Monthly Archives: September 2009

The 2008-2009 Caruso Awards: The Worst New Characters Of The Year

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Long-time readers of Shades of Caruso will be well aware of the concept of The Gupta, but I must admit to being concerned that new readers have come across this post and are wondering why I sound like an enormous racist. Here is the long version if you want a proper explanation, but if you don’t want to check that out, here is a short version. Spielberg’s The Terminal features a deeply unlikeable character who seems to be awful to everyone around him for no apparent logical reason. Gupta, played by Kumar Pallana from Wes Anderson’s troupe of supporting players, is a total schmuck, and every scene with him in drove Canyon and me into fits of apoplectic fury. This is not — I repeat, NOT — a comment on Kumar Pallana, who is delightful in his other roles. The problem lies with the character of Gupta, not the performer. Why writers Andrew Niccol, Sacha Gervasi and Jeff Nathanson thought this odious little sprite was a good idea is beyond me, and Spielberg’s motives are similarly unclear. Is he some form of trickster demon? An experiment in audience sympathy? I am still perplexed by this.

Nevertheless, after seeing it, me and Canyon came up with the theory that every show or film features a Gupta, some character who annoys us, or has seemingly no purpose, or fails to do what they are supposed to do (i.e. be charming, coming off instead as a bit of a dick). This is never a knock on the actor, who might be perfectly fine when not playing this poorly designed character, and it’s not objective (these things never are). It is also not a racist comment, for the millionth time. If the original Gupta from The Terminal had been, say, a bespectacled nerd from the West Midlands called John who had a weird compulsion to leave large wet patches on slippery floors to make Catherine Zeta-Jones fall over, we would be talking about the John of the show. Gupta was just the character that inspired the observation, and has now been immortalised. It is more than the character deserves, to be honest.

So anyway, here are the ten new Guptas from shows seen over the period from September 2008 to September 2009. Remember, this is not a comment on the actors, though if they have in any way contributed to the Guptocity of the characters they are playing, we will have to cry foul. Sorry, potentially lovely people who have been unfortunate enough to get work playing douchebags.

10. Kimmie Keegan - Ugly Betty

kimmiekeeganThe obnoxious stunt-casting of Lindsay Lohan can be forgiven. The increasingly desperate Ugly Betty needed to do something to draw attention to itself now that the glowing articles from EW and Salon have dried up, and the former interest in presenting a candy-coloured and energetic vision of a tolerant world has given way to a tiresome soap opera pastiche that lies dead on the screen like something that gets lampooned by Joel McHale on The Soup. Nevertheless, Lohan’s character — Kimmie Keegan — was a misfire from the first second. Played as a spiteful figure from Betty’s past, she was used to make our heroine feel even more insecure at work than ever, but as this season was scattershot and poorly organised, this long long set-up of Kimmie as a supervillainous foil paid off far too quickly to have any impact. Yet another waste of our time from a once-great show. Lohan’s listless and unfocused performance didn’t help either.

Worst Moment: Dissing Marc and Amanda in the Mode cafeteria. Yes, we get that her arrival has turned the office into a kind of surrogate for school, and they’re playing with those uncomfortable moments from our past, but there is no way she would turn them away. They have too much accumulated power between them. The grinding gears of the plot were deafening.

9. Emile Danko - Heroes

dankoAs I said above, the appearance of a character on the Gupta list is not a knock on the actor. Indeed, Željko Ivanek is a terrific character actor who has given numerous super performances in the past. We were lucky enough to see him at the Edwin Booth Theatre in Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman, opposite Jeff Goldblum and Billy Crudup, and he was superb. Heroes is possibly the polar opposite of an acclaimed play by an award-winning playwright. Here, Ivanek is forced to play a deadly hunter required to hunt powered individuals, operating with staggering ineptitude and making all sorts of baffling and ridiculous double-deals, all the while letting people off the hook whenever the abysmal scripts require it. There is almost certainly a way to make the character work, but when he is written in such a way as to have no coherent arc or soul, there is no way to invest in him or his goals. No, we don’t add characters to the Gupta list because we hate the actors, but we can add a character to the Gupta list if we love the actor. Seeing Ivanek in the middle of this mess was a dispiriting experience.

Worst Moment: After making a million comments about how he will show no mercy to any powered individuals, he promptly teams up with Sylar. Eventually he betrays him, just as he reflexively betrays everyone in the show at some point or another, but he still allows him to go around absorbing powers while he is his “partner”. Dear God, this series is beyond awful.

8. Lucas Douglas - House

westonIn his first appearance in House, hired by the titular character to spy on his team and friends, Lucas Douglas is very funny and charming. He’s a bit inept, and makes numerous social faux-pas that endear him to people around him enough that they open up to him. It was an amusing take on the private detective role. And then he crops up again the following week, acting like he has known all of the characters for months and starts hanging out with House at his home. And then he turns up for a third week and he’s coming onto Cuddy, and she seems to be responding to it. That was enough for us. David Shore has said that Douglas was meant to get his own show, meaning his appearance in House was a dry run for that show, though now it appears not to be going ahead. A shame, as I would happily have watched him in his own show, which would have had a chance to grow organically with new characters and situations. Having him hang out with well-established characters like some kind of misguided Gary-Stu? Thanks, but no thanks. And he’s coming back in season six. Let’s hope they get him right this time.

Worst Moment: Seeing him hanging out at House’s apartment, jamming on a piano and chatting away with the long-time misanthrope and professional asshole, was the first inkling that something had gone wrong with the show. Has the example of Poochy taught us nothing?

7. Captain David Shepherd - Kings

davidshepherdKings cannot help but be dominated by the incredible power of Ian Mc-Fucking-Shane as King Silas Benjamin, with that rich, booming voice resonating through the cavernous locations and sets like the word of God. The only actor on the show who can stand up to that is Brian Cox as Vesper Abedon, the former king of Carmel, and we sadly don’t get to see much of that. (I’m not counting Dylan Baker’s William Cross, as he is a sneaky toad who conspires against his king behind his back, meaning he rarely has to go toe-to-toe with Benjamin). So who do they get as the potential usurper, the future King David to Benjamin’s defeated King Saul? A hick soldier who gets lucky against a tank one time, looks terrified throughout, and seems to have “Crying about how horrible the world is” listed as a hobby. Christopher Egan should feel no shame for being outclassed by McShane; other than Cox, everyone on the show is, including such fine actors as Dylan Baker, Eamonn Walker, and Wes Studi. What can’t be avoided, though, is that David Shepherd, as conceived here, is a whiny loser. I don’t care how many butterflies hover around his head (this is a plot point, not a weird metaphor). He looks completely wrong sharing the screen with King Silas Benjamin. It’s like watching Milhouse Van Houten facing off against Charlton Heston as Moses.

Worst Moment: In The Sabbath Queen, a flashback shows King Silas Benjamin visiting his dying daughter in hospital. In the atrium of the building we get to see David before he becomes the soldier that destroys the Goliath tank. He is crying. Of course. Cowboy up, you wimp!

6. Martha Rodgers - Castle

martharodgersCastle is a star vehicle, no doubt about it. Other than the dashing, hilarious charmster Mr. Nathan Fillion Esq., there is very little going on to make Castle appointment TV. We only watched a few episodes, waiting for a moment when Fillion would get a chance to inject some unpredictability into the show, while the supporting cast did stuff in the background. I think they were police detectives or something. We couldn’t tell the difference between them, to be honest. One of them was a woman, right? She was in The Spirit, chewing the scenery? Whatever. When Fillion was onscreen, all was right with the world, but sadly he also had to interact with his character’s mother, played by Susan “Falcon Crest” Sullivan. Hamming it up as an actress and socialite, she has little to do other than chide Castle constantly. That’s it. She’s an old show-off who moans a lot, sucking the energy out of Fillion’s scenes. There’s nothing there for Sullivan to do, and she’s never given anything funny to say. When Tracy Jordan yelled “Banter!” on 30 Rock that one time, he was expending more effort than the Castle writers did cranking out this tired repartee. Sometimes, being a Gupta is a case of just not being properly thought through.

Worst Moment: In A Death In The Family (which regrettably has nothing to do with the murder of Jason Todd), Fillion does a pretty good impression of Christopher Walken. It’s not quite as good as Kevin Spacey’s, but it’s still funny. Martha is required to point out how terrible it is, but the complaint just doesn’t fly because it is a good impression. Also, earlier in the episode, she calls Robert Picardo “Doctor Death”. It’s like she’s just trying to annoy me personally.

5. Eli Loker - Lie To Me

elilokerLie To Me seemed, in early episodes, to be a concept with very little room for expansion. With the main characters able to detect lies, the possibilities for crime-solving seemed set in stone: watch person twitch, explain meaning of twitch, clap said twitchy person in irons. Next case. Eventually it broadened its parameters and introduced new characters to play off Dr. Cal Lightman, but in its early stages it seemed like the show would revolve around truth and dishonesty to the exclusion of all else. As an avatar to explore these themes, one Lightman Group worker — Eli Loker, played by Brendan Hines — refuses to lie, and spends much of his time saying the most outrageous things to people in the interests of maintaining this self-imposed philosophy of perpetual honesty. In the context of Ricky Gervais and Matthew Robinson’s forthcoming The Invention of Lying, I’m sure that conceit will play out in various interesting and amusing ways. Here it’s used to give Loker an opportunity to sexually harass his colleague Ria Torres by pointing out how much he wants to sleep with her all the time. Is he meant to be charming or creepy? If it’s the latter, thumbs up. Oh, and forgive my irrationality, but I hate his fucking floppy hair too. I want it to get caught in an escalator or something.

