The severing knife seems to lack a point

We've now watched the first two seasons of Severance. Season 1 was easily the best thing I've seen on Apple+. Everything else has been some combination of mediocre and/or tiresome. But Severance was compelling. It was an obvious metaphor for the disdain that most American corporations actually hold for the people doing the work that keeps them in business, as well as an examination of the ability to separate work lives and home lives, the question of how much work should dominate one's life (especially in comparison to other societies, like much of Europe), and so forth. It was great. It was well-acted. And, even though I'm not really a mystery show person, I was willing to go along with the hidden elements because it seemed like they were all leading toward some reasonable conclusion. Enter Season 2...

From the very outset, the plot left reason and progression at the door in favor of the bizarre. Not only was it no longer really a metaphor for modern work life, but it also seemed to be grasping in different directions at the stranger corners of said life, such as cultish religions like Scientology. Suddenly, the founder of Lumon didn't just inspire Steve Jobs-like devotion, but was instead this messianic individual whose words were followed like commands from the gods and who had created this miraculous invention that would be the saving grace of humankind as long as those same stupid humans didn't get in the way of its immaculate conclusion. And that's all well and good, as long as you're actually trying to tell a story and not just provide set pieces for being weird. Instead of telling a story that seems to have some kind of sense attached, we were just shown episode after episode of people talking about dire consequences and impending doom, along with side jaunts into basement meadows filled with young goats for no discernible purpose. As I said, I'm not really a mystery show person, so I'm probably not the target audience here. I am OK with weird things happening, as long as said mystery seems to be progressing in a positive direction. That is, to say, progressing at all.

Without that direction, we're going to end up with something like The Killing, which was an American attempt to duplicate a successful Danish TV show about a murder and the subsequent investigation. But the first season was a series of red herrings which meant that the story didn't develop, most of the characters involved didn't develop, and the season finale left everyone watching feeling like they were robbed because what most assumed would be the tedious Agatha Christie-style resolution wasn't even that but yet another massive teaser for the second season, which most viewers largely and rightly abandoned, myself among them. Showrunner Veena Sud then insisted that the fact that people hated the ending of season 1 was a good thing because it meant people were talking about the show. That sounds like a great example of marketing, rather than actually telling a story and there's some of that feel to the end of this season of Severance, as well.

Don't get me wrong. I understand and appreciate a lot of the work that's going into this. The character conflict between Mark's two halves and Dylan's emotional trauma with his wife's attraction to his innie and the halting relationship between Irving and Bert and all of the other quirks of humanity that the actors and their stories are bringing to this are things that I appreciate. But it also feels like all of the strangeness is just there to bring window dressing to outwardly-realized internal conflicts. It's like trying to tell a personal drama by dosing someone with LSD every couple days and seeing if they can figure out what's real and what's delusion; what emotions are genuine and what's just the drugs talking. I can see that our various characters are going through changes and I appreciate that, but I don't feel like the story itself is going anywhere. Again, it's reminiscent of The Killing, in which each episode was about localized emotional trauma but all of those set pieces didn't add up to an actual game, to put it in football terms. (That's not supposed to be another slam against Ted Lasso, but feel free to read it that way, if you like.) This feels like what people tell me Lost turned into: an excuse to keep the mystery going and not actually bringing anyone to a conclusion that they'll feel was worth the effort of keeping up with the non-story. Unlike the end of season 1, I'm not compelled to sit down in front of season 3 at all and that's unfortunate because I felt like the first season was actually saying something and not just an excuse to run to Reddit and talk about everyone's pet theories about what the goat and Brienne of Tarth really represent.

Contrast in binging results

While we were off during the holidays, we decided to binge a couple series because the time and opportunity were both there. The first one was Clarkson's Farm. Now, full disclosure: I largely detest "reality" TV because most of them are simply setups to create drama out of nothing. Presenting people in real situations will almost never be interesting enough to retain an audience unless you're an actual documentarian with an actual story. For this stuff, something always has to be manufactured. This was never more evident than when I had the misfortune to be sick a few years back and, even worse, decided to watch a couple of the Storage Wars-type shows (which may have included the actual Storage Wars. They were all so pedestrian that I don't remember.) Somehow, no matter where the nominal leads of the show went, there was always a "villain/huge rival" person that would be the primary opposition in bidding on abandoned storage units. It was obviously a setup to create situations that would have normally been Man from Mundania from the very outset. Your "reality" TV was clearly scripted. Even when there's not an obvious writer, it's usually quite evident that the producers are selecting "random" contestants by their personalities that will doubtlessly conflict, thus generating the aforementioned "drama." Perhaps it's because of Jeremy Clarkson's showmanship and experience (I have never seen Grand Tour or Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?), but Clarkson's Farm never seemed to require that. The people involved range from perfectly mundane (most of them) to rather unusual (Gerry, the wall-repairer and nominal "head of security") but Clarkson does such a good job of playing off of them that you don't feel like you're being spoon-fed anything. So, not only was it often hilarious, usually involving Jeremy's acerbic relationship with his primary contractor and assistant, Kaleb, but it was also incredibly educational. We learned more about modern farming in a few hours of watching this show than we probably could have in a week's worth of straight documentaries. It also did a great job of making rather pointed statements about climate change and Tory government incompetence without hitting you over the head with them. You lived the experience just like Jeremy does. Now, clearly, Clarkson is in a much more advantageous position than your typical farmer and his poor business decisions would probably be a death knell for the average farm if he weren't already a millionaire and wasn't being paid handsomely by Amazon to show his wild ideas either taking fruit or not (mostly not), so it's not like this is precisely "reality" TV, either. But he does spend a lot of time muttering with his land agent, Charlie, about the cost of things and how the farm- and farming, in general -just isn't sustainable in England. He also acknowledges his situation regularly (i.e. he probably couldn't do this if there weren't a film crew following him around.) We burned through the 24 available episodes with 8 more incoming in May.

