It's not a dealbreaker or anything, but c'mon. 3:45AM?
*Oh, and if you were having trouble placing that actor who showed up to discuss backstage murder with the President's greaseball daughter, here's a helpful tip. Imagine him hyperventilating in a room, looking at Morgan Freeman and saying "OH GOD He Told Me to FUCK Her...THERE WAS A GUN IN MY MOUTH and....AND I FUCKED HER I FUCKED HER THEREWASAFUCKINGGUNINMYMOUTH OH GOD".
This episode was written and directed by screenwriter extraordinaire Akiva Goldsman, the man who gave us
Batman and Robin and
A Beautiful Mind (guess which one won him an Oscar!), so once his name popped up in the credits, the question of whether the episode would be good was pretty much settled, transitioning into how bad it would be. And, sure, it wasn't very good, but it wasn't terrible either; it's more along the lines of
I Am Legend in the Goldsman oeuvre. No, it was a fairly typical affair, but the main problem was that it was pretty stupidly metaphorical. The plot involves Olivia having dreams that she's murdering people, starting with pushing a woman in front of a subway train. Do the dreams turn out to be real, with her shocked that the events are happening in real life? You betcha! So she goes kind of crazy, trying not to sleep, yada yada yada, and it turns out she has a mental connection to the guy that's actually doing it, but not exactly. He's got "reverse empath" powers, forcing his emotions on other people, and he's also suicidal, so his emotions caused that lady to jump. So Olivia, seeing the events through his eyes, interprets his mental push as a physical one, seeing herself actually doing the pushing. Later, a woman stabs her husband in a restaurant, and Olivia dreams that she actually grabbed her and and made her do the stabbing. That's a bit of a
literal interpretation, no?
Even worse is a bit that's clearly designed solely for cheap titillation, as the killer goes to a strip club and seduces a dancer by making her feel his arousal. As with all the other stuff, Olivia sees herself in his place, so we get to see her make out with the dancer. We don't get to see them go and have sex though, but if they were using the same literalism as the murders, wouldn't it stand to reason that Olivia saw herself rape the girl? It's pretty morally troubling that this aspect of the episode was pretty much ignored. The guy was obviously a menace, but people don't seem to care about the rape, just the murder. This whole thing was not very well thought through.
Also lame is the reason that Olivia is involved at all: it seems that she was a subject of some experimental drug tests as a child, along with the killer, so that's why they have a mental connection. And the man running the tests? Walter, of course! So yes, she's not just a federal agent investigating cases, she's also intimately involved with the whole ongoing pseudo-scientific mysteries? Does this sort of thing always have to happen in long-running series, with every character being somehow involved with everything? We're still in the first season here, and we're going to that well already?
So, yeah, not a very good episode, and that's not even getting into the details, like how Olivia was able to recognize the bad guy's exact Manhattan apartment after seeing that it had a red door. This show is going downhill fast; let's hope they haven't made Goldsman the new head writer or something. We need more funny Walter and less angst. Do it.
Dollhouse: "Haunted" by Matthew J. Brady
It's a one-off episode this week, without much in the way of plot progression, but that's all right; it's good to explore interesting uses of the show's premise. What we get here is a sort of murder mystery in which a friend of Olivia Williams dies, and her brain gets downloaded into Echo so she can go to her own funeral and solve her murder. Actually, it gets presented as a murder mystery, but it's not a very good one. For one, we aren't told how she died except in an offhand comment near the end of the episode. It's actually about the woman interacting with her loved ones and finding out that she wasn't as well loved as she thought she was. No, her children, brother, and even husband all seem to think she was a heartless old bitch. If only Eliza Dushku was a better actress, we could have seen her actually react to these revelations, but we're treated to what was basically her default personality, with a few lines of dialogue to make her sound sort of upper class. It still ended up being a pretty interesting episode, although the resolution was kind of cheesy. Still, we got to see her try to convince her husband that leaving him her horses instead of any money was a gesture of love, since they were what she loved most. Oh, rich people. Your priorities are all askew! How delightful! Or something.
