So, it's all come down to this. The end episode, the season finale, the whole enchilada. Today I watched the final episode, ending the series. It was a fitting conclusion, with all the things set in motion previously coming into the fore.
Let's do this thing.
First up on the chopping block is Kevin's internal conflict. Now, it is important to know something before I continue. By this episode, Amy and Brad are, well, a couple. This of course works wonders for Kevin's attempts to get together with Amy, so he's pretty much up the creek. Perhaps it's karma getting him for that Yandere thing from the last episode I wrote about? Anyhoo, this feature is important to the narrative because it shows Kevin's determination: even though Amy has found happiness he refuses to give up on his feelings for her. Sorry female viewers, you'll have to try harder to woo him. It's also important to note that throughout the series Kev's feelings for Amy have remained constant. This makes his love for Amy one of his defining characteristics. A similar thing happened in Firefly, whenever Mal found happiness with a woman who wasn't Inara. Even when Mal was with the other girl, Inara still loved him. Of course, Inara was also a lady, so that's sort of the opposite I suppose.
There's also Kevin's external conflict, and there's plenty here. First there is, once again, Brad. He strikes on two occasions, first at an evening scene, and then later, towards the end, as he intercepts Amy before Kev can get to her. This is important to the narrative because it allows for it's continuation. You see, if Kevin had his way then he would get Amy and there would be no story. It is consequentially integral to the narrative that Kevin and Amy are never together, otherwise the story would resolve itself and the narrative would die prematurely. As a result, an external conflict of some sort will always thwart Kevin's attempts to win Amy's heart. This is the reverse of Firefly, when some sort of external conflict would always keep romantic interests together (other suitors, you see, tended to meet unfortunate ends).
As well as all this, there is a second source of external conflict in the form of Phillip (Phill-eep), a disillusioned green-eyed monster. As Cody, one of the girls, is getting married, Phillip attempts to stop the ceremony, and Kev's battle with him provides part of the climax, and some nice comedic relief.
Finally, there is Kevin's positioning with the audience. We, as viewers, judge Kevin largely by his thoughts, and, as such, we are presented with them in the form of his voice-overs and imagine-spots. In this episode, for example, we see exactly just how lime-green jello Kevin is when he imagines Amy killing Brad. Britta even calls him out on it too. But at the same time this contrasts with his actions, so even though we see him wishing a character dead, we still sympathize with him, and not Brad. This feature is important to the narrative because the audience must see into the protagonist's head, but at the same time sympathize with them.
Well, that's it. The season ends at the after-party of the wedding (strange-the series began and ended with a wedding), with everyone resolved, and a few lasting shots of Britta. Foreshadowing, perhaps?
Till next time,
MillitantGuerillaCommunistHippie, signing off.
Thursday 14 April 2011
Wednesday 13 April 2011
Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-changes
Welcome back Comrades, to another exciting installment of my journey to conquer TV land in the name of the proletariat and free love.
When we last left off, I had been assigned a TV show todissect analyse, and we had just watched the pilot episode. This time we watched one of the later episodes. As always it was a right rollicking old yarn about boating and boats and a whole Plethora (stick that in your word calendar and use it!) of other little tidbits of humor.
Now let's get down to business.
In this episode, as always, our bolsome protagonist has his internal conflict over Amy, the girl next door (figuratively speaking). This episode further complicates things (we'll look at how in just a minute), and also sheds some light on Kevin's previous ventures into the deep dark sea of dating, revealing all his previous assorted spouses, flings and lovers have all been..not quite right. Somehow they have been.....odd. This shows the audience just how much Kev NEEDS to be with Amy, and causes the audience to scream at him something along the lines of "GET TOGETHER WITH HER YOU IDIOT! SHE'S PERFECT FOR YOU!". Unless of course they're one of those female viewers with a crush on him, then it's something more like "GET TOGETHER WITH ME YOU IDIOT! I'M PERFECT FOR YOU!". This type of internal conflict is reminiscent of Inara and Mal in the first and only season of Firefly.
Of course, internal conflict is just one side of the story. There's also external conflict too. But unlike other episodes, this time it's not from Brad. You see, in this episode, Brad had found....
