his baby.” / “I think that’s only true for human dads.”
• “Caroline Channing’s Dessert Bar? This place isn’t like your sex life, Caroline, you’re not doing it all by yourself.”
• Max using a garbage bag to pack for their trip was a really nice touch.
• “You know what they say: If you remember the parties at Wharton ya weren’t there.” She wasn’t.
• Sophie’s father’s first words to her were: “Next item up for bid!”
• “We need to party. Tonight needs to end with us driving a police car into the fountain on the quad or it is a fail.”
• They did not try very hard to find actors who look like they’re in college.
• “Hey, no random, uncommitted sex here! This is college!” / “I have a computer full of videos that says you’re wrong-“
• “Well, like most people straight out of college I’m at a job I don’t want to be at.”

I’m becoming increasingly more concerned for Barbara Kachinsky Golishevsky. This feature, which hopefully continues past this week, is named after Caroline’s aside to Max, and its purpose is to track Sophie and Oleg’s fitness as parents-

We’ve Got to Get That Kid Out of That House

• Sophie “dipped [Barbara] in perfume” so that “everyone treats little Barbara like Mariah Carey”.

Really not great.

• Sophie asks Oleg to give the baby some space as “her spray tan hasn’t even dried yet.”

Objectively awful.

• Sophie continues to roughly shove the stroller around, much to the audience’s wild laughter.

Clear negligence.

• Sophie keeping Barbara away from Oleg because “fathers aren’t equipped for the job”. 
• Oleg getting a pair of “moobs” so that he can feed his daughter.

Ironically enough, the very reason Caroline utters the words that title this feature is the best example of Sophie and Oleg being good parents. They very clearly want what’s best for Barbara, and in particular this features Oleg identifying his own shortcoming, as it were, and taking steps to amend it. It’s certainly not the way most parents would share childcare duties, but it’s the thought that counts and not what I would consider harmful to the child.

This is the second part of a series I began almost exactly three years ago with “Asian Comic Book Fan Watches Thor: The Dark World Expecting Racial Representation, Deals with Crushing Disappointment by Writing Blog Post“. The Marvel sequel in question sidelined Hogun, played by Japanese actor Tadanobu Asano, almost completely, and as the title of the blog post would suggest I had been very excited to see him again.

I can’t not use this image again, it’s just too perfect. Source: platoapproved.tumblr.com

With Doctor Strange, on the other hand, that anticipation was not present at all. Last June I covered the news that Tilda Swinton was in talks to play the Ancient One, the title character’s mentor, in “Celebrity Blind Spots and Fixing Racist Narratives [By Making Everyone White]“. The gist of that post was how, in an effort to be more “progressive” filmmakers have been choosing to “fix” problematic minority characters by simply casting them with White talent. That’s as opposed to simply amending what made them so racist and stereotypical to begin with.

At that point in 2015 Swinton starring in the film had not yet been confirmed, and absolutely nothing had been mentioned about the character of Wong, Doctor Strange’s manservant in the source material. With Benedict Cumberbatch already locked into the role it was a magical time in which there was still the possibility of Marvel releasing a movie with two prominent Asian characters.

Look, my hopes were never particularly high that Swinton wouldn’t land the part. As soon as it was announced she was in talks for the role support began pouring in. That she was a woman in her 50s in a genre that has helped shine a spotlight on men of all ages and women of a very particular age was laudable to many. The thing is, the optics are so bad.

Do you know what the film still above depicts? A White woman introducing a White man to mystic arts in Nepal. Doctor Stephen Strange travels all the way from New York City to Kathmandu only to kneel at the feet of a Celtic sorcerer, begging for her to teach him. And let me be clear, the movie does not hide the fact that a good portion of it takes place in Asia. The fictional land of Kamar-Taj is depicted as being explicitly Eastern in everything from the architecture to the clothing worn. I knew all of this going into the theatre, but didn’t realize how much uglier things would get. Please be warned, from this point on there will be mild spoilers.

In a scene that’s meant to be humorous Doctor Strange initially turns to an elderly Asian man as the Ancient One, only to find that it’s the bald White woman serving him tea who bears the title. The man he’s mistaken the Ancient One for is revealed to be Master Hamir. It should be noted that while he does reappear later to assist in his magical tutelage he has no speaking lines whatsoever.

What’s more the many unnamed students in Kamar-Taj are such a racially diverse group that Asians are objectively in the minority. Of the zealots who follow Kaecilius, the film’s villain, almost all are White.

In fact, looking through the full cast list on IMDb reveals that there are a grand total of seven roles given to actors of East-Asian descent.

The uncredited roles which account for more than half are Shina Shihoko Nagai as Martial Artist/Waitress, Emily Ng as Restaurant Passerby, Clem So as Kamar-Taj Disciple, and Ruolan Zhang as Tea Lady.

