Non-Console Gaming and Me

This is a brief addendum to my previous post, covering the non-console gaming I've done over the years.

PC Gaming:
I've been PC gaming since the days of DOS; the first PC games I played extensively were SimCity 2000, Microsoft Flight Simulator, and Dawn Patrol.  Compared to console gaming, PC gaming for me wasn't divided into discrete generations but rather consisted of a continuing succession of new computers (on average, we'd get a new one every 2 or 3 years).  Up until the late 1990s, console gaming made up the majority of my gaming time, but after then the balance was tipped in favor of the computer.  This was mostly because the game genres I began getting interested in were mostly PC exclusives, including strategy (Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, Age of Empires II, Cossacks, Stronghold, Tropico, many games in the Command and Conquer series, and Eugen Systems' Wargame series), simulators (IL2:Sturmovik and its add-ons, Microsoft Train Simulator, Trainz), economic simulations (Railroad Tycoon II, Roller Coaster Tycoon, Chris Sawyer's Locomotion), or citybuilding games (SimCity 2000, 3000, and 4).  By around 2007, PC gaming made up the majority of my gaming time (around 75%), and by around 2010 it made up almost all of my gaming time.

Handheld Gaming:
I had a Gameboy growing up and played a lot of Tetris on it; I also had a GameGear (with only 1 title: The Lion King).  While I did play these during long car rides and during similar situations, I was never all that big on handheld gaming; by the turn of the millennium, I'd usually take a portable music player (tape, then CD, then iPod) and/or a paperback with me on long car rides, especially since books didn't require batteries.

Tabletop Gaming:
Growing up, I considered board games boring and/or childish, but while I was living in New Brunswick, NJ (I was going to Rutgers at the time) there was a comic book/tabletop gaming store located about a block away from where I lived (The Fallout Shelter; the store has since then moved to Highland Park, and subsequently closed), and I started going there, where I was introduced to card and board games such as Power Grid, Zombies, and Man Bites Dog.  Since then, I have added Ticket To Ride and Terror in Meeple City to my repertoire of board games, and have also played numerous miniatures games, including Warhammer 40K, Wings of Glory, and X-Wing.  I think part of what attracted me to tabletop gaming was that it gave me a break from time spent behind a computer; while I loved going on the computer in my free time when I was growing up, today I often use a computer at work so tabletop gaming has become a welcome break from that.  In addition, there is a tactile element to tabletop gaming that electronic gaming just doesn't have; in its own way, moving a game piece or a group of miniatures around a board or playing surface is more satisfying to me than just making a bunch of pixels do something on a screen.

Arcade Gaming:
I wasn't a regular visitor to video game arcades, but when I did visit them, I played everything from Asteroids to Midway:1942 to Super Alpine Racer.  Depending on where I was, going to an arcade could feel like visiting a 70s video game museum, or it could feel like I had stepped into the future.

Console Gaming and Me

An account of my experiences in the Console Wars

Lately, I've been reading/watching a lot of retrospectives about different gaming platforms*, and was in the mood to write about my own experiences with the various generations of consoles; while I don't claim to be the most experienced veteran of the Console Wars, these gaming systems did play a role in shaping a major part of my youth and adolescence.  Before we begin, it's worth noting that in my family, in order to placate 3 siblings, we generally tended to have 2 consoles on 2 separate TVs at any given time, each with a fairly limited selection of titles (this was considered preferable to having 1 console with many titles that had everyone fighting over it).

And now, without further ado, a generation-by-generation breakdown of the consoles I've played:

Pre-8-Bit Era:
I was born in 1985 (the same year that the NES came out in the US!), so the early period of games, the "Golden Age of Videogames", and the crash of 1983 were all before my time.  On occasion, I'd play arcade or computer versions of games from this era, but otherwise I'm not very familiar with this period of gaming.

8-Bit/Third Generation Era:
The NES was the only console from this period that I played, and I played it quite a lot.  Although we had quite an extensive cartridge collection, the only games I remember playing extensively are Super Mario Brothers, Super Mario Brothers 3, Top Gun, Burgertime, Paperboy (while playing this game, I spent most of my time deliberately throwing newspapers at windows...), and Battletoads (which I could only get past the first 2 levels of, but still really liked playing).  I guess all of the other titles either didn't interest me, or they were too difficult or advanced for me at that age.  Super Mario Brothers 3 was probably the game I played the most on this console.

16-Bit/Fourth Generation Era: 
My family had both a Super Nintendo and a Sega Genesis; of the 2 consoles, I tended to play the SNES a bit more often.  At this point I was old enough that I was getting really good at games.  An important milestone from this era for me was Super Mario World, which was the first game I beat.  Other games I played often from this era include:

• SNES: U.N. Squadron (which I found out years later was based on the manga and anime franchise Area 88), Metal Warriors (which I mostly played against my siblings and/or cousins on multiplayer), Desert Strike, and Krusty's Super Fun House.
• Sega Genesis: Sonic 2 was the game I played the most on this console (it came packaged with the console; to this day, I have only played the first Sonic The Hedgehog once, while at a friend's house), followed by Rocket Knight Adventures, and Zombies Ate My Neighbors.  I think we had about a dozen games for the Genesis, but these are the only games I really remember playing.

