Wednesday, October 30, 2013

War of the Witches (Review)

Series: American Horror Story: Coven
Episode Title: "Fearful Pranks Ensue"
Episode Grade: B

I wasn't terribly thrilled with last week's episode of American Horror Story, which I felt relied far too much on blatant, out-of-character stupidity. Objectively, however, a lot of stuff happened, most notably Fiona slashing Madison's throat in an effort to stave off her inevitable death and replacement as Supreme.

"Fearful Pranks Ensue," by contrast, is concerned more with reacting to last week's events, setting up future craziness and letting Jessica Lange chew some scenery. There's not a ton of plot advancement, though there is the usual amount of creepiness.

But it's a fun, tense episode, and damn, do I enjoy watching Jessica Lange do her thing.

As indicated in the second paragraph, "Fearful Pranks Ensue" spends much of its running time dealing with the fallout from Fiona's...pointed disciplinary style. This doesn't really go anywhere, in terms of plot advancement or repercussions; Fiona gets away with her murder.

But it does expose us to part of the larger witch universe, which is something I've been looking forward to since the season premier. The Witches' Council dispatches three representatives to investigate Madison's death, a group headed by one Myrtle Snow, who has a long-lasting feud with Fiona. She also understands quite well what Fiona has done, both to Madison and to the previous Supreme (throat-slashing, in case you forgot).

This particular plot is mainly just a chance to get Frances Conroy (playing Myrtle) and Fiona in a room together and let Conroy's righteous rage bounce off Lange's stony contempt. And it is utterly successful in that goal; there's something undeniably enjoyable about watching Conroy desperately interrogating Lange and coming up short again and again.

The investigation ultimately turns on the butler, Spalding, a greasy-haired chap we've only seen in the background before this episode. He saw Fiona kill the original supreme, then witnessed the aftermath of her murder of Madison. He lost his tongue shortly after Fiona's original murder, and there's every reason to think that Fiona was responsible for this. Myrtle Snow certainly thinks so, as he lost his tongue shortly after Myrtle placed a spell on him requiring him to tell the truth (it's a show with witches, they all went to school together, just go with it).

The reveal that Spalding actually took his own tongue, presumably aware of Myrtle's spell and unwilling to rat on Fiona (he loves her), is deftly handled, and speaks to one of AHS' themes: the depth and desperation of obsession, and the ways in which love and passion can twist into something horrific.

It's a theme that synchronizes well with Conroy's character and her reaction to Spalding's refusal to give up Fiona even when he has the chance: it's a hysterical, over-the-top explosion, the reaction of someone who has been driven for years by a seething desire for vengeance.

In the case of the Coven season, this is a desperation primarily aimed toward some form of preservation. This has taken the form of Fiona's obsession with immortality and Cordelia's quest for a child, not to mention Kathy Bates' unwilling immortality. The characters on this show want to be preserved for the future, whether literally (in Fiona's case) or in a more traditional sense, through the birth of children.

And then there's Spalding, who takes the preservation theme to a new level. Turns out, the butler is holding onto Madison's corpse and turning it into a human doll so she can join the tea party he's been holding with his more traditional dolls.

The other significant plot in "Fearful Pranks Ensue" is also about an explosion of rage, this time from Angela Bassett's Marie Laveau. It turns out, Jessica Lange isn't particularly scared of minotaurs, and after coming across Gabourey Sidibe recovering from her sexual encounter with said minotaur, she dispatches the creature (off-screen, unfortunately) and sends its head to Bassett.

Bassett responds in the only reasonable way: by summoning an army of zombies.

Yes, American Horror Story is engaging in the zombie craze. The context makes this reasonable enough, and the episode ends in nicely creepy fashion, with Laveau's undead host knocking on the witches' door (loudly, but not un-politely). And, hey, zombies are their own form of preservation.

THEMES!

"Fearful Pranks" is fun. That's the takeaway. And after last week's catastrophe, "fun" is a pleasant development. It gives Jessica Lange and Frances Conroy room to work, and it sets the stage for storylines that might actually be worth pursuing.

Notes

  • Cordelia's husband, Luke, is cheating on her, which is awful and...oh, wait, he just shot and killed the woman he slept with. OK?
  • The episode ends with a black-hooded figure throwing acid in Cordelia's face in a women's room. It's obviously a major development, but I'll be damned if I have coherent thoughts on it right now. One supposes it'll play into Fiona's obsession with eternal beauty in some way.
  • FrankenKyle repeatedly slams his head on a toilet, then flees (with impressive stealth) when Zoe leaves to make him lunch. Again, Zoe: not too bright.
  • "I've always enjoyed our little talks together, [Spalding]. Especially since you lost your tongue."
  • "If [Madison]'s dead, it's probably because she got wasted and offered the Grim Reaper a hand job or something."



Monday, October 28, 2013

Texts and Sub-Text (Review)

Series: How I Met Your Mother
Episode Title: "No Questions Asked"
Episode Grade: A-

How I Met Your Mother has always been fond of the running gag. At the series' best, the show's writers take that age-old concept and turn it into something more than a frequently repeated joke. As in "No Questions Asked," tonight's stellar episode, the gag is both episodic glue and thematic through line.

"No Questions Asked" eschews a traditional multi-plot structure for a single narrative that ropes in the entire core cast. It does so with skill and humor, and it does so in a way that pays off with surprising emotion at the end of the episode.

"No Questions" asked picks up right after the end of last week's episode, which ended with Marshall's phone ringing with a call from Lily. And since Sherri Shepherd had admitted to texting Lily with the news that Marshall had accepted a judgeship in New York, there was every reason to think she was calling about that bit of news.

This turns out to be a fairly predictable fake-out, and instead Lily is scared to learn she's staying in the room haunted by the ghost of Deerdorf the Hooker, who murdered people with his hook hand (or, alternatively, was a popular male prostitute who killed no one and died of syphilis). Marshall's pretty stoked about this, of course, being a huge fan of ghosts.

The show's writers have some fun with the ghost story element (this is HIMYM's Halloween episode, presumably), but it's there to instigate the episode's plot: Marshall's realization that Lily hasn't checked her text messages yet and hasn't seen Shepherd's text.

He then starts calling in favors, which presents some amusing vignettes. These are "no questions asked" favors, and Ted, Barney and Robin all owe him one. Ted, because Marshall got him out of the mailbox in which he was stuck. Barney, because Marshall agreed to sign him out of the hospital when Barney had been rushed there after winning $50 from an Irish guy by swallowing large versions of all the items in Lucky Charms cereal. And Robin, who Marshall rescued from a horde of unitard-clad ninjas when she herself was mysteriously wearing her own purple unitard and calling herself "Night Falcon."

The way all three friends take to the task of deleting the text from Lily's phone with over-the-top bravado is good for some easy laughs. Ted climbs the drain pipe outside of Lily's room in a driving rain storm. Barney crawls through the air ducts "like the bad guy in Die Hard" (Bruce Willis). And Robin, who orders obscenely expensive room service and hides in the food cart. None of them are the least bit concerned with the fact that Lily's room is unlocked.

This is all really, really funny, and that's quite enough for me. But "No Questions Asked" takes a step into something more with the way it nods at questions of love and marriage. There's a little sideplot here where Barney and Robin start worrying about the long-term viability of their marriage when they realize they're both "lone wolves" who don't consult each other before making decisions.

Is this a little sudden and on-the-nose, a bit of tossed off material mainly there to advance the plot? Sure. This isn't something that's been discussed before. But this is also where our familiarity with the show's characters, build up over nine seasons, comes in handy. Yes, the particulars Barney and Robin are talking about are new, but they reflect broader truths we've long recognized about these characters. In fact, the dynamic explored in this episode is part of what makes the Barney-Robin (Bobin? Rorney?) pairing so much fun.

And it's reflected back nicely at the end of the episode, when Ted calls in his own "no questions asked" favor with Lily (he brought cupcakes to her kindergarten classroom and rescued her from homicidal children) and gets her to destroy her own phone.

After Marshall gets the news, he realizes that he never did the "no questions asked" thing with Lily. He tells Lily that he's been arrested for tackling Russell Brand because he thought Brand was Bigfoot. He tells her that he was mauled by a raccoon he tried to hug. He tells her that he took apart the television and made a robot from its parts. And he tells her that he's been arrested for tackling Russell Brand because he thought Brand was Bigfoot. Again.

Marshall doesn't want to play "no questions asked" with Lily, because she's the love of his life, and that means sharing that life with her. So he ends up just telling her about the judgeship, the reaction to which we're going to see next week.

Yeah, this is a little saccharine. But, again, it fits with the character dynamics that have been so painstakingly established over nine years. Marshall's a little saccharine, and I'm prepared to accept a resolution that turns on him acting according to his nature.

"No Questions Asked" probably falls short of true greatness. Despite some of its thematic richness, it's still a pretty light and inconsequential episode. But for all that, it shows How I Met Your Mother at its best: funny, structurally innovative and built on a long-established foundation of outstanding character work.

