lunedì 30 agosto 2021

Girl from nowhere - season 1

This is a strange series because the main character is not just peculiar, she is some sort of immortal creature, not really good nor evil. She doesn’t seem to feel any pain or bother at all with mortal concerns (unless she wants to pretend she does for the people around her). She’s been hurt, beaten, killed, but she doesn’t care, doesn’t appear to feel it at all and is never scared.

At first I thought she would punish in her own way those who did bad things, taking the part of the victims, I’m sure I heard or read something like that somewhere, but that’s not really true. It can happen, but it’s not why she does things.

Sometimes she punishes bad people, quite often she tempts others to see what they’ll do. Also, she’s not overly concerned if someone gets hurt during her schemes, it sort of seems like she is just playing to see what will happen, how far will people go, what people will choose under certain circumstances and under temptation. 

She is clearly immortal, and she can also be in more places at once. 


Nanno attends many different high schools throughout the series. I can’t read the school names on their uniforms (only two of them were clearly different uniforms, one red and one with a short skirt, the others looked pretty much the same), so either she attended one school for more episodes, or some actors were in more episodes.



1 - Ugly truth

A school nominated Purest School of the Year, they make videos on meditation and stuff like that.

When a young female teacher, Mali, proposes teaching the students about safe sex, she is rejected with the usual thing that by talking about it you encourage teenagers to think of sex… 

Nanno is a new student. She volunteers, along with another girl, to take part in Mr Win’s yoga video. He has a wife and a daughter, Vaew.

A girl, Mei, looked pretty uncomfortable with the idea of doing another video with him.

Nanno sends home the other girl and goes alone to shoot the video, and while filming the professor starts kissing her and has sex with her. He calls her again later to do it again; she acts cold so he shows her the video he made of them doing it and tells her he would release it, as blackmail. When he goes home, his wife tells him that Nanno returned his phone and is now upstairs with his daughter. She stays for dinner and makes her a sort of permanent presence in her daughter’s life. She also recorded her conversation with Win. 

Mei is pregnant and Nanno offers to take her to abort , like the father of the baby wants her to. I guess they talk a bit, and apparently she changes her mind, keeps the baby and leaves school.


Nanno leaves Vaew alone with her boyfriend in an empty room with a bed. She’s filming her, and  she shows it to Win. He has to give her the password of his computer to know where she is, so he rushes there to hit the boy and take her home. He’s all angry at her, but she just saw videos on the  boy’s phone of Win’s ‘activities’. She runs away from him and is hit by a car. Poor Vaew, he was her role model.


Not really sure about the end, what happened, is he the only one arrested or those other two as well? I’m not sure, there was a video that showed a guy and a woman having sex… well, it was the two that were opposed to teaching safe sex in school, so the scandal may be explained by that…


2 - Apologies

An ep about people apologising and then committing the same mistake over and over, and keeping apologising, instead of stopping making the same mistake.

It starts with a girl being secretly buried in her school uniform.

Two girls, Taew and I-Tim, are constantly approached by three guys that want to get to Nanno. It hurts. They are good friends, Taew and ITim, but they had enough. They refused at first, but now they accept concert tickets in exchange for bringing Nanno to a party where the guys want to get her drunk.

But Nanno doesn’t get drunk, so the girls put pills in her glass. Nanno passes out and the guys want to have sex with her one after the other, but she wakes up. The others keep the door locked until he’s done and he forces himself on her, but she mocks him and laughs at him so he strangles her while raping her. They bury her somewhere, all together. She comes to while they shoving dirt on her, so they finish her off and cover her entirely.

Saying ‘I’m sorry Nanno’ afterwards does not make it right!!!!!

Next day, though, Nanno comes to class like nothing happened.

They discuss the situation at Hok’s house, where they had the ‘party’ the night before, and Nanno shows up. She recorded everyone on her phone so they suffocate her all together and go to bury her again. She laughs in their faces so Hok smashes her face with the shovel. While he’s doing it, a second Nanno walks up to them. They try to kill this one too and another one appears.

The episode ends with Nanno going to school like nothing ever happened, and the others looking freaked out... which is quite a light punishment for what they did.


3 - Trophy

In the world there’s only place for the geniuses, not normal people.

Nanno is the genius of the school (in Physics and Buddism…). Pui just won a literary prize, thus is their latest genius. Her friend Mew is upset, they were losers together…

Nanno tells Mew that both her and Pui won by copying things on Google and altering it a little to make it theirs, so she does the same for the art assignment. She prints a flower she liked and thre some paint at it, and the teacher entered it in an art competition and she won.

Now everyone appreciates her; her parents were ignoring her or comparing her to her more successful sister, now they praise her, so she keeps doing it. And again and again, posting lots of stuff online, then for the oncoming open house event at her school she’s asked to do one live on stage that will be broadcast live. 

She tries at home (and here it goes, a line done wrong in a big white piece of paper and it gets thrown away, what a waste…)

Mew begs and cries and begs Pui to hit her arm with a hammer that she brought. Pui refuses and she does it herself, but then screams and yells that Pui did it to her.

(Why does her mom feed her? She could eat with her left hand)

Nanno reminds everyone that she posted online that she made one with her left hand, so they still expect her to do it. Everyone does their bit (musicians, dancers etc) then it’s her turn to go on stage.

A girl jumps on stage saying Mew stole her friend’s work (the first flower) but the principal accuses her of lying. They all urge Mew to draw something to prove what it true and who’s lying. 

Mew can’t create something like that, of course, and what she draws looks nothing like the one she copied, but the people of the school insist that it is the same and that she is a genius, and that the other girl is just jealous because she comes from the school that is always second to them.


