"They're Saving a Teenager with a Bowl Haircut"
Usually Heather Havrilesky is so broad that I forget that she can be very, very funny when she reins it in. Here is her recap of the 24 finale.
"I've been controlling animals since I was six."
Another week of Sweeps stunts:
24. Wow. James Cromwell is a bastard. "Don't make me murder my grandson." That's the most passive-aggressive threat ever. Kind of a thrilling chase at the end, with Milo and DoomedSisterInLaw.
Heroes. Eh. Felt like reading water until next week, when, according to the NBC promotions monkeys, "Someone's going to fly, someone's going to die." I'm trying to think if we learned anything new or saw anything cool. Oh, Sylar can now melt pots and pans. That was cool. Jessica as member of the Linderman equivalent of the Deadly Viper Assassination Squad was kind of fun, although it got less fun when Parkman survived being thrown out a window.
Gilmore Girls. Chris and Lorelai . . . I wasn't really paying attention during their final break-up scene, because I was listing all the lost opportunities in my head: I think it was a serious mis-step to give Emily that speech about how Lorelai has to learn to compromise if she wanted to save her marriage and then never pay that off. Rory and Logan . . . I was hoping they were going to play Rory's crush on the T.A. a little differently. I'm still waiting for Logan to be revealed as the philanderer we all kind of know he is. Maybe the Rosenthal regime likes Logan? I still find him smarmy.
Veronica Mars. Well, hell. A week in which Veronica doesn't do anything completely atrocious. That alone was an improvement. Plus, we had some serious progress in the Dean Begley, Jr. mystery. Plus, an interesting A-plot, although I'm going to be sad next week when we learn that pretty, pretty Josh murdered his father. Not enough Wallace, either: couldn't we have excised a few scenes of Logan getting life lessons from Little Girl God?
Lost. Slept through, which is too bad, because it sounds like it was a good one? Stuff happened? Should I give it another chance?
Ugly Betty. Another good episode: some funny stuff from Michael Urie, Mark Indelicato and Becki Newton, continuing excellent handling of the Alex/Alexis subplot, good mix of subplots overall. I wonder if the network is giving the producers notes about how often Eric Mabius has to be shirtless. Otherwise, I don't understand his story last night. Oh, right -- stuntcasting! Lucy Liu is still kind of lost on me. On the other hand, Jerry O'Connell was pretty good as the homophobic jackass.
The O.C. I totally fell for every minute of that. I mean, not so much Taylor being helpless and stupid, and not so much Kirsten and Sandy's sense of entitlement, but Julie and Kaitlin bonding in the midst of adversity? Yes. Ryan appearing to be about to bleed out for the entire freaking hour? Oh God. You know, it's the penultimate episode, so I really kind of half thought that they could kill Ryan off. Really effective, and the meta-stuff was kind of fun, and the trip down memory lane. Seth trading the Range Rover for the shopping cart was a nice touch and good foreshadowing of decimation of the Cohen mansion.
The Office. This was maybe the best episode of the year? Jim as a vampire? Steve Carell channeling Ricky Gervais as a motivational speaker? Creed? I think any episode that has Creed in it, at all, is automatically really funny. -- Peter
General Finnegan Says, "Put Those Electrodes Down!"
Wait. Even the military is saying that 24 has too much torture? Awesome.
"Our Imaginations Are the Source"
Two episodes of 24 tonight -- um, I think 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM and 2:00 PM to 3:00 PM. Here's a scary article about Joel Surnow and Howard Gordon. Read at your own risk: it kind of ruined the show for me.
This Guy Likes Clown Porn
We're already a full week into Sweeps. Consequently, we're getting "events" (disasters, gun fights, hostage situations, etc.) in lieu of episodes, for our dramatic television shows. I'm just about caught up, and have some things to say.
Prison Break. I picked the wrong week to skip, apparently. Michael and Sara back together? Sara beating up on Kellermann? I would have liked to have seen both of those things.
Heroes. Dear Jeff Zucker, congratulations on your promotion. Now, please fire the people who put together the promotional clips for this show, because they suck. I hate that, week after week, we get the entire episode sketched out for us, during the first minute. This week alone, those jackasses ruined two potentially suspenseful plot points: the confrontation between Sylar and Horn-Rimmed Glasses and the revelation of Claire's paternity.
24. After a few boring weeks, I feel like we're back on track. Yeah, the revelation of who's really behind Graem was heavily, heavily telegraphed, and I also don't really care about where that story's going. On the other hand, McCarthy nabbing Morris is promising.
Gilmore Girls. A pretty dour episode, but not bad. I actually mis-read the Emily ghoul/loving wife flip-flop they pulled and felt a little ripped off by it. Kelly Bishop really rocked the whole episode, though. Chris has completely devolved in -- what? -- two episodes? That reads as a little fast for my tastes, although I'm also completely ready for the Luke-Lorelai reconciliation, which says something : at the end of last season, I was ready to give up on Luke. Meanwhile, when are we going to get the rug pulled out from under us with Logan? I still don't trust him, but time is running out.
Veronica Mars. Two episodes in a row in which Veronica does something really, really bad: last week, it was blackmailing that judge, this week it was ordering Madison's car stolen. I want Wallace to come back -- from wherever he is -- and kick her ass.
Lost. Less boring than I was expecting. I liked the Juliet flashbacks. Did anyone else notice that she was married to Edmund Burke? First we had Locke, then Rousseau . . . How long until we meet Desmond's friend Frank Voltaire?
Ugly Betty. Holy crap. Best episode yet. I can't believe how deftly they're handling the Alex/Alexis plot twist. It's not just how cleverly and sensitively they're doing the gender reassignment subplot, it's how perfectly they're pacing the show right now. It's rare to see a show where a fast pace and sensationalist storylines are balanced with character stuff, at all, let alone this well. Michael Urie gets better and better, too.
