Category Archives: Caprica

The 2010-2011 Caruso Awards: The Worst New Characters of the Year

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As I said yesterday, there were very few good roles for actresses this year, but even more annoyingly, there were plenty of bad ones. It’s the usual thing; most shows need a shrewish nagging wife to make things hard for the male lead, or some sexy bikini-clad hottie to titillate (poor Grace Park in Hawaii Five-O, spending even more time in her smalls than Daniel Dae Kim), or they have little to do and are only there as a signifier of gender issues — e.g. Boardwalk Empire‘s Margaret Shroeder wasn’t terribly written, but she did seem to ping-pong between two differing emotional states, all the while standing in for oppressed women everywhere. As the year wore on this list looked like it was going to be all women; that really scared me. I’m not a misogynist!

Thankfully a lot of the shows I watched in the last couple of months provided some truly terrible male characters, but nevertheless, it’s troubling that this was the case. A momentary blip? Or a consequence of Jeff Robinov’s infamous statement that Warner Bros. wasn’t going to make movies with female leads any more? Probably not the latter, but I like to bring that up as often as possible, that a moneyman in charge of a studio thinks there’s no audience for movies with a female lead. It’s not the quality of the movies; come on, it’s gotta be the broads putting people off, man. SMFH.

So yeah, here’s some more hate. Apologies for complaining about the number one choice here again, but honestly, that character is one of the worst errors of judgement ever made in TV drama. That it happened on Jane Espenson’s watch seriously depresses me. I don’t blame her for any of it; partisan of me, yes, but I just cannot believe she wasn’t overruled a lot on that misbegotten project.

10. John Pope – Falling Skies

There’s a case to be made that Pope is actually the best character on Falling Skies. He’s certainly the only character played with any sense of fun; kudos to Colin Cunningham for avoiding the mogadon gas that seems to have been pumped into the set. Nevertheless, he’s just there to fill the gruff badass slot that shows seem to have these days; the same as Gawain in Camelot and Kyle Hobbes in V. It’s a thankless role, because no matter how long his hair, how broad his performance, how “dangerous” he might seem at first, you know the cowardly alien invasion show will do all it can to soften the character for primetime viewing. And so, after just a single episode, the vicious bastard who killed one of the 2nd Massachusetts’ numerous African-American redshirts (seriously, the black actors on this show needn’t bother clocking in at the start of the day; they’re little more than cannon fodder), and who led a band of bastards so bastardly it’s made pretty clear they repeatedly raped the only woman in their ranks, is quickly given the task of being camp cook. He’s not so bad after all, you see, because he knows about herbs and stuff. Not long after that he’s bonding with Noah Wyle’s youngest kid. Falling Skies‘ central, enormous disconnect is most transparent here; the idea of the show is meant to be bleak, and its treatment uncompromising, but instead what we get is a sanitised slice of cowardice that satisfies no one. Pope could have been a modern day Ham Tyler. Instead he’s a declawed Wolverine. I dread the inevitable crying fits he will have in season two.

9. Lumen Pierce – Dexter

SoC wants to be very clear here; any dislikings here are not aimed at Julia Stiles, who does superb work as the vengeful rape victim who teams up with Dexter to hunt down and kill a group of extremely nasty scumbags. Her work elevates the show in much the same way as John Lithgow did as season four’s Trinity Killer, with the bonus that her naturalistic take on the character provides an interesting contrast to the cartoonish performances around her. It’s Lumen herself who is the problem. For all of the interesting character moments throughout the season — her initial disastrous impulsiveness, the conflict between her urge for revenge and her fear of it — she still ends up leaving in the finale as much for franchise-supporting convenience as anything else, which once more shows up the programme’s mechanical nature. Once the season is done, the guest star leaves. Knowing this is how the show operates, much of the season feels like a waste of time; she won’t be around soon, so why invest in her? She’s just yet another character drafted in to give Dexter something to bounce off, one more twisted mirror to reflect an aspect of Dexter’s “complex” persona which amounts to nothing in the way of change or growth. Add to that her damsel-in-distress function for hero Dexter, and you have the most frustratingly almost-awesome character of the year.

8. Sophia – The Event

Though the second half of NBC’s Sci-Fi Frustration Engine was tighter than the first, the radical reboot that got us to that point had some negative repercussions as well. The afore-mentioned resemblance to 24 was the most egregious, but worst of all was making Sophia the Wussy Alien into Sophia the Unbelievably Cruel and Evil Alien in the space of an episode. In the first half of the season the “leader” of the aliens was an ineffectual loser whose words carried zero force; the regularity with which her subjects disregarded her orders or basically just fronted on her became a running joke. The showrunners were obviously aware that they had created someone with all of the moral authority of an oven glove and killed off her son in one of the most interesting episodes of the season. This was enough to turn her into a badass hell-bent on killing millions of humans. That’s inconsistent at worst, promising at best, but sadly the showrunners had cast soft-spoken Laura Innes as Sophia. When playing a compassionate alien she was fine. As a potentially genocidal vengeance-crazed villain? Not so much. The disconnect between the initial conception of Sophia and her eventual turn was the killing blow for the show.

7. Ilsa Pucci – Human Target

In the first season of Fox’s generic action series, Chi McBride was cast as Winston, the witheringly sarcastic but level-headed partner of protagonist Christopher Chance, fretting about the legality of their operations but always coming through in the end. By the final episode of that season, their friendship was well-established, and that perpetual panic was rendered obsolete. Come the second season, and for some reason he was still being dismissive of his partner’s abilities, but this time he plays second-fiddle in the chide stakes to new benefactor Ilsa Pucci. While Winston has concerns based on his understanding of what his colleague is involved in, Pucci is an outsider who perpetually stresses out about the legality of their actions, and spends most of the episode being a McKee obstacle; fine if the show didn’t already have someone in that position, but untenable here. Indira Varma is – as ever – utterly charming as the innocent caught up in the shady goings-on, but the character is a terrible drain on the show’s energy. Even more frustrating, a mid-season attempt to deepen her character is squandered almost immediately, before we get into the usual sub-Maddie-and-David romance bollocks in the last few episodes. Of all of the ideas behind the show’s unsuccessful revamp, Pucci’s redundant introduction was the worst.

6. Odin Sinclair – Caprica

Admittedly there’s only a bit of screentime given to lecherous monotheist Odin Sinclair, what with Caprica being ripped from our hearts by Syfy as they attempt to purge their schedule of, you know, sci-fi. Which is fine by me; he represents the only upleasant spot in the final run of this magnificent show. He’s a great representation of Caprica‘s unorthodox characterisation. There’s barely a single character in this show that doesn’t defy categorisation; they all feel like recognisable humans, filled with contradictions and weaknesses and flaws. And so Odin is a slimy little opportunist who uses a Lacy Rand avatar for porn purposes, smokes space weed like an intergalactic beatnik, and then somehow manages to actually seduce the real Lacy Rand as some kind of awful bonus. Horrible that the writers would do that, but I guess his tiny rebellions and doofus-cool are realistic. He’s the show’s bad boy, and at least does better than the similarly-creepy but far-more-dead Philomon from the first half of the show. So if he’s such a cleverly-drawn character what is he doing on this list? Well, I reckon I’m allowed to stick at least one character on here just because I just can’t stand them, even if that character is intentionally awful and given some compelling qualities. Oh Lacy Rand, you can do a lot better than this sleazy little hipster schmuck.

5. Stephanie Powell – No Ordinary Family

Rowan Kaiser of the AV Club wrote a great piece about No Ordinary Family‘s conservatism, a right-wing viewpoint perfectly encapsulated in the character of Stephanie Powell. Her power is superspeed, a gift that Barry Allen and Wally West would use to travel through time or pass through solid matter. Hell, even Heroes‘ Daphne used it to steal things. In No Ordinary Family, for the most part, Stephanie’s superspeed gives her the ability to get all of her chores done quickly. This is a character written to be smarter than almost everyone else in the show, a scientist researching the mysterious plant that gave them all superpowers. And yet this is merely a “Strong Female Character” get-out clause, her intelligence practically added by default as there needed to be a scientist in the main cast and her husband Jim is written to be an emasculated child whose arc from dope to hero is more important than her actualisation. And so, instead, Stephanie just races around, hoovering and making dinner and lunch for her navel-gazing, lazy family of odious self-regarding jerks, just like a good housewifey should. That’s when she’s not a relentless Claire-Dunphy-esque buzzkill, nagging her nigh-invulnerable super-strong husband to stay home so he doesn’t get hurt, because the presence of whiny behaviour from women in bad TV shows supersedes logic. Man, fuck this show.

4. King Arthur – Camelot

Okay look, in the long game for this show I’m sure Arthur was meant to become a kingly king, a man who leads men, the ruler who unites the lands of Albion, searches for the Grail of Christ and fights the forces of the evil Morgana le Fay, and how better to begin this monumental arc than by casting the guy who looked like he was suffering from tuberculosis in Tim Burton’s magical screen version of Sweeney Todd. SoC has nothing against Jamie Campbell Bower; his rendition of Johanna in Todd is quite lovely. Nevertheless, it’s hard going watching this wispy-bearded incarnation of Arthur, who seems completely out of his depth at every step. It’s a version of the myth that sees him improbably capture the hearts of his followers despite looking like he’s going to burst into tears throughout, but no amount of swords pulled from waterfalls are going to convince the audience that he’s worthy. If they really were planning to toughen him up over the course of the show, they would have needed about 20 seasons to realistically get to that point. The show’s insistence on making Merlin the guiding hand means the central character is little more than a puppet. He does have some agency, at least, but unfortunately his act of rebellion against his mother and medieval consigliere is to stalk and pester Guinevere, all the while whining at her about how much he loves her and why don’t you love me back I’m totally the king cuz Mr. Merlin says so waaaaaahhhhh. Basically, he’s me when I was fifteen. No one followed me into battle when I was a teenager, so why the hell should I believe that anyone would pledge allegiance to this fey twerp?

