Eddie Cahill #5: Charismatic Brilliance

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Just thinking, does this mean we may get a Flack-free episode when Eddie is on paternity leave?
 
Nothing wrong with The Chipmunks but thinking of mini Eddie's talking like them just gives me the creeps. Fleeing the mental image of Chipmunk mini Eddie's sent me crashing into the truly terrifying thought of mini Eddie Oompa Loompa's... SINGING! :eek:
 
Hmm, looks like she's pregnant. Congratulations to the couple!:D

Eddie's kids will be too cute.:p I'm sure he'll make a great daddy.:lol:
 
AppleJack said:
A Flack-free episode? I object!
Click to expand...

So do I!! So far its been a fairly Flack-light seson considering all that happened with him during the season 5 finale!!! A few Flack-less episodes and I might as well quite watching!!!
 
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Congrats to the new mom and dad! Perhaps they filmed some of Flack's scenes in advance, in order for him to take some much deserved time off to spend with the new baby :thumbsup:

This is a special time and I'm sure he will want to enjoy every moment of it......midnight feedings, diapers, and all :lol:
 
Hey!!!!! I've been here before?!?!?!?!!

It has been awhile since I have roamed the halls of Charismatic Brilliance but as for the Wonder of the hall.....I have so not forgotten!!! :D

Real life has stepped in and once again put a spin on stuff. It was as if the box of stuff hit me on the head and laughed as I tried to figure out the :censored: was going on. The worst was to have my 22 yr old cat put to sleep. Tailspin, nose dive, going under, and emotionally draining. Needless to say I'm a very messy crier. It is not a pretty sight to see me cry. It was worse when I was at work and would just bust out in tears. I'm not sure who was more traumatized the residents or my co-workers! But alas....some time has passed but it still hurts. Although I must add that some CSI:NY and some Flack time did help.

Full moons, pun intended, and the :censored: :censored: :censored: DEA's recent laws on Scheduled II medications sort of was the icing on the cake. I work in long term care and every medicine has to have a doctors signature. Hey..I'm bright enough to know that. In one 12hr shift I think I sat down for ummm...60 mins. I had a resident who was actively dying of brain cancer. The doctor had not signed an order for Roxinal earlier that afternoon. The man was in PAIN. So I'm on the phone to the doctor, pharmacy, hospice for the whole night. I stressed to these people that I need that Roxinal like 2 seconds ago. Here is the kicker of it all. We have E boxes for such instances as this. There is Roxinal in that Ebox. It was in my reach and I could not use it. Why? I need a doctors signature faxed to the pharmacy before I could use the Ebox supply! DEA put the new rules into effect on Oct 1. How frustrating it was that I could not comfort that resident with the pain medication he so needed and it was right at my fingertips! By the end of shift, I had broken down in tears of frustration and anger. Found out later that morning the Roxinal arrived, that was Friday morning. He passed away Monday morning.

So I'm spending some time leafing through the boards and catching up on things. Might take some time...but it will be worth it!!!

I had downloaded a pic of Flack to my Blackberry and told my coworkers that if you continue to give me a hard time, they love to give me a hard time, that Flack would fix their clocks. One of my female coworkers reply was....."Oh.....that is nice!" Guess it won't work on everyone!!! :lol: Maybe it shouldn't have been a pic of Flack smiling.........:confused:

I apologize for getting carried away. On I go to discover what has been going on in this place!!!!
 
I finally watched The Narrows. I'd been procrastinating because Vincent D'Onofrio's thespian gruntings aren't my idea of a good time, but I eventually succumbed to the lure of seeing Eddie Cahill as someone other than Mr. Nice Guy. In that, I wasn't disappointed, though Eddie still exuded a heartbreaking vulnerability in his role as a heroin-addicted Iraq War veteran who ends up working for the local mob boss as a driver in a car service.

