Breaking Bad and the Human Flaw

Two week, I started watching Breaking Bad on Netflix (hey, my subscription’s just sitting there.. I had only had a perfunctory interest in Malcolm in the Meth Lab because it was on the same network as The Walking Dead. The 8 minute episode recap I saw drained me; I could only imagine how much moral weight a full episode, much less a 13-episode season contained. But the show’s blending of a liberal and a conservative understandings of evil intrigued me. 

BB is partially typical liberal satire on middle America, and a liberal understanding that evil is created by one’s circumstances. The conservative dopes in the sticks want to judge us, says Hollywood? A mega-villain can just pop out of the cul-de-sac in average-joe-New Mexico if he gets cacer. But what makes the show great is a conservative understanding evil. Creator Vince Gilligan admitted that one of best decisions he and his writers made early in the series was to make Walt driven by blinding pride, so much so that he cannot accept help from others to pay for his cancer treatments (see the video below). Otherwise, according to Gilligan, it would have just been clumsy Dr. Tim Whately, bumbling to hold on to his drug money. In spite of this, BB was in fact fifteenth on a 2010 list of favorite shows of democrats, mainly because its most dominant theme is perversity-in-the-suburbs. (No doubt, many democrats also watched BB because of AMC’s other hit show, Mad Men, which was democrats second favorite show and their top scripted show.)

It is fascinating to consider the corruption of a man who says to his partner in crime, “Do you believe that there’s a hell? We’re pretty much going there.” The way Walt charges toward the blackness in front of him just shows how much nihilism has taken over American culture. We run toward judgment and indulge in pain, even if we admit what the consequences will be.

Why Jim and Pam’s Struggles Didn’t Bother Me

When I read the criticism of Jim and Pam’s relationship, I shake my head. The Office‘s perpetual sweethearts, who moved seamlessly from crush to couple to married couple over the shows nine seasons, spent the better part of the show’s farewell season fighting over Jim’s absence, in direct contraction to their relationship over the previous 180-some episodes, where they moved on from fights in a heartbeat.

This is, America what you expect have in your relationships. Don’t be surprised when you see this generation’s Harry and Sally come close to calling it quits. It speaks to how the concept of marriage being a stable and permanent institution in our culture is long over. But I digress.

Jim and Pam Halpert just go to show how much even secularists want to believe in marriage, even when they find the institution “unrealistic.” Yes, Jim and Pam’s behavior this year has not as consistent with what they have been, but Jim undermined Pam’s engagement with Roy, and Pam proclaimed her feelings for Jim while he was in a relationship. The show has never dealt with their emotional infidelity.

And to be fair, it wasn’t just Jim and Pam fighting. One of the best episodes this season was “Junior Salesman”, that took place after the Halperts had a huge fight on the phone. Instead of just throwing Jim and Pam back into bliss after that fight, the show did something more realistic: they showed Jim trying to do the right thing for Pam on that day. When two people are having fights as big as they were, you can’t just go back to happy bliss without some work. It goes one day at time.

I’m actually glad that The Office went the way it did with Jim and Pam, and I’m not a fan off TV relationship drama for the sake of drama. Unlike the storyline with Jim being tempted with Cathy last season (oh please), this storyline was believable. And honestly, what could the show have done that would have been better?

Happily ever after…

Resetting 24’s Clock

I enjoyed the nearly two year wait between 24‘s sixth and seventh season, not just because the sixth season was terrible, but because I’d gored myself on endless rewatchings of the show on DVD. After I waited for the eighth, I wished to myself that show could come out with a new season every two years instead of every year.

Guess Fox has taken the hint.

24 was the perfect show (along with Alias and Lost) to move television into the DVD and online age. Built around cliffhangers and every little plot twist, you had to get the show on DVD if you missed an episode. And when Netflix started streaming episodes without commercials, 24 was the perfect show to sell it. Combined with contemporary themes about terrorism and riffs from twenty years of classic action yarns, the show was like a mini-action movie every week.

