"Clear Eyes. Full Hearts. Can't Lose": My Thoughts on Friday Night Lights

“You love football. You just don’t know it yet” - Coach Taylor

“You know it's kinda like this drug. When you're out of it, you see it for what it really is. But when you're in it, it seems like there's no other possible reality.” - Tyra

To paraphrase the great tv critic Dan Fienberg, while my brain might tell me that other shows are better, my heart tells me that Friday Night Lights is simply a tier in quality above them. 

The show may have been clichéd at times (even pretty bad during its 2^nd season, which the less we speak of the better), but the series had an emotional clarity and honesty that was unlike anything else on television.

Its documentary-like quality and improvisational nature allowed for actors to be completely natural and play scenes with an openness that many other shows might shy away from. Friday Night Lights didn’t just do emotional material, it made you feel as if you knew exactly what its characters were experiencing and feeling, as if you were experiencing events right along with them. That rawness and emotional intensity, many times, had the series putting you through the ringer. To put it another way, if you weren’t tearing up just a little bit at various points during an episode, you might not have a soul. 

This emotional honesty often left the series high and dry when it came to ratings. The show was always on the verge of cancellation, and miraculously got to live on for 5 seasons due to a deal NBC struck with DirectTV. The other factor in this was that the series was primarily, but not always, about a high school football coach and his team. However, that short sells the series, which in truth was about so much more. The show wasn’t just about football, but small town politics, family, race, class, and community. The show used football as a lens through which we could glimpse the town and the people that inhabited it. To put it more succinctly, it was about what football does to a football crazed town. 

So though the series was at times clichéd, it was to the credit of everyone involved that its execution elevated it above this. When Julie is thinking about having sex with her boyfriend Matt, the series refuses to go into after school special territory. Her mother sits down and has a conversation with her about having sex. But Mrs. Coach doesn’t tell her “SEX BEFORE MARRIAGE IS BAD. RAWRR!!” Instead, we see her be sad that her daughter is growing up, concerned for her getting hurt, and let her know that no matter what she does, she’ll always love her. Take the race question of the first season; after assistant coach Mackey makes an unintended racist comment, running back “Smash” Williams decides the African American players should no longer play. The series is balancing a tight wire throughout, but it is worth it for how all the black players walk off the field in unison at the end of the episode. Jason Street’s sendoff in the 3^rd season stretches credulity, as he receives a sports agent position he’s massively under-qualified for. However, it’s all worth it to see him beg his baby mamma to let him stay with her. And it’s to the credit of Scott Porter that we’re as sold on his proposal as she is.

The series was always about a married couple at its heart. The other major characters were teens that eventually left the town, but rather than focus on their journeys outside of Dillon, Texas; the show continued to stay and add new characters that Coach Taylor and his wife Tami had to deal with. Married couples in dramas seem to be a terribly difficult territory for tv shows to portray. Series tend to act as if it’s hard to create interesting conflict for individuals that are married. Even really believable fictional marriages such as the Cohens on The O.C.  dealt with affairs and other crazy things that a stable, happy marriage had no right to be confronting. Jason Katims and company avoided this pratfall by scaling down conflicts. Worrying about sending their kid off to daycare, being sad over sending their kid off to college, wanting to buy a house they can’t afford, etc. Coach and Mrs. Coach actually fought a surprising amount but it was always realistic complications, and it always ended with them having an honest discussion where they worked it out. In the hands of Kyle Chandler and Connie Britton, the Taylors were a realistic married couple that was fun to watch and who you never doubted for a moment loved eachother.   

The series was all about the small scale. Small dramas in a small town. This was its bread and butter. This never was more stark than the show’s very bad 2^nd Season which distanced itself both from football and from the small, everyday things of a small town in Texas. Instead, we got weird stories such as Landry killing a rapist and him and Tyra trying to cover it up, Matt having an illegal affair with his much older Latina in-home nurse, and a sort of threeway in Mexico between Tim, Jason, and Lyla. It was the sort of material that made the series feel like it was completely different from the 1^st season that had made it so great in the first place. At times it felt like 6 different, unconnected stories that just happened to take place in the same town. Thankfully the 3^rd season reestablished its roots and we got four more really great, but sadly shortened, seasons.

