tv shows

Lunchtable TV Talk: Tyrant

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I thought that Tyrant had a lot of promise after its first, and even second, seasons. Even if it did not seem entirely plausible – or even particularly good – there were a lot of paths and themes that could have led the show to greener pastures in its efforts. But I have not really seen the potential come to fruition. There were hints of nuance at times, but now, well into the third season, it feels like revenge has led the mild-mannered pediatrician/heir to the tyrannical first family of the fictional Abuddin, Barry/Bassam, to become just like the rest of his tyrannical predecessors. And that progression just does not feel real.

Something else that does not feel real at all – or ever – is the character played by Jennifer Finnigan (Bassam’s wife, Molly). I’ve always had a problem with Finnigan, who overacts in a way that brings high school drama to mind, and has done so in all her roles. (That is, she always feels like she is doing an acting exercise – here, in Monday Mornings, in The Dead Zone… matters not, she just is not embodying her roles in any kind of believable way). The only thing that felt slightly authentic happened when she and Bassam suffered a huge loss in the most recent season, but her behavior and reactions since then, while probably logical in abject grief, don’t feel genuine coming from Finnigan. I keep trying to see past this or look at her with fresh eyes, but it is just not happening.

I could recount the previous season and the characters and their machinations, but that isn’t really useful here. The gravitas the show could have as a kind of pseudo-commentary on current events (in the middle east or in politics in general) is squandered on a bunch of affairs and sleeping around (really soapy shit, frankly, which does not have a place in this show). You know, it does not really interest me that Bassam and Molly are no longer in love or that Leila (former first lady, Bassam’s sister-in-law and former lover) never loved her husband and now loves some US military officer (Chris Noth, following up his turn on The Good Wife with this, which does not feel particularly different… in fact, none of his roles ever feel different). I don’t care I don’t care I don’t care. These personal tales add nothing to the story and no depth to the characters, so it’s a bit like watching something that IS a soap opera. I doubt that was the original intent/vision for this show.

Overall, it feels (and has always felt) like this show should have aimed for a shorter-term view of its run, preserving limited-run storytelling to ensure quality and focus. But I’m not getting that kind of feeling from this. And any goodwill or excitement the show seems to build ends up getting killed off quickly. (And while I was excited to see The Americans’ brilliant Annet Mahendru end up here, she has been underutilized.)

At this stage I am not sure whether to recommend this or not.

Lunchtable TV Talk: Baskets

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I’ve never been much of a Zach Galifianakis fan; I’ve never been much of a Louie Anderson fan. Somehow, though, when these two are put together in a mildly insane show, Baskets, about a man, Chip Baskets, hell-bent on making a living as a classically trained (in the French tradition) clown and the humiliations he endures, his crazy family and the cast of characters accompanying him on his life’s rather sad journey, it feels like a meta story within a story (that is, a sad man, desperate to be a clown, living the life of a sad clown). Quite telling about how Chip seems to approach life is that he moves to Paris to fulfill this great dream but never once seems to consider the fact that they speak French in France.

But rarely does Chip realize the absurdity of his own life and the oblivious way he wanders through it. He is self-aware enough to be completely selfish (i.e., he knows what he wants, but never considers the consequences for other people; he is pining for and romanticizing his love with a French woman who uses him while failing to see that he is perpetrating the same kind of blind – and sometimes not so blind – using and abusing of a downtrodden doormat of a Costco employee/insurance agent who gloms onto him, Martha). He actually seems to serve as a mirror for the average thoughtless person. He does things for his mother (brilliantly portrayed by Louie Anderson), not out of duty or kindness but guilt (like most of us do). He does things for himself that he cannot afford and that make no sense just because he wants to and has no self-discipline (like most of us do).

I don’t know quite how, but by the end of the first season, during which I was at a loss most of the time as to what I thought but also could not stop watching – I felt a real emotional connection to the show and its deeply imperfect characters.

Now that it has been over for ages, I don’t remember the finer details I wanted to elaborate on. But the show will be back for a second season. Perhaps then it will become clearer whether this is a masterpiece or just a weird anomaly – or better yet, maybe we will never get a clear picture, and that might be okay.