After we finished that, we poked around for something else on Amazon and came across Goliath, a legal drama helmed by Billy Bob Thornton. Billy plays Billy McBride (convenient), a genius lawyer who apparently founded a legal firm that became high-powered enough in the span of ~20 years to be deeply in bed with major defense contractors. But Billy lost his taste for the big show and drank himself to near-oblivion, such that he now lives in a motel somewhere near the beach in California. He gets recruited to be the front man by another lawyer wanting to do a quick settle-and-cashout on a wrongful death case against one of the former firm's major clients. This, of course, morphs into a vast conspiracy that provides the apparent reasoning for making this into a TV series, rather than a one-off film. In addition to BBT, the cast is relatively star-studded (William Hurt, Maria Bello, Molly Parker) but the writing is... not, primarily because the entire basis of the series is kind of half-assed to begin with. We made it through 3.5 episodes, with the last .5 being under duress because I was already pointing out that a) no one in the series other than Billy is actually an interesting character and he is mostly because he's BBT; b) nothing in the plot or the action even graces the concept of what legal work is like; and c) that plot is completely paint-by-numbers. In all three episodes, there was a setup for a crisis, the crisis, the furthering of that crisis, and then its immaculate resolution. Said resolution was always ascribed to Billy's panache, encyclopedic knowledge of the law, and the use of every shortcut by which to execute the exercise of that knowledge. This is compounded by the fact that every character in this story already knows this about Billy and predicts that he'll do exactly as he does, at which point he does exactly that. He never makes a mistake because the plot doesn't allow room for mistakes. That might require another 10 minutes of screen time and that would disrupt the pattern that's been established. It's like how you could watch episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and know exactly where they'd hit the plot points (problem, heightened problem, crisis, resolution) at each commercial break. Just as an example of the detachment of this series, despite having apparently drunk himself to seeming ruin, Billy lives in the most nicely-appointed "cheap motel" rooms (two of them) that you'll ever see because I guess we can't have a genuinely burdensome living situation because that might require actual writing about a human character and would detract from the "cool" legal maneuvers that Billy is required to do in each episode that also largely take place off-camera...? It's like watching Deus Ex Machina, the Series. Do not bother.

Trying too hard to be something different

It's been a few weeks. There hasn't been much playing at the Michigan Theater that's been particularly interesting, so we've mostly just been watching TV on Tuesdays. But there hasn't really been much of that that's particularly compelling, either. We've had the misfortune to see a film that we were hemming and hawing about seeing at the Michigan and also another Apple+ TV series that is ending up like all of the rest of them, other than Severance.

The film was Bottoms; another Emma Seligman feature that is the follow-up to her fairly-entertaining Shiva Baby, which we did see and did enjoy, but wasn't compelling enough for me to sit down and type out a couple thousand words about. It was originally a short film and then was popular enough to become a long film and didn't really benefit from the necessary padding of the script. Meanwhile, Bottoms, which stars and was co-written by Rachel Sennott (also the lead in Shiva Baby) is one part bog-standard teen sex comedy and one part parody of same. The characters are all hyper-realized stereotypes of those idiots you detested in high school, except for the main group, which is the poor nerds that somehow end up with all of the girls. At any moment, I was waiting to hear Robert Carradine's bellowing laugh erupt from one of the women that mostly occupied our time. But the problem, of course, was just that: We've seen all of this before. Many times. None of it is new. None of it is original. None of it is really that funny. The only difference here is that both leads (the other being Ayo Edebiri, best known as Sydney from the spectacular The Bear) are gay. That's a nice acknowledgement of modern viewpoints and the identities that many people had even back when you and I were in high school, but it doesn't make the tired plot or screenplay any better. It just makes it an even more obvious retread with some modern window dressing to try to sell it to new audiences (much like Bros.)

Seriously, the summary offered by Rotten Tomatoes (where the film has a 93% approval rating...) is "Propulsive and over-the-top, Bottoms is an instant high school comedy classic that feels both current and nostalgic." I can assure you that there's nothing inherently "propulsive" (whatever that actually means) about it, especially when it comes to the leaden predictable plot. That, of course, is probably what makes people feel "nostalgic" about seeing the same thing they've seen since the 1980s introduced us to Porky's. I'm sorry to say that nostalgia was not the overarching feeling I was getting. It was more like boredom. And, of course, the "current" part was, again, likely down to the fact that many reviewers seem smitten with the idea of gay people being something original in storytelling when they should just be regular people in a decent story, if one were being told. If they wanted to make a film about being LGBTQ+ in high school, then they could have written a script that fully engaged that topic, rather than simply using it as a note of "modern" difference from the almost 40-year-old Revenge of the Nerds. There really was nothing that made this film stand out- script, direction, performances -from any of the dozens of lookalikes over those past four decades, which is really disappointing after the solid films that we've seen both Sennott and Edebiri (Shiva Baby, Theater Camp(!)) in this past summer. And, yes, I should get around to writing something about The Bear.

