In 2004 there was this show—this little, tiny show about this girl in this town. And she was damaged and jaded and full of so much emotional baggage you could just about see her staggering as she walked—except she was also smart, and beautiful, and funny. Plus, she solved crime. With the help of a sidekick. And a dog.For three years this show went on, struggling against low ratings and viewer apathy and a late-series outbreak of Narrativeitis (common symptoms: desperate guest spots, flashy storylines like serial rape, and harebrained structuring), until it was canceled. In 2007, the world saw the end of Rob Thomas’ Veronica Mars.
I talk my way through all of that as a way of better providing the context with which to judge Rob Thomas’ new show, which is actually a reboot of his 1998 romantic-comedy, Cupid. After having proven he’s a television writer-producer with a knack for writing dialogue marked by both wit and angst, the bar has been set awfully high—perhaps too high. Because Cupid, which airs weekly on Tuesdays at 10 p.m. on ABC, while pleasing at times, is no Mars. It’s not as original, or as vivid, or as emotionally sincere. It is, instead, broad and rote and a bit sophomoric.
Bobby Cannavale, his caterpillar eyebrows scrunching and un-scrunching in pantomime of comedic timing, plays a man—“Trevor Pierce”—who may or may not be the titular Roman god of love. Sarah Paulson plays the shrink assigned to his case (she’s both monitoring him to make sure he doesn’t “harm” anyone and to do research for her next Dating 101 best-seller). The issue is that Trevor needs to match-up 100 couples before he’s allowed back on Mount Olympus. Problem is, both Sarah and the rest of New York City have a bit of an issue with “true love:” they hate it.
And so they head out, one tsk-tsking after the other. Sparks fly. Laughs are had.
Yet here’s the thing: as much as I wanted to write off Cupid after its first thirty minutes, I was thrown for a loop by its second act. Though the theme is cartoonishly clichéd—Trevor is all for the sizzle and passion, Paulson’s Claire is all for long conversations and deep connection—the stories that act them out give out a pleasant snap. In the pilot, for example, a man (Sean Maguire) flies all the way from Ireland to find a woman he met for twenty minutes. Once in NYC, he hooks up with a journalist (Marguerite Moureau, way better here than in Life as We Know It) to help get the word out to his mystery gal. Things happen, some of which you can guess and some of which you can’t, and the ending comes as a nice twist. The dialogue, for all it lacks in smarts, has more than enough heart.
Now here’s hoping the rest of Cupid could get into shape. Who knows—if that happens, maybe some god, somewhere, really is smiling down on Rob Thomas & Co.
Showing posts with label Television Review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Television Review. Show all posts
Monday, April 6, 2009
Friday, October 3, 2008
30 Rock: The Complete First Season: B+
The Rural Juror; "Muffin Top"; dating your distant cousin (accidently); "Vice President of East Coast Television-and-Microwave Programming"; Fat Bitch I & II; The Black Crusaders—this is 30 Rock: Tina Fey's irreducibly insane, incandescently clever show-within-a-show sitcom. Such moments as those above are the reason her show first hit the radar, why it won over critics and (small but fanatical) audiences alike; and it's obvious why: 30 Rock has an admirable spirit of loony iconoclasm, it's a stalwart of left-brain/right-brain/no-brain bubbly wit. Built like the drunken, one-night-stand bastard of Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip (but far more entertaining) and fleshed out by mind-bogglingly quick zings between the Smart and the Dumb, the High and the Low, Fey's brain-child is a bit like doping up on laughing gas for thirty-minute intervals—the drug hits quick and stays, sizzling pleasantly in the back of your head, driving you to laugh spontaneously, constantly.
That's not to say everything works. A lot doesn't. Or didn't—see, the opening four episodes of Rock seem counterintuitive to what should be happening: they sink steadily downward, becoming almost impishly ridiculous; hollow and quirky: Scrubs Zero. The "Pilot" is more the tasteful precursor, though it too has some bumps. And then "The Aftermath," "Blind Date," and "Jack the Writer" become increasingly, almost imperceptibly, difficult. One can see, in Fey's writing and producing, the thread-bare work of her vision. And then the uptick, and stuff starts shifting for the better.
Leaving objectivity at the door, the concept is this: Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) is the creator and head-writer of The Girlie Show, a mildly-hot sketch show on NBC with a crackpot star (Jane Krakowski). In comes a new executive, Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin), who recruits fallen-movie-star Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) to boosts the show's ratings. Lemon, already a frazzled career-woman in the greatest of clichéd traditions, now has to contend with her paranoid best-friend being replaced with a loose cannon…and the new boss who really wants to mentor her.
For several reasons, this would never happen. Like, in a million-billion-'till the end of time years never. But with a loopy conceit comes an even loopier product—and 30 Rock delivers pretty uniformly. The punch-lines are written as confessions; the action is sliced up into an ironic mélange; and the cast is such a phenomenal support (excluding Mr. Baldwin, who we'll get to in a moment) as to make even the weakest moments fresh. Even "The Head and the Hair" is infectiously goofy. And "Up All Night," "Cleveland," and "The Fighting Irish" are about all the necessary prove of Rock's crystallization as a comedy fount.
…Now: Alec Baldwin. Frequent-SNL host, movie star, Baldwin Brother—but funny, funny, man? Yes, yes, a 1,000 times yes. Delivering his lines a silken purr, squaring his physical presence into a box of imposing dexterity, and centering even those jokes that fly off the screen, the actor isn't just the heart of the show, but also its breakout show. He does something almost transcendent, and he does it in the context of a lesser, if very loose and very witty show. He makes the impossible possible, and turns the alt-NYC of Fey's world not just into a fanciful place, but also a state-of-mind: where sketch shows can have the name "Girlie" in their title and still air; where NBC is just a subsidiary of the Sheindhart Wig Company; and where in Cleveland, everyone's a model.
That's not to say everything works. A lot doesn't. Or didn't—see, the opening four episodes of Rock seem counterintuitive to what should be happening: they sink steadily downward, becoming almost impishly ridiculous; hollow and quirky: Scrubs Zero. The "Pilot" is more the tasteful precursor, though it too has some bumps. And then "The Aftermath," "Blind Date," and "Jack the Writer" become increasingly, almost imperceptibly, difficult. One can see, in Fey's writing and producing, the thread-bare work of her vision. And then the uptick, and stuff starts shifting for the better.
Leaving objectivity at the door, the concept is this: Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) is the creator and head-writer of The Girlie Show, a mildly-hot sketch show on NBC with a crackpot star (Jane Krakowski). In comes a new executive, Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin), who recruits fallen-movie-star Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) to boosts the show's ratings. Lemon, already a frazzled career-woman in the greatest of clichéd traditions, now has to contend with her paranoid best-friend being replaced with a loose cannon…and the new boss who really wants to mentor her.
For several reasons, this would never happen. Like, in a million-billion-'till the end of time years never. But with a loopy conceit comes an even loopier product—and 30 Rock delivers pretty uniformly. The punch-lines are written as confessions; the action is sliced up into an ironic mélange; and the cast is such a phenomenal support (excluding Mr. Baldwin, who we'll get to in a moment) as to make even the weakest moments fresh. Even "The Head and the Hair" is infectiously goofy. And "Up All Night," "Cleveland," and "The Fighting Irish" are about all the necessary prove of Rock's crystallization as a comedy fount.
…Now: Alec Baldwin. Frequent-SNL host, movie star, Baldwin Brother—but funny, funny, man? Yes, yes, a 1,000 times yes. Delivering his lines a silken purr, squaring his physical presence into a box of imposing dexterity, and centering even those jokes that fly off the screen, the actor isn't just the heart of the show, but also its breakout show. He does something almost transcendent, and he does it in the context of a lesser, if very loose and very witty show. He makes the impossible possible, and turns the alt-NYC of Fey's world not just into a fanciful place, but also a state-of-mind: where sketch shows can have the name "Girlie" in their title and still air; where NBC is just a subsidiary of the Sheindhart Wig Company; and where in Cleveland, everyone's a model.
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Angels in America: A-
In a work so over-stuffed with ideas as Tony Kushner's Angels in America—an HBO movie adapted from Kushner's own Pulitzer-prize winning drama that liberally runs up to six hours—what more can there be to say of it except that it stuns: continually, unerringly, stubbornly, until your heart and brain swell and ache with the sheer volume of energy presented on screen. The time is 1985, New York City, and everywhere, in Kushner's world, people fret and dart about, sliced up by their interconnected bonds of disease, love, and politics. AIDS has just begun to ravage the city, and the millennium approaches; as many a character doth proclaim, history itself is opening up—"Anything can happen. Any awful thing."
At the center (and about him do the other elements and characters spin like spokes about a wheel) is Prior Walter (Justin Kirk, giving a luminous, ebulliently witty performance bristling with fervor and grace), who has just been diagnosed with the dreaded syndrome…and whose lover of four years, Louis (Ben Shenkman), has just walked out on him because of it—the latter man not being able to handle disease or its deteriorating effects. Alone, save for his friend Belize (Jeffrey Wright, in one of multiple roles, re-defining the stereotype of the ravishing 80s glitter queen by being even more ravishing and delightful), Prior begins to see visions of an angel (Emma Thompson, fluttering and declaiming with hair-raising power) who tells him that he is a prophet. His prophecy? A little irrelevant—save for that Kushner uses the device to probe even the neurosis of the guiding hands in Heaven.
The cast is large, huge even, but portrayed by a handful of principles in multiple roles. Those most important not yet mentioned: Meryl Streep, as the mother of a closeted Mormon (Patrick Wilson) who becomes un- after he falls in with a troubled Louis; Meryl Streep as Ethel Rosenberg, done all up in Kabuki makeup to see Roy Cohn (Al Pacino) off after the homophobe himself dies of AIDS; Pacino, aforementioned, who gives a turn of such startling clarity, eloquence, and stark heartlessness the audience can practically see his career jumpstart before their eyes; Wilson, also aforementioned, who's like Brendan Frasier—from Gods and Monsters—on sensitive-steroids; and Mary-Louise Parker, as Wilson's long suffering wife, Harper.
James Cromwell pops up here and there as Cohn's doctor, and occasionally a wax statue springs to life with a new face, but mostly the same eight individuals keep walking and talking for almost 360 minutes. Their anguish is palpable, and director Mike Nichols—no rookie himself, and a veteran to stage, screen, and stage-to-screen adaptations—frames shots and scenes around their marooning discontent, but the real star is Kushner, who writes speech in no way I've heard before; it's patterned in a way after the rambling Jewish neurosis of Woody Allen, or Allen Ginsburg, but it's also spiked-through with revelation and philosophy.
Kushner would go on to write Steven Spielberg's marvelous 2005 thriller/meditation-on-revenge epic Munich, but in Angels does he most prominently and purely display his gift. Monologues sprout like trees from within each character—organically, and stunningly beautiful; and the fantastical elements that come to eventually power the central narrative are both cooky and believable (aided by Nichols, who aims and succeeds for a tone of cynical hope). Sliced into two three-hour halfs—"Millennium Approaches" and "Perestroika"—that have their share of problems, Angels in America is a delectable, miserable, contradictory, exemplary dissection of life on a island, wherein each individual deludes themselves into thinking they are alone, and lonely.
"Perestroika" lags, and grows a bit thematically murky after the clarity and force of "Millennium," but it concludes with a climax of awesome, shattering implication. Confronted by a table of fretting principle angels who implore their prophet to allow himself and his race to "stop moving" in order to allow the world to heal itself Prior doesn't even miss a beat to shake his head in refusal. "Bless me…I want more life." So too, will each viewer after finishing Kushner's masterpiece: more life in this dank, tragic, ecstatic little piece of rock we call Earth.
"There are no gods here, no ghosts and spirits in America, there are no angels in America, no spiritual past, no racial past, there's only the political, and the decoys and the ploys to maneuver around the inescapable battle of politics," Louis spouts near the end of the first half—and so it may be. But there's also us, humans, vibrant and joyously, messily, alive. Kusher and Nichols, with their cast, make the act of living in this modern century a promise fulfilled.
At the center (and about him do the other elements and characters spin like spokes about a wheel) is Prior Walter (Justin Kirk, giving a luminous, ebulliently witty performance bristling with fervor and grace), who has just been diagnosed with the dreaded syndrome…and whose lover of four years, Louis (Ben Shenkman), has just walked out on him because of it—the latter man not being able to handle disease or its deteriorating effects. Alone, save for his friend Belize (Jeffrey Wright, in one of multiple roles, re-defining the stereotype of the ravishing 80s glitter queen by being even more ravishing and delightful), Prior begins to see visions of an angel (Emma Thompson, fluttering and declaiming with hair-raising power) who tells him that he is a prophet. His prophecy? A little irrelevant—save for that Kushner uses the device to probe even the neurosis of the guiding hands in Heaven.
The cast is large, huge even, but portrayed by a handful of principles in multiple roles. Those most important not yet mentioned: Meryl Streep, as the mother of a closeted Mormon (Patrick Wilson) who becomes un- after he falls in with a troubled Louis; Meryl Streep as Ethel Rosenberg, done all up in Kabuki makeup to see Roy Cohn (Al Pacino) off after the homophobe himself dies of AIDS; Pacino, aforementioned, who gives a turn of such startling clarity, eloquence, and stark heartlessness the audience can practically see his career jumpstart before their eyes; Wilson, also aforementioned, who's like Brendan Frasier—from Gods and Monsters—on sensitive-steroids; and Mary-Louise Parker, as Wilson's long suffering wife, Harper.
James Cromwell pops up here and there as Cohn's doctor, and occasionally a wax statue springs to life with a new face, but mostly the same eight individuals keep walking and talking for almost 360 minutes. Their anguish is palpable, and director Mike Nichols—no rookie himself, and a veteran to stage, screen, and stage-to-screen adaptations—frames shots and scenes around their marooning discontent, but the real star is Kushner, who writes speech in no way I've heard before; it's patterned in a way after the rambling Jewish neurosis of Woody Allen, or Allen Ginsburg, but it's also spiked-through with revelation and philosophy.