Well, Nanno didn’t really uncover anything here, and the liars came out on top… What is the meaning of this?


4 - Hi-So

What can money buy?

On her first day, among many other things apparently, Nanno bought an entire room at school, and put her name outside the door. She says it’s her own new company, and she starts when a boy doesn’t get a good enough grade, not enough to earn him a new bike courtesy of his dad, that is, so he wants her to changes it for him in exchange of money. Everyone says it’s cheap enough, so he accepts and it goes so well that many other people start asking for things. She says she can do anything, so they ask her lots of different stuff: a gay boy asks her for a cute girl to introduce to his parents, a guy whose girlfriend cheated on him wants revenge so the guy is beaten up while he was out with the girl… 

When a group of friends start talking about going on a trip - she should write a letter to their parents to justify the trip - it’s Nanno that suggests to go all together to party at Dino’s house.

All these kids apparently have wealthy parents, but they tell legends about how much money Dino has. He doesn’t want to but they insist. Problem is, Dino’s family is not rich at all, they are poor people. Loving, but poor. He doesn’t want to admit the truth to anyone, not even Nanno, so he asks her to find another house for him. To pay her, he steals 200.000 baht from his parents.

He keeps playing the part of the super rich kid, and when Nanno tells him to call the servants to bring them whisky, his parents arrive.

The farse goes on, he pretends to be rich and they wait on him; still, they try to interfere when the guys want to drink and smoke, but Dino yields and tells them to comply. When they try a stupid game with a gun, a sort of Russian Roulette game but pointing it at their arm, not their head, Dino’s dad stops it and yells at them ‘what the f.. are they doing?’

Believing them servants, all the guys are annoyed and very rude to them, but now one of them, Pop I think, loses it and beats them up badly.

Still, Nanno puts things right by making the kids pay up: they put together 350.000 baht and give the money to the ‘servants’ for their silence in the matter.

They take it. Of course, what could they do? But once home, Dino and his parents don’t talk about it.


5 - Social Love

Hann and Nanno don’t know each other but are put together on a social media by someone who took a picture of them (I don’t know, it was someone at school, there was a little bit of dancing and then they posed for a picture). The school loves the new couple, called Hanno for short, and they start buying things with their faces on, and the likes on Facebook grow by the minute, it becomes very very popular, and Yui of course is upset because she’s Hann’s secret girlfriend.

Sort of forced by the situation, Hann tells everyone and Nanno that he is single and asks her to date him. Yui wants to break up, can’t stand it anymore, but Hann doesn’t want to. They are caught talking together in private and Nanno runs away crying, but when Hann tells her the truth, she laughs in his face saying she knew all along, but also that he can’t leave her or she’ll play the part of the heartbroken and everyone will turn on him.

Yui tries putting compromising photo of Nanno up but is caught and everyone hates her now.

A group of kids with Hanno masks on their faces beats her up. At this point, Hann thinks that if Nanno died, he could play sad and then it would be over. Yui attacks her and everyone sees Nanno falling off the roof. Nanno laughed in Yui’s face then let herself fall off. They take her away as if se was dead, but it turns out that she was reanimated. She will be in a vegetative state forever, and Hann will have to look after her. 

It was her voice at the beginning of the episode saying they’ll stay together forever.


6 - Wonderwall part 1

What is the force that drives humans?

This is ep theorise that it might be hatred… we’ll see the conclusion.

Bam is the manager of the school football team - well, manager is the word in the subtitles; here it seems to mean the person that washes the players’ stuff, gives them water, takes care of everything practical. She really cares only of one player, though. She likes O and fusses over him a lot, but not the others. Nanno is the new manager and Bam is extremely jealous of the attention all the boys have for her.

Bam is so angry she writes on the bathroom wall that Nanno is a shitface, and Nanno sees it. The next day, Nanno’s face stinks, and Bam tries to write that O is crazy about her, but this one doesn’t work. Another player, Teng, is rude to her and she writes that he is a dog, and he starts acting like one.

Bam sees a girl being bullied and tells her that if you hate someone and write something on the wall, it will become true. She doesn’t believe her.

Bam also learns that the effect goes away if the wall gets cleaned. She tries to stop the cleaning lady (why, I wonder, since both Nanno and Teng were already back to normal so there was nothing else she could erase by cleaning). Bam insists, tells her of the enchanted wall, but the woman doesn’t believe her and reports her to the couch.

Bam is so angry she writes that she hopes she suffocates and die, and the woman is found hanged.


7 - Wonderwall part 2  

The force that drives humans the most is fear.

Scared, Bam wipes the wall and the cleaning lady is not dead at all anymore.

Bam writes that Nanno’s face is ruined by acne.

The bully, Fon, kills herself because the bullied girl wrote it on the wall.

News get around, and things go wild: A girl, Fah goes mad, the principal has a heart attack… bam loses it when she finds out that someone wrote about O hurting himself. She finally thinks of cleaning it all, but someone wrote that whoever will clean the wall will die. So she doesn’t. More people go in to write stuff.

Bam tells Nanno she’s sorry and Nanno laughs at her telling her she started it all and liked it when she had the power, but she does not have the strength to finish it.

Bam goes to do it and Nanno yells that she’s going to clean the wall, so lots and lots of people try to stop her. She’s scared so she writes she wishes everyone would vanish. They do. Everyone. At the end, she looks in the mirror and can’t see herself anymore. She screams but she has no voice.

Everyone, indeed.


8 - Lost & found

This was a strange episode, it doesn’t feel in line with the others. 

TK is a cleptomaniac, and was expelled from his last school for it, and his dad gave a lot of money for this school to accept him. Although he sent a man to do it, since he’s never around.