The O.C. This is an example of bad pacing. Just give us the damned earthquake already. Oh, but the Kaitlin stuff was really good -- funny, not too tedious (unlike the Taylor-Ryan stuff), and well-acted. -- Peter
Uneasy Lies the Head . . .
I saw The Queen this weekend. It was not that great: yeah, Helen Mirren is really good, and so is Michael Sheen, but the script is pretty clunky -- a lot of plodding, expository dialogue, a few heavy-handed metaphors -- and some of the casting (James Cromwell as Prince Philip, particularly) is disastrous. Also, maybe as an American, it's hard to care about the whole thing -- monarchy in crisis, blah blah blah.
It did get me thinking, though, during last night's first part of the 24 premiere. Both the movie and the show are, in part, about the role of stoicism in politics. The Queen -- in fact, the queen herself -- explicitly states that. In 24, people are always making sacrifices -- the sole chance for redemption for a lot of characters, over the past five seasons, has been being willing to take one between the eyes for the good of the country. So there's that. There's also the acting style of most of the company, which is built around emotion so smothered as to resemble autism. Mary Lynn Rajskub (Chloe) is an extreme example, but it's there with James Morrison (Bill Buchanan) and Roger Cross (Curtis), too, to such an extent that watching the two of them awaiting Jack last night put me in mind of Hal Hartley's movies, which seemed to work only due to similarly restrained performances from his company -- Adrienne Shelly, Martin Donovan, Karen Sillas . . . Morrison, Cross, Rajskub, Kiefer Sutherland and Jayne Atkinson all feel like they're members of a similar troupe. D.B. Woodside (Wayne Palmer) does not, which makes me feel like his presidency is as doomed as the Logan administration was. It feels like he's not going to be able to authorize appalling things in the same way his big brother did and I wonder if the show is using Woodside's limitations as a performer to bolster the kid-brother-dressed-up-in-big-brother's-clothes effect of Wayne as president. Maybe I'm wrong. -- Peter
Come Back, TV!
Television is starting to trickle back from this long hiatus around Christmas. I thought it might be helpful to start trying to keep track of when we can expect new episodes of important shows:
Sunday, January 14: 24. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick. Kiefer's beard looks suitably grody. (Remember, we've got two whole hours on Sunday and then two more on Monday.) Spoiler Alert: This season's day begins at 6:00 AM, possibly Eastern Time and Chloe might have a new hairstyle. That's all we know. Also tonight: Brothers & Sisters, for what it's worth. Tonight's episode begins Jason Lewis's arc as a closeted soap star/love interest for Kevin.
Monday, January 15: More 24. Also, the Golden Globes, which -- huh. I had no idea they were already here. Another spoiler: because they are on NBC, no one will watch them.
Thursday, January 18: The Office, My Name Is Earl, Scrubs, 30 Rock, Ugly Betty and The O.C. are all new.
Sunday, January 21: Battlestar Galactica returns! The new episode is entitled "Rapture," which is scary, because remember, when last we left off, Adama was going to nuke the crap out of everything in order to keep the Cylons away from that McGuffin that has something to do with everyone finding their way to Earth. Meanwhile, on Brothers & Sisters, Marion Ross does what she does best -- stink up the joint as a difficult matriarch.
Monday, January 22: Prison Break returns and so does Heroes. Prison Break will be picking up the whole lame conspiracy/Terrence Steadman non-murder non-mystery. Christopher Eccleston joins Heroes.
Tuesday, January 23: Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars are both back. Gilmore Girls is a Christmas episode, apparently. The Hell? I guess we're skipping over Rory's Christmas in London with Logan, despite all the anvils being dropped this spring about the Orbit girl. Veronica Mars is a Mac episode (yay!) as well as -- duh -- the beginning of the Ed Begley, Jr. murder mystery. -- Peter
You Think?
Here's a pretty good Variety article, in which 24 executive producer Howard Gordon cops to the show's "vague misogyny":
http://www.variety.com/ac2006_article/VR1117944806?nav=eactress&nid=2853
Note: Variety may take forever to load. Enjoy! -- Peter
P.S. Alan Sepinwall reviews a few more pilots here and here.
Meaning and Meaninglessness on 24
I think I finally understand 24. I had a moment last night, and now I think I get it. I've been saying all along that I think the show is overrated. I couldn't understand why other viewers -- particularly critics -- continued to rave about a show that's often incredibly stupid, jingoistic and, even at its most sensational, oddly flat. Yeah, the production values are amazing and I can't imagine the attention to detail the show's titular time frame requires of everyone involved. But the scripts, the rabid misogyny and xenophobia and the humorlessness are all pretty hard to take. Why am I watching this, again, I often wonder
Then I had my moment. It was early in last night's episode. Jack and Audrey were trailing that scumbag Christopher Henderson (Peter Weller) in a squadcar Jack had acquired I forget how. We got one of those weirdly framed middle-range shots. It focused on the "to protect and serve" motto painted on the door. I thought, "Oh, irony," but that didn't parse. Jack really does protect and serve -- us all. There was a second shot of "protect and serve." I couldn't handle it. 24 isn't ironic, it's not sincere, it's some third thing. It's . . . post-ironic. Irony and sincerity are constructs. There is no meaning, there is only Bauer. It all became very clear to me.
The rest of the episode only confirmed my belief (or lack thereof -- it doesn't matter). Secretary Heller (William Devane) plunged his car off a cliff in order to assure that Henderson would not be able to follow through on his threat to kill him. There is no way to process such absurdity except post-ironically. I have had my epiphany: I understand everything and I am so confused. -- Peter
