Sunday, March 30, 2008

Titularly Parasitical

“The Taming of the Shrew.” By Christopher Lloyd. Perf. Tim Daly, Steven Weber, and Crystal Bernard. Dir. Andy Ackerman. Wings. Season 3, episode 3. NBC. 10 October 1991. DVD. Paramount, 2006.
So many Shakespeare and Film disappointments have taken place because of the merely titularly parasitical . . . that is, the simply eponymously leech-like . . . er . . . what one might call the superficially allusional . . .

All right. It’s when they give something a title that has a reference to Shakespeare but they don’t back up that title with any Shakespearean matter.

That’s true of the episode of Wings listed above. It’s called “The Taming of the Shrew,” but it’s basically about the character above who had a bad breakup and was sort of angry. But then she got over it.

Ah, well. It indicates that Shakespeare is still a financial draw . . . or that he was in 1991.

The same disappointment accompanied my viewing of an Animaniacs’ episode entitled “The Taming of the Screwy.”

But that one was, at least, much, much funnier!

No comments:

Post a Comment