New Girl - "Chicago" - Review

The best television comedies have a zany spark. This inspired energy they exude. An unpinnable je nais se quoi that makes them a pleasure to watch. It’s that quality they give off when the writing, the acting, and the production design culminate in a finished product that’s simply a pleasure to watch.

Even when New Girl isn’t making me laugh (and this episode wasn't its funniest), it leaves me smiling, self-satisfied at watching a show that’s in its prime; that’s new, exciting, and immensely fun. New Girl doesn’t always re-invent the wheel. In fact, it’s often very formulaic. Its bigger arcs for this season are relationship narratives we’ve seen time and again on sitcoms. And yet those stories remain a delight to watch because it’s all so fresh, charming, and, yes, funny.

The moments that sell this inexplicable joyousness to a good series is captured, for me, best in “Chicago” by Jess’s Elvis impersonator performance. Not only does it come totally out of left field but it’s also hilarious and it provides the episode’s biggest laugh. And yet it’s heartwarming, goofy, and lovable and completely in the vein of jokes that New Girl is known for. The second best example of this style of joke-telling comes early in the episode. In a moment that’s equally funny and sad, Nick tells his roommates that his dad has died just at the moment that they’re sucking in helium from balloons, and thus they are forced to provide sympathy while sounding like munchkins from the Wizard of Oz. 

This balance between humorous and sad continues throughout the episode and is handled incredibly well. Funeral episodes are often about characters taking stock of their lives. Death forces us to consider where we are at with our lives. New Girl does this largely with two of its characters.

In the less serious storyline, Schmidt is being very Schmidt-like. He, of course, makes the funeral for Nick’s recently deceased father all about himself. We don’t learn anything new about Schmidt from this story, but Max Greenfield continues to nail Schmidt’s bizarre enthusiastic, neurotic commitment to everything he does. In this case, Schmidt is scared of death almost to a fault, and he’s afraid to see Mr. Miller’s corpse. This leads to the first very amusing Schmidt scene. Winston coaches him through his fears by pretending to be a dead body, a method that’s working up until the moment Winston shifts out of his coffin pose and freaks Schmidt out. In the second of Schmidt’s thanatophobia scenes, Schmidt protects the chain on Dennis Farina’s corpse from one of Nick’s family members (played by Bill Burr – who some might remember for his memorable cameos in Breaking Bad). The kicker where he finally overcomes his fears and then continually bobs his head into the coffin like a drinking bird toy is a very funny capper. 

The largest chunk of screentime though is dedicated to Nick reacting to the news that his father has passed. We learn the odd, amusing fact that when Nick’s dad left town, he was forced to pick up the slack and take responsibility for his family. “Don’t laugh when they call him responsible,” Schmidt quips. Nick immerses himself in the plans for the funeral, becoming more responsible than perhaps we’ve ever seen him. The big task, the one he’s hesitant about, is giving a eulogy, at the behest of his family. He assigns the writing of the speech to Jess, who not unexpectedly fails at this task. This causes Nick to spiral, getting super drunk just before the funeral. Jess helps sober him up just in time to make the eulogy, a moving, funny, honest speech that is one of the episode’s highlights. 

In the early days, New Girl would never been capable of the delicate balance between sentiment and jokes. But now it does it as effortlessly as an impromptu Elvis karaoke sing-a-long. 

Stray Observations:

-The casting for Nick’s family was epic. Nick Kroll, Margo Martindale, Bill Burr. Doesn’t get much more perfect, and the little details of this worked so well (Grandma: “Don’t trust the cops”). Those Chicago accents were just on the right side of exaggerated.
-Lamorne Morris is very funny in the scene where Winston's attempts to stall the funeral fail when his feelings for his father figure overcome him.
-Though the death of this character comes out of nowhere, and it is a secondary character, the show sold it to me.

-“He loved me more than he loved you” “Yea, he told me that too”

-“Except for that 1 hour I committed fraud with him” “That’s all you need to know”

-“It’s bad to see a body before a funeral”

-“You’re mad at me. You’ve got your mad face”

-“This is every day in North Korea”

-“I really feel transported to the ghetto”

Grade: A-

Thoughts on Season 1 of "Parenthood"

Many series’ first seasons are uneven. Few series come fully formed out of the gate. Some of the best television series ever made have had to take time to find themselves. Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s first season is pretty awful at times, and its spin-off Angel had possibly even larger problems in its first season. Breaking Bad’s shortened first season didn’t give it enough time to develop itself properly.