Notes

  • "You were a...priority male." "You said you'd stop telling that joke after the editor of Bazooka Joe comics rejected it." "That man is a comedy snob!"
  • "So, you didn't order room service and 'Prison Sluts 9?'" "I'm telling you, I didn't order room service." Lily likes her lesbian porn.
  • Barney and Robin begin questioning the long-term viability of their marriage when they realize Barney arranged to have a flight of doves released after the wedding while Robin's relatives plan a 21-gun salute. 
  • "Can't your guys just fire blanks?" "Blanks? At a wedding? Yeah, that's romantic."
  • Barney and Robin gain confidence in the long-term viability of their marriage by concocting a plot to retrieve Lily's phone that involves a unitard-glad Robin creating a distraction by shooting a priceless vase and Barney dispatching a trained dove to pick up the phone. "Sometimes it's best to go simple."
  • "It's absolutely insane...how foolproof this plan is!"
  • "Why do you have a gun? Why do you always have a gun?"


Thursday, October 24, 2013

The Existential Question at the Heart of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

A few weeks ago, in my review of "Eye Spy," the worst episode yet of Marvel's Agents of SHIELD, I explained that I expected more fun and crazy from a show set in the Marvel universe. We've already been conditioned by a series of hideously expensive, skillfully put together movies to accept a world with superheroes.

That is, it seems to me, a tremendous advantage for Agents of SHIELD. And yet it's an advantage the show has yet to leverage, much to my disappointment. Agents of SHIELD has been many things, but chief among those traits it has been boring. And that's unfortunate.

I was talking about this same issue on another forum, and a friend of mine made a point I hadn't considered (because I'm usually incapable of thinking more than an inch deep about things). To paraphrase his question, isn't the presence of superheroes in the show's universe actually a significant disadvantage? Don't Thor and Iron Man and Captain America present serious questions about the importance of the show's plot? Can't all these super beings just solve the problems?

You know this is a reasonable point, because it involves multiple questions in a row. And in a world with an active Norse god, Skye's hurried typing is only so interesting.

There are, I think, three ways Agents of SHIELD can answer this question:


  • Embrace it: Go big. Become "the superhero show." Sure, you can't really use any of the A-level heroes from the movies, but the Marvel universe is a big place. There are a lot of other heroes, both super and mundane, and they don't come with baggage. Alternatively, you can make up new heroes and villains, give the comic books some fresh material. Make your show a big, grandiose spectacle, the sort of thing viewers know will be consistently entertaining.
  • Shun it: Go small. Alternatively...you know you can't live up the movies. You don't have the resources or the freedom. What you do have is time; a full season of 20+ episodes in which to develop characters and themes. Make Agents of SHIELD a character-focused show and let us learn to care deeply about the people involved. This approach has the added advantage of addressing the "why can't the superheroes handle this" question: when the scale and stakes are apparently small, it's reasonable that Iron Man and Thor can't be bothered.
Of course, these approaches both have their issues.

The problem with "go big" is that...well, put simply, you can't do it. As noted, the big-time superheroes and villains are out of the picture. Robert Downey Jr seems a good-natured sort, but I doubt he's going to agree to show up regularly on your network television show. 

Still, even if you try to be the superhero show with lesser or original heroes and villains, this still requires more resources than Marvel and ABC appear willing to invest in Agents of SHIELD. Superheroes and super villains require special effects, and special effects require money. And if you want compelling heroes and antagonists, you have to invest in compelling actors. 

But the problems with Approach One go beyond the budget. Agents of SHIELD is less a work of fiction than another province in the Marvel empire or a tentacle in the undulating, grasping squid that is Marvel entertainment. It's more of a support structure than a standalone enterprise.

This means that the show's ambitions almost have to be limited. We've got Avengers 2 coming out in 2015, and that's going to make enough money to enable Marvel and Paramount to buy Poland. It's an investment you can't put at risk, not for the sake of one ABC drama. So Agents of SHIELD can play in the Marvel sandbox, but it can't disturb the terrain, either by introducing new elements or screwing too severely with what's already there.

"Go small," by contrast, is eminently doable. It doesn't require a huge budget and it doesn't mean you have to muck around with the established dynamics of the Marvel universe. And it seems to be the approach Agents of SHIELD is taking so far.

What it does require, however, is a level of writing skill, character development and thematic resonance that the show has not displayed as yet. The "small" approach demands a core of characters we can care about, and a set of stories that grab our attention.

And, no, we're not there yet. It's difficult to care about a group of characters when one of them is Agent Beige Drywall, another is Generic Hacker Girl With a Dark Past and the other two are Bumbling Scientist Mark I and Bumbling Scientist Mark II.

(Clark Gregg and Ming-Na Wen...you're cool)

One can be too harsh in evaluating the quality of the show's stories so far. After all, we're just five episodes into its run, and we've only just begun to see the vague outlines of a season-long arc. But a smaller, character-focused drama isn't just dependent on the larger stories. Individual, standalone episodes can be fertile soil, and Agents of SHIELD hasn't shown any ability to use these episodes to its advantages.

Instead, we've gotten a series of forgettable antagonists, boring plots, meaningless MacGuffins and vaguely portentous looks. 

So, if going big is impossible, and going small seems beyond the capabilities of the show's writers, where does that leave us?

With option three: steer into the skid.

You have a universe full of superheroes you can't use, and these entities present serious challenges to the stakes of your show. But don't ignore them: acknowledge them. Make these questions the core of your narrative. 

What does the existence of superheroes do to the morale of Coulson's team? How does the knowledge that there are beings of infinite power and ability just around the corner affect a person's self-esteem and sense of self-worth? It would seem to make everything you do seem small and petty by comparison. When you've busted your ass to reach the pinnacle of your field, only to find others floating effortlessly above the peak you've spent your life staring at longingly, that would seem a shattering moment. 

Beige Drywall has honed his skills and physical abilities over years of training and endured god knows how much to get to that point. What does it do to his psyche when Thor flies in and destroys all the bad guys with one swing of his hammer? Or to discover that Captain America out-paces him in all physical tests simply as a result of being injected with a serum?

Fitz and Simmons spent years studying to become world-class scientists. Isn't it disheartening to see Tony Stark walk into a room and solve problems of mind-boggling complexity with a glance? 

These issues go on and on and affect every member of the team. Their struggle to define themselves as extraordinary while standing among gods can make for truly compelling drama.

And, in fact, Agents of SHIELD has shown some inclination toward this road. One of the reasons I enjoyed the pilot as much as I did was the way it put those precise questions in the mouth of Mike, the engineered superhero the SHIELD team is trying to neutralize. His feelings of worthlessness, brought on by a combination of economic deprivation and the presence of The Avengers in the popular consciousness, were powerful and well-articulated.

Unfortunately, these themes were largely dropped after the pilot. It's easy and cliched for someone like me to suggest that they would be compellingly developed if Joss Whedon was actually running this show, instead of serving as a kind of honorary executive producer (Whedon wrote the pilot). But that's a meaningless thought; Whedon has The Avengers to look after, and he's beyond weekly television dramas at this point.

I certainly don't expect Agents of SHIELD to choose option three. That version of the series doesn't have to be dark, and it can make eloquent statements about the power of humanity and the everyday greatness of these characters. But it would undoubtedly require going to dark places, and I don't think those are places on which Agents of SHIELD wants to shine a light.

Regardless, the show as it stands now is barely worth watching. It is a largely boring drama salvaged by a few solid performances and an occasional flash of wit in the dialogue. Agents of SHIELD can be more, but only when it decides what it wants to be. 

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

A Replacement-Level Episode (Review)

Series: American Horror Story: Coven
Episode Title: "The Replacements"
Episode Grade: D+

How much stupidity are we supposed to accept in American Horror Story?

There were a number of moments during tonight's episode that could have prompted that question. It might have been the moment when Gabourey Sidibe masturbated in an effort to seduce a minotaur. It might have been the moment when Zoe dropped off the confused, utterly silent, stitched-together remnants of Kyle at his mother's house, rang the doorbell, then ran away. Or it might have been the moment when Madison allowed Fiona to slash her throat because she had absolutely no sense that the evil, scheming supreme witch obsessed with protecting her power and youth hadn't suddenly become friendly and mentoring.

It was moment two, in case you're curious.

The question that starts this review isn't rhetorical. One comes into an AHS season expecting a healthy amount of crazy, and that's fair enough. But there's a difference between "crazy" and "stupid." Odd as it might sound, characters can behave rationally in a show luxuriating in craziness. And crazy can be fun.

Stupidity, however, which is what "The Replacements" luxuriates in, is not rational or fun. It's just a plot bouncing from random bit of creepiness to random bit of creepiness, pointing at the weirdness and saying, "Hey, this is some crazy shit, right?"

There's the glimmer of some interesting themes in "The Replacements," which is a rather on-the-nose title. The A-plot here is Fiona's realization that Madison is going to become the new supreme, as evidenced by her sudden ability to set things on fire with her mind. The supreme succession works by draining the current supreme's power and giving it to the up-and-comer (a fact that is revealed in a painfully written, cringe-worthy flashback at the beginning of the episode), which explains the decline of Fiona's health.

