Somewhere

The Week In TV 02/10/2011

Community, Season 3, Episode 2: Geography of Global Conflict

After a strangely outside of the box-type episode last week, “Geography of Global Conflict” was pretty much classic Community.  Not ground-breaking, perhaps, but a lot of fun.  In the A-plot, Annie meets Annie Kim, a more driven, ambitious and tightly-wound version of herself, and must face off against her in a model UN contest.  The “double” story is a TV staple, and it can’t just be me that appreciated the repeated references to Fringe’s alternate realities, but Annie Kim was largely dropped halfway through the episode to focus on what she had brought out in “our” Annie’s character.  The descent into pure, primal, undignified rage at not only not getting her own way, but in the fracturing of the personality she has built for herself.  Annie’s breakdown mirrors Jeff’s from last week, and was also mirrored in a very funny Britta B-plot wherein she attempts to reconnect with her radical roots.  This latter plot held the most laughs for me, in part because Gillian Jacobs manages to make Britta’s righteous anger somehow hilarious, endearing and bathetic all at the same time.  The only element of the episode and, if I’m honest, of the show itself that isn’t working for me is the Jeff/Annie romance.  The more the show keeps on pushing towards it, the more unlikely it seems.  The writers cleverly worked themselves out of the romance set up at the beginning of the series by just having them sleep together and for this, ultimately, to mean very little.  I like to think that they can write their way out of this particular storyline, because as great as Joel McHale and Alison Brie are together, their chemistry is rooted in a brother/sister role more than anything else, and although Annie Kim’s throwaway comment about whether Jeff was Annie’s “father or her lover” was very funny, meta-gags aren’t going to be enough in the long run.

Downton Abbey, Season 2, Episode 2:

A rather stuffed episode this week, Downton Abbey suffered from trying to introduce too many storylines this week, some of which felt particularly strained.  There also wasn’t a great deal of anything to tie this all together, which meant this episode felt fragmentary, introducing too many new elements and treading old ground with its existing romances.  The most successful of these new storylines is the addition of a new manservant, whose shellshock provokes an unlikely sympathy in the hitherto villainous Miss O’Brien.  We’re also privy to a thawing in Thomas’ character, who has returned to Downton Abbey to help tend to the wounded, in particular a strapping young blind man whose suicide leaves Thomas a gibbering wreck.  Even more unconvincing was Edith’s sojourn on a local farm, where she proves just as adept at turning the head of a married farmer as she is at driving a tractor, both somewhat improbably.  I don’t disapprove of the writers giving these characters more to do, but lending them romantic interests isn’t necessarily the same as fleshing out their characters.  Miss O’Brien’s story was convincing because Siobhan Finneran managed to retain a certain sternness that made her admiration and sympathy that much more believable, but Thomas and Edith’s plotlines pretty much came from nowhere.  The whole thing felt very much like the show resting on its laurels until the events of the next week, in which Downton Abbey starts taking in the war-wounded.  Whilst we must always be grateful for the opportunity for Maggie Smith’s withering looks of disapproval, I can’t help but feel that the show will have to remove some of its gloss if it’s to succeed in providing any emotional heft to this particular place in history.

Fringe, Season 4, Episode 2: One Night In October

A near perfect episode, with the case-of-the-week neatly dovetailing with the main cast’s emotional issues, even if they don’t know it yet.  In Earth-2, a serial killer named John McClennan is stealing people’s happy memories using a device that freezes their brains from the inside out.  On Earth-1, John McClennan is a university lecturer specialising in serial killers.  Olivia is tasked with bringing Earth-1’s McClennan over to Earth-2 in order for him to help their Fringe division track down their murderer.  It’s not long before McClennan, taken on a tour of his Other’s home, suspects something is awry and Olivia reveals to him the existence of the second universe.  It’s then that McClennan reveals that he has the same tendencies within him, tendencies that were quelled by the appearance in his life of a woman named Marjorie that taught him how to “step into the light.”  This interplay between the two McClennans is mirrored in the complex interplay between the two Olivias.  Fauxlivia thinks Olivia is needlessly cold and humourless, but Olivia’s revelation that she came from an abusive home starts to make her wonder if she hasn’t misjudged her other half.  Anna Torv again does a magnificent job of differentiating between the two characters, and I suspect that their fractious relationship is going to form one of the most interest story arcs on this season of Fringe.  There were also further references to Peter’s inevitable return, as it appears that Walter isn’t just seeing his son in reflective surfaces, but also hearing his voice.  This background story felt unusually ominous in its fracturing of Walter’s mental state (always moving), but also served to foreground an unusually strong Walter/Astrid relationship.  An episode with big themes then, but one that didn’t forget the characters behind it all.

