The Frivolous Fun of 80s Hair Metal

May 1, 2021January 27, 2025 RilalyLeave a comment

They were hairy and kooky, obnoxious and a little spooky, the metal bands of the 80s. As fashionable as it was to love these (mostly) L.A.-based heavy metal in the 80s, it became just as fashionable to openly despise them in the 90s.

I loathed them too, until a young co-worker, who was discovering them for the first time, said, “Hey, they’re not [Bob] Dylan, or [John] Lennon, I get that, but c’mon, they’re fun.” I immediately dismissed that line, because the guy was a doofus. His musical tastes did not define his doofosity, but it was everything else that led me to dismiss just about everything that came out of his mouth. Yet, to my amazement this simple line, from such a simpleton, fundamentally changed the way I listen to music today. I went through a they’re-not-this-that-or-the-other-thing phase, until I eventually turned into a “C’mon, they’re fun” guy too.

I’d love to write, right here, that the self-indulgent critics’ call for important, meaningful music, never got to me, but the pressure to denounce hairy metal from the 80s came from every “cool kid” corner of my life. Prior to loathing them, I went through a long and expensive heavy metal phase when I was a teen. I spent almost all of my minimum wage paychecks on cassette tapes of every major, and many minor Los Angeles-based, hair, glam metal band out there.

When I aged out of it, I sought serious, brilliantly complex music, but when doofus said what he said, I realized that I was trying to make myself into a serious adult, because I wanted adults else to take me seriously. Doofus reminded me that we can all seek complex arrangements in our music from artistic musicians, but let’s not forget to keep it fun.

With his succinct condemnation of my self-importance and self-indulgence, doofus reminded me of the simplistic brilliance of all those years ago. The book Nothin’ but a Good Time also reminded me, more recently, that the hairy, glam metal music of the 1980s never claimed to be anything more than what it was. Say what you want about the bands of this era, and the music they wrote, but they never tried to be vital or important. They never wrote a seven minute opus on the Fall of the Roman Empire and how it might correlate with the modern rise of technology. The music of the Los Angeles-based hair bands were all about having a party, abusing their body with whatever substances they could find, having random and consensual, conjugal visitations, and any other forms of excess they could find to have a good time. The book also pointed out that they didn’t mind practicing what they preached.

Shortly after I grew out of my love of hairy metal, I sought clever and complex music, but I’ve never enjoyed deep songs with meaningful lyrics. This might be a result of listening to so many thousands of hours of metal music in my teens, but I have always considered deep, meaningful songs so silly. They do nothing for me. Most of the time, when I hear a lyricist attempt to write deep, profound lyrics, I think of Fredo from The Godfather, “I’m smart! Not like everybody says… like dumb… I’m smart and I want respect!”

We’ve all read critics pour through lyrics for the deep meaning the author intended, but most of them either have something to do with something political or social, or they contain some oblique, or over the top, reference to drug use. I listen to that music, and I repeat it numerous times, but the lyrics don’t affect me in anyway. Vocals, and vocal inflections, should be used as another instrument in a song. If they do it well, I’ll listen, but I don’t understand why we should care what Thom Yorke of Radiohead has to say about his view of the world any more than we do Bret Michaels of Poison. In this vein, Michaels’ lyrics might be more respectable, because he doesn’t engage in any of the “look at me, ain’t I smart?” type of the self-indulgent lyrics we find in Yorke’s work.

Most of the “vital and important” music critics of the era loathed heavy metal, but we didn’t really care. We didn’t need Nothin’ But a Good Time, and that served to undermine the power of the music critics. The critics knew that most of the hairy metal bands didn’t know how to play their own instruments, and they panned them for not only ignoring socially significant issues but damaging some. They loathed these bands for thumbing their nose at consequential issues, and they deemed them inconsequential. No one I knew cared. We wanted to play heavy metal music at our parties, and we wanted to play that same music in our cars on the ride home from work to remember those parties. The book Nothin’ But a Good Time reminded those of us who loved it that there was a time when we didn’t take ourselves so seriously, and we knew we weren’t vital and important. We were silly and stupid, because we were kids, and we wanted our music to be silly and stupid too. We didn’t want to hear what critics said we should be.

