Reaction Post - This is because you're good.

The Good Wife: 4x14 Red Team, Blue Team.

Linkliste unbehandelter Themen

Politics: 

French and Malian forces are advancing against the Islamist Rebels in Mali (including airstrikes by the French air force), and France declared its intention to start withdrawing troops in "as early as two weeks". Foreign Affairs predicts that Mali's problems are migrating to Niger, and Jadaliyya writes about the situation of internally displaced refugees in Mali.

Here's the full text and video of President Obama's State of the Union speech. 

Republicans are threatening to filibuster the confirmation of Chuck Hagel, who is about to succeed Robert Gates as United States Secretary of Defense.

Creepiest thing to appear in the news these weeks: domestic drones. Happy Valentine's Day, United States!

ProPublica has a chart of the "players" involved in the News International scandal.

There'll be a new pope soon (favourite hashtag of the week: #exbenedict)

Pop Culture: 

Sylvia Plath died fifty years ago.

I recently started catching up with My Mad Fat Diary, a British TV show set in Lincolnshire in 1996, portraying the life of Rae, a teenage girl who finds a new circle of friend and tries to find confidence after a mental breakdown. It's incredibly acted and written. 

Bomb Girls started a five-week-long mid-season break but will resume on March 25th, and air its second season in the US on Reelz starting March 27th. 

And Being Human is back for its fifth and final season, and is absolutely lovely, mainly because Michael Socha, Damien Molony and Kate Bracken are a fantastic team as the new modern werewolf&vampire&ghost family. I don't know why I always forget how much I love this show whenever it isn't on.

Mad Men's sixth season starts April 7th, Breaking Bad resumes its fifth and final season in summer.

The xx played a Tiny Desk concert for NPR last week. 

Thao & The Get Down Stay Down (their new record, We the Common, was released February 4) played a concert for KEXP (so did Calexico, Frightened Rabbit

More music released this year: Erin McKeown's Manifestra (here's the video for Proof), Tocotronic's Wie wir leben wollen (here's the BtVS inspired Auf dem Pfad der Dämmerung), and Foals' Holy Fire.

Popular - Why are we fighting?

Popular: 2x20 You Don't Tug On Superman's Cape...

This is the penultimate episode of Popular, and the sad thing isn’t just that the show is ended so abruptly that the writers had no time to come up with a proper ending, it’s also that these two final episodes aren’t the strongest of the season. TV shows are peculiar that way: what other work of art suffers the constant danger of being cancelled pre-maturely, before the final page is written or halfway through a full-length film, or before the painter has time to fill out the blanks on the canvas? 

I’m also now going to make an assumption about Popular that I’ve never made this directly before: I don’t think that there was a very clear or strict outline of all the storylines and the characters for the whole season. I think a lot of it just happened as the show progressed, and the consistency (on and off consistency, occasional excellent, occasional missing consistency) comes from the actors more than the scripts, or specific writers having a better grasp of a particular character. None of this is criticism of the show, it’s a valid choice, but it leads to a pace that is sometimes peculiar: characters don’t seem to grow and change subtly with every episode, but more in leaps whenever an episode is focused on them, and then sometimes the show turns elsewhere and loses its grasp on someone, I’ve always felt. There is a certain danger in it, but on the other hand, there wouldn’t be outstanding episodes like Fall on Your Knees. 

I'll always be hungry

The Thermals - Born to Kill


[via Stereogum]

off Desperate Ground, coming out in April on Saddle Creek.

Bomb Girls - Things are going so well.

Bomb Girls: 2x06 Where There’s Smoke.

Betty: It’s just… How can this happen so fast?
Teresa: Wow. Seems to me you’ve waited a long time.
Betty: Yeah.
[…]
Teresa: And here I was thinking I’d gone and missed the fireworks.

Four characters, stuck between waiting and figurative fireworks – action, movement, decisions. Gladys is told that her life will start once she is married, but the idea doesn’t fit in with how she feels herself change and evolve while James is gone. Betty is waiting – and the thing is, she’s waiting for Kate, but also for a whole lot of other things, except it’s difficult to divide the two since she’s in love. Eugene is physically unable to wait, because whenever he stops moving, all his memories from the war and the questions about who he is that he can’t answer meaningfully anymore come sweeping in. Kate can do nothing but wait because everything is terrifying, so instead of facing her feelings and her fears (or as a way to face them that isn’t working out very well), she has created an elaborate fiction and is constantly performing in it. 

The moments when characters decide to finally move in one direction, come to decisions that affect not only themselves but also others, are the key scenes in the episode. Gladys realizes that she has to tell James about her feelings, because not telling him is starting to feel the same as lying to him. And it’s more than just her attraction to Eugene Corbett: it’s finding out that her father has been paying for her hotel room all this time (that he wasn’t honest about something and doesn’t understand why she cares so profoundly about not being dependent on her family), that the only way she will really be free of their attempts to influence her life is to be financially independent from them. What troubles her most is the idea that the responsibility for her will pass from her father to James, that the idea that she may be responsible for herself never even comes up. As long as she’s James’ fiancée, her father takes care of her; once she passes on to James by marriage, he’ll take care of her. She’s enjoyed the privileges, but Gladys is starting to realize that she’s maybe no longer willing to pay the price. I think that’s where her attraction to Gene comes from: it’s about how different he seems to be from James, how different he is from her family, but also the fact that she desperately wants to be responsible for her own life, and her own mistakes. Part of owning her mistakes, and taking responsibility for her life, isn’t just being able to pay for her own food, telephone calls, and accommodation, it’s being able to be honest to the people in her life about her own actions. Except of course James stops her before she can tell him the truth; it’s clear that he already knows what’s coming, but he’ll be sure once she says it and he’s not sure he’ll be able to face the war once he is. 

