Fragments (Memory & Media Part I)
With the return of NBC to iTunes and the dawn of HD episodes, we’ve been re-watching the last season of The Office. I’d almost forgotten how funny it is. Not the show in general, just last season, because what’s fresh on my memory are the episodes after the strike. I may be in the minority, but, I think that while those episodes were good, something was just off. I didn’t feel like we were back in sync until “Did I Stutter?” where Stanley and Michael come head-to-head.
But it really is a funny season. And it brought us some major relational shifts: Dwight & Angela broken up, Michael & Jan living together, Jim & Pam dating. I care about each of those, and I know getting involved in PB&J is the cool thing to do, so I hesitate to even mention them, but it’s hard not to when I see the way Jim looks at Pam in those first few episodes.
John Krasinski nails it! I’m not sure there’s a girl in all of America whose heart doesn’t melt when he even just thinks about Pam. Last night that look got the best of me:
Me: “I’m sure Jim & Pam will end up together, even if they break up, because this is TV and it would be cruel for the writers to do that to the fans, but do you think they’d end up together in real life?”
Chris: “Of course they’re going to end up together. You can’t build that much anticipation around two characters and not put them together.”
Me: “Yeah, but I mean in real life. Would they end up together or do you think they’re too good together or something? Too much alike? You think they’d have this great relationship until a bit of doubt crept in and ruined it or do you think it’d be smooth sailing? And if they didn’t end up together, you think they’d be able to be happy?”
Chris: “Jim & Pam in real life?”
Me: “Yeah.”
Chris: “In real life, Jim & Pam aren’t real.”
Don’t worry. I know Jim & Pam aren’t real. But I do think they represent real humanity. And I don’t know if they’ll end up together on TV or not. The Office takes some close looks at some hard human issues. That’s part of what I like about it, but I doubt they’d end in such a heartbreaking spot. I don’t know if those two would end up together in real life either, but I figure there’s a higher chance that they wouldn’t in that scenario than on the airwaves.
Nothing profound came out this conversation, just that Chris doesn’t think about TV in terms of real life and he couldn’t think of a reason why those two made-for-each-others wouldn’t get together and stay together. And I, obviously, get caught up in the reality of TV all the time and wouldn’t doubt for a second that they might not end up together just because that’s the way it happens.
With that melancholic mood in place, we settled in to watch the last two S1 episodes of Mad Men, the show we’re currently watching at night. Chris picks the nighttime show — we just finished S4 of Alias and the most recent season of The Closer. He picked Mad Men too, probably because his design buddies love it, but it’s not his usual fare. It’s a quiet drama, all relationship, the opposite of what he likes. But he says he’ll come back for the second season, which is good because I’m at least mildly interested in finding out what happens to these people.
But that’s not the point. The point is the season finale wrapped and I went to sleep with this bit on “nostalgia” curled up beside me:
In case you can’t tell, Don’s an ad man, making a pitch for a slide projector. He’s a complex man who’s taken his wife for granted and run away from his past. (The guy who leaves the room crying is in the doghouse with his wife.) Don’s pitch sounds like a pitch, but I still really like what he says about nostalgia.
Then this morning I came across this story about these two young people who really are perfect for each other and know it instantly, but when they start to doubt that happiness should so be easy, they decide to test their rightness for each other by breaking up and waiting to see if life brings them back together. Years later, they do meet again, but by that time life has taken their memories and they walk past each other forever, not realizing that every other love will never be as perfect.
It’s a well-written story, and you know what? It’s what I said could happen to Jim and Pam and got scoffed at for just last night!
Just to drive this weekend’s nostalgia theme all the way home, I also read an article on eMusic where this musician lists her favorite albums. She starts the description of one with, “You know how people who love music are always talking about how an album takes them back?” That got me thinking, because while I figure she’s probably right, I’d never imagined that that’s not true for everyone. I mean, I have albums I listen to for the mere sake of going back, but that also happens unintentionally. And with all the sensory ties to memory, it’s hard to believe music wouldn’t do that even for people who aren’t “music lovers.”
Anyway, I planned on connecting all these incidents into some cohesive thoughts on the nature of nostalgia, memory, media (TV, literature, music), and the senses. (I was gonna tie The Office into memory, maybe via personality, but really, I just wanted to talk about The Office, as if you can’t tell from Twitter.) And I was going to revise each of those points down, but Caelyn’s crying, so I guess I’m not. I’m sure I’ll be getting nostalgic later this weekend anyway, so maybe I’ll have some new thoughts that’ll make a nice tie-together post on Monday.
In the meantime, this is what you get.
But I will try to sneak away for comment responding sometime this weekend! (Thanks for all yours!) And, I’m not sure if it was a request or a threat, but here ya go, JSmo! If you make your first post something about the psychology of memory, I might not even have to finish this series.
7 comments
Okay, I replied to you on the Daily Smo…so send me the details. I don’t even know how to put photos or anything on there, so it will probably just be words for now (until a professional blogger like yourself can come over and show me how to work things). I am reading a fascinating book called “The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog and other stories from a child psychiatrist’s notebook” that has quite a bit of interesting information about memory. Go ahead and tie your thoughts together and I’ll dig into Perry’s book to see if I can give you something interesting!
JSmo — I’ll get the info to ya as soon as I can. I’m sure you can figure it out, and you can change it up however you want. But you certainly shouldn’t feel pressured to do it! It’s just there in case you ever want to give it a shot!
Who knows if I’ll actually get my thoughts tied together or not, but you should definitely share your thoughts on that book. Sounds interesting!
One thought I’ve had about The Office and “real life” is that I probably wouldn’t like Jim and/or Pam in “real life,” all that much. And I would feel about Michael and Dwight the way JSmo feels about them. That’s really what’s brilliant about The Office to me, is that it makes us care about these characters who are very ordinary and flawed. That’s also why I like the NBC version better than the BBC version, although maybe it’s a cultural thing on my end that keeps me from caring about those characters.
lex — Really good point! I’ve thought that, too, about the characters. I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say I wouldn’t like them, but I wouldn’t really want to spend time with them, you know? (But Michael and Dwight could make me pretty mad in real life. So maybe I wouldn’t like ‘em.) I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t enjoy working at Dunder Mifflin. Somehow, though, I really do care about each of them. Like, I just watched The Dinner Party, in which Michael is at the top of his inappropriateness, and, yet, it made me feel really good when Michael’s showing Jim the “table” he made and talking about how he mounted his plasma by himself and Jan’s acting like he’s such a loser, but Jim says, “Wow, Michael, I’m not any good at this stuff.” I like it in part because of what it does for Michael and in part because of what it reveals about (like you said) flawed Jim. It’s a subtle, triumphant moment for each of them. You’re right, too, about that quality making the show so brilliant. I don’t think it’s just a cultural thing; the BBC version’s funny, but it doesn’t have the heart and humanity that the NBC version does. (Of course, I’m not British either.)
Do you think, in “real life,” if for some reason, despite not liking them, you ended up spending the kind of time with the characters that we do via the show, you’d end up caring about them?
I don’t think “in real life” I could know them they way I know them even if I knew them, so, no, I don’t think I’d care about them the way I care about them. Especially the annoying characters (Michael, Dwight, & Nard-Dog).
lex — Yeah, I’m with you. (Just watched some classic Nard-Dog and thought the same thing, actually.)
Where’s the Zoo post?
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