Month: April 2016

The Path – Season 1 – Episodes 1-2 Don't forget your lightscreen.

Sure you’ve got your zombies, your demons, your headless horsemen, your lawyers in suits that cost more than you make in a year, but for real horror, nothing beats that interminable grace-ish moment of twee before the group home meal on The Path. Holy cow, so to speak. The meal itself is almost as bad – not the food (probably) but the “conversation” around the table. So much passive agressive false enthusiasm and bullshit, they should have collapsed the crust of the Earth and plunged into the fiery depths. But no. It’s never that easy.

And I’ve seen few things more frightening than when Aaron Paul makes some mild comment about how everybody makes mistakes, and Michelle Monaghan snaps back “I don’t.” and she is not even slightly kidding. The show is pushing Hugh Dancy as the too-tightly-wound Evil Cult Dude but it’s Monaghan’s Sarah that strikes me as the real engine of destruction waiting to engage. That kind of absolute certainty that one is in the right, always, it never ends well.

So the setup of the show goes well. We’ll see whether they drive it off a cliff or not. Already there are some weak spots in the logic – hey lady, if your husband was killed, maybe go to, I dunno, the police? the FBI? But no.

The Catch – Season 1 – Episode 3 You call them corn, we call them "assholes"

There is a thing that is all too prevalent in movies and TV, the “Talking in the Theater” scene. Characters wind up in the audience for some event – a movie, a lecture, a concert, or the like – and still talk to each other like they’re at a ball game or something. Sometimes one of the NPCs around them will Ssssh! them, but only to demonstrate how cool and important the characters are compared to the stuffy/nerdy/square/whatever NPCs. It shows that either the creators are self-absorbed narcissists who cannot even conceive of why this would be problematic in any way, or that they are lazy mechanics who don’t think of their characters as real people in real situations: theater shmeater, whatever, we need this exposition, or we need to highlight this relationship, or advance the plot to here. Probably, as usual, it’s a bit of both. People already have enough difficulty these days distinguishing being in their homes and being in public, modeling this kind of unacceptable behavior is an automatic red card. The worst thing I can say about The Catch is that this scene was like the whole show writ small.

Otherwise this episode was stupid and bad, and it makes me sad that there are people who’ve been sold on the idea that this is what “witty” and “sharp” is like. Stylish, maybe, what do I know from stylish, but it’s stylish in the same way as those godawful huge gold and jewel laden watches they like to hang on people like diving weights: ugly and shallow and yet extremely useful as a flag saying, “Avoid Me!” I’ll take that advice.

10 Cloverfield Lane But the chain, Howard, you never explain the chain.

10 Cloverfield Lane is another good example of how much better a story is that recognizes that for most “Is it this or that?” questions, the answer is “Yes.” Especially about people. It’s true and crazy, good and bad, sweet and sour. Awareness of that doesn’t just make it more realistic and complete, it expands your opportunities to make your audience anxious if that’s what you’re trying to do. And oh I do think they had that on their minds here. Yes.

At the same time, what I particularly appreciated, personally, was what they didn’t do. They generally don’t go for the easy Boo! moves, despite being perfectly set up for them over and over. No simple startles here, just the ongoing increase in ohcrapness. I didn’t recognize the cast*, apart from John Goodman (I’ll never think of shaving the same way again), but they do a fine job. And though I know that really it has nothing to do with Cloverfield, it still makes me want to watch that again.

* I should have recognized Mary Elizabeth Winstead though! Ramona Flowers! Bad popculter. Plus an album with Dan the Automator!

American Crime Story – Season 1 – Episodes 8-10 "I'm not afraid to point to him."

Of course we know how it turned out. But what I didn’t know is that the prosecution thought that they might have actually pulled it out in the end, despite the mistakes and the circus and the bullshit. So it’s gutting to watch them as the verdicts are read, and see them realize that the evidence never really mattered.

So many reactions to these episodes and The People vs O.J. Simpson as a whole. First, that Sarah Paulson damn well better be at least nominated for an Emmy for this performance. Sterling Brown and Courtney Vance too. The whole cast was outstanding, even Cartoon Johnny Travolta.

Secondly, it had a weird echo in this election year, on the pointlessness of argument in some situations. This was a case study in motivated reasoning, people convincing themselves that things were “true” because they wanted it to be so. Facts and evidence and reason don’t just fail to diminish that effect, they increase it. You probably could have polled the jury on the very first day and gotten the same result.

Then, Chris Darden, holy heck. In some ways I think that what was going on in that courtroom, as written here, was one of the few actual examples of “political correctness” I’ve ever seen. As in, pure cowardice. People just didn’t want to be seen saying things they felt uncomfortable about. So they left it to him. Brown shows so well the rage that has built up after months of this. If this was a Tarantino movie he would have Hulked out and smashed the whole place up then thrown OJ into the ocean.

What I appreciate about the script and the show is that they never make anything tidy. Cochran both descends into bullshit fantasia in that closing argument and is absolutely 100% correct about the larger picture with the LAPD. Clark is purely right to see this as a murder trial, full stop, and yet wrong too.

What I didn’t realize was that even in 1995, the idea of domestic violence hadn’t really sunk in: “Prosecutor Marcia Clark made a case that, at the time, was unique: Women who have been the victims of partner abuse are very likely to be killed by their spouses.” That seems obvious now (well, one hopes), and that this trial had much to do with making it obvious is at least some benefit. The show demonstrates how easily and lightly Nicole’s terror is waved off.

I would never have expected this show to be this good. Let’s hope they can avoid the sophomore curse in Season 2.