Breaking Bad No Mas

After an incredible second season, I was very excited for the return of Breaking Bad and last Sunday's premiere No Mas did not disappoint. Season premieres often layout the groundwork for the rest of the season and No Mas managed to answer a lot of lingering questions from season 2 without feeling like a checklist and firmly entrenched the major conflicts in the upcoming season. From the first episode of the series the audience is forced to wonder when will Walt's two worlds collide and what will be the fallout when that occurs. This type of big reveal is usually saved for the climax of an episode or a season, but the premiere lets the other shoe drop very unexpectedly and we end up as surprised as Walt when Skyler finally guesses that Walt is a drug dealer (though Walt prefers to think of himself as a manufacturer). I think this was a great choice by Vince Gilligan as it really catches the audience off guard, but it still makes perfect sense within the story. We are only surprised because we know that we are watching a TV show where big reveals and arcs tend to converge at the same time.

When Walter admits to his drug dealing he assumes everything will go back to normal, Skyler will empathize with his method of paying for his cancer treatment and providing for the family and they can go back to having a happy life. While he is wrong I think Walt's delusion and rationalizations is what makes him such a compelling character. Cable dramas have created several complex anti-heroes, but I don't think any are as endearing as Walter White. For his entire adult life Tony Soprano has been a sociopath his motivations appear to be a combination of sadism and rational self interest, we occasionally find ourself rooting for him because he is so charismatic, but he is not a good guy. Walter White is not a good guy anymore, but he was. His actions seem somewhat justified given his history. A good friend created an empire off his ideas, he is working a lowpaying job that he is grossly overqualified for, yet he is a tough, but fair teacher, a good father and an all around stand up member of the community. He hasn't been rewarded for any of these traits and finally snaps. He is going to start to take what is his, things spiral out of control and at some level he realizes what he is doing is wrong. However like Tony Soprano he realizes on some level he enjoys being bad, but he cannot fully grasp this realization so he needs to rationalization his actions. The first shot of Walter in the premiere is him burning all his ill gotten money, before having a change of heart and saving it. He feels some remorse over what he has done, but at his core he is still rational, burning the money doesn't absolve him of his sins, so why waste it? This callous logic appears again when he speaks at the school assembly. It could have been worse, but a tragedy still occurred and he is downplaying it to rationalize his own actions. While he is saying offensive cold things we don't feel like we are watching a sociopath justify his terrible actions, we feel pathos for someone getting ostracized in front of a huge crowd. Cranston's performance is so good that we do not judge Walter we pity him

One of the most important exchanges in the episodes occurs when Jesse says "I am the bad guy". Last season Jesse was on the fence; was he a bumbling high school dropout who lucked into making the best meth in town or was he evil. Throughout the season we saw him feel legitimate guilt and compassion for his actions, something that Walt was incapable of and I expected Jesse would leave the drug trade (or Walt would kill him); obviously the premiere ruined that speculation. Jesse has accepted that he is the bad guy and I suspect he will start acting like the bad guy. This is in strict contrast to Walt who's delusion prevents him from seeing himself as a bad guy. However as an audience member I don't see Walt as the bad guy either. I excuse Walters behaviour just as he does, because he is still vulnerable. He is still trying to act like a drug dealer instead of being one. He cannot successfully lie when confronted with his transgressions and while he shows flashes of ruthlessness and anger it has yet to become all consuming. For all the awful things he has done Walt still has virtuous traits and while i expect his virtuosity to wane as the series progresses we still want everything to work out for him.

Stray Thoughts

- I am usually unmoved by depressing stories from characters I have no affiliation with, but I literally gasped and covered my mouth while listening to the drug counselor's story about killing his daughter.

- After hearing he would be a regular in this season I was disappointed that Bob Odenkirk was absent.

Justified

Despite getting really good reviews across the board and being a huge fan of Timothy Olyphant I was cautiously optimistic about Justified. I think that is because no review accurately contextualized the show for me; in fact I was surprised to see the show was set in the present and expected it to be set at the turn of last century. Justified is about US Marshall Raylan Givens a throwback US lawman in a modern world. Justified is a refreshing take on a cliche that works really because it is such a literal interpretation of it. We have all seen cop movies or TV shows that show what would happen if you took an outlaw mentality in todays bureaucratic world, however the only time we actually see a real outlaw and not just that mindset in contemporary society are in terrible fish out of water action comedies. In Justified you get the best of both worlds a true outlaw that could survive in 1800 and 2000, set in a place that time has forgotten, where people still drink moonshine and work in coal mines, but have automatic weapons and Cadillacs.

