A Glorious General, If Not a Glorious Episode (Review)

Series: Rome
Episode Title: "An Owl in a Thornbush"
Original Air Date: September 11, 2005
Grade: C+

Three episodes in the history of a show isn't much of a sample size, but with the shorter seasons employed by HBO dramas (Rome got 12 episodes in its first season) this point isn't too soon to begin asking broader questions about the direction of the enterprise. In the case of Rome, that question is simple: what exactly does the show want to be? Is it a grand historical drama concerned with the world-shaping events surrounding the fall of the Roman Republic, or is it more interested in the lives of ordinary men and women and investigating how those lives are affected by the grand events?

Through three episodes, including this week's middling affair, that question remains unanswered. Instead, Rome seems to be trying for a hybrid approach, where the larger events are foregrounded, but viewed through the eyes of those either outside the circles of power or right on their peripheries. The result so far has been a relatively dissatisfying amalgam, where the machinations of the powerful are rendered dull and the lives of the less powerful characters aren't given enough detail to be truly compelling, with one notable exception.

The most notable example of this dynamic in "An Owl in a Thornbush," which is largely set in Rome as Caesar approaches and Pompey and the Senatorial class flees to a better strategic situation, is the side plot featuring Octavia and her ex-husband Glabius. If you've forgotten about these two, don't feel bad; we should all be so lucky.

Octavia was happily married to Glabius, before her mother Atia broke the marriage in an attempt to connect Octavia with Pompey. Octavia whined about it in the second episode, and this week she sneaks out of her home in the middle of the night for a tryst with her beloved ex. Atia finds about it, dispatches a man to take care of things and, yada yada yada, Glabius ends up with a sword in his stomach, which will happen in Rome, even today.

All of this is supposed to be terribly sad, especially the scene where Octavia stumbles across Glabius' corpse, then confronts Atia, only to have her mother lie and say she had nothing to do with the murder. The idea here, I think, is to reveal the corruption of power and the extent of Atia's ruthlessness.

But this fails as plot because Glabius is a non-entity who ends up with about two and a half minutes of screen time, and Octavia, while more prominent within the show, has been given no real characterization to speak of. And it fails as character work because Atia's ruthlessness and power hunger have already been amply demonstrated. In short, I don't care about Octavia, I don't care about Glabius and Atia is much more entertaining in other contexts.

The show simply hasn't devoted enough time to Octavia to make me care about her little tragedies, and when it counts around to reminding us that she exists it's simply not enough to actually create compelling drama.

I mentioned above that one element of this show is clicking so far, and that element continues to be Kevin McKidd's Lucius Vorenus. Dispatched with new BFF Titus Pullo to scout ahead of Caesar's march and avoid combat, Vorenus is instead concerned with two things: his wife and his soul.

McKidd in this episode continues to do fantastic work conveying the torment of a traditionalist and a religious man swept up into a rebellion he neither understands nor supports. He is a member of the 13th Legion and does his duty, but he does so always with the understanding that he is damning himself and his country in the eyes of his gods.

Lucius explains the baffling fact that his scouts find no resistance as they advance (Pompey has fled Rome with most of the nobles) with the belief that the gods have withdrawn their favor from Rome and no longer protect the city. It is a staggering realization for a man such as Vorenus, and McKidd plays it well, with just the right mix of pious anger and despair.

Vorenus is also concerned about his wife, whose distaste he is aware of, and again, this is handled in a way that resonates with what we know of the character. As he says, "I love her and I require she love me also, or else I am only her slave, and I cannot tolerate that."

This is the thinking of a man who loves his wife but is also of his time; he wants his wife to be happy because he loves her, but the "or else I am only her slave" clause is not some sort of masculine chest-thumping or attempt to cover his feelings. Vorenus is a proud man of 1st century Rome, and proud men of 1st century Rome are not in positions of weakness vis a vis their wives.

Vorenus's storyline in this episode ends with the momentous decision to leave the 13th Legion, a decision made after he and Pullo enter Rome and nail Caesar's proclamation to the Senate door. He prays to Venus for his wife's love, but again, while this is a reflection of the depth of his feelings for Niobe, it is still the prayer of a Roman man. He does not ask to be a better man to earn that love; instead, he offers his blood so that Venus will give him that love.

But that pride crumbles when he finally sees Niobe, and the words he says to her, while shrouded still in a measure of Roman pomposity, are humble, almost plaintive. "I've been sullen....cold...but I'm not made of stone...I can change. I swear on the life of my daughter's son that I will change if you will have it so."

This ends with Vorenus embracing his wife, who seemed on the verge of confessing her infidelity. The point is left ambiguous. Does Vorenus understand that the baby in the other room is his wife's by another man and has decided to forgive Niobe? If not, the inevitable revelation will prove an interesting test of the "new" Vorenus.

Notes

• "Of course, the best way to please a woman is with the wet, beating heart of an enemy. They say they don't like it, but they do." Titus Pullo's idea of the perfect Valentine's Day present.
• Vorenus is quite shocked to learn of the existence of the clitoris.
• There's a weird, abortive sub-plot here with a group of soldiers stealing gold from Rome's treasury, only to have the great misfortune of running into Vorenus and Pullo, who solve things the way they usually do: with stabbing. Pullo returns to the scene later, discovers the gold, then takes the cart away just as Caesar's column approaches. I imagine he ends up rich and satisfied in a life of splendor.
• Polly Walker, who plays Atia, really is wonderfully entertaining in a comedic context. Her instructions as to who will kill who as an angry mob gathers outside her door are hilarious. To a slave: "You must kill yourself. Your survival would be inappropriate." To her son: "Octavian, who would you prefer to kill you?"
• With Pompey and all his supporters fled, and Rome now in the hands of Caesar, Atia is running a nifty little protection racket, extorting money from local businessmen in exchange for Caesar's favor. Good thing that practice died out thousands of years ago. I'd hate to think any Italians would ever get the idea of doing something so unethical. 

