If a writer has writers' block, then a blogger will suffer from Blogger Clog, and that's certainly the case here. There are numerous reasons for my infrequent posting, perhaps most importantly this goddamn illness, which, while little more than a cold, has been hanging around for weeks. Hard to be prolific when one side of my head feels heavier than the other. On top of that is a much busier than usual week at work which has drained me of much energy, and oh God this election this fucking election it's driving my brain crazy with the excessive checking of the politiblogs, so much so that, even though I've been enjoying his updates, if Andrew Sullivan writes "know hope" one more time I'll either turn violent or cry or cry violently. It's the classic split between his faith and my atheism; he can know hope all he likes, but I'll not relax until Obama's inauguration. People who know me will be very familiar with my fatalistic tendencies. ::takes break from hard minute's blogging to check fivethirtyeight.com::
Another reason, which is probably the main one if I was willing to sit and poke at my ossified brain in order to find out, is my attempt to finish reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Though I'm wary of saying anything about it for fear of angering her many many fans/followers/cultists, I have to say it is about to defeat me. No, Randian visitors, her worldview has not dominated mine, as if it had been dismantled and bested by a philosophy of vast strength and power, like the machines that conquer and crush the rocks and mountains of the earth. I'm just, well, really really really fucking bored by now. Her insanely florid prose might have amused me before, but by now, after being shouted at in a self-pitying and mean-spirited tone for 700 pages, I might not be able to make it. But I must! For am I not a human being? Is not my mind the Alpha and Omega, the force that can harness nature and bend it to my will, able to withstand this mighty onslaught, bearing the winds and rains of her ideas and rising, triumphant, like a Titan, like the owner of himself and his destiny, masterful and immortal? Fuck you, book! You shall never defeat me!
However, I do just want to get it over and done with by now, if only because I need a break from it. I'm glad I'm reading it, especially at a time like this, when one presidential candidate is bellowing "Socialist!" and running from person to person like Kevin McCarthy in the first two versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and the world's most powerful Objectivist, Alan Greenspan, is talking about how there is a flaw in the world that makes his free market ideals untenable (I'm totally paraphrasing; please don't correct me, people). Before reading Atlas Shrugged I would have thought his comment rather cheeky, blaming people for the market disaster and not The Market itself, but now I see his point (though I don't necessarily agree with it). If I'm reading Atlas Shrugged right (again, don't comment, I don't need clarification just yet), the Objectivist creed would work just fine as long as everyone was "moral" by Rand's code, but after many many years Greenspan has apparently discovered that people (i.e. traders and bankers and economists and anyone who deals with money anywhere in the world ever) won't abide by that code of behaviour, and will in fact take as many short cuts as possible to fill their pockets with as much Fat Bank as they can. I see where he's coming from. I think he's a bit tapped to be suddenly saying, "Oh, it's humanity's fault for this and not mine for coming up with a system of economics that doesn't take into account actual human behaviour as it really actually exists for reals, but instead bases its assumptions about what people are like on the idealised ramblings of a writer from the 50s who had a weird thing for dominatory industrialists and smokestacks and trains going into tunnels and which therefore cannot possibly work," but I do see where he's coming from. Thanks for the recession, jerkwad.
So yeah, it's been interesting to listen to Republican and conservative thought with a new, deeper understanding of where it's coming from, and to finally comprehend why followers of that creed hate taxation as much as they do even though I think they're wrong, and so I do owe a debt of thanks to Ayn Rand for giving me such a long-winded peek into that mindset. Sadly, my brain is dying from the melodrama and the hate and the victimhood, and I just want to get it over with so I can move onto something fun (I got John Hodgman's new book two days ago and it's begging to be read). Until then, time I would devote to blogging is being taken up with enduring the endless Rand-ting, so it's like another blog slowdown, and one I really don't want to endure but will because I'm stubborn like that and hate leaving books unfinished (especially when I'm 700 pages in). I will get back to the planned post about Mad Men, and some Face/Offs I've been looking forward to as soon as I can, but for now, I must complete this mammoth task.
In the meantime, here is the other thing that has totally possessed my mind over the last week, but luckily it's a thing that is making the brain very very happy. Marnie Stern, super-genius guitarist, has just appeared on my Radar of Unbelievable Awesomeness with her new album This Is It and I Am It and You Are It and So Is That and He Is It and She Is It and It Is It and That Is That (which is a phrase attributed to Zen philosopher Alan Watts, according to AV Club). It is absolutely incredible, easily on my 2008 best list along with Re-Arrange Us by Mates of State and The Family Afloat by Bound Stems and several other lovely works. Stern's guitar playing is unlike anything I've heard before, and strumming along to it would be the most insane Rock Band challenge ever (especially as Zach Hill's drumming is almost as complex and frenetic). This is her new single, Transformer, and it should be number one across the planet.
Even better is her song Ruler, which you can find on her MySpace page. Thank you for keeping the book cooties from smothering my brain, Marnie Stern.
Friday, 31 October 2008
Tuesday, 28 October 2008
This Week In TV Year II (Week 7)
As I have already said, I've been taking my time on this one for several reasons, but one of the most important ones is that The Shield was so great last week it overwhelmed my brain in much the same way that Lost does when it's on. Except for one notable exception, this week was pretty poor, and my enthusiasm for some shows is waning. It doesn't help that I started writing this while the wonderful In The Name of the Father was on Sky Movies, distracting me even more (and holy shit, Mark Sheppard plays one of the Guildford Four!), and tried to finish it while The Incredibles was on. That's my favourite film of the decade we're talking about. How could I not get distracted?
Non-Shield Highlight of the Week:
As this week's Friday Night Lights ended, and the final slow-motion shot of "Smash" Williams faded to black, Canyon said, "My God, it really is back on form." I couldn't agree more. Though we enjoyed the second season more than many, this third season has been exceptional even by this show's high standards. The latest episode was just about perfect, and was filled with examples of how the showrunners have upped their game this year.
Part of it is the shorter season. This time there won't be any Carlotta missteps, or new characters not given a full arc (I'm still upset at how Santiago was treated). Sticking with the core characters and seeking to build upon old tensions rather than introduce new ones, the show has done the miraculous and made a season that feels like the first season while telling stories that are new enough to feel fresh but have expanded from previous concerns. The best example of that is Matt Saracen's relationship with his grandmother. Though his position as QB1 is now endangered, and has generated a great deal of turmoil for himself, Coach, and the Dillon fanbase (who are jerks, let's be honest), we still have the old, unresolved arc featuring his grandmother's illness informing his every choice.
That story should have become boring a long time ago, but while season two featured that awful Carlotta plot, this season sees Matt reaching out to his mother in an act of desperation, and from there we find out more about him, his family, his capacity for forgiveness, etc. Carlotta told us nothing other than how teenage boys get horny and make mistakes. This new plot has been a revelation in more ways than one. Most importantly, it's given Zack Gilford a chance to show what he's capable of, which seems only fair after season two gave Taylor Kitsch numerous opportunities to shine. His scenes with his mother, played by the ever-excellent Kim Dickens, were a joy to behold. I'm glad the showrunners got around to giving Gilford a shot at the prize.
Another consequence of the shorter season is the chance to finish arcs conclusively. Next week we'll find out what Jason Street has been up to, but for the first four episodes we saw Smash get a second chance to get into college. Last week I admitted I was getting a bit sick of the constant doubts Smash had, but luckily this frustration was assuaged by this week's conclusion. By the time Smash gets his phonecall of acceptance, he's really earned it, having faced down every obstacle going. If he didn't make it, it might have been "realistic", but it would also have been wrong.
The whole point of Coach's philosophy, and Smash's confidence, is that hard work and dedication bring you what you want, and this was the perfect dramatisation of that. My misgivings faded as Coach delivered yet more stirring speeches about living up to his promise, and the last five minutes of the show were viewed from behind a veil of happy tears. It was exactly the ending we had hoped for, and justified everything Smash has gone through. If only all TV could be like this.
What the Hell Just Happened? Disaster of the Week:
As this season has progressed, you'll note that my fondness for Fringe has increased from my initial position of slightly optimistic reticence, with much of that interest based around Dr. Walter Bishop and The Observer, that bald Easter Egg I love so much. In the first season of Alias, created by J.J. Abrams and often written by Fringe creators Kurtzman and Orci, I remember the pilot episode being one of the strongest hours of TV I've seen, and that first season containing pretty much no clunkers, so confident was the showrunning team. Though the Fringe pilot was nowhere near as good as the first hour of Alias, it was still compelling, and the premise grew to be more interesting than I had first thought by the time The Observer showed up. So how the hell did last week's episode turn out to be so feeble, even though it opened with such nasty events as brain-cooking and blood tears?
Much of it comes down to a truly crappy script, which was little more than a list of cliches of forehead-slapping overuse, with serious misjudgements throughout. I'm not sure which was worse: the scientist who, when rumbled, shoots himself in the head; Olivia's rogue investigation and sudden random and hilarious aggressiveness; the race against time kidnap plot (also used this week in CSI), and much more. Perhaps the worst crime was sticking Lance "Intensity" Reddick with some dialogue of look-away-it's-so-awful clunkiness.
There were other problems, though. One scene at a horseriding club was lit so badly you could see shadows on the floor even though it was supposed to be filmed during late-afternoon, and other scenes were blocked terribly, with characters pulling guns on each other in a room so small the camera almost gets in the way. I understand that the show has to make the most of its budget, and the shooting schedule is tight, especially as development on the show would have been affected by the writers' strike, but it still seemed amateurish. These egregious errors are above and beyond the main problems; that it was sluggish, boring, silly, littered with tonal errors (having a main villain played, by Canyon's least favourite actor Chris Eigemann, with outrageous mustache-twirling evilness), and criminally over-writing Walter so that he is almost annoying. Almost. I'm sorry, but even though he went a bit far, having him get upset over microwaving a papaya to death because it's the friendliest of fruits made me laugh too much to get angry at him.
Fringe is away for three weeks, what with sport and elections and whathaveyou. It's a good job the fourth episode was so freakydeaky, because otherwise I would be walking away after this. It wasn't as bad as Knight Rider (surely impossible), but maybe it was approaching Flash Gordon levels of awfulness. It gives me no pleasure to say that, and the only thing that makes me feel better about that judgement is that I refuse to believe the show is going to sink. Surely this is an anomaly. I'm just hoping the number of bad episodes don't end up outweighing the good.
Slowly Improving Show of the Week:
As I had hoped, this week's Mentalist was definitely organised around a central location, a sort of bland office complex that featured last week without being named as the CBI HQ.
Other notable features of the episode included more screen time for Gregory Itzin (working as the pencil-pushing jerk I had hoped he would be), more panicky reactions from Patrick Jane upon being confronted with a gun, and some humour. It's babysteps, but the hour went much quicker than some of the other shows we watched this week. Spotting some of Derren Brown's techniques helped (the fumbling disarming of a gun-toting Eastern European was particularly welcome), and I hope we see more of his team using elaborate lies to fool the criminals into giving themselves up. That said, I still don't think I'd recommend it to anyone who's not a huge fan of procedurals, though. It's still not quite there yet, but it's a little victory that, five episodes in, it's managed to create an episode that is arguably more entertaining (if less well constructed) than this week's episodes of House (not as bad as I had feared, but a little dull) and CSI (would have been better if the serial killer introduced this week didn't get arrested at the end).
Heartbreak of the Week:
Oh Friday Night Lights, how you torture us. Tyra and Landry's ill-fated love was never meant to be, only beginning because of the murder/rape plot that annoyed the fanbase so much. This week, Tyra definitively moved on, leaving a heartbroken Landry behind with nothing but his slowly weeping guitar for solace.
Yes, the murder plot might have been handled well but was not welcome on the show. Yes, it was a contrived way to get Tyra and Landry together when in real life there is no way she would ever want to be with him. But who cares about that when we get to see acting of the calibre displayed by Adrianne Palicki and Jesse Plemons? Fuck it, they could have been abducted by aliens for all I care. Seeing Landry's heartache and Tyra's sadness over the consequences of her decision was one of the acting highlights of the season so far.
Your Sex Is On Fire of the Week:
And so were the words to transpire, whatever that means. Yes, this week House finally had bisexual Thirteen have some gay sex, because in TV land, as Canyon pointed out during the hectic sex scene (which was as hot as a fever), bisexual means lesbian, but a lesbian that the male viewers have a chance with. I really doubt that having lesbian smooching and the attendant rattling bones hinted at in trailers means twenty million more viewers tune in, but even if the opening felt unusually exploitative for the show, it kinda matched Thirteen's desperate effort to live her life to the full before she dies. Sort of. Well, it was edited really frantically. Luckily, it's not forever, but it's just tonight, oh we're still the greatest. The greatest! The greatest! And YEEEAAAAHH Yo' sex is on fiyah!
Yeah, you know Kings of Leon are the shit.
Actor We Love of the Week:
Lee Pace is always great on Pushing Daisies, but we want to give him a shout out this week, just cuz.
Actually, it's more that we just saw him in The Fall (directed, of course, by... TARSEM!), and he is unnaturally great in it. Let's hope that the imminent cancellation of this lovely show frees him up for more great work. For instance, the West End loves American actors lately, Mr. Pace. Some are very close to pie shops. Plus, you can stay at our house while you are here. We have a very small bed that only slightly smells like cat vom. You'll love it.
Improbably Attractive Biologist of the Week:
Evil David Esterbrook, evil CEO of evil pharmaceutical company Intrepus, is more than happy to hang around while a woman is injected with a compound that will turn the strontium capsules in her head into a weapon, but he won't be doing any of the injecting himself. Instead, he has an improbably attractive biologist to help him out.
As you can seen, the improbably attractive biologist is wearing a HazMat suit, and if you think she took off the helmet and shook her long black hair out like the stereotypical sexy librarian who lets her hair down to the amazement of all the horny chaps nearby, you would be right.
Sudden Romantic of the Week:
Though Landry and Tyra get the award for most heartbreaking relationship failure of the week, Dwight Schrute's agony over the imminent marriage of Angela and Andy came a close second.
That he kept undercutting that pain with such horrible treatment of Phyllis was perfect, but even better was his pathetic but noble attempt to make it up to her at the end.
Of course, there were other romantic developments in this episode, but this was the one that seemed to get forgotten in the rush to squeal with delight over the other stuff.
Worst Performance of the Week:
I'm beginning to think that the Fringe showrunners made a huge mistake in casting Anna Torv to head their new show. Though all of my affection for the show rests with either John Noble or Lance "Intensity" Reddick, I'm willing to open my arms to allow others in. No one has stepped up yet. Kirk Acevedo's tics irk me, Blair Brown is as shaky as she was during Altered States, and even though I thought he was okay opposite Patrick Stewart in Mamet's A Life In The Theatre, I'm otherwise baffled by the appeal of Joshua Jackson, especially in a role as poorly written as this one.
Torv, on the other hand, has shown little spark of life in Fringe, which we attributed to the lifeless role of Olivia, who has been asked to swallow her grief over her lover's death and possible betrayal (and, you know, the fact that his consciousness is living inside her brain or something). This week, however, Olivia has been re-written as an angry young lady, all guns drawn and snarly, telling tales of her evil step-dad and going after nasty pharma-jerks who abduct women to make their brains a big radioactive weapon, or somesuch. (Check out this week's appearance of The Observer, who seems to find Olivia's inept flirting more interesting than someone's head exploding in the opening scene. He truly is inhuman!)
While I would definitely say Olivia needed a revamp, and pronto, and while I would accept a mid-flow personality change as a quick fix to what must have been an obvious problem with the template for the show, did the showrunners realise that Anna Torv can't really pull it off? With the whole episode revolving around her dangerous past and sudden no-nonsense attitude, her acting quirks were on full display, and warning bells sounded throughout.
While I'm not able to discuss her acting technique using technical terms, and though a lot of what was wrong with that episode is down to the shockingly poor script, it was still a dispiriting display of faux-rage and stroppy, confrontational bluster, none of which convinced. Though Torv's voice is possibly the most soothing thing currently on TV, hearing her spit sarcastic and furious lines at her co-stars just made us laugh in incredulity. Her goofy reaction to the scientist's suicide was amusing too; this picture does not do justice to the WTFness of it.
In other venues, I'm sure Ms. Torv is just fine, and she must have done something right to get the job, but so far this role seems like a bad fit. Perhaps it's unfair to compare her to Jennifer Garner, whose work on Alias was so consistently impressive (shut it, haters), but she had some warmth or lightness that Torv desperately needs. Of course, perhaps she is not meant to portray that, in which case the character needs to be rethought, as she can't do tough guy, so it's going to be a problem if Olivia 2.0 is meant to go all Horatio Caine week after week. Nevertheless, Torv is on probation until there is another change, because right now, Angry Olivia is still good for a few laughs, which harms the show's atmosphere, but holds our attention more.
Magnificent Insanity of the Week:
It's official: America's Next Top Model has lost its mind. Words cannot describe the lunacy on display. I'll let this photo montage do the explaining for me.
There really is nothing else to add.
Troubling Development of the Week:
We've been thinking it for a while now, and this week might have set our opinion in stone: Ugly Betty is now officially boring. While we're a week behind on Pushing Daisies out of regrettable error, we're not up to speed with Betty mostly because we just don't care about the majority of the storylines currently running. While Claire Meade's incarceration was amusing, this week's prison sub-plot just made me wish I was rewatching Arrested Development, an urge more pronounced after Jeffrey Tambor turned up on CSI the following week.
The biggest problem the show has this season is that there is very little it can do that it hasn't done before. The O.C. had a similar problem in its middle two seasons, after the crazed first burned through major arcs in the space of a couple of episodes. Eventually the show had nowhere to go, and the penultimate season ended up filled with clanging plot failures like Sandy's descent into evil, Marissa's infinitely boring friendship with the world's most depressed surfer, and Ryan's war with the adorably named Volchok. Ugly Betty is in similar trouble. Other than the attempted murder of Christine, which was done and dusted in two and a bit episodes, we've wasted hours (or thereabouts) on Hilda's affair and Daniel's son, both of which are the most tedious sub-plots of the year so far.
A large proportion of each episode is now given over to stories that don't go anywhere, merely offering cloying moments of grief from minor characters who are unhappy over events that don't really matter. Don't believe me? Watch how often Daniel mentions his son over the rest of the season. Also, Hilda made her true love go back to his wife to try to make it work out? Yeah, I'm sure that the guy who was crazy about you and didn't want to be with his wife any more is real happy about that decision. It was all so dull that even her son looks like he wishes he was on Heroes or something.
Of course, while The O.C. had a similar quality dip, it found its feet again for a mostly entertaining fourth season, but that was by ditching the dark plots and going all out with the weird (alternate realities?), which might have annoyed the purists (if there is such a thing as an O.C. purist) but kept us happy. How can Ugly Betty go that route? It's already cartoony, and until now has worked by maintaining that slightly hysterical soapy semi-dramatic tone. Turning it into an out-and-out comedy might make it more fun in the short term, but it might finish the whole thing off as well. It's worth a try, though. Even the happy-making return of Gio became a meta-comment on how much the show has begun to annoy us.
My suggestion is the same as I've been saying for a while now. Give Marc and Amanda more to do. Make Claire Meade a catty matriarch again. Give Wilhelmina something else to do other than plot to takeover Meade Publications every week. Betty's fine for now, but her family is dragging the show down (plus, Justin is realistically snotty as a teenager, but he's also zero fun). Give Daniel a victory or two, or bring back his tacky lad's mag (dozens of story possibilities flew out the window with that decision). Most importantly, make it funny again. Jokes are flopping lifelessly to the ground with depressing regularity, and it's making the show a chore to watch. I'm not sure how much longer we're going to stick with this, and I bet we're not the only ones.
Shurely Shome Mishtake Moment of the Week:
Olivia Dunham spends much of last week's Fringe being grumpy about her birthday, which is later explained away as a consequence of her abusive stepfather beating up her mother so much that Olivia ends up shooting him. He nearly dies but somehow survives (is Mad Science responsible??!?!?!?), before disappearing. His only contact with Olivia is sending her a birthday card every year since. That the whole speech was only lacking a reference to the screaming of the lambs was not the worst thing about it, nor was the cliche of Olivia transferring her anger of her stepfather over to her investigation of Evil David Esterbrook. It was the fact that she shot someone when she was nine and grew up to become an FBI agent.
Oh sure, she did it in self-defence, but surely there has to be some rule that someone who once tried to kill someone else, no matter what the circumstances, should not rise through the ranks of the FBI to become an agent. It just strikes me as being highly unlikely. No doubt someone somewhere knows that it's actually mandatory or something, but until then, I call bullshit.
Gratifying Performance of the Week:
We're a week behind on Pushing Daisies, and rumours of its imminent cancellation are sapping our enthusiasm, but that doesn't mean we're not getting any pleasure out of it. The episode from two weeks ago, with Ned, Chuck and Emerson visiting Olive's convent featured many amusing moments, but most pleasingly it gave Anna Friel a chance to show off her acting skillz. Wracked with doubt about her place in the world, and whether or not she should have received a second chance at life, she is saved from a potentially terminal depression by the news that Aunt Lily is actually her mother. Her tear-soaked reaction was almost enough to set me off.
I've been waiting for years for Friel to live up to the promise of her Brookside performances, and regrettably she's not had any roles good enough to give her a chance to show off what she can do, but Chuck is perfect for her. I especially like that even though she is becoming more unhappy as the show progresses, she is still cheery enough to hide it convincingly. Plus, the way she keeps waving at Olive is adorable.
Here's hoping we get to see a full season of endearing character moments like this.
Distracting Embonpoint of the Week:
It is my sincere wish to be as progressive about gender politics, the insidious male gaze, and the negative impact of the objectification of women as possible, but Catherine Willows' breastal area seemed way way larger than usual this week, causing me to lose focus on the plot.
This, in turn, made me feel like a lecherous wanker for getting so distracted. Was I being irrational? Am I no better than some Daily Star-reading creep whose favourite word is PHWOAR? Surely I'm better than this, I thought as I rewound subsequent scenes several times because I had become so anxious about my distraction and the psychological consequences of my sudden fascination with the boobs. It was upsetting me so much I had to blurt out my suspicions about a size increase to Canyon, who, thankfully, had been thinking the same thing. Not that I'm saying, "It's okay for me to be staring at boobs because my wife was as well," but it did make me think I was onto something with my suspicions. And I'm not judging Marg Helgenberger if she has indeed had cosmetic surgery. That's her choice, and more power to her for doing it. Good on her. Not "Good on her for having bigger boobs. Or not, if she's not done anything and I've made a mistake." Just, you know, good on her for doing what she wants to do. If it is what happened. I'm not saying it definitely is. I'm not the kind of guy who gets obsessed with these things. It's just idle curiosity. So, what happened? Cosmetic surgery (not that there's anything wrong with that)? Or just that top she is wearing? It could just be shadows. Not that I'm insinuating she has small boobs normally. I've never really thought about it one way or the other, to be honest. They just caught my eye this week, which is unusual. It's almost aberrant, you could say. Me noticing her boobs, that is, not the boobs themselves. I'm sure they're as great now as they have always been. Though of course I don't go around saying, you know, "Hey, boobs are great! Yowsa boobs!" And I certainly don't think women are expected to have cosmetic surgery done. It's totally their choice and it's none of my business. Of course, I also think that wanting to enhance boobs is totally acceptable, and I would never suggest otherwise. And it's not just for women either, or wymyn, should I say. Men can have them too, if that's what they want, certainly if they are intending to change gender, which, again, is supercool with me, and I would never think to make any disparaging comments about that either. Which is getting me away from my question about Catherine. Now that I think about it, I'm fairly sure it's an optical illusion or something to do with the lighting, and I'm reading too much into things, which is more than likely. It's the culture we live in, you know, obsessed with body image and looks and what-have-you, reducing people to their parts instead of dealing with them as a whole. It's so terrible. I never ever do that. Except this one time. And earlier on when I was going on about all of the hott gay sex in House. But that was just me pointing out the show using sex as a ratings winner, in an exploitative manner, otherwise I wouldn't have mentioned it at all, because of course I don't want to seem like I watch TV just to ogle anyone, because I totally don't. So, we're settled with this, right? It's just a very nice top she is wearing, and I should be ashamed of myself for being so interested in it. Good. Glad we're clear on that. [/torrential flopsweat]
Distracting Groin of the Week:
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Holy shit! Don Draper is 150% more man than most! (Believe me, that bulge next to the AMC sign is not the pleats.)
He could appear in the porn version of this show. As Dong Draper.
Inaccurate Depiction of Bloggers of the Week:
CSI wandered into dangerously luddite CSI: Miami territory last week, with our heroes hingeing their investigation on the comments section of an art blog. While a serial killer left macabre posed corpses around Las Vegas, an immoral blogger (seen below, with more hair than is usual for bloggers) made vodcasts about the project, leading the killer to post comments about how awesome he was.
I say the blogger was immoral because, in a bit of judgemental stereotyping, the blogger was more concerned with the statement than the crime, though he got the message after being pulled in to lay a trap for the killer. If this was CSI: Miami the blogger would have been the killer, and he would have broadcast the murders on The YourTube, the sick bastard. He would also have been a pedophile. And a terrorist. CSI: Classic was not as bad as that, but it still chafed.
Still, the thought that the police were going to trace the IP addresses of the commenters in order to find the killer must have made the hearts of many bloggers soar in much the same way that the end of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back did, with fantasies of finding abusive jerkoffs and making them apologise for being douchey. Ah, how lovely the internet would be if everyone had some goddamn manners.
Shock of the Week:
Hard to believe, but last week's Heroes did not totally suck. I'm not saying it qualifies as good, but it was intentionally amusing at times (as well as unintentionally), and contained some surprises that actually worked until you thought about them for a moment, instead of seeming like contrived nonsense right off the bat. I have no idea what last night's episode was like (I intended to get this finished before it aired, but I'm still feeling super-rough), but this episode managed to be flawed but fun. Things to like: Hiro's tantrum after getting hit over the head with a shovel for the second time...
...Daphne trying to ignore the power of Parkman's turtle totem...
...Pops Petrelli's power being a new variant on Peter and Sylar's power absorption, and best of all, Peter going down like a punk in the final scene.
Things not to like: Daphne wondering how Parkman could know so much about her which is stupid as, even though it's not the reason for his knowledge, she has just read a folder on him pointing out he is telepathic; Adam also going out like a punk, with much crying and whining and dessicating...
...Peter not reading his dad's mind before getting powersucked; the utter lameness of Pops Petrelli's Association of Evil Individuals...
...Hiro's power suddenly freezing Daphne, even though it has been established that he can't, which also means that last week's fake-out murder of Ando was just as stupid as expected...
...all of the deeply boring Puppet Man plot, especially finding out that Meredith went after him even though she knew he could control her body...
...and everything involving Tracy, Nathan and Suresh, who are an Unholy Trinity of boring stupidity.
Still, that's a lot more in column one than in recent weeks. I strongly doubt the show is ever going to be what we hoped it would be, and some viewers are never going to warm to it, such as a disgusted Canyon, who barely made it through this installment, but it might get to the point where it makes sense once in a while, something the second season seemed to render impossible.
Guest Stars of the Week:
Just recently I made a comment about how CSI often blows the mystery of the week by casting guest stars who are obviously going to be the killer, but this week convention was shirked, meaning Alex Kingston really was a grief counsellor, and Jeffrey Tambor really was just a snotty artist. The killer turned out to be just some guy doing a weak Kevin-Spacey-in-Seven impression.
Tambor is one of those rare Scientologists its okay to like, such as Beck, Chick Corea, and mid-to-late 90s Travolta. It's always a treat to see him on TV, and he was lots of fun here. Kingston did an equally good job as the counsellor who ends up facing off against Gil following a misunderstanding, but even so I was worried that the show was suddenly employing two guest stars.
It's a bit of overkill that suggests the showrunners were eager to distract the viewer from the new character, who would otherwise be the biggest deal in the episode. Speaking of which...
Unorthodox Introduction of the Week:
...new character Riley Adams, played by Lauren Lee Smith, arrived at CSI HQ with an aggressive attitude and a malfunctioning sense of humour. As Lee Smith appeared in the credits, replacing Gary Dourdan, we discussed how difficult it would be for her to fit in with the fanbase's expectations, who treat in-show change with a range of emotions running the gamut from thwarted yet undeserved entitlement to seething indignant rage.
Perhaps the CSI showrunners realised that, and didn't bother creating a likeable character, knowing it would all be for naught. Better to just alienate the audience on purpose and win them over in the long term (I wonder if naming her after a famously unpopular character who joined a show late in its run was part of the plan). Also, I noted that Riley is the first permanent team member added since Holly Griggs (not counting Greg, who was promoted. Griggs, of course, was murdered in the pilot due to Warrick's negligence. So far Riley is the total opposite of Griggs, which makes the whole thing nicely symbolic. Or cyclical. There's a point being made here, but sadly the grogginess is making it hard to find.
Model of the Week:
We've decided on our favourite for this cycle. I had been convinced that Lauren Brie was going to win for sure, despite being partially covered in an almost inedible rind, but it was not to be. As is now the way with ANTM, we got to see her being a big bitch two weeks ago, and not long after she was SENT! HOME! Unfortuately the same happened to the awesome Joslyn, leaving us kinda bereft. Now, we're not sure she can pull it off, but we're totally rooting for Analeigh, who has been adorable and is getting better every week.
Her CoverGirl ad this week was possibly the best in the show's history, and her in-house diplomacy has been a refreshing change from the usual catty shenanigans (Marjorie and Samantha have been moved to our Shut-The-Fuck-Up Corner). Of course, Elina will probably win now that Tyra has made it her mission to break her spirit and mold her into something else as if she were V and Elina were Evie, but we're hoping Analeigh (and therefore justice) will win out.
Grisly Moment of the Week:
Was it Pops Petrelli yanking a tube out of his throat after absorbing Adam's power?
Or Fringe Mysteriously Experimented-Upon-Person Emily Kramer after her head exploded due to some particularly Mad Science involving Strontium or something?
Or the eerie image, from CSI, of a child suspended in a tank filled with carbon monoxide?
That wasn't gross, but it was deeply unnerving, especially as it brought back uncomfortable memories of Vincent D'Onofrio's elaborate murders in The Cell, which was, of course, directed by... TARSEM!
Silly Bet of the Week:
Not only does he have a name guaranteed to make Brits laugh for all the wrong reasons, Wayne Rigsby (played by Owain Yeoman) bets Mentalist Patrick Jane that he can't seduce the widow at the funeral they are staking out. For crying out loud, not only is he The Mentalist, but he's played by Simon Baker.
Yum! He's such a mischievous hottie. No woman could resist his Amazing Powers of the Brain and his sexxy waistcoat. Bet lost. (Actually, Rigsby kinda wins, but only because the widow is a murderous psycho and Jane has to put her away using psychology and subterfuge. Bad luck, Mentalist.)
Hitchcock Reference of the Week:
Having an obvious but non-showy Vertigo reference in Pushing Daisies was very welcome.
You see, later that week we watched Eagle Eye, and the hamfisted way D.J. Caruso visualised his rip-off of the big finish of The Man Who Knew Too Much, with a CG overlay of a sheet of music with a big note sticking up where the bomb is going to go off, was just horrid. Just showing the tower, identical to the one in Vertigo, is the way to go.
Intensity of the Week:
Even from a distance...
...Lance Reddick brings it.
I'm really startled by how much this week has disappointed me, stripping me of all of my enthusiasm for this project. It's not just me, either. Brian Michael Bendoom was harder to track down for comment, but after leaving numerous messages for him, he got back to me to say...
...and to be honest, I think he's being generous. Be better this week, TV!
Non-Shield Highlight of the Week:
As this week's Friday Night Lights ended, and the final slow-motion shot of "Smash" Williams faded to black, Canyon said, "My God, it really is back on form." I couldn't agree more. Though we enjoyed the second season more than many, this third season has been exceptional even by this show's high standards. The latest episode was just about perfect, and was filled with examples of how the showrunners have upped their game this year.
