#what a bizarre fucking end to the season to then be now posting social distancing episodes!

[youcancallmeathief]

When you’re rewatching wtFock and you get to 10x8 and you realize they’re playing a board game called Pandemic and talking about how the virus is winning....

#jesus christ #this was right before Christmas #what a bizarre fucking end to the season to then be now posting social distancing episodes! #wtfock

[bibliophileiz]

A (not really) Ode to bucklemming

Last bucklemming episode, and you guys, it was just such a classic example of their stale mediocrity. And yet, at the end of this post, I found myself bizarrely happy with how the episode turned out.

This is the second time I’ve watched it, and while I was planning to just liveblog my thoughts, I realized quickly that would not work, because most of the episode is boring and miserable, (especially the first third or so) and that makes for boring and miserable note-taking. I think I said in a tag of a different post that Dabb assigning this one to bucklemming is just further proof that he hasn’t cared about plot at all this season, and honestly, I don’t know there’s much they COULD have done to make this plot entertaining. Chuck even says at one point that it ... isn’t entertaining.*

The first third or so is basically Sam, Dean, and Jack being miserable with nothing around them break that misery up (except, briefly, a dog). And that makes for a miserable viewing experience. Here are a handful of notes I took that give you the gist:

- Chuck standing there talking about how loneliness and no-people is “deep” and a “page-turner” is such a gratifying little critique of shitty writers who like their gritty stories about permanently miserable protagonists. Like dude, you know there’s a reason nobody rereads “The Road,” right? - Dean slurring his words because he’s hungover is the first time anything interesting has happened with the dialogue in this whole episode. - Rob Benedict is the only one who gets to inflect his dialogue this episode. I do think his acting in that last scene is great, where he’s screaming, “Guys, wait!” as they drive off. It’s not a terrible ending scene.

So there’s that. Now here are my notes not-related to how stale and boring everything is:

Beginning: -The shots of Kyoto and New York City remind me of all the shots in NYT and other major newspapers after COVID shut everything down last spring (except in this case all the traffic would still be in New York, just no people). - “I couldn’t save anybody.” Poor Sam. (must push down feelings about Sam’s leadership arc and how it always seems to end with people dying, ugh, repress, repress!) - Also, I wanted to see a shot of a sink running and one of them turning it off. Just a random thing.

Archangel stuff: - I guess it makes sense to lose Adam if you’re going to kill Michael at the end, but goddamn if Michael isn’t a way more boring character without him. - Ah, Lucifer, a.k.a bucklemming’s attempt at comic relief. I’m starting to miss the boring dialogue. - Ooh, awesome, the only female character in the episode shows up bound and gagged and immediately murdered so she can be used and then murdered again. (Also, the first time I watched this scene, I was sure she wouldn’t wake up and was gearing up to laugh at Lucifer for sucking.) - Jensen stays as far away from her as he can when he unties her, I’m sure that actress appreciates him trying not to give her COVID. Course then she immediately ruins it by head-butting him, which is NOT practicing social distancing. - Many have commented on whether Lucifer can actually kill Death by snapping his fingers. We don’t know, but the Scythe WAS right there, and if Dean can kill Death with it (twice), I’m sure Lucifer can. - On the other hand, it IS established lore that God doesn’t have power in the Empty. Presumably he could negotiate with it like Death, and possibly he just took advantage of the loud chaos of Jack exploding, Death dying, the Empty apparently being super pissed, etc. to sneak in and make off with Lucifer. - Also WHY DO ALL THE ARCHANGEL FIGHTS IN THIS SHOW SUCK ASS???? - “I haven’t been in a battle like that in several centuries,” Michael says, as if he just fought the Battle of the Blackwater in Game of Thrones, and not what appeared to be the archangel equivalent of Mario Kart.

And climax/last scene: - But the best moment of the episode is when they GET BACK UP BLOODY AND HOLDING ONTO EACH OTHER AND ABSOLUTELY BEAMING BECAUSE THEIR LITTLE BOY IS ABOUT TO BECOME GOD. - Also, I like the music in this scene. And it seems like it’s the same place they used to film the end of Season 12/beginning of Season 13, which was probably peak Dabb era, ngl. (Jensen as Michael was also great.) - I also like that Jack and Chuck are both wearing light jackets, but Jack’s is a leeeeeetle whiter. - Chuck looking at the blank book is that moment in every writer’s life, when they’re like, “NOOOOOO, the computer DELETED EVERYTHING I WROTE.” - “Dean Winchester, the ultimate killer” You guys, 10 is Chuck’s favorite season. - Of course it is sweet that Cas’s last words seem to have had an effect on Dean, how he goes from “That’s (killing) all I know how to do” to “That’s not who I am.” I’m far from the first person to point that out though. - What happened to Amara is THE WORST. - Also, I am annoyed that Jack isn’t going home with them, because I really wanted him to be God, and a hands-off one, but I also wanted him to drive the Impala and solve crimes, ya know?  - Jared at least seems to understand that this ending is upsetting, because Sam has tears in his eyes, whereas Dean is just kind of like, “ah, he’s leaving.” Which is fine because DEAN AND JACK ARE NOT AS CLOSE AS SAM AND JACK, fight me. - Him disappearing into light is stupid, though. - At least Dean and Sam get to sit close to each other at the end. I wonder if that was the first scene shot after they got out of quarantine. - WHERE ARE THEY DRIVING? - Maybe to go see Jody. - WE GOT BELA AND CROWLEY AND ANNA IN THE MONTAGE HELLZ YEAH, ALSO ABBADON AND ELLEN AND RUFUS, but we also got fucking Asmodeus and Ketch and no Benny, what the fuck, Showalter?

