I addressed The Walking Dead generally in my piece last night, but I do want to address the premiere in particular.
As far as premieres go, this is a really strong effort aesthetically: character is largely on the backburner in an effort to define the scale of this world, which operates directly in opposition to characterization. The whole point of the series, after all, is that humanity has dwindled down to a small collection of survivors, and yet this creates an even grander sense of scale as a result of the sheer emptiness.
I want to talk about that emptiness a bit, and the role it plays in telling the story in “Days Gone Bye.”
However, having now watched the first two hours of AMC’s The Walking Dead – which premieres tonight at 10/9c with a special 90-minute opener – I think that I want to talk about zombies, and their function as genre. In a movie, zombies are easy: you introduce zombies, chaos ensues, heroes emerge, a conclusion is reached (which is either the heroes proving themselves capable of subsisting within a zombie-infested nation or the zombie outbreak being contained, presuming a happy ending is desired). Admittedly, I’ve only watched a handful of zombie movies thanks to being largely averse to suspense, but the point I want to get across here is that there’s a clear timeline. There is a situation, there is a conclusion, and you move on from there.
When you move this notion into television, however, you’re forced to live in that space, which is a problem that The Walking Dead will have to face should it join the rest of AMC’s lineup. Community, of course, is a very different situation, but it is nonetheless interesting to note that seriality plays a pretty substantial role in how their zombie story is told, and so I think tackling them both simultaneously will speak to some of the things which impressed me about Community and some of what concerns me about The Walking Dead.
Thus far, I’ve been disappointed in the quality of The Good Wife’s second season, if not disappointed in the season as a whole. There has yet to be an episode which really lived up to the potential of the first season when it comes to its legal procedural elements: the show’s serialized elements have remained present, but the series was at its most effective when the legal story was novel or particularly well organized (I’d argue “Heart” was the season highlight).
For me, “VIP Treatment” is the best episode of the season and certainly a standout in the series as a whole primarily because it is driven by a legal case as opposed to ongoing character interaction. Like last week’s episode, it features some work regarding Peter’s campaign, the love triangle, and Kalinda and Blake’s feud of sorts, but it’s all done in service to the standalone story. It’s an episode which makes its standalone storyline feel like something much more substanthe episode worked really welltial, and which embraces the show’s uniquely well-drawn workplace environment to tell a small story with potentially huge ramifications.
The test of an episode so heavily based around a specific musical property is how it is integrated into the series as a whole. While Rocky Horror superfans are likely to judge the episode based on its relationship to the musical, I’m more interested in the musical’s relationship to the characters. I watched the movie for the first time over the weekend, and while the music is obviously the main reasons for this crossover it’s also easy to see how various characters could fit into particular roles. Finn and Rachel are a logical Brad and Janet, Sam might as well be Rocky 2.0, and the other roles all have enough meaning and interest that whoever fits into them could gain a new level of interest as a result (especially if the show is interested in the musical’s more subversive qualities).
At a few points, I think “The Rocky Horror Glee Show” succeeds in this area, albeit with some missteps. By admitting that the musical is inappropriate for this setting (small town Ohio), both through the actual storyline and how a variety of characters respond to the material, the show doesn’t pretend that it is entirely natural for these two properties to come together. In those moments, the episode is fairly grounded, problematizing the staging of the musical in ways which have potential to speak to the show’s characters.
The problem is that the central reason this connection is being made is the part of the show that simply doesn’t work, something that was entirely absent two weeks ago where the show was at its best in a long while. By grounding the musical in Will and Emma’s relationship, and in Sue’s efforts to destroy the Glee club, the small character moments are ultimately complicated and often undermined by the sense that tying this into one of the series’ weakest ongoing storylines takes leaps in logic that limits the potential impact of the musical’s presence in the episode.
The Pleasure of the ‘Unnecessary’: BBC/PBS’ Sherlock
July 31st, 2010 / October 24th, 2010
Before I watched it, I found Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss’ Sherlock [which premiered tonight on PBS in the U.S., but which aired on the BBC back in July] to be quite perplexing.
First of all, I wondered whether we really needed another take on Sherlock Holmes considering that Guy Ritchie’s movie (which I thought was solid, but unremarkable) was released only seven months ago. Now, before you jump on me, I became aware in doing some research that the original pilot for this series was shot long before the movie debuted, but considering how late the series is arriving it was nonetheless the first thought which popped into my mind.
Second, does Steven Moffat really need to write for another eccentric problem solver? The Doctor is, in many ways, a detective in his own right, along with being both an outcast and a genius, so one can’t help but feel that Moffat is developing a type (albeit one that, in the case of the Doctor, I quite enjoy).
And third, and this is speaking from my North American experience, television is littered with series which owe much of their structure to Conan Doyle’s work. House has both the eccentric problem solving and the Holmes/Watson dynamic in House and Wilson, The Mentalist has the eccentric, observational crime solver with the archnemesis, and every single crime procedural on television has the whole “crime solving” part of things.
