thoughts on Admission

Tina Fey plays Portia Nathan, an admissions officer at Princeton. She lives her life in a fairly predictable fashion; she has a long-term live-in boyfriend and has been in admissions at Princeton for sixteen years. Her orderly life begins to unravel, however, when John Pressman (Paul Rudd), who works at an alternative high school, asks her to come talk to his students about Princeton. Most of them are actively opposed to the idea of attending an exclusive, traditional, Ivy League school, but one, Jeremiah, is very interested. John, meanwhile, seems strangely interested in Portia; it's clear that he knows her from somewhere, or wants to tell her something. He lets her know what that "something" is fairly quickly: he thinks that Jeremiah is her son. He knew her roommate in college, he explains, and that roommate borrowed his car to take Portia to the hospital when she went into labor. Jeremiah's birth certificate reveals that he was born in the same hospital at the same time that Portia delivered, and as Portia gets to know Jeremiah as he pursues applying to Princeton, it begins to seem more and more likely that he is her child. Something else also begins to happen: for the first time in perhaps years, Portia actually actively cares about whether a particular student gets in to Princeton or not. She has warned a younger colleague about getting too emotionally invested in any one particular applicant, but she finds that she really wants Jeremiah to get in, and actively fights for him. Meanwhile, her boyfriend leaves her for a Virginia Woolf scholar who is pregnant with his twins, leaving her free to sort of, kind of, maybe start something with John, who has a habit of picking up and moving every few years, much to the dismay of his adopted son, Nelson. Add in a subplot with Portia's eccentric mother (Lily Tomlin), who wants Portia to call her by her first name and stops feeding her dogs because she thinks that animals are too dependent on humans and should learn to hunt for themselves, and you've got yourself a movie.

I've come to really like these "high-strung woman has to learn to deal with unexpected changes in her life" movies. Celeste and Jesse Forever is another recent example. The basic message of such movies is that life doesn't always turn out the way you planned it, but it usually works out okay, which I generally find to be true. I identify fairly strongly with characters like Portia and Celeste, and I find it fairly comforting to see these women completely lose their shit, yet have things still work out in a positive (though less than perfect) way. As far as this particular movie is concerned, I also really liked most of the characters and performances; I generally find Paul Rudd and Tina Fey to be very likeable, and many of the secondary characters are very interesting and different in generally believable ways, which I also really liked.

Despite the fact that I thoroughly enjoyed myself throughout much of the movie, though, there were some holes in the plot. Basically, I feel like the whole movie would never had happened had John, instead of contacting Portia, approached Jeremiah's adoptive parents and said, "I know a woman who gave birth at the same time and in the same hospital where Jeremiah was born. I don't know how you feel about Jeremiah meeting his birth parents, but if you think this is a good idea, I could give you her name and you could contact the adoption agency for advice on how to pursue this." I have no idea whether even that is the appropriate course of action in this situation, but I don't feel like you should just spring this on some woman out of the blue unless you have more proof. I also don't think the woman should then, as Portia eventually does (spoiler alert), approach the child and be like, "I think I'm your mother." I'm just saying; there are ways to find out for sure whether Jeremiah is Portia's or not, so why get people all worked up based on theories?

Also (spoiler alert), Portia eventually goes so far as to actually tamper with records to get Jeremiah into Princeton; she is caught and fired for this. Now, I get that this is meant to show how much Portia has come to care for Jeremiah and also serves to get her out of her rut; she's had the same job for sixteen years. But...if the message of the movie is that life sometimes turns out better when it doesn't go according to plan, then does it really matter that Jeremiah doesn't get into Princeton? Couldn't he be just as happy and successful somewhere else? He would be disappointed, of course, but he would presumably get over it. So much of the movie is spent establishing how worked up students and parents get about getting into Princeton; while it is an interesting twist to have Portia become one of those worked-up parents, wouldn't it have been interesting to then have her realize that this thing (admission to Princeton) that she and her colleagues, along with so many parents and students, spend so much time agonizing over, just doesn't matter that much? The college admissions process is stressful, for sure, and the decision of where to go to school is an important one...but not getting in to one particular school is not the end of the world. Having Jeremiah just plain not get in and watching Portia deal with that would have made more sense and sent a better message, I think, than having her tamper with the outcome.

In spite of this, the performances and characters are strong enough for me to still recommend this movie. The plot just kind of all falls aprt if you start thinking about it too much, though.

thoughts on the second season of Smash (so far)

May I preface this by saying how much I really, really enjoy this show? I actively look forward to it every week. There are a few shows that I like but only catch sometimes; this is one of only three current shows (along with Nashville and The Americans) that I make sure to catch every episode of, or look up online if I can't watch it live. That said...

...Karen and Derek are the only two characters that I really, really like and care about. Ivy can be pretty entertaining and funny at times, but I don't like how they've taken her apart from the rest of the cast and put her in a completely separate play; I just don't think she's a strong enough character to carry her own storyline. In fact, during her one solo number during the most recent episode-- the one that supposedly was so amazing and funny that the star of her show decided to cut it because it would take attention away from him-- I found myself checking Facebook. She didn't have my complete attention. Julia is also okay sometimes, but her storylines are so all over the place-- now she's having an affair! Now she's getting divorced! Now she's mad that they're making her rewrite Bombshell! Now she likes her rewrite better, and is mad that the producers decided to stick with her original version of Bombshell!-- that it's hard to know what to care about where her character is concerned. Along those same lines...

...We don't know enough about the new version of Bombshell to care which version they go with. Yes, we've been told-- and seen inklings-- that the new version is edgier and more authentic or whatever...but we haven't seen it. We get the vague idea that they should go with the new one, but we certainly aren't invested enough in it to make Eileen's decision a cliffhanger, as they did in the second-to-last episode. They're trying to creat tension around plot points that we just don't care about. Also...

...at least once every two or three episodes, there is a musical number that is so bad that I am actively embarrassed for everyone involved. The most egregious example is the "Public Relations" number in which Tom envisioned himself playing all of the journalists, and one was a woman, and they all had really bad, stereotypical accents. I honestly have had trouble even looking at Tom since then. Also...

...the fact that Karen and Derek are the only two characters that I am super invested in has become more of a problem now that Derek has left Bombshell and that, in fact, the storyline involving Hit List has become far more compelling. I'm actively rooting for Karen to leave Bombshell and join its cast. That said...

...Jimmy is an ass-- though absolutely, he can sing, and I love his storyline and the show he's helped create. However, I absolutely don't want him and Karen to get together. I want her with Derek.

Basically, what it all comes down to is that they've split this season off into too many separate storylines, only one of which (the "Hit List" storyline) is very compelling. Like I said, I still really look forward to this show; it's just getting to the point where there are only certain characters and storylines I like, which I think is a problem.