Worst Moment: After taking the moral high ground all season, in the episode Depraved Hearts he decides to rat out a businesswoman who has done a Bernie Madoff with a ton of money. This sabotages a deal with her father, leading to innocent shareholders losing out on fiscal reparations, just so he could feel better about himself. Then, when it becomes apparent he has humiliated team leader Dr. Gillian Foster, he implicates Torres. We prayed for him to get fired, but sadly he’s just demoted to intern-status and asked to give up his paycheck. Apparently he can still afford product for that shitty hair, though.

4. Stuart Radzinsky - Lost

radzinskyAs our heroes became trapped in a terrible decade and forced to wear unflattering jumpsuits, my love of Lost palled ever-so-slightly, mostly because I thought I knew exactly where the show was going. How much could it surprise us when we knew that there was going to be an Incident at the Swan Station building site, and a Purge instigated by Richard Alpert and hastened by Ben Linus? With the future seemingly set in stone, I thought the fifth season was just putting pieces into place, not realising we were being set up for what might be a temporal reboot in one of the most thrilling episodes of TV I have ever been lucky enough to see. Nevertheless, that frustration remained for the last seven episodes, ruining my enjoyment of my favourite show. However, that cloud had one silver lining. I knew that Stuart Radzinsky, paranoid one-note jerk, was going to die by his own hand, blowing his brains out and leaving a stain on the ceiling of the Swan Station. For the latter half of the season he alienates the audience with a seemingly never-ending stream of shrill complaints about interlopers, bitching about security at his beloved station, and then, for good measure, risking the entire planet just so he can drill into the exotic matter at the heart of the island and complete his precious experiment. In a show as carefully constructed as this, it is surprising to see the writers find nothing for Radzinsky to do other than moan and moan and moan. Good riddance to bad scientist rubbish.

Worst Moment: Taking over every group he is a part of just by bleating louder than everyone else is his modus operandi, but his behaviour at the end of season low-point He’s Our You — voting to kill Sayid and strong-arming Horace with the threat of bringing Dharma HQ into the equation — was the bottom of the barrel. I’ve met guys like this. They were assholes too.

3. Clement McDonald - Torchwood: Children of Earth

clementmcdonaldThe glitchy, unhinged character who has some kind of weird insight has become an overused cliche of modern SF or fantasy TV. Was it Whedon who first introduced us to annoying stream-of-consciousness blitherings from those who have been touched by madness or revelation? If so, consider it a black mark on his otherwise spotless résumé. Even so, he still managed to do it better than most. Drusilla could be funny, and River Tam was okay, though crazy season seven Spike was relentlessly annoying. That’s a better run than Russell T. Davies, who has stolen this most irksome of writerly tics for use in his own shows. Doctor Who had all sorts of chattery psychic grandmothers or mad Daleks talking about space beyond time and dancing in the lonely places blah blah. It was supremely silly and leached all drama from their scenes. His attempts to turn Torchwood into a cross between State of Play and Quatermass were scuppered by a vast and embarrassing number of plot inconsistencies, absurd melodramatics, and shaky performances (all Torchwood trademarks), but he did himself no favours by introducing a man who can smell aliens as a vital plot device. As with Heroes and the Incredible Mister Sniff (as played by Jamie Hector from The Wire), the sight of a person snuffling as hard as they can while trying to look intense is the silliest thing an actor can do. It’s impossible to take this seriously, and to have so much of the drama of Torchwood: We’re Very Serious And Adult This Time hinge on a man who keeps punctuating his ramblings with repeated bursts of “Isn’t it? Isn’t it?” and then smelling the air around him with a look of terror on his face is a disaster waiting to happen. Paul Copley’s unfortunate performance was not the only thing that didn’t work in this noble failure, but it was the thing that made me shout “OH DO SHUT UP!” at the screen whenever his tics kicked off.

Worst Moment: As all he did was sniff and panic, there wasn’t really a single moment that stood out. Perhaps his death annoyed me the most, as it seemed added to the story only so that Captain Jack could then use that most scientific of solutions — a frequency with the things reversed or something! — to defeat the junkie snotmonsters from planet Zorb or whatever they were supposed to be. If it were up to me, he would have gone out like the young woman in Quatermass — levitating and then blowing up in a hospital. They really don’t make ‘em like they used to.

2. Topher Brink - Dollhouse

topherActually, I was wrong. Whedon’s penchant for mad characters and their crazy chatter is not the only bad mark on his report card. He also created Topher Brink, who was very nearly the number one Gupta of the decade. Perhaps it’s because of the moral ambiguity running through the show, but Topher’s alignment with the ethically dubious Dollhouse makes it hard to get a bead on his character. Is he meant to be funny? Is he a surrogate for the nerds watching at home? Is he Xander gone wrong? Is he Warren gone right? Perhaps he is meant to be thoroughly, irredeemably unlikeable, which would at least explain why he is thoroughly, irredeemably unlikeable. That would give us the hope that he turned out exactly as planned and isn’t a failed attempt at something more nuanced. However, we also see Adele feeling sorry for him for not having friends. Surely this would be an impossibility anyway. The universe wouldn’t let it happen. We also see a tragic Topher of the future, broken by the realisation that his inventions have brought about the end of civilisation, not to mention the concepts of individuality and consistency of self. So what? We’re meant to think poor Topher? Fuck Topher. When it comes down to it, I can commend the Dollhouse crew for creating yet another complex and mystifying character, beautifully shaded in such a way as to generate any number of interpretations as to his true personality by the audience. Unfortunately, he’s also unwatchably smug, grating, and unfunny. How much of that is the fault of Fran Kranz’ interpretation of what Topher should be or Whedon’s initial conception of the character will remain a mystery for now.

Worst Moment: It was painful to see the cast having to goof around in the disappointing comedy episode Echoes, but having the already unfunny Topher become even more unfunny by an order of magnitude was torture. Coming after the brilliance of Whedon’s mid-season “revamp” Man on the Street, it was even more aggravating.

1. Zoe Chae - Knight Rider

zoechae

One reader of Shades of Caruso recently caught up with Dollhouse and asked me, via Twitter, whether Topher was going to be the Gupta of the Year. She was amazed when I said no. The same thing happened with Canyon, who was convinced there could be no other candidate. Both of these people did not sit through almost the entire season of Knight Rider (a confession: I stuck with it until the mid-season reboot and when it was obvious the changes didn’t improve the show, I finally bailed). From the very first moment Zoe Chae appears onscreen, smiling with galactic-levels of self-satisfaction at the prospect of her team-mates being cooked to death inside a napalm-coated sentient car, I knew there would be no competition for the top spot. The point of Topher remains a mystery to me, but while I find the character insufferable, I also trust that Whedon has a plan for him, and that one day there will be some revelation or adjustment that makes him at least tolerable. Zoe, on the other hand, was always just a callous rotter and nothing more, and I can see absolutely no reason for it. It’s not entertaining or funny to see her belittling her colleagues, revelling in the thought that they are facing death, sexually harassing them or playing mindgames with them. There is zero devilish charm there. She is dedicated to making her colleague Billy as miserable as humanly possible, flirting with him until he makes an sexual overture in return before dashing his hopes with an evil smile and a flick of her hair. She’s a menace.

That, however, is not the worst thing about her. When I look deep into my soul to try to figure out why my dislike of this most reprehensible of characters is so visceral, I realise it’s because I have a sneaking suspicion that this character has a huge and passionate fanbase, which might explain why she survived the mid-season cull that removed Bruce Davison, Sydney Tamiia Poitier, and Yancey Arias. Perhaps Zoe, whose creation seems to me to be a colossal miscalculation on the part of the inept showrunners, is actually the pinnacle of cookie-cutter, focus-group created fictional beings. The thought that this nasty piece-of-work is actually widely adored and admired for her no-nonsense attitude and Chaotic-Neutral alignment is so upsetting to me that I can’t bring myself to Google her name just in case I stumble across dozens of fansites filled with accounts of how her fans have been spreading the word of Zoe throughout the land by insulting their loved ones and then grinning inanely as they weep.

I am terrified by the possibility that, somehow, the world has become so broken, so mean-spirited and narcissistic, that Zoe Chae, a woman who reacts to the imminent death of her friends with the word, “Awesome!”, is actually the poster child for a new generation of nihilistic, hedonistic, self-centred motherfuckers, and we can just kiss the concepts of civility and brotherhood goodbye as our kids sashay through life with no thought for their fellow man. Of all the characters I have selected as Show Gupta in the past, no other one has made me despair of the damage done to the human condition like Zoe. In the mind’s eye of the most paranoid Daily Mail reader is an image of a heartless youth whose emotional responses to the people around them seem utterly detached from those you would express if motivated by empathy and compassion. That is how I felt watching Knight Rider. The Awful Adventures of Zoe Chae actually managed to depress me. Topher’s annoying tics are nothing compared to that.

Worst Moment: Given a chance to go on a secret mission with Michael “Le” Knight (née Michael “Le” Traceur), Zoe spends the majority of the mission trying desperately to get into bed with him even though she knows he still holds a torch for his former lover Sarah Graiman, and that Sarah, who will doubtless be watching, feels the same way about him. She also knows Billy, the poor besotted fool, will be watching too. If she could have figured out a way to break the hearts of the rest of the Knight Industries team, I’m sure she would have done it. KIDS TODAY!!!!

