Nathan Barley comes to TV

http://pzat.meep.org/cunt/

Steve I thought the BoC track was something off MHTRTC - I'd know it if I heard it again.

how did the guy at SugarApe (he looks 'senior' i.e. around the same age as Dan if not older) find out about the 'southern French' thing so quickly do you suppose? given the only way was for WoS bloke to tell him about it? it was mildly amusing but totally unlikely.

i keep thinking back to the bit where he joins in the CMB game in the pub and how much i like it, almost as if i liked the fact that he was enjoying the game, this almost being heart-warming, that here's where rather than revealing himself to be a fellow Idiot he reveals himself to be a fellow...human? not sure, but it seems like a fun variant on RockPaperScissors i.e. harmless fun. what was interesting was when the receptionist girl (why is she the coolest person in the programme? is she completely together and smarter than everyone else? then why is she 'just' the receptionist etc.? age old device but intriguing in this context) told him off for doing this he immediately stopped. so it seems Dan is saved yet stifled by the girl and what appears to be an unrequited crush on her. also intriguing.

i'm surprised how much i enjoyed it based on these thoughts.

has there been this kind of discussion with According To Bex?

What is up with the song choices for this?

Don't tell anyone, but Momus is generally OTM throughout the thread.

rather gentle example of him refusing to make his assistant coffee

And not-so-gentle example of him demanding credit for the animation.

(when he laughs at the end of this scene, he's the spitting image of Ricky T)

why didn't Dan's sister walk horrified out of Trashbat Towers after seeing poor Pingu electrocuted is what i'm wondering

Because she's a more interesting character if she has a weakness for one of Nathan's more acceptable evils, and because he (and the assistant) are standing there and because she's beholden to him. And because otherwise she'd just be a copy of the receptionist.

You don't actually see her face in that scene past the initial reaction shot.

An interesting thing not so far mentioned is that the first episode is completely neutral as regards whether Nathan is helping Claire because he fancies her, or because she's Dan's sister, or just because she is "creative" and he's overprovisioned. Apart from - the splitsecond in Place where it becomes clear that he's lying about his offer.

In intonation and general facial features, Jonnaton Yeah? reminds me of Armando Ianucci. Himself and the guy with the afro + the lines make me laugh most of the time.

I assumed that watching the first episode would make it clear what the noise maker was doing in Dan & Claire's flat. I was wrong.

Is there an actual attempt to get us disgusted at ourselves by becoming emotionally involved in the tramp races? Are we supposed (if it wasn't sped-up to fuck) to share Dan's focus on how many teeth are pulled?

The Nathan Barley question: Does he produce rubbish because of his priveledged background, and its effect on his relationship to his life and the world (basivally: a giant toybox), or because he's just no fucking good?

Dear god, that "you're playing rubbish!" "what?" exchange was terrible.

The 8-Mile sequence was a bit fun though. Loved that line about "tending the garden", or whatever it was. I was high on honey and lemon and St John's Wort.

My main problem with this programme is that they're all cunts (I'm not sure Chris Morris or Charlie Brooker knows how to write anyone that isn't), which is fine if that's the statement you're making, but I think that in order to sustain a sitcom over a whole series, you need at least some measure of sympathy for at least one of the main characters, and I can't see how you can have any sympathy for any one of those guys. I've given this a two-episode chance now, I don't think I'll bother with the third.

(Barley voice over, reading from Ashcroft's terribly stilted and banal article) They use the word 'cool', it is their favourite word. The idiot doesn't think about what it is saying. Thinking is rubbish. And rubbish isn't cool. Stuff and shit is cool.

Barley aloud, admiringly Oh Ashcroft, Ashcroft!

http://18hz.deid.net/sugarape/res/fountain.jpg

Momus, I'm sure I've seen a few different 'welcome to our newest user...' things on UkNova recently, are you sure it's not just that you have to keep checking back until the membership's dropped below 25,000? They've been kicking off people who never upload recently so it ought to drop fairly often.

the junkie singing songs to little kids?

Things I did like: when Dan called his sis 'fat arms' during their argument - about the only thing that suggested real emotion; the junkie choir guy's song - XL or Rough Trade should sign him now.

Peep Show satirised this scene a lot better, and it wasn't even the main focus of that show. In Peep Show Jeremy and Super Hands' 'band' was more convincingly lame, and, especially, there was Super Hands getting addicted to crack to look cool ("Mmmm, this crack is so moreish".)

(wasn't the prisoner theme part of the mashup in the club? had all sorts of things in there that i remember from my youth. blancmange?)

With respect, Mr Raw, convincing plot and real emotions is not the point of NB. Is it convincing that Dan Ashcroft has had Pete's Dragon out for seven years and owes £2492 and has to play Russian Tramp Racing to earn the money back? Of course it's not. But is it convincing that I went to my local video store on Avenue A on September 12th, 2001, only to be told that, even though they'd closed on 9/11, I still had to pay a fine? Would you believe that if you saw it in Nathan Barley? You probably wouldn't, it would just sound like typical farcical Brooker/Morris atrocity hokum. But it happened. It's 4 Real. Life has also lost the plot, which is why plot is irrelevant. What matters in satire is that we recognise our folly and laugh at ourselves. And, you know, writing for Vice magazine, do I recognise it when the Sugarape editor says to Dan "Stupid people think it's cool, smart people think it's a joke, also cool"? Yes, I do. Verifuckingsimilitude, right there, dude. I also think the hipster vocab is terrific, approaching Burgess and Orwell in its inventiveness:

"Hey you should come, dollsnatch, it's going to be totally fucking Mexico."

"Check this, m'niggas, online tramp racing from Russia, totally de-reg, yeah?"

"I'm going to sleep
Oh yeah, respect for that. Catch some susans.
Yeah, break a Chinaman, yeah?"

Lines like these aren't just funny and inventive, they tie hipsterism in to zones of disorder (Mexico, Russia, China), and that's been a crucial element to every subculture. The atrocity and poverty of these zones of disorder both offsets the privilege of the bourgeois kids who buy into them (by, for instance, gambling on tramp teeth-pulling) by making them seem worldly, and shows them up the moral abyss they live in. I'd put it to you that the verisimilitude of satire works at that kind of level, and not at the level of "Would he really have pulled out the plug just when he won all the money?"