Homage to the lack of interest

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is Quentin Tarantino still doing what he's always been doing: spending time imagining how the American film industry could have been different, while offering a paean to what it was, anyway. The only real problem is that he's not doing it as well, anymore.

Tarantino has long been criticized for his use of homage to other films and film styles. Reservoir Dogs, for example, has been cited for a number of similarities to Ringo Lam's City on Fire. Tarantino hasn't shied away from these implied insults, suggesting that what he does is reference the work of other authors while putting his own spin on it. This latest film, though, is what amounts to an homage to a time period and is subsumed in cultural references to that period, using the famed Manson murders as something of a real world backbone to what was happening in the fantasy land known as Hollywood. In fact, both male leads are based on actual people, with Leonardo DiCaprio's Rick Dalton being a pastiche of actors like Tab Hunter and Brad Pitt's Cliff Booth representing long-time Burt Reynolds stunt double, Hal Needham. Margot Robbie, of course, plays the actual Sharon Tate (and, on that note, Mike Moh's Bruce Lee is both well done and fairly amusing.) The period in question was one of transition in Hollywood (and the nation), where tried and true stalwarts like Westerns were giving way to the New Hollywood of more introspective pictures in the hands of names like Scorsese, Coppola, and Altman. Tarantino takes time to emphasize that societal change with Dalton and Booth's constant references to "hippies" and how they're seemingly appearing everywhere, with occasionally bloody consequences, while Dalton lives out the creative change, with his type of performer no longer being in demand.

So there is a story here, of Dalton's career struggle and Booth's faithful assistance. And there is a message here; of transition, of social transformation, and of the continued presence of violence in all of it. But what's missing is anything particularly memorable about the film. Tarantino made his bones with dialogue. Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Inglourious Basterds, even his segment in Four Rooms are all memorable for the way their characters communicate. Who can forget the conversation in the diner that veers from a discussion on whether pigs are fit to eat to the seeming nobility of a lifestyle change? Or the tension of a farmhouse in France while an SS colonel expounds on work, duty, and milk? Or the matter-of-fact explanation of a murder? Nothing like that exists in Once Upon a Time. There aren't really any memorable scenes, outside of a violent confrontation near the end and Dalton's occasional rants about himself in a mirror. One of them was dialogue-light and the other was dialogue-neutral. Despite the acting prowess of most of the people in the film, the one or two memorable lines come from child actress (excuse me: "actor") Julia Butters who stuck out as an homage to Kim Darby's role in True Grit. If you go into this expecting a Hans Landa or a Jules Winfield or a Calvin Candle, you're going to be disappointed. Tarantino took some criticism for his previous film, The Hateful Eight, being a wholly predictable and somewhat formulaic Western. Now he's made a film about the (temporary) end of Westerns that is no less predictable.

DiCaprio is his usual intense self, bringing energy and animus to a routine role. Pitt's job on screen is basically to be cool. Pitt is very good at being cool (see: Ocean's Eleven), so he handles it with aplomb. But that's as far as they both go. There's not enough in this script to give them moments that would leave an impact in the minds of the viewer. No one is going to be walking out of the theater reciting Ezekiel 25:17 or giving the plantation owner's opinion on the structure of power in the Old South. Watching a stuntman's personality expressed in his driving style and Sharon Tate's giddiness at her own success onscreen is interesting enough to keep the film moving, but there's frankly nothing that one walks out with and says "That's a Tarantino film!" until we get to the faux commercial during the credits for his long-time fictional Red Apple cigarettes. Again, this is an homage to an era, so we get a lot of looks at signage, architecture, car fenders, and other signs of the real world of that time surrounding the fantasy world and that's all well and good for a decent film. But it doesn't quite reach the level of a great one and, having been a Tarantino fan since the early 90s, that's usually what I'm expecting.

There have been some comparisons of this film to Jackie Brown; generally considered the weakest of his efforts but also the most languid and most personal of the stories that he's told. I think the comparison is apt, as this is a personal story, slowly played out amidst the foibles and contrasting outer lifestyles of the two leads, but whose lives intersect in their careers which, again, are part of the homage. Bit appearances by the usual suspects of Tarantino (Michael Madsen, Kurt Russell, etc.) are fine as inside jokes for those who've followed his films, but they don't add much, either (those seeing this as a meta reference to the former studio stables of actors are likely getting the joke.) I read about a poll the other day that mentioned the higher percentage than normal of attendees seeing the film because of the director and because of the actors involved. That actually says a lot about the film itself and why I can only passably recommend it. It's not bad. It's just not that great, either.

Boys will be boys

Having delved into Amazon recently and found it somewhat wanting, I figured I'd continue with something a bit less random, given my history of involvement with the comic medium, and watched the first couple episodes of Garth Ennis' The Boys. I was a once a huge fan of Ennis' work. I think his original run on Hellblazer, along with Jamie Delano's which preceded him, makes up the definitive version of the character of John Constantine. But after Ennis started a run on The Punisher in the mid-90s, his work began to take on trappings of that character and a decided glee in the "hardass for the sake of being hardass", as it were. Aside from a comedic turn in the miniseries Dicks (which I freely used at one Chicago Comic-con for an attempt at some very cheap laughs with the event announcer), Ennis was mostly producing ever-bigger guns and ever-bigger pools of blood. The introspection of his earlier work was largely missing. I haven't read the comic series that Amazon's production is based on, but after two episodes of their series, I can say that not much has changed.