3. Nelson Hidalgo – Treme

Last year SoC gave its prestigious Worst Character of the Year award to Treme‘s Sonny. Who could argue with us that the barely-talented, energy-sucking, self-pitying creep didn’t deserve his place at the top of the list? Well, David Simon for one. Okay, he didn’t respond to us specifically. Such was the furore about Sonny that Simon mentioned it in one of his customary defensive and self-aggrandizing interviews, bitching out fans for not waiting to see what character magic he weaved with Sonny in the future. And, to a certain extent, he was right. Sonny has struggled towards respectability this year. I’m sure that this year’s addition of opportunistic braggart Nelson Hidalgo will yield some interesting narrative further down the line, but as with Sonny, the main problem, above and beyond his obnoxious personality and forced bonhomie, was that he was painted as such a broad villain, an almost comically corrupt individual whose worst crime is almost his patronising cultural tourism, that all the audience can do is stare in disbelief as the air curdles around them. Treme can be very subtle, and it can clang like a struck anvil. This year, the sound of that anvil was a wheedling cry of, “Cuz, cuz, cuz!” Don’t let the rusted storm door hit you on the ass on the way out, Nelson.

2. Maggie Young – Rubicon

Perhaps it was Rubicon‘s mid-season change in direction that left Maggie the pouting PA so lost and aimless. Certainly the early episodes hinted that Maggie would be interesting even if only as the woman who betrays our hero in a femme fatale style, a possibility hinted at by her vampish demeanour and heavily-stressed sexiness. In that case we can blame the second showrunning team for not finding anything for Maggie to do for the majority of the season. Rubicon‘s biggest novelty — and arguably its greatest weakness — was its insistence on depicting workplace drama at such length. When the usual flirtations and power plays were enacted against the sinister espionage backdrop, the contrast was entertaining. Maggie’s problems – feckless husband, unrequited love, guilt over her early betrayal of Will – were played against nothing compelling, which meant they were just bog-standard plots lifted from other stories. With nothing to do Maggie just hovered in the background, mouth slightly open in a perpetual expression of cluelessness. Was she meant to be the show’s Joan, sultrily swishing through the American Policy Institute corridors like a sexy panther? Or was she just a loose end that no one could tie up? Whatever her initial purpose was, by the fifth episode she was a drag on proceedings, and merely got more useless. Rubicon ground to a halt whenever she appeared; a problem on any show, and deadly on something as slow-paced as this.

1. Oswald Danes – Torchwood: Miracle Day

In this terribly angry post, SoC expressed its opinion about paedophile Oswald Danes at great length, stressing our disbelief that anyone in any writers’ room on the planet would think that adding a convicted child rapist and murderer to your show was a bonus. This wasn’t a Todd Solondz, Happiness moment where that nice Dylan Baker plays a paedophile as a thwarted, lovestruck criminal and plays with your expectations. That was truly provocative storytelling. Adding a child rapist to a dim-witted sci-fi action show can only be worthwhile if something is said, or some idea is explored.

I think the idea here is that humanity will embrace someone awful if they are the beneficiary of a miracle, thus showing how easily gulled we stupid humans are in the face of the impossible, or that the media can manipulate our opinion about absolutely anything becase we’re such sheep, even though the media doesn’t seem to be any better at this than the paedophile himself as the show goes on. Whatever the point meant to be made here, Oswald Danes was meant to die in the first scene, at the very moment the polarity of the… thingy (this is as technical as the explanation in the show) is reversed using Jack’s blood, and he didn’t. So he is the new messiah. But no one thinks this about any one of the hundreds of thousands of other survivors that should have died at that exact moment. Eh?

And so Oswald just hangs around for a few hours, making some speeches and doing this weird leering thing with his distorted face as if someone keeps shoving invisible turds under his nose, getting into fights because he disgusts people, or being treated like a compassionate visionary because he knows how to manipulate people into liking him, depending on whatever garbled point is being put across that week. Of course this means he joins the long line of Torchwood characters with no coherently thought-out personality, who are merely introduced into the story to get the narrative from point A to point X through sheer bloody-mindedness, and not through the traditional storytelling method of depicting recognisable human beings acting with consistency and agency and propelling the plot through actions that reveal something about themselves.

If I were to be generous (which I’m in no mood to be, to be honest; it’s been a crap day thus far), Torchwood exists as a counterweight to Doctor Who‘s relentless positivity about the potential and wonder of humanity. This show is all about making a very strong point about how terrible and venal and mundanely evil we are, though it has yet to even once dramatise this point in a convincing way. And before anyone cites Children of Earth, please don’t. The characters in that series bore so little resemblance to humans that it might have well been set in the Tubbytronic Superdome. Any potential connection between their behaviour and ours was stretched to breaking point by their improbable and hysterical evil.

In that sense Oswald Danes is consistent with previous Torchwood characterisations, but if you take a step back and try to look at him objectively, you see that he was an experiment gone horribly wrong, a story device added without properly considering what he was meant to do. As such, he wastes the viewer’s time. That’s bad enough, but he’s also a paedophile. You put a child rapist in your show, RTD, and he served no purpose. There was no story told here, no allegory or examination of morality or even plot mechanics. His presence in the show is like an enormous stinky shitstain wiped across the franchise. In all the time I’ve been writing about TV, I’ve never seen any decision as wrongheaded and ill-intentioned as this one. It’s an idea whose time will never come.

Okay, one last post. I feel like I’ve given birth to a litter of extremely large and angry babies. This blog should have asked for an epidural.

The 2010-2011 Caruso Awards: The Best Episodes of the Year (20-11)

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2011 has been a bit of a crap one for movies so far. There’s very little I’ve outright loved — only Attack The Block, Rango, and Fast Five have really fired my imagination, and even the current London Film Festival has left me cold so far. It’s made me worry that there’s something wrong in my head. Have I experienced too many stories? Have I become immune? Will I never again enjoy a story without thinking the final act needed an extra level (The Skin I Live In) or thinking someone else did it better (Rampart = A trailer for The Shield)?

Perhaps it’s good, then, that I’m doing this list now. Ordering these shows has been a nightmare. They’re all truly great hours (or half-hours) of TV, with barely a micron of difference in quality between them. Even the top spot (in my next post) was hard to decide on, as there were three episodes that were eligible candidates. I’m happy with my final choice, but it took some pondering. I think I’m good with this part of the list as well, though I’m sure I’ll regret something once I’ve hit Publish.

20. Big Love – The Noose Tightens

The final season of HBO’s underrated polygamy drama had a lot to do before it came to a close. The first few episodes appeared to be concerned with dealing with the fallout from the previous, much-derided season’s worst excesses, as well as setting up the biggest plotquakes to come. The result was a dispiriting lack of urgency for several episodes, but a forgiveable one when this barnstorming hour is taken into account. Everything that had been set up thus far kicked off here: Margene’s guilt over her underage marriage to Bill leading to her hysterical reaction to Cara Lynn’s affair with her tutor; Bill’s desperate anger and bullying of Barb as she prepares to spread her wings and leave his church; Alby’s plot to finally free himself of his arch-enemy Bill with the help of Verlan; the wives facing up to the fact that they are likely to lose their husband as Bill pleads with Senator Dwyer to drop the procurement prosecution aimed at Barb. It’s a packed episode; fireworks go off in every scene, leading to a heart-stopping finale with Alby’s mania finally finding a victim. Chloe Sevigny, who has always been the best thing about Big Love, reaches new heights here, her performance ranging from blazing defiance to mortal terror. The show – and the masterful creation that was Nicolette Grant-Henriksen – will be greatly missed.

19. Terriers – Fustercluck

Viewers who caught the first three episodes of FX’s almost uncategorisable slum-noir P.I. show were likely confused as to what they were getting. The tone seemed at odds with expectations; neither as funny as Ted Griffin’s work on Ocean’s Eleven, nor as gritty as Shaun Ryan’s Shield, it seemed to straddle a number of genres. There were also quibbles about the overall structure; was it going to be serialised or episodic? The fourth episode was where Griffin’s masterplan came into focus, and also made it clear that the first three episodes were actually tonally consistent, not to mention intentionally unpredictable. Hank and Britt – two well-drawn characters unlike pretty much anyone else on TV – come into focus as two street-smart chancers making it up as they go along, and getting themselves into more trouble than they bargained for when they become accidentally responsible for the death of the shady real estate developer who hired them in the first episode, whose body they are then forced to hide. With that act the show suddenly made a weird kind of sense; these were not the normal TV heroes, and this was not a normal TV show. Most shows have a format for you to hold onto, but at this point Terriers leapt into the unknown, and became essential viewing.

