Saw the Express with Jeff last week, and have just finished up both series of Spaced with Kris, and they seem complementary experiences: heavily referential but more parroty homages than parody, attuned to the finer points of myriad pop cultural details iconic and not-so, each devoted to character more than plot, and equally invested in the many pleasures of forgetting forward motion to let said characters chatter and get wasted and circle around their intense emotional relationships with one another.
Both have been pumped up but I found them pleasurable, occasionally brilliant but not all that, even as they were always good company.
Blah di blah. My review is boring. I’d contemplated throwing out some noodling about a generation of filmmakers who commit to reflexivity yet avoid a kneejerk irony or detachment… but I’m feeling no burn to do so. It’s kind of neat that the adoring recreation of, say, a few shots from Tarantino are not just the filmmakers showing off but actually serve the characters–who shape themselves via such associations. And Spaced, in particular, can brilliantly weave such allusions into plots that explore and expand upon these characters’ worlds — the show deploys parody, but the parody’s not its own raison d’etre.
And now that I’ve casually used French, I bid you adieu.