Glee, Season 3, Episode 2: I Am Unicorn

A marked improvement on last week’s incoherence, there actually seemed to be an emotional through line to this week’s Glee, as its characters struggled with how they were perceived by others, and how they perceived themselves.  Kurt tries out for the lead in West Side Story, only to be told that he is not masculine enough (i.e. “too gay”) for the part and this, backed by a campaign for student body president that focused almost entirely on his sexuality, made him feel like this one aspect of his character was all that defined him.  It’s an astute direction to take the character in, not only because it seems like this is leading towards an interesting conflict with Blaine (who’s more “Rock Hudson-gay” to borrow a phrase from Burt Hummel), but because it’s a more nuanced take on Season 1’s rather broad “Minorities.”  There is also, finally, a storyline for Quinn that doesn’t make the character feel entirely schizophrenic.  When Idina Menzel makes a welcome return as Shelby, Quinn is forced to confront everything she’s had to go through and what that might mean for her now.  It’s a storyline that seems to ignore Season 2 entirely (something that might serve the show well in other areas as well…), and Diana Agron has always been good at marrying the disparate elements of her character, so this thrust into more emotional territory was pleasing.  And if I’m slightly worried by Quinn’s statement that this was all a ruse in order to win back custody of Beth, I appreciated the acknowledgement that for all Sue and Will’s misguided assurances that she’s “still that popular blonde cheerleader,” she’s perhaps a little more fucked up than anybody realises.  If Shelby’s return managed to reap great dividends, including an emotional reunion with Rachel and a scene that doesn’t reduce Puck to comic relief, Sue’s campaign for congress continues to baffle, even dragging in Quinn to what is, at this point, not just a mess of a story but a mess of a character.  What felt most promising, however, were the smaller moments scattered throughout the episode that pointed at longer running story arcs, something which the show has never been particularly good at.  Rachel and Finn’s future, Kurt’s relationship with his father and Santana’s feelings for Brittany all got chance to shine here, and although Glee has disappointed far more often than it’s surprised, I’d be lying if I didn’t feel a smidgeon of cautious optimism at this point.

The Good Wife, Season 3, Episode 1: A New Day

After a second season of such quality that nobody saw it coming, and a slew of acting awards for Julianne Marguilies, The Good Wife is back.  Like last week’s Fringe, this season premiere gave us the glimmer of something new amidst a fairly standard (if of good quality) case of the week.  When a Jewish student is found murdered on a college campus with a swastika carved into his cheek, Lockhart and Gardner represent a Palestinian student accused of a hate crime.  Demonstrating its ability to deal with hot button issues in interesting, sensitive ways, the resolution was a clever one.  Rather than a crime committed for religious beliefs, it was a crime of passion.  As Alicia wonders aloud, these are “just college kids.”  Alicia herself enters the episode with a newfound (or at least different sort of ) confidence that doesn’t just extend to the new haircut.  Hiding an affair with Will – and how dirty did that sex scene feel? – she’s also trying to figure things out at home, and there were a couple of beautifully understated scenes with her and Peter this week.  The show was smart in hinting at what are sure to be Season 3’s big conflicts, and if Season 2 was about the conflict between Alicia and Peter professionally, then this season is about their conflict professionally.  Bringing in other, smaller conflicts (Alicia vs. Carey, Carey vs. Kalinda) into the courtroom proceedings is another smart move on a show one suspects is just hitting its stride.  The only aspect of this week’s episode that didn’t work was Grace’s tutor, a disaffected-seeming college student with flashmob tendencies.  It was a goofy side element to what was otherwise a strong return.

