TV Girl

LOST: My Defense of Season 6 and the Parallel Universe

2010-03-05T17:59:00.000-08:00

NOTE: This is a response article, and it’s all in good, writerly fun. I enjoy analytical writing, and so I write analytically. Sometimes, I do it at people. This is one of those times.

So, here is my response to a recent post on io9, a blog I (sometimes) enjoy, but sometimes it's just...they’re missing the POINT. Especially when it's bitching about the shows I love, I do not tolerate shortsighted, half-baked analysis-lite, which is what this io9 article called “5 Reasons Lost’s Parallel Universe is a Waste of Time” is made up of almost entirely, glossing over nuance to achieve some altogether boring and misguided discussion that lacks all complexity of thought. So, you may want to look at the io9 article first, and then read this, and then I guess you can go ahead and decide for yourself whether you're going to watch "Lost" for the big pay-off in the end or whatever, or if you're going to understand it for what it truly is, which is a show that stopped being about something so simple as an answer the moment we found out what was in that hatch!

It was a man down there! (Gasp.)

Okay, so first (Part I), there is the argument that season five is the "Same Shit, Different Day." Here is why this argument is so simple and, therefore, so wrong. (I'm sorry for the length, but it had to be.)

Like much of this article, this first section completely ignores the concept of character complexity. In doing this, the writer (Meredith Woerner) has somehow managed to file away all of our Losties as happy-and-sad, good-and-evil constructs, when, in fact, they’re complex characters who act on motives that are never (ever) cut-and-dried or straight forward. My favorite example that this writer uses is that of Sayid. This is her description of Sayid: “He was a torturer, for god’s sake. We get it—he doesn’t like killing, but thinks it’s a necessary evil. That was established when he tortured Sawyer for an inhaler he didn’t have, roughed up Ben, went on a killing spree after his lover Nadia was murdered—hell, he even murdered the hell out of that chicken when he was a boy. We get it: Sayid kills to serve his own twisted reasoning, whatever that may be at the moment.” OKAY. Well! Now that we’ve got SAYID all nice and wrapped up for us here in this colossal web of black-and-white. What the writer completely neglects to understand here is that, nothing is so simple as black and white. First of all, yes, Sayid was a torturer. No, we don’t “get it,” because each time Sayid has tortured someone on the Island, it has never been for the same reason, and these “reasons” have never been so simple as “twisted.” When he tortures Sawyer toward the beginning (Confidence Man 1.8), yes, this is our first and most straightforward example of Sayid’s “moral ambiguity,” but then, when he tortures Ben in the armory—his motives here are anything but black and white. He is filled with remorse, grief, guilt, anger, vengeance... The complexity here, based in what we know about Sayid (in both the immediate and distant past) is staggering. “Lost” is a show that remembers everything about its characters so as to build a world of complexity for each one, and sometimes, this causes confusion, or it brings us to tears or drives us mad with worry. I know that, when I cry during Abandoned (2.6), it is not just because there’s a dead girl on the screen. It’s because everything I know about Shannon has just collided with everything I know about Sayid and everything I know about the two of them together in the most destructive way possible, and now that she’s dead, there’s something missing from inside of him. This is an example of an event that colors all future events involving a certain character. Woerner at io9 ignores the whole concept of resonance, emotional register based on deftly-placed exposition (which is all “Lost” really is), and in turn, she ignores the complexity of these characters and groups them into cut-and-dried types that are either happy or sad, good or evil, and she ignores the gray area in between. She ignores the concept of the pattern that repeats and that also builds on itself, that, in fiction (and in reality), a situation can look almost exactly the same as the one that precedes it (ie: Sayid tortures helpless victim), but it is not the same because we have new information now or because something has happened to color these current moments differently from moments in the past.

So, when Sayid is beating Ben in that armory (One of Them 2.14), he is not just beating Ben. He is beating himself because he could not protect Shannon, he is reaching for blame because he cannot blame Ana Lucia, because he cannot find anyone to blame. Just because Sayid is a “torturer” doesn’t mean that he’s mindless or “twisted.” It doesn’t mean that he’s all good or all evil. He is many, many things, because he is a carefully constructed character. He is not a type. He is not generic, which is what this writer misunderstands. Therefore, her argument that we’re not “learning” anything from the parallel universe is, well, just so refutable, because it’s ignoring so much information. She claims: “What about Kate? Claire makes Kate a better person?” Well, no, because what kind of a person is Kate? She’s no “kind” of person, and it’s not like, one minute she’s bad and the next she’s good. She’s a lot of things, but she’s no kind. “Kate’s still a thief and messed up, but at least Claire forces Kate to think about others.” Kate’s “messed up?” Well, that’s certainly true, but what the hell does that mean in this moment in time? Kate is messed up in the beginning of season one, for example, and still at the end of season three, and she’s still messed up now. Does that mean that Kate hasn’t changed? No. It just means that her “messed up”-ness has evolved and gained complexity. Also, Claire does not “[force]” Kate to do anything. The situation with Claire in What Kate Does (brilliant title) is presented by the writers as an opportunity for Kate’s character to grow, for her to become more complex ON TOP of everything we already know, because we now know what she’s capable of, and no, it’s not “shit” we’ve seen before.

The parallel universe in “Lost” is all about fate, that these people would have met anyway under different circumstances, many of which have similar, although oblique ramifications for our Losties. For example, Jack the father is something that’s never been addressed (aside from Sarah’s negative pregnancy test in The Hunting Party 2.11), but his own daddy issues are. Lighthouse (6.5) is a fascinating inverse, not a rehashing, of familiar themes. It’s also shortsighted to describe Jack as a generic “bad dad.” Is Jack a bad dad? I don’t get that impression, although it would be an easy mistake to make if you’re not really paying attention to what’s going on. Jack is divorced, and Jack does not get a ton of time with his kid, but this only makes him a bad father if we’re imposing our personal opinions or accepted stereotypes of what it means to be a bad father (or a “torturer,” if we’re talking about Sayid) onto a nuanced character like Jack, who exists in a world that is not our own. If his son fears him, it is not for the same reasons that Jack feared his own father. Remember, Jack is a “great man.” If his father is a great man, David may fear that he, one day, will not be a great man. We can see this in that he is driven, that he is like his father (A musician and a spinal surgeon? What parallels! What complexities!) in that they both need to succeed, but that great men (and women, for that matter) cannot succeed without missing a few notes, or watching a few people die on the table in the process. This all would, of course, require one to read into character complexities that are far beyond face value, or the generic, so I can see why it’s misunderstood at io9.

So, to this: “We’ve learned nothing new or interesting about these characters we’ve known for years”—I say, “Construct an argument that takes into account all the character complexity you’ve ignored, or the existance of complexity at all, because otherwise, you’re just molding the material into a shape that fits your agenda, and so your argument is not credible.” If you’re mad at “Lost,” you’re mad at “Lost,” but if you want to make a legitimate argument, then you’ve got to consider all the information, and not just the information, or the personal inferences that you care about.

HOLY CRAP. I’ll try not to make all my responses so long. But the thing is, if you’re doing actual analysis, which I know that io9 isn’t really attempting to do on any real level and so it is not satisfying, then it takes time. Watch me go, I guess, if you’re still interested.

Part II: Woerner claims, “Who are These New People? Oh, Wait. It doesn’t Matter.” She writes, “Who are these hippie Others and why should we care? Well, we shouldn’t, because they were all killed off this week by the smoke monster.”

I claim: Well, it’s interesting to me that this writer assumes we care about these people at all, OR that we’re meant to. She asks, “[W]ere we sad when [Dogen] and his nerd sidekick were brutally cut down by Sayid?” and she doesn’t have an answer, but I do: NO. No, we don’t care. And does that then absolve these characters of their purpose on the show? Absolutely not! I want to ask this writer: “What would you rather have happen? Who would you rather our Losties interract with this late in the game?” More on that in a second, but first, a bit about what’s at stake.

Okay, while I agree with Woerner and her irritable sensibility toward these “hippie Others,” one thing that this aspect of the show has always done (introducing ancillaries who go on to die a hot minute later) is remind us of who and what is really at stake here. Woerner is right in that we care about the people we’ve just spent five seasons getting to know, but I question her invocation of the “We’re running out of time” card, because a) Stop groping for answers when you should be watching closely, and b) Whatever ending Abrams has in store for us will never be good enough if we’re so damn worried about how quickly he’s getting us there. Keep in mind that the writers aren’t fumbling here. They know the answers. We’re not going to get all of the answers because “Lost” is not a show about answers. Nor do its writers and producers care that you want answers. To watch “Lost” merely for answers is like watching “Mad Men” because you like commercials. Seriously, what’s at stake in “Lost” is not anything so simple as “What do the numbers mean?” or “What’s in that hatch?” or “Who are the Others?” et cetera, et cetera. Is it not a much more powerful moment when Sayid loses the woman he loves again than the moment when we learn that Hurley’s numbers correspond to a bunch of coordinates that point to pretty pictures in a mirror that gets smashed anyway? If you’re going to watch “Lost” just for its answers, then you’re missing the point, and you’re always disappointed, and you probably shouldn’t be writing articles about it. “Lost” sure is an entertaining show, but it’s also layered, intelligent, complex. People watch it for its unique complexity in a world of bland procedural shows and gauzy doctor operas, not for cut-and-dried answers.

But now, back to my first point: It’s important to recognize conflict. Anytime we’re dealing with fiction (or TV or whatever), it’s important to recognize conflict. We’ve watched “our guys” struggle to escape from, fight, kill, torture these Others for a long time, and it would be silly to think that this should all just…disappear in the final season. Live together, die alone, right? What’s that matter if there’s nothing to unite against? No cause to die for? Great literature, and yes, I’ll refer to “Lost” as such for the sake of this discussion, is loyal and possessive, and it gives itself entirely to one specific stock of characters; however, extras (like the Others) and villains (like Keamy) are often necessary to order a credible world, and also to further the plot, to create conflict and tension, and to give our loyal band of adventurers a reason to unite. Isn’t it powerful when, after five seasons of time/space travel and struggles of both an internal and physical nature, Jack and Sayid trust each other so fully—that Sayid will do anything that Jack says and Jack will swallow a mysterious pill to get the truth (What Kate Does 6.3)? How can we get that trust and that powerful, powerful moment if there’s nobody that they CAN’T trust and no situations in which such unequivocal trust is necessary? So, I ask: What would you rather have happen, Meredith Woerner, contributing writer at io9? I really do wonder, because there’s so much complaining in here (“Who are these hippie Others and why should we care?”) but no qualification in terms of what you’d rather see, or what would have worked better, or what you’d like to have happened in the first six episodes of “Lost”’s final season. IT MAKES SENSE that the Others are there. This is a world that exists in three (sometimes four) dimensions, and there are people living in it other than Jack, Kate, Sayid, et al. The Others are a credible force to unite against, and when many of them are killed by the Smoke Monster, it’s not because they served no purpose, or because the writers just got sick of them or whatever, it’s because they’re purpose has come, presented itself, and now it’s gone. They’ve put the plot where it needs to be (and yes, the “magical dagger” was an important part of that) and now, we can all move forward into the evening because they’re out of the way. Sometimes, writing is about problem-solving. That’s what I teach my students here at UCI, and if all of this shit with the Others and Dogen and the dagger is necessary to up the ante on Sayid one notch, then I’ll take it. Because again, “Lost” serves its characters. It doesn’t serve you or me or the answers we sometimes desire.

Part III: Woerner claims, “The Shock and Awe of Parallel Whaaaaat??? Moments Have Lost Their Luster.” I claim, “You’re missing the point.”

I guess, first, in terms of her claim that the continual reappearances of Losties and Lostie-Extras in the parallel universe “[cheapens] some of the past awesomeness these characters went through,” I have to say this: Your tenses are screwed up. None of that happened in this world. It’s not in the past. YES, it is in the past for us, and so we can suffuse these new encounters (with Rose, Keamy, Jin, etc.) with characterizing factors that we’ve learned from the universe in which the Island still exists, the universe we’ve been living in for the past five seasons. But again, I make the argument that the parallel universe, which assumes that everything we’ve seen so far has not actually happened, is not recycling old themes or, as Woerner puts it, merely “pandering to fans”—it is putting our characters into situations that seem familiar (like Jack and fatherhood), but that are, in fact, an inverse on the familiar (Jack is now the father, not the son), and/or they’re approached obliquely so as to enlighten us with a new perspective on, not only who these characters are (Jack and his daddy issues), but also, how fate works in the world of “Lost” (Jack has a kid in this universe, and so he is forced to work the same things out differently than he does in the universe where he doesn’t have a kid, and this new approach gives us new insight on Jack and Jack’s potential.). All of this is important. We’re learning as much about these characters as we can. We’re even getting hypothetical information, and we’re getting all this in lieu of a universe that Woerner would prefer to be something so simple and boring as “a question-answering aid.” My response to that is this: If you prefer a show that gives straight answers to straight questions, you may want to try “Fringe” or “Bones” or or any one of the thousands of police procedurals on TV. Clearly, and I’ve got lots and lots more proof if you want it, “Lost” is a character-driven show, and sometimes, in character-driven shows (like “Mad Men” or “Friday Night Lights”), the real question is not, “Will Don Draper continue to cheat?” It’s “Why does Don Draper continue to cheat?” In “Lost,” the real question is not, “What does it all mean?” It’s, “How does it all mean?” How does the fact that the smoke monster is John Locke (simple reveal) affect Sawyer, who is grieving and vulnerable (complicated unfurling)? Do you see what I mean? Stop demanding the what and start reveling in the how, because it’s much more beautiful, and it’s much more satisfying that way, I assure you.

Part IV: Woerner claims, “It’s Undoing All the Hard Work From Previous Seasons.”

Well, now, there are moments in here where I agree (like, I do agree that Sun has been “reduced to standing around uselessly for too long now,” and I’d like to see her taking a bit more agency and getting a bit angrier) but I also think that this, right here, is a gross exagerration propelled, yet again, by this writer’s shortsighted anger at the current lack of answers. Answers Answers Answers! Wow, the constant disappointment that the answers-only-oriented viewer must endure. Now, the only example we get here of this incredible “undoing” is of the Sun and Jin plot, the star-crossed lovers who haven’t seen each other in three years, and I guess…I’m just willing to wait. I’m not going to get all crabby and excited about Jin in the freezer, because I don’t have all the information yet. Their episode is coming up on March 30^th, and since “Lost” has never failed to deliver a helluva reunion, I’m trusting that it’ll play out, and that it will be impactful and beautiful. Or, perhaps it will be gravely sad. I don’t know. Because like I said, we don’t have all the information. We don’t know what’s going to continue to happen to keep them apart, and while I do agree that these two characters have fallen a bit by the wayside, I think that this relationship is so dynamic that it’s earned a little bit of time on the backburner.

I also do not believe that Woerner has “forgotten about all the hard work the writers did building up the tension between these two wonderful characters.” First of all, this writing again confuses complication (Sun and Jin have been apart for a while, separated not only by space and time, but by the anomolous factor space/time jumping) for a cut-and-dried lack of answers. Second of all, I simply do not understand this argument at all. This season is undoing “hard work from previous seasons” because…Sun and Jin have not reunited yet? Woerner claims, “in reality all we want is to watch these two strive to be together again.” Um, are they not striving? Every damn day? And is this really “all we really want?” Perhaps we could get a little more face time with each of them, but isn’t this just one writer’s opinion attempting to stand in for a multitude of other’s, angry that Sun and Jin have not yet been reunited, and somehow, inexplicably blaming this anger on the parallel universe device? I guess the idea of this argument is fine and intelligent, but it’s not executed very well. Meaning: There are no real examples here, no real analysis to prove this point. And also, I think that part of the purpose of the parallel universe is to, yes, undo some of what’s been done in order to prove a point that, yes, remains to be seen. And it remains to be seen because…we don’t have all the information yet! And so we cannot apply it to the characterization of Sun and Jin.

Part V: And this is my favorite, because I’ve already done all the backlashing I can do on the matter. Woerner claims, “Where are My Answers, Lost?”, effectively inserting herself into the equation, as if the quest for answers were the only thing this show has to offer, and that it is a failure if it does not make good on every damn mystery that’s been introduced, and that it is a failure because, well, some angry fan said so. Oh, that’s just so boring. It’s missing the point. Who cares? Who cares what questions were answered in Sundown? I’ve seen a whole new facet of Sayid and now Shannon’s back on the table and…I’m willing to wait for all the information. This desperate fear that “we’re running out of time” is tired and painfully premature. Patience, and allow the information to present itself. Then, when it does, although not to your liking and surely not fast enough (which is the outcome any such viewer should expect), you can complain or do whatever you want, but that’s only because you’re missing the point.

Again, I ask, is it more powerful to learn that John Locke is the smoke monster or to watch how this information affects our players and the strange, sometimes terrifying things it might cause them to do? Perhaps watch the entire series again and ask yourself, “Why am I really enjoying this? Is it because of all this new information I have now? Or is it because of the painstaking development of these vast and intricate characters, and that it is how they’re affected by that information, or by (gasp!) less stimulating information, that truly makes this great?”

WORKS CITED:

Woerner, Meredith. "5 Reasons Lost's Parallel Universe is a Waste of Time." io9. 4 Mar 2010.
(http://io9.com/5485987/5-reasons-losts-parallel-universe-is-a-waste-of-time?skyline=true&s=i).
5 Mar 2010.

Lost. ABC: Television. (2004-2010)

Favorite Shows: Part II

2010-02-15T22:21:00.000-08:00

"Lost" (2004-2010)

"Lost" is a terribly good show. It's addictive and well-rendered, character-focused, patient, beautiful. I will be so sad to see it go, but I am near death in my excitement for the conclusion of this incredibly rich, momentous and bold sequence of events.

Top Season(s): 1 -- Right now, I'm just finishing up season one for the second time (not in a row, just ever), and I'm just...it's a thing of beauty. I think the reason "Lost" is so successful is the reason so many other shows are not successful. It takes its time, takes its time, allowing us to truly know and understand these people and their lives before plunging us head first into plot. This is where "Fringe" fails, and where that knock-off garbage "Flash Forward" falls flat on its face. In those early episodes of "Lost," there is a painstaking quality, an incredible patience, an unfolding into this gorgeous mess of symbolic gold--It is a story that could not possibly be told any better, because it takes its time. "Lost" is best watched in the form of the binge. Six, seven episodes at a time is really the best way...I think there are a lot of people that will back me up on that. It's like reading a book, a book written by an author who understands exposition and placement of exposition and the precise calculation of which information is best revealed when. The greatest thing about "Lost" is that it makes us wait, and it doesn't only make us wait for answers to questions like, What's the deal with that hatch? Who are the Others? What happens to the pregnant women? In fact, I think it's almost more excruciating to wait for the answers to much more interesting, character-driven questions: How does Locke end up in the chair? Why does Jack's marriage end? What did Kate do? It's the emotional undercurrent that carries "Lost," not the plot, I think, which is interesting and ever-evolving, but it's the raw human stories, I think, that really make it so special and that really set it so far apart from (and above) the rest.

Top Episodes: Pilot Pt. I (1.1), All the Best Cowboys have Daddy Issues (1.11), Deus Ex Machina (1.19), Abandoned (2.6), The Long Con (2.13), Man of Science, Man of Faith (2.1), What Kate Did (2.9), The Glass Ballerina (3.2), I Do (3.6), The Man from Tallahassee (3.13), The Constant (4.5), Something Nice Back Home (4.10), There's No Place Like Home Pt. II (4.14), What Kate Does (6.2)

Favorite Character(s):

Character Death that Hurts the Most:

Boone

Favorite Story/Character Arc: Sawyer (James Ford) -- Sawyer's evolution really reminds me of Spike's (from "Buffy") in such that they both begin as minor villains who find themselves consistently rendered obsolete or 'harmless,' who then change deeply, usually due to the influence of women, women who are both like them and who are attracted to them (against their better judgment), and yet who ask something of them that, at first, they cannot give. Usually, it's decency, emotional availability. These are the things that they learn to understand. While Sawyer is a new man (with a brand new name) once he shacks up with Juliet in the season five, it was Kate, way back in the beginning, who, I think, sort of singled him out as, not an outsider, but a man of worth, a man who could do something good, and this is what changed him. Sawyer is dynamic, and he is consistently one of the most interesting characters to watch. He's written with quite a bit of nuance, the way he'll sort of push a certain character away for a moment before caving or giving in--He's incredibly vulnerable, and that is so very unlike Jack, who is vulnerable, sure, but he's got a very hard shell, and he's got his head on straight, and he comes from money and class and all that. Sawyer is like the same sad song sung over and over again, only toward the end, maybe there's a major chord in there somewhere that you didn't notice before, and it's all, I think, because of Kate.

Favorite Moment in the Writing: Kate professes her love for Sawyer in 3.4 Every Man for Himself (Back when James was Sawyer, and Kate was Freckles) OR the entire Pilot, both parts. That first scene when Jack comes onto the beach is both perfectly set up with scenery, proper tone and hell fire ambience, as well as filtered directly through Jack's point of view, effectively placing him into the hero slot and letting us know that, hey, this is the guy we're going to follow for six years, and isn't he cute and oh, he's a doctor, and he's our guy. "He's a good man, maybe a great one," Christian says in 1.16 Outlaws. I think those opening scenes in "Lost" are a direct and fabulous testament to that.

Review: "Supernatural" 5.14 My Bloody Valentine

2010-02-12T13:38:00.000-08:00

Well, it's another hiatus for our boys. I always hate TV in the spring, especially with our underdogs like "Supernatural," which is painfully underrated, which competes with "Fringe," is a helluva lot better than "Fringe," and just keeps getting better and better every episode, every moment, and I speak specifically of this week's episode, My Bloody Valentine, which was blessed and cruel and entirely amazing. Last night's was the best ep of "Supernatural" yet. From its very first scene, which shocks and disgusts, I think, in a league beyond any we've ever seen the show approach, to Dean's long-time-comin' prayer in that final moment, My Bloody Valentine contains a certain irreverence, a maturity that truly frightens...in a very, very good way.

"Supernatural" has never been a show that hands anything to its protagonists, the Winchester boys (which is why I got so mad earlier this season). The writing frequently afflicts them beyond their means to get better, and it forces them to ride out long, complicated roads of maybes and if-only scenarios, before finally yanking the rug out from under them and saying, "Nice try. You're going to doom mankind after all." And in this episode, there is also a sense of degeneration. We're backsliding. Not the show itself, but the characters, who find themselves stewing in the tragic soup of their respective (and joint) emotional baggage--Sam is back on demon blood; Dean has no hunger; Even Castiel has backslid, fallen prey to the hunger of his vessel, Jimmy, who has been gone for a long time now. This sense of degeneration ads yet another layer to the hopelessness that exists at the core of "Supernatural."

Hopelessness, like a nail, has been driven in deeper and deeper up to this point, and we know that it's there and it's going to stay. Unlike in recent episodes (ie: Changing Channels or The Song Remains the Same), the hopelessness in My Bloody Valentine is not directly related to the boys' presumed inability to avoid their destinies as Michael and Lucifer. Instead, it is a hopelessness that has burrowed finally into the human underbelly of "Supernatural"--my favorite part--in which we not only get to see what terrifying, unstoppable monsters lurk in the shadows of the physical world, but also in the fraying psyches of our main characters. Dean and Sam are at the end of their rope. The hopelessness is real now, not just something out there in the world to be stricken down with the Colt or Angel allies or anything like that. It's in the bodies and the minds and the souls of our Winchesters--It's hunger, Famine, which is bodily if anything. Perfect timing for Famine! I think we see this in that last scene. Dean prays, and it's like--Oh my god, it's come to this.

The violent nature of the deaths in this episode alone, I think, is indicative of some deeper interior struggle going on with the boys, especially with Dean. Lovers eating themselves to death? R&J type suicide pacts? I see Jo all over this episode--Dean's loss of appetite rather than increase--for food, for sex. The Black Rider informs us that this is because Dean is already so empty, there's nothing to fill the void, but I'd argue that it's something much more specific than that. Had I written the episode, I would have invoked the Jo card swiftly and incurably. We know how much her death hurt Dean, and how, before that, he was already damaged beyond repair. My only criticism of My Bloody Valentine is this deliberate non-meniton of Jo. Instead, Dean's emptiness is pushed onto platitudes about his shitty, shitty existence, but as I try to teach my beginning fiction writing students: The specific is always much more powerful than the general. Any reference to Jo would have, I think, pushed this episode past the precipice of great and into utterly affecting territory.

Other great things here: We've got Cupid, who is sort of like the Trickster in terms of comic scapegoating, and a lesser moment in "Supernatural" history would have dwelled on him for too long. But here, in this mature and fabulous My Bloody Valentine, it's just enough to break up the terror, and to give Dean an opportunity to say something like, "I punched a dick." This is one of the scarier episodes we've seen from the show. Even some of the images in here, while they might feel familiar, are singularly violent: Sam with a face full of demon blood, Castiel stuffing himself with ground beef, that crumbling old man in the wheel chair, Famine. The way that he reveres Sam Winchester toward the end is horrifying, because we've seen Sam revered before, by demons, by Lucifer. Again and a again, we're reminded of the darkness that lurks within the Sam character, and we wonder, we wonder again and again whether and how he'll say yes to the Devil, and some part of all of us, I think, will not be surprised if (when) he does.

Season five has been so good, I think, because its proverbial demons are bigger and badder than ever--in both the world and the psychology of the show. With My Bloody Valentine, "Supernatural" just got a little bit older, wiser, a little harder than its ever been. Its performances, too, felt mature to me. That bit with Sam assaulting that demon on the street was quick and impacting. Nice chops, Padalecki. Also, I don't want to approach Dean's prayer in the end here, only because I think it's a moment so earned, so expertly achieved that it may need its own post entirely. Have we forgotten about Castiel's quest for God? Or the half-demon child? I don't know. I thought maybe we had, but this last moment has absorbed all of that. Who is Dean talking to here? He asks for help. If this were season three, surely, he'd be talking to his dad. But the boys--they're past that now. He's praying, and to who? God is dead, or so we're told. But I think that God is the literal Deus Ex Machina that this season is sort of waiting for, and I think that, if that's what it comes to, somehow, it will be very, very earned.

Favorite Shows: Part I

2010-02-09T23:56:00.000-08:00

I'm not as well-read as I'd like to be, in terms of television. I mean, I've seen a lot of TV, sure, but I've only been alive for twenty-four (almost twenty-five) years, and, well, there's just not enough time for me to have seen it all. But I try. I try, and because of it, I've come up with a few favorites over the years. So, I'm going to take my time on this blog and try to come up with ten of these favorites over the next week or so, and I'm going to write about them a little bit here. This is basically me purging myself of the shows that have affected, impressed me, and broken my heart over. It's also a bit of analysis on why I think they're so great, and why everybody else should think so, too.

I've written about two favorites in this first post. These shows are, I suppose, stereotypically female-centric, but if you want to go ahead and debate, I'll debate. I think both men and women have been able to enjoy both over the years. Especially the first.

"Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (1997-2003)

"Buffy" appeals to me because it's Joss Whedon writing strong televised fiction about a woman who has been chosen to do a job, a job that only a woman can be chosen to do, and she does it...well. "Buffy" is a kind of show that doesn't exist anymore, and it's sort of like the fundamental antithesis of "Dollhouse," because it gives its characters that one thing that "Dollhouse" simply cannot: agency. While so much of it, especially those earlier episodes, may be steeped in the villain-of-the-week formula, "Buffy" is still a show whose characters act clearly and consistently on their agendas. Even when the characters change in the most drastic, unexpected ways, it's never truly unexpected, because they never change merely to convenience the plot; They only change because, well, there just never was any other way--Willow was always going to become an ambitious, uber-witch, and Riley was always going to leave, and Faith was always going to get pushed off that rooftop. Buffy was always going to sleep with Spike. You can look back, you can find those roots. That first time Spike puts his hand on Buffy's back in Fool for Love, how they fought before that--there's even that line that's echoed again much later--You're beneath me. From beneath you, it devours, we remember the First. Well, this is kind of how Buffy works. Its characters mature and become jaded and hard, sad creatures, but none of it is ever sudden. It's always been there, lurking in its many forms, cold beneath the surface, waiting to come up and to hurt and feed and kill again like it was always meant to do.

Top Season(s): 2, 5 -- Season two is my truest love, mainly because of the way that it handles the crisis of the teenage girl--sex, boys, first love, passion and limits and bodily disorientation. Season five, I think, has a vast and well-developed arc. It is the tightest of all the seasons, in terms of vision, and Glory is, perhaps, my favorite of all the Big Bads.

Top Episodes: Surprise/Innocence (2.13/2.14), The Body (5.16), Passion (2.17), Conversations with Dead People (7.7), End of Days (7.21), Restless (4.22), The Zeppo (4.13), I Only Have Eyes for You (2.19), Graduation Day Pt. 2 (3.22), Becoming Pt. 1 & 2 (2.21/2.22), Amends (3.10), Hush (4.10), Once More, With Feeling (6.7)

Favorite Character:

Spike

Favorite Story Arc: The Buffy/Spike relationship--I have always maintained that Spike is one of the most dynamic characters ever written for TV. His relationship with Buffy, as well as his ascension from monster to man, is long, filled with tragedy, violence, and small, perfect moments, moments like that last scene in 5.7 Fool for Love, or much much later in 7.20 Touched. There is a crossroads when Spike returns in season seven with a soul, and he's weak and possibly killing again, skulking mad in the basement of Sunnydale High School. I write specifically of episode 7.2 Beneath You, those final moments when Spike reveals himself to Buffy as a man, and he folds himself over the cross, and things are never so easy as folding yourself over the cross...but in time, I think, Buffy accepts him as this, as a man. Does she ever learn to love him? I'm not really sure. By the end of season seven, I'm not sure that Buffy is capable of truly loving anyone. She's hard-worn and broken, and the days have been long, and the apocalypse...it's been aplenty.

Favorite Moment in the Writing: Anya in 5.16 The Body, struggling with the concept of mortality in her recently human state - "But I don't understand! I don't understand how all this happens. How we go through this. I mean, I knew her, and then she's--there's just a body, and I don't understand why she just can't get back in it and not be dead anymore. It's stupid! It's mortal and stupid! And, and Xander's crying and not talking, and, I was having fruit punch, and I though, well, Joyce will never have any more fruit punch, ever, and she'll never have eggs, or yawn or brush her hair, not ever, and no one will explain to me why."

"Gilmore Girls" (2000-2007)

I think that, after having watched the entire series between two and seventeen times, I have begun to understand "Gilmore Girls" as one of the most consistently well-written, well-directed, well-acted shows ever on television. Each episode is its own little gem, building, not a thousand little story arcs in the way that "Buffy" builds story arcs, but instead, an incredibly gracious, vast world of individual characters, their growth, their relationships, and such a marvelous setting for them to walk around in--Stars Hollow. "Gilmore Girls" is a show that appreciates its characters more than anything else, that relies solely on its characters as credible, flawed individuals. It exercises restraint and agenda to push itself forward, where lesser shows will exercise plot. The tension in "Gilmore Girls" is rarely plot-driven, and even when it is, our real concerns always lie with Rory and Lorelai, the women at the heart of this massive, magnificent universe, and their experiences and plights and stumbles and falls are the things that make this show so special, so charming, so terribly missed.

Top Season(s): 6, 7 -- This show is so very consistent in its brilliance, but there is a certain maturity in the later seasons that I love, perhaps because we're centered more on Lorelai, and as Rory gets older and her life gets its own pieces and moving parts, they become separate, autonomous women, and each of their experiences are no longer hopelessly linked, but individually textured. I also love the utilization of Emily in these later seasons, who has learned quite a bit about herself and about her daughter over the past several years. Her relationship with Lorelai evolves, and there are moments toward the end there, especially in episode 6.21 Driving Miss Gilmore that are so deftly achieved it breaks my heart to acknowledge the series' demise.