In other plots, Topher turns Sierra into a female version of himself so they can pal around and play laser tag. Oh, the hilarity. And more amusing, Agent Ballard can't help but fuck his doll girlfriend. I think this was supposed to be agonizing for him, and if you think about it, it makes sense that he would be troubled, because he is supposed to treat her normally and not send any messages about anything being wrong back to the Dollhouse, but it comes off has him just being cold to her and then suddenly getting turned on and initiating some rough sex. Then he gets one of those scenes where he sits in the shower and just can't scrub himself clean. I find that pretty hilarious; it reminds me of this political cartoon that I saw recently.
So yeah, more along these lines would be enjoyable. As much as I hate to admit it, I think I'm in this for the long haul. Or the short haul, depending on what Fox does with the show...
The Celebrity Apprentice – "Week Nine"
Everyone on The Celebrity Apprentice is completely exhausted—so much so that this week’s episode featured a boardroom yawning montage that the editors intended to make fun of Clint Black for being long-winded, but only ended up making fun of the show itself for not having enough material to fill out its two hour running time. Of course, that was only a brief interruption of the rest of the episode, in which each of the remaining six players turned into buckets of piss and started splashing themselves on one another.
On team Kotu, the generally level-headed Jesse James verbally bitch-slapped project manager Clint Black for his (ultimately winning) Right Guard magazine layout, calling him stupid, telling him “it looks fucking terrible,” laughing at him, suggesting he throw away the entire project altogether, and, I’m pretty sure, somewhere in there, giving him the fattest nerple I’ve ever seen in my life. Clint is not nearly as annoying as the producers and his team-mates are making him out to be—it’s almost as if they’re using him as a George H.W. Bush proxy so that they can browbeat him—but good Gawd, was Jesse vicious. It’s easily one of the meanest smack-downs in reality TV history, made even meaner by the fact that, you know, Clint Black’s a generally well-respected guy that very obviously had absolutely no idea what he was getting into when he signed up for The Celebrity Apprentice. This whole time, Clint has been hesitant to say a single negative word about any of his competitors—probably in service of feebly trying to protect his image, but still—yet Jesse James tore into him like Clint had threatened Sandra Bullock with a spiked whiffle ball bat. He should give the Real World/Road Rules kids seminars.
Over on Athena, Melissa Rivers was having a prolonged little freak-out because she felt like her teammates Annie Duke and Brande Roderick were conspiring to get her kicked out of the game—which, of course, they probably were. The major source of joy in watching this season, since losing Andrew “Dice” Clay and Tom Green, has been in seeing Joan and Melissa Rivers get more pathologically disturbing with each passing week. Just about every week, Melissa accuses someone—Claudia Jordan, Annie Duke, Piers Morgan, Elmo—of making personal attacks on her character, throws a little bit of a fit about it, and then whines for her mother to back her up (which Joan does) even though Joan and Melissa have been on opposing teams for the last five task. She has gotten increasingly paranoid as the competition has gone on, and it has been as pathetic as watching a kid get his candy stolen. Athena lost and Trump, after leaning toward firing Brande as the team’s project manager, instead fired Melissa for a pretty legit reason—of the three women, she had raised the least amount of money for charity. In response, Melissa threw a wah-wah cry-cry fit that would make Vanilla Ice smile—refusing to do a final interview, cursing at the producers, and, in possibly the biggest “I’m taking my ball and going home” moment in reality TV history, bringing her mother into it. Melissa stormed off the set, and Joan stormed right on with her, but not before having this amazing exchange with Annie and Brande:
JOAN: You are a piece of shit, and you are a stupid blonde. It’s that simple. [to Brande:] And you are being so manipulated. You’re being so manipulated, and she is going to knock you off. You think you’re going to win? You’re not going to win.
BRANDE: I’m still here. I’m still here and Melissa’s not. How about that?
JOAN: Does this mean that much to you?
BRANDE: Yes. Yes, it does, because I want to give $250k to my charity.
JOAN: It’s not all about money.
BRANDE: Yes, it is.