Of all the consoles we had, the Super Nintendo lasted the longest.  This was due in part to the fact that for many years we had a weekend/vacation house, and while consoles came and went in our main house the SNES was never replaced in the weekend house; even after we sold the weekend house, the SNES was still in operational condition, and after I moved out I had it in my apartment until 2009!  I think my parents might still have our SNES console somewhere in their house, but I have no idea if it's still operational.

32/64-Bit/Fifth Generation:
This was probably the peak console gaming era for me, and also when I was at my most strongly partisan when it came to choosing one platform over the others; in school, there was a strong dividing line between those who had a PlayStation at home and those who had a Nintendo 64 (my family was a PlayStation family**, and I don't recall anyone ever having both consoles in their house while these were the current generation of consoles***), and the merits of one system over the other was fiercely debated in cafeterias and between classes.  Looking back, I think this was in part due to just how different both systems were, and how evenly balanced they were in terms of both advantages and drawbacks; any time those defending one console would come up with an advantage, those defending the other console would have a strong rejoinder (PlayStation player: CDs can hold so much more data than cartridges and they're cheaper and easier to make, which means more games are available for the PlayStation! N64 player: Cartridges don't get scratched and don't have load times, and the Nintendo Seal of Quality guarantees that the games that do get made are of a consistently high quality!****).  I didn't know anyone who had a Sega Saturn or its derivatives, and as a result I never played any games for that console.

• Sony PlayStation: This was probably the most extensive and varied games collection we had; whereas on previous consoles we tended to play (with a few exceptions) either 2d platformers or sidescrolling combat games, here the genres we played included survival horror (Resident Evil 1, 2, and 3), stealth-based (Metal Gear Solid, Tenchu:Stealth Assassins, Syphon Filter), racing (Gran Turismo, Micro Machines V3, Destruction Derby), 3d platforming (Crash Bandicoot, Spyro, Tomb Raider, Wild 9), vehicular combat (the Twisted Metal series, Vigilante 8), and many many more (including, but by no means limited to, Soviet Strike, Descent, Treasures of the Deep, and the first 2 games in the Grand Theft Auto series, including the London:1969 expansion pack).
• Nintendo 64: While the Nintendo 64 remains the console I've probably played the least (not counting, of course, consoles I haven't played at all), I did on occasion play this console at some of my friends' or cousins' houses, and we rented it once or twice from Blockbuster.  When I played this console, the games I played the most often were Mario Kart 64, GoldenEye 007 (both games usually in 4-player split screen), Shadows of the Empire (which was probably the only N64 title I really wished would come out on other consoles), and Super Mario 64.

Sixth Generation: 
By this time, my interest in console gaming was beginning to taper off; I was now in high school, so I had far less free time, and also what time I did have for gaming was becoming increasingly dominated by the PC, as I was getting more and more interested in strategy and simulation games, two genres that were the PC's domain.  Still, I did play quite a few titles from this era, including:

• PS2: In addition to all of the original PlayStation games I played, I also played Metal Gear Solid 2 and 3 (one of the most bizarre moments in gaming for me came when my science teacher asked me and 2 other students before class began how to get past a certain level in MGS2), The Getaway, Grand Theft Auto III, and Micro Machines V4.
• Xbox: In addition to Halo (which I think everybody who's had an Xbox is legally required to have played), I also played Max Payne, Knights of the Old Republic, and its sequel The Sith Lords, which have so far been the only RPGs I've played.
• GameCube: While I spent most of my console gaming time playing on the PS2 and Xbox, I sometimes played the GameCube (usually when my siblings were already playing on the other 2 consoles).  The only games I remember playing on the Game Cube are Resident Evil Zero (which is the only Resident Evil game I've played all the way through), The Twin Snakes, and Rogue Squadron III.
• Dreamcast: My sister had a Dreamcast, but I don't remember ever actually playing it myself.

Most of my console time was split relatively evenly between the PS2 (although when I was playing the PS2, about half of that time was spent playing PlayStation games) and Xbox, with the GameCube coming a very distant third.  I still have a PS2 in my apartment, but around 80-90% of the time, it's being used as a DVD player.

Seventh Generation:
By this point, I was in college, so what time I had for console gaming was limited to whenever I was home, the consoles were available, and I didn't feel like playing a PC game.

• On the Xbox 360, I played Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Grand Theft Auto IV, and a few levels of Half Life 2. 
• On the Wii I played a few levels of Paper Mario and about half an hour of Legend Of Zelda: Ocarina Of Time (We didn't have the Wii for very long; my younger brother bought the Wii, and then traded it in after having had it for only a few months).

This was the first time since Sony entered the market that we didn't get a new PlayStation console.  Ultimately, this would also turn out to be the last console generation I played games from, as this generation coincided with the PC nearly completely taking over my gaming time.  In addition, at this time my 2 siblings and I moved out (with my sister ending up on the opposite coast from my brother and I), so my parents decided not to buy any new consoles (Although my brother did get them an NES: Classic Edition.).  So ended my service in the Console Wars; I now consider myself as having resigned my commission and retired from the conflict.

