TV

Lunchtable TV Talk: People meet… what comes next?

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With the ever-expanding variety of TV-style content available at the ready, old themes are taking on new polish. It’s no secret that storytelling is becoming more nuanced and diverse, and storytellers are becoming freer to tell their stories without the constraints of things like network TV schedules and limitations, demands for typical romantic sitcom tropes or pandering to certain audience demographics. Within this landscape, different kinds of romantic comedies are finding their “hour upon the loom of days” (cannot resist, however inappropriate the tone, an Ezra Pound reference…).

In the middle of these emotional days, I watched the widely praised little comedy, Catastrophe, which chronicles the accidental relationship borne of an accidental pregnancy resulting from a casual one-week fling. The couple decide to make a go of it, with the American half of the couple moving to London to pursue a relationship with the Irish woman he’s knocked up. I won’t heap rosy praise on it (other viewers have done this enough), but I will concede that it can be quite funny and “real” in ways that most sitcoms laboring under this premise could not be.

Given my state of mind, though, it mostly made me sad and reflective. Thinking about how people meet and what propels their relationships forward. How is it that they decide, “This is what I want. This is the person I want to be with”? It would be easy to say that the characters here chose to be together only because the woman was pregnant, neither party to the couple is particularly young and perhaps neither felt they had much to lose. The show did a good job at making the relationship feel more deliberate than that by highlighting the doubts and fears the characters felt – particularly the woman. The man seems quite sure (and reassuring) and never strays from this underlying conviction, even when friends, family and circumstance try to convince him otherwise.

Perhaps it was his commitment and willingness to work at it and to “put up or shut up”, in a sense, that struck me.

Overall, Catastrophe, despite having a few semi-crass jokes and whatnot, is sweet and gives the viewer a palette on which it creates two whole, three-dimensional adults who find themselves in a surprising situation. How people deal with the unplanned is telling.

The unplanned and unpleasant drives another surprisingly sweet (and short) sitcom, Scrotal Recall, which, despite its raunchy name, is both worth watching and not at all what you think it is. It follows (without bothering about chronology) the story of a guy who discovers he has an STI and needs to inform all his previous sex partners. The show finds its comedy not just in the awkwardness of trying to break the news (“Hey, sorry you’ve not heard from me in a year, but congrats! You may have chlamydia!”) but in the retelling of the stories that led the character to get into all these sexual situations in the first place. Bubbling along in parallel with these flashbacks is the ongoing, years-long tension between the main character and his friend/roommate (the old story about close friends of the opposite sex – one has a crush on the other but is scared to say or one of them has a relationship already so the timing is off… and the timing always seems to be off. It’s another version of Ross and Rachel but … cuter and less important to the storytelling). In fact, Vox compares the show to How I Met Your Mother without the irritating pomposity of Ted and without the sociopathic tendencies of Barney. I agree but add that it is much more relatable and less formulaic, and actually, in its own slightly bumbling way, quite sweet.

While this pair of sitcoms (both with roots in the UK) resides at the “sweet/nice” end of the spectrum, it stands to reason that there would be similarly angled sitcoms at the other end. That is, sitcoms that go against the grain, challenge one’s perception of a “relationship” or “dating” comedy. (This does not take into account recent takes on the ennui of marriage, such as Togetherness or Married, neither of which is perfect but both of which finally do away with some of the stupid/schlub husband + hot wife making fun of him trope that has long populated the mainstream TV landscape.)