Television is a medium we give leeway to when it’s bad; in the hands of the right creative talent tv shows can go from bad or guilty pleasure to must see series (This is definitely the case with The Vampire Diaries). Often times shows are better off for sucking early in their runs because it allows them to figure out what does and doesn’t work for them. In the long run this means they’re less likely to stumble (not always – odds are they’ll still stumble, but the crème de la crème will still produce some good episodes even past its peak, take Lost or Friends for example).

Parenthood is a series with great pedigree. Creator Jason Katims was fresh off of producing the excellent Friday Night Lights. Peter Kraus had starred in HBO drama Six Feet Under, and Lauren Graham had honed her dramatic and comedic chops on Gilmore Girls. 

Despite this talent though, and the talents of a mostly very good ensemble, the series struggled in its infancy. The same note kept being repeated for Erika Christensen’s Julia whose conflict always kept being her high-strung workaholics undermining her relationship with her daughter. Dax Shepard is an actor of limited range who often failed to capture the seriousness of Crosby discovering he has a son. A number of storylines stretched credulity, particularly mother and daughter Sarah and Amber simultaneously falling for the same teacher. 

The show initially struggled to rise above its clichés. A family with sons and daughters at far too perfectly spaced out ages is something we’ve seen a bit too much before. But it’s an idea that in the right hands could be used to deal honestly and earnestly about the titular theme of the show: parenthood. But not just parenthood, but growing up and small scale problems we face on a daily basis. Shows don’t need crazy nonsense happening on a regular basis. I love Game of Thrones as much as the next guy, but I certainly don’t need to see sword fighting and dragons to become invested in a series. 

There was promise in Parenthood though. In time the show became better and better at observing the small moments its concept assured. Jason Katims’ last series was the great tv drama Friday Night Lights. What set Friday Night Lights apart from the rest of the dramatic pack was how emotionally raw the series could frequently be. As critic Alan Sepinwall described it, “Most dramas, even the really good ones, will take you so close to the characters' emotions and no closer, as if they fear the audience will grow uncomfortable if there isn't some distance between themselves and the characters… [Friday Night Lights] shatters any kind of barrier between viewer and viewee.” When you watch Friday Night Lights, an odd bond is formed where it almost seems as if we’re feeling everything the characters are feeling. Though this sense of powerful, intense emotion isn’t felt nearly as often in Parenthood, there are a number of moments where the world around me faded out and I was there with the characters experiencing their joy and their pain. That’s a powerful experience that few shows are capable of and it was happening enough that (coupled with the tremendous likability of the cast) kept me coming back.

When these moments weren’t occurring though the cast of Parenthood drew me in time and again. This is a great, very large cast. It’s so big that a number of actors were short shrifted or given material that didn’t appropriately show off their talents. It took a long time for the series to utilize the grandparents Zeke and Camille (Craig T. Nelson and Bonnie Bedelia). Thankfully when they did it was possibly the strongest storyline of the season, dealing with the possible divorce between the long suffering couple, and it subsequently trickled down to elevate everything on the edges of this plot. Other actors were simply being given material that was weaker than what they were capable of, including Mae Whitman and Erika Christensen.  

Overall though this is a very pleasing start to a series, especially one with a shortened season. I look forward to what I’m told is a series that continues to get better as it progresses.

"Seven Psychopaths" - Film Review

Seven Psychopaths is kind of a mess, particularly in the early going.

It feels like the sort of the movie the studio greenlit even though it had an incomplete script, and much of the movie comes off as if it’s based on the first draft of a screenplay. Many of the ideas are half-formed and amorphous, never truly amounting to much.

The first half the movie is filled with scenes of varying quality that don’t seem to flow in an easy, natural order. The scenes seem to be tossed together haphazardly with no consideration for their placement. 

Though it picks up halfway through the film (the film’s best scene occurs a little over halfway through, involving one of the characters describing his imagined perfect film ending), it continues to be hamstrung by everything that’s come before it. The early portion of the film never finds its footing and it hurts everything that comes after. 

