Tag Archives: Episode 3

April 28, 2017 · 11:30 pm

Same Old Sana?: Skam Season 4, Episode 3

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Season 4, Episode 3

April 28, 2017

We are still early in Skam’s fourth season: it has only been three weeks, and the “story” as it were has only really just begun. It is premature to suggest that the show is or is not living up to the previous seasons, especially as someone who binged the previous seasons and has a blurry sense of their narrative pacing as a result.

That said, this week’s episode reinforced for me how Sana is different from the previous point-of-view characters. As I noted in the article I wrote about catching up on the show, each season’s point-of-view serves a different narrative function: the first season is an introduction to Eva, the second season contrasts Noora’s outer confidence in season one with her insecurities, and the third season pays off a developing narrative about Isak happening in the margins of seasons one and two.

Season four, however, doesn’t have a clear narrative function yet, as it has yet to give us any particularly new insights into Sana’s character. Over three seasons, Sana was drawn as an opinionated and motivated Muslim who wants to be a part of Norwegian culture while still respecting her religion’s belief system. Although the character’s no-nonsense approach made her a fan favorite both within the central group of girls and in her Biology partnership with Isak, ultimately her “story” was more or less about the seeming incompatibility of her religion and her social life…which is also the central conflict of season four. While it’s an interesting conflict, and took a twist at the end of this week’s final clip, there isn’t that same sense of discovery that felt central to each of the previous seasons, at least thus far.

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June 13, 2015 · 11:39 am

Anatomy of a [Not] Green Screen Scene: Orange is the New Black [UPDATED]

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UPDATE (06/16): So I wrote this post in an attempt to understand why this particular set of shots from Orange is the New Black‘s third season looked so weird, presuming that the culprit was to do with a form of composite imaging. It was the most logical explanation, and one that seemed to be supported when breaking down some of the other differences between this shot and the others.

Here’s the thing, though: I had the chance to chat briefly with the show’s post-production producer, who let me know that there is no visual effects work in this sequence. There was no green screen. This shot, like the others in the scene, was shot entirely on location. And so my presumption was wrong, and so I must give thanks for the clarification, and apologies for the erroneous claim (which was based solely on textual evidence).

Unfortunately, there is no further light on why the scene looks so weird despite this, which has turned this into a much larger mystery (if you’re me and in way too deep at this point). Did those who also identified it as green screen—myself included—respond to something particular about the way it was lit or colored? Were those who saw the image I posted on Twitter and agreed that it looked like a case of composite work simply suffering from false confirmation bias from my initial identification, and would they have reached the same conclusion on their own? Were the show’s other uses of green screen—the Afghanistan sequence, the driving plates, etc.—pushing us to see green screen where there was none? Were the other issues with the scene—lighting continuity, blocking continuity—pushing us to look for a reason where no reason exists?

We may never know. In the meantime, let the below remain for posterity as evidence of the time I got so deep into understanding why something looked weird that the rabbit hole nearly swallowed me whole. Apologies again for the error, and for dragging you into what is now a larger question of visual perception that we may never solve—if anyone has any suggestions on what happened here, please let me know.

UPDATE 2: A few Twitter suggestions as to why the shot might look off, diving into more technical details of filming. My thanks to them, and keep ’em coming.

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April 27, 2015 · 12:29 pm

Game of Thrones – “High Sparrow”

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“High Sparrow”

April 26, 2015

As noted last week, my reviews of Game of Thrones have shifted to The A.V. Club, but I will continue to link them here for regular readers. Warning: These are reviews intended for book readers, so if you want to know absolutely no small details about the story as told in the books, you may want to steer clear.

Game of Thrones – “High Sparrow” [The A.V. Club]

And yet at the same time, it’s also just so much easier when you have multiple characters occupying the same space. The show could have started the season with Sansa at the Eyrie, but what function would that serve if they can map similar self-discovery onto Sansa’s journey back to Winterfell? While there is a version of this show where practical changes like this one read purely as logistical, “High Sparrow” avoids this fate by tapping into the show’s history and creating an arc that uses that history more poetically than the books the show is based on.

That may be a bold claim, but Martin’s story is so sprawling that it often feels like the story could never truly come full circle, especially given we’re still waiting for major convergences that Martin has been teasing for multiple books at this point. The show, by comparison, is pacing itself differently, and uses Sansa’s return to Winterfell to tighten its storytelling and pay tribute to where the show began. Whereas Martin’s return to Winterfell felt like following a war, Game Of Thrones’ return to Winterfell is about character, and creates a stable foundation for whatever comes next.

