Chance

Moving along to Fear Itself episode ten Chants. This episode is directed by John Dall with a script by Lem Dobbs and John Dall. And let's see these people of notes So John Doll I had not heard of m also prolific in a lot of television directing, including Yeah, some episodes of Hannibal, a whole lot of Dexter and his films, which are certainly films many of us have seen, The Last Seduction, and a little little flick you might have watched in the early two thousands called joy Ride. I do love I do love joy Ride. It's been a very long time since I've watched joy Ride, but I remember enjoying it quite a bit.

I love I love that movie. Um. And from the writer of Gaudy, Yeah, this guy. I'm so intrigued about it because I don't I've never thought of this man before. Limb Dobs of Yes Gatty but also a co writer on Dark City, Dark City and Heywi Wire, Um the Liney, which is a really good movie.

UM. And uncredited on Romancing the Stone, which is interesting. Um. And I wonder how that worked because I know that was like the first time only time screenwriter. And I wonder if he was like just brought in to clean things up or something like that.

Yeah yeah yeah. Um. But so Chance, which keeps confusing me because, um, is it so do you played Monopoly in your lifetime? Right? Yeah?

Yeah? Uh the two cards it's Community, Chest and Chance, right, I thought, so? Yeah, No, no, no, it just it confuses me because this series had one episode called Community and one episode called Chance, and I keep getting them mixed up in my head, like I think I told you so. I've been watching this on DVD, and the DVD set is the most ridiculous thing ever because the DVDs are not labeled at all and they're not in order. So every time I just have to try, I put a DVD in, have to see what's on the DVD to write it down so that I know, okay, disc one one A side A of Disc one is Fear Itself or Eater and Community whatever.

Now I flip it over to see what's another one. But every time I do it, it takes like three minutes because it has one of those really long menus. But I had written down Chance when because it's on an early DVD, and I thought, wait, did I actually mean to write down community and get confused because of monopoly, but no, I didn't. So it's it's it's a weird title for it because I know what references the it's the titular character's names Chance. But also like, is it supposed to be telling me something because I don't feel like it does.

I don't. Look, I don't have a problem with this episode, but yeah I do. I don't really don't know how I feel about this one. I watched this today. I watched it really just a couple of hours ago, so it's it's fairly fresh in my mind, which is good because this is one of those episodes.

I get the feeling if we said, oh, something came up, I can't record this week, We'll have to record next week, I'd say, okay, great, and then I would say, wait, did I watch that? I don't remember anything about that episode? Yeah, so tell the fine people at home what happens in Chance? Well, so I think, okay. So basically Chance starts Ethan Embree and maybe the best thing.

I don't know if I've ever seen him this dynamic, and yes, he's great in this episode. He's really good in it, and they they him, and I feel like he does good, but it's basically it's about a dude, and you get I have a lot of positive and negative things to say about this. Let me try to make this a neutral recap. There's this dude that's clearly a bit down on his luck or having money trouble or in a bad situation, and he has a lady friend and he's like, I'm gonna go sell this thing to this antique guy and he's gonna give me an excessive amount of money. I believe it was forty five thousand dollars.

So this is not anything to sneeze that he is going to give me this money and then our life will be great. So Ethan Embrey heads down to the antique store. He's like, here's this thing, buy it from me, and antique dude is like, no, this is not what I thought it was. I am not going to buy this from you from the for the amount of money you thought, and then Ethan Embrey loses his mind. That's it is a very tiny story, but like it does interesting things with how it rolls out information, which I really liked, especially after watching something like um something with Bite, which was just so poorly And again I will say thinly written that to have something with a little bit of like nuance and mystery, and like just when they chose to give us information, and I really felt like, oh, this is this is a good this is a good writer as opposed to max landism.

So I appreciated that. But in the end it turns into a doppelganger story, which I love. So you have your two ethan Embers. You have your your stumbling, kind of sad dope ethan Ember, and then you have your confident, violent doppel gang or ethan Embery and also like that Buffy episode and kind of five. But like then it's just kind of like Ethan Ember starts just killing people bowl like kills the antique guy and then kills Secure the antique's wife, and then yeah, and it's like, oh, okay, why is he doing all this?

