TV shows

Lunchtable TV Talk: Madam Secretary

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Sometimes this show is attempting to be like something else… something self-important or something like The West Wing but it isn’t.

It’s not the greatest show, but I like it. I realized that it’s cast chemistry that makes it work even though it is not the best show on tv. And other shows – more starkly this season than any other in recent memory – may have a decent premise but fail largely because they seemed to cast in a vacuum. Like, “Oh, John Stamos is available. We’ll get him for Grandfathered.” But then the rest of the cast was assembled, one by one, in the same way, with no actual testing to see if chemistry existed – or just in a calculated but ad hoc way, i.e. trying to come up with racial equations to make the show look diverse or something similar. And the result is annoying and disruptive to storytelling.

Madam Secretary is fairly formulaic in its storytelling, but the cast gels well. Téa Leoni seems like someone who could have been a CIA officer who ends up in cabinet-level government service quite by accident. Željko Ivanek – well, he fits in everywhere. And Tim Daly – well, I love him. Well, you know, Wings.

Lunchtable TV Talk: Law & Order SVU

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“When did we become the voices of reason?” (SVU’s Olivia Benson as portrayed by Mariska Hargitay to Ice-T’s Detective Fin Tutuola)

Det Tutuola: “Sooner or later, we play all the parts.”

The endless Law & Order crime-and-punishment franchise is standard but solid fare, generally speaking – something one can play in the background without paying much attention. But Special Victims Unit (SVU), despite following the same template, is not as easy to ignore. I recently started watching the later seasons of the show, and find myself increasingly disgusted but still intrigued by the bigger picture. SVU shows a world that is very dangerous – with unseen risks lurking around every corner and potentially in every person you meet. It’s an ugly, brutal, pain-filled, cruel world – particularly for women and children. Is the world really like this? Or are shows like SVU making us more paranoid that we live in a world that is more fraught with danger than it really is? Is the show desensitizing us to real horrors? I started asking these questions as I watched episode after episode, and found out I am not alone. A recent Slate article posed similar queries, as the 17th season of the show premiered – the only one among the once large L&O family still on TV. Is the show, the article asks, “inevitably exploitative and fear-mongering?”

“…some story lines get downright creepy—like the arc involving sadist and serial rapist/murderer William Lewis, which ran over six episodes between May 2013 and April 2014. SVU was pretty explicit about the horrific things Lewis, played by Pablo Schreiber, did to the women he kidnapped and abused. “Some people were legitimately disturbed by those episodes,” Leight admitted. They were also “by far the most popular” of the nearly 100 episodes in the Leight era. “I will say, unequivocally, the audience prefers the more overtly dangerous ones,” he says. It’s impossible to diagnose exactly why, of course, though Leight speculates that it could be that the mostly female audience finds it cathartic to watch “these disturbing guys get caught, as opposed to real life, where they often aren’t.”

Personally, I doubt it is completely attributable to catharsis. I think some of it is that people are voyeurs. People like being disturbed… and some are disturbed.

I do in fact think a lot about the justice system, gender, sexuality and law v moral “norms” and all kinds of things as a result of watching the show. An interesting aspect of the show is character development. Most of the L&O series have been procedural and focused very little on the characters’ personal lives, and even though SVU delves further into the personal histories and problems of its characters, it never becomes a soap opera or character drama. We can see, for example, that Hargitay’s Benson is often driven by her own history and though skilled, sympathetic and a tireless, vocal advocate for victims, she is just as likely to be blind to the big picture, pursuing suspected perpetrators and refusing to see any evidence that doesn’t support her theory of who the criminal is, which we see leading to the ruin of innocent suspects. Luckily in later seasons, we’ve seen this counterbalanced by the character Amanda Rollins, whose own imperfections and experience lead her to question motivations and seek insight around Benson’s sizable blind spots. Interestingly the show provides a balanced view of the sensitive nature of these kinds of heinous crimes and how the law enforcement and justice system handles investigations and suspects.

