NMTDaily: TRUTH / OLIVES / PIZZA
Part One: TRUTH
- The first thing you need to know is that these are my three favorite episodes in all of NMTD. Of course they are, it’s just three episodes of my favorite boy talking himself into realizing he’s in love with Beatrice. This monologue from the play was SO perfectly adapted and SO perfectly performed. Truth/Olives/Pizza my beloved!
- These three episodes put together are an adaptation of one single monologue in the play that then ends with Beatrice showing up to bid Benedick in to dinner. I was gonna make one big post on all three episodes, but I have too much to say about each one, apparently. So you’re getting three posts.
- The irony is that I don’t like olives and I can’t have pizza unless it has nondairy cheese or no cheese at all. But I will always have Truth/Olives/Pizza!
- Something that haunts me: what is the deal with “I finally got my posters up”? Out of world it probably just took TCW some time to finish the set dressing (in which case why call that out to an audience that might not have even noticed a difference?) But in-world? Ben, you’ve presumably lived in this house since you were 13, why did you not decorate your own room until comparatively two seconds before you leave for university? I guess Ben probably also wanted set dressing for his videos in-world, but it’s still weird to me that he hadn’t put up anything on that wall in all his teenage years living there.
- This is part of why I used to think his parents were divorced. Like Ben and his mom were rearranging the house after his dad moved out and he got to pick a new room now that there was more space upstairs? Idk man, I just find this line to be almost the only thing in the entire series that reminds me it’s fictional, that takes me out of the world for a second.
- And immediately we’re right into the secondhand recap of Ben’s overhearing scene. I am really glad we got Tricking Ben eventually, it would be a shame to miss seeing that moment.
- “LEO! So this has got to be true.” Stroke of genius by the Love Gods, bringing Leo into the plan. This is the detail that gets Ben to believe what he overhears, and it’s very important. I also love picturing Hero and Pedro as the Love God Representatives going to Leo and pitching him their big plan. I’m sure he threw his head back and laughed for a solid minute before saying “hell yeah, I’m in, let’s do this.”
- “Beatrice- Beatrice- likes me. She LIKES me!” Ben is genuinely panicked and weirded out by this at first. It’s unprecedented (for him anyway). It’s also adorable.
- The devil horns! Also doubling as a reference to the play, where horned is a euphemism for married.
- “Why not someone who likes her back?” Ben genuinely does not know yet that he does like her back. This is the very beginning of a world-rocking Feelings Realization! Of course, if he got his wish here and found out Bea liked someone else, Ben would still have had his feelings realization anyway, because of how jealous he’d be.
- “you spend every lunchtime glaring at me” Ben. That means she spends every lunchtime staring at you. I can’t believe Beatrice just canonically, noticeably, is always staring at Ben. She doesn’t know why, but we do 😏
- “they said if I knew about Beatrice liking me, that I’d just act like some self-centered, proud, arrogant, unheroic douchebag.” Well, I doubt they put it exactly like that, so it’s very funny to me that this is how Ben phrases it. First of all, those first three words are practically synonyms, you don’t need all of them unless you really want to drive the point home. Secondly, I adore “unheroic”. What kind of teenager says “unheroic”? Ben, you ARE a Shakespearean hero, but I don’t think you’re supposed to know that! 😆 I guess it is a very teenage-boy word choice, when they know more about the fictional concept of heroes than they know about being a good man in a boring modern world. Which is cool because that’s exactly what Ben is about to learn. How to be a good man and an ally to women.
- “She is really funny…” already starting to consider it, are we Ben? He just sounds so fond on the next part about it being hard to see when you’re in the middle of things. It’s precious.
- Ben: *starts to re-analyze every interaction he’s ever had with Beatrice through the lens of her liking him* *panics* lol
- That’s exactly what’s happening, the arguing is flirting, and they’ve BOTH been doing it while stubbornly refusing to understand that that’s the reason they like arguing with each other so much! I love them. The second Ben looks at their arguing from this lens, it’s over for him. “Oh god, this proves it!”
- I love the Let Me Explain Through Interpretive Dance t-shirt juxtaposed with how Ben is hardcore talking with his hands this entire video. He’s explaining through interpretive hands!
- ooh, Beatrice texting on the phone that she currently can’t find! The plot thickens… (Hero, it was Hero)
- I love Hero knowing that Ben will believe that Bea wrote that text if she calls him Dickface and makes fun of the Hero/Claudio relationship. Shows how often Bea talks about “the Dickface” to Hero and also how she openly rolls her eyes at Hero’s romance to Hero’s face, which is sad for Hero.
- “surprisingly nice of her to invite me” Hook, line, and sinker! Well played, Hero and Team Love Gods! Hook him with the Overhearing, then catch him with the text showing Bea reaching out to him.
- Also heart-crushing in the context that she used to be his best friend and this is the first time she’s invited him to do anything since their falling-out. And he’s genuinely touched, but also genuinely surprised. And it isn’t even really her. </3
Comment round-up:
- The adorable pinned comment where a very earnest commenter (playing along and pretending this is a real vlogger and not a character) gives Ben the advice to not be a douche, observe how Bea acts around him, and take the camera to the party. And Ben adorably convinces himself in the replies that it’s chill to bring the camera because Bea also vlogs. I love him.
- Commenter who is not playing along: “Oooh it’s starting!” Ben, replying: “Ooh what’s starting?” Love a fourth wall break.
- Commenter: “the world must be peopled!” Ben replying: “yeah, true.” YEAH TRUE. OMFG he wants to have her babies 😆
- “Go ahead and be horribly in love with her!” Amen, commenter. Amen.
- oh this is the video where Ben links to a song in reply to a comment and says it makes him happy! And the song is about falling in love and is called Benediction!!! My post about that. 💖 He was definitely listening to that song and thinking about his own newfound feelings for Bea! And it made him happy!
- Someone points out Ben has the Game of Thrones books in his room, and that’s Beatrice’s favorite TV show. The compatibility!
- Someone points out how Ben jumped straight from “she likes me” to “not the person to fall in LOVE with”. Jumping to the big L word awfully quick there, Ben!
- Someone asking Ben “Molly or John?” Which I can only assume is asking which character Ben ships Sherlock with on BBC Sherlock. Lol. No answer from Ben, who is almost certainly not a shipper of anything at this point. I don’t think that’s generally how he does fandom rn. He will become a shipper after he finds love and decides he doesn’t hate romance after all, but we aren’t quite there yet ;) Someone get Lolilo-era Ben into shipping Johnlock and Frodo/Sam so he can stop shipping Pedrazar in his real life!
- People noting the posters are HP, Scott Pilgrim, and Banksy. Banksy?! That’s interesting. Why do we think Ben has a Banksy poster? Did he just think it was cool or does he follow the world of street art?
- Someone in the comments says “and so it begins…” which is the title of the first episode of the series! Likely unintentional but still a reference.
I’ll leave you there! Hoping to do posts for OLIVES and PIZZA soon, so we can see more of Ben realizing he loves Beatrice and being a lovely little loser about it!
💖🦩🥭
