Category Archives: TUiW Summer TV Club

by | June 16, 2010 · 11:29 am

Summer TV Club: Homicide – “Night of the Living Dead”

First off, a clarification: “Night of the Living Dead” aired on NBC as the Season One finale of Homicide, well out of its intended order. The episode was shot to be the third episode, hence its review now instead of later in the season.

With that out of the way, we can tackle “Night of the Living Dead,” perhaps the most unique and interesting hour a cop drama has ever produced. In just a few short episodes, Homicide has impressed me for being so different from every other show in its genre, and “Night of the Living Dead” reinforced that further, making for a fascinating character study with minimal action and a heavy dose of humor and painfully blunt realism. In a lot of ways, it’s an anomaly of its time. As current cable show like Mad MenH could pull of the same thing now, but as a network show in the 90′s, it seems like Homicide was setting itself apart from the beginning, and I don’t think its impact can be understated.

“Night of the Living Dead” takes place during a miserably hot summer night when the air conditioning is out and the detectives of Baltimore don’t have any calls to look into, save for a man dressed as Santa threatening to shoot people from the roof of a building. The mysteries are either small or stagnant; Felton and Lewis seek to figure out who keeps lighting a candle every night, while Bayliss and Pembleton bicker over the Adena Watson murder, which still has no new leads. Bayliss is embarrased when he insists they bring in a suspect that turns out to be a kid in middle school.

The heat and lack of cases leads to bickering and frustration too. Gee is furious not only that no one will come fix the air conditioning, but that Pembleton refuses to disregard his orders to remove his tie. Munch, furious over getting dumped, yells and screams about how he’s so unlucky in love, while Bolander refuses to call him his partner and frets over asking out Blythe. Crosetti is flummoxed by his daughter’s request to have her boyfriend spend the night with her at his ex-wife’s house. Felton is exhausted after his wife keeps him up night after night trying tips to save their marriage. Howard is distracted by the fact that her sister’s cancer diagnosis came the same day her husband admitted an affair. On a night when there are no murders to go out and solve and no cool air, the detectives are left to their own devices, their problems simmering in the Baltimore heat.

The episode does a great job of glossing over some larger societal problems as well, keeping them significant, but not waving them in your face. First there’s the boy Bayliss mistaken calls in, who when asked what his parents do, replies, “get arrested.” The same boy falls asleep on the interrogation room table, no home to go to, but Bayliss kicks him out anyway, out into the night with no where to go. Later, as Gee attempts to find a way to fix the A/C, he finds a baby in a cage. After calling child services, they discover its the child of the cleaning woman, who can’t afford a babysitter, but didn’t want rats to go after her child, who she now fears she’ll never get back. Both are major social issues being presented, but handled with a certain amount of realistic callousness that the show quickly made its forte. They’re problems, but what can the heat rattled detectives do about it?

The episode ends full of hope, with Bayliss and Pembleton realizing something that could change their investigation into the Watson murder, and the revelation that it was Munch was lighting the candle as a memorial for all the victims, a surprising turn for the guy who was last seen yelling at his again ex-girlfriend. The parting shots of “Night of the Living Dead” are of Gee spraying the rest of the detectives with a garden hose on the roof. It’s a nice image for an episode that plays out like a session in a psychiatrists office.

I have to say, what impressed me most about “Night of the Living Dead” was that it’s the kind of hour you won’t find on network TV these days, let alone in the 90s when it aired. There’s a sense of brutal honesty and concentration on the characters that today is isolated to shows on cable. Even the best network shows these days have avoided focusing on their characters in this manner, instead concentrating on romantic entanglements and forward motion of the plot. “Night of the Living Dead” is funny and bleak, and that the show took a risk so early and tried an episode that doesn’t have their characters out in the field is really impressive. You’re not going to find an episode of CSI: Miami this good, I guarantee it.

Michael’s Score: 98
TUiW Grade: A+

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by | June 11, 2010 · 6:27 am

Summer TV Club: Dead Like Me – “Dead Girl Walking”

Dead Like Me is available to watch for free on Hulu or on Netflix Instant Streaming!

Even though it was over an hour long, the pilot of Dead Like Me is pretty heavy on the establishment of the world of the show instead of the characters. Sure, we got a little aquainted with George Lass, but really, we only got a light glossing over the rest of our cast of characters. “Dead Girl Walking” took the opposite approach: a relatively small bit of exposition was used as a method of figuring out who the Reapers and the Lass family are.

And we got some good bits. We learned that Mason died in the 1960s when he tried to drill a hole in his head to expand his consciousness, and Roxy is a hard ass parking attendant, and Betty sweetly takes pictures of the people she reaps. There’s also of course Rube, who doesn’t really except any bullshit and doesn’t understand the idea of bite sized food that isn’t bite sized. The surviving Lass family also gets a little bit more added to their biographies. Reggie, who I don’t think had a line in the pilot, tells people that Joy doesn’t let her go to the bathroom and steals toilet seats, which she uses to decorate a tree near the Lass home. Joy is tough, and has little tolerance for her daughter’s antics, while Clancy is softer on her, ultimately creating a bit of a riff with his wife.

George’s story in “Dead Girl Walking” revolves around her refusal to reap a soul assigned to her. She doesn’t want to do it, and since she never agreed to anything, feels she doesn’t have to. Despite tagging along with Betty on a reaping, and assisting Rube in another at Der Waffle House, she still doesn’t feel comfortable with the whole concept, and decides she doesn’t need to show up when Post-Its are dolled out. But as George quickly learns, she can’t escape her responsibility, and the consequences are dire. You see, when a soul isn’t reaped in time, the person can still die, their soul trapped inside. In this case, it leads to the traumatizing experience of a man experiencing his own autopsy. Though still stubborn about who’s responsibility it was, George learns her lesson.