Top Episodes: Driving Miss Gilmore (6.21), Partings (6.22), Raincoats and Recipes (4.22), Friday Night's Alright for Fighting (6.13), You Jump, I Jump, Jack (5.7), Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy-Days (3.1), They Shoot Gilmores, Don't They? (3.7), I'd Rather be in Philadelphia (7.13), Hay Bale Maze (7.18)

Favorite Character:

Lorelai Gilmore

Favorite Story Arc: While this show does not have clear-cut arcs, as previously mentioned, my favorite thing that's closest to an arc is the relationship between Luke and Lorelai. It takes forever to get there, but when we finally do at the end of Raincoats and Recipes, and we watch it rise and stagnate, fall and flounder, then, perhaps, rise again, it's just so credible and so well-developed. There never was more restraint exercised in a TV romance, or more practicality.

Favorite Moment in the Writing: Friday Night Dinner in 6.13 Friday Night's Alright for Fighting -- scroll to the bottom of the page to watch the clip. It's incredibly hilarious, comic timing genius, a moment of pure catharsis powered by six seasons of painstaking characterization and the continuous escalation of familial tension after familial tension. I could never transcribe it correctly here. The funny stuff starts at about 5:20 on the clip.

(Next, I'm going to take a minute to talk about "The West Wing" and possibly "Lost.")

LOST: Season 6 Premiere Review

2010-02-02T22:15:00.000-08:00

10:13 - The season six opener has, so far, impressed, beckoned, and broken my heart. For the first three seasons, we had flash-backs, for the fourth, we had flash-forwards, the fifth just had flashes, and in the sixth...well...we're flashing sideways. We've got an alternate reality now. TWO alternate realities. Those who were once dead may no longer be...or they're not dead yet, or they're dead somewhere else, but just not here. I think the first hour of the "Lost" season six premier bodes well for our ending as a whole--There's authority, sincerity, that devotion to character and agenda that season one did so well, and still that love for genre experimentation, for hard scifi mixed with the sociological that was initiated (flawlessly) back in season four.

Also...BOONE.

10:19 - Josh Holloway has become a real actor. He's channeling something here, something completely new. He's no longer Sawyer. And he's no longer James. Who is he?

10:22 - Ankh?

10: 23 - Waiting for Dean and Sammy Winchester to swoop in and save the day. (RE: Lucifer needs a new meat suit)

10:24 - Who's hotter? Jack, Sawyer, Jin, Sayid?

(ANSWER: Kate)

10:27 - My questions about this season lie primarily with the development of our characters: Will Jack finally win Kate? Who will Sawyer become? What's become of Desmond Hume? Will Sayid find happiness? Where is John Locke? Will Jin and Sun find each other?

10:31 - Sawyer has always reminded me of Spike from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"--our most dynamic character, our anti-hero, love's bitch, a man who undergoes constant transformation.

10:34 - Sayid = Jesus much?

10:36 - Sayid's "death" (death?) resonates--it is a moment of resonance, a moment in which all of the characterization sketched out through the first five seasons really sails--who has Jack become? Not only a doctor, but a friend, a partner, a comrade, a soldier. This is a fabulous moment, pending Sayid's death, of course, in which a character hurts. Jack, why can't you save him? This is a question that will go on and on.

10:40 - It's weird. At first I was irritated by the alternate reality at LAX, but it's fantastic. So many new tensions! We know these characters. That's why it works.

10:43 - Claire! (Reunions)

10:45 - The smoke monster reveals himself...as Locke? Only it isn't Locke. Of course. The plot is moving along fabulously--characters intact, enough questions are answered, new questions presented--I think this is a success!

10:48 - "What do you want?" "...The one thing that John Locke didn't. I want to go home."

10:52 - "Lost" deaths no longer mean what they once meant. It all makes sense now, the novelty of a "Lost" death--because nobody is actually dead. ...Or whatever. Whatever "death" really means at this point.

10:55 - Oh, Locke. The joy that you are when you truly are. Does that make sense?

10:56 - Building new bridges--there's nothing I love more than watching these characters meet again...for the first time.

10:58 - This episode is bizarre but oddly coherent.

10:59 - Sayid!

What happened?

That's right.

Jealous Fights, Basket-swiping, Hypermasculinity: An Analysis of the Men in the Gilmore World

2010-01-21T15:41:00.000-08:00

Everybody loves the Gilmores. They love them so much, in fact, that they're willing to get into fist fights over them, abrasive verbal spats, bid obscene amounts of money for lunch baskets, fake-fight in the middle of a college lecture, COMMIT already (against all odds), claim them (like a dog would a fire hydrant) at a Tarantino-themed college party, cheat on their spouses with them, humiliate them in the middle of a dance marathon, humiliate their friends at the coffee cart, stalk them after a break-up, bleed petulance over a friendly game of Bop-it, cause this, and a number of other...things. The men of the Gilmore world are almost always characterized as jealous, hyper-masculine types who, if they don't spend all of their time raging against the machine, lifting heavy objects, working with their hands, changing lightbulbs, cleaning gutters, camping, fishing, neglecting to seek higher education, or spitting into a spitoon, instead spend their time getting kicked out of prep schools, riding around in limousines, sleeping with blonde socialites, battling severe daddy issues, raging against the expectations of their rich, waspy ancestors, wearing turtlenecks, berating the help, begrudging their privilege, drinking to excess, and spoiling the social event of the season.

The men of the Gilmore world are brooding, overly sensitive, WACK jealous, helpless to their more primitive impulses (the hunter, the protector, the aggressor), and these "impulses" are, for whatever reason, heightened at the mere divine scent of any moving Gilmore within a three block radius. Their sheer petulance should be rendered insufferable, and I wouldn't think twice about it--if it weren't for the fact that this repeat characterization of the Gilmore world's weaker sex weren't, well I think, at its core, a subtle (or not-so-subtle) commentary on the objectification of women, male assertion over women and over the female body as territory. I mean, okay. Jess literally swipes Rory's lunch basket right out from under Dean's nose at Star's Hollow's annual Bid-a-Basket festival (2.13 A-Tisket, A-Tasket). Together, they engage in a bidding war until--alas--Rory's "basket" has been won by the man willing to pay the best price. Do you understand what I'm getting at here?

A Gilmore is a specific type of woman--a nuanced turn on"the girl next door" archetype--the sensational, intelligent, capable, self-sufficient, naturally pretty brunette with minimal issues of self-worth, self-esteem, minimal serious pitfalls other than the obvious "eats too many pop-tarts" and "drinks too much coffee." The Gilmore women (Rory and Lorelai--this article will not attempt Emily) are the evolutionary foil to the vintage "girl friday," because the Gilmores do not exist in any way to serve, assist, or better their male counterparts. They do not serve anyone but themselves. They rely on themselves for sustenance, for comfort and reassurance, and they rely on each other. They never rely on a man (for anything other than his handiwork, of course--both around the house and in the bedroom), and it is not that the men of their world can't handle this (the Lorelai-Rory relationship and their respective independence are typically and universally accepted as things of untouchable, impenetrable quirk-dom)--to the contrary--they recognize these women as one of a kind, as defying expectations, as rare and remarkable. Like an urn. Everybody loves a Gilmore, and when you have one, you become a mindless fiend, a slave to her beauty and her beckoning, and you'll fight anyone that comes sniffing around, because this one's taken. If you don't have one, you want one, desperately, and you'll do anything to get that thing of perfection on your arm.

Okay, that's a bit harsh. The men of the Gilmore world are not all bad. They're not all drooling, jealous cavemen. They're nuanced, of course, because the writing is good, and they have histories and emotional baggage and can often be quite sweet. But WITHOUT FAIL, these men are jealous. They're jealous and obsessive, or their jealous and evasive, and so it's always an issue when my friends and I sit down and try to talk about which of Rory's boyfriends is our favorite (yes, we do this), or whether we truly prefer Luke to Chris for Lorelai, because none of the men that consort with the Gilmores are, in fact, good enough for the Gilmores. They're sulky and fractious, grumpy and stubborn. They don't play well with others, and I would chalk it up to a one-dimensional writer's tick if it weren't for the unfailing nature, the consistency in characterization of each and every single boyfriend in the Gilmore world, in conjunction with the distinctive, very specific differences maintained between each one. The Gilmore boyfriends are: Dean, Jess, and Logan for Rory, Christopher and Luke for Lorelai. No, I have not forgotten Max Medina. My first impulse with Max is to call him an exception, because I don't really count him among the "principles." But then I think back to the impulse marriage proposal--they're about to break up, Lorelai is fed up, and so he must stake the defining claim, and when she turns him down, he attempts to woo her with the romantic presentation of 1,000 yellow daisies, and while it works for a moment, Lorelai is, ultimately, unconvinced. She calls off the wedding. She blames herself for being irrational and irresponsible, but we know, and the complications of her character tell us: Max wasn't good enough for Lorelai, and that's why she couldn't bring herself to marry him. (I also don't count Jason Stiles, although, if I did, we might file him under the "rich boys" element below.)

The concept of these men not being "good enough" is heightened by the fact that the Gilmores are, well, a very well-to-do, well-respected family in Connecticut, and that Emily and Richard Gilmore, Lorelai's meddling, yuppy parents, are constantly making the personal lives of their daughter and granddaughter their business du jour. Emily and Richard frequently burden themselves with the task of finding a man that is good enough for Lorelai, or pairing Rory with a suitor that is good enough. "Luke is not good enough for Lorelai," Emily literally says in 5.7 You Jump, I Jump, Jack, and while the intended meaning of "not good enough" is the more obvious issue of class, there is a definite initiation at this moment of the many other ways in which it turns out that Luke is not, in fact, good enough for Lorelai. He really is a bigger mess than we understand at first--the secret daughter, the daddy issues, the pathological introversion. Jess and Dean are boyfriends of Rory's who are continuously deemed as "not good enough." The reason, outright, is still an issue of class. Dean, however, turns out to be the most despicable of all Rory's boyfriends (Cheating on Lindsay? Sulking on a daily basis? Breaking up with her twice in front of a whole group of people?) and Jess (while, arguably, and surprisingly, the least despicable of them all) turns out to be traumatized (due to issues of abandonment) in such a way that he cannot make himself emotionally available to Rory--until it's too late of course.

Then, we've got our rich boys: Logan and Christopher. Christopher Hayden is Rory's father. He's from a respectable, rich family who've known the Gilmores for many years, and he ran out on Lorelai after Rory was born. Logan Huntzberger is...a Huntzberger, the equivalent of a Vanderbilt or a Rockerfeller, a galavanting playboy of infinite wealth and wise-ass snark. These boys are, according to Emily's standards of class and money, "good enough" for the Gilmore girls, despite their many personal and social inadequacies. These boys are not, however, truly good enough, because of these personal and social inadequacies--which are often exaggerated and, by way, insufferable. They're possessive, clingy, adulterous, and imbued with this mocking, sad sense of entitlement that imbues all the yuppy douche bags of the Gilmore world. They do a nice job of furnishing gifts: Burkin bags, diamond necklaces, college tuition, Oxford English Dictionaries, but they do a terrible job of furnishing any type of emotional stability or ability to function in a give-and-receive type relationship. They run away from their problems, and they run hard. They're total wrecks, is what I'm saying. They represent the misguided values that Lorelai and Rory have avoided, because Lorelai and Rory do not live their lives the Gilmore way. Sure, Rory has been known to humor her grandma in terms of having a Cotillion and, later, becoming a member of the D.A.R.. She also attended Yale (more a product of her intelligence than her social standing). She was, however, raised a normal girl under normal financial and social means. She cannot tolerate rich, whiny men who cannot get their acts together. This we learn. Her mother, who rebels against the monied lifestyle has raised her to be level-headed, a hard worker, and self-supporting. Like herself. Rory is a positive role model for young women, the type of fictional role model that I do not see anywhere today.

At the end of season seven, neither Rory nor Lorelai are in a committed relationship with any of the men we've watched them fumble around with time and time again over the course of the series. Rory rebuffs Logan's marriage proposal, and Lorelai rebuffs Luke, who, it turns out, is not as sweet and gracious as we all thought he was in the beginning. If you ask me, when both of these break-ups officially happen, I am ecstatic, because they're long overdue. By the end, Luke and Logan are men kept around because they're whiny and broken, men that need to be taken care of and humored and patted on the head for issues that, frankly, can bite me when compared to the issue of Lorelai at sixteen raising a child on her own, or Rory being abandoned by her father before she was old enough to sit up by herself.

The fact of the matter is, the jealous boyfriend is a staple in the Gilmore world, but it is not a mere matter of inventing drama. It is a much more complex evaluation of extreme, almost cartoonized jealousy and sensitivity as a salient aspect of male behavior. This physical and passive aggression is merely the attempt of these men to dominate over each other, to stake claim over the Gilmore women and, in turn, dominate them, too, and "Gilmore Girls" does a number on pointing these things out. Now, the jealous boyfriend is often used as an added tension in teen and women-oriented dramatic programming (RE: "Dawson's Creek," "Desperate Housewives," "Gossip Girl"). In these cases, with male jealousy made into a central arc (rather than a running factor of characterization) and a mere catalyst for dramatic teasers and suspense (rather than for, as far as I can tell, any real intellectual purpose), the portrayal of men as jealous, primitive, head-bashing animals has, I think, caused a misconception in the "real world" that this is the way that most men act, or the way that men are supposed to act, or that masculinity is, in some way, directly reliant upon aggression. Because, yeah, drama is attractive. What a tragic piece of misinformation. The story of two brothers fighting for the same woman's affection is an age-old tale, and yeah, maybe it happened...once...but this is not the way that "real" men act, at least not in my experience, and this portrayal of men as sulking and aggressive is, not only harmful to women, who, while playing along, become accessory to their own objectification, but to men as well, men who trust, men who are not jealous, good men. Normal men. Normal men are not jealous fiends. In fact, I don't know one.

Side Note: Jealous men are rare on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," as well as most other works of the Whedonverse. Xander, Oz, Angel, Riley--these men are sensitive creatures, self-sufficient and forgiving. Men who do experience jealousy, like Captain Mal Reynolds on "Firefly" or Spike on "Buffy" are characterized as either flawed, anti-heroic men of duty or love-sick puppies who like to indulge in their own misery--and both readily acknowledge their insufficiencies as problematic. They are not oblivious to these moments of uber-masculine display.

Now, my conclusion: I'm not claiming that the men of the Gilmore world are harming viewers with their constant presentations of male aggression. To the contrary, the consistency with which creator, writer, producer Amy Sherman-Palladino (who's previous work includes stints with "Roseanne" and "Veronica's Closet") has characterized her male characters to such extremes of jealousy and over-sensitivity, creates, instead, a well-informed meditation on the objectification and sensationalizing of women, certain types of "idealized" women especially, but really--all women. Furthermore, "Gilmore Girls" truly is a show that's made by, for, and about women, and so certain commentaries, like the one I just rambled on and on about for far too long are better understood. They have real relevance, because "Gilmore Girls" was never a show that relied on cheap suspense, adultery plots, threesomes, volatile love triangles, high drama, etc. It is actually a humble show, a small show that relies on its characters, which are written credibly and thoroughly, its humor, which is rooted deeply in the show's love of pop culture, its youthful exuberance. It is a show that values women. It values intelligence. It values intelligent women. Its jealous men cause drama, sure, but that drama is usually just a passing tension, a transition between charming, hilarious, many times poignant exchanges between Lorelai and Rory. Because this is not a show about "boy drama" as much as it is about the relationships between many mothers and many daughters--namely, Lorelai and Rory Gilmore.

"Gilmore Girls" is a show for women to watch together, alone, in four-hour shifts or one at a time, to vent their frustrations on, to love, to quote, to admire, to enjoy. I'm not saying that men can't enjoy it, too, but really, this is a show for women. It's also a show that is unrelenting in its appeal to women--real women--not the weird idea of "women" that MTV tries to recruit--due to the strength and good nature of its protagonists and their realistic reactions and ways of coping with change and rejection, fear and loss. It is a show that is unapologetic to the men who discredit it. Not in any way that is aggressive or spiteful, but in the way that it really loves to treat issues that are sort of singular to women and to the understandings that women have about themselves, their bodies, their daughters, and the way they're perceived by both each other and men alike. I find that most men retaliate against "Gilmore Girls," call it annoying and cloying and a total chick show. Well, these things are meant to spite, but the truth is: Boys, there are some of you that just aren't in on the joke. And that doesn't mean that the joke sucks or that the joke is not worth telling. It just means, take a deep breath, you're not invited...to be in on the joke. Wah.

Chuck Premiere 1/10/10: Live Blog

2010-01-10T21:13:00.000-08:00

So, this is something I plan to also do for the return of "Supernatural" on the 21st, and hopefully the "Lost" premiere on February 2nd. I would just tweet, but I may need more than 140 characters, and this way, anybody who wants to read this, can just read it without having to fish through their Tweet Deck or whatever. Twitter is a fun reactionist tool, but it's not great for continuity of thought or analysis.

Anyway, (very) quick preface: I only just discovered "Chuck" maybe a month or so ago. In that time, I've fallen in love with each and every aspect of the show, from its unabashed desire to both please and challenge us to its willingness to reinvent both the spy genre and the forty-five minute broadcast TV time slot.

Okay, here goes!

9:00: "Guys, I know Kung fu." (Oh, Charles. It's so good to see you.)

9:01: Not entirely convinced by Chuck's mean face...but I think that's part of the irony, why this show is so different from anything else out there. I also really appreciate that Levi is...well...lanky and awkward.

9:04: Chuck boxers!

9:06: Agent Sarah Walker is, I think, the greatest female character on TV right now. She's young, beautiful, but she's a real woman, who's tall and strong, who has a job that's typically attributed as "male," and Strahovski is, yes, impressive. And only this show can get away with a scene in which its leading lady exits a swimming pool in a white bikini, soaking wet, swinging her blonde hair around. This show gets away with so much because of how strong Sarah Walker is.

9:09: Okay, thank god that was a car commercial, because I was going to say..."This feels like a car commercial."

9:13: I don't really like grungy, hairy chuck with the cheese puffs...But I always enjoy any physical manifestation of a character's inner state of mind. Related: Morgan looks great!

9:18: Back to the Buy More? I do hope so. The Buy More is always such a fantastic sounding board for most plot-related issues in the show, even some issues of interiority with Chuck and the gang. "Chuck" is at its best when it really works that tendency toward parallel narratives, because this creates a singular kind of resonance that is either hysterically funny or surprisingly poignant.

9:22: Oh yeah. "Heroes." THAT show deserves cancellation.

9:27: So there's a new goal, now, for "Chuck," which is balance. How can we achieve that balance between Chuck Bartowski's natural propensity for the awkward, and his new-found Spy skills. I think, so far, things are doing alright. Although I'm still not convinced. I still wish he was a normal goof. Still, I understand this as part of the progression of the show, and I'm willing to see it through.

9:32: James Franco on "30 Rock" = HELLZ YES. (I love him. He's so savvy.)

9:36: I like it when they let Casey have a feeling. Or an opinion. Because he's complex, and I really do look forward to learning more about him.

9:37: HOLY WTF MOMENT. That was weird a little. Emmett dies...I wonder at the purpose. I'm shocked, but perhaps this is the writers' way of asking us to watch the show differently now. To accept its maturation as, not just a comedy, but a drama as well.

9:44: There's budget going on here. Bigger budget. Look at the colors even, just in the frame. The show feels a little like a fairy tale. Note to self: work that out for future post.

9:48: "Chuck, what happened?" "Something...awesome."

9:55: Buy More! And look! It's not a total reboot this season. We're back at the Buy More. Morgan, Casey, and all. Oh, the good times that shall ensue.

9:58: Eye of the Tiger! Tear. Sniffle. Man, I miss my Winchester boys.

Phew! I am fatigued. Only made it through half of tonight, but I can't wait to write about "Chuck" again.

What's Real and the Old Elevator Trick: A (Very) Current Analysis of "Dollhouse"

2010-01-09T17:28:00.000-08:00

(This article is SPOILER HEAVY. Stay away unless you're up to date.)

"Angel" had an elevator, too. Remember that? More and more with every recent episode of "Dollhouse,"I am reminded of Whedon's obsession with the corporate conspiracy, namely how much Rossum has begun to resemble super firm Wolfram and Hart, with its elusive 'partners' and 'company heads,' people or supernatural beings that we don't know, apparently don't trust (or trusted to easily), the people we 'least' expect who dwell on the top floors of very tall and shiny buildings, doing whatever it is they do up there, folding their hands together on top of their clandestine desks, thinking up schemes and drinking expensive caffeinated drinks, or existing purely as the essence of evil, hanging out in a bare white room in the shape of a panther or a little girl with a bow in her hair or something creepy like that. I cannot help but think: What's more mysterious than taking an elevator ride to a floor in a building you've never been to? Especially when the person sending you on your elevator ride says something like, "Someone upstairs wants to meet you," and then they don't come with, because they're not invited. Unlike you, because there's something about you that's special, only you're not quite sure what it is yet.

Anyway, the elevator trick is just like that trick in which a character walks into an office (probably on the top floor of a very tall, shiny building), and there's somebody in there talking to that character, but their chair is turned around, and so the character (and we) can't see who it is. We can only hear their voice, which is maybe vaguely familiar, but not enough to raise any flags yet. Then, the mysterious chair-person turn around, and the character (and YOU) are like, "Whoa! It's Jonathan! That geek who tried to kill himself with a sniper rifle in the bell tower at UC-Sunnydale! Wait, what's he doing in that chair?" Yes, what is he doing in that chair? And was he the person you least expected? Probably, but you didn't know till you saw him. And didn't you sort of trust him? Yeah, well, because he's harmless or one of the good guys or whatever. This is an example I took from "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," episode 3.17 Superstar, you know, "Buffy," Joss's baby and claim to fame.

Joss does this a lot, and so do tons of writers and directors out there. Think "Fringe," season one finale: Olivia is sent on a strange elevator ride up a tall and shiny building. When she gets to the top, and she meets William Bell, it's not like we've seen this man before and are having one of those smash identity switch brain implosions (like what "Dollhouse" just pulled on us in 2.11 Getting Closer), but the man in question, William Bell, has been the man in question for quite a while, (Who is William Bell? Where is he? That was the foundation of "Fringe" Season one.) and so, naturally, we're expecting to be shocked a little bit upon our discovery of who and where William Bell is. It would not be half as impactful (or surprising) had William Bell just been some random no-name old guy. Or even a robot. No. Abrams does the "pluck and surprise" (a shitty term I just coined, just now), in which he plucks an actor from a current or previous work (ie: Abrams was working on Star Trek at the time), one that fans know, who they'll easily attribute to this current or previous work, and then relies on, not so much surprise (a little surprise), but excitement. Look! It's Nimoy! It's Spock! And didn't Abrams just do a Star Trek revamp? That old dog!

Okay, fine. But "Fringe" is a lesser show than "Dollhouse." "Fringe" is a crowd pleaser, in that it sort of tip-toes "X-Files" territory without taking too many risks, without breaching formula or updating the genre, and also without delving too deeply into its characters or in politics or major issues of today. "Fringe" is like "Lost," only lame and sort of unoriginal, but it satisfies our (my?) weekly craving for procedural brain candy without having to succumb to the bygone charms of "Bones," or the directional failures of "House." Similarly, "Angel" is also a lesser show than "Dollhouse." "Angel" does some neat stuff with redemption and sex and tragic heroes and all that, but once vampire lovechild Connor enters via hell portal, the wheels come off, and I have trouble looking at the screen for too long without finally having the urge to look away in shame. The last season is fine, one-note, but fine, and it has some great moments (a la, Fred's soul is incinerated, enter Ilyria, exit Wesley's will to live), but it's no "Dollhouse."

"Dollhouse" is creepy, and it's better, because it's politically relevant. It examines the backfiring of certain technological advancements, things like human trafficking, slavery, violence against women, pure neuro-claustrophobia (ie: I'm trapped in my own brain), rape culture, our social construction of rape, and a million subtler, less expected manifestations of rape (that's a whole other Media Studies dissertation). These things are reasons "Dollhouse" is being cancelled, because we here in America can't handle our TV getting all mixed up with our politics, and so these types of shows typically only do well on pay cable options like HBO and Showtime. Again, beside the point--"Dollhouse" is better than the elevator trick, or the smash identity switch, or the "pluck and surprise," all of which it has recently or not so recently employed. Now, I completely approve of Joss's choice last season to surprise us with Alan Tudyk as the elusive Alpha. This was exciting. We were all sort of waiting to see who it would be, and I think Tudyk was an unexpected choice (because, I mean, Wash is so sweet and so dead), but a perfect choice (because Tudyk's range is off the heezy), and who doesn't love Alan Tudyk? And it's one of the many throw-backs a disgruntled Mutant Enemy writing staff has given to the failed masterpiece "Firefly." I even bought Summer Glau as Bennett Halverson. I mean, we knew she was going to be on the show, because we read the spoilery news on Whedonesque, and then she was, and she wasn't a doll (even though she would have made a great doll), but something better--a foil for Topher. FINALLY, a way to excavate Topher, because Fran Kranz can actually handle his shit, and also because whenever "Dollhouse" does major character excavation it's always a treat, and it's always well-done, and I'm always ALWAYS impressed.

So the only reason I'm a little bit pissed about the old elevator trick in Getting Closer, and about the major revelation that, SHOCK, it's been Boyd Langton all along, is because we're just being yanked again, back and forth, back and forth, and it is, I'm sorry, at the expense of what "Dollhouse" does when it's at its best: excavate its characters, excavate its politics, excavate the reason it's so good so often. I still hold that the best episode of "Dollhouse" is 1.9 Spy in the House of Love, and not because of any plot twists, or the revelation that Dominic is the infiltrator, leaking info to the NSA, or because of any super-cerebral bullshit concerning the existential nature of the soul, but because of its delicate examination of Adele, our commander, our matriarch, and the smaller, less exciting revelation that she is, in fact, the client Ms. Lonely Hearts, who employs Victor as a companion, not only for sex, but for genuine human connection. Loneliness, the desire for true human connection, true identity among a baffled crowd of masked nobodies--that's what "Dollhouse" is about. It's why Echo is becoming self-aware in these episodes, because she's searching for that connection, that thing that makes us all 'real' and not 'dolls.' It's the reason Ballard struggles now, because he is still 'himself,' but he's not. He's not 'real.'

What is it to be 'real?' Is it the architecture in our brains that makes us real? Well, maybe, on a technical level that only Topher Brink can decipher, but is it not, to the rest of us, the understanding that we created ourselves, that we put ourselves together as a sum of our experiences, our memories, the convictions instilled in us, if not by genetics, then by our own choices, the losses that are particular to us, the gains, the sacrifice, the things that, even in a sea full of people, allow us to be different, to be our own? What makes us 'real' cannot be defined by the plot conventions of the science fiction genre. It cannot be defined at all in fiction, but for individual examinations of characters that are, in fact, real (Adele, Topher), as opposed to examinations of characters that are not (Echo, Dr. Saunders).

With this, we come to understand the foundation of the show, and the science fiction plottery becomes ancillary, as it should, because Whedon's shows are never about their outer story (Vampire Slayer fights vampire, related big bads; Thieves ride in Space Ship, thieve; Vampire with soul masquerades as Private Investigator, fights evil; Morally ambiguous corporation builds super computer comprised of human brains to take over world). They're about the arcs of basic human connection and what happens when we can't get it, how desperate we become without it. Buffy sleeps with Spike, alienates her friends. Angel isolates himself for fear he'll, again, lose his soul. Captain Reynolds tries not to be in love, because there's baggage, acts all macho instead. Adele sleeps with an active. These are all people (or vampires) attempting to connect with one another and failing and the desperation that ensues. This is what hurts so bad about Joss Whedon's work. Nobody's ever really happy, but isn't that, like, the way it is anyway? Even without Mutant Enemy manifesting it for us on the screen?

It's just, okay--"Dollhouse" is cancelled. Everybody knows. So what gives with the tendency toward all-out closure, driven by plot? The show is good enough, JOSS is good enough, so why not just character sketch for six episodes? Allow for an open ending? Why not just show us the terrifying truth about the Dollhouse and Rossum, give us some exposition on, you know, Anthony and Priya and Caroline and Madeline, and leave Epitaph One as nothing but resonance? Leave it a quiet, sad truth, not a "shape of things to come," a shape that, as now-dead Clyde reassures us in the Attic, can be prevented if only Echo can get out and stop things with her fancy new personality, if we just tack on a ticking clock for some instant, watered down tension in an already doomed situation, if the show becomes a slave to plot progression and, as a consequence, watches its character integrity perish by the wayside.

Because we're doomed. It's certain. Echo can save us, maybe, but even with Epitaph One as a fabulously rendered reference, we still don't know. That episode is so good precisely BECAUSE we don't know. We don't know what Safe Haven is, or if it exists at all. If the contents of the episode are any indication of the future for our wayfarers, then everybody is probably going to die anyway. All we have is this broken building, this beautiful shot of dilapidation and desuetude. I like it. Leave it like that. Let it rest already. "Dollhouse" is a sad, dark show. That's why it's dead now. So show us what will be lost, not the plot points we must follow if we wish to prevent that loss, because what's lost is always much more resonant and interesting when we know what it is, not simply that it's lost. And what I mean by what's lost is, again, what's 'real.'

The show is ending. I don't know why we need a wild goose chase, complete with elevator rides and identity twists to get there. I'm thirsty for character. I want to know more who. I've had it with the what. "Dollhouse" is going down, and so there's no need to wrangle more viewers or to satisfy our desire for closure on Rossum. There is, however, a need for complete vision, something "Firefly" never got, because it was decapitated with zero notice. And complete vision can't be reached through plot alone. So maybe Rossum comes down, or maybe it doesn't. Does it matter if we don't know who we're losing? Or, for that matter, what is gained? So this is why I wish season one would have just been it. Let it rest. If I'm left with nothing but Epitaph One and then all that wonderful characterization of Adele and Topher and resonance of tomorrow--then that's all I really want anyway. I'm okay with sad endings. I'm okay with the apocalypse, as long as it's done well.

What I'm saying is this: Joss, you don't need to distract us anymore. There's no need for sleight of hand, for trickery. No need for fireworks or a big bang in the end. If anything, you've earned a little stagnation. "Dollhouse" is more effective when it ends sad and quiet, just unplug the ventilator. There's enough built, enough exposed already. The surface is raw. Anything is going to hurt now. So let resonance and residual vibrations take it from here. And again, that's just me. I'm a masochist with story endings. I like my characters to hurt, and I don't like plot-driven anything (which is part of why I'm boycotting Avatar), because I don't think that it's what happens that stays with us in the end. It's the impact. It's the who. Who is being impacted, and how have their lives (or un-lives) been changed forever?

I'm working on it!

2009-12-29T00:32:00.000-08:00

Sorry I've been MIA. (Holidays. You know.) I'll be back soon, however, with some SERIOUS writing on...

Chuck.

Stay tuned.

-T

RIP: Brittany Murphy

2009-12-20T20:45:00.000-08:00

My thoughts and prayers are with Brittany's family and friends. Especially now that it's Christmas. What a terrible thing--I am sad, because she was so very young, and the movies that she made--they brought me tons of joy over the years. I won't forget you, Brittany. I know you're somewhere glimmering, now, ghetto fabulous sweet, rollin with the homies in that place where starlets go when they die too young.

Farewell, pretty lady.

Memory, Perception, and Point of View: The Merit of "How I Met Your Mother," Pt. 2 of 2

2009-12-18T11:27:00.000-08:00

"How I met Your Mother" loves to play with time and temporal markers, meditating on how memory works, and how sometimes, memories can bleed into one another or get mixed up. For example, in episode 3.17 The Goat, we’re introduced, for the first time, to Missy. Missy is a goat brought into Lily’s kindergarten class as a visitor with Farmer Frank, who drunkenly explains to Lily’s students that right after this Missy is going to be slaughtered. Lily, “in a fit of mercy,” purchases Missy and brings her over to Ted’s apartment where she hopes to stash the goat until Monday when animal rescue will come to pick her up. That’s when we get our first shot of Missy the Goat in the bathroom. Future Ted tells us, “…What Missy the Goat would go on to do in that bathroom was so—” and then he stops himself and qualifies, “No, you know what? I’m getting ahead of myself. We’ll get there.” Future Ted is the one telling the story. This is first person POV, and so this kind of thing is okay. It’s credible, and we believe it. We’ll also keep watching to find out what the deal is with the goat in the bathroom.

