tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-84456677466133439472024-03-14T00:22:53.505-07:00A Storyteller's Guide to Telling StoriesAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06235900666167642831noreply@blogger.comBlogger65125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8445667746613343947.post-71441215825197921012016-01-23T07:42:00.002-08:002016-01-23T07:42:55.126-08:00Her Story: Season 1 Episodes 1-6<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HV6_DPDYOws/VqOcC85CWtI/AAAAAAAAAmc/N9f46YWEuug/s1600/12489317_1519604955000101_1447875579453708186_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="343" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HV6_DPDYOws/VqOcC85CWtI/AAAAAAAAAmc/N9f46YWEuug/s400/12489317_1519604955000101_1447875579453708186_o.jpg" width="400" /></a>There's honestly no way around it: <i><a href="https://www.facebook.com/herstoryseries/timeline" target="_blank">Her Story</a></i> is brilliant. It's poignant and impactful, honest and romantic, at turns funny and heartbreaking, and unendingly important. The more I think about it, the more I find myself thinking that "important" is one of the better words to describe a show today, so I don't use it flippantly. <i><a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/70242311" target="_blank">Orange is the New Black</a></i>, with its large cast of women of different ethnicities, sexualities, and gender expression falls in this category as well. And that both of these shows are capable of getting their message across while still being wonderfully entertaining is a triumph.<br />
<br />
<i>Her Story</i> is a six-episode, new media, show (webseries?) that's up on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/" target="_blank">YouTube</a> as we speak. It's the first show in history that's about Transwomen and features Transwomen (and men) in every phase of its development, behind and in front of the camera. So it's groundbreaking in that way. But more than that, or to be more specific, in conjunction with that, it's a story about the dating and love lives of a section of the world that simply never gets any focus. It's not hard to find shows or movies about gay men meeting and falling in love. It's a little harder, though still not impossible, to find shows or movies about lesbian women meeting and falling in love. But trans people simply are not being given their due in storytelling. And so here we are, and thank God for that finally.<br />
<br />
These first six episodes (none of which is longer than 11 minutes and can easily be consumed in one sitting) follow Violet (played with charm and heart by the lovely <a href="http://smartassjen.com/" target="_blank">Jen Richards</a>) and Paige (the beautiful <a href="http://missross.com/" target="_blank">Angelica Ross</a>) as they embark on two very different relationships. Violet doesn't consider herself to be gay, but when she's approached by Allie (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm6300205/" target="_blank">Laura Zak</a>) and asked if she'll contribute to a story Allie is hoping to write for the local gay paper, it's impossible to deny an attraction and an interest is sparked between them. Meanwhile, Paige has a meet cute with James (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm5652008/" target="_blank">Christian Ochoa</a>), and the two of them are quickly off on magical dates. On the one hand you've got Violet who has to confront certain ideas she holds about her own sexuality, but who is at least already out as trans to the person she's interested in. On the other, Paige has to seriously consider whether or not to tell James, or more specifically when to tell him. The way these two stories play out is a fun and beautiful study in nuanced storytelling. One of the show's greatest triumphs is it's ability to tell its story in quiet and simple terms without needing to baldly state it's position too often.<br />
<br />
At least, it does so with the two main romances. In other places, I think it could be argued that a more deft touch could have been longed for. One of Allie's friends is a lesbian named Lisa (<a href="http://www.calamitycaroline.com/" target="_blank">Caroline Whitney Smith</a>), and she's pretty horrible. To be fair, she's openly horrible from the start, and the first scene we see her in features Allie telling her in no uncertain terms that she's a bad person. But as the season goes on, we see that there's no real redeeming quality to her, and something about her always felt flat and caricatured to me. Lisa has a position, and indeed it's a position many people in the world have, but what's lacking in her is a reason for that position. In the show's defense, multiple episodes that barely hit the eight minute mark is hardly enough time to flush out each character as completely as I'm sure the writers would like. But in a story where we get to see so many characters brought to life so vividly, Lisa's flatness stands out all the more. No story can be told without a more utilitarian or functional character, but when some of the more important stories or conversations taking place within the show hinge on her position, this character serving as little more than a mouthpiece for the opposition feels lacking.<br />
<br />
But here's the thing, at the end of the day, that's pretty much all of the bad you can find in what is otherwise a brilliant story. So in it's first season, <i>Her Story</i> clearly finds itself in the plus column. The story is a winner, the writing is beautiful and moving, and the performances are truly amazing. In content like this, something not being backed by a major network or studio, the acting would easily be where you'd expect to be let down. But that's not the case here. Everyone is great, but I have to say Angelica Ross was a true standout for me. She portrays a power, inner strength, and resilience that you know was born of a difficult struggle to get to where she is, but there's also a vulnerability there that's all the more affecting because of those things. The scene of her and James' second date and the cheeseburger was beautiful and heartbreaking as much for what wasn't said as for what was. And the show's willingness to touch on the importance of her race and her class is really smart and important. She's an African American, transgendered, woman, who has worked to pull herself up into the upper class, but clearly wasn't always there. These are grand and important distinctions, and somehow Ross gets each of those things across effortlessly with just her looks and her bearings. It's brilliant!<br />
<br />
In short, go watch <i>Her Story</i>. It's roughly an hour long, and it can be found on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCw2Mg0PoxZkAHAzDiabWr9A" target="_blank">YouTube</a>, or on the <a href="http://www.herstoryshow.com/" target="_blank">show's site</a>. Let's be honest, you could easily spend more than an hour on YouTube just watching videos of cute animals. Why not spend that time watching something interesting, intelligent, and important instead? The animals will still be there when you get done.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06235900666167642831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8445667746613343947.post-85970139218164609662015-11-05T18:09:00.001-08:002015-11-05T18:48:48.725-08:00Empire: "A High Hope For a Low Heaven"<a href="http://www.ew.com/sites/default/files/1446648716/recaps-empire.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.ew.com/sites/default/files/1446648716/recaps-empire.jpg" height="266" width="400" /></a>From my last <i>Empire</i> review: "The episode ends with Hakeem being kidnapped in broad daylight. This might be a little silly, but it's also a great way to go into a brief hiatus. The show will be back after the World Series is over, and when it is, we'll get what looks to be a tense and highly rewarding episode. I honestly can't wait!" Well I waited with everyone else, and I have to say I'm sorry I ever let my expectations get anywhere near that high because this was a shit show of an episode. On the one hand, I want to blame the small hiatus for this episode's massive failure, but the truth is the storylines here simply aren't executed well at all. It's yet another case of <i>Empire's</i> breakneck pacing coming around to bite it and us in the ass.<br />
<br />
That's not to say there isn't good to be found here. The opening moments picking up where the last episode left off are rightfully tense, and in true <i>Empire</i> fashion they aren't without a level of humor. This episode tells us that Becky's dating, or at least sleeping with, one of the rappers on the Gutter Life label, and he's sexy as hell, so good for her. And the story about Jamal looking to take over his own marketing and branding instead of allowing Empire to brand him as a gay artist is both valid and interesting. Though to be fair it's also baseless as we haven't seen Empire's efforts to brand or market Jamal at all, and I strongly doubt that the Staples Center would turn him down for a show there because he's gay, or for the "you're too current" reason they give him. So that's all ridiculous and speaks towards a different problem I'll try to touch on later. But the idea of Jamal wanting to steer his career in a particular direction is interesting enough.<br />
<br />
There's also a moment at the end of the episode when Lucious is talking to Freda about he feels closer to her than he does his own sons that could work if the show gives it it's due. I think I mentioned last season that some part of what <i>Empire</i> could stand to do is talk more about how Hakeem and Jamal don't get to claim any level of street-cred since they both grow up in a time after Lucious has already made it out of the ghetto. So what would be the core of Hakeem's fanbase is always going to be a bit alienated from him because they can't relate and if he tries to rap about something real to them, it'll come off as fake. Enter Freda who does live that life and who has the ability to be the kind of protege that Lucious can see himself in and that his kids honestly couldn't ever be. It makes sense that he'd feel a connection to her as an artist that he doesn't feel to his boys. In order to make that reading work properly, you have to forget his promise her father that he was going to have sex with her, but willful ignorance should be second nature to all <i>Empire</i> fans by now.<br />
<br />
To cap off the good from this episode is the scene of the brother's banding together once more to help pull Hakeem back from his PTSD fueled edge. It carries every bit as much weight, and probably even more, as the elevator scene from last season. That's because 1) Hakeem's downward spiral is one we've watched happening over the course of the episode, making this scene feel more organic and inevitable, and 2) the Lyons brothers continue to be the strongest aspect of the show. At one point, the boys point out to Hakeem that he's stronger than most because he made it out of being Cookie and Lucious' son and he's still alive. That's a feat to be reckoned with, and I can't help but to agree with that outlook. Very often, I wonder what this show might look like if the battle lines were drawn with all of the Lyons kids on one side and Cookie and Lucious on the other. You'd have to do away with some of Cookie and Lucious' sniping at each other, which has of course been a fun cornerstone of the show since the beginning, but that makeup would at least give us one team to root for, which is what the show is drastically missing at the moment.<br />
<br />
Sadly, that's where the good ends for this hour. The biggest offender in this episode is the Hakeem storyline. This should be the thing that makes this episode great, and for a moment it feels like it will. But then Lucious pays the ransom, a ransom asked for and acquired off screen I might add, and the kidnappers let Hakeem go. Simple as that. No one's delusional enough to think that Hakeem will actually die in this episode, so the stakes were always going to be relatively low, but had they at least allowed the story to transpire over the course of the whole episode, they could have built a little suspense and given the characters enough time to realistically deal with their feelings about the youngest Lyon being taken. As is, he's taken, released, falls into PTSD, and then is pulled out of it and returned to some kind of status quo in the course of one episode. <br />
<br />
Allow me to digress for a minute here and talk about another primetime soap show. Last season on <i>Scandal, </i>Olivia Pope was kidnapped in order to put pressure on the president to go to war in order to get her back. It was silly and soapy as these things tend to be, and since there's honestly no show without Olivia, the stakes weren't too high in that storyline either. But the entire ordeal lasted for multiple episodes, saw Olivia having to do things she never thought she'd have to in order to survive, and left her with lasting mental scars the likes of which she's honestly still dealing with well into this season. If <i>Scandal</i> can take a kidnapping story and have it last for five episodes, is it really too much to ask for <i>Empire</i> to allow its story to play out over one full episode?<br />
<br />
I'm dead tired of telling <i>Empire</i> it needs to slow down. It does, but I don't want to say it anymore. Instead I'll say that the show needs to choose stories it can rush through without viewers feeling as though they've been short changed. It's done a passable job of that in the past, so I know they're capable. But what I don't know is whether or not that's a viable model for a full season of TV. I don't think it could be much worse than what we're faced with now, so I say give it a try and let's see.<br />
<br />
<b>Random thoughts:</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
--Was anyone actually surprised by the reveal that Cookie's new boy toy is somehow in league with the guys who kidnapped Hakeem? Show of hands...anyone?<br />
<br />
--It might not be fair because <i>Empire</i> has actually done a good job of presenting gay characters as unique and varied, but William Fichtner's performance in this episode was the most simplistic and stereotypical portrayal of a gay man that I've seen in quite sometime. It didn't cross over into full on camp, which might actually have been for the better, but it felt like a very conscious affectation. It was highly off putting.<br />
<br />
--I found it pretty funny and very telling that Cookie's first thought upon seeing her youngest son all tied up like that was that Lucious was behind it all.<br />
<br />
--I'd really like to get behind the Lucious and Freda storyline, but I can't help but to think the show is going to find a way to fuck this up pretty soon.<br />
<br />
--Jamal mentions that he's still upset about Michael, but that's where the Michael talk ends. I'll be happy when we can put all of this behind us and move on to a better story and love interest for Jamal.<br />
<br />
--I don't think it's possible for me to care less about a story than I do about Andre's running the Gutter Life label story.<br />
<br />
--The other thing that this show gets wrong is in deciding whether or not it takes place in the real world or something totally fabricated. On the one hand there is a lot of homophobia in the Hip-Hop community, but on the other hand they have an openly gay man who was named CEO of a Hip-Hop company and an openly gay woman who is a majority share holder. So if the world is a fabricated fantasy world, then why say the Staples Center wouldn't let Jamal play there? Why not invent a stadium, or at least come up with a better reason?<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06235900666167642831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8445667746613343947.post-29317920088810208562015-10-28T20:33:00.000-07:002015-10-28T20:33:46.991-07:00Short Film Review: Eden<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/PAyYdNezpP4" width="560"></iframe>
<br />
Eden (2014)<br />
Written by Jason Rostovsky<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Roboto, arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px;"></span><br />
Directed by Sean Willis<br />
<br />
Trigger warning: Suicide and depression.<br />
<br />
In a perfect world, I'd only write here about films and shows that I really liked. Indeed, the shows I cover are shows I enjoy watching, or else why would I keep giving them my attention. But I cover even the episodes I don't really much care for. Such is also the case for short films. <i>Eden</i> is not the worst thing I've ever watched, but it is painfully heavy handed and full of cliches.<br />
<br />
Set in the year 2042, <i>Eden</i> is the story of Adam and Everett (yes those are their actual names), two young gay men interred at the Eden facility. From what I can tell, the Eden facility is a prison / hospital where gay men can be "cured" of their homosexuality. Or more specifically where white gay men can be cured since I don't think I saw a single brown face in the entire movie. There's no word on how Adam and Everett ended up there, but it doesn't seem like the treatment is voluntary. But the point is that Adam and Everett are in love, or well Everett at least seems to be in love with Adam while Adam doesn't know how he feels about anything. And it is through their respective love and ambivalence that they decide to break out. They're aided, for no discernible reason whatsoever, by one of the facilities nurses.<br />
<br />
Eden is a bit of a mess from top to bottom. The characterization is spotty at best, the world lacks enough detail to be believable, and they force out cliche scenes as if they're brilliantly reinventing the wheel. I swear if I never see another scene of someone punching a mirror again it'll be too soon. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1984458/" target="_blank">Devon Graye</a> (whom you may recognize from his stints on <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0773262/?ref_=nm_knf_i2" target="_blank">Dexter</a></i> and, more recently, <i><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3107288/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_3" target="_blank">The Flash</a></i>) and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4097798/" target="_blank">Derek Stusynski</a> do passable work as Adam and Everett respectively. But any deeper grasp of their characters is ultimately undermined by the weak dialogue and the waffling storyline they're given.<br />
<br />
The extended scene the two of them share in the church is the biggest offender. They talk a lot but I can't be sure that they actually say much of anything. Everett wants to get out, but Adam isn't so sure. Everett declares his love, but Adam can't even return the favor. And yet in the meantime, Everett seems to have been relying on Adam to be the one to come up with the plan to get them out in the first place. Is it because Everett is too weak to come up with a plan on his own, or did Adam lie to him and say he had a plan when he wasn't even really considering actually leaving to begin with? If it's the latter, then why are they together at all? Is it really love that binds them, or is Everett the only person Adam's found willing to blow him in a church and worth keeping around for just that reason?<br />
<br />
The weak love story could maybe be forgiven if the world were better conceived and executed, but sadly there are more questions than answers on that front. If the Eden facility is involuntary, and the idea behind it all is to cure these people of their affliction, then why do the patients get to decide when or if they get the cure? The big red button in each of the patients' rooms seems counterintuitive to the core concept of the world they created. If gay men are bring rounded up and locked away, and there's a functioning cure for homosexuality, then why wouldn't that cure just be forced onto the men crossing the Eden threshold?<br />
<br />
The saddest part about all of this for me is that the problems with <i>Eden</i> aren't problems that would require a feature length runtime to fix. Sometimes a short story only needs to be flushed out and longer to be improved, but in this case, the story they're trying to tell in <i>Eden</i> is perfectly suitable for the short format. But that doesn't change the fact that it needed an extra edit or two, and maybe for the people behind the camera to be more aware of the world they're working in. I mean did we really need another scene of someone getting hurt while running away and tearily telling their love to run off and save himself? I think not.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06235900666167642831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8445667746613343947.post-11307456040340542732015-10-21T20:38:00.000-07:002015-10-21T20:38:32.696-07:00Empire: "Be True"<a href="http://cdn.idigitaltimes.com/sites/idigitaltimes.com/files/styles/large/public/2015/10/21/empire-andre.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://cdn.idigitaltimes.com/sites/idigitaltimes.com/files/styles/large/public/2015/10/21/empire-andre.jpg" height="311" width="400" /></a>By now, it should be clear that <i>Empire</i> doesn't have a slower pace than the sprint we've seen them operating at since the first episode. But hours like "Be True" suggest that the show doesn't need to slow down so much as make sure that the storylines they're running through are consistently interesting. And perhaps when they aren't as interesting the fast pace works in the show's favor because they don't last too long. Either way, "Be True" is the best episode of <i>Empire</i>'s sophomore season to date and it doesn't even have a standout line like the first episode's "You can't even dyke right!" I think some part of this is due to the importance of each character's storyline.<br />
