The Canon #10: Gilmore Girls - "The Incredible Sinking Lorelais" (2004)

The Canon is a recurring feature that looks back on outstanding movies, TV episodes, albums, books, etc.; inducting them into an imaginary canon of all-time great things.  (Inspired by the podcast, Extra Hot Great.)

Everybody has bad days.  Sometimes when you're having a particularly rotten one, all you want to do is talk to the one person who can make you forget about it all and feel better.  For Rory Gilmore, that person is her mother Lorelai, and vice versa.  The first three seasons of Gilmore Girls were built on the foundation of their unbreakable bond, and the notion that no matter how bad things got, they always had each other to lean on.  (This idea was often used literally -- just think about how many episodes ended with the two of them embracing in some way.)  Consequently, season four of the show was a big risk, since Rory going off to Yale stood to alter the dynamic between her and Lorelai.  Although they were close enough in proximity to still see each other in person, they were far enough away that they couldn't always immediately be there for each other.  Instead of avoiding the shift in Rory and Lorelai's relationship, Amy Sherman-Palladino decided to lean into it and tackle the idea head on.

In "The Incredible Sinking Lorelais," the 13th episode of season four, Lorelai Gilmore is having a no good, very bad day.  It doesn't start off that way though: the episode begins with her, Sookie, and Michel marveling at the progress of the Dragonfly Inn, the new bed and breakfast that they're starting on their own.  It's almost time for the grand opening, and they're happy because the phones have just been hooked up, allowing them to log their first reservation.  But Lorelai gets the first bit of bad news shortly after that, as Tom, the head of the construction crew in charge of building the inn, informs her that the money is running short and his men won't be able to do the work much longer if they're not getting paid.  Once the seal breaks, a whole deluge of problems start to flow through.  She then gets into a rare fight with Sookie, who forgets to be there to sign off on an expensive sink needed for the Dragonfly's kitchen, causing it to be shipped back to Canada.  As if that weren't enough, she has to deal with the arrival of her grandmother in Hartford, who sees through Lorelai's problems and susses out that she's hemorrhaging funds.

Lorelai is a person who has made it her mission to be as independent as possible, starting from the day she had Rory and decided raise her without the help of her parents or Christopher.  So asking for a handout -- from Luke, she ultimately decides -- is a big deal for her.  Her business failing is one thing, but the embarrassment of having to seek another's help makes it worse.  But even worse than that is that she keeps trying to call Rory -- her rock, the one person who's always there to make her feel better -- but can't reach her.

Little does Lorelai know that Rory is having a no good, very bad day as well.  Aside from Lane staying at Yale due to a squabble with her mother and Paris being embroiled in a squabble of her own with Janet, Rory's going through a regular Yale day at first.  However, things take a turn when Paris finds out that Lane knows about the affair she's having with a professor, and gets angry with Rory for telling her.  When Paris confronts Rory about this, she also demands that Lane move out of their dorm, stating that their two other roommates agree that Lane has overstayed her welcome.  Initially, Rory doesn't believe it, but Paris's claims are confirmed when she later talks to Tana and Janet about it.  Much like with Lorelai, once the ball of bad news gets rolling, its momentum just keeps increasing.  The biggest blow comes when she visits her professor's office to get a paper back, and discovers that not only did she get a D on it, but that her professor thinks she should drop the class, out of concern that Rory is overworking herself.

Until now, Rory has always been the perfect student, not used to even the most minor academic setback.  Getting a D and having to drop a class is a major shortcoming for her, despite her professor's consolation that many freshmen struggle with the Yale curriculum.  The fact that her grandfather took the same course load and did just fine only makes her feel more inadequate.  And all she's got are voicemail messages from Lorelai; every time she tries to seek comfort from her mother, she can't get the real thing.

There's a beautiful symmetry to "The Incredible Sinking Lorelais."  Rory and Lorelai's storylines sit side by side, and the episode cuts from one Gilmore girl to the other, following both of their days as they decline at a similar rate.  The missed calls start off as a great joke, as we see Lorelai and Rory debate over an amusing story about an old horse through the exchange of voicemails.  But it quickly becomes clear that these failed connections are the structural elemental around which the episode is hung, and the way that they become more urgent the longer Rory and Lorelai go without hearing from one another is very effective.  Even their breakdowns mirror each other: they come back-to-back, involve both women crying in the arms of men, and have the words "I'm failing" buried somewhere in there.  It's no surprise that Lauren Graham knocks her scene out of the park, but Alexis Bledel's acting is particularly moving; it may be her best performance in the entire series.  At this point, Rory and Lorelai are close in proximity and on similar emotional wavelengths, yet they have no idea.  That's what makes the ending of the episode so brutal.  They're both listening to the last voicemail that the other left, and if one of them decided to call at that moment, they'd be able to reach the other.  But they're both so tired and upset that they give up and go to bed.

In a way, this is the episode that splits the series and informs everything that comes afterward.  It does that on a short-term level -- notice how Rory and Lorelai both cry in the arms of the men they hook up with in the season finale -- but for the long-term as well.  Although Rory and Lorelai's closeness is what defines their relationship, it was never going to remain as ironclad as it did during the Chilton years.  Rory's in the process of growing up and growing away from Lorelai, and the communication breakdown between them here foreshadows the fighting and drifting that they go through in seasons five and six.  "The Incredible Sinking Lorelais" is the best Gilmore Girls episode because it's a powerful story of two women unable to share their pain with the one they love the most, but it's also the most important in the way that it delineates their dynamic over the two separate eras of the show.


Gilmore Girls Week continues tomorrow at 8:00 AM EST with a piece on the many boyfriends of Rory Gilmore.  The series kicked off yesterday with an overview of the entire show.

The Canon #9: Taxi Driver (1976)

The Canon is a recurring feature where I look back on movies, tv episodes, albums, books, etc. that I love; inducting them into my own imaginary canon of all-time favorite things.  (Inspired by the podcast, Extra Hot Great)

The first time I watched Martin Scorsese's 70s classic, Taxi Driver, was when I was 16 or 17.  Once a year, usually during the summer, DirectTV would have a special deal where they gave customers a free weekend of all the premium cable channels like HBO, Showtime, and Cinemax.  I always used these opportunities to catch up on as many films as possible, taking full advantage of the variety that this deal provided.  On the particular night that I watched Taxi Driver, I had already watched about 3 or 4 movies that day, so I was very tired when it started airing at 11:30 PM.  So naturally, I watched most of the film in only a half conscious state, letting it wash over me instead of fully engaging with it.

