We finally finished the show. The Beloved agrees with you. Completely. She’s an ASL interpreter, and she paused the show at that point and went on at some length about how terping for Mabel would be a nightmare. She never moves her mouth!
Also said was Keep your eyes on the damn road!
I just raced through the entire thing over the past few weeks, but towards the end I noticed Bunny was walking a chicken instead of a dog. I had to assume they changed it and I had somehow missed seeing a chicken the entire time.
Actually, I was surprised they even had her there. I figured they would have pulled her out of the intro.
The other thing I noticed every time I watched the intro was that the red lights in the building (from the two staircases and some other random windows) vaguely formed a red Netflix “N”. I’m assuming it was a coincidence, but if it was a Netflix Original, it certainly would have appeared deliberate.
Mrs Gambolini isn’t a chicken.
As a person who suffers from TMJD, I’m sympathetic to needing to having jaw issues and needing to take it easy on the jaw movements while speaking. I do it all the time. But if I’m being paid to act, I’ll pop some Aleve and open my mouth. And whether or not I’m being paid to act, if I’m in a situation where someone needs to see my whole face move in order to understand me - an emergency situation nonetheless! - I mean, just fucking MOVE YOUR FACE!!! I just can’t believe no one caught this. Not even the deaf actor!
That’s kinda funny. Not only does in contradict the title of the show and podcast, in the first episode they started to go off on a tangent about some unrelated murder and one of them said they should need to stick to only murders in the building.
I hope they make it work somehow so they stick to the original premise of the show. Otherwise it’s essentially just a joke or, at the very least, something should have been the title of that episode.
Another thing that caught my attention, and maybe it’s been mentioned already, is that when the three of them are in the secret passageway, they stop referring to the murderer as ‘he’ and switch to ‘they’. I’m curious if they had filmed up to that point without settling on who would be the murderer or maybe the role of Alice was originally played (and partially filmed already) by a male.
Maybe it’s nothing, but it seemed jarring, especially since I recall it happening during a single scene (using ‘he’, then one by one switching to ‘they’).
I noticed it too, but I don’t think they switch so much as some of the characters use they/their and the others use he/his. Lucy and Charles use they/their, while Oliver and Mable use he/his.
I seriously doubt they hadn’t decided who the murderer was going to be by that point.
It could have been a choice to further show Mabel’s ignorance of communicating with a deaf person, although it was likely just how Gomez speaks.
However, until reading this part of the thread, it wouldn’t have occurred to me to exaggerate my facial expressions when speaking to someone who is lip reading.
I’m wondering…
Would some people, especially certain types of people, assume a murder is committed by a male and use “he”?
Would other people, not assume and use “they”?
Would some of the “he people” with more information, or with influence by the “they people” switch from “he” to “they”?
Would good writers realize this and decide which characters in the show fit in each category?
Yeah definitely just the way she speaks. Once you notice it you see it in all her scenes, and really it’s not a problem for me. I move my jaw like that a lot too. But like I said, she’s paid to act. She can act like a person who opens her mouth when she speaks to a lip reader.
I can’t believe how invested I’m getting in this, but Mabel would only know to do that if the lip reader told her (and possibly reminded her a couple of times (20 year old habits are hard to break)).
I dig that. And that’s why I’m mad at the writers and directors too. Because in that car scene, and other scenes, they have the deaf actor presumably understanding what she’s saying. That’s where it breaks down for me. He reminds her once, she doesn’t seem to change her mannerisms, suddenly they’re a team and he understands it all.
But he still continued on the conversation, never asking her to enunciate (is that even the right word) better. He rarely even asked her to make sure she’s facing him when she’s talking. If it were about her ignorance, there would have been (more) times when he wouldn’t have understood her. As it stands that wasn’t the case.
And the writers seemed to be aware of these things. Teddy was always facing directly towards him while speaking.
We debated this for a while, too. Mabel probably doesn’t realize that her mouth doesn’t move when she speaks — most people aren’t that self-aware, and she probably hasn’t seen herself on video a lot.
On the other hand, Selena Gomez has chosen to play Mabel as someone who doesn’t move her mouth when she speaks. (On Selena + Chef, when she isn’t playing a character, she moves her mouth much more*.) So why the hell didn’t anyone — especially the deaf actor or Gomez herself — point out that lip-reading Mabel is pretty much impossible?
I know that lip-reading ordinary people is much harder when they try to over-enunciate. But surely Mabel is an exception.
*I just put on a random episode with the TV muted, and I was able to read her lips several times.
Because he already knows what her lines in the script are; the actor isn’t actively trying to interpret her lip movement. He’s not responsible for her acting; just his.
The characters acknowledged the issue. Theo gave Mabel a card saying that he can read lips but he’ll only understand about a third of what she says. But something that bugged me about the actors not seeming to acknowledge it is that it meant James (the actor playing Theo) wouldn’t be able play off of “verbal” cues from Mabel. He’d have to be reacting to other things. Whether it’s the director or something visual Selena is doing, but it seems like it would be less natural…or maybe it’s more natural since it’s probably similar to his actual life with people not looking directly at him while talking. And, like I mentioned earlier, they were clearly aware of this as shown by most of the scenes involving Teddy and Theo have them directly facing each other.
We just got Hulu and I binged both seasons over the past several days. I was quite entertained with all the plot twists and turns. Looking forward to Season 3.
And the first two episodes of season 3 are here.
I can’t decide if I want to start watching now or wait until more episodes are available!
I always wait for nearly the entire season to be there.