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aion-rsa · 4 years ago

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How Search Party Season 4 Revels in Character Specificity

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This article contains spoilers for Search Party season 4 episodes 4 through 6.

One of the most tried and true laws of the entertainment industry is: Ann Dowd makes everything better.

The character actress livens up just about everything that she’s in, whether it’s as a shockingly charismatic cultist in Hereditary, a shockingly charismatic cultist in The Handmaid’s Tale, or a…shockingly charismatic cultist in The Leftovers. OK, so we might be boxing Anne in a bit here. When it came time to cast basically the exact opposite of a shockingly charismatic cultist in Search Party season 4, however, the show’s creators still knew there was but one place to look.

“We got really lucky with her wanting to do it,” co-creator Charles Rogers says. “She could not have been sweeter. Everyone is ‘darling’ to her, she’s just got this really warm spirit. And then we put her through hell. She had to fall a million times, she had to crawl on the ground, she had to get chicken nuggets stuffed into her mouth over and over. It was like, ‘Oh my God, we got Ann Dowd,’ and then it was like, ‘Oh my God, I’m so sorry, Ann Dowd.’”

For two glorious, fleeting episodes in the middle half of Search Party’s fourth season (episodes four through six premiered on Jan. 21. The final four arrive on Jan. 28) Dowd plays Paula Jo, a nosy and officious neighbor of Chip (Cole Escola) – who just happens to be a narcissistic psychopath who has kidnapped and imprisoned our lead, Dory Sief (Alia Shawkat).

“We knew from the beginning we wanted there to be a nosy neighbor who was obsessed with Christmas. We just thought that was a funny way to see a little of the town that Chip lived in. Also, in the vein of Misery or Silence of the Lambs, there are outside forces milling about, endangering the captor’s ability to be the victim in their cell.”

Paula Jo soon finds herself in that same cell, for the crime of noticing that Chip has a distressed, captive woman in the back of his car. While Dory is emotionally drained and defeated from her time in captivity, the defiant Paula Jo makes it very clear that, if Chip is to have her as a prisoner, he is going to need to follow an exhaustive array of dietary and medical guidelines.

“The idea was that she was essentially like, ‘It’s going to be really hard to keep me alive,’” Rogers says.

Of course, Chip doesn’t keep Paula Jo alive too much longer. After the woman discovers that her cellmate is infamous murderer Dory Sief, Chip freaks out that anyone would cast aspirations on his “friend” like that and shoves peanut oil saturated chicken nuggets down her throat, triggering an allergic reaction and killing her. Ann Down and Paula Jo’s time on Search Party is brief but boy do they both burn bright. And that Paula Jo interlude serves as another example of just how well this series walks a tonal tightrope in its bold storytelling mission four years in.

Search Party remains like just about nothing else on television. Ostensibly still a “comedy,” there are fewer and fewer comedic situations that the character’s find themselves in as time goes on. This batch of episodes finds the usually reliable comedy trio of Elliot (John Early), Portia (Meredith Hagner), and Drew (John Reynolds) in the clutches of shifty tweaker type who seems primed to abandon and rob them…then lo’ and behold, he abandons and robs them! The show plays that scenario straight, but the fact that the characters’ own neuroses get them into the scenario (Portia is a people person who just can’t say no) adds an unmistakable comedic element to it.

Search Party Season 4 Honors Misery and Other “Captive” Dramas

By Alec Bojalad

Meanwhile the series lead has now spent six consecutive episodes in captivity, under intense psychological manipulation and torture. As is the case with Portia and company, the show never shies away from the reality of the terror of Dory’s situation. Rogers and his co-creator Sarah Violet-Bliss even went so far as to interview experts on cults and brainwashing to better understand the light bout of Stockholm Syndrome that Dory would come to experience.

“We talked to this man named Rick Ross, who is a leading expert on cults and brainwashing and how to deprogram people from cults. He appeared in The Vow for a little bit actually,” Rogers says. “He kind of just walked us through what’s possible and so that we could make the most entertaining aspects of that because a starting place for us was being like, ‘Okay, Misery, Room, and Silence of the Lambs are templates of a captor genre. Then the season will take a big turn when we go towards a narrative that has more to do with brainwashing and that kind of cult abuse of power.’”