Lunchtable TV Talk: The Knick

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Surgery has changed, and not changed, a lot through the years. But it’s hard to watch a riveting and harrowing show like The Knick and not think about how surgeons, despite how refined their art has seemingly become, are basically glorified butchers. The Knick makes this visually evident at every turn. They feel like they are the right hand of god – I think “innovative butcher”, looking for creative but ultimately untested ways to fix things. Not that there are not randomized controlled trials and other forms of evaluation to test the efficacy of procedures and their outcomes. But every procedure had to have a first time, right?

Yes, surgery, the O.R. – things have changed, but things are not that different. Look at the antiseptic issue – it evolved, even if we still have debates about single-use versus reusable textiles and microorganisms that can live on in multi-use drapes or gowns.

Or I think of the idea of cutting people open. It seems like a good idea – cut whatever ails someone out entirely. But when we look historically, some of the most radical cutting, which was until recently seen as the only course of action, has been unnecessary or at least did not lead to better outcomes. (Don’t miss the PBS documentary, Cancer: Emperor of All Maladies to get more insight on the changing face and understanding of cancer.) How much of medical science is not even understood?

When I think of, for example, the Star Trek film, Star Trek IV, much maligned for its “fluffy” environmental storyline and time travel premise, I am struck by the scene when the team goes to a hospital to rescue Chekhov. Dr McCoy goes nuts, railing against the idea that you could cut people open and think it would produce a good outcome. It could alternately be interpreted as new-agey mumbo jumbo, or a different look at “standard” medical practice.

This also makes me think of a recent article series (“Medicine without Blood”)  on bloodless medicine. It argues that, while Americans embraced the almighty, “life-giving” blood transfusion in WWII, followed by a wholesale, post-war adoption of transfusions as an accepted, mainstream tenet of modern medicine. But had the blood transfusion ever been subjected to the same level of scrutiny and testing that other procedures and treatments are?

“Yet, in the thrall of wartime transfusion, blood had never been treated like an experimental drug and subjected to rigorous, randomized clinical trials assessing risk and benefit. Its power was intuitive. Doctors observed that patients with anemia seemed to feel better following transfusion. “The patients looked rosy and felt full of energy,” one older doctor told me. No one was thinking yet about adverse effects.”

Or…

“Some bloodless medicine experts have also helped lead a national movement calling for more sparing use of transfusion. Donor blood comes with risks for all patients, including the potential for immune reactions and infections. And clinical trials have shown that, for a broad range of conditions, restrictive transfusion practices do not lead to worse outcomes than liberal ones. In recent years, the American Medical Association has listed transfusion as among the most overused therapies in medicine.”

The point of these diversions is only to highlight that what was accepted as life-saving, mainstream practice at one point becomes passe, restricted or even recognized as dangerous later. And some procedures come back into favor as more and more evidence is collected, as different diseases and bacteria are understood better, and so on. It’s not an exact science and always evolves.

And The Knick, set at the dawn of the 20th century and in the frenzied, competitive dawn of surgical practice, shines a light on these questions and contradictions. Clive Owen is outstanding (he usually is when he plays an arrogant, brilliant but self-destructive asshole). The supporting cast is also superb. I was particularly surprised by Eve Hewson (daughter of U2’s Bono) and her role as young but increasingly independent and fierce nurse, Lucy, a West Virginia native who cares for but enables Owen’s Dr Thackeray during his drug abuse.

As the show explores the expanding world of surgery, it also expands the worldview, in some ways defying the norms of the time. In the most obvious way – the hospital employs a new assistant chief surgeon – who happens to be black. In less obvious ways, The Knick gives us characters who and stories that defy their time. Women characters come to mind here, particularly in the form of the aforementioned nurse and also in the character of Cornelia Robertson, who is the head of the hospital’s social welfare office. She serves as a part of the hospital board of directors, and as such, is a working woman and an executive-level participant in decisionmaking. Of course this is all because of her family, not because of her qualifications. But she is expected to step away from these roles when she marries. And while I enjoyed the storylines involving this character, in particular her interracial relationship with the previously mentioned assistant chief and the abortion she has when she becomes pregnant with their child, I think maybe this story strains credibility.

The Knick isn’t perfect, and not everything comes together beautifully, but I don’t expect perfection from good TV. I expect ambition and striving for something. And this show isn’t lazy.