The shows quiet, pragmatic optimism, its shaping of characters into good but flawed people, and its emotional depth and sincerity made Friday Night Lights into a pleasure to watch.  

Thoughts on Season 1 of "Fringe"

First seasons are often about shows figuring out what they want to be. Very few series start out hitting the ground running. This was very much the case for Fringe’s first season.

The main problem with Fringe’s shaky and often frustrating first season was its inability to balance larger narrative mythology with more episodic, specific procedural developments. The procedural stuff was usually fairly decent. However, the series always shined just a little brighter when it revealed a bit more about what exactly the deal was with “The Pattern”.

The first nine episodes floundered. Though the crazy scifi events of any given episode were usually interesting enough, they never really sparked a significant fervor in me to continue watching the show. There were obviously glimpses of the excellence of what the series could be in certain episodes (The Pilot and “Arrival” were early efforts that left me intrigued enough to believe the series, given the push in the right direction could be something that I would really enjoy). But it remained unfocused and a grab bag of a narrative. It’s as if the show’s writers didn’t figure out what they wanted to do with the show going forward until incredibly late into the game.

This isn’t an uncommon occurrence, but for a show like Fringe, it can suck a lot of life and liveliness out of it. This was never more apparent than the season’s 10^th and 11^th episodes “Safe” and “Bound” where the series emphasized the larger picture mythology more than ever before. The two episodes were the best episodes the show had produced up to that point. These episodes were so effective because they connected the more episodic, specific procedural events to the bigger picture. The writers also tied together elements from previous episodes (including “The Equation” and “In Which We Meet Mr. Jones”); finally making them meaningful elements to the bigger story. 

The more the series advanced this season, the more abundantly clear it became that the isolated stories that were disconnected from the larger story and mythology just weren’t working. By the end when the series essentially went for broke, stuck to its guns, and went for the parallel universe stuff, it became incredibly fun to watch. The character moments felt honest and spot-on; the action felt intense and unforced; and all the crazy twists hit harder because they had much, much larger implications for what was to come. 

Now serialization doesn’t necessarily imply that a show is any better than any other series. Law and Order and the various CSI series do procedural stories on a weekly basis, and that’s all well and good. I, however, personally find serialized, long arc stories to be much more entertaining to watch in tv dramas. In the case of Fringe, the mythology of the show has been far more interesting and enthralling than anything else the show has tried to attempt. I can rarely get invested in individuals caught up in the crazy events of a particular episode who I know are never going to return after that episode. There’s no reason for me to get emotionally invested, no matter how well-executed. On the other hand, when the procedural work is linked to the main characters and the mythology it engages me in a way that the one-off tales don’t. 

Fringe’s character work was also spotty. John Noble’s performance as Walter Bishop was an obvious stand out, and he appeared to have a lot of fun with the role. However, Anna Torv’s Lena Dunham was at times poorly written; often too plain for me to care about her. Other characters such as Lance Reddick’s Agent Broyles, Kirk Acevedo’s Charlie Francis, and Jasika Nicole’s Astrid were highly underutilized despite seeming like they could have carried much bigger stories. Reddick, in particular, was always great in his scenes, but these were too brief for such a talent. 

Fringe hinted its whole season that there was potential lying underneath the surface. And when it handled itself right that greatness showed through. As a broadcast network, Fox probably wasn’t the best network to handle a series like Fringe. Rarely does a series with as much bizarre science fiction elements and an increasingly dense mythology garner large ratings (which apparently have continually declined over the series's run). Having to appeal to such a broad base of an audience probably tied the hands of the series initially, and I doubt going forward they're going to be capable of continuing to appeal to everyone. That can only mean good things for mythology story lovers such as myself.

I look forward to watching the show’s 2^nd season. As problematic as its first season might have been, when it was firing on all cylinders, it was an immensely enjoyable show. With the implications of the last few episodes still up in the air, the series seems to be emphasizing its mythology more, which I can only assume will do wonders for its storytelling.    

