Post by queensgirl on Jan 26, 2006 9:15:11 GMT -5
This episode does not focus as much as usual on the pure sparks between the two detectives that we are used to seeing. At least, not out in the open, though there are plenty just hidden. Still, there’s a heck of a lot going for it.
One of the main themes is role reversal. Characters act the opposite of the norm. They do things another person's way, for reasons that don't make sense at first, but in other ways help them see things very differently.
The mystery is well-written, with tension from many angles, and with the sympathetic character of Mr. Macy. He's the one in the triangle who did the least amount of damage. Well, he was part of it, but you know what I mean. He just got roped into it. I really choked up when Ken Woodley said, "I saw him, he was always just hanging around here."
There are a lot of laughs in the post office chase. And we get to see the beginning of a romance between a humble receptionist and her reluctant temp accountant beau.
I love Gail Woodley's line, "I hardly got to speak to her, the receptionist was running by me so fast."
;D
Agnes and Bert were destined, oddly enough, to find more happiness and stability than the gods granted to our main couple. See that as you will, but Agnes and Bert are good characters and we get to know a lot more about them here.
Agnes is sweet but with a very different side, one of deep and unashamed emotions; it’s been sometimes tempting to think of her as a one-dimensional character, but she really isn’t that at all. And Bert, from the moment he shows up, is hard-working, average, frightened of Agnes' confrontational attitude at first but capable of turning that emotion into something else entirely.
...Remind you of anybody?
In this episode there are many levels of deception and inability to tell the truth:
Between -- Mr. and Mrs. Woodley
Mr. Woodley manipulating Mr. Macy
Agnes and Bert
And, lurking in the background as always,
Maddie and David.
Each of these sets of people tries to keep secrets from the other, in order to preserve the fragile environment in which they live.
Dangerous or embarrassing incidents force them to tell the truth and confront each other.
All of them see their dealings with one another start on one level and end up someplace very different indeed.
Mr. and Mrs. Woodley had a marriage of questionable quality. Each was tempted by the results of their strange experiment. Frightened by the letter business, Gail tried unsuccessfully to get back into her marriage. Ken was playing a game to revive his wife's interest and then became so repulsed that it cost the life of Gail and her pen pal.
Mr. Woodley roped in a lonely person who was in need of something to do. He didn't figure on Macy actually stepping out of role and making things a lot more difficult than first planned. Poor Mr. Macy proved to be a little too much help, and look where it got him.
Agnes and Bert--they are a mirror for the other relationship on the horizon, as well as charming in their own right. But they don't start out that way. Agnes 'introduces' herself by doing what in some states is considered battery. Bert literally runs from her after this. He has to fend her off many times and gets very angry, before he gets a couple of talkings-to from his bosses and somehow keeps an even keel. By the end of the episode, however, after a cooling-off period and an attempt to not pay attention to Agnes, Bert finds that to be more difficult than he'd first thought.
(When the two detectives do the separate 'scoldings,' does it remind anybody else of a mother and dad punishing their kid after he does something one parent considers horrible and the other just precocious? As if he can get away with more under one person's eyes than he can with the other...)
Anyway. Then, of course, there's our main two.
This episode is sort of like "Freaky Friday," where everyone switches places. Maddie and David take opposite tacks than normal in the way they move to solve the case. After scaring the heck out of David by aping his jokes, Maddie is actually the one to come up with the crazy scheme to keep Macy writing the letters. That's a dangerous thing to do, and it sounds like something Dave would normally dream up. But no, it's Maddie's turn to do strange things.
David then turns out to be the more 'responsible' one, who stays down at the post office after having figured out the loophole in the theory of what happened to Macy, and turns in the extra work that helps clinch the answer. Usually it's Maddie who's doing the 'chores' aspect of a case and David who's running around all crazy, talking to people he knows he shouldn't, coming up with those odd brainstorms that fill in the gaps in Maddie's reasoning.
Then there's the other kind of deception, in matters of the heart.
