Vader in love redux

It's been awhile since I overanalyzed the hell out of something, and I've got a few free minutes in my otherwise busy schedule, so I'm going to write some more about the 'Darth Vader in Love' skit.

There's a lot of stuff going on here, and what makes it funny, I think – at least for men – is the way it all happens 'according to script.'

Although this starts off with some Mel Brooks-level humor – Vader infatuated with the 'Sith chick' Commander Larkin in pink hemlet and armor – it quickly moves to more sophisticated territory. Vader, perhaps pop culture's number one control freak, suddenly finds himself in a situation over which he has absolutely no control. Not only has he lost control of external events, he's lost control of himself, which for him is far worse.

One of the things you've picked up on if you've read my favorite book, Alan Watts' The Wisdom of Insecurity or anything by Pema Chödrön, is that we don't have control over anything, when you get right down to it, and it's better to learn to live with the shifting sands of uncertainty than to futilely try to find refuge in fortresses that ultimately can't defend us from reality.

So here's Vader with a 'teachable moment,' but no one there to teach him. He's hanging over the abyss of what is fundamentally the mere biochemical processes of his own brain, and it's funny to any of us who have had similar experiences. (Some of us, though, remain blithely unaware of such processes and plow forward regardless of possible consequences. Even Darth Vader wouldn't offer the Prime Minister of Germany a free backrub at a formal meeting of an economic summit.)

An enlightened Vader would have sensed his attraction, recognized it for it what it was, remembered that there is no 'Vader,' no 'Commander Larkin,' and that the Force that can be named is not the true Force – and he would have gone on with the business at hand of torturing the captured rebel.

So we laugh at Vader's floundering around because it looks so much like us.

And then there's the birthday party scene, and here's where Commander Larkin reveals the inevitable previously-undisclosed boyfriend. Of course, she waits until she's got Vader in a room full of people and has given him the gift before dropping the 'Chris bomb' on him.

More typically, 'Chris' would have been the ne'er-do-well heir to the Harkonnen Spice Fortune back on Arrakis, but since it's pretty hard to top a Sith lord in a 'fabulously wealthy bad boy' contest, the writers counter-programmed with an IT geek.

Clearly Larkin has figured out Lord Vader is on the make and has timed the counterstrike for maximum embarrassment and dicomfiture, not to mention drama. Again, Lord Vader: no Darth, no Larkin, no Chris, no drama. Detach and move on, dude.

Anyway, that's why it's funny.

To me, anyway.

Not that anything like this has ever happened to me. I'm just talking in the abstract, of course.