Perhaps most routinely misanthropic and sometimes annoying but nevertheless funny and human is You’re the Worst, in which two young… let’s call a spade a spade here… assholes hook up after getting drunk at a wedding. They are both firmly convinced that they are not relationship material, commitment phobic and perfectly happy with a casual, no-strings setup. But most of the first season is spent making us – and them – realize that they’ve been wrong. It’s a little bit cliche when you write down the premise, but the execution makes it what it is. I honestly did not think I would like it. The advertising I saw surrounding the show struck me a lot like the Comedy Central advertising for Broad City and Inside Amy Schumer. The ads made these shows look offensively bad (not in a good way), while in fact, both are genius. You’re the Worst won’t make any “genius” lists, but despite it being ages ago that I consumed the first season, I remember a few gems that pulled me in – from the Phil “Groovy” Collins v Peter Gabriel argument between the show’s leads to the “Sunday Funday” (although if I recall these were in the same episode, and I think the guy who plays Pied Piper CEO Richard in the brilliant Silicon Valley plays one of the poseur-follower idiots copying the Sunday Funday). At its heart, the show does display two people who are actually the worst (you would hate these people if you knew them in real life) but find each other, defend each other, fall in love with each other… and I suppose that things boil down to that kind of cliche. We go through life hoping to find that person we can relate to, be completely our ugly selves with and land, as someone once said to me in better times, “land in the tall grass”.

On an entirely different plane, particularly as it borrows liberally from fantasy and the grotesque rather than grounding itself in reality, Man Seeking Woman explores the dating life of a single guy after a breakup. On one of his first post-breakup outings he meets a woman who is portrayed – literally – as a troll. In another episode, he is invited to his ex-girlfriend’s party to find that she is dating Hitler. Yes, that Hitler. He is not dead and has just been hanging out/hiding out, is ancient and rolling around in a wheelchair. Each episode ups the ante with this surreal take on the world, with one equating marriage with a prison sentence – you become a useful penis in the suburbs with a drill sergeant wife – life sentence without possibility of parole. Some insights shine through the absurd concepts and visuals, even if some things go too over the top for me. The absurdity, though, almost always serves to channel some more basic truths: the concept of remaining friends with members of the opposite sex once you have moved on and how partners may have different rules for that depending on the relationship, the nature of marriage, the cocoon-like pod people that new couples become and much more along the same lines.

The Call of the Millennial – The Rebel Yell?

Apart from the aforementioned Catastrophe, which features basically middle-aged people, the other shows and television in general have been flooded with shows featuring millennials on the hunt – for fun, for sex, for love, for drugs, for something. Sometimes they don’t even know what they are looking for but find something anyway. Perhaps this aimless search is how and why these shows work. Familiar themes explored through a new lens – but with a slightly rebellious twist?

Shameless TV addiction

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I don’t know if other kinds of addicts get a rush from meeting other addicts. I suspect not because with drugs or drink, it might provide a kinship but also means there’s less of whatever substance being used to go around. This does not apply with TV. There’s plenty to go around, the more the merrier.

Being a TV addict is a relatively new identity for me to embrace. I spent many years not watching any TV (largely during my education), so there are blind spots in my TV knowledge (although not many because I read a lot of pop culture publications and still caught TV out of the corner of my eye). I suppose it has always been a bit of a hidden addiction for people of a certain type. Academics and intellectuals proudly and not without judgment in their voice announcing that they don’t watch or own a television. To some degree this high-culture anti-TV bent has been mitigated by the current golden age of television, in which serialized stories are a new form of in-depth cinematic genius and character development. It’s fine now to rattle off a handful of culturally acceptable programs, i.e. Mad Men, Breaking Bad and maybe something slightly more obscure.

But to admit that you pretty much watch a huge amount of what is offered… that’s still a bit of a mark against you. But you know what? I just turned 40… and I don’t care. I am 40, and I can do whatever the hell I want (or don’t want) with my time!

Something that makes me feel more confident about this choice is not just that I am 40, but also, meeting other fellow TV addicts who understand that you do not necessarily neglect everything else in your life in favor of vegging out in front of the telly. No, it is one thing that is going on among many.

I have a colleague who has seen all the rare and obscure and strange TV that I never thought I would be able to share or discuss with anyone. And that was not just a rush but helped make some of the more challenging work days better. It also made me feel that the lifestyle I have chosen is conducive to binge watching and not feeling badly about it.