Joining Master Hamir’s Topo Wresniwiro are Linda Louise Duan as Tina Minoru and, I’m surprised it took me this long to get to him, Benedict Wong as Wong. 

It’s particularly fitting that it took me 3,500 words to mention Wong because his inclusion wasn’t even announced until January of this year. That’s a few months after filming had already begun. What’s more, Wong almost didn’t make it into the film. In September of this year director Scott Derickson revealed that:

“I was very happy with that [Tilda’s casting], but I was also very conscious that in doing that I was erasing a significant potential Asian role. I was going to leave Wong out of the movie at first; he was an Asian sidekick manservant, what was I supposed to do with that? But once the decision was made to cast Tilda, we brought Wong back because, unlike the Ancient One, he could be completely subverted as a character and reworked into something that didn’t fall into any of the stereotypes of the comics.”

Wong almost didn’t make it into Doctor Strange, and Wong is the only Asian character who speaks in this entire movie. In a horrific reversal from the dream I mentioned earlier in this post, there was a brief period of time in which there were no significant Asian roles. No significant Asian roles in a movie that largely takes place in Nepal and has the setting of its climactic action setpiece in Hong Kong.

Wong, both the Chinese-British actor and the character, serves primarily as comic relief, not even able to garner a single action sequence for himself. While his performance is well-done and his presence is appreciated, what’s even more upsetting is how the Ancient One is portrayed. Which is to say, with nuance and multidimensionality.

Playing the Sorcerer Supreme allows Swinton to be mysterious and engimatic, which are hallmarks of Asian stereotyping to be sure, but later strips that away to reveal more about herself. It’s in that moment that the audience is allowed to see how human she is, that in addition to being both stern and kind, as evidenced by her mystic training, she is also selfish. It’s a level of complexity rarely afforded to a character in a Marvel movie who is neither the hero nor the love interest.

I used the term “upsetting”, but really “heartbreaking” is more accurate. The Ancient One, as written in Doctor Strange, could have been given to any Asian actor with the ability to imbue the part with the gravitas it needs, as an opportunity for a poorly represented demographic to have a greater presence in a film shown around the world.

To refer once again to the title of of this blog post, I had very low expectations when it came to this movie. What I didn’t anticipate, however, was how just how well-rounded the Ancient One’s role was going to be, which only makes the loss of that part all the more palpable. Not only that, but the fact that outside of Wong the presence of Asian characters would be so abysmally low, especially for a film that chooses to take place in two distinctly Asian settings.

Only five days ago Kevin Feige, the president of Marvel Studios, stated that, “It’s definitely important to [them] that these movies reflect the world,” and while it may be thought that counts in Doctor Strange‘s particular case their efforts failed.

So not only has CBS stopped updating the 2 Broke Girls page on their site with advance stills, but this week I was unable to find any trailers uploaded to YouTube to use in my header image. It’s like they don’t want anyone online to get excited about this show anymore.

Which is actually a darn shame, since this week’s episode was pretty good! Not only did we have some genuine character progression with one of the two leads [it’s always Max, please never put your money on Caroline] but there were some really solid jokes! I’m not even mildly disappointed that the actual events that occurred only barely mirror the synopsis that the Google search up above provided; it would’ve been nice to see Earl take centre stage more, but I enjoyed 2 Broke Girls this Monday, a rare enough occurrence to invalidate most other criticisms.

It’s a surprisingly plot-heavy installment, with two of the threads even tying together. As the header image indicates Earl’s past lover Pilar, who absconded from Cuba to the States, is in town to see the sights. On Max’s end Randy texted her, not a picture of his junk as per uje but letting her know that he has a layover in Newark. While Caroline is over-the-moon excited about a rom-com staple come to life, her best friend is hesitant to make any big moves at the risk of embarrassing herself. Cue, in the last third of the episode, Earl telling Pilar that he’s just not up to it, and the Cuban escapee responding that that’s life: nothing risked, nothing gained.

All the while, just off centre stage, Han and Oleg have their own thing going on. Max has made a disturbingly decadent cake for an Overeater’s Anonymous group’s big cheat day, and the diner owner accidentally drops the aforementioned dessert on the [presumably filthy] kitchen floor. Cue his begging the fry cook for help:

It’s a genuinely funny moment, and it made me realize that 2 Broke Girls may have more mileage in it that I originally thought. While other sitcoms have exhausted unorthodox character pairings long before their sixth season, this show’s tight focus on its leads has kept that to a minimum. Even with the small cast size there are still a number of combinations left to be made, and I hope the writer’s room continues throwing them together to see what sparks.

