Tuesday, December 12, 2017

Unconsciousness

You did what now?
[As before: heavy spoilers below.]

Um, yeah. I guess we're done here. I completed season one of Westworld last night and every time I think about it, all I can do is arch an eyebrow at some of the choices made, not just in the last couple episodes, but in the series overall. Twice before I've posted about what a slog the whole viewing experience was, with a few flickers of interest. That's why it took me over a year to finish watching. But what it boils down to is that the whole first season came to many of the same story conclusions as Michael Crichton's just-this-side-of-B movie did in 1973. The hosts are in revolt and there will be much blood extracted from the callous humans who've been treating thinking entities like appliances. In essence, what they're saying here is that it took 10 hours of TV to reach the same point that Yul Brynner got to in a half hour. And that Westworld, the series, for all of its multitude of characters and drawn out storylines and philosophical trappings, is still basically just half of Battlestar Galactica confined to an amusement park. Or an attempt at Blade Runner, but with a lot more angst and melodrama. Maybe.

Is this the part where I agree to do something that I don't understand?
There's a lot more talking in the last couple episodes as we're finally given some clarification on all of the visions and time lapses that a few characters have been experiencing. Most of that stuff centers around the hosts' realization of what the screenplay calls "consciousness." Now, that's a very nebulous and oft-debated term and concept, but the essential definition of that state is an awareness of self and having thoughts and feelings about the world around you. There's more to it, of course, but its most basic level is reacting to external stimuli and understanding a state of existence. The hosts have part of that, in that they respond to external stimuli as any thinking creature would. They have emotional displays to events around them. In that respect, you could possibly identify them as of animal intelligence, because many animals have those same reactions. But it's clearly more than that on the part of the hosts, even if they lack the sense of self that usually accompanies the term "consciousness." For example, Maeve doesn't lean back at the bar and think to herself: "Another day of screwing guys I don't know and maybe even getting shot for my troubles. Hooray?" But even if they don't have the higher levels defined by introspection, streams of thought, and the ability to imagine, we still have a situation where the machines are having emotional reactions to external stimuli, like pain, and they create emotional attachments to the guests based on behavior in order to maintain relationships through extended storylines. That's a sufficient level of realization that would make inflicting pain on them a moral and ethical issue even if they couldn't tell you the difference between Cartesian duality and more modern perspectives. People are arrested for violating those ethical grounds in their treatment of animals every day. The hosts would be no different, whether they can dream about escaping their private hell or not.

Searching for Nirvana. Obvsly. I've heard it's kind of like a labyrinth.
A tiny part of all of the talking about the basis of the entire series is when it's mentioned that Arnold defined the doorway to consciousness as suffering. They walked away from that idea quickly, despite it being one of the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism. The other Noble Truths explain that suffering is caused by desire, which in this case is displayed by Dolores' desire to solve the mystery in her head, Maeve's desire for freedom, and so on. That's kind of a blanket statement that hearkens to a major religion, rather than solely to philosophical underpinnings about the nature of the human condition. But they didn't follow up on it at all, which I found kind of odd, given how willing they'd been to drag out most of the rest of the story. That's a snippet that could have filled out some of the endless, rueful exchanges between William and the people on the fringe of the park. Instead, the first nine episodes were often a poor attempt at visual storytelling that led to an avalanche of Anthony Hopkins exposition in episode 10, which immediately had me thinking of a Bond villain revealing the master plot while he has 007 trapped in a sure deathtrap. Unfortunately, the only people trapped in this case were the viewers, especially when Ford states that he's actually been helping the hosts for 35 years by torturing them. If you frowned at the oblique nature of that, it's just one more step in the opaque storytelling that dominated the series.

I wasn't that broken up, but it was kind of annoying.
Take, for example, the Man in Black/William storyline, as it completely crashed and burned in the finale. So, the two most tedious storylines of the series were linked in tedium because they were about the same guy. I guess that makes sense on a production level, but what was the point of the whole exercise in the first place? This guy is obsessed with finding out what "the maze" is, despite the fact that he's been in the park for thirty years and is on the board of directors. Surely in his interactions with Ford by this time he understands that "the maze" is a construction by which they were teaching the hosts to discover themselves? You reach the end of the maze, you find your self and blossom into full consciousness.  There is no physical "maze" for him to discover, unless the implication is that his behavior, as a human, was every bit as mechanical as any of the hosts because he couldn't seem to accept the fact that he was never going to find the Minotaur. I guess I can accept the idea of someone that monomaniacal, but it's also an example of someone who's dumb as a bag of hammers and not exactly the guy that you'd expect Logan's dad would pick to run his massive company. It's a rather startling lack of insight which in fewer words is known as "stupid", which perhaps explains why that dual storyline was mostly annoying. It was essentially Don Quixote so that the showrunners could hand the audience a "Gotcha!" moment when they revealed that "THIS windmill runs backwards, too!" [Evil laugh.]

No. Seriously. THIS time, it'll work.
And Ford spent 35 years doing... what? Preparing them to fight for their rights in an incredibly slow and subtle method of allowing a select few to emerge into a state of consciousness and then wiping that away because he knew that the memory imprints of that emergence would eventually lead them to freedom? Or insanity, which, y'know, is a kind of freedom. This seems like a logical plan? I guess I can see why it would take 35 years... for the same reason that it took 10 hours of TV to tell the same story that a 90-minute, middlebrow, sci-fi thriller from the 70s did. Wow, man. There were nods aplenty to that middlebrow film, too, with the apparent "Samurai World" or "Shogun World" operating in the same complex, just like the Roman World and Medieval World from the film. And, of course, this revelation is presented in said torrent of exposition, so that the audience is digesting the master plan, Dolores' and Maeve's anguish that was a direct consequence of this master plan, and the fact that- No! Wait! Dr. Ford is actually a good guy! -all at once. That doesn't read like something that was planned out for a set sequence of episodes. It sounds like a pitch for 20 episodes that ended up stretching too long when HBO called and said "You gotta wrap it up in 10." But the worst part is that the story isn't even worth 20 episodes, especially if all of them are filled with more mutterings by the Man in Black about "the maze".

Now we have to watch society adapt as the rules have all crumbled in the face of this little world being taken over by a bunch of automatons, many of whom have an unhealthy pallor to their skin. Wait. Don't we already have this show? (Speaking of things that take too long to tell a story...)

No, I don't really believe it, either.
Hm. Yeah. As I've mentioned a couple times, there are a lot of good offerings on the concept of artificial intelligence and when or how it graduates to the level of "human". These are becoming more plentiful as the concept comes closer to emerging in our own reality. From what I've seen, I don't think Westworld measures up when compared to things like AMC's Humans; at least not if you don't want to linger through 10 weeks of angst while waiting for something interesting to happen.

Sunday, December 10, 2017

Still grinding

[Content note: There will be drastic spoilers below, so if you're planning on watching the first season of Westworld, you probably want to stop here.]


I'm still watching Westworld. Slowly. Deliberately. Whenever I'm up late and no one else is around so that I don't have to explain why. Part of the problem is that, as you may recall, I was pretty bored watching the first two episodes of the series that so many have hailed as the best thing HBO has done since Game of Thrones. It had a couple very vague interesting points but seemed to be taking a long time to build up to where it was heading. Consequently, I watched the next three, up to episode 5, with the same kind of "can't look away from the car crash" detachment with which I viewed True Detective season 2 (of which we will never speak again.) But, 'lo and behold, episode 5 was actually interesting and the following two have been at least intriguing, since I can pretty much see where they're going, but it's morbidly fascinating to see just how much time they can waste to get there in the course of a 10 episode season.