Right, much as that seems like I’ve covered most bases, there will be more to come in a few days time, mopping up the last few traces of TV observation from the past year. Remember, kids: don’t play with the feelings of your loved ones. Just because Zoe Chae does it doesn’t mean it’s cool.

The 2008-2009 Caruso Awards: The Best New Characters Of The Year

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A quick explanation of what’s going on here. This is, as the title says, a list of what I feel are the best new characters introduced in the same time period as the first two lists, though I suspect number 9 is ineligible due to Leverage starting just outside the capture period. Well, tough, because I’ve written all that and I’m not changing it now. These are the characters that have entertained me the most, have served their show best, and have been created and manifested with the most care. The number one slot will come as no surprise to regular readers, and I must say I’m pleased to be publishing this post just a few hours before his triumphant (I hope) return to our TVs.

10. Nina – Reaper

ninareaperIt’s tempting to think of Reaper‘s resident hott demon as little more than a riff on Buffy‘s Anya, being a love interest who just happens to be a servant of a dark force, but while Anya was given a rich inner life — not to mention a tragic end: never forget! — Nina is perfectly designed to fit into the jollier — and simpler — milieu offered by CW’s comedy. For a show that has been so bad at creating compelling female characters (remember Josie?), it was especially pleasing to see Nina fit in so well, but then the second season was much looser than the first, allowing for much broader comic characters and sillier plots. Sadly for the fans, the show’s annoying cancellation by the misguided CW means we’ll never get to see how Nina’s relationship with Ben plays out. We’ll also miss out on Jenny Wade’s crackerjack comic timing. Someone snap her up, quick. The Dollhouse team could surely put her to some good use, especially with its new links to Reaper.

Best Moment: Spending an entire episode flirting with Sam’s douchey half-brother Morgan, just to lure him into a trap set by the Path of Steve. Then she eviscerates him. She’s, like, the perfect woman or something.

9. Eliot Spencer – Leverage

eliotspencerLeverage expends a lot of energy mimicking the air of casual smartassery Soderbergh mastered with the Ocean’s Numeral films, and then splicing it with the snarkiness of vintage A-Team. It’s not a knock, as Leverage does it well enough on a low budget, and entertains much more than most higher-profile network shows. Nevertheless, both Soderbergh’s con-movies and The A-Team are not known for their multi-dimensional characters, and ciphers will not work in a long-running series anymore. Plus, as with the increasingly tiresome Ocean’s films, without a heart at the center of it Leverage would pall quickly. Thankfully, the team’s bruiser — a long-haired, white B.A. Baracus played with dopey charm by Angel‘s Christian Kane — works as the show’s conscience as well as the guy who hits people in the head. Just as with the show’s hybrid nature, it’s a winning combination.

Best Moment: In the pilot, Spencer — who has, to this point, been portrayed as little more than a cool-as-a-cucumber hardass — begins to enquire into Nathan Ford’s past, and his obvious depression. His interest, and vow to look after his new boss, was the unexpected emotional hook that kept me watching.

8. Veronica Palmer – Better Off Ted

veronicaBOTBetter Off Ted pulls off a tonal miracle by lampooning sickening corporate thoughtlessness while still being a goofy, benign sitcom about office politics. Hiding its thorns under lovely petals of silliness (metaphoraclypse – sorry), the show gets away with some edgy material by playing up the wacky musical stings, and relying a lot on the charm of its lead, Jay Harrington. Nevertheless, the show wouldn’t work without its MVP, Portia de Rossi, who comes closer than the rest of the cast to playing a caricature. The hard-nosed, humourless, no-nonsense female boss is an overused archetype, but de Rossi plays Veronica Palmer to perfection, lacing her almost robotic personality with shades of doubt. Often as confused by the goings-on at the sinister/lovable corporate monolith Veridian Dynamics as everyone else, she maintains enough of an edge to keep her minions in check. What could have been a one-note cliche character is, in de Rossi capable hands, the number one reason for watching the show.

Best Moment: Nonchalantly squirting water into Phil’s mouth to stop him screaming following a cryogenic experiment gone wrong.

7. Patrick Jane – The Mentalist

patrickjaneShows featuring anti-social know-it-alls flourished this year, taking their cue from the continued success of House, but the trick is hard to pull off a second time. Lie To Me‘s Dr. Cal Lightman, played by a hyper-aggressive Tim Roth, almost made it onto this list for his late run of excellent moments in the final few episodes of the season, but that character needed to be tinkered with as the show progressed. Patrick Jane, however, arrived fully formed. Surrounded by affable dopes who seem to dislike him half the time and then secretly delight in his antics when he’s not looking, Jane — as played by the extremely charming and dapper Simon Baker — is the mirror image of Lightman. While Roth’s character is a seething mass of hostility with a soft centre, Jane is a showman and charmer who hides a dark core, tortured by the murder of his family and desperate to catch their killer, Red John. The rest of the show is formulaic, but Baker’s brilliant work as a man trying to distract himself from misery with mischief and silliness is enough to keep us watching.

Best Moment: The season finale sees Jane closer to catching his nemesis than ever before, and his genial mask slips throughout. Brazenly promising to kill Red John as soon as he catches him, his colleagues are forced to question the wisdom of keeping a vengeful maverick on their team.

6. Dr. Claire Saunders – Dollhouse

clairesaundersIt’s difficult to talk about Dr. Claire Saunders being a great character, as she is fictional even within the context of the fictional world she lives in. Formerly an Active, Whiskey is maimed by the insane SuperActive Alpha, rendering her useless as a puppet, and then made to take on the personality of a composite character, trapped within the building by fear, and judging the actions of her colleagues without realising she is one of their puppets too. The beautifully timed late season reveal of her origin made her even more tragic than she already was, and her final appearance in Epitaph One, haunting the Dollhouse like the ghost of someone who never existed, was heartbreaking. For those of us who have been adamant that Amy Acker is an immensely underrated actress, this first season was a powerful and undeniable vindication of our beliefs. Let’s hope Whedon finds a way to bring her back for the second season.

Best Moment: Every time she silently reacts to some amoral inanity from the loathsome Topher Frink with withering disdain, an angel gets its wings. (Edit: As pointed out in comments, it’s actually Topher Brink, not Frink. I guess my brain is slowly trying to erase itself so I never have to think about his annoying ass ever again.)

5. Constance Carmell – Party Down

constancecarmellJane Lynch is like Tina Fey, Lily Tomlin, Goldie Hawn, and Joyce Grenfell rolled into one unstoppable comic behemoth-lady. Everything is better with her in it, and Party Down was lucky enough to have her for eight episodes before she disappeared to make Glee. Sad for the fans of the brilliant adult sitcom, but she left us with many joyous memories. Constance is a washed-up actress who doesn’t even realise she is washed up, hanging onto past glories and oblivious to the fact that these fleeting brushes with fame are the highlights of her career (such as playing a hooker in Baretta). While the show leads — Ken Marino, Adam Scott, and Lizzy Caplan — get the big emotional beats, Lynch takes Constance’s sad circumstance and explores all comedic and tragic aspects of it, sometimes all at the same time, without needing big plot developments to showcase her complexity. With just the slightest of plot-threads at her disposal, she makes Constance breathe, all while blowing every other performer on the show away. Considering the incredible cast (both regular and guest), that’s some achievement. I’m sure Glee is very good, but for taking Lynch away from Party Down, I shall hate it forever.

Best Moment: Almost too many to count, but the clueless liberal outrage that erupts while catering the California College Conservatives Union Caucus is priceless. Teaming her up with Ryan Hansen is a masterstroke.

4. King Silas Benjamin – Kings

silasTo be perfectly honest, there are only two words needed to describe why King Silas Benjamin makes it into the top five of this list: Ian Mc-Fucking-Shane. His presence is enough to make Kings essential viewing for all fans of Deadwood who mourn the loss of Al Swearengen. He could have been playing a postal worker, with each episode showing him completing his route, and it would have been appointment television, but instead we’re lucky enough to see him as the monarch of the fictional country of Gilboa, a man tortured by the deals he has made to get where he is, and scared of the consequences of his actions. As his brother-in-law, Crossgen CEO William Cross, conspires against him and the attention of the nation turns to his potential successor, his faith in God and his love for his family are torn apart and rebuilt time and again. Watching Benjamin do terrible things to maintain his hold on power while being assailed by his enemies was one of the purest joys of the year. Sadly, that’s all she wrote. Yet another stupid decision from NBC.

Best Moment: During a power-cut orchestrated in a fit of spite by Cross, Benjamin is haunted by the Sabbath Queen, a manifestation of what seems to be the Devil, come to collect on a deal he made to keep his daughter alive many years before. The king’s sanity is tested to breaking point by the visions, and the intensity of the show jumped up about fifteen notches.

3. Mia – In Treatment

miaWhen compiling these lists — both this one and the subsequent Gupta list, it’s tempting to praise the nice characters and diss the out-and-out assholes. Nevertheless, the screenwriters of In Treatment managed to write a particularly frustrating character who does nothing but complain and belittle those who help her, lying to her loved ones and pushing them away, all the while oblivious to the negative consequences of her actions, and still manage to make her compelling, sympathetic and strangely lovable. At least, they did a lot of the work, but it’s Hope Davis’ masterful performance that really brings this contrary and annoying woman to life, making you care deeply for her even when she is doing and saying the most exasperating and needlessly confrontational things. Desperately unhappy with the way her life has turned out and eager to blame everyone for it except for the one person responsible for shaping her personality, Mia rails against therapist Paul for seven weeks, before finally reaching a point where she looks at herself from outside long enough to see that she can change, given time. There is no award prestigious enough for Davis. Her work as this character is utterly exemplary.

