IX: OMG GG

After undertaking to re-watch the first season of The OCsuch that I could write essays by the episode, a curious thing happened: I couldn't stop watching. The same vortex that ensnared me on its premiere had me again. This isn't to say that I've stopped - far from it - but to explain my curiously intertwined absence.

Gossip Girl is the sort of cultural phenomenon that can escape one entirely if they don't own a television and aren't plugged into the right circles. I know this because it happened to me. When I woke up one morning to find my days filled with blog subscriptions instead of my second job, I found a world with a show so popular it has its own tag on Gawker. And here I thought I was still with it?

Whereas Josh Schwarz's previous project, The OC came at the beginning of the TV revolution - DVR was a distinctly luxury item and streaming piracy was naught but a twinkle in the eyes of the college students who scoured the torrents for Canadian Television rips of network shows - GG arrived into a world whose television viewers were in control. Apart from this, and its meager challenge to the final season of The Wire for the title of "Cultural Item of Note: 2007-2008 Television Season Category," I can think of no other reason why Gossip Girl did not reach the pan-cultural, iconic status of The OC. Not only is it practically the same show, but it arrived in a culture even so status obsessed that it can sustain The Hills and an American edition of the British OK tabloid.



Gossip Girl is, in its essence, the refinement of The OC. A comparison less on its tastes, sentiments, or even a coastal rivalry, GG is Schwarz distilling the same plots, the same themes, and even some of the same characters through the filters of network lessons learned and East Coast location filming.

In his new series, Schwarz has matured not just in his style, but also in his content. In Episode 9, "The Heights," The OC is at its high school soap opera best. Even with its B-Plot of the Balboa Wetlands development project, it is a John Hughes movie writ television. The tomboyish friend who helps her guy friend crush get the other girl, the missed connections that nearly tear apart the nascent star-crossed teenage romance, the showdown on the soccer field where Ryan tackles his nemesis because he thinks Luke is still after his girl! In this episode, and indeed much of that which redeems the series, the is high school, or at least its cultural simulacrum. Distorted, Technicolor, glossed, and exaggerated but not so impossible as to take it completely out of the sphere of the shared experience.

Gossip Girl owes no allegiance to your petty nostalgia. Insomuch as school exists, it is purposeful background to absurd shenanigans. Sure, in Orange County there was the USC obsession, but in the Upper East Side the Ivy League application process involves courting your author/idol and outing your best friend as a recovering alcoholic. And if you're not at that school, you're a home-schooled filmmaker. Or whatever it is that Vanessa does when she's not turning Rufus's gallery into a cafe.

The OC thrived on contrivance. Characters drawn deep enough to like and shallow enough to turn the plot on the dime, wildly unlikable personas cast as unlikely heroes, aspirational locations and people and products. And though I'd be lying if I said GG weren't possessed of these same flaws, I'd be no less dishonest if I didn't admit it I loved it. In part for the same reasons that I got caught up in The OC in the first place, but also because GG, for all its flaws, seems- at least on first watching- to dig a little bit deeper for its story lines. Little J's pyrrhic war with Blair, Dan and Serena's romance, Rufus's tragi-comic love life. Though these stories on occasion fall victim to television's peculiar coincidences, they're driven by characters that both define and are defined by their experiences.

And it's not that Gossip Girl didn't open the second season with a bizarre series of wildly unlikely and unfortunate events that all led up to one wonderfully salacious payoff. But at least when GG does bad, it does bad incredibly well.

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Reaper: Season 1, Episode 16, "Greg Schmeg"

Sometimes it only takes one episode to launch a show to greatness. Seinfeld was a pedestrian comedy until “The Boyfriend”; How I Met Your Mother didn’t catch fire till “Slap Bet”. I’m not willing to lump Reaper in with those worthies—yet—but if its subsequent episodes (of which I'm hoping there will be more) are as funny and engaging as “Greg Schmeg”, Reaper is setting itself up to be a damned fine show.

So here’s the deal, for you poor souls (yuk yuk) not in the know. In September, the CW released a critically acclaimed pilot about a sadsack worker drone (Sam Oliver, played by Bret Harrison) toiling away in a big-box construction supply store. One day he wakes up to find the Devil (the ineffable Ray Wise, who’s as delightfully evil here as he was on Twin Peaks) lying on his comforter. The Devil coolly informs Sam that, thanks to a dubious bargain his parents made before his birth, his soul has become property of Hell. So Sam, distraught, is forced into a second job: a bounty hunter for Hell’s escaped souls—a rather altruistic task, all things considered, but since Sam never voluntarily auctioned off his immortal soul the Devil is forbidden from making him do anything too odious.

