TV Reviews: Hollywood (Ryan Murphy's latest), Upload, Waco

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So much good TV! The list of what I'm watching is growing exponentially with Ozark's 3rd season and Dead To Me's 2nd season starting to jump into my rotation on top of Castle Rock's 2nd season.

The following YouTube video covers (in order) Unorthodox (Netflix), Hollywood (Netflix), Upload (Amazon Prime), Waco (Paramount Network), and Middleditch and Schwartz (Netflix). Two of these are covered in my last post. I'll cover the other three in more detail below along with "Never Have I Ever" which is a gem. 

Hollywood (Netflix)-Ryan Murphy's umpteenth flashy TV show tells the story of the Golden Age of Hollywood through the memoir of  (for lack of a better word) Hollywood pimp Scotty Bowers. Bowers opened a gas station in Los Angeles after the war where he arranged for discrete sexual liaisons for a number of men and women including many closeted celebrities. He wrote about it in a tell-all book that's a loose guide here. Key word is "loose" here. Bowers story is flattened in the service of the story that Ryan Murphy and crew really want to tell which is an intersectionalist revisionist story about how great inclusion is.

The series has been unfavorably compared to Tarantino's revisionist yarns because he's not as strong of a storyteller to pull off the difficult tightrope. Aside from bad storytelling, another charge is that his often-sensationalist bents have proved offensive here as he's dishonoring Rock Hudson by completely making up his backstory. Personally, I'm more shocked by Scotty Bowers who's pimping industry was more like sex slavery: His sex workers don't have the option of refusing down jobs that make them uncomfortable. When the Scotty Bowers figure (Dylan McDermott) makes the case to one of his straight workers that he should service gay people because they have to live in the shadows and this will make them happy (yes that really happens), it's a pretty egregious conflation between the kind of sex positivity and a progressive work space.

But the series suffers more from not having a deep focus. I can push aside the blatant progressive messaging but if it's not trying to say the kinds of things that have been said a hundred times in better ways ("Glow", "Orange is the New Black," etc.), this is a show that glides on the belief that just showing people in Hollywood of yore is enough of a story. It's borderline watchable but not highly memorable.

Upload (Netflix)-I've never particularly found the idea of human consciousness particularly appealing. "Transcendence" and "Ghost in the Shell" are among my least favorite films (you'd think I would have learned my mistake the first time) out and I found the gobbledy gook about how the mind works in "Lucy" to be dull. But if the mind isn't the sole focus of the show, then we're onto something.

From the guy who adapted the Office to American television (Greg Daniels), this show is so ironclad in its world-building that there aren't many plot holes to fish around in. Unlike "Star Trek", this is a world that broaches the topic of post-scarcity realistically.

The basic gist is a guy dies in a version of the future where people’s consciousnesses can get uploaded into a sort-of virtual retirement community.

Getting into this man-made version of heaven is like shopping for a retirement community and the dead rely on their living families to continually pay the bills.  Our protagonist (Robbie Arnell) is a man whose ticket to Lakeview (a place that looks like Alberta’s Lake Louise, see below) is sponsored by a rich girlfriend (Allegra Edwards) who’s um...let's just say she's got issues. His single mom can’t afford to pay his bills putting him in a situation where he's indentured to her. It's creepy. Like Alexander Payne's underrated film "Downsizing", this is a series that explores how a humanity-saving solution doesn't necessarily solve socio-economic disparity.

The series features a good love triangle and a solid group of supporting characters including a shallow self-proclaimed best friend (Kevin Bigley), a kid who died at the age of 11 (Rhys Slack) who is stuck in the afterlife that way, and typical office politics for the people who operate the system in the real world. It's not particularly funny, but it's breezy, thoughtful and deeply effective as light science-fiction.

Waco (Paramount)-Like "People vs OJ Simpson" (one of Ryan Murphy's best projects), this story is written in history and the series is about revisiting something we already remember in the news from a distanced lens. Think prestige TV's version of I Love the 90s with better actors. And damn, this is a fine ensemble with Andrea Riseborough ("Birdman"), Paul Sparks ("Greatest Showman"), John Leguazimo, Melissa Benoist ("Glee", "Whiplash"), Keiran Culkin ("Succession") and the great Michael Shannon. At the center of it is Taylor Kitsch (Taylor who? Yeah, not sure who he is either) who plays cult leader  David Koresh.