I’m not betting that Fox will for sure bring 24 back. Honestly, where Jack Bauer was left at the end of the series was a good way to end things (or to move into a film franchise that wasn’t to be.) There was talk that JJ Abrams and ABC would revive Alias, sans Rambaldi mythology and Jennifer Garner, and that was just talk. This talk, I kind of buy because  Netflix probably is involved, and if Netflix raised the critical darling but seldom watched Arrested Development out of the abyss of canceled shows after seven years, reviving 24 should be a cakewalk. (And who knows how much Netflix has said they’ll pay Fox for more 24.)

Bringing Jack back into action will be like the how can still be called 24 if the timeline is broken after twelve hour (as is reported by David Fury on Twitter), or however long it runs. (Fox almost split the show’s seventh season into two halves, after seeing the eight so-so episodes produced before the writer’s strike halted production.) Listen, people: don’t think about. You still watched 24: Redemption, and it was just two hours. Just enjoy the fact that, if a season is terrible, the door to a reboot is that much closer.

And with a 12 episode series, the season plot doesn’t need three or four levels of conspiracy, each one more preposterous than the next. The show could get by with two, or at the very most, three. No more seasons ending with trying to nail the super-villains with a recording, or thinking “really, there was a guy behind Jon Voight or Ramon Salazar?” And maybe they will even be able to do the story without a mole.

And if you are wondering about the memories of your favorite show getting ruined, just watch the second half of The Following‘s season this year and say to yourself: that the best Fox can do, a 24-wannabe that can’t even make the FBI believably competent. Might as well bring back 24. Murder, She Wrote and Dallas movies that followed the conclusion of those series. In a way, the short run series has become what the TV movie was back in the 80’s and 90’s. Thanks, Netflix.

And with the going on three years that have passed, there’s new stories that 24 could do a take on, like a politician trying to cover up the government’s failures in a terrorist attack, ALA the current Benghazi scandal. Now that wouldn’t be interesting TV, would it?

Ready for more?

Why Seinfeld Worked

I have a confession: I love to watch DVD extras and audio commentaries, if they are talk about how a movie or episode (loser alert). Recently, I watched up some extras from Seinfeld DVD’s on YouTube about how Jerry Seinfeld developed his series for NBC and was blown away by his vision and work ethic. While it probably makes me a loser, I just find it fascinating how an individual idea can blossom from a two-sentence monologue to a full film or TV episode, or series. I learned a lot from how to turn conversations into the manuscript I’m now writing.

Here are some points I took from those DVD.

Strong self-image without being pushy: Seinfeld honed his crafted as a comedian for more than ten years before filming the Seinfeld pilot, and always thought of himself as a comedian, not an actor. He knew which network notes to take (adding Elaine) and which network notes to say no to (generic sitcom notes, specifically about “The Chinese Restaurant” episode), and didn’t try to go against NBC just for the sake of doing so. Jerry the character was a guy that “things worked out for”, against conventional sitcom wisdom.

Humility and lack of ego: didn’t take the best storylines his staff writers gave him and let them be used by the more eccentric characters on the show. As Jason Alexander noted, George and Elaine often had more interesting things to do than Jerry did. Jerry was the straight guy who often commented on the funnier antics of his friends.

And at one of the reunion roundtable, Seinfeld was concerned about if his co-stars felt like they were doing the right thing by walking away from the show when it was on top, after they had to return to the wasteland of reading tons of bad scripts.

Could take any story and make it funny: multiples times, one of Seinfeld’s writers would be telling Seinfeld and Larry David a story about something that actually happened to them, and it would end up as one of the stories.

Incredibly high standards: Recently, I happened to catch an episode of a typical 90’s sitcom which featured a single storyline throughout the episode. It was painful to watch the story stretch for twenty-two minutes. While other sitcoms where doing one or two stories, Seinfeld and David demanded four. They wouldn’t use ideas that writers said they’d always used before, and every idea had to be original. And the second the show was showing some signs of age, he knew it was time to walk away.