18. The Vampire Diaries - The Descent

No matter what your feelings about the capabilities of handsome Ian Somerhalder as an actor, his Vampire Diaries character Damon was always one of the best things about this oft-po-faced supernatural teen drama. It’s only fitting that the best episode of the massively improved second season should be Damon’s finest hour. Our anti-hero takes on the responsibility of looking after his sexual partner Rose as she slowly succumbs to the mortal wound inflicted by a werewolf. Other momentous events happen in this episode, all courtesy of SoC writing heroes Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain, but the episode makes the list thanks to the final ten minutes, beginning with a surprisingly moving fantasy scene with Damon easing Rose’s pain with a manipulated dream that allows her some dignity and comfort before he euthanises her. Our new awareness of his compassion is then blown away in a horrifying final scene, as a clearly mentally unstable Damon finds a lone woman driving through Mystic Falls, and regretfully but violently kills her. The final shot of the episode, showing Damon’s vampire eyes, bloodshot and almost glowing with confusion and malevolence in the darkness, is the most chilling of the entire 2010-2011 TV season. It’s not the only time The Vampire Diaries outdoes its prestige TV rivals by messing with the audience’s expectations, but it’s the most memorable.

17. Boardwalk Empire – Paris Green

For SoC there was no greater frustration this year than that experienced while watching Boardwalk Empire. The setting, cast, and production values were all well within our wheelhouse, but the show never took off the way we had hoped. Time will tell if this is just a stumble before a sprint, but until then we can at least be grateful for this memorable late-season belter. For the most part Paris Green appears to be a quiet meditation on the imminent death of the Commodore, which leads to a series of revelations for Jimmy Darmody. Once more Michael Pitt excels as the bitter, thoughtful heavy, burning with frustration at his lot in life and torn between two emotions as his father nears death. Of course, in the final surprising act it isn’t his father who dies, but a man with a secret allegiance to Nucky Thompson – the man who acted as a guardian to Jimmy. Poor Agent Sebso, who finally proves to be as foolish as his cover persona seemed, is coerced into his own death at the hands of his unhinged boss. Michael Shannon shakes the screen as the evangelically-powered Nelson Van Alden, blasphemously baptising his Jewish lackey in a final scene of terrifying power that goes disastrously wrong. If only the rest of the series had scenes as riveting as that, or the beautifully shot moment when the two prohibition agents initially find the baptism site. Hopefully season two will harness the potential of this delirious insanity.

16. Spartacus: Gods of the Arena – The Bitter End

Most, if not all, Spartacus fans would have been fine with the show taking a year-long break while star Andy Whitfield recovered from cancer, but the showrunners cleverly and graciously gave him time to rest by creating this prequel mini-series while keeping him on staff in order to support him, in the hope he would return. Sadly, this was not to be. With only six episodes in the series it was possible that Gods of the Arena wouldn’t achieve the same narrative momentum that the first season did which, if you don’t recall, was moving as fast as a bullet train by the time the final episode arrived. The worries were for naught; with many of the familiar characters in place, Gods of the Arena had a head start. Even with so much of the story already told, GOTA still managed to throw in a few surprises, especially the insight into just how cunning Lucretia truly is. The last episode of the season was a balls-out shocker with an amazing final setpiece; a huge ruck in the new arena which features the immensely satisfying resolution of numerous arcs, including the developing animus between Batiatus and Solonius, the reason for loathsome Ashur’s hatred of Crixus, and the surprising reason why Gannicus isn’t present in the House of Batiatus in Blood and Sand. It’s thrilling, shocking, gorgeous and gaudy and as addictive as smoking, just as we had hoped.

15. The Walking Dead – Days Gone By


I’ll have more to say on this in a forthcoming post. I’ll link back once it’s published. For now, just look at that awesome picture and try to remember how promising that pilot was, how excited everyone got when it aired. So long ago…

14. Parks and Recreation – Fancy Party

There were funnier episodes in the third season of Parks & Recreation (also known as The Show That Shades Of Caruso Once Foolishly Said Was Terrible But Actually Turned Out To Be One Of The Great Sitcoms Of Our Time, for short), and there were more ambitious ones, but no other episode this year encapsulated the life-affirming fantasy elements of this show so completely. The city of Pawnee transforms all who live under its umbrella of optimism, and all who have committed themselves to following this remarkable show are similarly affected by its cheer-inducing rays. This episode saw April and Andy get married after being together for a little while (“My Brita filter is older than their relationship,” says Ben, adding, “Wait a second, should I change my Brita filter?”). The sensible characters object, the foolish characters rejoice, and for once common sense is utterly wrong. Only in Pawnee can an obviously disastrous life-decision be the only right thing to do, and not just because their young love finally motivates Leslie to begin her courtship of Ben. It’s also encapsulates the beauty of Parks and Recreation; a sentimental show that makes that oft-derided philosophy acceptable, a sitcom that offers the audience a chance to embrace light in a dark world, without shame. Long may it run without being tampered with by NBC executives.

13. Caprica – Apotheosis

If SoC had its way, Caprica would still be with us. Its cancellation was inevitable, seeing as only about fifteen people watched it, but at least the show went out in style. Last year saw the similarly regrettable cancellation of Dollhouse; another cerebral sci-fi show that had more on its mind than episodic threats or tedious alien invasion plots. That final season almost fell apart under the weight of completing its story. The last few episodes were a mad dash through several seasons of plotting, and I’m grateful for that, but it did mean the finale was compromised. Caprica comes up with a solution that is simultaneously more satisfying and yet still upsetting; the show ends with a montage of what would have come if Caprica had run for ten years like it should have. The tease is fascinating, forming a link between this Battlestar Galactica prequel and the rest of the franchise. The main body of the episode is magnificent too: we see the Graystone family find peace as they reconcile with the avatar of Zoe; we see the failure of Clarice Willow’s dastardly plan, as Daniel and Amanda Graystone thwart the Soldiers of the One in their quest to promote the Monotheistic Heaven; and we see the Adamas take their revenge on the Guatrau following the death of the first Bill Adama. It’s a great season finale, and the only thing that stops it from being a great series finale is that it shouldn’t have been a series finale. ::wears black gloves in mourning, as is the Tauron way::

12. Rubicon – A Good Day’s Work

Rubicon travelled a short distance from 70s-style conspiracy drama to cerebral 24-style topical thriller with some peculiar baggage including the spate of uninvolving office romances and a malfunctioning sub-plot featuring Miranda Richardson as a woman being sad in some rooms. It was the eleventh episode that fulfilled the promise of both versions of the show, with our paranoid hero Will Travers finally revealing to Catherine Rhumer the results of his research; shadowy corporation Atlas-McDowell is in the Shock Doctrine business, wrecking the world and profiting from the chaos. The show suddenly comes into focus, and writer Zack Whedon and director Brad Anderson crank up the suspense with a nerve-wracking fight scene between Will and smug assassin Donald Bloom. It’s the build-up and pay-off that seals the deal; Truxton’s anguish when he realises what he must do to protect his evil cabal, and Kale’s efficient disposal of the dead body of his former lover. This immensely exciting hour of TV ends with Will slowly falling apart, as he realises just how much danger he is in. Plus we get to hear Rocket from the Crypt’s On A Rope over the sound of a body being dismembered. How often does that happen on TV?

11. The Shadow Line – Episode Six

Addicts of Hugo Blick’s dread-soaked drama, shunned by those who proved immune to the almost other-worldly oddness of it all, could well have felt vindicated in their obsession by the rush of shocking moments that occur in the middle of this episode. The first half of it seems like an elaborate set-up for an imminent disaster, which comes during a typically lengthy set-piece that sees Jonah Gabriel face off against his would-be assassin Gatehouse in the home of his mistress and secret son. The audience, of course, knows that they are not alone, and the traps set by both Gatehouse and Glickman end up going horribly wrong. This ten minute centrepiece, in an already exciting episode, is one of the crowning achievements of the TV year, a sequence of bombshells layered so expertly over each other, occasionally in contravention of usual dramatic logic, that any quibbles about the plausibility of it fade away. It’s deliberately played straight at the audience, who can only react with numb horror. Which is not to say that’s the only good thing about the episode. Gatehouse’s final scene, rising like Lazarus to face his would-be assassin, is memorably chilling and, as with the rest of this remarkable show, commendably precise in execution.

Top ten tomorrow. If I can stop shuffling the order around.

The 2010 – 2011 Caruso Awards: Lessons What I Learned, Part The Fourth

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Longtime readers will know that I’ve dedicated much of the last few years obsessively watching Cuse and Lindelof’s sci-fi masterpiece Lost, and that I liked the finale. Many didn’t, and with great and terrifying vehemence. I half-expect friend-of-the-blog @MhairiMcF to throw a sharpened copy of season 6 at my throat for suggesting it was a success right to the final, beautiful shot. I appreciate this is not the general consensus, but I’m a MAVERICK who’s not afraid to say what he thinks, except for when I write huge caveat-posts attempting to explain away my horrible cowardice.

Anyway, I’ve spent a long time boring my loyal readers about that Ben Linus and the very significant shot of an Avalon (not Apollo) chocolate bar in the finale (the key to it all), and I’m about to do it again even though it is no longer with us. No, come back! Please don’t run away; I’m trying to work out some thoughts on the nature of mystery in narrative, and how to set up small plot bombs on the way to the big stuff. This is even more on my mind after watching the masterful Breaking Bad season 4 finale, which paid off stuff I didn’t even realise needed to be paid off. Truly Breaking Bad is a thing of great wonderment. If you care about TV or storytelling, it has much to teach you. (Spoilers for Lost and Doctor Who follow.)

There’s a way to create mystery without also creating frustration and boredom

As a die-hard fan of Lost, in a world in which such an opinion makes a person some form of awful pop-culture pariah, I’m aware that my thoughts on long-arc mystery stories may be dismissed by you, the reader, especially by the time you have finished the next part of this sentence; I think Lost, a show now widely considered to have completely arsed up the landing, is one of the best examples of generating mystery in a long-run show. The finale transformed many former fans into board members of Pitchforks and Torches Inc., and I understand that, even while I pledge my allegiance to it. The final answers couldn’t satisfy everybody, though sadly they seemed to piss off almost all of the fans.