As for portraying who's the good and bad guy, the show plays it relatively even-handedly. The show makes it pretty clear that David Koresh is a non-violent person. He and his followers horde guns which serves as a relevant commentary on how many Americans west of the Mississippi view gun rights. Michael Shannon's stand-out performance as an FBI agent in charge of the negotiation is also distanced from moral judgments because he's not the person who screwed up the situation in the first place. The central question with him is whether he'll be able to defuse the situation and that's a good ingredient to a thriller.

The show also attempts to ask what made Koresh so charismatic and I didn't leave with a clear answer. On the one hand, he unilaterally makes decisions for the group and he is the only person in the compound who gets to have sex AND that includes with all the other parishioner's wives. On the flipside, he's an ace at leading bible study. So who knows? At the end of the day, I felt that there was an answer that made sense to the characters but I didn't feel like I could actually live in those characters' shoes. That might have been the difference between a good and great show.

My Week in TV II: American Crime Story, Crashing, Superstore, Another Period

American Crime Story-House by the Lake
The main draw of this show was watching innocent, sweet Darren Criss try his hand at playing a cold serial killer. So far this show lacks any sort of thru-line except Criss’s character himself. Last week, “Random Killing” centered around the killing of a notable real estate magnate presented with little context as for the “why.” Andrew Cunanan was analyzed so little that it felt like we were meant to accept him as simply a deranged man without rhyme or reason. Did we make more progress into figuring out what makes him tick this week? Not yet, but the season is long enough that we have reason to think that the show will at least attempt to mine that territory.
In the interim, this week was a thrill of a ride that seemed unpromising at the first commercial break because it seemed like the episode tipped its hand early. These episodes seem most fun when those around Andrew don’t know he’s a serial killer so I wasn’t sure why I wanted to keep watching once that was done with. I even turned off the episode at that point, but when I returned a couple days later, I realized how wrong I was.

The episode resumed into a tense hostage situation with Andrew taking his reluctant friend/lover- and witness to the murder number one – on the road with him. Why doesn’t David scream for help and run for cover at the diner? Why doesn’t he wait until Andrew is sleeping to make a phone call? All we can say in the wake of David’s tragic end is that hindsight is 20/20.

Like past episodes, the series does an excellent job of spotlighting the tragic nature of living in this community regardless of whether they’re being hunted by a serial killer or not. The way they seek love on the DL makes them more vulnerable to being taken advantage of and the errant looks of passersby invites suspicion no matter what.

Another Period-The Olympics
This show has haphazardly thrown every famous person Helen Keller to Harriett Tubman to Sigmeund Freud to Thomas Edison to Scott Joplin into the circle of the Bellacourts regardless of plausibility. It reeks just a little of stunt casting but that’s generally a complaint to make when such stunts aren’t effective. In these cases, the intersection of the famed historic book cutout with the Bellacourts has presented an opportunity for pointed social satire: Like musicians today, the show posits that Joplin was likely aided by his historic rise through a mix of talent and being in the right place and right time promotion-wise. Similarly, the unabashed reverence that we give historical figures is challenged with Harriett Tubman and the vouyeristic possibilities that came as a result of Edison’s moving picture inventions are commented on by making Edison a snuff film pervert himself.

This week it’s Adolf Hitler. He’s derided by some critics as an easy joke target and that same school of thought translates to putting him in a historical fiction comedy. Aside from my preference for the show to focus on American figures (they jive better with this show’s take on the origins of American excess), there’s nothing much they do with him other than make him play the “who would you kill if you could go back in history game?” and, oh yes, they do give his hatred for Jews an origin story. But still, there’s nothing particularly sharp about it. On the bright side, it is a return for Brett Gelman as the shady lower class squall Hamish who apparently is a friend of the doctor. As a Jew, I can tell you that the praying they do before the Shabbat dinner is authentic Hebrew.

In other news, the incest plot between Freddie and Beatriz sister sort of gets resolved but sort of doesn’t. For my money, this thread seems like a remnant of the show’s early days when they were all over the place tonally and this is one of their ickier ideas. There’s also an archery competition which returns Helen Keller and Lillian who’s not as nasty to her fellow woman as usual. That job belongs to Brian Huskey’s character who’s gay repression has made him angrier and angrier and if seeing him get ANGRY tickles your funny bone, you might like this B-plot.

