Monsters of Television

“Give me a break. You guys were going to murder me. I thought you guys were professionals.”

After Lydia mentioned the train tanker of methylamine, my first thought was, “AMC must’ve wanted a train episode to coincide with the premiere of Hell On Wheels.”

My second thought was, “There was a train whistle at the end of the cold open. I wonder if that’s connected. Man, I really hope the kid stays away.”

Dammit. Read more »

“Life is good, Skyler.“

It’s really not. But that’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?

I have to imagine that this week was flush with blog posts re-considering long held prejudices and grudges against Skyler and/or Anna Gunn. Or at least I hope they are. I admit that I’d be writing one myself, but I kind of want to interrogate why I’ve come around on Skyler, and the reason why frankly has me irritated with myself for being an asshole.

But we’ll get to that. I think “Fifty-One” may be one of my favorite episodes of the series so far because it shows the real threat that Breaking Bad‘s, as a friend of mine, Maria, called it on Facebook, “unchecked masculinity” has on the world. There are women trying to escape (not just get away from but actually escape), and the men simply will not let them. And if we weren’t sure about this, the cold open is Walter and his son pointlessly revving the engines of leased sports cars.

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“How are you still working here?”

Adorkable.

And, finally, we have the story of the cylon.

While Mac Mac and Maggie have been busy flitting about girlishly, getting themselves worked up into tizzies that big, strong men continually save them from, there is one woman at the office who has been on the fringe of the nonsense. No, not Kendra.

It’s Sloan and her Munn-Face, blue-steeling through all the emotional scenes, establishing herself as unable to feel whatever hyperbolic emotional meltdown her radioactive coworkers are in the middle of. She stares robotically as Mackenzie carries on about stuff that happened four years ago. She’s maintains a stance that she has been told she does not communicate well with humanity. She has not found herself beholden to Will at any point, which clearly means she can’t be a female in this newsroom with her name in the excruciatingly long title sequence.

Well, no more! Sloan will prove her weak womanhood once and for all by being silly on camera, all so Will can paint himself as a martyr, the penitent bully, and a more square-jawed Obi Wan all in the same episode. Girls are such a mess!

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“Just because you shot Jessie James, don’t make you Jessie James.”

You’d think that, with all that cash, Mike could get a pair of pants that does a little something for his figure.

Skyler says less than fifty words the entire episode, depending on whether or not you count non-lexical vocables as words. My pleas to the universe that she have fewer words than that during previous seasons notwithstanding, it’s important to note what’s happening to her, now that she has become a woman with her life stolen from her.

Since the beginning of the season, her part has been dominated by the overwhelming fear she feels in Walter’s presence, the boot-quaking nightmare that is having no control over the monster in her bedroom. While she’s also had her Heisenberg moments this season (particularly while ensuring Ted keeps his big, stupid mouth shut), it’s nothing compared to the speechlessness she feels while Walter tries to mitigate his farce of a family life with his increasingly powerful role.

Whether you believe Walter is actually living two compartmentalized lives, is pretending to live one as a cover, or is desperately grasping at the last ounce of humanity left in him is irrelevant. The sum of his introspective and forward-facing action is the same: Walter is become the antagonist and everyone else on the show could be the hero that contributes to his demise.

Skyler, a woman living on the edge, is just as primed as anyone to eventually break down and be the person that ends this dystopia for everyone. Jesse, Mike, Hank, even Badger could contribute to the downfall Walt so desperately needs. She conveys this during three scenes at fifty words total. Give or take. Two of them repeated several times to sweet, cheer-worthy relief.

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“Friends don’t let friends sneak into insane asylums alone.”

Do Arkham Asylum inmates only eat sliced bread and peanuts?

My first instinct was to type this whole thing in Mona Code (what Spencer would know as a basic mnemonic device) but that’s harder in practice than theory. “She lives under trees” is more inspired than you might think it is. It’s like trying to compose Don Quixote from scratch. Or terza rima in German.

But, then again, it’s a lot easier when your character can communicate in nonsense. If you have anyone past puberty brushing a doll’s hair, they can say just about anything because she is clearly cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. In fact, I wonder what the doll industry has to say about this show. They certainly are on the forefront of establishing fake porcelain babies and tiny plastic people as the creepiest things to stumble across in the dark. Especially vast extinct necropolises ensconcing zany Rosewood asylums.

A lot of information is revealed in this episode, which usually means I’m going to hate the thing since that leaves very little room for Hanna to bust out a few choice lines (comedic brashness usually gets replaced by boring anxiety).
But this one could’ve been much worse and none of the plot that is revealed feels terribly contrived. Well, except for Nate’s weird Jenna love and Ali’s unmentioned evil bestie Cece coming to town. Couldn’t emerging characters exhibit some winsome faculties?

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“There’s no better reason than family.”

