One Last Ride On The Road To GTA VI 📅 ?? Days to launch
Sometimes Protection Looks Like Chaos
This is one of those scenes where Michael and Trevor are, bizarrely, doing the right thing for completely dysfunctional reasons. Tracy is humiliating herself on television, the judges are tearing her apart, and Michael’s first instinct is to intervene. Trevor’s reaction is even more extreme, but importantly, Trevor doesn’t hesitate.
There’s also a great contrast between the two men. Michael is embarrassed by Tracy and furious that she’s being humiliated, but he is also painfully aware that he has failed as a father. Trevor, meanwhile, has absolutely no concept of appropriate behaviour, yet his instinct is essentially; That’s Michael’s daughter. She’s being attacked. We’re stopping this.
That makes the earlier scene even more interesting. Trevor spent the entire journey mocking Michael’s family, but when Tracy is actually threatened or humiliated, he immediately becomes part of the family defence mechanism. The joke is that the two men are probably the worst possible parents to send to a television audition.
They’re also exactly the two people Tracy needs at that moment.
The deeper bit
There’s actually a lovely little piece of character development hidden inside all the insanity. Trevor doesn’t really understand normal family boundaries. Michael does, and has completely failed to maintain them.
Trevor barges into Michael’s home, insults everyone, mocks Amanda, winds up Jimmy and generally behaves like a human hand grenade. Yet when Tracy is put in a vulnerable position, Trevor doesn’t stand around analysing the situation. He acts.
Michael has spent much of the game trying to control his family, repair his marriage and convince himself that he’s still the man in charge. Trevor doesn’t bother with any of that. His version of family loyalty is much simpler; “You’re one of ours. Nobody else gets to mess with you.”
It’s dysfunctional as hell, but there is something surprisingly genuine about it and there’s another nice piece of irony: Michael and Trevor have just reunited after years apart, and the first thing that truly unites them isn’t a criminal enterprise. It’s Tracy.
That tells us something about both men. Michael’s family is the thing he desperately wants to fix. Trevor’s relationship with Michael is the thing he desperately wants back and for a brief moment, they’re both fighting for the same thing.
That’s why the scene works so well underneath all the screaming and chaos. Sometimes the most dysfunctional people in the room are still the ones who turn up when it matters.
With Grand Theft Auto VI on the horizon, I thought it was the perfect time to revisit one of the greatest games ever made. Over the days leading up to the launch of GTA VI, I’m returning to Los Santos for one last ride through the narrative.
In this new collection I’m analysing the story in the comments to tell you what I think is going on. Disagree with what I say? Get in there! My challenge is to get the whole game covered by GTAVI launch.
Link to full GTA playlist here:
Level me up by – 👍 💬 🔔 🔎 Gramepa – 🙏
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