Another day, another CLIP! YAY.
This one opens with.....Powell the Poet reading something. Oh brother.
Wow, Todd's carving a bird from wood. Artistic. Interesting.
Yet another incident to make us love this man. Jessica is being a stupid teen, which could lead to her being a stupid dead girl, (love Erin Torpey though) and Our Man is there to save the day. Of course, he is a bit of a stalker, we definitely don't care though. :D
I love Todd's face when Jessica is telling the kid no. He almost panics. Not sure what to do, because he does not want to jeopardize his own safety. Within the following few moments, he almost decides it's worth the risk. Todd's protection of children makes us start to think. What's with this guy? He's a rapist, but here he is carving birds in a purple cape and saving kids. Defending the honor of a young girl. The writers were hard at work controlling our view of him, and it definitely was working.
I love his flashbacks. Almost as if he is "watching" someone else? Exactly. Not sure who actually raped Marty, my money is on Pete, but there are disagreements about those who follow the DID idea through his life. The Genie definitely seems like a different "person" than the rapist and convict. The Genie reminds me a lot of . . . Tom. The kid flees, and he's left alone with his bird and his thoughts. Possibly realizing how wrong he was? How guilty he is? Or remembering what he did as another alter?
"What's a matter? You look sad." Leave it to a kid. As an 8th grade teacher, I still marvel at the little ones I used to teach, how they will just come out with things like "you have pretty hair" or "do you need help?" CJ is the perfect little kid, to me. He and Sarah ALMOST stole the show from Our Boy.
The "evil master" is himself. I love how he alludes to this when asked by CJ. "Always going to be after me, always looking for me." He cannot escape the evil part of himself. In other conversations, I've thought the evil master was Peter Manning, but it doesn't really matter, and is probably both father and parts of himself. Watching what almost happened to Jessica brings up his having to face and deal with that "bad guy" within him. Of course his discussion changes BACK to the master being Peter. Important: "We all want to grow up to be just like our masters....some masters don't deserve genies, they hit 'em and they punish them and they send 'em away, and they tell them that they're stupid and worthless, and after a while, the Genies start to think that they are stupid. Maybe they are because they just want the masters to care about them. They never will" and it goes on. I thought I was done crying with these clips, but NOT TODAY. In light of what Todd is about, and what we know of him later, this is the most telling conversation he's had. CJ is just so cute in his short attempt to comfort Todd. Free therapy. Roger's VOICE even transforms during these scenes. The tones he speaks in with the children, and sometimes Rebecca, are like lilting music.
FAIL: Beginning of clip, dealing with watching Powell write a poem.
Sound off!! Love these clips! Juju is the Goddess of Toddness.
I had forgotten this scene with Jessica. Once more we're given a glimpse of what haunts Todd. He relives the scene of his taunting Marty and then has to listen to the young teen do the same to Jessica. By now he really just wants to put everything behind him. If he thinks about it,it bring reality into play. He's a little bit like the ostrich with his head in the sand trying to believe that if he hides his eyes it will all go away but then something happens and it's all thrown back into his face.
ReplyDeleteTodd's relationship with CJ and Sarah is the turning point for me. I found myself so drawn to the young man who had such empathy with these two kids. He let them go where no one else had. He let them into his heart. The commentator yesterday pointed out that Todd received more therapy then either Zach or Powell received and they were right. Todd began opening up to Rebecca but the two kids gave him their full attention and their full support. They wanted nothing more than for their Genie to be happy.
I find it interesting that both CJ and Sarah were never as comfortable around Powell as they were Todd. It was almost as if they sensed something about Powell that didn't ring sincere. Just watching the ease they felt around Todd made us feel at ease. Todd sat there and told his buddy CJ all the hurt that happens sometimes to people and CJ did what a good buddy does, he offered his support no questions asked. If Todd hadn't run into Sarah that day at the Tabernacle I'm not sure we would have seen Todd change. He'd just heard Rebecca claim that although she had fallen in Love with him she realized how evil he was and that everyone had been right. If he had left at that moment I believe his downward spiral would have just continued. Sarah and CJ gave Todd their friendship. The timing proved crucial because he believed no one could even like him you could say Sarah and CJ were his saving grace.
This is my favorite garden shed scene ever. I love that Todd gets to peek through the blinds at a young version of himself. I really think that Todd seeing Jessica's innocence and naïveté and, really, seeing how a nice, upstanding society girl could feel pressured into acting out in order to fit in was absolute genius. The parallels that were drawn between Jessica and Marty were unmistakeable and just what Todd needed. He needed to see Marty in Jessica's eyes and hear Marty's fear in Jessica's voice. He needed to make that connection, and he did.
ReplyDeleteI'll say it again, the child playing CJ (Was his name Tyler?) is seriously one of the best child actors ever. You can just see that he's really listening and paying attention and, yes, behaving like a true friend to Todd. The listening was so important. Again I think TM9394 really nailed it. THIS is Todd's therapy. He's talking. He's spilling his guts. He can't not talk about it, maybe because he's finally got little else to do but think about his life and what it all means. IDK. But it's really kind of breathtaking to watch and listen (again) as Todd becomes an icon.
Also have to say that in retrospect it's hard for me not to read something else into those scenes between Jess and her teenage lothario. Two thirteen year old kids, home alone and behaving badly. It makes me go back again to Todd's 14th birthday and what happened then. Especially since right after is when Todd started talking about how some "masters" would just never love you no matter what. It seems to fit so perfectly when look at it from the other side.
Question: Do you think this is where Powell starts to really lose it? He's started writing in that journal all the time. Didn't that thing end up having a lot of passages about death and destruction? He's starting to look a bit shifty to me.