Somewhere

The Week In TV 20/11/2011

Community, Season 3, Episode 8: Documentary Filmmaking: Redux

After the sad news that Community would be going on hiatus, and questions hovering over its cancellation, the show pulled out an episode that was every bit as alienating to newcomers as one would expect from such a singular show.  Dean Pelton is tasked with creating a new commercial for Greendale, for which he ropes in Jeff’s inspired Jim Rash impersonation, Britta and Troy as a pair of “diverse” students building bridges and Annie as an obsessive script editor.  Abed’s decision to film the process as a documentary immediately brings “Intermediate Documentary Filmmaking” to mind, but this is less of a riff on Charlie Kauffman and more an extended take on Hearts of Darkness, the documentary depicting the production of Apocalypse Now.  It’s as niche a reference as “Dinner with Abed” last season, but one that works wonders, as we see the dean quickly lose sight of the commercial, instead focusing on the possibility of involving Greendale alumnus Luis Guzman (who makes a great appearance towards the end) and on creating something of such epic proportions that he isolates himself from everyone working with him, descending into his own private hell.  Abed remains detached throughout until the very end, correcting the dean’s commercial and helping to pave the way for the emotional catharsis that Jeff’s resigned forgiveness allows for.  As a statement on the show itself it’s fairly accurate, that however clever and post-modern Community might lean, it’s ultimately interested in the wellbeing of its small cast of characters, which is why it’s so adored by the small group of people that do watch it, and so misunderstood by those that might have only caught the occasional episode.  And this doesn’t even allow for all the great stuff happening on the sidelines, such as Jeff’s gradual integration into his Dean persona, Troy and Britta’s increasingly miserable hugging montage, or the possum in Dean Pelton’s office.

Fringe, Season 4, Episode 7: Wallflower

This being the final episode before the show goes on hiatus over Christmas, I was expecting a little more fireworks from “Wallflower,” but the clue was in the name since this was a fairly muted episode of Fringe.  A mysterious invisible assailant has been killing people across the city, draining them of their pigment.  Born with an intense aversion to light, he was pronounced dead at the hospital only to be sold off to the company that would become Massive Dynamic, where he was renamed Eugene (short for “unknown genetic disorder”).  It was there that their testing instigated a condition that suppressed his condition, but also made him develop a chameleon-like ability to blend into his surroundings, an ability that has meant Eugene has lived his life invisible to those around him.  Whilst the procedural stuff in “Wallflower” was pretty standard, the theme of (in)visiblity that run through the episode resonated.  Just as Eugene is unable to connect with those around him because they are unable to see him, so Peter is stuck in a world where he can’t trust what’s in front of his eyes, where he isn’t seen as “Peter,” but as someone to be distrusted, even feared.  There was some concession to the bigger picture here, with Peter making plans to build a new Doomsday device and Olivia being gassed in her apartment by Nina Sharp and injected with a peculiar substance.  But really, this was a case-of-the-week, when we need to see a bit more movement on the larger problems that have plagued this season.

Glee, Season 3, Episode 6: Mashoff

Whilst this season of Glee has produced some outright clangers, it’s also made a move towards consistency that is as pleasing as the storylines it insists on sticking us with are frustrating.  And if “Mashoff” featured some of the show’s very worst elements, its final five minutes were up there with the best the show has ever put forward.  Teacher / student pairings have never worked.  Even Friday Night Lights failed to pull it off, so the infernal dragging out of the Puck / Shelby romance is tedious, all the more so because it seems like we’re going to be stuck with it for several more episodes yet.  Thankfully, the writers seemed to have dropped Quinn’s ridiculous plan to win back Beth, and if this feeds back into the character’s own feelings of isolation, then that’s fine with me.  What’s irritating about Glee is that it’s perfectly capable, even – dare I suggest – fairly good at understanding adolescent unhappiness and loneliness, but all too often its good intentions are hampered by the need to insert another wacky plot point or unrelated musical number.  So although the show has done a lot of good work in rehabilitating Quinn’s character by effectively forgetting that Season 2 ever happened, it can’t resist flinging her into another silly black hole of a story.  With any luck, now that her ploy has been rumbled by Shelby, the writers are going to explore why Quinn feels unhappy rather than just have her do a bunch of insane stuff.  The beating heart of “Mashoff,” however, is Santana, who continues to be one of the better executed characters on the show.  Continuing to hurl insults at Finn in much the same way she always has, he retaliates by outing her, also hitting on her deepest insecurity: that Brittany might not return her feelings.  It’s a real heart in mouth moment, one made all the more heart-breaking by a performance from Naya Rivera that completely nails all the different tones that Glee tries on.  When Finn’s comment is picked up by one of Sue’s rivals running for congress, he inserts it into his campaign, thus outing Santana to everyone else as well.  This culminates in the best musical moment of Season 3 so far (up there with Don’t Stop Believing and Forget You), a mash-up of “Someone Like You” and “Rumour Has It,” in which Santana sees Finn whispering to Rachel and assumes it’s about her.  It’s not, of course, but her pent-up anger and a desperate attempt to mask her own vulnerability lead her to slap Finn across the face.  It’s a unique moment within the episode, and in Glee in itself, since it touches on something real, and which no other show on the air right now is really attempting to do.  It’s gratifying to see the show try and make use of its talented ensemble cast, but the insistent need to sacrifice meaning and character to throwaway lines (and seriously, what was Kurt’s “I promise to ban dodgeball” speech about?!) and jokes that negate any emotional response is baffling, especially when it’s a show capable of the highs it reached within those last five minutes.