Usually, being half asleep is a far from ideal state to be watching a movie, but under this circumstance, it was actually fitting, given the film's dreamy/nightmarish qualities.  From the rain-smeared windshield of Travis Bickle's cab, to the rapid succession of stoplight after stoplight, to the way that red lights echo far past their source to bleed all over the screen; Scorsese is able to capture that rarely depicted mixture of the vivid sensory feelings and foggy interpretations that come with a dreamlike haze.  Neon lights reflect the garbage filled streets.  Nights are a breeding ground for the seediest of crooks and deviants.  Days are claustrophobic with the bustle of the city.  They bleed together like a Mobius strip, on and on and on.  Bernard Herrmann's score repeats its motifs, nagging away, gnawing at your soul.  This is New York for Travis Bickle, a disorienting purgatory he's found himself in after serving in the Vietnam War.

The second time I watched Taxi Driver was just last week in my Cinema Survey class.  It's my last semester of college, and it's a surprisingly lonely time in my life.  I'm graduating soon without ever having left much of a mark on this place.  I don't have much of a social life, didn't make many friends here, and the few I did make in the early stages have long since moved on with their lives.  I'm a Computer Science major, but I'm basically done with the requirements for my degree, and the majority of the classes I'm taking this semester are to finish out my Cinema Studies minor.  So I don't even have the few people in my major with whom I've had many classes over the years around to provide a sense of familiarity.  It's even worse that this Cinema Survey class is a general education class, usually for freshman to take to get their cultural credit out of the way, so it's filled with large groups of friends who sit together while I'm all by my lonesome.  Sometimes I find myself wondering how I can be in such a densely populated place yet feel so isolated.

As much as this makes my life miserable, it's the perfect condition to watch Taxi Driver in, because it's perhaps the ultimate film about loneliness.  We're introduced to Travis Bickle through his plaintive narration, where he describes his job in not so chipper terms: "Each night when I return the cab to the garage, I have to clean the cum off the back seat.  Some nights, I clean off the blood."  New York may be teeming with life, but it's a barren wasteland to Travis, who finds companionship only in his increasingly deranged thoughts.  The most famous bit of narration sums his fatalistic views up perfectly:

Loneliness has followed me my whole life, everywhere.  In bars, in cars, sidewalks, stores, everywhere.  There's no escape.  I'm God's lonely man.

The one scene that really gets to me occurs in the middle of the film, just as Bickle's loneliness really starts to eat away at him.  He confides in Wizard (Peter Boyle) about how he's been "feeling down" -- the street outside bathed in red light, as most of the important scenes in the film are -- but he doesn't quite know how to articulate it.  The advice he gets from Wizard, to just take it easy and find a girl to sleep with, doesn't do much to assuage his feelings.  It's a scene that's interesting enough due to the striking visuals and De Niro's raw, vulnerable performance, but for anybody who's ever been in a bad place and has tried to reach out to someone, only to get a response that doesn't help much, it's a moment that takes on much more power.

Most of all, Taxi Driver captures just how angry being lonely can make you.  Travis has a distinct sense of justice, however misplaced, and his need to "do something" about the depravity around him leads him to buy guns and start an intense physical regimen.  The infamous "you talkin' to me?" scene is a perfect distillation of the rage he feels, directed at nobody and everybody all at once.  Part of the reason why the movie is so troubling is because it feels so real.  I've never been driven to violence, but lots of his insanity is understandable because it's not so far removed from the frustrations that any isolated person develops.  The combination of desperately longing for human connection while also being repulsed by the actual process of forming those bonds is certainly something I've felt before.

New York has been a frequent subject of study in Martin Scorsese's work, and Taxi Driver's representation, warped though it may be, might be the ultimate depiction.  It's almost an extension of Travis Bickle's mind -- just look at the way somebody is always getting roughed up at the edge of the frame, or how crooks and prostitutes fill the background of many scenes.  Travis is obviously a mentally disturbed person, possibly because of his time in Vietnam, but it's clear that the city is a catalyst for his psychotic break.  In a way, Taxi Driver makes you realize that New York -- and the whole world, really -- must be filled with these kinds of damaged, broken people we'll never know about.  Travis Bickle is only one of them.

Whedon Week/The Canon #8: Dollhouse - "Belonging" (2009)

The Canon is a recurring feature where I look back on movies, tv episodes, albums, books, etc. that I love; inducting them into my own imaginary canon of all-time favorite things.  (Inspired by the podcast, Extra Hot Great)

There's an argument to be made for the goodness within the protagonists of almost every Joss Whedon show.  It's easiest for Buffy, which was always a show with a clear sense of right and wrong, and when characters did become evil, they were justly punished for it.  Characters on Angel, on the other hand, often questioned whether they were crossing the line between good and evil, before eventually being assured that they were not.  The crew on Firefly were outlaws, sure, but the lovable kind that you're supposed to root for.  Plus, they're outlaws from a government that's clearly seen as corrupt.  But the characters that run the titular organization on Whedon's most recent show, Dollhouse, are unequivocally people whose morals have been compromised.  Part of the reason why the first season episode, "Man on the Street," is seen as such a turning point for the show is because it's the first one that truly examines how the Dollhouse takes people's lives and identities, all in order to service lonely and predatory clients.

But no episode is better at exploring the deplorable nature of the Dollhouse than "Belonging," the fourth episode of the show's second season.  It starts off with flashbacks of Sierra, before her time in the Dollhouse, when she was just an artist named Priya.  Enter Nolan, one of the Dollhouse's biggest clients, who notices her artwork and tries to court her, only to have his advances rebuffed.  The episode does a great job of exploring power dynamics -- how the powerful use their considerable advantage over the powerless -- when Nolan resorts to seedier methods to win Priya over.  Once he has her in his sights there's nothing she can do, as Nolan drugs Priya so that she appears to be psychotic enough to be committed to the Dollhouse, and he can have her at any time.  Priya's paintings frequently featured birds, and at one point a character suggests that the birds are a metaphor for her -- free but unsure of where she's going.  But the real metaphor is that she's now a caged bird: trapped and only brought out when her master wants her.