What I liked most about “Dead Girl Walking” was that it had a secondary plot for George, which surrounded her adjustment to living on her own for the first time. Sure, the biggest change for her was dying and becoming a Reaper, but she also is an 18 year old girl that is forced to live on her own for the first time and can’t stay in contact with her parents. She doesn’t get anything to eat at Der Waffle House because she can’t afford it, and the crappy apartment she’d been squatting in needs rent payed on it soon. She keeps going back to her old house, and is depressed over the world that has kept turning since she died. Big changes other than her new job have happened very quickly to George, and rather than follow Mason’s example of stealing money from parking meters, George returns to Deloris Herbig (“As in her big brown eyes”) and the Happy Time Temp Agency, and starts anew as her alter ego, Millie Hagen.

“Dead Girl Walking” is the quintessential “second episode.” Even the best shows often need to have a second episode that is designed to help the viewer find their bearings within the show (examples: Lost, How I Met Your Mother). “Dead Girl Walking” slows down the lightening fast pace of “Pilot,” and pauses to illuminate some of the other things going on the in the story: George needing to make a living, Reggie’s rebellion, Joy and Clancy’s arguments. The problem though was that it was too slow. Aside from introducing some of these problems, it was clunky at points, and slow at others. Betty and George’s reaping was clearly designed to remind us of how that process works, but with George also taking the soul of the man at Der Waffle House, it seemed like the same point was being brought across too many times.

But I like all the bits with Mason, and the idea of a grim reaper working at a temp agency is actually very funny to me. “Dead Girl Walking” is far from a perfect episode, but it once again shows the potential of the show seen in “Pilot,” and adds to an already creative premise.

Michael’s Score: 65
TUiW Grade: B-

For more on our summer TV club, including the schedule and where to watch some of the shows, go here.

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by | June 10, 2010 · 1:26 pm

Veronica Mars – “Meet John Smith” and “The Wrath of Con”

“Meet John Smith”

Today’s first Veronica Mars episode is all about parenting and, more specifically, mothers. There’s Celeste Kane, the overbearing 09er matriarch who wants to keep Duncan on the antidepressants that have been stifling his personality. He goes off them and starts to get a little loopy, most notably being driven to jump off a balcony by the sight of Troy and Veronica getting close. After a chat with the doctor and, just as importantly, Celeste, Duncan goes back on the meds; but not before he gets a visit from/hallucination of his sister who tells him what we’ve known for weeks: something’s not right about the official story of her murder.

Meanwhile, in the case of the week, a young nerd asks for Veronica’s help in tracking down his dead-beat dad. But all is not as it appears, and when Veronica has Wallace pull the kid’s profile, she finds out that his dad died a while ago. The kid confesses that he was just lying to try and trick Veronica into spending time with him. However, much to his surprise, they actually get a response to one of the letters they sent looking for the dad. It turns out that Dad is still alive; he’s just had a sex change and turned into the nice woman who hangs out at the kid’s video store. Though the kid lashes out at her when he first finds out, he gets over it and the two bond.

For Veronica, Mom is as much an idea as a person at this point, and not a very flattering one at that. She lashes out at Keith and the client of the week, saying that the parent who stays is the hero and the one who leaves is the villain. Veronica’s jaded and cynical edge are an attempt to shield herself and deal with the psychic trauma of being ditched by her mom. She’s even gone a step further and taken to solving crimes and acting like Sam Spade in an attempt to cut out any memory of her mother from her personality and be more like her dad. But Veronica also isn’t ready to let go and so she decides to drive to the address she has for her mom. All she finds there is an old college friend of Mom’s who tells Veronica that her mom bailed and didn’t leave an address so Keith couldn’t find her. The woman’s attempt at comforting Veronica and assurances that her mom still cares for her are of little value to Veronica, who has once again been abandoned by her on the run parent.

“Meet John Smith” has a more satisfying emotional core than the first couple episodes and that, combined with the solid twist, made for my favorite episode so far.

“The Wrath of Con”

The weekly mysteries are kind of a mixed bag right now and “Wrath of Con” feels especially frivolous. More an excuse to put Kristen Bell in some Sydney Bristow-esque disguises (Veronica’s later characters and disguises will feel a little more natural than they did here), the episode has Veronica going toe-to-toe with a couple of con artists who stole money from a girl Wallace likes. Veronica infiltrates their game club and a college party before eventually figuring out that they’re raising money for a new computer game that will make them millions. She gets the girl’s money back and turns the guys over to the FBI.

Meanwhile, we find out that, like Veronica, Logan’s psychotic jackassery is as much a reaction to the emotional trauma of the last year as anything else. When put on the task of creating a video montage celebrating Lilly, Logan bypasses the syrupy, Hallmark stuff and decides to create one that Lilly herself would have liked. By all accounts he does a great job too: everyone except Celeste loves the montage and even Weevil is a little weepy by the end. Logan may be an ass, but he cared for Lilly and losing her has affected him in a very profound way.

The real main character of this episode is Lilly. Originally, the plan was for her to just appear in the flashbacks in “Pilot,” but the crew loved Amanda Seyfried’s performance and decided to keep her around for more episodes. Its a great choice and it especially works here as we get a feel for why, exactly, everyone loved Lilly so much and what a sad loss it is for the Neptune community. One of the show’s big ideas is showing how behind the media circus that comes with sensationalized crime stories like this one, there exist real people who are really hurting.

Meanwhile, Veronica has grown closer to Troy an 09er who is also somewhat new to Neptune and thus not as caught up in the anti-Mars drama. Although Veronica has been resistent, by the end of this episode, things seem to be going better.

“The Wrath of Con” saves a weak A-story with a lot of nice character work, bur for those of you still waiting to see what the fuss is about, don’t worry. If my memory serves, next week’s pair of episodes really sees the show start to kick it into high gear.

Jonah’s Scores:
“Meet John Smith” – 82
“The Wrath of Con” – 67

TUIW Grades:
“Meet John Smith” – A-
“The Wrath of Con” – B

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by | June 8, 2010 · 3:55 pm

Summer TV Club: Homicide – “Ghost of a Chance”

Before starting college, I worked at a local camera store for a summer. On my first day, I was completely inept with our pricing, couldn’t run a check to save my life, and had to stay late dealing with a woman who demanded her pictures that evening and not first thing in the morning. It was a disastrous first day, but at least it wasn’t as bad as Detective Bayliss’, who ends his first day by taking on the brutal murder of 11-year-old Adena Watson. My issues with the price of a 5×7 print had nothing on that.