The premise is that superheroes exist in the 'real world' and a major corporation (Vaught) has lined up most of them as employees that they then make money from via movies, advertising, product placement, and by contracting them out to be the resident protectors of various municipalities that pay dearly to have their own pet super. The supers, of course, are as corruptible and foible-filled as any of the rest of us and are not above using their fame and the constant adulation that results from it to get whatever their petty hearts desire. The Boys are an impromptu gathering of people who've decided they've had enough of being second-class citizens and want to blow the lid off of this situation, including a willingness to blow the respective lids off of the supers in question... which, I mean... OK?

It's not a particularly original premise (cue: superhero comics rant), but not everything has to be if it's told/presented well. It's kinda trying to out-Watchmen The Watchmen, but that's the cinderblock that every "superheroes in the 'real' world" story is going to have hung around their neck, especially given the storytelling abilities of Alan Moore, which often exceed those of the people lined up to attempt the same job. Moore layers themes into his stories, often with subtle visual cues that resonate down through them. The blood drop on the Comedian's smiley face button is the classic example from The Watchmen. Ennis, being less concerned with themes and more with entertainment, instead tends to batter you about the head and shoulders with them: "THIS IS WHAT'S HAPPENING! Corporation bad! Supers bad! Mercenary killers somehow good! IT'S A QUANDARY!" There's nothing for the viewer to figure out because it's not really supposed to be figured out. You're mostly supposed to sit there and be entertained by the blood spray and the fact that famous people might be rapists, too (which in the era of #MeToo seems kind of pedestrian, if still a nod to real life.)

Karl Urban is OK as the lead (Billy Butcher), but kinda lacks the rough edges that you might expect from such a character. Every time I see him, I keep thinking: "This is the urbane Bones McCoy from the new Star Trek films trying to be a badass. And generally failing." I guess there's something to be mined from Jack Quaid's character (Hughie) and his transformation from introvert to a member of a kill team, but I haven't found it yet. In contrast, Erin Moriarty (Starlight) coming to grips with her new situation and complete disenchantment with it has been far more believable. Antony Starr as Homelander has been kind of intriguing, since he's clearly doing the 'stranger in a strange land' bit, albeit as the overeager tool of the menacing Vaught Corp. I admit to not even recognizing Elizabeth Shue (Madelyn Stillwell), which is usually a compliment to someone that has slipped so easily into her role.

But on that note, one of the aspects of the show that really stood out to me is this: These supers are all still mindblowing to everyone around them. Given that the setting indicates that they've been around for years (decades?), it's difficult to rationalize how everyone can still be so much in awe of them. Sure, people get starstruck in different ways and certainly part of the premise is to draw the contrast between how famous and wonderful and heroic these people are and what their normal, human tendencies happen to be. But you're telling me that a multi-term US Senator in tough negotiations with Vaught somehow isn't going to be aware of the paranormal means they might use to entrap/convince him? Not least because the scene was used for one of those cheap (not even) laughs about sex? These guys are going out on nightly patrols and their every move is watched and analyzed on phones and social media just like actors and athletes today and yet one guy taking a long dive off a pier is enough to leave everyone with their jaws on the floor?

Doing these 'real world' situations is always a tough line to walk. After all, it's supposed to be 'normal' and yet not normal. But that single disconcerting note kind of opens the door to my overall impression in that most of this just feels staged. Overall, these don't seem like natural characters doing things that they naturally would. They seem set up to do scenes, rather than follow a storyline; as if, in setting up this tale of ethics about the difference between larger-than-life personalities and the actual people behind them, the creative team kind of lost track of the idea of telling a story and instead are just doing those cheap laughs or playing for shock value. Given that this is the same development team (Seth Rogen, etc.) behind another adaptation of Ennis' work (Preacher), I can't say that I'm too surprised. It's not a disaster and, unlike the fairly bland Mrs. Maisel, it has enough of those rough edges (outside of Urban) to maybe watch a couple more episodes and see if it beds in a little better. But it certainly hasn't reached the level of compelling/binge TV.

Mrs. Maisel's mediocrity

I noticed a couple posts on the board a few weeks ago talking about how good The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is and I know it's been getting some critical raves, as well. So, bereft of regular watching material in these post-GoT days, I figured I'd give it a shot. My opinion of Amazon's original series so far has been somewhere in the collective zone of "meh" or worse. Britannia is just bad. When the top acting talent you have is the Guv'nor from The Walking Dead, you're climbing a mountain already. When you decide to pile on special effects that really have no connection to the story, it's obvious that you're either trying to make up for something or you were aiming low in the first place. Similarly, Good Omens isn't working for me. The book is FUNNY. I've twice tried to make it through the first episode and fallen asleep both times (i.e. not funny.) My hopes weren't particularly high for Mrs. Maisel, either, and...

