MINNIE AND ROMAN CASTEVET IN ROSEMARY’S BABY
It’s often said that New Yorkers don’t know their neighbours, even
though they’re literally surrounded by them. But New Yorkers probably
have extremely good reasons for ignoring the people next door – a
neighbour might be a murderer (see Rear Window), or, in the case of
Rosemary’s Baby, all your neighbours might be members of a coven
of Satan worshippers who want to use your body as a vessel for the
devil’s offspring. There’s an uncertainty throughout Rosemary’s Baby
as to whether Rosemary’s suspicion of her neighbours – the eccentric
Castevets and their band of predatory pals – is well-founded and true,
or whether she’s losing her grip on reality. As Guy, her unsupportive
husband, likes to say: Rosemary has “the pre-partum crazies”. While the
movie’s ending seems to suggest Rosemary’s supernatural suspicions
ARE true, it might equally suggest that her paranoia has completely
overwhelmed her. Either way, the moral is: never move to New York.
...................
COSMO KRAMER IN SEINFELD
Some time around Seinfeld’s fourth season – right when the show
realised it could become the very best sitcom that ever was – someone
told the studio audience to shoosh. Up until that point, there had been
a loud ‘yay’, or a whoop, or a spontaneous clap every time Kramer
opened a door, fell over, cracked a joke, or stood there doing not very
much at all. People were wild about Kramer. They didn’t even pretend
to like the other characters as much, even though Elaine clearly rules.
It’s hard to know what people saw in him: was it the gravity-defying
hair? The hot tub? The constant falling down? Kramer is also a
TERRIBLE neighbour – he likes to go into Jerry’s apartment without
permission and help himself to food, or Tupperware, or whatever else
might be lying around. Good thing I wasn’t in the audience, I guess,
because I probably wouldn’t have stopped booing.
STEVE URKEL IN FAMILY MATTERS
If a psychiatrist ever showed me an Urkel-shaped inkblot to try
and understand my squiggly brain, I would probably associate it
with words like ‘suspenders’, ‘nasal’, ‘nerd’. Chewing my fingers,
I would nervously tell the shrink about that one episode where
regular Steve Urkel – such a daffy dork – was suddenly transformed
into SEXY ‘Stefan Urquelle’, and why do I even remember this, do
you think it means something? Oh, oh, and then there was Urkel’s
over-the-top infatuation with his neighbour, Laura Winslow! That’s
a bit creepy, right? I mean, this has to explain something, RIGHT?
The psychiatrist would then say “no” and politely ask me to go away,
because they cannot help me with my weird problems. There’s no
cure for ‘every inkblot looks like Steve Urkel or some other 1990s
sitcom character’, so I’d better just learn to live with it, I guess....................
NED FLANDERS IN THE SIMPSONS
If I had to choose between living next door to the Flanders family
(those God-fearing and eternally cheerful dweebs) or the Simpsons
(the well-meaning and impulsive chaos-mongers), I would
probably choose the Simpsons. They’re just a bit... bouncier. The
Flandersesess (I don’t know what the plural is, sorry) eat liver
for dinner and like it. Family patriarch Ned’s idea of a very crazy
night is a white wine spritzer. He also has a habit of adding ‘diddly’
and ‘doodly’ to his words at random. Some of The Simpsons’ best
episodes are ones where kind-hearted Ned is allowed to forget
about the rules for just a minute and relax and have a bit of fun.
Unfortunately for Ned, a ‘fun’ episode usually involves something
horrible happening to him, like the time a hurricane hit his house,
or he accidentally committed bigamy in Vegas, or the Leftorium –
his store specialising in products for left-handers – went bankrupt.rowena grant-frost talks us through
some famous on-screen neighbours.
the folks
next door
popcorn