Nevertheless, it must have been doing something right to keep as many people invested for so long, and my super-scientific study of the show has identified two important elements in the way the mystery developed; the greater mystery of the Island was supplemented by smaller mysteries that were resolved in the meantime, and the larger mysteries were supported by numerous hints and clues that allowed audiences to create their own theories about what the ultimate meaning of the show might have been (and I still maintain that the genius of the show is that many unresolved elements have kept these debates going among my brothers-in-arms, who hide from view for fear of being murdered by haters).

Examples of the former are numerous. Though the new consensus on Lost is that many mysteries were dragged out for a long time, it took less than a (short) season to find out What Lies In The Shadow Of The Statue. The hatch is a mystery for about half of the first season, and then we found out what was inside at the start of the second. Even the reason for polar bears being on the island is revealed very early on, if you were willing to expend a bit of energy reading up about the Dharma Initiative online. Etc. etc. etc. The resolutions may have disappointed some, but the timescales were often shorter than critics maintain.

It’s easier to keep viewers invested if you’re throwing bones to them at regular intervals. Even better, giving the audience room to create their own theories helps too, and Lost was very good at introducing plot elements that serviced alternate interpretations throughout its run. Almost every revelation was ambiguous enough to strengthen all giant theories. The best example might be the run-up to season five’s finale. There was a chance that detonating a nuclear bomb at the site of the Swan Station could save the heroes or trigger the events that doom them; the summer after that incredible final whiteout aired was a great time to be a committed Lost fan, as debate raged over which possible interpretation was the right one.

And so to this year’s shows. Three examples of disappointing-to-disastrous long-arc planning come to mind; Doctor Who, The Event and The Killing, all of which fail in different ways and to different degrees. Who ended strongly with The Wedding of River Song, paying off the events of the season opener in a reasonably satisfying way, though it also repeated one of the show’s long-standing mistakes; not giving the audience a sense of when the end game will arrive. Lost had the benefit of having an end date, as well as a goal for the characters (getting off the island for good), that made sense to all viewers. An essential element of successful element of long-arc storytelling is giving clues as to the shape of the final story, which can be done without giving away any plot elements or surprises. That’s where Steven Moffat’s show falls down. How, and when, will Who end?

Of course Who isn’t going anywhere — it has become very lucrative and ridiculously popular, no matter how the press likes to spin the viewing figures by pretending timeshifting doesn’t exist — but it seems obvious now that what had seemed to be one season arc in Moffat’s first year was actually the beginning of a multi-season arc of head-melting complexity. Massive kudos to him for doing that, but the feeling that answers and resolutions are on the way is constantly being stymied. Having a better idea of when this long story will finish would help shape our expectations, but as the final scene of The Wedding of River Song came around, only then did it become apparent that we weren’t going to find out everything just yet.

And that’s fine, even if some of the answers we’ve had along the way (River Song is Amy and Rory’s daughter, and she “killed” the Doctor) are not really surprises at all. Nevertheless, the big arc is not paying off quickly enough, or establishing a recognisable shape, to allow the casual viewer to get a grip on it. Moffat has rejected criticisms that the show is too complicated to understand, and I’m willing to agree with him on that, but it is very complex, and the millions of ideas being thrown out are not allowing the viewer to paint a picture in their own head of what the final story will look like, even if they’re completely wrong because there are still some tricks up Moffat’s sleeve.

What are The Silence? What is their plan? Did I miss this? I must admit the gabbled dialogue distracts me so much I miss a lot of the detail. They’re a religious order? Like the Order of the Headless and the future militant arm of the Anglican Church? At times like this I enjoy Moffat’s ambition, and I look forward to his resolution, but I feel like I do when I read some of Grant Morrison’s craziest comics; like I’ve come in halfway through the story and have missed a lot of important plotpoints, and I can’t prioritise which loose ends and currently redundant events will end up being relevant to the big arc, and so have forgotten many of the key moments and characters whenever they pop up again. Even if I get comments explaining this stuff to me, I can’t make it make sense in my head. As a result, despite sporadic bursts of great enjoyment, the show has become less interesting to me.

I’m not sure how this can be fixed, though it would be nice if we wasted less time on standalone episodes and actually spent more time fleshing out these concepts instead of leaving them as tantalising hints of a greater universe. Perhaps that would make the show more comprehensible, and allow us to interact with it more (though I can see from a quick search that Who theories are almost as widespread as Lost ones). I’m aware that feeling like an outsider here is how many felt with Lost, and basically I’m getting a taste of what it was like to casually watch Lost in a state of frustration. Maybe Who‘s ultimate failing is to not be “my kind of thing” the way Lost was, which is no fault of the show.

The Event‘s long-arc failed mostly because the mysteries posed early on were thrown out as the show tried to find a form that was appealing to anyone. The aliens were pretty sympathetic in earlier episodes, which meant the show’s bad guys were often humans. Obviously this was too confusing for viewers, who abandoned the show after its spectacular pilot, and so the show contorted itself into knots trying to move the aliens into a villain role, though it commendably made their motives justified on some levels. The Event was at its best when it explored this moral quandary, which sadly wasn’t often enough.

It also didn’t help that the show spent a long time dramatising the mysterious actions of James Dempsey (Hal Holbrook), a shady conspiracy archetype injecting himself with YouthJuice and conspiring with various characters from his gloomy Office of Mysterious Conspiracy. What could he be doing? Was he a threat to humans or aliens? Before the end of the season, perhaps sensing that the show was going in the wrong direction, we find out he’s one of a race of Sentinels who protect the Earth from alien invasion. And then, moments after revealing this, he kills himself so the show can become a 24 clone. He’s never mentioned again. Any investment in this plot was a waste of time, and that’s a deep wound to a show based on resolving a mystery.

Even a scene as ridiculous as Hal Holbrook shooting himself in the head after telling the protagonist to stop wasting time chasing him instead of looking for aliens (hell of a nod and a wink to the audience there) is preferable to the tricks played by the team behind The Killing, which dragged a relatively simple story out to absurd length by introducing suspects, making them seem as guilty as it’s possible to be, and then excusing them three episodes later in the most contrived manner possible and never speaking of them again. The show isn’t about people, or life, or even about the murder of Rosie Larsen and how that affects her community. It’s a shell game.

The Killing does just about everything wrong in making a long-form show about a single case. Though it’s been a long time since I saw the first season of Murder One, I remember it did a number of things right that The Killing didn’t even try to do. It supplemented the main mystery (Did Neil Avedon kill Jessica Costello?) with other plots, not least the tension between lawyer and professional BADASS Teddy Hoffman and his nemesis Richard Cross. There was always something else going on, and payoffs littered the first season. There’s no comparison between those plots and The Killing‘s secondary stories. A delayed wedding? A search for a mole in a political campaign (yes, a subplot similarly plagued by red herrings) dramatised by literally THOUSANDS of scenes involving William Campbell and his minions arguing about emails? Who cares?

Murder One also promised a resolution by the end of the season, and we got one. I remember thinking it was pretty satisfying, especially the final fate of Cross, which was poignant and brilliantly performed by Stanley “Ol’ Dependable” Tucci. The Killing hinted at something similar and then went out of its way to render the majority of the season completely superfluous. As with all of those shows that plot for the finale (see previous posts), it made the viewer conscious that they had wasted a lot of time. It wasn’t just the lack of resolution; it was realising that the build-up had been empty entertainment calories. That was the show’s great betrayal. A disappointing ending is one thing, but to regularly piss on us on the way there is unforgivable.

Pandering to an inappropriate audience doesn’t work

No Ordinary Family was not much fun to watch, despite the entertaining interplay between Michael Chiklis and Romany Malco, but then it was aimed at a very specific demographic. To a family with young teenage children, the show might have been a lot of fun, like an undemanding Incredibles rip-off with some bland banter and a couple of poorly shot action scenes in a car park every week (seriously, the majority of the show’s “action” takes place in the same car park, and usually involved someone being punched into the side of a van). That audience never really materialised, but instead of trying harder to win that audience over, it became more interested in chasing a nerd audience that would never accept it.

Throwing in references to specific comic tropes, or casting actors from Battlestar Galactica (a show aimed squarely at adults, let’s not forget), was not going to bring in an audience that would not be served by anything else in the show. Most comic fans were rightly wary of the low-level superheroics on display. It was not a show for them, and no matter how hard Greg Berlanti and Marc Guggenheim tried (the guys who co-wrote the execrable Green Lantern, FFS), superhero fans were more likely to enjoy Alphas, a show that was smarter, funnier, and more gratifying than this. Guest appearances by Brent Spiner, Rebecca Mader (who also showed up in No Ordinary Family, playing a similar character) and Caprica‘s John Pyper-Ferguson made much more sense; they played internally-consistent villains, and were gratefully received by fans who appreciated that they were being catered for by showrunners who understood their interests.

More to come. I’ll keep the Lost chatter to a minimum. (SMILEYFACE)

The 2009-2010 Caruso Awards: Miscellaneous Gubbins of the Year

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It never ends! This is the bad thing about not blogging regularly: I have a year’s worth of observations stuck in my brain, and only by barfing them out here can I get some rest. Seriously, I haven’t slept in about eleven months. I just sit in the spare room going, “Jon Hamm: very handsome. Zachary Quinto: seen enough of him for another year”. Hopefully our pain will end soon and I can either never blog again or at least change the subject. Maybe I’ll just start blogging about books I never normally do that.