Thoughts on Season 1 of "Deadwood"

Spoilers on the First Season of Deadwood below:

It’s easy to get into Deadwood and find yourself overwhelmed. The characters speak with a Shakespearean high mindedness that often times makes it difficult to keep up with the rapid fire delivery of creator David Milch’s foul mouthed, textured dialogue. The show isn’t all too concerned with whether you’re keeping up with its increasingly meandering, dense and intricate plotting. Miss a line and you’ll eventually catch up on the big picture of the plot machination forest but lose out on the tree-lined minutia. The unwieldiness of the dialogue is made all the more problematic by the fact that Deadwood is host to a sprawling, expansive cast that at times is troublesome to keep track of.

The series takes a few episodes to really kick in. It really isn’t until the death of David Carradine’s Wild Bill (symbolically marking the shows revisionist Western nature killing the Old West mythos that came before it) that the series really finds a footholding. And if the traversing feels slow in the get go (a number of early plots fizzle out or quickly vanish, such as Bullock and Swearengen’s rivalry and Kristen Bell’s turn as the leader of a brother-sister duo hoping to rob the Bella Union), it’s meant to be surefooted enough to give us our bearings before truly throwing us into the deep end of the pool. As the show progresses, it continually stops trying to hold our hand (I’m not very far into the 2^nd season, but it seems pretty clear that Milch and company care little for trying help their audience keep up). 

If at times the scripts may give me a headache and the various schemes of individuals may go over my head, the series makes up for it with a real sense of place. Over the course of the first season, the show does an impressive amount of world building. Practically every building on the thoroughfare is given a name and purpose, and is run or inhabited by characters we know. HBO actually put in some significant funding into the set (which eventually would, in part, lead to the show’s cancellation after its 3^rd season), and it’s one of the best designed sets to be seen on television. The interior locations of buildings aren’t off on some sound stage but are actually part of the buildings, which makes for a freer movement of the camera; something which the series takes great advantage of. The direction and scripts use this to allow various characters in different locations to be witnessing events concurrently. Placing characters in relation to one another creates unexpected connections, ads tension and dynamism, and makes the world of Deadwood feels incredibly real. It’s this grounded, detailed sense of realism that elevates Deadwood. Deadwood is a series that’s about the gritty, unpleasant realities of life, and especially how that unpleasantness would have been infinitely even more unpleasant back in 19^th century territorial South Dakota.    

That Deadwood is inhabited with an excellent cast also helps alleviate some of the frustration that comes with Milch’s writing. Even when I’m not sure what they’re saying, it’s often entertaining just to hear the wonderful actors speak the specifically crafted words. The cast is atypically talented, but it’s Ian McShane’s Al Swearengen that stands above the rest. Swearengen is the pseudo-ruler of Deadwood. As one of the earliest arrivals to the town, he bought up the best land, and now runs the Gem, a saloon that offers prostitutes and gambling. Though ruthless and often thoroughly selfish, Swearengen is a magnanimous figure; charismatic, and charming even as he’s ripping off and killing people. It’s to the credit of McShane that Swearengen (initially not the central figure of the narrative) became the most prominent and memorable figure of the series. Sure, Al is a loathsome person at times, but he has regrets and even a sadness to him. He’s even occasionally sympathetic, though he’d rather not admit it. He feels bad about beating up Trixie, his prized whore who he has a deep connection to; he can’t help but feel sorry for the ailing, kindhearted Rev. Smith, dying from a brain tumor, and eventually euthanizes him as an act of kindness. Swearengen becomes increasingly layered, and almost every major character is shown to be multifaceted and complex. Timothy Olyphant’s Seth Bullock is set up initially as the lawful counterweight to Swearengen, but proves to be hot tempered and quick to act. Though so keenfully deadset on upholding the law and trying to make himself out as morally superior to others, he cheats on his wife with the widowed Alma Garret. Though his wife was the widow of his dead brother his actions sit in a morally murky area that the series loves to take us to. But the cast runs deep and there isn’t an actor that doesn’t carry their weight. Whether it be Jim Beaver as good natured prospector Ellsworth, or W. Earl Brown as childish but loyal lackey Dan Dority, or John Hawkes as shrewd but reserved Sol Star, or William Sanderson as skeethy, spineless E.B. Farnum, or Brad Dourif as concerned, tireless Doc Cochran, among many, many others, the series presents us with characters worth watching portrayed with a first-rate cast that deserves more recognition.    

