"Polite Society" and "The Artifice Girl"

Let's look at some recent, lower budget genre films today.

"Polite Society" is this year's "The Paper Dragons," as both films are about protagonists from Asian immigrant communities, and exploring identity and family ties through the lens of a kickass martial arts film.  Ria Khan (Priya Kansara) is a British-Pakistani teenager who wants to become a stuntwoman, but her traditional parents (Shobu Kapoor, Jeff Mirza) aren't so keen on the idea.  Her older sister Lena (Ritu Arya) has recently left art school, and is now being pressured to marry and settle down - specifically with Salim (Akshay Khanna), the son of a family friend, Raheela (Nimra Bucha).

As wedding plans roll ahead and Ria's relationship with Lena becomes strained, Ria becomes desperate to stop the wedding.  She's just sure that Lena's future husband and mother in-law have nefarious motives for the match, and starts seeing the world like it's a grandiose martial arts film, where she must engage in one-on-one matches with opponents like the bully Kovacs (Shona Babayemi), and ultimately the rich and domineering Raheela.  Everything builds to a fantastic climax at the elaborate wedding, where Ria and her friends infiltrate the event and have a truly epic showdown.       

What I appreciate the most about "Polite Society" is that it's a ton of fun to watch.  Yes, it's enthusiastically a girl power film.  Yes, it was created by Nida Manzoor to showcase the British-Pakistani immigrant community.  However, it is a martial arts movie first, from Ria spending the whole film trying to perfect a special move, to the super-exaggerated stylization of the fight scenes.  Kansara showing off her moves while garbed in gorgeous wedding attire makes for some of the best visuals in the film.  It also doesn't skimp in the comedy department, with good natured, culturally specific ribbing of the Khans and their friends.  It's a slicker, sillier film than I was expecting, but definitely a nice surprise.

And now for something completely different.  "The Artifice Girl" is one of those microbudget science fiction films that is heavy on ideas and fairly minimalist in its filmmaking.  It reminds me of "Marjorie Prime," which explored these heady ideas about AI through a series of unhurried conversations between its characters.  "The Artifice Girl" gives us marginally more, but really boils down to three scenes of people talking in rooms, or over a screen.  One of them is an AI designed to look and behave like a eleven year-old girl, named Cherry (Tatum Matthews).   She was created to lure and identify sexual predators, but as Cherry grows and changes over the years, troubling ethical questions arise.

Written and directed by Franklin Ritch, who also plays the younger version of Cherry's creator Gareth, "The Artifice Girl" asks some probing questions about AI and its implications.  What makes it so effective is that the story takes its time humanizing Cherry.  The opening scene has Gareth being interrogated by a pair of law enforcement agents, Deena (Sinda Nichols) and Amos (David Girard), who have to be convinced that Cherry isn't a real girl.  Gareth demonstrates that Cherry can imitate a child, but behaves like a machine, talking in terms of objectives and protocols, coldly explaining her logical processes.  Tatum Matthews does an excellent job of conveying how Cherry fundamentally doesn't think the way a human being does.  But even after learning she's artificial, doubts remain.  Cherry may not be human, but she's self-aware and becomes moreso.

The final conversation of the film takes place between Cherry and an aged Gareth, now played by Lance Henrikson, who once also portrayed one of cinema's most famous artificial life forms.  It's here that the film's central themes really come into focus, and "The Artifice Girl" is revealed to be a parent/child story, and ultimately a hopeful one in spite of the dark subject matter.  The movie's production is very limited - it originated as a pandemic project, no surprise - but with clever editing and some discreet special effects, it doesn't feel low budget.  Because it's so unlike most studio produced science-fiction films, it feels more like television, and that's not a bad thing.  The melodrama is occasionally laid on pretty thick, but I strongly recommend this one for lovers of hard sci-fi and speculative fiction.     

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My Favorite Claire Denis Film

I've struggled with Claire Denis films, to the point where I was pretty sure the title of this post was going to be "The Claire Denis Film I Dislike the Least."  However, while I was catching up on the films of hers I hadn't seen, I did find some that I genuinely enjoyed.  I find Denis' work difficult to connect to because her characters are very raw and driven more by instinct and appetite than logic.  I would often find the intensely subjective narratives difficult to penetrate.  Her films require strict attention, because she'll hint at important information without ever stating it outright, and seems to prefer very open endings.  She's also extremely frank about sexuality, violence, and racial experiences in ways that often catch me off guard.

I don't think it's any surprise that my favorite Denis film is one of her most conventional, "Nenette and Boni."  Alice Houri and Gregoire Colin play a brother and sister pair, as they did in "US Go Home."  The two are estranged until the teenage sister, Nenette, shows up one day pregnant, and the older brother, Boni, reluctantly lets her live with him.  Boni is a familiar type of character, the directionless young man who seems content drifting through life, occasionally working or pulling off petty crimes.  He spends an amusing amount of time fantasizing about a woman who works at a bakery who doesn't know he exists.  His horndog ramblings and the long, lingering shots of pummeled dough and cream swirls, reflect his one-track mind.  Nenette, on the other hand, is clearly in crisis.  She doesn't want the baby, and after learning she can't get an abortion, seems resigned to going through with the birth and an adoption.  She goes through the film becoming more and more depressed, expressing less and less emotion.  By the end of the film, Boni has changed too, but he's unexpectedly developed an attachment to the baby that is so strong, he's compelled to take extreme measures to keep it.    

Denis' imagery in other films is so blunt and so stark, especially with regard to bodily fluids and functions, that they make me queasy.  Here, the unromanticized treatment of pregnant bodies felt refreshing, and Nenette's anxious  experiences with various parts of the medical establishment felt very honest and necessary.  Nenette doesn't care about the baby she's carrying and engages in risky behavior, including smoking.  But while her behavior is alarming, villainizing her is not the point.  Denis is far more interested in her state of mind, in her emotional reality in the moment.  Little background is offered for how Nenette became pregnant, and why she chose to run away and only seek care when it was far too late for an abortion.  We're only offered a piece of her story, and it's one where she's barely active - with no real control over the events that occur.  It's only at the very end, when the pregnancy is over, that Nenette seems to be able to breathe again, and is poised to move on.     

The alienation expressed by Nenette is matched by a deep, unnameable passion in Boni for life, for sex, and eventually for fatherhood.  The ending of the film unfolds so quickly, that if you look away from the screen for more than a few seconds, you'll completely miss what happens.  What's important, though, is recognizing that Boni's fixation on sexual gratification transforms, through caring for his sister, into a deeper drive to hang on to a piece of his lost family.  He sees an opportunity for a real connection at last, and takes it.  Initially, Boni is a charismatic, but careless creature, who skates by with minimal effort.  But when his fantasies are dispelled and he's given the chance to do something meaningful, he becomes focused, driven, and committed.  And watching this happen is wonderfully life-affirming.  