Best Moment: Her final epiphany during her final session is a breathtaking moment of catharsis and revelation, perfectly performed and deeply moving.

2. Dr. Raymond Langston – CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

raymondlangstonAs with Ian Mc-Fucking-Shane,  bringing Laurence Fishburne into your show is guaranteed to make me watch it. When it’s a show I already love, I’m even happier. When the man I reflexively refer to as Morpheus is given a role as entertaining, as well-developed, and as rich with potential as Dr. Raymond Langston, I’m beside myself. Early reports about Gil Grissom’s replacement hinted he would be half scientist, half serial killer, and the suspicion that the long-serving CSIs such as Catherine Willows would not be promoted due to the introduction of someone new gave cause for concern, but Langston never turned into Mr. Hyde, and Catherine became head CSI, proving that the showrunners really give a damn about the internal logic of their show. Such thoughtful fan service is rare these days, and much appreciated. This meant Langston starts at the bottom and works his way up: an odd state of affairs when that character is played by someone of Fishburne’s fame and talent. Thankfully, this move paid off beautifully. Langston’s enthusiasm, naiveté, and kindheatedness are a breath of fresh air after the turmoil of the last few seasons, though the final episode, with Langston forced to kill a man in self-defence, shows he’s not out of the woods yet.

Best Moment: Langston’s first day on the job goes horribly wrong (botched fingerprint dusting, getting muck all over his suit, etc.), but eventually equilibrium is reached. He even wins over audience-surrogate Hodges. Sadly, the shrunken ratings for the best procedural in town did not reflect this meta plot point.

1. Dr. Walter Bishop – Fringe

There was no competition. Even with the character of Dr. Raymond Langston showing so much care and attention from the writers’ room, nothing could compare to the joy I feel whenever John Noble ambles onto screen, chattering excitedly about some food stuff or other. I’ve already waxed rhapsodic about Dr. Walter Bishop, and I don’t want to go over the same ground again, other than to stress how important John Noble’s (and Kurtzman and Orci’s, and Abrams’) work has been to me. Fringe is a bit of fluff that could well go far. The best episodes of the first season were genuinely exciting and well-constructed hours of TV that easily ranked among the best of the year. The potential is there for some really thrilling developments and some bold storytelling. It was also, on occasion, horribly boring and stupid, poorly written, formulaic, and crazy, though sadly not the right kind of crazy. At times I half watched it while doing other things, which is something I would never think to do with Lost. However, even in the show’s darkest moments, I never, even for a second, considered not watching any further. From the moment in the pilot episode when Walter pointed out he had pissed himself (“Just a squirt.”), I was hooked for good.

I can’t think of any other character on TV, past or present, who manages to be pathetic, inspiring, commanding, comedic, tragic and lovable all at the same time. He’s a narrative miracle, able to alter the mood of every scene he is in without ever betraying what the character is at his core because he encompasses every possibility. Part of that is strong writing (even the worst writer must relish putting words into Walter’s mouth, giving them a chance to shine), but most of it is the inspired casting of Noble, which opens up innumerable opportunities for pathos, drama or humour. The only other character on TV that makes me this happy is Ben Linus, who was also a happy accident of casting that gave writers so much to play with. Emerson and Noble are proof that casting interesting and daring actors is more than half of the job of making dramatic gold. Let us hope they inspire other showrunners to take a chance on the weird.

Best Moment: Oh God, where to begin? “I just got an erection. Oh, fear not, it’s nothing to do with your state of undress. I think I simply need to urinate.” “Unless you have an IQ higher than mine, I am not interested in what you think.” “To understand what happened at the diner, we use Mr. Papaya. This is upsetting because he is the friendliest of fruits.” “The only thing better than a cow is a human! Unless you need milk. Then you really need a cow.” Then there’s the random moments, such as shuffling around a room long enough to generate a static shock to his son’s head, or his various explosions of temper at the generally useless Olivia or Peter. Basically, pick even a weak episode, and wait for Walter to show up. Invariably, something fun will happen. When he’s not having some awful and distressing breakdown.

Next up, worst new characters of the year, and then miscellaneous stuff about best pilots and worst direction and all that jazz.

The 2008-2009 Caruso Awards: The Worst Episodes of the Year

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As with the list of best episodes, we’re operating on a strict timeline, meaning some shows that would normally appear here, won’t. Luckily, as the summer sees less non-reality shows aired, I’m exposed to less dross. Of the shows I’ve seen over the past couple of months, only one would potentially qualify for this list, i.e. ABC’s dripping wet space soap Defying Gravity. I cannot believe showrunner James Parriott not only aimed to make a show that he has described as “Grey’s Anatomy in space”, but managed to find a lead actor even less appealing than Patrick “Oily Void” Dempsey (Ron “Acting Lessons” Livingston, if you were curious). Anyway, that will have to wait until next year, as the show is still on, inexplicably. Now, I shall let my anger flow from me like sewage from a pipe. Apologies for the inevitable mean-spiritedness…

10. Battlestar Galactica – Daybreak

daybreakAs was said in the previous post, ending a long-running series is a fraught proposition, almost guaranteed to disappoint some fan somewhere. The trick is to make sure that at least the core questions or dilemmas of the show are addressed and resolved, and to pay off longrunning character arcs in a way that show consideration for continuity and human behaviour. No mean feat. It’s unfair to criticise showrunners for not getting a finale 100% right, but if Shawn Ryan could get it 99.999% right with The Shield, we now know it can be done to a very high degree of viewer satisfaction. Daybreak tried to resolve all of the unanswered questions posed by four seasons ofBattlestar Galactica, but in the laziest manner possible. Attributing all kinds of mysterious happenings to a unknown force that is never named or explained or given any kind of motivation rendered the whole tale pointless. As wishy-washy as the nebulous thought processes of the worst kind of woolly-headed fantasist, Daybreak resolved barely anything, with characters making illogical and suicidal choices for no reason other than that it was the last episode, and it needed to end before the final credits. The puddle-deep enquiry into AI ethics was the killing blow (Hug A Robot Today, So They Don’t Nuke Us Tomorrow!). So why is it not higher in this list? Because the first hour was fantastic, Boomer’s redemption was beautiful, and it featured some of the best performances of the year (Callis, Olmos, McDonnell: take a bow). Shame it didn’t follow through properly. Or at all. (For more whining about how disappointing this episode was, here is my original post following the broadcast of the finale.)

9. Dollhouse – Stage Fright

stagefrightIt’s tempting to be forgiving of the first half of Dollhouse‘s first season. Thousands of words have been written about how Joss Whedon’s incredible new show had its wings clipped by the evil suits at Fox, who either couldn’t understand the high concept or thought no audience could, and thus tried to force the show into a poorly fitting mission-of-the-week format. Until, that is, they suddenly stopped being evil suits and let Whedon go crazy with ideas and talking and audience-alienating character arcs like Ballard’s descent into self-loathing and unpleasant hate-fucking or Adele’s surprising ethical lapses with Victor. Let’s not forget, as shaky as the first half of the season was, it also laid the groundwork for the miraculous TV that was to come. And yet, even taking that into account, Stage Fright was a desperate failure, more Bionical Woman meets Josie and the Pussycats than Alias meets Buffy,  with Echo imprinted with the personality of a pompous backing singer for a superstar, and Sierra mugging for the camera as an adoring fan. The final dramatic scenes were like out-takes from Wayne’s World. It’s not so bad, though. The team responsible for this episode (David Solomon, Maurissa Tancharoen and Jed Whedon) also gave us the phenomenal Epitaph One. For this mis-step, they’re super-totally forgiven, and then some.

8. Dexter – Turning Biminese

turningbimineseAs I’ve complained before, the popular and critical adoration of Dexter has baffled me for years. What strikes me as overdirected, poorly acted, clangingly obvious and desperately patronising drives millions of viewers into paroxysms of joy. Fair enough. Shades of Caruso keeps giving it chances, especially when Shield producer Charles Eglee steps in, and that patience was rewarded with the most pacey and entertaining season yet. However, it’s still overdirected, poorly acted, clangingly obvious and desperately patronising. While most episodes this year were just average (and one, Sí Se Puede, was actually very entertaining, even to this Dexter hater), some were just dire. Turning Biminese was the worst of the bunch, featuring yet more obvious metaphors, tedious sub-plots for the dreary cops in what can only be described as the world’s most inept police department, and a cringe-inducing, desperately unfunny rant from forensic photographer and obnoxious foul-mouth Matsuka, in a scene that sounded as if it had been written by an enraged adolescent Ain’t It Cool talkbacker who had just been told that the star of his favourite TV show was gay. The episode’s worst crime? After realising that Dexter is a vigilante with a murderous MO, season three Big Bad Miguel Prado (played with scenery-devouring enthusiasm by Jimmy Smits) actually says “Dexter, you and I, we’re the same!”. Instant, irrevocable FAIL.

