Resident Alien Review (SyFy)

A pretty stereotypical alien (Alan Tyduk) crashes in Colorado and is diverted from his original plan of destroying the Earth. In the opening scene, he kills doctor Harry Vanderspiegle and morphs his unseemly-looking body (closely resembling 1950s serials) into an alien. His plan? Patiently wait it out in Vanderspiegle's isolated cabin while retrieving the parts needed to repair his ship. He even watches Law and Order for months on end to learn English in case he needs to interact with anyone. 

The glitch? Because Vanderspiegle was a doctor, he's summoned for an emergency forensic call when the local doctor gets murdered and he has to fill in. Before long, he is forced to take up the position full-time (until a new doctor can be hired) and must survive social interaction with the locals while trying to cover his tracks for murder and fixing his original ship. Also on his to do list: Show up on time for work and blow up the Earth.

More than anything else, Harry resembles Chance from the novel 1979 film "Being There" in that he's a complete blank slate. One couple with marital issues thinks that he's not a murderous alien but rather a key to saving their marriage, the mayor (one half of the aforementioned couple) thinks he's a trusted therapist, the nurse takes him to be a trusted friend, a libidinous bartender looking for Mr. Right thinks it could be him and the lost goes on. 

Even Vanderspiegle's ex-wife doesn't realize her ex-husband is much different in character and wants to give their marriage another chance. The mystery over whether he is moved by his new friendships and encounters with the humans of Patience, Colorado enough to not destroy humanity? This is a question that keeps us wanting because Harry's character arc is as rough as sandpaper. There's a great use of the unreliable narrator trope in that his words are frequently juxtaposed with his actions on camera. Similar to the way the characters in Patience might see him, he's not particularly easy to gauge. 

The show takes a few episodes to pick up but it has a really strong expanded universe and takes on a number of issues with admirable subtlety There's a Native American nurse (Sara Tomko) who touches upon First Nations issues (her father is played by Gary Farmer who is from the Cayuga nation); a former Olympian (Alice Wetterlund) who has battled the depression that often comes when an athletic career at the highest levels comes to a close; and a lonely sheriff (Corey Reynolds) who learns to appreciate his (Elizabeth Bowen) deputy the way one would a significant other. There's also a couple (Levi Fisher and Meredith Garrelson) that has marital issues that are played with impressively subtle tones. Their marriage is portrayed with such nuance that the audience sees it the way a friend might see a crumbling marriage from the outside. 

Most importantly, the show is never limited by its science fiction roots. It aims to entertain on a deeper level.

How many films of Blake Edwards have you seen?

Background: This might be a bold statement for a director who’s not even listed in my college history of film text book, but I would like to make the case that Blake Edwards ruled the 60s or at least epitomized it.

This was very much a transitory decade as the studio system was collapsing and the new wave of American auteurs who would re-invigorate cinema would only arrive at the tail end of the decade and many of those directors would take a while to develop their style and gain the capital for their dream projects. There were a few masters at the top of their game like Stanley Kubrick and David Lean and some of the live TV generation like Sidney Lumet, Norman Jewison, and John Frankenheimer would hit the ground running.

When I look through my experiences with 60s films (that doesn’t include the early efforts of the new wave or the last remnants of those studio masters), I often think of this as the era of sophisticated comedy: If Lubitsch had a travel budget that let him shoot in Europe, fewer code restrictions and had the luxury of color, that’s the 60s. The color palate of films in this era ranging from West Side Story to Sweet Charity are rich and span the rainbow (in the case of Adam West’s “Batman” they were oversaturated but that’s the general idea). An inordinate number of films (Topkapi, Gambit, Charade, Marnie, The Thomas Crown Affair) I’ve seen involve art or jewel twists which reads as more sexy and sophisticated to movie audiences than it does gritty as far as crimes go. Even prostitution became sophisticated in the hands of Billy Wilder’s Irma la Douce which is so innocent, it’s family-friendly. This was the era where Europeans Gina Lollobrigida, Melina Mercouri, Claudia Cardinale, Sophia Loren, and Lila Kedrova became stars without having to subvert their identities to the Midwestern ideal. It was also the era of Bond which certainly would not have been popular if they went for an Atomic Blonde/Jason Bourne look.

All you need to know about how Edwards epitomized this finesse was to look at the poster to Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Audrey Hepburn (another exotic European) has a posh dress a mouth-wateringly opulent diamond necklace and a cigarette that doesn’t look like it was bought at a local pharmacy.

Blake Edwards’s films were visually polished and he was equally adept at black-and-white as he was with color. I also feel that when it comes to comedy auteurs, people point to Woody Allen and Mel Brooks but tend to leave Blake Edwards out. Is it because Peter Sellers gets more credit? At the same time, a film like Days of Wine and Roses showed a capacity for dramatic material with a Serksian flair.