How bad were the hairy metal bands of the 80s? How good were they? It depends on who you ask and when you asked them. As the book points out, the era was all about timing. Those who were in a Los Angeles-based heavy metal band between 1984 and 1988 learned how the other half lives for a while, and they indulged in every excess they could think up. If a heavy metal, glam band had all of the above and they released an album as late as 1989 to 1990, a major record label probably signed them, but every album they made went straight to the $.99 bin. The idea that sales are all about timing is not a novel concept of course, but was any rise-and-fall of a musical genre as stark as what happened to heavy metal in the 80s? Disco? maybe.

Were Motley Crue (‘83), Ratt (’84), Poison (‘85) that much better than Bang Tango (’89), Junkyard (’89), or Dangerous Toys (’89)? When we listen to classic rock radio today, which bands do we hear? How many of us even know the latter three? One would think that if the latter bands had music that was just as good that they would eventually rise to some levels of prominence. They didn’t, in part, because the more prominent bands of the era tapped into a time and place of the zeitgeist that will presumably never die in some quarters.

What happened in the intervening years, some of those band members interviewed in Nothin’ but a Good Time say the dynamic in the industry experienced a subtle shift when Guns N’ Roses changed it a little in 1987. Others not in the book, say the industry tilted further away from the “Rock and Roll all nite and party every day” rock theme when the funk-rap hybrid bands Faith No More (’89) and Red Hot Chili Peppers (first noteworthy album ’89) arrived on the scene, but most acknowledge that the Seattle, grunge movement led by Nirvana’s Nevermind in 1991 sounded the death knell of the hairy metal of the 80s.

To read about 98% of most modern critics, the modern reader might believe that Kurt Cobain single-handedly killed ‘80’s hairy metal. The critics write this, I think, because they loved everything about Cobain, Nirvana, and the single Smells like Teen Spirit. They love the narrative that ten minutes after Smells like Teen Spirit aired on Mtv, everyone knew the heavy metal movement was over. Some of the artists interviewed in this book, however, suggest that Slash might’ve done more to end the mid-80s version of hair metal than Cobain. I consider that an intriguing notion, considering that most put the heart of heavy metal’s reign over the music industry between ’84 and ’89, and that it began to wane two years before Nevermind was released. As factual as that statement appears to be, according to record sales and Mtv plays, it’s not as compelling as the narrative that suggests one band, one man, and one song ended it all. Others claim that other Seattle artists Mother Love Bone, Alice in Chains and Soundgarden did something so different in the years preceding Nevermind that they laid the times-they–are-a-changing groundwork to pave the way for Nevermind. Some musicians claim that the King’s X 1989 album Gretchen Goes to Nebraska laid the groundwork for what some call the Seattle sound, and others call grunge. Regardless the who, what, and whens of the argument, most agree that Nevermind did put the final stake in the heart of the dying carcass that was the hairy metal of the 1980s.

*******

As compelling as the argument of the death of heavy metal is, the tale of the birth of heavy metal might be as interesting. Almost every artist of the era lists Aerosmith and Led Zeppelin as the forefathers of their sound, and others state that the first Black Sabbath album, AC/DC’s Back in Black, and Quiet Riot’s Metal Health, and Twisted Sister’s Stay Hungry all played a role. The over-the-top looks, the stage theatrics, and the simple, arena, sing-a-long rock songs intended for nothing but fun, however, belong to KISS. Put simply, if KISS didn’t rule the airwaves of the 70s, the early hair metal movement of the 80s probably doesn’t happen.

Nothin’ But a Good Time mentions KISS a couple of times, but for the most part this book strives to cover the scene in this era, and it provides little backdrop for who (other than Quiet Riot and Twisted Sister) might have inspired it. Yet, if KISS inspired the early years of the movement, it would be a stretch to say they were the catalyst for the entire era. KISS came out in ’73, and they hit their peak commercial value between ’75 and ’77. Why did it take seven years for bands like Poison and Motley Crue to take their influence to platinum success?