7. Torchwood: Children of Earth – Day 2

It’s not a Worst Episode of the Year list without an appearance from the Torchwood team, ineptly going where no one should ever have gone before. Or after, for that matter. But what is this? Not the worst hour of the year? How could this be? For a start, having Russell T. Davies give his full attention to the show instantly raised the quality level, after two years of neglect from the hapless Chris Chibnall. A greater focus and a willingness to do the unthinkable to the core team of characters gave it a boost of credibility and power that even a hater such as myself cannot deny. After two years of staggering awfulness, the first episode of the mini-series Children Of Earth was a huge and pleasant surprise. Dialogue fizzed, action zoomed along with actual momentum, and drama happened without becoming instantly ridiculous. It was enough to make me tuck into a large slice of Humble Pie.

And then, almost as soon as it had promised so much, the show fell flat on its face and stayed there. While fans and critics lined up to praise the show for its bold plot twists and dark subject matter, it became apparent that the most startling dramatic moments — the horrible fate of the children taken by the 456, the various depressing deaths, the commentary about the venality of politicians — were jotted down as essential touchstones early on in the scripting process, with little idea of how to create the connective tissue necessary to make these moments work, let alone create characters who act like recognisable human beings (the ridiculous — and easily avoidable — fate of John Frobisher sticks in the craw most of all).  The moral conundrum at the heart of the show fails too. The threat facing humanity is never fully explained, so every terrible choice is undermined by the suspicion that there might have been a way to avoid doing such terrible things, but those possible solutions are being rushed past in the hope that the viewer won’t notice. Plot holes and longeurs abound, and the usual failings of this most ridiculous show rear up once more (poorly executed action, terrible performances, po-faced melodrama). Day 2 makes the list for quickly ruining the promise of the opener. Easily the most over-rated TV event of the year.

6. Fringe – The Cure

thecureBy the time season one of Fringe reached episode six, the show was wobbling between two states: pointless, boring misfire, or insane, ambitious curio. We’d been given an overlong and dull pilot, several minutes of unexciting chase sequences, and oh God so much witless exposition from Peter Bishop. We had also been given mad ray-guns, Warren-Ellisian techno-telepathy, burrowing missiles, various fun Easter Eggs and, best of all, The Observer. Just as the show had begun to show promise, the tinkering of the showrunners threw a frustrating spanner in the works by revamping lead character Olivia Dunham. As she had done nothing particularly interesting for the five previous weeks, it was a necessary move, but there are ways to do it right. Thrust into an adventure featuring super-evil brain scientists and their sexy lab assistants, Olivia cast off her passive demeanour and transformed into an ill-judged avenger, stepping on toes, cracking skulls, and “flirting” with her nemesis. Anna Torv relaxed into her role by the end of the season, but here she was way out of her depth, mugging and shouting and overplaying most dramatic moments. If the episode had been better it wouldn’t have mattered, but even Walter seemed out of sorts. The fingerprints of concerned and interfering Fox executives were all over the place. It would be weeks before Fringe recaptured that exciting post-Observer momentum.

5. Ugly Betty – Ugly Berry

uglyberryOnce a vibrant and lovable diversion with hidden brains and a commendable commitment to showing racial and sexual diversity, Ugly Betty is now a shadow of its former crazy self. After some of the best writers and directors on the show were sacked midway through the second season, the quality dropped noticeably, and Shades of Caruso’s interest dropped even further. Early struggles to keep up with the lacklustre third season faltered with the stunt casting of Lindsay Lohan as Betty’s nemesis Kimmie Keegan, but it was the appalling Ugly Berry that killed our interest altogether. Jokes fell flat, potentially long-running arcs were cut short (Lohan’s departure has been blamed on her dreadful behaviour, but who knows — or cares — what the real reason was), and new arcs came and fizzled with distressing regularity. That crazy energy had turned to depressing inertia. Even though it features three of the most entertaining actors on TV (America Ferrera, Michael Urie, and the amazing Becky Newton), enough was enough. So sad to see a once great show go the way of last season’s fashions.

4. Eleventh Hour – Agro

agroITV’s failed Doctor-Who-killer, Eleventh Hour, was improbably picked up by Jerry Bruckheimer, possibly while the writers’ strike kept his brain-trust out of commission for months. Good for the UK, I guess, especially with Brit actor Rufus Sewell taking over from previous star Patrick Stewart and heading up this expensive show. Avoiding the crazy superscience of Fox’s Fringe, Eleventh Hour seemed to want to explore actual moral questions about modern advances, soberly showing exaggerations of real world dangers and asking whether the men and women of science were capable of reining in their worst impulses in order to help mankind. Well, if you can call portraying most of the scientists on the show as demented, power-crazed idiots “sober”. The show was arguably more ridiculous than Fringe by pretending to be more responsible with its plots, while throwing logic, reason, and recognisable scientific theory out of the window on a week to week basis. To make things worse, at least Fringe was fun. Eleventh Hour was the dreariest show on TV, a seemingly never-ending chain of cliches, moodily-lit close-ups of slightly worried faces, and undramatic soap operatics staged with all the half-arsed energy of a commercial for boil-in-the-bag rice. Of those eighteen tedious hours, the most exasperating might have been Agro, during which Dr. Jacob Hood matches a DNA sequence to that of a dangerous fungus by looking at twelve base pairs on a blackboard. Obviously they were the most distinctive twelve pairs out of the possible 12,495,682 that could have been on the board (and that’s if it was merely yeast). That kind of stupidity kills shows dead, you know.

3. The Mentalist – Russet Potatoes

russetpotatoesWhen describing The Mentalist, Shades of Caruso has found itself using words like “pleasant”, “diverting”, “watchable”. Even in the grip of an absinthe hallucination, it would be an impossibility to make a claim that The Mentalist is great TV. Nevertheless, it did approach an unexpected intensity in its very entertaining season closer Red John’s Footsteps, and its genial tone was often a nice contrast to the humourlessness of a lot of TV procedurals. Sadly, when it went wrong, it went memorably wrong. Russet Potatoes introduced hypnotism into the mix, pitting Patrick Jane against mesmerists of such great power that they can create murderous minions at the drop of a hat. One of the CBI team — the gloriously named Rigsby — is turned into little more than a dopey puppet, macking on his colleagues and trying to kill our be-vested hero. Hypnotism could never achieve the results seen here, which wouldn’t be a problem if the rest of the series hadn’t shown such an admirable commitment to portraying the acts of flim-flam artists and fake spiritualists in a realistic light. The show’s IQ level dropped precipitously early in the episode as every character seemed to be hypnotising someone else, and that level kept plummeting, culminating in a rooftop showdown that looked like something out of a Wayans Brothers movie. One of their really bad ones. One without Anna Faris in it.

2. Knight Rider – A Knight in Shining Armor

Glen A. Larson is a TV legend. He made almost all of my favourite TV shows back when I was a discerning pre-teen. The original Battlestar Galactica, BJ and the Bear, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Galactica 1980, Magnum P.I. (co-created with fellow TV legend Donald P. Bellisario, creator of numerous shows with titles that are just assortments of letters), Manimal, Automan… What an exciting time it was. Riding high above them all in a leather jacket and white man’s afro was David Hasselhoff, playing the heroic archetype Michael Knight (the inspiration for Joseph Campell’s Hero With A Thousand Faces, though the show was cancelled before Michael got to progress any further than his second face). Knight Rider. One man, one car, an infinite number of exciting challenges that can be resolved with little more than a bit of talking-car sass and a Turbo-Boost. It was a show so complex, so daring, so groundbreaking, that even the shows that ripped it off (such as Streethawk, featuring a very fast motorbike that, sadly, didn’t talk) were incredible just by borrowing a little of its brilliance.

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Perhaps the new Knight Rider can’t be blamed for not living up to that original, but when it actually manages to be worse than last year’s pathetic reboot of Bionical Woman, the show is pretty much the same as an asteroid made of fossilised alien-shit caught in the gravity well of the nearest sun. Actually, that doesn’t even cover the extent to which this was bad. It was like a cross between a Sci Fi original movie and a Girls Gone Wild video. In many episodes, Michael “Le” Traceur (who becomes Michael Knight early on in the season) is required to find information from a pool-side bikini party, during which he uses KITT’s space-age satellite hacking technology to zoom in on some poor lady’s bosoms. Rowr rowr! Often, he is also required to meet an old friend who is now a terrorist of some kind because of Reason X. Once or twice he is sexually harassed by his female colleagues. The majority of his enemies, when they’re not former friends who have gone insane, are either young, blonde females in leather catsuits, or young, brunette females in leather catsuits. His colleagues are either angry bureaucrats or lust-addled twenty-somethings who make nerdy references. In one episode Billy — played by Paul “Billy from Battlestar Galactica” Campbell — dresses up as Captain Jack Harkness and goes on about how much he loves Torchwood. The convergent awfulness of the moment was like having a bucket of boxer’s spit emptied over my head.

knightrider2Most of the time KITT does little other than sit there like a big piece of talking product placement, with Val Kilmer mistakenly portraying the formerly lovable car as a relative of HAL, instead of a fussy, pedantic middle-class nerd, which is what the wonderful William Daniels did in the original series. The rest of the time, it’s a plot-resolution device, with what amounts to a Star Trek replicator in the glove compartment which is used to solve every problem that comes their way. Handy. Later in the series the show turns into Transformers for five minutes, with one main character becoming super-evil before being eaten by a giant robot, which is then defeated with a Turbo-Boost. Even the most undemanding teenager would have been affronted by the cynicism of the enterprise. So why pick this episode? Because it managed to be even stupider than any of the other episodes, as well as for setting up a template so ill-conceived that the show had to jettison most of the characters in a mid-season revamp of hilarious ruthlessness. For its gratuitous semi-nudity, illogical science, and shoddy production values, it is a prime example of how unforgivably ill-conceived the whole thing was. It will not be missed.

