The 2008-2009 Caruso Awards: Miscellaneous Bits and Bobs
The new TV season is full swing, and yet here I am, still talking about last season. Of course, I’ve farted around for a couple of weeks doing very important things (not playing Halo 3: ODST, no matter what my endless tweets and Raptr updates will say), and am only now getting around to putting this up. Please forgive my tardiness.
Though I don’t want to say too much about the new season, which is just coming into shape, I will say that some shows (Fringe, House) have yet to get back to full strength, some (CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Dollhouse, Lie To Me) have come back with a confident bang, and some new shows (Community, Flashforward) have really piqued my interest. One new show (Modern Family) made me think I will never trust another critic ever again. Unless something really dreadful comes along, I think I have my Worst New Pilot of the 2009-2010 Season winner already sewn up.
Anyway, here are my final thoughts on the 2008i-2009 season. There were originally going to be more YouTube clips on here, but I’ve had a dispiriting day watching them get taken down. Fox and NBC, sorry for infringing on your copyright, but all you did was get rid of some free publicity, as I was going to tell the world how awesome your shows were. Except for that clip from Heroes. That was up because Angela Petrelli’s insanely histrionic reaction to her son’s death was the funniest thing of the year. So I can understand that one. And now, on with the hyperbole…
Best New Show: Sons of Anarchy
If one were to be unduly harsh, you could compare the first episode of Sons of Anarchy with the pilot of The Shield. Considering that is easily one of the most impressive and instantly captivating pilots ever made, there was little chance that showrunner Kurt Sutter could ever compete. That he made a pilot as good as the one that kickstarted his biker epic is a testament to his skill as a writer, and his decision to get Sopranos director/producer Allen Coulter in to co-direct it is exactly the kind of smart move that a good showrunner should make. The first few episodes were not perfect, but the building blocks were there.
What sets Sons of Anarchy apart from every other show debuting during the 2008-2009 period — even the eventually superb Dollhouse — is how quickly changes were made, and how confidently they were put in place. By the time season highlight The Pull came around, it was already shaping up to be essential TV, but that episode propelled it onto a completely different level of excellence. Ramping up the pace of the show and throwing one or two of the less interesting characters into terrible danger / potentially ruinous moral compromise, Sons of Anarchy hinted that it could become something that will rival the mighty Shield for complexity and dramatic power. It helps that it features one of the best ensembles on TV right now, filling out its main cast (which, let’s not forget, includes Ron Perlman, an impressive star-making turn from Charlie Hunnam, and relentless magnificence from Kim Coates) with guests spots for Mitch Pileggi, Drea DeMatteo, Jay Karnes, Dayton Callie, Maggie Siff, and the incredible Ally Walker, who blows everyone else away with her terrifying warrior mentality and fearless sexuality. And in season two, we get Adam Arkin and Henry Rollins. Seriously, what’s not to love? From all accounts, the second season is even more unhinged than the first, which is saying something considering the incredible brutality and amoral shenanigans from the first. I can’t wait to dive in.
Worst New Show: Parks and Recreation
Creators Greg Daniels and Michael Schur are not idiots, obviously, but this landed with a terrible splat and couldn’t convince me to hang around long enough to see if it would improve. Part of that was because I was mad at the dip in quality over at The Office. Was it fair to blame this show for that? Probably not. Parks and Recreation has been mooted for so long (remember when it was supposed to be a straight spin-off of The Office?) that their attention has probably been divided for a long time, and the fourth season of The Office was great. Nevertheless, the energy of one show definitely seemed to have been split between two, and the result was a listless hour of supposed comedy.
I have fought with myself over whether it would have been worth hanging around to see if it got better, but then I remember little things that irked like the way the showrunners differentiated the talking head interjections from those of The Office — using two cameras for the faux-interviews instead of one — which drove me into fits of absurd rage. The Office already has trouble keeping the faux-doc format going, and this conceit draws even more attention to the fakeness of it all. Perhaps I’m just burned out on this format. ABC’s new comedy Modern Family has been heralded as the next great sitcom after just two episodes, with across the board raves. We watched last week’s pilot in a state of shock. Flamboyant gay stereotypes? Clunking, obvious jokes about the generation gap? Appalling overacting from everyone (with Julie Bowen being the worst offender)? A character misinterpreting the accent of a Columbian woman? (I say Columbian because Sofia Vergara is from Columbia. She’s probably expected to play someone from a different country in this.) Modern Family is exactly the kind of retrograde laugh-track-enhanced sitcom that seems almost archaic now, but because it’s filmed in a single camera faux-doc style, it’s treated as a cutting-edge exploration of modern American mores. Bullshit. It’s Everybody Loves Raymond. Dressing a raccoon in baseball gear doesn’t make it a baseball player. It just makes it a raccoon covered in sport gear. (Note to self: use less raccoons in metaphors. It just complicates things.)
I also remember one potentially funny scene in Parks and Recreation — involving hapless and strangely unlovable Leslie trying to convince a bunch of ill-informed citizens that her plans are worthwhile — failing to take off, and I realise that after this summer of purposely ignorant right-wing hijacking of the health-care town hall debates, this kind of scene probably won’t ever be funny again. Democracy failing to work because of the Crazification Factor getting in the way of intelligent debate is something I just can’t laugh at right now. What makes this turn of events most sad is that the concept is so full of potential, and yet it didn’t even work before the protests. I can’t figure out how you could take an idea this promising and fail to make something that mixes madness and profundity in the same way as The Office. Compare that to Knight Rider. That was always going to be shit. This should have been a potent mix of satire and ridiculousness. That’s why I have to put it in this category. Apparently it has found its stride in the second season, from what I’ve heard on the Hinternet. Sadly, the people who are saying that also keep going on about how Modern Family is hilarious. So, you know…
Best Title Sequence of the Year: Hung
The choice of music (I’ll Be Your Man by The Black Keys), the phallic objects in the background, the pace of it…
…It’s a perfect title sequence.
Best Pilot: Kings
From what I can gather, there was very little publicity for Kings when it made its way onto the screen. Many have said this was the reason for its failure to find an audience, though to be honest a literate curio like this was unlikely to ever become a breakthrough hit. Alternate histories? Playing with Biblical stories? Unappealing main characters? It just seemed like a real long shot. It was impressive to see NBC gamble on making the show in the first place, but as with the equally intelligent Journeyman, making a show and trying to make the show available to a wide audience are two different things.
To be honest, with Journeyman the hurt is greater. That show was less ambitious, but as a result was more likely to find an audience if given a chance. It also improved as it went along. Kings started off incredibly strong and then stalled a little. That’s the problem when a show gets a pilot this impressive. Written by showrunner Michael Green and directed by the underrated Francis Lawrence, Goliath (the name of the pilot) was like no other pilot I’ve ever seen. Even though it was made on a shoestring, it looked incredible. Even more appealing, it had a weird edge of fantasy even beyond the alternate earth conceit, with God interacting with certain characters in a matter of fact way even though the show did not explicitly preach Christian values.
Perhaps this more than anything alienated audiences: atheists might rebel against a show that openly debates the wishes of God, and Christians might be irked by this God not being a recognisable version of their God. While I fall into the first category, I don’t mind God turning up in fiction as long as It’s not used as a deus ex machina or Unexplainable Puppeteer (hello Battlestar Galactica) or as an accurate version of “our” God (a sky bully who gets pissed off if we don’t play by Its crazy rules). The version of God in Kings was not a big deal, but Its mysterious behaviour, and effect on the behaviour of the main characters, was fascinating.
As was the superb character King Silas Benjamin (not to mention his allies and enemies), and the superb use of New York locations (standing in for the fictional city of Shiloh) to give a sense of epic scale to the show, and the incredible cast… As I say, the show was fascinating to watch right up until its unfortunate cancellation, but it never quite lived up to the promise of that amazing pilot, simply because the pilot made you think you were watching the most amazing show ever. We weren’t, but it was damn good nevertheless. Even the slightly disappointing finished product was better than almost everything else on TV. You could practically sense the cult following develop as you watched, not to mention hear the knives coming out for it as you realise how odd the project was. We’re lucky we saw any of it, to be honest.
Worst Pilot: The Unusuals
Seemingly rushed into production as a result of the writers’ strike, The Unusuals matched an underwhelming concept with a poorly defined set of uninteresting characters, failed to find a consistent tone, and handed off directing chores to the ever-feeble Stephen Hopkins, a man who has never made even one good film (I remember liking The Ghost and the Darkness when I first saw it, but I fear I’m being kind). There was no way I was going to enjoy this.
The main reason for my annoyance is that there were some good actors in there who just couldn’t rise above the material or the execution. Some of the most interesting actors — both promising and established — flounder within the show’s poorly thought-through format, with some characters played as broad as possible and others reining in the madness. Jeremy Renner in particular looks like he’s wandered in from another show. Harold Perrineau does okay with his skittish character, while Adam Goldberg sucks all of the energy out of his scenes with a sour and unappealing demeanour, not to mention a terrible mustache. The conceit that a hypochondriac with a fear of death is partnered with a man who wants to die and yet seems blessed is one of those ideas that sounds great on the page and fails on screen.
As for Amber Tamblyn, playing a high-society girl trying to make it as a cop in the cuh-rayzee precinct, it was a more entertaining concept when rich-boy Carter turned up in E.R. That was only one of the shows this seemed to emulate. M.A.S.H., NYPD Blue, Hill Street Blues, Hooperman (for crying out loud): it was an echo of greater shows, a throwback to 80s cop dramas when they started to become more confident and complex. Sad thing is, we don’t want babysteps any more. We’ve moved on. The low ratings and inevitable cancellation of this show proved that. Let’s hope those good actors turn up in better projects now.
Best Pilot of the Year Not Selected For Series: Virtuality
I won’t go into how much I hated the Battlestar Galactica finale again, as I’m beginning to come across as a total crazy person who is obsessed with going on about it, but it did make me reconsider trying out Caprica, the Stoltzified spin-off. Why should I keep watching shows set in this universe, made by this team, who had so disappointed me throughout the last few seasons? Yes, Jane Espenson would be there too, and I love her work, but still, I cannot imagine being invested in this story any more. There is a good chance I’ll relent, because good SF is hard to find on TV at the best of times. Nevertheless, my annoyance remains.
You can imagine how uninterested I was in another Ronald D. Moore / Michael Taylor show (I was never fond of his BSG episodes), especially one that seemed so prosaic. Moore has stated in the past that he was interested in making BSG because he felt the urge to rebel against Star Trek‘s chirpy universe and its reliance on holodeck technology to change up the show, which made Virtuality — a show about space travellers who use virtual reality technology to relax — a curious proposition. I resisted this too, and then relented after seeing the feeble Defying Gravity, which seemed to be drawn from the same template. Thinking Virtuality would be nothing more than a space soap along the same lines as the other network drama, I gave it a spin, expecting little.
I love it when I’m proved wrong like this. As much as Fox’s other new SF show – Dollhouse – Virtuality is a fascinating and challenging exploration of ideas, dramatically filmed and featuring an excellent cast. In fact, the cast is even stronger than that of Dollhouse, with excellent turns from Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Sienna Guillory, Richie Coster (who needs more work, stat), and the ever-dependable Clea DuVall. All the actors are on top form, but these four really stand out. As for the comparison with Defying Gravity, the only thing they have in common is being set in space. Virtuality is about so much more: our perception of reality and how it will inevitably be twisted by the lens we observe through, how technology can affect us emotionally, how we refuse to let it go even when it is obviously not doing us any good (an idea expressed far more clearly here than in Lee Adama’s ridiculous speech in the final BSG episode). While Defying Gravity really is a soap set in space (with one character seemingly completely defined by the pregnancy she once terminated, which is as regressive a character arc as is possible), Virtuality is about ideas. It’s proper SF.
At least, it was proper SF. Even though it was obviously incredibly ambitious and beautifully made (with top direction from Shades of Caruso favourite Peter Berg), and even though were was huge potential for relatively cheap but gripping drama, it was shelved. I’m utterly depressed by this turn of events. There was only one misstep in the whole pilot, with a nasty perception-rape sequence that made me uncomfortable. Reliance on rape plots always upsets me, but here even this most unpleasant of plot threads is used to further the show’s exploration of whether there is a gap between virtual and actual reality, and what happens to us when we lose track of the difference between the two. If the show was willing to treat something potentially exploitative as cleverly as this, we would almost certainly have seen a lot of very smart SF in the rest of the series. But no. While Whedon got lucky with Dollhouse, the Virtuality team saw their show taken away before they could go any further. The best thing I can say about it? It was better than most movies I’ve seen this year. It’s a crying shame there will be no more.
Most Unfairly Cancelled Show of the Year: Reaper
Patton Oswalt is a brilliantly funny and caustic man, but recently he broke my heart. In this interview, he explained how, while filming his turn on Reaper, he saw the crew and cast crushed by their parent network, The CW.
When I did Reaper, the episode I originally did was supposed to be the beginning of this introduction to this overall mythology, because they clearly were taking the Joss Whedon playbook: You have a monster of the week for a while, and then you start linking it all up, and you create this overarching kind of world and story. And in the middle of the week, the network just came down on them and said “No, go back to monster of the week.” And you could feel this deflation amongst the actors, because they really understood that they had to start putting mythology into things. The network was just like, “Nope!”
This is the network that, when it was The WB, cancelled Angel, so I already have a big problem with them. Now I have an even bigger one. It may have not become something more ambitious, but it was endlessly lovable, and became admirably silly in the second season. The first was funny, but at times the second season was funnier than many sitcoms. The monster-of-the-week format of the show, which had seemed so restrictive, sometimes ended up shoved into the cold open, with the rest of the episode dealing with silly relationship drama, Sock shenanigans, or sly mythology expanding business with recurring characters like Nina or Tony. This might not be as involving as Buffy, but it was never as blandly diverting as something like The Mentalist. It fell right in the middle, which is apparently deadly.
That greater focus on just being daft was working for us, but the lack of a coherent arc from week to week (other than Sam’s lacklustre efforts to get out of his contract, and the hints that he is a more important player in the battle between God and The Devil) seemed to doom it. More than any other show departing this year, this is the one we’ll miss. Goodbye to one of the most entertaining casts on TV, some of the most eccentric writing of the past few years, and most of all, goodbye to the best Devil in recent pop culture history. He may be showing up in Dollhouse, but will Ray Wise be this mischievous, charming, delightful? Ray Wise fans everywhere, please come together one last time to marvel at that beautiful, beautiful grin.
At least one of us is smiling, I guess. [Insert sad-face emoticon here]
Best New Double Act of the Year: Ray Drecker and Tanya Skagle - Hung
When compiling the list of best and worst characters, I had certain unspoken rules in place to stop myself from focusing exclusively on certain shows. Party Down‘s cast of beautifully observed characters could have dominated the first list, and Knight Rider could have dominated the second. My biggest quandary was caused by Hung, HBO’s lovable male-prostitution-and-economic-disaster comedy that has so entertained us recently. How do I get to honour two of the funniest characters of the year without breaking that rule? As ever, inventing a new category is the perfect answer. Hung is a show that has a few tonal errors (what was going on with the horribly misconceived Jessica, played with occasional delicacy by Anne Heche?) and a very loosely defined season arc (two pimps fighting over Ray and his magical dong), not to mention some wasted actors (why hire Gregg Henry and put him in about five scenes?). At times, it felt like we were watching half a show.
Nevertheless, it became appointment viewing just because of the wonderful work of Thomas Jane and Jane Adams. Their chemistry, and their relentless bickering and grudging friendship, was the thing that made Hung exceed its limitations. It also made Shades of Caruso reconsider the talents of both actors. Thomas Jane was given moments of pathos which he has never really had a chance to play before, and he excelled, especially in the season finale. Jane Adams has always played sad-sack losers, but this time she was given a chance to give Tanya some nobility even as her plans fell apart around her. Both actors also got to show off their physical comedy skills, with Adams especially amusing during her many impotent temper tantrums.
It was their interplay that really held the show together. Even as other plot threads and arcs seemed to falter or shoot off in predictable directions, watching these two actors play off each other was more than enough to save the show. It’s notable that episodes where Ray and Tanya aren’t onscreen together were the weakest of the season, whereas the ones which explored their dependent relationship and accidental exploration of each other’s personality were the most satisfying. Hopefully the show continues to throw these polar opposites together next year.
Best New Couple of the Year: Sawyer and Juliet – Lost
Ah yes, the love triangle/quadrangle. The constant refrain of Lost doubters (and some fans) is that the show is wasting its time whenever it focuses on the relationship drama of Jack, Sawyer, Kate, and Juliet. “We don’t care about that shit! Show more Faraday!” Yes yes, love drama tends to make me go to sleep as well. Many shows are hamstrung by tedious relationship dramas: House is at its dreariest when Thirteen and Foreman, or Cameron and Chase, go on and on about their coupledom; Kings ground to a halt every time David and Michelle made goo-goo eyes at each other. Hell, even the otherwise perfect Party Down was at its least interesting every time Henry and Casey got together. So there is precedent.
However, I love the relationship drama from Lost for two reasons. One: at the end of the season, we see how far Jack has fallen from grace. We thought he was the square-jawed all-American hero who would bring everyone out of the wilderness like a be-stubbled Moses, but over time we see he’s a deeply damaged, semi-psychotic loser who – as we find out in the final episode of season five – even lied about his character-defining anecdote from the very first episode. How much of a loser is he? After pushing away the woman he “loves” with his whiny attitude and various emotional breakdowns, and after years of trying to figure out what his purpose is now that his dad isn’t around to torture him, he has two choices to make a difference in his life: a) man up and seek help for his depression, all while giving up on the thought of making a go of things with Kate, or b) detonate a nuclear bomb, killing everyone on the island, in the hope that it will change history and allow Oceanic 815 to land safely in LAX so he doesn’t have to put up with the mess he made of his life. I’ve said before that one of the things I love about Lost is that it shows the psychology of its characters in minute detail, and this final touch – showing how far people will go to avoid making simple changes in their lives because of their fear of what will happen if it fails – is the perfect metaphor for how we hold onto our broken selves even when we know how to make things better.
Two: It also gave us the wonderful, tragic pairing of Sawyer and Juliet, which justifies all of the sturm and drang to get there. So far, all of the pairings that have been tried were wrong somehow. Jack and Kate didn’t work because Jack is insane. Kate and Sawyer didn’t work because Kate keeps messing with Sawyer’s head. Jack and Juliet didn’t work because Jack was not even slightly into Juliet and was just using her to get over Kate. However, as soon as the fourth season ended with a shirtless Sawyer walking out of the sea towards a drunken Juliet, I knew we would get to see something go right. And, for the most part, it did, even though it was not to be.