For as much as the episode is devoted to Priya/Sierra, it's equally a character piece for Topher.  One of the best decisions that the show made in season 2 was to introduce characters higher up on the chain of command at Rossum.  It gave the writers an opportunity for people like Adelle and Topher to have something to fight against, while never letting them off the hook.  If the show is all about exploring the moral blackness of what is essentially a high class prostitution ring, then season 2 is primarily interested in discovering where these characters draw the line, and clearly "Belonging" is the line for Topher.  Once Echo brings the unsettling artwork that Sierra has been doing to his attention, he begins to investigate, eventually discovering the true nature of Sierra's arrival at the Dollhouse.  It's a real turnaround for Topher, who had been previously depicted as an evil scientist who only thinks of the dolls as his experiments.  "I'm not the bad man," he says early in the episode, but when he's forced to face the collateral damage that his science has caused, he has to take a hard look at himself.  It's what causes him to unleash an altered Priya on Nolan, which results in Nolan's death.

There are many plots moving along at the periphery too, giving us more progress in the slowly building connective tissues in Echo's mind, Sierra and Victor's growing bond, and a glimpse into Victor's pre-Dollhouse past.  It's also thematically hefty to boot, examining and shattering the lies that these characters tell themselves to keep going.  For all of the talk that Adelle and Topher give about how what they're doing is helping people, they are still complicit in ruining Priya's life.  As we see in the scene where Victor has flashbacks to his time in the Middle East before becoming an Active, the Dollhouse only colors over the pain of the past; they don't erase it.  And in the process they've picked up some emotional scars too.  At the end of the day, Priya gets to forget the blood spilled, but Topher has to live with what they've been through every day.

Is this the darkest episode in the Whedonverse?  He's been known to get grim, but "Belonging" is pitch black.  I remember watching its original airing and being slack-jawed, amazed by the boldness of Sierra's tragic origins.  This the last episode before the intense serialization that follows in the 9 episodes that close out the series, and it sets them up well, hinting at the mistrust of authority that drives the explosive events to come.  At this point, the season is only just starting, but it never gets better than this episode, which reminds the audience and characters alike that the Dollhouse is a dirty business, and nobody's slate can ever truly be clean.

Whedon Week/The Canon #7: Firefly - "Out of Gas" (2002)

The Canon is a recurring feature where I look back on movies, tv episodes, albums, books, etc. that I love; inducting them into my own imaginary canon of all-time favorite things.  (Inspired by the podcast, Extra Hot Great)

For all of the supernatural and science-fiction plotting that appears in Joss Whedon shows, they are, at their core, primarily relationship-based.  The dynamic between the entire crew of the Serenity is one of my favorite things about Firefly, but there are smaller relationships that play out over the show's limited run too.  There's Zoe and Wash, the married couple who seem unlikely at first, but whose rhythm feels like the product of years together.  There's River and Simon, the brother and sister who've bonded over the tough circumstances they've both faced.  But one of the most interesting of these -- and one that may not readily come to mind -- is the one between Mal and the Serenity itself.  Malcolm Reynolds almost functions as a post-hero -- a man who is aware of the existence of heroes in stories and is attempting to be one himself.  He tries his hardest to have the steeliest resolve and the wittiest rejoinders, all with a certain level of self-awareness.  And if he is the post-hero, then the Serenity is his post-sidekick.  "Out of Gas" is a remarkable episode for many reasons, but especially because of how much it fleshes out Mal's relationship with his beloved ship.

The episode is written by Whedon cadet Tim Minear, who is the master of the flashback, a technique that is employed throughout the course of the hour.  "Out of Gas" opens near the end, with Mal collapsing on the floor of the ship, blood dripping from his abdomen, before cutting to an earlier point in the story.  Minear layers on the flashbacks, alternating between the present (Mal's bloody amble through the ship), the past (how he got into this situation), and the distant past (his first meeting with the rest of the crew), and keeps things from getting messy due to some slick editing.  There's a bit of symmetry between the cuts, as one scene in the present directly informs the jumping off point for a flashback.  The episode shows the events that led up to these people originally coming together, highlighting how inextricably linked they are.  Like all protagonists in a Joss Whedon show, they have a bit of a familial bond.

Of course, we soon learn that the cause of this sticky situation is an explosion that happens on the ship, brought about by a broken part that Kaylee told Mal needed fixing way back in the pilot.  Conditions are dire -- there is no spare part, Zoe was knocked unconscious by the explosion, and they only have a few hours of oxygen left.  The deterioration of the ship causes a breakdown within the crew, as Mal and Wash become embroiled in brief squabbling over what to do, and some of the others panic in the face of their impending deaths.  Usually, this would be an easy bit of symbolism, but the ties between these people and their ship are so tangled that it feels organic and logical for this crisis to have such fractious results.  The deepest investment in the state of the ship comes from Mal, who eventually sacrifices himself by staying on the ship and sending everybody else off on shuttles to try to find safety.

There certainly are episodes of Firefly that are funnier ("Our Mrs. Reynolds," my personal favorite), more exciting ("Ariel"), or brainier ("Objects in Space").  The thing about "Out of Gas," though is that it's the episode that's most essential to understanding the heart of the show.  The Serenity is the thing that unites all of these disparate people, and like the catalizer that initially causes the explosion on the ship, Mal is the component that keeps things running.  Yet, in the end, it's not Mal getting the new catalizer into place that saves the ship -- it's the rest of the crew coming back to him after Zoe regains consciousness.  As much as "Out of Gas" is about a man and his ship, it's also about those other people who make his time on that ship so much more enjoyable.

