Television Of The Weak: You Know Who Nobody Misses? Daniel Baldwin.

This week, it's all about True Blood, Community, The Prisoner, Homicide: Life On The Street & Hung.

Hung - "The Rita Flower or The Indelible Stench" by Martin Brown

During their first encounter, Ray—playing the role of “Randall”—helps Jemma with a flat tire on the side of the road, takes her to lunch at a roadside diner, and fucks her in the bathroom. In the scene immediately following, we learn that Jemma is dissatisfied with her experience—Ray was acting out his own fantasy rather than hers. At this point, we don’t know much about her, other than that she’s been in a series of bad relationships, and it seems like she’s working out some sort of emotional problem by hiring a male prostitute to enact her damsel-in-distress fantasies. They try the flat tire scenario again. Randall blows it, again. She gives him a third chance, which he jumps at, even though this is all incredibly strange, because Jemma pays well. Things are going well until Jemma tells Randall that she’s falling in love with him. Ray recoils at this, unable to parse the difference between telling her he’s falling love with her as roll-playing and telling her sincerely. Still, they manage to patch it up to go on a series of dates—at least one of which is to a psychiatrist’s office. Jemma starts asking for details about Randall’s life, including his real name. He indulges her, thinking it’s a sign of actual interest. She asks where he works; he tells her he coaches high school basketball. She shows up to one of his games. He starts showing off for her, coaches the team to victory, and gives her a celebratory kiss—in front of his ex-wife, kids, school, and pimp. Then he asks her back to his place.

Over the last two weeks of Hung, a lot the juice in Ray and Jemma’s client-prostitute relationship has come from the meta-theatricality of it. We can assume that Jemma has been role-playing the entire time, even as she finds out the details of Ray’s life—asking his real name, showing up to one of his basketball games, and, this episode, spending the night in the tent where he lives. With Ray, it’s trickier, and that’s why the Jemma storyline has begun to unlock a lot of Hung’s potential. From the very beginning, Ray has had difficulty with role-playing. We’ve seen him get coached by Tanya, fumble his way through a couple of encounters with Molly, and, now, lose sight of the line between his prostitution-life and his real-life. At the beginning of “The Rita Flower or The Indelible Stench,” Ray is in gloriously uncomfortable territory. Essentially, he has never stopped playing out the damsel-in-distress scenario. He has a bit of a Superman complex. In his eyes, role-playing or no, Jemma is still a troubled woman that desperately needs his help—except, instead of helping fix her flat tire, he’s going to solve all of her problems by dating her. Because that usually works.

Unfortunately, "The Rita Flower or The Indelible Stench" does everything in its power to undo all of the compelling drama that Hung has spent the last two episodes setting in motion. After the night in Ray’s tent, Jemma leaves some money on his pillow and sneaks out before he wakes up. Ray inexplicably takes this as a sign that she does, in fact, have feelings for him, and leaves her an awkward phone message asking her out. Meanwhile, Tanya is getting shitty by herself in a bar, and some dude hits on her because she has a Proust tattoo. Either the creators are hard-up for a Tanya story arc or terrified of following through on Ray’s story arc, because the character they invent as the catalyst for the major events is wholly implausible. After hitting on Tanya at the bar and spending the night at her appointment, he hangs out with her the next couple of days in order to give her some sort of icky life coaching—in order to work out her issues with her mother, Tanya must write a poem about her, and, like, say it in front of her. It’s a thoroughly meaningless subplot, which only has the effect of diverting attention from Ray’s story—as does Ray’s inevitable affair with his neighbor’s wife, which comes to a head this episode, the only twists being that he tries to get money out of her and fails, and that we see her breasts.

Written by Emily Kapnek, whose last TV gig was as writer and executive producer for Emily’s Reasons Why Not starring Heather Graham, which was famously (and mercifully) cancelled after a single episode, "The Rita Flower or The Indelible Stench" feels like an episode that was written after the rest of the season and shoehorned in. It’s possible that none of the episode’s events could have any real ramifications on the series’ action, which would explain a lot, like why so few of the show’s recurring characters appear. Either way, it’s a serious momentum-killer, after two of the most intriguing episodes of any TV show this year. The episode ends with Jemma failing to show up to her first real date with Ray, capping it off with a tired cliché. After two episodes of building to an amazing climax, it’s excruciatingly apt that Hung would be unable to close the deal.