The saving graces of "Boy Parts" were the scenes where Jessica Lange interacted with Kathy Bates and Angela Bassett. This week, she spends most of her time with Emma Roberts, which is...less compelling.

That Madison isn't particularly bright is believable, though the show goes entirely too far in making her out to be a bitch. It's less believable that she would wholeheartedly embrace Fiona's sudden interest in her new powers. Madison doesn't like anybody, and she sees nothing suspicious in this horrible woman's new-found friendship?

This all ends in a fairly predictable fashion, as Fiona betrays Madison in the same way she betrayed her own mentor, the previous supreme: with the aforementioned throat slash. Death in this series seems a somewhat temporary phenomenon, what with the presence of Lily Rabe's resurrection ability and a voodoo priestess with the ability to create zombies living right down the street, so we'll see if Madison returns at some point.

Again, you can see a reluctant idea peeking its tiny little head around the corner through all this nonsense. Fiona's position as supreme is tied tightly to her power and to her beauty; the fear of replacement is very much the fear of death, and this gets to larger questions as to how society so readily disposes of women once they pass their physical primes.

Our B-plot this week is once again FrankenKyle (yes, I know "Frankenstein" was the name of the doctor, I've played Trivial Pursuit too), and it's notable for two things: first, actually making me exclaim, "Jesus Christ" in reaction to Zoe's abject stupidity, and, second, incest.

After Zoe retrieves Kyle from a delightfully creepy Lily Rabe (who still loves her Fleetwood Mac), she makes the baffling decision to bring him back to his mother, who she met earlier in the day. She does this, as I mentioned earlier, by leaving Kyle at the doorstep and running away after ringing the doorbell.

When you're delivering a dead boy to his mother, it's best not to take the flaming bag of poo approach to the handover.

Kyle's mom oscillates between baffling obliviousness (it takes her quite a while to ask Kyle why he won't talk) and suspicion (she can tell his body isn't his body because...well, she's been having sex with him for a loooong time). It's hard to see what exactly the incest revelation adds to this particular story, aside from allowing us to say, "Yeah, I get it" when Kyle responds to his mother's last advance by bashing her head in with a trophy.

Three data points does not make a trend, a fact that I learned in grad school and which directly contradicted what I learned in journalism school. So it's probably premature to start complaining about the apparent rapid decline in quality of this season's episodes.

Still, we've gone from a solid premiere to a flawed second episode to a thoroughly asinine third offering. That's discouraging, if nothing else. And if Coven can't stumble onto the distinction between stupid and crazy, it's going to be a long season.

Notes

  • Another reason I'm suspicious of Madison's death: IMDB says Emma Roberts is around for 13 episodes. 
  • Oh, right the minotaur. It comes hunting for Kathy Bates, and Sidibe draws it away with a bit of Bates' blood. She leads it to a secluded spot, and for some ungodly reason starts trying to seduce it (something about both being called beasts, which is unfair to Sidibe's character, but, you know, does seem like a fair label for the half-bull, half-man creature). And, yes, this includes masturbation. This apparently works, but the scene ends with Bull Man grabbing Sidibe's neck. Based on the previews for next week's episode, that ends poorly, though I wonder how Sidibe's "human voodoo doll" powers play into the equation.
  • Sarah Paulson rounds out the plot happenings by visiting Angela Bassett, whose screen time is depressingly short. Paulson wants a fertility rite, Bassett won't give it to her, and that's that.
  • Bassett's raw contempt for Paulson is pretty awesome, at least.
  • Not much work for Bates either, unfortunately. She does get a funny reaction to seeing Barack Obama on TV for the first time. Obvious and predictable, but funny.
  • Fiona "hates a racist," which is an oddly noble character trait for someone of her ruthlessness and brutality. She also voted for Obama twice, which you can probably expect to see mentioned on the Republican National Committee's Twitter feed at some point.
  • "I've led a disreputable life, but I did it in style."
  • Rabe keeps going on about Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks to FrankenKyle, who is utterly dead-eyed in response. I'm with you, buddy. 

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

The Dull Heat of Betrayal (Review)

Series: Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Episode Title: "The Girl in the Flower Dress"
Episode Grade: B-

Last week, I expressed some irritation that Agents of SHIELD hadn't really taken advantage of the Marvel universe's full potential. The context established by the blockbuster Marvel movies of the last few years presents some serious challenges for a television series set in the same universe.

There's a longer, standalone piece to be written about those challenges and the various ways this show can address them. A review's not really the proper place for that sort of macro-level thinking, but "The Girl in the Flower Dress" indicates one possible way forward.

Agents of SHIELD has been reluctant to become "the superhero show," and for a number of understandable reasons. And its ability to craft a compelling, long-term arc has been limited. "The Girl in the Flower Dress" tackles both of those issues, and reasonably well.

Some of the execution here is lacking, a reality that starts with the decision to make the show's first true superhero a fairly generic fire-starter. You've got to have a fire guy, apparently, but that doesn't make this particular superpower any more compelling.

If budgetary concerns constrain the show from really exploring the full range of visual effects that tend to arise from superpowers, there are some smaller stories that still can be pursued. The psychology of superpowers has been pretty well explored in modern comics, but it remains a fairly compelling topic for a TV show set in the Marvel universe.

"The Girl in the Flower Dress" tries to get at the motivations driving Chen Ho Win, the Hong Kong street magician who reveals his pyrotechnic capabilities when approached by a beautiful woman in a...um, flower dress. Sure, the woman, named "Raina" and played by Ruth Negga, has a couple guys in hazmat suits knock Chen out and drag him back to a laboratory.

But she also plays expertly on Chen's ego, his sense of destiny. In these early scenes, with Raina trying to persuade Chen to give in and help her organization, Chen comes off as a little desperate, but not truly troubled. He is, instead, a man with a remarkable gift and an awareness of it that makes him vulnerable to Raina's persuasion. When she hooks him with a promise that everyone will know his name, it's a powerful moment, and it truly resonates. That we're all a little desperate for recognition isn't some grand sociological insight, but combining such a desire with Chen's destructive capabilities is compelling television.

Still, I mentioned earlier that while I liked the ideas of "The Girl in the Flower Dress," some of the execution was less effective. This is most clearly seen in Chen's little arc here. Louis Changchien, who plays Chen, does the best he can, but the writing takes the character to extreme places with little justification.

Raina's organization ("Centipede") betrays Chen, of course, and we saw the evil doctor from the pilot return as part of a plot to use Chen's fire-resistant platelets to complete the organization's super serum and prevent it from causing all the soldiers to spontaneously combust. This is actually reasonably clever.

What works less well is Chen's reaction after being saved by SHIELD. Again, Chen doesn't come off as a bad guy early in the episode, but by the end of the hour he's ranting and raving like a mad man. That power corrupts is an old cliche, but it usually doesn't wok this quick. Chen goes from mild-mannered street magician to power-mad lunatic with remarkable celerity. Chalk it up to the super serum if you'd like, but that's too much of a hand wave for my tastes.

This does lead to an interesting ending, where Coulson and Melinda May once again get to be ruthless SOBs, which is a look that works well for both Clark Gregg and Ming-Na Wen. Gregg's line, "We don't want to hurt you. But we have to," is genuinely chilling. And there's a cold brutality to Ming-Na forcibly injecting Chen with the unstable super serum.

This story finally gives us a little more development on the larger, season-long arc that was nodded at in the pilot, which is good. It's hard to evaluate that arc at the moment, but it's nice to see Agents of SHIELD indicate a little more ambition.

The other plot here is the revelation of Skye's betrayal, which is met with some mild irritation by the rest of the team but doesn't really seem to affect the group dynamic too much. We've known Skye's been working as a double agent for the Rising Tide since the second episode, of course, but while Coulson seems appropriately angry no one else really registers an emotion.

The details of the revelation here are fairly unimportant. Skye helps SHIELD track down the guy who hacked into their data stream, thus putting Chen in danger, only to stymie them in lovely Austin, Texas, as it turns out the hacker is her old boyfriend. They have sex, Agent May is waiting outside the bedroom door (for how long, one wonders) and the truth comes out.

The hacker boyfriend is a disposable part we'll never see again. Skye tells Coulson at the end of the episode that all she's really looking for is information on her parents, which doesn't seem terribly interesting at the moment. She found a document redacted by SHIELD, and so Coulson, instead of throwing Skye off the plane in the middle of the Pacific Ocean as he probably should, decides to keep her on and even offer her help.

I don't know. We'll see. I'm not particularly enthusiastic about the potential for this or the inevitable introduction of Skye's shockingly alive parents, but I suppose it could lead somewhere reasonable.

For now though, I'm content with an episode that took several steps up from last week's dull affair and actually brought some new elements into the fold.