Until then, I'll have to content myself (and you) with writing about Apple+'s attempt to be different in a similar failing fashion to Bottoms. As noted, other than Severance, the offerings on Apple+ have been pretty subpar for any number of reasons. The problem with our latest attempt to find something interesting, Invasion, is also one of trying too hard to stand out from the crowd and missing the target in the process. Just from the title, you're automatically aware that the series is about an attempt by little green men to conquer/eradicate/make aggressive contact with/something-as-long-as-it's-violent our little green world. Again, this is a plot that goes back to H.G. Wells at the end of the 19th century (War of the Worlds is 125 years old this year, in fact.) However, in this case, rather than show the snake-necked saucers of the Martians laying waste to the countryside, through the three episodes we've watched, we've seen the presumed aliens once, for about 15 seconds. In their place, we've gotten four stories about emotional and personal loss that just happened to occur during this supposed crisis.

We have the estranged former doctor who gave up her career to be the perfect housewife; the career soldier wrestling with the effects of distance from his own marriage; the fragile schoolboy dealing with bullies and absent parents; and the brilliant engineer who is enduring her first long separation from the love of her life, driven by their mutual careers. Again, all of these are themes of emotional and personal loss and all of which are completely ancillary to the ostensibly overarching theme of an alien invasion. Any of them could have happened in the midst of any other kind of disaster (pandemic, terrorist attack, worldwide forest fire) and any of them could simply have been happening on their own, no crisis required, such that the focus of the show called "Invasion" isn't any SF element at all, but simply the angst of these people going through their personal problems. But all that does is make a footnote of what is supposedly the central thrust of your story. Said invasion is a background element, at best. I think the idea was that they'd tell the story of a "war of the worlds" at the ground level, by showing what happens to these normal people facing normal problems who are suddenly thrust into extraordinary circumstances, akin to the classic Alien. But all they've done is provide a veneer of SF to a pretty standard melodrama; to the point where you wonder why it's considered speculative fiction at all.

Now, I was just complaining about seeing the same, old thing and, certainly, we've seen a few hundred alien invasion-type films and TV series that put our (human) heroes in trying times over the years, from ongoing wars like Battlestar Galactica to plain, old Earth-gets-firebombed stuff like The Tomorrow War. None of that is particularly exciting or original anymore. But none of them try to pretend they're something they're not in the hopes of approaching it from a nominally original angle, either. All of the stories and characters (and performances) in this show are interesting enough. It's not been boring. But it could have just been titled "Four Stories of Loss" with any of the premises mentioned above (jokes or not) and we would have had the same result. But we came into this with the idea that this is about an ALIEN INVASION and instead it's about a lot of longing (and appropriately plaintive looks) for when things can be "normal" again; presumably post-divorce, post-mourning, and post-getting back to primary school before someone kills you and takes the conch. Clearly, they've tried to slow play this as a different way of approaching the stereotypical assumption that many would make and that's all well and good. But it also sets up the viewer to be disappointed as we wade through the emotional debris and wonder what visitors from other worlds have to do with any of this or why they'd bother. We're probably not going to anymore, either.

They think you're the mark

"If you can't tell who the mark is in the first five minutes, then you're the mark." Some variation of that phrase is usually uttered in most movies or TV shows about gambling because most people think gambling is about losing. Or, well, most people actually think gambling is about winning, but most people end up losing because they're the walking example of that adage. Similarly, most people don't know how casinos actually function and, well, most people don't know what good writing actually is and, well, we can keep going in this vein for a long time before we run out of obvious examples. All of them lead to a situation where you could argue that Poker Face is actually a good show and you'd be wrong because it isn't and it took me getting all of 45 minutes into the first episode to tell you why. Tricia is currently finishing the last ~15 minutes of said episode while I'm writing this opening paragraph because she's willing to give it that much more consideration before deciding whether it's worth it.

First off, production design. It's shoddy, obvious, and stupid. If you're setting up a situation where you don't want to try to keep dancing around being set in the most obvious of locales (Las Vegas), then you probably want to at least set yourself up so that your replacement for Vegas seems like it's a realistic situation. The show seems to be set in "Frost County", because the big guy who owns the casino where most of the action happens is Sterling Frost. The county is named after him. The police answer to him. The casino that he owns is named after him. His son, Sterling Frost, Jr. (Adrien Brody, the only performance worth watching in the limited time that I could sit through; we'll get back to that) is named after him. Ego will often take you a long way. If that's the case, why would your ego think that it's necessary to name said casino "Frost Casino" like you never made it past the opening pitch of the series to some idiot producer, rather than something both more self-serving (just "Frost" might have worked, since everyone knows what it is, like "MGM Grand") and even vaguely more intelligent for the viewer? Does said viewer need to be reminded more than once that this place- where most of the essential action takes place -is the casino or do you think they can figure that out on their own? Similarly, no actual casino in the world has a blazing neon sign that announces its high rollers room as the HIGH ROLLERS ROOM. That is, unless the target audience for your show has both a) never actually been in a casino and is b) stupid. Just FYI: Most people with that much money don't want to be bothered by nosy spectators watching them lose that money, so the big neon sign to attract people would generally be seen as a poor choice.