Trying to parse what made me so resistant to Denis' work, I think it comes down to me thinking about films too much in terms of plots and themes and messages, while Denis is very experiential, very sensual, and not afraid to arouse and/or disgust the viewer.  It literally took me years to get on the same wavelength she's been on, but I'm glad I finally did.  Denis is by far the most celebrated and prolific female director of the past two decades, and well worth giving a second look.

What I've Seen - Claire Denis

Chocolat (1988)

I Can't Sleep (1994)

US Go Home (1994)

Nenette and Boni (1996)

Beau Travail (1999)

Trouble Every Day (2001)

35 Shots of Rum (2008)

White Material (2009)

Bastards (2013)

Let the Sunshine In (2017)

High Life (2018)

Stars at Noon (2022)

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My Top Ten Films of 1945

This is part of my continuing series looking back on films from the years before I began this blog. The ten films below are unranked and listed in no particular order. Enjoy.

"Brief Encounter" - Before David Lean made his epics, he was known for his intimate domestic dramas.  "Brief Encounter" is considered one of the best British romances ever made, a gentle film about ordinary people with ordinary lives.  It's also a lovely time capsule of the era, where Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard's have their chance meetings at a railway station, and bond over Donald Duck cartoons.  The bittersweet ending is one for the ages. 

"The Clock" - Judy Garland and Robert Walker star as a young couple trying to get married before Walker's 48 hour leave from the army is over.  The film proved Garland's bona fides as a dramatic actress, but the real romance was going on behind the scenes, between Garland and her director, Vincent Minelli.  Like "Brief Encounter," the power of the story is in its simplicity and realism - the rushed wedding leaves Garland in tears, but love wins in the end.

"The Men Who Tread on the Tiger's Tail" - One of Akira Kurosawa's earliest films as a director, made at the tail end of WWII.  It depicts the famous twelfth century story of Yoshitsune and the six loyal samurai, using Noh elements and a new comic character to enliven the familiar events.  Many of its elements would echo Kurosawa's later, more famous films.  Due to censorship concerns, it was dubbed an illegal production and not released until 1952.  

"Spellbound" - I include this Alfred HItchcock thriller mostly for its production design, where Salvador Dali was hired to provide Surrealist imagery for the film's dream sequences.  The depiction of psychoanalysis here is woefully out of date, but the film remains very watchable thanks to the efforts of its stars, Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck.  And special kudos should also go to Miklós Rózsa for his wonderfully evocative, Oscar nominated score.  

"The Bells of St. Mary's" - A sequel to "Going My Way," where Bing Crosby's Father O'Malley is paired with Ingrid Bergman's formidable Sister Benedict to save a school and a passel of adorable inner city kids.  It's a very sweet, uplifting picture about the power of faith, and was a box office smash.  Crosby gets to sing a few numbers, but it's Bergman who steals the show.  Sister Benedict is so earnest in her belief in the impossible, you can't help being won over.  

"Anchors Aweigh" - Who could resist the pairing of Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire as sailors on shore leave in Hollywood?  This is famously the movie where Kelly danced  with Jerry the Mouse from the "Tom and Jerry" cartoons.  It also features Sinatra singing at the Hollywood Bowl, Dean Stockwell as an annoying kid, and glimpses of MGM and other Hollywood studios they way they existed in the 40s.  Kelly and Astaire would team up again in other films, but never so well.

"Christmas in Connecticut" - A Barbara Stanwyck screwball comedy that functions as an anti-Hallmark Christmas movie.  The main character can't cook, has to scramble to create the illusion of cozy farmhouse bliss, and in the end gets both the man and her job as a magazine writer.  Some seem to think the film champions the women's place being in the home, but I think it exposes this attitude as a hilarious sham.  S. Z. Sakall as Stanwyck's handy Uncle Felix steals the show.  

"The Southerner" - A moving chronicle of the difficulties of a family of Texas sharecroppers.  This was one of Jean Renoir's handful of American films, which raised a storm of controversy because it showed the poverty and harshness of the sharecroppers' lives, and Southerners didn't want to be associated with this image.  The film itself, however, is beautifully made - full of stirring human drama, capped off with a breathtaking flood and survival sequence. 

"The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry" - One of my favorite film noir, in spite of a neutered ending to placate the Production Code.  George Sanders  has never been more sympathetic onscreen, playing a desperate man who accidentally murders the wrong person.  Lots of twists and turns result, leading to an ending that is mostly emotionally satisfying, even if it's a clear cop-out.  Lose the very last "it was all a dream" scene, and this is just about perfect.  

"Conflict" - A cleverly executed suspense film that features Humphrey Bogart committing what appears to be a foolproof murder.  This is one of several films where Bogart plays a criminal that involves narrative trickery and different levels of reality.  This one feels like it plays fair, however, because the psychological elements are handled so well.  Director Curtis Bernhardt includes some excellent symbolic imagery, and a gorgeous final shot. 

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About the Impact of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA Strikes

At the time of writing, the WGA and SAG-AFTRA members are still on strike.  I've been purposefully avoiding writing about the strikes, because frankly I have no real understanding of any of the issues involved to the degree that I would be comfortable providing any opinions or commentary, and I don't want to contribute to the noise.  I am absolutely pro-labor, however, and the fair compensation of artists and writers in the streaming era feels long overdue.  

However, I think writing about the impact of the strike on average consumers at this point should be pretty safe territory.  We're getting to the point where the effects of the strikes are impossible to ignore, especially when you're a media junkie already bracing for the impending media drought.  It's not just that the late night shows have been off the air since the beginning of May, or that movie stars haven't been able to promote any shows or movies since mid-July, but we're seeing studios making or considering more drastic moves as their supply of new media starts to run dry.  "Dune 2" was just delayed to next spring, and it won't be the last tentpole to move.

Even if the strike is resolved immediately, the pause has been long enough that we're going to be feeling the effects of this for years.  The last major writers strike of 2007-2008 changed the television landscape permanently, and the current strike has already lasted longer and been compounded by two guilds striking simultaneously.  Because of how long it takes to actually create movies and shows, there's still a cushion of media that's finished or in post-production being steadily released.  You might not even have noticed that actors have been scarce for interviews, since some promo material is often shot months in advance, but it's getting harder and harder to pretend that everything is business as usual.

If you're an awards season buff, you'll probably have heard that the Emmys have been moved to next January, right in the middle of what's traditionally been Oscar season.  Since the awards shows are considered promotional activities, and FOX understandably doesn't want to air a ceremony where none of the stars show up, the big night has been delayed, even though the nominations have already been announced.  If the strike doesn't get resolved soon, Oscar season may also be forced to move.  The smaller prestige films are way more reliant on promotional campaigns featuring their talent, and several titles like "Challengers" and "Poor Things" have already seen their releases postponed.  The film festivals are expected to be sparsely attended.  And can you imagine an Oscar season without any FYC campaigning by the actors?    

