Also, the entire season is about death. I didn’t figure it our until reading it somewhere. Buffy vs. Dracula makes a lot more sense with that in mind. (I did figure out the same about Farscape season 3 on my own, but the first episode is called Season of Death, so that helped.)
I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned the arrow in the FedEx logo. I noticed it the first time I saw it (I’m a designer), but some people can’t see it even when it’s pointed out to them.
Another one I just remembered: It was some time last year before I realized that the band with John, Paul, George, and Ringo was spelled differently from the insect. Beatles, as in “beat”. Before that, I think I just used both spellings interchangeably, and never noticed since spell-check recognizes both.
Helena, good catch on Rabbit and Owl-- I never even suspected. Now that you mention it, though, Gopher must be real, too… All of the real animals don’t have their own names, just the names of their species.
I don’t know how obvious it is to everyone else but in Aliens, it seems very clear to me now that Bishop sold Ripley and co. out. He lies right to her face and no one catches him on it. He tells Ripley and the surviving marines that flight time for the second drop ship will be 40 minutes. Now hold on a minute there Mr. Bishop. That’s the express elevator to hell you’re talking about. We watched the flight in real time when it was done with a load of squishy marines and a human pilot and from start to finish it took FOUR minutes, not forty. So Bishop had control of that drop ship for a lot longer than he let on. Check his expression when the survivors show up at the landing field early because of Newt’s shortcut. “Oops, you’re not supposed to be here yet!” So that’s how the eggs got on board in Alien 3. Bishop ferried them there. That’s probably also why the Queen ripped him in half- she recognized him as the egg thief!
There was also a really good, really subtle one in Angel. In Season 2, Angel is able to get ahold of a special ring that the Senior Partners use to travel between their dimension and Earth. Angel puts the ring on and gets on a different express elevator to Hell, where he is greeted by old Wolfram and Hart buddy Holland Manners. And everything Holland says to him is complete bullshit. It was the best victory they ever scored against Angel and they never get any credit for it.
Basically, Holland tells Angel that there is no way to get to the Senior partners; the home office is on Earth. Angel never notices Holland very smoothly changing the subject. Angel ends up demoralized because he knows he can never defeat the negativity and evil in all human beings so he gives up on trying to get to the Senior Partners! Sure the home office is on Earth. But the Senior Partners aren’t! And even after Angel does some dimensional traveling (including to a jail run by the Senior Partners!) he gives up on trying to take them on in their home turf. But he was almost there. There’s a visual in the episode that shows the elevator dropping into an open space and then back into the elevator shaft. That ties in with Lindsay bitching at Darla in the next episode about the ring which everyone spent so much time disenchanting. So it’s clearly shown in the episode that Angel was well on his way but got distracted by a bullshit story and didn’t realize his elevator could be diverted from the outside!
I was watching the Seinfeld episode “The Couch” a few days a go and it suddenly occurred to me that the argument between Poppy and Kramer over how to make a pizza was a parody of the abortion debate. I’m not sure how I missed that before.
An especially delightful performance is on “The Secret Policemens’ Other Ball” DVD; Cleese makes Palin crack up, and plays with it a little until they’re both losing it.
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I didn’t realize that Will’s last name of “Truman” is an indication that he is Grace’s “true man” until I read the book about the series. It was orginally suppose to be “Hermann” (her man), but the producers changed it.
I always thought that Born in the U.S.A. was a celebration of being American until one day I actually listened to the words and realised that it was about a Special Forces veteran who was left on the scrap heap after he had finished his time.
Writing in a foreign language, where your vocabulary is much smaller (even if you’re fluent), forces you to be more economic with your words. It’s not a feature of French, but of it being a second language to him.