Gladys: I’m not strong, James. I haven’t done right by you.
James: Gladys, let’s not.
Gladys: You deserve to know. Please, let me try to say this, James, this is difficult. You won’t be coming home to the same girl you left behind.
[…]
James: This may be the last chance we have to talk before the war is finally done.
Gladys: It’s gonna be okay, James.
James: It means the world you saying that.
Gladys: There’s more I wanna say. You have to let me say it.

Sometimes telling the truth is absolutely necessary, but it’s also selfish to an extent; both Gladys and Betty need the relief, the burden off their shoulder, but James and Kate respectively are the ones that have to carry it as well. This is probably my favourite scene of the episode, because it’s so layered and complicated: Kate is removing the traces of an evening out with Ivan in Betty’s room, talking in that strange voice that is so unlike her about him while we see her removing her make-up in the mirror over Betty’s basin. Meanwhile, Betty is furiously, aggressively, knitting an intelligible piece of clothing on the bed, surrounding by a pile of wool and what’s probably supposed to be mittens and pullovers and scarves. On the surface, it’s a painfully domestic scene, and maybe, whenever Betty imagined that house she would own one day, and the person she’d share it with, she pictured something fairly similar. The idyllic picture is disturbed by the fact that Kate seems to be so unlike herself, her face is a mask, her voice is a bit too high and her smile doesn’t seem genuine at all, and as she tells them, Betty’s knitting gets even more frantic (she needs new needles because this is what she’s been doing this past months, instead of talking about her feelings). Later, Teresa is going to mention all the walls in the room – which is perfect, because Kate and Betty seem trapped in this scene, in this performance of something that is imitating the idea of a normal friendship. It seems like a stage more than anything – a stage with a lot of mirrors as well, reflections. Kate mentions dancing with Ivan, and proceeds to show Betty the foxtrot – grabbing her hands, just like she did when they first met, pulling Betty with her except everything’s changed since then. It’s the only way she can share things with Betty. Ivan showed her how to dance, and now she’s showing Betty, until finally, Betty breaks. And I love this show to bits and pieces that the breaking point isn’t a result of a conversation, but of their physicality, that it is Kate taking Betty’s hands to pull her in for a dance – Kate who is a reflection of herself, and Betty, who is reflected in the mirror on her dresser but sits too far away from it to ever be in the same frame as her own reflection (which is maybe analysing the scene too much, but it’s just striking to me how perfectly it matches where they are). The moment Betty realizes she can’t continue, it’s a physical thing as well, before she starts to explain. It’s the way her entire body tenses up, she raises her shoulders, she almost pushes Kate back before she steps away from her. 

Because Ivan almost made Kate feel like she knew what she was doing, performing in the role of Ivan’s girlfriend, but forever, only always, because she is still never talking about her feelings, truly. 

Betty: I can’t. I can’t do this anymore.
Kate: You were doing great.
Betty: That’s not what I mean, and you know it.
Kate: Is it Ivan? Do you still have feelings for him?
Betty: No. Of course I don’t. Dammit, Kate, you’re not an idiot.
Kate: Betty, don’t, things are going so well.

There are several scenes where Kate’s mask drops, but this is the first one: her tone changes completely at “Betty, don’t”. She recognizes that they’ve just stepped out of their respective roles she’s cast them in. She acknowledges that this is a dialogue about what is going on behind the scenes, and she is wary of it. Kate isn’t acting anymore. And now we don’t see their reflections anymore, because they are facing each other. 

Betty: For you, yeah. You got all you want, a boy who’s falling for you and a girl who already has. You use this… you use me... I helped you make a whole new life, and what are you doing?
Kate: I’m living it, Betty. There’s nothing wrong with that.
Betty: Then you find someone else to dance with.

This isn’t an act of hope. It’s an act of desperation. The thing is that there is still a part of Betty that profoundly believes that she saved Kate Andrews. This is what kept her going while Kate was gone; the idea that she would save her from her father. But Kate Andrews ultimately saved herself – is saving herself. It started when she stood up to her father and told him off, asked him about her mother, found the strength to leave him. That was just the first step, though, the real exhausting work is unlearning all the lies he told her all his life. Vernon Rowley left scars on her back and took the light from her eyes, last year, when he came to the boarding house to reclaim her. That kind of damage can’t be undone by one act of heroism, and this is a lesson that Betty needs to learn. This is maybe why Betty’s thought of “You use this” is unfinished, because this is still something that Betty needs to realize (and I love Betty McRae, but being in love so much and shaping the person you’re in love with into something they’re not is dangerous, and selfish). She did provide Kate with a home though, that’s valid. It’s always easier to run to something than it is to simply run away from someone.

Here’s what happened before this conversation: Betty made the acquaintance of a female sergeant involved in the VicMu bonds drive. A soldier confident enough to ask her, after seeing her watch Ivan and Kate dance, which one of the two she used to date, and then to flirt with her more openly than she’s probably ever been flirted with by another woman (“Could it get any better”, Teresa asked, after Betty lied that her life’s great). And Betty walked off, because she’s just spent a year putting all her hopes and expectations in the one person she’s head over heels in love with. Gladys’ life is supposed to start once she’s married to James, but I think that Betty has, in her mind, stopped hers until Kate is ready to admit that she loves her back, regardless of whether Kate feels the same way about her, or will ever be able to admit it. Betty’s closed herself off to all other possibilities because she’s already in love, what else could she possibly do? 

The terrible thing about this entire conversation is how different it is from Betty’s first declaration of love in Elements of Surprise – Betty trying to kiss Kate in that episode, and explaining how she felt for her, was an act of hope. She misinterpreted the signs, didn’t fully comprehend Kate’s situation, and expected a completely different ending to that conversation. Declaring her love so openly was a romantic gesture. Here, it’s something entirely different. I don’t think that Betty expects any other outcome than the one she gets. I don’t think that Betty even hopes that Kate is going to say that she feels the same way about her – she’s just so frustrated, and so angry, and so desperate, that she just wants a way out of this impossible situation. It’s a coup more than anything. She can’t bear taking part in the performance anymore – one that Kate asked her to agree with in the beginning of the season. She can’t go through the motions of a normal friendship. Once she's told Kate to leave, she’s able to go and find Teresa in what’s surely the cutest outfit Betty McRae has ever worn.