All work has halted on most studio produced shows and movies, including all of 2024's MCU movies, "Wicked," the "Ghostbusters: Afterlife" sequel, "The Last of Us," "Euphoria," "Sandman," and more.  A couple of productions like "House of the Dragon," are still filming because most of their cast members are British and not SAG-AFTRA members.  A very narrow category of independent productions have waivers to move forward.  As a result, nothing announced to be coming out in 2024 may actually be coming out in 2024.  You may have noticed that San Diego Comic-Con was very quiet this year, since nearly all the bigger companies canceled their panels.  This is where we usually get a lot of announcements, sneak peeks, and interviews about upcoming projects, but with so much up in the air, hype for anything has been scarce.  

On broadcast television, the fall schedules are being filled with game shows, reality shows, and reruns.  A couple of streaming shows are being transplanted to broadcast, like edited "Yellowstone" episodes on CBS this fall.  ABC just ran all of "Ms. Marvel" to set up for the November release of "The Marvels."  With no new episodes of "Ghosts," the original UK "Ghosts" will be filling in.  Streaming has been the most protected from the effects of the strike so far, with services like Netflix pushing more foreign-made content and older shows like summer hit "Suits."  However, the whole ecosystem has been going through a significant contraction this year.  Prices are skyrocketing, the flow of new content has been dropping, and there's been a push toward ad-based services - that'll be the topic of its own separate post later.  

I feel it's important to emphasize that this isn't going to be like the delays caused by the pandemic.  In the pandemic everyone had to work around constraints, but there were a lot of creative people who were able to still figure out ways to get the job done and entertain us.  The strikes mean a total blackout.  Hollywood has shut down, and it'll take tremendous effort to get it going again.  

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"Inu Oh" and "One Piece: Red"

Catching up on some recent anime films, I found that two prominent titles both had some surprising elements in common.  

First, there's Masaaski Yuasa and Science SARU's "Inu-Oh," the tale of a blind biwa player named Tomona (Mirai Moriyama) and a deformed Noh dancer named Inu-Oh (Avu-chan), who join forces to essentially form a hair metal band in 14th century Japan.  Very, very loosely based on a few historical incidents and figures from the era, the story imagines that the two outcasts, both negatively affected by the cruel power struggles going at the time, become subversive musical storytellers, spreading the tales of the defeated warriors who still haunt the land.    

The story is a wonderful mix of fantasy, folklore, and historical fiction, with plenty of modern day relevance.  Tomona and Inu-Oh are positioned as the ultimate artistic rebels, breaking away from the established traditional forms of their chosen crafts, and fearlessly speaking truth to power.   A good chunk of the film is taken up by their wild performances, which incorporate everything from American metal band showboating to Cirque du Soleil style acrobatics.  Inu-Oh turns out to be under a curse, which has turned him into a monstrous creature with one gigantic oversized arm and a face so misshapen that he wears a gourd over it as a mask.  His movements are alien and strange, until he finds a way to channel his energies more productively.    

I really enjoy Science SARU's style, which is so much more fluid and raw than most other modern anime, while sacrificing little of the detail.  Yuasa is able to seamlessly mix and match his influences, having his characters use period costuming and other elements to evoke pop stars like David Bowie and Iggy Pop.  He connects old traditions like the drag performances in Noh theater to the subversive genderfluidity of the glam era musicians in some delightful ways.  At the same time, the songs are legitimate bangers and very entertaining.    

The latest "One Piece" film, "One Piece: RED," is also about a pop star.  I count myself as a "One Piece" fan, though I haven't been keeping up with the franchise lately.  It's one of those endless boys' fighting series, this one built around superpowered pirates. I like "One Piece" because it has a good cast of appealing characters and the designs are cheerfully weird, with all kinds of strange body types and visual gags.  Our hero is the goofy pirate kid Luffy (Mayumi Tanaka), who searches for a legendary treasure alongside his intrepid crew of adventurers, following in the footsteps of his mentor, Shanks (Shuichi Ikeda).  In "One Piece: Red," we meet Shanks's daughter Uta (Kaori Nazuka and Ado), a mesmerizing pop idol who can bend reality to her whims.

This movie has done so well financially that I figured it had to be something special.  And for a "One Piece" film, it's certainly very good.  The fight scenes are big and crazy, the songs are pretty solid, and the animation is certainly better than anything I ever saw in the TV show.  The story is also simple enough that I think a newcomer could follow what was going on.  There are good pirates, bad pirates, good cops, bad cops, good musicians, and bad musicians.  There are cameos everywhere, and a lot of new characters I didn't recognize.  However, I never had trouble keeping everyone's allegiances and motivations straight.  It helps that Uta herself is pretty compelling for a one-off character. 

However, I doubt that "One Piece: Red" is going to get much attention from anyone who isn't already a "One Piece" fan.  There's no real story progression, no new character revelations, and Uta's not going to be a regular in the series.  The crazy battle sequences are fun to watch, but they're not any more impressive than what we saw in half a dozen other anime movies over the past year.  The plot is pretty familiar anime business about getting stuck in dream worlds that everything from "Demon Hunter" to "Urursei Yatsura" has done.  We also don't really get much time with any of the colorful cast aside from Luffy and Uta.

It's nice to know that "One Piece" is still doing so well, but the movie mostly just made me want to pick up the series again, and see what my old pirate pals have been up to for the past few years.  

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Video Game Movies I'd Like to See

Well, after the recent success of "The Super Mario Bros. Movie," "The Last of Us," and "Tetris," it looks like we've got our next trend.  I'm not much of a gamer, but I've been around pretty much since the beginning of video games, and I'd like to put in my two cents about old games that could potentially make for some fun movies.  Keep in mind that I'm not going to talk about the obvious candidates like "Legend of Zelda" and "Donkey Kong," which I'm sure are already in the pipeline.  Also, there are a ton of games that have already seen adaptations in one form or another, from "Double Dragon" to "Assassin's Creed."  This is a list of games that have largely left the public consciousness.    

Kirby - A prime candidate for an animated film would be Kirby, the little pink blob with a big appetite.  The star of thirty games and his own anime series, his staying power has been assured.  However, he's a blob of few words, much like Pikachu, and might need a little rejiggering on the way to the big screen.  I stress that Kirby would need to be animated, because his whole schtick of eating things to gain their powers would probably look horrific in live action.   

Metroid - Samus Aran hasn't had the best time in recent years, with a couple of games that made a mess of her character.  However, she was gaming's original ass-kicking female space adventurer, and had some great foes.  I'd love to see the Metroids and Mother Brain in live action.  I'll always be a little sad that Lara Croft beat her to the big screen, but I suspect that Samus would fare better as a screen hero because she's a much tougher piece of work.  

Mega Man - The problem with Mega Man is that he's awfully derivative of other anime and game characters.  His opponent Dr. Wily is inevitably going to get confused with Dr. Robotnik.  Still, I always liked Rock the robot kid, especially in his cartoon incarnation.  The other evil robots have a lot of potential.  I'd love to see them get a shot at the silver screen.  I think "Mega Man" is best suited for animation, but you could definitely make a live action version work.   

