Capsule Reviews: Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Killing Eve, and Ozark

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt (Season 4A)-

Some of the most memorable episodes of the show came out in this bite-sized six episode sample: Specifically, the one where Lily turns a tech conference into an orgy and Lily goes toe to toe with her late lover's daughter for her inheritance (I guess Carol Kane is the MVP).

Like Tina Fey and Robert Carlock's other project, 30 Rock, there seems like an unspoken centrifugal force in this universe that wants to keep its four principal characters from finding any sort of permanent comfort. Kimmy switches projects from working at a start up to writing a childrens book and Titus goes from executive producer of The Capist to high school drama teacher to landing an acting gig. Titus as a showbiz personality is more conducive to the gig economy while Jackie and Kimmy are being whiplashed a bit more inorganically to fit the template. Still, knowing what I'm in for at this point leads to easier suspension of disbelief.

The shortened season feels like I just got an appetizer-sized portion than a full meal which is why it might not make my top ten.

Killing Eve-I can understand why this show is a critical darling and I wanted to like it too. It was slick and stylized; it offered an engaging and tight plot; and an even better lead. Sandra Oh's Eve Polastri doesn't have an overriding gimmick (like say, autistic in The Good Doctor, an a-hole in House, or victim in Jessica Jones) but she's pretty intriguing in a lot of subtle ways: As an Asian-American in a man's field, she's a fish out of water in more ways than one; she's outspoken but not in a way that feels inorganic, and she's legitimately uneasy because she is not field-tested.

On the other end of the spectrum is a psychopathic serial assassin who's meant to be a doppelganger. She's an intriguing villain but like Francis Underwood in House of Cards, she does so much bad that you start getting invested in wanting to see her punished. The problem is the show doesn't really treat her like a serial killer. Either that or they have massive strokes of stupidity when trailing her. In one episode, Eve's colleague follows her into a nightclub unarmed without even calling for back up. Later on, they go after her without even carrying any weapons? The last episode I watched featured our heroine twice facing our villain unarmed without defensive measures. Villanelle's colleagues are equally ridiculous around her.

As far as I can tell, the show isn't about catching a killer as it is exploring Eve's relationship with the killer. She was singled out in-universe for her fascination with Villanelle and the show's overtones are a bit Hitchcock/Cronenberg. The scenes with Eve and her colleagues meeting Villanelle face-to-face recall the Seventh Seal without the ghastly imagery: facing death personified. 

However, it sure is awkward when the rest of the show aims for a more gripping form of realism.

Ozark (though Episode 8)-Shows like Breaking Bad, House of Cards, and The Americans have led to a popularization of the notion that great TV is about characters being irrationally ordered to do impossible things from all sides. 

Take Ozark as an example:

A) The cartel holds Marty Byrde responsible for the Snells when its pretty nonsensical to think that Byrde can control a pair of criminals who are often hell-bent to doing the polar opposite of what would be prudent.

B) Wilkes (along with cartel pressure) wants the Byrdes to single-handedly change the voting of the entire Missouri legislature by upending nearly every other player in the state. 

C) Meanwhile one unchecked agent, Petty, is abusing his power in every conceivable way to make life impossible for the Byrdes. Petty's demand of Rachel to get dirt on Marty is pretty impossible to fulfill if Marty's not saying anything

D)  On top of that, there are a number of wildcards like an ex-pastor who suddenly turn murderous, because of course he does. Rather than think strategically, he instead makes a superfluous demand --he wants his son back in less than 24 hours or else Wendy is dead-- which isn't realistic considering the speed of bureaucracy. 

The tension on this show has gone from satisfying to an adrenaline high. At what point, however, does the show's credibility cancel out any gains? The second season is imminently watchable because watching characters maneuver out of tight situations is as hard to turn away from as an explosion or fight scene or juicy romance. But could the show be made better if it wasn't based on contrivances? As sacrilegious as it is to take shots at the above-mentioned shows, I blame the effect of the three shows above for setting such a template and having the flaws in those shows go unexamined.

Another question at stake is the intrigue of the anti-hero which has played out in many shows including the ones listed above. Through several of the episodes, Marty made the flimsy justification (overtly or tacitly) that he was protecting his family but what about the costs to other people's families? How would FBI protection not protect his family? It wasn't until the very end of Breaking Bad that Walter White came to terms with his selfishness. The Americans had a pair of complicit anti-heroes coming to terms with it in opposite ways which remained something that enriched the show greatly in later seasons.