To return to the Max’s character progression, however, her and Randy end up sealing [or re-sealing] the deal on their relash [that’s pronounced “re’laysh”]. While not huge compared to other romantic gestures, especially given that her trip to the airport was so straightforward, her meeting with him results in a very casual exchange of words.

“I want something more. I want a relationship.”

“I wouldn’t hate that.”

While it’s strange to see her get back to Randy just a few episodes deep given what happened last season finale, it’s that unexpectedness that’s helping to keep the show fresh. It also doesn’t hurt at all that CBS et al. continue to make 2 Broke Girls a place to help those with an iron deficiency get a little beefcake in their diet-

All of the above, on top of how many jokes stuck the landing, actually gave me hope that watching 2 Broke Girls on Monday nights, as well as writing these reviews, might actually be something I genuinely look forward to. And let me tell you, given this US election season any excitement at all is much-needed excitement.

Current Total: $2,710.65

New Total: $3,710.65. I know exactly how they made this money! This was payment to make a cake for that Overeater’s Anonymous cheat day! I guess Max was able to throw another one together off-screen.

The Title Refers To: This took me a while to figure out, since it wasn’t really explicitly spelled out in the episode, but it’s a portmanteau of “rom-com” and “commie”, the latter referring to Pilar who once lived in a Communist state.

Stray Observations:

• Han signs his letters “From the desk of a Jellybean Addict”.
• “I have to use the bathroom again, my prostate changes faster than the lineup of The View.”
• Earl’s last name is Washington! Max had no idea as his license just says “Earl”.
• Pilar manages to recognize him in spite of the fact that she last remembers him as 6’2″ with an afro. That’s love for you-
• “No thanks, if I liked porn I wouldn’t’ve thrown away Sophie and Oleg’s ‘I’m having a baby’ card.”
• Sophie’s trying to make baby Barbara laugh this episode, and it leads to Max trying the ol’ I-got-your-nose trick on Caroline-

Beth Behrs is a pure delight.

• “What if Barbara has no idea what’s funny. Like a Netflix comedy!” [insert quote about living in glass houses]
• “You thought when I first said ‘hi’ to you it meant I wanted you to move in with me for six years.” At this point I’m willing to concede that the timeline is hella borked. [see my previous comments about it in this review]
• re: Han being a notary- “There’s a lot of sides to being a square.”
• I’ll try to remember to take a screenshot later, but there’s a really well-done exchange where Max asks Earl if he needs his walker and then hands him a bottle of whiskey. It’s very good.
• “I guess Crossfit failed me again today.”
• Oleg repeats his nonchalant response to where the cake disappeared to a second time, and extremely quickly. It’s one of the best performances I’ve seen out of Jonathan Kite.
• Sophie still not a great parent: “She’s gettin’ real monster truck rally with that carriage.”
• “Prepare to meet your maker, Han. Which I’m assuming is Mattel.”

While Family Guy has long had this same accusation leveled against it in regards to its predecessor The Simpsons, a similar one arises from time to time with live-action sitcoms. That leads me to our newest, hopefully weekly feature:

Friends Did It First

Max first introduces her cake as being a “maple vanilla rum cake with a raspberry cheesecake filling and a chocolate crumble,” which is fine, and also sounds delicious. Where she really begins to court danger is when she mentions that “also there’s a layer of ham in it,” as well as one of hotdogs.

Even the most casual Friends viewer knows about Rachel’s infamous trifle that appeared in “The One Where Ross Got High”, the ninth episode of the show’s sixth season. Here that is for all of you nice people:

While Max’s creation is clearly intentional and not a mistake, like Rachel’s was, the similarities are starkly apparent. This is a rich, irresistible confection that has its ingredients listed only to have an outlier, meat, come out of nowhere. In Friends it’s it’s beef sauteed with peas and onions, whereas in 2 Broke Girls it’s hot dogs, potatoes, and even “a ham”.

As one last quibble I do want to mention that that’s how Max refers to its inclusion: “also there’s a ham in it.” The entire episode I was intrigued by the idea that she had fit an entire ham into the cake, only to find, once Han drops it on the floor, that it’s just a slice of ham. That’s false advertising at its finest, Ms. Black. That Overeater’s Anonymous group will be very disappointed.

Even though I wrote a little over a thousand words last week on my experiences with Doctor Strange [required reading for this blog post] there were a couple of additional criticisms I wanted to level against both that specific film and the industry as a whole. While I covered pretty thoroughly how Asians were poorly represented in Marvel Studio’s latest offering, what I didn’t really touch on was why.

When Diversity Means Painting With All the Colour of the Wind

In the months leading up to the release of Doctor Strange the conversation about the Ancient One’s casting began heating up. With mainstream news outlets picking up on the controversy there were many waiting to hear from the creators themselves, which brings us to the episode of the Double Toasted podcast that guest starred screenwriter C. Robert Cargill.