And there's this little gag with a mirror at the beginning in the antique store. Oh god, this has so much shit I love in it. Why was it like this? So I love antique stores, and I love haunted objects, and I love doppelganger stories. So for a split second, I thought like, wait, is this a haunted mirror?

Is this going to be like literal, like he looked in the mirror and it split him off into two people. And now there's a murderous version of himself and then the version of himself that would handle things good, like that Buffy episode. But it wasn't. It was that he spoiler, he's just killing people and he's I guess, like hallucinating or or he has had a break with reality to the fact, to the extent that he does not know what is real and what is not. And there's a moment I'll stop talking a second, there's a moment at the end where you're like, oh my god, did he imagine all the bad things?

And this actually went really well, And oh if I could have just if I could have just nudged somebody and said, like, you should just leave it there, let it go. Yeah, I would have loved that ending. How weird would that have been? It would have been cool. Yeah, it's this is the one where you're right, there are a lot of good things about it.

And it's helped a lot by that by Ethan Embrey, who's really good, because I think part of it is that when he's playing like if you want to call him good chance, he what his thing I think as an actor when he was younger was that he was really likable, Like he has a really this open face, this very young face even when he's older, that you just you really want to you want him to get the girl, you want it to all end up. Okay, It's why he was, I think, like so lovable and can hardly wait in those kinds of movies. So you're rude for him, and then when you get like cool evil Ethan embree, there's something interesting going on. But it's for me, the issue is that they're the and not that like I needed an answer because I thought it was supposed to be when he gets hit in the head with the urn, that like, oh it's a magical urn and it released his doppelganger.

That's what I took it out. But I think I just might have made that up. It's that there's no yeah, like it's unsatisfying, and I think that's what you were getting at. That the the turn, the exact thing, the reason why this is happening, what it really means. It's just not there, And it could have if that was just crystallized a little bit, it would this would have been like, oh that was a sharp hour of TV.

I think then it would have been I guess for me like close to Family Man in the way it does things. But I don't think this is as good as that, Like I think it's just it's missing that key narrative decision that ties it all together. Yeah. Yeah, and yeah it it went. It introduced ideas but then ended up not using any of them.

Yeah, which I guess is fine because in the end it does. It just is the fact that he had a break with reality and it started killing people. But but like it is, do we I mean, I guess this is what two thousand and nine, But even in two thousand and nine, did we need that story? Yeah? Yeah, I don't know, like because it wasn't too like he was a single guy living with his girlfriend, she wasn't pregnant, they didn't have a mortgage, Like there's all these factors that could have and granted I don't need a lot in forty three minutes, but it seemed like a you know, the that escalated quickly type thing of I don't know, like you could have like you might have gotten kicked out of your apartment, but you'll you'll just you know, you'll get a job, like you'll find something.

Like you said you sold copy or supplies, you can keep doing that, Like it just the the turn I didn't get, Like it just it tried to start at a seven and go to an eight and that was it. Instead of starting lower, going higher and taking you there. It was just And as I say that, the more I'm thinking about it, like it actually does feel like one of those things I think about a lot of Soderbergh's films is that there's kind of like a heart missing. And I think this is true in like the Limeian Haywireds. It's certainly true in something like Contagion and Side Effects, where there's a story, there's characters that have to make decisions in order to get things to a certain place, but there's no real emotion or I mean, for lack of a better word, heart in the characters in what they're doing.

And I guess that's kind of how I feel here, Like it wouldn't have been that hard to make him a little bit more on edge, and I don't know how on edge he is. I think he does a great job, and I think the scene where he just finds out he got screwed, right where um, and that actor is great too. It's VONDI Curtis Hall playing the dealer. He's great. You've seen him in a bunch of things.

We talked about him and he was by you not that long ago. Um, when he's basically saying like, look, you got conned and sorry, like you're you're not getting money, but now this I just as you. It's so interesting how this all kind of coalesced or whatever came together. But but like it all so, yes, you're you're completely right, but part of me feels like those things were missing for a reason and I and I like that and let me, let me try to support my point. So so there's this whole con the other thing you just brought up, the con thing.