<br />
Jamal's in the studio with guest star <a href="http://www.neyothegentleman.com/" target="_blank">Ne-Yo</a> recording more great music and talking about touring together. Ne-Yo's another big get in the long line of big name guest stars the show's been able to pull in, but more than that he's a breath of fresh air for the show. He disagrees with almost everything Lucious says and isn't shy about standing up to him and speaking his mind, and more importantly he talks to Jamal like he's a person and a real artist, not like he's just some gay rich kid riding his dad's coattails. My friends and I have spent a lot of time lately talking about <i><a href="http://abc.go.com/shows/nashville" target="_blank">Nashville</a></i> and their continued failings with the Will Lexington storyline. I've brought up the similarities between these storylines before, but it seems just as important now since Will just recently came out of the closet on that show. It's taken them three whole seasons to do what Jamal did in one, but more importantly since Will came out he's been dropped from his label, fallen into a bit of a depression, and hounded by members of the gay community for not doing enough to use his star status to push forward issues of visibility and equality. In short, he's been punished for being gay and the show doesn't seem to think there's anything wrong with that.<br />
<br />
Conversely, Jamal works in Hip-Hop and R&B, an industry that's every bit as homophobic as the Country music industry. Yet in the wake of him coming out, he's been named the CEO of his father's company, had a hit album, is creating what should be another hit album, and has real life people from the industry telling him at every turn that his sexual orientation doesn't matter. There are scenes here where Ne-Yo talks to Jamal about the choice to bring Michael on the road with him like they're discussing something as simple as the weather. He compares Jamal's decision to his own experience of bringing girls on the road with him. Never once does he stop to sure up his position as a straight man or point out that there's any difference between him and Jamal. I know it's scripted, and who knows maybe in real life Ne-Yo feels differently on the subject (though I strongly doubt it), but that doesn't change the fact that it's important. At multiple times throughout the show's run, <i>Empire</i> has made it clear that it does not agree with Lucious' position on the subject of Jamal's sexuality. The more <i>Nashville</i> allows people to be horrible to Will without facing any kind of retribution for their actions or without bringing in powerful people to offer their unwavering support of him, the more I think that the show and it's writers are the ones that are homophobic. But that's a rather long tangent to go on for me to basically say that I really enjoyed Ne-Yo and his role in this episode and would greatly like it for him to come back at some point.<br />
<br />
While Jamal battles with whether or not to take Michael on the road with him, Michael seems to be battling with his jealousy or whatever the fuck has been his problem towards Jamal. They spend more time with Adam Busch's character this episode and listen to him make common complaints about monogamy and same-sex marriage. They're arguments that shouldn't be new to anyone who's had an honest conversation with a gay person lately, but it's still interesting to hear them laid out on a popular primetime show. It culminates in him trying to blow Jamal in a hallway at Leviticus, being turned down, and then successfully blowing Michael out on Jamal's balcony. I've made no secret of the fact that I've hated Michael since his return this season, and in truth if this how we can finally be rid of him, I'm all for it. The problem with this storyline is I don't know that Michael's motivations for anything he does have been explained or sussed out well enough for him to be compelling or anything other than the full out villain in this situation. I'm guessing we'll finally get to hear his side of things later, but I also wouldn't be surprised if he's just unceremoniously gone from the show like he was last season.<br />
<br />
While Jamal's stories in "Be True" are my favorite, it's Andre's decision to get baptized that hold the hour together. It leads to a nice scene between him and Rhonda where we're strongly led to believe that she isn't pregnant at all, something I've suspected since she first said she was. There's also a solid scene where he tells Lucious about his botched suicide attempt, but that doesn't really go as far as it should. And there's the best scene between the three brothers that we've seen since the elevator scene last year. Andre tells them that he set up Jamal's robbery, not Hakeem, and they both forgive him. It's a scene of strong performances all around, and I really really liked Hakeem's indignation over the fact that Jamal could have been hurt in all that instead of being mad that he'd been lied about. The Jamal--Hakeem relationship is still one of my favorite aspects of the show, and when they do little things like this to sure that up, it makes me hopeful about the show's future.<br />
<br />
For his part, Andre seems genuine about wanting to do all he can to be a good big brother and to heal this family. Outside of the horrible influences of Cookie and Lucious, it's impossible not to root for him. The three of them together have a strong chemistry, and there seems to be a lot more unconditional love between them than there is between the kids and either of the parents. It all brings me back around to my main point that Empire the company would be much better served with the Lyons boys having equal control over it. If that's not the direction the series is heading in, it's all going to seem like a significant waste.<br />
<br />
In 1100 words I still haven't mentioned Cookie's new promoter/bodyguard/love interest, the new threat to Lyon Dynasty, or Hakeem's continued struggle to set up his girl group and his obvious new love interest. And that's not because those stories are uninteresting, but simply because there's so much here. <i>Empire</i> at its worst crams a lot in to an episode and feels like it goes nowhere. But at it's best, it seems to crack through storylines at a breakneck speed without losing momentum or feeling like a waste. I don't think this kind of thing is at all possible to sustain for long periods of time, but <i>Empire</i> doesn't seem interested in marathons so much as wind sprints. It's an odd choice for a TV show (the ultimate in long form storytelling), but it's a choice that seems to be working more than not working for <i>Empire</i>, so I guess we should wish them well and just get out of their way.<br />
<br />
<b>Random Thoughts:</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
--Porsha's back! And thank God, because I love her. And the way she walks back in with a "I know you're busy, but can I have my job back?" kind of attitude is so indicative of who she is as character.<br />
<br />
--There's another flashback to Lucious' time with his mom in this episode. This time to explain his seeming PTSD about Andre's being baptized. These scenes continue to be interesting to watch and continue giving us more about Lucious' past, so I don't want to come down too hard on them, but I do think they're starting to feel a bit one note. It all boils down to one thing: everything Lucious hates in the world is because his mom was bipolar. They're going to need to do more with these scenes or else find a new angle.<br />
<br />
--Speaking of who Lucious is, it turns out he's an Atheist. This is actually something that I think the show could stand to explore more of. I'm interested in how a black Atheist would come to success in the black community. And I'm also interested in seeing more of the basis for his extreme homophobia. There's usually a correlation between high levels of religious fervor within a community and high levels of homophobia, but if Lucious lacks one, then why hold on to the other?<br />
<br />
--I'm going to break character a bit and actually go to bat for Michael on one point. I refuse to believe that Michael, the active member of the gay community that he is, and constantly trying to get Jamal to get behind this or that great gay cause, doesn't know what the term "heteronormativity" means.<br />
<br />
--Lucious: "This family is my business." In the ongoing conversation about what "family" might mean to this show, I guess we have to add Family as a business transaction to the list.<br />
<br />
--The episode ends with Hakeem being kidnapped in broad daylight. This might be a little silly, but it's also a great way to go into a brief hiatus. The show will be back after the World Series is over, and when it is, we'll get what looks to be a tense and highly rewarding episode. I honestly can't wait!Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06235900666167642831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8445667746613343947.post-10908792966696098802015-10-14T20:42:00.000-07:002015-10-16T10:10:40.471-07:00Empire: "Poor Yorick"<a href="https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2015/10/14/1444836516961/d05d8f68-48f3-41a9-8b89-ebbac51ee44b-2060x1236.jpeg?w=620&q=85&auto=format&sharp=10&s=c25202a148288130ddfba1f1133706c8" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://i.guim.co.uk/img/static/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2015/10/14/1444836516961/d05d8f68-48f3-41a9-8b89-ebbac51ee44b-2060x1236.jpeg?w=620&q=85&auto=format&sharp=10&s=c25202a148288130ddfba1f1133706c8" width="400" /></a>When was the last time you went into the woods, stood in a small clearing no more than 15 feet in <br />
diameter, and saw that you were surrounded by a group of identical trees? Never mind surrounded, when was the last time you saw as few as two trees that looked exactly the same with the same unique identifying characteristics and were right next to each other? I ask because I'm a born and raised city kid, and even living in a beautiful state like Florida, I make it a point not to spend anymore time than needed outside. But I'm honestly curious about whether or not this is a common phenomenon that I've just never heard of or witnessed before. And I ask because such a question is what was rattling around in my mind during one of the important scenes in this week's Empire episode. The problem with this is that while main characters are trying to dig up dead bodies on a TV show, I shouldn't be stuck thinking, "But that's not how trees work."<br />
<br />
The willing suspension of disbelief is a two-way street. I'm willing to meet a storyteller halfway most of the time. I'm willing to do my part and turn a blind eye to silly and nonsensical things in an effort to best enjoy the story, but you have to give me a story worth enjoying first. There's actually a great example of the show doing just that in the previous episode. The Lyons sit down to dinner in the wake of Lucious' release. Never mind how ridiculous it is that all these characters who hate each other and have split up, gotten back together, and split up once again would agree to just head over to Lucious' house to sit down to a meal. I'm willing to overlook the ridiculousness that is the origin of this dinner party in favor of the fun and drama of seeing these stupid characters all in the same place at the same time. In other words, I'm willing to suspend my disbelief in favor of the juicy soapy story that I find far more interesting than I do the continued woes of Andre and Rhonda and the Clue case of finding Uncle Vernon dead in the living room by candle stick. So if you can't make the story interesting, at the very least you have to make it make sense, and the two of them forgetting where they buried Vernon because all the trees in this one small space are 100% identical does not make sense, so the entire scene crumbles as a result.<br />
<br />
Which is a shame because I was rather enjoying most of the episode before that. "Poor Yorick" is an odd tale of two halves. The first half feels like some of the better aspects of <i>Empire</i> that we've seen this season. The second half kind of falls apart. The entire episode is written and directed by Danny Strong, so I don't understand the reason behind the loss of logic past the midpoint, but there it is. One minute everything flows consistently and the drama feels organic, and the next minute Cookie's got weird PTSD flashes leading to stupid behavior and Hakeem is stabbing a painting that shouldn't be there in the first place.<br />
<br />
But I feel like I've spent so much time talking about the bad of this season that I want to focus a bit more on the good. Starting with the opening FBI raid of Empire and the song it's set to. The music of this season hasn't felt as stand out and impressive as the music from last season. Don't get me wrong, I didn't think the music last year was setting any new standards or heights for contemporary Hip Hop, but a lot of it was at least catchy and memorable. They'd spent so long teasing "<a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/no-apologies-feat.-jussie/id966020365?i=966020368" target="_blank">No Apologies</a>" that it was impossible not to recognize the beat and the hook by the time we finally got to hear it in an episode. While I don't think "<a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/battle-cry-feat.-jussie-smollett/id1043712774?i=1043712775" target="_blank">Battle Cry</a>" is quite on that same level, it's easily my favorite song so far this season, and I thought setting it against the FBI raid was both really on the nose (as tends to be the case with <i>Empire</i> songs) and really entertaining. The opening scene offers good music, the chance for a bit of levity from Becky (which is always appreciated), and an opportunity to push some aspects of the story forward. It's a lot of heavy lifting for one <i>Empire</i> scene, and I'd commend them for it.<br />
<br />
Also in the good column was seeing <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0123951/?ref_=tt_cl_t8" target="_blank">Adam Busch</a> guest staring as the artist photographer brought in to come up with a cover for Jamal's Rolling Stone appearance. Seeing another <i>Buffy</i> alum show up in an episode written and directed by Danny Strong was really quite great. And I have to say I like his weird sloppy artistic energy. And I like the way he was flirting with Jamal throughout their scenes together. What I don't like are the shots of Jamal's useless and annoying boyfriend looking all pained over it, but I've said more than enough about how I feel about Michael at this point. Suffice it to say, if Adam Busch can manage to stick around, I'm going to start hoping for him to replace Rafael de la Fuente as Jamal's love interest. It's nothing against Fuente himself, who I think is easy on the eyes and talented enough to stick around. It's just that Michael was ruined for me last season and they don't seem at all interested in doing any character rehab on him this season, nor have they justified his continued presence on the show, so I'm ready for him leave. Couple that with the fact that I think Busch's character has a kind of vision and an energy that I'd really like to see paired with Jamal. I don't know that they'd make each other better, but I do think these two characters could stand to make each other more interesting which is a lot more than I can say about Jamal's current relationship.<br />
<br />
There was one more small moment in this episode that I really enjoyed, but it was so insignificant that I almost don't want to mention it. The shot of Hakeem at that bar prepared to send Jamal an apology through text only to delete it and change his mind. It's not that he's not sorry, it's that he can't bring himself to say it just yet, and there's a lot going on in Bryshere Gray's face in that quick scene. I think all three of the Lyons' boys have had impressive moments this season and this was Hakeem's. Never mind that it doesn't seem like the kind of bar that Hakeem would ever be caught dead in; the whole thing simply hints at an aspect of this story I'd like to see them explore deeper: the effect this rift is having on Jamal and Hakeem specifically. They had the strongest relationship of last season, and seeing them put through their paces this year has been painful and sad. It only makes sense that they'd feel dubious about the actions they're having to take for one reason or another, and I'd like to see more of those little cracks in the facade.<br />
<br />
The rest of the episode is stock <i>Empire</i> fare by this time. The good thing about this episode is that there are at least small tidbits of good that weren't really a part of the previous few installments. So it seems they haven't fully forgotten how to tell good stories, but I don't think this is some kind of turning point for things. Something has to jolt this show into gear before it starts to feel like we're all just wasting our time here. Here's hoping finding a dead body in a passenger seat is that thing.<br />
<br />
<b>Random Thoughts:</b><br />
<br />
--Cookie and Lucious have a funny scene where they shoot barbs at each other the likes of which only two people with their history would really be able to pull off.<br />
<br />
--I think this show has to figure out what they want to do with Anika. All this back and forth bouncing between Cookie and Lucious isn't working. And while it seems like they've got her making moves to benefit Lyon Dynasty, all of them have been off screen and therefore might as well not happen at all. I've never seen a worse case of a character spinning their wheels.<br />
<br />
--The music video scene was sadly predictable. I knew Jamal would throw the first punch, and I knew the bat would come into play. It's too bad because the more I see those boys together the more I remember that that's the best state for them. Talk about two people capable of making one another better.<br />
<br />
--I haven't mentioned it yet, but I do think <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0747420/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t29" target="_blank">Andre Royo</a> has been a joy as Lucious' lawyer.<br />
<br />
--“If I die in police custody, I did not commit suicide.” It’s funny coming out of Cookie’s mouth, but the sad reality behind it and the necessity of it is tragic. Still better than seeing her in that gorilla suit though.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06235900666167642831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8445667746613343947.post-91763617020804011882015-10-08T20:01:00.000-07:002015-10-09T07:27:57.550-07:00Empire: "Fires of Heaven"<a href="http://www.seat42f.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/EMP203_Sc37_0683r_hires2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.seat42f.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/EMP203_Sc37_0683r_hires2.jpg" height="266" width="400" /></a>I can, and do, put up with a lot from <i>Empire</i>, but one thing I can't really abide is when the show is boring. I complained about the same thing with the last episode, but that one at least posed some interesting questions about the show's position on "family" and what that means to the Lyons' and had a couple killer scenes under its belt. This week's installment can't claim either. Family is still a word thrown around like grenades throughout the hour, but the same questions from last week are still floating around instead of being answered. And nothing of note happens. Which is surprising for Lucious' first episode back from the country club that pretended to be a prison.<br />
<br />
So what is there really to talk about after the third hour of this new season of the show? The only thing that's really stuck with me so far are the scenes about Lucious' relationship with his mother. Before I gush about this too strongly, allow me to say that they seem to being pouring it on a bit thick with the characterization of Leah Walker's (being played by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0746714/?ref_=tt_cl_t14" target="_blank">Kelly Rowland</a>) illness. In much the same way that I thought they could have been a little more subtle and worked on their pacing a bit more with Andre last year, all we seem to be seeing of Leah are the extremes, and I don't think that that serves to really put a real face on this illness. However, the reason why I think this works a lot more than Andre's devolution is because these scenes take place solely in Lucious' memory and of course he'd be more fixated on the extreme highs and lows of his mother's condition.<br />