Anyway, all of this, future Ted tells us, takes place the week of his thirtieth birthday, the week of his surprise thirtieth birthday party, the week Barney slept with Robin and then hires Marshall to find a loophole in the Bro Code (Another integral part of the “HIMYM” world) so that he can stop feeling so bad about it. All of this, future Ted’s voiceover says, “brings us to April 25, 2008, my thirtieth birthday, or as it would come to be referred to in later years, the Day of the Goat.” After a quick phone exchange between Lily and Barney, at which time Lily says, “You gotta see it! It’s so much fun having a goat at a party!” the voiceover continues, “In a few short hours, Lily would come to regret those words.” There is suspenseful music, and then we get a repeat shot of the goat in the bathroom, but we aren’t going to learn about the goat right now, and future Ted assures us, once again, that “we’ll get there.”

“The Goat” is a turning point episode, in that Ted experiences some serious emotional trauma after learning that Barney slept with Robin and, in turn, telling Barney that he doesn’t want to be friends anymore. At the end of the episode, Ted arrives at his surprise birthday party by himself, and then the episode does that thing that “HIMYM” does when it’s at its best: it reveals itself to be a narrative that is not only about how Ted Mosby meets the woman of his dreams, but about friendship, love, and loss during those strange transitional years that exist between college and adulthood. After Ted arrives at his party, there’s a shot of Barney, torn, sitting alone in a limousine, empty glass in his hand after having just been dumped by the person who, as we understand it, he values most in this world. We are distracted, because it is sad. We’ve forgotten about the goat.

Break. When we return, we get one last shot of the goat in the bathroom. It’s got a pink towel in its mouth, and future Ted is back with this closing bit of voiceover: “Oh, right, the goat! So funny. You’re gonna love this! So later that night, the goat locked herself in the bathroom and was eating one of Robin’s washcloths and—Wait, hold on. Robin wasn’t living here on my thirtieth birthday. When did this happen? Oh, wait. The goat was there on my thirty-first birthday. Sorry I totally got that wrong.” Cue credits. We’re left sort of speechless. Why?

Because future Ted has just redacted what we thought was going to be an integral part of the episode. Yes, it seemed integral at first, partly because, well, the episode is called “The Goat,” and also because that shot of the goat in the bathroom kept showing up, and future Ted kept assuring us that, eventually, we’d get there. We’d get to what happened with the goat. We never got there. This feels like a trick, like a gimmick only there for a laugh, but it is, in fact, an earned ending. While we’re waiting for the goat story, what we don’t necessarily realize right away, but what we begin to realize over time, is that this episode is not about the goat at all. This episode is about the the consequences Barney must face after having slept with Robin, and it’s about Ted’s friendship with Barney. Remember how Ted talks early on about his box of stuff that he doesn’t need anymore? Well, that turned out to be foreshadowing, as he later groups Barney in with the stuff in that box, and now, instead of thinking about the goat, we’re thinking about Barney and Ted, and their friendship, and what this means for next week’s episode. So we may be surprised in the end, but we’re not too disappointed, because the narrative has successfully distracted us from the goat. Future Ted has forgotten, too, about the goat, as he’s telling the story. We know this, because in the end we get an “Oh, right. The goat!” and that’s when we learn that it’s all been a big mistake, the goat is next year, and now we have to wait a long time to get the exciting conclusion. That’s alright, though, we’re not concerned with the goat. We’re concerned with Barney and Ted.

Here’s an instance of two memories that bleed together in future Ted’s retelling, but it’s not enough that they just bleed together. Again, this is is not a gimmick, and I think it might be safe to argue that the reason these memories bleed together is thematic in nature, and that they have much more in common than the simple fact that they both take place around Ted’s birthday. Both The Goat and the episode in which the goat narrative wraps up, season four’s finale The Leap, deal with Barney and Robin’s relationship—The Goat being the catalyst, and The Leap being, well, the leap, and the fruition. They get together. Sort of. That’s not the point. These two episodes deal with Ted at great milestones in his young adult life. Ted is our guy, but he’s obsessed with compartmentalizing, and he wants to plan everything, and he wants everything to go to plan. In fact, it makes total sense that, twenty years from now, Ted Mosby sits down with his two kids and proceeds to tell them the ENTIRE story of how he met their mother, because that’s how Ted works. He obsesses, and he is meticulous. He’s an architect. He plans things, and, well, he’s kind of a romantic, but he’s also naïve. Both The Goat and The Leap meditate on Ted’s inability to control the world around him.

In The Goat, he decides not to be friends with Barney anymore after Barney sleeps with his ex-girlfriend, breaking the bro code, and defying Ted’s expectations—all of this, regardless of the fact that he’s moved on from Robin, and that Barney actually has feelings for Robin. She was not just a one night stand to him. In fact, Barney’s feelings for Robin are what complicate and pressurize much of season four. Of course, we know that Ted’s decision to dump Barney in The Goat will not be easy, but he makes the decision, like that, and it’s not until later, when Ted gets into a car accident, and Barney is injured trying to get to him, that Ted realizes Barney’s importance as a friend, and that, sometimes, actually being a friend is a little bit more complicated than the list one might make on a piece of paper of the things friends should and should not do.

In The Leap, Ted, unemployed and looking for work, is asked by a couple of potential clients to design for them a tourist restaurant in the shape of a cowboy hat. He designs the building after three very hard days, and they reject him. Then, after Ted’s party (which he didn’t attend), his rejection, and the run-in with Missy the goat (goat pay-off…finally!), the group sits down with Ted to console him, and Lily begins to talk about how things change, and how nobody’s life turns out the way they’d always imagined when they were younger. “I have to be an architect,” Ted says. “That’s the plan.” “Screw the plan,” says Lily. “You can’t design your life like a building. It doesn’t work that way...Listen to what the world is telling you to do and take the leap.” Then, there is the actual, proverbial leap, when everybody literally jumps from Ted’s roof over to the better-furnished roof nextdoor. Hey, this is a great show!

Essentially, these memories bleed together in the retelling, because they both deal with similar plot and thematic milestones for Ted, and since this is future Ted’s story, we’re sort of at his mercy. Also, this type of overlapping of memories and events (which actually happens a lot in “HIMYM”) simply goes on to create an ever larger, more credible, three-dimensional world for these characters to run around in. What’s so great about all of this, is that Ted Mosby, our protagonist, is an architect who, at every pass, attempts to design his own life (like Lily said), but the structure of the show "How I Met Your Mother" is entirely based on memory, and it is often told in a way that is, in fact, non-linear. Future Ted is always sort of getting lost, mixing things up, exagerrating, and outright changing things. It’s like the structure of “HIMYM,” or the outcome in the retelling, is a a manifestation of its character’s goals, and of the show’s central theme, which I think Lily lays out rather plainly for us in The Leap: “You can’t design your life like a building. It doesn’t work that way. You just have to live it and let it design itself.” And that’s what memory is. Memory is not what really happened. It is, in fact, quite different than reality. It’s a perception of what happened, dependent on us and how observant we are, what we do and don’t remember, how we remember, why we remember certain details over others, and memory sort of redesigns and reimagines itself as we get older and farther away from the thing we’re trying to recall. “HIMYM” is doing the same thing: constantly reinventing itself, changing its story, creating elaborate schemes in which memories are intertwined and updated in new and challenging ways. It’s why we keep watching. It’s why we love it so damn much.

Memory, Perception, and Point of View: The Merit of "How I Met Your Mother," Pt. 1 of 2

2009-12-17T14:09:00.000-08:00

I've written a somewhat longish essay about the use of POV and memory in CBS's "How I Met Your Mother," a show that, I think, is television's greatest sitcom since (and in the vein of) "Arrested Development." By longish, I mean that this essay is too long to be published entirely in one post. Therefore, I've decided to split it up into two posts, one to be published today and one tomorrow. Alas, Part 1 shall commence...NOW. Enjoy!

“How I Met Your Mother” is all about memory. The point of telling is twenty years in the future, and it’s the only real instance of voiceover that I love on television, because “HIMYM” is not just using voiceover as a trick or as a way for the audience to cheat themselves into the mind of the protagonist. That’s lazy writing (like in "Dexter," which I love, but that voiceover is SO unnecessary). Instead, Bob Saget’s perfectly pitched dad-tone voiceover does a lot of work, and it’s a serious part of the show’s infrastructure as a thematic building block and an experiment with memory. In fiction, first person point of view is based on perception, what the narrator remembers, how he or she remembers it, and what he or she forgets or skips over. In television (and in film), this type of POV is difficult to pull off. Most of the time, the POV in film and TV is third person omniscient, moving in and out of certain situations, and it may follow one person more closely than others, or, more often, two people, sometimes (like in "Friday Night Lights" or "Mad Men") many more. For example, in Sleepless in Seattle, we get two very solid third limited POVs, one with Annie and one with Sam, and it’s when they collide that the tension really sizzles. There’s one or two moments of limited third on Jonah, too, like when he and Jessica are purchasing the airplane ticket, or when he’s on the plane, or when he’s waiting on the top of the Empire State Building by himself. That third person, then, really zooms out and becomes totally omniscient when we see the map of the United States and the dotted lines that represent Annie’s plane rides across the country. This is a sort of basic example of what I’m talking about, how POV works in film and TV.

The first person POV is usually attempted via voiceover, like in American Beauty, or in "Dexter," but usually, this fails, because even with the suspense of disbelief created right away in American Beauty when Lester tells us that he’s narrating from beyond the grave, are we supposed to believe that this is still Lester’s POV when we’re in Ricky’s house and Ricky’s father comes in and asks for a urine sample? Or that it’s still Lester’s POV when Ricky and Jane are making that video in Jane’s bedroom? Are we supposed to believe that, just because Lester is dead, he knows all this now? Doesn’t that then cause all sorts of problems for the physics of the world in American Beauty? There are serious issues here, but these issues don’t seem to matter as much in film and on television as they do in, say, a novel or a short story, because film and television have the luxury of visual distraction. American Beauty is a fantastic narrative, and without the voiceover, a perfect narrative. So why the voiceover? Because it’s a sort of trick, and it lets the audience feel like they’ve been let in on a secret that the rest of the characters don’t have access to. That’s how "Dexter" operates. We know what Rita doesn’t know, and so we will usually sympathize with Dexter over Rita, even after he’s just finished lying to her and she’s angry. In "Dexter," the voiceover gets us to sympathize with a character who might otherwise seem unsympathetic. "House, M.D." on the other hand, gets along fine without a voiceover, even though its main character is a douche bag, because unlike Dexter Morgan, who is a serial killer (and a blood spatter analyst), Gregory House is a doctor, and we want to trust doctors. We don’t need that extra boost. So in “Dexter,” maybe the voiceover helps, but it’s certainly not necessary. In fact, it might be much more interesting if we weren’t always in Dexter’s head.

Back to "How I Met Your Mother." Future Ted’s voiceover in “HIMYM” is not a trick or a ploy to illicit sympathy when there are moral or other ambiguities going on the narrative. “HIMYM” is the only show on television (that I can think of, at least) that has an unreliable narrator, and it’s the best show to really mess with memory and to meditate on how we remember things. "Scrubs" is the next best thing, I think, but "Scrubs" isn’t what it used to be, and J.D.’s voiceover is in the present tense, and so it is more about interiority, fantasy, and self-reflection. J.D. is not really telling the story. He’s thinking about the story, and we’re let in on his thoughts. For example, the opening of the "Scrubs" pilot: J.D. sits up in his bed. His voiceover says, “Since I was a kid I’ve been able to sleep through anything. Storms, sirens, you name it. Last night I didn’t sleep.” J.D. goes to the bathroom, sprays a dollop of shaving cream into his hand. “I guess I get a little goofy when I’m nervous,” says the voiceover. Then, we get a couple shots of J.D. with a shaving cream bra and shaving cream muscle lines. Funny. J.D.’s voiceover says, “See, today isn’t just any other day. It’s the first day.” Then, J.D. says to the mirror (outer story J.D., this is a line of dialogue, the first real line of dialogue), “I’m the man.”

Okay, so we’re given J.D.’s actions. He gets up, goes to the bathroom, plays with some shaving cream. These things are funny because of J.D.’s voiceover, his interiority (or interior monologue) in the moment. There’s a small tension when J.D. tells us in voiceover that it’s his first day and that he’s nervous, and then he says outloud to the mirror, “I’m the man.” We’ve already got a little inner turmoil here. There’s already some conflict, because WE know that J.D.’s nervous, because of his interior voiceover, but his actions reflect confidence, and we’ll keep watching, because we want to see how things play out. The voiceover in "Scrubs" creates a different kind of tension than it does in “HIMYM”, but it’s still doing a lot of work and is, in its own way, necessary. It’s a self-reflective voiceover, and it allows for quite a bit of silly stuff to happen (because this is J.D.’s head, right?) without us wondering what is and isn’t real. The exagerration is in the moment. "Scrubs" is about perception and escape, whereas “HIMYM” is about memory, and what it means to have a memory, and how memory works.

Memories change. There’s tension when, in “HIMYM,” memory is altered, like when the terms “bagpipes” or “eating a sandwich” are used instead of the actual terms for what future Ted’s talking about: loud sex and smoking pot. This type of tension is what creates much of the humor in the show. At first, future Ted is using these phrases supposedly to save himself from having to divulge sordid details to his children, to whom he’s telling this very long story (in the outer story of the show—realize that almost all of “HIMYM” is exposition), but in the meantime, a running joke has just been created, and then when it’s repeated, builds itself into the structure of the world. This is sort of a basic tactic in writing. Writer and fabulous teacher Ron Carlson always says, “If you want to make something real, tap it twice.” Once we hear two references to “eating a sandwich,” the joke becomes not just a joke, but a credible part of the world, and we believe it without even flinching, so that in a later episode, when we hear a reference to Marshall and Lily “eating a sandwich,” we know exactly what that means, and there’s comedic pay-off. It’s funny, because it’s an inside joke between future Ted and the audience. Marshall and Lily aren’t actually in on the joke. In fact, the characters in “HIMYM” aren’t actually in on a lot of the things we, the audience, find funny in the show, because the humor exists not so much in what they’re doing, but in how Ted remembers, and how Ted relays the story to his children and, by extension, us. (...)

Check in tomorrow for Part II: Temporal markers and The Goat; Memory and The Leap

Authority Rules: The Merit of "Glee"

2009-12-10T23:24:00.000-08:00

"Glee" brings to television something that I thought we'd lost a long time ago--something seemingly gone with the days of "Freaks and Geeks" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Dawson's Creek" and "Gilmore Girls." "Glee" is about a merry band of misfits, teenagers who don't rule the school or ride around in limousines or subscribe to the pitiful, contemporary stereotypes engrained in our psyches by blond (wealthy) idiots like Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie. "Glee"is a show about acceptance, about friendship and leadership and staying true to oneself. It's about having conviction. That said, "Glee" might seem to embrace cultural stereotypes of teenagers (ie: pregnant cheerleader, Tracy Flick type, dumb jock, fashion-conscious gay kid), but it, in fact, does not. It does the opposite.

I've learned a lot here at UCI, and one of the things I've learned is that everything's been done. Everything in the whole wide world has been written already--every kind of teenager and every kind of person in the whole entire world. That said, stereotypes are not real. They do not exist in the real world. They exist only as a way for us to mentally categorize information. For example: Even the most stereotypical Orange County housewife (in the real world) will wear a funny hat every once in a while, read Charlotte Bronte, and smoke cigarettes on the porch while humming old Sex Pistols tracks. These things go against stereotype. She's still considered a stereotype, however, because she's tan with expensive highlights and breast implants, and she drives a Range Rover and wears a big, diamond watch and neglects her poor, stereotypical Orange County children who do stereotypical drugs like cocaine while she flirts shamelessly with the stereotypical pool boy. You see, stereotypes don't exist in the real world, and they only really exist in fiction, movies, or television when a writer (or writers) choose to write idea at the expense of characterization. This is usually a consequence of laziness, inexperience, or a simple lack of talent. We see this on a lot of shows, namely (and since we're talking teenagers), "Gossip Girl."

See, I stopped watching "Gossip Girl," because every time its writers come close to true characterization, like with Chuck Bass, they slack off and rely on our generic understandings of youth and money, sex and revenge, rather than excavate an understanding of these things that is unique to Chuck. Of course Chuck Bass acts out the way he does. He's a rich heir from the Upper Eastside of Manhattan, and he's got daddy issues. We can understand that, because we've read Fitzgerald's "This Side of Paradise" and because we've seen "Dead Poets Society." That's not characterization. That's laziness. It's not intelligent TV, so I don't waste my time with it anymore. "Glee," on the other hand, makes quite a bit of commentary on stereotypes, because it reinvents its stereotypes and develops its characters by giving each of them a unique perception of the world. Quinn is a pregnant cheerleader...whose parents kick her out of the house, who lies about the identity of the father of her child, who allows herself to be manipulated by a desperate woman, who, despite her sweet looks and social status, still feels like a misfit every single day. Puck is a big, dumb jock (AND a pool boy)...who eats dinner at home in front of the television with his mother, who is Jewish, who plays the guitar, who must struggle with the fact that the girl carrying his child doesn't want him around, who steals money from the bake sale to pay for sonograms, who quits football to join, well, Glee.

Anybody who watches "Glee" knows that it is not simply some throw-off teen romp full of bubble gum and stereotypes (as it may seem, I think, to some people). Quite to the contrary--"Glee" is, at times, deeply serious, deeply heartbreaking in its examination of teenage life. In this way, it is like "Freaks and Geeks," but it is better than "Freaks and Geeks." I think of that scene in Wheels, that gloriously orchestrated scene that juxtaposes Kurt practicing scales on the piano and his father receiving a hateful phone call pertaining to his son's sexuality. This scene sort of chewed me up, spit me out weak. It is almost unreal. It's a product of perfect editing, perfect pacing, writers with knowledge of not only juxtaposition of visual and aural queues, but also of cultural tensions, familial tensions, and tension in general. This scene is pretty much a how-to on writing suspense, and it's an example of suspense that works and feels very real while existing outside the moronic realm of an action flick. It's scenes like this one that, the moment "Glee" gets too silly or goes to town with our suspense of disbelief, pretty much throw our heads through a window, place our feet firmly on the ground and remind us that silly and music are not all this show has to offer. It becomes a very adult show in these moments, a show that discusses homosexuality, teen pregnancy, people with disabilities, financial stress, marital tension, issues of self-worth, and more. Wheels, I think, is this season's best episode, with Mattress at a close second for its emotional excavation of Will in moments of unspeakable revelation. I have to say that I didn't know Matt Morrison could act like that. He had me at hello with those curls and that voice, but that's not all. Dude's got chops, and I'm looking forward to much more of Will Schuester.

One last thing on "Glee"--I'm really digging the new Naturalistic camera work. By that, I mean, the shaky cam, that sort of documentary-style camera work that "Friday Night Lights" has been working for four years. I think some critics get on "Glee"'s case for its supposed inconsistent tone, but I think they're missing the greater significance here. The story is this: "Glee" can get away with pretty much anything it wants. It can use Naturalistic camera work in one shot, and take a more traditional approach in the next, and it can use Surrealism in its musical numbers, and it can use voiceover whenever it damn well pleases. "Glee" is so well-paced, and it has such fabulous authority that it can get away with anything. Seriously, when have you ever watched "Glee" and thought, Wow, these writers really don't know what they're doing, do they? No! They always know exactly what's going on. It's not "Lost." We're never caught wondering, watching as the writers so obviously try to shake loose from their own shit-tastic, labyrinthine handy work (note: I love "Lost"). It's not "Mad Men." It never feels sort of slow or cyclical. It never makes me want to gouge my eyes out with frustration (note: I love "Mad Men.") It's "Glee." This is the merit of "Glee." The Magical Realism and all that suspense of disbelief that we feel: It's all earned. The writers, the performers, the directors, the producers--they own each and every episode they put out. They make it their own, and it's this authority, this commitment to pacing, to plot, and to character that allows them to get away with pretty much anything they want. Like I said, "Glee" is about conviction, and this show's got plenty of it. Plus, and I don't think anyone can disagree with me here, it's entertaining as hell. So where's the love? I love "Glee." It's quickly becoming one of my favorite shows and, I think, one of the best shows on television.

(Watch "Glee" at hulu.com.)

Christmas TV Episode #1: "Smallville"

2009-12-05T22:11:00.000-08:00

1.) "Smallville" 5.9 Lexmas (Watch it now here, or for more choices, try here.)

This list has has been dedicated to counting down what I believe to be ten of the most unexpected and fantastic Christmas Episodes on semi-contemporary television. There are a lot of great shows on this list, a lot of shows ten thousand times better than "Smallville," (I mean, "Six Feet Under" is ten thousand times better than most shows) but Lexmas is a rare and singular example of a true Christmas episode, an episode of television that uses Christmas as, not only an active setting for its characters to run around in, but also as a catalyst for specific events, themes, and tensions that end up playing a large role in the continuity of the series.

Lexmas is easily the best episode of "Smallville," and uncontested as the greatest Christmas episode I have ever scene. It's affecting and incredibly sad, the story of a Lex Luthor that could have been, a story of difficult decisions, love and loss, and heartbreak. Lex Luthor's life has been an accumulation of broken promises and myriad casualties, and he's frail because of it, broken down and shredded, with pieces missing, and he is haunted by the cold, immovable fear that he will always be alone, and that this, in the end, is what will drive him to destruction, to evil, to the Lex Luthor we have come to know as, not morally ambivalent or vulnerable or young, but Superman's arch nemesis, the man who cannot control his own fate and so seeks to control the world's.

"Smallville" might, to the casual observer, seem to be all about Clark Kent, the mere identity crises, confusions, and tribulations of a strapping, young Superman. It is, in fact, much more complicated than that, or, much simpler, depending on your perception, as "Smallville" is really about choices. It's about the choices we make every day, to leave someone behind, to reveal a secret, to betray a friend, to get married, to have children, to leave home, to come home, to kill, to forsake our families, to trust, to run away, to love with our whole hearts, to give up, to keep going, to disobey, to do the right thing--It's about all these choices and more, and the people that we become because of them. In Lexmas, which is a sort of modern-day adaptation of It's a Wonderful Life, only in reverse, Lex is faced with a choice. The choice he makes in this episode decides much of the man he is to become.

Up until now, we've seen Lex do terrible things, seen him make terrible choices, but there's always been hope for him. He and Clark have tried to be friends, and sometimes it seems they really are. We know he values Clark's friendship, but he's also insatiable and suspicious, and he cannot trust. We know he's terrified of becoming his father, of becoming the very embodiment of the greed and the bitterness that he's been surrounded with his entire life, and we know he's afraid, or unable to love. In episode 4.10 Scare, a deadly neurotoxin is leaked from a lab in LuthorCorp, a toxin which causes its victims to enter a perpetual state of their worst nightmare. When Lex is infected, his nightmare, we learn, is particularly terrifying: We see him standing in the middle of a stark, post-apocalyptic world, surrounded by death, and smiling. Lex's worst nightmare is to find joy in the act of causing pain to others. Of causing death. Scare, I think, imbues Lexmas with a very interesting and complicated resonance. We know Lex's worst nightmare, and now, we must sit and watch as he allows it to become him.

Lex stands so close to the darkness, to real evil, and yet he's always staring back through some window into the life he's always wished he could have, at the seemingly lost possibility of righteousness, wondering what happened and how he can scratch his way back in. Lexmas allows for a real manifestation of that window, and now, the window is open. After getting shot by a couple of bad characters in an alley in Granville, Lex nearly dies, and in his state of near-death, he is ushered into an alternate reality by an apparition of Lily, his dead mother. This reality, she promises, can be his should he make the right choice in the end. We then navigate this reality with Lex, who's baffled but quickly adapts to its inherent happiness. This is a reality wherein Lex has forsaken the Luthor family and fortune, seven years in the future. He is married to Lana, and they have one son and a baby on the way. They're living the middle-class American Dream in a country home in Smallville, and it's Christmas Eve. He is good friends with Clark (which, we're reminded, is very important to him), and Clark's father, Jonathan Kent, has been elected Senator. Lex and his son Alex buy a Christmas tree together. It's learned that Chloe's book, an expose on LuthorCorp, (pioneered by an "anonymous tell-all source"--obviously Lex) is being published in January, and Clark is a reporter at the Daily Planet. Later that night, at the Kents' Christmas Party, Jonathan reveals that the governor has chosen Lex to be the recipient of the Kansas Humanitarian Award. Jonathan even gives a toast to Lex. "Ladies and gentlemen," he says. "I give you Lex Luthor, the finest man I know."

After the toast, Lex goes out to the porch and his mother appears to him. "I can't remember ever being this happy," he says. "This has been the best day of my life." She tells him that he can have everything, all of this, if only he'd "follow [his] heart, not [his] ambition." So much hope and saturated golds and Christmas reds and greens imbue each shot in Lex's alternate reality, that we can't help but wonder if, somehow, he will make the right choice, and he'll come out of this thing, not only alive, but better, a better man, "the kind of man," Clark tells him out there on the porch, that "[Lana] could love." He doesn't make the right choice, however, and the reason for that is not something I'll reveal to you here. If you've seen the episode, then you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't, you should watch it, because Lexmas is an episode that tries to make us understand the plight and descent of not just an icon or a character from popular culture, but a man. "Smallville" has done such an interesting job humanizing its characters, turning the idea of Lex Luthor and his many appropriations and all-too farcical contrivances into a man. The best characters are the ones that we can recognize from all angles, the ones that exist in our memories, as not just notions, but as walking, talking human beings.

Lexmas is a landmark in the downward spiral of Lex Luthor, his deterioration as a man, and his final true pitch into corruption and evil. The choice that he makes at the end of Lexmas is not sudden. It is the culmination of countless tensions and events orchestrated perfectly up to this moment. This choice has been swimming beneath the surface for five seasons, and now the writers have chosen this moment, Christmas, for it to rear its tragic head. This development is devastating in a lot of ways, as it diffuses any hope we may have had for Lex Luthor, hope we hold on to even though we know that the path he must take is inevitable. We all know how it ends. "Much like Ebeneezer Scrooge," Lex says at the end of Lexmas, "I realized that what I want more than anything is to live happily ever after. And do you know what the secret to living happily ever after is? Power. Money and power. See, once you have those two things, you can secure everything else...and keep it that way." Michael Rosenbaum's Lex Luthor is stoic but uncertain, right on the edge of vulnerable. The range of emotion that he uses with Lex is what, I think, makes his Lex Luthor the best and most dynamic Lex Luthor of all. Oh, this is a Christmas episode for the ages.

Here ends the Best Christmas TV Episode Countdown. Maybe, someday soon, when you're feeling merry and yule-happy, or maybe when you just need a forty-five minute break between shopping and baking, you'll find some use for this list. So happy watching. Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night. Of television.

Christmas TV Episode #2: "Party of Five"

2009-12-04T15:39:00.000-08:00

2.) "Party of Five" 3.13 Christmas (Watch it now on hulu.com.)

"Party of Five" is a type of drama that doesn't really exist anymore. It's about family, and I can't really name any shows on right now that deal with and try to understand the same types of messages and situations that "Party of Five" excavates each and every episode. Off the top of my head, I come up with "Supernatural," which does sort of deal in some heavy familial issues, but the Winchesters are only two brothers, and they don't keep a home, and they don't have to deal with paying the bills or taking care of younger siblings. They don't live in the sort of mundane reality that resembles our own. They're almost like superheroes, so it's not the same. There's "Friday Night Lights," which does give us a sort of close examination of the Taylors and their home life. We get a lot of their dynamics as a family and their situation in Dillon, TX, but "FNL" is still one of those multi-POV shows, like "Mad Men" and "The Wire," and whole episodes will pass without addressing real familial conflict at all. That doesn't make it any less of a show, it just makes it a different type of show than "Party of Five," which is a show about family in the most unrefined sense of what that word, family, and what family really means. And what family really means is not something I'll attempt to list for you here on my TV blog. It's a million things, big and small, and this episode, I think, is one of the most nuanced examples of what this show can really do as a drama about family, and the emotional gravity it can achieve without feeling entirely sentimental and overwrought.

"Party of Five," in case you don't know, premiered in 1994 and was actually supposed to be cancelled during its second season due to low ratings. Fox kept it around, however, after it won the Golden Globe for Best Drama in 1996, and the show then aired for six seasons until 2000. It never really did do well in the ratings, but then again, most compelling dramas don't. Again, I refer to "Friday Night Lights," which is, I think, the best show on television right now, and nobody watches it. Don't ask me why. Anyway, "Party of Five" is about the Salinger family, five brothers and sisters whose parents were killed in a drunk driving accident about nine months before the time period of the pilot. Charlie (Matthew Fox), Bailey (Scott Wolf), Julia (Neve Campbell), Claudia (Lacey Chabert), and Owen (he's the baby--so multiple actors) live together in their parents' house, and the show is about them dealing with the tribulations of, not only growing up, but of growing up without their parents. They learn to depend on each other in ways they didn't know they could, and they also learn that they can hurt each other. I think "Party of Five" is particularly deft in how it captures sibling rivalry without ever forgetting its characters or letting things come to cliche. I always say that sibling dynamics are the hardest to write. The writers on this show, however, really get it.

"Party of Five" deals in quite a few heavy-handed themes (alcohol abuse, depression, cancer, teen pregnancy), but unlike a lot of other family-geared shows of the era, "Party of Five" never really gives off that "Tonight, on a very special episode" vibe. Instead of relying on the audience to sort of insert their generic understanding of these larger issues, or other smaller, family-related issues, "Party of Five" localizes them to the Salinger family, and instead of sort of talking to us, the audience, or into some void that I like to call the Danny Tanner Void (You know, when he sits the girls down and gives them this generic, all-encompassing lecture that could really apply to anyone, and so it is lost?), the characters talk to each other. They lecture and listen to each other. They argue, and there's always agenda going on--no character is ever lost at the expense of message. Plus, the acting is impressive. Some of the greatest moments, and the greatest performances in this show belong to a young Lacey Chabert, whose monologues often have the ability shake me loose and bring me to tears. She doesn't have one in Christmas, but she does share a couple poignant scenes with Charlie, one particularly poignant interaction toward the end, and it really is one of those things. She goes outside to the porch, looking for "somewhere where no one else is," which is such a lovely notion, really, when you think about what it must be like to live in a house so full of people. On the porch, she finds Charlie. "It doesn't really feel like Christmas in there," she says to him, and then there's a certain honesty in her voice and on her face as she's talking to her much older brother about things like happiness and what it means to have something of your own in this world, and there's such sadness, such wisdom for such a young girl to possess. You can't help but believe her.

This episode, unlike some of the others on this list, really feels Christmassy. It's not without its conflicts, though, as a major discovery about Grandpa Jake leaves us weak with worry, and Charlie's inherent optimism, his constant search for a life and goals of his own, are thwarted, once again, by things beyond his control, and Bailey's apathy is beginning more and more to resemble alcoholism, and Julia and Claudia, the women of the house, feel that their family, torn in so many ways, is sort of hanging by a thread and that there's nothing they can do to save it, and there's a real hopelessness here that you can feel, but it's Christmas. Grandpa comes over, and these conflicts are not defused, but they're sort of laid down one by one, tucked away just for the night, and the episode ends with Julia and Claudia, cleaning up after dinner, singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" in a perfect, perfect scene that, in any other show would go completely unearned.

I really miss "Party of Five," because like I said before, there's really nothing like it, and I wish Sony would just release seasons 4-6 on DVD already. I'd buy it all in a heartbeat.

UP NEXT: #1! Wait for it...

Christmas TV Episode #3: "The West Wing"

2009-12-03T20:40:00.000-08:00

3.) "The West Wing" 2.10 Noël (Watch it now.)

