The Factual Opinion

Too Many Movies: You Shall Know Us By The Size Of Our Gross

This week, Joe McCulloch caught up with Macgruber and Kites while Tucker trudged down The Road.

MacGruber
Directed by the souls of its ancestors, 2010
Joe McCulloch

Given that this is a revival of the SNL ‘character’ movie for the current era of R-rated feature comedy -- and headed by a chest-thumping, incompetent-but-really-super-competent man’s man character not a hundred miles out from Will Ferrell’s traditional persona at that -- it’s a little surprising how it expands its source material of 30-second Will Forte clips into a big parody of the last quarter century of action movies. Except, it’s surprising to me because that’s such well-trodden territory, and MacGruber has almost nothing to add, from its mock-serious opening battle (evidencing a sense of style that immediately vanishes from the rest of the film) though a halfhearted ‘80s kitsch credits sequence and into an expository Rambo 3 parody straight out of Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls. It’s not as detailed as Hot Fuzz, not as vulgar as Team America: World Police, not as manic as Hot Shots! - one of the big laughs is even a bald-faced reworking of Jack Black’s cocksucking speech from Tropic Thunder, and while that alone isn’t a big deal to me -- silent comedians would frequently appropriate each other’s routines and modify them, adapt them, seek to better them -- it nonetheless points to how crowded this field is, and how little MacGruber stands out.

Still, there’s a few good bits. It’s pretty hard to fuck up spoofs of soft-focus sex scenes, Ryan Phillippe makes for a good Channing Tatum, Val Kilmer grins and snarls around like an aging heel manager of pro wrestlers (who make up much of the film’s cannon fodder) and Kristen Wiig is amusing as MacGruber’s comprehensively timid sidekick, who through her abuse sometimes teases out what makes Forte’s brand of comedy special: his characters aren’t so much eccentric as possessed, prone here to fucking hallucinations in a graveyard or filling a notebook with obsessive demarcations of petty personal wrongs. He’s a demon, like he said with Tim & Eric, who’re consistently the best at accessing the sputtering torture of his comedy; if Ferrell funny-screams, Forte scary-screams, and while Ferrell’s deluded-but-not-really characters are capable of learning something about relationships and masculinity, Forte (even in as comparatively ‘nice’ a project as The Brothers Solomon) seems to occupy a world of basically illusory change. Which isn’t inapplicable at all to a parody of an action hero, even one with as dull movie as this surrounding him.

Kites
Directed by Anurag Basu, 2010
Joe McCulloch

You probably haven’t heard, but this thing recently made a little bit of history - it’s the first Bollywood production to crack the North American top ten on its opening weekend, having appeared on a likewise record-setting 208 screens. Granted, this accomplishment is a little tenuous, in that higher-grossing stuff has debuted in North America before -- My Name is Khan pulled in nearly twice as much just a few months ago -- while Kites had the good fortune to premiere in a somewhat fallow week dominated by an underperforming children’s picture, but let’s not discount the relentless internationalism at play. Pairing Indian actor Hrithik Roshan -- his banner year was 2006, where he starred in the first and second-highest grossers of the year, the superhero film Krrish (he was the superhero) and the Bad Boys-ish buddy cop thingy Dhoom 2 (he was the villain) -- Uruguayan-born film and telenovela actress Bárbara Mori in a U.S./Mexico-set romance-action-tragicomedy delivered in Hindi, Spanish and English, every effort appears to have been made toward thundering borderless appeal, including plans for a re-edited, re-scored, no-songs Remix version to open somewhere this weekend, supervised by Rush Hour and X-Men: The Last Stand mastermind Brett Ratner.

Wait! I can hear you! I am actually psychic and I can hear your thoughts and you’re thinking: “Brett Ratner? Is this gonna be some kinda anonymously slick albeit unpretentious entertainment product, sexy?” To which I say: basically, yes, but at least the full-length version (haven’t caught the Remix) boasts some memorably confused abandon. This can be bad-memorable, sure - the plot, in re: strapping Las Vegas dance instructor Roshan’s brief marriage to illegal immigrant Mori for the purposes of scamming a green card, then their dalliances with the scions of a powerful casino mob family, then their flight from murderous violence, and then, of course, their discovery of true love, wanders all over the damn place through a long series of apportioned flashbacks that don’t so much confuse (it‘s a really simple plot) as cause puzzlement over their delay in presenting dramatically potent information - present-tense scenes of Roshan wandering bloody through the desert are supposed build into a mystery about why Mori suddenly abandoned him, except the flashback-plot has barely finished cutting through the backstory and into the cute-fighting phase of the relationship by then, simultaneously presenting little reason to care and telegraphing future developments, not that any of them are ever in doubt. It’s really kind of an Oh What the Fuck feel, extending to the metaphoric significance of the title, which is bluntly explained in an opening voiceover and never reprised.

Yet the good-memorable is connected to this - it’s purely tonal, fundamentally masala, adapting old something-for-everyone Bollywood aesthetics to a sort of free-associative citation of presumably international fonts of cinematic mass appeal. Roshan wanders through a glossy-gritty Vegas to the music of the most clichéd semi-noir voiceover imaginable (did you know some cabdrivers become rich at the tables, while sometimes the rich become cabdrivers?), only for a chance confrontation with a young and dangerous lady to erupt into an extended dance-off straight out of Step Up 2: The Streets, which then gives way to several reels of straightforward luxury porn in which the romantic leads delay contact as begrudging the pretty casino money scenery its fated end. Also: Roshan avoids being drawn into the world of gang violence after witnessing a sickening Reservoir Dogs citation - the ‘mob’ is self-evidently constructed from bits of mob movies, including the black downpour massacre from Road to Perdition. There’s interrupted domestic violence, a comedic bank robbery, a song set to a daring escape in a hot air balloon, and lots and lots of heart-tugging death, evoking the ‘70s American fatalism of lovers on the run as another helpful device. It’s half-delirious nonsense, and definitely something that registers shorter than 130 minutes, but I mostly flashed back on my own volition to happy, legal-and-otherwise immigrants relaxing on a yacht and later sharing a drink over chants of No More Poverty, which is closest to a deeper sentiment you’ll find as the rich come to call havoc and love evades conjunction with dollars, rupees, pesos, whatever.

The Road
Hillcoat X McCarthy, 2009
Tucker Stone

More exercise than experience, John Hillcoat's take on McCarthy's bleak fiction succeeds at capturing drudgery, but not a whole lot else. The Road, as book, was one of Cormac's sparsest plots--the boy, the father, survival, little else--and without his prose, Hillcoat depends on atmosphere and scene-making, creating electrified action beats, only one of which (the grasping hands of nude, live meat in a flame lit basement) captures the furious horror of McCarthy's skewered-infant passage. Digitally painted by a manic-depressive cousin of Stephen Soderbergh, Hillcoat's view of a future apocalypse is ugly, possibly honest, but visually boring in a way that McCarthy's description of the same never were.

And still, some of it delivers. While he's no great shakes in the final hour of the film, Kodi Smit-McPhee's initial scenes are powerfully moving. The way his downcast eyes recall an earlier shot of his dead mother, his high-pitched crying as Viggo Mortensen cradles his face--there's just enough emotion to engender in the audience the same lunatic caring that motivates Viggo's entire performance. The film limits its concerns to this brusquely explained passion for the son's life, glancing alongside the question of whether their mutual survival is worth the toll, and yet, even as the phrase "carry the fire" gets trotted out with a fervor that McCarthy doubtfully intended, that question incessantly looms. Why should they keep going? What possible future could be worth all of this? There's a pat, near farcical answer when Robert Duvall delivers a straight faced "no time for luxury" response to the question of whether he thinks about dying, but the true one seems more likely to be found in the film's final minutes. It's in the corny moment when a woman--under the over-the-top sneer of a miscast Guy Pearce--reaches out her hands for the boy, telling him how happy she is to see him. It's a wildly un-Road like moment, the sort of gentle, easy warmth that wouldn't be out of place in one of those Nicholas Sparks movies, but it works. You go this far, you lose this much. For this. Coming after the two hour education in why it can't last, it's certainly cynical. It touches all the same.