However, what ultimately sets Deadwood apart from other series is how intelligent it is. The series is about the “Old West” of course, but it’s also about the formation of communities, how people write their histories, and what being a “civilization” entails. Watch as government positions are arbitrarily handed out so Deadwood looks as if it's more formally organized, or how Al manipulates the already shaky proceedings in the court case against Jack McCall, or how Wild Bill and Bullock take it upon themselves to dole out justice on the man who killed a family outside the town, or how lies are fabricated for the ad informing people of small pox. These are people who will soon be part of the U.S. and civilization, but aren't yet. Who want to join the states, but are also weary about what that means. And they're constantly lying and scheming, and often times they're doing things for the greater good of the town merely because it'll ultimately benefit themselves. Situating itself in a morally complex universe that asks tricky questions and often forgoes shoving a particular message down our throat; Deadwood forgoes formulaicness, and predictability to provide stories that are interesting and engaging.

"Love Actually" - Film Review

There’s been a trend in recent years towards making big budget films that are thin on plot and try to cram as many stars into the story as possible. And for the most part, these types of films have been pretty bad. The most obvious examples of this are Gary Marshall’s Valentine’s Day and New Year’s Eve, both of which meander aimlessly with no real goals, one dimensional characters, obvious story arcs, and very little to emotionally invest us in the stories.

Now Love Actually certainly fits the mold of these other types of films (the movie seems keen on having almost every famous British actor make an appearance). However, it’s much better than its counterparts. Certainly many of the storylines are fairly predictable and even at times clichéd. But there remains an undeniable charm to the film even as it becomes increasingly obvious what’s going to end up happening to everyone.

Part of this credit has to be given to writer/director Richard Curtis. Curtis’s filmography includes memorable British flicks such as Four Weddings and a Funeral and Bridget Jones’s Diary. Much of Love Actually’s DNA can be seen in these two movies; they’re both films that are for the most part not spectacular or particularly noteworthy. But that’s not to say they’re not good; in fact, they’re smart, funny, charming, well-crafted films that rise above their occasional formulaicness through deft direction, solid scripts, and nice acting. 

Love Actually is a holiday movie in the best sense of the term. It uses the gateway of goodwill from pre-existing notions of holiday cheer to get us invested in its various storylines. On the strengths and likability of its casts, and the sheer goodwill its builds over the course of the film through its cast and the exuberance of the holiday spirit, it makes us really like the movie despite how frequently overstuffed and formulaic it may be. Though a number of cast members are underserviced or underutilized, and as sad as it is to see Andrew Lincoln, Emma Thompson, and Laura Linney get their hearts broken, it’s hard not to be smiling, laughing, even sometimes tearing up, but at least never being bored or disappointed.

Grade: B   

"Les Miserables" - Film Review

For the longest time, Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables was considered to be part of that pantheon of literary works deemed unadaptable (along with other such *ahem* “unadaptable” works as Fight Club, Life of Pi, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy). It’s easy to see people’s doubts about Hugo’s work being translated to any other medium. The novel tells a sprawling, sweeping tale with a large cast of characters and deals with a wide range of heavy themes. But Les Mis’s first stop to the big screen wasn’t in the form of film, but oddly enough into a theatrical, operatic performance. Though the now highly regarded musical version of the story cut a fair bit of the narrative, it kept much of the central themes of loss, redemption, and revolution that had made it such a powerful story in the first place.

Hugo’s novel had proven itself adaptable, but now people wondered less about the plausibility of that, and more about the question of whether its superb musical counterpart had any hopes of being made into a film. Well, now, that it’s been made, the more appropriate question seems to be: how does the play translates to film?

