Monsters of Television

“Nothing personal, Mike. Now let’s see if you really did learn something from me.”

Mike may not have his BA, but he's still a badass

After the show came back from the Olympics, “Steel-Eyed Death” provided some character depth for Lupo while still remaining firmly rooted in its procedural aspects. The episode would’ve remained the same had Lupo’s history with violent crime scenes not been revealed. While it does give us a glimpse into Lupo’s life (as well as the limits of his relationship with Bernard), the formula remained in service of an overall crime narrative, not a character one.

This week the procedural aspects matter less than the character aspects. In particular, Cutter is given a significant degree of not only back story, but there are very real stakes in the episode due to the show’s tendency to drop characters with little warning (barring knowledge of non-diegetic dealings). Read more »

“This isn’t going to stop until Pictionary bans the word ‘windmill.'”

The big laughs this week build, as do the show’s sweet and tender character moments. Community isn’t structuring itself like Seinfeld, where the plots converge into one final freeze-frame joke, and nor should they (unless they intend to do a Seinfeld-parody episode, something I’d be all for them attempting), but the show nicely lays the groundwork for jokes across an episode, even if the episode overall isn’t spectacular.

First and foremost, an East Asian rabbi is, by definition, funny. Funnier than an East Asian teaching Spanish (“This is who I am!”). That the joke of the two Changs in occupations you wouldn’t necessarily find them in isn’t overplayed, and instead allows Pierce’s latent Nazism to express itself by drawing a Swastika in place of a windmill during the Pictionary tournament. There’s enough of a gap between seeing Rabbi Chang and the tournament that you forget that Rabbi Chang is around, creating another punchline. That it results in an off-screen fight that is bad enough to summon the police is simply icing on the cake.

Second is Britta and Troy. A good comedic combo already, Britta’s white liberal guilt leads her to get a switch after she feels she’s disrespected Troy’s grandmother. It’s an amusing idea, though that Britta has no idea what a switch is, and that she doubts Troy’s grandmother will use it seems a bit weird, but I was willing to roll with it after the pay off of Britta being spanked, Troy watching while cry talking, only to have Jeff and Amber (Pierce’s swindling ex-stepdaughter) stumble in while making out added another sexual element to a scene that was already uncomfortably sexual anyway.

Story-wise, the show continues to drive home the of the study group as family, as Pierce and Jeff finally acknowledge that they are the same person, but at different stages in their lives. That Jeff still indulges in jackassery by sleeping with Amber (albeit only once; he wanted to do it twice) but feels bad about isn’t a step backwards, but a consistent character trait. Pierce’s confession that he probably would’ve done the same absolves Jeff of the guilt, and provides acceptance. It’s a nice moment, but one I feel that the show has firmly established at this point. I’m ready for it to move onto another thematic concern, or provide more variation on it (somehow).

Finally, if Jeff Winger doesn’t see the appeal of Glee, I don’t know why anyone else should.

FINAL THOUGHTS

• The Human Being with a tinier, female version of itself: creepy. (And until you know that it’s Family Day, it’s REALLY creepy.)
• The episode did suffer a bit from a lack of Annie. I guess her family doesn’t care about her after that time in rehab.
• Cry talking is the show’s tradmark gag, and Don Glover is a master at it (McHale isn’t bad either).
• Line of the episode: “Disappointing you is like choking the Little Mermaid with a bike chain.”

“That, my friend, was a Chicago defense. Get used to it.”

It's like he can see through my soul with his awesomeness

I will freely admit that my unbridled love of this episode stems largely from the fact that it was an episode that allows Josh Charles to dig into a script and just tear up his scenes. It’s not that the other actors on the show aren’t good; it’s just that Charles is vastly superior to them. (I kid. The cast is a very solid ensemble.)

So if I remove my mancrush from the equation, is this still a good episode? Absolutely.  The episode has a bit of everything in it, from the troubles at Stern, Lockhart & Gardner (soon to be Lockhart, Gardner, & Neutral Third Party) to solid courtroom scenes to debates about ethical client representation to Alicia and Peter’s home life and navigating family management (and planning!). Read more »

“It was on this island that everything changed.”

This may be the best, most compelling episode (yet) of the final season of Lost, for many reasons.

"You were larger than life, you came and you conquered..."

It’s an episode that provides even more nuance to Benjamin Linus, a character that’s been going strong for seasons now, and who knew that there was much nuance left to be mined (obviously Michael Emerson, thus proving, yet again, his acting ability).