One thing I'm struggling with is the macro picture. For all the mystery and drama surrounding the essential question of thinking beings subjected to abject slavery and manipulation, the show doesn't really ask that question in the macro sense because it's contained to the park. Unlike, say, Blade Runner or AMC's Humans, the hosts aren't integrated into the public which would force that question to be posed to society-at-large. It's "just" a sadistic amusement park... which does, however, pose the eternal question of just how much the havenots are used as mindless drones by the haves. This is exemplified most obviously when Theresa finds Charlotte screwing one of the hosts a short time after referring to them as "property" of the corporation. So they are touching on the basic morality of living beings used as slaves or less-than-slaves; more like tools. Also, I get that the board of directors' plan may be to bring the technology into the larger world and that's why they're trying to wrest it from Ford. That in itself would bring that essential question into society and perhaps that's where they're going with future seasons. But if so, they're going to have to venture way beyond the limits of "Westworld", which doesn't seem to be the point of the story. Also also, if it's taken us seven episodes to set up that essential conflict, I'm more disappointed than ever.


The other thing that's bothering me is style. The moment where Bernard is revealed to be a host was a decent BIG REVEAL moment, even if it had been fairly obvious for some time (Ford pays close attention to Bernard and always invites his opinion; Bernard has a deep insight into Dolores' perspective, almost as if he relates to it; etc.) I'm assuming it was enticing for the idiots that like to insist on the "Deckard was a replicant!" conspiracy theory in Blade Runner which, of course, invalidates most of the basic questions that that film was asking. Bernard's reveal doesn't because there is no special class of human to oppose the other humans. You can't draw contrasts between the hosts and the guests because the former get reprogrammed every day and the latter are aware that they're in an environment that essentially begs them to act inhumanly. There is no day-to-day existence that permeates the scene. Life's a stage, etc.


That makes the only special class of human Ed Harris' Man in Black, who has to be one of the most pointless characters in the entire series, to date. He's determined to find out the root secrets of the park's function. He apparently has no other discernible mission or motive. But it's also a complete sideshow. Is anyone actually interested in that aspect of the story? Does anyone see a point to it? Even if people find themselves intrigued by the mystery of either/both his mission or his dogged determination, is anyone actually entertained by seven straight episodes of Ed Harris doing the Sauron thing ("I am mean and angry... because I am mean and angry!!!") Or, for that matter, him being the implacable, motiveless villain who does little more than hie into the wilderness, muttering about a maze alongside confused hosts who somehow find themselves motivated to follow him? In my original review, I thought the character was a ham-handed homage to Yul Brynner's Gunslinger in the original film. Now I just think he's boring. The possibility remains that the MiB is another one of Ford's special constructs and he's so driven to find the secrets of Westworld because he's trying to meet his maker, a la Roy Batty. But if too many of the apparent humans in Westworld are actually hosts or if too many of the hosts are "special" like Bernard and Dolores, the shine starts to come off and we start drifting away from our macro questions into minutiae. Does this "special" host function differently than that "special" one? Who really is the Star-bellied Sneetch... or are we really all just people (Sneetches)?

It's clear that the showrunners have been stretching this thing out to build suspense for some kind of tempestuous wrap-up to the season. But until episode 5's revelations about Theresa's subterfuge, Maeve's awakening, and more detail on the origins of the park from Ford, I had no motivation to watch except to see what kind of ditch they could dig themselves into. Now I can see a couple avenues out and I'm interested in some of the larger plots that they've finally gotten around to presenting, but there's still so much dross attached (William and Dolores' romance or pretty much anything connected to William? Yawn.) that I've shifted from mild disinterest to annoyance. My first request of any series remains extant: Tell me a story. If you can't do that, I got not time for ya. Westworld seems like it's been trying to tell me a story, but it needs to try a lot harder in the last three episodes if I'm going to watch the subsequent seasons.

Friday, December 8, 2017

Knightfail


I finally caught up with Vikings and have been watching it in real time (Ewww! Commercials?) along with everyone else. More on that below. But today I wanted to ramble a little bit about the History Channel's new show, Knightfall. I'm a day late, but maybe some of you still haven't seen it. After reading this, you may not want to.

Knightfall is about the Knights Templar; a monastic order founded in the 12th century to protect and assist Christian pilgrims on the trail to the Holy Land after the Crusades had been initiated and the various Christian states had emerged in the Levant. Their official name is The Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon. Over time, they became known as the Knights of the Temple or simply Templars, in the same way that the similar Order of Knights of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem became known as the Hospitallers. Nicknames are far from a modern invention. The Templars were a warrior order and one of the more effective fighting forces on the Christian side during the two centuries that it took the Muslims to expel the Europeans from the region. That being said, they were still a monastic order, which meant that they lived like monks often did, spending a lot of time at prayer and taking vows of poverty (they are the "Poor Fellows"), chastity, and so forth. It's the poverty angle that usually comes up in any historical discussion about them.


Since they were on the leading edge against the infidels, they became a favored charity inside the church (Saint Bernard of Clairvaux was their most prominent advocate) and received not only money but businesses and land (i.e. wealth.) With the rapid growth of their order, the actual warriors soon became a relatively small fraction of the whole organization and they designed an early method of banking, where pilgrims could leave their money at a Templar fortress in Europe, travel to the Holy Land with a letter of credit, and receive the same sum from a fortress in Jerusalem or Acre or wherever they ended up. The purpose of the organization soon became money management, rather than bringing the word (and sword) of God to the infidel. This ramped up when the Crusader states were destroyed and the Templars returned to Europe without much else to do. In the end, they became a primary lender to various monarchs, most notably Philip IV of France, whose own activities following on the heels of his father, Philip III, had plunged the state into debt and who went to the Templars to get a bailout. All good so far?

OK. So here's where we get to the show, somewhere around 1306. Instead of, say, doing a show like Vikings, where the founding of the order is displayed and we see the daily struggles, battles, and politics of the Levant in the Crusader era; or simply a show just about the extremely complex politics surrounding the post-Acre period in France and the order's eventual destruction, the driving plot element for our main characters at the center of those political machinations is... the Holy Grail.


Yes. That Holy Grail. With the magic and the healing and the voices booming down from the heavens and yadda, yadda, yadda. So, Vikings took a few figures from legend and many from the historical record, most prominently Ragnar Lodbrok, and has successfully woven it into a fairly accurate portrayal of history (There's that word.). Knightfall, OTOH, is taking a well-documented segment of that same historical record and weaving a legend into it that doesn't become prominent for another couple hundred years and then has more to do with silly English knnnniggets than a monastic order. The Grail was first mentioned in a poem in Flanders in the 12th century, but it was regarded as a work of fiction and it didn't have any of the trappings of being the cup of Christ or anything like that. All of that came later when someone thought it'd be a cool spin. In short, the Templars had absolutely zero to do with it and riding that horse means veering away from the quite interesting story of the Templars themselves and into Dan Brown Da Vinci Code stuff which just detracts from the whole picture. In the first episode, we already have the secret compartment in the sword of Godfrey with the gemstone that was somehow carved years ago to indicate that the Grail had made it to France. This is like the goofy side of Indiana Jones, where objects of extreme veneration and surrounded by ancient cities filled with devout believers are placed in rooms that are so dangerous that no one would ever go in there to worship the deity in question. Similarly, no one would "hide" the location of the grail by carving a gemstone to reveal the first clue in the puzzle unless they wanted said gemstone to be a plot device in a TV show. Try finding evidence of that in your nearest medieval epic.


That's pulp adventure stuff, which is absolutely fine if that's what you want. I love Raiders of the Lost Ark. It's a great film. But there are also no illusions about what it is: an adventure film, as opposed to a TV series that is ostensibly about the Knights Templar, but seems intent on sidelining much of their interesting and complex history (there's that word again) for magical fireworks. They're not doing the Templars. They're doing King Arthur and calling it the Knights Templar. Seriously, we already have our Perceval (Bobby Schofield; young lad, innocent, true believer, not jaded) and our Lancelot. They call him "Landry" (Tom Cullen) but that was probably a writing room goof: "This guy, the not-quite-leader, best warrior, we'll call him Lannnn... dry. Yeah." How do I know he's Lancelot? Because the devoted monk is breaking his vows of chastity in the most spectacular way possible by screwing the king's wife!


