My Week in TV Part VII Corporate "The Fall"

Corporate (Comedy Central)-“The  Fall”-The popular black comedy closes out a second season without showing any discernible changes from the first and that’s mostly a good thing. Other black comedies like “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” and “Shameless” have introduced serialization, but this show has a much simpler formula and there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that when it gets the job done. There’s also the fact that the thematic point of the show is that work is an endless purgatory so while mixing things up would  be nice, it’s slightly truer to the show to keep Matt and Jake constant.

This week’s episode, being a season finale, had me going for a while. The episode begins with Christian scaring his employees with an apocalyptic announcement just for kicks (another standard of the show: Christian is one of the most casually horrible people on TV). In the hierarchy of being able to do what you want, Christian has almost sadistic reign with John and Kate enjoying some partial degree of hell-raising privilege. One of the clever things about this show is that although  Matt and Jake are middle management, you rarely see them enjoying the perks of being able to domineer anyone under them (despite the fact that people like Baron and Grace exist). In certain cases where you do see them with an underling, Matt and Jake are often unsuccessful in controlling them.

In any case, the next development in the story is slightly confusing: It’s not exactly the end of the world but Christian decides to begin a marketing campaign which, for extremely tangential reasons, cause Matt, Jake, and Grace to act as if it is the end of the world. At this scale of comedy, it's not worth worrying about.

Jake quits his job and tries to do every Bohemian yuppie idea that fills his head—open up a record company, start a bar with carefully curated music, become a chef—before realizing that there’s a group of roughly identical yuppies with the exact same ideas in their head. The joke of Jake’s lack of originality is a great example of how comedy can be presented visually with a little bit of innovative thinking.

In the interim, Matt seems to have an inverse trajectory to Jake’s unemployment slump riding a magical high. This is another case where presentation- an affirming montage of Matt ascending up the corporate ladder and seeming to enjoy himself for once- makes the difference. 

But the scene stealer as always as Grace who has a list of creepily specific people she wants to sleep with because it’s “the end of the world”(which, again, it isn’t). Technicalities aside, it’s a lot of fun to witness this character, who’s generally been portrayed as asexual, suddenly become the South Asian Wilt Chamberlain.

The disadvantage of an upcoming third season is the lack of room to take many of these characters anywhere else. But as "Seinfeld" and most sitcoms in the 20th century have demonstrated, the status quo can work wonders if the comedic beats are strong enough. 

My week in TV VI: Umbrella Academy Pilot: Wes Anderson Meets Quentin Tarantino

Credit: Comingsoon.net

Umbrella Academy (Netflix)-“Pilot”- Encapsulating the feel of this show is so easy, I can do it in five words: Wes Anderson meets Quentin Tarantino.

When some freak accident in mother nature impregnates and induces labor in countless women across the globe on the same day, a shady rich man travels the world to adopt as many of the kids as he can. He ends up with seven (six of whom are still alive) then trains them in an ornate mansion to use their superpowers, but what else is new? There’s a parody on the internet by the wonderfully film literate You Tuber Patrick Williams:  “What if Wes Anderson directed the X-Men” which hits this show right on the nose.

The found family here feels like a near facsimile of the co-dependently depressed “Royal Tenenbaums”; the adult sibling who’s trapped in a kid’s body (character’s name on IMDB is listed as “Number Five”) is dressed exactly like Max from “Rushmore”; and the lavishly delicate interiors recall any number of Anderson’s films.

But as you’re thinking the show is just ripping off one of the most idiosyncratic auteurs of the 90s (although technically “Tenenbaums” was 2001), the penultimate act of the pilot, Number Five goes into a diner and casually murders (and rewatch this clip, it’s not self-defense but rather gleeful brutally) five SWAT  team members while lights flicker, fast edits ensue, the victims’ last gasps fill the soundscape and the song ”Istanbul Was Once Constantinople” plays in the background. The sensory overload and the glorified violence recall Tarantino and it’s even more jarring here.

From the pilot, the show has a lot of questions left unanswered and Mary J Blige, supposedly the season’s villain, hasn’t yet made an appearance. The other recognizable name in the credits, Ellen Page, works well as a cog in the ensemble.

Despite the stylistic “been there done that” feeling, there are moments of inspiration that come from sheer stylistic  boldness. The montage of Ellen Page’s character playing the violin, for example, while the other protagonists are introduced is endlessly rewatchable.

