Hey, y'all...content warning right up front: Today, I'll be discussing some frank stuff about my body, and body dysmorphia. It's unpleasant in spots. If you'd like to not read about all that, by all means feel free to skip down to the regularly scheduled TV review and enjoy that.
It's a really strange thing to lose weight and feel exactly the same, physically. Twenty-five pounds is not nothing. My older kid weighs around that. Me on March 25, 2018 was literally the same weight as me today, while holding my kid. But I don't feel any different. I get compliments, my wife remarked how she can actually get her arms all the way around me, and a few of my shirts are fitting differently. It happened. No one is screwing with the scale behind my back. But I don't feel any different. And I don't fully believe any of the compliments or comments. It turns out, I might not be able to do so.
I hate taking my shirt off. I'm sure plenty of folks feel the same, it's not an uncommon dread for anyone who doesn't possess washboard abs. But I feel genuine animal panic at the thought of removing my shirt at a swimming pool. Or in the locker room today, even. I don't even like to wear one single shirt; I have an elaborate system of under-shirts and strategically draped over-shirts that let me feel comfortable about the curvature of my gut. It doesn't make any sense. I know that. You can see, from the very casual glance, that I'm a large fella. I was described by a theater director once as "square-shaped" because I'm as wide as I am tall. There's no reason for me to be afraid that people might see my huge stomach or my pronounced man-boobs. They can see them! Unless I start wearing a burka, there's little reason for me to armor myself in two or three layers in the middle of July. But I do it.
Well, the other day I caught a glance in the mirror and had to stop and say out loud, "Where were those twenty-five pounds, if everything is right where it has been for ten years?" But now I'm noticing little things. My rings that I wear on either hand are loose. Like, "coming off while I type this right now" loose. And while my gut still spills over my belt line in that ever-so-evocative "muffin top" configuration that I always hear about, the curvature is far less drastic to the touch. My cheekbones are visible now, if I happen to jut my jaw out slightly. Things have changed, but I have to fight my brain to acknowledge it.
Remember in The Matrix when after waking up in the pod full of K-Y jelly with a bunch of plugs and holes in his body, and no hair, Neo goes back into the simulation and he's back to the way he looked before? They called it "digital residual self-image" or something along those lines. I feel like I'm aware of the weight loss, but my brain is still in the Matrix and still sees me from an askew angle. I wonder, if I manage to lose a further significant amount of weight, if I'll ever actually notice the difference.
"Lost in Space" Season 1, Episode 7 - "Pressurized"
The ramp-up to Dr. Smith's unmasking is moving at a markedly slower pace than the investigation into Angela's shooting aboard the Jupiter 2. It's frustrating as a viewer to watch the admittedly necessary sequence of Maureen and John puzzling out the pistol's origin and its pathway into the hands of the traumatized woman, but it gets way more interesting as Dr. Smith lays the blame at the feet of Victor, for WHATEVER reason.
Also, when did John and Maureen become a road comedy? Their disastrous turn into a tar pit of all things, spurred by increased seismic activity, seems like a convenient way to waylay them for the episode, so that Penny, Will, and Dr. Smith can carry on unencumbered by any supervision. It's narratively necessary, again, because we have to see their broken marriage evolve before the final episode, since nothing on that front has happened since Episode 4.
This episode is generous with the exciting adventure sequences, like the race through the geyser field and the resulting frenetic handheld cinematography when Evan is pinned under the tanker. But it feels uncharacteristically inorganic. Like the episode was sketched out and someone said, "Um...we need something more visual to happen right here, and then here."
Honestly, the show could survive without the scheduled pizzazz thanks to strong performances. Parker Posey's smug rendition of "This Little Light of Mine" is just enough to make Dr. Smith's visit to the cairn and her scouting of Robot's shattered remains feel like a violation of the highest order. Her soliloquy to the dead machine, in which she proclaims herself a good person not unlike the Robinsons and gives a little more detail of her plans to have the Robot commit all her evil deeds, is ably performed by the veteran actress, but it's the most nakedly artificial circumstance for a complicated villainous character to speak directly to the audience. She might as well carry a tape recorder. And for how brilliantly she sidesteps suspicion up to this point, the assumptions she makes in her attempt to recreate Will's empathic reprogramming of the android are almost laughable. What did she think would happen? That's yet another seemingly rushed, poorly executed plot point in the name of everything catching up for the finale.
The subplot involving Penny flaking on new beau Vijay to cheer up her recently Robot-less little brother is cute, but is the series' closest steps toward cloying sentimentality. I like the concept of Will's mental state, that of an eleven-year-old boy who had to give up his puppy. But the "learning to fly" business skews just a little too schmaltzy. Then again, I'm probably just revealing myself to be something of a curmudgeon here.
Penny will likely wish she had kept the date. Vijay's sudden decision to spill his guts to his father regarding Penny's knowledge of the planet's fate seems just as accelerated as the rest of this episode. It's unclear to me if Victor plans on leaving just enough people behind or everyone who isn't his family, but either way it's something of a rapid heel turn for the prickly politician. It reeks of a ten-episode series needing to be compressed into eight, so all of the dangling plot points needed to be brought forth at the same time.
Random Notes:
-Don's begrudging altruism is a great character trait that keeps paying off for anyone who still remembers how he talked such a big rogue anti-hero talk in Episode 2.
-Between Will's psychic link to his alien Robot and Judy's bedside manner with Evan, the Robinsons must have taken advanced courses in human decency.
-The helium gag at the end of John and Maureen's tar pit adventure was well earned, at least.
