Tag Archives: John Lithgow

March 21, 2011 · 8:25 pm

How I Met Your Mother – “Legendaddy”

“Legendaddy”

March 21st, 2011

There is something hypocritical about the status of Barney Stinson as a character within How I Met Your Mother. On the one hand, he is the character who will change the least: because of his popularity, and because of the broad comedy the character is known for, Barney Stinson will never dramatically alter his behavior. And yet, at the same time, the character is uniquely positioned to engage with more emotional and transformative elements due to Neil Patrick Harris’ dramatic acting ability and the value of having a narcissistic character show signs of selflessness and vulnerability.

Ted Mosby is always on the verge of a dramatic life event, but is never allowed to reach that moment because it would fundamentally change the course of the series. However, because there are assurances that Barney’s essence will not be changed, he’s allowed to do what Ted is not: he’s allowed to meet his father, allowed to confront a potentially life-changing moment on a show which in its sixth season is largely resistant to fundamental change.

The result is a tremendous showcase for Neil Patrick Harris and John Lithgow, achieving an emotional complexity that has been absent from Ted’s story for what seems like a very long time without sacrificing the essence of the character. While there are some who remain frustrated with the lack of momentum on the eponymous story, the show’s sixth season has been quite effective in crafting stories about the other side of the parental coin that have really landed.

Even if they aren’t quite as transformative as Ted’s love life.

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August 21, 2010 · 6:00 pm

2010 Creative Arts Emmys Predictions: Guest Acting

2010 Creative Arts Emmys Predictions

August 21st, 2010

Each year the Creative Arts Emmys are a celebration of the unsung heroes, albeit a celebration which remains largely unsung: few ever really get to see the awards, and so there’s a certain lack of fanfare. However, with the Guest Acting awards given out at the show and with the battles between shows like Glee and Modern Family unfolding for the first time, it’s a good early indicator for how the big awards will fall.

I’m still grappling with the idea of doing predictions for the big awards, and waiting until the Creative Arts ceremony is over is a good reason to put it off for another day. So, let’s take a look at the Creative Arts awards, and go from there.

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July 8, 2010 · 10:28 am

The 2010 Primetime Emmy Award Nominations

The 2010 Primetime Emmy Award Nominations

July 8th, 2010

[For complete analysis of the 2010 Emmy Nominees, head to my full breakdown, “The Trick is to Watch TV,” here.]

Here are the nominees for the 2010 Emmy Awards (and, for added value, my gut feelings in terms of early favourites have been bolded): for all of the awards, click here to download the Academy’s PDF.

Outstanding Drama Series

  • True Blood
  • Breaking Bad
  • The Good Wife
  • Dexter
  • Lost
  • Mad Men

Lead Actress in a Drama Series

  • Glenn Close (Damages)
  • Mariska Hargitay (Law and Order: SVU)
  • Julianna Margulies (The Good Wife)
  • Connie Britton (Friday Night Lights)
  • January Jones (Mad Men)
  • Kyra Sedgwick (The Closer)

Lead Actor in a Drama Series

  • Kyle Chandler (Friday Night Lights)
  • Bryan Cranston (Breaking Bad)
  • Michael C. Hall (Dexter)
  • Jon Hamm (Mad Men)
  • Hugh Laurie (House)
  • Matthew Fox (Lost)

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June 5, 2010 · 2:36 am

Handicapping the 2010 Emmys: Official Ballot Miscellany

Official Ballot Miscellany

June 4th, 2010

Earlier this evening, Emmy voting officially began; this isn’t particularly important to us non-voters, but it does mean that the official ballots were released (PDFs: Performers, Writing, Directing), which means that we know who submitted their names for Emmy contention and can thus make our predictions accordingly. In some cases, this simply confirms our earlier submissions regarding particularly categories, while in other cases it throws our expectations for a loop as frontrunners or contenders don’t end up submitting at all.

For example, Cherry Jones (who last year won for her work on 24) chose not to submit her name for contention this year, a decision which seems somewhat bizarre and is currently being speculatively explained by her unhappiness with her character’s direction in the show’s final season. It completely changes the anatomy of that race, removing a potential frontrunner and clearing the way for some new contenders (or, perhaps, another actress from Grey’s Anatomy). Either way, it’s a real shakeup, so it makes this period particularly interesting.

I will speak a bit about some surprising omissions and inclusions in the categories I’ve already covered this week, but I want to focus on the categories that I haven’t discussed yet, including the guest acting categories, writing, and direction, which are some interesting races this year.