It’s an episode that gave even more weight to the flash-sideways structure than any previous one, one that navigates ideas about destiny and choice, and manages to provide redemption for a character who has done horrible things (never mind that fans had long since forgiven Ben Linus anything based on the sheer amount of charisma the character has).

But the episode also begins to map out the season’s most compelling new character, Richard, while still providing a bit of meta commentary, though this time significantly more subtle than in “Lighthouse.”  After last week’s episode that emphasized the big picture narrative of Smocke’s goals to leave the Island, to see what the Island means to a man who who wanted to protect it, and himself, it made for damn fine television. Read more »

“You can be the best!”

Now that everyone is introduced, the show can settle into a groove that allows characters and stories the chance to breathe, maybe not focus on everyone very closely, while developing the stories laid out in the pilot. And by and large the show does that. The upside of the multiple storyline aspect is that it makes it easier to see which ones are and aren’t working, and then I can pretend like the latter ones don’t exist, making my job hobby a lot easier.

This episode finds the Bravermans figuring out what to do next now that their family is reunited in one geographical space, each with conflicts to overcome (finding a job, coping with kids who have different and specific needs, and in Zeek’s case, chopping wood and being a busy-body) and how they can do it and still remain a family. Read more »

“Maybe the thing to do here is to keep letting him think he’s clever.”

Last week it was horrorcore and oversaturation of violent media that were destroying America. This week it was graduate students that represent a threat to America’s moral fiber (thankfully, it was one from the social sciences, not the humanities (we’re harmless! (it’s why no one fears cutting our budgets…))).

The graduate student, while much maligned, isn’t exactly the villain of a 1990s period piece (we’re not paid enough to be really dangerous in any decade), like I discussed last week with the show. Instead, “Brilliant Disguise” offers an example of an idea that would’ve probably been better served by being on Criminal Intent instead of on Law & Order. This boils down to the differences in the two show’s formulas, and what characters and stories feel more at home on which show. Read more »

“So unobservant.”

I, along with many others, have been pummeling How I Met Your Mother for the past 10 episodes due to their mishandling over the Barney/Robin break-up. No fall out, barely an acknowledgement of it. Barney went back to being Barney and Robin went back to thinking she was the prettiest girl in the room and being a bit oblivious.

It turns out that we, the audience, were the oblivious ones (along with Ted, Marshall, and Barney). Robin was going through a mourning period off-screen for months now (four to be exact), and it all came to a head after Barney compared a random hook-up as a “younger Robin” with bigger, shapelier breasts.

Now I have to get vomit stains out of the inside of my stormtrooper helmet (sadly that’s not the first time I’ve typed that sentence).

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“This seemed like a better idea in rehearsal.”

I feel I should be clear up front: There’ll be no discussion who won, who should’ve won, what people were wearing, etc. It’s outside the scope of this blog. Instead, I’ll be talking about how the Oscars worked as a television event (it didn’t), one that is regularly hyped as a major audience gatherer (don’t know yet if that worked), and whether or not ABC really needs to keep airing this monstrosity (it probably should ask to keep enough time to air an episode of Desperate Housewives right after so the evening isn’t a complete waste).

Things didn’t exactly get off to rollicking start, and indicated the muddled tone the telecast would invoke throughout the night. A song-and-dance number by Neil Patrick Harris done on the pseudo-MGM superspecial set was lacking in interest or fun. As a result, I hoped for Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin to come out and just knock my socks off.

Sadly, I had to remove the socks myself.

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“You think you know me but you don’t.”

So I was wrong: the show is quite willing to give us two crazy main cast members.

Sayid is officially on the train to Crazy Town

But the crazy is tempered by the fact that crazy Claire and Sayid are still, in some way, regular Claire and Sayid. Both still have flashes of gentle smiles and I think we can all agree that both are still rather attractive (as Miles noted about Claire). What each is going through, as their infections sink in deeper and deeper into their hearts, is that their central motivations come to the forefront, for better or for worse (mostly for worse)

When “The Substitute” aired, I argued for the flash-sideways as a lens, using an analogy I stole from a professor of mine to explain to students how genre functions: when you look at something as one particular genre, those traits come forward while the other traits recede a bit (“Think of His Girl Friday as a screwball. Now think of it as a social problem film.”), leaving you with whatever you’re looking for. With the flash-sideways, the same principle is applied, just this time with character traits and motivation.

With “Sundown,” we perhaps the clearest deployment of that idea yet.

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