Kushner would go on to write Steven Spielberg's marvelous 2005 thriller/meditation-on-revenge epic Munich, but in Angels does he most prominently and purely display his gift. Monologues sprout like trees from within each character—organically, and stunningly beautiful; and the fantastical elements that come to eventually power the central narrative are both cooky and believable (aided by Nichols, who aims and succeeds for a tone of cynical hope). Sliced into two three-hour halfs—"Millennium Approaches" and "Perestroika"—that have their share of problems, Angels in America is a delectable, miserable, contradictory, exemplary dissection of life on a island, wherein each individual deludes themselves into thinking they are alone, and lonely.
"Perestroika" lags, and grows a bit thematically murky after the clarity and force of "Millennium," but it concludes with a climax of awesome, shattering implication. Confronted by a table of fretting principle angels who implore their prophet to allow himself and his race to "stop moving" in order to allow the world to heal itself Prior doesn't even miss a beat to shake his head in refusal. "Bless me…I want more life." So too, will each viewer after finishing Kushner's masterpiece: more life in this dank, tragic, ecstatic little piece of rock we call Earth.
"There are no gods here, no ghosts and spirits in America, there are no angels in America, no spiritual past, no racial past, there's only the political, and the decoys and the ploys to maneuver around the inescapable battle of politics," Louis spouts near the end of the first half—and so it may be. But there's also us, humans, vibrant and joyously, messily, alive. Kusher and Nichols, with their cast, make the act of living in this modern century a promise fulfilled.
Rome: The Complete Second Season: A-
Ancient world history, re-done with a Sopranos twist...and a dash of Entourage, with just a splash of Dynasty and Dallas. Plus a massive-scale set, for flair. That's Rome -- the HBO drama that views a pivotal period of Ancient Roman civilization from an angle that can only be termed meta-modern: fleshed out as grand soap opera, played out over continents and years, and then spiked through with televisual flourishes reminiscent of the last twenty years of backstabbing prime-time bitchery entertainment, Rome is structured like it was thought-up by someone who watched way too much of all the best stuff to be offered by piquant, overstuffed, sensationally engrossing late-night melodramas. Which it probably was. And then they added the violence...and the sex...and the sandals.
Created by Bruno Heller, John Milius, and William J. Macdonald, the series sees in the chronicling of the fall of the Roman Republic and rise of the Roman Empire an elegant symmetry; spliced almost perfectly in half, season one dealt with Ceasar's (Ciarán Hinds, spread wide majestically on wings of noble megolomania) ascent and subsequent assasination. Season two picks up with the aftermath, and carries on through the civil wars over who would populate the power vacuum all the way to the triumph of Ceasar's great-nephew, Octavian (Max Pirkis, as the younger incarnation, and Simon Woods as the elder). Remember that nod to The Sopranos? It's evident in the ever-prevalent jostling for influence and political stability -- and writ large, magnificently, equally on the Senate Floor as in the villa of Octavian's mother, Atia (Polly Walker, turning in a performance of delicious villainy). What about Dynasty or Dallas? Just as both of those soaps follow a cast of rambunctious, morally unscrupulous people tethered together alternately by blood, marriage, money, scheming, or "affection," so too are the lovers, fighters, politicos, and women of this soap. Their shenanigans just take place 2,000 years previous. Huh.
And where's our dash of Entourage? It so happens that our two protagonists (though I apply the term loosely: Rome has a main cast of dozens, and the camera shares time equally) are Lucius Vorenus (Kevin McKidd) and Titus Pullo (Ray Stevenson), two ex-soldiers in this Ceasar-less world who have found themselves still bound together, by duty and friendship, their bond strengthened and weathered more and more by the demands of a fractured upper-crust. (Late in the season, Vorenus is forced through pride to ally himself with Mark Antony -- portrayed by James Purefoy in a tour de force of debauchary, emotional immaturity, and sincerity -- while Pullo finds an older acquaintance with Octavian leaves him on the opposite side of the void.) They are us, wide-eyed but (somewhat-) noble in a society going to rot.
And we, the audience, are them. Which is probably the biggest success of Rome, even in its second -- shorter -- season. In a cast of top-tier performers, we sympathize and understand each and every one. From Cicero (David Bamber, whose beady eyes are put to fiendishly clever good use), the Senator who successfully plotted against the power bases of both Ceasar and Antony, to the Newsreader (Ian McNeice), who is as good to a narrator/news announcer/adman as a society several millenium ago was going to get, each character who speaks but one word is rich with care and precision; Rome's cast is a Dicken's dream team made flesh, wonderfully.
The first year was better, but only because it was more reliable; we all know the mechanics behind the character arc of Julius Ceasar. The second year was gloomier, more unstable, which translates in some etheral way to not as good -- denser somehow, murky without being wholly satisfying. Head writer Bruno Heller, who wrote eight of season one's twelve eps, isn't nearly as omnipresent, which could explain things. But really, just don't. Revel instead in a grand historical tapestry that interweaves fiction and fact into a memorable, staggeringly inrresistible, drama. Fatefully, Mere Smith (a former Joss Whedon associate, and a major creative force behind the middle years of Angel) contributes two scripts -- and they're two of the sharpest all series. "Deus Impiditio Esuritori Nullus (No God Can Stop a Hungry Man)" is both the penultimate installment, Smith's better of her two efforts, and perhaps one of the two or three best episodes of Rome, ever. It's scrappy, turbulent, sourly witty, and irrevocably authentic. If the real Ancient Rome wasn't this good -- this violent, or sexy, or frighteningly human-sized -- then it should only aspire to be.
Created by Bruno Heller, John Milius, and William J. Macdonald, the series sees in the chronicling of the fall of the Roman Republic and rise of the Roman Empire an elegant symmetry; spliced almost perfectly in half, season one dealt with Ceasar's (Ciarán Hinds, spread wide majestically on wings of noble megolomania) ascent and subsequent assasination. Season two picks up with the aftermath, and carries on through the civil wars over who would populate the power vacuum all the way to the triumph of Ceasar's great-nephew, Octavian (Max Pirkis, as the younger incarnation, and Simon Woods as the elder). Remember that nod to The Sopranos? It's evident in the ever-prevalent jostling for influence and political stability -- and writ large, magnificently, equally on the Senate Floor as in the villa of Octavian's mother, Atia (Polly Walker, turning in a performance of delicious villainy). What about Dynasty or Dallas? Just as both of those soaps follow a cast of rambunctious, morally unscrupulous people tethered together alternately by blood, marriage, money, scheming, or "affection," so too are the lovers, fighters, politicos, and women of this soap. Their shenanigans just take place 2,000 years previous. Huh.
And where's our dash of Entourage? It so happens that our two protagonists (though I apply the term loosely: Rome has a main cast of dozens, and the camera shares time equally) are Lucius Vorenus (Kevin McKidd) and Titus Pullo (Ray Stevenson), two ex-soldiers in this Ceasar-less world who have found themselves still bound together, by duty and friendship, their bond strengthened and weathered more and more by the demands of a fractured upper-crust. (Late in the season, Vorenus is forced through pride to ally himself with Mark Antony -- portrayed by James Purefoy in a tour de force of debauchary, emotional immaturity, and sincerity -- while Pullo finds an older acquaintance with Octavian leaves him on the opposite side of the void.) They are us, wide-eyed but (somewhat-) noble in a society going to rot.
And we, the audience, are them. Which is probably the biggest success of Rome, even in its second -- shorter -- season. In a cast of top-tier performers, we sympathize and understand each and every one. From Cicero (David Bamber, whose beady eyes are put to fiendishly clever good use), the Senator who successfully plotted against the power bases of both Ceasar and Antony, to the Newsreader (Ian McNeice), who is as good to a narrator/news announcer/adman as a society several millenium ago was going to get, each character who speaks but one word is rich with care and precision; Rome's cast is a Dicken's dream team made flesh, wonderfully.
The first year was better, but only because it was more reliable; we all know the mechanics behind the character arc of Julius Ceasar. The second year was gloomier, more unstable, which translates in some etheral way to not as good -- denser somehow, murky without being wholly satisfying. Head writer Bruno Heller, who wrote eight of season one's twelve eps, isn't nearly as omnipresent, which could explain things. But really, just don't. Revel instead in a grand historical tapestry that interweaves fiction and fact into a memorable, staggeringly inrresistible, drama. Fatefully, Mere Smith (a former Joss Whedon associate, and a major creative force behind the middle years of Angel) contributes two scripts -- and they're two of the sharpest all series. "Deus Impiditio Esuritori Nullus (No God Can Stop a Hungry Man)" is both the penultimate installment, Smith's better of her two efforts, and perhaps one of the two or three best episodes of Rome, ever. It's scrappy, turbulent, sourly witty, and irrevocably authentic. If the real Ancient Rome wasn't this good -- this violent, or sexy, or frighteningly human-sized -- then it should only aspire to be.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Life as We Know It: B-
I've been spoiled. All those episodes of Gilmore Girls or Everwood or The O.C. or Once & Again have lulled me into thinking that all groups of teenage friends are eloquent, thougtful, and witty to the nth degree; and, too, all familial units are pierced most frequently not by their continual moral dilemnas, but by their stringent -- poignant -- self-analysis. (Plus, having fallen in love with Roswell, I thought that even teen soaps that weren't a-poppin' with smarts at least had soul, heart.) Life as We Know It's sales pitch (a pitch developed by Gabe Sachs & Jeff Judah based on a book by Melvin Burgess), on the other hand, flew in the face of all of this accrued experience. It was, instead, about a trio of best friends who stuttered and stammered and tripped their way through an extraordinarily hormonally-charged adolescence.
The friends are Dino Whitman (Sean Faris), Ben Connor (Jon Foster, previously of the moody and mature The Door in the Floor), and Jonathan Fields (Chris Lowell, who later perfected the stammering artsy-geek schtick as Piz on the doomed final season of Veronica Mars). And their adolescence is basically the four women they moon over at various times in order to get laid: Jacky (Missy Peregrym), Deborah (Kelly Osbourne...yes, her), Sue (Jessica Lucas), and Ms. Young (Marguerite Moreau)...a teacher at the school the aforementioned six all attend. The boys' horniness is central to many of the show's plots, and sub-, but the narrative tentpoles are mostly cliches: the cheating mom, the student-teacher affair. It's only as Life progresses does some fresh blood circulate into the story's veins.
New as it may be, the blood still feels stale. Because as previously mentioned, Life has none of the verbal intelligence or deep-dish soul of some of the better teenage melodramas. What it has is an attitude at once flukey, layer-deep, and coy; it's perpetually perched on the edge of emotional climax (pun intended), while rarely achieving it. And, looking at the drama from the introspective angle (such an action being especially warranted because Life copies its character asides, it almost seems, from Once & Again...a far better interpersonal drama), its psychic ramifications are best defined as all surface and no substance -- the televisual equivalent of one of Dr. Phil's "morality" lectures.
The cast is fascinating -- Mr. Faris has a sneer in the early episodes that is at once both affected and masking, possessing, a bitter sincerity and pain -- and their chemistry has some nice moments. The same can be said of most of the series, during particular episodes. Each forty-five minute chunk has some good scenes, even occasionally a very good one (Dino's tearful confession to his friends about his mom's infidelity stands out), but there are only a handful of solid episodes -- "Pilot," "Pilot Junior," "A Little Problem," and, ironically, the last two unaired episodes: "Friends Don't Let Friends Drive Junk," and "Papa Wheelie."
Seeing Peter Dinklage make a too-cool guest spot as a shrink to help Dino sort out his post-divorce aggression issues is just a sore reminder about how far the show hasn't reached, all it hasn't achieved. In its thirteen episodes, the girls are never more than super-good friends and a series of rotating one-notes; and of the guys, Ben is the most rounded, while Jonathan is so badly-developed it's almost grating. "Papa Wheelie" is the name of a trick, I suppose, but the real trick of it -- produced as it was as Life's final show -- is that in its exploration of some surprising moments (having Jonathan finally stand-up for himself against his best friends' continual teasing; Dino's parents' new relationships) it does the unthinkable: it gives a previously sealed-up, mostly souless show soul. And that satisfies even as it dissipates quickly. Sort of like high school.
The friends are Dino Whitman (Sean Faris), Ben Connor (Jon Foster, previously of the moody and mature The Door in the Floor), and Jonathan Fields (Chris Lowell, who later perfected the stammering artsy-geek schtick as Piz on the doomed final season of Veronica Mars). And their adolescence is basically the four women they moon over at various times in order to get laid: Jacky (Missy Peregrym), Deborah (Kelly Osbourne...yes, her), Sue (Jessica Lucas), and Ms. Young (Marguerite Moreau)...a teacher at the school the aforementioned six all attend. The boys' horniness is central to many of the show's plots, and sub-, but the narrative tentpoles are mostly cliches: the cheating mom, the student-teacher affair. It's only as Life progresses does some fresh blood circulate into the story's veins.
New as it may be, the blood still feels stale. Because as previously mentioned, Life has none of the verbal intelligence or deep-dish soul of some of the better teenage melodramas. What it has is an attitude at once flukey, layer-deep, and coy; it's perpetually perched on the edge of emotional climax (pun intended), while rarely achieving it. And, looking at the drama from the introspective angle (such an action being especially warranted because Life copies its character asides, it almost seems, from Once & Again...a far better interpersonal drama), its psychic ramifications are best defined as all surface and no substance -- the televisual equivalent of one of Dr. Phil's "morality" lectures.
The cast is fascinating -- Mr. Faris has a sneer in the early episodes that is at once both affected and masking, possessing, a bitter sincerity and pain -- and their chemistry has some nice moments. The same can be said of most of the series, during particular episodes. Each forty-five minute chunk has some good scenes, even occasionally a very good one (Dino's tearful confession to his friends about his mom's infidelity stands out), but there are only a handful of solid episodes -- "Pilot," "Pilot Junior," "A Little Problem," and, ironically, the last two unaired episodes: "Friends Don't Let Friends Drive Junk," and "Papa Wheelie."
