Television Of The Weak: Nobody Cares About The Past

This week we've got Hung, Mad Men, and due to the scheduling mishaps last week, a whole shitload of other stuff. Plowing? Forward.

Hung – “A Dick and a Dream or Fight the Honey” by Martin Brown

Over the last ten episodes, we’ve seen Jessica pathetically fight for the love of her children, withhold sex from her husband, and put up with Ray’s enduring affection for her. Yet there’s always been the lingering question of “Why?” Why does this character even appear in Hung, when her storyline runs parallel to the main one, never crossing over? Why are we expected to care about Jessica’s relationships with her kids, husband and ex, if those relationships have absolutely zero impact on the action of the show? Why did the writers build an entire, second supporting cast around Jessica, including not only her nebbish husband, but also her egregiously stereotypical, omnipresent, money-hungry mother?

Anne Heche has done fine work with the role of Jessica, and the writers have not made it easy on her. In “A Dick and a Dream” alone, she fields pussy talk while a vaguely ethnic masseuse spreads her legs open, and makes the emotional leap from unsatisfied housewife to high class trick in two scenes. As it turns out, the only reason Jessica appears in Hung is so that she can mistakenly hire Ray as a prostitute. Turns out the show has pinned the culmination of the first season on this moment.

Over the last ten episodes, Hung has consistently chosen plot development over character development. Typically, a show should introduce a crisis (Ray needs money) that our protagonist must deal with (so he becomes a prostitute), and let that play out (hilarity ensues as Ray learns everything he needs to know about women. As a sex worker). The joy is in watching the protagonist struggle through a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. Hung introduced its crisis, and then compounded it over and over without ever resolving anything, over the course of a whole season. Ray needed money, so he became a prostitute, but then he needed money more, so he became a prostitute more. Here we are at the season finale, when the season’s arcs should be tidying up, and things should be set in motion for next season, but they’re still introducing plot points out of nowhere. Ray’s going to be laid off. There’s honey in the walls of his home. And, oh yeah, he still needs more money.

The basic—The MOST basic rule of drama is that characters undergo a change between the beginning of the play and the end. At the end of the first season, neither of two main characters have changed a bit. Ray is still dealing with his problems in the same way, by charging into them without thought or ability. His house burns down, so he rebuilds it himself. He needs money, so he takes a get-rich-quick course. He’s got a big schlong, so he has to learn how to use it. But that was all in the first episode. In “A Dick and a Dream,” he’s still hacking away at those same issues. Little progress has been made, only complications. For her part, Tanya hasn’t gained an ounce of spine since deciding to become a pimp. We’ve watched her beg and flail all season without progress. Her latest complication? Her house is infested with flies. So fucking what? That’s not even a good metaphor.

The supporting characters fare even worse. Hung still feels the need to establish Lenore as a villain by having her let her dog poop in a playground. Here’s the twist: She doesn’t clean it up! Jessica’s husband has an awkward scene where he buries his face between a female patient’s legs—ostensibly, to reveal the sexual tension between them; but, really, it’s because someone decided that Hung should be a middle-aged corollary to Entourage, with Lauren Weedman subbed out for Alexis Dziena. Then there’s the scene where Ray’s kids hug because Damon’s boyfriend has walked out of a date with him. It’s preceded by him saying, “Can I have a hug?”

All of this brings us to that moment they’ve been building toward all season, when Ray’s supposed to knock on Jessica’s hotel room door—ex-husband and wife turned prostitute and trick. Ray spots Jessica before she goes up to the room, puts everything together in his head, and calls her on his cell phone. She in her room, he on the other side of the door, he tearfully tells her that she’s a good mother. The show obviously intends this to be the moment where we see Ray’s growth—but that growth never happened. If this turn of events had been character-driven, if it had been the result of Ray and Jessica’s emotional journeys over the course of the season, it might have had some resonance. Instead, it feels contrived.

