From: kimi@fang.att.com (Kimiye Tipton)
Subject: Re: January 4th Episode
Organization: AT&T Tax Systems Development, Maitland FL
Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1993 21:22:02 GMT

In article <C0E26q.Hu0@boi.hp.com> dianem@boi.hp.com (Diane Mathews) writes:
>In article <rizzoe.616.726244287@FASECON.ECON.NYU.EDU> rizzoe@FASECON.ECON.NYU.EDU (Emily Rizzo) writes:
>>First, I understand now why there are no children in Cecily -- the writers
>>simply can't deal with them.  Brad was a paradoy of of a sitcom stereotype
>>of an obnoxious kid; there was nothing remotely real about him.  Twelve is 
>>a difficult age, somewhere between child and adult with a good chunk of 
>>each mixed in, but Brad came across as a smart-talking midget.  
>
>AGREED!  I hope they don't try again.  The baby episode last season was good,
>but that was because it dealt w/ people's reaction to the kid.

Except, like Heather said, the kid was a type, a symbol of the horny 
adolescent in all men, not a real child.  He was there to show the
inordinate power women have over men, as background for why they
later feel the need to exert power over women and things.  I might
have figured this out sooner if the kid hadn't been so funny-looking
(okay, cheap shot, but he _was_).  That's why Holling was so accepting
of him-- he could relate, past all those decades.  Also note that
Shelley got rid of him by being a mother figure rather than a sex
object, in spite of the fact that she accepted his compliments.

I think this portrayal depended entirely on the actor, and might
have been successful with a Fred Savage or someone with some innate
attractiveness to soften the obnoxiousness.  But maybe we were
supposed to hate him...  And therefore he couldn't be a "real" kid...

>Quite often i don't realize, any more than the men involved do, how much we
>are conforming to society's roles and their consequences.  Once realized, i
>usually become quite angry.  I wish i could get away w/ saying things that
>Maggie said last night, but in real life men discard reactions like hers as
>PMS and never think about the issue any more.  It was realistic, to me, and for
>once i saw a woman be successful in her frustration.  Thoroughly delightful.

I don't care if the outburst does coincide with PMS-- I've found that
PMS doesn't cause me to _lie_ about what's bothering me-- it just
gives me the nerve to finally say something.  That's why Maggie's
accusation of Joel thinking she had a medical problem really struck
home with me-- it made me think, yeah, if we all had just a little
less patience, we wouldn't have to blow up so hard when the hair
finally arrives on the camel's back.  

But the humor has to come out of Maggie's over-reaction, not the
point she's making, and so the writers will have her over-react.
She has to cloud the issue and bring in lots of baggage, or the
blow-up would be serious, not funny.

>>Finally, I was troubled by the fact that Maurice made an anti-gay comment
>>to Maggie and went unchallenged.

Yeah, but no one nails Maurice about his comments on Asians and other
groups half the time, either.  It's real life that sometimes you just
take a deep breath and ignore it for the time being.  Maggie had other
fish to fry, and the plot was set up that she wasn't going to challenge
him until later in the episode.


Kimiye     kimi@kokomo.att.com   
"Hi, this is Ed Chigliak, your host for `Apocalypse Now', the show
about the end of life on earth as we know it."  (or something like that)



Newsgroups: alt.tv.northern-exp