This week we've got Hung, Leverage, The Mighty Boosh, True Blood, Top Chef Masters & more on The Prisoner.
Hung – “Do It, Monkey!” by Martin Brown
Most great television shows take anywhere from half a season to a couple of years to truly find their voice—rarely, does one come fully formed out of the womb. Considering the amount of potential that Hung has shown so far, it’s not completely surprising that the series’ fifth episode is a truly great one, but it is a bit of a nice payoff after four episodes worth of (*ahem*) hanging around to see whether or not the show can make good on its promise.
“Do It, Monkey!” is structured around a single customer, Jemma, who hires Ray to act out a damsel-in-distress fantasy, but is continually dissatisfied with his participation. The first scene between them plays out as if it were happening in real life, with no indication from the writers or actors that Jemma is simply a trick—even the preview refused to give it away, though the description on TiVo blew it. The sequence ends with Ray and Jemma getting it on in a diner bathroom, and cuts immediately to a scene between Tanya and Ray where she informs him that the client wasn’t into it.
From there, the episode becomes a series of escalating role-plays between Ray and Jemma, creating a fascinating relationship between the two of them, and culminating in Jemma telling Ray she loves him. Hung manages to both explore male/female intimacy and subvert audience expectation by letting things play out in a somewhat excruciating manner. Ray can’t bring himself to tell Jemma that he loves her, capturing an elusive feeling (known to many actors) that is difficult to get on film—grappling with real psychology and emotions under imaginary circumstances. Natalie Zea, plays Jemma so straight-forwardly that she’s a complete mystery—neither her nor the writers make the mistake of giving away her reasons for hiring a man-whore to complete her fantasies.
There’s an equally uncomfortable and fun subplot between Tanya and her How to Be a Millionaire teacher, Floyd, which erupts into a hilarious screaming match, and some less compelling stuff with Ray’s ex-wife, kids, and her new husband, which the writers still don’t seem to know what to do with. But it’s Ray and Jemma’s meta-theatrical relationship, which looks like it will continue to grow in the next episode, that makes “Do It, Monkey!” one of the best episodes of any show so far this year.
Leverage - "The Order 23 Job" by David Brothers
People like to say that Nazis make the best villains. Close, but no cigar. Wife beaters and child abusers? Those guys are the best. You watch as your hero bounces their head off a stone wall, tosses them down a stairwell, or blindfolds and pushes them into traffic without even a twinge of "Ohh, I may be desensitized to violence." No, you cheer, and then you look around for whoever isn't cheering, because they are obviously sympathizers and fifth columnists. Get them.
Leverage doesn't go quite that far, but it's nice to see a member of the team take a break from the heist of the week to at least attempt to put the fear of God in a scumbag. It hints at both a Tortured Past and a moral code that has no time for that kind of funny business.
The rest of the episode is good and solidly high-stakes. The team has to "steal a hospital," in Nate's own words, and they do it with aplomb. Elliot and Hardison put on small town cop disguises, Sophie gets her Noo Yawk Fran Drescher on, Parker gets to be giddy a couple of times and creepily focused in others, and Nate gets to play bastard.
The villain is almost an afterthought in this one, since so much of the episode is based around the mindgames and hijinks of the gang. There's the "drip roofies down a rope and into a water bottle" trick, rewiring an entire security system to display through a cell phone (old hat for Hardison, of course), a fight in a morgue, and tricking a cop into stripping down and showering. Add all this up with a biological weapons hoax and a pretty clever zombie homage and you've got the kind of show that you can smile at.
Elliot should've tipped the guy over into the stairwell, though.
The Mighty Boosh - "The Priest and the Beast" by Sean Witzke
"Its the tears of Mozart... mixed with the urine of Mark Knopfler"
The Priest and the Beast is Julian Barrat's favorite episode of the Boosh - which makes sense as he plays Rudi, who is a black psychedelic monk guitarist with a fucking door in his afro. It's also the one episode in the show that's exclusively focused on music, and not in the half-assed way something like "Journey to the Center of the Punk" is. And Barrat is right, this is a classic.