-Joe McCulloch, Tucker Stone, 2010

Television Of The Weak: It's Like A Graveyard

The end! The end of Fringe, with Matthew J. Brady! The end of Lost of Zeb L. West! The end of Grey's Anatomy, with Tim O'Neil! The end of 24, with Tucker! And a regular episode of Breaking Bad. With Sean Witzke!

Lost – “The End”
Zeb L. West

Well, here we are. At the end of all things. Just you…me…the cast…and 13.5 million viewers all tuned in for the answer to… something! Some vague and indescribable rationalization that will satiate six long seasons of explanatory deprivation!

I polled my most trusted, die-hard, Lost-watching friends, and they were literally unanimous in their lack of a single unified question that needed answering!

Some were DYING to know: “What, in the fuck, was the polar bear? And why do I have the vague sense that they already explained it to me?”

Others could not live another moment without knowing: “Why did that statue have four toes?! And why, in God’s holy name, am I convinced that it is significant?”

And still more were chomping at the bit to know: “Why do they call Hugo ‘Hurley’? What kind of inaccurate nickname is that? It’s like the Richard/Dick paradigm! Might as well call a Becky ‘Deb’! There MUST be a connection to the numbers…”

I can still remember my third grade teacher, Mrs. Boyle teaching us that it’s a total cop-out to end a story with ‘…and I realized it was all a dream!’ But somehow Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse believe they’re smarter than Mrs. Boyle… as if somehow that third grade rule did not apply to their clever ‘flash-sideways’ plot device!

If the entire flash-sideways plot was only a pre-death flash in Jack’s mind, then why the hell were we watching all of those other characters? Just because they planted a clue to it with his re-occurring neck-bleeding doesn’t justify the fact that we had to sit through whole episodes of other characters being visited by little-blue-fairy Desmond!

I mean, what were we watching that for if it was all happening in Jack’s mind? Was he having some kind of third-person omniscient dream about what all of his friends would have done if they hadn’t been to the island and their lives were slightly different? How they would all be leading happy but empty lives where they never met their soul-mates (except for the few who remained single at the end? Locke? Boone? Vincent?) And what was that thin little antagonism between Desmond and Eloise Hawking about? Where she wants to stop him from waking up figments of Jack’s imagination? Like, what does this hypothetical have to do with ANYTHING?! All the writers have been saying in interviews lately is that they only feel obligated to answer what the flash-sidewayses were all about, and sadly, that’s all they (barely) accomplished. Or worse, since the whole six-season story ends within Jack’s little pre-death fantasy dream, we’re left confused about what happened in the ‘real’ story.

Okay sure, maybe Christian Shepherd (the irony of whose name is not Lost on flash-sideways Kate har-dee-har-harr /barf) alludes to the fact that they’re all somehow participating in this belabored alternate reality as a way of spiritually reaching out to one another from beyond the death that some of them haven’t yet experienced! …But that still doesn’t mean that it matters! What does it mean that Ben and Locke have a heart-to-heart outside the church if it’s all inside of Jack’s mind? Who cares about Boone at this point? Or worse, Sayid and Shannon! (The mere thought makes me genuflect in horror) And why in God’s name should Boone and Hurley be buddy-buddy at this point? Hell, Sun’s flashback to an ultrasound (while receiving an ultrasound) serves about as much narrative value as a sentimental recap episode of Three’s Company where Jack (Tripper) remembers Chrissy/Cindy/Terri doing something stupid.

And that right there is the trick of Lost’s final episode! The transition was not from action to exposition, but from exposition to sentimentality! Many folks shed a good tear for the passage of their tv character friends, but that’s not to be confused with the catharsis of a well-told story. It’s hard to say good-bye to characters you’ve spent six years with! It’s hard to say good-bye to a weekly tv-watching ritual! Or the precious water-cooler hypotheorizing that follows! Hard to say good-bye to EVERY SINGLE love story we’ve invested in! Not a single one survived, unless you suspect (as I do) that Miles and Lapidus were MADE for one another.

So did I enjoy watching the whole enchilada? Fuck yes I did! And writing these rants about the last two seasons has really improved my engagement in the story and its many plot failings!

Did I start writing these columns to drain all of the enjoyment out of the series for anyone who genuinely liked it? Fuck no I didn’t! And if you’re still diggin it and want to call me a dipshit in the comments, I say speed the plow! We’ll always have season 1, which was truly awesome television!

And in case you think me callous, here’s what I CAN give them credit for: maintaining a shred of ambiguity! At least they preserved some of the mystery they worked so hard to cultivate. As much as they started to blitzkrieg us with late-game exposition, even going so far as to BREAK THEIR OWN STORYTELLING CONVENTION (the flash sideways) to give us more flashbacks (which, by the way, don’t really explain ANYTHING if they are not the actual origin story – guess we need an origin story for Jacob’s mother now too! And an origin story for the island-protector before her!) Boiling it all down to some frustratingly concrete explanation would have cheapened the whole experience. Because, as I wrote before, this has always been about mystery, not puzzle! (http://www.factualopinion.com/the_factual_opinion/2010/03/television-of-the-weak-a-freak-show-from-sunup-to-sundown.html). When I heard they were adding an extra half-hour to the already two-hour finale, I figured it was because their epic explanation had bloated so large, it couldn’t be contained within 120 minutes! (Did I give them credit for anything in there? I hope I did..)

In conclusion:

1. The smoke monster deserved better.
2. A friend said it was much better than the random-ass ending of Battlestar Galactica, and I must agree.
3. Another friend said that the seasons after J.J. Abrams had clearly left the show (2-6) were a lot like the West Wing seasons after Sorkin left the show.

4. Afterlife in a church? Why? What was the Dharma initiative?
5. Bunch of vaguebooking at the end about ‘letting go’ and ‘moving on’ and ‘let’s go find out’ and ‘well, there is no “now”, here’!? New Age balderdash I say!
6. It was pretty progressive to have us grow attached to a torturer from the Iraqi Republican Guard! (And have him fall in love with a girl who belonged on the O.C.!)
7. Can’t believe they killed off Tina Fey’s character so fast!
8. I woulda been happy to see Walt, even if he’s grown to be a linebacker over the years.
9. Goodbye psychotic/psychedelic Dharma map that appeared once we stopped punching in the numbers and the blast door came down! (I heard there was a puzzle you could buy that had a picture of it – God bless you hardcores who bought that puzzle and lovingly put together every senseless piece!)
10. Goodbye John Locke’s knife!
11. Goodbye Richard Alpert’s guy-liner!
12. Goodbye ‘Freckles’ (even though I feel like I never saw em!)
13. Goodbye Jacob, you extreme plot device which to this day confounds me!
14. How the fuck did Jack end up back out of the leprechaun hole? I don’t know! Were we taken back to the beginning of the season after Juliet rock-tapped the H-bomb? I don’t really know! Jack looked like he was in the same spot as the beginning of the season, but he still had the gut wound that killed him, so who the funkenstein knows?!
15. I’m glad Hurley was our savior, because he was the only one who was pure at heart J

And last, but not least! I’m happy to announce the winner of the contest is TIM O’NEIL with the following prediction:

“Years from now the Lost season sets are gonna be in the 2/$15 bin at Target and anyone who picks them up is going to consider taking the plunge before remembering their friend from work told them once that the show sort of petered out in the end and wasn't worth the trouble.”

Tim, please shoot an email with your address to the ‘email me’ link right above Bert eating the baby! And I will send you your very own set of Dharma Station pins which I bought off of etsy!

Farewell my fellow Lost fans! It’s been a pleasure J

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

Does this second half of the Fringe season finale even need discussion (for that matter, does any episode of the damn show)? Probably not, but I soldier on nonetheless, determined, for some reason, to try to wrangle some enjoyment out of this show. This one is okay, although most all the interesting alternate universe stuff made it into the first part, aside from an Olivia-on-Olivia fight scene and the much-ballyhooed-around-the-comics-internet alternate DC comics covers (http://dcu.blog.dccomics.com/2010/05/21/geoff-johns-and-hank-kanalz-on-last-night’s-fringe-alternate-universe-covers/) (which are barely noticeable in the background as Peter muses that the differences between universes are subtle; he's obviously not a comics fan or he would be busting a nut over the amazing sight before him). There's also a pretty obvious ending twist/cliffhanger, especially since it calls back to the "evil replacement" plot of the beginning of the season, but it's not a bad way to end the season. No, the annoying thing here is a plot that was a bit too thin to be stretched out over two episodes, leaving us with annoying bickering between Walter and a barely able to enunciate Leonard Nimoy, who does little more than act as a deus ex machina to keep the show from ending. Thanks to his selflessness, I'm sure we'll be back to the same old plots about people with exploding skin or something before we know it, barely remembering that there's a reality-threatening evil high-tech army a vibrational barrier away. Yay?