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June 26, 2014 · 9:00 am

Lost – “Tabula Rasa”

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“Tabula Rasa”

Aired: October 6, 2004

[I’m going to be taking over The A.V. Club’s TV Club Classic reviews of Lost next Wednesday—in preparation, I’m offering some short thoughts on each of the episodes Todd VanDerWerff already covered at the site.]

On the one hand, the second-pilot-syndrome in “Tabula Rasa” seems to fly in the face of our conception of Lost as a highly serialized show. In the context of the mythology-heavy show it became, the idea that it would so pander to the idea any viewer tuning into this episode would have no idea what happened in the previous episode is absurd, particular when it’s now watched in a binge-viewing environment where it’s likely someone has just watched the pilot.

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April 20, 2014 · 8:57 pm

Game of Thrones – “Breaker of Chains”

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“Breaker of Chains”

April 20th, 2014

“I will not become a page in someone else’s history book.”

As is often the case with watching Game of Thrones as a book reader, I left “Breaker of Chains” with questions about how non-readers would receive the episode.

These are not simple evaluative questions like whether readers would enjoy this scene or that scene in the episode. Like most, it’s a compelling episode, with some fantastic scenes in the fallout of last week’s major events. Rather, they are questions of whether or not reveals that are obvious to readers—we know what’s about to happen—are anticipated by non-readers in the way the series would seem to be hoping for.

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October 13, 2013 · 9:50 pm

Homeland – “Tower of David”

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“Tower of David”

October 13th, 2013

It’s been a few months since I watched the first two episodes of Homeland‘s third season. They were made available to press ahead of the show’s panel at the Television Critics Association press tour, which was logical—in that it allowed those in attendance to ask informed questions rather than random guesswork—but also daring. It was daring because in the two episodes screened for critics, Nicholas Brody did not appear for even a brief sequence, and yet Damian Lewis was seated on the panel at the Beverly Hilton.

I tweeted in advance of that panel that I was interested to see how the room responded to this (among other facts about Homeland‘s third season, specifically the increased focus on Morgan Saylor’s Dana), but Showtime was quick to offer clarification: a trailer revealed early footage of Brody’s first appearance in “Tower of David,” and the panel confirmed he would return in the very next episode beyond the ones we had seen. Part of me had expected them to treat Brody’s return as a surprise, leaving his fate open-ended, but from the beginning Brody was something the series was very open about, creating a certain suspense to see how the show planned on reintegrating the character into the narrative.

“Tower of David” works as a structural exercise in character development, drawing a parallel between Brody and Carrie’s respective prisons. However, it fails to acknowledge and mitigate the issues that plagued the two characters’ development last season, leaving an episode that works up until the point you look into the past rather than the present/future.

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April 14, 2013 · 8:58 pm

Game of Thrones – “Walk of Punishment”

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“Walk of Punishment”

April 14th, 2013

“A person could almost be forgiven for forgetting we’re at war.”

“Walk of Punishment” opens with something of a comedy routine. Edmure Tully is attempting to send his father off to the afterlife with a flaming arrow, but the arrow misses. And then misses again. And then misses again. It’s only then that his uncle, the Blackfish, steps in to fire the arrow necessary. Edmure is made to look the fool, the Blackfish is made to look like a man who suffers no such characters, and our first glimpse of Riverrun has served its function, in part, through comedy.

Of course, it’s also a funeral, which makes its comedy somewhat dark. It helps that we don’t actually know much about Hoster Tully, a character in the books and more of a symbol in the series. It also helps that the scene works the joke perfectly: I resisted laughter on the first miss, found it on the second, and felt the tragedy sneak back in on the third. The scene never feels at odds with the moment or the episode around it except when it’s supposed to feel like it’s at odds with the moment because, well, it is. A world of war and tragedy is not a world without comedy, but rather a world where comedy is rarely allowed to continue unabated for very long.

Catelyn’s quote above, spoken to the Blackfish, captures Benioff and Weiss’ approach to lightening the mood in Westeros. At any given point, there are characters in situations where they could forget about the gravity at hand, where the inherent humor of human interaction overwhelms the threat of widespread conflict. Sometimes it’s Talisa tending to two young captives, wanting to keep them from thinking about the world around them; sometimes its Tyrion wanting to give Podrick a gift for his loyal service. And in a previous time it was Jaime and Brienne, alone on the road, bantering their way toward King’s Landing.

