S01.E10: The Boy

[mxc90]

Quote

First Aired: April 27, 2020

A final mystery is solved

 

Edited April 28, 2020 by mxc90

[Starchild]

Hm. Well. That happened.

Another show that introduced brand new characters late in the game that we're supposed to care about. (I'm x and I'm you)

I didn't hate it, but I'm underwhelmed.

[mxc90]

WTH! I have no idea who I am now after this.

Seems like Jason had something to get off his is chest and instead of going on Dr. Phil he made this episode.

At the end (with 4th wall going to be broken), I was expecting Jason to say "Sally" instead of Janice.

I would be surprised if this gets a second season.

What I'll remember from this is Jason is not in shape, hated a script (maybe HIMYM) and took the job anyway, he lost his way (is this true in his real life?), as a kid he kept drinking chocolate milk (but deep down he was thirsting for alcohol), and someone had the idea to take a selfie way back then.

[LittleIggy]

WTF. That finale was a self-indulgent mess. The magical adventure with my new friends Peter, Simone, Janice, and Fredwynn ended last week apparently. Well, I enjoyed the ride until tonight. Should have jumped off the train before it hit the wall...BTW, I want to punch that creepy kid.

[Dowel Jones]

Well, that was more than a little confusing.  It came across as 'Let's do some crazy, weird stuff and see how the audience reacts.'   I get it, we're all one big community, but I'm still me and my story is mine, so there. 

So, Jason gets a postcard from Elsewhere, goes to the hotel, and is thrust into the game, already in progress in his life, and he decides to write a mini series script about getting into the alternate reality game? Who is running the game if he hasn't created it yet?

Cameo from Elegant Squatch!

Jason's support group sure bailed in a hurry. I wonder if he had been dragging them down for some time. 

 

[Starchild]

Any chance the ending was tacked on after the COVID-19 lockdowns started?

[LittleIggy]

1 hour ago, Starchild said:

Any chance the ending was tacked on after the COVID-19 lockdowns started?

I was thinking that, too.

[Koalagirl]

Wow, I feel so much better about myself after reading these comments.  I thought maybe I was too simple minded to get the ending.  Now I’m feeling a little pissed off because there were a couple of weeks I had to force myself to sit through the episode, all the while thinking the payoff at the end would be worth it. And then .... it wasn’t. 

[tennisgurl]

At first I was really confused by this ending (and I still am, just in a different way) because I wanted to see more of the actual characters that we have been hanging out with all season, but then I realized that this is more of a coda to the show than an actual continuation. Last week, the story of Peter/Simone/Fredwyn/Janice pretty much ended, we got endings for everyone more or less. Peter learned to try new things, Simone learned to open up to people(and they got together!) Fredwyn learned to show compassion, and Janice learned how to find her own way after her husbands death. The game ended, we know who Clara is and why she created the game. The team is still together, even after the game ended. This episode is more about...Jason Segal going through some stuff. 

I feel like this episode will either be really hated by people or really loved by people, and if nothing else, it was really interesting to me to see why this show pretty much came to be and what it means to Jason Segal. You know, when this show started, I even thought to myself that it had been awhile since I saw him in anything, and after doing some research, it looks like he went through a lot of problems with alcohol, and looking at this, I suppose he feels like he burned out after getting tons of success really quickly, tried to fit a mold he wasn't really interested in being, and more or less feels like he sold out and became miserable feeling like he gave up his creativity for financial success. Which...is pretty much the story of Clara/Lee, and actually does into the theme of the show really well, the dangers of giving up your creativity and good intentions for money and success and compromising your self to make something more commercial or that uses people instead of inspiring them. 

Its funny, I commented way back in episode one that it was funny that his characters name here was Peter, which was also the name of his character in Forgetting Sarah Marshall...the movie with the vampire musical...now its very unlikely that that was a coincidence. And I should have known right away that The Boy was an abstract look into Jason Segals career, it started with him watching and being inspired by the Muppet Show! If nothing else, this show has certainly been memorable, and its left me with a lot to think about.

Edited April 30, 2020 by tennisgurl

[buttercupia]

nah, that was some straight up bullshit.

[justmehere]

1 hour ago, tennisgurl said:

if nothing else, it was really interesting to me to see why this show pretty much came to be and what it means for Jason Segal.

Loved your whole post, tennisgurl. The last episode threw me, and I've been debating whether to watch the whole thing again or let it go. It was obviously a very personal project for him, and it's interesting to see that a friend (whoever it was - I like that he kept the characters as stand-ins for whoever engaged him in real life) led him to the real game. I had thought the real version ended with the documentary, but maybe there are different iterations continuing in different places.