It’s well-researched, heavy stuff. And thanks to performances and characters like Ann Dowd as Paula Jo, it’s all somehow still darkly funny. Search Party has picked up great lessons from some of the storytelling masters like the Coen Brothers. The key to both good drama and good comedy lies in specificity. The characters of Search Party are specific in their traits, flaws, and tics. That makes the darkness around them feel all the more simultaneously real and surreal. Because if we’ve learned anything about reality recently, it’s that it has equal bits of surreality sprinkled throughout it.

Like poor Ann Dowd having chicken nuggets shoved in her mouth.

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Search Party season 4 episodes 1 through 6 are available to stream on HBO Max now.

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fragiledewdrop · 5 years ago

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High school Newspaper Shenanigans

I don't have a lot of good memories about high school, but today I found a dusty copy of what passed for a "newspaper" in my school and it brought me back to when I was 16.

The girl who had been running the school newspaper for as long as I could remember was graduating that year, so she had to prepare for the final exam and university and she did not have time to edit anymore. My friends B., C., and I, in what was probably a fit of madness, decided to try our hand at it. And so I found myself co-editor of a newspaper. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but it would be one hell of an adventure.

The paper was called "Up!", after the Disney movie, for...some very creative reason I cannot remember. The first thing we did was change the title to "Up patriots to arms!"

One of the first things we had to cover was a very important, popular, yearly student strike,which would have been fairly easy, if not for the freaking tension between the two student organizations in our city. The biggest one, the "Rete" , was basically left wing - although many people didn't know or care about their affiliations- and they constantly butted heads with the student block, a group of self proclaimed neofascists who dressed in all black, used smoke bombs during protests and were always surrounded by the police.

We decided it would be a grand idea to interview the respective leaders to get both opinions on the matter.

The president of the "Rete" came to meet us after school. The highlight of the interview was when he said that his was a "non political organization", at which point we looked at each other in disbelief and asked him:"Really?"

The answer was "Yeas, although of course many of us are registered in different parties along the whole spectrum, such as..." and he started listing all left wing parties in the country, from communists to centrists, because apparently that's what he meant by "variety". Anyway.

It was time to interview the leader of the Block. He told us to wait in a square until someone would come get us.

B. and I were getting very nervous.

A guy with a shaved head and a black leather jacket came towards us. "You the journalists? Follow me"

We followed him to the lair. I mean headquarters.

(By the way, we realized we knew this guy. He was a lamb. I had no clue what he was doing there.)

The headquarters' walls were legit covered in swastikas and pictures of Mussolini. Yikes.

The leader was also very nice. Didn't stop me wanting to throttle him when he said that poor Mussolini was just misunderstood.

I had to ACTUALLY stop B. from doing something rash. No picking fights with the fascist dudes in he fascists's lair, please.

They straight up told us, I shit you not, that they were a brotherhood and, as a very effective bonding experience, they put on music and danced in a circle while whipping each other with leather belts. I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP. Maybe they were, but it didn't seem so. That didn't make it into the article, but it's forever etched into my brain.

I was shaken, but the double interview turned out great. #journalism

A while later we were sitting at a school assembly in the local movie theater. Everybody was complaining about the fact that our gym's roof had collapsed the year before and nobody was doing anything about it. We were taking the bus every week to a public gym, but we had to pay for it and were Officially Not Happy About It.

It was then that B. went : "You know what would be great? If we could interview the mayor about this"

I lit up. "Oh my god! We could ask him so many things! And not just about our school, but about the Linguistic High school that had to be evacuated and about [all the other schools that were literally falling to pieces. You know, Italian things]"

But the consensus was that, while we could try, it would be almost impossible for us to get an interview. So we sighed and sat back.

C.cleared her throat. "Guys." "Yes?" "You know how the mayor is a lawyer?" ".... Yes?" "Well, my dad is a lawyer. He knows him."

We dragged her to the bathroom

"We are not leaving here until your dad gets us an appointment" (poor guy)

He did

For that same night. At the town hall. At 8 pm.