All in all, from a gaming point of view I'd say it was an extremely interesting time to come of age, being able to see the ways the graphics and gameplay drastically changed from generation to generation (the latter not always changing for the better; the change to 3d in particular had its share of problems, especially when it came to camera controls), and the often rapid and unexpected rise and fall of different companies and genres (if someone had told me in 1992 that in less than a decade Sega would be making games for Nintendo consoles while competing with consoles made by Sony and Microsoft, I would have probably thought that they were either making things up or completely out of their mind). 

*Mostly in the form of watching LGR videos on Youtube and reading Gamespite articles
**Apparently, we were one of the first PlayStation families, as we had one of the early models (the kind that after some time had to be turned upside-down to work properly)
***I remember my cousins getting a Nintendo 64 after they'd had a PlayStation for about 4 or 5 years, and me telling them something to the effect of "You already have a PlayStation!  You can't have both systems in the same house!".
****Little did we realize that what the Nintendo Seal of Quality meant was that the game would work when it was placed in a console, not that it would actually be any good to play...

Great Episodes: The Client (The Office)

The Client was the 7th episode of the 2nd season of the American version of The Office.  If viewers had been watching episodes of The Office in order from the beginning, they would have seen 12 episodes of manager Michael Scott generally acting like a complete idiot (or at least really, really immature), and probably would have asked themselves at least once "how did this guy ever become manager?".  This episode not only goes a long way towards answering that question, but it also initiates both the gloriously dysfunctional Michael-Jan relationship and introduces Threat Level Midnight!

Synopsis:
A-Plot:

Michael and recently-divorced Jan have scheduled a meeting with Christian (Tim Meadows), a Lackawanna County government official whose order could practically double the Scranton branch's sales and prevent the branch from closing.  While Jan wants the meeting to be a no-nonsense affair held in a conference room at a nearby hotel, Michael unilaterally changes the meeting location to Chili's and goes out of his way to avoid talking business, instead telling jokes to Christian, discussing what to order, and singing the Chili's Baby Back Ribs jingle (Jan, meanwhile, orders a vodka tonic...)

Whereas in other episodes Michael's behavior could very well have resulted in disaster, in this episode his plan works extremely well; he and Christian strike up a strong rapport, and almost as an afterthought he manages to close the deal in the bar where everyone's having drinks after their dinner.  Meanwhile, Jan's expression implies she's equal parts sloshed, incredulous that Mike's plan and methods actually worked, and attracted to Michael in a way she never was before.

 

After Christian leaves, Jan and Mike celebrate with a hug that turns into a kiss... which turns into the two of them going off together somewhere in Michael's car!

B-Plot:
Several Dunder-Mifflin employees are in the break room discussing worst first dates.  Pam says she wins, as on her worst first date, her date took her to an ice hockey game, went with his brother, and left her behind.  It turns out this date was with Roy, her current fiancee...
Later, while searching over the phone for the best joke in Michael's joke book collection (Jan initially allows Michael to tell only one joke, so he wants to make sure it's the absolute best one in his collection), Pam comes across a copy of Threat Level: Midnight, Michael's script for a spy action movie starring "Agent Michael Scarn".  With Michael away, the rest of the staff have a read-through of the script, which ends abruptly when Dwight finds out that Scarn's incompetent assistant was originally going to be named "Dwight" (a one-time misspelling of Dwight's name in the script as "Dwigt" prevents search-and-replace from completely changing the name).  An enraged Dwight then offers to entertain the office by shooting off fireworks, an offer that only Kevin takes up (although Pam and Jim do watch the fireworks from the roof of the office, while having a dinner of Jim's famous grilled-cheese sandwiches, then dancing).

Conclusion:
The next morning, the camera crew arrive to find that Dwight had slept at the office for some reason.  They hear a car pulling in, and look out the window to see Jan arriving in a taxi.  Dwight looks straight at the camera, astonished.  After a talking head sequence with Michael, who claims at first that all they did was talk and then says they made out, Jan calls.  We only hear Michaels's side of the conversation, but it's clear that Jan has some regrets about the night before.  As he gets more and more dismayed at the way the call's going ("No, I didn't put anything in your drink!"), he hides under his desk while talking on the phone (shades of George Costanza?).  Meanwhile, Jim talks to Pam, describing last night's event as a "date" using the logic that it featured dinner, dancing, and a show.  Pam says that swaying doesn't count as dancing, and Jim responds with "At least I didn't leave you at a hockey game", which causes an enraged Pam to leave in a huff.  Jim and Michael then share a glance of commiseration.

What makes this a great episode?
To begin with, this makes Michael a much more believable character; this episode shows him having almost a sixth sense for salesmanship with the way he bonds with Christian.  His position as branch manager can now be understood in this context as a classic example of the Peter Principle, with Mike the phenomenal salesman being promoted to a managerial position that he has no real aptitude for and would rather not do.  Not only that, but this episode manages to add considerable depth to his character while at the same time having many classic Michael Scott moments that are true-to-character, such as his reason for changing the meeting location to Chili's (a letter to the editor at a business magazine declared Chili's to be "the new golf course" for meetings... that Michael himself wrote), or after being told that he's only allowed to tell one joke at the meeting, he makes Jan and Christian wait as he makes Pam go through all of his joke collection books in order to tell the best joke ever rather than just telling the one he was originally going to tell.

