Television Of The Weak: Everybody Goes And Takes Their Pants Off

This week, Matthew J. Brady begins the arduous task of closing the door on Fringe, Sean Witzke follows Breaking Bad down the rabbit hole, and Tucker glances alongside the penultimate hours of Parks & Recreation and 24.

Fringe - "Over There, Part 1"
Matthew J. Brady

Whenever I wonder why I bother watching this show, an episode like this comes along and reminds me. Not by being so good that I remember I love it, no, but by exhibiting potential to be non-boring, and possibly dumb and goofy enough to be really enjoyable. That's this one to a T: we get to see the alternate-universe versions of the Fringe division, and they're interesting enough that we wonder why we waste time with the dour sad-sacks in this universe when there's a gadget-using band of sci-fi badasses operating out of a CTU-style headquarters on the other side of the vibrational barrier. Olivia has brown hair, and bangs, and she looks like she's having fun in their kick-ass SWAT team version of the group! Charlie is still alive, and bald, and he keeps talking about being infected with worms! Astrid wears a beret and does calculations on a high-tech computer to save the day at the last second! Broyles shouts orders over the radio and does less glaring than usual! There's a pretty-boy leader of the team, obviously there to be cannon fodder! Olivia has a hunky, shirtless boyfriend, surprisingly not played by the Human Target guy! There are blimps in the sky, and people use floating holographic wrist communicators! All sorts of cool shit seems to be going down all the time! Why are we hanging out with the boring version of these people again?

Apparently, this is supposed to be the evil universe, what with the shapeshifting invaders and such, but if anything, the regular reality seems like the bad guys, ever since Walter invaded, kidnapped Peter, and screwed up the nature of their reality. And now the other Walter (who is apparently the Secretary of Defense over there, and we know is mean because he frowns all the time) has come back to retrieve Peter, but he has evil plans involving a prophetic machine or something, so our version of the team has to go and invade again to get Peter back. They do this by rounding up some of the kids who Walter experimented on along with Olivia back in the day and having them all somehow psychically project themselves into the other universe, which really doesn't make sense, but that's besides the point. It's all about inter-dimensional adventures, with people coming face to face with their doubles and being SHOCKED, then getting in fights. That's what seems to be the plot for next week, anyway; all we really get here is a To Be Continued.

Seeing the cool ideas that got dreamed up here, one wonders why we waste time on such mundanity the rest of the season? It's all low-key stuff about intelligent viruses, or giant slugs, or one or two morphing assassins, or an elusive mastermind with a removable head. Here, we get hints of the creation of a team of super-powered defenders against invaders, and awesome sci-fi gadgets from another reality, and shit like that, and it's much more entertaining than the endless wallowing in guilt and sadness that we usually get. Somebody must think it important to build an emotional core for these characters, but they've made that so boring that any distraction from the tiresome mope-fest that we usually get is not only welcome, but enthusiastically celebrated, at least on my part. I say bring on the action, start the universal civil war, blow some shit up. That's the American way. As it is, we'll see if next week portends a shift in that direction for next season, or if it'll be back to the yawn-inducing status quo. I think I know where to place my bets.

Breaking Bad - "Kafkaesque"
Sean Witzke

Jesse Pinkman going "Hey, whats more important than money?"

Breaking Bad is in some ways about masculinity and what it is to be a man - the Mr Chips becoming Scarface aspect of the show. Walt and Hank and Jesse are all going through the same shit - but all of that is a pretty distant second for how much the show is about money. This shit all about money, about the difference between greed and actual need. Hell, this episode starts off with a chicken commercial followed by a factory process of hiding meth in the chicken place's ingredients. It has Jesse figuring out that Gus is clearing 96 mil, at least, on the meth Walt and Jesse are making. It has Marie being told her husband is going to be pre-approved for shit phsyical therapy by their insurance company, and the doctor siding with the insurance company. It's about Walt finding out his family is financially secure no matter what (or so Gus says) and then coming seconds away from driving into a semi-truck at 100mph. Economic realities govern decisions and actions as much as greed, everything is money in Breaking Bad.

Jesse wants to make more money first and foremost. He might want to answer to no one - Walt, Saul, his parents, anyone - but he wants money more than that. Jesse wants to get paid more than the 1.5 mil he just got paid a week ago. Jesse, at least according the the press releases and behind the scenes interviews, is happy with being the bad guy. In earlier episodes, that meant that he was willing to destroy Hank completely and smiled when he saw the twins had done it for him. This episode it means he's clean but willing to use his support group as a place to deal. Jesse is dangerous because he doesn't give a fuck, or at least is actively trying not to.

Jesse Pinkman going "Yeah, totally Kafkaesque... Majorly."

