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2011 TV Preview Part Four: The Network from Whence The Premise Came
Round four of America’s newest favorite way to kill ten minutes at work brings us to the network that started it all: NBC. It gave the world both The Cape and Community, without which this entire gimmick wouldn’t exist (for background, see the installments for FOX, CBS, and ABC), and without which I might be forced to actually put some thought into what I write on this blog rather than falling back on half-assed jokes and YouTube embeds.
A dozen new programs are tasked with resuscitating the once-proud Peacock from its perennial place in the ratings cellar. Proving itself to be a fount of originality, NBC’s line-up includes a modern day spin on classic fairy tales (…wait…), a sitcom developed by popular stand-up comic Whitney Cummings (no, not this one, a different one), a coming of age tale set in the world of musical theater (but not, y’know, THAT one), and a moody 1960s period piece centered on a brooding, nattily-attired anti-hero. Yup.
Eh, to hell with originality. I just want to know if any of these new shows will give us 2011’s answer to this guy!
Breaking Bad: Box Cutter
Been a busy few days, but I wanted to register a quick reaction after the jump to Breaking Bad, which began its fourth season this week in a confidently low-key fashion.
After a year-long layoff, Breaking Bad returned with a grab bag of signature nerve-jangling elements. Walt chased a brutal, cold-hearted decision with a soberly dissembling rationalization of why it was someone else’s fault. Jesse, truly and completely hollowed out now, sits numb amidst the fallout of his latest bout with punching above his criminal weight class. Only alone with Walt can he yet again begin rebuilding an armor of curdling nihilism.
Toss in a healthy helping of casual deceit, in this case courtesy of Skylar, who continues to inch with unsettling ease down the path Walt blazed (enlisting her infant daughter in her manipulation of the law-abiding locksmith was some truly veteran sliminess). And of course Saul, wonderful Saul, injecting the requisite dose of comic, sneering paranoia.
Breaking Bad’s brilliance, and its audacity, is in the way it maintains a racing pulse throughout an episode so pitched in silence: Skylar calmly relocating Walt’s abandoned car, Hank atrophying in his bed pan, Walt and Jesse helplessly awaiting Gus’s reaction. The violence is notably brief, startling for its sangfroid cruelty despite its obvious necessity to the plot. The real centerpiece is the air around that violent moment, as Gus slips out of his cerebral, respectable exterior and back in again with complete deftness, his languid movements pumping up the tension in the room like a bellows.
Lastly, let us pour out a batch of aluminum for poor meek Gale. You could pack a whole support group full of people whose faith in Walter White (even unknowing, in Gale’s case) is repaid in tragedy. Or you could if half of those people weren’t either corpses or functionally shattered individuals.
2011 TV Preview Part Three: Separating ABC’s "Meh" Wheat from its "Meh"-ier Chaff
Continuing to raise the bar for shallow, gimmick-based criticism everywhere, my highly scientific assessment of next season’s network TV schedule rolls on. See here and here for the first two entries in this series, in which I watch the trailers for a few new shows and predict whether they are bound to more closely match the creative nadir of The Cape, or the hopes once held by Mr. Nadir for The Cape. Today I take a gander at some of the whopping 13 new programs to be unleashed by ABC in 2011-12, while categorically refusing to suffer even a second of Work It, lest I pop a few veins and activate Dark Willow mode.
2011 TV Preview Part Two: In which CBS knows what CBS do
Yesterday, I took it upon myself – dedicated servant to the people of the Internet that I am – to predict the fates of some of next season’s new television hopefuls. In lieu of pilot screeners or genuine critical talent, I’ve opted to approach this task with the next best thing: a preposterous gimmick: Which shows will wind up on the scrap heap before finishing out a season, like last year’s poster child of ineptitude, The Cape? And which will become the sort of Nielsen-slobbering stalwarts that run for six seasons and a movie, as a normally wise man once predicted for that selfsame The Cape?
Today, I check in on CBS, which continues to dance with the fluffy multi-camera sitcoms and moody procedurals that brung ’em to the network TV catbird seat.
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A Look At The 2011 TV Season, Through The Lens of The Cape
No sooner does the current television season come to close than do the five (four? four and a half?) main networks begin directing our collective gaze to the awesome and amazing new shows awaiting us next season.