The plot of this week's episode is simple: Howard and Vince are awful musicians and have to find a new sound before tomorrow morning, where they have a meeting with the head of pieface records. Naboo calls them idiots and starts telling them the story of how Rudi and Spider recorded their greatest album, El Sonido Nuevo. He knows because he was their dealer at the time. Cut to Rudi and Spider in the desert, fighting and searching for the new sound. They jam out, all their bullshit gets aired - Spider has offers to drum for Santana, Spider is illiterate, Rudi fucks his guitar, Spider (and many others) have slept with Rudi's wife, Rudi has stolen from Carlos Santana frequently and feels very guilty about it, Rudi treats Spider like shit, Spider is a horny weirdo who always thinks with his eight dicks.
Get it? He's called Spider because he's got eight dicks.
Rudi plays his guitar at Spider like a weapon. Spider calls up Santana on a phonebox in the middle of the desert, but is distracted by a woman with an inscrutable accent. She points out that many people go to this desert looking for the new sound, pointing out the guy from Dexy's Midnight Runners, Chris DeBurgh, and Razorlight (who are actually played by Razorlight, albeit Razorlight walking around with a metal detector. Hey at least they don't play any music). Spider goes to a town full of women, sings his song "Spider Lovin" and hits on the entire town. Except Monkey, who's played by comedy genius Alice Lowe. Rudi berates Spider, turns down some free sex ("Put away those fiery biscuits") and compliments for his dress, and then gets all angsty and lets out that he only has sex for one and a half minutes. Which explains why he's a priest now? There's a moon scene that's so crappy it's appalling. Then Monkey goes to Rudi. Monkey drinks her own pee, covers herself in peanut butter. Her father was killed by the evil bandit Betamax. The bandit kills every man in the town, and has sex with all the women. Except Monkey, who covers herself in peanut butter because Betamax is allergic. Does not explain the pee drinking. Alice Lowe is better known for playing Liz Asher in Garth Marenghi's Dark Place - where she works with Matt Holness, Richard Ayoade and Matt Berry - with this episode that makes 3/4 of that crew have appeared on the Boosh. In an interview @ SDCC last week Noel Fielding described the Garth Marenghi show as the Stooges to their MC5. Not really relevant to the episode at hand, but that is fucking awesome and I will slap your fucking lunch out of your hand if you disagree you godless piece of shit how fucking dare you. So Monkey warns Rudi that Betamax will kill him while flirting in the most awkward and stilted way you could possibly imagine people talking in. Outside of a Todd Solondz movie. (Only funny.) Rudi debates going or staying and then Spider tries to screw him because he thinks he's a lady in the robe of the high priests of the psychedelic monks (which looks a whole lot like a combination of what Jordorowsky is wearing in the first and second halves of El Topo). Spider is going to bug out so he doesn't get his ass kicked by Betamax, Rudi tries to stop him. Spider relays the story of how they got stuck with the cleanup after Woodstock, and how the Who were smart enough to leave after they played "Roger Daltry doesn't hoover for nobody, he's his own man!" - please note this is actually important. Rudi pulls plane tickets to Brazil out of his afro-door so Spider can go jam with Santana in Rio. Spider tears up the ticket and decides to stay and fight with Rudi, grows a door in his own forehead. They go to fight Betamax, who is actually pissed because Spider fucked his wife decades ago, which means he fucked a big pile of tape. Rudi attacks Betamax with his hi-speed shredding, is wrapped up with tape, Spider pulls a remote out of his door and rewinds Betamax until he dies. Then Rudi + Spider play a show for the whole town, finally discovering the new sound. Cut to Naboo telling Howard and Vince the only way to find a new sound is at the end of a long journey. It's been all night and they have only ten minutes left. They threaten to beat his ass, he gives them "liquid music" which is actually just Lucozade. Then over the credits we see the actual Roger Daltry cleaning up after Rudi and Spider's show.