1. Heroes – The Entire Third Season

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I tried. I really really tried so hard to pare this down to a single episode. Before watching the second half of the season, with the “Heroes” on the run from Nathan — who has gone from thinking everyone should have powers to thinking no one should have powers because of some mental conversion moment that has skipped out of my memory — I was certain the woeful Knight Rider episode was bound to top this list. After three very depressing days watching the last eleven episodes of Heroes season three back to back, it was obvious that not only was this show a more catastrophic failure than the now-cancelled swimsuit-and-car showcase, there was no way one episode could ever be singled out. The things that make Heroes the stupidest, most broken and ill-conceived show on network TV are now systemic. It’s like the opposite of a synecdoche. The whole must speak for the part.

The perfect example of a rudderless ship, Heroes has ceased to make any sense from scene to scene, let alone week to week. Early attempts to explore some kind of moral complexity — by having some of the “Heroes” flirt with doing bad things and the one true villain do good things — never disappeared, but instead became the raison d’être of the entire show. With no fresh ideas coming out of the writers’ room, each season sees the same things happening: the world is revealed to be facing a cataclysm, Sylar will try to become the President of the United States (who needs what amounts to omnipotence when you can waste years trying to pass legislation to regulate hazardous emissions from small businesses?), and all of the characters change alignments at the drop of a hat.

deadlytracy By now, we’ve seen all of the main characters in both hero and villain format, either with a time travel or premonition cop-out or with an insta-retcon plot-knot dropped into an episode with no warning or reason. Heroes have had evil scars (Peter), evil long coats (Hiro), or evil black hair (Claire). Villains have worn Spectacles of Virtue (Sylar) or Sensible Bobs of Benevolence (Daphne). This is what passes for character growth in the Heroes universe. In one episode I’m sure Noah Bennett started out evil, became good, turned evil again, and then by the end was double-crossing Nathan, triple-crossing Danko, and quadruple-crossing himself. Do the actors realise what a joke their characters have become? Why did we spend the first half of the season watching Sylar become good just for him to become evil again one episode later? How can we be expected to find any of this meaningful? And do we really need to have entire episodes taken up with Claire tearfully betraying or leaving her father, just for them to be reunited a week later? And why, part of the way through Chapter Four, did Tracy Strauss kill an innocent person, thus wrecking her chance to escape from Danko? Just to have a cool visual? This isn’t any kind of human (or even metahuman) behaviour I know. Frankly, the whole farrago is insulting.

Ah, but the writers’ room has been cleansed! Goodbye Jeph Loeb and Jesse Alexander! Hello Bryan Fuller! Surely this is good news. Well, yes, the single Fuller-written episode of the season, Cold Snap, featured the most natural dialogue Heroes has had for a while, had a pleasing structure, and a coherence lacking anywhere else in the seemingly endless twenty-five episode run. It was poetic, and kinda moving, if you look past some shaky performances. Swoozie Kurtz was in it too, for bonus YAY points. However, it not only showed up the surrounding episodes for the epic disasters they were, it failed on its own terms too. Parkman’s weird obsession with Daphne, based on a premonition that obviously was never going to come true (like most of them, as plotlines are abandoned willy-nilly), made a mockery of his previous infatuation with his suspicious wife. Fair enough. A lot of screentime was used up explaining how they had fallen out really badly, meaning he left his child just to go hang out with Suresh, because there ain’t no party like a Mohinder party (it involves a lot of intense teeth-gritting and nonsensical voiceovers about destiny and heroism and how up can be down if you squint really hard).

poordaphne

So, fair enough, Matt saves a gravely ill Daphne, and uses his Amazing Powers of the Brain to bamboozle the mortally wounded speedster into thinking he can fly her to the moon. So romantic. Compared to her previous death scene — which lasted three seconds and almost turned Matt temporarily evil for an episode before he thought better of it — it was a nice finale for possibly the only entertaining character introduced since season one. What happens as soon as Fuller hands over scripting duties to the rest of the team? Matt turns temporarily evil for an episode, thinks better of it upon confronting Danko, is reunited with his wife and son, and decides to stay with them. For ten minutes. Then he decides (with no prompting) that he has to fight the good fight against Danko. For Daphne? For justice? Because he can’t stand the sight of a full diaper? Who knows? The showrunners can’t have him written out, though. Who was he upset about earlier? Fucked if I know. Some woman. Denise? Can’t have been important. Quickly! Onto the next scene! Hiro is walking into a wall or something while Ando pouts about not being taken seriously. Everyone loves Hiro!

Fuller left not long after, and though I’m sure there were numerous logical reasons for his departure, part of me likes to think he realised how impossible it will be to sort out this Briar-Patch continuity. It can’t have helped that his good work trying to nail down even just one character (Matt) was undone almost immediately, and for no apparent benefit, nor that getting rid of Loeb and Alexander means much when you have Joe Pokaski and Aron Eli Coliete around. Maybe it was the jawdropping awfulness of the season finale, with Nathan killed and Sylar tricked into turning into him and having his memories replaced, just so that Angela doesn’t lose the son she never even seemed to like that much even though that means she’s hanging around with the man who actually killed the loved one he is now impersonating. Of all the rank stupidity and poor storytelling I have seen this year, nothing approaches the staggering wrongness of that moment. If I were Fuller and Tim Kring came to me with that idea, I’d walk out of the door and never look back. Who knows? Maybe Fuller came up with that idea? Maybe he was responsible for all of Matt’s behaviour and dialogue, even the really really stupid stuff that contradicts everything that happened in Cold Snap. Unless someone is willing to spill the beans, we’ll just have to hope it’s not the man who once made me think this show could be something truly special by writing something as wonderful as Company Man.

season3This post could go on forever. This piss-poor excuse for a show, which is — never forget — NBC’s most watched dramatic series, has become a joke. Every episode features nine or ten moments of laughable error, poor storytelling, inconsistent continuity, unbelievable behaviour, or ungrammatical dialogue. The crux of the matter, the killing blow to the credibility of this haphazard, chaotic mess is that it is now, after three years, less coherent than either the Marvel or DC comic universes. Yes, the DC universe, which has been rebooted numerous times and features 52 divergent universes with a multitude of characters, is more coherent and digestible and — most importantly of all — far more entertaining. If Lost‘s continuity could be seen as a series of lines linked together to make a starkly beautiful web of meaningful interconnections, Heroes would look more like a box of toothpicks dropped onto the ground in the middle of a sandstorm. As the talking fox from Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist says, “Chaos reigns”. This is not something to be proud of. NBC, a network that cancelled Journeyman just as it was beginning to attract plaudits, and shunted its most promising new show — Kings — into a summer season with a two month gap wrecking all storytelling momentum, has kept this on the air. The network recently gave up the ghost and stuck Leno on every night instead of commissioning new shows. That was the actual surrender. Keeping this on the air was the white flag that preceded it. Something tells me it won’t get another reprieve after this year, from NBC or from the viewers. There’s only so much patience in the world.

Dishonourable Mentions:

The Unusuals – Boorland Day: Great character actors are not enough to save a misconceived project, and this formless bag of quirky tics disguised as character traits, bolted onto the most formulaic of cop plots, was as misconceived and unimaginative as anything shown on network TV this year. As the pilot was directed by Stephen Hopkins, the show could only improve. This second episode showed it couldn’t improve enough. Sometimes, a flawed premise is just a flawed premise.

House – Last Resort: Other than his brief appearance in Big Love, Željko Ivanek has had a really bad year. Looking lost as a gun-toting villain in Heroes was one thing, but he also played a gun-toting villain in House, harassing our hero and a bunch of annoying patients for an hour, which is no way to use someone who just won an Emmy. If there’s a plot I would happily remove from modern TV, it would be the hostage situation…

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation – No Way Out: …because with Last Resort and this feeble effort from the usually dependable CSI team, it’s gone beyond played-out. The hostage situation here seems to have been used as a clumsy way to force two new characters (the excellent Dr. Raymond Langston and the practically invisible Riley Adams) into the limelight, but we find out nothing new about them other than that they cope well under pressure. Well, duh.

Parks and Recreation – Canvassing: Humour is a subjective thing, obviously, but sometimes a show comes along that seems to actually completely lack jokes. It’s not like Family Guy, where there are lots of jokes but they’re all really stupid and poorly timed. Parks and Recreation just doesn’t seem to be a comedy, except that Amy Poehler is in it. This was a particularly annoying episode, with some unlikeable people doing boring things. It can only improve.

The Office – Employee Transfer: Perhaps I’m mad at Parks and Recreation for distracting the showrunners of The Office. A generally underwhelming fifth season still had a few big laughs and upsetting drama, but one episode was a perplexing laugh-free half-hour, misjudging the balance between comedy and tragedy in a way that was shocking coming from a show that gave us last year’s brilliant Dinner Party. Plus, Amy Ryan left the show. Fuck that shit.

It feels better getting that all off my chest. Tomorrow, or the day after that, my ten favourite new characters of the year. There is no one from Heroes in that list.

The 2008-2009 Caruso Awards: The Best Episodes of the Year

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In years past, at the beginning of the new US TV season, Shades of Caruso has handed out plaudits and grouchy insults to shows from the previous year. Here are the entries from 2006-2007, and here are the three entries from 2007-2008, where I went nuts over Lost and sneered at the continual failure of Torchwood. This year is slightly different. Firstly, there will be more of it, simply because I seemed to watch even more TV than in previous years, and secondly because this is a new blog and I should land with a splash, right?

