Red Dwarf and that Music Quiz
Jan. 26th, 2004 10:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatWell, bored out of my mind tonight, so decided to watch the last three episodes on the Red Dwarf Season 1 DVD. I'd watched the first three episodes last week.
Interesting series. Each episode is approximately half an hour or 30 minutes in length and has a laugh track - so it's basically a situation comedy series. Not being a person who is particularily partial to situation comedies or even overly fond of them - for a couple of reasons, which I'll attempt to explain since so many of my friends adore the art form, this series was interesting for me to watch.
Also really despise laugh tracks. For two reasons, 1)the laughter often overlaps the dialogue making it difficult to hear and 2)I often find myself laughing when the laugh track isn't. I told you I was contrary. It's almost as if whomever is producing the show doesn't trust the audience to laugh in the right place or find it funny, so puts a laugh track in to gently persuade them.
Another problem I have with situation comedies, is most situation comedy writers don't trust their audience to get the joke, highly insecure for some reason, and let their jokes go on for far too long. Almost as if they are afraid if they don't keep hammering us over the head with the punch line - we won't get it. I always want to bash them over the head and say - "I got it! It was funny ten minutes ago! Now it's annoying! Can we move on please? Thank you." Humor is a delicate thing, you can't over-do it or it will fall flat. Subletly always works best.
British comedies don't make this mistake as often as American ones do. But they aren't immune.
Also - I admit I have an odd sense of humor. Very dry wit. I find things funny that other people don't and am often annoyed by things that others find humorous. Jonathan Swift and absurdist playwrites for instance amuse me. The Three Stooges do not. I cringe whenever I watch them. Benny Hill made me laugh. Monty Python makes me laugh. Mr. Been? Makes me ill. I can't watch him. Austin Powers? It depends, the physical humor turns me off, the subtle jokes aimed at the spy genre, very funny.
How does this relate to Red Dwarf? Well Red Dwarf seems to be an odd combination of absurdist situational humor and annoying physical humor. It's almost as if the writers decided to combine the absurdist/existenalist comedy of Monty Python with the gross-out pratfalls and bantering of The Three Stooges, providing me with cringe worthy and geniuinely amusing moments. Very odd combination. I find myself torn between fast-forwarding and rewinding at any given moment.
What is the story about? David Lister, a lowly technician on a work station in space, called Red Dwarf, refuses to turn in his pregnant pet cat (cats and other creatures are strictly forbidden in space) and is punished by the Captain and put in stasis for the remainder of their voyage. During the trip, Lister's anal retentive roommate Rimmer screws up and an explosion kills everyone including Rimmer. 3 million years in the future, Hal, a somewhat senile ship computer, lets Lister out of stasis and resurrects Rimmer, as a hologram to keep Lister company. When Lister asks Hal why he picked Rimmer and not one of his close friends or the girl he had a crush on, Hal states he figures Rimmer will do a better job of keeping him sane. The only other person on board is an evolved humanoid descendant of the pet cat - also a guy.
(So yes, we have the Three Stooges..in space, where there is nothing but rocks flying by and a senile somewhat sarcastic computer named Hallie to keep them company.)
Of the episodes I've seen so far: the best are without a doubt Future Echoes and Waiting for God - these two episodes actually have something interesting to say and rely more on absurdism and situational humor. Future Echoes - is about the characters dealing with future representations of themsevles and whether they exist within the time space continium. Waiting for God - through the cat descendant, the writers do a lovely job of making fun of religion and our reliance on religion and use of religion to justify treating each other like crap. Also a really wonderful satire on Battlestar Galatica hidden in there somewhere. Dave Lister discovers that his cat Frankenstein was so thankful about him giving his life to save her and her babies, that she made him a god and decided that the place he talked to her about was heaven. His plan had been to leave Red Dwarf at the end of the voyage, travel to Figi with his cat and set up a hot dog and donut stand with funny arrow hats. The cat people turned this dream into well heaven and fought over what color the hats should be. They had wars over 1000s of years regarding the color of the hats - blue or red.
