Barry Episode 5 Review: Do Your Job

My first thought when I heard Bill Hader was doing a tragicomic take on the gangster genre was “seen it a thousand times.” Off the top of my head: There’s "The Whole Nine Yards" "The Mexican", the first season of "Breaking Bad", "Analyze This", "Mickey Blue Eyes", "Big Time in Hollywood, Florida", "Lilihammer"---it would be easier at this point to just think of TV shows and movies that involve illegality WITHOUT veering into mob humor.

But that just means this is a high bar to clear. To stick out in a saturated genre, “Barry” has to show me something I haven’t seen before. I don’t know about anyone else, but “Do Your Job” did the trick for me. One of the stalwart conventions of the genre is the numbing of the protagonist to murder after murders.  The act of a gangster’s crisis of conscience leading him to decide “so what happens if I don’t kill him?” Now that’s something new. The ramifications of letting a marked man live? Now that’s intereresting.

A lot of great TV at the moment ("Good Place" and "Last Man on Earth" are prime examples in the half-hour comedy space) leaves you with no idea what’s coming next and Barry has this in spades. Taylor's survival is (at least for me) the show's saving grace but it's not an isolated incident. 

The Sally-Barry relationship is another great example. Sally’s somewhat of a fast mover for Barry in every sense. She pushes him into Gene’s class, into a friendship, into a sexual relationship, and now she pushes him away with equal style. Her “toxic masculinity” label of Barry might have been appropriate if Sally had actually taken time away from her own needs to actually see Barry for who he was and treat him with the necessary gentleness (in this case: kid gloves at every stage of their relationship). In this sense, it’s somewhat refreshing to see Sally get called out by her classmates.  D'Arcy Carden's character (I want to call her Janet?) came into their after-rehearsal chill sessions with fighting words that nicely ratchets up some of the in-group dynamics which reminds of how much more development these guys could use. 

The fact that this universe is acknowledging Sally has some growing up to do also leads for a possibility of Sally-Barry ship to recur considering they both have roughly an equal amount of work to do. Besides, they’re scene partners which seems like a cruel exercise for both of them.

For now, “toxic masculinity” isn’t a particularly appropriate description for Barry considering how well he’s handling his line of work. Nonetheless, Barry’s a pretty troubled guy and “Do Your Job” is the first time Barry starts to express this out loud. The channeling of his anger about his classmates’ ignorance of killing is a good start for Barry, both as an actor and a man dealing with his demons. In a sense, one serves the other which is why Barry was likely drawn to acting in the first place. 

In other plot lines, Gene's and the lady detective finally consummate their relationship. To call this unexpected is an understatement particularly with the incongruity of how Gene sees himself verses how smooth he actually is. Gene is the comedic high point of the episode which is a much-needed introspection of Barry.

The show's fluidity between action, comedy, and serious self-introspection is striking the right notes at this point in the season.

Rise Episode 3 Review: What Flowers May Bloom

Credit: Vulture

In the melodramatic version of high school presented by Rise, there are two polar archetypes of “Manhood” with a capital “M”: football and theater. 

Theater guys tend to talk about their feelings whereas football players tend to bury it away because it supposedly gets in the way of glorious character-building manly labor.  Theater guys are comfortable with all manners of non-straightness and might even be somewhere on the LGBQT spectrum, whereas football guys are too busy dealing with their magnetic allure to the opposite sex to notice such things.

Granted, "Rise" didn’t invent these stereotypes, but the show seems too lazy at times to portray its world any other way. This thematic axis guides the development of nearly everything in the world. The show’s alpha male characters, Mr. Mazzou and Robbie discover their self-actualization in the world of theater which refines their more masculine edges. It’s here that they both get in touch with their feminine sides (primarily being empathetic) needed to navigate all the challenges in their lives that require feelings and all that gooey stuff.

Mr. Mazzou needs to recognize Mrs. Wolfe as an asset and find the words needed to communicate with Simon's about why their son should stay in Staunton. One might call his two encounters with Mr. and Mrs. Saunders an arc of sorts: In the first encounter, he tries to us his masculinity to stake out his territory and puts his foot in the door when Simon’s mom tries to close it. But he lacks the words to follow through. Later, he’s miraculously granted the words (supposedly by being humbled by Mrs. Wolfe). Similarly, Robbie doesn’t yet have the words to put his crush at ease that he would be faithful to her but he’s getting there.