Gossip Girl, Season 5, Episode 7: The Big Sleep No More

This is what counts for a climactic episode of Gossip Girl, as some scheming outsider pulls the strings of the show’s leading characters at a swanky shindig.  What worked particularly well about “The Big Sleep No More” was not the quality of the guest star (Elizabeth Hurley has never quite reached enjoyably terrible), but her scheme to win back Nate, oust Charlie and have Serena help her take down Gossip Girl had a surprising amount of layers to it.  Since Revenge is so good at plotting intricate fallout from Emily’s scheming, Gossip Girl’s success is somewhat mitigated, but even I was impressed by how Charlie’s vulnerability towards episode end fed into Serena’s need to find a cause to push her into writing her blog.  Not one of this might make a lick of sense in the long term - how is Serena’s blog meant to take down Gossip Girl exactly?  Are we really going to have to suffer through the writers trying to make Charlie sympathetic?  Surely there was a simpler way to rehabilitate Nate’s image?  And what was wrong with it in the first place? - but for a big, relatively complex party episode, it worked well.

Homeland, Season 1, Episode 7: The Weekend

Easily the best episode of Homeland yet, which is saying something, “The Weekend” operates primarily as a pair of two-handers.  In the first, a confused Brody picks Carrie up and together they head for her family cabin the mountains.  Once the alcohol wears off, it’s all too clear that both have developed feelings for one another that go beyond simply drunkenly fucking and beating up white supremacists at dive bars, although the tension remains.  How much of this is real for Carrie, and how much is an act?  At one point we see her nervously load a gun that she hides in a bedside cabinet, but her look of concern when she wakes up to Brody shouting out during his sleep paint a different picture.  In the episode’s one failing, Carrie lets slip that she knows what brand of tea Brody drinks, and he immediately twigs that she’s been spying on him.  Although the episode had prefaced this by making us aware that Carrie was off her medication, I don’t buy that she’d make such a schoolboy error, and in an episode where everything surrounding it was so perfect, I wish the writers had come up with a better way for this to come out.  Of course, it hardly matters since the end goal was so fantastic, as Brody laid out everything we thought we knew about him.  Yes, he converted to Islam after years of torture, and yes he did know Abu Nazir, but he didn’t reveal this because he was ashamed of the loving relationship the two had formed when Nazir had given him comfort during his ordeal.  Not only is this scene passionately acted, but the true sense of what has been lost suddenly comes crashing down.  Both Brody and Carrie have lost the meaningful connection they had together, and as Carrie states when Brody is leaving, “what was real…was real.”  It’s a statement that is poignant in its seeming confusing, coming from a woman whose reality has been altered not only by her psychosis but also by a job that forces her to question the motives of everyone around her.  And Brody, a character who up until now it’s been difficult to sympathise with – not only because we were led to believe that he could be a terrorist, but also how this suspicion fed into the way he treated his family – finally allows himself to break down once he returns home.  It’s a heartbreaking scene of real loss, and one which is mirrored in Carrie’s more het-up reaction to events.  Just as Carrie and Brody built up a relationship of mutual trust, so too do Saul and Aileen in the episode’s other two-hander.  Ordered off a bus to Mexico, Aileen is forced to take a long car journey with Saul to Langley, where his attempts to connect with and understand her are at first met with frustration.  People might be predictable, but Saul still can’t understand the pain that drove her to terrorism.  It’s only when he speaks of his childhood, and his own feelings of isolation, that Aileen begins to talk to him, finally agreeing to work with a sketch artist on a configuration of a man that visited them a few weeks back before heading on up to the roof with her husband.  The way the episode is structured – with Saul calling Carrie just as Brody reveals that he’s not a terrorist – is perfect in that we think we’re about to be double-bluffed, and then we’re hit by one heck of a cliff-hanger: Tom is still alive.  Brody didn’t beat him to death in Afghanistan.  He’s still alive and Aileen has just identified him to the sketch artist.  Tearing apart one of the underlying questions of the show – has Brody been turned, or hasn’t he? – is pretty ballsy considering we’ve only hit episode seven, but it’s also suggestive that the writers know what they’re doing, and those of us who were worried that the show wouldn’t be able to sustain more than a single season (however excellent that season was) got to see that there’s a much bigger plan in the offing.  Likely to remain one of the best episodes of TV of the year.