There isn't a lot of violence as far as mob movies go. There's a beating and Eddie's death by acid and a throat-slitting, but there are no shotgun blasts or bullet-spewing machine-gun firefights or broken kneecaps. The bleak atmosphere and drama are achieved through the tension between the poor neighborhood from which Mike(our protagonist, though I submit he's no hero) comes and the affluent, yuppie college world of which he so desperately wants to be a part. No one is particularly likeable here. The ostensible hero is a whiny, emo candyass who winds up working for the mob in order to pay his tuition. He displays the common sense of a turnip by agreeing to ferry packages to Oyster Bay for $2,000 a week. He cheats on his nagging, stereotypically Brooklyn girlfriend with an upper-middle-class Manhattan brat who thinks nothing of spending summers in Italy. He protests the repossession of a television from a poor family, but doesn't actually refuse to participate in said repossession. When Nicky Shades(Eddie) bursts into the car service with a gun and threatens to kill the mob boss for ruining his neighborhood, Mike sides with the mobsters and talks the high, desperate, broken-hearted Nicky down, effectively ensuring his ugly demise. When Nicky is cornered by the mobsters in a dark alley, our resident genius points him out to his pursuers and then sits uselessly in the car until he hears Nicky scream, at which point, he grabs a gun, leaps from the car, and rushes into the alley, only to discover that Nicky has been doused in acid and is dying a slow, agonizing death. Nicky begs him to "help him go," and he obliges by putting a bullet in his head. He does not, however, shoot Nicky's killer, despite a lot of gun-waving and crying and empty threats. I know I was supposed to like and pity Mike, but I couldn't. If you truly care for your friend, you don't drive the mobsters around the neighborhood looking for him, nor do you point him out to his killers. You don't wait in the car while they pour acid on his face. You don't scream empty threats. You use the gun to put a bullet in both mobsters, and if you're too late to save your friend, you put a bullet into his murder's face. Mike is keen on being hard done by but seldom accepts his responsibility for the choices he made. He could've refused the Oyster Bay runs, could've let Lou refuse to give Nicky a job, could've chosen a less expensive college. But he wanted to be the Big Damn Hero and have it all exactly how and when he wanted it. Just because you have a dream, that doesn't guarantee you the right to attain it in the flashiest manner possible, or at all. I don't really blame him for getting Nicky a job at the car service; he was just trying to do a good turn for a childhood friend. I do blame him for siding with the mobsters when Nicky burst in with a gun. Had he sided with Nicky and shot the mobsters, Nicky might have survived. He chose to side with the money, and it cost Nicky his life. And poor Nicky. What a mess. He came back from the war with a bad leg and a vicious heroin addiction. He comes home with a head full of disillusionment to discover that the neighborhood he'd been fighting for had been corrupted by the mob. He'd gone from a local hero who was going to make it out to a hired thug repossessing televisions in front of crying children. It's interesting to note that while he has no compunction about upsetting the children by taking the television("Trust me, when I kicked in doors in Fallujah, they lost a lot more than a fuckin' TV"), he's disgusted when he sees the repossessed TV tossed carelessly behind the car service, its screen cracked. "Look at that," he says. "What a fuckin' waste. Fuckin' Lou, ruinin' the goddamn neighborhood." He was happy to repossess the television when he thought it would be re-rented, but once he realized the mobsters had taken the television because they could, he was bitter and disgusted. If you were a pointy-headed swot with an analysis kink, you could claim that the television repossession was a metaphor for his service in Afghanistan. By far the most poignant scene in the movie is the one in which he injects heroin between his toes while Mike watches and his pregnant girlfriend sleeps. "Don't you think you should stop before the kid comes? You survived. You made it back. You don't want to die here. Sal says that when you die in Brooklyn, God says fuck you." "God already told me 'fuck you," Nicky says, and injects the heroin between his toes just as his heavily-pregnant girlfriend waddles into the living room. "Take our picture," he tells Mike the aspiring photographer. "Isn't she beautiful? Look at that big belly. G'on, take our picture, Mike. We can show it to the kid someday. Mike takes the picture while a very high Nicky kisses his tired girlfriend. Nicky is so wrecked, so damaged, and you know you should be disgusted by his addiction, but Eddie imbues the scene with such an old, delirious tenderness and fragile optimism that you can't help but ache for all of them. For Mike, who sees what his childhood friend and idol has become, for Luz, the pregnant girlfriend, who's stopped asking about his habit, and for Nicky, who's trying so hard to forget. I'm still not sure why Nicky burst into the mob boss' lair with a gun. He was obviously high, but I think he was motivated by regret, self-loathing, and fear for his unborn child. If the neighborhood was this bad now, how bad would it be when his child was born? I think he was trying to atone for his involvement in the television repossession. He was tired of being used to do other people's dirty work. "You wanted to be me? I wanted to be you, so do it, Mike. Do it. Please, Mike. Please?" he begs when Mike threatens to shoot him. In a twisted way, he was trying to do right by his child. He couldn't shake the smack, but he could try to make his neighborhood a little safer. Unfortunately, he can't bring himself to shoot before Mike sides with the mobsters, and so it's the beginning of the end for him."]There isn't a lot of violence as far as mob movies go. There's a beating and Eddie's death by acid and a throat-slitting, but there are no shotgun blasts or bullet-spewing machine-gun firefights or broken kneecaps. The bleak atmosphere and drama are achieved through the tension between the poor neighborhood from which Mike(our protagonist, though I submit he's no hero) comes and the affluent, yuppie college world of which he so desperately wants to be a part.