<br />
So after the deft hand they employed last week, we're treated to a couple flashbacks that make Leah's condition explicit. She buys a bunch of "gifts" for a young Lucious even though it's well past his birthday, and she exuberantly helps him to open them. And then, seemingly in no time at all, she's plunged into a depression so deep she's nearly catatonic. The mention of needing to return the gifts in order to be able to eat suggests that not much time has passed between the two scenes. So either she cycles really quickly, or Lucious simply remembers these things in one go and they all get jumbled up in his mind. The latter explanation works much better than the former, and that's what I'm going to choose to believe in spite of not having enough faith in the writers to really buy that they'd have the kind of foresight to pull that off. But willful ignorance and blindness are still necessary to really get a lot out of this show.<br />
<br />
These scenes do more work examining Lucious' motivation than anything we've seen thus far. We've seen glimpses of why he views Andre the way he does, some of his earliest connections to music, and assuming they take this story in the direction I expect they'll take it (which is about as bold of an assumption as I can offer), we'll probably see the basis for his commitment issues. It's hard to miss the fact that Lucious' father isn't in the picture, and I assume living with an unmedicated bipolar mother would have led to a lot of abandonment and trust issues. So what we've been seeing through these short scenes are explanations of who Lucious is.<br />
<br />
The smart thing I think the show is doing is that they aren't allowing these explanations to serve as excuses for his horrible actions. Lucious is still a dick, and by no means do I think we're intended to sympathize with him currently, but the ability to know the difference between a reason and an excuse is something more advanced than I ever would have given this show credit for in the past. So the only thing left is to see where this all goes and how it continues to impact his present situation. Obviously he's going to continue to be a dick to Andre, but will this history and his potential guilt over Andre's condition drive him to be colder than expected towards his future grandchild? And I assume with this being introduced this season that there's no real way the truth won't come out by season's end. How, if at all, does that shake things up and change the other character's perception of Lucious?<br />
<br />
We'll have to wait and see if we get answers to these questions, but in the mean time these flashbacks continue to present the sole bright point in otherwise dreary and boring episodes. The problem for <i>Empire</i> is that these scenes, compared to everything else, are too few and far between to save the quality of the rest of the show. So the assignment for the writers going forward is to find a way to either tap back into the fun level of crazy from last season, or to find a way to draw the pathos of these flashbacks through the rest of the episode.<br />
<br />
<b>Random Thoughts:</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
--In case anyone wasn't sure about Jamal's story about becoming more and more like Lucious, the two of them have a choreographed simultaneous removal of their sunglasses towards the beginning of the episode. It was pretty pathetic.<br />
<br />
--Also pathetic was that Empire! salute from Lucious and the fans at his press conference. Give me a break.<br />
<br />
--What the ever-loving fuck was Cookie wearing during Lucious' party?<br />
<br />
--Am I the only one who finds it a bit ironic that they've brought Kelly Rowland in to guest star in a season where they seem to be doing a kind of Destiny's Child storyline with Hakeem's girl group?<br />
<br />
--Speaking of Kelly Rowland, while I think it's probably easier to convey the extreme highs and lows of someone with this illness, I still think it's worth noting that she's been strong in her appearances.<br />
<br />
--And speaking of guest appearances, can we not find a better rapper than Pitbull to guest on the show? And after a full season of being the musical producer for the show, Timbaland makes what I think is his first appearance in front of the camera this week.<br />
<br />
--What a blessing to not have to deal with Jamal's annoying boyfriend this episode.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06235900666167642831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8445667746613343947.post-59525149163751954072015-09-30T20:17:00.001-07:002015-10-01T10:22:33.939-07:00Empire: "Without a Country"<a href="http://hitshowstowatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Empire202_Sc6_0540_hires1-1000x600.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://hitshowstowatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Empire202_Sc6_0540_hires1-1000x600.jpg" height="240" width="400" /></a>What does the word "family" mean to you? I'm an old school lover of language, so the idea that words with such a clear and obvious denotation can have such varied connotation is something that will always amaze me. To some people, family is a source of strength, support, and unwavering, unconditional love. To other people it's a curse; a source of unending horror and a repository of painful memories. To the Lyons, family is a weapon, or at times maybe a shield, but seemingly never anything stronger or more transcendent than that. Over the course of a season and two episodes, we've seen the characters on this show cry, spit, and throw claims of family at one another to justify some of the most vile and horrible actions. But have we ever seen the other side of that coin? Do the writers behind this show have any positive notions about familial relations? And if they don't, is that a problem?<br />
<br />
<i>Empire</i>'s second episode of its sophomore season is nowhere near as engaging as its first. This is always a problem with <i>Empire</i> since the cracks in this show are always more visible and less defendable when the episode in question isn't as good. If there aren't as many laugh out loud Cookie lines, or soapy drama so juicy you can't help but to leave your jaw on the ground for the entire commercial break, then you're left seeing nothing but the man behind the curtain. But what continues to amaze me about this show is the presence of small moments that are nothing short of astounding.<br />
<br />
Towards the end of this episode, Andre goes to visit Lucious in jail and beg his forgiveness and to be let back into Empire. As anyone could have predicted, Lucious says no, but then Andre pleads his case with a kind of quite furry that's more compelling than if he'd just stood up and yelled his indignation to the rafters. Lucious has shunned Jamal his whole life for being gay, but now he gives Jamal Empire. Hakeem sleeps with Lucious' fiancé and helps in the hostile takeover, but still Lucious wants him back at the company. Andre makes one mistake, and then apologizes for it in a manner that no one else is interested in, and yet Lucious says no. When Andre asks why it is that his father hates him so much, we're treated to a flashback of a young Lucious in his mother's arms as she sings him a lullaby. In the midst of it, she seems to zone out a bit and the assumption we're left to make here is that she suffered from a mental illness same as Andre does; Lucious doesn't hate Andre, he hates the way he reminds him of his own mother who probably hurt him due to her own struggles.<br />
<br />
As an explanation for his actions, this ranks right up there with the hint from last season that he was simply jealous of Jamal's talent instead of hating him because he's gay. Granted, the show hinted at that and never took it any deeper than that surface level last year, so there's no reason to expect a deeper treatment of this subject matter either. However, the scene plays brilliantly, and the flashback of Lucious and his mother is just subtle enough that it's open to interpretation. It's all done with such a deft hand that you're left wondering how could this be the same show that had Cookie dressed as a gorilla in a cage to beat home a message last week? If each <i>Empire</i> episode was full of nothing but those kinds of moments, can you even begin to imagine how much better of a show it would be?<br />
<br />
But if it was full of those moments, those moments wouldn't be as special as they are here. The scene between Lucious and Andre is a diamond in the rough that is the rest of the episode. An episode that features Hakeem being an idiot and trying to force their new label to fly before it can even crawl, Lucious making a radio ready track from a prison supply cabinet, and a horribly uninspired performance from guest star Ludacris.<br />
<br />
That's not to say that "Without a Country" is a total waste of an episode. There's some important place-setting in this hour, and if the first episode served to wrap up storylines left over from last season, this hour has a lot more to do with setting up some of the stories we'll be dealing with over the course of this season. Place-setting will always be a thankless job in TV, and with the full season order having been bumped up from 12 to 18 episodes, a few slow filler episodes are unavoidable, but there had to be a better more interesting way to handle this.<br />
<br />
One thing that seems interesting about this season is the juxtaposition of Cookie and Lucious. Cookie was the far more sympathetic party last season. It was hard not to be when the show started with her strutting out of prison in that fur coat and immediately making her way to see her kids. While Lucious started the season out pitting his sons against one another, Cookie started out trying to just bring them together and start recapturing all that she missed out on. Now Cookie's the one setting them against each other in service of getting what she wants and while Lucious hasn't become the good guy by any means, he still feels like the wronged party.<br />
<br />
This episode sees her make the plan to start her own label, struggle to keep Hakeem in line enough to do the work that needs to be done so he can actually put an album out, continue to fight with Anika, tell Jamal they're starting their own company with as much of a threatening glower as she can, and then lose Andre as an ally in spite of her attempts to hold on to him. It's another remarkable scene as she follows him down the hallway repeating his name only to have him beg her to let him go, but it's also a scene that sets Cookie up as just as big a failure on the family front as Lucious ever was. I've questioned the purity of her motivations in the past, and this episode made me question them more. Clearly she's owed something for taking the fall for Lucious all those years ago, but does her recompense have to come at the expense of her kids? And if she doesn't care whether it does or doesn't, can she ever claim the moral high ground over Lucious again?<br />
<br />
I ask that because the heart of the show clearly always has been and maybe always will be the battle between Cookie and Lucious with their kids as both collateral and collateral damage. It's family as a war zone. And if that's what the show wants to be, then that's fine. If the writers have nothing positive to say about the family dynamic, then they're more than entitled to their opinion. But I said last season that my preferred outcome for the show is one where the brothers band together to run Empire as a unit. I've noted multiple times how my favorite parts of the show continue to be these little moments where there's some kind of love and devotion shining through, or at least the deeper bonds and scars (which can be simultaneously painful and beautiful) that family creates. So while I have to acknowledge that my preferred version of the show isn't the only possibility, and might not even be the "best" possibility, I can't help but to wonder whether or not a show that was about the strengths of family and about the Lyons banding together to take on the world wouldn't be a show that resonated more deeply with a wider audience? Then again, if the ratings are any indication, <i>Empire</i> is reaching a wide enough audience doing what it's been doing this whole time. Maybe it's not broken, and if that's the case, then it can't be fixed.<br />
<br />
Random thoughts:<br />
<br />
--I've mentioned him before, but Hakeem's gender fluid bestie is one of my favorite side characters on this show. I want to know more about them. How do they identify, how do they know Hakeem, and what's the overall plan for them on the show?<br />
<br />
--I'm ready for Cookie and Anika to stop the overt fighting. I think if the show took them in more of a frenemies direction with constant backhanded compliments and little barbs being flung but no more overt hostility, that'd be for the better. They don't have to like each other, but maybe just work together for the greater good.<br />
<br />
--Still trying to figure out what the point of Michael is. I was very happy when he wasn't on the show anymore. No matter how adorable <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4246971/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t12" target="_blank">Rafael de la Fuente</a> is.<br />
<br />
--Tiana is back in this episode but no reference to her sexuality or her previous relationship to Hakeem. Which isn't a problem, per se, just a disappointment.<br />
<br />
--Andre's never been my favorite character, but he certainly owned it this week. I understand the drama capable of being created from his more manic moments, but these moments of just quiet despair always resonate so much deeper for me. I don't think <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1784293/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t4" target="_blank">Trai Byers</a> is a bad actor, but I do think he's maybe a bit better at this things than he is the louder, crazier moments.<br />
<br />
--Who should we be rooting for at this point? Who are you rooting for? Is the point to just make all of these characters equally hatable? I still love Jamal, but the more he devolves into Lucious, and the more scenes of him yelling and looking around with that stank face, the more I jump off that bandwagon.<br />
<br />
--Part of the reason I wanted to write reviews for <i>Empire</i> is because I tended to disagree with the reviews posted on my number one TV review site, AV Club. Joshua Alston, whom I generally love in his other coverage, and I simply have different takes on the show. However, his review on this episode is really good and one I agree with fully in spite of us having different opinions on what stands to make this show "good." Either way, you can check out his review <a href="http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/strong-episode-brings-empire-back-down-earth-226154" target="_blank">here</a> if you're interested to see where our opinions differ and where they converge.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06235900666167642831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8445667746613343947.post-39210577566386724102015-09-23T20:14:00.000-07:002015-09-23T20:26:41.793-07:00Empire: "The Devils are Here"<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-tPLgmueD__w/VgNdhgXtEPI/AAAAAAAAAhE/kARfQBIJ_gY/s1600/960.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-tPLgmueD__w/VgNdhgXtEPI/AAAAAAAAAhE/kARfQBIJ_gY/s400/960.jpg" width="400" /></a>And so starts the 2015 Fall TV schedule. <i>Empire</i> starts not with a bang so much as a gorilla suited Cookie roaring and thumping around in a cage, and anyone thinking the show might tamper some of it's campier moments down in its sophomore year were shown just how mistaken they were. This first episode alone features the caged gorilla, a large lesbian themed party, a severed head in a box, and guest stars such as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000673/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t24" target="_blank">Marisa Tomei</a>, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001674/?ref_=nv_sr_1" target="_blank">Chris Rock</a>, and Al Sharpton. I guess there are benefits for <a href="http://www.ew.com/article/2015/02/06/foxs-empire-breaks-23-year-record" target="_blank">breaking records</a> left and right in your first season. But is the episode any good?<br />
<br />
After a long hiatus I've realized that I honestly can't tell just how "good" I think <i>Empire</i> is any longer. It makes me laugh out loud multiple times an episode, but it also makes me roll my eyes a lot. It's headstrong enough to take on the injustice of the American justice system, but we all know it's also fickle enough to not follow through and have anything more to say than it did in this one episode. Even if I decide to engage with the show that <i>Empire</i> is instead of the show I want it to be, I'm still left wondering how well it tells its story and how effective anything it does is in the long run.<br />
<br />
And so I end up watching the episodes with a kind of battle raging in my head. "The Devils are Here" opens with a concert being thrown by Empire to raise awareness about Lucious' three month long incarceration. It's good music, Empire artists, and a general fun time, and I enjoy it. And then Cookie and Lucious' brother, who I don't remember ever meeting before, use the platform to drop stats and talk openly about how unjust the American prison industrial complex is. At this point, I'm left to wonder whether or not the fact that Lucious is indeed guilty and therefore right where he should be undercuts the concert's, and by extension the show's, message about unfair incarcerations. But clearly that's thinking about things too much when the point is to be entertained by the music and curious about the hints of sapphic flirtation between Cookie and Marisa Tomei's Mimi.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile back in what looks like one of the most minimal security prisons that anyone accused of murder has ever been interred in, everyone's abuzz with the news that Frank Gathers (Chris Rock playing strongly against type) is about to be joining them. Apparently her and Lucious and Cookie all go way back and we're told more than once that he's crazy. Cookie's cousin Jamel, last seen murdering the wrong person on Cookie's orders in a drive by, is worried about Frank's retribution and attempts to appeal to an uninterested Lucious for protection. It's protection he clearly needs as we find him later in the episode having been beaten up and, it's at least suggested, cannibalized by Frank. So I should add "bad guy who eats parts of people right in front of them while trying to get information" to the list of insane things in this episode.<br />
<br />
But crazy doesn't mean bad. There's nothing really wrong with the prison scenes in this episode except that they take time and attention away from <i>Empire</i>'s greatest strength: the Lyons family. Lucious is in there on his own, and while I don't hate Lucious as a character, I also don't think there's very much to him outside the confines of the rest of the family.<br />
<br />
The real meat of the episode takes place back at Empire records. Cookie and everyone who isn't Jamal is busy trying to secure a lot of money from Mimi in order to complete their hostile takeover and remove Lucious as CEO of the company. This seems to require appealing to Mimi's homosexuality with a big girl on girl party and lots of flirting from Cookie and Anika. Anika even sleeps with her (which leads to one of the funniest lines of the night), but it's all to no avail. Mimi has an off screen meeting with Lucious and decides to throw her money and influence behind him and Jamal. In another show, I'd lament the fact that so many of these scenes take place off camera, but the truth is I think it was for the best here. In last <a href="http://adrianalexanderswriting.blogspot.com/2015/03/tv-review-empire-episodes-11-12.html" target="_blank">season's finale</a>, I mentioned how uninterested in the hostile takeover storyline I was. This is mostly because in that episode they seemed more interested in explaining the legal side of it like I was in business school. But here they put it all in basic and dramatic terms and it works. Andre, Cookie, Hakeem and Anita need a couple hundred million dollars for Mimi and they set out to get it. By the end of the episode, they seem to have it and move in to make their announcement only to find out they've been double crossed. No talk about percentages or major shares or the strategy behind corporate takeovers. They set a reasonable and understandable goal and they go after it and then they succeed and yet still fail. It's basic storytelling, and that's where the show needs to stay.<br />
<br />
