Maybe someone can help me out with this. This movie was doing the trailer rounds for a while, and part of my recollection, at the time, was, "Haven't this been done already? Didn't Noomi Rapace already play a black-suited bodyguard before?" I swear, I have an image in my head of a TV show that had her playing a bodyguard, working with a partner, a man in a similar black suit, protecting a client in one of those classic expensive houses on top of a hill, all glass and stone. I looked at her IMDB history and no such TV show exists, so the only thing I can think is that there is an actress who is Noomish who played such a character. Maybe we can work together to identify...
Anywayz, yes, Noomi plays Sam Carlson, a character based on real-life body guard Jacquie Davis, a lone wolf figure, low on the EQ scale but reknowned for how good she is at her job. After an almost botched job in Sudan, she is shaken up, but takes on another protection job that seems simple enough -- protect the daughter of a recently deceased mining tycoon. She's a bit of wild one, so hiring a woman (who won't sleep with the client) seems smarter. Of course, almost immediately the compound (said glass and stone house from above) is attacked and the two women barely escape alive.
This movie felt a little like Extraction, in that its a small movie, focused on two people escaping from Bad Guys, in a country unfamiliar to North Americans. Is this now a sub-genre? But whereas the former was more focused on the action, as all Leading Men movies are, this was more focused, more tightly narrowed in on the conflict, the tension between the two women, initially because the client doesn't want to be protected, but later because the two need to rely on each other. This movie also gave a bit more intrigue, the conflict between the tycoon's daughter and her step-mother (it's always a STEP mother), a misdirection on who is responsible for the attack, and also the more vague trauma (body guards / mercenaries always have a dark past) that Carlson carries around. In the end it delivers exactly what it professed to do, which is not bad, but I would love to see Noomi become the next John Wick.
And thus begins, unintentionally, another episode of Women with Guns. Another episode? Apparently almost all the movies I would place into that category were washed away but one hiatus or another. I wonder if it was part unto not wanting to admit my fondness for this genre.
I suspect the emptiness of Will Forbes IMDB entry is due to a lack of interest from the public-sourced editors that IMDB relies on, as John Henry did so badly in the eyes of review sites, it isn't worthy their attention. That said, it wasn't that bad of a debut, especially for something on a micro-budget, especially from someone who came to Hollywood to do music for films, not make them. In order to score film, he created a film. Kudos.
Drawing from the well-known folklore character, it transposes the image of the imposing black man with a hammer from a steel driving man building railroads to a reluctant hero of the downtrodden in LA, with a hammer. John Henry (Terry Crews, Brooklyn 99) is an ex-gang member living a very quiet life, one of regrets and avoidance, interrupted by a young Honduran girl who hides under his porch, hiding from police and worse. She had just been rescued, by her cousin and brother, from a gang who had kidnapped her, intending on making her a drug induced sex-slave. The brother was shot, the cousin sacrifices himself to the police so she can escape.
The gang is run by Hell (Ludacris, Gamer), Henry's childhood friend and cousin, whom he sorely injured, leaving both scarred for life, one metaphorically & emotionally, one physically & emotionally. Hell has much of his right jaw replaced by a one-up on gangstas with gold teeth. Henry knows what he will go up against, and what it will cost him to finally come out of his repose and once again face Hell. Alas, Forbes takes the metaphor too highly at times, adding sloppy high styling when the lowkey down-to-life interactions between characters worked better. A rarely still Crews is believable as a large man capable of great violence, while Ludacris's comic book villainy seems out of place here. Still, I did enjoy, as I am still wrapped up in my curiosity about the less-Hollywood side of LA.
Like Paul Thomas Anderson who I returned to with The Phantom Thread, Charlie Kaufman was another one of the creators that was a key part of my formative cinephile years in the 90's. Having been a lapsed cinephile throughout the 2010's, though, I feel like I've lost track of what Kaufman has done since, what? Her? (I've been watching too much Arrested Development...typing "Her?" made me laugh out loud). A quick something search tells me, first, that Her was a product of Kaufman's one-time collaborator Spike Jonze and that he was not actually involved with that picture, and second, that I've missed the TV movie How and Why (which I've never heard of, but starring Arrested Development's Michael Cera) and the stop-motion Animalisa in between this latest directorial effort and his first on Synechdoche, New York. I'm only returning to his latest work because of ease of access, with I'm Thinking of Ending Things being a Netflix original film.
[Boy, that was a messy, messy paragraph. I thought I knew where I was going with this review, but then it turns out my faulty memory and lack of research have derailed those plans. I'm embarassing myself.]
I'm thinking of ending things, like Synechdoche, is a story-as-metaphor, where what is happening is less about the reality of what is going on, and more about what the presentation means. For someone like myself who appreciates creativity and weirdness, this type of film should really be something I lock into and just lap it up til it's done. But stories that work only as metaphor, like Synechdoche or Darren Aronofsky's mother! I find both engaging and frustrating Where mother! was about personifying environmental anxiety as human drama, I'm Thinking... is much more internal, much more individualistic. It's almost a character study but it's not obvious until the end who the character it is that we're studying, or what the metaphor is... and even then, it may take a little something searching to find some discourse that helps explain it a little better. I was mostly engaged (it does feel a little long) but at times I found it a little too esoteric, but I don't think I was ever actually frustrated with it.
[Where am I going with this, exactly? I seem to just be meandering, my thoughts unclear. I'm distracted, Do I want to be doing this? This film is more clever than I am, and I just need to admit it. I'm embarassing myself.]
The first half hour of the film takes place in a car, a segment of a lengthy road trip a woman (Jessie Buckley) is taking with her recent-ish boyfriend (Jesse Plemons) to his parents for the first time. It's sleeting outside, the wipers rhytmically sway back and forth providing the soundtrack to their conversation (I'm very impressed at how the editing keeps the rhythm of the wiping, it must have been a bit of a challenge in doing so). We hear inside her thoughts, but the first time she thinks "I'm thinking of ending things", he say a little "Hm?" as if he heard her. This is just one of many little curiosities that arise along the journey to the parents house. At one point he asks her to recite the poem she's been writing... but on top of being a poet she has all these other majors that she's studying, and jobs that she has, and creative things she does. And I think he keeps calling her a different name every time he says it. Something strange seems to be going on here. She recites her poem, and it's long. Too long to be something she's just written and is unsure about, too well formed and well rehearsed. People don't just remember poems that long. Something seems amiss. And every time she seems to start to talk about perhaps, you know, ending things with him, there seems to be a little blip in time. Suddenly they're at his parents house.
[Am I saying too much, am I giving too much away? I've listened to at least two podcasts talking about this film already. If everything I'm about to say just a regurgitation of what they said? Do I have no original thoughts of my own? Am I ruining this for everyone? It's not what happens, but how it happens, right? I'm embarrassing myself.]
even the posters seem to be making reference to other art and culture
The parents (David Thewlis and Toni Collette) are an odd sort, and their surroundings likewise. There's a weirdness in the air. The basement door, somethings up with it. The dog seems to appear out of nowhere, shake itself off vigorously for too long, then disappear again. The parents sometimes seem younger and sometimes older. Why is there a picture of her as a child in his house? What is going on, it's definitely eerie. Not necessarily horrifying, but certainly not normal. It's like the ending of 2001:A Space Odyssey only it's the middle of the film. There are little things throughout that tell us she isn't who he says she is, little tells that continue to compound when they leave the house, get sidetracked at a dairy mart, and then wind up snowed in at his old high school, where they run into the janitor that the film has been occasionally cutting to all this time. And then an extended interpretive dance sequenceis used to, basically, explain what is actually going on...depending on how well you speak the language of "interpretive dance".
[What am I doing? I'm just giving it all away here. But then, the reality is, whomever is reading this has either watched the film, is intending to watch the film or has no interest in watching the film...I'm not going to change anyone's mind here. That's not what I'm here to do? What am I here to do? I'm embarrassing myself.]
[SPOILERS (maybe)]
The metaphor - which I *kind* of picked up on, but searched on to corroborate - is about loneliness, about a life lived too deep in arts, culture and criticism to the the expense of actually living life, these passions getting in the way of connecting with others. Both characters that Jessie Buckley and Jesse Plemons play here, are figments of this janitor's mind. Plemons represents his younger self, almost unwavering in performance the way he sees himself. Buckley is an amalgam of women, some perhaps real, some imagined, some maybe only characters from a story. She is the focus of this story, and yet she is the most mercurial character, like in his mind he just can't lock down who she should be, and even in this fantasy she still doesn't want to be with him. I don't know if the tone of this is more about regret or depression. And is the title of the film, which seems to be about her thoughts of dumping him, is it actually about him thinking of suicide....?
[Is that the right read of this film? I don't know. I probably need to watch it again armed with the knowledge of what happens and therefore able to invest more in the investigation of the metaphor. I should just stop typing now. I'm embarrassing myself.]