Dum dum duuuum
A YANDERE!
For those of you who don't know, a yandere is a character, usually female, who appears nice and sweet on the outside, but is absolutely insane on the inside, in a psychopath kind of way too no less. She obsesses over her romantic interest, and, well...let's just say bad things happen to any other girl he even looks at. Seriously. I saw things in 'Nam that look tame in comparison.
So anyway, Kevin's external conflict for this episode is a yandere by the name of Wanda. She's actually very minor in the yandere hierarchy (the girls would have been lucky to be alive by the end of the episode if it were a proper yandere), but she is, nonetheless, not all there, if you know what I mean. Of course, as Jayne* says, "not all of her has to be".
This conflict is important to the narrative because, unlike the previous external conflict, it presents a new problem: Kevin no longer has any reason to pursue Amy for the time being. It is almost the reverse of the problem with Brad, instead of a threat to his success with Amy, he is instead trapped in a relationship with Wanda. Additionally, it tests both his love for Amy and his friendships to the limit, especially as Wanda begins to cause a rift between Kevin and the girls. This is also the spitting image of the Firefly episode "our Mrs. Reynolds", when Mal finds happiness with a woman, who causes problems. They're of a much more life threatening sort, mind you.
Then finally there's Kevin's engagement with us, the viewing class. In this episode we see Wanda duking it out with the girls over Kevin's affections (and eventually duking it out with Kev himself), and we see kevin caught in the middle, confused and misunderstood, so even when he lashes out at his friends or gets into a fight with a girl we still sympathise with him. This is important, because we as the audience need to like him because, you know, he's still our way into the story.This whole "caught in the crossfire protagonist" thing was featured a fair bit in The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the TV spinoff of the Terminator films.
Well that's all for now Comrades, two episodes done and dusted. What will happen to our intrepid hero on his adventures? What new ways will he have toprobe analyse a character? Tune in next week to find out.
*You know, Jayne, from Firefly. You did read up about Firefly like I told you to right?
When we last left off, I had been assigned a TV show to
Now let's get down to business.
In this episode, as always, our bolsome protagonist has his internal conflict over Amy, the girl next door (figuratively speaking). This episode further complicates things (we'll look at how in just a minute), and also sheds some light on Kevin's previous ventures into the deep dark sea of dating, revealing all his previous assorted spouses, flings and lovers have all been..not quite right. Somehow they have been.....odd. This shows the audience just how much Kev NEEDS to be with Amy, and causes the audience to scream at him something along the lines of "GET TOGETHER WITH HER YOU IDIOT! SHE'S PERFECT FOR YOU!". Unless of course they're one of those female viewers with a crush on him, then it's something more like "GET TOGETHER WITH ME YOU IDIOT! I'M PERFECT FOR YOU!". This type of internal conflict is reminiscent of Inara and Mal in the first and only season of Firefly.
Of course, internal conflict is just one side of the story. There's also external conflict too. But unlike other episodes, this time it's not from Brad. You see, in this episode, Brad had found....
Dum dum duuuum
A YANDERE!
For those of you who don't know, a yandere is a character, usually female, who appears nice and sweet on the outside, but is absolutely insane on the inside, in a psychopath kind of way too no less. She obsesses over her romantic interest, and, well...let's just say bad things happen to any other girl he even looks at. Seriously. I saw things in 'Nam that look tame in comparison.
So anyway, Kevin's external conflict for this episode is a yandere by the name of Wanda. She's actually very minor in the yandere hierarchy (the girls would have been lucky to be alive by the end of the episode if it were a proper yandere), but she is, nonetheless, not all there, if you know what I mean. Of course, as Jayne* says, "not all of her has to be".
This conflict is important to the narrative because, unlike the previous external conflict, it presents a new problem: Kevin no longer has any reason to pursue Amy for the time being. It is almost the reverse of the problem with Brad, instead of a threat to his success with Amy, he is instead trapped in a relationship with Wanda. Additionally, it tests both his love for Amy and his friendships to the limit, especially as Wanda begins to cause a rift between Kevin and the girls. This is also the spitting image of the Firefly episode "our Mrs. Reynolds", when Mal finds happiness with a woman, who causes problems. They're of a much more life threatening sort, mind you.