Second, plot. The basic story of the first episode is that your lead character, Charlie (Natasha Lyonne) can tell when anyone is lying, so Sterling, Jr., the casino's manager, is going to use Charlie to help him beat a high roller in a game of poker, since she'll always be able to tell him and his inside guy when said high roller (Mr. Kane) is bluffing. There's a lot more going on in the episode involving a murder, but that's the basic premise around which everything else revolves. And that would be fine for a pilot that introduces Charlie, her ability, and how that will be used to set up the "murder of the week" situation that the entire series is supposed to work with except that said basic premise is bullshit because that's not how poker works. If Charlie always knows that someone's lying and, therefore, bluffing, OK. But what if they don't need to bluff/lie? If they think their three kings beats everyone else at the table and they bet on it, they're not lying. And if you think your two pair beats everyone, you're still losing to their three cowboys. So how does Charlie give you an edge in that situation? How could you even imagine that she would give you an edge unless you'd never played poker in your life and really had no idea how the game worked? They were also setting up cameras to see all angles of the room. If that's the case, then they should be able to see the mark's hand and play into it whether they have Charlie there or not, so what's the point of involving her? Are there really that many people out there who've both never played and never been in a casino that are willing to ride along with this situation because Lyonne and Brody's acting somehow make it worth watching?

Third, acting. Yes, Brody, like usual, is excellent, shifting from mildly perturbed to casually menacing to quietly plaintive and back again with aplomb. Lyonne, OTOH, brings a lot more fire and light to a lot of what happens, which seems to be her whole purpose in the general proceedings. The person who keeps turning over that page that people might not want turned seems to be her Sisyphean rock (e.g. she has to keep doing it, even if it's not really what she wants.) That's fine from a character motivation/goal standpoint, but it's also a situation that can get tiresome for the viewer right quick. She already fills her role with some level of exasperation. How long until that starts being the role of the audience, as well? The reason that some people find sitcoms to be more annoying than humorous (waves tiny flag) is that they're prescribed situations. You have to be willing to be set up to be knocked down and that's just not really entertaining to me because those characters are bowling pins, rather than bowling balls. They don't roll forward. They just stand there to get knocked down and set up to be knocked down again, over and over. They don't make progress. That's what this is and it's usually pretty tedious by the third or fourth time around. But in this case, it's not even the typical Colombo-style "murder-of-the-week" because Charlie's magical ability lets the writers do a shortcut. They don't even have to set up clues and do all that deductive reasoning nonsense. They can just set up one bowling pin to lie and the other pin will know that they're lying so we can just cut right to the chase, almost literally.

But, clearly, I am the exception to the rule because not only has said series been critically hailed (99% on Rotten Tomatoes! 99%! With an 8.6 average!), but intelligent people like Gail Simone are declaring it to be one of the best shows on TV, at the moment. I have Peacock because it's the only way I can be sure to see all of Liverpool's Premier League matches, so I definitely didn't go out of my way to pick it up in order to see Poker Face and I can tell you right now that no one else should, either.

Carnivals are usually fun

Give me a line that doesn't sound stupid. I dare you!

Jeff Bezos apparently told his creative types that he wanted to have the "next Game of Thrones" as an Amazon original. Carnival Row is supposedly one of the first entries in that attempt to recreate the (ahem) magic of the HBO series. I can tell you right now that, if by some miracle they actually succeed in that effort with this show, I will lose what little faith I have left in humanity. It's been a while since I've seen something this bad. Yes, I know the last episode of Game of Thrones was just a few months ago, but even that had some redeeming value (Solid actors with actual roles, a decent line or two, etc.) I didn't see any whatsoever in Carnival Row.

First off, let's just assert one thing: No show is going to capture the zeitgeist the way GoT did for two reasons: 1. The multiplicity of networks means no one is watching any one thing at any given time. There's too much choice out there to capture the same size audience so that that one thing will be the only thing talked about at the office the next day. 2. Almost all of these new services are offering up entire seasons in one go. There is no designated watching time, such that you know that you and several million other people are all planted in front of your TVs at the same time (and tweeting about it at the same time...) That kind of communal activity just isn't possible when some people binge things inside 24 hours and others can only watch them over a few weeks. At the moment, Hulu is the only one attempting weekly releases to try to maintain that community tension (and, of course, show commercials.)

Wait... You want us to say what?

That asserted, there's no way that Carnival Row should become the next big hit because no one except Jeff "more money than any deity you can think of" Bezos would have been willing to pay for it. It's awful, top to bottom, from every technical perspective you can think of: acting, direction, writing (save me, Jeebus; ESPECIALLY the writing), as well as the more nuts-and-bolts stuff like lighting and basic physical functions (how dual, insect-like wings actually work, for example.)