Part of it is the shorter season. This time there won't be any Carlotta missteps, or new characters not given a full arc (I'm still upset at how Santiago was treated). Sticking with the core characters and seeking to build upon old tensions rather than introduce new ones, the show has done the miraculous and made a season that feels like the first season while telling stories that are new enough to feel fresh but have expanded from previous concerns. The best example of that is Matt Saracen's relationship with his grandmother. Though his position as QB1 is now endangered, and has generated a great deal of turmoil for himself, Coach, and the Dillon fanbase (who are jerks, let's be honest), we still have the old, unresolved arc featuring his grandmother's illness informing his every choice.
That story should have become boring a long time ago, but while season two featured that awful Carlotta plot, this season sees Matt reaching out to his mother in an act of desperation, and from there we find out more about him, his family, his capacity for forgiveness, etc. Carlotta told us nothing other than how teenage boys get horny and make mistakes. This new plot has been a revelation in more ways than one. Most importantly, it's given Zack Gilford a chance to show what he's capable of, which seems only fair after season two gave Taylor Kitsch numerous opportunities to shine. His scenes with his mother, played by the ever-excellent Kim Dickens, were a joy to behold. I'm glad the showrunners got around to giving Gilford a shot at the prize.
Another consequence of the shorter season is the chance to finish arcs conclusively. Next week we'll find out what Jason Street has been up to, but for the first four episodes we saw Smash get a second chance to get into college. Last week I admitted I was getting a bit sick of the constant doubts Smash had, but luckily this frustration was assuaged by this week's conclusion. By the time Smash gets his phonecall of acceptance, he's really earned it, having faced down every obstacle going. If he didn't make it, it might have been "realistic", but it would also have been wrong.
The whole point of Coach's philosophy, and Smash's confidence, is that hard work and dedication bring you what you want, and this was the perfect dramatisation of that. My misgivings faded as Coach delivered yet more stirring speeches about living up to his promise, and the last five minutes of the show were viewed from behind a veil of happy tears. It was exactly the ending we had hoped for, and justified everything Smash has gone through. If only all TV could be like this.
What the Hell Just Happened? Disaster of the Week:
As this season has progressed, you'll note that my fondness for Fringe has increased from my initial position of slightly optimistic reticence, with much of that interest based around Dr. Walter Bishop and The Observer, that bald Easter Egg I love so much. In the first season of Alias, created by J.J. Abrams and often written by Fringe creators Kurtzman and Orci, I remember the pilot episode being one of the strongest hours of TV I've seen, and that first season containing pretty much no clunkers, so confident was the showrunning team. Though the Fringe pilot was nowhere near as good as the first hour of Alias, it was still compelling, and the premise grew to be more interesting than I had first thought by the time The Observer showed up. So how the hell did last week's episode turn out to be so feeble, even though it opened with such nasty events as brain-cooking and blood tears?
Much of it comes down to a truly crappy script, which was little more than a list of cliches of forehead-slapping overuse, with serious misjudgements throughout. I'm not sure which was worse: the scientist who, when rumbled, shoots himself in the head; Olivia's rogue investigation and sudden random and hilarious aggressiveness; the race against time kidnap plot (also used this week in CSI), and much more. Perhaps the worst crime was sticking Lance "Intensity" Reddick with some dialogue of look-away-it's-so-awful clunkiness.
There were other problems, though. One scene at a horseriding club was lit so badly you could see shadows on the floor even though it was supposed to be filmed during late-afternoon, and other scenes were blocked terribly, with characters pulling guns on each other in a room so small the camera almost gets in the way. I understand that the show has to make the most of its budget, and the shooting schedule is tight, especially as development on the show would have been affected by the writers' strike, but it still seemed amateurish. These egregious errors are above and beyond the main problems; that it was sluggish, boring, silly, littered with tonal errors (having a main villain played, by Canyon's least favourite actor Chris Eigemann, with outrageous mustache-twirling evilness), and criminally over-writing Walter so that he is almost annoying. Almost. I'm sorry, but even though he went a bit far, having him get upset over microwaving a papaya to death because it's the friendliest of fruits made me laugh too much to get angry at him.
Fringe is away for three weeks, what with sport and elections and whathaveyou. It's a good job the fourth episode was so freakydeaky, because otherwise I would be walking away after this. It wasn't as bad as Knight Rider (surely impossible), but maybe it was approaching Flash Gordon levels of awfulness. It gives me no pleasure to say that, and the only thing that makes me feel better about that judgement is that I refuse to believe the show is going to sink. Surely this is an anomaly. I'm just hoping the number of bad episodes don't end up outweighing the good.
Slowly Improving Show of the Week:
As I had hoped, this week's Mentalist was definitely organised around a central location, a sort of bland office complex that featured last week without being named as the CBI HQ.
Other notable features of the episode included more screen time for Gregory Itzin (working as the pencil-pushing jerk I had hoped he would be), more panicky reactions from Patrick Jane upon being confronted with a gun, and some humour. It's babysteps, but the hour went much quicker than some of the other shows we watched this week. Spotting some of Derren Brown's techniques helped (the fumbling disarming of a gun-toting Eastern European was particularly welcome), and I hope we see more of his team using elaborate lies to fool the criminals into giving themselves up. That said, I still don't think I'd recommend it to anyone who's not a huge fan of procedurals, though. It's still not quite there yet, but it's a little victory that, five episodes in, it's managed to create an episode that is arguably more entertaining (if less well constructed) than this week's episodes of House (not as bad as I had feared, but a little dull) and CSI (would have been better if the serial killer introduced this week didn't get arrested at the end).
Heartbreak of the Week:
Oh Friday Night Lights, how you torture us. Tyra and Landry's ill-fated love was never meant to be, only beginning because of the murder/rape plot that annoyed the fanbase so much. This week, Tyra definitively moved on, leaving a heartbroken Landry behind with nothing but his slowly weeping guitar for solace.
Yes, the murder plot might have been handled well but was not welcome on the show. Yes, it was a contrived way to get Tyra and Landry together when in real life there is no way she would ever want to be with him. But who cares about that when we get to see acting of the calibre displayed by Adrianne Palicki and Jesse Plemons? Fuck it, they could have been abducted by aliens for all I care. Seeing Landry's heartache and Tyra's sadness over the consequences of her decision was one of the acting highlights of the season so far.
Your Sex Is On Fire of the Week:
And so were the words to transpire, whatever that means. Yes, this week House finally had bisexual Thirteen have some gay sex, because in TV land, as Canyon pointed out during the hectic sex scene (which was as hot as a fever), bisexual means lesbian, but a lesbian that the male viewers have a chance with. I really doubt that having lesbian smooching and the attendant rattling bones hinted at in trailers means twenty million more viewers tune in, but even if the opening felt unusually exploitative for the show, it kinda matched Thirteen's desperate effort to live her life to the full before she dies. Sort of. Well, it was edited really frantically. Luckily, it's not forever, but it's just tonight, oh we're still the greatest. The greatest! The greatest! And YEEEAAAAHH Yo' sex is on fiyah!
Yeah, you know Kings of Leon are the shit.
Actor We Love of the Week:
Lee Pace is always great on Pushing Daisies, but we want to give him a shout out this week, just cuz.
Actually, it's more that we just saw him in The Fall (directed, of course, by... TARSEM!), and he is unnaturally great in it. Let's hope that the imminent cancellation of this lovely show frees him up for more great work. For instance, the West End loves American actors lately, Mr. Pace. Some are very close to pie shops. Plus, you can stay at our house while you are here. We have a very small bed that only slightly smells like cat vom. You'll love it.
Improbably Attractive Biologist of the Week:
Evil David Esterbrook, evil CEO of evil pharmaceutical company Intrepus, is more than happy to hang around while a woman is injected with a compound that will turn the strontium capsules in her head into a weapon, but he won't be doing any of the injecting himself. Instead, he has an improbably attractive biologist to help him out.
As you can seen, the improbably attractive biologist is wearing a HazMat suit, and if you think she took off the helmet and shook her long black hair out like the stereotypical sexy librarian who lets her hair down to the amazement of all the horny chaps nearby, you would be right.
Sudden Romantic of the Week:
Though Landry and Tyra get the award for most heartbreaking relationship failure of the week, Dwight Schrute's agony over the imminent marriage of Angela and Andy came a close second.
That he kept undercutting that pain with such horrible treatment of Phyllis was perfect, but even better was his pathetic but noble attempt to make it up to her at the end.
Of course, there were other romantic developments in this episode, but this was the one that seemed to get forgotten in the rush to squeal with delight over the other stuff.
Worst Performance of the Week:
I'm beginning to think that the Fringe showrunners made a huge mistake in casting Anna Torv to head their new show. Though all of my affection for the show rests with either John Noble or Lance "Intensity" Reddick, I'm willing to open my arms to allow others in. No one has stepped up yet. Kirk Acevedo's tics irk me, Blair Brown is as shaky as she was during Altered States, and even though I thought he was okay opposite Patrick Stewart in Mamet's A Life In The Theatre, I'm otherwise baffled by the appeal of Joshua Jackson, especially in a role as poorly written as this one.
Torv, on the other hand, has shown little spark of life in Fringe, which we attributed to the lifeless role of Olivia, who has been asked to swallow her grief over her lover's death and possible betrayal (and, you know, the fact that his consciousness is living inside her brain or something). This week, however, Olivia has been re-written as an angry young lady, all guns drawn and snarly, telling tales of her evil step-dad and going after nasty pharma-jerks who abduct women to make their brains a big radioactive weapon, or somesuch. (Check out this week's appearance of The Observer, who seems to find Olivia's inept flirting more interesting than someone's head exploding in the opening scene. He truly is inhuman!)
While I would definitely say Olivia needed a revamp, and pronto, and while I would accept a mid-flow personality change as a quick fix to what must have been an obvious problem with the template for the show, did the showrunners realise that Anna Torv can't really pull it off? With the whole episode revolving around her dangerous past and sudden no-nonsense attitude, her acting quirks were on full display, and warning bells sounded throughout.
While I'm not able to discuss her acting technique using technical terms, and though a lot of what was wrong with that episode is down to the shockingly poor script, it was still a dispiriting display of faux-rage and stroppy, confrontational bluster, none of which convinced. Though Torv's voice is possibly the most soothing thing currently on TV, hearing her spit sarcastic and furious lines at her co-stars just made us laugh in incredulity. Her goofy reaction to the scientist's suicide was amusing too; this picture does not do justice to the WTFness of it.
In other venues, I'm sure Ms. Torv is just fine, and she must have done something right to get the job, but so far this role seems like a bad fit. Perhaps it's unfair to compare her to Jennifer Garner, whose work on Alias was so consistently impressive (shut it, haters), but she had some warmth or lightness that Torv desperately needs. Of course, perhaps she is not meant to portray that, in which case the character needs to be rethought, as she can't do tough guy, so it's going to be a problem if Olivia 2.0 is meant to go all Horatio Caine week after week. Nevertheless, Torv is on probation until there is another change, because right now, Angry Olivia is still good for a few laughs, which harms the show's atmosphere, but holds our attention more.
Magnificent Insanity of the Week:
It's official: America's Next Top Model has lost its mind. Words cannot describe the lunacy on display. I'll let this photo montage do the explaining for me.
There really is nothing else to add.
Troubling Development of the Week:
We've been thinking it for a while now, and this week might have set our opinion in stone: Ugly Betty is now officially boring. While we're a week behind on Pushing Daisies out of regrettable error, we're not up to speed with Betty mostly because we just don't care about the majority of the storylines currently running. While Claire Meade's incarceration was amusing, this week's prison sub-plot just made me wish I was rewatching Arrested Development, an urge more pronounced after Jeffrey Tambor turned up on CSI the following week.
The biggest problem the show has this season is that there is very little it can do that it hasn't done before. The O.C. had a similar problem in its middle two seasons, after the crazed first burned through major arcs in the space of a couple of episodes. Eventually the show had nowhere to go, and the penultimate season ended up filled with clanging plot failures like Sandy's descent into evil, Marissa's infinitely boring friendship with the world's most depressed surfer, and Ryan's war with the adorably named Volchok. Ugly Betty is in similar trouble. Other than the attempted murder of Christine, which was done and dusted in two and a bit episodes, we've wasted hours (or thereabouts) on Hilda's affair and Daniel's son, both of which are the most tedious sub-plots of the year so far.
A large proportion of each episode is now given over to stories that don't go anywhere, merely offering cloying moments of grief from minor characters who are unhappy over events that don't really matter. Don't believe me? Watch how often Daniel mentions his son over the rest of the season. Also, Hilda made her true love go back to his wife to try to make it work out? Yeah, I'm sure that the guy who was crazy about you and didn't want to be with his wife any more is real happy about that decision. It was all so dull that even her son looks like he wishes he was on Heroes or something.
Of course, while The O.C. had a similar quality dip, it found its feet again for a mostly entertaining fourth season, but that was by ditching the dark plots and going all out with the weird (alternate realities?), which might have annoyed the purists (if there is such a thing as an O.C. purist) but kept us happy. How can Ugly Betty go that route? It's already cartoony, and until now has worked by maintaining that slightly hysterical soapy semi-dramatic tone. Turning it into an out-and-out comedy might make it more fun in the short term, but it might finish the whole thing off as well. It's worth a try, though. Even the happy-making return of Gio became a meta-comment on how much the show has begun to annoy us.
My suggestion is the same as I've been saying for a while now. Give Marc and Amanda more to do. Make Claire Meade a catty matriarch again. Give Wilhelmina something else to do other than plot to takeover Meade Publications every week. Betty's fine for now, but her family is dragging the show down (plus, Justin is realistically snotty as a teenager, but he's also zero fun). Give Daniel a victory or two, or bring back his tacky lad's mag (dozens of story possibilities flew out the window with that decision). Most importantly, make it funny again. Jokes are flopping lifelessly to the ground with depressing regularity, and it's making the show a chore to watch. I'm not sure how much longer we're going to stick with this, and I bet we're not the only ones.
Shurely Shome Mishtake Moment of the Week:
Olivia Dunham spends much of last week's Fringe being grumpy about her birthday, which is later explained away as a consequence of her abusive stepfather beating up her mother so much that Olivia ends up shooting him. He nearly dies but somehow survives (is Mad Science responsible??!?!?!?), before disappearing. His only contact with Olivia is sending her a birthday card every year since. That the whole speech was only lacking a reference to the screaming of the lambs was not the worst thing about it, nor was the cliche of Olivia transferring her anger of her stepfather over to her investigation of Evil David Esterbrook. It was the fact that she shot someone when she was nine and grew up to become an FBI agent.
Oh sure, she did it in self-defence, but surely there has to be some rule that someone who once tried to kill someone else, no matter what the circumstances, should not rise through the ranks of the FBI to become an agent. It just strikes me as being highly unlikely. No doubt someone somewhere knows that it's actually mandatory or something, but until then, I call bullshit.
Gratifying Performance of the Week:
We're a week behind on Pushing Daisies, and rumours of its imminent cancellation are sapping our enthusiasm, but that doesn't mean we're not getting any pleasure out of it. The episode from two weeks ago, with Ned, Chuck and Emerson visiting Olive's convent featured many amusing moments, but most pleasingly it gave Anna Friel a chance to show off her acting skillz. Wracked with doubt about her place in the world, and whether or not she should have received a second chance at life, she is saved from a potentially terminal depression by the news that Aunt Lily is actually her mother. Her tear-soaked reaction was almost enough to set me off.
I've been waiting for years for Friel to live up to the promise of her Brookside performances, and regrettably she's not had any roles good enough to give her a chance to show off what she can do, but Chuck is perfect for her. I especially like that even though she is becoming more unhappy as the show progresses, she is still cheery enough to hide it convincingly. Plus, the way she keeps waving at Olive is adorable.
Here's hoping we get to see a full season of endearing character moments like this.
Distracting Embonpoint of the Week:
It is my sincere wish to be as progressive about gender politics, the insidious male gaze, and the negative impact of the objectification of women as possible, but Catherine Willows' breastal area seemed way way larger than usual this week, causing me to lose focus on the plot.
This, in turn, made me feel like a lecherous wanker for getting so distracted. Was I being irrational? Am I no better than some Daily Star-reading creep whose favourite word is PHWOAR? Surely I'm better than this, I thought as I rewound subsequent scenes several times because I had become so anxious about my distraction and the psychological consequences of my sudden fascination with the boobs. It was upsetting me so much I had to blurt out my suspicions about a size increase to Canyon, who, thankfully, had been thinking the same thing. Not that I'm saying, "It's okay for me to be staring at boobs because my wife was as well," but it did make me think I was onto something with my suspicions. And I'm not judging Marg Helgenberger if she has indeed had cosmetic surgery. That's her choice, and more power to her for doing it. Good on her. Not "Good on her for having bigger boobs. Or not, if she's not done anything and I've made a mistake." Just, you know, good on her for doing what she wants to do. If it is what happened. I'm not saying it definitely is. I'm not the kind of guy who gets obsessed with these things. It's just idle curiosity. So, what happened? Cosmetic surgery (not that there's anything wrong with that)? Or just that top she is wearing? It could just be shadows. Not that I'm insinuating she has small boobs normally. I've never really thought about it one way or the other, to be honest. They just caught my eye this week, which is unusual. It's almost aberrant, you could say. Me noticing her boobs, that is, not the boobs themselves. I'm sure they're as great now as they have always been. Though of course I don't go around saying, you know, "Hey, boobs are great! Yowsa boobs!" And I certainly don't think women are expected to have cosmetic surgery done. It's totally their choice and it's none of my business. Of course, I also think that wanting to enhance boobs is totally acceptable, and I would never suggest otherwise. And it's not just for women either, or wymyn, should I say. Men can have them too, if that's what they want, certainly if they are intending to change gender, which, again, is supercool with me, and I would never think to make any disparaging comments about that either. Which is getting me away from my question about Catherine. Now that I think about it, I'm fairly sure it's an optical illusion or something to do with the lighting, and I'm reading too much into things, which is more than likely. It's the culture we live in, you know, obsessed with body image and looks and what-have-you, reducing people to their parts instead of dealing with them as a whole. It's so terrible. I never ever do that. Except this one time. And earlier on when I was going on about all of the hott gay sex in House. But that was just me pointing out the show using sex as a ratings winner, in an exploitative manner, otherwise I wouldn't have mentioned it at all, because of course I don't want to seem like I watch TV just to ogle anyone, because I totally don't. So, we're settled with this, right? It's just a very nice top she is wearing, and I should be ashamed of myself for being so interested in it. Good. Glad we're clear on that. [/torrential flopsweat]
Distracting Groin of the Week:
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Holy shit! Don Draper is 150% more man than most! (Believe me, that bulge next to the AMC sign is not the pleats.)
He could appear in the porn version of this show. As Dong Draper.
Inaccurate Depiction of Bloggers of the Week:
CSI wandered into dangerously luddite CSI: Miami territory last week, with our heroes hingeing their investigation on the comments section of an art blog. While a serial killer left macabre posed corpses around Las Vegas, an immoral blogger (seen below, with more hair than is usual for bloggers) made vodcasts about the project, leading the killer to post comments about how awesome he was.
I say the blogger was immoral because, in a bit of judgemental stereotyping, the blogger was more concerned with the statement than the crime, though he got the message after being pulled in to lay a trap for the killer. If this was CSI: Miami the blogger would have been the killer, and he would have broadcast the murders on The YourTube, the sick bastard. He would also have been a pedophile. And a terrorist. CSI: Classic was not as bad as that, but it still chafed.
Still, the thought that the police were going to trace the IP addresses of the commenters in order to find the killer must have made the hearts of many bloggers soar in much the same way that the end of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back did, with fantasies of finding abusive jerkoffs and making them apologise for being douchey. Ah, how lovely the internet would be if everyone had some goddamn manners.
Shock of the Week:
Hard to believe, but last week's Heroes did not totally suck. I'm not saying it qualifies as good, but it was intentionally amusing at times (as well as unintentionally), and contained some surprises that actually worked until you thought about them for a moment, instead of seeming like contrived nonsense right off the bat. I have no idea what last night's episode was like (I intended to get this finished before it aired, but I'm still feeling super-rough), but this episode managed to be flawed but fun. Things to like: Hiro's tantrum after getting hit over the head with a shovel for the second time...
...Daphne trying to ignore the power of Parkman's turtle totem...
...Pops Petrelli's power being a new variant on Peter and Sylar's power absorption, and best of all, Peter going down like a punk in the final scene.
Things not to like: Daphne wondering how Parkman could know so much about her which is stupid as, even though it's not the reason for his knowledge, she has just read a folder on him pointing out he is telepathic; Adam also going out like a punk, with much crying and whining and dessicating...
...Peter not reading his dad's mind before getting powersucked; the utter lameness of Pops Petrelli's Association of Evil Individuals...
...Hiro's power suddenly freezing Daphne, even though it has been established that he can't, which also means that last week's fake-out murder of Ando was just as stupid as expected...
...all of the deeply boring Puppet Man plot, especially finding out that Meredith went after him even though she knew he could control her body...
...and everything involving Tracy, Nathan and Suresh, who are an Unholy Trinity of boring stupidity.
Still, that's a lot more in column one than in recent weeks. I strongly doubt the show is ever going to be what we hoped it would be, and some viewers are never going to warm to it, such as a disgusted Canyon, who barely made it through this installment, but it might get to the point where it makes sense once in a while, something the second season seemed to render impossible.
Guest Stars of the Week:
Just recently I made a comment about how CSI often blows the mystery of the week by casting guest stars who are obviously going to be the killer, but this week convention was shirked, meaning Alex Kingston really was a grief counsellor, and Jeffrey Tambor really was just a snotty artist. The killer turned out to be just some guy doing a weak Kevin-Spacey-in-Seven impression.
Tambor is one of those rare Scientologists its okay to like, such as Beck, Chick Corea, and mid-to-late 90s Travolta. It's always a treat to see him on TV, and he was lots of fun here. Kingston did an equally good job as the counsellor who ends up facing off against Gil following a misunderstanding, but even so I was worried that the show was suddenly employing two guest stars.
It's a bit of overkill that suggests the showrunners were eager to distract the viewer from the new character, who would otherwise be the biggest deal in the episode. Speaking of which...
Unorthodox Introduction of the Week:
...new character Riley Adams, played by Lauren Lee Smith, arrived at CSI HQ with an aggressive attitude and a malfunctioning sense of humour. As Lee Smith appeared in the credits, replacing Gary Dourdan, we discussed how difficult it would be for her to fit in with the fanbase's expectations, who treat in-show change with a range of emotions running the gamut from thwarted yet undeserved entitlement to seething indignant rage.
Perhaps the CSI showrunners realised that, and didn't bother creating a likeable character, knowing it would all be for naught. Better to just alienate the audience on purpose and win them over in the long term (I wonder if naming her after a famously unpopular character who joined a show late in its run was part of the plan). Also, I noted that Riley is the first permanent team member added since Holly Griggs (not counting Greg, who was promoted. Griggs, of course, was murdered in the pilot due to Warrick's negligence. So far Riley is the total opposite of Griggs, which makes the whole thing nicely symbolic. Or cyclical. There's a point being made here, but sadly the grogginess is making it hard to find.
Model of the Week:
We've decided on our favourite for this cycle. I had been convinced that Lauren Brie was going to win for sure, despite being partially covered in an almost inedible rind, but it was not to be. As is now the way with ANTM, we got to see her being a big bitch two weeks ago, and not long after she was SENT! HOME! Unfortuately the same happened to the awesome Joslyn, leaving us kinda bereft. Now, we're not sure she can pull it off, but we're totally rooting for Analeigh, who has been adorable and is getting better every week.
Her CoverGirl ad this week was possibly the best in the show's history, and her in-house diplomacy has been a refreshing change from the usual catty shenanigans (Marjorie and Samantha have been moved to our Shut-The-Fuck-Up Corner). Of course, Elina will probably win now that Tyra has made it her mission to break her spirit and mold her into something else as if she were V and Elina were Evie, but we're hoping Analeigh (and therefore justice) will win out.
Grisly Moment of the Week:
Was it Pops Petrelli yanking a tube out of his throat after absorbing Adam's power?
Or Fringe Mysteriously Experimented-Upon-Person Emily Kramer after her head exploded due to some particularly Mad Science involving Strontium or something?
Or the eerie image, from CSI, of a child suspended in a tank filled with carbon monoxide?
That wasn't gross, but it was deeply unnerving, especially as it brought back uncomfortable memories of Vincent D'Onofrio's elaborate murders in The Cell, which was, of course, directed by... TARSEM!
Silly Bet of the Week:
Not only does he have a name guaranteed to make Brits laugh for all the wrong reasons, Wayne Rigsby (played by Owain Yeoman) bets Mentalist Patrick Jane that he can't seduce the widow at the funeral they are staking out. For crying out loud, not only is he The Mentalist, but he's played by Simon Baker.
Yum! He's such a mischievous hottie. No woman could resist his Amazing Powers of the Brain and his sexxy waistcoat. Bet lost. (Actually, Rigsby kinda wins, but only because the widow is a murderous psycho and Jane has to put her away using psychology and subterfuge. Bad luck, Mentalist.)
Hitchcock Reference of the Week:
Having an obvious but non-showy Vertigo reference in Pushing Daisies was very welcome.
You see, later that week we watched Eagle Eye, and the hamfisted way D.J. Caruso visualised his rip-off of the big finish of The Man Who Knew Too Much, with a CG overlay of a sheet of music with a big note sticking up where the bomb is going to go off, was just horrid. Just showing the tower, identical to the one in Vertigo, is the way to go.
Intensity of the Week:
Even from a distance...
...Lance Reddick brings it.
I'm really startled by how much this week has disappointed me, stripping me of all of my enthusiasm for this project. It's not just me, either. Brian Michael Bendoom was harder to track down for comment, but after leaving numerous messages for him, he got back to me to say...
...and to be honest, I think he's being generous. Be better this week, TV!
Sunday, 26 October 2008
Tip Of The Hat, Jon Hamm; Wag Of The Finger, D.J. Caruso
Loyal readers of this blog know that I try to use the weekend to review this week in TV, but a mixture of things have delayed me: shopping, lethargy caused by the tail end of a really shitty ill patch, a trip to see Eagle Eye at IMAX, the usual habitual refreshing of Huffington Post and Daily Kos and Daily Dish and Salon and FiveThirtyEight just to be sure that the desperate Republican-originated October Surprise hasn't happened yet. I'm working on that post (spoiler alert: nothing topped The Shield, just as predicted). Until then, yes, I'm again being naughty and resorting to linkblogging. It's linked to the Mad Men End of Season Review I hope to get on with later in the week, so it's almost as if this is a prologue to that. I just needed to say, good work hosting Saturday Night Live this week, Jon Hamm, and I will have more praise for your recent work in a few days.
Here is Don Draper's Guide To Picking Up Women, and here is some of the Mad Men cast opposite Jason Sudeikis and Kristin Wiig. Why have I not embedded videos onto the blog? Because NBC videos are too large for this horrid template, Hulu won't allow me to embed because I'm in the UK even though US readers would still be able to see it, and AOL had embeddable videos that were the right size but their code is as shitty as any of their godawful programs, such as the IM app that crashed Canyon's iPhone and made her lose all of her contacts, or the IM app that wrecked our new laptop to the extent we had to reinstall everything down to the operating system OH GOD AOL YOU SUCK RACCOON ANUS!!! Anyway, check out the links. Jon Hamm is great, and I especially liked Bill Hader's impression of Sal.
Oh, and Eagle Eye? Note to director D.J. Caruso (formerly of The Shield, just to keep this "topical"). Mr. Caruso, if you're going to film a series of car chases that are going to end up projected on a screen as high as three double decker buses, move the camera back far enough that people can see something more than five minutes of smudgy black shapes flashing past the camera with white dots zipping back and forth. I think they might have been bits of glass. Seriously, people bitch about Michael Bay's incoherent car chases, but compared to the scenes in Eagle Eye, this...
...looks like Peter Yates' crystal clear Bullitt setpiece. The first Eagle Eye car chase was so poorly shot and edited that I thought Shia LaBoeuf and Michelle Monaghan had died four times, but instead four other identical cars had crashed, leaving our heroes improbably untouched. It ruined an otherwise entertaining, if utterly preposterous, bit of nonsense, and one that featured Michael Chiklis, earning the berserk project 10,000 bonus Chickie points.
One more thing. Thank you, YouTube, for allowing me to link to a crazy Nic Cage vs. Sean Connery car chase, and for not being as shitty as AOL, who lick dead toad scrote.
Here is Don Draper's Guide To Picking Up Women, and here is some of the Mad Men cast opposite Jason Sudeikis and Kristin Wiig. Why have I not embedded videos onto the blog? Because NBC videos are too large for this horrid template, Hulu won't allow me to embed because I'm in the UK even though US readers would still be able to see it, and AOL had embeddable videos that were the right size but their code is as shitty as any of their godawful programs, such as the IM app that crashed Canyon's iPhone and made her lose all of her contacts, or the IM app that wrecked our new laptop to the extent we had to reinstall everything down to the operating system OH GOD AOL YOU SUCK RACCOON ANUS!!! Anyway, check out the links. Jon Hamm is great, and I especially liked Bill Hader's impression of Sal.
Oh, and Eagle Eye? Note to director D.J. Caruso (formerly of The Shield, just to keep this "topical"). Mr. Caruso, if you're going to film a series of car chases that are going to end up projected on a screen as high as three double decker buses, move the camera back far enough that people can see something more than five minutes of smudgy black shapes flashing past the camera with white dots zipping back and forth. I think they might have been bits of glass. Seriously, people bitch about Michael Bay's incoherent car chases, but compared to the scenes in Eagle Eye, this...
...looks like Peter Yates' crystal clear Bullitt setpiece. The first Eagle Eye car chase was so poorly shot and edited that I thought Shia LaBoeuf and Michelle Monaghan had died four times, but instead four other identical cars had crashed, leaving our heroes improbably untouched. It ruined an otherwise entertaining, if utterly preposterous, bit of nonsense, and one that featured Michael Chiklis, earning the berserk project 10,000 bonus Chickie points.
One more thing. Thank you, YouTube, for allowing me to link to a crazy Nic Cage vs. Sean Connery car chase, and for not being as shitty as AOL, who lick dead toad scrote.
Friday, 24 October 2008
Reed Richards Is Brane Smart (2)
From Fantastic Four #542, written by Dwayne McDuffie, pencilled by Mike McKone inked by Andy Lanning & Cam Smith, with colours by Paul Mounts. Reed Richards explains to his former nemesis The Thinker (formerly Mad, now just extra pensive) why he helped create the Superhero Registration Act.
"That's all very interesting, Richards, interesting enough to give me a terrible headache. If anyone was going to be able to make something like this work it would be you. However, surely a plan like this only works in terms of determinism, which presupposes a closed system where you know all of the variables and can extrapolate from them. But what if there is a variable introduced from outside that closed system, something that you know nothing about, like, say, a long-planned and secret infiltration of our planet by shape-changing aliens. Like the Skrulls, perhaps. What about if something like that happened, or was already happening? I'm speaking of a hypothetical situation, of course. If something enters that system from outside, such as hundreds upon hundreds of Skrulls, all acting with an agenda that you have not factored into your equation, then perhaps your calculations are wrong, and there was no need for you to throw away our civil liberties in this way, as your calculations are utterly wrong. However, if your calculations are so complex and so far-reaching that you can take into account any and all possible variables, i.e. using the universe as your closed system and therefore making calculations for all matter that exists, then you would know about any future invasions of Earth and would be able to counteract them before they could cost the lives of millions of innocent humans, right?"
"SHUT UP MAD THINKER I AM SMARTER THAN YOU!"
(N.B. This is not a criticism of Dwayne McDuffie's short run as writer of Fantastic Four, as his work was superb, second this decade only to Mark Waid's run, but even though I loved his effort to prove Reed Richards is not just an reactionary dick as portrayed during Civil War, it might have worked better if he had been able to plan around Secret Invasion.)
