Monsters of Television

“Ma’am, I live in a world of rules.”

Death penalty stories are inherently manipulative. The stakes are clearly and easily defined, and since our protagonists are always defending an “innocent person”, we’re quickly caught up in their story. Said death row inmate will also have an estranged family member that our protagonists will convince to see their relative one more time. Pile on the ticking clock of a last-minute appeal, both legal and emotional, and you might as well just go ahead and toss us, the audience, into an emotional pressure cooker.

And it’s surely to the The Good Wife‘s credit then that while I was aware of its shameless deployment of the death penalty tropes that I didn’t really care that I was being manipulated (well, okay, twice I got a little annoyed). The episode is tightly constructed, suspenseful, and emotional, and it’s a real treat to get this before the winter hiatus settles in. Read more »

“So why do I feel outside of awesome looking in?”

The problem with “False Positive” is one of story perspective. While I appreciate it when the show neatly divides the episode into segments (it makes note taking  great deal easier), it also calls attention to when a character is given less attention. And in this episode, as is often the case, it’s Ted that gets the short end of the narrative stick.

Now, I’m as tired of writing about this as you are of reading it, but I’m going to give the show the benefit of the doubt that the emotional and symbolic heft that the episode sets up but then spectacularly fails to pay off for Ted will eventually circle back to us later in the season. Because this is his story, for better for worse. In this case, it’s the story of how Ted fixed everyone else’s life without reflecting that he needed to fix his own. Read more »

Quickly becoming TVD's most sympathetic character--who knew?

I cannot believe I am writing this, but here goes. Tyler is my new favorite character on The Vampire Diaries. I know, that is completely crazy, right? He’s a self-proclaimed dick. But among all the various happenings in the most recent episode, his storyline is the most effecting. The performance by Michael Trevino as Tyler is quite strong, and the character may give Damon a run for his money in the clever jackass department. If you read my posts about this show regularly, you know I am a big fan of Awesome Vampire Caroline. And now it seems I have found the best match for her greatness. Really hope the show continues to depict Tyler’s transformation with such honesty and rawness.

It isn’t possible for me to express how moving was Tyler’s transformation and Awesome Vampire Caroline’s refusal to leave him. He was terrified and experiencing shattering pain; all she could do was be with him, but you admire her compassion. I’m super nervous about how Tyler will react when he learns Awesome Vampire Caroline has lied to him (about Mason, about the Salvatores), but I am loving these two as a duo. I should also note that the visual and aural elements of his change were executed in impressive fashion by the program’s technical people—really good work for a show I don’t imagine has a huge budget.

As for the rest of our merry band of warriors, Elijah continues to improve upon his initial awful introduction—he’s becoming a real frightening bad guy. Elena got sidelined for the most part, but even trapped in her home, she proved herself a capable negotiator. And the best news? Someone I hate got bit by a werewolf. What excellent news!

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“Man, I hate camping.”

You get a twofer this week since I’m feeling generous. And because what I could say about one episode I could pretty easily say about the other, so it just made sense to combine the two into one post. This isn’t a bad thing, either. Both episodes reflect what I can only assume is the template for most of the upcoming episodes, and it’s a template I’m perfectly happy with. Read more »

“Sad quick Christmas song.”

I will say this up front so there will be no confusion: I was not looking forward to this episode of Community.

I have nothing against Rankin/Bass. I have nothing against puppets. I have nothing against stop-motion animation. In fact, I love all three of these things a great deal (well, I don’t love Rankin/Bass, but I do love puppets and stop-motion). But when I heard Community was doing a homage to Rankin/Bass Christmas specials, I immediately became a little queasy. I avoided as much in the way of reading and seeing anything about it as I could.

It was the equivalent, in my mind, of Glee doing episodes centered around one singer/performer: it was too much excessive pop culture humor that unanchors the show from its reality (well, Glee isn’t nearly as narratively consistent as Community, so this comparison is a mite unfair). As a result, I came to dread the day when this episode would air.

Am I still dreading it? Is this the episode of Community that will be the asterisk in my “Best series ever!” list (instead of “Basic Rocket Science”)? Or did it win me over with whimsy and commitment to its premise…? Read more »

“What are sidekicks for?”

It’s hard to be a sidekick. You’re often times over-utilized and under-appreciated. You get next to none of the glory but you’re always the one to take the blame when things go wrong. Most of the time your parents are dead too so life just sucks. George and Katie both got fed up with playing second string to the Super Powells and staged a walkout.