Earthworm Jim - You forgot about this weirdo, didn't you?  I'd honestly love to see some maniac filmmaker try to make a live action version of this with photo-real CGI, but if your hero is an earthworm in a super suit, it's almost certainly going to be animated.  Earthworm Jim was a creature of his time, a Sega Genesis veteran who briefly got his own, strange cartoon series in the '90s.  The absurdist, irreverent humor is a little dated, but I think it could still work today.  

Frogger - Frog crosses busy street.  It's an absurdly simple premise, but other characters have done more with less.  The appeal of "Frogger" is that everyone knows "Frogger," even if we never actually played the game.  This is one of the oldest game franchises that's still spawning sequels to this day.  It's even one of the earliest to be adapted into another medium, with a cartoon version in 1983.  For some reason Frogger was an investigative reporter.  I guess we could do something with that?      

Lemmings - This is one of the earliest computer games I remember playing, and still have a tremendous fondness for.  Somehow, I associate it with Christmas, probably because of the "Christmas Lemmings" spinoffs.  Again, the mechanics of the game are what's really memorable here, as there aren't any real characters.  An animated adaptation probably makes the most sense, but I always thought that this would be great to do with Muppets, probably because of the box cover art.

Katamari Damacy - This franchise has a couple of things going for it - very memorable gameplay, a set of interesting characters, and an utterly deranged story involving space aliens trying to make stars by rolling up everything in sight into the katamari balls.  This could be an interesting take on the usual alien invasion story.  Either live action or animation are possible, but I think a live action version would have to be a horror film because katamari balls in live action are the stuff of nightmares.

A Boy and His Blob: Trouble on Blobolonia - This obscure NES title is something of an "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial" clone, with an alien befriending a boy and going on an adventure with him.  The fun part is that the alien is a shapeshifter, and will change form depending on what color jellybean you feed him.  I never played the game, but the writeups in Nintendo Power magazine were fascinating.  I wanted a blob to feed jellybeans to! 

Bubble Bobble - The only video game I ever truly got myself addicted to was "Bubble Bobble," where a pair of baby dragons named Bub and Bob defeat enemies by trapping them in bubbles and bopping them off the screen.  It's terribly cute, and I see no reason why Bub and Bob and their girlfriends and their theme music shouldn't get their own adaptation into some form of media, probably animated.

The King of Kong - Finally, we're overdue for a dramatized version of the 2007 "The King of Kong" documentary that pitted Steve Wiebe against Billy Mitchell for the world record score of "Donkey Kong," especially since the truth about Mitchell and Twin Galaxies came out a few years ago.   

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My Top Ten Episodes of "The Great"

Oof, this is late.  A thirty episode series might seem a little slight for one of these lists, but when you have a show as consistently good as this one, it's not hard to come up with good entries.

The episodes below are unranked and ordered by airdate.  Spoilers ahead.

"The Great" - Our premiere episode sees the arrival of Catherine at the Russian court, which is a madhouse overseen by a hedonist, immature Peter III.  Several other major characters and relationships are quickly established, along with the show's total disregard of historical fact.  This episode packs in the sex and violence and outrageous behavior, setting expectations and further cementing that this will only be an *occasionally* true story.     

"Meatballs at the Dacha" - Peter and Catherine meet the Swedish royals, Hugo and Agnes.  I'm mainly including this one for presenting such a nice change of scenery, and for Nicholas Hoult's really fantastic rant about how Russian warfare works.  It's no wonder that Hugo and Agnes were brought back in the second season, and wound up main characters by the third.  They technically aren't real historical figures, but it feels like they should be.

"The Beaver's Nose" - The coup ensues at last, Catherine is finally pregnant, and violence is nigh.  The situation feels like it's changing every minute, and Catherine has to choose between Leo and the crown.  Fanning and Hoult are great in the confrontation scenes, while the palace becoming a literal battleground presents plenty of interesting things to look at.  The crew's ability to orchestrate such drastic changes to the sets from episode to episode never fails to impress. 

"Heads It's Me" - I prefer the second season of "The Great" to the first, because Catherine's fumbles with power are way more fun, and I prefer Peter on the road to redemption.  But first, Catherine's got to get him back under her control.  This involves escapes, standoffs, setting things on fire, and a great scene where Cathering taunts a hungry Peter with a roasted pig.  The real Peter III should be dead by this point, but Hoult is too entertaining to exit the show just yet.    

 

"Stapler" - Catherine's perpetually unimpressed mother comes to visit, played by Gillian Anderson, and she's immediately a formidable enemy for most of the court.  To impress her, a science fair is held, resulting in a lot of fun sight gags and a lot of misuse of science.  Catherine's relationship with her mother is a whole new source of anxiety, and wonderfully compounds all the ongoing problems.  And the incredibly anachronistic roller coaster as the final surprise is just a delight. 

"Seven Days" - Catherine is going to have her baby and Peter spends most of the episode digging graves just in case.  Jason Isaacs also shows up to play the hallucinated Peter the Great, but Gillian Anderson steals the spotlight as Joanna again, manipulating Catherine and seducing Peter.  I don't think anybody saw the ending coming, really one of the most twisted things that this show has come up with, but it's terribly fitting for the character and for "The Great."  

 

"Walnut Season" - I haven't said anything yet about Elizabeth, who is one of my favorite characters and such a wonderful presence throughout.  This episode is perhaps Belinda Bromilow's finest hour, where she abducts newborn Paul.  Meanwhile, this is also where Marial decides to marry Maxim, Georgina returns with a new plot, and everyone gets ready for the upcoming season finale.  Also, Peter takes to fatherhood incredibly well, which never gets old.

 

"The Bullet or the Bear" - Here's where I talk about Orlo, because the character didn't deserve this ending after all he's been through, but what a way for the writers to signal that nobody in the cast was safe anymore.  It comes at the end of a typical scenario where Peter and Catherine fail to kill each other again, and several of our regulars are threatened with a grisly death, only to come through fine.  Orlo dying  in the most random way possible is a genuine, ironic surprise.  

"Fun" - "The Great" isn't the same show in its third season as it was earlier, because the irreverence is quickly disintegrating and giving way to much darker material.  All the happy chaos that Catherine instigates is to cover up her grief, and the very real possibility that she's having a break with reality.  And it's not funny this time, but downright chilling.  The ending, where Catherine's house of cards falls apart, is one of the most quietly devastating moments of the whole show.    

"Once Upon a Time" - The finale finds good endings for everyone, but especially for Catherine as she demonstrates some of the boldness and cruelty that she's learned from Archie and Elizabeth.  I wish we could have had more time for some of the minor characters, but then again I wouldn't give up that final dance sequence for any of them.   Huzzah!

