Author Topic: EP313: Playing Doctor  (Read 16836 times)

Scattercat

  • Caution:
  • Hipparch
  • ******
  • Posts: 4904
  • Amateur wordsmith
    • Mirrorshards
Reply #25 on: October 18, 2011, 08:21:32 AM
The outro and some of the comments said something to the effect that the ending was romantic.  The story seems to take unexamined the idea that the best thing Glue could do was to make this RealDoll for his beloved.  THAT is what irritates me, and it's fairly central to the thematic core of the story, i.e. Glue's unrequited love.

The other bits, I agree with you, and if the story had confined itself to that, I would have cheerfully laughed along.



Talia

  • Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 2682
  • Muahahahaha
Reply #26 on: October 18, 2011, 12:44:40 PM
I'd suggest that that's what Glue THOUGHT was the best thing he could do.



Rachel Udin

  • Extern
  • *
  • Posts: 13
Reply #27 on: October 19, 2011, 01:52:32 PM
I'm not a fan of the "Sacrifice myself for my love" without the confessing. If he'd confessed, been turned down and still stayed, then I might have bought it. Maybe I've been exposed to too many romance plot lines where this is far too contrived. Glu suffered even more from the lack of follow through than the ones I'm used to.

I think real love isn't the sacrifice--especially the one way. It's the getting along together and working through problems together even when you don't agree. It's the working through loose socks in the couch, the toilet paper is the wrong way--the every day events that slowly can irk a person and working through those issues with that other person. It's more Shakespeare talking about how the imperfections of his lover are what makes him love his lover even more. As one show put it, "I want to go grocery shopping with you." (Necessary Roughness)

I also had a minor nitpick where he'd put part of his heart into the lover's body. I would have bought it if the previous paragraph hadn't gone into all the technical biological jargon. As in the metaphorical heart, but it bothered me when it was the physical and it went into meta science. The actual seat of emotions is in the brain mostly the amigdala and the pituitary gland. The sexual organs also play a role.  Last two being the major ones. Emotion can also be triggered by the frontal cortex, but the hormones don't sit there. If you're going to talk about nerves, the technicalities of cancer, etc. Then launch into how the heart contains physical emotion... I'm not buying it. Adrenaline from the pituitary gland creates the heart pumping more, not visa versa. The feelings of euphoria are mostly seratonin and endorphines. That given, scientists don't know what makes love, the complex emotion happen and persist. (i.e. they can't make someone love someone else).

I've been hearing this lecture since I was five down to the level of neuro receptors...

Anyhow, the point is, stick to either meta science or science, don't mix them back to back, unless we're going to the brain as a sweat gland via the Egyptians.

I was on board until the cancer and the sacrifice bit.



InfiniteMonkey

  • Lochage
  • *****
  • Posts: 483
  • Clearly, I need more typewriters....
Reply #28 on: October 21, 2011, 08:31:29 PM
I think my problem with this is just that I've had one too many ironical post-modern superhero/supervillain stories of late, and I was just full. Plus I have a hard time mustering that much sympathy for a serial nebbish like Glue. Better to have him snap and go postal.



mbrennan

  • Matross
  • ****
  • Posts: 210
Reply #29 on: October 22, 2011, 10:45:52 PM
I understand that comedy can be used to play around with ideas that wouldn't work in a more serious story.

Unfortunately, this one didn't make me laugh.  I was annoyed by both characters, and while certain touches were entertaining (I ditto liking the comment about terrorists changing how governments respond to mad scientists), it really didn't come across as funny enough to counterbalance the things that bugged me.

I definitely don't think you're supposed to analyze this seriously. No more than you would the movies Zoolander or Dumb and Dumber for example.

Those being two splendid examples of the kind of comedy I don't like.  As I explained to someone recently, after they tried to hook me on Archer, I've hit a point where I don't care if a character is being ridiculously sexist or racist or just flat-out stupid or whatever for the purposes of mocking sexism and racism and stupidity and so on; it still isn't something I want to sit through.  (Especially when too many people seem capable of missing the point of the mockery.)  This story doesn't go that far, obviously, but -- well, let's take the example of Dr. Medici moaning and crying about how she's lonely.  That isn't funny to me because it doesn't go anywhere; she stays lonely and depressed (and then gets cancer), and then her sad sack of an admirer attempts to save her from it by means that are more creepy than romantic.  The end.  I don't see why I should laugh.