At the end of the scene, Ray decides not to knock on the door. So, basically, they’ve spent an entire season building up to the moment when Ray’s real life will intersect with his prostitute life—using every machination and coincidence in the book to get us there—and then they avoid it.

Hung has had a rocky first season. It began with a gimmicky premise, but showed promise in the hands of Alexander Paine. The first few episodes didn’t really know what to do with themselves, introducing tons of supporting characters, and fragmenting into tons of tiny plotlines. After a couple of episodes, it found some focus—and, for a second—a voice, after introducing Jemma, a trick with potentially complicated motivations, and stripping away most of the other action. Then it swiftly ditched the Jemma plotline after a four-episode arc, began introducing a ton of other new characters (Pierce! Tanya’s mother! Horny Patty!), and, again, had no idea what to do with itself. With “A Dick and a Dream,” Hung hustles to tie up as many loose plot-points as it can, or jettison them in preparation for a potential second season. But, without true character development, the show still has no real center. Ten episodes in, and I still have no idea what the fuck Hung is really about.

Mad Men - "Guy Walks Into an Advertising Agency" by Sean Witzke

Christ, someone get this kid some acting lessons. I've had it up to here with this Cindy Brady shit. Motherhood was all kinds of fucked up back then - which isn't to say that it's not all fucked up now, but it's a little less blatantly condescending to the kids. I do like that Betty's extent of caring about her kid is giving her half a speech and a Barbie. She's not a bad mother, but she clearly would rather have a nanny and says so. I don't blame her, I don't like Cindy Brady either.

The British bosses are coming to shore things up, people are pissed and scared shitless - everyone even has to give presentations on the day before July 4th. Roger Sterling and Don Draper get a shave together, by order of the their boss, because they aren't getting along. While there, Sterling tells a story about his Dad dying really offhand - moments of color like that that makes me wish this show would throw plots away altogether. Joan Holloway is leaving on the same day. Joan's brick of a husband is drunk, he just found out he's never going to make surgeon (he has "no brains in his fingers"). Joan sleeps on the couch like a cat, and still looks that way without her makeup. Turns out that great life she had lined up isn't going to work out, shock. The British show up, played by smarmy asshole #1, smarmy asshole #2, and the dad from The Nanny. They tell everyone that they're not getting promotions and they now have many more bosses. "One more promotion and we're gonna be answering phones", which is probably the only good line that Pete Campbell will get all season. Don Draper is teased with a possible cross-atlantic position ("Look at that, the suspense is killing him") but turns out that was just a tease. Jared Harris gets shipped off to Bombay, or I guess in real life Fringe? 

Poor bastard either way. 

The shithead new boss' smarmy foot gets all Steve-Buscemi-in-Fargo'd, which is nice I guess - there's a backstory to it but it involves Ken Cosgrove so I'll spare you the boredom. Fat Communist Bearded Guy gets a bloody dress shirt for the deal. Joan and Peggy have a final conversation, where they finally make a kind of amends - Joan roundaboutly tells Peggy she's proud of her. Conrad Hilton calls up Don Draper, which marks 35 minutes in where I actually start giving a shit about this episode, and that's after seeing Joan Holloway sleeping like a cat in her nightie. Don Draper tells Conrad Hilton he doesn't work for free, maybe the baddest shit that has happened this season. That's what you want from a show about the 60s, two unblinking hardasses talking about nothing in the most dynamic way possible. The inherent drama, the whole sociopolitical angle that the show is in large part about is completely pushed aside for plot-points this week and the show suffers. When we finally get Draper explaining to Hilton that he works one opportunity at a time, it's clear that this is the closest we'll get to Stringer Bell in s3 Wire or Hearst in s3 Deadwood. The way that Don talks IS his act of violence, IS the compelling television. I'd rather watch that kind of tv, one guy talking with enough power to destroy someone and the inherent threat that, yes, he can and will do so any time he wants. That's really scary, really fun. The integrated "advertising history" commercials in Mad Men are the advertising equivalent of having whatever product they are selling you in your face. This week it was Clorox. In the final scene we get Don Draper and Joan Holloway's only real scene together in the entire series - and the two of them sit there laughing about the poor jackass who just got crippled, and then she kisses him goodbye. For the final scene, turns out that Cindy Brady is terrified of reincarnation, and the episode is full of references to death ("I feel like I was just present at my own funeral and I didn't like the Eulogy" is Harris' final line ), and we see that naming a baby after a dead Grandpa probably needs to be explained to your dumb lisping kid. Don Draper responds by telling her that our destiny isn't written and we control it ourselves, and Betty responds by telling her . "That's okay, honey. Everything's fine." Both of them are wrong.