Honorable mentions: "The Beard," "Alone at Last," and "The Duel"

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"The Bear" Year Two

It's always gratifying when a season of television succeeds in being a season of television, as opposed to being more like a miniseries or a reworked movie that's being meted out to us in multiple parts.  You can tell that the second season of "The Bear" was conceived of and always meant to be serialized television.  It builds on all the characters and relationships that were introduced in the first season, and carries through to a satisfying endpoint that points the way toward a third season, without being a cliffhanger.  And it takes advantage of all the benefits of being a prestige streaming series - variable length episodes, binge model release - without ever feeling indulgent.  I can't remember the last time a ten episode season felt exactly the right length. 

After being relatively cool on season one of "The Bear," I'm definitely in its corner after second two.  This year is more tightly focused, with one big goal in mind: charting the efforts of Carmy and Sydney and the rest of their crew as they struggle to open the new restaurant.  This requires massive amounts of work, more debt, endless stress, and multiple characters going off to train and build up their skills.  There are a slew of high profile guest stars in the mix, but the focus of the show remains on the core characters we were introduced to last season.  Many of them are significantly improved.  Sugar, Carmy's sister, agrees to be the project manager for the restaurant's remodel, and comes into sharper focus.  Richie, who was a character I couldn't stand last season, undergoes a transformation into a far more stable, promising version of himself.  Fak (Matty Matheson), Carmy and Richie's childhood friend, becomes a series regular, spearheading the construction efforts and the comic relief. 

Many of the important members of the ensemble get individual spotlight episodes - Richie, Marcus, Sydney, and Sugar most prominently - while others get stories playing out more quietly throughout the season, like Tina and Ebraheim.  There's a good balance between the more chaotic, anxiety-inducing installments, like the flashback episode, and the much more laid back, character-focused entries like Richie's reinvention.  It also helps that this season has so much more emphasis on food and restaurant culture.  There's plenty of time in the kitchen, but the scope expands so we're seeing different kitchens, and the front of the house, and other operations.  Sydney's episode, where she visits multiple restaurants in search of inspiration for a new menu, is foodie heaven.  

We learn a lot more about the Berzatto family, especially in a star-studded hour-long flashback episode covering an eventful Christmas dinner.  We meet more family members, and other people from Carmy's past, including his old friend Claire (Molly Gordon), who emerges as a potential love interest.  In the process, the show fills in the details about Carmy, encounter by encounter.  Because of him, everyone in his orbit is inspired to better themselves, and make the dream of the new restaurant a reality.  And because of him, the process is also endlessly fraught and rife with conflict, leading up to a spectacular finale where Carmy's ambitions and deficiencies collide in a beautiful piece of dramatic irony.  Sydney continues to be a standout.  Her big arc this year is overcoming her doubts about putting everything she has into the new venture, about relying on Carmy as her partner, and ultimately about performance anxiety.  I love that we get to meet her father, played by Robert Townsend, and Richie's ex-wife, played by Gillian Jacobs, who help put so much into context.    

There's a wonderful attention to detail in the show that helps to ground it in a very specific time and place.  Instead of glossing over all the little complications that other fictionalized depictions of renovation work would happily skip, "The Bear" leans into them.  Every missing permit and scheduling snafu and failed fire suppression test piles on the tension.  Shots of closed restaurants remind us both of the financial stakes and the post-pandemic setting.  The motto "Every Second Counts" is introduced this year, and it feels like the creators of "The Bear" take it to heart.  Every second of the show is executed with such care and such thoughtfulness.  I love the editing in particular, which sets the tempo of the show - sometimes mellow and sometimes on the verge of a heart attack.  The montages of chaotic construction work and perfectionist food service are fabulous.

The performances, however, are what I really love the season for.  Carmy and Claire's relationship is the kind of sublot that might drag down a weaker show, but I dug every minute the two were onscreen together.  I adored seeing Abby Elliott as Sugar, holding her own against every other Berzatto (and Berzatto adjacent) male in sight.  Ayo Edibiri, Lionel Boyce, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach are inevitably going to break my heart.  I wish we'd gotten more of Liza Colon-Zayas and Edwin Lee Gibson, who do so much with hardly any dialogue.  Even Oliver Platt returns for a brief, but moving arc, revealing some new dimensions.  I wish I could add comments on some of the other guest stars, but that would be ruining some wonderful surprises.  

Finally, as well done as it was, my favorite episode was not the popular Christmas special.  I continue to have trouble with the sustained levels of anxiety and shouting matches that some of these characters see as a way of life.  I'm glad I watched it, but I'll never be able to watch it again.  Having Richie's much calmer episode as the direct follow-up was very much appreciated.  His and Marcus's quiet voyages of discovery were the highlights for me this season.  Well, not that quiet in Riche's case.  I don't think I've ever been so happy to hear anyone blasting Taylor Swift.

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"No Bears" Needs Some Context

One of the most important films released in 2022 is Jafar Panahi's "No Bears," but I wonder if it's only a great film if you know and understand the context in which it was made.  Panahi, who has been under various forms of house arrest and filmmaking bans since 2010, made the film illegally in Iran,  As a result, he was imprisoned along with two other directors for several months.  "No Bears" is about two couples trying to escape Iran, and includes situations that are allegories for the oppression of Iranians by the current regime.  As with his previous films, Panahi also plays with several layers of reality, including placing himself in the thick of the action as the main character.   

In the film, Panahi attends a wedding in a remote village, staying with an amiable host named Ghanbar (Vahid Mobaseri).  He shoots some footage and takes pictures during his stay, and travels too close to the border, raising suspicions.  Soon, it comes out that a young couple, Gozal (Darya Alei) and Solduz (Amir Davar), are planning to run away together, even though Gozal is supposed to marry another man.  Various villagers are convinced that Panahi took a picture of Gozal and Solduz that is evidence of their love affair.  Panahi is subsequently subjected to more and more Kafkaesque rounds of interrogation by the villagers, who are certain that the picture exists.  Their arguments are convincing enough that I'm still not sure whether or not Panahi actually took the photo.  

At the same time, Panahi is remotely directing scenes for his newest film, which depicts a different couple in Turkey, Bakhtiar (Bakhtiar Panjei) and Zara (Mina Kavani), trying to use fake documents to leave the country.  The film within the film is a blend of documentary and fiction, where the escape attempt is genuine, even though the specifics of the scenes are being dramatized.  And the lines are blurry enough that I was convinced for a few scenes that we were watching some footage filmed during a real escape attempt, instead of Panjei and Kavani reenacting scenes from their own lives.  This mix of reality and fiction has been used by Panahi and his fellow Iranian filmmakers before, but rarely for stories this bleak and immediate.    

The production was clearly very constrained, and much of the footage wasn't shot under the best conditions.  The handheld portions in particular are very rough.  The script also hinges on a lot of coincidences and compressed timelines that break the story's immersion.  As powerful as the ending is, it strains credibility that all these events should have played out at the same time.  However, "No Bears" is absolutely brimming over with very real emotion from everyone involved.  This is especially true of Panahi himself, who seems to be channeling all the frustration of having to be a witness to these tragic stories of desperate people driven to the brink.  The film's title comes from an anecdote told to Panahi, about how people act to protect themselves against a threat that isn't actually there, in order to keep the peace and the status quo.  However, these lies have their own consequences.   