"The West Wing," epic and magnificent as it is, this foray into American politics and the nuts and bolts of democracy, is really, at its core, a treatise on personal histories, friendship, and (excuse my language) the politics of the heart. Noël is a study in this hypothesis, an episode of "The West Wing" that deals primarily with the personal dilemmas of its characters and secondarily with the political, press-related, and national security dilemmas of the White House. Like "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," "The West Wing" is a show about a workplace, but also like "Studio 60," on "The West Wing," workplace-related ordeals are not separate from the ordeals and agendas of its characters. Often, the two are directly related, either literally or symbolically. The affairs of the White House affect and are affected by the characters that handle them, and no character is ever lost at the expense of political wonk or consternations of national security. There is a fair bit of shop talk in "The West Wing," but it's well-written, and you don't necessarily have to understand it all to know what's going on, or to have a good concept of the gravity of the circumstances. Sorkin is a genius in writing mood and frustration. He gives his characters things to talk and rant about, and then they run around and talk and rant in their own fabulously unique ways. It's all about the characters. They're credible and dynamic, and we'll follow them pretty much wherever they want to go, regardless of whether we know what they're talking about while they get there.

In Noël, we see Josh Lyman (the role that Bradley Whitford was born to play), Deputy White House Chief of Staff, meeting with an ATVA psychologist Dr. Stanley Keyworth (guest star Adam Arkin) to discuss and come to terms with his recent symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Josh's PTSD is a result of the Rosslyn, VA shooting at the end of the first season, during which two gunmen fired shots into a crowd of Bartlett Administration players on their way out of a town hall meeting. Josh and President Bartlett were shot, and Josh's injury was critical.

Noël is masterful in its examination of sound: music, especially. The introduction of the brass quintet, and then the bagpipes, and finally the cello, played in a special appearance by Yo-Yo Ma, build and evolve throughout the episode, and are eventually transposed over the sound of sirens. The transposition illustrates Josh's constant reliving of the shooting at Rosslyn, and how, in his perception, the music equals sirens, a perception that is triggered by the PTSD and causing him to have a meltdown. This meltdown culminates about five days prior to the outer story, when, after the Congressional Christmas Party and the performance by Yo-Yo Ma, Josh goes home and injures his hand by cutting it on some glass.

The hand injury, and how Josh received the injury, is sort of the crux of this episode, so I won't give away too much information here. Josh claims to have hurt it by setting down a high ball glass too hard on an end table, but it's clear from the get-go that this is a fabrication of his broken mind. It's also clear that getting Josh to recount what really happened to his hand is Stanley's goal in getting Josh to acknowledge his PTSD. The hand injury and Stanley's frequent repetition of the question "How did you hurt your hand?" is, essentially, the driving catalyst behind all the in-scene exposition of Noël.

The outer story of this episode is simple: Josh sits and talks with Dr. Stanley Keyworth, ATVA psychologist, for several hours on Christmas Eve. The majority of this episode is conducted through exposition, flashbacks that begin about three weeks before the outer story and end with Josh injuring his hand after the Congressional Christmas Party five days ago. This episode uses flashback in various ways, particularly snap flashbacks full of aural and visual parallels to the outer story, and repetition of these snap flashbacks to create a visual tension for Josh's fractured memory. (Note: I'm using the term "snap flashback" because I don't know what else to call it. What I mean is a very quick flashback, almost impressionistic.) In particular, the repetition of a snap flashback in which Josh does set down a high ball glass too hard on the table (while it's clear that this is not what actually happened) really nails the idea of repression, and how capable the human mind is of altering memories that are painful. Here's that Sorkin social consciousness again. In Noël, he acknowledges the true nature of PTSD, that it is not simply a stigma applied to Vietnam and other war Veterans, but a serious psychological condition that can affect anyone who's been involved in a traumatic situation--even the Deputy White House Chief of Staff.

Whitford's performance in Noël will shake and startle you. It's so controlled, yet unexpected, because the Josh Lyman character is very much about confidence, snark, and arrogant charm (not to mention intellectual superiority). To see him stripped of his composure, of his control and then shucked down to sheer fear and frustration, a pulp of his former self, is unnerving. His fragility is so intimate that, at times, it's almost uncomfortable to watch. But then again, this type of intimacy seems to be Sorkin's best and most unacknowledged specialty. So it works, and we watch.

I think the best part of this episode is in the above clip, when, after Stanley finally dispenses Josh into the world, diagnosis in hand, and Leo McGarry is waiting for him in the White House lobby. Josh is surprised, and then Leo tells him a story about a man who falls into a hole, and here, in this scene, is what I'm talking about when I talk about politics of the heart. "As long as I got a job," Leo tells Josh, "You got a job." Like I said in my post about "Studio 60," Aaron Sorkin has this uncanny ability to encapsulate moments and themes that, in the hands of a lesser writer, would almost always reveal as sentimental and schmultzy, and to master them into these moments of pure understatement while still imbuing them with quite a bit of emotional gravity. This moment at the end with Leo is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. I think it really is just a matter of remembering the agenda of each character and not allowing message or sentimentality or formula to get in the way of credible characters and character interactions. I mean, it's not easy, but Sorkin does it anyway.

This idea of character agenda is, I think, a huge part of what's making TV so good these days. You see, television that sticks to formula, like "CSI" or "Bones," must often use its characters as pawns to sort of serve the story, to push the plot forward, mouth pieces for expository information. This doesn't leave much room for credible characterization and agenda. Great TV is really only characters and agenda. Like "Friday Night Lights" and "Mad Men" and, yeah, "The West Wing." What's the "plot" of a show like "The West Wing?" Well, there's a premise. There's always premise, but the "plot," or whatever you want to call it, is really, then, just the result of several different characters sort of bumping into and reacting to each other in a certain setting at a certain time. Sorkin is, I think, the true master of the television character. That's why he's on this list (and lots of other much more important lists) more than once.

UP NEXT: Getting down to the final two! For this next one, think the 90s and a young Matthew Fox.

Christmas TV Episode #4: "Supernatural"

2009-12-01T16:52:00.000-08:00

4.) "Supernatural" 3.8 A Very Supernatural Christmas (Watch it now at Youtube.com)

(LIGHT SPOILERS AHEAD) A Very Supernatural Christmas is terrifying. It's one of the show's scarier episodes (RE: Evil Santa), with lots of blood and some seriously creepy ironic old people. That said, lots of "Supernatural" episodes are scary. Lots of them are hilarious, too. I think the true significance of this show, however, lies in its exposition, and how deeply imbued with sadness and loss these boys' lives really are. "Supernatural" is a fairly serious show. I don't just mean Angels vs. Demons or Lucifer and the end of the world. I mean this: Here are two brothers that have lost everything. They're bereft in so many ways. They've watched everyone around them die, and now they only have each other. This history, this dynamic is written so well into the infrastructure of "Supernatural," that when death threatens to take one of the Winchester boys away, and the other reacts so intensely, so extremely, that he would die, that he would sell his soul to save his brother, our reaction is equally extreme. It's heartbreak. Extreme, terrible heartbreak, and if you truly watch and understand this show, you understand that it's about just that: heartbreak, sacrifice, desperation. Demons, Angels, Tricksters, Vampires--these things are the secondary tension in "Supernatural." The primary tension lies in the tragic history of Sam and Dean Winchester, and that's why this episode, A Very Supernatural Christmas, is so goddam good.

At the end of season two, Sam is stabbed and killed, and to bring him back, Dean makes a deal with the crossroads demon, who gives him one year to live, and then his soul goes straight to Hell. Sam has been searching, but there seems to be no way to break Dean's contract. Dean is doomed. Dean sort of accepts his fate, but Sam will not. This episode does a really great job of capturing Sam's frustration, his unwillingness to cope with the inevitability of Dean's demise, as opposed to Dean's resignation of the matter, and then translating all of this over to the template of Christmas. Because Dean wants to celebrate Christmas this year, for the first time ever, and Sam rejects him on the grounds of unhappy childhood memories. This is not the real reason, of course, but it is, however, what catalyzes this episode's massive forays into in-scene exposition.

In this episode, we're given three long, very involved flashbacks, in which mini-Sam and mini-Dean (maybe eight and twelve years old) are spending Christmas alone in a hotel room. The hotel room is brown and gray, and there are fast food wrappers everywhere. The boys seem to have been alone for a long time, because dad is out on "business," and their dialogue implies that this sort of thing happens often. The boys and their dad move around a lot, and while Dean knows the real reason, Sam is still sort of left in the dark.

This scene is incredibly charged with resonance and history (Dean storms out after Sam mentions their mother), and yet the writing is fully conscious of, not only what's happened to them in the past, but also what's happening to them now, or in the future. Sam, in this scene, is inquisitive, resourceful, naive, and maybe a little pessimistic. He talks big, but he's vengeful and impulsive, and he's already showing us hints of moral ambiguity (in stealing his dad's journal and snooping around Dean's gun). Sam's moral qualms, as well as his tendency toward impulsive behavior, really explode in season four, after he loses Dean and consorts with Ruby for four months. By the time Dean returns, Sam is too far gone, too broken and entrenched in the notion of revenge, and there's really no possibility of repair, only forgiveness, and then "Supernatural," like "Buffy," becomes a show about redemption. Dean, in this flashback, is obedient, headstrong, and brave, and he seems to have some greater, darker understanding of the world and their situation that imbues him with a kind of death wish, or desperation, or sacrificial nature. He sleeps with a gun under his pillow, is evasive and condescending, and from this and previous flashbacks, we know that his first priority, as established by dad, is to protect Sam. Mini-Dean's development into the Dean we know today is based in his extreme observation of sacrifice. Not only would he die for Sam, but he's ready to die. He's willing, and that makes Dean, I think, the more sympathetic Winchester.

Even though Dean is characterized as a womanizer, a soldier, the do-now-think-later type, and he can sometimes come off as radical or vicious, he is, essentially, a true selfless character, in that he rarely seeks revenge or power, relief or happiness for the sake of himself. Usually, when Dean seeks these things, he's seeking them for Sam. Sam, on the other hand, is not selfless. Sam is, in fact, quite selfish, and we can see that a little bit in A Very Supernatural Christmas, when Dean tries to convince Sam that they should have a real Christmas this year, and Sam snubs him.

Sam: Look, Dean, if you wanna have Christmas, knock yourself out. Just don't involve me.

Dean: Oh yeah, that'd be great. Me and myself making cranberry molds.

Dean doesn't actually want Christmas for himself, even though he's about be sent into the pit. He wants to celebrate Christmas as a family. Sam thinks about himself. "Don't involve me," he says. Dean resigns. Later in the episode, Dean brings up a memory of a wreath made of empty beer cans that their dad brought home one Christmas. Sam attacks him, because Dean hasn't "talked about Christmas in years." Dean responds, "Well, yeah. This is my last year." Sam says, "I know. That's why I can't...I can't just sit around drinking egg nog pretending everything's okay when I know next Christmas you'll be dead. I just can't." I! I! I! Sam won't sacrifice his own hang-ups to accommodate Dean, who's just sacrificed his soul to save Sam. Then, we move into another flashback in which mini-Dean comes back with dinner and ends up telling mini-Sam all about their dad's true identity as a Hunter. He also tells Sam that it was monsters who killed their mom. Sam responds, "If monsters are real, then they can get us. They can get me...If they got mom then they can get dad, and if they can get dad, they can get us." Dean says, "It's not like that, okay. Dad's fine. We're fine. Trust me." Dean then promises Sam that it will be all better when he wakes up. "I promise," he says. Sam is worried about himself. He's young, sure, but Dean is young, too. Dean is worried about dad. He's worried about them. "We're fine," he tells Sam. Sam doesn't believe him. I'm not sure he believes him now.

A Very Supernatural Christmas is about Sam coming to terms with his own selfishness in dealing with Dean's sacrifice. After they almost die several times before killing a couple of pagan gods, Sam sends Dean out to buy beer and sets up a little Christmas celebration while he's gone. The two drink very strong egg nog (an acknowledgement, I think, of Sam's lingering inability to cope, and a bit of foreshadowing, as Sam does have some minor struggles with alcohol in coming episodes, as with other, more unsavory addictions) and exchange gas station gifts next to a make-shift Christmas tree decorated with car air fresheners. They share a moment in the end, of silence, and it seems like Sam might say something, but I'm so glad that he doesn't, because that silence alone is fraught with more emotional history, sacrifice, and baggage than any words that any writer could ever write. "Supernatural" really is one massive, televised demonstration of resonance. It's a show occupied by silence and sidelong glances, conversations and singular moments that are wrought and heavy with the past. Christmas episodes are always good opportunities for any show to excavate the ever-present emotional underbelly that lingers in the space between two characters. "Supernatural" doesn't really need a Christmas episode to excavate its characters' emotional fixations, but it's got one anyway, and it's a good one. It's a really, really good one.

UP NEXT: "I've been down here before, and I know the way out." Yo-Yo Ma and Christmas meltdowns in the White House.

Christmas TV Episode #5: "Buffy the Vampire Slayer"

2009-11-30T22:28:00.000-08:00

5.) "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" 3.10 Amends (Watch it now.)

Amends is one of "Buffy"'s more important episodes, because "Buffy" is, in a lot of ways, a show about amends more than anything else--making amends, repenting, and the search for redemption. By this point in season three, so much has happened, our characters have hurt each other in such terrible ways, and all any of them really have left is the possibility of making amends, righting the wrongs of their pasts. By season three, "Buffy," while still dealing with the tribulations of characters in high school, has evolved into a very adult show, handling themes of sex, sacrifice, divorce, mental illness, death, forgiveness, redemption, and quite a few more, all while pioneering the accelerated, self-aware, culturally conscious, and structurally innovative brand of television we then saw in shows like "Dawson's Creek,"and "Gilmore Girls," and now see in shows like "Chuck" and "Supernatural." "Buffy" also spends a lot of time excavating its characters and their understandings of their own self-worth, as well as their purposes in life and in love, an accomplishment that I think has gone completely missing from teen-centric television today. That is, if there were such thing as teen-centric television today. Now, instead of nuanced, complicated teenagers like Buffy Summers and Willow Rosenberg, we're given lessons in stereotype and generic crybabies like Serena Van der Woodsen and Blair Waldorf. "Buffy" is one of the most important shows of the last decade, definitely of the nineties, and probably, well, ever, and with four seconds of research you'll come to understand that this is not just me invoking my blogger right to hyperbole. It's pretty much unanimous. "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" is fabulous and culturally significant television. Now, Amends...

Angel: Am I a thing worth saving? Am I a righteous man? The world wants me gone.
Buffy: What about me? I love you so much.

Here is one of those exchanges that has the power to encapsulate three season's worth of a television show into one striking moment, one powerful altercation of central theme and character dynamics. Moments like this don't come along often. Not in "Buffy," not in anything.

The first three seasons of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" are a study in forgiveness, in self-forgiveness, redemption, and sacrifice. Amends is a milestone episode, in that it manages to gather all of these things and to manifest them in one explosive, unparalleled scene--that last scene (before the ending montage) in which Angel is waiting for the sunrise, for suicide, on a cliff, and Buffy tries to talk him out of it. Angel is a vampire with a soul, which makes him an enigma, a strapping hunk of moral ambivalence, of guilt and uncertainty, and when he falls in love with Buffy, he's forced to look at himself as, not a monster worthy of punishment for his barbarous past, but as a man worthy of forgiveness, of love and redemption.

If you've seen "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," then you know that its most explosive episodes are those written and directed by Joss himself. Here is one of them. Joss's episodes are shiny gems of magnificently tight storytelling and powerful, agenda-driven performances (see: Innocence, Hush, Once More with Feeling, Restless, Becoming: Pt. II, there are more). They're also, in many ways, driven by, not necessarily hope or Romanticism (re: The Body), but the show's incredibly delicate, volatile interpersonal relationships. Amends, for example, is rooted very deeply in the histories that these characters share, resonance of certain scenes, moments, and small exchanges that exist solely because of some previous moment, or some slowly accumulating dynamic between the characters involved. This is a difficult episode to watch if you've never seen an episode of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," because it is basically a series of culminating moments, moments where tensions and bouts of characterization that have been swimming under the surface for seasons finally rear their terrifying heads. When Angel asks Buffy if he's a righteous man, if he's worth saving--these are not empty words. These words are wrought and packed with past and emotional significance that can only be truly understood by first watching the forty-three episodes that build up to this point.

That's not to say that Amends and its final confrontation are not worth watching if you haven't seen the show, especially if you're thinking of watching the show (which you should). The history of this scene is incredibly complicated, but some of it, I think, can be gleaned from the dialogue, a few expository sentences from me, and the sheer physicality of the players. In season two, Angel loses his soul after sleeping with Buffy (2.14 Innocence), and then, after he either kills, tortures, or threatens each and every one of Buffy's friends, she is forced to kill him in order to save the world (2.22 Becoming: Pt. II). In 3.3 Faith, Hope, and Trick, Angel is resurrected from Hell (with soul) by an anonymous force, and now, the First Evil (an incorporeal, primeval ish that comes back full force in season seven) is haunting Angel, trying to convince him that he was put back on Earth to lose his soul and resume his past as a killer. This is why the First wants him to sleep with Buffy again (re: sexy dream). There's a quick history for you.

Also, the physicality of this scene does quite a bit of work all by itself in characterizing the volatility, the ferocity of this relationship. Angel faces away from her, she attacks him, he throws her to the ground. He grabs her shoulders, screams in her face. They cry. The Buffy/Angel relationship is hallmarked by its extremes, by its passion. Their love has been polarized due to its unremitting nature of life-or-death--either they're in mad, undying, pathological love, making out and dialoguing on the fate of their forever-bound souls, or they're mortal goddam enemies, slashing at each others' throats with giant swords and sending each other to hell dimensions. This is part of the sadness, the tragic rift that has formed between them and, again, that theme of, not just forgiveness, but of worth. Of weight, of relativity, of sacrifice. What is this love worth? Buffy and Angel can never be together, because when they are, the earth beneath them crumbles and the world literally ends, and when you're a hero, like they are, you just don't have a choice. The world has to come first. That's just sad.

One last thing: The ending here (it snows in Southern California, and everything seems to get better right away) is so firmly Whedonesque, because Joss Whedon, while he likes to toy with his characters and their relationships in terrible, destructive ways, is not afraid to allow these same characters some small, occasional pieces of relief, or consistency, in return for their constant sacrifice. Granted, these pieces are never whole, always bittersweet, and usually thwarted by tragedy or transience, but they are nuanced pieces of real world consistency. In Hush, Buffy and Riley are allowed to share a kiss in that silent, post-apocalyptic downtown scene before rushing off to their respective hero-work. Even in The Body, there's a small piece of amusement when Xander puts his fist through that wall, or when he gets a parking ticket outside of Willow's dorm. In Seeing Red, Willow and Tara get to lie in their pajamas in the sunlight before Tara is killed by a stray bullet in the end. In Amends, there's snow in Southern California, and everything seems okay for now, but really, we know it's not. Like I said, these pieces are not whole, but they're rooted in real, human consciousness, the firm, simple truths in life (a kiss, bloody knuckles, pajamas, sunlight, snow) that may not always offer happiness in its purest form, but that offer some consistency in an otherwise unpredictable existence. Terrible things happen, but in the end, it's the little things we cling to--Christmas dinner, the memory of laughter, coffee in the morning, dipping your toes in the swimming pool, clean bedsheets, rain. In the end, it's not the emptiness that defines us, or the voids or the things we've lost, but the small truths, the lily pads that keep us afloat, the things and the moments and the smells and sounds and actions and memories that get us from one day to the next.

"Buffy the Vampire Slayer" is a show about these little things, and so is Christmas (Raindrops on roses, anyone? Whiskers on kittens?), so it makes sense that the only Christmas episode in the history of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" would succeed. Watch the show. Think about it. None if these characters are ever really happy, but that's not the point. Happiness is not the point. When is it ever really the point? Or when is it ever really attainable? The point is getting from today to tomorrow and to be surrounded by the only things we have left--the simple truths of everyday and the people that love us.

UP NEXT: My truest loves, the Winchester boys.

Christmas TV Episode #6: "Seinfeld"

2009-11-20T18:24:00.000-08:00

6.) "Seinfeld" 4.13 The Pick (Watch it now at Youtube.com)

The Pick is a perfect episode of television. I talked a bit about short stories in the "Six Feet Under" post, and I'll go ahead now and update those claims by saying that, well, there are quite a few episodes of "Seinfeld" that are as compact as complete as any great short story. This is one of them. I was talking to a couple friends last night at the Anthill Pub, and mind you, the three of us disagree on a lot of things (we're all writers and very obsessive), but we did agree on this: "Seinfeld," especially in the first half of its run, is more often than not pure genius, and the reason it was around for so long (and that similarly accelerated shows like "Arrested Development" were not) is that its incredibly literary methods are masked, not only by a novel premise at the coat tails of the family-friendly "Full House"-centric classic sitcom era (four friends living in New York--count how many times that's been duplicated--too many), but also by the writing. Each episode of "Seinfeld" is so tightly written, and the situations are so profoundly absurd, that the comedy works for almost anyone, and you don't need to understand or even try to understand how it achieves its unique comedic glory. But it is extra fun when you do try to understand. That's what I'm doing here.

The Pick is like a short story in that it really does follow a lot of basic rules (rules is a bad word, but I'll use it anyway) that short stories follow in order to achieve credibility and that sense of completion. Even though most short stories do not leave us with perfect, tidy endings complete with big, red bows, they do leave us with a sense of completion, a sense that the story has, in its way, achieved everything that it can, and the rest is all implied. Ron Carlson is a great writer who has published several books in addition to being the Director of the MFA program here at UC-Irvine. He's also a lovely man and an incredible teacher. Anyway, Carlson, in his book Ron Carlson Writes a Story and also in everyday teaching moments has a few terms and methods that he applies to the creation of a short story and how to, I think, sort of achieve this sense of completion. The Pick is amazing in how it actually follows quite a few of these methods and rules, and this is part of why it's so perfect, and why it really does feel like a short story.

According to Carlson (and he's right, yes, he's right), one of the first things a short story should do is build an inventory for itself: establish the people, places, and things of the story. This might seem simple to you, but it is not. I teach my beginning fiction students that, before they can really start to achieve any sort of success with a story, they need to establish the Who, What, and Where, because if you don't have a solid foundation to stand on, a world for its characters to walk around in, and things for them to manipulate, then you simply don't have a story. Realize how inventory works is different for every writer, but "Seinfeld" builds inventory in a very traditional way. Granted, this is an episode of television, so we've already got most of the inventory we need (we're in New York, we know our characters, and we have some understanding of the situations they always seem to be getting themselves into), so inventory, in this case, is going to be all about setting us up for the current outer story. Which things are going to be tapped twice in this episode? Here's how The Pick does it:

The episode begins with the standard Jerry-in-stand-up format. He tells a joke about a model, and since we've probably seen the show before (or even if we haven't), we know that a model, in some way, is going to be integral to tonight's episode. Then, we're in Jerry's apartment (a main setting where most of this episode will take place), and we're given a bit of exposition through George's pining over losing Susan. The dynamics are set right away. Elaine is yelling from the other room while Jerry reads the paper at the table and George is on the couch. So, even if you've never seen an episode of "Seinfeld" in your life, you begin to understand that these people are friends, they hang out in this apartment quite a bit, and they're pretty comfortable around each other. Comfortable enough to yell through the bathroom door at a conversation happening in the kitchen. The conversation itself characterizes these people and the dynamics between them, and it sets up several key pieces of inventory: Elaine's therapist, George's ex Susan, Tia the model Jerry met on an airplane, a Christmas card, and Elaine's new religious bf Fred. Kramer walks in and asks for some Double Crunch. You can bet that each and every one of these things is going to be tapped twice in this episode, which is another Carlson-ism: If you want to make something real, tap it twice. George goes to the therapist. He asks Susan to take him back. Elaine puts her picture on a Christmas card. We meet Fred at Elaine's office. Even the Double Crunch shows up again. We meet Jerry's model friend, Tia in the next scene, in which another major piece of important inventory is revealed: a new Calvin Klein perfume called Ocean. That'll be tapped again, too, when Elaine is wearing Ocean, and then when CK himself makes a cameo on the show and gives Kramer his own CK ad.

The key piece of inventory in The Pick is Elaine's nipple, which turns out to be exposed on the Christmas card she had made and sent out to hundreds of people she knows. The nipple is used several times, including in the therapist's office with George and later when Elaine tells Fred (in a particularly hilarious moment) that she can "see the nipple on [his] soul." In addition to all of this, the last piece of inventory introduced in this episode is the notorious (and eponymous) pick, which shows up first when Tia sees Jerry scratching his nose and mistakenly assumes that he's actually picking his nose in the car. Later that week, Jerry debates the meaning of "the pick" with George in his apartment after Tia won't return any of his calls. This moment is indicative of one of those things that makes "Seinfeld" tick--"Seinfled" is a show about very narrow misunderstandings: the meaning of "the pick" versus "the scratch" and Elaine's nipple, which is only just exposed, but if there ever was a show where the phrase only just has any sort of meaning at all, it is "Seinfeld." So the conversation in which Jerry and George decipher the meaning of "the pick" is a moment of particularly excellent "Seinfeld" logic. Anyway, the pick shows up again in full force once George does somehow convince Susan to take him back. Once he gets back to her apartment, however, he realizes that he doesn't really want her back at all and, yes, uses the pick to get out of the relationship.

Another thing tapped twice in this episode is the literary allusion: Jerry's Merchant of Venice allusion while defending "nose-pickers" everywhere ("If we pick, do we not bleed?") and then Elaine's previously mentioned allusion to The Scarlet Letter ("Because it is not me that is exposed, but you! For I have seen the nipple on your soul!") This is like the icing on the proverbial cake. In a show so fraught with literary significance itself, these high literary allusions are an ironic, not-quite-but-almost-metafictional wink at the reader who reads closely. And by reader, I mean member of the audience, but remember that here, on my little TV blog, television is literature. I like to read TV as much as I like to watch it.

Anyway, this episode is not magnificently Christmassy, the only real Christmas element being Elaine's Christmas card, but it's a GREAT episode nonetheless. That much, I've already pointed out, so I'll go now and ready myself for the next installment on this list. Hopefully, I'll do some other things, too, like eat, sleep, and do work.

UP NEXT: "Tree, nog, and roast beast" = How Whedonites do X-mas.

Review: "Supernatural" 5.10 Abandon All Hope

2009-11-20T15:24:00.000-08:00

Since this is our last episode of "Supernatural" for a while (the show returns January 21st, 2010), I do want to take a real moment to talk about the show and to map out what's really working, what's not, and why season 5 worries me so damn much. There are very real, very nasty SPOILERS ahead, so unless you're up to date, I'd tread no further.

Like Mo Ryan said at the Chicago Tribune, the writers have really done a number on themselves this season, spinning a plot as intricate as it is epic, inventing a war that keeps getting bigger and bigger and a hoard of folklore that just keeps becoming more and more nuanced. I like all of this, but season five has not been impressing me so far, at least not as a worthy successor to season four, which was so perfectly paced, and it took its sweet time so well developing Sam and driving that wedge between him and Dean and really landing the emotional impact of that last scene when Dean is there and the Devil is about to escape from Hell. Season five of "Supernatural," so far, reminds me of season six "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," in which the writers had to yank themselves up by their bootstraps pretty hard after having just done a fabulous job with season five. Season five's writing was so good because of its pacing and its patience. The writers really succeeded by effectively pacing the longterm story line (Glory, Dawn as key) with minor to absolute tragedy (Riley leaves, Joyce dies) and with Buffy self-discovery (Fool for Love, Intervention), and then, they hurled the show's title character into a mystical energy lock, which killed her, and, essentially, left themselves with nothing to work with. "Buffy," however, has an excuse, since nobody was totally sure whether it would be back for a sixth season at all. When UPN picked it up, the writers took the wheels off, and the season got very bad (introduction of the Trio) before becoming quite good ("Once More with Feeling," the Buffy/Spike relationship), and then it got bad again toward the end and never really did get back to that point of sheer perfection in season five.

It's not that I feel the "Supernatural" writers are losing the reins, or that, any moment, we're going to take a nose dive into "Lost" territory--the land of loose ends and wavering focus--but Abandon All Hope, the tenth installment of "Supernatural"'s fifth (and possibly final) season, while emotionally wrought and loaded with wonderful moments of tension and farewell, sort of picks us up, sends us forward (via FABULOUS scene with Mark Sheppard as the demon Crowley), and then drops us right where we left off. Lucifer walks the Earth. Big Bad is on his way. The Colt is useless, and the boys are powerless once again. All of these things make sense (the powerlessness, I mean), but the ending feels cheapened and sort of rushed, mostly because of that convenient little turn of events in "The Real Ghostbusters," when Becky Rosen tells Sam that Lilith gave the Colt to a demon named Crowley, a fact she'd learned by reading Chuck Edlund's Supernatural book series. The book series is an element of the show initially introduced, I think, because it's funny, and this show loves to get meta, and also because it fits into the lore, Chuck is a prophet of the Lord, Castiel tells us in "The Monster at the End of this Story," and I thought that, while the idea of a prophet sort of makes things easier for the boys and the writers (if we know what's coming, maybe we can stop it), the whole thing just worked because, well, it makes sense that, if Sam and Dean are going to be such heavy hitters in the last battle on Earth, there would be a prophet somewhere on Earth to guide them. It's then so distinctly "Supernatural" that the prophet would write a low-circulation, cult following series of books about the fate of Sam and Dean. Let's get meta! This is an instance where the mythology of "Supernatural" meets and plays a major role in the show's flare for the metafictional and the self-reflexive. That's part of what makes "Supernatural" so smart and so unique to any other series on television today.

But oh, that moment in "The Real Ghostbusters" when Becky just drops that expedient bit of knowledge right into Sam's hands--that pissed me off. Never before have the writers sort of plunked the show into such overt convenience and instant directionality. "Supernatural" is about many things, one of them being the quest, the odyssey, and its long bouts of maddening hopelessness, searches that span seasons and absolutely ZERO breaks for our Winchester boys (Why should they get breaks? They're Odysseus in this story.) do not in any way add credibility to the fact that a minor character used for comic relief just gave them a major break in their case--a break that would have made more sense had it been unloaded on them MONTHS ago, maybe even last season. I would have believed a season's worth of searching for Crowley any day, and that, too, would have made Mark Sheppard's appearance much less sudden and much more gratifying in Abandon All Hope. It did seem to me that the writers felt trapped by their own handy-work, and that this was their way of digging themselves out. It doesn't work, however, and it effectively defuses much of what this episode tries to achieve: hopelessness in the face of the Devil, who, it turns out, is one of the few things in the universe that the Colt cannot kill. Also, since so much of this series has been so dependent on the Colt and finding the Colt and everything that the Colt means, and how it is the boys' last real connection to their father (as it's one of the last things he touched before he died) and by extension any life they had prior to this whole Michael vs. Lucifer ordeal, I will believe that they are able to obtain the Colt with ease from a rogue demon named Crowley, I will not believe that they didn't spend a season searching for him first. I've always admired "Supernatural" for its pacing, and its unwillingness to let up on the hardships it's caused its main characters, but this season is in trouble. It shows.

I think this episode is successful in many ways, but I also think that parts of it squashed its own momentum, and the empty cliffhanger in the end only served to annoy me, because it felt exactly like the cliffhanger at the end of the season four finale, and we've made it this far, so naturally, I'm not worried. Or, well, I'm not worried in any way that feels new or complicated. "Supernatural" is at its best when it feeds on our more human, emotional fears--not fears that are sort of unmanageable, like that of the Angel of Death, or Lucifer walking on Earth. The best scene in Abandon All Hope is surely Dean's farewell to Jo, which is milestoned with a kiss and carried by its performances: Jensen Ackles and Alona Tal make the moment into terrible heartbreak. No words are exchanged between them, but the moment resonates, because we know what Dean has lost--everything, everybody close to him. His relationship with Jo, while one that never really came to any romantic fruition, is super important, because it is the only real relationship he's had with a woman for a long time. Also, they don't just sleep together during their last night on Earth (a great decision by the writers, might I add), and they haven't slept together before. Because Dean has continuously been characterized as a kind of skirt-chaser, this really works, and it makes me think back to that first time we met Jo in 2.2 "Everybody Loves a Clown," and how it was right after Sam and Dean's father died, and Jo asks Dean if she's ever going to see him again. Dean replies, "Normally, I'd be hitting on you so fast, it'd make your head spin. But, uh, these days...I don't know." Jo smiles. Tal is so perfect for this role, because she's beautiful and scrappy, blonde and waifish without ever seeming ethereal. She is not unattainable. She is a real girl, maybe the first real girl who's ever really approached Dean--let's not forget that she approaches him in this scene--and when she chalks up Dean's rejection to just "wrong place, wrong time," we know that whatever might have happened between them, probably is never going to happen, but their connection (again, carried by its stellar performances, makes me sad she's been killed off) is still not defused completely. The show never does forget about the attraction between Dean and Jo after that, but it's always done such a great job with hopelessness, and with this idea of "wrong place, wrong time," that while we're rooting for them, we know they'll never be together. And that's part of the incredible sadness of this moment in Abandon All Hope.