“Ghost of a Chance” directly refers to a case Howard was investigating, but it seems to have more to do with Bayliss’ trial by fire of a first case. No homicide case would be easy, but to have to start with one that has the attention of the entire police force and local media is like learning to play golf at Augusta National. Bayliss hasn’t gotten used to the idea of seeing a dead body or telling a family, heck he doesn’t even have a desk. Making matters worse, Pembleton wants to take over the case and Gee is on his case about not showing enough fire about the case. Then the local media finds out that this is his first ever homicide case. Oh, and there’s no evidence at the scene and every lead goes nowhere. Here comes Bayliss’ chance to prove himself and solve a big case in the spotlight, but he doesn’t yet have the stomach or the confidence to do it. He barks orders at Pembleton, Lewis, and Crosetti, but he goes silent in a group meeting and in the coroner’s office. It’s easy for the other detectives to ask the contents of Adena Watson’s stomach or whether or not she was raped, but Bayliss still can’t differentiate between Adena Watson the 11-year-old girl and Adena Watson the case. It’s perfectly understandable, and I think in a lot of ways, Bayliss is the a stand in for the audience, who also may not have the steel facade to cover up for their own emotion in the murder of a little girl.

While Bayliss is wrestling with his internal demons, Howard is dealing with the supernatural, much to the amusement of Felton. After being visited by Ed Danvers, a prosecuting attorney (played by a not yet bald Željko Ivanek, who has become in recent years my favorite go-to villain), Howard makes it her mission to get enough evidence out of a suspected murderer, Ralph Fenwick, to convict him of a brutal murder. Without any new leads and not knowing where to start, Howard tells Felton she was visited by the ghost of the murder victim, telling her where the murder weapon is hiding. She can’t find it though, and Felton enlists Lewis and Crosetti to help mock her for her ghostly tips. But Fenwick isn’t sleeping and is incoherent when they go to talk to him again, and they nab him trying to move the gun late at night. They catch him thanks to a tip Felton got from a tarot card reader, which helps patch things up with his partner.

The best humor of the night came from the adventures of Munch and Bolander, who are investigating the possible murder of an elderly man. They show up to find that the man is in fact alive, having just passed out, and when he wakes up, he begins yelling at his wife, with her retorting that she wished he didn’t wake up. It’s a hilarious scene that turns gruesome a while later, when they’re called back, this time with the man actually dead in the cellar. It seems he collapsed again, and this time, his wife dragged him down the stairs and out to the cellar. Bolander doesn’t think it’s a homicide, which conflicts with the opinion of the coroner, Blythe, who he’s also working up the courage to ask out. Munch is looking out for his friend though, and he arranges to have flowers sent to Blythe under Bolander’s name, and things seems smoothed out. Munch again had my favorite moment of the episode, this time coming as he yells at a rat.

“Ghost of a Chance” was again filled with moments where it’s shown that homicide is just as job, mostly seen through Lewis and Crosetti, you alternately joke about the true events of the Lincoln Assassination and filling old Memorial Stadium with water. And yet, the episode is much heavier than it’s predecessor, mostly with emotional scenes of Bayliss telling Adena Watson’s mother her daughter was dead and the powerful scenes like the one where Gee and Bayliss argue over his lack of intensity. Homicide in just two episodes has found the line between the lighter side of a dark job and the super dark side of a dark job. I’m looking forward to understanding the characters a little bit better, but already, I’m finding myself comfortable in this show.

Michael’s Grade: 80
TUiW Grade: B+

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by | June 7, 2010 · 10:22 pm

Summer TV Club: Twin Peaks – “Pilot”

5 miles south of the Canadian border and 12 miles west of the state line, Twin Peaks is an insular logging community in Washington that seems innocent, almost quaint on the surface. But then the body of a young girl washes up on a riverbank, covered in plastic.
Welcome to our Summer TV Club coverage of Twin Peaks, a show which probably needs no introduction but indulge me. In 1990, when Twin Peaks’ movie-length pilot aired, the highest rated show was Cheers. Matlock and L.A. Law were still attracting lots of viewers and we were just a few months away from the debut of Cop Rock. At the same time, whether by coincidence or fate, Twin Peaks and The Simpsons debuted. While I wonder what a world in which Cop Rock captured the imaginations of the public would be like, instead it was Twin Peaks that would go on to become one of the most influential shows on TV. Everything from Lost to Northern Exposure can claim a kindred spirit with David Lynch and Mark Frost’s weird, cerebral program. Which makes it all the more embarassing that, until this week, I had never seen it. Given how confusing this show can be, it might be better to have a guide who knows where the story is going. I’ll be doing my best, though, to make sense of it all. Feel free to chime in the comments if I have it all wrong though (just try to clearly mark spoilers as such).
So, Twin Peaks? We start with an opening credit sequence that looks and sounds not unlike a town’s promotional video (with plenty of footage of lumber being cut), but with a slightly sinister undertone. As a first-time viewer, “Pilot” introducted us to the large cast of characters who will be in play while wallowing in the bizarre atmosphere of its title environment. The tone shifts wildly, points are raised and dropped, the line between reality and dreams is blurred, and genres are combined. Its one thing to have this kind of thing in Blue Velvet, playing in a few hundred theaters to the art-house crowd; its quite another to have it on broadcast TV.
The rather deliberate pacing of “Pilot” stands in stark contrast to most modern TV shows, which try to hook the viewer as quickly as possible. Instead, after the police discover the body of Laura Palmer, things take on a dream-like quality as we move through the town of Twin Peaks and meet its residents. There’s Laura’s grieved parents – in an episode that veers wildly between comedy and tragedy, the scene where Sarah and Leland are informed of their daughter’s murder is devastating – her assorted friends and neighbors, and the surrounding community, all of whom seem to come to a stop. But there’s also indications that Laura wasn’t the innocent prom queen she appeared, and that there some sinister corrupting forces at the heart of this town.
Into this environment comes Special Agent Dale Cooper (played by Kyle Maclachlan, best known for Showgirls and Desperate Housewives) (Oh yeah, and Blue Velvet), all pie-eyed enthusiasm and all-American wholesomeness (at least, at first glance). He’s psyched for the Douglas firs and relaying his thoughts on a tape recorder for the sake of “Diane,” a device that works because of how much insight we get into Cooper’s mindset. Cooper is a Lynch hero through and through, a mix of Jeff Beaumont and Betty Elms (sure, the latter is still a decade away) and I’m very excited to see how he interacts with the good people of Twin Peaks. Already, I’m really digging his interplay with the town’s sheriff, Harry S. Truman.
But for me, two scenes stand-out the most after a first viewing. There’s Cooper and Truman’s examination of the body, with its unsettling, flashing flourescent light (apparently an accident that Lynch wisely decided to keep). The light is a small moment but it serves as an incredibly effective reminder that something here is not right. Then there’s the ending, which trades on “Leader of the Pack” doomed-teenager imagery as it finds James and Donna, confessing their love in a dark, barren forest. And Truman and Cooper’s surveillence. And Donna’s father’s odd reaction. And that creepy coda.