It proves that in medicine, and in gender roles, as in the rest of life, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Lunchtable TV Talk: Halt and Catch Fire

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Halt and Catch Fire has been hit or miss in its first two seasons, but I liked it. I feel like the show did hit its stride in some ways within the second season. Recently the show was renewed for a third. The way season two ended, it could have gone either way. It would not have felt like a tragic loss had the show not won its reprieve, but the big changes hinted at meant that a third season could be an interesting shift.

Where things went right: the exploration of women working in tech, very early in the game. It’s refreshing to see, even if unusual. I sometimes think people have expectations that are too high for television characters. I read a lot of “analysis” taking different shows to task for their lack of diversity. And when there is diversity, there’s a lot of nitpicking about whether it’s the appropriate or representative kind of diversity. And in fact, real life is not always as diverse as people would demand. Were the early 80s a hotbed of activity for women in tech development? Sure, they existed but were probably anomalous. I haven’t done any research on the topic, but I am not doing a real analysis here. I find that TV viewing (or the practice of “reviewing” as a career) is a little bit muddied but the demands critics in particular place on the stories, the characters and the richness and depth of their lives. Sure, I like that, too, but there is really only so much a character can embody and accomplish in an hour each week for ten weeks.

I suppose this is why I find Halt very satisfying. The two women leads, Donna and Cameron, are very different, working together but at very different stages of their lives. They often work at odds, and handle things very differently, but ultimately come together for a common cause (especially in the face of adversity). I was particularly interested in Donna’s development, while Cameron is supposed to attract attention as the unstable wunderkind. But because Donna has been the stable one professionally and personally, she has been the backbone of the company she co-founded with Cameron, and she has been the backbone of her marriage with Gordon. She has always been the one to work in a stable job (until taking a risk on the gaming startup) to support her husband Gordon’s crazy ideas but eventually embraces the calculated risk – probably because she has the stability and experience to know it will work for her. She is also a mother, and one of the quiet but important stories in season two was her personal and discreet choice to have an abortion. The show did not make a big deal out of it – no one did. She is a married mother of two, in a troubled marriage, deep into the chaos of her startup company, and it was bad timing. It was clearly a difficult decision but always came across as intensely personal and right for her. It was pivotal in the development of Donna’s character and delivered subtly and beautifully by actress Kerry Bishé.

While the show started off being more about Gordon and Joe and their race and personal quest to build a personal computer, it morphed into a show that parallels the story of a scrappy startup with the story of two very different women swimming upstream, forging stronger, independent identities, in the formation of this startup. It has been quite fascinating. Gordon and Joe became secondary to the story, and they are no longer driving the action forward by the end of season two.

Lunchtable TV Talk: Grandfathered

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The back-to-back line-up of The Grinder and Grandfathered includes two 80s pretty boys, now middle-aged, with each character struggling with the “growing pains” of letting go of youth and relevance. In The Grinder, Rob Lowe is an actor whose long-running, popular legal drama comes to an end, and he’s lost, not knowing what to do. And while the premise is silly, the show seems to work. The chemistry among the actors, improbably, works (I wouldn’t expect Rob Lowe and Fred Savage to be likely siblings, but they play off each other well. Something I never imagined, actually, during Lowe’s pretty-boy heyday would be his ability to take his own quirkiness to the level he has cultivated and use it to mesh well with all the ensemble casts of which he has been a part). The Grinder is underperforming, though, and it probably won’t survive its low ratings.

This is sad because it’s a much better show than the other show with a tangentially related premise – John Stamos as the middle-aged guy fighting age, trying to pretend he is younger than he is – preening and vain – but he discovers that not only is he a father, he’s also a grandfather. It’s not very funny, not very entertaining, and the people in it just don’t gel together as a group. This show probably won’t survive either.

But ratings are not always the whole story, but that seems to be depend largely on the network. AMC’s Halt and Catch Fire has been renewed for a third season despite consistently low ratings. Of course, Halt has redeeming qualities, and these other two shows won’t really be missed.

Lunchtable TV Talk: The Affair and Ballers

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Sometimes inspiration for writing about the TV I love does not come easily. Sometimes, for some shows, no inspiration comes at all. There’s no way to know what will hit the spot and what won’t. For example, there are many shows I watch(ed), love(d) and would recommend, but unless I think of some particular angle that I feel I want to express, I will never bother to write specifically about them.