I'm missing something. I've watched the first two episodes of season 1 and all I can do is shrug my shoulders at most of it. First off, it's not funny. I think I've LOL'd once? For a show about stand-up comedy, that's not a good sign. My sense of humor is as critical as the rest of me and I don't generally go in for cringe humor and watching people act out their very normal neuroses with fortune tellers isn't going to get me rolling, either. Secondly, Mrs. Maisel's character isn't believable. It's not because she's a woman in the 1950s doing a profane act on stage in the Village. That part I'm OK with. It's that she's clearly written to defy most possible stereotypes and yet claims to be hewing to them. From her first moment on screen, where she's delivering the toast at her own wedding, to halfway through the second episode, where she entices her husband to fuck in the bathroom of a diner the day after said wedding, this is obviously someone used to doing her own thing. But, somehow, we're supposed to believe that the woman openly mocking her parents' attitudes and regularly spending time among the Bohemian set in the Village is going to have conniptions about performing on stage alongside the Geographical Poet (who is one of the more entertaining aspects of the series so far, if that tells you anything)?

Consequently, most of the characters aren't particularly entertaining. They're largely annoying or routine. It's been a long time since Kevin Pollak was the most invisible man of the lineup in The Usual Suspects and, despite playing the highly bombastic Moishe, he's still not leaving a lot of impressions. In most writing, regular characters have to have one of two things: impact or depth. If you can do both, great! Moishe doesn't really do, either. Granted, it tends to take more than a couple episodes to display said depth, but Rachel Brosnahan does it immediately. She's the main character, so it's easier for her, but that means that the characters in her orbit should have impact. They should be immediately doing or representing something interesting when they appear on screen. What Pollak's character represents is the stereotypical Jewish father, disappointed in his shlemiel of a son and feigning outrage at his wife but secretly admiring the chutzpah, since it's more than his son will ever have. Every time he's on screen, I'm doing the windup gesture with my hand in the hopes that the TV will somehow fast forward through this bit. No luck so far.

There are only two who meet those criteria so far. One is Alex Borstein as Susie (finally out from behind the artwork as the voice of Lois in The Family Guy.) When she shows up, things happen and they're generally things that propel the story forward, rather than simply act as set decoration. The other is Michael Zegen as estranged husband, Joel, who's clearly looking for something more in life and without a clue as to what it is or how to find it. (Perhaps I'm sympathetic, having occupied that role for much of my life?) The most interesting aspect of the series so far is the presence of Luke Kirby as Lenny Bruce which, if you're interested in the history of comedy at all (and the genesis of the new breed of comedians from that time like Bruce disciples George Carlin and Richard Pryor), is at least mildly interesting to see. How do they keep this connection going without pandering to the history of Bruce or using him as a regular deus ex machina to open doorways for Brosnahan? It's clear that Midge is supposed to be one of those disciples and she is kinda entertaining to watch. It's just that most of what's going on around her really isn't and, so far, her comedy really isn't earth-shattering, either.

So, I dunno. On the one hand, there might be something there. OTOH, when I sit down to watch this I keep thinking that I could be doing something more productive with my time (this is not new.) I'm open to encouragement, either way.

Obscene confessions of a lapsed Michigan fan

[With apologies to the indomitable Craig Ross, esq.]

I've been a Michigan fan since I was six years old. The year was 1976 and my dad was watching the Michigan-OSU game. I instantly became interested in the team with the cool helmets. When Michigan stopped OSU right before halftime with an end zone interception and proceeded to score 22 unanswered in the second half, I turned to my dad and asked who those Cool Helmet Guys were. He said: "The University of Michigan." I responded: "That's where I'm going to school."

That prediction turned out to be accurate. I did attend Michigan in 1986, having become a rabid fan of both football and basketball teams in the decade prior, and graduated four years later, living and dying with every moment that either team played (and adding the hockey team to that cycle of death and rebirth (mostly death in those early years...)) But I come to you now with a confession that requires no great effort to utter, despite it having been laughable for the majority of my life:

I am no longer really a Michigan fan.

I think many things fade as you get older and your outlook and priorities change with both age and, hopefully, wisdom. But to use the easiest comparison, I am no less the diehard Liverpool fan that I became only a couple years after that football game. In fact, given that LFC is in probably better shape, with better leadership on the field and off, than it has been in 30+ years, I may even be more of a fan now than I was then. No, the change in my Michigan loyalty is based on a series of factors that have grown more prominent in my mind and more inimical to the basic enjoyment of the teams as the years have gone by. To wit:

The game:
This aspect is largely centered around football as, in a few ways, I feel like the game is broken. Like most other sports, if you have endless talent, you have options. If you don't, there's a way to take advantage of the modern development of the game and then there's a way to cling to tradition in an exercise of futility. Too often in the last decade, it seems like Michigan has gone the latter route. When Jim Harbaugh was hired, I was the least excited among the fans that I know. I was attending Michigan when Harbaugh played quarterback there and I had kept an eye on his pro career and his subsequent coaching career. Despite considerable success at the latter, he didn't exactly strike me as a forward thinker of the game, so I was hesitant upon his arrival because Michigan had gone through a series of upheavals transitioning away from the hidebound Carr era, to the more modern but disastrous Rodriguez regime, and then a return to what the English would call a Proper Football Man in Brady Hoke. That label is always applied cynically to someone whose thinking is largely outdated but who embodies some unknowable spirit of the game the way it used to be when men were men and daffodils sang on the sidelines. The Ann Arbor-centric parallel is the "Michigan Man"; a term I have grown to loathe for the blind loyalty it's meant to instill, despite the lack of success which often follows in its wake (see: Hoke, Brady and Carr, Lloyd.)