My Week in TV Part V: Those Who Can't: "Escape Room"

Welcome back to my Week in TV series, where I take a single week of TV and review everything I watch. Thishas taken an extremely long time and this episode aired about six weeks ago but I'm thrilled to get this in in time for the season finale. Let's hope "Those Who Can't" gets renewed for a fourth season. It's a great match for TruTV. With three TV shows left to write, I'm slowly but surely making my way through the series. Stay tuned!

Those Who Can’t (TruTV)-“Escape Room”-Far more than in the first season, this show has become about terrible people (a la “Seinfeld” or “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia”) who are not just oblivious but downright destructive to their environment. At the same time, the episode points out the flaws of such a categorization: If Sweens (Jerry Minor, one of SNL’s better one-season wonders) thinks that “the quartet” is the scourge of the school’s well-being, he needs to cast a wider net.  Lesley is running high-end rackets; Rod (despite one episode where he went clean) was fired for defiling the school shed and showing up drunk, the doctor twins are a pharmacy for illegal drugs, and there’s the creepy guy with the cats. There’s also the problem that Fairbell is too mentally deficient to truly be categorized as a trouble maker. This seems to be a common trope in TV such as Jason Mendoza (“The Good Place”), Amir (“Jake and Amir”), or Matt (“NewsRadio”) and none of those shows really deal with the characters as if they need to be treated for mental illness.

Moving on, Sweeney makes a power play to get “the quartet” fired through isolating them through an imaginary escape room team-building exercise and then mobilizing the staff to air out their grievances to Quinn. As can be expected, Quinn’s man crush on Loren and company hinders his objectivity. On top of that, he really wants to do an escape room exercise of his own which is a comic riff that last throughout the entire episode and gets funnier as it goes along.

Once in the escape room, the gang pretty immediately resort to cheating and immediate destruction: A pretty literal manifestation of how bad these characters have become. Here’s where I’m starting to think having the gang at least try to solve the puzzle might have been a better use of a plot about an escape room. Use what you got, people! Then again, there’s a certain shock value that it took the group precisely zero seconds to resort to cheating. Comedy is funny sometimes in that there aren’t necessarily wrong answers (which makes me kind of superfluous, huh?).

What’s more important here is the dynamics between the group as the hierarchy of the characters (Loren/Shoemaker > Abby > Fairbell) carries through their interactions as well as the topic of who was and wasn’t invited to the party.

Meanwhile, Leslie steps it up (always a good thing) in a rare act of selflessness and advocates for the quartet as the union rep in some of the episode’s best dialogue. The day of course is saved by none other than Rod who’s discovered in a backroom under the impression that he’s in a consensual relationship with the school mascot costume.

Aside from an uneventful second act (basically the gang breaking things), this episode represents Sweeney as a worthy foil. Better luck next week, Sweens.

My Week in TV Part IV: Miracle Workers

Credit: FilmGeorgia

Miracle Workers (TBS)-Six Days (Episode 4)-Simon Rich demonstrated an ability to make out-of-the-box comedy in “Man Seeking Woman” and if anyone’s going to make a televised response to ride the coat tails of “The Good Place”, he’s a pretty fitting choice. A version of heaven overrun with bureaucratic rabbit holes and enigmatically incompetent officials raises comparisons to “The Good Place” (particularly, the first season) but as the series has progressed, Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil” seems like a more apt reference with all the anachronistic technology and emphasis on bureaucratic overload.

Most of my problems with the series are logistics but they are more nit picks than substantial plot holes that don’t really affect my enjoyment fortunately. There are fair too many easter eggs to enjoy as the show takes us through these labyrinthine delights. The highlight of the week in the humor department was seeing the past lives of three central angels: Sanjay was a cool prince, Eliza was ……[wait for it]….an ersatz Xena Warrior Princess, and Craig was…..[drumroll]…. a caveman who ate dirt in a bog.  The escalation and comic suspense here was priceless and it helps that these comic set pieces fill in blanks to build up this world.

My main irritation was initially the fact that God should have been easy to manipulate. As a leader who has been granted a dangerous amount of power, Steve Buscemi’s version of God calls to mind various interpretations of Presidents 43 and 45: Leaders with unfathomable amounts of stupidity who couldn’t supply the brainpower for the position without considerate staff assistance. And the truth is those leaders are highly easy to manipulate by staff members withholding papers from their desk or foreign leaders appealing to their flattery. Because I had a rooting interest in not seeing the world blow up and preventing our heroes (Geraldine Viswanathan and Danielle Radcliffe) reassigned to single molecules for all eternity, I started to wonder why no one was resisting God’s harmful idiocy.