The missing link, in my humble opinion, arose from a subtle shift the British band Def Leppard made away from their more traditional heavy metal sound from the KISS, AC/DC sound to the more polished, David Bowie, T. Rex catchy pop-metal sound that proved more radio friendly when they made the relatively successful High N’ Dry in ’81. In ’83, Def Leppard took that concept up a notch with the release of Pyromania. That album’s success did not happen overnight, but in my world, no one I knew had ever heard of a group called Def Leppard on Thursday, but by Monday, everyone I knew was wearing the Def Leppard Union Jack sleeveless T-shirt. The groundswell was almost that immediate.

The primary difference between Def Leppard and KISS, in my world, was defined by every teenaged girl I knew. I knew teenage girls who liked KISS, especially the song Beth, but when Def Leppard put Pyromania on the shelves, every girl I knew suddenly loved a rock band. When the songs from Pyromania hit the radio, it was the closest thing to Beatlemania that I’ve ever experienced. Every teenage girl I knew listened to Pyromania and when teenage girls love something that much, teenage boys pay attention, and they eventually learn to love it.

The success of Def Leppard’s Pyromania (’83) led to Poison’s success (in ’85), and Motley Crue’s shift from their KISS-inspired (’83) album Shout at the Devil to the more female friendly Theater of Pain (in ’85). The formula Def Leppard set (by selling 6 million albums at the time) was to release a hard rock single followed by a more radio friendly ballad led every 80s heavy metal act who followed, to include a more female friendly ballad. (This formula started before Def Leppard, but they appeared to reignite it.)

The book Nothin’ But a Good Time begins right about here. The book doesn’t mention the integral role that I think Def Leppard played, but after the success of Pyromania, every major label tried to sign their own version of Def Leppard/KISS between 1984 and 1988. Most metal bands signed during this era went gold (selling 500,000 units sold), and some went platinum (1,000,000 units sold) to multi-platinum. As evidence of how crazy this signing spree became, a member of a band called Bang Tango said, “We weren’t even a real band when we were signed, and we had to learn quickly.”

Were most of the 80s hair metal bands ridiculously excessive? Were they politically incorrect? Did they have the lyric “baby” in every song, at least once? Were they everything critics loathe? The answer is D, all of the above. No one cared. When I write that we didn’t care about the critics, that shouldn’t be limited to the “who cares what the critics think?” trope that bands drop about critics. I’m talking about genuine, almost total obliviousness. We may have dropped a “You know the critics hate these guys right?” To which, the other guy would say, “Really? No, I didn’t know that.” And that was the end of the discussion in the non-cerebral and non-political party we teenagers were all having for a majority of the mid-80s.

At some point, the party we were all having with the L.A.-based, hair metal, glam bands had to end. The definitions of when and how this happened differ, but it did end. Some bands were still being signed to major record companies, and in this book those bands said that they paid their dues, and they felt like they wrote a decent album, but the record company didn’t promote them the way they might have just two years prior. They claimed that they were just as talented, or more so, than other bands who made millions two years prior. They missed the signing spree, and the multi-platinum awards for any band who could string together a halfway decent heavy metal ballad. They missed the crucial money making part of the era by about two years.

For those of us who were young and easily-influenced teenagers during this era, the polished pop metal to heavy metal music they produced will always be “ours”. It seduced us into believing life could be fun, and that it could be one big party that doesn’t have to end. Logic dictates that everything must end, however, and there came a point when glam metal needed to die. An era defined by excess eventually became so excessive that it became a parody of itself, and those of us who once loved it developed a love/hate relationship that eventually came to an end when young, rock enthusiasts reminded us how fun the music from the era used to be. Even with that, however, some of the artists interviewed in the book Nothin’ But a Good Time now admit that it became obnoxiously excessive, and it had to die under its own weight. Someone had to come along and burn the field to prepare for the harvest of something different and new. These facts about life and art can be as hard to accept as they are to deny, but as the book states a number of the top-tier bands of that era have experienced a certain rebirth from younger crowds who missed it the first time around and older crowds who seek the nostalgia of the acts.