Lister sighs - that's a crock, they were supposed to be green. It goes on from there. I rewinded for this episode.
The worste of the episodes? Me2 and Balance of Power - more three stooges than absurdist dry wit.
Also the jokes went on a bit too long.
I actually enjoyed the first episode, The End, very funny in places with subtle wit. Not too over the top. Confidence and Paranoia - an interesting episode where Confidence and Paranoia literally come to life during one of Lister's fever dreams.
There's a rather funny moment between Lister and Confidence outside the ship.
Red Dwarf is similar to The Prisoner, in that the characters outside of the lead are fairly archetypal in nature. Unlike the Prisoner, they actually have names and distinct personalities and we see them in every episode of the series. The Prisoner is a Jungian spoof on spy shows and Red Dwarf is a Freudian spoof on science fiction space dramas. Both deal with the existentialist view that we are alone in the universe and must find a way of handling it. Red Dwarf has four main characters: Dave Lister - the central character, his friend Rimmer who is a hologram and represents his ego, Rimmer can't touch anything or eat, yet he is egotistical and constantly striving to be better than everyone else, Hallie - the ship's computer, is clearly the super-ego, he runs the ship, navigates through the expanse of space, and lets people know what the overall structure is, then there's Cat - the id, who just eats, dresses cool, declares things are mine, and prances about all day. He'd be having sex too if there were any female cats aboard. The interaction between the characters is basically like watching a comedy set inside someone's psyche, which elevates the comedy above the vast majority of situational comedies.
Certainly worth a rental.
The Music Quiz - hmmm, I apparently know more about music than I or anyone else expected. Yay me! Shocking I know.
Good. You know your music. You should be able to
work at Championship Vinyl with Rob, Dick and
Barry
Do You Know Your Music (Sorry MTV Generation I Doubt You Can Handle This One)
brought to you by Quizilla
Interesting series. Each episode is approximately half an hour or 30 minutes in length and has a laugh track - so it's basically a situation comedy series. Not being a person who is particularily partial to situation comedies or even overly fond of them - for a couple of reasons, which I'll attempt to explain since so many of my friends adore the art form, this series was interesting for me to watch.
Also really despise laugh tracks. For two reasons, 1)the laughter often overlaps the dialogue making it difficult to hear and 2)I often find myself laughing when the laugh track isn't. I told you I was contrary. It's almost as if whomever is producing the show doesn't trust the audience to laugh in the right place or find it funny, so puts a laugh track in to gently persuade them.
Another problem I have with situation comedies, is most situation comedy writers don't trust their audience to get the joke, highly insecure for some reason, and let their jokes go on for far too long. Almost as if they are afraid if they don't keep hammering us over the head with the punch line - we won't get it. I always want to bash them over the head and say - "I got it! It was funny ten minutes ago! Now it's annoying! Can we move on please? Thank you." Humor is a delicate thing, you can't over-do it or it will fall flat. Subletly always works best.
British comedies don't make this mistake as often as American ones do. But they aren't immune.
Also - I admit I have an odd sense of humor. Very dry wit. I find things funny that other people don't and am often annoyed by things that others find humorous. Jonathan Swift and absurdist playwrites for instance amuse me. The Three Stooges do not. I cringe whenever I watch them. Benny Hill made me laugh. Monty Python makes me laugh. Mr. Been? Makes me ill. I can't watch him. Austin Powers? It depends, the physical humor turns me off, the subtle jokes aimed at the spy genre, very funny.
How does this relate to Red Dwarf? Well Red Dwarf seems to be an odd combination of absurdist situational humor and annoying physical humor. It's almost as if the writers decided to combine the absurdist/existenalist comedy of Monty Python with the gross-out pratfalls and bantering of The Three Stooges, providing me with cringe worthy and geniuinely amusing moments. Very odd combination. I find myself torn between fast-forwarding and rewinding at any given moment.