Although we know what happens down the line with Bert and Agnes, it's interesting to see how different the story is at its start. It's girl loves boy, boy hates girl, boy freaks out and can't take it anymore, boy tries to get out of this and then finds he can't walk away from girl. ;D
At first, their banter is a mirror of Maddie and David's early mistrust and anger at each other, to the point where, after Bert has been discovered trying to evade Dipesto's watchful eye, he literally freezes up when she comes near him. He utterly refuses to return her hug:
A: What are you doing?
B: I’m just standing here. What are you doing?
A: Oh…
Agnes' overt romantic gestures are seen as too aggressive and then rejected. She is crushed. (To top it all off, everyone else makes fun of her.
)
You can see this as the other couple with the parties switching places--this time it's the man who is shy and the woman who is aggressive. The banter is colder and less of an attempt to get close; Bert really is afraid of and dislikes Agnes at this point, and wants to push her away.
In the cases of the warped Woodley marriage, the pen pal relationship between Macy and Gail, the troublesome current between Agnes and Bert, and last but not least the continuing war of attrition between our two detectives--all of them start of with some type of deception or twist, which when you dig to the bottom conceals much stronger feelings, a mix of confusion, competition and sexual attraction.
Only one of these couples will wind up happy.
And it's not the one you think.
But let's go back to that wonderful scene at the end, with the elevator. Agnes stands there near the door and refuses to turn around and speak to Bert. She was hurt by his rejection of her, as well as by the scolding from Ms. Hayes, and she might very well be frightened that if she talks to him again, one or both of them will get the boot. So she just faces the elevator door, as if to stare holes through it.
It's a wonderful bit of acting, as Dipesto first looks steely-eyed, but if you watch closely, she's fighting back tears by the end. Bert, for whom the acting is also darn near perfect in this episode, vaults completely from his anger of before to genuine sympathy and even courtesy. (He doesn't say anything bad when he approaches the elevator, in that awkward moment by the door; instead he is downright deferential; he just nods and lets her be, sort of trying to step around the oddness of the situation. Pay careful attention to the way Bert hovers in the background while they're in the elevator. I'd swear he looks pretty roughed up too, almost fighting back his own tears.)
Then, ever the romantic Italian, he opens the door again, just to keep his eyes on her.
Hope springs eternal. Well, maybe only sometimes. But at least it springs! ;D
One of the main themes is role reversal. Characters act the opposite of the norm. They do things another person's way, for reasons that don't make sense at first, but in other ways help them see things very differently.
The mystery is well-written, with tension from many angles, and with the sympathetic character of Mr. Macy. He's the one in the triangle who did the least amount of damage. Well, he was part of it, but you know what I mean. He just got roped into it. I really choked up when Ken Woodley said, "I saw him, he was always just hanging around here."
There are a lot of laughs in the post office chase. And we get to see the beginning of a romance between a humble receptionist and her reluctant temp accountant beau.
I love Gail Woodley's line, "I hardly got to speak to her, the receptionist was running by me so fast."
;DAgnes and Bert were destined, oddly enough, to find more happiness and stability than the gods granted to our main couple. See that as you will, but Agnes and Bert are good characters and we get to know a lot more about them here.
Agnes is sweet but with a very different side, one of deep and unashamed emotions; it’s been sometimes tempting to think of her as a one-dimensional character, but she really isn’t that at all. And Bert, from the moment he shows up, is hard-working, average, frightened of Agnes' confrontational attitude at first but capable of turning that emotion into something else entirely.
...Remind you of anybody?
In this episode there are many levels of deception and inability to tell the truth:
Between -- Mr. and Mrs. Woodley
Mr. Woodley manipulating Mr. Macy
Agnes and Bert
And, lurking in the background as always,
Maddie and David.
Each of these sets of people tries to keep secrets from the other, in order to preserve the fragile environment in which they live.
Dangerous or embarrassing incidents force them to tell the truth and confront each other.
All of them see their dealings with one another start on one level and end up someplace very different indeed.
Mr. and Mrs. Woodley had a marriage of questionable quality. Each was tempted by the results of their strange experiment. Frightened by the letter business, Gail tried unsuccessfully to get back into her marriage. Ken was playing a game to revive his wife's interest and then became so repulsed that it cost the life of Gail and her pen pal.