Things Fall Apart (Review)

Series: The Newsroom
Episode Title: "Red Team III"
Episode Grade: A-

It is striking that "Red Team III", the most important episode of this season and one of the series' best, spends precious little time on the actual event that has defined the entire season. Indeed, the airing of News Night's report on Operation Genoa is dispatched over a couple minutes, with some overly portentous music and quick camera cuts among stern, worried people.

"Red Team III," instead, is concerned primarily with the aftermath of the Genoa disaster and how the staff reacts when the story starts to fall apart. It is a flashback episode, told in the waning moments of the final depositions conducted by the attorney played by Marcia Gay Harden. As a result, there's some story furniture that has be arranged before we can move through the episode, some reminders the audience has to be provided with so that we remember what has gone into Genoa so far.

Don reminds us of the evidence. Then Neal. Then Sloan. Then Don again. This is tedious at first, but then it becomes clear what the show is doing: reminding us of how damn solid the entire story seems to be. We have two eyewitnesses from the operation. We have Marine General Stephen Root. We have the budget document Charlie's source provided.

Stacked one on top of the other, the entire structure of Genoa seems sound, and it's easy for the audience to see how the newsroom staff (including Will, brought in for the first time) believes the same thing. And that makes the revelation that the structure is a house of cards all the more devastating, even if, technically, this isn't a revelation at all; we've known it since the beginning.

So they run the story, and General Root immediately calls to complain that he never said what he was shown on the show to have said. The staff can shrug this off, but then the Pentagon issues a belated response, threatening legal action and absolutely denying the story.

Things only truly start to disintegrate when Sweeney, the first to come forward with confirmation of the use of sarin gas, does another interview on the network and reveals (for the first time) that he had suffered a traumatic brain injury in a previous fire fight. The primary symptom of a TBI, it turns out, is memory loss.

And this is where the episode, more workmanlike than inspired to this point, kicks into gear. Emily Mortimer does what is undoubtedly her best work in this episode, especially in a scene where she essentially cross-examines herself and finds all the flaws of her interview with Private Valenzuela, the other participant in Genoa who came forward to confirm the story.

Then the capper: Charlie meets with his source, a man named Shepherd, to get confirmation that the story is still sound. Instead, "Shep" puts a dagger in it. His son was an intern at ACN, and he was fired for posting critical things about Will's show on the internet. Things Charlie agreed with, no doubt, but interns get fired for criticizing their networks online.

Charlie didn't fire the kid, but Shepherd holds him responsible for the fact that his son died of a heroin overdose after being fired. And so he did the one thing he knew would hurt Charlie the most: he forged the mission document.

And then MacKenzie discovers what Jerry Dantana did to the footage of his interview with General Root, thanks to the shot clock at the bottom of the basketball game that was going on in the background. Her tearful reaction, and the look on her face when she tells Will, is heartbreaking, and makes up for a lot of fairly pedestrian work Mortimer had turned in prior to this episode.

The episode ends on what is theoretically a stirring note; Jane Fonda, playing the head of the network, storms in and refuses to accept resignations from Will, Charlie and MacKenzie. She refuses to settle with Dantana, who has filed a wrongful termination suit alleging he was scapegoated for the institutional failure that caused the Genoa debacle. And in response to Charlie pointing out that they no longer have the trust of the public, Fonda ends the episode with, "So, get it back!"

But however that's supposed to resonate with the audience, the feel and smell of failure is too heavy on this episode to be dismissed by one amusing scene with Jane Fonda playing a drunken businesswoman. "Red Team III" is an episode about the aftermath of a career-shattering mistake, and it is striking and compelling as a result.

Notes

• Turns out Will heard similar rumors about Genoa from a source of his own. Who turns out to be Shepherd. Whoops.
• I really like Thomas Sadoski's incredulity in the opening deposition, when he's trying to convey just how insane it is that Dantana is suing.
• More solid work from Hamish Linklater, who does a great job in the early scenes with Red Team III playing a character who is genuinely aggrieved at his colleagues' skepticism while knowing what he did.
• What doesn't work here: Jim is right from the beginning and suspects the story is wrong, all without giving any reasonable basis for his conviction. Jim's the most troublesome character on the show, and he's worth a longer discussion at some point.
• Not a lot of laugh out loud comedy in this one, but I did enjoy Sloan pointing out to Don that she would survive in prison just fine by pulling a Shawshank Redemption and doing the warden's taxes. "What are you gonna do, produce their nightly news show?"
• So, that game in the background? Definitely Florida-Kentucky. Once again, Gator basketball saves the day. 

Of Traditions, Tribunes and Rubicons (Review)

Series: Rome
Episode Title: "How Titus Pullo Brought Down The Republic"
Original Air Date: September 11, 2005
Grade: B

One of the thematic threads I expect Rome to weave throughout its narrative is the question of how tradition affects the behavior of the people in this world. The Roman Republic was full of traditions, most religious, which governed everyday life. Rome was hardly unique in that, and an observer in the 1st century BC would be hard pressed not to see the hand of a benevolent deity (or seven) in the unlikely rise of a small village to global superpower status.

"How Titus Pullo Brought Down the Republic," aside from representing a significant improvement on Rome's pilot episode, is concerned primarily with exactly that theme. How our characters grapple with the web of traditions in ancient Rome is what defines them in this episode, and those same traditions play a huge role in pushing forward the inevitable break between Caesar and the Senate in Rome.

The most fascinating work here is from Lucius Vorenus, who accompanies Antony to Rome at the request of Caesar, who is hanging around with the 13th Legion outside of Italy while his consulate ticks to a close. Antony is being named Tribune, a kind of people's representative inside the noble Senate, and Vorenus and Pullo are tabbed with escort duty.

Vorenus has his own concerns: he is seeing his wife for the first time in eight years. Vorenus is the representative of tradition in this episode, a believer in the values and rituals that define the Roman Republic and earned it divine protection.