Marty started out this season as a zombie of sorts: He turned his moral barometer off and retained a tunnel vision on his goal imagining his river boat casino would liberate him. The more interesting version of the show has come in the past couple of episodes as he started to veer off his original course with acknoweledgement to the consequences for Wyatt, Julie, and Rachel (the only characters worth caring about when this show is at its least interesting).

I'm on episode 8. Let's see where this show ends up.

Fun Summer Movies are No Longer an Option, Are They?

For all the evidence you need that the days of leaving identity politics out of movie reviews are over, look no further than the critical treatment of two of the most care-free popcorn comedies of the summer over at Rogerebert.com. Film critic Matt Zoller Seitz laments on “Set It Up”, “We never gain a sense of what it means for these two to be in charge of—and yet isolated within—a predominantly white workplace and the film” while “Tag” gets called out by Glenn Kenny as “a lazy, vulgar celebration of White Male American Dumbness.” That the films’ racial politics are prioritized over their aesthetic appeal or even their apolitical contexts shouldn’t surprise any casual consumers of movie reviews lately. 

What was originally intended as a movement for greater inclusivity has made way for a brand of hyper-specific criticism leveled against perceived offenders of progress that has come to dominate entertainment writing. What is desperately needed for consumers and writers in the industry is to consider the effects of having so many critics cluster together on the political spectrum.

In 2007, Ebert himself reviewed the Wes Anderson film “Darjeeling Limited” and praised the film’s “Indian context” noting,“ Anderson and his co-writers Schwartzman and Roman Coppola made a trip through India while they were writing the screenplay. It avoids obvious temptations to exoticism by surprising us.” Anderson’s quirky visual style and life-affirming themes of belonging, however, don’t really register to film critics in 2018 as his potential for creating offense has now been prioritized.

Odie Henderson, writing on the same website writes about his 2018 film:

“Unlike that Roald Dahl adaptation, “Isle of Dogs” does not have a compelling story, and even worse, it has the most egregious examples of its director’s privilege since “The Darjeeling Limited.” .."But as entertaining as it is to look at “Isle of Dogs,” I couldn’t get past Anderson’s usual clumsiness when dealing with minorities. This is a film where a character is literally whitewashed, an act that makes him more agreeable afterwards. “Isle of Dogs” treats this as a sight gag. It plays more like a confession."

Each of these three aforementioned film reviews has a problematic dichotomy that begs for a critical examination of its own.

When Seitz notes in his review on “Set it Up,” that the “film plays differently on characters who are African-American and Chinese-American, and therefore had to fight their way into a corporate workplace that welcomed most white people of a certain social class” he either egregiously assumes that all African-Americans and Chinese-Americans followed the same path of struggle or erroneously posits that every film must represent the quintessential member of the minority they depict on screen. This flies in the face of decades of cultural writing that advocates for putting people of color in leadership positions without portraying it as a big deal.

“Tag”, is a similarly innocent comedy about a group of adult friends who have played the playground game continuously for 30 years. Kenny writes: “No one should be surprised, I think, to learn that the actual group of men on which this movie is based are in fact all white. It’s not so much that I’m under the impression that tag is a game most sensible persons of color might consider corny. It’s more that, well, try to imagine a group of African American men feeling safe enough to play "adult" tag at their places of work or various other public spaces. You get the idea?" Kenny is now calling any film that features white people on screen having fun without overtly commenting on racial relations in the U.S. racially insensitive. By that same logic, is Ed Helms’ character required to comment on the Flint Water crisis or the lack of drinking water in the Third World when he gets thrown into a pool?

Henderson’s review of “Isle of Dogs” first and foremost attempts to posit Wes Anderson as a controversial figure when no such controversy existed. In addition to Roger Ebert’s neutral review on the film’s cultural context, a glance at Rotten Tomatoes shows a general critical consensus that took issue with the film’s redundancy but had no such issue with Wes Anderson’s whiteness. In contrast, Henderson never gives Wes Anderson the wiggle room to safely delve into the territory of the Japanese director he’s trying to pay homage to in the film. His review echoes those accusing Anderson of sloppy cultural appropriation which is part of the newfound trend of narrowly defining cultural appropriation as a red flag signaling malicious intentions despite the fact that many have pointed out cultural appropriation has been a necessary ingredient of cultural development that has rarely discriminated between oppressor or oppressed.

This is just the tip of the ice berg for some essays I'm trying to write at the moment following my publication last year film criticism being overly based on identity politics. I look forward to continuing to publish more.