In the past couple episodes, there have been encouraging signs that it is possible to outwit God and contain his awfulness. Craig (Radcliffe) manages to spare Tim Meadows’ life and Rosie (Lolly Adefope) manages to pass off God to a human so she can get her work done (although it’s entirely possible she’s as lazy as God is). Besides the satisfaction of God (at least this version of him) get his comeuppance, it also levels out the stakes quite a bit.

The central premise this week is a little more in line with “Man Seeking Women” where the episode is driven by a gimmick. God decides to find a new prophet and the process is played out like a match on Tinder. The talent of Simon Rich’s methodology is that pretty much every line of dialogue can be read in both absurdist scenarios: Consistent with both a pseudo-romantic relationship between man and deity; and the biblical history of the relationship between prophets and God.

This is a dense episode, however, and it’s quite admirable that the urgency of the world exploding hasn’t taken a pause so that God can get his friendship on with a prophet. In fact, this might be the most meaningful episode for Craig yet as his central conflict—feeling important – is dealt with more directly. Sanjay has largely served as a foil rather than a direct antagonist so having the two having a TGIF-like talk about how much they value each other isn’t as off-base as it might same.

And then there are the two socially awkward love birds around whose fate the universe might rest. It does seem easy on the surface for these two to kiss but real life shows that it’s not as easy as it looks for most people if there’s any pressure and I’d say two weeks counts. Factor in that these two are on the more socially awkward end of the spectrum and that there are going to be other guys in the dating pool to distract you (see episode 2) and there’s enough to keep the suspense. The latest obstacle is the dying grandma and it’s a good place to close the chapter.

Next week, the IMDB description indicates an emphasis on Rosie. She’s been the hardest to get a handle so it's about time.

The 25 Best Performances of 2018 in Film

1.       Ethan Hawke, First Reformed-What’s most impressive is that there are no overtly dramatic shouting monologues when you feel the character really has something to say. You can feel him bottling it up inside. 

2.       Rachel Weisz, Disobedience-The performance is helped along by the absence of a score in some places. The soundscape (mirroring a horror film to some degree) matches the performance really well and there’s also the fact that Weisz has to play discomfort in the first half without revealing too much of a larger truth (her past attraction to McAdams’ character)

3.       Christian Bale, Vice-It boils down largely to “It’s Christian Bale, what do you expect?” There’s a lot of nuance in playing Bale

4.       Rachel Weisz, The Favourite-The stand-out in this film because she’s so devious and fun. If Emma Stone donned an accent, it might have been more of a contest

5.       Mahershala Ali, Green Book-I feel like accent-wise he Sidney Poitiered it up a wee bit too much and I could sense inconsistencies accent-wise, so deducting a little for that. Other than that, it’s a tour-de-force performance worthy of an Oscar. Obviously, it should be a lead but the marketing team at Universal was smart enough to place him in a weak field where there’d be no question he could win with all the fluctuations of a long season

6.       Kiki Layne, If Beale Street Could Talk-In particular, I remember the indelible montage of her working long days behind a retail counter while pregnant and then succumbing to labor

7.       Alessandro Nivola, Disobedience-“You are free!” So much subtlety in this performance and so many uncomfortable situations. “Disobedience” and “The Favourite” were easily the most challenging and successfully acted films of the year

8.       Rachel McAdams, Disobedience-McAdams’s Oscar nomination came from being elevated by the prestige of starring in sn eventual Best Picture winner in a week year. This is miles above that role. 

9.       Rami Malek, Bohemian Rhapsody-I was originally happy to see him win an Oscar but upon rewatching this film a second time on an airplane, BORRRING. I believe I was so blind to its flaws on the first watch because I knew nothing about Queen and they are a really interesting story. Mercury was an ethnic and sexual outliar to his time while gaining exalted status as a rock God and he was also intellectually ahead of his time. If you already are aware of Queen the novelty wears off fast and that applies for the performance too. However, there is a certain multi-directional charisma Malek bought to the role that helped move it along. I was planning on ranking him higher but A) He didn’t sing and B) He has a certain naivette in the first half of the film that sort of leaves more questions than it answers.

10.   Ben Foster, Leave No Trace-Proud to brag here that I attended a screening with Foster appearing afterwards in Q &A. Since the days of “Big Trouble” and “X-Men: The Last Stand”, I’ve been a fan of this guy.  He generally has a look that gets him cast in baddies or rough-and-tumble guys.