Whedon Week/The Canon #6: Angel - "Waiting in the Wings" (2002)

The Canon is a recurring feature where I look back on movies, tv episodes, albums, books, etc. that I love; inducting them into my own imaginary canon of all-time favorite things.  (Inspired by the podcast, Extra Hot Great)

Television writing is a very collaborative medium.  Although there are some writers; like Aaron Sorkin, David E. Kelley, and David Milch; who prefer to take up most of the scripting duties on their own, for the most part, the writing of episodes in a season is shared amongst a room of writers.  Creators and showrunners tend to only step in a few times per season, usually for the premiere, finale, and any other "big" episode in the middle of a season.  Before I started watching any Joss Whedon show, I was always aware of the reverence that people had for episodes that were written by him.  Look at any discussion of Buffy and you'll quickly see somebody say that all of the best episodes of that show were the ones written by Whedon.  Many of his episodes are the best of a given show, but even when they're not, the one mark of a Joss Whedon episode is that it "feels" different than the rest of the episodes.  In particular, they always feel very cinematic, an early indication of the huge directing career he'd eventually have.  While a number of them can be described as "gimmick episodes," a script credited to Joss always manages to be interesting and high-concept, while also packing in so much story and character, moving things forward substantially.  In that case, "Waiting in the Wings," the 13th episode of the 3rd season of Angel, is a textbook Joss Whedon episode.

One of the dominant themes in all of Joss Whedon's work is that he loves to explore the inner-workings that exist within a large group of people.  Where the Scooby Gang on Buffy functioned much like a makeshift family, the Angel Investigations crew on Angel had the rhythms of a tight-knit workplace.  As is the case with all workplaces, whenever you spend all that time together, relationships are bound to develop.  By the time "Waiting in the Wings" rolls around, the crew is right at the point of combustion with all of the relationships that have been bubbling under the surface.  There are so many layers of romantic entanglement going on in the middle of season 3 -- Angel likes Cordelia, Cordelia likes Angel, Gunn likes Fred, Wesley likes Fred, Fred likes Gunn, Cordelia thinks that Fred likes Wesley -- and Whedon understands the tension that comes from characters not saying what they truly feel.  Stories come to a climax in his shows when everything finally boils over and the truth reveals itself.  When Angel gets tickets to a ballet show and the group gets all dressed up to go together, passions run high, and it's pretty clear that the furtive nature of these affections will soon come to an end.

But in true Whedon fashion, things get much stranger from there.  Angel quickly realizes that the dancers that they're watching on stage are the same ones from the last time he saw the show...but the problem is that that was over a hundred years ago.  Seeing that something fishy is going on, he and Cordelia go to investigate, and they find themselves backstage in an endless hallway where there is no exit.  Adding to the mystery of this ballet company is a room where they begin to feel the feelings and thoughts of people from long ago.  The scene between Angel and Cordelia in this room is electrifying, serving as a bit of a redux of a scene at the end of the season 2 Buffy episode "I Only Have Eyes For You," but stretched out even longer.  What makes the villain plot in "Waiting in the Wings" so masterful is that this transference of emotions only serves to heighten what's already there.  Angel and Cordelia may be acting out the lust of former lovers, but it blends in with their own buried feelings and neither can hardly tell what's real.

As Angel and Cordelia find out from the room of transference, the leader of the ballet troupe loved one of the ballerinas, but his affections were unrequited, so he put a spell on everyone, forcing them to perform the same routine for eternity just so he can watch his love dance.  The intensity of love is a connective thread throughout every story in the episode -- once Fred, Wesley, and Gunn notice that Angel and Cordelia have been gone for a while, they decide to look into it, and their tensions only get intensified once they sneak backstage too.  The love triangle between the three of them is a classic bit of storytelling, and it plays out with all of the weight that comes with unrequited affections.  

But it all comes back to the ballet.  "Waiting in the Wings" is peppered with scenes of the trapped ballerina (Summer Glau, in a role that eventually got her cast on Firefly) performing onstage, adding to the graceful beauty of the episode.  And just like ballet, which communicates through opaque non-verbal movements, all of these characters are elegantly dancing around one another instead of confronting each other head on.  Love often renders the loved as nothing more than an object; they only exist as a performance on a stage for you to enjoy.  With such thinking, and a set-up as intricate as the Angel Investigation crew's, there could never be a solution where everyone wound up happy.  Although Fred and Gunn get to experience love as a two-person dance, Wesley is left the odd man out, and Angel's inaction leads him to losing Cordelia at the last second, as Groo returns from Pylea before the episode closes.

"Waiting in the Wings," doesn't receive the overwhelming praise that many other episodes written and directed by Joss Whedon do, and that could be caused by the fact that it feels like a bit of greatest hits collection of his more popular episodes.  On top of that, it doesn't have the repeat value of something like "Hush," the season 4 Buffy episode that's similar in terms of theme and tone, but is a bit more fast-paced.  However, it makes up for those shortcomings with its laser focus, resulting in a very insightful and moving exploration of the notion of desire.  It takes something as juvenile and melodramatic as secret crushes and love triangles and elevates it to the level of poetry, and the result is a funny, sexy, and thoughtful episode of television.

Whedon Week/The Canon #5: Buffy - "The Body" (2001)

The Canon is a recurring feature where I look back on movies, tv episodes, albums, books, etc. that I love; inducting them into my own imaginary canon of all-time favorite things.  (Inspired by the podcast, Extra Hot Great)

There's such a specificity in grief -- both in terms of the vivid emotions we feel and how it can vary with each individual case.  "The Body," the 16th episode of the 5th season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, is the greatest expression of grief that I've ever seen put to film, and certainly my favorite episode of television.  I've never lost anybody in my life, yet I still feel such a deep connection with the Scooby Gang dealing with the death of Buffy's mother.  Stylistically, the episode is unlike anything the show had done before, and to this day it still feels different from every other TV episode I've ever watched.  Buffy and the gang have just experienced something that has shaken their world, and everything has been rendered slightly off because of it.  Sights and sounds that usually have no significance become vivid and bold -- the numbers on a phone, the patterns on the rug make their previously unobtrusive existence known.  But what strikes me the most about "The Body" is how quiet the whole thing feels.  The scene in Dawn's art class (where the picture up top derives from), which is about the negative space between objects, is kind of a description of the whole episode -- exploring all of the emotions that occupy the gaps between grief.