"That's all very interesting, Richards, interesting enough to give me a terrible headache. If anyone was going to be able to make something like this work it would be you. However, surely a plan like this only works in terms of determinism, which presupposes a closed system where you know all of the variables and can extrapolate from them. But what if there is a variable introduced from outside that closed system, something that you know nothing about, like, say, a long-planned and secret infiltration of our planet by shape-changing aliens. Like the Skrulls, perhaps. What about if something like that happened, or was already happening? I'm speaking of a hypothetical situation, of course. If something enters that system from outside, such as hundreds upon hundreds of Skrulls, all acting with an agenda that you have not factored into your equation, then perhaps your calculations are wrong, and there was no need for you to throw away our civil liberties in this way, as your calculations are utterly wrong. However, if your calculations are so complex and so far-reaching that you can take into account any and all possible variables, i.e. using the universe as your closed system and therefore making calculations for all matter that exists, then you would know about any future invasions of Earth and would be able to counteract them before they could cost the lives of millions of innocent humans, right?"
"SHUT UP MAD THINKER I AM SMARTER THAN YOU!"
(N.B. This is not a criticism of Dwayne McDuffie's short run as writer of Fantastic Four, as his work was superb, second this decade only to Mark Waid's run, but even though I loved his effort to prove Reed Richards is not just an reactionary dick as portrayed during Civil War, it might have worked better if he had been able to plan around Secret Invasion.)
Thursday, 23 October 2008
This Week In TV Special: Vic and Ronnie vs. Shane
Knowing that any weekend posts about this week in TV would be completely derailed by the gut-wrenching hour of TV we saw last night, I thought I would get some of my feelings out here to save me time later. Though this week's Mad Men, which we have yet to watch, is reportedly horrifying and gripping and brilliant, and I'm sure something we watch regularly will impress us (or disappoint us ::aims stinkeye at Ugly Betty::), there is no way, and I really really mean NO WAY, that anything will wrench the Highlight of the Week mantle from this week's episode of The Shield, Parricide. The only episode of this magnificent show that is more upsetting, shocking, template-destroying, and beautifully made is the season five finale, Postpartum, an hour of TV that almost made me vomit, if it's possible to vomit while sobbing uncontrollably and wailing the odd exhortation to God or Crom or Neo or whoever.
--------Beware Shield spoilers if you have yet to watch it, which, really, is kinda unforgivable--------
Over the last couple of months, we have sped through six seasons of the show, hooked by the moral quandaries and thrilled by the efforts of lovable thug Vic Mackey and his Strike Team to escape the mistakes of the past with their souls and families intact. Of the many things to praise, perhaps the thing that excites me most is the show's willingness to take its format to the brink of destruction as often as possible and reel it back without removing consequences for its characters. It's not just splitting the Strike Team up at the end of season three and figuring out a way to realistically bring them together again midway through the next season -- it's having one of the team killed in the most heart-rending way at the end of Postpartum and still keeping the show running even though some of the characters have been transformed into psychotic versions of their former selves. Most of that is due to the superb writing staff and the sure hand of showrunner Shawn Ryan, but it's also a function of that format. The setting (The Barn and Farmington), the set of characters (the police force of The Barn, including the Strike Team), and the antagonists (the various gangs and their bosses) remain unchanged from season to season, but the cast and the scope of the show expands while the morality of all the characters contract, becoming touched more and more by Mackey's crimes, and the compromises everyone has to make to do their jobs and survive. Episode to episode the show looks the same, but the format is not "See what scrapes Vic gets into this week"; it's "When will Vic pay for his moral failure?", as the show is all about Vic's long arc from cop-killing crook to desperate do-gooder trying to atone for his multitude of sins, all the while corrupting everything he touches in barely perceptible increments. As a result, even though an occasional observer might think the show is static, it's always changing, always travelling toward a core of darkness.
This final season shows that better than most, with Vic's efforts to save his soul and his link to his estranged family overshadowed by the consequences of his murder of Terry Crowley, the Armenian Money Train heist, Lem's death and, most recently, Vic's failed attempt to set up his former best friend, Shane. Most of the season has been about moving pieces into place, such as pushing Shane so far that his only hope of survival is to kill his former Strike Team partners, though his traditional ineptitude means the plan fails. This week's episode featured a bravura moment of drama, as Shane watches his reluctant accomplice, Two Man, cave under pressure, revealing Shane's part in that murder plot. If the show has pushed itself almost to destruction many times before, in that incredible moment The Shield as we know it fell apart (or, to be more exact, exploded), and yet we still have five episodes left to go.
Watching the whole beautifully choreographed mess unfold, we kept trying to predict what was going to happen. Shane's gonna kill Ronnie! Ronnie's totally gonna murder Shane! Vic's gonna snap and kill Ronnie to save Shane even though Shane is totally off the chain! And yet we were wrong. A colleague recently praised The Wire by saying that when a plot line kicks in, surprising you completely, in retrospect you realise there was no other way it could have come down, and The Shield does that too, but perhaps no better than it did in this incredible hour. Thinking there were only one or two ways the episode could unfold -- with murders and cover-ups -- we couldn't see this grand surprise coming, as it changes the show utterly. Of course, as The Shield reaches the end of its life, it can afford to do something like this, but still, watching it happen was a thrilling experience.
Of all the things to love it for, though, best of all is the performance of Walton Goggins, which deserves award recognition next year. Seeing his mask of bravado and overconfidence slowly crumble as his cover-up falls apart was entertaining enough, but the final moment -- as he watched his goon, Two Man, weigh up his options, and realised that his career and friendships and possibly life are finally all over -- was on a par with Michael Emerson's performance as Ben Linus in The Shape of Things to Come, which, for me, is the highest praise I can give. It was heartbreaking and darkly funny and thrilling and a million other things. It's the sort of performance that signals the arrival of an actor that people follow from project to project for the rest of their career, and the sad thing about it is that Shield fans have already seen him give a performance that is just as amazing, in his final scene with Lem, and yet he has not been given a multicoloured coat like that Joseph guy, except with dozens of reinforced pockets to hold all of the awards he deserves. That's the sort of crime that should be investigated by the Strike Team, with all of the door-smashing, body-blocks, and threats that the award judges deserve.
Okay, enthusiasm purge over. That is all. (Canyon just told me that genius humorist John Hodgman's third book is going to be callled That Is All. It's the little things that make life worth living.)
--------Beware Shield spoilers if you have yet to watch it, which, really, is kinda unforgivable--------
Over the last couple of months, we have sped through six seasons of the show, hooked by the moral quandaries and thrilled by the efforts of lovable thug Vic Mackey and his Strike Team to escape the mistakes of the past with their souls and families intact. Of the many things to praise, perhaps the thing that excites me most is the show's willingness to take its format to the brink of destruction as often as possible and reel it back without removing consequences for its characters. It's not just splitting the Strike Team up at the end of season three and figuring out a way to realistically bring them together again midway through the next season -- it's having one of the team killed in the most heart-rending way at the end of Postpartum and still keeping the show running even though some of the characters have been transformed into psychotic versions of their former selves. Most of that is due to the superb writing staff and the sure hand of showrunner Shawn Ryan, but it's also a function of that format. The setting (The Barn and Farmington), the set of characters (the police force of The Barn, including the Strike Team), and the antagonists (the various gangs and their bosses) remain unchanged from season to season, but the cast and the scope of the show expands while the morality of all the characters contract, becoming touched more and more by Mackey's crimes, and the compromises everyone has to make to do their jobs and survive. Episode to episode the show looks the same, but the format is not "See what scrapes Vic gets into this week"; it's "When will Vic pay for his moral failure?", as the show is all about Vic's long arc from cop-killing crook to desperate do-gooder trying to atone for his multitude of sins, all the while corrupting everything he touches in barely perceptible increments. As a result, even though an occasional observer might think the show is static, it's always changing, always travelling toward a core of darkness.
This final season shows that better than most, with Vic's efforts to save his soul and his link to his estranged family overshadowed by the consequences of his murder of Terry Crowley, the Armenian Money Train heist, Lem's death and, most recently, Vic's failed attempt to set up his former best friend, Shane. Most of the season has been about moving pieces into place, such as pushing Shane so far that his only hope of survival is to kill his former Strike Team partners, though his traditional ineptitude means the plan fails. This week's episode featured a bravura moment of drama, as Shane watches his reluctant accomplice, Two Man, cave under pressure, revealing Shane's part in that murder plot. If the show has pushed itself almost to destruction many times before, in that incredible moment The Shield as we know it fell apart (or, to be more exact, exploded), and yet we still have five episodes left to go.
Watching the whole beautifully choreographed mess unfold, we kept trying to predict what was going to happen. Shane's gonna kill Ronnie! Ronnie's totally gonna murder Shane! Vic's gonna snap and kill Ronnie to save Shane even though Shane is totally off the chain! And yet we were wrong. A colleague recently praised The Wire by saying that when a plot line kicks in, surprising you completely, in retrospect you realise there was no other way it could have come down, and The Shield does that too, but perhaps no better than it did in this incredible hour. Thinking there were only one or two ways the episode could unfold -- with murders and cover-ups -- we couldn't see this grand surprise coming, as it changes the show utterly. Of course, as The Shield reaches the end of its life, it can afford to do something like this, but still, watching it happen was a thrilling experience.
Of all the things to love it for, though, best of all is the performance of Walton Goggins, which deserves award recognition next year. Seeing his mask of bravado and overconfidence slowly crumble as his cover-up falls apart was entertaining enough, but the final moment -- as he watched his goon, Two Man, weigh up his options, and realised that his career and friendships and possibly life are finally all over -- was on a par with Michael Emerson's performance as Ben Linus in The Shape of Things to Come, which, for me, is the highest praise I can give. It was heartbreaking and darkly funny and thrilling and a million other things. It's the sort of performance that signals the arrival of an actor that people follow from project to project for the rest of their career, and the sad thing about it is that Shield fans have already seen him give a performance that is just as amazing, in his final scene with Lem, and yet he has not been given a multicoloured coat like that Joseph guy, except with dozens of reinforced pockets to hold all of the awards he deserves. That's the sort of crime that should be investigated by the Strike Team, with all of the door-smashing, body-blocks, and threats that the award judges deserve.
Okay, enthusiasm purge over. That is all. (Canyon just told me that genius humorist John Hodgman's third book is going to be callled That Is All. It's the little things that make life worth living.)
Tuesday, 21 October 2008
Don't You Get It? Homo Superior Is The Future!
I've got time to kill for the first time in aeons, so hey, here's a trailer for Push, starring alternate-reality megastar Chris Evans and my favourite candidate to play T'Challa in a Black Panther movie, Djimon Hounsou.
Yes yes, it's just Heroes, except set in Hong Kong, but as Heroes is now officially broken, there's room for a competent version of it. If it is competent. It might be rather dull, especially for an action thriller, considering how the trailer features lots of shots from two locations. That suggests there are only two action scenes interspersed with Dakota Fanning being super-knowledgeable and mature beyond her years. Of course, from that trailer it also looks like the "heroes" are only interested in saving one of their own, with the side effect of helping humanity just by keeping their friend out of the hands of a secret government agency. So it's as much a rip-off of The Fury (sans John Cassavetes and his dead arm) as it is a million other things, like Firestarter and Scanners etc. etc. but, as far as we can tell, without the exploding people. You can't have films concerning governmental abuse of psychic superheroes without exploding people! It's like mint choc ice-cream without chunks of chocolate. Surely this is obvious.
Just to complicate matters further, The Fury is already being remade, but will it feature anything that could top this?
It's one of the greatest endings to a movie ever filmed, and justifies the rest of the film, which is meh at best. After rewatching that scene just now I got called into a meeting about departmental restructure, during which terms such as "metadata delivery" and "upstream involvement" were bandied about, terms that my brain tries to grasp only to see them slip from my fingers like wriggling fish. It means nothing to me. I'm obviously in the wrong line of work, and it occurs to me now that surely there is an opening working for these shady governmental agencies. But how to get an interview? It's not like they're going to be advertising in the Telegraph, because, you know, shady. Should I have been in the army, perhaps? I'd assume that handling people who could bat you across the room with a flick of their premotor cortex is risky enough that you should know how to trepan a person with your thumbnail, and, well, I don't. I can kill a fridge with a knife, though. [/bitter]
Maybe I could still try, somehow. With the economy in the toilet government spending is down (except when spending money on saving banks, obviously), which means that even though spending on weapons is probably going to remain high, it'll still drop, and so that investment will have to go further. What's a better use of money? A bunch of nukes costing trillions of dollars? Or a bunch of pasty-faced telekinetics covered in Celtic tattoos and black coats with sleeves too long? All they need to keep going are Disturbed albums and cases of Mountain Dew. Provide those, and figure out a way to demonise The Other in a way that their youthful minds can understand and react to ("They hate our freedoms," ain't gonna cut it), and you've got the cheapest army ever.
The only other investments you'll need are in wrist restraints and tranquilizer darts (for when you need to experiment on them), and development of psychic dampener technology to stop them going apeshit if you run out of Mountain Dew, or Disturbed split up. It's a growth industry waiting to happen, and I reckon I've got what it takes to jump in at ground level and make a difference. As long as my first day on the job doesn't end like this.
Consider this my resume, Psychic Corps of the UK.
Yes yes, it's just Heroes, except set in Hong Kong, but as Heroes is now officially broken, there's room for a competent version of it. If it is competent. It might be rather dull, especially for an action thriller, considering how the trailer features lots of shots from two locations. That suggests there are only two action scenes interspersed with Dakota Fanning being super-knowledgeable and mature beyond her years. Of course, from that trailer it also looks like the "heroes" are only interested in saving one of their own, with the side effect of helping humanity just by keeping their friend out of the hands of a secret government agency. So it's as much a rip-off of The Fury (sans John Cassavetes and his dead arm) as it is a million other things, like Firestarter and Scanners etc. etc. but, as far as we can tell, without the exploding people. You can't have films concerning governmental abuse of psychic superheroes without exploding people! It's like mint choc ice-cream without chunks of chocolate. Surely this is obvious.
Just to complicate matters further, The Fury is already being remade, but will it feature anything that could top this?
It's one of the greatest endings to a movie ever filmed, and justifies the rest of the film, which is meh at best. After rewatching that scene just now I got called into a meeting about departmental restructure, during which terms such as "metadata delivery" and "upstream involvement" were bandied about, terms that my brain tries to grasp only to see them slip from my fingers like wriggling fish. It means nothing to me. I'm obviously in the wrong line of work, and it occurs to me now that surely there is an opening working for these shady governmental agencies. But how to get an interview? It's not like they're going to be advertising in the Telegraph, because, you know, shady. Should I have been in the army, perhaps? I'd assume that handling people who could bat you across the room with a flick of their premotor cortex is risky enough that you should know how to trepan a person with your thumbnail, and, well, I don't. I can kill a fridge with a knife, though. [/bitter]
Maybe I could still try, somehow. With the economy in the toilet government spending is down (except when spending money on saving banks, obviously), which means that even though spending on weapons is probably going to remain high, it'll still drop, and so that investment will have to go further. What's a better use of money? A bunch of nukes costing trillions of dollars? Or a bunch of pasty-faced telekinetics covered in Celtic tattoos and black coats with sleeves too long? All they need to keep going are Disturbed albums and cases of Mountain Dew. Provide those, and figure out a way to demonise The Other in a way that their youthful minds can understand and react to ("They hate our freedoms," ain't gonna cut it), and you've got the cheapest army ever.
The only other investments you'll need are in wrist restraints and tranquilizer darts (for when you need to experiment on them), and development of psychic dampener technology to stop them going apeshit if you run out of Mountain Dew, or Disturbed split up. It's a growth industry waiting to happen, and I reckon I've got what it takes to jump in at ground level and make a difference. As long as my first day on the job doesn't end like this.
Consider this my resume, Psychic Corps of the UK.
Monday, 20 October 2008
This Week In TV Year II (Week 6) Part 2
I'll be thrilled when I get this done, you know. The Illness From Out Of Space has made us feel so crappy and so woozy-headed that we're actually behind on TV watching. We've not yet seen last week's Ugly Betty or Pushing Daisies, or the premiere of Crash, opting instead, through sheer laziness, to sit through the mediocre failure that is Jan de Bont's remake of The Haunting. I mean, I've already seen it twice, so I know it's terrible, but I made Canyon sit through it anyway. What was I thinking? Anyway, let's do this thing.
Correction:
Remember I said in the previous post that the Fringe lift error was Mistake of the Week? I forgot this egregious screw-up from CSI.
I'm making an effort to praise this show for its intelligence (something a lot of haters who don't watch it think it lacks), and they pull this trick. It makes me look like a chump. A chump!
Grisly Visual of the Week:
Peter did to Sylar what most viewers have been hoping would happen to Peter when he snapped the neck of his "brother" (give us a break)...
...and then we got to see him fix it. I'm sure the effect was a lot easier to do than it seems, but then the simple stuff is much more effective, sometimes. Flashes of coolness like this are all the difference between watching crap like Heroes and watching crap like Knight Rider and Torchwood, which can't even get the spectacle aspect of sci fi right.
Oh, and as for wishing harm on Peter Petrelli? Someone (Daddy Parkman?) read my thoughts.
Kill those stupid brains!
Downright Nausea-Inducing Visual of the Week:
At the start of this week's CSI, a woman is compelled by hypnosis to jump out of her apartment window to land with a crash on a passing bus. So far, so much like the opening of Lethal Weapon. However, that film didn't show a coroner trying to pick up the body afterwards.
And we were eating when it happened. Thanks, CSI.
Heartbreaking Moment of the Week:
The scene in last week's Mad Men, where Sal listens to a blast of homophobic drivel from his colleagues (including his secret crush Ken Cosgrove), was already superbly played before we get to his stoic reaction.
Bryan Batt perfectly illustrates Sal's heartbreak with a forced smirk, his eyes doing the rest. It was almost impossible to watch.
Best Appearance By A Beloved Character Actor of the Week:
Though we've not yet seen The Wire (which is a temporary arrangement now a loyal friend has bought me two seasons), we've heard great things about Andre Royo, aka Bubbles the drug addict. Having him show up in Heroes seems like a good idea for a show populated by this shower of twerps.
His power, creating deadly vortices, is supercool, Royo's performance was full-on, and his character is interesting and tragic. Hiring him is one of the first smart moves the showrunners have made this season, and I can't wait to see how it all plays out.
::sigh:: Never mind.
You Couldn't Make It Up Moment of the Week:
We're up to speed with America's Next Top Model for the first time ever, which means sitting through the catch-up episode for the odd morsel of new content. Though it might seem pointless, the catch-up episode often features a new insight into some of the contestants that either illuminates events from previous weeks (such as when did the dreary but hypercompetent model/cheese hybrid Lauren Brie turn out to be such an asshole?), or sets up arcs in the final half (the inevitable separation of BFFs Marjorie and Analeigh).
However, while the catch-up episode spent too long going over Tyra's ridiculous unfunny stunts again, it did feature the absurd sight of McKey (who really should have been sent home by now) getting upset when Elina tried to kill a bee with her hairspray, and not because Elina is a hypocrite after ranting with dogmatic vehemence at everyone about animal rights earlier in the episode. Taking the bee outside and (I'm not making this up) trying to revive it with water, McKey announces that killing a bee is the first step to becoming a serial killer. You've got to start somewhere, apparently.
Crazy knows crazy, I guess.
Smug Dope of the Week:
When Meredith stopped Claire's mom from searching for the newly gloomy immortal with this bitchface, I rubbed my hands with glee, and not just because she obviously thinks that having hands like small gas hobs make her the equal of any villain.
Unfortunately, considering how much I was looking forward to seeing her eat her words, her nemesis proved to be a puppeteer type, the kind of mind-control sleaze that crops up way too often in comics (for a while there DC was filled with Dr. Psycho cameos and Marvel kept playing with the loathsome Purple Man, which turned my stomach quite a bit).
What's even worse is that Meredith seems to have been puppetised without even singeing her foe even a little bit. Come on, Meredith, cook that bastard! Braise him! Sautee his eyes!
Unexpected Turn of Events of the Week:
Breaking from House season four tradition, we actually saw Cameron and Chase onscreen, together, at the same time, in the same room, and interacting no less! At first I thought they were only going to be shot like this, out of focus (God forbid they would share the same geometric plane)...
...but later that episode they were actually right next to each other (though with zero eye contact, as you would expect).
I would love to see the effects budget for this week, because I still can't believe they're on set together. Of course all of this sarcasm is covering for the fact that I feel really bad for Jesse Spencer and Jennifer "Captain Kirk's mom" Morrison after their break-up, but it's had the unfortunate after-effect of making watching them together very uncomfortable, as well as making me think the reason the original Cottages/Housettes got side-lined is because of tension on set. Of course, I don't know that this is indeed the case, but it does create a weird show/audience dynamic.
Frustrating Show of the Week:
We like The Mentalist, and not just because of the awesome title. We love the central idea, and Simon Baker is very watchable as Patrick Jane (no relation to Thomas "Homeless Dad" Jane). However, as I have said before, the secondary cast is not lighting our fire yet, but that's not the only problem.
At the moment we have no idea what the hell they are all doing, or where they are stationed. There was a hint that the Serious Crimes Unit, or the California Bureau of Investigation, or Brain Squad, or whatever they are called, do in fact have a base of operations, but so far they have been going from place to place, interrogating people in what look like closets full of filing cabinets. If this is a procedural, it's an ill-defined one. With a base of operations a la the lab in CSI or a precinct or anything, it would help give the show a visual shape to counteract for the loosey-goosey approach that it seems to be going for so far.
Crappy Easter Egg of the Week:
I'm not even going to look on the net for information about the Pinehearst Company, and considering how easy it is for me (or many others) to futz about looking for uninteresting crap, that's saying something.
It's fair to say I'm not even pleased that the company logo explains the odd tattoo that many of the "heroes" (pfft!) have on their bodies, though it's not exactly a shock that it represents half of the DNA spiral.
Cool Easter Eggs of the Week:
While Heroes stinks up the TV with FAILstench, Fringe, though not quite firing on all possible cylinders yet, is still promising enough that its many Easter Eggs are exciting, providing a new avenue of investigation into the show's ever-expanding list of mysteries. Strengthening the sense that the Fringeniverse is an actual place, the Massive Dynamic logo keeps cropping up in odd places.
That poster hints at some MD involvement in personal development projects such as the one created by the evil Jakob Fischer (and makes me wonder if Massive Dynamic is meant to be what the Dharma Initiative would be like if it actually got anything done, instead of spending all of its time being attacked by Richard Alpert and his band of Unmerry Men). Fischer's ads appear early on...
...and were also seen on a telegraph pole in the fourth episode. That said, the ad beneath it would surely lead to a lawsuit for discriminatory employment practices, wouldn't it?
Of course, the show's best Easter Egg is The Observer, seen here eyeballing Joseph MEEEEgar, prior to the elevator accident.
Fact Burst! The Observer is played by Michael Cerveris, who plays guitar with Bob Mould's band (meaning I might have actually seen him live that one time in Wolverhampton when he was supported by Mercury Rev), has played Sweeney Todd on Broadway (OMG we love Sondheim!), and has recorded an album with Steve "Sonic Youth" Shelley, Norman "Teenage Fanclub" Blake, Corin Tucker and Janet "Quasi" Weiss from Sleater-Kinney, and others. He is the coolest Easter Egg EVAH!
Almost Impressive Exposition of the Week:
Actually, this is a two-parter. Displaying a pleasing adherence to reality, The Mentalist used not-hypnotism to drag the truth out of some feckless, murderous surf brats who seemed to have read Donna Tartt's The Secret History prior to killing a friend. Before fooling them, our hero primes the kids with an explanation of what hypnotism is and what its limits are. It was refreshingly free from artifice.
Seems hypnotism wanted to snatch the Overused Theme spot from hallucinations, as CSI featured a thread about bank tellers handing over large sums of cash to Glenne Headly, who had hypnotised them as part of a weight loss/quit smoking program, which meant it was not only stepping on The Mentalist's toes but also Fringe's creepy mad science self-improvement plot.
Headly, upon being interrogated by Nick and Catherine, gives a long speech about what hypnotism can and can't do that was surprisingly thorough and well-researched, dismantling a lot of pre-conceptions about the technique. Sadly, our glee was dented by the final act resolution, where we discover she had hypnotised one of the bank tellers by phone and convinced her to jump off her balcony.
When Nick points out that, according to her earlier speech, a hypnotee (?) can't be made to do anything that is not in their nature, Headly darkly hints that maybe it was in their nature after all. Though the show was trying to make a point about hidden dark tendencies in her subjects (the same excuse was given for their criminal behaviour in handing over the money), it was stretching credibility to breaking point. Shame.
Frustrating-And-Cool-At-The-Same-Time Cameo of the Week:
Way back in the second season of House we were given a clue about the origin of the cranky doctor's supercrankiness upon discovering his father was R. Lee Ermey. Or at least played by him. Obviously meant to evoke memories of his stock character of abusive drill sergeant, a big blank was filled in. This week, Ermey returned to play a corpse.
Though it's frustrating to see Ermey but not get a performance out of him, the continuity nerd in me was happy to see him turn up to complete his arc. (If you're curious to see what he can do when not barking orders at cadets, hunt down his superb performance in Dead Man Walking.)
Comedy Team of the Week:
Much as most people hated the Feudal Japan thread from last season, Adam Monroe and Hiro at least had a funny chemistry that made it almost bearable. Though the third season is more fun than the second, it's possibly stupider, so I was surprised at how happy I was to see Adam reunited with his former friend, now enemy.
Their scenes together were endearingly funny and silly, especially with the wonderful Ando added to the mix. Hopefully there's much more where that came from.
::sigh:: Never mind.
Justice of the Week:
Okay, so this is over a few weeks, but this cycle of America's Next Top Model seemed to feature more objectionable small-minded catty morons than usual, with the presence of Isis bringing out record levels of hateful prejudice. Even though one rotter, Sharaun, was kicked out in the first week, I girded myself for a long period suffering the idiocy of Hannah Palin from Alaska, Brittany the Bitch, and Manly Clark. But check it out!
In a flurry of awkward contrivance that made me wonder if ANTM was quickly discarding the truly awful contestants as early as possible before lawsuits started flying, a runway challenge became an instant eject button for Hannah, whose walk was truly dreadful, though curiously it didn't have the added problem of making the designer have a meltdown about hoochy posing destroying the purity of his vision, as Samantha's equally misguided display did.
It really should have been Samantha getting kicked out, considering the vitriol aimed at her later (see below), but it was obvious Hannah had to go just for being a clueless little ninny. So off she went, with barely another mention that week, and the catch-up episode only spent a moment with her and her ha ha so hilarious Pixie Dust.
Worst contestant ever? Maybe. There was competition this year. Brittany was also godawful, picking on Elina who was dealing with family issues that completely perplexed her bitchy co-contestant, whose mom was soooooo awesome that she couldn't even imagine a mother being anything less than perfect, and OMG Elina you're so selfish for not loving your mother despite the psychological damage she caused, GOD!
When up before panel with Analeigh the Angel, I thought that, as in previous seasons, the nice but dull model wannabe was going home and the bitch would stay, as drama equals viewers. But no! Time to go home to your saintly mother, Brittany.
That was so awesome I howled with delight. There was only Clark to go, and she had suddenly seemed to be getting better, which gave strength to the theory that she would be hanging around as this season's catty standout. After coming first before panel the week before, she was especially obnoxious, but after a really terrible photoshoot, she was gone, tiara and all.
Watching a lot of these back to back really made me feel better while the evil disease ravaged my body. And then, as a bonus, Kenley didn't win Project Runway!
Of course, the fact that she was copying other designers and was in denial about it was no impediment to some more super-whiny crap from her. "It's bullshit," she said of the judges' decision, not realising that she was actually passing judgement on her own nasty behaviour. Thank you TV for punishing the wicked! Though really, it should have been Korto winning over one-trick Leanne, according to Canyon.
Troubled Couple of the Week:
Though many hate them, we're big Gil/Sara 'shippers, and midway through the latest episode of CSI Canyon began to worry that Gil's imminent departure would lead to the horribly cruel twist that he leaves too late to make a go of it with his nerdy lover.
If that happened, I would totally boycott the show. (This is a lie. Morpheus is on the way. There's no way I'm missing that.)
Internal Monologue of the Week:
"Don't mind me, Gibson. I'm just here for the meeting. I'm sure these guys won't notice that I can't drink you. Just sit there and I'll ignore you. I'm totally not staring at you."
"And that's not drool on my chin, by the way. Tum te tum te tum. Not thinking about you. Not at all. Hold on, did those guys just say they don't want to rehire me?"
"Come here, booze! BOOZE! Thank you for catching me when I fell, you beautiful liquid. I feel alive! ALIVE!"
Holy Shit Who Is This Guy? of the Week:
In a small role as Joseph Meegar, the Fringe Scientific Oddity of the Week, Ebon Moss-Bachrach knocked my socks off.
The X-Files is littered with hundreds of similar characters, their lives disrupted by unnatural occurrences. They were often forgettable, though with the odd stand-out. Moss-Bachrach's nervous energy meant that only three minutes into the episode we were rooting for him in his efforts to woo receptionist Bethany in a way we would normally reserve for a character we have been watching for months. Hopefully he will be back later in the series; I get the feeling that Fringe will be bringing back characters as and when they are needed.
Asshole of the Week:
Heroes is full of terrible villains, but terrible in the sense that they're really lame. It's doubly annoying that the showrunners are trying to artificially make good guys bad and vice versa, either with contrivance, misunderstanding, or serums that turn people into spiders. And yet, the biggest villain on TV recently was designer Jeremy Scott, who behaved like a colossal jerk on an America's Next Top Model by bitching out Samantha for being a bit too flamboyant while modelling his shitty clothes.
Dude, you look like a minicab driver pretending to be Adam Ant. Bitchiness rights are therefore forfeited. Admittedly, after watching the catch-up episode it turned out he did keep telling Samantha not to be hoochy while modelling his disastrous creation, and she didn't listen, so he had a right to be pissed, but saving it for panel just because the runway challenge was used as a convenient way to get rid of Hannah the Bigot was low class. His drubbing of her seemed to have been given to him as a consolation prize, as there's no way someone as talented as Samantha is going home yet, but it seemed like a re-run of Nigel's shitfit when CariDee was a bit too familiar with him a few seasons back. Tyra likes the idea of the show as a school for these beginner models, but having the judges bitch them out like this just makes it look like the exploitative sideshow that it really is. Leave Samantha alone! That said...
Hypocrite of the Week:
Samantha really tested my support for her by being relentlessly catty about Marjorie. Though the nervy French model-Padawan's ongoing mental breakdown and self-loathing piss me off too, Samantha's behaviour went from being arguably defensible to out-of-line with a quickness. During the catch-up episode she made a big bitchy deal about Marjorie and Analeigh's superfriendship, complaining about their adorable touchy-feeliness and seeming devotion to each other. And then we get to see what Samantha's been up to!
Bathtime with Lauren Cheese and the odious Clark! What a hypocrite! God! If she's down with lesbi-erotic events like this, I get the feeling she's jus' jellus about Marjoleigh. Is it a secret Sapphic love for either the skittish semi-European or the angelic skater? Or does she just want an awesome loyal friend of her own? Whatever the reason, I can imagine Elina is not happy that anyone else got to splash sudsy water at her beloved Clark, even though Clark is a cocky bigot and I'm glad she's gone.
I love America's Next Top Model.
Disappointment of the Week:
In an act of attempted matricide that would have improved Heroes by dozens of percent, Peter Petrelli, well on his way to becoming the evil Greaser Petrelli because he absorbed Sylar's hunger by fixing a watch just so he could something something, tried to chop the top off his annoying mom's head.
At least Pops Petrelli is played by the wonderful Robert "Alligator" Forster, which makes up for Ma Petrelli, one of my least favourite characters on TV. What is the point of her? Her allegiance changes every fucking week. I know people get annoyed at Lost for having morally ambiguous characters, but at least our perception of whether they are good and bad changes through plot, not contrivance, which accounts for the majority of the power and emotional impact of that most wonderful of shows. Heroes, on the other hand, seems to have been plotted as if by Luke Rhinehart. Next week, when she gets released from the nightmare trance she is stuck in, she'll be a volunteer fireman. The week after, a neo-Nazi. Can someone else chop her head off? Can Meredith broil her? Anyone? Please?
Dashing Blade of the Week:
Jay Manuel should dress like this all the time.