It’s not just that the combined hottness of Sawyer and Juliet is so great that it probably melted most of the TVs in the world. It’s also not just that selfish Kate and crazy Jack were finally out of the equation. It’s even not just because seeing Sawyer and Juliet flirting while shooting people was the most awesome thing ever. It’s that there was barely any controversy in the relationship, which probably would have even survived the forthcoming Purge, somehow. It’s only when Kate returns to the island and reignites Juliet’s psychological damage (previously caused by the break-up of her parents, the infidelity of her ex-husband, and the death of her lover Goodwin) that it all goes horribly wrong. Did Sawyer still hold a candle for Kate? Probably. Did he love Juliet? I reckon yes, and I believe he would have done anything for her if she had given him the chance. All of this made the quadrangle emotionally powerful, as we finally had something to hang on to. Would Sawyer and Juliet survive the machinations of the island/Esau and Jacob? More than any other relationship in TV history (except for Fred and Wesley in Angel), my nerves were set on fire by the possibility that those kids might not make it after all. Of course…
Most Upsetting, Most Harsh, and Most Unfair Scene of the Year: The Incident finally happens – Lost
…we all know how it turned out. Nothing else this year made me cry as much as this.
Damn you, stupid TV show! Damn you for being so fucking mean! And damn you Emmy voters for not giving nominations to Elizabeth Mitchell and Josh Holloway. They were amazing all season.
Worst New Couple of the Year: Luke and Bess - In Treatment
In Treatment‘s second season deviated dramatically from its source material — the Israeli drama Be’Tipul — when it moved main character Paul Weston from Maryland to Brooklyn, allowing the show to dramatise his dislocation from his family, as well as to provide a reason for why he suddenly has so many new patients. This meant that we lost the chance to see season one patients Amy and Jake return, this time as a divorced couple fighting over their son, leading to the creation of two new patients, Luke and Bess. With their marriage in tatters and resentment flying between them, their son Oliver suffers terribly, putting on weight and falling into depression as his parents either fight for custody of him or, amazingly, against custody.
None of the characters in this show are particularly nice to Paul, but the games Luke and Bess play with him, using his advice as justification for a serious of awful, selfish choices, were worse than the usual antagonism people show their therapist. Many times during the season I was horrified by their behaviour, and by the time the season finished they were openly talking about how their lives had been ruined by their marriage and how they wanted another chance at what they had with barely any regard for Oliver’s well-being. When Paul finally loses his temper with them in episode 28, it elicited a round of applause from us. Figuratively speaking. And to be honest, he should have been even angrier with them.
Of course, this being In Treatment, these two horribly selfish people are written so well that we can see their point of view — and their humanity — clearly enough that even at their worst we cannot completely write them off. Their eventual remorse is a relief, but it’s still not enough considering how completely both parents are oblivious to the young boy’s needs. Thankfully, Paul is there to prove to Oliver that he will still be there for him, in some respect. His final scene with Oliver, talking to him via “phone” in his office, started a deluge of tears from this admittedly weepy viewer. If Oliver escapes this miserable situation with his psyche intact, it will have nothing to do with his parents.
Most Underused Character of the Year: Boyd Langton - Dollhouse
Whedon has a talent for peppering his casts with older character actors playing the “parents” to the younger crew. With Buffy we had Giles, in Angel there was Wesley (though his efficacy is doubtful; he’s arguably more flawed than any of his compatriots), and Firefly had Shepherd Book. These stern characters with hearts of gold gave their respective shows some kind of grounding when things got wacky, though Whedon wasn’t averse to making them run through some ridiculous hoops (Book’s mad hair, Wesley’s various pratfalls, Giles’ guitar playing). Sadly, while Langton got a chance to be silly in the disappointing comedy episode Echoes, he rarely got a chance to do anything interesting either. Many characters got to have interesting arcs and secrets, but Langton seemed to be getting less and less screentime as the series wore on. Making him head of security broke the student-mentor relationship between him and Echo, but then this might be Whedon trying to throw his own archetypes out, confounding our expectations. That he would give handler-duties to someone who appears to have an unhealthy sexual attraction to Echo (I’m talking about the plasticine-man known as Ballard) shows there might be something to that.
Nevertheless, it is a shame to cast someone like Harry Lennix — who has intense onscreen presence and then some — and then not give him as much to do as possible. His new role means he will interact more with Olivia Williams, meaning the two best actors on the show get to bang heads together: joy! That promotion, along with his new connection to Whiskey/Dr. Saunders, suggests he will be given more to do in the second season, but nevertheless, his relative inaction in later episodes was one of the few things I didn’t like about the improved half of the first season.
Most Entertaining Villain of the Year: Gemma Teller Morrow – Sons of Anarchy
One of the great pleasures of Sons of Anarchy is how it mixes up its Shakespeare. The debt it owes to Hamlet has been acknowledged by creator Kurt Sutter, but less attention has been paid to his shameless steal from Macbeth. Gemma Teller Morrow — former wife of SAMCRO leader John Teller — at first seems like a strong biker chick, but by the end of the pilot episode has revealed herself to be a conniving, power-hungry Queen whose sense of morality has been twisted until she will do anything to protect her family and the direction of the gang, a fact proved by her attempt at driving Jax’s junkie wife Wendy to an overdose. Later in the season she apologises to Wendy for this act, but even then she’s only doing it because she’d rather her son stay with a recovering junkie than return to his longtime sweetheart Tara. Plus, she does seem to be implicated in John’s death, possibly committed by her current husband Clay Morrow, which appears to have been done to prevent a change of direction towards legitimacy for the biker gang.
The most miraculous thing about this character is that she has dispelled my previous reservations about the talents of Katey Sagal. I’ve complained about her terrible voicework on Futurama before, where she leaves no joke intact, but I had suspected her dramatic work was not as shaky. She was great as John Locke’s departed love Helen in Lost, for example. In Sons of Anarchy, she’s even better, outacting even Ron Perlman when she’s in full flow. This display of Macchiavellian sneakiness got even more entertaining as the season progressed. There was a certain amount of character modulation during the latter half of the season, with some of her excesses toned down, and the horribly stagy confrontations between her and Tara tweaked until they sounded like actual human conversations, but even so, her Lady-Macbeth-esque manipulations of all around her were a source of delight even when she misfired a little. Gemma, as Journey almost said once, don’t stop conniving.
Least Entertaining Villain of the Year: Miguel Prado - Dexter
Dexter sure does have some crappy nemeses. In the first season, he goes up against his own brother, played with ridiculous camp evilness by Christian Camargo. In the second season, he is forced to conquer his evil girlfriend, manifested by Jaime Murray with a bag of absurd tics even more annoying than those of Dexter’s sister Debs, who is played by the equally dreadful Jennifer Carpenter. In the fourth season we’re getting John Lithgow. My memories of his madness from De Palma’s Raising Cain do not bode well for any Over-Act-O-Meters used to track the progress of this show, though I reckon he will be infinitely more entertaining than Dexter’s other “villains”.
Last year we got to see Jimmy Smits contend with the usual quota of ineptitude, improbable motivation, and mustache-twirling obviousness that comprises the Dexter Big Bad, and he made a meal of it. Amping up his intensity to sky-high levels, Miguel Prado went from saint to madman in the blink of an eye, all pretense at showing him as a morally complex human thrown out of the window with a haste even this most feeble of shows has never exhibited before. His cluelessness meant his occasional victories against Dexter relied upon our “hero”‘s IQ dropping 100 points, which is a flaw that has run through the show from the beginning. Prado would then, naturally, make a bunch of mistakes, all the while chewing scenery like a murderous Donald Sinden. I say he was the least entertaining villain of the year because watching his character arc was deeply unsatisfying, with him changing his personality from moment to moment in order to move the plot, and not vice versa, but I did get a lot of pleasure from his reaction after he finally kills a bad guy.
Nastiest Villain of the Year: Nolan – Dollhouse
I can’t make any glib observations about this. Whedon is an avowed feminist, and this new show seemed to be a peculiar expression of that worldview, drawing both perplexed condemnation and optimistic readings. The fact that the show didn’t immediately say that the Dollhouse was a bad place threw a lot of viewers (including myself), but I’m sure a lot of Whedon’s fans (again, including myself) hoped that things would be clearer in the long run.
By the end of the season it was obvious that the Dollhouse tech was meant to be The Worst Thing That Has Happened To Humanity Ever, and not just because it brings about the end of the world (or at least, the end of Humanity). The most graphic and upsetting example of this comes in the excellent episode Needs, where the Actives come to and “escape” their prison (but only because they are allowed to). Drawn to the terrible things that have made them volunteer for Activeness, we see November visiting the grave of her child, and Echo deciding to stay behind to rescue her fellow Actives (surely this should worry the Dollhouse executives a bit more). Sierra, who I’d never found to be particularly compelling, goes to see the man who has paid the Dollhouse to make her an Active. Any doubt that the Dollhouse is a force for evil is removed once we find out that Nolan (played with oily menace by Vincent Ventresca) has paid the Dollhouse to turn her — a woman who once refused him — into an Active just so that he can violate a woman her whenever he feels like it. As Couch Baron says here, there truly are no words that can describe how awful this is. It was the most potent way to show how dreadful this technology is, and upset me deeply. The bad taste remained for the rest of the season. How rare for a network show to explore this kind of moral depravity without shying away from it.
Best Cast of the Year: Party Down
Just as with this year’s Best New Double Act category, I created this category last year to give shout-out to Reaper‘s wonderful cast, which featured a host of great actors, especially Ray Wise, Tyler Labine, and Ken Marino. This year, Party Down gets a nod for featuring so many great actors, including Ken Marino. If I’d been blogging when Veronica Mars started, I probably would have highlighted the terrific cast of that show too, which would have meant discussing Ken Marino’s turn as sleazy private investigator Vinnie Van Lowe. Basically, Ken Marino seems to be my weakness. If he’s around, I am helpless.
Which is not to say Party Down worked solely because of him. As I’ve mentioned at length in my Best New Characters award list, Jane Lynch is breathtakingly good as Constance Carmell, and her replacement (Jennifer Coolidge) was just as good. Of the core cast, I’d highlight Ryan Hansen too, playing the adorably clueless Kyle Bradway — basically Dick Casablancas with a heart of gold. His vapid interactions with Jane Lynch are the highlight of many episodes, and he even manages to make tolerable the time spent with Martin Starr, here doing worryingly convincing work as the deeply unpleasant Roman DeBeers. He’s probably the weak link in the cast, though I would also become annoyed by the endless hipsterish emotional evasions of Casey Klein, played by Lizzy Caplan. (Side note: I think it’s fair to say that, thanks to real-world annoyances too numerous to count, I automatically take against any character on TV who spends all of their time on the phone instead of doing their job, or while other people are trying to talk to them. Those caveats are meant to signify that Jack Bauer is not to be considered one of these people. When he’s on the phone, he’s actually saving the world).
At the heart of this amazing ensemble is Adam Scott, formerly playing Palek the Vulcan Inseminatron from Tell Me You Love Me, and now utterly rehabilitated from that indie-movie-aping earnestness after his incredibly bold turn in Step Brothers. Here he is required to be in enormous emotional pain for the majority of the time, and it’s a credit to him that playing a completely shut-down shell of a man doesn’t mean he isn’t funny. His ability to mix up this world-weariness and emotional vulnerability with deadpan wit is essential to the success of the show. He’s Tim-from-The-Office, but even more pathetic. You weep for him in every episode.
So, they’re a fantastic core group, but they’re not the only reason Party Down wins this award. Just as with 30 Rock and Arrested Development before them, this show manages to get some of the best character actors around to populate the secondary cast. In the first season we saw Ken Jeong, J.K. Simmons, Steven Weber, Marilu Henner, Joe Lo Truglio, Mather Zickel, Joey Lauren Adams, Molly Parker, Breckin Meyer, Rob Corddry, Rick Fox (as himself), George Takei (also as himself), not to mention — for the Veronica Mars fans out there — Kristin Bell, Enrico Colantoni, Daran “Cliff McCormack” Norris, Ed Begley Jr., Alona Tal and Jason Dohring. Matched up to the best sitcom scripts of the year, there was no way this show was going to fail. Even though I’m agnostic on the appeal of Megan Mullally (drafted in to replace Jane Lynch in season two), I have a strong feeling she will be magically transformed by this most glorious of shows.
Worst Cast of the Year: Parks and Recreation
I feel a little ill, because I’m about to criticise the casting of a show that has Amy Poehler in the lead role. Amy Poehler, who was the best thing about last year’s Baby Mama. Amy Poehler, who was one of the best things about SNL for the past few years. Amy Poehler, who was one of the three things in Southland Tales that was actually great and entertaining instead of desperately bad and misery-inducing (the other two things being The Rock and Wood Harris, with whom she shared her scenes). She makes me laugh pretty much every time I see her, but not here. In that case, I’m willing to assume she was just dealt a bad hand, and given a character who is unworkable. The only times Leslie Knope comes alive and becomes more than a badly formed lump of unrealistic character flaws is when she pines over Mark Brendanawicz, her selfish and unappealing colleague played by the talented Paul Schneider. Again, another talented actor playing an unlikeable and uninteresting character. Maybe I should rethink this category. Is it the cast, or the show, that I don’t like?
Well, Aziz Ansari is in it. I’ll admit, I have not seen much of his work. He was in Funny People for a couple of minutes, and the effect he had on me was akin to having my soul Maced. Perhaps I’m wrong. This show seems to be underwritten and poorly thought through, which could account for it, but his turn as Tom Haverford is almost unwatchable. I’d say that’s more than just a glitch in the writing. The same goes for Nick Offerman as the Dwight-Schrute-esque Ron Swanson, a character that screams desperation from the writers but is not at all helped by Offerman’s flat performance. Both Haverford and Swanson seem like the kernel of a joke expanded to character-size without much thought given to whether these characters will work. As it is, they’re just belligerent. The less said about Aubrey Plaza and her pointless teenage character April Ludgate, the better. (See above for comments about affectless, oblivious characters like Ludgate and Casey from Party Down.)
Perhaps the thing I resent most is putting someone as funny as Chris Pratt opposite a comedy void like Rashida Jones. She was charming enough in The Office but wasn’t expected to be particularly funny. Here she is either a dope being manipulated by Pratt’s Andy, or she berates him, making her seem churlish and him seem like a victim, which he isn’t. Crappy couples on TV are not often fun to watch (ask any Lost fan who despairs whenever Jack and Kate get together). I’m more than willing to accept that a lot of these actors are far better in other roles. Hell, I’ve seen them be better. Pratt was hilarious in The O.C. as Che, and Paul Schneider was riveting in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Perhaps I’m being way too harsh on these actors. Sadly, the bottom line is that, unlike The Office that came with only a couple of good characters, already based on archetypes from the UK series, and then built the supporting cast as they went along, Parks and Recreation started from scratch and got none of the characters right. Even a good cast would have trouble making this bunch of half-formed comedic scribbles come to life. In time, if it doesn’t get cancelled, perhaps this will change. Let me know when it does. Until then, I’ll stick with Community, Dan Harmon’s brilliant new sitcom, which recently started almost fully-formed and will hopefully keep getting better.
Best Guest Star of the Year: Jon Hamm - 30 Rock
For a little while, we were non-converts to the Cult of Hamm. He entertained us enough in Mad Men, but we had enough reservations about the first season that he didn’t really register in our consciousness, even after the Dick Whitman revelation gave Hamm the best acting opportunities. Perhaps we thought he was just a pretty face, and couldn’t imagine there was anything else in there. Canyon was also offended by his Brylcreemed hair. She deemed it unappealing. I wasn’t about to argue.
Then came the far superior second season, and sightings of his normal hair (adorably floppy), and then a turn on Saturday Night Live that was so confident and charming that I fully expect Hamm to eventually challenge the hosting records fought over by Christopher Walken, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin. Dramatic excellence, perfect comic timing, a willingness to play off his image, and seriously, one of the handsomest faces on Earth; if he can sing and dance, he’s got it all. We are now members of the Cult. Wearing robes and everything. It’s proper infatuation.
His three episode run as Dr. Drew Baird on 30 Rock was joyous. It was so good that the plot of his final episode, with him coming to realise that having everyone fawn over him all the time is something that doesn’t happen to anyone else, was even alluded to in the third season of Mad Men (reacting with bemusement when Sal points out that he doesn’t get hit on by flight attendants on every flight he takes, unlike Don, who is obviously spoilt for choice). Once Mad Men is over, Hamm can pretty much pick a direction. Not many actors get to achieve stardom and show both comedic and dramatic chops. Maybe he’s more like Dr. Drew than he realises.
Most Resurrected Character of the Year: Captain Jack Harkness - Torchwood: Children of Earth
I thought I always wanted Captain Jack’s immortality to be used more, as it’s a nifty little gimmick. I don’t think that any more.
Most Surprising Directorial Work of the Year: Akiva Goldsman on Kings and Fringe
Akiva Goldsman has done some awful things. His script for Batman and Robin is rightly reviled. He’s great at simplifying complex narratives and turning them into multiplex fodder (A Beautiful Mind, I, Robot). He’s the go-to guy for big movies based on crappy thrillers by bad writers (he’s adapted John Grisham and Dan Brown). When nerds hear his name, they sob with misery. “Why is this man so beloved of Hollywood?”, they shout. “It must be proof of its awfulness, along with the career of Michael Bay!” Of course, my own feelings about Bay are not so straight-down-the-line, and now, Goldsman has begun to win me over.
All he had to do was build up his experience as a director by making two of the strongest hours of TV of the 2008-2009 season. His debut, on Kings‘ The Sabbath Queen, showed a talent for atmospherics and interesting visuals, pacing the episode beautifully and getting some good performances from even the weaker actors on the show. After that he wrote and directed Bad Dreams, one of the highlights of Fringe‘s first season. Again, the creepy atmosphere was beautifully judged, and the opening few minutes were hypnotically staged. Even better, the big finale was disturbing and tense, even as it played with some less than fresh ideas, and then we got a video clip of a young Olivia that wouldn’t have looked amiss in Hideo Nakata’s Ringu. If you’ll forgive me for cheating and ignoring my own rules, we’ve also seen his work on the first episode of the second season of Fringe, and again, it was very impressive. In time it’s obvious that he will be directing films too. I hope he finds some interesting material to work with, but even if not, I look forward to seeing what he will come up with.
Least Surprising Directorial Work of the Year: Greg Yaitanes on House and Lost
Shades of Caruso took against the TV (and occasional film) director Greg Yaitanes after some hilariously overwrought and showy work on shows such as Heroes and Drive, and we’ve yet to be convinced he deserves reappraisal. Last year he won an Emmy for his work on the first part of the House season finale, which would have been understandable when you take the logistics of the shoot into account, but is frustrating when Katie Jacobs’ work on the far more affecting final episode wasn’t even considered (and she’s listed as co-director of the Yaitanes episode too, but didn’t get a nomination). Since then, Yaitanes has been given a co-producer credit on House, and contributed numerous episodes to this season, including the shocking Simple Explanation, in which Kutner (Kal Penn) commits suicide offscreen.