Then finally there's Kevin's engagement with us, the viewing class. In this episode we see Wanda duking it out with the girls over Kevin's affections (and eventually duking it out with Kev himself), and we see kevin caught in the middle, confused and misunderstood, so even when he lashes out at his friends or gets into a fight with a girl we still sympathise with him. This is important, because we as the audience need to like him because, you know, he's still our way into the story.This whole "caught in the crossfire protagonist" thing was featured a fair bit in The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the TV spinoff of the Terminator films.
Well that's all for now Comrades, two episodes done and dusted. What will happen to our intrepid hero on his adventures? What new ways will he have to
*You know, Jayne, from Firefly. You did read up about Firefly like I told you to right?
Monday 11 April 2011
So take a piece of my heart babe.....
Hahahah, pathetic capitalist squares, you thought you had defeated me, but no, I am back, and have begun liberating TV land!
Or rather I have to write up a new blog for school. At any rate it's to do with the pwetty wittle pictures that come up on the idiot box. Of course, this doesn't bother me, because TV shows are right up my subterranean tunnel network.
And the lucky TV show that was chosen to be brutally probed, dissected and examined in the process known as 'analysis' was a plucky little dramady called Go Girls. For the uninformed, Go Girls is a comedy-drama about four best friends who make a new-year's resolution each, one vowing to get famous, one to get rich, and one to find love (and marry him). Oh and the other one just wants a car part (no he doesn't). It's made right here in the Land of The Long White Cloud too, so I feel patriotic about it.
Oh and we have to say something about a character, so we all obviously have to choose a character. I myself am going with a lovable rougeish scamp by the name of, Kevin. Kevin is the sole male in the group, the other characters in it being Amy, Britta and Cody (a girl).
This is important because it explains why I choose to dissect Kevin's character. You see comrades, Kevin is the odd one out here, and I often feel as though I am the odd one out many times. As such, I sympathize with ol' Kev. And, as will be discussed later, he has a bit of a heart problem (no, not literally), and I'm sure we can all relate there. As such, I feel for Kevin a lot more than the average viewer*. In another worldy where TV was real, we may have even been..........Friends................
................................................................................
...............................................................................
Meh, I still think I would get on better with Mal**.
Anyhoo, Kevin is also the story's protagonist. This means that the story is told from his perspective. Pay attention people, this will be important later.
So, we watched the first episode. The pilot. It was called 'Dream on' (not to be confused with the Glee episode of the same name). It was spiffing stuff indeed, full of weddings and drama, but with more that a sprinkling of comedy.
Now, it's not all fun and games unfortunately, and I have to analyse the poor soul. So here goes.
The features I have selected are conflict (internal and external), and Engagement.
The first feature this blog post will look at is internal conflict. In this episode, it is established just what Kevin's internal conflict is for the rest of the series: he is head over heals in love with Amy, the character trying to get rich, and one of his longest friends. Kevin is, as a result, confronted with the problem of winning her heart, and weather doing so will jeopardize his friendship. We as the audience know this because, as the protagonist, we can see into Kevin's head, so we hear his thoughts and see his dreams. Throughout the episode, there are a number of alternate events that occur within Kevin's imagination, and the all have something to do with Amy falling for him. This very clearly establishes his relationships with several other characters, such as Amy (duh), Brad (who we'll get onto in a minute), and a few others. This internal conflict is important for a number of reasons. First and foremost it provides the audience with a source of drama, and you can't have a drama show without, well, drama. Additionally, it gives our hero a flaw, and as an audience we like flawed realistic characters, not Marty Stues. Other shows that feature dramatic characters flawed with internal conflict include Firefly (Simon's love for Kaylee), Buffy's feelings for Angel in the first few episodes of Buffy The Vampire Slayer and John Chriton being torn between returning home and his new friends in Farscape. And don't get me started on the Winchesters in Supernatural. All of these fine examples added new problems and challenges for the characters in their show, and challenge=drama=entertainment.