Jim Harbaugh, in many ways, is a Proper Football Man. By that, I mean that he clings to a notion of the game that was outdated when he was playing for Bo Schembechler. What that has produced in the last four years is the inability of the football team to defeat its greatest rival (heretofore led by one of the preeminent modern football minds of the game), which means not only a lack of what most Michigan fans would identify as "success" (conference titles, Rose Bowls, playoffs), but also performances that are often somewhere between grueling and soporific. I spent the first game day last year accompanying my girlfriend's son to the tailgate that he was being paid to watch while its owners were inside Michigan Stadium. Despite Michigan playing on the widescreen in front of us, I spent most of that time watching Georgia Tech on another TV to my right. Why? Because Tech's offense was actually entertaining, even if also outdated. Better the fossil you don't know than the one you do when it comes to interesting football, I guess (although, admittedly, I know the triple option very well because Michigan ran it when I was a kid...)

On top of that, the continuing prostration to the gods of commerce has made the game largely unwatchable in the first place. Three minutes of action followed by three minutes of commercials is awful for fans in the stands, as well as those trying to watch at home. American football is already a slow-paced game, given that the ball is actually in play for only a fraction of the time that the game clock is running. When you combine that with the constant interruptions (touchdown, commercial, kickoff, commercial, end of quarter, commercial; one minute of game time just took 15 minutes of actual time), it simply saps the life from the proceedings. I've gotten to the point where even the four commercial breaks in every half of basketball is more annoyance than I'm willing to tolerate, so I frequently watch those on "DVR delay", so that I can speed through the ads.

But the most disturbing aspect to football, of course, is the health risk. Unlike basketball, I think football is on a clock. As the evidence of the dangers of the game, CTE-connected and otherwise, continue to mount, I find myself no longer interested in watching people kill themselves for my supposed amusement. It's even worse when watching them kill themselves in an often brutally boring display of offense. I can't look at hits on the football field in the same way anymore and I'm usually just thinking about how much damage these kids are doing to themselves for our entertainment... and for someone else's money.

The NCAA:
As usual, it's always about the money, and this incorporates basketball and hockey, as well. The NCAA is one of the more corrupt institutions in the sporting world and when you consider that said world includes organizations like the NFL, FIFA, and the IOC, that's saying quite a bit. Unlike those other organizations, which exist to profit off of the games they oversee and only occasionally via the abuse of the athletes which play those games, the NCAA goes all-in on the abuse. There are many, many other locations where you can read about the ongoing circus that is the NCAA's attempt to preserve the notion of "amateurism" (including their admission that the term "student-athlete" was created so that they wouldn't have to pay workmans' comp to what were obviously employees.) I find that I simply can't continue to be a paying spectator to that circus. The only other institution in this country where your labor produces profits for others but only in-kind "payment" for you is prison. There is no other institution where you are expressly forbidden from using your talents for payment. There is no other institution where people the same age as you and attending the same school as you can make money from an outside job but where you are forbidden to do so because of your talents and consequent special status ("student-athlete".) There is no other institution or status where you are forbidden from even taking a job that has nothing to do with those talents. While you are a "student-athlete", you're essentially indentured to your university, while no other student, including those on "full ride" scholarships as these athletes often are, is so burdened. The fact that the image in front of us is largely a bunch of young, Black men making billions for old, White men while not able to take a dime of that money can't be more disturbing, because that scenario has never happened in this country before...

John Beilein, a career college basketball coach, recently resigned that post at Michigan, at least in part because of the farcical system that the NCAA has in place. All the man wanted to do was teach and coach basketball, but the NCAA has set up a host of policies that prevented him from doing just that, supposedly to protect the athletes from being exploited by their coaches, but mostly to ensure that they're not classified as employees so they can continue to be exploited by their universities. These policies are given the guise of preserving some kind of "life balance" between sport and school, but given that the NCAA has been unwilling to enforce its rules against some of its biggest offenders (and biggest moneymakers), it becomes apparent what (account) balance they're really trying to preserve. All indications are that he was also frustrated by seeing his players regularly leave school early for a chance at the money that they should be making now.

I find myself unable to support that system- directly by buying tickets or tacitly by watching TV -any longer. I don't want to contribute to the wallets of those old, White men while we hear example after example of athletes being unable to go to the movies or even have enough to eat, while their in-kind "payment"- an education -is often a scam only perpetrated until their usefulness to their non-employer is served. I'm not interested in supporting the profoundly elitist and often racist perspective that athletes can't be trusted with the millions that they've earned, while programmers who develop a new app in school (Mark Zuckerberg, anyone?) aren't given a second thought about how they might spend their windfall. I'm not interested in helping to perpetuate the idea that athletic departments are strapped for cash and therefore can't pay their laborers, when any tour around a major university will show you exactly how and where that money is spent. You might even see the host of middle managers and special assistants walking out of their well-salaried jobs and well-appointed offices on your tour. Major athletic departments exist to make money and spend money so that they can claim that those that earn the money can't have a slice. I live with enough lies already, thanks. And the key thing here, of course, is that...