New girl Nanno is intrigued; she steals too and challenges him, but she seems to be better at it than him. They spend a lot of time together, and it feels like a love story.

He never had friends before, and is now really attached to her.

She tells him she can bring his father back. 

She plans to steal from the principal, but he’s afraid for her. He does it all and is caught, and it turns out she is on the school’s side, so he spends, I don’t know how long, in a prison for underage kids, but when he comes out his father is there.

Nanno and Tk meet again, she says she had to separate them so that his father would come back. He tells her he doesn’t want to lose her.


9 - Trap

It’s Nanno’s first day at a new school when a prisoner apparently escapes and comes here dressed as a student and starts attacking people. 

In a class, a boy and two girls are in detention and the prof won’t let them go until Koh finishes his homework, but he doesn’t want to do it. The prof’s daughter Tang joins them.

A girl runs in saying there’s a murderer outside and to close the door, then a boy Suer and his girlfriend Sa, and then Nanno. They close the door and wait, all really scared. Nanno is not.

They keep arguing with each other, blaming each other. When a girl yells to be let in, the prof won’t let it, scared for his daughter. After a while, they all insist Koh should go out and get help, even if he doesn’t want to go alone. They insist (well, Sa didn’t but her boyfriend did and was very pissed that she defended him) so he pushes a girl Kaew out instead. Then they insist so much he does go out. Nanno tells the prof that if Koh does get help, he’ll be a hero, and the prof will come out really badly when people will listen to what he’ll say the prof did. So the prof goes out telling Tang to stay in with the other girls.

Since Nanno is so different, smiling, not scared at all like the others, the remaining girls accuse her of being the murderer, and only Tang defends her (stating what she thinks to be true, that a girl was attacked while Nanno was with them). So they all go out together. Sa wants to find Koh, the others want to stay away, so they argue some more and a girl loses her phone.

They meet Kaew who is in shock, and brings them to Koh. He’s dead, murdered. They suddenly reunite there, even the girl they thought had been killed outside their door but simply had an attack and fainted. They hear on the news that the murderer only injured three people before falling to her death, so now Nanno wonders who killed Koh… and asks Tang to retrieve the lost phone for her, since the girl who owns it recorded what happened in the class. Tang can get to it, but when she hears Nanno say that it will be a proof against her father, she lets it go and tells her she can’t get to it. Nanno laughs saying she’s just like the others and will fit perfectly in the school.


10 - Thank you, teacher

Prof Pim always smiles and the students like her because she chats all the time so they don’t have lesson. Prof Aum is more strict, she doesn’t chat and always looks severe. 

One prof will retire at the end of term, and the students should vote their favourite teacher. Aum only gets one vote. She’s told she’s too stubborn and too hard on the kids, while she’s the one who tries to teach and doesn’t make it too easy on them. She has a child and an ex-husband who went away after he got a student he was tutoring pregnant. The man went with the girl, I think, so now Aum is very bitter, not only about their educational system, but also about students (oh God, another woman who blames the girl when the husband cheats and leaves… I hate this)

Prof Aum appears really stressed but refuses to take time off. When the story of her ex husband being fired and going away with a student becomes news the students see on their phones, she collapses. Later, she has an episode, she sees and hears things and she stabs a student not quite knowing what she was doing. Her episodes continue, and we finally learn why she’s so out of her mind. We see that when her husband left (and she kept badmouthing the girl) her little son cried out for his father, wanting to go with him, so Aum took him inside the house yelling that he should not want to be with his bad father, and to shut up, and to make him shut up she suffocated him. She let go of him only when he lay motionless, dead. We thought he was living with her, but it was her hallucinating all along. She’s fired, of course, after she stabbed a student, and the rich one at that, Chin. At the school ceremony, when they would reveal who won best professor, she appears with a shotgun and kills everyone but Nanno. They talk and Aum tells her that she doesn’t like her because she looks like the (badmouthing again) girl that stole her husband… 

Then Aum says that she did it for everyone, to make schools better… but instead of killing Nanno she shoots herself and Nanno leaves.


11 - The rank

At this school for girls, they teach how important beauty is for girls and actively encourage them to take care of it and strive to make themselves beautiful, and they hold a special list of most beautiful girls: the girls in the top ten get to use a beautiful house with a beautiful garden, special food and everything, living like princesses, while all the others must make do with what the school offers to the common people. 

Ying is number ten, and when Nanno joins the school she starts worrying since Nanno is pretty. Nanno starts immediately at number 11, then takes her place and Ying is horrified to have to eat the same food ordinary girls eat and even more at using the school toilets. Very soon, after talking with Nanno, she starts planning on taking out all the girls that are above her in the list: she makes Nanno fall, and then does little tricks to the others to ruin their beauty, and yet at the end she is not elected number one. The Shining Star is ChomPoo, a girl that was fat at the beginning of the episode but is no more now.


12 - BFF part 1

A class of high school students acts like they are best friends forever, and at the end of their last year they bury a box where each one of them put something in.

At a class reunion, some ten or twelve years later, they meet and chat and smile like they are still best friends forever. 

When they open the box, they find in there a phone that doesn’t belong to any of them, and slowly they start remembering that for a few months there was a girl with them, a psycho that didn’t make friends. Slowly they remember and now they recognise Nanno, the girl that was serving them drinks - she still looks like a 16yo though, that’s why nobody paid her much attention before. They recall that she was always on the phone talking to her boyfriend Tan and never had time to spend with her classmates; the girls wanted to go out with her so they told her to bring Tan so that they might meet him too, but every time they wait in vain and he never shows up, so Fong checked her phone and there was no Tan in there, Nanno talked to herself, so people started avoiding her and eventually someone hurt her for being a freak, until she left school.