Not only is the episode masterfully directed, the script is just as raw and devastating, featuring several moving passages about death and how we deal with it.  The impressive thing is that there are only about 5 scenes that fill the episode, and as they go on deliberately, endlessly; we hope that they'll just cut away, much like the characters don't want to come to terms with the reality of the situation.  Loss can feel like such a singular, all-consuming thing, and Whedon does a great job of reflecting that sensation.  Just look at the scene where Buffy tells Dawn about their mother's death, and how all of Dawn's classmates seem to be drawn like magnets toward them.  But it also shows how in actuality, the rest of the world just keeps going, so regardless of whether Xander is grieving or not, he still gets a ticket for being double parked.  There's this hyper-real tone to "The Body," and it's so obsessed with the idea of processes.  What do I do?  What do I wear?  How do I act?  Anything to avoid thinking about the real question: why does this happen?  Season 5 of Buffy is about God in many ways, and Joyce's passing is major to the themes of the season, as it's the only death in the entire show brought about by natural causes.

Whenever something really bad happens to me, I get stuck in a stage that's a weird mixture of denial and bargaining.  I imagine it not happening, thinking that maybe if I formulate all of these elaborate alternative scenarios, one will eventually become true.  The minute you snap back to reality and realize that that's never going to happen, you're weighed down by an even heavier sense of pain.  That's why the parts that get me the most in this episode are the two or three scenes where Buffy imagines that her mom is actually alive.  You can see her thinking "If I could just do this one thing differently..."  But in the end, like Dawn in the closing scene, she's reaching for someone she can never truly touch again.  Joyce Summers is there no longer.  All that's left is the body.

"I wish that Joyce didn't die.  Because she was nice.  And now we all hurt." --Anya

The Canon #4: The Killers - "Hot Fuss" (2004)

The Canon is a recurring feature where I look back on movies, tv episodes, albums, books, etc. that I love; inducting them into my own imaginary canon of all-time favorite things.  (Inspired by the podcast, Extra Hot Great)

Back in late 2004, I didn't really listen to any kind of rock music.  My tastes mostly consisted of rap, R&B, and top 40 pop.  At this time, The Killers were inescapable, with their first single, "Somebody Told Me," getting constant play on VH1, MTV, and various radio stations.  Their second single, "Mr. Brightside," was even bigger, solidifying the band as something that wasn't going away any time soon.  Here's the thing: I loved these songs.  I'd never felt this way about any kind of "rock" music, besides songs that appeared on various Madden soundtracks, and that was more a case of attrition than it was genuine enjoyment.

It was such a new feeling that I was almost scared to like them.  I remember wanting to ask for Hot Fuss as my Secret Santa gift in 7th grade, but I didn't want anybody to know that I was into The Killers.  I eventually bought the album myself (along with Jay-Z's The Black Album) and never looked back.  It's just a perfect set of catchy pop/rock songs.  The sounds of sirens that appear in the album opener, "Jenny Was a Friend of Mine," were almost like a clarion call for the effect that the band would have on me.  Everything just felt so new, and hearing that throaty bass on "Jenny..." was like a baby opening their eyes for the first time.  After that was the endlessly catchy "Mr. Brightside," and then "Smile Like You Mean It," a wonderfully wistful song with arena-ready sonics.  But it's "All These Things That I've Done" that's the weirdest, most triumphant song on the album.  A chugging rocker one second, a piano ballad the next, "All These Things..." is a perfect example of the band's knack for deceptive melodies.

Hot Fuss has gotten a reputation for being front-loaded, but that's simply just not true.  The first half has all the singles, sure, but it's the second half where the band gets interesting.  "On Top" showed that they clearly had chops, and it's probably still their most instrumentally accomplished song, with the tight groove between the bass and drums, and the guitar adding layers over the low-end.  "Change Your Mind," the jangler that follows, shows another shade to the band, a midtempo swoon that they wear well.  On the other hand, "Midnight Show" is so huge that it's at risk of careening out of control at any moment.  It's the emotional highlight of the album, yet instead of ending on that high note, they close out with the woozy "Everything Will Be Alright."  It's a fascinating, but ultimately successful choice; the perfect denouement to the album.  The only song that I had a problem with at first was "Believe Me Natalie," the 9th track.  Instrumentally it's all over the place and lyrically it's nonsense, but the dreamy heartache of it all kind of grows on you after hundreds of listens.

And that's the key to this album.  Emotionally, it just feels so high-stakes that it connects on a visceral level, even when a song or section shouldn't work.  It's essentially the perfect album for middle school.  Where I would later find Brandon Flowers' lyrics painfully bad, the melodrama that soaked "Jenny Was a Friend of Mine" and "Andy You're A Star" was really profound to me at 13.  The songs were so splashy that it was hard not to get wrapped up in them.   Flowers was never afraid to get big and theatrical either.  He dipped to the dugout and belted to the balconies without fear.  He even had a freaking gospel choir on two songs in a row and somehow we let him get away with it!

Many of the negative reviews of Hot Fuss were steeped in accusations of the band's apparent lack of originality.  It's true that their sound recalled the 80s in general, but they rarely sound like they're just blantantly ripping off bands.  "Change Your Mind" is a bit Morrissey-esque and "Midnight Show" has some Duran Duran to it, but that's not really different than the pastiche being done by other acclaimed bands of the time (Franz Ferdinand, The Strokes, Bloc Party).  Plus, they set themselves apart because of how good they were at laying on atmosphere, especially when it came to their synths.  Brandon Flowers' synthesizer work blew my mind back then, and I've still never heard better synths than the ones on Hot Fuss.

So what happened to The Killers?  There are two things that ultimately led to the downfall of the band: 1. They were so offended by some of the criticism of Hot Fuss that they wanted to do anything to get away from that sound.  2. Flowers' ambition got the best of him, and he lost the ability to reign in his ideas, just throwing everything out there and trying to make it work.  So the band got really into the Bruce Springsteen and made Sam's Town, and while I still think that's a pretty great album, it was clear to see that they had lost a bit of their magic.  In 2008 they released Day & Age,  and it was fine, but I just stopped caring about them.  Last year's Battle Born was poised to be the band's big comeback, and I was optimistic after hearing "Runaways," but the album as a whole is atrocious.  They're a band that I'll always check up on, given my residual love for Hot Fuss, but I think their heyday is long behind them.

Yet I can't emphasize enough how important Hot Fuss was to me.  I read every review, checked out every older band referenced in them, and sought out anything current that sounded like them.  They were essentially my gateway band into the world of alternative and indie rock; my six degrees of separation.  Every band I listen to today is in some way because of The Killers, and although it may not be hip or edgy to say this, Hot Fuss is still one of my top 5 albums of all time.  Whenever I revisit it, the wave of nostalgia hits, but when that has passed, I'm left with a marvelous album that still holds up.