Seeing Peter Dinklage make a too-cool guest spot as a shrink to help Dino sort out his post-divorce aggression issues is just a sore reminder about how far the show hasn't reached, all it hasn't achieved. In its thirteen episodes, the girls are never more than super-good friends and a series of rotating one-notes; and of the guys, Ben is the most rounded, while Jonathan is so badly-developed it's almost grating. "Papa Wheelie" is the name of a trick, I suppose, but the real trick of it -- produced as it was as Life's final show -- is that in its exploration of some surprising moments (having Jonathan finally stand-up for himself against his best friends' continual teasing; Dino's parents' new relationships) it does the unthinkable: it gives a previously sealed-up, mostly souless show soul. And that satisfies even as it dissipates quickly. Sort of like high school.
Friday, June 6, 2008
Firefly: The Complete Series: A-
Buffy wasn't yet all there. And Angel certainly had a long way to go. Firefly: The Complete Series, however, was a fully-formed beauty almost from the word "Go." It's surprising, when one looks back, to realize that Joss Whedon's sci-fi/western action-drama is nearly perfect - especially when that same viewer also realizes that his other two television shows (the aforementioned Buffy and Angel, one a horror-film twist, the other a noir-tribute) took many more episodes before they became great. But all Firefly needed was one nearly-mediocre two-hour pilot to set itself up, and then it shot off into the stars, blasting away all expectation. All of the expected Whedon tropes are here - narratives that quirk ironically half-way through; layered episode titles; a rich, talented ensemble cast; an over-arching plot that questions the moral structure of human beings; and dialogue that bounces, zings, zaps, and screwballs sincerely through all manner of wit and heartache - but they're all far more polished at the starting gate, and the result is an immensely entertaining, sadly short-lived, space opera.
The strongest aspect of the show, as with all Mutant Enemy productions, remains the writing. And the strongest aspect of that aspect is the dialogue. It lumbers about in "Serenity," the two-hour pilot, and "Heart of Gold," the penultimate episode, is nearly as bad, but from "The Train Job," up through and past "Gold," Whedon & Co.'s words are madly, shockingly, gleefully intelligent; they practically rub their smarts and sass in your face. More so, when a step back is taken for a sad or touching moment, it actually rings true. There must be a slight change to be noted there, because even in Angel, sentiment was a clumsy thing. Perhaps it is but a mere symptom of the ease creator Whedon has with his third, and as of yet last, show. He doesn't spend nearly any time reiterating themes or character flaws, but rather lets the inventive, oddly rich, creation at his fingertips spread and soar.
And this is what the audience finds: in the 26th-century, humans inhabit a completely new star system, spread out over hundreds of moons, with a pair of "core worlds" at the center. It's very much the Old West, outsized over thousands of light years. Another twist: the political and socioeconomic structure of the worlds is dominated by the Alliance, a massive government complex controlled by the last two superpowers: China and the United States (accordingly, every character is fluent in Mandarin and English, and their conversations flow between the two, to fizzy effect). Sounds pretty tame, if a little 1984, right? One problem: some years ago, the Alliance felt itself sufficiently strong enough to reign in and "re-civilize" the outlying moons. However, the outlying moons felt their independence was too precious to be given up so easily - thus, a civil war: the Browncoats versus the Alliance. The Alliance won, and now, some years later, we are introduced to Captian Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion), a cynical ex-Browncoat, and his crew - among them, a doctor (Sean Maher) and his fugitive sister (Summer Glau) - as they rove the various worlds looking for work as smugglers aboard their ship Serenity (class: Firefly).
The various jobs they accrue make-up episode-by-episode story, but at its heart Firefly is an exploration of the crewmembers, and the life they have had to make for themselves admist a contradictory society, wherein one-half is civilized, and the other is very "futuristic Wyatt Earp." Episodes like "Ariel," in which Serenity's crew has to break-in to a hospital on a core world, and "The Message," weave the various big-picture narrative elements together with ease and mastery. And "The Train Job," "Shindig," "Trash," and "Safe," are perfectly insular, and perfectly satisfying. Above all of them sits "Objects in Space," the series finale written-and-directed by Joss Whedon, which is, odd as it sounds, most easily summed up as an existential exploration of the crew as they attempt to fend off a psychic, psychotic, bounty hunter (Richard Brooks). What makes "Objects" so brilliant, perhaps one of the best episodes for television Whedon has ever written, is how the expected - witty conversations, thrilling heroics - is suplemented by the completely new.
And what makes Firefly so brilliant, at least for the majority of the time, is how each of these different strengths are united and tied together into one supreme package. Both Buffy and Angel would go on to be better shows, but for what it was, when it was, for the time period it was aired, Firefly was an epic character study; a funny, funky, cool action-adventure; and a drama with a studied and truthful atmosphere. If I knew how to say "This is yet another achievement on Mutant Enemy's Crown of Awesome" in Mandarin, after watching all fourteen of these episodes, I probably would.
The strongest aspect of the show, as with all Mutant Enemy productions, remains the writing. And the strongest aspect of that aspect is the dialogue. It lumbers about in "Serenity," the two-hour pilot, and "Heart of Gold," the penultimate episode, is nearly as bad, but from "The Train Job," up through and past "Gold," Whedon & Co.'s words are madly, shockingly, gleefully intelligent; they practically rub their smarts and sass in your face. More so, when a step back is taken for a sad or touching moment, it actually rings true. There must be a slight change to be noted there, because even in Angel, sentiment was a clumsy thing. Perhaps it is but a mere symptom of the ease creator Whedon has with his third, and as of yet last, show. He doesn't spend nearly any time reiterating themes or character flaws, but rather lets the inventive, oddly rich, creation at his fingertips spread and soar.
And this is what the audience finds: in the 26th-century, humans inhabit a completely new star system, spread out over hundreds of moons, with a pair of "core worlds" at the center. It's very much the Old West, outsized over thousands of light years. Another twist: the political and socioeconomic structure of the worlds is dominated by the Alliance, a massive government complex controlled by the last two superpowers: China and the United States (accordingly, every character is fluent in Mandarin and English, and their conversations flow between the two, to fizzy effect). Sounds pretty tame, if a little 1984, right? One problem: some years ago, the Alliance felt itself sufficiently strong enough to reign in and "re-civilize" the outlying moons. However, the outlying moons felt their independence was too precious to be given up so easily - thus, a civil war: the Browncoats versus the Alliance. The Alliance won, and now, some years later, we are introduced to Captian Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion), a cynical ex-Browncoat, and his crew - among them, a doctor (Sean Maher) and his fugitive sister (Summer Glau) - as they rove the various worlds looking for work as smugglers aboard their ship Serenity (class: Firefly).
The various jobs they accrue make-up episode-by-episode story, but at its heart Firefly is an exploration of the crewmembers, and the life they have had to make for themselves admist a contradictory society, wherein one-half is civilized, and the other is very "futuristic Wyatt Earp." Episodes like "Ariel," in which Serenity's crew has to break-in to a hospital on a core world, and "The Message," weave the various big-picture narrative elements together with ease and mastery. And "The Train Job," "Shindig," "Trash," and "Safe," are perfectly insular, and perfectly satisfying. Above all of them sits "Objects in Space," the series finale written-and-directed by Joss Whedon, which is, odd as it sounds, most easily summed up as an existential exploration of the crew as they attempt to fend off a psychic, psychotic, bounty hunter (Richard Brooks). What makes "Objects" so brilliant, perhaps one of the best episodes for television Whedon has ever written, is how the expected - witty conversations, thrilling heroics - is suplemented by the completely new.
And what makes Firefly so brilliant, at least for the majority of the time, is how each of these different strengths are united and tied together into one supreme package. Both Buffy and Angel would go on to be better shows, but for what it was, when it was, for the time period it was aired, Firefly was an epic character study; a funny, funky, cool action-adventure; and a drama with a studied and truthful atmosphere. If I knew how to say "This is yet another achievement on Mutant Enemy's Crown of Awesome" in Mandarin, after watching all fourteen of these episodes, I probably would.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
The O.C.: The Complete Fourth Season: B+
In The O.C. nothing is what it seems. For the first season, that meant that creator Josh Schwartz’s soap-drama about a wealthy Newport Beach family who decides to adopt a street vagrant named Ryan Atwood (Benjamin McKenzie) was more intelligent and slyly entrancing than the generation of teen-oriented primtime shows - Beverly Hills, 90210 or Melrose Place - that had preceded it. It was entertaining, sincere, and witty where the viewer had only expected shallow mush. In the second season, this blossom of novelity turned fetid and mediocre; the arch over-lapping storylines (all of which inevitably found a main character the subject of some "salacious" or salacious lie or secret or misdeed) turned pulpy and madly over-imagined. Yet even that was lost for the third year: along with that faint glimmer of freshman glory went all semblance of a cohesive vision; the same set of second bananas that had trounced around, albeit glumly, Newport for season two were replaced by a veritable revolving door of tramps, schemers, businessman, and the like. But - surprise, surprise! - all that has changed. With Josh Schwartz back behind the wheel, The O.C.: The Complete Fourth Season has regained the largest share of its original sprightly bounce that is ever likely to occur.
When I say sprightly though, I don’t necesarily mean in a happy-go-lucky way. A huge plus for Schwartz and his team of writers is in a re-invigorated dramatic bent to the series. Its an easy thing to re-claim considering the last season ended with Marissa’s (Mischa Barton - she will not be missed) death in Ryan’s arms. Launching off from that comes "The Avengers," the season premiere, which finds each remaining member of the Cohen and Cooper families coping with life after the accident and high school. For some, the dislocation of long-distance relationships and dead-end summer jobs extending into the fall has stilted their personalities; others have taken the freedom as a re-ignition for a passion they never thought existed. And still others grapple with their grief by figuring out a way to actually grapple. Namely with Volchok (Cam Gigandet). For Seth (Adam Brody), Summer (Rachel Bilson), Ryan, and Julie (Melinda Clarke) respectively (among associated other parents and relatives), life seems a little different from where they had expected. But fear not! Come the next few episodes, the mad-antic highjinks of the gang will eventually re-ensnare them all...much to my delight.
Still, the dramatic subtleties don’t dissapear overnight, and seeing those first few episodes thrum with repression, betrayal, and depression - all embodied skillfully in the countenances of Clarke and McKenzie - gave off a satisfaction not felt since the first season finale. But eventually all good things come to an end, and this stands true even for The O.C. Except, the good persists. From "The Gringos" on towards "The Summer Bummer," the high-absurdist soap-factor skyrockets to levels of unimiginable glee. Thanks to the return of Taylor Townsend (Autumn Reeser, a geeky-comic vixen), Newport is again a place to party and have a good time. Bravo as well to the writing and the fellow cast. For the former, is there any greater proof of the resurgance of talent than witnessing "The Cold Turkey"’s dexterous balancing-act mixing tragedy and mania? For the latter, well, all I can say is watching the new Fab Four (that’s right: it’s Taylor-Ryan time) gives off a delirious, entertaining, charge.
So does most of The O.C. for its final season. Sure, there are a few flat spots ("The Metamorphosis") and just because a show can recognize that it has a tendency to wrap up plots in miliseconds doesn’t mean it gets a free pass on subsequent attempts to do so. But Josh Schwartz, who writes approximately a quarter of these sixteen episodes, keeps thing in fine form, never once lapsing too long into the dreck I’d become grudgingly accustomed to. What’s more, there are episodes that satisfy past the purely cerebral. The aforementioned season-openig arc are has a slow-burn pathos; and the penultimate "The Night Moves" isn’t just one of the most intricately suspenseful and riveting episodes of the whole series, but also writer Stephanie Savage’s best work. The surprise boils down to how, on not so infrequent occasions, the perfectly adequate fizz can give way to a deeper layer. Not only is the funny perfectly affected for this fourth season from the first, but so too is the underlying subtexts.
Of course, in the end, The O.C. is all about the soap. And there is plenty of crazy melodrama to sample (Chris Pratt, delightfully, as Che anyone?). Yet over ninety-two episodes and nearly five years, the audience has come to care about the Cohen family, and their affections are given due respect over the season. All the relationships that have been dragged out and showcased from Day One are finally resolved, with series finale "The End’s Not Near, It’s Here," and the flirty possibilities lately introduced aren’t entirely extinguished. For a writing-producing duo that would later move on to the far sillier Chuck and the far grittier, if less wholesome, Gossip Girl, to see them deliver on all the talent promised from those first twenty-seven episodes is, if not a dream come true, than a zany-fun experience that often leaves you laughing and touched, nary a Very Special Episode in sight. Say Welcome, or Goodbye, to The O.C. bitch.
When I say sprightly though, I don’t necesarily mean in a happy-go-lucky way. A huge plus for Schwartz and his team of writers is in a re-invigorated dramatic bent to the series. Its an easy thing to re-claim considering the last season ended with Marissa’s (Mischa Barton - she will not be missed) death in Ryan’s arms. Launching off from that comes "The Avengers," the season premiere, which finds each remaining member of the Cohen and Cooper families coping with life after the accident and high school. For some, the dislocation of long-distance relationships and dead-end summer jobs extending into the fall has stilted their personalities; others have taken the freedom as a re-ignition for a passion they never thought existed. And still others grapple with their grief by figuring out a way to actually grapple. Namely with Volchok (Cam Gigandet). For Seth (Adam Brody), Summer (Rachel Bilson), Ryan, and Julie (Melinda Clarke) respectively (among associated other parents and relatives), life seems a little different from where they had expected. But fear not! Come the next few episodes, the mad-antic highjinks of the gang will eventually re-ensnare them all...much to my delight.
Still, the dramatic subtleties don’t dissapear overnight, and seeing those first few episodes thrum with repression, betrayal, and depression - all embodied skillfully in the countenances of Clarke and McKenzie - gave off a satisfaction not felt since the first season finale. But eventually all good things come to an end, and this stands true even for The O.C. Except, the good persists. From "The Gringos" on towards "The Summer Bummer," the high-absurdist soap-factor skyrockets to levels of unimiginable glee. Thanks to the return of Taylor Townsend (Autumn Reeser, a geeky-comic vixen), Newport is again a place to party and have a good time. Bravo as well to the writing and the fellow cast. For the former, is there any greater proof of the resurgance of talent than witnessing "The Cold Turkey"’s dexterous balancing-act mixing tragedy and mania? For the latter, well, all I can say is watching the new Fab Four (that’s right: it’s Taylor-Ryan time) gives off a delirious, entertaining, charge.