Now, granted, you had to expect that the acting would be brutal if the lead is Orlando Bloom, whose range is essentially "pensive but wooden figure constantly trying to convince you that he actually has emotions.", but how did they trick Jared Harris and Indira Varma into this? Promise them they'd only have scenes with each other so they could feed off one another and ad-lib their way out of the awful script? Apparently not, since it was still awful when Harris was explaining- to his wife -how his job works and the status of the current legislature. Because she wouldn't know these basic things, would she? And, overall, the acting doesn't rise above the level of Bloom's emoting in front of his boss (complete with requisite fist slamming to the desk) at how much he feels for the Fae people and their plight. Could they have made this any more obvious? How about if he did the classical "baring a breast with a ready dagger" bit?

Dreary. Like pretty much everything.

But the direction was poor, too. Chase scenes are supposed to build tension, not stutter for five minutes while the two participants keep pacing each other, but that's exactly what happened as Rycroft Philostrate (Bloom) and Unseelie Jack (Matthew Gravelle) race across the rooftops. It was like trying to turn over an engine when the starter is failing. You keep feeling that something's about to happen as the car does that shudder... but then nothing. So, you try again. That's not tension. That's anticipation and despair, because the motion that you get means nothing and the motion you expect never happens. You want tension? Go watch The Bourne Identity again to see how to set up and conduct a chase scene. Oh, and the names... Rycroft Philostrate. Vignette Stonemoss. Imogen Spurnrose. Seriously? I mean, you're serious with this? It isn't fantastical enough that you have people with wings and demons living in the sewers and you think Orlando Bloom can actually act, but you have to give people names that would make each and every one of these people despise their parents?

But that's part and parcel of the worst part: the writing. It's brutal. Half of it is exposition, but even where it isn't, they have the True Detective, season 2 pattern down cold (i.e. People don't fucking talk like that!) My favorite bit was where Bloom confronts the sergeant he suspects and the latter responds: "Just what are you insinuating?" Wut? Not "What's all this about?" or "Tryin' to make a point?" or even "What are you tryin' to say here, inspector?", all delivered in standard Cockney. No, no, no. Let's reach into Webster's for the elevated term because that's the first thing that would come to mind for Average Joe Desk Sergeant. All that tells me is that, in addition to your world not being real (suspension of disbelief!), your characters aren't real, either, because they speak like someone just handed them a script, rather than how they would if they actually lived in your unreal world. JFC, Tamzin Merchant's entire role (Imogen) is exposition! Every time she opens her mouth, she's dropping facts like an almanac to people that should already be familiar with them. She even describes what we've already seen, as if we need that explained to us like her entire family history and marital status. "Carriage!" Yes, we saw that. This is the same response I'd expect from a four-year-old pointing out the window to say: "Fire truck!", because it's exciting for him and he thinks no one else saw it. But we're watching the screen (presumably), so we don't need it announced.

"I'm about to tell him what style of hat he's wearing!"

The crowner is, appropriately, the last scene, where you'd expect some more detail and, instead, are given none, presumably because the writer (René Echevarria) thought it would be "mysterious". Unseelie Jack is about to unburden himself of, y'know, everything and decides that that's the moment to drop some hints about the horrible things that he's seen and why Rycroft Philostrate(!) has no clue about the real world. It's at this point that you'd normally drop in a couple names or words that the audience won't recognize or understand so that they have something to entice them into watching the next episode (although, with this series, perhaps this is a blessing.) Think Melisandre talking about the Lord of Light/Red God/R'hllor. You don't know who that is or what its role is in Westeros, but she name-drops because it's natural to her (she lives there and, really, with the Red God) and it gives the audience something to think about, in addition to providing a little detail on the world. We get none of that from Unseelie Jack's monologue. None! It's all horrible darkness this and you won't believe what I've seen that, but we don't get one single detail about this obviously overarching plot element. So, his entire speech becomes ephemeral, as we later watch a Fae woman get devoured by something in the sewers down by the docks which, for all we know, might be a common thing in these parts... and tells us the same thing his useless speech did!

Me, too. It's called "This screenplay."

I'm not even getting into more technical detail, like how showing everything with a blue lens to make it seem "dark" also begins to make everything blend together. Or how you don't soar, as Vignette(!) does in the opening scene, with dual, halteres-type wings (think common housefly.) Or how working girls don't sleep with their johns! That's because they're working and need to move on to the next guy. If you're going to use sex as a major plot element, you might as well know how it works, yo.

I honestly can't fathom how even Amazon greenlit this thing and I've seen Britannia. Echevarria was showrunner on Terra Nova (once described as "Stargate Universe by Dr. Seuss"), if that gives you any indication at which level things are operating. But if one is trying to field the "next Game of Thrones", one certainly wouldn't start here. Aim higher.

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.

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.

Brave New World

Yes, nerdism has taken over the formerly almost-sacrosanct environments of non-cartoon TV and movies. With the dramatic success of Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, all things Marvel, and the impending Star Warsapalooza, there's no shortage of projects that may be springing from prose to screen (Yes, Star Wars first hit big on the screen, but in terms of actual solid storytelling, many of the comics and novels beat the films from the word 'May'.) Someone on the board linked Tor's massive list of potentials and almost-realities (ahem) here. So, let's review, top-to-bottom:

Good Omens: I heard Neil Gaiman tell a hilarious story more than once about the initial attempt to write a screenplay from this book. Whether it can ever beat that story is up for debate.