Breaking Bad - "Fly"
Sean Witzke

This episode was directed by Rian Johnson, who's artistic voice has largely been tainted by the fact that every idea he has had is overshadowed by the voices of other people. Brick owes a whole lot to Hammet, Chandler, and Polanski; Brothers Bloom is a decent little con man movie buried under every tic that he could steal from better directors Paul Thomas Anderson and Wes Anderson. Its fitting that the opening of his recalls both the first scene of Terry Gilliam's Brazil and the lingering flies-as-symbol-for-mental-corruption device David Cronenberg used in The Fly. The fly buzzes around, Walt goes overboard trying to kill it, putting Jesse in danger, delaying production, falling about a story and braining himself. In both filmic instances, the fly was a much larger symbol than just an annoyance to the characters. The Fly is a good metaphor for the series, how Walt's obsession eventually becomes Jesse's - that his willingness to become completely amoral pays off on Jesse's head a thousand fold. The only way I see Jesse's life ending is violently, and in the very near future, probably getting thrown in a refrigerator truck with a whole mess of Gus' chicken.

This is a holding pattern episode, the kind that come right before the real shit goes down on tv seasons like this - the last 2 episodes of shows like these are usually bloodbaths. Or at the very least, they are massive game changers like Mad Men's s3 finale was. Breaking Bad seems to be following that formula, even though the Hank vs. the Twins episode would have been a season-ending-cliffhanger on any other tv show. This episode is a two-man show, Walt and Jesse talking to each other as they make meth, recalling "4 Days Out" from last season. Walt is losing it, over his family again, and expressing it with his perfectionist tendencies without realizing. Last time it was the dry rot in his house representing his fear of his cancer surgery, this time its a fly representing his collapsing relationship wth Skylar.

Walt wishes he'd died, he wishes he hadn't let Jane die. The real drama of the episode is two monologues - one where Walt comes very close to admitting he watched Jane die, and ends up telling Jesse that he spoke to Jane's father the night she died. It's tense, but it's also heartbreaking. Walt think he's "missed his moment" and now he's just stuck here. In remission, doing reprehensible things with no noble purpose anymore. He's stuck in the now, where he realizes he can't get to be a hero from where he's found himself standing.

Jesse betrays how much he cares about Walt too - or at least worries about him. He talks about the discovery channel a lot, first in pretty direct metaphors about how he feels they're getting screwed for money by Gus (talking about how the head Hyena forces the other to kiss his ass, literally). Then ebola. Then possums, and then how one got into his Aunt's how when he was kid. Then about how his aunt went insane, still thinking it was in there, and how her going crazy was cancer metastizing in her brain.

It's an emotional workout between Walt and Jesse, going through them fighting each other, patronizing each other, confessing, and eventually treating each other with more love than they want to admit they have for one another. Walt tells Jesse he's been to his oncologist and he's still in remission (to him, thats the problem), but that creates a bigger problem, one thats been coming up more and more this season - Walt is losing it, with a suicide attempt last week and now this, it's only going to get worse.

24 "2:00PM - 4:00PM"
Tucker Stone

There was one priceless moment of ridiculous nonsense before the lights went off, a scene where Jack pressed a gun to the head of Reed Diamond before ordering the soon-to-die sucker to suture up an abdominal knife wound, but otherwise, this was the worst season finale the show has ever had. (Even the James Cromwell season included the destruction of an oil rig and the blinding of Rickey Schroeder.) This one consisted of Jack losing a fight, crying, and failing to kill anybody, multiple scenes where President 42nd Street changed her mind (again!) and lots and lots of Freddie Prinze Jr grunting. Sure, there was the expected moment when Charles Logan put a bullet through his skull after testing the gun on Reed Diamond's face, and yes, that part was absolutely wonderful, but otherwise, these two hours were the exact opposite of whatever note anyone wanted the show to go out on. (And no Aaron Pierce to boot!)

That's partly to be expected. 24 is on its way to a feature film incarnation, the show had run out of characters to kill off that would have resonated in any measurable way, it wasn't like Jack was going to bite it, and the crew were at least halfway through production on this dumb season when they found out they wouldn't be returning for more. Last week's episode was a rare gift, a callback to the days when a normal conversation in an office building could be interrupted by a surprise gunship attack, or Aaron Pierce could shot the fuel tanks on a flamethrower and blow up three lanes of a Los Angeles highway. There wasn't enough gas left in the show, this season's plot, the only choice was to exit through the back.

That's what they did, in their own silly fashion. Freddie, Chloe & Arlo, staring at a floor-to-ceiling drone image of Jack. He looks up in the sky and said goodbye.

He can't hear you, but say it anyway:

Good riddance.

Grey's Anatomy - "Sanctuary" and "Death and All His Friends"

Tim O'Neil

I must apologize for being dead wrong. You see, I thought I had it all figured out. Shows like Grey's aren't exactly rocket science, after all. It's a prime-time soap with occasional pretensions towards medical drama, although the latter definitely only exists to support and reflect the narrative priorities of the former. So if you watch enough of the show, enough to get a pretty good feel for what exactly is going on and how it unfolds, you feel like you can predict it with some accuracy.

Heading into the season finale, I was dead sure that a few things were going to happen: first, that Callie was going to get together with Mark, since both of their ticking-biological-clock storylines seemed to be converging nicely; second, Lexie would finally formalize her relationship with Karev (they had been coasting along as informal "friends with benefits" for too long); third, and this was the clincher, Derek Shepherd (McDreamy) was going to "cheat" on his "wife," the show's namesake Meredith Grey. Now that last one requires a bit of explanation: although Meredith and McDreamy have been married since last season's finale, they were never actually married - in the general chaos of O'Malley's death and Izzie's near death, they didn't make it to the chapel, but instead opted for a cutesy fake marriage ceremony in the hospital locker room, writing their vows on a Post-It note and acting as if they were married in fact.

Now, you don't have to be Charles Dickens to know that this kind of twist, while "cute" and romantic, is essentially a dramatic IOU: Post-It marriages aren't real marriages, and somewhere down the line you knew full well that the writers were going to exploit this discrepancy. It's worth pointing out that it's in McDreamy's character to be periodically unfaithful: the show's first major storyline hinged on him cheating on his then-wife Addison Montgomery with Meredith Grey - they divorced, Addison got her own spin-off, Private Practice, and the execrable phrase Mer-Der entered the cultural lexicon. The show had used Shepherd's tendency towards infidelity as a cornerstone of the drama in the earliest seasons. As this current season drew to a close, the writers even established two possible lust objects for his temptation: a spunky hospital lawyer who appeared a few episodes back in order to council Shepherd through a difficult deposition (more on that later), and a useless new resident - April - whose mooning infatuation with Shepherd has been a running joke for the previous handful of episodes. All of the pieces were in place for a dynamite finale. Shepherd's new position as Chief of Surgery was stressful, and the demands of his job were putting increasing strain on his relationship with Meredith - something had to give, and the revelation of infidelity would send shockwaves throughout the entire hospital.

Except - that's not what happened at all. This is what happened:

Shit got serious real damn fast.

Remember that deposition I mentioned a few sentences back? Well, the deposition involved a man whose wife had died while being treated at Seattle Grace. She suffered a massive hemorrhage and subsequently lost all brain functions, and she had previously signed a DNR which the doctors followed with due diligence. The problem is that the woman's husband wasn't particularly happy about this, and refused to accept that the doctors had done everything necessary to resuscitate his wife. So first he tried to sue. When that didn't work so well, he came to the hospital with a gun.