The university:
is the NCAA. The NCAA is a membership organization. The schools that follow its rules are the ones who write the rules. Michigan is one of those members. But, even beyond that, there's no way to escape the truth that Michigan is also a giant, profit-seeking corporation. The facade of an educational institution for most major American universities disappeared long ago and Michigan is no exception. Athletic departments are just a manifestation of the same phenomenon that is rampant across academia. From the never-ending building sprees to the vast gulf in salaries between department heads and those who actually do the bulk of the teaching, Michigan and universities like it are far more concerned about their bottom lines than they are about the welfare of most of their employees or the education of their students. How else does one explain the university refusing to extend a decent contract to its lecturers without a walkout? How else does one explain the confrontational nature of the relationship between the university and the city in which it resides? (Mostly about tax issues. It's always money...) How else does one explain the ridiculous increase in university cost of attendance, far outpacing inflation over the past 40 years? That explanation is simple: the University of Michigan is a profit-seeking, multi-billion dollar corporation and is following in the same behavior pattern of most of its brethren (Wal-Mart, et al.) The university is sitting on an endowment of over a billion dollars and yet it can't find a way to give its staff a decent cost-of-living increase or maintain their health insurance? What does it say when the university with one of the most famed medical schools in the world regularly threatens to cut back on the health care access of its employees?

It's not just that I don't really want to be associated any longer with teams that bore me or a system that exploits athletes in the name of a mythical status while gathering increasing profits. It's that I'm questioning the nature of the institution from which I hold a degree. That institution owns its identity and it's one that I'm not really comfortable with anymore. To draw a comparison with Liverpool again, I'm happy to say that LFC is a club that is extremely conscious of the livelihoods of its employees and the community that surrounds it. The club goes to great lengths to assist local charities and has instituted a ticket price freeze for the past few years after fans objected to an increase in the already expensive seats at Anfield. The only time Michigan ever instituted a ticket price freeze was when students stopped coming to the games because the team was so awful (see: Hoke, Brady.) Ownership matters. The actions of owners matter. Michigan's teams are "owned" (there's that disturbing scenario again!) by the university. They represent the university and their respective actions are impacted by each other. I look at recent activity by my alma mater and confess that I'm not particularly proud of it or proud to say that I was once part of it.

So, yeah. I have no problem walking away from the football program. I'm mostly there already and my interest in hockey was slowly hammered by Red's almost decade-overdue departure. But I did (and do) really enjoy watching Beilein's teams and I'm intrigued by what Howard might do. I'm also intrigued by a member of the Fab Five, one of the more prominent collective voices talking about the injustice of the NCAA system 30 years ago, being the guy who basically has to live by and enforce that system with his players. I'd like to think he's no happier about it than I am, but he doesn't have the choice I do to simply not play ball anymore. And, despite my interest in his team, that's what I'm going to do.

All bleeding stops eventually

For much of TV's existence, shows didn't have a planned ending. If a show was successful, it would simply keep running, episode after episode, season after season, until the Nielsen numbers went down and advertisers dried up and the network finally pulled the plug. There were very rarely finales or acknowledgments that the story was coming to an end. They simply ceased to exist. In more recent times, many series have a planned story to tell and exist expressly for the purpose of doing so. Breaking Bad is a good example, in which Vince Gilligan planned seven seasons and ended it on schedule. Deadwood was a victim of the old trend. HBO simply pulled the plug in 2006 and we were left, after three seasons, with several storylines which seemed as if they could have been given proper, or at least better, closure. But I think that's kind of an erroneous view, based on the unusual hybrid that Deadwood was, and I don't think this evening's film really did it any favors.

Putting aside a lot of story questions that the movie actually introduced, rather than resolved, such as why the seemingly terminally ill Doc Cochran was more hale and hearty than central character Al Swearengen, I think the very basis of the film was superfluous. In an odd way, similar to those older series that were callously swept away, Deadwood became a progression that wasn't really about telling an extended story. The plot mattered less and less as the seasons moved along and it became more about simply spending time with the wonderful characters that David Milch and his colleagues had created; in the same way that watching later seasons of All in the Family weren't because Archie Bunker had become the owner of a bar, but because it was a weekly opportunity to spend time with the acerbic central figure of the show. No better comparison can be made than between Al and Archie, both of them with execrable character flaws and an often shocking lack of humanity, but an earnestness of action that made them entrancing and, yes, even lovable. Trying to wrap up All in the Family with a two hour film would have left the same empty feeling as the Deadwood film did. That wouldn't have been the real Archie experience, in the same way that this wasn't Al or Seth Bullock or Jane or Dan or any of the rest.

The one that sticks out the most to me is Jane. While it may be a natural progression for the character to still be alive because she'd stopped drinking, less bombastic Jane is simply less Jane. Calamity Jane earned her nom de plume because she was beyond natural. Showing her as wiser and more mature Jane degrades rather than enhances our memory of the character who likely used the phrase "Go fuck yerself!" with more meaning and wider intent than any person in the history of performance. The rekindling of her relationship with Joanie is meant to be sweet, but arcs into the realm of sentimental that belies the character, who often found sentiment at the root of her brusque actions but kept herself eternally guarded against actually feeling for anyone, lest she get wounded again as with Wild Bill.

In complete contrast, George Hearst's continuation as the Darth Vader of the piece was the most glaring piece of fan service among many. While everyone else had developed somewhat and mellowed with age and/or infirmity, Hearst was barely changed (and neither was Gerald McRaney, impressively), as were his actions. On the one hand, his continuing his path of theft, murder, and financial bullying was a measure of his contempt for the people he once had complete control over (financial, mental, emotional); peons to be manipulated or disposed of at his whim. On the other hand, doing so lacked any of the character's previous sense of subtlety and profound sense of perception for how people could be cadged into action, rather than simply threatened. This is even more focused because of him having risen from simple millionaire to US Senator (which is true of the actual Hearst), which takes some awareness of social interaction, even though Senators at the time were still appointed by whichever legislature they could buy off. His being beaten in the street by the same people that he scorned while now-marshal Bullock looked on in his own evident enjoyment was tossed out there for the fans to finally soak up. It's akin to Cersei having been killed by Arya or some other "just dessert" that many people would have wished, but which served the story and the character not at all.