When it comes to Breaking Bad, I’m always changing who I root for. I’ve steadily stopped rooting for Walt (and as this season has progressed, IN ONLY 2 EPISODES, I find him truly despicable); I’ve never liked-liked Jesse, seeing him as more a victim (which this season has only intensified so far); the rest of the White family is a bit of hit of miss (I’ve come around on Skyler, but poor Walter, Jr. just loves breakfast). Gus is likeable due to sheer performance chops, Hank is perhaps the most insanely human character on the series, and Saul is a wonderful study of a guy in over his head.

So if there’s still a character I’m actively rooting for, that I actively get a un-guilty thrill from (which is what I get from Walt now), it’s Mike. And through this episode, I was wanting him to get out of this life. I want him to relax, drink beer and Ensure, and play Hungry Hungry Hippos with his granddaughter. Even though the man is the hardest of hard-boiled assassins and P.I.s, he’s a tired and beaten down man who wishes the world would just wise the hell up and leave him alone. Read more »

“Very graceful.”

I don’t know why people were complaining so much about episode 4 of this show. Episode 5 is so much worse.

Let me rephrase that. I’m trying to temper my opinions of the show and base them on adjusted expectations. The Newsroom isn’t the serious, groundbreaking drama we thought it was. It’s not even a groundbreaking workplace comedy. But my thoughts on this are well-documented and well-shared throughout the community nerdy enough to discuss such things (one I love dearly).

Even while relieving the show of a haughty premise, “Amen” is infuriating. It makes me curious about the industrial complex at HBO surrounding Sorkin. In this new golden age of television, we have a lot of “auteurs” to whom we direct our praise and aggression but they generally collaborate heavily on a program or, at the very least, have to deal with a studio. Vince Gilligan often notes his collaboration process with his room for Breaking Bad. Matt Weiner had a much-publicized debacle with AMC between the fourth and fifth seasons of Mad Men. Shawn Ryan (The Shield) can barely get a network to stick with him long enough to grab an audience (see Terriers, The Chicago Code).

But Sorkin’s influence on this show must be more comparable to Louis C.K. on Louie, a showrunner who has the deal every young aspiring television writer in the world would love to have: complete autonomy. The reason I say that is because, just like on Louie, sometimes, stuff just doesn’t work. And those things that don’t work (to the degree that they don’t on these shows) usually don’t make it to air on programs that have a lot of studio oversight. The viewing public has given Louis C.K. the right to stumble because (a) even those stumbles are at least comedic/storytelling experiments worth trying and (b) how do you not love that ugly mug? Sorkin, however — sigh. Someone needs to tell him.

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“Respect the badge.”

The premise may seem really familiar by now: a group of genetically-enhanced misfits are brought together under the guidance of an idealistic doctor/psychiatrist/scientist to fight the super-powered and morally-ambiguous.  Alphas (don’t call them mutants) are under pressure from government regulation and misguided terrorist organizations to blend in or fight the power, all except for a gifted few that iterate in the gray area between the poles of intolerance.

It’s tread territory (X-Men, Heroes), particularly lately as we lump vampires into the mix of misunderstood entities of abjection (True Blood). The dynamic between Red Flag and Dr Rosen’s team of misfit toys is terribly familiar (though we don’t have a Magneto or Sylar — yet). The stakes involving government’s tenuous peace with the “good” Alphas are just as high as in the Marvel universe. The analogy to marginalized minorities is equally palpable.

That being said, Alphas (second season starting tonight) is worth your time. And I’ve got five good reasons for you to watch. None if them have anything to do with a dude with metal claws and a bad haircut.

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“I’m number one even if I can’t touch her!”

I don’t post a lot about anime on here because I often don’t get to watch it in a timely manner during the American television season, and Japanese television has four television seasons each year (going with the calendar seasons) in which new series premiere and some show continue, which means there’s always so much new stuff to watch that it just gets out of hand.

But the summer affords a chance to catch up a bit, and while I haven’t had the chance to catch up on everything I’ve wanted to, I wanted to make a quick recommendation, especially for non-anime watchers, for the summer series Natsuyuki Rendezvous. It’s a romantic dramedy of sort, and it reminds me just a bit of one of my favorite movies: Truly Madly Deeply.
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“I’m on a mission to civilize.”

Jeff Daniels is immune to Munn Face.

We all have a measuring stick for when we have to make the important decisions in the time we dedicate to our television watching. Okay, maybe not all of us. Some people don’t actively make decisions what to watch. Sometimes we just turn the channel or turn it off entirely rather than continue watching, a fight or flight response.

But for those of us that do consciously give a show time to convince us it’s worth our precious hour, you can’t do much better than a four-episode rule. Three and it’s barely out the gate. Five and you’re almost halfway through an HBO season and you might as well stick with it until the end. Four is a solid number.

So here we are on episode four of The Newsroom and I’m coming to terms with the fact that, even if I was going to make a decision to run, I couldn’t turn it off because of several factors, not the least of which is the pedigree of writer behind the program. So, instead of giving up on the thing, I have another decision to make.

I have to come to terms with the fact that this show isn’t what we thought it was. We’re not watching an exposé on cable news or a character study on the people that report to people about other people. This is an hour-long sit-com. And if you’re going to stick with it, it’s time you came to terms with it, too.

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