His first step was to straight-up execute the hapless Dr. Reed Adamson, the fetching pixie-cut brunette who we see laying in a pool of her own blood above. Moments later Karev wanders into the room and gets a shot to the chest. He's still alive, however, and he somehow manages to crawl into a nearby elevator, where he is later discovered like this:

In case you couldn't already guess, this weren't your father's Grey's Anatomy. Meanwhile, the rest of the hospital is still blissfully unaware of the shooting rampage. It is revealed that Meredith Grey is actually pregnant. This is a horrific idea for a number of reasons. Let's begin with the understanding that Meredith Grey, as played by noted conservative activist Ellen Pompeo, is actually part-human, part cat. Please note the family resemblance:

So even as the audience is reeling from the thought of seeing Ellen Pompeo's eight wrinkled teats swollen in anticipation of her hideous brood of Dr. Moreau cat-children, we are brought back to episode's actual plot, which involves bullets and gunfire. A few people who aren't actually important cast members get stone murdered and the whole hospital gets placed on lockdown. Meredith and Yang are ignorant of what's going on for what seems like a simply absurd interval of time, before running into Shepherd who is really quite surprised that they totally ignored all the pages telling everyone that the hospital was under lockdown because there was a psycho shooter on the loose.

The thing I most enjoyed about this episode, if I can be perfectly honest, is the way it forces these main characters to confront just how self-centered and selfish they really are. The juxtaposition of the rest of the hospital cowering in abject terror of the shooter while Meredith and Yang continue their absolutely banal conversation is quite rich, most likely intentional, and a good illustration of exactly why Seattle Grace would be the worst hospital on the face of the planet in which you'd ever want to end up.

Of course the police are absolute incompetents. Even after the hospital is locked down and the hallways are clear, they somehow neglect to send the SWAT team in, which of course gives the shooter the opportunity to wander all throughout the building and have close encounters with every character and plotline. They don't actually get around to taking a shot until he's been walking around unencumbered for at least a half-hour, real time, and even though the guy gets up and walks around for another half-hour or so, they don't catch up to him until the end of the second hour. By then, he's already dead by his own hand.

The shooter's primary target is, you guessed it, Shepherd, who he believes to be personally responsible for his wife's death. When he catches up to Shepherd he almost hesitates, but then finally his balls drop and he gets down to business:

Usually on a show like this you have favorite characters whom you root for and hope to see succeed; but on Grey's, I have found that I have characters whom I root against and hope to see die. I think that Meredith and Shepherd are two of the most insufferable narcissists in the history of television, so I was really hoping they'd both get their tickets punched. I mean, come on, look at where Shepherd got shot: do you get up and walk away from a hit like that? Under any conceivable circumstances?

But he doesn't die, even though it's later established that he has a bullet lodged in his aorta. They succeed in getting him to an OR where they just happen to have a full coterie of staff ready to put him under for open-heart surgery. And of course the only surgeon who can possibly perform this miracle operation is Yang, who is still after six years just a resident. But she scrubs up and goes in . . .

And then the shooter wanders back onto the scene, apparently pissed that he didn't actually have the wherewithal to finish the job he set out to do in the first place. He holds the operating room hostage, insisting he'll shoot anyone who tries to save Shepherd's life. But just then, who should find his way to the OR but our man from Iraq, Owen Hunt!

Now, of all the people in Seattle Grace, the one person who should actually know what to do in the event of a shooting war, it's Mr. Warzone himself. And indeed, from the moment he walks into that OR, the viewer is aware of a sensation of keen anticipation. We're waiting for the inevitable moment when Operation Ginger Storm bursts free from the shackles of civilian restraint and is mentally transported back to The Shit, Deer Hunter-style, so as to deliver a merciless beating to the killer.

Or, he could just get shot in the shoulder like a punk, which is what actually happens.

Anyway, even as Shepherd is bleeding out on the table, Meredith drags Hunt to an adjoining room to remove the bullet lodged in his shoulder. And then, as if the Grand Guignol wasn't grand enough, we are treated to the spectacle of Meredith Grey suffering a miscarriage onscreen:
That is apparently the face you make when your body spontaneously aborts a fetus and the blood trickles out of your uterus and down your leg. And yes, the bit about the blood trickling down her leg really is in the episode. How could I make this shit up?

Meanwhile, in another plotline, Karev (who you might remember from almost dying in the elevator) is bleeding out on the table while lLoan labors to save his life alongside Lil' Lexie. A couple episodes back Sloan realized that all of his odd behavior this season was a result of the fact that he never got over Lexie. But she was with Karev now, and as Karev lay dying on the table Karev and Lexie reaffirmed their love. Sloan, of course, remains stoic, ultimately saving the life of the man who has stolen his one true love. Which is how these things usually work on this show.

Meanwhile meanwhile, Dr. Bailey is forced to deal with another shot cast member, Dr. Charles Percy, shot in the gut but holding on to dear life with the aid of this week's bit of stunt-casting, Dr. Mandy Moore (Demi Lovato showed up a week or so back as well - best not to ask). Of course, all the elevators have been turned off and the hospital is locked down, so it's impossible to get Percy to an OR and save him, so he dies with his head in Bailey's lap, like so:

And then the show lingers on his last words:

Percy: Can you do something for me? Can you find Reed? When this is over, Can you find her? I always...I always had a crush on her. I don't think she knows.
Mary: She knows. Girls always know.
Percy: Yeah?
Mary: Yeah.
Percy: Can you tell her anyway? Can you find her and tell her I loved her. I loved her so much.
Bailey: Ok.
Percy: Can you tell her, you tell her I was a catch. You tell her I was a hot hot catch and she missed out on a great guy.

We already know that Reed is dead, but they don't. That's what's called" dramatic irony," and let's be frank, folks: I'm not made of stone. There was . . . something in my eye, that's all. It must be raining, but there's not a cloud in the sky.

Eventually the shooting has to stop. And the only man who can stop the slaughter is Richard Webber, the formerly-disgraced ex-chief of surgery, brought low by alcoholism and removed from his position but who is - we are conveniently informed at the beginning of the episode - six months sober. He is caught outside the hospital at the time of the shooting but somehow manages to slip the totally effective police cordon and enter the hospital, determined to track down the shooter and get to the bottom of the massacre.

Now, I'm sure Tucker is going to talk about the finale of 24 and all the brutal, gruesome shit Jack Bauer does in the course of wreaking his bloody vengeance; I'm sure there's been some cold-ass shit on that show. But honestly? I've never seen anything on network TV quite as cold as this shit right here. You might have been justified in expecting that Webber would talk the shooter down, convince him to see the error of his ways and turn himself in with some kind of illuminating moral parable. But what happens in actuality is that Webber confronts the gunman and convinces him to shoot himself.
That is apparently the face you make when you're talking a mentally deranged shooter into swallowing the barrel of his own gun:

I've lived. I've really really lived. I've failed. I've been devastated. I've been broken. I've gone to hell and back. And I've also known joy. And passion. And I've had a great love. See death for me is not justice. It's a ... end of a beautiful journey. And I'm not afraid to die. The question is, are you? A life in prison or an afterlife ... with your wife. Me or you? Your choice.

And then of course the SWAT team finally arrives, but it's too late: Richard Webber has successfully talked a man into taking his own life. I don't care where you grew up, that's pretty much the living definition of hardcore.

I see more than a little similarity between this season finale and one of the massive crossovers us comic fans have grown used to with numbing regularity. They're both intended to do the same thing: goose up interest in flagging franchises by the injection of shocks and suspense, as well as a simply massive amount of blood and guts. Are these episodes of Grey's any different from, say, the bit in Siege where the Sentry totally tears Ares in half? Not really. The only real difference is that whereas this type of audience-goosing gimmick has really worn out its welcome and ceased to be at all effective in superhero comics, it's significantly more rare to come across something as genuinely shocking as this on a TV show like Grey's Anatomy. Maybe if I paid attention to fan sites or whatever I would have had some idea going in as to just what this episode was all about, but as it is I went in completely cold and was pretty damn amazed . Grey's

is still a patently absurd medical soap opera, but for all that the folks behind it do know how to turn some very basic and predictable ingredients into something that keeps pulling me back in despite the fact that I damn well should know better. For all the inconsistency and stupidity and coincidence and straight=up sexual abuse of the suspension of disbelief on display for these two hours, it was never less than riveting.