SF.Fangirl

  • Peltast
  • ***
  • Posts: 145
Reply #30 on: October 23, 2011, 07:58:03 PM
I found this story disappointing.  The preview (ie first sentence) sets up a funny, satirical mad scientist story and fails to deliver.  It wasn't funny and the characters are both completely pathetic and doomed to an unhappy ending.  Glue might end up happier after his boss dies of cancer if he manages to get over it and finds a better life.  That seems unlikely though.



audpicc

  • Extern
  • *
  • Posts: 2
Reply #31 on: October 25, 2011, 05:20:47 PM
Seriously? If this indeed was supposed to be a comedy you cold have fooled me. The heavy handed jabs at feminism were totally off putting and borderline offensive. I guess even a career woman (omg, even a female mad scientist. Have you ever even heard of that before?!?!?) still needs the perfect man in her life. Ugh. You can take a parody of a feminist and give her a dead mom and cancer, but she'll still only be a parody of a feminist, especially when prince charming comes along and saves the day! Nope, she doesn't need a cure for cancer or a fulfilling career, all she needs is a MAN!

At least this story isn't as popular as twilight.
I'm also sort of disappointed at how nobody on the forum has called out this story for being sexist yet. Here I am saying it: This Story is Sexist!
« Last Edit: October 25, 2011, 05:37:27 PM by audpicc »



Unblinking

  • Sir Postsalot
  • Hipparch
  • ******
  • Posts: 8729
    • Diabolical Plots
Reply #32 on: October 28, 2011, 05:28:25 PM
At least this story isn't as popular as twilight.
I'm also sort of disappointed at how nobody on the forum has called out this story for being sexist yet. Here I am saying it: This Story is Sexist!

You can be disappointed in me; I can take it. :)  But I didn't see this story as sexist.  I think I could see Glu as sexist.  You said that a message sent by the story was "Nope, she doesn't need a cure for cancer or a fulfilling career, all she needs is a MAN!"  I can see your point, but to me, that message was portrayed by Glu not by the story itself.  He was the one who thought that was a good solution and I didn't get the impression that the author was trying to convey that this was a good solution.  I don't think it was a good solution, and I think the misery of both characters will be multiplied by this decision.  But when it all comes down to it, it was Glu that made that decision and it was Glu who thought it would be a good idea.

If the story itself could be said to be sexist against women then I'd argue it must also be sexist against men. Glu and the lobotomized Glu-clone are the only men onstage in the story.  And if he is meant to be representative of the male half of humanity, I can't say I feel flattered by that.  



Scattercat

  • Caution:
  • Hipparch
  • ******
  • Posts: 4904
  • Amateur wordsmith
    • Mirrorshards
Reply #33 on: October 29, 2011, 01:16:31 AM
Well, the Doctor DOES take the proffered gift and seems quite happy to have it, though she's pretty much a terrible person in or out of the story.



Rain

  • Matross
  • ****
  • Posts: 178
Reply #34 on: October 29, 2011, 08:24:30 AM
I didnt find this one funny at all, so overall it just felt like a really weak story



Unblinking

  • Sir Postsalot
  • Hipparch
  • ******
  • Posts: 8729
    • Diabolical Plots
Reply #35 on: November 08, 2011, 02:51:47 PM
Well, the Doctor DOES take the proffered gift and seems quite happy to have it, though she's pretty much a terrible person in or out of the story.