So does most of The O.C. for its final season. Sure, there are a few flat spots ("The Metamorphosis") and just because a show can recognize that it has a tendency to wrap up plots in miliseconds doesn’t mean it gets a free pass on subsequent attempts to do so. But Josh Schwartz, who writes approximately a quarter of these sixteen episodes, keeps thing in fine form, never once lapsing too long into the dreck I’d become grudgingly accustomed to. What’s more, there are episodes that satisfy past the purely cerebral. The aforementioned season-openig arc are has a slow-burn pathos; and the penultimate "The Night Moves" isn’t just one of the most intricately suspenseful and riveting episodes of the whole series, but also writer Stephanie Savage’s best work. The surprise boils down to how, on not so infrequent occasions, the perfectly adequate fizz can give way to a deeper layer. Not only is the funny perfectly affected for this fourth season from the first, but so too is the underlying subtexts.
Of course, in the end, The O.C. is all about the soap. And there is plenty of crazy melodrama to sample (Chris Pratt, delightfully, as Che anyone?). Yet over ninety-two episodes and nearly five years, the audience has come to care about the Cohen family, and their affections are given due respect over the season. All the relationships that have been dragged out and showcased from Day One are finally resolved, with series finale "The End’s Not Near, It’s Here," and the flirty possibilities lately introduced aren’t entirely extinguished. For a writing-producing duo that would later move on to the far sillier Chuck and the far grittier, if less wholesome, Gossip Girl, to see them deliver on all the talent promised from those first twenty-seven episodes is, if not a dream come true, than a zany-fun experience that often leaves you laughing and touched, nary a Very Special Episode in sight. Say Welcome, or Goodbye, to The O.C. bitch.
Roswell: The Complete First Season: B
There are aliens in Roswell, New Mexico; and they come in the form of good-looking young actors. Oh, and while there they encounter an equally pretty group of human friends to bond and couple with. Such interactions can't happen however - what with the two groups being from two very different sides of the tracks - but we all know how young passion can be. And we certainly all know how zealous the FBI (and their shadowy secret projects) can be when its got ahold of a very interesting trail that may lead straight to our beautifully sweet "illegals." Such values are at the heart of Roswell: The Complete First Season; but just as Jason Behr, Brendan Fehr, and Katherine Heigl (!) mask certain depths as Max Evans, Michael Guerin, and Isabel Evans respectively, so too does Roswell. There are numerous moments of contrived soapiness created straight from the previously mentioned formula, but who's to say such contrivances are always awful - or that a sweet-souled little sci-fic teen-drama isn't allowed some improbabilities? Miraculously, the critic and the fan in me both agree that Roswell is worth the effort.
One element to reward a viewer's patience is in the occasional clever subversion of a central theme: how being part-alien can fuel the standard teenage angsts. Another is in, guiltily, watching these interesting teens come together and intertwine; which fuels directly into the pleasure of seeing creator Jason Katims (who pulled the idea from a young-adult novel series) work his hypnotically pure tone - something he would perfect all the more seven years later as show-runner for Friday Night Lights, which is like Roswell with less cliches...and UFOs.
If Katim's abilities as a writer aren't as developed or honed as he would later display for Lights, they have an admirable honesty and depth of compassion. Being sucked into the story of how Liz Parker (Shiri Appleby) and her two friends, Maria (Majandra Delfino) and Alex (Colin Hanks), cope with the knowledge that three of their fellow students - the aforementioned Evans siblings and Michael - are from another planet is a nearly effortless experience. And then later watching as the two groups come to intermingle can occasionally reach a nearly (albeit cheaply) euphoric high. This is the type of hour-long drama that would rather spend the majority of its first season investigatng the romantic and platonic implications of the two groups' match-up before sufficiently amping up the sci-fi suspense. Which is ok: because seeing how Liz & Max (the typical, anguishedly-thwarted pair), or Michael & Maria (a romance of atypical chemistry: a Seth & Summer before their time), or even Alex & Isabel (a surprisingly grounded relationship) eventually come together can be refreshingly entertaining; each couple having its own unique rhythm seperate and as a part of the collective six as a whole.
And as a group, they certainly have obstacles. For the narrative elements of Roswell that must inevitably stare-down the long barrel of Serialized Drama, there is luckily a happy answer to be found. Katims and his writers create a nutty little town out of Roswell, NM - but also one in which, when stuff starts hitting the fan, you aren't quite sure where to turn. Do you look toward Ms. Topolsky (Julie Benz, before she was Angel's delectably amoral vamp-lover Darla), a nosy "guidance counselor"? Or the local sheriff (William Sadler), whose alliances and ambiguities never seem to cease? Can you even trust yourself or your closest friends and family, with whom you share a history none of you know anything about? These are the sporadically-introduced, introspective quandries facing the sextet over the season, and most of the time (from "Crazy" up through "The White Room") the suspenseful arcs work. And for those that don't, you always have the good-natured relationship aspect ("Heat Wave," "The Balance," "Independence Day,"). Heck, once in a while they even intersect to fascinating effect ("Blood Brother," "Into the Woods").
But, and more than once in a while, the viewer realizes that there are problems in Roswell not so easy to spot; and it sure isn't the aliens. Nor could it quite be the actors (who are a rough, but able, group). Perhaps it is the sheer overload of heart occasionally on display (the friendships in this show are, to my guilty pleasure, hyper-protective and hyper-caring versions of their real selves); or maybe its that bits and pieces of the story can be discarded or picked up at random (i.e. Alex's band, or Max's boss) or maybe its that neither half of the show is permanently welded together: the sci-fi mystery is never as tight as it should be, and the character-driven drama could sprawl just a tad more. Maybe it's a bit of all of these that makes one realize that no matter how hyper-addictive an experience it is episode-to-episode, there is a level past which Roswell's unique blend cannot reach, cannot grow.
The season finale, "Destiny," ends on a curiously desolate note - taking, in my eyes, the Romeo & Juliet influences much too far - that would seem to set-up havoc for all the fragile, and beguilingly sincere, emotional connections we've spent 22 episodes watching and discovering. If this is the case, I can only hope it is for some conclusion, or some twining together, of the mystery with the soap; because if there is one thing we learn from Roswell it's that Teenage Alienation can actually be, you know, Alienation. And if there is one thing Roswell should learn from me, it's that such discovery is central to why I love it so: for its smart exploration of life in a brave new world...that may not just be high school.
One element to reward a viewer's patience is in the occasional clever subversion of a central theme: how being part-alien can fuel the standard teenage angsts. Another is in, guiltily, watching these interesting teens come together and intertwine; which fuels directly into the pleasure of seeing creator Jason Katims (who pulled the idea from a young-adult novel series) work his hypnotically pure tone - something he would perfect all the more seven years later as show-runner for Friday Night Lights, which is like Roswell with less cliches...and UFOs.
If Katim's abilities as a writer aren't as developed or honed as he would later display for Lights, they have an admirable honesty and depth of compassion. Being sucked into the story of how Liz Parker (Shiri Appleby) and her two friends, Maria (Majandra Delfino) and Alex (Colin Hanks), cope with the knowledge that three of their fellow students - the aforementioned Evans siblings and Michael - are from another planet is a nearly effortless experience. And then later watching as the two groups come to intermingle can occasionally reach a nearly (albeit cheaply) euphoric high. This is the type of hour-long drama that would rather spend the majority of its first season investigatng the romantic and platonic implications of the two groups' match-up before sufficiently amping up the sci-fi suspense. Which is ok: because seeing how Liz & Max (the typical, anguishedly-thwarted pair), or Michael & Maria (a romance of atypical chemistry: a Seth & Summer before their time), or even Alex & Isabel (a surprisingly grounded relationship) eventually come together can be refreshingly entertaining; each couple having its own unique rhythm seperate and as a part of the collective six as a whole.
And as a group, they certainly have obstacles. For the narrative elements of Roswell that must inevitably stare-down the long barrel of Serialized Drama, there is luckily a happy answer to be found. Katims and his writers create a nutty little town out of Roswell, NM - but also one in which, when stuff starts hitting the fan, you aren't quite sure where to turn. Do you look toward Ms. Topolsky (Julie Benz, before she was Angel's delectably amoral vamp-lover Darla), a nosy "guidance counselor"? Or the local sheriff (William Sadler), whose alliances and ambiguities never seem to cease? Can you even trust yourself or your closest friends and family, with whom you share a history none of you know anything about? These are the sporadically-introduced, introspective quandries facing the sextet over the season, and most of the time (from "Crazy" up through "The White Room") the suspenseful arcs work. And for those that don't, you always have the good-natured relationship aspect ("Heat Wave," "The Balance," "Independence Day,"). Heck, once in a while they even intersect to fascinating effect ("Blood Brother," "Into the Woods").
But, and more than once in a while, the viewer realizes that there are problems in Roswell not so easy to spot; and it sure isn't the aliens. Nor could it quite be the actors (who are a rough, but able, group). Perhaps it is the sheer overload of heart occasionally on display (the friendships in this show are, to my guilty pleasure, hyper-protective and hyper-caring versions of their real selves); or maybe its that bits and pieces of the story can be discarded or picked up at random (i.e. Alex's band, or Max's boss) or maybe its that neither half of the show is permanently welded together: the sci-fi mystery is never as tight as it should be, and the character-driven drama could sprawl just a tad more. Maybe it's a bit of all of these that makes one realize that no matter how hyper-addictive an experience it is episode-to-episode, there is a level past which Roswell's unique blend cannot reach, cannot grow.
The season finale, "Destiny," ends on a curiously desolate note - taking, in my eyes, the Romeo & Juliet influences much too far - that would seem to set-up havoc for all the fragile, and beguilingly sincere, emotional connections we've spent 22 episodes watching and discovering. If this is the case, I can only hope it is for some conclusion, or some twining together, of the mystery with the soap; because if there is one thing we learn from Roswell it's that Teenage Alienation can actually be, you know, Alienation. And if there is one thing Roswell should learn from me, it's that such discovery is central to why I love it so: for its smart exploration of life in a brave new world...that may not just be high school.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Angel: The Complete Fifth Season: B+
Joss Whedon has been quoted in interviews with the sentiment that the fifth season of Angel, just behind season three, is his favorite of the five years the show was on the air. It's easy to see why too: of all five years, Angel: The Complete Fifth Season has the most of each of the program's unique and far-flung elements; you've the mini-arcs of story first used in year two, the flawless jocularity of seasons three and four, and the nifty introduction of a whole new plot setup (a la the first season, because it - if anything - was new). Along with all of these is also the patented Angel atmosphere: claustrophobically gothic, a little screwball, ultimately poignant (but only in the service of tragedy), and with very nice production values. As such it's easy to see why series co-creator Whedon, that rapier wit-storyteller, adores this final installment in Angel's (David Boreanaz) quest for atonement. But is such worship deserved? Are these last 22 episodes some of the best Mutant Enemy ever produced? Not quite, but if Angel doesn't go out with a bang, at least it didn't sink to a whimper.
The hallmark of this season is that Angel Investigations, the constant home base for our rag-tag bunch of witty demon hunters, has been shut down. Permanently. Instead, the whole gang has been transplanted over to Wolfram & Hart (think The Exorcist with lawyers)...and given complete control of it. The idea of Angel as CEO was revealed in "Home," the fourth season finale, as Lilah (Stephanie Romanov) told the group that the Senior Partners - the group of super-planar demons that created W&H and who are, presumably, plotting the Apocalypse - were done with L.A. and, what's more, they wanted to reward Angel for having ended world peace by killing Jasmine (Gina Torres), a "Power That Was" (aka Goddess) who descended from the heavens to create a utopian slave state. To many's surprise, he agreed; the reprecussions of his decision (affecting some we have yet to know about) are the focus of season five.
Don't think that this means season five would follow much the same wholly-serialized pattern of storytelling that the masterfully entertaining fourth season did. No, in fact their newfound control of the hugely powerful law firm serves more as backdrop, dramatic and comedic foil, than Big Bad. Many episodes ("Life of the Party," "Just Rewards") follow the same design as season one: Monster of the Week re-done in the 21st century, and more nicely stylized. What makes Angel transcend such dissapointing backtracking is in the way the new sets of W&H make most episodes thrum with low-key dread, indecison (this tone is set by the season premiere, "Conviction," written and directed with crackerjack precision by Joss Whedon). The old-AI team aren't quite sure why they've been bestowed with such sudden power and money; and the addition of a few new supporting players, and the return of one or two old ones, keep them continually off-balance.
This anguish fuels straight into a motif I'm not quite sure I've found well-suited to be worn long-term by Angel: the tragedy, the suddeness, of death. But don't misunderstand; in "You're Welcome," (written and directed by newbie showrunner/long-time staff writer David Fury) "A Whole in the World," (again, written and directed by Joss Whedon) and "Shells," (written and directed by Steven S. DeKnight, who burst onto the scene as a major creative force behind last year's outrageously clever plot) the immediacy and skill with which death is manuevered into Angel's inner circle can bring a viewer to tears. Oddly enough, to counter-act that, are two of the series' most pricelessly funny episodes: "Smile Time" - in which, famously, our hero is turned into a felt puppet. Literally. - and "Harm's Way," a delightful showcase for new castmate Mercedes McNabb's deft timing as Harmony, Angel's secretary-vampire who subverts her soulessness by the sheer superficiality of her personality.
All these different elements, revealed in the beginning and now espoused at above, would never work if not for the cast. Boreanaz, along with J. August Richards (as newly-brilliant legal eagle Gunn), Alexis Denisof (Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, a bitterly indelible presence), and Amy Acker (grown into her own, killed, and then reborn in a year-long showstopper of a performance) make each new twist and turn - each one somehow cheaper, more incapsulated, than the last - felt and enthralling. Sure, one realizes that some of the Big Moments of the year (Cordelia's last episode; Fred's "infection") never reach fruition and reaction from the team - I would have loved a funeral, or even some group-mourning - but the season isn't completely devoid of serial drama...just a little lighter.