Jan, on the other hand, goes in a completely new direction starting with this episode.  In earlier episodes she was essentially the Americanized version of Jennifer Taylor-Clarke, but from this episode onward she becomes steadily more unhinged, culminating in the cringe-filled train wreck that is Dinner Party.

Tim Meadows, guest starring as Christian, plays his role quite well, as a client who is on the same wavelength as Michael, who likes the same kind of jokes and so on (it would be interesting to see another episode with a different client who is more of a stuffed shirt or all-business type, and to see whether Michael either loses that client or adjusts his personality and still makes the sale).  What I liked was that he didn't try to outdo or overshadow Steve Carell, but instead played off him and reacted to his jokes ("I've got Awesome Blossom coming out of my nose!") .

In the B-plot, Jim and Pam's relationship is changed, Michael's magnum opus Threat Level: Midnight is introduced (although Michael's alter-ego "Agent Michael Scarn" has already appeared in other episodes), and Dwight gets some classic moments as well ("I played 'Mutey the Mailman'", his talking-head sequence in which he indignantly spells out his name with extra emphasis on the "H" in the name "Dwight", leaping through the fireworks).

How well do the A-Plot and B-Plots fit together?
They complement each other quite well; Mike's wanting to tell the best joke ever to Christian causes Pam to find the script to Threat Level Midnight while looking through Michael's desk in order to find one of Michael's joke books.  The shared look between Michael and Jim at the end of the episode, as they are both left to deal with the aftermath of the previous night, ties the two plots together quite nicely.

Note: Screencaps are used for purposes of discussion and commentary.

Introducing a new blog category: Great Episodes

On this blog, I will start writing about great episodes of various TV shows.  Most of the time, the episode in question will be chosen simply because it's so well-written, but sometimes an episode will also be chosen because it has a major impact on the show as a whole, such as a particular episode forming a major turning point in the series.  Another thing that I will consider is how well that episode integrates its subplots; an episode can have a "B plot" completely unrelated to its main story, but to me it's best when the main plot and subplots are somehow connected.

The first "Great Episode" I will write about will be The Client, from the NBC series The Office.

A reflection on my visit to the Gropius House

When Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus movement, arrived in the United States in February of 1937, he was given what many architects would dream of having at their disposal: $20,000 (equivalent to almost $345,000 in 2017) to build his house, and 5 acres of land in rural Lincoln, Massachusetts to build it on.  He would live at this house from its completion in 1937 until his death in 1969; his widow lived there until her own death in 1983, after which the house became a museum.

When I took a tour of this house last Saturday, one thing I was struck by was just how well-planned, designed, and built it was.  What did Gropius do with the design that made it so great?  Here are some things I noticed, either during the tour or upon reflection after the tour.

• He kept the size reasonable 

 Looking around the outside of the house, I was first struck by how small it was, especially for what was an architect's home.  At 2,300 square feet, it's 600 square feet smaller than the 1790 farmhouse I grew up in (and which my parents still live in), not to mention most contemporary McMansions (or even what are considered average sized houses).  However, when taking a tour through the interior, you see that not a square inch of space is wasted; there are no redundant or unnecessary rooms, like having 2 living rooms or similar spaces (the only thing approaching redundancy is the fact that the house had both a ground-level screened-in porch and an observation deck on the 2nd floor; however, those 2 locations give very different views of the surrounding area).  In that 2,300 square feet, Gropius managed to design a house that had room for 3 bedrooms (including a master bedroom with a large dressing area), a maid's quarters, a home office, living room, dining room, kitchen, pantry, screened-in porch, and observation deck.  Part of how Gropius managed to fit all of that into such a small space was by not wasting any area with hallways; all of the rooms were reached through a central entryway with a spiral staircase (which used less space than a regular staircase, and which echoed the spiral staircase on the outside of the house)*.

It also makes sense that he kept the size modest, considering that this house was as much an experiment as it was a residence; with a larger house, he might have bitten off more than he could chew.  In addition, it was the goal in Bauhaus to make designs (including housing) which could be mass-produced and affordable for almost all classes and income levels; a house like the Gropius House was intended to be affordable for most middle-class families.

• He incorporated elements of existing architecture into the house

In designing this house, Gropius didn't simply take a German Bauhaus design and copy its design in Massachusetts; the Gropius House incorporated several traditional New England architectural elements, including the use of clapboard siding**.  However, he didn't use it in a completely traditional manner; first of all it was mounted vertically on the house (the Gropius House is a rather horizontal design to begin with, and using horizontal siding would have probably produced the same effect as what happens when an overweight person wears a horizontally-striped shirt), and it was also mounted inside the entryway, to make it easier to hang up and rearrange art:

In this way, Gropius made a house that was innovative but one which also had traditional elements.  Also, the lighting fixture in the above picture was an existing design, but normally used in places like movie theaters and department stores; much of the materials and fixtures being used in this house (like the glass bricks) had already been used in industrial and commercial applications.  What the Gropius House did was to use these for the first time in a residential environment.