Gossip Girl, Season 5, Episode 1: Yes, Then Zero

The first episode of any given season of Gossip Girl is usually dirge.  You might get a hint of mystery, but really it’s just an excuse for the characters to hang out in the Hamptons, or France or wherever.  Season 5 opens in L.A., where Serena is somewhat unconvincingly working on a film set for David O’Russell, but her inevitable rise to prominence is being blocked by her immediate superior, who is so clearly signposted as a future love interest, it’s insulting.  Meanwhile, Chuck has developed a taste for danger, Nate sleeps with another older woman (Elizabeth Hurley), Blair is fighting Louis’ mother for control of their impending wedding, and Dan discovers that a section of his novel is about to be published in Vanity Fair.  The stakes are minimal, especially since the reveal of Blair’s pregnancy is something we had already guessed in the Season 4 finale.  And whilst I was a fan of Gossip Girl’s solid fourth season, now that it’s disposed of its more ambiguous, peripheral characters such as Vanessa, Jenny and Eric, where can it really go?  Blair might be one of the best TV characters of the past few years, but not even Leighton Meester can add any tension to a romance that quite obviously is never going to happen.  Worse, the pilot episode splits her up from Chuck and devotes far too much time on Serena’s tired travails.  Hopefully the show is about to throw a few spanners in the works, but it’s laden with too many tired characters and a lack of will to treat the rich and powerful with anything other than a sort of blunt worship.

Pan Am, Season 1, Episode 1: Pilot

Along with The Playboy Club, Pan Am is one of two nostalgia pieces with Mad Men-inspired advertising campaigns.  Of the two, Pan Am is by far the most successful, and really one of the most successful pilots of the season full stop.  Following the (mis)adventures of four Pan Am stewardesses and one male pilot, this sets itself apart from Mad Men from the starting gate.  This isn’t a nuanced look at the change undergoing American society in the 1960s, it’s a fun, frothy piece of escapism that happens to be set in an outwardly glamorous profession.  Following Laura on her first day of the job, we learn in flashback that she’s followed her more forthright sister Kate into the air hostess business after walking out on her wedding.  They’re joined by Collette, a French romantic who’s faced with her lover’s family on a flight from New York to London, Maggie (Christina Ricci), a bohemian free spirit back in service after being kicked out for refusing to wear a girdle as part of her uniform, and Dean, a pilot besotted by English flight attendant Bridget, whose hiding a dark secret.  Just like the BBC’s more languid recent period drama The Hour, Pan Am also dips its toe into the Cold War espionage, with Kate recruited by MI6 and, in this opening episode, being asked to replace someone’s passport with a fake so that he can be detained at customs.  What’s most promising about the show is that it manages to juggle several tones very well.  You’ve got romance, glamour and sex appeal on the one hand, all of which fit seamlessly with Kate’s more tense storyline, and the flashbacks that reveal what I suspect will be the first series’ overarching mystery.  It helps that there’s a minimum of exposition, and that things are kept light whilst never slipping into camp.  It also manages to tread a thin line in suggesting that whilst these women are liberated in the sense that they can travel the world, and that the uniform allows them a sort of sexual liberty that they wouldn’t be privy to otherwise, it also shows that these women are still very beholden to men, a truth that The Playboy Club seemed to circumvent entirely.  In short, this looks like a romp, and one of the most expertly executed ones of the current TV season.

The Playboy Club, Season 1, Episode 1: Pilot

There are a lot of problems with The Playboy Club, from its attempts to emulate Mad Men (this first episode is even directed by one of the Mad Men veterans) to its poorly-executed mob subplot, but the thing that’s likely to grate the most is its continued assertion that the Playboy bunnies weren’t just liberated in terms of sex and finances, but that the job was empowering to all the women we see being ogled at, abused and put upon in this opening episode.  Really, the show tells us, these women should feel lucky.  Whatever they might have to put up with behind the walls of the Playboy Club, it’s nothing compared to what they’d have to put up with “out there.”  But there’s no “there” out there, so cloistered is the show’s worldview.  Part of the problem is undoubtedly that the Playboy brand has leant its stamp of approval, with Hugh Hefner providing an embarrassing opening voice-over about how this is where you went to be whoever you wanted to be, presumably as long as this fit in with the Playboy ideal of thin waist, heaving cleavage and infantilising bunny costume.  But if the politics of The Playboy Club sail pretty close to the wind in terms of offending its audience (not to mention rewriting history), it’s also deathly dull.  Amber Heard plays Maureen, the Peggy Olson of the bunny world, who’s ushered into a shady underground world after managing to kill a mobster with her high heels when he tries to push her too hard in the back room.  Luckily, suave Don Draper photocopy Nick Dalton (Eddie Cibrian), a man with his own connections to the mob but who’s currently navigating New York law, is on hand to help her dispose of the body.  Of the supporting characters introduced, none of them raise much interest, although a lesbian bunny and her gay husband (played by Firefly’s Sean Maher) involved in a gay rights organisation might yield something interesting down the line.  The show basically had two roads it could have gone down: serious dissection of the 1960s American underworld, or fluffy romp veering towards camp.  Unfortunately, the pilot episode fails on almost every level – only Laura Benanti as an early-thirties bunny squeezed into retirement has any life behind her eyes) – and its flat, bored tone, glib political engagement and glorifying of the Playboy brand all conspire to make this one of the worst pilots of the season.