Mad Men is one of those shows. It was analyzed, torn apart, beloved, criticized and everything else you can do to a TV show from the comfort of your couch (by professionals and amateurs alike). I don’t have anything to add to that discussion, apart from noting how Don Draper seemed to be something like a drunken traveling handyman there near the end. (And I was able to note the semi-subtle red Coca-Cola thread sewing the final season together, but I only did that in order to compare and contrast it to another already-dead series about ad men, HAPPYish, which also got into the ring with the Coca-Cola theme.)

There are others. It might not be that they were revered and torn limb from limb and sucked dry of all their marrow. It might just be that I would not know what to add. The upcoming second season of Fargo counts among these. The first season was untouchable, and my rambling about it would not do it justice or be a very good use of my time. (But who am I kidding? Is any of this a good use of my time?) What about stuff like Boardwalk Empire? Slow, simmering, complex, an acquired taste, not for everyone… what could I really write that could give that epic its due? No, there is nothing. Maybe one day I will feel some great urge to “unpack” (one of those overused-of-late terms I hate, which seems to have seeped from academia into corporate jargon) Bobby Cannavale’s performance in Boardwalk or Boardwalk’s courageous and unusual choice of offing one of the leads early (setting the “no one is safe” tone early) or effusing about Michael K Williams in yet another unforgettable and iconic HBO role. But probably not.

In fact, writing about things I love is considerably more challenging than writing disparagingly about content that just does not make the cut. The more disappointing something is, the easier it is to excoriate.

And that’s how I reach my tale of watching The Affair, and my increasing hostility toward it. The only good thing about it: Richard Schiff. Seriously. Actually in the first season, which started off with some promise and a lot of positive buzz, Joshua Jackson stood out as both a good performance and as a good character. Every other character was so unlikable and selfish – and I mean everyone, right down to the main guy, Noah’s and his wife, Helen’s, kids – particularly the oldest daughter. Maybe the self-centered nature of man (and woman) is what the story is meant to be about. Every man for himself. And the actors in the roles play that selfishness and the slivers of perspective we get (when they point of view shifts from one character to another) to a T. I have read plenty of analysis about this show and its squandered potential, so I won’t bother in that vein.

I mostly wanted a reason to write that Richard Schiff commands the screen even when he only appears for two minutes. I mean seriously – I watched the show Ballers the other day just on the strength of his being in it. He is not even in it that much, but again, his presence elevated the show. And, oddly, because I did not go into Ballers with any expectations except maybe believing I would find the show stupid, I was pleasantly surprised (particularly in the episode in which Michael Cudlitz shows up… because, you know, Cudlitz always shows up. He’s almost as everywhere as the frighteningly omnipresent Tom Skerritt and still has plenty of time to increase his presence – and maybe join a ballet production – to reach Skerritt-like levels).

All I can say for these things – TV expectations, letdowns and surprises – is go figure.

Lunchtable TV Talk: Rosewood

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We’re not long into the new TV season, but there are already some things I really do not like.

Life in Pieces, which I mentioned in another post, is a disaster, despite the presence of Jordan Peele. Limitless, boring, formulaic and dead-end in only the way “gimmick” shows can be. Dr Ken – oh my god. I am not sure I have ever in my entire life seen something as bad, wholeheartedly, offensively and truly bad, as this. Code Black – flatline. Absolutely no chemistry among the cast, nothing is believable, and I think we have enough medical dramas already to last a lifetime.

Rosewood, which I wanted to like because Morris Chestnut (his V and Nurse Jackie characters outshine this by a mile even though he was not the lead in either of those shows) is eminently likable and nice to look at, does not hold my interest at all. I seriously struggle to sit through the 45 minutes of the show, and in fact skipped the last ten in the third episode. None of the characters possesses anything that makes me want to come back for more (or even finish what I start). Lorraine Toussaint, who has been in virtually everything in the last few years (seriously! The Fosters, short-lived Forever, Orange is the New Black, Body of Proof and countless guest roles in popular shows…) cannot even command interest. Should I keep trying?