Because here’s the thing that romantic comedies never tell you: sometimes putting all your hopes into one person and expecting that person to meet them is horrible for both of you. This is why this new and shiny relationship works so well, because Betty wanted all of this from Kate but Kate isn’t ready for any of it. Teresa and Betty fold forms together, and Betty bravely declares that she won’t attend the bonds drive for Kate, and then Teresa does the most marvellous thing: she openly acknowledges that they share their specific sense of alienation, of otherness. Betty spent a whole episode speaking in code with a German prisoner of war about how she felt different and how scared she was of being found out, and here’s Teresa, speaking about it so openly and directly. 

Teresa: I see your friend is performing?
Betty: Kate, yeah, she’s singing a jingle, part of the Witham trio. That’s not why I’m here.
Teresa: Got a thing for folding forms?
Betty: Just doing my bit for the war effort.
Teresa: Well, if you ask me, this war has given us more than we could dream of.
Betty: Now we fit right in.
Teresa: For once we don’t stick out like a sore thumb.  

It’s a glorious moment for Betty, being recognized this way. Her connection with Teresa isn’t about love; it’s about sharing this knowledge and acknowledging each other’s desire openly. Teresa waltzed into her life and found her – somehow picked her out from the crowd, instinctively knowing she was gay too – and maybe for the first time, Betty doesn’t feel like the loneliest person on Earth, which I think at this point in her life is maybe more important than being in love. 

Betty and Kate have always had terrible timing. Kate performs the jingle for Witham’s Food at VicMu’s bond drive, right after her conversation with Betty, and Leon later remarks that her “head’s not in the game”. So Kate chooses the one person who already knows to talk to about Betty McRae. 

Leon: Something with your fella?
Kate: It’s Betty, she has these feelings.
Leon: Yeah, she’s very fond of you.
Kate: No, what she feels is sin, it says so in the bible.
Leon: The bible also tells us to stone a man to death for working Sundays.
Kate: I can tell in my heart if something’s wrong.
Leon: If you can’t love her the way she wants, love her the way you can.

Kate used to sing to feel, and then she sang because of her feelings, and then she couldn’t sing at all – and now her performance is empty because of what Betty told her, and just another person in her life offers an interpretation of religion completely different from Vernon’s, but she can’t openly accept it yet, because believing these things, believing and practising all the things Vernon taught her, was a matter of life and death, and unlearning them will take a long time. It might be that Kate is talking about herself here, not about Betty, and her own feelings (because she never does, so it’s safe to assume that if she ever did, she’d pretend she was talking about somebody else). It’s dangerous for Kate to think about the ways that she loves Betty. In the end, she is more genuine and honest in her singing than she could ever be in anything else, because that’s how things always were – Kate used to sing to Betty, all her songs were about Betty, but she used to sing them to her as well – and now, Betty walks out before she’s finished, because something’s changed. 

Kate: All our friends keep knocking at the door, they’ve asked me out a hundred times or more but all I say is leave me in the gloom and here I stay within my lonely room because I don’t wanna walk without you, baby. Walk without my arms around you […] I don’t have to turn up for that sunshine, oh baby, please come back or you’ll break my heart for me. Cause I don’t wanna walk without you, no, sorry.

Betty’s sitting right behind Ivan, so Kate can conveniently sing this song directly to her without being found out, but it’s left strangely open whether Betty realizes that this song is about her – and maybe she doesn’t allow herself to think about the possibility, because it means she couldn’t ask Teresa up into her room. Betty leaves before Kate finishes, and this is the second time that Kate’s façade drops, when she realizes that her seat is empty and that the only way she knows to communicate her feelings didn’t work. 

Betty takes Teresa up to her room, and this is the most glorious contrast to how things happened when she did the same with Ivan: she was so hesitant and irritated by her at first because she approached her in the bar frequented by everyone working at VicMu, and now she’s actually gathered the courage to take her to the boarding house (after taking Ivan there to make a point). She doesn’t need whiskey to convince herself she wants this. She’s terrible, hilariously awkward (“Well, here you got a wall… fan, dresser, another wall, window, wall, a lamp, and a picture I’ve never actually looked at until right this moment, brush… and…. Well, bed.”), and she doesn’t know how to handle physical contact at first, but she also profoundly wants this, and has waited for this to happen forever. Just think about what it means in that historical context and for a character like Betty McRae to say “I want to”, and then to cross the distance to kiss Teresa? Betty probably pictured something along these lines with Kate, in a million years, but now, after a day or so, someone who used to be a stranger is in her room, kissing her, and being herself and being true to her feelings and her desires suddenly doesn’t seem alienating and ridiculous anymore. It’s the first time “it felt right”. The first time she felt safe. 

All the ways she had to speak in code about herself and her feelings, she had to hide herself away, to a point where she convinced herself that she doesn’t deserve any kind of love, from anyone, and suddenly, here’s a woman who knows all her secrets intimately and understands them, someone she can share a part of herself with that she’s been hiding forever. She just always thought that “When we’re finally safe, it’s okay to stop fighting” would be about Kate, not about herself.

Teresa: Now is the time you ask me how soon until I ship out.
Betty: So when do ya?
Teresa: I’m heading out on a bond tour but I’ll be back.
Betty: Don’t take this the wrong way but I’m not sure I would have done this with you if I’d known I’d have to see you again.
Teresa: So that’s what you were looking for?
Betty: I wasn’t looking for anything. But I’m glad you found me.

All of this is incredibly endearing and beautiful, their intimacy, the way that Betty’s previous alienation has suddenly led to this completely unexpected and easy feeling of companionship and closeness. 