While his explanations regarding the character have since been championed by those defending the casting decision, even after his rescinding all comments made, and in spite of them being refuted by others, in particular by Shaun of the No, Totally! podcast, what I want to focus on are what he says right after that:

Now if you don’t want to actually listen to him, which I find perfectly understandable, I’ve also transcribed the relevant quote [emphasis added]:

“But when you start to see this film you’ll see that what we were able to do with Kamar-Taj, we made one of the most multicultural films most people have seen in years. Like this film is [. . .] I’m not certain that there’s a single major race that isn’t represented with a speaking role in this film. It allowed us to bring in, even as small characters to build upon later, a lot of characters from the Doctor Strange universe who come from all over the world. We were able to play with a lot of things and it gave us a lot to work with.”

Cargill takes a lot of pride in Doctor Strange featuring a very racially diverse cast, at least in regards to background characters and bit parts. The question is why that’s necessary given that Kamar-Taj, where much of the film is set, is located in Nepal.

The idea appears to be that since every “single major race” has been represented [his claims that they all received at least a single line being suspect] good racial representation has been achieved. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Even setting aside the fact that White men and women already receive the spotlight across every form of media it should be considered that a component of good racial representation is accurate racial representation.

To turn the clock back two years, it’s why I was so frustrated by Big Hero 6 and its setting of San Fransokyo. Despite being set in a metropolis intended to be a mashup of polyethnic San Francisco and largely monoethnic Tokyo the main cast ended up looking like this:

Featuring, and the post goes into further detail, a single half-Japanese character.

There has been a large push towards diversity in Hollywood, which sounds like a net positive. The issue is that it has trended towards equally representing, and I’ll use Cargill’s terminology again, every “single major race”. The original Big Hero 6 comic book featured a fully Japanese cast , yet what was presented on-screen was a group where Japanese people were actually in the minority.

To use yet another food metaphor, imagine a movie theatre that only sold popcorn with a little butter and salt. Eventually the demand for more variety arises and the management concedes that it’s in their best interests to offer a little more. One day moviegoers walk up to concessions to see-

-behind the glass. Not caramel popcorn, or cheddar cheese, but this hodgepodge of colours and flavours. Which isn’t to say that people don’t enjoy it, they do. At a certain point any change is a good change, and the rainbow popcorn itself is actually delicious. Yet eventually they do start to wonder why these are the only two options for their favourite movie snack, why they can’t get a bag of just sweet and salty kettle corn, that sometimes all they’re looking for is one specific, unadulterated flavour.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve seen a news article on how an upcoming film adaptation’s director or producer recently announced their decision for a “diverse cast”. Oftentimes that’s in regard to a movie that might otherwise have starred a cast that is mostly, if not completely, non-White. The rational appears to be that a film starring a single minority group will be seen as being solely for that audience. On that note, there is a very recent example that proves just how wrong that line of thinking is-

Yet another production falling under the Marvel umbrella, Luke Cage was a show that refutes that idea completely. But where did the Netflix original series go right where so many others go so very, very wrong?

Luke Cage: By Black People, For Everyone

You don’t have to look long or hard to find an article praising this show for its
authenticity in accurately portraying life for many African Americans. That can be attributed in part to producer, writer, and showrunner Cheo Hodari Coker, a Black man himself, as well as the other writers. He describes the group as:

“Our writers’ room was majority African ­American—which is a rarity on ­television—but it was also ­diverse in every way. When it came to ideas, ­everybody had their own power. There was beautiful conflict when it came to story.”

It’s particularly important to note that in spite of being largely made up of Black men and women he stressed the diversity of creativity and ideas that were present. Having a single person who can relate and empathize with the characters can be incredibly impactful, but having several adds nuance and ensures that more than a single perspective will be heard and, in turn, depicted on-screen. While this authenticity isn’t the sole factor in having any piece of art resonate with a broad audience it’s significant nonetheless.

Doctor Strange is by no means an explicitly Asian story, yet it is still largely set in Asia and, given a direct adaptation, would have starred an Asian person in a significant role. In addition to that, much of the concern surrounding the Ancient One’s portrayal was of falling into racial stereotypes and offending a large chunk of the movie-going audience. With that in mind, how many Asians were involved in its creation?

As mentioned earlier Doctor Strange was written by C. Robert Cargill, and joined by Jon Spaihts and director Scott Derrickson, all White men. Producing the film was Kevin Feige, who has been doing the same for all Marvel Studios productions, and who is also a White man. When considering the pitfalls of racial stereotyping how much did this group really understand? Was there ever an Asian person in the room to be asked if any intended portrayal might be seen as offensive?