That's all I want to get at right now. This episode is great in many ways, but I feel it lacks the pacing and momentum and some of the resonance that episodes like "Lucifer Rising" and "The End" really nail. I hope the writers figure out the true directionality now, not just of this season, but of Sam and Dean who, I think, have fallen a bit by the wayside in these past few episodes. Of course, they're present in the scene, but the tensions between them have been a little forgotten, and so has Dean's turmoil over having been to Hell, Sam's turmoil over having betrayed his brother, and the ever present loneliness factor. They have nobody to love them, besides Bobby, of course, and each other, and now with Ellen and Jo gone for good, the women in their lives have all been lost. They've all died terrible deaths, and I hope that the show addresses this, because I think it's very important.

Christmas TV Episode #7: "The Office"

2009-11-19T15:35:00.000-08:00

4.) "The Office" 3.10 A Benihana Christmas (Watch it now.)

This episode is crucial to several of the character dynamics in "The Office" (which are all particularly well-done, bravo), and how these dynamics are going to play out over the coming seasons. The dynamics I'm speaking of in particular here are those between Jim and Pam and Jim and Michael. In this episode, we see the first of a long, escalating line of glimmers that sort of clue us in on the fact that Jim is, indeed, still in love with Pam, and that the possibility of a real relationship between them has not been diffused in any way. Jim is dating Karen at this point, but the rebound theme in this episode (Michael, having just been dumped by Carol, experiences his first rebound relationship after a silly, well-rendered lunch at Benihana), finally introduces the idea that Karen may, in fact, be just that--a rebound--and the reality of their relationship takes a turn. Karen is not a placeholder, because their relationship is given quite a bit of expository weight (the fact that they both buy each other the same Christmas present says quite a bit all by itself), and while maybe we're not rooting for this relationship to work out, we certainly believe that it exists outside walls of Dunder Mifflin. It becomes clear, however, or the writing in A Benihana Christmas sort of makes it clear, that Karen is not the "girl in question." Karen is the rebound, because like Jim says: a rebound "can be a really fun distraction, but when it's over, you're left thinking about the girl you really like, the one who broke your heart." Jim's expression at this point, and the moment that follows, in which the camera kind of just stays on him and Michael sitting on that couch, is really telling of some complicated, internal realization, in which Jim self-reflects on the advice he's just given Michael, and is not surprised, but concerned, with what he's just unleashed.

In this episode, Pam's Christmas gift to Jim is an elaborate prank on Dwight that she's been working on for months, but Jim won't accept the gift at first, on the grounds that he's just gotten a promotion and shouldn't participate in this type of tomfoolery anymore. Pam is hurt, and so when she befriends Karen after that, I'm not quite sure if she's doing it totally out of compassion or a desire to make Karen feel welcome in the office. It seems to me that at least part of her is forming an alliance with Karen to make Jim feel uncomfortable. Even if she doesn't know this at the time, the agenda sort of lurks beneath the surface, adding even more tension to an already strained relationship. When Jim does end up accepting Pam's Christmas present in the end, the moment is so nonchalant that we don't really realize what this means. He's not given up on Karen, certainly not, but he has acknowledged something about himself that maybe he wasn't ready to before, something he hasn't acknowledged since leaving for Australia and transferring to the Stamford branch: he wants Pam in his life, and he liked his life better when she was in it.

Back to that scene on the couch with Jim and Michael, which is, I think, one of the subtler, more nuanced exchanges we've seen between these two particular characters--I think this scene is so great in that it really foreshadows a lot of what we're actually seeing on current episodes of "The Office." Now, Jim has been promoted to Branch Co-Manager and is technically on the same pay scale and same level as Michael Scott. Their relationship now is so interesting, because they're both isolated from the employees, and they both sort of get the same shit that Jim spent four seasons just giving to Michael. This new dynamic really changes the show, because Jim is off-kilter. He's not used to being the outcast, and Michael, who has this awed admiration for Jim (because Jim is laid back, he has a wife and a baby on the way, and he's got a great wardrobe and great hair) is now conflicted over having to share his boss responsibilities, because, I think, he enjoys the time they get to spend together sharing them. Anyway, this current tension in the Jim-Michael relationship is foreshadowed and set up nicely when they have this little moment on the couch in which Jim explains the rebound relationship to Michael, and internally, they're both sort of struggling with the same thing (on WAY different levels, mind you), so this connection is very real and very present in the scene.

A Benihana Christmas, I think, is one of the best episodes of "The Office," simply because it really does a nice job juggling all of these complicated relationship dynamics with the outer story of rival Christmas parties and a guys lunch at what Michael refers to as "Asian Hooters." Is this episode Christmassy? Yes! Right from its opening scene, in which Dwight brings in a Christmas miracle to gut and prepare for the office as a snack.

UP NEXT: "I'm not sure, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I see...a nipple."

It's Supernatural Thursday! You know what that means...

2009-11-19T14:36:00.000-08:00

...It means an hour spent with the most nuanced siblings on television, Sam and Dean Winchester. It means Jensen and Jared, angels and demons, apocalypse and fan girl squeals. This is "Supernatural"'s last episode of the year. It'll be back after winter hiatus at some point in January, so you've got plenty of time if you have some catching up to do. Or, if you want to start watching, which you should. It's in it's fifth season right now, and those of you who marathoned it like I did (or are marathoning right now) know that it just keeps getting better and better. "Supernatural" is, perhaps, the most underrated show on television, if not for its instinctual, organic take on familial relationships, then for its fabulous pacing, inventive story lines (which are hard to come by, these days, in the fantasy genre), and an indescribably addictive quality that, until you watch every episode from the pilot through tonight's, will not let you rest until it's satiated. "Supernatural" will suck you in for hours at a time and then spit you back into your own reality, a little dazed, and that reality will feel increasingly dull and fabulously mundane. Then, however, in the process of your endless online searches for fan sites and blooper reels and off-camera images, and your incessant Winchester-centric tweeting, you learn that "Supernatural" fans, next to the Whedonites, are as voracious, as dedicated and unflinching as they come, and reality gets a little more exciting, because you realize you're not alone in your obsession and that, really, there's not a whole lot greater than being part of a fandom like this one.

Minor tangent on fandoms: I get so irritated with Twilighters, because they think they're so great. Well, guess what. I read the Twilight Saga, and I saw the movie, and I'm going to go see "New Moon," and yeah, I think Edward Cullen is a hottie, but there's something superficial about Twilight-mania. Don't you agree? Don't you sort of feel like, at any moment, this whole damn thing could just dissolve into the ether of pop culture phenomenon? Or get replaced by something else? Isn't that generally what happens when a fandom surrounds the novelty or the idea of a book or movie or television show rather than the actual merit of said production? The idea of Twilight and its appeal to young women is fairly simple to synthesize. Harry Potter went away, and those books were great, and then Stephenie Meyer came along and wrote a love story about a vampire,
and everybody freaked out. It doesn't matter that I (and many other like-minded women) find the subject matter of the Twilight saga to be incredibly sexual and far too mature for any wandering twelve-year-old girl. It doesn't matter that Bella Swan is a weak role model for young women, and no young woman should look up to her at all. It matters that this is something that was new, and the timing with Harry Potter, and the current revamping of vampires (re: "True Blood"), plus it's a love story, and then the movie, and Robert Pattinson, and everything collided and made Twilight mania. But, to be frank, Twilight sucks. Especially in comparison to Harry Potter. Stephenie Meyer may be able to write obsession, but she's got nothing on J.K. Rowling, who can write actual world-centric fiction. Rowling, while maybe not as gifted with prose or syntactic style, really knows how to build a world. She's kind of a genius in that way, I think, and the fandom surrounding Harry Potter, while it has lost some of its initial fervor, still remains intact. It's something that's become as much a part of our consciousness as getting on the bus in the morning and going to work. It's not a thing that I imagine will dissipate any time soon or ever, because it's brilliant. Because the books will be printed and reprinted, and we'll give them to our children to read, and they'll give them to their children, and call me crazy, but I just can't imagine for the life of me handing "Twilight" to my hypothetical daughter or son, who I would like to grow up respecting his or herself and women in general. Okay, that was a big tangent, back to "Supernatural."

ALL OF THAT SAID, the "Supernatural" fandom is so much fun to be a part of. It's actually quite unique, as far as fandoms go, and it's rooted in more than just the excitement of a moment or the next big thing. This show is actually good. Plus, the boys, Jensen and Jared, are very active with their following, holding multiple Supernatural-cons across the country, and really participating in the thing that keeps their show on the air: its fandom. It also pays a ton of respect to its fans by way of the show itself, which loves to get meta on our asses and refer to the fact that Sam and Dean are sort of a spectacle, and people love them, and the writers and actors and producers and creator Eric Kripke want to thank us for it (see episode 3.18 'The Monster at the End of this book" to get an idea of what I'm talking about, or the more recent episode "The Real Ghostbusters"). The boys are also best friends in real life, and that dynamic really shows in scene. Plus, the writers seem to know exactly what they're doing when they write these boys. There's so much authority, and the story memory is spot on (meaning: past dynamics and situations, instead of falling by the wayside, get absorbed into the consciousness of the show--this is what all great TV does--it's why "Mad Men" is so good). Plus, I say it all the time, and I'll say it again: There's nothing harder to write than siblings, and when you get them and they're done this well, it's writing (and acting) to marvel at, to stew in, to really love with your whole heart. It's not the greatest show on television by any stretch of the imagination (that's hard to do these days, because there sure is a lot of great TV), but it is great. And if you're looking for your latest obsession, look no further.

Oh, and if you are a "Supernatural" freak, like me, today's hash tags on Twitter are #Supernatural and #FindtheColt. Once per tweet, or else we'll get spammed. I think it's hilarious that the Supernatural following is so huge that Twitter has disabled #Supernatural from trending. Fun fact.

Christmas TV Episode #8: "Six Feet Under"

2009-11-18T18:18:00.000-08:00

8.) "Six Feet Under" 1.1 Pilot (Watch it now.)

"Six Feet Under" is a show to be watched for its pacing and its performances. If the short story in fiction were to be translated into a visual medium, I don't think we'd get a cinematic vignette or a short film, we'd get the "Six Feet Under" pilot, which fits a lesser show's entire first season's worth of family dynamics and character excavation into about sixty minutes, has a beginning, a middle and an end, and somehow manages to feel complete in the process. This pilot is a singular thing. Very few pilots are this good. It effectively sets up its major conflicts and themes, not through plot points or expositional jibber-jabber, but by characterizing its players (the Fishers), developing a setting (Pasadena, Fisher & Sons Funeral Home), and then allowing those characters to move through that setting, each equipped with their own agendas and their own internal trepidations, and they keep bumping into each other in the worst kinds of ways. The ways families do. Dynamics are born and there you have them: The Fishers.

This pilot chronicles the death and funeral arrangements of patriarch Nathaniel Fisher, Sr., who is killed in a car accident at the beginning of the episode. It's Christmas Eve, and each of our characters, still unaware of the accident, are engaging in their very own patterns of telling behavior: Claire is smoking crystal meth with some bad characters in a yellow apartment, Nate is banging a woman he just met in a closet at the airport, David is in charge of that evening's viewing downstairs in the funeral parlor, and Ruth is in the kitchen cooking a pot roast. Here, the writers waste no time. We get concrete characterization right away. This is the type of behavior we're going to be experiencing all season long. These are the people we're dealing with. Each member of the family then has his or her own reaction to the news of their father's death. I won't give them away, but I will say that Frances Conroy's performance (as the mother, Ruth Fisher), in particular, will hurt you in places you didn't know you had.

Alan Ball (writer/creator/director) then takes us through this world, building credibility through the experiences of each character and how they're coping in the immediate aftermath of Nathaniel's death. Claire, still possibly tripping on Crystal, can no longer tell if she's just high or having a meltdown. Nate, who had initially come home from Seattle just for Christmas, is beginning to understand that he might not be leaving as soon as he'd hoped, and to reevaluate the reason he didn't go into the family business in the first place. Michael C. Hall gives a very powerful, controlled turn as David Fisher, a closeted homosexual and bonafide control freak who's trying to hold himself together, to hold the family together and the funeral home, and he's failing. Ruth comes clean about an affair she'd been having for years prior to Nathaniel's death and calls herself a whore while weeping into Nate's suit coat at the viewing (or wake). Meanwhile, Nathaniel, Sr. haunts each of them, and the show comes to life, not just as a novel take on the modern family and morticians, but as pure magical realism--a world where ghosts walk and talk and give us advice, and where it's as mundane to see your dead father smoking a cigarette on the hood of a hearse as it is to see a dog taking a shit on the sidewalk.

The show abandons the whole commercial/advertising angle after this episode, I think for the better, and you'll know what I'm talking about if you watch. Still, "Six Feet Under" continues and maintains that very quirky, fantastical edge throughout its five season run, an edge that sets it apart from most contemporary serialized dramas. "Six Feet Under" can be as morose as it is whimsical, and it tackles some pretty heavy themes like drug use, fatal illness, homosexuality and religion, depression, abortion, infidelity, psychological disorders, addiction, and, of course, death. Sometimes, the things we're seeing on the screen, we're not so sure we should be seeing, but that discomfort is part of the tension. I think the pilot, which takes place at Christmas and is vaguely Christmas-themed (though we're still stuck in Southern California), is, perhaps, the greatest episode of "Six Feet Under." There are some great ones, but this one, I think, just wins.

UP NEXT: "Hey! I would like a nice slice of Christmas Pam. Side of candy Pams. And perhaps some Pam chops. With mint..."

Dr. Cameron is out. Epic fail for "House, M.D."

2009-11-17T15:39:00.000-08:00

I've loved "House" for a very long time, and I've always been sort of impressed by the writers, and their ability to achieve balance between formula and a more serialized format, but last night was lost on me, and I'll tell you why.

"House" lost a little bit of credibility for me last year when Kutner was written off the show via suicide. This concerned me. Not only was it completely unearned (based on Kutner's character and the dynamics of the season), but also completely unnecessary. I know they wanted to make it clear that he was never coming back, but was suicide really the only way? It was jarring and sort of obscene, and now, Kutner's been wiped completely from the consciousness of the show, which makes it even more jarring and obscene. Last season then fell flat, relying on many of the show's old tricks (head games and hallucinations) while simultaneously claiming that these things were somehow new or innovative. We've already seen TONS of alternate-reality-hallucinatory "House," and I think these head-trip episodes are largely the weakest in terms of both performance and credibility. The exceptions, of course, are the season four finales Houses Head and Wilson's Heart, which, I think, are quite well done.

Anyway, my favorite "House" episodes of all time are Euphoria Parts I and II, when Foreman becomes deathly ill (a la amoeba in the brain) and has to go into quarantine. Epps's performance breaks my damn heart, and this is maybe the first time we see House experience any real fear over losing somebody close to him. The best episodes in "House" are the ones that hurt our protagonist in places he can't numb with Vicodin, and they put him in situations that he can't solve by discussing differential diagnoses with the team. Remember, House is Sherlock Holmes. He's a detective, but he's broken and addicted, and so much loss has outfitted him in a seemingly impenetrable suit of emotional armor. The Euphoria episodes expose House's vulnerability far more adroitly than any of these post-House-flies-over-the-cuckoo's-nest episodes, in which the show seemingly forgets about all the baggage House's relationships with his team, Wilson, and, especially with Cuddy, have been lugging around for five seasons, and we're supposed to believe that he's somehow changed, or that the relationships around him have in any way changed when they all look the same to me. I'm increasingly annoyed by the writers' inability to build on the relationships between House and Wilson, and especially House and Cuddy, relationships that are frequently tapped but almost always on the same note. Cuddy STILL thinks House is unreliable, and she's always so surprisingly practical and cool, and she never gives in for a second to her unavoidable attraction to him, an attraction that, I think, is incredibly complicated, and I want more. I don't want her to be this typed professional single mom who's looking for stability and security, because only the 's' word I'm concerned with is SEX, and why she and House aren't having it, or why they haven't had it already. When we thought House and Cuddy slept together last season, I think the tension really changed, and things became a lot more interesting. Then, when we found out that it had all been a dream, this tension became annoyance, and House and Cuddy lost their nuance--it became all about that on-again-off-again crap that "Bones" will simply NOT LET GO, and it's just not interesting. There's no momentum anymore, and after last night's episode, we're back to square one in almost every possible way. Cuddy is untouchable, the old team is back, Chase is tortured, and House is in charge. What should we expect now that the writers have effectively diffused almost all of the tension they've spent five seasons trying to build?

I feel almost like House has been missing from this season's consciousness, as the writers have sort of chosen to focus on Chase and Cameron's failing marriage instead (yawn-fest, don't care) and Chase's ruddy inner-turmoil over killing that bad guy. I've always loved the Chase character and found him to be the most dynamic of all the team members (especially now that Thirteen and Taub are back), but I've never understood his relationship with Cameron, or why they got married, because, well, I've never understood her. She's never really been excavated, and for a long time up until this season, was hardly ever around anymore. I sort of forgot about her and all of her underdeveloped moral qualms from the earlier seasons, and then all of a sudden, last night, there she is BERATING House for being this evil, broken person who made Chase into an evil broken person, and I don't know if I'm supposed to be upset with her for saying these things or nodding in agreement, because none of it makes any sense.

Why is she suddenly leaving NOW? Why not just write her off at the end of last season, have her leave Chase at the alter, and then--BAM--Chase has a reason for the moral fuck-ups he's committing. The Cameron character has always been sort of weak and inconsistent. We never got to know her at all. When she told House that she'd used to be in love with him, I thought, "Why didn't we know this sooner? Why is this all happening now, so late, when there's no resonance anymore and the impact of the moment is lost?" I would have believed her exit MORE had she just disappeared and never come back, because that monologue was just overwrought and out of touch, and it operates on the assumption that we care about Cameron at all, when the writers have spent five seasons neglecting to develop her or her backstory beyond the whole "I fix needy guys" thing. Chase and Foreman have both experienced bouts of intense characterization and exposition, but not really Cameron. All we know about her is that she had a husband once, and the only reason she married him was because he was dying, and then he died, and now she's got a "fixer-upper" complex. Is that why she married Chase? What did she see in him that needed fixing? I would have liked to learn that, to see that in action. Maybe that would have lent some credibility to her exit, because if we know that her initial intentions with Chase were to fix him, just like they sort of were when she was supposedly in love with House, then she's actually leaving because she knows she can't fix him--not after this terrible thing he has done, and she can't handle that, so she leaves. Make sense? I don't know. I think I'm rambling at this point.

Anyway, I have to call it quits on this, or my entire afternoon will be lost analyzing "House, MD." I'm just so disappointed with last night's episode, and with the weird directionality taking place this season. I just hope they get rid of You're-a-cop-Kenny from "Garden State" and excavate the characters they've already got. Because I don't care for new faces at this point. I want to know more about what and who is already there.

Christmas TV Episode #9: "Arrested Development"

2009-11-17T13:37:00.000-08:00

9.) "Arrested Development" 1.7 In God We Trust (Watch it now.)

Christmas in Orange County--there's a lovely thought. I never really understood quite what that meant until, oh, about this time last year, when suddenly, Christmas decorations became just painfully ironic, these dusty flags on lamp posts advertising "Comfort and Joy!" and "Holiday Cheer!" while the sun blazes down and I'm sweating on my way home from campus. My car is disgustingly dirty, because we haven't had any real rainfall since May, and listening to Christmas music while anywhere but locked in my room with the blinds drawn just seems wrong, like I'm wearing snow boots in the desert or a bikini in the Himalayas. The people here crack me up, too, especially around the holidays. "Doesn't it feel like Christmas?" one friendly (though misguided) barista posed to me the other day. I didn't even know she was talking to me, but she was. I said, "No, why?" She told me that the weather made it feel like Christmas. I thought about slapping her but laughed politely instead, and then the girl behind me ordered an iced Chai latte because it was seventy-four degrees out. Yeah, Christmas weather. That's a hilarious joke. Seriously.

When you're from Wisconsin like me, or anywhere like it, you know the true meaning of cold. You know what it's like when your face goes numb on the way from the car to the front door, or when snow gets in your shoes and drenches your toes, and then they hurt for an hour even after you've gone inside. You know what it's like to drive to work in a snow storm, watch three cars spin out or drive slowly into the ditch and then wonder if that will be you in five minutes. The days feel like hell, until about April. Then, they still feel like hell until July, and if you're really unlucky (which, usually, we are), things never really get better, and then there's snow again before there ever really was sun. The whole thing makes Christmas in Orange County seem as mundane and predictable as a knock-knock joke. Everybody's got the same frame of mind (and the same wardrobe) as they did six months ago on the Fourth of July. You sort of wonder what's the point, and then you sort of feel a little bit bad for them, because will they ever know true Christmas cheer? Well, no, or it's a different kind of Christmas cheer. I seem to find that it's cheerful all year 'round here in SoCal (which is maddening, I tell you, but okay), and so do they need Christmas cheer in Orange County? Not really, because they've got constant sunshine. Who needs nog when there's sunshine?

See, in the Midwest, we need Christmas cheer. We need big, jolly glasses of eggnog and giant frosted cookies and fur boots and wool scarves--TO KEEP US WARM. TO KEEP US SANE. Go to Racine, WI, you'll see those same flags on the lamp posts, and they'll provide a considerable amount of holiday cheer, not just a minor change in the scenery. The Christmas spirit, in Wisconsin, is not about red and green, and it's not just about Santa displays at Bloomingdale's (I'm pretty sure we don't even have one of those). It's about plucking us out of our weather-related misery for a month before dropping us flat on our asses again for January drear. So I don't want to hear that it feels like Christmas when it's seventy-four and sunny. But then again, this is a SoCal thing (I'm not condescending--they've got great weather. Why should they care about our suffering?), and this type of SoCal mentality is EXACTLY what "Arrested Development" does best.

In this episode, we learn that Tobias is a never-nude. We watch Michael and Lindsay get drunk together in the middle of the afternoon (in one of the funnier drunk montages I've seen on TV). We get to see what the Living Classics pageant is all about in Orange County (it's all about grumpy rich people in summer formalwear getting angry over denim cut-offs and a missing God in the Michelangelo piece). George Michael wears a muscle suit under his clothes to impress Maeby. Maeby packs a suitcase and buys a ticket to Portugal in a desperate attempt to get attention from her flake, self-absorbed parents. There's a whole lot in this episode, actually. It's a pretty good summation of what "Arrested Development" is. It's a sitcom, sort of, that screws with us. It's sort of like "How I Met Your Mother"'s slightly more innovative, less successful big sister, in its propensity for inside jokes, running jokes, delicate word play (Bob Loblaw's Law Blog, for starters), and an insightful voiceover from a TV has-been. Like "How I Met Your Mother," "Arrested Development" places quite a bit of trust in the audience. It asks us to pay very close attention to what's going on, to make intricate connections between episodes and situations, to locate the family dynamics ourselves, and to notice background jokes that are sort of happening all the time, or that the writers will touch on for just a second before moving on. This show in no way calls attention to any of these things. It trusts us to notice them and put them together, and therein lies the hilarity. It's a show for people who like to participate in their television, people like me, who don't just watch, but who see TV as a sort of conversation in which things are revealed and withheld at specific moments, and then it's my job to figure out why.

This episode is not so Christmassy. There are some decorations, however, in the model home, and that's EXACTLY what I'm talking about when I talk about a SoCal Christmas mentality. Christmas decorations make Christmas! Red tinsel! Voi la! You've got Christmas! There's no real sense of nostalgia for what Christmas time actually means in the home. When I think of Christmas, I think of cold nights and mittens, fireplaces all glowy, hot cocoa with candy cane stirring sticks, footprints in the snow, heavy scarves, and the warmth that's created by lights on the tree, by garland, by baking smells and cookies fresh out of the oven. Not JUST the decorations and objects of Christmas, the physical warmth that these things create. "Arrested Development" really captures that idea of the mundane Southern California Christmas. It's just like in "Studio 60," when Matt Albie is running around trying to find fake snow (They end up shaving coconuts--go figure), and grudgingly trying get everybody into the Christmas spirit, and there's some commentary about how Christmas isn't real in LA. That's exactly what I'm talking about! There's no weather. Weather is the simplest form of conflict. Well, that and money and a ticking clock. But without weather, and with millions of dollars and all the time in the world, there's no real need for the warmth generated by mistletoe and shiny wrapping paper. I don't know whether they've got it great or got it bad here in Southern California. I just know that I miss Christmas time in Wisconsin, and that In God We Trust is a GREAT Christmas episode--precisely because it doesn't rely on snow and chestnuts crackling over the fire. It's funny, because it sort of ignores Christmas, but it still uses the decorations and, of course, there's family, so there's this fantastic irony, and that's the humor.

UP NEXT: More Southern California Christmas bliss. Pasadena, to be exact. Also, there's a funeral home. Complications!

Christmas TV Episode #10: "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip"

2009-11-16T15:22:00.000-08:00

10.) "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" 1.11 The Christmas Show (Watch it now.)

Is it really any wonder that Aaron Sorkin can write Christmas? Sorkin's work is known mostly for its fast-talking characters--the kinds with tortured, morally conscious psyches, and most people can identify Sorkin's work based on its particular propensity for smooth tracking shots down long hallways, during which these tortured souls have work-related conversations or trade advice about women. These things are all true. What Sorkin should be known for, however, is his ability to localize tragedy or romance or unity or Christmas time--things that are largely sentimentalized by lesser writers and that can become easily overwrought or drenched in schmultz when in the wrong hands--and to lend them credibility in the moment, keeping things honest while still retaining a good amount of gravity.

In The Christmas Show, Sorkin meditates on quite a few of his usual themes (off-kilter romance, benevolence, David vs. Goliath, there are more). It also talks a little shop. Like "The West Wing," "Studio 60" is about a work place. Personal dramas are rampant, but the premise (a show within a show) is never lost and is always reliable for pressurization. This episode is good. The stuff about the FCC fining the fictional NBS $325,000 because a marine uttered the word "fuck" on live TV after almost being blown up by a stray grenade is great, and it's classic Sorkin consciousness. We know who we're rooting for: the underdogs. This type of thing is always running vehement on "The West Wing." There is also a love triangle afoot in The Christmas Show, as well as an unexpected, off-stage kiss that lends itself to a pretty sweet, believable moment in which Harriet mistakenly calls herself "Matt" on live TV. Also there's a love confession. Like I said, the episode itself, as just any old episode, it's pretty fantastic, well-balanced and all, but it becomes great, it becomes a great Christmas episode, during its final scene.

So, Danny clears four minutes in the middle of the live broadcast of Studio 60 (the show within the show) to showcase a group of brass musicians whose homes were destroyed in Hurricane Katrina. The segment is called simply "The City of New Orleans," and as the band plays (a heartbreaking rendition of O Holy Night), a slide show behind them displays photos of New Orleans in its post-disaster desuetude. It is a chilling, touching, truly terrifying scene, and the real gravity of the moment lies in the nature of its conception. You see, salaried musicians on NBS shows like Studio 60 and The Tonight Show called in sick earlier in the week so that these musicians, initially referred to as "subs," could fill in and be paid for their time. Danny gives them a spot on the show to get them union memberships and a chance at real employment. The moment in which he decides to do this is internal. Still, it's written well enough so that we don't know that this last scene is coming, but when it does, we're not entirely surprised.

That final scene in The Christmas Show is, essentially, triumphant in its recognition of Katrina as, not a media spectacle or the channel you change when you get home from work or a vessel through which to elicit a romanticized, sentimental reaction from an audience, but as a tragedy, something that affected real lives--so many real lives--and something that should be addressed honestly, not only in the media, but in entertainment and art, and in our homes as well. Here is the morally and socially conscious Aaron Sorkin that we met a long time ago. Here is the man who wrote the special episode Isaac and Ishmael for "The West Wing" season 3, an episode that breaks continuity, and that is dedicated entirely to educating the public on and paying tribute to those directly affected by the September 11th terrorist attacks. Really, Aaron Sorkin is a pretty special writer. There's nobody like him. Nobody.

UP NEXT: What starts with a B and rhymes with uncouth?...

The Countdown: Fantastic Television for Christmas

2009-11-16T01:30:00.000-08:00

I figure there's no better way to kick off my TV blogging experience than with a LIST. I like lists. I'll try to lay off the lists, but right now, here's a LIST. Here's a LIST of my favorite, fan favorite, and fantastic TV Christmas specials. Christmas time is approaching, and whether you like it or not, that means ironic weather-related Christmas displays in the SoCal malls, the revulsion yet (strange) appeal of the eggnog latte at Starbucks, credit card debt, wrapping paper, scotch tape, maniac shoppers at the super market, and, best of all, CHRISTMAS THEMED TV.

I will try to post one episode every day for the next ten days. Anyone who enjoys Christmas episodes will enjoy the episodes on this list, I'm sure. I'll try to contextualize (thought not too much), as well as include a link to where you might watch each episode online, so that, one day, in a fit of holiday cheer, if you feel like watching some good TV (Christmas-style), you've got some go-to glory. Realize that my authority on the matter is mostly bullshit. I'm just a girl who truly loves TV and who believes in its power as an art form.

These will mostly be contemporary, circa the past ten years, and they're all part of a series that is/was ongoing. That means: no made-for-TV movies or mini-series type deals, so none of those guilty pleasure romcoms they air all December long on ABC Family (ie: girl gets trapped in snow globe, falls in love with snow globe boy). That also means no "Charlie Brown Christmas" or the Stephen Colbert special or those little stop animation movies from the 1960s. Even though they're awesome. I want to write about serialized TV. Also, these are not necessarily obscure, but I've chosen some episodes that, I think, may be unexpected. Anyway, I implore you to tell me your favorites, especially if they're not on this list. Because like I said, I love TV, and I'm always looking for more to love.

Letter: Here's the sitch. (Thanks, Joss.)

2009-11-15T18:30:00.000-08:00

I went away for a while--I've been here in Irvine, CA, and in the past year or so since I last posted on this thing, I've been working on my MFA in Creative Writing, writing stories about alien abductions and Christmas ghosts, and even attempting my first novel (painful, fabulous, terrifying ordeal). I've been making lots of new friends (who will all be lauded, famous writers someday) and, oh yes, watching lots of TV.

The Scooby Gang, the Winchester boys, Bartlett for America, Angel Investigations, our friends at Capeside High, Agents Mulder and Scully, the Dharma Initiative, the Dillon Panthers, the Ad men at Sterling Cooper, Sookie and Bill, Ted Mosby & co., Dunder Mifflin, TGS, those crazy kids at the Dollhouse, McKinley High School in Lima, OH, the Diagnostics team at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, FBI: Fringe Division, Bones and Booth (will they or won't they?), those proud soldiers aboard the Galactica, and all the millions more whose fictional lives I've indulged in and obsessed over probably far too much and for far too long--THANK YOU.

When I moved out here to California, 2000 miles away from home, I started to realize that my life, as blessed as it is in so many ways, will never be a thing of formula or continuity. At least not for a very long time. Words are fickle and unfriendly, and I've sort of given my life to them. I don't think I'll ever really get it back, but that's okay. Anyway, I left home to pursue my dream of becoming a writer, and I started looking for all those things that went away the minute I moved into my semi-drab, furnished apartment in this parking lot civilization called Orange County: continuity, history, something I could go back to again and again, familiar faces and locales, friends and family, and I found television. I fell in love. I couldn't get enough, and I still can't. I watch TV like I read books--hard and with purpose. I analyze everything from the anti-heroes of "Mad Men" to the sibling dynamics in "Supernatural," and I never get bored of it. Ever. I've always liked TV, yes, but this year, it's become a passion, and it was only a matter of time before I started writing about it. Because, well, that's what I do.