Photo (c) 2008 Hot Gossip Productions.

Lunchtable TV Talk: Animal Kingdom

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I keep wanting to call this “Animal Experimentation” for some unknown reason. I just cannot keep “Animal Kingdom” as a title in my brain for more than one second. I suppose it’s that I associate the word “animal” with the dismally bad Zoo, and it stars James Wolk (there was a time that I would watch anything just because of him; even he is not enough of a draw to maintain Zoo). Wolk starred in a good but short-lived show called Political Animals, and somehow all these animals-in-titles and animals run amok (in Zoo) has my “animals” confused.

Animal Kingdom was something I started watching almost by accident and find that it is like a combination of the gone-but-not-forgotten Sons of Anarchy or The Shield (i.e., gangs of pseudo or actual criminals pulling off nefarious “jobs” but always digging a bigger and bigger hole for themselves the more they try to fix the first botch job) and the short-lived Gang Related (in which a detective must play both sides – his loyalty to his gang family and to the law).

I watched the first season and enjoyed it – I find that Ellen Barkin, like a lot of women, is a heck of a lot more interesting now than she ever was when she was young. Barkin plays the family matriarch who is nothing if not a master manipulator. Everything else essentially revolves around her and the things she sets into motion. I’d say watch it or read about it to find out about the plot, but Barkin is the real reason to watch.

Lunchtable TV Talk: American Gothic & The Family

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Watching Rupert Graves seem to struggle a bit with an American accent and even seem to fit into an American ensemble felt strange. He never really embodied this role, and maybe it’s just my brain used to his Englishness. Or maybe, The Family suffered from a complete lack of cohesion that devolved into decentralized and sloppy storytelling over the course of its one and only season.

American Gothic and The Family are remarkably similar in many ways – they have a similar tone. American Gothic does not so much rely on the use of flashback, but the story draws from past events to build suspense in the present (unlike The Family’s more frequent and ham-handed attempts to use flashbacks). We have a member of the main family running for public office with a lot at stake if the family’s secrets are unveiled (in AG, one of the adult siblings is running for mayor of Boston; in The Family, the mother runs for governor of Maine). We have a law enforcement tie-in (one of the siblings in the main family in AG is married to a detective; in The Family, detectives investigate the disappearance of the main family’s young son, and one detective has an affair with the aforementioned misplaced Graves). We have the screw-up drug addict sibling in both stories; the Justin Chatwin character in AG better embodies the realities of addiction, much more convincingly than the brother (whom I can never see as anyone other than Matt Saracen in Friday Night Lights) in The Family. We get cops in AG who feel more like real cops/detectives rather than some kind of half-sketched out idea of cops (as we got in The Family). We get with AG a sense that the story knows its plot points and knows where it plans to go (unlike The Family, where the only compelling thing was Andrew McCarthy playing well against type). We get in AG a mystery that we care about finding a solution to (unlike The Family, which started strong with its first episode or two but fizzled out quickly. I am caught up to the most current American Gothic, and I am still hooked).

We have a mystery at the core of both stories and a thread of ruthlessness that runs through both in the protective siblings and family members who safeguard their secrets at all costs.

Although both were stacked with what should have been really all-star casts, The Family’s cast never really felt much like a family (the cast really did not gel for me. On paper, it looks great – acclaimed, good actors; chemistry though is a strange and rare thing that cannot be created just by having a great cast list). Despite – or perhaps because of – the dysfunction in American Gothic, you do get the idea that these people could be family. I don’t have feelings one way or the other about Virginia Madsen (for the most part), but I am thrilled to see Juliet Rylance, Justin Chatwin and Antony Starr (all of whom were co-stars in some of my favorites: The Knick, Shameless and Banshee, respectively; if you have Banshee withdrawals, Starr’s character here is a lot like Lucas Hood – mysterious, shady, reticent, volatile and with lots of secrets).