I will say this: the scene where Foreman and Thirteen discover the body was brilliantly done. Unfortunately, Yaitanes had a vision for this episode and went ahead with it. Everyone at Princeton Plainsboro is obviously very depressed about Kutner’s death, so Yaitanes lights the entire episode as if all the colour has been drained from the hospital. It’s an entirely grey hour of TV, just in case you didn’t get it from the performances or dialogue or sad music all over the place. To be honest, the episode Joy, directed by an unexpectedly off-colour Deran Serafian, featured the worst direction of the season, but Yaitanes was consistently bad here, and worse elsewhere.
You see, he also managed to infect my beloved Lost with his ridiculous film-cooties. I could talk about the flashy work he did on Heroes, but to be honest he’s the least of that show’s problems, so I don’t really mind if he stays on it. Lost, however, is a totally different matter. He had worked on the show before, in the first season, and as we started rewatching the show recently, I noticed he was kinda bad then too. That was when the show was in its infancy, and was still trying to find its tone, so his attention-seeking excesses were less obvious. By now, we all know what works and what doesn’t work within the very specific Lost world, which made Yaitanes’ excesses even more noticeable than usual. We know that Ben is creepy and Sayid is scary and intimidating, which are characteristics stressed by their very specific line-readings. In He’s Our You, we see a flashback to a face-off between the two characters, and both Michael Emerson and Naveen Andrews draw out their sentences to absurd lengths, with poorly edited pauses between each shot emphasising that they are both very methodical people who hate each other.
Lost usually treats these big moments with a sense of grandeur that works well, considering the unapologetically grandiose nature of the narrative, but this scene stepped over the line between epic and ridiculous. It made my favourite show seem like a parody of itself. I don’t even want to get into the awful “interrogation” scene later (included above), which was poorly written but even more poorly directed. What was Andrews doing here? It’s all over the place. The final scene with Sayid shooting young Ben was brilliant, but it was the only bright spot in a very disappointing hour of Lost. When you compare this horrible misinterpretation of the tone of the show to the consistently impressive work of star directors Jack Bender and Stephen Williams, it just looks amateurish. I keep hoping he’ll settle down, but the latest episode of House was directed by him, and as it was about a games programmer, most shots seemed to feature arms coming out of the side of the frame towards the person being observed, just like an FPS, so it might be a while before he realises less is more.
Best Shout-Out of the Year: House
Stephen Colbert is a huge fan of House, and it seems the feeling is mutual. (It’s the photo above his shoulder, obviously.)
This is the only way Colbert is ever going to get on a Fox channel without being mischaracterised as a baby-eating Trotsky clone.
Intensity of the Year: Lance “Intensity” Reddick – Fringe
While Parks and Recreation fans, or Dexterites, or people with Unusual taste, might be mad at me for being a big meanie and saying such terrible things about their favourite shows, surely there can be no controversy here. No one else this year was so stern and scary and just fucking in charge.
I suspect Lance “Intensity” Reddick can atomise titanium just by looking at it. As with Harry Lennix on Dollhouse, Reddick is pretty under-used on Fringe. Most of the time he is onscreen he’s taking the Fringe team to various crime scenes, or giving Olivia either a bollocking or a pep talk. This is not a good use of this man’s talents. He also showed up in Lost, as the sinister Matthew Abaddon, where he stopped being sinister just before getting shot and killed. Which sucked. I hope season two of Fringe sees him doing more entertaining stuff. I’d like him to shoot one of their ridiculous monsters (a part squid, part mushroom teenager hiding under carpets, for instance), or have more screen time with Blair Brown and Her Metallic Arm. If the Fringe showrunners don’t hurry up, he could well get very bored very soon. In this AV Club interview, he says he wants to try his hand at comedy. (For the record, though he is seemingly never required to show it on TV, Mr. Reddick is fully capable of expressing amusement, and isn’t just a scarily intense man.)
If he left Fringe to do that, you know I’d be checking it out.
And that’s it for this year. In the next few weeks, some new polls or something. Maybe some chatter about the London Film Festival (I got really carried away buying tickets the other week). Stay tuned, new readers. As you can see, I may not post as often as I would like, but when I do, I tend to post big.
The 2008-2009 Caruso Awards: The Best Episodes of the Year
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
There 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
At 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
The 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
For 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…
The Annual Culling Of The Shows
When I say culling, I’m not referring to us cutting back on shows. Don’t be ridiculous. We’re so far behind on most shows that we’re following that it is tempting, but it’s not going to happen any time soon, because I hate to give up on anything. Of course, I’m actually referring to that awful time of year when the networks pass judgement on the underperforming programmes on their rosters, slicing out much-loved cult faves and giving the kiss-of-life to some real oddities that no one is really passionate about. Hollywood Reporter has a report on the status of many shows here (this information is arranged in a more pleasing list format by Herc in this AICN Coaxial post), and it contains good and bad news, as ever.
Most upsetting is the unequivocal cancellation of Reaper, which has improved by leaps and bounds this year. Having shaken off first season nerves, the showrunners and performers have allowed more oddness and format-shaking looseness in, with some episodes doing away with the ponderous soul-hunting stuff in the cold open in order to follow the protagonists as they bumble along in their super-amiable way, and others just running with gags that would never have occurred last year. In a recent, very entertaining episode, more time was expended upon Sock (seeking chemical castration to prevent his lust for his step-sister) and Sam (dealing with his zombie dad’s attempts to bond with him) than was spent on what would once have been considered the A plot, which was just fine by us. Nevertheless, that burst of energy came too late to save it. Sam, Sock and Ben (and Ray Wise, of course) will be missed.
The woeful state of Jerry Bruckheimer’s roster of shows surprises me. While the CSI franchise is not going anywhere (especially now that the original series is on such consistently great form, courtesy of Morpheus), Without A Trace and Cold Case look like they’re in trouble, with one of them probably cancelled. I get that this is due to the financial pressures of running both shows, but they always seemed like they’d be around forever, like bigotry and flatulence. I say that despite the fact that I watch neither of them and have exactly zero interest in them.
I’m much less surprised that Eleventh Hour is facing doom. It’s only just started airing in the UK, on Living (which means watching it exposes me to endless adverts for Grey’s Anatomy; a seriously nauseating experience, especially with Kevin “Journeyman” McKidd popping up every couple of seconds to remind me of our favourite recently cancelled series). A less apt channel I cannot imagine, as Eleventh Hour has yet to display a pulse. Is this the most boring show on TV? Yes, despite the insistence of the ever-present Clicking Clock Of Teh Doom, it’s much less silly than Fringe, but it’s not like it gets the science right even in such unambitious circumstances, so it hasn’t even got that going for it.
At least Fringe, while being full of risible science, is not ashamed to forget about realism and just go all out, showing us people turning into rampaging porcupine monsters, or macrophages that burst out of your mouth and crush your windpipe on the way out, or teleportation devices that are just fucking wicked cool and if you don’t agree then I’ll never love you. Eleventh Hour, on the other hand, is sober but utterly joyless. It also features a lot of googly-oogly eyes, as Rufus Sewell and Marley Shelton have intense ocular orbs that scare the piss out of me. Not for much longer, though. Farewell, Dr. Hood and Thingy Gunbabe. I hardly knew you or cared.
Two other shows I don’t watch are Num3e7501019 or whatever the hell it’s “called”, and The Unit, pictured above (that’s First African American President David Palmer carrying what looks like a life doll for people with a fetish for deli-shop owners). While Numbronics has a few fun character actors on it, I cannot understand how a procedural about numbercrunching has managed to last for five seasons, and is likely to come back for another. I saw the first three episodes, and tuned out because I couldn’t see how the concept could sustain itself. And yet there it is, running even longer than the similarly restrictive Bones (though of course the charm of that show, apparently, is the chemistry between Boreanaz and Deschanel). What happened to the Numberation format to make it run this long? Was I wrong to drop it? (This is a rhetorical question; I’m not going back to it no matter what I hear.) Maybe a long-running character will turn out to be a serial killer, to the delight of its many fans. Or am I thinking of another show?
In contrast, the possible cancellation of The Unit saddens me despite my utter ignorance of it. Why? Because this year creator Shawn Ryan treated TV watchers to one of the classic seasons of one of the greatest shows ever created. The final season of The Shield was a nerve-destroying tour de force, and to think he’s lost one show (on a high) and then maybe lost the other one without fair warning makes me unhappy on his behalf. For providing us with such a thrilling conclusion to The Shield, he should win awards, not get thrown off TV with such disregard. Fingers crossed that, if worst comes to worst, he can come up with another show as great as The Vic Mackey Glower Hour (twice as thrilling as The Jack Bauer Power Hour, even on a good day, tension fans!).
After a whole season of speculation about being dropped by Fox, it looks like Terminator: The Needlessly Long Title Involving The Important-Sounding Word “Chronicles” is finally being cancelled. That, and Dollhouse, have suffered the fate of Friday Night Lights; running to overtake the expectation of imminent extinction. While FNL has, happily, been renewed for two more seasons, T:TSCC is not going to be so lucky. Perhaps Fox only really needed it to dilute the impact of the upcoming film in order to damage its box office chances, if their behaviour over Watchmen is anything to go by. Ironically, even though I was enthusiastic about T:TSCC when I saw the pilot, I only watched one more episode. Of course Torchwood, which I was comparing it to, got worse than even I could imagine, and yet I watched it all the way through to the hysterical end. What’s up with that?
Surprisingly, Dollhouse might make it to a second season, which would probably be surrounded with even more chatter about cancellation. The only thing people have linked to Dollhouse more than those early, awful episodes is the expectation that it will not last. While once that was irksome, it’s a testament to the quantum leap in quality from the sixth episode on that cancellation would now be a tragedy (in terms of TV show potential, not actual real tragedy). The last two weeks have provided more brain food than any other show on TV that isn’t set on a mysterious island. As long as Dollhouse 2.0 is allowed to continue to explore the distortion of the moral norm caused by Dollhouse tech and not just have the ever-unappealing Dushku wandering around in bondage gear prior to some poorly edited fighting, a second season would be welcomed with fireworks and Bacchanalian parties (and, sadly, a flurry of woeful fanfic). If the show is not going to play to its intellectual strengths (yeah, I said it), why bother giving it another chance?
As I said earlier, we’re inundated with shows, even more so now that In Treatment is back for two and a half hours a week, so maybe I should be glad Cupid is being axed. I never watched the original starring Jeremy “Mercury from The Metal Men” Piven, so I have very little awareness of what the show is like, but we’re talking about a remake of a failed show, replacing the undeniably watchable Piven and the equally appealing Paula Marshall with Bobby Cannavale and Sarah Paulsen. I’m having trouble mustering enthusiasm for this, and now that it’s been cancelled, that enthusiasm dims even more. If I do watch it, it’ll be out of loyalty to the man who brought us Veronica Mars (though that wasn’t enough to make me watch 90210).
Still, I can’t imagine that it could be worse than Castle or The Unusuals. Despite the charmkrieg that is Nathan Fillion selling almost every shitty joke and laboured flirt-op (and proving he is indeed better, better than Neil, at so many things it’s hard to conceal), everything else about it is to entertainment as formica is to wood. A lot of unimaginative shows feel like they are made by machines, but the machine that made this is constructed out of string and cardboard and powered by irradiated rats. Still, at least it’s not The Unusuals. ABC’s website made this sound like a drama featuring a bunch of unorthodox cops whose rarified skillsets allowed them to solve crimes no one else could. Canyon thought it was meant to be a straight-up comedy. That it satisfied neither of us is a sign something went haywire as soon as calloused fingers typed Fade In.
It’s telling that, in the pilot, you see a clip of Bruce Weitz on TV in some kind of sitcom, as the show also felt a lot like Hill Street Blues, but this time with a team comprising nothing but the weirdos like Renko, Belker, and Buntz, but lacking the stable characters like Furillo, Coffey and Esterhaus. The first hour, directed with typical ineptitude by Stephen “The Reaping” Hopkins, was interminable, cutesy, unimaginative, uninvolving, edited into incoherence, cloying, drab, desperately quirky, and, most annoyingly, filled with terrific, wasted actors, like Jeremy Renner, Harold Perrineau and Terry Kinney. Such talented guys. Oh, and Adam Goldberg is in it too. Erm… ::tumbleweeds blow by::
So, if we lose that, no biggie. Better Off Ted, however, is just about the most lovable show on TV that isn’t Reaper, and even if it’s not as funny as 30 Rock, or as clever as The Office, it’s still worth rooting for, especially as series creator Victor Fresco also gave us Andy Richter Controls The Universe, and I’d feel bad for the guy if he was responsible for two great sitcoms cut down in their prime. It has cemented our love of Portia DeRossi, who is just wonderful as the android-like Veronica Palmer, and has managed to satirise soulless corporate culture in such a non-abrasive manner that we almost love our monolithic overlords by the end of it. It’s mild stuff, but compared to the laugh-void that is Parks and Recreation, it’s Arrested Development meets Seinfeld. I’ve got my fingers crossed for it.
Sadly, I doubt anything can save my favourite new show, NBC’s bonkers soap opera/religious fable/alternate-reality-curio Kings, which would be unmissable even if it was just 45 minutes of Ian “Swearengen” McShane walking around his “palace” muttering to himself, but manages to excel by featuring Ian “Swearengen” McShane walking around the city of Shiloh, capital city of the Kingdom of Gilboa, scheming against his foes (including Brian Bloody Cox!), railing against a preacher (played by Eamonn Bloody Walker!), and trying to predict what God wants of him in order to protect his eroding power base even when that makes him act against the interest of others. As with Dollhouse, no one expects it to make it to a second season, which is heartbreaking. In a season as dreary as this one (where the only other new shows worth following are the frustratingly erratic Fringe and the fluffy Mentalist) it’s been a revelation. No matter how the other shows fare, knowing that the Sword of Nielsen Damocles hangs over such a promising head is enough to make me wonder why the hell I bother watching TV when ambition is so often rewarded with dismissal.
Self-indulgent whinge #268 over.
Morpheus Saves My Ass, And Not For The First Time
CSI is not usually known for its uplifting qualities, dealing as it does with the nastiest elements of humanity, especially with its trademark forensic attention to minute, grisly detail. Nevertheless, this week’s episode, The Grave Shift, which featured the first episode starring Laurence “Morpheus” Fishburne as Dr. Raymond Langston was, at least to this fan, the right installment at the right time.
I don’t want to dwell on real-life issues too much, as this blog was always meant to be a place for me, Canyon and Masticator to dissect the pop culture that has affected us, but I can’t talk about this wonderful hour of TV without giving up a little bit about myself. At the moment I’m staring redundancy in the face, and while there are huge benefits to this, and much to be happy about, there is also uncertainty, fear of the unknown, the prospect of that first day in a new environment. If you’re wondering why this blog has recently been updated so sporadically and indifferently, that’s why. I know I’m not alone in this, and this is not a big deal in the scheme of things, but it is affecting me, though I am lucky to have Canyon’s wonderful and much-needed support and advice to temper it all.
Even so, it’s hard to concentrate on things while in this state of emotional flux, and it’s distracted me enough to make me disapprove of the first two episodes of the new season of Lost, a situation which is unprecedented. Suspecting the onset of acute anhedonia, I’ve almost felt like ignoring TV until the situation improves, but luckily I didn’t go that far, and last night we watched The Grave Shift with grins on our faces.
As I’ve mentioned before, the prospect of one of my favourite actors taking over from William Petersen was a cause for celebration even though I didn’t want to see Gil leave. More importantly, I was tentatively confident that his arrival would be handled well. This optimism was bolstered by some evidence, such as the entertaining Gil-hiatus when Liev Schreiber guest-starred as the deeply troubled Michael Keppler, which showed that the showrunners can do great work introducing characters when they put their mind to it. However, there were also botched introductions, like Jessica Lucas’ minor stint as CSI Ronnie Lake, or Lauren Lee Smith’s Riley Adams, who was added to the team with as much abruptness as Louise Lombard many moons ago. Even after half a season I have no idea who this person is except to note that she’s a bit rude sometimes. As we already have Brass, Hodges and Doc Robbins filling that role, I don’t see what we’re gaining by having her around.
My optimism paid off. Langston’s first appearances in the previous two-part serial killer episode were a great teaser, showing a smart and capable man afflicted by a touch of self-doubt and much enthusiasm, which is a weird combination of traits you don’t get to see in fiction every day. In his first full episode, Fishburne does an amazing job of making Langston a distinct character not just from his new CSI colleagues, but pretty much anyone else on TV. Meticulous, eager, jumpy, earnest, and a little bit out of his depth, Fishburne manages the incredibly difficult task of immediately manifesting a well-fleshed-out character the audience can warm to even as it mourns the loss of its most popular character.
Well, okay, I speak for myself there. I know what opinion is like on the internets, and I’m not about to go looking for other takes on it, as I’m sure there will be a lot of carping and whining about how the show is ruined now Gil is gone. The worrying drop in viewing figures suggests hardcore Grissom fans are not willing to hang around to see what the new guy is like. Whatever. For those of us who remain, this episode was a terrific introduction, for us, for Langston and, funnily enough, for David Weddle and Bradley Thompson, the excellent Battlestar Galactica writing duo whose names popped up as producers in the credits of this season’s opener. This was the first episode credited to them as writers, and in a meta-comment on their new position, it concerned Langston’s first day on the job: learning the ropes, making mistakes, breaking a case, figuring out the office politics and making friends.
My favourite character moments in the show revolved around Hodges, whose depression following Gil’s departure manifests as bitter hostility towards Langston. As an audience surrogate anticipating the traditional internet reaction to change (i.e. fruitless carping and shocking levels of entitlement), Hodges’ reaction was perfect, as was Langston’s initial frustration and subsequent efforts to win him over. Utilising Hodges’ help to crack an arson case, Langston provided us with a nifty set of facts about bomb-making on a budget, and then gave us a nice big explosion as a bonus. It’s a textbook way to win the audience over. Look! He’s doing it onscreen. Get over it, whiny schmucks.
At the same time we see the rest of the team adjust to Gil’s departure and the new power structure in the lab, with Catherine in charge (a promotion I have been hoping would happen for years now), Ecklie given the job of undersheriff, and Nick turning Gil’s office into a communal workplace for the whole team. Pretty much every decision made by the showrunners has hit the spot dead on, anticipating fan reaction brilliantly. Seriously, this is probably a naïve thing to say, but if anyone watched this episode and didn’t like any of the adjustments made, I just can’t take their protestatons seriously. There are so many ways to fluff a major overhaul to a show, but this one has been handled superbly. I was thrilled by the thought that had been put into it.