From the opening scene where Raylan Givens shoots a sleazy gun runner in a Miami hotel after giving a very literal request to leave town in 24 hours I was engrossed in the pilot. The rest of the episode was structured like a typical police procedural, but it was much more entertaining than most procedurals because of Olyphant and Walton Goggins' performances and because of Elmore Leonard dialogue that to paraphrase Olyphant from an AV Club interview is cool as fuck.

Despite being engrossed throughout I have two concerns about whether or not Justified can be a long running series. The first is whether or not it can be a successful serialized show. While I wouldn't mind if Justified ended up being a procedural, Graham Yost is intending on making it a serial and Few things bother me more on TV than poorly down serials. Careless plotting (Heroes , Entourage) can destroy good acting and writing very quickly and I have seen many good shows fail, but continually try to write compelling long arcs. As for now they have barely scratched the surface of the characters so I will take the wait and see approach My second concern is that a lot of the great dialogue in the pilot was lifted directly from Leonard's short stories, if the writers cannot recreate the aforementioned cool as fuck dialogue, a lot of the style the show created will be gone and we will be left with a mediocre show regardless of it's format. Having said all that I generally think most pilots are pretty bad; shows need to showcase all their characters and the pilots are usually muddled and uninteresting so the in the meantime I will remain cautiously enthusiastic.

The Pacific

A disclaimer I have not seen Band of Brothers, everyone I know has suggested I see it, but I haven't got around to it. I was planning on watching Band of Brothers before I started The Pacific, but I was at a friends as he started watching The Pacific so I decided to watch it, I was underwhelmed. Another disclaimer I generally do not like war movies, I am not a history buff so I don't care for or appreciate the verisimilitude of even the most accurate war films. My blood will boil when Dillon High runs the ball from the 10 with 10 seconds left, but even if I could tell the difference I would be indifferent if British Solider was using a Smith and Wesson.

The Pacific opens showing us soldiers preparing to ship out to war and to me the scenes felt like how people who didn't live through the 40s remember the 40s. I don't think they did this to juxtapose the inevitable war scenes, it just felt like a way to introduce some characters and develop a tone, which I didn't really care for.

Most of the dialogue in the Pacific feels like it should be in Kelly's Heroes and while I realize that 19 year old country boys getting sent off to war wouldn't be discussing Proust on the front line, it seemed like the writers were trying too hard to capture the banality of the conversations. I didn't expect to hear bawdy WC Fields jokes followed by musical theatresque fake-laughing.

Though it has cliche dialogue The Pacific has some very ambitious action sequences. Most movies want the audience to see everything so they can follow the action. The Pacific tries to truthfully recreate the battles by having many fights at night in the dark. The goal is too make the audience feel as uneasy as the soldiers, who don't know where the enemy is, however there is a fine line between making the audience feel uncertain and making the scenes impossible to follow. I wasn't watching on a great TV and my mind may change when I watch this weeks episode in HD, but I struggled following a lot the action in the pilot and often found myself incredibly disinterested during what should have been great action sequences.

A major reason why I am not a huge war movie fan is because they tend to have have the same moral: "War is Hell". Several soldiers are sociopaths and war justifies racism, sadism and other awful elements of human nature or even worse turns ordinary people into cold callous killing machines. I do not want to discuss the accuracy of the message, but the sentiment is trite. I am not particularly interested in seeing The Pacific illustrate the dehumanizing nature of war after I have seen movies like Full Metal Jacket that have done a much better job of it. I maybe holding The Pacific to an impossibly high standard, but given that they aren't trying anything particularly original, there would need to be near flawless execution for me to really love the show. Ultimately The Pacific's moralizing is not particularly compelling, but it is so overt that it can't be ignored. In the pilot the Pacific oscillated between being an ambitious, but flawed popcorn war-movie and an unoriginal guilt trip about war's role in society. I will probably end up watching the whole series as it is only 10 episodes, but thus far it isn't something I would recommend.