• The layout of the house is extremely well-designed

To simplify plumbing, all four bathrooms are located in a cluster, with 2 right next to each other and directly above the other 2.  This greatly simplified plumbing, so that all of the house's toilets and baths could be supplied from a single vertical "column" of pipes.  Other examples of good design include the use of glass bricks to form the wall between the home office and the dining room; this allowed sunlight to pass through the house's large windows and into both rooms.

 

The glass bricks in the wall also echo the glass bricks on the outside of the house:

 
Another element of the house which deals with sunlight is this overhang over the second-floor deck and rear of the house.  This overhang is positioned in such a way that it shades the windows below from the sun in the summer (when the sun's high in the sky) but allows sunlight to heat the windows in winter when the sun is lower to the horizon.

Yet another way that space in the house is well-used is the use of curtains in the interior to create temporary partitions in rooms.  Like the use of shoji screens in Japanese architecture, these allow rooms to be reconfigured as needed.  One place that uses a curtain is the living room/dining room; without the curtain, the area is one large L-shaped room, but with the curtain in place the living and dining rooms are separate locations.  He could have put in a wall or sliding door, but that would have made the two rooms look smaller and more cramped (and there would have been no possibility of configuring room in its "open" L-shaped state, if, for example, there was a large number of guests there).  Another place where it was a good idea to use a curtain instead of a wall and door was in an alcove in the second floor entryway; with a wall and door, this space would have probably been little more than a closet, but with a curtain it became a favorite spot for Ise (Walter's wife) to do her sewing.

• The house suits the landscape and the landscape, the house

When Gropius got the property he built his house on, there was already a working apple orchard on the premises.  Gropius designed his house to feature a prominent view of the orchard through the large picture window in the ground floor living room, and from the upstairs deck.  Looking out the opposite direction when Walter and Ise lived there would have shown a well-tended garden along with surrounding fields and forests.  The screened-in back porch would have given different views of the landscape as well. 

 

• Everything in the house complements the architecture

In addition to the design of the house itself, the furniture and artwork, and even objects like appliances and table settings fit the house perfectly.  Considering that a major element of the philosophy of Bauhaus was the importance of good design in everyday objects***, and that Bauhaus sought to be an all-encompassing school of design, it's worth thinking of the objects inside the Gropius House as part of the house's architecture.

• It's an example of modern architecture that looks good and functions well

When people talk about hating "modern architecture", they often picture buildings like the hideous and dysfunctional Brutalist Boston City Hall (or buildings with similar attributes found on numerous college campuses****), or Frank Gehry's various postmodern designs, which dump piles of snow over the emergency exits, or which blind motorists and treat pedestrians like ants under a magnifying glass.  In contrast, the Gropius House is built on a human scale, with a well-thought-out floor plan and no wasted space (and conversely, no small, cramped rooms) and whose structure seems to still be holding up well today after 80 years.  It's modern architecture that works.

• It's a modern house that looks like people actually lived there

All too often when viewing a modern house, one gets the impression that living there would be a sterile and austere existence.  The preservation society did an excellent job of demonstrating the house as a pleasant place to live, in part by making it look like the Gropiuses are still there.  Ise's hats and coats still hang in the entryway, there are logs in the fireplace, the dining-room table is set, the kitchen has an open cookbook on the counter and (plastic) food being prepared, and Walter and Ise's desk is covered with their work (the two often collaborated in their work).  Photographs displayed around the house show images of everyday life, like Walter playing ping-pong on the screened-in porch.

Finally, I must say that probably the biggest reason I liked this house so much was that this house in many ways is an antidote to the kind of house I lived in for much of my adolescence and adulthood, and the houses I was surrounded by while living there.  I lived for many years with my parents in a former farmhouse built in 1790 (with a large extension added on in the early 20th century).  It was a large, rambling house with several small and cluttered rooms.  Surrounding our house were several subdivisions of McMansions, which were also what this house was not; large houses on small lots with overly complicated rooflines and poorly thought out floor plans (often with great quantities of wasted space), houses which used expensive materials when it came to surface appearance (like using expensive marble countertops in the kitchen) but cutting corners with structural materials and quality with the result that many of those houses were falling apart less than 10 years after they were built.

The Gropius house is everything the above houses are not: with its reasonable size, high quality of construction, well-planned layout, and the way it fits in with the surrounding landscape, this house really resonated with me from the moment I saw it.

*The spiral staircase on the outside of the house was one of Walter's adopted daughter Beate ("Ati")'s requests; she wanted to have a way to access outside from her room.  It's worth noting that the banister for the interior spiral staircase is the only custom-made item in the entire structure; all of the other fixtures and components were existing designs.
**Although this house was sometimes described as "International Style", Gropius always objected to the term being applied to this house.  He said that he would have never designed this house in Europe, with its different construction materials and architectural traditions; this house was specifically designed for this location.
***Perhaps the best example of this outlook on design is the the Bauhaus movement's philosophy that "It is often more difficult to design a first-rate teapot than to paint a second-rate painting."
****Note: this comic brings up the oft-repeated myth that colleges used Brutalist architecture to suppress student riots.