Pan Am, Season 1, Episode 8: Unscheduled Departure

Pan Am delivers its strongest episode yet, mostly thanks to its construction, which forces all its characters into one storyline, and a focus on MVP Collette.  During a flight to Caracas, an elderly gentlemen that Kate has been taking care of has a heart-attack, and the plane is forced to land in Haiti for medical assistance.  Collette, as the only French speaker, borrows a jeep and, along with Ted, ventures into Port-au-Prince to find a doctor, along the way picking up a Haitian refugee whose family have been killed.  Meanwhile, back at the aircraft, Kate continues to exchange anecdotes about lost love with her old man, and Maggie has to deal with an uppity rich bloke who demands to know why they’re not leaving straight away.  With the notable exception of the pilots, the characters are all well-drawn enough at this point that seeing them all work together to achieve a common purpose gave the episode a drive that previous episodes have lacked, and Collette’s own feelings of abandonment were allowed to play out in suggestive parallel to the teenage girl she picks up, rather than the writers hitting over the head with it.  There are still plenty of wrinkles to iron out – the disgruntled passengers lacked any shade, for one, and the episode hardly allowed for a nuanced view of Haitian history – but this was the tightest episode of Pan Am yet, and one which built well to its soaring emotional moments.  I doubt that Pan Am will ever be appointment television, but there’s something to be said for its solid craftsmanship and the good work of those in front of the camera.

Revenge, Season 1, Episode 8: Treachery

A rare place-holder of an episode this week, as Revenge arranges all its pieces for something promisingly dramatic down the line.  The real Emily Thorne has indeed killed Frank (no fake-out there, then), and as we discover in a series of extended flashbacks, used to despise Emily back in prison.  Aided by the wise words of mentor CCH Pounder, Emily used this anger to her advantage, reaching out to her namesake and forging a friendship that was deeply felt on one side, and entirely a relationship of convenience on the other.  Planting Original Emily with Nolan, where she promptly strikes up a flirtation with a visiting Jack, Our Emily is forced to doctor the New Year’s Eve photograph with her in it, before Lydia regains her memory.  Although last week’s episode ended with Lydia awakening from her coma, it didn’t prove much of a cliff-hanger, since her amnesia was as irritatingly plot-convenient as all memory losses are on soap operas.  However, whilst recuperating at the Graysons, she does overhear Conrad say that Victoria had plans to get rid of her permanently, and since Lydia can scheme with the best of them, it’s unlikely that this bit of eavesdropping is going to be forgotten.  Now that the show has almost entirely removed itself from its revenge-of-the-week format, Emily’s plans seem to keep unravelling.  In many ways it reminds me of Dexter at its best, when he’s backed into a seemingly impossible situation that’s entirely his own making, the thrill being in watching how he manages to extricate himself.  The same goes for Emily, a similar character that it’s difficult to truly empathise with even if we enjoy watching her work and (by and large) want to see her succeed.  And though this week didn’t see much in the way of fireworks, it’s a pretty safe bet that subsequent episodes will be able to do something good with this whole Single White Female idea.

Ringer, Season 1, Episode 9: Shut Up And Eat Your Bologna

Ringer made a turn for the better this week by finally giving Bridget some kind of motivation as to why she’s still pretending to be Siobhan, and allowing the character to have a bit more agency in her own life.  It’s not long before Malcolm realises that Charlie isn’t who he says he is, and whilst asking Siobhan to distract him, Malcolm breaks into John’s “real” apartment (he conveniently left a key plus address in his jacket pocket), nearly discovering Gemma in the process, who’s locked in the cellar.  Meanwhile, flashbacks reveal that the police officer guarding Bridget in the first episode is in with Siobhan, as he tells Bridget that even if she testifies, she’s still going to be killed unless she changes her identity.  And of course Bridget wants to find out why someone would want to kill her sister.  An amusing trip to Siobhan’s therapist gives her some answers, not only the fact that her sister was being prescribed anti-depressants for paranoia, but after stealing her file she’s quick to discover the bar where Siobhan met Charlie.  The episode had much more forward momentum than we’re used to seeing on this show, and was all the better for it.  Although Ringer seems determined not to go full tilt into cheesy thriller territory, it’s managed to balance this out somewhat by (not-too-subtly) correcting some of the motivational issues surrounding its lead character.  Now if only we knew why Siobhan was acting this way…

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