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Monday Media Musings - 11/08/21
Only Murders in the Building: Another show I watched with my Tuesday TV group. We ended up watching the last four episodes in one night because we had to know how it ended. Both hilarious and engaging, the television equivalent of a page-turner, Selena Gomez is wonderful, and her chemistry with Steve Martin is spot on. All of the cast was great, really. This show is one of my favorite genres: it parodies a genre while being itself an exemplar of that genre. I think that's what literary analysts mean by pastiche? Jane the Virgin is the example that immediately comes to mind -- a telenovela that simultaneously pokes fun at the conventions of telenovelas. Anyone have any other recs in this vein? Anyway, I don't listen to enough true crime podcasts to have a good sense of exactly all the references, but some were obvious even to me (I recognized the plinky piano theme music as a send-up of Serial immediately). The episode focused on Theo Dimas was particularly interesting, I thought -- a whole episode with no spoken communication, even when we weren't watching through a Deaf character's eyes... until Charles breaks in with his whispered exclamation, which was so effective that I jumped in my seat a little. But it was all wrapping up a bit too fast, a bit too neatly, so I figured we had to be missing something. I had been wondering how they would pull off a second season, but the final moments set up the turn perfectly, and I can't wait to see what's coming next.
My Fair Lady: Our most recent theater experience. I've never seen this show before, nor have I seen the movie, but I was familiar with many of the songs, and I knew the basic outline of the plot -- or at least I thought I did. An English professor of linguistics (Henry Higgins) makes a bet with a colleague that he can teach a Cockney woman (Eliza Doolittle) "proper" speech and behavior well enough that she can pass for upper-class at a society ball, hijinks and romance ensure. And while that's not wrong, exactly, there are a lot of reasons the story wasn't what I expected. The first thing I wasn't expecting was that Eliza came to Higgins of her own volition, asking for help to learn a manner of speaking that will allow her to work in a flower shop. She also knows about the bet from the very beginning -- it's made in front of her, so nothing about it comes as a surprise. The ball, which I had always imagined to be the climax of the story, instead happens at the beginning of the second act, setting up a whole lot of plot that I had no idea was coming. Last, and perhaps most importantly, this particular revival (it premiered in New York in 2018) changes the ending -- Eliza and Higgins do not end up together. The final moment of the show is Higgins standing in his home, Eliza walking away into the wings without looking back, under a spotlight as the rest of the light fades, and then the spotlight snaps off, leaving him alone in the dark. It was a strong moment, and one that makes me feel much more kindly to the show as a whole. To put it bluntly, Higgins is awful -- sexist, selfish, dismissive, deeply classist, far far too impressed with himself... just extremely hard to like. I had no idea how the show was going to make me feel okay about a romantic relationship between him and Eliza, and I'm relieved that it ultimately didn't try. Apparently this is a change from the original, one that was meant to be more true to the original play (Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw). I definitely like it better this way.
Also noteworthy is that the context of many of the songs wasn't what I had assumed. For one, "I Could Have Danced All Night" has nothing to do with the ball -- it's Eliza being wistful about a brief but meaningful moment of connection with Higgins during "The Rain in Spain". And "Get Me to the Church on Time" is about one last night of debauchery before Eliza's father marries her stepmother -- not someone excited about their impending wedding.
As usual for these productions, the staging was gorgeous, the performances were all excellent, the costumes were amazing (clearly modeled on the costumes in the movie, many of which are so iconic that I recognized them immediately even though I've never seen it). Glad I saw it, if just to have finally experienced a show that's such an important part of Broadway musical history. But I do wonder whether some of these shows from the earlier part of the 20th century ought to stay a part of history, not be continually revived.
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I have mixed feelings on the subject of Eliza/Freddy. In the main, I think I agree with you, but if she has to pick one of them, I still think he's a lot better for her than Higgins.