Community - Pilot by Sean Witzke

This is available for free on Facebook. Joel McHale is in it. He's really funny. Chevy Chase is in it. He's not funny, or at least he hasn't been since that one time he did Three Amigos, and that's debatable to anyone who doesn't have a hard on for John Landis like I do. There's a girl as well, and she's attractive in a tv pilot way, which is another way to say "kinda". She's named after a water filtration system. There's annoying music the whole time. And there's an Arab kid who talks a lot and has very little separating him from Jack Donaghy's assistant, and that very little is that he's not openly gay. The guy who is the announcer for BBC america is in it, and he's still not appealing. I saw his standup - dude is funny but in that "who gives a shit, i've got free time" kind of way. There's a lot of references to Breakfast Club which still doesn't make that movie any good, Gen X-ers. (John Hughes is dead and now we all have to mourn him, but goddamnit who cares except for cars flying over hills with the former drummer of Sonic Youth driving. John Hughes really knew what he was doing when it came to Steve Martin cursing motherfuckers out. Steve Martin was one of the Three Amigos.) Joel McHale is a disbarred lawyer who lies all the time, but he's really just playing a glib, toned-down variation of what he does on the Soup. The cast is fleshed out with a strung out preppy girl, a dumb jock who identifies people by their similarities to famous people (kind of like how Bobbe J Thompson does in Role Models, but not in a way funny or insightful way. Reindeer Games!), and a heavyset black lady who is as ill-defined as you'd expect a heavyset black lady to be on a show like this. Even though they make a joke about it, it's too goddamn self-aware and cute to actually be funny. These people? They are not interesting. Then again, McHale isn't really a character so much as he's a real (shallow) person trapped in a crappy room full of tv characters who rattle off their lines while attempting to exceed purely physical stereotypes. All the jokes are easy ones, except for the somewhat funny ones that were in the promo we all saw months ago, the ones that got our hopes up. I graduated from Community College and three days afterwards a guy got stabbed in the computer lab. At my graduation a drunk lady advised a bunch of college graduates to join the military. Community College is a funny place. This isn't funny like that. Hey, you know how 30 Rock is funny, and Parks and Recreation is funny in sheer defiance of the show's crappy writing because the cast is so amazing, or how Andy Barker PI was really funny but got cancelled two minutes into it's debut airing? 

This isn't funny like those things. It's not even fake funny like the US redux of the Office, where it shoves the joke into your stupid face over and over again until "that's what she said" goes round the horn from soul crushing back to funny by sheer repetition. Don't you think that Pam and Jim are the perfect couple? Just don't you? It's not funny like that. It's not funny like the UK Office either, y'know in the way that stark, deadpan horror combines with writing and acting you care about to create something real - to create characters who actually exist in a way more than engines to spit out pithy bullshit and can actually touch you while still making dick jokes. Not funny like that either.

Pilots of comedies normally aren't funny. Hell, first seasons of funny shows - even the classics - never stack up against second and third seasons. Maybe I'm being harsh. But this is not funny, except for the moment Joel McHale is called Ryan Seacrest.

True Blood - "I Will Rise Up" by Nina Stone

So, the bomb actually went off, huh? I was almost sure that with that sort of cliff hanger, we were going to witness this episode starting with some of that super fast, super stealth vampire movement in which they disarm the guy and kill him. but nope - it went off...and yet only killed a few minor characters. Phew!

 

Sookie seemed to become more than just a telephath this time, like she's become some kind of vampire empath? Watching her just stand and witness Godrick's decision to burn up on the roof after 2,000 years was kind of powerful. I mean....you know, in real life we're always trying to talk people out of doing things or into doing things or getting them to talk about their feelings...but truly it's because of what WE want. Eric was the emblem for that part in us in his pleading for Godrick to stay - not for Godrick's sake, but for his own. Yet Sookie, angelic, almost godlike, stood there crying, feeling sad for his choices but willing to let him go, and just watching.