Theres a lot of long distance shots of suburban space on Breaking Bad. And while it became a crutch during the first season, whenever it pops up now that this show its amazingly effective. This isn't the wild west and this isn't the inherent drama of the city. Breaking Bad plays out in church rec centers and hospital waiting rooms, wood paneled trailers way out in the desert, chunky suvs on long stretches of highway. Breaking Bad is about crime as a means to an end that becomes its own end. But it's against bullshit, convience stores and concrete parking lots. The drudgery isn't Kafkaesque, it's way more American than that. (Kafkaesque kind of takes on the same tone as "Dickensian" did in the last season of the Wire, where they probably heard it enough that they felt taking a stab at using the word at all).

Jesse Pinkman going "What the point of being an outlaw when you have responsiblities?"

Saul Goodman is still awesome, explaining Money Laundering as if he was explain how the postal system works to a child. To Jesse it might as well be using golf balls to clog a pipeline - sounds like an idiotic waste of time. Problem is, Saul is up front about what he does to Jesse and Walt, and he's actually doing the smart thing. Jesse feels like he's being fucked with because Jesse isn't that smart.

Screw Skylar, though. Seriously. On a show where everyone's motivations are now governed either by their ideas of responsibility or "fuck you pay me" greed, all of whom remain understandable or sympathetic, Skylar is the one character I can't bring any sympathy up for. All she does is demand from other people, and acts out of revenge and anger. She wants to hurt Walt, she brushes off the boss she's been screwing, she tells a huge lie to Marie about Walt gambling. That speech was fascinating because it's not clear if Skylar would be okay with Walt as a gambler. I don't think she would, but Marie would. She's fine with calling Walt smart, but she makes him irresponsible in the story - saying she understands that what he did was for the family then saying he blew the whole family's savings. Walt isn't a good father and provider, he's a problem solver. It makes him into something else, and while Walt is just happy that he can help Marie out without Skylar telling her the real story.

Marie is quickly becoming the best character on this show, I like how she's still the same character but now that we understand how much she loves Hank and her family. They didn't suddenly make her a bad ass or likeable, they just told us more about her.

But yeah, lets talk about everyone except Walt and Gus, because that shit? That shit is the reason to watch this show. Walt figures everything out, that Gus was playing the twins against Hank to move Walt into his favor, but also to fuck over his supplier, take out their muscle, distract the DEA, and dump his own product (made by Walt) far and wide. Walt figured that out on the drive over, he knows Gus was the one who called Hank, and the one who put hank in the crosshairs to begin with. But Walt doesn't talk to him about that. Walt understands that he's alive becuase of Gus, and that Hank is crippled for the same reasons.

Walt asks him about money, gets put on retainer, 12mil a year indefinitely.

Walt is okay with that.

Parks and Recreation - "The Master Plan"
Tucker Stone

Parks had a rough start, but the popular opinion--if network television shows could be said to still play a part in that--is that its star has risen, while The Office, its older sibling, has seen its wane. Although it's as meaningless as it gets, I'd agree. I've got nothing caustic to say about the Office, but I don't watch it anymore, and I can't imagine a reason why I would ever start again. To be totally up front, I actually just threw a couple of episode of Parks on because I wanted to see how they planned to write Paul Schneider off the show, because I've always had a soft spot for the guy. From what I remember of the initial season, Schneider felt wasted on the show, a more classical actor stuck amongst a group of talented comedians doing various riffs on the characters they've spent careers creating. From a Schneider focused perspective, this season has been a washout--they've just written him into a mean-spirited corner, and there's every reason to expect that fallout from the current plot will be used as the broom to sweep him out the door. That aside, the show deserves the praise it seems to be garnering.

The plot of "Master Plan" is pretty thin--the government of Pawnee is collapsing, budget hawks have been sit in to eliminate waste--but that's an easy way for a sitcom to create some tension and introduce the latest guest stars. If you spent any time spent near a television, even one that was unplugged and sitting outside a crack den, you already know that said guest stars happen to be Rob Lowe and Adam Scott. Scott seems to be gearing up to take the most-unlikely-person-to-date Amy Poehler seat formerly held by Louis CK & Justin "Iron Man had a script?" Theroux, while Rob Lowe plays the comic relief portion. Originally, that seemed to me to be part of the show's major flaw--it's all comic relief, but too indebted to format rules to go as insane as it seems like it could on paper--but these performers have developed enough of a rhythm that the show ends up being funnier more often than it's not. (There's still jokes that don't hit the mark--in a previous episode, Nick Offerman went from being completely hilarious as he instructed the viewers of a telethon on how to recane a wicker chair while Amy Poehler pointed out that he was actually causing them to lose money, but this was then followed by the sight of Offerman "sleep-fighting", a gag that sounds sort of like what that creepy guy who can't read social cues might come up with when he isn't interrupting everybody to talk about his favorite They Might Be Giants album.) Adopting the umpteenth version of The Office's socially-retarded star crossed lovers seems to be working, despite the fact that Aubrey Partridge's performance has turned out to be too one-note when given this much screen time, but the show's tighter, faster paced, and yet the gags are given room to land. This episode rested most of those moments in the tightly wound force of positive thinking that was Lowe, a man who gobbles vitamins and listens "to ocean sounds" in keeping with his dream of living to be 150, as well as the hands of Aziz Ansari, who continues to mix a near-crippling self-hate with a torrent of psychopathic joy. (That moment when Aziz breaks into a gigantic smile after finally, desperately, getting a single phone number? That's supposed to hurt, and brother, it did.) For my money though, the moment to beat right now is this one, when Chris Pratt, after having had his soft, dopey heart thoroughly caved through the back of his spine, letting you know what he thinks of the Karate Kid.