I used to write film reviews for the Daily Cardinal, THE student-run newspaper at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. (That's right, Badger Herald. You do not count.) I even had my own column for a while. That was one of the most gratifying experiences of my life. I learned so much about film and writing at the Cardinal that I cannot begin to thank the editors and fellow writers/obsessors who I worked with at the Arts Desk and who encouraged me for the better part of three years (Will, Kevin, Dan, Joe, Eunice: You all rock). I've done a lot of writing since then. Fiction, of course, sort of rules my life right now, but I did continue to post film reviews and short essays on this blog up until about August of last year. I have another blog, too, where I posted maybe two essays on literature and Buffy the Vampire Slayer before getting busy and sort of giving up, and the other day, I wrote a ten-page essay FOR FUN on point of view and the merit of "How I Met Your Mother." Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that I love writing about this stuff. I love analyzing television and treating it like art. Because it IS art. Especially now. I don't know if you've noticed, but television is exceptionally good right now. "Mad Men," "Battlestar Galactica," "Friday Night Lights"--these shows are literature. They're playing with us, and they're playing with the way that television works. Remember the meta-fictional, self-reflexive charm that accelerated WB shows such as "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Dawson's Creek" sort of pioneered in the late nineties and early 00s? Well, that charm has been refined, distilled, and concentrated with shows like "Supernatural" and "How I Met Your Mother." This is just one example. I could go on forever right now. But that's what the blog is for. So that I don't. Well, at least not all at once.

Anyway, once I get this thing going (over Christmas break I hope to put it in full swing), I'll be writing about the literary side of television. There will be some other stuff, too (like random fandom), but mostly, I want this to be a place where my friends and followers who love TV can read about it in the capacity that it is, in fact, literature. It's not low brow, and it's not a distraction. Well, not the shows I like to write about anyway. So, there's more to come, but for now, I'll leave you with this quote from one of the greatest, most influential television heroes of the last twenty years: Homer Simpson.

"Television! Teacher, mother, secret lover."

Ain't it the truth?
-T

What Joss Whedon's Sudden Absence Means for "Wonder Woman" and other related musings

2008-08-19T09:30:00.001-07:00

Is it such a wonder that a brilliant writer/director like Joss Whedon, instead of directing Harry Potter movies and garnering a success ten times that of Christopher Nolan, Peter Jackson, and Sam Raimi put together, is producing a forty-five minute musical called "Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog" and releasing it for around $5 on iTunes? Or that, five years after Buffy, six years after "Firefly," a brilliant director like Joss Whedon sees little more success than a Nebula for his "Serenity" screenplay and a Buffy comic book entitled "Season 8?" Am I surprised that "Firefly" was cancelled? Or that "Dollhouse" will probably meet a similar fate? And, last but not least, am I surprised that Joss has abandoned the future Warner Bros. project "Wonder Woman," a picture Whedon pioneered several years ago, due to creative differences?

One word: No.

None of this surprises me. Joss Whedon is a feminist. You can read his incredibly moving comments about Dua Khalil's horrific death last April here, and you can watch how these comments evolve into a poignant questioning of our world, our world's treatment of women, how that treatment leaks into the guts of every facet of society: movies, everything included.

I think that most people who are even mildly familiar with Joss's work have some sort of understanding that, yes, he's a feminist. He writes strong female characters, but not just strong, commanding female characters that, in addition to conquering whatever world it is they live in, also must deal with the mundane details of everyday life, sexism included. Certainly, Buffy Summers' first purpose as a human being is to slay vampires, kill demons, and save the world. But can we forget about the time when her mother dies? How she puts the pieces together all by herself, gets a job, and works relentlessly to support her sister and her loyal friends? And "Firefly," a show in which prostitution is no longer a game of suffering and humiliation: but a government appointed LOB called 'companionship,' and companions like Inara hold as much power and authority as the most highly ranked government officials. Also, there's River, a fugitive escapee from some government testing agency, who seems a little touched, in the world of a child, but really, she can kill you with her brain.

And it is not only the women that Joss imprints upon, but the men as well. Captain Malcolm Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) of Serenity will not stand for the inferior treatment of women, an opposing pillar to the more primitive thinking (and surely representative) of cinder block head crew member Jayne. Similarly, "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" has Xander, the only member of the Scoobies without a significant power, who is bumbling and human and falls in love with a vengeance demon. His best friends are Buffy, the Slayer, and Willow, a powerful witch by Season 6, who often go to extreme lengths just to rescue him from his own mistakes. You see, with Buffy, Joss has turned an entire master narrative of 'damsel in distress gets rescued by Prince Charming' upside down. It is often the men who need saving in "Buffy," as well as in "Firefly."

Anyway, these are all just accounts, and I could go on forever giving them to you. In fact, I had to stop myself there before I got into the whole "Buffy was raised by a single mother" thing or "the mechanic on Serenity is a cute little girl" thing or the "Riley in Buffy Season 4 whores himself out to vampires just to appeal more to Buffy" thing...before I got carried away. What I really want to get at is the master narrative (white male alpha) and how it is affecting film today. In my previous article about the HP6 delay, I mentioned recent comments made by Warner Bros. production president Jeff Robinov, who said that WB would no longer distribute movies with women in the starring role. Of course, this is not entirely true. They will distribute these movies, and this is just something that several producers overheard the d-bag saying over caviar one day, yada-yada. But, is it entirely false?

Why is Joss Whedon held to the background? What is keeping him from the forefront? Could it be his widely-manifested feminist views, and how often (and strikingly) he brings them into his work? Think about it. I'm going to make a short diversion here. VERY short. Abortion, birth control, Planned Parenthood. All issues of 'hot' political agenda, bipartisan issues that have Fox News in an uproar, and why? They are not issues of government. They are medical issues. They are issues between a woman and her doctor, and these issues are protected by a number of confidentiality laws, each one of them unconstitutional if broken (though that word doesn't mean much anymore). It is entirely acceptable for a human being to oppose an abortion, based on religious doctrine or personal preference or whatever. I never argue that. I am pro-choice, and that means I'm pro your choice NOT to have an abortion for whatever reasons (personal, unbiased as they are) you provide (or don't provide). It is, however, unacceptable for politicians (most of them men) to act as conductors of an issue like abortion, or an issue like birth control or affordable women's health care, simply to control the political climate around them. This is a power play: as long as women's issues remain issues of government, hotly debated, in the limelight for people to vote for or against, women are kept at bay. As long as white-haired men (or black-haired, red-haired, or sexist women, whoever they are) continue to manipulate these issues, using them to control their voters, to rope them in or cast them aside, the message is sent that: the decision between a woman and her doctor is not good enough--it must, in some way, be controlled by a man.

Okay, that wasn't as short as I'd hoped. But what I'm saying is: Do you think it's possible that WB and all of their underhanded glory will stain "Wonder Woman" with a covertly sexist agenda? That the reason Joss was forced to leave, these 'creative differences,' come from his seemingly unpopular writings of women? Would he leave if it were anything less? It is obvious that he will not make do. In the article linked above, Joss writes that he has "snapped," and that he'll no longer stand for the anti-woman doctrine of society. Is his lack of success in the face of men like Christopher Nolan and Sam Raimi, men who write and direct epics about the plight of not women, but men and their charming women counterparts, perhaps a product of the industry's (and society's) inherent distrust in women? Robinov was right in just one respect: movies about women don't sell like movies about men. But isn't this just a symptom? Of, perhaps, the fact that movies about men get multi-million dollar viral marketing campaigns ("The Dark Knight") while movies about women get zilch ("The Brave One," "The Invasion," "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2," even "Sex and the City" which succeeded purely based on its prior acclaim)? Or that, perhaps, too many people are used to a world in which a woman cannot be the hero? That the idea might even frighten them?

I imagine that "Wonder Woman," which was originally to star Morena Baccarin (Inara in the "Firefly"-verse) as Diana Prince, will not do well. I imagine they'll cast some toothy, leggy, busty white woman to play the titular role, even though "Wonder Woman" is somewhat of an Amazon Princess, and they'll do what was done to Elektra, which is to ruin it. Maybe not. I'm just thinking to the extreme, as I often do, and it would be so wonderful if I'm proven wrong. But one thing is for sure: If Joss left, it was for a reason. Can we trust that reason? I can't. Why? There are only so many things I can list for you here. Otherwise, I could probably go on forever.

Review: "Vicky Christina Barcelona"

2008-08-16T18:03:00.000-07:00

I saw "Vicky Christina Barcelona" at the Downer in Milwaukee. There was a bit of a problem with the projector in the beginning; first the picture was squished, then too small, then there was this irritating blue line...idk. Anyway, I felt very passionate about this poor customer service situation, and I was determined to ask for my money back or to complain to the manager as soon as the movie was done. I didn't, however, do either of those things, and I'll tell you why: "Vicky Christina Barcelona" was so very fun and delightful that, well, I completely forgot.

Woody Allen always makes good movies. He is a tremendous filmmaker, one of those writers with a flare for the neurotic, a director who loves his actors. "VCB" was not as good as "Match Point," but it was in a similar vein. It focuses on human nature, how we tend toward the things we want, even if subconsciously, and how the things we want are either right in front of us or perpetually out of reach. It's about how human beings want everything, how we want everything to be the way that we want it to be, and we don't want guilt when it's over, just to feel free, let go, open, and new. How many times have I taken a look at my life and feared that it's flying too quickly? That I'm not living to my fullest potential? Wondering if there's a way I could liberate myself from the societal standards to which we all succumb? I found myself relating to Christina, Scarlet Johanssen's character, and the way that she is constantly searching, how she gets settled into one thing, says there for a while, only then to be plagued with a kind of restlessness, a dreaded yet unavoidable feeling that comes in intermittent waves.

"VCB" does not really have a plot. It is driven by its characters, how they look at and think of one another, how they're affected by the people and situations around them, of the past, the present, and the future. Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Christina are young, seemingly high society women that have run off to Barcelona in the last months before Vicky's wedding. Vicky is to marry Doug (Chris Messina), the kind of Manhattan yuppy who wears velvet slippers with his boxer shorts, the kind of guy who is able to coast blissfully through life without really thinking about anything. Albeit, he is a nice guy, and he loves Vicky, and she loves him, too...I think. Anyway, she and Christina are approached by the enigmatic artist Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem) who presents them with a daunting proposition: Go to Oviedo with him, drink wine, see sights, and make love. Christina, the childish one, the carefree college grad who is struggling to find her voice, agrees right away, but Vicky takes some convincing. She is the Wood Allen character. She is the neurotic one with a million theories and anal tendencies, and she puts up a convincing argument. She loses, however, and the girls go to Oviedo. Many things happen: beautiful things, sexy things, surprising things with fanciful outcomes. For a while, "VCB" feels like an old movie. Bardem is the dashing Spaniard with no ulterior motives, just a view that life has no purpose but to live. Vicky and Christina are his muses, both very different in both the ways that he loves them and the ways that they love him back.

This is all wonderful, but my favorite part of the movie is Penelope Cruz. Cruz plays Maria Elena, Juan Antonio's vivacious ex-wife who, I guess, once tried to kill him. She is a totally unexpected actress. She's so beautiful. It's a fierce beauty. One would never know she was so talented at just a single glance. But she is wonderful. In the movie, Maria Elena tries to kill herself and, for a time, lives in a strange, somehow pragmatic threesome with Juan Antonio and Christina. Cruz snarls her lines like a lioness, a perfect counter to the nonchalance of Bardem. I'd even go so far as to say that, should there be a shortage of good supporting work this Oscar season, she could easily snag a nod.

This is a good movie: snappy, complete, even a bit old fashioned. It's like a pleasant escape.

A Word About HP6

2008-08-15T18:09:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's only too fitting that the moment I start talking about teen movie take-overs, one of them gets pushed back eight months and the other one gets pushed forward one.

In case you don't know what I'm talking about, it's Warner Brothers' decision to kick the release of "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" back from November 21st, 2008 to July 17th, 2009. What is the deal here? According to Alan Horn, Chief Executive Douche over at the WB, the writer's strike delayed several "tentpole" projects that were due for a summer '09 release. This opened up a window (I guess) for finished money-makers (ie: Harry Potter) to move into open summer blockbuster slots. Also, if you'll recall, "The Dark Knight" (honing in on $500 million after just four weeks), was released on July 18th (ring a bell?). Warner Brothers has suggested that this weekend is, perhaps, one of much enchantment (???), that Heath Ledger's tragic, untimely death had nothing to do with the influx of curious movie-goers (while they continue to bid for his posthumous Oscar in an effort to get more butts in the seats--shitty, shitty, shitty), and that HP6 will rake in similar numbers based simply upon a bit of mid-July magic. And I mean, call me a pissed-off fangirl with a raging love in her heart: but I don't think so.

According to a recent article at wenn.com, Steve Kloves, screenwriter for all the HP movies (sans "Order of the Phoenix"), is already fearing for the success of the franchise. "I'm not going to lie to you," he said. "I do have some concern that because the books are over, the anticipation won't be the same. It would be a complete car crash if no one showed up." Ahem...car crash? When I first read this article, I thought that Steve was, possibly, quite insane. People not showing up for a Harry Potter movie? However, I didn't know what I know now, and I assume that he was well aware of the WB's latest debacle. Could it flop? I, personally, plan to boycott the film for at least two weeks. My friends and I talked about boycotting one day for every month the film was delayed; however, this hardly seems enough. And yeah, I'm only one person. We're only six people. But are we alone? I know we all love Harry Potter, and we're all super excited to go see it, but I feel as if a line has been drawn. You simply do not f*ck with an institution like Harry Potter. You just don't. We may be huge nerds, but we're not stupid. We're dedicated, and you just don't f*ck with this kind of dedication. Because, first and foremost, the dedication is to the books, the characters, and J.K. Rowling. The fifth movie stunk, so to delay the sixth is a tragic mistake. I am already wary about the Half-Blood Prince, since they kept David Yates around, and now, I'm downright discouraged. The decision seems very shortsighted. To delay it eight months? With three movies to go? Come on.

By the time the second Deathly Hallows movie is released, the majority of its fan base will be in college, dedicating real time to real, personal endeavors. Will they care anymore? Who knows? With Kloves already concerned for the franchise's popularity (and three movies to go, the closest of which a year away), who's to say that they will? Not to mention the fact that the maturity level of the films is bound to increase (steering away younger viewers and whole families), to mirror that of the books. And I hate to bring it up, but how much of that fan base (especially little girls...aka: solid gold) has already moved on, ready and willing, to another upcoming franchise?

The "Twilight" saga--Which has already begun its reign. The moment the WB shot HP6 into 2009, Summit took advantage. "Twilight," the first of four possible movies about a teenaged girl in love with a vampire, will now be released on November 21st, 2008 instead of it's original bid for December 12th. Perhaps the WB isn't worried about "Twilight," but I wonder. With its up-and-comers Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson (who automatically draws a swarm of HP followers due to his 2005 stint as Cedric Diggory), a revered director like Catherine Hardwicke ("Thirteen" and "Lords of Dogtown"), not to mention a screenwriter who pioneered the likes of oh...idk...Showtime's "Dexter," the movie is bound to be good. Will it overshadow Harry Potter? Probably not. Well, not right away. By the time HP6 comes out, however, maneuverings for the Twilight sequel "New Moon" will, most likely, be in full swing, and where will the fangirls be then? Probably in front of YouTube, watching backstage interviews with Robert Pattinson, not at their fourth showing of HP6. And call me a blasphemer, but for the sake of the Harry Potter institution, I hope that's what happens.

Anyway, as for my INCREDIBLE beef with Warner Brothers (yes, incredible beef)...this latest Harry Potter stunt is simply the icing on the cake for many of us. If you'll recall a comment made, not too long ago (somewhere around the release of "Sex and the City") by WB production president Jeff Robinov...something along the lines of...Warner Brothers will no longer make movies with women cast as the main lead. Yeah. You can read the LA Weekly article here. It's some good reading. Anyway, this is another reason I'm super excited for "Twilight." It's a story with a female protagonist. The writer and director are both women. And it's going to do so well.

So suck that, Warner Brothers. With all the love of Harry Potter and Hermione Granger and Hagrid and Dobby and Severus Snape in my heart, I politely disagree.

...:)

What is it about "Lost in Translation?"

2008-08-13T13:05:00.000-07:00

When I think of "Lost in Translation," I think of a movie that pioneered an entire army of ambiguous endings. Family dramas and friendship dramas began to spike in the indie world, at a time when indie movies were suddenly very important, leaving the epic, Spielbergian masterpiece behind. We began to see more movies like "Sideways" and "Junebug," movies that follow a couple of characters through a sort of elongated vignette, revolving not around plot but around individual discovery. Now, I know that "Lost in Translation" was not the first movie to have an overtly ambiguous ending. It was not the first movie to swap the idea of plot with the idea of people. But, it's the first movie that stands out in my mind when I think of the millenial indie drama. Before "Lost in Translation," there was "American Beauty." "The Hours." "A Beautiful Mind."Far From Heaven." Sweeping movies. Handsome movies. Movies with a lofty, dramatic perspective. "Lost in Translation" was one of the first movies to scale it way down. While "American Beauty" looks at people from the landscape of life and death, beauty and prejudice, young and old, now and then, "Lost in Translation" localizes its landscape to one particular, seemingly insignificant friendship that takes place in Tokyo, Japan. While movies like "American Beauty" pontificate on what it means to be alive, using symbolism, multiple story lines, and voiceover from the afterlife, "Lost in Translation" simply shows us one example, one that is not significant at all, and lets us decide for ourselves.

This is also what a movie like "Junebug" does, the 2005 drama in which Amy Adams plays a young, expectant mother with a green outlook on life. In "Junebug," we see one fam

ily and its many relationships, its little tragedies, how the members of the family react to outside stimulus, to things like faith and history. It ends on a sad but uplifting note, and instead of pondering the grandiosity of a movie like "American Beauty," with all of its wondrous interweavings and genius wrappings-up, we find ourselves thinking about our own family. It is then not until much later that we remember we saw a film at all. A similar reaction is brought on by the itty-bitty movie "Pieces of April," or the better-known comedy "Sideways." Movies like this don't become spectacles that we discuss at length over coffee or liquor, but little pockets in our hearts that grow deeper over time. "Lost in Translation" is one of these pockets for me, and I now find myself wondering why.

One of the most important parts, I think, of "Lost in Translation's" success, is that we, the audience members, get to watch the beginning, middle, and end of a friendship. While I can't prove that, there's nothing that proves me wrong, aside from, perhaps, the thing that Bob might have whispered into Charlotte's ear in the end. What could it be? It doesn't matter. It is simply a reminder that most friendships

are made up of the things we can't see, can't hear, can't point out from far away. They're not even made up of the way we feel about each other. They're made up of the things we experience together, as friends. The way that Bob and Charlotte feel about each other seems, in a way, inconsequential. It is never laid out in full. We all must agree that there is some sort of territoriality, though not the hostile kind, simply the kind that keeps us wanting the best for the ones we care about. The movie is made up of Bob and Charlotte's little interactions, the fact that they seem to understand each other at a deeper level than we'd expect. Their friendship almost seems to exist simply upon this notion: that Bob and Charlotte both, at this moment in their lives, need somebody to understand them. Once the purpose is served, and both seem to better understand themselves (for they seem to understand each other better than they understand themselves), the friendship must end. Tokyo is simply the place that it happens, the source of their initial bond, a landscape to influence the decisions they make throughout the day. Once the Tokyo trip is over, so ends the illusion and the friendship that served to teach them that life does not begin or end in any specific order, but instead, is just a series of relationships and the ways that they make us change.

These are just my musings, the things I think about while watching movies. I watched "Lost in Translation" this morning on the treadmill, and I couldn't get it out of my head. What is it with this movie? Nothing seems to happen. The dialogue is so sparse, so rarely the milestone of a scene. Yet, it moves us. It moves me. I'm interested in what other people think. If you have an opinion, let me know.

The Teen Beat

2008-08-12T13:22:00.000-07:00

Yes, I was sucked into the "Twilight" saga. I read it in a very brief period of time. That, plus the strange void I seemed to enter after seeing "The Dark Knight" for the first time, seemed to equal a hefty hiatus from the film blog. But I am back now, and I want to write about something different. I know I write about teen movies a lot, but that's only because they seem to be experiencing a strange uplift in the entertainment industry. With the onslaught of "Gossip Girl," the reign of "Juno," the Apatific "Superbad," the unveiling of "Twilight," "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist," "Youth in Revolt," and all of Michael Cera's bumbling glory, the teenager has become an inescapable entity. And the term teenager no longer pertains to a simple collection of years during one's lifetime. It is now a state of mind, an homage to the endless versions of yesteryear, each perception different than the last and often overwhelmingly so.

I wonder at this new obsession. Is it simply Hollywood's latest fad? We seem to have given up on the smart rom-com. That whole thing ended with "Love Actually" and will seemingly never resurface. The superhero movie is in the process of changing its complexion entirely. What was once an action-heavy color-fest is now a psychological dive into the world of alter-egos. The teen movie was abandoned in the early 2000s, at the back door of several loser flicks like "Drive Me Crazy" and "She's All That" and the bygone whimsy of "American Pie," "Ten Things I Hate About You," and "Get Over It." Between then and now, we've experienced the uprise of indie films, watched them disappear into the background, saw a craze in film franchises, and more Pixar than we could probably take. The great resurrector after all these years was probably "Superbad," mid-2007, which reminded us all exactly what it was to be in high school. "Juno" then solidified the trend in teen movies, proving that even the subject matter of a sixteen-year-old can be fodder for the Academy Awards. It also brought us Michael Cera, an actor who, alone, will probably pioneer an entire army of teen entertainment. With him, comes Kat Dennings, Anton Yelchin, Blake Lively, Jamie Bell, Jonah Hill, and Kristin Stewart. Not to mention those "High School Musical" kids. And this is all SANS the two most highly-anticipated movies of 2008, let alone the most highly-anticipated TEEN movies of 2008: "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" and "Twilight." Both based off of lucrative fiction for young people. Both starring handsome boys and vivacious girls, kissing scenes and grave situations, gunning in the genre of Fantasy.

The culture of young people, not only teens, but early twenty-somethings as well, has taken on a mind of its own. The days of thirty-year-old boyband members are over. We now have Zack Efron. For the twenty-somethings, there's Robert Pattinson, and for the itty-bitty-tween-base, Daniel Radcliffe. Among the girls, pop stars like Britney Spears who once ruled with pop-innocence, pop-dancing, pop-virginity, and TRL have been replaced by Disney creations like Hannah Montana, whose grasp has reached everything from school supplies to sold-out concerts. Young actresses are beginning to embody a new kind of gravitas. With all of this young person work out there, they're finally taken seriously. Not as child stars or 'younger-versions-of,' but as individual bodies of talent. I refer to Kristen Stewart, Emma Watson, Kat Dennings, and Ellen Page. Of course, there are more, but these are my favorites. They dress elegantly, speak with intelligence, stay out of the tabloids, and challenge themselves professionally. Their success leads to more roles for them to conquer, the more roles for them to conquer, the more success they incur, and so on and so on. More roles mean more movies, more television shows. The product? An influx of teen and young person oriented entertainment, and not just any entertainment, but QUALITY entertainment. Because these young people are being taken seriously, they take their careers seriously. This means that movies like "Superbad" and "Juno" are not the end of distinctive teen cinema. Okay, deep breath. The whole thing excites me.

And now, finally, I get to talk about "Twilight." *Sigh*

With "Twilight" comes the reincarnation of the evisceratingly handsome Robert Pattinson. In case you don't remember, he played Cedric Diggory in HP4, and now he's Edward Cullen the vampire that makes all human boys look like dandelion stems, and he's about to take over the world. OMG. Just wait. The draw, however, to the "Twilight" film, aside from the books' overwhelming popularity, is the quickly rising stardom of Kristen Stewart. Chances are, you've seen her in something, whether it be "The Messengers," "Into the Wild," "Panic Room," or "In the Land of Women." The film, directed by Catherine Hardwicke ("Thirteen" and "Lords of Dogtown") and written by Melissa Rosenberg (um, "Dexter") is bound to impress. Its hefty release date and future-franchise potential will surely brew the perfect amount of delirium. It will also, as I said earlier, launch Rob and Kristen into unbridled stardom. Plus, as the culmination of two other teen-oriented fantasy movies to be released this fall ("The City of Ember" in October and "HP6" in November, both novel adaptations), "Twilight" will mark the exciting beginning (and climactic end) of three film franchises (hopefully) that all revolve around young people: 1) "The City of Ember," book 1 of the Ember Series, books about a post-apocalyptic world in which all light has seemingly gone out; 2) "Harry Potter," which will end in the double-magnificence of Hallows I and II, something the world has been anticipating for over a decade; and finally, 3) the "Twilight" saga, a franchise that will hopefully be completed with three more exciting movies to fully chronicle the desperate love and chilling plights of Bella Swan and Edward Cullen.

Ah, to be young again. At least, deep down, I know that, if I really wanted to become an actor, I could find a very solid place among this new culture of teen entertainment. Meaning: I frequently get carded at R-rated movies. Look out, Blake Lively. Here I come.....;)

i'm sorry here's what i've been doing-->

2008-08-11T19:46:00.000-07:00

i am done now. promise. xoxo.

Review: "The Dark Knight"

2008-07-18T13:23:00.000-07:00

Christopher Nolan has created a movie that is darker, graver, and one thousand times better than I ever, in my wildest dreams, could have imagined. It is an incredibly grown-up movie, one boob or f-word away from an R-rating, somewhere near the intersection of drama, action, and horror. "The Dark Knight" is paced with the utmost restraint, revealing one scene after another like sand being poured from glass to glass. No spills, not even a trickle. Each exchange has a purpose, each moment equipped with an arsenal of foreshadowing and suspense. The movie builds upon these moments, growing immensely until it is no longer just a cohesive collection of wonderful scenes (like most good movies are); it is a force. Good movies make us feel a certain way. When a film is well-rounded in its writing, directing, acting, etc., it always leaves us with a sense of closure in the end, even if (like in "Lost in Translation") the ending is ambiguous. Good movies feel like brown paper packages and a simple piece of yarn. Everything is square and complete and clasped into a little bubble of perfection. "The Dark Knight" begins as a good movie and ends as a force. It's like the sky or the sun, something that exists on its own accord. It succeeds in the way a black hole succeeds, and by the end, a story about Bruce Wayne/the Batman becomes an ensemble drama about the people of Gotham City, their relationships, plights, madness, and pain. This is the best movie of the year so far.

The film is lead, without doubt, by the tour de force of Christian Bale. He is a masterful Bruce Wayne, and "The Dark Knight" is, essentially, about the undoing of Batman the hero. Batman is not a hero, but a guardian who must make decisions that nobody else can. It is not his eternal goodness that defines him (Bruce Wayne is human, and no Clark Kent) but his ability to do what must be done, regardless of the consequences. He trusts the people around him, and they trust him. Even if the whole of Gotham does not.

The film is stolen, however, by the late (and painfully missed) Heath Ledger. It is not a question of how he 'captures' the Joker in "The Dark Knight." It's not a question as to whether he's consistent or on his A-game, or what his methods are or whether or not this was the role that killed him. There are no questions. Heath's final completed role is a force, just like the movie, somehow separate from the finished product yet crucial to its success. Heath's Joker is a complete reinvention of the idea of Joker as villain. It is incomparable to Jack Nicholson's Joker, but not because it is inferior or superior in any way. Heath Ledger's Joker is a young man with no plan, no real idea of what's going on aside from a sadistic yearning for destruction and, as Gordon once said, "a taste for the theatrical." While negotiating with mob boss Sal Maroni, the Joker demands a payment of "Half." Half of what, exactly? Nobody knows. Not even the villain himself. The surrounding criminals laugh, assuming the clown means money. It becomes quite clear later on in the film, however, that money, things, and people mean zero to the Joker. The Joker describes himself as something of a dog chasing cars: that if he ever actually caught one he'd never know what to do with it. "Some men just want to watch the world burn," Alfred says. The Joker is an enigmatic character. He speaks his own unique, psychotic language, and he's frightening. He's frightening because of his smile, his laugh, his slithering childhood anecdotes. Because there's nothing in the world that he, himself, is frightened of. Not death, not pain, and definitely not the Batman. In the beginning of the movie, he tells the mob crew to kill Batman, that this will return Gotham to its original state. But the Joker does not want to kill the Batman. The Batman is far too much fun! Some small part of me believes that the Joker merely tells the criminals to kill the masked vigilante so that he can watch each one meet his uncanny demise. Sadistic, I know. This is the villain of "The Dark Knight."

Another stand-out performance in "The Dark Knight" comes from Aaron Eckhart, an actor who is good at being handsome and charming (like in "Thank You for Smoking"), but is not necessarily known for his dramatic character work. The transformation of Harvey Dent is, perhaps, one of the most enticing character transformations I've ever seen in a movie. He begins as the classic Eckhart gem: tall, masculine, devastatingly handsome, clever in the way that Alan Shore is clever. It is then revealed, however, that Harvey Dent is more than just a ballsy District Attorney. He brings down half the mob (with only a little help from Batman), and suddenly he's Gotham's 'White Knight,' a real hero with a face and an identity. He's also got Rachel Dawes on his arm (the new and improved Miss Dawes, via Maggie Gyllenhaal), a development that causes Bruce to wonder if, perhaps, the bat suit has unwillingly botched his chances. He throws a fundraiser for Dent, in hopes that the DA's heroic tendencies will eliminate the need for Batman in Gotham. His hopes are thwarted, however, with the Joker shows up, clad with cronies, knives, and semi-automatics. Instead of leaving the saving to Harvey Dent, Bruce is forced to incapacitate the handsome DA, hide him in a closet, and stuff the villains himself. I will not mention anymore on the transformation of Harvey. None of it will be given proper justice in this article. You will have to see it for yourself.

"The Dark Knight" is a movie that does not define a genre, but redefines it completely. Most people will say that it is not only a good superhero movie, but a good movie. I've already mentioned this. It is a good movie. It's a great movie. I'm seeing nominations in almost all of the Academy's major awards (maybe even a sure win, posthumously, for Mr. Ledger), including Best Picture of the Year. But, as I also said before, this is not merely a good movie. It's an experience. It changed the way I look at, not only superhero movies, but the state of cinema as an industry. That art can exist in the form of a superhero movie, and that wonderful cinema can be enjoyed by all audiences, not just the frequenters of an art house.

I know I've talked about the three major performances, and that's about it, but for whatever reason, this is what I was compelled to focus on. Of course, Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox and Michael Caine as Alfred Pennyworth are perfectly cast, intelligent overcast to an otherwise young and chaotic air. Maggie Gyllenhaal, as previously mentioned, brings a sultry sense of empowerment to the role of Rachel Dawes. In an article with the AV Club, she talked briefly about maintaining that empowerment in a film dominated by men. Her comments were quite refreshing, as the role of women in male superhero movies is rarely touched upon, and it's actually very interesting. The CGI goes without saying: sleek, dark, haunting. This is the kind of movie that makes me glad I love movies in the first place. Because I can sit here and think about "The Dark Knight" for hours on end--about its precision, terror, performances, writing, and scary originality of vision. Christian Bale says he'll do a third movie, but only sans Robin and if Nolan is on board. I certainly hope that it's cocked and locked, because it doesn't get much better than "The Dark Knight."

Dark Knight Approaching: Heath Ledger, Revisited

2008-07-15T16:35:00.000-07:00

We've all, at one point or another in our movie-watching careers, experienced moments of complete transcendence. Moments when you first see an actor, usually an actor you've never seen before, and you delve, head-over-heels, into a love affair for that one person's entire existence, and then there's just no going back. No going back to the way things were before he or she walked onto the screen. I've had epiphanies with Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep, Robert Downey Jr, Christian Bale, Kate Hudson, and countless others. They all gave me joy and sent me on movie benders that sometimes lasted for months. One of them, however, stands out in particular. I was young, fourteen years old, in a movie theater with twelve other fourteen year olds. It was opening weekend for "Ten Things I Hate About You." Allison Janney is there. "Kat. Cat! Meow." Julia Stiles flits from the shot , a combat-booted, ringlet-headed, full-fledged wafe. "As always, thank you for your excellent guidance. I'll let you get back to Reginold's quivering member." Nice . And then, enter my first really big Hollywood crush: Heath Ledger. "Only so we can have these moments together." Hello, smitten.