A Look at The Simpsons, Season by Season

Note: A more-than-passing familiarity with The Simpsons is probably necessary for enjoying this post, or at least understanding it.

     To say that The Simpsons has been a major influence on me would be an enormous understatement; from an early age (apparently, my second-grade teacher told my parents that I shouldn't be allowed to watch The Simpsons; after all, it taught dangerous concepts like "those in power are often malevolent, clueless, or both"), The Simpsons shaped me in terms of my outlook on things, my sense of humor, and in many cases, I saw things being parodied on The Simpsons before I even saw what they were parodying; among other things, this caused me to nearly burst out laughing during my high school American Government class when I saw the library scene in All the President's Men for the first time, after having seen Sideshow Bob Roberts:

To this day, the classic-era Simpsons remains one of my favorite shows, with my still-growing collection of Simpsons DVDs being among my most prized possessions.

Here's my opinion on The Simpsons, season-by-season.  If you want an episode-by-episode recap and review, then I'd recommend Mike Amato's excellent blog, Me Blog Write Good.

• Season 1: To a certain extent, this season was more of an experiment than anything else; the show was in many ways still finding its feet as a full-length show after being previously featured as a series of shorts on The Tracey Ullman Show.  As a result, for fans of the classic (and modern) era, watching the first season can be a jarring experience; Homer's Walter Matthau-esque voice, the bizarre animation, and several moments of out-of-character behavior can at times make it seem like you're watching a different show.  Despite all of this, you could still begin to see the classic Simpsons take shape; so while it may have been unusual to see Marge getting drunk in There's No Disgrace Like Home (and Homer being so embarrassed by his family's behavior that he pawns the TV to pay for therapy while Marge tries to talk him out of it), there are other parts of that episode that ring true, like seeing Mr. Burns' enormous mansion (and Burns informing his guests that the hounds will be released).  Elsewhere in season 1, you see many other classic elements of The Simpsons for the first time, such as:
• The Simpsons satirizing both sides of an issue; in Bart The Genius, both regular public schools and elite gifted schools get made fun of.  Also in that episode is the first example of "art shift", with Bart's mental imaging of an overly complicated math word problem being animated in a much different style from the regular animation.
• The first travel episode, The Crepes of Wrath.
• The Telltale Head introduces the population of Springfield as an easily-swayed mob.
• Moaning Lisa shows how Lisa's intellect and creativity is unappreciated, especially in a place like Springfield
• Krusty Gets Busted: The first Sideshow Bob episode, which means Kelsey Grammer's first appearance.  It also shows the extent of Krusty's merchandising empire, his sordid personal life, and one of the first really dark jokes in the show: when Krusty has a heart attack on-air, the children in the audience laugh because they think he's making funny faces.
• Albert Brooks' first appearances, in The Call of The Simpsons and Life on the Fast Lane.
• Season 2:  The first season that could really be called "classic", the voicework, animation, and characterization is much truer to form, but there are still some niggles; Flanders, for example, in this season is more of a yuppie than a religious extremist; he even mixes and serves drinks at a party in the War of the Simpsons.  Important milestones for this season include the first Treehouse of Horror episode (and the only one actually taking place in Bart's treehouse), and the first appearances by Phil Hartman as Lionel Hutz in Bart Gets Hit by a Car and as Troy McClure in Homer Vs. Lisa and the 8th Commandment, and the first flashback episode in The Way We Was (which also features Arnold Schwarzenegger parody Rainier Wolfcastle in his first appearance as McBain).  Itchy & Scratchy & Marge is the first episode to use show-within-a-show Itchy & Scratchy as an episode-long commentary for The Simpsons (and, just like in Bart the Genius, parodying both sides of the issues of things like cartoon violence).  Lisa's Substitute shows that The Simpsons can also have genuinely heartfelt episodes that aren't sappy or overly sentimental.
