I Went To The Seaside And All I Got You Was This Dumb Post

I wasn't going to post at all today because Mrs Bhagpuss and I went to the seaside with Beryl so time was short when we got back. Well, I say seaside... for strict journalistic accuracy, I guess I should make that estuary. The real sea is just a tad too far from where we live for a comfortable day trip with a small dog. 

Still, the Victorians apparently didn't care much for the difference, since they built a very nice little town where the river widens out and goes tidal. There's a lovely walk along the headland, a promenade, a pier, some nice pebble beaches and plenty of rock pools for Beryl to paddle in, so who's counting?

As I said, I didn't think I'd have time for a post but it occurred to me I had a couple or three odds and ends I'd wanted to fit in somewhere and this seemed like as good an opportunity as I was going to get, so here we are. It might be Wednesday but it's Friday in my mind... or something like that. 

AI Predicts The Future!

First up, that Glastonbury Festival Emerging Talent Competition. A few weeks back I posted about it in somewhat desultory fashion at the end of a piece about Google's AI chatbot, Bard. I wasn't very excited by any of the shortlist so I asked Bard "Who do you think will win and why?". 

Somewhat to my surprise, Bard had a very definite opinion, predicting, with some confidence, "I think that N’famady Kouyaté has a strong chance of winning." The result of the Battle of the Bands final, as reported by NME, although apparently not on the Glasto official site itself, as far as I can see, was announced yesterday. Guess who won?

Yep. Got it in one: N’famady Kouyaté.

Now, to be fair, I also had the balofonist down as the likely winner before I even asked Bard but even so... I wonder if Bard picks lottery numbers? 

We Mean It In A Loving Way!

In another callback to an earlier post, here's a video I meant to share a while ago but never found a suitable slot for. Oh, alright then, I forgot all about it. Happy now?

I thought it was funny but I guess you'd have to know the show. I wonder how much crossover there actually was, at the time it was originally broadcast, between the short-lived, cult TV series and people who actually play tabletop roleplaying games? I mean, it's not like D&D plays the same central of role in Freaks and Geeks that it does in Stranger Things. It's more of a bolt-on towards the end.

While I'm on the subject, I don't believe I've seen a single review of Honor Among Thieves anywhere in this part of the blogosphere. Did I miss someone's take on it or has no-one really had anything to say? Surely people must have seen it by now. I'd have thought a big-budget, critically-acclaimed, commercially successful movie based on a core component of our collective hobby might have triggered at least some kind of response. Then again, I haven't seen it and I think this is probably the first time I've mentioned it, so I can hardly talk, can I? 

And That's A Wrap!

Since TV's come up, here's another news story I spotted that I thought might be worth a note. It finally occurred to me that the third season of Stargirl hadn't turned up on Prime, so I did some googling and found it isn't going to happen. The Prime thing, that is. The third season of Stargirl, that's done. It's been and gone.

Why Prime isn't showing Season 3, when they showed 1 & 2 is anyone's guess. Well, money, I suppose. I'll have to watch it on DVD, which is fine. I'd like a hard copy to keep. I'd get the box of all three seasons, if they did one, which they don't. Whoever they are.

At least I know there isn't going to be a fourth season. The show's been cancelled. In an unusual move, though, two separate endings to Season 3 were shot; one for if they got renewed and one for if they didn't. It means the final season has a proper ending, for once.

I believe we were talking about that a while back. It seems like something showrunners and writers maybe ought to be considering as default option these days, although I guess it would be weird for the cast to shoot alternate endings for every season. Kind of like a recurring premonition of their own doom. 

It wouldn't be that hard to do, though. Most shows I can think of would be pretty easy to wrap up at the end of most seasons because what tends to happen is they tie a neat bow around the season arc anyway, then stick a foreboding cliffhanger on the end of that. Just crop it a bit and don't screen the lead-in to the series you didn't get. 

It Didn't Look Like This In The Shop!

And finally, I made BFF status with the latest on my Phantom hit-list, Urian. It happened a bit faster than I was expecting because I had a bit of luck with the latest event, the generically-named Fireworks Celebration, which is giving away handfuls of Ornate Gift Boxes, each worth a thousand points of Affection.

My glee was short-lived when I made the damn dress and put it on. I was - not unreasonably, I think - expecting it to look identical to the outfit Urian herself wears. The ones I got from Jenny, Johanne and Ave do. 

Unfortunately, whereas Urian's original is made of silk, the reproduction seems to be more like taffeta. It looks stiff and uncomfortable instead of free-flowing and instead of billowing, the long train sticks out to one side like a wonky bustle. It's not awful but it's not what I was expecting. 

