50 Shades Dumber: Reflections on Stupidity

I made it.  Through nausea inducing, irritating, exploding headachy, nasty, awful crap I trudged.  And that was before I contracted Pneumonia.  But I did not give up!  Not even when Hugo the bald, creepy puppet man used his voodoo spells to curse me with eternal bad hair (I do not blame Hugo.  He was no match for 50 Shades.)  No, reader, I charged onward through this crappy book all because of your stats you.  You’re welcome.

It is hard to truly put into words what reading this book is like.  I still think the best comparison is the speed bump.  Imagine that the entire world is one big school zone.  You can only drive 20 mph, must watch out for stray children and SUV driving moms on cellphones and every few feet you hit a speed bump.  BUMP.  E.L. James’s writing is filled with these speed bumps on every single page, heck, in almost every paragraph.  You can be reading the drippy, boring prose but you’re still putting along until BUMP you hit something that makes you either a) roll your eyes b) laugh out loud at the idiocy c) whack your head against something d) curse James or, most often, e) all of the above.

Is this not the most perfect speed bump sign for 50 Shades ever?

There are so many examples of this.  Every time Ana is jealous of anything female, even, I swear to sweet white baby Jesus, Christian’s helicopter, which he calls a “she”.  BUMP. Every time Ana refers to Christian as God’s gift to women.  BUMP. Every time a male lusts after Ana or a female lusts after Christian and the other one gets pissed about it.  BUMP. Every time one of those wonderful, repetitive lines is uttered – “hard, thin line” (bump), “fair point, well made” (bump), “pants hanging that way” (bump), “down there”(bump), “Oh, my”(bump), “Jeez”(bump), “Come, Ana”(bump), and the millions of murmurs, mutters, and sighs (bump, bump, BUMP).  I think my absolute favorite one has to be when Christian refers to himself as the royal “we” as in “We aim to please, Miss Steele.” (bumpity bump bump) Next thing you know, he’ll just start referring to himself in the third person, like Elmo, which makes sense considering he already acts like a two-year-old.  “Ana Mine!  Ana Mine!”

Christian says Ana is his bitch, hee hee hee!

And the heart stopping plots!  Crazy Leila with a gun!  Crazy rapey Jack!  Crazy Mrs. Robinson! Crazy helicopter go boom-boom!  Crazy will they or won’t they have sex in the next two pages cliffhangers!  Crazy house shopping and driving around aimlessly!  Crazy wedding proposals after descriptions of lusting after crack-whore mom look-a-likes!  Crazy pages of absolutely nothing happening but talk talk talk leading nowhere!  Such excitement I nearly wet myself! 

You need one of these to get through this series.

And just when you think you can’t take anymore, there are the EMAILS!  BUMP!

Brain bleach kitty, I weep for you.

But oddly enough, the thing that really makes my mind reel, starting in book two, is the  abrupt change in point of view for only a few paragraphs.  Twice.  Just WTF, James?  You decided to write in first person.  There are limitations to that, as in, you only know what the main character is thinking, which is even more limiting if that character is a gold-fish brained bitch like Ana.  But still, you made your bed, so freaking lie in it.  You don’t get to suddenly have it in third person from the point of view of four-year-old Christian because you want to – it doesn’t work that way.  It’s confusing and stupid. 

When E.L. James started writing, that’s when.

50 Shades Dumber opens with poor widdle Christian, crack-whore mommy, and a pimp from the movie “Pulp Fiction”.  There’s no real reason for this, except I guess for you to feel sorry for Christian being used as an ash tray, but we already knew that, so why?  I mean, there are other ways she could have conveyed the same scene without switching the point of view like that.  But no, there it is, standing out like a big, freaking speed BUMP and the story has only just opened.

This book should carry this warning on every page.

The second instance of this comes in the last page of 50 Shades Dumber.  This time we’re thrust into third person so we can see Snidely sitting outside nefariously plotting the doom of Christian while smoking, rubbing his hands together, and cackling with glee.  Of course it doesn’t say it’s Snidely, we’re just supposed to guess.  Gee, who could possibly want to destroy Christi-poo and Ana-kins who could have been arrested but was just plopped in a cab instead?  I can’t figure it OUT.  HELP ME.  This passage made me madder than the rest of the book combined because it’s just so wrong.  I mean, you learn about this crap in freaking high school English here.  Did James go to high school?  How bad are British schools, cause I thought Americans kinda had the sorry school system market cornered.  Just – arghhhhh.

See this chart? SEE IT???

Okay, better now.  And I’m all ready for book three, which I have been warned is the worst one yet.  I’ve read Speaker’s recaps, and all I can remember is a picture of a blue bunny on a waterski.  I think that should be on the cover instead of the handcuffs, personally.  It’s much more visually interesting.  Maybe Goofy will release her memoirs soon, so we can read something that’s actually good.  I hear she might consider it once she’s done with her stint on Bachelor Pad.

Look closely and you can see a blue bunny in a bikini.

Since I’ve interviewed most of the stupid characters from the book with 50 Shades Dumber, I’ll have to try something else for book three.  I’m thinking more bitchy reviews but this time with pictures harvested from Google images and my own nefarious mind on Paint.  Possibly some multiple choice quizzes will be involved, because I love taking moronic quizzes like in Cosmo.  I’ve also considered a “choose your own adventure” style, except that I’m pretty sure everyone would choose “they blow up all over the place” every time, and we wouldn’t get very far into the story.  Unless they were to become zombies.  Actually, that would kind of rock, except I’d feel sorry for the other zombies.  I will have to think on this.  Should you have any suggestions, feel free to add them in the comment section below.

Just kidding – I do want your input.

Also, another thank you for all the well wishes and pleas to aliens and whatnot for my recovery from 50 Shades of Pneumonia.  They were much appreciated.  I love you all.

Alice