Nerd Man of the Month: Nathan Fillion

This past week, People Magazine -- also known as The Big Book of Pictures -- named Matt Damon its annual Sexiest Man Alive. Far more important, however, was the ranking on page 144 wherein they included Nathan Fillion in their "Domestic Bliss" section, which was nestled between their Men in Sexy Places section and their Sexy and Shirtless section, neither of which I looked through seven or eight times.

There are two significant facts you should know about Nathan's inclusion in the "Domestic Bliss" section. One, he gave the best quote in the whole magazine: "There are black widow spiders in my backyard, coyotes walking down the streets, killer bees, rattlesnakes -- there's so much around L.A. that'll kill you!" And second, his glamor shot was one of the worst Photoshopped images I've ever seen. Don't the editors of People Magazine know the cardinal rule? You don't Photoshop Nathan Fillion's face. In fact, I'm fairly certain that was one of the original Ten Commandments: When thine Canadian Nathan Fillion appears unto you, thou shalt not ruin his prettiness with thine Erase tool.* Right?

In order to defray the sadness of the poorly Photoshopped Nathan, The Park Bench is naming him its November Nerd Man of the Month. We have bestowed this honor upon him for other significant reasons as well including the fact that:

He can fly a space ship. How cool is that?


Okay, he might not actually know how to fly a space ship, but I bet he knows people who can.

Also, he's a terrific, under-appreciated actor who shines in anything he does, from his days as Captain Mal in "Firefly" to his appearances in "Lost" and "Buffy" to his role as a sweet, confused and sympathetic ob/gyn in "Waitress" to his role as a sweet, confused and sympathetic ob/gyn in "Desperate Housewives" (I'm sensing a pattern here) to his hilarious yet heroic turn (he battled a deranged deer!!) as Bill Pardy in "SLiTHER."


And most important of all, the man's damn funny. Just check out his three faces of soap opera acting:



For all this and yes, for his ability to wear tight pants, we bestow our shallow Park Bench love on Nathan Fillion and welcome him to the Nerd Man pantheon.

*The rule was amended years later to read: Thou shalt not Photoshop Nathan Fillion unless it's to make it look like he was your date at the senior prom. As the Pope said at the time, "That's just common sense."

Movie Review: Waitress

I’m a woman who likes pies. I’m just going to lay that right out there for you. Toby is my favorite character on The West Wing because he likes pies. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because the pilgrims invented pie. The moon is my favorite astronomical body because – and only because – of the existence of The Moon Pie.

It’s no surprise then that I loved Waitress, a film about a woman, Jenna, with a talent for making spectacular pies. She has other narratively interesting characteristics as well: she hates her suffocating husband and plans to leave him just as soon as she wins a pie baking contest. Jenna, played by Keri Russell, also has just found out she’s pregnant and soon launches into an affair with her obstetrician (Nathan Fillion). Also, as the title suggests, she’s a waitress. She works in a diner alongside her two best friends, played by Cheryl Hines and Adrienne Shelly, the late actress who starred in many a Hal Hartley film and who wrote and directed “Waitress.” Rounding out the cast is Andy Griffith, who plays the faux curmudgeon who owns the place.

You can tell right from the start that Shelly was a disciple of Hartley, the indie film god who gave us Trust, Amateur and Simple Men. Her characters have that same studied quirkiness and affinity for flat, funny dialogue. With this film, though, I think she outdoes Hartley. Where his movies can sometime be too clever and come off emotionally hollow, Shelly builds her humor from the characters themselves so it all feels natural. These people are truly unusual, but believably so and that’s what makes them so completely endearing.

Keri Russell is wonderful as Jenna, a character who is so deeply, soul-crushingly unhappy but who still manages to be patient and caring, if not a little cranky, to nearly everyone else around her. Who knew Russell could be so good? After seeing her work in this movie, I hereby pledge to never make another Felicity joke again.

Shelly and Hines are very good, too, bouncing off each other like a small Greek chorus, chirping their dialogue in clipped Southern accents that belie their own sadnesses. Andy Griffith does a nice, quiet job with his character, an older man who dispenses advice to Jenna each morning in the diner. I will admit, when he leaves her a note addressed to “my only friend,” I got a little choked up.

And finally, here I am with the Nathan love. As many critics have said, why this man isn’t a bigger star is utterly baffling. I mean, Nathan’s character is two-timing his wife with a pregnant married woman and all you can think is, “he’s so sweet.” He brings pure goodness to a character who, in the wrong hands, could have been seen by the audience as being perched on a slippery moral slope yet he pulls it off without a hitch.

Also, in my head, I really, really need to stop thinking of the poor man as Captain Tightpants.

So here’s my recommendation for the weekend: go have some pie and if you can, go see Waitress. And then have some more pie. It’s what the pilgrims would have wanted.