Mac and Dennis
Two dudes; two bros; two guys. This duo have the simplest relationship: they’re two male friends with very similar interests and values. They like drinking, violence, and getting laid. Granted, their respective views on this have evolved over the years, particularly with Mac coming out as gay. Still, both men are very much tapped into the same idea of 00’s-era macho posturing that neither of them can really live up to, and this often brings them together on something. What breaks them apart is that Dennis is usually much more ambitious and focused; he’s the most big-picture thinker of the Gang, and he’s usually constructing entire systems and getting frustrated with the Gang when they fail to live up to his expectations (this also describes his relationship with reality).
Mac, meanwhile, is one of the most impulsive of the Gang; granted, he and Dennis are equally able of just giving up on an idea when they realize it’s a lot of work, but whereas Dennis is committed to a single ideological construct he made up in his head, Mac will jump from idea to idea based purely on what’s happening around him. Dennis can, at least, recognise the reality of what’s happening in front of him; Mac makes up reality in a very Homer Simpson way and believes in it fully.
Dennis and Dee
Brother and sister. When these two come together, it’s usually based on a shared belief in their own sophistication and class above everyone else. More often than not, it’s their shared vague liberalism, but it can also be based on their belief that they’re upper-class. Mostly, it really does come off exactly as two siblings with a clear equal dynamic choosing to agree on something to get it together. There are ways in which they’re very similar; each believes they’re the smartest of the Gang, for one thing, with Dennis’s god complex and Dee believing herself above the macho posturing even when she indulges in it.
Frank, Dennis, and Dee
I group these three together because Dennis and Dee each have the same kind of relationship with Frank – a child and their parent. Both of them resent Frank for his shitty parenting, obviously, and they’re just as prone to try and take advantage of him for his money or connections (in fact, this often motivates Dee and Dennis teaming up). Really, their relationships are one of mutual manipulation; all of them know each other well enough to be able to play each other.
Charlie and Mac
This is also two bros, but of a different flavour; Charlie and Mac tend to bond over more childlike stuff as opposed to teenage boys. They celebrated Christmas throwing rocks at trains, for example; when they bond, it’s over a shared lower-class childhood. In a lot of ways, Charlie is an overgrown little boy, and that brings something out of the other characters; with Mac, it brings out his own little boy. When they break, it’s either because Charlie has gone so gross that Mac simply can’t tolerate it anymore; Mac’s limits are usually physical. On the other hand, Charlie has a core of decency that Mac can often blow past, especially in his politics.
Dee and Mac
This one is one of the harder ones to write about. Their divisions are easy to explain: in a lot of ways, Dee sees herself as the ultimate woman and Mac sees himself as the ultimate man. Usually, when they work together, it feels like it’s to screw over the other members of the Gang, or they end up paired up almost by default (like “The Gang Hits The Slopes”).
Dennis and Charlie
This is a fun dynamic whenever it comes up; as I said, Charlie is an overgrown boy, and when he teams up with Dennis, it activates Dennis’s protective instincts. The best example of this is “The Gang Gets Stranded In The Woods”, mostly because it finds a way to turn that dynamic around; as Dennis says, he set out to teach Charlie a lesson, but it went the other way. But for the most part, Dennis loves being in charge and in control, and Charlie’s open naivete gives him an easy in. You also see that in “The Gang Goes To The Jersey Shore”.
Dee and Charlie
This is another relationship where it feels like it happens by default; I’m gonna take one break away from seeing these cartoon characters as real people and point out that they’re often teamed up because Kaitlin Olson has the easiest time not breaking at his improvisations. But story-wise, there’s also a lot of Dennis in Dee here; she’s much less of a control freak, so she’s more likely to comment on Charlie’s insanity than attempt to guide it, but she’s more than willing to use him to achieve her goals.
Frank and Charlie
The gross crew. When Frank lands in the series, he proclaims that he wants to stop living the high life and start getting filthy and weird; as the series progressed, he continued to maintain enthusiasm for ‘getting real weird with it’ and joyfully describing himself as the Fringe Class. He’s willing to go along with just about any insane idea Charlie comes up with, and Charlie is capable of some insane ideas. It’s hard to think of two characters with greater chemistry of any kind of TV; out of all the Gang, this is the relationship most based on pure love.