We don't know if that's what happened. So there's this against the slow roll of information. So there's this vase, and there there's this some mysterious party that the antique dealer and some guy they would never see exactly. And the guy the antique dealers like, hey, I would I would pay so much for this. This guy doesn't even know how much it's worth.

And so Ethan Embry he is able to buy the vase from the collector guy for like twenty k or something, and thinking that he's going to go and flip it with the antique dealer for forty five. And then he's like, you never had any intention, you knew this was fake you. And then the antique dealer was like, look, I didn't know. And I can see both sides of that. Both of those things seem like they could be true.

But also when he first walks into the office, he's like, I got this mirror from some guy and he doesn't even know how much it's worth. Don't tell him. And you're like, oh, so this guy is kind of crooked. So I was just thinking, this feels like a Kafka story because it's so overly complex and so yeah and so like minute details and so kind of like not to say that Kafka stuff is devoid of emotion, but I think one of the things that when you like you read something like The Metamorphosis, why it works is because it's so horrific. But yeah, our narrator is so cool and collected, and there was something about the way this information was given to us that felt very clinical.

And I went looked and this director that this the writer lem Dobbs wrote Sodaberg's Kofka movie, and I was like, mating even notice that ah interesting writing style, Like yeah, I don't know. I like this story, but at its heart it is just about a man who is murdering people and that is unsatisfying. Yeah, that's man, that's really interesting. I didn't I didn't even notice the Kafka um credit. Part of it is that I haven't seen Kafka.

The other thing is it's not something I was thinking and watching it. But now that you say that, that's that's such an interesting lens to view it in. Um, yeah, you're making me want to rewatch it. But I also I'm going to be even more frustrating because it's going to ultimately be like right, he was just a you know, a frustrated guy who took his anger out on everyone around him. Yeah, and I guess you could you could always say like did that man ever turn into a cockroach?

Like we there is there is there's like, um, fantastical elements to to Coska stuff, where like I mean you could totally just read it as allegory and never true never, But like, I guess this is a fear itself. So I kind of wanted something a little bit more than like an unhinged gentleman killed like that felt very like yeah, because like there was interesting stuff here, and then that felt like they a fumble, like why did you do that? And then and then he ends up killing the woman from Pelts and I was just like, Okay, I guess strangle that lady. This is what we're doing. Wait, that was the same woman from Pelts.

Not realized that she came on the screen and I went, was that Pelts? And then I went and I racist? And then I looked at it. Oh that's cool, because then I had that flash of oh did you just think that that a woman of color was a woman of color from another thing you saw? Yes, I fucking dumb racist, But it isn't.

It's her. I'm trying to figure out her name. She's here. Where are you Ellen? You see?

I can't she's she? But she was the woman in Pelts. Yeah, she was lovely. She had a terrible fate in Peals and I felt bad for her as an actress, but she was lovely. I was happy to see her and I was like, oh, she's gonna is she gonna get to do something?

She doesn't. Yeah, she gets to take a shower, which of course we don't see anything because it's made for TV. But she gets to take a shower and die because that's what happens to win in in these anthologies. It's almost like it peters out. Yeah, like you have these interesting the interesting stuff with the I wonder if there's a different story here.

The stuff with the antique dealer and around the antiques and around that is so robust. Yeah, and then it's like and then a security guard and then his wife, and I'm killing all these people and now I was crazy. It was also a little weird because it's like a shop and the shop has a shower. Did you find that odd? But yeah, it's like it's like the shop is it's like an antique store.

And then like but he also lives there. The geography of it was a little weird. Yeah, it wasn't explained well. But again, like and I understand, like, again it's a made for TV. It's probably shot in twelve days, no time to establish here's the apartment part of this area.

But it was just like one more thing of like you threw a shower, how'd you find a way to throw a shower scene in this Yeah, yeah, I mean, I guess maybe I'm talking about it so much and so hard because I'm disappointed because I thought for a minute it was going to be something really interesting and then it ended up kind of kind of not being. Yeah, no, I think you've you hit you hit it, hit the nail on the head of the nail. That it's it's well told. This is not a badly directed hour of TV, and the cast is really good, Ethan every really sells it, and there there are really interesting things going on, but at the end of the day, it's about a dude who goes crazy and kills people, including his girlfriend and an innocent woman, and it just, yeah, like that's all we get, and even just the end of him just in the backseat of a police car and kind of laughing, and that, I don't know, like something more there just there is an unsatisfying element to this episode, and part of it, I think, especially as we're talking it out, is is that whole Because clearly this could have been a little bit more if there was something, if there was another week of time, if there was a little bit you know, maybe if they could do an extended version that added five minutes to explain things or give us more history or something.