Best Couple of the Year (According to me and not Daisyhellcakes): Raylan Givens and Ava Crowder – Justified

Before we get into a more technical appraisal of what makes Raylan (Timothy Olyphant) and Ava (Joelle Carter) the most interesting couple of the year, we have to accept that two very good looking and sexy people with immediate and startling chemistry are already well on their way to becoming fan favourites. One of the key moments of the pilot for FX’s Justified came when our hero — hunting his former colleague and now nemesis Boyd Crowder — turns up on the doorstep of his high-school sweetheart Ava. It’s a scene that Scott Tobias describes well in his review of the episode:

I loved the chemistry between Raylan and Ava, Boyd’s sister-in-law, played by an absurdly sexy Joelle Carter. Ava is on the hook for murdering her abusive husband, which obviously puts her in danger with Boyd and company, but she and Raylan know each other, too. Their greeting on her front porch is something else, like an attraction so electric that they lose any sense of social or professional politesse.

Much of the first season concerns them fighting their obvious desires in a pretty half-hearted manner considering how soon in the season they hop into the sack, which naturally puts Raylan’s job in jeopardy. What’s most amusing about that is that he doesn’t really seem to care: he’s so laidback and confident he just figures it will resolve itself without his intervention. Of course, he is eventually temporarily suspended, and the relationship falters not long after that, but only because Ava won’t listen to Raylan’s good advice about getting out of town to avoid the wrath of the Crowders. Maybe that’s the key to the relationship: both of them are smart but bull-headed, and so the tension in the will-they-won’t-they plot — which often comes across as contrived — is an extension of a very believable dynamic. They’re not kept apart by social convention or contrivance or even Raylan’s job (because for the most part he doesn’t seem to think he needs to cut off his relationship with Ava): they’re always on the brink of splitting up because they won’t back down from their core beliefs.

Nevertheless, as great as this couple is, there is another romantic sub-plot for Raylan to contend with. His ex-wife Winona (Natalie Zea, completely forgiven for her depressing stint in Dirty Sexy Money after her appearances in Hung and Justified) is also on the scene, and though she is now married and has had enough of Raylan’s dark side for one lifetime, he obviously still loves her and has a chemistry just as potent as with Ava. Because basically Timothy Olyphant is very good at this: his chemistry with Molly Parker on Deadwood was similarly smoking. What the hell is going on with him? He is like a walking sexual reactor, giving off Orgone radiation and turning all of his co-stars into glowing, sex-irradiated hottness sponges.

Anyway, the relationship with Winona runs through more traditional routes — she’s married, he’s pissed her off, he’s conflicted because of his feelings for Ava — but that doesn’t stop them getting together eventually. We lucky viewers get to see our hero find a partner and then lose her, as well as pine for a lost love and then slowly rekindle it. How lucky we are to have a show with two compelling romantic sub-plots: most shows can’t manage one. Of course, there’s always a possibility that you will root for one relationship over the other, and that’s what happened at SoC HQ. I’m a member of Team Ava, and Daisyhellcakes is resolutely on the side of Team Winona. I think we can both agree that this is a far more interesting choice than Team Edward and Team Jacob, especially as there is a good case for either Ava or Winona, whereas if you’re Team Edward you’re mad, as Jacob is at least not a murderous corpse with a bouffant. Ava and Winona are well-realised characters, well-played by two talented actresses, and when they are onscreen with Raylan your TV will start to ignite and then fire outwards like some Martian heat-ray. I’ll stick with them, thanks very much. (ETA: Hello Olyphant fans on LJ! Shades of Caruso is proud to be Team Raylan first and foremost, because he’s one charming son of a bitch.)

Most Tragic Couple of the Year: Dale Tomasson and Alby Grant – Big Love

When I nominate this relationship as being the saddest of the year, I have to note that it’s a depressing cliche to see two gay men come together, be miserable because they know they can’t be together, and then have one of them take their own life because they can’t take the shame of it. It’s nothing new, and it reinforces cultural belief that a gay relationship must inevitably come with such crippling emotional pain that it’s not even worth doing. That’s the bleakest possible read of the relationship. What makes this a coupling that is worthy of praise is the lovely and disarming work by Matt Ross (never better than here) and Benjamin Koldyke, who play the two men as innocents struggling to make sense of their feelings while weighed down with fear. It’s a new note for Ross to play, and he really goes for it: his love for Dale is simultaneously sweet, creepy, and horribly depressing. Koldyke is ostensibly the elder here, and should be more responsible, but he turns into an adolescent whenever Alby is near. It’s heartbreaking to watch.

At least two shows this year managed to show gay relationships that were normal: a bit of an event, really. Modern Family had Cameron and Mitchell, who were a cuddly gay couple with an adopted daughter, and represented one of the few things I liked about that abominable show, though as this excellent article points out (thanks to @werdsmiffery for the link), there are big problems with the way they are portrayed in the most non-threatening manner possible. Even more notable was Caprica‘s Sam Adama, who has a husband (yes, wingnuts, a TV show featuring a planet that has LEGAL GAY MARRIAGE fuck you, and if that hurts your ickle feelings my heart soars to hear it). We don’t see him much, but then that’s the beauty of it. Sam is a gay man married to another and they do fine and it’s no big deal. Except it obviously is a big deal, otherwise I wouldn’t mention it, but I have to say, after months of hearing hate-filled douchebags pretending that their opposition to gay marriage is a constitutional issue (when it’s actually revulsion and anyone smarter than a fungus knows that it’s revulsion), just seeing an acceptance of gay marriage on a TV show made me absurdly happy. Some more screentime for Sam’s husband would be nice (mentioning him and then not showing him except for a quick glimpse seems like a dodge just as bad as Cameron and Mitchell showing so little affection), but even this small detail on the show not only makes the world of Caprica more interesting, it also makes the TV landscape a little less homogenous, a little more inviting.

Best Reality TV Moment: So You Think You Can Dance – Alex and Twitch

Reality TV doesn’t really do it for me. Sure, I adore Top Chef – surely the highwater mark for reality TV: talented people doing amazing things under extreme pressure with personal bullshit kept to the minimum for the most part — and I still like America’s Next Top Model for the most part, usually whenever the models are obviously following orders to worship Empress Tyra, but the shows that take place on a stage leave me cold. I have no time for X Factor or Britain’s Got Talent or Strictly Come Dancing, even though I appreciate those shows do a great job of uniting huge audiences together in a shared experience, and at their best can give a lay audience an insight into the techniques of the participants and the experts brought in to advise them. Nevertheless, when this happened, I stopped what I was doing and watched in dumbstruck awe.

Yes, it’s not embeddable. Stupid Fox: if ever there was an advert for their show, that is it. A better-looking version of the dance is here, but context is all. As you may have noticed, Alex is a ballet dancer (a very good ballet dancer too) who is out of his depth in this situation. He has no experience of hip-hop dancing, and is paired with a former contestant who excels at it. It’s also a two-man dance, something that usually brings out Nigel’s dodgiest and most defensive comments. That he reacts the way he does in that clip (i.e. not screaming that he’s a MANLY MAN and he loves BOOBS and not COCK) says something about the artistry of the choreography and the execution. Sadly, not long after this Alex left the competition, having injured himself during rehearsals. He’s still recovering, but hopefully will be back dancing soon. Nevertheless, he did leave us this, and Shades of Caruso salutes him and wishes him well.

Best Live TV Moment of the Year: The opening sketch of the 2010 Emmy Awards

Okay, so only the last bit is live, but it’s still a potent moment, especially the quick glimpse of the gang rushing to their marks backstage, with Jorge Garcia looking simultaneously determined and scared. Perhaps the reason this made me so happy was that it came towards the end of a long year of TV watching, and felt like the capper on the whole damn exercise. It made me slightly like Glee a bit more, gave me a thrill to see Hurley giving it all he’s got, namechecked Lost and Community – two shows I love that didn’t get anything during the ceremony — and featured Jon Hamm backing it up in front of Betty White: when Twitter memes collide. Most surprising of all, it constituted yet another girder in the bridge being built between my Jimmy Fallon apathy and the increasingly possible Jimmy Fallon fandom. If he’s gonna rock the Springsteen like that, I can’t help but forgive him for Taxi. (But oh, the forgiveness burns as it leaves my fingers.)

Best Title Sequence: Human Target

It’s a perfect combination of rousing music — courtesy of Battlestar Galactica hero Bear McCreary — and fascinating imagery, referencing Christopher Chance’s comic book history without going the boring route of having a bunch of panels with speech balloons: the usual tedious choice. The show is uneven, but this stirring opener makes it look like the most confident action show around.

Worst Use of Music: The Vampire Diaries – Bloodlines

Gina Torres shows up in the CW’s hit Twi-lite teen drama, mostly to remind the audience they could be rewatching a Whedon show instead, but also to get murdered by Damon. She’s betrayed him, and so he’s inevitably going to rip out her heart. It’s not played sad: it’s brutal, and obviously meant to be a reminder that Damon might seem charming from time to time, but he’s actually mad evil (it’s not subtle character shading, but it is welcome considering how everyone else is sleepwalking through the show). The tune we hear playing over this horrific moment? The chorus from this fluffy nonsense…

A 100% tonal mismatch. It’s almost impressive. Nevertheless it begs the question: does anyone on the show involved with the music licensing even pay attention to the show?