And Eric - after seeing Godrick act as the highest version that a Vampire can aspire to, and knowing that Eric loved him, why, then, won't Eric try and model his behavior after him. Rather, he manipulated Sookie, tricked him to suck the silver out of him after the bombing, and now she's emotionally tied to him for eternity. I mean, it's worse than if she overtly cheated on Bill. God, how awful. I can only imagine how this will be fodder for episodes to come.

And, who loves Lafayette? Raise your hand! Me! Me! Me! Yeah, he's just a mish-mash of sexual energy, good and bad and all in between...but, like, he knows himself. And it seems like that old lesson of how you can't really know others until you fully know yourself. He might be the only, truly, honest person in the bunch. Which is why he can look at Maryanne and say, "I'm feelin' you, and you're a soulless bitch." I mean, what a perfect description. But I'm so excited he doesn't fall under her spell, and I'm so excited he witnesses Tara's eyes turning black, etc. etc. I love me some Lafayette. He's the superhero of the millenium. ;)

And bravo to Sam for shape-shifting into a fly to elude Maryann. Yay, Sam.

Homicide: Life On The Street - "Gone For Goode", "Ghost of a Chance" & "Son of a Gun" by Tucker Stone

Yeah, I know. But now that I've finally gotten around to reading David Simon's book, on which this show is based, I figured we could get down to the business of dealing with the actual show...which, yes, I've only seen a few full episodes of. (Those few include the award winning one where Andre Braugher barks at Private Pyle while Private Pyle lays, guts akimbo, between a subway train and the concrete, and, because I love my mother and used to let her control my television, one of the Law & Order cross-over episodes.) But hey: loved the Wire. Why not dive in and see how this shit plays out?

The first three episodes of Homicide establish pretty well what the show is going to be like: bleak, dour people doing bleak, dour things while bleak people die around them. Dourly? Andre Braugher is a stand-out, sure--he's one of the few actors on the show who really gets to showboat, and he's tremendously good at doing that. (That's not a slight to the rest of a cast that includes stalwarts like Ned Beatty and Yaphet Kotto, but truthfully speaking, you're never going to rewind a Yaphet Kotto monologue or a Melissa Leo interrogation. Not yet, at least.) But Braugher--brilliant, solitary and manipulative--his scenes are as good as you've heard, if you've heard a thing at all. Unsuprisingly, that's because so much of what Braugher brings to the table stems from a very real, and very fascinating, human being: Detective Harry Edgerton, the New York raised upper class black man who moved to Baltimore and become a homicide detective. David Simon used Edgerton twice--besides Braugher's "Frank Pembleton", Edgerton was the model used to create The Wire's "Lester Freamon". What's interesting in these first three episodes is how Andre Braugher combines that character with something absent from Simon's portrayal of Edgerton--namely, a ferocious "angry black man" attitude that Braugher slips into whenever Frank Pembleton finds the performance necessary. (Notable in the first episode, when Kyle Secor's rookie detective throws the "what would an innocent man do" line that sets off Braugher's ferocious "get outta my FACE", but it's even more obvious when Frank--parterened with Daniel Baldwin--snarls out a dangerous "say it. because I'm black", daring Baldwin to cross the line.) None of that comes from the book, where Simon goes so far as to describe the long-standing rule that Harry Edgerton was passed over whenever somebody had to say "police" at a door, because, as the other detectives put it "Nah, Harry. We need somebody who sounds black." And while the script calls for the other detectives to latch onto some of the original Edgerton criticisms--like when Braugher is ridiculed for "listening to Emmylou Harris"--it's Braugher's delivery that sells something larger than words-on-page. He's not angry because he's black. He's angry because he's not a codified stereotype, and yet he gets treated like one simply because those around him are either too stupid--or worse, too racist--to pay attention and realize that Pembleton's bugged-eye rage comes from a place of intelligence, a place of cold manipulation. He's not growling at a suspect or fellow cop because he's black and they aren't, he's growling at a suspect because he knows it will trick them into the confession he wants, and he's growling at a fellow cop because the cop is, plain and simple, a stupid motherfucker who couldn't tell their ass from a hole in the ground. (And rage--especially when it's directed at a weak white man already out of sorts due to lack of experience and comfort--is the quickest way to remind them which one they put food in.)