The Canon #3: Melancholia (2011)

The Canon is a recurring feature where I look back on movies, tv episodes, albums, books, etc. that I love; inducting them into my own imaginary canon of all-time favorite things.  (Inspired by the now-defunct podcast, Extra Hot Great)

I suffer from depression.  Although I've never been officially diagnosed and perhaps even making that statement will anger those who have, I'm pretty certain of my self-evaluation.  Often I wonder about the origin point of my depression.  Did it always exist and it was just waiting to show itself?  Or was it triggered by something specific in my life?  When I was young and in elementary school, I was a very angry kid, often prone to lashing out on classmates at random moments.  By the time middle school rolled around, I had thankfully learned to suppress my anger, and the melancholy that it transformed into never seemed to rise above the usual strains of adolescence.  It wasn't until high school that I truly realized that something wasn't quite right with me.  Slowly the world was turning gray, my outlook on life was taking a turn for the worst, and I was plagued by this feeling of intense internal lethargy and aching.  Outwardly, I was such a happy person and my peers thought of me as funny and generally friendly.  The fact that I was constantly having suicidal thoughts wasn't something I was comfortable with sharing, nor did I think that it was something that would be believed.  Things only got worse once college started.  With the stress of being away from home and having an insanely difficult workload, I developed some serious anxiety issues.  I'd always been a person with hang-ups, but the anxiety increased tenfold, manifesting into actual nervous tics and bouts of self-abuse.  The anxiety and depression were a mixture that fueled itself, with the two of them constantly feeding off of each other.  It's something that I've dealt with for a few years now, and while I'm still able to be a (mostly) functional person, I sometimes fear that it's going to kill me one day.

With such a despondent disposition, one would think that I'd actively seek out art that'll cheer me up, but for some reason I've always gravitated towards depressing art or art about depression.  After all, my two favorite television shows of all time are The Sopranos and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, both of which tackle the subject of depression in a raw and visceral way.  One of my favorite films is the canon-worthy Virgin Suicides and hey, suicide is right there in the title.  It may seem a bit perplexing for me to want to torture myself by watching such gloomy content, but when you think about it, we all seek out art that we can relate to.  If my tastes seem overly depressing, it's only because I can relate to the feeling that these songs, TV shows, or films are trying to convey.

No film is a better example of this than Melancholia, Lars von Trier's operatic end-of-the-world film from 2011.  Inspired by von Trier's own history with depression, the central story is about two sisters, Justine (Kirsten Dunst) and Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), who each get a half of the film devoted to them.  Justine is newly married and Claire plans the wedding reception, which is constantly marred by myriad complications.  All of this is set to the backdrop of Melancholia, a rogue planet that is scheduled to fly towards, but not hit Earth.  During the reception, which seems to endlessly stretch into the dead hours of the night, Melancholia is nothing more than a glint in the sky, too distant to even mull over.  But in the days -- or weeks; it's hard to truly get a gauge of the time or place in which the movie exists -- that pass, the planet comes closer and becomes an ever-present concern.

The first half of the film, titled "Justine," focuses on the titular character in post-marital bliss, attending her reception. There's some wonderful bits of black comedy in this half, and it's easy to see how the dysfunctional family tensions and the use of probing handheld cameras could be channeled into a more lighthearted film.  Trier has a different intent though, and for every bit of amusing wedding chaos, there's double the despair from Justine, who can't help but to retreat to her room on a night devoted to her.  Some may find this first half to be a bit slow and tedious, wondering when the story will get to the planet-smashing action that the film's grandiose intro promises, but it's an important and powerful look inside of Justine's head.  Melancholia is a masterful portrait of the life of a depressed person.  With Trier's honest writing and Dunst's unflinching performance, Justine's malaise is palpable and moving.  Audiences are trained to want character actions to be rooted in a firm cause, but this first half expertly shows how often a depressed person's mood can change on a dime for no reason at all.  One second, Justine is enjoying herself just fine and the next second she can't bring herself to be around anybody else.  As much as the film is about what it's like to be depressed, it's just as much about how difficult it is to deal with somebody who is mentally ill.  Justine's erratic behavior causes problems for everybody else who has spent money on this reception and can't understand why she would ruin it.

This half devoted to Justine is so gripping and relateable that it's hard to imagine feeling as engaged with the film once the "Claire" title card pops up on the screen, announcing the second part of Melancholia.  Surprisingly, it's this half that elevates the film to masterpiece territory.  After the fallout of the disastrous wedding reception, Justine is crippled by her depression and recedes to the background, and the story begins to focus on Claire, whose worries about the approach of Melancholia become the impetus for drama.  After a relatively glacial first half, the "Claire" portion continually ratchets up the tension and never lets up for an hour straight.  Even though her husband (played by Kiefer Sutherland) is sure that Melancholia will just pass by the Earth as the scientists say it will, Claire isn't convinced.  All of this is filled with such an intense sense of dread -- a dread that reaches out of the screen and pulls you down with it.  On the night where the rogue planet skirts past Earth, Claire, filled with fear and wonder says "I can't breathe" and it's hard not to feel the same way.  A makeshift device used to measure how close Melancholia is to Earth is introduced late into the film, and it's a brilliant way to present visual information and add tension.  When it's first used, it helps to soothe Claire, convincing her that she's safe and that the rogue planet is moving away. But when she uses it again on a whim the next morning, Melancholia has now become larger and closer, ensuring the planet's destruction.  Kirsten Dunst was praised for her role as Justine (winning Best Actress at Cannes) and she's terrific, but this film is truly The Charlotte Gainsbourg Show.  When the end of 2019 rolls around, I'll still probably consider her performance as Claire to be the best of the decade.  Her worrying about the fate of the Earth and her subsequent panicking once Melancholia is barreling toward her is absolutely heartbreaking.