24 - "1:00PM - 2:00PM"
Tucker Stone

It is absolutely no one's fault that 24 was so bad, for so long, that they gave up before this episode. And yet: this episode of 24 was without peer. Circling around one of the most satisfying action pieces the show has ever pulled off, closing with its goriest tableau, this was exactly what anyone who still cared was waiting for--and yet, there was no way to see it coming. Sure, the show has presented a litany of "Jack goes hardcore" episodes before, but none of them involved him wearing head-to-toe body armor, and the show's never gone as far in the visuals of violence depictions as they did in that closing sequence. After having spent eight seasons presenting the character as one whose capabilities and ferociousness knows no limit, he's become the official bad guy, and their delivery of that turn has barely flinched. Jack's meager nod towards decency--not murdering the Secret Service officers assigned to protect Charles Logan, the show's best post-Nina villain--is dispensed with instory, with Freddie Prinze Jr serving as the audience stand-in, his face curled into incredulousness as Chloe tries to defend Jack by pleading that "He shot to wound."

It really, really doesn't matter. Having, literally, nowhere else to go, the show has more acutely acknowledged what it had only vaguely addressed since those first hours in these final minutes--Jack isn't a good person. He was an honorable man, certainly, but he's always been a violent brute, a machine of death, a thing that you point in the direction of a problem. With his purpose beaten out of him, his own integrity sacrificed in a twisted version of his own "greater good" philosophy, there's nothing left for him to do...except kill people.

He's still very good at that.

-Matthew J. Brady, Sean Witzke, Tucker Stone, 2010

Comments

[seth hurley]

Jack going Snake-Eyes on the convoy was like Michael Mann directing GI JOE.

but Logan? Logan fucking owned this episode. His reactions in the limo and afterward were classic. What did it for me was the earlier scene as he was getting dressed while watching the announcement of his involvement on tv, those expressions...holy shit he is good.

[Tucker Stone]

that thing with the tie--did he button the top after he pulled it all the way up? Jesus, that guy. He's screaming and crying, pissing his pants, and then he's just laying on that stretcher, chortling and gargling, preening like a christmas hen. I'm going to miss him most of all.

[Matthew J. Brady]

Man, I wish I had kept watching 24; this shit sounds hardcore.

Parks & Rec (as the cool kids call it) has certainly gotten better in its second season, but the same was true of The Office as well; give the characters more room to breathe and develop, and they can play off each other so well. My favorite running joke is the pathetic nature of department loser Jerry, who everybody constantly and mercilessly mocks, with him pretty much never getting any redemption. He's like The Office's Kevin, but played as a sad sack resigned to a life of indignity rather than just fat and dumb; it's genius, and pretty fucking dark in that he never wins, each mockery hitting home and every attempt to stand up for himself brutally beaten down. If the series finale sees him committing suicide after getting fired a month before his retirement, I won't be surprised.

[Tucker Stone]

Matt, you could totally stick up a middle finger to the last few years of 24 and just watch the two latest episodes and still get something out of it.

Parks: yeah, sometimes I like the Jerry gags, sometimes i feel like its a hold-out from the Office's constant use of cringe-humor. That episode where he screws up his shoulder, only for the final reveal that he was getting a burrito out of a drainage ditch...didn't they do something almost exactly the same on the Office a couple of seasons back? That little scene where he made Anne think they'd made out was pretty great though.

[Abhay]

The fact the same guys who screwed up Conan are screwing up Parks and Rec after so much improvement in the second season (by "moving it to mid-season" to make room for Outsourced, not by losing Paul Schneider or bringing on Adam Scott)... I just want to rant about that forever. Just forever. On the internet. At random people.

My favorite running joke is Duke Silver. And that was before I saw the Duke Silver website: "It has everything you've come to expect from the music of Duke Silver: the frenetic energy, the sexual tension, the saxophone."

[sean witzke]

My favorite website joke is April's bio entry in the Pawnee newsletter

[BerserkerJosh]

My pressing query for the 24 Finale - how are they going to find enough people for Jack Bauer to kill? Also, how badly can Cole Ortiz be embarrassed by his declarative statement about taking Jack down?

Also, I wish I had written Sex Hair. Maybe the best song by a fictional band ever.

[Tucker Stone]

At some point this season, it become clear that having somebody as incompetent as Cole Ortiz for Head of Field Ops had a lot to do with his willingness to react to any complicated situation in sixty second increments. He has no memory, he merely acts and speaks immediately following stimulus. He's what Steven Covey someday dreams of becoming.