Romancing The Stone: Willow, Weep For Me

Ooooh....must I get right back on the horse?  I mean, I know I must have seemed courageous to you all. So brave in letting my first love go. We were the stuff of true romance, weren't we? And yet, like a Courtesan, I have others awaiting my attention, affection and charm. Like that darling American Vampire. 

American Vampire # 3
Written by Scott Snyder & Stephen King
Art by Rafael Albuqeurque
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics

But it suddenly feels too rushed. Too soon. All things now suffer in comparison to The Sword. I have to wonder if this week's reading of American Vampire #3 is tainted with loss. Maybe I'm too desperate to fill the void of spectacular-ness that is in my life. What comic book could really win in this situation?

All of this overly-dramatic introductory stuff is my way of saying that I found this issue "all right." The second half, the Stephen King half, feels completely redundant. I don't feel like anything truly new is happening in it. It was the same story from the last issue. Skinner's been alive in a grave as a Vampire for years and then he eats his way back to town. And then he does it some more. No one believes he could be back, but then he is, and they're only surprised for a little bit, and then they go back to saying "eh, don't worry about him" immediately. Oh, and no one believes this is a true story, but it is. Got it. GOT IT. I had it last issue. Maybe I'm being unfair, but it just seems like a comic shouldn't start repeating itself until it's been running for a lot longer than three issues.

But the first part of this issue? I'm still diggin' it. I love this little joke about vampires being all over the film industry in Hollywood in 1925. I love the way the characters look, especially love how our girl, Pearl, can go from looking like a hot girl on a motorcycle, to a ferocious, cat-eyed, vampire. The way they draw her hands and her whole body when she leaps from her bike to the car to attack is fantastic! That whole sequence, the way she kills the jerks and spars with the girl is too good. There's something about these drawings that reminds me of....oh yeah, Saturday morning cartoons. (Except in this case it's Saturday morning cartoons gone awry.

And then, there's the introduction of a possible Love Story. Aaaawwww. Pearl's got a guy who doesn't believe a word of what she's telling him. (Not in a condescending way. In a, what-the-fuck-am-I-supposed-to-do-with-this-information way.) She disses him and takes his car, all in the name of revenge. Okay, maybe she's protecting him in the name of love, too. I'm good with either explanation.  

Overall though, nothing quite compares to my baby. I'm sure I'll come around. I think I just need a little......time. And you know, time takes time. So in the meantime, I'll play the field and see what happens. I mean, I'm sure there's more than just one fish in the sea, right?

-Nina Stone, 2010

Too Many Movies: The Swedish Robot Invasion

This week, Joe McCulloch claimed You, The Living for Spain while Tucker tried to make sense of the emotions caused by Terminator: Salvation.

You, the Living
Directed by Roy Andersson
Joe McCulloch

Generally, I’d say there’s only a couple hundred or so people in the English-speaking world up for a feature-length Swedish sketch comedy/anti-comedy assemblage that plays like a self-devouring story suite of Joe Sedelmaier commercials culminating in the Where’s the Beef lady beholding Armageddon, but it looks like 36 of ‘em were every movie critic that bothered, ‘cause this thing’s currently logging a perfect score at Rotten Tomatoes.

Obviously that’s not an ironclad criterion of appeal -- Netflix users have it ranked at 3.2 stars, 0.1 below Broken Lizard’s The Slammin’ Salmon -- so let me assure and caution you that You, the Living is the kind of movie where an executioner steps into the electric chair chamber and notices a spark leaping as he absently turns a dial on the death panel, causing him to intently consult the user’s manual as the chaplain wanders in and, possibly unaware of the situation, starts leafing through his Bible, both men reading in awkward silence until the screaming prisoner is led in. This is part of a larger series of segments initially depicting a man driving in slow traffic leaning out of his driver’s side window and telling the you, the viewer, of a calamitous dinner party dream, then playing the same dream out at tremendous length but focusing only on inessential details, such as the man’s attorney softly weeping at his sentencing.

There’s a lot of tears in this thing, enough to dampen the edges of takes so they’ll stick together - an early diptych of scenes involve an elementary schoolteacher attempting unsuccessfully to not cry in front of the class because her husband called her a hag, immediately followed by a carpet salesman navigating a mild screw-up on the floor and then erupting into tears because he called his wife a hag, even though she called him an old fart to begin with, thus prompting a short debate between the story’s only two customers as to whether it’s worse to be called a hag or an old fart, while an oblivious window shopper only catches on a second before the scene break. Games occur: ‘wacky’ Dixieland music starts to play out a tortured boyfriend reluctantly abandoning his exhibitionistic self-pitying lover, except she then starts to speak-sing along with the soundtrack and it’s subsequently revealed that the music is played diegetically by other characters, interspersed all throughout the movie, even in people’s imaginings. Another trick: a woman is shown pressing her senile mother to tell us about her childhood but only grows more and more desperate, the joke being it’s actually not in any way a comedy skit, just a nice woman getting really upset over her mother’s dementia in the midst of more direct humor.

This interplay of comedy and anti-comedy vis-à-vis deadpan absurdism as performed by nonprofessionals isn‘t unfamiliar -- indeed, the picture’s a quasi-sequel to Andersson’s vignette-based prior feature, 2000’s Songs from the Second Floor -- but the contrast also functions as a segue between Acts I & II. Soon a big storm breaks out to temporarily link some characters via sound design, and the comedy/anti-comedy balance reverses so that sketches become mostly blunt depictions of anxiety inhabiting the exoskeleton of comedy. I mean, even more so than straightforward comedy - you never can tell what’s beneath all that armor, but you generally reach viscera once you dig enough. Regardless, the film becomes still and laden with portent (“tomorrow is another day” is uttered several times), and, for most of us, a focused struggle over the course of several scenes (deliberately hanging too long after their punchlines) between reading a lot of maybe-comedy through subtitles and taking in Andersson’s disarmingly visual direction, blending funny mise-en-scène, a terrific eye for faces and ultra-beige production design.

Luckily, someone then drops dead in the middle of an especially extended scene series -- I’m told there’s exactly 50 scenes in the movie, so multiple viewings may reveal a more delicate, determined tonal structure -- leading us into the aching, elegiac Act III, anchored by an absolutely bravura stretch wherein a young woman, one of the saga’s recurring faces, fantasizes about her wedding night with a rock singer husband playing guitar while she unwraps kitchenware gifts and everyone applauds as their room floats by like a hotel that’s a train. It’s startlingly rich, revealing, funny, heartbreaking, and softly ominous, leading into a brassily ominous finale reminiscent of A Serious Man, an even more excellent comedy that’s even less of a comedy than this. And just as the Coen Brothers summarize their film ahead of time with a handy fable, Andersson helpfully tells you what’s going to happen right up front in the form of a sleeping man awakened by a rushing train and addressing you, the viewer, the living, before the main titles. Life is but a dream, and these are only sketches.

Terminator: Salvation
Stuff? There's stuff in it, 2009
Tucker Stone

The first Terminator film is one of my mother's favorite movies. When I was very little, watching it with my little brother while she surreptitiously distracted us during the nipples-out sex scene, she explained to us that the reason she liked it wasn't because it was a great action movie--which it was, and still is--but because it was a love story, and a very good one at that. Whenever I see one of these films, I still hear her voice in my head, talking about her favorite scene, when Kyle Reese tells Sarah Connor how he came across time for her. When I miss her, and I do, I think about those moments.

This film, the fourth installment in one of the most financially doomed ones in film history, served as an attempt to restart the machines after the dull cash grab of Terminator 3. It was supposed to be the beginning of a trilogy, one that would be set in a post-apocalyptic world ridden with robots and death, a long-form version of what Terminator 2 had only shown glimpses of. It was supposed to succeed without Arnold Schwarzenegger. It was supposed to make as much money as Iron Man.

It botched the landing on all of those.