Best Use Of Guest Stars: 30 Rock

The wide array of celebrities appearing on 30 Rock might be used as a litmus test regarding your tolerance for guest stars: it’s either a crutch, or a good “get” (sorry, I won’t do that again). It’s a testament to the show’s popularity in the creative community that they can attract the people they do: having Elizabeth Banks and Julianne Moore play recurring characters on your show is pretty impressive no matter how you look at it. Still, if they were just playing versions of themselves it would pall immediately, but 30 Rock has given them terrific characters to work with. In seasons past the sight of Al Gore racing off to save a whale, or Handsome Jon Hamm living in his bubble, or Elaine Stritch being the archetypal disapproving mother, has almost erased their other work from our memory: while watching the pilot of Boardwalk Empire we kept expecting Steve Buscemi to reach into his pocket to pull out a can.

The fourth season featured some of the show’s best guest appearances to date, with Banks and Moore both terrific as Avery Jessup and Nancy Donovan splitting Jack Donaghy’s attention, and a lovely appearance by a very goofy Matt Damon in the season finale (and the opener for season five, as well as the live episode broadcast this week), but it was Michael Sheen’s bravura performance as weedy Wesley Snipes that stole our hearts. As great as he is in pretty much everything he’s in (including the second Twilight movie, a feat we thought impossible), from now on Sheens’s appearance in a movie — no matter how dramatic — will be greeted by us with cries of, “Why is your face like that?” or “I don’t want to go back to England. I can’t suffer through the London Olympics — we’re not prepared, Liz. Did you see the Beijing Opening Ceremonies? We don’t have control over our people like that!” We want him on the show every week: that’s how you do guest appearances.

Worst Use Of Guest Stars: Modern Family

And this is how you don’t do them. To be honest, I’d stopped the show before the guest stars started arriving en masse, but I did sadly see them transform Elizabeth Banks into a cartoonish party-hard maniac who literally wishes Cameron and Mitchell would kill their adopted child so they could go drinking more often (before, of course, falling for the little darling in the mawkish final scene). Words fail me on that one, and then start working again when considering the crushingly unfunny appearance of Edward “Vaudeville” Norton as a member of Spandau Ballet, now so destitute he is reduced to performing in the homes of fans for a few dollars. His Cockney accent is the worst thing I’ve heard all year, and makes Julianne Moore — with her risible Boston accent — sound like Ben Affleck. Fucking show: from Hell’s heart, I stab at thee!

New Favourite Actor: Joseph Fiennes – FlashForward

Joe F! I don’t think I shall ever see an actor hammier than thee. FlashForward was not a great show, and for most of its running time it wasn’t even diverting. Did anything interesting actually happen between the pilot and the insane gun-crazy finale? However, there was one thing that kept me glued to the screen: the towering display of eccentric enthusiasm from Joseph “Rather Handsome” Fiennes, who leapfrogged his brother to become my favourite Fiennes just through the use of one eyebrow. Photos barely do that eyebrow justice: you have to see it slowly creep up while his almost lipless (and yet still handsome) mouth gently parts in horror (or surprise, or joy, or intensity, or whatever) to get the Full Fiennes. No one on TV has ever given me such incidental joy since the Great Caruso first showed up as immobile scientist and deadshot Horatio Caine. As I’ve said before, it sounds like I’m just being mean, but I have such enormous affection for Fiennes and all of his metric tonnes of acting in this role that I wanted the show to continue simply because I knew I would miss him so much. And I do! His berserk energy was one of the highlights of the season (in the picture above he is throwing a phone across the room with all of his force. Yes! A backhanded throw! Where does he come up with these ideas?), and without it TV seems to be a paler place. Still, he is now working on Camelot, a Starz production seeking to pick up some of that Spartacus buzz. What makes that show even more promising? The showrunner is SoC nemesis Chris “Torchwood” Chibnall. There is a chance Camelot will make me spontaneously combust with mean-tinted joy. Let’s just hope any helmet he wears in the show has a gap so we can see his eyebrow. Speaking of which…

New Favourite Eyebrows: Ruth Wilson – Luther / The Prisoner

Her performances in Luther and The Prisoner are amiably mad, especially in the former, where she seems to be trying to channel every femme fatale in cinema history. It’s a delirious experience watching her flirt and pout while talking about murder in gallumphing, unsubtle dialogue that would sound impossibly stupid coming from any other actress. I doff my cap to her: she’s one of the things that made me like Luther even when I should have been despairing. She gets a bum deal in The Prisoner: Number 6 just rushes through her life, messing with her equilibrium, being so “sexy” (???) that she falls in love with him (or is that the special love-potion invented by Number 2?), and is then turned into a comatose speculative-universe-generating megabrain in the half-intriguing, half-nonsensical finale. But no matter what she is doing, and no matter how well she is doing it, it’s the eyebrows that drew me in. They are the Alpha and Omega of eye-mantelpieces, and I can’t wait to see what they appear in next.

Are these awards over? Can they be over? There’s still so much I had planned to say. ::sobs::

The 2009-2010 Caruso Awards: The Best New Characters of the Year

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Yes yes, I’m still not done. Traditionally Shades of Caruso feels obliged to praise showrunners for creating new characters that embody all that is great about a show, draw attention to aspects of the show that we hadn’t spotted before, or make us want to watch something that otherwise we wouldn’t be that bothered about. Previous years have seen us hurl garlands at Walter Bishop from Fringe and Dr. Amber Volakis from House like we were throwing love-frisbees. Who will win this year? Will it be Amy Pond? (Clue: no.) Will it be a sexy new vampire on True Blood? (Clue: No, because we haven’t watched it, despite all of the sexiness.) I’d like to think our choice is utterly uncontroversial. We’ll save the controversy for the following post, which will be about the worst new characters of the year. Rules apply: only characters introduced in seasons completed by the time the awards started are eligible, and only one character per show can be included, except for the two exceptions seen below, who made it onto the list because I think the relevant shows have two important, likeable characters that share a lot of traits and also show how issues of race can send two similar people down completely different roads.

10. Dan Stark – The Good Guys

Matt Nix’s endearing cop show sadly doesn’t have the consistency to become a regular watch, but whenever it comes on, your attention will inevitably be held by Bradley Whitford’s full-powered performance as retro-cop Dan Stark. He’s more than just a mustache-delivery system. Due to his time on Sorkin-Shows — where the amount of dialogue exceeds molecules in the universe — it’s forgivable to think that verbal humour is all Whitford can bring to a role, but much of the pleasure of his turn as the American Gene Hunt depends on his bizarre physical comedy. It’s worth tuning in each week to catch his weird stiff-armed high-kicking combat stance, let alone his clueless pronouncements and hysterical technophobia (as shown above). It’s a joke that’s been done elsewhere, but Whitford’s lively energy is infectious. Colin Hanks is a good foil, and RonReaco Lee is funny as a Huggy-Bear-esque snitch, but they don’t even need to be there for The Good Guys to work. It’s Whitford’s show: everyone else is just visiting.

9. Dr. Bennet Halverson – Dollhouse

Adding a character to this list of awesomeness should be a happy moment, but there is a twinge of sadness here. Though Dr. Bennett Halverson is introduced with a flourish and allowed at least one classic episode almost to herself, we don’t get a chance to see just how great this character could have been. The sense that there was a 500-page story-bible written about her various exploits is there in every scene. Halverson’s unpredictability, impishness and ruthlessness shine through Summer Glau’s most winning performance yet, so much so that we can go from being charmed by her to hating her guts in an instant. Other than Echo, she’s the most complicated character on the show, something made very clear even though her character is disposed of in a hurry, just like the show. You just know her final moment was meant to be a fourth season shocker, something that would have built to an amazing emotional crescendo. Unfortunately, we just a fraction of the ultimate plan. It’s enough to create a strong negative emotion, but still only a ghost of that all-too-familiar Whedon-pain.

8. Vince Howard / Luke Cafferty - Friday Night Lights

Sometimes all it takes for a character to win over an audience is just being a good guy. Not a Nice Guy, but someone who is shy and dopey and overly polite and too sincere for his own good. Luke Cafferty is a slave to his manners, his own worst enemy, a guy who makes a series of stupid mistakes and suffers terribly for them all while trying to do the right thing. Vince Howard is on the knife-edge of taking a wrong turn in his life that he can never return from, all the while knowing what the right choices are. Luckily for them, they’re in a show that has at its core a simple message: you can be better, and you can transcend this. Maybe I instantly loved both characters because they were just regular good guys who refuse to let misfortune grind them down, but I also wonder if I loved them because they enable Coach Taylor to do what he does best: change lives, save young men from the hell of their mistakes, and inspire them to be better people. After all, at its best Friday Night Lights is like uplift-porn.

7. Lucretia – Spartacus: Blood and Sand

In the new age of TV, we demand bad guys who are nuanced and not just evil. Spartacus starts off with a hissable villain in the form of Gaius Claudius Glaber, the legatus who ruins the life of “Spartacus” after our hero dares to question his orders. It’s telling that Glaber then disappears for the majority of the season, to be replaced with the glorious duo of Batiatus and his wife Lucretia. While SoC has long considered John Hannah to be a not-great actor, his work here has prompted a rethink. Nevertheless, as entertaining as the spluttering lanista was, he’s nothing without Lucretia. She works less as a Lady Macbeth and more as an equal, independently following her own plans to aid their political ambitions. What’s best about her — other than Lucy Lawless’ fine work — is that her plans don’t work out as well as she hoped: her “friend” Ilithyia eventually escapes her web of blackmail, and her inevitably doomed love of Gladiator Crixus proves to be just one part of her downfall. It’s that vulnerability and fallibility that makes Lucretia one of the most entertaining bad guys of the year.