“Pilot” keeps its cards close to its chest; its not trying to beat you over the head with a battery of mysteries. Instead Twin Peaks creates a mood, a mood that anyone who’s driven around a small town at night can empathize with. The mood that, underneath the gentle facade and behind the woods, there’s something very wrong.

Jonah’s Score: 90

TUIW Grade: A

David Lynch Tweet of the Week: “I have applied the hands to the holes.”

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by | June 4, 2010 · 3:55 pm

Summer TV Club: Deadwood – “Deadwood”

By way of reminder, both Michael and Jonah will be writing about Season 1 of Deadwood: Friday’s entry in the Summer TV Club.

Michael’s Take

Wow, does Deadwood start out with a punch! Within the first 10 minutes of the show, there’s a brutal hanging and a slew of f-bombs (Wikipedia says there are 43 in the episode). Deadwood immediately made itself known as, if not a realistic portrayal of the Wild West, one that is steeped in stylized, gritty realism. This ain’t John Wayne’s west.

The episode is heavy, to say the least. At times, I felt I didn’t have a grasp on what was going on, not only because the episode seemed to pick up from some previous point, but also because the characters mumble in their already hard to follow accents. When I did catch on though, I really enjoyed it. It’s a complex show that doesn’t mind making its characters pure evil or morally ambiguous, even the first 10 minutes. There was no better way to set the tone of the show then with that opening scene, in which a steel-eyed Timothy Olyphant as Seth Bullock at first shows a slight compassion for a man sentenced to death for stealing a horse, but immediately turns cold when a mob descends upon them, demanding they do the hanging themselves. Bullock gets his last words to pass along to the man’s sister, and hangs him himself, much to the astonishment of the mob outside. Bullock, and later Wild Bill Hickok, have a twisted perception of justice that includes killing without remorse.

Ian McShane absolutely knocked me over in this first episode as Al Swearengen, the owner of the Gem Theatre, which roles several vices (drinking, gambling, and prostitution) into a one stop shop for a town the is built on vice. Swearengen is ruthless, and its not hard to tell, he’s going to be the villain of Deadwood, which I think should be really interesting. As the clear ringleader of a massacre of a family covered up as an Indian attack, Swearengen is immediately weary of Hickok and Bullock, who recover a little girl from the scene and shoot the man they believe actually did it. What interests me is how, in a town where there is no law and no one person that runs the show, Swearengen will clash with Hickok and Bullock, who are clearly on the same page as far as taking matters into their own hands.

I think something that bears noting here in this first glimpse at the show is how profane the language is. I’ve read that creator David Milch decided to use modern profanity because using the actual slang of the time (ex. “goldarn”) would have come across as utterly ridiculous in the context of the show. But at the same time, the swearing seems so over the top and abundant that it’s occasionally distracting. Sure, most of these people are, for lack of a better term, stupid drunks, but I occasionally, the language overshadowed the plot.

Yet, the profanity fits in with Deadwood. Milch seems to be going for a cross between historical accuracy and Old West mythology, and the two ideas work together in a pretty unique way. The Western started as a sort of idyllic exploration of the untamed West, and as Deadwood seems to want to point out, it wasn’t full of John Waynes. Deadwood more than anything fascinated me with its first episode. It’s compelling to say the least, but it’s also incredibly intense to watch, which I think is what makes it so appealing. How do you find characters to root for in a lawless town? I’m excited to find out.

Jonah’s Take

Deadwood opens with Seth Bullock, our main character, preparing to set out for the titular town. Before he can go, he has one last piece of business to attend to: watching a prisoner in lock-up for stealing someone’s horse. A posse comes to kill the man but Bullock refuses to give him up. However, he also knows that he’s outnumbered and can’t hold the mob off. So Bullock hangs the man himself, circumventing the law to make the most out of an impossible situation.

If its contemporary, The Wire, was about how bloated and fading institutions are destroying communities, then Deadwood is about how the creation of those institutions and how they were built from nothing (at least, that’s my take after watching the first episode). The city of Deadwood itself is a potent metaphor: a town in the wilderness with no laws and the promise that an enterprising and resourceful person can make his (and it seems like, while there are a number of interesting female characters, most of the town’s players will be male) fortune without interference from any kind of state. Without laws, we’re left with a collection of individuals, each with a set of morals and varying levels of flexibility with regards to the exercise of those morals.

In the pilot, simply titled “Deadwood,” we meet the season’s major players. There’s Seth, a marshal who seems committed to the notion of justice if not the law. Seth and his friend Sol come to Deadwood to sell hardware, but it isn’t long until Seth’s need to punish the wicked crops up. To do so, he teams up with Western legend Wild Bill Hickok, who has just arrived in Deadwood as well (and who is played by the always welcome Keith Carradine). Hickok’s arrival creates a stir in the community but, for now anyway, he appears to be a bit of a cipher. Hickok and Seth set out to the site where a family was massacred and rescue a little girl, however Seth comes to suspect the man who led them there (and claimed the family were victims of an Indian attack) and the two of them execute the man when they return to Deadwood. In a place without laws, people will follow their own compasses to their brutal ends.