We cleared our afternoon to come up with pertinent questions and practice and freak out.

At 8 we were at the town hall.

There was a red banner on the balcony with a slogan on it, that would be there for months afterwards, because...

... that same night a group of workers had occupied the town hall to demand better pay and better working conditions

Good for them

Bad for us

We were about to leave, but they assured us the mayor would be with us shortly

We waited three whole hours

During which, obviously, an old council member came to talk to us about how, if we wanted to do some real journalism, we should investigate the presence of the Illuminati in our town

Not gonna lie, we were kinda interested at that point

Around 11, the mayor called us in

I am going to concede that he must have been tired

But he was still a slimy son of a bitch

Extremely condescending

When we brought up our problems, he told us our schools were the Province's responsibility

(the Province would of course later tell us we were the Mayor's responsibility)

It was a train wreck

But eye opening

The article we wrote was extremely passive aggressive

He told C.'s father that he really liked it

I don't know if he was impermeable to sarcasm or just a politician.

Fast forward a few months. While our math teacher was talking, a giant piece of plaster fell from the ceiling, missed her by millimeters and crashed on the floor. We went on, business as usual, but that was kinda scary. And it was not the first incident of that kind to happen in our school.

We decided to do a reportage

Armed with notebooks and a camera, we went from classroom to classroom, asking students and teachers about problems with the building.

It was like opening a can of worms.

We got everything from "Oh yes, don't you see those huge holes in the ceiling and in the floor?" to "Yes, every time it rains the classroom gets flooded" to "See this giant wooden piece of tent rod? It fell on my shoulder last week. We don’t even have tents!"

Everyone had something to complain about. The teachers. The janitors. It was scary, to be honest. Especially considering we were repeatedly told ours was the safest school structure in town (what with having been standing since the end of WWI and all)

One day, while we were trying to get on the roof to evaluate its conditions, the headmistress called us in her office.

She said that she had gotten wind of what we were doing (duh)

And she hoped that we wouldn't give a bad impression of her "to parents and important people"

Because after all her hands were tied

It was the responsibility of the Mayor and the Province

(Just who the fuck was responsible for us?)

She smiled sweetly, leaned in towards us and whispered "You'll be careful now, won't you?"

She looked at me and said my name

Hoping I'd be the responsible/most easily intimidated one

(I had beef with that woman, mmmkay? But that's a story for another day)

I smiled and I told her: "Of course. We are just taking pictures of what we see. We'll let the truth speak for itself"

We did

No commentary

Just very objective descriptions and pictures

We really felt like heroes of the free press and free speech, at the service of the people despite the threat of power. (Yes, it sounds dramatic. It's because we were teenagers)

And then there were the other, less momentous adventures:

That one time when, after days of editing, we had to fill a little blank space at the bottom of the last page and nothing fit. We were frantically searching through our notes, the articles other students had sent us, drawings, everything, and we were slowly losing hope, until B. unearthed one of my notebooks and said : "What is this? 'Requiem. In memoriam termosifoni malati, ego ista verba pronuntio..." I was horrified. "NO" I yelled. "That's just a joke. We are NOT publishing that. NO WAY!" It was really a silly thing, you see. There was a radiator in our classroom that didn't work very well. Sometimes it was scorching hot, sometimes (on the coldest days, obviously) it was icy. So my friend E. and I had decided that the radiator was "sick", and we wrote its last will, its epitaph, parodies of famous poems like "La fontana malata" (The sick fountain) by Palazzeschi or "All'amica risanata" (To the healed friend) by Foscolo (can't find translations, sorry). It was fun. B.had found my silly attempt to write a "Requiem" in...kinda dog Latin I guess? But the grammar was correct. In any case, IT WAS NOT MEANT TO SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY. But we were desperate, so I relented. On one condition: it had to be ANONYMOUS. And that was the best decision I ever made in my entire life, because when we distributed the newspaper I saw a bunch of Latin teachers analising the fucking thing in front of their classes. "Mmmmhhh I am not sure an accusative was the best choice here. I would have gone with a dative." Then write your own pastiche poem, Marta! One of them had even copied it on the blackboard and was trying to figure out the metric! That was the equivalent of a 3am shitpost, not fucking Catullus, people! I have never been so embarrassed in my life! At least my friends were having a field day with it. Oh, and my Latin and Greek teacher figured it out. She read it and told me : "This was you, wasn't it?" I wanted to disappear. But she said it was funny, and that was the end of it.