More of my writings on Another Period

Crashing-Pete and Leif/Bill Burr (Season 2 Episode 2, Season 2 Episode 3)-
There’s significantly more wiggle room in Pete Holmes approach to the rapidly oversaturating genre of comedians playing themselves when one considers that few comedians are as wet behind the ears as the Pete Holmes character. The format of using an audience surrogate who’s naïve and sweet allows us to witness all the freedom and decadence of the comedian lifestyle with enough distance that the audience is freed from complicitness.

In the season’s second episode, Pete sleeps with a woman who’s not his wife for the first time and, like many of Pete’s other misadventures, the differing view between Pete and Ally over “what last night meant” is a wake-up call that Pete is woefully unprepared for modern city life. It’s a mostly harmless encounter (I might be wrong, maybe he’ll be in therapy for this all the way through Season 4, who knows?). The distance between Pete and his friends is highlighted by the fact that his friends are much happier than he is that he slept with Ally. Also worth noting, Ally ( Jamie Lee ) looks a helluva lot like Pete’s first wife (Pete the character, that is) Lauren Lapkus that the casting doesn’t seem coincidental here.

Questions of Pete’s masculine identity are once again challenged by his host of the week Bill Burr. I have no idea who Burr (question of the week: does anyone know what Bill Burr is famous for? Does anyone want to save me the trip to IMDB?) so f--- him because he’s more toxic than Artie Lange in continually trying to turn Pete into something he’s not: a man’s man. Then again, Burr’s not that mad at Pete for his screw-up of the week, so it evens out. Although people repeatedly screwing up in epic ways is the hallmark of much of sitcom comedy, this show is too sweet to do that to its protagonist and that’s part of the charm. It’s also revealed somewhere in that Pete Holmes has a new gig as a warm-up comic for Dr. Oz so it looks like he’s at least gotten a second chance which is fitting for a show about second chances.

More on Crashing

Superstore-Groundhog Day
My general assessment of this show has been that it’s a bit overrated but it has its moments. Also some dead weight in Glenn (a waste of Mark McKinney’s talents) and Dena but this is an episode with minimal amounts of those two so that’s a plus. In fact, this was really a great episode all-around with plenty happening on the sidelines to give this place the feel of a hang-out show that it achieves in its finest moments. Jonah and Kelly handling of the announcements (with Sandra as a special guest) is the epitome of workplace goofiness that many with semi-fond experiences in the retail sector (if you were lucky enough to have a boss or two who granted you a little leeway) can relate to. Also worth asking, did anyone else see the lack of build-up to Jonah and Kelly’s romance as a missed opportunity? The show could have used just a few ounces of courtship.

While Kelly and Josh provide some levity, Garrett’s promotion provides a little impetus for self-examination. How much do the people in a place like this crave upward mobility? Most of us can relate to having worked a job like this and simultaneously wishing to be the boss while not wanting the responsibilities of the extra paperwork or coming in to the store early as the key holder. Even bigger question here: Does the show really expect us to believe that intellectually curious egghead Jonah would be content at this job for this long? When I worked at a movie theater or a tea store, the college educated kids would generally be in and out the door in a few months as they used the job as a place holder for the next big thing.

Lastly, there’s the central plot: Amy getting back in the dating scene. The plot nicely uses light-hearted comedy to approach serious challenges in the female dating experience like slut-shaming and objectification. There’s also the more universal issue of the complexities of workplace dating. Also worth noting here, I just noticed that Tate is played by Australian comedy star Josh Lawson of “House of Lies”, “Anchorman 2” and is an amazing improviser. I also just found out while looking at the photo of the Academy Awards Luncheon that Lawson got Oscar nominated this past month for his short film . Congrats!