The Office - "Gossip"

Looks like it's going to be one of those "yikes that was uncomfortable" seasons. The last season of The Office was--was it good? It all runs together. It ended at a picnic where Stringer Bell was really mean to everybody, which was pretty much his modus the entire season. The dream of Stringer appearing on the Office was a good one, but it ended up being a string of episodes where he was just fucking mean, and while it's fun to watch Michael get his knees taken out from under him so consistently, Michael is never going to lash out with any real menace. It's all about feeling sorry for him, or laughing at his failure. Stringer's nowhere to be seen in "Gossip", which is another "Michael fucks things up, fails to fix them" episode. It was also a rare Stanley focused episode, which is only a treat until you remember that Stanley is somewhere around Phyllis in the "most interesting non-Michael character to focus on". But it is what it is: the Office, and it's back. It's still pretty funny.

House - "Broken"

There wasn't any real way that Broken couldn't disappoint--House has proven, time and again, that it will not reject formula no matter how stale, and that it can be a bad show even when Hugh Laurie is doing a great job. Still, it had to work extra hard--like, steal everything it could from Cuckoo's Nest hard--to dismantle guest appearances from Andre Bragher and "Artemis" from It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia. (Apparently that women's real name is Artemis? Kind of impossible to find anything touching in that dance number, considering the sight of Artemis playing a bohemian dancehall number is the sort of thing that the Artemis character on Sunny In Philly does all the time for laughs. Sure, meta is the thing nowadays, but for fuck's sake, how meta can you get?)

That isn't to say that they weren't pleasures to be found in the bizarrely implausible situation House ended up in. (He fucked Lola! He's got a cool new haircut and some rad t-shirts!) But at the core of it all, it was a record scratch back to the 'quo, and it felt like hell watching the writers shit on part of the characters core appeal: which was that there being nothing wrong with being a selfish asshole when you're fundamentally open about being one. House can be crazy, sure. Go with that. Go with years of drug addiction wreaking their toll. But--apologies? C'mon. Make him sane, and make him sober, if needs must.

But there's already enough shows about wimpy doctors.

Sons of Anarchy - The First Three Episodes of the Second Season

So this is a show, huh? Kurt Sutter runs it, he wrote all the episodes of the Shield where horrible things happened to female characters, and he showed up as a guest star a couple of times. (He was the Armenian mobster with the foot fetish. Who cut off people's feet?) Anyway, Sons of Anarchy is...well, it's about bikers, it has some really bizarro casting choices, like Hellboy, Henry Rollins, Peg Bundy, the fat cop from Batman Begins who some people ARE SURE is an overweight Tom Waits, even though he's not, and at least one of the guys from Braveheart. Oh, and a guy from Deadwood. Man, nobody really watched Deadwood even by HBO's we're-committed-to-this-just-kidding standards besides casting directors, huh?

Sons of Anarchy is pretty gross and strange--it's got hardcore violence, a gang rape, butt shots during sex, and yet the main actor isn't very good at fake kissing? There's a parody of Mad Men, a porno movie called "Meek Men" where Don has a woman spank him with a high heel shoe, and the "big finish" is that she shoves the heel into his asshole--what kind of porn movie is that? Probably gonzo orgasm destroyer, but why hasn't anybody mentioned that before? Basically, Sons of Anarchy is something you watch when you're hungry. Not for the shoe, but for food, and it's too late to watch something that requires intelligence or class. Go figure. It's catchy?