I haven't decided whose look to appropriate next. I'll have to think a little more carefully about what the outfit's going to look like on my character, this time. Probably should have been doing that all along...

In other Noah's Heart news, there was another server merge recently. I didn't check who merged with whom but I'm guessing my server was the recipient because it seemed fairly busy before. Now it's busier still. 

How many more merges there'll be before the game goes dark I wouldn't like to say. Noah's Heart has such a minimal web presence I have to assume it's not going to be around for long. I hope it at least makes it to the first anniversary. I'd love to be able to say I played every day for a year straight.

And that's all I have for today. Let's be honest - it's a lot more than I thought I had!

High School Never Ends

Until I came across the name in a passing reference in Roz Kaveney's entertining and informative analysis of teen television and movies, Teen Dreams, I had never heard of Freaks and Geeks. Given the involvement of several internationally celebrated Hollywood names - Judd Apatow, Seth Rogen, James Franco - and a whole raft of very familiar faces from later shows, including Linda Cardinelli and Busy Philipps - combined with my lifelong interest in the American High School Experience, an infatuation most likely contracted through an early exposure to Spiderman and Superboy comic books, my ignorance of this particular show seems, to say the least, surprising.

The surprise intensifies when you factor in the critical reputation of the show itself. Although it ran only one season, a third of whose episodes weren't even broadcast during the original run, Freaks and Geeks, as Wikipedia relates, "has appeared in numerous lists of the greatest television shows of all time, including lists by Time, Entertainment Weekly, TV Guide and Rolling Stone." At time of writing, it has an IMDB rating of 8.8/10 and a Rotten Tomatoes perfect 100% from critics and a near-perfect 96% from the audience.

This, by any standards, has to be an important show, particularly for anyone interested in the sub-genre within which it sits. As soon as I became aware of its existence, I knew I'd have to make an effort to track it down. 

Once upon a time, such an undertaking would have been anything from a challenge to an impossibility. It took me many years to scrounge up a copy of another short-lived series set in high school, the wonderful, if now somewhat dated, Square Pegs. I spent years searching, without success, for a DVD or even a VHS copy of the twenty episode long single season that aired on CBS in 1982-3 and in the UK on Channel 4 a few years later.

When I did eventually surface a copy on EBay, I ordered it gleefully, only to find with bittersweet irony that almost by the time it arrived the show had unexpectedly appeared on the listings of Amazon Prime. I ended up watching it there. My DVD copy remains unplayed.

These days, following a number of similar experiences, I almost always run a "Where Can I watch...?" check before committing to ordering a hard copy of anything. Or I just take a glance at YouTube. The extent to which various rights owners police their back catalogs varies hugely. The free-to-play profile of some IPs extends no further than a scattering of clips and trailers, whereas other shows are available in their entirety, uploaded by fans for the pleasure of sharing a fancy or an obsession, then left to sit, unmolested, for years.

The apparent lack of interest by the relevant authorities in older, cancelled shows with little potential for resale is, of course, a huge boon to those of us not lucky enough either to live in the countries where they were originally shown or not to have been aware of their existence at the time. YouTube was, for example, where I watched all of the excellent Boston Common, which was not then and is not now available to watch or buy in any other way, unless you can find a used or pirated copy.

With this in mind, acting purely on a single mention of the title in a paragraph that elided it with all-time favorite My So-Called Life, and knowing nothing of the show's storied heritage and critical plaudits, my first port of call immediately after learning of its existence was indeed YouTube. I figured such an obscure, obsolete, unsuccessful show would be very likely to have at least one afficionado, eager to spread the word.

And it kind of does. Someone going by the name of JackoTV has uploaded the whole eighteen episode run - as two solid blocks . As if to emphasize the seemingly random nature of rights enforcement online, the two seven-hour long entries are separated by a two minute trailer on Paramount Movies' official channel, promoting the show in its current official release.

I didn't watch the show either on YouTube or Paramount. I watched it on Amazon Prime where, seemingly by pure, synchronous happenstance, it popped up in my recommends that very evening. Of course, it's most likely it had been there a while but I'd had no reason to notice it. I don't click on everything Prime or Netflix try to push at me. Something has to trigger me.

As soon as I found it there, I started watching. From the magnificent opening credit sequence, sublimely underpinned by the Joan Jett classic Bad Reputation, I was hooked. Limiting myself to my usual one episode a night ration, I worked through the full season in two and a half weeks. I watched the final one last night.