• Season 3:  More classic Simpsons.  While the first 2 seasons were fairly grounded in reality, from this season on the show starts getting more and more outlandish.  Milestones include: Mr. Lisa Goes to Washington, the first travel episode in which the entire family goes somewhere together (The Crepes of Wrath had Bart going to France alone), Like Father, Like Clown, introducing Krusty's Jewish background (and making his earlier endorsement of Krusty-Brand Pork Products even more hilarious in retrospect), Michael Jackson's uncredited appearance in Stark Raving Dad (which also doubled as a perfect parody of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest), and the amazing coincidence of Bart The Murderer being first broadcast right around the same time Goodfellas came out (given the turnaround time needed to make an episode of The Simpsons compared to a show like South Park, there's no way they could have seen Goodfellas and then made the episode), and Sideshow Bob's first return in Black Widower. 
• Season 4:  This is the first season of The Simpsons I (vaguely) remember seeing when it came out (resulting in the above teacher's admonition to my parents not to let me watch the show).  Things get even zanier, with the widely-acclaimed Marge vs. The Monorail being possibly the most outlandish of any episode of the classic era.  Other highlights of the season include A Streetcar Named Marge (which included a song whose lyrics led to Bart writing "I will not defame New Orleans" on the chalkboard in the next episode's opening credits), the show's first flash-forward in Itchy & Scratchy: The Movie, New Kid on the Block having quite possibly the best B-plot of any episode (Homer at an all you-can-eat restaurant, and his subsequent lawsuit after he's thrown out), Mr Plow, and Last Exit to Springfield, which is frequently cited as the best ever episode of The Simpsons.
• Season 5:  This is the first season I remember seeing in detail, and the most outlandish.  It's also one of the most consistently hilarious seasons of The Simpsons; if I was only allowed to view one season of The Simpsons, I would choose this one without any hesitation.  Nearly every episode is packed with terrific moments from start to finish, but the ones that stick out for me are Homer's Barbershop Quartet, Burns' Heir, Homer and Apu, Deep Space Homer, Rosebud, Homer Goes to College, Bart Gets an Elephant, Homer Loves Flanders, and The Boy who Knew Too Much.  One thing I liked about this season was how many of the episodes focus on individual characters, including those from outside the Simpsons family such as Mr. Burns or Apu.  Much of this season's humor comes from being by this point a well-established show with familiar characters.  That way, Homer's sudden friendship with Flanders is funnier since it's coming after 5 seasons of enmity, as is seeing Bart bond with Skinner outside of school after having had an antagonistic relationship with him both before and after this episode.
• Season 6:  I find this season to be something of a breather after Season 5, but still a very good season.  It's not that outlandish things don't happen in this season (they do), it just doesn't feel quite as filled with wall-to-wall insanity the way the 5th season did.  This season has my favorite travel episode, Bart vs. Australia, and two of my 3 favorite Lisa episodes: Lisa's Rival, and Lisa on Ice.  It also features the first episode in which a significant portion takes place in the future (Lisa's Wedding), as well as part 1 of Who Shot Mr. Burns, the only 2-part episode of The Simpsons.  Other favorites of mine include Homer the Great, Sideshow Bob Roberts, The PTA Disbands, Homie the Clown, Bart's Comet, and Lemon of Troy, which contains quite possibly my favorite bit of animation: Homer's Shelbyville rival biting into a lemon like it's an apple. 
• Season 7:  Another good season, it starts strong with part 2 of Who Shot Mr. Burns.  Other episodes I particularly like are Lisa the Vegetarian (my favorite Lisa episode, with my favorite Troy McClure film: Meat and You – Partners in Freedom [a Meat Council film, part of the "Resistance is Useless" series]), King-Sized Homer, Mother Simpson, Two Bad Neighbors, Homer The Smithers, Bart on The Road, and A Fish Called Selma.  Special mention needs to go to 22 Short Films About Springfield, for its bold (and successful) experiment in structure and the fact that it gives so many otherwise peripheral characters some time in the limelight, as well as the CGI-animated Homer³ sequence from Treehouse of Horror VI.  A milestone in CGI animation, it premiered a month before Toy Story came out.  The animation of this sequence was spectacular then, and still holds up well today; a particularly well-done sequence is when Homer (and later Bart) pass the boundary into "the Third Dimension" and you can see them transition before your eyes from 2-d to 3-d.  On the season 7 DVD, there's a well-made featurette on the making of this sequence that's really worth watching.  Another episode worth mentioning is the fourth-wall-breaking 138th Episode Spectacular.