The Marriage Ref Larry David/Madonna/Ricky Gervais

After the first episode of The Marriage Ref was eviscerated by almost every single critic, I decided I would never watch the show ... that is until I discovered both Larry David and Ricky Gervais would be panelists. David and Gervais are two of the best comic minds in the world and I was curious to see if they could turn The Marriage Ref into an entertaining hour of TV. A disclaimer I am not a fan of reality TV, however unlike most of the internet I didn't think the concept for The Marriage Ref was particularly bad idea for a reality show. I certainly found it more intriguing than a retread of a competition or dating show, so from the outset I figured it could be decent.

Overall I thought this weeks episode was a very funny hour of TV, but it was only funny because of Larry David's misanthropy and the postmodernity of David and Gervais recognizing how absurd this show is. Larry David's unfiltered stream of consciousness was hilarious and while I am sure he only went on the show as a favour to Seinfeld his laissez-faire attitude towards the show is what made him endearing and funny. Gervais tried a little harder to actually make jokes, but he is such a great comic talent it never really seemed like he was trying any harder than I would when making a joke while watching a bad movie with friends. I find meta-commentary in fiction is often smugly clever, however I loved Gervais and David''s meta-commentary because it came from a real place. This wasn't a carefully crafted deconstruction it was two guys shooting the shit as they slowly came to terms with how odd this show is.

The oddly pleasant surprise of the episode was Madonna who acted like a normal person all things considered. As a 21 year old I am more aware of Madonna the infamous crazy person who believes in Kaballah than Madonna one of the biggest pop stars of all time and I have created a false dichotomy where she can only be one or the other. It was disarming, but intriguing to see Madonna doing anything sincerely and while her feminist rants became a grating it would be something i'd expect out of a lot of female guests in this environment.

A major criticism of the first episode was that the conflicts were too surreal and they all had clear winners. I think this episode has surreal conflicts, but they were all based in reality of classic relationship arguments; controlling mothers, relationship's with exes, a sloppy spouse. That gave the disputes a universality, having said that (sorry LD) I don't think the show would be entertaining without an all-star cast like tonight, there is still some really sloppy editing* and Bob Papa has a typical annoying upbeat host attitude, that makes me think he would be better served fake laughing on an NFL pregame show.

*Madonna had at least two jokes that clearly bombed and the producers tried editing it so the home audience couldn't tell it bombed. Instead we got a couple really bad choppy edit jobs. This may also be why Madonna appeared relatively un-insane.

Stray Thoughts

- Outside of being gorgeous I am not sure what the point of having Maria Menounos act as the celebrity fact checker was.

-How hard would it be to synch up the satellite feeds with the couples after the fact, given that the show is pre-recorded.

- This really should not be an hour long.

Saturday Night Live Zach Galifanakis/Vampire Weekend

Since SNL is usually at its strongest during election years I expected a drop off for this season, but didn't imagine it would be this severe. However there have been occasional bright spots and they had a lot of hosts like Blake Lively or Taylor Lautner who seemed predestined for a mediocre to bad episode, so when I discovered Zach Galifanakis was hosting I was excited. I am not the biggest Galifanakis fan in the world, but having a comedian host a comedy show instead of a movie star seemed like a novel development. Despite a very weak opening sketch (get it health care reform is unpopular! and if you don't get it we will repeat it half a dozen times) I was excited after seeing a very good monologue even if it was basically Zach's standup act, that is much funnier than most of what SNL has done this season.

Unfortunately my high hopes after the monologued were quickly abandoned and they proceeded to perform the same tripe they have performed throughout this season. One would think that with a team of writers and a cast of a dozen comedic actors they would be able to create more than one or two original sketches a week, but they haven't been up to the challenge. This week they had 6 sketches 3 0f them were more or less exact copies of sketches they have already done unsuccessfully. I am pretty sure they have covered every possible joke about over-affectionate families, Kathy Lee Gifford and What's Up With That.

The other sketches were a mixed bag. The bidet sketch seems like a funny riff that you would have at 3am while sleep deprived with friends. The idea that people would be so have a bidet fetish is a funny one-liner, it isn't funny as 4-5 minute sketch where you repeat that joke ad nauseam. The Situation Room sketch was a less funny, muddled version of this excellent Daily Show piece from a couple days ago. http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-march-4-2010/tech-talch---chatroulette.

The pageant sketch was relatively strong, but it should be a type of sketch they are regularly pumping out and not the highlight of the show. It allowed Zach Galifanakis, Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig to showcase their talent in some funny moments, even though they cracked near the end of the sketch. This ended very abruptly and it got me thinking that SNL does a lot of fake talk shows and game shows because they don't need a to write a good ending since they can just end the show or go to commercial break.