This makes him the most interesting and challenging character we've seen through two episodes. Vorenus isn't an anti-hero in the same sense as Tony Soprano or Walter White, a man who is compelling while violating the standards and mores of his culture. He is, instead, an excellent man by the standards of his time. It's just that the standards of his time are so alien and loathsome to our own.

Vorenus' interactions with his wife Niobe in this episode are cruel when they aren't awkward, clueless when they aren't cruel, heartbreaking when they aren't clueless. One of the first words out of his mouth when speaking to his wife after eight years of separation is "Whore!" See, Niobe is holding a child who is clearly not eight years old, and Vorenus' rage is only slightly assuaged upon hearing that the child is his daughter's by a young plebian boy.

These scenes with Vorenus, his wife and their daughters do a remarkable job capturing all the difficulties that would arise after an eight-year military separation. Niobe has to introduce Vorenus to his daughters. The entire domestic scene, with a crying granddaughter and a miserable wife, is alien to Vorenus, who handles it as a Roman man would: by berating and criticizing his wife.

This is all difficult to watch, but it also makes sense for the character and setting. The show's attempt to establish a dichotomy between the traditionalist Vorenus and the more iconoclastic Titus are rather clumsily handled and less effective; Titus is still in the mode where he baldly states all his motivations, and those motivations are neither particularly compelling or expressed with any great skill or eloquence.

The links betwen Pullo and Antony, on the other hand, are more interesting, as the show is better at showing Antony's disregard for tradition and cultural mores than it is with Pullo. The two are separated by status and power, but they are of a type.

We'll move past the scene with Antony having sex behind a tree while his army stands 20 feet away and focus instead on how he behaves in Rome. Rome loves its elaborate ceremonies, especially for those holding public office, and Antony impatiently has to sit while priests chant and dance around him. When it's all over, Antony's groan of pleasure is cleverly paired with Pullo's in a brothel.

Antony's primary purpose in Rome is to meet with Pomey, Cicero and Cato and work out some kind of compromise. Or, more accurately, his primary purpose is to feign compromise and provoke the Senators into moving against Caesar by being his arrogant, brutish self. Caesar's strategy works too well; Pompey puts forward a motion in the Senate to send Caesar an ultimatum with the expectation that Antony would exercise his tribunal veto.

Pompey is not particularly clear or convincing in explaining the point of this (something about sending Caesar a message), and it's one of the episode's weaknesses. Regardless, the plan falls apart when the Senate degenerates into chaos following Pompey's motion; Antony's veto is never heard or recognized, and the ancient man running the Senate insists per Roman tradition that the motion has the full force of law. "This is a religious issue, and there are no tricks in religion," he wheezes.

Pompey and Cicero find a loophole: the Senate's hearing was never officially adjourned, which means the Senate is still technically in session. However, this idea falls apart in exactly the way Pompey fears it might: a fight breaks out in the Forum as Antony heads to the Senate to veto the ultimatum when Pullo recognizes a man who helped wound him in a bar fight a few nights earlier.

Antony flees to a now-outlawed Caesar with Pullo and a wounded Vorenus, and here we get the portrait of a man who handles tradition differently than either Antony or Vorenus. Caesar exploits Rome's traditions for his own purposes, exhorting his previously mutinous soldiers by detailing the blasphemous way the people's Tribune was accosted in the forum.

This has the appropriate effect: Caesar's soldiers are outraged and rally behind their general, and he marches across the Rubicon into Italy with only the slightest hesitation. This is the first time the show really makes Caesar a noteworthy presence. Where traditions bind Vorenus and annoy Antony, Caesar knows how to make them work for him.

Notes

• The final scenes in the military camp really do an excellent job of showing Caesar as the master manipulator he was in real life. A bruised and bloodied Antony goes to wash himself, but Caesar wants the visual for his soldiers' benefit.
• Antony, Cato, Cicero and Pompey have a meeting at Atia's house. Cato: "Woman, this meeting is invisible." Atia: "Be assured Cato, I do not see you."
• Cato is outraged that Antony is wearing the red cape of a soldier within the borders of Rome, another nice little bit on Roman tradition.
• The Atia Sex Watch: Yep, she has some. With Antony this time.
• Octavia gets her first entertaining moment of the series, mocking Atia by mimicking her mother's orgasm noises. The most amusing aspect of the scene is Atia's utter lack of shame throughout.
• There's a really cool, painful scene of Pullo undergoing primitive Roman brain surgery after his bar fight, including a moment where the doctor pounds a nail into Pullo's skull. Presumably this is the future of American medicine post-Obamacare.
• Vorenus overhears his wife telling a convalescing Pullo how miserable she is. This is more than a little Three's Company-esque for my liking.
• Vorenus acquiesces to his daughter marrying the plebian after hearing that his family makes decent money driving herds of cattle around. He's initially a little skeptical about the kid, as his house is built from cow dung, but the kid assures him, "It's very hygienic. It doesn't smell at all."
• Oh, turns out the baby is Niobe's, which we find out in a last second revelation that is not nearly as dramatic as the show thinks it is. 

One Step Forward...(Review)

Series: The Newsroom
Episode Title: "One Step Too Many"
Episode Grade: B+

Last week, I wrote that it would be a mistake for Aaron Sorkin to step away from the reality that the staff of "News Night With Will McAvoy" had screwed up in pursuing the Operation Genoa story. With this episode, Sorkin comes close to doing just that. It works, for now, because of some quality acting from Hamish Linklater and solid writing in giving Linklater's Jerry Dantana character reasonable motivation.

"One Step Too Many" unfolds over the course of several months, but the crucial action takes place over the a couple scenes, spread out over the course of the episode. The newsroom staff tracks down a Marine general, who will henceforth be referred to as "General Stephen Root" because his actual character's name is long and not readily available on the internet at the moment, who they suspect has knowledge of Operation Genoa.

General Stephen Root, played by Stephen Root, is a chemical weapons acolyte. Charlie and MacKenzie use this to wheedle an apparent confirmation out of General Root in an excellent scene that shows how these two people actually become high-ranking journalists.

