YOU CAN’T CHEAT A PERIOD PIECE

For any red-blooded American kid who grew up in the 1980s, your required viewing is now Stranger Things.  The editors at Nitflix command you.

The only excuse you have is if you are still in the dark ages and aren’t streaming, or if your budget doesn’t allow for a streaming service.  The latter excuse we can accept.

Season 2 of Stranger Things was released on Netflix today.  Aside from being a great story, Stranger Things’ popularity is due the films from which it draws upon (E.T., Close Encounters, The Goonies, D.A.R.Y.L., etc…), and the memories that are stirred within us as a result.

 

Stranger Things allows us to reminisce of a time where the smartest phones were cordless at best, you could walk yourself to school without parental supervision and Google was known as the local library.  

These are some of the nuanced limitations of the world in which we grew up.  Capturing a time and place as Stranger Things does so perfectly, cannot be cheated.

From the cars and clothing, to the school desks and movie projectors, everything must be accurate.  Nothing can be left to chance for fear of nitpicky bloggers, like yours truly, who will pick at every last detail and make sure that every object, live or inanimate, is temporally up to snuff.

You can’t have a 1990s model Lexus coupe driving through the streets of 1980s Hawkins, Indiana.  Get our drift?

IT SUCKS TO BE ON THE CREW OF THE ENTERPRISE

We broached this subject two posts ago regarding being a 2^nd in command to the main antagonist and how their screen time should be valued, for it is limited.

 

Crew members on the Starship Enterprise understandably know the risk of their commitment to Starfleet and the ship they serve.  For the unlucky crew members that are profiled in brief, their fate is sealed.  They fare a little better than the SOSDF in Grease, but despite their character’s best intentions, they can’t escape their cinematic death.

The Family Guy does a good take on this, admittedly better than us editors.  But we’ll give it our best to expound upon this idea for you.

Exhibit A:  Midshipman 1^st Class Peter Preston (Ike Eisenmann) – Star Trek 2:  The Wrath of Khan (1982).  Scotty’s right-hand man for the training promptly answers to Admiral Kirk’s¹ questions of readiness.  But Preston was not ready for the attack from Khan, which left the ship damaged and crew members wounded or dead, including him.

 

A grief-stricken Scotty claims, “He stayed at his post.  When the trainees ran.”  For all intents and purposes, Preston fulfilled his duty of a Midshipman on the Enterprise and as the crew member chosen to die.

 

Exhibit B:  Fast forward to Star Trek: First Contact (1996) and Lt. Hawk (Neal McDonough) is ordered to accompany Picard and Worf to fix the Enterprise while magnetically grounded to its exterior and avoiding cyber-henchmen trying to... ²

 

The point is, Picard and Worf aren’t getting killed off.  As a result, one of the evil cyborgs lifts Hawk off the magnet and throws him into the vacuum of outer space.

Sorry Hawk and Preston, but that’s the breaks.  Read the fine print on your signed Entrance Waiver to Starfleet³.

¹ In Wrath of Khan, Kirk has now been promoted to Admiral.  He will be demoted in StarTrek 4:  The Voyage Home (the one about traveling back in time to save a whale), lest you forgot.

² Maybe a Trekkie can get up off their mom’s couch and let us know exactly what the heck Picard, Worf and Hawk were doing on the outside of the Enterprise?  Please and Thank You.

³ Does a Trekkie out there have a copy of the signed waivers by Hawk and Preston where it says that The USS Enterprise is always subject to the evils that roam the galaxy and prisoners are not taken?  They have to exist.

HAND-JIVE MANIA

GREASE (1978)

The season has officially changed to Autumn here at the offices of Nitflix, bringing gray skies, cold rain and a touch of seasonal mood disorder.  But we are ready and motivated for curling up under a fleece blanket on the couch, watching our favorite movies over a bowl of burnt popcorn (a benign peccadillo) and a beer.

On one such occasion this past week, I caught Grease just as my favorite guilty pleasure scene comes on the screen.  The Hand-Jive at the Rydell High School dance contest contains a short, but memorable character (whom we cannot accurately verify any credit for via IMDB), who shall forever be called, “Spazzed-Out Sweaty Dancing Fool” (SOSDF for short).

I had to revisit this scene for my own joy and self-maintenance. Right here from 3:42 to 3:46

It’s only four seconds of a guy who looks like a cross between a jam-band tweaker and a death metal fan.  With mouth agape and little if no sound exiting his mouth, the man is committed to his role as the SOSDF.  

This touches a rarely tapped section of our brain that remembers how silly the characters looked to us, even though their cut was kept off the editing room floor.  We refer to this sort of actor as the Camera-Seeking, SAG-Card Earner (CSSCE) and they are the glue that keep our interest.

Feel free to express gratitude upon these actors, asking the heavens for more CSSCE’s and characters like the SOSDF.  Try to remember your favorite CSSCE and reopen the floodgates (through however you stream these days) to your funny bone and ultimately, your happiness.

 

You’ll need some once winter hits.