Building the plot around Trixie's rash actions isn't new for the series and it allowed Paula Malcomson some room to continue her own path that she'd trod 13 years ago, with the birth of a child giving her space to admit her own self-worth ("Because I'm the bride and it's my special fucking day.") and finally allow Sol to marry her as what she finally felt: an equal. Plus, credit is due to Timothy Olyphant and Molly Parker for being able to convey the longing between Seth and Alma even after such a long time for both characters and actors. So, it's not as if the film is a total loss. But overall it was more of a Hallmark movie version of the show than the actual show. It lacked the dirt (despite the Gem still using a cloth banner for its main sign; one wonders how much of the set was still standing or had to be reconstructed) and the grime and the grinding intensity that the series conveyed so effortlessly. This was too clean and too easy. Perhaps it's as simple as Al not being himself and leaving the story without a center? Possible, but I think it's more complicated than that. The title of this piece is a line from Doc, acknowledging the mortality of everyone and everything. I prefer to think that the show bled its last 13 years ago, with the rougher image of the camp still firmly in my mind.

I'd like to have come up with something pithy, but so would they.

The title for my last GoT review could've been something like "All shows must die." or "Disappointment is coming", although that would have been more appropriate last week. But, no, there's not much sense in trying to be cute when one of the greatest TV shows ever dies a slow death over two seasons only to spectacularly faceplant in the finale. I'm not particularly outraged because I tend to spend my outrage savings on things that actually matter and also because, as noted already this season, I've pretty much just been waiting for Game of Thrones to end, since it had long since lost the label of "compelling television". But one thing you could be sure of was that at least it largely hadn't stooped to the level of "typical" in its storytelling. I noticed that Benioff and Weiss were credited under "Written for television" again and, holy shit, was it ever.

As mentioned before, George RR Martin didn't actually write the line about lack of attention and happy endings in the books, but he might as well have, since A Song of Ice and Fire was never destined to be a Happily Ever After kind of tale. If it were, Ned Stark would have been revealed to be alive and manipulating things behind the scenes a couple seasons ago. But, uh, let me just state for the record that: Stark Kids Make Good is about as Hollywood Happy Ending as you can get. Basically, all the good guys of the story won out, except the one latterly condemned by genetics. Is that the lone dollop of sadness in our otherwise uplifting tale about elected kings, the independent Stark kingdom, Tyrion the Hand, and Arya's adventures into the new world? Oh, sure, Jon gets stuck at the now mission-bereft Night's Watch (broken Wall, no more Others, Wildling allies that he's even helping resettle the land beyond the Wall- Why is there a Night's Watch again?), but returning the perennial outsider to the outside again is not the stuff of tragedy.

We seemed to be rolling for a bit, with Dany enforcing the policy of unnecessary celebration (i.e. Kill all who opposed me) and Tyrion searching amidst the destruction of King's Landing, his family, and his principles in the agony of victory. And then we reached the crux point of the expected assassination of the Dragon Queen (with imagery firmly ensconced in our heads as Dany walks to review her troops with Drogon's wings emerging from her shoulders) and all of the tragedy dissipated in that single moment that D&D had apparently decided was enough, leaving us with an easy stroll through what some might consider Fan Service Central.

Except most fans didn't want this.

Game of Thrones made its bones by not being afraid to confront the reality of people's choices. There was a debate on Twitter last week about the contrast between "plotters" and "pantsers" when it comes to epic fiction. The former have a detailed outline that they tend to follow through on, which makes their characters occasionally seem wooden, as they serve the plot, not themselves. Pantsers tend to simply write and see where it goes ("seat of their pants"; hence, title) which makes their characters quite human and enthralling, but also can lead to situations where the story escapes the writer and they have to work hard to get out of corners that they've painted themselves into. Vince Gilligan mentioned that the writing room on Breaking Bad enjoyed that process, as they liked to challenge themselves to see if they could make the story continue to work. And that's both cool and feasible when your story is largely driven by the motivations and actions of one or two characters. That's simply not feasible when it's driven by 15. Martin has obviously taken on the role of both kinds of writer. ASoIaF wouldn't be feasible without some kind of outline and his work as editor and writer of the collaborative Wild Cards series demonstrates an ability to move a story along step by step.

But he's also clearly a pantser, as he's spoken often about how the story has moved in directions he didn't expect because of this or that character or about how particular characters aren't "speaking" to him today (or this week or month or year), as an explanation of why writing hasn't proceeded as quickly as everyone would like. D&D, as screenwriters, have to be plotters. Given the demands of producers, directors, actors, networks, and a production schedule, you can't just dream up new stuff on set and delay while the story goes in five new directions that you didn't plan for. The process of wrapping everything up this season spoke loudly of their determination to move on, as it was rushed and sloppy (Starbucks, Jaime grows a hand), so we already had story problems that were bringing the series to a rather ignominious end. But at least we didn't have Happily Ever After, which belies the very tenets of the story that Martin started telling over a quarter-century ago.