Seriously. I love his blue-rinse hair styled like this. He's like a cross between Prince Charming and a gay John Forsythe.
Ludicrous Contrivance of the Week:
Claire speaks for all of us when she calls her dad on his absurd Marvel Team-Up with the worst and most dangerous villain on Earth, even if he intends to kill him.
What's even stupider is that Sylar suddenly wants to go straight, and is getting all of the hero moments that the actual heroes should be getting. I know this season is all about muddling the loyalties of the main characters and playing with our expectations, but just clumsily switching good to bad and back again is untenable from a narrative point of view, as the changes are being done with barely any preparation. For all its faults, season two's exploration of Parkman's temptation to misuse his power was way more convincing than Sylar suddenly declaring, "I'm a good guy now!" prior to performing one of the very few acts of heroism this season by saving Claire.
And really, is this the only heroism possible on this show? Saving other heroes from their own stupidity? And then Claire changes her mind at the end of the episode and gets mad at her dad for trying to get rid of Sylar even though the psychopath ruined her life, just as she had said at the start of the episode? It's like the show is trying to fail. However, this PSA for John McCain from Hayden Panettiere helps.
She's my actual hero.
We Love Doctor Walter Bishop Moment of the Week:
As Fringe gets down to establishing its universe, Walter has receded into the background a bit, which is a little frustrating, but still, even a little Walter is better than no Walter at all.
A still image doesn't do justice to the eccentricity on display, as he rubs his besocked feet in a carpet to generate a static charge that he uses to shock Boring Peter out of his boring, sarcastic revery. Shame it wasn't deadly. Less Peter, more Walter!
Fashion Improvement of the Week:
Masticator seems to be a fan of Maya's sexxy sexxy get-ups, and I should explain that it's not that she's not an attractive superlady. I just think her fashion sense is awfully tacky, with some potentially stereotypical "Hispanic" trappings added by unimaginative showrunners that make her look like the cartoonishly tacky Hilda Suarez. I just thought she wouldn't be played like a ditzy bit of eye-candy, but that's too much to ask of Heroes. Still, this week she straightened that shit out.
Hopefully now that she has become a bit less over the top with her boob-exposing dresses and super-high-heeled sandals, she'll get to do something interesting and heroic. That would dispel all of these suspicions that the showrunners don't know what to do with her character, making her hang around just to give Suresh someone to interact with and eventually menace, when in fact there's every chance she could be a pro-active and interesting character at last.
Oh, for fuck's sake!!!!
Intensity of the Week:
There wasn't even another contender this week.
He has Intensity of the Year all sewn up already.
As is traditional, I was hoping Brian Michael Bendoom would sum up this week's TV for me, but he was too busy vomiting orange mucus into his diabolical metallic mask.
I feel you, dude.
Correction:
Remember I said in the previous post that the Fringe lift error was Mistake of the Week? I forgot this egregious screw-up from CSI.
I'm making an effort to praise this show for its intelligence (something a lot of haters who don't watch it think it lacks), and they pull this trick. It makes me look like a chump. A chump!
Grisly Visual of the Week:
Peter did to Sylar what most viewers have been hoping would happen to Peter when he snapped the neck of his "brother" (give us a break)...
...and then we got to see him fix it. I'm sure the effect was a lot easier to do than it seems, but then the simple stuff is much more effective, sometimes. Flashes of coolness like this are all the difference between watching crap like Heroes and watching crap like Knight Rider and Torchwood, which can't even get the spectacle aspect of sci fi right.
Oh, and as for wishing harm on Peter Petrelli? Someone (Daddy Parkman?) read my thoughts.
Kill those stupid brains!Downright Nausea-Inducing Visual of the Week:
At the start of this week's CSI, a woman is compelled by hypnosis to jump out of her apartment window to land with a crash on a passing bus. So far, so much like the opening of Lethal Weapon. However, that film didn't show a coroner trying to pick up the body afterwards.
And we were eating when it happened. Thanks, CSI.
Heartbreaking Moment of the Week:
The scene in last week's Mad Men, where Sal listens to a blast of homophobic drivel from his colleagues (including his secret crush Ken Cosgrove), was already superbly played before we get to his stoic reaction.
Bryan Batt perfectly illustrates Sal's heartbreak with a forced smirk, his eyes doing the rest. It was almost impossible to watch.
Best Appearance By A Beloved Character Actor of the Week:
Though we've not yet seen The Wire (which is a temporary arrangement now a loyal friend has bought me two seasons), we've heard great things about Andre Royo, aka Bubbles the drug addict. Having him show up in Heroes seems like a good idea for a show populated by this shower of twerps.
His power, creating deadly vortices, is supercool, Royo's performance was full-on, and his character is interesting and tragic. Hiring him is one of the first smart moves the showrunners have made this season, and I can't wait to see how it all plays out.
::sigh:: Never mind.
You Couldn't Make It Up Moment of the Week:
We're up to speed with America's Next Top Model for the first time ever, which means sitting through the catch-up episode for the odd morsel of new content. Though it might seem pointless, the catch-up episode often features a new insight into some of the contestants that either illuminates events from previous weeks (such as when did the dreary but hypercompetent model/cheese hybrid Lauren Brie turn out to be such an asshole?), or sets up arcs in the final half (the inevitable separation of BFFs Marjorie and Analeigh).
However, while the catch-up episode spent too long going over Tyra's ridiculous unfunny stunts again, it did feature the absurd sight of McKey (who really should have been sent home by now) getting upset when Elina tried to kill a bee with her hairspray, and not because Elina is a hypocrite after ranting with dogmatic vehemence at everyone about animal rights earlier in the episode. Taking the bee outside and (I'm not making this up) trying to revive it with water, McKey announces that killing a bee is the first step to becoming a serial killer. You've got to start somewhere, apparently.
Crazy knows crazy, I guess.
Smug Dope of the Week:
When Meredith stopped Claire's mom from searching for the newly gloomy immortal with this bitchface, I rubbed my hands with glee, and not just because she obviously thinks that having hands like small gas hobs make her the equal of any villain.
Unfortunately, considering how much I was looking forward to seeing her eat her words, her nemesis proved to be a puppeteer type, the kind of mind-control sleaze that crops up way too often in comics (for a while there DC was filled with Dr. Psycho cameos and Marvel kept playing with the loathsome Purple Man, which turned my stomach quite a bit).What's even worse is that Meredith seems to have been puppetised without even singeing her foe even a little bit. Come on, Meredith, cook that bastard! Braise him! Sautee his eyes!Unexpected Turn of Events of the Week:
Breaking from House season four tradition, we actually saw Cameron and Chase onscreen, together, at the same time, in the same room, and interacting no less! At first I thought they were only going to be shot like this, out of focus (God forbid they would share the same geometric plane)...
...but later that episode they were actually right next to each other (though with zero eye contact, as you would expect).
I would love to see the effects budget for this week, because I still can't believe they're on set together. Of course all of this sarcasm is covering for the fact that I feel really bad for Jesse Spencer and Jennifer "Captain Kirk's mom" Morrison after their break-up, but it's had the unfortunate after-effect of making watching them together very uncomfortable, as well as making me think the reason the original Cottages/Housettes got side-lined is because of tension on set. Of course, I don't know that this is indeed the case, but it does create a weird show/audience dynamic.Frustrating Show of the Week:
We like The Mentalist, and not just because of the awesome title. We love the central idea, and Simon Baker is very watchable as Patrick Jane (no relation to Thomas "Homeless Dad" Jane). However, as I have said before, the secondary cast is not lighting our fire yet, but that's not the only problem.
At the moment we have no idea what the hell they are all doing, or where they are stationed. There was a hint that the Serious Crimes Unit, or the California Bureau of Investigation, or Brain Squad, or whatever they are called, do in fact have a base of operations, but so far they have been going from place to place, interrogating people in what look like closets full of filing cabinets. If this is a procedural, it's an ill-defined one. With a base of operations a la the lab in CSI or a precinct or anything, it would help give the show a visual shape to counteract for the loosey-goosey approach that it seems to be going for so far.
Crappy Easter Egg of the Week:
I'm not even going to look on the net for information about the Pinehearst Company, and considering how easy it is for me (or many others) to futz about looking for uninteresting crap, that's saying something.
It's fair to say I'm not even pleased that the company logo explains the odd tattoo that many of the "heroes" (pfft!) have on their bodies, though it's not exactly a shock that it represents half of the DNA spiral.
Cool Easter Eggs of the Week:
While Heroes stinks up the TV with FAILstench, Fringe, though not quite firing on all possible cylinders yet, is still promising enough that its many Easter Eggs are exciting, providing a new avenue of investigation into the show's ever-expanding list of mysteries. Strengthening the sense that the Fringeniverse is an actual place, the Massive Dynamic logo keeps cropping up in odd places.
That poster hints at some MD involvement in personal development projects such as the one created by the evil Jakob Fischer (and makes me wonder if Massive Dynamic is meant to be what the Dharma Initiative would be like if it actually got anything done, instead of spending all of its time being attacked by Richard Alpert and his band of Unmerry Men). Fischer's ads appear early on...
...and were also seen on a telegraph pole in the fourth episode. That said, the ad beneath it would surely lead to a lawsuit for discriminatory employment practices, wouldn't it?
Of course, the show's best Easter Egg is The Observer, seen here eyeballing Joseph MEEEEgar, prior to the elevator accident.
Fact Burst! The Observer is played by Michael Cerveris, who plays guitar with Bob Mould's band (meaning I might have actually seen him live that one time in Wolverhampton when he was supported by Mercury Rev), has played Sweeney Todd on Broadway (OMG we love Sondheim!), and has recorded an album with Steve "Sonic Youth" Shelley, Norman "Teenage Fanclub" Blake, Corin Tucker and Janet "Quasi" Weiss from Sleater-Kinney, and others. He is the coolest Easter Egg EVAH!
Almost Impressive Exposition of the Week:
Actually, this is a two-parter. Displaying a pleasing adherence to reality, The Mentalist used not-hypnotism to drag the truth out of some feckless, murderous surf brats who seemed to have read Donna Tartt's The Secret History prior to killing a friend. Before fooling them, our hero primes the kids with an explanation of what hypnotism is and what its limits are. It was refreshingly free from artifice.
Seems hypnotism wanted to snatch the Overused Theme spot from hallucinations, as CSI featured a thread about bank tellers handing over large sums of cash to Glenne Headly, who had hypnotised them as part of a weight loss/quit smoking program, which meant it was not only stepping on The Mentalist's toes but also Fringe's creepy mad science self-improvement plot.
Headly, upon being interrogated by Nick and Catherine, gives a long speech about what hypnotism can and can't do that was surprisingly thorough and well-researched, dismantling a lot of pre-conceptions about the technique. Sadly, our glee was dented by the final act resolution, where we discover she had hypnotised one of the bank tellers by phone and convinced her to jump off her balcony.
When Nick points out that, according to her earlier speech, a hypnotee (?) can't be made to do anything that is not in their nature, Headly darkly hints that maybe it was in their nature after all. Though the show was trying to make a point about hidden dark tendencies in her subjects (the same excuse was given for their criminal behaviour in handing over the money), it was stretching credibility to breaking point. Shame.
Frustrating-And-Cool-At-The-Same-Time Cameo of the Week:
Way back in the second season of House we were given a clue about the origin of the cranky doctor's supercrankiness upon discovering his father was R. Lee Ermey. Or at least played by him. Obviously meant to evoke memories of his stock character of abusive drill sergeant, a big blank was filled in. This week, Ermey returned to play a corpse.
Though it's frustrating to see Ermey but not get a performance out of him, the continuity nerd in me was happy to see him turn up to complete his arc. (If you're curious to see what he can do when not barking orders at cadets, hunt down his superb performance in Dead Man Walking.)
Comedy Team of the Week:
Much as most people hated the Feudal Japan thread from last season, Adam Monroe and Hiro at least had a funny chemistry that made it almost bearable. Though the third season is more fun than the second, it's possibly stupider, so I was surprised at how happy I was to see Adam reunited with his former friend, now enemy.
Their scenes together were endearingly funny and silly, especially with the wonderful Ando added to the mix. Hopefully there's much more where that came from.
::sigh:: Never mind.
Justice of the Week:
Okay, so this is over a few weeks, but this cycle of America's Next Top Model seemed to feature more objectionable small-minded catty morons than usual, with the presence of Isis bringing out record levels of hateful prejudice. Even though one rotter, Sharaun, was kicked out in the first week, I girded myself for a long period suffering the idiocy of Hannah Palin from Alaska, Brittany the Bitch, and Manly Clark. But check it out!
In a flurry of awkward contrivance that made me wonder if ANTM was quickly discarding the truly awful contestants as early as possible before lawsuits started flying, a runway challenge became an instant eject button for Hannah, whose walk was truly dreadful, though curiously it didn't have the added problem of making the designer have a meltdown about hoochy posing destroying the purity of his vision, as Samantha's equally misguided display did.
It really should have been Samantha getting kicked out, considering the vitriol aimed at her later (see below), but it was obvious Hannah had to go just for being a clueless little ninny. So off she went, with barely another mention that week, and the catch-up episode only spent a moment with her and her ha ha so hilarious Pixie Dust.
Worst contestant ever? Maybe. There was competition this year. Brittany was also godawful, picking on Elina who was dealing with family issues that completely perplexed her bitchy co-contestant, whose mom was soooooo awesome that she couldn't even imagine a mother being anything less than perfect, and OMG Elina you're so selfish for not loving your mother despite the psychological damage she caused, GOD!
When up before panel with Analeigh the Angel, I thought that, as in previous seasons, the nice but dull model wannabe was going home and the bitch would stay, as drama equals viewers. But no! Time to go home to your saintly mother, Brittany.
That was so awesome I howled with delight. There was only Clark to go, and she had suddenly seemed to be getting better, which gave strength to the theory that she would be hanging around as this season's catty standout. After coming first before panel the week before, she was especially obnoxious, but after a really terrible photoshoot, she was gone, tiara and all.
Watching a lot of these back to back really made me feel better while the evil disease ravaged my body. And then, as a bonus, Kenley didn't win Project Runway!
Of course, the fact that she was copying other designers and was in denial about it was no impediment to some more super-whiny crap from her. "It's bullshit," she said of the judges' decision, not realising that she was actually passing judgement on her own nasty behaviour. Thank you TV for punishing the wicked! Though really, it should have been Korto winning over one-trick Leanne, according to Canyon.
Troubled Couple of the Week:
Though many hate them, we're big Gil/Sara 'shippers, and midway through the latest episode of CSI Canyon began to worry that Gil's imminent departure would lead to the horribly cruel twist that he leaves too late to make a go of it with his nerdy lover.
If that happened, I would totally boycott the show. (This is a lie. Morpheus is on the way. There's no way I'm missing that.)
Internal Monologue of the Week:
"Don't mind me, Gibson. I'm just here for the meeting. I'm sure these guys won't notice that I can't drink you. Just sit there and I'll ignore you. I'm totally not staring at you."
"And that's not drool on my chin, by the way. Tum te tum te tum. Not thinking about you. Not at all. Hold on, did those guys just say they don't want to rehire me?"
"Come here, booze! BOOZE! Thank you for catching me when I fell, you beautiful liquid. I feel alive! ALIVE!"Holy Shit Who Is This Guy? of the Week:
In a small role as Joseph Meegar, the Fringe Scientific Oddity of the Week, Ebon Moss-Bachrach knocked my socks off.
The X-Files is littered with hundreds of similar characters, their lives disrupted by unnatural occurrences. They were often forgettable, though with the odd stand-out. Moss-Bachrach's nervous energy meant that only three minutes into the episode we were rooting for him in his efforts to woo receptionist Bethany in a way we would normally reserve for a character we have been watching for months. Hopefully he will be back later in the series; I get the feeling that Fringe will be bringing back characters as and when they are needed.
Asshole of the Week:
Heroes is full of terrible villains, but terrible in the sense that they're really lame. It's doubly annoying that the showrunners are trying to artificially make good guys bad and vice versa, either with contrivance, misunderstanding, or serums that turn people into spiders. And yet, the biggest villain on TV recently was designer Jeremy Scott, who behaved like a colossal jerk on an America's Next Top Model by bitching out Samantha for being a bit too flamboyant while modelling his shitty clothes.
Dude, you look like a minicab driver pretending to be Adam Ant. Bitchiness rights are therefore forfeited. Admittedly, after watching the catch-up episode it turned out he did keep telling Samantha not to be hoochy while modelling his disastrous creation, and she didn't listen, so he had a right to be pissed, but saving it for panel just because the runway challenge was used as a convenient way to get rid of Hannah the Bigot was low class. His drubbing of her seemed to have been given to him as a consolation prize, as there's no way someone as talented as Samantha is going home yet, but it seemed like a re-run of Nigel's shitfit when CariDee was a bit too familiar with him a few seasons back. Tyra likes the idea of the show as a school for these beginner models, but having the judges bitch them out like this just makes it look like the exploitative sideshow that it really is. Leave Samantha alone! That said...
Hypocrite of the Week:
Samantha really tested my support for her by being relentlessly catty about Marjorie. Though the nervy French model-Padawan's ongoing mental breakdown and self-loathing piss me off too, Samantha's behaviour went from being arguably defensible to out-of-line with a quickness. During the catch-up episode she made a big bitchy deal about Marjorie and Analeigh's superfriendship, complaining about their adorable touchy-feeliness and seeming devotion to each other. And then we get to see what Samantha's been up to!
Bathtime with Lauren Cheese and the odious Clark! What a hypocrite! God! If she's down with lesbi-erotic events like this, I get the feeling she's jus' jellus about Marjoleigh. Is it a secret Sapphic love for either the skittish semi-European or the angelic skater? Or does she just want an awesome loyal friend of her own? Whatever the reason, I can imagine Elina is not happy that anyone else got to splash sudsy water at her beloved Clark, even though Clark is a cocky bigot and I'm glad she's gone.
I love America's Next Top Model.
Disappointment of the Week:
In an act of attempted matricide that would have improved Heroes by dozens of percent, Peter Petrelli, well on his way to becoming the evil Greaser Petrelli because he absorbed Sylar's hunger by fixing a watch just so he could something something, tried to chop the top off his annoying mom's head.
At least Pops Petrelli is played by the wonderful Robert "Alligator" Forster, which makes up for Ma Petrelli, one of my least favourite characters on TV. What is the point of her? Her allegiance changes every fucking week. I know people get annoyed at Lost for having morally ambiguous characters, but at least our perception of whether they are good and bad changes through plot, not contrivance, which accounts for the majority of the power and emotional impact of that most wonderful of shows. Heroes, on the other hand, seems to have been plotted as if by Luke Rhinehart. Next week, when she gets released from the nightmare trance she is stuck in, she'll be a volunteer fireman. The week after, a neo-Nazi. Can someone else chop her head off? Can Meredith broil her? Anyone? Please?
Dashing Blade of the Week:
Jay Manuel should dress like this all the time.
Seriously. I love his blue-rinse hair styled like this. He's like a cross between Prince Charming and a gay John Forsythe.
Ludicrous Contrivance of the Week:
Claire speaks for all of us when she calls her dad on his absurd Marvel Team-Up with the worst and most dangerous villain on Earth, even if he intends to kill him.
What's even stupider is that Sylar suddenly wants to go straight, and is getting all of the hero moments that the actual heroes should be getting. I know this season is all about muddling the loyalties of the main characters and playing with our expectations, but just clumsily switching good to bad and back again is untenable from a narrative point of view, as the changes are being done with barely any preparation. For all its faults, season two's exploration of Parkman's temptation to misuse his power was way more convincing than Sylar suddenly declaring, "I'm a good guy now!" prior to performing one of the very few acts of heroism this season by saving Claire.
And really, is this the only heroism possible on this show? Saving other heroes from their own stupidity? And then Claire changes her mind at the end of the episode and gets mad at her dad for trying to get rid of Sylar even though the psychopath ruined her life, just as she had said at the start of the episode? It's like the show is trying to fail. However, this PSA for John McCain from Hayden Panettiere helps.
She's my actual hero.
We Love Doctor Walter Bishop Moment of the Week:
As Fringe gets down to establishing its universe, Walter has receded into the background a bit, which is a little frustrating, but still, even a little Walter is better than no Walter at all.
A still image doesn't do justice to the eccentricity on display, as he rubs his besocked feet in a carpet to generate a static charge that he uses to shock Boring Peter out of his boring, sarcastic revery. Shame it wasn't deadly. Less Peter, more Walter!
Fashion Improvement of the Week:
Masticator seems to be a fan of Maya's sexxy sexxy get-ups, and I should explain that it's not that she's not an attractive superlady. I just think her fashion sense is awfully tacky, with some potentially stereotypical "Hispanic" trappings added by unimaginative showrunners that make her look like the cartoonishly tacky Hilda Suarez. I just thought she wouldn't be played like a ditzy bit of eye-candy, but that's too much to ask of Heroes. Still, this week she straightened that shit out.
Hopefully now that she has become a bit less over the top with her boob-exposing dresses and super-high-heeled sandals, she'll get to do something interesting and heroic. That would dispel all of these suspicions that the showrunners don't know what to do with her character, making her hang around just to give Suresh someone to interact with and eventually menace, when in fact there's every chance she could be a pro-active and interesting character at last.
Oh, for fuck's sake!!!!
Intensity of the Week:
There wasn't even another contender this week.
He has Intensity of the Year all sewn up already.
As is traditional, I was hoping Brian Michael Bendoom would sum up this week's TV for me, but he was too busy vomiting orange mucus into his diabolical metallic mask.
I feel you, dude.
Sunday, 19 October 2008
This Week In TV Year II (Week 6) Part 1
Illness has struck with the force of Hawkmonkey's fearsome mace, and both Canyon and I are punctuating our gravelly, barely audible conversations with noseblowing and low-decibel groaning. As a result, this week's post has gone horribly awry, so I'm pushing this out with proper proofing or editing or even thinking before it gets any later than it already is (and I've still got more to moan about tomorrow). Apologies for any inconvenience. Blame bacteria!
Highlight of the Week:
Mad Men (or Magnificent Men, as I'm thinking it should be re-titled) might have been especially strong and startlingly different than usual this week, but despite that brilliance, it doesn't take the top spot this week because...
WILSON'S BAAAAAAAACK!!! And yes, I'm aware it was only a matter of time before our favourite oncologist got over his fury at House, but to have it happen in such a wholly satisfying stand-out episode was a double pleasure. Though their relationship had seemed to be broken forever, the showrunners came up with an elegant solution, by showing the rift between them is not borne of Wilson's anger over House's involvement in Amber's death, but is rooted in Wilson's own insecurity. His reflexive need to run away from things before they can run out on him is what finally pushed him into falling out with House, at the same time that it has been the foundation of their friendship (House will never leave, and thus represents the only sanctuary Wilson has from that fear).
It wasn't all about Wilson coming to terms with his demons. Personal growth for House doesn't necessarily mean fixing his bitchy attitude, and this week saw him coming to terms with his bitterness over his genetic lineage by realising that it makes no difference in the end. He is who he is no matter what his DNA says, a rare instance of nurture winning out over nature in a medical show like this. Either that or House's final epiphany, "My dad is dead," is just him being finally hit by the news he got at the start of the episode. Either way, it was a beautifully realised moment, making me wonder if his superb eulogy was partially genuine too (I keep forgetting how great Hugh Laurie is).
Of course, parenthood was at the heart of the unusually compelling Disease of the Week thread too. An adopted Chinese woman with addiction problems and abandonment issues seeks out her original parents, who deny she exists. Encountering a magnet, a rash of unpleasant symptoms threaten her life in classic House stylee, and eventually we find out that an attempt on her life by her father while still a baby is responsible for her illness. In a straight-from-the-headlines plot twist, her brain was pierced by needles, which were moved by the magnet, causing a cascade of symptoms through her body. Though using the over-familiar Chinese one-baby rule as a plot device pissed me off at first, at least this was based on a real and very depressing case.
Thematically the show was so tightly bound that it could very well have seemed contrived, but with the focus aimed at House and Wilson's hugely entertaining bickering those connections between the A, B and C plots didn't come together until the final act, though I appreciate that could be a subjective thing, especially as I was so happy to see my favourite sparring duo together that I wasn't in the mood for splitting hairs.
I even forgave Kutner's announcement that the needles in the patient's head were pressing on her "addiction centres", as, even though this is total horseshit in medical terms, it mirrored the solution to House and Wilson's relationship problems. Now that Wilson recognises what has been causing his destructive tendencies, the grief needle has been removed and we can get back to normal. It's the best present the show could give me.
Baffling Turn of Events of the Week:
A couple of years ago, David Milch's perplexing John From Cincinnati diverted my attention for a few weeks, just as I once went crazy for Sudoku and Limines for Xbox 360. Trying to unravel the meaning of it almost made up for the utter tedium of it all, as characters paced around rooms (to denote boredom), spoke cod-Shakespearian (to denote eccentricity, which I actually enjoyed a lot), and screeched at dolphin frequencies (to denote furious anger, which I most certainly did not enjoy). In the middle of all this laboured weirdness, John (aka Surf Jesus) delivered his Sermon from the Mount, 21st Century Style, which was the one scene in the whole sorry exercise that I loved unreservedly.
I didn't watch further (the axe had pretty much fallen by the time I got around to it, so I knew it was pointless to keep watching), but I was impressed by how much it changed the direction of the show, dropping a moment of such batshit oddity into the proceedings that it now lives on in my memory as a completely different thing than it would have if I'd stopped watching just before it happened. This week, Mad Men did something similar, and it is taking me some time to assimilate it.
One of the few criticisms the show has received, along with "the pace is too slow," (which is bullshit), and "the symbolism is too obvious," (which strikes me as occasionally accurate) is that there is very little plot momentum. As the show's stock in trade is incremental character revelation, I don't see that as a problem, and in the moments where plot does move forward, even small things (like Roger leaving Mona) are like explosions. This episode did big plot and small character work, but the character work was utterly unlike anything yet experienced on the show, and the plot stuff has the potential to completely change the template of the show. In other words, it was a headfuck.
What initially seemed to be an opportunity to show Don and Pete in a new environment, and what I had thought would be a "road trip" plot along the same lines as this week's House, became a baffling journey into super-liberal European-style hedonism, with Don the Reluctant Square cast into a world of sex, booze, and loucheness that had nothing to do with the world of sex, booze, and loucheness that he already occupies.
I will admit that I totally misunderstood what was going on at first, but I get the feeling that was the point. After Don and Pete are shown a presentation on MIRV warheads and imminent nuclear destruction - which, incidentally, is not a good thing to show someone in the midst of a decade-long existential crisis - Don is approached by a dandyish European Viscount doing the European Viscount version of "My mate fancies you!" (The difference between this version of that chat-up line and the more common version is that in this version it's his daughter with the crush. Those Europeans!)
Of course, when Don sees who fancies him, he is instantly entranced. Joy, who could only have been more obviously named if she was called "A Balm For Your Troubled Soul, Don Draper", drives him into a confused frenzy of lust, hope, and confusion, and despite his sadness over Betty kicking him out of the house, he follows her to a swish pad across town, where he promptly drinks something unusual, faints, and wakes up on a couch, surrounded by weirdos, with one sinister looking chap on the verge of sticking a needle in his arm.
I mean, who wouldn't think something was up? Don, of course, doesn't realise he looks like a handsome film version of a spy, and is not aware of the filmic conventions of that genre. Getting abducted and drugged is par for the course for a spy, and with Cold War technology and paranoia entering the plot, it was hard not to suspect something was up.
Of course, Don was actually just hanging out with some decadent Eurotoffs, getting laid, and feeling all funny when a copy of The Sound and the Fury gets waved at him (remember my theory that culture is Don's Kryptonite). That he looks like Matt Helm or one of the Men from U.N.C.L.E., or that the dinner scene reminded me of the moment in On Her Majesty's Secret Service where an undercover James Bond has dinner in Blofeld's mountaintop hideaway, is neither here nor there. Luckily Don didn't end up hunted by assassins and forced to watch his wife get killed on their honeymoon, but sadly he did become more lost than he already was.
It's fair to say that since embodying the American Dream, and realising that it doesn't solve the problems he has been battling his whole life, the beatnik, cultural, European lifestyle has been appealing to him. He has been involved with a hipster poet (Midge), a Jewish entrepreneur (Rachel), and a brassy managerial sassmouth (Bobbie), and seemed most intrigued by the first two mistresses (actual or potential). They hinted at a world outside the one he finds himself trapped in, and Bobbie was just someone he shtupped out of habit, all the while feeling unfulfilled because she offered him nothing but empty sex.
As a result, being offered a good time by the alluring and unfamiliar Joy was exactly what he had been hoping for, and for the first time this season actually seemed momentarily happy. It was only after seeing a young boy made miserable by the actions of his father that Don realised not just that he had a obligation to his own children, and not just that he had once been the lonely child in a screwy family, but that if he had, in the past, lived the same life as his benefactors/captors, he probably would have been in the same boat anyway.
With the European dream dashed, he phones someone and identifies himself as Dick Whitman (which deserves a ZOMG for being so unexpected), and seems to be on the way to meet them soon. I had a hunch it would be Midge, having realised he was happiest living the hipster life with her (plus knowing she could score some weed for him), but if he's calling himself Dick Whitman, it's probable it's not someone we've seen before. With all other options exhausted, all he has is the past.
Overly Delayed Plot Resolution of the Week:
I love FNL's Smash Williams, and have been rooting for him to succeed in his mission to buy his mother a house since episode one, but I'm about done with that plot now. In the past, Smash has been hotheaded and cocky, with only the occasional impediment to his success getting thrown into his path. Now that he only has a few season three episodes before disappearing for good, we've had three episodes of him having second thoughts about pursuing a football career only to be brought around by someone else.
Don't get me wrong, each time this has happened it's been dramatised with the usual high FNLian standards, but even so, "I can't do it," "Yes you can," "No I can't," "Yes you can," ad infinitum gets boring way before I actually gets infinitum. Next week might see him get his wish, finally, which will suit me down to the ground. At least then I can relax about him and devote proper fretting energy to Matt Saracen and his doomed QB1 position.
Discovery of the Week:
It is actually possible to kill a man in the middle of Central Park in daylight and then drag him back to your top-floor warehouse/penthouse/loft apartment without anyone noticing.
It's also possible to kill your next door neighbour and never be interrogated by the police even though you have already beaten him up hours before right in front of his wife.
Really, if the Heroes showrunners aren't going to give a shit, why should the viewers?
Good Haircut of the Week:
Many internet people who watch Mad Men are offended that Kurt the European Homosexual is a hairdresser, thinking it an oddly stereotypical thing for the show to do, though really it is based around taking our assumptions about the 60s, applying them to well-drawn characters and showing why we have these assumptions. Even though we too thought it a bit obvious to make Kurt a hair stylist genius...
...it's great that Peggy looks so good now.
And she's going to see Bob Dylan too. Perhaps she will be the first Sterling Cooper employee to tune in, turn on, and drop out (Don's weirdness and sudden vanishing act to go find his outer Joy doesn't count).
Bad Haircut of the Week:
The godawful do foisted on Elina in America's Next Top Model in the recent makeover episode is a goddamn disgrace, worse than all of the previous too-tight weaves, bleach armageddons, or baldness experiments.
For once, the tears were well deserved.
Still, I may not like Elina much (her delusional, shallow crush on the awful, hypocritical Clark is the dealbreaker), but she's done some great work with this mop ever since, straightening it so that she doesn't look like a clown, and "owning it", as Tyra would say.
Overused Plot Device of the Week:
In three shows this week, main characters had visions of people from their past. In Mad Men Don was so disconjunctified by Betty's decision to kick him out of Casa de Draper that he's seeing her everywhere.
Of course, for we internet heathens who have committed the heinous act of blasphemy that is thinking that January Jones is not the most glorious and magical actress in the land, less Betty is not a bad thing, so the cameo was fine by us. How will her fans cope? Aiming yet more snotty abuse at the unbelievers who don't understand wot gud akting iz, I'll wager.
In Heroes, we finally found out the secret behind the appearances of Linderman, as shown above. Though, by now, we're watching Heroes for the unintentional comedy, it does crack out the odd surprise, and bringing back Parkman's dad was a big one.