The next Marvel Netflix show, to be released next March, is Iron Fist. I last covered it very early this year, specifically in regards to the idea that they might cast an Asian as the titular character. Similar to Doctor Strange this is yet another narrative steeped in orientalism and the White saviour trope, arguably more so as Daniel Rand becomes the next of a long line of mystical warriors.

While it has since been announced that Rand would be played Finn Jones, less has been released about the people behind the camera. What we do know is that Scott Buck will be the showrunner, with Tamara Becher serving as one of the writers. Without a single Asian person to be seen working on this production is it really any wonder that at the time of this writing Iron Fist appears to only have three Asian actors as a part of its cast? Again, these are not explicitly Asian stories, but with that region and culture playing such a large part would Asian voices not be a much-needed creative contribution?

If diversity and representation are in fact important to Marvel Studios and Marvel Telvision, as well as the entertainment industry as a whole then changes have to be made both in terms of how decisions are being made, as well as who is making them.

So first thing’s first, and just because it’s the first thing you see when you open up one of these reviews, the header image is very clearly of subpar quality. The best I could find as far as promos was this one video on YouTube which, as you can see, isn’t great. I’ll try to to step it up moving forward but I can only really work with what’s available.

Given that this week’s episode actually fell on my birthday I wasn’t sure how to feel about it. Were my expectations made that much lower due to my having to watch and review it when I could be doing almost anything else? Or were they perhaps on the higher end due to last week’s surprisingly decent installment? Regardless of where my expectations actually ended up falling, 2 Broke Girls served up a decent enough episode that more importantly continues to keep things fresh.

The highlight of “And the Rom-Commie” was the decision to pair Oleg and Han together, a coupling that ended up paying off surprising comedic dividends. While I don’t think that Matthew Moy deserves all the credit for how enjoyable the show has been lately, his performance opposite Kat Dennings is what I want to shine a spotlight on this time around. While his cherubic looks and high-pitched voice have more often than not been openly mocked, which in turn helps perpetuate the stereotype of the effete, sexless Asian man, they also end up adding a genuinely funny mischievous quality to his performance in “And the Sophie Doll”. 

I’ve often made note of whenever Han dishes back what the rest of the staff at the Williamsburg Diner are sending his way, but the key difference here is that the battleground has changed. When he spills a hot beverage on Max’s notebook he immediately starts crying out, “It’s okay, it’s okay!” which leads to the following exchange:

“You spilled all over the book how is that okay?

“Because- that was your cocoa. [sips deeply from his own mug] Mmm! How d’ya like your girl Swiss Miss now?”

There’s a number of reasons it lands so well, with one being Moy’s gleefully impish delivery contrasting so well with Dennings’ deadpan snark. Another is that it takes place in the girls’ apartment, meaning that the traditional relationship, as overturned as it normally is, between employer and employee is absent. Both are fine examples of how the show’s reticence to focus on pairs that were not the titular duo has left the writers’ room with a wealth of potential character combinations to play around with, all of which offer a lot of promise. I’m personally looking forward to Caroline and Sophie holding down their own plotline, which is a sentence I never thought I’d find myself writing.

As for what actually happens, as it turns out it never occurred to the Wharton-educated Ms. Channing that when becoming the owner of a drinking establishment it might be a good idea to hire a bartender. Or, at the very least, know how to make cocktails yourself if there’s no budget for additional staff. This leads to her and Max taking a bartending class, which I think is cool because as a now-26-year-old I still have a less than ideal relationship with alcohol. This results in a humorous but expected situation where Max excels and Caroline does not. Also Han gets chicken pox and there’s something about Sophie having a doll with her face on it.

It’s terrifying.

The episode concludes with neither of them passing, due to various shenanigans, but Max becoming a competent enough bartender to handle making more than just Jolly Rancher shots. It’s a definite positive in regards to the overall success of their Dessert Bar, which the premise of the show is based on right now, which is good. That said, even if the focus wasn’t on the overarching narrative I wouldn’t even complain. 2 Broke Girls is probably never going to be a joke that makes me laugh our loud, but these past few weeks it’s been making me smile which is a step in the right direction.

Current Total: $3,710.65

New Total: $3,340.35. It looks like the bartending course for the both of them cost exactly $370.30.

The Title Refers To: Sophie’s creepy-ass doll which I didn’t dedicate almost any of this review to. It’s supposed to be for surveillance, the parenting variety specifically, though it’s used for other purposes throughout. This also the least clever episode title in a very, very long time.

Stray Observations:

• It feels like ages since the last time the cold open featured Max snarking at a customer.
• Han, or “Law & Order: SAD”, scrutinizes a hair found in a diner patron’s food and notes:

“It’s brown, somewhere between coffee and burnt sienna. Cleaned hastily with a combination shampoo/bodywash. This hair belongs to a single White man, alone, and not by choice but so set in his ways.”