11.   Viola Davis, Doubt-I’m not as much of a fan lately of Davis for reasons that have to do with her (publicly disowning “The Help)  and reasons absent (the attention she gets in comparison to costars), but It was a creative choice to grant her a BAFTA nomination. As the lead, she plays a key role in elevating a genre film to a work with the kind of socio-economic  that might get the Oscars talking.

12.   Cynthia Evro, Bad Times at El Royale-Aside from her wonderful singing voice, she brings the fear and tension and when she smashes that bottle over the dude’s  head (it would spoil it to identify the victim of her smash but I left a hint there), it’s a show-stopper of a scene. This film has a very strong ensemble

13.   Jon Hamm, Beirut-Squinting at intelligence reports, ruminating over high-pressure decisions, talking with the authority of a well-versed operative against various diplomats, this is the kind of stuff they gave Claire Danes Emmys for in “Homeland” and Hamm deserves at least a sliver of the same attention here for a fine performance in a film that opened at the wrong time of year. Like Viola Davis, the movie’s ability to transcend genre rests entirely on him.

14.   Regina King, If Beale Street Could Talk-An excellent choice for Best Supporting Actress if they’re not going to go with Weisz. The scene where she pleads to the Puerto Rican for her son-in-law’s life is that showstopping moment an Oscar campaign needs for the highlight reel but she’s present in every scene.

15.   Emma Stone, The Favourite-This film is a collection of great scenes and she had a number of standout moments I can’t deny. If she put just a bit more work into an accent or just felt more of the period, I could have felt like she was carrying more of her weight.

16.   Olivia Coleman, The Favourite-It’s always nice to see the Oscar prognosticators be made fools of on Oscar night. After all, the spirit of the event is to be elated when a name is called on the big night and those prognosticators try to mathematically shortcut the process and suck the fun out of it. Besides, Olivia Coleman has been a vibrant up-and-comer who has enhanced everything she’s done and Glenn Close isn’t owed anything just because she’s been nominated before. However, the screen time was a bit short to get all worked up about.  

17.   Colin Farrell, Widows-I’m not one of those types who goes around saying “I’m gonna write a screenplay someday” but I occasionally have imaginary movie ideas I’m developing in my head and one of them is about an apathetic politician exactly like the kind Colin Farrell played in this film which is kind of creepy yet remarkable. One way to measure a good supporting performance is if you want to see a whole film developed about the side character and in this case, yes.

18.   Tim Blake Nelson, Ballad of Buster Scruggs-If this singing cowboy had the whole film to himself, I could say it having some kind of Jack-Sparrow-like potential in terms of making a dent in pop culture and getting action figures and the like.

19.   Thomasin McKenzie, Leave No Trace-I remember it being a great movie with a solid relationship in the center, but I don’t have that sensory memory so many months  later of what this performance felt like.

20.   Marina del Taverna, Roma-Is the “d” capitalized or lower-case. Discuss amongst yourselves (or look it up)

21.   Viggo Mortensen, Green Book-A bit stereotypically Italian but f the Green Book critics who are continuing to perpetuate the myth that the movie’s inaccurate. I’m assuming Mortensen did his homework

22.   Jeff Bridges, Bad Times at El Royale-After seeing Jeff Bridges in interviews, I have a sneaking suspicion that this seven-time Oscar nominee has just been playing variations of his stoned hippie self for a long time. I’ve seen four of his seven Oscar-nominated performances and have been unimpressed.

23.   Michael Palin, Death of Stalin-What a national treasure. His indecisive pickiness is a great contrast to this unique film

24.   Lakieth Stanfield, Sorry to Bother You-A terrible and obnoxious movie, but credit where credit is due.

25.   Sandra Bullock, Ocean’s 8-Yes, I think she’s more charming than the smug George Clooney here. This is a playfully fun part and she has a slyness I like

Others I was considering:
Nancy Garcia Garcia, Roma; Donald Glover, Solo; Steve Carell, Vice; Jeffrey Tambour, Death of Stalin; Rufus  Sewell, Death of Stalin, Lewis Pullman, Bad Times at El Royale; John  David Washington, BlacKkKlansman; Amanda Seyfried, First Reformed

My Week in TV Part III: Crashing Season 3 Premiere

This is a series where I capture a single week of TV watching but it's taken me over a month to get through that single week and it's shifting quite a bit as I go, so essentially this is just another TV review

Crashing (HBO)-Season Premiere-“Jaboukie”-As I often say, loving a past season of a show doesn’t necessarily translate to an equal enthusiasm in the present. Because of the increasing gaps in time between seasons, and the subsequent efforts needed to refamiliarize myself, it’s never a given that the content will hit me the same way.