Hickok attracts the attention of Al Swearengen, Deadwood’s breakout character. Deadwood seems designed (or, more accurately, undesigned) for a man like Swearengen who is intelligent, power-hungry, and amoral. Swearengen has no qualms about duping an easy mark for $20,000, killing an underling who made a mistake after he’s done with the man, and beating a hooker. The latter, named Trixie, is a hooker with a heart of gold, but she seems, at first blush, relatively powerless. She comes back to Swearengen and sleeps with him even after he beat her. For Swearengen, Deadwood represents an opportunity for him to provide illicit vices to the lesser masses who are drawn to the town partly by those vices. The most telling scene, for me, was his irritation at the news of the family’s slaughter, because he worried that the ensuing mob would take away from his business. Swearengen is as smart as he is ruthless, though, and he takes control of the situation like a good capitalist: slashing prices and hanging onto his business while promising the time for justice and retribution will come the following morning.

We also got glimpses of a couple more intriguing characters. There’s Molly Parker’s Alma Garrett, who seems much more intelligent and formidable than her simpleton husband (Swearengen’s mark). And, of course, there’s the boisterous and amusing Calamity Jane whose abrasive, energetic presence certainly left its mark on the first episode (she’s definitely my favorite character coming out the pilot, although its close with Swearengen).

Even at this early phase, having heard that the show’s first episodes are its weakest, I find myself really drawn in by the world of Deadwood: its characters, its setting, and especially the thematic possibilities of a city with no laws. I’m also intrigued by the question of why Seth set out for Deadwood in the first place? Is it for the opportunity presented by a town like that or did he leap at the chance to impose his own morality onto a totally blank slate? Am I being cynical? What is this show trying to tell us about those who would lead? And about “The System” on a macro level? Unlike Michael, I thought the excessive swearing worked, not only because it was cleverly used but it heightened the sense that Deadwood is a town without civilization. Here there is no need for decorum and the people in charge have no problem throwing around as many “fucks” and “cocksuckers” as they please. Deadwood is hardly an eden, but what compromises will our characters need to be made to construct and impose order onto the chaotic and natural world around them?

For more on our summer TV club, including the schedule and where to watch some of the shows, go here.

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by | June 3, 2010 · 3:34 pm

Summer TV Club: Dead Like Me – “Pilot”

Dead Like Me is available to watch for free on Hulu or on Netflix Instant Streaming!

There’s a good chance you may have missed Dead Like Me when it was on Showtime from 2003-2004. It’s brief run came at a time when Showtime was still running mostly second rate programs in comparison to the heavier shows on bigger rival HBO, and though it was easily the best and highest rated original show on the network. The show was the first created by Bryan Fuller, who’s other shows Wonderfalls and Pushing Daisies have garnered strong cult followings. Fuller made a name for himself through his work on the first season of Heroes, and before Dead Like Me, wrote for the Star Trek Franchise, but his first show set the tone for the remainder of his work. Though he left the show after only five episodes, due to a creative dispute, he was able to leave his mark on it, and leave behind his distinctive touch (pun intended for you Fuller fans out there), creating a show that was heavy on its characters instead of it’s fantastic theme.

Dead Like Me is an ensemble show, but it centers on it’s narrator, George Lass (Ellen Muth), an angsty 18-year-old college drop out, who on her first day working at a temp agency, is killed when the toilet seat of an abandoned space station crashes down on her as she eats lunch. But rather than moving on, George joins a group of Reapers, undead souls that remove the souls of people before they die and help them move on to the afterlife. At the head of group is Rube (a fantastic Mandy Patinkin), a no-nonsense leader of the gang that also includes Mason (Callum Blue), a British hooligan, Roxy (Jasmine Guy), who works as a meter maid when she isn’t reaping, and Betty (Rebecca Gayheart), who takes pictures of everyone she takes the souls of. They’re a motly bunch, and unfortunately for George, they souls they’re taking aren’t the old or even the sick, but those that fall in the “External Influence,” so homicides, suicides, and most notably, horrific accidents.

I think that one of the brilliant aspects of the story that was revealed from the start is that this isn’t just a bunch of ghosts taking people’s souls. First of all, they don’t maintain their same appearance, at least to the rest of the world, as all non-reapers see some sort of alternate version of them. Secondly, they don’t kill anyone per se, that’s left to the Gravelings, little goblins that set in motion the chain of events that lead to a person’s demise. Interference will lead to some sort of repercussions, though it’s not terribly explicit in the pilot what those might be. Every morning, the Reapers get notes of who they’re going to be reaping from Rube that contain only the person’s first initial, their last name, a location, and time. It adds an amusing and entertaining level of difficulty to the actual reaping, where the Reaper is left to figure out on their own who is going to die before it’s too late. If they don’t get to them in time, the soul will remain in the body, and be subjected to terrible things, such as their own autopsy or even being buried soul-alive, which sounds even more terrifying to me. Additionally, if a Reaper refuses to remove a soul, it will wither inside them, which again, sounds pretty terrible.

Another clever thing that’s established from the start is that the Reapers don’t get paid for any sort of compensation for their work, which means they have to get a day job or some other sort of income. It’s this little caveat that leads George back to Happy Time Temp Agency, where she worked ever so briefly before she died. Having gone through the interview process previously, George, under her no identity of Millie Hagen, charms Deloris Herbig (“as in her big brown eyes!”) into getting an office job.

While all of this is pretty disconcerting to George, her new companions assure her that she’ll get used to it, and that everyone dies. Yet, it’s easy to sympathize with George, as she attends her own funeral and sees how distraught her oft ignored sister Reggie and her mother are. Her first two reaps aren’t any easier, the first taking place in a bank full of people (and ending in a crazy Rube Goldberg fashion) and the second being the soul of a little girl that dies in a train crash. George refuses to take her soul, but once Rube tells her about how souls wither and die, she reluctantly does so, and leads the girl into a bright light. It’s a poignant moment mixed into a 72 minute pilot that largely stays in the realm of slapstick and dark humor.