Really? This is how we explain the eventual decision by Philip to exterminate the Templars, not because he was a right bastard and figured that rubbing out his lenders was better than actually paying his debts (they didn't call him the "Iron King" for nothing; of course, some people also called him "the Fair"...) but because he's going to be mad that his wife is screwing his best friend? As soon as Merlin walks in with a prophecy, we should be good to go, yeah? The problem with the story of the Templars is the same one that afflicted the samurai in the later Shogunate era: with no enemy to fight (or at least, the lack of will to do so), the warrior class reverts to other activities. The Templars became bankers that prayed a lot. The samurai became clerks and bureaucrats who carried swords. Both groups tried to maintain the very martial and focused outlook that their original role demanded, but it became impossible. The Hospitallers became little more than pirates in their waning days, for that matter. I think that's enough story material to drive the series forward without invoking the Arthurian legend in ways large or small.

Plus, there's way too much of this "knight in shining armor" stuff. No one walks around in plate armor. It's heavy and uncomfortable and you certainly don't keep it on your horse if you're hurrying into the countryside at the last minute. There's no way your horse would have been armored like that in the middle of Paris, so why should you grab it from the stable in full plate regalia? But then when the moment comes to display just why the Templars were so feared, they dropped the ball. The Knights were prominent in the Levant because wearing that much metal made them the medieval equivalent of a tank. They would charge, shatter lines, and then the infantry would clean up. This was showed to decent effect during the siege of Acre scene at the beginning. But when they rush out of Paris to save the Jews, they come down the road on the flank of the mercenaries. That's a prime target. Take the charge and the mercs won't even have time to turn their spears properly. That's an easy win. Instead, they ride around to the front of the enemy's formation (i.e. its strongest point) and dismount. Za? You're knights. The word goes back to the equestrian order of the Romans. Your advantage is that you're on horseback. But you decide to abandon that advantage and slug it out on the ground. OK.


None of the performances stuck out in any marked way. There's no interesting character like Ragnar or quirky character like Floki or even frustrated, simmering character like Rollo. Lance- uh, Landry is simmering in frustration, but it's so drowned in angst that it's hard to be sympathetic. Plus, he's decided to relieve some stress by shacking up with Joan of Navarre. The real Joan was reportedly a highly intelligent and shrewd woman, so it's a natural fit if the showrunners wanted a strong female character. But the real Joan had also grown up with Philip and they were very fond of each other, in contrast to many other medieval marriages. But I could live with all of that. I could live with the "love interest" routine and the need for sex in a "mature" series and so forth. It's all good. Maybe Joan of Navarre was getting horizontal with the master of the Templars. But all of those little failings pale in significance to the fact that the series is going to be driven forward by the chase for the magic chalice. They chose... poorly. I'll probably watch the second episode just to see what happens, but it's not likely I'll go past that.

*                 *                *


On Vikings, I thought they did really well with a lot of the time compression and the eventual introduction of the Great Heathen Army. It remained interesting and Ragnar's constant, driving need for glory and legacy was a very human motivation that made waves for everyone around him. I thought that Floki's realization in Algeciras that the Muslims were ignoring the invaders because of their devotion to their god and the practice of their religion was a highlight of the whole series; a very moving moment. The first couple episodes of season 5 have been a little rocky. I think everyone- cast, writer, and fans -knew that it was going to be difficult to replace the energy not just of Ragnar, but Travis Fimmel and the void is definitely there. Neither Lagertha, Bjorn, Harald, or Ivar can be the central focus that Ragnar/Fimmel was. None of the other actors have that charisma and writer, Michael Hirst, has taken advantage of that void to present all of those people striving to fill the gap that Ragnar left them. It's much easier to do method when a change in production basically demands it. The one exception is Floki. His travels to and around Iceland have been interesting and have carried a lot of subtle excitement and emotion. I don't think Vikings will ever carry the weight and quality that other legendary shows have. I'm watching not because I'm fascinated by the story or the people playing it, but because I already know the story and I'm interested to see it brought to life on the screen.

Anyway, next I'll return to Westworld. Yes, I've finally gotten through the majority of it and I might as well put down some perspective before the new season arrives in the new year. There's no guarantee I'll actually watch the new season, but I'll get to that next time.

Thursday, November 9, 2017

Not exactly driven


In my very occasional series of "Catching up with films that all of you saw a year ago", I finally saw Baby Driver tonight. [Tangent: What can I say? I just don't see many movies these days. Tricia's not really a fan and I could go see things alone, but that's really kind of lame. Of course, if I actually had a job writing about movies, I guess I'd see a lot of things alone. So, if anyone's looking for a critic, I'll gladly suffer the travails. /tangent.]

I'm not a huge Edgar Wright fan. I appreciated certain aspects of Shaun of the Dead and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. I also thought Ant-Man (which he wrote, but didn't direct) was one of the more entertaining Marvel films because he isolated the aspect that drives Marvel's characters into legend: They're real people. That's been a hallmark of his other films, as well. Weird stuff happens to his characters, but they still stay largely human, with all of the associated quirks, failings, and idiosyncrasies that comprise that condition. No one is human in Baby Driver, from the title character (Ansel Elgort) to his sudden girlfriend (Lily James.) They're all figments of imagination that would have a horrible time actually functioning in a society made up of humans, which we (kinda) still live in.


First off, it's an action film. I get it. There's supposed to be a lot of action, which frequently involves bullets and various loud noises. However, I think Wright went just a bit over the top here. I mean, yeah, running firefights across the city are fine, since it's an action film. But when we get to the point where cars are falling from the upper floors of parking garages and exploding in the middle of downtown Atlanta, that's where you start to lose me. First off, because cars don't really explode when they catch fire. But secondly because you're kind of losing the thread of the story for a lightshow. Lightshows don't affect the quality of the music at a concert, so they don't really need to be a part of the story, unless your story happens to be about a war where explosions are common. Take, for example, Ben Affleck's The Town. It's also a story about a high-end, efficient heist crew, including one member who wants to get out, and there are several exciting gunfights and chase scenes. But there are no explosions because gunfights are already exciting enough. There are times when both writer and director have to exercise some restraint in order to keep the focus on their story. Wright didn't do that here.


That lack of humanity had an even bigger impact on some unfortunate casting. I'm sorry, but Jon Hamm (Buddy) doing the shaved blowback look doesn't make him a criminal. It just makes him look goofy. And he's still so wooden in these kinds of roles (he was also in The Town) that it's difficult to take him seriously and not think that I'm watching Don Draper act out an extremely visceral commercial in the conference room of Sterling Cooper. Making him take it to the nth degree with a Terminator schtick (Is he really dead this time?) doesn't help, especially because said schtick (Is he really dead THIS time?) is driven by the world's most obvious death scene for Eiza Gonzalez (Monica), as a consequence of a totally unnecessary moment of bravado for a professional thief. Was that the moment we were supposed to imagine that Monica was really a badass like the men, even though her role to that point had been nothing but sex object, full stop? Because she can be a total idiot and stand in the open with a pair of long guns in front of a phalanx of cops while her husband wisely shelters behind the car?


Jamie Foxx (Bats), unfortunately, had the worst of the roles. I just have no patience for these unreasonably violent and chaotic characters that somehow still function in society long enough to not be jailed or gunned down in the street. You're telling me that this psychopath (not a sociopath, which would be believable and which Doc (Kevin Spacey) is; the two are quite different) has become a professional heist guy so reliable that someone as meticulous as Doc would hire him more than once and somehow not be aware of what a loose cannon he is? Or that anyone would choose to work with him when he repeatedly does exactly what pros don't do, which is attract attention to himself on a regular basis? Or that he wouldn't have long ago been arrested and permanently jailed because he constantly attracts attention to himself with petty crimes? Yeah... no. It's simply not believable. On top of that, you have Spacey mailing it in as hard as he possibly can. I know the man has been typecast as evil genius since The Usual Suspects (spoilers!) and the script did him no favors, but he might have allowed himself to have just a bit of personality. And how does Jon Bernthal rate third billing with a whole five minutes of screen time and a completely disposable (and forgettable, since Doc didn't hire him again) role?