American Gothic could easily stray into the terrible territory of the now-departed soap/drama Revenge, which shared some of the same themes (but often handled them so clumsily and squandered all the suspense and goodwill built in season one, letting it trickle away in several misdirected, increasingly boring seasons). But American Gothic retains all the things that excited people about Revenge when it first began. (Virginia Madsen somehow pulls off the “trailer trash-turned-wealthy family matriarch” more effectively and believably than Madeleine Stowe ever did.)

I could be prematurely declaring success for American Gothic – but for now, I’ll cautiously say that it is definitely a better contender than The Family in terms of holding interest but… can it outlast something like Revenge and not degenerate into heightening levels nonsensical soapy dramatics. I realize that all shows of this nature rely on some soapy dramatics, and that’s not what I mean. Some shows manage to pull this off without appearing to be completely stupid and desperate. It remains to be seen whether American Gothic will be one of these.

Lunchtable TV Talk: Hap and Leonard

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There is not much that Michael K. Williams does that I don’t want to see. The Wire, Boardwalk Empire, The Night Of and so many more things, he makes things watchable. Where they go beyond him can vary. I am not sure I like Hap and Leonard that much, but the strangely compelling friendship between Williams as Leonard, a black, gay Vietnam vet with temper problems, and James Purefoy as Hap, a man who has spent time in prison for dodging the draft, drives the story forward.

On paper the pairing between these actors seems unusual and not at all like it would work. But it does. In episode two, when Hap tries to hug Leonard, and it’s ridiculously awkward, Leonard exclaims, “Come on, man. This is why dudes don’t hug each other.” There is something so genuine about the way Hap and Leonard try to take care of each other and care about each other that is, well, why the show is called “Hap and Leonard”. (Incidentally I also really like Purefoy with the exception of the monumental joke that was The Following, one of my all-time most hateful of hate-watch shows.)

This isn’t really a long or extensive description and certainly isn’t an analysis of any kind. It’s just to say that, thanks to Williams and Purefoy, the show is actually worth watching.

Lunchtable TV Talk: Continuum

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Again I ran out of things to watch and decided to watch sci-fi, time-travel cop show, Continuum. I did not expect much but have been fairly entertained (just more than halfway through the series now). All sci-fi isn’t good, and shows with time travel at the heart of their premise rarely capitalize on the good idea.

But Continuum isn’t too bad – and doesn’t suffer at all from what I lovingly refer to as “Canadian production values”. Older Canadian tv used to feel like it was a decade behind the United States in how it was produced, what it looked like – even in what the characters wore. I don’t really know why this was the case. Despite living for a good chunk of my life near the Canadian border (British Columbia rules!), and watching a lot of CBC, I could never quite wrap my head around why those kids from Degrassi Junior High (the original, which my junior high science teacher made us watch?!) looked like they were striving or 1983 while the rest of us were firmly in 1988. Haha. (And some Canadian classics, such as The Littlest Hobo, which apparently was a great hit in Scotland, never made it to us in the States at all.)

This is not really about Continuum but instead about the progress and quality of Canadian tv shows. We know American shows have been filming in BC for years and years, but perhaps this industry influence has rubbed off on the quality of the tv they make for themselves. (Motive and Continuum are a good bit better than The Bridge (and would anyone even remember that, considering our Bron/The Bridge/The Tunnel series that came later?), and even if it was something of a contemporary of these shows, it felt more like an older Canadian show with a lot less idea of what it hoped to do with itself). The boom in Canadian productions also, of course, means that we get to see a lot of familiar faces – often. BSG’s Tahmoh Penikett and Alessandro Juliani have already made appearances in Continuum (and in Motive for that matter). And there will probably be other BSG alums. Ian Tracey is a staple of Canadian tv guest arcs (have not seen him be a regular since I happened to catch DaVinci’s Inquest on late-night Icelandic tv; another Canadian cop show that featured loads of people who would, at that time, go on to BSG stardom).

All of this to say that Continuum is good enough for me. I will continue watching and enjoying – and most of all, supporting Canada’s original programming. In part because I love Canada.