Blake Edwards was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1922 and was a child of divorce. Edwards made his way to Hollywood through good old-fashioned nepotism. His stepfather was a mid-level producer at 20th Century Fox and his stepfather only got that job because Edwards’ step-grandfather was J. Gordon Edwards , a big-time silent director who was most famous for his work with Theda Bara. Edwards’s step-family got him extra work which led to small roles and eventually writing credits in the early days of TV. He married Julie Andrews and had no natural children of his own, instead adopting two and inheriting a stepchild, so way to go on population control. He was also the inaugural visiting scholar at Arizona State’s film school.

What Most People Agree are the Essentials: Days of Wine and Roses, Victor/Victoria, Pink Panther

Number I’ve seen: About 5 1/4: I’ve seen What did You do in the War Daddy?, Pink Panther, A Shot in the Dark, Revenge of the Pink Panther, The Great Race and some of Days of Wine and Roses (it was playing on TCM and I didn’t have the DVD).

Favorite: I’m pretty much writing this entry because of The Pink Panther which I think is one of the greatest comedic films ever made. There’s no better way to punctuate the cozy obliviousness of the jet set than to make them glaringly blind to the guilt of a debonair thief (David Niven) and unaware of just how incapable the bumbling detective (Peter Sellers) is who’s trailing him. The brilliance of Inspector Clouseau is that it’s not entirely far-fetched that he could have held onto his job after all those years through bureaucratic glitches, dumb luck, and persistence.  I’ve watched this film at multiple ages and it always holds up.

Underrated: The Great Race is like a cross between Around the World in 80 Days and Wile E. Coyote vs the Road Runner. One of the most glaring things about the film is a complete lack of character exposition. Two professors (Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis) have a rivalry that extends to destructive pranks and the film opens on their prank war without telling the audience the who and why of what we’re seeing. It’s a film that revels in cartoonish immaturity but also has a playful sweetness: Natalie Wood adds quite a bit to the film as an prim and proper reporter who plans to cover this around-the-world car race (again, this isn’t a film that makes logical sense) a la Nelly Bly and she serves as a love interest for Tony Curtis. Don’t feel bad for Jack Lemmon’s character: He has Peter Falk as a companion.

Overrated: There are no films of Edwards to date that I regret watching and that I wouldn’t recommend. Trail of the Pink Panther attempted to cobble together a film from left-over footage of the Peter Sellers post-mortem (reportedly in a manner that wasn’t cleared with Peter Sellers’ estate) and it’s rightfully panned so I can’t call it overrated. I will suggest A Shot in the Dark isn’t as good as the original. The element of surprise is hard to replicate in the original and the ironic ending that Clouseau is right after all is the perfect ending to his character arc.

Blind Spots: I really should try to find a copy of Days of Wine and Roses rather than waiting for it to come back on TCM to see the second half.  I remember turning it off at some point because I didn’t want to watch a darker film about alcoholism and I regret that. I can’t really speak about his expertise with drama if I haven’t seen anything of his in that field. Victor/Victoria, in which he collaborated with wife, Julie Andrews, could be another interesting take on gender politics and perhaps cover what Tootsie (which I critiqued last week) was missing. S.O.B. was nominated for a Golden Globe but its plot—a director decides to do a topless scene with his lead actress—doesn’t seem like much to make a movie about. There’s also an 80’s movie called Blind Date and in the same way that seeing Billy Wilder try to tailor his style to later times in his final films, it might be interesting to see Edwards navigate 80s mores (I imagine his film would be significantly more showing than dancing around in a Lubitschesque way).

Filmography as director (39 films):

Blake Edwards’ Son of the Pink Panther (1993)

Switch (1991)

Skin Deep (1989)

Peter Gunn (1989)

Justin Case (1988)

Sunset (1988)

Blind Date (1987)

That’s Life! (1986)

Fine Mess, A (1986)

Micki & Maude (1984)

Curse of the Pink Panther (1983)

Man Who Loved Women, The (1983)

Trail of the Pink Panther (1982)

Victor/Victoria (1982)

S.O.B. (1981)

10 (1979)

Revenge of The Pink Panther (1978)

The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976)

Return Of The Pink Panther, The (1975)

Tamarind Seed, The (1974)

The Carey Treatment (1972)

Wild Rovers (1971)

Darling Lili (1970)

The Party (1968)

Gunn (1967)

What Did You Do in the War, Daddy? (1966)

The Great Race (1965)

A Shot in the Dark (1964)

The Pink Panther (1964)

Experiment in Terror (1962)

Days of Wine and Roses (1962)

Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961)

High Time (1960)

Operation Petticoat (1959)

The Perfect Furlough (1959)

This Happy Feeling (1958)

Mister Cory (1957)

He Laughed Last (1956)

Bring Your Smile Along (1955)

Lady Dynamite, Masters of None, and Comedians Playing Themselves in Peak TV

"Lady Dynamite" is so zany and out there that it was a little difficult to get a grasp on it when I first watched it. Ironically, my difficulty with the material wasn't because there's nothing like it on TV but because I saw traces of nearly everything else on TV: The cutaways of "30 Rock", the awkward attempts at social justice statements from "Master of None", the use of a comedic veneer to mask trauma that's shown on "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt", the 4th wall randomness of "Man Seeking Woman" or "Family Guy", and the feminist celebration of woman as proudly dysfunctional adult from "Broad City". 

