Bad Soap Opera

 Day 108

February 15th, 2024

Well, here we are again. Another day and another lackluster viewing in the books. The only thing that made the viewing work well today was that I got to watch it while I was working on some computer work at work. I just throw a headphone in and get lost in the moment.

I do feel like they could have given Gibb some love in this movie. She is a troubled teen in the film. They may not outright say that or portray it, but you can see it through the cracks of the poor character development. Now was that done on purpose of the writers to create essentially a female Rod Lane? Again I doubt that as well. It lines up and I believe I've spoken on this previously. But I never sat down and fully compared her to Rod Lane.

Both come off as troubled youths, the rebels in the group of friends. Both saw their respective dates die. One ran away and the other was traumatized by the events. 

You could tell that Rod was a bit traumatized by the death of Tina, but he focused more on wanting to declare his innocence. His death did hit harder than Gibbs's because Freddy hung Rod in his jail cell making him seemingly guilty for Tina’s death. We do get a nice nod in the film to Rod’s death when Mark dies. Like Glen and Nancy, Will and Lori were also helpless in helping Rod and Mark survive. 

With Gibb, you knew she was traumatized from seeing Trey dead. The writing for her character and how she was dealing with the grief was like life imitating art. It felt surreal and relatable if you lost a friend or a loved one. You are lost, confused, and hurt. Even though she may not have fully realized why she was dating Trey outside of the obvious sex and his nice ass. Those are her words not mine in regards to his ass. She probably genuinely cared for Trey even though he treated her like shit and you got the notion that maybe she was in an abusive relationship. 

If they had given the attention that they did to writing Gibbs's character, I feel like we could have had a better movie regarding the teens in the film. We would have got that sense of danger, true fear, and most of all feelings from the characters. It's kind of hard to take the rest of the gang seriously when only one person, Gibb, shows those emotions and comes off like a real person in a situation that she had to deal with. 

It's one of the many what-ifs and missteps of the film. 

Oh, the sequence with Mark and Will in the van plays out like a bad soap opera.