That, however, is not why the show salved my aching worryglands. As we were seeing Langston’s first day on the job, we saw him make errors (wrecking a print due to overzealous powdering), overstep boundaries (confronting a father who hits his son), and offer help to someone who literally spits in his face, an act that made me furious even though it’s only a TV show.
(An aside. At first this scene pissed me off, as I don’t want our new hero dissed by some ungrateful little punk, but it is framed almost exactly like Horatio’s super-earnest and patronising discussions with the various orphans left in the wake of the crime wave perpetuated by Miami’s resident Nazis, drug barons, cannibals, nuclear terrorists, and time-travelling octopoid Martian overlords. Instead of that faux-heroic idiocy, Langstrom reaches out because he thinks it’s the right thing to do, and it goes horribly wrong. Are the showrunners trying to reassure us that CSI: Classic isn’t going the way of its drooling moron cousin? Maybe.)
Despite these setbacks, he prevails through determination and curiosity, absorbing the advice of his new colleagues, adapting to challenges, and patiently practising the things he has learned. Throughout the episode we journey with him, learning as much new information as he does; no mean feat considering how long this show has been going and how much the fans have already picked up (did you know arson victims’ brains boil, and the steam escapes through the natural cracks in the skull? I didn’t, and I kinda wish I didn’t). The attention to detail, and the eagerness to impart new trivia, was a joy to behold.
Langston won me over in the first few minutes, meticulously preparing for his first day, dressing in inappropriate but precise clothing, and throwing himself into work with huge enthusiasm. Now we have someone who is enthusiastic about the job, whereas the series has spent a couple of seasons dealing with the toll it has taken on the team’s psyche. For the first time in a while, Gil’s initial playfulness has been returned via Langstrom’s willingness to engage with the job. Just to seal the deal, his selection of relevant fingerprint powder, complete with a nifty snap of his wrist, was, for want of a better word, adorable (I never thought I would say that about Laurence Fishburne). It was such a nice touch that it is now immortalised in the title sequence. Sweet! It instantly rivals Alec Baldwin’s dramatic turn in 30 Rock‘s titles as best credit moment on TV right now.
This was just what I needed. Though I’m never going to have a job as fascinating and semi-glamorous as being a criminalist with the fictional Las Vegas CSI team, it was still inspiring to see someone embrace the possibility of an exciting and inspiring new career instead of dreading the future, as I have in my darker moments. Langston’s attitude cheered me up immensely, and though I expect that to be temporary, it was a nice respite from stupidly fretting and making myself miserable. My gratitude to the cast and crew is hereby immortalised via blog, for them to stumble across somehow.
The Return of TV, The Departure Of A Blog Feature
For a while now I have plugged away at writing enormous posts, filled with screengrabs, about the various weeks of TV, a task I once enjoyed and slowly came to dread, simply because even if I had some fun with it the process was horribly time-consuming, which made posting even more irregular than it already was. My reading time was overtaken by attempts at writing comments with every spare moment I got, which eventually became a source of much frustration as my ever-shitty TyTn II phone kept crashing and deleting my work. The last time that happened ended up removing the majority of a Week in TV post, and though I didn’t realise it at the time, it was the final straw. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again; THE TYTN II IS THE WORST PHONE IN THE WORLD! Do not even think of buying that buggy-assed fucking shit.
So, with the TV season restarting after a Christmas holiday, I might as well admit defeat, even though I have several semi-finished posts filled with pictures littered around the place. Should I even bother finishing the rambling diatribes when I can’t even muster the enthusiasm to do anything with them now that a silly amount of time has passed, and I have now found other projects to concentrate on? I don’t think so.
So, for now, here is a bit of what I was going to write, just for the sake of keeping track of my responses to the last few weeks of TV, which contained some dreck but mostly some of the best TV of the year, such as a wonderfully consistent season of Friday Night Lights, the grim but entertaining introduction of Dr. Raymond Langstrom (aka Morpheus) on CSI, and certainly the best series finale since the last episode of Angel, as The Shield finished with a staggering, emotionally draining closer that even my favourite show, Lost, cannot possibly top. And then there was this stuff…
Stupidest Science:
Suresh, the crusty unscientist and narrator of Heroes, is already the stupidest and most annoying character on TV, so having him experiment on, and kill, innocent people in order to make his serum work is par for the course of this moronic show. Even so, stating that they need a catalyst to make the proteins bond with the enzymes, as they did many weeks back, is possibly the worst kind of sciencey-sounding gibberish I’ve heard in years.
Proteins and enzymes don’t bond. If they did, we’d never be able to digest meat (or nuts). Considering this is a show that features superheroes and scientists, it’s a blow to its credibility that no one who works on it seems to know anything about superheroes or science. It’s no wonder Suresh’s research creates this.
Plus, for extra stupid points, this poor bastard mutates way faster than Suresh does. If a reason for this was given, I don’t know what it is. Suresh can’t even fuck up properly. What amuses me most, is that this non-science bullshit carries across the writing staff of Heroes. Here is a panel from Joe Pokaski’s dire Ultimate Fantastic Four, set moments after Jeph Loeb ruined the entire universe with his Ultimatum, a comic almost as bad as his Onslaught Reborn mini.
And the way Heroes uses death to lazily generate drama?
Don’t get too upset there, Ben. Oh, and because Jeph Loeb continues to be a plague on the world…
Crappiest Plug:
Obviously written before Jeph Loeb got shitcanned by Tim Kring, this episode of Heroes (It’s Coming) featured Hiro getting upset about the current state of affairs in the Marvel universe, proving that he truly is a fanboy in his current brain-damaged state. While the shock over the death of Steve Rogers is justified, getting all twisted up about Red Hulk is a waste of time.
Once Loeb is off the title and Greg Pak or Fred Van Lente get back on it, that’s gonna get retconned as quickly as Supergirl got rewritten once Loeb left DC. And hey, when Bryan Fuller arrives at the end of this season of Heroes, he can retcon all of his nonsense here as well! It all works out in the end.
Most Annoying Turn of Events:
As I’ve mentioned before, it’s gratifying to see an atheist heading up a TV show, which is one of the reasons we’ve stuck with The Mentalist so far. Sadly, however, just as with the other big TV atheist, House, instead of letting that stand, the showrunners have to flirt with showing these characters in doubt about their stance. Fair enough if the character is dealing with some terrible event. As they say, there are no atheists on a deathbed. However, having characters doubt their beliefs just because some “supernatural” event has happened is just horseshit. It troubles me to think that atheists are just considered religious believers in waiting, and a bleeding statue or family tragedy is all we need to be pushed over the edge, just as it’s horseshit to assume a religious person would automatically eschew their beliefs if presented with examples of terrible mortal cruelty.
House has flirted with this in the past, much to my disgust, this episode of The Mentalist (called Seeing Red, showed our jovial but tortured hero Patrick Jane meeting a psychic, played by Leslie Hope, aka super-unlucky Teri Bauer from season 1 of 24. For much of the episode he calls her out on her techniques, treating her as a terrible fraud. Much James Randi-esque fun is had as he toys with her, but all of that good will is undone in the final scene as the psychic tells Jane that she knows about his family’s murder at the hands of the evil Red John, and reassures him that they didn’t suffer. As she leaves, Jane bursts into tears.
Now, the worst case scenario here is that Jane is so distraught over this tragedy in his past that he’s willing to suspend his scepticism long enough to allow the possibility that this information is real, which is a betrayal of everything he has stood for so far and scuppers the show entirely. That his devout colleague Grace Van Pelt sees him crying could suggest that that is what is intended, her look of sympathy also one of triumph. However, I’m going on the minor information I have about this lightly sketched character. For all I know, she understands that Jane is actually just grieving, having been reminded of the tragedy by the psychic, which is the scenario I would prefer to imagine. Jane has been portrayed as a man angry at the abuse of skills such as his, and I’d like to think the show is willing to portray him as a tortured man but not one turning his back on his beliefs (and his knowledge of fraudulent psychic nonsense) just for some solace. It’s lazy writing to have him debating this so early in the day, and smacks of focus group meddling. I hope Bruno Heller knows this and won’t take the show down that road, and so in the interest of giving him a chance I’m just going to assume Jane is merely grieving and not taking her words at face value. Nevertheless, I’ll be keeping an eye out for any further bullshit flare-ups.
Best Road Trip:
FNL has faced cancellation since early in its first season, and especially now, with the show on a roll, the prospect of losing it is a miserable one. Last season, ending on an episode that provided zero closure and only accidental cliffhangers, looked for a while to be the last episode ever until the DirecTV deal came through. That third season might also be the last (we’ll have to wait and see what happens when FNL returns to NBC), but at least we’re getting a little closure before then at the start of the season we saw Smash achieve his dream, and with this episode the same thing happened to Jason Street.
Using actual New York location shooting with a bit more grace than the clumsy attention-seeking of Ugly Betty, Street and Riggins bumble around the city in search of clothes and employment like a couple of yokels, except lovable, funny, and relatable. In the process, we see Street’s confidence finally hit a speedbump, as he is rebuffed by the sports agent who had inadvertently given Street false hope, and yet more signs of Riggins’ newfound maturity, as his advice and support saves the day.
As is usual with me, the end of the episode caused floods of tears, as Street gets his Happily-Ever-After with Erin, and Riggins watches from their cab. It was only then that it struck me: no more banter between these two friends. As grateful as I am that we got to see Street’s arc finish (and finish with a happy ending to boot), it’s a shame we get to lose that.
The chemistry between Scott Porter and Taylor Kitsch has been one of the most appealing things about FNL since the pilot. It shall be missed.
Most Pleasing Guest Star:
My childhood adoration of Steve Martin has taken numerous knocks since he became the go-to guy for weak wacky dad roles or unnecessary and ill-thought-out remakes of superior works, but luckily his appearance on 30 Rock as the crazed white-collar criminal Gavin Polone was a shot in the arm for my admiration.
Though he strayed into Wild-and-Crazy-Guyisms in the final stretch, for the most part he was reserved and quirky, much like in his film-stealing uncredited turn in Baby Mama. I’d hold out hope that this is a sign of a forthcoming renaissance, but I shouldn’t hold my breath.
Worst Fashion Sense:
I could have spent a long time dealing with the psychic fallout from this horrendous jacket (cagoule?) worn by Greg in CSI…
…but we’re actually both traumatised by the clothes foisted upon the female leads of The Mentalist. Amanda Righetti has been given some really badly fitting t-shirts, especially in the most recent episodes.
She’s got a rocking bod, so it takes some skill to make her look bad. Still, in early episodes she did okay. Robin Tunney, on the other hand, has been lumbered with awful low-slung pants and nasty, tucked-in shirts. This picture…
…doesn’t even begin to display the horror. If you watch the show (and you should, as it has gone from strength to strength, despite the quibbles voiced above), check out her dreadful ensembles. I’m shallow enough to want some CSI-style flash in their outfits. Tim Kang and Owain Yeoman also suffer with their bland suits, with only Jane looking swish with his vests. Maybe that’s the point. Still, though.
Most Distracting Furniture:
It was the confrontation absolutely nobody was waiting for. After two years of not thinking about it at all, Nathan Petrelli finally comes face to face with the father he thought was dead. It was one of the great TV moments, up there with the end of M.A.S.H., or that bit in Only Fools and Horses with the chandelier. And through it all I was transfixed by Pops Petrelli’s table.
It’s just a sheet of circular glass resting on three metal beams. Simple. Yet I spent the whole scene either staring at it or worrying about the damn thing. Is the glass resting on the pointy corners of the beams? Isn’t that dangerous? If you nudge the table will those corners scratch the glass? Or are the corners flattened? In which case that wouldn’t happen, but the purity of the design would be disrupted. This fascination with furniture is proof that there is obviously something wrong with me, if I’m going to be distracted from all of the dramatic tension and devastating emotion on display by something so innocuous.
Most Blistering Performance:
Recently I pointed out how amazing Walton Goggins had been in The Shield, and his streak of acting brilliance continues all the way to the outrageously exciting finale, but in the penultimate episode, Possible Kill Screen, his genius was utterly eclipsed by one of the most astonishing acting moments I have ever seen.
Shield spoilers! Do not read if you have not yet watched this amazing show!
Michael Chiklis has been consistently great from episode one, even though I had a tough time buying this little man as a hardass despite all of the posturing and violence. In the penultimate episode, believing he has no choice but to sign a deal with ICE behind Ronnie Gardocki’s back in order to save his wife from an arrest that didn’t actually happen, Vic is asked to confess his wrongdoings in order to complete the deal, allowing him to start his new deal as a federal agent. After signing the document he pauses for a startlingly long time, something even the best TV shows don’t have time for, and in that time, he seems to age ten years. The weight of everything he has done is so overwhelming that the strain of it made him look like a different person. How he did this I don’t know. I don’t have a picture of that, so take a look at this, and imagine the complete polar opposite of it.
The moment was electrifying, even more so when he finally unburdens himself of the list of crimes to an increasingly horrified Laurie Holden, who slowly realises that her support of Mackey has doomed her career. Vic’s deadened laugh as he recounts some of the more despicable acts of the past three years is chilling, but even worse is his arrogance at the end, knowing that he has saved his own ass, with his only remorse saved for Ronnie.
Chiklis deserves honours and awards for his work here, but he wasn’t the only actor to shine even brighter than usual. Midway through the confession Claudette and Dutch arrive to catch Vic, only to find he is now immune to prosecution. CCH Pounder’s performance in that moment, snapping with the strain of seeing the man she detests getting away with not only the crimes she thought he was responsible for but also much much more, was another award-worthy moment, and not the first either.
This is the depressing fact about The Shield, that outside its fanbase, it’s largely ignored in favour of more prestigious work. The recent disgraceful Golden Globes, which snubbed Lost and The Wire, also coughed up nothing for The Shield, and while there’s an argument that ballots were cast a while back, the show has been around for long enough that it deserved a sentimental nod just for old time’s sake. Though, of course, a gratuitous nomination just for making it to the finale would be almost as galling as no nominations at all, it still stings that Chiklis, Goggins and Pounder end up with nothing. At least they have the gratitude of a legion of fans who have been lucky enough to see these fine actors at the height of their powers.
Most Pointless Torture:
While waiting for the TV season to kick off again, we started watching the sixth season of 24, which we had yet to watch even though it aired a couple of years ago. During that there has been less of the torture, though saying that we’re not even halfway through, so who knows how that changes. Nevertheless, nothing they can do in that show will top the endless crazy zapping of Sylar (who, at that point, was momentarily good) by Elle.
Seriously, she goes nuts.
Really nuts. It’s to do with him killing her dad, Evil Ned Ryerson.
Stephen Tobolowsky was a dick in this show, and she never seemed to like him, so why his murder brings about this response is, as with many things on Heroes, illogical.
Even Mel Gibson doesn’t get tortured for this long in his movies, and he has a Christ complex.
Well done, Elle, you blew some skin off his face. You can probably knock it off now.
No? Still going? Okay. Do you need to recharge or something? Drink some Powerade?
That wifebeater he’s wearing is awfully resilient. After all, in this opening shot, she destroys his jacket in a homage to Watchmen.
Occasionally, for variety, he gets blown backwards.
So yes, she is very angry.
So angry I bet she never gets over it and forgives him! That would be crazy.
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
Most “Holy Shit!”-Inducing Improvement:
We really never saw this this coming.
Yes, Fringe had been, before the pre-holiday episode, a sporadically entertaining sci-fi show packed with silly implausibilities, boring secondary characters, poorly cast leads, and even more loose plot threads than Lost had at this point in its first season. Other than John Noble’s brilliant performance as Dr. Walter Bishop, we found it mildly diverting but frustratingly underwhelming, especially when compared to the electrifying mind games of Lost.
And then Safe happened. Suddenly every character was written better, every plot thread echoed the others, and most of those annoying questions posed earlier in the season came together brilliantly. It also featured the best cold open so far, as shady FBI traitor Agent Loeb (surely a comment on the hapless writer/producer) used the phasing doohickey from a few weeks ago to steal a lockbox containing a mysterious machine.
The sequence had pace, intrigue, grisly death and cool sci-fi trappings, and even better, we didn’t have to wait to find out what the machine was, and who it belonged to. By the end of the episode we knew it was part of a teleporter that had been designed by Walter many years previously, something that even he didn’t know.
Not only did it sate our curiosity about the elements introduced this week, we got to see Mr. Jones in action, killing his lawyer (played by an underused James Frain), and then being snatched from his captivity in Germany by mad science to reappear in America, at Little Hill (another question from previous weeks thus resolved). The teleportation effect, disrupting the ground and shaking the prison, was especially well conceived.
While the craziness raged, Walter’s memory hiccups continued, as Olivia began to mistake John Scott’s memories for her own. That the show had finally figured out how to make two plots intertwine in this way inspired hope that the writers were becoming more confident now that the format and characters have been set down. It’s not the best writing on TV, but it was the best writing on Fringe so far, and I take heart, hoping that this represents the moment the show kicks into gear.
So, for now, that ends that. I’m sure that I’ll still talk about TV in the future, in some format, and not just because some of our favourite shows are returning. Yes, Battlestar Galactica, Big Love, and Flight of the Conchords are back, and coming very very soon, my favourite show, Lost, returns following a triumphant season. In the words of my good friend and dastardly despot Brian Michael Bendoom…
That Week In TV Year II (Week 10)
The things that delayed the completion of this post include:
Enough of this list-compiling shit. Let’s get this fucker rolling!
Week 10 (10 – 16 Nov):
The Shield 3:11 – Petty Cash
America’s Next Top Model 11:12 – Good Times & Windmills
Friday Night Lights 3:07 – Keeping Up Appearances
CSI 9:06 – Say Uncle
The Office 5:07 – Business Trip
House 5:07 – The Itch
The Mentalist 1:06 – Red Handed
Heroes 3:08 – Villains
Fringe 1:07 – In Which We Meet Mr. Jones
30 Rock 3:03 – The One With the Cast of Night Court
Highlight of the Week:
Debate rages about whether The Office has become too broad, deviating so far from the template created by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant that is no longer relevant as a comment on the drudgery of office working and how it can bring out the worst in people. Having Michael drive his car into water, or making Dwight clamber over the top of a house to check how sturdy it is, or any number of oddities, has turned some fans off for being too wacky.
