"Santa Claws" <santa.claws@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:d14fmvo8upiahtnagmlhc55d22j79rq3q8@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Changed thread title as this really doesn't have much anything to do
> with UK DVDs any more...
>
> >
> >Or is _all_ meanness to Dewey (from Reese, anyway) personal and
vindictive?
> >
>
> Reese seems to me to have a very distant attitude towards Dewey. He
> does seem to take his frustrations out on Dewey a lot more than anyone
> else, but I figured that was just because Dewey was the one who would
> hurt him least when he hits back. The one where he forces Dewey to
> sing 'I'm a teapot' while taking potshots at him with a catapult struck
> me as particularly vindictive, he did it for no reason other than that
> he could.
That one got me puzzled - it made me wonder why/how Dewey would agree to
that. If Reese essential said "Do it or I'll give you the usual", I might
have preferred the usual - at least you could see that coming. Dewey had
to
be pretty scared flapping his arms, concentrating on singing and when he
was
going to get hit next, sort of like a kid sitting in a dunking booth at a
carnival sitting several feet above a tank full of cold water and ice.
(Now
there's an idea they need to work into the show.) Maybe Dewey just
thought
Reese wanted to play with him, and ended up realizing that he'd better
just
play along.
> And even when being 'nice' to Dewey, he does it in a fairly detached
> manner. Like trying to give advice on not going to school with a
> handbag, and telling him not to admit to hearing voices telling him to
> do things.
It may be that after so many years of practice, Reese has just come to see
Dewey as an essential doormat and that just _is_ the nature of their
relation****p. Naturally they are a near comedy of opposites - Dewey is
more
happy go lucky, sensitive and childishly playful while Reese is more
devoutly deviant with a persistent need to rage against the machine. The
latter has a personality that would instinctively have it prey on the
former, so that could explain a lot.
> >I wouldn't be that sure about the heart underneath. While these show
her
at
> >her worst, you have to consider the character in general. She answers
the
> >door half ****d, for crying out loud. She doesn't really seem to be
> >scrupled enough to not put someone else (except maybe Hal, who she also
has
> >whipped into fear of her a lot) above herself.
>
> She is a control freak. A self centered, egotistical control freak.
> Hal plays to that, the kids are suffocated by it. But she doesn't see
> that, she sees herself as reasonable. And from her point of view I
> think she does care. It is just that her point of view is so twisted
> that the kids really stand no chance.
That's just the nature of self centered people. They don't, and perhaps
_can't_ even concept pf how others might feel about something.
> >But
> >even after she knew, she kept up the shtick. You really have to be not
only
> >a bad parent, but a bad person to do that.
>
> That was the point I lost patience with that episode. Though I tend to
> put it down to out-of-character writing for Lois rather than Lois
> being that, well, plain evil.
Again, when I look at the way Lois usually is, the handful of times that
she
is herself to an extreme as described above, and the rare instances where
she shows some warmth - as well as the (lack of) credibility that she
plays
those scenes, and I still have to say that perhaps the above described
really isn't so out of character for her. Plus, when you consider who is
*her mother - Ida, wonders almost cease as to why she doesn't like her
kids.
Obviously she was raised that way as well so she just p***** it on.
> >We're just not supposed to hear her say she is wrong (save the time
> >it practically killed her to utter it in "Traffic Ticket").
>
> Hmmm. I love that episode. And the fact the one time they manage to
> force her to admit she was wrong, the one time they know she was
> actually right.
"I was wrrr...wrrwrwr...wwwwrrrr....wrr...wrr...rrrororoonnnggg!!!".
Sounded like a whimpering timberwolf on depressants - I loved that. :)))
But again that was just a comedic twist of the show - Lois is generally
wrong when she takes one of her stands though she thinks (and has Hal
saying) that she is always right. I took that episode to sort of
underscore
the fact that she usually is wrong, the way they played her being right
being a sort of anti-event.
> Why she freaked out so bad about schoolwork? I tend to blame the
> writers. I can't really see at as anything but totally out of
> character for her.
I think it may have been just a play on the anomaly or the peculiar,
making
the audience think "Why would a kid get in trouble for doing schoolwork?".
And I guess it was funny in that sense - for all of one half of a half
second till Lois started getting selfish about the couch.
> Most other times she will about forgive anything
> because it is for school. She was ready to let him go watch a meteor
> shower at 2AM because she thought it was schoolwork.
And when it wasn't, she wasn't about to accommodate to his sense of
enjoyment at all. (Actually, I think she was going to rope the whole
family
into it when she thought that initially, but when Malcolm said he just
wanted to enjoy it and share it with the family they all weren't up for
it.
This was one of the foreshadowings to Malcolm's possible leaving for
London
IIRC.)
> And when he is
> playing 'not just any fairy, but the biggest fairy' in the high school
> play, she is willing to trash her whole schedule for him because she
> is so proud of him.
Could be more common with parents of younger children, could also have
been
that she knew he didn't want to do it.
> She is the one who signs him up for advanced
> cl***** that he doesn't want. And square dancing must be im****tant,
> teaches him geometry. She might not understand any of it, but she is
> concerned to make him suffer all that the school has to offer. She
> wants him to succeed whether he wants it or not.
Or like we said, she knows what he doesn't want it and that makes her want
to do it that much more - just to make his life miserable. Malcolm does
want to succeed - he has said so several times. He was just afraid in the
first episode of social rejection, as many bright schoolkids are.
Though it wasn't mentioned in the episode, I wonder if it was Lois that
got
him to go out for basketball.
> You know, I wonder how much the writers go into this stuff...
> Sometimes it seems a lot. Other times like they make it up as they go
> along.
There are many different writers so I guess it is nearly impossible for
someone to follow someone else's vision completely.
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