television

Workplace fire extinguisher

Standard

Sometimes you work with people who are natural firestarters – not in a good way. Everything they touch starts to burn, slowly at first, but eventually the flame turns into uncontrolled fires of epic proportions. Some workplaces have firewalls in place who protect most of the other people working there from getting burned too many times. And you really notice when those firewalls are absent.

In those times, you feel a bit like the guy in this Kids in the Hall sketch, following the pyromaniac with a fire extinguisher – frustrated both by the person starting the fires and by the boss who drags his feet doing anything about it.

 

Lunchtable TV Talk: Maron

Standard

I don’t know of anything better than a certain self-deprecating humor, the likes of which Marc Maron has mastered in his podcast and further on his TV show, Maron. I binge-watched all four seasons in two days (could not stop), and read just as I slid into season 4 that the episodes shown this week would be the last ever. It did feel fitting and perfect, ending on his terms, well before some ho-hum inertia, repetition or dullness set in.

I think what gripped me about Maron is how the somewhat unusual parts, which appear in every episode, are still relatable. I was shocked to find how many times the plot points mirrored things that happened in my friends’ and acquaintances’ lives.

Cases in point:

  • A colleague forced an elderly, dying hamster on another colleague and then dodged her phone calls when she was trying to call and ask him about this sickly hamster. In the end she took the hamster to a veterinarian and had to spend about 200 USD to put the hamster down humanely.
  • A man I used to know was secretly living in his storage unit/garage. He built a loft inside. I did not know for a long time that he lived in a storage space, so was surprised when he drunkenly phoned me one night and reported that he had somehow fallen out of bed… onto the hood of his truck?! It sounded logistically impossible until I later learned he was sleeping in a loft above his vehicles.

I could continue this list but it’s useless. I only want to illustrate that there is something both real but unreal about Maron, and this is its perfect imperfection … and why it was utterly addictive.

(And, my god, who doesn’t love the cats?)

No half measures: Overmuch Maron & hula time

Standard

It seems I cannot watch any tv show without bingeing on it. Very late to the party, I started watching Maron – and am already halfway through. Maron, though, is worth the binge.

Something shorter, like BBC’s Upstart Crow… also worth the binge. Quite funny in that Brit comedy kind of way (which I don’t care for unless I am in the right frame of mind).

Something like Canadian crime show, Motive. Not as worthy, but even that I sat sucking up episode after episode.

In between I pick up new episodes of Tyrant or the very promising The Night Of.

Yet still can’t avoid crap.

There are many ubiquitous things I keep seeing, each time annoying me more. Even the compulsive viewing of Maron doesn’t keep me from seeing the endless nonsense about PokémonGO (Chuck D of Public Enemy fame even tweeted, “If you LOVE POKE MAN go and buy yourself a adult diaper too.”).

I also have not avoided the tiresome tedium of Taylor Swift/Tom Hiddleston/Calvin Harris. All I can say to that: Who gives a fuck? And yet this makes headlines.

Puke. Time for some Tahitian hits. Childhood hula lesson memories, inspired by a Tweet from Marc Maron.

 

Lunchtable TV Talk: Not Billy Flynn’s Chicago

Standard

Dear god, I’ve sucked up Chicago Fire, Chicago PD and Chicago Med. I can’t defend it. I don’t know why. I don’t find it very engrossing and find entire episodes have passed without my having paid close attention – and the storytelling, particularly in Fire, leaves gaps, so it would be difficult to tell if it was the poor narrative or my attention span. Case in point: Chicago Fire returned from year-end hiatus, and I fully believed that one of the firemen was left with his life hanging in the balance as a cliffhanger, and when the show returned, he was returning to work. No explanation as to how he managed to recover. Did I miss an episode or is this just the way the show goes? (I realized after seeing Chicago Med and PD that there is a lot of crossover, so some of the story you think you missed might have unfolded in one of the other Chicago shows.)

I think I was seeking a mindless outlet after the mindless OD of House MD, and Jesse Spencer being a bridge between House and Chicago Fire seemed easy enough to cross. It entertains my ear to listen to the shortcomings of accent/dialect retraining. To Spencer’s credit, his midwestern American accent improved over the course of the few seasons that exist. I don’t mind him, don’t mind the woman who plays his partner/fiancee, Dawson, and don’t have feelings about a lot of the cast. But if ever there were an annoying ‘bawbag’ (to borrow from my friends the Glaswegians), the dude who was even more annoying on Sex & the City is him… I can’t remember his real name and can’t be arsed to look it up… but his character is the very loud, heavily accented, very Catholic Chris Hermann.