And generally this leaner look would favor Angel - as it did with season three - but there are definitely more down moments than I'd like, especially after the high that was year four. Instead, and much to my surprise, is this compact turn-of-events; a 22-episode roller coaster that obviously needed an additional year to sprawl and grow in depth. Such squeezing in then results in these little cracks, flaws, but the unique creations far outweigh the handful of dissapointments. Namely, Illyria (Amy Acker), a paranoid ancient demon-god, is worth every moment of Lindsey's (Christian Kane) speechifying. It's an odd thing to come to the end - depicted in series finale "Not Fade Away," characteristically remarkble from co-writers and directors Joss Whedon and Jeffrey Bell - and look back on all the quips and moments of horror; and how well at times that cocktail worked. In the end, Whedon's creation will stand as a fascinating five-year look at how forgiveness figures into a fluid moral compass, and how that in turn works into a richer and wider tapestry of good and evil. If that sounds heavy, Mutant Enemy never made it feel so. And Angel: The Complete Fifth Season did it one better; they made it interesting, once or twice heartfelt, startlingly funny, respectably finished, and true to the core truth of the series: redemption ends the moment you do, so never stop fighting.
The hallmark of this season is that Angel Investigations, the constant home base for our rag-tag bunch of witty demon hunters, has been shut down. Permanently. Instead, the whole gang has been transplanted over to Wolfram & Hart (think The Exorcist with lawyers)...and given complete control of it. The idea of Angel as CEO was revealed in "Home," the fourth season finale, as Lilah (Stephanie Romanov) told the group that the Senior Partners - the group of super-planar demons that created W&H and who are, presumably, plotting the Apocalypse - were done with L.A. and, what's more, they wanted to reward Angel for having ended world peace by killing Jasmine (Gina Torres), a "Power That Was" (aka Goddess) who descended from the heavens to create a utopian slave state. To many's surprise, he agreed; the reprecussions of his decision (affecting some we have yet to know about) are the focus of season five.
Don't think that this means season five would follow much the same wholly-serialized pattern of storytelling that the masterfully entertaining fourth season did. No, in fact their newfound control of the hugely powerful law firm serves more as backdrop, dramatic and comedic foil, than Big Bad. Many episodes ("Life of the Party," "Just Rewards") follow the same design as season one: Monster of the Week re-done in the 21st century, and more nicely stylized. What makes Angel transcend such dissapointing backtracking is in the way the new sets of W&H make most episodes thrum with low-key dread, indecison (this tone is set by the season premiere, "Conviction," written and directed with crackerjack precision by Joss Whedon). The old-AI team aren't quite sure why they've been bestowed with such sudden power and money; and the addition of a few new supporting players, and the return of one or two old ones, keep them continually off-balance.
This anguish fuels straight into a motif I'm not quite sure I've found well-suited to be worn long-term by Angel: the tragedy, the suddeness, of death. But don't misunderstand; in "You're Welcome," (written and directed by newbie showrunner/long-time staff writer David Fury) "A Whole in the World," (again, written and directed by Joss Whedon) and "Shells," (written and directed by Steven S. DeKnight, who burst onto the scene as a major creative force behind last year's outrageously clever plot) the immediacy and skill with which death is manuevered into Angel's inner circle can bring a viewer to tears. Oddly enough, to counter-act that, are two of the series' most pricelessly funny episodes: "Smile Time" - in which, famously, our hero is turned into a felt puppet. Literally. - and "Harm's Way," a delightful showcase for new castmate Mercedes McNabb's deft timing as Harmony, Angel's secretary-vampire who subverts her soulessness by the sheer superficiality of her personality.
All these different elements, revealed in the beginning and now espoused at above, would never work if not for the cast. Boreanaz, along with J. August Richards (as newly-brilliant legal eagle Gunn), Alexis Denisof (Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, a bitterly indelible presence), and Amy Acker (grown into her own, killed, and then reborn in a year-long showstopper of a performance) make each new twist and turn - each one somehow cheaper, more incapsulated, than the last - felt and enthralling. Sure, one realizes that some of the Big Moments of the year (Cordelia's last episode; Fred's "infection") never reach fruition and reaction from the team - I would have loved a funeral, or even some group-mourning - but the season isn't completely devoid of serial drama...just a little lighter.
And generally this leaner look would favor Angel - as it did with season three - but there are definitely more down moments than I'd like, especially after the high that was year four. Instead, and much to my surprise, is this compact turn-of-events; a 22-episode roller coaster that obviously needed an additional year to sprawl and grow in depth. Such squeezing in then results in these little cracks, flaws, but the unique creations far outweigh the handful of dissapointments. Namely, Illyria (Amy Acker), a paranoid ancient demon-god, is worth every moment of Lindsey's (Christian Kane) speechifying. It's an odd thing to come to the end - depicted in series finale "Not Fade Away," characteristically remarkble from co-writers and directors Joss Whedon and Jeffrey Bell - and look back on all the quips and moments of horror; and how well at times that cocktail worked. In the end, Whedon's creation will stand as a fascinating five-year look at how forgiveness figures into a fluid moral compass, and how that in turn works into a richer and wider tapestry of good and evil. If that sounds heavy, Mutant Enemy never made it feel so. And Angel: The Complete Fifth Season did it one better; they made it interesting, once or twice heartfelt, startlingly funny, respectably finished, and true to the core truth of the series: redemption ends the moment you do, so never stop fighting.
Angel: The Complete Fourth Season: A
It's not like I didn't think Angel had it in him; it's just...well...can this fourth season, this exemplary showcase for a daringly cohesive dramatic serial, really be the same show that once spun an entire episode from the pronounciation of the word "Shanshu"? The answer, it seems, is yes. And who am I to quibble when the end result is this: a thrilling drama with spiky jolts of comedy to keep you on your toes? After having viewed all 22 episodes (and in one marathon week-long sitting, too!) all I really know is this: I must be one big Angel addict, or Angel must be one heck of a show. Or both.
Narratively speaking, it doesn't pull any punches; the tag-line for the penultimate year might have been "Things Fall Apart: How to Structure a Fiendishly Clever Plot in Concentric Circles."
Everything kicks off with "Deep Down", the first of the season openers not to have been written by series creators Joss Whedon or David Greenwalt. The thought of whom then sets me on a rant full of pleasant surprise: it seems most of the Angel writing-producing staff was shuffled around this season. Greenwalt and Tim Minear are credited solely as Consulting Producers and Minear and Mere Smith, both of whom were some of the most prolific and talented of the staff writers, contribute a measley total of four eps this year; shockingly though, this fourth season was actually better without them - the new scribes (Steven S. DeKnight, Elizabeth Craft & Sarah Fain) are as gifted as any I've seen. Anywho, back to the original programming: with the season premiere firmly in place, the Angel Investigations team attempts to rebuild after Angel's (David Boreanaz, a better vamp with each season) dunk in the ocean and Cordelia's (Charisma Carpenter) ascendence to God-status. They need not look hard for long - the pieces practically start falling in their laps. Yet it may not portend all happiness and joy; just after the whole gang comes tentatively back together, they run smack up against The Beast (Vladimir Kulich).
This monolith of misery runs the gamut from invincible to apocalyptic but he's only the first in a series of whammies. His arc gives way to one even more surprising and then that falls back to reveal a third - the final of the season - that has got to be one of Joss Whedon's most cleverly constructed. And all along each installment crackles with dramatic power, each one rife more and more with mystery and suspense. Indeed, look no further than "Calvalry" or "Shiny Happy People" for just indications of plotlines that keep throwing you for a loop. Or, failing that, "Supersymmetry" and "Home" (the season finale, a one-night-only engagement by writer-director Tim Minear that has a sharpened, heart-in-your-throat, final sequence) are perfect examples of two stand-alone stories that hold their own in this serialized universe. But if you still need something to hit the spot "Spin the Bottle" and "Ground State" are just about the wittiest things you'll view.
Am I making my point? If what was so extraordinary about Angel's third season was its newly-found restraint and balance, than the wallop of a shock in its fourth year is the way that Angel keeps pushing the envelope, luring the audience into a plot as dense and tricky as any possible - full of villians and crossed schemes. Sprightly as ever, and all the more happy to oblidge the increasingly sadistic writers (and thus, the masochistic auidence) is the cast. Though Charisma Carpenter is, I'm almost certain, present on screen in true character for about 0.07 seconds of the year, she does perfect with what she has. And Vincent Kartheiser is a freak-puppet genius: he floats above and drowns below his emotions. Of the rest, Alexis Denisof, as Wesley (that most sardonically bitter of rogue hunters), and Amy Acker, as Fred, are standouts. But that doesn't mean the rest of Angel: The Complete Fourth Season doesn't shine. Or that such brilliance (in both meanings of the word) doesn't bode well for the final season, because - God help me - I'm addicted and I can't wait to find out.
Narratively speaking, it doesn't pull any punches; the tag-line for the penultimate year might have been "Things Fall Apart: How to Structure a Fiendishly Clever Plot in Concentric Circles."
Everything kicks off with "Deep Down", the first of the season openers not to have been written by series creators Joss Whedon or David Greenwalt. The thought of whom then sets me on a rant full of pleasant surprise: it seems most of the Angel writing-producing staff was shuffled around this season. Greenwalt and Tim Minear are credited solely as Consulting Producers and Minear and Mere Smith, both of whom were some of the most prolific and talented of the staff writers, contribute a measley total of four eps this year; shockingly though, this fourth season was actually better without them - the new scribes (Steven S. DeKnight, Elizabeth Craft & Sarah Fain) are as gifted as any I've seen. Anywho, back to the original programming: with the season premiere firmly in place, the Angel Investigations team attempts to rebuild after Angel's (David Boreanaz, a better vamp with each season) dunk in the ocean and Cordelia's (Charisma Carpenter) ascendence to God-status. They need not look hard for long - the pieces practically start falling in their laps. Yet it may not portend all happiness and joy; just after the whole gang comes tentatively back together, they run smack up against The Beast (Vladimir Kulich).
This monolith of misery runs the gamut from invincible to apocalyptic but he's only the first in a series of whammies. His arc gives way to one even more surprising and then that falls back to reveal a third - the final of the season - that has got to be one of Joss Whedon's most cleverly constructed. And all along each installment crackles with dramatic power, each one rife more and more with mystery and suspense. Indeed, look no further than "Calvalry" or "Shiny Happy People" for just indications of plotlines that keep throwing you for a loop. Or, failing that, "Supersymmetry" and "Home" (the season finale, a one-night-only engagement by writer-director Tim Minear that has a sharpened, heart-in-your-throat, final sequence) are perfect examples of two stand-alone stories that hold their own in this serialized universe. But if you still need something to hit the spot "Spin the Bottle" and "Ground State" are just about the wittiest things you'll view.
Am I making my point? If what was so extraordinary about Angel's third season was its newly-found restraint and balance, than the wallop of a shock in its fourth year is the way that Angel keeps pushing the envelope, luring the audience into a plot as dense and tricky as any possible - full of villians and crossed schemes. Sprightly as ever, and all the more happy to oblidge the increasingly sadistic writers (and thus, the masochistic auidence) is the cast. Though Charisma Carpenter is, I'm almost certain, present on screen in true character for about 0.07 seconds of the year, she does perfect with what she has. And Vincent Kartheiser is a freak-puppet genius: he floats above and drowns below his emotions. Of the rest, Alexis Denisof, as Wesley (that most sardonically bitter of rogue hunters), and Amy Acker, as Fred, are standouts. But that doesn't mean the rest of Angel: The Complete Fourth Season doesn't shine. Or that such brilliance (in both meanings of the word) doesn't bode well for the final season, because - God help me - I'm addicted and I can't wait to find out.
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Angel: The Complete Third Season: A-
I suppose the biggest surprise of Angel's third season isn't in its newly-minted dramatic grace; or its stronger-than-ever wit (sharpened, more so every episode, on pop culture and the ebb-and-flow of conversation); or even the now constantly prevalent talent of its actors. No, the big jaw-dropper of a shock that is to be discovered in this third round of exploits from Angel Investigations is how well all the aforementioned elements come together. This isn't the gawky first year, wherein Angel (David Boreanaz) went parading through somewhat entertaining storylines bantering with a somewhat entertaining supporting cast; and neither is it last season, where the first signs of maturity (and, as well, the pain of growth spurts) first popped up in darker and more extended serial narratives while characters began to bend and sway beyond the expected. This is Angel: The Complete Third Season, a slice of television pleasure that is more plausibly - thrillingly - dramatic, more dynamically written, and more consistently funny than any year previous.
Part of the credit should go to Joss Whedon and his team of writers. More aptly, though, it should go to David Greenwalt and his team of writers. Certainly both men should share the adoration (both did jointly create the show, spun from Whedon's masterwork Buffy the Vampire Slayer) but it's more obvious with each year that both men did not dedicate the same level of energy. In that contest, Greenwalt is the clear winner; and the episodes he's written - from "Heartthrob" to "Offspring" to "Tomorrow" - are ranked among the season's best. Yet the trend of his continuing, and growing, strength as a writer-director extends beyond just he: each of Mutant Enemy's (the production company Whedon started to foster his pop-crazed ambitions; think the modern-day Factory with less pan-sexual shenanigans) scribes contributed at least one great work to the season, and some (Tim Minear, Mere Smith) even gave more. Such perserverance and advancement shows in every densely-plotted detail of Angel & Co's latest bumpy ride through demon-infested L.A. Among their growing concerns: Darla's pregnant, Wesley's (Alexis Denisof) cracking up, Cordelia's (Charisma Carpenter) visions are becoming more and more visceral - in every sense of the word - and Angel himself is working through grief over Buffy's death.
These obstacles may seem steep, but they are used in beautiful service of Angel's central theme: the price and redemption of consequences. Each new struggle molds and re-tweaks our beloved team, and only in the best ways. Gone is Mopey Angel from the middle of season two - he's now downright jocular in brooding; gone too (eventually) is Watered-Down Wesley, he's been replaced by a demon hunter (let's call him, finally, Watcher Wesley) far more capable (and darkly witty) than anything I'd yet expected. Cordelia (blessed, blessed Ms. Carpenter: an actress of quicksilver comedic and dramtic timing) blossoms into a figure of true radiance - literally - but also one beyond her normal superficiality; her visions have helped her transcend humanity (again, literally) and Angel, with such a leading lady, is lucky indeed. And Fred (Amy Acker), the wacky physicist the gang rescued from Pylea late last season, eventually blossoms as well into much-needed goofy relief.