Now they see her and remember her, and she starts uncovering some of their secrets:

Meng the photographer likes young girls, probably forces them;

Chai the bodybuilder had to give back the medals because of steroid use;

Wit builds buildings, one collapsed but someone else went to prison in his place;

Kai is a doctor with no patients, and his hospital is used to recycle money for corrupted politicians;

Bell sells skin products but also sells fake ones;

Shorty’s wife wants a divorce because he’s aggressive and hurts her, an abusive man;

Fong the angel has depression and used to self harm and drink…

and Thap… he turns out to be Tan.


13 - BFF part 2

The truth comes out, the girls actually discovered that Tan was Thap so Fong and her two friends wanted revenge (on her) and made the rumour that she spoke to nobody, that she was a psycho, 

and everybody started avoiding her, calling her names, and Tan stopped answering her calls, vanished… until someone used his phone to send her a message, she went and the class ganged up to beat her up with sticks. When Thap saw her, he didn’t help her but ran away, saw Fong and told her he wanted to leave her (as in, it was already over with Nanno, but he wanted to leave Fong as well), and that’s when she cut her wrist for the first time, to keep him with her. He’s still with her now so not to feel guilty (and her arm showed many more cuts scars, not just one), but there’s a romance between him and Proud, Fong’s friend: she’s a flight assistant and he’s a pilot and they’re often together.

Fong attacks her, and has the guts to be the injured party here. Now she starts drinking again.

Fong was pregnant, but from the blood between her legs, it seems she lost it.

Nanno tells them all that she spiked their drinks and they’ll die but she has one dose of the antidote, so they start hitting and stabbing each other quite badly, it’s a bloodbath, until Chai manages to use it on himself.

Now Nanno says that the antidote is in his blood so they gang up on him to kill him to drink his blood, and they do it.

Nanno now tells them that she was joking, she didn’t poison anyone, she just did it because she was a psycho and wanted them to remember her.

It’s not her fault, she says, it’s them who hurt and killed each other after saying that they were friends forever… one of the guys wants to kill her, but then they all fall down, dead. The poison was in the syringe they fought for…

and yet, some time later, they all wake up, the place is spotless and their clothes are clean, and there’s a syringe there still intact. They go away, I’m not sure they’ll be friends anymore though…


Nanno says it was fun going to high school, where teachers are role models (first ep), people say sorry so they can do it again, where people do anything to be better, where beauty is everything, where when people worship money it’ll become more important than people, where even the weak can be evil if given enough power, and where karma is the consequence of an action…

And we have a short recap of all the episodes… 






Primal fear - 1996

 It’s a good movie. A very bitter legal drama, with an equal talk of psychology as well as laws, and a twisted end. There’s some hint at money intrigue in it, but it doesn’t go anywhere.

The part about the past relationship about the two attorneys was totally irrelevant and useless, it meant nothing to the story and changed nothing, it was simply a waste of time and also annoying.

The actors were all good. I’m not a big fan of Richard Gere when there’s great depth involved in the character; he did okay but it could have been better. Laura Linney did good with the cards given to her but I’m not sure how this Janet is supposed to be. The character of Janet was not really developed as it should have been. They say she went out with Martin for six months before they split, but it’s not clear why they split, or why she’s so bitter while he keeps trying to get close again. She says about their story that “it was a one-night stand, it just lasted six months” which is a good line, but there’s no more explanation.

She seems to try too hard to be tough, totally stressed out and a little lost in life.

Edward Norton was really good, it was a good character to play, it must be really ‘fun’ for an actor to play a character like this, I’d love that.

Alfre Woodard, well, always a pleasure.


Details:

We’re in Chicago.

Martin Vail is a defence attorney who loves the spotlight, the fame, the money, being on magazine’s covers and all that.

When all the tv channels break the news about archbishop Rushman’s brutal murder, and the chase of suspect murderer Aaron Stapler, he immediately offers to defend him pro bono. I guess because a story like that would be front page news every day.

Janet is charged with the prosecution, and she is ordered to aim for the death penalty.

Martin doesn’t come out as an idealist, he gives interviews saying he believes in the “illusion of truth, what he makes the jury believe”, that he doesn’t care who the person is, he simply does his job, not caring at all if they did or did not do what they were accused of, but then he meets altar boy Aaron, stuttering boy from Kentucky, only nineteen but already with a sad past and a difficult life, who appears to him to be a poor little boyscout, and he believes in his innocent and so he fights to save him from death. Aaron has nothing, really, to say in his defence. He says he blacked out, he doesn’t remember, he got scared… and Martin does what he can: he arranges a psychological evaluation of him while the trial goes on. He tries to suggest there might have been a third person there, simply because to give someone the death penalty there must be no doubt at all so he wants to make the jury doubt, but half way through something comes up.

Another altar boy reveals that there is a tape, a videotape, in the archbishop’s possession, and Martin discovers that the man used to film the two boys having sex with a girl.

It did look like, before, like it might have been all a money matter, but now this video shows that the archbishop was not the saint everyone seemed to think (nobody is a saint, people, nobody).

Also, it gives Aaron a motive. Martin confronts him thinking he lied to him, but this is when Roy comes out. When Martin presses Aaron too much, he’s so stressed and cornered that he can’t take it, so Roy comes out, and Roy’s personality is the total opposite, he’s confident and aggressive, and clearly admits that he killed the man because Aaron was not strong enough.

He cannot change his line of defence this far in the trial, so he plays it desperately from other angles but trying to get there anyway.

He has the doctor talk of Aaron’s personality disorder, then he has Janet grill Aaron on the stand until Roy comes out and tries to hurt her and escape but of course is stopped.