The captain is likeable but so overwrought as an actor, which I suspect is some holdover from stage training – he is so demonstrative and emotive in all his actions that it is just too much for television (it would make sense on the stage). He was the same as the perpetually tortured Muslim character in prison drama, Oz.

When I ran out of Chicago Fire episodes and didn’t have much more in my to-watch folder, I decided to go for Chicago PD. I find the scratchy-throat voices of both Sophia Bush and Jason Beghe to be just shy of fingernails scratching a chalkboard – and the looks on Beghe’s face along with how his head slightly bobs around when he is getting in someone’s face and being threatening – just a bit too much.

But who am I kidding? It is all too much!

Casting breakdowns – Women are screwed

Standard

I stumbled on this article while having an exciting lunch of rice. Oh, how I could live on rice. But I digress.

The article addresses television casting: “Men can be all shapes and sizes on film; women must be hot.”

While this is probably true 99 percent of the time, I am very interested in cases that go against this pattern. Even where a show is unsuccessful (and maybe is a contributing factor to its lack of success – for example, the short-lived and frankly not very good What About Joan?, which starred the unconventionally/not typically attractive Joan Cusack as the lead and the very conventionally attractive Kyle Chandler as her lovely, doting, devoted boyfriend. If it were not a vehicle specifically for the already well-known Cusack, would the casting breakdown have said, “Normal, frumpy, almost-middle-aged woman – average, no one would take a second look woman”? And if it does highlight some non-mainstream casting, that is the whole point of the show – Less Than Perfect, Mike & Molly, Ugly Betty – and no one could really claim that America Ferrera is not attractive. She was just made to look like a misfit in the fashion-model world. Nor is it even fair to say that the stars of the aforementioned shows are not attractive – but the premises and way the roles are written emphasizes that they do not fit into some scripted beauty ideal).

Why is it that if that were the casting description, and the eventual casting decision, people would question, “Why would he be with her?” about the hot boyfriend, but no one really questions that hot women would choose TV’s less-than-attractive men. (And here we might hear the “men have power/money” argument, which could explain many older men-younger women connections on TV, but it does not explain the King of Queens or the According to Jim phenomenon. In real life, I suppose I meet a lot more women of all types who consider men as a whole package, so the looks are not the deciding factor. I suppose TV reflects real life in this way – men are not as likely to look beyond the surface. And on a general level, most people are judging on appearance.)

Lunchtable TV Talk: Parenthood

Standard

In one of those lengthy periods in life when I am at best misguided and at worst in the throes of  losing my mind, I decided to watch ALL six seasons of the TV show Parenthood. Widely lauded during its run, I never saw it. And I continued to slog through all the droning, annoying seasons despite being almost perpetually annoyed. I hate watched it in the same way I hate watched the dreadful Brothers and Sisters. How can networks keep making these huge-family dramas in which every possible bad thing that happens happens to just one family? (Sure, the odds are greater when the family has four or more siblings in it, as these stupid shows both do. Parenthood was worse, though, because it also delved into more than just the siblings.)

I recently read an article about how streaming services like Netflix releasing entire seasons of bingeable shows allows the viewer to gloss over the weaknesses in the overall fabric of the show and its construction. We get the whole story at once, which might not be the most technically effective way to tell episodic stories, i.e., we have a 10 or 13-hour movie in some of these series rather than an actual serial. I don’t find that this weakness is evident in made-for-streaming shows… but I do see this weakness (and this might just be personal preference) in shows like Parenthood. I noticed, for example, that in every single episode, someone says (and sometimes more than once in an episode) some variation of “we need to talk”: “We need to have a conversation”, “Can we talk?”, etc. And all they did was talk – endlessly. You would think this would interest me because I loved shows like In Treatment, in which the entire show was just talking – a therapist and his patient in an office. Nothing else. But no. That was riveting. Parenthood is just a whine-fest of misguided self-righteousness. And it is from this starting point that I definitely saw major plot and writing deficits – all smooshed together with histrionic, self-involved characters (almost all of them – not just the dude who was supposed to be the “irresponsible younger Braverman brother”).

I cringe just writing the name “Braverman” down, remembering all of Craig T. Nelson’s toasts and boasts about the greatness of the almighty Braverman family. “He can get through it because he is a Braverman.” The show spins around this ridiculous premise. (Somehow TV families, especially large ones, like to rest on this idea… that because of their size and “complexity”, they are more interesting or special than all other families….).

