Fan Forum - View Single Post - Aliens in America Thread #6

Looney6 · 03-06-2008, 06:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nogodsnomasters (View Post)

I strongly disagree. First, I think Aliens is a pretty good show. It's no Gilmore Girls of course, but it's a better than average comedy. I don't think it's great because it suffers, I think, from a bit of schizophrenia; it tries to be too many things at once (biting satire, sweet, irreverent, bawdy, conventional, edgy, preachy, etc.) sometimes within the same episode. They pulled it off more often than not, in my opinion, but the lack of focus had an overall weakening effect. The show flirts with edgy Election style satire but ends up pulling its punches.

Scott the weakest link? I don't see it that at all, although I haven't agreed with every aspect of his portrayal of Gary (I thought some of his expression were a bit over the top), I enjoyed most of his scenes immensely.

I think what Scott and the interviewer said about Gary made a lot of sense. It was funnier to have Gary be an ex popular high school jock. His character to me represents a man whose life sadly peaked in high school. The show portrayed him as a record holding highschool rusher and part of the homecoming court. Does that translate into success as an adult? No way. That's intentional. The interviewer nailed it:

IGN TV: Something that interested me about how Aliens has progressed is that Gary is sort of inhabiting that American Beauty decline of the middle class man – but here it's how aware his son is aware of it. Even if it's only in narration, we hear your son chronicling how sad you are. It's great it's so funny, because otherwise it might just be sad.

Gary is supposed to be a parody of the clueless ex-jock. He can't relate to his son simply because he's not athletic. We see Gary as equally lame as his son, but in his world he's not. That's the point. The show is trying to poke fun provincial attitudes of Anytown, USA.

I think it was daring of Scott to play someone so opposite of Luke, and although I miss Luke, I have enjoyed watching him play a loser. I don't think Scott playing sloppy, always-eating Gary was a waste of his talent. His talent is acting, and Gary was 180 degrees from anything Scott had ever done before.

I think that was the intent of the constant eating.

Hats off to you, Scott: Luke, Gary, Peter Strahm--all in one year. Bravo.

I can't really agree with your sentiments NGNM. I realize this is the CW we are talking about here but this show missed the mark so many times. And I thinks it's exactly because of the schizophrenia issue. It ran the gamut from crude toilet humor to elements of a family dramedy. They never decided what they wanted this show to be. They never really stuck to anything they were selling at the Upfronts or press tour. It's as if after the Pilot aired the network told the producers to rework the show. I actually think the strongest characters were Franny and the daughter. And the only time the SL's seemed cohesive was when they stuck to something more family oriented and had the dramedy element. They unfortunately set out to be both a sitcom-y comedy and edgy and they failed on both fronts IMO. And I think the ratings show that since they were never able to pull in more than .7 share any given week. Once Online Nation and Life is Wild were cut it effectively became the lowest rated show on TV and the CW. And that wouldn't be so bad except I think the spread between it and the next highest rated show is significant enough to warrant a cancellation. Reaper is at least generating enough online interest that they have opted to wait and see and they actually brought them back after the strike which means they are gambling on Reaper improving once their new eps start airing.

I'm fine with SP stepping out of Luke's flannels. He really has a lot of work to do in proving his GG success was not a one time thing. But this was not the best vehicle for him to do that. He should be taking some smaller roles on bigger shows where he'll be seen by more people. A guest stint on ER could be great. YMMV

ETA

I think the Luke vs Gary debate wrt to the strength of their characters is an apples to oranges comparison. Gary is supposed to be furniture. Luke was not. He was an integral component to Lorelai's SL. The central focus of AiA was about the boys. And since a large part of a teens life happens at school it strongly implied that that Gary & Franny would be used to just support whatever SL's Justin and Raja would have. And that is really how Gary was used most weeks. I think the term "disconnected" is probably the best description of him.