Some of these offerings may approach the sort of cultural ubiquity that renowned TV guru Abed Nadir imagined was in store for The Cape (i.e., six seasons and a movie). Others will turn out to be risible, misbegotten calamities that crash and burn in a blaze of anti-glory, like what actually happened with The Cape. Most will probably fall somewhere between those extremes, but I’m going to ignore those cases because they don’t conform easily to this admittedly strained joke premise.
From Gapers Block – Chicago Rot: Embracing the City’s Dark Side
In a sparsely-furnished office in the Merchandise Mart, five recent graduates of Tribeca Flashpoint Media Arts Academy are striving to write the next chapter in Chicago’s film history. With their independent movie Chicago Rot, currently in pre-production, they’re determined to change the perception of their hometown among film-goers and filmmakers alike. And by partially funding the project via the crowd-sourcing website Kickstarter, they’re inviting Second Citizens who share that vision to chip in.
Continue reading at Gapers Block
A (partial) defense of History Channel
The announcement that History Channel will air a 10-hour scripted series based on the Bible, just a few months after very publicly rejecting a miniseries about the Kennedy family on the grounds of historically inaccuracy, is raising some eyebrows. James Poniewozik of Time.com, astute as ever, sums up the case well.
As a committed agnostic, I’m sympathetic to the argument that the Bible shouldn’t be regarded as a work of history in the sense that it accurately relates real world events which occurred in the past. Few but the most devout fundamentalists would argue otherwise.
But it’s absolutely a work of history in another sense. It’s a cultural artifact of rare significance spanning continents and millennia, on par with the Odyssey or Arthurian legend. It’s an ineffable, protean amalgam of historical truths, parables, cultural prisms, and good old-fashioned storytelling flair.
This makes it an altogether different case than that of The Kennedys, which sought to dramatize factual events – recorded, verified, remembered by plenty of people who lived through them first hand. Taking creative liberties with that sort of dictionary-definition history clearly runs afoul of History Channel’s nominal brand identity. I don’t think dramatizing the Bible falls under the same standard, and I similarly don’t think anyone would bat an eye if History announced it was producing a scripted tale of, for instance, Arthur’s exploits in Camelot.
Ending On A High Note: A Few Great Season Finales
The 2010-2011 network TV season draws to a close this month, sending us out into invigorating, socially well-adjusted, outdoor summer evenings (okay, fine, sending us flipping over to repeats and catch-ups on Netflix). In honor of this bittersweet time, let’s talk favorite season finales.
By no means is this meant to be a best-of-all-time catalog, since I can’t pretend to have seen all sixty years worth of television (careful observers will note that all of these episodes aired in the last two decades). Nor is this even a comprehensive list of my personal favorites. I have no doubt that I’m omitting some wonderful specimens from shows I love – Cheers and Homicide: Life On The Street come to mind – but which I simply haven’t seen recently enough to recall sharply. I’m also excluding series finales, which aren’t fair to compare given their built-in emotional triggers.
So, feel free to jump into the comments and share your own favorite, and tell me exactly why I’m an irredeemable soulless idiot for leaving it off the list.
(Oh, do I even need to add that spoilers follow? Well, this is the Internet, so yes. Yes I do.)
Anti-Superman screeds are wrong – but not because Superman’s fictional
The hysterical kerfuffle over the latest issue of Action Comics, in which Superman renounces his American citizenship, has predictably inspired a huge amount of jingoistic blathering. And of course there have been plenty of calm, well-reasoned rebuttals from people who actually understand the point of the story and who aren’t, y’know, morons.
But one counter-argument I’ve heard around the Twittersphere – partly in jest, partly not – basically amounts to, “Calm down, Superman’s not real.” There are many valid reasons to reject the anti-Superman screeds, but this isn’t one of them. If you believe that fiction has a serious role to play in demonstrating and shaping societal values, then it’s perfectly reasonable to be angered by a work of fiction that seems to spit in the face of the values you cherish – or worse, one you once regarded as sharing your values which suddenly seems to upend or reject them.
Andrea Pallas Daglas 
Pop culture is ready for its next favorite psychopath
This month’s GQ excerpts an essay from Jon Ronson’s new book The Psychopath Test, which examines the frightening likelihood that the subtly yet undeniably insane are prevalent in every area of society – especially in the upper echelons of power. Reading the piece – an intriguing mini-profile of a notorious corporate executive, “Chainsaw” Al Dunlop – motivated me to revisit two related texts that I’ve loved (though one of which I have
only the faintest memories of).
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