Cut - Naboo freaking out that Bollo is planning to tour with Howard and Vince across Europe. Spider giving Rudi shit for about ten minutes at the start of the episode. Half of "Searching for the New Sound" has been edited out. Both of these are very bad choices because they establish that Rudi is searching for the new sound because he feels guilty that he's been stealing from Carlos Santana his entire career. Cutting the sound is fucked up because it proves that their weird, languid Santana-influenced jams are actually pretty good already, and that Rudi kind of treats Spider like shit (hence the tarantula imagery). Rudi getting walked-in on by his wife as he fucked his guitar. Rudi's Lament, which is a straight-up horn-laden Morricone homage and you don't get to hear it, America. It's beautiful. Spider Lovin'" is cut in half too. The Moon is not cut. It is the absolute worst Moon gag. A bunch of exposition with Rudi in the barn. Spider's lines "He sounds like a whole heap of bullshit!" and "I've got eight cocks!". No Rich Fulcher, except a heavily-modulated voice for Betamax.
Music - Like CB4, The Phantom of the Paradise, and the Monkees - "The Priest and the Beast" actually features music by fictional musicians you could listen to shorn of it's fictional context. Rudi and Spider actually make music that you could conceive of enjoying. 4 song in this episode, one cut out completely (ironically the shortest one). All of them are damn good - "Searching for the New Sound" is loose psychedelia which has been unceremoniously cropped. "Spider Love" is a kinda nasty Bobby Brown song dipped in carbolic acid. And "The New Sound" is one of Boosh's greatest successes - while not exactly new because it robs a little from Santana's "Soul Sacrifice" - but it's undeniable how great a piece of music it is. The lyrics aren't even trying for funny, it's actually pretty bad ass - "We have searched all over this world, Spider, to find the new sound, but there is one place we forgot to look..." "Oh yeah where?" "Inside our own minds!" before it explodes into bongo-driven chanting fantasia. It's some good shit, and it doesn't go on longer than a couple minutes so it never has time to disappear up it's own ass. Boosh killed it this episode, no amount of shoddy editing can screw that up.
Next week - Milky Joe, Bob Fossil's tv show, and the Boosh go out on a high note.
True Blood - "Release Me" by Nina Stone
SO good! No more treading water. Nearly every scene this episode revealed something important or something important/drastic/dramatic happened. Or both. I mean, I tried to do my usual multi-tasking while I watched, but kept missing things and had to keep rewinding. (Thank god my normal television watching partner ignores this show. Otherwise, I'd probably have found myself single by episode two.) So finally I just sat there and watched. There is SO much happening. Not that the most linear truth was revealed about Maryanne, but I love that Daphne said that Maryanne goes by lots of names such as Lilith, Gaia, Dionysus, Isis, etc. And what she said about her - that there's never been a time when she hasn't existed, she's always been here. I'm not sure why I'm so charmed by all this inscrutable rambling, this torrent of overused mythological references, but, hey, I am. And of course, the female personification of all things evil lives down in Louisiana near New Orleans and all that voodoo and Vampire stuff. I just love it.
But there's so much more - the history of Bill & his Maker; learning that Vampires start to bleed from their various orifices if they don't sleep during daylight hours; Sookie learning that they guy she's been teamed with is part of the Church that they were sent to infiltrate; the fact that Eric ran to Sookie's rescue...but that it's not him we see saving her, it's Godrick. Pretty rad. And oh wait! I just remembered that Jason was shot! Was that the gun with mini wooden stakes in it? What on earth is going to happen? How many episodes are left? I'm guessing not many as so much is starting to happen. Oh, man, it's so good that I want more as soon as it's over. I think I'll go rewatch it right now.
[Editorial Note: She went and watched it again.]
Top Chef Masters – “Champions Round Begins” by Martin Brown
Top Chef, like 90% of other reality competition shows, relies heavily on its structure—a large pool of contestants is slowly whittled down to a small group of finalists. Usually, what happens is that, over the course of the season, as a viewer, you pick a horse—the person who you may or may not expect to win, but root for against all the others. (Sometimes the horse picks you, which is what happened with me in season 1, when I found myself inexplicably rooting for Miguel Morales) Occasionally it turns out there are a couple of people to legitimately care about, but most of the time, you’re saddled with one tolerable contender, some cannon fodder, and a fair amount of assducks.
