Tag Archives: Analysis

May 5, 2011 · 1:18 am

Season Finale: Justified – “Bloody Harlan”

“Bloody Harlan”

May 4th, 2011

In what has been a truly spectacular second season, Justified has more or less followed the same pattern as the first season: serialized elements are introduced gradually over the first half of the season before exploding in the final episodes.

What seems different this time around, though, was the nature of that explosion. While both seasons feature conclusions defined by a three-way battle (Miami/Crowders/Raylan in S1, Bennetts/Boyd/Raylan in S2), the second season had given each of those groups an incredible level of detail and history. With the Bennett/Givens feud having been established early on (and most evident in Dickie’s daily reminder of Raylan’s baseball bat handiwork), and with Boyd having risen into a position of power in opposition to the Bennetts, “Bloody Harlan” lives up to its title by giving us the big action climax to these ongoing feuds.

And yet, on some level this still felt like a denouement, or at least a futile attempt at a denouement for a show purposefully designed to avoid such efforts. With so many storylines featuring so many characters with a great deal of agency (and a multitude of motivations), Justified is always reaching the climax of one story or another, but it’s never truly allowed to have that moment to pause and reconsider. There is a brief moment early in “Bloody Harlan” where it feels like Raylan and Winona are going to be able to look to the future, but within minutes another loose end is picked up and another bloody firefight begins to unfold, before being replaced by contemplative scenes almost begging to serve as resolution.

In other words, Justified is a show of false parlays, which this season has focused in on the qualities that will make its constant search for futile resolution one of the finest shows on television.

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Tagged as Analysis, Apple Pie, Ava, Bloody Harlan, Boyd Crowder, Dickie Bennett, Episode 13, Finale, FX, Kaitlyn Dever, Loretta, Mags Bennett, Margo Martindale, Pregnancy, Raylan Givens, Review, Season 2, Season Finale, Television, TV, Walton Goggins, Winona

May 3, 2011 · 9:28 pm

Glee – “Rumours”

“Rumours”

May 3rd, 2011

“Tell me why everything turned around?”

“Rumours” never pretends that it isn’t an episode built around the songs from the Fleetwood Mac album of the same name: heck, early on Will pulls out the LP with April Rhodes and displays it for everyone, and it becomes the Glee club’s lesson of the week.

What I found interesting, though, was how the somewhat artificial presence of the storyline was ultimately overcome by Ryan Murphy’s willingness to play with the album’s methodology in the script. Rumours, the album, was produced in a very focused environment based on historical record: as Will explains, they only spoke to one another about the music so as to avoid their personal differences from breaking them up before the album was complete. And yet Glee has often suffered for this very reason: because we see so little of these characters’ lives outside of the Glee club with the show so focused on the musical performances and New Directions’ trip to Nationals, the interpersonal relationships that would allow them to develop as characters are left by the wayside. And unlike the songs on Rumours, the songs on Glee are rarely infused with the emotions of unspoken (and unseen) personal conflicts, instead feeling like plot points or iTunes sales.

“Rumours” is quite effective because it allows the central theme of the episode to trickle down through its characters organically, never dwelling on the initial rumors and instead focusing on their psychological effects on ongoing character arcs. Despite the presence of a meddling Sue Sylvester spreading vicious rumors about members of New Directions, what follows feels driven by individual characters confronting their insecurities in a self-aware, nuanced fashion. Parts of it are manipulative, and certainly there are some of the show’s usual leaps of logic, but “Rumours” successfully uses a simple premise to reveal some complex emotions, nicely encapsulating the level of character momentum the show has heading into the final three episodes of the season.

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Tagged as Analysis, Ann Coulter, April Rhodes, Artie, Brittany, Chord Overstreet, David Bowie, Don't Stop, Episode 19, Fleetwood Mac, Fondue for Two, FOX, Go Your Own Way, Kristin Chenoweth, Kurt, Lord Tubbington, Matthew Morrison, Naya Rivera, Quinn, Review, Rumours, Ryan Murphy, Sam, Santana, Season 2, Songbird, Sue Sylvester, Television, The Chain, TV, Will Schuester

May 1, 2011 · 8:57 pm

Game of Thrones – “Lord Snow”

“Lord Snow”

May 1st, 2011

“I wanted to be here when you saw it for the first time.”