But banter, like all men, must die.

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October 14, 2012 · 8:55 pm

Dexter – “Buck the System” (And Season 7 So Far)

“Buck the System”

October 14th, 2012

*Blows the Dust Off the Dexter Header Image* Well, it’s been a while.

I watched the fifth season premiere of Dexter waiting for a plane, and found it to be your typical episode of Dexter. But as the time crunch of the semester took over, the idea of watching any more floated away, and I hadn’t seen even a few minutes of the show since that point. The show remained “on the radar” as any show does, and certainly the events from the end of the sixth season were more visible than others, but the fact remained that I was content with Dexter being out of sight, out of mind.

This changed when that no longer became possible. During the past two seasons, people weren’t talking about Dexter: sure, there were still record numbers of viewers, but the people on my Twitter feed—people who used to talk about the show—seemed quiet. And then suddenly, there was Alan Sepinwall and Mo Ryan writing about the show again after watching their screeners for the first three episodes of the season. Tonight’s episode, “Buck the System,” was the last episode they saw before writing those pieces, and their support—and the similar mentions of improvement from the rest of my Twitter feed and my students—led me to take a look at the preview disc Showtime had been kind enough to send along.

I discovered a much better show than the one I left, mostly because we’ve reached the point where Dexter is the season’s star. Moving away from the seasonal serial killers of seasons past, the seventh season is invested in exploring Dexter and his impact on those around him, excising entirely unrelated subplots in favor of a web of character beats all focused on the ramifications of his actions. “Buck the System,” on the surface, is the episode where Dexter successfully begins to show Deb the positive benefits of his actions, and the episode where Yvonne Strahovski is introduced as a woman who, as a girl, once fell in with someone like Dexter. However, it’s also the episode where the unintended consequences of Dexter’s actions are equally as clear, at least to someone who is willing or able to think about them (which Dexter, very clearly, is not).

It’s a subtle distinction, but one that won me over, and has me committed to seeing the season out.

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June 26, 2012 · 1:46 am

Bunheads – “Inherit the Wind [And the Fast-Talkin’ Style]”

“Inherit the Wind”

June 25th, 2012

I haven’t weighed in on Bunheads in any official capacity to this point, although I’ve been watching it and largely enjoying it. The pilot left unanswered questions, and the two episodes since then (“For Fanny” and this week’s “Inherit the Wind”) have done a pretty good job of answering them.

On some level, that covers my basic evaluation of the show, but tonight’s episode raised two points for me about the viability of the show’s future. One has to do with Sutton Foster, who is tasked with a lot of heavy-lifting as the audience’s surrogate into this small town, and the other has to do with the style of dialogue that she and the rest of the cast have to deal with. As much as I largely enjoyed “Inherit the Wind,” and liked some of its larger moves toward stability, I think there’s still something about the show that doesn’t sit right without outright sitting wrong – and, apropos of tonight’s episode title, it’s partly something the show inherited.

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April 15, 2012 · 8:56 pm

Game of Thrones – “What Is Dead May Never Die”

“What Is Dead May Never Die”

April 15th, 2012

“They are the knights of summer, and winter is coming.”

This central idea has been at the heart of Game of Thrones from the very beginning: the children we’ve come to know, and the younger characters who jostle for power, do not know the true struggles of both the actual winter (starvation, struggle) and the metaphorical winter (war, bloodshed) that await them in the future.

Unfortunately, almost all of these characters have been faced with this reality sooner than they anticipated, pushing characters like Sansa and Arya Stark, Theon Greyjoy, and Renly Baratheon into positions where they must reconcile their fears and insecurities with a path they might not have chosen if not for the circumstances. Their struggles, however, must remain largely personal: while Theon Greyjoy might struggle to decide between his two families, for example, he has no one on the Iron Islands to talk to but a single flame and a piece of parchment. When he chooses to burn what he’s written, he makes his decision by isolating himself and accepting that this is his burden to bear as his father’s son.

“What Is Dead May Never Die” is about exploring these kinds of relationships, and exploring really is the right word: although partnerships both begin and end in the episode, other scenes are more about the complicated politics of those partnerships as winter approaches. While the show is still at the point where plot remains on the backburner, the pieces moving into place no longer seem motivated by the whims of the script; characters are taking greater agency in this environment, and the result is a strong thematic piece which lays some important groundwork for characters both new and old.

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