Top Chef Masters, by necessity, had to fuck with the formula a bit. They couldn’t rightly expect the 24 participating chefs, each of whom has at least one restaurant of his or her own to deal with, to commit to a weeks-long competition. So, they created a tournament-like structure, with six preliminary rounds—in which four chefs compete, but only one advances—and a more traditional reality TV, one person eliminated a week structure for the top 6.
Plenty of people found the first six episodes of Top Chef Masters tedious, what with each week’s introduction of a new cast that may or may not have been even remotely interesting. (I, for the record, was not one of those people, but I admit that the failure could be mine.) Now that we are in the final-6, showdown, however, the long introduction seems to be paying off. Because we’ve seen each of the top 6 compete and win a prelim already, there’s been a substantial amount of what you’d call “character development” with each of the finalist chefs. It’s an exciting and fulfilling—and totally rare—feeling to be able to root for at least five out of the six remaining players. (The sixth one, Art Smith, who you know as Oprah’s chef, is the one that the show seems to want you to root for, except… yikes.)
The first half-hour of “Champions Round Begins” is constructed in a way that enhances that character development. Top Chef Masters has to re-introduce each of the chefs—who also include Rick Bayless, Anita Lo, Michael Chiarello, Hubert Keller, and Susanne Tracht—because there’s been as much as six weeks since you’ve seen them last, and it has to do it within the framework of competition, because there’s no house that they all live in together, like there would be on Top Chef. The opening Quickfire Challenge is Top Chef’s Mise en Place Relay Race, in which two teams have to shuck 15 oysters, dice 5 onions, butcher 4 chickens, and then separate 5 eggs and beat them so that when they turn the bowl upside-down it will hold for five seconds. If that doesn’t sound exciting to you, you’ve never seen Anita Lo dismantle a chicken.
There are a handful of disclaimers about how these chefs haven’t done this kind of prep-work in a while, but they turn out to be completely unnecessary. Each of the finalists excels at his or her individual task/s. Art Smith tears through his five onions with the quickness, Anita Lo goes hog wild on her four chickens, and, in a last-minute showdown Rick Bayless wins the whole thing by beating the everliving fuck out of those eggs. You could craft an entire spin-off show out of this Quickfire, and air it on ESPN.
Team Bayless, which also includes Lo and Hubert Keller, is awarded five stars for their victory (don’t worry, the losers get four). The contestants are then asked to cook their “signature dish” for the other chefs, and Top Chef focuses on each of them for a moment, filling in a little bit of back-story for each of the finalists. For Anita Lo, they show a hilarious picture of her high school graduation; Michael Chiarello talks a little about his relationship with his mother; each of the snapshots gives an acute representation of the chef.
Ultimately, the chefs are asked to choose one of their fellow contestants’ signature dishes to recreate for the elimination challenge. Besides the charismatic contestants, one of the things that makes Top Chef compelling, is watching people who are verifiably good at what they’re doing cook. That being said, two of the chefs make horrendous missteps. Art Smith tries to cook an egg inside of a ball of lamb, and somehow ends up with undercooked lamb and overcooked egg. Susanne Tracht ends up plating her food ten minutes early, meaning that she serves her meal cold, and she goes home for it.
Of the five chefs left, both Art Smith and Michael Chiarello seem primed to make some big mistakes along the way, leaving Hubert Keller, Anita Lo, and Rick Bayless as the ones to beat. Hubert Keller is a classically trained French chef, making him a little bit of a quiet underdog in the midst of some of the flashier chefs. Anita Lo is an absolute monster, winning the first round with a reinterpretation of Hubert Keller’s “lobster cappuccino” which consisted of a corn chawanmushi, champagne gelée, and lobster biscuit sandwich (only with one of those could I even begin to tell you what it is).