It's pretty brave to put himself out there like that. He could have ended the story in somewhat traditional fashion, but instead he revealed how he had been as lost emotionally as Peter and Lee/Clara - possibly with connections to the other characters as well - and then found a way to feel excited again about creating, and doing so in a way he hadn't tried before - taking a real risk with this show. By revealing so much personally, there's potential to reach even more people than simply watching might do.

The scheduling of the show is interesting as well, given that so many people have enforced downtime (not everyone, obviously), time in which they might consider new directions for things that aren't working, rather than going back to "normal" when things open up. The show started airing before lock-down, too. 

Anyway - I'll be watching the series again. I paid attention to the personal aspects before, but this time I won't worry about the puzzle at all.

 

[smartymarty]

17 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

Boy was an abstract look into Jason Segals career, it started with him watching and being inspired by the Muppet Show!

 

17 hours ago, tennisgurl said:

Its funny, I commented way back in episode one that it was funny that his characters name here was Peter, which was also the name of his character in Forgetting Sarah Marshall...the movie with the vampire musical...

There was also a call-out to Sarah Marshall when Jason took off after the milkman. A guy on the street yelled out "Jason Segal! Show us your dick!" Segal appeared full-frontal naked in Sarah Marshall.

I'm glad I came her to read comments on this last episode. It really grated on us last night, seeming unnecessary. But justmehere's comments put it all into perspective for me.

[gail56]

Well, I didn't like it. I kind of see what he was trying for, but I missed the story and characters we have grown to love. As someone said, their stories ended last week. So for me the show ended last week. I would watch the whole show again except for the last episode.

I did like the part where his younger self was telling off his older self. Watched that scene over a few times!

[TC3200]

This show (the whole series, not just this last episode) looked promising at first, but it's either too arty or too emo to make any sense to me. I don't even know what I watched, and the show didn't come close to delivering anything after creating all that anticipation with the teasers that advertised it.  I'm not even interested enough to try to analyze or understand the premise(s) or lessons, if there were any.

Edited April 30, 2020 by TC3200

[Dowel Jones]

I finally rewatched it, and, although it's not much clearer than before, I have to commend Jason Segal for getting such an experimental project all the way through the television maze.  Although I thought it fell rather flat at the end, on the whole it was a much more entertaining ride than some of the scripted series that currently plug the airwaves with repetitive plots and dialogues.  I like to have my questions answered, as does most anyone, but sometimes a bit of ambiguity at the end is food for thought too.

[Starchild]

On 4/29/2020 at 4:17 PM, tennisgurl said:

I feel like this episode will either be really hated by people or really loved by people

I neither loved nor hated it.

One question to anyone who knows: when the Boy was watching TV, each time he turned away from the screen to say "I can do that", the picture changed to two eerie figures. What was that?

[Dowel Jones]

That was Clara and Lee.  I stopped the frame at that point to be sure of it.  What the significance was, I don't know.

[Darian]

I would have liked this as an extra or companion piece, with the last episode, tweaked, as the finale. I love hearing the genesis of any creative project and we got a bit of that, fictionalized. But this reminded me of what a creative writing professor said about writing memoir: if you want to publish it, you have to be ready to treat the process as craft not therapy. This episode made me think this whole project, especially this episode, was partly therapeutic for Jason Segel, but this episode was more therapy than craft. I didn't hate it entirely, but wish I had not gone in primed for a finale. 

I loved the previous nine episodes and will also rewatch someday but end at episode 9. 

[Auntie Anxiety]

Boring AND self-indulgent is not a good combination, which is too bad because I loved the show until this last episode. 

[Matt K]

While I kind of liked this episode, they really should have done a better transition from the end of Peter, Simone, Janice and Fredwynn's story to Jason's.  The fact that last episode ended kind of abruptly and this episode has nothing to do with those characters definitely causes issues (I was going to recommend the series and would still have if the story ended better in episode 9). 

What I did like is how Jason's story continued the theme of healing by connecting with people.  Also apparently the ARG Jason goes through is based on a sequel to the real Jejune ARG.  I liked what I watched but they really needed to transition from the Jejune story to Jason's story better.  

[lidarose9]

The final episode would have been OK if they'd left off that whole black-and-white section in the first half about the kid. It was meant to tell us how Jason came to be so down and out in that 12-step meeting, and we could easily infer that from what we learned elsewhere without being bashed over the head by it. (I had never heard of Jason Segal before seeing this series so I know nothing of his past history.)

I hated the whole Clara thing. It was a clunky plot device that didn't work.

My other complaint is that Fredwynn's character was not as well developed as the others. We never really got much back-story on him.

The game itself was original and fun. Overall, the series started out with an interesting premise that eventually resolved into just another "we need to connect with other people to be happy" story.