• Beth Behrs confirms with this line that she is still an absolute delight: “We’re going to bartending school so we can- and don’t kick me– be the best- no pinching, not my nose!– business we can be!”
• “Welcome to the Dinersburg Williams! Who said that?”
• Their bartending teacher, Gil Bronski, is played by French Stewart which I did not find out on IMDb. Big ups to 2paragraphs for the info.
• He’s also a “former child actor briefly sidelined by a 30 year drug addiction.”
• “I’m gonna nail this test like it’s some guy I met at the grocery store.” Max, do you mean like in Season 4 Episode 2 “And the DJ Face”?
• “You like that, is it hard enough, am I hurting you?” Han’s such a considerate lover back-scratcher.
• What goes in a White lady? “A bottle of Chardonnay and a fat guy that makes her laugh,” apparently.

• In this scene Oleg is making “don’t say anything” motions with his left hand and Jonathan Kite continues to kill it.

• Poland has eight days in their week, the last of which is used “for dredging the lakes.”
• In the final scene a customer orders a mojito and Max already has mint leaves in the bottom of a glass ready to be mulled. That’s either a lot of foresight or laziness on the part of the props dept.

Time in comic books tends to be a very elastic thing, which makes sense given that most titles only release 13 [an appropriate number of monthly issues as well as an annual] issues per year. When it comes to TV shows, however, it can normally be assumed that a season takes place within a calendar year, an assumption that is typically backed up by special holiday episodes.

In this latest feature, which I hope to add to week after week, we’ll be taking a close look at how 2 Broke Girls views its own timeline up to this current season. We’re calling it-

The Life and Time[line]s of Max and Caroline

S6E1: “And the Two Openings: Part One”

• As noted in that review, Caroline sees J. Petto, who first appeared in S2E17 “And the Broken Hip”. She describes that as being “two years and three businesses ago”.

S6E4: “And the Stepmama Drama”

• Caroline tells her best friend: “Max I’ve been waiting six years to hear you say that [she likes her jug].”

S6E6: “And the Rom-Commie”

• Yet another mention of six years with Max saying: “You thought when I first said ‘hi’ to you it meant I wanted you to move in with me for six years.”

S6E7: “And the Sophie Doll”

• Caroline directly states that her phone hasn’t rang in six years, which can’t possibly be true because she’s dated guys in that time. Remember Candy Andy?

While it’s certainly disappointing to have to write, a run of two decent consecutive 2 Broke Girls episodes is really not bad at all. I thoroughly enjoyed “And the Rom-Commie” as well as “And the Sophie Doll”, and even though they weren’t incredible or even the best the show has ever been, their airing one week after the next felt like an encouraging change of pace for the CBS sitcom. It’s unfortunate that in spite of the season’s eighth installment continuing to land successful physical gags and better utilizing their cast neither are enough to prop up a paper-thin plot.

Which doesn’t mean that those two points are unappreciated, by any means. Han is actually the driving force of this episode, and while he’s been the focus in past seasons this week he manages to participate in the joke without necessarily being the butt of it. Also notable is the fact that, besides being POC on ensemble comedies, this is the first connection I’ve ever made between him and Sergeant Terry Jeffords on Brooklyn Nine-Nine.

The clue lies in what he’s holding.

Fans of the FOX sitcom might recognize the above still from “The Oolong Slayer”, the fourth episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine‘s third season, in which Terry becomes briefly [and intensely] addicted to cacao nibs. Han’s into the raw, powdered version himself, but even then I never expected the two to share a weakness, let alone anything else.

The reason for Han’s addiction is that the cacao apparently fuels his creativity and artistic abilities, which are particularly important since he’s entered the U.S. Post Office’s Federal Duck Stamp Contest [yeah, it’s a real thing]. The conflict arises in Max seeing this as being a bad habit for him to get into and Clint, the new bartender at Dessert Bar, being his supplier. His refusal to stop after being told not to leads to Max firing him, and it’s a genuine surprise to everyone involved when she reveals her reasons for doing so [i.e. she cares about Han].

All that boils down to a fairly straightforward plotline we’ve seen many times before, with Max’s affection for her friends being exposed, much to her chagrin. What’s unfortunate is that although Han’s cacao addiction is not short [no pun intended] on physical comedy-

-it’s the B-plot that holds so much potential. See, Caroline essentially headhunted Clint from a nearby bar, and much of that establishment’s clientele ended up following him. This means a pretty significant profit his first night, a height [again, no pun intended] not reached by Max and her “one for you, one for me” policy when it comes to tending bar. It’s by, definition, a pretty successful outcome all things considered. The thing is that Caroline lets that success go straight to her head.