What is the story about? David Lister, a lowly technician on a work station in space, called Red Dwarf, refuses to turn in his pregnant pet cat (cats and other creatures are strictly forbidden in space) and is punished by the Captain and put in stasis for the remainder of their voyage. During the trip, Lister's anal retentive roommate Rimmer screws up and an explosion kills everyone including Rimmer. 3 million years in the future, Hal, a somewhat senile ship computer, lets Lister out of stasis and resurrects Rimmer, as a hologram to keep Lister company. When Lister asks Hal why he picked Rimmer and not one of his close friends or the girl he had a crush on, Hal states he figures Rimmer will do a better job of keeping him sane. The only other person on board is an evolved humanoid descendant of the pet cat - also a guy.
(So yes, we have the Three Stooges..in space, where there is nothing but rocks flying by and a senile somewhat sarcastic computer named Hallie to keep them company.)
Of the episodes I've seen so far: the best are without a doubt Future Echoes and Waiting for God - these two episodes actually have something interesting to say and rely more on absurdism and situational humor. Future Echoes - is about the characters dealing with future representations of themsevles and whether they exist within the time space continium. Waiting for God - through the cat descendant, the writers do a lovely job of making fun of religion and our reliance on religion and use of religion to justify treating each other like crap. Also a really wonderful satire on Battlestar Galatica hidden in there somewhere. Dave Lister discovers that his cat Frankenstein was so thankful about him giving his life to save her and her babies, that she made him a god and decided that the place he talked to her about was heaven. His plan had been to leave Red Dwarf at the end of the voyage, travel to Figi with his cat and set up a hot dog and donut stand with funny arrow hats. The cat people turned this dream into well heaven and fought over what color the hats should be. They had wars over 1000s of years regarding the color of the hats - blue or red.
Lister sighs - that's a crock, they were supposed to be green. It goes on from there. I rewinded for this episode.
The worste of the episodes? Me2 and Balance of Power - more three stooges than absurdist dry wit.
Also the jokes went on a bit too long.
I actually enjoyed the first episode, The End, very funny in places with subtle wit. Not too over the top. Confidence and Paranoia - an interesting episode where Confidence and Paranoia literally come to life during one of Lister's fever dreams.
There's a rather funny moment between Lister and Confidence outside the ship.
Red Dwarf is similar to The Prisoner, in that the characters outside of the lead are fairly archetypal in nature. Unlike the Prisoner, they actually have names and distinct personalities and we see them in every episode of the series. The Prisoner is a Jungian spoof on spy shows and Red Dwarf is a Freudian spoof on science fiction space dramas. Both deal with the existentialist view that we are alone in the universe and must find a way of handling it. Red Dwarf has four main characters: Dave Lister - the central character, his friend Rimmer who is a hologram and represents his ego, Rimmer can't touch anything or eat, yet he is egotistical and constantly striving to be better than everyone else, Hallie - the ship's computer, is clearly the super-ego, he runs the ship, navigates through the expanse of space, and lets people know what the overall structure is, then there's Cat - the id, who just eats, dresses cool, declares things are mine, and prances about all day. He'd be having sex too if there were any female cats aboard. The interaction between the characters is basically like watching a comedy set inside someone's psyche, which elevates the comedy above the vast majority of situational comedies.
Certainly worth a rental.
The Music Quiz - hmmm, I apparently know more about music than I or anyone else expected. Yay me! Shocking I know.
Good. You know your music. You should be able to
work at Championship Vinyl with Rob, Dick and
Barry
Do You Know Your Music (Sorry MTV Generation I Doubt You Can Handle This One)
brought to you by Quizilla
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no subject
Date: 2004-01-26 08:39 pm (UTC)Real Men in Space (insert body part-scratching jokes here)
Date: 2004-01-27 02:07 pm (UTC)Remember the movie "Dark Star"?
