The Devil needs a plot

Continuing my now seemingly monthly schedule of posts (I will likely get back to Spider-Noir, but it was as uninspiring as noted), I once again was propelled by an inquiry after watching a 20-year-old film in anticipation of its just-released sequel. The film in question is The Devil Wears Prada, a David Frankel production that I had long been completely disinterested in because I knew the type of film that it was: the erroneously-named "brain candy" because it doesn't actually encourage you to use the organ in question. We sat down to watch it yesterday at a friend's place because we're planning on watching said sequel (innovatively titled "The Devil Wears Prada 2" on Monday.) In the end, my suspicions were proved accurate and the 20 year wait could have gone on much longer with no loss to be known.

The film is based on a novel by Lauren Weisberger who had once worked as a personal assistant for Vogue editor, Anna Wintour. Most people assume that the book is a roman à clef as a result and Wintour has accepted the similarity between herself and Meryl Streep's character in the film, Miranda Priestly. Priestly, the tyrannical magazine editor whose presumed focus and drive on making her magazine, Runway, the best it can be in the highly competitive fashion industry is about as stereotypical a role as I've ever seen Streep take and leaves me questioning what really interested her, not least because the rest of the story is as thin as the paper it was printed on. (This was back in 2006, when people still used paper.) To wit: Idealistic young woman looking to do "serious" work as a journalist instead demeans herself to participate in the fashion world, only to absorb all of its tenets (style over substance!), alienating her friends and lover before finally realizing that that world isn't for her. The End. Pretty bow on top included (We are talking about fashion here.) You could map out the progression of this story inside the opening five minutes of the film and precisely nothing was surprising or interesting along the way as you traveled in your straight line from A to B. The story doesn't challenge you, the characters do nothing but fill their assigned roles and most of it is a demonstration of how to take an industry which supposedly thrives on innovation and taking chances and depict it as traversing the safest, most non-controversial path possible.

The cast is no different in this respect. Outside of Streep's underplayed and restrained performance (likely to allow the other actors to more fully fit their stereotypes), Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci don't bring a whole lot to the picture other than walking in their assigned paths. Indeed, I thought Hathaway was really miscast in this role, since it seemed to call for someone who could emote more at the injustice of the treatment she was receiving, rather than passively endure it as either the price of paying the rent in Midtown or because she knew she only had to keep playing this part for another 60 minutes of screen time and it would all be over. You can see the little touches of casting and writing designed to both be more "inclusive" (Hathaway's character graduated from Northwestern, in the Midwest, rather than Brown as in the novel in order to make it not entirely East Coast snobbery (Fashion is global!)) and, unfortunately, less so as, with the lone exception of Tracie Thorns, everyone in the cast is not only White but also apparently straight. In the fashion industry. The fact that they're all upper middle class to upper class Yuppies and very conscious of their assumed station in life just makes it that much more repellent. I'm all about stories about characters that are not the type of person you'd like to meet on the street. I write many of them. But I also want my difficult/dangerous/nasty characters to be interesting and none of these people are. They're mostly just contemptible, not only for what they assume about their lives but how all of those assumptions make them crucial to the existence of modern culture and society. You simply don't understand. They have to be snobs because, well, that's the business!

Obviously, I am not the target audience for this kind of thing, even if I was inclined toward films that ask you to "turn your brain off and enjoy." My version of "enjoy" is a story that asks me to think about why it's happening and who these people- these humans -are. But none of these people are actual humans, despite the late, faint attempt to convince everyone that Priestly still is one, even if she can't bother to learn her assistant's names or be conscious of the fact that they have personal troubles (aka life), as well (the "humaniziing" scene being Andrea having to emotionally extend in sympathy for Priestly's impending divorce.) That attempt to make Priestly likeable is couched in the assertion that she has to be "The Devil" because she's a woman in her highly competitive industry and if she were a man, everyone would simply look up to her/him for doing what needs to be done to succeed. I have no illusions that there are many male executives who are every bit as contemptible as Priestly in any number of industries. I have no interest in getting to know them or watching a film about them, either, as they remain, just like her, terminally uninteresting.

All of that said, I will still be sitting down in front of the sequel, if only to satisfy the curiosity of whether Frankel and writer, Aline Brosh McKenna, has learned anything in the past 20 years. All of the main cast are along for the new venture, as well. One would hope that people like Streep, Hathaway and Stanley Tucci are conscious of trying to do something new and/or different but with a huge audience out there looking for "brain candy", my hopes are not high.

Walking old ground

Strangely, we've spent more time in front of the TV these days. Crazy, I know. With that in mind, one or both of us have sat down to watch things that came highly recommended within the past few years that we haven't gotten to. And, no, one of those things was not Tiger King. I realize it may be all the rage right now, but I sat through 40 minutes of the first episode to see what the fuss was about and turned it off. It was like an episode of Inside Edition, except longer and dumber (For those of you not old enough to remember Inside Edition, it was where Bill O'Reilly got his start in leading a "news" program, if that gives you any insight.) If I want to watch contemptible people trying to justify their awful or ridiculous behavior, I can watch our idiot president every day. I don't need to see animal cruelty on top of pettiness.