A struggling screenwriter Marty Faranan (Colin Ferrell), whose an alcoholic (because why not), is writing a movie entitled “Seven Psychopaths” (Man, how meta!). A number of these he ends up adopting from real life, including a mysterious murderer who only kills mid to high ranking Italian mafia members or yakuza. Some he makes up and, get this, they turn out to be real (Woe, man). 

He’s joined by his lousy best friend Billy Bickle (Sam Rockwell) who makes a living kidnapping dogs, only to return them to their owner to garner the reward. When one of these dogs belongs to a crazy criminal boss Charlie Costello (Woody Harrelson), he tracks down the dog and Billy and Marty, along with Marty's business partner Hans Kieslowski (Christopher Walken), suddenly find their lives in grave danger. 

It’s one of those films that thinks it’s a whole lot smarter than it actually is. There are a number of self-aware, meta commentaries on films in general and the film itself, and some work really well, but others just feel half-baked. It’s also a film that squanders a great cast, and the cast is frequently better than the material they’re being given.

It's got a lot of zany energy and at times it's pretty amusing, but it's too loosely formed to work as well as it should. 

Grade: B-

How I Met Your Mother - "The Time Travelers" - Review

For the entirety of “The Time Travelers”, something is completely off about How I Met Your Mother. Barney is attempting to persuade Ted to go see Robots vs. Wrestlers, and his trump card is to have Barney from 20 years from now show up. Well, clearly, Future Barney can’t be there, nor can any of the later future incarnations of Ted and Barney. And so much of the episode revolves around us trying to figure out what the catch is to this. Because obviously within the logic of the HIMYM universe, Ted and Barney can’t be seeing their future selves, and if they were they certainly wouldn’t be accepting of it so quickly and easily.

The B-plot here also isn’t jiving well. It’s actually fairly amusing. Marshall invents a fruity, “girly” drink and has been too embarrassed to order it. Since he’s been making Robin get it for him, Carl the bartender decides to name it after her and puts it on the menu. Marshall proceeds to fight for the drink’s name. There are a number of funny moments involved in this plot. The one-upmanship of Marshall and Robin is one of the better stories the show has done this season, and the conclusion where Marshall doesn’t know Carl’s last name made me laugh harder than many jokes in recent memory. 

However, this plot keeps rubbing up against the main plot in all the wrong ways. Whenever Robin, Marshall, and Lily go over to the booth, the time travelers suddenly disappear. And even if the idea of the time travelers is completely unfounded, I would have like it if the writers had at least maintained consistency for the rules of the time travelers.  

And then the last five minutes of the episode happen, and all my complaints about the episode were blown up. 

Turns out Ted is in the bar by himself. The Robin and Marshall fight happened five years ago, and he imagined the time travelers. He’s alone. 

It’s a gut punch. The last time the show did a twist reveal like this was “Symphony of Illumination” where Robin talks to the kids she never had, and, just like in that episode, “Time Travelers” strikes an unexpected nerve with you.

And though I still have major problems with this episode, when Ted imagines himself running to the apartment of his future wife, that he hasn’t met yet, and Josh Radnor performs possibly at the best I’ve ever seen him in the series, well, let’s just say the dust kicked up in the room. 

Despite this though, the episode is filled with strange choices. The time travel material is undermined by the constant fact that time travel would never be possible on a series such as this. Though the show manages some funny jokes about future version after future version of Ted and Barney showing up, the jokes just don’t land as well as they should because we know something isn’t quite right about the scenario. And as much as liked the moment where the always lovely Jayma Mays reprises her role from way back in season one as the coat check girl (particularly where she appears as two future versions and poignantly notes that Ted’s relationships always go one of two ways: with him or the person he’s dating getting tired of the relationship), my attempts to surmise the real reason for the time travel hijinks undid much of what was funny or touching.

And yet that end reveal is fairly devastating and sad, so much so that it overrides many of the bothersome sentiments that were hamstringing my ability to like the episode. It’s a reveal that attempts something more than factory output sitcom situations and pat emotional moments. It’s a moment that says something meaningful about this character. It’s a moment that finds a way to use the flaws and problems of the series in recent memory to its advantage, as if they were a necessary component to get to this moment (even though I’m guessing the writers didn’t ever plan this far ahead). 