Altered Carbon: The possessing-someone-else's-body experience has been done, many times, and has still never been improved upon since All of Me. This was a great book. Film? Eh.

Ancillary Justice: This, OTOH, would be, as Leckie says: "tremendously cool"! How to translate it successfully to a TV audience? There's a question.

Bone Street Rumba: Never read it, but the premise sounds way too much like the "villain of the week" serial that they attempted to make of Hellblazer this year and which, of course, died a totally deserved and hopefully agonizing death.

Brave New World: Spielberg? Nope. Syfy? Nope. If it was being done by AMC or HBO or Gilliam, I'd have hope.

Gateway: This, OTOH, may be right up Syfy's alley, in that it can be easily converted to a Star Trek-like "problem to be solved by the 4th commercial break"-of-the-week delivery, even if a lot of the subtexts in the story may be lost. Beyond the black screen horizon...

Little Brother: Creative death, thy first name is "reality-based young adult" series. Seriously.

Lock In: I hate Scalzi's stuff. That is to say I love Scalzi's stuff because he's so much better than I am. This, however, was not one of my favorites and recommending Legendary by referencing Colony does not do it any favors.

Luna: New Moon: Haven't read it. Have heard good things about it. CBS? Ugh. Kill it! Kill it with fire!

Redshirts: This, OTOH, was one of Scalzi's best. FX adaptation for a limited (key word) series? Oh, hell, yes.

Robopocalypse: Haven't read it. If it truly is trying to compete with The Walking Dead, but with robots, I'm not particularly interested unless it's carrying some kind of philosophical bent akin to The Matrix.

Six Months, Three Days: Creative death, thy second name is "light procedural" (read: cop show.) If they do want to turn this excellent story into a modern version of Moonlighting, that only reaffirms my contempt for NBC (see: Hellblazer.)

Spin: Haven't read it. Not a real Wilson fan. Sounds ideal for Syfy...

The House with a Clock in its Walls: As you may have guessed by now, I'm not a huge fan of kids' fantasy,either, and haven't been since I was one. (Exception made for Skeksis.)

The Last Policeman: Haven't read it. Sounds kind of intriguing on a very personal perspective level. But, alas: CBS.

100 Bullets: I really like Azzarello's work. I think he has a good sense of pace and a great understanding of his characters. That said, I think Bullets is one of the more sorely overrated series of the past 20 years and attempting to make a film of it, rather than a TV series, doesn't strike me as wise.

Fortunately, the Milk: Haven't read it. Again, not too excited about kids' stuff, except to say that Gaiman's light, yet layered, touch would probably interest me more than others.

And, no, I didn't put in another pic just because it's Scalzi. I'm trying to break up the wordage.

Ghost Brigades: Doing the whole Old Man's War story would be amazing. Doing it by Syfy would be less so, especially given their inability to normally sign actors that could truly bring Scalzi's stuff to life (young or old.) Still, I'd watch.

His Dark Materials: Eh. This sounds like a slightly younger version of the BBC's recent Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, which I watched one episode of and fell asleep halfway through. Twice. I have the other five on the DVR. No telling if I'll come back to it.

Horrorstör: "Hey, you know what'd be cool? If we do a more focused version of Office Space, but with ghosts in a warehouse!" No.

How to Talk to Girls at Parties: Haven't read it and, y'know, Neil is reliable and all, but I keep thinking of Jeff Goldblum in Earth Girls Are Easy and just... nah.

Hyperion: Would be killer. Even on Syfy, I'd be glued to this.

MaddAddam: Margaret Atwood. Darren Aronofsky. HBO. What else needs be said?

Midnight, Texas: Haven't read it. Actually sounds kind of intriguing. But NBC? Any broadcast network that uses the words "humorous, sexy, and downright scary" is going to produce something like Wicked City. Seriously, does anyone that isn't trying to sell middle America another piece of shit use the word "downright" anymore?

Ready Player One: So, so geeked (ahem) for this.

Red Mars: Epic books. I have little background with Spike TV, so I've no idea if they'll throw decent weight behind something as cerebral as this, but Straczynski is a selling point, even if I only saw a few episodes of Babylon 5.

Skin Trade: Decent story. Almost ideal for Skinemax. Maybe.

The Dark Tower: Read the first one. Didn't like it. Not inspired, but remain to be convinced. I'd be far more enthused about a cartoon of Dork Tower.

The Forever War: Would be teh awesome. I'm a little cagey about Tatum, but he was quite good in Foxcatcher.

The Kingkiller Chronicle: Haven't read it, but have had it recommended to me by a couple friends. Anytime someone signs up in as large a way as Lions Gate has, it always strikes me that they're leaning on marketing (and, typically, copying someone else's success as an aspect of that marketing; GoT anyone?)

Time Salvager: Reading the description makes me think 12 Monkeys has already done it and then I see who the director is... HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! No.

Uprooted: Reading the description makes me think Dragonslayer has already done it.but at least Ellen Degeneres has more credibility than Michael Bay.