Because of Melancholia's neat bifurcation, it'd be easy to try to compare the two halves.  Yet they complement each other so well that they form one logical piece.  All of the catharsis of the Claire half wouldn't land nearly as well without the Justine half.  Much like these two sisters, the halves exist as opposites.  In the first half, which is more about depression, we are shown life through the eyes of somebody who doesn't want to live.  Once it switches to the second half, which is all about anxiety, we are shown death through the eyes of somebody who doesn't want to die.  As a whole, the film is a stealthily poignant story about the love between two sisters.  At first, Justine is in a position of weakness, where Claire tries to help her and pull her out of her pit of despair.  Later, Claire is the one who needs help, and although Justine is initially cold about the world ending, she's there to comfort her sister in humanity's final moments.

It's impossible to talk about Melancholia without talking about its ending. Ambiguous endings really infuriate me sometimes.  I'm completely fine with an ambiguous ending that is in tune with the style of the rest of the film and leaves the viewer with many thematic questions to ask themselves.  A perfect example of this is Meek's Cutoff, my other favorite film of 2011.  However, I often feel like writers resort to abrupt or ambiguous endings because it seems like they couldn't figure out a way to organically conclude the story (to use another 2011 example: Martha Marcy May Marlene).  One of the reasons why I love Melancholia so much is that Lars von Trier basically gives a giant "F You" to the idea of ambiguous endings.  There's nothing ambiguous about the ending of this one.  The second half of the film's central question is whether Melancholia is going to collide with our planet or is just going to harmlessly pass by.  The film could've easily ended without us finding out whether it does or doesn't hit Earth and let the dread of wondering be enough.  But no, von Trier won't settle for that.  Instead, he shows Melancholia speeding towards Earth and destroying it completely.  Everything about that final scene is perfect.  The score cranks up to a deafening level and then, after focusing on Charlotte Gainsbourg's look of pure terror, finally cuts to a wide shot of the planet hitting the Earth and eviscerating our protagonists in the process.  Silence and a black screen follow, solidifying it as the one of the greatest movie endings of all time.

Melancholia is an obvious metaphor -- after all, it's a gigantic blue planet named "Melancholia" in a movie that's about depression.  Somehow, the film never makes the metaphor as obvious as you'd assume it to be.  Instead of directly commenting on Justine's depression, the planet is used as this looming threat; a stand-in for a wide range of emotions.  This level of mystery is something that exists throughout the course of the film, ramping up particularly near the end.  Perhaps there's no meaning to the wisps coming out of Dunst's fingers in the picture above, the rain of hail, the 19th hole on an 18-hole golf course, or the bridge that a horse refuses to cross, but it adds to the eerie helplessness felt from this cosmic event.  As cataclysmic as the film is, it's filled with breathtaking beauty.  Each shot is perfectly framed and lit, and there are some shots from this film that are indelibly etched into my mind.  There's also a fundamental understanding of sound that Melancholia has.  The score is dramatic and loud when it wants to be, but the best moments come from when it drops away and the only sounds are the empty tones of the dead night air.

It may be a credibility-losing thing to say, but Melancholia is my favorite film of all time.  Although it's less than two years old and most people's favorites are things that are consensus "classics," people would've thought you were crazy too if you said The Godfather was your favorite film of all time in 1974.  I'm not saying that Melancholia will ever be regarded in the same way The Godfather is, but time is less important than people seem to think.  I've lived a short life, but I don't think I'll ever see a film that makes me feel the way that this did.  It shook me mentally (I couldn't sleep all night after watching it), physically (I broke out into a sweat), and emotionally (the ending left me bawling).  Ever since, I'd been frightened to revisit it, not wanting to feel less about the film than I did that first time.  Luckily, I still loved it when I rewatched it last night.  It may not be something that I endlessly return to, but Melancholia affected me in ways that nothing else ever has.

The Canon #2: Mad Men - "The Suitcase" (2010)

My favorite image in the history of ever

The Canon is a recurring feature where I look back on movies, tv episodes, albums, books, etc. that I love; inducting them into my own imaginary canon of all-time favorite things.  (Inspired by the now-defunct podcast, Extra Hot Great)

There's a frequent occurrence in my life that I have dubbed "Night Madness."  It's a term I use to describe what often happens to me at night when I'm trying to go to sleep.  My brain decides that since it doesn't have to devote its energy to walking and talking, instead of getting some sleep, it's going to reallocate that energy to fretting over everything.  And I mean everything.  Past mistakes and embarrassments, current predicaments, and future prospects all meld together to form a miasma of stress that clouds my brain and prevents it from any hopes of peace.  Eventually, all of this stressing just spins out of control, to the point where I feel like I'm going to scratch off my skin or that my brain will pop out of my skull at any moment.

Mad Men's classic episode, "The Suitcase," is Night Madness in televisual form.  Plopped right in the middle of the show's towering 4th season -- the 7th episode of each season is usually known to be the most experimental -- "The Suitcase" serves as both a detour from the action of the season and also a ruminative inspection of everything that has happened up to this moment.  It's a big night for America, as the upcoming fight between Cassius Clay and Sonny Liston is poised to be the event of the year.  But it's also an important night for Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, with the deadline for their Samsonite ad looming.  The episode could be classified as a bottle episode, choosing to mainly focus on Don and Peggy as they toil away on a pitch in the dead hours of the night.  Incidentally, there's also a confluence of circumstances in both Don and Peggy's lives too that add to the stakes of the night.  Don receives an urgent message from California that's likely to be about Anna's deteriorating health and he's dreading making the call.  It's also Peggy's birthday and she's got big dinner plans with her fiancee.

One of the joys of long-running serialized television, and why I vastly prefer television to movies, is that it allows for a grand construction of character arcs and relationships.  There's this slow accumulation of information that you gain about everyone and if you have a show as good as Mad Men, which constantly calls back events from the past, it can be extremely satisfying to see small details pay off in big ways.  Part of the reason why "The Suitcase" is one of my favorite television episodes of all time (really, I'd only put Buffy's "The Body" and maybe an episode or two of The Sopranos above it) is because it's all about the payoff.  Everything we see is a result of things that have happened to these characters over the past three and a half seasons.  The main tension running through the episode is one that's been present throughout the whole season: Don and Peggy's growing distance.  Despite the fact that just at the end of the third season, Don was begging Peggy to come back and work for him, he's been unnecessarily cruel to her in the 6 episodes that come before this one.  Don's lack of appreciation, coupled with Peggy feeling like he stole her idea for what eventually became the award-winning Glocoat commercial and Duck Phillips courting her to work with him, are all ingredients contributing to the stew that is Don and Peggy's estrangement.