In the opening moments of “Winter is Coming,” we saw the Wall for the first time. Directly after the credits rolled, we first set eyes on Winterfell. Shortly thereafter, we visit King’s Landing for a brief moment as Cersei and Jaime discuss the secrets that may have died with Jon Arryn.

These were the first moments that we, as viewers, saw these pivotal locations in this series, but two of these were never formally introduced: Cersei and Jaime rode north to Winterfell soon after that conversation, and we saw only a brief glimpse of The Wall at the conclusion of “The Kingsroad.” Our focus was on Winterfell, and on the parties who set forth from its walls, and on Dany’s struggles across the narrow sea.

In “Lord Snow,” the Wall becomes more than an imposing structure, and King’s Landing becomes more than a geographical entity. The episode opens with Ned riding into King’s Landing and immediately finding himself in a meeting of the Small Council, while we are catapulted into Jon Snow’s first training session with Ser Allister Thorne without any glimpse of his initial arrival. There is no time to rest or become acclimated to their new surroundings, as life in King’s Landing and life at Castle Black hold a new set of challenges which will shape the episodes to follow.

And yet, “Lord Snow” is perhaps the most narratively uninteresting episode of the first six, almost like a second pilot where no story truly finds its footing. While the political organization of King’s Landing is sketched out, and the reality of being a brother of the Night’s Watch is well-established, the actual payoff for these events are left for the subsequent installments. Returning to this episode after having seen that which follows, I found myself appreciating what it accomplished without necessarily finding it satisfying, the first episode where the narrative feels limiting rather limited.

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Tagged as A Song of Ice and Fire, Aiden Gillen, Analysis, Arya, Benjen, Bran, Catelyn, Cersei, D.B. Weiss, Daenerys, Dancing Lessons, David Benioff, Dothraki, Episode 3, Grenn, HBO, Jaime, Joffrey, Jon Snow, King's Landing, Littlefinger, Lord Snow, Maisie Williams, Ned Stark, Pyp, Renly, Review, Robert, Ser Barristan Selmy, Syrio, Television, The Night's Watch, The Wall, TV, Tyrion

April 30, 2011 · 6:49 pm

Doctor Who – “Day of the Moon”

“Day of the Moon”

April 30th, 2011

[Note: while this does not air until a bit later this evening in the U.S., I’m embracing my independence from any one particular country to post my review when it’s finished so that those who watched in the U.K. can discuss it in a more timely fashion. Accordingly, if you want to avoid spoilers, don’t keep reading.]

It’s the time of year when writing about television on the side must take a back seat to writing about television in an academic (and, over at the A.V. Club, “professional”) fashion, and so it’s unfortunate that a weekend filled with paper writing had to collide with “Day of the Moon.”

In truth, I could probably handle writing about an episode like next week’s, where the show returns to its isolated adventures with only subtle nods towards a larger serialized storyline. I could evaluate the appeal of the situation (which next week features Downton Abbey’s own Hugh Bonneville, I believe), consider the ongoing character dynamics between the Doctor and his companions, and then be merrily on my way.

With “Day on the Moon,” I could actually be here for a day. It’s a compelling episode, filled with enough good ideas to carry three episodes of a lesser show, but it also ends up with enough loose ends that actually going through and analyzing them in a satisfactory fashion would be impossible given my current time crunch.

But, I do want to make a few points about the episode, given that I am sure there will be oodles of speculation to be done over the course of the season regarding what we saw here and given the fact that I very much enjoyed it.

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Tagged as Amy Pond, Analysis, BBC, BBC America, Canton, Day of the Moon, Episode 2, First Kiss, Girl, Last Kiss, Nanorecorders, Regeneration, Review, Richard Nixon, River Song, Rory, Season 6, Series 6, Steven Moffat, Television, The Doctor, The Silence, Time Lord, TV

April 28, 2011 · 11:09 pm

The Office – “Goodbye, Michael”

“Goodbye, Michael”

April 28th, 2011

As many of you know, for reasons I discussed last fall I’ve spent this season writing about The Office at The A.V. Club. It was a position I took in part because I was extremely excited to work with a great group of people, but also because I thought the seventh season of The Office would be a particularly interesting one. Knowing that Steve Carell was exiting, and knowing that they would need to transition into a new lead given that NBC is in no position to cancel their highest rated comedy, it seemed like a nice critical challenge that would be especially compelling given the A.V. Club’s engaged comment base.

