We Are All Made of Stars
I'm not a big fan of The Office, but I am a big fan of cross-series continuity, so I got a giddy little bit of joy at the reference to buying a paper company in Slough the other night on Lost. J.J. Abrams has become the new king of subtle inter-series conectivity, what with this and the Driveshaft song playing in an episode of Alias (I can't remember if there's ever been a connection to Felicity on Alias, aside from overlapping actors).
This reminded me of the brilliant website I found thanks to a tip from Liz back in October: Tommy Westphall's Mind - A Multiverse Explored, which I find infinitely fascinating (and it's become even better now that the students of Degrassi Community School exist in Tommy Westphall's mind).
However, there are a number of paradoxes, that I'm not sure are addressed on the site (I haven't studied it thoroughly enough).
The most obvious is when the same actor has appeared on two shows within the multiverse playing different, unrelated characters (Friends got around this nicely with Buffay twins). If Driveshaft really does exist within the world of Sidney Bristow, does that mean that Weiss and Kendall had evil Francie-type doppelgangers made of them?
The other paradox is when a show that exists within the multiverse references another show in the multiverse as a fictional TV series. The most glaring (and headache-inducing) examples I can think of stem from Seinfeld. It's established on an episode of Mad About You that Paul Buchman leased his apartment to Kramer... but years later, George watches Mad About You in bed with Susan. But the real Mobius Strip (and/or Ourobouros - I'm not sure which) is that on Seinfeld, Kramer "acted" as a secretary on the TV show Murphy Brown, which is linked via an O.J.-esque carchase to Love & War, on which a character writes a spec Seinfeld script that's read by Jerry Seinfeld (the actor, not the character) and Larry David. But all of them are connected in the fictional multiverse.
I need an Advil.
posted by The Pop Culture Petri Dish at 3:39 AM
4 Comments:
There's a reason why TV is meant as entertainment, not logic!
I am currently mourning the impending cancelation of Arrested Development. A great show that nobody watches.
A great show that nobody watches... that apparently everybody (except Nielsen families) watches. At least judging by the outrage popping up all over the blogosphere in the last few days. Has anyone ever met a Nielsen family or known anybody who knew a Nielsen family? If so, tell them to start watching Arrested Development.
As for everybody else... start buying the DVDs. It worked for Family Guy (a little too well, since that spawned American Dad, which is now bumping Arrested Development).
It's sort of like the Kevin Bacon Five Degrees of separation thing. There's a friendship site sort of like that but I can't remember the URL. I think you should submit this to The Horse Chronicals at
*http://www.thehorsechronicles.com*
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