Enneagram – Page 11 – Enneagram and Encaustic

LUCY LIU’S DR. WATSON, SEVEN

Joan’s a surgeon who quit after a patient died on the table. This is the doctor part of Elementary‘s Watson, and it’s good. However, if she’s serving as Holmes’ Sober Companion, why didn’t they make her a psychiatrist? Her medical background is acceptable at first, but as time ticks down and Sherlock’s father refuses to extend her employment, it’s harder to believe a surgeon would stay for Holmes’ own good. She starts to look codependent and she’s required to lie to him. Why can’t she admit she likes solving cases with him?

As the seasons continue, this misstep is resolved and Watson feels more solidly like a Seven. She’s competent and calm, professional and curious. Her abrupt change of career is very Seven. However, her costuming is problematic — those uber-high heels and cocktail waitress skirts. It doesn’t suit her and it pulls too much focus. What did she wear as a surgeon? Business casual seems closer to her personality and is probably what she’d already have in her closet.

With this Holmes and Watson we have Five/Seven, Strength and Weakness numbers. A lot of conflict and similarity is possible here. By Season Two the showrunners start to utilize this interplay. It’s no longer codependency, but cooperation. Joan’s firm boundaries for her personal life become established — very Seven. She’s more than Sherlock’s assistant, in her own mind and in reality.

The clothing, though, doesn’t change and it really bothers me. I see that Liu needs extreme heels so that the full shots have her at a comparable height to Miller, but they’re so ridiculous and ugly. How does a detective in four-inchers and a short skirt manage to investigate a crime scene? The costuming continues to contradict her practical and efficient character. It’s a silly complaint, but I refuse to give it up.

JONNY LEE MILLER’S HOLMES, FIVE

From the first moments of Episode One of Elementary, this Sherlock behaves like a Five. He’s much more serious and less fun than the archetypal Seven Holmes. His super-smartness also comes with a weariness because he must explain everything to the peons around him. (A Five hates to explain; a Seven loves it.) Also, his drug addiction is a result of emotional turmoil. His substance-usage is to forget his despair. The Seven Holmes partakes because it’s stimulating and fun.

We still have a Head Type Sherlock, but this is a darker version. There’s no twinkle in the eye with this Holmes. It’s a valid choice with interesting possibilities, but the showrunners need to stay on point. A Five isn’t going to lean close and sniff the rug, for instance. A Seven loves that kind of sensory input, but a Five would find another way to follow the clue. A Five wouldn’t invite hookers in. He would recoil from the need to touch and interact with a stranger. A Five can just shut that tap down, so to speak, and become celibate. A Seven is the Holmes who would explore all avenues, including sexual. I believe the show is playing with different parameters of Sherlock, but it slides back sometimes to the old portrayals.

By Season Two, this Sherlock is firmly established. His clothes, with the high-buttoned collar and bland styling, are very Five. He’s eccentric, but he likes an ordered world. Watson must live in his house so they can work at all hours. He’s more than disdainful of those who don’t understand, he’s actually pained. Everything borders on over-stimulating for him. It’s a complete and beautifully acted portrayal of a Holmes with a different Enneagram.

Season One Overview of The Last of Us

Wow. Season One is a grim line-up! It’s a dark world out there.

I’ve bolded the episode titles as I work through the Storytelling Enneagram.

When You’re Lost in the Darkness

ONE

This encompasses the first half of the episode, including all of pre-outbreak life. Within here Sarah dies and twenty years pass. We’re also introduced to post-outbreak life under a military government.

Establish Joel and Tess; establish Marlene and Ellie.

TWO

Joel meets Ellie. This Trouble moment looks all the way forward to the final episode. He’s tasked with delivering her to the Fireflies at the Two, and he succeeds at the Eight (although not in the way we expect).

When Ellie discovers the radio code in Joel’s apartment, we also begin to see their dynamics together. We get the hint that their dominating and crusty personalities might be double Eights, and we see which person is going to lead the other. Ellie outsmarts Joel right from the start.

ELLIE WILLIAMS, EIGHT

Remember, Ellie is a leader. It’s something we’re told more than shown, until we look at her in comparison to Joel. The child leads the man.

Here’s an interesting thought: is Ellie an Eight? Usually I wouldn’t like two main characters sharing the same Enneagram number, but this might work. Ellie displays the positive traits of an Eight. Leadership, bravery, loyalty, and an awareness of how her actions impact greater society. Joel is the negative. He’s brave and loyal, but not in the same way. He’s the guy the mob boss can depend on to do the dirty work. Ellie and Joel are both the kind of people you need in a dystopia, but Ellie’s the one you want to keep around after society begins to rebuild. Joel’s the one you want following Ellie’s orders.

JOEL MILLER, EIGHT

Think back to the beginning, before the outbreak. Joel would probably be his truest self at that point. Even then he was socially disconnected. Sarah wants him to grab a birthday cake and he forgets. Later, certainly, he’s not socially comfortable. He ridicules Tommy for being a “joiner”. This is not a Heart Type.

He’s not a leader, either. That’s Tess. That’s Marlene and, we’re told by FEDRA, that’s Ellie. Joel is a follower. We can say, judging by the final episode, that he’s not a planner. When no one is in charge of him, he kills everyone in the building. He’s not strategic. (He would’ve kept the doctor alive if he had any sense of the post-apocalypse big picture.) We could even say that Sarah was the boss of him before she died. For Joel, he’s not just losing a daughter with Sarah (or with the threat to Ellie), he’s losing his purpose and identity.