Mac and Frank
This is one of my favourite relationships because it comes up so rarely and yet is so good at generating moments. I would rank Frank as the smartest member of the Gang, and if Mac isn’t at the bottom, he’s pretty close – he’s better ‘educated’ than Charlie but they’ll swap who has more common sense depending on the issue. They’re also simply the two people I’d be least inclined to believe would hang out; everyone else has some kind of connection, whether that’s familial or shared values or whatever. Mac and Frank have almost nothing in common, so it’s incredibly funny to see them paired.
If they do have a connection, it’s that Frank actually is what Mac aspires to be, at least when it comes to scheming. I think Frank often sees the perfect patsy in Mac – a submissive beta male who thinks he’s an alpha, if you’ll tolerate that terminology for the length of this sentence. Mac, I think, has the vague idea that imitating Frank would be a good idea, but nothing close to the discipline required to do so. If Mac ever has the advantage, it’s when Frank’s ever-worsening dementia kicks in; one of my favourite scenes is in “The Gang Gives Frank An Intervention”, when Mac walks with Frank and watches him fail to drink beer.
About the writer
Tristan J. Nankervis
Tristan J Nankervis (aka Drunk Napoleon) has been a writer, pop culture critic, dishwasher, standup comedian, waiter, potato cake factory worker, gamer, TV worker, and various other things. You can find him in Hobart, Tasmania.
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"Obi-Wan never told you about your father."
Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
Backrooms
Excellent. More to come.
Happy Endings, Season One, Episode Nine, “Your Couples Friends and Neighbours”
“Max, why don’t you just admit that you have two dinners?”
“Because he’s a hobbit.”
“Hobbits have two breakfasts.”
“He does that too!”
“I like beer, man. And rattlesnakes.”
“Damn it, why does that turn me on?”
“Said he’s never seen Les Mis, it’s weird.”
One thing this show understands intuitively straight up is that you always have to have some plot for every single main character every episode.
“You know about the teddy cam?”
“Of course! But it’s cool, I know how to use it to my advantage.”
[video of Brad watching his wedding video]
“Ho ho, my–”
“Hey.”
“Why can’t I say it?”
“Fine.”
“My–”
“No, changed my mind immediately.”
“What up, Brad!”
“Hands kind of full, bro.”
“Oh. Yeah, they are!”
“From high school? That slut!”
“Whoa, kind of harsh!”
“I’m talking about Dave!”
I actually really enjoy Brad and Jane as a couple. Pre-established relationships on TV shows like this can be hard, but they really do come off as a young couple with a strong chemistry.
“I am not insane! Okay, doctors one, three, and five confirmed that!”
“Why was I bowing?”
“Well, I only know three ninja turtles, so I’m out.”
“I thought it was gonna be ‘put the lotion in the basket’, but this guy’s got pretty got taste in shirts.”
“I am the shareman of the board.”
Brad’s glee as he sets up Jane to walk into the swingers conversation is fantastic.
“You gotta admit it, they are a very open couple.”
“I walked into that.”
“Dude, you can’t act hard when you’re talking about breakfast cereal.”
“You do not steal from people!”
“Yeah, sorry about that. Is that my shirt?”
“What? No! I’m – I’m gonna exit through the gift shop.”
That’s a reference.
I can’t believe I have to wait five weeks for season 2.
I did catch “The Girl with the David Tattoo” at a hotel, so I might have more to say on it since it’s fresher in my memory.
The Unsuspected – The secretary of the famous host of a true crime radio show commits suicide, right after the host’s ward is lost and presumed dead at sea. But it wasn’t suicide, it was murder (as we all knew immediately) and the ward isn’t dead, and of course things are not what they seem with the host. The plot is at times muddled, overstuffed in some spots and understuffed in others, and this is never entirely a good mystery and is maybe too early in crime fiction history to be a “howcatchem.” But Michael Curtiz and cinematographer Woody Bredell makes it all very stylish and noirish, with some really well done scenes including the finale. And Claude Rains is perfect as our protagonist (and antagonist). Audrey Totter, Hurd Hatfield, and Constance Bennett are also very good, but there really isn’t a compelling foil for Rains. Oh that we had a Columbo!
Elementary, “All Ears” – A man whose wife vanishes some years ago (and who was accused of killing her) receives a package containing her ears. A twisty case where it turns out the woman is not only alive but has made ransom demands against her ex twice, and who (thanks to cutting edge medical science) succeeded in growing a second set of ears on her back as part of the scheme. (This is a real thing, sort of. A scientist grew a human ear on the back of a mouse. I think that breakthrough has been used to make new ears, but I can’t find anything that confirms this.) The half-science fiction mysteries are always both hard to swallow and fun. Meanwhile, Joan pushes Lestrade to get back on his feet even though Sherlock thinks the only way anyone can start over is to hit rock bottom. As before, Sean Pertwee is very good.