From there, "The Suitcase" lets the tension explode.  Don and Peggy argue, and the amazing performances by Jon Hamm and Elisabeth Moss -- neither of which won an Emmy that year -- really sell the raw emotions of these two fighting about everything that's been bothering them over the last few months (and years).  There's a weird flow of moods to these arguments too -- one second they're bickering and the next second they cool off a bit, only to get into a bigger fight.  Through these scenes, we get to see just how much they're tied to each other.  Both are guarded individuals, consumed by their work, and drawn together because of their mutual understanding of one another and the things they know about each other that nobody else does.  The episode makes a point of constantly giving Peggy the chance to choose between Don and something else and she always chooses Don.  When she has multiple opportunities to just leave Don to be a grouch all by his lonesome, she decides to stay with the man who gave her a career instead of being with her family.  Later, when Duck shows up and scuffles with Don, she could easily leave with Duck, who seems to appreciate her talent more, but she still sides with her old mentor.

The Don and Peggy relationship is my favorite thing about Mad Men.  Sure, I love its beautifully glacial pace and its examination of how people react to the societal changes barreling towards them, but the show would lose a significant amount of its heart without Don and Peggy on the fringe, occasionally having a moment of solidarity.  Much like Peggy does, all I want to see is Don approve of her and voice his respect for her.  This constant push and pull between Don's callousness and his need for Peggy doesn't seem like it would be fertile territory for dramatic tension, but it works immensely.  At the same time, if the balance veers too far in any given direction, then the whole foundation falls apart.  I always joke that I will stop watching the show if Don and Peggy ever kiss, and even though I'd never quit my favorite show on television, I'd probably never forgive it either.  Luckily, Matt Weiner has such a perfect command of the boundaries of their relationship that I trust him not to.  Platonic friendships are hard to come by on television, but Weiner has crafted one of the greatest of all time, and some of the best moments of "The Suitcase" come when Don and Peggy directly assess the state of their relationship.

Once all the fighting falls away, the episode slows down and takes on a more languid feel.  The two begin to open up to one another about their parents' deaths, relationship troubles, Don's experience in the war, Peggy giving up her baby at the end of season 1, etc.  There's a real somberness to these scenes and the script and performances perfectly capture the rhythm of a conversation between two individuals wearily commiserating in the dwindling hours of the night.  On a show that's built around opaque interactions, it's refreshing to see the rare moment of clarity that Don and Peggy share with each other.  The night is set to the backdrop of Cassius Clay and Sonny Liston, two titans battling until only one is standing, so how beautiful is it that Don and Peggy entered the night at odds and came away with a new appreciation of one another?

Night Madness is full of sorrow and regret and rage.  It's terrifying and it hurts.  What's worse is that you go through it all alone.  "The Suitcase" finds beauty in the idea that you don't have to go through it by yourself.  The sadness will still come, but it's so much less painful to suffer through when you have somebody to share it with.  Don may know that Anna, the woman who knew him the most, is probably dead, but he sees her ghost while laying in the lap of Peggy, the only other woman who understands him.  "Open or closed?," Peggy asks Don the next morning in regards to his office door, when the haze of the night has ended and the reality of daylight has set in.  They may never speak of the night before ever again, much like they never previously spoke about the things they told each other in the moment, but they'll always have that shared experience.  "Open," Don says.

The Canon #1: (500) Days of Summer (2009)

The Canon is a recurring feature where I look back on movies, tv episodes, albums, books, etc. that I love; inducting them into my own imaginary canon of all-time favorite things.  (Inspired by the now-defunct podcast, Extra Hot Great)

It's funny how time works, constantly re-informing the way we think about life as it progresses.  You may feel one way about something and then look at it in a completely different way just a year later.  When I first saw (500) Days of Summer in 2009, I absolutely loved it and eventually it ended up being my second or third favorite film of that year.  Since then, I hadn't rewatched it, and a part of me worried that I wouldn't like it as much as I did when I first saw it.  I worried that what 17 year old me found to be genuine emotion and insight lying under a thin layer of twee, might seem like a bit of inspiration completely obscured by a thicket of cloying cuteness to 21 year old me.

Fortunately, four years haven't done much to change my views on this wonderful little film that's all about the flaws in our perception when it comes to relationships.  Marc Webb's playful directorial touch in lockstep with Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber's charming script effortlessly convey the complexities of male-female interactions.  No matter how old you are or what your circumstances may be, there is probably something that you will be able to relate to in (500) Days of Summer.  Some of the scenes are so well-observed that they feel achingly real, even if they don't fall in line with your own history.  Falling in love is full of generalities, yet we all feel them with such an intense specificity, and the film's greatest strength is its ability to capture that very abstract idea.

The film's narrative is built on this nifty little trick, where the scenes are a nonlinear collection of days that chronicle the relationship between Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel.  But this concept is not just a gimmick; it's used to tell the story in a way that's even more powerful than following it from start to finish.  Scenes that happen later in the relationship sometimes play right before a scene that happens early in the relationship and vice versa.  Something as small as Levitt making a joke and Deschanel not responding will be informed by the proceeding scene, where they make the same joke and are blissfully content earlier in the relationship.  With this constant temporal shifting and pastiche of film styles, the film feels less like a journey through the rise and fall of the love between two people and more like whirling fragments of exuberance and heartbreak.

Initially, it seems as if (500) Days of Summer portrays the relationship as an event of mythic proportions.  Narration is used to give this central romance a storybook feel, as if every moment of existence has been leading up to their pairing.  Upon further examination, though, the film is actually a takedown of the concept of all-consuming love.  As much as we would like to think so, the "dream girl" just doesn't exist, and treating women as objects is ultimately destructive.  That's why the famous Expectation vs. Reality scene is so fantastic -- it shatters all of the fantasies that Levitt has and reveals just how much of what we've seen has been his internal perception.  The film stumbles a bit with the little sister character (played by Chloe Moretz) and its overly-neat ending, which both try to underline the film's themes and overdo it.  But when it's just letting the story organically show how much the initial rush of infatuation may blind us to what's really going on, it's about as thoughtful and emotionally affecting as anything I've ever seen.