Raised by Wolves - HBO Max/Crave/CTV Sci-Fi (5 episodes watched) Lovecraft Country - HBO (5 episodes watched)
Game of Thrones's success has led to a monumental shift in HBO's programming. I'm hardpressed to think of a genre show (when I say "genre" I mean nerd-stuff like Horror, Superheroes & Sci-Fi, not like westerns and crime procedurals) on the Home Box Office prior to that series launch. I would have to hazard a guess that it created such a seismic impact on how the channel views its audience that they're now trying very, very hard to keep feeding the beast. The reality is Generation X and those that followed were raised on a steady diet of science fiction, space opera, horror and superheroes. Look at the biggest films of the past 50 years - Jaws, Star Wars, Superman, E.T., Back to the Future, Batman, Terminator 2, Jurassic Park... and that just takes us from 1970 to 1995. From '95 to 2020, it's monolithic superhero, fantasy and sci-fi franchises with horror always being cheap to make and making some major money for smaller studios. Nerds and geeks are the mainstream. HBO is aging out of its "sophisticated drama" and "elitist comedy" audience and striving for sophisticated and elitist genre programming, and by gum, it's working.
This year has been particularly stellar in HBO's slate of genre programming, starting with Watchmen, the absolutely brilliant de-facto sequel to the classic graphic novel which ended its 9-episode run January, followed by a revamped, Blade Runner-inspired third season of Westworld and the sharp and snarky Avenue 5, a comedy about a space cruise line gone horribly awry. Then we have this summer two massive new endeavours: Raised By Wolves and Lovecraft Country.
Both shows are drastically different from each other but feel very "HBO" in that they play drastically different than most other television programming. When other channels like AMC, Showtime, FX or even Netflix and Hulu are doing when they unveil the best of their best is trying to present shows that would feel at home on HBO. An HBO program shows a commitment to integrity and vision, where storytelling is condensed, focussed, and swerves away from convention where others might veer right into it.
The trailer for Raised By Wolves looked like bog-standard sci-fi. A refugee colony of children on an alien planet are raised by androids, and then come a group of human adults who want to disrupt their peace, not believing children should be raised by androids. It looked like tedious, desert sci-fi, ala Earth 2 and other '90's snooze-fests. What it had going for it was Ridley Scott, directing the first two episodes and executive producing the series. It's not that Scott's genre track record is spotless (Gods of Egypt, Alien: Covenant) but generally, he fares well, and with this looks were most certainly deceiving.
Created by Aaron Guzikowski, his original concept as far as I could discern, a small shuttle crash lands on the planet Kepler-22b. It's manned by two androids, Mother and Father. They make each others' acquaintances upon evacuating the crash site, and saving its very modest cargo. A portable shelter is erected and Father gets to work settling while mother is hooked up to small embryonic chambers and she brings the babies to term. Through a quick series of vignettes, the children age, the agriculture of the settlement expands, and Mother and Father find a shared sense of purpose, a common ground for raising a family. But the children get sick, and over time all but one of them dies, after ten years it's just Mother, Father and Campion as apparently the last gasp of athiestic human civilization.
Then approaches a ship, the Mithraic refugees, the last survivors of Earth, have come to Kepler-22b. A brutal war was waged on earth for years between the extreme poles of athiests and followers of Sol. Their war left the Earth utterly scarred and uninhabitable. Mother was a Mithraic siren, an adroid of mass destruction and murder, reprogrammed by an athiest to be the matriarch of a new, godless society, free from the corruption of belief and religion. But if the harshness of survival on Kepler weren't enough to put that in jeopardy, the Mithraic survivors - mostly holy men, warriors and androids - certainly won't help. Their first encounter trigger's Mother's siren protocols and things go very very badly for the Mithraic. Mother saves the children from the ship and destroys nearly everyone else.
Among the Mithraic survivors are two athiest soldiers who have had plastic surgery to disguise themselves as noble soldiers in order to evacuate the planet. Further complications arise when they learn the identities they took over were parents of a young boy. Yet even further complications for them when they are among the last of the Mithraic survivors, putting their sanctity and devotion to religion to the test, and also trying to lead the Mithraic back towards Mother's camp to rescue the children.
The show craftily explores what happens when two sides of an issue can no longer peacefully co-exist, as if only one side or the other has absolute right to exist, and the other must be destroyed. There's a similar play in American (and to a lesser but no less troubling extent, Global) politics that finds the divide between different sides utterly unbridgeable. The show is less about politics than the ramifications of being so inflexibly divergent, but even by the third episode the conclusion that both belief (or faith) and agnostic skepticism have their place, and moreover are essential to existence. Utter adherence to doctrine finds man believing it absolves them of monstrous behaviour, while absolute adherence to the lack of existence of God to the point of intolerance, it makes enemies of believers. Both sides find no room for doubt, but doubt is critical to understanding, entertaining the possibility is enough to find empathy.
The show also explores what makes a family, and I love how it handles the Mother/Father dynamic. What starts out as very mechanical, very alien, almost an uncanny valley representation of parental dynamics becomes more an exploration of what give and take needs to occur in parenting. Parents should ascribe to the same concepts of nurturing and discipline, but too often don't. Even if programmed to do so, disagreements in specific methods of rearing young still come up, and the androids need to compromise.
Raised by Wolves is beyond the bog standard, for sure. There's great thought put into the dynamics between characters, the evolution of both individuals and groups, and sufficiently making the desert seem like an interesting place (delving into the pasts of the characters on Earth and the war that was waged there help to break up the sandy monotony). I find the Mithraic religion very curious, and the eye-catching military design resembling Arthurian knights (but with a futuristic spin) adds parallels to medieval crusades.
Post-apocalyptic + alien planet + robots + medieval inspired costumes = I don't think I've watch a show that just screams "Toast!" so much in a long time.
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The first episode of Lovecraft Country opens in black and white in the trenches of the Korean War. A soldier leads the charge, shooting, stabbing and bashing the enemy. He pauses to breathe, an expression of both awe and horror on his face as he takes in his situation. Planes roar overhead and bombs drop. The subsequent explosion is a furious orange and yellow. As he climbs out of the trenches, the black and white slowly gives way to stark elements of colour, as the battlefield isn't just men and guns and tanks but ufos glowing green, red-eyed, long-legged tripods, and winged tentacled creatures, and it just gets more bizarre from there, until Atticus "Tic" Freeman (Jonathan Majors - the next big star) awakens from the dream where the fantasy stories have merged with his own experience of war. Back in the US, Tic is returning home, but despite being a veteran he's still a second-class citizen, relegated to a segregated section of the bus, and forced to walk the rest of the way to town when the bus breaks down.
It's a bold opening, delivering the message that this show is going to both deliver some very highly fantastical elements while also be firmly rooted in America's dirty history. It's the same slap-in-the-face that Watchmen delivered, instantly undermining any expectations of frivolousness, and backing it up with a solid hour of the uneasy reality of being Black in the 1950's (as opposed to the uneasy reality of being Black in any other decade). Given protests around the many murders and racial injustices of Black men and women that have been dominating the news cycle in 2020 (next to COVID-19 and an endless stream of Trump bullshit) it seems an especially apt time for shows like Watchmen and Lovecraft Country to reflect upon the present day with historical context, but the sad reality is these types of stories at any time would carry the same relevance. The positive is that they are receiving both the budget and attention they deserve, when this would likely not have been the case even ten years ago.
That first hour of Lovecraft Country deals with introducing our main players and their dynamics - Tic, his uncle George (Courtney B Vance), his Aunt Hyppolyta (Aunjanue Ellis - I loved that George and Hyppolita were introduced in bed together...not just expressing Black love, but also late-middle age love), his old neighbourhood friend Leti (Jurnee Smollett), her half-sister Ruby (Wunmi Mosaku) and the spectre of Tic's dad, Montrose (who we meet in the second episode, played by Michael K Williams). George publishes a travel guide written specifically for Black Americans to navigate through the country (a big old middle finger to the Oscar-winning, white-gazing Green Book) and the tenor of the show hovers largely around the unease that white America has with their semi-liberated Black population, and the deeply aggressive racism that prevails. Late in the first first act the omnipresence of racism is temporarily put aside as some seriously nasty, Lovecraftian creatures attack. The threats are many fold.
I love how the show started so epically, then grounded itself in a rooted reality, built up the characters and some very relatable relationships, and then thrust these characters in an all too real and uncomfortable horror before upending it all with something much more fantastical. And then it goes full Sam Raimi/Evil Dead 2. It gets gross, but playfully so. It's almost a welcome tension breaker from the racism to have something much more external come in and terrify everyone.