But there is just something missing that keeps this just from from And it's not that it keeps it at a level like no, it keeps it from clicking into place and that that's so unfortunate. Yeah, it's a bummer. Um, I wish it had been the most amazing thing in the world. Well, perhaps the next episodeses rolling up. Let's see, we've got one, two, three episodes left.

Oh boy. Um And for context, this episode on IMDb has a five point one, which is pretty low. Um, that might be the lowest. That is actually the lowest race did of any episode of this one we just watch. Yeah, it ties with Echoes, which is two episodes from now Robert Wayne White rights episode.

But yeah, I don't know why this is the five point one. That seems very unreasonable. I don't trust anybody. Well we shouldn't know. These IMDb ratings are such bullshit, like there have been there's some people just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's bad.

It's just there's this weird like, oh, this gets one star and it's competently active and competently made, and you just it just didn't resonate for you. I don't think that makes something be one star. I mean it's all subjective. Anyways, that's bullshit, because this was There's no way this was the worst or one of the worst episodes of this season. Now I would agree.

Yeah, I think people just found it kind of boring or just were frustrated by it. I mean, there's only five reviews on IMDb, so it's not very that's not a big sample set. And there are fourteen ratings, so huge and something with bite I think was a five point eight. So again that tells you a little bit strange. Yeah.

Next episode is The Spirit Box, which is directed by Rob Schmidt, who did Wrong Turn and the dentist episode of last season that I can't remember the name of. Oh, right to Die, Right to Die though, Oh okay, yeah yeah yeah, so yeah, I don't know it is what it is. I guess, um it's a shame because I think it's like, do you recommend this episode? Yeah? I do, I think yeah.

I think if you're hand picking them, don't skip this one, because I think you might find even more than we did. I think they're if you watch it carefully, and maybe I didn't watch it closely enough. I think you'll find some some pretty good stuff in here. M This is oddly enough. Even though I didn't overly enjoy watching this one, this is when I might revisit because I think, like you're saying, there's stuff here, there's good stuff here.

Yeah, I see the key. Yeah, I liked it. Um. If we are we going to do, we'll probably do. Ratings would probably be in my top five.

Yeah. I have no idea where it will end, but we'll find out. Yeah, and I'll make it do ratings because I know how, but you hate them. No, it's fine. I can do it and then immediately change my mind and then release an addendom episode where you correct yourself.

Yes, fair, all right, everybody, that was a chance, which is a mild recommend from us. So about it if you so desire, We'll be back eventually with more. Bye bye, good bye A monster mirror. When I woke to day monster my mirror, but I did not I did not show here I beneath my bed. Don't the monster look at me?

And this is what he said. He said, Wabba wabba wabba wubba woo boo whoo. Who wubba wabba and a dudelddu he sang wabba rubber rubber. So I sang it too. Don't bubba me, or I will wam by you.

I will bubb told the monster in the mirror, no, I am not scared. Then I smiled at him and thanked him for the song that we had shared, while the monster thanked me to his mother black back. And then the monster in the mirror sang the song again. He sang wabba wabba rubber rubber Woo woo woo, who wabber wamba and a dude lidude, he went wabba ubba rubberhind I sang o Lord, This wamba wubba rubber is a monster song. See you wubba wabble wabble wabba Whooo, whoa who wubba wabba wabba and me do you went wabba wabba wabber and I sang a go this wabble wabble rubber listening.

Monster song is a song. If your mirror has a monster and it, do not shout. This kind of situation does not call for freaking out and do nothing that you would not like to see him do. Because that monster didn't be mirror. He just might be you singing Wabba wabba wabba wabba Woo woo woo.

Who Wabba wamba wubber Hander, Dude in, Dude, who wubba wabba rubber You can join in too, Yes, if you welcome me, tonight will welcome you. Going woo wobo is nothing to do. Every time you womba Hostril b By you love you