The judge now decides that she’ll send the jury home and she herself will give a verdict of insanity, so Aaron will have to stay in a hospital for a month to be evaluated… (then what? home?)

Anyway, at this point Janet has lost her job and made enemies, Martin has made enemies also, but Aaron is safe…

and here comes the twisted ending:

Martin goes to tell Aaron the good news, and sweet innocent Aaron seems really relieved and everything, but then he makes a mistake (does he really?) and says something that only his other personality Roy ought to know, so Martin comes back to him and now Roy tells him how he wanted to tell him, that he had fun all along, that they were a good team at the trial and so on… Martin is shocked that Aaron faked the blackouts, that he remembered everything all along, and asks him if it was all a lie, if ‘there never was a Roy’, to which he gets shocked again when the reply is that ‘there never was an Aaron’.

Martin goes out immediately, feeling very very low.

Now, this probably means that the whole insanity thing was just a ruse to avoid the death penalty, that since he had nothing else to save him he came up with this, and the last line means that while he is in fact alone in that head of his, his true personality is not the poor innocent one but the aggressive, murderous one, and he fooled everyone and got away with two murders (he confessed at the end there that he also killed the girl Linda).

I’m pretty sure that is how they see it, and that is why Martin looked like that, completely fooled and bitter. He said earlier that he wanted to believe there was goodness in everybody, and this ending kills that.


And yet, there is another way to see this ending, which is the one I thought first actually. 

Because, you see, the disorder made lots of sense here for a boy grown up without a mother, with an abusive father, who ran away alone and lived on the streets begging until he was rescued by the same man that later manipulated him into doing sex videos in front of him…

yeah, these details of his life might not be really true, might be part of his ‘cover’… but if so, then why kill those people? I think it was his true past, and that he really started having a disorder to cope with reality, but then, and here it comes the last line of the movie, reality sucked so much that Aaron gave up and Roy’s much stronger personality took complete charge of the body they shared before… 


still a bitter ending, still a total failure on Martin’s moral viewpoint, still a murderer who got away with it… based on facts, nothing really changes there, no. What changes is the character:


A-if there never was a disorder, it means there is nothing good in the boy, that he is a nineteen year old murderer without remorse, rotten to the core, and that it was all a plan, the best thing he could think of since he failed to escape the police. 


B-if there was a disorder, it means that there once was a poor innocent Aaron but his fucked up reality killed him leaving a murderer in his place.


ITA Schegge di paura


martedì 24 agosto 2021

The angel of terror by Edgar Wallace

 I like Wallace’s books, they always have interesting characters even after so many years. His description are mostly of people, of their character, he does not spend too much time with every detail of his surroundings, and this I like.

In this specific story, though, I wasn’t very fond of any particular character. Still, I liked the book well enough.

The main protagonist of this story is Jean Briggerland, a girl who grew up poor and since he was a teenager she started scheming with her father to get money out of people. They have killed three men already when this story starts. There is the ‘terror’ part. The ‘angel’ of the title comes from her appearance. She is beautiful, so extraordinary beautiful that everyone, men and women, think of her as an angel; men either fall in love with her or are so enchanted by her beauty that the simple idea that she might have committed such acts is ridiculous to them. 

Lydia, a girl that becomes the object of her scheming soon enough, is also one of those that think she looks so much like a beautiful angel that it is impossible to believe ill of her.


This story starts with Mr Meredith convicted of a murder he did not commit, but only his lawyers Glover and Rennett believe in him. Everyone else believes Jean’s testimony.

Jean is Meredith’s cousin. He has lots of money and no other relations, so at first she tries to marry him, then when that fails she tries to have him hanged.


Jean’s father shot Bulford, and her testimony only condemned Meredith.


Meredith is not hanged, thanks to Glover’s appeal to the court I think, but he is sentenced to life in prison. Glover manages to give him a leave to the hospital for a fake operation, and Meredith escapes to reach Rennett’s house.

Glover and Rennett looked hard for a girl with no relations and also money trouble, and found Lydia. When her father died, she promised to honour all his debts, so now she works hard to that purpose. She works for a paper, and does drawings.

Glover and Rennett take her to Rennett’s house and explain to her their plan: they want her to marry Meredith, then Meredith will go back to prison and she will have a lot of money to pay all her debts and live well. 

She accepts and they marry right away. Meredith does not go back to prison because he dies as he exits the house.

Jean’s father shot him, not knowing he had already married, so the Briggerlands are not the heirs anymore.


Glover tries to warn Lydia of Jean’s dangerous character, but Lydia refuses to believe such a thing. Jean’s scheming to get rid of her starts, because since the girl has no other relations, they are her heirs (as her only relatives-in-law).


Lydia is almost run over by a car, after Jean and her father have moved a little away.

Jean tells two men who have already been to prison many years about Lydia’s money, where her apartment is and her habits.

Jean’s father helps a crazy man out of the asylum and sets him on Lydia.

Jean takes a child, terribly ill with smallpox, up to Lydia’s bed.

Jean’s father tries to shoot her from a distance while she is at sea, but misses her (not by much, but enough).


Marcus Stepney lives by cheating at cards and tricking people, and he tried it with Lydia without success. Jean convinces him to marry her and share the money she’ll give him for the divorce once she realises the mistake. 

(This plot wasn’t too clear to me)

Anyway, it is soon clear to him that she would never marry him willingly. He is not a violent man, though, he cheats people out of their money but he has never killed anyone or assaulted anyone, so he lets go that idea as hopeless.


Jean has Lydia write a suicide note under the pretense that she is writing a story but her poor wrist hurts and she needs Lydia’s help, and she also has her write Glover’s address.