Mr. Woodley roped in a lonely person who was in need of something to do. He didn't figure on Macy actually stepping out of role and making things a lot more difficult than first planned. Poor Mr. Macy proved to be a little too much help, and look where it got him.
Agnes and Bert--they are a mirror for the other relationship on the horizon, as well as charming in their own right. But they don't start out that way. Agnes 'introduces' herself by doing what in some states is considered battery. Bert literally runs from her after this. He has to fend her off many times and gets very angry, before he gets a couple of talkings-to from his bosses and somehow keeps an even keel. By the end of the episode, however, after a cooling-off period and an attempt to not pay attention to Agnes, Bert finds that to be more difficult than he'd first thought.
(When the two detectives do the separate 'scoldings,' does it remind anybody else of a mother and dad punishing their kid after he does something one parent considers horrible and the other just precocious? As if he can get away with more under one person's eyes than he can with the other...
)Anyway. Then, of course, there's our main two.
This episode is sort of like "Freaky Friday," where everyone switches places. Maddie and David take opposite tacks than normal in the way they move to solve the case. After scaring the heck out of David by aping his jokes, Maddie is actually the one to come up with the crazy scheme to keep Macy writing the letters. That's a dangerous thing to do, and it sounds like something Dave would normally dream up. But no, it's Maddie's turn to do strange things.
David then turns out to be the more 'responsible' one, who stays down at the post office after having figured out the loophole in the theory of what happened to Macy, and turns in the extra work that helps clinch the answer. Usually it's Maddie who's doing the 'chores' aspect of a case and David who's running around all crazy, talking to people he knows he shouldn't, coming up with those odd brainstorms that fill in the gaps in Maddie's reasoning.
Then there's the other kind of deception, in matters of the heart.
Although we know what happens down the line with Bert and Agnes, it's interesting to see how different the story is at its start. It's girl loves boy, boy hates girl, boy freaks out and can't take it anymore, boy tries to get out of this and then finds he can't walk away from girl. ;D
At first, their banter is a mirror of Maddie and David's early mistrust and anger at each other, to the point where, after Bert has been discovered trying to evade Dipesto's watchful eye, he literally freezes up when she comes near him. He utterly refuses to return her hug:
A: What are you doing?
B: I’m just standing here. What are you doing?
A: Oh…
Agnes' overt romantic gestures are seen as too aggressive and then rejected. She is crushed. (To top it all off, everyone else makes fun of her.
) You can see this as the other couple with the parties switching places--this time it's the man who is shy and the woman who is aggressive. The banter is colder and less of an attempt to get close; Bert really is afraid of and dislikes Agnes at this point, and wants to push her away.
In the cases of the warped Woodley marriage, the pen pal relationship between Macy and Gail, the troublesome current between Agnes and Bert, and last but not least the continuing war of attrition between our two detectives--all of them start of with some type of deception or twist, which when you dig to the bottom conceals much stronger feelings, a mix of confusion, competition and sexual attraction.
Only one of these couples will wind up happy.
And it's not the one you think.
But let's go back to that wonderful scene at the end, with the elevator. Agnes stands there near the door and refuses to turn around and speak to Bert. She was hurt by his rejection of her, as well as by the scolding from Ms. Hayes, and she might very well be frightened that if she talks to him again, one or both of them will get the boot. So she just faces the elevator door, as if to stare holes through it.
It's a wonderful bit of acting, as Dipesto first looks steely-eyed, but if you watch closely, she's fighting back tears by the end. Bert, for whom the acting is also darn near perfect in this episode, vaults completely from his anger of before to genuine sympathy and even courtesy. (He doesn't say anything bad when he approaches the elevator, in that awkward moment by the door; instead he is downright deferential; he just nods and lets her be, sort of trying to step around the oddness of the situation. Pay careful attention to the way Bert hovers in the background while they're in the elevator. I'd swear he looks pretty roughed up too, almost fighting back his own tears.)
Then, ever the romantic Italian, he opens the door again, just to keep his eyes on her.
Hope springs eternal. Well, maybe only sometimes. But at least it springs!
;D
