TV shows

Lunchtable TV Talk: Homeland

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Not all shows are blessed with sheer perfection. In fact, most aren’t. Even the best shows have uneven episodes or seasons and threads or characters that don’t quite pan out.

One of the most uneven shows, Homeland, saw a revitalization last season as its troubled protagonist, Carrie (Claire Danes), left the CIA and worked in Berlin. Of course her path never strays far from her CIA officer life and its characters, even when she tried everything to escape. It’s part of who she is, even when she formed an identity and family life outside of it. The most recent season revived the show – and my interest – even if there were bits I did not care for (Carrie going off her meds again!)

If anything, this new life for Homeland, without Nicholas Brody and that whole mess with which Homeland was introduced to viewers, shows that you can’t really write some things off, even if they seem to have expired. After delivering a knockout punch with its first season, Homeland should probably have taken a different tack. It became progressively more difficult to deal with season by season until it reinvented itself with the last season. With an unbelievably talented cast, you just need some stellar storytelling to get back on track.

And, ultimately, as Carrie herself learns, you can go home again.

Now let’s see what Homeland’s fifth season, which will begin in early 2017, brings. (I realize I have/had nothing new to write about the show – it’s been written about and analyzed ad nauseam by professionals and others… and I don’t need to add to the cacophony. As usual, though, I am just cataloging my viewing experiences for my own sake.)

Lunchtable TV Talk: BrainDead

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I was not sure what to make of the show BrainDead. But I am enjoying it immensely as it goes along. But will it be long for this world? If ratings are any indication, no. You can see the fingerprints of Robert and Michelle King (responsible for The Good Wife) all over it. Will that pedigree change anything? The Good Wife suffered from low ratings throughout its entire run. BrainDead shares some casting overlaps, stylistics, and a superb cast overall, just stuffed with talent. I hope it gets a longer chance to prove itself. It’s a timely commentary – and tonic for the times.

Aaron Tveit (from Graceland) is charming and smooth; Mary Elizabeth Winstead – I finally get it. She had been talked about a lot but I could never see the “it” that made people talk about her. Overall I did not care for the English-language remake/version of The Returned, and she was one of the central characters (no one really looked great in that near-train-wreck). Also the formidable Margo Martindale. Brandon J. Dirden, who was one of the FBI agents (Stan’s partner) in the most recent season of The Americans and so much more. And Johnny Ray Gill, the guy who was Sam in the ambitious and rewarding Underground. The great Tony Shalhoub, who needs no further introduction because he is the best. And Danny Pino, the dude who left Law & Order SVU and came to BrainDead from a role in Scandal.

The contentious nature of politics is ratcheted up a few million notches in this dark-comedy drama. A lot of crazed making up facts. Only at least there is an explanation: some bugs – literal insects – are taking over people’s brains. In our ‘real’ world, I guess we don’t have an explanation for the extremes. Politics is rough enough without erasing facts (or losing half your brain to a parasite and suddenly listening to The Cars’ “You Might Think” on repeat).

It’s a hyperbolic mirror of our current situation – Tony Shalhoub’s character wants to name a kiosk after Ronald Reagan (a WWII veteran! Only he’s not – he just feels like one because he made a movie in which he served in WWII) – and Shalhoub’s opponent wants to call the kiosk after Emma Goldman. There is no middle ground and no compromise.

Photo (c) 2009 Neil Conway.

Lunchtable TV Talk: The Night Shift

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Sometimes the stuff television offers feels like it’s churned out on a conveyor belt in a factory. Some time ago I watched the previous season(s) of The Night Shift, about a bunch of doctors working the – duh – overnight shift in a Texas hospital. It was not anything special – in fact when I picked up watching the latest season, I did not even remember that there had already been two, not one, seasons. But… I still kept watching.

Between seasons of The Night Shift, I started watching the Chicago juggernaut (Chicago Fire, Chicago Med, Chicago P.D.). Not only did Chicago Med (and all its gratuitous crossovers into the other Chicago properties) wash away all memory of The Night Shift, when The Night Shift returned, it felt and seemed a lot less interesting than it had been because it was a lot like watching more Chicago Med, only with characters I no longer remembered or recognized. (Weirder still, they are all on NBC in the US, so… burnout, anyone?