MASH, “Exorcism” – Turns out there is a Korean totem on the base, and when Potter has Radar move it out of the road, the whole camp is mildly jinxed. When a local hurt by an army medical bus needs surgery, he says he senses bad spirits and refused to be let anyone operate till an exorcism is performed. The belief in such things things as part of shamanistic faith in Korea is real, and I think the writers tried to get this right. Plus most of the characters respect the beliefs of others (even Mulcahy). But this one makes me feel a bit itchy, like it’s played entirely for effect and not as an attempt to understand another culture.
The Ecstasy of Order: The Tetris Masters My son has become obsessed with this doc about the first Tetris World Championships, (this is the only film with “Ecstasy” in the title I can see recommending to him). And you know what? It’s pretty good! Actually, I saw this over a decade ago at the Omaha Film Festival – before my son was born – and remembered a number of specific moments all the way until that little retro gamer came to be. So, higher praise is in order than just “pretty good.” Memorable and well-put together (as anything called “The Ecstasy of Order” ought to be).
Manhattan Murder Mystery — This one starts slow and gets better in the back half, but it has to be considered a minor Allen, especially coming off the triumph of Husbands and Wives. Allen and Diane Keaton are a couple of middle-aged marrieds who end up meeting their down the hall neighbors, the older and extremely quotidian Mrs. And Mrs. House (Jerry Adler and Lynn Cohen). When Mrs. House dies of a sudden heart attack and Adler doesn’t seem appropriately bereft, Keaton decides he must have murdered her — largely as a way of exoticizing the Houses’ marriage in order to prove that she and Allen aren’t going to ossify into jejunosity like they have. (Egged on by an unctuous Alan Alda as their newly single friend who has a crush on Keaton.)
It’s a thoughtful dramatic premise, but in the first half of the picture there just isn’t much verve there. Allen is continuing his more realistic cinema verité style from H&W, with comedy arising from situation rather than comic asides and business. But it’s less compelling in a mystery/thriller story that is a fundamentally more outrageous plot. (Although Allen as actor does have a great sequence early while trapped by politeness as Mr. House shows off his stamp collection.)
I wonder if this was shot in sequence, because the movie’s tone changes dramatically about halfway through and gets more compelling. The mystery story has some indelible beats, and Anjelica Huston shows up having a lot of fun as a mystery writer Allen works with, but also Allen starts doing his shtick. And I wonder if he felt disappointed in himself as a filmmaker for reverting to it. But the best moment of the film is a scene where our heroes are trying to use a taped conversation to trap the bad guy and Allen starts clowning around with the cassette. Ron Rifkin is sitting next to him and can’t keep himself from cracking up.
In a sense, this is a more interesting picture to think about and critique in the context of a retrospective project like this one than it is to watch. The first half is dramatically ambitious but wan, and the second half is more engaging but nothing we haven’t previously seen. Also, like half the cast of The Sopranos is in this, which is kind of funny on its own.
And a young Zach Braff in his debut! (Who was understandably nervous about acting with living screen legends.)
Backrooms
I am an easy sell when it comes to uncanny spaces and impossible architecture, so the set design was right up my alley: not just the endlessness, but all those random low partitions, mazy hallways, and bits of submerged furniture. There was an early stretch that was a little too sleepy even for me, a committed House of the Devil fan, but things soon picked up. If I have a problem with this, it’s that it felt a little like two separate movies somewhat awkwardly cobbled together–a low-budget found footage exploration + a Chiwetel Ejiofor psychodrama in a weird space–and while I really liked both of those movies, I wasn’t sure they always completely gelled. Still, this is probably the best and cleverest rendering of this kind of psychology-shaped supernatural since The Babadook, and the alienness of it all helps: you find yourself first (we all enter through a hall of mirrors?), but this is much vaster than that, and everything gets replicated, so you’re only special to yourself.
SPOILERS
Love the idea that Cap’n Clark turns on Clark because Clark, in admitting that he doesn’t want to change and he really does want to marinate in his own miserable interiority, actually has changed–he achieves a clarity and self-recognition he never had before, and it lets him pursue his own slow self-destruction without dragging Mary along with him. Of course that separates him from the grotesque protective monster who comes from all his worst and least-processed impulses.