Notes

  • Ruth Negga is absolutely phenomenal in this episode. She's quietly menacing when she's not being the perfect salesman.
  • Coulson mentions to May that, before the alien spear went through his heart before the Battle of New York, he never would have trusted Skye. "You sure it didn't go through your brain?" "You don't really do comforting either, do you?"
  • "I'm really sorry." "Noted." Stony Coulson is the best Coulson. 
  • Raina dubs Chen "Scorch," which he eventually comes to embrace. "Ah, crap. They gave him a name."
  • Chen ends up killing the evil scientist/doctor from the pilot. There's some fairly impressive visuals in that scene. 
  • Beige Drywall Emotion Watch: This week, vague annoyance at being betrayed by Skye. 

Monday, October 21, 2013

The Wedding Crusade (Review)

Series: How I Met Your Mother
Episode Title: "Knight Vision"
Episode Grade: C+

A full season of network comedy is going to have some valleys. It's exceedingly difficult to come up with 20+ compelling, funny stories, especially in your ninth season. The best you can hope for is that these episodes are more valleys than canyons; a few solid jokes, some good work from the actors, etc.

"Knight Vision" is a pedestrian, lightweight episode. It doesn't advance the story of How I Met Your Mother's final season, and it doesn't address the show's significant themes in any but the most cursory of fashions. There's enough mildly entertaining comedy here to keep "Knight Vision" from becoming anything truly dire, but not enough to really justify detailed analysis.

We have a pretty standard A-B-C plot structure here. In the A-plot, Ted eyes a lovely young woman (Anna Camp) for your standard wedding weekend hook-up. How I Met Your Mother has gone to the "Ted latches on with a crazy chick" well often enough that it's a little uncomfortable, so it's not a lot of fun to see the show hit that note again.

There's at least a nod here to a slightly different form of crazy; Camp's character is not so much psychotic as caught in the middle of what seems like the worst week ever. She loses her job, her car is stolen, her boyfriend breaks up with her...it's just a bad scene. As even Camp's parents point out, "Our daughter's kind of a drag."

Camp's energetic, if not particularly nuanced. There's a lot of shrieking and loud sobbing, and Ted's immediate discomfort is at least moderately interesting. The episode's insistence on making a running joke out of frequent appearances from the "he chose poorly" knight from Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade is almost enthusiastic enough to make the gag work, but not quite.

The B-plot is better, as it focuses on Barney and Robin and gives us the always-welcome Edward Herrmann as a judgmental minister. Again, there's some fairly pedestrian writing here that's salvaged by the great chemistry between Neil Patrick-Harris and Cobie Smoulders.

Ultimately it's just fun watching these two play perverts. Robin and Barney stealing Lily and Marshall's rom-com meet cute is pleasant enough, and I laughed out loud at seeing a flashback of Robin dressed as college-aged Lily, with college-aged Lily's hair.

This ends in kind of a weird place, with Robin and Barney accidentally killing Hermann's character with tales of their debauchery. But the scene leading up to that moment is funny and sweet in a really odd sort of way.

The C-story, which once again features Marshall (who is probably permanently demoted to c-story status this season), is mainly just an excuse to put Sherri Shepherd's sassy black woman voice in Alyson Hannigan's tiny, adorable little girl face, which, again, I'm not above that. It's fair enough to have Marshall play out his "I accepted a judgeship" conversation in advance, but it's not a particularly weighty plot.

And perhaps that's the best description of "Knight Vision" as a whole: fair enough, but not particularly weighty.

Notes

  • The episode begins with Barney putting himself and Ted in The Last Crusade. Ted's not happy with his role."Really, I'm the one working with the Nazis?" 
  • "Ted and I are happy." "Are we?"
  • Barney has the right idea when the minister dies. "Wedding at Bernie's!" "We're not doing Wedding at Bernie's."
  • "By my third date with Robin I hit more bases than Bob Hope in wartime." "Real topical."

Sunday, October 20, 2013

Wherein We Learn Having Sex With Your Brother is Bad (Review)

Series: Rome
Episode Title: "Utica"
Original Air Date: October 30, 2005
Episode Grade: C

Well, we're back to dull.

Not every episode can revolve around Titus Pullo impregnating Cleopatra, though I confess I'd probably watch that sitcom ("Oh no! Caesar's home! Quick, go out the fire escape!" "Seize her? I barely even know her!" *cue laugh track*). And "Utica" seems more about setting up the last two episodes of this first season than any other task.

Still, "Utica" is also an episode that goes down some weird, silly, pretty gross story paths, and to no apparent end. It also focuses heavily on Octavia and Octavian, neither of whom have been well-defined enough to make their plots particularly interesting.

But let's start with the good, which for once is something happening around Lucius Vorenus but isn't about him. Ray Stevenson's been game enough so far as Titus Pullo, but despite the writers' desperate insistence that Pullo is charming and interesting, the character just hasn't been of much value so far. Yes, yes, Pullo likes to drink and carouse, and he's very happy to tell you these things, but a man is not the sum of his vices and habits, and that's how Rome has treated Pullo before now.

So it's interesting and gratifying, if a little cliched, to see him fall into a depression in "Utica." Pullo and Vorenus have finally returned home from the wars, Vorenus to the loving embraces of his children and the bed of his beautiful wife, Pullo to...what, exactly?

It's a question we can see Pullo asking himself as he watches Vorenus' family reunion. Pullo doesn't really have any family (we find out later in the episode that his mother was a slave and he never knew his father), and we've never actually seen him live anywhere. He's a soldier and a drinker, and that's all we know of him.

So it's good to see Rome realize this and nod at something more. Stevenson does great work simply with his facial expressions in this episode; the envy and sadness on his face as he observes Vorenus and Niobe are palpable. And so is his desperation as he tries to convince himself that he has something similar with his slave girl, Eirene.

There are a couple of touchingly pathetic scenes between these two, and if Chiara Mastalli, the Italian actress playing Eirene, isn't particularly dynamic with her limited dialogue, she also expresses a lot with her face. Pullo gifts her a bracelet he looted from Egypt, and the awkwardness of the moment is clear just from looking at Eirene.

And toward the end of the episode, when a drunken, bellowing, teary-eyed Pullo finally takes the inevitable step and embraces a naked Eirene, less in lust than in a desperate search for connection, there's nothing sexual about the scene. It's thoroughly pathetic, in fact, and there's something quite chilling about the dead-eyed look we see on Mastalli's face as the scene ends.

Of course, none of this means that Vorenus is left out of the fun. I've been pretty effusive in my praise for Kevin McKidd's work so far, and if "Utica" doesn't give him his juiciest scenes, there's still plenty here to enjoy.

Some of Rome's best scenes have come from showing the awkwardness of Vorenus' interactions with his family. This awkwardness doesn't come from masculine disdain or even apathy; he clearly loves his wife and children very much. He's simply uncomfortable with an environment with actual, expressed emotions, and he doesn't know what to do with himself when he's not a soldier.

As a result, "Utica" is concerned with how Vorenus is going to find his way after the wars. He spends a month hanging around the house, boring the children with his war stories and generally not contributing anything. But his brief attempt at learning the butcher's trade ends with him embarrassing the underling of a local crime boss (the same one he briefly worked for earlier), which puts his life and his family's life in danger and is not generally how a butcher's day goes.

This particular plotline ends with Caesar making an unexpected appearance at Vorenus' house as he waits for the crime boss to come for him. Caesar has a different idea: he wants Vorenus to run for the magistracy of the neighborhood. And after a rather amusingly short period of reluctance, Vorenus accepts.

There's not much to that particular development in this episode, but I look forward to seeing how it evolves. There's a lot of humor and drama to be mined from the straight-laced, blunt-speaking Vorenus politicking for votes, and I expect good things from McKidd.

Sadly, I had no such expectations for the other plotline in this episode, and in those low expectations I was proven quite correct.

The "relationship" between Servilia and Octavia, which was first established in "Pharsalus," has always been curious. It was a rather transparent attempt by Servilia to establish an in with Atia's family and find some way to exact her vengeance. But the endgame was unpredictable, as it was never clear how having sex with Octavia would end with the destruction of Atia.

Well, this particular plant starts blooming in "Utica..." only to be destroyed immediately.

Octavia lets slip to Servilia that Caesar has some sort of serious affliction, which interests Servilia a great deal. She tries to guilt trip Octavia into pumping her brother (phrasing!) for information, and when that fails, she wins over Octavia by claiming that Atia had Octavia's former husband killed.

Octavia does not cover herself in glory in this episode. She immediately believes Servilia's claim that her men had captured one of the murderers. Atia later points out how ridiculous this is (Octavia didn't even ask to speak to the guy), and Octavia crumbles and believes her mother. Sure, Servilia is telling the truth (or at least she's right about the husband's murder), but Octavia's swings are utterly unbelievable.

And her initial attempt to get the information from Octavian are clumsy and ineffective ("Tell me a secret"), though she does get Octavian to disclose his role in the death of Niobe's lover, a fact of which Servilia is appropriately scornful.

This brings us to the "ew" moment of the episode. Servilia somehow manages to convince Octavia that she should seduce her brother to get the information. Again, Octavia goes from "no way" to "yeah, sure, I'll sleep with my brother" with shocking celerity.

Now, to her credit this goes better than her first effort, and she does succeed in seducing her brother. So...kudos to Octavia, I guess?