Project Runway - "Fashion Headliners"

See, this is the kind of shit that Project Runway doesn't do enough of. Making clothing out of newspaper ain't as strong as the old car part challenge they had--the one where most of the designers cheated and used seatbelts--but it's certainly got more potential than yet another "make a cocktail dress or, you know, a dress, some kind of dress, use fabric" adventure.

The Eastern European woman from the American South didn't realize that "Time to change" was totally played out around the Democratic Primary, but that's what Tim is for. Subtly, softly, kindly, he tells you that you're a moron. She scraped by, but wow: not for long, huh? She seemed nice, but I've always got a soft spot for the "this is my last chance, my children are older than some of the people who I'm competing with" women. Never the men, though. 

Dear old men who still talk about dreams,

Why do I hate you so much?

Sincerely,

Bewildered In Poughkeepsie.

Some people on the show don't like Irina, but that "some" includes people like Nicolas, who is a real piece of work himself. A 90's version of punk rock? Why don't you eat piss and buy a Panic At The Disco album to soundtrack it, piss-eater? The designers do all agree that the real scum is Johnny, who was doing a crossword puzzle instead of working on his dress. His second dress? Because a steam machine exploded?

Although we still don't have a lot of personalities that aren't just "reality show abhorrent", Logan is a pretty attractive man who has a very wistful smile and pretty eyes. Don't know if that makes you a good designer. Does make you somebody worth keeping around as a contestant.

Johnny mentioned that he "don't really care what other designers think of me" which is just about the most untrue thing that Johnny could say. He clearly only gives a shit about what other people think of him. Anytime somebody says something like that, what they mean is I Hope Everybody Likes Me, Why Don't They, Oh God, Maybe They Will If I Relapse.

Both Michael Kors and Nina Garcia are unavailable, but Tommy Hilfiger--who is crazy, racist and about as fashionable as a used condom--is filling in. He's joined by Eva something something from Desperate Housewives, which is still referred to as a hit show, despite the severe paucity of breathing audience members it commands. They pull it together enough to send Johnny home, the show bursts to life for the 11 seconds where Tim Gunn treats him with disdain, contempt and then, for maybe the first time ever, talks shit about him behind dude's back, and then it's back to...whatever it usually is. Bitching? Or that's this, isn't it.

-Tucker Stone, Sean Witzke, Martin Brown, 2009

Comments

[Chris Jones]

What did you guys think of that piece of shit pilot "Community", if any of you saw it?

[Sean Witzke]

Right here - http://www.factualopinion.com/the_factual_opinion/2009/08/totw_081809.html

[Matthew J. Brady]

I was going to apologize for not getting in a review of the Fringe premiere (still haven't watched it), but I see that multiple episode reviews are okay, so no problems! I can be lazy!

Man, I love that The Office could just coast on formula (like the "Parkour!" opening), but they still do their best to be awkward and uncomfortable as hell. That's the real vibe of the show, and the true legacy of Ricky Gervais' original. I don't think they'll ever have the balls to do some of the stuff he did on Extras though.

One other new show that I considered writing about, but didn't bother: Modern Family. My wife was excited about it, because she thought it looked funny, so we watched it, and it wasn't bad. I definitely laughed a few times. My favorite joke was when the gay couple introduced their adopted Vietnamese baby to the family, saying that her name was Lily, and the brother-in-law said, "Wait, Lily? Won't she have trouble saying that name?" Yes, dumb, but I still laughed.

[Spitfire]

Wow, Tucker. Wow.

[andre]

mad men kinda transcends criticizing right now sorry. that episode was way more bad ass than you let on.

[Sean Witzke]

I liked last weeks better, it had Don faking being a pussy to get on a cop's good side.

[moose n squirrel]

I want Jim and Pam to die a horrible, horrible death.