Judd Karn
Online Editor

Mission Viejo Drama takes on “Almost, Maine”, a play based around nine short stories about love.

     After a year of semi-remote learning, many students were looking forward to commuting to school everyday to see their friends they haven’t seen in months and to get a sense of normalcy. The students most excited for this return to normalcy were the artists: the musicians, the film students, and the drama department.
    With this return to normalcy, though, came some natural creative hindrances. For the drama department, the major obstacle was masks, but they figured out how to make do with what they had, using transparent masks that do not fog up, allowing the actors to express themselves substantially more than they would be able to by wearing an opaque mask. But now, after slowly transitioning back to normalcy, I am glad to say that the MVHS Drama team was able to perform their first performance in two years mask-free, and  the difference is night and day.

     To be clear, I am not saying that the actors’ performances were bad when they were wearing the masks. I am just saying that the actors were able to express themselves in their full capacity now and that wearing a mask, no matter if it is clear or not, will still make it substantially harder for you to act and worsen the viewer’s experience. Even if you have a world class audio team there will still be exponentially more troubles with a mask, that is just the way it is.
    When I saw MVHS drama perform “Clue on Stage” it was great. I was astonished by how well the crew was able to pull off acting while in a mask, but (logically) there were setbacks due to the actors wearing masks. So I am so glad to see the drama department perform their first show without masks, “Almost, Maine”.
    “Almost, Maine”, written by John Cariani, is a play compiling 9 different love-based stories all taking place in the ‘almost’ town (the citizens never organized themselves into a city) T13-R7, but people just refer to it as Almost. Almost is located in Maine, smack dab in the middle in fact, and is disconnected from everything, a classic very small town. 

     The play’s underlying meaning is a rather simple and sweet one, covering love and disconnection, whether it be disconnection from other towns or disconnection from people, that is covered throughout this play. And when there is disconnection with people those disconnections are mended, showing how love perseveres all, it may seem like love is not always there, but it is.

     All the nine stories in the play are about a comedic slice-of-life love story with some including some plot lines that you have to suspend your disbelief to enjoy (ie. in one scene the two people in the scene are literally falling for eachother).

     I found the play to be a bit over the top with some parts but I really liked how the actors portrayed their characters, with my personal favorite story being scene 2 “Her Heart”. I also thought that it was really cool that a majority of the scenes were directed by different students and thought that this was the perfect format for them to do something like that in.

      The play was nothing groundbreaking, but it was a nice compilation of short stories with great portrayals of those stories. All of the cast really sold whatever love-related idea they were trying to express. It was just a nice, sweet play.

Credit: Megan Mahoney Lighting Design

Judd Karn
Online Editor

The Disney+ miniseries takes a different approach then its predecessor, ‘The Mandalorian’, but they couldn’t decide what they wanted different.

     ‘The Book of Boba Fett’, which premiered on December 29th, covers the ex-bounty hunter Boba Fett and what happened after his supposed demise in ‘Return of The Jedi’; the series also functions as a continuation of ‘The Mandalorian’ plot. Unlike ‘The Mandalorian’, which is an episodic series with a finale that brings together people from earlier in the season, ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ features an overarching plot that continues throughout all of the miniseries’ episodes. 

     I would recommend that you watch ‘The Mandalorian’ before this; a multitude of the plot points rely on you knowing things from the aforementioned show, and you may feel like you’re missing something throughout the entire series.

    The one major problem with ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ is that most of the time it does not know what it wants to be, the overarching story and the exemplary side plot provide great entertainment but there is one episode that pivots completely from the series; the episode was good, but it did not feature Boba Fett at all. Parts of the episode felt out of place and like they should be on a different show but it did not stray too far from the main plot.
    Although there are some holes in the series I think it is still competently put together: the plot is consistently entertaining and intriguing, the action is captivating, and the series maintains the space western tone that George Lucas (creator of Star Wars)emphasized in the original trilogy, especially with Boba Fett.
    As for the rest of my opinions, I would not be able to go into depth with them unless I talked about key plot points, so from here on out there will be spoilers:
[SPOILERS AHEAD]
    The series starts on Boba Fett escaping from a sarlacc pit, a creature which swallows its victim and slowly digests them with acid for one thousand years; he had been thrown into the pit by Han Solo This backstory side plot, which continues until Chapter 4, provides an enthralling set up for the story. 

     During the beginning of this backstory there are very few lines of dialogue (due to the fact that the other characters, tusken raiders, do not speak any english), yet the characters still feel well developed.

     It does feel a bit mundane in the beginning of the series due to the large amount of exposition but that is reasonable as most miniseries struggle to make exposition interesting, and the dullness is supplemented by some action scenes here and there.

