Hi,
I'm back again to write about this week's episode of Vinyl cafe. This
week's episode is an hour long, which I guess is the norm for this
show? It's a bit daunting to review this one, but I'll give it a try.
This
episode opens with Stuart in front of a live studio audience in
Vancouver. The end of the program reveals that he'll be touring with
live shows across several Canadian towns over the next few months,
which I am totally cool with, because the audience's laughter and
applause feel like a good fit for this show, and I think it would
lose a bit of its charm without them.
I'm
not sure if this is the normal format of the show, but this episode
opens with Stuart telling an anecdote about himself on his last trip
to Vancouver (only half of this episode focuses on Dave & co.
Again, this may or may not be the norm for this show).
Stuart
begins by saying how much he likes Vancouver grocery stores (again
with grocery stores! That's three episodes in a row!) but segues quickly
into a loving description of his three favourite Vancouver
restaurants: a Sushi place, a German bakery, and an Indian
restaurant, all founded by immigrants or the children of immigrants.
I
don't need to follow the canned synopsis/moral format of my previous
review to break down this story, because Stuart helpfully states the
moral of the story at the end: this country is made richer by its
inclusiveness towards immigrants, like a many-folded croissant (his
analogy, not mine). It's the kind of feel-good message I expect from
this show. Stuart describes the owners and atmospheres of these
restaurants with loving detail, which really helps to get the message
across. It helps to establish a warm, friendly tone at the beginning
of the episode.
Unfortunately,
this tone only lasts past the musical interlude that immediately
follows this story(with musical guest Veda Hille). It stops once we
reach the vinyl cafe story exchange, where listeners can send in
their true stories to be selectively read by Stuart on the show.
This
week's story concerns a woman riding the Skytrain (Vancouver public
transit). She describes it as a scene familiar to anyone who has
taken public transportation: strangers sitting and standing in
silence, doing their best to ignore one other. This silence stops
when an older gentleman requests that a young man remove a knapsack
from a seat so that he can sit down. He is met not with courtesy, but
insults and foul language. The other passengers are stunned, and do
nothing, until a third man demands that the younger man apologize.
When this is also met with derision, he activates the train intercom
and requests that security arrest this young man because he
"threatened another rider". "Also" he adds, "he's
ugly". This prompts the young man to leave the train at the next
stop. The other riders are relieved and begin exchanging knowing
glances with each other, bonding over this experience. Another woman
tells the third man that there is a button that can be pushed to
summon transit police, which can be used instead of the intercom. "I
know", the third man replies, "I wanted to humiliate him".
Sorry
for the long description of an otherwise brief portion of the show,
but I really didn't like this story! It felt tonally dissonant
following Stuart's anecdote about the importance of being accepting
towards everyone. Now, let me start by saying that the young man's
behaviour in this story was unacceptable. This does not give the
other man in this story carte blanche to insult him! And all of the
passengers on the train are happy that this reprisal took place and
they all bond over their collective schadenfreude!? The message of
this story is like a twisted version of the message of Stuart's
restaurant tale: strangers can be brought closer together through the
collective enjoyment of a deserved public humiliation.
Well,
I disagree with that message! Responding to bullies with bullying
never solves anything! If someone on a train is threatening someone,
just push the emergency button, there's no need to throw insults at
the person causing trouble. In fact, it could escalate things and
make the situation worse! The woman who submitted this story adds at
the end that that young man will think twice before refusing his seat
on the Skytrain again (paraphrase). No, he won't, because the insult
he received from the third man and the collective silent acceptance
of this by the rest of the passengers will only further embitter him
to his fellow passengers in the future, and that's assuming this
incident doesn't dissuade him from ever taking the train again.
What
happened, Vinyl Cafe? Why did you completely flip the tone of this
program from light-hearted to mean in five minutes flat? I thought
this was supposed to be a feel-good program. I tried to stay positive
anyway, since a Dave story was coming up after another musical
interlude(an aside: I'm going to avoid commenting on the musical
parts of this show too much because I don't feel qualified to analyze
music, but suffice to say the music from this week's episode was
good. It was Veda Hille again).
Anyway,
the last half of the episode featured another Dave story. Did it help
fix the show after the tonal dissonance of the previous two segments?
Sorta.
I
won't go into a lot of detail about this story, but it's another
"Dave does something silly" story that I mostly enjoyed.
Murphy (A friend of Dave's teenage son, Sam) is having a Bar Mitzvah, and
Dave mishears a phone call inviting him to the event, so he assumes
that he needs to dress as a rabbit for the after-party, instead of a
Rabbi. So Dave attends with his son in full costume (the costume is
blue for some reason, a funny detail for which no explanation is
given), and of course his son is extremely embarrassed. Dave also has
to pee while at the synagogue, and naturally he can't unzip the
costume and ends up freaking a kid out in the bathroom, and it's all
as funny as you would expect, up to and including when the Rabbi
himself enters the bathroom, sees Dave, and momentarily believes that
he's hallucinating.
Unfortunately,
it's at this point that the story goes off the rails a bit. You see,
the Rabbi is being pressured by the Cantor to retire, but it's in the
Cantor's own interest that this happens since the Rabbi will be
replaced by a relative. However, with Dave's help the Rabbi is able
to trick the Cantor into believing that he is hallucinating and
seeing a giant blue rabbit that isn't there, during the ceremony, in
front of everyone. The Cantor doesn't attend the after-party and
everyone there learns of the prank and they all have a good laugh,
and Dave takes a bow.
Normally
I would consider this ending fairly harmless fun, but following the
previous Skytrain story, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth. In this story, Dave & co. humiliate a bully in
public then laugh about it afterward. That's a bit mean-spirited,
Dave.
Maybe
I'm just too sensitive, but please, fictional & non-fictional
people in these stories, try to be a bit more understanding of mean
people. Treating intolerance with intolerance should not be the first
resort when it comes to dealing with unruly people.
I
know I'm sounding a bit harsh, but I did mostly like this episode.
Stuart's story was good, Dave's story was mostly good and had some
touching father-son bonding moments. But there were some mixed
messages that put me off a bit.
Hopefully this is not something that frequently occurs on this
program.
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