Dantana is dispatched to interview General Root, and their conversation is fascinating. Root is distracted by a basketball game (more on that in the notes); he's uncooperative enough to be disquieting, but not incoherent or apparently un-credible. He has Maggie and everyone else leave, which is easy enough for a motivated Dantana to wave off as understandable paranoia.

But Dantana doesn't hear what he wants to hear. He hears something perilously, achingly close to what he wants to hear; General Root confirms the existence of Genoa, but when Dantana presses him on the use of sarin gas in the operation, Root instead talks about how the US would use sarin if they had used it.

Back in New York, Dantana doesn't hesitate. He cuts the tape of the interview and removes the word "if" in Root's "if we used sarin gas" statement. When he presents the interview to MacKenzie, Charlie and the rest of the newsroom staff (Will is still being left out of the story), he shows them tape of Root flatly confirming the use of sarin gas.

How does all this work? It would be fair to ding Sorkin for taking the easy way out and making Dantana openly unethical. Dantana deceiving MacKenzie and Co. can be seen to remove any sense of responsibility or fault from the core cast, essentially skirting the promise of the Genoa storyline.

And yet I'm basically on board, with some reservations. Much of this comes down to Linklater's outstanding performance here; Dantana is motivated by a sincere concern over the state of civil liberties in the Obama era. Linklater spends most of the episode on the "sincere" and "passionate" side of the line, but falls onto the "strident" side just often enough to make his actions predictable.

And the the motivation here is sound. Dantana clearly believes in Genoa, and it's not hard to see how he can justify his actions; Root's statements, if viewed in the right light, with a certain amount of squinting, can be seen as something close to confirmation. Dantana didn't so much slide down the slippery slope as take one wrong step when he thought he was already off the slope.

This reading is based on what we saw of Dantana's interview with General Root, which is only a few questions. If it turns out that Root explicitly denied the use of sarin in Genoa, then Dantana's motivations become much less understandable, and the whole storyline suffers as a result.

For now, however, "One Step Too Many" is compelling television, even if it deliberately avoids some steps that could have made it truly outstanding.

Notes:

• On the other hand, shouldn't MacKenzie have watched the entire interview? Unedited? She even asked Don if he trusted Jerry.
• About that basketball game: General Root loves March Madness and refuses to do the interview without a game on. But what's shown is actually a regular season Kentucky game in Lexington. And, if I'm not mistaken, it's Florida-Kentucky. (Stephen Root the actor is a Florida grad. And as a "by the way," UK won that game, 76-68)
• Yes, there are other storylines in this episode. Will's obsession with his ratings continues, and Nina advice leads him to an appearance on the ACN morning show. That appearance ends with Will throwing a football at a stand of lights and then breaking up with Nina. It's...not much.
• "I think you're lovable, but your numbers are problematic."
• There's some excellent comedy in the other story, which has Jim planning on dinner and soooo much sex with Hallie (who is still on the show, for you Grace Gummer fans). Sorkin has always done well with plots where a frustrated and desperate man has obstacle after obstacle thrown in his way.
• Constance Zimmer continues to do good work as the (now-fired) Romney spokesman who tags along at Hallie's request. "I know this is a special evening for you, so of course I said yes."
• Taylor: "I loathe you in ways that are unquantifiable." Neal: "Cool."
• "How do you know Reagan's horse didn't dance?"
• Hallie brings along a friend for Neal. She's the worst sort of Sorkin character; I really wish he'd stop with the ditzy women.
• Will doesn't want Sloane to spoil John Carter.
• Maggie is also in this episode.

The Series Wasn't Built in a Day (Review)

Series: Rome
Episode Title: "The Stolen Eagle"
Original Air Date: August 25, 2005
Grade: C

There is perhaps no hoarier cliche when talking about television than, "Pilots are hard." It's accurate, of course, but that doesn't make the sentiment any less obvious or any more insightful.

So, forgive me then: pilots are hard. And Rome is a truly outstanding example of that particular sentiment.

Things start off poorly, with a voiceover providing what must have seemed like crucial exposition. "Rome rules a lot of nations! But it can't rule itself! Nobles don't like poor people and poor people don't like nobles! Here are Caesar and Pompey!" It's all terribly dull, and in that respect sets a perfect tone for what follows.

We start this series, as we should start every series, with a battle scene, and while it's obviously handicapped by budgetary concerns (we see about seven Romans and maybe a dozen Gauls), it's a nice way of providing insight into our main characters, Titus Pollo (Ray Stevenson) and Lucius Vorenus (the well-traveled Kevin McKidd). The discipline and skill of the Romans is well-displayed here, and Pollo breaking formation is treated with the appropriate seriousness.

After this, however, the episode degenerates. There's a lot that goes wrong here, but the chief sin is that it's dull.

Oh, things happen, and it's easy enough to see how they will become more interesting in the future. Caesar (Ciaran Hinds) accepts the surrender of the Celt chieftain Vercingetorix, then finds out that his daughter Julia, who is married to his ally and co-consul Pompey (Kenneth Cranham), has died in child birth. Caesar's first reaction to this news is to try and find another member of the Julii clan to marry Pompey and keep the consular alliance strong.

Meanwhile, his relative Atia (Polly Walker), who, in traditional HBO fashion, we are introduced to in the middle of a sex scene, conscripts her son Octavian (played with admirable sullenness by Max Pirkis) to take a beautiful horse to Caesar in Gaul and good lord we're 10 minutes in and I'm already bored.

There are elements of this episode that work. When Caesar's eagle standard is stolen by a couple of "Spaniards" who are painted blue, the legion reacts with appropriate ferocity. Vorenus is given the task of retrieving the standard, and starts by crucifying a member of every tribe in the area. It's an effective scene, and McKidd plays it just right: efficient, mechanical, ruthless without being ostentatiously cruel.

Vorenus and Pollo (who was thrown in prison and sentenced to death for breaking formation, only to be sprung by Vorenus in order to help search for the standard) search fruitlessly for a while. During one of the breaks, Pollo has is made to explicitly lay out his entire character motivation, saying, "Kill my enemy, steal his gold, take his women. What else is there?"

