The Office Review: Episode 9.12, "Customer Loyalty"

What exactly constitutes an "explosive mind-bender", anyway? No, really. I know it's 2013, and by this point in time any and all strong adjectives have been weakened to the point of triviality. So, when Greg Daniels says that an upcoming episode contains an "explosive mind-bender" about the nature of the documentary, what he obviously means is, "This is a good episode that does something a little bit unexpected." And thus, a surprising chunk of fans across the internet proceeded to seal their cruel fate of crushing disappointment, by taking this phrase literally, and expecting "Customer Loyalty" to actually bend their minds, with explosives.

"Steve Carell is coming back", a few of them convinced themselves, "because Michael Scott is secretly the one behind the whole documentary!" Never mind the fact that it's already been confirmed by countless sources that, no, Steve Carell isn't coming back, at all. "Or surely the documentarians have some sort of DARK CONNECTION to Jim's/Pam's DARK PAST and also they're RELATED." Because, clearly, the way for the writers to preserve everyone's fond memories of the past eight seasons - okay, nobody has fond memories of season eight, but you know what I mean - is to recast everything in a creepy, possibly rapisty light. Long story short, fans are weird, and when they're given even the slightest reason to start with the theorizing, it's enough to make a sane man want to put a bullet through his head.

So, you really have to feel bad for "Customer Loyalty". Its biggest flaw isn't even its own fault. Here it is, being a perfectly lovely episode of television, efficiently plodding away at its day job in construction, helping to build the foundation of a solid final story arc, and gently minding its own business at the end of the day after the whistle blows....and then the producers run their mouths, and the insane fans pour out of the woodwork, yelling and screaming and projectile vomiting about how "Customer Loyalty" was not nearly as explosive or mind-bending as the twist ending they had thought of themselves, involving evil twins and secret passages and, hey, remember this one character who was in, like, one scene in season two, yeah, HIM, maybe he's involved too.

Jesus Christ, people. Sometimes I'm so, so glad that I just don't think big.

The Office Review: Episode 9.11, "Suit Warehouse"

A couple years ago, I wrote a brief series of Family Guy reviews, where I mostly complained about the show being the show that it is in the first place. I reviewed them not out of any affection for the show - for I have very little - or any real desire to think about it - for I have very none. Rather, they're just the side effect of having to live with a gross urophile who would watch pretty much nothing else, and needing to talk through that. Since then, I've been thinking - why not give brief weekly episodic coverage to something I actually do like, or at least care about, even if it's maybe a little embarrassing?

And so, that is how we have arrived at this: a series of reviews chronicling the final efforts of The Office to convince people that it is, indeed, still a thing that exists even without Steve Carell. (A series of reviews I hope to be more timely from now on.) This ninth and final season thus far has, to be sure, not even come close to match anything from the heights of seasons 2-4, yet with Greg Daniels back at the helm there are just enough flashes of what the show had that, well, I find myself clinging to the hope that somehow it'll all come flooding back in time for the finale. There's actually character development again! Stories! Stuff like that! Simple things that fell by the wayside during Paul Lieberstein's years as showrunner, where a bunch of things happened in arbitrary sequence, and then unhappened as necessary, and so on. (Pretty much the only thing he could commit to was, well, the thing that Steve Carell leaving already forced him to!) So, of course, the question remains: Will anything that has happened so far this season actually matter, or will it all crap out in a most spectacular way?

(I suppose I should mention that Jesse reviews typically contain spoilers, so....spoiler alert, for anyone who cares.)

New (and Old) Year's Resolutions!

Oh, hey, it's 2013 already. Actually, it has been for several days now, but I'm slow. Also, I'm sick, which makes my slowness even slower. Curse you, common cold!!

Anyway, like several years before it, 2012 turned out to be more of an unmitigated disaster than I had hoped (and blogged) for. Granted, it wasn't as disastrous as, ahem, years far in the past I had to spend with a certain urophilic someone who shan't be named. I guess things are slowly getting better nonetheless, and I think that's an important realization. And I just know things are gonna keep getting even betterer, because it's a new year, with renewed potential for big change. We finally elected a black man president, after all!

So, what do I hope to achieve in 2013? I'm glad I asked! As usual, I've made a quick list of the four things I feel are the most important for me to focus on this year, on a personal level.

D52 Week 52 (FROM THE NEAR FUTURE): Wreck-It Ralph!

(WARNING: Spoilers for a newish film you very much may not have seen ahead!)