Recently I discovered that another former colleague is almost as TV addicted and has very similar tastes to mine. Few things are socially as satisfying as being able to share the storylines and clever bits of dialogue – or to be able to discuss your own “tier” system for viewing (the can’t-miss, great shows; the stuff you don’t miss but is not quite great; the rest… or in my case, the stuff I hate but could not stop watching because it fueled the fire against stupidity, e.g. The Following, Looking, Brothers & Sisters…).

I don’t know that any other amateur TV addicts take it as seriously as I do, often writing feverish, critical blog posts (not well-thought-out or researched enough to be professional-level criticism) when inspired to, but the sense of relating to someone based on their tastes and also on their tendencies to overdose is comforting.

Riding the wave of TV shoutout – if you notice

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This week’s season finale (can you believe season two is already over? NO!) of Silicon Valley mentioned Varnish Software. In the morning following the air date, Varnish users and employees buzzed about this passing mention.

A few years ago, the unpopular, one-season medical drama Monday Mornings fairly prominently mentioned by name the antiseptic Hibiclens (a popular product from the company I was working for). No one at the company knew about it until I told them. Yeah it was not a popular show, and I don’t know if it was ever even on in Sweden, where the company has its HQ.

The difference in excitement levels, though, also illustrated the difference in how the employees in the two places use technology (and maybe consume TV content).

I oversimplify, I know, but I have worked in both worlds and think it’s fairly indicative. At the tech company, even people who did not watch the show found out about the mention. People kick into gear and try to capitalize on the mention in any way they can (at least Twitter or whatever avenue you can take). Even if the Hibiclens mention, which was even more prolonged and key to the unfolding substory, had been brought to the entire company’s attention and proposed as a marketing “bleep”, it would just have been ignored, as an, “Oh, that’s nice” moment.

TV: Timing is everything

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TV shows appeal to people in different ways – just like everything else (you know how you love, say, Chinese food, and I hate it and want to gorge myself on Indian food, which you hate… well, that’s what I mean. We’ve all got different tastes, no doubt).

With TV, also as with many things that just reach a saturation point, I have noticed, depending on when you jump onboard a specific show, you will feel differently about it. Early adopters of Breaking Bad, for example, sung its praises and loved it. Then mainstream adoption made the show highly visible and much talked about – talked to death, really. People who might have been the sort to adopt early or at least enjoy the show had it not been overblown end up not really liking it – but would they have had they seen it earlier, had they seen it before it became overblown and expectations heightened? If they waited a few years, and all the hype died down, and they just turned it on and watched… what would the experience have been then? I wonder this sometimes because there are shows like that for me – that I joined late (The Sopranos comes to mind here).

If you have the whole show to watch at one time, perhaps long after the show has ended, do you have a different experience and gain a different perspective or take away, than someone who watched episodically, week after week and season by season?

Lunchtable TV Talk: The Leftovers

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You know how it is when you get all fired up to do something, and if you don’t strike while the iron is hot, the impetus to act dissipates or entirely disappears? Specific topics in writing are like that for me. I can’t count the times I have collected notes and links to articles that inspired or informed my thinking but then don’t write what I want to write immediately. Soon the inspiration is gone, and anything I would write later on the subject is devoid of the passion and sometimes entirely of the point I wanted to make.

(This is a different problem from being inspired and researching and drawing in a lot of information from a lot of sources, only to lose all the gathered information in one horrible technology crash. This also happened recently. Rest assured, I don’t think any of us is suffering or losing sleep over these articles I won’t be writing!)

I have already admitted to being a TV addict, half-watching copious amounts of the stuff while doing other things. Only giving it half my attention means that unless something is truly remarkable, I am not taking much away. I still, though, feel compelled to chronicle all this multitask erstwhile viewing, and if I don’t do it right away (either after watching a particular episode or finishing a season), I might as well not do it.