-"The one time Penny does what she is told and stays aboard the Jupiter, and look what happens." Truer words never spoken.
Rating: C+
It's a really strange thing to lose weight and feel exactly the same, physically. Twenty-five pounds is not nothing. My older kid weighs around that. Me on March 25, 2018 was literally the same weight as me today, while holding my kid. But I don't feel any different. I get compliments, my wife remarked how she can actually get her arms all the way around me, and a few of my shirts are fitting differently. It happened. No one is screwing with the scale behind my back. But I don't feel any different. And I don't fully believe any of the compliments or comments. It turns out, I might not be able to do so.
I hate taking my shirt off. I'm sure plenty of folks feel the same, it's not an uncommon dread for anyone who doesn't possess washboard abs. But I feel genuine animal panic at the thought of removing my shirt at a swimming pool. Or in the locker room today, even. I don't even like to wear one single shirt; I have an elaborate system of under-shirts and strategically draped over-shirts that let me feel comfortable about the curvature of my gut. It doesn't make any sense. I know that. You can see, from the very casual glance, that I'm a large fella. I was described by a theater director once as "square-shaped" because I'm as wide as I am tall. There's no reason for me to be afraid that people might see my huge stomach or my pronounced man-boobs. They can see them! Unless I start wearing a burka, there's little reason for me to armor myself in two or three layers in the middle of July. But I do it.
Well, the other day I caught a glance in the mirror and had to stop and say out loud, "Where were those twenty-five pounds, if everything is right where it has been for ten years?" But now I'm noticing little things. My rings that I wear on either hand are loose. Like, "coming off while I type this right now" loose. And while my gut still spills over my belt line in that ever-so-evocative "muffin top" configuration that I always hear about, the curvature is far less drastic to the touch. My cheekbones are visible now, if I happen to jut my jaw out slightly. Things have changed, but I have to fight my brain to acknowledge it.
Remember in The Matrix when after waking up in the pod full of K-Y jelly with a bunch of plugs and holes in his body, and no hair, Neo goes back into the simulation and he's back to the way he looked before? They called it "digital residual self-image" or something along those lines. I feel like I'm aware of the weight loss, but my brain is still in the Matrix and still sees me from an askew angle. I wonder, if I manage to lose a further significant amount of weight, if I'll ever actually notice the difference.
"Lost in Space" Season 1, Episode 7 - "Pressurized"
The ramp-up to Dr. Smith's unmasking is moving at a markedly slower pace than the investigation into Angela's shooting aboard the Jupiter 2. It's frustrating as a viewer to watch the admittedly necessary sequence of Maureen and John puzzling out the pistol's origin and its pathway into the hands of the traumatized woman, but it gets way more interesting as Dr. Smith lays the blame at the feet of Victor, for WHATEVER reason.
Also, when did John and Maureen become a road comedy? Their disastrous turn into a tar pit of all things, spurred by increased seismic activity, seems like a convenient way to waylay them for the episode, so that Penny, Will, and Dr. Smith can carry on unencumbered by any supervision. It's narratively necessary, again, because we have to see their broken marriage evolve before the final episode, since nothing on that front has happened since Episode 4.
This episode is generous with the exciting adventure sequences, like the race through the geyser field and the resulting frenetic handheld cinematography when Evan is pinned under the tanker. But it feels uncharacteristically inorganic. Like the episode was sketched out and someone said, "Um...we need something more visual to happen right here, and then here."
Honestly, the show could survive without the scheduled pizzazz thanks to strong performances. Parker Posey's smug rendition of "This Little Light of Mine" is just enough to make Dr. Smith's visit to the cairn and her scouting of Robot's shattered remains feel like a violation of the highest order. Her soliloquy to the dead machine, in which she proclaims herself a good person not unlike the Robinsons and gives a little more detail of her plans to have the Robot commit all her evil deeds, is ably performed by the veteran actress, but it's the most nakedly artificial circumstance for a complicated villainous character to speak directly to the audience. She might as well carry a tape recorder. And for how brilliantly she sidesteps suspicion up to this point, the assumptions she makes in her attempt to recreate Will's empathic reprogramming of the android are almost laughable. What did she think would happen? That's yet another seemingly rushed, poorly executed plot point in the name of everything catching up for the finale.
The subplot involving Penny flaking on new beau Vijay to cheer up her recently Robot-less little brother is cute, but is the series' closest steps toward cloying sentimentality. I like the concept of Will's mental state, that of an eleven-year-old boy who had to give up his puppy. But the "learning to fly" business skews just a little too schmaltzy. Then again, I'm probably just revealing myself to be something of a curmudgeon here.
Penny will likely wish she had kept the date. Vijay's sudden decision to spill his guts to his father regarding Penny's knowledge of the planet's fate seems just as accelerated as the rest of this episode. It's unclear to me if Victor plans on leaving just enough people behind or everyone who isn't his family, but either way it's something of a rapid heel turn for the prickly politician. It reeks of a ten-episode series needing to be compressed into eight, so all of the dangling plot points needed to be brought forth at the same time.
Random Notes:
-Don's begrudging altruism is a great character trait that keeps paying off for anyone who still remembers how he talked such a big rogue anti-hero talk in Episode 2.
-Between Will's psychic link to his alien Robot and Judy's bedside manner with Evan, the Robinsons must have taken advanced courses in human decency.
-The helium gag at the end of John and Maureen's tar pit adventure was well earned, at least.
-"The one time Penny does what she is told and stays aboard the Jupiter, and look what happens." Truer words never spoken.
Rating: C+