Ryan Sheely (skyping live from Nanyuki, Kenya 0°01′N 37°04′E) is joined by Jordan Stokes and Matthew Wrather to overthink the season finale of Glee, touching on Kenyan politics, nostalgia and repetition, virginity and sexual initiation, Marx Lite, love as a battlefield, Bohemian Rhapsody, and pointillist causality.
There will be no spoiler warnings and there will be many naughty words. If either of those things bothers you, don’t click!
→ Download TFT Episode 20 (MP3)
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References
KTN Kenya
Nakumatt
Jeff Koinage
Heraclitus of Ephesus
Nick Clegg
Marx Lite
Chariman Mao, Quotations
Queen, Bohemian Rhapsody
Queen Music Videos, Part 1 & Part 2
Elliot Fratkin, When Nomads Settle
James Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed
Ryan Sheely returns with Matthew Wrather to overthink Glee and Gossip Girl, including Glee’s Parent Trap plot, Santorum, lack of thematic unity, the difference between explanation and rationalization, and what can and can’t break up a happy couple. Bonus coinage of jargon: “Doin’ it on the deuce!”
There will be no spoiler warnings and there will be many naughty words. If either of those things bothers you, don’t click!
→ Download TFT Episode 15 (MP3)
Want to download new episodes of These Fucking Teenagers automatically? subscribe in iTunes or via RSS. And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter.
Reactions to the show? Email us or call (203) 285-6401.
What, does no one smile in season four? Cheer up, guys!
Hey, folks! I’m back and ready to Lost-ify. Special thanks to Ryan Sheely for holding the fort until I returned. I haven’t read his article yet—he warned me it was not only primarily spoilers, but in fact only spoilers—but my mother ensures me that it is an enchanting piece of work. If you haven’t read it yet, please do so—but only if you’ve seen all of Lost season five.
I, however, am way back in the land of the fourth season, and I’d like to talk about time. Time is… confusing. To say the least. (I know this because I saw The Time Traveler’s Wife last night. My one-word review of the film: Mehhhhhh.)
We humans tend to think of time as a straight line pointing forward—but is it, really? Lost’s writers certainly don’t think so. That would be too simple, and, as we well know, Lost doesn’t like simple.
Plot-wise, Lost’s fourth season was exciting and somewhat overwhelming. A staggering number of important events occurred over the course of just twelve episodes. Because there was so much plot, it was hard for me to tell if there was an overarching theme tying everything together. But if I had to pinpoint one main theme of this season, it would definitely have something to do with the nature of time. Over the years, science-fiction writers have used time travel and paradoxes to explore many different themes: the inability of humans to escape the deterministic nature of the universe, the joint themes of regret and revenge, love’s ability to transcend time and space. So this week, I’ll try to answer this question: when Lost starts talking about time machines and psychic flashes and trick flashforwards, what is it really talking about? What is time a metaphor for? At heart, what is season four of Lost about?
But first, let’s recap the episodes I watched over the past two weeks:
Up 2: Next Year in Jerusalem
“He caught him up, and, without wing
Of hippogrif, bore through the air sublime,
Over the wilderness and o’er the plain,
Till underneath them fair Jerusalem,
The Holy City, lifted high her towers . . .
. . . There, on the highest pinnacle, he set
The Son of God.”
– John Milton, Paradise Regained, Book IV
The kindness of the world toward your existence turns out to be an illusion of youth, and all love dies. Man must keep his faith and promises, even as he ages toward death — find a place to stand firm, even as he falls.
Pixar’s Up and John Milton’s great poems Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained are about more than what they have in common. A laundry list of their similarities would hardly be interesting (especially if you haven’t read the poems). But they meet at a critical and compelling place in what I like to call the Artistic Project.
This balloon is about to get heavy, so if at any point you need a little extra lift, bookmark this.
Now, let us go, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, to find our solitary way —
The oldest profession* has been getting a lot of press lately. Perhaps as a way to cleanse some of the recent negativity, I’d like to turn to one of the more sincere expressions of love for the women of the night — or, to pull up short with the second-oldest profession**, the women of the evening. Video after the pole dance.
* Though I still say that there’s no reason to assume the first professional was a prostitute. We don’t know which Cro-Magnon first drew a regular salary. The title probably belongs to some random field that will never want it, like interior decorator, inventory flow manager or osteopath.
** Definitely osteopath.
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