So I have questions.

Some of them are unimportant, like how did people in restaurants at the end react when they found themselves looking at food that seems to have undergone days’ worth of rot in the blink of an eye? Also, you got a shot of a full airport at the end, but that begs the question: were there airplanes in the sky at the time Chuck snapped everyone away, and did they crash, and did the people on them get snapped back into crashed airplanes and was that not super confusing for them and did the airlines lose billions of dollars because all their planes crashed right before COVID shut them down anyway and if all that’s the case is it really any wonder they needed a bailout from the federal government?

But some of them are plot-relevant and could have helped an episode in desperate need of it.

For example, I want to know what’s going on with the Empty, and if Mark Pellegrino had talked about it for more than two seconds, I might not have hated every second he was on screen. Also, there are other things happening this episode. Like Jack walking around sucking life and “power” out of plants catches Dean and Sam’s attention immediately. We know that, because we see them noticing it and exchanging confused glances in the flashback at the end of the episode.

Here’s the thing though: Why not have that in the beginning? It’s not a Huge Reveal, and it would have given Jensen and Jared something to do in that stale boring beginning other than Make Sad Face. As pretty as Jensen and Jared are, and as good as they are at making sad faces, you cannot build an entire episode around that. 

Related, there isn’t actually much of a beat in the plot where it makes sense for them to figure out Michael will betray them for God. It seems like it will happen in that conversation between Dean and Michael when Michael expresses his hurt that Chuck let Lucifer out of the Empty before even asking for help. But at that point, it seems Sam and Dean have already come up with their plan. The flashback makes it seem as if they began to suspect Michael would betray them when Lucifer called him a cuck, something I think they made a plot point purely to have the word “cuck” in the episode for the third time.**

There are a few hopeful beats that show that bucklemming understand on some level that there needed to be some flow to this episode, such as the dog and Dean thinking he may have gotten Cas back. But I don’t think those are substitutes for showing Sam and Dean come up with their plan to defeat God. Even if you don’t want to reveal that they know Michael will betray them, you can still get one scene in there of them saying something like, “You think this’ll work?” if you just cut two minutes of Michael’s boring monologue in the church and/or Lucifer’s bullshit.

It follows this weird pattern of bucklemming once again seeming to not find Sam and Dean particularly interesting, so they don’t spend any time writing them DOING anything, or at least succeeding at anything, because they’d rather write Lucifer killing women and generally being an asshole.

So ... who cares, right? It’s bucklemming, they were bound to be mediocre-to-bad anyway, it kind of makes sense for Dabb to give them this episode because nepotism definitely makes it a best case scenario. And while I take issue with Dabb as a showrunner, I do think he’s great at standalone episodes and character stuff, so I’m not too terribly worried about next episode. I just think there were things about this episode that could have sucked less.

There ARE things about it that were fine, dare I say even good. It was in my notes, but I just want to emphasize that I LOVED the shot of Sam and Dean getting up bloody and broken, holding onto each other and grinning their asses off knowing that Chuck’s about to lose to Jack, and they get to see it! They may very well have gone into that fight expecting to die -- Chuck nearly just zapped them from existence, which would have still unleashed God-power for Jack to soak up.

The ending scene is pretty good, with Sam and Dean seeming like they’re still pretty beaten down, but trying to get it together. That’s more Jensen and Jared’s acting than anything bucklemming wrote, but it’s still good. The montage is good (although I will say for like the third time, where. the fuck. was Benny?) 

Jensen’s acting over the dog was SO SOFT (doesn’t he have a dog?). I half-expected the dog to run to him at the end, which would have been cute.

There are also things that were ... potentially good, if they’d been brought up correctly? I actually really like that Jack is going to be “hands-off” (although I like less that he and Sam will never see each other again, but Dabb did say it was going to be a bittersweet ending, so ....). 