Lunchtable TV Talk: Banshee

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Banshee was a pretty crazy show: violence, mystery, unreal (but fantastic) characters. Despite what reads in a synopsis as a lunatic-filled bloodbath, Banshee was one of those can’t-miss indulgences. I was looking forward to watching the final season early in 2016, but then the final season was pushed back to April. It felt like an interminably long time to find out the fates of the Banshee crew. When it arrived, it seemed to end so fast.

The premise always stretched capacity to believe. An ex-con arrives in Banshee, Pennsylvania, Amish country, and assumes the identity of the town’s new (recently murdered) sheriff. He doesn’t seem like a run-of-the-mill lawman, but for years he manages to never quite be caught impersonating a dead man. The story evolves but really isn’t anything special without its cast, the colorful characters who make up the Banshee world and the killer action/fight sequences. It’s not deep, meaningful entertainment, but it’s well done.

Most of all, I think, I will miss Danish actor Ulrich Thomsen as Kai Proctor, the town villain and Amish outcast. He was not long missing from the small screen, though, as even before Banshee’s final episodes had aired, he turned up in NBC’s The Blacklist, which feels like an ideal role for him, even if it’s in an increasingly irritating show.

Photo (c) 2007 Mattias Weinberger under Creative Commons license.

Lunchtable TV Talk: Forever & Second Chance

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TV is saturated with shows that tell some variation of the immortality/reviving someone from death story. Some are better than others. The two most recent (at least that I bothered to watch) – Forever and Second Chance – couldn’t be more different. (Penny Dreadful crossed into this category to some extent, but it is an entirely different… monster. And it suffered greatly from a huge buildup that led to a rushed and unfortunate, low-satisfaction ending after three unhurried seasons.) Like Dreadful, both Forever and Second Chance ended up prematurely cancelled – in their cases, after a mere single season.

Forever, starring the charming Welsh actor Ioan Gruffudd – who made a star turn in the latest season of UnREAL – in the lead and Judd Hirsch – who has recently made his curmudgeonly mark in The Goldbergs and Maron –  in an excellent supporting role, actually had the story and the writing to make the idea of a man who can’t die – and keeps “reanimating” after every death. In the form of flashbacks we find out how he got immortality as well as piece together his relationship with Hirsch and so on. Flashbacks can be the most grating part of many shows, but they were effective in Forever because they helped give us a piece of the puzzle. The show was engaging enough that we wanted those pieces.

Second Chance, though, apart from the presence of Tim DeKay (of White Collar fame)… did not deserve a first, let alone, second chance. It was this improbable concoction of improbable stories and people. Loosely crafted around the Frankenstein theme, it was all over the place. I would describe how except that it is not worth my time or yours. Especially since it’s over before it really began.

What fascinates me is the constant urge to resuscitate this idea of bringing the dead back to life or creating some form of immortality, especially when all the cultural works about everlasting life show that it is often more painful than anything else.

Photo (c) 2010 James Adamson

Lunchtable TV Talk: Stranger Things

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I never imagined, when he was young (or when I was young, for that matter), that Matthew Modine would, in middle age, come to play a range of (semi-)evil masterminds. But both here in Stranger Things and in the short-lived and flat Proof, Modine is just that. He is a behind-the-scenes kind of guy, pulling all the strings. Would you have imagined that when you saw him Vision Quest or Full Metal Jacket? (Well, maybe. In his long career, he has been and done almost everything.)

That’s not really the point, though. Where Modine fits into my brief and redundant narrative is that he, having been a fringe fixture in 1980s movies, fits well into a Netflix show that revives the 80s and its entertainment, its style and its feel down to the last molecule, Stranger Things.

