Week 68: Socials Roundup
Posts from 15 April to 21 April, 2024
Week 68 saw lots of boards! Writing and background jokes from blackboards, whiteboards, and plexiglass on Legends of Tomorrow (2016-2022); Derry Girls (2018-2022); Letterkenny (2016-2023); Community (2009-2015 and a movie) and PEN15 (2019-2021).
Letterkenny
whiteboards / blackboards / clear-surfaces-plus-dry-erase-markers are prime real estate for background jokes, and Letterkenny 9.02 takes full advantage:
Feast your eyes on this Skids idea cloud which has more layers of jokes than an onion for sale in a roadside veggie stand.
Legends of Tomorrow
Speaking of background jokes, you *can't* convince us that the Legends of Tomorrow props designers didn't make Ray's whiteboard - er, clearboard - drawings of mysterious totems sexually suggestive on purpose.
(Giving three of the seven horns or teeth is a particularly delightful touch.)
Community
Community had so many whiteboard jokes you can find entire forums attempting to catalog them.
We chose this one from 2.10 "Mixology Certification" because if you don't get it, you most certainly didn't realise any of the rest of them . . . and our entire series this week is lost on you.
Derry Girls
Derry Girls is begging you to press "pause" to read all the jokes on Sister George Michael's blackboard.
(*cough* if only the streaming platforms weren't virulently anti-pausing-to-appreciate-the-stillframe *cough*)
PEN15
PEN15 2.02 "Wrestle" uses different transition techniques (hard cut and whip-pan) to go into and out of Anna's fantasy sequence. Often, cuts in- and out- of a short fantasy or daydream are the same, to orient the audience, but it works here because 1. even the daydream is still in Anna's bedroom (for budgetary or story reasons, who can say!?) and 2. the drastic change in outfits, hair, etc. make the distinction clear.
At 0:15 over a closeup, crowd noise starts. As Anna drops out of frame at 0:19 there's a hard cut to a medium shot of her dropping onto a pillow, wrestling it into submission. 0:29 there's another hard cut on her elbow drop, now she's back in the mirror, still in her 'fantasy' outfit. She looks up to see Brandt holding up a sign, ring-girl style.
As she looks to where he *would* be in her actual room, the camera whip-pans . . . to an empty chair. On the whip-pan back (which hides the cut), Anna is in the same position, but in her original outfit, signalling the end of her daydream and showing the dejection she feels with her reality.