There's an abrupt jump after the attack of the Lovecraftian terrors ends where our protagonists find themselves at the door of a mansion, greeted by a character (and vehicle) which only appeared like a blur earlier in the episode. It's a very strange editing decision, and it leads directly into the second episode which tonally takes such an abrupt turn from the first episode that it threatens to sink the series entirely.
Seriously, the second episode kind of sucks.
There's a mystery throughout the first episode, the maguffin of Tic's missing father, which leads us to a secret society where Tic and his family have a very important role to play. The bulk of the episode takes place in the aforementioned mansion, and tries to weave its way through destinies, and bloodlines, and magic and power...and more stuff. It's a lot of world building that is at total odds with the world built in the first episode. Certainly the role a group of Black people play in this very white organization does hold the lens of racism up to these types of stories, but it tonal whiplash that I found very hard to resolve. Not to mention the editing is rough, and the score for the episode is so overbearing that it makes it hard to concentrate on what's actually being said. I was almost ready to tap out of the series after that one.
The third episode rebounds, putting the focus squarely on Leti (and her relationships with her sister and with Tic), as she buys a haunted house in a white neighbourhood and has to deal with terrors both external and internal. It's a little wonky of a story, but it helps establish that Lovecraft Country as a series is more episodic than serial in nature. There is progression of relationships and character but each episode shifts into different horror subgenres and changes the spotlight. The fourth episode is kind of Indiana Jones-inspired as Leti, Tic and Montrose try and fill in some gaps in their understanding of their place in recent events. The fifth episode is magnificent, putting Ruby in the spotlight and goes straight-up body horror as she takes a potion that allows her to temporarily become a white woman.
Any one of these episodes could fuel a much longer arc for the characters, but the show is designed (apparently like Matt Ruff's novel it's based on) as a series of almost separate vignettes that build the larger whole. I really like this format of storytelling in novels, and it's rarely employed, nevermind employed well on television. Usually a show is either firmly serialized or a very structured episodic, it's not very common to get what's essentially a serialized anthology. But the sort of subgenre and style jumping the show does from episode to episode, for the most part (so far) makes it rather wonderful. Even if I've only love 2/5ths of the output so far, the strength of those 2/5ths and aspects of the larger world make it very worthwhile. And I like the shifting focus from character to character, which is certainly helped by an outstanding cast. Seriously all the major players are outstanding even when the material is less so. I'm eagerly awaiting the Auntie Hyppolita episode.
It's been a crazy see-saw ride...from being all in within the first three minutes to almost bailing completely through the second hour, to appreciating it much more at the fourth hour to absolutely swooning for actress Wunmi Mosaku as much as the camera does every time Ruby's on screen. It's not the nearly perfect streak of Watchmen, but it's upholding the same principles of telling a wildly entertaining story while also being very conscious of what its mere existence means, and handling that very responsibly.
2018, Zach Lipovsky, Adam B. Stein (Kim Possible) -- download/Netflix
Freaks is another exploration of a world where superpowered people are not considered superheroes, but downright dangerous, which is a good point. In the Marvel comics universe, the Civil War storyline was kicked off when a super team battle results in the explosion of the super villain Nitro. Not only does it kill most of the super team New Warriors, but also most of a neighbourhood of 600, including a school bus full of kids. This leads the American government to pass a Registration Act, to have more control over how super powered people interact in public. In Freaks, a similar tragedy leads to the strict, more draconian, regulation of people who exhibit any special powers. And thus seven year old Chloe is hidden away from the world by her father.
Much of the opening of the movie hides the backstory from us. We see her over controlling father (Emile Hirsch, Lords of Dogtown) hiding her inside a house where the windows are covered up, and it appears very PoAp. She has no life, and is very very curious about what is going on outside. Despite that, her dad has given her some hope that, if she is good, life will get better soon. She's seven; she doesn't quote believe him. We also don't quite trust the narrative, the presentation lending itself to the father perhaps being delusional. Chloe occasionally peeks outside, seeing a friendly ice cream truck, and really wants some ice cream. And we know how much trouble ice cream can cause.
Once the third act kicks off, and we have been exposed to Chloe's expanding powers, we might be thinking the control the government wants is not such a bad thing. These power folks are scary, and yes, everyone is entitled to freedom, the scared normals do have reasons to be afraid of the abnormals. Gone are the elements of horror or misdirection from earlier in the movie, and it slips further into being just another episode of Heroes. Still, the presentation is skilled enough to keep attention and the smart little actress playing Chloe (Lexy Kolker) is a wonderful lead.
Yes, the sequel of Train to Busan, currently in the theatres, which I am still avoiding like they are filled with the zombie hordes, not that I was rushing out to them even before-Pause, but I found a pristine copy with wonderful subtitles! Despite my opening line in the first blog entry, I enjoyed Train to Busan and even more so in rewatching. But the movie didn't leave much room for a sequel involving the original cast, so it didn't bother. This is the post-zombie-apocalypse world, one where the refugees of South Korea have scattered to the wind, and the entire peninsula has been quarantined.
Things are not going well for the refugees, as we know how well the world likes mass crowds of downtrodden people showing up on their shores unexpected, with little to no money and different languages. So, four years later, survivors Jung Seok and Chul-min, the man he saved, are barely surviving in Hong Kong. When the opportunity comes up to make some cash, American cash, by returning to the city on Incheon, financed by a criminal organization, they don't quite jump for it, but really, they don't have any choice. They are sent with a few others, to find a truck full of cash, and bring it to the docks. The last crew sent died, but the truck should almost be there. Of course, things don't go as planned.
This is an PoAp action movie laid atop the zombie genre. Incheon, and the rest of South Korea, is in ruins. Four years after the zapocalypse, most of the inhabitants are eaten or zombified or gathered with a Mad Max style group of violent thugs. Except for Min Jung, her kids and their grandfather. Exiles from the compound run by Captain Seo, they are more than capable of taking care of themselves, thus they easily rescue Jung Seok when the rest of his crew is killed. The truck full of money (and food and Chul-min) is taken back to the compound. She realizes that the money, and the ship arriving to retrieve it, can get her family out of the dead city, so they plan to raid the compound (where the truck was taken after Jung Seok's crew died) and take it for themselves.
Min Jung's two daughters are expert getaway drivers, maneuvering their CGI car around the city and through the zombies with an ease more at home in video games. Its rather silly looking, but also rather a visually captivating as the car swings around, bashing down zombies, bouncing off barriers with nary a scratch. This is easily the best bits of the movie, which is focused around the good guys surviving both the Bad Guy thugs and the fast-running, mass-gathering zombie hordes. Jung Seok and Min Jung may be expert shots, but the speedy super-leaping zombies will eventually take them all down, unless they get to the boat.
Furious, 2017, Dzhanik Fayziev, Ivan Shurkhovetskiy -- Amazon Dwarves of Demrel, 2018, Chris Raney -- Amazon
So, it is well known to the five readers of this blog that I am a D&D player. More accurately, an ex-D&D player over 50. And if you know any other ex-D&D players over 50, you know that we remember the days when there were almost no fantasy or swords & sorcery based TV or movie media for us to ogle. Now with The Witcher or The Lord of the Rings (among many other things) setting the bar, we have tons of decent material, and even more (so much more) less than stellar choices. But that doesn't stop me from occasionally walking the stacks (metaphorically speaking) to see if there is anything I might want to watch.
Furious is a pseudo-historical story of the Huns (Mongols? Mongols) invading Russia, more precisely, the attack on the city of Ryazan, and the defense led by the knight Evpaty Kolovrat. The frenetic action focused movie, of a style oft attributed to Wuxia films, is likely lacking on historical accuracy (honestly, how would I know?), replacing it with rousing few-against-many situations where our heroes mostly persevere, as long as there is a heavy dose of melodrama and tragedy.
Evpaty is a soldier, a trainer of soldiers, who suffers from night terrors so severe, he has to be tied down. He awakens every morning with his memory mostly wiped, his loving wife calming him and explaining to him all that has happened since his traumatic injury many years ago, until it all comes back. So, tragic warrior, lovely wife & family, skilled with connections to the Prince and the love of his fellow warriors.
I wish more of the story stuck with me, but the lopsided melodrama and constant slow-mo action overshadowed the story they wanted to tell. To be honest, I liked Evpaty, but you couldn't help but know things were going to go badly for him, despite his role as the everyman who rises above his station to save his people. You see, that's the thing -- he never actually saves his people. The Mongols invade, and like the battle of Stalingrad, the Russians lose, are decimated and our hero still has to gather those left to fend off the overwhelming forces from the east.
The movie is lovely looking, the CGI decent and the set dressing engaging. There is something about the Russian medieval architecture, all wood and peaks, that I love, that fits well into my D&D world-building mind. The problem is that despite their desire to make memorable supporting characters, everyone is just another bearded grim warrior that I could tell from the next. In the end, it was a nice romp but nothing I will ever think about again.