The important thing about all of this is always the family. Jamal and Hakeem, once so close, are clearly at each other's throats over Jamal being named the heir apparent. Cookie is claiming left and right that she's trying to unseat Lucious not to oust Jamal, but to bring the family together, and through those statements we see just how torn apart it all is. Also, the more Cookie says "I'm doing this for you" the more I see Walter White saying "I'm doing this for my family," and I can't help but to think if the two characters aren't more similar than I ever gave them credit for being before. But either way, the fact that so much of these developments, even Anika's sex session with Mimi, happen off camera allows us to stick with the Lyons family and see the fallout from their schemes and plots.<br />
<br />
It all adds up to one of the better episodes of the show. It elevates what <i>Empire</i> is good at, while limiting its flaws. But it's also the first episode in a show that's seen its season order bumped up from 12 to 18. I'm walking into this season not expecting any real serialization, no really deep commentary on the important social issues they continue to bring up but only skate over the surface, and for the show to continue at a breakneck speed that will make your head spin. My expectations, however, are that since I know to expect those things, they won't be so shocking or annoying this season as they were last. Also, in the event that the show decides to surprise me and carry those elements a little better this year, it'll all be for the better. Here's hoping, but not really expecting.<br />
<br />
Random thoughts:<br />
<br />
--Jamal's story this episode, if not this whole season, seems to be about how much he's losing himself in the wake of trying to fill Lucious' shoes. He's more forceful than is at all warranted with his boyfriend, uninterested in throwing his face behind this LGBT cause, and hasn't been able to make time to get into the studio at all while his current album keeps falling from the top spot on the charts. On top of that, his interactions with Hakeem and Cookie are heartbreaking since his relationships with those two were the stronger parts of last season. I'd by lying if I said I wasn't both excited and curious to see where this all led.<br />
<br />
--Speaking of Jamal's boyfriend, Michael's back. No word on why or how, or why they seem to have an exclusively Spanish speak butler, but there's that, I guess.<br />
<br />
--The exceptionally fast pace that was both the boon and the bane of last season is back as Chris Rock's character is both introduced and killed off in this one episode. I can't tell if I'm more impressed by that or disappointed that they didn't get more out of powerhouse like Rock.<br />
<br />
--Conversely, Marisa Tomei's character could stand to stick around. IMDB only has her listed as being on this one episode, but lord knows they've been wrong in the past. Fingers crossed that we get more of her in the weeks to come.<br />
<br />
--There's one dream / memory sequence for Andre about what he and Rhonda did to Vernon, but that seems to be about where that storyline ends this week. I'm assuming it'll be one of the serialized elements of this season and I'm already not looking forward to it.<br />
<br />
--I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the final scene between Cookie and Jamal! It's really fucking fantastic and Henson and Smollett absolutely kill it. The moment he breaks down after closing the door and the look on her face as he backs her out are just priceless.<br />
<br />
--"You can't even dyke right!" has got to be one of the funniest lines in TV history.<br />
<br />
--Likewise, every time Porsha is on screen is a treasure.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06235900666167642831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8445667746613343947.post-46849766582207463532015-09-23T16:06:00.001-07:002015-09-23T16:44:27.343-07:00Short Film Review: Pink Moon<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/1LuUkP_ZKoY" width="560"></iframe>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.facebook.com/pinkmoonmovie/" target="_blank">Pink Moon</a> (2014)<br />
Written & Directed by Sal Bardo<br />
<br />
<br />
I want to try something new: Reviews on short films. I wrote a couple towards the start of this blog, but at some point I just spiraled into only covering TV. Which isn't a bad thing; I love TV and it's more than worthy of attention, and with Empire starting up again this week, you can be sure there's more week to week reviews to come. But I love short form storytelling just as much as I do long form, so why have I been neglecting short films? Well, whatever the reason, hopefully I can be diligent a let that end now.<br />
<br />
<i>Pink Moon</i> is a short that I've watched twice now and I can't quite figure out if I think it's brilliant or if I think I'm just a sap. The truth is that it has a strong affect on me either way, so I guess you have to say it's a success. The story takes place in a society where the roles are reversed and homosexuality is the norm while heterosexuals are the persecuted minority. On top of that, abortion is illegal and there seem to be strict rules in place geared towards global population control. It centers around Ben and Emily, two teenagers in love and working to hide their forbidden straight relationship and terminate their unplanned pregnancy. Through this conflict, the film does strong work showing just how important open and ready access to abortions and better health practices are. The horror of shady back alley abortions is something we should all want to avoid at all cost, and the film isn't shy about suggesting such.<br />
<br />
One of <i>Pink Moon</i>'s greatest strengths can be found in the performances of the two leads, Brandon Tyler Harris and Cole Johnston. In quick and quiet moments, the couple's love for each other is made plain and they come off not as deluded Romeo and Juliette stand ins, but as mature and loving people trying to make the best of a shitty situation. Emily in particular seems to be worried about disappointing her mothers (of whom we only meet one) and upsetting the life they've all had planned for her.<br />
<br />
There is one mark against <i>Pink Moon</i> as far as I can tell: Ben's boyfriend Leo. He's here to represent some mark of normalcy for the society in which they live, and obviously Ben only has a boyfriend because it's expected of him much in the same way that gay men have long been marrying women in our real world. But the two scenes with Leo feel oddly ungrounded and unbelievable. Or to be more specific, we don't know enough about Leo to know exactly how to respond to his two scenes. Is he a good guy who's been pushed over the edge by dating someone he's clearly into but who refuses to have sex with him? If so, does that justify him finding a piece of paper with a phone number on it and battling against his boyfriend to call it against his wishes and then getting two of his friends to beat up said boyfriend while shouting slurs of "Breeder!" at him? Or is he just an all around horrible person? If so, why were he and Ben dating in the first place? I think one scene in between the phone call and the straight bashing scene would have been enough to better illuminate Leo's motivations, but without that he's left a little flat.<br />
<br />
Other than that, I think <i>Pink Moon</i> posits an interesting if not totally revelatory world and then sets out to do it justice. And it's the rare kind of Queer film that doesn't seek to villianize the straight characters. Indeed, how can it given its basic premise? Instead, by the end, you're rooting for the straight couple and hoping they'll be able to craft the kind of life they really want and within which they'll be the most happy. It's a very enjoyable 17 minutes, and well worth your time.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06235900666167642831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8445667746613343947.post-38338269233620881502015-08-25T16:51:00.000-07:002015-08-26T06:29:51.264-07:00So You Think You Can Dance S12E12 & 13<a href="http://gossipandgab.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/top8_sytycd.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://gossipandgab.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/top8_sytycd.jpg" height="266" width="400" /></a>We're mere weeks away from the blessed end of this much derided, and probably final, season of <i>So You Think You Can Dance</i>, and I find myself increasingly happy about that. Since that amazing <a href="http://adrianalexanderswriting.blogspot.com/2015/08/so-you-think-you-can-dance-s12e10.html" target="_blank">tenth episode</a>, things continued their downward trend for the show; so much so that I honestly had nothing at all to say after last week's episode. It's wasn't overly surprising, and I don't think I'm even capable of being disappointed any longer, it was all just so bland. This week isn't too different, truth be told, so I'm not sure how to go about talking about these last few episodes. If there's one thing I'm kind of surprised over it's just how much the gender dynamics have evened out on this season. There were two guys and two girls on each team this week before Neptune and Derek went home leaving Virgil and Jim as the sole guys in the top six. But that's about all of the surprise I'm capable of mustering. So I think I'm going to do something a little different and talk about the last six contestants left in preparation for what's to come.<br />
<br />
Hailee is my favorite dancer left on team Stage. I think she's really pretty, wonderfully talented, with a great personality and a fun spirit. She hasn't really faltered much this season at all, but she also hasn't been challenged much. This is due to the easier choreography and the abundance of Hip Hop and Contemporary (or Jazz) numbers we've seen. I don't think we've really seen Hailee do anything outside of those genres so far in the competition. To her credit, she's done them all well, and I doubt she'd have much trouble with something like Latin Ballroom if she were to ever have to do it, but we also can't know for sure because of how paired down this season has been. Originally, I thought this was due to the Stage vs Street conceit, and I still think that that has a lot to do with it, but after hearing multiple sources saying it was between changing the show or getting cancelled last season, I'm starting to wonder if the elevation of the viewers' favorite styles isn't in an attempt to pull in more eyeballs. Either way, it's to the detriment of the show and the performers.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://gossipandgab.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/hailee_sytycd.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://gossipandgab.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/hailee_sytycd.jpg" height="266" width="400" /></a></div>
I was surprised to find her in the bottom this week, but not too much so. We're getting to the point where the people in the bottom and going home might not be about anything they didn't do or don't have in their arsenal but just about the fact that someone has to go. Her dance with FikShun at least was great and worth keeping her around hopefully for another week. She's more than proved what she's capable of doing in Hip Hop over the past few weeks, and watching her keep up with a previous winner was great fun. Much like Virgil, FikShun brings a fun personality and more than enough energy for Hailee to play off of. It's easy to see why she'd deliver such great performances with both of them.<br />
<br />
Jaja is my favorite dancer left on team Street, and every week I'm left with the same feeling: She was more than good enough to make it far last season, and while I'm happy to see what all she can do this year, I would have loved to watch her work against the stronger contestants and with the stronger choreography of last season. Her solos are never anything short of strong, hard hitting, and intricate. She's got a control over her body that makes her fun to watch, and she's always so good at choreographing something to each little tick and bass drop in the music.<br />
<br />
She's also one of the more versatile dancers on the show, or at least one of the ones who's been put <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/yyjIWUJzap0/hqdefault.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/yyjIWUJzap0/hqdefault.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
through her paces a bit more, with Broadway and Bollywood routines thrown at her in just the last two weeks alone. Both of those performances were stellar, and she, like Hailee, was given the task of keeping up with a former winner (last year's Ricky) and she more than holds her own. My default setting is to stare at Ricky when he's on stage, it's an old habit from last year as he just pulls attention so effortlessly, but I couldn't stop my gaze from drifting back to Jaja in this number because she's just so good. I think her personality is every bit as big and impressive as Hailee's, but she's more understated in some ways. She's more than capable of letting her dancing speak for itself and I can't help but to think that no matter what these next few weeks hold for her, she won't have trouble finding work in the years to come.<br />
<br />
Megz rounds out my own personal top three at this point. I think she's got a style and a bearing all her own, and there's something refreshing about her uniqueness. I think we've seen a lot of different female contestants over the years, but for the most part they tend to fall closer to the feminine end of the spectrum; at least the ones who make it this far usually do. Megz has a way of flouting that while not having to come across as purely masculine. She's really just herself and that's appealing. I think it has a lot to do with how far she's made it thus far.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://ojp8zqasz32qat8n13om56p4.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/sytycd_04-megan-alfonso_0345.rc_.a_hires1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://ojp8zqasz32qat8n13om56p4.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/sytycd_04-megan-alfonso_0345.rc_.a_hires1.jpg" height="320" width="221" /></a></div>
Sadly, last night's Paso Doble was the first real test she's had thus far and it came on a night that already saw her in the bottom four. The truth is that she didn't dance it all that well and there aren't really any excuses for that. However, I watched the performance and was left wondering if she'd been able to do a ballroom number or two prior to this point, or had been asked to do it in Vegas maybe, would she have been better prepared for this number? She looked far more out of her depth dancing outside her element this week than contestants tend to look in the top eight performance episode, and I can't help but to wonder if that doesn't have something to do with how coddled she and the rest of the contestants have been with these simple routines all in the same two genres. Sadly, I don't see her making it through next week, but that's got as much to do with the strength of Virgil as it does the weakness of her performance this week.<br />
<br />
Virgil's status as the heir apparent to FikShun should be pretty obvious by now. They're both small Hip Hop dancers with big personalities who work their tails off to bring it each week they dance outside their styles. Virgil admits to his stint on (or was it off) Broadway, so we know he's got experience beyond the Street level. It explains a lot of why he's been so solid in the Broadway and Contemporary routines he's been given thus far. He's another contestant who hasn't danced any Ballroom or anything more extreme like Bollywood or Disco. This week's African Jazz was the closest he's really come to being pushed all that hard, and he actually managed to dance that well if not bring the top notch performance we're used to.<br />
<br />
In fact, if there's a question still to be answered about Virgil it's whether or not he can convincibly <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://s3.amazonaws.com/img.goldderby.com/images/1436242005_sytycd-photo-street-Virgil-Gadson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://s3.amazonaws.com/img.goldderby.com/images/1436242005_sytycd-photo-street-Virgil-Gadson.jpg" height="266" width="400" /></a></div>
perform against type. He's so cute and fun and energetic and bubbly that when he's given a character that's more sinister and stoic, like he was this week, he has to try a lot harder to convey those things. He didn't do as good a job with this one as I think he could have, but he danced it well. So whereas Hailee and Jaja have proven themselves capable of tackling anything that's thrown at them, Virgil seems able to dance whatever they give him, but only tends to be given these same kinds of characters week after week with us unable to tell if he's got a wider range than that. If it's a complaint or a criticism, it's a small one, and one I'd feel better leveling at the choreographers than at Virgil himself. These kinds should have been tested a lot harder than this so far and that failing isn't their own. With that being said, Virgil hasn't found himself in danger once this entire competition, and while I'm not sure if he's got what it takes to win like FikShun did, I do think he's a shoe in for the finale.<br />
<br />
Gaby has gone from a contestant I never remembered being on the show until I was watching her dance to someone that I think is another shoe in for the finale. In fact, I think Gaby might have what it takes to win the whole thing. She's crazy talented, and while her personality doesn't stick out as much as Hailee and Jaja's does, she's had a really strong dark horse quality about her these last few weeks which have seen her really vault to the top of the competition. The weakest part of her performances in the last two weeks have been her solos. They haven't been bad, but they've been stock Tap fare that we've seen a lot of in the last couple years. There were two Tappers on the show last year, so I think the bar has been raised on what we expect from a Tap solo, and I don't think Gaby's done anything to make me impressed on that level. She's got a strong rhythm and musicality that you expect from a Tapper, but there's yet to be that wow factor that I think we're used to.<br />
<br />
Instead, she seems to save that aspect for her paired dances which have been great. The Hip Hop <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/jDEgEmiUjSY/hqdefault.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/jDEgEmiUjSY/hqdefault.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
number she did with Joshua last week was really strong and at the time I thought it might have been good enough to see it again on the finale, but then I watched her performance with Robert this week and I think that that's actually the number we'll be seeing again in a couple weeks. It wasn't only the best performance of the night, it's one of the better performances of the season. I think the first line of credit goes to Mandy Moore who returns after a too long absence and brings a level of creativity that has been sorely lacking this year. It's another of those dancers embodying abstract ideas kind of numbers that I love so much. And watching Gaby as a person struggling with strong social anxiety was just brilliant. It's also a number where I think Mandy's explanation of what the number was about enhanced the performance and clearly found itself embodied in the movement and both performances. On top of that, it's the sort of number that Robert's been excelling at since his time on the show, so it was great to see him as the all star for it. The judges have been a bit liberal with the standing ovations lately, but this was one performance where it was more than deserved. If Gaby does go on to win, I think we'll be looking back at this night as the one where she put it away.<br />
<br />
Jim rounds out the top six and he's got the unenviable position of a dancer with all the technical ability in the world and not nearly enough performance ability or personality. Where Gaby fades into the background in her solos, Jim shines and effortlessly justifies his continued presence on the show. But then the partnered numbers come around and you're left feeling flat. I assumed this would be a problem from him way back when he had to share an interesting fact about himself and the best he could come up with was that he likes baths. Now we see him lacking in any kind of passion or connection to his partners and it's just sad. The All Stars usually serve to elevate the show and the performers to new heights, bringing something out of them that their fellow contestants often can't seem to reach, but in the case of Jim the opposite is true: he was better off dancing with his contemporaries because at least then his technical abilities were able to outshine the competition and justify keeping him around.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://blog.chron.com/tubular/wp-content/blogs.dir/1943/files/sytycd-10-the-peformances/my2_4681_hires1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://blog.chron.com/tubular/wp-content/blogs.dir/1943/files/sytycd-10-the-peformances/my2_4681_hires1.jpg" height="276" width="400" /></a></div>