But my money’s on Rick Bayless to win the whole thing. Aside from his generous spirit (when asked to make his signature dish for the other chefs, he responded, “Just the opportunity to cook for these other chefs is probably going to be the highlight [of the show] for me”) and infectious enthusiasm (see his Top Chef Masters blog, Root 4 Rick (http://www.root4rick.com/)), dude is an obvious force in the kitchen. He tied with Anita Lo and Susanne Tracht for highest score in the preliminary rounds, with 22½ stars. He brags about being into “the physicality of cooking.” And this episode’s quail with parsnip and prosciutto looked absolutely bonkers. Plus, he can beat a mean egg.
Tucker, the viewing order for the series is as follows:
Arrival
The Chimes of Big Ben
A, B and C
Free for All
The Schizoid Man
The General
Many Happy Returns
Dance of the Dead
Checkmate
Hammer into Anvil
It's Your Funeral
A Change of Mind
Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darling
Living In Harmony
The Girl Who Was Death
Once Upon A Time
Fall Out
Although only the final two episodes actually have a direct connection and should be watched as the penultimate and then final episodes. There is a theory, however, that it doesn't really matter what order the series is viewed in (other than the last two episodes) as, because of the opening credit sequence being repeated each episode, each story is, essentially, the first story to be told!
The above viewing order is best, partly because the paranoia increases from episode to episode, and partly because the script editor and co-creator George Markstein left sometime around the twelth or thirteenth episode. Interestingly, Markstein is in every episode-- he plays the man Number Six hands his resignation to in the opening credits.
Without wanting to spoil things for you, the episodes to really look out for are hoe written and or directed by Patrick McGoohan himself. He was also credited as Pady Fritz, writer of Free for All; and Joseph Serf, the director of Many Happy Returns and A Change of Mind. While I understand the desire to remain unspoilt, I would advise reading up on the series after you've finished watching it, as the more you know of its background, the more layers there are added to the story.
I hope you enjoy the rest of the series, as it really does deserve it's reputation as one of the best tv series ever made, and has dated little over the years, merely retained a curiously stylish look. I look forward to reading more of your reviews.
Posted by: Lee | 2009.08.05 at 03:51
I concur with Lee. The order was carefully thought through. The confusion over ordering you've read about has been blown out of all proportion by manic fans years ago, and simply stems from a minor issue in the UK in 1967. When the show was broadcast in the USA in 1968 the whole thing had been in the can awhile and the order was the most coherent in mood and contents as Lee suggests - and varied very little from the UK original.
Posted by: Moor Larkin | 2009.08.05 at 07:06
You might not want to reassess the quality of Combat!, but if you're an Altman fan you should probably check out the episodes he did; I saw him speak about half a year before his death and he said that those episodes, especially "Cat and Mouse", were the place he really learned to make films and that he was still proud of them even now. Dynasty probably isn't worth it.
For Witzke, I was walking in Bed Stuy yesterday night and a bunch of ten year old kids on skateboards were screaming "I'm old Gregg! I have a mangina!" over and over again. Take that as you will.
Posted by: nrh | 2009.08.05 at 09:32
"(Is it just me, or did none of those guys have real numbers? I couldn't catch them all, but it seemed like there were letters on their nametags.)"
I believe the Village Council characters all have numbers such as "2a," "2b," "2c," etc. Which I always thought was a nice touch - not only are they numbers, they're not even their own numbers.
As for episode order: this Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_The_Prisoner_episodes) gives you an idea of some of the various different competing orders out there. The one Lee's listed was the one they were originally broadcast in - this was neither the production order nor the order in which they were originally meant to be broadcast. I mean, whatever; only die-hard fans spend a lot of time arguing about this stuff, and while I am one of those die-hards, it seems silly to take up a lot of your time with it, given that it's going to sound like the concerns of a space alien to you.
Posted by: moose n squirrel | 2009.08.06 at 08:37
nrh - good goddamn that's awesome.
On the Prisoner, it really doesn't matter what order you watch them in as long as "Arrival" is first and "Once Upon A Time" and "Fall Out" are last. The show isn't the kind of thing where revelations are doled out in a linear order anyway. This shit ain't Lost.
Posted by: Sean Witzke | 2009.08.06 at 14:45