Some foreknowledge of Jafar Panahi's career and the situation in Iran is necessary to parse what's going on in "No Bears."  I think it's a good idea to have seen some of Panahi's earlier films made during his arrest as well, like "This is Not a Film," to appreciate how far he and filmmaking technology have come over the past decade.  Watching him direct over Zoom calls, and casually enlist other people to help with the production is very poignant.  I don't think that "No Bears" is one of his better films, because it delivers its messages bluntly and some of the execution is clumsy.  However, it is an absolutely vital piece of filmmaking that I'm glad I was able to see.       

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The 2022-2023 Television I Didn't Watch

In advance of my 2022-2023 television top ten list (I go by the Emmy eligibility calendar, because it's easier), I want to talk about some of the shows I didn't watch this year, for various reasons.  There are far, far more shows out there than anyone can possibly keep up with, so this is not a remotely exhaustive list.  The titles below are only the most high profile ones that I want to talk about why I skipped. 

I reserve the right to revisit these choices in the future, but I still haven't seen anything from any previous list.

"Succession" - I'm finally giving up on ever starting this.  There's been a boost in the show's popularity for its final season, but I can't bring myself to spend nearly forty hours watching these terrible people destroy each other for power, no matter how entertaining they are.  The clips and catch-up summaries I've seen have only cemented that the Roy family are simply too infuriating for me to take.  

"Yellowstone" - This includes all the spinoffs.  I'm glad that Taylor Sheridan and Kevin Costner have such a big win, but the more I read about the show the more it's clear that I'm not the target audience.  Westerns were always a challenge for me, and frontier narratives even moreso.  I might have fun picking apart the show's old fashioned worldview, but there are simply too many other options for me to bother. 

"Cunk on Earth" - I've seen the Philomena Cunk character a few times in some of Charlie Brooker's other shows, and I don't think I need to see one built around her.  I have a pretty low tolerance for comedians playing dumbell characters, and I'm not getting any novel vibes from Cunk.  The subject matter actually looks like a lot of fun otherwise - visiting historical sites and talking to various experts.  Too bad.

"Daisy Jones & The Six" - I like Riley Keough and Sam Claflin, but music biopics, even fake ones, are pretty rough for me.  I recently watched all of Danny Boyle's "Pistol," which was about a real rock band from the same period, so I think I've hit my quota for this genre anyway.  This is the show on this list I feel guiltiest about skipping, however, because it's a riskier project and aimed at an underserved audience.     

"Jury Duty" - The combination of a reality show with a sitcom format reportedly got some very good results, but this just isn't the kind of thing I enjoy.  Frankly, a whole series where everyone is fake except for the one guy who's being "Truman Show" -ed sounds bizarre, and not in a good way.  I'd be way more interested in watching a documentary about how this project was done than the actual show itself.  

"White House Plumbers" - I'd probably be watching this for the star-studded cast if it weren't for the fact that "Gaslight" got to the Watergate scandal first, with an even better cast last year.  I got really burned out on all those prestige miniseries in the spring of '22, so I've been cutting back.  "Love & Death" is another one I'm on the fence about skipping, which covers the same events as last year's "Candy."

"Dahmer" - Finally, I'm generally a true crime fan, and I like a lot of the people involved in this project, but I don't think I need to see Ryan Murphy's take on Jeffrey Dahmer.  If this were a movie, maybe it would have been more palatable, but ten episodes is a lot.  I like the idea of a macroscopic approach, looking at systemic failures as well as Dahmer's sociopathy, but the results were reportedly mixed.  

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A Rant About "Air"

2023 has the odd distinction of having several films built around business deals and products, such as "Tetris," "Blackberry," and even "Flaming Hot."  "Air" is one of these, which tells the inspirational story of how Nike, an underdog in the basketball shoe business back in 1984, managed to sign Michael Jordan to one of the most lucrative endorsement deals of all time and launch the Air Jordan brand.  Nike's talent and marketing folks, Sonny Vaccaro (Matt Damon) and Rob Strasser (Jason Bateman) are positioned as the heroes, with Nike CEO Phil Knight (Ben Affleck) grumpily supporting them as the risks they want to take keep compounding.  On the other side of the negotiating table are Jordan's formidable mother Deloris (Viola Davis) and agent David Falk (Chris Messina).  We only ever see Michael Jordan himself from behind or with his face obfuscated, like Jesus in "Ben Hur."

If you take the film at face value, it works perfectly fine.  The performances are all good, with Messina and Davis getting some of the better monologues.  Ben Affleck's direction is nothing fancy, but it does the job of resurrecting the '80s, with the help of nostalgic media clips and a soundtrack full of familiar hits.  The hero worship of Michael Jordan is laid on pretty thick, but comes across as genuine.  I'm sure there are sneakerheads out there who would enjoy learning how Air Jordans came about, and who the major players were behind the scenes.  I, on the other hand, have no particular love for professional sports, footwear, or self-congratulatory corporate hagiography, so I sat through "Air" trying very hard not to roll my eyes at certain points.  To be blunt, I didn't buy what it was selling.

The last time I saw Phil Knight onscreen was in the little-seen documentary "Claydream," where Knight ousted beloved stop motion animator Will Vinton from his own studio, eventually taking it over and turning it into Laika.  Knight gives a lot to charity, and I'm sure he's a lovely person in his private life, but as a businessman, the man is a shark.  There's no other way to become a billionaire.  Watching Ben Affleck play Phil Knight as this blustery, but benign eccentric rubbed me the wrong way.  And while I'm sure that "Air" resembles the truth, there's no doubt in my mind that this is a heavily prettied-up version of the real story, with all the rough edges sanded down.  Nearly all the major figures who appear in "Air" are still alive, and the script is clearly doing its best to show everyone in the best light possible so no one has any possible reason to take offense.

Frankly, "Air" is a story told from the wrong perspective.  Late in the film, negotiations hit a snag when Deloris Jordan asks for profit participation on the sales of the shoes, which forces Vaccaro to admit that endorsement deals don't compensate the players fairly.  Michael Jordan's Nike deal actually helped to change this, which only adds to his status as a legendary player.  However, Jordan also remains an extreme outlier in a sport that has systematically exploited its players.  This is acknowledged in the film itself, but far too late and far too little.  No matter how much the film tries to paint Nike as the underdogs, the stakes are undeniably higher for Jordan and his family.  So it feels incredibly myopic to be telling this story largely from Nike's point of view.  A similar shoe deal subplot in "King Richard" was handled far more appropriately.

Make no mistake that "Air" is about Michael Jordan through and through.  Screenwriter Alex Convery made it clear that he came up with the idea for the film because of a segment of the Michael Jordan miniseries, "The Last Dance."  But while "The Last Dance" was about the man himself, "Air" is about the legend, and the commodification of that legend by a shoe company.  Sure, the blow is softened by Vaccaro being portrayed as a basketball lover and an especially prescient talent scout, who is able to get the deal rolling by convincing everyone at Nike of Jordan's impending greatness, but in the end the deal is a triumph of capitalism, not sports, and not fandom.  And as fun as "Air" is to watch at times, especially when Chris Messina is going full tilt, it never stops feeling like a shoe commercial.     