I'm not actively participating in this anymore, y'know, but I figure, if I just happen to watch one of the remaining movies, I might as well still say something, right? It's always nice to still have the option of subjecting others to my opinions.

As a writer (in theory) myself, I'm all too aware that virtually any story that anyone anywhere could think of has, with almost 100% certainty, already been told countless times in the past. Because, well, humans have been telling stories for thousands of years. It's kind of our thing. Other animals got all sorts of practical, yet fascinating and awesome, physical abilities; humans, instead, got the ability to make shit up, and against all reason, we've done pretty well for ourselves with that. Anyway, objectively speaking, nothing is original, ever. And yet, things still feel original to us. Why is that, when they clearly aren't? It's a simple question of conviction. Do the people behind a story honestly believe in it, or are they simply running down a checklist, making sure it has all the essential components that make it recognizable as a story? Despite the frequently gorgeous animation, the often catchy songs, and their admirably patriotic support of the all-American "non-A-listers whose voices you might nonetheless hopefully recognize" industry, the Disney Renaissance all too often felt like the latter, as I've liked pointing out a lot. And then DreamWorks achieved box office prowess, and Disney shifted to marking off essential film components on a wackier checklist for much of the 2000s. By comparison, Wreck-It Ralph feels like a revelation. It's got just as many storytelling cliches as the far less impressive Disney films that came before it, but it engages them with a renewed sense of self-confidence. They're not just half-heartedly checking them off; they're all here for a reason, and that alone makes this probably the best thing Disney has done in at least a decade and a half.

(Perhaps it helps that video games themselves are positively overflowing with obvious cliches. One could argue, then, that if anything they enhance the atmosphere here.)

Nothing Exciting Ever Happens.

Hi, blog! I'm sorry I've been neglectfully neglecting you. That's just awful of me, and I'm sorry. How can I ever make it up to you?

You can't. I'm really, really pissed off and I'm never, ever gonna forgive you. I think we should see other blogpeople.

I....I know, I was being selfish, but this isn't me, honest! I can do better, really I can! P-please....just give me one more chance....

*sigh* Okay, fine. Go ahead.

...what? Really? I just.....I didn't expect you to give in so easily.

Yeah, well, I don't have much self-esteem.

Cool. Okay, where to start?

D52 Week 40: The Emperor's New Groove!

There's no shortage of divisive films in the Disney canon - at least three of which involve offensive Asian stereotype cats - but The Emperor's New Groove has to be the most curiously divisive. It divides the realm of People Who Watch Disney Films into two categories, with almost stunningly clean-cut precision. Those who watch Disney films because they're just general animation fans tend to like it, because it's something different; but those who watch Disney films out of the belief that they're inherently superior to other animated films tend to look down on it, because it's SILLY, like something produced by one of those OTHER studios, harrumph. Granted, yes, this is a very silly movie, and even in its most theoretically tense moments, it chooses instead to lovingly embrace Teh Wacky. But still, people. Go harrumph yourselves.

Where does Jesse fall? Well, frankly, I'm in the former category. I've never thought there was anything admirably consistent about Disney, quality-wise - aside from the Pixar films they merely distribute, at least. Sometimes, their in-house productions are good. Sometimes they're not. Oftentimes they're forgettable. They're consistent where it gets tiresome to be consistent, like using the same fucking story in roughly 80% of their movies; and they're inconsistent everywhere else. What makes Disney so special? Damned if I know! I'm certainly not a big enough fan to enjoy watching a different Disney film EVERY SINGLE WEEK. (I'm certainly also not a big enough fan to think it's an even remotely romantic idea to spend a honeymoon at a Disney-themed amusement park. You're welcome, Tails.)

Indeed, when I expressed my interest in the D52 thingamajig, I thought it would mostly be a recurring sort of discussion topic at most, until it unwittingly morphed into THIS, which is not a consistently consistent source of fun. Anyway, at least I was less frustrated with this particular week. Because, you see, I fall into the former category.

D52 Week 39: Dinosaur!

Congratulations are in order for Gurgi and, um....other, even less memorable characters. The Black Cauldron is no longer my least-favourite D52 film!