As well as internal conflict, Kevin also has conflict of the external variety. In this episode, a source of this came from Brad, Amy's former spouse. Brad is getting married (to Angelina, no less), but he still seems to have feelings for Amy. Naturally enough, this complicates things for Kev, who now has a rival for Amy's affections. There are several cues in the episode that show Brad's feelings, including a Freudian silence in one scene, but I digress. The humble audience knows just how Kev feels about all this when we see one of his dream sequences, in which he violently assaults Brad. I reckon these two will get on juust fine. This external conflict is important because it pressures Kevin into making a decision, and adds tension as the audience wonders, "will he ask her before it's too late?". Other examples of external conflict in TV land are Band of Brothers (World War two, 'nuff said), Farscape's oppressive Peacekeepers against Moya's crew, and of course The government clamping down on Serenity's perfectly legitimate business adventures in Firefly. The external conflicts in these shows all served to threaten the characters and make the audience wonder, "will they accomplish the goal in time?".
The third feature is engagement, not to other characters, but to the audience. As Kevin is the protagonist of the show, we as the audience are set up to sympathize with him. To achieve maximum approval rating with the target demographic, Kevin is portrayed as an 'everyman'. The common blue collar average-joe that us viewers can relate to. He doesn't have fancy medical jargon, he doesn't solve crimes, he just lives out his life with the rest of us. As such he frequently uses local mannerisms, most prominently the traditional "yeah, nah", common amongst the proliteriat-I mean, middle class, who hopefully form the largest slice of the viewer pie. Mmmmmmm, viewer pie. This is essential because, as the protagonist, Kevin must be sympathized with by the audience, as it is through him that we see the story. A similar thing is in effect with the peppy sarcastic youth that is the protagonist in Buffy. That show's target demographic related to Buffy, and so the target audience found the show much more entertaining.
In conclusion, Kevin is a character, the protagonist no less, in the drama series Go Girls, who has both internal and external conflict, and is established and set up strategically to get merit points from the audience by being like them, and not some detective that uses some sort of science to solve brutal murders. Or a vampire. He definitely isn't a vampire, Not yet at any rate....
Well that's all for now Comrades, until next time, peace out!
*This of course excludes female viewers who crush on him. I am neither female nor do think of him in that way.
**I am of course referring to Malcolm Reynolds, captain of the starship Serenity. If you have no idea what I am talking about, please cease reading any of my blogs immediately and resume only after gaining rudimentary knowledge of the awesomeness that is Firefly by at least researching it on Wikipedia.
Or rather I have to write up a new blog for school. At any rate it's to do with the pwetty wittle pictures that come up on the idiot box. Of course, this doesn't bother me, because TV shows are right up my subterranean tunnel network.
And the lucky TV show that was chosen to be brutally probed, dissected and examined in the process known as 'analysis' was a plucky little dramady called Go Girls. For the uninformed, Go Girls is a comedy-drama about four best friends who make a new-year's resolution each, one vowing to get famous, one to get rich, and one to find love (and marry him). Oh and the other one just wants a car part (no he doesn't). It's made right here in the Land of The Long White Cloud too, so I feel patriotic about it.
Oh and we have to say something about a character, so we all obviously have to choose a character. I myself am going with a lovable rougeish scamp by the name of, Kevin. Kevin is the sole male in the group, the other characters in it being Amy, Britta and Cody (a girl).
This is important because it explains why I choose to dissect Kevin's character. You see comrades, Kevin is the odd one out here, and I often feel as though I am the odd one out many times. As such, I sympathize with ol' Kev. And, as will be discussed later, he has a bit of a heart problem (no, not literally), and I'm sure we can all relate there. As such, I feel for Kevin a lot more than the average viewer*. In another worldy where TV was real, we may have even been..........Friends................
................................................................................
...............................................................................
Meh, I still think I would get on better with Mal**.
Anyhoo, Kevin is also the story's protagonist. This means that the story is told from his perspective. Pay attention people, this will be important later.