Fans of Pushing Daises will love Dead Like Me, given all of the similar devices that Fuller would later transfer over to that show, including a girl going by a boy’s name (George and Reggie, Chuck in Pushing Daisies), the family dealing with the aftermath of their loved one’s death, that said loved one actually being alive in some supernatural theme and not being able to tell their family, and most notably, the complicated set of rules that govern life and death. As with Pushing Daisies, the characters of Dead Like Me have a strict set of rules governing their interaction with death. Stating these rules so explicitly in the pilot doesn’t make for great dialogue, but without understanding them, the show would have hard time standing on its own.

But the pilot of Dead Like Me is intriguing and a whole lot of fun. I like that the Reapers get such vague descriptions of who they need to reap and how they guess how it will all happen, and I love that even after she’s died, George still has to get a job to make ends meet. In a way, Dead Like Me is a really twisted coming of age/workplace comedy/fantasy show/family drama that is able to shift between each with ease. Make no mistake, at its heart, Dead Like Me is a black comedy, but the pilot had its fair share of touching moments. But it’s the little things that make this show so funny. George being killed by a toilet seat is funny enough, but there’s also the zany, slapstick nature of George’s first reaping, and the goofiness of things like the secretary at the temp agency, who looks like she just wondered in from a Saturday afternoon cartoon.

It’s a premise that’s chalk full of potential, and the cast in the pilot is pretty brilliant. Mandy Patinkin shines, naturally, as Rube, but Ellen Muth’s pitch perfect grouchiness steals the show, yet she plays up George’s human side well too. Without it though, Dead Like Me doesn’t have a soul (another pun intended). I know that one episode, especially a pilot, makes it hard to tell the general tone of a show (and it’s made even more complicated here given that Fuller left the show so early on), but Dead Like Me definitely engages on several levels, and I’m quite interested to see where it heads.

Michael’s Score: 80
TUiW Grade: B+

For more on our summer TV club, including the schedule and where to watch some of the shows, go here.

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by | June 2, 2010 · 4:10 pm

Summer TV Club: Veronica Mars – “Pilot” and “Credit Where Credit’s Due”

Hello and welcome to TUIW’s Summer TV Club coverage of Season 1 of Veronica Mars. I’m Jonah and I’ll be your guide through the quirky and splintered world of Neptune, California but, before we get into that, a couple of notes:

-Unlike other Summer TV Club entries, we’ll be covering two episodes a week here. The reason is that Veronica Mars is the only show with a traditional 22-episode season and we only have 11-13 weeks to get through this.

-Also unlike the other shows, I’ve seen all of Veronica Mars so I’m still getting used to recapping a show when I already know where it’s going. However, for those of you following along and watching for the first time, I won’t be spoiling anything before it happens, so these recaps will be safe to read. That being said, I will, from time to time, include a veterans section at the bottom of the review (like Alan Sepinwall does with his Wire recaps) to talk about some of the long-term table setting. So if you’re a VM rookie, make sure to avoid that part (which will be clearly marked).

-Finally, if you’re going to post spoilers in the comments, please clearly mark them as such.

All right, that’s enough of that. Let’s get going.

“Pilot”

When the 2000s retrospectives were written, Veronica Mars was mostly left out of the conversation or ranked rather low on the Best Shows of the Decade lists (ours excluded). The general reason being that the show’s second season was complex and ambitious to a fault and the third season was hindered by the compromises the show had to make to stay on the air. This gets at (what I see as) a fundamental flaw in how we evaluate television. Given potential shifts in personnel both behind and in front of the camera, general network instability, any number of unpredictable real world problems that could crop up, and the fact that shows aren’t produced all at once, it makes much more sense to me to evaluate a TV show like you would a band, and each season like you would an album. From season-to-season a show can change wildly, but within an individual season, there’s usually a plan and some sort of unified creative direction. I’d argue that it is more useful to analyze and criticize shows season-to-season than as a whole. So why am I engaging in a largely theoretical discussion here? Because there are maybe only 5 or 10 seasons of television that are better than season one of Veronica Mars.

A lot of the credit goes to Rob Thomas (not the Matchbox 20 guy), a former teacher and novelist who had written a number of books about high schoolers before cracking into TV with Cupid (which featured a young Jeremy Piven). Thomas followed that with a program on UPN, a channel that still existed when I was your age. UPN was probably looking for the next O.C., but under Thomas, they got something much different: a season-long crime mystery that doubles as a thorough examination of the class issues at play in Neptune, California (which Veronica describes in the Pilot as “a town without a middle class”), a clear stand-in for Orange County.

But I’m getting way ahead of myself. For starters, there’s “Pilot,” which opens in medias stakeout as Veronica Mars, a blonde 17-year-old girl spitting narration straight from a Raymond Chandler novel, sits in a parked car spying on an illicit meeting at a love motel. Unlike the high schoolers of Brick, the people of Neptune don’t all talk like this. Veronica Mars’ hard-boiled nature was created and this hour sets about showing us how.

Honestly, “Pilot” played a little wonkier than I remembered it. Pilots are always an iffy affair since they’ve been extensively focus tested and the elements that are conducive to good television are just starting to fall into place. However, Kristen Bell doesn’t disappoint. She had done pretty much nothing before this show, and it’s obvious to see why, despite the fact that Veronica Mars was never a ratings success, Bell has become a very in-demand actor. She manages make some very stylized dialogue grounded in a real emotional place. She also never forgets that she’s playing a high school junior. Despite her cynical facade, Veronica Mars is (as Wallace puts it) “a marshmallow.”

But why the cynicism? As we learn in “Pilot,” Veronica was in with the cool kids (09ers, in the parlance of the show, named after their zip code) and dating the most popular boy in school, Duncan Kane, until Duncan’s sister and Veronica’s BFF Lilly was murdered. Keith Mars, Veronica’s dad and the local sheriff, suspected software billionaire Jake Kane (Lilly and Duncan’s father) of committing the crime, which was a problem because Jake Kane is a billionaire and the most popular man in Neptune. Keith pursued Jake until a recall election kicked Keith out of office. Veronica’s mom disappeared and all of her friends abandoned her because of her father’s crusade. Veronica went to a party to prove that she wasn’t affected by them, only to be drugged and raped.

