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.
Random Gum – Summer 2016 soundtrack: Alive and Kicking Latent Love and the Pre-Internet Days
The whole playlist (minus the songs that don’t exist on Spotify…) on Spotify.
01. Simple Minds – “Alive and Kicking” …now it’s all or nothing/cause you said you follow through…
Appeared twice in the same week on primetime TV (The Goldbergs & Fresh Off the Boat), proving 80s/90s nostalgia is alive and kicking – Simple Minds and John Hughes, always leading the charge. For S, for Amber
02. Vorderhaus – “Stepping Off the Ghost Train” …You tell yourself you’re in love/I tell myself I don’t care/I’m stepping off the ghost train/I’m tired of loving you in vain…
03. INXS – “Never Tear Us Apart” …but if I hurt you, I’ll make wine from your tears…
A cover version of this with female vocal (Paloma Faith) appeared in L&O SVU and made me think of the original, and of the domino-like tragedy of Hutchence–Yates–Geldof. And after the “Alive and Kicking” appearances I also thought of former best friend Terra and her junior high crush on INXS’s Jon Farriss. She had gone to spend the summer in Aberdeen (Scotland, not WA), dreamt Farriss died and had written me a letter (yes – a real letter, as this all happened in the 1987-8 world before the internet) describing the nightmare, to which I replied, “Don’t worry – he’s alive… and kicking!” Which was only funny at all because INXS’s hit album was called KICK. For Terra. For S.
04. John Grant – “Geraldine” …we’re not like them, we’re not that strong/at least that’s what they have been telling us all along…
The gorgeousness of John Grant continues.
05. The War on Drugs – “Under the Pressure” …When it all breaks down and we’re runaways/Standing in the wake of our pain…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCoP2W4v2v8
This has been a particularly rough year so far for musical deaths. I’m no Glenn Frey/Eagles fan, but this song plays into 1980s memories as well as a more recent vignette when two of my colleagues and I took our young Spanish intern to lunch for his birthday, and he commented on how I can possibly wear dresses in the cold, and I replied, “In the office, the heat is on…” The three of us old lady colleagues, in unison, burst into song, ‘The heat is on…’, which perplexed the youthful Spaniard.
07. AaRON – “U-Turn (Lili)” …you know there’s still a place for people like us…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTKfrY4cQ9I
Many thanks to my colleague, Laurent. This popped up at a time that everyone and everything seemed to be named Aaron, and as Key & Peele ended on Comedy Central, and I inhaled all five seasons in a few days, and keep going back to the “Substitute Teacher” clip in which the sub pronounces it, “A-A-Ron”.
08. Beach House – “Days of Candy” …I know it comes too soon/The universe is riding off with you…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoDamvrfUbQ
I’ve never experienced anything like the collective outpouring of shared grief and mourning for a public figure – and felt a part of it – the way I did when Bowie unexpectedly died in January 2016. I had never been a huge fan, but his departure felt like the dimming of a bright light that guided our path through the modern cultural landscape. For weeks afterward, I cried if I listened to him (which I could not stop doing) or thought about him. In the end, mortality will come for the flesh, but the work, voice, sound and vision live forever.
10. Lush – “Lovelife” …in your concrete arms I adore you…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYzfT1zmAGg
Celebrating the resurrection of Lush, their 2016 tour and (possibly) seeing them in London in May (which, sadly, I could not). For all my Lush-loving friends (too numerous to count!). “Every door conceals a dream and a nightmare…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6m47EQtAMzI
I don’t know how this fits into the soundtrack, really. I watched a documentary about the 1970s and thought we could use a pause here to groove on the decade
20. Elvis Costello – “Sweet Pear” …But there’s a void without your kiss/I wake on the precipice above the abyss/And though the touch of your lips these fears dismiss/Make no mistake there is an ache I have to live with…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQ9bVpGLego
“Was my grip too loose, my grip too strong/That made you want to run away/And now you’re back where I pretend you belong/I wonder every night and day, how long?” For Roberto.