Natchez
Great documentary! Thanks to Bridgett for the recommendation. More on Wednesday.
The Wedding Banquet
As recommended by the Screen Drafts Gay ’90s episode. There’s a slight doubling effect when watching this, because I can see what it must have meant at the time–the acceptance the straight parents offer their gay son here is complicated, bittersweet, and sometimes even grudging, but it’s still there; the gay couple end the film alive and committed to each other–but watching it now, the bitterness stands out to me a little more than the sweetness. There’s also a scene in the middle that I would read as rape, and while I don’t think it was fully intended that way, the movie is still nuanced and observant enough that the aftermath still registers all the complexities of a character’s reaction in a way that rings true anyhow.
So I can’t quite shake the darker version of the movie, but I like that that darkness is there, even if it probably wasn’t supposed to feel as present as it does. This also still has a tremendous amount of charm: both tart and light humor, easygoing character chemistry, colorful cinematography. As Screen Drafts episode mentioned, it also captures a realistically textured kind of queer life in a way that’s often elided, like self-censoring your living space before your family comes to visit. (I’ve done that.)
Serial Mom
Rewatch with friends at a group movie night. Kathleen Turner is an absolute marvel whether she’s working in comedy or drama, and it’s depressing to me that although she has several career highlights, she somehow doesn’t have even more.
The War of the Worlds
The Spielberg version. Excellent destruction; excellent design on the Tripods. I cannot buy Tom Cruise as a working-class dad, estranged or not–he’s too naturally intense for the role–but if he never quite clicks with the kids, he shines in the scenes with Tim Robbins, where that intensity can turn up in the form of stillness as he reacts to realizing exactly how unhinged Robbins is. A little too much CGI in this, but the scope of the action–and the commitment to keeping our “participation” in it relatively limited and on-the-ground (this is a survival mode movie, not a heroic movie) are both great.
Desperate Journey
WWII action-adventure film where Errol Flynn and Ronald Reagan head up a bombing crew that crashes behind enemy lines. They’re quickly captured but just as quickly escape–via one of the best scenes in the movie, with Reagan’s Johnny confidently improvising technobabble to convince the German major that he’s giving away military secrets (“Thermotrockle amfilated through a daligonitor. Of course, this is made possible because the dernadyne has a franicoupling.” “I do not understand you.” “I knew you wouldn’t.”)–and go on the run to get some stolen plans back to England. This has some tonal problems, not quite making all its shifts from lighthearted, comedic action caper to actual-body-count war thriller work, but it’s a likable film all the same. Good character chemistry, some well-crafted scenes.
I’m unreasonably entertained by the gotta catch ’em all English-speaking allies approach to assembling this crew, with an Australian (nice to see Flynn actually playing Australian!), an Englishman, an American, a Canadian, etc., and national anthems remixed into sprightly scoring.
Glad I recorded it off TCM, since the only DVD has disc rot and it’s not streaming or digitally available anywhere else.
I actually interpreted that moment in Backrooms a little differently:
SPOILER
SPOILER
SPOILER
I think Cap’n Clark turned on Clark because he’s simply embracing that lack of change alongside him – like, oh, we can be self-destructive? Time to destroy myself in the most obvious way!
SPOILER
SPOILER
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I like this reading too! More darkly comedic.
(I do not know why my SPOILERS text wasn’t bolding despite having the proper formatting for it, and when I gave up the bolding and just spaced it out, it deleted some of the surrounding text, and now even with SPOILING instead of SPOILERS, it’s doing this. WHO KNOWS.
EDIT: Ah, fixed it. I’d borked the HTML earlier.)
I’m just glad I’m not the only person who has forgotten how to do the actual spoiler formatting.
I’ve neatly avoided forgetting how to do it by simply never learning in the first place.
One of the reasons I’m relatively down on Nope is because Peele completely ganks his gnarliest scene from Worlds, Spielberg’s alien digestive system got there first! And Cruise is definitely unbelievable in the early going but I think this gets recontextualized as the film goes on. He is playing at being a father and hammering, Cruise-like, the notes he feels he must hit. And this leads to the basement with Robbins, who is indeed creepy and weird but he let Cruise in, right? To help him. Spielberg has this incredible shot of Cruise, not a big man, standing silhouetted against the entryway, about to destroy, and he looks like the very tripods he’s been running from, he is the invader here and I think it is very much an open question as to whether his actions have basis in reality. But he is protecting the species. The end of the film seems to be echoing The Searchers in where Cruise is and what he can’t do and if that doesn’t quite land (this is as much a fantasy if not more than Minority Report’s ending) I think it fits in the broader family critique Spielberg is working with here.
