The situation, as such, hasn’t improved at all – but still the twins manage to inject a goodly amount of levity into it, simply by being who they are. On a certain level, you really have to be grateful for the existence of this sort of people, no matter how annoying they might otherwise be.
And they bring up a very important issue, actually – namely, responsibility. And I’ll admit that avoiding the subject makes perfect sense in terms of script-writing, when it comes to this sort of we-have-to-bury-the-hatchet-and-combine-our-forces-against-our-common-enemy-situation. On the other hand, I feel it’s completely unrealistic. Yes, even in reality it would make perfect sense to focus on improving the situation, rather than discussing who caused it – but that’s just not how real people behave. In real life, playing the blame game easily takes up 80% of the disposable time in that kind of situation, with problem-solving getting at most half of the remainder. While comic characters usually can’t afford to be as dysfunctional as real-life people, I felt a slight injection of reality couldn’t hurt at this point.
The specific form the blame game is taking here is the meganekko duel. This happens when two or more meganekko characters turn the raw power of the fact that they’re wearing glasses, and the personalities that stem from it, against each other…rather than against the innocent people around them, as would be usually the case. It happens rarely, since meagnekko usually get along well…in a cold and aloof manner, of course.
But here they’re going full hog, immediately escalating to the intransparent glasses stage. That’s when a very convenient case of reflections turns a meganekko’s glasses intransparent (from the point of view of the audience), hiding their eyes and giving them an unnatural and disquieting air. In short, it means serious business. (This only applies to tall meganekko with rectangular glasses, though. Short characters with round glasses never mean serious business, no matter how reflective their glasses are. They’re just not built for that.)
The fact that both parties escalate so readily and drastically might have something to do with the fact that Biff only started wearing glasses recently, and the twins even more recently than that. You know, nobody is as zealous as a recent convert…
More on Thursday.
LENS FLARE! Someone get J.J. Abrams out of the studio!
I’d think the low production budget should have a more than sufficient deterrent effect on J. J. Abrams. He probably wouldn’t be caught dead anywhere around such a poverty row studio. XD
Meanwhile, Gendo Ikari sits in a perfectly dark room illuminated ONLY by the glint of his glasses, saying, “Amateurs.”
Yeah, that’s true – in Gendo’s case mere reflections wouldn’t provide a sufficient explanation. He must have had some sort of light source in there. XD