It’s a lot of exposition to swallow, but the show does a good job of moving us through it. And, psychologically, it makes sense that Veronica would latch on to her father – the only stable, supportive human left in her life – and try to be more like him. But by the end of “Pilot” things are looking up for Veronica. She has befriended newbie Wallace and become frenemies with Weevil and the local bike gang.

But as much as I love the long-term storytelling, I had forgotten how much fun the week-to-week mysteries can be, and especially Veronica’s solution to those mysteries. Here we get a pretty good one, as Veronica unleashes a plan that brings down Logan (who I’ll talk more about when we get into the next episode) and the Sheriff while taking care of Weevil’s case and Cliff’s. Even though it’s still a very tightly written mystery, there’s still some extraneous elements (like the helpful firefighter) that the show will get better about not using as it gets more comfortable.

All in all, “Pilot” does a good job of introducing us to the world of Neptune and setting up this season’s main concerns.

“Credit Where Credit’s Due”

There are two kinds of quality TV shows. There’s the kind like Mad Men and The Sopranos whose ambitions are immediately obvious and who announce themselves as being different from other TV shows. But then there’s the shows that have to work within a genre and the viewer has to accept that before moving on. Battlestar Galactica looks and feels like a Sci-Fi original movie and The Wire starts like a cop procedural. And, in Veronica Mars’ case, you have to put up with a heavy dose of post-O.C. teen angst (complete with a soundtrack of hot new buzz bands like Fountains of Wayne) and a cameo from Paris Hilton to get to the good stuff.

But even this episode has a lot going for it. For one, “Credit Where Credit’s Due” starts to tackle the season-long concern of just how different Veronica is from the 09ers. In high school, feelings tend to be exaggerated, drama blown up, and the differences between each other expanded. Is Veronica an outcast on the fringes of high school society? Or is she a popular girl who is just posing? Weevil certainly thinks it’s the latter, accusing Veronica of assuming he was guilty of the credit card fraud. Also, freed of the expository concerns of “Pilot,” “Credit Where Credit’s Due” can be a little more fun and take its time to give us great character moments like the scene between Keith and Sheriff Lamb in the diner.

Plot-wise, this episode is relatively straightforward, as it once again finds Veronica being brought into the worlds of the bikers and the 09ers, because of some credit card fraud. While both Weevil’s grandmother and Weevil take the fall, it’s pretty obvious that the culprit is actually Weevil’s cousin, who was using the credit cards to take out 09er Paris Hilton behind Logan’s back. The cousin gets his ass kicked by everybody, Weevil (and Grandma) get out of jail, all thanks to the investigative prowess of Veronica Mars (with an assist from Wallace, who now works in the office).

I think the mystery here is a little thin and the resolution is nothing too special (not to mention that it has Paris Hilton dragging the whole thing down). There’s also some iffy logical issues (like the woman in the police station who is apparently the only person in the town who doesn’t know the Kane family or Lilly’s murder) and, like a lot of second episodes, this one feels a little like the show is ramping up. Still, I think where “Credit Where Credit’s Due” really succeeds is in turning the relationship between Veronica and Keith, which felt a little awkward in “Pilot,” into a much sweeter and more believable one. It also does a good job of pushing the master plot forward just enough (the Kanes’ airtight alibis aren’t so airtight, as proven by the traffic photo of Lilly).

It can be a lot to keep track of, and the show’s web is only going to get wider and denser from here. Still, as a start, it’s a damn good one. The show’s mystery is well-established and we’re already starting to see its class warfare concerns come up (although right now, it can be a little too on-the-nose about it). And, at the center of it all is Kristen Bell, giving an absolutely phenomenal performance. The pieces are starting to fall into place, and it’ll only be a matter of time before things really kick into gear.

Jonah’s Scores:

“Pilot” – 82

“Credit Where Credit’s Due” – 73

TUIW Grades:

“Pilot” – A-

“Credit Where Credit’s Due” – B

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by | June 1, 2010 · 2:58 pm

Summer TV Club: Homicide – “Gone for Goode”

Welcome to the start of our Summer TV Club! What better way to kick it off at the close of a holiday weekend with a gritty crime show about murder! Before delving into the first episode of Homicide, I think it makes a little bit of sense to explain why I’m watching it in the first place. Part of the allure of Homicide is the creative team behind it. The show was adapted by a book by David Simon, a Baltimore reporter, who would go on to win acclaim for The Corner, The Wire, and now, Treme. The show’s creator, Paul Attanasio, would get an Oscar nod for his script for Quiz Show, before he’d settle back into television with a little show on Fox called House. And then there was a Barry Levinson-directed pilot. On top of all of this, there was a top notch cast that featured Kyle Secor, Andre Braugher, Daniel Baldwin, Clark Johnson, Jon Polito, Yaphet Kotto, Ned Beatty, and Richard Belzer, who introduced the world to Detective John Munch, a character he still plays today on Law and Order: SVU.

So the pedigree of the show really speaks for itself. Yet, as seems to be David Simon’s curse, the show was critically acclaimed but struggled in the ratings, even from the start. Premiering after Super Bowl XXVII on January 31, 1993, Homicide immediately became a bubble show. Yet two Emmy’s for the pilot and the success of ABC’s cop drama NYPD Blue led to the show getting picked up for a minuscule four episode second season, following an equally small nine episode first. The show struggled in the ratings for the rest of its seven year run, and after a TV movie in 2000, the show wrapped its run. Homicide has been heralded not just for its quality, but also for it’s portrayal of African American men, and even spawned one of the first internet tie-ins, with Homicide: Second Shift, a mini-spinoff exclusively on the web.

All of this weighed heavy on my mind as I put in the first episode, “Gone for Goode.” Immediately, Homicide establishes just what it is. It starts with Lewis (Johnson) and Crosetti (Polito) at the scene of a recent shooting, but instead of getting details or scouring for clues, they’re having a conversation. Right off the bat, Homicide plays out like a dark workplace drama, with the crime in the background. Shortly after this scene, and following the opening credits, the general form of Homicide becomes clear: rather than feature the whole department working on a single case, the sets of partners are all working their own cases, all with the goal of turning cases on the big board from red (unsolved) to black (solved).