And it was played to the very hilt, with the council of nobles almost leaning all the way into some kind of democracy before laughing that off; one Stark child ruling the North; another Stark child ruling everything else; and the two outsiders given free reign to pursue their own paths, with Jon returning to a place where he doesn't need to know anything and is the home of his first love, while Arya ensures that she never becomes a proper lady. This is to say nothing of Tyrion getting the chance to return to the role he always loved, even when he had to do it for his sadistic nephew, and the rest of the gang forming the Slapstick Council (Bronn defaulting to lord of Highgarden off a drunken promise that no one else witnessed; Sam becoming Grand Maester without the proper training or acknowledgment of the Citadel's hierarchy; etc., etc.) Pile onto that the world's only remaining dragon disappearing into myth and the casual departure of Dany's army of fanatical warriors and no one really had to worry about anything when the credits rolled. It's the end of the Third Age and has become the Time of Men with all that fantastical stuff and decent storytelling just disappearing into the mists that spawned the dragon queen in the first place. It's all so convenient, so typical, so weak.

A couple years ago, Benioff and Weiss revealed that the next project they were hoping to work on was a post-US civil war story where the South had won. My immediate thought was: "Don't these guys know how done-to-death that idea is?" There's a host of half-assed books out there about that very topic, most of them written with the extremely unoriginal idea: "What if the racists still ran our government and treated everyone without white skin as something to be owned, feared, and/or reviled?" Most sensible people would tell you to just read the news if you want to see that story in action, but there's a ton of very mundane fiction written about it, too. That's the story that D&D wanted to tell and get HBO to help them with. Given the plummeting quality of Game of Thrones over the past couple seasons, leading to this outright reversal of most of the dramatic principles that had formed the story's identity, I have to say that I've gone from disbelief that they'd want to pursue that idea to complete understanding. These guys were handed a gold mine of material and ran with it as long as they could. Once the ore ran out, they reverted to standard plot lines that fill space in all of the average TV shows ever produced. With GoT now wrapped, they can continue to pursue their very average ideas with average plots that they generate from them. Speaking of average stories, they're now slated to write a couple Star Wars films...

No one should feel cheated. We had several years of excellent television and storytelling. For those of us that read the books years before the show emerged, it was a treat to see it all come to life and to include so many of our friends and family members into this world that we knew and loved. The fact that it ended so limply is unfortunate, but that's the case for a lot of good things. Point of fact: Endings are hard, especially with stories this large and long and complex. There are always things that are going to leave at least some people unsatisfied, if not everyone. I was fully prepared for disappointment of some fashion. What I wasn't prepared for was the utter abandonment of the approach that had made the series a revelation to most of its audience, book-readin' and non-. All of the characters went home happy- in Westeros -while the audience was left to wonder: What the hell happened?

Technical stuff:

Why bother?

Lines of the week:

"There's nothing in the world more powerful than a good story."

You don't say...? Well, we had one for years.

Happy endings

One of Ramsay Bolton's quotes has become something of a tagline for Game of Thrones: "If you think this has a happy ending, you haven't been paying attention." It's not from the books but it's assumed that it was directed at the audience of both books and TV show, since so many people are programmed from childhood to assume that "... happily ever after." is the natural order of stories. No one should have ever assumed that about A Song of Ice and Fire and this latest episode kind of drove that point home, albeit somewhat obtusely.

This is the first episode of the season where I felt that Benioff and Weiss were back to hewing to Martin's template, rather than just trying to tie up plot threads in as expedient a manner as possible. The end of some major characters and the transformation of others were things that were essentially fated to happen. Despite Varys' good intentions, the idea that the entire power structure, tradition, and thousands of years of history (and the entrenched power that dictated that history) of Westeros were going to transform into a peoples' utopia through the efforts of a small group of those same power-wielders was never anything more than actual fantasy. Similarly, anyone that was actually paying attention knew that Dany was weighed down by her heritage and, when push came to shove, was going to follow in the time-honored path of most Targaryens: fire and blood. There are no surprises here; a rather demonstrable lack of subtlety perhaps, but no surprises.

Likewise, Jaime and Cersei's story was always going to end in tragedy. Despite both of them being among the most interesting of all characters in the story (especially Jaime, for me), it was written into their bones that they would not be creating a new life in Pentos when the Dragon Queen took over. Cersei's ambition and viciousness were inevitably going to end her and she was the addiction that he simply couldn't break. You don't need a prophecy to tell you that (and I guess you could say he fulfilled it by taking her down to the catacombs where they both died, but that is a rather oblique finish.) Furthermore, her ending was always going to be kind of routine. There would be no moment where the audience could feel satisfied that the Evil Queen got her just desserts. Cersei as much as predicted what would happen during the siege of the city by the Baratheons; the same things that always happen to non-combatants in war. Their end was perfectly in line with expectations. What I think all of this appropriate drama suffered from is that the story is simply too large for the show to handle and always has been.