In the last two weeks we've seen him dance with Jessica and Comfort, both of whom are just as technically strong in what they do, and it leaves him being overshadowed either in technique (as is the case with Comfort in the Hip Hop number this week) or in performance (as with Jessica last week). Given the results, I'm guessing America saw something in his number with Jessica worth picking up the phone for. I fully expected him to be in the bottom this week with Derek going home, but for some reason he was safe and Hailee was in danger. To his credit, he danced the number as well as he could, but I still think he just looked like a Ballet boy playing at Hip Hop, and gone is all the undeserved praise Nigel heaped on him after his Hip Hop number with Jaja earlier this season.<br />
<br />
The voting this week left me feeling unsure about what's coming next week. Either Megz and Hailee's fanbase isn't strong enough to rally and keep them in the competition, or it was just a momentary lapse and Hailee, at least, finds herself beating out Jim for a spot in the finale. I don't think Megz is strong enough to beat out Jaja and Virgil for a spot at the top of team Street, so I have to assume she's going home next week. But if Hailee goes with her, then we'll end up with a Jim, Gaby, Jaja, and Virgil top four which will see the early gender imbalance of the season rectified and give us an even split. I'd be lying if I said I was excited or curious about what was to come, but the fact of the matter is that this season has been so weak that the most interesting storyline to follow thus far has been the shifts in the numbers along gender lines. It's a sign of just how far SYTYCD has fallen that as we gear up for the finale I'm more interested in talking about how many boys and girls there are on the show than I am about the actual dancing.<br />
<br />
<b>Random Thoughts:</b><br />
<br />
--One of the good things the show is doing is the video packages at the end as we say good bye to the contestants. The other contestants offering their thoughts and what they'll miss about their fallen friends is very touching, though I have to wonder how they went about getting the segments. Were they specifically asked "Hey, what are you going to miss about Derek when he leaves this week?" or is it something more misleading? If they're being told before hand who's going and who's staying, then I'm not sure what to think anymore.<br />
<br />
--On the other hand, the judges comments this week made it so obvious who'd be in trouble and who was safe that they should be ashamed. They need to do a better job of that and tone down the "Your career going forward will be so bright if you just..." talk.<br />
<br />
--I enjoyed the idea of the dancers doing their solos to songs from Empire last week. It was a nice piece of cross promotion, though it was obvious who was more comfortable picking a song and who wasn't. Derek's audio-only Drip Drop told me he wasn't sold on it at all. They all picked their own music this week and he went with a about two men in love. I'm happy Derek's been able to wear his sexuality on his sleeve this entire time, so many other performers in the past weren't able to. But I would have liked him to pick a better song last week. There are gay people on Empire too, Derek!<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">--</span><b style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Same-Sex Speculation Space</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13.1999998092651px; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;"><span style="line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">: One of my very very favorite performances in the history of SYTYCD was done by Mia Michaels (surprise surprise) and it was danced by <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKbGhPncG1g" target="_blank">Billy Bell, Alex Wong, and Ade</a>. Instead of suggesting my own story for a Same-Sex dance this week, I'm just going to refer back to this one and ask for more stuff like that. In fact, now that I think about it, it's odd just how good the show used to be at Same-Sex numbers even when they didn't have to have them like they did this year. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BePGx_KjvmM" target="_blank">Billy Bell and Ade</a> also had another of my all time favorite numbers. And who could forget this <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUF5T9wHAfs" target="_blank">Lacey and Sabra</a> number? What the fuck happened, guys?</span></span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06235900666167642831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8445667746613343947.post-37961804349652505892015-08-12T15:26:00.001-07:002015-08-12T15:26:19.626-07:00So You Think You Can Dance S12E11<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pAD_eO2Hr1I/Vcu6dQFitPI/AAAAAAAAAe8/xXWxF4nHREI/s1600/Jim%2BYOrelis.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="268" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-pAD_eO2Hr1I/Vcu6dQFitPI/AAAAAAAAAe8/xXWxF4nHREI/s400/Jim%2BYOrelis.jpg" width="400" /></a>I thought, after last week's stellar episode, that maybe I had judged this season too harshly and we were finally getting back into what made this show great. The talent's been culled sufficiently enough that we can believe only the best are left, and we're gearing up for the top 10 which is always an exciting time. And then this episode happened and it became painfully clear that Burim and Asaf weren't season 12's problem; the Street v. Stage conceit and the choreographers are. It's enough to make you see that this show at its best is a well oiled machine of wonderfully working parts. The talented dancers work in tandem with the genius choreographers to bring their vision to life, and then the judges work to bring it all down to earth and give us solid critiques to help us make some level of sense of what we've just seen. At different points of the season, one or more of those cogs weren't spinning properly, and this week I think it's the choreographers.<br />
<br />
Though to be fair, when they get it right, they get it very very right. Jim and Yorelis open the night with a number welcoming back a very busy Sonya Tayeh back to the SYTYCD stable of choreographers. And everything about the piece is perfect. It's danced wonderfully, and everything from the concept to the costuming is just pitch perfect. I watched it with my jaw on the ground and my eye bulging and I thought the hot streak of the season would continue. Sadly, it was a bumpy ride from that point on, but we at least started on a serious high note.<br />
<br />
Jaja and Edson turn out a good but not great (by any means) performance that left me thinking more about Jaja's skill level at giving a great performance than it did anything else. It was enough to make me think, and not for the first time I might add, that she would have been a welcome addition to the program last year if she'd made it. The girls from last year were never very strong and none of them really stood out at any given time. Jaja would have been the one to really carry the girls through the performances, and she would have been quite a character amongst those other contestants. I don't think she could have challenged Ricky for the win, but it would have been nice to watch anyway. I will say that watching the judges disagree at the end of the performance was a lot of fun. Maybe they do all have real opinions after all.<br />
<br />
Virgil and Hailee are paired together again for a Tyce routine. Tyce is one of my least favorite choreographers, or at least I find him to be one of the more hit or miss choreographers in the bunch. <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JmKt2DO2uCk/Vcu9-5cCyBI/AAAAAAAAAfM/mmAaA5nxePo/s1600/virgil%2Bhailee.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="276" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JmKt2DO2uCk/Vcu9-5cCyBI/AAAAAAAAAfM/mmAaA5nxePo/s400/virgil%2Bhailee.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
You never know one week to the next what you're going to get from him, though recently I think we've seen a lot more bad than good. This number isn't one of his worst, but I did think it was oddly choreographed. It was a story about a possessive woman who refuses to let her man leave her, and the guy who is trying to do just that. And yet there were multiple moments in the piece where Virgil seemed to go towards Hailee and pick her up off the ground instead of taking his shot and just leaving. I've had this problem with Tyce before where I think his idea is solid but then I watch the performance and can't help but to think that I can't see it being translated into the specific movement. At the very least, Virgil and Hailee danced it well and presented yet another strong performance from the pair of them, this time more in Hailee's comfort zone than Virgil's. If they'd been paired together this whole time, they'd be a force to be reckoned with heading into the top 10. And collectively they've got personality for days.<br />
<br />
If the first three performances of the night ranged from great to good, the Jazz number between Alexia and Ariana started the overall doom of the episode. It's interesting that the two worst numbers came from same-sex pairings. I've been clamoring for more of these kinds of pairs for the duration of time that I've been watching the show, but what I really wanted were <i>good</i> same-sex dances. I should have been clearer. Instead, the two same-sex numbers of the night have the girls portraying burlesque dancers and pinup models. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing at all wrong with being a burlesque dancer or a pinup model, but it does expose just how limited the choreographers are when it comes to thinking up stories for female dancers. Any all girl performance thus far this season has either been sexy for sexiness' sake, or some bland blanket level "girl power" concept. The judges aren't shy about ripping the girls in both of these dances (Alexia and Ariana in this one, and then JJ and Kate a bit later on) a new one for their performance, but no one thinks to acknowledge the fact that they never should have been asked to do this in the first place? Remember a few seasons back when two of the guys performed some weird Russian jumping dance and Nigel was quick to point out that it wasn't them it was the style, and we've never seen that style on the show again? Where was that same level of concern for these girls? Instead the judges say things like they clearly didn't commit to doing what they were told, and they should just fake it till they make it when put in a position to perform something they don't believe in or that makes them uncomfortable. The extent of how problematic all of this is would break my brain if I tried to parse it all out. Suffice it to say I'm way more disappointed in the choreographers of these pieces than I am the dancers.<br />
<br />
The other two performances of the night aren't much better. Megz and Derek's hip hop number is painful to watch. Megz is at least OK and seems to do just about all she can with a significantly inferior dancer in Derek. He's back from missing last week and clearly needs to knock his performance out of the park since his lack of performing automatically put him in the bottom three this week. And yet at no point does he show even a hint of an ability to dance Hip Hop. He dances too high, in his shoulders, and with too much control to hit his pops at all hard enough. It was bad enough to show that had he been asked to dance outside of his style during Vegas week, he probably wouldn't even have made it to the top 20. Unless my notes deceive me, or I missed something, it's his first time dancing a hip hop number, and it comes right before the formation of the top 10. Pathetic. Neptune and Gaby's dancing isn't horrible, but it's a routine in which Stacey Tookey has decided to tackle racism. And of course it looks and feels like just about every conversation I've ever heard about racism from the point of view of a white person. In short, she's not the person to tackle this subject, and she clearly should have left well enough alone.<br />
<br />
The group numbers at least brought a high level of skill and concept to the close of the show. Sonya <br />
<a href="http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EgzShrqfmvI/maxresdefault.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EgzShrqfmvI/maxresdefault.jpg" height="225" width="400" /></a>having two numbers on the night was exactly the right way to go as her number for Team Stage about the immediate moment when you get heartbreakingly bad news is really perfect. And the weird carnival sideshow number for Team Street was a lot of fun too. At this point, it feels like Team Street's group numbers have been been more about team work and pulling together than Stage's have. This one sees all the members of the circus together, dancing, and celebrating their differences. It's both very straight forward and very rewarding all at once.<br />
<br />
In the end, the judges can't save anyone, it's fully up to America's twitter voting to decide which one dancer from each team's bottom three will go on to join the top 10. Therefore, it should come as no surprise to anyone that Neptune and Derek (the only two guys in the bottom at all) get saved. Derek's rewarded for his horrid Hip Hop number by being allowed to stick around for awhile, and Neptune stays in spite of Yorelis' significantly superior performance on the night. It's not that Neptune doesn't deserve it. To me, he shouldn't have been in the bottom in the first place. It's just that if this is the week he ended up in the bottom and we were basing who to save on the performances of the episode, Yorelis is a the keeper for sure. But it's just another lackluster result from this lackluster season, so what more can we even expect?<br />
<br />
<b>Random Thoughts:</b><br />
<br />
--Shout out to Megz’s Celebrity Man Crush question to Derek during their video package. Acknowledging our guys sexuality is important and something this show has always shied away from in the past.<br />
<br />
--One of the things I noticed in this episode was just how undiverse the dance forms all were. In the episode to decide the top 10, every sing performance was either Jazz, Contemporary, or Hip-Hop. No ballroom, broadway, disco, or Bollywood in the entire hour? What the fuck is up with that?<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">--</span><b style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">Same-Sex Speculation Space</b><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 18.4799995422363px;">: In spite of the show's obvious lack of interest in presenting any good same-sex stories, I've decided to keep this going. This week, the guys. Imagine a routine about two guys who are best friends. One of them has a kid, the other doesn't, and the guy with a kid has recently found out that his wife has died and he's going to be left to raise their baby on his own. His friend comes over to offer his support in the matter, but the guy in a pure macho man fashion refuses to show his weakness to his buddy. In my head, I'm seeing something where one of the contestants puts on a bravado and brave face each time the two of them are facing each other, but every time his friend's back is turned, he breaks down and his true pain, fear, and despair shines through. Until the end when he clearly asks for help and allows his friend to see just how vulnerable he is. </span></span></span><br />
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06235900666167642831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8445667746613343947.post-65885239939740895692015-08-04T17:21:00.000-07:002015-08-05T07:10:56.392-07:00So You Think You Can Dance S12E10<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wpL4WmMraMU/VcE7t0AhLpI/AAAAAAAAAdQ/EGrMGwTfM-s/s1600/jim%2Bariana.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="256" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wpL4WmMraMU/VcE7t0AhLpI/AAAAAAAAAdQ/EGrMGwTfM-s/s400/jim%2Bariana.jpg" width="400" /></a>Last year around this time, SYTYCD was shaping its Top 10 in an episode that I had nothing but <a href="http://adrianalexanderswriting.blogspot.com/2014/07/so-you-think-you-can-dance-s11e10.html" target="_blank">glowing praise</a> for. This year, the show isn't as good, the talent isn't as strong, and we're still one week away from finalizing the Top 10, but this was just as strong of an hour of dance as that one was. I didn't think I'd find myself in a position to say it again but this is why I watch this show. This episode served as a reminder about all the good this series has to offer the world, and if they'd been bringing it at this level for the entire season, I think I'd be lamenting the show's probable cancellation a lot more than I have been. But on the other hand, if each episode had featured such a group of stunning performances by now, maybe the effect would have warn off and this episode would have paled in comparison. I don't want to recommend mediocrity as a course of action, but I do think that the fact of the matter is that this episode sores as high as it does in some small part because of just how bad and boring the episodes before it were. The routines were also original, challenging, and well thought out in a way that they haven't been this season, and they were danced with a fire and passion we haven't seen so far, but I still think the low bar set by the earlier episodes made it easier for this episode to be so rejoiced.<br />
<br />
This, I think, rings truer for the first paired performance of the night, Jaja and Hailee in a jazz routine. I loved it when I watched it taking place. Hailee and Jaja are easily my two favorite performers on the show so far (with Megz rounding out my own personal top three), and I've been hoping for more same-sex dancing on this season as the gulf between the girls and guys gets wider and wider. The general "Girl Power" theme of the number is so played out on the show that I wanted to gouge my eyes out when I heard it, but Hailee and Jaja bring a fun and playfulness, but also a strength and fire to it that it made the routine worth my momentary cringe. So the point is that I enjoyed the number very much and I thought it was a great way to kick off the episode, and then as things went on I totally forgot it had even existed in the face of the better routines that followed it. This isn't meant to be a mark against these two, but I wonder if they won't find themselves in the bottom next week based simply on how forgettable the number was in the grand scheme of the rest of the episode. I wouldn't be surprised if their fanbase was strong enough to vote them through, but I also wouldn't be surprised if they found themselves in danger (though still pushed through to the top 10) next week.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cLBj9Rwg1vM/VcE_J4VhBXI/AAAAAAAAAdg/PuKZIH4DCcc/s1600/neptune%2Balexia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="275" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cLBj9Rwg1vM/VcE_J4VhBXI/AAAAAAAAAdg/PuKZIH4DCcc/s400/neptune%2Balexia.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
Part of this is because the Alexia and Neptune number that follows them is just so much fun and so great to watch. I don't know that Alexia brought out the very best Hip Hop performance we've ever seen from a Contemporary girl (in fact I know she hasn't since this routine from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrT5ca9EbTw" target="_blank">Lauren and tWitch</a> still exists), but I do know that there was something phenomenal about this number. First off, Neptune brings yet another high level of chemistry to a "romantic" performance. Last week he was vibeing with Kate on a level I didn't think possible for a mismatched pair who hadn't ever danced together, and this week it's Alexia. Both performances were real and believable, but this one was also fun and intriguing. I think we've seen all kinds of relationships on this show over the years, but this has to be the first time we've seen one between two mental patients. It was genius, and cute, and so much fun, and wonderfully danced, and everything you hope a performance on this show will be. Alexia's face went through a range of expressions and emotions throughout it that I think really sold the character, and both of them just preformed it wonderfully.<br />
<br />
After two stellar performances and news of Derek's injury, I was expecting a less than impressive Ballroom number from JJ, and then I was wrong. It would be easy to attribute the skill and effectiveness of this number on the presence of the choreographer dancing with JJ. If anyone's going to know how to dance the number, it's the person that created it. But the fact of the matter is that JJ was honestly the star in this pairing; I couldn't take my eyes off of her. I don't want to down play the amount of that which is due to his partnering in the first place. One of the things I find fascinating about a lot of ballroom numbers is the fact that the male partner is often there to simply present and be there for the female partner. He often has more to do than just lift and pose, but in a lot of these kinds of numbers the guy is meant to be an afterthought really. And that's what happened here. Who knows if the number would have been as remarkable had Derek been well enough to perform it with her. Given that his injury came while practicing the lifts, it seems like he's lacking the upper body and core strength needed to pull this routine off. But whatever the case <i>could</i> have been had he been in there, we know what it <i>was</i> without him, and it was great. If I have one complaint, it's that the sexiness of the routine seemed to come from the costuming and the choreography more so than from any actual connection between the two dancers, but that's to be expected in some ways.<br />