There’s a Filipino proverb I read way back in high school that essentially states that a man coming into a bit of money is generous, whereas a man coming into a lot of money builds a high wall around his house. The gist of it is that wealth changes you, and at the first sign of escaping a life of squalour Caroline’s course of action is to burn as many bridges as possible. It’s the perfect narrative for a sitcom about two young women living just above the poverty line [please don’t tell me they’re below it I will never believe you] and I would have sacrificed the visual of Han frantically rubbing cacao on his gums for it to have taken centre stage. It’s very true to life, and to have there to be little to no fallout [Max is back to bartending, Caroline faces no repercussions for her announcements] is a major disappointment.

As for Sophie, this episode may actually showcase her at her mothering best. She still violently shoves the baby carriage through crowded rooms [“I hope they’re never expecting Barbara to have a short-term memory.”], which I’m horrified elicits any laughter at all out of the audience, but she also realizes that parenting is all about sacrifice. She only has enough time to make either Barbara or herself sexy, and she’s been opting for the former every time, resulting in her not looking her best. Ultimately Max tells her she’s setting a bad example and the status quo is reestablished, but it’s a nice sentiment nonetheless.

All in all “And the Duck Stamp” has some bright spots, but doesn’t take the time on a storyline worth telling. It’s great to see them up their comedic game, but a little more attention to where 2 Broke Girls is headed would be great as well.

Current Total: $3,340.35.

New Total: $4,840.35. This account for the $1,500.00 they made on Clint’s first night tending bar. It does not, however, factor in Max and Caroline’s manicures.

The Title Refers To: The U.S. Post Office’s Federal Duck Stamp Contest, as mentioned above, actually does not compensate winners beyond having their hand-drawn work featured on a new stamp. Sales of the stamp will, however, help raise millions of dollars for conservation efforts.

Stray Observations:

• “Hi, I’m Clint the new bartender. It’s a pleasure for you to meet me.”
• “Why you gotta harsh my buzz?” Just the first of many lines that make Matthew Moy the comedy MVP this week.
• “If this keeps up we’ll be able to watch Hulu without commercials.” I’m not sure what’s changed since but . . .
• “We don’t have grooming money; I’m still cutting my hair with a sword like Mulan.”
• They don’t have “screw-you money” yet, just “enough to be mildly unpleasant.”
• I still can’t wrap my head around this exchange in their laundromat:

“I can’t wait till we don’t have to come here anymore.”
“Then where will we cook our chicken?”

• “Caroline wanted our nails to project success, so-” Max got little Monopoly houses painted on her nails. Monopoly houses are green and her nails are blue, which I also can’t wrap my head around.
• “You better slow down, we’ve only had one good night at the Dessert Bar and you said we have to keep working at the diner until we have at least enough money to be legally poor.”
• Han stayed up all night sketching a duck so . . . his hair is wild?
• “My guy from Columbia guarantees it. Not the country, we went to college together.”
• In response to the chocolate all over Han’s face: “You look like Jonah Hill reading the reviews for War Dogs.”
• Max once made opium out of poppy seed bagels and a La Croix.
• “I come out here to smoke a joint and I walk in on a dug deal? Shame!“
• “Caroline, there are no shortcuts to success, or creating a stamp-worthy Mallard. Life is a slow steady climb to just getting by-“
• Han’s new cacao dealer is a stay-at-home granddad just so they can really double down on the old person jokes.
• Between that guy’s daughter working for Nestle in Toronto and Han making sure the cacao isn’t cut with Nestle Quik there’s a suspicious amount of product placement for a truly terrible company.
• Sophie and Oleg have some pretty great lines about public sex in front of an Amish family, including: “I bet they wish they had a camera for that!”

Going back to Donald Duck’s first appearance in the early 30s, and Daffy Duck’s soon afterwards, waterfowl have long held a place in American comedy TV. That being said, it’s no surprise to see ducks make an appearance in 2 Broke Girls and shouldn’t be if they do again. This feature, which may be a weekly one, is dedicated to everyone’s favourite aquatic bird and titled-

What the Duck!?

Han spends a cacao-fueled night drawing a number of ducks for the U.S. Post Office’s Federal Duck Stamp Contest, and they are, in order:

• the American Wood Duck
• the Harlequin Duck
• the Spot-billed Duck
• a Mallard
• a Mallard
• a Mallard
• a Mallard

Assuming that he’s trying to complete his entry for the 2017 contest the problem is that there are only five eligible species accepted. Those are:

• Mallard
• Gadwall
• Cinnamon teal
• Blue-winged teal
• Harlequin duck

As you can see only two of the birds, the Mallard and the Harlequin Duck, make the list. My best assumption is that Han knew what ducks were and weren’t eligible, and chose to illustrate the Spot-billed and Wood ducks as a means of practicing his craft.