The time travel paradoxes in Terminator were never that problematic, even when they didn't make sense. (In the first film, the best response to an audience attempting to read-for-logic comes via Reese, when he hurriedly responds to a question regarding the future by saying "I don't know tech stuff.") Being a James Cameron film, specificity and intricate comprehension isn't the point anyway--moving forward is. McG seems to have grasped that concept--don't worry so much about explanations, just keep going--but he did so without ever coming up with any particular story in the first place.

The plot of Salvation works out like this: there's a guy with amnesia who is pretty tough, and he meets up with a couple of kids, one of whom is a little girl that freezes like a startled deer whenever an evil robot is about to attack, the other of whom is the young version of Michael Biehn's character from the first film. Across town, there's John Connor, played by Christian Bale's version of Batman with the suit on--and if you couldn't stop smirking at that gravelly Batman voice, you'll bust your sides when he does it without a mask--and he's hanging out with Common and shooting robots during the day. On his downtime, he gets on the radio and makes cryptic promises to whoever is listening about how they're part of the resistance merely by being alive. (And somebody needs to tell Lil' Kyle Reese that, because one thing that makes Kyle Reese really mad is when people wear red armbands--the sign of the Resistance--without "earning" them.) After some action scenes, Kyle gets kidnapped, it turns out that the amnesiac guy (Sam Worthington from Avatar) is some kind of proto-Terminator cyborg, robot body over human heart and brain, and John Connor convinces everybody in the Resistance to put all their faith in a magic radio signal that he and Common have only tested once. And then they put all these things together in a building where a naked man with a digital version of Arnold's face attacks Connor and Sam Worthington gets in a big argument with a television screen. And then a nuclear explosion goes off while a helicopter flies 300 yards away from it unscathed. And then open heart surgery in a desert tent (not sanitary!) with a former veterinarian doing the deed. And then Christian Bale repeats more quotes from the previous movies on the radio.

There's plenty of other stuff that happens, including one scene where a motorcycle Terminator gets fooled by the old "play some Guns n' Roses and stretch a rope across the road" trick, despite multiple earlier scenes where the motorcycle Terminators are shown to be really nimble and totally capable of spotting and reacting in milliseconds to road hazards. There's also a scene where they finally put a face on the machine so that the machine can explain, in explicit detail, how they planned for all of this random shit to happen just so they could Kill John Connor. Even dumber, the face of the machine is Helena Bonham Carter, because amnesiac cyborgs can more easily relate to Helena Bonham Carter. (This is what the machine said.)

So the whole movie--the entire time you watch it--is about killing John Connor. Here's the thing: the machines could have killed John Connor about 800 different ways, in this film, before they get anywhere near the end of the film, which is when they finally try. And they try by sending one naked robot after him, and they don't even give the robot a weapon. Remember the deal with the first three films? That part of the conceit was that these solitary human beings had to fight an unstoppable naked robot, and their only weapons were handguns and shit that didn't work? The machines know this, and yet they send a robot--the same robot that failed to work before--against an adult John Connor who has all kinds of badass sci-fi future weapons. And where do they try this shitty, horrible attempt?

In a factory that makes robots.

You can't make fun of this shit. It's like saying you want to beat up Rocky, and you've always wanted to beat up Rocky, and now you've tricked Rocky into coming inside your Ivan Drago factory where you have thousands of Ivan Dragos, all of whom are armed with futuristic gatling guns, and sure, Rocky has some guns as well, but fuck him, you've got the element of surprise on your side. And then you send out one Ivan Drago, with no guns, to do the deed. And then you lose. And then, even though you've got all these other robots in your robot factory, you sit around and let him set up bombs inside your factory, and then you sit around and watch him leave in a plane that you could easily shoot down with any of the hundreds of gigantic gun robot planes that you also build inside your factory, but you don't. Even though he's weak and nearly dead from the piece of metal that was shoved through his beating heart. Nah, fuck it. You tried your best, even though you didn't. Let him blow the whole factory up with a nuclear bomb. You can try again later.

Except you can't, because this movie actually was so bad that the production company is going to have to auction off the rights for less than they're worth. You fucked it up that bad!

I take it back. This movie is kind of impressive.

-Joe McCulloch, Tucker Stone, 2010

Stunt Casting: Benjamin Marra Discusses The Rise Of Arsenal # 1-2

What follows is an extensive examination of the first two issues of The Rise of Arsenal, published by DC Comics, with special guest Benjamin Marra. Due to the length, it lies underneath the break.

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

Romancing The Stone: It cut like a knife, but it felt so right.

 
[What follows contains multiple spoilers for The Sword.]

"Better to have loved and lost, than to never have loved at all."

You know what I mean. You probably already know that my first official Love Affair with a comic book, after writing these little columns off and on for something like two years, has come to an end. It's not that anything "happened." There's no hard feelings. The relationship ran its course. It's done now. And we are both the better for it. Well, I am, at least. It's a thing.

Throughout one's life, a person has many first loves. You may remember the first sweater you loved, or the first song you loved. I was just thinking about that today. I was working on some lyrics for one of my new children's songs, and I was contemplating whether or not to make it an action based song where I instruct the kids to jump and/or clap and/or wiggle--or if I should make it a story song. Thinking about story songs reminded me that my first very favorite song, when I was really young , was "Billy Don't Be a Hero." It wasn't about jumping, it wasn't about my tricycle. It was a story song. (And sure, it was an anti-war propaganda song. But I didn't know that. Even though it worked on me!) I remember picturing the whole thing in my head. Paying rapt attention every time I heard it. I cried at the end everytime. "I hear his fiancee got a letter/that told how Billy died that day./The letter said that he was a hero/she should be proud he died that way./I heard she threw the letter, awaaaaaaaaaay." (commence whistling.)

My first made-for-TV movie? Well, thank God for google and wikipedia, because just moments ago I thought, "what was that movie called? Lemme google 'girl riding on back of turtle movie." Found it immediately. "The Bermuda Depths!!!" You gotta read this or watch this or listen to THIS, to know what I'm talking about. Oh man, I am so excited to hunt down a copy of it and watch it through these 2010 eyes of mine. I'm sure it's going to be a difficult experience, but as a child, sitting next to my sister, I was riveted. (My husband says it's because of the young Carl Weathers, but he's being a creep.) I watched this whole movie  - stayed up "way past bedtime" - and cried at the end when {SPOILER ALERT} the girl was under water riding on the giant turtle that had THEIR NAMES ETCHED IN IT FROM WHEN THEY WERE KIDS. Oh my! Good Lord!

Oh yeah, why am I telling you about all of this. I don't know. I mean, I got so excited about finding The Bermuda Depths, I had to tell someone. Oh. Why do I bring this up at all? I guess because as two of my first loves, they really got to me. Judging something as a "good story" is clearly a subjective thing, and in both of these cases, I was a small child, and my love for these two things was completely raw, I was wide open for them every single time. I didn't know movies or music, I was looking for something that worked ON me, something that I intuitively wrapped my arms around and fell completely in love with.

And that's exactly what happened with The Sword.

I know that "Good story" and "good writing" can be two totally different things. But in these three cases, including my first-true-comic-book-series-love The Sword, they all have definitive beginnings, middles and ends. Okay, Bermuda Depths is sorta a fantasy thing, but still, at the end - and I still remember this - Magus let's go of Jennie. He takes of the shell necklace that symbolized their connection and throws it off the back of the boat he's on. (That's when we see her swim way below on the turtle. I swear Styx's Come Sail Away began to play at that point, but I could be wrong. Maybe it was wishful, little girl thinking.) In Billy Don't Be a Hero, even though his fiancee asked him to "keep his hand low," Billy volunteered for battle one day and went and got himself killed. Leaving a very sad fiancee behind.

Clearly the emotion and motivation of love is wide awake and alive in both of my childhood loves. That's what was at the core of those stories and the basis of my emotional experience and connection to them. It's in the Sword as well. Throughout this epic story, Dara is avenging the sudden, terrifying and cruel deaths of her family members. Along the path of her journey, their were concise, specific flashbacks of her memories of her family members. They weren't always fond memories of them. They were full and often difficult interactions that Dara had with them, those moments in life that stick out, that never fade. Moments that defined her relationship with her sister, her father and her mother. Difficulties aside, each memory depicted a real family love, where each family member took the time to be with Dara and really love her. Complicated moments, not a mashed up collection of "you're the greatest! I love you so much!" kind of memories. No, those vignettes were stories that depicted the way Dara had come, as an adult, to define loyalty, integrity, honor, courage and humility. Real, true love of a family member. These stories were so usually placed in a way that treated them as Dara's fuel for revenge, her extra dose of motivation to take on the biggest, scariest monsters she's ever seen, and as part of the lessons she was drawing from in those moments of battle. That's not all they were though. Those moments showed who she was, how she got there, and they made her real to me, they made me care about her and what she'd lost way back in those first issues.