Y: The Last Man: I would kill for this. Hopefully, I won't have to.

American Gods: This would be amazing. The Starz label makes me hesitate somewhat, but expanding things actually sounds viable for once and they're clearly engaging the fanbase, so...

Neil Gaiman's Likely Stories: I've read most of them. They're good. Sky TV isn't easily available in the US, so I'm muted on this (in more ways than one.)

She Who Brings Gifts: I'm sorry. No more zombies. Do Not Want. Yes, perhaps humorous, innovative take. Doesn't matter.

Story of Your Life: Never read it, so I'm blank on this one. Can't really go wrong with Adams and Renner... except what am I saying? Of course you can go wrong. But, again, I have no idea. The premise doesn't sound exceptionally different from many similar stories (like one we'll see below.)

The Sandman: Not a chance in hell. The whole series in one film? I don't care if Gaiman and other notables like Goyer and Gordon-Leavitt are involved. It's not feasible. I mean, good luck to'em and all, but to be honest, I was never that huge a fan when comparing it to other things that Vertigo was doing at the time.

Childhood's End: This is what Story of Your Life could aspire to. I'm eager to see how they make this work, especially since I always arched an eyebrow at the appearance of the aliens, since it seemed like too obvious a message. And it is Syfy, but this book may be something they can excel with.

Hunters: Never read them, so I'm blank on this one, too, but the phrase "heavy procedural" just entered my mind. Edit: Having now watched the trailer, it looks bad.

Lucifer: Hrm. I never liked this idea and wasn't particularly enthralled with the story the first time. Now it's going to be a series? Hellblazer, here we come (Ironical!) Edit: Having now watched the trailer, it looks bloody awful.

Preacher: The sole saving grace (heh) of this one is that it's AMC. The comic series, while initially excellent, faded over time and I'm not entirely certain that even AMC will be able to sell some of the excesses of Ennis' imagination to a non-pay-cable (i.e. HBO) audience and, if not, why bother?

The Expanse: Never read it. Sounds pedestrian (MASSIVE conspiracy!) and, of course, Syfy. But it's at least open-ended enough to give a look-see on the pilot and see if they've escaped the clutches of the Sharknado.

The Magicians: Harry Potter as a college student! Awesome! Not really. Edit: Having now watched the trailer... just, no.

The Man in the High Castle: Often Dick's most highly-regarded work, I'll certainly watch it, but I'll begin by questioning whether anyone can capture the twists of his particular insight. Ridley Scott did it once. Edit: Having now watched the trailer, it looks promising.

The Shannara Chronicles: In essence, they're adapting the only worthwhile book of the Shannara series (Elfstones of Shannara) but I have doubts about how well that will come across in the lower budget of TV and, of course, MTV, which doesn't have a track record of releasing anything of cultural impact and/or merit since circa 1983. Edit: Having now seen the trailer: production values are high; acting maybe not so high. Worth a look.

So, a few highlights, some more possibilities, and then the usual amount of fool's errands. We'll see.

It's not on my back

 

Film

 12 Monkeys began its first season on SyFy last Friday. Like many people, my first reaction when I heard the announcement of a TV series was: “Why the hell would they do that? The story’s over and there's not much more to say.” But in the worlds of time travel and Hollywood, there's always something else to say, even if no one cares to hear it. My next thoughts were: “How are they going to duplicate Terry Gilliam’s offbeat style which was one of the real selling points of the film? And how are they going to even come close to the performances of Bruce Willis (one of the best of his career) and Brad Pitt (the one that convinced me he could act and earned him his first serious critical appraisal), which were two more real points in the film’s favor?” The short answer is: They’re not. The long answer is: SyFy, like much of Hollywood, is hoping to attract viewers with a franchise (even though a 20-year-old standalone film only somewhat registers in that classification) and then keep them with solid writing and acting. Did they do so? In my case, not really.

Film

 The first problem is the visuals. Films obviously have much larger budgets than TV series (at least to start they do) and so can create and shape their worlds in vastly superior ways. Gilliam’s film, like many of his other efforts (Brazil, Time Bandits) was gritty, dirty, shadowy. It made you uncertain about what was real and what wasn’t. It left you searching the screen for clues and answers and still fascinated even if you didn't find them. It made the mundane menacing, as it would be to someone traveling through time on what seemed to be a hopeless mission. But even with all that uncertainty, it felt like real people lived there. The technology used for that time travel was the most obvious aspect of that feel. The steampunk brass and protrusions were in full evidence and it was clear that humanity and this technological wizardry were confined to dark and dirty spaces because we could never see the time machine or really ascertain how it functioned, but we knew that it was unstable. It was presented that way with all of the wobbling bits and jarring performance as James Cole plunged into the chronal stream.