But here I am a few days after someone recommended the show The Leftovers to me. Usually I have already seen everything there is to see, so recommendations, while welcome, greet me as old news. The Leftovers is no exception. I watched it during its original run and was sometimes confounded, sometimes disturbed. I have no argument with the mostly powerful performances delivered by a large ensemble cast. But the fact that I almost remember nothing about the show, and a lot of its themes have been jumbled in my head with what I’ve seen in the disappointing US version of The Returned, makes me less than enthusiastic about recommending The Leftovers, even though I was drawn in at the time and will watch season two. Perhaps my TV addiction amounts to “too much of a good thing…”.

Suddenly Kevin Rahm

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I had seen him in other places like Judging Amy and Desperate Housewives (neither being shows I actually watched), so Kevin Rahm never registered with me. But now he is everywhere. He has been Mad Men’s (newly moustachioed) Ted Chaough, Bates Motel’s bad guy Bob Paris and Madam Secretary’s somewhat mad external strategist, Mike B. It is Rahm’s moment.

His simultaneous ubiquity put him on my TV obsessed radar, but I do wonder what his future holds. He is sort of an everyman, can even appear a bit on the milquetoast side. Either he can play this everyman everywhere or he can be more of a secret weapon – displaying the ability to blend in like an everyman before unleashing some craziness and villainy on unsuspecting viewers.

Coca-Cola and “assholery”: Mad Men and HAPPYish

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Coca-Cola believes it taught us to sing. Or at least it believes it is so intrinsic to our lives that we won’t even notice its ubiquitous presence in our favorite TV shows. How pervasive Coca-Cola suddenly is in two TV shows that focus on the advertising industry: Mad Men and HAPPYish. If everyone in the world is an asshole, as the TV show HAPPYish posits, then ad men are the biggest assholes in the world, selling asshole ideas to a world of susceptible asshole sheep-herd consumers.

“In this toilet of a world, the asshole is king*.” Everyone loves the asshole.

“Your problem is that you think that assholes are some sort of anomaly, some sort of aberration. Nature is an asshole factory, my friend. If you exist, you’re an asshole*.”

Throughout the latter half of the final season of Mad Men, there have been multiple references to Coca-Cola, as present as Lucky Strike was to its first season. The references are subtle – talking about Coke like it is the holy grail of advertising, what all ad men aspire to. With only one episode left, it remains to be seen whether all these mentions lead somewhere or are just planted for the sake of talking about Coke. Lucky Strike’s dominance in season one, and the ad men’s urgent campaign to wipe out the rising tide of health warnings against smoking, foreshadowed a brave-faced Betty Draper Francis being diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Do the constant references to Coke as Mad Men winds down – the pursuit of their business – foreshadow the oncoming proliferation of diabetes, obesity and other health ills that soon overtake America? Is Matthew Weiner painting a cautionary tale in broad strokes? The vices we desire are ultimately what will kill us, but there are awfully compelling, glossy ad campaigns that make these vices appear however ad men want them to look – seductive, sexy, wholesome, beautiful, “toasted” (Don Draper’s pitch to Lucky Strike in season one) or a harbinger of world peace (“I’d like to teach the world to sing/in perfect harmony… I’d like the buy the world a Coke…”). All in the consumerist pursuit of elusive happiness and using manipulative, asshole tactics to convince us that a sugar-filled drink can accomplish anything of the kind.

Quite a different show about advertising, HAPPYish started off pretty weak and is still far from perfect. But in episode four, it started to get better. In it, the ad team at the heart of the show is pitching Coca-Cola. Much less subtle and totally over-the-top, the episode began with showing a bunch of young ad interns a parody of the original Coca-Cola “I’d like to teach the world to sing” ad. The actual Coke pre-pitch turns out to be a slap in the face to the young, Swedish upstarts trying to overtake the agency with their rejection of traditional ad campaign tactics. Oh the Swenglish sounds, spewing such corporate marketing psychobabble and insanity! One of the Swedish duo, Gottfried, exclaims, “We don’t need campaigns any more. It’s one smart idea, and it changes the world, ok? We need ideation! We need social integration. We needs events, we need moments… it wasn’t a war that started the Egyptian revolution, it was fucking Facebook.”