So, we watched the first episode. The pilot. It was called 'Dream on' (not to be confused with the Glee episode of the same name). It was spiffing stuff indeed, full of weddings and drama, but with more that a sprinkling of comedy.
Now, it's not all fun and games unfortunately, and I have to analyse the poor soul. So here goes.
The features I have selected are conflict (internal and external), and Engagement.
The first feature this blog post will look at is internal conflict. In this episode, it is established just what Kevin's internal conflict is for the rest of the series: he is head over heals in love with Amy, the character trying to get rich, and one of his longest friends. Kevin is, as a result, confronted with the problem of winning her heart, and weather doing so will jeopardize his friendship. We as the audience know this because, as the protagonist, we can see into Kevin's head, so we hear his thoughts and see his dreams. Throughout the episode, there are a number of alternate events that occur within Kevin's imagination, and the all have something to do with Amy falling for him. This very clearly establishes his relationships with several other characters, such as Amy (duh), Brad (who we'll get onto in a minute), and a few others. This internal conflict is important for a number of reasons. First and foremost it provides the audience with a source of drama, and you can't have a drama show without, well, drama. Additionally, it gives our hero a flaw, and as an audience we like flawed realistic characters, not Marty Stues. Other shows that feature dramatic characters flawed with internal conflict include Firefly (Simon's love for Kaylee), Buffy's feelings for Angel in the first few episodes of Buffy The Vampire Slayer and John Chriton being torn between returning home and his new friends in Farscape. And don't get me started on the Winchesters in Supernatural. All of these fine examples added new problems and challenges for the characters in their show, and challenge=drama=entertainment.
As well as internal conflict, Kevin also has conflict of the external variety. In this episode, a source of this came from Brad, Amy's former spouse. Brad is getting married (to Angelina, no less), but he still seems to have feelings for Amy. Naturally enough, this complicates things for Kev, who now has a rival for Amy's affections. There are several cues in the episode that show Brad's feelings, including a Freudian silence in one scene, but I digress. The humble audience knows just how Kev feels about all this when we see one of his dream sequences, in which he violently assaults Brad. I reckon these two will get on juust fine. This external conflict is important because it pressures Kevin into making a decision, and adds tension as the audience wonders, "will he ask her before it's too late?". Other examples of external conflict in TV land are Band of Brothers (World War two, 'nuff said), Farscape's oppressive Peacekeepers against Moya's crew, and of course The government clamping down on Serenity's perfectly legitimate business adventures in Firefly. The external conflicts in these shows all served to threaten the characters and make the audience wonder, "will they accomplish the goal in time?".
The third feature is engagement, not to other characters, but to the audience. As Kevin is the protagonist of the show, we as the audience are set up to sympathize with him. To achieve maximum approval rating with the target demographic, Kevin is portrayed as an 'everyman'. The common blue collar average-joe that us viewers can relate to. He doesn't have fancy medical jargon, he doesn't solve crimes, he just lives out his life with the rest of us. As such he frequently uses local mannerisms, most prominently the traditional "yeah, nah", common amongst the proliteriat-I mean, middle class, who hopefully form the largest slice of the viewer pie. Mmmmmmm, viewer pie. This is essential because, as the protagonist, Kevin must be sympathized with by the audience, as it is through him that we see the story. A similar thing is in effect with the peppy sarcastic youth that is the protagonist in Buffy. That show's target demographic related to Buffy, and so the target audience found the show much more entertaining.
In conclusion, Kevin is a character, the protagonist no less, in the drama series Go Girls, who has both internal and external conflict, and is established and set up strategically to get merit points from the audience by being like them, and not some detective that uses some sort of science to solve brutal murders. Or a vampire. He definitely isn't a vampire, Not yet at any rate....
Well that's all for now Comrades, until next time, peace out!
*This of course excludes female viewers who crush on him. I am neither female nor do think of him in that way.
**I am of course referring to Malcolm Reynolds, captain of the starship Serenity. If you have no idea what I am talking about, please cease reading any of my blogs immediately and resume only after gaining rudimentary knowledge of the awesomeness that is Firefly by at least researching it on Wikipedia.
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