#the christmas episode! whoof.

[the-lisechen]

idky people are saying s2 of the bear is bad, i'm on e9 and this rules. i mean, i can see why people would be annoyed, but just a few off the cuff observations

-fuck carmy tho. bro needs to get his shit together

- i do not know what they're trying to do with claire. obviously it's good that someone loves carmen, but why do they have this set up as a binary choice between that and the restaurant? are we supposed to like her? not like her? think she's good for carmy? think she's terrible?

-(i am reflexively not a fan of claire, being a sidcarmy person forever, but i'm not sure how it reads to an outside observer)

-marcus! his journey to europe! THE DESSERTS. wonderful side quest, wonderful idea to give him a whole episode. excellent worked

-richie. richie! RICHIEEEEE. i love him. i adore this perpetual fuckup. i love that he found his spot. i knew at least twenty guys exactly like him.

-chicago. i miss it every day, i miss it in my blood. i think i knew exactly where everything was for each shot, and it killed me. excellent work, guys.

-loved loved LOVED carmy getting stuck in the walk in and everyone immediately stepping up to run the restaurant. absolutely stellar. loved richie throwing 'i love you' in the middle of his rant. that felt very real to me.

syd! suffered more than jesus, exceedingly patient about it. the omelette! that was everything.

not even going into carmen's mom. awful. awful.

on the whole, really enjoyed it. i loved, so much, that people were open and honest about their feelings. i love that on some level this is a show about love, and how it saves us and how it really, really doesn't.

[immortalled]

Questionably canon or not if only because the book contradicts canon several times, there is so much to unpack here and I honestly have no clue where to start. So I'm just gonna say:

A. Nathan really took that first death and Simon not being able to save him personally, huh? I suppose there's no sense in ragging on about how upset you are with Rachel, a dead girl, if he thought it was her fault, but it's interesting to me that he latches onto it being Simon's. Personally I'm going to take that misplaced anger as an obvious sign that Nathan is way more traumatized by his first death than he admits or realizes. Obvious, I guess, but. Whoof.

B. This is either wrong or Nathan's lying again because in one episode he says he always wears condoms because he doesn't want kids. Two, actually, to be sure. Frankly I think the biggest immersion-breaker is that Nathan doesn't have several Little Nathans running around Wertham. Incredible. Also cringing over again the implication that Nathan values himself as an object more than a person.

C. Ah. Prison rape jokes. Early 2000s humor, how I do not miss you. I know this entire letter is meant to be a joke, but I am once again putting on my clown nose and clown shoes to cry about how absolutely horrible it is that Overman decided Nathan's final canon scene should be him in a Las Vegas prison, the one thing Nathan admits he's afraid of several times in canon. And for what? A cheap "save me, Barry" joke? C'mon, Howard. Anyway. I'll always have feelings about a very obviously terrified Nathan using ridiculous humor to cope. It's sad too that he's writing to a penpal rather than any of his friends??? Help.

...And Nathan describing himself as a "hungry power-bottom" will forever plague my brain.

D. I've mentioned before, but I also have emotions for how cute it is that Nathan claims he doesn't like Christmas but he's so excited to celebrate it with his friends, AND allotting a time for them to argue. Really says something about typical holidays at home.

E. Not much to say here except I wish Nathan and Curtis had teamed up for something in canon. I think one of the biggest wasted opportunities of Misfits is that Curtis and Alisha never had too much good, one-on-one screentime with any of the OG gang unless it was romantically motivated.

Misfits book scans, inc. excerpt from a scrapped episode.