<br />
Everything up until this point in the night was good, but the number of the evening was Jim and Ariana's Contemporary piece about a man's struggle with depression. I'll admit my bias here; I love the performances on this show that have a dancer embodying more of an abstract concept than an actual person. Mia Michaels' <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZ-1cq8ibwg" target="_blank">Addiction piece</a> will forever be a standout for doing just that. So as soon as Cheeseman said the word depression I was hooked. But then Jim (towards whom I'm decidedly indifferent) and Ariana (whom I actually like but haven't committed to memory until now) danced it and it was even more brilliant than I originally expected. Nigel mentioned that Hailee and Virgil's performance from last week would be remembered from here on out, but I think this will be the number that comes out of this season and lives on in SYTYCD history as maybe one of the top three or five best things to ever come out of the show. There was a strange indifference and detachment to Ariana's performance that I loved. While Kupono's stint as Addiction was more malevolent, Ariana's Depression just kind of was. There was a matter of fact quality to it that I thought worked wonders because depression isn't malevolent, it isn't malicious, it just kind of is. And Jim's struggle to get out of it was believable. I thought at the time that he could have shown a bit more sadness in his face, but now I think it's possible that his character was maybe past any sadness and had moved on to just a sheer force of will to break out. And if that's the case, I think it worked. Either way, I loved this from start to finish and I'll be shocked if either of them find themselves in the bottom next week.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7zZWDnZFoac/VcFLJ4jsfHI/AAAAAAAAAd0/-fC-TIh1UGU/s1600/virgil%2Bgaby.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7zZWDnZFoac/VcFLJ4jsfHI/AAAAAAAAAd0/-fC-TIh1UGU/s400/virgil%2Bgaby.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
I could go number by number like this, but the fact is that the rest of the episode ran apace of what came before. Virgil and Gaby had a really fun and cute broadway number that had me grinning and laughing out loud for a lot of it. And Marissa and Yorelis' hip hop number was good, though not great. The lowest point of the night came from Asaf and Kate's number, but that was no surprise. To his credit, Asaf was better than he was in that horrendous waste of time last week, but he still showed why he shouldn't have been kept around. The best moment was during the video package when Kate confirmed what I said last week: his being her partner made her fearful of her own safety. It's an eye opening moment of honesty. She cries because on the one hand she wants to help him get better and carry him through the performance, but on the other hand she can't really relax into any of the lifts because she's constantly scared he'll drop her. These contestants put their bodies, careers, and lives in one another's hands each week, and to keep someone around who isn't up to the task of taking care of his partner is negligent. And the judges' thin and pathetic justifications for keeping him felt like a slap in the face of everything this show has stood for over the last 12 seasons. This wasn't a case of America simply failing to see the greatness within a dancer (like Billy Bell for example) and constantly letting him fall into the bottom for the judges to save him and try to impress upon everyone how great he really is. It was simply about them pushing their own agenda in hopes of getting the best story. But it's over now, America put him in the bottom again and the judges did what they should have done last week and sent him home.<br />
<br />
But instead of ending on that sour note, I think it's worth mentioning the other standout performance of the night. I was hard on the judges for keeping Edson instead of Moises last week, but given his performance with Megz this week, I think it's clear that they made the right choice. I don't think Moises had the strength to pull of that number as well as Edson did, so this was a situation of a more optimal pairing. Plus this new choreographer, Talia, is really quite wonderful. It's another number where a dancer embodies something abstract instead of a character, this time with Edson performing as Temptation and Megz as the tempted party, and it's just brilliant. The stuff with the shirts, and the hiding, and the lifts, and the eventual acceptance at the end, it was all wonderful. A great end to the best string of performances the season has seen.<br />
<br />
The group numbers were fun too, but I'm starting to think they've run their course. Marissa goes home from team stage which will at least stop the bleeding of male contestants for awhile. During the team stage group number, I had a moment of shock when I thought Edson and Jim were the last two guys on the team altogether before I remembered that Derek was just hurt for the week. The girls are clearly better, I've said it a number of times by now, and I can't help but to wonder if we aren't in for an all female top six or five. After all, the street team is officially down to just Virgil and Neptune for the guys. But whatever the ultimate gender breakdown of the show when we reach the end, if they keep having episodes like this one, I can at least say it'll be worth the ride to find out.<br />
<br />
Randoms:<br />
<br />
--<b>Same-Sex Speculation Space</b>: given the continued shift towards an all girl group by the last few weeks of the show, and also given my continued urging for the show to embrace same-sex pairings for their dances, I've decided to create a space where I can posit stories for same-sex numbers in the future which have nothing to do with romance since I think the show tends to shy away from these pairings because they don't want the romantic implications. Let's start with the girls: imagine a number, maybe a Broadway or a Jazz number, about an older dancer who's time is running out and a young girl who reminds her a lot of herself at that age. The young girl is all sex appeal and easy talent which makes her not want to put in the hard work to be as great as she could be, and instead of being jealous and catty about it, the older woman tries to take the young girl under her wing and inspire her to be the great dancer she's meant to be. Nothing romantic about it, and not the typical "women fighting and being jealous" storyline we're used to seeing. But also not the general "girl power" rubber stamp the choreographers tend to roll out in these situations. You're welcome, SYTYCD, I'll let you have that one for free.<br />
<br />
--My mention of Virgil and Gaby's performance was brief, but I really have to say that I was laughing for a couple minutes when they pulled out those glasses. Those two have personality for days and it's so worth it.<br />
<br />
--I complained last week about how the lack of pairs stops us from having the "learn more about this dancer" segments that the show usually has, and then they rolled out the "one thing America doesn't know about me" segment this week. Kudoes to Kate (almost kidnapped? wtf?!), Virgil (awesome Jazz band), and Derek (cute adoption story) for actually picking interesting and worthwhile facts. Everyone else either bored me to tears or at least were pretty simple and straight forward as if they hadn't put any real thought into it.<br />
<br />
--I think one part of why this episode's performances were so much better was that the choreographers finally took off the kid gloves and started putting the contestants through their paces with these routines. It looked like there were a few lifts in the video package for Asaf and Kate that were edited out of the final number, but that doesn't seem like it's for lack of trying on Cheeseman's part to get them in there in the first place.<br />
<br />
--I really liked Nigel's Nigel’s point about Yorelis looking like she hasn’t been choreographed but just feels the music and lets it move through her. She's not my favorite, but she's certainly got that particular quality, and I never could have found the words for it without Nigel pointing it out.<br />
<br />
--What're the chances Burim could have danced with Kate in that number better than Asaf did? I know it's not a strict one-to-one trade off since the pairs aren't set. If Burim had stayed, he could have just as easily been with Gaby instead of Kate this week. but since he was gotten rid of instead of Asaf, I just felt the need to compare the two, and I can't help but to think he would have turned out a better performance to show why he deserved to be kept around than Asaf did.<br />
<br />
--Is it just me or is Derulo actually getting more helpful and more palatable as the show goes on?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06235900666167642831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8445667746613343947.post-76143986475026284582015-07-28T18:50:00.001-07:002015-08-04T15:05:16.577-07:00So You Think You Can Dance S12E8 & 9<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Hu2OAbhlfck/VbgIZSeeywI/AAAAAAAAAcE/Np3_Yg5QKJk/s1600/960.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Hu2OAbhlfck/VbgIZSeeywI/AAAAAAAAAcE/Np3_Yg5QKJk/s400/960.jpg" width="400" /></a>An odd thing about reality tv in general is how dependent on outside forces it is to be "good." The participants have to be interesting, and in the case of SYTYCD also talented, you have to be able to form an attachment to any number of them, and then the "right" people have to be sent home each week to allow the drama to remain compelling and to leave the viewers feeling vindicated that the "right" person has won by whatever metrics such a thing is being judged. After so many episodes this season, I'm shocked by just how many ways this show is failing in those areas.<br />
<br />
First off the good, because there is still good. Virgil and Hailee's number that closed the competition routines last night. It's the best thing that's happened this season. My jaw was on the floor, I cheered throughout it all, and couldn't help but to be amazed. Both of them danced it wonderfully, and I have to agree with Travis' point that Hailee was the best person from his team for this number. The two of them together were the perfect duo for the routine and they worked hard to start to distance themselves from the competition.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://cdn.blogs.sheknows.com/realitytvmagazine.sheknows.com/2015/07/so-you-think-you-can-dance-kate-neptune-455x315.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://cdn.blogs.sheknows.com/realitytvmagazine.sheknows.com/2015/07/so-you-think-you-can-dance-kate-neptune-455x315.jpg" height="276" width="400" /></a>The number before it staring Neptune and Kate was equally impressive on the other end of the spectrum. The judges can wax poetic about the dancers dancing out of their styles each performance all they like. The fact of the matter is that that's always been the bread and butter of this show. So while it's impressive that Hailee was capable of dancing Hip Hop so well and that Neptune delivered on contemporary as well as he did, it's no more impressive than the many cross-style performances that came over the 10 years before it. But that's not to diminish the number itself which was just brilliant. Neptune and Kate had a chemistry that we haven't seen thus far in the competition because no one's danced together enough to build it. That they can just fall into a new performance and sell the emotion on such an astounding level is to be commended. That's not even mentioning how skillfully it was danced. Kate's skill level and training brought a crispness to her movement that Neptune lacked, and that was all for the betterment of the piece. I got the impression watching them that they were really two different people from two different worlds, but that they honestly loved each other and the entirety of their relationship made sense. Sometimes when two contemporary dancers get together in a routine like this one, their combined skill level leaves it feeling a bit homogenized and like they're both just two halves of the same performer. But there's something about the difference in the quality of Neptune and Kate's movement that really added an extra layer to the story that deeply resonated with me.<br />
<br />
Sadly, I think that's where the good ends thus far. The first episode with everyone dancing outside of their comfort zones wasn't as bad as I expected, or as bad as this episode for that matter, but it hasn't been on par with where we're used to seeing this show at a comparable point in previous seasons. The bulk of the dancers, and that's on both teams, simply aren't as good as they usually are. The Stage dancers seem to be low on personality and performance ability. It feels almost as though the 10 of them that made up the top 20 were chosen specifically for that purpose. Whereas the Street team has personality in spades and very little technique and skill. This was expected from the moment the theme of this season was announced, but the failings on the Stage team are more surprising. I think it was orchestrated this way simply because if you took the best Street dancers you could find and pitted them against the best Stage dancers in this show's history, they'd be slaughtered. So conceits were made on both sides to try and keep things leveled. The results are just bad performances that can't solely be blamed on the less trained Street competitors.<br />
<br />
Darion going home last week after his technically interesting but ultimately bloodless Ballet number with Jim and his seriously lagging number with Hailee and Yorelis was evidence of this. Here's a classically trained Ballet dancer with all the technique in the world. And we've seen Ballet dancers on this show go far when they let their personality and performance level fly. But Darion didn't have that second level. In fact, he was so lacking in being able to bring out any emotion that I was left wondering if he'd have been on the show without the need to keep the Stage team down closer to the Street team's level to create a fairer competition.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6RMOjC_i7Kk/VcE1yngCXsI/AAAAAAAAAck/oHltrijqfhA/s1600/burim.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="245" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6RMOjC_i7Kk/VcE1yngCXsI/AAAAAAAAAck/oHltrijqfhA/s400/burim.jpg" width="400" /></a>"Would they be here if it were just a regular season?" was a question I expected to be asking of the Street dancers, but not of the Stage dancers. But that's not to say that it isn't fair to ask of the Street team too. In the cases of Burim and Asaf, the answer is clear: No they wouldn't be. Asaf at least shouldn't even be on this season seeing as how the judges cut him only to bring him back to fill in for a last minute injury. Burim at least has a leg up on Asaf in his skill and his ability to pick up choreography, but he's not at the level of some of the better B-Boys we've seen in the past (Hok and Legacy come to mind), so while I think he might have been a good choice for this year, I still ask if he would have made the cut in seasons previously. And yet for all of that, the judges decide to keep Asaf and to lose Burim this week? Over the years, I've seen some really confusing choices be made on this show, but one of the things that generally kept me watching was that those choices were usually made by the voters and then rectified by the judges. The judges' ability to decide who from the bottom three vote getters would be going home until the top 10 was formed was one of the things that always set this show above others. And while they haven't always been perfect, they've at least often made their decision with a level of understand-ability. Not this time. And the lack of explanation on their part doesn't help to make this seem like a reasonable choice either.<br />
<br />
How can anyone justify keeping Asaf after he turns in what can only be described as the worst performance of the night. The Cha-Cha routine he was given was even streamlined and simplified for him and he still managed to make it slow and boring and lifeless. The fact is Asaf isn't a strong enough dancer for this competition, and instead of admitting that and sending him on his way, the judges subject us to him for at least another week. The choreographers don't know what to do with him during group numbers, which is why he's always in the back or off to the side and never focused on from the cameras. And he's hurting his partners each week by not allowing them to let lose and just dance for fear that he might not be there to catch them when needed. Keeping him around at this point is both boring and dangerous, and yet he stays because he tries really hard and the judges like the idea of seeing his overall arch when everything is said and done. This isn't a competition to find the best sob story or the most improved dancer, it's about finding the best, or at least America's favorite, dancer, and the judges just undercut that in a big way.<br />
<br />
Oddly enough this is also reflected in their decision to cut Moises instead of Edson. Neither of them danced particularly well this night, but Moises proved last week, at least to me, that he's got more performance ability than I expected. He's maybe the most technically sound Stage boy left in the competition, but the way he was capable of bringing out a strength and masculinity that I didn't think he had last week won me over on his performance ability. Conversely, Edson hasn't. In his number this week, I didn't buy for a second that he wanted either of the two girls he was dancing with, and since his character was at the center of a love triangle with them, that was important. But after a lackluster Bollywood routine last week and an unbelievable performance this week, he somehow manages to stick around while Moises is sent packing. It's two bad decisions in one night from the judges and it leaves me thinking that they're more interested in keeping up with their theme than they are in presenting the stellar level of dance we're used to seeing from the show.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OI7dsj_WxcQ/VcE2C_ifPBI/AAAAAAAAAcs/WVWr42bO_yE/s1600/street.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="247" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OI7dsj_WxcQ/VcE2C_ifPBI/AAAAAAAAAcs/WVWr42bO_yE/s400/street.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
It all boils back down to what I said in my very first review of the season; the show is trying to change fundamental aspects of itself, and in doing so it's losing its identity and not picking up a better one to replace it. The Stage v Street concept isn't without it's strengths. The group numbers that have been closing the night have been consistently stellar in my opinion. And their willingness to get rid of contestants without considering gender opens the door for more same-sex pairings. Granted it's a door they don't seem at all interested in walking through as each episode has seen groups of three and four dancing instead of the traditional duos (which has also been the show's loss). But we've still reached a point where there are five girls and three guys on each team. And that's understandable since the girls are so much better this year than the boys. But instead of just having that happen, they need to capitalize on it and do something with those dynamics. What this show doesn't need are more crowded and convoluted routines like Stacey Tookey's number for Derek, Jaja, and Alexia. That didn't make sense and wasn't very interesting to watch.<br />
<br />
These routines also speak to the other thing the show has lost: the strong storylines born from the chemistry (or lack of same) of the early pairings of dancers. Being paired together gave the dancers incentive to do their best to help their partner as well as themselves, and it gave us those cute but silly video packages where the dancers would tell us something special about their partners. Instead we're left with very little idea of who the contestants are, and therefore left without much of an ability to latch on to anyone to really root for. Beyond Virgil and Jaja, I couldn't tell you who the Street performers are. Same goes for the Stage team now that Moises is gone. I know Hailee's name after her number last night, but prior to that I wouldn't have recalled her.<br />
<br />