Accept this doesn't actually accomplish anything. Octavian knew what she was doing the entire time. His reaction when she starts to ask for her favor is to say "Ah" and explain that he was expecting her to ask again about Caesar's infirmity.

It's...it's just all so pointless and stupid. Servilia gains no particular advantage from knowing about Caesar's epileptic fits, aside perhaps from the ability to spread accurate rumors instead of lies. Octavia is so easily persuaded it's laughable; agreeing to ask for more information is one thing, but allowing yourself to be talked into having sex with your brother in order to please your lesbian lover who has a grudge against your mother is just soap opera shit. Octavian's role in this is all a little odd as well (he admits that incest is really, really awful, not just a societal more), but it's probably best not to focus too much on his mindset here.

None of this works out for Servilia, of course. Octavian immediately tells Atia (why on Earth...), who dispatches her man to do some dirty work. His gang ambushes Servilia's litter in the streets, kills her guards, cuts her hair and strips her naked in public.

So, that's a pleasant way of ending "Utica," an episode that focused on two under-developed characters doing awful things together with no explainable motivations and to no discernible end. Yay.

Notes

  • The episode begins with Cato and Scipio, the last two anti-Caesar holdouts from the Senatorial party, retreating to the African city of Utica after losing yet another battle. Cato kills himself, followed shortly by Scipio. Say goodbye to two characters with whom we never spent any time. I don't think Scipio had ten lines of dialogue before this episode.
  • We're shown the aftermath of this glorious battle: a couple corpses and some burnt wood. And a dying elephant! I think the elephant must have exhausted Rome's budget, based on how the show has handled battles so far.
  • Pullo, upon seeing Vorenus in the tunic of a political candidate: "You look like laundry."
  • "You're a virtuous woman, so you must know seducing your brother is wrong."
  • Octavian to Brutus: "I believe your capitulation is sincere." "How nice of you to say so."
  • Oh, and sister-banging Octavian is going to be a pontiff, which is a very Borgia approach to high religious office. 
  • I just have "EW" written in my notes.



Wednesday, October 16, 2013

The Stitched-Together Life (Review)

Series: American Horror Story: Coven
Episode Title: "Boy Parts"
Episode Grade: C+

It's rather banal to say that the theme of a given piece of art is "life." All art is about life, in one way or another. Arguing that a piece of fiction is about "life" is pretty much a waste of bandwidth.

That said, "Boy Parts" is very much about life.

This particular episode of AHS, however, is concerned with the literal fact of life and its creation. "Boy Parts" doesn't do much more than hit the expected early notes of that particular song, but between Kathy Bates' immortality, Lily Rabe's ability to return dead things (including herself) to life, a resurrected college kid stitched together from the body parts of his friends and a conception ceremony that involves Sarah Paulson having sex with her husband in a ring of fire surrounded by snakes, there's every indication that this is going to be a consistent element of the season.

AHS is hardly the first horror story to concern itself with this theme, and in fact it's impossible not to think of Frankenstein's monster when watching Emma Roberts and Taissa Farmiga attempt to resurrect the frat brother Roberts killed last week with her telepathic abilities.

This is the weakest plotline of the episode, and for a couple of reasons. First, Farmiga and Roberts are currently the least impressive actors on the show. Roberts can do spoiled and petulant, but not much else. Unfortunately, those are two more emotions than Farmiga has been able to display so far, acknowledging that it's still early in the season.

As a result, scenes focusing on these two tend to devolve pretty quickly into a series of bitchy comments from Roberts and vaguely pained reactions from Farmiga. It's a pattern that grows old quickly.

Second, it's hard to care overmuch about Kyle's resurrection because it's hard to care overmuch about Kyle. We were given only brief glimpses of the kid last week, and while he looked like a shining star in comparison with his gang-raping frat brothers there was little enough to justify Farmiga's longing.

That she feels guilty about his death is reasonable. That she silently agrees to go along with Roberts' plan to sneak into a morgue and stitch the severed body parts of Kyle's friends onto his head is not, and yes, I realize the silliness of going on about "reasonable" when the sentence includes some of the words this one does. 

This little scheme goes as you'd expect, which is another flaw. Resurrection spell apparently fails? Check. Kyle comes back to life at awkward moment by slowly raising his head and upper body from the table? Check. Kyle beats an innocent person to death in rage and confusion? Check. Kyle continues to display rage and confusion at his new state of being? Check.

It's easy to see some of the potential directions the show's writers can take this plot. Kyle's left in the care of Misty Day, the resurrectionist witch played by Lily Rabe we saw get burned alive last week. It's possible they just go the full-on Frankenstein route and make Kyle a groaning, moaning, murdering monster. There's also the chance Kyle will slowly re-gain his humanity and the associated faculties, only to realize the horror of his situation and act as a commentary on the relentless pursuit of eternal life.

Of course, it seems we're going to get a lot of those commentaries this season. The whole idea that immortality is far more a curse than a blessing is fairly tiresome by this point. But to the extent that these plots let us watch Jessica Lange act the bad-ass around fantastic actresses like Bates and Angela Bassett, well, they're fine by me.

The strongest moments in "Boy Parts" come from the interactions between Lange and the other two women. This is in spite of the fact that the dialogue here is nothing to be proud of; it's ponderous and severe, without much in the way of wit or cleverness to recommend it. But these three women make it work.

Bates is particularly good in this episode, as she succeeds in finding a slight measure of sympathy in the utterly horrific character she's playing. There's a wonderful moment where Bates defends herself by saying, "I was a woman of my time," only to have Lange utterly reject the rationalization with, "That's a crock of shit." You don't want to try and humanize Bates too much, for fear of ignoring her crimes, but it's not impossible to acknowledge the severity of both her sins and her punishment.

And Bates, who is, of course, a wonderful actress, manages to convey the horror of her situation with her tone of voice and facial expressions. Marie Laveau (Bassett) displayed the corpses of Bates' family before throwing her in the coffin, and Bates loved her girls very much, "even the ugly one." When Bates talks of Hell as an eternity of seeing the dead faces of your children in front of your eyes, well, it resonates.

We also get to see the first of what we can hope are many conversations between Lange and Bassett. The dynamic between the two is fascinating; Lange, the elitist witch with no small amount of racism tingeing her contempt, and Bassett, the the centuries-old holder of great power resentful of the magic stolen by Lange's little tribe.

The back-and-forth they have in Laveau's salon (of course the centuries-old holder of great power runs a hair salon, because how else would we know she was black) is a delight, if, again, the dialogue is rather on-the-nose. The dynamic here that I find so intriguing is that Lange needs Bassett, who possesses the secret to immortality. And because Lange's character hasn't seen any of the movies that deal with this and doesn't know how immortality stories end, that's a secret she very much wants.

"Boy Parts" is something of a step back from last week's premiere, though not a significant one. It places us at the intersection of a bunch of roads, and asks us to imagine which ones we'll take. Thing is, we have a pretty decent sense of where most of them end. Finding a path that doesn't merely shroud a cliche in various shades of crazy seems to be the challenge of this season.

Notes

  • We get another flashback to Bates and Bassett, this time the moment when the latter imprisons the former in a coffin. And I have to ask: was it really possible for a huge mob of torch-wielding slaves to gather in 1840's New Orleans?
  • I briefly mentioned Sarah Paulson's plot early in the review. It's fairly basic right now: she's infertile, her husband (who knows she's a witch) suggests magic, she's reluctant and then immediately gives in. Followed by ring of fire snake sex. 
  • "She's sober." "Except vodka."
  • "I'm sorry I killed your boy candy, OK?"
  • "Did we just marry the devil? 'Cuz I'm not sure I'm down with that."
  • Misty is really, really fond of Fleetwood Mac. Farmiga's one really good moment in this episode is her creeped out reaction to Misty's rambling speech about the beauty of "Dreams." I make that exact same face when other people go on about music.
  • Is the New Orleans morgue really just completely deserted for long stretches of time? Like, long enough to collect a bunch of body parts, stitch them together and perform a Satanic rite?
  • Bull Man lives!

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

With That Double Vision...(Review)

Series: Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Episode Title: "Eye Spy"
Episode Grade: C

Well, that was boring.

Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of Agents of SHIELD, post-pilot, has been the show's unwillingness to explore and exploit the potential of its premise. This is a universe with a physical god (Thor), a super soldier unfrozen from the 40's (Captain America) and a mild-mannered scientist who transforms into a massive green monster when he's peeved (The Hulk).

And viewers accept this. We're down with it. We've spent a lot of money watching the movies that established this universe. We've made it pretty clear that we're OK with a healthy dose of crazy. That's a tremendous advantage for the show.

Unfortunately, Agents of SHIELD hasn't shown any inclination to indulge us in this. Instead, it has been content to poke at a few mildly interesting stories that don't come close to fully taking advantage of the Marvel universe.

As such, it's hard to find too much to say about "Eye Spy," beyond acknowledging the truly dire nature of that pun. It's a standalone procedural episode without much wit or energy or really anything to truly recommend it. It's never actively bad. But when the best word to describe your episode is "workmanlike," you have an issue.