This is a particular kind of Eight, the type society tries to keep busy in physical jobs. He’s a mastiff on a leash, if we’re lucky. In civilization, we want Joel to obey orders. In war, we let the dog slip.

Look for the Light

This is the finale for Season One of The Last of Us.

ONE

Someone is panting and running through the woods. A woman. She’s last-trimester pregnant, and she’s having contractions. Sounds of pursuit keep her moving. Ahead, a ramshackle farmhouse. When entering, she calls out, “It’s me,” so she knows this place.

Her water breaks. In what was once a child’s bedroom, she pushes a chair under the doorknob and squats against the wall. She’s in advanced labor now. From her pocket she takes a switchblade, ready just in case. Something attacks the outside of the door. An infected breaks in and scrambles at her, rushing right up to her face.

She stabs him and goes back to giving birth. A small human, delivered onto the floor, starts crying. As mother looks down at the baby, she notices the bite mark on her leg. She quickly cuts the cord and ties it off.

A very precious and unhappy newborn infant (a squirmble!) gets a close-up. Mama cradles it and says, “Ellie”. Roll credits.

When We Are In Need

This is my least favorite episode of The Last of Us. Let’s get through it together.

ONE

Silver Lake, CO. The depths of winter.

Inside a restaurant, people meet and listen to a man reading from the Bible. A teen girl weeps. A sign written on cloth hangs at the window: “When we are in need He shall provide.”

TWO

The preacher/leader (David) kneels next to the girl. (He speaks gently but he has a creepy vibe.) She asks, “When can we bury him?” David pauses, looking at another man (James) at the gathering, then says the ground is too cold for digging. In the spring.

Outside, people in parkas head home. Blowing snow and roof ice dams indicate a very cold place. (None of Jackson’s social cheer is here.) James and David discuss that their meat stores are down to a week. Deer were spotted in the forest. David challenges James, sensing doubt in him. No, he answers, it’s just been a hard six months.

THREE

Ellie examines Joel’s wound while he sleeps. He looks feverish. Wolfing down the last packet of jerky, Ellie leaves a piece on Joel’s blanket. She heads out with the rifle.

Left Behind

LEFTOVER NINE

While credits roll, the camera travels through a neighborhood of abandoned houses. Inside a garage is the horse, still wearing its tack. Cut to a frantic Ellie, ripping cloth for bandages and pressing on Joel’s wound. He lies on the basement floor gasping in pain. He tells her to leave, and she yells at him to shut up. “Go to Tom,” he says. After covering him with his coat, she gives him a long look and walks out. Fade to black.

ONE

Pearl Jam starts, over, and we fade in on a Walkman at Ellie’s waist while she runs laps in the school gym. Round and round the basketball floor the girls jog until some bully comes from behind and rips off Ellie’s headset. The bully taunts that Ellie’s friend, the one who fights for her, is no longer here. After a pause, Ellie throws a punch.

Cut to Ellie in the principal’s office. She has a black eye. Cpt. Kwong wears a FEDRA uniform. He’s gentle, mentioning that Ellie’s been in much more trouble over the past few weeks. The bully, Bethany, is in the infirmary with stitches. Kwong, who appears to like Ellie, lays out the two paths ahead for her. One, she becomes a drudge doing the worst jobs. Two, she becomes an officer and has an easier life. “There’s a leader in you,” he says.

Details of a room: a baseball on a window sill, dinosaur drawings, a paperback copy of “No Pun Intended”. Rain is heard while Ellie on her bed reads the comic book Sam loved in Episode 5, “Savage Starlight”. She tosses it aside and looks over at a bare corner of the room with an unoccupied bed. Lights out, and Ellie climbs under her covers.

Kin

LEFTOVER NINE

Henry’s final moment from the previous episode replays.

ONE

Three Months Later. We’re in snow country. A man carrying rabbit carcasses strides up to a self-sufficient cabin. We don’t see his face until he enters and exchanges a glance with this wife, who sits by the fire. Her eyes move sideways, and Joel steps from behind the room’s center post with his gun drawn.

The couple goes through some hilarious schtick, the kind only longtime partners have, and the man sits. Joel is looking for Tommy. Ellie, from the loft, asks to come down. Husband and wife exchange another speaking look.

TWO

Joel asks for their location on a map and how to travel west. “Go east,” the man says. Past the river are a lot of dead bodies, only some of them infected. Joel and Ellie head out, having no choice but to continue on.

(This was a jewel of a scene that ended way too soon. Give Graham Greene and Elaine Miles their own show. I’d watch them all day.)

THREE

As they leave, Joel has what appears to be a panic attack, although it could be angina.

It’s published!

Acting the Enneagram is now available at amazon. You may have noticed I’ve become more interested in how a character’s Enneagram impacts the overall success of the story.

In this book I go over the basics of Personality Typing for the Enneagram using movie characters and posts from the blog. I add some never-before-seen Storytelling Enneagram breakdowns for an assortment of movies, and then I mash the two sections together.

Going forward look for me to try more of this weaving of Enneagrams in my posts and in future books. I’m convinced this is the best way to write, create, and critique film and television stories. Besides, it’s fun!