Meanwhile, the very very low budget indie flick Dwarves of Demrel or as it is called on Amazon, Dragon Mountain, was actually rather engaging despite being very very rough around the edges. For one, the repackaging as having something to do with a Dragon is very disingenuous, as it is absolutely nothing to do with any dragons, literally nothing but a CGI one flying overhead like so many of the indie fantasy movies found on Amazon bank on. Dragons sell? Not really, but I guess?
But for me, dwarves sell. The three men playing the dwarven miners trapped underground after a mine explosion and collapse were as convincing as anything CGI-ed by Peter Jackson and crew. They just look the part, with darkness and shadows and bulky clothes helping. The actors just dive into the roles and sell it.
The story is just that, three dwarves trying to survive a cave in, and find a way out. Along the way we find out about the political troubles going on, where humans have come in where dwarves are doing badly, taken over and run the mines like overseers, badly and with little concern for safety, thus the predicament the trio find themselves in. Through conversation and a little action, we learn the hearts of these men.
The problem was that was it. Nothing else but the talking. A good short story, but not enough to make a full novel from, and therefore not enough to make a full movie. There is some danger, and some conspiracy, and intrigue, but not enough to keep me from getting bored. And this is from me, a guy who loves dwarves! Ever since The Hobbit I have been a dwarf man, the first race I go to when I have to start a new character with a new group -- not that that has happened in a long long while. But I got enough out of the movie to watch to the end, and somewhat enjoy it. I am interested to see if they do another, maybe more about the other races.
2020, Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman (Viral) -- Netflix
What would you do for super powers? How about just five minutes worth? Yeah, if you are me, then not too much. Seems like a low ROI. But sure, go ahead make the metaphorical connection to addictive substances and you might have something there. I imagine the rush of doing a Flame On (!) even for the briefest moment would be quite the thing. Well, except for the fact you just lit on fire, and your clothes are burned up, and possibly the fuel is your own flesh. But, again, addicts do stupid things. This is where the movie would have us go, with the hopes we can just ignore the logic of the matter (super powers tend to ignore logic & physics as they are) and go along with the adrenaline pumping action.
Art (Jamie Foxx, Baby Driver) is in New Orleans tracking down the source of the newest, hottest drug on the street, the aforementioned -- "Power". Mixed into the story are dedicated street cop Frank (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, The Dark Knight Rises) using the drug for his own purposes, and his street contact, teenager Robin (Dominique Fishback, The Hate You Give) who really is the centre of this movie, and she carries it onward even as the rest flags around typical action thriller tropes. Art is at the centre of this conspiracy (but no, not the movie), having lost his daughter to the organization responsible for the drug's creation and release, while Frank just wants to protect his city, even if he has to sacrifice his own health. Robin is literally dragged along for most of the movie, as the trio do your typical chase-the-drug-dealers-down run, but it is her strength that allows the two men to come out on top.
Despite the shoot-first, think-later aspects of the movie, you can see they were trying to establish something here, maybe not a whole franchise worthy world, but at least something to sink your teeth into. The problem is that it spends so little time thinking about this world, and the trappings. We get only a few examples of the drug being used, when they should have done at least a quick montage scene of how often the drug can go wrong (let's just say the powers it provides are not always useful) but no, they sunk all the CG money into key scenes, including this stupid timer method of turning the pill on. Turn it on? Yeah, remember the gimmick in Dredd where the drug looks like an inhaler with brown goo mixed in? In this one, they twist the pill and it clicks on, emitting a beautiful firey light as it gets absorbed into the system. Then, power on, slow-mo CGI and Action! Each pill also has more packaging than an iPhone. But after that wears off, we should have had something else about the Why's and How's, alas it just went down a typical the-street-is-an-experiment angle, which frankly, was not very interesting.
Well, this has been a fun...holy shit! 6 months!?! It's been six months we've been locked down and socially isolated to quell the spread of coronavirus disease 2019!?! It feels like both an eternity since this started and also like no time has passed at all. Time has ceased to have any meaning without any real memories to be made (total lie... this 6 month period was marked with such monumental things as both my kids having appendectomies, my grandmother dying, and a whole host of doggie afflictions on top of a roofing job and other larger societal clusterfucks that we shant soon forget...but I digress), and with all of the world's cinema and television productions shut down there's scant new original programming to fill the time. So what does one do when there's not a constant barrage of new content to drive one mad and assail one's audio-optical senses...? REWATCH!
That's right, time to consume beloved content of times past, those things we don't revisit as often as we would like to because there's too much damn new stuff to wade through. How has this become our life? Why are we so distracted? Because the fantasy realities are often so much better, or maybe so much worse, than the reality we experience every day.... or maybe just different enough to take us out of "today".
Upon rewatching a handful of my favourite comedies, I found it hard to let go of "today". There's a lot of bad stuff out there in our world which just constantly eats up space in my head: divisiveness is at an all-time high; race and class structures are getting vigorously contentious; and politics and media both seem to be designed to manipulate (and outrage) the population. We're attempting to make the biggest strides of our generation (X, Millennials) and we're meeting it head on with a (build that) wall of take-it-all-with-them-when-they-go Boomers that their ill-minded supporters that are not only resisting but trying to rescind long-established societal progression, take us back to a "great again" time that, really, was only great for a few and ultimately really harmful to everyone else. The divide just keeps growing, and things just seem to be more radical on either side. Moderates and centrists seem to be an almost imperceptible minority.
So looking at these situationally comedic programmes - Arrested Development, Clone High, Community, Father Ted, Flight of the Conchords, Happy Endings, Letterkenny and Parks and Recreation - almost all of these at some point have dated themselves with comedic set-ups or punchlines that fail to meet today's standards of respect and decency, and let's be clear we're talking mostly on race or LGTBQQIP2sAA standards, but in some cases it's creators or personnel involved, and I'm sure there are others changing aspects of society that mar these otherwise deliriously funny programs.
Let's be clear, I LOVE these shows, but I'm also able to see them critically, and can acknowledge, just as with watching anything from another time, that those times were different. But we must also acknowledge the change in times and standards, and that, in some cases, these things were even wrong for their time.
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Arrested Development (currently watching season 3)(2003-2006, 2013, 2019)
I once considered Arrested Development to be the funniest show ever to have been on TV. The subsequent 4th and 5th seasons on Netflix were good but largely due to scheduling concerns of its large, active cast, it seemed the show faltered a bit and relied upon a lot of editing tricks in order to deliver its delightfully absurd story. The 4th (review) and 5th seasons drag down my overall impression of the series, if only slightly. Diving back in from the beginning for the first time since I guess just before Season 4 came out, as always I revel in the ridiculous amount of setup and forethought that went into the writing and staging of the show. The jokes are often subtle, and they build over time, often layering upon each other. Many gags are solely designed for the rewatch (the amount of set-up for Buster losing his hand in Season 2 is just magnificent, nothing you're ever going to catch the first time around).
The show is about the Bluths, a terrible upper-class family in serious trouble and their terribly dysfunctional dynamic. Lying, cheating, stealing, scamming, greed, envy, wrath... all the bad stuff. By the later Netflix seasons, even naive, innocent George-Michael (Michael Cera) has taken on the family trait of profusely and adeptly lying. What makes the show fun to watch is that very few people people get sucked into their radar and are affected in any monumental way, for the most part the family's bad behavior only reflects badly upon themselves.
Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman) is the ostensible protagonist of the show, a seeming odd-man-out in the family, but he too shares much of the dysfunctional mindset the rest of his family does, but he's oblivious to it. Thinking he's better than his family, and knowing that things are wrong is the main thing that makes him stand out... and yet, upon returning to season 1 and knowing what we know about Michael after 5 seasons, almost any time he engages in a relationship with someone I'm yelling at the screen telling the woman to run, like it's a horror movie.
Many of the Bluths are casually racist, sexist, and every other -ist... genuinely awful people but the comedy lies in their utter obliviousness to their awfulness. The sly backhanded comments they make towards each other are so often ignored as if all of them are blind to any real critique of who they are. But there's an infallible logic to how these people turned out the way they did, which is the brilliance of its writing and character creation. The marvel of watching them fail so spectacularly is only fun because we know these people and despite all their faults we kind of like them (ok, we like them from afar, we'd never want to be anywhere near them).
So the show's comedy stands up, much of the time, because its comedy of personality. The only people the show is really trying to punch down on is these characters, not any other specific group of people. That said, there are so many red flags, starting the marginalization of the Latinx characters like Lupe, the maid. She's an integral part to many of the show's funnier bits, but hardly a fleshed out character in the show, and so often the joke is just how put-upon she is by being in service of the family. The sympathetic response sometimes outweighs the comedic setup.
