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'Privileged': Everybody get naked and stuff
In support of Privileged, I eagerly took the last month printing up thousands of Team Charlie t-shirts. So I'm rarin' to go, with a couple dozen pallets of shirts waiting for me in a warehouse and ... oh. Frak.
Megan begins the episode alternately avoiding-slash-bonding with her mother, spending a lot of time going shopping with Shelby but also trying to constantly duck her phone calls. As with most things in life, Megan is very confused and continues to overthink everything. She needs something to keep her mind occupied, and ideally there are few better diversionary tactics than having sex with your hot boyfriend. (So I've been told.) But despite the fact that Will's list of past sexual conquests comprises a sizable percentage of Palm Beach County, Will seems completely uninterested in having sex with Megan, which of course just means that once again Megan is confused and forced to overanalyze what that means about what Will thinks of her.
Megan comes to Marco's room at night - yes, Marco has a room; more on that later - because a boyfriend that won't have sex with you is just not an issue you can save until breakfast. Marco explains that Will thinks of Megan as a nice girl, so he's trying to be gentlemanly, and that's hardly something to be upset about. But Megan needs more than that. Being respected is fine and all, but she needs Will to jump her bones.
As always, Marco sees all and knows all, but helping everybody defuse their problems isn't exactly his life's goal. Marco said way back in the pilot episode that working here was just a stopgap until he could open up his own restaurant, and now we're finally paying off on that. Marco's boyfriend Keith doesn't really respect Marco's current job, asking when he's going to get tired of these spoiled people. Keith has a surprise in store, showing Marco a perfect available location to start up his own café. Keith wants Marco to finally take the initiative to follow his dream, but Marco isn't really sure that now is the right time.
Elsewhere in the kitchen, Sage doesn't really know what to do next with Luis, now that she's admitted to Rose that she likes him. Flirting and bickering are elements that Sage has down pat; the rest of romance, not so much. But when Rose hears Luis mention the cause of democratic reform in Cuba, Rose's mind starts spinning into action. Rose loves nothing more than a good cunning plan, and one comes to her. Laurel - who's unseen; given that Megan's mom is hanging around and we have a real Marco plot, the show's Old Person Quota prevents Laurel herself from being around - wants the girls to organize a charity event, so Rose comes up with the idea of hosting a charity luncheon for Cuba that Luis can help cook for, thus forcing Luis and Sage to work together. All they need to do is figure out what the problem with Cuba is. "What's going on in Cuba?" Sage asks. "I don't know yet. But Megan will tell us," Rose offers.
At night, Megan escorts Will back to her room, planning to seduce him, and manages to give herself a head wound in the process. Foreplay should really be left up to the professionals. So instead of getting Will into bed with her, Megan ends up having Will take her to the hospital. After getting stitched up, Megan admits to Will that she was trying to seduce him. "I'm sorry, I had no idea," Will admits. That's not good. Will says that he was trying to be respectful and not rush into things. "Respect is for grandmas. I want to get naked and stuff," Megan responds. "And stuff"? Good thing Megan's not a writer or anything.
Will decides not to waste any more time, and whisks Megan into a supply closet in the hospital for a quick hookup. "That's so Grey's of you," Marco will observe later. Technically, if this were Grey's Anatomy, there would be three other couples already having sex in that closet.
After the closet quickie, Megan is surprised to run into her mother, who heard that Megan was taken to the hospital. It provides a chance for Shelby to meet Will for the first time, and the next day, Shelby comes to see Megan again, and decides to offer the unsolicited advice that she can tell Will's type and knows that he's one of those guys who can't be trusted to do anything other than break your heart.
Megan, after taking a day to seethe over this latest development, finally pounces and tells her mother off, using the criticism of Will as a catalyst to unleash two decades' worth of frustration. Megan snaps that her mother isn't allowed to have an opinion about Will, and moreover, doesn't really have the right to ever try to provide any advice to her, given how Shelby wasn't around to do that job when she was supposed to, when Megan was growing up. Megan concludes that no matter how hard she tries, she will never be able to forgive Shelby for abandoning the family. "You don't know me. And I don't want to know you," she finally declares.