In “Gone for Goode,” the three cases investigated are not interwoven with the personal lives of the cops, but rather their work relationships and their relationship with work. Before Felton (Baldwin) and Howard (Leo) take a call about a body in a basement, he hesitates to take the call, thinking it will be an unsolved case, when in fact, it goes incredibly smoothly. Lewis and Crosetti’s case involves a woman who murders her husbands after taking out life insurance policies, encountering styrofoam coffins and lost bodies along the way. Felton gets into it with Pembleton (Braugher) when the latter has a set of unmarked car keys, and won’t go get a new key, instead trying every one in the garage. Muntz yells at a suspect that he’s “not Montell Williams.” I was pleasantly surprised not only by the humor, but by how it wasn’t in the form of a witty quip the way it is in most current crime dramas.

Yet on the other side of the humor is the gritty cop drama. There are some cop show troupes present, such as the fact that Pembleton refuses to work with a partner, but for the most part, Homicide doesn’t treat the scene of the crime or the details with any more reverence than they need. In fact, the humor works to the advantage of the show, making the brutal crimes more realistic. In fact, David Simon was once quoted as saying, “The greatest lie, I think, in dramatic TV is the cop who stands over a body and pulls up the sheet and mutters, ‘Damn’ and looks down sadly. To a real homicide detective, it’s just a day’s work.” And that’s a good point, which help separates Homicide, and later The Wire, from the standard cop procedural. There is importance placed on the severity and gravity of the crimes, as seen in Bolander’s (Beatty) remark to Muntz that someone needs to stand up for Jenny Goode, a druggie that was the victim of a hit and run, and yet, it’s hard to argue with the fact that if you see that sort of thing everyday, you’ll become immune to the tragedy of it, and thus look for the lighter side of a job that dwells in tragedy.

The most powerful scene in “Gone for Goode” comes when rookie cop Bayliss (Secor) sits in on an interrogation with Pembleton. The two had been investigating the death of an older man in a hotel, and had caught a younger man, (Spin City‘s Alexander Chaplin) who had been in his company and had stolen his car. Pembleton is a one man “good cop, bad cop” routine, lulling the suspect into waiving his right to an attorney before getting him to confess. Braugher puts on a spectacular performance in the scene, and his subsequent argument with Bayliss over whether or not the kid should have had the right to attorney or not is as powerful as any scene you’ll see on television today. To a certain degree, this isn’t really the most original cop argument, but it does an excellent job of setting up the convictions of both Pembleton and Bayliss, the latter of whom at episode’s end takes his first call, where he’s called to the scene of the murder of Adena Watson, an 11-year-old-girl. The case is Bayliss’ first, and from what I understand, becomes the biggest lingering mystery over the course of the show’s run.

I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of “Gone for Goode.” As someone who’s never been a big fan of cop procedurals, I was impressed at how the show relies on its characters more than it does the idea of cops solving cases, even in its first episode. There is a naturalism that has rarely been seen in network television, even in today’s new golden age, that is incredibly appealing, and engages the viewer as much as the story itself. I guess it goes without saying I’m really looking forward to seeing how this show plays out.

Michael’s Score: 98
TUiW Grade: A+

For more on our summer TV club, including the schedule and where to watch some of the shows, go here.

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by | May 27, 2010 · 2:36 pm

Introducing the TUiW Summer TV Club

Looking for something to pass the idle or rainy days of summer? Join TUiW in our Summer TV Club! We’ve picked five highly regarded TV shows that we’ll be reviewing over the next few weeks, so borrow, rent, or Netflix some DVDs and join us for this fun, retroactive look at five great shows! Three of the seasons we’re reviewing are available for free (legally!) online, and links for those are provided below. We’ll be kicking off everything this Tuesday, with a normal Monday-Friday schedule beginning the next week, after the holiday weekend. So without further ado, here are the shows and our schedule!

Monday: Twin Peaks Season One

Jonah kicks off the week with David Lynch’s weird and mysterious Twin Peaks. The show follows an FBI agent investigating the mysterious murder of a homecoming queen in the town of Twin Peaks, which seems to have an endless supply of oddities. Our Twin Peaks reviews will start a week after the rest, due to it’s fewer number of episodes and the Memorial Day holiday on Monday. CBS has all of the first season (except the feature length pilot) for free on their website here.

Tuesday: Homicide: Life on the Street Seasons One and Two

Before there was The Wire, there as Homicide, based off of David Simon’s book of the same name. With a pilot directed by Barry Levinson, Homicide ushered in a new era of gritty cop shows. Michael will be taking on both Seasons One and Two of the show, both included in the same DVD set. Homicide is not available for free (legal) streaming online, but Seasons 1 & 2 are available on Amazon for as low as $9.99 here.

Wednesday: Veronica Mars Season One

Kristen Bell got her big break by playing the title role of Veronica Mars for three years, and Jonah will be taking a look at the show’s first (and best) season. Veronica Mars is film noir mystery set in the middle of a wealthy suburban high school, and was easily one of the most underrated shows of the mid-2000′s. Jonah will be reviewing two episodes a week to stay in pace with our four other shows. The first season of Veronica Mars is available for free streaming online at The WB Website (Warner Bros. TV, not the network) and can be watched here.

Thursday: Dead Like Me Season One

Bryan Fuller made a name for himself with Pushing Daisies and for his work on the first season of Heroes, but he created Dead Like Me, a dark comedy about a girl that dies and becomes part of a gang of Reapers, bringing people from life to death. Michael will review the first season, which can be found on Hulu here or on Netflix Instant Streaming!

Friday: Deadwood Season One

We’ll close out the week with dueling reviews of the first season of Deadwood, the acclaimed western drama from NYPD Blue‘s David Milch. The HBO show garnered 8 Emmys in 28 nominations, and was one of the more critically acclaimed shows of the 2000s. Deadwood is not available for free (legally) online, but is available on Amazon or iTunes.

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