It also put right one of the biggest problems of the second season, i.e. the huge build-up of The Boogeyman as the worst villain ever just for him to turn up in one episode and then vanish as if he'd never existed. Having him show up again and be responsible for one of this season's most interesting mysteries almost makes me think the showrunners know what they are doing. Almost.
Fringe featured the most bizarre hallucination moment of all. Olivia (aka Vanatron) is haunted by visions of her dead/undead lover John Scott, who keeps popping up to tell her he loves her as well as giving her clues to this week's Pattern mystery.
As we are unclear as to his actual status, what with him being in the hands of the possibly death-vanquishingly powerful MASSive Dynamic, this episode played with our expectations throughout, until Dr. Walter Bishop revealed that a piece of John Scott's consciousness had broken off inside Olivia's psyche during their mindmeld in episode one, and that his consciousness was communicating with her independently of the actual John Scott, who really is dead. Though he might not be. And Walter could be lying. We don't know anything, and cannot assume anything either. Five episodes in and this show is already a total mindfuck. That's some good going.
Nerd Joke of the Week:
"I was not born in a manger. I was actually born on Krypton. I was sent here by my father Jor-El to save the planet Earth." - Sen. Barack Obama at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner earlier this week.
Thanks to Captain Snarky for posting that picture in another internet venue. It made the germs forget to make me feel like whipped shit for two minutes.
Previously on Angel Actor of the Week:
Snarky Sheriff Costello, who put House and Wilson through the wringer this week, was played by Jack Conley.
We Buffy fans who stuck with Angel, which became the equal of its magnificent parent but failed to win over everyone (the haters!), should remember Sahjhan, the demon who plotted against Angel in the third season, and combined pure evil with sarcastic wise-assery. Conley did a great job in that, and a great job this week as well.
Previously on Lost Actor of the Week:
Okay, Brett Cullen has been around for a while, with memorable appearances in Ugly Betty, West Wing, Friday Night Lights, and the lamentable Ghost Rider, but he'll always be Goodwin to me. Moral ambiguity is everywhere on the show, but Goodwin, the Tailie-murdering romantic, was one of the most compelling examples. I'm always glad to see Cullen around, and this week he was in full evil mode in The Mentalist.
With Gregory Itzin turning up as well, not to mention Xander Berkeley last week and Zeljko Ivanek in the pilot, the weakness of the secondary cast is beginning to worry us. Nothing against any of the actors (and hey, one of them is called Tim Kang, and reminding me of Kang the Conqueror is always a good thing), but we're worrying that the characters have interchangeable personalities and the actors are not distinct enough to be anything other than redshirts, especially when character actors as outstanding as these are being cast.
Previously on 24 Actor of the Week:
As mentioned above, The Mentalist gained 1000 cool points this week by featuring a potentially recurring role for Gregory Itzin, formerly Evil President Charles Logan on 24.
We adore him (and his TV-wife Jean Smart), and having him show up here as a bureaucratic ass-covering foil for our unorthodox and playful hero would signal an uptick in the potential of a show that is, despite its success and renewal, is still not clicking right. Part of it is the cast. We're ready for Robin Tunney (as grouchy cop Teresa Lisbon) to depart the show in the same way that Kim Delaney vanished from CSI: Miami with barely any excuse. Generating no chemistry with Simon Baker is one thing, but the bitchface...
...is wearing on our patience. There needs to be a point to this character soon, because right now, all she is is a drain on the show's energy, which leaps back up whenever The Mentalist gets to mentalising his foes. More Itzin would help, and if he is going to be the pencil-pusher who stands in our hero's way, making Lisbon the ally of The Mentalist would go a long way to making her tolerable. I mean hey, this advice is offered for free, showrunners.
Mistake of the Week:
Broyles (aka Lance "Intensity" Reddick) calls on the Fringe team to investigate the case of a lift driving itself into the ground, killing eight people inside. The only problem with that is...
...there were only five people in the lift, and one of them, Joseph MEEEEEgar (as named by the ever-awesome Dr. Walter Bishop) survived using his powers of bioelectricity to levitate (which violates every law of physics, but whatever). Perhaps there is a reason for this that has yet to be explained, because otherwise, this is a bizarre error for a show that has spent so long getting the background details right.
Worrying Visual of the Week:
After Don calls the mysterious person and utters his real name, he writes an address on the last page of Joy's copy of The Sound and the Fury, rips it out, and then reclines in the opposite position to that of the title card chap, with the added symbolic value of Don being semi-nekkid instead of being dressed to the nines.
All very clever, but the news that Matthew Weiner is still not signed up to helm the third season (which was only this week greenlit) raises concerns that we are in the same boat as Joy; besotted with Don, and doomed to lose him and not know what happens at the end of the story. Was Weiner warning us? I'm so upset I'm adding awful alliteration (and assonance) to this post. I know AMC are developing other shows, a continuation of the life of Harry Caul from The Conversation (and scripted by Christopher McQuarrie) and an adaptation of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, both of which make me swoon with nerd joy, but I'd hate to think they are responsible for Weiner's urge to seek development deals elsewhere.
And on that potentially troubling bombshell, so ends part one of yet another way too long post. More as soon as disease lets me.
Highlight of the Week:
Mad Men (or Magnificent Men, as I'm thinking it should be re-titled) might have been especially strong and startlingly different than usual this week, but despite that brilliance, it doesn't take the top spot this week because...
WILSON'S BAAAAAAAACK!!! And yes, I'm aware it was only a matter of time before our favourite oncologist got over his fury at House, but to have it happen in such a wholly satisfying stand-out episode was a double pleasure. Though their relationship had seemed to be broken forever, the showrunners came up with an elegant solution, by showing the rift between them is not borne of Wilson's anger over House's involvement in Amber's death, but is rooted in Wilson's own insecurity. His reflexive need to run away from things before they can run out on him is what finally pushed him into falling out with House, at the same time that it has been the foundation of their friendship (House will never leave, and thus represents the only sanctuary Wilson has from that fear).
It wasn't all about Wilson coming to terms with his demons. Personal growth for House doesn't necessarily mean fixing his bitchy attitude, and this week saw him coming to terms with his bitterness over his genetic lineage by realising that it makes no difference in the end. He is who he is no matter what his DNA says, a rare instance of nurture winning out over nature in a medical show like this. Either that or House's final epiphany, "My dad is dead," is just him being finally hit by the news he got at the start of the episode. Either way, it was a beautifully realised moment, making me wonder if his superb eulogy was partially genuine too (I keep forgetting how great Hugh Laurie is).
Of course, parenthood was at the heart of the unusually compelling Disease of the Week thread too. An adopted Chinese woman with addiction problems and abandonment issues seeks out her original parents, who deny she exists. Encountering a magnet, a rash of unpleasant symptoms threaten her life in classic House stylee, and eventually we find out that an attempt on her life by her father while still a baby is responsible for her illness. In a straight-from-the-headlines plot twist, her brain was pierced by needles, which were moved by the magnet, causing a cascade of symptoms through her body. Though using the over-familiar Chinese one-baby rule as a plot device pissed me off at first, at least this was based on a real and very depressing case.
Thematically the show was so tightly bound that it could very well have seemed contrived, but with the focus aimed at House and Wilson's hugely entertaining bickering those connections between the A, B and C plots didn't come together until the final act, though I appreciate that could be a subjective thing, especially as I was so happy to see my favourite sparring duo together that I wasn't in the mood for splitting hairs.
I even forgave Kutner's announcement that the needles in the patient's head were pressing on her "addiction centres", as, even though this is total horseshit in medical terms, it mirrored the solution to House and Wilson's relationship problems. Now that Wilson recognises what has been causing his destructive tendencies, the grief needle has been removed and we can get back to normal. It's the best present the show could give me.
Baffling Turn of Events of the Week:
A couple of years ago, David Milch's perplexing John From Cincinnati diverted my attention for a few weeks, just as I once went crazy for Sudoku and Limines for Xbox 360. Trying to unravel the meaning of it almost made up for the utter tedium of it all, as characters paced around rooms (to denote boredom), spoke cod-Shakespearian (to denote eccentricity, which I actually enjoyed a lot), and screeched at dolphin frequencies (to denote furious anger, which I most certainly did not enjoy). In the middle of all this laboured weirdness, John (aka Surf Jesus) delivered his Sermon from the Mount, 21st Century Style, which was the one scene in the whole sorry exercise that I loved unreservedly.
I didn't watch further (the axe had pretty much fallen by the time I got around to it, so I knew it was pointless to keep watching), but I was impressed by how much it changed the direction of the show, dropping a moment of such batshit oddity into the proceedings that it now lives on in my memory as a completely different thing than it would have if I'd stopped watching just before it happened. This week, Mad Men did something similar, and it is taking me some time to assimilate it.
One of the few criticisms the show has received, along with "the pace is too slow," (which is bullshit), and "the symbolism is too obvious," (which strikes me as occasionally accurate) is that there is very little plot momentum. As the show's stock in trade is incremental character revelation, I don't see that as a problem, and in the moments where plot does move forward, even small things (like Roger leaving Mona) are like explosions. This episode did big plot and small character work, but the character work was utterly unlike anything yet experienced on the show, and the plot stuff has the potential to completely change the template of the show. In other words, it was a headfuck.
What initially seemed to be an opportunity to show Don and Pete in a new environment, and what I had thought would be a "road trip" plot along the same lines as this week's House, became a baffling journey into super-liberal European-style hedonism, with Don the Reluctant Square cast into a world of sex, booze, and loucheness that had nothing to do with the world of sex, booze, and loucheness that he already occupies.
I will admit that I totally misunderstood what was going on at first, but I get the feeling that was the point. After Don and Pete are shown a presentation on MIRV warheads and imminent nuclear destruction - which, incidentally, is not a good thing to show someone in the midst of a decade-long existential crisis - Don is approached by a dandyish European Viscount doing the European Viscount version of "My mate fancies you!" (The difference between this version of that chat-up line and the more common version is that in this version it's his daughter with the crush. Those Europeans!)
Of course, when Don sees who fancies him, he is instantly entranced. Joy, who could only have been more obviously named if she was called "A Balm For Your Troubled Soul, Don Draper", drives him into a confused frenzy of lust, hope, and confusion, and despite his sadness over Betty kicking him out of the house, he follows her to a swish pad across town, where he promptly drinks something unusual, faints, and wakes up on a couch, surrounded by weirdos, with one sinister looking chap on the verge of sticking a needle in his arm.
I mean, who wouldn't think something was up? Don, of course, doesn't realise he looks like a handsome film version of a spy, and is not aware of the filmic conventions of that genre. Getting abducted and drugged is par for the course for a spy, and with Cold War technology and paranoia entering the plot, it was hard not to suspect something was up.
Of course, Don was actually just hanging out with some decadent Eurotoffs, getting laid, and feeling all funny when a copy of The Sound and the Fury gets waved at him (remember my theory that culture is Don's Kryptonite). That he looks like Matt Helm or one of the Men from U.N.C.L.E., or that the dinner scene reminded me of the moment in On Her Majesty's Secret Service where an undercover James Bond has dinner in Blofeld's mountaintop hideaway, is neither here nor there. Luckily Don didn't end up hunted by assassins and forced to watch his wife get killed on their honeymoon, but sadly he did become more lost than he already was.
It's fair to say that since embodying the American Dream, and realising that it doesn't solve the problems he has been battling his whole life, the beatnik, cultural, European lifestyle has been appealing to him. He has been involved with a hipster poet (Midge), a Jewish entrepreneur (Rachel), and a brassy managerial sassmouth (Bobbie), and seemed most intrigued by the first two mistresses (actual or potential). They hinted at a world outside the one he finds himself trapped in, and Bobbie was just someone he shtupped out of habit, all the while feeling unfulfilled because she offered him nothing but empty sex.
As a result, being offered a good time by the alluring and unfamiliar Joy was exactly what he had been hoping for, and for the first time this season actually seemed momentarily happy. It was only after seeing a young boy made miserable by the actions of his father that Don realised not just that he had a obligation to his own children, and not just that he had once been the lonely child in a screwy family, but that if he had, in the past, lived the same life as his benefactors/captors, he probably would have been in the same boat anyway.
With the European dream dashed, he phones someone and identifies himself as Dick Whitman (which deserves a ZOMG for being so unexpected), and seems to be on the way to meet them soon. I had a hunch it would be Midge, having realised he was happiest living the hipster life with her (plus knowing she could score some weed for him), but if he's calling himself Dick Whitman, it's probable it's not someone we've seen before. With all other options exhausted, all he has is the past.
Overly Delayed Plot Resolution of the Week:
I love FNL's Smash Williams, and have been rooting for him to succeed in his mission to buy his mother a house since episode one, but I'm about done with that plot now. In the past, Smash has been hotheaded and cocky, with only the occasional impediment to his success getting thrown into his path. Now that he only has a few season three episodes before disappearing for good, we've had three episodes of him having second thoughts about pursuing a football career only to be brought around by someone else.
Don't get me wrong, each time this has happened it's been dramatised with the usual high FNLian standards, but even so, "I can't do it," "Yes you can," "No I can't," "Yes you can," ad infinitum gets boring way before I actually gets infinitum. Next week might see him get his wish, finally, which will suit me down to the ground. At least then I can relax about him and devote proper fretting energy to Matt Saracen and his doomed QB1 position.
Discovery of the Week:
It is actually possible to kill a man in the middle of Central Park in daylight and then drag him back to your top-floor warehouse/penthouse/loft apartment without anyone noticing.
It's also possible to kill your next door neighbour and never be interrogated by the police even though you have already beaten him up hours before right in front of his wife.Really, if the Heroes showrunners aren't going to give a shit, why should the viewers?Good Haircut of the Week:
Many internet people who watch Mad Men are offended that Kurt the European Homosexual is a hairdresser, thinking it an oddly stereotypical thing for the show to do, though really it is based around taking our assumptions about the 60s, applying them to well-drawn characters and showing why we have these assumptions. Even though we too thought it a bit obvious to make Kurt a hair stylist genius...
...it's great that Peggy looks so good now.
And she's going to see Bob Dylan too. Perhaps she will be the first Sterling Cooper employee to tune in, turn on, and drop out (Don's weirdness and sudden vanishing act to go find his outer Joy doesn't count).
Bad Haircut of the Week:
The godawful do foisted on Elina in America's Next Top Model in the recent makeover episode is a goddamn disgrace, worse than all of the previous too-tight weaves, bleach armageddons, or baldness experiments.
For once, the tears were well deserved.
Still, I may not like Elina much (her delusional, shallow crush on the awful, hypocritical Clark is the dealbreaker), but she's done some great work with this mop ever since, straightening it so that she doesn't look like a clown, and "owning it", as Tyra would say.
Overused Plot Device of the Week:
In three shows this week, main characters had visions of people from their past. In Mad Men Don was so disconjunctified by Betty's decision to kick him out of Casa de Draper that he's seeing her everywhere.
Of course, for we internet heathens who have committed the heinous act of blasphemy that is thinking that January Jones is not the most glorious and magical actress in the land, less Betty is not a bad thing, so the cameo was fine by us. How will her fans cope? Aiming yet more snotty abuse at the unbelievers who don't understand wot gud akting iz, I'll wager.
In Heroes, we finally found out the secret behind the appearances of Linderman, as shown above. Though, by now, we're watching Heroes for the unintentional comedy, it does crack out the odd surprise, and bringing back Parkman's dad was a big one.
It also put right one of the biggest problems of the second season, i.e. the huge build-up of The Boogeyman as the worst villain ever just for him to turn up in one episode and then vanish as if he'd never existed. Having him show up again and be responsible for one of this season's most interesting mysteries almost makes me think the showrunners know what they are doing. Almost.
Fringe featured the most bizarre hallucination moment of all. Olivia (aka Vanatron) is haunted by visions of her dead/undead lover John Scott, who keeps popping up to tell her he loves her as well as giving her clues to this week's Pattern mystery.
As we are unclear as to his actual status, what with him being in the hands of the possibly death-vanquishingly powerful MASSive Dynamic, this episode played with our expectations throughout, until Dr. Walter Bishop revealed that a piece of John Scott's consciousness had broken off inside Olivia's psyche during their mindmeld in episode one, and that his consciousness was communicating with her independently of the actual John Scott, who really is dead. Though he might not be. And Walter could be lying. We don't know anything, and cannot assume anything either. Five episodes in and this show is already a total mindfuck. That's some good going.
Nerd Joke of the Week:
"I was not born in a manger. I was actually born on Krypton. I was sent here by my father Jor-El to save the planet Earth." - Sen. Barack Obama at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner earlier this week.
Thanks to Captain Snarky for posting that picture in another internet venue. It made the germs forget to make me feel like whipped shit for two minutes.
Previously on Angel Actor of the Week:
Snarky Sheriff Costello, who put House and Wilson through the wringer this week, was played by Jack Conley.
We Buffy fans who stuck with Angel, which became the equal of its magnificent parent but failed to win over everyone (the haters!), should remember Sahjhan, the demon who plotted against Angel in the third season, and combined pure evil with sarcastic wise-assery. Conley did a great job in that, and a great job this week as well.
Previously on Lost Actor of the Week:
Okay, Brett Cullen has been around for a while, with memorable appearances in Ugly Betty, West Wing, Friday Night Lights, and the lamentable Ghost Rider, but he'll always be Goodwin to me. Moral ambiguity is everywhere on the show, but Goodwin, the Tailie-murdering romantic, was one of the most compelling examples. I'm always glad to see Cullen around, and this week he was in full evil mode in The Mentalist.
With Gregory Itzin turning up as well, not to mention Xander Berkeley last week and Zeljko Ivanek in the pilot, the weakness of the secondary cast is beginning to worry us. Nothing against any of the actors (and hey, one of them is called Tim Kang, and reminding me of Kang the Conqueror is always a good thing), but we're worrying that the characters have interchangeable personalities and the actors are not distinct enough to be anything other than redshirts, especially when character actors as outstanding as these are being cast.Previously on 24 Actor of the Week:
As mentioned above, The Mentalist gained 1000 cool points this week by featuring a potentially recurring role for Gregory Itzin, formerly Evil President Charles Logan on 24.
We adore him (and his TV-wife Jean Smart), and having him show up here as a bureaucratic ass-covering foil for our unorthodox and playful hero would signal an uptick in the potential of a show that is, despite its success and renewal, is still not clicking right. Part of it is the cast. We're ready for Robin Tunney (as grouchy cop Teresa Lisbon) to depart the show in the same way that Kim Delaney vanished from CSI: Miami with barely any excuse. Generating no chemistry with Simon Baker is one thing, but the bitchface...
...is wearing on our patience. There needs to be a point to this character soon, because right now, all she is is a drain on the show's energy, which leaps back up whenever The Mentalist gets to mentalising his foes. More Itzin would help, and if he is going to be the pencil-pusher who stands in our hero's way, making Lisbon the ally of The Mentalist would go a long way to making her tolerable. I mean hey, this advice is offered for free, showrunners.Mistake of the Week:
Broyles (aka Lance "Intensity" Reddick) calls on the Fringe team to investigate the case of a lift driving itself into the ground, killing eight people inside. The only problem with that is...
...there were only five people in the lift, and one of them, Joseph MEEEEEgar (as named by the ever-awesome Dr. Walter Bishop) survived using his powers of bioelectricity to levitate (which violates every law of physics, but whatever). Perhaps there is a reason for this that has yet to be explained, because otherwise, this is a bizarre error for a show that has spent so long getting the background details right.Worrying Visual of the Week:
After Don calls the mysterious person and utters his real name, he writes an address on the last page of Joy's copy of The Sound and the Fury, rips it out, and then reclines in the opposite position to that of the title card chap, with the added symbolic value of Don being semi-nekkid instead of being dressed to the nines.
All very clever, but the news that Matthew Weiner is still not signed up to helm the third season (which was only this week greenlit) raises concerns that we are in the same boat as Joy; besotted with Don, and doomed to lose him and not know what happens at the end of the story. Was Weiner warning us? I'm so upset I'm adding awful alliteration (and assonance) to this post. I know AMC are developing other shows, a continuation of the life of Harry Caul from The Conversation (and scripted by Christopher McQuarrie) and an adaptation of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy, both of which make me swoon with nerd joy, but I'd hate to think they are responsible for Weiner's urge to seek development deals elsewhere.
And on that potentially troubling bombshell, so ends part one of yet another way too long post. More as soon as disease lets me.
Thursday, 16 October 2008
Hawkmonkey PWNs Puppet Angel
It was my birthday recently, and Canyon got me the best present ever: Hawkmonkey!
She gave a custom order to a craftsperson on Etsy called Siansburys, who makes incredible sock monkeys, many of which are of her own design, and some of which are based on established pop culture icons (I especially like her Captain Jack Sparrow Monkey).
Canyon, being an awesome wife who has had to put up with a lot of my nonsense about what an awesome asskicking megahero my beloved Hawkman is, has outdone herself, and Siansburys, whose designs are all wonderful, has astounded us with the enormous skill, attention to detail, and adaptive imagination on display here (the packaging was wonderful too). Zoe, on the other hand, is not so pleased.
I love this photo Canyon took this morning, of two crimefighters contemplating the world they are about to clean up using fangs, fists, and a big mace.
The only downside to this wonderful present is that some unscrupulous, awesomeness-hating creeps might come to my house one day and put Hawkmonkey in some kind of compromising position not befitting his majestic splendour. If you think I'm being unduly paranoid, there is a precedent.
I'd only had those action figures a couple of days, dammit! To be fair, one of the criminals responsible for that tableau did get me two Wire boxsets this week, which are greatly greatly appreciated, though I do worry that the Wire cultists are now getting so desperate for new blood that they are buying DVDs for the rest of us. Plus, nice work spotting that Hawkman is so totally a top.
She gave a custom order to a craftsperson on Etsy called Siansburys, who makes incredible sock monkeys, many of which are of her own design, and some of which are based on established pop culture icons (I especially like her Captain Jack Sparrow Monkey).
Canyon, being an awesome wife who has had to put up with a lot of my nonsense about what an awesome asskicking megahero my beloved Hawkman is, has outdone herself, and Siansburys, whose designs are all wonderful, has astounded us with the enormous skill, attention to detail, and adaptive imagination on display here (the packaging was wonderful too). Zoe, on the other hand, is not so pleased.
I love this photo Canyon took this morning, of two crimefighters contemplating the world they are about to clean up using fangs, fists, and a big mace.
The only downside to this wonderful present is that some unscrupulous, awesomeness-hating creeps might come to my house one day and put Hawkmonkey in some kind of compromising position not befitting his majestic splendour. If you think I'm being unduly paranoid, there is a precedent.
I'd only had those action figures a couple of days, dammit! To be fair, one of the criminals responsible for that tableau did get me two Wire boxsets this week, which are greatly greatly appreciated, though I do worry that the Wire cultists are now getting so desperate for new blood that they are buying DVDs for the rest of us. Plus, nice work spotting that Hawkman is so totally a top.
Wednesday, 15 October 2008
Sci Fi Through Space/Time: The Wild Blue Yonder
A shameful admission before begin. The Wild Blue Yonder is the first movie I have seen by Werner Herzog, even though I have Rescue Dawn somewhere in this house, not to mention a Herzog/Kinski boxset that has been touched by me only to move it from house to house. Pitiful. Until I saw this movie, the only experience I had of Herzog was to experience what Klaus Kinski thought of him, as expressed in his demented, perverse, brilliant autobiography. Apologies for the long quote, but really, if you're going to quote Kinski, you have to quote a lot:
The word on the street is that Kinski's autobiography was full of exaggeration, obfuscation, and insane bullshit, but even so, that's the kind of description that makes an impression on you. For some inexplicable and inexcusable reason I never got to see Herzog's work, but I made an effort for The Wild Blue Yonder, because the idea behind it, of a monologue delivered by an alien played by Brad Dourif, was immensely appealing. Perhaps I should have realised that this was to be one of Herzog's minor works, and an exercise in audience frustration, rather than his larger projects.
While I say minor works, I'm aware that the documentaries made between his major films are highly regarded, and that what might appear to be dashed off are done with intelligence and enthusiasm. At least, that's the impression I got from Wild Blue Yonder, which was simultaneously trivial and fascinating, though perhaps more for what it says about filmmaking and storytelling than I says about its subject matter, which is an amusing but slight satire on modern culture, environmental concerns, and the urge to explore our surroundings, with a possible side order of comment on the sci fi genre and its reliance on spectacle.
Made on a shoestring budget, mostly utilising bits of footage found by or donated to Herzog, Wild Blue Yonder is a long tirade delivered by an alien, relating an alternate history of earth. His race, escaping an ice age on their home planet orbiting Andromeda, arrive on earth with the hope of rebuilding their civilisation but instead fail because, in Dourif's words:
Much of Dourif's tale is told in a rundown Midwestern town, with deserted streets, dilapidated faux-Grecian buildings, and decrepit trailers, standing in for the aliens' hubris-wrecked Babylon. The setting, and the tale told, are reminiscent of Nicolas Roeg's adaptation of Walter Tevis' The Man Who Fell To Earth, but Roeg didn't visualise the alien's arrival on Earth using old stock footage of crashing airplanes.
Herzog's reliance on found footage to relate his galactic tale is both frugal and, for a while, amusing, cleverly linking shots of NASA scientists examining a probe to the next part of his tale, as an Andromedan virus escapes from the Roswell UFO during its examination at Cape Canaveral, and infects the planet.
A spacecraft orbiting Earth contains the only uninfected humans left, and their fate depends upon leaving Earth's orbit and finding some way to travel across the galaxy to the home planet of the alien refugees, in the hope that they might find some way to build a new life there, with scientists desperately trying to invent methods of faster-than-light travel in order to speed up the journey.
This section of the movie is possibly the most problematic. Using footage of zero-G shenanigans from the STS 34 Space Shuttle mission, a long stretch of the short running time is taken up with mundane shots of astronauts sitting (well, floating) around, doing very little. The narrative grinds to a halt at these points, possibly to mimic the boredom of the astronauts, forced to play a waiting game while trying to leave Earth's orbit, but also, maybe, as a pointed antidote to the grandiosity of much sci fi. Just as exotic fantasies of interesting alien cultures are punctured by Dourif's resolutely unglamorous and self-loathing shlub, the wonder of space travel is presented as a flat, gray, nothing, a life of chores and boredom.
Scattered through these scenes are very entertaining rants from Dourif about the sins of humanity (breeding pigs and climbing mountains. It makes sense in the movie), weird alternate history interludes (Galileo's launch figures in), and occasional breaks for baffling interviews with astrophysicists discussing theoretical intergalactic space travel methods, including one really awesome one from Martin Lo, explaining his Interplanetary Network theory. Nevertheless, these interruptions, delivered with no concessions to layman speak, are so perplexing that I began to suspect Herzog was making a point about mainstream sci fi, replacing the genre's meaningless sub-scientific babble with actual science, in all its impenetrable complexity.
Eventually, using Lo's method of interstellar travel, which he refers to as chaotic transport, the astronauts reach their destination, the ice encrusted planet from which Dourif's ancestors travelled, and Herzog switches to footage of divers swimming under the ice at Murdo Sound, which was given to him by musician Henry Kaiser. With Dourif's narration describing his homeworld as one with a frozen blue sky and bizarre alien creatures, we see divers passing under a thick blue crust of ice, surrounded by unfamiliar underwater flora and fauna. Compared to the eventless middle section, this part of the film is fascinating and, again, playful.
The kicker, delivered in the final moments of the film, is that the astronauts, so isolated and harried by their desperate trip through space, return to Earth with good news about the possible relocation spot, only to find that Earth has been deserted long before, making their journey a useless one. Even worse, the remnants of the human race are now living in space and Earth has become a national park for holidays.
This, in turn, makes the entire film seem like an absurd and futile joke, and makes you wonder what the point of it all is. Is it a treatise on humanity's urge to trivialise the glorious? Some of the photography at the end is so beautiful it seems Herzog might be angered by the thought of his fellow man taking this beauty for granted. Harking back to the start of the film, the aliens' plans for their stay on Earth, which requires building a city featuring a mall, a court room, a Pentagon, in an effort to replicate Washington DC, all fail. It's likely this is a metaphor for the death of the American dream, and the way intelligence or wisdom can be ignored by many. One funny moment, with Dourif describing the alien lifeforms and their incomprehensible languages matches up with an image of a floating aquatic blob as a human language, possibly Farsi, bubbles up through the soundtrack. Is this just a silly joke? A comment on Western attitudes to foreigners, with a hint of war-on-terror criticism thrown in for good measure?
By film's end I was baffled as to what Herzog was aiming for. A lot of the voiceover (and the denouement) is pointedly satirical, especially about humanity's inability to take responsibility for the consequences of its actions. However, it also ends on a flatly ironic note, a Shaggy Dog tale ending that makes the journey as pointless as the one taken by the astronauts. After that, much of the movie seems purposeless. Long stretches of the film pass with little happening, leaving room for contemplation but it has very little (if any) narrative drive. It also makes you wonder if Dourif's alien is nothing more than a crank rambling about his conspiracy theories from the wreckage of his trailer park home, which makes the movie even more absurd, as if the faux-documentary is doubly faux. There are layers and layers of falsehood here, which suits a movie that takes existing footage out of context and creates something new from it.
Of course, trying to assign meaning to a film as blank and mischievous as this one is an exercise in futility. All of these interpretations could be correct, but I could theoretically micro-analyse the movie for years. From where I'm sitting it could either be a prank, a critique of a genre I love, or the most profound movie ever made. Of course, obsessively dissecting this movie might still be missing the point. Herzog might have merely been trying to create a poetic experience, a hypnotic fusion of image and sound, but on a subjective level I'd have to say it fails in that respect as well. The imagery in the final third of the movie is beautiful but grainy, and the mid-section is utterly drab, the only colour provided by many out of context displays of blurry cosmic events.
What makes those long narrative-free sequences in the middle bearable is the beautiful soundtrack by German cellist Ernst Reijseger and Senegalese singer Mola Sylla. Recorded prior to making the movie, it lives independently of the film, unlike something like Godfrey Reggio's Koyaanisqatsi, which is as perfect a melding of abstract vision and non-diegetic sound as is possible. Wild Blue Yonder, perhaps intentionally, splits the visual content almost evenly between mundane and strangely beautiful, and not even the haunting soundtrack Herzog has presided over can make the dull half work as well as the other. If the movie sounds like hard going (and it can be), I recommend the soundtrack CD, Requiem For A Dying Planet, which has been stuck to my iPod for months now.
If the movie doesn't fully succeed as story or satire, it does make a strong case for cobbling together a narrative out of things that are available to you. Herzog was lucky enough to get hold of Henry Kaiser's footage (which he also used in his documentary Encounters at the End of the World), and the space shuttle footage, which comprise the majority of the film, and much of the film looks like stock footage from a library, acquired either for free or at least cheaply. The only expenses incurred, other than post-production and research, is getting Brad Dourif into the middle of nowhere for a couple of days, and hiring musicians and studios to record the wonderful soundtrack. For these, Herzog got some funding from Centre National de la Cinématographie, France2 and BBC Films. Well, I say BBC Films, but it was actually Nick Fraser and the Storyville guys, who are currently responsible for 90% of the interesting things coming out of the BBC, including James Marsh's super Man on Wire. I doubt BBC Films proper would never have any interest in funding Wild Blue Yonder now that they've rebranded themselves as The Keira Knightly Period Costume Factory in an effort to emulate the rest of the British Film Industry instead of supporting exciting projects like Morvern Callar and Last Resort [/rant].
As I said recently, the idea of cobbling together the resources to tell a story any way you can and using whatever means necessary to communicate ideas is very alluring. One way, the Michel Gondry way, involves making things and using your imagination to get around problems in a script already written. Herzog's idea (which is not solely his, but merely one he is using here) is to take found footage and construct a narrative out of it. Using free stock footage (available online), it's relatively easy to make a film telling a story you want. As I say, this is not a new idea; within the narrow parameters of my experience I've greatly enjoyed the work of Chris Morris, Armando Iannucci, and Adam Buxton, all of whom have used found footage for comical purposes, and of course Orson Welles' last movie, F For Fake, played with truth and falsehood by manipulating the real and unreal until the audience doesn't know which is which. Herzog has even used this technique before, in his 1992 movie Lessons of Darknesswhich re-edits footage from Operation Desert Storm into a reflection on faith, magic, and madness. Even so, it was not until I saw The Wild Blue Yonder that I realised how easy it could be. It was an exciting moment.