The Office’s Man Behind the Curtain

One of the most shocking, out-of-no-where moments for me on The Office (US) broken into one of its most sentimental. When Michael Scott was at the airport and telling the documentary crew “I guess this is it”, I thought “Wow, that’s right. If you had this documentary crew in your office for as long as Michael did, you feel very sad to see them go.”

But when Michael added “Hey, will you guys let me know if this ever airs?”, the show acknowledged something it almost never did: that the documentary crew was compiling a lot of footage for some reason. I wondered why, after six full seasons, the producers of the show would bring something that had only been acknowledged in passing, to the center of the discussion. But it was there and gone, until this past summer.

That was when Greg Daniels said we’d get to met the documentary crew, and again I wondered about this. Granted, at the beginning of the year, I wasn’t as invented in the because of how bad season 8 was (James Spader, really?) When I heard it, I thought “Why?” If the show didn’t improve creatively, no one would care.

But the show has improved creatively, in no small part because Daniels is back running it. Surprisingly, Ed Helm’s absence hasn’t hurt the show either; if anything, his absence kept show from making bigger mistakes. Daniel wrote big, multi-episode arcs for his characters, the thing that made the show successful back in the day. Even the Jim-Pam marriage strain is believable, and good.

So that brings up the question of whether or not revealing who is behind the documentary is relevant to the story. The fact that Daniel’s is going to reveal it all speaks to how television has changed since Lost. Ten years ago, people would have cared who was filming the documentary because, in the eight seasons the show has aired, the crew has barely impacted the story of the characters. When The Office first came on the air, I heard of people who watched the show for three or four years and didn’t know there was an unseen documentary crew filming the characters. In fact, it was a while until I realized that the crew was asking an unseen question to Michael, Pam, and Dwight during the talking head-cut scenes.

The American Office has sought to be less of a documentary than its British counterpart. While it ignited the ire of TV critics, Daniels went for a brighter look and a more buffoonish boss, which gave the show a longer life and more appeal. On the original British Office, the characters were people who you believed actually worked in an office called Wernham Hogg Paper Company. The characters on the American Office are like the people you believe work at Dunder Mifflin.

So that leads to the question of the barely-referenced documentary crew, and whether or not it should be revealed. While the British Office didn’t reveal its documentary crew, it did show the fame David Brent gained from the broadcast of the documentary in the Christmas special. While I have reservations, I think it could be done, and done in a way that’s interesting and that makes sense. Whatever way it’s done, less is more because it’s back story, and, as Stephen King wrote On Writing, the key word with back story is “back”. We don’t need ten episodes devoted to who the documentary crew is, but it could be interesting, as long as it’s not sold as this huge “reason for the series” (ALA Lost).

I do think that there could be a mockumentary that is the opposite of what The Office is: a show that brings the documentary crew into the foreground of the show, and lead cameraman is a series regular. The Office choose to be a different kind of show, and for its sake, let’s hope it knows how to break the fourth wall.

Why Last Resort Doesn’t Work and Revolution Does: Not Rocket Science

(Warning: The folowing posts contains spoilers from the shows Revolution and Last Resort. Proceed at your own risk.)

Last fall, The Walking Dead took a lot of flack for its slow, farm-centric episodes which screamed “We’re a show on a tight budget!” While I wasn’t in love with them myself, I felt that the episodes built up the tension and created greater moments late in the season. As Robert Kirkman noted, the viewer becomes numb to the zombies if they are front and center in every episode.

I wish Shawn Ryan would understand that.

Back in September, I compared the pilots of Last Resort and Revolution, the two new serial dramas this fall. At the time, I found Last Resort to be a more compelling hour of TV than Revolution. While it wasn’t a horrible thing that Revolution started slow (laying the groundwork, if you will), Last Resort seemed so full of potential stories and interesting characters (seriously, Robert Patrick was the fifth or sixth story option), I thought it would have a better chance. Unfortunately, Ryan and ABC didn’t realize how much potential they had and felt they had to manufacture more.