We have a most puzzling paradox, really: Dinosaur would've been considerably less boring had it, well, allowed itself to be "boring"! It's absolutely absurd that they went through all the trouble of making these realistic, detailed dinosaur models, then completely ruining that by giving them goofy cartoon voices - to the degree that Della Reese's voice is goofy, anyhow. Um. Well, it's goofy relative to the visuals, anyway. If Della Reese really was a dinosaur, nobody would take her seriously, and Touched by an Anchisaurus would've been cancelled after just one season, instead of *consults Wikipedia* holy shit Touched by an Angel was on the air as recently as 2003? I like the stories about angels, unicorns, and elves, now I like those stories as much as anybody else, but....seriously, that's kind of sad, isn't it? When you consider all the amazing series out there whose lives were cut tragically short because networks don't get those young people and their internets, and then TOUCHED BY A FUCKING ANGEL gets NINE SEASONS??? Screw you, CBS, and your freakishly old audience!

Consisting of dinosaurs, you could say.


Which brings me back to the movie I'm ostensibly supposed to be writing about. *takes a deep breath*

D52 Week 38: Fantasia 2000!

Hard to believe it's only been eight months since I took a look at the original Fantasia (my first full-fledged D52 review, from an apparently happier time in my life!), and yet, here we are. Fastest fifty-nine years EVER! Of course, it wasn't the first time a sequel had been proposed: in the 80's, your friend and mine Wolfgang Reitherman proposed something called Musicana, "an ambitious concept mixing jazz, classical music, myths, modern art and more, following the old Fantasia format". And then this was ditched, because Recyclerman was physically unable to do anything potentially interesting by that point in that career. Why, the mere THOUGHT of doing that eventually killed him, so it was shelved. But then, in 1990, Roy Disney entered the fray, feeling the need to prove that he is every bit as much a Disney as his Uncle Waltie; and so, following in his footsteps, he produced a Fantasia film that ended up heralding the end of a period of critical acclaim and commercial successes for the studio. Just as Fantasia begets Dumbo and Melody Time, Fantasia 2000 begets Treasure Planet and Home on the Range. Thanks a lot, dudes.

Still, that shouldn't affect one's opinion on the quality of the Fantasiae themselves. After all, we should be fair, and impartial, right? So, come join me in being an impartial fairy, as I take a segment-by-segment look through Disney's first package-style film in quite some time! (It's easier to not be dreading a package film when I know that it won't be succeeded by, like, six more.)

D52 Week 37: Tarzan!

And thus, the period somewhat arbitrarily known as the Disney Renaissance comes to an end, forever. With this most momentous of occasions, one very important question comes to mind: What is it about nature-based settings that predominately feature animal characters that brought out this weird urge in Disney to hire famous pop singer-songwriters, to contribute awkward quasi-ethnic songs? There's something very 1990s about slow pop ballads set to tribal chanting and percussion, isn't there?

Yes, Tarzan is, in many ways, a good note for this era to go out on. It's really pretty! There are some genuinely interesting characters! The action scenes are nicely done! The biggest problem with the film can be summed up quite simply: Phil Collins. The again, the biggest problem with most things Phil Collins is involved with can be summed up in the same way. A Disney film doesn't have to be a musical to succeed, but if it's going to lean heavily on its soundtrack - and they often do - then those songs should be, y'know, organic and entertaining at best, unobtrusive at worst. Phil Collins manages none of these things. (Of the many petty things Trey Parker and Matt Stone have pettily been pissed off about over the years, losing to Phil Collins might be one of the most reasonably petty of them all.)

D52 Week 36: Mulan!

Y'know, the Disney Renaissance experience seems to be really hampered when you watch all of these movies back-to-back (as are a lot of cumulative Disney experiences, apparently). How wonderful it must've been to be moviegoers in the 90s - I wasn't allowed to see movies at that time, period, so I wasn't one - and have a new gorgeously drawn Disney film almost every year! Why, that's almost just long enough to forget enough about the previous one to feel like the new one's, well, new! Whereas, when you watch them all back-to-back, it's a little wearying. That barely concealed sadistic side of us all seizes on the repetition to come gradually more to the forefront, practically begging to see even ONE movie that doesn't end in unearned happy lovey-dovey romancings. For all the intriguing new directions they go in on a visual level, and all the surprisingly well-cast characters that pop up, it still always seems to boil down to the same rusty old story mechanisms, creaking away, until the end of time itself. Is this literally the only type of plot they could dream up at this time? Seriously, dudes??

And so, we come to Mulan, a film where our heroine mentions on precisely one occasion that she thinks her commander is hot, and he can't bring himself to murder her for being a woman. Clearly, They Should Totally Be Together, forever!!! ♥