The two find the standard...when they find Octavian, who was captured during his trip by what we assumed were Gauls. What follows is probably the worst scene in the episode. Octavian immediately spells out, in tedious detail, exactly what is happening. See, Caesar doesn't care about the standard. Caesar knows Pompey cares and will consider the theft a sign of weakness. This will tempt Pompey to strike first, which gives Caesar the moral high ground to fight back.

Oh, and it turns out Pompey sent some of his slaves to steal the standard. Caesar discovers this and is overjoyed, as it plays right into his hands.

We are supposed to be impressed by Octavian's intelligence and insight, but this comes off far less as the explanation of a politically shrewd observer and more as a writer's device for spelling out the plot.

There are some other elements to this episode, which I'll briefly discuss in the notes. However, "The Stolen Eagle" illustrates exactly why pilots are so difficult. You have to introduce your audience to your characters, your stories and your world, and you have one episode in which to do it. Corners are cut on character development, and so you're left with Pollo baldly explaining his mentality and Octavian getting an unrealistic, unearned moment of brilliance in place of actual, demonstrated intelligence.

The pilot episode of Rome falls short on just about every front. It was, perhaps, a necessity for a show set in as large and complicated a world as ancient Rome. But it simply is not an entertaining hour of television.

Notes

• The other significant storyline here is Atia convincing her daughter Octavia to divorce her husband and marry Pompey. Octavia is adamantly opposed, and is then convinced with 20 seconds of persuasion.
• The scene where Atia introduces Octavia and Pompey is utterly creepy in all the right ways. Octavia's makeup and hair look utterly clownish, and Atia explicitly whores out her daughter ("You can take your groom's right immediately. Right now, if you wish.").
• Of course, it's all meaningless, as Pompey ends up marrying another noblewoman. Turns out he decided to turn on Caesar the moment Julia died. Octavia shouts for Pompey's head, which is an amusingly severe and quick shift in personality.
• An imprisoned Pollo calls his jailers "Piss-drinking sons of circus whores," which should probably make its way into Obama's next press conference.
• There's a scene in the Senate where Pompey defends Caesar. The show does a great job catching the stilted, mannered gestures of the Roman Senators. 
• Cato, on the other hand, is not nearly as interesting as the severe, fanatical ascetic he was in the real world. 
• I suspect that's not the only unnecessary scene of Atila having sex we're going to be presented with, is it? 

The Glory That Was Greece, The Grandeur That Were "Rome" Reviews

I mentioned the other day that I intended to watch and write about some recent, well-regarded shows that, as a productive member of society for the first time in my life, I now have access to. There's no reason at all to delay that, so starting tomorrow I will be watching and reviewing HBO's Rome.

HBO has a few more critically acclaimed series available; I can watch The Sopranos or The Wire right now. So, why Rome? 

I was a classics minor in college, and while "Classical Studies" was pretty much just code for "History, But Greece and Rome," the latter has always been by far the more intriguing subject to me. I was always more of a "Fall of Rome" guy than a Caesar guy; like Ken Levine and George R.R. Martin, I find something extraordinarily fascinating about watching the collapse of something that once was great.

But, of course, the creation of the extraordinary is also of tremendous interest, and there's no lack of drama to be found in the stories of Caesar, Antony and Octavian. The story of Rome is an exceptional one, and not easy to tell.

I am most interested in seeing how Rome, a series, however generously funded by HBO for its two seasons, that still dealt with all the limitations of the television medium, strikes a balance between the larger picture of the Roman Empire and the smaller bore stories of its characters. I will go into this question in more detail later, depending on how the show develops, but it will suffice to say that stories of massive historical events that attempt to focus on in-depth character studies, so as to provide the larger context with color and meaning, can miss the grand sweep of history that makes the stories so fascinating in the first place.

But we'll get to that soon enough. Look for the first review in this space tomorrow. The schedule after that will likely be a little sporadic, but I can promise reviews will appear at least once a week.

A Father, A Fake Phone Call and Naked Pictures (Review)

Series: The Newsroom

Episode Title: "News Night With Will McAvoy"

Grade: B

Coming off one of the series' better and more eventful episodes, “Unintended Consequences,” the expectation might be that “News Night With Will McAvoy” would be a breather episode, a chance to recover and take stock of the important character developments from last week. Instead, Aaron Sorkin and company opted for an episode veritably stuffed with plot, enough of which works to make this a success. However, enough falls flat to keep “News Night...” from achieving anything genuinely memorable.

Something of a bottle episode, taking place entirely in the ACN newsroom over the course of a single show, “News  Night” is very much an episode about technology. This is dangerous ground for The Newsroom, which has too often reveled in Sorkin's oft-expressed disdain for the internet and internet culture and anything that runs on electrons.

Intriguingly, however, “News Night” takes a perspective that is, if not exactly sophisticated, then at least nuanced and understanding in a way that has not often been on display. Will is distracted by news that a Washington Post writer tweeted mean things about him. A Syrian woman calls in during the show and tells Jim that her husband is trapped under a bombed out building in Damascus. And, in the plot line that wins the award for “Most Minefields Avoided With Shocking Deftness,” Sloane has to deal with an ex-boyfriend sending out naked photos of her over the internet.

Will's mindset is also very much at the forefront of “News Night,” as he's distracted both by the Post writer's tweet and the news that his father has suffered a heart attack. Jeff Daniels does excellent work here mainly by not overplaying any given scene or emotion; he is stolid and stoic throughout, save some of the usual banter with Emily Mortimer's character, a reflection both of his professionalism and the extent to which he has submerged himself in his show. The moment where Will reveals the Post writer's final tweet (“You just lost a viewer”) is an outstanding one, both in terms of Daniels' performance and what it says about the character.