For the show’s reductive dichotomy of manhood, it at least gets credit for not villainizing the school of Strickland completely. Gordy, who’s been overly feminized in the world of theater, finds the lack of conversation with Strickland therapeutic in dealing with his punishment. Of course, there’s a separate conversation to be had over whether the punishment fits the crime in terms of drug offenses, but we’ll save that for another day. Interestingly enough, Strickland lacks the words to express what he needs to say to Vanessa so he has the same problems as Robbie and Mr. Mazzou. But Strickland has presumably gotten as far as he has in connecting with Vanessa because he’s capable of showing what he means through gestures. A cell phone cover doesn’t really fall under the category of Valentine’s gifts, but whatever floats your boat, Vanessa.

Beyond the character arcs themselves, there’s a lot to appreciate about the way Rise as a whole shows without words. Consider how well the interactions between Robbie and Lilliean encapsulate the sweetness of being out with your crush and the visceral awkwardness of feeling out your potential partner.  This is also a week where (as far as we know), Simon might be saying goodbye to the theater program that has given him so much. The sadness behind Simon’s eyes as he announces his departure to the group and that tear-swelling hug with Mrs. Wolfe are both well-deserved moments. True, the music’s a little sappy but it’s hard to understate the emotional impact of these moments. One might call it a masculine touch on a traditionally feminime genre, but if you throw the dichotomy away, it’s a visually poetic and effective way of storytelling.

AP Bio Season One Review

Knowing that his days on dark sitcom behemoth ”It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” are numbered, Glenn Howerton takes a cue from co-star Kaitlin Olsen and makes a lateral move by transferring the same comi-sociopathic screen persona into a new sitcom arena.

“AP Bio” is a fun show with a premise that doesn’t hold up to any level of scrutiny. If you can get past the latter, you’ll be able to enjoy the former. It’s one thing to con your way into a teaching job and not care about doing it once you get there (the most notable example being “Bad Teacher”). It’s another to actively want to prevent your students from learning when it’s so much easier just to let them open their text books and read on their own.

The deal Howerton’s character, Jack, makes with his students is that he’ll give them an automatic A if they don’t rat out his anti-learning methods to the well-intentioned-but-aloof Principal Durbin. What about the AP exam or whatever 200-level biology class they might take in college? What about the fact that Jack regularly threatens Fs when he’s upset?  Watching Jack be so casually erratic and cruel is surely funny, but the show falls apart when the reasons his students don’t rat him out are so paper-thin.

For all of its celebration of Jack’s cruelty, the episodes have followed a bit of a TGIF-template wherein Jack softens at the end of the episode. He generally realizes his mistake and makes up for it somehow. This is all well and good, but the cycle of unfeeling task master to atoner and back to monster at the start of each new episode starts to wear thin by episode’s end. It's clear that the show is trying to have its cake and eat it too after a certain point, by making Jack evil with a capital E (in the latest episode, it's revealed that he is a highly competent at teaching biology after all) but also having him learn and grow. "AP Bio" desperately needs to split the difference.

The best that the show does on this front is to show that Jack's not as completely devoid of feelings as his alter-ego Dennis Reynolds at times. In the episode where he dates a single mom, he does discover within himself that he's enamored (or "freakin' enamored" as the episode is titled) and he's slightly more up front with his own parental issues and psychological baggage then Dennis. Still, it's not always entirely convincing that Jack exists other than as an ersatz for Dennis. 

It’s also worth noting, the show has some amazing features in the background. The multi-racial Greek chorus of teachers (Mary Sohn, Lyric Lewis, Jean Villepique) who have not yet caught on to the fact that Jack is a con-artist but provide him with sufficient enough foils, have a great chemistry and dialogue. If this show is any bit of a downer, they add  a level of upbeat energy. Additionally, the show could just as easily be about the kids since there are so many different shades  of color (Heather needs an upgrade to full cast member, spin-off, and so much more) and humor from the rapidly developing group of students.