The TV show has none of that. In the couple shots we saw of the machine and Cole, it’s spotless. It could have just rolled off of the nearest Star Trek set as a stand-in for one of the Enterprise’s dilithium containment tubes. Furthermore, there’s nothing around the machine to indicate that it’s anything other than a film set. It’s in a largely featureless room, without people and without indication that anyone or anything has ever been there other than Aaron Standford, who plays Cole, and a camera crew. The same problem exists for the rest of the episode. Cassandra Railly’s (Amanda Schull) hotel room is just a spot to shoot a scene, despite her having waited there for who knows how many days and then waited while Cole recovered from his wound. The lengthy interrogation of Cole takes place in what looks like a converted garage. Cole’s first disappearance takes place in the cleanest alley of any American city yet known. The only place that has some degree of visual character is the house where they meet Leland Goines, which simply apes a similar scene in the film as Cole desperately tries to find the progenitor of the world-destroying virus. There’s nothing eye-catching in the episode that leads one to think: “Hey. I wonder if that were a clue to this story or the background of it! I’d like to see that again.”

And TV...

 Likewise, both Standford and Schull, while not bad at their jobs, certainly don’t sell their roles. Willis as Cole was determined and borderline maniacal, but he was also completely confused because he was in an environment that he remembered but had left behind 30+ years ago, past who knows how many drugs and the strain of the time shift. That’s an interesting character and Willis played it to the hilt. Standford acts like he just walked on to the set from downtown Toronto… because he did. He’s completely in control and cagey at all the proper moments. There’s nothing to indicate that he’s any different from any of the NSA agents who hold him prisoner, despite being stupid enough to let his personal aggression threaten the security of the mission he’s supposedly so committed to. Part of the film’s appeal is its uncertainty. We’re pretty sure about Willis’ Cole’s mental state but we’re as lost as he is in trying to solve the big mystery (the virus) or the small one (if he’s actually sane.) There is no doubt in Standford’s Cole. He’s completely linear and, thus, completely uninteresting. Similarly, Schull doesn’t even approach the doubting desperation of Madeline Stowe in the film, who keeps spouting rationalizations even as the impossible occurs right in front of her. Schull goes along with the story because it’s the story, not because her character believes it. And, seriously: Cassandra Railly? Really? Nothing reeks so much of SyFy’s  Sharknado  cheapness than dropping in little sops to Greek myth as some kind of nod to the audience that a) knows the myth or b) remembers the reference to Cassandra from the film or c) somehow doesn’t think that this is their lowbrow attempt to let the audience know that they’re in on the story.

Because, in essence, the first episode played out like we were in on the story, right? It’s a franchise. The only reason we’re watching is because we’ve seen the film. The show doesn’t have to spend any time questioning the reality of what Cole is seeing. We know he’s sane because we’ve already seen this. In that case, why are we watching it again? Oh, I see. It’s to introduce all of the random viewers who haven’t seen a film from 20 years ago but are still somehow SyFy Channel watchers. They must be a crowd of… what? 20? Maybe 25? In that case, boy, did they get screwed because they got the 45-minute National Geographic version of a genuinely interesting story.  They don’t get any of the bad in-episode references like Cassandra, but they do get a canned pilot that doesn’t even set up interesting questions about time travel (the central premise of the show, albeit not the film) other than: “Why is this happening?” I can ask the same question about the weather and get a response that might be more interesting.

Time travel, yo.

 But there’s a key in those last two sentences. The central premise of the show is time travel, which means that what we’re likely looking at is a modern, slightly-darker version of Quantum Leap except without any of the historical trappings that made that show successful. We won’t get to see Scott Bakula try to deal with the rage, frustration, and danger of living through the Watts riots. Instead, we’ll see Standford bulldogging his way toward the final answer: the solution to the virus. But that doesn’t make for good TV. Either we’ll be chasing time travel red herrings every week (“This week: How do James and Cassandra deal with the fact that Goines dropped his key to the bioweapons vault in a building that later burned down?!!”)  or we’ll be stalling as they attempt to keep from solving the virus issue in order to not end the series. It’s like The Fugitive. What happens when he finally finds the one-armed man? Well, it’s either a great movie or the end of your series, so you’d better start stalling and make some wicked subplots to carry you.

And, granted, this could all be a case of pilot episode necessities. You have to lay your groundwork before your story can really roll forward. Fine. But, in the name of that bloody weather, HOOK ME! Give me something, anything, to say: “That was cool and I’m coming back to see what this person does next.” The pristine example of this in modern TV is the first episode of Breaking Bad, where Walter White is driving a runaway RV down a desert road in his tighty whities and a gasmask with two corpses rolling around in the back. Holy shit! I’ve seen it twice and I want to watch that again more than I want to see the next episode of 12 Monkeys. It doesn’t even have to be that explosive.  Again, the selling point to the film was the mystery. You sat and watched because you weren’t quite sure what was going on but it was interesting. This first episode was laid out in a fashion in which you couldn’t miss what was going on, which made it largely uninteresting and certainly not compelling enough to turn on again.

All of that said, I may give the second episode one more shot because I could be wrong (Grantland thinks I’m wrong.) It wasn’t the unmitigated tire fire that was Constantine, but that’s like saying you’d rather watch 12 Monkeys instead of C-SPAN during budget deliberations. Yes, I’ve done that. There may be no greater combination of boredom, abject despair, and astonishment at the idiots appointed as our “representatives.” Now that I think of it, I’ve got this great idea that involves time travel, the US Congress, and nerve gas… Meanwhile, 12 Monkeys is currently just another example of why TV is bad for your eyes.