21. Dom La Nena – “Saudade” …E onde é que foi que vi voar aquele beija flor/Onde esta agora os restos de um amor que machucou/E o tempo passou, você não mudou/A quanto tempo foi que você não voltou…
23. Sleeper – “What Do I Do Now?” …is there someone else, am I too familiar, was it when I said I wanted to have children…?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSe3dV7dPYw
I’ve always preferred Elvis Costello’s slower, sadder recording of this song. Every time I hear it, it seems to take on new depth and meaning. “What do I do now? Are we going under? What did I do wrong? I thought we had it sorted out the other day. Maybe I’m just stupid. Thought we’d try again. No one told me it was raining.”
26. Saint Motel – “A Quick One While He’s Away” …It’s like a dream to be with you again…
27. Townes van Zandt – “Waitin’ Around to Die” …sometimes I don’t know where this dirty road is taking me…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbsMn476T2U
Never get enough of Townes. “Now I’m outta prison, got me a friend that lasts. Well he don’t drink or steal or cheat or lie, well, his name’s codeine, he’s the nicest thing I’ve seen, yeah, together we’re gonna wait around and die.”
28. Psycho Killer – “Road to Nowhere”
Stuff like this (the original anyway, and the Talking Heads in general) and The Pretenders – stuff I could not appreciate until on the cusp of being “aged” like cheese or wine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvQHt5t7zkg
Of course I’m inspired by Martina (another Mexican thing) here and how kind of comical this song is, but also thinking of multiple discussions on the dislike for Welsh people (haha) and the recent passing of Tom Jones’s wife (RIP).
34. Ezra Furman – “Body Was Made” …Your body is yours at the end of the day and don’t let the hateful try and take it away…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkEkjxX_YrM
Had not heard so much saxophone in a long time, and stumbled on this right after having multiple conversations about how the name “Ezra” isn’t one you hear often.
35. Lush & Jarvis Cocker – “Ciao!” …life is wonderful now that I’m rid of you…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0Jvo5_IrlI
This is 1996 for me, two of my favorites of the time, trying to break away from the grip of shitty relationships that seem to be the telltale sign of young adulthood.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tvEvBUG8mY
Music my mom listened to a lot when my brother and I were children. My brother had an angry-looking, fluffy blue stuffed rabbit he named “Eddie Rabbit” thanks to our exposure to this. Wondering what happened to the little rabbit, as I made some of my last long-haul drives in the middle of the night between home & Gothenburg.
39. Irma Thomas – “Anyone Who Knows What Love Is (Will Understand)”
40. Townes van Zandt – “Be Here to Love Me”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E6NPj9M_p20
“Your eyes seek conclusion in all this confusion of mine/though you and I both know it’s only the warm glow of wine/that’s got you to feeling this way/but I don’t care I want you to stay/hold me and tell me you’ll be here to love me today”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eViyPYJ2okc
“Cause what we got down here is oceans of longing/And guessing games, and no guarantees/And you work so hard to be in control/And now you’re laughing at yourself because you can’t let go”. For Roberto.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgEB3rY8ZGI
Lovely song anyway but its placement in the stunning second season of You’re the Worst, when you’re hit with the realization that the main character is descending into a deep, dark depression was perfect.
