Somewhere

The Week In TV 23/10/2011

The Good Wife, Season 3, Episode 4: Feeding The Rat

The Good Wife has always excelled at office politics, and if this week’s case-of-the-week wasn’t that exciting, everything going on behind the scenes more than made up for it.  The episode opens with the quietly pathetic Travis entering a convenience store to buy his son a birthday present, only to witness a hold-up in which the cashier is shot.  Unusually for this show, the audience already knows that Travis is innocent when an eye witness accuses him of being the shooter, but what gives this story its real tension is the threat that Lockhart and Gardner might be forced to plead out the case in a hurried effort to drop all pro bono work.  Of course, this leads to Diane’s larger-than-life conscience to take a stroll down to shabby Legal Aid, but instead of getting rid of them decides to offer them a place in-house (with Will’s approval).  Elsewhere, Will is tasked with bringing in Celeste, who’s breaking away from her firm, along with Bankruptcy.  When Celeste offers him a place at her new start-up as baseball commissioner, we get to see Will dabble in an old lifestyle that includes poker, threesomes and Lutz from 30 Rock.  Thankfully, Will is having none of it, a life he left behind long ago and which stand in cold contrast to his accidentally-uttered “I love you” to Alicia.  I’m pleased as to how their relationship has played out so far.  Too often do we see the roles reversed here, the needy woman pinning everything on a man, that it’s nice to see Alicia treat her relationship with Will for what it is, and to now wish to investigate it further.  I’m sure there’s more to come on this front, but I’m pleased with how it’s mostly been placed on the backburner this season.  Again though, this wasn’t an entirely satisfying episode in that there seemed to be a lot of setting things up without any real indication of what the series-long narrative arc is going to be.  It’s still hugely entertaining, well-acted and intelligent, but I’m still waiting for the spark that ran through Series 2.  

Gossip Girl, Season 5, Episode 4: Memoirs of an Invisible Dan

A corker of an episode this, as Gossip Girl finally gets back on track.  With the publication of Dan’s book imminent, he feels compelled to reveal his identity and, of course, his nearest and dearest don’t like how they’re portrayed.  Serena is a shallow party girl, Dan has slept with Blair, Chuck is so lonely that he commits suicide, and Nate and Rufus are so uninteresting that they barely warrant a mention.  As a meta-assessment on what this show needs to recognise in order to pull itself out of the doldrums, it’s bang-on.  If only Gossip Girl were as interesting as the cheap-looking hardback edition of Dan “voice of a generation” Humphreys’ pseudo-novel, Inside!  What makes the revelation of what’s actually written so appealing is that, uncharacteristically, the show has been coy about letting us know what’s inside.  The fact that there’s something in there that Blair might not like to read has been teased out forever, so it was a tad disappointing that Dan had merely written in a sequence where they slept together.  Naturally, as ever with Gossip Girl, the rich and pretty return home to find that everything is still pretty much as they left it, whilst the outsider is yet again left with nothing after doling out some harsh truths (cf Jenny and Vanessa in Seasons 3 and 4 respectively).  Louis believes Blair when she tells him that she didn’t sleep with Dan, Nate continues doing whatever he’s doing at the moment (seriously, it’s easier just to zone out when he’s onscreen), and Serena gets handed another opportunity at her new job.  Meanwhile, Dan’s friends, and even his own father, turn their backs on him, and all the glowing reviews in the world aren’t going to make him feel happy anytime soon.  The only character for whom the book seems to have any real impact is with Chuck, who’s not irritated by his portrayal, but more concerned that it’s true, leading to a lovely moment with Lily at the end of the episode.  The one story element that continues not to make any sense whatsoever is Charlie.  Without any scheme of her own other than to tag alongside Serena for the summer, she’s a pretty weak villain, especially considering Katie Cassidy’s fun, bitchy turn as Juliet last year.  Unfortunately, Charlie is nowhere near manipulative enough to remain interesting, and I doubt that teaming her up with Elizabeth Hurley’s hammier-than-thou Diana is going to solve that.  

Homeland, Season 1, Episode 3: Clean Skin

A quieter episode than the previous two thrilling instalments, with the focus squarely on the personal, and how it’s affected by the professional.  As Brody prepares for a big TV interview, the gulf between Jessica and Dana continues to widen, and Jessica’s attempts at reconciliation are quickly rebuffed when Dana reveals that she knows about her relationship with Mike.  Brody and Jessica’s relationship, how they both know and do not know one another, forms the emotional centre of the episode, and leads to its two best scenes.  In the first, Brody takes his daughter to see a fence lined with padlocks put there by couples who thought they would last forever.  Previously, Brody’s reconnection with Dana seemed to come at the expense of her relationship with Jessica, a fact that Brody seemed unaware of.  Here, when he explains to his daughter the ways in which people change and grow, he demonstrates that he’s listening more keenly than we might be aware.  The second scene is another uncomfortable seduction attempt on Jessica’s behalf, where Brody asks her to undress before jerking off, his wife unsure where to look, whilst Carrie herself is unable to tear herself away.  What does this reveal about Brody?  Carrie’s earlier assertion that this is just “reality TV,” seems to belie a nagging suspicion that she can catch Brody in the detail, something which the audience can’t help doing either.  But Carrie has more pressing issues at hand, and Brody’s potential status as a terrorist is mostly background noise this week as Carrie’s asset, Lynne, is murdered.  The writing has been on the wall for Lynne ever since Carrie lied to her about getting a security detail, but the show did a good job of sucker-punching its audience with an innocuous-seeming chauffeur that kills her just as we’ve been lulled into a false sense of security.  Cleverly, and although Danes does an excellent job laying out Carrie’s guilt over Lynne’s death, the murder points to a potentially larger conspiracy than a prisoner-of-war being turned.  Lynne wasn’t made, but she was wearing an expensive necklace that the prince’s right-hand man can use for collateral to buy a young couple a house right next to an airport.  Whilst Homeland has proven itself adept at closing out each episode with jaw-dropping twists, it’s the work round the edges that most impresses, be it Brody’s relationship with his family or Carrie mending bridges with Saul, the character detail is so spot on, that the larger stuff hits home all the more effectively.