Revenge, Season 1, Episode 2: Trust

If last week’s pilot episode showed promise, the second episode of Revenge demonstrates that this is a show that knows exactly what it’s doing.  It’s here that we get to see the bare bones of what I imagine will be the story week-to-week: a new hate figure will be introduced for Emily/Amanda to enact her revenge on, interspersed with flashbacks to her childhood that explain how her father was set up in the first place.  It’s not a bad way to structure a series of television, and I’m intrigued as to how all of this leads up to Daniel getting shot, since he appears to be one of the more sympathetic characters at the moment.  The “revenge of the week” focused on the owner of a hedge fund that testified against Emily’s father.  Pretty flush herself, Emily has no trouble in attracting his interest, before leaking news of a sure-fire investment that bottoms out as soon as he bets all his clients’ money on it.  What’s pleasing is that this sort of thing could get old very quickly, but this episode was also adept in weaving in several other storylines to its more procedural material.  There was the reappearance of Lydia, who’s demanding a big cheque since photos of her tryst with Conrad found their way to her husband, triggering the fidelity clause in her pre-nup, meaning she receives nothing from their divorce settlement.  There was also the marvellous silent bitch-off between Emily and Victoria as they discuss over tea their respective bids on the beach house.  Less successfully, there was a storyline involving the poor (read: not that poor) family running the bar, with Declan’s attempted seduction of the youngest Grayson leading to a beating from her ex-boyfriend.  Since the whole show seems geared to making us despise the privileged lifestyles Emily’s victims leads, this blunt comparison seems unnecessary.  The show stands in stark contrast to Gossip Girl, a show whose luxurious trappings seemed less aspirational and more vulgar during the economic crisis, especially when the show itself seemed so unsure as to how it should handle its “normal” characters such as Vanessa and Jenny.  Revenge sort of acts in reverse to that, perpetually fucking over the people we secretly feel not only don’t deserve their wealth and privilege, but whom deserve instead a nasty form of punishment.

Ringer, Season 1, Episode 3: If You Ever Want A French Lesson

Three episodes in, and I’m still no clearer on what Ringer is trying to do exactly, and even though there’s a lot here that is explicitly bad, I’m still finding myself drawn in.  After discovering that the photo used by the assassin sent after Siobhan is one of Andrew, and that Siobhan was seeking advice from a divorce lawyer, Bridget begins investigating her husband.  The fact that this is all a dead end makes the whole endeavour feel somewhat pointless, although it does lead to a touching reconciliation scene that makes good use of the chemistry between Gruffud and Gellar’s chemistry.  Over in Paris, you get the sense that the show could be a whole lot more fun if it gave in the camp that’s continually threatening to overrun it.  Siobhan (covered in an insane amount of bling) picks up a guy in a bar only for morning sickness to hit her unexpectedly.  Her silent phone call to Henry suggests that the writers have plans to explore Siobhan more as a character, and Gellar has always excelled at finding sympathy within seemingly unlikeable characters, so this could be an interest course for Ringer to take.  Too much of the show feels aimless and dull, but there are glimpses (albeit brief) of something more, or at least sufficiently over-the-top, that might just save things yet.

Suburgatory, Season 1, Episode 1: Pilot

At first glance, Suburgatory might just seem to be another Mean Girls rip-off, taking pot shots at easy targets without a great deal of wit or ingenuity.  Tessa is the teenager moving from New York to the ‘burbs, where she meets the expected assortment of plastic bitches and their perma-tanned mothers.  What’s on display, however, is something more open-hearted.  Whilst the brief parade of high school subgroups feels awfully familiar at this point, Suburgatory is keen to move beyond this to show that, as Tessa points out that these people are also trapped in their own suburban hells.  The interest in moving beyond caricature will help make this show sail, and even if it’s not as funny as it needs to be at this point, it’s nice that, along with Awkward, the TV season has produced two promising new teen shows.

1. musingsofaprobableschizophrenic reblogged this from stripyhorse23
2. stripyhorse23 posted this