It's like The Sword is a version of the Hero's Journey, like the "magical information" that comes to her is from a wizard or a guru -- it's from her family, it's her past, it's what she was thinking about at the time. And I suppose that's why I freakin' LOVED it when she kicked ass! I've never seen anything like this in print. The element of surprise in the wounds she inflicted when she unleashed her fury through the Sword was mind-blowing! Once again, let me tell make it clear: I hate gore. I do not go to horror movies. I watch violence on television with my fingers across my eyes. But in this book, I LOVED watching Dara, motivated by love, slit people's jaws in half.

So, here I am with the last issue. I don't want to spoil anyone else's enjoyment of this series, so I'll try to talk about it as vaguely as I can, but in all honesty, that's going to be very difficult. I really like that The Sword came to a true end. I wasn't sure if it was going to be a faux ending that led into a new series. Isn't that how everything happens these days? One TV series ends, but don't worry! There's a spin-off! Even when a movie doesn't have a sequel coming, well, somehow everything heads for a "happily ever after."

That isn't the case in The Sword. It wraps up in just the way it promised it might a few issues back. I applaud the Luna brothers for that. I love their integrity.

So, how was this last issue as a whole? Well, first there was a lot of narration about how Phaistos came to be standing here. I loved the mythology that was created for this series. LOVE it. It's another thing that made the experience so charming. To not only have the story of Dara and her family, but this epic and ancient backstory of the Gods who created the Sword? Just when you think the story couldn't go any further, we'd get a little bit of the mythology. The only drawback is that when the story goes there it's, well, mostly just that. The telling of a story. It's a very interesting story, for sure. There are some really cool drawings and mind-stretching thoughts about Phaistos sinking down to the Earth's core and how his character developed as he spend hundreds or thousands of years trying to get back to our layer of the Earth. But of course, that doesn't provide a lot of crazy action. There's very little Sword action, that is. That's okay though. There's been lots of cri-ZAY-zy action in previous issues.

As we inched to the very end, I loved the layout. A sort of modern comic book triptych. The story of Dara's family's past, the most recent past when she got rid of the sword and her current circumstance as she crawls her way home to end the story right where it started for her. I found that really powerful. And that ending- okay, sorry, because I can't NOT talk about it - with her sitting underneath her house, right where she found the sword and moaning as all her wounds, from throughout the series, begin to reappear. Those drawings are amazing. Just amazing.

And that was it. That's exactly how it ends, there's no sugar coating it. There's no deus ex machina. Nothing. The story came to its natural conclusion. The Sword is gone, all her wounds that it healed are re-emerging, and Dara is dead, "with" her family.

So BRAVO! BRAVO, I say! You never forget your first love. I'll never forget you. And ya know what? I can always re-read you some time. Which means, I've officially crossed over to comic-book fan. Yay, me!

-Nina Stone, 2010

Nina's other columns on The Sword:
The Sword # 1
The Sword # 2-6
The Sword # 7-8
The Sword # 8-12
The Sword # 13-18
The Sword # 19-22
The Sword # 23

Comics Of The Weak: I Wanted A Mission, And For My Sins, They Gave Me One

I need to borify it more.

The New Avengers Finale # 1
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Bryan Hitch
Published by Marvel Comics

This piece of shit, oh mama. When did Bryan Hitch get so avant garde? Jesus this fucking guy. Spits out random bullshit like he's way behind in the random bullshit race.

What the fuck are you two doing with your hands, you freaks? This ain't the time for indian wrestling.

Oh sure, it was pretty nice of Tony Stark to loan out the gigantic fancy helicarrier, too bad he couldn't loan one that has the technology necessary to make and receive fucking phone calls. And say, what's up with the 1,001 faces of Luke "Being black, that's my costume" Cage? Hell, it's one thing if his face changes throughout the issue because 17 different inkers were used to get the thing out on time, DC does that shit all the time, but on the same page? You've already drawn his face. Just copy your own work, how hard is that? It's right there! It's on the same page!

Here's a quote that has two colons in it: "I think about that and I say: if God, all of a sudden, decided: All right, you're done....I know, in my heart, I'm cool because we did all we could. I know that."

You know something, that is: very inspirational, Luke Cage, and yes, God would: totally agree with you about: that whole, taking a walk thing, that you're talking about doing because you're: cool with what you did, which was talk a lot for six years about your wife wanting to fuck Spider-Man and also walking, but never mastering the art of fighting in an interesting way: but just walking, at the end of this comic, because yes: taking a walk; that's how, the reader will know that: this story was totally planned out over the course of years and not: come up with on the fly while the writer was: playing Xbox Live and thinking 'bout: Glee.

Seriously, what the fuck are you doing? Are you planning to jack off his forearm?

The Flash # 2
Written by Geoff Johns
Art by Francis Manapul
Published by DC Comics

If this issue of The Flash is any indication of how the character views himself as a person, than The Flash is a giant dickhead. He waits around for situations to arise wherein he can make snap judgments, all of which paint him as "the" vocal force for truth and honesty in a world where everybody else is lazy, dishonest & morally suspect. In other words, he's a religious zealot, and his religion is himself. He doesn't seek out opportunities to be a hero, he waits for situations to arrive, and then he acts like a prissy schoolmarm. Afterwards, he makes sure to point out, specifically, why he did a great job at them, why you didn't, and why you should have, and you would have, if you were more like him. But you're not. Oh wait. You are! You're a blogger! Or a webcartoonist. Same thing. Like the Flash!

Ultimate Comics Spider-Man # 10
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by David Lafuente
Published by Marvel Comics

Hey, they finally cut the kid's hair and started dressing him in boy clothes. There's even some moments in this that call back to that This Is A Soap Opera Romance comic it used to be, but then it throws down the pause button to get all preachy and reference that Chris Rock "that train is never late!" routine. Nothing's as American as fat white cartoon principals doing Chris Rock routines for screeching Lovejoy types, badly. More make out sessions please.

Titans: Villains For Hire Special # 1
Written by Eric Wallace
Art by Fabrizio Fiorentino, Mike Mayhew, Sergio Arino, Walden Wong & Hi-Fi
Published by DC Comics

This is a Holla-Caust tie-in books where DC editors continue to eliminate the malignant racial strand of "whatsem, you know, non-whites", but it's also about a chick that some dude named Volcano Vagina. Which is a good name, and hey, maybe this will be the book we're all waiting for, the book where they finish the triangle they're currently drawing and include a scene where Hal Jordan turns to Ollie in the heat of the moment and says "You're acting pretty Jew-y there, buster brown." For right now though, this is just one of those comics that you think you need to read because you heard it includes a part where some Asian dude catches a giant sword with his chest while a rape/molestation victim tries to fire fuck her way towards mental health, but then you read it and realize that nobody is playing it for laughs, it's just all serious. And then you just feel bored, which makes you worry that maybe something's wrong with you because you aren't getting all Fanta-Angry about bad comics anymore but then you get over it and realize that the numbers for this thing are so low that it could have been laced with ecstasy and there'd only be like two heart attacks.

Siege: Epilogue: The Sentry: Fallen Sun # 1 (Of 1)
Written by Paul Jenkins
Art by Tom Raney, Scott Hanna & Val Staples
Published by Marvel Comics

There's a warning on the recap page that says "Read Siege # 4 Before Reading This Book", which you could be grateful for, except that it is at the bottom of the page, underneath four paragraphs of information. One of those paragraphs--the last one before the warning, actually--is a textual retelling of the entire conclusion of Siege # 4, which, you stupid fuck, are supposed to read before you read this, you dumb motherfucker, didn't you know to read the bottom words first? How you put your pants on, stupid fuck? How'd you know where to buy that shitty whore's cap, you flakey cunt?