Dany's descent into the Mad Queen took place off-stage, between the execution of the one person she genuinely trusted and the opening of this episode. That's it. It's a progression that would have taken a few hundred pages in the novels, if not more. We didn't even get to see it because the series is wrapping up. It's the same problem that surrounds the Night King's demise. Here are huge events in the story, even on a very personal level with Dany, that need room for the audience to breathe in and absorb. Instead, they're happening like someone flipped a switch. And it's not just with Dany. Her decision to light up King's Landing even after hearing the bells is immediately taken up by her army, Dothraki, Unsullied, and northerners alike, with a show of bloodlust that fairly belied the circumstances. Here was a standoff where one side was visibly giving up and when the dragon starts roasting them anyway, that's a signal to attack...? There's plenty of history that tells you that when armies enter a city after a long siege, the looting and the raping and the pillaging begins. But this was a siege of a couple days and the scene didn't play that way at all. Dragon knocks doors down, army enters to little resistance, enemy surrenders, and... killfest time? Dany's descent into familial madness doesn't mean that everyone around her instantly follows. I guess you could argue that the nature of the Dothraki and the pent up anger of the northerners toward the Lannisters and the Unsullied led by the extremely outraged Grey Worm all contributed to that instant battle frenzy, but it struck me as very awkward.

But this is where epics sometimes run aground. Everyone who reads or watches a story has their own estimation of what the ending is going to be like and you're rarely going to please everyone. Take a look at the endings of shows like The Sopranos and Breaking Bad as examples. But when you're irritating pretty much everyone, not just with the events, but how they're delivered, there's something else that's wrong. And, again, this is the problem of switching media. D&D are trying to end this epic. These are tragedies that Martin has been building toward for 20 years. Trying to do justice to them in the space allowed by six episodes of TV just isn't feasible. This was the episode where it really felt like the series was back to the flavor and character of Martin's writing after a two year absence. But it's also the one that perhaps shows how it was never going to work in the first place.

Technical stuff:

George Patton once said: "Fixed fortifications are monuments to the stupidity of man." But he was speaking from the perspective of someone in the 20th century, fully engaged in the concept of modern mobile warfare. Back in the Middle Ages or the approximate technology level of Game of Thrones, the worst possible thing you can do when trying to defend your fortification is walk outside your fortification! But now we've seen it happen in two episodes this season. Maybe you can justify it in the battle of Winterfell, since the whole plan was a delaying tactic until the Night's King could be drawn out... but, no. This episode had even less justification, since the troops were sheltering inside a ring of scorpions to keep the dragon away. Stepping outside to meet the enemy in the field wrecks that plan quite nicely. I'm not normally one to nitpick things in a fantasy story, but they at least have to make some kind of sense. This doesn't. Also, what exactly is the point of having gates with a visible gap between the doors, as one set in the inner walls of the city was shown? Inner walls are supposed to be used as stages to drop back to when under siege, which means that gates there should be the same as the ones shown outside and not be useless in a fight. Production error, like the magical coffee cup?

Speaking of scorpions, one upside was that we finally got to see what it's really like trying to use siege weapons against anything other than things that don't move (aka walls): They're slow, heavy, and clumsy. "Reload! Faster!" No, no, you're just not going to do it "faster" because siege weapons are not fast, especially when trying to engage the medieval equivalent of an F-15 with a fully automatic howitzer. Also, perhaps I missed something, but how exactly were the bells pertinent to Dany? We saw Tyrion explain his plan to Jaime and then explain it to Jon, but Dany wasn't privy to those conversations. So, when the bells are rung, that's what triggers her to act on Missandei's last word? That just seemed like something hit the cutting room floor that we otherwise should have seen.

One real downside of Martin not having his effective hand on the tiller is the degeneration of Tyrion as a character. As noted before, Tyrion's adherence to his new outlook on life has become less tragic and more annoying than anything else. He's wedded to the same fantasies that Dany and Varys were, but has spent all of this season and much of the last two expressing them in an ever more dolorous fashion. In the middle of trying to insist to Dany that she should find another way of taking the city, he insists on the crackpot plan of escaping to Pentos for his two siblings. Family loyalty and childhood memories run deep; I get that. But woeful, tragic Tyrion is a lot less interesting than canny, smart, and still tragic Tyrion. Martin has said before that the Imp is the character he's closest to and who carries what is essentially GRRM's outlook on life and it's never been more obvious that D&D don't have anywhere near the grasp on him than it has been since the series departed the books.

It was a nice touch to see Arya standing alone in the aftermath, which highlights her character in many ways. Adding in the pale horse ("Then I looked and saw before me a pale horse; he who rode upon it was named Death; and hell followed with him." - Revelation 6:8.) was also appropriate for those of us into those kind of apocalyptic scenarios.

Two fight scenes, two impressions: The Clegane Bowl was decent. I kind of wish that there'd been a way to distinguish between what the Mountain could endure just because he was Gregor and what being a zombie version of Gregor was able to grant him in that fight. Having to follow the typical zombie routine of "aim for the head" was, however, quite disappointing. But the Euron/Jaime "showdown" was completely superfluous. It was basically just a way to give Euron something to do other than being roasted by a dragon with hundreds of others and somehow grant a latter-day lover's quarrel between the two of them over Cersei. That's just completely ham-handed writing and a real waste of a few minutes of screen time.

Lines of the week:

"Alright, then, Let it be fear."
Kind of a setup line for something everyone could see coming, but at least it was delivered with conviction.

"I drink to eat the skull keeper."
Communication is essential.

But the winner, as always and forever, is the Hound:

"Yeah. That's you. That's what you've always been."
That line applies to so many characters in this episode.

Still the best character in the story, dead or alive.