I wrote a gushing fan letter to a producer involved with the show because the show’s second season meant a lot to me and if nothing else, we’ll always have season 2.

However, it’s going to be difficult to tell if Pete is still going to retain his sweetness which is a key part of what makes the show so refreshing.

Let’s look at this week’s story: Comedian protagonist goes on the road a lot where he has gets some laughs, enjoys a relative comfort and some dispassionate (yet loud) sex with a venue booker. He feels a bit lonely in a new way—lost through the grind of travel, so he invites a young comedian with him on the road for the rest of his tour. The new protégé picks up steam and when they get to New York City for comedian protagonist’s audition at a prime comedy spot, the protégé ends up impressing the booker so much that he displacing the now devastated comedian. It’s a solid plot that hinges a good twist, but the question: Is this sufficiently a Pete Holmes story?

It’s inevitable that Pete’s naiveté will disappear as he becomes more experienced but the show’s success relies on him retaining the same character in his core. Both Pete’s treatment of Ally and the way his sexual encounter is framed as uber-casual raise questions. In the case of Pete and Ally, the version of Pete I was hoping to see was the one who awkwardly felt compelled to convey his apologies to Ally and had the conviction to act on it. In the case of the sexual encounter, this should be big news. Sexual encounter #2 was a moral crisis and an interpersonal obstacle course. Maybe not knowing any details of sexual encounter #3 (or possibly more, who knows how many post-Ally rodeos he’s had?) is the point: It’s all just a blur to him. Personally, I want the scoop!

The upshot here is that this is only the season opener. This is one of the better examples where the episodic review format isn’t as great without context.

My Week in TV Part II: The Other Two: Chase Goes to a High School Dance

The Other Two (Comedy Central)-Chase Goes to a High School Dance-In the sense that one of the morals of “People vs OJ Simpson” is that O.J. Simpson (possibly mentally ill from concussions) is the least important  character in the story, I’m starting to get the sense that Chase is a meaningless node by which all the other cogs work around in the wheel that is his support system. It’s a solid concept and the four others cogs—the overly eager manager (Ken Marino), the menopausal mom seeking her positivity (Molly Shannon), and the two flailing adult siblings (Helene Yorke and Drew Tarver)—are all interesting enough combinations of comedy and pathos to carry the load. The first three episodes were strong enough to have me thinking this show had “30 Rock” potential in terms of comic flow. Credit here goes to the interplay with the image consultant (Wanda Sykes) and Cary as they keep flip-flopping on whether gay is good or not.

This episode is a bit of a step back. The idea of Streeter forming a boy band is a long-range joke that loses steam by the time it gets to the punchline, because it carries over to a second scene. Considering it’s obvious that the children would never want to leave a school dance to go to a library just so they can listen to an extremely inappropriate man tell them something they’re going to reject anyway, why not just let the joke be how creepily Streeter comes off? Another problem with the episode is even if Chase is not a dynamic character, the absurdity of his situation isn’t put to much use here. This is due to reduced screen time on Chase which is a balancing act.  

One of the main brick jokes of the show (a less generous term might be “gimmick”; a more generous term might be hook or calling card) is that the two siblings are living parallel lives as evidenced through the split screen of their similar activities that open and close the episodes. But it’s a bit more complex than that: Brooke is more unformed on a surface level; Cary seems visibly more capable of passing as an adult on the inside but he has now shown an ugliness on the inside. 

At least that’s the way the two are diverging. Brooke’s cardinal sin at the beginning of the show was sloth. She was initially too lazy to take a job but as Chase’s assistant, she was on her feet diligently playing damage control to Chase’s double Lorraine (Jackie Hoffman) and out-Streetering Streeter. In contrast, Cary has gone from being understandably frustrated that he has to answer questions as “the gay guy” by his boss to cruelly backstabbing a gay kid at the school dance and not thinking twice about it. In the last episode (I watched) Cary deals with the awkwardness of getting it on with his sexually confused roommate by chastising his roommate not only for his lack of honesty but from everything from his taste in TV to how he looks with a shirt off. It’s petty but the problem is it’s inseperable from the fabric of the show because his Seinfeld-like detachment is an antipathy. Who knows if the show is even aware of how ugly Cary comes off?  Nonetheless, it’s a little early to tell if this is a definitive thesis for what’s happening or what will come.

The show did have a few high points: Mainly Lorraine causing trouble by doing the exact opposite of what she was supposed to do. If there was ever an occasion for a great one-off guest star to shake things up, this would be it.

Still have faith in this show. On to next week.