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Down the "June's Journey" Rabbit Hole

What have I gotten myself into?

Picking up where I left off with my last mobile gaming post, I had tried a bunch of different mobile games with different gameplay, and the only one that I wound up keeping was the "mystery hidden object game" June's Journey.  I liked that I could go at my own pace, ad interruptions weren't mandatory to progress, and I enjoyed the gameplay.  The seek and find picture mechanics are very well done, and playing them oddly gives me a feeling of satisfaction that I'm tidying up the cluttered spaces.  

However, if you want to speed up the pace of the gameplay, get competitive, and get better rewards, June's Journey is an expertly engineered timesink.  Like most free-to-play games, the amount you can play is limited by in-game currency connected to a timer.  In this case, if you run out of little yellow lightning bolts, you have to wait for them to regenerate - at a rate of two minutes a bolt, and 14 bolts to play a game.  You can make them last longer by watching ads, reducing the rate to 10 bolts a game.  You can win more by participating in side games and receiving prizes.  

Of course, that just covers the ability to play.  In order to access more levels, you also have to decorate.  More specifically, you have to convert your winnings from each round of play, measured in coins, into buildings, trees, roads, and other decor for your very own digital Orchid Island.  Each decoration is connected to another currency, measured in pink flowers.  In order to move on to the next level, you need to hit a certain flower benchmark.  Of course, the decorations also have built-in timers, and the time between a purchase and actually getting the flower value of the item can be multiple days.  You can bypass this by spending another form of currency, the purple gemstones.  Coins, flowers, gemstones, and lightning bolts are prizes from a variety of different mini-games and side quests in June's Journey, often with their own currencies to keep track of.  At one point I was juggling gold bars, keys, tokens, tickets, cards, coins, gems, bolts, compasses, cups of coffee, flowers, bushes, building materials and more.  And of course there are randomized prize boxes and card packets in the mix to keep things interesting.    

The decorating part of the game is fun, even if you don't care for the cutesy design sensibilities of the game.   Because all the decorations have different flower values, and building space is limited (controlled by yet another currency!) you have to figure out how to best maximize your flower value while not making your island look like too much of an eyesore.  I buy a lot of trees, because they're easier to keep in scale, and good for hiding anything especially garish that comes out of one of the prize boxes. June's Journey is obviously aimed at female players, with a storyline that takes place in 1927, following the adventures of a mystery-solving adventuress and socialite, June Parker.  Orchid Island is a perpetually sunny, well-kept paradise of parties and holidays, where something is always under renovation.   The storylines are basic romance novel fodder, and I don't get much out of them, but I do appreciate that the cast of characters is diverse and there's a good variety of different environments.

I haven't even gotten into the social aspects of the game, where you can join teams and play group challenges against each other for bigger prizes.  Some of the competitive teams are pretty hardcore, requiring resource pooling and scoring benchmarks I have no hope of getting anywhere near.  Some players have been playing for years and have multiple islands, all decorated to the teeth.  Roughly two months in, I'm trying to keep my own playing casual, but it is very easy to get sucked into all the side quests and mini-games, which are frequently more intense and require much more time commitment.  

There's an extensive community around June's Journey, and this is one of the only games I've found where none of the other players appear to be bots.   That speaks well to the game being able to retain my interest.  I'm just worried it may be able to retain it a little too well.  To be continued…

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"Based on a True Story" is Killer

The popularity of the "true crime" genre has only grown in recent years.  I'm certainly guilty of contributing to this.  It's already spawned several pieces of media where newbie podcasters try to cash in on the craze, notably "Only Murders in the Building."  The latest entry is "Based on a True Story," which takes a novel approach.  Its podcasters, Ava and Nathan Bartlett, immediately ID the killer, and then go into business with him to produce their own true crime show.  Even better, the leads are Kaley Cuoco and Chris Messina, who have both the comedic and dramatic chops to sell the comedy and the thrills - often simultaneously.

The Bartletts live in an affluent part of Los Angeles and are expecting their first child, but they're struggling financially.  Ava is a realtor with dwindling prospects, and Nathan is a former tennis star turned aging coach.   They hire a plumber, Matt (Tom Bateman), who Nathan befriends before Ava realizes that he's the local serial killer, The Westside Ripper.  Creating a podcast featuring Matt seems like the answer to their money troubles, but things quickly spin out of control.  It turns out that podcasting isn't as easy as it looks, especially when it comes to marketing and promotion.  Other characters, like Ava's best friend Ruby (Priscilla Quintana) and her younger sister Tory (Liana Liberato) become involved.

"Based on a True Story" works great as a fast-paced thriller, where the Bartletts struggle to stay one step ahead of the law and their dangerous new co-creator.  This is the kind of show that frequently indulges in narrative fake-outs, and every episode ends on some kind of cliffhanger.  However, it works even better as a spoof on the true crime genre, and especially poking fun at a particular breed of rich Angeleno.  Matt not only agrees to do the podcast, but he becomes so enthusiastic about it that the Bartletts constantly have to fight to keep him from taking it over completely.  They find themselves in competition with other podcasts, and other true crime entrepreneurs trying to cash in.  The show is very breezy, and light on gore, but it makes a point to show how the Bartletts become more and more morally compromised as the unstable situation goes on.  

I also appreciate "Based on a True Story" for being such a great showcase for its talented actors.  Ava is shown to be very pregnant, but Kelly Cuoco is still extremely attractive and charismatic throughout.  She's playing a more mature, responsible version of her usual persona, but is still horny and chaotic.  Between this and "Air," it's been a fantastic year for Chris Messina, who managed to get me to empathize with him in some truly absurd situations.  Tom Bateman is clearly having a lot of fun looking sinister, and walking that thin line between repellent and fascinating.  He reminds me a bit of  Villanelle from "Killing Eve," though the show hasn't gotten past his surface level schtick yet.  Even the minor characters get some great moments.  Ruby, for instance, is set up as a spoiled hedonist with a troubled marriage to Simon (Aaron Staton).  However, she gets a truly kickass moment in the finale that was so smartly done, I was honestly disappointed when it turned out to be part of one of the show's fantasy sequences.

  

At only eight episodes, "Based on a True Story" makes for a quick watch, and it ends exactly where it should.  I definitely wanted to see more the moment the last episode was finished.  I expect that the show can sustain a couple more seasons, but hopefully won't outstay its welcome.  The farce is a lot of fun, and I hope it can maintain the same energy and irreverence for a while.