All the times we had to edit what other students gave us and it was WILD, you guys. The grammar alone...The choice of topics....We got quite a few articles about UFO sightings over our town, so that was a thing. (We got to see a lot of really interesting and creative stuff, though)

The times we absolutely lost our cool, because it was hard work, okay? "Federica, your Isabel Allende analysis is a bit too long. Maybe if we cut the Scheherazade comparison..." "YOU ARE NOT CUTTING THE SCHEHERAZADE COMPARISON, B." "But.." "That is the backbone of the whole thing. The structure would collapse without it." "It's only a metaphor!" "No! I won't sell myself and my principles for a chance to be published" "Guys! CALM DOWN! It's just...essentially a book report." "SHUT UP C."[........] "I think we need to eat something" "Yeah. Should I make pancakes? With chocolate chips or without, B.? "

The time we got stuck at school because it was snowing, and C. wrote a beautiful piece called "The agonizing mesmerism of snow", and our friend P.,who was a wizard with a pencil, made an earie and amazing drawing for it that almost made me cry. Coincidentally, it was the day pope Ratzinger resigned. We thought it was a joke while still at school, then later on agreed that it was the reason it had been snowing in the first place. None of us wanted to write about the pope, so we asked the guy who was always sending us articles about the occult and arcane symbols hidden in churches. It turned out great.

The time a bunch of our more "troublesome" classmates started making hilarious dirty jokes based on Catullus' double entendres and B. promised them we would publish them (anonymously) if they wrote them down. They did, and the result was a page titled "Surrealism" full of the dirtiest "poetic" stuff in existence that made everybody laugh themselves unconscious, with the exception of some teachers who somehow didn't get the jokes.

The time we interviewed our student representative (a classmate of ours), whom B. had always thought was too full of himself and needed to be brought down a notch. So we "accidentally" misspelled his name in the article. Nobody noticed except him. He was fuming and it was glorious (not my proudest moment, but what can you do)

The time another brilliant classmate wrote a piece called "The pathologic mysoginist" that absolutely enraged some of the guys in our school. I stan her to this day.

That time I wrote a long article for Woman's day about the abuse and mistreatment of women in our country and across the world. I thought it was nothing special, really, but then Maria the janitor (the sweetest lady in existence) stopped me in the corridor and teared up a bit and said that she hadn't known about a lot of the things I had discussed, but she thought it was important to talk about them and that she felt represented as a woman and that she wanted to bring the paper home to read it to her husband. It touched me so deeply I still get emotional when I think about it.

Anyway, all of this and more happened in one year. Then we, too, had to worry about university admissions and exams and we passed the burden on to "aliens and occult" guy (who was amazing too)

But I remember the passion we poured into it, the willingness to take risks, the feeling of defying authority for the "greater good". We were idealists, all of us, and so full of hope and a will to change things in every way we could. Maybe a high school newspaper means nothing in the great scheme of things, but it meant something to us. It made us brave when we didn't think we were. It made us defiant. I wonder if that part of me is still sleeping, somewhere deep inside.

#Memories #High school #Journalism #I guess #High school newspaper #Adolescence #Adventures #Funny #I am so full of feelings right now #We were crazy #About me #Long post

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heresjeonny · 8 years ago

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EXO 101: A Crash Course

Park Chanyeol

Soft baby by day, sexy mofo by night. Can do everything?? Sing, rap, dance, cook, act, write and produce music, play the guitar (classical, spanish, lead, and rhythm omg) and the piano and the drums, has the body of an elf king. He’s also AMAZING with children as shown [here - skip to 12:17 and WATCH you won’t regret it] and dogs too! All animals really. He’s Korean Snow White. With abs. And if Snow White was extra.