Anyway, an explanation of why some shows are on here and some aren’t. As I’m judging from 2008-2009, using the first week of the new season as a cut-off point, I’m including shows that have finished their season by now. This means I’m assessing the first season of Hung (which finished last night), but not the third season of Mad Men (it finishes in a few weeks). There are a couple of popular shows missing that I’ve not yet had a chance to see (Damages, True Blood, the second season of the excellent Breaking Bad). Hopefully I’ll be up-to-date on them by next year, because I really do need to be watching even more TV, obviously. Anyway, here are my favourite single episodes of the year.

10. Fringe – Safe

safeThere were probably better episodes of Fringe in the first season, but Safe was where the intended pace of the show was revealed. Instead of ambling like early seasons of Lost, Fringe was going to pay things off as fast as they could be introduced, and while this made a mockery of the original “disposable sci-fi procedural” format, for fans of intricate mythologies and bold narrative leaps, Safe was manna from heaven. It also featured some of the most sophisticated storytelling of the season, with both Walter Bishop and Olivia Dunham struggling to take command of their faulty memories, while a skilfully deployed red herring distracts the viewer from the true goal of the Big Bad, the oily David Robert Jones. If future seasons of Fringe can crank out a greater percentage of thrilling hours such as this, we will be a lot more forgiving of the weak monster-of-the-week nonsense necessary to pad things out.

9. Party Down – James Rolf High School Twentieth Reunion

jamesrolfAt first, Party Down seemed like it would be an Office-style cringe-com focusing on Ken Marino and his portrayal of the hapless and officious Ron Donald. Fair enough, but you would expect more from the creators (Paul Rudd, plus Veronica Mars showrunners Rob Thomas, John Enbom, and Dan Etheridge). A couple of episodes in, and it was clear that the show was channelling — and possibly surpassing — a different UK sitcom: Fawlty Towers. Beautifully plotted and performed to perfection, the year’s best new sitcom improved week by week, even surviving the loss of cast member Jane Lynch (replacing her with Jennifer Coolidge was a masterstroke). Every episode has its considerable pleasures, but this wins out simply for the final, brilliantly timed shot during the credits, working not only as a brilliant sight gag, but also as an upsetting cliffhanger and commentary on the disappointments of life. But, you know, more funny than profound.

8. Friday Night Lights – New York, New York

After the second season disappointed some demanding viewers (though that was not the case here at Shades of Caruso), the showrunners took strength from their guaranteed thirteen-episode season order and delivered a run of episodes that bordered on perfection. With no single episode better or worse than any other, selecting a highlight is a nightmare, but it was the departure of Jason Street — Scott Porter, hopefully going on to mega-stardom, as should everyone on this show — that inspired even more tears of sadness and joy than usual. As this show is gloriously sentimental in the best possible way, that’s saying a lot. With Street and best friend Riggins cast adrift in New York, the showrunners risked failure by showing two Midwest yokels struggling to find their way in the world in that hostile environment, but their determination and love for each other becomes inspiring, and the happy ending is truly earned. Even at the end of a major character’s arc, we’re still finding things out about who he is and what he can do. For the third year running, Friday Night Lights provides the best depiction of young people in all of pop culture. Who needs vampires when you’ve got a show team this good?

7. Big Love – Come, Ye Saints

comeyesaintsThe third season of Big Love — also to be known as The Best Season Yet — felt more complicated and dense with possibility than ten multiverses. With a cast of characters that dwarfs even Lost‘s pantheon of weirdos and damaged losers, the story possibilities for HBO’s polygamy drama are endless, but you don’t expect the showrunners to test that supposition by lighting the fuse on a dozen plot fireworks each week. Though such narrative richness is to be applauded, the most simple episode of the season was arguably the best, though simplicity doesn’t mean undramatic. A pilgrimage for the Henricksons, from their home in Utah to a Mormon pageant in New York, turns into a hellish experience for the entire family, as much a tribulation as a road trip. Events from as far back as the first season finally blow up, shaking Bill’s faith in his family, his calling, and himself. Progressing expertly from comedy to tragedy, writer Melanie Marnich and director Daniel Attias twisted the screws with consummate skill. The most underrated show on TV continued to amaze.

6. Mad Men – The Jet Set

Critical darling Mad Men began to exceed expectations in the second season, moving beyond the first season’s reliance on cultural juxtaposition and exploring the characters as much as the period setting. Episodes created complex narrative and thematic patterns that rewarded repeated viewings, achieving a richness and unpredictability that is usually only found in novels.


Even taking this complexity into account, The Jet Set was a cut above, changing the locale and format so completely that it was like watching an experimental short stuck into the middle of the season. The preoccupations of the show to that point — the growth of the youth movement, the value of experience, fear of obsolescence, the attractions of the unfamiliar — were painted with a richer palette, as Don has a holiday in the sun with gloriously decadent Europeans. Possibly the most thought-provoking episode of the most intellectually stimulating show on TV.

5. Sons Of Anarchy – The Pull

thepullFor a show as violent and unpredictable as this, it takes a lot to outdo itself in terms of shock value. Taking the moral muddiness of The Shield as a starting point, Sons of Anarchy lived up to the promise of its early episodes with a shocking display of narrative confidence. By the halfway point of the episode there have already been two failed assassination attempts on major characters. As if that wasn’t enough, the Hamlet-inspired show’s Ophelia-surrogate — Tara, played by Mad Men‘s Maggie Siff — is placed in a terrifying situation and kept there for ten unbearably tense minutes, as she tries to outwit her insane stalker, played with surprising menace by Jay “Dutch from The Shield” Karnes. The resolution of this stand-off is unforgettable, pushing the boundaries of what is acceptable on TV. In a flurry of jawdropping violence, with a side-order of sex, the year’s best new show arrived with a gloriously amoral bang.

4. Dollhouse – Epitaph One

It looked like the most disappointing new show of the year for almost half a season, before creator and all-round genius Joss Whedon took control of the reins and steered Dollhouse into ever-more fascinating directions, delivering more philosophical enquiry and narrative tricksiness than almost every other show on TV. Several good-to-great episodes rounded out its initial Friday night Fox run, and one or two of them could have been included lower on this list. However, the best was saved for last. Missing out on a US broadcast, Epitaph One was premiered at Comic-Con and broadcast internationally, becoming a sensation. Rightly so. What had seemed like a promising show suddenly became one of the most daring and exciting things on network TV for years, easily as intelligent and surprising as Battlestar Galactica or Lost at their best. Expanding the scale of the show from assignment-of-the-week action shenanigans to post-apocalyptic tech-nightmare epic, Whedon and his amazing staff of writers pulled the rug out from under the audience with all of the skill of a consummate showman. The battle to keep this amazing show on air for as many seasons as possible starts now.

3. In Treatment – April: Week 4

The format of In Treatment, that has so upset delicate TV reviewers in the past, lends itself to long build-up and eventual pay-off of varying degrees. The result is that, while every week has its pleasures and trauma, it’s the final week of confrontations, breakthroughs, and regrettable failures that provides a good proportion of dramatic beats. This was different. At roughly the halfway point in the second season — seventeen episodes into its thirty-five episode run — the most moving and startling confrontation to date happens, and the ramifications of it affect everything that follows. Therapist Paul — Gabriel Byrne in a career-best performance — is forced to intervene in the life of patient April — Allison Pill, also in a career-best performance — after she refuses to get treatment for her life-threatening lymphoma. Two stubborn individuals meet head-on in a draining confrontation, with April terrified of taking control of her future, and Paul scared to become too involved in yet another patient’s life. Despite their reservations, and even though Paul’s decision dooms their therapeutic relationship, he has no choice but to cross an ethical line. Emotionally exhausting and pitched perfectly it is, as I have said before, a masterclass in acting and writing.

2. Lost – The Incident

The fifth season of Lost gave us the most shocking tone twist yet: presenting domestic bliss in the middle of the usual head-bending surprises. That calm was threatened throughout by an approaching storm, The Purge. With much of the island’s past set in stone, and Faraday’s rules of temporal solidity stressed on a regular basis, the time travel plot seemed to put too many constraints on what had previously seemed to be a web of narrative possibility. At least, until The Incident shattered all of our expectations, generating unpredictability out of the most cohesive and restrictive continuity on TV. What had seemed like a strange late-series rut was preparation for the biggest mindfuckery yet, casting new light on who our heroes are and how they came to be, and then leaving their fate in what amounts to an Eigenstate of uncertainty. Following the final, shocking white-out, no one knows what will happen next, but then this is what the die-hard Lost fan wants most of all: the itch of confusion, bewilderment, and dread, something akin to a perverse punishment, especially for fans of gun-toting fertility experts. In 2010, pop culture is about one thing and one thing only: finishing this incredible journey, and bringing these characters home.

1. The Shield – Family Meeting

One of the biggest problems with the new breed of serialised long-form TV drama is that there is always the possibility that shows will falter at the last post, tainting what has come before. Sometimes the finale is deemed unsatisfying by the fans (The Sopranos, Buffy), or it doesn’t provide satisfying answers to long-running mysteries (Battlestar Galactica), or it just stops dead with no closure at all (Deadwood, Twin Peaks). Committing to a show can be a risky proposition. Will this investment of time pay off? Perhaps more than any other show yet made, The Shield rewarded its viewers’ patience, ending on an incredibly satisfying high, and paying off seven seasons of increasingly tortured narrative with more brio and boldness than anyone could have hoped. Other than a couple of Farmington cops, every arc played out in ways that hardly any viewer could have expected, without betraying any of the characters’ core personalities, or by following the easy path. Shane and Ronnie’s final moments, in particular, still chill the blood months after first viewing.