After this episode I am convinced SNL maybe the most creatively bankrupt show on TV, in the old days of SNL the cast was constantly doing drugs, which would be a reasonable excuse for recycling a bunch of bad sketches, but this cast just seems lazy, uncreative and insular. It amazes me that they get hosts like Joseph Gordon Levitt or Zach G who in another world could have been stars on SNL, but they just force them into their formulaic sketches instead of using their talent productively. If DVR didn't allow me to fast forward through a bunch of sketches and crank through an episode like 30 minutes I would stop watching SNL on a regular basis.

Stray Thoughts

- Kenan as Mo'Nique, gee what a surprise Kenan is in drag playing, I can't wait to see that happen next week.

- Wolf Blitzer at Burning Man

- At least Vampire Weekend was a solid musical act.

Community and Parks and Recreation

Community "Physical Education"

After the Olympics I was craving for NBC Thursday and Physical Education gave me what I was missing for two weeks. Physical Education could be my favorite episode of the series thus far, two really strong plots, tons of funny one liners and some good character work. Earlier I blogged about how I liked Community's subtle twists on formulaic sitcom plots so long as they aren't winking too much at the camera. Physical Education successfully achieved that in both of their stories. The Abed plot sets itself for the cliche, "just be yourself" plot and veers towards the obvious cynical twist. You can be yourself in the world of family sitcoms where mean things happens solely so everyone can learn a lesson, but in the real world conformity is necessary. As I watched this unfold I felt the plot uninspired, but succeeded because of all the jokes along the way, however I didn't anticipate the final wrinkle. Abed was never acting like himself and he was doing it to appease his friends who are so sure there is something wrong with him. It's easy to view Abed as pop culture references machine, but episodes like this show that he has some elements of a real person and isn't just a quirky funny sitcom character.

The other plot was an outrageous, but hilarious parody on cliche sports movies. Though Community has shown it has a heart, it is at its funniest when it is as its most absurd. Dan Harmon has created such a crazy environment at Greendale that it seems like any character can reasonably inhabit it; even a senior citizen pool teacher who insists all of his class wears tight gym shorts for increased mobility. However in spite of it's insanity Greendale is still endearing. It makes sense that Jeff would start embracing this Community instead of just making cynical comments at everyone's expense. While I wouldn't want to be there forever Greendale does look like it would be a lot of fun and we can see that Jeff really enjoys the spectacle of the pool game. Similar to the debate episode, I thought it was a really strong choice to attach the ludicrous views of the coach to the game of pool. Pool is always portrayed as a tense, cerebral game and it was delightful to see Community's manic version of strip pool, that led to several hilarious sight gags and crowd reaction shots.

Stray Thoughts

-The original joke and all the callback from Shirley wondering if white people got offended that they remade black movies specifically for white audiences was executed perfectly. Starting with Jeff calling Fat Albert the black after school special and continuing with Brown Joey and White Abed.

- Abed as Don Draper hitting on Annie/Trudy Campbell was fantastic.

Parks and Recreation "Lady of the Year"

Despite The Office having an hour long baby episode tonight, I wasn't that enthused to watch it and after Lady of the Year I have a hypothesis for why that might be the case. The Office has frequently used outsiders as an audience surrogate, they are the minority who realizes how wacky and zany all these characters are so hilarity ensues. The peripheral characters on Parks and Rec are often equally if not more insane than the cast members allowing us to empathize with Leslie Knope for having to deal with militant soccer coaches or feminists who sell out for transient publicity. In bad episodes of The Office I find myself pitying the cast members and empathize with the periphery, over time this has caused me to become resentful of a lot of the characters.

Ron Swanson has a strong sense of humanity and decency that allows us to like him and not just laugh at him. He showed this compassion in the pre-olympic Valentines Day episode and continued to show it in this episode. He has a lot of fun playing with Leslie, but never does anything especially mean spirited just a bunch of harmless pranks that rile Leslie up. While elaborate pranks are often funny, sometimes simple ones are much more effective and I enjoyed watching Ron getting under Leslie's skin so much when the most elaborate thing he did was hiring a photo crew.

Stray Thoughts

- I would go to a club called clubadubdub

-"Andy why are you digging that hole in the backyard?"