Monsters of Television

“There are no secrets in parenting.”

Kristina’s getting all potted up!

(Note: Usually, these Parenthood reviews would go up on TV.com (you can see the rest of them for this season) but I missed a deadline. Apparently I have stuffing on the brain. So enjoy it here this week.)

I think we’ve been ignoring Sydney for so long that we missed her growing up. She looks like she’s about six months for a driver’s permit now.

It’s a good representation of the shift in balance for the show. Over the past few episodes, Parenthood has turned from being comprised of post-modern parenting morality tales couched in well-developed narratives and portrayed by nuanced characters (think back to “The Talk” which was a hair away from being a sit-com A story) to focusing heavily on characters rather than the Braverman family unit. Julia and Joel struggling with Victor and putting Sydney not just on a backburner but completely out of the picture is just an example of how the togetherness of the family is starting to pull apart just slightly.

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It’s always fun watching a show find its feet.

Elementary came out of the gate very self-assured for a new show, very certain of its tone and style and direction. It has also been very certain of its characters – who they are, where they’ve been, and where they are going. While Sherlock and Watson are clearly the focus of the show, its nice to see some time being spent developing – or, perhaps more accurately, displaying – the show’s other characters.

While we’ve had a bit of Gregson so far, it’s always been in relation to other characters. Most of his personality has been shown through his interactions with Sherlock and Watson. “One Way to Get Off” gives us a bit of Gregson-for-Gregson’s-sake. I do hope this is a sign of things to come.

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“We are all love’s fools.”

It’s a terrible cliche, but it only became a cliche because it’s true. We do so very much because of love. Even the things we  do out of hate are because of love, for hate cannot exist where love has not yet been.

Take Earle, for example. His love turned to passion turned to obsession turned to hate turn to psychosis turned to him wearing a horse suit (best “disguise” so far, y’all – a horse suit). We find out here just exactly what the Black Lodge is and why Earle wants it: it’s a place where spirits make “evil for the sake of evil.” And that’s why Earle wants to find it. He wants the power of pure evil.

It’s all a little “mwahahahaha!” for my taste.

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We love a good mystery.

People, as a general rule, love mysteries, in whatever form they take. Simple ones or complex ones, it makes no difference. We love piecing together clues, working our way through evidence, figuring out whodunnit – especially if we can figure it out before our friends. It’s why we love Agatha Christie and Nancy Drew. And it is very much so a major part of why we love Sherlock Holmes.

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“It’s still crap.”

First, apologies for no review for “Waiting for the Knock” from last week. Between paid writing and trying not to get sick (and then actually getting sick), I just didn’t have the opportunity to write about the episode. Here’s a micro-review: Clarke is the most awesome to ever awesome, Cary’s hoodie was hawt, and if Dylan had hung onto Lemond any longer, I would’ve been sniffling about a drug dealer and his son. Also: Two folks from The Wire stopped by, again, so that was cool. Also also: Cary’s hoodie, guys.

And now onto “The Art of War.”

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“Like a wise man once said: First instincts; usually right.”

Just as there are many different ways to tell a story, there are many different ways to develop characters. You can begin at a life-changing moment, or right after it. You can start with the end result – be it the final stretch of life or the place a character ends up after their long journey of development – or you can make that your final destination and make how the character got there the focus.

The truth is, unless we start at the very, very beginning, we are always coming into a character in medias res. There are always parts of the character’s past that we don’t know, parts that have inescapably shaped them and influence every decision they make.

One of the concerns – with stories and characters – is giving away too much too soon. Wanting to know more, wanting to watch the yarn spin out, is what keeps the audience coming back. It’s all about giving just enough in just the right way to hold the audience’s interest.

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No one in this room actually thinks Charlie is going to stab anyone in the eyeball.

My first introduction to Tracy Spiridakos (our gal Charlie) was in a one-page “interview” from the August issue of GQ. As women featured in GQ are wont to do, she was artistically topless and wearing pink jeans that struggle to cover what you would think would be a behind easily masked by off-the-rack clothing but, lucky for us, this turned out not to be the case. I put “interview” in quotes because seemingly she was asked two to three questions, enough to fill enough negative space with words to justify the image and all of them were pointed to a male fantasy. She plays video games! She likes to hack and slash! She watches Battlestar Galactica! All right, it’s a nerdy male fantasy but still, she’s referred to as a babe and not in an infantile way.

GQ isn’t exactly picky about picking women to splash across its pages in various states of undress (“Hey! Can you find creative ways to cover your nipples in front of a blank white wall? Good enough for us!”) but positioning Spiridakos to sell Revolution on her aesthetic feminine wiles in the press might lead you to believe that she would do the same on the show. Surprisingly, for the most part, that hasn’t been the case.

In fact, much of the show and her character trades on her innocence or naivete, both as an emotional core and, in my opinion, as a non-villainous antagonist. She’s constantly walking into trouble like Mr. Magoo but in place of a blindness that gets her onto the girders of a building under construction it’s her not sticking to the plan that constantly gets her captured. She has a variety of tight-fitting shirts (as everyone on the show seems to) but, outside of her cousin getting all worked up for her, there hasn’t been a focus on trying to make her a sex symbol of the show. Until NBC got a hold of this episode.

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I’m starting to get the feeling that this Earle thing is going to carry right into the TV movie ordeal that wraps up this show’s run. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I am starting to get a little bored with the standard chess move, someone dies, Earle’s crazy, Coop is concerned, just you wait til next week thing they have going on here. They need to mix it up, do something that gets me reinvested in what Earle is doing (mayhaps put in hints (like the one in this episode) of Leo building toward full defiance?). This might mean having to kill off a main character. I vote Donna.

Alas, Windom Earle did not die in a cave-in at Owl Cave at the end of the last episode like I had hoped happened. And we didn’t even get any great disguises this week to justify him still being around. Seriously, that fisherman get-up was pretty blah. Step up your game, crazy man!

Coop’s on his game, though, and finally is in the right place at the right time to put together some pieces.

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“It has its costs.”

The character of Sherlock Holmes has as many different interpretations as he has iterations. From brilliant antisocial snob to brilliant borderline sociopath, Sherlock can be – and has been – many things. What makes new versions of the character possible is this elasticity of traits. What makes new versions of this character worthwhile is which combination of traits its current owners go for. How do you make it fresh, how do you keep it interesting?

So far, Elementary is making a damn good go at crafting a distinct and intriguing new Sherlock both in tone and texture.

With every episode, we learn a little bit more about how this Sherlock ticks, a little bit more about what’s underneath the surface. It must be said that the fact that this Sherlock willingly reveals things about himself – not as a trick, not after being backed into a corner, but in an honest desire to give truth to another person – reveals as much about, and shapes, this character as what he actually says.

I enjoyed the case this week, but even more than the whodunnit, I enjoyed how the situation affected Sherlock and, by extension, Watson.

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I’m of two minds about “Don’t Haze Me, Bro.”

On the one side, there is no Nick storyline. HUZZAH. (Sadly, he’s back for the next two episodes.) And it was a very funny episode.

On the other side, the case of the week was something of an afterthought (though it had John Glover, who is always a delight). And some of the humor turned out not to be that funny.

Oh, and despite all the mounting evidence, someone is bound and determined to demolish Peter’s run for governor with this campaign worker scandal.  Are we getting played for saps? Read more »