Rob Ford

Lunchtable TV Talk – Battle Creek: Embattled

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Even if Battle Creek gets the axe (which seems pretty likely right now), the first half of its one and probably only season has been entertaining. I recognize that I pull out the “entertaining” word an awful lot. It suffices often enough for these shows that don’t knock it out of the park but pass the time reasonably and pleasantly. But average adjectives are just about all that distinguish TV shows that fail to distinguish themselves.

Battle Creek’s cast should have done half the work by virtue of its experience and talent. The cast, anchored by comeback kid of sorts Dean Winters (best known for playing “Dennis”, Tina Fey’s on-off, loser boyfriend in 30 Rock, “Mayhem” in a long-running series of ads for Allstate Insurance, Ryan O’Reilly in the disturbing HBO prison drama, Oz as well as Rescue Me and Law & Order SVU) as Detective Russ Agnew, comes together within the beleaguered Battle Creek, Michigan police department. They’re led by the multitalented Janet McTeer as their commander, and the police department has basically no resources with which to work. In comes Josh Duhamel as dapper, charming FBI agent, Milt Chamberlain.

The story, with this group of actors, should gel better. The premise pits two very different detectives with two different perspectives on investigative work and on life against each other, but forces them to partner up. Agnew is cynical and distrustful (and his reasons for being this way become clear in the course of the show); Chamberlain, at least from what we have seen in the few episodes we’ve seen, is cheerful and trusting (but we don’t get a very good look at what motivates him or is behind his actions). They work together, improbably, to solve crimes, and the acting should complement the story – but I don’t feel like the show has unfolded a compelling enough story for us to care or to make people watch.

It’s unfortunate because there is potential. Its DNA has a little bit of Vince Gilligan (creator of Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul); guest casting has been clever and fun (a superb and hilarious as well as topical guest appearance from the great Patton Oswalt as Battle Creek’s mayor – a terrific comedic send-up of Toronto’s former mayor Rob Ford; Candice Bergen as Detective Agnew’s con-woman mother).

The actors – both regulars and guest stars – have done their part with the material they have, but the show itself, so far, has not been tight enough, has not been more than middling. If given a chance, I imagine that the show could hit its stride (many shows have surprised us after slow starts in their first seasons). Now it’s just a matter of Battle Creek getting that chance.

The daily schmear – Sleazy topic overload: Dirty habits, dirty minds, dirty looks

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“Fucking cocaine!” he muttered (at :45 seconds)

“You know I was really so successful at everything I did – business, politics, hell, I could handle anything. Except cocaine. Only I didn’t know that because of cocaine.” (RIP Larry Hagman)

Dirty habits

Cocaine has been in the news – and news parodies in particular – a lot lately. We can thank North American politicians for the rapid uptick in cocaine-related news, even if, every time cocaine is mentioned, I think of the aforementioned clip from the film Primary Colors. (Or I think of the music of Rosa Eskenazi, a Greek singer, who sang a lot about drugs, back in the early part of the 20th century.)

Both The Daily Show and The Colbert Report were fixated on cocaine and its crack cousin this week, thanks to Toronto mayor Rob Ford and Florida Republican congressman Trey Radel and their drug-related indiscretions.

Trey Radel cocaine

Daily Show coverage of Trey Cokehead Radel

One Colbert story, though, comedic as his presentation was, actually struck a chord in my nerd side. Apparently University of Pennsylvania researchers have found that a male cocaine users’ sperm DNA (okay, granted we’re talking about male rodents, not humans) is altered to pass on some kind of immunity to the effects of cocaine, making his male offspring less susceptible to cocaine addiction.

Colbert – cocaine study

Of course when I passionately rattle off details of studies like this as well as the observed symptoms and effects of various drugs, I scare my colleagues – but it is just general knowledge, gleaned from talking to people who have done these things. I’ve never even been drunk. Actually in a former workplace, one colleague and I were joking that all the aluminum foil accumulated in our office (because I wrapped all my baked goods in foil for transport) could help us smoke crack. Except we only imagined that you needed foil to smoke crack because we had no idea at all how one would actually smoke it. We have no idea how to take any drugs, let alone how to get them.

Dirty minds: Multicultural Swedish fika

In Swedish, “fika” is a concept beyond just a “coffee break”. It is a sacred cow – to the extent that any talk against or threat of eliminating this treasured event from Swedish work life is met with loud protest of a kind that Swedes are rarely wont to undertake. It is so ingrained and expected that HR recently felt it necessary to discuss its centrality to the culture with the global staff.  Apparently they wanted to emphasize that people should feel empowered to take fika, to explain that we actually do not have enough fika today and that people should not succumb to the pressure of people giving them “dirty looks” when they seem to disapprove of their “fika-taking”.

Let’s not get into the multicultural challenges of fika. Even the word fika sends nonplussed, flustered Italians into a tailspin, not knowing where to look, averting their gaze, not knowing what to do with themselves when we exclaim excitedly, “FIKA TIME!” (Check out the word “fica”, and you’ll get it.)

Dirty looks

In a recent discussion on these “dirty looks” that (presumably) non-Swedish colleagues give to active fika-takers, one Swedish colleague misunderstood “dirty looks” to mean something sexual. Yes, every time you take a fika, someone will give you seductive looks! In which case, Italian men would hang around and wait for fika to happen constantly.