That's beside the point, though. Wild Blue Yonder, as a film, is not a success, being only sporadically entertaining, narratively simplistic, and thematically jumbled. As a reflective space to let your brain wander in, visually it's often too murky or drab, though the leisurely pace certainly helps generate a hypnotic state. It's more successful as a kind of cinematic prank, daring to corral unconnected imagery and playful ranting into a coherent, if ephemeral, whole. Nevertheless, throughout I kept wanting a little bit more; more narrative, more energy, more purpose (or, to make the project more of a joke, less purpose). There's a strong case that Herzog, seeking to confound audience expectation, has deconstructed the sci fi genre, showing the tedium of real space travel and the lies at the heart of the sci fi movie: they have alien worlds created in the heart of a computer, he has an underwater world that is as real as it is alien, but when seen in the context of the movie is as false as the CGI vision. That's possibly the most intriguing critique of the movie, but that means the film only works on an intellectual level. Having to sit and watch it is still an occasionally frustrating experience for this ADD afflicted film buff.
Falling between two stools, one of entertainment and the other transcendental art, Wild Blue Yonder ended up leaving me unsatisfied as a movie, even while it made my brain whir with excitement as a creative template. There's no way I could think ill of it, even if just taking it as a quirky curio starring one of the great character actors of our time in full flow, but I hesitate to recommend it either, simply because even after pondering it for months, I'm not sure what it set out to do or what it achieves. Maybe that was the point of it.
Herzog is a miserable, hateful, malevolent, avaricious, money-hungry, nasty, sadistic, treacherous, cowardly creep...
He should be thrown alive to the crocodiles! An anaconda should strangle him slowly! A poisonous spider should sting him and paralyze his lungs! The most venomous serpent should bite him and make his brain explode! No panther claws should rip open his throat--that would be much too good for him! Huge red ants should piss into his lying eyes and gobble up his balls and his guts! He should catch the plague! Syphilis! Yellow fever! Leprosy! It's no use; the more I wish him the most gruesome deaths, the more he haunts me...
His speech is clumsy, with a toadlike indolence, long winded, pedantic, choppy. The words tumble from his mouth in sentence fragments, which he holds back as much as possible, as if they were earning interest. It takes forever and a day for him to push out a clump of hardened brain snot. Then he writhes in painful ecstasy, as if he had sugar on his rotten teeth. A very slow blab machine. An obsolete model with a non-working switch— it can't be turned off unless you cut off the electric power altogether. So I'd have to smash him in the kisser. No, I'd have to knock him unconscious. But even if he were unconscious he'd keep talking. Even if his vocal cords were sliced through, he'd keep talking like a ventriloquist. Even if his throat were cut and his head were chopped off, speech balloons would still dangle from his mouth like gases emitted by internal decay.
The word on the street is that Kinski's autobiography was full of exaggeration, obfuscation, and insane bullshit, but even so, that's the kind of description that makes an impression on you. For some inexplicable and inexcusable reason I never got to see Herzog's work, but I made an effort for The Wild Blue Yonder, because the idea behind it, of a monologue delivered by an alien played by Brad Dourif, was immensely appealing. Perhaps I should have realised that this was to be one of Herzog's minor works, and an exercise in audience frustration, rather than his larger projects.
While I say minor works, I'm aware that the documentaries made between his major films are highly regarded, and that what might appear to be dashed off are done with intelligence and enthusiasm. At least, that's the impression I got from Wild Blue Yonder, which was simultaneously trivial and fascinating, though perhaps more for what it says about filmmaking and storytelling than I says about its subject matter, which is an amusing but slight satire on modern culture, environmental concerns, and the urge to explore our surroundings, with a possible side order of comment on the sci fi genre and its reliance on spectacle.
Made on a shoestring budget, mostly utilising bits of footage found by or donated to Herzog, Wild Blue Yonder is a long tirade delivered by an alien, relating an alternate history of earth. His race, escaping an ice age on their home planet orbiting Andromeda, arrive on earth with the hope of rebuilding their civilisation but instead fail because, in Dourif's words:
You see aliens as these technologically advanced superbeings who destroy New York city in two minutes flat. Well I hate to say it, but we aliens all suck.
Much of Dourif's tale is told in a rundown Midwestern town, with deserted streets, dilapidated faux-Grecian buildings, and decrepit trailers, standing in for the aliens' hubris-wrecked Babylon. The setting, and the tale told, are reminiscent of Nicolas Roeg's adaptation of Walter Tevis' The Man Who Fell To Earth, but Roeg didn't visualise the alien's arrival on Earth using old stock footage of crashing airplanes.
Herzog's reliance on found footage to relate his galactic tale is both frugal and, for a while, amusing, cleverly linking shots of NASA scientists examining a probe to the next part of his tale, as an Andromedan virus escapes from the Roswell UFO during its examination at Cape Canaveral, and infects the planet.
A spacecraft orbiting Earth contains the only uninfected humans left, and their fate depends upon leaving Earth's orbit and finding some way to travel across the galaxy to the home planet of the alien refugees, in the hope that they might find some way to build a new life there, with scientists desperately trying to invent methods of faster-than-light travel in order to speed up the journey.
This section of the movie is possibly the most problematic. Using footage of zero-G shenanigans from the STS 34 Space Shuttle mission, a long stretch of the short running time is taken up with mundane shots of astronauts sitting (well, floating) around, doing very little. The narrative grinds to a halt at these points, possibly to mimic the boredom of the astronauts, forced to play a waiting game while trying to leave Earth's orbit, but also, maybe, as a pointed antidote to the grandiosity of much sci fi. Just as exotic fantasies of interesting alien cultures are punctured by Dourif's resolutely unglamorous and self-loathing shlub, the wonder of space travel is presented as a flat, gray, nothing, a life of chores and boredom.
Scattered through these scenes are very entertaining rants from Dourif about the sins of humanity (breeding pigs and climbing mountains. It makes sense in the movie), weird alternate history interludes (Galileo's launch figures in), and occasional breaks for baffling interviews with astrophysicists discussing theoretical intergalactic space travel methods, including one really awesome one from Martin Lo, explaining his Interplanetary Network theory. Nevertheless, these interruptions, delivered with no concessions to layman speak, are so perplexing that I began to suspect Herzog was making a point about mainstream sci fi, replacing the genre's meaningless sub-scientific babble with actual science, in all its impenetrable complexity.
Eventually, using Lo's method of interstellar travel, which he refers to as chaotic transport, the astronauts reach their destination, the ice encrusted planet from which Dourif's ancestors travelled, and Herzog switches to footage of divers swimming under the ice at Murdo Sound, which was given to him by musician Henry Kaiser. With Dourif's narration describing his homeworld as one with a frozen blue sky and bizarre alien creatures, we see divers passing under a thick blue crust of ice, surrounded by unfamiliar underwater flora and fauna. Compared to the eventless middle section, this part of the film is fascinating and, again, playful.
The kicker, delivered in the final moments of the film, is that the astronauts, so isolated and harried by their desperate trip through space, return to Earth with good news about the possible relocation spot, only to find that Earth has been deserted long before, making their journey a useless one. Even worse, the remnants of the human race are now living in space and Earth has become a national park for holidays.
This, in turn, makes the entire film seem like an absurd and futile joke, and makes you wonder what the point of it all is. Is it a treatise on humanity's urge to trivialise the glorious? Some of the photography at the end is so beautiful it seems Herzog might be angered by the thought of his fellow man taking this beauty for granted. Harking back to the start of the film, the aliens' plans for their stay on Earth, which requires building a city featuring a mall, a court room, a Pentagon, in an effort to replicate Washington DC, all fail. It's likely this is a metaphor for the death of the American dream, and the way intelligence or wisdom can be ignored by many. One funny moment, with Dourif describing the alien lifeforms and their incomprehensible languages matches up with an image of a floating aquatic blob as a human language, possibly Farsi, bubbles up through the soundtrack. Is this just a silly joke? A comment on Western attitudes to foreigners, with a hint of war-on-terror criticism thrown in for good measure?
By film's end I was baffled as to what Herzog was aiming for. A lot of the voiceover (and the denouement) is pointedly satirical, especially about humanity's inability to take responsibility for the consequences of its actions. However, it also ends on a flatly ironic note, a Shaggy Dog tale ending that makes the journey as pointless as the one taken by the astronauts. After that, much of the movie seems purposeless. Long stretches of the film pass with little happening, leaving room for contemplation but it has very little (if any) narrative drive. It also makes you wonder if Dourif's alien is nothing more than a crank rambling about his conspiracy theories from the wreckage of his trailer park home, which makes the movie even more absurd, as if the faux-documentary is doubly faux. There are layers and layers of falsehood here, which suits a movie that takes existing footage out of context and creates something new from it.
Of course, trying to assign meaning to a film as blank and mischievous as this one is an exercise in futility. All of these interpretations could be correct, but I could theoretically micro-analyse the movie for years. From where I'm sitting it could either be a prank, a critique of a genre I love, or the most profound movie ever made. Of course, obsessively dissecting this movie might still be missing the point. Herzog might have merely been trying to create a poetic experience, a hypnotic fusion of image and sound, but on a subjective level I'd have to say it fails in that respect as well. The imagery in the final third of the movie is beautiful but grainy, and the mid-section is utterly drab, the only colour provided by many out of context displays of blurry cosmic events.
What makes those long narrative-free sequences in the middle bearable is the beautiful soundtrack by German cellist Ernst Reijseger and Senegalese singer Mola Sylla. Recorded prior to making the movie, it lives independently of the film, unlike something like Godfrey Reggio's Koyaanisqatsi, which is as perfect a melding of abstract vision and non-diegetic sound as is possible. Wild Blue Yonder, perhaps intentionally, splits the visual content almost evenly between mundane and strangely beautiful, and not even the haunting soundtrack Herzog has presided over can make the dull half work as well as the other. If the movie sounds like hard going (and it can be), I recommend the soundtrack CD, Requiem For A Dying Planet, which has been stuck to my iPod for months now.
If the movie doesn't fully succeed as story or satire, it does make a strong case for cobbling together a narrative out of things that are available to you. Herzog was lucky enough to get hold of Henry Kaiser's footage (which he also used in his documentary Encounters at the End of the World), and the space shuttle footage, which comprise the majority of the film, and much of the film looks like stock footage from a library, acquired either for free or at least cheaply. The only expenses incurred, other than post-production and research, is getting Brad Dourif into the middle of nowhere for a couple of days, and hiring musicians and studios to record the wonderful soundtrack. For these, Herzog got some funding from Centre National de la Cinématographie, France2 and BBC Films. Well, I say BBC Films, but it was actually Nick Fraser and the Storyville guys, who are currently responsible for 90% of the interesting things coming out of the BBC, including James Marsh's super Man on Wire. I doubt BBC Films proper would never have any interest in funding Wild Blue Yonder now that they've rebranded themselves as The Keira Knightly Period Costume Factory in an effort to emulate the rest of the British Film Industry instead of supporting exciting projects like Morvern Callar and Last Resort [/rant].
As I said recently, the idea of cobbling together the resources to tell a story any way you can and using whatever means necessary to communicate ideas is very alluring. One way, the Michel Gondry way, involves making things and using your imagination to get around problems in a script already written. Herzog's idea (which is not solely his, but merely one he is using here) is to take found footage and construct a narrative out of it. Using free stock footage (available online), it's relatively easy to make a film telling a story you want. As I say, this is not a new idea; within the narrow parameters of my experience I've greatly enjoyed the work of Chris Morris, Armando Iannucci, and Adam Buxton, all of whom have used found footage for comical purposes, and of course Orson Welles' last movie, F For Fake, played with truth and falsehood by manipulating the real and unreal until the audience doesn't know which is which. Herzog has even used this technique before, in his 1992 movie Lessons of Darknesswhich re-edits footage from Operation Desert Storm into a reflection on faith, magic, and madness. Even so, it was not until I saw The Wild Blue Yonder that I realised how easy it could be. It was an exciting moment.
That's beside the point, though. Wild Blue Yonder, as a film, is not a success, being only sporadically entertaining, narratively simplistic, and thematically jumbled. As a reflective space to let your brain wander in, visually it's often too murky or drab, though the leisurely pace certainly helps generate a hypnotic state. It's more successful as a kind of cinematic prank, daring to corral unconnected imagery and playful ranting into a coherent, if ephemeral, whole. Nevertheless, throughout I kept wanting a little bit more; more narrative, more energy, more purpose (or, to make the project more of a joke, less purpose). There's a strong case that Herzog, seeking to confound audience expectation, has deconstructed the sci fi genre, showing the tedium of real space travel and the lies at the heart of the sci fi movie: they have alien worlds created in the heart of a computer, he has an underwater world that is as real as it is alien, but when seen in the context of the movie is as false as the CGI vision. That's possibly the most intriguing critique of the movie, but that means the film only works on an intellectual level. Having to sit and watch it is still an occasionally frustrating experience for this ADD afflicted film buff.
Falling between two stools, one of entertainment and the other transcendental art, Wild Blue Yonder ended up leaving me unsatisfied as a movie, even while it made my brain whir with excitement as a creative template. There's no way I could think ill of it, even if just taking it as a quirky curio starring one of the great character actors of our time in full flow, but I hesitate to recommend it either, simply because even after pondering it for months, I'm not sure what it set out to do or what it achieves. Maybe that was the point of it.
Tuesday, 14 October 2008
Adventures In Awesome: Want! Now! (3)
Thanks to the super-handy RSS blog roll gadget in our sidebar, I just saw the Long Now blog take a break from interviewing Neal Stephenson over and over again (not necessarily a bad thing) to give a nice little plug to Bloom, an iPhone app created by Peter Chilvers and aural Michaelangelo Mr. Brian Eno.
It's basically like having an interactive version of Music For Airports or the first half of Discreet Music in your pocket, and is therefore the greatest invention in the history of mankind next to penicillin, the printing press, and vibrating scalp massagers, though I will admit it's similar to Electroplankton. Soon this shall be mine. Well, Canyon's, as she's the one with an iPhone. Nevertheless, this is surely an essential purchase, perhaps even more so than the lightsaber app I keep playing with, even though LucasArts has ruined it by getting rid of the previous app (for, you guessed it, copyright infringement) and turning it into a plug for The Force Unleashed, which, while fun, means the purple Mace Windu saber has disappeared.
Of course, all of this puts my piece of shit TyTn II to shame. All it can do is not work as a phone, run down a battery after an hour of use, and mock me, silently. Brian Eno would be disgusted with me for buying it. Stay away from that phone, people. If the new Knight Rider was a phone, it would be marginally more reliable than the TyTn II. And Val Kilmer would read out my voicemail message.
It's basically like having an interactive version of Music For Airports or the first half of Discreet Music in your pocket, and is therefore the greatest invention in the history of mankind next to penicillin, the printing press, and vibrating scalp massagers, though I will admit it's similar to Electroplankton. Soon this shall be mine. Well, Canyon's, as she's the one with an iPhone. Nevertheless, this is surely an essential purchase, perhaps even more so than the lightsaber app I keep playing with, even though LucasArts has ruined it by getting rid of the previous app (for, you guessed it, copyright infringement) and turning it into a plug for The Force Unleashed, which, while fun, means the purple Mace Windu saber has disappeared.
Of course, all of this puts my piece of shit TyTn II to shame. All it can do is not work as a phone, run down a battery after an hour of use, and mock me, silently. Brian Eno would be disgusted with me for buying it. Stay away from that phone, people. If the new Knight Rider was a phone, it would be marginally more reliable than the TyTn II. And Val Kilmer would read out my voicemail message.
America's Next Top Phonies, Jerkwads, and Moosehunters
Due to tardiness and the vice-like grip of the work of art known as The Shield (seventh season PWNs all other shows), it took us way longer than expected to finish the tenth cycle of the World's Best Reality Show, aka America's Next Top Model, even though it was much more entertaining than the dreary eighth and ninth cycles. Even weirder, it was fun even though we weren't rooting for anyone, except for a week when I suddenly thought gloomy punk freako Lauren was the most awesome of all, until she suddenly started screaming at all of the other contestants like a psycho. Other than her, the most entertainment was provided by Dominique, who was an idiot and an egotist, but her photoshoots and adverts were so hilariously misjudged that it was worth the pain of her endless solipsistic monologues to see the crazy genius of her modelling (here is an example of her in a pair of meat knickers).
Even so, the challenges were more interesting than usual, and the chemistry in the house was better than the previous two cycles, which were both snore-inducing. However, the finale was a shocking travesty of justice, with mediocre model-in-training Whitney winning over the transparently superior (though incomprehensible) Anya, seemingly just so Tyra could make a big deal about a plus-size model winning the competition. No matter how heartening it is to see a "full-figured model" (Tyra's phrase) win the competition, and it is very heartening, it would have been even better if she'd been any good, and if her body had contained even one honest bone. Here's her cringe-inducing Italian CoverGirl advert, at the 1:30 mark, which earned her little praise (while she's not as bad as Dominique or Lauren, at least those are hilarious).
Despite being repeatedly told that she was coming across as a ridiculous phoney with an off-putting fake laugh, she would not stop reverting to her overlaugh and cutesiness. Previously, not doing as Tyra has commanded is a crime that has put paid to the ambitions of numerous contestants, but for some reason Whitney's inability to knock her hokey shtick off was ignored in the final weeks. Just to make me even more annoyed, the finale was rendered shambolic by the farce that was the season overview, which usually compares a significant percentage of the photos of each finalist, but this year was truncated due to the dearth of Whitney shots that could compare with Anya's professional pictures. That Anya lost because her accent is odd and her final runway walk was not 100% perfect is bullshit pie. Watching the finale and getting that shock nearly ruined our holiday, it left me that flabbergasted. It's like the Saleisha controversy all over again, except Saleisha was at least talented.
Bitching about Whitney's win is not the sole reason that I'm posting about ANTM. Early in the cycle I was distracted by Claire, the dive-bombing mom with too much self-confidence and zero personality. That's par for the course on this show (though usually the dive-bombing doesn't come into it), but for some reason she reminded me of David Byrne.
I appreciate that I'm the only person who can see that, and the neuronal mishap that created that connection is not only confusing but offensive (to this Byrne fan, at least). Later in the season, as Whitney defied logic and justice and remained in the running as superior models fell by the wayside (Katarzyna, maybe hyper-photogenic savant Lauren, that is if she didn't walk like a palsied hobo), I started to get the feeling that she looked a lot like someone famous. Not trusting my brain anymore, I tried to forget about it, but the elusive connection picked at my consciousness. Finally, in the penultimate episode, it hit me; Whitney is Lina Lamont for the 21st Century.
Now we've started the eleventh cycle, and there a few pre-makeover lookylikeys already (bear in mind we've not yet seen the makeover episode, which might change things drastically). Most peculiar is Marjorie's downright freaky similarity to child actor Barret Oliver from D.A.R.Y.L., which I at first thought was my brain malfunctioning again, but upon mentioning it to Canyon she also saw it, and then, a couple of days later, I found that AV Club commenter L'il Un said the same thing after this customarily hilarious Amelie Gillette recap.
She even acts like Barret Oliver, her nervous tics flashing across her face so rapidly it's as if she's running through his entire Neverending Story performance on fast forward. Not quite as dramatic, but during her photoshoot, scatty Samantha was channelling 70s era Bonnie Tyler.
Marjorie and Samantha seem likeable enough so far, though Marjorie's skittish behaviour is making us equally jumpy. I'm being cautious in my praise as I've been burned before by siding with contestants who have turned out to be horrible and catty. While she was my favourite for the majority of the series, I can never forgive cycle five contestant Bre for the Granola Bar Incident, even though that gave us this wonderfully dry Wikipedia comment:
Still, despite my initial caution they, along with the apparently saintly Analeigh, are infinitely better than the bigots Sharaun and Clark, who respectively look like a vampiric Amanda Bearse from Fright Night...
...and good ol' Southern boy Strom Thurmond.
Hannah, the ignoramus from Alaska, has yet to visually remind me of anybody, other than a young, dopey Beth Orton (sorry Beth Orton!). However her soul seems to be a match for Sarah Palin, right down to her incurious mind, out-of-her-depthness, parochial ignorance, fear of the other, and tedious moose anecdotes.
Oh, sorry, I meant "small-town values" (if I lived in a small town I would be really pissed off with people stating that these values are representative of everyone there). I'll take it as a good omen if the depressingly beleaguered Hannah gets kicked off the show (bear in mind I'm avoiding spoilers, so I'm aware it might have happened already). It would work out well for her, as she can go back to her home town, where she can avoid "black music", gang violence (with gang meaning "black", it seemed), and the playful lesbianism of the third episode, which only offended me (a non-small towner with BAD VALUES!) in that Elina appears to have terrible taste in women, what with chasing after the awful Clark instead of someone nicer. Peer beyond her looks to the cold heart beneath, Elina! You're too good for her!
Even so, the challenges were more interesting than usual, and the chemistry in the house was better than the previous two cycles, which were both snore-inducing. However, the finale was a shocking travesty of justice, with mediocre model-in-training Whitney winning over the transparently superior (though incomprehensible) Anya, seemingly just so Tyra could make a big deal about a plus-size model winning the competition. No matter how heartening it is to see a "full-figured model" (Tyra's phrase) win the competition, and it is very heartening, it would have been even better if she'd been any good, and if her body had contained even one honest bone. Here's her cringe-inducing Italian CoverGirl advert, at the 1:30 mark, which earned her little praise (while she's not as bad as Dominique or Lauren, at least those are hilarious).
Despite being repeatedly told that she was coming across as a ridiculous phoney with an off-putting fake laugh, she would not stop reverting to her overlaugh and cutesiness. Previously, not doing as Tyra has commanded is a crime that has put paid to the ambitions of numerous contestants, but for some reason Whitney's inability to knock her hokey shtick off was ignored in the final weeks. Just to make me even more annoyed, the finale was rendered shambolic by the farce that was the season overview, which usually compares a significant percentage of the photos of each finalist, but this year was truncated due to the dearth of Whitney shots that could compare with Anya's professional pictures. That Anya lost because her accent is odd and her final runway walk was not 100% perfect is bullshit pie. Watching the finale and getting that shock nearly ruined our holiday, it left me that flabbergasted. It's like the Saleisha controversy all over again, except Saleisha was at least talented.
Bitching about Whitney's win is not the sole reason that I'm posting about ANTM. Early in the cycle I was distracted by Claire, the dive-bombing mom with too much self-confidence and zero personality. That's par for the course on this show (though usually the dive-bombing doesn't come into it), but for some reason she reminded me of David Byrne.
I appreciate that I'm the only person who can see that, and the neuronal mishap that created that connection is not only confusing but offensive (to this Byrne fan, at least). Later in the season, as Whitney defied logic and justice and remained in the running as superior models fell by the wayside (Katarzyna, maybe hyper-photogenic savant Lauren, that is if she didn't walk like a palsied hobo), I started to get the feeling that she looked a lot like someone famous. Not trusting my brain anymore, I tried to forget about it, but the elusive connection picked at my consciousness. Finally, in the penultimate episode, it hit me; Whitney is Lina Lamont for the 21st Century.
Now we've started the eleventh cycle, and there a few pre-makeover lookylikeys already (bear in mind we've not yet seen the makeover episode, which might change things drastically). Most peculiar is Marjorie's downright freaky similarity to child actor Barret Oliver from D.A.R.Y.L., which I at first thought was my brain malfunctioning again, but upon mentioning it to Canyon she also saw it, and then, a couple of days later, I found that AV Club commenter L'il Un said the same thing after this customarily hilarious Amelie Gillette recap.
She even acts like Barret Oliver, her nervous tics flashing across her face so rapidly it's as if she's running through his entire Neverending Story performance on fast forward. Not quite as dramatic, but during her photoshoot, scatty Samantha was channelling 70s era Bonnie Tyler.
Marjorie and Samantha seem likeable enough so far, though Marjorie's skittish behaviour is making us equally jumpy. I'm being cautious in my praise as I've been burned before by siding with contestants who have turned out to be horrible and catty. While she was my favourite for the majority of the series, I can never forgive cycle five contestant Bre for the Granola Bar Incident, even though that gave us this wonderfully dry Wikipedia comment:
Bre was involved in a memorable argument with fellow competitor [Nicole Linkletter] when she accused Nicole of stealing her granola bar, and retaliated by disposing of all of Nicole's energy drinks. The girls refused to talk civily until they reconciled during a day out in London when they were paired together, originally to their dismay. The identity of who stole the granola bar remains unknown.
Still, despite my initial caution they, along with the apparently saintly Analeigh, are infinitely better than the bigots Sharaun and Clark, who respectively look like a vampiric Amanda Bearse from Fright Night...
...and good ol' Southern boy Strom Thurmond.
Hannah, the ignoramus from Alaska, has yet to visually remind me of anybody, other than a young, dopey Beth Orton (sorry Beth Orton!). However her soul seems to be a match for Sarah Palin, right down to her incurious mind, out-of-her-depthness, parochial ignorance, fear of the other, and tedious moose anecdotes.
Oh, sorry, I meant "small-town values" (if I lived in a small town I would be really pissed off with people stating that these values are representative of everyone there). I'll take it as a good omen if the depressingly beleaguered Hannah gets kicked off the show (bear in mind I'm avoiding spoilers, so I'm aware it might have happened already). It would work out well for her, as she can go back to her home town, where she can avoid "black music", gang violence (with gang meaning "black", it seemed), and the playful lesbianism of the third episode, which only offended me (a non-small towner with BAD VALUES!) in that Elina appears to have terrible taste in women, what with chasing after the awful Clark instead of someone nicer. Peer beyond her looks to the cold heart beneath, Elina! You're too good for her!
Monday, 13 October 2008
These Weeks In TV Year II (Weeks 4-5) Part 3
I swear, these post titles are beginning to look like quadratic equations.
Tear-Jerking Moment of the Week(s):
Goddamn Coach Taylor! Considering his default personality is "very pissed off", his farewell to Jason Street in the second season of Friday Night Lights made me blub like a baby, and in this season opener his vow to help Smash Williams get the scholarship he has always wanted made me shed multiple tears.
Oh man, it's so good to have this back.
Runner-Up:
The return of CSI was a muted affair, dealing with the aftermath of Warrick's shooting by the dastardly Undersheriff McKeen. Opening on Warrick's death in Gil Grissom's arms, a large part of the show showed the CSI team dealing with his death, with Gil, Catherine and Nick taking it hardest.
While I had problems with the crime-solving aspect of the episode (how great it would have been to have kept Undersheriff McKeen around, knowing he was the bastard who killed Warrick), the rest of the episode was terrific, and when the usually stoic Gil breaks down during the eulogy to his friend, I lost it.
I guess this is where we start to see Gil get ready to leave the team, prior to the heavily-anticipated arrival of Morpheus. I don't think he'll be crying at any funerals.
Mentalist of the Week(s):
CBS has an honest to God hit on its hands with The Mentalist, which surprises me. While a lot of serialised or complex shows appear to have hit the buffers, procedurals seem to be doing well. The Patinkin-less Criminal Minds is doing great, the CSI opener had the highest ratings of the season so far, and Crime-Fighting Derren Brown is surprising everybody. We thought the second episode was passable at best, but it didn't help that we saw it right after watching the special features for Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which included multiple unused clips from the made-up in-film procedural Crime Scene: Scene of the Crime, and lots of extra previews for Sarah Marshall's next show with Jason Bateman (including Divine Justice and Jesus H. Cop). As a result, The Mentalist looked like another spoof, so closely did it hew to a procedural formula.
Still, that formula is subverted a bit. The main character, Patrick Jane, is still disliked by his whole team, and does not do well in action situations: he gets bailed out twice this week, and his plan goes wrong in the final act, leaving him at the mercy of two murderers.
Luckily, even though he's impetuous he's still smarter than everyone else, and solves cases while the rest of the team chase their tails (which is a format convention similar to House's weekly misdiagnosis of a patient and his or her subsequent respiratory arrest/cardiac arrest/anaphylactic shock). Nevertheless, so far we've seen three people get shot because of his intervention, and we're only two episodes in. No wonder no one likes him.
We'll probably stick with the show for a while longer, while it finds its feet, but it occurred to me that I'm already impatient for Jane to use his Amazing Powers of the Brain throughout, getting restless when the show falls back on the usual procedural nonsense (evidence logging, interrogations, mobile phone calls, rap sheets, etc.). It reminded me of being a kid and watching dreck like Knight Rider (original flavour) or Airwolf. I couldn't give a shit about the talky bits. I just wanted to see KITT leap over a hedge or Streethawk use his beam weapon or BA Baracus throw a stick of dynamite at someone. Same here. All I want is The Mentalist hypnotising people and winning rock, paper, scissors competitions. That's the fun stuff. And when is Derren Brown getting a guest spot?
Fashion Faux-Pas of the Week(s):
Even the all-black, all-the-time stylings of the Future Heroes can't top this cringe-inducing ensemble from Don Draper.
His pants/trousers are sort of beige as well. It was a nauseating sight. All he needed to complete it was a pipe and he would have looked like the deluded 50s dad from Ren and Stimpy. The only thing that came close was Maya, again forced to totter around in high-heels and cleavage-tastic dress on account of how hot she is for Suresh, not realising he's all wrong on a genetic level.
Poor Dania Ramirez. I gather her power was going to be used to kill the Shanti virus in season two, but that plan got cancelled when the writer's strike killed the season early. From saviour of the world to hott, scantily-clad babe making failed booty calls to a mad scientist. She needs a better agent.
Still, at least the clothes, horrible though they are, look good on her. These pants, worn by Anna Friel on Pushing Daisies, do not flatter her at all.
And this combo not only features much heinous plaid (or tartan or something ugly), but also a daring top.
When I say daring, I mean, "Why is she exposing that much skin around a guy whose touch could instantly kill her?" It's not the style that bothers me, it's the risk of doom. I really get conniptions when I see them together. Love the show though I do, it really stresses me out.
"Where The Hell Did That Plotline Come From?" of the Week(s):
At the end of a fluffy Ugly Betty, someone pushes Christina down a flight of stairs.
Harsh. I know I'm no fan of Ashley Jensen's mugging, but I don't want her character to actually get mugged. What was great was that the episode had set this up with some stealth, with her former husband and Claire Meade set up as possible suspects. It was especially welcome as the following week brought us the best Ugly Betty episode in some time, overcoming some dreary structural tricks (flashbacks and police interrogations again?) with much humour, silliness, and an almost surprising denouement. I say almost, but the reveal of the attacker would have been more surprising were it not for Rebecca Romijn's obvious pregnancy.
They obviously needed an excuse to lose Alexis for a while, but at least they used her real-world situation in this way, resolving the attacker plot without pinning it on some hastily introduced patsy. This way the assault has some real consequences.
Uncomfortable Scene of the Week(s):
Seeing Paul Kinsey attempt to weasel out of travelling to civil rights battleground Mississippi with his girlfriend Sheila was hard to watch, as Paul's hipster liberalism is punctured in front of the Sterling Cooper bellhop, Hollis, he has just made an effort to greet as an equal.
Liberal white guilt, fractious race relations, relationship strife, the civil rights movement: all commented on in just one minute of screentime. ::doffs cap::
Bravery of the Week(s):
As much as I’m utterly uninterested in any of the characters played by Ali Larter on Heroes, kudos to her for allowing the showrunners to use this photo from her youth.
Humiliating Scene of the Week(s):
This is a personal one. Earlier in the week an attempt at defrosting our fridge cost me a rather large amount of money thanks to some less than clever (i.e. unbelievably fucking stupid) and very impatient behaviour. I don’t want to go into it too much, as I’m utterly embarrassed about it and really furious at myself, but let’s just say that this moment…
…with Betty defrosting a fridge using a bowl of hot water and not a knife and meat tenderiser combo would have been rather helpful if I’d watched it two days earlier. At least our new fridge doesn't smell weird and can't be dismantled by our cat Sydney, I guess.