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The Dark Star's crew is on a 20-year mission to destroy unstable planets and make way for future colonization. The smart bombs they use to effect this zoom off cheerfully to do their duty. But unlike Star Trek, in which order prevails, the nerves of this crew are becoming increasingly frayed to the point of psychosis. Their captain has been killed by a radiation leak that also destroyed their toilet paper. "Don't give me any of that 'Intelligent Life' stuff," says Commander Doolittle when presented with the possibility of alien life. "Find me something I can blow up." When an asteroid storm causes a malfunction, Bomb Number 20 (the most cheerful character in the film) has to be repeatedly talked out of exploding prematurely, each time becoming more and more peevish, until they have to teach him phenomenology to make him doubt his existence. And the film's apocalyptic ending, lifted almost wholly from Ray Bradbury's story "Kaleidoscope," has the remaining crew drifting away from each other in space, each to a suitably absurd end. Absurd, surreal, and very funny. John Carpenter once described Dark Star as "Waiting for Godot in space." Made at a cost of practically nothing, the film's effects are nevertheless impressive and, along with the number of ideas crammed into its 83 minutes, ought to shame makers of science fiction films costing hundreds of times more. --Jim Gay, amazon.com
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The premise, as you can see from the summary above, was the idea of deep space mission as metaphor for the existential condition. The satire was two-pronged: it lampooned the cosmic puffery of Kubrick and Clarke's 2001, and it also made fun of NASA's antiseptic, manly-man camaraderie. Rather than the astronauts of the Right Stuff, Dan O'Bannon and John Carpenter (co-writers/director) postulated a group of quirky, whiny deep space technicians, arguing about personal space, lack of toilet paper, and each other's slovenly habits.
The similarities to Red Dwarf are astonishing. You get the same philosophical musings and the attention to (at times) gross and disgusting details about personal hygiene. Although I understand why latter squicks you, I honestly can't see having one without the other. It's the irritating quirks, the irreconcilable personalities, and the vindaloo stains on Lister's shirt that give the lonely Red Dwarf universe its own distinct...odor.
Still, I got into Red Dwarf starting with Series III, and looking back on Series I, you could see Rob Grant and Doug Naylor working out the characters, experimenting with the format, seeing what they could get away with in telling their story. Like Whedon and Buffy (miraculously surviving the first season), they grew bolder and bolder every year, until by Series IV and V, they'd left the sitcom format behind, and turned Red Dwarf into a full-fledged sci-fi comedy. The expansion of characters like Rimmer and Kryten took away the purely "Freudian" dimension, but the series gained more than it lost.
Hope you enjoy Series II.
J.
Re: Real Men in Space (insert body part-scratching jokes here)
Date: 2004-01-28 09:31 am (UTC)Although I understand why latter squicks you, I honestly can't see having one without the other. It's the irritating quirks, the irreconcilable personalities, and the vindaloo stains on Lister's shirt that give
Don't misunderstand me, I have no problems with these types of quirks - actually that's one of things I liked about Firefly - was the physical quirks. It's the exaggeration of them that gets on my nerves. I find exaggerated physical comedy annoying. In Series I Red Dwarf - one gets the feeling if Dave Lister were sitting in a luxurious apartment complete with automatic shower, he'd still be a slob, spilling stuff on himself repeatedly.
Some episodes of Red Dwarf remind me more of the old Jack Klugman/Tony Randell comedy the Odd Couple based on the Neil Simon play of the same name, than Waiting for Godot. Others very much Waiting for Godot in style. We got neat freak Rimmer, and slob Lister - they were that way with or without toilet paper. (Though to be honest? The character who grates on my nerves on Red Dwarf isn't Lister - it's the Cat, who is the most clean and the least like a Real Man.) So, no, it's not the realism of physicality that bugs me. It's the sitcom style jokes that go on for too long that grate a bit. Balance of Power felt like an old episode of I Love Lucy or the Odd Couple. Waiting for God, however, had geniune depth and comical things to say about the human condition. I see great potential in the first season, and from what both you and Rob state above, it appears the others are much stronger storywise and actually build the characters.
Haven't gotten to the Season II DVD yet. Did like most of Season 1, just found a few episodes to be a little over the top.