If this is how Megan closes the book on big relationships in her life, it might be a bad omen for lame duck Charlie. Charlie tells Megan that he's planning on heading back to college, and is applying to transfer to a school in San Diego. As he prepares his college transfer application, Charlie asks for Megan's help, which infuriates Mandy, given that Charlie won't accept her help. Mandy finally puts her foot down that it really hurts her how Charlie always seems to be preoccupied with Megan, as if he'd always rather be with Megan than with her. Which, of course, he would, but that's not the point.
When Charlie checks in for a scheduled session to work on the application, he tells Megan that he can't stay long because it isn't fair to Mandy. And then Charlie immediately reneges on that idea and spends all day with Megan. When Charlie comes back to his apartment, Mandy is steamed at him, and Charlie only makes it worse by lying and insisting at first that he wasn't really with Megan.
The day of the charity luncheon arrives. Sage has largely tried to avoid Luis in the interim, pretty much spoiling the whole purpose of the exercise, but that has the potential to be the least of everyone's concerns. A nasty society lady named Mrs. Bennington is annoyed that the girls had the audacity to hold an event on Cuba, Mrs. Bennington's own pet issue and apparently personal fiefdom. Bennington tries to publicly embarrass the girls by asking them to provide a testimonial in front of everyone as to their own efforts in the Cuba cause. Sage flails away hopelessly, but Rose unexpectedly steps in with a perfect save.
Marco tells Keith that he's not going to take the café space, and Keith is mad at him, to the point where Keith storms off, arguing that Marco isn't willing to commit to anything, himself included. "I thought we were fighting about a café, and he thought we were fighting about the future of our entire relationship," Marco explains to Megan later. Marco says that it's over between them, that they've said too much to one another to come back from. That last part strikes Megan, who realizes how harsh she was to her mother and that if she doesn't try to make things right now, she maybe never will. Megan leaves her mother a voicemail, softening her earlier words and saying that she doesn't want to permanently end any chance of their ever having a relationship with one another.
After the party, Luis finds Sage, and explains that he's not actually from Cuba, which Sage had automatically assumed after hearing Luis offhandedly mention Cuba once. Sage huffs that Luis misled her, and that that's inappropriate. "I never said I was Cuban. You just assumed. Way more inappropriate," Luis responds, not backing down. These two will never stop arguing long enough to seriously talk, so they'd better just kiss in the heat of the moment. And they do just that. Sage finally cops to the fact that she likes Luis, and they shout at each other a little more, and then they have a big sloppy kiss.
At the end of the episode, things come full circle. At the beginning, Megan needed to get into bed with Will in order to distract herself from her messed up family. In the episode's final scene, Megan has succeeded and Will is in bed with her, but Megan's family rushes itself right back to the forefront. Megan gets a phone call bearing news - Lily is in jail.
Viva la Resolución
In the spirit of the new year, we should all resolve to be a little nicer. Then again, being really catty and negative is usually more fun. And this is the internet, after all, where negativity is the global standard. But here in this episode, Privileged did something quite annoying to me: they went and started to fix every one of the smaller pet peeves I had about the show. How dare they. These are the three small things I was really hoping they'd fix at some point, and the show managed to start fixing them all in one episode:
1. I hated, hated, hated the opening titles.
2. The show feels like it's done on the cheap; Les Anges is supposed to be this huge sprawling mansion but had really only been shown to have like four or five rooms.
3. The series was making no distinctive use at all of its Palm Beach setting.
Opening titles? Gone, totally overhauled. The new ones are hardly anything revolutionary, but they win simply by virtue of not being the old ones. It is impossible to overstate how much I hated the old opening titles, starting with the weird fake-looking shoes of Digital Megan. Also, the old title sequence suffered from a total lack of continuity with the show itself; the title sequence depicted Megan's room as having an ocean view, and Megan's windows really look out at nothing but garden foliage. Finally, there was the issue that the titles had Megan working on a Mac. There's a negative stereotype of Mac users as elitists, as people who thumb their noses at the uneducated masses - in effect, every possible negative criticism of Megan herself crystallized into one metaphorical object. Please let those old opening titles be banished, never to be seen again.