Asshole of the Week(s):
We love Buddy Garrity from Friday Night Lights, with his bumbling ineptitude and endless enthusiasm.
In the first two episodes of the third season, however, he crossed a line into pure asshole-dom, scheming against Tami over her decision to divert his Jumbotron money into funding the school, and threatening Riggins prior to dinner.
Sure, he's onto something in his distrust of Riggins, and most parents would probably agree, but by not trusting Lila's judgement and ability to understand her boyfriend's childish impulses, he just makes things worse for everyone.
Soundtrack of the Week(s):
The CSI season opener was, as mentioned before, more contemplative than usual, and part of the reason was the lovely ambient soundtrack by John M. Keane, channelling The Mighty Eno or Cliff Martinez. While Forgetting Sarah Marshall writer Jason Segal is onto something when he criticises procedural soundtracks as being little more than ominous tones and atmospherics (Mark Snow, I'm looking at you), this week CSI proved him wrong. It was a joy to listen to, and increased the emotional impact considerably.
Accidental Political Satire of the Week(s):
Obviously Friday Night Lights was filmed a little while back, but surprisingly they still managed to comment on the Sarah Palin vice-presidential debacle with a sub-plot about Tyra Collette trying to win an election by appealing to the groins of intellectually stunted morons, with sassiness, broadly caricatured feminine wiles, and mean-spirited insults.
It's as if the writers have precognition or something.
Best Nerd Reference Scene of the Week(s):
Jim's torture of Dwight, recasting Battlestar Galactica as Dumbledore Calrissian's quest to return the Ring to Mordor, made my hair stand on end.
I'm sure many shared our pain.
Facial Expression of the Week(s):
Is it Noah Bennett donning his famous horn-rimmed glasses?
Olive reacting to a dishonesty overdose?
A rare smile from Stanley, who is only happy when food comes into the equation?
The mysterious Dr. Zimmerman (regrettably not played by the world's best Zimmerman) getting accidentally frozen by Tracy Strauzzzzz?
Tyra Collette moments after her stripper sister gets engaged to Riggins the Elder?
Lily Charles, as a nun, trying to reassure Olive?
Peter Petrelli using Jesse's "sound manipulation" superpower (which, it turns out, is thankfully more like Banshee from X-Men than Michael Winslow from Police Academy)?
Tami Taylor reacting to the political corruption ofSarah Palin Tyra?
Most Insane Televisual Event of theWeek(s) Year Decade:
We've almost caught up with America's Next Top Model (it's delayed by about a year in the UK), having just started Cycle 11 after a mostly pleasing Cycle 10 (I'll be getting to that soon, hopefully). Yes yes, this aired a few weeks back, but it's been a busy period in our lives. God! Anyway, within minutes of thiscycle season beginning, we were overjoyed at the shambolic and relentless insanity unfolding on our TV. The futuristic theme for the premiere and auditions was the greatest stroke of genius in the show's history, and almost killed us from the laughter. I don't know what I loved most. It was a battle between Alpha and Beta Jay (with Alpha Jay looking utterly mortified by his silver get-up)...
...the laser scanning of the catsuit-clad model-wannabees...
...theOrgasmatron Glaminator 11.0 (what does that even mean?)...
...The Tyrabot (for crying out loud)...
...the three hosts beaming up "fiercely" (which almost gave me a hernia from the laughter)...
...and the entrance of Noted Fashion Photographer Mr. Nigel Barker later in the premiere, this time from a magician's cabinet.
This pleased me greatly. Almost as much as the delicious schadenfreude of vicious bigot Sharaun getting kicked out in the first week. Usually the out-and-out bitches hang around for a few weeks, or right until the end (cat-human hybrid Dominique and the amazing Jade spring to mind), but this time there are so many nasty women in the house that they could sacrifice one straight away and not bore-ify the show later.
Intensity of the Week(s):
For once, there's a challenge to Lance "Intensity" Reddick's Crown of Intensity. In a welcome return to the show, The Haitian, aka Jimmy Jean Louis, has enough dignity left over after getting knocked out by both Ando and Peter (embarrassing) to deliver some awesome intensity.
Still, even that attempt is crushed by the effortless intensity of my man Reddick, here reacting to the news that Olivia has discovered the presence of The Observer.
It strikes me that what we're seeing here is a case of White Men Can't Do Intensity. It could be argued that Don Draper's reaction to the appearance of Jimmy Barrett is a sure-fire winner...
...but I'm not sure that that doesn't count as psychosis rather than intensity. Removing that candidate leaves us with this.
It's just pathetic, really.
Holy shit I've finished! I feel like I've been writing this since February. In summation, not bad stuff, with some great returning shows and the smart move of avoiding new shows and things that are proven to be terrible (Knight Rider). I asked Brian Michael Bendoom what he thought, and...
...I think that's good? [/old man]
Tear-Jerking Moment of the Week(s):
Goddamn Coach Taylor! Considering his default personality is "very pissed off", his farewell to Jason Street in the second season of Friday Night Lights made me blub like a baby, and in this season opener his vow to help Smash Williams get the scholarship he has always wanted made me shed multiple tears.
Oh man, it's so good to have this back.
Runner-Up:
The return of CSI was a muted affair, dealing with the aftermath of Warrick's shooting by the dastardly Undersheriff McKeen. Opening on Warrick's death in Gil Grissom's arms, a large part of the show showed the CSI team dealing with his death, with Gil, Catherine and Nick taking it hardest.
While I had problems with the crime-solving aspect of the episode (how great it would have been to have kept Undersheriff McKeen around, knowing he was the bastard who killed Warrick), the rest of the episode was terrific, and when the usually stoic Gil breaks down during the eulogy to his friend, I lost it.
I guess this is where we start to see Gil get ready to leave the team, prior to the heavily-anticipated arrival of Morpheus. I don't think he'll be crying at any funerals.
Mentalist of the Week(s):
CBS has an honest to God hit on its hands with The Mentalist, which surprises me. While a lot of serialised or complex shows appear to have hit the buffers, procedurals seem to be doing well. The Patinkin-less Criminal Minds is doing great, the CSI opener had the highest ratings of the season so far, and Crime-Fighting Derren Brown is surprising everybody. We thought the second episode was passable at best, but it didn't help that we saw it right after watching the special features for Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which included multiple unused clips from the made-up in-film procedural Crime Scene: Scene of the Crime, and lots of extra previews for Sarah Marshall's next show with Jason Bateman (including Divine Justice and Jesus H. Cop). As a result, The Mentalist looked like another spoof, so closely did it hew to a procedural formula.
Still, that formula is subverted a bit. The main character, Patrick Jane, is still disliked by his whole team, and does not do well in action situations: he gets bailed out twice this week, and his plan goes wrong in the final act, leaving him at the mercy of two murderers.
Luckily, even though he's impetuous he's still smarter than everyone else, and solves cases while the rest of the team chase their tails (which is a format convention similar to House's weekly misdiagnosis of a patient and his or her subsequent respiratory arrest/cardiac arrest/anaphylactic shock). Nevertheless, so far we've seen three people get shot because of his intervention, and we're only two episodes in. No wonder no one likes him.
We'll probably stick with the show for a while longer, while it finds its feet, but it occurred to me that I'm already impatient for Jane to use his Amazing Powers of the Brain throughout, getting restless when the show falls back on the usual procedural nonsense (evidence logging, interrogations, mobile phone calls, rap sheets, etc.). It reminded me of being a kid and watching dreck like Knight Rider (original flavour) or Airwolf. I couldn't give a shit about the talky bits. I just wanted to see KITT leap over a hedge or Streethawk use his beam weapon or BA Baracus throw a stick of dynamite at someone. Same here. All I want is The Mentalist hypnotising people and winning rock, paper, scissors competitions. That's the fun stuff. And when is Derren Brown getting a guest spot?
Fashion Faux-Pas of the Week(s):
Even the all-black, all-the-time stylings of the Future Heroes can't top this cringe-inducing ensemble from Don Draper.
His pants/trousers are sort of beige as well. It was a nauseating sight. All he needed to complete it was a pipe and he would have looked like the deluded 50s dad from Ren and Stimpy. The only thing that came close was Maya, again forced to totter around in high-heels and cleavage-tastic dress on account of how hot she is for Suresh, not realising he's all wrong on a genetic level.
Poor Dania Ramirez. I gather her power was going to be used to kill the Shanti virus in season two, but that plan got cancelled when the writer's strike killed the season early. From saviour of the world to hott, scantily-clad babe making failed booty calls to a mad scientist. She needs a better agent.
Still, at least the clothes, horrible though they are, look good on her. These pants, worn by Anna Friel on Pushing Daisies, do not flatter her at all.
And this combo not only features much heinous plaid (or tartan or something ugly), but also a daring top.
When I say daring, I mean, "Why is she exposing that much skin around a guy whose touch could instantly kill her?" It's not the style that bothers me, it's the risk of doom. I really get conniptions when I see them together. Love the show though I do, it really stresses me out.
"Where The Hell Did That Plotline Come From?" of the Week(s):
At the end of a fluffy Ugly Betty, someone pushes Christina down a flight of stairs.
Harsh. I know I'm no fan of Ashley Jensen's mugging, but I don't want her character to actually get mugged. What was great was that the episode had set this up with some stealth, with her former husband and Claire Meade set up as possible suspects. It was especially welcome as the following week brought us the best Ugly Betty episode in some time, overcoming some dreary structural tricks (flashbacks and police interrogations again?) with much humour, silliness, and an almost surprising denouement. I say almost, but the reveal of the attacker would have been more surprising were it not for Rebecca Romijn's obvious pregnancy.
They obviously needed an excuse to lose Alexis for a while, but at least they used her real-world situation in this way, resolving the attacker plot without pinning it on some hastily introduced patsy. This way the assault has some real consequences.
Uncomfortable Scene of the Week(s):
Seeing Paul Kinsey attempt to weasel out of travelling to civil rights battleground Mississippi with his girlfriend Sheila was hard to watch, as Paul's hipster liberalism is punctured in front of the Sterling Cooper bellhop, Hollis, he has just made an effort to greet as an equal.
Liberal white guilt, fractious race relations, relationship strife, the civil rights movement: all commented on in just one minute of screentime. ::doffs cap::
Bravery of the Week(s):
As much as I’m utterly uninterested in any of the characters played by Ali Larter on Heroes, kudos to her for allowing the showrunners to use this photo from her youth.
Humiliating Scene of the Week(s):
This is a personal one. Earlier in the week an attempt at defrosting our fridge cost me a rather large amount of money thanks to some less than clever (i.e. unbelievably fucking stupid) and very impatient behaviour. I don’t want to go into it too much, as I’m utterly embarrassed about it and really furious at myself, but let’s just say that this moment…
…with Betty defrosting a fridge using a bowl of hot water and not a knife and meat tenderiser combo would have been rather helpful if I’d watched it two days earlier. At least our new fridge doesn't smell weird and can't be dismantled by our cat Sydney, I guess.
Asshole of the Week(s):
We love Buddy Garrity from Friday Night Lights, with his bumbling ineptitude and endless enthusiasm.
In the first two episodes of the third season, however, he crossed a line into pure asshole-dom, scheming against Tami over her decision to divert his Jumbotron money into funding the school, and threatening Riggins prior to dinner.
Sure, he's onto something in his distrust of Riggins, and most parents would probably agree, but by not trusting Lila's judgement and ability to understand her boyfriend's childish impulses, he just makes things worse for everyone.
Soundtrack of the Week(s):
The CSI season opener was, as mentioned before, more contemplative than usual, and part of the reason was the lovely ambient soundtrack by John M. Keane, channelling The Mighty Eno or Cliff Martinez. While Forgetting Sarah Marshall writer Jason Segal is onto something when he criticises procedural soundtracks as being little more than ominous tones and atmospherics (Mark Snow, I'm looking at you), this week CSI proved him wrong. It was a joy to listen to, and increased the emotional impact considerably.
Accidental Political Satire of the Week(s):
Obviously Friday Night Lights was filmed a little while back, but surprisingly they still managed to comment on the Sarah Palin vice-presidential debacle with a sub-plot about Tyra Collette trying to win an election by appealing to the groins of intellectually stunted morons, with sassiness, broadly caricatured feminine wiles, and mean-spirited insults.
It's as if the writers have precognition or something.
Best Nerd Reference Scene of the Week(s):
Jim's torture of Dwight, recasting Battlestar Galactica as Dumbledore Calrissian's quest to return the Ring to Mordor, made my hair stand on end.
I'm sure many shared our pain.
Facial Expression of the Week(s):
Is it Noah Bennett donning his famous horn-rimmed glasses?
Olive reacting to a dishonesty overdose?
A rare smile from Stanley, who is only happy when food comes into the equation?
The mysterious Dr. Zimmerman (regrettably not played by the world's best Zimmerman) getting accidentally frozen by Tracy Strauzzzzz?
Tyra Collette moments after her stripper sister gets engaged to Riggins the Elder?
Lily Charles, as a nun, trying to reassure Olive?
Peter Petrelli using Jesse's "sound manipulation" superpower (which, it turns out, is thankfully more like Banshee from X-Men than Michael Winslow from Police Academy)?
Tami Taylor reacting to the political corruption of
Most Insane Televisual Event of the
We've almost caught up with America's Next Top Model (it's delayed by about a year in the UK), having just started Cycle 11 after a mostly pleasing Cycle 10 (I'll be getting to that soon, hopefully). Yes yes, this aired a few weeks back, but it's been a busy period in our lives. God! Anyway, within minutes of this
...the laser scanning of the catsuit-clad model-wannabees...
...the
...The Tyrabot (for crying out loud)...
...the three hosts beaming up "fiercely" (which almost gave me a hernia from the laughter)...
...and the entrance of Noted Fashion Photographer Mr. Nigel Barker later in the premiere, this time from a magician's cabinet.
This pleased me greatly. Almost as much as the delicious schadenfreude of vicious bigot Sharaun getting kicked out in the first week. Usually the out-and-out bitches hang around for a few weeks, or right until the end (cat-human hybrid Dominique and the amazing Jade spring to mind), but this time there are so many nasty women in the house that they could sacrifice one straight away and not bore-ify the show later.
Intensity of the Week(s):
For once, there's a challenge to Lance "Intensity" Reddick's Crown of Intensity. In a welcome return to the show, The Haitian, aka Jimmy Jean Louis, has enough dignity left over after getting knocked out by both Ando and Peter (embarrassing) to deliver some awesome intensity.
Still, even that attempt is crushed by the effortless intensity of my man Reddick, here reacting to the news that Olivia has discovered the presence of The Observer.
It strikes me that what we're seeing here is a case of White Men Can't Do Intensity. It could be argued that Don Draper's reaction to the appearance of Jimmy Barrett is a sure-fire winner...
...but I'm not sure that that doesn't count as psychosis rather than intensity. Removing that candidate leaves us with this.
It's just pathetic, really.
Holy shit I've finished! I feel like I've been writing this since February. In summation, not bad stuff, with some great returning shows and the smart move of avoiding new shows and things that are proven to be terrible (Knight Rider). I asked Brian Michael Bendoom what he thought, and...
...I think that's good? [/old man]
Sunday, 12 October 2008
These Weeks In TV Year II (Weeks 4-5) Part 2
Much as I don't want to derail this post with talk about a quality movie (i.e. Hairspray), I suppose I can make it more TV related by carping about Sky. Hairspray was as entertaining as expected (and ten million times the movie Dreamgirls was), though it was hard to tell thanks to the botched broadcast on both Sky Movies and Sky Anytime, which filled the film with so many glitches and bloops that it sounded as if it had been remixed by Aphex Twin. It was taken down from Anytime last night, as was Breach (which comes highly recommended solely on the basis of Chris Cooper's awe-inspiring performance). If Sky's technology is getting hinky, it's a bad sign. I've already had trouble with their Box Office downloads disappearing, and our Sky+ box has taken to crashing every Sunday morning. Is it our machine, or is there trouble at their end?
That's neither here nor there, especially as I'm here to make fun of Heroes and say good things about Mad Men.
Most Boring Side-Plot of the Week(s):
Is it Hilda Suarez's adulterous love affair with Eddie Cibrian?
Or Taub's mysterious relationship problems with his wife?
Or Daniel Meade's battle to keep his hideous son in America?
Or Matt Saracen and Julie Taylor possibly getting back together?
At least Daniel's son turned out not to be his son (a real shock), and Hilda's relationship meant we got to see Marc and Amanda losing their composure.
The other plots are just mogadon.
Biggest Badass of theWeek(s) Century:
Check out The German. Last week on Heroes he totally staked his claim to being the most awesome villain since Kang the Conqueror, who, never forget, once destroyed Washington DC, an act so heinous it actually made Thor cry! First The German used his magnetic powers to draw some blinds. Just moments later, while we were still catching our breath, he cracked a safe, using those same magnetic powers to turn the dial instead of using his hands!
Ho. Lee. SHIT! Fuck you, Polaris! Eat donkey shit, Magneto. What have you ever donebesides reversing the poles and other miscellaneous acts of supervillainy?
Even better, a little while later he totally neglected to use his powers to protect himself against a deadly superpowered punch!
Just amazing. I hope current X-Men writers Mike Carey, Chris Yost, Warren Ellis, and Ed Brubaker are taking notes.
Thematic Coherence of the Week(s):
The tenth episode of Mad Men, while maybe not as entertaining as the previous one, was still excellent, mostly because of the beautifully sustained theme of lost or recaptured youth and adolescence. Early on we see Betty's father recovering from a stroke, seemingly senile and prone to confusion. He mistakes Betty for his first wife, which upsets her enough to drive her into Don's arms, as she humps him on the floor like teenagers trying to elude their parents.
Her father, now trapped in his own adolescent state, threatens Don and makes a pass at his own daughter, which is surely the most shocking moment of the episode, if not the season, and beautifully played by everyone. This distresses Betty further, and she seeks solace in the arms of her old nanny.
Upon returning home she kicks Don out again, and then hangs out with that creepy-ass kid from the first season. Using his presence as an excuse to regress even further, she chills out with some Bob Kanigher madness…
...and watches cartoons while sipping on soda like a kid.
Of course, her new friend might only be a kid, but he thinks he's an adult, visually represented by the t-shirt he wears, covered with Don Draper pheromones (which overpower every woman in the room, obviously). His creepy-ass desire for Betty shocks her back to herself, and she snitches on him to his mother, filled with regret at the loss of her fantasy. It could be worse, of course. She could be made to wear a bonnet.
Good stuff. It also made me realise that the theme of the entire season was youth (and young manhood) all along, with the odd dabble in cultural awakenings, which is what the 60s are remembered for. Perhaps there will be more of that in later seasons (I look forward to Don hearing Are You Experienced? for the first time). This year, though, we've already seen the introduction of Sterling Cooper's first youth consultants, Roger trying to recapture his youth by running off with Jane the Scheming Secretary, Freddy peeing his pants, Pete hiding from his adult responsibilities, and Jimmy Barrett being an impulsive brat (though that hides a calculating mind). Though we're not yet sure what a toll this disconnect will take on any of them, it's fair to say that it's not just Don's infidelity that has made the normally pristine Betty end up looking like this.
All of this childishness throws Don's behaviour into stark relief. Along with Peggy, he is more responsible and "adult" than almost everyone else on the show; they all think they're mature but they act like kids. Don is the alpha male (and alpha character) because he observes everyone else in the playpen from a position of behavioral superiority and relentless Draper-esque fury. The irony, of course, is that he never got to have a childhood, and is either angry at those who surround him because he is jealous of them for having that, or because their behaviour is totally alien to him, creating a confusion that fuels his rage. All this time Don is searching for who he really is, but maybe there's nothing to find.
Mysterious Theme of the Week(s):
While Mad Men brilliantly visualised the infantilisation theme in The Inheritance, Six Month Leave featured a curious motif that I really didn't get. Many of the main characters started their scenes lying down.
There's a possibility this had something to do with Marilyn Monroe's death, referenced at the start to the show...
...which would suggest that the characters are, thematically, being killed by the times they are living in (certainly Joan's repose is deathly, turning Roger's office into a tomb).
Also, there was a blood drive subplot, which could be a hint that all of the characters shown lying down are bleeding out, that their souls are grievously wounded.
Or they're just lazy.
Best of them was Betty's faceplant.
Oh Betty, if only I could send some Prozac back in time for you!
TV Return of the Week:
So great to see Francis Capra on TV again, after illness made his appearances on Veronica Mars sporadic.
He did a great job on that show, mixing youthful cockiness, insecurity, and machismo. Hopefully he'll get a chance to do the same on Heroes.
::sigh:: Never mind.
TV Return of the Week(s) That Didn't Involve Getting Killed Like A Totally Lame Punkass Bitch:
Xander Berkeley, a character actor I'm immensely fond of, appeared in The Mentalist as a folksy cop who helps our team track down the Redhead Killer, as well as becoming a suspect towards the end. Here he is being a big red herring while talking to Amanda Righetti, formerly Hailey Nichol on The O.C.
If this had been CSI, the killer would have been Berkeley, as the guest star is always the killer. CSI might be the superior show, but it does keep making that mistake. Ten points to The Mentalist, but if it really wants to totally win me over, it can come up with some complicated way to make Berkeley a regular. Automatic 10,000-point George Mason bonus.
Runner-Up:
Look! It’s Sara Sidle, come back to Las Vegas to attend Warrick’s funeral!
I see Jorja Fox is rocking the late-80s Ally Sheedy look. Shame it doesn’t suit her, because otherwise my late-80s smitten-adolescent self would heartily approve.
Beautiful Visual of the Week(s):
Ned bringing hundreds of bees back to life with the help of Chuck was the most memorable visual of the last couple of weeks.
I can imagine that the ladies who love Lee Pace (LL Lee P) would also agree.
Clever Visual of the Week(s):
House guest star Breckin Meyer, playing a crappy artist, is exhibiting symptoms of visual agnosia, which means his perception is distorted though he doesn’t realize it, leading to a clever cold open featuring a hideous portrait that he sees as normal. Later in the episode he is visited by two strange doctors…
…but they are actually Taub and Thirteen, their identities obscured by his ailment.
It’s not much to rave about, but in a mostly underwhelming episode, I was taking what I could get.
Ridiculous Visual of the Week(s):
Was it the sight of supervillain Knox activating his super strength by sniffing very hard?
Or unpowered Daphne being revealed to have a flappy-arms dash that does not scream Wally West so much as Dean and Hank Venture's various "Super Run Away!" moments?
Maybe it was the moment it was revealed she was running at superspeed in high heels.
Could it be the pirouetting Wall Street traders flying off in a scene that would otherwise have been supercool (a New York populated by flying people and speedsters)?
Or the ludicrous Men in Black stylings of Agent Glasses and Agent Sylar?
How about Suresh the Super Hoodie scuttling around his future lab like a verbose Phantom of the Opera?
Or maybe it was domesticated Sylar (sorry, Gabriel) hanging out with some kid named Noah and Mr. Fucking Muggles, who is apparently immortal?
Perhaps it's the future of fashion, which, to the horror of designers everywhere, appears to be lots of black...
...with black dyed hair a la Al Pacino...
...or,if that's not an option, the Young Republican look (thanks to Heroes semi-fan Diane Court for that observation).
Surely the strongest contender has to be Matt following his animal totem, a turtle (which seems to at least be intentionally funny, and an obvious way to keep him out of the way for a week or so).
I think by now you get my point.
Psyche-Tearing Visual of the Week(s):
It's either the removal of a drug-filled bezoar from Breckin Meyer's stomach...
...Meyer's grotesque swelling caused by anaphylactic shock...
...or this nightmarish image from Pushing Daisies, as a bee-coated assassin menaces Chuck.
A nice reverse of the final scenes of The Wicker Man, where, as everyone knows, bees will go for THE EYES! NO, NOT THE BEES! MY EYES!!!
And yes, there is still more to come (and I will happily admit I'm milking this to make it look like I'm posting more).
That's neither here nor there, especially as I'm here to make fun of Heroes and say good things about Mad Men.
Most Boring Side-Plot of the Week(s):
Is it Hilda Suarez's adulterous love affair with Eddie Cibrian?
Or Taub's mysterious relationship problems with his wife?
Or Daniel Meade's battle to keep his hideous son in America?
Or Matt Saracen and Julie Taylor possibly getting back together?
At least Daniel's son turned out not to be his son (a real shock), and Hilda's relationship meant we got to see Marc and Amanda losing their composure.
The other plots are just mogadon.
Biggest Badass of the
Check out The German. Last week on Heroes he totally staked his claim to being the most awesome villain since Kang the Conqueror, who, never forget, once destroyed Washington DC, an act so heinous it actually made Thor cry! First The German used his magnetic powers to draw some blinds. Just moments later, while we were still catching our breath, he cracked a safe, using those same magnetic powers to turn the dial instead of using his hands!
Ho. Lee. SHIT! Fuck you, Polaris! Eat donkey shit, Magneto. What have you ever done
Even better, a little while later he totally neglected to use his powers to protect himself against a deadly superpowered punch!
Just amazing. I hope current X-Men writers Mike Carey, Chris Yost, Warren Ellis, and Ed Brubaker are taking notes.
Thematic Coherence of the Week(s):
The tenth episode of Mad Men, while maybe not as entertaining as the previous one, was still excellent, mostly because of the beautifully sustained theme of lost or recaptured youth and adolescence. Early on we see Betty's father recovering from a stroke, seemingly senile and prone to confusion. He mistakes Betty for his first wife, which upsets her enough to drive her into Don's arms, as she humps him on the floor like teenagers trying to elude their parents.
Her father, now trapped in his own adolescent state, threatens Don and makes a pass at his own daughter, which is surely the most shocking moment of the episode, if not the season, and beautifully played by everyone. This distresses Betty further, and she seeks solace in the arms of her old nanny.
Upon returning home she kicks Don out again, and then hangs out with that creepy-ass kid from the first season. Using his presence as an excuse to regress even further, she chills out with some Bob Kanigher madness…
...and watches cartoons while sipping on soda like a kid.
Of course, her new friend might only be a kid, but he thinks he's an adult, visually represented by the t-shirt he wears, covered with Don Draper pheromones (which overpower every woman in the room, obviously). His creepy-ass desire for Betty shocks her back to herself, and she snitches on him to his mother, filled with regret at the loss of her fantasy. It could be worse, of course. She could be made to wear a bonnet.
Good stuff. It also made me realise that the theme of the entire season was youth (and young manhood) all along, with the odd dabble in cultural awakenings, which is what the 60s are remembered for. Perhaps there will be more of that in later seasons (I look forward to Don hearing Are You Experienced? for the first time). This year, though, we've already seen the introduction of Sterling Cooper's first youth consultants, Roger trying to recapture his youth by running off with Jane the Scheming Secretary, Freddy peeing his pants, Pete hiding from his adult responsibilities, and Jimmy Barrett being an impulsive brat (though that hides a calculating mind). Though we're not yet sure what a toll this disconnect will take on any of them, it's fair to say that it's not just Don's infidelity that has made the normally pristine Betty end up looking like this.
All of this childishness throws Don's behaviour into stark relief. Along with Peggy, he is more responsible and "adult" than almost everyone else on the show; they all think they're mature but they act like kids. Don is the alpha male (and alpha character) because he observes everyone else in the playpen from a position of behavioral superiority and relentless Draper-esque fury. The irony, of course, is that he never got to have a childhood, and is either angry at those who surround him because he is jealous of them for having that, or because their behaviour is totally alien to him, creating a confusion that fuels his rage. All this time Don is searching for who he really is, but maybe there's nothing to find.
Mysterious Theme of the Week(s):
While Mad Men brilliantly visualised the infantilisation theme in The Inheritance, Six Month Leave featured a curious motif that I really didn't get. Many of the main characters started their scenes lying down.
There's a possibility this had something to do with Marilyn Monroe's death, referenced at the start to the show...
...which would suggest that the characters are, thematically, being killed by the times they are living in (certainly Joan's repose is deathly, turning Roger's office into a tomb).
Also, there was a blood drive subplot, which could be a hint that all of the characters shown lying down are bleeding out, that their souls are grievously wounded.
Or they're just lazy.
Best of them was Betty's faceplant.
Oh Betty, if only I could send some Prozac back in time for you!
TV Return of the Week:
So great to see Francis Capra on TV again, after illness made his appearances on Veronica Mars sporadic.
He did a great job on that show, mixing youthful cockiness, insecurity, and machismo. Hopefully he'll get a chance to do the same on Heroes.
::sigh:: Never mind.
TV Return of the Week(s) That Didn't Involve Getting Killed Like A Totally Lame Punkass Bitch:
Xander Berkeley, a character actor I'm immensely fond of, appeared in The Mentalist as a folksy cop who helps our team track down the Redhead Killer, as well as becoming a suspect towards the end. Here he is being a big red herring while talking to Amanda Righetti, formerly Hailey Nichol on The O.C.
If this had been CSI, the killer would have been Berkeley, as the guest star is always the killer. CSI might be the superior show, but it does keep making that mistake. Ten points to The Mentalist, but if it really wants to totally win me over, it can come up with some complicated way to make Berkeley a regular. Automatic 10,000-point George Mason bonus.
Runner-Up:
Look! It’s Sara Sidle, come back to Las Vegas to attend Warrick’s funeral!
I see Jorja Fox is rocking the late-80s Ally Sheedy look. Shame it doesn’t suit her, because otherwise my late-80s smitten-adolescent self would heartily approve.
Beautiful Visual of the Week(s):
Ned bringing hundreds of bees back to life with the help of Chuck was the most memorable visual of the last couple of weeks.
I can imagine that the ladies who love Lee Pace (LL Lee P) would also agree.
Clever Visual of the Week(s):
House guest star Breckin Meyer, playing a crappy artist, is exhibiting symptoms of visual agnosia, which means his perception is distorted though he doesn’t realize it, leading to a clever cold open featuring a hideous portrait that he sees as normal. Later in the episode he is visited by two strange doctors…
…but they are actually Taub and Thirteen, their identities obscured by his ailment.
It’s not much to rave about, but in a mostly underwhelming episode, I was taking what I could get.
Ridiculous Visual of the Week(s):
Was it the sight of supervillain Knox activating his super strength by sniffing very hard?
Or unpowered Daphne being revealed to have a flappy-arms dash that does not scream Wally West so much as Dean and Hank Venture's various "Super Run Away!" moments?
Maybe it was the moment it was revealed she was running at superspeed in high heels.
Could it be the pirouetting Wall Street traders flying off in a scene that would otherwise have been supercool (a New York populated by flying people and speedsters)?
Or the ludicrous Men in Black stylings of Agent Glasses and Agent Sylar?
How about Suresh the Super Hoodie scuttling around his future lab like a verbose Phantom of the Opera?
Or maybe it was domesticated Sylar (sorry, Gabriel) hanging out with some kid named Noah and Mr. Fucking Muggles, who is apparently immortal?
Perhaps it's the future of fashion, which, to the horror of designers everywhere, appears to be lots of black...
...with black dyed hair a la Al Pacino...
...or,if that's not an option, the Young Republican look (thanks to Heroes semi-fan Diane Court for that observation).
Surely the strongest contender has to be Matt following his animal totem, a turtle (which seems to at least be intentionally funny, and an obvious way to keep him out of the way for a week or so).
I think by now you get my point.
Psyche-Tearing Visual of the Week(s):
It's either the removal of a drug-filled bezoar from Breckin Meyer's stomach...
...Meyer's grotesque swelling caused by anaphylactic shock...
...or this nightmarish image from Pushing Daisies, as a bee-coated assassin menaces Chuck.
A nice reverse of the final scenes of The Wicker Man, where, as everyone knows, bees will go for THE EYES! NO, NOT THE BEES! MY EYES!!!
And yes, there is still more to come (and I will happily admit I'm milking this to make it look like I'm posting more).
Saturday, 11 October 2008
These Weeks In TV Year II (Weeks 4-5) Part 1
We went on holiday! To Italy! And when we got back we had about one million TV shows to watch (and had missed some movies at the cinema, such as ::choke:: Appaloosa). It was a lovely trip, but it meant I have been avoiding blogging (thanks to Masticator for holding the fort with his defense of Jersey Girl). So, here is a bunch of whining about everything we've spent the last few days slogging through, with some omissions. I'm considering saving my soul by not watching Knight Rider anymore, have not seen this week's installment of Pushing Daisies yet, and haven't tried out Eleventh Hour and Life on Mars, though that's partially because I've not yet watched the originals either. So, bear in mind there are some episodes missing, but otherwise, this is a lot of stuff from the past two weeks.
