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We should have swiped these joints all season.
From hbo.com:
>Inside the Episode
With Steve Hawk
The Future Tense of Joy
David Milch, JFC's executive producer and head writer, likes to talk about the many ways in which the future continuously reinterprets the meaning of the past. In that context he often quotes a poem by his mentor, Robert Penn Warren: "This is the process whereby pain of the past in its pastness / May be converted into the future tense / Of joy."
That concept came to life several times over the course of the first season of JFC, but perhaps never more so than in this episode when Butchie (Brian Van Holt), Cissy (Rebecca De Mornay) and Shaun (Greyson Fletcher) leave the Snug Harbor Hotel together to help Mitch (Bruce Greenwood), who's back at the Yost house, levitating to the ceiling. As the three generations of Yosts climb into Cissy's car to drive away, John smiles and says, "Meet the Jetsons."
John's recalling a moment from the show's first episode, after Butchie challenged his father, Mitch, to a fistfight and in anger said to John, "You want to meet a happy family, watch the Saturday morning cartoons, John. Meet the f**king Jetsons." To which John replied, in his parrot-like fashion, "Meet the f**king Jetsons."
Here, eight days later, the meaning of that line has been reversed: Butchie is joining his mother and his son on a mission to help his father. And thus the future reinterprets the meaning of the past, and the pain of the past is converted into joy – or at least something approaching it.
A Shepherd Without Crook or Understanding
The scene in which Linc (Luke Perry), Jake (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) and John (Austin Nichols) buy an El Camino from the Dealer (Peter Jason) at the Cherry Oldies car lot is probably the most important puzzle-solving moment of the season. It's not my place to provide a line-by-line interpretation, but I can say this: If you sensed that the car-buying sequence provides some clues about why John has come to Imperial Beach -- and about the show's fundamental cosmology and intent -- trust your instincts. Here's a transcript, with narrative from the original script:
EXT. CHERRY OLDIES USED CAR SALES – DAY
Linc and Jake and John with the owner/operator of Cherry Oldies Used Car Sales. The Dealer's appearance invokes P.T. Barnum's trustworthiness, and his manner Chicken Little's hurried angst --
DEALER: I feel that you boys are ready for this Camino ....
LINC: (Includes Jake) Between the two of us we own more cars than you have on this lot. My guess is that your feeling's probably right.
Linc meant to put the Dealer off his pitch and thereby abbreviate their business; instead the Dealer bridles --
DEALER: That's not what I mean by ready – number of vehicles owned.
Jake and Linc tag-team their message of impatience --
JAKE: What do you mean, Pops?
LINC: We got to, uh, boogie.
The Dealer comes over their top --
DEALER: Oh, so I've got to know what I mean before I can have a feeling. Do I have to know that you'll understand me? Do you have to know you'll understand before you'll listen?
Which appears to put Jake in a different, passive state --
DEALER (to Linc): Twenty-five cars between you -- you should've let me sit down before you told me. I got that many dealerships in each of that many sectors, and brands on goddamn franchise. I've got to boogie, me.
John indicates the Dealer, in whose rhythms and accents he reproaches Linc and Jake for their failure to take the Dealer's premise on its face --
JOHN: He feels you're ready for the Camino.
Where Jake's gone, Linc has now gone too --
DEALER (to John) You're off-line now, Country.
JOHN: I don't know Butchie instead.
DEALER: (To Linc and Jake, re John) How's he for high-performance? And he ain't who's worst-underpowered.
If the Dealer had suspenders he'd flex them to indicate who he means --
DEALER: Intrusions, evanescences – I'm a shepherd without crook or understanding. Fits and stops and starts. Waves and ripples and ramifications. Busted knee, mother-son handjob .... Christ, Jesus Christ Jesus Christ.
The Dealer's tight smile is not fully persuasive --
DEALER: Crosses and shoulders to bear 'em.
He smacks his hand on the El Camino --
DEALER: El Camino, fifteen thousand, as is.
Linc and Jake have regained their faculties --
LINC: Is it gassed?
JOHN: F**king-A right it's gassed Linc.
As John puts on the counter the fifteen thousand dollars in hundred dollar bills which has materialized in his pocket the Dealer's stern gaze goes to Linc --
DEALER: You and your twenty-five cars. Circle and line on the wall, and zeros and goddamned ones, is what to turn the both of your gifts to --
The Dealer's "both" appears to include Jake --
DEALER: -- and not one damn minute to waste.
JOHN: Ragheads are going to get themselves eradicated.
DEALER: (vigorously interrupting John) Country, I took you off-line. (calling off camera, re El Camino) Manuel, get a cage on this thing.
John leans over the hood of the El Camino and employs the entirety of his wingspan to offer it a hug. Off which --
Why I Don't Come Up Here
If Linc and Jake's encounter with the car dealer is pivotal for its code-cracking aspect, the season's most powerful emotional moment (to me, anyway), comes at the end of this episode, when Bill (Ed O'Neill) finally works up the nerve to return to his late wife's sick room. Bill's soliloquy contains one of Milch's trademark "watch what people do, not what they say" moments. "Safely returned, happy outcome," Bill says as he shares the good news with Lois that Shaun has come home. But listen to his voice and look at his face – he's clearly on the verge of breaking down from his continuing sadness and loneliness over the loss of his wife.
