clinton-pittman

An excellent and amusing way to practice hearing a little French. There's also a dubbed version, of course. It's good enough that Kaitlin Olson is making a US version, which is how I learned about the original.

The French actress seems even more flamboyant than Olson, but maybe it's just being French. It's also interesting to see the differences in French television production and US television production. The French are a bit like the British, always with the interesting little villages rather than just going with skyscrapers.

Very clever show. As usual, those who don't think it's clever probably aren't clever enough to enjoy it.

Shows for "smart people" are pretty rare. First, really smart people don't watch television, which means I'm not that smart. So a "show for smart people" has to be tuned for "almost smart people," who aren't quite really smart because of laziness or lack of education or, sadly, because sometimes there's a hamster wheel but the hamster who really, really wanted to see what was at the top of the wheel died a long time ago.

This is a show about the son of a literary critic. That critic/father believes that criticism is the real measure of quality writing, of society even, implying that the much more sensible theory advanced in Ratatouille is wrong (pro tip: Ratatouille has the most accurate description of critics ever written). Pauline Kael would not believe that nonsense, and she was one of the best movie critics America has ever had the luck to enjoy reading.

If you believe the father/critic, you're probably a failed writer, teaching at some schlock community college because your lone attempt at a novel crashed and burned. That would be Hank.

What do we mean by "success"? Especially when our parents have been successful (one of the ingredients common to "smart people" though not required). We all know that 90% of TV shows, movies, music, paintings, sculptures, or any other artistic endeavor are just plain awful. Not just bad, but so bad that they may rip the fabric of space and time. These are Hank's students and colleagues.

Unfortunately, most bad artists have no idea that they are awful at their respective crafts. This is the basic premise set forth in the first 240 seconds of the show.

I am hopeful that the show will explore what is good art (the first example being the show itself one hopes), why people who make awful art have zero self-knowledge, whether they can improve their art (which is, at least in part, a technical skill that can be taught and can be learned), and mostly whether we are able to criticize ourselves accurately at all. I get the idea that maybe the show believes that even good artists are poor critics of their own art's worth, and that undervaluing art is at least as bad as overvaluing it. And definitely, an artist is much more valuable than a critic because a critic only reflects, while even a bad artist is a creator.

It's Scott Pilgrim meets The Matrix, with a dash of Konty Python thrown in just for fun. But it's also a meditation on family and finding your place in the world, AND it's a feel good movie on top of that, meaning that you'll want to call your Mom and tell her you love her.

I wanted to watch it again as soon as it ended.