The day he died, I went home, opened a bottle of Australian Chardonnay, and held my glass up really high--to that one, particular moment. To his eyes, like cups of coffee, their fearless undercurrent. And now, the time has come. Midnight on Thursday (or Friday, whatever), I'll be court side to, quite possibly, the greatest superhero villain performance ever created. I will wonder how things could have been, at the career I've looked forward to following film by film all these years. There is a moment in the movie "Candy" in which Heath and Abbie Cornish have ditched their drab wedding reception for a quick bite to eat at the local McDonald's. "We're the coolest people in McDonald's," Abbie says, and Heath laughs, and there's this very real, familiar face up there on the screen looking on, making promises with the eyes. I think that, while "Candy" is not my favorite Heath movie by a long-shot, this scene will always be the scene I remember him by. If you get the chance, watch the movie. Even if only for this one moment of wonderful acting.

My favorite Heath movie (thus far) is, without a doubt, "A Knight's Tale." The movie itself is very fresh and exciting. I am, for whatever reason, glad that, before his untimely death, Heath was able to play a knight. It sounds corny, but think about it. Not every actor in the world is given the chance to play a knight, even if that knight's actual knighthood is fabricated. The character of William Thatcher/Sir Ulrich von Lichtenstein, no doubt, came with a crass potential for cliche. He could have been too eager, too pushy, all brawn and no brains. Could you imagine if Paul Walker had been handed the role? But Heath brought a signature vulnerability. The result is a surly but frightened young man, one unsure of his past but determined to make something of his future. He plays the handsome dreamer, but he has a fatal flaw: compassion for the weak. Compassion for the place that he came from: Cheapside, the dregs of Medieval society, worth nothing but the dime in his pocket and the friends by his side. His hubris is short-lived and quickly corrected. Heath is the reason that William Thatcher is so worthy of his loyal followers.

People talk about "Brokeback Mountain" quite a bit, as if its Heath's one and only achievement. I disagree with this mentality, but I do admire the caution, the subtlety, the slight of hand that he gave to the character of Ennis Del Mer. I did not like the movie as much as most people did. I thought it was long and sweeping and made up mostly of mountain scenery. But I did like Heath. I thought that the emotional restraint was so very in tune. He was there, inside of Ennis, calculating the way this man walked and talked and spat and drank and grieved and remembered and moved on. The whole time, however, you didn't see him. There was no Heath on the outside; he was merely stirring up brilliance from within. When I left the movie, I was quiet for a very long time. I wasn't pondering the depth of the film itself, which is really quite simple. I was pondering Heath Ledger's performance, the yearning chemistry between him and Jake. I was glad he finally took a role that demonstrated his talent to its fullest extent. At that moment, that's what I thought.

I know now, however, that true talent is not released in any one fledgling moment. It is a process that, over time, cracks up from the surface of something raw and something good. The innate ability to do anything comes first, and then it is honed, and then, once its basic potential is mastered, something begins to squirm underneath. It comes alive and breaks through gradually: one foot, one hand, a belly button at a time. Eventually, the monster is loose, and you never knew until this moment, that something so vast lurked within. As I anticipate "The Dark Knight," I can only wonder: is Heath's monster waiting in a film canister somewhere in the form of the villainous Joker? Is this what he was meant to do--truly meant to do in his time here on Earth? I don't believe in fate, but I do believe in the soul finding its one, true purpose. Heath's soul has moved on. It's somewhere else, sharing cocktails with Edie Sedgwick and James Dean, looking in on us from time to time. But perhaps, at some point before its departure, it met its final aim.

Review: "Hellboy 2: The Golden Army"

2008-07-13T22:46:00.001-07:00

When compared to superheroes like Superman or Batman, Hellboy, at first, seems to be lacking a certain slant of novelty that such powerful DC wonders have come to embody. This could be for many reasons, most notably, however, that "Hellboy" is not bred with a fantastic sense of setting. It takes place in a variety of locales, none so archetypal as Metropolis or Gotham City, and lacks that sort of color and ingenuity that most associate with comic books today.

BUT, that is not to say the "Hellboy" movies do not make up for their dubious settings with plenty of other fancy tricks. "Hellboy 2" is, well, excellent. I liked the original, but the sequel is better. The plot is stronger. The villains are scarier. The CGI has graduated from nominal to stupendous. This is all not to mention Ron Perlman, who, similar to Robert Downey Jr in "Iron Man," seems to have been born, quite specifically, to play the titular character. "Hellboy 2," much like its predecessor, is filled with one-liners and frantic reactions that, if acted by any other human being, would appear completely overdone. Perlman has created a demonic teddy bear--a beast from some Hell dimension that drinks, cusses, pities, reacts, and makes love just like a regular human. It's genius. I am trying to imagine what it would all be like had they cast Vin Diesel as Hellboy. No, I am trying NOT to imagine what it would all be like had they cast Vin Diesel as Hellboy.

"You can have any brew you want...as long as it's a Corona." Blerg.

Anyway, the plot of "Hellboy 2" is somewhat elaborate, based off an ancient myth told to a very young Hellboy by father figure Broom. According to myth, there is a Golden Army locked away somewhere and that it's controlled by a mystical crown. This Golden Army is said to be indestructible, made of magic and fancy metals that would annihilate upon demand. A truce has been struck between the leaders of the two worlds, splitting the crown into three pieces: one for the humans, two for the creatures of the dark. This truce has apparently been going strong for a long time. Now, however (and without doubt), the truce has been foiled by creepy-face Prince Nuada (Luke Goss) who has set out to steal said crown pieces from the humans with plans to wipe them out completely via brawn of the Golden Army. He's already stolen one, from an auction, due mostly to the hefty appetites of...tooth fairies.

This, of course, is where Hellboy comes in. He, along with pyrokinetic Agent Liz Sherman (Selma Blair), Abe Sapien (Doug Jones), and newcomer Johann Krauss (Seth MacFarlane) of the Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense are sent in to cut Nuada off at the pass. It's all very action packed. The special effects (especially the fight scenes between Hellboy and...anybody) are incredibly well done. Prince Nuada shows off the ninja skills that we saw in the original "Hellboy" through the mechanical creepiness of Kroenen. The monsters at the Troll Market (yes, the Troll Market) all but define the inventive genius of Guillermo del Toro. Oozy things. Tall ferocious things. It's almost like he's trained his mind specifically to break free from the humanoid rules of anatomy. There's even one moment, after Hellboy fights some giant, green, pod-headed mythical thinger, when all of that fancy CGI cracks wide open into a situation surprisingly whimsical. It's not anything I can explain to you here. It's something that, in the vein of Terry Gilliam's "The Brother's Bloom," does things with CGI that invoke a beautiful and childlike sense of fancy. This was my favorite part of the film.

And all of these things are central to the movie's success, I assure you; however, when all is said and done "Hellboy 2" is a love story. Liz Sherman is one of the more interesting female comic book characters I've stumbled upon, and Selma Blair does her a good deal of justice. Her chemistry with Perlman is sweet and surprisingly human. I love it when two actors bring this kind of chemistry to their roles. If I can relate to the relationship between a pyrokinetic FBI agent and a big, red mythical creature from a dimension far away, then I can believe anything. It's all very touching. There's even some Barry Manilow. Not what you'd expect from a superhero movie with the word 'Hell' in the title, is it?

Review: "Hancock"

2008-07-06T13:27:00.000-07:00

It's always kind of annoying when bad choices happen to good movies. Like, in "Hancock," for example. "Hancock" is a film expertly cast. Will Smith is always on his A-game. For somebody who started his career as the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, he is a surprisingly serious actor--one who is WAY overdue for that shiny gold statue--and he just keeps getting better. Hancock, the man, is grimy and disheveled. And it's not like he's just a little bit grimy and disheveled. He's practically that weird homeless guy on the corner with a tin cup. He is uncouth and inappropriate, a potty mouth with a flair for, not the theatrical, but the destructive. His antics frequently cost the city of Los Angeles somewhere in the several millions. Plus, most people are growing to detest the troubled hero-type, describing him as little more than an asshole.

If anything, "Hancock," is a sort of superhero movie with consequences. You know in "Spider-man 2" when Spidey destroys the monorail train, or when Doctor Octopus rolls a ball of burning energy into the river? Well, did anybody stop to wonder what the mayor of New York City might be thinking? Or the people when they realize how many of their tax dollars are going into cleaning up these gargantuan messes? Hmm. The makers behind "Hancock" did.

The film was very fresh and exciting. The special effects were unique. I liked Hancock's flying style, that it was sloppy and human, even when he wasn't totally hammered. And I liked the story. Sort of. Actually, I liked the first forty-five minutes or so. For the first forty-five minutes or so, the movie was about John Hancock, about his shabby disposition, his spent outlook on life, and his hardened struggles with the rest of mankind. After the first forty-five minutes or so, I'm not really sure, but I think the writers might have lit the crack pipe. And the last Act or so of the movie is really nothing more than a jumble of information bombs. Explosion after explosion after explosion, and suddenly, the movie isn't about John Hancock anymore. It's as if the writers abandoned the story at this point, that they really wanted to do this particular thing with the characters, and even when it didn't work, they just kept hacking away at it, and then, by the time they realized it REALLY didn't work, it was too late. And I'm sure there was a deadline to adhere to. With these kinds of summer movies, there always is. Essentially, the writers and filmmakers made a choice they couldn't stick to, and it ended up ruining a perfectly good movie about a rogue superhero attempting to relate with the people around him.

In the movie, John Hancock is a singular Superman type. He is super strong, intuitive, bulletproof, all that. Only he is not like Superman, because everyone thinks he's an asshole. He is rarely graceful when performing heroics, and the ungrateful people of L.A., at this point, would rather shoulder heftier crime rates than deal with Hancock's expensive tendencies. Eventually, however, Hancock saves the life of P.R. rep Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman), and things begin to take a turn. Ray convinces Hancock to let him handle the superhero's representation from now on. Hancock does a stint in the brig, gets out on 'good behavior,' and starts to make friends with Ray's wife Mary (Charlize Theron) and his son Aaron (Jae Head). Anyway, all of this is super interesting. It delves deep into the psychology of Hancock's torment. It does not attempt to solve his past, but it questions what may have happened to him on the night he supposedly changed. See, Hancock cannot remember anything about his life before an accident he had about eighty years ago--the accident that left him different than everyone else. This is all in the first part of the movie, the part that I really liked.

There is one particular moment, however, after all of this wonderful set-up, in which everything takes a questionable turn. It's possibly the worst choice made all year, as far as movies are concerned. And I won't tell you, because it technically gives the ending away. Though I'm not sure what kind of an ending it really is. In my opinion, it's a bad one, but I'm sure my opinion will not resonate with everyone.

"Hancock" is a decent movie. It succeeds in some places and fails in others. As a summer blockbuster, it's a pretty big disappointment, because in the end, it doesn't live up to the chops it prepared us for. By 2008, we've all seen what special effects can do, and we've all seen a million-and-one superhero movies. We need something with consistency, darkness, and brains. "Hancock" didn't have all of these things. But what can you do? Not all movies about tortured men with super powers (or billions of dollars) can be as good as "The Dark Knight."

Which, obviously, I haven't even seen yet. But I have pretty high expectations.

DVDs to Love 3

2008-06-24T21:57:00.000-07:00

"Charlie Bartlett" (2007): Wealthy teenager Charlie Bartlett was just expelled from his last chance at private school for pedaling fancy, fake I.D.s to his peers. Now, it's time for a go at public school, where he meets sweet, rebellious Susan Gardner (Kat Dennings), school Bully Murphy Bivens (Tyler Hilton), and Susan's father Principal Nathan Gardner (Robert Downey, Jr. in a role that was likely written with him in mind). This movie seems like a kid movie and was poorly marketed to play out like one. It is, in fact, rated R, and there's nothing 'kiddie' about it. Its titular character is played by Anton Yelchin, whose convincing turn as the shaken, good-natured teen comes leaps and bounds from his role in the heinous "House of D." Charlie, in an innovative plea for popularity, begins to hold counseling sessions in the boy's bathroom while selling prescription drugs to his troubled classmates. Downey gives a provocative performance as the alcoholic principal who fears his job and his students. Coming off a bad divorce and even a stint in rehab, Nate Gardner and his plight as father/principal/mentor are a driving force for much of the film's tension. "Charlie Bartlett" is full of humor, and also sensitivity to the touchier subjects that teenagers have always faced, including depression, peer pressure, sexuality, and low self esteem. It also stars Hope Davis as Charlie's daft and medicated mother. This was an excellent movie.

"In Bruges" (2008) I reviewed this movie several months ago, and now it's finally on DVD. Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson play Ray and Ken, Irish hitmen sent into hiding in Bruges, Belgium after a hit goes terribly wrong. Much of the movie revolves around the ennui of Bruges, known as the most well-preserved Medieval city in Belgium, where fat Americans attempt to climb narrow bell towers and the most exciting thing to do is sight-see. "In Bruges" is dark but mostly comical, delving heartily into the wealth of talent in its cast. Ralph Fiennes is droll and vile as Harry the boss in London. Colin Farrell is daft but troubled, shouldering an albatross that I won't give away to you here, and Ken is the jaded widower who has seen and done most evil in the world and has now come to a considerable bargain with it all. Fanciful, whimsical, like a sort of fairy tale movie, "In Bruges" is wildly entertaining, to say the least.

"I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" (2003) Clive Owen is always skilled at giving surly madmen a certain vulnerability that distinguishes the serial killers from the misunderstood. His characters are often misanthropic hero types with hearts that have hardened almost completely, aside from one sink hole made of something in the past. I refer most specifically to his characters in "Shoot 'em Up" and "Closer," as well as in this little number. "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead" is a cold and distant movie about a man who disappears for several years only to return upon his brother's mysterious death. It's obvious that there's a "History of Violence" thing going on, because unidentified mob members and local pools of gossip have him pegged as a once-violent man who will go to any length to achieve his revenge. Ultimately, "I'll Sleep" is a story of transcendence and the familiarities of the past, which can sometimes fool us into thinking that change is impossible.

"Wonder Boys" (2000) Here is a film that, if you haven't seen it, you're missing something incredible and living and evolving and just like everything you could ever hope to encounter when watching a movie. Michael Douglas is in rare form as Grady Tripp, an aging novelist/Creative Writing Professor at a small, New England college whose last novel "The Arsonist's Daughter" struck gold seven years ago...and has yet to see a successor. "Wonder Boys" is but one slice of this difficult man's life. In it, he takes under his wing a troubled student named James Leer (Tobey Maguire) whose talent for fiction-writing vastly outweighs his talent for social situations. They come together at a cocktail party for Word Fest, a fancy sort of event in which writers and related literati congregate to celebrate all that is...words. Sooner or later, Tripp's editor shows up, the sardonic and intermittently gay Terry Crabtree (Robert Downey, Jr.). He's got a six-foot-tall transvestite named Antonia on his arm and a quickening desire to get ahold of Tripp's new book. The problem is, however, that the new book, at roughly 2600 pages, is nowhere near fruition. Plus, Tripp's wife just walked out on him, not to mention the affair he's been having with the Chancellor's wife (Frances McDormand). To put things simply, he's been quite unable to concentrate lately, and the result is a fantastic movie about the epiphany of one man and the people that surround him.

Weirdest Double Feature Ever.

2008-06-23T09:44:00.000-07:00

"Teeth" is an indie horror film, and in it, a high school virgin discovers a set of teeth in her vagina. "Sunshine" is an off-beat sci-fi film, in which a group of scientists and astronauts fifty years into the future attempt to reignite the dying Sun. The two films are seemingly unrelated: separate genres, separate leagues entirely. "Sunshine" exhibits an established director in his most creatively exuberant hour; whereas, "Teeth," with its cast of no-names and a director as virginal as its title character, has barely caused a blip on the radar.

So what brings the two together? Well, seemingly the fact that both titles are obscure enough that I had to type "movie" after them in order to find images on Google. But no. It's very simple actually: Originality in vision, style, and execution. While "Teeth" is shot simply, cheaply, and fueled by the pitfalls of Christian suburbia, "Sunshine" is, in itself, an action sci-fi film for those jaded by the action sci-fi film. Both render the rules of their genres obsolete: "Teeth," by using the qualities of a B-horror film and adapting them into a stylish tale of empowerment for teen girls; "Sunshine," by trading the plight of an action hero and the bravado of "Armageddon" for a deeply psychological game in which the twists could not be spun with more mastery.

In any event, this double feature will be sure to give you plenty to muse over with your fellow film-obsessed. It also guarantees crazy, detailed dreams in which you may be attempting to escape a deep space apocalypse while nursing a twisted love story with Cillian Murphy.

"Teeth" (2007)
Here is a movie that most people haven't heard of...or are too nervous to pick up off the shelf. The premise is pretty daunting. A quiet suburb borders a nuclear power plant. Its inhabitants range from the derelict to the celibate. Christian teens wear red rings to symbolize their purity and stalwart abstinence, and they're lead by the pretty but daft virgin Dawn, played with a multitude of daring by Jess Wiexler, an actress you have likely never seen before. Female sexuality is presented with, not homophobia, but xenophobia, as if women are not subjects of biology, but objects of the utmost suspicion. We are the unabashed commiters of original sin and should protect our sacred modesty until our wedding night. Dawn, however, like many girls her age, cannot ignore her sexuality forever. She enlists a love interest named Tobey, and even kisses him while they swim in the lake. He is handsome and sturdy, a perfect future husband. There are a few drawbacks to the equation, however. Most notably: Dawn is unaware that her blessed love womb is endowed with more than just virginity. And it's called Vagina Dentata.

So, anyway, after the swimming and the kissing in the lake, Tobey starts moving a little to fast, and an attempted rape scene gets ugly. What horrors ensue, I can't bear to describe. I will say, however, that some of the most disturbing images I've ever seen in a film fall severed to a blanketed surface several times throughout this film. And while "Teeth" is a movie of bold, usually outrageous horror, it left me feeling strangely empowered. Perhaps it was the brave performance of Jess Wiexler, or the idea that evolution might just help us girls out yet. Teen queen Dawn becomes a sort of female super hero in my eyes. The kind you really really do not want to $%@& with. Especially if you're a man who simply can't keep it in his pants.

*
"Sunshine" (2007)
There were two things that drove me to rent this movie: Cillian (who's ALWAYS good, because he can be either snake-like and creepy or quiet-eyed and sexy) and Danny Boyle (who did great things for zombie movies in 2002). "Sunshine" is now turning out to be one of my very favorite science fiction movies. It takes place in space, 2057. The sun has begun to burn out indefinitely, causing a solar winter back on Earth. Some time prior, a ship called Icarus I was sent to the Sun with the goal of dropping a nuclear bomb the size of Manhattan into its core. Theoretically, the bomb would reignite the sun, or, more accurately speaking, ignite a sort of star inside of a star--one with enough capacity to warm the Earth. After the first mission failed for mysterious reasons, Icarus II is sent for a second try, the last try, as every last scrap of nuclear material on the planet has gone into its vital success.

Aboard the Icarus II is a team of eight scientists and astronauts, including Murphy as Capa, the resident Physicist and only team-member who understands the true ramifications of their mission, Rose Byrne as Cassie, the even-tempered peace-keeper among the ailing crew, and Hiroyuki Sanada as Kaneda, the Captain of Icarus II with a steady hand and level head. Other cast members include Cliff Curtis as Searle, Chris Evans as Mace, Benedict Wan as Trey, Troy Garity as Harvey, and Michelle Yeoh as Corazon. I only mention their names because much of "Sunshine's" success squirms to life through its ensemble cast. The action unfurls on many levels, through human error, death, and disaster. The real tension, however, comes from the characters, how they've been written, and how they're portrayed.

The most important parts of "Sunshine" are those in which the characters recognize the inevitable gravity of the task at hand. At times, life seems to go on quite normally. The crew members talk and steer the ship. They tend to the oxygen garden. They visit the resident psychologist. But these moments of seeming bliss are interceded by those of unimaginable misfortune. One degree of miscalculation leads to a damaged ship and the death of a crew member. Suicidal tendencies overcome one, while fire destroys the oxygen supply for them all. The mission has gone from one-stop shop to a near-rescue mission when the crew stumbles upon a distress call from Icarus I. Countless events ensue, each one as unexpected as the last. Each one taking its toll on the characters one by one. And "Sunshine" becomes a deeply psychological journey, one less futuristic than it is humanistic. In the end, I was so impressed, that I wanted to watch it again. I hadn't expected to be so surprised by a genre that has outwardly lost all recognition.

*

At the end of the double feature, I had come to the conclusion that I wouldn't be sleeping well that night. I didn't. It was, however, worth it. The theme of the night turned out to be 'Weirdest, Most Pleasant Surprises.' I'd do it all again in a heartbeat.

Tonight, however, it's "Charlie Bartlett" and "Monster's Ball." How's that for a change of pace?

Everyone in this family needs to just calm down and eat some fruit or something: "Signs," Revisited

2008-06-17T18:30:00.000-07:00

After all of that M. Night/"The Happening" hullabaloo, I (naturally) went to the video store to pick up some of his older creations. "The Sixth Sense" was checked out (go figure). I've seen "The Village" so many times that I'm beginning to understand what those derelicts were thinking (problematic). "Unbreakable" features on TBS at least 28 days a month (plus, Samuel L. Jackson is annoying me)...and, alert me if I'm wrong, but "The Lady in the Water" just has too much Bryce going on (you know what I mean). That left "Signs," and when I watched it today, surround sound in full swing, all alone in el basemento, I remembered what it was that made me love M. Night in the first place.

"Signs" is a thousand times better than "The Sixth Sense." It baffles me that the latter made it to #89 in the AFI's Top 100 in 100 last year. Not that I trust their taste implicitly (GET OVER CITIZEN KANE), but come on. "The Sixth Sense" is a quiet, well-acted, expertly-directed ghost drama. I like it, but I've never had the impulse to watch it twice in a row. Like I did today. With "Signs." As soon as the crop circle movie was over, I had this feeling like I wanted to watch it again...and again...and again. This is the movie we should watch when we want to see what kind of a director M. Night really is. He is a quiet directer. He is, contrary to popular belief, unadorned, sans glitz, and he tells stories with his camera much like Kevin Brockmeier tells stories with his prose: never at length, from familiar perspectives, glancing from space to space, covering all angles, and surprising us, not so much with terror or the slicing of a violin, but with little pieces of the human soul, pieces that distill and disappear like snowflakes on the sleeve of your sweater.

My favorite part about "Signs" is Mel Gibson. I know he's got a bad wrap and everything, but this was pre-crazy-Mel-with-the-beard, and I like him in this movie. He makes it for me, a product of perfect casting. The character of Graham Hess comes with many dimensions. He is a man who's been stripped of his wife, his faith, and now his home has been commandeered by what some are calling the end of the world. His brother Merrill (Joaquin Phoenix) is around to help with the kids, living in a room over the garage. The kids, Morgan (Rory Culkin) and Bo (Abigail Breslin) are growing wary of the life their father leads, and they notice his lightless eyes better than anyone. Graham knows it, too, but he's not willing to come clean. He somehow feels responsible for his wife's death, not because he is, but because he once believed in a god that let it happen in the first place. He cannot forgive God. He lives every day trying to get past it. He does not want to be called 'father' anymore, but the members of the town seem so reluctant to call him anything else, that we can only infer what he means to them all. It's a very sad story, and the wrinkles in Mel's face as he looks past the signs, the curtains that lift and close behind his eyes, revealing only portions at a time--they all really work. Looking back on it all, it would have been nice to see "Signs" get any kind of Oscar recognition. Perhaps a nod for Mel. He did such a fantastic job bringing this small film to life.

And that's another thing: small films. Many people seem to be under the delusion that M. Night Shyamalan is trying to make blockbusters, and maybe it's because of the poor choices that have been made concerning opening dates, but none of it's true. M. Night Shyamalan's movies are rarely of blockbuster caliber. None of them are big or booming or special effecty at all. His films are about careful scene work. They're about people talking and not talking during periods of crisis. He has a knack for directing news media clips and for writing the stories of strained relationships.

In "Signs," the strained relationship lies in the heart of the Hess household. Something bad has happened. It shook the foundation, and the family must deal with it somehow. Morgan is the older brother, played with commanding, Culkin sway by little Rory. He is curious, not defiant, but steadfast, always ready to stand up for himself, his sister, and the way things used to be. Bo is the little sister. She is played by a very young, pre-"Little Miss" Breslin whose giant eyes shine like orbs. Bo is intuitive, sometimes omniscient. She always seems to see what the others do not. Her water obsession says something about the unusual way she views the world. And then there's Merrill. I like it when Joaquin Phoenix does vulnerable, because he does it well, and even though Merrill seems strong and hard and weathered well, he is still, compared to his older brother, a very young man. He carries a fierce love for Bo and Morgan--and for Graham, whom he sees as a sort of fallen idol, the man he's always wanted to be, now mangled and tossed on the shore. He spends most of the movie taking control, while his brother stands idly by in his pain. By the end, however, Merrill realizes that he, too, can conjure faith, even if from a man that has cast all belief to the horizon.

"Signs" is a powerful work in characters. The film itself, as a piece of art, contains strong camera work and a vast intuition on M. Night's part toward the subject of emptiness. How can a family, so bereft, come together in a time of human catastrophe? For a time, they're drawn apart, separated by things that would otherwise seem inane. But the thing I love most about M. Night's films is the harmony created in the end of them all. Even when they start with separation and loss, pain and the crucial uncertain--they always end on a shimmer of hope. And this is something we can all understand.

Review: "The Happening"

2008-06-14T14:04:00.000-07:00

I was extremely comforted, though not necessarily surprised, to find out that M. Night Shyamalan's latest endeavor, "The Happening," is, indeed, a very successful film.

And I'm not the only one (rogerebert.com). Haters to the left.

Anyway, during my columnist days, I wrote a trio of columns entitled "The Critics Suck Trilogy," and its main focus is the plight of M. Night Shyamalan. His plight is induced by a little something I like to call the 'M. Night Buzz,' a phenomenon that affects lots of movies--most notably those written, directed, and produced by Shyamalan himself. To be brief, the 'M. Night Buzz' is a buzz created by critics, wannabe film buffs, and an ignorati of entertainment pundits that successfully botches the outlook of a film by deciding what an audience member will think of a film before he or she even enters the theater. This creates a word-of-mouth bash-fest on the film in question, usually causing a box office fiasco, and, in M. Night's case, a career that has (wrongfully) become little more than a punchline.

And the buzz continues with "The Happening," a film that will make uninformed viewers grumble grumble because they weren't really paying attention to the important parts, though it is probably the most effortless, concise piece of writing in the Shyamalan arsenal. Consider the comic timing of an abandoned model home in rural Pennsylvania, complete with faux glasses of orange juice and plastic facades in the bookcases. Consider the nuance in the performances of Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Daschenal, the way they seem to flit past the obvious and interact so delicately with one another. And now, consider these soft delicacies intertwined with the sheer creativity of the way that M. Night frightens us: an airborne, unidentifiable "toxin" that causes its victims to become disoriented and then to commit suicide. "The Happening"is a terribly familiar kind of suspense tale, one that simply stews in its lack of finite explanation until it reaches an abrupt but stirring end.

The premise of the film is, by far, the simplest of all the M. Night premises. Unlike "Lady in the Water" or "Signs," there is no vast time line of events, no real knots to untangle on the way to the closing credits. Instead, "The Happening" begins in Central Park with a pandemic of stillness and strange suicides. Before we know it, construction workers are jumping from their platforms, and cops are shooting themselves in the streets. Mind you, none of this happens in pandemonium. It is all handled quite calmly. In fact, the entire movie uses such admirable restraint that it almost feels like a novel.

Wahlberg and Deschanel play Elliot and Alma Moore. Elliot is a schoolteacher, and Alma is his hesitant, guarded wife. As the case with all M. Night tales, "The Happening" involves a human tale beneath the darkness: insecurity of a delicate, undecided marriage. After the event in Central Park, the Moores, living in Philiadelphia, board a train to Harrisburg with family friend Julian (John Leguizamo) and his daughter Jess. But once word gets out that Harrisburg might be hit, too, the conductors lose contact with their base, and the passengers are stranded to a small, rural town. From then on, the only goal is to escape the northeast, where the mysterious attacks seem to be confined. Elliot discusses with strangers the possibility that vegetation could be responsible for the attacks--that its only defense against endless human assault is the release of a deadly neurotoxin. Is this really what's happening? Nobody knows. I think that's the purpose behind the title. Sure, it seems a little contrived, but the uncertainty is severe. Anything more specific would pollute the film's ambiguous nature.

There will always be nay-sayers, and I will always be here to defy them. M. Night Shyamalan, buzz-ridden or not, continues to be one of the most daring and imaginative directors of our time. While his films may not resonate with everyone, one cannot deny that they are always unique, whimsical, and unparalleled. I look forward to his next achievement.

Technologically Advanced: "Gossip Girl" (TV) and "Cloverfield," Pure Genius

2008-06-11T17:10:00.000-07:00

Gossip Girl here, giving you the DL on all of the hidden, most unexpected genius of the film and television elite. In a world where the upper echelon of entertainment has become an artistic cluster fuck in indie film and HBO, it's sometimes difficult to strain the flair from the bare. But, as always, I have my own opinions to flaunt. I also have a tendency for the underdog. I like to find innovation in things that some might view as...sophomoric, at best. In any event, I'd like to talk about two of my favorite new jabs in film and television and why I think they bring something spicy to the table. Disagree if you want. I don't mind. You know you love me.

XOXO.

"Gossip Girl." Let's be honest. It is unlikely that anyone reading this right now has indulged in the guilty pleasure that is the plight of Serena Van der Woodsen. So...what are you waiting for? The genius of "Gossip Girl" lies in its complete and total embrace of the modern teen lifestyle. The show is made of a reckless abandon, a knowledge that, at this point in the post-WB-Buffy-Dawson's Creek world, there really is nothing a TV show aimed at the Millenial can do but put it all out on the table. And by all, I mean TEEN CHIC CENTRAL.

The OMFG marketing ploy (see above) is fabulously genius. Why? Because the entire show is set in the world of cyber space. It's basically a giant myspace page with a schweeet wardrobe and Sunday brunch at the Palace Hotel. It's narrated by the ubiquitous Gossip Girl, an anonymous social queen who knows everything about everybody who's anybody in the elite Upper East Side of Manhattan. Teenagers walk around with their snazzy cell phones in hand, jumping at the sound of a hasty text cluing them into GG's latest discoveries. The sex is ample, the poison served on the rocks, and there is definitely some envelope-pushing--but the show is mostly about the determination of one socialista to change her ways from drunken, moneyed whore to well-dressed, merciful dame. Plus, you have to admit it, the pathologic social habits of privileged teens in New York is a lot more interesting than the irritating tans of privileged a-holes in LA. Although, I do think that some of the post-modern, edgy, fourth-wall-breakage of "The O.C." was also kind of genius. Either way, "Gossip Girl" is like a glitzy AIM conversation full of three-dimensional characters, most that have plenty to deal with BESIDES the stereotypical plights of high society's youth. It's just shallow enough to work, just smart enough to make a killing. XOXO. A teen show with innards.

I've seen "Cloverfield" twice, and, both times, it shook me. Like "Gossip Girl," "Cloverfield" takes a few hints from the Millenial/Gen. Y lifestyle: fancy cell phones, gorgeous flats with concrete walls and steel columns, and a neurotic flare for documenting EVERYTHING. I tell you. My sister takes pictures of EVERYTHING. Her room is a haven for black and whites. And "Cloverfield" reminds me of that. It's genius, however, lies in the way that it reveals its fears: Through the creation of Twenty-something Survival Skills 101. The characters in "Cloverfield," a bunch of, IDK, twenty-three year olds, are so believable that, from the first explosion in Midtown, I swear I could have been any one of them. The girl dating her best friends handsome older brother. The faux-Bohemian type passing through to say hello, the unsure, young professional with a hasty future, or even the camera man, a semi-clueless BFF with a knack for comic relief.