So if we know next to nothing about the contestants, and the people who were allowed into the season aren't that talented, and the wrong people are being sent home week after week, then what does this season of SYTYCD have going for it? Nigel remarked at the end of Virgil and Hailee's performance that when this show turns 20, it would be a performance they'd still be talking about. The hard truth is that this show probably won't make it past its 10th birthday, never mind its 20th, and as I watch each episode thinking these are the last we'll ever see, I'm left wondering how we're going to remember the show. They made it a point to look back over the first 10 years during that one hour long special last week, but this season isn't the capper to that remarkable journey, it's just the last death rattle of the end.<br />
<br />
Randoms:<br />
<br />
--Speaking of the one hour special from last week, how much of a hot mess was that? I don't want to throw it under the bus too bad, but one hour wasn't enough, the current contestants dancing solos wasn't needed at all, and the constant toss ups to Ryan Seacrest about his new show were pointless and took up way too much time. It left something that should have been a wall to wall celebration of what came before feeling empty and rushed. And I also had a problem with Paula and Jason getting to pick performances to see again. They've been there for all of two days and they get a vote? If there was ever a time to bring back Mary Murphy and Mia Michaels, and Lil C, and Debbie Allen, and all the people who've made this show what it is today, this was it. The producers and Fox could have done better; this show deserved better.<br />
<br />
--Last week, Nigel had a lot of glowing things to say about Jaja and Jim's performance and about how remarkable it was to see a Ballet dancers and a Hip Hop dancer together making a great performance. He went on and on about it as if this was the sole doing of the Street v Stage conceit, and the entire time I kept thinking "But that's what the Alex Wong and tWitch performance was, and it was a million times better than whatever we just watched." But he didn't even make mention of that piece of history. And then the very next night we get to see that performance again and I felt validated.<br />
<br />
--The twitter save thing is another interesting change to the format that I want to like but I'm not sure I think it's being used to the best of its ability. I guess restricting the tweeting to the last 5 minutes makes a level of sense, but I think allowing people to do it throughout the show would encourage live tweeting of the episodes and get the word out even more about the show on social media. But in order to do that effectively, they'd probably have to reveal who the bottom 6 were at the top of the hour, and we already know that that doesn't really work, so I don't know. Either way, it feels to me like a good idea that just needs a little more refining.<br />
<br />
--Pharside and Phoenix have been wonderful additions to the ranks of SYTYCD choreographers. I've enjoyed just about every routine they've made over the last couple seasons, and they're winning streak continues into this week.<br />
<br />
--I can't express how upset I am over Burim going home. Not that I think he's top 10 material or anything, but that they had the prime excuse to just get rid of Asaf and they didn't take it bugs the shit out of me. Plus, I'll miss his beautiful blue eyes and cute little accent.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06235900666167642831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8445667746613343947.post-14477736819493784192015-07-14T20:07:00.000-07:002015-07-14T20:07:42.688-07:00So You Think You Can Dance S12E7<a href="http://cdn.uinterview.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/news-SYTYCD-Team-Street.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://cdn.uinterview.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/news-SYTYCD-Team-Street.jpg" height="288" width="400" /></a>I've long believed that if you don't enjoy a story, whether it be a book or TV show, you should give up on it. Life's too short to waste it reading books you don't enjoy or watching season after season of a TV show you're no longer into. Starting a new series is not the equivalent of a marriage. There are no vows, no promises, not even really lofty notions about eternity. It's more of a simple handshake deal. You sit down and you say, "I'm going to give you so much of my time, and in return you're going to entertain me to whatever level I feel I require to be entertained. If you fall short of that task, then I'm leaving you for another form of entertainment and you can't complain; if you wanted me to stick around, you should have been better." It's an odd one way street whereby you don't owe a show anything, but that show owes it to you to be entertaining and to contort itself into whatever odd shape your desires dictate in the moment. But with that being said, I'm only human and I come with my own set of loyalties. So when <i>So You Think You Can Dance</i> announced a set of changes that I felt sure would ruin the show, instead of giving up on it on the spot I decided to give it another go. A show that's built up some capital with me by being good in the past will inevitably last longer and get a stay of execution or two before I give up on it all together. I watched two of the audition episodes this year before I decided to give up on that and check in when the competition started in earnest, and then I decided that I'd give the season a fair shake of about two or three episodes before I decided for sure if I'm going to stick out this 12th and probably final season. After the Top 20 Showcase episode, I'm still on the fence, but not for the reasons I expected to be.<br />
<br />
As I mentioned <a href="http://adrianalexanderswriting.blogspot.com/2014/07/so-you-think-you-can-dance-s11e6.html" target="_blank">last year</a>, the Top 20 episode is one of my favorites. In the past, when Fox had more faith in the show and give them more time to do their thing, it was an episode that served to simply show off what the contestants could do. Freed from the requirement of dancing for America's votes and from the constraints of having to dance outside of their given styles, the contestants skilled and lucky enough to make it to the Top 20 were allowed to just let loose to some great choreography that was often more about the beauty and the joy of dance than anything else. Now that the showcase has been integrated into the competition, I like it a little bit less, but I still respect the place it holds. This year it's still a solid showcase of strong dancers dancing well, but it's not quiet up to the level of previous years for a very simple reason: The choreography is lazy and uninspired.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://ojp8zqasz32qat8n13om56p4.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/W5A0569_hires1-e1436856717632.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://ojp8zqasz32qat8n13om56p4.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/W5A0569_hires1-e1436856717632.jpg" height="275" width="400" /></a></div>
When I found out that everyone in Vegas would only be dancing within their own styles, or more specifically that the "Street" dancers would only be dancing in Hip Hop styles and the "Stage" dancers would be dancing in all the different styles, I decided not to watch the auditions. As a result, I walked into this episode not knowing anything about any of the contestants except for Jaja who I loved last year and therefore is my early favorite, and I fully expected the Street dancers to enter this stage of the competition at a distinct disadvantage. In the past, the Vegas round was the most difficult aspect of the audition because it was supposed to prepare the dancers what what they'd be facing in the weeks to come. Here it was lightened in order to coddle them towards instead of away from success. Simply put, if the Street dancers had to dance Ballroom at these early stages, they would have been eliminated in large numbers leaving us without a team of ten in the top 20. So my expectation was that they'd reach this point without an ability to even perform choreography and then get tossed into the deep end against contestants who can do whatever is asked of them. On the one hand, that's not the case as the Street dancers clearly have the better set of performances on the night and take an early lead in the competition. But on the other hand, were any of them actually really challenged and pushed hard enough, or critiqued firmly enough by the judges, to make a fair accounting?<br />
<br />
There are a few places were I think the routines lived up to this stage of the competition. The first of which is Brian Friedman's routine for Alexia, Hailee, and Marissa. It's a type of routine that I don't generally care for: sexy girls being sexy for sexiness' sake, but he choreographs it is killer high heels and has them doing a lot of moves in those shoes that should have broken their ankles. To their credit, the girls move around in those shoes well, I only noticed one point when someone looked like she was about to fall, but she caught herself just in time. But the problem here is really that the routine is sexy, the costuming is sexy, the shoes are sexy, and then on top of that the girls decided to pull overtly sexy faces too. It's one thing too much and the judges are quick to tell them to dial it back and not try too hard to be sexy when you've got so many elements making you sexy already. In spite of that one aspect to the execution, I thought the choreography was suitably strong for dancers good enough to make it to the top 20.<br />
<br />
Likewise, Darion and Jim's Ballet routine featured a high level of difficulty. They weren't quite as in sync as they should have been, and they noticeably missed the connection on their first lift, but given how difficult the entire routine was, I'm willing to give them a bit of a pass. I didn't think it deserved the standing-O the judges gave it, but it was nice nevertheless. The two group numbers that closed out the night were also impressive and featured a high level from the choreographers. Team Street going last was exactly the right call as they blew the roof off the building and solidified their round one victory.<br />
<br />
Everything other than those four performances, however, left something to be desired. It felt like the choreographers were going easy on the contestants in an effort to ease them into the competition, but the result was uninspiring and uninteresting numbers. Even Travis Wall's number was surprisingly lackluster, and that's from someone that I've praised again and again as a genius and the best thing to ever come out of this show. This week his story was simple and overdone, and the movements either didn't suit the story or weren't executed well enough by Edson and Kate to convey the story. It's a strange misstep in what otherwise should have been a home run.<br />
<br />
To make matters worse, the judges overpraise the Street dancers at every turn while giving (understandably) harsh critiques to the Stage dancers. The other standing-O of the night came at the end of Chris Scott's number for Jaja, Lily, Asaf, and Burim, and that was horrible. Or maybe horrible is a bit strong, but it certainly wasn't anything to leave your seat over. Scott starts the video package by saying he doesn't really have much of a plan beyond wanting to showcase what each of the dancers is good at. Which......ok? I think I've made this analogy before and if I have, bear with me, but there's something that happens when a coach makes a guts call in sports: if it works, he's a genius, if it fails, people will be calling for him to be fired. There's something purely results based in sports that renders individual decisions incapable of being judged on their merits alone; it's all about if it worked or not. Chris Scott's decision to not come up with any kind of story or put forth any distinct choreography didn't work. And then the routine was filmed in a manner that left each individual dancer on stage as pretty much the only person in the frame while they were dancing. So if there were moments of synchronicity or of two people dancing against each other at the same time, we didn't really get to see them. The moves the dancers executed were nice, but there was no sense of great scale or purpose to it all, just four people on stage doing their own solos, and that's not what this show is about.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://pmctvline2.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/w5a0162_hires1.jpg?w=700" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="278" src="https://pmctvline2.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/w5a0162_hires1.jpg?w=700" width="400" /></a>Compared to the Pharside and Phoenix routine for Virgil, Yorelis, and Ariana about a man trying to get into the pearly gates and being courted by one angel and one devil, the Chris Scott routine looks like amateur hour. Granted even this routine wasn't my favorite. I didn't find the difficulty level to be too high, though it was still higher than a lot of the other routines of the night, and there certainly weren't enough tricks or lifts in it to keep my attention for long. But it at least had purpose and showed that the choreographers were thinking about what story they wanted to tell and how they could both challenge the dancers to step outside of themselves while still showing off their talents. After a string of solid numbers last year, Pharside and Phoenix are really stepping up as a choreography duo that can stand toe to toe with NappyTabs, and that's a good thing.<br />
<br />
This first episode of the competition wasn't enough to measure the show by. The real test will come next week when the dancers are paired up and forced to dance outside of their given styles. But even through the first hour some of the problems are still seeping through. Jason Derulo has yet another performance in this episode. It's not the first of the season and I'm willing to bet it won't be the last, and I'm already seriously beyond bored with him. His critiques have at least gotten better, and he was the only judge to fairly criticize the first routine of the night, so I'll give him that much. The new format has the dancers running off stage into the loving arms of their respective mentors after each tongue lashing from the judges, and then we cut to their very brief (seriously I think it was like three seconds) conversation with their mentor as they respond to what the judges said and he rushes through some kind of advice. Listen, I love tWitch and Travis Wall, but this is horribly fucking pointless. In order for this to work out, they need to better justify these two being such a big factor in the show. Travis choreographs one of his team's performances, but tWitch doesn't, and the advice we see them giving throughout the episode amounts to nothing. I'm hoping that we discover next week that the two of them have a hand in deciding the pairs and maybe even choosing dance styles for those pairs in the weeks to come. If they have insight into what these kids will be good at, I'd like to see them use it to make the show better and also to challenge the contestants to do better. But I'm not optimistic. In the mean time, it just looks like their going to be sticking around to wait in the wings and to pretend to be important. Much like <i>So You Think You Can Dance</i>'s 12th season is shaping up to do if things don't change.<br />
<br />
Random Thoughts:<br />
<br />
--Asaf is the only dancer who seems to be too far out of his depths during this stage of the competition. And since he's only in the top 20 to fill out a spot vacated by a dancers who was injured in the last minute, I guess that's to be expected. I must say I found it pleasantly surprisings that he was the only dancer out there seemingly incapable, or maybe just unwilling, to pick up choreography.<br />
<br />
--Megz is another early favorite of mine. She's beautiful and very expressive in her performance. She and Jaja are two reasons the female Street dancers are being so heavily praised this season, but it's not praise that's misplaced at all. From what I can see, the girls on the street team are much better than everyone else at this stage of the competition. It still remains to be seen how they'll do in other styles, but I'm hoping they stick around for awhile.<br />
<br />
--Is it just me or are the Stage team boys really really gay this year? It just seemed like each time any one of them opened their mouths, a purse fell out. It's not a judgement, simply an observation. In the past, it's seemed like even a lot of the gay contestants (Travis and Benji both come to mind) were at least passable enough that you might not have known they were gay unless you were paying attention. This year....not so much.<br />
<br />
--This year is also short on dreamy boys. No cute and derpy <a href="http://www.broadwaydancecenter.com/images/faculty/boyd_kent/boyd_kent2.jpg" target="_blank">Kent Boyd</a>, no one with the more adult sex appeal of <a href="http://www.shotgundigital.com/images/g_image/photo-001885.jpg" target="_blank">Dmitry Chaplin</a>, and certainly no one as adorable and bear cub-ish as <a href="http://i2.cdnds.net/12/31/618x406/sytycd_season_9_will_thomas.jpg" target="_blank">Will Thomas</a>. No one stood out to me this year and that's odd for this show. Who will the young girls who make up so much of the voting viewership of this show vote for?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06235900666167642831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8445667746613343947.post-15904310911557124722015-07-03T11:20:00.000-07:002015-12-15T11:56:24.015-08:00Sense8 S2 Episodes 9-12<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gMoNrnFUNWA/VcE4IOIZiJI/AAAAAAAAAc8/mOZFJzXo7Jo/s1600/sense8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="266" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gMoNrnFUNWA/VcE4IOIZiJI/AAAAAAAAAc8/mOZFJzXo7Jo/s400/sense8.jpg" width="400" /></a>An interesting thing happened while I rewatched the last act of <i>Sense8</i>, I stopped taking notes as I had been doing consistently through the first eight episodes and just watched it all transpire again. It shouldn't have been as engaging since I literally only just watched these episodes for the first time a couple weeks ago, but I couldn't pull my eyes from the screen. It wasn't that I didn't have anything to say about what happens in this final act, but what I had to say took a backseat to the experience. And I think that's most of what I love about this show in a nutshell: it's not without its problems, when you stop and think about things for too long (like why the hell does Wolfie just happen to have a damn bazooka in the trunk of his car?), the story can falter a little bit. But it's all so interesting, so engaging, and so unlike anything else on TV that you can be totally immersed in the story while its on. In a scene where Kala Visits with Capheus, she asks him why a house might have a big screen TV but no bed. His response is that the bed keeps you in the slum while the TV takes you out of it. True escapism at it's finest. It's not the only thing I love about storytelling, but it's certainly one of the things I love the most, and I think <i>Sense8</i> does it about as well as any other show out there.<br />
<br />
The last four episodes serve as a culmination of everything the show had been building towards for the eight that came before. Most of the stories draw to a solid conclusion, we get an awesome sequence of all of the cluster working together to use their skills and save one of their own, and a fairly solid path forward for future seasons, <a href="http://www.vcpost.com/articles/77211/20150702/sense-8-update-season-1-finale-reviews-netflix-original-show-second-season.htm" target="_blank">assuming there are any</a>. Collectively, these elements combine to make a thrillingly satisfying ending, but taking the stories on an individual level, I'm less sure.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://soseriadosdetv.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/2015-06-16-11.02.03.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://soseriadosdetv.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/2015-06-16-11.02.03.jpg" height="223" width="400" /></a>I mentioned previously that Lito's story is my least favorite of all the individual threads they follow in <br />
the first season, and that's equally true for the ending. The scene between him and Nomi in the eighth episode is brilliant, but it's also the first extended Visiting scene he has in the season. The scene where Sun is on her period and he feels the effects for it was mostly played for laughs, as are most of Lito's scenes, and this is the first time that he has this kind of sit and talk and share some piece of yourself moment that the others have been experiencing all along. It's a part of what I don't like about Lito's story: he feels so isolated from the others. But the other thing I didn't care for about Lito's story is that it felt the most predictable. From the moment Lito allowed Daniela to go off with Joaquin, you knew there was no other way for his story to go. Of course he spirals without Hernando, of course he finds his courage and goes after her, of course he gets her back and his actions allow Hernando to forgive him and they all get to be a happy family again. Subtlety was never <i>Sense8</i>'s strong suit, but this was all a bit too obvious for my taste. Which leads me to say that we've seen this kind of story (specifically the closeted gay man having to come out in order to earn the love of his out boyfriend) enough times before that there's nothing new or interesting that can be done with it, so maybe choose a better story next time.<br />