Anyway, that pilot was awesome. It was clever and novel and it had three best friends in funny suits attacking a fire monster with a vacuum cleaner. But subsequent episodes? Ugh. Reaper became formulaic in the worst way. Each week Sam and his friends at the box store would face a bland, crudely-drawn villain. A will-they-or-won’t-they “romantic” relationship between Sam and his childhood friend Andi (Missy Peregrym) was so maudlin and predictable it could have come from the notebook of a ten-year-old who had watched nothing but Ross and Rachel her entire life.

But Reaper’s biggest problem was that it forgot to be funny. The comedic charm of Sam’s friends Ben (Rick Gonzalez, always awesome) and Sock (Tyler Labine, whose Jack Black impersonanation has been toned down, thankfully) took a back seat to Sam’s whiny angst about doing the Devil’s work, and to the tedious romance between Sam and Andi. Worse still, DMV clerk/secretary for Hell Gladys (Christine Willes), the most reliably guffaw-inducing character on the show, disappeared for a long string of episodes without any explanation. The producers of Reaper entrusted their show to Harrison and Peregrym, the show’s two prettiest people. As Ken Levine just pointed out, that’s not exactly a recipe for comedic success.

We here at NH hated the WGA strike (and still do), but at least it seems to have refocused Reaper’s showrunners, Tara Butters and Michele Fazekas. The result is a breezy, much more confident affair. In the first five episodes since Reaper’s return, Sam has moved away from home, thus eliminating an awkward, go-nowhere family storyline. Sam and Andi are now in a relationship, even avoiding the lame she-can-never-know-my-secret dynamic: Andi knows Sam’s a reaper, and she’s cool with it. They’ve even abandoned the slavish devotion to the villain-of-the-week formula, introducing a rather fun subplot involving The State alumni Michael Ian Black and Ken Marino as gay ex-demons leveraging Sam to overthrow Satan, a narrative arc that promises to last at least through the end of this season. And oh yeah, the funny’s back. Gonzalez and Labine have been showcased more and more, and with Black and Marino and Lucy Davis (from the UK’s version of The Office), they’ve introduced legitimately amusing guest stars.

That momentum carried over into this week. “Greg Schmeg” wasn’t just a great episode of Reaper, it was of the best episodes of network television this season. There were some outrageously funny moments in it, particularly the devil’s attempts to get Sam to kill the man brainwashing Andi into cheating on him. Tricking an unwitting Sam into carrying the biggest knife I’ve ever seen before unveiling the smooching couple was a great sight gag (“I show you this because I care. And also I kind of enjoy it.”), but giving Sam a telescope to spy on them, then swapping the telescope with a sniper rifle, still has me giggling. During Reaper’s doldrums the Devil often acted too much like Sam’s buddy, but he’s become increasingly more menacing in this post-strike run and the show is better for it. Plus Ray Wise is absolutely eating it up, and that’s always delightful.

There were some other great moments, like Gladys’s triumphant return (cheerfully admitting that she’s bribable, assuming the bribe is a promise to take care of her Persian cat, Fancy) and the burnout paranormal arms dealer, who was funnier and more interesting in 2 minutes of screentime than most of Reaper’s previous guest stars were in twenty. But the best of them all was probably Sam finally showing some backbone and standing up to the Devil, and outfoxing him in the process. Harrison isn’t as funny as his co-stars, but as Sam he doesn’t need to be (and he probably shouldn’t be, considering Sam’s unhappy fate). As the straight man determined to do the right thing, Harrison is spot on for the role, and good on Butters and Fazekas for finally realizing it.

If there was a blemish in “Greg Schmeg”, it was the reiteration that Reaper still can’t do proper romance. I have a lot of gripes with Hollywood, but chief among them is the persistent fear of presenting a legitimately layered female character. It’s as if writers everywhere are afraid to create a woman who is in any way flawed, and Ben’s new love interest (Battlestar Galactica’s Kandyse McClure) is in the same mold as Andi before her: impossibly patient, impossibly pretty, impossibly good. But that’s something I can overlook if the show promises to be as consistently funny and engaging as these past few episodes have been.