And Kate hears, because her door doesn’t close easily (this is how Kate and Betty first met, because Kate’s door wouldn’t close, and she needed it to close so desperately). It takes her a moment longer to lock it, Ivan’s already ahead, and she hears these noises from Betty’s room and realizes and it takes her a moment to put up that smile for Ivan that has nothing to do with the way she really feels, and everything with whom she is pretending to be. She was a whole new person, on that stage. She was herself, but only for a bit. 

Eugene Corbett is the character that can’t be still, because moving is the only way he can keep the scary thoughts at bay. His concerns about his own humanity aren’t theoretical anymore, as James’ were – he’s at a point, after experiencing the horrors of war, where he’s convinced himself that he is now impossibly different from everybody else, someone who kills people, so returning to the normality of life not directly affected by war has become utterly impossible. 

Lorna: What is in you, it’s not normal.
Gene: Who says I’m normal? Hm? I kill people, ma. I look through the dark at a man’s face, and I shoot him dead. So if I wanna whoop it up to forget, I damn well will.
Lorna: There’s doctors and they have treatments.
Gene: Treatments? I already got one. It’s called going back. I’ll see you when the war is over.

He can’t even relate the stories his father finally, in an act of bravery, shares with him to help him, because his experience of war is so completely different from his: Bob fought in the trenches of WW1, but Gene is “up in my glass bubble, no mud no blood”. His experience of killing people is strangely distant. The only way his life is making sense anymore is when he isn’t being careful, when he is risking it, when his “heart’s in his throat”, and the only way Lorna will be able to keep him is by sending him away to a place that he understands. There are so many different ways of losing someone in a war. Gene steps off that ledge because his mother tells him to, and gives him permission to return to the battle. 

After their shared experience of talking Gene down from the roof of VicMu, Lorna delivers a telegram to Gladys – after explaining to her how to make an omelette, which is the first time that she’s ever acted as a sort of mother-figure to Gladys – and Gladys immediately realizes what this means, because she’s just spoken to James and he didn’t mention a telegram, and he is a soldier in a different country, so this is how she would get that message. She knows what’s going to happen, and she’s unable to read it herself, so she asks Lorna. They just spoke, and said they loved each other, and Gladys bit her tongue not to share the one thing she so desperately needed to say. 

There are moments in shows that feel so painfully true to life that it’s incredibly hard to write about them. Gladys realizes that she burnt that omelette, and throws it out, and starts making a new one, and Lorna kindly and quietly explains to her how it works, because this is all she can do, wait for the terrible truth to set in. Gladys tries to do this one thing right – making omelettes with the spatula set that she won spending money she didn’t have, because “a gal can cook wherever she wants” – and then she finally breaks down, and cries, and the unlikely person comforting her is Lorna Corbett, whose way of holding on to her beloved son was sending him back to the war that just killed James Dunn. 

Random notes: 

Meanwhile, the personal responsible for the literal fireworks is one Marco Moretti. He purchases him from a friend, who has suspicious insights into the detainment camp Marco’s father is held in, asks about the TNT used in VicMu and makes a weird comment about “new countries”. I think I have a vague idea where this is going but Marco sure doesn’t, because he’s just realized that just like other characters in this episode, he’ll stop worrying so much and live his life and Vera’s right there, watching him be more happy than we’ve seen him in months, and they are both so adorable (I think I also know where this is leading…)

I really like that we get a look into Gene’s confused perception of reality – an intimate insight into his troubled mind – while the only way to figure out what Kate is going through is to try and make sense of the moments when her façade drops and she finds herself unable to keep up the fiction (in her conversation with Betty, maybe during the conversation with Leon, in her performance on stage, and finally, when she hears Betty and Teresa through the door). With Gene, all we see is the fire, with Kate, only the smoke.

Watching Teresa’s gaydar work out Betty was glorious. Thank you, show.

Teresa/Theresa/Bond Girl. I'll eventually go back and correct it if I'm wrong but from the perspective of the reviewer, not once mentioning the name of a major character in an episode is a bit mean??

HIM OR HER??

Honestly, Betty could clothe an entire regiment with her knitting. SHE NEEDS NEW NEEDLES!! 

Lorna warns Gladys that Gene makes “a Sherman tank look like a tricycle”.

Gladys: MEN.
Betty: Princess! My point exactly. 

The way Gladys talks to Eugene still cracks me up. “I spoke to James I’ll have you know.”

This episode features a glorious scene where Lorna explains women’s magazines to Bob and it’s secretly one of the loveliest tiny things ever. The way they laugh about their shared funny stories makes my day.

Rollie Witham, that sly fox, talks about how “freedom costs money” and gives a whole speech about Gladys’ and James’ sacrifice, “lovers investing in their bond, deferring easy happiness knowing that greater rewards await”. Considering how this episode ends… 

Dee Dee: I have met so many soldiers on this tour and each and every one of them has touched me. 

So has Gladys Witham, Dee Dee.

See you in March!!

GUYS...

This one screencap alone deserves an essay.

Bomb Girls - I won’t suffer silently for the sake of appearances.

Bomb Girls: 2x05 The Harder We Fight. 

Carol: I feel the position is perfectly suited to a girl of my standing. 

Vera: Or maybe the position is more suited to the person who, while actually standing, re-organized the entire filing system. 

Carol: I helped. 

Vera: You licked labels. 

Carol: And I was tasting glue for days.

Behind this conversation, Carol and Vera’s reasons for why they are best suited for a promotion to office manager at VicMu, is an argument about being someone vs. actually doing things, status vs. merit. Carol thinks her social standing automatically means she is qualified to fill the position (if you remember how VicMu functions, it’s why she’s up in the office and not downstairs working the line in the first place). Vera argues that she has proven that she is the best for the job by doing the work, applying herself, introducing innovation, showing initiative. It’s a very personal conflict between the two (Carol has been worried about Vera infringing on her territory since the beginning of the season), but also a reflection of a greater change in culture that is about to happen. Fighting against an established regime, insisting on the need for a change, always comes with a price. 

