#ed helms

Jet: I’m not really a hugger.
Jet: *learns there is a hit out on Elliot*

Season 6: Episode 2 (The Meeting)

Perfect scene setting:

AsAndy confesses he wants Erin back, only part of the Dunder Mifflin sign is visible…

“I can’t help but wonder about my fate”

Stoner comedies get a bad rap - and deservedly so. While the vast majority of these movies (Dude, Where’s My Car?, the Harold and Kumar series, etc.) play these drug-induced capers for cheap laughs (“duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude”), Jeff, Who Lives At Home, the new film from Jay and Mark Duplass, takes a far more realistic approach to drug use, creating a surprisingly charming and affecting subversion of the stoner sub-genre.

Jeff, Who Lives At Home follows the titular Jeff, a thirty year old man-child living in the basement of his mother’s house, whose only real interests are smoking weed, and his favourite movie, M Night Shyamalan’s Signs. His love for this film dominates his view of the world - everything he sees is construed as a sign, and these signs, when he finally decides to follow them, lead him to a variety of personal triumphs, as well a mystery involving a man named Kevin.

The most impressive element of the film is the characterisation of Jeff. On paper, and in many lesser films, Jeff would be someone to laugh at - his brother’s initial reaction to Jeff’s personality could be construed as a comment on this - but here he’s more than that: he’s interesting, caring, and, most of all, he’s incredibly kind hearted.

It’s this kindness that lends Jeff, Who Lives At Home its charm. By creating such a complex, hippie-ish, and interesting central character in Jeff, the Duplass brothers have achieved the feat of creating a profoundly heartfelt (and quietly hilarious) movie about a jobless thirty year old man-child living in his mother’s basement smoking weed all day trying to find his destiny.

And that kind of thing doesn’t happen by accident.

Forever salty over how writers DESTROYS character developments and relationships whenever an actor or actress has to leave a show suddenly.