| I think there is a conundrum... the one I laid out. ;) | |
| Last Edit: Chazwaza 04:19 am EDT 08/25/22 | |
| Posted by: Chazwaza 04:14 am EDT 08/25/22 | |
| In reply to: No conundrum, it's Beth's song - Singapore/Fling 11:32 pm EDT 08/24/22 | |
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| It is a challenge of the show, not necessarily a problem. The song works both as Beth's song or as Frank's song. I think you have a very specific and skewed view of what the song is or means when Frank sings it and I don't agree with your take on it. I think it makes plenty of sense for Frank to being singing back his vows in the new context of him messing up the marriage with his choices. It is no less complex to hurt someone you love, or to stray from them and risk your relationship, while also loving them and mourning the relationship you thought you could have and acknowledging how deeply it will haunt you. I think there's an argument to be made that what we need to hear from Beth is not how much she (inexplicably) still desperately loves him (this character you say we have seen be nothing but a jerk to everyone)... this isn't some failing of the human capacity to love. He cheated, she isn't ok with that, the relationship is torn apart. So you think what we really need to hear is how she nonetheless desperately loves him and is torn up that she can't be with him? Rather than his mournful reflection on the mess he made and the loss it is for him? I don't agree, beyond that I think it works for both characters. Having his wife who we just met step in to sing to the audience about how much she loves him actually very much risks coming off as the authors spoon-feeding a reason to not hate Frank even more than when the song is given to him, just send the woman in to validate him why we are watching him, explain how everyone loves him even if all we see is the opposite... I dunno, doesn't seem like the greatest version when we have had so little of her before and get so little of her after. The more I defend it thinking about the actual lyric and actual function of the song in the timeline the audience experiences, the more I think it might work better as Frank's song. I also don't think Merrily is meant to be the "how Frank hurt everyone" show, where all the characters just singing about how Frank hurt them or how his hurtful actions made them feel... he needs to reflect as well, he needs to experience his life as well. Maybe "Not A Day Goes By" should have been Frank's song responding to Charlie in the restaurant, or in a scene that doesn't exist with just him and Mary about missing Charley and their friendship/collaboration... that's the real central relationship, not Frank and Beth. Maybe Charley should have passed away before they could reunite, and that's the song he sings. I dunno. Maybe it doesn't work for either Frank or Beth when it's about their relationship because we don't know or especially care about their relationship, and Frank never sings about his relationship to Charley or Mary. But really, I don't think your interpretation of Frank singing it to manipulate his wife into not leaving him, or that it's just this selfish male trickery is fair or the only way to see or play it, at all. And also, so what if he is trying to make her reconsider? This is what someone who loves his wife and doesn't want their marriage to end despite knowing he is the one who messed it up. People have complicated feelings and desires. You don't think it's possible to love someone and betray them? To want someone else, but also to want them? To not think you want someone/thing and then when you actually lose it, realize you do... or want to want it, so you scramble to keep it if you can? Or to fear who or what you will be if you lose them, whether you actually want or deserve to keep it? This is human and layered, not surface-level male selfishness like you describe so dismissively. Hal wasn't 100% right and he wasn't at all wrong. And just because after the show is done it works as Beth's song doesn't mean it does in the moment it's played. I've seen it done this way, I never feel it works. |
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| Previous: | re: No conundrum, it's Beth's song - lordofspeech 09:45 am EDT 08/29/22 |
| Next: | re: I think there is a conundrum... the one I laid out. ;) - Singapore/Fling 05:49 pm EDT 08/25/22 |
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