Gladys’ struggle is the other side of the coin, in a way – hers is not about corporate culture, but she has been caught between enjoying the privileges of being born into wealth, like Carol, and suffering under the expectations that come with her social status, since the beginning. Vera fights against the exclusivity of a self-reproducing upper class that assigns positions according to birth (she is the outsider, trying to break in); Gladys questions the expectations that she, as part of that social class, has to meet, and acts up against them in different ways. Gene Corbett actively positioned himself “outside” when he pointed out that James was born into command rather than “earning it the right way” like he did. He is everything that James isn’t, and being with him gives her the chance to act out against both her family and Lorna, but at the same time, and that’s where the show is so smart, he is a connection to James, because Gladys is currently frustrated by the fact that she can’t speak to her fiancé. She can’t share James’ experiences, he and they are out of her reach, so asking Gene about what the war is like is the closest she can get to her fiancé (and at the same time, the way Gene speaks about the war – like it’s a great adventure, without the profound concern for his humanity that James has – just makes it clear how different he is from him). There is also a moment when he is showing her his scars, and it’s giggly and fun up to the point where he reveals the ones on his legs from his plane getting hit, when Gladys once again realizes how serious this war is, and what damage it does (except obviously the real damage the war did to Eugene Corbett isn’t visible on his skin).

Gene: Tired of being a good girl?
Gladys: I told myself it was to bug your mother, but the truth is that…
Gene: You like me.
Gladys: I like me, when I’m with you. That’s all I know.

It’s not just about defying her parents’ expectations, it’s also about the fact that the war – the surroundings of the factory, the new people she is meeting on a daily basis – provide her with a kind of freedom that she didn’t have before. I think Gladys is at the beginning of something, and she’ll need to do a lot of daring things to get there (and yes, stupid things too). For now, Gene is the person that dares her to drink beer out of a bottle and go skinny dipping – eventually, it’ll turn out that he is driven by his trauma, that he can’t stop himself from seeking out danger – but right at this moment, it’s about how different this day at the beach is from her last one with James (also at the beach, probably intentionally). 

When Carol gossips about Vera Burr, the things she says about her just happen to apply to Gladys as well. This is the thing that happened to Gladys: she’s changed so much that she’s unable to connect with her oldest friend. She wouldn’t be able to talk to any of this to her. 

Gladys: I don’t see your problems. Why judge what makes another person happy.
Carol: Alley cat who swig beers out of bottles and sleep with anything in uniforms should not be angling to be our next office manager.
Gladys: You’re a snob, Carol Demers.
Carol: Well, at least I’ll be able to wear white on my wedding day.

Gladys goes on a reckless drive with Gene, doesn’t realize the extent of his damage, is caught with him by a police man, and ends up driving home with her mother, while he’s arrested. 

Mrs Witham: What on earth were you thinking? Because when these wonderful feelings pass you will be left with nothing but a few tawdry memories and your name in the mud.
Gladys: I don’t care what people think. I don’t want your life, mother. I won’t suffer silently for the sake of appearances.
Mrs Witham: Keeping this from the press and your father is the last act of kindness I do for you. From now on you’re on your own.

“Suffering silently”, not as in “being cheated on”, but as in living your whole life as if you’re constantly observed by a judgemental crowd, always keeping your feelings in check. And yet, Gladys probably doesn’t realize what it means to be completely without the privileges she’s enjoyed all her life. Maybe it feels like a victory for the moment, being rid of the golden cage, but there’ll eventually consequences she might not be prepared for.

And then there’s Betty McRae, engaged in a more physical struggle than the other two, against a newly recruited worker. In the context of VicMu, the production line represents the one place in the factory where merit matters more than anything else. It’s not really relevant where any of the girls come from; ultimately what matters is how quickly and how safely they can make bombs. Betty, maybe more than anyone else, truly has made this her home (like in the introductory speech all the new workers get). I think the severity with which she meets Reggie is easily explained by her relationship to the factory: this is the one thing in her life that works out. She’s VicMu’s best worker (a compliment that’s even greater because it comes from Lorna Corbett, who doesn’t seem like the kind of person that would be particularly inclined to make them without reason). It provides her with the chance of maybe one day buying her own home, and living on her own terms. Part of her outrage over the way the film director represented her in Bringing Up Bombshell was over the fact that it so misrepresented her identity, but it also made a mockery of being a valuable and focused worker (if it’s just for the moment, until the boys come back home). She’s earned her position through hard work, and she has enough experience to train new workers – and yet, Reggie questions and disrespects that knowledge and experience at every turn. You only have to look at Betty’s reaction to Vernon’s letter – a combination of being worried about Kate and seeing it as a threat to her job – to predict how she will react to her merit being questioned by a seventeen year old that has just arrived from a washing machine factory in Amherst. Reggie insists that her hour-long training taught her more about building bombs than Betty learned in years actually working in the factory (“You’re gonna wish you knew half as much as us new girls.”), turns down her advice on pouring the Amatol with more care, and then proceeds to insult her in a way that is perfectly suited to making her angry (calling her “My Führer”), if any of the things she told the German soldier in the previous episode were actually true. 

Betty: You got a lousy attitude, you know that?
Reggie: We get the job done, and that scares you.
Betty: No, what scares me is that you don’t even know how much you don’t know.

At this point, she doesn’t have a reason yet apart from distrust (because Reggie’s “cocky and reckless”) – it’s mainly a reaction to Reggie’s attitude – but once Gladys hurts herself on a casing, all her worst fears are confirmed (plus, remember, Betty isn’t just territorial about the factory, she’s also protective about her friends). 

It’s perfect that Lorna is the one trying to rein Betty in – Lorna, who respects Betty for her work, who probably sees herself in her a little bit, because they are both so focused and take their job so seriously. Lorna reminds Betty that they “have enough enemies in this war” without antagonizing other workers, and that Betty’s “meant to be a role model” – and of course, part of Betty’s reaction is her frustration over everything else that is currently going disastrously wrong, and Reggie is just the final insult to push her over the edge.

