A Statement About Jim and Pam

In the spirit of being completely "behind" in my reviewing, writing, commenting, etc., I am now going to talk a little bit about The Office season finale. But first, a digression! Try not to act surprised.

The joy of living with one's (super cool) grandparents is that you can introduce them (or one of them) to super cool shows that they haven't seen yet, and in return you get to revisit old favorites. I highly recommend this course of action.

So we watched 30 Rock and have just moved on to Season 1 of The Office. Which brings me full circle to The Office season finale.

It is so painfully cute to watch Jim and Pam in these opening seasons, especially knowing where they end up-- and makes it that much holy-fraktasm-jump-up-and-down-able when they find out that they are pregnant at the end of Season 5. Eeek!

I think it can be argued that these two compose the most healthy, functional, and normal relationship on network television. They are madly in love, have real-life problems, and are not perfect people by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, it's been horrifyingly indicated that Jim Halpert may be turning into Michael Scott, and if he doesn't jump out of his slacker haze, Dunder Mifflin Paper will actually become his career. Not just his job.

Not that Pam wants to change him. Quite the contrary, she wants him to be happy, just as he did when he sent her off to her art program in New York at the beginning of this season. These two are not strictly driven by any specific ambition except to be together. They want to be happy, healthy, and together. Not much more you can ask for than that.

As a couple they go through everything that normal couples go through-- unwanted separation, home purchasing (one of the scariest, sweetest moments ever is when Jim buys his parents' house-- without talking to Pam first), vague threats from outside parties (hello Karen, and dude from New York!). It's not the nature of The Office to show us anything about their domestic or sex lives, yet somehow we know that they are perfectly, er, satisfied on both counts, and we don't mind only seeing their relatively circumspect office interaction.

Personally I can't wait to see what comes next for them, and wouldn't be surprised to learn that we return from the real-time summer vacation to find that they eloped during the break. In the meantime, though, I'm going to seriously enjoy starting again from the beginning, and seeing just how far these two crazy kids have come.

A Statement About UP, But Really Partly Cloudy

So UP rocks, sparkling reviews, Oscar shoo-in.

Blahdy blahdy blah blah.

I don't really think you need a post telling you all of that, since there have been thousands so far, so instead I am going to use this space to mention the less-talked about Partly Cloudy, the short that appears before UP in the theater and will undoubtedly be nominated for an Oscar of its own.

Let's just get it out of the way to start that for me, Pixar can pretty much do no wrong in all aspects, but especially especially in the short film arena. In fact, I was almost more excited to see the short than to see the feature. Not going to lie.

Partly Cloudy is the story of how babies are made-- all kinds of babies-- by the clouds and carried down to Earth by storks. The pretty clouds produce pretty babies; kittens, puppies, chicks, humans, while there is one lonely, dark cloud below who creates the more-or-less undesirable babies; porcupines, sharks, rams, electric eels. And this cloud's poor stork is harried, bruised, battered, stabbed and swallowed on a regular basis. The conflict comes when our cloud produces what is obviously a baby shark, and the stork takes off in a panic to one of the friendlier clouds. A friendly cloud who has already proven itself to produce football equipment. The cloud gets upset by the abandonment, but soon recovers when his friend returns with pads and a helmet to keep him safe while he carries the shark down to its mom.

What can I say about this film? Per usual, frakking glorious. Just a little parable about how sometimes you have to do crappy things, but if you have a friend who can get you through (a loyal friend, natch) it'll be all good in the end. Teared with joy, sent a copy over to Lady Liberty to say je t'aime.

Up next? Probably a breakdown of a little film called Tranformers, which I will probably see at midnight, or at least on opening day, with a certain Transformers geek that I don't live with. And I'm not talking about my brother.

A Statement About How I Met Your Mother

Yes, again. Get over it.

So we were displeased with the finale (well not displeased... disappointed), but after many more reviews of previous shows, we (you know... me) have a couple of more things to share about what has to be the most underrated show on television.

Similar to the aforementioned Gavin & Stacy, the show has created such a strong ensemble simply because the most obvious people are not in the driver's seat.

It turns out that Alyson Hannigan is a pretty huge deal--cult actress with comic book likenesses and everything, and the woman can act. The temptation to put her front and center in anything would be strong, but is something the casting directors of HIMYM were wise to avoid. Her strength lies in being a supporting player, in maintaining the heart of the show, and in bringing the main characters down a peg or two when necessary (see: every interaction ever between Willow Rosenberg and Buffy Summers). To have put her in the role of Robin, the more-or-less main "love interest" on HIMYM would have been a colossal misuse of Hannigan's powers.

Ditto for Jason Segel, who plays Hannigan's on-screen husband Marshall. To look at him on the show, one would have no idea that he is one of the Apatow Gods of Comedy, and that he had one of the more vulgar and disturbing roles in Knocked Up. Not to mention the fact that he wrote, starred in, and did full-frontal nudity in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. His supporting role in HIMYM is in no way a reflection of his talent, and does no injustice to his ability to be a very very funny man. Instead he is allowed to create a character (a character, I suspect, who is closer to his actual personality than any of his other personas) and build it with his own specifications, without any of the pressure of having to actually carry the show.

This post would go on for far, far too long if I started discussing the merits of Neil Patrick Harris, but suffice it to say he's established a new Gold Standard for the term entertainer in the past year.

When the five leads in How I Met Your Mother sit around their favorite bar table, you know you're in for a laugh riot (or at the very least, a good giggle). It's hard to believe, too, that the people sitting around the table playing those characters are legends in the making.