45. Robyn Hitchcock – “1974” …And as Nixon left the White House you could hear people say/’they’ll never rehabilitate that mother, no way’…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVDDXFpVjNU
Robyn is just a magnificent storyteller, master of verbal imagery and a genius. Love! If “Boogie Shoes” was a grooveable 70s moment, this is a philosophical rumination on that ruinous and ugly decade.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ybYYKBd_40
“I can hardly breathe without you/There is no future I want to see without you/I just don’t know who I would be without you/There is nothing out there for me without you…”
54. Giant Sand – “Stranded Pearl” …every girl is like a pearl/hearts strung along and then left stranded…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wcUKHnrTXzg
A great, visual, wordy song. “I lost me my eye in a battle/went there to rattle their cage/lost sight of the big picture/now this permanent fixture is my rage”. (Made me think a bit at the end of a Derek Walcott poem, “Codicil”, which ends, “All its indifference is a different rage.”)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unmaQzVS9lw
“Well the one in Chicago wasn’t there anymore, and because that thing in Berlin wasn’t anyone’s fault… I got no idea what’s fair but I knew before – you got foreign lovers”. An insanely fitting song, stumbled on by accident. All the foreign lovers (and hilarious that Chicago and Berlin are the cities referenced…).
As an adolescent, my friend Terra and I ‘discovered’ Fairport Convention, and it’s still something nice to listen to. When I listened to this again and reflected on the time that’s passed by since we were friends, and particularly since we were close and finding new music together, the song was particularly poignant and bittersweet.
62. Núria Graham – “Dark Past” …everybody’s got a dark past/but mine is just about to start…
63. David Bowie – “Cat People” … Just be still with me/You wouldn’t believe what I’ve been through…
“When the summer’s light is fragrant/with scents of returning/you relent, you resent, now you’re burning/for nothing to change…”
65. Wire – “German Shepherds” …it’s beginning to and back again…
Song title made me think, in a very roundabout way, of the Paris attacks of November 2015. Following the attacks, the French government went on the offensive and a Belgian shepherd (like the one in the TV show Person of Interest) was killed during a raid, prompting the Russians to give a new dog to the French. Hmm. Then in March, of course, Belgium fell victim to yet another terror attack.
No sentiment could be truer. November 2015, driving around downtown Tacoma, with thanks to my brother, Kyle, on relationships: “That phase of my life is over.”
67. Vorderhaus – “Venus in Retrograde” …how do you really love/the truth is happening/it’s venus in retrograde/the dark affair within…
You know you want more: https://soundcloud.com/vorderhaus/
68. Townes van Zandt – “For the Sake of the Song” …nothing’s what it seems/maybe she’ll start someday to realize/if she abandons her dreams/then all the words she can say are only lies/when will she see that the gain is only to lose/all that she offers me are chains/and I got to refuse…
For ML. “Maybe she just has to sing for the sake of the song/who do I think that I am to decide that she’s wrong?”
71. Primal Scream – “I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have” …I betrayed you, you trusted me, and I betrayed you…
Sometimes you realize that even when something is ostensibly done, you cannot fully move forward until you have let go completely of past things and people. The sad reminder of the last conversation, last realization/S.
For many reasons I put this here – it’s a Swedish story full of Swedish place, but it is also choice for its connection to dear Andreas, the value of musical recommendations, and to our many talks about ad copy and the fraudulent feeling of writing stuff without meaning, pop culture stuffing of ads & such.
73. David Bowie – “Where Are We Now?”
Constant striving for Berlin, which represents a constant striving for change.
What can I even say? If Bowie was a loss and a shock, the loss of Prince was an even greater shock. For me, Prince is always freshest, best and alive in the Purple Rain period. I fell in love with the first time I heard this one as a child. RIP.
I can’t add much to the feverish discussion surrounding the latest, much-anticipated release of House of Cards episodes on Netflix. Similarly, I won’t be eloquent about HBO comedy Veep. Both have been around for a few seasons – and in both cases, the new seasons began with the stakes higher than ever for the main characters, Frank Underwood and Selina Meyer, respectively, because both had since last season, ascended to the presidency of the United States.
House of Cards is a drama predicated on a lot of underhanded and often illegal machinations and dealmaking. Veep is a comedy predicated on the idea that vice presidents are little more than puppets who appear for photo-ops and toe the party line. Each show has its strengths – particularly their stellar and varied casts (as I have written before – I will watch things just because I like the actors in it). These shows are no exception.
Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright head a cast that includes quite a few great performers. I happen to love Molly Parker, and her Jackie Sharp seems genuinely conflicted at times about balancing the need for honesty and humanity against the requirement to lie and scheme to achieve upper-echelon power. Michael Kelly’s continued portrayal of Doug Stamper as a shady operator, willing to do whatever it takes, has been riveting. I also enjoyed seeing Lars Mikkelsen (brother of Mads Mikkelsen of Hannibal fame) playing the Russian president to idiomatic perfection – “it’s a lot of work being a Dane trying to do a Russian accent” (naturally adding a tick in the checklist of even more Scandinavian men appearing on TV). There is a lot of drama, a lot of intrigue, and there are many unlikable people and actions here.
In that sense, I didn’t always enjoy the latest season. Wright’s performance as the First Lady is as commendable as her spot-on work throughout the series – she commits to and embodies Claire Underwood completely. But the story about her husband naming her as US Ambassador to the UN felt a bit half-baked to me. Even if such a move is possible, it seems so unrealistic and highly risky given the stakes pitted against her inexperience. Her demand that the president yield to her, reasoning that it is “her time”, might be authentic, if petulant and crybaby in tone, but the outcome feels forced. Nothing good comes of it.
Meanwhile the troubling trajectory Doug Stamper is on feels quite genuine, even if unrealistic, and Kelly embraces it with aplomb. He doesn’t just lie down and die when the president distances himself. When he is no longer in the inner circle, he finds ways to ensure he will get back there. Not pleasant ways, but sometimes chilling and always manipulative schemes to get him the information, leverage and power he needs to return to the president’s side.
Veep is of course, for the most part, a horse of another color. Despite superficial similarities, the shows – their casts, their tones, their drive, their stories, their purposes – could not be more different. In previous seasons, all the characters bring something special, comedic (sometimes embarrassingly comedic) to the table and present a farcical take on (vice) presidential politics. Headed up by Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who is really in her element here, as vice president (now president) Selina Meyer, the cast is made up of characters both overly driven and egotistical who compete with each other to try to win favor with the VP, as is the case with Anna Chlumsky and Reid Scott. Both are smart and want to be at the forefront of Meyer’s campaigns and staff – and often ended up, for lack of a better term, “eating shit” on Meyer’s behalf. Tons of other great characters played by great actors – nothing more notable that I can add. (I am so happy to see Patton Oswalt on the show as the new VP’s chief of staff. Oswalt’s showing up everywhere these days, and I love it: Justified, a hilarious episode of the beleaguered Battle Creek, voiceover in The Goldbergs, voice work in BoJack Horseman, a role in Brooklyn Nine-Nine… and he is still something to miss about United States of Tara!). It’s a funny show, and keeps getting funnier – while House of Cards feels like it’s sliding.
The Goldbergs was a bit over the top for me in the beginning, but as I continued to watch, the 1980s nostalgia eventually won me over. Many, many moments choke me up with tears. The show manages to evoke nostalgia, emotion without being overly saccharine. And I suppose people who did not grow up in that era might not feel as strongly about it. But they can find other points to connect with emotionally (the importance of family, the connection the crazy mother has with the kids, the sense of not wanting your kids to grow up, the feeling that everyone is awkward in youth but eventually, with the right guidance, they find their voice and path). It is interesting to watch the Goldberg kids grow up.
A recent episode made me laugh out loud. The dad wonders why someone would destroy a perfectly good Fiero to make a robot when the youngest, Adam, enthuses about the greatness of The Transformers (toys and cartoon). Adam pits the “stupidity” of a game “where grown men hit a ball with a stick” against his future run by robots. Argument ensues about baseball versus robots – America’s pastime (past) and its robotic future.
“Robots aren’t even real.”
“Oh you’ll see how real they are when cyborgs take over and outlaw your precious baseball.”