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Hello "Mrs. Davis"

After watching the entire season, I still don't know if I like "Mrs. Davis" or not.  It's a wild swing of a show that mixes multiple genres and tackles some interesting topics.  I respect that it leans into being very weird, in a way that not a lot of shows are.  Co-created by Damon Lindelof and Tara Hernandez, it stars Betty Gilpin as a renegade nun named Sister Simone.  She lives in a future where a superintelligent A.I. named Mrs. Davis has more or less taken over the world by taking charge of people's happiness and telling them what to do.  Simone hates her, but is happy to keep her distance, living in a remote convent, until one day Mrs. Davis contacts her with a quest and an offer.

The storytelling is done in a roundabout way, showing us wacky things up front, and then filling in the backstory to explain how we got there, and what those events actually mean in content.  This is one of those heightened comic book universes where the first episode involves a wild chase sequence with Nazis and a lot of physical gags, and Simone occasionally meets with her husband Jay (Andy McQueen) in a metaphysical diner.  Because of all the figures from Christian theology that keep popping up, and the wonderfully bizarre concepts, "Mrs. Davis" reminds me a lot of "Preacher," except much lighter and more earnest in its aims.  It's also like "The Good Place," except more anarchic and pulpy.  While on her quest, Simone gets a chance to work out her baggage with her genial ex Wiley (Jake McDornan) and her troublesome parents (Elizabeth Marvel, David Arquette).  Often, the supernatural shenanigans just feel like a distraction.

Maybe that's why I didn't connect to "Mrs. Davis" the way I was hoping that I would.  I love Betty Gilpin as a badass nun, and I love that the show takes its Christian theology fairly seriously, even though it's very irreverent.  However, in spite of flirting with some pretty heavy subject matter, it never stops feeling like a sitcom.  Mrs. Davis, for instance, is a pretty sinister creation, able to track down Simone wherever she goes, and manipulates just about anybody to do her bidding, but any darker implications of this are only threatened and never really carried through.  The characters feel emotionally genuine, but it doesn't feel like the show is taking them seriously.  Lots of time is spent on goofy situations like Simone getting herself swallowed by a whale, and Wiley taking part in an endurance contest to prove he isn't a chicken, but none of it feels consequential.  I kept waiting for Mrs. Davis to reveal that the whole quest had been a trick to get Simone to feel a sense of spiritual fulfillment and make up with her mother.  I couldn't bring myself to take most of the show at face value and I didn't find any of it funny.     

Still, I got through the whole season without much effort.  It's well made and easy to watch, with a fast pace and lots of good comic performances.  The show is also riddled with familiar guest stars, including Margo Martindale, Shohreh Aghdashloo, and Chris Diamantopolous leading the anti-AI underground. And it never feels like the production is cutting corners at any point, the way it often felt in similar shows like "Preacher" and "Legion."  Clearly a lot of effort was expended on making "Mrs. Davis" the best that it could be.  However, I don't think I get what it's trying to be, and I'm not alone.  Every reaction to the show I've seen calls it very weird, which is fine, but it's not a very deep or impactful kind of weird, the way David Lynch films are.  It's more of a random, unfocused kind of weird, like the purposefully AI generated episode titles.  What put me off the most was when the show would touch on something interesting, like Simone and Jay's unbalanced relationship, and then never really engage with it to my satisfaction.  It felt like constantly running into narrative dead ends.

Everything does wrap up nicely in the end, and some of the twists are gratifying to see play out, though the mechanics of it are more interesting than any of the substance.  I guess I just wasn't on the same wavelength as this one, and I can't figure out if it's the show's fault or mine.  I suspect it's a little of both.  "Mrs. Davis" is wildly creative, completely unpredictable, and the kind of show I'd like to see more often.  This one just didn't do anything for me.  Oh well.        

  

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"Poker Face," Year One

Iconic detectives have long been a mainstay of television.  We watched Columbo and Jessica Fletcher solve dozens of murders in the '80s and '90s.  And now there's Charlie Cale, played by the gravel-voiced, big-haired Natasha Lyonne, a casino waitress and human lie detector, who is forced to go on the run after getting herself mixed up in a murder.  Created by Rian Johnson, and absolutely crammed to the gills with notable guest stars, "Poker Face" is designed to be a throwback to the glory days of episodic mystery shows, where every episode takes place in a new town, with a new cast of characters.  

Because "Poker Face" has more ambitions and more of a budget, each episode can feel like it's a different show from week to week.  Charlie has a knack for landing service jobs in all kinds of industries, so she can be a cleaner in a retirement community one week and a merch girl for a rock band the next.  She also has the uncanny ability to run across ne'er-do-wells, who end up lying to the wrong lady, and Charlie is compelled to call them out.  Most of the episodes follow the same formula.  First we watch the murder (or other major crime) of the week play out, and then we rewind to see the events from Charlie's point of view.  The mystery isn't who committed the crime, but how Charlie will eventually trip them up and discover the truth.

I appreciate that "Poker Face" is designed for casual viewing.  There's a scary enforcer played by Benjamin Bratt chasing Charlie across the country, but he only shows up in a handful of episodes.  There are a couple of fun characters that pop up again for the finale, and the show rewards you for sticking around, but you can absolutely enjoy each episode by itself.  I marveled over how the show had managed to land a cast list so varied and high profile - two of this year's Best Supporting Actress nominees pop up in different episodes - but then, it makes sense that they'd be more willing to sign on for one episode, often in a big, juicy role.  These include Chloe Sevigny as a washed up rock star, Tim Blake Nelson as a racecar driver, Judith Light and S. Epatha Merkerson as bitchy retirement home besties, and Nick Nolte playing a special effects guru based off of Phil Tippett. 

However, positioning Natasha Lyonne as the star is what really makes the series work.  Charlie Cale is a perpetually frazzled, scroungy, lovable soul who seems to be happiest around people, no matter what walk of life.  Her greatest strength and her worst fault is that she's empathic and cares about the victims that nobody else does.  The whole series kicks off because she won't accept that her best friend Natalie (Dascha Polanco) was killed in a domestic dispute.  And once she realizes that someone has lied to her, she's unable to let things go.  Many of the criminals she meets along the way are sympathetic and have good reasons for their bad behavior.  Charlie often acts as our moral compass, reminding us that no matter what the provocation or what the reward, justice has to be done.  Lyonne's performance is a delight throughout - her easy familiarity and rambling cadence immediately recall Peter Falk - she's the epitome of the tough broad with a soft heart.  

The production quality is very high, full of little homages to the shows that "Poker Face" takes its influences from.  The title screen features a blocky yellow '70s font and a copyright notice.  The score is bluesy, with a fun banjo theme announcing Charlie's arrival in every episode.  Her ride is a late '60s Barracuda, often the only recurring onscreen element from episode to episode, aside from Charlie herself.  Because she's staying off the grid, her world is full of lowlifes and society's rejects, but plenty of nice people too, who Charlie befriends along the way.  It helps to foster an old fashioned, analog view of the world that is very nostalgic and appealing. And unlike a lot of TV projects these days, "Poker Face" can go on for as long as it wants.  I'm certainly planning on tuning in for another season.  

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