From the whining and constant hyper-intensity of Monica Potter’s Kristina (it’s either “everything is crap because my son has Asberger syndrome” or “I have cancer”) to the whining “I’m not good enough and am a loser” mantra of the ever-annoying Lauren Graham’s Sarah, from the bitchiness of Erika Christensen’s Julia to the endless, endless, endless crying and whining about everything courtesy of the otherwise brilliant Mae Whitman as Amber, this show is… just such shit. It’s been over for some time, and as such should probably not *still* annoy me this much, but I saw the title in a list of things I had seen and felt irritated all over again!

I want to be able to write something better about it… that is, something more descriptive, at least devoting a bit more effort to making my analysis a bit more constructive. I realize that my view is unpopular, and that I am in the minority, but there is no way to fix this pile of dung.

Lunchtable TV Talk: River

Standard

It is not often that Stellan Skarsgård goes wrong in his choices. Sure, I don’t love Mamma Mia! or The Glass House, but usually his work is worth watching, even if only for his presence (Nymphomaniac comes to mind here).

For me, River is one of the best surprises of 2015. For one thing, it’s “trippy” (as The Guardian refers to it). Detective Inspector John River is a loner who is out of touch with his own feelings but is in touch with visions/hallucinations of dead people and with a deep sense of empathy. All of this is quite unusual for a TV serial “renegade cop”. It could easily be a caricature, but the acting and the storytelling ensure that it does not devolve into ridiculous territory.

Ultimately it turns out to be a study in human complexity and fragility and is engaging at every step – and it’s only a six-hour journey, meaning that it fits neatly into an evening or two (for dedicated binge-watchers). Like most “detective” shows it’s point is to seek answers. But on different layers – not just the cop mystery on the surface. There are always secrets, and having community with the dead allows a bit more insight into those secrets. Seemingly cheesy plot device, but Skarsgård and excellent supporting cast make it work.

Lunchtable TV Talk: Lilyhammer – No experience leaves you unchanged

Standard

It’s been a long time since I watched Lilyhammer on Netflix. And a long time since I moved to Norway myself. It was not a crash-landing as rough as that experienced by protagonist “Johnny”, the alter ego of an American mobster, Frank Tagliano, who goes into witness protection in Lillehammer, Norway after testifying against his cronies. Knowing the reach of the mob and relying on his love for the “Lilyhammer” Olympics (most of us just remember the Tonya Harding–Nancy Kerrigan saga), Frank manages to get his witness protection assignment in Lillehammer, Norway – which turns out to be a major culture shock not just for him but for everyone he encounters in the community. That includes the police force, social services, his new girlfriend, the hospital system… and everyone else.

He makes a strange bunch of new friends/colleagues, opens a new nightclub and changes the rules to suit him. Through manipulation and brute force, he pushes through quite a lot of his own brand of corruption, intimidation and coercion to impose on the naive, fairness-loving Norwegians. He also forces the residents to look in the mirror (e.g., an episode that deals with racism, refugees and “inclusion” – which is timely now during the recent refugee crisis). Frank can be insensitive and totally politically incorrect (and sexist), but has his own sense of fairness that comes from living in a multicultural society – even if a very limited one like the mob – and this rubs off on everyone around him and comes full circle until he starts to realize new truths about himself as well.

But no experience leaves you unchanged. While the Norwegians eventually bend and comply – and learn – from Frank’s ways, Frank too is softened by Norwegian life.

Lilyhammer was cancelled, so no more of the fun we got for three seasons… but luckily three seasons is an easy binge watch.

Subtitled entertainment – Language realism on TV

Standard

As a person who often multitasks while “watching” television, I don’t always pay close attention to every moment of action. (That is, I hear all the dialogue but don’t always catch the visuals going with it.) Particularly with some of the dumber shows I watch, such as The Following or The Slap, this does not bother me much. I pay closer attention to shows I enjoy. But then there is a growing middle category: subtitled entertainment.

When I watch a foreign (non-English-language) film, I already know there will be subtitles, and I don’t watch something like that until I am ready to focus. But television is starting to introduce more and more subtitled content. In a sense it’s an era of language realism. In most films and TV of the past, we’d be treated to unrealistic and frankly stupid dialogue in which the actors (English speakers) adopted some kind of vaguely similar regional accent representing the place they were supposed to be from… and very little of the actual local language would appear.

