| Wednesday, February 11, 2009 |
19:56 - I have free will, honest
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Just finished watching the entirety of The Royle Family, after a recommendation that is impossible to resist. James says he hasn't seen the third season (er, series, as they say across the pond), and I would venture that that's a crying shame. Definitely worth the seeking out, especially the epic "Queen of Sheba" episode that caps off the whole remarkable effort.
I don't know what it is about this show that makes it so enthralling; on the one hand, you completely loathe each and every one of the characters and can't bear to listen to another second of any of their rote mechanical stimulus-response utterances, whether Barbara's meaningless and relentlessly enraptured cooing or Denise's grating lazy squawking and squeaking or Jim's sullen outbursts of bile and grim laughter. You wonder how any of them put up with living in a world where trading in fenced knockoff jeans and gasping for joy at the thought of a bacon sandwich is just how things are done; and you wonder why on earth you keep watching.
But James is right, in that it's the little unexpected moments that sneak up on you. When Jim and Twiggy protractedly dance to "Mambo No. 5", it more than makes up for three hours of accumulated gritted-tooth shavings, as does his rare and hard-fought-for grudging encouragement of Antony on his way to London. And though the comedic stinger that ends each episode is tame by the standards we've become accustomed to, coming after 29 minutes of tapioca-textured living-room banter, having the tension broken by Jim imitating dead Elsie over the baby monitor and smashing through Norma's carefully constructed emotional wall such that she collapses in helpless laughter means the audience does too.
It was only toward the end that I realized what the writing was doing: it was ensuring that there was not one member of the whole cast I didn't despise listening to. Running clichés of thick-accented delivery tics—Denise constantly forgetting that she's recently given birth ("I just put him down." "Who?" "Baaaby Daaavid!")—are carefully balanced by tics you hate just as much in the next character down the couch (Dave dully reciting a list of what forms he likes is bacon to take; Nana repeating the same story to everybody in turn, whether one or two feet away; Cheryl obscenely smacking her lips and moaning over a cheap chocolate bar). There's nobody there you can root for. You want to smack each and every one of them. And yet you can't; you're trapped, without a protagonist to fall back on, just like they're trapped in their dreary world of TV and tea and ill-disguised bitterness. They're all dumb, lazy, and beaten down by life—and even Antony can't escape it, as his long-term success only ever means he now has to lend his dad beer money and absorb the same old abuse for it—and yet the little flecks of gold in the dialogue are what, somehow, makes it all worthwhile in the end. There's no better illustration of that than the Norma's-eye view of Jim standing over her hospital bed in the final episode: it's the same effect you get in the redeeming scene James cites, only a lot more so.
Definitely worth seeking out and getting to. By hook or digital crook.
Anyway. Back to my better-late-than-never Battlestar Galactica marathon. I understand the Cylons look like us now.
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Brian Tiemann
