Goodbye Kitty

yardgames

Retired Administrator
A very interesting analysis indeed. We used to have a member who was actually majoring in popular media, and he wrote a variety analyses demonstrating how MITM relates to some real-world ideas. I'm always fascinated by these types of connectiosn that people can make.

I've always thought of Freud as the "dream guy" and haven't ever really learned much about him in the areas that you connected the episode to him. I think that it's fascinating to see how a simple sitcom can connect in so many ways to real-world ideas.

I'd love to see any other connections you can make in this episode or others.
 
I'm going to make myself look like a simple idiot, but to get to a more basic level of looking at the eppisode- did anyone notice, the final shot, i.e. the satelite image of the earth, was the same one used in the very first eppisode. I know useless and probably a waste of posting space, but ah well, never mind :D
 

Dewey

Minimalistic
Deweyrules! said:
I'm going to make myself look like a simple idiot, but to get to a more basic level of looking at the eppisode- did anyone notice, the final shot, i.e. the satelite image of the earth, was the same one used in the very first eppisode. I know useless and probably a waste of posting space, but ah well, never mind :D
I did not know that - thanks for this nugget of information!
 

NeCoHo

Retired Mod
MITM18 said:
Just wondering, but you write/post exactly like a member that quit these forums a few months ago.
Freaky, It's like the... same thing. I'm getting suspicious.....
 

yardgames

Retired Administrator
Now, now, even if Appanah did decide to come back for some strange reason.... we must let Dewey be. If it's not Appanah, which I'm sure it isn't, then we will scare him from ever writing anything again. Someone must have some thoughts on the ideas raised?
 

Garbage Kills Megan

parties with your mom
Freud's theories about how men fall in love with people just like their mother is very well known, but I have to say that I don't take much stock in it. Freud also said that is was common for boys to have sex dreams about their mothers, but he didn't do any research to come up with this idea. Freud had sex dreams about his mother, so he just decided that it was normal and common. He never did any research to see if other men experienced the same things. I tend to be a little hard on Freud because I have found that I disagree with so many of his theories.

I don't know if the writers were necessarily thinking about these theories when they wrote this episode. Particularly with the Reese plotline. I think that they have shown before that many men are attracted to Lois's assertiveness. (Spangler is a good example, in The Bots and the Bees) She's kind of, as Dewey(the character) put it, a bad ass. I don't think it's a stretch that Reese would be attracted to a girl that is a bad ass. And in the end, I think it all comes down to, "wouldn't it be funny if someone accidentally fell in love with their mother?" As Dewey(the forum member) said, it is not actually possible to romantically fall in love with your mother, so the idea of someone not realising they are falling in love with someone they are related to is one that leads to awkward situations, and in the end, comedy. Same thing with Back to the Future. If you had to get your parents together in the past, what would cause the most conflict? Marty's mother falling for him added the needed conflict for the plot, while also leading to awkward comedy gold.

I don't think Freud's theories were more than possibly an afterthought, though it is interesting to see how they apply. There are a lot of theories and trends that you can see represented in Malcolm, as former members have shown in their posts. Personally, I think it is because those theories are based on life, and so is Malcolm in the Middle.
 

yardgames

Retired Administrator
In the past, we've had debate after debate about how much of this sort of thing the writers actually think about when they write an episode. For example, when they choose to deal with a given issue (i.e. disabilities in Ida Loses a Leg or religion in Day Care) how much do they really know about that issue? It's great to hear your ideas on the matter.

I think the idea of someone falling in love with someone that's like their mother is preposterous. I'm male, so maybe it's subconcious as Dewey (the forum member (this is gonna, get confusing, isn't it?)) suggested. But I honestly don't think I would want to marry anyone with any remote similarities to my mother.

What I would ask is this: Has the story ever come about where the general audience (not super-fans of the show) might be told in an assertive obvious sort of way that Piama is 95% similar to Lois? It seems to me this is sort of more of a subconcious joke that the writers play on regular fans who can look deep enough into the characters to see its humor.
 

Garbage Kills Megan

parties with your mom
I think one of the reasons that Piama is so similar to Lois is because Francis is so similar to Hal. I think the show does definitely let you know that all the boys in the family are very similar. Not only in the way they deal with girls, as Hal explained in cheerleader, but also that they are all "bad boys". Lois explains in The Bots and the Bees that Hal was a wild guy, and that is where the boys got it from. Lois tamed him. And she tells Francis that some day a nice girl would do the same thing for him. Francis needed Piama's firey personality to help tame him. In this way, the girl he ended up with is like Lois. I think they do make it clear in season one that Francis would need a girl to tame him. It's up to the person watching to remember this once he marries Piama, and it's up to the watcher to notice that she is similar to Piama. On the show, they often use clever shots and cuts to show parallels between characters and situations. I can't think of any time that they have done this to show how similar Piama and Lois are. I could be forgetting something, though.
 

yardgames

Retired Administrator
I like that comparison. I would never have remembered that chat and made that connection. I tried to give you some rep points for it, but apparently I've given you too much already lately.