But the acting award for tonight goes to Olivia Munn, who had been somewhat sidelined in the early episodes of this season. She plays Sloane's devastation and humiliation beautifully, and Sorkin deserves credit for the writing of a plot line that could easily have been disastrous. Sloane's scenes talking things through with Don, whose character has undergone an enjoyable and much-needed evolution since the early days of the show, are beautiful; Don is understanding, but, in a wise decision by Sorkin, not perfect, and Sloane doesn't hesitate in rejecting his insinuations that she is dating obviously awful guys. And the moment where she finally break downs and says, “I wanna die,” is perfectly pitched and played.

While concerns about tweeting and other technological issues engage the staff (Neal is able to find out, off-screen, that the “Syrian” couple are actually calling from Manhattan, which nicely avoided my expectations of Jim heartbreakingly talking a trapped survivor through his final hours), the long-term storyline that propels this season is being handled in the old-style: face-to-face, journalist to source, over a drink.

Charlie receives a visit from a Navy PR guy, purportedly to discuss issues surrounding a Naval computing facility in Utah. It quickly evolves into a discussion of Operation Genoa, the black op that News Night has been sedulously looking into over the course of the season and that we know is doomed to blow up in the show's face.

The end result of this conversation? The Navy man hands Sam Waterston a piece of paper, a budget report that leaves the latter convinced Genoa is real.

I've been intrigued by the Genoa plotline since the beginning of the season, both because it is evidence that the News Night staff is capable of screwing up and the way in which it is becoming increasingly easy to see how they could screw it up. Critics, including the show's many journalist hate watchers, have argued that Sorkin's decision to set the show in the recent past makes journalism too easy; the characters always make the right calls, because Sorkin already knows the right answers.

With the Genoa plotline, however, The Newsroom seems to be showing how easy it is to screw up while chasing a story. And by making the story they're chasing all the more convincing, Sorkin shows just how difficult the practice of journalism really is.

The episode ends with a fairly standard Sorkin trope: the last-minute bombshell that one character knew for a while, then calmly explains to another character (and the audience). In this case, it's Will telling MacKenzie that his father died.

Never having met Will's father, or having heard much about him aside from a brief discussion in a psychiatrist's office (which was helpfully included in the “previously on...” vignette before the show”), this can only have so much effect on the audience. Its effect on Will is what it's interesting; we now know that Will went through a lengthy segment of the show with his father's death on his mind and never showed it. And there's a touching scene where, coming back from commercial after telling MacKenzie the news, Will stares blankly for several seconds before moving on with the final segment of the show.

“News Night With Will McAvoy” is an episode that relies heavily on its actors performances and works because of it. Ultimately, however, our read on this season is going to depend in large part on how the Genoa plotline develops. Showing the News Night staff as mortal and fallible is a good step; it would be a mistake for Sorkin to back away from it.

Notes

·         What didn't work about this episode? Maggie. Those inclined to be harsh toward the show, who have frequently complained about the alleged misuse of Allison Pill, will see her storyline, both the revelations that she's been drinking and sleeping around and her mistake editing the George Zimmerman 911 call, as further proof of Sorkin's inability to write a competent, together female character. I'm a little more charitable, in that the behavior is portrayed as an understandable reaction to a traumatic event instead of a character flaw and her explanation for the editing mistake (she had five minutes to cut a six-minute tape to 20 seconds and removed a crucial bit of context) is reasonable, but it's not a particularly compelling bit of television.

·         “The country is divided between people who like sex and people who think it’s kinda gross…” Not the most nuanced depiction of the culture wars.

·         Also falling a little bit short is the conclusion to Sloane's storyline, which has her beating up and photographing the ex-boyfriend. A nice little “Fuck, yeah!” scene for Olivia Munn, but too trite and neat by half.

·         Don lecturing Sloane on being better than her boyfriends also rings false, and is the only bad moment in their conversations.

·         “I am feeling something so intensely I don't even know what it is.” A good line, and well-delivered by Munn.

·         Comedic storyline not covered in the review: Don's sarcastic comment about a candidate for the Solicitor General position speaking to a jihad group is the source for a World Net Daily piece. This is basically just a re-hash of a real life case where a reporter joked about Chuck Hagel speaking at a benefit for “Friends of Hamas,” then watched in horror as it was reported as fact in Tucker Carlson's rancid Daily Caller. It does give Olivia Munn a funny moment, where Don tells her not to laugh while he's on a speaker phone call with a WND editor and she says, “How am I supposed to when all I've been doing is laughing for hours?”

·         Yet another plotline has a kid from Rutgers planning on using an appearance on News Night to come out. It's basically a two-scene story, but there's a nice moment at the end where the kid says it was “one way to tell my parents without being there.” 

·         Hey, Will understands the concepts of Twitter followers and re-tweets!

• 
  

So...What Are We Doing Here?

A few years ago I ran a blog called "Distressed Reporter." Its audience never expanded beyond some friends,  a few spammers and some folks who happened to stumble across it by accident, but I enjoyed the experience.

I started the blog during the 2008 presidential campaign, and there was a lot of material. I wrote quite a lot about politics, but it was very much a general interest blog, a place where I would write about anything I wanted. That included a lot of posts about Florida athletics (far too many for most of my reader), Braves baseball and entertainment.

The intention with this blog is to focus far more extensively on...well, Andrew Writing About TV. Not exclusively, to be sure, but I hope to write quite a bit about television, movies, videogames and the other bits of pop culture that attract my attention.

What does that entail? Well, for now the blog is likely to get off to a slow start, with most network television still on its summer vacation. Weekly reviews of The Newsroom will start immediately, and you can expect a new post on that topic tomorrow morning. Once other shows I watch with frequency return to circulation, I intend to review them in this space as well.

But what I'm most excited about is watching and reviewing some of the classic shows that I missed during their original runs. That includes The Sopranos, The Wire, Rome and, presumably, other shows that aren't available to me on HBOGO.

I still have to work out the precise details for those classic reviews. But it is a remarkable opportunity to catch up with some shows I've heard so much about over the years.

So, keep an eye on this space. Let's see what we can find.