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December 17, 2009 · 12:20 pm

Equal Treatment: SAG delivers Disappointing TV Nominations

The other day, I tore into the Golden Globes for being star fetishists, arguing that their choices reflect a clear lack of interest in actually honouring the best in television (when Entourage is your default, there is something very wrong). However, I think sometimes we pick on the Golden Globes so much that we forget that other award shows which actually have some shred of credibility are just as capable of proving disappointing.

And so I feel I need to provide equal treatment, and criticize the Screen Actors’ Guild for a bizarre set of nominations (click the link to read if you want to know all of the context for the below rant) which seem to indicate that they’re not actually watching television at the moment. While the rut SAG has fallen into is less egregious than that of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, its relative credibility makes its shame a definite disappointment during this end of year awards season.

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December 14, 2009 · 12:45 am

Season Finale: Dexter – “The Getaway”

“The Getaway”

December 13th, 2009

When Dexter started its season, I spent a lengthy post comparing the show to 24, arguing that the show’s initial interest in Dexter as a psychological case study has been all but eradicated by seasons which have turned the show into your basic serial thriller that fails to take into account just how complex the character truly is. The show took two seasons to establish that Dexter is someone who has a code, and who kills those who deserve to be killed, and now it has taken that stock character and turned him into the blood analyst equivalent of Jack Bauer, happening to find himself wrapped up in compelling cases each and every season that speak to Dexter more than something wholly random but often do so in a superficial way. And like 24, these situations can often be quite compelling, but if you stop and think about the real potential in this character and the series you can’t help but feel that all involved could do better.

If we choose to accept that this is all Dexter is going to be, the fourth season has been quite solid, benefitting from a terrific and terrifying performance by John Lithgow as Arthur Mitchell, also known as the Trinity Killer. And much as 24’s fifth season was one of its strongest due to the amount of time spent crafting Gregory Itzin’s President Logan into a complex antagonist, the show works infinitely better when it takes the time to create a character that can give us chills, and who brings out interesting shades in Dexter’s character. So long as we ignore how convenient it is that Trinity is based in Miami, the consequences (like Jennifer Carpenter’s fine work post-shooting, like more time with Keith Carradine, etc.) are quite engaging, and viewed on their own represent some great dramatic television.

But they’re surrounded by a show that can’t help but call attention to its faults, and how those faults could have been prevented. Harry Morgan, once an integral part of the series’ mythos, has devolved to the point of serving as an exposition tool, a physical representation of Dexter’s self-conscience that the writer aren’t even willing to define as either angel or devil because they’re afraid that question would be too complex to handle. The supporting characters, like Batista and LaGuerta, are given stories that are literally just excuses for them to remain in the cast. Rita and her kids, once a beard for Dexter’s inner emptiness, have become a way for the show to investigate fidelity and suburban life, but never in a way that feels like it goes beyond melodrama.

“The Getaway” takes a lot of these elements and puts them to good use, unearthing Dexter’s bloody past in a way which feels organic and concluding the Trinity arc with the sort of momentum that the show is so very good at developing. And in its conclusion, which is in fact truly game-changing, there contains the DNA for the show to reinvent itself, to send it down a darker and more complex path that harkens back to the show’s first season.

And I’d be a hell of a lot more excited if I thought that was actually going to happen.

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December 7, 2009 · 3:08 am

Dexter – “Hello, Dexter Morgan”

“Hello, Dexter Morgan”

December 6th, 2009

“Who are any of us, really?”

There’s a requisite scene or two in “Hello, Dexter Morgan” where Dexter stands in front of a four-part mirror discussing his fragmented self or sits in his storage container chatting with his conscience in the form of his dead father. In these scenes, the show taps into something within Dexter Morgan that serves as the very basis for this character study, and I consider myself legitimately interested.

Except that, in this the show’s fourth season, those scenes have been completely ineffective, to the point where I consider them a parody of what the show once was. Lines like the above used to have some legitimate weight in this show’s universe, but the theme has been dragged through the muck so many times that it has lost all meaning. Michael C. Hall has never stopped capturing the inner torment of Dexter Morgan, but the show is so insistent on surrounding that with absolute chaos in an effort to “excite” the audience that moments of contemplation feel like exposition as opposed to inquisition.

What makes “Hello, Dexter Morgan” work as an hour of television is that in a collection of scenes it manages to capture at least one character in an new light, finding Jennifer Carpenter doing some of her stronger work on the show to date. If you were to isolate her scenes, you’d have a bang-up Emmy tape – unfortunately, you’d also have a non-representative statement of where the show is truly headed right now.

