Getting Down to the Bones of the Story

I’ll come clean right off the bat: in the past year, Bones has become my favorite show. I can’t help it. I’m a sucker for a strong female character who uses too many big words and also happens to be able to kick ass when the time comes. For those who haven’t seen it, I recommend Netflix-ing the pilot. Within the first ten minutes, you’ll see why this show is awesome.

But not to get too off topic, last Thursday Fox aired the finale of the fourth season of Bones. The episode opens with narration by everyone’s favorite bug-n-sludge guy: Hodgins. Soon, we find ourselves in an alternate reality: Bones and Booth are married and running a nightclub, Angela is their hostess, and Sweets is a bartender.

The entire episode tells us the story of what might have happened with these characters had they been in different circumstances. It's clever, it's fun, and it shows how much of the characters stays the same, despite new circumstances. Next to me, my friend was mumbling about how pointless the episode was, but it got me thinking. How many shows can let go of the mantle of their “doctors” and “detectives” and “scientists” and still be left with entertaining characters that can hold our attention for a full hour of television?

The episode, though of course only a fleeting fantasy that ends before the cliffhanger conclusion, is a testament to the strength of writing on Bones. The reason I love the show is for its characters, and I think that more a more modern shows are coming to realize that, if they give us interesting, fun people to watch, we don’t really give a shit what the people are doing. So Bones qualifies as especially ridiculous fantastic this week because it shows how much fun a show can be with great characters.

There is however, one major caveat to the Bones finale. I can feel some producer up there in Hollywood whose mind is churning over a Bones spin-off starring a pair of nightclub owners. All of my mind power is focused on stopping him (or her).

But it was an interesting experiment of an episode, and I would love to hear everyone’s thoughts. Was it good? Was it crap? Which of your favorite shows would you like to do an episode like that? Discuss.

My Foray into Foreign Films - Part One: Flying Lesson

 To open up, I thought I’d start with something obscure, something unusual, something different. I, like so many, am facing a new era in my life. I’ve severed what were essentially the last few threads of my childhood and have been thrust full force into the world. Great. I’m sure I’m not alone, sitting in my stage of transition, and I hope that at least some of you can sympathize with how scared shitless I am. This is definitely a moment of ridiculous fantastic.

And that is what brings me to the topic of this post: Flying Lessons directed by Francesca Archibugi (quite a name, right?). It’s an Italian coming-of-age story about two boys, who go by Chicken and Curry (I shit you not), who have just failed their final exams in high school. Feeling lost and confused, they decide to go India. Curry, an adopted Indian boy, desperately wants to find his family.

The boys fumble their way through India, managing to lose their passports and get separate. The locals treat Chicken like they would treat other “white” foreigners, but, assuming that Curry is “one of them,” they speak to him in their language and treat him like a native. The boys are rescued from their struggles by a doctor from Habitat for Humanity named Chiara. She’s intelligent, giving, and courageous, and soon has Chicken falling head over heels.

Flying Lessons is an uncompromising tale of what we can face and what we can learn when we leave everything we know for an adventure. There are some horrors—losing their passports, nearly being arrested, attempted infanticide—but there are also joys. Curry finds his family’s home. His mother is dead, but he meets his sister and brings her back to Italy.

This is a hard to watch, hard not to be moved by piece of foreign cinema that makes me want to take an adventure. Maybe we should let go a bit. Take off to find our roots, or even our true love, and live through a crazy piece of reality that we will tell stories of for the rest of our lives.

Flying Lessons: 7 out of 10

Hello World!

It would be customary, at this time, to open this up with an intro. Some kind of hello, how are you, my name is __________ and here are the top three most interesting (or not) things about me. But I’m not going to start that way. Maybe if you follow along, you’ll get to know me a bit better. Maybe you know me already. The only thing to say is that I love to write, I love movies, and this is my irreverent reflection on entertainment, culture, and life, so if you don’t like it, don’t read it.

Here you might be wondering, what is That Ridiculous Fantastic? And I say you know, just think.

-It’s the fucked up but fucking awesome place that we call home

-It’s the violence and the laughter, the hate and the love, the sad and the happy all rolled into one big ball of crazy

-It’s the sights, the smells, the tastes, the feeling…and the way it all melds together is both disgusting and incredible

-It’s the living and the dead and all those in between (and lets face it, most of us are in that last category)

-It’s everything, it’s life, and it’s worth talking about worth screaming about, and it’s best represented in our films, our music, our art, in the way we talk, and the way we act, and we should talk about it.

So let’s talk about it. Or think about it. Or criticize it. Or rave about it. I’ll find the ridiculous fantastic in anything and everything. So read on.