But the killer is the ending. I don't know how many test audiences it went through, but all of them should never be allowed near a theater again. In what jurisdiction does multiple armed robbery, multiple grand theft auto, multiple carjacking, multiple assault with a deadly weapon, murder, and a lifetime supply of reckless driving and endangerment get you 25 years, parole in 5? And in which state do you get paroled with that list of charges on the first chance? The Hollywood happy ending is so tacked on that they didn't even bother to do any makeup for Elgort and James to show that they'd aged five years, especially in Elgort's case. That list of charges puts you in maxi and no one comes out of there with the same babyface that they went into it with. Prison ages you. So does time, in general. But it didn't matter because all of the intensity and chaos and violence of the previous hour and 50 minutes was just washed away by the gentle golden glow of a moving Hallmark card as Baby walks away with the girl. Really? This is what the whole tragedy of this kid's childhood and his alienation from society and the trauma of being roped into this heist team boils down to? Happily ever after? Yikes, man.


On the positive side, the choreography was excellent. The chase scenes, both behind the wheel and on foot, were thrilling and one of the two high points of the film. The other was the soundtrack, which is brilliant. (Attention, Guardians of the Galaxy fans: This is what a film soundtrack sounds like. Give it a listen.) I can't remember the last time I'd heard Hocus Pocus and I've been listening to Damned Damned Damned the whole time I've been writing this. I have a deep appreciation for people who share my broad taste in music, even if they're fictional characters.

But once again, I find myself on the outside looking in on this one, since like GotG, I seem to be the lone voice of disdain among my friends that have seen it. It's also sitting at 93% on Rotten Tomatoes and most critics were gushing over it to the point where I'm starting to think that movie critics are like mattress critics: handsomely paid to give the best review possible to the average and routine. The New York Times even hailed it as a "NYT Critic's pick", despite this quote directly from the review"is so good that you want it to be better and go deeper, for it to put down its guns (or at least hold them differently) and transcend its clichés and cine-quotes so it can rocket out of the genre safe box into the cosmic beyond where craft and technique transform into art".

Yes. That's exactly what I'm saying. It's not "better." It's not "deep." It's completely clichèd and displays a remarkable lack of craft which would make it art. And yet it's somehow a "critic's pick"? Seriously, does anyone want a movie critic that, you know, actually watches the films? Anyone? Bueller?

Friday, September 22, 2017

The drug war from Missouri to Colombia


I'm not going to go into a history of the War on Drugs (capitalization required because it's official. And important. And because it makes it feel even more stupid.) We all know about it. We all know it's pointless. We all know Jefferson Beauregard (not a racist) Sessions is going to spend millions of dollars and thousands of man-hours pursuing it because it's a primo example of the usual GOP approach to problems: it only seems like it hasn't worked because we haven't been hitting our head against that wall hard enough! But I am going to look at it indirectly from the perspective of a couple Netflix series that we've recently indulged in.

A couple weeks ago, Tricia suggested that we watch Narcos, which has been a relatively heralded member of Netflix's original production lineup. I've seen people talk about it occasionally on the board and it seemed like something I might get to at some point, although I'm pretty well versed in the story of Pablo Escobar. But I'd also added Ozark to our queue because of another brief mention on the board and that had a more immediate appeal, so I suggested that instead. It was a good choice, since we burned right through the first season in a matter of days. Given that that was over, we decided to try out the original idea and sat down to watch the first couple episodes of Narcos last night.


Ozark can rather easily be compared to Breaking Bad, in that it's a take on the "fish out of water" premise, in which a "normal" guy gets involved in situations that are utterly foreign to him; in this case, delving into criminal enterprises that go way beyond simply shuffling money between accounts. Indeed, my first very mild criticism of the series was that bringing the nuclear family along to remotest Missouri was bringing along a rather hoary Hollywood trope ("How do Billy and Susie react to not having access to Starbucks?!") that we could all probably dispense with by now. But what made that not even a concern was both the complexity of the story and the performance, surprisingly, of Jason Bateman.

Unlike Walter White, Bateman's Marty Byrde isn't a person who had a burning ambition to do something better with his life. Byrde was doing exactly what he wanted: working the numbers. Similarly, the rest of the family wasn't really aspiring to something better (except Wendy's (Laura Linney) fling with another lawyer) or had any need to prove themselves in the way that Skyler and Walt, Jr. did. Walter's disruption of their life didn't happen immediately and in some ways actually improved their situation in the early stages. This was part of the lurking transformation of both Walter and the story as a whole which was the masterstroke of Vince Gilligan's storytelling. Ozark, OTOH, is a huge disruption to the almost entirely blissful complacency of upper class life that the Byrds had in Chicago. It's basically the converse of the Beverly Hillbillies (Don't call'em "rednecks"...) and much more funny. The family is dropped into a situation that isn't a setup for all of the "look how strange bass-ackwards Missouri really is." It's more of a story about how quickly they can adapt to a new situation because their lives, quite literally, depend on it.


That's where Marty is highlighted because his entire existence is about analysis and finding the best route to maximize the outcome. While he, like the rest of the family, is focused on survival, he's also compelled by instinct to find the best possible result, which involves treating everyone and everything around him as an asset to be exploited; at least until that kernel of human kindness breaks through and makes him start caring about a couple of those assets. I'd long ago dismissed Bateman as a routine straight man in a bunch of disposable comedies (Horrible Bosses, et al.) But in Ozark (which he's also a producer of and directed multiple episodes of the first season), he's proven to be much more. Marty's an accountant and, as such, displays the often-typical difficulty that guys who love numbers have in relating to other humans. He's pretty stone-faced... until it comes time to make a deal. Like most guys who know numbers, Marty also knows that everyone has a price and it's usually the guy equipped with that instinct that will make the best deal. Bateman is able to show deep emotions when he interacts with his family, but is able to switch back to that stone-faced, deal-making accountant at a moment's notice because that's his calling and it's how that family that he feels deep emotion for is going to survive. The moment when he witnessed his wife's lover landing on the pavement and we could just watch his face process the shock and horror and switch right to a realization of what must have happened and how his best route was to neither react nor be present at that moment was priceless.


Linney, OTOH, has a far more emotional role, since her grounding isn't in her career but in the fact that she's been looking for an emotional attachment that the detached Marty hasn't been able to supply. Their interaction provides another display of emotion in that Marty admits that Wendy has wounded him and implies that he's basically keeping her around in order to provide some semblance of normalcy for the kids. But he also demonstrates that he really doesn't understand his wife of 17 years when he decides that a PI video of her and her lover might be his inroad back into a deeper connection. At the same time, she struggles with the fact that she agreed to this path that puts them all in danger, while still yearning to be her own person AND try to reunite with her husband for the sake of normalcy for the kids (and perhaps more.) The fact that they decide to just bite the bullet at one point and fully include the kids in the process of their criminal activities rather than continuing to dance around it is just the topper. It's wonderfully complex acting and storytelling and that, along with an excellent supporting cast, makes Ozark both a proper descendant of Breaking Bad and very much its own thing. The weird, old dying guy in the basement; the ruthlessly ambitious assistant; the straight-laced lodge manager who's obviously attracted to Marty; the obsessive and identity-conflicted FBI agent; the family- and tradition-obsessed drug dealing locals; all of these characters provide a density and texture to the story that made for enthralling viewing from the first episode to the last. That many elements in play also leave countless opportunities for where to take the story next and which parts should be emphasized or de-emphasized, in turn, makes for very smart writing.


Narcos, OTOH, wasn't quite as compelling. Granted, we've only seen two episodes, but we were eager to watch more after seeing only one of Ozark. Our reaction to Narcos was relatively ambivalent. Part of it was the storytelling approach. Narcos feels like a dramatized documentary to some degree. In most cases, I'd really rather just watch the documentary about Pablo Escobar's life, since truth is often just as strange, if not stranger, than fiction and one risks burdening the story with irrelevant elements in an attempt to find people that the audience can supposedly relate to. I had the same problem with Hidden Figures. Just watching the basic facts and interviews with the women who'd lived through that time would have been emotionally compelling enough for me. Adding on everything else was really just unnecessary gloss to a story that was already extremely interesting.