I also -- and God, I’m going to get hate mail for saying this -- don’t mind that he didn’t bring Cas back. That highlights the difference between him and Chuck. Chuck brings back Sam and Dean (and, in Season 5 at least, Cas) over and over again, not out of love, but just to throw them back into their exhausting existence. In contrast, Jack NOT bringing anyone back (except the people who’d been snapped out of existence, which I would argue is more about putting the world on its proper course again, as opposed to “violating the natural order,” as Billie would put it). He knows he has to let people go. You could argue that’s always been his arc -- he and Cas even talk about how hard it will be for them to one day lose Sam and Dean back in Season 14 when they think Dean is dying.

But I wish there had been dialogue exploring THAT instead of the weird vague stuff about how he would always be a part of them. It doesn’t have to be anything super analytical like what I just wrote, it just has to be him saying, “I understand that in order to be a just god, I have to let things go and be at peace.” 

(However, if the reason they DIDN’T go that direction is they didn’t want Dean to be like, “You know, he’s right,” next episode and not rescue Cas from the Empty, then I’m fine with them leaving that out. Screw the natural order, Dean -- go rescue Cas from the Empty!)

I also really really really want to get some sense that Sam’s faith has been rewarded. We got a tiny glimmer of that this episode in the hushed, awed way Jared delivers the line, “Are you really ... him?” Sam has always been the one with faith in a just and loving God, and one of the things that aggravated me about the end of Season 14 was his faith being so blatantly not rewarded, in favor of promoting Dean’s more cynical take on God.

The show has always, since the very first season, raised questions about where God is, whether his will is just, and how we know we’re following it, and the main characters all have different answers to that -- Sam’s being the more faithful, optimistic view of “God is good”, Dean’s being the more critical “If God is good then why do bad things happen?”, and, most interestingly, Cas’ viewpoint largely fluctuating with his own sense of identity and self-worth. The point is, we had all three of these opinions on God, without the show ever explicitly saying which one was right.

Until very recently, I thought it should have stayed that way. But now I love the idea that Sam’s faith in God was rewarded not by Chuck, but by Jack -- the very boy he took under his wing and raised as his own son, the boy who understands that he is good and that people are good largely because SAM TAUGHT HIM THEY CAN BE. It’s just so beautiful, and I’m getting more and more happy about this ending as I write about it, actually, so maybe I don’t entirely hate Jack’s ending after all.

That was a happier note than I planned on ending this on. I guess that is how you stop worrying and tolerate bucklemming. 

Goodbye, bucklemming. I hated many of your episodes, but I will miss you and your weird, inconsistent writing that was so entertaining to pick apart and analyze and make fun of. I hope you find some cop shows where you can churn out more mediocrity and make some money. And in the meantime, stop killing off women.

*Yet another example from this season of the writers intentionally writing a bad episode to highlight the fact that Chuck is a bad writer. NEWSFLASH DABB: Bad writing is still bad writing, I don’t care if the villain of the story is the writer, I still don’t want to watch it if it’s bad.

**Which is such a bizarre insult to use. Isn’t it slang for a guy who’s wife cheats on him? I swear I’m not innocent or sheltered, I have just literally never heard anyone use that insult in a real context in my entire life. 

#how i learned to stop worrying and tolerate bucklemming #this is the last time i get to review one of their episodes i'm getting a little choked up #not really #supernatural spoilers #supernatural #supernatural home stretch #this episode was boring and miserable but the end was decent

[lightsandlostbells]

Skam France episode 5

Wanted to say thank you to all translators of this show … it’s really generous to keep up with the clips, especially on top of how many social media updates there are. You are the best <3

Episode 5 reaction

Clip 1: coffee with Lucas

This scene felt so sterile to me? Largely because of how it is shot. The coloring is cool and blue, not bright and warm (watch the original clip and notice the stark difference), there are these big windows taking up part of the frame and this table with almost nothing on it that puts all this space between the camera and the characters. Part of this conversation is filmed at table-level, not at eye or face level, and it feels so removed. The space between them and their body language makes it look like an awkward first date and one of them is going to fake a sick grandmother in order to leave in 10 minutes. 

I don’t know what to make of Lucas’ performance here. It’s like he enters the cafe knowing something is up and he’s alert to any relationship dysfunction. Almost like he’s humoring Emma. And he’s holding back amusement at her troubled romance with Yann.