Some of the best stuff right now is a product of the C. Guest Mockumentary. "Cloverfield" is, I think, one of the keenest derivatives so far. Not only is it shot in the hand held style, wreaking imperfection in every shot, but it's also mostly improvised, and I LOVE that we get a glimpse of the monster. I think that it's a common misconception that the monster should be kept a secret. The monster and its icky lice thingers often reveal themselves in shards, but there are moments of the loftiest display. These displays are then met with reactions. Characters on a seemingly bravado quest to save the Queen Bee--the friendships seem real. So much is at stake, and that makes it that much scarier. In a movie like "The Ruins" or "The Mist," the pay-off really is just so minimal, because the interpersonal relationships among the characters are not there. When you can really relate to what it's like to care about someone, and then you can relate to how it would feel to watch that person die in a flash of red. That's fear. Plus, the shaky cam is no slouch either, and there's really nothing like that swaggering J.J. Abrams style.

My Perfect Day: a la Movie Scenes

2008-06-04T16:35:00.000-07:00

Okay, so this is sort of like borrowed material. I found a link on IMDB to an article from the Misfortune Cookie Blog (http://misfortune-cookie.blogspot.com), and I thought it would be way fun to emulate it here. In the article, said-blogger gives us what she thinks would be a perfect day, composed of movie scenes from start to finish. So, I thought about it, and I made my own perfect day...Only I decided to add one tiny, little change: bringing TV into the mix--since I love TV. Anyway, what do you think?

GOOD MORNING: "Enchanted" (2007)
If only I could make a dress out of curtains. And summon vermin with a simple melody. Also, if only I got joy out of chores. Most of all, the idea of waking up so refreshed, wearing a big, fancy dress on Patrick Dempsey's couch (yummy) with such refreshed motivation...it's heavenly. I would also like to welcome each morning with the flawless vocals of Miss almost-princess Giselle. Listen to those high notes. Impressive!

BREAKFAST TIME: "Gilmore Girls" (TV) (2000)
What better way to start the day than with a stack of pancakes at Luke's Diner? I certainly can't think of one. With witty, poppy banter to keep my lips moving and the company of Lorelei, Rory, Babette, Kirk, Taylor, Lane, Miss Patty, Dean, Jess...Oh, how the list grows. Not to mention, the service, which is like a lumberjackier version of Chip 'n Dales, via Luke's gorgeous bod dealing coffee by the pot. Hubba hubba, Lorelei. How did it take you four whole seasons?

OFF TO WORK: "The Shop Around the Corner" (1940)
Let me just say, the last thing I'd want to be is a temp at the Global Credit Association in "Clockwatchers." Parker Posey or not, I don't even care. What I really want to be doing is running a toy company while simultaneously an accidental grown-up via carnival game. That would be awesome. But seriously, seriously. I can't do that. So, instead, I'm clerking at Matuschek's and falling in love with my pen pal (and concurrent co-worker), a man I seemingly hate, but, let's be honest, we're talking Jimmy Stewart here.

LUNCH HOUR: "When Harry Met Sally..." (1989)
Five words: I'll have what she's having. What better way to spend my lunch than with the winsome Harry Burns? The conversation is interesting, always climactic, and my hair looks amazing. Also, there's no better lunch than that one you have with a new friend who will one day turn out to be the one.

HAPPY HOUR: "Sex and the City" (TV) (1998)
Oh, I don't have a specific moment, but I do have a specific drink: Cosmopolitan. Give me trendy New York ambience and a tall, cold glass of pink, my fabulous friends and girl-talk galore. I happen to enjoy the voice over, the "metaphorically speaking," the Mr. Big-isms. And I enjoy the happy hours. Cocktails on me, and, as Samantha might say...hold the tails, boys. You know!

DINNER TIME: "The Graduate" (1967)
Yeah, I said it. I want to stuff my face with burgers and fries, at the drive-in, zipped up in that hot, little red car with Benjamin Braddock. I guess that means being post-titty-tassels, crying in the midst of jeering scoundrels, but whatever. Dustin Hoffman was a hottie in those days. You have to agree. And that stunt he pulls in the end..."ELAINE! ELAINE! ELAINE!" Oh, the romance. And all because of a couple tears and a dinner at the drive-in.

NIGHT OUT: "200 Cigarettes" (1999)
So, apparently it's New Year's Eve. No big deal. I never said it wasn't. Anyway, this is my chance to party with the hot, goth Casey Affleck and to talk with that nucky* New York burr. Oh, and fish nets. "200 Cigarettes" is all about being young, doing stupid shit, the kind you look back at with a quiet smirk. I'll hang with all my colorful characters and shake up the new year in high heel shoes. What else would I rather be doing, if I could do anything in the whole, wide movie world?

*nucky: adj. (invented by me); exactly what it sounds like, nucky

Drainage: "There Will Be Blood," Revisited

2008-05-26T19:05:00.000-07:00

I had another viewing of "There Will Be Blood" this evening, and I have to tell you, either I am going completely crazy, seeing things that don't exist, pulling tragic pieces of evidence out of the thin, smoky air--or, there's something going on in this script besides oil, greed, and the Bible. There's something big and deep, and it's hardly palpable enough to grab onto.

Why do I say all this? I don't know. Every since I saw this movie, it has haunted me. My lack of understanding and yet desperation toward knowledge, toward meaning. It haunts me the same way "The Waste Land" haunted my English 507 lecturer. She'd pain, she'd toil, and she'd beg us for answers. It was stupid, of course, because she was the one with all the answers, but she was so desperate that she began turning to her students for just a drop of understanding. We all wrote papers, and we all tried. But, of course, an undergrad's paper on HURRY UP PLEASE IT'S TIME isn't going to carry any real relevance. It may gesture to something that, in its purest state of being, holds the meaning of everything--in the poem, in the world, in the universe, in time, everything. The name of God, even. But these types of things cannot be refined enough. They can't be made into something hard that we can see and touch. It's almost as if T.S. Eliot was in touch with something golden, something completely disarming. Srsly. This is how I feel about Paul Thomas Anderson's "There Will Be Blood." I'm not a PhD trying to milk anything from anyone. According to most people, film students in particular, I don't know dick about film. Fair enough. A Family Video/Sundance 608 education can only take you so far. But I do feel that there's something that lives inside "There Will Be Blood," and it's something that cannot be distilled into an essay. I won't attempt to solve the story, to so much as pretend that I have any real inkling of what's going on here. I can only ask questions and pose astronomically ridiculous theories, and I have to get them out in writing somewhere. So here goes.

FYI, this column contains SPOILERS. If this concerns you, I suggest you see the film and then read my weirdo interpretations. There's nothing worse than a spoiled milkshake.

QUESTION: Is Eli Sunday real?
-Everybody else seems to think so. Sometimes, I do, too. I can't, however, abandon the idea that Eli Sunday is not real. That he is, in fact, some strange manifestation, an imprint of Daniel Plainview's past, of a self that Daniel used to know but now blames for the damage in his current life. Eli rarely appears in a scene without Daniel. Even the church scenes involve Daniel to some extent, and Eli's only scene without Daniel is the scene in which he attacks his father at the dinner table. Eli's outburst is strange, but it does seem to resemble one of Daniel's earlier outbursts...on Eli. Both Daniel and Eli shove their victims to the ground and focus their energy on that victim's face. It could be a coincidence, but I can't accept that. Similarly, both Eli and Daniel receive baptisms during the film. Daniel is baptized by Eli in the Church of the Third Revelation. Eli is "baptized" by Daniel after asking about the $5,000 he is owed--his face thrown into the dirt as Daniel promises to "bury [him] in the ground"--rather than, perhaps, to raise him up to the Lord. Anyway, I have a lot of difficulty organizing my thoughts on this theory. Mostly, it's still a work in progress.

QUESTION: Is Daniel Plainview the devil?
-A lot of people have been throwing around Biblical interpretations of "There Will Be Blood," in many cases, as if it's a regular Jesus allegory, complete with magical lion or street-crossing turtle. Well, maybe not, but you get the idea. Many folks have become preoccupied with the name of Eli's church. They've also become obsessed with Eli as the false prophet, Paul as the real prophet, whether or not Paul exists, and whether or not Eli is (??I don't get this??) the father of illegitimate daughter Mary, and that this sin is somehow responsible for his crazy repent in the end (right before he gets bludgeoned). I, however, choose to focus on a seemingly cliche argument in the way of Biblical interpretations. It is not, cliche, however. Hear me out. Daniel is the devil, though not in the traditional sense. He is not the fiery, red-tailed demon, the one that masquerades as a snake or slips through your lips in the form of a lie. He's not Milton's Lucifer either, but rather, he's a new variety of super villain. He is the devil in the sense of Oil Man--tall, gritty, dripping black goop from every pore. His strengths? Cunning, knowledge, manipulation. His weaknesses? Envy, greed, women, an inability to trust. His face is like leather. His hands are stained black. He limps through the night like a broken scarecrow. He sleeps on the floor, and he sleeps hard.

In the Stephen King short story "The Man in the Black Suit," a young boy is met with the devil while fishing in the woods. The devil is described as a tall man dressed in a black suit. The man has a large mouth, bad breath, eats a fish raw, and he says terrible things. He tells the young boy that his mother is dead and that he is going to eat him. Later in the story, the devil chases the boy out of the woods and all the way home. I could not help but think of this story during the ending scene of "There Will Be Blood." When Daniel tells Eli that he is just an "afterbirth," that he "slithered out of [his] mother's filth." When Daniel says, "I told you I would eat you," while chasing Eli around the bowling alley. The way he's gnawing into a piece of meat while Eli confesses out loud, "I am a false prophet. God is a superstition"--this all makes me think of the devil in King's O. Henry winning story. The chase, the eating, the horrible propositions. This linked to Daniel's greed, his insatiable envy, his disdain for the human race. His limp, his snare. I believe he is the devil.

QUESTION: Why is Daniel's past left a mystery?
-Whenever presented with a character, especially one as complex as Daniel Plainview, it is not only important to question that character's present motives, but also those motives derived from the past. But what is Daniel Plainview's past? We learn very little about him. We know that he was born in Fon du Lac, WI, that he had one sister and, perhaps, a half-brother. We know his parents are dead, that he lived on a farm, and that there was a house near the place he lived that he very much loved at the time. We know that now, to see that beautiful house again would make him sick, but we don't know why. We see Daniel's sympathy toward the Sunday daughter Mary, the way he reacts when H.W. tell him that Mary's father beats her if she forgets to pray, but we don't know why. We assume that Daniel is unmarried, but we don't know, and we don't know if he's ever been married. We assume he's never had any children of his own, but we don't know. We do know that he adopted H.W., and most of the time, it seems that he did so only to create the illusion of a family business, but aren't there moments that suggest that, somehow, Daniel did love H.W.? Flashback scenes especially, those shown near the end after Daniel reduces H.W. to the "b*stard from a basket." We usually cannot tell, however, whether Daniel's love for H.W. is actually love, or if it is a desperation for that family business--the one that cannot exist without an actual family, the one that has made so much money on oil. In any event, Daniel Plainview's past is left mostly a mystery. Any time he is questioned, he responds "I don't want to talk about those things," or he creates a hasty subject change. He manages this by commanding every situation he takes part in. This must mean something, though, about his past. What causes him to avoid talking about himself? What is the cause of his perpetual state of distrust? Of his sympathy toward Mary Sunday? His need for a family member? His seeming sexlessness? The greed? The envy? Most movies would, of course, reveal these things to us in the form of intermittent flashback, or, perhaps, all in one ending reveal. Paul Thomas Anderson, however, has chosen to leave these things unanswered, and this dangling ambiguity, this blurred imperfection, is one of the things I love most about "There Will Be Blood." The story seems to thrive on letting its audience wonder. Not all audience members will choose to wonder. Not all of them will understand that they have to wonder in order for the movie to come together. It is in this instance that "There Will Be Blood" could be called everything from 'disorganized' to 'blatantly pretentious.' I think, however, that it is more a mystery than anything. It's more mystery than it is Bible talk. More mystery than it is Capitalism. More mystery than period drama, than character sketch, than anything. It's the mystery of Daniel Plainview, because he goes crazy, he commits murder, he says and does terrible things--but we have no idea why.

QUESTION: Did any of this really happen?
-It's the age-old enigma. It was all a dream! Seriously, though. I think that, if "There Will Be Blood" is the case, it would be okay, since we never actually find out that it was all a dream, that it is left painstakingly ambiguous, and that the only people who truly think that it's a possibility are me and maybe a couple of other weirdos like me that are just looking for a way out of this ceaseless state of PERPLEXED. Think about it. You don't have to agree with me, because you'll probably think I'm crazy, but at least let this insane idea skim the surface of your ability to analyze.

Those first few scenes. The horror movie-esque drone from the orchestra, that red-hot view of those hellish mountains. And then we see Daniel Plainview, silver-miner, geologist, hacking away, all alone, countless feet below the ground. He finds a rock. He spits on it. He loses his tools to an explosion. He falls off the ladder, into the mine. Blackness.

This blackness is so strange to me. It's different than any other moment in the entire film. When the picture comes back, we're met with Daniel, flat on his back, gasping for air, at the bottom of the mine. My question for you is: Could it be possible that everything that happens FROM THAT MOMENT ON happens only in the mind of Daniel Plainview? Is it possible that Daniel does not survive the fall, that he's broken his back, and that what happens next is a mere glimpse into what could have been? A dream tainted with the plight of his past--his broken faith, his nonexistent family, a lack of women, impostors left and right, and, this brings me back to my first question in this column, Eli Sunday--a projection of his former self, all the things that have gone wrong so far condensed into that severe, human manifestation that comes just before death. I notice all of these things due to the prevalence of parallelism throughout the movie: paralleled phrases, actions, events. Toward the end, Eli shouts, "Daniel Plainview, your house is on fire!"--mirroring the actually house fire started by H.W. nearly thirty years earlier. Daniel repeats the phrase, "Three wells producing. Five thousand dollars a week," in the end, while talking about Paul. He described himself with that same phrase earlier in the film, while talking to prospective sellers. Both he and Eli experience their own 'baptism:' Eli's in the mud, Daniel's in the church. The only scene in the film that ever escapes the command of Daniel is the scene in the Sunday home when Eli attacks his father, accusing him of letting Daniel take over their family--a scene commanded by Eli and yet, somehow, owing all of its furor to the sadistic Mr. Plainview. Similarly, there are multiple moments in the movie in which Daniel, even when surrounded by other people, seems completely alone. When he attacks Eli after being confronted about the missing church donation, the men standing around the scene do nothing. At one point, a phantom voice says Daniel's name, but that is all. It's almost as if they are merely the backdrop of a dream, and they have no lives or feelings outside of the scenes Daniel has set in place for them. Also, in the very last scene, the scene where he kills Eli, the butler comes downstairs with a particular calm about him. Even after seeing Daniel hunched there, beside the splattered brains of Eli Sunday, he says only, "Mr. Daniel?" to which Daniel replies, "I'm finished." One of the greatest last lines ever. Because maybe, just maybe, he is finished. This is the end of a long battle with himself, those last burgeoning moments before death when your life flashes before your eyes, and you're made to question everything you've ever done and said and stood for. And upon murdering Eli, some means is brought to a hostile end. And how are we to know? Who are we to question what happens right before you die? And with that end comes another quick cut to the black screen, a jovial jaunt on the violin, and the same four words that anchored us into this mess, "THERE WILL BE BLOOD."

To conclude this crazy array, I just want to mention something I read recently. Right now, I'm reading a book by one of the strangest, smartest writers I've ever read. His name is Haruki Murakami, and the book in question is filled with the ominous and the unexplained. Even more so, however, it is filled with some very intelligent musings. One of those musings is this: "Works that have a certain imperfection to them have an appeal...There's something in it that draws you in...You discover something about that work that tugs at your heart--or maybe we should say the work discovers you." This is the way I feel about "There Will Be Blood." All of these things, these bewitching elements of the unknown, the missing links in the final pattern, these are what make the movie great. Besides the fact that it's a beautiful period drama with an excellent leading man, and that it won Oscars and will be remembered for years to come--it's the imperfections in "There Will Be Blood" that cause us so much wonder. It's the questions with no answers that keep us searching, and it's a piece that keeps us searching that gives reason for applause.

Anyway, I want your theories. If you're reading this, and you've seen this movie, I know you have theories of your own. Please share. In the meantime, I drink your milkshake. Slurp. I drink it up.

The Over & the Under: Part II

2008-05-20T17:45:00.000-07:00

THE OVER:

1. Scarlett Johansson
-Last Decent Role: Nola Rice, "Match Point" (2005)
-WTF was she thinking?: "Scoop" (2006); I guess this proves that just because it's Woody Allen, it doesn't have to be quirky-awesome to the max.
-Recent endeavors that aren't helping matters: "Anywhere I Lay My Head," an album of Tom Waits covers that is, according to Allison Stewart of the Washington Post, "what would happen if Mazzy Star's Hope Sandoval decided to release a solo album assembled by a group of carnival barkers and hobos."
-Why I think she's overrated: Well, six consecutive crappy roles aside, Scarlet did not show up to the the Cannes Film Festival premier of "Vicky Christina Barcelona" (another "we'll see" by Woody) because of some un-met ridiculous diva demands. Also, her recent engagement to king of dick and shit humor Ryan Reynolds seems to be taking center stage while the fact that she used to be considered a talented actress has seemingly disappeared altogether. She used to be deadpan, the kind of girl you could sit on a New York bench with and make fun of passers-by. Now she's mostly used-up, and even if she does manage an Oscar-worthy performance sometime in the future, unless she gets her act together, it's unlikely that the Academy will care.

2. Shia LaBeouf
-Last Decent Role: Kale, "Disturbia" (2007)
-WTF was he thinking?: "Indiana Jones" and the washed-up franchise--oh, I'm sorry, "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull."
-Recent endeavors that aren't helping matters: Getting arrested for trespassing because he refused to leave a Wal-greens after close. Who do these people think they are? It's a Wal-greens, not the Chateau Marmont. I doubt the good retail workers of the greater L.A. area, the kind making $6.50/hr, are going to sympathize with an overrated movie star on a shaving cream-run/power trip. Gimme a break.
-Why I think he's overrated: Apparently, it is no longer necessary for actors to contribute to the art of performance before the good magazine writers of the world begin making predictions about their lavish, award-winning futures. Plus, I am fully convinced that the only character Shia LaBeaouf is capable of playing is himself: a horny, over-privelaged nancy whose perpetual incredulity does nothing but irritate every living being in his midst. Zero sympathy, Shia. Zero sympathy.

3. Angelina Jolie
-Last Decent Role: Mariane, "A Mighty Heart" (2007), though I feel this might be pushing it. I'd go so far as to say that she hasn't had a truly good role since "Girl, Interrupted" (1999)
-WTF was she thinking?: Any number of movies, my favorite being the up and comer "Wanted." It's like "Gone in 60 Seconds" meets "Girl, Interrupted," and while I will admit to liking both of those movies, I have absolutely no desire to see their completely unrelated and unneccessary spawn.
-Recent endeavors that aren't helping matters: Being pregnant, yet again, with Brad Pitt's weird love-babies. Also, "Atlas Shrugged," to be released to a vast audience of very bored Libertarian types later this year.
-Why I think she's overrated: Ange used to be one of my favorite actresses, but lately, she seems to have resigned herself to Brad's favorite mignon, part-time actress in bad, mostly animated features, and full-time ceaseless regular to the tabloids. As it turns out, Angelina Jolie IS one of those actresses that wins an Oscar and then drops off the radar. I don't know what happened to that daring woman who played Lisa Rowe nine years ago, the one with the exotic looks and intimidating chops, but I wish she'd either disappear completely or make a long-term comeback. One's career cannot exist forever on a cover of US Weekly alone.

4. Quentin Tarantino
-Last Decent Flick: "Kill Bill: Vol. 2" (2004) which, I have to admit, is pure genius.
-WTF was he thinking?: Producing "Hostel: Part II," as if Eli Roth holds any true relevance to the oh-so-innovative world of contemporary horror (#5 on this list).
-Recent endeavors that aren't helping matters: That whole "Grindhouse" fiasco. Tarantino may think he's so good that he can do whatever he wants (like produce bad sex, guns, and gore horror starring actors like Michael Madsen and the intermittently employed Rose McGowan), but a few stylized CSI episodes aside, he hasn't proved much of anything yet.
-Why I think he's overrated: The name Tarantino has become its own genre in recent years. Words like 'tarantinian' and 'tarantino-esque' have swept descriptions of stylized violence from L.A. to Amsterdam, and one might think, were one to be unfamiliar with the recent plights of Mr. Tarantino, that he was a regular Orson Welles. "Pulp Fiction" proved that his cult, pop culture tendencies could be contained into great filmmaking, and then "Reservoir Dogs" pioneered an entire movement of indie blood shed. THEN, he gives us a duo of fantastic movies called "Kill Bill," and then...he disappears? Or, well, he pops up here and there with his big, fat name beneath executive producer, one far-off project called "Inglorious Bastards," but that's about it. He is the vanishing genius of our time, and it's so sad that he's on my list of most overrated humans in the film industry. But he is, and I hope that, in the coming years, he proves me wrong.

5. Eli Roth
-Last Decent Flick: ?
-WTF was he thinking?: Perhaps that he was something new and exciting? That torture porn is some kind of excuse for horror genre innovation? That the same formulaic crap can be used over and over again for films that seem like they should be different but are really all exactly the same? That "Cabin Fever" did for leg-shaving what "Psycho" did for shower-taking? Omg, I didn't come up with that last one. Eli said that about himself once on E!.
-Recent endeavors that aren't helping matters: "Hostel: Part Deuce." No sequels, please, Eli. Yours tend to come off as 'hum drum' and can't even scare a twelve-year-old with asthma (No offense, Nate.). Also, apparently Lindsay Lohan called him old once. Burn!
-Why I think he's overrated: I think it's preposterous that Eli Roth is credited, by anyone, for ever introducing something new and exciting to the horror genre. It's a widely accepted fact that, yes, stylized gore can be scary or innovative (think "The Night Watch" or "Sin City"), but excessive, fakey gore is simply an excuse for not writing good material. The scare factor comes in all forms, but with our society's current inundation with ruby red corn syrup, fake guts that are funnier than frightening, and everything that Tarantino did with gore in "Kill Bill," it takes more than Eli Roth to get our hearts pumping. A constant triggering of the gag reflex does not equal adequate fright. It equals annoying. But, perhaps I shouldn't be saying all this. Eli is probably reading this right now, and later this week, he'll issue a statement to TMZ.com about how funny it is that people think he's an insufficient filmmaker. He does that sort of thing a lot.

6. Reese Witherspoon
-Last decent role: June Carter, "Walk the Line" (2005)
-WTF was she thinking?: "Rendition" (2007); Nobody wants to go to the movie theater to watch the unfolding political agenda of any over-privelaged entertainer. Look, you already have millions and millions of dollars. Just do your job and entertain.
-Recent endeavors that aren't helping matters: Jake Gyllenhaal? Srsly. I haven't heard squat about the little Phillipe kids in at least a year, but every day there's a picture in US Weekly that suggests she's shipped them off to boarding school in the Forest of Dean. Both she and Jake have apparently traded good careers for paparazzi-laden smootch fests. Bleh.
-Why I think she's overrated: Well, she super cute, and she's Elle Woods. She won an Oscar (well-deserved), but I don't understand why so many actresses seem to think that, once you've won an Oscar, the only way to go is Rom-Com central? Like Hilary Swank, who is not on this list, but she might be someday if she pulls that "P.S. I Love You" sh*t ever again. Anyway, I just don't think that, besides "Walk the Line" and maybe "Election," Reese has proven herself beyond the bubbly blond with the too-cute smile. It's like, she won an Oscar and suddenly she's Julia Roberts. Not even a little bit, missy.

7. Jake Gyllenhaal
-Last decent role: Jack Twist, "Brokeback Mountain" (2004)
-WTF was he thinking?: See previous overrated ranking's answer
-Recent endeavors that aren't helping matters: Showing up in the tabloids. AT ALL. Jake is that guy that we've always felt close to. The boy nextdoor, apple pie, sad blue eyes, an honest voice. But the mere idea of him traipsing around L.A. with overrated actress Reese Witherspoon blows my mind. Jake Gyllenhaal was supposed to be one of those actors that stayed away from all that, a main reason that former gal-pal (and current alcoholic) Kirsten Dunst kicked him to the curb.
-Why I think he's overrated: I feel that, contrary to what many people might think, Jake Gyllenhaal is rather...one-dimensional. His characters are often vulnerable, usually naive, always handsome, and easy to take advantage of. Perhaps the roles are to blame, the directors, the casting directors, but I really think that if he were a good actor, he'd take control of the situation and say, "I'm sick of being doe-eyed shy guy," whip out those balls, and impress us. I still haven't given up on Jake, having loved his performances in both "Brokeback Mountain" and "October Sky," but I will soon if he continues to fail me, or worse, falls beneath the burgeoning, lipsticky shadow of current love interest Reese Witherspoon. We all saw what happened to Ryan. Poor guy.

8. Halle Berry
-Last decent role: Leticia, "Monster's Ball" (2001)
-WTF was she thinking?: Oh, god. "Catwoman."
-Recent endeavors that aren't helping matters: Absolutely RUINING X-Men 3 by demanding that Storm be given a stronger role in the storyline. Storm is extraneous. They should have cut her out and said she was off training X-kiddies in China or something.
-Why I think she's overrated: Halle Berry has given some interesting turns. I loved everything about "Bullworth," and she won an Oscar for "Monster's Ball." Unfortunately, aside from those two instances, the extent of Berry's performance aptitude rarely ventures past the well-muscled beauty or the femme fatale. Most admire her for her beauty. They fail to see past the flickers in her eyes. They get obsessed with her recent fortune in fertility or the dresses she wears to award ceremonies. Ceremonies she's rarely seen from the stage. It is unlikely she'll ever return.

9. Cate Blanchett
-Last decent role: Sheba, "Notes on a Scandal"
-WTF was she thinking?: Anytime I see Cate Blanchett gliding around, her skin unattainably white and then over-rouged, her voice loud and possibly donning some nonexistent accent, I think to myself, "WTF is she thinking?"
-Recent endeavors that aren't helping matters: "Indiana Jones" and the curse of the aging unemployed--I mean "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." Seriously. What is with the wig. I hope it is a wig.
-Why I think she's overrated: Because it's almost as if the members of the Academy have entered a sacred pact forged in their own blood that requires them to nominate ol' Cate every single year she does anything at all. And it's not that she's a bad actress. She's wonderful, versatile, beautiful...but come ON. Like I've said all along: Angry Galadriel needs to give it a rest. I want more of the Cate that we saw in "Notes on a Scandal," less of that obnoxious character that yells and quivers and has a face painted white...sigh...but judging from her most recent mishap ("Indiana Drones"), I shouldn't get my hopes up.

10. Sean Penn
-Last decent role: Not "I am Sam," that's for sure.
-WTF was he thinking?: "All the Kings Men." Also, "Into the Wild," which directed. And not because it was a bad movie, but because Sean muddied it up with all kinds of bad eighties contrivance and a sickening quota of schmaltz.
-Recent endeavors that aren't helping matters: Well, well. Where do I begin?
-Why I think he's overrated: Because every single thing that Sean Penn makes, every last performance and screenplay and shot in a movie that he's directed needs a healthy dose of peer revision. Somebody needs to get in there and tell him that sometimes, things are better when they're not soaking wet with emotion. With blood and sweat and tears, the kind you can't wash off, not even with nine beers. And it's not that emotion is always bad. It's just that, after a time, everything that Sean Penn does feels bleary-eyed and under-revised. It's like draft one of a short story I wrote freshman year. Purply and losing itself in its own breadth. Vomit.

The Top Ten: Actors

2008-05-06T15:20:00.000-07:00

These are my top ten modern actors, meaning, actors still alive and working rampantly today. Perhaps at a later date, I will create a list of my Top 10 actors of all time. That will take some serious thought, however. Not that this list did not. Anyway, here they are. I only commented on the Top 5. I do feel, however, that all of these men have careers that speak for themselves.

The List:

1. Robert Downey, Jr.
-Favorite Role(s): Terry Crabtree, "Wonderboys"; Tony Stark, "Iron Man"; Larry Paul, "Ally McBeal" (TV)
-Underrated Performance: Paul Avery, "Zodiac"
-Looking forward to...: "Iron Man" sequels and "The Soloist"
-That wry smile, that voice, the way he makes everything natural, as if he's bringing nothing but elements of himself. Everything's real with Bobby Downey. The life the he brings to every role. I think of the smallest things, like Larry Paul on "Ally McBeal," how he made half the women in America wish he'd sing them songs and leave them smiling next to snowmen. He's a quiet genius, and I love him. He's the kind of actor that doesn't let you forget that it's an art.

2. Mark Wahlberg
-Favorite Role(s): Tommy Corn, "I Heart Huckabees"; Troy Barlow, "Three Kings"
-Notable Performance: Dignam, "The Departed"
-Looking forward to...: "The Happening" and "The Lovely Bones"
-At first, he seemed an unlikely choice, but the more I thought about it, the more I liked the fact that he was an unlikely choice. Because Mark Wahlberg never fails to impress me. He continues to make good choices, to increase versatility while remaining well-abbed and deeply mysterious. He's the actor that seems like he should be one-dimensional but never is.

3. Michael C. Hall
-Favorite Role(s): David Fisher, "Six Feet Under" (TV)
-Notable Performance: Dexter Morgan, "Dexter" (TV)
-Looking forward to...: "Dexter," Season 3
-Obviously, he hasn't been in every movie ever. But I've seen all five seasons of "Six Feet Under," and it was enough to convince me. He's the unspoken king of subtlety. He's always the player with a secret, a very deep insecurity. Plus, he's fearless. Absolutely fearless.

4. Johnny Depp
-Favorite Role(s): James Barrie, "Finding Neverland"; Roux, "Chocolat"; Sam, "Benny and Joon"
-Notable Performance: Sweeney Todd, "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street"
-Looking forward to...: "Public Enemies" and "The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus"
-Irreplaceable. It's hard to think of any single Johnny Depp role manifested by somebody else. With every appearance on the silver screen, he reinvents himself, and that's something that, as a human who truly loves the art of film, I simply cannot ignore.

5. Ralph Fiennes
-Favorite Role(s): Harry, "In Bruges"; Justin Quayle, "The Constant Gardener"
-Notable Performance: Francis Dolarhyde, "Red Dragon"
-Looking forward to...: More Voldemort
-Fiennes is truly terrifying at times. He can scare us and make us cower beneath the covers. He's the boogie man, a visceral nightmare. And yet, he's often quite likable. It's the fact that he can simultaneously scare and entice me. That's what makes me love him so much.

6. Tom Hanks
-Favorite Role(s): Carl Hanratty, "Catch Me if You Can"; Jimmy Dugan, "A League of Their Own"; Ray Peterson, "The Burbs"
-Notable Performance: Forrest Gump, "Forrest Gump"
-Looking forward to...: "Angels and Demons" and "Toy Story 3"

7. Terrence Howard
-Favorite Role(s): Jim Rhodes, "Iron Man"; Djay, "Hustle and Flow"
-Notable Performance: Cameron Thayer, "Crash"
-Looking forward to...: "The Crusaders"

8. Christian Bale
-Favorite Role(s): Bruce Wayne, "Batman Begins"; Alfred Borden, "The Prestige"
-Notable Performance: John Preston, "Equilibrium"
-Looking forward to...: "The Dark Knight"

9. Russel Crowe
-Favorite Role(s): John Nash, "A Beautiful Mind"; Det. Richie Roberts, "American Gangster"
-Notable Performance: Officer Bud White, "L.A. Confidential"
-Looking forward to...: "Body of Lies"

10. George Clooney
-Favorite Role(s): Michael Clayton, "Michael Clayton"; Chris Kelvin, "Solaris"
-Notable Performance: Fred Friendly, "Good Night, and Good Luck"
-Looking forward to...: "Burn After Reading"