“Write jokes, get paid,” was the philosophy Jay Leno followed throughout his career in comedy. He also preached this to his fellow comedians who thought they could and should use comedy to change the world. “That’s all such nonsense.” Leno reportedly replied. “It’s all about write jokes, get paid.” The glam metal of the ’80s followed this philosophy. They wrote fun, little meaningless songs that they hoped young people would enjoy so much that they might run to their local record store and buy, and we did, by the millions. The music was not important, vital, or consequential, but those of us who lived through the era thought it as a lot of fun. When we comb through music timelines, with critics who write such things, we’ll never see them list our favorite artists on the “most influential artists of the eras” lists they write. Those of us who lived through the era know what a ridiculous time it was in music, in terms defined by music critics, but if we were to write a eulogy on the time period, we might say something like, “Was it a meaningless era that focused on a lot of dumb, superficial stuff? It was, but that was the kind of party we were having back then. Sorry, you missed it.”

Ruminations on Kafka

January 8, 2021December 31, 2024 RilalyLeave a comment

Reading Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis story is akin to eating a delicious sandwich. As with a couple of great sentences, one delicious slice of salami can define a sandwich. Others rely on the relationship fresh, crisp cuts of lettuce have with the other ingredients. As with a great sandwich, we can almost taste the craftsmanship of a great story. Those of us who never worked in the sandwich industry, don’t know the symbiotic relationship these ingredients should have with one another, but we know it when we taste it. Those of us who worked in the industry, and have an intimate level of familiarity with the art of the sandwich, know that even the perfect symbiosis of the freshest, most delicious ingredients don’t matter without great bread. The quality of the bread is the great divide between an average sandwich and a delicious one.

The consensus on author Franz Kafka is that his craftsmanship did not involve writing great sentences. His prose was characterized by a Stanley Corngold as “luminous plainness”. I understand the ambiguity of that description, but while I concede that there were very few, some of these were great ones. Anytime we read a great story, like Metamorphosis, our inclination is to add some “could’ve been, should’ve been” lines. Maybe that’s the egotistical writer in me, but I do that with most stories. Yet, every time we think of a great line, it doesn’t seem to fit quite right. Where would we add, what would we delete, and how would any of it improve the prose, the rhythm, and the setting of Metamorphosis? In the course of our imagined efforts, Kafka is unveiled, his economy of words, and the meticulous choreography of his story.

I would love to see some early drafts of Metamorphosis, just to see what Kafka added and deleted in the course of his revising and editing. Did he have great sentences in the first draft only to realize they damaged the otherwise “luminous plainness” feel of the story? Did Gregor Samsa’s family have greater, more comedic reactions to Gregor transformation into an Ungeziefer ‘a beast unfit for sacrifice’? Did he vie for greater entertainment in the story, or did Kafka have a religious zeal for the story’s mundane feel? My guess is that in the early drafts of this story, Kafka had to battle with an egotistical need to add something more to Metamorphosis to make it more, because we all live by the credo that more is always more. Did he initially have one of the characters make an incredibly insightful comment about humanity that illuminated us on how insightful Kafka was? Most authors cannot avoid the conceit of informing their readers how smart and brilliant they really are, and they do so by creating hyper intelligent, incredibly insightful, and unbelievably brilliant characters. In lesser hands, the characters always know, because the author knows, and we know, and neither of us wants to think anyone involved is dumb, uninformed, or stupid, because that might reflect poorly on us and the author. In the context of the lesser stories, some characters know things they couldn’t possibly know, but the author has spent so much time helping us relate to and identify with their character that if she doesn’t know it’s an incriminating comment from the author on her, and everything she’s about. It could also be twisted and mangled into the author’s thoughts on us. Is the author talking down to us, no, that character “only be playing” because it’s later revealed to us that she knew all along, because she’s an anointed intellect just like us, and the author.