Why Three Billboards Sends a Better Thematic Message for our Times than Get Out

When we champion films for nominations and wins during awards season, especially in this day and age where critics see less distinction between cultural commentary and ascetic judgement, what we're often talking about is the predominant societal message we want to see Hollywood express in the wake of whatever we feel are the primary cultural obstacle of the present day. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri and Get Out are twoof the nine films that have been nominated for Oscar outside of the nine films that have both been discussed as contenders for Best Picture and they’re to consider in tandem because they have contrasting ways of dealing with the same problem.

Get Out is a classic horror film created by Jordan Peele who I have a lot of respect for as an actor (standing out on a show that is spiraling downward as he did with Mad TV deserves a special kind of praise) and as the co-creative mastermind behind Key and Peele which mined the same thematic territory-- the awkwardness of racial tension -- as Get Out.

One of the main tenets of comedic effect is the release of tension (further academic study has also added recognition as a comic trigger so the more societally relevant) so Key and Peele's sketches already have a head start on our funny bones because they center on the tension we all recognize.

Like the 2016 film  Keanu in the action genre last year (not a particularly notable film depending on which film critic you ask), tailoring Peele's thematic message to a different genre comes with challenges. In the case of Get Out, the metaphor for racial awkwardness is presented not within the benign confines of comedic sketch but a more aggressive genre. More so, this is a genre with a protagonist and antagonists in the form of a well-meaning couple (a Guardian article, uses the term Liberal Racists ) who profess themselves Obama supporters but are decidedly less comfortable with their daughter dating a black person.

The film has been said by its creator to embody truth and Peele's achievement of authenticity is worthy of applause. HOWEVER, the question with regard to the film in terms of award season is if this thematic message is THE thematic message of the year. Such things are apples and oranges but Get Out is essentially microaggression: All the metaphor boils down to well-meaning people unintentionally making the black experience worse than they thought. Moreso, it's a celebration of anger (at least when seen through critical lens) at racial inequality.

The sheer number of articles in the culture sphere coming out on a daily or weekly basis
expressing anger at Hollywood (a known ally for liberalism) for not being inclusive enough, isn't so far removed from the anger that the Get Out audience is encouraged to feel (through literary means of
amplification) against an ally for not being inclusive enough.
On top of that, there's increased references I see in articles and, particularly on twitter, to the idea of anger being not just a valid response to hatred but a productive emotion. Amber Tamblyn (an actress I admire, to be clear), for instance, has labelled her political stance in several interviews as pro-anger.

Suffice it to say, I'm not sure that meeting microaggression with anger or defining yourself by that emotion is what we want to be THE message of the year.

In contrast, Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing Missouri is about a society that's consumed by anger. How entirely prescient. Most of the film’s characters live in a state of down-trodden weariness that characterizes much of the American rust belt. The film is ugly and bold enough to know that people aren't going to have an easy time processing it (from the critics of various factions to someone like myself who walked out of the theater feeling a sense of intense confusion before eventually loving it) but it's ultimately a film about the extremely difficult journey two people make in dealing with an unfair and yes, angry world and that journey begins with finding a semblance of inner peace.

In this sense, Three Billboards is the inverse of Get Out: The former desires to show us anger beneath the surface while the latter tells us what we already have known for a while: We live in an angry place and time.

More importantly: The former encourages us to take awareness we might not have previously had, convert it to anger, externalize it, and direct it towards a villain. The latter encourages us to look at the anger within ourselves before we engage with the outside world.

Personally, I think society could use more of the latter message.

Round-Up of Non-Current Films I've Seen: Admission, The World's End, 9 to 5, Amadeus, Wish I Was Here, West Side Story

Admission (2013): Tina Fey and Paul Rudd star in a rom-com about an admissions officer at Princeton who discovers that the son she gave up for adoption a long time ago is now college age and his untraditional teacher/mentor/ready-made love interest is pushing hard for him to get into Princeton for reasons that only exist to drive the plot forward. The lack of rhyme and reason behind an admissions officer throwing her integrity down the drain by giving preferential treatment to a son she never knew existed becomes a pretty distractable plot hole considering the opening voice over talks about how seriously Tina Fey takes her job. 