One other thing: “If you ever feel like turning that triangle into a square, let me know.” Ew.

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Battlestar Galactica: Season 4, Episode 5, "The Road Less Traveled"

“You have to make peace with your past. That part of you is gone.”

Couched in the cryptic doublespeak of a half-mad cylon, the sentiment above is more than a stern injunction to our hero, Kara Thrace. It is, simply, the refrain of the events of “The Road Less Travelled”, and all that has transpired early on in Battlestar Galactica’s fourth season.

Since its universally praised premiere, “He That Believeth In Me”, complaints have been legion about the subsequent episodes of this season, ranging from the unwelcome evolution of favorite characters (specifically, the rather curious transformation of the once-proud Kara Thrace into a frenzied shadow of her former self) to its glacial plot developments. Hell, a peek at the TWoP forums leaves one with the impression that Ronald Moore and company deserve a fashionable coat made from some hot tar and feathers, expiation for the destruction of what was once so good and true.

As perfect as the most of the episodes in the first 3 seasons were, there are only so many logistical crises and cylon attacks the ragtag fleet could withstand without spinning the wheels. In that respect, perhaps it’s a mixed blessing that Battlestar Galactica has never enjoyed monster ratings—it’s a virtual certainty that a cash cow would never be allowed to leave on its own terms, but to be stretched out as long as possible, intention in art be damned (think Lost). I don’t doubt that there’s still lots of potential in exploring further the politics of the fleet, or fleshing out some of the minor characters (I’m still waiting for a Doc Cottle showcase), but better to get out a season early than a season late. A ragged group of humans on the run from an inexorable killing force is a great conceit, but the up-and-down reception of season 3 signaled to audiences and creators alike that it was time to move on, to move in a different direction and have the fleet find Earth or die in the process.

Of course, it’s one thing to acknowledge that a new direction is needed, quite another to agree with the one taken. Episodes like “The Road Less Travelled” should assure viewers that Moore and company have things well in hand, its echoing motifs bouncing off character parallels to create a very literary and very watchable 44 minutes. While the episode ended with the fleet no closer to Earth, the real progression came, as it consistently has this season, in the characters themselves. The majority of screentime was given to the increasingly-troubled Demetrius, but the more affecting moments lay in the person of Chief Galen Tyrol, who, in becoming both cylon and widower in a matter of weeks, was very obviously falling apart. I’m consistently amazed by the scope and talent of Galactica’s stable of actors, but here, Aaron Douglass may have given the best work of any of them this season. Tyrol deliberately dehumanizing himself, both physically with his freshly shaved head and psychologically with a gun to his cheek, worked mostly thanks to Douglass’s commanding presence and miraculous facial control (seriously, he must have been paying attention to Michael Hogan’s eyeball during the past year and a half).

In other words, Tyrol’s downward spiral felt earned, ultimately, and that made his reconciliation with Baltar that much more satisfying. I speculated earlier that Tyrol losing his wife might untether him from the stalwart character we had come to know, because, like Boomer before him, he would be alone. That eventuality certainly came to pass (though the Boomer parallels stop short, since Tyrol, crucially, didn’t pull the trigger), but who could suspect was that Tyrol would find his support—his salvation, even—in the words and deeds of Gaius frakking Baltar? As this season progresses, it’s becoming easier to understand just how it is that Baltar has been able to accumulate, and maintain, such a devout following. However tantalizing his message that all of God’s children are perfect beings is, without a compassionate figurehead it would sink under the weight of the established Gods. Baltar, if nothing else in this episode, for the very first time in the character’s history proved himself to care deeply about someone other than himself. That’s progress, people.

As for the Demetrius saga, it’s difficult to speculate on the early events of a two-parter. Helo’s mutiny certainly would have been more emotionally compelling had it not been established previously that he was willing to break military protocol to follow his conscience—remember, this is the man who squandered humanity’s only chance to permanently eliminate the cylon threat because he couldn’t countenance another genocide. That said, it was mostly good, if (and I’ll cop to what others are saying here) mostly pointless. Starbuck is still crazy? Check. Anders and Athena are still not getting any airtime? Check two. Leoben’s introduction was an interesting development, but he only briefly interacted with anyone outside of Kara (his scene with Anders, however, was worth the price of admission, each man knowing something the other doesn’t), and those scenes were predictably maudlin. And he only confirmed what was already suspected: that the cylon civil war is devastating. There aren’t any more resurrection ships. They’re playing for keeps.