I mean, if they’re keeping Isak’s involvement in this season much the same as in the original, Lucas bothers me a lot more? Because honestly, Isak’s meddling seemed more opportunistic than anything. I don’t think he had a grand master plan to break up Jonas and Eva, I think was just stumbling onto chances to mess with them and (with telling people about Eva and Chris) acting impulsively/drunkenly. That doesn’t excuse him, but I also don’t think he was sitting down and making bullet points about how to break them up. Lucas … I’m not saying he has a grand master plan and he’s writing bullet points, but this seems like he’s putting more effort into playing her. Like his “good advice” feels more like an act. Maybe it was Tarjei’s acting but I think he did a good balance of Isak being a snake but also kind of not keeping it entirely under control. You can see him start to smirk a little when he questions Eva about why she’s with Jonas. With Lucas, the way he walks in kind of smirking about Yann and Emma’s problems and then puts on this wide-eyed, concerned tone once he’s feeding her bad advice is a little alarming. 

Might be worth asking whether people have a different read on that original scene with Isak and Eva. Because I always thought Isak met up with her not really anticipating that she was going to ask about Jonas, and only caught on due to the nature of her questions, and pounced on that. But maybe other people thought he was expecting this conversation when he walked into the cafe?

If I wasn’t aware of the storyline, I’m not sure what I’d think here. On social media, Lucas and Emma seem to be pretty close and always doing goofy stuff together with Yann, but this really doesn’t feel like a conversation between friends. 

Clip 2: Daphne’s O-tales

I did like the opening shot leading into the girls on the bench.

FOR FUCK’S SAKE, CHARLES. Wrap up your dick. You grown-ass man.

Actually, adding a scene in which they establish Daphne buying condoms, only to tell us that Charles didn’t bother, makes him seem so so much worse.

Between Emma and Manon, the hat game was strong in this clip.

I wrote a post about this but Manon does seem like a more genial, easygoing kind of person than Noora. I like her and found her sweet here; her feminist comments are more gentle than Noora’s. But she’s also less forceful and confident, and that’s perhaps why some people are finding her more forgettable.

Wow Charles comes across like a MASSIVE dong here. Way more so than William. William kind of hurriedly walked by Vilde and kept his eyes averted and muttered hello. Charles seemed like he wanted to establish eye contact with Daphne for the specific purpose of ignoring her.

I did like that Emma approaching Alex seems like a more deliberate fuck-you to Yann. 

Daphne is so cute.

Clip 3 - Emma and Yann argue, then make up

The POV. …. ARGH

Whyyyyy did the camera follow Yann. Why.

Rewinding a bit, Yann and Emma are so much more forward then Jonas and Eva. Eva was a little hesitant to bring up the issue with Ingrid and Jonas was floundering a little when coming up with a story. You could see he wasn’t totally confident in his lie. Emma just gets straight to the point and Yann fires back at her. They’re very assertive in this argument. It’s way more confrontational, as are many things about their relationship.

Though it’s worth mentioning that when Eva did bring up Ingrid to Jonas, she was pretty assertive. She was reluctant at first but she held her ground.

Yann is so much more of a giant asshole in this conversation! He keeps telling her she’s annoying. Now Jonas told Eva to stop being insecure all the time and that also stings, but Yann is really out of line. He also seems a lot more aggressive when he asks if Emma wants a break. Jonas seemed fearful that Eva really wanted a break. Yann doesn’t say it like he’s scared of her saying yes. He just throws it in her face. 

I’m glad that Emma sticks up for herself and tells Yann not to speak to her that way because it was really inappropriate. (To a degree, though, I’m like … Eva’s character arc doesn’t exactly map onto Emma, it won’t feel as earned if they try to keep it exact.)

I do like this song. I’ve liked it before the show and when I saw it in the credits I was waiting for it to show up.

So this part in the original is very distinctive, when the camera keeps Eva and Jonas at a distance, and we watch them fight and make up without hearing them. It’s especially memorable because of how Skam tends to put us up close with the characters’ emotions, and in this instance they don’t let us in on the conversation. And I can see why Skam France didn’t want to just recreate that, because even though they’re redoing much of the original series, to redo that scene exactly as the original is … sort of pushing it. So I get it, they wanted to find a different outcome for the scene, but it really annoyed me that they went with this because of the choice of POV.

Emma walks away and they keep the camera on Yann. We see him make the decision to go after her while the music plays dramatically. But this is so strange, because it puts the emotional emphasis on Yann and his thought process when this is Emma’s season. We should see her thought process, we should have seen her walk away from the table heartbroken and upset and angry, done with Yann’s bullshit. It’s her decision not to put up with it anymore, it’s her development, her emotional state as a character. It’s just really odd that all of a sudden they gave this moment to Yann.

A comparison would be toward the end of season 2, when William is leaving for the airport and we see Noora walk away and call Eva on the phone. We see her emotional reaction to William leaving, all the way up to the car pulling up in the background and William going to her. We could have had that here, where we see Emma distraught and eventually see Yann run after her in the background. I just don’t like that they shut us out of this very important emotional moment for our lead character. We didn’t even see her face as she was walking away.