While we're on the subject, I'm getting tired at this point of Tina Fey playing the same character over and over: Intelligent late-30s women who are often the only sane person in the room, and filled with worries of being a childless spinster as age creeps up on them.

Additionally, the courtship between the two lead characters tips too early in the first act. 

So why did I see it? It had a killer trailer. Those will get you:

Amadeus (1984)-My favorite old film I saw in the past year. The best picture winner from 1984 was included on AFI’s initial list of 100 Greatest Films of All-Time for good reason. The film is essentially a tone poem exploring the concept of jealousy which is quite novel. Even more clever is the idea to use a lesser-known historic figure to tell the story of the movie's main subject. Tom Hulce and F. Murray Abraham were largely unknowns when they took on the respective roles of famed composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and rival Salieri. The film is based on a a myth that Salieri poisoned Mozart out of jealousy for his genius and while the version of Salieri seen here is a heavily bastardized version to fit the plot, it does help illuminate the life of Mozart and the context in which he lived. 

I wrote an article for TopTenz about classical music icons who lived like rock stars and found the similarities between the two pretty eye-opening: The reality is that Mozart could generously be described as a foul-mouthed prankster and a brat at worst. "Amadeus" treads in that territory and carefully layers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's wardrobe and mannerisms with subtleties indicating the parallels between Mozart (the pink wig, the unchecked embracing of weird, the love of attention) and modern-day rock idolatry. 

Whatever Mozart's cause of death, there was a tragedy to his life that was universal to any artist and while the film brilliantly allots audience sympathy between both central figures, there's something endearing about Mozart and the fact that sales of Mozart spiked by 30%  in 1985 is indicative that Hulce's Amadeus did something right. 

9 to 5 (1980)-A good meditation on the #MeToo movement. I watched this mostly because I loved the song and found the movie serviceable. It was one of the highest grossing films of 1980 and deserves to be mentioned among landmark films of that time period. The film's pairing of Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin and Dolly Parton (in her acting debut) and the dream sequences in which the three fantasize about killing their bosses, are also among the most notable things about the film. The best thing about the film is the natural camaraderie between the leads and just how impressively villanous Dabny Coleman's character was.

World's End (2013)-After seeing Hot Fuzz, Scott Pilgrim, and Baby Driver and admiring Edgar Wright's work in all three of those films, I thought the time was right to approach this ode to the apocalypse. 

The film was a dueling film with Seth Rogen's This is the End and coming into this film having watched the Seth Rogen film throws the viewer for a curve because it's not apparent until about an hour in that this is an apocalyptic zombie film of sorts. The film takes the facade of a stunted middle-aged man who recruits his more well-adjusted adult friends for one last attempt at some sort of epic monumental pub crawl. The idea of a pub crawl might not be as epic as it seems, but the film sells us that this is a substantial deal to the protagonist. It also sells us on his delusion by showing how little of a deal it is to the other guys. The adult-friends-coming-to-terms-with-their-youths genre here provides quite a bit of narrative thrust and the film nicely adds the attacking zombies when the former needs some pick-me-up. The film lacks the comic depth or the game-changing gimmickry of the other three films I saw but those films set the bar quite high, so I'm quite pleased with the film's more moderate resolution. The film also has a lot of Easter Egg symbolism (look at the royal connection in the character's last names) that I didn't pick up until I saw the IMDB section so that might have affected my opinion. 

Wish I Was Here (2014)-Confession: I didn't care for "Garden State." The plot felt by-the-numbers, uneventful, and I spent most of that film scratching my head over why Zach's character would be into a disabled girl. The story attempted to be more than a romance and embody several facets of his life, but the protagonist's relationship with his dad and friends seemed easily solvable (or, again, uneventful) and considering the big ending was him getting together with Natalie Portman, was it really that much more than a romcom masquerading as a holistic indie film?

In contrast, "Wish I Was Here" has a lot of non-romantic plotlines that aren't treatest as afterthoughts. Mandy Patinkin's father character is a genuinely tough obstacle to the protagonist's well-being and he even has some valid points underneath his crusty facade about the protagonist being financially unwise by pursuing acting full-time. The film deals with money, spirituality, maintaining a marriage, death, fatherhood, and being a good son and treats each of these plots with a good deal of weight. 