• Season 8:  This is the last season I'd consider a classic from start to finish, but some of the issues that would plague later seasons began showing up in this season.  Some of the episodes started out strong but kind of faltered or petered out in the 3rd act; other times, there would be a solid B-plot but weak A-plot (or vice-versa).  That said, this season does feature my favorite Treehouse of Horror episode (VII), with my 2 favorite sequences being The Genesis Tub and Citizen Kang.  Other favorites of mine from this season include You Only Move Twice, Bart After Dark, The Twisted World of Marge Simpson, Simpsoncalifragilisticexpiala-D’oh-cious, Homer Vs. the Eighteenth Amendment, Lisa's Date With Density, In Marge We Trust, and the ever-controversial Homer's Enemy.  El Viaje Misterioso de Nuestro Jomer is almost on that list; the first-act sequence of Homer's Guatemalan Insanity Pepper-induced freakout is nothing short of amazing, but it's too hard of an act to follow; the 2nd and 3rd acts of the episode have their moments but ultimately pale in comparison (compare this with the Homer³ segment, which was placed at the end of the episode).

• Season 9:  The first season I'd consider as having a significant drop in quality, it nonetheless has several terrific episodes.  As a lifelong resident of the New York metropolitan area, even if all of the other episodes were complete trash, I'd still feel that The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson made up for all of them by itself.  Fortunately, there are still quite a few good episodes in here, including Lisa's Sax, The Trouble with Trillions, Realty Bites, The Cartridge Family, King of the Hill, and The Last Temptation of Krust.  The episode The Principal and the Pauper is an especially controversial and despised episode among fans, but I think it had potential, but needed several rewrites (and possibly being made as a 2-part episode).  I'll probably write a separate blog post about this particular episode sometime in the future.
• Season 10: More bad than good this season, but when they made a good episode it was still almost on par with classic-era episodes.  Bart The Mother, D'o'h-in' in the Wind, Lisa Gets an "A", They Saved Lisa's Brain, and 30 Minutes Over Tokyo are quite good, but surrounded with filler.
• Season 11:  I stopped regularly watching new episodes of The Simpsons in the middle of this season, so there's a chance some of the episodes I haven't listed are quite good (but I'm not holding my breath).  Of the ones I've seen, I remember Brother's Little Helper, Guess Who's Coming to Criticize Dinner?, E-I-E-I-D'oh, and Behind the Laughter being the better episodes of this season.
• Season 12-15:  By this time, my viewing of new episodes was sporadic at best but every now and then I'd see a fairly good episode.  Trilogy of Error, I, D'oh-Bot, She of Little Faith, The Lastest Gun in the West, I am Furious (Yellow), Moe Better Blues, and Margical History Tour are the best of a bad lot.
• Season 16+: Who cares? I pretty much stopped watching new episodes at this point.  Every now and then I'd see one from these seasons, but it would invariably remind me of better episodes with a similar theme; for example, Goo Goo Gai Pan and The Regina Monologues reminded me of much better travel episodes from the classic era.  Don't Fear the Roofer, The Debarted, and The Italian Bob were OK, but 24 Minutes was probably the only episode from this era that I thought was genuinely good without any other qualifications (for example, I feel that The Debarted is an excellent episode if you've already seen The Departed, but probably a confusing mess if you haven't).
• It goes without saying that I saw The Simpsons Movie; I thought it was like watching 4 season 9-quality episodes back-to-back.  While some of the jokes fell flat, I still thought the writers tended to hit more than miss and felt the movie was quite good overall.  One thing it did not do, however, was get me to start watching the TV show again.

 Thus ends my Simpsons season-by-season retrospective; before writing this post, I knew that the 5th season was my favorite one overall, but otherwise I tended to think of The Simpsons on an episode-by-episode basis rather than thinking in terms of seasons.  To those of you reading this, what's your Simpsons experience been like?  Are there any die-hard fans who started watching from the classic era that still watch new episodes when they come out?  Did anyone reading this start watching during the Ullman era, when The Simpsons was a series of shorts on that show?

The Book Vs The Film: An Introduction

     As both an avid reader and film enthusiast, I enjoy watching films made from books and seeing how they've been adapted to the screen.  Given that both media have their own strengths and weaknesses, one thing I find interesting is after a comparing and contrasting both versions of a story after a book's been made into a film.

The main reasons for changing elements of a story when adapting it to film include:

• Length.  A book can be read in installments, but a movie has to be able to be viewed in a single sitting.  Adapting most full-length books (as opposed to short stories or novellas) requires a considerable amount of compression in this regard if an 8 hour-long movie is to be avoided.  Most of the time, this is possible, with characters being combined or omitted and the plot being trimmed down so that any extraneous side plots are removed.  This can be a double-edged sword: at best, this can straighten out a meandering plot, or trim down a bloated plot; at worst, it can omit so much of the book's plot that the movie is almost incomprehensible unless the viewer has read the book first.
• Cost.  Making a film is an incredibly expensive process.  If you can combine characters, or omit a scene which would require the construction of a new set (especially if the set was only going to be used for one scene or it would be overly expensive or complex to build).  Often, this results in the filmmaker "killing two birds with one stone" and removing scenes and/or characters results in both cost and length being reduced.
  
• Special effects limitations.  Sometimes filming a scene exactly the same way it's written in the book would require special effects too advanced for the time the film was made, or it might have the effect of destroying the audience's suspension of disbelief by looking too fake.  In horror films, a special effects failure can make a scene or monster laughable when it's supposed to be scary; if that's the case, then a change is probably for the best. 
• A scene doesn't translate well to screen.  For whatever reason, a scene that works well in a book would just be boring or confusing on screen, especially for those who haven't read the book.  Conversely, a scene might be added to the film that wasn't in the book, but is well-suited to the screen.
• Other.  Sometimes, if a film is an adaptation of a popular book, the film might make a major change to the ending or plot twist to surprise fans of the book.  This isn't especially new; the deaths of Cordelia and Lear in Shakespeare's King Lear were a surprise ending for those familiar with the stories that inspired the play.  Other times, the director of a film wants to make the film "their own", and makes changes for the sake of making changes.

When watching a film adaptation of a book, I really try to evaluate the film on its own merits rather than just say something like "the book was better".  For me, one of the most important things to consider is its accessibility to someone who hasn't read the book: would they be able to see the film and understand what's going on?

As far as faithfulness to the source goes, that's not a particularly high priority for me; I'd much rather see a good film that's a loose adaptation than a terrible film that adheres closely to the book.

With this in mind, I am starting a series of blog posts called The Book vs The Movie, in which I will look at adaptations of books to screen (I will probably not be writing about any reverse instances, like the novelizations of various films, or books and films that were written concurrently, such as 2001: A Space Odyssey).  What I will be looking at is how closely an adaptation follows the book, how good of a film it is, and how well it stands on its own.

The first work I will be reviewing is The Dogs of War.

PS: It goes without saying, but these reviews will be full of spoilers.