The show’s main character, Steve Coogan’s Thom Payne replies, “And the Egyptian revolutionaries.”

Bradley Whitford, the manager of the agency, grows more irate: “I don’t think Egypt is the best case study for the long-term effectiveness of social media.”

Gottfried: “It’s like you told me when we first met about Al Qaeda. They’re a great brand but what makes them a great brand? They don’t make campaigns – they make events: 9/11, 7/7, Charlie Hebdo…” ?!

Whitford’s Jonathan exclaims in angry exasperation: “THIS IS COCA-fucking-COLA! They couldn’t be less insurgent-like if they fucking tried!*”

The idiotic Swedish upstart interjects his “end of campaigns” BS and tries to tell Coke they can be an insurgent. After the Swedish wunderkind makes an ass of himself pitching the death of advertising, Bradley Whitford’s Jonathan jumps in to pitch Coca-Cola on a level it will understand: domination… in the form of the programmed, hyperdetailed, 600+ page 1933 Nazi organization brand bible: “This is what Coke needs” – the book that, Jonathan claims, makes Mein Kampf look like child’s play. He urges them to embrace global dominance the way the Nazis did – as no brand has ever been as powerful as the Nazi brand, not even Coke. “Domination is the same goal no matter what you’re selling. Coca-Cola is not a brand: it’s an uber-brand; it’s a movement that deserves a fanatical devotion*.”

HAPPYish’s antihero, Payne, ends up declaring, after the Coca-Cola pitch nightmare and a conversation about how society has cast philosophy and insight aside to look for wisdom in advertising and in retail therapy (“It’s not hard to be a genius in a world that looks to shopping bags for insights.”): “If I hadn’t met Lee (Payne’s wife), it wouldn’t be funny at all. We’re the only ones on earth that the other one can stand. Maybe that’s all you can ask for on this planet. One non-asshole. After all, the pursuit of happiness is the source of all unhappiness. You know who said that? LuLu Fucking Lemon. Here on planet asshole, the shopping bag knows all.”

Mad Men and its revelation-via-ad-campaign has echoed these same reflections, questions and explorations in its characters’ pursuit of happiness. It is a subtler, quieter evaluation of happiness and man’s wants in life. But it is further evidence of what HAPPYish hammered home – everyone is an asshole, which has been proven time and again in seven seasons of Mad Men.

*All quotes from season 1, episode 4 of Showtime’s HAPPYish

Lunchtable TV Talk – Grace and Frankie: Squandered opportunity

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The pedigree of Grace and Frankie’s cast (Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Sam Waterston, Martin Sheen) should guarantee (and does on paper) that this would be at least a semi-worthwhile viewing. But then it relies entirely on the marquee names and ignores the need for compelling writing, which is tired and borderline offensive, or acting. The characters are one-dimensional caricatures – and the show is just plain boring. It’s sad. Netflix rarely misfires this badly with its original programming. But this is just lazy and not funny where it is supposed to be. Full of insensitivity and lack of believability. It misses the opportunity to handle topics, such as late-in-life divorce, late-in-life coming out, quite deftly. We saw Amazon take on a similar journey in Transparent when a senior citizen man comes out as transgender and handled the story well. Grace and Frankie also deals with the retirement-aged set and looks at characters of an age that we don’t normally see in leading roles. They usually hang out in the background as the resident grandparents. Sadly, even with this cast and the potential for groundbreaking material, this show entirely mishandles these themes horribly.

Lunchtable TV Talk – Elementary: Promotion and reinvention

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It seems a fool’s errand to try to describe or review TV’s Elementary. Jonny Lee Miller (he’s great but he’s always a little bit “Sick Boy” to me) as one of many versions (modern and not so modern) of Sherlock Holmes delivers enough entertainment week on week – and the reimagined scene, set in New York with a female Watson (Lucy Liu originally as Sherlock’s sober companion and later his fellow detective), is effective in differentiating it. Supporting cast is also usually effective. I am struck in particular by Aidan Quinn as the police captain, as it seems Quinn has been relegated to a lifetime of playing the put-upon also-ran (Desperately Seeking Susan and Legends of the Fall come to mind) or world-weary police captains (in Elementary and in the short-lived US version of Prime Suspect starring Maria Bello).