Two defences spring to mind, the first being, if it’s funny (which it very nearly always is), who cares? The other is that is still able to reveal subtle truths within the context of a broader show that features Dwight hiding weapons around the office, or Creed hinting that he might be a murderer. This episode, set on a feeble business trip to Canada for some of the Scranton crew, featured an alcohol-fuelled Andy trying to get Oscar laid before phoning Angela to demand sex (which she is having with Dwight right at that moment), and Michael becoming convinced that the female concierge of their hotel was like a Geisha. Both plot threads were pleasantly farcical, but become part of a thematic trend when linked to Jim and Pam’s relationship woes, or Ryan’s attempt to woo back Kelly to restore what he sees as tarnished honour, inadvertently freeing Darryl. (Side-note: Craig Robinson has been great all season, and possibly the one thing that saved the previous episode, Employee Transfer, from becoming too uncomfortable to watch.)
The original show kept the office relationship thread restricted to just Tim and Dawn (with David’s woes coming later in the series), as there was more than enough horror to document already. The US version, while still dealing with the horrible mundanity of office work, has definitely branched out to more outlandish plots (while keeping the characters internally consistent), but slowly a noose has tightened around many of the characters’ necks.
What could be considered an over-reliance on soapy relationship drama still feeds into the central theme, that the drudgery of office work is a living hell from which there can be no escape, a miserable fate that, until this episode, was made funny by Michael’s (and, in the original, David’s) obliviousness to this fact. Of the main characters, the number of characters who appear to have a social life outside Dunder Mifflin is shrinking. Angela and Dwight and Andy are in a love/sex/emotional torture triangle, Pam is unable to complete her course and fulfil her dream, Ryan is playing some weird game with other people’s feelings, and for a while now Phyllis has been married to Bob Vance of Vance Refrigeration, who works in the same building, and has his own bizarre and seemingly unbreakable connection to his job. The office has taken over their lives over time, and while I’d agree that it’s debatable whether that theme in the show is intentional or merely a side-effect of the emphasis on relationship plot threads, it is there nevertheless.
Most poignantly of all, Michael, who has considered his job to be the second most important thing in his life, has just seen that job ruin the actual most important thing: finding a partner to have numerous kids with, an obsession he has had since childhood. If his delusional attitude to the realities of working life has kept him happy in the past, it probably won’t for much longer. Given a shitty business trip as a sop to his upset over Holly’s departure, and feeling lonelier than ever after a depressing tryst from which he expected more, Michael snaps and bitches out David Wallace.
For the character, and this show, it’s a dramatic (and beautifully performed) moment that’s on a par with Michael Corleone deciding to kill Sollozzo and Captain McCluskey. That’s not hyperbole, my good friends. After all, I could have said it’s on a par with him ordering the hit on the heads of the other four families and Mo Green while his nephew is baptised, but I didn’t. I’m not that crazy.
While Michael (Scott, not Corleone) had a depressing epiphany (which may or may not play out in coming weeks), we also got to spend a lot of time with Andy, a prospect that made me miserable. I loved Ed Helms on The Daily Show, but when introduced to The Office, I was disappointed that I couldn’t get a bead on who Andy was. Other than some odd belligerence and insecure Ivy League posturing, I didn’t believe in the character, especially after he became deferential to Dwight. I understand that was a consequence of his anger management training, but at the time it seemed too drastic a change, and rendered the character kinda pointless. Surely there was a place in the show for someone with an anger problem. As long as it didn’t flare up too badly, it could have been a new and interesting dynamic to have on the show. As it is, we’re just waiting for Andy to have another nervous breakdown, and as his wedding to Angela is not going to be a harmonious affair, it sometimes seems like we’re on a straight course to it. Maybe this expectation is why I’ve been bored with Andy, as I’ve been unable to see what else his character is there for.
Thankfully, this episode showed a new side to Andy, given his own plot instead of being a featured player in The Dwangela Show. His successful attempt to bond with Oscar over many strong drinks, and his endearing insistence on trying to hook Oscar up with a couple of heterosexual businessmen, went a long way to giving Andy a real personality at last. It also meant we got to see Ed Helms and Oscar Nunez playing drunk, which was surprisingly funny (playing drunk can go wrong so often). It was a total pleasure seeing them becoming friends, as well as getting more screentime for Nunez, who is often regrettably sidelined.
Most surprising of all, at least to me, is how the showrunners have managed to keep the Jim/Pam story going for so long without running out of ideas. It’s especially gratifying for me as, in direct contrast to the original series, Tim/Dawn was my favourite thing about it, whereas here I often tune out as they flirt. No offence to Krasinski or Fischer, who do a great job, or to the writers, who have managed to make their characters fun and flirty, as well as slightly tragic (both of them are doomed to never live up too what they think their potential is, providing much bittersweetness to their romance). I just have more fun watching the other characters, and think their low-key comedy moments are less amusing than Creed’s occasional utterances, or Dwight’s epic delusion.
This week made me care about them. In a scene as well acted, written, and directed as anything in the entire run of the series, Pam phones Jim to tell him she has failed her course, and will have to stay in New York to retake her exams. Both actors do amazing work conveying the misery of that moment. As I’ve said, the US version of the show is still doing what the original did, i.e. showing how office work can kill the soul unless you’re careful. It also shows that life can throw you terrible curveballs outside work, and this cruel event was a perfect example of that. Of course, that was, thankfully, not the final word (see below).
Almost Highlight of the Week If Only It Hadn’t Fallen Apart At The End:
Coming hot on the heels of the exceptional Leave Out All the Rest, this episode looked horribly like a CSI:Miami-esque cultural embarrassment, as a shooting in Vegas’ Koreatown is covered up by the locals who are distrustful of the police force. I seem to recall an episode of some procedural show about Korean gangs and the Omerta-like silence of the Korean residents, but I can’t remember which show it was in. Whatever it was, this vague recollection made me more than a little uncomfortable with the portrayal of Korean immigrants as skittish, incomprehensible, and ignorant. Seeing this episode open with the shooting made my heart sink.
Luckily the gang plot turned out to be akin to a red herring, with the murders caused by familial strife over a series of clinical trials performed by an unethical pharmaceutical company on a very young HIV-infected boy. Introducing this plot element defused some of the uncomfortable events that had occurred by that point, most notably one elder Korean woman’s panicked near-shooting of Nick, thinking he was going to abduct the boy and perform more experiments on him.
Even better, it served as a metaphor for the dismissive attitude of mainstream (and corporate) America towards its working class immigrants, seeing them as dehumanised, manipulable resources and not as individuals, which was a bold narrative stroke that I did not expect, and echoed last season’s episode about the consequences of costcutting at a water treatment plant. The other great thing about this plot is that Gil gets screentime wearing his scrupulous scientist hat and not his forensic investigator one (and by hat I don’t mean this one).
Right now, with Eleventh Hour and Fringe dealing with bonkers pseudo-science, it’s great to have a show present both good and bad science in this sober way. Well, I say sober, but that’s probably too generous. If Big Pharma fudges the statistics on their clinical trials, it’s probably more insidious and subtle than just ignoring a couple of days of results, but it’s satisfying to see the show address the issue from the point of view of someone the audience trusts. Even better, it’s also a great character moment for Gil, coming so soon after Sara’s message from a scientific expedition. While she left the team due to the psyche-wrecking stress of working in such miserable conditions, Gil is slowly realising that there is more to life than sitting in a sexily-lit office and eschewing real research. His natural curiosity, that was once one of his more endearing qualities, has become a curse, and maybe now he realises that Sara has found a better way. It’s likely this will be the thing that makes him leave the team.
As I’ve said before, I’m looking forward to the arrival of Morpheus as Dr Raymond Langston, because that voice is like the planet itself intoning profundities and, if that photo is anything to go by, he will look motherfucking sharp, as ever, but I will miss Gil’s socially awkward alpha nerdery, and his belief in the power of science. Perhaps Langston will be like that too, though the early talk of him having a psyche similar to that of a killer not only smacks of gimmickry, but drags the show into Will Graham territory (ironic, as the early seasons of the show, with Gil more outgoing and lean, brought back memories of Michael Mann’s Manhunter). I’ve got no problem with that per se, but I’ll miss Gil’s positive perspective on science, and besides, Cracker did forensic profiling definitively, so this can only suffer by comparison.
So why is it not the highlight of the week? Partially because The Office was so great, but also because the killer turned out to be the HIV positive child. While this was a great way to explain away the silence of the Korean community, which naturally wants to protect the child from the deadly consequences of defending himself and his uncle from his greedy and unscrupulous mother, it sadly joined the long line of episodes where the killer turns out to be the child. Though this stopped shy of the bad seed explanations used in the past, it’s still an over-used tactic, so much so that we can now add “It was the kid that did it!” to “It was the guest star that did it!” as probable third act reveals. In individual cases there’s no problem with this; this episode was generally terrific, and both Hannah West episodes were superb. It’s just becoming formulaic, and is used too often as a way to illustrate the generally awful state of the world, and can smack of “Save the Children!” handwringing, which ticks me off.
Directorial Excellence of the Week(s):
Since the pilot episode, helmed by TV vet Clark Johnson, The Shield has always been strongly directed, with a roster of in-house talent making TV gold out of their low low budget and crazy shooting schedule. On top of such fine directors as the late Scott Brazil, D.J. Caruso, Dean White, Guy Ferland and even Michael Chiklis, the show has featured some classy guest directors, with Frank Darabont and David Mamet providing two excellent episodes.
This week’s nerve-shredding installment of The Best Show On TV™ was helmed by Craig Brewer, aka the Southern Douglas Sirk. As a big fan of Hustle and Flow and Black Snake Moan, I was particularly thrilled, and this episode was a perfect fit for him, with quirky moments like Shane and Mara’s inept hold-up, and Vic’s drug deal, complete with panicky money transfer. It was terrific stuff, as always, and made me eager for his next movie.
Also pleasing was the chance for ace director of photography Rohn Schmidt to direct an episode two weeks earlier. His contribution to the show (and to Darabont’s The Mist, which looked way more expensive than it actually was) is such that it was nice to see him get a chance to step up. It was a decision in keeping with the rest of the season, which has seen several characters come back, sometimes to wrap up loose ends. That the showrunners are eager to honour the road they have taken by giving us one last look at the rich tapestry of characters they have created to populate Farmington is one of the things I love most about this season. This is how you end a show.
Best Use of the Golden Hour of the Week:
The Office, as well filmed as it is, cannot be said to be a pretty show. The cast are mostly believably plain, though the rabid internet fans of John Krasinski and Jenna Fischer might disagree. The palette of the show, all greys (grays) and… well, greys (grays), is hardly easy on the eye either. It’s all in the service of the bleak tone, and so please don’t consider this a complaint, just a statement of fact. However, this week we got to see a little colour, used to great effect, as Pam returns to Scranton just as the sun is setting behind her. The result, all lens flares and backlighting, was beautiful.
It felt like a different show for a couple of minutes.
Personality Overhaul of the Week:
Remember when I said Marjorie was an annoying skittish bird of a woman whose fear of everything made it hard to connect with her? Well, seems she agreed, because this week, to paraphrase Dr. Evil in Goldmember, she went men’al on account of the booze.
And yet, following all of that madness, this is how her photoshoot ended.
Oh Marjorie, your crazy European mind is a source of constant mystery.
Improvement of the Week(s):
What is depressingly stupid, peppered with plot holes and narrative contrivances, woeful performances from a bunch of lucky amateurs, distrust of logic, a total lack of embarrassment when it comes to retconning continuity problems, and a perplexingly huge fanbase? Obviously, it’s world’s worst sci-fi show Torchwood. But what has all of the above minus sexual progressiveness and plus Robert Forster and Malcolm McDowell working hard(ish) to get that kidney-shaped swimming pool they always wanted?
Yes, it’s the Metahuman Family Variety Hour, with laughs (see Suresh buy “something to take off the edge” from a drug-dealer with a plummy British accent), thrills (will a major character get killed and/or brought back to life this week, before being resurrected and/or killed again the week after?), and suspense (how much can the showrunners ruin the character of Sylar this week? Quick answer, quite a bit, if they’re going to trap him on a bed that he can just walk out of even without powers. Look at his hands! They’re not even tied down!).
The episode entitled Villains spent much of its running time showing how Sylar, who was introduced in the first season as an evil bastard, took a momentary retcon break in the middle of his bastardiness to sappily regret his first murder (David Berman from CSI!) while hanging out with Elle after a meet-cute involving attempted suicide. That this remorse makes a mockery of the entire first season is possibly the most infuriating thing that has happened in the whole show, made worse by the “reveal” that Sylar ended up being re-evilled by HRG, manipulating Elle into throwing some hipster douchebag into his line of sight, which triggers his hunger and makes him super-extra evil.
Poor Sylar! HRG was the real villain all along! At least, that’s the big narrative conceit there, that the characters we thought were heroes and villains were all vicey-versa. King Kring and his Krazy Kronies in the writers room may have thought that this was a promising direction to take the third season, but all it’s done is waste our time. Did any of the Peter-bad, Future Sylar-good stuff mean anything, especially now Peter has no powers? If Kring is so in love with this idea, wouldn’t it have been cheaper and simpler for him to just play Dungeons and Dragons instead? If you want your characters to change alignments in that game you just reach for another character sheet and scribble in Chaotic Evil instead of Lawful Neutral.
There were other things happening this week. Having Meredith and Pyrokinetic Man turn out to be siblings was simultaneously annoying (is this just one big incestuous family by now?) and gratifying (for the first time in a long time it felt like the showrunners had planned something ahead of time instead of giving the impression the script was rattled out by someone who had never attended a script meeting to date). That didn’t change the fact that even the momentary return of Eric Roberts didn’t make that plot interesting.
Actually, now that I think about it, is Eric Roberts interesting? He’s kinda funny, unintentionally, and I do love him for being in Worst Movie of All Time contender The Specialist, but I think the casting of someone well known in this show I once liked has blinded me to the fact that we’re talking about someone who is Roy Scheider, except not cool (N.B. I wrote this before rewatching The Dark Knight a couple of nights ago, and he’s really good in that, so I think he is now hovering around the edges of cool).
It’s the same with Malcolm McDowell. It’s impressive that he’s in it, until you remember he’s also been in Tank Girl and Fist of the North Star and any number of bad movies, and it’s not like he was any good in them. Does he suck now? Was he only ever notable for being the anti-establishment poster boy in 60s British cinema? That dangerous young man is not who we see grappling with Patrick Stewart in Star Trek: Generations, or haunting Adrian Pasdar. Or is Heroes so bad now that it’s infecting my memory of him as Alex the Korova-drinking asshole, or young H.G. Wells in Time After Time?
It’s not just him. Canyon and I were discussing Veronica Mars earlier this week, after I updated her on the terrible silliness Kristin Bell has to endure in this (falling for Sylar, being very very angry in almost every scene, wearing some really unflattering clothes). I committed the terrible sin of saying I don’t even remember whether she was any good on that show, and Canyon justifiably chided me. Turns out the suckage of this show is so complete that I cannot remember how charming and intelligent and tragic she was in Mars. All I think about now when I see her is, at best, the hilarious deleted scene from Forgetting Sarah Marshall where she gets abducted by a horse, or, at worst, every single second she was on screen in this episode.
Maybe that’s the worst crime Heroes has committed, other than squandering a great premise, not to mention Tim Kring’s insistence on insulting the fanbase. Dude, when Aaron Sorkin did it we forgave him because The West Wing was the shit. Your silly show hinted at impressive things for half a season, and has been a laughing stock ever since.
So why did I call this Improvement of the Week? Because it was much less ponderous than the usual nonsense we have to endure, ignoring Suresh, Parkman, Peter (for the most part), “Tracy”, Claire, and The Ridiculous Mr. Sniff. Some of the retconning was fun (Linderman’s attack of conscience), and it temporarily fooled me into thinking the writers were interested in gathering up loose ends. So, possibly the best episode of Heroes since the penultimate episode of season one. It was still the worst thing I watched all week, though.
Visual of the Week:
This New Yorker piece (recently reprinted in the Daily Telegraph without acknowledging the originating magazine) paints Alec Baldwin as a tragic and miserable figure, wracked with self-doubt/loathing, overthinking everything, and seemingly suffering from anhedonia. But look at him!
If only he knew how much joy he brings us.
Voice-Off of the Week:
Fringe returned this week, luckily being just good enough to erase the memory of the previous dire installment. It wasn’t all (tolerably) good, though. Ever since seeing Jared Harris in the execrable Resident Evil: Bollocks Overload (I can’t remember the proper title; it was the second one), I’ve been more than a little creeped out by his voice, which is almost exactly the same as his dad’s, except higher-pitched. It’s like English Bob during puberty, and it really irks me. Such a petty thing to be annoyed about, and I appreciate I must seem like a jerk, but it bothers me so much that I have no idea whether he is a good actor or not, as I concentrate so much on the voice that I don’t pay any attention to what he’s saying.
This week’s episode featured a Face/Off between Harris (as the predictably mysterious Mr. Jones) and Olivia, played by Anna Torv and her Amazing Voice of Amazingness. It was like matter and anti-matter colliding during the scene. Torv may still make some regrettable acting choices (her love scene with Billy Burke was tough to watch), but her voice is like angry chocolate. It makes up for a lot.
Oddly Subdued Direction of the Week(s):
I’ve railed against Greg Yaitanes many a time in the past, but to my surprise this week’s episode of House was restrained, and all the better for it. Considering how annoying Deran Serafian’s work on Joy was (see previous post), I’m wondering if the title cards were mixed up. Or their minds were swapped! That’s much more likely.
Tonal Victory of the Week:
The Mentalist has got into a groove of above-average entertainment, despite the relative anonymity of the supporting cast, mostly because the showrunners seem to have found the right tone for the show. While it concerns murder and kidnap and other forms of criminal behaviour, the show is uncommonly genial, which is pretty much what creator Bruno Heller is aiming for.
This week’s installment showed Patrick Jane, super-handsome Mentalist Supreme, winning lots of money at a casino (in the line of duty), and sharing it with his colleagues and a woman trying to buy a new liver for her mother. It was playful and silly, with the murder mystery plot going unmentioned for a weirdly long stretch of the show, and when it re-focused on the murder, we ended up getting a ton of face-time with Gregg Henry, one of the most watchable and likable actors around. As most procedurals tend to be dour, it’s refreshing to have something that is willing to strike a chirpier tone, and a lot of that is down to Simon Baker’s wonderfully charming lead performance. His devilish grin and joie de vivre is the key to this show’s success, and the news, from that link above, that we are going to see how much of that is a cover-up for his inner anguish, means there is enough depth to the character that we’re not about to get bored of that multi-layered gregariousness any time soon.