Welcome to Peak TV: Where the overabundance of innovative voices on TV makes it harder to stick out and a comic voice as original as Maria Bamford is penalized for not coming out on the airwives five years ago.

Besides the myriad of recognizable influences there's the obstacle that Bamford's show can loosely be classified into the most overused genre on television: Comic actors playing thinly veiled versions of themselves trying to make it in showbiz inevitably providing a satirical take on Hollywood along the way. It started with "The Larry Sanders Show" and "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and the idea has gotten so saturated that it seems like the go-to template for anyone wanting to stretch their act into a TV show if they don't want to put much energy into the pitching session. The genre is starting to rapidly sour with unique acts like subversively sexually explicit music duo Garfunkel and Oates and hyperobsessive pop culture freak Billy Eichner getting shows that add zero value whatsoever to what started out as great acts.  

The good news here is that any initial complaints about the show are a lot less valid after a scattershot pilot that's loaded with every gimmick imaginable. The show gradually starts to even out and make more purposeful decisions over when to break the 4th wall. By the fifth or sixth episode, Bamford starts to deploy these gimmicks with a mastery that makes "Lady Dynamite" one of the most wall-to-wall enjoyable shows on TV.

It helps to separate the show from other entries in the "comedians playing themselves" genre in that Bamford isn't trying to advance her show business career at all. At times, she seems blissfully ignorant of exactly how well she's doing (her faux sister Susan is alarmed at how much she makes at a studio session as if she heard it for the first time). In another episode, she turns down Judd Apatow because in that particular episode, her new focus on life is about doing as little as possible in life. After a few episodes, one can better make the argument that this even if it's a clichéd genre, Bamford's work is the ultimate personal statement: Maria Bamford is simply figuring out her life and way of expressing it on screen as she goes along.

It also helps that so many of the plots are loopy enough to match Maria Bamford's personality: Her uncertainty is matched by characters that either swing towards an extreme opposite (Mo Collins as pushy childhood friend Susan, Ana Gasteyer as Karen Gillam, Annie Mumulo as a highly aggressive dog trainer) or similar aimlessness (Fred Melamed is highly enjoyable as an agent who reeks of casual desperation, in the second episode she dates a bisexual recovering meth addict who can't distinguish the difference between bisexuality and polygamy).

Masters of None

In the era of Peak TV, shows are being given out like cars to the Oprah studio audience and one consequence is that while there are a lot of great comic voices out there, not everyone is exactly qualified to sustain an audience as the lead of a television show. Whereas Maria Bamford can will her way through a hackneyed premise on sheer personality, Aziz Ansari (assuming he doesn't have the acting abilities of Peter Sellers up his sleeve) would be questionable as a lead for a high-concept series.

It's not that Ansari isn't a deservedly successful comedian. He was an excellent addition to the mix on "Parks and Recreation," he is a successful author, and has a worthwhile stand-up show worth watching. There's just very little variation from Tom Haverford to "Master of None" lead Dev and that character was originally created as a foil to the altruism of Leslie Knope.

What also doesn't help is that it seems like Aziz Ansari's vision for his show is as bizarrely uneventful as the in-universe pitch for "Seinfeld." Yes, technically things happen, but it seems as if the show's goal is to drain as much dramatic tension as possible so that the show is as close to nothing as possible. In other words, Aziz/Dev just wants to be chill but there's a such thing as overdoing it. The show also doesn't seem to have any game plan for making you laugh: The long-term setups lack comic complexity and the short-term jokes are more at a dramedy-level than an actual comedy.  

Oddly enough, the show did get great reception but I suspect that has more to do with the increasing prevalence of the social justice movement among TV critics. Ansari is a minority that's not often seen on TV and his episodes tackle such hot button issues as tokenism in casting, sexism, and the issues that come with being the children of immigrants. In some of these cases, the show comes off as overly preachy because Aziz's take on those issues is the only memorable thing about the episode.

For contrast, "Fresh Off the Boat" is a show I immediately latched onto because of the unique cultural perspective of a minority family. I could see people being attached to Dev for the same reasons, but that doesn't excuse such a show from phoning it in everywhere else.