At this point Jean was desperate for money, she had almost none left, so Jean writes another letter using a typewriter and forging Glover’s signature, and also a check from Lydia’s book and she sent it via some people to Rennett, who has it paid. Mordon and a girl take the money and Mordon gives it to Jean. Mordon does all this because of course he is not just her chaffeur, he is in love with her, and Jean promised to marry him, but in truth she hates him after he kisses her once.


Jean convinces Lydia to go on a road trip and stop at a specific place. Mordon is to drive her there and Jean sends her father to kill them. He shoots Mordon dead, then shoots Lydia and she falls in the sea and they think she’s dead.



Marcus was out on a boat when he hears the shots and sees a woman falling and he immediately jumps to save her. He realises what happened and leaves Lydia safely at a hotel, but he does love Jean so he escapes with her.


Glover reveals that he was Old Jarrs, the ‘old man’ who had saved Lydia’s life more than once, and they plan to get married. Lydia is still fond of Jean.


He intends to marry her, of course, if they can reach a safe place, but she doesn’t want him. She doesn’t tell him that obviously, and they reach Morocco. 


They meet Hafiz, a contender for the throne of Morocco (I think) that Jean had met before and they had discovered to be very alike. 

He offers her a place in the hills where he is lord and therefore she could be safe. She does not care for Marcus, so he is sent on his way alone, although he still had the money she had stolen from Lydia. 


This is how it ends.


A bit anti-climatic, in a way. Glover had very little space in the book, much less than I hoped, and his story with Lydia is barely there.

The fact that Jean ends up ‘protected’ by Hafiz makes sense, since they were so very alike, although we don’t know what it will really happen to her. Will they be together? Will she have money like she always wanted? It’s anybody’s guess.


Friends season 10


Chandler looks just the same as in the last episode, which was a season ago… I don’t think this ever happened before.

This last season was to give a good ending to the whole thing, and it was a good ending, in a way.

I honestly hated the whole Joey/Rachel romance (though it was nice to see a more serious/normal Joey for once. 


1- The one after Joey and Rachel kiss

Monica, Chandler and Phoebe are in a room and the walls are so thin they can hear that Ross is in his room kissing Charlie, while Joey is in Rachel’s room kissing her.

Ross stops it because he wants to talk to Joey first, so he goes searching for him. They board the plane and they still haven’t talked. 

Ross talks to him about Charlie and Joey says it’s ok. Ross is so amazed by how cool he is about it, that Joey can’t tell him about Rachel. Later, at home, Ross walks in on Joey and Rachel kissing.

Phoebe meets Precious (Mike’s girlfriend of three months) and breaks them up since Mike isn’t there to do it.


2- The one where Ross is fine

Ross says he’s fine with Joey and Rachel kissing, and he wants to have dinner the four of them together, but he acts so very weird. He talks weird and acts weird and drinks everything himself.

To the others, it’s a horrible night. The girls go away but Joey stays with him, and once more sober, Ross realises it’s been six years sing he was with Rachel, and it’s time to move on.

Monica and Chandler talk to a couple who went to the same thing they are going through now, trying to adopt, but then Chandler sees the child and tells him he was adopted, and he didn’t know it yet.

Frank Jr is so tired for looking after the triplets that he talks about giving one to Phoebe, but then he can’t really give any of them up. She offers to babysit more.


3- The one with Ross's tan

Joey and Rachel have their first official date. It seemed to have gone well, but back home they kiss, but every time he touches her leg she slaps him. They try again but they can’t.

Monica shows a really good spray-on tan, so Ross wants to try it. He counts in Mississippi so he gets it wrong, then he tries to do it again on his back, but it does it wrong again, so he did it four times on his front, and not once on his back. He tries again, but this time there’s a girl telling him what to do and he doesn’t let her talk, so he doesn’t know that the thing works differently here and gets it done on his front again.

Amanda, a woman Monica and Phoebe knew when they lived together, is back in town. She went to England and now speaks with a British accent. The girls don’t like her and try to avoid her, but then Monica says yes to meeting her.


4- The one with the cake

Monica and Chandler plan a weekend away in Vermont, but it’s Emma’s first birthday party. Ross and Rachel want everybody there, to have the perfect birthday party. 

Emma sleeps most of the time and it gets late. Rachel founds out that the cake she got was not what she ordered, they did put the face of the baby in icing, but the cake was in the shape of a penis, so she takes the Porsche and drives to New Jersey to change it, but is stopped for speed and can’t make it.

Joey leaves to go to an audition and Phoebe to a client, while Monica and Chandler are forced to stay with Emma and miss their weekend in Vermont.

Joey and Phoebe come back as soon as they can, and make it before the parents arrive.

Ross was able to transform the form of a penis in that of a bunny, so the party is not ruined.


5- The one where Rachel's sister babysit

The adoption agency needs letters of recommendation so they ask Rachel for one, and Joey wants to do it too.

Phoebe and Mike celebrate their one-year anniversary. He wanted to propose to her at a Knicks game, but she said it was a bad way and he didn’t do it, so then she does it, but everyone boos because it’s the girl proposing, so it goes badly, and so they do it again, and this time he asks her at a restaurant.

Amy, Rachel’s sister comes back. She is not only rude and vain and spoiled, she is also totally devoid of any sign of loyalty or familial love or anything: she can never remember Rachel’s daughter’s name and told her so very lightly that she used to make out with Barry once she went to sleep… Rachel was spoiled but she wasn’t rude or bad.

Anyway, Rachel wants to help her get her life together, and lets her babysit Emma, and Amy has her ears pierced.