At the core of the show was Vic Mackey, morally compromised hero or self-justifying maniac, depending on how you look at him. It was Michael Chiklis’ stage to play on, and the whole enterprise depended on him stepping up to the plate. In Family Meeting, he managed to top his breathtaking work in the penultimate episode Possible Kill Screen. Vic’s final scene, with our anti-hero standing on the edge of a metaphorical precipice, rendered this viewer speechless with anticipation and delirious pleasure. It was as perfect an episode of TV as will ever be made. To those who have yet to watch The Shield, you can jump in with confidence. The rest of the series is worth anyone’s time, but the last ninety minutes was something else: a storytelling accomplishment that viewers will be talking about for decades to come.

Honorable Mentions:

Hung – The Pickle Jar: HBO’s adorable male prostitution fairy tale hit its stride four episodes in. The final scene, with Thomas Jane breaking through Margo Martindale’s defences, was one of the highlights of the year.

Better Off Ted – Racial Sensitivity: The deceptively innocent corporate satire really showed the bite behind its chirpy exterior for the first time, as a glitch in Veridian Dynamics’ new security system turns the clock back to the days of segregation. It’s funnier than it sounds.

House – Birthmarks: The fifth season of House featured few highlights, but the reunion of House and his best friend Wilson was gold. Working through their differences on a road trip to attend a funeral for House’s father, Hugh Laurie and Robert Sean Leonard proved, yet again, that they’re the best double act on TV.

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation – 19 Down / One To Go: Writing a beloved character out of a popular show in such a way as to not annoy every fan must be almost impossible, which makes this two-parter — during which Gil Grissom solves one last serial killer case with the help of new team member Dr. Raymond Langston — all the more notable. The creepy performance by Bill Irwin and the happy ending were the cherries on top.

30 Rock – Generalissimo: Bouncing back from a disappointing sophomore year, 30 Rock fully embraced absurdity and delivered episodes to rival the first season. This featured numerous hoary sitcom stereotypes, but for Alec Baldwin’s turn as Hector Moreda, and Jon Hamm displaying his considerable comic talents, it wins out.

Tomorrow, I’ll announce my least favourite episodes of the year. For those who have followed this blog for a long time, there is a shock number one. Because, for once, it’s not Torchwood. There was a lot worse out there. A lot worse. I couldn’t believe it either…

Hello WordPress, Got Room For One More?

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Wow, the dashboard is so pretty. It’s like Functionality Porn in here…

First, an explanation of what the hell is going on for anyone showing up here for the first time. Shades of Caruso has been going for a couple of years now, during which time we have criticised Slumdog Millionaire and Mike Leigh, praised Michael Emerson and Kung Fu Panda, obsessed about Rock Band, and listened to Seth Lakeman, Jens Lekman, and Animal Collective. As the over-used phrase would have it, good times. Nevertheless, in its previous incarnation Shades of Caruso was in a rigid — and ugly — Blogger template. So, as of today, we (we being contributors Canyon and Masticator as well as me, Admiral Neck) are going to be trying out a WordPress format for a while. I’ve transferred our previous blogposts over, but some of them didn’t seem to work properly. Consider the old blog an archive, which we shall refer to from time to time, and consider this blog to be in a state of constructiony-flux.

And yes, even though we’ve not said it on this new blog, we still support James “Sawyer” Ford.

Now, time to go on and on about The Shield, Lost, and the woeful Torchwood. Business as usual, it seems.

Rock Band Wish List #4: (Addendum)

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Recently I praised Activision and Neversoft for their eclectic range of songs in Guitar Hero 5, but today I come to bury them. Because this shit just isn’t acceptable.

It might be hard to believe, but I do try to avoid preciousness or excess fragility when dealing with pop culture ephemera, and not get my knickers in a twist about, say, JJ Abrams coming along and making Spock and Uhura a couple (I thought it was quite sweet, actually), but with music, it’s different. Music is more personal, and the connection to certain creators is more direct. When Kurt died, it fucking hurt. Hurt me, hurt my friends. I still remember the night his death was announced like it was yesterday. Years earlier my mother had been reduced to tears over the deaths of Elvis and John Lennon, and I hadn’t understood why she would do that. When Cobain died, I got it. This Rolling Stone article — or should I say retyped press release — claims that this only came about once Courtney Love (that brave defender of Cobain’s legacy) signed off on it, along with Primary Wave Publishing and Dave Grohl, but it’s unclear whether they’re talking about the music or the image.

The licensing deal had been in the works for years, but Activision’s Vice President of Music Affairs Tim Riley is still pinching himself. ” ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ is a song that we’ve had at the top of our wish list ever since I came to Guitar Hero,” he tells Rolling Stone from his office in Santa Monica. “So it’s been a while.” Indeed, securing the proper approvals was no small feat. Not only did Cobain’s widow Courtney Love have to sign off on behalf of the estate, so did former drummer Dave Grohl and Primary Wave Publishing, which administers the Nirvana catalog. “There’s a lot of moving parts to something like this,” Riley explains. “But it was about timing, not an issue of resistance. We almost did it for World Tour, but we couldn’t get it together. Then after three years of working with the different parties, it was like the perfect storm.” Naturally, Love did have some concerns. Namely, Cobain’s physique, Riley reveals. “Courtney supplied us with photos and videos and knew exactly what she wanted Kurt to look like,” he says. “She picked the wardrobe and hair style, which turned out to be the ‘Teen Spirit’ look, then we went back and forth over changes — some subtle, some not so subtle.” In column B? Love’s reference to the Greek God Adonis, whose youthful good looks made the male deity an object of desire. “She certainly had a physical image in mind,” says Riley. “She wanted him to have that sort of athletic definition but not overly so.” And while Love has long had a reputation for being difficult, Riley’s experience was anything but. “She was actually great to work with,” he says. “She got back with comments pretty quickly.”

I’ll bet she got back to them quickly. Milos Forman hasn’t been rushing to cast her in another movie, I’ll wager. Would Grohl have any say in image control rights? He can’t have thought this was a good idea, surely. And what about Krist Novoselic? I’m unclear about how the Nirvana estate has been handled, but doesn’t he have a say? Whatever. I’m pissed, and I’m not the only one. I’m coming in late to the game complaining about this, but it needed to be said, my recent excitement about the game was done before I realised this had happened. Shades of Caruso does not endorse this bullshit.

It does endorse this, though.

Poor Dave.

Rock Band Wish List #5: The New Pornographers

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The Beatles: Rock Band‘s imminent release means I’m neglecting Rock Band II, which could well be a first for me. It doesn’t help that three days ago I downloaded Drop7 to my iPhone and am now hallucinating numbers like Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind.


Nevertheless, as addictive as that game is (it’s like crack and heroin got spliced in a telepod with a heap of bacon bits), it’s not going to feature Here Comes The Sun, so it will have to take a backseat soon. As I’ve said before, I’m not the biggest Beatles fan, which makes my enthusiasm for this game all the more surprising. I’m so eager that I’ve decided against buying Batman: Arkham Asylum, instead saving those pounds so that I can belt out Back in the USSR a week from now. The Batman-loving part of my brain is very angry at the Rock-Band-loving part of my brain.

Until the day TB:RB comes out, or is superseded by potential follow-ups such as The Rolling Stones: Rock Band, The Beach Boys: Rock Band, Radiohead: Rock Band, or Dewey Cox: Rock Band…

…I can still keep wishing on a star for new Rock Band DLC. The recent additions to the library have been superb: ten Spinal Tap tracks, an assortment of Tom Petty and Fleetwood Mac songs, and the one Kaiser Chiefs single I like (I Predict a Riot, predictably). Even better than that, tomorrow will see the release of a five song Talking Heads pack, comprising Girlfriend Is Better, And She Was, Take Me To The River, Crosseyed and Painless, and Once in a Lifetime. All we need now is a Big Suit peripheral, and it’s gonna be Stop-Making-Sense-HQ up in this bitch.


Of course, filling this blog with wishes is one very unreliable way to get my favourite songs on the game. The Rock Band website, however, is just fantastic, linking with the game and allowing you to make requests for future Rock Band songs on your own home page. Of course, I really doubt that my exhortations will be heeded, just as they probably won’t here, either, but it’s a lovely feature, as is the photo gallery, which allows you to create photos of your band members. Here is the full roster of The Vic Mackeyz, with (left to right) Daisy Hellcakes, McJoggah, Jen Sanity, and George Murderer:


Sadly, I am currently unable to rescue our Oscar night band — Illitaritt Natzys — from Rock Band I obscurity. Shame that. Also a shame I won’t be able to customise the Beatles line-up in TB:RB, otherwise I’d have Stuart Sutcliffe, Pete Best, Yoko Ono, and Will Oldham (for variety).

Anyway, what do I want on Rock Band now? One song occupied my head completely during a recent trip to the States. From Electric Version — an album I listened to after falling for the title track in Rock Band, aptly enough — it’s The Laws Have Changed, which is a strong contender for Greatest Pop Song Ever Recorded. (And yes, that is indeed Nicki “Cally from Battlestar Galactica” Clyne going mental in the video.

And then Harmonix can follow it up with all of Neko Case’s magnificent album Middle Cyclone. For my forthcoming birthday. Thanks in advance, chaps.