But the other problematic aspect is that there's no one particularly fascinating about the disclaimer targets in Narcos. The based-on-an-actual person lead, Wagner Moura, as Pablo is fine. Those of us familiar with the history know that Escobar had a rather outsized personality that he expressed in a variety of ways. But the "good guy" lead, Boyd Holbrook, as Steve Murphy, gives us nothing. He's a crusading DEA agent (yawn) who does a sheepish "my friends set me up" approach to his future wife (yawn) and then delivers the "don't treat me like the FNG" moment (yawn) when the first direct attempt to go after the Medellin cartel takes place. That's cardboard. It's routine. There's nothing to work with there that isn't starkly obvious in the character's 20 minutes of screen time. Compounding that is the producers' and directors' apparent love of spectacle. This is a story about drugs and violence, so they're going to show you as much drugs, violence, and sex as they can cram into an episode, whether it makes a story or not. The sex angle is particularly notable, since the second episode had titillation at its most obvious.


In the course of a few minutes, there's Pablo screwing a reporter who likes being in his limelight, DEA agent Javier Peña (Pedro Pascal) screwing one of his prostitute CIs, and DEA agent Murphy screwing his wife. Oh, and a gratuitous shot of the MS-19 people celebrating a minor victory. I mean, fine. Sex happens, yo. I'll be the last person to object to its inclusion in a story because that's what humans do, often with each other. But this was utterly Skinemax in its approach: nothing but a flash of tits in all three (and a half) instances and the reporter apologizing by offering up her ass to Escobar. The strangest one was Murphy, since the realization that there's street violence in Bogotà in no way required us to see them doing anything in bed but sleeping. The other two scenarios at least offered up story reasons for having sex in the form of Pablo cheating on his wife and feeling the tug of fame and Peña having a more personal relationship with a CI and possibly displaying the route he took to make her a CI. But all three of them in rapid succession felt canned, as if the director decided "OK. It's getting a little slow here. We better do some titillation to keep the audience both interested and aware of the fact that this show is EDGY. To the EXTREME!"

The end result is that I don't care about Murphy, I don't care about Peña (even though he's the Red Viper), and I care about Escobar only so much as I know that his life is actually interesting. But, again, I could just watch a half-dozen documentaries to get the interesting parts, rather than waiting for them to draw them out over some dramatic framework that also includes a bunch of other people I don't care about.

Ozark had me from episode one. This was an interesting story, with interesting characters, and with actors I either already respected (Linney; really good in The Truman Show, Mystic River, and Kinsey, if you've never seen them) or who instantly excelled in roles I would have never anticipated from them (Bateman.) I'm looking forward to the recently announced season two. Narcos I could give or take right now. If Tricia wants to watch more of it, I'll try, but my initial suspicion is that there just won't be enough story to keep me interested, especially when there's so much other good TV that could take its place.

Friday, September 1, 2017

Just a little rain on the parade


Rain is on my mind. Not like Harvey rain. This ain't Michigan State's impending debacle. (Tangent: I've seen people on the Web blaming Houston's zoning regulations, or lack thereof, for the flooding. These people apparently haven't registered the concept of 50 inches of rain falling in a few days. 50 inches! 50! I don't care if your zoning regulations say: "Only one building, wetlands, and a dirt road per 10 acres." 50(!) inches of rain is going to flood ANYWHERE. /tangent) But some small rain on Michigan's latest gridiron campaign, beginning tomorrow, is clouding my thoughts.

I've been having a tough time getting excited for this season. My fandom has been slipping away for the last decade, mostly because I can't justify the existence of the NCAA any longer. Even if I was aware of the issue when the Fab 5 were complaining about it in 1992, the fact that an increasing number of billions of dollars is being made on major college sports and none of it is going to the athletes is something that just hangs over me when I watch the game. Nowhere else in society do you have adults be expected to put their skills to use and be explicitly forbidden from being compensated for them. At a minimum, you call that exploitation. At a maximum, there are much darker parallels to be drawn, especially given that the majority of those athletes are African-American. The fact that the only professional outlets for those skills in the US collude with the NCAA to deny those athletes access to those paying jobs for three years (in the case of football, 1 in basketball) past the age when most of them have legal standing as adults just makes the crime, and the associated hypocrisy, even worse.


You can add to that the issue of concussions. American football is a violent game, full stop. It's why so much protective gear is worn. Even sports that are considered contenders for the title holder of violence, like rugby, don't require so much gear because the game isn't predicated on extremely powerful collisions. Those collisions lead to concussions and I find that when I'm watching a game these days, I spend a fair amount of time thinking about what those kids are doing to themselves in the name of getting permission to be paid for what they're already really good at.

These feelings are in stark contrast to those of Michigan's current coach, who feels that football embodies everything that's good about life. In truth, no one else that I recall can so accurately be said to "live football." Every day, during almost every waking moment (he does have a family), one could make a fair argument that Jim Harbaugh is thinking about football and how to be better at it than he was the day before. My slow alienation from the game has reached its pinnacle right around the time that most around me, energized by the dynamo of his personality and the success that Harbaugh has maintained throughout his career, are more enthusiastic than ever about what Michigan could accomplish on the field. But I try to blot out the stain that is the NCAA and the scourge that is the threat of CTE and think in similarly positive terms and realize that I just don't share the faith anymore.


Brian did his usual excellent review (I can't call anything that exceeds 50K words a "summary") of the team and his expectations for the season and came down at the 9-3/10-2 mark. You know how many of those I've seen in my life? 12. Two more at 9-4, a 9-2-1, a 10-1-1, 5 10-3s (including the last two years), and 3 11-2s. There were a couple 10-1s, an 11-1, and a 10-0-1 in my lifetime but I was too young to know what was going on. I've seen a lot of apparently successful seasons for Michigan that, in many ways, don't really add up to a whole lot. I mean, yeah, a lot of Rutgers fans would kill to have the program that Michigan has, but their first problem is that they're Rutgers fans, so I don't really care about that. I just imagine sitting in front of a game, mildly irritated that these kids are sacrificing their health and bodies to make millions of dollars for someone else, and think about the impending 10-3 season and... I just get bored.


Do I really want to see Michigan slaughter Rutgers again? Do I really want to see the ritual sacrifice of Cincinnati or the slugfest with Wisconsin or the inevitable loss to Ohio State again? Do I really want to be implicitly supporting a system that denies these kids the opportunity to make a living off of their natural talent and developed skills, unlike 99% of the rest of humanity? Make no mistake. These guys are professional athletes. The only thing not professional about it is that they're not getting paid. Having recently been looking for jobs in a sphere where my only experience is of a volunteer or self-employed nature, I can tell you what most employers think about the "professional" standing of someone who's never received a paycheck. These kids are basically modern corporate America's favorite class: unpaid interns, who are supposed to be eternally grateful to the monolith that tells them that their time and effort aren't worth a dime without the guidance that the monolith provides. Insert Kubrick's giant black slab conveying the thought of tool use (violent tool use, incidentally) and it's kind of hard to deny the imagery.


I still enjoy the game, to a certain degree. I was watching Indiana and Ohio State play last night with an appreciation for what was happening on the field (and utter amazement at the modernity of about half of Mike Debord's offense; I'll never forgive 1999.) And despite a similar appreciation for Harbaugh's gung-ho personality and the dynamism that he brings to some parts of the offense, I find myself unable to join the Harbaughdyssey because I don't see the breakthrough that so many friends and others I respect insist is taking place. I don't see Michigan contending for national prominence on a regular basis because I don't see Michigan getting past OSU to win the division or go to the conference title game, which means 10-2/9-3 and some irrelevant bowl in Florida on an annual basis. Incidentally, the last irrelevant bowl game that Michigan participated in cost TE Jake Butt millions of dollars as his draft stock plummeted when he injured his knee during said game. "Come to Michigan! Do lasting damage to your body for free, because it's the only way to (hopefully) get paid for what you can do with that body!"