My Week in TV Part I: LA to Vegas, 9-11, Shut Eye

 My week in TV is a more casually-phrased column I do over at a Disqus channel called the Ice Box

Credit: Vulture.com

9-1-1: The Pilot
The hype underlying this show is based on two equally baffling premises: A) That a procedural like this can be touted as high drama B) That there’s room on TV for more Ryan Murphy/Brad Falchuck shows. With the cachet of the Murphy/Falchuck brand, however, this isn’t surprising. The question is can this creative team turn a genre that’s become shorthand for unremarkable-yet-dependable into must-see TV, while avoiding the pratfalls of camp and sensationalism that started to overtake “ Glee ” in later seasons? Based on the pilot, it looks like the worse elements of the Murphy/Falchuck lore are avoided. The appearance of a baby in a sewer pipe is a bit gross but the relevant scenes exercise an admirable level of restraint towards the macabre, and hey, it’s evidently based in real life .

What the TV show does have is strong characters with potential for arcs. They’re not extremely far removed from the kinds of stock characters that pop up on whatever iteration of "CSI" or "NCIS" we’re currently on, but I trust that in the hands of these producers, big things can happen. With the show’s lead pretty boy (Oliver Stark) having two on-screen hook-ups in the first hour (and I gotta say, red-headed snake lady was H-O-T, although I’m not sure how much of it has to do with her snakes) we get the message that things have the potential to get steamy. Hell, even the (East) Asian guy (Kenneth Choi, Last Man on Earth , one of my favorite shows of 2015 ) has an active sex life. Ordinarily, those guys are cast as technical nerds. When has that been known to happen? Like many a procedural show, the pilot episode is unfortunately quite long on TV shows about, well, procedure. Ugh. Josh Krause’s relationship to Private Pretty Boy is taken straight from Ice Man’s lectures of wrecklessness towards Maverick in Top Gun. "You're Dangerous Man!"

Connie Britton, epitomizing the steely resolve needed to handle the dispatch when these bizarre things are first phoned in, is the best character in terms of most interesting POV. Hopefully, they don’t overmilk her role.

All I can say at this point is: Worth an episode 2.

LA to Vegas-The Fellowship of the Bear (Episode 3)
Despite a decent cast and a relatively novel premise, I can’t see this show reaching beyond a certain ceiling nor can I figure out why Peter Stromare is voluntarily reducing himself to a recurring TV role as a cheap Balki impression from “Perfect Strangers.” Ed Weeks’s “Mindy Project” fares a little better as he has some genuine chemistry with leading lady Kim Matula (a very charismatic lead who looks natural in high heels) as the two genuinely have some fun this week looking for his lost doll. It’s not a quest to be particularly invested in but the twist at the end made for a meaningful gesture and a comic punch. Peter Stromare’s character (Artem) gets some interaction this week with stripper Nichole (Olivia Macklin) and while the plot isn’t amazing, It helps to give them color. It’s also fun in a guilty pleasure kind of way that Nichole the stripper character is politically incorrect.

Shut Eye-First eight episodes of Second Season
One of my top shows of 2016 (see the whole list here ), it took me a while to get on board Season 2 but it’s been just as worthwhile. The show is set where the world of shady fortune telling partners intersect with the ethnic Mafioso of the Romanian-American community (AKA gypsies). I have no idea the degree with which these crime and family traditions are based in any actual research but it seems properly idiosyncratic and grounded in a sense of place to pass even if it were invented out of thin air. This show admirably juggles a lot of genres from everything from acute family drama (“Ozarks” or “The Americans”) to a mafia thriller from the POV of a man trying to get out from under their thumb, to the thrill of seeing a conman in his element (something that Jeffrey Donovan mastered in “Burn Notice”).

Season two sidesteps the climactic twist of season one (that Eduardo and Fonso are in cahoots) and gives Donovan’s character of Charlie the ability to continue his thin margin of life as if he didn’t majorly screw up. The season has a lot more pairing of Fonso (Angus Sampson) and the more impulsive Eduardo (David Zaya) and they make for an interesting due of rabble rousers. The series also features an arranged marriage through a rightfully archaic lens that’s made even more uncomfortable by the forced bride being a closeted lesbian. The only thing that doesn’t work is the plot involving Aasif Mandvi and Charlie’s supernatural abilities. If you watched the trailers for this, you’ll notice it’s one of the things used to sell the show.

Why is American Horror Story's bizarreness acceptable guilty pleasure watching?

American Horror Story came out of the gate this fall as one of the most anticipated programs. Especially in a weak fall pilot season like this, I knew AHS would be either godawful or massively engaging and that executive producers Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk would leave little middle ground.