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November 23, 2009 · 2:38 am

Dexter – “Hungry Man”

“Hungry Man”

November 22nd, 2009

There is no question that I have been highly critical of Dexter this season, which isn’t to suggest that I wasn’t also critical of season two (where the conclusion fizzled) or season three (where things felt as if they wrapped up too neatly): this is a show that I have always felt struggled in the balance between the parts and the whole, and this has been especially clear this season. While I’ve enjoyed the majority of the story surrounding the Trinity Killer, and Michael C. Hall is delivering as compelling a performance as ever, I’ve found myself watching episodes out of obligation more than interest, and fastforwarding through anything not involving Trinity, Dexter, or Deb.

If we follow that strategy, “Hungry Man” contains perhaps the best connection yet between Dexter and Trinity, offering glimpses of two theoretically similar Thanksgiving dinners that in reality tell two very different story or, more problematically for Dexter, two very different stages of the same tale. The problem is that this isn’t actually a new theme, having effectively been the purpose of the Trinity story since we meant “Arthur,” and despite some really fantastic execution throughout it (like seasons before it) feels a bit too on the nose, thematically.

However, when you have a show that likes to meander about as it does and (in my opinion) waste our time with storylines that are irrelevant until the show decides to deliver a bombshell like at the end of this episode, I’ll take compelling contrivance over mundane mind games any day.

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November 16, 2009 · 2:36 am

Dexter – “Road Kill”

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“Road Kill”

November 15th, 2009

I spent part of last week finishing up the fifth season of Six Feet Under, which has long been half finished after a lengthy marathon session of the entire series just proved dire last summer, resulting in “Depressive Melodrama Burnout” (DMB, for short). Returning to that show was a reminder of just how amazing Michael C. Hall can be, and how in some ways I wish that Dexter could feel as…progressive as Six Feet Under often did. Say what you will about Alan Ball’s incessant refusal to allow his characters to be happy, but the sense of growth in David as a character (and, not to spoil anything, a late series regression) helped to provide a sense that the collective weight of the show was actually having an impact on his psyche.

Dexter, as a series, is like a masochistic, homicidal version of “Will it float?” where the writers throw various circumstances at Dexter to see whether it will mix with his existing psychotic personality. The argument the fourth season has been making thus far is that Dexter is not aware of how much his personality has actually changed, and the Trinity Killer is a sign that perhaps there is some secret switch that will help reconcile his new life in the suburbs with his murderous impulses (and actions). And, now into the show’s fourth season, the psychological experiment at the centre of the show is downright uninteresting to the point where last week’s violation of Harry’s code is about a season and a half behind the times: we’ve been waiting for Dexter to realize that the code is flawed, and develop his own, since the start of the third season, but the show is formulaic to the point where that would disrupt the flow of the story.

“Road Kill” works as an episode because it completely sidelines Dexter’s predictable responses in favour of the unpredictability of the Trinity Killer. To do so, of course, the show has to admit that the actual impact of killing a mostly innocent man is entirely counterproductive to the show’s intentions, instead heading to Tampa in order to delve into the psyche of a character that, in being new and interesting, the writers actually seem interested by. The rest of the episode isn’t nearly as interesting, but letting Hall and Lithgow go on a road trip together is a recipe for success, if limited by the show’s current focus.

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October 19, 2009 · 12:43 am

Dexter – “Dex Takes a Holiday”

dextertitle

“Dex Takes a Holiday”

October 18th, 2009

After missing one episode while I was in New York, and having another one delayed by a DVR failure, I’ve finally caught up with Dexter’s fourth season. Ultimately, both episodes were an improvement over the premiere, although they suffered from similar problems. The show’s decision to place Dexter into the suburbs and into a family life has made for an odd shift in tone. In some ways, it’s a return to first season storylines, with Harry Morgan recurring to remind Dexter that he’s deranged and that he can’t truly have a family. However, the show spent two seasons largely ignoring that story, and something about the way the show played them in a comic light early on has robbed the show of some of its teeth. Just as we see a legitimately intriguing new serial killer who creeps us out, Dexter’s storylines have felt like bad thrillers (the vandal scenario) by comparison.

What “Dex Takes a Holiday” does better is to marry Dexter’s predicament with less of an awkward identity crisis and more of a profound identity crisis – whereas consequences before have been a teenage girl thinking Dexter is being lame, and for Dexter’s suburban dream to suddenly turn into something less than Cleaver-esque, this week posed a far more extreme question in a direct fashion which lacked in subtlety but connected thematically. The episode had its problems, but by literally shipping off Rita and letting Dexter act burdened by inner emotions and not halogen flood lights it really brings into stark contrast the potential of this character.

The problem is that it required sending the family away, a luxury that not every episode will have, and a factor which even an intriguing twist at episode’s end can’t exactly overcome.

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