While some of the episodes have been pretty good (the second and the third had good plot devices), Last Resort just doesn’t know when to take a breath. Instead of focusing on Grace, the third episode spent a lot of time exploring Dichen Lachman’s character, who, while interesting, didn’t need to be looked at with any kind of urgency. When a show mis-vaules its cast like that, it makes characters like Christine and Kylie even more annoying then they already were. (Both seem a little perfect and too one-note for this show.) Every episode seems intent on inventing crisis and not exploring simple things like how are the soldiers finding food and water. The pilot was good enough they could devote time to those things and set up bigger events down the line.  The most recent episode, the one with the chemical attacked, opened with a scene that looked like it was adapted from bad Lost script.

Not that Revolution is perfect by comparison, but it has an objective and knows what it is. When I speculated about Elizabeth Mitchell’s place on the show, I worried that they would reveal she was alive in episode 9 and play it as if it were this huge surprise. Instead, they did so at the end of the second episode and didn’t pretend it was a shock, and have given her a little more to do each week. It takes its time, but each week, finds a new and interesting part of the work to explore. I’m still not high on Charlie, but she isn’t screwing up the show. I wasn’t in love with (Spoiler Alert) the decision to kill of Maggie, but it worked within the context of that world. It’s corny at times, but the big reveals are good.

And the one thing that Revolution has going for it is the thing that is sinking Last Resort: it has simple, overarching plots of the search to get Danny back and of Monroe trying to turn the power back on. Last Resort had that when it got the suspicious fire order, but since the pilot, there has been almost no pursuit of who set the Colorado up. Nobody is calling friends in Washington questioning the order, nothing. Even failed serial dramas, like Vanished and Flash Forward ended their pilot with a sense of where their shows were going. Last Resort‘s pilot ended with a vague proclamation of “Maybe this is home now.” And it only will be home for a couple more weeks, a shame given what was invested creatively and talent-wise in the show.

Know where you’re going?

The Hunger Games Upon Further Reflection

Upon further reflection of The Hunger Games (part 1 and part 2), I have realized what could have taken the books’ great potential to great heights. Getting the great premise was the easy part, but pushing that premise to its limits would have required some bolder choices.

Suzanne Collins claims that the tributes from the lower districts don’t have as much success as the “career” tributes, better off-districts. One would think this analogy is pretty straight forward, but I would say: look at high school and college football. For thirty years, the lion’s share of the top college football stars come from poor backgrounds, where football becomes their ticket to education and hopefully, to support their famialy. While the career’s training may help to set them apart, the lesser districts would fight harder to support their own families (again, Collins seems to be writing in a culture that has disowned the value of the family as a natural unit of provision). Once every eight or ten years, you’d get physically imposing tributes from Districts 9, 10, 11, and 12 who’d win. Katniss, in her pessimistic narrative, rarely looks at the winners of the games and hopes against hope she’ll provide for her mother and Prim, like she always does.

That leads me to one of my specific criticism of the book, mainly, the lack of payoff for two of the big accomplishments in the book. One, Katniss’ sabotage of the careers food supply isn’t directly paid off, and two, Katniss doesn’t seem to suffer from not killing Foxface, who dies in unceremonious fashion from eating the poisoned berries. My solution: have Cato die from eating the berries instead, and set up a finale between Thresh, Foxface, and Peeta and Katniss.

Consider it: Cato isn’t prone to hunting, and without a food supply, he’d probably be more apt to take someone else’s food rather than hunt for himself. And Foxface likely would have known which berries where poisonous and which ones weren’t

So much wasted potential….

The point of putting a bunch of teenagers in an arena in a fight to the death doesn’t just have to be about muscle. It can also be about choice, and what young people would do if they were pushed to the breaking point. When Katniss and Peeta face Cato, it’s not hard for them to kill him because he’s an obviously villian. But what if Katniss had to face Thresh, who spared her life? If Foxface was the one holding Peeta up at the top of the horn, threatening to drop, wouldn’t all the moments where Katniss had spared her flashed before her eyes?  When push comes to shove, would Katniss have even killed Rue if it meant providing for her family? The Hunger Games doesn’t give us that answer.