Likewise, Lucille Bluth (the absolutely wicked Jessica Walter) has an adopted Korean son "Annyeong" is a half-note above one-note, but again, not much of a developed character. He's there because Lucille wants to make her sMothered adult son Buster (Tony Hale) jealous. There's a pretty great payoff to his presence, but they could have done better with him in the meantime.
The most flagrantly offensive of Arrested Development's many offenses is so flagrant because even in 2005 when it aired it was really, really wrong, and show creator Mitch Hurwitz should have known better. Hell, at any point any one of dozens upon dozens of people should have called him out on it. The set-up finds Michael drawn to impulsive, eclectic, British Rita (Charlize Theron), and his attempts to court her are seemingly at odds with the family's ongoing legal troubles. The show plays up a British espionage angle with clever diversions and a few James Bond-styled musical stings, but the reality is revealed after a few episodes, that Rita has a neurodevelopmental disorder which the show, painfully, states more than once as "retarded" (the mysterious "Mr. F" turns out to mean "mentally retarded female"). It's not meaning it offensively, but it's still a punchline that even in 2005 was indeed offensive, and they should have known better. That someone who is mentally challenged (I might be saying a bad thing right there, I mean no offense if so) is perceived as being far smarter than they are because they're British is kind of funny but still offensive, and also unable to see it because of their beauty is equally kind of funny/offensive, but add on Michael's deep seeded need to prove the family wrong about his dating prowess is what actually makes it funny. Its his obliviousness that's the joke, but it's the execution that's all over the map. On first watch, where Rita is just the next "manic pixie dream girl" in pop-culture, only to reveal that she's got a disability it was a wild ride and super surprising but, as I said, painful in its reveal. It's the rare instance that seeing the setup on rewatch only makes it more painful, as the show doesn't handle it too tactfully or tastefully. I'm sure there's a way to do that story inoffensively, but they didn't take the time.
And then there's the cast, well, not the cast...but specifically Jeffrey Tambor, who has been outed as problematic on set of his later show Transparent (from which he was ultimately fired) and even a few inappropriate behavioural incidences on this show. I'm not sure what Tambor's status is today, but he certainly doesn't seem as busy as he once was.
And then there's Bob Loblaw, the Bluth's second lawyer, played by Trump-supporting Scott Baio. Bob Loblaw is a funny name for a character and the punny alliterative tonguetwisty playfulness they have with it ("Bob Loblaw's Law Blog", headline reads: "Bob Loblaw Lobs Law Bomb"), and Baio is effectively deadpan, but eerily dead-eyed in the role. I didn't think much of it at the time (replacing Henry Winkler with Scott Baio as the family lawyer made for an immediately funny Happy Days-referencing gag, obviously with voice over from Ron Howard adding an additional layer). But I think even then Baio was showing signs of being a garbage man... a parroting Republican shill. He's just hard to look at in rewatch. But I love those Bob Loblaw jokes. Perhaps they should have gotten Donnie Most instead.
And perhaps it's problematic that the show's most prominent Black character is a GOB's puppet, Franklin. The show knows that the Black affectation the characters put on anytime someone talks to Franklin is very very wrong, and I like the examples of Black people reacting to Franklin (perhaps the best is the guard at the community gate who seems to genuinely enjoy Franklin... Job's music producer, much less so). In GOB's mind, he sees his "relationship" with Franklin as progressive, but GOB's portrayal of a Black person mines pretty much every stereotype out there. It's not good, but then it's not supposed to be. The joke is definitely always on GOB, but does that make it ok? Hard questions.
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Clone High (2002)
A year after an impromptu move to Toronto in 2001, I found myself in semi-isolation, no cable television, not a lot of money and an incredible amount of time on my hands. I took up Blogging, which was a burgeoning thing at the time, before it got corrupted by commercialization, and overridden by social media. Through blogging I met people, virtually, from all over the world, but mostly it became an avenue for a very social club of localites called the GTABloggers. It's through GTAB that Toast and I met and became instant likeminded amigos.
Within the GTAB little cliques formed unintentionally, and a small circle of us really loved our nerdy animation and comics and video games and pop culture ephemera. Amongst our little group Clone High became a big thing. I'll defer to others to clarify the truth but I want to say it was our beloved, now sadly departed friend Jeremy who discovered the show. At the very least when Jeremy and I became roommates, Clone High was regularly on the TV. Living in my head for an eternity is Jeremy's rendition of Mr. Butlertron's catchphrase "Oh, Wesley". Likewise how many times Jeremy would have on his jumper and say "Look at my lovely sweater vest" ala Principle Scudworth. So many in jokes carried along with us that I actually forgot they came from Clone High. It was rewatching this series for the first time in probably 15 years that reminded me.
This rewatch literally brought bittersweet tears to my eyes as memories of Jeremy and his impeccable impersonations of characters from the show came flooding back. I could remember specific moments watching the show with him or remembering specific situations where he pulled out a quote at the perfect time, something he was very, very adept at.
If anything, I'm thankful to Clone High for the many, many memories of Jeremy it returned to me. I miss him so much, and there's never a week that passes that something doesn't bring him to mind. There's so much I wish I could still share with him.
Beyond my obviously very personal, very sentimental attachment to the show, it's created by Bill Lawrence (creator of one of mine and Abed's favourite sitcoms, CougarTown. Also, Scrubs) and Phil Lord and Chris Miller...who are like gods to me. I unironically cite to my kids that Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs is my favourite movie. The Lego Movie is absolute genius. The Jump Street movies are a million times better than they have any right to be and their hands in the pots of things like Last Man on Earth and Into The Spider-Verse just show how unique and amazing their comedic and dramatic touch is. (Oh, Solo, A Star Wars Story, what could have been).
It's Lord and Miller's ability to play with genre conventions that is their truest gift. They seem to have preternatural instincts on how to suck the audience into cliched character and story only to whip them around and surprise them constantly. And they cut their teeth on Clone High which toys with the 90's style high school-based drama, just ramped up to 11, blowing past eyerolling and deep into absurd. The premise, as detailed by the insidiously earwormy theme:
Each of its meager (but welcome) 13 episodes is like an after-school special but warped into getting the message all wrong. An anti-littering episode doesn't even try to stick the message. And the show certainly encourages underage drinking, and drugs, and sex. Because they're fun.
But for all the goof-em-ups and make-em-laughs where the show goes wrong is a very modern consideration. Of the main cast of characters, the characters of colour are mostly not voiced by people of colour. Ghandi is voiced by Michael McDonald (MADTV) and Cleopatra is voiced by Bill Lawrence mainstay (and wife) Christa Miller. I can't imagine anyone else voicing them now (Cleo is such a Christa Miller-type) but the failure in diverse casting to start with is the real problem.
There's also the very public controversy surrounding Ghandi being used as a goofy character which offended a great many in India and partly contributed to the cancellation of the show. I don't know if that's overreaction or not, because it's not really Ghandi, just a hypothetical clone on a nonsensical cartoon. The whole point is that the clones are nothing like their namesakes and, on occasion, they misinterpret the lessons they should be learning from their genetic originals. Okay, i can see now how that might be a little offensive.
There's also Ghengis Khan, a side character whose clone obviously is developmentally challenged. It not necessarily punching down, but the whole comedic intent is just that.
The show perpetuates gay stereotypes with JFK's two dad's, and Joan's dad (voiced by Scrubs' Donald Faison) is playing off the wise old black man cliche (his refrain "I may be blind, but..." then dispensing sage advise) and yet it's doing so very, very knowingly. I'm still wrestling with whether knowingly perpetuating a stereotype for comedic effect isn't still negatively perpetuating the stereotype. I have a hard time with that, as I think satire is one of the more powerful tools to disarm the sterotypes. This will come up again and again as I write about other shows.
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Community (2009-2015)
Community is an all-time top 5 favourite show and pretty much has been from episode one. I remember catching the pilot and thinking I've never seen a pilot so fully realized. From an extremely strong opening that seemed like a mini-movie (credit the Russo Brothers who would go on to some mildly popular stuff) to a few muddled, but still funny follow-ups, the show eventually found its rhythm with the characters and the actors portraying them, not to mention setting up the larger world of Greendale Community College...all the supporting bit players, the running gags, the adversaries, the romantic tensions, the different dynamics between different character pairings, all of it delivered through the filter of Dan Harmon, whose id, ego and superego were laid bare within each of the main characters. Beyond that the show became a vehicle for deconstructing all manner of TV, movie and other storytelling tropes, really making its first big move with the Justin Lin directed, action-heavy paintball episode "Modern Warfare" closing out Season 1. It wasn't just pastiche for pastiche sake, these things mattered in the larger sense and were massively fun.