I know the original show didn’t stick to the POV of the protagonist 100%  of the time, but it did for the most part, and when it diverged during the season they were typically very brief moments. Off the top of my head, I can’t think of a comparable scene where most of the camera work and the emotional emphasis went to the love interest rather than the protagonist. It would be as if William got in the car and we saw him thinking it over as Penetrator Chris drove away, and we saw him tell Chris to go back, and we followed him as he went back to Noora. Or if, for example in season 3 when Even leaves the hotel room, we follow him as he goes out in the streets naked and we leave Isak behind. IDK, it’s just bizarre and a blatant divergence from the show’s structure. 

Clip 4 - Daphne, Daphne, Daphne

The intro effect was kind of odd, as if the girls had been plunged into a nightmare from which there was no escape and it was all about Daphne nonstop telling us about Charles.

I don’t know if we’re supposed to take Charles’ texts as legitimately about his basketball game or him just giving Daphne some BS excuses, but the part with him saying “the coach is putting so much pressure on me” is a thing I hope is real. Give Charles some motivation outside of his love life.

Alex asking for the topless pic of Daphne - well hello. Can this be foreshadowing for gay/bi Alex?

I actually like how this scene was paced and how the girls were kind of humoring her until it got to be too much.

So I found some of Imane’s previous interaction with Daphne unnecessarily mean, because it felt like she was putting down Daphne even when Daphne hadn’t merited that reaction (rather than being a response to Daphne saying something ignorant) but I liked her more here even though this is the most blunt she’s been so far. Maybe because she had a real reason to be blunt.

Also I haven’t commented on the social media much but there are texts where Imane acknowledges how harsh she was and says she will apologize to Daphne, which is nice. 

I think some of why Imane can come across harsher than Sana is because Daphne doesn’t really push back as much as Vilde did. Vilde would seem pretty steamed about the way Sana talked to her (like shushing her) even if she didn’t argue to her face. She was still mad about it to the other girls. In this scene she openly asked why Sana is rude to her. Daphne doesn’t even stand up for herself here, she just leaves upset.

Imane’s words about guys also resonate with Yann’s dramatic speech (showering you with compliments, etc.)

Clip 5 - Horror Comics

Right off the bat, I LOVE the costumes. Love love love. I would have the time of my life going to a party like this.

Alex as Annabelle and Manon as Georgie from It <3

The opening is a fun way to set up the party vibe and establish Daphne looking wistfully at Charles. I don’t know if this was intentional, but Harley Quinn is absolutely the costume you would wear if you were trying to get a guy’s attention. I don’t mean that in a “fake geek girls” way or that Harley cosplayers do so to look good for men. There’s just a sexual connotation with the character that doesn’t exist in demonic dolls or little boys in rain slickers who get murdered by evil clowns.

Alex sitting on the couch and not moving, just smiling creepily, is so perfect and IC for her costume, I love it.

Not to sound like a creep but Ingrid looked kind of hot in her horror makeup. 

I waver between whether they’re trying to make Raptor Alex/Emma a legit ship or to make him more of a jerk. Because kissing her forehead might seem kind of sweet, but then it’s like … oh yeah, that is actually inappropriate to do to a girl you barely know who has a boyfriend. And he doesn’t seem happy that she pushed him away.

It’s kind of funny to me that Camille is giving her this very, very teenage advice. Honey, at least one of you is in her 20s.

Camille is a sweetheart and I liked that she offered her number to Emma.

But also … the look of her confusion on her face as Emma left … c’mon dudes. I don’t mind little things like this, but you know, you can establish that suspicion/confusion while Emma is in the room witnessing it, like when Camille first walks in on her and Alex. That’s enough. We’re good.

The shot of Daphne watching Charles (with some random girl, btw, not Sara) was very Dramatique~ but I thought it was well done. Daphne sold it with her heartbreaking reaction.

Oh, Charles dressed as the Joker! That is actually great. Did Daphne know that he was going to dress that way, and planned to go as Harley Quinn accordingly? Or was it a coincidence? I’m going to take it as planned; she found out and decided to have a matching outfit with him, as a sort of couples’ costume. Even though he probably didn’t know about it. Ouch, Daphne.

(Was that an Edward Cullen at the party when Emma leaves? Lmao.)

The reveal of Yann smoking weed is dumb when Emma straight up saw Not Elias smoking with Yann and Lucas at the cabin. Like did it not occur to her…

And Yann posts about smoking weed on IG, what the fuck, this shouldn’t be too much of a surprise.