But one of the things we have watched that was worthwhile is Fargo. As a devoted Coen Brothers adherent, I am, of course, a fan of one of their greatest films. There were a couple people on the board constantly recommending the series as one of the best things on TV for a year or two, but we'd just never gotten around to recording it. (Does anyone actually watch TV with commercials, unrecorded, now that sports aren't happening?) Having watched the first season, I'd have to say that they were probably right. It certainly doesn't hurt that season 1 is basically just the film extrapolated to a larger picture. Lester Nygaard's (Martin Freeman) scheme is more impromptu than Jerry Lundegaard's and Molly Solverson (Allison Tolman) isn't pregnant or the chief of police, but the essence of the story remains the same, without a wood chipper, but with far more death and destruction. One of the keys to telling a good story in modern, serialized television is keeping a certain pace. That demands solid writing, directing, and especially editing. I think season 1 achieved that by constantly turning the bizarreness screw, but not turning it so fast that it became farce. Instead, we were regularly re-interested in what was happening with Lester, Molly, Lorne Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton), and their cast of supporting characters. No individual storyline rose above another, to where we were occasionally waiting for one scene to end to get back to another, more entrancing character.

There can be no argument that those production qualities were helped along by a stellar cast. Both Freeman and Thornton played characters that were similar to what they've done before, but neither with quite as much edge, in my experience. Thornton does "implacable" quite well, but usually not with as much malice. Similarly, Freeman does "bumbling" really well, but never to the point where he's finally lashed out and shown just how dangerous he can be. But the pinnacle to me was Tolman. She was delightful every time she came on screen and she played her role so subtly that it lent weight to the "reality" of the situation. We've all been in situations where we thought our boss and everyone around them were idiots, but no one (normally) explodes with indignation. Neither did Molly, as she simply swallowed the outrage of being the only competent person in the room and kept trying to do her duty (and a bit more.) I thought sheriff Bill Oswalt (Bob Odenkirk) really highlighted this by being clueless not because he was stupid, but because he was just looking at things from a small-town person perspective and was genuinely shocked at the level of perfidy that was happening in that small town, enacted by people that he'd known for most of his life. Again, that's a genuinely normal reaction in abnormal circumstances and I think that kind of thing made it more digestible to the audience. It was also kind of funny to see Keith Carradine again playing the retired lawman role, similar to what he'd played in Dexter, many years ago.

That, of course, leads right into season 2, which is about the younger Lou Solverson, among others. We're three episodes in and... we've kinda stopped. There are good story elements there and there is, at the very least, an interesting cast (Kirsten Dunst, Jesse Plemons of Breaking Bad fame, Ted Danson.) But, despite keeping that "edge of bizarre but still reality" motif, season 2 seems to lack the charm of the first season and the film, which was an essential element of what made both of them compelling. We'll probably get back to it, at some point, but right now it feels very much like a sophomore slump.

Speaking of sophomore slumps, let's talk about True Detective. We picked up HBO for free for a few days, so I thought I'd look in on the third season. As many of you may remember, I think the first season is one of the best things HBO has ever done, which is a very high bar, while the second season was a faceplant of genuinely epic proportions. Somehow, HBO continued to let Nic Pizzolatto be the showrunner and he did them the service of basically ripping himself off. In short, season 3 is a retread of season 1. It's largely the same premise: missing children, weird dolls, backwoods mysticism, local people covering for their own, etc. The genuinely new elements are twofold: 1. Issues of race in the South (Really?!) are confronted head on. 2. The format of following the investigation through three different time periods (1980, 1990, 2015) is an interesting one that keeps the story moving. Otherwise, more people might have figured out that this was just season 1 set in Arkansas.

The story is entirely based upon the relationship between Wayne "Purple" Hays (Mahershala Ali) and Amelia Reardon (Carmen Ejogo) which, again, is just like season 1. The latter was also centered around the relationship between Marty and Rust. That was the important part; not dead children or perv hoarders living in old fortifications out in the bayou. Same thing here. The dynamics of Wayne and Amelia completely supersede the "buddy cop" situation of Hays and Roland West (Stephen Dorff); thankfully, since the latter isn't much of a "buddy" situation and there isn't anywhere near the magnetism between Ali and Dorff as there was between Harrelson and McConaughey. Considering their importance, it's gratifying to see both Ali and Ejogo completely carry the season; especially Ali, whose emotional reactions and expressions utterly sell scene after scene. I'm a Mahershala Ali fan in the first place (his performance in Moonlight is a must-see), but he was really excellent here. It was also encouraging to see female characters who actively propelled the story forward, like Amelia, rather than being scenery.

All of that said, unlike season 1, having seen it once, I have no compulsion to go back and see season 3 again; largely because we were retreading old ground from the beginning. The LA experiment crashed and burned in season 2, so Pizzolatto headed back to his home territory and... basically told the same story. I mean, I guess that's fine, if that's your schtick. Aaron Sorkin has gotten away with it for most of his career. But there were some really questionable approaches in the wrap-up, too. Like season 2's "entire plot contained in one desk drawer", we basically had an Agatha Christie summation in the final episode of this season. This wasn't about leaving unanswered questions or letting the characters (and the audience!) make their own decisions about what happened. No, this was all wrapped up with a nice bow on top. The End. Happily Ever After. Much of the final episode was like reading the Wikipedia summary of the entire series, which basically could've been "Watch season 1, instead." Also, the final image was strange. Hays being a LRP in Vietnam was an aspect of his character but not a really prominent one, so to close the series with him ducking into the bush again seemed markedly out of place after having summarized your whole story as being about the connections of family (both murder/kidnapping case and on a personal level.) Unless Pizzolatto was just going all Jacob's Ladder on us. The most absurdly funny aspect to this season was watching HBO's Inside the Episode shorts after each one, where Pizzolatto spares no effort to pat himself on the back for "how good this scene was" or "how much I like this part of the story." All creative types have to have some degree of ego. Most are usually more adept at containing it. I think I'm going to go rewatch Chernobyl...