The first season of American Horror Story had a certain set of complex rules regarding ghostdom in an extremely unlucky house where nearly everyone who lived on the premises gets murdered and then some. As someone who's not ordinarily a horror fan, the show took me to some dark and freaky places with a certain melodramatic aura characteristic of Murphy's style and that lent ambiance.

The second season, Asylum, was rife with grand potential. On top of being a period piece set in a really intriguing place (a 1950's sanitarium is the kind of thing you'd drop everything to see a History Channel documentary of), the show offered some highly intriguing castings: Jessica Lange as a sadist nun, Sarah Paulson as a steel-willed reporter (anything but her insufferable Studio 60 "comedienne" was a nice turn for her) , Joseph Fiennes as a monsignor, Chloe Sevigny being on TV at all, Zach Quinto as a court-appointed psychiatrist - and pretty much every actor delivered.

The show had a good villain in Jessica Lange's nun who would institute her reign of terror unchecked and a decent wild card in James Cromwell's Nazi doctor, but soon pretty much everyone started turning evil to the point where the show had about seven too many villains and to say that the balance between antagonists and protagonists was off would be a massive understatement. Suddenly, Lily Rabe was possessed by the devil, Zach Quinto (who, for the first time in recent memory, stood a chance of playing a good guy on TV) got possessed by his Sylar character from Heroes, there were aliens and mutant bears (I really wish either lions or tigers were included into the plot so that I could add an "oh my" at the end), and Joseph Fiennes' monsignor became guilty by association because he supported Cromwell's Nazi experiments. At least I think he did. After a while, I stopped keeping track. Was I really supposed to?

At some point the plot became secondary to the proverbial song and dance of the horror genre (hopefully that wasn't too lazy of a Glee reference) and Falchuk and Murphy were clearly having too much fun playing around to pay attention to the important details.


A message board commenter (thsholiver) I came across today wrote:
"I don't know about everyone else, but I at least watch the show for the batshit insanity, and any plot they can work in that doesn't get in the way of that is just a bonus."

The problem is that as the plot drifts down the list of priorities in AHS's storytelling kit, the show gets more and more forgettable. I remember last season for a few strong performances, and a random hodgepodge of standout scenes. Surely, the show benefits from Jessica Lange's "Name Game" Youtube clip but it would be nice if the actual plot was one of its strong points.

 
What's worse is that the show has such great potential with plots and characters. This season, the show takes place in New Orleans at a school for the witches. I'm not into True Blood, Vampire Diaries, Twilight (I don't even know if witches are in those shows so this could be an awful analogy, sorry) or whatever the hot show about supernatural teenagers is these days, but I AM interested to see a story about hormonal-crazed supernatural witches in the hands of Murphy, Falchuk and a stellar cast of Tessa Farminga, Sara Paulson, Jessica Lange, Gabourey Sidibe, Lily Rabe, and Kathy Bates.

And the show got off to a great start. But then there was a ridiculous plot in which Evan Peters's dead body parts are sewn together with that of other bodies in the morgue by a Tessa Farminga's Zoe who only knew him 15 minutes. The romantic notion of Zoe wanting to bring a guy you briefly fell in love with to life wasn't the problem so much that she thought it would be a good idea to sneak into a morgue and bring her quasi-boyfriend back to life by sewing his head and other dead body parts together.

If that wasn't enough, this week Gabourey Sidibe's character had sex with a minotaur this week. Trust me, if you didn't see the episode or don't know what I'm talking about here, it's as weird as you would have imagined.

The show is rougly 80% solid story plotting and 20% some errant writer just throwing weird shit into the script to see how much he can get away. In other words, the plot is starting to get derailed by that 20% batshit insanity and, even worse,  I'm starting to get the feeling that batshit insanity is going to start winning the day over a solid plot from here on out. How is that going to be memorable?

Glee starts a new season

Glee is a show that invites the viewer to celebrate the here and now of the show without thinking too hard about how that specific episode ties coherently into any other episode. The list of "headscratchers" (or plot holes) listed under Glee on TVTropes.org is immense. One would figure that the majority of Glee viewers have decided that the best way to enjoy the show is not to take it at face value.

But to become invested enough into the show that you're at the "never want to miss an episode" level, you have to understand that the show does have an internal logic that simply doesn't exist in normal space or time.

