Disjointed

Disjointed was added to Netflix on August 25th (yesterday). I chose it due to seeing the light it would portray medical marijuana in and if it was going to be more of a sitcom or documentary. From the opening, it was clear it was going to be a sitcom. The opening scene was shown through the recording of a commercial for the dispensary. While you could tell it was a commercial and being recorded, the characters made direct eye contact with the camera as well as used a laugh track which made it feel glitchy, cheesy and awkward. The lighting that they used throughout was an interesting choice as it is very bright and well lit throughout all scenes. I would have expected it to change with the scenes and the mood they were going for with each scene, but it stayed bright the entire episode. The theme song was a complete 180 degrees from the remainder of the episode. It featured older music and a black and white scenes of people smoking from multiple old movies.

After reading about camera angles this week, I mainly focused on them as I was watching this pilot episode, to see how they influenced the plot and viewer emotions. Multiple times I caught them influencing my interpretation of a scene. In conversations, the camera cuts back and forth between the people in the conversation, but tends to focus more on the people who are being spoken to. This makes sense as you see their face and emotion to what’s being said to them and their reaction helps guide how the producers want you to feel. At the beginning, a mom, Maria, comes in and is very frantic and emotional about her experience with being at the dispensary. Ruth takes a position of authority in the way that she sits above Maria on the couch. The camera angle also strengthens this, as it looks down on Maria, and up at Ruth. Camera angle is used again to manipulate the feeling of conversation between an Asian girl, Jenny and a guy growing weed, Pete. Jenny has just lied to her mom about where she is and what she is doing, telling her she is in medical school dissecting a cadaver. After this conversation, the conversation between Pete and Jenny evolves into more of a lecture feeling as she is high as the camera is looking down on her and Pete is chastising her.

As Ruth and her son, Travis talk about business plan and future, camera angles are prevalent again. Ruth is seated through their conversation, and Travis starts to discuss his ideas with her, he gets on her level to try and make her feel at ease. As Ruth rejects him, Travis stands up to tower over her. The camera is looking down on Ruth and up at Travis as he is talking about industry and making her business more successful. Ruth is reluctant to change and appears older and is made smaller by the camera angles as Travis talks about big business and his dreams for the company.

A majorly interesting scene in this episode is an animated scene about post traumatic stress disorder. It was very mesmerizing, with scenes that are intricate and complex. There were many flashbacks to the security guard, Carter’s time in Iraq intermixed with aspects of his life such as images of his home and his date falling apart. Instead of simple narration with this, they used flowing words with rhythm, much like slam poetry. The whole thing was hard to take your eyes off but also hard to focus on what you were hearing and seeing, giving way to how people living with post traumatic stress disorder feel daily.

Multiple stereotypes were prevalent throughout the show. The mom, Maria had a stereotypical reason for medical marijuana--that her kids and husband were too much and left her wanting to drive her minivan into a lake. The commercial for marijuana was very stereotypical. It was almost identical to every beer and “manly” commercial on television. The subtle use of the Coors Light logo for the logo of “Kush” reinforced that feeling. The weed grower, Pete, approached everything with a scientific undertone, but at the same time wore a “drug rug”, a sweater popularized by stoners.

Overall I was intrigued by the show, as fake and cheesy as many aspects were. I plan on watching a few more episodes just to see how the characters and plot develop.