Of course, there's other people on the show, but at the tail end of these first three episodes, the only one who comes close to Braugher's fully realized character is, surprisingly, Jon Polito. Ned Beatty gives it a go, and Kotto has a nice moment or two, but it's Polito's obsessive little troll-man that steals every scene he's in. Squinting and giggling over a ridiculous mustache, beating crabs and various other foods into submission before shoveling them into his mouth like a child with paste, Polito is given the largest emotional ground to cover, and he runs wild with the opportunity. Although some might find the pat "listening to jazz" moment to be a bit much (and they might be right), it's contained within the same episode where Polito strips to his drawers in Kotto's office, rubbing his stubby fingers into the gunshot wounds that guarantee him supremacy over all regulations. (Once again, this character's behavior and circumstances come as near dictation by Simon, who described this exact cop in the same terms--an obsessive nut laced in near fatal scars from an archaic "good shooting", which he promptly used as a ticket to homicide.) Of course, by the time this show started getting actual seasons--this first one is only nine episodes, and the second a humiliating four--Polito will be replaced, sticking to the classic television rule of hiring pretty people who can't act while ignoring fascinating people who can. Because the fascinating people look sort of like goblins.

That's probably enough about that. Maybe next time I'll mention the plot or something.

The Prisoner - "Dance Of The Dead" by Tucker Stone

Let's be honest here: Kafka-esque plot twists are kind of hard to swallow in 2009. They aren't as across-the-board irritating as using that Lux Aeterna song in a movie trailer, but ye god and fucking yikes, are there really people in the world who see the words "Kafka-esque" and don't die a little inside? Now, The Prisoner is old, and it was television, and it's a classic, and it should be gauged on its own merits, and By Gosh and Aw Shucks, how nice was that little scarebox at the end, where Number Six gets thrown into a kangaroo court and convicted of violating a rule he couldn't possibly know about only to have a conveniently prepared dead man take his place, all for the purposes of explaining some of the nature of the community to him...why, that's the sort of stuff that originality and innovation are made of, yes?

Not really, no. I'm not quite sure what it was I found so irksome about this episode, beyond the basic truth that I find tiny old women with taut, brittle skin to be a particularly unsettling breed of humanity. (And dressing them up like Peter Pan just makes it even worse.) Maybe it's that the Island's controllers never seemed to have a definitive goal in this installment? Whereas the first episode seemed mostly devoted to teaching Number Six that he can't escape, a kind of education in real time of the actual constrictions of the prison he's in, and "Free For All" taught him the finality of his place in the Island's hierarchal system, "Dance Of The Dead" was just..vacant? That might be too strong. Maybe "petty" is the right word. Putting Number Six near a body he can't help but search, punishing someone he knows, cycling him through a mock trial over the possession of a radio practically dumped into his hands, terrorizing him--for what? It's clear from the dialog, from the character's interactions amongst themselves, that Number Six only clams up that much harder when antagonized. They know from the start this trick won't work, go through the motions of trying, and then finish by claiming victory--all while seeming to achieve nothing. If the show was one beholden to serialized ups and downs, that behavior might make sense, but the show (seems) to be operating with episodic deliveries of fully contained arcs, meaning that it's up to "Dance" to finish with some kind of conclusion beyond a laughing bad guy.

I should probably note that the show itself remains a captivating piece of viewing, that it's compelling, imaginative, innovative and blah blah blah blah. The thing is, well--of course it is, you know that already. It's a sophisticated show that probably stands head and shoulders above whatever it was in direct competition with at the time, and I'm just saying "probably" because god knows I don't want to watch 17 episodes of every late 60's show to use a more definitive phrase. And with that out of the way, yes, "Dance of the Dead" is eh, pretty good. But alongside "Arrival", it pales, and next to "Free For All", it falls off the shelf. Oh well. More to come.

-Sean Witzke, Martin Brown, Tucker Stone

Comments

[Chris Jones]

Is Daniel the one that died? Because if so, not cool.

[LurkerWithout]

Daniel Baldwin's character died on the show. Is that what you mean? Or did one of the Baldwins die and I never heard about it until now?