To its credit, "Eye Spy" does begin with a nifty, creepy little set-piece in a square in Stockholm. A dozen men in suits and red masks carry briefcases through the square and into the local subway system, stalked by a mysterious woman. She follows them onto the subway, de-activates the lights and kills them all in about a minute, picking up one of the briefcases by removing the hand to which it is cuffed.

It's a really excellent opening sequence, bare and almost wordless but utterly effective at setting an intriguing mood. Unfortunately, "Eye Spy" isn't really interested in exploring that atmosphere.

There's some suspicion that the woman, quickly identified as former SHIELD agent Akela Amador, might actually be a telepath; that seems the only way to explain how she could have pulled off her heist (the briefcase she took contained a healthy load of diamonds, and there was no way of knowing which briefcase held the gems). Agent May is skeptical of this, pointing out that there's never been a proven case of telepathy or ESP, to which Skye quite reasonably points out, "Hey, Thor."

Unfortunately, May is right, and it turns out Amador's apparent ability to read minds is actually the product of a nifty little camera that's been implanted in her eye. She can use it to see through walls by closing her eyes.

Through the usual Bones/CSI-esque procedural tech wonders, Coulson's team is able to track Amador down and bring her in. Turns out she's being controlled by some mysterious organization she knows little about; text orders appear in her sight, and if she doesn't follow them her handlers will activate a kill-switch that...well, it's probably easy to guess what a kill-switch does.

Again, there's just not much here. There's some attempt to draw a theme out of the contrast between Amador's lengthily exposited backstory as an agent hostile to the team concept and the little squad Coulson is put together, but it's clumsy and uninteresting, and Pascale Armand, who plays Amador, doesn't do much with the little she's given.

Agent Beige Drywall is sent into the facility Amador was meant to rob (using a pair of glasses wired to convince Amador's handler that he's looking through her eyes), has a couple mild adventures that no more succeed in raising Drywall's heart rate than they do the viewers' and escapes with few problems. Meanwhile, the science team manages to complete a rather sensitive (and icky) operation on Amador that removes the kill switch lodged in her eye.

All of this ends with the death of Amador's handler and no particular advance in the larger story arc at which Agents of SHIELD is making a show of nodding. Amador knows nothing about the organization controlling her, and so neither does SHIELD. This means we're left with a standalone episode that's not nearly interesting enough to stand alone.

Notes

  • Skye does get to be competent in a few scenes here, which is nice. 
  • Left alone in a surveillance van and told not to call unless there's an emergency, Skye, Fitz and Simmons call Agent Drywall to ask what to do if they have to pee. Drywall directs them to a water bottle. Skye points out she doesn't have a penis. It's juvenile, but I chuckled at it.
  • Skye's also going through weapons training. Coulson's excited to learn that she's just about stopped saying "bang" every time she pulls the trigger.
  • Agent Drywall's instructions once he finds Amador's target? "Seduce him." He beats the guy up instead. 



Sunday, October 13, 2013

Pride and Paternity (Review)

Series: Rome
Episode Title: "Caesarion"
Original Air Date: October 16, 2005
Episode Grade: B+

Maybe the utter disappointment that was "Pharsalus" drove my expectations low enough that I'm now grading Rome on a scale. Or maybe "Caesarion" genuinely is an excellent episode of television. Regardless, this is easily my favorite episode of Rome. It's an episode that, to be sure, has some of the same problems that have bedeviled the show in the past; but it nods at intriguing questions of nationalism and tradition, and above all else it is driven by an extraordinary performance from Ciaran Hinds.

Caesar hasn't exactly been backgrounded in Rome's first season, and in fact I've written about the strength of Hinds' performance in a few different reviews. Still, it hasn't been easy to get a sense of Caesar as a character. Rome has shown us Caesar as schemer and manipulator, as master politician, but aside from a couple of brief moments with Servilia we haven't really been shown Caesar as a person. Put another way, we know Caesar's lies, but we don't know his truths. We don't understand what genuinely matters to him.

"Caesarion" takes place almost entirely in Egypt in the aftermath of Caesar's victory at Pharsalus and the death of Pompey on the Egyptian shores in the previous episode.  It's the latter event that drives the best parts of this episode. When Pharaoh Ptolemy and his advisers hand Pompey's head over to Caesar, they expect a certain amount of gratitude from their unwelcome guest.

Instead, Caesar reacts with the anger of a man who has just lost a friend, and, after the recently completed civil war, it's easy to forget he's exactly that. Caesar's not a sentimental man, but he had worked closely with Pompey for years before their split. The tear he sheds in a private moment at Pompey's funeral pyre makes clear that he's genuinely saddened by Pompey's death.

But, of course, there's always more to Caesar than friendship and sentimentality, and his immediate reaction to being handed Pompey's head is driven more by pride than sadness.

Hinds is incredible in this scene, and when he follows a somewhat understated, "Shame on the house of Ptolemy," with a booming, raging, "He was a consul of Rome!", it's enough to make hairs stand on end. This is Caesar as defender of the Roman state and Roman pride, as protector of Roman dignity, as Roman. His anger at the death of Pompey is only partly anger at the loss of a friend; it is fueled in no small part by a patriotism so deeply ingrained it crosses into chauvinism and a pride in power so strongly held it crosses into a crushing arrogance.

Caesar and everyone else in Rome look down on all who aren't Roman, of course, but they have special contempt for the Egyptians. They have contempt for the eunuchs and cowards who bow and scrape to Ptolemy while manipulating him, and they have contempt for the boy Pharaoh and his weakness. That one of their own, a great citizen, a consul of Rome was so cravenly betrayed by men such as these is offensive to Caesar's sensibilities.

This sense of pride and of alienation from the Egyptians they're occupying plays into the other storyline in rather fascinating ways. Caesar, in order to protect the supplies of Egyptian grain that keep Rome from starving, elects to stay in the country and resolve the dispute between Ptolemy and his sister Janice...er, Cleopatra. In order to do this, he must find Cleopatra, who Ptolemy's advisers insist is lost and beyond their reach.

Caesar dispatches Vorenus and Pullo to find her, because these are the only two soldiers in the Roman army.

We've talked at some length about Vorenus' sense of tradition and deeply felt religious convictions, but that's always been in a Roman context. What makes Vorenus' role in the plot of "Caesarion" so interesting is that he carries these same sensibilities into Egypt.

I just finished talking about Roman arrogance and patriotism, but when it came to religion the Romans were the farthest things from bigots. They worshiped their gods, but not out of a belief that these were the only gods in heaven. The Romans instead believed quite sincerely that the gods of their enemies were real and powerful, and on many occasions would attempt to sway or even bribe these gods into switching sides. Once conquered, former enemies were largely allowed to worship according to their beliefs and traditions.

So when Vorenus rebukes Pullo for mocking the gods of Egypt, he's not being ahead of his time and he's not acting out of character. When he says the gods of Egypt are "old and powerful," he's not being especially tolerant. Instead, he's acting within the personality we've seen so far.

That he's set up against Pullo in this isn't particularly surprising; Rome has driven this dynamic into the ground. But he's also implicitly set up against Caesar, who obviously has precious little respect for Egyptian gods and traditions (Caesar also has precious little genuine respect for Roman gods and traditions, to be fair). Pullo and Caesar are very much of a type in "Caesarion:" contemptuous of the decadence and rot of the Egyptian state and insistent on Roman supremacy. Vorenus, by contrast, affords his surroundings with a measure of respect; not out of any regard for the Egyptian people or Ptolemy, but instead out of a realization of the staggering history of the place. Egypt, he points out, was a thriving civilization thousands of years before Rome was even founded, and the blood of the ancient Egyptians still flows in Cleopatra and Ptolemy. Vorenus is a man who respects history and traditions, even those that aren't his own.

The little twist "Caesarion" puts on the well-trod history is worth mentioning, even if I'm not sure what to make of it right now. Pullo and Vorenus track down Cleopatra by following the assassins Ptolemy dispatched to her tent. They kill the assassins seconds before they can murder Cleopatra and escort her to Caesar in Alexandria.

What happens next is a little weird. Cleopatra understands that she has to seduce Caesar to win his support ("I have him or I die, so I will have him"), which is shrewd enough. But the night before she arrives in Alexandria, she's somehow able to discern that she'll conceive a child if she has sex that very night. Caesar's not there, but she realizes a child would give her extraordinary power over Caesar, so...time to find a pinch hitter.

Cleopatra initially turns to Vorenus, who is tempted, but ends up refusing, partly out of masculine Roman pride ("Roman men are not used in such ways"), and, though it's unstated, partly out of love for Niobe.

Pullo has no such worries.

So, yes, it appears our Titus Pullo is, in fact, the father of Caesarion. As I said, I'm not sure what to do with this information, but there it is.

For all that works in "Caesarion," I can't call it a truly great episode, and I mentioned back in the opening paragraph that it's plagued by some of the same problems that we've seen earlier in the series. The big issue here is what happens after Vorenus and Pullo deliver Cleopatra to Caesar and the latter two end up in their inevitable steamy embrace.