That answer hinges on the musical itself because much of what works and doesn’t work for the adaptation is the nature of it being a musical. The music of Les Mis has a majesty to it; an emotional, powerful grandeur. But the music by itself is not enough to carry a film. And Les Mis by its very nature has next to no dialogue. The film has us watching one person after another singing (with varying degrees of enthrallingness and ability). This isn’t necessarily problematic; a number of films have done this before. West Side Story, clocking in at over 3 hours, is almost non-stop musical for the entirety of the film’s length. But what allows West Side Story to get away with this is that every musical number is dynamic. The camera changes angles, and actors move around. It provides the film with a vibrancy and energy that Les Mis often lacks. Too many of the shots in Les Mis are a single close up for almost the duration of the musical number. It’s as if director Tom Hooper forgot that he was making a movie and had the ability to move the camera around. This leads to a stiffness to the movie that causes it to be a slog to sit through at times. In short, the execution and staging of these musical numbers often takes away from the impact of them.

Don’t get me wrong; I love Les Mis. Ever since my high school put on a production of the show, I’ve been a devout fan of the musical. But that’s just it; I’m a fan of the musical, not this film adaptation which just happens to have its music. And it doesn’t even always have its music. There are weird cuts and additions to songs, and there is a wholesale creation of music that often feels clunky. For fans of the musical it may seem like it’s enough, especially after long wishful thinking about the arrival of the day when the play would appear on the big screen. But for people uninitiated to the story and music, it may not be nearly as satisfying. The fact is that Les Mis was never something that was going to be easily turned into a film, and this is probably the best we could have hoped for considering the difficult source material they were working with.  

Les Miserables –  B-

"The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" - Film Review

The Lord of the Rings was a book series that was said to be unadaptable. That Peter Jackson had the stones to even give it a consideration was just about as crazy as the series being as critically and commercially successful as it was. The narrative for the film trilogy ran something like this: alright, Fellowship is good, but there’s no way he can keep this up. And yet Jackson did, making (in my opinion) increasingly good films that made up one of the most popular, successful film trilogies in recent memory.

It’s been nearly a decade since the release of Return of the King. The original Lord of the Rings trilogy has aged surprisingly well with a decade under its belt. I’ve re-watched it a number of times since, and every time it resonates with me. At the time it was released, The Lord of the Rings was everything a big blockbuster ought to be: A well-acted, scripted, directed work following interesting, engaging characters within a sweeping narrative. And I don’t believe anyone was surprised when the announcement was made that The Hobbit would soon be made into a movie. The question wasn’t really whether it would be made, but when and how good it would be. I was cautiously optimistic about the film being produced, and remained so even with the influx of bad press upon its opening in theaters. 

I wanted to return to the world of Middle Earth. I was excited to see the familiar locales of the Shire and Rivendale, and the familiar faces of Gandalf and Bilbo. It’s a world worth exploring, and The Hobbit provides a nice but not entirely consistent or satisfying return to Middle Earth. Nostalgia for the setting and Peter Jackson’s typical directorial charm can only go so far. And much like a toy you’ve wanted so desperately for so long that when you get it, you find you’re just a wee bit disappointed, The Hobbit has its problems.  

Its main problems stems from the fact that it’s an incomplete story. The film abruptly ends after building up for 2 plus hours’ time. It’s highly apparent that it has more story to tell and the end point feels a bit arbitrary. Unlike Lord of the Rings, which had fairly obvious demarcations of when its story was meant to end, The Hobbit doesn’t because it’s one book (and a much shorter one at that). Another problem is that Jackson often doesn’t know when to linger on plot points or to breeze over them. While a few scenes benefit from the time to breathe, other such as the dwarfs stay at Bag End overstay their welcome. Finally, the band of 13 dwarves that accompany Bilbo on his adventure are significantly underdeveloped. Minus Richard Armitage as Thorin Oakenshield and Ken Stott as Balin, the rest of the dwarfs are practically an afterthought. This is much unlike the Fellowship of the original trilogy; we knew who every member of the Fellowship was, their personality, and what was at stake for them, so when put into conflict we had a reason to root for them. On the other hand, with the dwarfs, I felt much less motivated to root for them. Hopefully the later films will address this problem. I’m aware that the novel doesn’t really make large distinctions between the majority of them, but it’s not something as easily translated in a movie. 