Why is there a recap page for a comic that came out on the same day? Because Marvel knows that some people might not have read Siege # 4, but they definitely plan to read the Siege Epilogue?

Funeral porn is a tough gig, especially when nobody--and this isn't the normal comic book definintion of "nobody", this is the actual term, zero human beings--wanted a fucking thing to do with the character who is being laid to rest. Simply put, this guy? This Sentry character? This is somebody who irritated absolutely every single person who ever laid eyes on him. He was a ringer, a plot device, a bad idea. That doesn't necessarily mean that everybody wanted him to die--there's plenty of people who actively read super-hero stuff who don't require that the things they dislike be slaughtered--but it does mean that nobody was going to miss him when he eventually disappeared, which everybody knew was going to happen at some point. He was a Triumph rip-off, and his eventual disappearance was going to be met with the same who-gives-a-shit reaction that Triumph's multiple deaths were met with. But 2010 being 2010, you can't kill one of these fuckers--even one that had a fan base that numbered in the hot zeroes--without rolling out the memories. And since this guy doesn't have an actual past to point at, the memories are all made up on the fly: he used to fuck Rogue, because he could touch her and that's all it takes for her to spread; Ben Grimm apparently would've killed lots of bad guys (and thereby saved at least one school bus full of children from a horrible death) if it wasn't for the Sentry's moral rectitude, and Tony Stark needs to get to more meetings, because he doesn't know when to shut the fuck up about his personal life.

That Shitty Green Arrow Preview In A Bunch Of DC Books

Fuck Green Arrow. If you were a cop, and there was some asshole fighting crime in a small park at the center of an urban area in the city you were protecting, you'd fucking call in the swat team and arrest the fucking prick, and if he was shooting people with bow and arrow, you'd cap him on sight. Big ups though for making the gang rapists white. If DC is only going to be patrolled by white folks, it would be pretty creepy if all the criminals didn't follow.

Black Widow # 2
Written by Marjorie Liu
Art by Daniel Acuna
Published by Marvel Comics

Perspective matters, sure, i'll buy that with the same amount of cash dollars I'll pay for The Internet Making A Difference, but still: this is a comic book about a chick hero, right? The one in the movie that people like paying for, right? What's she done so far? Well, she's gotten her ass kicked all the way to the hospital to clear the decks so Wolve-a-fucking-rine can handle her shit for her, and then she's used the "i'm a lady who is a sick, see me cry" to fool a couple of dudes into an ass-kicking, and then a bald freak who stole the Watcher's forehead talked to some guys who used to have sex with her about how they all had sex with her and probably can't trust her because, you know, vagina blindness. And it works on two of them! Two of them go "man, she just fucked me to trick me. What a mean lady, i'm going to let strange bald men hunt her down." Now, sure, female empowerment isn't really the goal with these things, but for christs fucking sake, can't we hold off on "a bunch of ex-fuck buddies are going to fix your life for you, you dumb slut, so just keep playing with flowers and having meet-ups with your fellow can't-support-a-series gal pals" kind of shit until after there's been a really solid run of non-embarrassing comics? That's how they did it with Catwoman after all, and a certain successful Captain America/Criminal thing came out of that one.

War of the Superman # 2
Written by Sterling Gates & James Robinson
Art by Eduardo Pansica, Wayne Faucher
Published by DC Comics

Apparently Sterling Gates or James Robinson have a bone to pick with "the media", based off the cynical way in which they present Perry White and the Daily Planet. According to this comic, when something newsworthy occurs--for instance, when a planet and its entirety of inhabitants are brutally eliminated in an American-led first strike--Perry's second action after stopping the presses is to order his staff to seek out "public reaction" and "expert opinions". You'd think that a newsman might want to first make sure he can verify the story, that he can then tell the story, but according to this, Perry's impulse is to first find out exactly what the local hot dog vendor thinks. Hey dummy! You got to tell the morons first for the morons to deliver their moron reactions! Alternatively, this could have just been a minor screw-up attributable to bad scheduling, shitty writing and shoddy editing, but considering that this is a Superman comic supervised and created by a crack team of DC's best employees, merely thinking something like that is laughable. There would be no reason for DC to put anyone but their best on Superman comics.

Astonishing X-Men: Xenogenesis # 1
Written by Warren Ellis
Art by Kaare Andrews
Published by Marvel Comics

Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne # 1
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Chris Sprouse, Karl Story & Guy Major
Published by DC Comics

Initial response: Dick Grayson fucking sucks but so does this. What a boring piece of shit this was. Cavemen speak English? That old school rocket ship? The Joker is still around? Bucket of nonsense.

Current response: Ahhhhokayyeah okay, shit happens, ergo doing stuff.

You know what, here's the skinny: Batman comics. These cost the right amount.

No, move on, move forward. Grant Morrison has the best possible thing going for him in terms of public relations, in that he's got a mystique going that nobody else can claim, even Alan Moore, which is that Grant Morrison comics are like, controversial, you know? Not real world controversial, where you can't get anybody's attention unless you drill a bunch of skanks and make a You-As-Hitler picture that everybody finds out about right after you were caught crying for your wife at the Academy Awards because she won an award for Best Job Pulling The Thorn of Poverty From Freakishly Big Black Man's Paw, no, Grant's controversies are more teakettle and cuppa soup, more Misspelled I Hate That Fucker Rants against You're A Fucking Moron He's SnawSome and Is Doing Something Totally New And I'm So Unique And Special And I Like New Things response, and it's still the same let's-do-an-us-and-them nonsense as it was after Final Crisis, let's not repeat ourselves. (Or at least not so much, again, for the seventh time.) Part of the problem is that this is America, where you, through nothing more than purchasing and liking a different kind of entertainment, can define yourself as being Forward Thinking and Different and Iconoclastic because you spend your money on a different version of luxury entertainment, because, hey, isn't that how the world defines greatness? By arguing about what your favorite Counting Crows song is?

Shit, give him some credit: you can't get that kind of controversy out of a Greg Pak comic. Somehow, Grant's in the position where asking If You Liked That Thing He Wrote is more fraught with emotion than anything else, it's a CLICHE AHEAD love 'em or hate 'em thing that seems to always have about a billion spiky arguments about taste buried in its rosy thickets. Hell, Mark Millar arguments don't last as long as Morrison's, and Mark Millar's comics have resulted in Angelina Jolie nude scenes.

Jesus, Who Cares, Right? Do we have to wring our hands everytime the guy puts out another chunk of comics? Every time the guy puts something out, everybody has to go OCD on the antibacterial soap. Hell, my own palms are encrusted with blood! Lanolin burns like fire! And man, some of these comics, now that there's so many, some of them are just going to be fucking run-of-the-mill superhero comics, and if there's one thing that there's too much of, it's comics blogs it's run-of-the-mill superhero comics. It's always going to be impressive that Grant has pulled off the trick of convincing people that comic art isn't the primary draw, that the visual just doesn't matter, that only the story does. He's not alone! It's an extensive, constructed deception years in the making. It's a fucking lie. Words & plots aren't stories in comics. The story is the two things together, it's the art and the writing, it's them working together to create that weird mongrel hybrid. Does he pull it off here? Of course not. He clearly doesn't care--you can't read an interview where the guy proudly admits to being unaware of who will draw what he's writing or what the finished product will look like and not grasp that he absolutely doesn't give a shit--but that doesn't necessarily mean that a talented artist like Chris Sprouse can't exploit whatever hypno pellets Grant embroiders his visionary idea machines upon. And Sprouse does some of that, which--considering the nastiness inherent in Andy Kubert's cover, where a prehistoric man-beast gets incisor deep in Bruce Wayne's abdominal--is a damn good thing, because most of the time, a Kubert Batman is just a reminder of how ugly the Batman title become when he and JH Williams bailed for non-Morrison pastures. Sprouse can draw a fight, he can manage an exhausted face, and while his backgrounds are all washed into a bland sameness by the lazy color palate, the environments fit together, these hills and these valleys never arrive in panels with a sense of random need. He makes do, is what he does.

No other choice, it would seem. This is just another one-man show.

-Tucker Stone, 2010