6. Troy Barnes – Community

I agonised over which character on Best New Sitcom Community would make the grade here. Someone had to. Creator Dan Harmon did a fantastic job of populating the show with a central cast of memorable characters, and carried that good work through the season by altering relationships and focus to take advantage of growing chemistry and hidden acting strengths. All of the main characters (and secondary characters such as Star-Burns and Dean Pelton) are brilliantly realised, but the most consistently funny member of the core group has to be Troy Barnes, the dopey but good-natured former quarterback who loves Robin Williams, thrives on best friend Abed’s pop-culture savantism (even when he doesn’t quite understand it), has a notable way with words, and can harmonise even while scared of rats. Most importantly, Troy is a great showcase for the amazing Donald Glover, the Spider-Man who sadly never was. His ascent to immense super-stardom begins here.

5. Zoe Graystone – Caprica

Caveats naturally apply here, as of course the character of Zoe Graystone only exists in Caprica for a few minutes before being blasted into smithereens by crazed monotheist terrorists. The “Zoe Graystone” that captured my imagination is a computer extrapolation of metadata turned into a virtual avatar, hooked up to a robot, and then magically transformed into the first Cylon. Perhaps it’s this berserk origin story that makes her so fascinating, as she acts as a futuristic techno-Trinity of Mother, Daughter, and Holy Robot. Perhaps it’s seeing her grow — in the few episodes we got before Syfy maddeningly took the show from our screens — from a clueless, hostile teenager into a confident woman grieving for her own life and desperately trying to escape her physical prison. Mostly it’s because the most complex character in the Caprica-verse is played with such quirky energy by Alessandra Torresani, who drops into the nerd-culture consciousness with a splash and makes a meal of it. If she hadn’t been right for the part, the show would’ve been doomed. Thankfully, she’s perfect.

4. Davis McAlary / Antoine Batiste - Treme

Treme is about a number of things: it’s a critique of the Bush administration’s abandonment of a devastated city; a celebration of American culture and history; an organic musical that lacks the intentional artificiality of Glee; a thesis on the differences between commercial culture and “authentic” artistic endeavour. Most of all, it’s an attempt to document the “feel” of New Orleans, and though Albert Lambreaux’s furious Mardi Gras Indian chief might be the most detailed character in terms of introducing a slice of history that is unfamiliar to mainstream audiences, it’s lovable chancers Antoine and Davis that provide most of the laughs. Their lackadaisical personal lives are contrasted with their loyalty to local history, as Davis battles to preserve something of the town he loves and Antoine just gets on with being an essential part of Jazz culture. They’re also unreliable and shifty, with Antoine’s lovelife and Davis’ questionable appropriation of African-American language and culture being the salt in their sugary personas. They also serve as a subtle comment on race in America: while Antoine struggles, Davis coasts.

3. Raylan Givens – Justified

Shades of Caruso has many criteria for selecting the best and worst characters of the year, but there are some criteria we don’t often mention. One is Outrageous Hottness. I will admit to some weakness on occasion, but only one character made both myself and co-blogger Daisyhellcakes sit up in our chairs and say, “Hello!” Super-cool gunslinger Raylan Givens could turn even an unturnable head with his handsomeness, his pulse-quickening height, his lovely hair, his odd-but-sexy walk, and his excellent hat. Even better, the character is created by Elmore Leonard and is therefore rounded, funny, dark, and mysterious. Timothy Olyphant eschews the glumness of his previous TV character — Deadwood‘s terrifying Sheriff Seth Bullock — but keeps the Western elements. Raylan is a sharp-shooting, quick-witted, no-bullshit hero with terrible arch-enemies, compromised friends, a bad temper, a bit of a problem with drink, and two beautiful women who love him as much as he loves them. Basically, he is AWESOME and everyone who has yet to watch Justified needs to so they can contract Raylan Fever.

2. Lane Pryce – Mad Men

Ah Lane Pryce, let me count the ways that I love thee! SoC was already in the bag for Lane in the third season: his ups and downs in season four confirm the wisdom of our decision. In his first season as a secondary character, Lane is introduced as a stiff British dope who makes his American colleagues uncomfortable. As the season progresses, we see how he becomes won over by the American way of thinking, to the detriment of his marriage. It says a lot about Jared Harris’ wonderful performance that when it seemed he will be transferred from New York to India by his masters in London, we were mortified. Thankfully he is saved by THAT lawnmower, and stays long enough to see his exciting new life in New York jeopardised by PPL’s plans to sell off Sterling Cooper. There’s much to love in the stupendous season finale Sit Down And Have A Seat, but the greatest moment might be Lane turning on his bosses, saving the day and hanging up on them with a cheery “Very good. Happy Christmas!” like a puppet who just cut his strings. It’s an uplifting, delightful scene, and his emerging joie de vivre is infectious.

1. Sue Sylvester – Glee

It’s tempting to forgive all of Glee‘s flaws just because of Jane Lynch, though that would entail a boatload of forgiving. In a regular episode of Fox’s outrageously successful musical, there’s probably about five minutes of Sue Sylvester screentime, on average, and many weeks that five minutes can be enough to make watching the rest of the featherlight chaos worthwhile. Her florid dialogue, abuse of students, and quips about Will Schuester’s hair are comedy gold, but casting the magnificent Jane Lynch was the instant masterstroke. Party Down‘s loss is Ryan Murphy’s gain. Would Glee have any worth without her?  She’s the only reason Shades of Caruso has not yet given up on it. That’s how good she is: she utterly counteracts the considerable suck of the rest of the show. She’s the funniest thing on TV that isn’t in an NBC sitcom, and a source of unending joy. Don’t thank Murphy for it, though. His decision to make her a secret softy — her sister has Downs syndrome, and her interactions with her display a lighter side that no one else ever sees — could have ruined her. The only reason it doesn’t is because Jane Lynch is a comedy master worth approximately 58 Lily Tomlins (I say this as a fan of Lily Tomlin). We’re lucky we get to see her at the top of her game.

Coming up: the worst new characters of the year.

The 2009-2010 Caruso Awards: The Best Episodes of the Year (20-11)

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A quick reminder of the stupidly complicated rules of the Caruso Awards: only shows whose latest season (or half-season) has finished by the time of publication are eligible, hence the inclusion of an episode of The Venture Brothers from ages ago; and only one episode of each season is allowed. This is to prevent Spartacus: Blood and Sand from dominating the list (just like the gladiator Spartacus dominates the arena!). Apologies for any poor editing here. Much to my eternal shame I’ve discovered that no matter how long I spend picking over these goddamn things some awful mistake (or twelve) will always slip through. It’s like I’ve been cursed by some grammar-witch for all of my shaky writing. Somewhere in this house is a haunted Thesaurus that needs to be exorcised. And with that superstitious outburst, on with the praise, and the SPOILERS…

20: Misfits - Episode 4

Post-Heroes, it’s perfectly understandable that any “metahuman” show introducing a character with the power to travel through time is going to give the viewer pause. The narrative knots created by Hiro Nakamura in that horrid show were so complicated the showrunners could never untangle them, even with some desperate efforts in the final season. You can imagine our pleasure when this Curtis-centric episode managed to adhere to plainly obvious temporal rules, kept things straight and logical, and revealed heaps of new information about our favourite lairy superpowered ruffians. The main thread of the episode is Curtis’ efforts to make amends to his former girlfriend in a Butterfly-Effect-esque sequence of disastrous trips into his own past, but it mostly resembles Firefly‘s excellent backstory-heavy Out of Gas. By giving us more of a sense of just how messed up our heroes were before The Storm transformed them, showrunner Howard Overman humanises even the most annoying of the group. Though Curtis is the central character, it might be Nathan who benefits most. The endless sarcastic asides from the obnoxious little gobshite are given context as we see the antagonistic relationship he has with his father (a perfectly cast Dexter Fletcher). It’s a clever development that gives Robert Sheehan new notes to knock out of the park.

19: Caprica - Ghosts in the Machine

Where once this blog railed against Battlestar Galactica and the way it frayed and fell apart before our eyes, this thought-provoking prequel series did much to repair the damage done to its parent show by nervy Syfy chiefs. Ronald D. Moore, David Eick and Jane “Unappreciated Genius” Espenson replaced the sprawling and ill-tended mythos with greater focus and fewer characters. With a sturdy base and a dependable cast, the showrunners were able to explore sci-fi concepts with the rigour Galactica once did and then add some welcome melodrama. This grounds the speculative fiction in human emotion, the centre of which is the grief felt by two families who lost daughters in a terrorist attack, not realising that those children exist in a new state elsewhere. Here we see Daniel Graystone’s suspicions about the erratic behaviour of his lone Cylon come to a head just as Joseph Adama searches for the incomplete avatar of his daughter in V-World. While the grief-stricken Tauran lawyer approaches his daughter from a position of supplication, Daniel attempts trickery and calculation to try to get Zoe Graystone to reveal her secret existence within the Cylon’s robot shell. The tragedy is that neither father is willing to accept that their children have moved on in more than one sense. For all its speculative ambition, it’s the human truth of this rift that makes this show — and this episode in particular — so memorable.