"Caesarion" elects to skip over the year Caesar spent besieged in Alexandria alongside Cleopatra, which was a rather fascinating bit of history. Instead, we get a brief glimpse of some Egyptians gathering outside the gates, and then we go to the Roman Senate, where Cicero blandly informs Brutus that Caesar has been trapped for a year in Alexandria and gosh Brutus, isn't that interesting? Then Antony comes in, has a fun scene, and tells the two Senators that Caesar broke the siege.

And that's that. Portraying a lengthy passage of time is always tricky in a TV series, and when you only have 12 episodes (instead of a network run of 20+) you have to cut some temporal corners. But coming a week after Rome so blithely passed by the Battle of Pharsalus, this is something of a sore spot, and it's hard to escape the conclusion that this was, again, more a budgetary decision than a narrative one.

Still, "Caesarion" succeeds in righting the ship that threatened to capsize after "Pharsalus." It's fun and compelling, two features that have too often been lacking from Rome so far. And in spending so much time with Caesar, it finds a stable center.

Notes

  • Hinds really is something in this episode. When Ptolemy's eunuch points out that Caesar's debt collection is only legitimate under Roman law, Caesar thunders, "Is there any other form of law, you wretched woman?"
  • Cleopatra is played by Lyndsey Marshall, whose IMDB page is filled with work I've never seen (apparently she had a significant role in Being Human, which was a big deal in the UK before being adapted here). Her performance is...uneven, but she is quite excellent and manipulative in the scene where she seduces Caesar. "A man without sons is a man without a future."
  • She is also quite chilling when she finally confronts Ptolemy and his eunuch adviser. "It must not speak. It must die."
  • Caesar and Cleopatra's sex scene is intercut with Servilia and Octavia, which I guess serves as a useful reminder that there's hot lesbian action going on back in Rome?
  • Caesar and his retinue are clearly bemused by all the ceremony surrounding Ptolemy when they are first introduced to him, which feeds nicely into Caesar's reaction when Pompey's head is revealed.
  • The scene in the Senate I referenced above is largely just a clumsy excuse for exposition, but James Purefoy gives it some life with his bullying, intimidating performance. The way he manhandles and threatens Cicero is quite impressive. 
  • "Majesty commands you will enter her." 






Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Oh, Oh, Witchy Woman...(Review)

Series: American Horror Story: Coven
Episode Title: "Bitchcraft"
Episode Grade: B

"Bitchcraft" is a season premier that begins with Kathy Bates ripping out the tongue of a slave who had sex with her daughter and placing a bull's head on him so that he can be her personal minotaur and ends with Jessica Lange removing her from the coffin in which she had been buried alive for approximately 170 years. In between, Julia Roberts' niece uses her mind to crash a bus carrying the frat boys who raped her, Gabourey Sidibe stabs herself with a fork in order to hurt Roberts and Taissa Farmiga sexes two guys to death.

So, you know, there's that.

It's impossible to go into a season of American Horror Story without hearing stories from those who are loyal viewers. Created by Ryan Murphy, the mind behind Nip/Tuck and Glee, American Horror Story is, if nothing else a thoroughly unique concept. A horror anthology that deals with a standalone story every season, AHS has a reputation as one of the weirdest, most spectacular shows on TV.

As there's precious little batshit crazy in my life not provided by the House Republican Caucus, it seemed like it could be fun jump to into the third season of AHS' run. And based on "Bitchcraft," well, it seems like that was a reasonable bet.

The premiere doesn't really rise to the level of insanity one often hears ascribed to AHS, and considering what I described in the opening paragraph that says something. There are some elements here that will make your eyes roll, and some moments that are surprisingly boring. But considering that this is part season premiere, part pilot, and considering the...let's call it "convoluted" subject matter, "Bitchcraft" is also a thoroughly intriguing introduction to the universe.

Let's start with the negatives and the elements that would seem to augur poorly for the future of the season. This starts with Farmiga, who plays "Zoe," the closest thing to a protagonist we have so far. Zoe is introduced accidentally killing her boyfriend during their first sexual encounter. It's a horrifying scene, surprisingly gory (Zoe's boyfriend puffs up and bleeds out quite grotesquely), and Farmiga doesn't convey the awfulness of the moment.

She is, in fact, largely inert throughout the episode. That works at certain moments, such as a scene toward the end of the episode in which she coldly, deliberately has sex with a comatose frat boy in order to kill him, but mostly it just makes scenes in which she's featured slowly wither and die. And this is a problem, as Zoe promises to be the focus of a lot of scenes this season.

Now, what works in "Bitchcraft?" This starts with the dynamic between Jessica Lange and Sarah Paulson. Paulson is the head mistress of the Robichaux Academy for Exceptional Young Ladies, the school for witches where Zoe is sent after her little episode. Lange is her mother and the existing "supreme," which makes her sort of the Mike Trout of witches: well-rounded and skilled in all the black arts. And Mom wants to help with the grooming of Paulson's charges.

And the two hate each other. The tension in their scenes together is noticeable and venomous. Paulson and Lange are both skilled, veteran actresses, and the edge to their interactions is one of the best elements here. Paulson puts a nice capper on things with, "When are you gonna die and stop ruining my life?"

But what truly marks "Bitchcraft" is the atmosphere that's nurtured throughout. This is sometimes achieved through setting and action; the attic torture chamber where Kathy Bates (who's is given the not-at-all-annoying-to-type name of "Delphine LaLaurie") keeps her mutilated slaves is particularly gruesome.

But there's also a lot that's achieved here just through camera work and lighting. When Emma Roberts, playing a movie star named Madison Montgomery, drags Zoe to a frat party, director Alfonso Gomez-Rejon makes a (rather massive and well-adorned) frat house look creepy and horrifying through the use of long, high shots and camera angles that make distort the setting.

The setting is paid off with a fairly predictable set of developments: Madison acts snooty and insulting, a jackass frat boy drugs her drink and he and a bunch of his brothers rape her and film the act. Then, as they flee the scene in their party bus, Madison concentrates and flips their bus end-over-end, killing seven of the nine brothers on-board. Which is less predictable.

Gomez-Rejon uses similar camera tricks to create a slightly different effect when Zoe visits the hospital in search of the (not nearly as rapey) frat brother she met at the party. The fish-eye lenses and wide, high angles don't so much make the hospital a haunted house as they frame Zoe's distance and alienation from everyone around her. She seems far away from people she's standing next to, almost as if she's a visitor to a distant world.

"Bitchcraft" is mainly table-setting, which is a reasonable enough ambition for a season premier. Exactly what's on the table is still far from clear. But that's very much to American Horror Story's advantage. Better to tease the crazy than to unveil it, shrieking and gibbering, too early.

Notes

  • Kathy Bates is undone when Angela Bassett, playing the lover of the en-bulled slave, gives her an "eternal youth" potion that's apparently poison. Then Jessica Lange digs up her coffin and lets her out 170 years later, no worse for wear.
  • Bates' slave attic includes a man with no face and a man whose eyes and mouth have been sewn shut.
  • Lange (her character is named Fiona) is apparently obsessed with eternal youth and beauty herself. We'll see where that goes, but this is a fairly cliched plot, and it feels like we've seen all possible permutations of it.
  • I hope Zoe's voiceovers aren't a continuing element this season. They're not of much use, though I'll admit I laughed when Farmiga matter-of-factly states, "So apparently I'm a witch," as if she just remembered where she lost her pen.
  • Sidibe, who doesn't get much screen time, is a "human voodoo doll" who can hurt other people by hurting herself (she feels no pain). That seems like a useful, if limited, power.

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Pure, Weapons Grade Gravitonium (Review)

Series: Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. 
Episode Title: "The Asset"
Episode Grade: B-

For most of its running time, "The Asset" is a thoroughly mediocre episode of television, an hour or so that passes without much of note occurring and elicits nothing more than a shrug. It only reaches its modest heights as a result of some moderately intriguing character work and a direct, unsparing resolution to its central conflict.

"The Asset" launches with a dynamo action sequence, the sort of thing that really shows the resources backing Agents of SHIELD. A semi-truck is rolling down a Colorado highway when its schlubby, dirty-looking driver makes a call to some friends, who turn out to be SHIELD agents. They're escorting some precious cargo that the driver is transporting, and everything seems fine.

And out of nowhere the vehicles are lifted by some invisible force and thrown straight into the air; first, the escort SUVs, then the truck itself. The driver, who is himself a SHIELD operative, survives having his truck thrown into the asphalt from a few dozen feet in the air, which is kind of bullshit, but OK, whatever.

The "cargo" he was transporting turns out to be a rather fussy-looking gentleman by the name of Franklin Hall. He's a distinguished professor of...whatever the hell generic field sounds "science-y" enough for this show, and he was kidnapped by an old friend, Ian Quinn. Quinn, played by veteran "Hey, That Guy Looks Familiar" David Conrad with his usual slick charm, wants Hall's help turning the rare element "gravitonium" into something productive and profitable.