JOAN: You’ve got things twisted. I don’t want to hear this charity nonsense. Charity is a very wonderful thing. [to Annie:] And your people, you give money with blood on it. I’ve met your people in Vegas for forty years. None of them have last names. You’re a poker player. A poker player. That’s beyond white trash.
ANNIE: Poker players are the most awesome people in the world.
JOAN: Poker players are trash, darling. Trash. [Door slams.]
So, will Joan come back next week? Of course she will, for one simple reason: Because the cameras are rolling, son.
The Mighty Boosh: "The Party" by Sean Witzke
After last week's surprisingly well-done edit of "Strange Tale of the Crack Fox", I was worried about "The Party", which is the most densely packed of the third season of the Boosh. Pretty much all of the crimp about the bouncy castle was cut, what was strange is that they didn't cut the whole thing. The bit where Vince pays off Diva Zappa for flirting with Howard as a birthday present. The part were Naboo and Bollo give a Scott Pilgrim-style cooking lesson about hash cakes, and Bollo getting his kneecaps torn out by satan. The bit where the moon refers to himself as a vanilla rapist. Almost every line Saboo has, although the exchange between Saboo and Tony Harrison over the decks arguing about Fleetwood Mac has arrived unabridged, still as pants-shittingly funny as two grown men in ridiculous costumes arguing about Tusk can be. "Is he Christ?" has been completely cut. The part with Bob Fossil attempting to get into the party by saying "how about I talk to you like a baby?" (he is still seen in the credits wearing a hula skirt and nipple tassles). And the post-credits bit where Tony Harrison skull-rapes Rich Fulcher's still-alive severed head as he pleads "But I'm an old blind man!". Surprisingly, with all of that cut it still holds together extremely well. I still miss it.
So what did we learn tonight? Extreme sports calendar models all look like Gozer from Ghostbusters, "women love men with knockers", the bouncy castle will solve all problems no matter how complex, beheading is funny, hipsters will tolerate anything as long as it's dressed as crazy as they are, and that a smile from Diva Zappa is enough to reaffirm a man's heterosexuality. Surprised me too.
Actually what I love so much about "The Party" is that while it's got jokes and gags like crazy, it's really just a standard sitcom premise of buddies throw a party, reexamined without a lot of the cliches that usually are involved. There's a huge party, there's a lot of talk about Howard's lack of charisma with women, a misunderstanding, and it ends with Vince and Howard kissing in order to get out of it. Fucking standard, yeah? What's brilliant is that it doesn't automatically pull the "gays=funny" card like you'd expect. It spends a lot more time a) making you uncomfortable with Howard shouting "I'M A GAY!" or b) just pointing out every fan fiction writers favorite idea that all the back and forth in all buddy situations is sexual tension. Which of course it's not, it's just Howard being overly excitable and it goes away the second Diva Zappa shows up again. It's funny and the kind of brilliant - the same way that Spaced walked the same line without ever coming out and exposing it the way the Boosh have (there's even a slight nod to Spaced, where they show a flashback where the character still has facial hair). "You're not in your bedroom now, sweetheart!"
Parks & Recreation: Episodes 1-3
Oh, Amy Poehler, how we've done you wrong. Poehler first came to television through the bizarrely scheduled and relatively ignored Upright Citizens Brigade, a show that occasionally touched on what made the group's live stage shows so legendary even when it couldn't make the time to live there. From that, her foray into Saturday Night Live consisted of the same hit-or-miss comedy that Tracy Morgan struggled with, in that both had some hilarious scenes interspersed amongst true crap. Tracy ended up on 30 Rock, where his talents have gone to far better exploitation, while Amy Poehler turned out a couple of tolerable flicks, a couple of horrible ones, and then she got named as the star of an unnamed Office spin-off back in July of last year.
Then it wasn't an Office spin-off.
Then it was.
Then it wasn't.