18: Big Love – Sins of the Father

The oft-derided fourth season of Big Love was actually pretty great for most of its truncated run if you were willing to roll with Bill Henrikson’s decision to run for Senator — merely his latest bad idea in long line of them. A couple of early episodes were blackly comedic mini-classics, amping up the absurdity of the show while not becoming unpalatable. Sins of the Father rose above them all with its Godfather-like depiction of a man losing everything. However, while Michael Corleone loses everything by allowing his dark heart to overwhelm him, Bill loses everything with the revelation of his own hypocrisy, turning his back on son Ben after he admits to having feelings for Margene even though he was once cast out by his own father. Director David Petrarca and writer Seth Greenland do a superb job of making Bill’s ridiculously overwrought internal struggle make sense to an audience who would probably just forgive Ben, couching the drama in terms of Bill’s very specific insecurity: will he be usurped by his own son one day? For a show primarily about religion, Big Love deserves praise for playing these themes and Biblical references so lightly. Add to that a couple of great comic set-pieces involving Bill’s three wives, Bill Paxton’s best performance to date, and a sense of dramatic urgency the show has often lacked, and this episode can be placed next to last year’s Come, Ye Saints as a keeper.

17. The Venture Brothers – Pinstripes and Poltergeists

It’s tempting to hate Pinstripes and Poltergeists for being the final part of the bisected fourth season, just to be petty. The sudden disappearance of The Best Animated Show On TV was especially galling as it was finally picking up a good head of steam. Nevertheless, at least the show left us with something that is, as 21 says, “like Christmas, a first BMX bike, and meeting the cast of Firefly all in one”. Highlights include the long-delayed introduction of evil bureaucrat Monstroso (“Cigar?”), Rusty Venture discovering chatrooms and pop-ups, and the revelation that Brock Samson has been living on the Venture compound all along while working with the shadowy organisation S.P.H.I.N.X. (“Sphinx!”). Perhaps the best thing about this episode is that it can be used as a perfect example of how The Venture Brothers is more than just a snarky pop-culture melange. The characters have evolved so much that Brock’s outburst to Rusty about being close to Dean and Hank, yet not being able to contact them, has an emotional power unheard-of in Adult Swim’s roster: see also 21′s vengeful pursuit of Brock, which is finally resolved with a fight, an understanding, and an alliance against a common enemy. It’s enough to tug the heart-strings. There is also the small matter of 24′s ghostly nature: the revelations about him in this episode have made his continued “existence” as big a mystery as any number of polar bears, Rambaldi devices or parallel universes in the Bad Robot canon.

16: Dollhouse - The Left Hand

It’s easy to miss classic TV episodes when their parent network decides to burn through a condemned series with a burst of two-parters. After the second season of Joss Whedon’s brainwipe thriller started with a series of underwhelming standalone episodes, we were treated to a quick rush of excellent, mythology-heavy dramas that expanded the backstory of our characters and the shadowy Rossum Corporation, along with some of the most head-melting concepts in popular sci-fi drama. This season highlight was the best mix of mythology and standalone episode before the showrunners were regrettably forced to cut their five-season plan short. Our hero Echo and poor manipulated Senator Daniel Perrin are held captive in the Washington DC Dollhouse by slimy Stewart Lipman (a welcome appearance by SoC favourite Ray Wise) and the complicated Dr. Bennett Halverson, who is torturing Echo for a past transgression. The LA Dollhouse attempts to save its Active using two Tophers (both played brilliantly by Fran Kranz and a never better Enver Gjokaj), but the web of double-, triple-, and quadruple- crosses wrecks their plans. It’s a packed-to-bursting hour of action TV, both thrilling and funny. Truly, no other show on TV could dramatise such potentially alienating hard sci-fi ideas about personality-cloning and mind-manipulation with such playfulness.

15. Party Down – “Not On My Wife” Opening Night

My love of Cheers (a deep, deep love) did not migrate to spin-off Frasier, whose tone irked despite the generally excellent cast. The general air of satisfaction generated — possibly because the obvious jokes were interspersed with the odd reference to Mahler — swamped the gags that did work. All was forgiven when the show concentrated on farce, which it did brilliantly. Party Down, on the other hand, has a better episode-to-episode hit:miss ratio, and adding farce pushes Opening Night to the top of the heap. The aspiring actors and writers of the catering team are forced to work through the opening night of a farce performed by a community theatre group they consider beneath them, and end up embroiled in a whirlwind of sexual misadventure, misunderstanding, and escalating panic. It’s a superb example of the genre, with veils, masks, secrets and lies in abundance, but while John Enbom’s expertly judged script (and David Wain’s perfect direction) are to be praised, it’s the little things that stick in the memory: Casey’s inept flirting with the lesbian producer from Warners; Roman’s Bacchanalian behaviour; Kyle’s pitiful attempts at being sexy; and Ron misreading Lydia’s signals and ending up with a faceful of mace. The sight of his puffy, snot-covered face will linger in my memory forever.

14: Justified - Long In The Tooth

Whenever a show makes a big splash with its first episode, there is often a worry that comes with it: will this show keep the quality up? Will it somehow ruin it, go in the wrong direction, abandon everything that made that first hour so good? In a post-Sopranos age, we expect the best shows to be serialised, and the procedurals of network to be less impressive. Would Justified be able to create a serialised drama out of its short story origins? Or would it be little more than a well-shot villain-of-the-week show? The fourth episode of the phenomenal first season went both ways. Alan Ruck plays a crook on the lam from our hero Raylan Givens, forced to give up his career as a dentist after a memorably nasty encounter with an obnoxious patient. The episode works extremely well as a one-off: Ruck is perfectly cast as the impulsive but likeable foil to laidback Raylan, and his character is so well-drawn it’s genuinely upsetting that he can’t become a regular on the show. What makes this our favourite of the consistently stellar first season is the knowledge that even though Justified eventually becomes more serialised (even taking into account the nerve-wracking shoot-out with Miami goons near the end), it could have been a great, unorthodox procedural too. No matter what the showrunners did, we were prepared to love it unconditionally.

13: Sherlock - A Study In Pink

It’s rare that a TV show can come out of nowhere and capture the public’s imagination with the modern publicity machine being what it is. Perhaps because UK TV often has big events that don’t add up to much it was easy to expect little from Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss’ “reimagining” (forgive me) of Britain’s most beloved fictional character, especially with Rupert Murdoch’s snivelling toadies in the Sun spreading snide rumours about reshoots and disastrous pre-screenings. Thankfully it was just the odious Antipodean arsehole playing shenanigans: the first episode of Sherlock was a supremely confident, exciting 90 minutes of TV, instantly transforming Benedict Cumberbatch from that guy who appeared in the things into a TV icon, all spindly limbs and ghostly face, his lovely coat flapping in the wind as he chased villains around Cardiff London. Paul McGuigan invented a visual palette that was showy but not intrusive, with a brilliant floating-text conceit that allowed us to see Sherlock’s thought processes. Even better, Moffat filled the movie-length pilot with plot and event, moving things along at a clip and never relying on tedious exposition to bloat out a flimsy script. It felt substantial, like the arrival of your new favourite thing. We can only hope this was not a fluke: more on that to come.

12: The Pacific – Okinawa

Saying The Pacific wasn’t as feel-good as Band of Brothers seems crazy: after all, the original HBO mini-series featured the hell of war in startling, miserable detail. Nevertheless, it’s not called Band of Brothers for no reason. The most important point the series made was that in the middle of the carnage and horror, there was someone there who had your back, who would remind you of your humanity and your responsibility to everyone around you. The Pacific has very little of that uplift. The ninth episode of this ten-part mega-downer is possibly the bleakest hour of TV screened since the BBC’s Threads, as the 1st Marine Division find themselves trapped in a purgatorial war of attrition with a ruthless enemy at the base of an almost impassable mountain. Joseph Mazzello does excellent work as Corporal Eugene Sledge, pushed to the edge by relentless rain, despicable and dehumanising Japanese tactics (often involving civilians and children), and the low morale of his companions, most of whom die in agony because of mistakes borne of fatigue. With his humanity seemingly crushed forever, we watch in dread as he finds a dying Japanese civilian – the victim of an artillery strike he was involved with – and brace ourselves for further horror. The choice he makes is revelatory, cathartic, unforgettable. So yes, a gruelling hour of drama, but also an essential one.

11: Spartacus: Blood and Sand – Whore

This indecently entertaining sword-and-sandals epic never stints on surprisingly graphic sex and violence, with boobs, dongs, blood, buttocks and heads flying at the camera with such regularity you’d be forgiven for thinking it was originally meant to be screened in 3D. Neither the sex nor the violence were that important, certainly on a plot level, being there mainly because Starz were happy to let the showrunners go a bit mental. However this season highlight used graphic sex as a way to explore not only the levels to which the slaves of Batiatus’ ludus are expected to lower themselves, but also as a way to further dramatise the antagonism between our hero Spartacus and delightful snake-woman Illythia, wife of his mortal enemy Gaius Claudius Glaber. Most of the episode does a good job of adding new levels of debasement to the proud gladiators, now fully expected to be prostitutes as well as warriors, but it’s Lucretia’s conniving which makes this an instant classic. Playing a trick with masks to teach her former friend Illythia a lesson, the plot to humiliate her spins out of Lucretia’s control in the final moments. TV has arguably never seen a sequence as pornographic, violent, and purely Grand Quignol as this, but it never abandons character or plot for a second, a detail that you might miss as your jaw dislocates from dropping so fast.

The final ten will be here tomorrow. Anyone who has followed my tweets of the past few months will probably find few surprises: many of the episodes that broke the top ten drove me to such paroxysms of joy that I went a bit nuts over there. We’re talking many, many multiples of 140 characters.