<BACK TO INTRODUCTION TO "EXTRAS."
Years ago, while I was visiting family in Britain, I made a side trip to Southend-on-Sea, the then residence of the elegant and sophisticated Mr. Rumcove.
It was Rumcove who introduced me to "The Office." This was shortly after its first UK season. Like other British comedy freaks, I shortly became obsessed with it, so much so that it took me two seasons to become fully reconciled to the American version I am now recapping.
The American show is, in the immortal words of the Pythons, "something completely different." Because it's American, its emphasis is on the sort of redemption that the British show never really believed in, and therefore deferred until the final minutes of the last show. I've learned to love it, but not without feeling (particularly when I watch reruns of the British version, as I frequently do) a certain sense of my own American soppiness.
But Ricky Gervais and Steve Merchant are not from the soppy tradition, and Extras---in which Ricky Gervais is more often than not the straight man----is, like the first and truest version of The Office, cynical and a touch saddening.
In tonight's episode, Maggie (played by the lovely Ashley Jensen), is relentlessly patronized by a more "successful" former extra. At the same time, she is relentlessly stalked by Orlando Bloom, whose ego she has punctured by failing to find him attractive. There's a moment near the end where Maggie (though without realizing it) prevails with stunning finality over her rival, but---sadly---she fails to realize or enjoy it. And I don't look for many of those moments.
kGervais's character, Andy Millman, is sensitive and intelligent and creative, and so things are not going at all well for him, even though he's got a sitcom in production at the BBC. His point about the price of fame isn't new at all, nor is Millman's moment of clarity in which he realizes he'd rather be fame's bitch than go back to being an extra.
But Gervais and Merchant are good at making you see the emptiness of success of any kind, including the kind of success that comes with fame. I think perhaps that Gervais is better at it than anyone anywhere ever. In Extras, the real-life celebrities (good sports all, by all accounts) play the "from Hollywood" versions of themselves, brimming over with conceit, insecurity, envy, spite, arrogance, and total insensitivity to other people's boundaries or the decencies of ordinary social interaction.
And it's this more than anything else that gets across the point (which I think Gervais at any rate truly believes) that the wealthy and famous are as much if not more than the rest of us as empty as sounding brass. It's not particularly a happy thought, actually. If winning everything, if having it all can't make people happy, then what hope is there for the rest of us?.
Comments