So you think that Piama tamed Francis? That's interesting, because I always thought it was a combination of Lavernia and Otto, and actually growing up and working.
 

Malcoholic

New member
Piama like Lois: It was pretty clear in "Hal's Birthday" when the two first met that Piama was intended to appear similar to Lois. Piama's line "Lady, you don't want to put your hand in my face" sounds like pure Lois. In the scene where they're having tea, they both end up ready to slug it out--resorting to fisticuffs is uncharacteristic of women but is very much Lois-like, e.g. "Company Picnic." In the hotel scene, Piama shows, that like Lois, she doesn't take crap from anybody; she throws a glass of water in Lois' face.
Another time Piama is obviously like Lois is the time she kidnaps Lavernia's parakeet to make her stop abusing Francis; it's typical Lois behavior to be more forceful than the men in her life.
 

Garbage Kills Megan

parties with your mom
yardgames said:
So you think that Piama tamed Francis? That's interesting, because I always thought it was a combination of Lavernia and Otto, and actually growing up and working.
I actually agree with you. She didn't completely tame Francis. There were many things that lead to him getting his act together. I do think she played a part, though. I think Francis might still be getting into trouble every now and then if he didn't have a wife. We can't really be sure how much of a part Lois played in the taming of Hal, either. Maybe they will have a flashback to explain it someday.
 

Dewey

Minimalistic
yardgames said:
Dewey (the forum member (this is gonna, get confusing, isn't it?))
Would it help if i changed my username? I'm not sure how to do it exactly, but I was considering 'Ragina_Tucker' - From the episode 'Hal Quits', i thought that would make a good username.
 

admin

Retired Administrator
Dewey said:
Would it help if i changed my username? I'm not sure how to do it exactly, but I was considering 'Ragina_Tucker' - From the episode 'Hal Quits', i thought that would make a good username.
I think we can probably survive, after all its a pretty cool username to have :D If you really want to change it just PM me and I can change it for you :D
 

Emrysgirl

New member
I've been postponing looking at this thread for a long time because its long and I love reading, but its summer. Now that I finally did, here goes:

Garbage Kills Megan said:
Freud's theories about how men fall in love with people just like their mother is very well known, but I have to say that I don't take much stock in it.
With Freud, you have to be careful not to take him too seriously. He's fine if you take a more general, philosophical meaning as Dewey (VC member) did. But once you get down to the specifics (Oedipus and Electra complexes, etc.) it gets really bizzare. I too tend to disregard Freud because I had heard the more resonable, philosophical, filtered meanings earlier through other sources.

Dewey said:
The attraction for a [younger version of] mother figure is both realistic and idealistic. Its something that all men (albeit unconsciously) seek. This is evident in that married women eventually take on household roles that the mothers did in order to serve their husbands and may also become mothers themselves.
Again, I think this is a situation where you have to take Freud on a more figurative level. I think Reese's attraction to young Lois stems not as much from his view of Lois as the ideal wife/mother but rather from the fact that he's grown up around her and has had his thought shaped by her. Lois deems certain characteristics/values important. Consequently, she tries to embody them, and as the primary caretaker, she instills these values/priorities in her children.

Another view, or actually an extension, of this is that Reese sees and admires some of his own characteristics in the young Lois. That is, Reese falls in love with a female twist of himself. But, since he has been influenced so much by Lois, he has come to have many of her characteristics. So, the female twist of himself is Lois.

Also, one has to consider that while Reese may admire these characteristics in a young girl, he may expect more calmness in an adult. So, while he loves Lois as a girl, he may not like the same adult version of her.

Continued in the next post ( I saved it so that I don't loose what I typed, but you can't see the previous posts when you're editing.)
 

Emrysgirl

New member
I'm not going to comment on the Dewey (character) aspect of the post because I completely disagree with Freud's theory of childhood development.

Moving on,

Garbage Kills Megan said:
I don't think Freud's theories were more than possibly an afterthought, though it is interesting to see how they apply. There are a lot of theories and trends that you can see represented in Malcolm, as former members have shown in their posts. Personally, I think it is because those theories are based on life, and so is Malcolm in the Middle.
Yes, I completely agree. In fact, that was my answer to the analysis thread yardgames was reffering to. Things that we notice at a deeper level about the show are more often that not ironies in life itself, not the show in particular. So, we don't really have to worry about whether or not the writers thought of that.

yardgames said:
So you think that Piama tamed Francis? That's interesting, because I always thought it was a combination of Lavernia and Otto, and actually growing up and working.
I don't think Piama tamed Francis as much as that she is the reason he is tame i.e. it's indirect. People are willing to take a lot more risks with themselves than with others. Francis would have no objections to putting himself in danger. But now, he risks endangering (physically and emotionally) Piama. So, he'd be more cautious. Also, Piama's presence prevents him from just running when the situation becomes difficult. He has to stay in the same place because she's there.

@Dewey not to scare you away, but you do sound very much like Appanah. Not just in content but in writing style as well. Or perhaps it's just that I know so little about philosophy that even vaguely related things sound the same to me.
 
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