Triumphant Return of the Week(s):
Saved from cancellation by a weird deal between parent network NBC and DirecTV, Friday Night Lights, the best non-Lost network show on TV, returned with a long stretch of time left unvisited, which is an unfortunate side-effect of the unfairly truncated second season. After a burst of exposition for the benefit of any new viewers (oh please let there be a few million when it returns to NBC!), the show fit right back into its groove as if it had never been away.
Show highlights included Tyra's existential panic, Buddy and his beloved Jumbotron, the uncertain relationship between Lila and Riggins, and Matt Saracen's imminent retirement due to the arrival of hotshot QB J.D. McCoy and his scheming dad. To be honest, it was so great there's little to say about it other than OMG IT WAS SO GREAT and so was the second episode OMG! But perhaps that's enough.
Most Hectic Hour of the Week(s):
The return of Pushing Daisies was overwhelming even for someone who has been following it since the pilot, so God knows how it was received by any new viewers (of which there were probably none, considering its disastrous viewing figures). With two guest stars (Missi Pyle and French Stewart), the usual murder mystery, Chuck and Ned's estrangement and reconciliation, and Olive's departure from The Pie Hole (not to mention her nunnery subplot and Emerson's pop-up book project), it was perhaps too busy, but it was at least funny and smart and original.
The script was beautifully constructed and satisfying as well. Moaning about it all makes me feel like an awful misery-guts, you know.
Non-Returning Highlight of the Week(s):
My love for Mad Men now solidified, I can get on with enjoying the show instead of getting annoyed by the odd flaw. Of the two episodes we saw during this fortnight (Sixth Month Leave and The Inheritance), perhaps the second was more cohesive on a thematic level (see future Weeks 4-5 posts), but the first episode, dealing with Freddy Rumsen's sacking, was more fun.
Highlights included Freddy peeing his pants (kudos to the foley artist who captured the sound of his shoes squishing as he leaves the office), Pete and Peggy facing off over her promotion, Don crushing the juvenile idiots working under him like the unworthy scum they are, and of course the out-of-the-blue revelation that Roger Sterling was leaving his loyal wife for that overconfident floozy Jane.
My favourite thing, though, was the long sequence where Don and Roger take Freddy out and let him know, through glaringly obvious doubletalk, that he's being let go. The pace of the show is always a marvel, and here it allows the show to take a long detour as they wine and dine their friend, who is smart enough to know what they are doing but not smart enough to know what he should do next.
Joel Murray gives a terrific performance as Freddy, a dopey but genial executive who has come to the end of the line and accepts it with a mixture of resignation and fear. These long scenes were a total joy to watch, taking their time to tell a dozen stories in a way a network show would never be able to.
Alarming Failrate of the Week(s):
Heroes really is screwed, isn't it. I mean, we had a great time watching the last two episodes back to back, cracking up every few minutes at some dreadful staging or silly dialogue: we had great fun with Suresh and his terrible rash, which made us think all those geneticist brane-smarts mean nothing if he doesn't think to wear a condom while ravishing hott babes (sorry for the insinuation, Maya!). By now the disastrous writing, all speechifying and incomprehensible plot twists, is not the worst of it. It's full of errors, perhaps most visibly the self-plagiarism. When Usutu revealed his gallery of predictive paintings, we growned aloud.
It's becoming apparent that the powers are being spread between characters (Usutu and Isaac, Nathan and West, Claire and Adam, Future Ando and Elle, Claire's mom Meredith and Pyrokinetic Man etc.), and this will almost certainly be explained by the utterly dreary plot about the lineage of all of the Heroes (as soon as Angela Petrelli appears I totally tune out). Nevertheless, it still means the narrative is eating itself. Another apocalypse, another series of predictions, more time travel, more Company shenanigans, and on and on and on. If the characters were written better, this wouldn't be a problem, but they seem to have no fixed identity at all. Nothing is set in stone, and nothing matters.
Even on a surface level the show can't keep itself straight for two seconds. Early in the fourth episode, Suresh kicks Maya out of his lab and blathers on about fate and valour and DNA or something (I tuned out again), and then he sets his recording doohickey down onto a table. Time passes, and we're in the future, as shown by the recorder being covered with dust and cockroaches.
Immediately Canyon said, "He never picked it up again? Bullshit. He'll use it again later in the episode." Of course, she was totally right.
And are we supposed to believe this is a real headline? Any self-respecting editor would off him or herself if they let this go to print.
If the showrunners think none of this matters, they're horribly wrong. The amateurishness and silliness have reached epidemic levels, and viewers are deserting in droves. Not us, of course. If we're going to watch Car Crash TV, this is at least less painful to watch than Knight Rider.
Show Change of the Week(s):
Doug Petrie always seemed to be an odd choice for CSI producer/writer, not because he isn't talented (he is), but because his work on Buffy was leagues away from the tone needed for a gritty procedural. Many of his episodes were quirky, much as expected (especially Toe Tags, with the talking corpses), but he was able to come up with the expected grimness when necessary (he is credited with co-writing my favourite CSI episode ever, Monster In The Box).
It was never a problem that he was on the show, especially as it's always good to see Mutant Enemy writers doing well (see also: Marti Noxon on Mad Men, which is a hell of a step-up from Point Pleasant). However, nice though it was to have a writer we like work on a hugely successful show, seeing that he has jumped over to Pushing Daisies really cheered us up. His writing is perfectly suited to Daisies, and the only thing that sours that news is that Daisies is doing so badly in the ratings that it might get cancelled before he gets to write an episode. ::is sad::
Unexpected Cameo of the Week(s):
Holy shit! Betty Draper's dad is played by John McCain!
He was perfectly cast as well. Belligerent, lying to himself and others to cover up his confusion, and so overcome with attraction to hot females that he loses his composure.
Steady on, fella! That's no way to treat a vice-presidential candidate. Hehhhhh? Hehhhhh?
Second Most Unexpected Cameo of the Week(s):
This is Betty Draper's brother.
How did they de-age Robert Englund?
Opinion Reversal of the Week(s):
How quickly I have soured on Lucas the hapless PI in House. Individual moments were still funny, such as his appearance in House's closet, but the desperate attempts to create an audience for his forthcoming spin-off are embarrassing and distracting.
The stalking and subsequent courting of Cuddy has the potential to ruin her character forever, and the temporary suspension of House's usual disdain for any and all people in his sphere looks idiotic and transparently calculated.
A narrative decision this blatantly cynical could backfire horribly. David Chase should have thought twice.
Funniest Joke of the Week(s):
This rendered us helpless this week (it’s between 7:30 and 8:30, but you should watch the whole thing.
Infantile genius.
Punch of the Week(s):
Don Draper clocks Jimmy Barrett, and it is beautiful.
The best part of that is that even though I enjoyed seeing Don batter that obnoxious jerk, I also really enjoyed the scene from a few weeks ago when Jimmy humiliated Don by revealing he knew all about the affair with Bobbie. This is the show that gives and gives and then gives some more. Such brilliance is hard to achieve. Compare Don's effortless cool with Daphne's speedpunching, a supercool Flash trick rendered ugly by some dire effects on Heroes.
I'm really bitching about Daphne, which is not really representative of my opinion. You've got to love a snarky speedster, and she goes well with Hiro and Ando.
I just think her superpower pales into insignificance compared to the fearsome might of Don Draper.
Easter Egg of theWeek(s) Month:
It took very little time for me to fall for the new nerd-baiting mystery man The Observer, who arrived in the latest episode of Fringe in an explosion of debris, flame, quirky tics, and hot peppers. Even though it was obvious to me that he is little more than a grab-bag of weirdness calculated to appeal to the nerd fanbase, I immediately became enamoured of him, partially because he is bald and loves jalapenos (we're like brothers!), but mostly because he has driven the show headlong in an even stranger direction than I thought it would. What I had assumed was going to be a mildly diverting Alias-meets-X-Files procedural looks now to be a batshit curio that will split the audience into opposing groups of rabid fans and exasperated haters to such an extent it will make the Lost Talkback Wars look like a love-in.
It could have gone the other way, though. Midway through the episode, upon being confronted by Anna "Vanatron" Torv, Lance "Intensity" Reddick reveals that he has been seen numerous times at Pattern events, including the hospital in which the grisly birth scene from the second episode occurred. A photo is produced, showing The Observer, which offended me greatly. A blatant piece of ret-conning, it made the show look amateurish and desperate, trying to convince the audience that the show mythology had been planned in advance but instead making it look like it was being made up as it goes along (just like haters think is happening with Lost). Just to prove this, I went back to the second episode, hoping the hospital scenes would be Observer-free. Well, I'm not too proud to admit I was horribly wrong.
How cool is that? He's so fucking creepy. Thrilled by the knowledge that the Fringe team are trying to generate a plan for the show with seeded cameos and whatnot, I checked the net for more news about The Observer, and whaddaya know, he's been in all four episodes so far, with a Hitchcockian cameo walking past MASSive Dynamic in the pilot, and an eerie stalker moment on a train in the third episode.
Even better, it's obvious the show has been designed to appeal to those of us whose idea of a good time is to waste hours clicking through Lostpedia or play ARGs like the current Dharma Initiative Initiation game. As you can see here, there have been Easter Eggs throughout the series (The Observer was namechecked in the pilot title sequence), either feeding into the mythology or giving ARG hints. It's all very entertaining.
In fact, I find the promise of a new sci fi mythology more exciting than the actual show, which, despite the introduction of nose torture, glowing subterranean torpedoes, and crazy 50s rayguns, still kinda bores me whenever Dr. Walter Bishop is not onscreen. Hints that Peter and Olivia have a secret Pattern-influenced past might make them more interesting, but right now I'm not interested in them at all. And yet I can't wait for the next episode. I'm such a sucker for big mythologies. It's actually really embarrassing.
Well-Used Secondary Character of the Week(s):
I keep on about it, but it needs to be shouted from the rooftops of New York; Marc and Amanda are the best things about Ugly Betty, but are sorely underused. Amanda is getting about two lines an episode right now, though thankfully she is talented and funny enough that she at least knows how to make those lines count.
Marc, on the other hand, was given a juicier plot than usual, scheming to get Wilhelmina demoted from her new position as Mode editor-in-chief just to keep her all to himself. This angered Canyon, who was disgusted to see the status quo returned after a long period introducing numerous story opportunities that ranged in potential from promising to almost certainly a dead end. She has a very good point. Still, there is the short term gain that Marc got to show a new, Macchiavellian side. It ain't much, but it meant I laughed a lot, and sometimes that's enough.
How To Ruin a Character Recipe of the Week(s):
Add one book...
...Stir in one genetically engineered triplet damsel in distress...
...Sprinkle with liberal amounts of an invisible old man who probably never shuts up about working with Kubrick and Lindsay Anderson between takes...
...And you end up with a hyper-lame loser who can only get about four people to attend his press conference about a catastrophic disaster that kills hundreds of thousands of people.
Nice Jackie O glasses there, Tracey.
And now, I shall stop there, so that I can finally watch Hairspray (remake). More to come, peeps.
Triumphant Return of the Week(s):
Saved from cancellation by a weird deal between parent network NBC and DirecTV, Friday Night Lights, the best non-Lost network show on TV, returned with a long stretch of time left unvisited, which is an unfortunate side-effect of the unfairly truncated second season. After a burst of exposition for the benefit of any new viewers (oh please let there be a few million when it returns to NBC!), the show fit right back into its groove as if it had never been away.
Show highlights included Tyra's existential panic, Buddy and his beloved Jumbotron, the uncertain relationship between Lila and Riggins, and Matt Saracen's imminent retirement due to the arrival of hotshot QB J.D. McCoy and his scheming dad. To be honest, it was so great there's little to say about it other than OMG IT WAS SO GREAT and so was the second episode OMG! But perhaps that's enough.
Most Hectic Hour of the Week(s):
The return of Pushing Daisies was overwhelming even for someone who has been following it since the pilot, so God knows how it was received by any new viewers (of which there were probably none, considering its disastrous viewing figures). With two guest stars (Missi Pyle and French Stewart), the usual murder mystery, Chuck and Ned's estrangement and reconciliation, and Olive's departure from The Pie Hole (not to mention her nunnery subplot and Emerson's pop-up book project), it was perhaps too busy, but it was at least funny and smart and original.
The script was beautifully constructed and satisfying as well. Moaning about it all makes me feel like an awful misery-guts, you know.
Non-Returning Highlight of the Week(s):
My love for Mad Men now solidified, I can get on with enjoying the show instead of getting annoyed by the odd flaw. Of the two episodes we saw during this fortnight (Sixth Month Leave and The Inheritance), perhaps the second was more cohesive on a thematic level (see future Weeks 4-5 posts), but the first episode, dealing with Freddy Rumsen's sacking, was more fun.
Highlights included Freddy peeing his pants (kudos to the foley artist who captured the sound of his shoes squishing as he leaves the office), Pete and Peggy facing off over her promotion, Don crushing the juvenile idiots working under him like the unworthy scum they are, and of course the out-of-the-blue revelation that Roger Sterling was leaving his loyal wife for that overconfident floozy Jane.
My favourite thing, though, was the long sequence where Don and Roger take Freddy out and let him know, through glaringly obvious doubletalk, that he's being let go. The pace of the show is always a marvel, and here it allows the show to take a long detour as they wine and dine their friend, who is smart enough to know what they are doing but not smart enough to know what he should do next.
Joel Murray gives a terrific performance as Freddy, a dopey but genial executive who has come to the end of the line and accepts it with a mixture of resignation and fear. These long scenes were a total joy to watch, taking their time to tell a dozen stories in a way a network show would never be able to.
Alarming Failrate of the Week(s):
Heroes really is screwed, isn't it. I mean, we had a great time watching the last two episodes back to back, cracking up every few minutes at some dreadful staging or silly dialogue: we had great fun with Suresh and his terrible rash, which made us think all those geneticist brane-smarts mean nothing if he doesn't think to wear a condom while ravishing hott babes (sorry for the insinuation, Maya!). By now the disastrous writing, all speechifying and incomprehensible plot twists, is not the worst of it. It's full of errors, perhaps most visibly the self-plagiarism. When Usutu revealed his gallery of predictive paintings, we growned aloud.
It's becoming apparent that the powers are being spread between characters (Usutu and Isaac, Nathan and West, Claire and Adam, Future Ando and Elle, Claire's mom Meredith and Pyrokinetic Man etc.), and this will almost certainly be explained by the utterly dreary plot about the lineage of all of the Heroes (as soon as Angela Petrelli appears I totally tune out). Nevertheless, it still means the narrative is eating itself. Another apocalypse, another series of predictions, more time travel, more Company shenanigans, and on and on and on. If the characters were written better, this wouldn't be a problem, but they seem to have no fixed identity at all. Nothing is set in stone, and nothing matters.
Even on a surface level the show can't keep itself straight for two seconds. Early in the fourth episode, Suresh kicks Maya out of his lab and blathers on about fate and valour and DNA or something (I tuned out again), and then he sets his recording doohickey down onto a table. Time passes, and we're in the future, as shown by the recorder being covered with dust and cockroaches.
Immediately Canyon said, "He never picked it up again? Bullshit. He'll use it again later in the episode." Of course, she was totally right.
And are we supposed to believe this is a real headline? Any self-respecting editor would off him or herself if they let this go to print.
If the showrunners think none of this matters, they're horribly wrong. The amateurishness and silliness have reached epidemic levels, and viewers are deserting in droves. Not us, of course. If we're going to watch Car Crash TV, this is at least less painful to watch than Knight Rider.
Show Change of the Week(s):
Doug Petrie always seemed to be an odd choice for CSI producer/writer, not because he isn't talented (he is), but because his work on Buffy was leagues away from the tone needed for a gritty procedural. Many of his episodes were quirky, much as expected (especially Toe Tags, with the talking corpses), but he was able to come up with the expected grimness when necessary (he is credited with co-writing my favourite CSI episode ever, Monster In The Box).
It was never a problem that he was on the show, especially as it's always good to see Mutant Enemy writers doing well (see also: Marti Noxon on Mad Men, which is a hell of a step-up from Point Pleasant). However, nice though it was to have a writer we like work on a hugely successful show, seeing that he has jumped over to Pushing Daisies really cheered us up. His writing is perfectly suited to Daisies, and the only thing that sours that news is that Daisies is doing so badly in the ratings that it might get cancelled before he gets to write an episode. ::is sad::
Unexpected Cameo of the Week(s):
Holy shit! Betty Draper's dad is played by John McCain!
He was perfectly cast as well. Belligerent, lying to himself and others to cover up his confusion, and so overcome with attraction to hot females that he loses his composure.
Steady on, fella! That's no way to treat a vice-presidential candidate. Hehhhhh? Hehhhhh?
Second Most Unexpected Cameo of the Week(s):
This is Betty Draper's brother.
How did they de-age Robert Englund?
Opinion Reversal of the Week(s):
How quickly I have soured on Lucas the hapless PI in House. Individual moments were still funny, such as his appearance in House's closet, but the desperate attempts to create an audience for his forthcoming spin-off are embarrassing and distracting.
The stalking and subsequent courting of Cuddy has the potential to ruin her character forever, and the temporary suspension of House's usual disdain for any and all people in his sphere looks idiotic and transparently calculated.
A narrative decision this blatantly cynical could backfire horribly. David Chase should have thought twice.
Funniest Joke of the Week(s):
This rendered us helpless this week (it’s between 7:30 and 8:30, but you should watch the whole thing.
Infantile genius.
Punch of the Week(s):
Don Draper clocks Jimmy Barrett, and it is beautiful.
The best part of that is that even though I enjoyed seeing Don batter that obnoxious jerk, I also really enjoyed the scene from a few weeks ago when Jimmy humiliated Don by revealing he knew all about the affair with Bobbie. This is the show that gives and gives and then gives some more. Such brilliance is hard to achieve. Compare Don's effortless cool with Daphne's speedpunching, a supercool Flash trick rendered ugly by some dire effects on Heroes.
I'm really bitching about Daphne, which is not really representative of my opinion. You've got to love a snarky speedster, and she goes well with Hiro and Ando.
I just think her superpower pales into insignificance compared to the fearsome might of Don Draper.
Easter Egg of the
It took very little time for me to fall for the new nerd-baiting mystery man The Observer, who arrived in the latest episode of Fringe in an explosion of debris, flame, quirky tics, and hot peppers. Even though it was obvious to me that he is little more than a grab-bag of weirdness calculated to appeal to the nerd fanbase, I immediately became enamoured of him, partially because he is bald and loves jalapenos (we're like brothers!), but mostly because he has driven the show headlong in an even stranger direction than I thought it would. What I had assumed was going to be a mildly diverting Alias-meets-X-Files procedural looks now to be a batshit curio that will split the audience into opposing groups of rabid fans and exasperated haters to such an extent it will make the Lost Talkback Wars look like a love-in.
It could have gone the other way, though. Midway through the episode, upon being confronted by Anna "Vanatron" Torv, Lance "Intensity" Reddick reveals that he has been seen numerous times at Pattern events, including the hospital in which the grisly birth scene from the second episode occurred. A photo is produced, showing The Observer, which offended me greatly. A blatant piece of ret-conning, it made the show look amateurish and desperate, trying to convince the audience that the show mythology had been planned in advance but instead making it look like it was being made up as it goes along (just like haters think is happening with Lost). Just to prove this, I went back to the second episode, hoping the hospital scenes would be Observer-free. Well, I'm not too proud to admit I was horribly wrong.
How cool is that? He's so fucking creepy. Thrilled by the knowledge that the Fringe team are trying to generate a plan for the show with seeded cameos and whatnot, I checked the net for more news about The Observer, and whaddaya know, he's been in all four episodes so far, with a Hitchcockian cameo walking past MASSive Dynamic in the pilot, and an eerie stalker moment on a train in the third episode.
Even better, it's obvious the show has been designed to appeal to those of us whose idea of a good time is to waste hours clicking through Lostpedia or play ARGs like the current Dharma Initiative Initiation game. As you can see here, there have been Easter Eggs throughout the series (The Observer was namechecked in the pilot title sequence), either feeding into the mythology or giving ARG hints. It's all very entertaining.
In fact, I find the promise of a new sci fi mythology more exciting than the actual show, which, despite the introduction of nose torture, glowing subterranean torpedoes, and crazy 50s rayguns, still kinda bores me whenever Dr. Walter Bishop is not onscreen. Hints that Peter and Olivia have a secret Pattern-influenced past might make them more interesting, but right now I'm not interested in them at all. And yet I can't wait for the next episode. I'm such a sucker for big mythologies. It's actually really embarrassing.
Well-Used Secondary Character of the Week(s):
I keep on about it, but it needs to be shouted from the rooftops of New York; Marc and Amanda are the best things about Ugly Betty, but are sorely underused. Amanda is getting about two lines an episode right now, though thankfully she is talented and funny enough that she at least knows how to make those lines count.
Marc, on the other hand, was given a juicier plot than usual, scheming to get Wilhelmina demoted from her new position as Mode editor-in-chief just to keep her all to himself. This angered Canyon, who was disgusted to see the status quo returned after a long period introducing numerous story opportunities that ranged in potential from promising to almost certainly a dead end. She has a very good point. Still, there is the short term gain that Marc got to show a new, Macchiavellian side. It ain't much, but it meant I laughed a lot, and sometimes that's enough.
How To Ruin a Character Recipe of the Week(s):
Add one book...
...Stir in one genetically engineered triplet damsel in distress...
...Sprinkle with liberal amounts of an invisible old man who probably never shuts up about working with Kubrick and Lindsay Anderson between takes...
...And you end up with a hyper-lame loser who can only get about four people to attend his press conference about a catastrophic disaster that kills hundreds of thousands of people.
Nice Jackie O glasses there, Tracey.
And now, I shall stop there, so that I can finally watch Hairspray (remake). More to come, peeps.
Thursday, 9 October 2008
For Your Reconsideration: Jersey Girl
Want to know a good way to ensure you’re ridiculed as a clueless cultural pariah in internet circles? I’ve got one: suggest that Kevin Smith’s Jersey Girl is not a black, gaping quality-void with a side order of suck. This happens partly because, on many blogs and forums, there are no grey areas when it comes to pop culture. A movie is either OMG amazing or man did it suck balls. It’s a triumph or an abortion. In light of this Jersey Girl has come to be seen as a disaster, a critically savaged bomb that all but destroyed Smith’s chance of mainstream success and drove him back to the “Askewniverse” milieu and characters he had supposedly left behind, in the form of Clerks II.
And yet Jersey Girl wasn’t a huge flop. While no-one would call it a hit, the movie recouped its $35m production budget in box office gross, and went into profit with DVD sales. The reviews weren’t terrible either: the influential Roger Ebert liked it; it has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 40% and a Metacritic score of 43, suggesting that a good number of critics thought it fair or better. I’m on board with that, and I maintain that it’s a more worthwhile work than Clerks II, Smith’s supposed return to better form (Rotten Tomatoes 63%, Metacritic 65). I contend, in fact, that each film has gained a reputation it doesn’t really deserve.
The received wisdom – much promulgated by Smith – is that Jersey Girl underperformed partly because the public was sick of the high-profile relationship between its stars Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez. Possibly true, but you would think a public that avoids a movie because of the overexposure of its cast (big-draw movie stars generally being reclusive, publicity-shy types) would leap at the chance to see Lopez’s character die in pain in the first reel. Smith’s theory that the previous Affleck-Lopez film Gigli was so awful it put audiences off Jersey Girl can be given short shrift, not least because so few people actually saw Gigli. (As an excuse it is reminiscent of Spinal Tap’s claim that their support act was so bad, “the crowd was still booing him when we came on stage”.) But there’s no doubt the movie suffered terrible word of mouth. This was presumably in large part due to the central character, who has several glaring flaws.
And yet Jersey Girl wasn’t a huge flop. While no-one would call it a hit, the movie recouped its $35m production budget in box office gross, and went into profit with DVD sales. The reviews weren’t terrible either: the influential Roger Ebert liked it; it has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 40% and a Metacritic score of 43, suggesting that a good number of critics thought it fair or better. I’m on board with that, and I maintain that it’s a more worthwhile work than Clerks II, Smith’s supposed return to better form (Rotten Tomatoes 63%, Metacritic 65). I contend, in fact, that each film has gained a reputation it doesn’t really deserve.
The received wisdom – much promulgated by Smith – is that Jersey Girl underperformed partly because the public was sick of the high-profile relationship between its stars Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez. Possibly true, but you would think a public that avoids a movie because of the overexposure of its cast (big-draw movie stars generally being reclusive, publicity-shy types) would leap at the chance to see Lopez’s character die in pain in the first reel. Smith’s theory that the previous Affleck-Lopez film Gigli was so awful it put audiences off Jersey Girl can be given short shrift, not least because so few people actually saw Gigli. (As an excuse it is reminiscent of Spinal Tap’s claim that their support act was so bad, “the crowd was still booing him when we came on stage”.) But there’s no doubt the movie suffered terrible word of mouth. This was presumably in large part due to the central character, who has several glaring flaws.
- He’s played by Ben Affleck. Affleck has been charming and/or memorable in a number of movies – Dazed And Confused, Hollywoodland, Good Will Hunting, even the little-loved Phantoms – but rarely, if ever, as a romantic lead. There’s something desperately uncomfortable about watching him emote, and emote he does throughout Jersey Girl (bereavement! Unemployment! Fatherhood! Embarrassment! Redemption!). Each time a human feeling strains to etch itself across his considerable forehead, you want to reach out a restraining hand to stop him hurting himself.
- He’s named Ollie Trinke. There’s a gag in the film about how Ollie lumbered his daughter with the name Gertie, which only serves to underline the fact that Smith named him Ollie Trinke. Every time someone says “Ollie Trinke”, you’re jolted out of the movie and into a world where the writer could have given his lead character literally any name at all, but chose Ollie Trinke.
- He’s an arsehole. He’s an arsehole on a personal level, as we see from his ingratitude when his father steps into the breach and raises his daughter (something Ollie is too self-absorbed to contemplate doing himself), and from his egocentric assumption that his daughter will naturally want the life he plans to give her. He’s an arsehole on a professional level too: a publicist, a paid bullshitter, who treats subordinates and rivals badly, and whose one moment of honesty in the workplace loses him his inconsequential job. Rather than realising from this how worthless the industry is, he pines for his lost vocation for years to the detriment of all personal satisfaction.
- It takes a combination of two hackneyed movie contrivances to show him the error of his ways: one a Manic Pixie Dream Girl, a free-spirited, sexually liberated cutie with nothing better to do than fix this hapless sad-sack’s life; and the other a Magical Negro, who just happens to be both the indirect cause of his employment problems and the Biggest Goddamn Movie Star In The Whole World. Somehow these fantastic creatures get through to him while his own daughter can’t.
So he’s a dense, self-centred arsehole with a stupid name, played by a resolutely unsympathetic actor. That’s a lot of baggage for one character. But it’s not an inherent problem, because this is a movie about a dense, self-centred arsehole with a stupid name. The problem is that it’s aimed at a mainstream audience, who would reasonably expect a comedy about a nice, regular guy with a small flaw to be overcome in time for Christmas and the closing credits. A zany unreadiness to commit to a relationship, perhaps, or an adorable childishness that makes him scared to have kids of his own. The cutesy romcom images in the marketing material back up this impression, so it’s no wonder people came away confused and wondering why they spent so much of the movie disliking the character with whom they assumed they should empathise.
In general Jersey Girl is not a film that goes out of its way to be liked. Aside from the unpleasant lead character, it’s full of discomfort and close-to-the-bone domestic conflict, not to mention Lopez’s messy death. Few people watch a comedy to be reminded of their own human frailties. But its readiness to confront harsh realities such as mortality, selfishness, grief and abandonment are marks in its favour. This isn’t a fluffy crowd-pleaser, it’s a reflection on sacrifice, maturity, responsibility and finding your way in the world, and Smith deserves kudos for largely resisting well-worn romantic-comedy banalities. I guess people may want films consisting purely of schmaltzy, platitudinal frothiness or solely of scatalogical hijinks. Me, I’ll take uncomfortable, abrasive Jersey Girl any day over the dozen or more toxic comedies shat out by patronising studios each year.
There are other things to like about the movie. For one, an adorably non-adorable performance from Raquel Castro, whose gauche line readings and lack of neatly-groomed rehearsing-since-the-womb perfection make her infinitely cuter than most nominally winsome but actually creepily robotic child actors. George Carlin as Trinke Sr is sly, irascible and a choleric joy, avoiding the obvious softy-grandpa tropes as a grumpily realistic audience surrogate puncturing his son’s vanity and hubris. Smith has been as sentimental as any American director in his career, but he doesn’t romanticise the New Jersey suburbs here: Carlin doesn’t have some amusingly quirky small-town job but is a street-cleaner; Smith even manages to make Liv Tyler – who had just spent three years onscreen playing an ethereal elven princess – look like a reasonably normal woman.
And there’s jokes. I laughed out loud several times. Smith might not have married a mainstream romcom feel to his usual lowbrow sex-and-weed-jokes sensibility with total success, but his sense of humour’s still there. On my recent viewing of Clerks II, I laughed exactly once – at a throwaway Jay line – and spent the rest of the time wondering what this fundamentally conventional film had to do with Clerks, other than making me think Wow, these characters sure got more boring as they grew older.
Clerks II tries far too hard to be funny and daring – stupid high-school nicknames, slapstick, pop-culture riffs, donkey sex shows – and ends up just seeming awkward, like a youngish uncle attempting to impress bored adolescents. This is reinforced by the teenage character Elias (Trevor Fehrman), ostensibly a guileless whipping boy for Randall’s (Jeff Anderson) caustic wit, but surely a late insertion into the script when someone realised, whoops, our characters are all in their thirties and we need kids to go see this! Smith has undoubtedly improved as a filmmaker since the jejune flatness and stagey dialogue of Clerks, but here this translates into not one but two unforgivably boring montages: one in which Becky (Rosario Dawson) bouncingly teaches Dante (Brian O’Halloran) to dance and is suddenly backed up by a chorus featuring the entire population of New Jersey, and one in which Dante Drives Around Moodily And Thinks About His Life Choices. Montage sequences have their place but these are self-indulgent, tone-destroying annoyances.
Still, they’re not Clerks II’s worst indulgence, which is that from start to finish it’s basically an apology for Jersey Girl. Smith’s half-arsed excuses for the earlier film’s underperformance are understandable, but making a whole $5m movie pleading for forgiveness is a disproportionate response. At the start of Clerks II, Dante has been sucked in by the temptations of a normal adult life – marriage, house, working for his wife’s father, effectively Going Mainstream. Although the girl he is marrying clearly adores him and puts up with plenty of nonsense from him, Dante constantly questions his motives. Is he just doing this because it’s what society demands, because it’s what’s expected of him? After a day spent examining his options (and discussing them with Becky, who incidentally turns out to be a combination of Magical Ethnicity – see the aforementioned dance lesson – and Manic Pixieosity), Dante realises: he should just stay right here in Jersey and do the same thing he’s always done! He was a fool to think he should take the opportunity to grow and travel and try new things and explore the myriad possibilities open to a man! The parallels are glaring, and they do Smith no favours.
Jersey Girl doesn’t need or deserve this fulsome, self-vindicating coda – which ultimately fails, since it’s a less satisfying film than the one it’s apologising for. Apparently even Smith has realised that Clerks II’s message is bollocks, as the upcoming Zack And Miri Make A Porno sees him turn his back on his own personal QuickStop again to try something different. He’s even working with renowned improvisers, which he has confessed to loathing in the past. The film, which has garnered some good early notices, looks dirty (in all the good senses), honest and scabrous, and Smith has already butted heads with the MPAA over the marketing. Basically, and thankfully, it looks like he’s rediscovered some conviction, so I’m crossing my fingers he doesn’t lose it again and come up with Clerks III: Jersey Forever next.
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