In the most recent Elementary episode, I felt a strong connection to a very small scene, in which Quinn turns down a promotion. When asked why, he responds, “My ambition is being met.” He does not want to move. (It turns out in his case that the promotion was more of a way to get him out of his current job and is more a threat/not a choice than anything else.) But the bottom line for me is … how is it wrong when you admit that you are where you are because you want to be there? Isn’t finding the right place and right level of challenge and satisfaction and wanting to stay put its own triumph? We can search a lifetime for what we want to do and never find it. But when you find the thing that makes you happy, at which you have talent and from which you deliver results, do you need promotions and to climb a ladder just for the sake of climbing? The whole system is built that way – and not set up for those who are content with building on the foundation they have already built.

Elementary shows us another path, in fact, in the form of Liu’s Joan Watson. After a successful career as a surgeon, she leaves medical practice to become a sober companion. She eventually finds, in her work with Sherlock, that she is a gifted detective and makes a complete career change. For many this would seem ridiculous – after the years of training, education and practice that go into becoming a surgeon, walking away from it seems improbable. But finding one’s real passion – or a passion that becomes obvious or blooms only in later life – should be … if not rewarded, at least considered.

Having Watson’s career U-turn as a template and evolving example provides an interesting juxtaposition for the way the captain is tied to this career ladder he is expected to climb.

Lunchtable TV talk – HAPPYish: “Everyone’s f—ed and they don’t even know…”

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Apparently, HAPPYish on Showtime was meant to be a vehicle for Philip Seymour Hoffman’s boundless talents before his untimely death. The usually entertaining (in that obnoxious, this-rubs-me-the-wrong-way-but-I’m-still-laughing manner) Steve Coogan stepped in.

I don’t think it’s Coogan’s fault that the material feels tired, overworked, too much overprivileged middle-aged man at odds with the changing world. Coogan’s character is a senior ad exec, and much like Don Draper in Mad Men, he finds that the changing media landscape and its youth-oriented sensibilities seem to be moving on without him – even if those movements are actually illogical, loss-making bullshit. Coogan is the voice of reason but no one is listening. He’s struck by malaise – unable to be effective at work and unable to be particularly effective in his marriage. He can’t sexually perform, he tells his eager wife (Kathryn Hahn) that Prozac has robbed him of his libido but without Prozac he’d basically be horny but a miserable prick. The first episode makes Hahn seem like she is not able to say much aside from some variation of, “Are we gonna fuck (or not)?” And we were led to believe that men had the one-track minds.

The second episode focused more on Hahn’s troubled relationship with her unseen mother and her internal struggle about whether or not she should return a giant package her mother sent for her grandson. Somehow the parental conflict we don’t see just feels petty and Hahn’s character petulant and self-indulgent because we don’t really know the context. I normally like Hahn (she’s great in both Parks and Recreation and Transparent) but the writing and story here does not suit Hahn and seemingly does not suit anyone who is in this show – and there are a lot of names popping up, but everyone seems awkward.

Part of the problem, apart from trying too hard, is that we have little pieces of this same show already done better in other shows. We have the ad man-out-of-time in Mad Men. We have the hilarious parody of an industry that often seems to be blowing itself and praising its own insular nature at the expense of reality in Silicon Valley. We have the married-life rut and suburban ennui done to perfection in Togetherness. Like most critics, I think we don’t need another TV show about a dissatisfied but mostly spoiled middle-aged white dude complaining about everything he doesn’t have.

Do yourself a favor and watch those shows – not this one.

“Everyone’s fucked and they don’t even know…”