It really doesn’t make sense when Yann says that he didn’t tell Emma about smoking weed because of exactly the reaction she was having that moment, when Emma is just like, okay you’re smoking weed, meh. Eva actually got upset that Jonas was smoking weed and treated it like it was a big deal, so that made sense for him to say he didn’t tell her due to her predicted freakout. Emma barely gives a shit about Yann smoking weed and openly says so. She was more upset that he hadn’t told her and had lied. Yann is then like, well I didn’t tell you because of the reaction you’re having now. What?? So you lied to her about smoking weed … because you were afraid of her reaction where she is upset that you lied to her about smoking weed. The fuck? 

Sometimes I get the sense that they go through the scripts and make superficial changes but don’t bother with follow-through. Like someone said, “I don’t think Emma would care about him smoking marijuana,” so they changed that part, but stopped there without considering whether the dialogue and character motivations still made sense. This isn’t the first moment like this but it’s probably the most important, since Yann’s behavior in the first half of the season hinges on it.

Props to them for having some silence in this conversation, and for having Yann kiss Emma on the forehead - repeating the gesture Alex did earlier, unintentionally twisting the knife. Although the dialogue went a little OTT, as did Yann’s following text message, in terms of dramatic irony. I TRUST YOU SO MUCH EMMA, I’M SO HAPPY WE PUT THE LIES BEHIND US, I WAS STUPID TO THINK WE COULDN’T TELL EACH OTHER EVERYTHING. We get it. You don’t have to bang us over the head.

General Comments:

Daphne is still my favorite part of the show. Between her stealing the show and Lucas being not all that great so far, give her S3. 

Maybe I should get used to the POV not being as tight, but then you have to ask … what is the point of sticking to the story from Emma’s POV, other than the original doing it? For example, I’m watching the new season of Jessica Jones. The show is about Jessica Jones. She is the main character and has an arc. But she’s not the only character with development. The supporting cast has scenes without her, with their own story arcs, where they acquire information and do things that Jessica Jones does not know about. There’s nothing wrong with this because it’s the setup of the show. In fact it’s the setup of most shows. 

On the other hand, Skam’s one-person POV is pretty rare in terms of television shows. Actually I am struggling to think of another series told exclusively from another person’s perspective for more than a special episode. If you think about it, it’s rather inconvenient for most overarching plots. So why would you consciously choose this rather limited format? What is the benefit of it? To immerse yourself in the main’s head, to walk through their struggles and triumphs. If you’re going to cut that character out of their own emotional reactions, then why not do the multi-POV? And if you’re sticking to the single POV, then yeah, it is sloppy and worth mentioning. 

I mean, if you’re writing a book, you’ll be advised to keep your POV consistent. A novel with third person limited POV will receive criticism for messy writing if it strays. Harry Potter books don’t randomly jump to Ron’s POV in the middle of scenes. I feel like the same mindset is applicable here.

Not to Start Shit but at this point I definitely think the whole song and dance about “contractual obligations” to be faithful to the original Skam were mostly said to appease fans who didn’t like that the remake was such a close copy. I was skeptical about it when it was first said, but I mean. We’re now past the halfway mark, past when we were supposedly going to have the season diverge, but uh, it’s not. They have clearly been able to change some small things and add a few scenes here and there, so what exactly were these nebulous conditions that the remake had to follow? Did Julie Andem hand them an outline and say, “Here, you gotta do all the stuff on this list but go wild with everything else?” 

I’ll happily admit to my mistakes if there are more official details on the remakes’ obligation to the original, and with four episodes left they could still throw a few curveballs. But do I think that’s likely to happen? Nah, not really. Possibly a slightly different outcome for Yann and Emma. I think maybe they’ll omit some scenes and some smaller story points for time reasons, but that’s it.

#skamfr reactions

[instantdeerlover]

The Un-Heroic Reality of Being an ‘Essential’ Restaurant Worker added to Google Docs

The Un-Heroic Reality of Being an ‘Essential’ Restaurant Worker

As a restaurant employee, I’ve been deemed an essential worker. But you’d never know that from the way I’m treated.

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We started to grasp the severity of the COVID-19 situation about halfway through a Thursday night shift. It was March 12, and I was on the takeout register at the Los Angeles Vietnamese restaurant where I’ve worked for the past two years. Our busser had been coughing heavily for about a month, and now he was visibly sweating. “I think I have to go home,” he said. At the time, he worked two full-time jobs; diligent and meticulous, he never called out. “Maybe you should go to the hospital,” I told him. At that point, I was naive enough to think he could get tested and treated. He nodded and left.

News came to us in fragments. One table mentioned the NBA had just ended its season; another was frantic about the European travel ban. I began making a list of food and nonperishables to get from the grocery store. “You should go tonight,” my coworker told me. I jotted down phrases like “alkaline water” and “bags of pasta.” We laughed at my scattered list and our utter confusion, still unsure where this all was going.