NBC: Don’t Repeat Friends on The Office

Life after Steve Carrell

(Part 1 on The Office‘s downfall)

NBC may have sunk sitcoms ten years ago by sticking bad multi-camera, hammed laugh-track show it could find behind Friends, but they never really broke out of their slump. Instead, they showed audiences looking appalled at the terrible jokes on the bad sitcoms and called that show The Office.
Now, NBC seems to be making the same mistake with The Office: leaving the show on the air after it has ceased to be funny. The only difference is with The Office that show is since it’s fearless leader, Steve Carrell, left a year, the creative hole in the show is obvious. Mindy Kailing and Rainn Wilson are bolting for their own shows (along with show runner Paul Liebestein, whose going to run Rainn Wilson’s Dwight-centric spinoff), evidence to the fact that cast knows the show isn’t good anymore.

And yet, NBC renewed the show for a full season, with no announced plans that this will be the last year for the show. Even earlier on this  year, the Peacock thought that they could just introduce some new characters, and the show would be fine.Perhaps they’re forgetting what got them into last place: keeping on good shows long past their peak. ABC, on the other hand, figured it out with Lost and Desperate Housewives: better to retire a year early than a year late. Viewers aren’t stupid, and if you have a young show that’s so-so and could go either way, they are more likely to give it a chance if your good shows are good. NBC only sees the prosperity in front of them.

Say One Thing, Do Another: Why The Hunger Games Narrative is Sorely Lacking

(Warning: the following post contains spoilers from both The Hunger Games book and film. Proceed at your own risk.)

Two years ago, I walked out of a theater having just seen Inception for the first time and was depressed because it was the best movie I had seen in about ten years, and I’d probably only see about eight or nine movies as good as it for the rest of my life. Few do what Christopher Nolan did with Inception:take a radically original premise and pushes it to its limits, all the while ignoring what any other film has done before it, all on a grand scale. But after reading The Hunger Games and seeing the movie, I was severely disappointed because I’d just watched a film that had an equal premise but took no such risks and offered a poor character.

Let me make a concession: The Hunger Games is commercially successful. There’s something in this movie that speaks to young people, and it is at some points pure spectacle, such as Rue’s death and the subsequent rioting in District 11, along with Katniss’ tears. Katniss’ voice, as she provides for her family, echoes the despair of the lower classes, and her character isn’t the spoiled brat Bella Swan is.  The whole idea of teenagers forced into a killing competitions breads the possibility to explore so many idea, and when you see the film half-explore them, it is maddening.

The Hunger Games frustrate as they seems to know what to do at times, and other times, they seem clueless, in virtually the same narrative situation. For example, director Gary Ross wisely keeps the violence off-screen in places where it’s needed: the bloodbath at the opening of the games, Cato’s mauling by the dogs, and death of the boy who rigged the mines after Katniss destroy the career’s food supply. But in other situations, the gratuitous material lingers, like when Glimmer’s mangled remains are overshown. Also, there’s the boneheaded move of showing the dogs in the control room before they’re unleashed on Katniss, Peeta, and Cato. The games control room itself is a nice addition to the film along with President Snow and the head gamesmaker, Seneca Crane. The all the capitol supporting players and Haymitch are well cast, although it’s not overtly to find an actor to play an over-the-top TV host.

Then there’s the film’s twist: a good plot twist is not just about the twist itself, it’s about the setup and fallout. Take Katniss’ decision to destroy the careers’ food supply. She mentions it right before she does it, in both the book and film. If I had been editing the manuscript, I would have told the author to have Haymitch suggest to Katniss to destroy the food supply before the games. Make his character look smarter; an action that important needs to be hinted at earlier in the work. And in spite of this action Katniss still seems to survive by dodging the action. Other plot misses: Katniss’ failure to kill Foxface not coming back to bite her (reading the book, I thought Foxface would find and kill Peeta when Katniss went to the feast) and Peeta never disclosing to Katniss why he joined the careers at the beginning of the games. If you’re smart enough to come up with the double attempt suicide to end the games, I expect you to figure the rest of it out.