I look at that last paragraph and I feel mildly ashamed that I'm even contextualizing my apathy toward the record that Michigan might achieve, given the other concerns that I can't shake. I mean, certainly my interest in the game is grounded in what Michigan can achieve in it. I'm a fan. I have been since I was six years old. I could go on being just like all the other fans who love the game and all the kids who play it for that same, simple love. But I wonder. I wonder if that new coach who's supposedly the greatest thing to ever grace the sideline of Michigan Stadium (I've lived through six now; admittedly a ridiculously low number compared to many programs) is really enough to make me think that being a fan for one more 10-3 season is worth supporting the economic injustice or watching people risk the rest of their lives on a game that was probably a bad idea taken to extremes in the first place. I remain a fan, but I struggle with the idea of continuing to be a fan. Do I step out of the rain or keep walking to where I'm going?

Monday, August 28, 2017

The hero's pre-planned journey


Storytelling is a funny thing. "There's nothing new under the sun." has long been a cliché among writers of all types. No matter how original you think your material is, chances are it's been done before in some way, shape, or form. I've mentioned Joseph Campbell's "hero's journey" many times when writing these reviews, because there are some elements of that basic narrative that heroic fantasy (note the label) will never escape. Certain aspects of the story are going to happen because cultural expectations are present, especially when dealing with a mass audience like Game of Thrones, as opposed to a niche fanbase like, say, HP Lovecraft. The protagonists die and the monsters from beyond space and time win all the time in Lovecraft's stories. It's part of what makes them interesting to those of us that are fans. (Or have written the stuff.)

George RR Martin seemed to turn some of the usual trope on its head by being willing to sacrifice major characters, like Ned Stark. It's part of what gave both the books and the show their appeal, since much of the audience came to believe that Martin was willing to kill anyone (which isn't really true, but let's not get into that.) Consequently, there was no rote function in terms of the heroes of the story: meets challenge, defeats challenge, wins girl and kingdom, etc. For that matter, the story was written such that the "heroes" were often hard to define or even find. That's what always had the greatest appeal to me. I hate the Black Hat/White Hat syndrome. I want Gray Hats. I want humans. Give me The Wire or Breaking Bad or Joe Abercrombie's First Law books any day.


But at some point, as the writer, you have to ask yourself the question: Am I writing a story simply to defy the stereotypes/traditions or am I writing it because these characters have something to say, even if what they say is stereotypically "heroic"? Was Jon Snow always going to be the recipient of the orphan's destiny ("Your parents abandoned you... but you're really the heir to the throne of a kingdom!") or was that something that just worked out when it came to the tragedy of Ned's secret and Robert's Rebellion being based on a lie and Robert's enormous ego? I've complained multiple times this season about moments that I felt were fan service. They either weren't really crucial to the story but part of the audience would get a charge out of them (Arya slaughtering the entirety of House Frey) or they were crucial to the story but still feel like rote "heroic" stuff (Jon and Dany, the two most non-gray of the main characters, falling for each other.) Did Martin, the supposed standard bearer for writers that shock and surprise their readers, intend for many of his complex storylines to blossom into a "happily ever after" presentation? (Obviously, it's not over yet, so a lot could change.)

Or does some of this feel like fan service simply because the story's been in progress for 20 years? Martin has grumbled before that fans have long since figured out the clues to many things that he's dropped into the books, mostly because the gaps between said books have grown so long that fans have little to do but pore over every detail. So, even if it wasn't something typical like the orphan's destiny, people likely would have figured out the different tack being taken and it might feel just as tired as this kinda does. Or is it just me and those of us who really pay attention to these things? I have a couple characters from a post-apocalyptic setting that I wrote many of my comic scripts in, named Jekyll and Hyde. They're a couple of mercenaries and those names are really nicknames for them, but it's how they're identified. That's something you can do more easily in the comics medium, where certain things are acceptable when they're "meta". But a friend read one of my scripts years ago and told me: "You can't use those names. They're too obvious." But are they?


I've read Robert Louis Stevenson's novella. That's part of why I chose to use those names for those characters. How many modern readers can say the same? For that matter, how many of the generation currently watching Game of Thrones could give any detail of what the Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is actually about? Would those names be too obvious to them? Or would they kinda get the reference, as I originally intended, and move on? Similarly, am I too critical of the fact that Jon Snow's life is kind of playing out like a fairy tale or is it OK, since the majority of the fanbase are probably thrilled that one of the real heroes is getting the payoff that they've long expected? (This is why test audiences exist, after all.) This is part of why Jaime and Sandor Clegane have long been my favorite characters, largely because they're NOT typical and have followed a path that wasn't easily predicted and still isn't. Those are humans (albeit, highly cynical ones, which is also part of the appeal) and they've reacted to their changing circumstances by acting like humans.

I'm not a happy ending guy. I don't find them interesting. And, in truth, there's nothing that guarantees that what's coming up next season will have a happy ending. So, perhaps the problem isn't how things are coming to an end, but that they're ending at all and everything that most of the fanbase has predicted is coming true. Is it disappointing that the story is playing out as expected? Would people be more excited with another twist? Or would it feel like the writers were dodging simply to get that twist in? Let's take Littlefinger as an example. I long expected that the instigator of the current war would survive until the end, simply because that's what Littlefinger does: he survives, usually by working the edges of a situation. But last night, his story came to a close in one of those moments that I'd often refer to as "fan service". Sansa got her revenge and one of the characters that much of the audience loves to hate was executed for his actions. I'm sure that a good chunk of the audience feels content with that (relatively) happy ending. If Littlefinger had escaped yet again, there might have been some frustration. To me, a debatable story point like that is a positive thing, even if it didn't turn out the way that I anticipated.


In contrast, something like the Hound's confrontation with the Mountain was fan service to the extreme. In the midst of a highly uncomfortable truce meeting, the Hound chooses that moment to remind not only his brother, but the audience of the impending showdown between the lords of House Clegane, as Sandor intends to take revenge for the scars that we see on his face every time he's on camera. There's no acknowledgement of what's taking place around them; no mention of the fact that his brother is basically an undead construct (not too different from what's released from the crate a few minutes later). It's just time for a 1950s Western standoff on Main St., with as much testosterone as possible. I watched that and thought: Wouldn't that have been just as effective with a couple brief shots of the Hound's face, glaring at his brother? Or did Benioff and Weiss feel that the audience needed the melodrama?

On the other hand, in contrast to both of those, there were some moments that didn't play out according to expectations, but still demonstrated a firm grasp of character on the part of both the writers and the actors. Sansa and Arya assuming the role of masters of Winterfell, even though they'll never be as comfortable with each other ("Well, don't get used to it. You're still strange and annoying.") as Jon and Arya, the two outsiders, is a great example of letting the characters blossom into roles that most probably didn't expect but which now seem perfectly natural. Similarly, with Jaime finally making the break from Cersei, the latter has finally been left alone with all of her monsters, internal and external. It's how she's always felt and what her actions would inevitably lead to as she strove to take the place that she knew should have been hers ("But I listened. I learned.") By the same token, Jaime finally came to grips with the fact that his maturation and sense of ethics simply can't allow him to stay, no matter how much he loves his sister and their impending child. Among many storylines that seem rote or obvious, that's one that still intrigues me, as watching someone struggle with those basic moral and emotional conflicts is, in the end, what real storytelling is all about.

Technical stuff:


You can see the points where what was going to be the final season (this one) got stretched into two seasons, at HBO's request. There have been several instances in this season of characters doing the reunion thing (Winterfell, the expedition past the Wall, etc.) and last night was no exception. The meeting in the Dragon Pit led to several acknowledgements of time apart and the changes that had taken place in the interim. While most of these were interesting character moments (the conversations during the hike beyond the Wall being one of the highlights of that episode, for example), they just bordered on the tedious. We know that these people could tell each other interesting stories about where they've been and what they've done, but we've seen those stories. But, again, when you're wrapping up what's going to be an eight-year epic, I suppose there's some room for the characters to stop and look around at what's happened to all of them. The little smile shared between the Hound and Brienne was a particular high point here.