Revenge, Season 1, Episode 5: Guilt

Abandoning the revenge procedural was a smart move this week, as Emily’s past actions come back to haunt her.  We might have assumed that Lydia, once exiled by Victoria, was never to return, but now she’s back with a cool ten million in her back pocket and plans to reclaim her home.  Worse still, she has her revenge planned: unless Victoria welcomes her back into society with open arms, she’ll expose her and Conrad for framing David.  Emily sends a box full of incriminating evidence to Lydia’s house, fully knowing that a few hints of Lydia’s threatening behaviour to Victoria will have her sending round Frank in an instant.  What happens next is fairly shocking, as Frank struggle with Lydia before she falls off a balcony and dies.  Was this Emily’s intent?  The question of how far she’s willing to go has been raised before, and we’ve seen that she’s not afraid of a little collateral damage.  It’s an intriguing question for next week, especially now that Nolan (this week doing a little recce for Emily) is more involved in her scheming, and that her feelings for Daniel seem to be genuine on some level at least.  Madeleine Stowe got another chance to shine in her hollow acceptance of Lydia back into her life, and I’m beginning to wonder how complicit she really was in David’s framing.  My suspicion (and given that the show has proven adept at playing the long game) is that by season’s end we’re going to discover something that will change things.  I mean, at some point Emily’s going to reach her endgame, and I doubt very much the show will write out its biggest star, so the off reference to Victoria maybe not being all that bad could prove to be laying the foundations for something more.  Anyway, yet another impressive episode of Revenge,which showed how well-thought out this first series is.  There are plenty of storylines going on at the same time but unlike oh, say, Ringer, nearly all of them are interesting and don’t seem to be dropped and picked up again at random.  Enjoyably snaky.

Ringer, Season 1, Episode 6: The Poor Kids Do It Everyday

Last week, Ringer threw so many insane twists at us, it was impossible not to be at least mildly entertained.  This week, the twists we do get (and there are several, natch) seems pointless and uninvolving.  Gemma, as it turns out, isn’t dead.  Henry returned to his apartment to find a broken vase and some blood.  Stupidly assuming that Siobhan is responsible for killing her best friend (well, she probably is, but the Siobhan that he thinks), he covers up the evidence.  Bridget, for reasons unknown, tips the police off as to where Henry dumped the evidence, and makes sure her own fingerprints are all over it.  Why?  I’m not sure, but the answer is bound to be tedious.  Strangely, the more trite the story element, the better Ringer seems to be at pulling it off.  See Juliet trying to settle into her new school, where she’s confronted by a school bully and has to convince her father that she’s worth trusting again.  It’s the least exciting plot imaginable, but it’s more engaging and less head-scratching than the thousand other things flying around it.  Where the show really suffers is its lack of motivation.  What is Bridget’s endgame?  Now that Malcolm has been kidnapped and Gemma has gone missing, who is there to confide in?  The show could really do with bringing in some sort of confidante for her (I don’t trust her new Narcotics Anonymous sponsor, who I’m sure will do something shifty within the next couple of weeks after all those coffees and supportive chat about learning to forgive yourself), or at least sketching in a bit more back-story.   As it stands, the higher the pitch the greater the success rate – and the show’s various heated arguments are all qualified successes – but it needs to straighten out its plotting before things become even messier than they are already.

The Walking Dead, Season 2, Episode 1: What Lies Ahead

After a strong pilot, AMC’s The Walking Dead quickly tailed off into scenes of its characters squabbling, punctuated by the odd gory set piece.  Over the course of twelve episodes, the show never found time to develop any of its characters beyond archetypes, meaning that in spite of some solid performances from its cast, it was difficult to care what happened to any of them.  The finale to Season 1, where a pilgrimage to the CDC ended in disappointment, now feels so long ago, that some of its key moments (Shane trying to rape Lori, Andrea’s desire to kill herself) are long forgotten, meaning that reference to them here is jarring.  “What Lies Ahead” opens with a stunning action sequence in which the group are forced to mend the van on a highway, only to be surprised by a hoard of “walkers” (the show still refuses to call them zombies).  As they hide under vehicles, Andrea is corned in the camper van restroom, and Sophia is discovered and makes a run for it into the forest.  Despite Rick managing to kill the zombies chasing her, Sophia still goes missing, and the rest of the time is spent trying to work out if she’s dead or if she’s just hiding somewhere.  Conveniently, the group happen upon a church, meaning that there’s also a fair chunk of time given over to the characters’ spiritual crisis, in which Rick finds himself talking to Jesus on the cross.  It’s all terribly blunt, meaning that any good will created from the episode’s opening twenty minutes is frittered away with small talk and increasingly broad existential angst.

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