There's hundreds of hours of podcasts and thousands of blog pages devoted to disseminating the greatness of Community, the magic in a bottle for three seasons, and then documenting just what happens when you take Dan Harmon out of the equation (fired by NBC for reasons) and then what happens when you put him back in again (Season 5) and then shift the program to an anything goes streaming service (Yahoo! Screen) where you constraints are not the same as they ever were. Experimental, I think, would be the right word for what happened upon Harmon's return.
Season 5 contains a few of my top 5 favourite episodes, and rewatching season 6, I see the struggle they had adapting to a liberated, commercial-less structure, but it's a remarkably funny if altogether different season, that would only have been better we're Troy and Shirley even partly around in more than just spirit.
The wife and I looping Community, it's part of our Christmas tradition to rewatch the season 1,2&3 Christmas episodes on Christmas Eve, and we usually watch a few random episodes following. This was he first time we've done a real rewatch of full seasons since the show ended. But we didn't start from the beginning, we started with Season 5, then 6 then went back to 1,2 and 3. And we watched the (Oscar winner) Jim Rash-penned episode of Season 4, the gas-leak year, as it's the only episode of that imposter season that even feels legitimately comparable to a Dan Harmon produced episode.
The show and its characters are beloved. In my household we quote it all the time. The "Troy and Abed In The Morning" mug is sometimes a hotly contested item. And so while we can critique the hell out of it when it doesn't work like season 4, and when it's a little off in early season 1 or parts of season 6, it was genuinely painful when we heard that "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons" was being conceded as problematic and removed from Netflix's streaming.
In that episode, Chang (Ken Jeong), who has already been established as a crazy person, shows up to their D&D game in makeup as a "Dark Elf", his face,ears, neck and hands all covered in the blackest of black makeup with the brightest white wig on. The intention is three-fold: one, getting truly in the character of playing D&D, the Dark Elf race being a long-standing archetype in the game, and Chang's depiction pretty accurate, two, again exacerbating Chang's rather unhinged nature, and three, the alarming nature of such dark makeup being applied is absolutely a little shocking and the show calls this out with Shirley stating "and we're just going to ignore this hate crime right here?" It's a good joke but also one that's a deeply offensive trigger. They show admits they're trying to get away with something. I don't want to deny anyone their offense, but as comedy it's really only punching down on Chang, a consummate comedy whipping boy on the show that is never about his ethnicity (except the one joke where he forgets what his ancestral nationality is). I struggle mostly because "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons" has been such a crucial gateway into Community for our nerd friends who never got past thinking that (ugh) Big Bang Theory was the preeminent nerd culture TV show of the decade. Yes I'm punching down on Big Bang Theory because I found it offensive in its use of stereotypes to portray nerds for a whole fucking decade.
I hope there's a way they can resolve the made up Chang to be less offensive, like if they can tint him a dark blue or something. The episode deals more heavily with fat shaming, referencing a prior episode when Jeff (Joel McHale) made a reference to "Fat Neil". Well, it wound up becoming a moniker for Neil that stuck and sent his self confidence in a spiral, to the point that Jeff noticed his depression and arranged for a D&D game with the study group to help lift his spirits. There's a double-edged sword, as the episode is commenting on harm of body shaming while also being very guilty of it (*cough*tiny nipples*cough*)... and the "Fat Neil" moniker wound up sticking to the character in the fan culture, rather than, say "D&D Neil" or "RPG Neil" or just "Neil". There's a particularly incisive exchange in the episode:
Jeff is the bad guy, but he's trying to make amends, whereas Pierce (Chevy Chase) hits the height of his villainy this episode, Dan Harmon's frustration with working with Chase clearly coming out in the character's portrayal.
The show does explore issues with race, religion, weight, sexuality, age and more and does so craftily and creatively. It damns the Baby Boomer generation through Pierce through his inability to develop his PCness ("It sounds like 'penis'"). He says the most inappropriate things, often obliviously, but just as often pointedly. But his japes about Britta or Jeff's sexuality, or Annie's religion, or Troy, Abed and Shirley's race only serve to paint him as out of touch and make him out to be in the wrong. I think the tolerance the show continued to show Pierce (and even Chang with his very troubling actions as a result of possible mental illness) show the gentleness and thoughtfulness of the show. As much as these guys piss off the rest of them, they're still willing to try with them to make them more enlightened, to find common ground, to keep them as part of the family.
Chang's reiteration of the word "gay" as an insult, much like Pierce and his off-colour colloquialisms, is unappealing in its frequent usage. But very quickly in the show we're taken to dismiss anything Pierce or Chang have to say (or the actions they do) because the show, its characters and its audience know they're in the wrong.
For a long time I found the most offensive part of the show was that Shirley, despite being part of the core cast, often seemed to be given the shortest shrift in the show. Upon rewatch, looking explicitly for the amount of screentime Yvette Nicole Brown is given and in what capacity she is used, I noticed that she does get the spotlight more than I recalled, but also the stories she given are not as much fun... she's the most real and grounded character on the show, sporting the most pain and baggage that she can't seem to crawl out from under (divorcee, mother, Christian, recovering alcoholic, aspirations to run a business). But despite the fact that she's not the most prominent figure comedically, she's absolutely the beating heart of the show, which is why season 6 often feels so wounded. Even more than Troy's absense (which is brought up often), Shirley's absence is what's really felt. Pierce's absence is barely noticed.
The show worked in very binary terms for a while, trying to pigeonhole gay or straight, but through Dean Pelton (Rash) it managed to expose the spectrum of sexuality. By the time it got to season six, and it was questioning the sexuality of new cast member Frankie (Pagette Brewster, "the humble outsider who came in an nailed it"), it didn't matter. It didn't give answers despite the gang's curiosity, as if to say, "stop worrying so much about it". Some people want labels, and some people want to keep it private. Everyone has that right to choose how to identify themselves, or whether to identify themselves at all.
It's also important to note that Harmon himself was problematic behind the scenes, something he owns and apologizes for. He's aware he's a difficult personality and he's actively trying to be better. Whether he's been successful or not is another issue. Off set, Harmon keeps getting raked over the coals by alt-right trolls for his Channel 101 videos. Like James Gunn or Sarah Silverman before him, Harmon's sense of "provocative humour" especially at a younger age led to a lot of unsavory attempts at comedy that, viewed in the wrong lens seems to be condoning or promoting some pretty heinous things. The thing I acknowledge is the sense of ownership and their evolution
Side note: I was for a long time having issues with Alison Brie playing Jewish in the show, but turns out she is on her mother's side, so egg on my face for not looking that up sooner.
I love this show. Except season 4. It's mostly dog barf. And hooray for COVID to give us this reunion table read fundraiser (ok, not really "Hooray for COVID, but make the best of the worst situation, right?)
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Father Ted (1995-1998)
Polls about all-time best shows in Ireland routinely put Father Ted right at the top. It's a monumental program in their culture, to the point that their post office is issuing Father Ted stamps this year. The seasons 2&3 bridging special episode, "A Christmassy Ted" is another staple view in our household tradition on Christmas Eve. I've seen that episode more times than I've seen all the rest of the episodes combined at this point. A rewatch was highly in order.
And jesus if it still isn't one of the funniest shows ever made. It's curious to me that the very Catholic country of Ireland so embraced a show that was both making fun of the Catholic Church and also being very subtly critical of it. But it's also done in such a way that seems to scream "Irish!" that it's playfully japing at the homeland of its creators and stars. Who knew that Catholics had such a sense of humour about themselves, but their embracing of the show is a sure sign they do. Maybe it's just an Irish t'ing.
The show builds almost an alternate reality around the Catholic Church in Ireland, one full of very, very peculiar characters. Likewise, Ireland here is represented by "Craggy Island" a small, isolated place with denizens as peculiar as the Church that serves them. The Craggy Island Parochial House is the show's home base, where our main characters live.
Father Ted (Dermot Morgan), obviously is the star of the show. He's is the head of the home, and is a complicated man. He's driven by ego and seeking fame more than spreading the word of the lord and servicing the people. His lust for women and money seem at odds with who he should be, and the obvious reason why he remains a priest is because people pay attention to him and listen to him, it doesn't really seem to fulfil him otherwise. He's often forgetful or dismissive of the Church's teachings, beliefs and practices until he remembers his place. He was sent to Craggy Island as a demotion after some impropriety around charitable funds ("that money was just resting in my account"). He's well-intentioned, mostly, but often his self-serving nature get in the way of good intentions.
Father Dugall McGuire (Ardal O'Hanlon) is the sitcom trope of the idiot character ratcheted up where he's completely oblivious to pretty much everything all the time. "What's happening, Ted?" frequently pops out of his mouth. He's naive, and youthful, like an 8-year-old child in a man's body. He's a priest likely because his family didn't know what else to do with him. He doesn't understand the Church's teachings and any attempt to sermonize or perform Fatherly duties always end in spectacular disaster (a graveside tending resulted in the coffin on fire somehow).
