Monsters of Television

“Now cease everything you are doing to gaze at me, only letting your heart still strum.”

Around the sixth episode (“Prison of Love”) of Lupin The Third: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, I started to feel slight glimmers of what the show may have been after. After the ninth episode (“Steamy Desire”), I had a bead on the series. By the end of series, I realized I had been more accurate than I thought. Fujiko Mine is, from the onset, about gazing, what that gaze is capable of, and how it entangles all of us, male and female. It’s about spectatorship (in the broad, psychoanalytic sense, not an individual’s reception) and its ability to satisfy wish-fulfillment impulses when we sit down to consume media.

I’m stating the obvious, though. The series isn’t shy about its aims (the words of this post’s epigraph are the first words you hear at the start of each episode), but despite its willingness to show how gazing and vicarious thrill rides through fiction fulfill us (or even sustain us), it still ultimately reaffirms the power and importance of the straight guy’s looking, and that’s hardly anything new.

This will be a spoiler-heavy discussion of the series, so if you’re at all interested in watching it (and you should be), come back later. I linked to the show’s Hulu page above, and you can watch it there. If you’ve already seen the series in its entirety, let’s continue. Just let me don my owl mask first. Read more »

“I keep letting myself fall into bad patterns.”

So I’ve fallen way behind on watching Dallas. A lot of this was due to just feeling tired on Wednesdays for some reason, and a little bit of it was just forgetting that the show was on Wednesdays in the first place. But I’m all caught up and ready to go.

Except that I’m kind of yawning a bit. The structural issue with Dallas was laid out in the premiere when it established pretty much everything it was going to do, all the schemes that were in play. The rest of the reason was always going to be how it all unraveled, and there’s something a bit dull about watching plans collapse as opposed to watching plans come into fruition. Read more »

“Fate caused us to collide.”

That was a big roller coaster now wasn’t it?

I’m going to keep my thoughts pretty focused on just these two episodes since I have a wrap-up post over at TV.com (and if you’ve been following along here, you generally know what I’ve been concerned about and also enjoying). Which is good since there’s a lot of stuff to talk about just within these two episodes that this post might’ve gotten a little unwieldy if I tried to incorporate season ending thoughts as well. Read more »

“I didn’t know.”

It’s weird to write about The Killing in this space, not because we haven’t in the past (we have), but because when I think about this finale, and the season as a whole, I don’t separate it from the first season. I think of both seasons actually as a single, 26-episode season. Like, you know, on broadcast TV! Exactly what Veena Sud didn’t want!

This is a little unfair, of course. The Killing strode for something slightly more ambitious than your normal crime melodrama in its effort to show the ripple effect of this single girl’s utterly pointless murder. It wanted to explore the ramifications on the police, the victim’s family, power brokers, and, at least the first season, other people who knew the victim. It most cases, the show was wildly unsuccessful in its attempts to do this as it saw these ramifications as not only subplots but as red herrings into a murder that it, ultimately, never really cared about.

So I’m going to talk about the episode and this season, and then some brief thoughts on where the show can possibly go from here.

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“I made it very clear: I don’t know how to drive.”

Action-heavy episodes like this one are among the worst things to write about it. I can highlight the excellent direction by Joaquim Dos Santos (aka Dr. Fight) and Ki Hyun Ryu, but you already know they’re excellent. And you can’t not mention the storyboard artists who routinely deliver dynamic work that is then brought to life by Studio Mir and their animation director Han Gwang Il.

And it’s all great. Action sequences on Korra are never incoherent and show a knack for cleverness (how awesome was it when Mako re-directed the mecha’s electrical charge back to it? Answer: Very awesome) that I really don’t think any show matches it (if there is one, please let me know so I can watch).

It does mean, however, that there’s not too much to dig into, so if this is a little short, I apologize in advance. Read more »

“Don’t believe me, do you?”
“Excuse me, brother, but no, I don’t.”

I’ve never seen a single episode of the original Dallas. I was only six years old when it ended it’s 14 season run in 1991 (plus various TV movies and reunion specials), and the series was never really on my syndication radar (I don’t think I’ve ever seen it in syndication, though it has been syndicated in limited capacities). I’m familiar with it, then, only in reading TV histories, clips of the series in “TV’s best [whatever]…”, and pop culture parody and homage.

Which doesn’t exactly make me the best person to talk about the show since TNT’s Dallas is more of a continuation than a reimagining or reboot of the original series. But that doesn’t mean I don’t recognize its influences. Dallas popularized the use of the season-ending cliffhanger after the “Who shot J.R.?” season finale, and as we’re all aware now, the cliffhanger is pretty much way to end lots of shows, even sitcoms sometimes, these days (his likely explains, by the way, the show’s lack of syndicated presence following its conclusion).

As a result, I’m more likely to discuss ways in which this new Dallas feels a lot like other shows that are, in turn, likely indebted to the original Dallas. If anything, this version of Dallas perhaps represents the final segment of a snake eating itself. Read more »

“You’re safe now.”

Well, we were due for something of an even episode after the general air of intensity we’ve been experiencing since “And the Winner is…”. The episode isn’t bad, but it doesn’t have the same dynanism as even “The Aftermath” had. But perhaps this is because I’ve come not to like episodes that are focused on answering questions instead of telling a story (I blame some of Lost for this).

“Out of the Past” also has the unfortunate position of needing to resolve the Tarrlok story so the remaining three episodes of the season can focus fully on the last push against Amon. (Did you catch those previews for the 1-hour (meaning 2 episodes) finale? Cray-cray.) As a result, the episode feels more like a prerequisite than a strong unit of narrative in the grand scheme of things.

But at least the last five or eight minutes were pretty good. Read more »

“There’s no static on a psychic link!”

Sorry if you were hankering for a post about last week’s Flash-tacular episode. Between Impulse (my exposure is limited to last week’s episode and the current Teen Titans comic, and in both cases I don’t really like Bart) and time travel (an unnecessary attempt to raise the stakes for characters we barely know/haven’t developed a relationship with) I didn’t have much to say about the episode that I didn’t just say in a few words.

“Depths” on the other hand does offer something to talk about, whether we like it or not, and perhaps serves as a minor corrective to the issue of not knowing/haven’t developed a relationship phrase I used above (though I’m sure that a nuclear apocalypse isn’t going to happen, so it’s still unnecessary stake raising), though I’m not sure how much I even care now. Read more »

“Please help us. You’re our Avatar, too.”

Well then.

I’ve been dinging the show (ever so lightly) for its not demonstrating any oppression of non-benders. Sure, the council is comprised entirely of benders, as is the police force, but since the show hasn’t completely explored those as issues for non-benders, and Amon’s speeches have never leaned too heavily on the idea that the lawmakers and law enforcers are benders (though it seems like a ripe avenue for speechifying).

But with “When Extremes Meet” we finally get to see some of that oppression, all in the name of safety (of a select few)!, begin to play out. And it’s genuinely exciting and horrifying with small moments that sell the notion of oppression that the series hasn’t made a convincing case of until now.   Read more »

“Oh, really? Would you have felt the need to justify an all-male squad for a mission?”

I rather liked “Beneath” but that could have entirely been because Batgirl figured prominently into it.

The episode isn’t too busy, balancing only two plots with each other, plots that do tie into together, so the episode has a solid footing on which both plots can be executed without feeling disparate. It also isn’t overly convoluted or inserts action sequences for the sake of action sequences. Instead, it stages a really nice set piece at the end that feels earned and exciting.

It’s a nice change of pace for the show, even if I do feel like we’re about to rehash some plot points from another show.
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