I am once again hitting a wall in terms of finding an original thing to say about it – it’s been wildly popular (so much so that it took the Netflix platform down) and thus picked apart and analyzed to death. That happens with sudden phenomena such as these that feed so many different things:

  • Winona Ryder revival: a real one this time; for those who were not around in the late 80s and early 90s, Winona was a kind of offbeat ‘it’ girl; a shoplifting conviction and a lower profile made it seem as though she disappeared. She worked steadily but had both lost some of the indie/grunge cred that ignited her earlier career and, of course, aged out of the “it girl” title. She’s appeared in the Star Trek reboot and Black Swan as well as the lauded Show Me a Hero. She never went anywhere; nostalgia and the popularity of this show have just catapulted her back into the limelight.
  • 1980s nostalgia: oh, that dreadful fashion and hair; paeans to 1980s youth adventure films; nods to 1980s classic horror
  • Sounds: That unbelievable and dreamy soundtrack.
  • Immersion therapy: We have other 80s love stories on TV (Halt & Catch Fire), which are great, but you don’t really get to immerse yourself in the time and spirit as much because it’s a weekly. Stranger Things was nothing if not an eight-hour-long time-trip into 1983. And for those of us who were there, around the ages of the boys in the show, riding their bikes all around town looking for their lost friend, Stranger Things has brought that entire era back to life believably (perhaps nowhere more than in the wardrobes and sensibilities of the teens like Barb and Nancy).

All that said, I am not one of the people who loved this and gushed about it. I liked it, I binged on it. But do I anxiously crave another installment? Not so much. I was never THAT into the 80s as they happened, hated being a kid and being around the kinds of kids who are the protagonists of this movie, and I always thought Ryder was overrated.

Lunchtable TV Talk: Places and Things – Ray Donovan & Suits

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On the surface, and in pretty much all ways, Ray Donovan and Suits are two shows that have absolutely nothing in common. Except in my mind. I find that both suffer from devices – places and things – that distract the viewer. Every single thing seems plotted in an artificial way – or at least it feels artificial.

In Ray Donovan, particularly in season one and to some extent in season two (maybe understandable as the writers and characters find their footing), I felt like the entire show was a series of mobile phone calls between the wide character list. Sure, some action took place, but the phone calls were constant – either setting the action into motion, stopping some action before it happened or adding information that would have been unavailable (in reality or as a storytelling device) in the grand old pre-mobile-phone era. I wondered while watching what they would have done with a story like this minus the phones. Could Ray Donovan even have done his job without mobiles? (And in some cases, would his job – the way he does it – even be needed?) What did films and TV shows do before cell phones saved the day or could act as a device to up the suspense (i.e., girl goes home with murderer; her sleuth-like friend figures it out and tries to call her, but the phone is downstairs, and she’s already upstairs tied to the bed about to be slaughtered; camera pans to phone ringing away on the kitchen counter)?

The show might have been better titled “Cell” or something (a double meaning: endless mobile phone use coupled with jail time and/or threat of jail) because every scene involved some phone call that was sending Ray rushing off to another crisis or phoning one of his… can we call them henchmen? and sending them off to do his bidding or keeping someone out of a jail cell. This has not changed that much – it is still prominent, but it has lessened to the degree that I don’t find that it has washed away my enjoyment of the show. (After all, in this season, I got to see Ray sing Bob Seger karaoke with a former nemesis. This did not involve a phone.)

I have grown to appreciate Ray Donovan, even when story lines languish and things that feel promising (last season’s arc with Ian McShane – under- and misused) don’t go anywhere satisfying, there is still enough here to bring me back, season after season. In fact, it keeps improving.

What is not improving and has stretched its premise thin is USA Network’s Suits. Yeah, I am still watching, yeah, it still draws me (and apparently a lot of others, as it has been renewed for season 7) and yeah, we do see more places than the well-trodden hallway between Harvey Specter and Louis Litt’s offices, but not much. We get glimpses of New York, of the principal characters’ apartments, a few shots of courtrooms, and this season a glance inside prison. But for the most part, this show is all Specter, Litt or Jessica Pearson (and occasionally Donna, Rachel and Mike) charging down this main hallway between each other’s offices to give the other crucial news, a verbal lashing or some-other-who-knows-what. But this back and forth is starting to feel tired (along with the sap and nonsense of the Mike and Rachel story, which is really starting to, as someone jokingly said to me, miscombining two phrases, “burn my goat”.

What to do about over-reliance on the same things?