Speaking of character moments, there were some excellent ones in the meeting between Tyrion and Cersei. The best part was Tyrion deciding to do the courteous thing and offer his sister some wine. Never was more weight added to the simple action of the placing of a wine glass, as Cersei looked at it with the venom of someone who still suspects her brother of the murder of her son and Tyrion placed it with the mixed emotions of someone offering it in the spirit of trying to come to an agreement for all their sakes and yet still getting in a little jab at the person who unjustly accused him and caused him so much other anguish. That was a moment to savor, for certain. Similarly, Dany and Jon setting up the pleasure cruise in the strategy room while Jorah grits his teeth and everyone restrains themselves from rolling their eyes was quite funny. I was half expecting Tyrion to burst out with something like: "Yes, wonderful! Can the two of you stop thinking with your loins while we plan our grand strategy?"


There were also many little reflections on some of the ongoing tensions, like the undercurrent of resentment and awkwardness between Cersei, Jaime, and Brienne on the dais. But there have been several of those in terms of remembering back to the little moments that made up the basis of the story, as Arya and Sansa remembered their father's words about the survival of the pack over the lone wolf; as Tyrion recalled his offer to Bronn when they first met, doubling whatever "they" would offer; and, of course, the trial of Littlefinger, going back to the very root of the conflict that initiated the human story (as opposed to that which involves the Others.) As much as it disappointed me to see Lord Baelish depart the play, I have to say that that scene was exceptional. The highlight was Sophie Turner's performance. I said years ago that much of the audience's distaste for Sansa's character was making them miss the remarkable facets of her role and Turner's skillful handling of its nuances. She's been excellent.


On the downside, I'm not sure that Theon's role in this is really worth highlighting any longer. As much as I continue to appreciate Alfie Allen's performance in a difficult role, I think there are other ways to continue the redemption of Theon that don't involve having to drag a subplot off to the Iron Islands in the remaining seven episodes that the series has. It doesn't appear that Euron is going to be as instrumental as he is suspected to be in the books so, just like Dorne, it would seem to make sense to sideline the Greyjoys in favor of focusing on the real war and all of the turmoil that will surround it. Speaking of which, I have to say that I was disappointed in Conleth Hill's screen time this season. Varys has been instrumental in the plot and Hill's scenes with Tyrion and others are always a delight and we got very little of that this time. I would have thought that the grand truce meeting would have been prime territory for him and, despite his significant time on camera, he had zero dialogue. That's unfortunate but, again, seven episodes, shortcuts, condensing, etc.


Oh, yeah. The ice dragon/dracolich thing. I think it was handled well. I don't know if Martin intended that a dragon was the way to get through the Wall (guess we'll find out when that next book is done, right George? George...?), but that would presume that the Night's King is also a greenseer of some kind and can, unlike Bran, predict the future and know that dragons would not only be reborn into the world, but also that they would be brought to him. That seems to indicate a bit more power than just being one of the weapons the Children created and then lost control of and, of course, that's true, since the Night's King was a human member of the Night's Watch before becoming what he is now. It's quite possible we'll never know the answers to that, which is fine, since giving away all the lore is kind of boring and not doing so leaves the fans something to speculate on (and, of course, request prequels for.)

The flip side of that is the lengthy recap as Sam and Bran sussed out the reality of Jon's (Aegon's) heritage. That's one of those situations where you have the characters trying to catch up with the audience, which I don't always find especially useful because you risk having some viewers wishing they'd get on with it because everyone knows this already. Also, in telling Jon the truth, you have little to go on but the word of a mystic in a wheelchair. Similarly at Littlefinger's trial, only the shock value of Baelish reacting to hearing his own words given back to him (and the fact that most of the lords of the Vale didn't like him) "proved" anything. In some cases, you're just hoping the audience rides the ride and doesn't ask too many questions (just as with the history of the Night's King) and that's fine. That was a fine scene, regardless, with the little nuances of two of the more honest and straightforward characters in the entire story. ("I have no idea what that means.")

Lines of the week:

"I still enjoy it when they call me 'milord'."
"The thrill will fade."
Take it from someone for whom a lot of thrills have faded.

"Why would anyone want to live that way?"
"There's more work in the city. And the brothels are far superior."
Tyrion, social and sexual pragmatist.


"Now, thanks to me, she's got two traitors' heads walking right through her door and she can lock them up as soon as she gets tired of the clever words that pour out of their pieholes."
Ser Bronn of the Fucking Blackwater. I'm glad they kept him around.

"Seems every bad idea has a Lannister cunt behind it."
Likewise, the show was a little more boring without the Hound.

"I can't have children."
"Who told you that?"
"The witch who murdered my husband."
"Has it occurred to you she might not have been a reliable source of information?"
So, this is the thing: Has she actually been trying to have children? Likely not, but after months with Daario, the thought of how birth control is accomplished in the world of Ice and Fire comes back to the fore. Yes, there's 'moon tea', but did Dany have a keg of that sitting around the pyramid? Wouldn't that raise a few questions?

"I never trust godly men."
Historically, not an unwise habit. There's other agendae and occasionally even nasty morals that get in the way. Whatever else you can say about him, Petyr Baelish was no dummy.


"My sister asked you a question."
In the running for the winner just because of the way this was delivered. Ice cold.

"Thank you for all your many lessons, Lord Baelish. I will never forget them."
Similarly, this was awesome.

"I remember everything."
You must be a book reader...

And the winner:


"When enough people make false promises, words stop meaning anything, and there are no more answers. Only better and better lies."
Welcome to modern politics, 2017. This rang so true that apparently even Scaramucci was tweeting it last night.

Monday, August 21, 2017

The first enemy and the last


There's a funny thing about writing a lengthy story: if you're lucky, even you, the author, doesn't know where some of it's going until you get there. I've often found when I'm writing or plotting something extensive that little things I've done or written early on often become something even greater as I move along and live with the story and the characters for a while. I think it's easier done in fantasy than in some other genres because you can attach legendary or historical status to something as a footnote and then have it transform into the greatest threat the world has ever seen. Take, for example, the One Ring in Lord of the Rings. In the Hobbit, it's just an invisibility ring that turns out to be key for Bilbo at a few points and makes him the burglar that Gandalf had said he was. (Wizards. Can't trust'em. With that "insight" of theirs. They gotta be lyin'.) But it becomes one of the foci of the greater epic that followed.

Similarly, it's likely that George RR Martin didn't automatically envision the Others as the doomsday weapon that the Children of the Forest had created against the First Men or that they would be led by the Night's King or even that they had the power to casually slay the dragons that they would inevitably meet in the Song of Ice and Fire. I'm betting that a lot of that came later as the story developed or was even brought in from other unfinished works (I've done that, too; the legend of the Night's King kind of sticks out in this respect.) But there's little doubt that even when he was imagining this sprawling story as a single novel, the Others were always going to be the main antagonist of the story that everyone would have to ally against to prevent the scourging of humanity from all of Westeros, if not beyond. That's your essential plot. The rest of it is just details (albeit rather wonderful and interesting details.)


As Beric Dondarrion mentions in this episode, death is "the first enemy and the last." The Others were always going to be that death: the first enemy of all humanity and likely the last enemy of the series, even if the perpetual war for what remains of Westeros might carry on in some small corners of the continent. So, Martin (and, subsequently, Benioff and Weiss) always knew that the threat from beyond the Wall was going to be the end of the story. But what that threat really represents is still up for interpretation. Considering the massive amount of detail and backstory that surrounds virtually every aspect of the series, both books and TV, you'd like to think that a certain amount of majesty will be conveyed by finally encountering the last enemy. And that's where we're running into a little trouble.

As I mentioned last week, the adventuring party going out past the Wall is just a little too stock Hollywood convenience for me (again, see: Captain Kirk and Co.) So, while I appreciated the dialogue scenes it created- the reckoning of the sword between Jon and Jorah; the buddy cop routine between Tormund and the Hound; the reference back to the siege of Pyke between Jorah and Thoros -and the later tension of the battle between the living and the dead, I'm stuck feeling like a lot of things are being given short shrift in the rush to complete the season in seven episodes, after taking six years to get us here (and 20 years for those of us reading the books... How's that last one coming along, George, whattaya say?) Where at one time the series could have been accused of having taken a rather languorous pace in telling the story (Hey, George, about that pace... Nevermind. I'll stop.), now it feels like we're not seeing things that we perhaps should or that shortcuts are being taken in order to make the plot work.