[Tucker Stone]

Daniel's still alive. You're thinking of...wait. Who the hell are you thinking of?

[Marty]

Dude, you straight up STOLE my idea! Ah well, it's probably better this way. Now I can be a outright bitch in your comments section and tell you all the ways you're wrong.

[tom]

I'm watching the first season of homicide after finishing The Wire and David Simon's book too, and Braugher/Pembleton is excellent in the next episode, 'a shot in the dark', that he spends with Daniel Baldwin. My friend tells me that seeing how popular Pembleton was, in later seasons they decided to make him more vulnerable to be more sympathetic and missed the point, so completely undid it later.

Also, Sean, I liked your reviewing this week! Sorry to vanish for a week and then bring up a discussion you don't care about any more (another internet commenter trick!), but I went camping and it was actually kind of like an episode of the Mighty Boosh (nonsensical sexual threats and everything)

Julian Barratt is actually pretty good, and has a similar role in Chris Morris/Charlie Brooker's Nathan Barley; trapped in a world with ridiculous rules that he can't escape from. Though in this case the story isn't suffocated by the unbearable smugness and poor acting of Noel Fielding. My least favourite thing about the Boosh is its wasted potential - it's ALMOST hilarious.

[Tim O'Neil]

I've always been a little bit afraid to go back to Homicide. I have such fond memories of how damn unsettling and almost revolutionary the whole thing seemed at the time - trapped on late night Fridays, sort of like a secret TV show that only a few people knew about (which was basically true). I don't think the later seasons suffer *that* much in comparison with the early shows, even if (you're right) they prettify up the cast. But pretty much every cast member was fucked up in some profound way so that you couldn't really relate to them in the same way you can, say, Mariska Hargitay's boobs.

(I've seen that show exactly twice - both times when I was moving and had no other means of entertainment than old-fashioned rabbit-ears TV signal - and the only thing I remember about that show besides how it was basically about entrapping reformed sex offenders was that lady's breasts. Which is, I guess, thy it is still on the air?)

I also think the way they "humanize" Pembleton works remarkably well, because (not to spoil too much if you don't know) they don't so much as soften him up as cut him off at the knees. It's fascinating to see him weakened and humiliated precisely because so much time is spent establishing how smart, capable and intimidating he almost always is.

[Matthew J. Brady]

Oh, crap, I was going to mention what happens to Pembleton later on, but if Tim thinks it's a spoiler, maybe I shouldn't. Suffice to say, it's some more really good acting from Braugher, from what I remember.

I actually haven't seen much Homicide, but I'd like to watch some more of it. A friend of mine has that cool file cabinet DVD set, so maybe I can borrow some seasons at some point. I did watch it here and there when it was on, but I was way too young to really appreciate it. Still, I think I did recognize that it was good, and I still remember moments that stuck with me, like, well, what happens to Pembleton, and various interrogation scenes. Damn, now I need to watch some more, if only to satisfy Wire withdrawals.

Also, I'm probably going to end up watching Community because my wife is interested. But yeah, it looks like it probably won't be nearly as funny as it would like to be. May mockery commence.

[Jones, one of the Jones boys]

We've been watching Homicide too, after having just re-watched the Wire. Homicide is a bit of a let-down after the Wire and even the book -- and I say this as someone who LOVED it when it first came out. At the time, it seemed like the best show on television ever, but it's since been eclipsed by the Wire.

For one thing, it's much more of a straight-up cop show than the Wire. The cops are the good guys and the crims are the bad guys. The cases generally last only a week, so there's none of the long-range plotting of the Wire. And Andre Braugher's performance sort of overshadows everyone else (although Kyle Secor eventually comes into his own and gets into a nice rhythm with him).

But yeah, Andre Braugher is pretty damn fantastic. I totally wanted to be Pembleton, back when I was a callow teen.

[Tim O'Neil]

I don't know if I'd agree that Pembleton overshadowed everyone else - it was an ensemble, and just because some of the ensemble wasn't flashy didn't make them unimportant. Richard Belzer is awesome in every scene he's in, for instance, just on a much lower key than Braugher. And Yapphat Koto is really remarkable too, considering the limitations of his role as The Boss - he's less man than bear, growling like a force of nature.