Most people aren’t hilarious, charming, and wonderful people, yet we don’t really want to read about the characters who aren’t? We know this to be true, but in the ever-changing mind of the great author, some of the times story is sacred.

Were Kafka’s characters funnier, more charming, more compassionate, more wonderful, or more something that every author wants their readers to think of them in those initial drafts? My guess is that Kafka probably had hundreds of versions before it reached final form, and that final form of Metamorphosis we know today is an exhibition of ego-less restraint.

Great writers work through their strengths and weaknesses in pieces no one will ever see. Some of them learn that their path to a great story hinges on great sentences. Others find that the devotion to ideas and style pays greater dividends. Some might suggest this is an author finding their voice. They do so in the course of reading others, trying to duplicate them, and eventually realizing what their own greater strengths and weaknesses are.

I might be wrong, but I don’t think any reader will finish Metamorphosis with a “Holy Crud!” reaction. The reader might start the story in that vein, but Kafka diminishes the shock of a human transforming into an Ungeziefer with a level of choreographed reality the reader might find mundane. Thus, when we finish the story, it sits on a shelf in our mind like preserved meat, until we process and digest it, in the manner we will a great sandwich. It might take a while, it might take an incident, but at some point concept of the story will hit us, and we’ll realize what a unique, and uniquely crafted story it was.

Whenever we read a great story, like Metamorphosis, we seek a reference point, a doorway into the mind of the author. Most great stories are about us, in some tangential manner. Some stories are so foreign to our experience that we cannot find our point of reference, because we can’t possibly find ourselves in such a ludicrous story. The brilliance of Kafka is that his writing relies on an axis of narcissism and objectivity. Is it narcissist to believe that every story is about us, or is it narcissist to believe that none of them are? How do we define a great story? How does a great story define us? Do we know someone for whom the author speaks, and do we wish they would read Kafka to understand themselves a little better? How would they do that, what do we hope they might understand, and are our answers to those questions autobiographical?

To paraphrase author David Foster Wallace, readers should imagine a door when they approach a Kafka work. We seek a doorway into Kafka’s mind so that we can understand his works a little better. We seek a reference point, a point of entry. When we think we’ve found the doorway, we start “pounding and pounding, not just wanting admission but needing it, we don’t know what it is but we can feel it, this total desperation to enter, pounding and pushing and kicking, etc. That, finally, the door opens … and it opens outward: we’ve been inside what we wanted all along.”

One of the primary duties of every writer is to elicit emotion in the reader. How well they do this defines them. For one writer, it might be about the sentences, and for another it might be the idea that story is sacred. Some stories elicit instantaneous reactions, and some require some slow roasting. Some people don’t want to think too much. They want instant stories that provide a clear path from clear A to Z that culminate in an exciting conclusion. Millions of these books move from writer to reader, and the readers love them. Some of us prefer stories, like the ones Franz Kafka wrote, that reach in and fiddle with some different switches embedded deep in our psyche.

Kafka was an impersonal writer who chose to ground his greatest fantastical tale in reality. Prior to Kafka, and since him, most writers felt a need to form the basis for the fantastical with the fantastical. It just doesn’t seem realistic that something so uncommon should happen in a common home of common people. Kafka doesn’t fight against commonality in the manner some will by suggesting that the common can become uncommon. He chose to wrap his ingredients of “luminous plainness” in the idea and style, two slices of bread that made his story Metamorphosis historic.

The Pit Stops of Life

January 5, 2021March 30, 2021 RilalyLeave a comment

The Pit Stop

The destination is the destination of our planned vacation. We pack the belongings, the kid, and the dog with a destination in mind. When someone suggests that we take a pit stop, we say, “Why? We’re making good time here. At this rate, we should arrive at our destination by four p.m., with plenty of time to do much of what we planned.” The fun and frivolity we dreamed up, when we dreamed up this vacation, all took place at the final destination. Pit stops seem like a waste of the precious time we could spend having fun. The dilemma arrives when we arrive at our destination, and we have nothing to do for the first couple of hours.

