Welcome to I’m So Glad My Suffering Amuses You, the blog
that is unbreakable! I’m Dave-El and I’m alive, dammit! It’s a miracle!
May I blog about TV? I would ever so much enjoy that, I
ever would so.
I’m still working to keep my resolution for 2018 to watch
MORE television.
Wednesday night, I caught up on season 1 of Unbreakable Kimmy
Schmidt, the wacky Netflix comedy about a woman who was kidnapped by a doomsday
cult and forced to live underground for 15 years and that woman’s determination
to make a life for herself in New York City, armed only with boundless
determination and an 8th grade education.
I really like this show. Hell, I even like the theme song! Here are the lyrics.
Unbreakable
They alive, damn it
It's a miracle
Unbreakable
They alive, damn it
But females are strong as hell
Unbreakable
They alive, damn it
It's a miracle
Unbreakable
They alive, damn it
That's gonna be, uh... you know, a... fascinating transition.
Damn it!
Ellie Kemper is a pure joy (A PURE JOY, DAMN IT!) to watch as Kimmy navigates a life that is weird by any standard, let alone for a young woman who spent her formative years in a bunker. Although Kimmy is 30 years old, I love the almost childlike way she scrunches up her nose when something puzzles her and the way her eyes light up when she figures something out. She was taken into the bunker when she was still pretty much a child so it makes sense that her sensibilities and perspective are locked into that when she comes out of the bunker.
Titus Burgess is a blast as Kimmy’s roommate, Titus
Andremedon. Titus leans hard into every trope and cliché of a metropolitan black
gay male but what redeems his character is he knows he’s leaning hard into every
trope and cliché of a metropolitan black gay male and he doesn’t care.
I’m less enamored with the show when it moves away from
Kimmy. I can tolerate the self-absorbed snooty socialite Jacqueline Voorhees as
a foil for Kimmy but it’s hard to care when Kimmy isn’t on screen with
her. Jacqueline is played by Jane
Krakowski. If you’ve seen Jane as Jenna Maroney on 30 Rock, then that’s Jacqueline
but with fewer redeeming qualities. Season 1 does end with Jacqueline divorced
and seeking to explore her identity by returning home to her family and her
Lakota Indian roots.
Really. Since Kimmy’s heading back to NYC, I’m not sure
what we’ll get from watching Jacqueline head back to North and/or South Dakota.
The last 2 episodes of the season have Kimmy leaving New York
to reluctantly return to Durnsville, Indiana, her hometown where the Reverend
who held Kimmy and other women captive in the bunker is on trial. Despite being
overwhelmingly and obviously guilty of the crimes of which he has been accused,
the Reverend, serving as his own attorney, is on the verge of getting away with
his crimes. It doesn’t help that Durnsville is populated with complete idiots.
And the prosecuting attorneys seem clueless on the most basic practices of
law. And the prosecutors also look Marcia Clark and Chris Darden, the same
attorneys who managed to lose the case against obviously guilty double murderer
O. J. Simpson.
And the Marcia Clark look alike is played by Tina Fey
which just about breaks my heart. How can the future step mother of my daughter
play someone so stupid?
Thankfully, Kimmy saves the day with a video tape
audition the Reverend made to appear on NBC’s The Apprentice starring Donald Tr—
NO! Today is TV blog day! I will NOT permit that man’s
name to sully this blog post!
TV is my friend.
It makes things…. simple somehow.
MORE TV STUFF!
MORE TV STUFF!
Finished up season 2 of GLOW which culminates finding the
girls both failing and succeeding at the same time. The Gorgeous Ladies of
Wrestling are building up a loyal following. People know who the women of GLOW
are. They’re getting fan letters and marriage proposals. But the TV station
airing their show in Los Angeles has put the show in a shit time slot of 2:00
AM.
Why the hell did that happen?
It’s a move of petty revenge enacted by the station
manager after Ruth Wilder extricated herself from his private bungalow where
he was putting the moves on Ruth for a private performance. (In other words,
sex.) Ruth thinks she doesn’t need to put up with this shit so she leaves. The
station manager thinks he doesn’t need to put up with this shit and moves GLOW
to Saturdays at 2:00 AM.
Unfortunately contract shenanigans won't let GLOW be sold
to another TV station or network. Well, that sucks and the women of GLOW are
bummed. They’ve become a close knit group, supportive of each other. And dammit
if they haven’t come to have some pride in this cockamamie women’s wrestling
show. They’re loathe to give this up.