Aaron Sorkin, The Newsroom and Michelangelo's David

I've recently decided to stop reading reviews of The Newsroom, HBO's Aaron Sorkin-scripted drama that is currently in the middle of its second season. The simple reason for this is that I seem to be watching a different show from the one reviewed by most critics; episodes that I enjoy, that consistently make me laugh and intrigue me with their plots and character work, are routinely eviscerated by critics whose work I like and respect.

This isn't to say I'm right and they're wrong, or to claim that history will vindicate The Newsroom. There's a perfectly reasonable chance that, soon after the show comes to an end, we'll all view it as the ridiculous nonsense its critics argue it is. But even if my own oft-expressed admiration for Sorkin's past work biases me to an extent that I can't see the reality in front of me, the fact remains that I'm frequently baffled by what I read from TV critics.

I don't mean to say that the show's critics have no substantive complaints with the show; they do, revolving around issues of gender and race, characterization, plotting and the insufferability of just about every main character.

I find some of these complaints dramatically overstated (Dev Patel's Neal, for example, is not nearly the fool the show's critics accuse Sorkin of portraying him as), some of them reasonable (the complaints over gender) and some of them incomplete (the characters are quite insufferable, but they're also called on it frequently and suffer consequences for their arrogance).

Still, my differences with most observers over The Newsroom go beyond differences of opinion regarding specific characters and plot points. In fact, this gulf is, to my mind, remarkably illustrative of an important philosophical difference between the way I watch TV and the ways most critics do. It is a clash of approaches that not only goes a long way toward explaining how I can truly enjoy The Newsroom while so many dislike the show, it also says much about the elevated location in which I place Sorkin in my personal pantheon of great artists, certainly as compared to those who actually think and write about TV for a living.

Because it seems apparent that Sorkin's stock with TV critics is at the lowest point it has ever been. Certainly, Sorkin's reputation has fallen dramatically since his earliest ventures into television; SportsNight was a critical darling, if a commercial flop, while The West Wing was critically praised, commercially successful and showered with awards.

Much of this decline in the critical evaluation of Sorkin's work can fairly be attributed to an actual decline in Sorkin's work; Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, while often castigated with a passion that far exceeds what is justified by the show's sins, was too-often a mess, and The Newsroom, while far better than Studio 60, is certainly a lesser work, albeit one I greatly enjoy.

But even broader portraits of Sorkin, ones that take into account the earlier two shows, are often not kind to him. Watching an Aaron Sorkin drama is often looked at as the television equivalent of eating whipped cream straight from the aerosol canister; fun, and not without its many pleasures, but ultimately an empty experience, one that should be replaced with a far heartier diet.

That Sports Night and The West Wing weren't initially regarded in such a fashion is where the nub of the issue lies. What has changed since those shows debuted (1998 for Sports Night, 1999 for The West Wing) is the landscape of television, and what we view as quality TV drama.

Since The West Wing had its heyday, we've seen the complete (or near-complete) runs of many shows that are cited in arguments that we live in a new Golden Age of television. That list includes The Sopranos, Deadwood, The Wire, Rome, Breaking Bad, Mad Men and more.

These shows set standards for unique and skillful storytelling. And all had at their centers complex, difficult protagonists, men who weren't just tempted by their worst demons, but often sought them out. These were torn and tormented characters, and their internal dramas were often even more compelling than the events swirling around them.

For critics who have come of age with this dynamic, Sorkin's work, even previously well-regarded programs like The West Wing, can't help but retrospectively suffer. It is an anti-heroic age, and Aaron Sorkin keeps writing heroes.

Compared to Al Swearengen, Don Draper, Tony Soprano and Walter White, Jed Bartlett, to many critics, will always look quaint, at best, and hilariously simplistic at worst.

We all value different things in our entertainment. When it comes to television, some people like great acting performances. Others prefer production values or atmosphere. Like most of those who think and write too much about television, my biases are for writing.

Where I differ from many in this bias is how I define “writing.” Quality television writing is often defined by skillful character work, or vibrant world-building or intricate, well-structured plots and narratives.

I'm in favor of all those things, of course. No one is against them.

But what I value, what I most hold dear in the TV I consume, is language itself. For lack of a better way of phrasing it, I have a word-centric view of writing. And this explains much, if not all, of my regard for Sorkin; the star of a Sorkin drama isn't Martin Sheen or Peter Krause or Jeff Daniels, it's Sorkin's words. This bothers many who believe Sorkin's writing is obnoxiously insisting upon your attention and utterly unrealistic. By contrast, it has always captured me.

To demonstrate exactly how this differs from many of the critics I quite respect, it is illuminating to look at a review of The Newsroom's season premiere. The review, written by Todd VanDerWerff of The AV Club, nods at a few areas of praise, but generally falls on the scathing side; at one point VanDerWerff says the show is “beautiful poison.”

At the end of the review, in a section for miscellaneous notes, VanDerWerff says, “Sorkin still has a way with words, and there are passages of dialogue here that are mesmerizing in their structure and rhythm. I just wish they had something to say beyond, 'Agree with me! I am right!'”

Put another way, in a review evaluating the quality of an episode's writing, VanDerWerff believes “a way with words” is so unimportant as to merit a dismissive, dashed off note.

The AV Club obviously isn't an entirely representative entity; it has a particular style and set of preferences. And Sorkin is about as popular as chlamydia with the site's readership and commentariat (what's the difference between chlamydia and an Aaron Sorkin monologue? With the right medication chlamydia will eventually end). But the site is a respected and valuable resource, not to mention one of my favorite on the Internet.

And I don't single out this review and this reviewer for any special opprobrium. VanDerWerff is a prolific, passionate critic whose insights on television are to be greatly valued. Instead, I note it simply because the attitude expressed in that one line is quite emblematic of the dynamic I identified earlier.

Even Sorkin's sharpest critics acknowledge his skill as a writer; that is to say, they acknowledge his skill as a crafter of prose and dialogue. But for those who dislike The Newsroom and dismiss The West Wing, Sorkin's snappy dialogue, clever phrasing, well-crafted jokes and eloquent speeches are something akin to a bowl of chocolate sprinkles. It's all fine as accents, as something used to bring out deeper, more important and substantive stuff, but consumed on their own they're just meaningless.