“[He] never made pit stops,” a woman said of her now deceased husband. “He thought pit stops were a waste of time. He wanted to get there.”

Well, he’s there now, I thought of joking. He’s at his final destination. It would’ve been an awful, cruel joke. No one would’ve laughed, of course. No one would’ve so much as smiled. How many pit stops did he make to his final destination? Did he go quickly? He wasn’t the type to stop at a lakeside pit stop. “He wanted to get there.”

I didn’t say any of that, but in the midst of my scheme to drop that room-silencing, reputation damaging joke, I realized that I’m a no-pit-stops destination traveler too. I don’t stop to smell the flowers, look at a lake, or carpe diem the moment. I get there, wherever there is. I want to have fun, and I don’t want something like a pit stop to get in the way of it.

When we map out our vacation, it often involves lengthy travel times. Even on paper, we know we’re signing on for a long journey, even when they’re all interstate miles. It doesn’t get any better when we’re doing it. As the miles click by, it begins to feel like a Sisyphean trial of humanity to sit in a small car for that many hours in a row, and it doesn’t matter how large the interior of an automobile is, they all feel small after eight hours. The family might want to smell the flowers and look at a lake, but I’m the “Let’s just get there for all that’s holy. Let’s get this drive over” type of traveler.

The volume of the consensus breaks us down, however, and we take a pit stop. Their primary goal, after such long car ride, was to get out and stretch the legs a little, go to the bathroom, get the kid out of the car for a while, and let the dog pee. We’re not for it, but we strike a deal with those who are dying to get out of the car. We decide we won’t stay long. We’ll look at stuff, we’ll walk down to the lake and throw some stones in it. We’ll talk to some of the other people who made a similar pit stop, we’ll let the dog run around with whatever joy he always runs around in, and the kid can have some spontaneous kid fun. Then we’ll take that almost cinematic portrait with that crystal blue lake in our background, and we’ll all get back in the car for another three hours.

I don’t know if I needed the break more than I knew, but I was peaking at this particular pit stop. Some of the times, we have mental peaks, some of the times, we have physical ones, but every once in a great while they come together. Before we turn 25, our whole life is one peak after another. The only stories we tell involve those moments when we weren’t peaking. After 40, we are so impressed with our peaks that we tell everyone we know. Everything in between involves noticing peaks after the fact. I was peaking at that little pit stop. I was in the moment, the moment I stepped out of the car. I wasn’t thinking about the car ride ahead of us, how this pit stop might hamper our pre-planned schedule, or anything else for that matter. Once I stepped out of the car, I wanted to make this stupid, little pit stop as fun as it could possibly be.

We had so much fun at that little pit stop that it proved one of the best we have ever experienced on vacation. When we finally arrived at our proposed destination, we had all the fun we planned to have, and I remember that vacation as one of the better ones we’ve had. We may have spent four days at our proposed destination, and we only spent 30 minutes at that non-commercial pit stop, but the time we spent there will forever stick out in my memory.

City on a Hill

I love a great line. A great line can make a movie (90 minutes long, on average) or a series (roughly 47 minutes per episode, with ten episodes on average) seem worth it. Anyone who reads this will probably say that it says a lot about me, but my favorite lines are the obnoxiously offensive and repugnant lines of vulgar cruelty. Some heart-warming, positive lines, reach me, but nothing causes me to pause and rewind more than an awful line from an awful character.

I also prefer shows and movies that depict people doing and saying awful things to one another. There are exceptions, of course, as some shows are awful for the sole purpose of being awful. The great shows, about awful people doing awful things to one another, The Sopranos, Breaking Bad, and Mad Men always managed to preserve some relatable integrity in their characters while doing and saying awful things to other characters. We learn to cheer the main characters on, and when they did awful things to other characters, we cheer that on too.