Two months later, we are certain of a few things: The restaurant industry is in trouble, and government relief programs have been woefully insufficient. Mom-and-pop establishments, the likes of which Jonathan Gold championed across our city, will most likely be hit the hardest as their owners struggle to stay afloat.

And in the midst of this national conversation, restaurant employees have been deemed “essential workers,” a heroic title that feels to me, as one such restaurant worker, wildly generous. The reality of work under quarantine has been both more stressful and more farcical than I anticipated, and has made me question what it actually means to be essential.

Since Los Angeles’s Safer-at-Home initiative was instated, the nightly staff at our restaurant has shrunk by more than half, with only one front-of-house person and two cooks per shift. My hours have been reduced from five to two nights a week. We all wear masks: The owners provided each of us with a disposable one when the pandemic started, but by now most everyone has switched to their own reusable ones.

“I’m really disappointed,” she said. “I expected the food to be here in time for my virtual happy hour.”

The atmosphere vacillates between tense, normal, and bizarre. For the most part, anxiety over the risk of infection slips to the back of my mind as I deal with the annoyance of needy customers and the stresses of the tasks at hand. But I also try to stay diligent. I spray down the counters incessantly, and “sanitize” the pens (dunk them in bleach) after each use. I rush around matching boxes of food to their tickets while delivery drivers fill the restaurant. I shuffle between the three separate iPads we are now using for online delivery orders. Perspiration pools on my lip beneath my mask as I sweat through slammed shifts.

Some customers tip generously. But the longer quarantine goes on, the more customers seem to be reverting to their old habits. One night, a woman questioned the 10 percent service fee on her $180 order.

“What’s this?” she asked.

I explained that we put a fee on orders over $100 in lieu of a tip.

“Why?” she asked.

“Because it’s a lot of work…” I offered.

She left unconvinced.

Regulars who never tipped before the crisis have continued their practice of not tipping. “Thanks for staying open!” one of them chirped as he pocketed his change. Another customer put a $5 in the tip jar, then took two $1 bills for change. “I’m leaving you $3,” he told me curtly. During a rainstorm, a customer called and asked that we bring her order out to the car. When I handed her the receipt, she wrote “0.00” and signed her name with a flourish. She was wearing a T-shirt that said “Wild Feminist.”

The unacknowledged absurdity of the situation is almost comical. I am handing you noodles wearing gloves and a mask because we are in the midst of a global pandemic! I want to yell. I am risking my health for your greasy meal!

In the midst of a busy Sunday night, a woman called to complain about her order.

“I’m really disappointed,” she said. “I expected the food to be here in time for my virtual happy hour.”

“I don’t know what to tell you,” I responded. “I’m doing my best.”

In moments like these, it’s a relief to let my customer service facade slip away and speak bluntly. I try to keep it moving and turn such encounters into funny anecdotes, but still they stew in my stomach in a simmering rage. When will the efforts and labor of other people be recognized? If not now, when?

Before COVID, about half the restaurant’s takeout business typically came from the third-party delivery apps Caviar and Postmates. During quarantine, it’s grown to 80 percent. Since the customer tips the driver, not the restaurant, cashiers don’t make any money on those orders. As such, they are my lowest priority, and drivers end up with long wait times. They crowd the space around the counter, limiting the possibility of social distancing and creating additional stress. They hover and pester, and I snap back at them. Two newly deemed essential workers face off over whose time is more valuable.

Right after the pandemic began, my workplace became a Postmates Partner. Beforehand, we charged a 10 percent service fee on Postmates orders that went directly into our tips. But since becoming a partner, we’re no longer allowed to do so. The Postmates Partnership FAQ page boasts “increased visibility” for Partners on their app and website, as well as an average 300 percent increase in orders — meaning I am now handling significantly more orders on which I make significantly less money.

Whenever my coworkers and I have complained about the lack of tipping available on apps, the restaurant’s owners argue that we make $14.25 an hour (aka Los Angeles County’s minimum wage). Online orders, they say, help them recoup money they need to pay us. But in truth, these third-party platforms are just as exploitative to restaurant owners, with the standard commission fee hovering around 30 percent — and their shady practices have continued under the guise of COVID-19 relief. A recent GrubHub promotion offering a $10 discount for customers who ordered $30 of food noted in fine print that the $10 was actually comped by the restaurant, not GrubHub.

Against my better judgment, I get into a Facebook argument with a former high school classmate who now works for Uber Eats. Before the mayor of San Francisco instructed delivery apps to cap their restaurant fees at 15 percent, Uber Eats had implemented a button on its app allowing the customer to donate to the restaurant, rather than lowering its own fees. My former classmate argues that restaurants would get used to reduced fees and have trouble restructuring once the crisis ends and that relief disappears. I point out that this logic assumes that restaurants can’t balance their own budgets. This same argument is currently being touted by the U.S. government to minimize emergency aid: They don’t want people to get used to it.