Now, in a further change to content development – language is adding to the realism of many TV shows. The Americans probably leads the way, with a liberal mix of English and Russian. An article has even been written on how the writers decide when to use Russian. Hint: The choice comes down to authenticity. In The Americans, it makes perfect sense. Russians working within a Soviet institution in the United States are not going to speak to each other in English.

Another show where the blend makes perfect sense is the US version of The Bridge. It takes place on the US-Mexico border, and US police and working closely with Mexican police.

It has appeared more and more in various shows recently, such as Allegiance and The Blacklist. Interesting, it appears in shows in which the plot involves a lot of international intrigue. No big surprise. Language realism also appears in shows like Jane the Virgin, in which the grandmother speaks exclusively in Spanish, but understands English perfectly. She always speaks Spanish with her daughter, Xiomara, and granddaughter, Jane, but they almost always answer her in English.

The same kind of mix has appeared in Netflix’s Lilyhammer. An American organized criminal, exiled in witness protection in Lillehammer, Norway, navigates Norwegian language and society – the longer the show goes on, the more it’s conducted in Norwegian, mirroring the main character’s “integration” (which never quite happens fully).

These are all one-hour dramas, and somehow the language realism feels more expected in that setting. But it’s also happening more and more in the half-hour sitcom format, which feels strange in that I can’t imagine people having the attention span required to read the screen. But strangely – they do. The best example of this I can come up with is Welcome to Sweden, in which a fairly typical American guy moves to Stockholm with his Swedish girlfriend. His comical trials feature prominently – often in Swedish (particularly interactions with his in-laws). I did not even think about it when I recommended it to someone who only speaks English. He was going to watch it using my Swedish Netflix account, which did not offer subtitles in English.

It seems remarkable that as foreign language is receiving less emphasis than ever in US schools, language and culture diversity is appearing in a bigger way than ever on America’s TV shows. And it has jumped from just the occasional bit of Spanish, which has arguably been the most common second language on US TV, to reflect a slightly wider range of language diversity.

Lunchtable TV Talk – Bloodline

Standard

“I don’t want to fuck with your case, Clay. Go have a sunshiny day.” -John Rayburn (Kyle Chandler) in Bloodline

Sometimes you start watching a show or a movie and immediately know you are going to love it. Bloodline is not one of these shows. I knew that I would see it through, though, no matter what. Mostly, I knew I would watch because of star Kyle Chandler. I have been an enthusiastic Kyle Chandler cheerleader and champion since the early years – back when Chandler played Jeff Metcalf in the critically acclaimed but little-seen, little-remembered Homefront* back in the early 1990s. Chandler has appeared in many more shows over the years – most notably Early Edition and Friday Night Lights (the latter of which is an exceptional show). Chandler embodies Coach Eric Taylor from Friday Night Lights to the extent that it is almost impossible to imagine him in any other role. In most roles he has been a just but cranky and lovable but curmudgeonly man. In Bloodline it becomes clear he is still the moral compass of his difficult family, working in law enforcement, but he is troubled, and his performance in the final episode is like nothing I have ever seen Chandler do. (Also, the fact that Chandler’s character uses the word “fuck” or some variation of it almost every other word he says is a bit disarming. He’s Coach Taylor, and he doesn’t talk like that! Haha.)

Having already determined that I would follow through with the entire series (which was made available in full on Netflix), I do admit that the first five episodes didn’t inspire a whole lot of confidence about the show in its entirety. It moved slowly, moved around in time so that it was not clear when things were happening and thus was not clear what things were happening. It focuses on the dysfunctional Rayburn family; they own an inn in the Florida Keys. It is a somewhat complicated tale that weaves together past grievances with current problems and strained family relationships that all come to a head when Danny (played to menacing, psychopathic perfection by Australian actor Ben Mendelsohn), the black sheep of the family, returns.

Things pick up around the fifth episode. The story starts to tighten and the excellent cast helps the story to crystallize and brings it to life – even those in the smallest roles. By the end, I was riveted and very impressed by how the story unfolded. After the pieces of the story start to gel, all of the story’s mystery and pacing feel necessary and masterful. Luckily, the show will be back for a second season. I can’t wait – both because the storytelling preserves suspense – and there’s got to be more of that coming – and because I can always use another Kyle Chandler fix.

*Want to see Chandler before Coach Taylor, John Slattery before Roger Sterling (Mad Men), Ken Jenkins before Dr Kelso (Scrubs) or Chick (Cougar Town) or Mimi Kennedy before Abby (Dharma & Greg) or Marjorie (Mom)? Homefront is where you can see them all circa 1992-93.