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However... the fundamental problem undermining series 1 is still there. And that problem is this: Andy Millman serves as both Tim and Brent. Gervais wants us to laugh and cringe at Millman as we did at Brent, but he also wants to be the touchstone, the straight man, the normal guy, and Millman serves that same role.
So in this episode we had Millman as the sort of fool who would give £20 to a homeless man for good publicity ~ self-serving, hypocritical, selfconscious, false, ludicrous ~ and who would bribe his friend to ask for an autograph. The latter scene would have worked precisely with Brent in the same position (and Dawn forced to pay him compliments), and as Gervais isn't actually much of an actor, always apparently playing someone very much like his persona in interviews as Ricky Gervais, the whole performance in terms of Millman's mannerisms, his voice, his toadying, false modesty, eyebrow-waggling, grimacing and so on could have been a deleted scene from The Office.
On the other hand, we have Millman as the long-suffering straight man while all his friends go ape over "BOOBIES" on a calculator ~ Millman with his head down, almost exchanging pleading glances with us (as he would have as Tim). In these scenes (like the one with Chegwin last week) Gervais wants to be the only sane, adult character in the room, the one we identify with while cringing at the others.
In The Office, Gervais as awful clown and Gervais as straight-man hero were split across two characters. In Extras, we're asked to see Millman as a sympathetic, long-suffering, sincere and mature person in contrast to his milieu, and then to laugh at his failed pretensions and self-deceptions. It's like having Polly and Basil Fawlty in the same character.
That, to me, is the key fracture that ultimately makes Extras a failure as a project ~ a very, very funny show at times, but just without ... conceptual and character integrity.
(The other big problem is, as suggested above, the stretching of the show's "realism" ~ breaking out of The Office's perfect ensemble cast of regulars means you have cameos from people who sometimes perform way too broad, and the introduction of David Bowie doing a piano number in a club is glorious for the Dame's fans but totally breaks the terms of realism that the show established in its earlier scenes with Millman in his flat or on the local streets.) |
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