Though I wish the writers had built to this moment better and that they had laid the groundwork more strongly, the moment is so good, it’s almost justification enough for the episode’s problems. If the series can still manage moments like this, it’ll keep me coming back in spite of myself and in spite of my mixed feelings towards the series at this point.     

Grade: B+

"The Master" - Film Review

I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a movie quite like The Master.

On a technical level it’s near flawless. Every shot is impeccably, immaculately conceived and rendered. But this is to be expected from writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson. He’s a filmmaker’s filmmaker. 

Anderson has never shied away from tackling subject matter that’s … well, different. His breakout film was 1997’s Boogie Nights, a film about a porn patriarch.

The Master tells the story of Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix), a disturbed WWII veteran, who’s won over by the charismatic Lancaster Dodd (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), frequently called the Master.

Freddie is leading an aimless life after returning home from the war and finding it hard to adjust to post-war society. Bored at work, sexually frustrated, and taking pleasure in nothing but making and drinking alcohol, he’s always on the verge of bursting out in fits of rage. 

Lancaster, a magnetic orator, sees how easily manipulated Freddie can be and converts him to his following. At least, that’s one interpretation. The Master’s son Val (Jesse Plemons – in some spot on casting) believes that the man is making it up as he goes along and doesn’t actually believe in anything he’s saying; something that he tells Freddie, which deeply unsettles him. One skeptic describes Dodd's religious movement, “The Cause”, as a cult, and it does bear a resemblance to a cult at times.

But perhaps the Master does believe in the seeming pseudo-science of spirits time traveling (Though I personally didn’t interpret the film that way). 

Whatever the case may be, Dodd immediately takes a liking to Freddie, who he claims to see something in (what exactly that might be is never made completely clear). Or maybe he simply feels bad for Freddie, who’s mentally unsound and not the brightest of the bunch to boot. 

In either instance, Freddie’s drinking problems become untenable. He makes his own drinks filled with odd concoctions such as paint thinner (he accidentally kills a person at one point). The Master’s wife (Amy Adams) becomes fearful of the situation. He keeps attacking people who question Dodd’s work and teachings. The members of “The Cause” try to rehabilitate Freddie, but it doesn’t work, and soon after they’re forced to cut ties. 

Whether you find this too strange to enjoy, there’s no denying the film is filled with great performances. Joaquin Phoenix is completely unhinged as Freddie, perpetually crooked smiled, mumbling most of what he says in a low growl . Phillip Seymour Hoffman is a sight to behold as Lancaster; he’s so calm and charismatic that at times it’s hard not to buy into his philosophical propositions, no matter how unfounded.

On top of this, the film is beautifully shot and visually striking, which often makes up for how its plotting is occasionally haphazard, leaving something to be desired.

A challenging, dense, enigmatic movie that's certainly not for everyone.

Grade: B+    

The Walking Dead - "This Sorrowful Life" - Review

One of the underappreciated aspects of television is editing. The best tv series use their editing to add to the tension, humor, etc. But above all else, the editing prevents a show from being boring. The Walking Dead is a terrible offender of having swaths of dead air time. There are such large gaps of time where nothing happens, to the point where it’s distracting. Silence isn’t a bad thing for a show, but that silence needs to be used for a purposeful effect.  But on The Walking Dead, the time where there’s neither action nor people talking isn’t used for any other purpose than as transitions between scenes.

It’s annoying because the show should just jump from one scene to the next but instead it’ll cut to a new location and nothing’s happening yet. And the feel from such a visual choice is that the writers aren’t quite sure what they want to do and so they’re filling up air time with these transitionary breathing periods. The writers on The Walking Dead have never been quite certain as to what they’re doing either in the large scheme of things or in the individual moments, but it’s in these moments where nothing is happening that it becomes apparent that they really don’t have a full conception of what they want to do. They’re just filling up episodic time with this location establishment/dead air time because they were a few minutes shy on a script’s adaptation to the screen. That’s how it comes off. 