Still. Baltar. The savior. Of both cylon and human. Yowza.

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The Patriot's Draft

The Writers Guild versus the AMPTP might soon measure amongst the most significant events of our recent national public-political discourse. Stateside opinion of this president’s agenda has descended into an absurd nonsensicality, an afterthought inherent to an administration crippled by its overseas endeavors. Our recent presidential campaigns have been muted by permeating senses of foregone conclusions, both bleakly desperate (2004) and cautiously promising (2008.) And by now the once vaunted “New” Congress has proved infinitely more interested in on occupying itself with the affairs d’Clemens and Belichick than seizing upon any major policy movements. Meanwhile, a major labor dispute has now come and not really gone, helping to define in no small way the terms of a major domestic industry’s growth for the immediate hereafter with few Americans knowing (caring?) about the matters at stake, not only as relate to professional writers, but our own very lifestyles.

The terms of the writers’ return remain undisclosed to the public, but it is probable that the writers will receive a royalty rate lower than the proposed reparations for DVD sales would have provided once the agreement is ratified, as well as royalties for new media still well-below the desired broadcast television standard. Though, thankfully, nobody will be losing their homes or starving in Los Feliz in the immediate future for this agreement, there remains no end to the dirty tricks at the disposal of our multinational overlords to squeeze entertainment workers for every last penny. Online media- on the back of content bereft of the costs of manufacturing, shipping, storing and retailing physical properties- may very well yield profits soon into the billions. And as other proposals that might limit the continued dominance of corporate media powers seem doomed to fail, an eventual revelation of the strike’s resolution turning out to be the “Home Video Swindle: Redux” seems not only plausible, but exceedingly likely. Come the maturity of an integrated, online age for all popular entertainment, we will see more and more importance implicit to such issues as those highlighted in the recent strike. Yes, our scripted television shows are coming back on the air, but for thousands of people who work in the industry bracing for the possibility of more upheaval, their livelihoods are very much still up in it. A settlement shouldn’t suggest anything has truly been settled.

HBO’s John Adams miniseries wrapped up its 7 episode Emmy-grab this past Sunday night. I share many of the criticisms of the series that have been commonly reported in critics’ circles. The performances throughout are consistently decent yet somehow disappointing, many episodes are given to interminably boring stretches devoid of any sense of historian David McCullough’s transcendent passion for its source material, and that this gritty age of telefilms’ insistence on realism has culminated in a most brutal extreme, seemingly independent of any storytelling purpose. Yet it still evident to me that Adams is possessed of at least one strength which elevates it from utter mediocrity: John Adams was a simply brilliant mind and a dynamic speaker in heated debate, whose talents here lead to several excellent scenes depicting the political contests of our nation’s birth and early years. Paul Giamatti, in the series titular role, plays his finest moments with a dour ferocity of belief in the import his duties, which take him from the courtrooms of colonial Boston to the hostile would-be architects of America at Independence Hall and even an Audience with King Crankypants the Second himself.

Sadly, these excellent scenes are spread too few and too far between diversions that, despite substantial runtimes, still feel too shallow and limiting in their depictions of Adams as a person. We endure lengthy treatments on his restless periods in Europe (the French here are hedonist airheads, the Dutch wry moneychangers) and infrequent interaction with his family that mostly settles for presenting the man in the simple dyad of sensitive husband, overbearing-yet-distant father. But more than anything, his endless frustration permeates our every sense of the man. While often depicted fretting that he may not have done enough to secure a future for his fledgling country, certainly seems convinced enough of his accomplishments as a legislator and diplomat to brood endlessly over his recognized place in history for them. Adams was all-too aware it seems, even in his own time, that he was destined to the second-tier of our historical remembrance, behind men more popular (Thomas Jefferson), weighty (George Washington) or merely adept at whoring for attention (Benjamin Franklin.) To this day the greatest tribute paid to him is a 752 page biography that most Americans will never so much as use to level a coffee table (and now, 8 or so more hours of HBO’s post-Sopranos programming.)

