Letter to Myself :: Vol. 1
The following was written and saved via Google Docs two years ago.
“What’s good bro?”
Ain’t shit. Thinking bout Pete and Pete.
The Adventures Of Pete And Pete :: Season 2, Episode 8 :: “X = Why?”
(http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/the-adventures-of-pete-and-pete-x-why-67545)
Synopsis:
“As it turns out, Ellen Hickle isn’t such a golden child after all. Sure, to date she’s been in band, tried hard on tests, made action figures of her dad, and been pretty darn cool, but in “X=Why?,” Ellen finally rebels against authority. Granted, she still does it with her shirt tucked in and hair perfectly coiffed—all while still within the confines of the normal school day—but rebellion is rebellion all the same.
Not unlike almost every kid ever, Ellen hates math. More specifically, Ellen hates algebra word problems. She—rightfully so—doesn’t see when she’ll ever have to know how long it takes Farmer John to collect X eggs or how fast two different trains have to be going to arrive at the same destination simultaneously. It surely doesn’t help that her teacher, Miss Fingerwood, comes up with the looniest, most rambling problems—though as a viewer, that’s much appreciated.
One day, Ellen snaps, asking the one question no teacher ever wants to hear: “Why?” Why do kids need to know Latin? Why do we all need to know in-depth information about mitosis and pottery? No one even speaks Latin anymore. Why, Ellen wants to know, do she and the rest of her classmates have to know how to solve a word problem? Has Miss Fingerwood ever used a word problem to solve a real problem in her own life?
The teacher, as it turns out, once figured out the temperature of mud by walking in some high boots and doing something with suction but, as Ellen asks, why didn’t she just use a thermometer? Why, when polar ice caps are melting, rainforests are being cut down, and life is made up of precious few fleeting seconds? Why bother doing anything that doesn’t really matter?
Ellen’s learning revolt takes the school by storm, throwing the teachers lounge into turmoil and leading to the systematic destruction of substitute teacher after substitute teacher, from Mr. Zank (played by Violent Femmes’ Gordon Gano) to a Ms. Richter, who gets so befuddled she cleans the chalk off the board with her face. She even trumps the ominous Mr. Shrek, who reportedly has not only a license to teach but a license to kill.
Meanwhile, Miss Fingerwood’s struggling to find her niche. She gets fired from her gig as a bingo caller because she spends too much time talking about the numbers (“39. It’s curvy, yet so form-fitting. Functional, yet so alive. So full of grace, dignity. Oh, 39.”) Pete and Ellen go to see her at her new job as a movie-theater ticket taker, but she’s clearly a shell of her former self.
After Ellen bests the last, most potent sub—her dad—she starts to realize that there’s a human cost to revolution. After finding out Miss Fingerwood’s about to sail off into oblivion forever, she takes back all her questioning and uses a word problem to figure out where the math teacher is leaving from and when. She also makes up with her dad, who doesn’t mind her rebellion, saying that Ellen was just “exercising [her] power of expression,” which is a “very valuable trait to employers… and dads.”
Ultimately, the whole gang makes up and Miss Fingerwood is back on the job. She’s taking a new approach to her word problems, though, skewing them toward real life problem solving about carbon emissions and global warming. It’s a nice ending, if not a profound one.
“X=Why?” is actually a really nice, pleasant episode. Written and directed by Katherine Dieckmann, it’s an episode that both impresses the importance of asking questions on viewers while still saying, “Hey, kids. Sometimes you just have to do stuff you don’t like.” It’s not a very fun lesson, but it’s one everyone has to learn all the same.”
I’m twenty-eight. This episode must have stuck with me for more than two decades.
Groupthink:
“Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome.”
The point is to constantly questions things. Everything. I entered into a world where various version of happiness and success are is so heavily marketed and conditioned into people’s way of thinking. It’s easy to buy into what powerful people deem as normal or status quo.
Like my homie Doug would say, “You gotta think BIG!” We’re bigger and better than the status quo. Love is BIG. Peace is BIG. Questioning ways to create the best quality of life for all people on Earth is BIG! Let’s keep questioning the humanitarianism of our lifestyles and life system: economic and politics. Question it all for the purpose of digging deeper than the surface.