Along with Dugall, Father Jack Hackett (Frank Kelly) is Father Ted's other burden. A perpetually soused, abusive, foul-mouthed, lecherous old crank, he's less of a character and more a part of the set, occasionally piping up like a cuckoo clock "Drink! Feck! Arse! Girls!" But storylines about Jack are less character spotlight than sitcom premise.
The three priests are served by their housekeeper, Mrs. Doyle (Pauline McLynne) a widower who lives exclusively to keep the Parochial House well fed and clean (except Father Jack's vile corner of the room, which seems to spread like a fungus up the walls). We see Mrs. Doyle engage with other Parochial housekeepers and they're all of the same sort, all wearing the same homely attire, with their hair up in a nest, and smirky, unbemused faces, taking religion far more seriously than the Fathers.
Most episodes find the Parochial House being visited by other priests, and they're a mad lot of strange characters, like Father Stone, the most boring man alive. There's Father Finton Stack who insults everyone he comes across and plays jungle music at 3AM. Father "Todd Unctious", a grifter priest out to steal Ted's "Golden Cleric Award" (which he received for helping a band of Priests escape the women's lingerie section of a mainland department store without inciting further controversy for the church). And there's Sister Assumpta from the "Matty Hislop cult" (I don't get that reference), who is asked to come to the Parochial House to whip the priests into shape, but they instantly regret the choice once the Nurse Ratched-style abuse starts happening.
And then of course, there's Bishop Brennan, Ted's boss. He puts the fear of God in Ted, and every visit is a waking nightmare. When Ted loses the "All-Priests Five-A-Side Over-75s Indoor Football
Challenge Match" against his chief rival, Father Dick Byrne (he runs a
mirror parochial house with a dullard, a drunkard and a Mrs. Doyle-esque
housekeeper as well) his losing condition is that he has to kick Bishop
Brennan up the arse, a brilliant setup that is executed even better. Bishop Brennan is said to have a secret family in California, a fact Ted should never have told Dougal, who asks the Bishop outright about it. The show constantly displays how hypocritical the patriarchs of the church are.
As much of a non-issue as making fun of the Catholic Church was for the show, there's a few other aspects of the show that could pose as problematic. The first is when Father Dick Byrne and his lackey priests dress up as Diana Ross and the Supremes for the "All Priests Stars in Their Eyes Lookalike Competition", complete in brown face makeup. It's rough, and it's hard to tell if the show is knowingly saying that this is a rough look for three priests to be doing, or if the show even really cares. It's not pointed out, and nobody certainly says anything about it.
There's a whole episode though devoted to exploring racism on Craggy Island. Upon returning in shame from an all-too-brief stint in London, Father Ted is caught doing a "Chinaman" impersonation by new Irish-Chinese residents, even typically oblivious Dugall watches Ted's performance with a dubious eye. Ted spends the rest of the episode fending off accusations of being racist and trying to make inroads with the Chinatown residents. The offending impersonation is, seriously, awful, but it leads to an earnest and hilarious examination of what being racist actually means and how even well-meaning white people can be so oblivious to their racist tendencies. Plus, the local asking Ted: "I hear your a racist now, Father? Should we all be racist now? What's
the Church's position? I'm so busy down on the farm I won't have much
time for the ol' racism." Hilarious. But, as mentioned before, rehashing racist stereotypes also serves to reinforce racist stereotypes. It's tricky. But the question is should things like "Are You Right There Father Ted" or "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons" be pulled from broadcast altogether, or is it just censorship? Should they limited to use in stimulating discussion? Should they have warnings in advance? And what would that warning be? "Warning: this episode contains a scene or scenes that feature racist stereotype or imagery used for satirical purposes which some may find offensive. Viewer discretion is advised?"
To me the worst part about revisiting Father Ted these days is knowing that show co-creator and co-writer Graham Linehan has become fervently anti-trans. He has taken up a reprehensible position online as a vocally outspoken against trans rights, frequently baiting trans activists all under a "please think of the children" refrain that masks a serious misunderstanding of the issues. He's a TERF, trans-exclusive radical feminist, and believes that the gains women have made are threatened by including trans women and their plight into the cause. He thinks the online harrassment TERF-boosters receive is somehow comparable or worse than what trans people experience online and in person just trying to live their life. I'm not saying harassing someone or threatening them for their ideology is right (two wrongs still don't make right) but neither is baiting people into having to defend themselves and persisting to be publicly injurious to a whole community of people. He can have his opinion and shut up about it, but he chooses to be very, very public about it, apparently speaking for the other TERF women who get shouted down when they try to speak up about their views (at least according to him).
(cringe alert on the next video)
The IT Crowd is another favourite show of mine that Linehan created, and in the third season of that show there's an episode where the misogynistic, bullying Douglas Renholm starts dating a reporter who is trans. She is upfront about it, but he mishears her and persists with the relationship and falls in love. But when he finally finds out, he dumps her and is heartbroken. She really was the perfect woman for him, and my read of that was always that it was Douglas' issue that his narrow-mindedness couldn't see past, not that the show was criticizing trans people. I still think it can be read that way, but Linehan's status the past few years taints that appraisal. There's nothing transphobic in Father Ted to my recollection, but trans issues weren't very public at that time. Father Ted is generally a very sweet show, but man Linehan's steadfast stance heavily threatens to sour his work.
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Flight of the Conchords (2009-2010)
I'm trying to think of an example of a musical sitcom that worked before Flight of the Conchords, and likewise trying to think of one that worked after. I know Garfunkle & Oates copied the Conchords formulae for their IFC show, which worked to some degree, but besides that I haven't seen another show like Flight of the Conchords.
FotC is the musical novelty act of Brett McKenzie (The Muppets) and Jemaine Clement (Legion) which emerged from New Zealand into a smash hit at Edinborough Fringe Festival, followed by a successful BBC radio play and a best comedy album Grammy, leading into this HBO series. It finds "Brett" and "Jemaine" two starving artists in New York City trying to make a go as a two-man novelty band. Their "manager" is Murray (Rhys Darby), the head of the New Zealand consulate who is just as naive about how to truly exist in the mean streets of NYC as they are. He may even be more naive than Brett and Jemaine about how to properly manage and book a band, nevertheless he persists.
The band has one fan, the obsessive Mel (the deliriously funny Kristen Schall) who lusts after both Brett and Jemaine (not reciprocated) while her cuckolded husband Doug is often within earshot or arm's reach.
There's no over-arching story to FotC, the band never really takes off, and every episode finds them in a nearly similar status as the last. Of the 22 episodes, the majority of them deal with one or both of the boys courting or dating women, awkwardly.
The story fstructure acts as a set-up for typically 2-3 interlude songs per episode, which may or may not have direct relation to the story (but are often interpreted more as daydreaming). It's the music which really shines, as it's notoriously difficult to make comedy music that is not only funny, but legitimately good songs on their own. Brett and Jemaine are chameleonic in their ability to mimic styles, jumping genres frequently, cribbing from the likes of Bowie and Depeche Mode, emulating dancehall reggae and knowingly incompetent (but semi-competent) hip hop. There are epic ballads and seriously danceable jams, and they're consistently catchy, conceptually entertaining and frequently hilarious.
The show is largely inoffensive, as Brett and Jemaine's quiet New Zealand demeanour informs the pace of the show. They can be a little oblivious and selfish as boyfriends (the song "Carol Brown" - a trip through all the women that have dumped Jemaine - highlights that point.), but it speaks more to their immaturity than any true sexist or misogynistic leanings (the start of the song "Boom" Brett addresses, in secret, the girl he's crushing on: "I wanna tell her how hot she is but she'll think I'm sexist. She's so hot she's making me sexist...bitch...", but that's more playful than earnestly offensive). The song "Ladies of the World" perhaps is the closest they come to dated conceptual ideas, as they list out different types of "lay-days", they croon "hermaphrodite... ladyman layday/aw you sexy ladyman laydays, with your sexy lady bits and your sexy man bits too/even you must be into you-ho-hoo"... again I don't think it's meant to be offensive, but it seems perhaps a bit reductive.
There might be other examples of bad behaviour on the show, like their attempt at confronting "racism" when fruit vendor Aziz Ansari refuses to sell them fruit because they're from New Zealand (only for it to later turn out he's *actually* "racist" against Australians and it's all okay between them), or their squeamishness at being in a threesome, but together with one woman, not individually with two ladies. Or their mistreatment of Murray's best friend Jim who is just trying to be friendly...but that's just them being kind of insular jerks.
If anything, my problem with the show is the way Brett and Jemaine alternate between being super-sweet dudes and real goddamned pricks (but still kind of sweet-like). It's an internal consistency flaw that drives me a bit nuts when bingeing the show. But I still love it, and even more I love the tunes. I always wind up putting the Conchords albums on non-stop for weeks after watching the show.