The only upside to all of this is that my overstuffed TV schedule will be scaled back – and quickly.

Lunchtable TV Talk: The Grinder… Gold britannias and sovereigns

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My firewall, S, informed me that actor William Devane appears in some ads on British TV trying to get people to invest in gold. S practiced for several hours to be able to perfectly imitate Devane saying, “…gold britannias and sovereigns“. (And, lucky girl that I am, he did it all just to make me laugh… and maybe a little bit to make himself feel like he could sound more like an American. Go figure.) In any case, I went looking for this ad on YouTube but it’s nowhere to be found. Unfortunately for me, Devane also advertises gold stateside, and the ads are laughably hideous, as you’d expect.

“Don’t you just love the feel of gold?” What the hell?

I started wondering about the motivation behind these kinds of ads (and there are a LOT of them – ads, that is, not motivations). I guess Devane is a working actor, but it’s not like he has been a top-billed leading man. If I need a reason, look no further than money.

I recently read that critically acclaimed actress, Dianne Wiest, was struggling to pay her rent. Not necessarily because she was financially irresponsible but because a working actor struggles as much as the rest of us. She cited a lack of steady enough work as the reason for her woes, and perhaps Devane found himself in similar straits (despite his assertion in the ad above that his dad told him to invest in real estate, he did and “did very well for myself, but now it’s time to invest in gold”). Maybe, though, he just wants a payday. Devane can shill gold all over daytime TV in cheesy ads, and I don’t care why. It gave me more than a few laughs.

And getting more to the point now. Devane (and Wiest) both appear in new sitcoms this season – Devane in the semi-promising comedy, The Grinder, with Rob Lowe and Fred Savage (who, believe it or not, looks exactly the same as he did in The Wonder Years), Wiest in the not-so-promising Life in Pieces. I’ve watched both (but we’re only two episodes in with each of them), but I can’t really assess whether Wiest will be able to pay her rent with this one or whether Devane can tone down the gold talk. So far, The Grinder is funnier and more engaging than Life in Pieces. And, to be honest, I could not even get through the second episode of Life…

My best guess is that Devane will be rolling in gold (although ratings have not been great for his new show, so he has plenty of gold to cushion his fall); Wiest will be unemployed again soon.

Binge fatigue

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After mainlining seven seasons of The West Wing in less than a week, I did not experience “binge fatigue” because, despite the length of the show, almost every episode was of the kind of quality that I never felt a lag. Each season had its arc and pace, and the scope was limited to one full, two-term presidency and a couple of election cycles.

Despite being pleasantly surprised by the content of other shows, like Person of Interest, I find (now nearing the end of season 4) that I am feeling the fatigue. Some episodes of POI are better than others, and since Taraji P. Henson’s character was killed off, there is a definite void.

I wonder what it is that makes the fatigue set in in some shows and not others? Or is the fatigue endemic to the binge-watching process?

Lunchtable TV Talk: Mom

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Mom is not at all something I would normally watch but it is hard to resist Allison Janney. Despite her small role in Masters of Sex, she was one of the enduring reasons that kept me watching because of her nuanced and often heartbreaking depiction. She was a force to be reckoned with in The West Wing in a character who evolved throughout and showed strength and vulnerability at every turn. I loved her smaller, earlier roles in films like Big Night and Primary Colors. And so, so many others. It does not matter what film it is – even the crappiest film is made better with her presence.

Mom is punctuated by bawdy, vulgar humor that is only funny half the time, and imagining Janney in this kind of role seemed difficult. But I watched, and I stuck around for her (and Mimi Kennedy).

The worst part is the ostensible “star” of the show: Anna Faris, who is beyond annoying as she overacts the shit out of every scene. A few times, mostly in the quieter moments of despair she feels, something good shines through. But mostly she is too much, and if the show were only her, it would be completely unwatchable.

That is about all there is to say about this show. Once in awhile someone says something uproarious. And once in awhile the show hits an emotional, almost touching note as it tries to navigate the storytelling challenges posed by portraying people in recovery – how do you make addiction funny? Or, then again, how can you not try to make addiction funny? In reality it’s as complicated as people are. And surprisingly, in many cases, Mom handles this balance well, in large part because of Janney and Kennedy.