An example of the former is Benjen's appearance to rescue Jon. While a lot of people are probably seeing that as a deus ex machina moment ("Suddenly, from out of the (constant) blue (tint), our hero is saved!"), I'm betting there's an answer embedded in last season. When Benjen arrived to help bring Bran and Co. to the tree, he mentioned that he'd been sent there by the Three-Eyed Raven. I'm betting similar circumstances exist in this case, because Bran has probably been seeing future events and sent Benjen to save his brother (well, cousin, actually.) In the slower pace of previous seasons, we probably would have gotten a Bran scene that displayed that.

An example of the latter case is the rather rampant condensing of time that's happening in terms of armies racing across the continent, blacksmiths sprinting all the way back to the Wall, ravens streaking down to Dragonstone, and dragons similarly hitting supersonic speeds to get to the utter North. That looked like it took a matter of hours, when any realistic notion would indicate days having to transpire for all of that to happen. Yes, fantasy world; I get it. But there still have to be some rules in order for suspension of disbelief to take place and those rules seem to be nonexistent at the moment, which means our belief is under strain, too. Even if we accept that ravens can fly that fast and dragons can fly that fast, we also have to accept that Gendry was able to run the whole way back to Eastwatch, which means that the entire army of the Night's King was a couple hours walk from the Wall and was just hanging out for some reason. One would hope that their implication was not that the adventurers survived being exposed to the bitter cold for days while waiting for Dany and that the Night's King waited that long to finish them.


But, if so, does that mean that the Night's King also has visions of what's to come and this whole process was something of a trap so that he could acquire a dragon? (Ladies and gentlemen, Sindragosa has joined the game. /Warcraft nerd moment.) If that's where Martin's elaboration led him, I'd say that that's not what you'd hope to develop out of the base idea of the threat to all existence. It seems that the whole battle sequence was the shortiest shortcut of them all because, once again, the only way to convince Cersei Lannister to help out is to show her the walking dead. Yeah. That still doesn't sound good, which makes this whole detour of a storyline almost as bad as Dorne.


The overall theme of the episode is still carried over into the other major setting: Winterfell, where Arya and Sansa are carrying their childhood rivalry forward. The first "enemy" you have as a kid is almost always another sibling and those attitudes are difficult to shape, even with age and presumed wisdom. Similarly, there's little doubt that Littlefinger was the first enemy in the political scenario, since he poisoned both Jon Arryn's body and Lysa Arryn's mind, and there's also little doubt that he'll be around to see the end of whatever the situation settles into. But at some point we also run into the problem that petty squabbling between sisters has about as much importance in the face of the Others as any of the real fights between the great houses. It also strikes me as yet another too convenient moment. Sansa has spent this whole season warning us and everyone she can reach about how Littlefinger is not to be trusted and yet when she feels threatened by Arya, the first person she runs to for advice is... Littlefinger? We've spent the whole season watching Sansa take control of her part in the game and now see her revert to the scared child? I mean, yes, "fear makes people do unfortunate things" and this certainly could be part of the long con that Arya's running to expose Lord Baelish but, in the end, it's also just more noise because Omar the Ice Zombie comin', yo.

So, when you get down to writing that epic story, allow yourself the room to do two things: First, let characters, events, plot points, and storylines change of their own free will. Don't fight them. Let the story go where it's going to go and you'll usually be delighted with the stuff you didn't think of when you first mapped it out. Second, don't wait so long to end it that it feels like you have to cut it off before the publishers can't bind it and everyone feels cheated because the payoff didn't match the build up. We're not quite there yet (another season to go...), but things are getting rocky.

Technical stuff:


I was surprised to realize that Alan Taylor actually hadn't directed an episode since the end of season 2. Crazy. He directed Baelor, where Ned has the weight taken off his shoulders and where Drogo takes his last ride, so he's into the whole "major death" thing. I don't think Viserion being killed is quite at the same level, but it will definitely have an impact on the fanbase when the draconic contingent is reduced by a third (or switching sides, really. Many fine people on all sides, you know.)


RIP, Thoros. Paul Kaye made him one of the more entertaining minor characters.

In sharp contrast to the now years-old trend of "chaotic combat", I have to say that Taylor did well in keeping the pace of the island fight taut, but still allowing us to see exactly who was engaged with the undead at any given moment. The diversity of weapons helped in that respect, too (switching from Longclaw to the hammer to Dondarrion's flaming sword to Tormund's halberd to Jorah's two-fisted approach) but we had clear shots of each warrior doing their thing and it still felt like the pace and the associated mood was frantic, as it should have been.

The encounter with the scouting party gave mixed feelings. On the one hand, it was our first encounter with an Other that wasn't a hugely dramatic moments with cellos playing furiously. This was just a guy leading a bunch of wights and he got ambushed. On the other hand, why was one of the Others leading such a small band that could be ambushed and why bother to have an Other with a scouting party, anyway, if all of them are capable of screaming so loudly that the entire army can hear them from miles away. Despite perhaps learning that wights crumble when their raising master dies, we know that they don't need said master around to be mobile, as the ones at Castle Black in season 1 demonstrated. What added to the clumsy nature of that whole scene was that, when the Other was hacked down, all of the wights except one happened to dissipate. How many did the adventurers need to capture? One! Yay? Like I said, Benjen can perhaps be explained by the lack of a scene with Bran, but the whole ambush sequence left me frowning.


One minor note: They see the undead bear coming through the storm. I won't ask how they knew it was a bear, since at least Tormund was a native and had probably seen this before. But at one point he mentions that bears don't have blue eyes. How the hell could he have seen the thing's eyes through blizzard conditions? I mean, my vision ain't what it used to be, but come on.

On that note, the visual effects that made up said flaming, undead bear were really impressive. Even if the Hound wasn't traumatized by fire, you could forgive almost anyone for just stopping to stare at the (literally) roaring conflagration with claws.

Lines of the week:

"You spent too much time with the free folk. Now you don't like kneeling."
Political realizations come later in life for most people.

"You sold me to a witch."
"A priestess. I admit it is a subtle distinction."
There's a religion softball, right over the plate.


"This one's been killed six times. You don't hear him bitching about it."
Yep. Favorite character. Still the Hound.

"I knew what I was doing was against the  rules , but he was smiling so I knew it wasn't wrong. The rules were wrong."
This is one of the undercurrent themes of not only Arya's identity as an outside, but also the political situation as a whole, which Tyrion keeps trying to remind Dany of: if you play by the usual rules, you ruin everything you've tried to build.

"You're angry. Sometimes anger makes people do unfortunate things."
"Sometimes fear makes them do unfortunate things. I'll go with anger."
That exchange is the definition of Sansa and Arya: one constantly afraid, either that she won't be a queen or for her life; the other constantly angry because she can't be a knight or against the world for what it's done to her.


"The way she looks at you? Like she wants to carve you up and eat your liver?"
"You DO know her!"

and

"How did a mad fucker like you live this long?"
"I'm good at killing people."
Buddy cop movie, seriously. They're on the same page as far as avocation goes. Now they just need to talk about life outside the job and women is a typical topic. The screenplay writes itself!

"What's the point of serving a god if none of us know what he wants?"
Yet another softball.

"I suppose he stares at you longingly because he's hoping for a successful military alliance."
Hey, Metternich would have.


"If you want to build a new world, deceit and mass murder is probably not the way to go."
"Which war was won without deceit and mass murder?"
I think the juxtaposition of Dany's attempt to change the world without killing people to make those changes has been the best part of her storyline, throughout the series. I'm glad that they're keeping up with it now that she's on the cusp of achieving her goals.

"Everyone I've ever met has been a cunt. Don't see why the Lord of Light should be any different."
Yep. Still favorite.

And the winner:

"You have to keep moving. Walking's good. Fighting's better. Fucking's best."
Preach it.