Half-an-hour into the film, I wished the screenwriter would watch some episodes of 24 to understand how to pull off a good twist, only to see at the end of the film Billy Ray, who wrote a rejected screenplay for the 24 movie, was one of the writers. A yes-man writer if there ever was one.

But the real problem with The Hunger Games has to do with the central character and her arc, or more specifically, her lack of one. At the beginning of the story, Katniss doesn’t want to marry her friend Gale, and at the end of the story, she doesn’t want to be with Peeta. That isn’t a story arc. I don’t care if Katniss were to go being in love with Gale to denying love, or from not believing in love with Gale to believing in love with Peeta. Granted, I would prefer a view of marriage that respects the institution, but either way makes for a more interesting story that what I was subjugated to.

What Happened to The Office, and Could it Come Back?

Momentum on television is a funny thing. When a pilot is shot and shown to the network execs, it likely either has momentum or it does not. And a TV show’s momentum is often dependent upon the right mix of script, showrunner, and cast, and, often, the staff writers that can be put together. And often times, when a show looses momentum, it can be for the most inexplicable reasons. Sure, some shows just get old and exhaust their premise, but even 24‘s sixth season is better than half the bad shows that get canceled before November sweeps.

That’s why The Office‘s creative swoon post-Steve Carrell is on the one hand, both mysterious and makes perfect sense.

I’m sure Greg Daniels and his fellow producers didn’t think loosing Carrell would make their job easier, but I doubt they thought their show would end up on top 10-worst-shows-of-the-year lists. I could see the signs-the disappointing finale with a parade of unnecessary high profile guest stars, only one who stood out was added to the cast. Unfortunately, Robert California didn’t stand out in a good way.

The first episode back, I knew that The Office had jumped the shark. I wanted to give the show the benefit of the doubt, but it naturally shifted it’s way out of my Thursday night viewing. I forgot about the show entirely, and there hasn’t been one episode this season that I watched more than once. Andy was the wrong choice to replace Michael Scott (Jim would have been the natural choice), the Andy-Erin relationship went absolutely nowhere after being perfectly set up for them to get together in the previous season’s finale, and when Jim admitted he was attracted to Pam’s replacement, I was disgusted by the testing-the-Jim-Pam marriage.

It seems obvious that the cast of The Office knows the show isn’t going anywhere. Mindy Kaling and Rainn Wilson now have their own shows on the horizons, and other cast members could leave the show at the end of this season as their contracts are up. James Spader is definitely not coming back, not that that’s all that bad.

Was it all because Carrell left? It’s impossible to underscore how great he was one the show; he was its voice. But the shows creators needed find a new one, and I fault them for not recognizing that Jim’s could have been the natural fit.

But tonight, I watched the show, and at its conclusion, I thought, you know what? I still like this show. I liked how Jim chased after Dwight, and how Pam egged him on to do so. I even enjoyed Catherine Tate’s craziness, and surprisingly her antics, along with those of Todd Packard, have given the show a boost in the last few episodes. Now that Andy’s going to Florida to get back Erin, I think The Office could have some of its old mojo back, or at least be on the road to getting it back.

Over the years, I never like it when The Office went out there to be more gross than it needed to be (Pam walking in on Michael in the season 4 premiere, a sitcom storyline that had been done to death), but I always let it go. When Jim and Dwight were wrestling each other in the hall, I kind of rolled my eyes. It was two grown men, fighting like little boys, and given that we’ve seen grow up together in the office, it was pathetic. But it felt like an amusing dumb thing your child does, which is a good sign.

(Follow-up: How The Office came back, and what about that mysterious documentary crew.)