While it may have been received differently had it made it out before Ritchie’s film, or before Moffat took over Doctor Who, the fact remains that Sherlock is emerging in an environment where it feels “unnecessary” for those of us not entirely familiar with the source material, which can lead one’s mind to words like “disposable” (which, for North American viewers accustomed to 22-episode seasons, isn’t helped by the short three-episode order). So, it is perhaps that much more impressive that I really enjoyed Sherlock, a sentiment shared by the British audience which helped it garner some pretty substantial ratings which could get it a second season late next year.
It’s a well-made show building from a well-made premise, which may not make it “necessary” but which certainly makes it something I am glad to have on my television, and hope to have on my television in the future.
At this point, Cougar Town is sort of like a history lesson.
This isn’t to say that I had forgotten that Jules and Bobby were once married, and that the former has been paying alimony to the latter, but it hasn’t played a role in the show’s storytelling since the Cul-de-Sac Crew came together. We’ve just sort of accepted Bobby as a fun guy who lives on a boat, and since finances have never been a major concern for the show it’s not as if there’s any real question of whether the alimony will make or break the show.
Rather, it becomes the latest in a series of investigations which return to a storyline that could disrupt the series’ dynamic and then prove that it is not going to actually disrupt the series’ dynamic. And while I do think that “Keeping Me Alive” is pushing the pattern a bit too heavily, and the show will have to introduce an actual storyline at some point, there’s enough to keep this episode grounded for me to continue to sing the show’s praises.
The Good Wife was the best new network series of last season, without a doubt: the show was smart, sophisticated, and comfortable in its balance of both procedural and serialized elements.
This season, The Good Wife is a considerably worse show, objectively speaking: the weekly plots are over-written, the serial arc has swapped character drama for fairly rote political maneuvering, and tensions which might have remained subtexts last year become baseball bat attacks this time around.
Normally, I’d chalk this up to a network note about wanting to draw in younger viewers with a more exciting product; while I do think that this is likely part of it, I’m reticent to speak too critically because I’m finding this new version of the show a whole lot of fun. This is not to say that I don’t wish that the scripts could be a bit sharper, or that the show would avoid playing so heavily to the relationships between Will and Alicia as well as Cary and Alicia, but “Cleaning House” demonstrates that there are times when manipulative plotting can be delightful enough to quell most, if not all, of my critical concerns.
I’m extremely glad that Faye Miller actually said this during the episode, so I could pull quote it instead of saying itself myself. But, seriously: is Mad Men kidding me?
“Tomorrowland,” like its namesake, was supposed to be about potential: it was supposed to show us a way for Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce to survive, and a way for Don Draper to reconcile his identity crisis and move forward. It was about charting a new path after tobacco, working with the Cancer society and making plans for whatever the future might hold.
Instead, “Tomorrowland” drops us off with ten weeks of no business, a vacation conundrum, and a series of circumstances which is precisely the opposite of last season’s closer: instead of building excitement, “Tomorrowland” builds nothing but dread, creating scenarios that test our patience with these characters, and even the show itself.
Unless you’re a huge fan of total uncertainty and absolute chaos, chances are “Tomorrowland” was more disturbing than enlightening – the question, of course, is whether it is still good television.
And I think that answer, despite my frustration, is yes.
As some of you may know, I’m in the midst of starting a PhD program, which means that there have been certain televisual casualties this fall.
Some of them have been pretty insignificant: I don’t think that giving up on Undercovers after the pilot, for example, is a huge loss considering the series’ imminent demise. However, others have been more substantial, or more accurately have become more substantial with time.
Back at the end of August, I didn’t think that falling behind on AMC’s Rubicon was going to be a problem. While I liked the show, and thought it had potential, the first five episodes were not must-see television, and so the episodes started piling up on the DVR.
And yet, over time this became more problematic: critical and fan responses indicated that the show was starting to live up to is potential, and so it became a sort of social stigma to not be caught up with the series. Thankfully, the show seems to be fairly spoiler-proof, more interested in atmosphere than “plot” movement, but I was still anxious about being behind. I can see only so many “Arliss Howard better get nominated for an Emmy” tweets before I become uncontrollably curious, and so I knew that I would need to catch up before the finale.
As a result, I set aside all of yesterday to watch the last seven episodes of the AMC series ahead of the season finale – tonight at 9/8c – and I brought (some of) you along for the ride; over a 12-hour period, I watched all seven episodes, and returned here to offer some commentary, some links to other reviews, and a record of my growing appreciation for the AMC drama.
It’s not as substantial as it would have been if I had kept up throughout the season, but I’m just excited to finally enter into this conversation that will hopefully be enough to get the series a second season.
The most common word I’m seeing in evaluating tonight’s 30 Rock is “experiment,” which is more evaluative than you might think.
We call it an experiment because it wasn’t actually very good. This is not to say that I didn’t enjoy tonight’s 30 Rock (I did), or that the episode was a failure (it wasn’t). If the episode had actually lived up to expectations, we’d call it a risk worth taking, or a ballsy decision, but instead we consider it a one-off experiment in order to better reconcile its struggles within the show’s larger creative efforts.
As noted, I thought “Live Show” was fun, and think that there were parts of the way the episode was designed which worked quite nicely, but any deeper commentary built into the episode was killed by the live format. Many of the jokes landed, and a couple of the meta moments were successful, but any character development and much of the potential meta-commentary were lost in the midst of audience laughter.
Cultural Learnings 