In contrast to how "Garden State" meanders slowly without significant actions, the world of this film's protagonist is one of near-constant chaos as he juggles an array of responsibilities and desires.

The remarkable thing about how much this film won me over is that I retroactively like "Garden State" a little more because I now have a sense of the guy's style.

West Side Story (1961)-I've seen this before, but it's even better on second or third viewing. For instance, like a John Hughes film, "West Side Story" really captures youth and what the world looks like through the lens of those with immature life experiences: Yes, it's not particularly rational that the Jets would embracee sloth in Officer Krupkee or exxagerate their feud with the Sharks, or that Maria and Tony would sleep with each other after their brother and foster brother were killed, but these are teenagers whether they try to deny their rebellious nature (as Tony does) or not (the rest of the Jets). 

The inherent problems of racism and othering also caught me here. I didn't catch in any previous viewing that Tony was short for Anton and isn't considered a true Caucasian by Bernardo, that "America" has such prescient foreshadowing to the 2010s (references to hurricanes, debt and many people not being aware Puerto Rico is part of America) and that Lt. Shrank is racist as a matter of practicality: He detests gang violence because it makes his job harder, but he assumes that the Sharks are a bigger problem than the Jets. And the choreography! Jerome Robbins got fired before the completion of the movie and his main contribution were the four dance numbers (Mambo, The Prologue, America, and Cool). 

Silicon Valley Season 5 Premiere

"Silicon Valley" operates under something akin to a Murphy’s Law but, if you've come to like these guys too much to want to see them become repeatedly screwed over, it’s fotunately become gradually less pessimistic:  The show now operates under a rule of chaos where things never go as expected and there’s some unexpected conflict. Granted, most dramatic television relies on the unpredictable but this show always amps up that variable to the extreme. Every week, the five partners of Pied Piper walk a careful tightrope between massive success and financial ruin. One of the missions of this show is trying to show us that the stakes in Silicon Valley are always high and we get a sense of this when we see just how much these guys are often sued for or how close these guys are to bankruptcy.

As someone who didn’t catch the last season and a half, I’ll readily admit lacking the perspective of someone who might have witnessed Erlich Bachmann’s progression towards obsolescence firsthand, but his departure still seems like a massive hole. This show treads heavily in character-based comedy in the vein of “Parks and Recreation” or “The Office” but (judging by this episode) "Silicon Valley" doesn’t appear to have expanded its universe of recurring characters which puts a lot of pressure on the existing slate to carry all the facets of this multi-layered world. While the eccentricities of Gavin Belson and Laurie Bream are nicely developed and Jian-Yang looks to be getting more screen time, the majority of the show’s dialogue was the main quintet set apart from the outside world in their alternating between trouble-shooting and internal squabbling. My suggestion here: Monica, Jian-Yang, or some newcomer needs to be worked closer into the gang’s inner circle to be able to provide the necessary counter-balance in this new dynamic.

While I’m only marginally qualified to review this show considering I’ve fallen by the wayside for the last season and a half (though I will defend TO THE DEATH the practice of jumping into a show midway through as a viewer), the plot fell so easily into the template of past episodes that I’m starting to theorize that Silicon Valley is designed to appeal in syndication as non-serialized. Sure, the status of Pied Piper has constant changes but the company is fluctuating so constantly and the characters stay constant enough. Besides, there’s generally a nicely-laced narrative within the span of each episode.

This week saw Richard continue his war of attrition with Gavin Belson. As opposed to the first two seasons where Richard and crew were simply taking beatings left and right, we’re seeing two equally matched opponents playing high-stakes chess. As a sign of Richard’s newfound status somewhere between little and big fish in a pond of fluctuating size, he’s able to outmaneuver two more green and naïve competitors. More significantly, he comes into the interactions with these two with a far nastier demeanor and a resolve for vengeance. Considering the Sliceline CEO was more aloof than someone with the vindictiveness of Gavin, Richard’s moral exoneration isn’t as clear-cut and that’s what’s making this show a must-watch. During the heyday of “The Office” we used to have endless debates on the IMDB boards over the morality of the Dunder-Mifflin employees and the grey territory of Pied Piper can be debated in a spiritual fashion along these same grounds.