The Showtime series City on a Hill is not as great as those shows, of course, but it did have one great, repugnant, moment of vulgar cruelty.

“I can hear it now. The eulogies, the hymns, the bagpipes, everyone forgetting what a lousy piece of [dung] you’ve been your entire life,” the Jackie Rohr character says to his rival J.R. Minogue, on an episode of the TV show City on a Hill. The Minogue character lies in the ambulance, and we know he’s not going to live long enough to see the hospital. We know Rohr’s cruel sendoff will be the final thing the Minogue character hears. “Your wife’s going to be upset [after you die] for about five minutes, and I will … eventually, but this should be a comfort to both of us. There’s no hell. There’s only this life, right here, right now, and the last thing that you’re going to see in your lousy life is my ugly face.”

Seconds before this scene, Rohr eagerly leapt into the ambulance that carried J.R. Minogue, before the EMTs could close the door. We know this scene. We’ve seen it all before. The main character, a law enforcement official, leaps into the ambulance to hold a fellow cop’s hand, as the man succumbs to death. Even though they’re bitter rivals, Minogue’s a fellow cop, and that goes along way to forming some solidarity between the two. That’s the typical scene, in the typical cop movie, but the writers of City on a Hill had other plans for Rohr. They have him mock his rival on his deathbed, and he lays into Minogue with vulgar cruelty.

Ever since Sopranos, and perhaps beyond, viewers have come to accept the idea that their favorite main characters on their favorite productions can be morally ambiguous, if not downright awful people. Through a dizzying array of scenes, we accept the idea that Jackie Rohr is one such character. Yet, what motivates this character to be this spiteful? We’re to read into it. We’re to wonder if we could ever be that spiteful. We’ve all had people we dislike in a competitive manner, and we dislike others in a more personal manner, but have we ever hated someone so much that we wanted to taunt them into death? Most of us haven’t. I obviously considered this scene an interesting nugget to chew on, and I wanted a more thorough psychological exploration of why, or how, even a Jackie Rohr could be that spiteful and that hateful. Scenes like these remind me why I prefer books to movies.

We understand that when Rohr says, “This should be a comfort to both of us. There’s no hell,” he does so to inform the viewers that he knows that he’s as awful as J.R. Minogue is. That line sets up the next line well, but after I paused the series at that point and rewound it a number of times, I thought up a better line.

“There is no heaven, and there is no hell. There’s no such thing as an afterlife.” If the writers seek spite, this might be an altogether different level of spite, because as awful as J.R. Minogue apparently was, he likely tried to counter those evil deeds with some good ones throughout his life. It might be even more spiteful to inform him that those good deeds he performed, and any other attempts Minogue made at good and honest living, were a waste of time, because “there is no heaven.”

Rohr then alluded to the idea that his main point for jumping in the ambulance was to make sure that Minogue’s loved ones weren’t the faces he remembered. Rohr wanted his face, Minogue’s most hated rival, to be the last face he saw. I see the writer(s) working here. I know that they’re vying for one of the more spiteful moments in TV history, but if there is no afterlife, and J.R. Minogue turns to dust, there will be no way for Minogue to remember the final moments that Rohr hoped to ruin. He’ll turn to non-existence, and Rohr’s awful sentiments will die as soon as Minogue does. A better line might have been, “There is an afterlife, and we don’t know where you’re going yet, but if they somehow determine in their mysterious ways, that a piece of [dung] like you is worthy of eternal paradise, I’m here to ruin all that for you by providing you your own personal definition of hell, knowing that my ugly face was the last thing you saw in your time spent on Earth.”

I read an interesting complaint regarding individuals who follow religious philosophies. The complainant suggested that religious people fail to appreciate their lives on earth as much as they should, because they place inordinate focus on achieving eternal paradise in the next life. Whether there is an afterlife or not, even if it involves a level of paradise beyond our wildest imagination, something tells me that we’ll look back on our lives on earth with some regret if we don’t make more time to enjoy the pit stops in life, en route to our final destination.