Our avantgarde schlockmeister director Sam has made a new
friend, a guy who owns a strip club who comes to the taping of GLOW’s season
finale. Turns out this strip club dude also has a sweet set up in Las Vegas.
Hey, the contract that’s keeping GLOW from jumping to another TV outlet does
not keep them from doing live shows. So they gather up their stuff, board a bus
and the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling are off for Vegas, baby!
If you come to GLOW for the purient interest of watching
hot chicks in tight shiny lyrca outfits wrestling each other, you will be
surprised to find a genuinely sweet and funny show. The absurdity of watching
this ramshackle shoe string production actually become something real is
interesting enough but the stories of the women caught up in making this shit
into something worth putting on TV are compelling.
This really comes home in the 7th episode
of season 2 in the aftermath of Ruth Wilder of getting her foot broken in the
ring during a match. That episode is exclusively set in the hospital as the
women, in their own odd and idiosyncratic ways, rally around their fallen
fellow fighter. It’s an emotional story that demonstrates how much this group
of women have come to mean to each other. Or how much Sam, grumpy misanthrope that
he is, has come to care about them. Particularly Ruth whose artistic
aspirations have annoyed the hell out of him since the first episode of season
1.
Episode 8 of season 2 is just balls to the wall weird. It’s
an actual episode of GLOW that goes out on the airwaves of the greater Los
Angeles area, complete with wrestling matches, music videos, comedy sketches,
commercials, promos and more.
Also on Netflix….
My daughter Randie sucked me into this one: Queer Eye.
This show is a revival of the old Queer Eye for the Straight Guy series that
used to run on the Bravo cable channel. The premise then was it takes gay men
teach a straight man how to be a better straight man. Straight men are so
clueless without fashion tips from gay men.
The new Queer Eye loses “the Straight Guy” from the title
which introduces some flexibility into the premise. Yes, most of the men targetted for help are
hapless straight guys with no clue how to run their lives. But in the episodes
I watched with Randie, there were a couple of variations to the theme.
One was an episode where the Queer Eye team (the Fab
Five) is called in to help an African American woman in a small town. She asks
that the Fab 5 help her with a special project, the completion of a community
center at her church.
Which brings us some conflict. All of the Fab 5 have had
to navigate at least some of the treacherous waters of certain church
ideologies versus their status as gay men. One in particular has had some
particularly disturbing encounters with the church over his life and refuses to
enter the church’s sanctuary.
The woman they are there to help has had to make her own
journey to bridge the gap between the church she loves and the son she also
loves who came out as gay. One of the Fab Five is a black man who reaches out
to this young man as a mentor.
At the end of the episode, the world is still not a
perfect place but this tiny corner of it, thanks to the efforts and kindness of
these 5 gay men, this part of the world is certainly a better place.
The finale of Season 2 finds the Fab Five called in to help
sort out the life of a young man named Skyler. The episode opens in an
operating room. The patient is Skyler undergoing top surgery, the process of
breast removal. Skyler is trans and the goal of this episode is not just to
clean up his messy apartment and update his wardrobe. The Fab Five are there to
help Skyler fully become the man he always felt he was.
The thing about the LGBT community is that it’s not just
some homogenous blob of “not straight” people. Each part of that community has
their own struggles that vary even further with each individual person. It is
not a given that a gay man is going to automatically understand what life is like for a trans person. And that’s what we find with the Fab Five who have their own
knowledge gaps about what life is truly like for a transgender man like Skyler. But
their compassion and joy drives them to learn and help Skyler to fully
actualize being the man he always felt he was and now in a real physical sense,
completely is.
It is a heartwarming episode but admittedly, a hard one
for me to watch. Of all the permutations of differing sexual orientations and
genders, being transgender is a concept my mind sometimes struggles to wrap
itself around. I think it owes less to bigotry and more to just lack of
experience with transgender persons. But I’m trying to be better. Randie has friends who are transgender
and is very devoted to being a supporter and defender of this community. She’s
been very patient with me even as I still mangle my pronoun usage.
Over all, Queer Eye is a fun show. The Fab Five are
distinct personalities that mesh well with each other and the people they are
tasked to help. Although enjoyable, I can find the show a bit depressing. I
look around at my messy life and it makes me sad to know that five awesome gay
guys are not coming to my rescue.
Well, that just leaves me with more time to watch
TV.
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