There’s also Reggie herself to consider, not just the role she plays in Betty’s story, but the fact that she’s been on her own since she was fourteen, has taken care of herself since then, and has never gotten anything from anyone else. Her attitude is understandable. Her reluctance to take Betty’s advice is understandable. Gladys is the first to point out that Betty and Reggie seem to have a lot in common (the chip on their shoulder, for one), but Lorna realizes it to an extent where she is willing to house Reggie (it’s implied that she lost housing because of a racist landlady).

Vera suggest a mixer to help the new girls get along with the old ones. 

Vera: I worked that line and I know that if these girls don’t know each other, then they won’t like each other, and if they don’t like each other, they won’t respect each other, and if they don’t respect each other, they can never ever work together.

Carol doesn’t respect Vera because from her perspective, Vera is trying to intrude somewhere she doesn’t belong (but Carol has no real experience or qualification to justify her idea that she deserves any of this more, it’s only having been there first). Betty and Reggie don’t respect each other because each of them insists that their personal experience and knowledge is worth more.

Oranges and punches are thrown. Betty threatens to have her fired, Lorna talks her down, explaining to her that Reggie has had a hard time (“Who hasn’t”, responds Betty). 

Lorna: She made a mistake, Betty. We start rooting out every girl who’s slipping up we’re looking at an empty factory. […] Just remember that sometimes the harder we fight, the worse we make it.

And here’s the thing: I think Lorna knows about Betty. Maybe not the specifics of it, but she understands at least that Betty is different, but in a way, she almost identifies with it. I didn’t realize until the third viewing that maybe, Betty just doesn’t take that advice when she sort-of makes up with Reggie, coming to an uneasy peace where none of them really gives up any ground. Maybe she takes that advice into the later conversation with Kate, about Ivan. 

Betty and Reggie’s fight is physical, but they come to an uneasy peace by the end. Carol’s strategy is much more calculated and mean. She tells Donald, one of the workers, to reveal to everyone in the factory that Vera is lining up to meet soldiers. This is the difference between Betty and Carol – Betty stops. Betty accepts Lorna’s advice, but Carol doesn’t have anyone in her life who would realize that she is out of control and intervene (Gladys is joyriding with Eugene Corbett). Glorious, wonderful Vera totally owns the moment, but it takes its toll. 

Donald: I may not be a soldier, but if I give you these, will you give me twenty minutes in the store room?
Vera: Twenty minutes, Donald? Word is, you’ve never gone longer than three. Keep em. They look better on you anyway.

She walks away to the cheers of everyone, shaming Donald and Carol for their attempt to shame her, but she is still crushed by the fact that anyone would be willing to do this to her. Marco approaches her to provide comfort (for Vera, it immediately becomes about the scars on her face, and the camera captures her beautifully, trying to hide in the shadows, until Marco stops her).

Vera: Those gifts. They’re like love letters. And they help me remember nights when somebody made me feel beautiful. I’m not ashamed of any of it.
Marco: Then why are you crying?

In the end, Vera doesn’t win completely: Akins decides that he can’t give her the promotion after what happened at the mixer. But it’s a small step towards justice, because Carol doesn’t get the job either, and if anything, Akins seems disgusted by the way she acted. Vera gloating over that victory is probably the most glorious thing that has ever happened on this show.

Someone else isn’t winning any victories. Talking about things going terribly, awfully wrong in Betty McRae’s life, I think a good way to describe the default expression on her face is “I would laugh at the absurdity and irony of my life if this weren’t the feelings equivalent of a bison stampede running over my heart”. Betty has just decided to be true to her heart and stop pretending she has feelings for Ivan; meanwhile Kate has really set her eyes on finding a boyfriend (and it’s significant that feelings don’t even come into this – whenever Kate speaks about it, it’s about “hooking” a guy, flirting, the technicalities of it, it’s never about emotions). In one of the most tragically hilarious scenes ever, Marco tries to improve her skills, and, dork that he is, asks Kate to try on Betty (after she fails miserably to demonstrate her skills on him, because he is Marco Moretti, and not even Kate could pull that off with a serious face). Here’s how it looks in writing: 

Marco: Practice on Betty.
Betty: You’re an idiot, I’m not a guy.
Kate: Would you help a friend out? Come on! Say something funny.
Betty: Something funny.

More importantly, here’s what’s going on on their faces: Kate’s just falls apart when Marco makes the suggestion, because they are acting like everything’s normal (she is acting, more than anything), but now Marco is asking them to act out the very thing that none of them can talk about openly, because they aren’t allowed. It’s a look of sorrow. And then there’s the double horror of Betty’s life, of “I’m not a guy” (which is exactly why she’s even at this point with Kate, because it’s all wrong), and “help a friend out”, the way both of them are clinging to their friendship because it’s all that they are allowed and it’s already pretty impressive and special that they aren’t doing everything to avoid each other after what happened, that they are still so close. Kate’s eyes flutter, right before Betty says “something funny”, and then she laughs, artificially and loudly, and punches her in the shoulder, and the moment passes. Marco’s happy about the result. Next stop: playing hard to get!

Because this is what it comes down to: if this episode is about being something (by birth) and achieving something (through your actions), then Vera, by insisting that her actions are more important than what she was born into is a way to rise in the corporate hierarchy of VicMu, an opportunity. She believes that she deserves the promotion because she is the better worker, and who her parents are, and who she sleeps with in her spare time, is of absolutely no interest to anyone but herself. For Vera, it means freedom and possibility. 