Our neglect for the contentious farmer’s son from Massachusetts parallels our current role as consumers regarding the status of entertainment workers. Mixed thoughts and opinions converge for me as I experience a viewing of HBO’s John Adams miniseries via a less-than-legal internet source. Tuning into Hulu, with its high quality streams and conveniently stable servers has taken on something of a conflicting feel for me. It is a fact that our continued support for online content has enabled the technology that makes it so much clearer, faster and more plentiful and profitable) than ever, yet this is also maybe the single largest source of the leverage used by corporate powers to shirk fairness and continue to dominate its own, largely anonymous workmen’s class.
John Adams, the series, asks us to glorify the most unlikely qualities of likability that define our uniquely American spirit, and to elevate the collective effort of those who raised our nation by celebrating the most relatively nondescript of our sacred statesman. Adams, the man, lost his place on Mount Rushmore not for undeserving, but as the cost of his inability to be both indispensible and beloved at the same time. Tuning into Big-Money outlets like Hulu for our 30 Rock fix now feels, in some small way, complicit with a similar kind of marginalization to that which Adams has endured in our collective consciousness. It is after all our demand for new media that has pit another great American institution- Labor- against the times.

Or am I just framing a self-serving argument for the torrent abuser in all of us? Are we privateers or pirates? I’m really not sure, though I think I can say that, today, being a buccaneer bootlegger has never quite felt so patriotic.

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Pushing Daisies Episodes 1 and 2

I'm on record as saying that, for the past few years, maybe longer, TV has been a better bet than movies. You can argue the reasons why that is till you're blue in the face--necessity of invention in the face of more competition, more room to breathe for creative people--but the cheery fact is that shows like Deadwood and The Wire routinely reach heights that even the best of movies never quite reach.

Just judging by its first two episodes, you can probably add Pushing Daisies to that list. If ever there was an example of the obsolescence of cinema in the face of television, this is it. For one, Pushing Daisies looks like a movie, with vivid colors and glitzy, surreal effects that call to mind Edward Scissorhands or The Life Aquatic. Part of this is no doubt courtesy of director Barry Sonnenfeld (the cinematographer for the Coen Brothers, as well as the director for the Men in Black franchise), but it also has a lot to do with creator Bryan Fuller's vision.

Fuller's vision is realized in the forensic fairy tale Pushing Daisies actually is. Ned (Lee Pace), a pie-maker, possesses the ability to bring people and things back to life with a touch, but if he touches them again, they die permanently. And there are consequences. If Ned lets the erstwhile corpse live longer than a minute, someone else in the vicinity has to die. Ned's not a saint, but he's not a bad guy, either, so he uses his power to solve crimes and collect reward money with his partner, Emerson Cod (Chi McBride) and his resurrected childhood sweetheart, Chuck (Anna Friel).

Still, however much I rhapsodize about the state of television today, there's still a lot of bad things about it. The glut of procedural dramas is certainly one of them, and however quirky the trappings of Pushing Daisies are, it's still yet another procedural, which means that it's got to have interesting and likable characters to survive. And goodness, it does. Friel and Pace have fabulous chemistry, and they're the main reason for the only criticism people can find in the first two episodes: it's twee, it's precious, it's like freebasing the essence of sweet. And yeah, in a show where people drive a dandelion-powered car, that may be legitimate. But when Ned erects a plexiglass partition in his car with a dishwashing glove so he and Chuck can hold hands when driving, or when Ned and Chuck stand next to each other and hold their own hands, leaving the rest to their imagination (all of which is narrated by Jim Dale, one of two people, along with Jon Miller, who could read the phone book to me and keep me enthralled), it's impossible not to be charmed.

And the sweet is nicely counterbalanced by Chi McBride's acerbic, bitter Emerson (and who would have thought that McBride was a pretty funny guy after the stale-bean soup of a show that was Boston Public?). He's got some fantastic zingers, like his "Bitch, I was in the vicinity!" after finding out that Ned resurrected Chuck for good in the pilot episode, or his wishing Ned would finally just touch Chuck because the status quo was better for business.

So yeah, get these first two episodes, not only because they're certainly of a unique, satisfying feather, but because they may be the show's best. It's rare for a show to peak in its pilot episodes, but because ABC canned Sonnenfeld for going consistently over budget after the first two episodes, that's a distinct possibility. But I wouldn't mind so much, if only because Pushing Daisies is, for its first two episodes at least, one of the best things I've ever seen.

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