The experience is not over, with the remainder of the season (and, unless something changes, subsequent seasons) still to come, but tonight may well prove to be the climax. Over at The A.V. Club, I have my extensive analysis of “Goodbye, Michael,” Steve Carell’s final episode of the series and one of the sharpest episodes the show has produced.

“Goodbye, Michael” | The Office | The A.V. Club

If you have any specific comments about the episode that you’d rather make here than there, please feel free to do so below – and, if you’ve been following me over to The A.V. Club these twenty-two weeks, thanks!

Series Premiere: The Voice – “Blind Auditions”

“Blind Auditions”

April 26th, 2011

In principle, The Voice is about something grand and meaningful. By having the show’s judges be unable to see the singers they are judging, the show purports to finally have a singing competition in which physical attractiveness and age are no longer a driving factor. In a music competition space in which Steven Tyler objectifies young female contestants and Paula Abdul’s most lasting impression on the pop cultural space is the predication of every American Idol comment with “You look beautiful,” The Voice seeks to focus solely on the eponymous instrument.

However, The Voice is not “important.” Showing that a pretty girl with a solid voice would get noticed even when she can’t be seen, or showing that even an American Idol reject with a controversial past can still get attention, does absolutely nothing to impact society’s obsession with looks or their opinion of people who choose to sell their bodies; The Voice is not going to change America in any way shape or form, and that part of the show is somewhat cloying at the end of the day.

And yet, lest you consider me cynical, I actually found The Voice quite refreshing in that it managed this sentimentality while maintaining a sense of fun. This is not a show that will change America, but it is a show that demonstrates the value of chemistry between “judges” and which in its central conceit creates an endless stream of “television moments” that channel the series’ central altruism in ways I found charming if not as life-changing as NBC would like us to believe.

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Tagged as Adam Levine, American Idol, Analysis, Blake Shelton, Blind Auditions, Carson Daly, Cee-Lo Green, Christina Aguilera, Coaches, Competition, Frenchie Davis, Javier, Music, NBC, Review, Television, The Voice, TV

April 26, 2011 · 9:44 pm

Glee – “Born This Way”

“Born This Way”

April 26th, 2011

Why?

That is often the question with Glee, isn’t it?

First off, why was this episode 90 minutes long? While I’m sure FOX would like to claim that it is because the episode demanded it, in truth it’s because they wanted to bite into the first half-hour of NBC’s The Voice, which is trying to be NBC’s first successful launch this season.

However, I’d argue that “Born This Way” is in some ways an answer to the basic question of “Why?” To the credit of Brad Falchuk, who scripted the episode, we are given a pretty clear sense of why most characters do the things they do in the episode, and the central theme is one of those broadly existential questions that actually makes perfect sense for a bunch of high school kids. While the 90-minute episode is dragged down by its running time at points, points where the question of “Why?” becomes a liability for the show, there are moments here that show a desire to better understand who these characters are and what drives them. Even if that characterization does not stick, and even if most of it becomes reduced to what can fit on a witty t-shirt, the fact remains that the episode was not about Lady Gaga or about vague moralization. Instead, it used that moral to drive the show closer to its characters than we might be used to, and even if the results were expectedly uneven I would suggest they were compelling enough at the end of the day to make “Born This Way” a success.

Even if I’ve still got some “Why?” questions for Falchuk and the writing staff.

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Tagged as 90 minutes, Analysis, Barbra Streisand, Born this Way, Brittany, Chris Colfer, Emma, Episode 18, Finn, FOX, I Feel Pretty, Jayma Mays, Karofsky, Kurt, Lady Gaga, Lauren, Lucy Caboosey, Naya Rivera, Nose Job, OCD, Prom, Prom Queen, Quinn, Review, Santana, Season 2, T-Shirts, Television, TV, Unpretty, Will Schuester

April 24, 2011 · 9:00 pm

Game of Thrones – “The Kingsroad”

“The Kingsroad”

April 24th, 2011

“You’re not supposed to be here.”

In chatting with one of my colleagues who has not read A Song of Ice and Fire earlier this month, he raised an interesting question: why, precisely, do some Stark children go to King’s Landing while others remain in Winterfell?

It was a question that never occurred to me while watching “The Kingsroad” since I already knew the answer before I popped in the screener, but it’s one that strikes me as important during these early episodes. There is no avoiding the fact that Game of Thrones has a dislocated narrative, with various locations (highlighted in the opening credit sequence) housing storylines that are often operating on their own frequency, and such dislocation risks feeling arbitrary. It is, arguably, the greatest challenge that Benioff and Weiss faced with the adaptation, and facing that challenge will require more than a clever title sequence that places the various locations into context.