No one is particularly likeable here. The ostensible hero is a whiny, emo candyass who winds up working for the mob in order to pay his tuition. He displays the common sense of a turnip by agreeing to ferry packages to Oyster Bay for $2,000 a week. He cheats on his nagging, stereotypically Brooklyn girlfriend with an upper-middle-class Manhattan brat who thinks nothing of spending summers in Italy. He protests the repossession of a television from a poor family, but doesn't actually refuse to participate in said repossession. When Nicky Shades(Eddie) bursts into the car service with a gun and threatens to kill the mob boss for ruining his neighborhood, Mike sides with the mobsters and talks the high, desperate, broken-hearted Nicky down, effectively ensuring his ugly demise. When Nicky is cornered by the mobsters in a dark alley, our resident genius points him out to his pursuers and then sits uselessly in the car until he hears Nicky scream, at which point, he grabs a gun, leaps from the car, and rushes into the alley, only to discover that Nicky has been doused in acid and is dying a slow, agonizing death. Nicky begs him to "help him go," and he obliges by putting a bullet in his head. He does not, however, shoot Nicky's killer, despite a lot of gun-waving and crying and empty threats.

I know I was supposed to like and pity Mike, but I couldn't. If you truly care for your friend, you don't drive the mobsters around the neighborhood looking for him, nor do you point him out to his killers. You don't wait in the car while they pour acid on his face. You don't scream empty threats. You use the gun to put a bullet in both mobsters, and if you're too late to save your friend, you put a bullet into his murder's face. Mike is keen on being hard done by but seldom accepts his responsibility for the choices he made. He could've refused the Oyster Bay runs, could've let Lou refuse to give Nicky a job, could've chosen a less expensive college. But he wanted to be the Big Damn Hero and have it all exactly how and when he wanted it. Just because you have a dream, that doesn't guarantee you the right to attain it in the flashiest manner possible, or at all.

I don't really blame him for getting Nicky a job at the car service; he was just trying to do a good turn for a childhood friend. I do blame him for siding with the mobsters when Nicky burst in with a gun. Had he sided with Nicky and shot the mobsters, Nicky might have survived. He chose to side with the money, and it cost Nicky his life.

And poor Nicky. What a mess. He came back from the war with a bad leg and a vicious heroin addiction. He comes home with a head full of disillusionment to discover that the neighborhood he'd been fighting for had been corrupted by the mob. He'd gone from a local hero who was going to make it out to a hired thug repossessing televisions in front of crying children. It's interesting to note that while he has no compunction about upsetting the children by taking the television("Trust me, when I kicked in doors in Fallujah, they lost a lot more than a fuckin' TV"), he's disgusted when he sees the repossessed TV tossed carelessly behind the car service, its screen cracked. "Look at that," he says. "What a fuckin' waste. Fuckin' Lou, ruinin' the goddamn neighborhood." He was happy to repossess the television when he thought it would be re-rented, but once he realized the mobsters had taken the television because they could, he was bitter and disgusted. If you were a pointy-headed swot with an analysis kink, you could claim that the television repossession was a metaphor for his service in Afghanistan.

By far the most poignant scene in the movie is the one in which he injects heroin between his toes while Mike watches and his pregnant girlfriend sleeps. "Don't you think you should stop before the kid comes? You survived. You made it back. You don't want to die here. Sal says that when you die in Brooklyn, God says fuck you."

"God already told me 'fuck you," Nicky says, and injects the heroin between his toes just as his heavily-pregnant girlfriend waddles into the living room. "Take our picture," he tells Mike the aspiring photographer. "Isn't she beautiful? Look at that big belly. G'on, take our picture, Mike. We can show it to the kid someday. Mike takes the picture while a very high Nicky kisses his tired girlfriend.

Nicky is so wrecked, so damaged, and you know you should be disgusted by his addiction, but Eddie imbues the scene with such an old, delirious tenderness and fragile optimism that you can't help but ache for all of them. For Mike, who sees what his childhood friend and idol has become, for Luz, the pregnant girlfriend, who's stopped asking about his habit, and for Nicky, who's trying so hard to forget.

I'm still not sure why Nicky burst into the mob boss' lair with a gun. He was obviously high, but I think he was motivated by regret, self-loathing, and fear for his unborn child. If the neighborhood was this bad now, how bad would it be when his child was born? I think he was trying to atone for his involvement in the television repossession. He was tired of being used to do other people's dirty work.

"You wanted to be me? I wanted to be you, so do it, Mike. Do it. Please, Mike. Please?" he begs when Mike threatens to shoot him. In a twisted way, he was trying to do right by his child. He couldn't shake the smack, but he could try to make his neighborhood a little safer. Unfortunately, he can't bring himself to shoot before Mike sides with the mobsters, and so it's the beginning of the end for him.

It would've been just another forgettable, navel-gazing, pretentious borefest if Eddie hadn't infused it with a grace note of humanity and empathy.

B-
 
Ditto La Guera. Were it not for Nicky Shades, I probably would have stopped watching half way thru The Narrows. I just didn't care enough about the other characters to stick around till the end.

Eddie's portrayal of Nicky was spot-on. It was heartbreaking and painful to watch him (the character), but it was impossible to turn away.
 
I was so excited when i watched the narrows!! He does an absolutely fantastic job in bringing a new york guy to a new york film, I love Nicky Shades and Eddie as Nicky shade simply bitchen!
 
Looks like I have to watch The Narrows when I get the chance then. Eddie seems to be the only reason to why I am going to watch it, but who can blame me? ;)
 
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