6- The one with Ross' grant

Chandler’s job in advertising is going great. Joey asks him to star in the commercial, but Chandler thinks he’s not right for the part and won’t even tell his bosses, won’t even watch the tape that Joey gave him, which was what hurt him. Joey is sure because he made a commercial for a lipstick for men that aired only in Japan, and Chandler would have had something to say about that.

Ross is still with Charlie, and is hoping to get a grant, and the one to decide who gets it is Charlie’s ex boyfriend Benjamin Hobart. The guy tells him to break up with Charlie. He pretends it was a joke the first time, then sabotages his interview for the grant, then goes to him saying he’ll offer it to him if he breaks up with Charlie. Ross brings Charlie to him to settle things, and at the end Charlie and Benji get back together.


7- The one with the home study

Phoebe and Mike plan for their wedding, and she wants to get married at City Hall, so to keep the money and give it to charity. Then she talks to Monica and now she wants a wedding so she asks for the money back, then she thinks of the children and wants to give it back but the guy won't take it.

Rachel is scared of swings and doesn’t want Emma to go to the playground. Ross insists, so she has him hold a spider, since he’s afraid of them, and then she tries the swings herself.

Monica and Chandler have a visit from Laura, the woman who will decide if they can be put on the adoption list, but it turns out that she slept with Joey and he never called her back, so they try to keep him out and pretend they are not friends, but he comes in anyway, but manages pretty well to turn it on her saying it was her who never called him, and Laura gives them a good report and they are officially on the waiting list.


8- The one with the late Thanksgiving

Monica and Chandler didn’t want to host Thanksgiving this year, but the others want them to and Phoebe tricks Monica into a challenge with herself, to make it better than last year.

Phoebe convinces Rachel to enter a baby beauty pageant because the winner gets 1000$ (still creepy though - to put makeup and a cowgirl outfit on a one-year-old… ).

Joey has three tickets to a Rangers game, but Chandler argues they wouldn’t make it in time. He doesn’t go, thinking the others won’t go either, but Ross and Joey go anyway.

Everyone is 45 minutes late - Emma won. They waste time deciding what to tell Monica. Ross suggests saying they were mugged and that’s why they were late. Monica is angry and locks the door, the guys insist and Rachel tries her own old key, and Joey pleads… so they are about to open the door… but the girls also forgot to pick up the pies a and then Joey’s head gets stuck in the door so they break down the door and ruin all the food, but Monica doesn’t care because the agency just called and they are going to have a baby, a woman in Ohio picked them.


9- The one with the birth mother

Monica and Chandler go to Ohio to meet the pregnant girl, Erica. She thought, though, that they were a doctor (Chandler) and a reverend (Monica). Monica wants to go along with it, and Erica wants them, but Chandler is troubled. He talks to her, and eventually she sees reason and they tell the truth. Erica’s upset at first but then Chandler talks to her and he’s really great and moving, and she chooses them anyway.

Joey goes out with Sarah, a friend of Phoebe’s, but she took some food from his plate and that’s unforgivable for him. He doesn’t share food, not even with Emma. he goes out with Sarah again, and explains she can’t take food from his plate, but then she answers a call and he eats her dessert.

Ross needs clothes for a date, and he goes shopping with Rachel and Phoebe. Rachel buys stuff for him, but then he gives him one of her bags and keeps one of his, and he wears her shirt (and by the magic of television, Ross and Rachel have the same size apparently). Problem is, his date wears the same thing.


10- The one where Chandler gets caught

Phoebe and Rachel see Chandler getting in a car with a pretty blond and they think he’s cheating, and they tell the boys. They confront Monica and Chandler comes home and the truth comes out, they are looking for a house outside the city. They found a house they love already, and made an offer. Everyone’s sad, Joey doesn’t want them to move, and various flashbacks regarding the apartment since the first season come up. It might be nostalgic if you hadn’t seen that for nine years, but there are reruns you know… so it’s boring, really.

Their offer was accepted and they got the house.

(p.s. if they really wanted to do things in secret, how come Chandler got in the woman's car right outside the coffeehouse where they seem to spend all their time??? oh well, never mind)


11- The one where the stripper cries

Joey will be a guest in a game show that Ross and Monica love: Pyramid where a contestant is paired with a celebrity - and a poor man is paired with Joey.

Ross and Chandler go to a college alumni thing (ridiculous scenes ensue, of Ross and Chandler with ridiculous hair to make them look younger). They argue about the girls they kissed at school. Chandler kissed Rachel at a party. Ross thought he kissed a sleeping Rachel, but it was actually Monica (ehi, do not kiss sleeping girls, where’s the consent in that?!?)

Rachel and Monica planned a bachelorette party for Phoebe. It was to be just a lovely tea party, but Phoebe wanted more, so they hurried to call a stripper, and… a 50yo man arrives. Nobody is thrilled about that, and the man cries and they talk about what he’ll do as a next job.


12- The one with Phoebe's wedding

Phoebe’s stepdad stabbed someone in prison so he can’t get out to go to her wedding, so she asks Joey’s to walk her down the aisle.

Monica planned the whole wedding, going against everything Phoebe wanted. I know this show it all about comedy and being nice to friends even when they are being assholes, but come on, throw out Monica and lock her out of the wedding!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oh, finally, I was so glad when she fired her!!!!!!!!!   Still, between total submission and total rebellion, there should always be common sense…  so Phoebe is forced to hire her again.


Ehm… was Joey supposed to be making an Italian accent there? He simply talked slower, there was no accent there…

Rachel has to choose between Ross and Chandler because only one of them has a chance to replace Mike’s friend as his best man. She can't do it though.