Despite the American appetite for medical, legal and cop shows, I’d think the idea of getting lost in the oversaturation of the theme(s) would be enough reason to look at different topics. I don’t know – despite the “danger” in being lost in a sea of sameness, people keep introducing new shows in the same mold, and some catch on while others don’t. I don’t know why. I tried to watch Code Black, but holy shit – I could not even get through one episode (it seemed badly miscast), but it was renewed – multiple times, maybe. I thought Monday Mornings was a good premise, and I liked it, but it didn’t last and its decent cast landed elsewhere (e.g., Jamie Bamber had a great turn in the deeply unsettling but immensely satisfying British crime drama, Marcella, and prolific and interactive Tweeter – she seems exceedingly generous with her time – Jennifer Finnigan is a lead in Tyrant). I thought a Jennifer Beals-led medical-supernatural drama, Proof, was overegged, and it too was canceled. Go figure.

The Night Shift, being rather lacklustre and lacking in any real hook, seemed like it might suffer a similar fate. Maybe watching Scott Wolf be an alcoholic surgeon “working the steps” (in The Night Shift) rather than Oliver Platt being a particularly intuitive psychiatrist (in Chicago Med) is the kind of thing that makes the difference. I don’t know. It’s not like either show is must-see… it’s just that this is what is on in the background as I am working on a million other things. It takes something really remarkable to make me look up from my work and pay close attention (and there are very few of those things right now).

Lunchtable TV Talk: Burnistoun

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Watching the very Glasgow, very Scottish Burnistoun has been a bit spooky, as many of the sketches model near-exact conversations I have had, situations I have been in and linguistic bits I’ve noted. So many of the things I’ve long enjoyed and laughed at in everyday Scottish life, the Burnistoun sketches and their creators, Robert Florence and Iain Connell, have captured in comedic hyper-reality. It speaks for itself (or “itsel”, as the Glaswegians would say, because who needs the final “f”!). Just watch! Love love love.

(Makes me think of gone-Hollywood Gerard Butler and our discussions on how “Gerard” is pronounced GER-ard in Scotland and ger-ARD in the US)

(Hilarious take-off of TV historian-personality Neil Oliver, his dramatic delivery while the wind blows his flowing mane; something I’ve also long been having a laugh at.)

(Voice recognition lift in Scotland. Good luck with that!)

(Nae rolls! When all you wanted was a wee roll and sausage!)

(Kenny Rogers impersonators: “That’s the Kenny Rogers I’m gonna marry!” Actually, after all the work the real Kenny Rogers has had done, these impersonators look more like the real Kenny Rogers…)

Lunchtable TV Talk: Motive

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TV is a lot richer in summer these days than it used to be – we got a few seasons of some exciting new stuff, whole seasons of Orange is the New Black and BoJack Horseman on Netflix and quite a lot of “off-season” (if you can really even call it that any more) filler to carry us through until fall. In fact, you could almost argue that spring and summer bring some of the best stuff now. There are no boundaries to prime release time for TV shows (and, as I have argued, can you even call them “tv shows” any more, seeing as how they may fit the format but aren’t broadcast on any network and can be inhaled one full season at a time?

Because of that, addicts like me are spoiled – and never have to go through the withdrawals that generally accompanied the dry season of summer. Still, though, nothing is so abundant that I don’t end up seeking out filler beyond the filler I was already watching.

That’s how I ended up watching Motive. My mom told me about it, and apparently had been telling me about it for some time since I still claimed never to have heard of it when it was heading into its fourth season. Maybe because it’s Canadian and didn’t last in its big US network broadcast slot (and was eventually moved to USA), it was not a big title. Nevertheless, just before the fourth season kicked off, I watched all three of the preceding seasons. Why? Reason one: nothing much else to watch that weekend while I was busy with other things; reason two: Louis Ferreira. Who is he, you ask? Well, the only reasons I know and like him: he was Colonel Young in Stargate Universe (the only one in that franchise I cared for, largely because of Robert Carlyle) and was in Breaking Bad. There are worse reasons for watching a show. Reason three: I liked the idea of already knowing the crime and finding out the motive.

Oddly, for a Canadian police mostly-procedural, I have been pretty entertained. I raced through and didn’t pay rapt attention, so I can’t cite plot points or anything particularly notable. But I saw a lot of standard Canadian-actor extras and Battlestar Galactica alums, which is also fun. I didn’t remember at first that the lead, Kristin Lehman, had been a key supporting player in The Killing, which was also good – I like her a lot better in Motive as detective Angie Flynn. In fact, I came to like her a lot, and it’s the easy chemistry between Lehman’s and Ferreira’s characters that make the show as watchable as it has been. That is, chemistry based on deep friendship and respect between colleagues, not sexual tension or something similar. You don’t see that much on TV. In very subtle ways, stuff about Motive is different, and is why I keep watching.