It could be argued that Bill's final scene, in terms of its artistic import, is more representative than the car-lot scene in communicating the central point of JFC: to move viewers in ways that not only surprise, but also sometimes fail to rise to the level of consciousness. I know not everyone felt the same gut-punch that I did from Bill's speech or Zippy the parrot's sudden return, but if that scene got to you, ask yourself this: when's the last time you teared up because a bird flew in a window?
The World's Best Skateboarder
The red-shirted skateboarder who appears a few times toward the end of the episode is street-skating legend Rodney Mullen, who gets my vote as the best skateboarder in history. Today, in his early 40s, he still rides better than anyone. He's also without doubt the most kind-hearted skater I've ever met. I've known Rodney since he was a teenager, and I invited him to meet Milch last summer. At the time, we thought the John character might do some skateboarding in the show, and Rodney agreed to help train Austin Nichols, who plays John.
Rodney and Milch hit it off, and Rodney ended coming in for several visits. It was a pretty big deal when he agreed to appear as a background skateboarder in the season finale, because Rodney almost never skates in public anymore. He prefers to ride in isolation around the streets of Los Angeles from midnight to daybreak.
When he began performing tricks on the set in Imperial Beach, it nearly stopped production. His skateboard talents are otherworldy – combination ice skater, gymnast and punk – and people can't help but watch. While we were shooting the scene in which Bill is handcuffed, Paula Malcomson, who plays Jerri, stood transfixed by Rodney's skating. "When I watch him," she said, "I just feel so ... happy."
The End is Near
One of Milch's favorite themes, given voice throughout the first season of JFC, is that mankind's perceived differences and estrangements are both illusory and dangerous. He's particularly concerned about the way technological advances, in the form of 24-hour news channels and the Internet, have outstripped society's ability to deal rationally with the unsettling images that bombard it daily. Here's what he said in the writer's room about that subject during a brainstorming session last October:
"What makes the danger of ethnic cleansing so much more acute in contemporary times, and one of the things I want to engage in this series, is the extent to which we now reside in virtual space, and the homicidal impulse that's generated by the violation of our virtual space. After the planes flew into the World Trade Center, we were subjected to the stimuli of those images in our virtual space over and over and over again. And because of the way we're set up physiologically, we experience those as continuous ongoing attacks. They predispose us to a violence toward the people whom we take as the perpetrators, because we can't individuate. And because of the way we receive information, we identify the attackers as Ragheads. Our willingness to respond in a genocidal fashion, I think, is not to be underestimated, and that's one of the reasons that this postulated force from elsewhere (John) has dispatched these various miracles – to arouse the recognition that the apocalypse is upon us."
Before shooting the climactic Stinkweed "street fair" near the end of the episode, Milch gathered the entire crew together to explain how the scene, and especially Linc's speech, fit into that broader theme. Here's an excerpt:
"Here's the thing. If you've fucked up unremittingly for decades you wake up and you say to yourself, 'How the fuck am I still alive? Don't they come and revoke the license at a certain point?' That's what the universe gives us every morning. No matter how far we have veered from reverence for the miraculous fact that we exist in a universe that we don't understand, every day we get a chance to start over...
"John is the chance that the universe gives you every day. And commerce, in the form of Linc, has been persuaded to enlist itself in the service of a miracle. Now, Linc's going to think he's bullshitting, because no one is ever sure of their sincerity. The only way that you demonstrate your sincerity is in action. Whatever Linc thinks he's doing, however uncertain he is, he has decided to take action and enlist Jake in protecting John's identity, so that the anxiety that people feel when they see a plane flying into a building, which makes them want to kill a stranger, doesn't happen to John. And the way that commerce is going to try to protect John is by saying, 'All these miracles that have been going on? It was all Stinkweed. It was all bullshit. It was all commerce. It was a big f**king promotion.' ... What we're seeing is the elaborate resourcefulness of commerce once it has devoted itself to attempting to protect the universe."
The Internet is Big
Although the first season is over, you can still learn new stuff about some of JFC's characters and themes at various websites:
Yostclan - http://yostclan.com/ aka "The Pipeline"
The unofficial fan website for Mitch and Butchie Yost. The website reveals a hidden universe that can only be discovered after solving three puzzles, clues for which can be found on the site's bulletin board.
Stinkweed - http://stinkweedusa.com/
The official website of the apparel company founded by Linc Stark.
Videos:
Shaun Yost - http://www.youtube.com/user/ShaunYost
Shaun has posted several videos on-line, including his "Sponsor Me" video featured in the first episode.
Mitch Yost - http://www.youtube.com/user/ibsurfbum
Mitch's public service announcements on cross-border water pollution.
Meyer Dickstein - http://www.youtube.com/user/jrosenib
Two videos featuring Meyer Dickstein (Willie Garson).
Alternate Titles
Three alternate titles to the official one ("His Visit: Day Nine"):
a. "Intrusions and Evanescences"
b. "A Nud-Nudge for Us Earthlings"
c. "Wouldn't She Have Laughed To Have Seen That"
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