Yet this relief is short-lived in the scheme of things. Each new day (and episode) brings new twists and turns for our heroes: one episode, a new character; another, a new power. This more lean, bolt-tightened storytelling benefits the overall season magnificently - erasing most of the inconsistencies that plagued the show for most of its first two seasons. Aiding, as well, is the show's more witty wit. Sterling examples include the season finale, "Birthday", and "Carpe Noctem". Noticing how well the two elements compliment each other here reminds the viewer just how out-of-whack the dynamic could occasionaly be in the early years - some stories tipping too far into hokeyness while others strained into stony-faced denial - and just how well its been perfected now. I once said that, possibly, Angel was just the show to get all hot and bothered about; well, now's the time, commence the celebration: Angel has arrived.
Part of the credit should go to Joss Whedon and his team of writers. More aptly, though, it should go to David Greenwalt and his team of writers. Certainly both men should share the adoration (both did jointly create the show, spun from Whedon's masterwork Buffy the Vampire Slayer) but it's more obvious with each year that both men did not dedicate the same level of energy. In that contest, Greenwalt is the clear winner; and the episodes he's written - from "Heartthrob" to "Offspring" to "Tomorrow" - are ranked among the season's best. Yet the trend of his continuing, and growing, strength as a writer-director extends beyond just he: each of Mutant Enemy's (the production company Whedon started to foster his pop-crazed ambitions; think the modern-day Factory with less pan-sexual shenanigans) scribes contributed at least one great work to the season, and some (Tim Minear, Mere Smith) even gave more. Such perserverance and advancement shows in every densely-plotted detail of Angel & Co's latest bumpy ride through demon-infested L.A. Among their growing concerns: Darla's pregnant, Wesley's (Alexis Denisof) cracking up, Cordelia's (Charisma Carpenter) visions are becoming more and more visceral - in every sense of the word - and Angel himself is working through grief over Buffy's death.
These obstacles may seem steep, but they are used in beautiful service of Angel's central theme: the price and redemption of consequences. Each new struggle molds and re-tweaks our beloved team, and only in the best ways. Gone is Mopey Angel from the middle of season two - he's now downright jocular in brooding; gone too (eventually) is Watered-Down Wesley, he's been replaced by a demon hunter (let's call him, finally, Watcher Wesley) far more capable (and darkly witty) than anything I'd yet expected. Cordelia (blessed, blessed Ms. Carpenter: an actress of quicksilver comedic and dramtic timing) blossoms into a figure of true radiance - literally - but also one beyond her normal superficiality; her visions have helped her transcend humanity (again, literally) and Angel, with such a leading lady, is lucky indeed. And Fred (Amy Acker), the wacky physicist the gang rescued from Pylea late last season, eventually blossoms as well into much-needed goofy relief.
Yet this relief is short-lived in the scheme of things. Each new day (and episode) brings new twists and turns for our heroes: one episode, a new character; another, a new power. This more lean, bolt-tightened storytelling benefits the overall season magnificently - erasing most of the inconsistencies that plagued the show for most of its first two seasons. Aiding, as well, is the show's more witty wit. Sterling examples include the season finale, "Birthday", and "Carpe Noctem". Noticing how well the two elements compliment each other here reminds the viewer just how out-of-whack the dynamic could occasionaly be in the early years - some stories tipping too far into hokeyness while others strained into stony-faced denial - and just how well its been perfected now. I once said that, possibly, Angel was just the show to get all hot and bothered about; well, now's the time, commence the celebration: Angel has arrived.
Thursday, November 1, 2007
Friday Night Lights: The Complete First Season: A
What if they made a great television drama and nobody watched? What if said drama was bolstered throughout its premiere year by rabid praise and die-hard fans and still nobody watched? What if said drama was renewed, along other lesser-known yet more-beloved shows, for another promising year on the air and still no one appeared to view it? Such is the predicament of Friday Night Lights - the profoud, exquisite expose of small-town life that was spun from Peter Berg's 2004 film of the same name (Berg himself brought the concept to the silver screen and he sticks around to exec-produce, as well as write-direct the pilot). But what, ultimately, is the failing of Lights? By all accounts it struggles to find a hearty, a steady, audience; so how can it be that a program with such a negligible fan base be such a critic-winner? Simple: FNL is brilliant. Period.
The series begins much as the film did. It sets up the standard players (though perhaps in a far more crisp, interesting fashion) and then unrolls the standard plot devices: we've got Matt Saracen (Zach Gilford) as struggling QB2 under Jason Street (Scott Porter) - the golden boy of high school football - and their coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler), not to mention "Smash" Williams (Gaius Charles) - the cocky runningback - and Tim Riggins (Taylor Kitsch) - the half-drunk fullback. It's a team primed for victory (and not without a healthy dose of pathos)- but also one destined for collapse. Street incurs a tragic accident and whoosh the cards all fall down. With that loose thread, it all begins to unravel and re-thread; the eventual emerging picture? A story told over a multitude of perspectives, refracted through a dozen different townspeople, over a seaons worth of episodes, about one town with one hope, dying slowly.
Yet in that death, rebirth? The quick-change early episodes launch off from the pilot's obvious mechanisms and briskly build a head of steam. Saracen nervously takes the plate as the new QB1; Lyla Garrity (Minka Kelly) and Tim manuever around a wounded Street; Coach Taylor manuevers around a wounded constituency (not the least of which includes the resident honcho-car-dealer and the mayor); his family takes slow root in a new town; Tyra Collette (Adrianne Palicki) takes slow root in an old town; Smash takes a fast route to a new world; and we as an audience are taken along for the ride - one filled to bursting point with pin-point honesty, as true and delicate as all real life and as just as hard to resist.
But, of course, (and as I mentioned to start with) people have. Why? It isn't as though the soap-tropes that would seem to thrive here do, quite the opposite. Or that the cast of Texan men and women are strangled by their own "cliches", because they aren't. No, it is none of these. Could it be instead though that FNL, a football drama that wielded a razor-edge of catharsis for the everyday, simply was too much for its viewers? That is a tough idea to swallow, and one I'm inclined to not particularly trust, but what alternatives are there? Becuase I'm certainly not going to stand around believing the people simply will not view such excellence.
Still worried about that "excellence" bit I've gone on about though? Then look no further to the multi-episode arcs on racism, or sexual abuse, or steroid use, or the War in Iraq for confirmation that Lights, among its more theatrical breathen, is a vision of savy logic and character development - as curious as a wandering documentarian (a notion aided by the shaky camera work - a crafy trick) with twice as much perception and cunning intellect. It helps though that the show is gifted with such a team of writers, foremost of whom is Jason Katims and David Hudgins. Also worth mentioning? The series' phenomenal, phenomenal, cast - old and young actors, veterans and newcomers, who create marvelous, aching performances.
Now close your eyes for a minute and imagine what would happen if such perfectly realized creations all lived together in one town. What do you see - because I know what I see: it's an epiphany, a miracle about one small town struggling, hoping, praying, and living for those bright game nights. Its name is Friday Night Lights and there is nothing like it anywhere else on television today. Savor it.
Dirty Sexy Money: B+
The crazy, fascinating family at the center of Dirty Sexy Money is quite the small-scale economy of disfunction: they have bags, and bags, and bags, and bags, and bags of money yet hardly seem to work - together or apart; each member fighting against the other, each fighting against themselves. Such is the compelling, and most prominent feature, of ABC's new Wednesday night soap-opera. But look past the flat summations scattered throughout print ads and reviews - Dirty Sexy Money sends-up its own roots by embracing them, and manages to be way more purely entertaining than that other adult drama of the night (though, to be fair, Bionic Woman doesn't have the bolster of such a sparkling, joyously shallow cast). Concieved in an age of arch reverse irony in a visual arena too often cluttered with high concept, low delivery creations, here is something to be lauded, and failing that, at least enjoyed a whole heck of a lot; a show about a large family of eccentric, ridiculously wealthy people who never once manage to make you want to be them (and they even have yachts!) but also never once make you want to stop watching them.
Created by Craig Wright, a veteran of both Six Feet Under and Brothers & Sisters, his final product gets a rare, and rather astonishing, blessing: it is gifted with some of the salacious wit of the former without losing a bit of the hair-pin plot turns of the former. On a scale of critical respectability, there's a sort of lucky pre-destiny in this match-up between a man who trafficked in both the moral, dramatic, absurdities of death as well as the plain ol' absurdities of a drunken Sally Fields and this great big messy production. The end result? A world where lawyer Nick George (Peter Krause) gets sucked back into the world of the Darlings when his father, their long-time family lawyer, dies mysteriously.
Except, he doesn't actually voluntarily re-enter the orbit of a clan that, in his eyes, destroyed his father - he's sort of bribed by the sort of brilliant Donald Sutherland, as familial patriarch Tripp Darling. The scene in which this occurs is pulled off with nothing less than oodles of sly pinache by both actors facing off at opposite ends of a desk - one armed with a rascally, "naieve", smile of benevolence; the other, two exasperated eyebrows and a polished, high-caliber style. This miniature delight (one of several in the pilot episode) doesn't quite encaptulate all that there is to love about Money (as that would take perhaps several, long, slightly shoddy Lifetime films) but it jolts the viewer, entertains them, intrigues them; and in a world where one is either shocked, awed, stimulated, or cajoled by all manner of reality-sweatshop-medical-drama-comedy-musical-casino-mocku-detective-mentaries, to witness a show that promises only what it can deliver - a heap of campy wit and triumphant performances with just a hint of mystery (for spice) - is a true delight.
What perhaps isn't a delight? That cynical idea that nips about the show - the idea that it may start to repeat itself. Now, one may wonder: how can a show, complete with now less than eight main characters, run out of story? The same way it can provide such pleasure: by constantly throwing new stuff, no matter how implausible, in the way of New York's craziest group of relatives. Still, I have hope. This is a show exec-produced by Greg Berlanti, after all - the man that steered Everwood past all manner of schmaltzy potholes. Let's hope he does the same here. Because I'd hate to see what a boozed up Jill Clayburgh, or a cheating William Baldwin, or a sexy Natalia Zea, or a clueless Samaire Armstrong, or a strung-out Seth Gabel, or a wound-up Glenn Fitzgerald, or - heaven forbid - warm and calculating Donald Sutherland would do if their city-wide party were to get bumpy...er.
Created by Craig Wright, a veteran of both Six Feet Under and Brothers & Sisters, his final product gets a rare, and rather astonishing, blessing: it is gifted with some of the salacious wit of the former without losing a bit of the hair-pin plot turns of the former. On a scale of critical respectability, there's a sort of lucky pre-destiny in this match-up between a man who trafficked in both the moral, dramatic, absurdities of death as well as the plain ol' absurdities of a drunken Sally Fields and this great big messy production. The end result? A world where lawyer Nick George (Peter Krause) gets sucked back into the world of the Darlings when his father, their long-time family lawyer, dies mysteriously.
Except, he doesn't actually voluntarily re-enter the orbit of a clan that, in his eyes, destroyed his father - he's sort of bribed by the sort of brilliant Donald Sutherland, as familial patriarch Tripp Darling. The scene in which this occurs is pulled off with nothing less than oodles of sly pinache by both actors facing off at opposite ends of a desk - one armed with a rascally, "naieve", smile of benevolence; the other, two exasperated eyebrows and a polished, high-caliber style. This miniature delight (one of several in the pilot episode) doesn't quite encaptulate all that there is to love about Money (as that would take perhaps several, long, slightly shoddy Lifetime films) but it jolts the viewer, entertains them, intrigues them; and in a world where one is either shocked, awed, stimulated, or cajoled by all manner of reality-sweatshop-medical-drama-comedy-musical-casino-mocku-detective-mentaries, to witness a show that promises only what it can deliver - a heap of campy wit and triumphant performances with just a hint of mystery (for spice) - is a true delight.
What perhaps isn't a delight? That cynical idea that nips about the show - the idea that it may start to repeat itself. Now, one may wonder: how can a show, complete with now less than eight main characters, run out of story? The same way it can provide such pleasure: by constantly throwing new stuff, no matter how implausible, in the way of New York's craziest group of relatives. Still, I have hope. This is a show exec-produced by Greg Berlanti, after all - the man that steered Everwood past all manner of schmaltzy potholes. Let's hope he does the same here. Because I'd hate to see what a boozed up Jill Clayburgh, or a cheating William Baldwin, or a sexy Natalia Zea, or a clueless Samaire Armstrong, or a strung-out Seth Gabel, or a wound-up Glenn Fitzgerald, or - heaven forbid - warm and calculating Donald Sutherland would do if their city-wide party were to get bumpy...er.
Gossip Girl: B
"You're nobody until you're talked about."
One wonders whether or not Josh Schwartz, that whiz-kid maestro behind the best years of The O.C., realized the inherent irony involved when he - a witty television scribe famous for his one-man magic trick: turning "teenage life" into teenage life - took on the job of adapting a young adult book series concerned with the very last thing those Cally kids would have been: gossip, and lots of it. Yet the end result doesn't have a split personality - there are no Seth Cohens struggling to burst the fabric of cloistered, gritty Upper East Side gossip-queens and rich-kid cricles; if anything Schwartz and co-creator Stephanie Savage (another O.C. alum) give Gossip Girl a breezy irreverence otherwise lacking in the ubiquitous viral ad campaigns - replete with air-brushed faces and an implicit malevolence wrapped around the show's tag-line (with which I started this review). But more wisely, they also give the series premiere (and, a viewer hopes, the subsequent episodes) a fast-pace - all the better with which to deliver their throwaway lines and surprisingly good performances.
The titular "Gossip Girl" (Kristen Bell) serves as both narrator of the show and magnate for all of its many secrets, strained tensions, and storylines past, future, and present. Who cares? More importantly, and all the more courageously given the sheer burden of back-story needing to be expounded on, Ms. Ex-Veronica Mars gives our guide to the cliques and pariahs of Manhattan a delightful snarl; she delivers her observations and updates ("Melanie91 reports that...") with pin-point blase glee - all the better to keep a show not exactly founded on new ideas pumping with hot blood, and viewer interest (and joy, since Bell has managed to find such enjoyable work so quickly after her untimely demise on Mars).