Of course, it probably wasn't that mixed up behind the scenes--whatever goes on in Hollywood when it comes to making television gets "reported" at a tempo completely unrelated to the situation's reality. Either way, Parks & Recreation didn't start until just recently, and while Office watchers seem to have given it a strong start, it's numbers have already started dwindling--unlike the other stuff this blog dicks around with, television ratings are publicly reported and private decisions are made based off them. Standard Disclaimer for the whiners: sales and ratings don't necessarily have any connection to quality--Law & Order SVU and C.S.I. Miami, we're groaning at you--but that doesn't change the fact that Parks & Recreation hasn't been as quick to capitalize off its cousin-by-creation as NBC had hoped, and considering that NBC is preparing to turn their 10PM spot over to Jay Leno until the Apocalypse, ratings matter.
Why hasn't the show taken off, one wonders? Parks & Recreation brings with it a couple of stronger actors than the Office started out with--Aziz Ansari is a guy who can pretty much do nothing wrong in my eyes, no matter if that something is pretty much just him being him, all the time, Paul Schneider is one of those great unknown character actors whose starring turn in All The Real Girls serves as one of the few reasons why American independent film can't truly be considered dead, and Aubrey Plaza seems on track to be one of those female comedic actresses who deserve the long career they'll have no trouble attaining. And at the center, Poehler, who happens to be about a million times more charismatic than Tina Fey and about four times as talented.
And yet? The show isn't that strong. It's not as bad as the first season of The Steve Carrell Office, that's for sure, but it also doesn't show the same level of promise that those torturous explorations of script repetition expressed. Parks & Recreation doesn't look like the amorphous blob that those first six episodes of The Office were, it looks finished and professional, it looks like this is the show that Greg Daniels--the uber-god who runs both programs--wants to make. When it's Aziz referring to himself as a redneck, or the slow deadpan realization of Paul Schneider grasping that yes, he did have sex with Amy Poehler's character five years ago--it's spot on comedy, and it's as good as anything else those two have done. Nick Offerman's explanation of the sawed-off shotgun he points (alongside an actual mine) towards anyone sitting on the other side of his desk, his life-size poster of Bobby Knight--these are the moments that make Parks & Recreation entertaining, but they're few and far between, and they're sandwiched around Amy Poehler's character. Now, Poehler is doing the best she can, the same way she did whenever she had to plow through an SNL sketch with Jimmy Fallon, but honestly, she's been damned with a character whose behavior makes little sense, especially when compared against the similarly written Michael Scott played by Steve Carrell. Is Leslie Knope bad at social skills while good at her job? Not really. She's just bad at everything, and while the show explains it away by her own admission of nepotism, as well as Nick Offerman's explanation that he would prefer employees likely to "smother government in its crib", the choice still doesn't leave much up to chance, and without chance, all you've got are the sort of jokes that come from someone being dumb and completely inefficient. What makes it even worse is Leslie's passion, her most Michael-Scott-of-traits. Whereas the Office plays Michael's crazed obsession with Dundler Mifflin while always throwing in a couple of scenes dealing with how a complete fool could be such a successful paper merchant (which Michael is), Leslie comes across as an optimistic idiot who can't accomplish anything, and she isn't written as being oblivious enough to ignore it. Part of why the Office has been so successful has been that simple twist on self-awareness--Scott spends the majority of his time unaware how dumb and reckless everyone considers him, and when he does pick up on it, it's played purely for pathos and tragedy in the same way that Ricky Gervais and Steven Merchant constructed it--painful, compelling viewing. When Leslie fails--which so far, has been almost constant--it's just uncomfortable to watch in a fashion that isn't even remotely entertaining. It's just a dumb person being told they're dumb, and the pained look on her face lets the viewer in on the truth: Leslie knows she's a moron, too.
That's not to say that Parks & Recreation is a complete failure--honestly, any show that's willing to allow Anzari, Schneider, and Aubrey Plaza this much screen time is worth the 22 minutes a DVR episode requires--but that it's not a show that will last long enough to find its stride without a serious examination of what the writers can give Poehler to do. This woman spent years earning the chance through daily stage shows, she burned off more alongside hacks like Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers. She's suffered enough. It's time to throw her a bone.
-Sean Witzke, Matthew J. Brady, Martin Brown & Tucker Stone, 2009
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