And that's where I part company. Those words of Sorkin's, those wonderful, forceful words, are worth the watching themselves. When we argue that the beauty of the prose is largely irrelevant compared to the depths of the characters or the subtlety of thematic developments, we lose sight of a crucial element of great art.

Two comparisons always come to mind when considering this point; one reasonable, the other ridiculous.

Shakespeare is the more reasonable comparison, which should demonstrate exactly how ridiculous the other is. It is true that there is much to love in Shakespeare beyond the beauty of the words. Certain plays have excellent character work; the title character and his wife in MacBeth, for instance, and Hamlet's internal torment. And some of these plays have crisp, tense, dramatically stuffed plots; again, MacBeth is an excellent example.

But it's long been recognized that the plots of Shakespeare's plays, where not taken straight from history or stolen wholesale from other, long-forgotten works, often rely on absurd coincidences and unrealistic behavior patterns. And for every great character in Shakespearean drama there is a villain who will turn to the audience and say, “I'm evil because I like being evil.”

And yet...and yet little of this matters. Shakespeare's words echo across time and oceans because of their beauty and eloquence, because of their ingenuity and wit. It's hardly an issue that these words are often put in the mouths of stock characters and used in the service of propelling forward ridiculous plots.

Speaking of ridiculous, that other comparison....let me acknowledge here that this is an absurd attempt to bring in a vastly different kind of work in a vastly different medium. However, when thinking of Sorkin's writing and how it affects me, I can't help but consider Michelangelo's justly beloved David.

There is little sense in looking at the David that one is looking at an actual human being; the head, hands and feet are all disproportionately massive, and the sculpture boasts Michelangelo's usual unrealistic musculature. In fact, “the David: the actual human body::Sorkin dialogue:actual human dialogue” isn't a bad little analogy.

There's also little attempt in the sculpture to identify the man as David himself. Oh, he's holding a slingshot, but it's not prominently displayed, and if you removed it from the sculpture few would notice or complain (but try and use a chisel to prove this theory and the Italian police get so worked up...). As such, there's no story in the sculpture, no narrative or conflict, as we can't really draw on our established memories of the David and Goliath battle.

To look at the David, then, is to stare at a grossly unrealistic portrayal of a human being doing nothing. And yet we understand when we look at him that we are engaged in something sublime and amazing; it is an atheist feeling as if he is in the presence of the divine.

A man carved from cold stone a figure of such power and beauty as to survive the centuries. The David is nothing but beauty for beauty's sake, artistic power that serves no greater purpose than to remind us of what human hands are capable of. And we adore it, and rightly so.

It's what I think of when I watch an Aaron Sorkin drama. Critics listen to the grandiloquent speeches his characters deliver and find them unrealistic and unnecessary; they hear the patter of the dialogue and complain of the way it undermines characters. They observe the jokes, recognize the skill involved in their crafting, and dismiss them as irrelevant asides that deserve little consideration in evaluating the work as a whole.

That is fine and fair. We all have our preferences in art. We all have our priorities. This is not and never can be a question of right or wrong.

But I see the same speeches and I hear the same dialogue and I observe the same jokes, and I am struck by the eloquence and power of the words involved. It is all a reminder of the heights to which our prose can travel, and like the David, it is a reminder of what we are capable of. When a Sorkin line is deployed in service of inspiration, it is inspiring. When it is deployed in the service of humor, it makes me laugh, which is, perhaps, an even greater accomplishment.

Language has value, considered on its own. Words have value, considered on their own. And Aaron Sorkin's words do more for my enjoyment of television than most deep, tormented characters and well-structured, well-crafted plots.

Take, to use the most famous example, the scene below from The West Wing's extraordinary season two finale, “Two Cathederals"; it is my favorite scene in my favorite hour of television:

When evaluated by the standard of basic human behavior, this is patently absurd. There is no recognizable human being, no matter how eloquent or educated or erudite, who would curse God in Latin in the National Cathedral. If word leaked out that Barack Obama used a dead language in the National Cathedral to castigate God, the House Judiciary Committee would convene a hearing to discuss the question of whether the President was the anti-Christ.

And yet there is something exceptionally powerful and moving about this scene, even going beyond Martin Shen's bravura performance. We are carried past disbelief at the unrealistic behavior by the power of Sorkin's prose.

Bizarrely, I sometimes think about how the cathedral scene would be played if it was handled in the style of The Americans, FX's outstanding, critically acclaimed show about Soviet spies living in an American suburb. 

The Americans is very much about all the words left unsaid, the speeches unspoken, the emotions unexpressed (until Margo Martindale and Keri Russell sit in a car together, in which case “on the nose” is the order of the day).

This is a recipe for much critical praise, and quite a lot of it is justified. So, obviously, The Americans' version of the cathedral scene doesn't involve Jed Bartlett monologuing in Latin. It probably revolves around Martin Sheen stubbing out the cigarette on the floor of the National Cathedral, then sitting in tense silence for 30 seconds while he considers the implications of his decision.

That would undoubtedly be more “realistic” and more believable, and it would offer a great deal of character insight while moving the plot forward in a much more subtle way, calling back to an earlier flashback where a younger Jed had talked with his father about putting out cigarettes on a church floor.

But what that version of the scene gains in realism, believability and subtlety it loses in power and beauty. It loses that element of the spectacular, the conspicuous ambition for grandeur that, in Sorkin's hands, is as moving as it is out of style.

This is not to say that The West Wing, for instance, is just quips and eloquence. There is plenty of exceptional character work and well-tuned narrative drama in that show, which is why it's an all-time great program. By contrast, The Newsroom leans heavily on the strength of Sorkin's dialogue and his humor; it entertains consistently, but rarely reaches great heights (season one's “Amen” perhaps coming closest to those levels).

But a way with words is enough.