Rental Family – Brendan Fraser is a struggling American actor in Tokyo who gets offered a job standing in as characters in people’s lives, primarily acting as a stand-in father for a girl preparing to enter a new school and “interviewing” an elderly actor who feels like he has become obscure. I never got around to watching the Werner Herzog film that covers the same ground (using real actors who work for these agencies) but I may have to now for contrast; this film is sweet and charming but also overly simplistic and broad. I enjoyed it well enough but it felt like it was too intent on being “crowd-pleasing” to really get into the interesting themes it plays with.
Twin Peaks, S2E13 “Checkmate” – the previous episode was consistently entertaining despite focusing on a lot of the Bad Plots, this episode falls on the other side of that divide and felt weak to me despite a few good bits. Cooper immediately trading himself into the hostage situation and Denise (and Harry) saving the day is probably the highlight. TOO much of the James and Dick / Andy / Little Nicky subplots.
Seinfeld, S8E6 “The Fatigues” – the Wiki says that this episode ran way over and had to be edited harshly which makes sense because it is PACKED with mad stuff. They did a great job with it though, all of the insane plots tie together beautifully. Frank Costanza’s war flashbacks, chef’s kiss.
William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet – Really Baz Lurhmann’s Romeo + Juliet, and it embodies the idea, like Ken Russell’s work, of an auteur taking a story or idea and giving it their maximalist aesthetics and values. This really works for the operatics and impulsive, high octane emotions of Romeo & Juliet; I was surprised at the end that I was crying. (Credit to the editing that ramps up the tension here, especially the twist of the knife that Juliet wakes up as Romeo dies, not after.) Despite being a Shakespeare nerd mildly obsessed with the language, I don’t really mind how the film messes with the text. It’s not a play as rooted in words like Hamlet, so translating the story into a 90s action romance made perfect sense. (This does result in some real stiff line readings; DiCaprio is actually quite good at making Shakespeare sound natural, as is Perrineau.)
I do not like Luhrmann’s whole deal, just not my style, but it works here and I will give him (or the people at Capitol Records) for realizing that Billy Shakes really needed an injection of Butthole Surfers. And yes, Perrineau the absolute king (or queen, I suppose).
Sometimes it is not my style, sometimes I am all in on his crazy.
The Goonies — family movie night! Happy to report that nine-year-olds still find a statue’s dick being broken off and glued back on upside down hilarious. The adults probably enjoyed the movie more overall but the flaws (so much yelling, pokiness at times) are outweighed by the adventure and the incredible stuff — the ship! The waterslides! The spiked pit and the pincers from hell! It is very easy to be drawn in by this wonderful world (and I think Donner is a studio guy who knows how to get the most out of it) and that drives nostalgia as much as anything, this kind of craft isn’t growing on trees. I do think the arguments over this as generational touchstone are weird, it’s fine if people don’t like it but I will never not be stirred by “HEY YOU GUYYYYYYYYYYYYYYS!”
Live music — big weekend! Caught Dennis Brennan and his band on Friday, bluesy rock with a good amount of folks out dancing. Then a big beer festival with a ton of local bands on Saturday, the full Massachusetts experience of the lead singer of Spiller thanking people for showing up for his “white suburban fat guy grouchy rock” and then telling them to go support the Planned Parenthood booth next to the stage. Lots of good stuff, highlights were my guys Black Helicopter (great anxious new song) and Thalia Zedek, her band was down a lap steel player and her longtime bassist filled in the cracks with some great little runs and licks, he’s been a rock solid presence in the band forever and this felt like casual mastery of stretching out, great stuff to hear. But Sunday was the best show, I went to the no-cover bar to catch Tim Gearan, a rootsy/rock/blues guy I’ve caught before, and he was fucking on one — fantastic guitar work both as song structure and solo, he plays in a familiar dynamic but with a great tone that can shift between harsh and fluid and he easily slips around cliche. Great backing band with slide guitar, bass (Brennan’s bassist, who is a huge scene guy) and a drummer who brought a ton of friends and family to fill the place. Planned to stay for one set and watched the whole thing, I need to figure out the name of the song he played that had an incredible dirtbag Richard Thompson feel. Hell yeah.