Sure, I wouldn't say the Doctor is a shining example of the female sex either.  The story features a flawed woman, a flawed man, and a lobotomized copy of the flawed man.  But I don't believe any is meant to represent their entire sex.  At least that's not how I saw it.




eytanz

  • Moderator
  • *****
  • Posts: 6109
Reply #36 on: November 13, 2011, 04:26:02 PM
This one didn't do much for me. I didn't find it particularly funny, and I didn't find it particularly emotionally compelling, and I didn't find it to be particularly sexist. I mostly found it bland.



hardware

  • Matross
  • ****
  • Posts: 192
Reply #37 on: November 18, 2011, 09:12:07 AM
I didn't like this too much, not because I couldn't sympathize with the characters or what they did (I don't really need that to enjoy a story), but because the joke felt like a discarded Dreamworks film plot. Yeah, let's mix up this classical trope with some contemporary references thrown in without thinking too much about how the world created fits together, and then we reverse the classical gender but still make the female a needy hysteric looking for a man. You know, for laughs. The author probably did not think like that, but that's how it came out to me.

Still, there were some glimmer of an interesting story in here. The image of the little girl trashing her teddy bear was not original, but it was simple, powerful and felt true.



FireTurtle

  • Hipparch
  • ******
  • Posts: 898
Reply #38 on: November 21, 2011, 10:58:27 PM
*cringes, closes eyes and jumps on the "this was sexist" bandwagon*

Well. I am definitely not one to jump on the feminist side of things easily or quickly. I try to stay out of those arguments. (hence my deafening silence in the Great Conan the Barbarian (not that there's anything wrong with that) Debate. However, I just listened to this on the way home and I've got to say, it was not the happy little podcast release I was looking for.

The characters were off-putting. I gather this is because I don't generally enjoy movies such as Dumb and Dumber. Ok. Thats just me. I'm okay with that. Humor is a very individual thing.

What I'm not okay with (what had me getting out of the car in a funk and essentially feeling as if someone had pointed a finger at me and said "Ha ha you are ridiculous because you have a career and no man!" is the female character.
However "funny" she was supposed to be- going on a crying jag about how she is so lonely because she put her career first and no one understands her. Um. Yeah. That doesn't seem ha-ha funny. Its not pointing out an ironic juxtaposition (like terrorists vs mad scientists, or love of evil...) unless you really do believe that career women are never happy without a man (or woman, lets be fair) to love.
I'm having trouble getting where that is consistent with the overdrawn sociopathic super-villain she is supposed to represent. Unbearable loneliness caused by early childhood loss and what we would assume are sociopathic tendencies...no, she really just needs a man. Don't all women?
It would have been more funny if it was a male mad scientist and thus wasn't mirroring so closely what many of us hardworking career types still hear from our male colleagues today. I believe that the author probably thought that this was something funny because its so in the past or whatever. But, as with all stereotyping, be careful because someone somewhere is going to be hurt by what you say in innocence.

Rant over.

For the record, Glue at least maintained his identity as a self-sacrificing nit-wit throughout the story. I applaud this. But, in case you couldn't tell, this episode was a total miss for me. Damn. On to the next one!

“My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world and exiles me from it.”
Ursula K. LeGuin


LaShawn

  • Lochage
  • *****
  • Posts: 550
  • Writer Mommies Rule!
    • The Cafe in the Woods
Reply #39 on: April 11, 2012, 04:21:18 PM
Add me to the chorus of being disappointed with this story. I too expected that Glu would do something like put his own consciousness into the man he made, or put her consciousness in it. But to make a man just to make her feel better, especially since her life is going down the tubes, felt so weak. Plus, I don't think Glu will be satisfied seeing her with another man, even if it is own creation.

Back in 2001, the movie A.I Artificial Intelligence ran an online game that set the bar for all ARGs that followed after. There was all sorts of twisted games and puzzles, and the storyline was much better than the movie itself (in fact, characters from the movie were only hinted at). One of the side stories was about a couple who married but for business reasons couldn't live together, so they got a robot that looked just like the wife. The idea was that the wife would live vicariously through the robot through sensory uploads. Over time, however, the wife began to suspect that, strange that it seemed, that her husband was having an affair with the robot, who in all accounts was supposed to be her. The robot was developing its own personality, and by the time the wife realized it, the husband wanted a divorce so he could marry the robot. The last correspondence she wrote was so delightfully twisted--I highly recommend going to the Cloudmaker's site if you want to read through the entire game. It's absolutely fascinating.

But back to this story. Meh.

--
Visit LaShawn at The Cafe in the Woods:
http://tbonecafe.wordpress.com
Another writer's antiblog: In Touch With Yours Truly