Also worth mentioning is that this year’s winner was actually a Canada Goose! In fact all three winners featured geese, with first and third place being Canada Geese and second being snagged by a Brant. You have to feel bad for the Northern Shoveler, Red-breasted Merganser, and Steller’s Eider, it looks like geese were the it-birds for 2016!

Last Wednesday I posted my review of Till We Meet Again, an award-winning American-Thai production. The film follows the experiences of a couple traveling through Thailand, paying particularly close attention to how separation and loneliness play a part in their relationship.

I was also able to email director Bank Tangjaitrong a few questions to get insight on how Till We Meet Again came to be. Following sometime after should be interviews with Johan Matton, who both starred in and wrote the film, as well as co-star Emrhys Coope.

From what I could tell this is actually your second time working with Johan Matton, with the first being your award-winning short film That Girl, That Time, which you wrote and directed. He was the star of both films, but actually penned the script for Till We Meet Again. Can you share anything about your experiences working with him, as well as having him on story duties this time around?

I always look forward to my collaborations with Johan as we’ve worked together so many different times in the past from a director-actor capacity. With Till We Meet Again, Johan was not only the actor but also the writer and producer, and to most directors that would be an immediate red flag since lines would be blurred and there wouldn’t be a sense of hierarchy with too many “voices” on set, but that was not the case here. Collaboration is essential for me and I try to bring in the best people for the job and learn from them and listen to them. Every idea was valid whether it came from an actor, producer, writer, gaffer, etc. But it had to all be funneled through the director and he or she would choose what works what doesn’t and I think Johan understood that. During the shooting process our relationship was always about director and actor first, that was the priority.

I read that you were born and raised in Bangkok, and wanted to know what it was like filming the majority of a feature film in your home country. In particular I noticed that while shots are certainly beautiful, they never feel exoticized. Unlike, say, the way Thailand was portrayed in The Hangover Part II where it’s very clearly depicted as a foreign place.

The way we shot Thailand was very important to our story and I wanted to make sure that we weren’t just including famous landmarks and treating the visuals like an ad for the tourism authority. We needed to find that balance between what’s expected of a film shot in Thailand but also a film about the human condition. It’s important that a scene that takes place in the confines of four walls can be equally as intriguing as a scene on a secluded tropical beach.

During the film one of the characters muses aloud about how Thai people should “be thankful [they’re] in their country spending money.” As someone who lived in Chiang Mai for four years I’m no stranger to the fact that the economy is highly dependent on the tourist industry. With that in mind do you think that Eric, Joanna, Daniel, and Miranda are an accurate representation of the men and women who tend to visit that corner of Southeast Asia?

Erik, Joanna, David, and Miranda are just one group of people that visit Southeast Asia. There are of course plenty of others who permanently move here and live here like locals. There are people that open successful business ventures, artists, musicians, restauranteurs, etc. The scene is incredibly diverse but we chose to focus on the backpacking community because we wanted our western audiences to also have a sense of familiarity to this journey and be able to relate to this adventure.

On a similar note, Till We Meet Again is about four White tourists and their experiences in Thailand. With such a tight focus on such a small cast it’s understandable that there wouldn’t be much room for many other characters. Did you ever feel the urge to include more Thais, in speaking roles, than what made it into the final cut of the film? [Thai actor Vithaya Pansringarm is listed in the cast on IMDb but does not appear in the film]

We left a few scenes where Erik interacts with locals on the cutting room floor actually because I felt that some of the scenes that were written didn’t really amount to anything other than a few lines of expository dialogue or scenes that didn’t seem fleshed out. Every scene needed to move the story forward and we trimmed and cut what didn’t. The scenes that were cut out wouldn’t have done justice to the Thai characters in them and instead of just inserting them briefly I preferred to wait to give them the attention they deserved.

Both That Girl, That Time and the following Night Porter were short films released before Till We Meet Again. What was it like going from half hour films to a feature length that’s over three times that length?

Going from a short film format to a feature is like going from a pop song to an orchestra. It’s a completely different ballgame even though the fundamentals are still the same. The most challenging part for me was how do we find the best way to properly pace the film and hold the audience’s attention. With a longer duration, there’re a lot more decisions that need to be made in terms of timing and when to introduce questions to the narrative and when to answer those questions. There are so many possibilities and as a director you just have to trust your instincts to find the right ones.

Consistency is so vital in long form narrative and each scene needed to maintain that so during the shooting process the outcome of each scene had to convey the mood and tone that we set out to achieve from Day 1. Also with short films, in terms of stories, you often deal with characters that are in a specific situation rather than an elaborate and complex narrative with detailed backstory. That Girl, That Time and Night Porter were short films about chance encounters in a workplace over the course of one day, whereas Till We Meet Again spans years of a relationship that take place on both ends of the planet.

Till We Meet Again is now available on VOD, and is available on iTunes as well as other online services.