But applied to Kate, who argues that acting is more important than being, it’s not about a career, or success, it’s about dealing with emotions and feelings. It’s the idea that by acting, she can somehow escape who she is. She chooses to pretend, to perform, which is exactly why feelings play no part in her attempts to find a boyfriend. It’s about the surface of things, appearing as if everything is normal. Her attempts at flirting finally work – with none other than Ivan. It’s significant that they initially connect over Betty. Kate says “I was sorry to hear about you and Betty” – and chooses just the right moment to hold his hand.  

This is what pretending to be normal means to Kate: She tries to reshape her relationship with Betty according to what is expected of two women who are friends. Kate and Betty can’t talk about the kiss, but they’ve created this space of friendship where intimacy closeness is still possible. It allows them to sit on the bed together, because Kate is painting Betty’s nails, as friends do. They are basically holding hands, but it’s mitigated through this ritual approved by society, which is exactly what they’ve been doing for months now. Acting like everything’s normal isn’t just about covering up their part in Vernon’s death, it’s re-interpreting their entire relationship to fit into what is accepted. Kate can’t even begin to think about what she is really feeling for Betty, but she can go through all the motions of just being friends, and friends talk about crushes and boys and dresses and paint each other’s nails. 

Kate: There’s something that I didn’t mean to happen happened with Ivan, somehow I flirted with him and then he went and asked me to go out with him but I won’t, not if you don’t want me to.
Betty: He’s a nice guy. You could do a lot worse.
Kate: Are you sure it’s okay.
[…]
Okay then. Help me pick out a new dress.

I think part of this is Betty sticking to Lorna’s advice, that she’ll make things worse if she fights harder for Kate (who is doing exactly what Gladys told her mother she wouldn't: suffering for the sake of appearances). And the other thing is that within the constraints of where they are at this point, and what society allows them to feel, the closest thing Kate will ever have to being with Betty is being with someone who has feelings for Betty as well (and maybe the same is even true for Ivan – there is this strange moment when he first realizes that Kate is flirting with him). In the end, I don’t think that this will work for either of them. Kate carefully removes a bit of paint from Betty’s fingertip in the most intimate and tender way possible. They aren’t able to express their feelings for each other in words but it’s all in the eyes and their movements.

Random notes: 

It’s not obvious from the review but this was a FUN episode (Gladys Witham WON’T BE PASSING ANY ORANGES TODAY!!). It speaks to the quality of the show that fun is swiftly followed by getting your heart ripped out.

Also if the look of abject terror in Lorna’s face when she sees Gene on the fence doesn’t break your heart… There are so many ways you can lose people in this war, it’s not just death. The episode shows her performing as a mother in different situations – there’s her appeal to Mrs Witham as a mother, the way she takes care of both Betty and Reggie, and of course the heart-breaking realization in the end, that her actual son didn’t come back safe and sound.

A summary of the kind of day Betty McRae's having: 

The scene of Betty, Kate and Gladys arriving in the car was some serious Clueless 1942 material. 

Betty totally checks out all the new workers with the most appreciative look possible. I think Kate notices Betty noticing, but the cut comes too quickly to really tell (“We need all the help we can get” indeed).

It’s interesting to compare Betty’s reaction Kate’s mistakes in the first episode and how she treats Reggie entirely differently because Reggie isn’t apologetic about her actions (and denies them). Plus there’s the fact that she isn’t Kate…

Gladys: I doubt my fiancé would like another man behind the wheel.
Gene: See, now I wanna drive it even more.

Not really talking about cars anymore, are we.

I really like how she insists on calling him by his full name (“Eugene Corbett, you low-down lout.”), as if belittling him in this specific way and constantly reminding herself whose son he is would help. 

Just as a reminder of what the Gladys-Lorna business is about, because the episode had a lot of throwbacks to season one: in an attempt to remove Gladys from the line, Mrs Witham asked Lorna to have her fired (in exchange for paying for/helping with Sheila’s med school), so Lorna started rumours that Gladys was pregnant. The episode did a really good job at showing the strange connection Mrs Witham and Lorna have, but also the endless amounts of distrust based on their class differences (Mrs Witham is worried about her daughter’s reputation, Lorna thinks that rich people like the Withams “only use people like us”).

Lorna: Your daughter is dating my son.
Mrs Witham: Gladys is an adult, I’m sure she knows what she’s doing.
Lorna: You don’t believe that any more than I do.
Mrs Witham: Even if that were true, what do you expect me to do?
Lorna: Rein in your daughter.
Mrs Witham: Why don’t you harness your son?
Lorna: Your daughter’s engaged. This will come down harder on her than it will on him, we both know that.
Mrs Witham: Disappointing, isn’t it. Realizing your child isn’t the person you’d hope they’d become, and you have absolutely no control over it.
Lorna: I’m a mother, Adele, defending my own. I had hoped to find the same in you.

That last bit gets me every time, the moment when Lorna switches to calling Mrs Witham by her first name because she is speaking to her as a fellow mother, as someone who should be just concerned about protecting her children as she is. 

I really like that the initial appeal that her mother makes to her isn’t about the scandal and the rumours at all, it’s about the very personal effect that her infidelity will have on James – which she knows, from the other side of things, from being cheated on by Gladys’ father. 

Mrs Witham: You can justify it all you want, tell yourself you’ll be discreet, but once you cross that line, when James comes back home to you he’ll know. He’ll see it in your face, feel it in your touch. And it’ll cut through him like shrapnel.
Gladys: I know what daddy did to you
Mrs Witham: No you don’t. But keep it up, and you will.

Also with the shrapnel thing, because she’s just seen the effects of literal shrapnel on bodies, but the damage the war did to Gene Corbett isn’t physical, and the damage she’s about to inflict on James isn’t either, and all of this is just really fantastically written. 

Not really sure yet what to make of Marco’s encounter with the detective, who reads the transcripts of his visit at the detainment camp back to him and informs him that his father’s release was denied. (it does lead to an ominous “Go ahead, keep treating me like the enemy, you just might get what you’re looking for.”)

Akins: That’s the problem with you women. Too damn emotional.