This isn't to suggest that viewer interest won't be kept by the trials of one miss Serena van der Woodsen (Blake Lively) when she returns from a year of mysterious exile (a grand entrance our Girl relishes, obviously). Sure her "struggles" are watchable, and more than once fun (the pilot script, by Schwartz & Savage, has a bite of entitled wit), but far more interesting to me are what will happen to those rocked by the waves she creates by her re-entry: Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester), her "BFF", and Co. Already in this first hour there is substantial material, and juice-packed at that: Blair's desparate, wire-thin veneer of vanity and security; the frog-to-princes(or princess) tales of siblings Dan and Jenny Humphrey (Penn Badgley and Taylor Momsen); the back story on Serena's departure.
With such a wad of story though there comes a certain, heavy, commitment in viewing. And though the thought of pursuing such "frivolity" for an entire season can occasionally weigh on a person's soul (you can only take so much of Chuck Bass, trust me) the viewing experience is counter-balanced nicely with cast's alert, lively work and the promise of more carb-lite nothing (and by "nothing" I do mean solid quality t.v.) on Wednesday nights. If this all sounds alittle iffy - the thought of watching more rich kids struggle through their "issues" while listening to but more smarm, sass, and Justin Timberlake-via-soundtrack - while paradoxically being slightly addictive - I'd come back just to here more of Blake Lively's repartee (a clear-eyed alcoholic problem-child on the networks is, after all, so hard to find these days) - I'm sure that our anonymous, eponymous mistress of the blogosphere wouldn't have it any other way..and come around in a few more episodes, and I just might have to agree.
One wonders whether or not Josh Schwartz, that whiz-kid maestro behind the best years of The O.C., realized the inherent irony involved when he - a witty television scribe famous for his one-man magic trick: turning "teenage life" into teenage life - took on the job of adapting a young adult book series concerned with the very last thing those Cally kids would have been: gossip, and lots of it. Yet the end result doesn't have a split personality - there are no Seth Cohens struggling to burst the fabric of cloistered, gritty Upper East Side gossip-queens and rich-kid cricles; if anything Schwartz and co-creator Stephanie Savage (another O.C. alum) give Gossip Girl a breezy irreverence otherwise lacking in the ubiquitous viral ad campaigns - replete with air-brushed faces and an implicit malevolence wrapped around the show's tag-line (with which I started this review). But more wisely, they also give the series premiere (and, a viewer hopes, the subsequent episodes) a fast-pace - all the better with which to deliver their throwaway lines and surprisingly good performances.
The titular "Gossip Girl" (Kristen Bell) serves as both narrator of the show and magnate for all of its many secrets, strained tensions, and storylines past, future, and present. Who cares? More importantly, and all the more courageously given the sheer burden of back-story needing to be expounded on, Ms. Ex-Veronica Mars gives our guide to the cliques and pariahs of Manhattan a delightful snarl; she delivers her observations and updates ("Melanie91 reports that...") with pin-point blase glee - all the better to keep a show not exactly founded on new ideas pumping with hot blood, and viewer interest (and joy, since Bell has managed to find such enjoyable work so quickly after her untimely demise on Mars).
This isn't to suggest that viewer interest won't be kept by the trials of one miss Serena van der Woodsen (Blake Lively) when she returns from a year of mysterious exile (a grand entrance our Girl relishes, obviously). Sure her "struggles" are watchable, and more than once fun (the pilot script, by Schwartz & Savage, has a bite of entitled wit), but far more interesting to me are what will happen to those rocked by the waves she creates by her re-entry: Blair Waldorf (Leighton Meester), her "BFF", and Co. Already in this first hour there is substantial material, and juice-packed at that: Blair's desparate, wire-thin veneer of vanity and security; the frog-to-princes(or princess) tales of siblings Dan and Jenny Humphrey (Penn Badgley and Taylor Momsen); the back story on Serena's departure.
With such a wad of story though there comes a certain, heavy, commitment in viewing. And though the thought of pursuing such "frivolity" for an entire season can occasionally weigh on a person's soul (you can only take so much of Chuck Bass, trust me) the viewing experience is counter-balanced nicely with cast's alert, lively work and the promise of more carb-lite nothing (and by "nothing" I do mean solid quality t.v.) on Wednesday nights. If this all sounds alittle iffy - the thought of watching more rich kids struggle through their "issues" while listening to but more smarm, sass, and Justin Timberlake-via-soundtrack - while paradoxically being slightly addictive - I'd come back just to here more of Blake Lively's repartee (a clear-eyed alcoholic problem-child on the networks is, after all, so hard to find these days) - I'm sure that our anonymous, eponymous mistress of the blogosphere wouldn't have it any other way..and come around in a few more episodes, and I just might have to agree.
Angel: The Complete First Season: B
Most people travel to Los Angeles in search of fame, fortune, and a really great tan. Angel (David Boreanaz), that tormented vampire-with-a-soul from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, came to L.A. looking for redemption. Ironic considering that the city he seeks sanctuary in isn't exactly a mecca of epiphany? Not in the hands of Joss Whedon & David Greenwalt - two pop impresarios working in (mostly) entertaining, witty form. No, in the hands of these two Buffy alums (the former was its creator, the latter was a staff writer) Angel is a moody, moldy, jocular supernatural noir with our heroic vampire himself moonlighting as stoic detective and Cordelia Chase (Charisma Carpenter), Doyle (Glenn Quinn), and Wesley Wyndham-Pryce (Alexis Denisof) flitting around as his wise-cracking sidekicks. Sound a little strained, a little too top-heavy with "atmosphere"? The answer is: Angel works...if only by the skin of its barred teeth, err, fangs.
The series begins with Angel alone and doing his Batman thing against every evil in the metro area; needless to say, it takes a toll - both physically (though he is like immortal, duh) and mentally; see, our tall, dark, and brooding protagonist only remains as such as long as he remains attached to the world he is so guiltily saving. How? In steps Doyle, a half-demon who receives visions from those in need. Also comes along Ms. Chase, a wannabe actress from Sunnydale armed with a stinging tongue(her perfectly manicured person only masks a soul of the utmost superficiality...which is part of her charm). Together the three start Angel Investigations (they "help the helpless")...albeit somewhat reluctantly and so the show is born and so it runs as such for the first half a dozen or so episodes (Monster of the Week, every week - rinse, repeat); plus, it runs well - considering the level of slapstick verbal theatrics at work and the enjoyable talents of the actors.
But wait, the season is 22 episodes long and I mentioned only the first six or so; so what happens? Well, to phrase it lightly, the whole premise is all shook up. A new character pops up (coincidentally also from Buffy): Wesley Wyndham Pryce, a former Watcher now cavorting about as a "rogue demon hunter" (aka, a baffoon); speaking bluntly, I didn't much like Wesley's character and by the end of the season I couldn't muster nearly as much affection for him as I could for Cordelia (buoyed by Carpenters delicious performance) or Angel (held down my Boreanaz skilled, if rough, sullen essence). And overall the middle portion of the first season is bogged down in tedium and mediocre writing; but have hope! Just as I felt the promising potential of that first act gave way to the grating chatter of the second (ushered forth by the emotionally poignant "Hero") there came a cool wind - "Sanctuary".
Written by Tim Minear & Joss Whedon (only the second episode Mr. Whedon dained to write for the show in it's entire first iteration, bleh), "Sanctuary" has every good element in Angel - a razor's edge of suspense, high drama, and wit - and amped it up into a snazzy cocktail with bark and bite. In the pantheon of the show's writers and their first season achievements, "Sanctuary" definitely ranks high up, and the little Whedon contributes pushes him to the front of the ranks (barely past David Greenwalt, talented in only a slightly less capacity). To say it was a great episode would be a disservice; it was Angel's greatest episode in those rocky first months.
But from that struggle, eventually and not without the sweat stains to prove it, came a true contender; a lithe fighter capable of quick jabs at the funny bone (in that way it rips through pop culture, wordplay, and the withering retort), the heart (in its earnesty concering Angel's "family"), and the blood (in the way it makes it run cold). Watching through the early hours one may have doubts - I sure did - but preserve on: Angel may just be the type of show to get all hot and bothered about.
The series begins with Angel alone and doing his Batman thing against every evil in the metro area; needless to say, it takes a toll - both physically (though he is like immortal, duh) and mentally; see, our tall, dark, and brooding protagonist only remains as such as long as he remains attached to the world he is so guiltily saving. How? In steps Doyle, a half-demon who receives visions from those in need. Also comes along Ms. Chase, a wannabe actress from Sunnydale armed with a stinging tongue(her perfectly manicured person only masks a soul of the utmost superficiality...which is part of her charm). Together the three start Angel Investigations (they "help the helpless")...albeit somewhat reluctantly and so the show is born and so it runs as such for the first half a dozen or so episodes (Monster of the Week, every week - rinse, repeat); plus, it runs well - considering the level of slapstick verbal theatrics at work and the enjoyable talents of the actors.
But wait, the season is 22 episodes long and I mentioned only the first six or so; so what happens? Well, to phrase it lightly, the whole premise is all shook up. A new character pops up (coincidentally also from Buffy): Wesley Wyndham Pryce, a former Watcher now cavorting about as a "rogue demon hunter" (aka, a baffoon); speaking bluntly, I didn't much like Wesley's character and by the end of the season I couldn't muster nearly as much affection for him as I could for Cordelia (buoyed by Carpenters delicious performance) or Angel (held down my Boreanaz skilled, if rough, sullen essence). And overall the middle portion of the first season is bogged down in tedium and mediocre writing; but have hope! Just as I felt the promising potential of that first act gave way to the grating chatter of the second (ushered forth by the emotionally poignant "Hero") there came a cool wind - "Sanctuary".
Written by Tim Minear & Joss Whedon (only the second episode Mr. Whedon dained to write for the show in it's entire first iteration, bleh), "Sanctuary" has every good element in Angel - a razor's edge of suspense, high drama, and wit - and amped it up into a snazzy cocktail with bark and bite. In the pantheon of the show's writers and their first season achievements, "Sanctuary" definitely ranks high up, and the little Whedon contributes pushes him to the front of the ranks (barely past David Greenwalt, talented in only a slightly less capacity). To say it was a great episode would be a disservice; it was Angel's greatest episode in those rocky first months.
But from that struggle, eventually and not without the sweat stains to prove it, came a true contender; a lithe fighter capable of quick jabs at the funny bone (in that way it rips through pop culture, wordplay, and the withering retort), the heart (in its earnesty concering Angel's "family"), and the blood (in the way it makes it run cold). Watching through the early hours one may have doubts - I sure did - but preserve on: Angel may just be the type of show to get all hot and bothered about.
Friday, June 1, 2007
The O.C.: The Complete Second Season: B-
It was inevitable - I suppose - that The O.C., Josh Schwartz's exuberantly sharp and deeply entertaining soap opera, eventually fall so far from grace...but darn it if it isn't one of the most dissapointing television spectacles I have witnessed in some time (that, and of course Veronica Mars' quick third-season gutting). The reason I find it so probable that The O.C. turn so vapid so quickly (and really, 20 episodes constitutes as a relatively quick quality turnaround) lies in the very nature of the characters, and the show as whole, itself. The belief-defying original conceit - that a wealthy compassionate Newport family, the Cohens, would "adopt" a renegade street rebel named Ryan (Ben McKenzie, filled with appropriate slow-burn) and subsequently try and adapt him to their surface-loving life in Newport Beach, California - managed to charm its way into the hearts of the audience based mostly on a torrent of sincerity and wit. That power buoyed the show along well enough for the entire first season, kudos as well to the entire, thankfully sane, Cohen Family and the actors who played them, but due to some disconcerting shifts in its second season, The O.C. looks more and more like a cheap knock-off...rather than an upgrade. I am aware of course that teen soaps are by nature a product of the Machine, namely the television execs who herald them like the Messiah, but am I alone in thinking that where once The O.C.'s machinery glimmered, it now rusts?
I present as the first piece of evidence in my case: the characters. Seth Cohen (Adam Brody), that lonely and whip-smart son who befriended Ryan, was once the geeky sex-symbol, the mascot, of The O.C. It is understandable why: he has an infectious energy that seeps into you like rot...but with the opposite effect; nearly his every moment on screen in the first season was thrilling in the most unexpected way. After all, here was a nerdy Jewish teenager who instantly became the focus of every room he was in, and consequently the focus of the entire audience as well. In his second season a scary fact has become apparent: Seth isn't really human anymore. What he has become now isn't really much of anything anymore - so much cobbled together energy glued helter skelter by the writing team's increasingly ridiculous character developments; he is a sickening self-parody of his former magnificent self. Adam Brody maintains a level of bright spunk but his core is gone...stolen away by the dues ex machina of network television.
I write about Seth's striking new change at such length because to me, his character has always been the hinge upon which so much else rests; without him, the other characters seem to deflate alittle. To those who don't believe me I present to you Ryan, once a multifaceted bad-boy with a shining - and believable - heart (I defy anyone not to be warmed by those scenes where he looks out for Seth), who was transmogrified into a straight-laced sop. Worse still, his smoldering energy was abandoned as well and what was left in his place looks more like it belongs in 90210 than in Chino; he's much too dour prep, and not enough layered teenager. Following right along with Ryan, the Cohen parents - Sandy (Peter Gallagher) and Kirsten (Emmy-worthy Kelly Rowan) - sink into a deplorable pool of depression and loathing. There would atleast be a guilty jolt gleaned from watching their fights but mostly their emotions, and their storylines, remain more inert than explosive. Thankfully though I can say Gallagher and Rowan handle their trashy tales with mature (and winning) talent.
Moving forward, I present my second piece of evidence: the storylines. Once gifted with an arch perceptiveness (e.g. everyone's a cheat! everyone's a crook!) that rarely slid into camp, the stories now drift amok aimlessly picking, seemingly at random, new beloved people to torture with evermore numerous inane problems. There are no fewer than three plots about illicit affairs, one involving an illegitamate daughter, one about pornography, two different stories of love triangles, and a very poorly thought-out trifle of an idea about lesbians. And I'm not even counting the numbers of small waves created by the sudden arrival of several second-bannanas: Lindsay (Shannon Lucio), Alex (Olivia Wilde), and Zach (Michael Cassidy) - all of whom have, by the end of the year, found some sorry excuse to go straggling back to Character Hell.