Having read all that, you probably assume I disliked the film. But that’s not the case. I really do feel that Middle Earth and its stories as written by Tolkien are worth exploring. I was very entertained by much of the movie, and most sequences of the story in and of themselves were really fun to watch. I thought the opening with Ian Holm as an older Bilbo was touching and a nice callback to the older films; the council scene with Gandalf, Elrond, Galadriel, and Saruman was appropriately intense; Bilbos encounter with Gollum was perfectly staged; the actions sequences with the trolls, goblins, and orcs were all great sights to behold; the film also pulled off some funnier, lighthearted moments involving the dwarfs, Bilbo, and Gandalf. However, taken as a whole The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is less consistent and cohesive than I would have liked. 

The fact is that we may need to wait until its sequels are released to truly make a judgment about how good it is or isn't. And though it's worth seeing, The Hobbit just doesn't live up to expectations.

Grade: B-

"Safety Not Guaranteed" - Film Review

“We have to find out what’s wrong with this guy” -Arnau

“What makes you think he’s crazy?” – Darius

There’s a particular low key, aimless quality to certain independent films that can ultimately be their downfall. Gigantic and Daydream Nation are two good examples of this. The films are so directionless that they’re ultimately string thin thematically, and emotionally. But the low-key, low stakes drama of independent film storytelling isn’t necessarily a bad thing. When done right, it allows for intimate, personal stories that Hollywood films generally avoid making.

Which isn’t to say that Safety Not Guaranteed is aimless, but rather that it wears it indie heart on its sleeve. And despite the interesting concept at the center of the premise involving a reporter (Jake Johnson) and his two interns (Aubrey Plaza and Karan Soni) getting the scoop on a man who posts an ad seeking a partner to time travel with him; the film primarily is about quieter, character based moments about people making unexpected connections. 

I remember first discovering Aubrey Plaza in 2009’s Funny People where she plays an incredibly sarcastic comedian who Seth Rogen fails to get with. The highlights of Funny People are its various moments of stand ups and Plaza, for the brief screen time she receives, has some incredibly funny, stand out moments. Plaza would continue with this sarcastic, deadpan persona to great effect as April Ludgate in the excellent NBC comedy series Parks and Recreation. Safety Not Guranteed requires a bit more emotional heft of Plaza than she is typically asked of in Parks and Rec (the series has a big, beating heart underneath all the satire and Plaza has begun to break down the cold, deadpan exterior of April to show greater emotional shades, but the series doesn’t really have her wear her heart on her sleeves like Safety Not Guaranteed does). It’s refreshing to see Plaza work with material that gives her surprising emotional range and depth, and she plays the role incredibly well. 

Jake Johnson is also primarily only known for his tv career, for his turn as nice, soulful guy Nick Miller in New Girl. Here he plays against the expectations of him as the nice guy to great effect. Johnson is Jeff Schwensen, a dickish, selfish magazine reporter who’s using the excuse of the story to get away and try to hook up with a former, high school girlfriend. Jeff is a guy trying to ignore the fact he’s getting older. He’s a skeptical asshole who thinks he’s better than everyone else. And yet Johnson makes him incredibly charming and likable despite the fact he’s a narcissistic ass. 

By the end of the movie, we don’t really care whether the guy actually has invented a time machine or not (although we do get a definitive answer) because it doesn’t matter.  Mark Duplass portrays Kenneth Calloway (the guy with visions of time travel grandeur) wonderfully, providing him such outright sincerity, honesty, and kindness that it doesn’t matter that he’s just a bit weird and offputting. Much like Duplass’s Calloway, Safety Not Guaranteed is a little quirky, but it’s sincere and charming, probably more than it has any right to be. 

Grade: B+