Disgusting and Confusing Imagery of the Week:
Dear God, Fringe made me want to boak for reals, with this week’s burst of Mad Science involving a weird worm thing wrapped around someone’s heart and pushing tendrils into the guy’s veins, eventually coming up through his IV drip. Seriously, I have a vivid imagination, but this is totally sickening. Problem is, when the guy’s chest is cracked open, we see the worm around his heart…
…and for a whole minute I thought a big-lipped fish was growing in his chest with its mouth around his heart, which would have been gross, upsetting, confusing, and batshit insane all at the same time. Canyon thought it looked like Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors, which is also regrettably true.
Frustration of the Week:
Watching America’s Next Top Model and knowing McKey is going to win really got us down. Analeigh was, as ever, amazing during the challenge and her photoshoot and, outside the competition, protective of Marjorie and gracious and sweet throughout. It was bad enough seeing her sadness when Marjorie got kicked out, but knowing that she will lose to someone who can’t even flirt convincingly…
…made watching this episode a chore, filled with much shouting at the TV. Again, this is why I don’t watch reality TV. Its unreality makes it too real for me.
Funny Expressions of the Week:
What was up with Tina Fey this week?
And no, this is not just a flimsy excuse to post lots of pictures of Tina Fey, and I’m offended you would suggest that.
Fight of the Week:
Friday Night Lights was, as usual, amazing, with several disparate plot threads coming to natural and satisfying conclusions during the final football game, but even though I was in my usual FNL-induced joy-fugue, it was sad to see Street fighting yet again with his obnoxious friend Herc.
Their fractious relationship is one of the most fascinating on TV. Their bond withstands the terrible frustrations both feel toward each other, and this fight, one of many, was just as entertaining and touching as all the others. With Street’s arc resolved in the next episode, I’m going to miss their bitchiness and semi-hostile supportiveness.
Intensity of the Week?:
Is this intensity?
If you were to assume so because that’s what I say every week, having never met a joke I can’t beat into the ground like a tent peg, then maybe it seems that way. In fact, in context, Lance “Incredulity” Reddick is actually staring in baffled horror at Walter Bishop, who, at that point, is recounting a non-anecdote about eating a fruit cocktail once upon a time. To the hardcore Fringe-watcher it might seem like this is an easter-egg of some kind, like the appearances of The Observer (seen here at a German airport)…
…but to Broyles, it’s an excuse to give Peter a lecture. As we’re hugely bored by Peter’s reflexive annoying sarcasm and exposition (sarcexposition?), we’re happy either way.
Can you believe we’re still plodding through shows from week 11? We only just watched that week’s Fringe and House (both very good), and even though Thanksgiving shrank week 12 (i.e. this week), we’re behind on that too. I will get up to speed and talk about something else soon, I swear.
That Week in TV Year II (Week 9)
Of course, this was the week Barack Obama was elected President of the United States of America, a week spent fretting, then rejoicing, then fretting again (I did the last bit on my own, I think). Not much aired, but there were still some highpoints, including, of course, The Shield.
Week 9 (3 – 9 Nov):
The Shield 3:10 – Party Line
Friday Night Lights 3:06 – It Ain’t Easy Being J.D. McCoy
America’s Next Top Model 11:11 – The Final Five
CSI 9:05 – Leave Out All the Rest
The Office 5:06 – Customer Survey
30 Rock 3:02 – Believe in the Stars
Ugly Betty 3:07 – Crush’d
Non-Shield Highlight of Week 8:
For several seasons CSI would feature the occasional episode written by edgy former drug addict Jerry Stahl, writer of the addiction memoir Permanent Midnight, subsequently made into a movie starring Ben Stiller. In the book Stahl freely admits to megalomaniacal behaviour when crazed by drugs, hijacking Twin Peaks writers’ meetings with zany behaviour that ended up costing him his job.
Luckily for him he got cleaned up and ended up on the most successful show on US TV, where his scripts stood out like a sore thumb by repeatedly exploring the extremes of sexual experimentation and drug abuse, ostentatiously flying his freak flag as high as possible. That’s not to say his work was bad. While Canyon is more sceptical of his episodes, they struck me as cleverer and funnier than regular episodes. He also created the fan-favourite character Lady Heather (played by the ever-excellent Melinda Clarke), dominatrix, therapist, and muse to Gil.
Stahl’s moved on from CSI now, but this superb installment, written by Jacqueline Hoyt, echoed his repeatedly used themes while offering a more downbeat and morbid story than he maybe would have approached. Following a murder that looks to have been committed during bondage play, Gil takes that opportunity to visit Lady Heather (last seen brutally whipping a thug), ostensibly to gather information about the BDSM culture, but secretly to find comfort following his breakup with Sara, who dumps him via laptop.
Not cool! Hoyt does a splendid job of weaving the complex murder plot with Gil and Heather’s confessional conversations, delivering exposition about the crimes in beautifully paced montages, and giving William Petersen plenty to sink his teeth into. Even better was the inconclusive verdict, with the team up-ending several lives to get to the truth only to find they had gone in completely the wrong direction, which echoed the episode from last season when Catherine let her emotions get in the way of her forensic mind, causing her to cast judgement on an innocent man.
It helps that the episode was directed by the ever-reliable Kenneth Fink, again providing a visual feast (with Nelson Cragg on DoP duties). Fingers crossed Jerry Bruckheimer gets hold of a low-key crime film script and hands it over to Fink to direct. If Gregory Hoblit could make the jump to the big screen with Primal Fear, Fink could do the same.
Shocking Assault of the Week:
The Shield has often horrified the audience with totally out-of-the-blue violence: Aceveda’s horrifying rape, the almost deadly attack on Danny at the start of season 7, and of course the soul-numbing awfulness of the season 5 finale. In this episode Aceveda, seemingly cowed by the deals between Vic, Pezuela, and the ICE team, instead explodes into startling violence, raining down such a flurry of blows on Pezuela that even Vic and cartel head Beltran stand by in incomprehending shock. Of course, Aceveda is doing it to try to sabotage Vic’s plan and keep himself in the loop, not caring that he has made Pezeula look so weak in the eyes of the cartel that he has effectively signed his death warrant. In a series full of staggering moments, this was yet another stand-out, made all the more powerful by the fact that, as Noel Murray said in his excellent AV Club review, Aceveda has been walking towards that confrontation for years. Fans should have seen this coming, but as ever the magnificent Shield writing team kept us focused on Vic so much that the moment Aceveda snaps is still a huge, gut-churning surprise.
Fashion Faux-Pas of the Week:
Did a Great Eatlon take a big mystical dump on Tyra’s top?
And why is it held up with straps from a backpack?
Question of the Week:
Did they or didn’t they? Julie and Matt (in another stellar episode of Friday Night Lights) finally get back together after a day spent frolicking in a lake, spending the night together under the stars next to a big bonfire, which is such romantic overkill it positively screams OMG they totally did it. The next morning they’re utterly unafraid to be as soppy as possible, and Canyon and I spent the whole scene debating whether they did, but it was this naughty exchange of looks…
…that convinced me. They totally did it! After their previous failed attempt in season one it makes sense the show would be tactful about it, having already shown the conflict between Tami and Julie. Of course, if it turns out they didn’t do it, I’m coming back here to erase this part of the post.
Dear God Shut Up Already! Moment of the Week:
I don’t think anything on America’s Next Top Model has inspired me to such an explosion of splenetic rage as Marjorie’s endless self-loathing and inability to accomplish anything.
I already hate go-sees (they make me very anxious), but her nervy race through Amsterdam made it an even more excruciating experience. Her signature hunchback photo style is not so impressive once you realise she only uses it so much because she has no backbone.
Funniest Scene of the Week:
In a classic Office scene, Michael makes Dwight role-play a conversation with a customer (played by Jim) in order to assess his ability to interact with clients, all because evil Kelly faked some customer reports to ruin their chances of a bonus.
What made it so entertaining is that it was possibly the perfect example of the running joke of Michael and Dwight’s inability to distinguish reality from fantasy.
Least Funny Scene of the Week:
Jim listening to Pam, via teeny tiny handsfree, as she discusses her possible future in New York with a classmate (played by Mad Men‘s Rich Sommer) was excruciating stuff, with Krasinski selling his subdued anguish brilliantly.
Even bringing Dwight in at the end of the scene couldn’t make it funny. Just horrible to watch, but then The Office has always been very good at yanking the audience from happiness to sadness, which possibly accounts for my occasional reticence to watch it even though I think it’s wonderful. This scene was also way more effective and convincing than the rushed denouement to Michael and Holly’s relationship in the previous episode, Employee Transfer.
Visual Gag of the Week(s):
The third season of 30 Rock may have opened with a weak episode, even with a customarily welcome appearance by Will Arnett as Devon Banks, but the second episode was a huge improvement. Of the many great gags on offer, Octuples Tennis might have made me laugh the most.
Synchronised Running worked well too.
Irksome New Character of the Week:
With Tyra (Collette from Friday Night Lights, not America’s Next Top Model) all loved-up with her new fella (whose apparent drug addiction seems sure to wreck the relationship and doom Tyra to remain in Dillon forever), Landry attempts to cope with the fallout by listening to love ballads in his car and focusing his energies on Crucifictorious. After a bust-up with his bass player, a tryout for a replacement leads to the arrival of Devin, yet another cute hipster for Landry to fall for (considering how square Dillon is meant to be, it seems to be a more of a mecca for Flaming Lips-loving nerd-hotties than nearby Austin). Of course, she instantly joins the band, changing it from a prospective death metal Nirvana into Blake Babies or something.
Our initial misgivings about this new character were partially motivated by the unimaginatively convenient timing of her introduction, providing Landry with someone at exactly the right moment in his post-Tyra downward spiral to put him in a happy enough mindset to forgive Tyra and make them friends again. Luckily, Devin turns out to be gay, which pushed the plot in a much more satisfying direction, with Landry’s confidence shaken and Tami stepping in to give him some reassurance in a beautifully performed scene. Our other misgivings, however, were not allayed. Devin’s just kind of annoying. Purely subjective, I know, but having her around makes me especially unhappy about the absence of Jean, played by Brea Grant. Written with a peculiar lack of subtlety for a show that is the acme of subtlety, Jean was obviously meant to be Landry’s soulmate, in stark contrast to his relationship with Tyra, born of murderous necessity. In a perfect world that character would return to love up our hero, but instead she’s racing around the Heroesverse and getting macked on by some turtle-totemed guy old enough to be her dad. It’s depressing on a number of levels.
Spoiler of the Week:
When I started writing these posts I had no idea who ultimately won America’s Next Top Model, but of course it’s impossible to avoid spoilers these days. Canyon managed about twelve hours after the finale aired before being spoiled by a huge photo on the front page of Yahoo News, and I did okay, until yesterday. All I know is, when I see this photo at the start of this week’s go-sees…
…there is one goofy looking woman there who really should not be in the competition, and four others who all have promise. Except Elina and her Face of Stone. And yet McKey wins? This model wins?
Maybe when I finally see the finale I will get it, but by this point, the only thing that can get her to the top is some artificial and bullshit arc. I’m curious to see what it was that robbed Analeigh so completely. I am very very upset about this! It’s even more upsetting than Cycle 4 when Kahlen lost to proficient but boring Naima, but in that case at least Naima was an excellent model, though Kahlen had a much greater improvement curve and, you know, a personality. This is why I don’t watch reality shows very often. They create an unquenchable pain in my heart.
Background Music of the Week:
Top Gear returned with a splash of testosterone strong enough to turn our cats into human males, and even thought it’s not been long since the last mini-season it was still good to have it back, not-faked-at-all-wink-wink stunts and all. A particularly good one came when Jeremy Clarkson drove a lorry into a brick wall at high speed and nearly killed himself. His panicked grab for his chest was genuinely worrying. Best thing about it, though, is the astute choice of music. In the first week we got Panda Bear, the week after we got a burst of Wendy Carlos’ soundtrack to Tron, and this week was covered in Kings of Leon-y goodness. I love the ladies and gents who sort this stuff out, and even though I can imagine it’s horribly expensive to clear these tunes, it’s really worth it. I mean, Panda Bear! I couldn’t get over that. And it worked perfectly with the shot too.
Your Familiar Face Is In a New And Confusing Context And Is Therefore Rendered Alien Moment of the Week:
The awesome BDSM episode of CSI gave me terrible deja vu, with the snooty club owner Michelle Tournay giving me real problems.
A quick check of IMDb later, and it turns out she’s Peyton List, aka Jane the conniving secretary from Mad Men, and yes, it’s okay for me to say secretary as I’m just following the customs of the time period. Also familiar was the scarily dominatrixy Kumari, who had more red hair than five Debra Messings put together.
To be honest, I don’t know where I’ve seen Rachelle Lefevre before, but I do know she is going to be in Twilight, which I was ready to assume was going to be a big pile of nonsensical gloopy shite about sparkling vampires, but having seen how rabid (and willing to provide me with lovely hits) the fans are, I will accept is actually the most profoundly romantic and moving exploration of vamp-slash immortal and beautiful dedication and love ever made. Good for her and her mane of crimson hair for getting into this year’s hottest and biggest hit movie about lame vampires.
ETA: That picture, showing her sticking needles into some guy’s nipple in a scene that made me want to barf, doesn’t do justice to her incredible hair.
If Marvel are smart, they’ll start work on an Inhumans movie, and cast her as Medusa. And get David Beckham as Black Bolt. All he needs to do is look gorgeous/impassive and not speak. Perfect!
More to come. Seriously. I was really way behind on this mini-project. Blame Obama.
This Week In TV Year II (Week 6) Part 2
I’ll be thrilled when I get this done, you know. The Illness From Out Of Space has made us feel so crappy and so woozy-headed that we’re actually behind on TV watching. We’ve not yet seen last week’s Ugly Betty or Pushing Daisies, or the premiere of Crash, opting instead, through sheer laziness, to sit through the mediocre failure that is Jan de Bont’s remake of The Haunting. I mean, I’ve already seen it twice, so I know it’s terrible, but I made Canyon sit through it anyway. What was I thinking? Anyway, let’s do this thing.
Correction:
Remember I said in the previous post that the Fringe lift error was Mistake of the Week? I forgot this egregious screw-up from CSI.
I’m making an effort to praise this show for its intelligence (something a lot of haters who don’t watch it think it lacks), and they pull this trick. It makes me look like a chump. A chump!
Grisly Visual of the Week:
Peter did to Sylar what most viewers have been hoping would happen to Peter when he snapped the neck of his “brother” (give us a break)…
…and then we got to see him fix it. I’m sure the effect was a lot easier to do than it seems, but then the simple stuff is much more effective, sometimes. Flashes of coolness like this are all the difference between watching crap like Heroes and watching crap like Knight Rider and Torchwood, which can’t even get the spectacle aspect of sci fi right.
Oh, and as for wishing harm on Peter Petrelli? Someone (Daddy Parkman?) read my thoughts.
Kill those stupid brains!
Downright Nausea-Inducing Visual of the Week:
At the start of this week’s CSI, a woman is compelled by hypnosis to jump out of her apartment window to land with a crash on a passing bus. So far, so much like the opening of Lethal Weapon. However, that film didn’t show a coroner trying to pick up the body afterwards.
And we were eating when it happened. Thanks, CSI.
Heartbreaking Moment of the Week:
The scene in last week’s Mad Men, where Sal listens to a blast of homophobic drivel from his colleagues (including his secret crush Ken Cosgrove), was already superbly played before we get to his stoic reaction.
Bryan Batt perfectly illustrates Sal’s heartbreak with a forced smirk, his eyes doing the rest. It was almost impossible to watch.
Best Appearance By A Beloved Character Actor of the Week:
Though we’ve not yet seen The Wire (which is a temporary arrangement now a loyal friend has bought me two seasons), we’ve heard great things about Andre Royo, aka Bubbles the drug addict. Having him show up in Heroes seems like a good idea for a show populated by this shower of twerps.
His power, creating deadly vortices, is supercool, Royo’s performance was full-on, and his character is interesting and tragic. Hiring him is one of the first smart moves the showrunners have made this season, and I can’t wait to see how it all plays out.
::sigh:: Never mind.
You Couldn’t Make It Up Moment of the Week:
We’re up to speed with America’s Next Top Model for the first time ever, which means sitting through the catch-up episode for the odd morsel of new content. Though it might seem pointless, the catch-up episode often features a new insight into some of the contestants that either illuminates events from previous weeks (such as when did the dreary but hypercompetent model/cheese hybrid Lauren Brie turn out to be such an asshole?), or sets up arcs in the final half (the inevitable separation of BFFs Marjorie and Analeigh).
However, while the catch-up episode spent too long going over Tyra’s ridiculous unfunny stunts again, it did feature the absurd sight of McKey (who really should have been sent home by now) getting upset when Elina tried to kill a bee with her hairspray, and not because Elina is a hypocrite after ranting with dogmatic vehemence at everyone about animal rights earlier in the episode. Taking the bee outside and (I’m not making this up) trying to revive it with water, McKey announces that killing a bee is the first step to becoming a serial killer. You’ve got to start somewhere, apparently.
Crazy knows crazy, I guess.
Smug Dope of the Week:
When Meredith stopped Claire’s mom from searching for the newly gloomy immortal with this bitchface, I rubbed my hands with glee, and not just because she obviously thinks that having hands like small gas hobs make her the equal of any villain.
Unfortunately, considering how much I was looking forward to seeing her eat her words, her nemesis proved to be a puppeteer type, the kind of mind-control sleaze that crops up way too often in comics (for a while there DC was filled with Dr. Psycho cameos and Marvel kept playing with the loathsome Purple Man, which turned my stomach quite a bit).
What’s even worse is that Meredith seems to have been puppetised without even singeing her foe even a little bit. Come on, Meredith, cook that bastard! Braise him! Sautee his eyes!
Unexpected Turn of Events of the Week:
Breaking from House season four tradition, we actually saw Cameron and Chase onscreen, together, at the same time, in the same room, and interacting no less! At first I thought they were only going to be shot like this, out of focus (God forbid they would share the same geometric plane)…
…but later that episode they were actually right next to each other (though with zero eye contact, as you would expect).
I would love to see the effects budget for this week, because I still can’t believe they’re on set together. Of course all of this sarcasm is covering for the fact that I feel really bad for Jesse Spencer and Jennifer “Captain Kirk’s mom” Morrison after their break-up, but it’s had the unfortunate after-effect of making watching them together very uncomfortable, as well as making me think the reason the original Cottages/Housettes got side-lined is because of tension on set. Of course, I don’t know that this is indeed the case, but it does create a weird show/audience dynamic.
Frustrating Show of the Week:
We like The Mentalist, and not just because of the awesome title. We love the central idea, and Simon Baker is very watchable as Patrick Jane (no relation to Thomas “Homeless Dad” Jane). However, as I have said before, the secondary cast is not lighting our fire yet, but that’s not the only problem.