It’s a shame they chose to do this because, The Walking Dead actually on occasion has stories that are somewhat interesting, on paper at least. The conflicting feelings over whether to hand over Michonne to the Governor are a clearly stated problem that has the potential to bring out some interesting thematic questions and character reactions. Merle’s story arc in this episode also had the potential to be something incredibly engaging and complex. And they could have become these fascinating pieces of television to watch, but rather than using the extra screen time to add a few more scenes to round out the conflicts and characters, they kill screentime so we get a full hour of television. 

Michonne is a cool character; I fanboy up whenever she wields that samurai sword, but we know next to nothing about her. Yea, she’s resourceful and she’s handles herself well in a fight, but what exactly makes Michonne tick? I’m not quite sure. Similarly, Merle’s sudden desire to do the right thing and go out in a blaze of glory does seem to come slightly out of nowhere. If the writers wanted to build to this, they could have hinted at it a few times before hand. All we needed is a couple scenes where Merle talks with some other characters and we learn more about how he’s tired of being the bad guy and tired of being looked down upon by everyone, particularly his brother.

The choice between giving up Michonne to the Governor and allowing her to stay is also a problem never quite developed to its full potential. It almost feels inevitable that Rick is going to retract his decision to hand her over, mainly because Rick needs to be the better person in order for the conflict with Woodbury to work the way the writers have established it. The conflict between Woodbury could have been more nuanced and less one sided, but the Governor (as of last episode) has now gone into full-on villain territory, and so we’re far past a conflict where our opinions and feelings are divided and complicated. Rick’s decision to call off the “Ricktatorship” just doesn’t build from a well-established, organic place. Rick’s choosing it because these are the “good guys” and not because it was something he struggled with and had an epiphany about.

The first eight episodes of this season had problems but what made them far superior to nearly everything that came before them was the level of certainty with which they moved forward the story. There was still dead air time, but it seemed like the writers had a much clearer vision of what they wanted to achieve. After the smoke cleared from the mid-season finale, it became obvious that they didn’t know how to handle the aftermath of the conflict between the prison and Woodbury. They’ve been stretching out a conflict that logically would have happened much sooner except for the fact there’s more episodes of this series that need to be aired.  

Stray Observations:

-The car alarm scene is legitimately exciting even if Merle doesn't act to logical in it.

-“That’s a good idea” “It was Michonne's” – I don’t think you could be any more on the nose.

-“I’ll do whatever he says” – Rick is the leader because Rick is the leader, and not because he’s necessarily qualified.

-Glen asked Maggie to marry him. So, yea, that happened. He amusingly steals a ring off the finger of a zombie.
-Norman Reedus's acting is great when Darryl comes across zombie Merle.

Grade: B-          

"Smashed" - Film Review

Stories depicting addiction are never comfortable to watch. They’re often exacting examinations of the destructive power of addiction holds over people, and Smashed is no exception. The film draws us in with its intimate portrait of a marriage where the strongest connection is the couple’s mutual addiction to alcohol.

The plot of Smashed is fairly predictable and the writing is on the wall from very early on. A woman, Kate Hannah (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), who’s always drinking alcohol goes in to her job as a teacher after a night of heavy drinking and throws up in front of her children. She lies and says she’s pregnant, and, too slow to correct it, the whole school soon believes she’s got a baby on board. Things continue to escalate from there to the point where she starts to question whether there might in fact be a problem with her drinking habits. One drunken night leads to her smoking crack with a complete stranger from the bar, and she finds herself waking up out on the street the following morning.

The principal of her school Dave (Nick Offerman) confides in her that he’s a member of AA, and she joins him at his next meeting, where she finally admits to herself that she has a problem. She finds a sponsor, Jenny (Octavia Spencer), there. 

Things become problematic though between her and her husband Charlie (Aaron Paul) as he continues to drink while she starts up the twelve step program. Their relationship is increasingly strained; tensions mount when he can’t comprehend why she’d want to stop drinking, and the whole basis of their relationship starts to unravel. 

Although the wedging of the two apart is easy to see coming, Winstead and Paul’s performances are so raw that it becomes mesmerizing to watch. There's an unnerving, uneasy level of realism to these characters and their relationship.

Painfully realistic and touchingly humanistic, Smashed is a sad, honest look at alcoholism and a well-acted character study.     

Grade: B