What I am getting used to instead is the arrival of a future that tech companies have been priming us for: public spaces populated mostly by delivery drivers purchasing doomsday groceries and meals for those wealthy enough to stay home.

The reality ignored by every #StayAtHome PSA is that people’s ability to social distance relies on the labor of others. It’s not so much that the work we’re doing is itself essential. It’s our working, rather, that is essential to maintaining the status quo.

When my mom asks if I’m getting hazard pay, I can’t help but laugh.

The owners of my workplace withheld our paychecks from the March 1 to March 15 pay period until April 10, almost three weeks past payday. They issued our checks only after my coworkers and I launched a collective campaign of prodding and griping.

“I won’t be able to work going forward if we can’t be paid on time,” I texted one of the owners.

His only response: “We’re doing our best.”

During this time, the restaurant participated in a program to send 100 lunches to health care workers. They announced this act of benevolence in an Instagram post. Several commenters lauded them as “local heroes.” I considered posting a comment asking when these local heroes intended to pay their own employees, but decided against it.

One of my coworkers thinks we should try to be understanding, that the enemy is capitalism, and the owner is a victim for being dumb enough to buy into it. Another heard that the owners might lose their house. But it’s difficult for me to feel sorry for the people who control my income and whose interest in the plight of their employees depends on the day of the week. Though they offered groceries from the kitchen to all of us employees when the pandemic first hit, my bosses also neglected to disclose when I was hired that I am, in fact, eligible for sick time. I only learned about my accrual after the start of the pandemic, in passing, from a coworker.

We are now forced to be “in this together,” a phrase insisted upon in every glib managerial email.

But the truth is, I do feel a tug of sympathy. It’s harder to say “fuck the boss” when he’s a stressed-out guy I see every day, not a faceless corporation or billionaire villain.

Before COVID, my coworkers and I had begun to document our grievances, hoping to advocate for necessary changes. Some of the issues — not being allowed to order food on our breaks, micromanaging by the owners — are mostly irrelevant now that daily operations have shifted so drastically. Other issues, like passive-aggressive communication and the battle over service fees, have been exacerbated by the pandemic. Either way, we are now forced to be “in this together,” a phrase insisted upon in every glib managerial email. I want to keep my job, and I want the restaurant to stay open. As angry as I am, I remain bound to it.

A recent NPR story reported that many workers stand to make more money collecting unemployment than they would continuing to work. Many of my coworkers have decided to stay home, a choice that the owners have, to their credit, been amenable to.

My choice to keep coming in is mostly out of concern for my manager, a woman in her 50s with greater health risks than me, who I care for deeply and who would otherwise end up working nearly every shift herself. I also want to show solidarity with the kitchen staff and allow for them to maintain an income.

None of us know how long shelter-in-place orders will last and how far government resources will extend; a (mostly) steady paycheck feels more secure than limited unemployment benefits. The fact that assistance is tied to our employment status rather than our needs leads to tricky decisions, betting on which option will position us best long term.

C., one of the cooks I work with, was planning to move to Detroit with his family in May. He lost his other job at a restaurant in downtown LA when that restaurant closed. He’s paying rent in Los Angeles and making mortgage payments in Detroit. As an undocumented worker, he’s not eligible for federal stimulus money, even though he pays taxes. He tells me his savings account is dwindling.

“I’m trying not to think about it,” he says. “What can I do?”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a plan last month to distribute $500 cash payments to undocumented Californians, but the one-time payment doesn’t alleviate long-term worries. Before COVID, C. and I chatted often about the future, our respective plans. He wanted to learn to be a mechanic. Above all, he wanted to be his own boss.

The last time I went grocery shopping, I asked the cashier if he felt customers have been kinder or more conscientious since the pandemic began.

He laughed. “All I can say is that people are still people.”

People in the service industry tip each other well because we understand what this work requires, on normal days and even more so during the pandemic. My hope is for this understanding to extend and grow between workers across industries, as we follow each other’s leads, listen to each other’s demands, and take action where we can.

But the pandemic has not served as an empathy switch. Though outpourings of support for frontline workers across social media and various news outlets might indicate a cultural rethinking of the value of labor in the U.S., my experiences with both customers and management suggest otherwise. The imperative to thank frontline workers has not extended into material protection and solidarity, from either the government or the general public.

Customers want their shelves stocked and their takeout delivered. The labor that makes their leisure possible remains, essentially, an afterthought.

Sara Selevitch is a writer and a waitress living in Los Angeles. Nhung Lê is a Vietnamese freelance illustrator based in Sydney.

via Eater - All https://www.eater.com/2020/5/12/21251204/being-an-essential-restaurant-worker-during-coronavirus-pandemic

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