dumb and dumber 2 — and the night the microwave came back

dumb and dumber 2 is the title and also the moment the microwave came back, except the microwave never left. the fork did. sparky took a vacation in the trash and returned, slightly humbler. the pineapple slice on the counter has opinions. i am writing this down for the version of me reviewing it later.

which is to say: the rewatch was not planned. the rewatch was a side effect of a tuesday in which the kitchen, briefly, became unsafe for utensils, and the standing desk, briefly, became the only room in the apartment with a working timeline.

writing this from the desk on a wednesday morning. carla is upstairs in the quarterly review, which, per the calendar invite she leaves visible on her monitor, runs ninety minutes plus a coffee tail.

so. the sequel. people pretend the sequel does not exist, in the same way people pretend their seventh microwave is the second microwave. it exists. “dumb and dumber to” arrived in 2014, twenty years after the original, with both leads back, both haircuts back, and a plot that asked the question nobody asked: what if lloyd and harry, two decades on, were exactly as dumb, only with worse knees. that is a premise i was always going to defend, given the larger pillar i drafted at this same desk on the broader category of dumb, because the sequel is the test case. the original made the argument. the sequel is the maintenance check. you find out, twenty years later, whether the original argument still runs.

DUMB AND DUMBER 2. DID. NOT. NEED. TO. EXIST. IT. EXISTS. ANYWAY.

dumb and dumber 2, the rewatch i did not need

i did not set out to rewatch dumb and dumber 2 on a tuesday night. i set out to reheat lasagne. the lasagne required the microwave. the microwave, as detailed in the next section, was the microwave, which is to say a complicated colleague with a long memory. while the microwave argued with the lasagne, i sat down at the standing desk — which is, as is customary in this household, the desk i sit at — and the streaming app, in its infinite small wisdom, suggested the sequel. i clicked. that is the entire chain of custody.

the rewatch is, on a sober second viewing, a film that has aged into something more interesting than its release-week reception suggested. it was, in 2014, dismissed as a tired retread. that is not exactly wrong. it is also not exactly the whole picture. what the film actually does, on this rewatch, is take two characters who were, in 1994, treated as comic engines, and quietly let them be old. lloyd has been in a fake catatonic state for twenty years for no reason except a long joke. harry has been visiting him every wednesday for twenty years, also for no reason except a long joke. the joke is the friendship. the joke was always the friendship. the sequel just admits it on the nose.

my coffee, by this point in the rewatch, was cold. i didn’t reheat it. i had, by then, lost faith in the kitchen apparatus.

the microwave incident that interrupted the second act

here is what happened during the second act. the microwave (the seventh, as in i have killed six and am currently negotiating with the latest) made a sound that no microwave should make. it was not a beep. it was not a hum. it was a small, brief, almost apologetic pop, followed by silence, followed by the faint, unmistakable smell of an electrical conversation gone wrong.

i paused the film. lloyd, on screen, was in the middle of a long monologue about a hearing aid. the microwave, in the kitchen, was in the middle of a different monologue, which i could not understand because i do not speak microwave. i opened the door. the lasagne was, somehow, still cold. the microwave had, in the technical sense, given up halfway. that is, by my count, the seventh time a microwave in this apartment has gone on strike during a film starring jim carrey. i am not saying the two are connected. i am also not, scientifically, ruling it out.

i closed the door. i restarted the microwave. it worked. it has worked, since, every time i have asked it to. the microwave is, in the modern parlance, a moody colleague. you do not fire a moody colleague. you let them have their moment and you carry on.

this is, by the way, exactly the rhythm of the sequel. things break. things resume. nobody learns anything. that is the whole charm.

sparky the fork, retired but consulted

during the microwave’s brief mutiny i did, instinctively, look at the drawer. the drawer is where sparky lives. sparky, for the unfamiliar, is the fork who, several microwaves ago, tried to reheat lasagne with me and lost a small portion of his structural integrity in the process. sparky has, since, been retired from active service. sparky has the black mark down one tine. sparky is, in the household symbolic economy, the saint of dumb decisions involving heat.

i did not put sparky in the seventh microwave. i learned. but i did, briefly, take sparky out of the drawer and place him on the counter, like a small witness. the counter, that night, also had a slice of pineapple on it, leftover from a pizza i’d ordered on a hot take principle. pineapple on pizza, in my book, is the only sane half of the order; everything else is a contested dough product. i hold that take. i quote it here because the night, as it unfolded, was, structurally, a pineapple kind of night — a small, sweet, slightly indefensible thing on top of a larger, more contested thing.

sparky, the pineapple, the cold lasagne, and the paused jim carrey monologue. four objects. a still life. if i were a more pretentious idiot i would call it a tableau. i am not. i call it a tuesday.

carla was in the quarterly review, i wrote this from my desk

the morning after the rewatch, which is now, carla is upstairs in the quarterly review. that means the apartment of my work brain — which is to say the desk, the standing desk, which i sit at — is mine for the next ninety minutes plus the coffee tail. i have been writing this in the gaps between emails. nobody has emailed me anything urgent. nobody emails me anything urgent. that is one of the small dignities of my position.

i mention carla and the desk because the canon of this newsletter requires it, and because i’d like the version of me reviewing this draft later to know, for the record, that this is not a piece written from the sofa. the sofa would not have allowed me to be this organized. the sofa would have suggested a nap. the desk, by being the desk, demanded a paragraph.

this is also the place to mention, in passing, the previous entries in the cluster — the original manifesto i wrote on the 1994 film and the long dumb road retrospective i drafted afterwards, which deal with the bowl cuts and the road movie engine respectively. this post is the maintenance check on both.

the pineapple defense, briefly, on screen and off

back to the film, briefly. the sequel does, in one of its more underrated moments, contain a meal. lloyd and harry sit at a diner. they order. they eat. they talk. it is, in the literal sense, the smallest scene in the film. it is, in the sentimental sense, the entire film. two old men at a counter, eating, while the world outside the diner gets nothing done. that is a moment dumb and dumber 2 earns, partly because the original earned it first.

i ate the pineapple slice during this scene. cold pineapple. cold lasagne, eventually, after the microwave returned to service. an entirely cold dinner. the hot take held up. the cold dinner was fine. the rest of pizza, as previously stated, was the problem, but pizza was not on the menu that night, and so the problem was, on this occasion, theoretical.

i would defend the pineapple in court. i would defend the pineapple from the witness stand. i would, frankly, defend the pineapple to dave, who is on record as a pineapple skeptic and whose opinions on toppings have, over the years, cost both of us in friendship currency.

verdict — the sequel matches my week, accidentally

carla just walked past the desk on her way to the printer. the tab was already minimized. small win. the standing desk, on which i sit, did not betray me. the standing desk has a perfect record on this front.

the microwave, this morning, has been quiet. the lasagne is gone. sparky is back in the drawer. the pineapple slice is, regrettably, still on the counter, where it has begun the slow journey from food to ornament. i will, at some point, deal with it. probably thursday. thursday is when i deal with things. that is the system.

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