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Happy Endings (2011-2013)
As much as I enjoy Happy Endings (original review), another on the slate of the Russo Brothers directed and produced comedies (see also Arrested Development and Community) it's sometimes some "roof stooff" to watch without feeling squeamish. This latest rewatch of its three seasons, I lost count of how many times I said "that is so wrong".
The cast reunited during the pandemic for a brand new, original episode (in support of charities) that was really well done...with as much production value as you can put into basically a Zoom chat, but the editing was really good. It was just loaded with in-jokes, meta jokes, pandemic jokes, call-backs, and just utter silliness, yet still moving the "story" of the show forward. The writing staff reunited and churned out one of the best-ever scripts of the show, and it seemed both audience and cast would be very welcome for a return (the video is only 120K views, though, it's probably unlikely to happen)
As pointed out in the Q&A afterward perhaps the show's biggest problem is Adam Pally playing a gay character. Host Damian Holbrook asked Adam Pally what it's like to be a gay icon in the role of Max and, Pally, obviously very aware of the temperature today, seemed apprehensive about answering for fear of saying something terribly wrong. 10 years ago it was *probably* not a good idea to hire a straight guy in a gay role. Today it's *really* not a good idea to hire a straight guy for a gay role. It goes back to representation and bringing one's truth to a character. Unlike animation where you can, in theory, update the cast swapping out the voice actor, it's harder to just upend a character that a specific performer's mannerisms, look and personality have put into it by changing the players. Max was pretty defining for his time, a schlubby mess of a gay dude, who fell into no gay stereotypes except that he loved sexing up other dudes. There were many love interests, most played by gay actors, and Pally committed to same sex makeouts wholeheartedly...they're some very passionate (and in one instance very romantic) kissing scenes (the best of the show actually). So it's not the performance, and it's not a reductive stereotype, but awareness that Pally isn't gay means the character lacks an essential truth.
The other thing about Max, and likely something Pally brought to the role, is his frequent descent into a Black affectation, often quoting a song or a movie, but still adopting a vocal fry that calls another race. It's something Max just keeps slipping into, sometimes with Brad (Damon Wayans Jr.) joining in (does that make it alright?), sometimes with Brad urging caution. I honestly don't know if this quoting of Black pop culture is actually acceptable like imitating Borat or Larry David, but the amount at which Max does it seems inappropriate at best, offensive at worst. The show seems to think that Brad's presence makes it more excusable.... the "I have a friend who is X, so I can say that awful thing" excuse.
The whole "gay" of Happy Endings had me thinking that, just maybe, its creator David Caspewas gay and therefore if he cast and wrote/oversaw the gay characters, then Max would be more acceptable. Likewise the current Showtime show, Black Monday created by Caspe has a couple gay characters, one of which is portrayed by Paul Scheer who I know isn't gay, so if Caspe being gay made that choice then I think you have to accept that. Except, Caspe isn't gay. He's, in fact, married to Casey Wilson who stars as Penny in Happy Endings and Blair (Andrew Rannels)'s wife/beard in Black Monday. Part of the deal with Black Monday is it's set in the 80's and all the gay characters are closeted so was it part of the subterfuge hiring a straight actor only to reveal late in the first season that he's gay? And is that acceptable, especially when he's out and flamboyant in the second season, teetering on stereotype? (I love Scheer, but I'm not sure this was a great idea. At least Rannels is an out performer).
There's a part in Happy Endings where Penny is mad that Max is the worst gay BFF because Max doesn't want to do all the stereotypical gay BFF stuff with her, and so Max introduces her to Derek (Stephen Guarino ), a very outlandish and flamboyant character who will fulfill all those offensively stereotypical gay tropes for her. Derek becomes an occasional player in the show, his sing-songy "Draaaa-maaaaa!" one of the catchiest of catch phrases, and he gets some pretty good character development for an ancillary player who could have remained knowingly (and painfully) one note.
And then there's Dave (Zachary Knighton) who in thesecond season does a DNA ancestry test and finds out he's 1/16 Navajo, which he from then on leans into very, very hard for the remainder of the show. He tries to recapture some sense of that heritage, but it all seems to be stereotype and surface-level, not very well researched, and probably quite offensive if it wasn't so obvious that the joke is at Dave's expense. It plays with the idea of white people appropriating a culture that isn't truly theirs (see Max again) but doesn't every really get down to business with it. It just keeps playing it for laughs. The other thing, though, is it's totally in Dave's stupid-sweet nature to attempt to connect with that ancestral path and fail so spectacularly, and yet keep trying. I don't know if that excuses any offense...we're operating in a really weird time, and I don't know a lot of the time whether I should be laughing at something or not. There's a sort of adage that comedy is anything that's funny, but funny is subjective, holds true, and subjectively speaking I'm kind of confused
The one thing that's obvious is the cast loves each other, and they have a ball playing in this sandpit. That's part of what makes the show so endearing is the obvious fun and affection that the players have for each other and their characters. You can't make a "pile on" of insults (Penny's such a stupid clumsy bitch) so endearing unless you love one another a great deal.
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Letterkenny
The most recent of programs on this list, Letterkenny was the little foul-mouthed, chore-doin', hockey-watchin', whiskey swiggin', bar-brawlin' engine that could. Starting very, very small as a web series, and evolving into a cross-border hit on Hulu, Letterkenny now has the potential for regional franchises internationally, exploring rural small-town life everywhere on the planet.
Although the show now sports 8 seasons worth of content, a "season" here tend to be a 6 episode spurt, twice annually, sometimes with a holiday special inbetween. At this stage the show is just over 50 episodes but it's still very consumable.
I've already writtten about Season 1, and Seasons 2 through and I think I've covered a lot of the more concerning aspects of the series in those write-ups. But to quickly recap: the main problem of the show is it's lingering lens and objectification of women. It stocks its show with a bevvy of attractive women, often shuffles them around in crop tops or lingerie and then tries to earn its femenist bona fides with Squirrelly Dan (K. Trevor Wilson)'s talk of "Professor Trisha", his women's studies teacher.
To be fair (ahem)... the show's women, beyond the ogling lens, are a right force of nature in the show. Kid sister Katie (Michelle Mylett) is the Elaine of this group of guys hanging out. She's extremely comfortable with her sexuality, often to the discomfort of big brother Wayne (Jared Keeso) who doesn't like that she runs around in next to no clothes half the time but knows enough to not push the issue. Wayne's not totally uptight, just guarded, and overprotective. When sexual subjects are the topic of the day, Wayne may not be the most eager to contribute, but his intellectual curiousity usually finds him wading deep into the conversation.
The fictional town of Letterkenny abuts Native reservation land, where there is initially contention between the townies and the res, a truce is called and there's frequent crossover. There's not a lot of observation of life on the res, but the characters (well, Tanis, played by Tiio Horn, at least) are more than just cliches and the show largely avoids stereotypes (the fact that they're introduced selling cigarettes in town, though, and also approached to try and offload the marijuana plants found on Waynes property is kind of an early low bar that it thankfully rises above).
Gail, owner of Modeens bar, is one of few Black characters on the show, but she's a hilarious presence, rarely is a sentence uttered without some form of innuendo underneath, often directed at Wayne. Gail is hyper-sexual and has no preferences (well, she's got a fetish for Octogenarians), but it's Lisa Codrington's physicality in the role that kills me. She often talks while gyrating or thrusting her hips, or in broader outdoor scenes, her oversized boots, barely laced, her legs seemingly floating out of them give her this sort of rubber-ankle appearance as she moves about anxiously. She will often break into Jamaican patois to accentuate a point which seems to always fly over the townies' heads.
The show only really punches down on the meth heads and the upcountry degenerates... and city folk... and actual racists (like when Jay Baruchelturns up as Hard Right Jay trying to stir up alt-right bullshit in town) ... and maybe even the menonites who are completely oblivious (the Dycke family, Noah and Anita, plus their daughters Charity and Chastity, and then Squirrelly Dan's love interest Lovinia). Ok, it kind of punches down on a lot of "types" but it's never gender or race based, it's always just who's pissing them off, which for Wayne seems to be most everyone. So there's punching down of the townies too (the season 7 arc about the boys' agricultural call-in show on cable access shows this, and how "bad gas travels fast in a small town"). And yet, in a small town, you help out your neighbour and that's that.
There's an insular nature to the Letterkenny residents, not that they're afraid to venture out (over to Quebec, or "the City", or to the rippers across the border) but sitting in front of the fruit stand or at the bar seems to be enough for them. A beer, some conversation, playful wordplay, and maybe a tussle at the bar, kind of simple and, maybe not perfect, but nice. At the same time, the denizens are sexually adventurous and containing none of the rural prudeness one typically associates with small-town life. It's like a defining calling card as to what the youth of rurual communities should be striving for, tolerance and acceptance.
