It’s Getting Dark in Here (Fifty Shades Darker, pgs. 1-50)

So you better be pulling up some shades…like maybe 50 of ’em.

What the hell do I mean? At this point, I don’t even know.

In my last post, I included a poll about whether or not I should continue recrapping the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy. Here are the results:

For a second, I thought soup was going to take it. Soup is mmmmmm good. I really, really wanted soup to win and not because I have a Christian Grey food obsession, (Eat the soup!!! Eat it!! I say my eyes hooding in a darkening glower way of a darkened shade), but because these books are the opposite of soup. If I’m not being clear, I think these books are, to use a favorite phrase of Anastasia Steele’s, crap.

This is a democracy (is it?) and the public wants more interspecies mingling between Hugo and Goofy so I am continuing. Your kind, kind comments on the first series of recraps almost made me feel something in my dead, dead heart and even deader soul. For a second, my soul sparked like a lighter low on lighter fluid and then snuffed out. It was glorious yet odd feeling because it has been so long since I’ve felt anything.

This weekend I purchased the second book Fifty Shades Darker: Electric Boogaloo and took some over-the-counter anxiety medicine–the only one I could find was for dogs–and read the first 50 pages.

Oh reader…oh gentle reader…it was like I never left Seattle or Portland or Vancouver, wherever this book is supposed to be set. The setting is kind of a fluid thing like a blob of K-Y® Brand INTENSE®.

When we last left our heroine, Ana and her stinging bottom and clenching down there left the steely-eyed, impassive, lost, impossibly beautiful, long-fingered, flogging machine known as Christian Grey.

It is Ana’s first day of work as spanking machine test subject publishing assistant for a man named Jack Hyde, whose name is in no way suppose to make you think of a combination of Jack the Ripper and Jekyll and Hyde. Incidentally Jekyll “Ripper” Hyde wants to jack Ana:

Ana is, like, feeling quintuplet crap because it’s been, like, five days without seeing Christian curl and purse his lip. Everything reminds her of Christian. She breaks down when she tries to eat enormous bananas or passes by the dog collar display at the local pet store:

Christian tracks down her work email and sends her a message about attending Jose’s photography exhibit. “Do you still want to go? Clench your down there once for yes, twice for no,” it says.

This results in the most fascinating email exchange in all of email history. E.L. James could have written “We decided to still attend Jose’s show like we planned” but then you would miss out on this:

It’s show time. Ana hops into Christian’s car, and he is as amazingly pleasant as one could expect. He scowls and scolds and reprimands her for not eating and glowers and smolders and glares and any other synonyms for pissy.

Oh the eating! How I missed thee. Thank god you showed up in chapter 1 or else I wouldn’t remember Christian has a serious hang up about the contents of Ana’s stomach. She jumps into his lap as one would expect, and inhales his “Christian” smell, an intoxicating aroma of Boudreaux Butt Paste, Sex Panther, and the brand of cologne O.J. Simpson likes.

They get into an elevator where dark, deadly desire pools in Ana’s groin and electricity sparks from Christian’s “bright” hair. Lip biting ensues. They arrive at the helipad. Christian straps her into a harness and remarks how much he enjoys it, and I feel a strong sense of deja vu, like I read all of this before.

Because I did. Last week. When I read the first book.

Ana is in awe of the romantic things Christian says, and her inner goddess wakes up from her Ben & Jerry’s stupor:

At the gallery, Christian pees a circle around Ana to mark his territory. Christian glowers at Jose when Jose steps over the circle to embrace Ana. Throughout the evening, Christian refers to Jose as “boy”. The female gallery owner wants to hump Christian like all women do and tries to attach her groin to his leg. Ana notices that people are staring at her too. Wha? Crap? Triple holy cow craptasm! What the crap in crapville is crapping on? Ana thinks and then craps a bit in her pants. Jose, a self-professed landscape photographer, took portraits of Ana surreptitiously and now is seeking to make money off of them, which seems ethical:

Christian pees all over them and for added measure buys them so no one can ogle Ana’s stringy hair and too-huge eyes. Yes, digital photographs are very hard to reproduce so brilliant move on Christian’s part.

Christian throws a tantrum. “I wanna go now, Ana! Now! Waahhhhhhh.”

Because Ana is also mature, she tries to make Christian jealous by flinging herself at Jose. On their way out of the gallery, Christian pulls Ana into an alleyway and murders kisses her violently with tongue thrusts.

He then takes her to a restaurant because it’s been two paragraphs since food was mentioned. Relationship conversation time! “Why didn’t you shriek the safety word when I was shredding your ass with a belt?” Christian asks. “I told you I wanted it to be ‘turd nugget’ so I could remember it,” Ana says through her lashes that now work as a mouth. “Well then it’s your fault,” he cries. “Okay,” her down there says. Ana is all down with the “kinky fuckery” but not so much the total control of mind, body, and spirit, and the beatings with belts. “Fine,” Christian glowers. And presto! They’re back.

I predict no future problems.

Oh and Christian was beaten by his crack whore mom’s pimp. She killed herself, and it took four days to discover Dexter Christian and the body. They then order dessert.

What else? Ana received an iPad from Christian filled with songs about their relationship:

Kinky emailery. Ana is about to attend happy hour with work colleagues at a bar called Fifty Shades of Grey. I’m kidding.

It’s called Fifty’s. I’m not kidding.

And presto! We’re back.