What Did We Play?
Portal Reloaded Used some of my time off to finally beat this, which ended with easily the hardest Portal puzzle I’ve ever encountered, in the running for a top toughest puzzle in a game I’ve done. Ending had a funny and surprising quirk. All in all, with community mods like this (there’s a separate cooperative version, too!), Portal 2 might be the greatest value for a game I can think, even accounting for me having to buy it a second time after the old PS3 disc got scratched.
Portal and Portal 2 are such masterpieces: A+ puzzle games and incredibly funny on top of it. I should do a replay soon.
I still really need to play the second one. Maybe since you’re making such a good case for it being good value for money I’ll finally buy it and stop waiting for it to go even cheaper on sale.
Over here it’s only ten bucks on Steam!
Oh yeah it is pretty damn cheap on Steam! Alas, my laptop is hopelessly out of date so I’ll probably have to play it on Xbox… even if I do kinda prefer mouse-and-keyboard for first person stuff
Roots of Pacha
I needed a new podcasting game, and this prehistoric farming/life simulator is fitting the bill admirably. While a lot of these games are very similar in terms of structure and gameplay, this is already making a few distinct, interesting choices I appreciate (in addition to having good QOL interfacing and some lovely character and landscape art). It feels like the designers put a lot of thought into thinking about how setting the game before mass human civilization and human dominance–even in an obviously fictionalized way–might affect things. You’re domesticating crops, so you start out with wild varieties from seeds you can only gather from foraging wild plants; if you want an animal, you don’t go buy one, you find it in the wild and spend time with it, charming it with music until you’ve developed a kind of partnership and you can “invite” it back to the clan’s camp (it feels like more of a partnership, even if apparently you can also have some of your partners killed for meat). I may spend a lot of time going around playing music for ibexes and mammoths and wolves and rabbits and boars, far more than I can ever invite back to the camp. I’m having a good time.
But the most interesting shake-up to me, even though it’s almost a superficial one, is how the game handles money, which is to say that you don’t have money at all. You have something very similar to money, so I can see other people feeling like it’s a distinction without a difference, but the way it plays out is cool to me personally. You offer up food, materials, etc., and you accrue points for contributing to the community; the community also accumulates points on its own, racking up a general prosperity, and this affects things as well, separately from you. Sometimes you trade contribution points for items, and while, again, this is easy to read as a straight-up exchange of money for goods and services, explicitly defining this as being based on your contributions does make me think about how–thanks, David Graeber!–this is all an early kind of communal credit system. People are willing to help me out because they know I’ve helped everybody out in the past, but you can’t coast on that forever; your reputation for helpfulness has to be maintained. I’ve now met other clans, and I’m curious if anyone in either of them will eventually be open for trading, and if so, if that will also work on reputation points–I’d like it if it doesn’t. My reputation within my own clan shouldn’t mean anything to them. This should stay hyper-local!
In other situations, people will independently have an idea they want to explore for a major improvement, like digging a well, and all they need from me are some resources to invent what they’re thinking of. Having some of this come from the community outside of the player character and not directly tied to money or even a money-like system makes it all feel more left-y utopia than any equivalent game I’ve played, and it’s endearing.
Isles of Sea & Sky – grabbed this cheap on Steam during one of their “reduced puzzle games!” events and it has completely sucked me in. It’s a Sokoban-style block-pushing game but with Gameboy-era Zelda aesthetics and an open-world setting that allows for a lot of “I cannot see how to do this part so I’ll go somewhere else for a while” gameplay. Excellent for avoiding frustration, since these puzzles get pretty tough, pretty quick. I’m a good way in and loving the lack of hand-holding (there’s barely any in-game text and the various new abilities are essentially just left for the player to figure out) even if I have occasionally had to force myself to take a break, lest it drive me insane. But, assuming it doesn’t completely break me, this is the most rewarding puzzley game I’ve played in quite a while.
Two notes here are that Charlie is sometimes the straight man to Mac’s delusions, which is always a funny dynamic given how Charlie is insane, but he has learned how to function in his own strange world. (Same thing with Dee and Charlie in “The Gang Solves Global Warming”.) That and Dennis has come to genuinely hate Mac while Mac desperately wants his approval/is obviously in love with him.