“The Kingsroad” is the first stab at really tackling this challenge through thematic material, something that embraces the parallel storytelling that the series necessitates (as compared to the books, which go long stretches without visiting particular locations/characters). While the shifts in location were minimal (and very strategic) in “Winter is Coming,” with “The Kingsroad” we see a more traditional structure wherein we consistently shift from one location to another, a structure united by a growing sense that these characters may wish they had taken a different fork in the road.

It doesn’t quite bring the entire episode together, but the maps drawn for each of the show’s numerous storylines are at least all on the same piece of paper, and focus on the degree to which each individual character is prepared for the path that they have chosen (or that has been chosen for them).

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Tagged as A Song of Ice and Fire, Analysis, Arya, Assassination, Bran, Catelyn, D.B. Weiss, Daenerys Targaryen, Dany, David Benioff, Direwolves, Episode 2, HBO, Joffrey, Khal Drogo, Lady, Nudity, Nymeria, Review, Season 1, Sexuality, Television, The Kingsroad, The Night's Watch, The Wall, Theme, TV, Tyrion

April 23, 2011 · 9:00 pm

Season Premiere: Doctor Who – “The Impossible Astronaut”

“The Impossible Astronaut”

April 23rd, 2011

“Human beings – I thought I’d never get done saving you.”

As Doctor Who enters its sixth “series” (which I refer to as season above to avoid confusion with similarly titled posts on the blog), I find myself an an interesting crossroads.

As a viewer, “The Eleventh Hour” was my first experience with the start of a series (if not my first experience, as I watched the relevant Moffat-oeuvre episodes beforehand), and that episode served a very clear introductory function for Matt Smith’s tenure as the Doctor. It was also a contained episode, extending beyond the traditional running time to complete a single story alongside the introductions of both a new Doctor and a new companion.

By comparison, “The Impossible Astronaut” finds Matt Smith’s Doctor well-established, and despite the “official” addition of a second companion there is not much groundwork to be laid with either Amy or Rory given their importance to the previous series. It is also the first part of a two-part premiere, meaning that its full meaning has not yet been fully understood, and its role in shaping the remainder of the series remains fairly abstract.

When I suggest I find myself at a crossroads, it is because “The Impossible Astronaut” is a test of sorts for those of us who are new to the Who, so to speak. With the introductions out of the way, Steven Moffat has wholly embraced the series’ atemporality and put together a premiere which finds poetry in tragedy and tragedy in just about everything, breaking rules that we didn’t know existed and inventing rules that we can’t be sure exist. It renders viewers like me, those of us who only recently jumped on the bandwagon, not unlike the Doctor’s companions, forced to place our trust in Moffat’s vision while the questions pile up and the speculation overflows.

It says a great deal about the success of the fifth series that I barely blinked at “The Impossible Astronaut,” slipping easily into the giddy theorizing that this show can inspire and fully embracing my deep appreciation for something that I only started watching a year ago.

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Tagged as 1969, Alex Kingston, Amy Pond, Analysis, Arthur Darvill, BBC, Episode 1, Fez, Karen Gillan, Mark Sheppard, Matt Smith, Premiere, Review, Richard Nixon, River Song, Rory, Season 6, Season Premiere, Series 6, Series Premiere, Stetsons, Steven Moffat, Television, The Doctor, The Impossible Astronaut, The Lodger, The Silence, Timey-Wimey, Utah, White House

April 19, 2011 · 11:47 pm

Glee – “A Night of Neglect”

“A Night of Neglect”

April 19th, 2011

While I don’t normally link directly to my A.V. Club coverage here at the blog (although I could, I suppose, if you folks desired it), I figured this is a special circumstance given that I normally cover Glee here at Cultural Learnings. However, through a series of circumstances, Todd needed me to fill in for him for tonight’s episode, and so some last-second tinkering (which took longer than it had any right to thanks to a collection of technical issues) shifted my coverage to TV Club.

“A Night of Neglect” | Glee | TV Club

If you wish to comment on the episode but don’t want to wade into the A.V. Club comments, feel free to comment below, and I’ll do my best to follow both threads.

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Tagged as A Night of Neglect, Analysis, Review, Television, TV