And now my final piece of evidence, the one I feel has the most weight - as it infuriates me the most - as well as the most relevance to the plight of the still slightly-witty The O.C.: Josh Schwartz's departure. In the beginning he handled the majority of the writing, and his producing touch was everywhere. Similarly the show overflowed with quality. By the fourth episode of the second season, "The New Era", his persistent presence had waned and as a result the show wittled down; where once it was a rule-breaker as a vastly talented teen dramedy, it more and more limped along as a mere vestige of its former self.
That isn't to say there isn't some hope for it yet: the actors are still as great as they ever were, and Josh Schwartz still remains aboard the O.C.-ship, even if only as an executive-producer/occasional writer. A rebound is possible (one hopes) but if anything I've heard about the third season stands to be true, then The O.C. still has miles left to fall.
I present as the first piece of evidence in my case: the characters. Seth Cohen (Adam Brody), that lonely and whip-smart son who befriended Ryan, was once the geeky sex-symbol, the mascot, of The O.C. It is understandable why: he has an infectious energy that seeps into you like rot...but with the opposite effect; nearly his every moment on screen in the first season was thrilling in the most unexpected way. After all, here was a nerdy Jewish teenager who instantly became the focus of every room he was in, and consequently the focus of the entire audience as well. In his second season a scary fact has become apparent: Seth isn't really human anymore. What he has become now isn't really much of anything anymore - so much cobbled together energy glued helter skelter by the writing team's increasingly ridiculous character developments; he is a sickening self-parody of his former magnificent self. Adam Brody maintains a level of bright spunk but his core is gone...stolen away by the dues ex machina of network television.
I write about Seth's striking new change at such length because to me, his character has always been the hinge upon which so much else rests; without him, the other characters seem to deflate alittle. To those who don't believe me I present to you Ryan, once a multifaceted bad-boy with a shining - and believable - heart (I defy anyone not to be warmed by those scenes where he looks out for Seth), who was transmogrified into a straight-laced sop. Worse still, his smoldering energy was abandoned as well and what was left in his place looks more like it belongs in 90210 than in Chino; he's much too dour prep, and not enough layered teenager. Following right along with Ryan, the Cohen parents - Sandy (Peter Gallagher) and Kirsten (Emmy-worthy Kelly Rowan) - sink into a deplorable pool of depression and loathing. There would atleast be a guilty jolt gleaned from watching their fights but mostly their emotions, and their storylines, remain more inert than explosive. Thankfully though I can say Gallagher and Rowan handle their trashy tales with mature (and winning) talent.
Moving forward, I present my second piece of evidence: the storylines. Once gifted with an arch perceptiveness (e.g. everyone's a cheat! everyone's a crook!) that rarely slid into camp, the stories now drift amok aimlessly picking, seemingly at random, new beloved people to torture with evermore numerous inane problems. There are no fewer than three plots about illicit affairs, one involving an illegitamate daughter, one about pornography, two different stories of love triangles, and a very poorly thought-out trifle of an idea about lesbians. And I'm not even counting the numbers of small waves created by the sudden arrival of several second-bannanas: Lindsay (Shannon Lucio), Alex (Olivia Wilde), and Zach (Michael Cassidy) - all of whom have, by the end of the year, found some sorry excuse to go straggling back to Character Hell.
And now my final piece of evidence, the one I feel has the most weight - as it infuriates me the most - as well as the most relevance to the plight of the still slightly-witty The O.C.: Josh Schwartz's departure. In the beginning he handled the majority of the writing, and his producing touch was everywhere. Similarly the show overflowed with quality. By the fourth episode of the second season, "The New Era", his persistent presence had waned and as a result the show wittled down; where once it was a rule-breaker as a vastly talented teen dramedy, it more and more limped along as a mere vestige of its former self.
That isn't to say there isn't some hope for it yet: the actors are still as great as they ever were, and Josh Schwartz still remains aboard the O.C.-ship, even if only as an executive-producer/occasional writer. A rebound is possible (one hopes) but if anything I've heard about the third season stands to be true, then The O.C. still has miles left to fall.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
The Black Donnellys: C+
In the fall of 2005, Paul Haggis wrote and directed a little drama called Crash. The film was a near brilliant exploration of race and prejudice and it garnered him huge amounts of attention both for dividing critics and audiences (insipid! incisive!) and winning Best Picture. I had hoped that Crash was only one peak in a long, continued stream of brilliance. With Haggis' latest effort (with seminal co-man Bobby Moresco) I may have to eat crow.
The Black Donnellys is built on the foundations laid by shows like The Sopranoes and Brotherhood. It says that blood and family can't exist without each other and really that the latter is the definition for the former and vice-versa. Well, Haggis (who wrote and directed the first two episodes and serves as exec. producer) has certainly proved there is blood...a lot of it (for network television). We've got bodies being pummelled by sledgehammers, little brothers beaten near to death, a villain with a literal (!) axe to grind, and lots and lots of guns. Where then is the family?
Centering on the four Donnelly Brothers - Sean (Michael Stahl-David), Kevin (Billy Lush), Tommy (Jonathan Tucker), and Jimmy (Tom Guiry) - the show makes vague gestures at family and such but it finds much more joy in stacking things up (blood-wise) to knock them all down. I can't disagree, at times it makes for enjoyable drama. And the writing isn't half-bad (though, again, from an Oscar winning writer I would have expected more). My problem exists then with Tommy, as the central character in this massive, muddled, Greek tragedy.
Jonathan Tucker plays him with nice, steely resolve but since his character (and really every brother) professes to such an ingrained sense of love and protectiveness for his brothers you'd think that it would materialize on screen, right? Wrong. Though the first episode fared better, this second one finds Tommy flailing around with his younger brother Kevin like a paranoid jerk. His every movement seems powered by anger and selfishness. Ok, so he makes token gestures of affection near the end but that can't near make up for a lack of central character.Where Crash skated by on it's gigantic cast (thereby bypassing any real need for love), here The Black Donnellys is drowning in its own stoicism. The brothers, Tommy especially, are still such horribly opaque characters that even if their hearts were breaking (over Sean's ICU hospital stay, over being sucked into organized crime) we don't get to see them often enough to care.
The Office: The Complete Second Season: A-
Selling paper can't be a fun job. Therefore it is reasonably assumed that for those people who have drawn the unfortunate lot in life to be selling paper, their office lifes cannot be enjoyable. Here though, in this British-adapted mockumentary, squirming glee is mined for all it's worth when cameras take us inside the Scranton branch of Dunder-Mifflin, a fictional Pennsylvania paper selling company.
Run by Micheal Scott (Steve Carell), the most delirously self-absorbed being on the planet, the Scranton branch is home to a veritable carnival ground of closeted schizoids and adorable eccentrics. From deranged Dwight (Rainn Wilson), Micheal's desperate-to-be #2, to the temp Ryan (BJ Novak), the floor is filled to burst with people that are just ever so slightly off.
Yet maybe they aren't. One of the greatest pleasures in "The Office" is getting to know characters you had once thought peverse or strange. "69"-loving Kevin was just too sexual in season one. Here? He's intelligent and blunt, wonderfully out there in all of his wierdness. The same goes for every other resident...except maybe Dwight (who is the shows most consistent laugh getter and thus probably not deserving of a soul). We are all human and even though we shouldn't be afraid to laugh at other beauracry slaves, we also shouldn't be afraid to identify with them.
Anchored by an incredibly gifted ensemble cast, not to mention the delicious sexual tension between Jim (John Krasinski) and Pam (Jenna Fischer), this scathingly funny show reveals to all of us the struggling inner heart of white-collar America. Our grudges, romances, dreams, fantasies, and quiet desperations.The show has ripened almost completely in its sophmore year and I can only hope it maintains it's consistent air of hilarious irreverence, satire, and earnesty.
Run by Micheal Scott (Steve Carell), the most delirously self-absorbed being on the planet, the Scranton branch is home to a veritable carnival ground of closeted schizoids and adorable eccentrics. From deranged Dwight (Rainn Wilson), Micheal's desperate-to-be #2, to the temp Ryan (BJ Novak), the floor is filled to burst with people that are just ever so slightly off.
Yet maybe they aren't. One of the greatest pleasures in "The Office" is getting to know characters you had once thought peverse or strange. "69"-loving Kevin was just too sexual in season one. Here? He's intelligent and blunt, wonderfully out there in all of his wierdness. The same goes for every other resident...except maybe Dwight (who is the shows most consistent laugh getter and thus probably not deserving of a soul). We are all human and even though we shouldn't be afraid to laugh at other beauracry slaves, we also shouldn't be afraid to identify with them.
Anchored by an incredibly gifted ensemble cast, not to mention the delicious sexual tension between Jim (John Krasinski) and Pam (Jenna Fischer), this scathingly funny show reveals to all of us the struggling inner heart of white-collar America. Our grudges, romances, dreams, fantasies, and quiet desperations.The show has ripened almost completely in its sophmore year and I can only hope it maintains it's consistent air of hilarious irreverence, satire, and earnesty.
Entourage: The Complete First Season: A-
This hilarious HBO show has been called by many "Sex and The City with guys". Now although I won't argue that it bears striking similarities to it's east coast sister this show is more "Fame and The Guys". It's 40% twisted satire, 60% great hetero-guy bonding show about four best friends moving to L.A. to support the one of them that made it in Hollywood.
The four best friends are: Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier), the "it boy" of the Hollywood moment, Eric "E" (Kevin Connoly), his semi-manager, Turtle (Jerry Ferera), the man who always knows-a-guy-who-knows-a-guy, and Vincent's older brother Johnny "Drama" (Kevin Dillon). The twisted satire comes in the form of several great celebritiy cameos (always playing themselves) including Scarlett Johanssen, Gary Busey, Sarah Silverman, and Jimmy Kimmel, Vincent's high-powered foaming at the mouth agent Ari Gold (the amazing Jeremy Piven) who loves to shout lines like "hug it out bitch!", and Vincent's publicist Shawna (Debi Mazar) who hates practically half of Hollywood and represents the other half.
The show is acid-tounged and smart in it's portrayal of Hollywood but that's only half the fun(ny) and touch(ing). The other half comes in the form of the four guys and their relationships.....no not with women but with each other. Like in the season finale when Eric has a fight with Vincent over how best to interact with his career, or when in "Busey and The Beach" they all rally around Turtle and his might have been celebrity fued with Gary Busey. The cast is superb and Adrien Grenier is especially suprising in his ability to add split-second sincerity and compassion to a character that could have been a skease. These guys act like friends in ways even the "Sex" girls couldn't have dreamed of.
The four best friends are: Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier), the "it boy" of the Hollywood moment, Eric "E" (Kevin Connoly), his semi-manager, Turtle (Jerry Ferera), the man who always knows-a-guy-who-knows-a-guy, and Vincent's older brother Johnny "Drama" (Kevin Dillon). The twisted satire comes in the form of several great celebritiy cameos (always playing themselves) including Scarlett Johanssen, Gary Busey, Sarah Silverman, and Jimmy Kimmel, Vincent's high-powered foaming at the mouth agent Ari Gold (the amazing Jeremy Piven) who loves to shout lines like "hug it out bitch!", and Vincent's publicist Shawna (Debi Mazar) who hates practically half of Hollywood and represents the other half.
The show is acid-tounged and smart in it's portrayal of Hollywood but that's only half the fun(ny) and touch(ing). The other half comes in the form of the four guys and their relationships.....no not with women but with each other. Like in the season finale when Eric has a fight with Vincent over how best to interact with his career, or when in "Busey and The Beach" they all rally around Turtle and his might have been celebrity fued with Gary Busey. The cast is superb and Adrien Grenier is especially suprising in his ability to add split-second sincerity and compassion to a character that could have been a skease. These guys act like friends in ways even the "Sex" girls couldn't have dreamed of.
The O.C.: The Complete First Season: A-
Soap operas are by definition a few things. They are twisty and they are dramatic and they are constantly pulling on our emotions. Teen soaps are a few things as well: very twisty, very dramatic, and very draining. This teen/parent soap/screwball comedy about life for the families of the rich enclave Newport Beach manages to break the tradition of a teen soap and actually be very good, very very good. The pilot of the show is phenomenal, introducing us to Ryan Atwood (Benjamin McKenzie), a hood who is without a family and barely escaping juvie. He's taken in by the very gracious PD Sandy Cohen (Peter Gallagher) and is suddenly thrust into a world of riches and schemes. Every other person is either broke, drunk, or gay. Ryan quickly attaches himself to the Cohen's (of which their is a mother/wife, Kirsten played by Kelly Rowan) only son Seth (Adam Brody). Seth is an outcast, a person far too intelligent to fit into Newport and thus gets peed on by the water polo team ("they wax their chests" he once quips) every other day. Ryan becomes his best friend, big brother, and protector and their relationship becomes exactly 1/2 of the heart of the show. The other half being the eloquently played out marriage between PD Sandy and daughter-of-the-richest-man-in-Newport-yet-still-cool Kirsten. They fight, sure, but in the real world all couples fight, it's the fact that we know (and they know) that a marriage love is too strong to be destroyed by day-to-day arguments.
The O.C. so far may sound like most other suds-alot shows and it is.....in the wierdest way. It smartly stays away from melodrama (except with the 5-arc storyline of Oliver, in which the show was almost unwatchable) and instead involves itself in relationships, namely love triangles and adultery. To go perfectly with the smart plotting is the blithe, intelligent, and ever so witty writing. You'll laugh every episode, I guarantee it. The final piece of the puzzle is the acting, every cast member is quite good (with the possible exception of Mischa Barton as the naif Marissa) and the members of the Cohen family: Sandy, Kirsten, Ryan, and Seth give truly emmy-worthy performances (especially the fast and furious Adam Brody and the nuanced Ben McKenzie).
The season finale is conducted with a bitter pain and the fact that it ends with the final track from the pilot (a cover of the lyrical "Hallelujah" in case you were wondering) is only more reason to sob at the woe of the finale plot, the beauty of the characters and the writing, the beauty of the music, and the tragedy of the fact that you'll have to wait a whole summer to see how it resolves next season.
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