At the moment we have no idea what the hell they are all doing, or where they are stationed. There was a hint that the Serious Crimes Unit, or the California Bureau of Investigation, or Brain Squad, or whatever they are called, do in fact have a base of operations, but so far they have been going from place to place, interrogating people in what look like closets full of filing cabinets. If this is a procedural, it’s an ill-defined one. With a base of operations a la the lab in CSI or a precinct or anything, it would help give the show a visual shape to counteract for the loosey-goosey approach that it seems to be going for so far.
Crappy Easter Egg of the Week:
I’m not even going to look on the net for information about the Pinehearst Company, and considering how easy it is for me (or many others) to futz about looking for uninteresting crap, that’s saying something.
It’s fair to say I’m not even pleased that the company logo explains the odd tattoo that many of the “heroes” (pfft!) have on their bodies, though it’s not exactly a shock that it represents half of the DNA spiral.
Cool Easter Eggs of the Week:
While Heroes stinks up the TV with FAILstench, Fringe, though not quite firing on all possible cylinders yet, is still promising enough that its many Easter Eggs are exciting, providing a new avenue of investigation into the show’s ever-expanding list of mysteries. Strengthening the sense that the Fringeniverse is an actual place, the Massive Dynamic logo keeps cropping up in odd places.
That poster hints at some MD involvement in personal development projects such as the one created by the evil Jakob Fischer (and makes me wonder if Massive Dynamic is meant to be what the Dharma Initiative would be like if it actually got anything done, instead of spending all of its time being attacked by Richard Alpert and his band of Unmerry Men). Fischer’s ads appear early on…
…and were also seen on a telegraph pole in the fourth episode. That said, the ad beneath it would surely lead to a lawsuit for discriminatory employment practices, wouldn’t it?
Of course, the show’s best Easter Egg is The Observer, seen here eyeballing Joseph MEEEEgar, prior to the elevator accident.
Fact Burst! The Observer is played by Michael Cerveris, who plays guitar with Bob Mould’s band (meaning I might have actually seen him live that one time in Wolverhampton when he was supported by Mercury Rev), has played Sweeney Todd on Broadway (OMG we love Sondheim!), and has recorded an album with Steve “Sonic Youth” Shelley, Norman “Teenage Fanclub” Blake, Corin Tucker and Janet “Quasi” Weiss from Sleater-Kinney, and others. He is the coolest Easter Egg EVAH!
Almost Impressive Exposition of the Week:
Actually, this is a two-parter. Displaying a pleasing adherence to reality, The Mentalist used not-hypnotism to drag the truth out of some feckless, murderous surf brats who seemed to have read Donna Tartt’s The Secret History prior to killing a friend. Before fooling them, our hero primes the kids with an explanation of what hypnotism is and what its limits are. It was refreshingly free from artifice.
Seems hypnotism wanted to snatch the Overused Theme spot from hallucinations, as CSI featured a thread about bank tellers handing over large sums of cash to Glenne Headly, who had hypnotised them as part of a weight loss/quit smoking program, which meant it was not only stepping on The Mentalist‘s toes but also Fringe‘s creepy mad science self-improvement plot.
Headly, upon being interrogated by Nick and Catherine, gives a long speech about what hypnotism can and can’t do that was surprisingly thorough and well-researched, dismantling a lot of pre-conceptions about the technique. Sadly, our glee was dented by the final act resolution, where we discover she had hypnotised one of the bank tellers by phone and convinced her to jump off her balcony.
When Nick points out that, according to her earlier speech, a hypnotee (?) can’t be made to do anything that is not in their nature, Headly darkly hints that maybe it was in their nature after all. Though the show was trying to make a point about hidden dark tendencies in her subjects (the same excuse was given for their criminal behaviour in handing over the money), it was stretching credibility to breaking point. Shame.
Frustrating-And-Cool-At-The-Same-Time Cameo of the Week:
Way back in the second season of House we were given a clue about the origin of the cranky doctor’s supercrankiness upon discovering his father was R. Lee Ermey. Or at least played by him. Obviously meant to evoke memories of his stock character of abusive drill sergeant, a big blank was filled in. This week, Ermey returned to play a corpse.
Though it’s frustrating to see Ermey but not get a performance out of him, the continuity nerd in me was happy to see him turn up to complete his arc. (If you’re curious to see what he can do when not barking orders at cadets, hunt down his superb performance in Dead Man Walking.)
Comedy Team of the Week:
Much as most people hated the Feudal Japan thread from last season, Adam Monroe and Hiro at least had a funny chemistry that made it almost bearable. Though the third season is more fun than the second, it’s possibly stupider, so I was surprised at how happy I was to see Adam reunited with his former friend, now enemy.
Their scenes together were endearingly funny and silly, especially with the wonderful Ando added to the mix. Hopefully there’s much more where that came from.
::sigh:: Never mind.
Justice of the Week:
Okay, so this is over a few weeks, but this cycle of America’s Next Top Model seemed to feature more objectionable small-minded catty morons than usual, with the presence of Isis bringing out record levels of hateful prejudice. Even though one rotter, Sharaun, was kicked out in the first week, I girded myself for a long period suffering the idiocy of Hannah Palin from Alaska, Brittany the Bitch, and Manly Clark. But check it out!
In a flurry of awkward contrivance that made me wonder if ANTM was quickly discarding the truly awful contestants as early as possible before lawsuits started flying, a runway challenge became an instant eject button for Hannah, whose walk was truly dreadful, though curiously it didn’t have the added problem of making the designer have a meltdown about hoochy posing destroying the purity of his vision, as Samantha’s equally misguided display did.
It really should have been Samantha getting kicked out, considering the vitriol aimed at her later (see below), but it was obvious Hannah had to go just for being a clueless little ninny. So off she went, with barely another mention that week, and the catch-up episode only spent a moment with her and her ha ha so hilarious Pixie Dust.
Worst contestant ever? Maybe. There was competition this year. Brittany was also godawful, picking on Elina who was dealing with family issues that completely perplexed her bitchy co-contestant, whose mom was soooooo awesome that she couldn’t even imagine a mother being anything less than perfect, and OMG Elina you’re so selfish for not loving your mother despite the psychological damage she caused, GOD!
When up before panel with Analeigh the Angel, I thought that, as in previous seasons, the nice but dull model wannabe was going home and the bitch would stay, as drama equals viewers. But no! Time to go home to your saintly mother, Brittany.
That was so awesome I howled with delight. There was only Clark to go, and she had suddenly seemed to be getting better, which gave strength to the theory that she would be hanging around as this season’s catty standout. After coming first before panel the week before, she was especially obnoxious, but after a really terrible photoshoot, she was gone, tiara and all.
Watching a lot of these back to back really made me feel better while the evil disease ravaged my body. And then, as a bonus, Kenley didn’t win Project Runway!
Of course, the fact that she was copying other designers and was in denial about it was no impediment to some more super-whiny crap from her. “It’s bullshit,” she said of the judges’ decision, not realising that she was actually passing judgement on her own nasty behaviour. Thank you TV for punishing the wicked! Though really, it should have been Korto winning over one-trick Leanne, according to Canyon.
Troubled Couple of the Week:
Though many hate them, we’re big Gil/Sara ‘shippers, and midway through the latest episode of CSI Canyon began to worry that Gil’s imminent departure would lead to the horribly cruel twist that he leaves too late to make a go of it with his nerdy lover.
If that happened, I would totally boycott the show. (This is a lie. Morpheus is on the way. There’s no way I’m missing that.)
Internal Monologue of the Week:
“Don’t mind me, Gibson. I’m just here for the meeting. I’m sure these guys won’t notice that I can’t drink you. Just sit there and I’ll ignore you. I’m totally not staring at you.”
“And that’s not drool on my chin, by the way. Tum te tum te tum. Not thinking about you. Not at all. Hold on, did those guys just say they don’t want to rehire me?”
“Come here, booze! BOOZE! Thank you for catching me when I fell, you beautiful liquid. I feel alive! ALIVE!”
Holy Shit Who Is This Guy? of the Week:
In a small role as Joseph Meegar, the Fringe Scientific Oddity of the Week, Ebon Moss-Bachrach knocked my socks off.
The X-Files is littered with hundreds of similar characters, their lives disrupted by unnatural occurrences. They were often forgettable, though with the odd stand-out. Moss-Bachrach’s nervous energy meant that only three minutes into the episode we were rooting for him in his efforts to woo receptionist Bethany in a way we would normally reserve for a character we have been watching for months. Hopefully he will be back later in the series; I get the feeling that Fringe will be bringing back characters as and when they are needed.
Asshole of the Week:
Heroes is full of terrible villains, but terrible in the sense that they’re really lame. It’s doubly annoying that the showrunners are trying to artificially make good guys bad and vice versa, either with contrivance, misunderstanding, or serums that turn people into spiders. And yet, the biggest villain on TV recently was designer Jeremy Scott, who behaved like a colossal jerk on an America’s Next Top Model by bitching out Samantha for being a bit too flamboyant while modelling his shitty clothes.
Dude, you look like a minicab driver pretending to be Adam Ant. Bitchiness rights are therefore forfeited. Admittedly, after watching the catch-up episode it turned out he did keep telling Samantha not to be hoochy while modelling his disastrous creation, and she didn’t listen, so he had a right to be pissed, but saving it for panel just because the runway challenge was used as a convenient way to get rid of Hannah the Bigot was low class. His drubbing of her seemed to have been given to him as a consolation prize, as there’s no way someone as talented as Samantha is going home yet, but it seemed like a re-run of Nigel’s shitfit when CariDee was a bit too familiar with him a few seasons back. Tyra likes the idea of the show as a school for these beginner models, but having the judges bitch them out like this just makes it look like the exploitative sideshow that it really is. Leave Samantha alone! That said…
Hypocrite of the Week:
Samantha really tested my support for her by being relentlessly catty about Marjorie. Though the nervy French model-Padawan’s ongoing mental breakdown and self-loathing piss me off too, Samantha’s behaviour went from being arguably defensible to out-of-line with a quickness. During the catch-up episode she made a big bitchy deal about Marjorie and Analeigh’s superfriendship, complaining about their adorable touchy-feeliness and seeming devotion to each other. And then we get to see what Samantha’s been up to!
Bathtime with Lauren Cheese and the odious Clark! What a hypocrite! God! If she’s down with lesbi-erotic events like this, I get the feeling she’s jus’ jellus about Marjoleigh. Is it a secret Sapphic love for either the skittish semi-European or the angelic skater? Or does she just want an awesome loyal friend of her own? Whatever the reason, I can imagine Elina is not happy that anyone else got to splash sudsy water at her beloved Clark, even though Clark is a cocky bigot and I’m glad she’s gone.
I love America’s Next Top Model.
Disappointment of the Week:
In an act of attempted matricide that would have improved Heroes by dozens of percent, Peter Petrelli, well on his way to becoming the evil Greaser Petrelli because he absorbed Sylar’s hunger by fixing a watch just so he could something something, tried to chop the top off his annoying mom’s head.
At least Pops Petrelli is played by the wonderful Robert “Alligator” Forster, which makes up for Ma Petrelli, one of my least favourite characters on TV. What is the point of her? Her allegiance changes every fucking week. I know people get annoyed at Lost for having morally ambiguous characters, but at least our perception of whether they are good and bad changes through plot, not contrivance, which accounts for the majority of the power and emotional impact of that most wonderful of shows. Heroes, on the other hand, seems to have been plotted as if by Luke Rhinehart. Next week, when she gets released from the nightmare trance she is stuck in, she’ll be a volunteer fireman. The week after, a neo-Nazi. Can someone else chop her head off? Can Meredith broil her? Anyone? Please?
Dashing Blade of the Week:
Jay Manuel should dress like this all the time.
Seriously. I love his blue-rinse hair styled like this. He’s like a cross between Prince Charming and a gay John Forsythe.
Ludicrous Contrivance of the Week:
Claire speaks for all of us when she calls her dad on his absurd Marvel Team-Up with the worst and most dangerous villain on Earth, even if he intends to kill him.
What’s even stupider is that Sylar suddenly wants to go straight, and is getting all of the hero moments that the actual heroes should be getting. I know this season is all about muddling the loyalties of the main characters and playing with our expectations, but just clumsily switching good to bad and back again is untenable from a narrative point of view, as the changes are being done with barely any preparation. For all its faults, season two’s exploration of Parkman’s temptation to misuse his power was way more convincing than Sylar suddenly declaring, “I’m a good guy now!” prior to performing one of the very few acts of heroism this season by saving Claire.
And really, is this the only heroism possible on this show? Saving other heroes from their own stupidity? And then Claire changes her mind at the end of the episode and gets mad at her dad for trying to get rid of Sylar even though the psychopath ruined her life, just as she had said at the start of the episode? It’s like the show is trying to fail. However, this PSA for John McCain from Hayden Panettiere helps.
She’s my actual hero.
We Love Doctor Walter Bishop Moment of the Week:
As Fringe gets down to establishing its universe, Walter has receded into the background a bit, which is a little frustrating, but still, even a little Walter is better than no Walter at all.
A still image doesn’t do justice to the eccentricity on display, as he rubs his besocked feet in a carpet to generate a static charge that he uses to shock Boring Peter out of his boring, sarcastic revery. Shame it wasn’t deadly. Less Peter, more Walter!
Fashion Improvement of the Week:
Masticator seems to be a fan of Maya’s sexxy sexxy get-ups, and I should explain that it’s not that she’s not an attractive superlady. I just think her fashion sense is awfully tacky, with some potentially stereotypical “Hispanic” trappings added by unimaginative showrunners that make her look like the cartoonishly tacky Hilda Suarez. I just thought she wouldn’t be played like a ditzy bit of eye-candy, but that’s too much to ask of Heroes. Still, this week she straightened that shit out.
Hopefully now that she has become a bit less over the top with her boob-exposing dresses and super-high-heeled sandals, she’ll get to do something interesting and heroic. That would dispel all of these suspicions that the showrunners don’t know what to do with her character, making her hang around just to give Suresh someone to interact with and eventually menace, when in fact there’s every chance she could be a pro-active and interesting character at last.
Oh, for fuck’s sake!!!!
Intensity of the Week:
There wasn’t even another contender this week.
He has Intensity of the Year all sewn up already.
As is traditional, I was hoping Brian Michael Bendoom would sum up this week’s TV for me, but he was too busy vomiting orange mucus into his diabolical metallic mask.
I feel you, dude.
These Weeks In TV Year II (Weeks 4-5) Part 3
I swear, these post titles are beginning to look like quadratic equations.
Tear-Jerking Moment of the Week(s):
Goddamn Coach Taylor! Considering his default personality is “very pissed off”, his farewell to Jason Street in the second season of Friday Night Lights made me blub like a baby, and in this season opener his vow to help Smash Williams get the scholarship he has always wanted made me shed multiple tears.
Oh man, it’s so good to have this back.
Runner-Up:
The return of CSI was a muted affair, dealing with the aftermath of Warrick’s shooting by the dastardly Undersheriff McKeen. Opening on Warrick’s death in Gil Grissom’s arms, a large part of the show showed the CSI team dealing with his death, with Gil, Catherine and Nick taking it hardest.
While I had problems with the crime-solving aspect of the episode (how great it would have been to have kept Undersheriff McKeen around, knowing he was the bastard who killed Warrick), the rest of the episode was terrific, and when the usually stoic Gil breaks down during the eulogy to his friend, I lost it.
I guess this is where we start to see Gil get ready to leave the team, prior to the heavily-anticipated arrival of Morpheus. I don’t think he’ll be crying at any funerals.
Mentalist of the Week(s):
CBS has an honest to God hit on its hands with The Mentalist, which surprises me. While a lot of serialised or complex shows appear to have hit the buffers, procedurals seem to be doing well. The Patinkin-less Criminal Minds is doing great, the CSI opener had the highest ratings of the season so far, and Crime-Fighting Derren Brown is surprising everybody. We thought the second episode was passable at best, but it didn’t help that we saw it right after watching the special features for Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which included multiple unused clips from the made-up in-film procedural Crime Scene: Scene of the Crime, and lots of extra previews for Sarah Marshall’s next show with Jason Bateman (including Divine Justice and Jesus H. Cop). As a result, The Mentalist looked like another spoof, so closely did it hew to a procedural formula.
Still, that formula is subverted a bit. The main character, Patrick Jane, is still disliked by his whole team, and does not do well in action situations: he gets bailed out twice this week, and his plan goes wrong in the final act, leaving him at the mercy of two murderers.
Luckily, even though he’s impetuous he’s still smarter than everyone else, and solves cases while the rest of the team chase their tails (which is a format convention similar to House’s weekly misdiagnosis of a patient and his or her subsequent respiratory arrest/cardiac arrest/anaphylactic shock). Nevertheless, so far we’ve seen three people get shot because of his intervention, and we’re only two episodes in. No wonder no one likes him.
We’ll probably stick with the show for a while longer, while it finds its feet, but it occurred to me that I’m already impatient for Jane to use his Amazing Powers of the Brain throughout, getting restless when the show falls back on the usual procedural nonsense (evidence logging, interrogations, mobile phone calls, rap sheets, etc.). It reminded me of being a kid and watching dreck like Knight Rider (original flavour) or Airwolf. I couldn’t give a shit about the talky bits. I just wanted to see KITT leap over a hedge or Streethawk use his beam weapon or BA Baracus throw a stick of dynamite at someone. Same here. All I want is The Mentalist hypnotising people and winning rock, paper, scissors competitions. That’s the fun stuff. And when is Derren Brown getting a guest spot?
Fashion Faux-Pas of the Week(s):
Even the all-black, all-the-time stylings of the Future Heroes can’t top this cringe-inducing ensemble from Don Draper.
His pants/trousers are sort of beige as well. It was a nauseating sight. All he needed to complete it was a pipe and he would have looked like the deluded 50s dad from Ren and Stimpy. The only thing that came close was Maya, again forced to totter around in high-heels and cleavage-tastic dress on account of how hot she is for Suresh, not realising he’s all wrong on a genetic level.
Poor Dania Ramirez. I gather her power was going to be used to kill the Shanti virus in season two, but that plan got cancelled when the writer’s strike killed the season early. From saviour of the world to hott, scantily-clad babe making failed booty calls to a mad scientist. She needs a better agent.
Still, at least the clothes, horrible though they are, look good on her. These pants, worn by Anna Friel on Pushing Daisies, do not flatter her at all.
And this combo not only features much heinous plaid (or tartan or something ugly), but also a daring top.
When I say daring, I mean, “Why is she exposing that much skin around a guy whose touch could instantly kill her?” It’s not the style that bothers me, it’s the risk of doom. I really get conniptions when I see them together. Love the show though I do, it really stresses me out.