Another unfortunate issue so far has been the paradox that Privileged is a series about rich people, and yet feels like it's being done on the cheap. With cast members disappearing for weeks at a time, and a really limited number of sets, it feels like Privileged operates on a tiny budget. One of the unintentionally funny aspects of the show has been that Les Anges is supposedly a massive mansion, and yet you'd think there are only actually four or five rooms in the place - all we've ever seen is Megan's room, the girls' room, Laurel's office, the kitchen, and the dining room. So this episode definitely helped start to correct that problem, letting us spend time in Marco's room and the pool house. That still means that three quarters of this huge mansion remains unexplored territory, but this is a start.
And lastly, up until now, the show never has taken advantage of being set in Palm Beach. I expect that shows are set in a certain place for real reasons, and that the uniqueness of a setting will be revealed in the stories it allows. Up until now, though, Privileged might as well have been in any rich enclave - Palm Springs, California; or Isleworth, Florida; or McLean, Virginia; or Sugar Land, Texas; or Sag Harbor, New York; or the Upper East Side. Taking advantage of the fact that Cuba is a hot-button local issue is the most significant use of the South Florida setting that the series has done so far. More of that, please.
What do we think? Synchronized swimming: ridiculous, or inexplicably cool, like Cirque du Soleil? How much will you miss Charlie? Should Megan try to patch things up with her mom, or were you proud of her for telling Shelby off? What would you name Marco's nonexistent café? Did anybody else share my irrational hatred of the old opening titles? And should Megan just leave Lily locked up, where she can't endanger the rest of polite society?
This show is my favorite new show this season considering its the only new show I've continued watching. I'm glad I was bored to death with the first hour of the Fringe premiere episode otherwise I would never have flipped the channel and watched the Privileged episode at 9pm. I just hope that the CW renews the show for a second season.
SLP | Jan 7, 2009 9:50:42 AM | #First of all, I have to say how proud I am of Rose after she was so well-versed about Cuba! She has been the one who struggles to learn at school, and here she is spouting off all this knowledge and putting the snooty Mrs. Bennington in her place in one fell swoop! Yay Rose! She is just adorable!
I was also impressed by her plan to throw Sage and Luis together so of course I was happy to see them kiss at the end of the show! Again, yay Rose!
And I am liking Megan's Mom quite a lot...Sharon Lawrence is a great addition to the show and I enjoyed that she tried to get Megan to see her point of view on why she left the family all those years ago. Glad that Megan softened her feelings at the end - she was VERY harsh, and with good reason, I'm sure but Shelby is her mother after all and she's trying!
Finally, I really love Marco and I am 100% behind his decision to stay with the twins and Megan rather than fall in with his boyfriend's plans for him. Yes, a nice gesture but Keith was expecting a fait accompli by installing Marco in the empty space next to his own salon but come on, Marco belongs right where he is, watching "Friends" in his bed at the mansion!
Good to have this show back...should be interesting to see where Lily's situation takes them next time.
Ginni | Jan 7, 2009 11:06:01 AM | # A few thoughts on this episode: 1.Yes!Finally!I was so glad that Megan told her deadbeat mom off, but I unexpectedly began to feel bad for her mom, who at least showed some remorse for her past behavior. And, Megan's mom did explain she is now in a better place to be a mom. So, for now, I think Megan should give her mom another chance.
2.The opening titles seemed a bit bland;however, they are a big improvement over the old one.
3.As for Charlie, he can stay or leave.
4.I can't wait to find out what Lily did now and will wait to decide if Megan should bail her out.
5.I totally agree that the show needs to film more around the setting of Palm Beach. I would also like to see more of Rose and Sage at their school.
I love Charlie he can't go!!
klcater | Jan 8, 2009 6:56:05 AM | #
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