Big Love

The life of beautiful fools – No time like the present

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I had no intention of starting off today’s writing talking about Bill Paxton. But the dude went and died at only 61 after complications from surgery. (My history working in a surgical field, of course, makes me morbidly curious about the complications, but that is totally beside the point.) Bill Paxton appeared in more films and shows than I can count. For me, he is first ‘Chet’, the horrible older brother in the silly-stupid 80s flick, Weird Science – who would have imagined the career he ended up with based on that role? And later, although he appeared in many major blockbusters, his strength as an actor shone through in roles like TV’s Big Love and films like A Simple Plan and the disturbing Frailty (which he also directed), where his quiet conviction and ‘everyman intensity’ were on full display.

Apart from losing the actor, I think we’re once more reminded that our tendency to defer, to postpone, to wait… until everything is settled, figured out, the docket is cleared … is a waste of time. How does it do us any good? If you wanted desperately to do something, go somewhere – or whatever propels your dreams – why are you not doing it? Surely there are reasons why something is not realistic or why you think you need to wait.

But how many of those reasons are just excuses and fear? It’s easy to obscure what is important because sometimes following your heart is the much harder road to take. Should you not at least evaluate and question whether you are living how and doing what you want? What’s the worst that can happen? It’s a shame that it takes an untimely or unexpected death – of a family member or a friend, of a person in the public eye – to make us see that the present is all we have. Can you afford to wait?

After all, what happens to a dream deferred (Hughes)?

Lunchtable TV Talk: Hit & Miss (or why I changed my mind about Chloë Sevigny)

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Hit & Miss was the first time I heard Joy Division’s “Atmosphere” in what would be twice in two days (the second was in the stellar soundtrack to Stranger Things). Just incidental but positive.

I don’t know quite what led me to Hit & Miss. It’s a British show from 2012, so it’s not new, but I think it appeared on a recent list of “must-see” shows (which I routinely paw through looking for gems I may have overlooked in my obsessive TV viewing. Believe it or not, with the mushrooming of different platforms and their respective original programming, it’s easy for a lot of good and true-to-the-word “original” programming slip through the ever-widening cracks).

The protagonist, Mia, played by the versatile Chloë Sevigny, is a pre-op transgendered woman – and hitman/professional assassin. She’s at the top of her game in terms of successful hits when she gets word that her former girlfriend is ill with cancer and the surprising news that she has a son, Ryan. By the time Mia receives the letter and goes to her former girlfriend’s home, the woman has already died, leaving behind just her children. Mia, wanting to be there for her son and indeed for the rest of the children, takes on the entire family. The drama that ensues from here plays out over the course of six episodes is well worth watching.

Somehow, describing the plot in these bullet points makes it sound completely outlandish: any show would have more than enough story to grapple with just managing any single one of the traits/points listed. That is, a story about a transgendered woman could make a whole show. The story of a female assassin, another. The story of a former lover having to return to the past to rear a child he never knew about, another. But to combine all these and make it not just work but triumph is a real feat. Not everything about Hit & Miss was perfect, but its understated nature and careful, never-gratuitous handling of all of the difficult and sensitive subject matter nearly was. And at the core of that near-perfection was a solid, committed performance from its star, Sevigny.

Why I changed my mind: Chloë Sevigny

Sevigny was sort of an “it” girl – but a subversive one – in the 1990s, but she never embodied that overhyped concept (a concept that makes one biased immediately against someone who is overexposed in the early parts of their career). Someone like Sevigny, who has never been “mainstream” in a sense but has been prolific in her varied work, is someone I felt that bias against, both because of the overexposure/praise and because many of her sometimes daring choices seemed attention-grabbing (unsimulated oral sex in The Brown Bunny) more than professionally risky. Not to mention that many of the characters, despite being vulnerable, are almost never likeable. Often shady, scheming, not anyone you would want to be friends with or emulate. But that is Sevigny’s genius. She can make all of these negative character traits work and weave them into so many vastly different characters but at the same time make many of these characters fragile and vulnerable in ways that I have rarely seen any actor convey. Over time I have come to appreciate the growing depth of her work (I loved to hate her in Big Love; felt she added an interesting, honest, world-weary depth to the already brilliant Bloodline; was one of the few bright points in the most recent season of the increasingly bad American Horror Story). Frankly she grounded Hit & Miss, which could have been a colossal miss had it not been for her performance.

Photo (c) 2005 Cesar Bojorquez

reaching the end of the road

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As I mentioned yesterday and in an older post devoted exclusively to my obsessiveness about television, Friday Night Lights has come to an end after a five-year run.

There is something sorrowful about the end of a show that had so much humanity and human touchpoints in it. It is especially difficult when the show comes to an end after only five years, while seeming crap can remain on TV ad infinitum. I realized while watching it yesterday that it is not just full of real-life moments and the complex, changing characters we meet in our everyday lives but also that it is full of moments that we either relate to because we recognize these moments from our own lives or wish we had experienced ourselves. Me, being too much of a closed-off cynic most of my life to be open to the kinds of relationships people have on this show, I can only attest to their true-to-life feeling based on observation and conjecture. I did not fall in love with people in my high school, but just because I thought I was above that, does not mean I did not see it happen every day to people all around me. Much like many main characters in the show, some of those young loves lasted, and some did not.

At the heart of the show, we see the strength of the marriage between the two main characters, Eric and Tami Taylor. I repeat myself and every TV critic in the world when I state that I have never seen a more honest, grounded portrayal of marriage. The couple has struggles; they argue; they disagree. But they never disrespect. They eventually come together and discuss, even if they never agree. They work through challenges that real people face (for example, in one season, they want to buy a house they cannot afford, and unlike any other TV show I have seen in my lifetime, other than perhaps in the show Roseanne, where they did deal with the economics of middle-class family life, a couple chose to let go of something they dreamt of because they chose to be realistic and live within their means). The final season saw Eric and Tami face the biggest challenges to their marriage that they have possibly ever seen. The way they resolved the challenges took time, soul-searching, a sense of selflessness and of selfishness (each character having to find these attributes within himself to move forward together as a couple).

It has been a long time since I felt this broken up about the ending of a TV show.

In a couple of months, Big Love will also end after five years. I don’t feel the same kind of regret to see it go although I have found the whole show to be compelling, despite some the crazy drama that ensued (particularly last season). The crazy drama might even have been believable within the framework of Big Love if it had not tried to pack itself into one short season. I will miss the richness of the characters and how they each handle the trials of their new lives as “outed” polygamists.

Each of these shows, in their own ways, deals with different manifestations and representations of love. What could be more appropriate for Valentine’s Day? Another (holi)day I don’t celebrate. I cannot remember even being in a relationship during Valentine’s Day (since the 90s), and certainly not with anyone who cared for these artificial days for romance. I suppose I have become overly sentimental (or maudlin) now because I almost think it might be nice to have a day for that sort of sappiness.

Moving right along, as these shows reach the end of their road, and I find new shows to watch as I continue on my same road, working too much, baking too much, I wonder where the next fork will appear in my road.

Soundtrack for the frame of mind:
MGMT – “The Youth”

Video.