The show's about the rush of school from the perspective of a student caught up in the whirlwind of it. When you're in high school, popularity often feels like the be-all-end-all goal of your experience.
 
You might go through high school without ever getting slushied, but the (admittedly, often exxagerated) fear that you'll get picked on for not being in the in-crowd is often very real and almost universal.

It's true that there might be a lot of colleges out there and viewers thought it was silly that Kurt and Rachel thought their life was over if they didn't get into NYADA and Finn didn't think he'd be able to go to college as if FAFSA didn't exist. But to a high school kid who doesn't know any better, getting into your first choice college choice seems like the most important thing in the world.

Glee's decision to continue the characters past high school could be seen as a cheap and easy way out. In fact, a quick glance at this past summer's entertainment news confirms that keeping Kurt and Rachel on the show was the cheap and easy way out. At the same time, the decision to keep Kurt and Rachel makes complete sense from the aforementioned point of view.  I'd even argue that there'd be less truth to a high school show that graduated its seniors and released them from the cast.

Again, high school experiences are highly varied but anyone who had a relatively good high school experience knows that high school doesn't end when you graduate. A part of you stays there for quite a while and there's often an internal struggle between how much to keep in touch with old friends verse making new ones. In that vein, everyone who goes back to homecoming freshman weekend feels like Kurt did when Sue Sylvester commented on how pathetic he was for sticking around.

So while there wasn't anything notably outside my expectations with this week's Rachel subplot -- which can be condensed to Rachel finds New York is tougher than she thought -- the general sentiment of her arc felt true to the show. Not to mention, the show hit these themes very nicely with Kurt.

As for Kate Hudson, it's kind of nice that the part of resident bitch/foil has shifted away from Sue Sylvester but because she doesn't have that tongue-in-cheek delivery or funny dialogue, its kind of a waste.

As for things back at McKinley, the Glee club lost Finn, Kurt, Quinn, Puck, Rachel, Sanatana, Chang, and Rory. Of the remainder, Artie and Tina have never been particularly interesting, Sam's "I'm secretly poor" angle has run its course; and Brittany and Blaine become less interesting with the loss of Santana and Kurt. In this sense, the episode's theme about who to replace Rachel is apt because it doesn't seem like a lot of star power is left.

Fortunately, the newcomers look promising on the whole. I'm disappointed to see the poor angle played again with Marlee but the lunch lady plot was fairly effective and the actress plays the part in a very eager and genuine way which works for me.

Several aspects of Wade's plot were troublesome to me. First off, his desire to be a drag queen seems incompatible with transferring to a public high school: Wasn't Dalton the paragon of tolerance and McKinley its antithesis? It's also worth pointing out that cross-dressing is not allowed in most school dress codes. More to the point, the transformation of Wade to Unique was more ideal to a multi-episode arc. His desire to dress as a woman was insignificant and just plain weird because the why of it wasn't explained and (admittedly, I did likely miss the episode(s) where Wade debuted) and its hard to get invested in the struggle if it is surmounted within the first episode. It also does a great disservice to the LGBT movement because it's a missed opportunity to explain why someone his age would cross-dress.

The character of Jake Puckerman (Jacob Artist) is a little different than his half-brother Noah: Although they both had difficulty with authority, one's an underachiever, the other's an overachiever, and I appreciate that distinction. I also should note that I read no preview of any kind for the episode and did not see that plot twist coming.

Elsewhere, there's a new bitchier version of Quinn that will pick up the venom as Sue softens up. Although Kitty seems like a flat character and will probably remain so, her addition could be the show's saving grace.

Personally, I stopped watching Glee somewhere in the back 9 of last season. I started cringing as Quinn and Rachel became besties, Sue resolved to help the Glee Club, and Karofsky revealed his crush on Kurt. It was essentially the equivalent of the group high five at the end of a Saved by the Bell episode where the kids all learned a lesson and everyone's friends again. To give the closing episodes of a three year arc a joyous tone wasn't necessarily a bad idea, but this tone was stretched out over several episodes which took away from the drama.

In short, throwing in a new foil and having the Glee club fall from grace is what the show needed. Sue was getting too soft and even this show should have a limit over how many times they can revert Sue to her original grouchy form before believability is strained. I'm not sure if this new cast of characters can provide the necessary character drama to make Glee work this season, but it's a welcome change and a good start.