“Where The Hell Did That Plotline Come From?” of the Week(s):
At the end of a fluffy Ugly Betty, someone pushes Christina down a flight of stairs.
Harsh. I know I’m no fan of Ashley Jensen’s mugging, but I don’t want her character to actually get mugged. What was great was that the episode had set this up with some stealth, with her former husband and Claire Meade set up as possible suspects. It was especially welcome as the following week brought us the best Ugly Betty episode in some time, overcoming some dreary structural tricks (flashbacks and police interrogations again?) with much humour, silliness, and an almost surprising denouement. I say almost, but the reveal of the attacker would have been more surprising were it not for Rebecca Romijn’s obvious pregnancy.
They obviously needed an excuse to lose Alexis for a while, but at least they used her real-world situation in this way, resolving the attacker plot without pinning it on some hastily introduced patsy. This way the assault has some real consequences.
Uncomfortable Scene of the Week(s):
Seeing Paul Kinsey attempt to weasel out of travelling to civil rights battleground Mississippi with his girlfriend Sheila was hard to watch, as Paul’s hipster liberalism is punctured in front of the Sterling Cooper bellhop, Hollis, he has just made an effort to greet as an equal.
Liberal white guilt, fractious race relations, relationship strife, the civil rights movement: all commented on in just one minute of screentime. ::doffs cap::
Bravery of the Week(s):
As much as I’m utterly uninterested in any of the characters played by Ali Larter on Heroes, kudos to her for allowing the showrunners to use this photo from her youth.
Humiliating Scene of the Week(s):
This is a personal one. Earlier in the week an attempt at defrosting our fridge cost me a rather large amount of money thanks to some less than clever (i.e. unbelievably fucking stupid) and very impatient behaviour. I don’t want to go into it too much, as I’m utterly embarrassed about it and really furious at myself, but let’s just say that this moment…
…with Betty defrosting a fridge using a bowl of hot water and not a knife and meat tenderiser combo would have been rather helpful if I’d watched it two days earlier. At least our new fridge doesn’t smell weird and can’t be dismantled by our cat Sydney, I guess.
Asshole of the Week(s):
We love Buddy Garrity from Friday Night Lights, with his bumbling ineptitude and endless enthusiasm.
In the first two episodes of the third season, however, he crossed a line into pure asshole-dom, scheming against Tami over her decision to divert his Jumbotron money into funding the school, and threatening Riggins prior to dinner.
Sure, he’s onto something in his distrust of Riggins, and most parents would probably agree, but by not trusting Lila’s judgement and ability to understand her boyfriend’s childish impulses, he just makes things worse for everyone.
Soundtrack of the Week(s):
The CSI season opener was, as mentioned before, more contemplative than usual, and part of the reason was the lovely ambient soundtrack by John M. Keane, channelling The Mighty Eno or Cliff Martinez. While Forgetting Sarah Marshall writer Jason Segal is onto something when he criticises procedural soundtracks as being little more than ominous tones and atmospherics (Mark Snow, I’m looking at you), this week CSI proved him wrong. It was a joy to listen to, and increased the emotional impact considerably.
Accidental Political Satire of the Week(s):
Obviously Friday Night Lights was filmed a little while back, but surprisingly they still managed to comment on the Sarah Palin vice-presidential debacle with a sub-plot about Tyra Collette trying to win an election by appealing to the groins of intellectually stunted morons, with sassiness, broadly caricatured feminine wiles, and mean-spirited insults.
It’s as if the writers have precognition or something.
Best Nerd Reference Scene of the Week(s):
Jim’s torture of Dwight, recasting Battlestar Galactica as Dumbledore Calrissian’s quest to return the Ring to Mordor, made my hair stand on end.
I’m sure many shared our pain.
Facial Expression of the Week(s):
Is it Noah Bennett donning his famous horn-rimmed glasses?
Olive reacting to a dishonesty overdose?
A rare smile from Stanley, who is only happy when food comes into the equation?
The mysterious Dr. Zimmerman (regrettably not played by the world’s best Zimmerman) getting accidentally frozen by Tracy Strauzzzzz?
Tyra Collette moments after her stripper sister gets engaged to Riggins the Elder?
Lily Charles, as a nun, trying to reassure Olive?
Peter Petrelli using Jesse’s “sound manipulation” superpower (which, it turns out, is thankfully more like Banshee from X-Men than Michael Winslow from Police Academy)?
Tami Taylor reacting to the political corruption of Sarah Palin Tyra?
Most Insane Televisual Event of the Week(s) Year Decade:
We’ve almost caught up with America’s Next Top Model (it’s delayed by about a year in the UK), having just started Cycle 11 after a mostly pleasing Cycle 10 (I’ll be getting to that soon, hopefully). Yes yes, this aired a few weeks back, but it’s been a busy period in our lives. God! Anyway, within minutes of this cycle season beginning, we were overjoyed at the shambolic and relentless insanity unfolding on our TV. The futuristic theme for the premiere and auditions was the greatest stroke of genius in the show’s history, and almost killed us from the laughter. I don’t know what I loved most. It was a battle between Alpha and Beta Jay (with Alpha Jay looking utterly mortified by his silver get-up)…
…the laser scanning of the catsuit-clad model-wannabees…
…the Orgasmatron Glaminator 11.0 (what does that even mean?)…
…The Tyrabot (for crying out loud)…
…the three hosts beaming up “fiercely” (which almost gave me a hernia from the laughter)…
…and the entrance of Noted Fashion Photographer Mr. Nigel Barker later in the premiere, this time from a magician’s cabinet.
This pleased me greatly. Almost as much as the delicious schadenfreude of vicious bigot Sharaun getting kicked out in the first week. Usually the out-and-out bitches hang around for a few weeks, or right until the end (cat-human hybrid Dominique and the amazing Jade spring to mind), but this time there are so many nasty women in the house that they could sacrifice one straight away and not bore-ify the show later.
Intensity of the Week(s):
For once, there’s a challenge to Lance “Intensity” Reddick’s Crown of Intensity. In a welcome return to the show, The Haitian, aka Jimmy Jean Louis, has enough dignity left over after getting knocked out by both Ando and Peter (embarrassing) to deliver some awesome intensity.
Still, even that attempt is crushed by the effortless intensity of my man Reddick, here reacting to the news that Olivia has discovered the presence of The Observer.
It strikes me that what we’re seeing here is a case of White Men Can’t Do Intensity. It could be argued that Don Draper’s reaction to the appearance of Jimmy Barrett is a sure-fire winner…
…but I’m not sure that that doesn’t count as psychosis rather than intensity. Removing that candidate leaves us with this.
It’s just pathetic, really.
Holy shit I’ve finished! I feel like I’ve been writing this since February. In summation, not bad stuff, with some great returning shows and the smart move of avoiding new shows and things that are proven to be terrible (Knight Rider). I asked Brian Michael Bendoom what he thought, and…
…I think that’s good? [/old man]
These Weeks In TV Year II (Weeks 4-5) Part 1
We went on holiday! To Italy! And when we got back we had about one million TV shows to watch (and had missed some movies at the cinema, such as ::choke:: Appaloosa). It was a lovely trip, but it meant I have been avoiding blogging (thanks to Masticator for holding the fort with his defense of Jersey Girl). So, here is a bunch of whining about everything we’ve spent the last few days slogging through, with some omissions. I’m considering saving my soul by not watching Knight Rider anymore, have not seen this week’s installment of Pushing Daisies yet, and haven’t tried out Eleventh Hour and Life on Mars, though that’s partially because I’ve not yet watched the originals either. So, bear in mind there are some episodes missing, but otherwise, this is a lot of stuff from the past two weeks.
Triumphant Return of the Week(s):
Saved from cancellation by a weird deal between parent network NBC and DirecTV, Friday Night Lights, the best non-Lost network show on TV, returned with a long stretch of time left unvisited, which is an unfortunate side-effect of the unfairly truncated second season. After a burst of exposition for the benefit of any new viewers (oh please let there be a few million when it returns to NBC!), the show fit right back into its groove as if it had never been away.
Show highlights included Tyra’s existential panic, Buddy and his beloved Jumbotron, the uncertain relationship between Lila and Riggins, and Matt Saracen’s imminent retirement due to the arrival of hotshot QB J.D. McCoy and his scheming dad. To be honest, it was so great there’s little to say about it other than OMG IT WAS SO GREAT and so was the second episode OMG! But perhaps that’s enough.
Most Hectic Hour of the Week(s):
The return of Pushing Daisies was overwhelming even for someone who has been following it since the pilot, so God knows how it was received by any new viewers (of which there were probably none, considering its disastrous viewing figures). With two guest stars (Missi Pyle and French Stewart), the usual murder mystery, Chuck and Ned’s estrangement and reconciliation, and Olive’s departure from The Pie Hole (not to mention her nunnery subplot and Emerson’s pop-up book project), it was perhaps too busy, but it was at least funny and smart and original.
The script was beautifully constructed and satisfying as well. Moaning about it all makes me feel like an awful misery-guts, you know.
Non-Returning Highlight of the Week(s):
My love for Mad Men now solidified, I can get on with enjoying the show instead of getting annoyed by the odd flaw. Of the two episodes we saw during this fortnight (Sixth Month Leave and The Inheritance), perhaps the second was more cohesive on a thematic level (see future Weeks 4-5 posts), but the first episode, dealing with Freddy Rumsen’s sacking, was more fun.
Highlights included Freddy peeing his pants (kudos to the foley artist who captured the sound of his shoes squishing as he leaves the office), Pete and Peggy facing off over her promotion, Don crushing the juvenile idiots working under him like the unworthy scum they are, and of course the out-of-the-blue revelation that Roger Sterling was leaving his loyal wife for that overconfident floozy Jane.
My favourite thing, though, was the long sequence where Don and Roger take Freddy out and let him know, through glaringly obvious doubletalk, that he’s being let go. The pace of the show is always a marvel, and here it allows the show to take a long detour as they wine and dine their friend, who is smart enough to know what they are doing but not smart enough to know what he should do next.
Joel Murray gives a terrific performance as Freddy, a dopey but genial executive who has come to the end of the line and accepts it with a mixture of resignation and fear. These long scenes were a total joy to watch, taking their time to tell a dozen stories in a way a network show would never be able to.
Alarming Failrate of the Week(s):
Heroes really is screwed, isn’t it. I mean, we had a great time watching the last two episodes back to back, cracking up every few minutes at some dreadful staging or silly dialogue: we had great fun with Suresh and his terrible rash, which made us think all those geneticist brane-smarts mean nothing if he doesn’t think to wear a condom while ravishing hott babes (sorry for the insinuation, Maya!). By now the disastrous writing, all speechifying and incomprehensible plot twists, is not the worst of it. It’s full of errors, perhaps most visibly the self-plagiarism. When Usutu revealed his gallery of predictive paintings, we growned aloud.
It’s becoming apparent that the powers are being spread between characters (Usutu and Isaac, Nathan and West, Claire and Adam, Future Ando and Elle, Claire’s mom Meredith and Pyrokinetic Man etc.), and this will almost certainly be explained by the utterly dreary plot about the lineage of all of the Heroes (as soon as Angela Petrelli appears I totally tune out). Nevertheless, it still means the narrative is eating itself. Another apocalypse, another series of predictions, more time travel, more Company shenanigans, and on and on and on. If the characters were written better, this wouldn’t be a problem, but they seem to have no fixed identity at all. Nothing is set in stone, and nothing matters.
Even on a surface level the show can’t keep itself straight for two seconds. Early in the fourth episode, Suresh kicks Maya out of his lab and blathers on about fate and valour and DNA or something (I tuned out again), and then he sets his recording doohickey down onto a table. Time passes, and we’re in the future, as shown by the recorder being covered with dust and cockroaches.
Immediately Canyon said, “He never picked it up again? Bullshit. He’ll use it again later in the episode.” Of course, she was totally right.
And are we supposed to believe this is a real headline? Any self-respecting editor would off him or herself if they let this go to print.
If the showrunners think none of this matters, they’re horribly wrong. The amateurishness and silliness have reached epidemic levels, and viewers are deserting in droves. Not us, of course. If we’re going to watch Car Crash TV, this is at least less painful to watch than Knight Rider.
Show Change of the Week(s):
Doug Petrie always seemed to be an odd choice for CSI producer/writer, not because he isn’t talented (he is), but because his work on Buffy was leagues away from the tone needed for a gritty procedural. Many of his episodes were quirky, much as expected (especially Toe Tags, with the talking corpses), but he was able to come up with the expected grimness when necessary (he is credited with co-writing my favourite CSI episode ever, Monster In The Box).
It was never a problem that he was on the show, especially as it’s always good to see Mutant Enemy writers doing well (see also: Marti Noxon on Mad Men, which is a hell of a step-up from Point Pleasant). However, nice though it was to have a writer we like work on a hugely successful show, seeing that he has jumped over to Pushing Daisies really cheered us up. His writing is perfectly suited to Daisies, and the only thing that sours that news is that Daisies is doing so badly in the ratings that it might get cancelled before he gets to write an episode. ::is sad::
Unexpected Cameo of the Week(s):
Holy shit! Betty Draper’s dad is played by John McCain!
He was perfectly cast as well. Belligerent, lying to himself and others to cover up his confusion, and so overcome with attraction to hot females that he loses his composure.
Steady on, fella! That’s no way to treat a vice-presidential candidate. Hehhhhh? Hehhhhh?
Second Most Unexpected Cameo of the Week(s):
This is Betty Draper’s brother.
How did they de-age Robert Englund?
Opinion Reversal of the Week(s):
How quickly I have soured on Lucas the hapless PI in House. Individual moments were still funny, such as his appearance in House’s closet, but the desperate attempts to create an audience for his forthcoming spin-off are embarrassing and distracting.
The stalking and subsequent courting of Cuddy has the potential to ruin her character forever, and the temporary suspension of House’s usual disdain for any and all people in his sphere looks idiotic and transparently calculated.
A narrative decision this blatantly cynical could backfire horribly. David Chase should have thought twice.
Funniest Joke of the Week(s):
This rendered us helpless this week (it’s between 7:30 and 8:30, but you should watch the whole thing.
Infantile genius.
Punch of the Week(s):
Don Draper clocks Jimmy Barrett, and it is beautiful.
The best part of that is that even though I enjoyed seeing Don batter that obnoxious jerk, I also really enjoyed the scene from a few weeks ago when Jimmy humiliated Don by revealing he knew all about the affair with Bobbie. This is the show that gives and gives and then gives some more. Such brilliance is hard to achieve. Compare Don’s effortless cool with Daphne’s speedpunching, a supercool Flash trick rendered ugly by some dire effects on Heroes.
I’m really bitching about Daphne, which is not really representative of my opinion. You’ve got to love a snarky speedster, and she goes well with Hiro and Ando.
I just think her superpower pales into insignificance compared to the fearsome might of Don Draper.
Easter Egg of the Week(s) Month:
It took very little time for me to fall for the new nerd-baiting mystery man The Observer, who arrived in the latest episode of Fringe in an explosion of debris, flame, quirky tics, and hot peppers. Even though it was obvious to me that he is little more than a grab-bag of weirdness calculated to appeal to the nerd fanbase, I immediately became enamoured of him, partially because he is bald and loves jalapenos (we’re like brothers!), but mostly because he has driven the show headlong in an even stranger direction than I thought it would. What I had assumed was going to be a mildly diverting Alias-meets-X-Files procedural looks now to be a batshit curio that will split the audience into opposing groups of rabid fans and exasperated haters to such an extent it will make the Lost Talkback Wars look like a love-in.
It could have gone the other way, though. Midway through the episode, upon being confronted by Anna “Vanatron” Torv, Lance “Intensity” Reddick reveals that he has been seen numerous times at Pattern events, including the hospital in which the grisly birth scene from the second episode occurred. A photo is produced, showing The Observer, which offended me greatly. A blatant piece of ret-conning, it made the show look amateurish and desperate, trying to convince the audience that the show mythology had been planned in advance but instead making it look like it was being made up as it goes along (just like haters think is happening with Lost). Just to prove this, I went back to the second episode, hoping the hospital scenes would be Observer-free. Well, I’m not too proud to admit I was horribly wrong.
How cool is that? He’s so fucking creepy. Thrilled by the knowledge that the Fringe team are trying to generate a plan for the show with seeded cameos and whatnot, I checked the net for more news about The Observer, and whaddaya know, he’s been in all four episodes so far, with a Hitchcockian cameo walking past MASSive Dynamic in the pilot, and an eerie stalker moment on a train in the third episode.
Even better, it’s obvious the show has been designed to appeal to those of us whose idea of a good time is to waste hours clicking through Lostpedia or play ARGs like the current Dharma Initiative Initiation game. As you can see here, there have been Easter Eggs throughout the series (The Observer was namechecked in the pilot title sequence), either feeding into the mythology or giving ARG hints. It’s all very entertaining.
In fact, I find the promise of a new sci fi mythology more exciting than the actual show, which, despite the introduction of nose torture, glowing subterranean torpedoes, and crazy 50s rayguns, still kinda bores me whenever Dr. Walter Bishop is not onscreen. Hints that Peter and Olivia have a secret Pattern-influenced past might make them more interesting, but right now I’m not interested in them at all. And yet I can’t wait for the next episode. I’m such a sucker for big mythologies. It’s actually really embarrassing.
Well-Used Secondary Character of the Week(s):
I keep on about it, but it needs to be shouted from the rooftops of New York; Marc and Amanda are the best things about Ugly Betty, but are sorely underused. Amanda is getting about two lines an episode right now, though thankfully she is talented and funny enough that she at least knows how to make those lines count.
Marc, on the other hand, was given a juicier plot than usual, scheming to get Wilhelmina demoted from her new position as Mode editor-in-chief just to keep her all to himself. This angered Canyon, who was disgusted to see the status quo returned after a long period introducing numerous story opportunities that ranged in potential from promising to almost certainly a dead end. She has a very good point. Still, there is the short term gain that Marc got to show a new, Macchiavellian side. It ain’t much, but it meant I laughed a lot, and sometimes that’s enough.
How To Ruin a Character Recipe of the Week(s):
Add one book…
…Stir in one genetically engineered triplet damsel in distress…
…Sprinkle with liberal amounts of an invisible old man who probably never shuts up about working with Kubrick and Lindsay Anderson between takes…
…And you end up with a hyper-lame loser who can only get about four people to attend his press conference about a catastrophic disaster that kills hundreds of thousands of people.
Nice Jackie O glasses there, Tracey.
And now, I shall stop there, so that I can finally watch Hairspray (remake). More to come, peeps.
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Shades of Caruso Mini-Blog- Listmania ’11! The Best Movies Of The Year December 31, 2011