     The series, while being true to the original trilogy, still broke out of the mold a decent amount, trying new things; some things stuck, others did not. One thing that did not stick were the pastel floating mopeds that the ‘mods’ (cyborgs) had, they felt out of place and way too vibrant for the arid world of Tatooine, especially since they had no sand to be seen on them. 

     Many people have stated that their favorite episode was the episode that barely featured Boba Fett, Chapter 5; the chapter centered around the mandalorian, Din Djarrin. While this was one of my favorite episodes, the reason why it is many people’s favorite or second favorite is because it loosely follows the formula of ‘The Mandalorian’ which uses episodic elements that allow for more action each episode, but ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ is not episodic, and so it is likely that you will not have that much payoff and grandiose action. 

     What is great about Chapter 5 is that it provides that fulfillment of gunslinger action and holds the viewer over to the finale, it just happened to be that the writers chose to focus on Din Djarrin for this episode, although they most likely chose him because he would be in a different setting, a setting where they were able to have a punch ‘em up scene with no consequences to the plot.

     I thought the finale was effectively done, it gave us monumental amounts of action, featuring a 17 foot tall beast brawling a walking laser cannon with an energy shield, as well as several other fight scenes varying in size and types of skirmishes. Most plot points were filled up, and not carlessely, we also get to see Boba Fett’s series arc completed, going from a ruthless killer to a man of the ‘sand people’ (tusken raiders) to a good-willed gang leader that is the last survivor of his tribe, and avenges his tribe. By the end of the finale, everything that ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ wanted to do, it did.
    So is ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ a perfect miniseries? No, but it is a fairly good one, one that I would recommend to any Star Wars fan, and one that I hope will affect the future Star Wars movies and media for the better.
Rating: 8/10

Breanna Huynh 
Feature Editor

Celebrating Valentine’s Day through music and joy at Mission Viejo High School. 

     Valentine’s day, the time of year when flower prices go up and people spend a little bit extra on the people they love. While there are many ways people have celebrated Valentine’s Day, whether it be showering someone with chocolates and jewelry, Mission hosts their own event that is much cheaper, but, of course, more special.

     Mission’s way of celebrating Valentine’s day is their annual Valentine Grams, hosted by the school’s choir program. This year, it takes place from February 2nd to the 9th with delivery beginning on the 7th and ending around the 14th. 

     The way it works is that a student can purchase a gram for $5 and fill out a form listing the name of the person they want to send it to, the recipient’s 2nd period teacher, and the teacher’s room number. Then, on one of the days of delivery, choir, specifically, chamber, will go into their 2nd period class and sing a small part of a song to them in front of the class. 

     The songs that were chosen this year were “Just The Way You Are” by Bruno Mars and “Electric Love” by Børns. Usually, the choir class performs more songs but because of time constraints this year, they were only able to do those two songs with other potential songs being “You Belong With Me” by Taylor Swift and “Adore You” by Harry Styles. 

     The limited number of songs this year isn’t the only difference from past years of Valentine Grams. There is a significant drop of students in the class meaning that the balance within the chamber choir is odd because there are not enough people with low voices to sing the low parts in songs. 

     Despite this, Shelby Mills, the events coordinator, excitedly shares that while most people sign up for Valentine Grams to embarrass their friends, it is a nice way to “spread love and positivity around Valentine’s Day.” 

     Even if you don’t have someone you can celebrate it with, “Valentine Grams is really just a fun event to bring some spirit into the classrooms through music. It’s a fun way to show love to your friends, teachers…and for all of us choir kids too. Plus, it’s good for promoting the program, especially after COVID,” explains Chan Trinh. 

     As vice president of the choir class, Trinh and choir council president, Caleb Smith, make a spreadsheet with all of the orders and organize them by room numbers. Then, they split the choir into two groups: upperclassmen and lowerclassmen (with a few exceptions) and split the orders by the buildings (200s, 300s, etc). 

     Additionally, Trinh spends most of her time prepping with her choir group by helping them learn the music and teaching it to the class. Being a senior, it was really cool and exciting to “see one of the pieces I’ve arranged being put together. Usually, Mrs. Norris (the choir teacher) does all of this, but the valentines are strictly student run, so to be in that position is really cool,” she adds. 

     While this is the only year Trinh has actually done the grams (because of COVID last year), she recalls her favorite and most memorable part of doing the grams is singing in front of her friends. “Many of them I don’t have classes with, and being able to just sing for me, even for only 30 seconds, means a lot since we’ll be far apart after this year.” 

     Even though students mainly buy the grams as a joke to their friends, it is another way for choir students to do what they love and spread happiness and fun in the middle of the school year.