Photo (c) 2014 Michalis Famelis.

Lunchtable TV Talk: Feed the Beast

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Feed the Beast is one of those kinds of shows that could go either way. Based on a loosely classified ‘Nordic Noir’ Danish show (Bankerot) about a restaurant and the criminal underworld around it, it could have been quite a vehicle for storytelling and talent. It also appears on AMC, which has a history of mostly quality hits rather than misses (with a few exceptions, of course). But then, even though the show is watchable, it feels like it is always on the edge of comedy, and I don’t think it is supposed to. Maybe this is because everyone in the show feels like a caricature.

First and foremost, David Schwimmer plays, Tommy, a slightly angrier, more bitter and grief-stricken version of whiny, pathetic Ross from Friends. It’s not that he is incapable of something else – it’s just that this role requires it. And we know from the 12 or so years of Friends that he has mastered that role (incidentally I read an interesting take on Friends’ Ross and how he – and how he was treated and turned into a kind of cartoon – mirrors the way society treats and views intellectuals. And Schwimmer is probably underrated in general; as far as I was concerned, his performance in The People vs. OJ Simpson – as Robert Kardashian – was one of the highlights of that program). In any case, despite Schwimmer’s capability, his presence in a role that so closely matched the Ross role on some levels distracts and inevitably leads the Friends-soaked brain to scream out: “comedy”.

Tommy’s best friend, a low-level conman – and chef – “Dion” (an effective Jim Sturgess), who “bobs and weaves” his way through life, also feels comedic, mostly because his egregious actions don’t seem to lead to real consequences. Sure, he went to prison, but in his own estimation, he enjoyed it there because he got to cook. When he crosses bad guys, he gets a beat down, but nothing he doesn’t just walk away from. He keeps getting chances – and maybe that is what I find unbelievable, even if in real life I see people who get more chances than they deserve and more chances than I can count. It is not unrealistic at all; it just seems that way to me because my own view of the world is linear, and I am not a conman who counts on wriggling and wiggling my way out of every scrape. (And of course these scrapes the character gets into are all his own making; all get worse because of his propensity for piling shit on shit and promise on promise – none of which he can keep.)

The two friends reunite and open a restaurant, Thirio (‘the beast’, apparently, in Greek), which had been their dream along with Tommy’s deceased wife, Rie. This explains Tommy’s grief and anger – and increasing alcoholism, which he tries badly to mask (with his career as sommelier); the only thing keeping him going at all is his son, who has not spoken a word since his mother died.

Naturally the restaurant opening is much easier said than done and ends up involving Dion’s connections and obligations to underworld criminals (the main one is played by Michael Gladis, who is best known as Paul Kinsey from Mad Men – a character who always struck me as near-caricature tragicomedy, which contributes to my feeling about Feed the Beast) and Tommy’s racist, hateful father (to whom he has not spoken since sometime before he even got married). It all makes for what could be a compelling story – but it never quite does. I keep watching because I do get drawn in; yet, it’s never quite as good as it could be. I suspect this is because of this aforementioned hint of comedy I keep getting the scent of (and shouldn’t be).

Lunchtable TV Talk: iZombie

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It’s no secret that I keep track of and write about a lot of my gluttonous overconsumption of television. I don’t write about everything I watch because some of it is not worth writing about, and some of it, like Game of Thrones or The Walking Dead, have been written about and analyzed to death. I’m not really interested in picking at the bones that remain of the overconsumed shows. I love them, anxiously wait for them, but I don’t have much to add to the discussion.

It’s the shows that people don’t watch and pick apart, those under-the-radar entertainment bits, that I sometimes feel an urge to write about. Often when I am surprised that I find myself watching a certain show (and liking it), it makes sense.

Recently I ran out of things to watch (summer is tv doldrums – with some highlights, but largely not as robust as other times), and scrolled through a number of “best things you aren’t watching” lists, many of which listed iZombie as a good choice. I had misconceptions about the show, much as I would about any show focused on zombies (a concept I am not fond of), and was pleasantly entertained when I finally did dig in and watch all of it. I don’t find the performances that compelling (they’re normal) but the inside jokes and references – and the Seattle setting – which too was part of the joke, as it is sometimes very obviously Vancouver, which they take no pains to hide (at least the cars have Washington plates) – kept me pushing “play” on episode after episode.