This was only a matter of time. George getting caught picking up after Jim. But rather than being carted off to jail like any other black man would have been, he‘s praised as a hero, something that will increase the size of his nearly bald head 10 fold. And it does. Jim is not liking that George has the credit. He has to hide while George gets the glory, under the pretense of protecting Jim’s identity of course.

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“Police and parents. Of course that’s your plan, Humphrey”

This week’s episode felt like an old mystery novel. Two reluctant enemies team up to solve a crime. An old foe reappears and aids in the search. Unlikely alliances are made and old ones crumble. Questions are answered, reveals are divulged, and the criminal isn’t who you think it was all along. When every conceivable cat was brought forth from the big bag of shit that is the Humphrey/van der Woodsen’s lives, it was Lily who was the enemy. And she would have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for those meddling kids. And that dog, Serena, too.

While I still despise her, I did find myself feeling bad for Serena.  So many of her mistakes are her own, but this one (and a huge one at that) was entirely on Lily. And it’s not just Serena who got screwed over. Poor Chuck is now scrambling to save Bass Industries from being sold. Hos desperation is at maximum levels as he’s turning to Jack for aid. Season 4 is the season of unlikely alliances indeed.

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“Ted, let me show you my harpoon collection.”

“The Mermaid Theory” is not a bad episode, but it’s not particularly great either. If anything, it’s a lazily funny episode of HIMYM, which seems to a trend the show keeps falling into (“Glitter”, “Baby Talk”) this season. The show has ideas, but they never really reach hilarious or emotionally strong heights that the show used to be able to achieve without a hiccup.

If anything, the episode’s three-plot structure only makes clear the its failings and its strengths. Read more »

“If I could’ve traded places with him, I would have. I would trade places with him right now.”

“So — what do you want to do for 21 seconds?”

In the podcast earlier, I was curious as to what the cliffhanger for the end of this season could possibly be. Surly, we’d get some answers to some long-standing questions and maybe some tense moments with the cast being locked down in the basement of a suburban performing arts center technologically-advanced government building but where are they going? Karen pointed out that they need a plan. So when I sat down for “TS-19” tonight, that’s what I hoped to see. Instead, I got something else entirely. And even that was hampered by some of the same problems that’ve haunted this still-so-young series.

Chief among those problems: I don’t care about 80-90% of the cast.

Thus begins my series of Lost contrasts. The Walking Dead is completely different from Lost and not just because of the spelling. Though they both feature groups of survivors trying to fight for continuance against all odds and a mysterious force (smoke monsters and Others vs the where-did-they-come-from ghouls), The Walking Dead has a pretty serious problem of never endearing many of the characters to us. Lost had a giant ensemble cast to which they were able to give a lot of service, making it so that audience not only knew of each character but could identify them in a line-up. Before Jim started going bananas on the hills, diggin’ holes, did you remember who he was? Congratulations if you did (from the radiator hose thing). Many people didn’t.

And when you have a bunch of characters no one knows anything about and aren’t very developed beyond the surface, that’s horror code for “it’s time to thin out the herd.”

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“The Sacrifice”

Still pretty, but getting way scarier.

Lots of people were doing dumb things to save people they love on this week’s The Vampire Diaries.  Even Damon, who was trying to preach wisdom to Elena about her kamikaze mission, did his own dumb thing.  But when Damon does anything, somehow it seems less dumb, only sexy.  And there was much Damon sexiness to be had.  Perhaps they are trying to make amends for that wretched incident with Rose last week (yep, still hate this character). Maybe they just can’t let go of the tension between Elena and Damon.  Or maybe they know that Damon is why this show sizzles.  Case in point—the first half of this episode was rather lame—and I can only explain it by noting a decided dearth of Damon dash (the alliteration took over—apologies).

Reviewing each episode of a series is a problematic business because it can force a person to make too-firm pronouncements: i.e. episode A was excellent, episode B was crap, and episode C was passable.  When we start debating whether an individual episode was weak, I worry we lose the forest for the trees—after all, I wouldn’t be writing about this show if I didn’t enjoy it with some consistency.  Also, I haven’t yet seen a crap episode of The Vampire Diaries, so when I complain about weaknesses, I’m quibbling.  That said, this episode may be worth exploring a bit deeper to see where the show tends to be weakest in order to highlight why it succeeds as often as it does.

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