Quinn is actually a fairly intriguing character, and the show deserves credit for not turning him into a cliched corporate villain. Openly and unabashedly interested in profit, Quinn is also an information idealist who sounds more like Julian Assange than a mining magnate. There's little in the episode to indicate that Quinn's soaring speeches about the free flow of information and the evils of government intrusion are lies or hypocrisies; instead, we have a portrait of a bad guy with a message that is genuinely compelling without coming into conflict with his villainous actions.

And so we're off. "Gravitonium" is a classic screenwriting ploy, a little bit of nonsense used to hand wave the large nonsense that drives the plot. We need something with broad, generic powers to "suspend the laws of gravity" within a given area and throw trucks around while plausibly possessing the ability to also do massive, profitable things like moving lots of cargo around and acquiring oil without drilling, so we invent an element and give it a cliched, vaguely ominous-looking massive gyroscope machine to contain it.

"The Asset" attempts to advance the relationship between Skye and Agent Beige Drywall, and if it does so in rather clumsy and unskillful fashion, well, you take what you can get. Agent Drywall is training Skye to be a field agent and is apparently doing a poor job of it. Skye, for her part, is more whiny than committed and complains about the physical requirements of the training.

This is amusing (what did she figure field agents did?), even if all we see of the training is Skye and Drywall punching a heavy bag. But it finally does give Drywall's churlishness some reasonable motivation. Skye isn't taking any of this seriously, and while her jokes are pretty entertaining for the audience it's not hard to see how they can drive a serious agent up the wall.

Most of the training scenes go to pretty uninteresting places: Drywall gives us some vague backstory about protecting his younger brother from a violent older brother, he lectures Skye about "defining moments" and commitment, he teaches her a move to disarm a man wielding a gun that we know we'll see her use before the end of the episode, etc.

Because Quinn's operation is located in Malta and SHIELD can't swoop in without violating international laws, Coulson agrees to send Skye in to Quinn's mansion/compound (she uses her mad hacker skillz to acquire an invitation to his party).

This particular plot is mainly notable by its admirable unwillingness to play into the fake seduction act we often see in these scenarios. Instead, Skye fools Quinn into believing that she's betraying SHIELD out of a shared set of values (which doesn't require much acting), then succeeds in shutting down the magic laser wall surrounding the compound.

Still, this is mainly lockstep plotting (we're supposed to think that Skye is genuinely betraying SHIELD, and that's never a serious possibility) until Coulson (along with Agent Drywall as part of an extraction team and still wearing his suit, for some reason) tracks down Hall in the laboratory basement of the place.

As it turns out, Hall arranged to have himself "kidnapped." Worried about the consequences of Quinn's research into gravitonium, Hall leaked his location so he could get close to the facility and destroy Quinn's work.

It's a reasonably clever twist, if nothing particularly shocking. But "The Asset" plays the situation out to a logical and brutal conclusion. Hall puts the massive gravitonium generator into overload, which will sink the entire facility to the bottom of the sea, destroying Quinn's research for good but also killing everyone at the mansion.

He's not swayed by Coulson's pleas, and he doesn't ever waver from his course. So when the science team tells Coulson that the only way to stop the generator from exploding is to induce a chemical reaction within the elemental field, he chooses the only real option: shooting out the floor underneath them and letting Hall himself fall into the generator.

It's not entirely clear how that achieves the goal, but set that aside for now. It's a solid moment, unsparing and ruthless without being cruel, and it (mostly) doesn't attempt to escape the logic of the plot. It also gives Coulson an interesting character beat and a chance to actually be a bad-ass, do-the-job-at-all-costs government operative.

"The Asset" still isn't terribly impressive, even with this satisfying conclusion, and it's discouraging that Agents of SHIELD has, through these last two episodes, failed to live up to the promise of its pilot. Joss Whedon's presence is sorely missed, and the writing lacks the edge and wit the pilot promised. But there's enough going on to raise this episode slightly over "O-8-4," last week's disappointing effort.

Notes

  • Yes, Skye gets to use the disarming move to take Quinn's gun away from him. There's a funny moment afterward, however, when Quinn asks, "But do you have what it takes to pull the trigger?" "Nope." *flees*
  • Coulson struggles to dismantle a gun in the field and complains that it should be "muscle memory." He's still struggling with it on the plane after the mission. This is probably related to his mysterious post-death interregnum after The Avengers
  • "I saw plenty of action with The Avengers." "And you died."
  • Melinda May hands Skye a massive binder of communications data. "Do you want me to bench press this?"
  • Someone's going to tell me that "gravitonium" is a real thing, aren't they?
  • A brief programming note: I obviously didn't review How I Met Your Mother yesterday or Rome on Sunday. You can blame Braves' postseason baseball, but that's not going to be an issue from here on out. Look for a Rome review later this week. As for yesterday's How I Met Your Mother, I give it a B-. 

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Squabbling And Artifacts (Review)

Series: Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Episode Title: "O-8-4"
Episode Grade: C+

Shows focusing on the adventures of a team always feature the group conflict episode. In formulaic procedurals with standalone stories, these episodes tend to exist so that the audience gets a little twist and a look at something different. The fight is resolved at the end of the hour and it's forgotten by the start of the next.

In shows with serialized ambitions and interests in exploring characters, the group conflict episode is a chance to examine the dynamics of the team and the personalities of those involved. The conflicts can last longer, and the consequences can resonate more deeply.

It's obviously too early to say where "O-8-4" fits in. But its position within the show's run (quite early) and its tone (the episode ends with a round of back-slapping and knowing glances) all indicate that the conflicts of this episode will stay in this episode. The conflicts explored here are only moderately interesting, the plot is shrug-inducing and much of the wit that defined the pilot is missing here.

"O-8-4" is a reasonably entertaining hour of television, and there are some nice moments and performances here. But this is a trifling and insubstantial episode that leaves no lasting impression, even with Samuel L. Jackson's much-hinted-at pre-credits cameo.

So, what happens tonight? Agent Coulson and his ragtag team are called to Peru to retrieve a dangerous artifact. They do so, but only after a firefight with some rebels in which they are aided by the Peruvian army and Camilla Reyes, an old friend of Coulson's. Agent Beige Drywall (Brett Dalton) is pissed about something or other. Reyes and the Peruvians, brought on board SHIELD's fancy plane in order to escape the fight, betray Coulson in order to retrieve the artifact. The team works together to defeat the bad guys. They shoot the artifact, which is a weapon built by German scientist refugees from the Hydra organization we saw in Captain America, into the sun. The end. Oh, and Skye is still communicating with Rising Tide. The end. Oh, and Samuel L. Jackson. The end.

It's not that any of this is bad, really, but it's just workmanlike, uninspired and forced. Part of the reason the conflict here falls flat is that it doesn't seem to be based on anything. Agent Drywall (his name is actually Ward), Skye, Melinda May (a delightfully taciturn and no-nonsense Ming-Na Wen) and the science team of Fitz and Simmons (good lord) return from their firefight and immediately get to bickering.

Thing is, there's no reason for it. They retrieved the artifact. Every member of the team survived. No one even got hurt. And yet Ward starts complaining about being stuck with unprepared non-combatants, while the scientists take shots at Ward that seem rather ungrateful considering he protected them from a bunch of guys with guns.

Coulson even points out that nothing really went wrong, but that observation is lost on his team, who continue fighting. At no point are the stakes to this conflict really made clear. Ward mumbles something about being trained to eliminate obstacles and finding it awkward to work with a team, but Dalton isn't nearly compelling enough to sell any of this.

A little better is Skye's sense of helplessness and open self-doubt. Chloe Bennet does a reasonably solid job of conveying the emotions one must feel at being thrust into a group of hyper-trained, hyper-educated professionals who are used to dealing with superheroes. The character is constantly aware of being in the way, of an apparent lack of worthiness in the presence of all the chaos swirling around her.

But taken as a whole, we're too early in the show's run for any of this to have much meaning or impact. We don't know these characters very well, and while some of what we know is interesting enough, plenty of it us thoroughly uninteresting. The show needs to give me a reason to consider Ward a human being and not a fleshy piece of furniture before I actually care about his feelings toward those who lack his training or skills.

It's probably unfair to read too much into this episode or worry about what it augurs for the rest of the show. You have a give a show a chance to breathe, and that entails watching a few awkward gasps.

Notes

  • Hard not to think about the plot to The Avengers, which also featured a heavy emphasis on team conflict, while watching this episode. 
  • With the entire team bundled into a truck, fleeing the firefight, Dr. Fitz points out that the artifact is unstable and over-heating. Simmons says, "I can roll down a window!" *gunshots* "Do not roll down your window!"
  • "Do you need anything else before I check in on the device fueled by evil sitting in our cargo hold?"
  • Coulson reminds Ward that he speaks six languages (riiiight) and Fitz and Simmons that they have doctorates in "fields I can't even pronounce," tells them to pull it together and walks out. Skye quietly points out, "I'm good at stuff too."
  • "So...everything that I'm against?" "Yep."
  • Coulson keeps referring to Tahiti, where he supposedly spent his rehab, as a "magical place." Skye points out that it's the sixth or seventh time he's used that exact phrase.