But that’s it – it’s mildly clever, pleasant … and not something I can summarize or from which I can pick out some unique aspect. (OH! Except that they mentioned Celtic FC of Glasgow, and what other American tv show would ever do that?) And, that, my friends, is probably the point. The show holds up a mirror: are we not all zombies, overfeeding on mindless tv and other vacuous entertainment (while the rest of the world burns down), despite not being “hungry”?

Photo (c) 2013 Mike Mozart.

Lunchtable TV Talk: 1992 – Italian TV

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“Don’t let Italy fool you” – the one motto that remains constant in my life. This motto, usually holding true, sometimes prevents me from watching some otherwise riveting film – and surprisingly television.

1992, a ten-part Italian TV series, tells a story of lives that intersect across several Italian cities in 1992. From perspectives that span the law, politics, corruption and scandalous outcomes of these intertwining areas, it’s a gripping story with deep, interesting characters, each with his or her own challenges, and quite a bit of insight. Modern stories that plumb the past not just to spin a tale of historical fiction but to shine a light on universal and enduring truths are common enough (we’re seeing echoes of this in the current TV dramatization of the OJ Simpson trial in American Crime Story: The People v. OJ Simpson), but are they always edge-of-your-seat TV? Not always. But in this case, I’ve been on a binge.

Admittedly though I’ve had this lined up to watch for more than six months. I kept putting it off because I don’t know Italian and did not really have time for reading subtitles. I got halfway through the first episode twice before finally getting through the whole thing in a third-time’s-a-charm result. Now that I devoted a whole day to gobbling this up, I can’t believe I didn’t watch it sooner.

Of note is the great soundtrack that is just so 1992 (“Nearly Lost You” by the Screaming Trees, for example). And also one character’s insistence that we have a leader in Silvio Berlusconi – and everyone else around him is discounting this vision as pure folly, scoffing at an opinion poll he’d done with youth. One man even laughed and told him the list of popular public figures he’d compiled, with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the number three slot, was patently ridiculous because – guffaw, guffaw – who on earth would take the idea of old Arnie as a politician seriously!? Haha. We know what happened there. And look what happened for Berlusconi in 1994 (and a few times thereafter).

Lunchtable TV Talk: Shameless

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In a hazy and unpleasant summer spent largely in Berlin a few years ago, I was exposed to the original UK version of Shameless, which I did not care for at all. The US version of Shameless, on the other hand, I enjoyed right away, although I found it to be both bawdy with its off-color jokes, and difficult, digging into struggles with poverty, family problems, mental illness and identity. It has always been reliably entertaining, but the third and fourth seasons really kicked it into high gear.

In the lead-up to the new season of Shameless (already season six!), I have been thinking about how it developed into the confident, moving and human show it is. Its real power surfaced through deeply compelling characters whose backgrounds, full of imperfections and flaws, have been fully fleshed out to make the characters into real people: the Gallagher family. A drunken, drug-addled patriarch, Frank, malingers and manipulates as a narcissistic leech with no concern whatsoever about his family of six kids – Fiona, Lip, Ian, Carl, Debbie and Liam.

It would be easy to give in to the urge to shame Fiona Gallagher, the young, accidental “matriarch” figure who has always held it together to make sure the family is cared for and bills are paid. She had to take on all the responsibilities when it was clear that Frank wouldn’t, and their mother, Monica, was mentally ill (and left them). She had a lot dumped on her and never had her own childhood. So… when Fiona lost it, she really lost it… and in doing so, let everyone in the family down. But when you consider that Fiona was thrust into her role when she was just a child herself, it’s a bit easier to understand how she would act out. And keep making mistakes. And why the consequences are so much more devastating. Her role models/examples have continued to fuck up in worse ways than she could ever do (although her criminally manipulative, ne’er-do-well father, Frank, commits crimes, misdemeanors and trespasses and always seems to get away with all of his hijinks, depravity and dereliction). But for Fiona, the stakes are higher – always higher.

Fiona’s second-in-command, Lip, is a self-destructive genius who steps up to the plate when he needs to. Ian is another story (see the next paragraph). Carl is a not-too-smart would-be criminal (any smarts he has are used for scheming). Debbie has low self-esteem as she hits puberty and falls into some of the stereotypical traps (seeking out a sex to boost self-esteem, getting pregnant purposely to feel “loved”). Liam is a baby/toddler and is only interesting in that 1. he is black and no one knows or cares why, 2. he has to be cared for, and the challenges of rearing him play into larger plot points.