Akins: And you want me to throw these dizzy hens a party?

STUFF IT.

Talking about Marco (who's really been growing on me this season). I think the moment that made me laugh the most in this episode is when he excitedly and very emotionally recites the sexy passage from Song of Solomon and then oh so proudly looks at his audience of two for applause  - and then the moment turns almost immediately because just like when Gene asked Kate to dance, when Betty took her to Leon’s sermon, something is wrong exactly because this should speak to Kate, but it doesn’t (because all her father ever did was preach the hateful passages, the one denying her every bit of freedom imaginable). This is what Bomb Girls does at its best: you laugh with (or more accurately, at) Marco, and then you see Kate’s absolutely crestfallen face because she would like to be the person who takes solace from this so much, but isn’t. 

Silver Linings Playbook / Celeste & Jesse Forever

Imagine a film that makes you unlearn some of the lies that Hollywood has been telling you about love for your entire life, a film that is more concerned about the mental state of its characters than the way the audience would expect the story to go. Two people, both emotionally fucked up for different reasons, meet, form an unlikely alliance based on dance lessons, and fall in love in the process. Except that's not really what we see: what Silver Linings Playbook does is follow Pat (Bradley Cooper), who's just left a psych ward against the advice of his doctors. He tries to rebuild his life after finding his wife cheating on him with another teacher working at their high school, who he nearly killed after walking in on them. He follows a strict code, based on what he thinks will eventually make his wife take him back - except his rages remain uncontrollably destructive, and his obsession with getting his old life back (as a new and improved man) clearly stands in the way of him actually getting better mentally. Everything changes when he meets Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence), who recently lost her husband in a car accident. They are both extremely broken people, and their initial connection is based on using each other - he her to deliver a letter to his wife, since he can't approach her directly, she him to practice for a dance competition she wants to take part in - but something real sneaks into their relationship, because she understands him better than he does himself, and she heals some of the wounds from losing someone she loved by falling in love with someone else. None of this is ever verbalized, it's all in the way they look at each other, the way his attitude changes subtly, the way his rages that are so utterly destructive to his family (because Silver Linings Playbook doesn't hesitate to show the brutality of mental illness, the way it almost tears his family apart when his parents can't deal with it) stop. Tiffany remains elusive, since the film is focused on Pat, but has the kind of energy that forces everyone to focus on her whenever she appears. She stubbornly refuses to behave the way she is expected to in reaction to her loss, and reacts with a stubborn fury and anger whenever she's confronted with other people's preconceptions of grieving. He stubbornly refused to behave in any other way than the one he thinks will get him closer to the life he thought he had before, except things change, people change, and maybe none of it was real anyway (asked for why he is so desperate to get his wife back, he responds that she is the most beautiful woman he's ever been with). Silver Linings Playbook is about two people helping each other heal and falling in love in the process, because love shouldn't want to make you become a new person and shed your skin, it should help you grow into the person that you were all along.

Celeste & Jesse Forever gets the entire conventional romantic comedy over with during the credits in the beginning. Two people fall in love, marry, are a couple - but when the film begins, they aren't any more. Except for Celeste (Rashida Jones) and Jesse (Adam Samberg) it makes so little difference whether they are a couple or not that the audience only finds out that they aren't from their concerned best friends, who think that two people about to get divorced should not spend every minute together and behave like two people who are still in the process of falling in love. They both seem arrested in the position they were in while married - Celeste is a successful forecaster of trends, career-driven and focused, Jesse is vague and without any clear aims in life except maybe finding the perfect wave. They are best friends, comfortable in their shared routines and insider jokes that nobody else understands. They are so comfortable that neither of them can move on - but then life forces Jesse to when one of his one night stands is pregnant, and he decides to step up and be a father to the child. Suddenly, their roles are reversed, Jesse is driven and focused and changes in the process, becomes a person no longer completely accessible, as their shared history starts to disappear and break up into different paths. Celeste & Jesse Forever is ultimately an incredibly smart story about a woman who has to figure out who she is outside the context of her one defining relationship when she realizes that things are not always going to stay the same. Rashida Jones is amazing in this role, portraying the stagnation, the downward spiral of someone who is suddenly without a clear focal point in her life. Like Silver Linings Playbook, Celeste & Jesse Forever asks questions about what shape relationships need to take in order to not smother the people involved in it, and what happens when things change dramatically (and how people adapt to radical change). Being best friends is the hard part, but the hardest part, for Celeste, is figuring out how to hold on to her best friend when he is no longer her lover. Like Celeste says to the teenage pop star (Emma Roberts) she initially approaches with all the prejudice in the world ("contempt before investigation") - It never does get better. "But you do".

Silver Linings Playbook (2012), directed by David O. Russell, starring Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert De Niro, Jacki Weaver, Chris Tucker, Anupam Kher, John Ortiz, Shea Whigham, Julia Stiles.

Celeste & Jesse Forever (2012), directed by Lee Toland Krieger, starring Rashida Jones, Andy Samberg, Ari Graynor, Eric Christian Olsen, Elijah Wood.

Reading List: Jänner

Fiction: 

Glen Duncan: Talulla Rising.
George R.R. Martin: A Storm of Swords.
George R.R. Martin: A Feast for Crows.

Theatre: 

Elfriede Jelinek: Schatten (Eurydike sagt) (Akademietheater, Regie: Matthias Hartmann)

Films: 

Some Days Are Better Than  Others (2010, Matt McCormick).
Joven y alocada (2012, Marialy Rivas).
Fabulous: The Story of Queer Cinema (2006, Lisa Ades, Lesli Klainberg).
Love Me (2012, Rick Bota).
Struck By Lightning (2012, Brian Dannelly).
Silver Linings Playbook (2012, David O'Russell).
Celeste and Jesse Forever (2012, Lee Toland Krieger).
Your Sister's Sister (2011, Lynn Shelton)

Shows: 

Twin Peaks (with Fire Walk With Me).