Also the kindest soul ever. He’s always smiling, even when he’s down. He literally said, and I quote; “No matter how difficult something is, I will always be positive and smile like an idiot.” His then-girlfriend nicknamed him “Happy Virus.” Constantly buys his members gifts, is very tall (well over six feet), and he’s the most extroverted and sociable person - actually friends with everyone. 10/10 amazing human.

Byun Baekhyun

Don’t let him fool you!!! He looks soft but he will fuck you up with his cheeky lil smile and pelvic sorcery and unearthly vocals and uGH. His wit is unparalleled like omg, so sassy and hilarious and sharp. Also a huge nerd when it comes to anime, manga, and video games. Once gave a picture of himself to another member as a gift, the lil shit.

He’s incredibly passionate about his career and his members, and I think it was Kyungsoo who said that it’s Baek who keeps them all together at times. In summary: Byun Baekhyun is what happens when a demon and an angel do the do.

D.O./Do Kyungsoo:

Do Kyungsoo? More like Do Me, Kyungsoo. I’m sorry I’m so thirsty Ksoo...I don’t even know where to begin with this one. First of all, he single-handedly saved the human race from extinction with his voice. He’s savage af, so much so that he’s affectionately nicknamed “Satansoo” and he will smack a bitch. He’s also so soft and squishy at the same time, you’ll get whiplash. And his acTING. Lord in heaven. And I believe he didn’t even have acting lessons?? The nerve of him. He, too, is sex on legs, and he might be quieter than the others, but y’all best listen when he talks cause boy bout to spill the tea.

He’s also very paternal in that he takes care of the other members a lot, like when Kai, his roommate, isn’t feeling well, he’ll care for him or go out to get food for him. And he can cook really well. I’m gonna stop now before I end up writing an entire dissertation ;’)

Lay/Zhang Yixing

ALSO NOT PURE ABORT ABORT THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

Oh my god. Anyway. Zhang Yixing is the perfect contradiction. On the one hand, he’s an actual baby lamb - laugh and all. On the other hand, he’s the human embodiment of the NC-17 rating. Like, hide yo kids. Yixing is also one of the Chinese members of EXO, so he often leaves to promote his solo music which is in Chinese, and he works so incredibly hard and deserves all the success. He also writes the lyrics, and composes and arranges the music!

And...his dancing. Proof that god exists. There is literally no part of his body that Yixing does not have absolute command over - and you can see it because he is so precise, confident, and sexy. :’)

Suho/Kim Junmyeon

I actually had to cover his face while writing this because holy--

Yup. Moving on.

Actually, back to his face (and the rest of him): Remember when Da Vinci was conceptualizing the Vitruvian Man (lol only 90′s kids will remember...1490′s kids, that is). You know that picture of the guy with another pair of arms and legs superimposed on him, inside a circle? The drawing theorizing the ideal proportions of the human body? Yup, true story: Junmyeon was Da Vinci’s muse. Suho’s face is so symmetrical, it inspired mathematicians to write the golden ratio. He is a genetic miracle, a statistical outlier, a national treasure--

Anyway *sweats*. ALSO. Let’s talk about his personality. Myeon is the mom of EXO, the leader, so he’s naturally very parental. He actually chose the stage name “Suho” because it means guardian. He always does his best to keep his kids the members together and doing what they need to be doing. Always pays for things ($Junmoney$), and is the person a lot of them confide in and go to for comfort or advice, especially Sehun.

He’s such a dad too - like his dad joke ratings are off the charts. 10/10 would build you a tree house and tuck you in at night.

Oh Sehun

Maknae. Icon. Legend. Used to have a lisp.

People sometimes think he’s cold or reserved because of his face, but as you can see in the gif, he’s literal sunshine. He once cried on stage because he was knocked on the head by a camera - but he wasn’t crying because the injury hurt, he was crying because he wasn’t allowed to perform because of it, and he felt like he was disappointing his fans. He also cried during a radio show when asked about his other members - he said every night before he falls asleep, he prays for them and he prays that they all stay together and are successful and happy. And now I’m crying.