I would not be exaggerating, though, to say that the show turned a corner and became great in its telling of the Ian and Mickey story. Ian is the sensitive one in the family, very caring and yet rule abiding (he wants to join the military). He is also gay, which the family knows about and supports. During the run of the show, he falls in love with a tough and totally closeted neighborhood guy, Mickey Milkovich. I could rehash the way his coming out story unfolded when he realizes he is in love with Ian, but it’s better to watch. It’s also been written about in the perfect way. The deft handling of both the coming out and the subsequent relationship, which has been tested not just by the societal constraints of who the two of them are but also by the emergence of Ian’s mental illness, is nothing short of the best TV has to offer.

It is not necessarily fair to focus only on the core cast of characters because some of the supporting characters are essential – the neighbors/friends, Kevin and Veronica, are rich, viable stories of their own. Sheila, the agoraphobic mother of Lip’s disturbed girlfriend Karen and eventual paramour for Frank, is unassailably… weird. Some supporting parts are less effective (Frank’s daughter Sammi and her son Chuckie) even if they were important to the plot. But all the supporting parts hold the viewer’s attention and get the story where it needs to go.

But no supporting role(s) have been as key as the Milkovich family. Partly the sister Mandy, who is pivotal in Lip’s life – demanding that he live up to his potential (since he seems to be the only one in the neighborhood who has any). But most crucially, Mickey, because he and his relationship with and love for Ian form the real heart of the entire show. Others are the body and hold things together, Ian and Mickey are the heart.

I could ramble – clearly I already am. Some shows are good, and I write about them because I pick out one or two remarkable parts that strike me particularly deeply. In this case, though, it’s the whole package.

Lunchtable TV Talk: Parenthood

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In one of those lengthy periods in life when I am at best misguided and at worst in the throes of  losing my mind, I decided to watch ALL six seasons of the TV show Parenthood. Widely lauded during its run, I never saw it. And I continued to slog through all the droning, annoying seasons despite being almost perpetually annoyed. I hate watched it in the same way I hate watched the dreadful Brothers and Sisters. How can networks keep making these huge-family dramas in which every possible bad thing that happens happens to just one family? (Sure, the odds are greater when the family has four or more siblings in it, as these stupid shows both do. Parenthood was worse, though, because it also delved into more than just the siblings.)

I recently read an article about how streaming services like Netflix releasing entire seasons of bingeable shows allows the viewer to gloss over the weaknesses in the overall fabric of the show and its construction. We get the whole story at once, which might not be the most technically effective way to tell episodic stories, i.e., we have a 10 or 13-hour movie in some of these series rather than an actual serial. I don’t find that this weakness is evident in made-for-streaming shows… but I do see this weakness (and this might just be personal preference) in shows like Parenthood. I noticed, for example, that in every single episode, someone says (and sometimes more than once in an episode) some variation of “we need to talk”: “We need to have a conversation”, “Can we talk?”, etc. And all they did was talk – endlessly. You would think this would interest me because I loved shows like In Treatment, in which the entire show was just talking – a therapist and his patient in an office. Nothing else. But no. That was riveting. Parenthood is just a whine-fest of misguided self-righteousness. And it is from this starting point that I definitely saw major plot and writing deficits – all smooshed together with histrionic, self-involved characters (almost all of them – not just the dude who was supposed to be the “irresponsible younger Braverman brother”).

I cringe just writing the name “Braverman” down, remembering all of Craig T. Nelson’s toasts and boasts about the greatness of the almighty Braverman family. “He can get through it because he is a Braverman.” The show spins around this ridiculous premise. (Somehow TV families, especially large ones, like to rest on this idea… that because of their size and “complexity”, they are more interesting or special than all other families….).

From the whining and constant hyper-intensity of Monica Potter’s Kristina (it’s either “everything is crap because my son has Asberger syndrome” or “I have cancer”) to the whining “I’m not good enough and am a loser” mantra of the ever-annoying Lauren Graham’s Sarah, from the bitchiness of Erika Christensen’s Julia to the endless, endless, endless crying and whining about everything courtesy of the otherwise brilliant Mae Whitman as Amber, this show is… just such shit. It’s been over for some time, and as such should probably not *still* annoy me this much, but I saw the title in a list of things I had seen and felt irritated all over again!

I want to be able to write something better about it… that is, something more descriptive, at least devoting a bit more effort to making my analysis a bit more constructive. I realize that my view is unpopular, and that I am in the minority, but there is no way to fix this pile of dung.