There’s a storm outside, so they can’t do what they planned, but they decide to get married on the street, with Gunther lighting the lights outside the coffeehouse, Joey performing the ceremony, Ross carrying their family dog, and Chandler walks Phoebe down the aisle.

(P.s. that coat Phoebe had on, shse took it off because she had her wedding dress underneath, but that coat was really beautiful, so so beautiful!!!)

(p.p.s. in such a case, would Phoebe have to pay for all that stuff anyway? The ice sculpture, yes, of course, it was delivered, but the place and the food and the flowers and who knows what else, the whole thing was crazy... I think so, right? She didn't use all that stuff, but it probably was ready for her anyway...)


13- The one where Joey speaks French

Joey needs help because he needs to speak French for an audition, and Phoebe speaks French, very well. Joey, though, is a lost cause. He thinks he speaks it well, but really it's just a mockery, so Phoebe tells the guy at the audition, in French, that he is retarded and just please humour him, so the guy tells Joey his French was good.

Rachel’s dad had a heart attack, and Ross joins her to the hospital. That night she wants sex but she’s too vulnerable so he says no, but then back home they keep talking about sex.

Erica comes to New York for a visit. The father of the baby could either be her boyfriend who went  off to college or a guy who went to prison for killing his father with a shovel. Monica finds out it’s the college guy.


14- The one with Princess Consuela

Phoebe and Mike talk about changing names (Monica never changed her name to Monica Bing or even Geller-Bing). Phoebe goes there and the guy tells her she can choose anything she wants, and she chooses Princess Consuela Bananahammock. So Mike changes his name to Crap Bag… this makes her realise her idea was stupid and wants to change it to Phoebe Buffay-Hannigan.

Rachel has an interview with someone from Gucci, but her boss seated next to her and she pretends it’s a date. She doesn’t get the job and also gets fired. Rachel meets Mark again and he offers to talk about a job at Louis Vitton during dinner. They talk and he offers her a great job, but it’s in Paris.

Joey goes to see the new house, and he talks to an 8yo girl who is wiser than him, and then Chandler tells him he has his own room there.


15- The one where Estelle dies

Joey’s agent Estelle died. Phoebe doesn’t want to tell him right away because there are too many changes lately, so she calls him pretending to be Estelle (that was funny). But then a guy tells him she died, and when Phoebe calls him pretending to be Estelle, he thinks she calls from behind the grave…

Ross works to get Rachel’s old job back, but then Luis Vitton offers her more money so she still wants to go to Paris. Then Ross convinces the guy to offer her more money, so she stays, but she’s so down when she tells Ross, she was so excited about going to Paris, that he tells her to go…

Monica and Chandler look at the house next to the one they’re buying, and they run into Janice. Chandler only manages to get her off the house by pretending to still love her. 

(Now, seriously, has she thought this through? Yeah… when does she ever think things through…

she was always so nervous when someone looked after Emma, and now she will have to leave her child in a place she doesn’t know and with people she doesn’t know and that speak another language… easy, why not! )


16- The one with Rachel's going away party

Erica is back in New York, she only has three weeks to go.

The guys throw a goodbye party for Rachel. She wants to say goodbye to each of them individually: first Phoebe then Monica, Chandler, Joey, and Ross is last but the goodbye he was dreading doesn’t come, she goes out without saying anything to him.

He’s so upset he lashes out at her, then she does the same to him because he acted like he didn’t know her at all. They end up kissing.

Chandler and Monica take Erica to the hospital (nobody mentions here she still had three weeks but I guess these things happen...)


17- The last one  part 1 and 2

Ross and Rachel had sex (someone gave Ross a book called Sex for Dummies as a joke, and he actually read it and learnt something… good for him)

Joey got a baby chick and baby duck for Chandler’s new house (apparently the old ones are dead, although Joey thinks they went away at a farm… )

Ross wants Rachel to stay and be with him, but Rachel tells him it was the perfect goodbye.

Phoebe insists Ross should tell her. 

Erica had not understood something the doctors said, and is surprised like the Bings when it turns out she’s having twins. Chandler is utterly shocked but they’ll keep them both of course. The first is a boy, the second a girl. They’re called Jack and Erica.

Everyone’s shocked when they get home with two babies, then Rachel leaves.

Then Ross decides to tell her and Phoebe drives him to the airport. They would be on time, only they went to the wrong airport so they missed her.

Phoebe calls Rachel saying there’s something wrong with the plane, and even if she doesn’t believe it the other passengers freak out and get off the plane, so Phoebe has enough time to drive him to the right airport and they arrive just in time, and Ross makes a big speech on how much he loves her, then she boards the plane and he cries in Phoebe’s arms.

He goes home, hear’s a phone message she left him, and then she arrives. 

Monica packed the whole apartment and now they have to leave. Since everyone had a key, they leave six keys in the empty apartment...



and that’s it, the end. We’ll never get to see Chandler as a father…


Chandler Bing - Matthew Perry

Monica Geller - Courtney Cox

Rachel Green - Jennifer Aniston

Phoebe Buffay-Hannigan - Lisa Kudrow

Joey Tribbiani - Matt LeBlanc

Ross Geller - David Schwimmer


+


Gunther - James Michael Tyler

Janice - Maggie Wheeler

Jack Geller - Elliott Gould

Judy Geller - Christina Pickles

Estelle - June Gable

Frank Buffay Jr - Giovanni Ribisi

Mike Hannigan - Paul Rudd

Charlie - Aisha Tyler

Amy - Christina Applegate


Erica - Ana Faris

Benjamin - Greg Kinnear

Amanda - Jennifer Coolidge

the stripper - Danny DeVito

8yo MacKenzie - Dakota Fanning

Mr Campbell - Brent Spiner