Everyone is in love with him.

His dancing resurrected me from the dead, put my children through college, and ended world hunger because damn we are fed when that boy moves.

Sehun was once invited to Paris for a Louis Vuitton fashion show and became king of France. I’m not kidding. All he did was show up, and there was a huge crowd already there to greet him as if he were royalty, and he was voted best dressed at the show by Vogue. He went to the Louvre, and people were studying and appreciating him, the actual art.

Chen/Kim Jongdae

Ah, little dino bby. He’s iconic for many reasons:

1) His smile. It curls up at the corners like this :}

2) When he laughs, he literally goes HAHAHAHAHA like wow, amazing, I want this as my ringtone

3) He screams a lot. Nickelodeon once made a show about him called Jongdae: The Last Pterodactyl.

4) HIS VOCALS. Un-freaking-believable. He’s the male version of Mariah Carey.

5) Speaks really good Chinese! (He’s Korean)

6) An amazing human?? He donates to charity so often and he doesn’t do it for publicity either. He takes good care of the other members too.

Jongdae, let me put a ring on it.

Xiumin/Kim Minseok

HERE WE GO. My precious boy :’)

Minseok. The eldest. Also known as the best person to ever exist. Like Kyungsoo, he doesn’t talk much because he’s a shy lil bean, but once he warms up to you, the things that come out of his mouth are so deep and cute and funny and wowow I want ten of him

Is the least likely to cry

Was chubby (and so adorable!!) as a little kid, and now he has a six pack. Because of his weight as a kid though, he has spoken many times about the issue of body shaming and how people’s perceptions of a person shift based on how they look. He once said these words that made my cold, dead heart beat again: “I don’t have an ideal type. If our hearts match well, then she will look pretty to me.”

Has the strongest arms in EXO. They all arm wrestled and he won and it was the funniest thing ever.

Is not only an idol, he’s also getting his Ph.D. Dr. Kim. I can’t believe....

Wants to open his own coffee shop, and I don’t drink coffee, but I would chug any dish-water-coffee-grinds-filth that he would serve me because damn I love him.

Kai/Kim Jongin

R00D MOTHERF*CKER.

The Bias Wrecker. Or just your bias, plain and simple

Kim Jongin is one of nature’s greatest accomplishments. His gams are the eighth wonder of the world - and he puts them to use when he dances, like please kick me in the face with those omfg

His laugh. Astounding. Also don’t stand too close when he laughs because he will hit you. It’s just what he does lmao

He’s basically a hip young old man - so hot but so sleepy. He’ll sleep at any given opportunity.

Very fond of fried chicken. And dogs. But not in terms of eating, for the latter

Learned ballet for ten years and it shows, and I just wANT TO SEE HIM IN A LEOTARD DAMMIT

He has darker skin than the other members which people used to make fun of him for and still do comment on, but he says he loves it and he is proud of his body :’) we are too bby!!

Other random facts:

- EXO originally had 12 members but 3 left and we’re not going to talk about it okay? okay

- Chen and Xiumin are married best friends. Xiumin actually said in an interview that Chen is “like my wife”

- Sehun is now officially Lord Oh Sehun of Glencoe, Scotland because his fans are the most Extra and purchased the estate for his birthday :’)

- Chanyeol once folded one hundred paper cranes for his girlfriend as a gift, but in the middle of doing this, she called him and broke up with him

- Baekhyun can’t cook for shit but at least he’s pretty

- Kai dated F(X)’s Krystal

- Kyungsoo once said to the camera that he is “not pure”

- Yixing starred in a gay sci-fi movie where he and this other dude have a baby

- Suho is a health nut. Just like how girls always have pads and tampons on them, Suho has multivitamins

For @the-porcelain-doll-xo because I’m the friend that wants to drag you into hell with me, and I can’t wait for you to get into EXO ahhhhh ily <33

#this...took so long.....#also damn I just realized that I'm in love with every single one of them #exo #about exo #chanyeol #baekhyun #kyungsoo #yixing #lay #chen #jongdae #kai #jongin #minseok #xiumin #suho #junmyeon #sehun #d.o.

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