I found the experience initially disconcerting. Not for any intrinsic problem with the uniformly excellent writing, acting or production but because two of the main characters looked more than a little familiar. At this point you'd be forgiven for assuming I'm referring to the aforementioned presence of a number of actors well-known for many other high-profile performances but that's not it. Not at all.

Although I've known for years who Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen are, I've never knowingly seen them in anything. I know them purely on the stength of reviews I've read or heard, many of them unfavorable. It's never occurred to me to seek out any of their work. I assumed it would not be my kind of thing at all. James Franco, I do know, but only of late and only by way of his writing.

No, the thing that weirded me out as I began watching Freaks and Geeks was that one of the leads (Jason Segel as Nick) looked uncannily similar to someone I was at school with, while another (Linda Cardellini as Lindsay) looked not entirely unlike my first wife at the same age, a resemblance strongly intensified by the way Lindsay dresses, which is pretty much exactly how my ex-wife dressed when I was first going out with her, what with the brushed denim jeans and the green combat jacket.

Far from detracting from the experience, this aura of faux-familiarity added an extra layer of value to what is, in any case, an exceptionally subtle and unexpected show. I've seen a lot of movies and TV shows use the US High School system as a backdrop but I can't recall seeing any that did it so knowingly yet unselfconsciously. It's far from being a quasi-documentary and it doesn't even qualify as realism, but it has the grainy, shabby, well-worn patina of authenticity. 

As the season develops and the characters expose themselves more fully, it also reveals a very surprising warm-heartedness, something I was not expecting from the brittleness of the early episodes. By the time you've seen all eighteen, there are almost no unlikeable characters or at least there were none that I didn't end up liking once I'd found myself coming to understand and appreciate their motivations. 

It's not just the leads and supporting characters, either. All the usual stereotypical high-school/teenage villains - parents, bullies, teachers, authority figures - are given their moment to explain or illuminate their behavior, which always turns out to come from some emotional core that's believable and relatable. For a show that relies quite heavily on the comedy of embarrassment and humiliation - there were times when I literally had to look away out of sheer, excruciating empathy - it never leaves a sour taste. Every encounter, no matter how toe-curling, somehow resolves into a feelgood glow.

Watching Freaks and Geeks in 2023 is a bizarre excercise in time-shifting. It was made at the turn of the millennium but it's set in the very early 1980s. From forty years and three thousand miles away, the illusion feels near-perfect. Allowing for the slight cultural drift between the US and the UK back then, those could have been my friends; their musical tastes, the way they dress, the way they relate to each other and the world around them. I found it not so much nostalgic as reminiscent.

For a show that ended unexpectedly, Freaks and Geeks is extemely fortunate in its final episode. Not only does the show conclude with the end of the school year but there's an almost movie-like shifting of focus from character to character as the credits prepare to roll. It's just one scene short of a "Ten Years Later" post-credit sequence. Watching it, knowing there was no more to be learned about these characters, for once I almost felt satisfied.

After all the talk of unexpected, unwarranted or unecessary cancellations in the current streaming climate, it's perhaps instructive to be reminded that there never really was a golden age, a time when shows just ran and ran until they had nothing more to say. Freaks and Geeks failed to establish itself after an opening plagued by chaotic scheduling and conflict between the creative team and the network but even a successful start never guaranteed a long run; Boston Common finished in the top ten shows of the year in its first season but a schedule change in season two saw it fall out of the top fifty. There was no season three.

Quality just is not a factor in success, it seems. Freaks and Geeks really does live up to its critical reputation but despite the all-round excellence of the cast and the supple brilliance of the writing it couldn't even limp home to the end of season one.

Fortunately, in this brave new world of everything, everywhere, all at once, nothing ever really goes away. If anyone else, like me, either hasn't seen the show or maybe even heard of it, I thoroughly recommend hunting it down on whatever streaming platform carries it in your jurisdiction. 

There is one more chapter to the story. Freaks and Geeks spawned a kind-of sequel, a college-based show that featured many of the same cast, albeit not playing the same characters. That show, Undeclared, also only lasted one season. It's available on Amazon Prime to buy at what seems to me a pricey $1.99 per episode but that's only on Amazon.com. Amazon.co.uk declares it unavailable.

It's also pretty hard to source on DVD. EBay lists one copy but it's in Canada and the postal charges to ship it here ae prohibitive. It is, however, available on YouTube, in full, from several channels and, since Judd Apatow himself posted on Instagram to say "You can watch all of Undeclared on YouTube right now for free. It isn’t streaming anywhere currently but it’s here", I feel we've been given a free pass to watch it.

I'll start doing just that tonight. If it's even half as good as Freaks and Geeks, I'm in for a treat.