<br />
With that being said, Lito finding his place within the cluster by helping Wolfie achieve his action movie climax was amazing. I complain about Lito's isolation from the rest of the cluster, but the truth is that Wolfie is isolated too. Prior to the tenth episode, which opens with him having a brief and perplexing conversation with Will and leads to his moment with Lito, the only person he'd spent any one on one time with was Kala. That's still one more senseate than Lito spent time with, but the fact that the two of them are the cluster's most isolated characters and they join together to help one another through their respective story's endings makes a lot of sense and is very fulfilling. If the two of them continue to be on the fringes of the group moving forward, it could be a lot of fun to see a close friendship developing there.<br />
<br />
I've mentioned the show's potential balance issues before, and that came up in small ways in these last four episodes. Lito and Will's conversation during the attempt to rescue Riley bugs me. These last four episodes feature a couple of the cluster members meeting for the first time. Capheus and Kala sit and watch a movie together, and the aforementioned scene between Nomi and Lito is their first meeting as well (other than the orgy). In both of those cases, the characters start off not by introducing themselves but by acknowledging that they already know who one another is. Nomi looks at Lito and says, "You're Lito," and he responds with, "You're Nomi." But when Lito pops up in the BPO facility, the first thing Will says to him is, "Do I know you?" It's a line purely in service to the comedy of their awkward exchange about the orgy they had and Will's being flustered about it all, but it doesn't work for me. I think you can stick with Will's discomfort about having had sex with two men and one woman, and the weirdness of it all, but there's no real excuse for the group to have reached the last episode and for him to still be unsure about who anyone in the cluster is. It strikes a discordant note to me.<br />
<br />
But there's also an element of discordance to the entire final act which kicks up the action elements of the show to a much higher level than any previous point in the series. I don't think that this is a mistake, the ability for this show to be high action has been there from the start, but it was obvious that they wanted to focus on the characters first and the action later. I think all of this was done in an attempt to make sure that when the action happened, we were invested enough in the characters to care about who was getting shot at and why. But it still makes the third act feel, at times, like a slightly different movie than we've been watching for the last eight hours. The quiet character moments that set this show apart from others in the genre are still there. Lito and Nomi's scene is a landmark scene for the two queer characters within the cluster. Capheus and Kala's scene is a mirror of the scene he shared with Sun in the fourth episode. And this group of episodes doesn't lack in more of the romance between Will and Riley and Kala and Wolfie. There's also the third moment of the series doing something that no other show on TV is doing: the birth scenes while Riley listens to her dad playing.<br />
<br />
First the 4 Non Blondes song, then the mind orgy, and now graphic depictions of each senseate's birth all set to classical moment and streamed one after the other. It's honestly transcendent in a way that no other show could really capture. The first time I watched it, I cried like a baby over the beauty of it all. This time, I didn't cry but I still had goosebumps and I couldn't believe how each of their births informed so much of who they'd each become. Kala born in a temple, Will delivered in the back of a cop car, Lito born while the whole family watched the latest telenovela. Who they are echos back to those moments and they are connected to those moments in a deep way, and each of them being connected to their own moment connects them to each other's as well. It felt magical and moving.<br />
<br />
But there's also the action. And the action comes to the forefront in a way that it simply hadn't prior. In the last four episodes, there's multiple shoot outs, car chases, two games of chicken, multiple explosions, and hand to hand fights. Each action sequence works because we are invested, so the show did its work well, but the overall feeling of watching a different show is still there on the surface. In the end, I think this is neither good nor bad for the first season, it's just a fact.<br />
<br />
It all leaves me with a feeling that through the course of its first season, <i>Sense8</i> was capable of telling us exactly who it was. It's a show that's capable of grand ambition and showing us things we've never seen before. It's a show about the quiet moments between these connected characters that prove we aren't alone in our personal struggles. And it's a show with some really great action moments. These things don't have to be mutually exclusive. Indeed, in a show about eight people scattered around the world who are all living different lives but get to be constantly connected, I'm not sure how these things could be mutually exclusive. How <i>Sense8</i> is telling its story is intricately wound up in what that story is, and that's a brilliant thing to find in a first season.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://41.media.tumblr.com/428c5ba8f67669a024d2c95e9e2cb6ff/tumblr_nqjeasVFOh1s66dwno1_500.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="223" src="https://41.media.tumblr.com/428c5ba8f67669a024d2c95e9e2cb6ff/tumblr_nqjeasVFOh1s66dwno1_500.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
Which leaves us with the question of what me might be able to expect from the show going forward? In spite of Netflix's procrastination in announcing a renewal, I find it hard to believe that we won't be getting more episodes. So what might happen? Having Will look at Whispers in the last episode means they'll have to address that in some fashion moving forward. It also probably means that killing Whispers so that Will can have his mind to himself again should be at the top of the Cluster's to do list. Will and Riley are together now, though we don't know for how long, so I expect to see more about how love within a cluster is narcissistic, as Riley's Iceland friend, Inga, put it. Meanwhile, Kala and Wolfie seem to have hit a snag in their own romance. Watching the two stories progress alongside one another should be fun. But mostly, all I think I want to see is more scenes like Riley's rescue. More of these people jumping in and out of one another's lives at just the right time to add their own special skill set to the mix and solve the problem before them. The way the show figured out how to have a specific use for everyone was brilliant, and if that's more of what the next season looks like and less about each character's individual stories, then I'm all in.<br />
<br />
Random thoughts:<br />
<br />
--One thing I'm still not sure on is Wolfie's statement that he's a monster. On the one hand, I think he's just feeling a bit down on himself after the events at his uncle's place, but prior to the last episode, there was no evidence of him being monstrous. So should we take the statement with a grain of salt, or does the show honestly want him to be a bit more on the homicidal maniac side of the spectrum? The way Will calls him in to play chicken with the helicopter suggests that he's akin to a suicide bomber within the group. But I still don't know if I feel like that was earned or not.<br />
<br />
--Something else I feel very split on is Riley's background. Currently, she feels like the one cluster member with the fewest skills or knowledge to offer in big action moments. But beyond that, the last episode being so focused on telling the story about her and her husband seemed like a miscalculation to me. It's not that those flashbacks weren't affecting, because they were. But in a situation where so very much of who she is in these moments has to harken back to this experience, it seems a bit odd that we're only just finding out about it now. They do a good job of dropping hints about it all throughout, esp in the episodes after she's back in Iceland. So I feel confident that they knew this backstory all along, but it's another moment where part of me thinks they should have told us about it before they did. <br />
<br />
--For all of my dislike of Lito's story, his scenes at the bar were really nice. I liked it that they had him go back and apologize instead of allowing the scene to just kind of exist in a bubble. But also, did he actually pay for any of those drinks? I know he's famous and all, but still.<br />
<br />
--I mentioned it earlier, but Wolfie just happening to have a bazooka in his trunk made me laugh both times. It never pulled me out of the narrative, but it was still funny and slightly unbelievable, but still fun.<br />
<br />
--One more thing I'd like to see if the show is renewed is for the partners to be a little bit less perfect. Amanita, Hernando, and Rajan are all just way too storybook for me. I love them all as I love all the characters on the show, but a few flaws can go a long way. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06235900666167642831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8445667746613343947.post-73647128478658185202015-06-27T13:02:00.000-07:002015-06-30T13:40:11.143-07:00Sense8 S2 Episodes 5-8“Who can say if it is we that make the choice, or the choice that makes us?”<br />
<br />
Capheus' line from the fifth episode gets at one of my favorite aspects of this show: the question of <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://tomandlorenzo.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Sense8-Television-Series-Netflix-Review-Tom-Lorenzo-Site-TLO.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://tomandlorenzo.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Sense8-Television-Series-Netflix-Review-Tom-Lorenzo-Site-TLO.jpg" height="266" width="400" /></a></div>
what makes us who we are. And also how who we are can bind us to others from around the world no matter how dissimilar we might seem. It also comes in the moment I knew I was going to go all in on this show. I think the 4 Non Blondes singalong from the fourth episode was a landmark moment of the series, but the conversation between Sun and Capheus in this episode marked the true strength of the series for me. It's two people who couldn't be more different; Capheus an African man with an exuberant and outgoing, optimistic personality, and Sun a Korean woman who is more reserved and internal and strongly pragmatic than most of the other characters. They get together and they just talk. There's no running, no shooting, no action, no big time governmental conspiracy behind their conversation, simply two very different people talking and finding out that they aren't very different at all.<br />
<br />
I love the conversation that they have. I love the sheer amount of "I" statements found in it. Sun's isolation and struggle to answer the question before her calls Capheus to her in spite of how much she wants to be alone, but instead of having some kind of "tell me your problems and let me offer a solution" moment, Capheus talks about his family and his history with his mother. Sun talks about her family and her last moment with her mother. And through these similar relationships and experiences, the two of them arrive at a solution for their respective problems. Capheus remembers the importance of keeping his promise to care for his mother through everything, and Sun remembers the importance of keeping her promise to protect her brother and father. It's clear that their decisions to work for Mr. Kabaka and to go to prison respectively will setup their stories moving forward, but for the time being, it's just two people talking mostly about themselves, finding their similarities, and wading their way towards a hard choice.<br />
<br />
The way the show can strike a balance between these quieter moments, and the bigger more action based ones is to its credit. But the second act of this 12 hour long movie also exposes some of the weakness in the storytelling. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that it exposes the very very fine line that I think the show walks sometimes successfully and sometimes a bit more wobbly. I talked in the last review about the pacing issues, how slow the show can feel through those early moments, and about when the show decides to release certain information. The biggest element of these in this second act comes in the form of the closure of Dr. Metzger's influence on Nomi's story.<br />
<br />
It takes a full seven episodes before we find out who Metzger is actually working for. This information reshapes our interaction with Nomi's stint in the hospital from the first four episodes. He isn't some shadowy monster hired by her bigoted family to lobotomize her. He's a shadowy figure from a huge multinational conglomeration, BPO, who has been working to lobotomize senseates all around the world. That makes far more sense! Forgive my flippant tone here. In all honestly I do think that this explanation makes far more sense than the assumptions we were left to make before hand, but I also think the conspiracy storyline is the weakest within the show. But more on that in a future review.<br />
<br />
This question of what information to release and when is at the heart of most storytelling. And the truth is I'm still not sure if I think <i>Sense8</i> answers it properly. Telling us something more about Metzger when he was gearing up to perform the surgery would have changed my view of that particular story early on and helped things make a little bit more sense. It would have changed my perception of Nomi's mother from a cartoonishly evil villain, into someone who has her flaws but still honestly thought she was doing the right thing for her daughter. But having this information then would have eliminated the mystery aspect of finding it out here. So what's more important: giving your audience the information they need to make a scene make sense at the time, or preserving the mystery? I don't know that I have an answer to that question, but what is clear is that <i>Sense8</i> chose the mystery and to a certain extent the first three episodes suffered as a result of that choice. If anyone couldn't make it through those episodes because they didn't have this information, then I wouldn't be able to blame them, but getting it here was a lot of fun and they certainly missed out.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-X4W99FTn7_M/VYHvqGYl1GI/AAAAAAAAArQ/Ta1ExxI96rc/s1600/Screen-Shot-2015-05-07-at-5.13.35-PM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="218" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-X4W99FTn7_M/VYHvqGYl1GI/AAAAAAAAArQ/Ta1ExxI96rc/s1600/Screen-Shot-2015-05-07-at-5.13.35-PM.png" width="400" /></a></div>
There are two scenes in this collection of episodes that I think are just as much landmark scenes for the show as the singalong from the first act was. The first being the orgy scene in the sixth episode. It comes (pardon the pun) smack in the middle of the series (it's the center-most point of the center-most episode), and it is phenomenal. It's hot no matter how many times you watch, it's an unabashed moment of the producers saying, "Look at how beautiful our cast is," and it also answers one of those silly and simple but still important questions that sci-fi stories often have to grapple with: What's sex look like for these people now that they've been born to their new lives? The answer is hot, pansexual, international, and intense. And good for them! There's also something important about the fact that Sun, Riley, and Capheus are missing from the sexy fun times (though I can't really spot a solid reason for Kala's absence. Maybe she's sleeping). Lito and Nomi are having sex with their respective partners, Wolfie is turned on by a woman at the naked spa he seems to spend so much time at, and Will is exercising which we all know releases endorphins and gets you all worked up. So everyone participating in the mind orgy is already in that aroused headspace and get those emotions kicked up a notch by the actions of two members of the cluster. Riley, and Sun, however, feel sad and troubled at this moment. And Capheus is bored but trying to remain professional as he waits for his boss's daughter to finish her treatment. These three, even though they all seem to be awake at the moment the mind orgy happens, are not experiencing emotions that would allow for them to participate. Capheus at least seems to get a boredom boner while watching another Van Damme movie, but that's the extent of the effect. It shows, in my opinion, that the people behind the show are still really thinking about the deeper implications of everything they're doing. And this conscious and reasonable exclusion of specific characters takes a scene that otherwise might have been totally gratuitous and makes it an important moment of deepening the show's mythology. <br />
<br />
But it also exposes one more potential problem with the storytelling. It feels like the producers know the portions of the story they're focused on now might be a bit slow and boring, and so every now and then they toss the viewers a bone to get them over the hump. Some of the action sequences and certainly the mind orgy scene feel as though they fall into that trap. They aren't wrong, per se; the story through this middle section of the show was especially slow and boring to me on this second viewing. But much as <i>Game of Thrones</i> often used sex and nudity to spice up what they thought was a boring exposition scene in their first season, <i>Sense8</i> is trying to mask the fact that they couldn't come up with a more natural way to make the story engaging in its own rights by throwing sex at us as a distraction. I agree with the tactic here more than I did on <i>Game of Thrones</i> because 1) the scenes on <i>Game of Thrones</i> weren't as boring as the showrunners thought they were and therefore didn't need spicing up, and 2) because the sex here actually does do a good job of deepening the mythology of the show as I said. So if the distraction can still hold some level of importance, then I can't see a reason to fully dissuade them from using it. Though I would suggest maybe choosing a more interesting and engaging story for next season so you don't have to fall back on these tricks.<br />
<br />
The other scene is Nomi's big action sequence towards the end of the eighth episode. This is the start of the other reason I think I love this show more after a first
season than I do most other shows in the same time frame. One of the
reasons I don't care for first seasons as much as I do subsequent
seasons of a show is because I'd much rather see characters in control of
their skills and abilities than simply learning how to get there. One of
my favorite moments in <i>Buffy the Vampire Slayer</i> comes in the finale of the fifth season when Buffy goes out back to kill a vampire like it's nothing and then walks back in to continue the conversation about how she's going to save her sister from a god. Vampires through the first three seasons represented a serious threat to the group. Every night offered Buffy a difficult fight, and the villains she was most frightened of (Spike, Drusilla, The Master) were all just vampires. But by the time you reach the fifth season, slaying a vampire is just "what I do," as she puts it.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://i1.cdnds.net/15/19/618x392/ustv-sense8-still-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://i1.cdnds.net/15/19/618x392/ustv-sense8-still-2.jpg" height="252" width="400" /></a>While the senseates aren't quiet as in control after their first eight episodes, the start of that control is beginning to shine through. Will and Nomi are drawn together through their simultaneous investigation into the BPO issue. And so he helps her to escape when Whispers is coming for her. Her distress wakes up Sun who joins with Will's knowledge of basic police procedure to keep them informed of what's happening and to give Sun a leg up in her fighting with predetermined information. All of this is seamless, and when you consider that Sun hasn't spent much, if any, time with either Will or Nomi before now, you see that there's an ease with which she can come to their rescue and do her thing. Likewise, as soon as Nomi gets into the car and remembers that she doesn't know how to drive, here comes Capheus with his exceptional driving skills to help her out. It's a fun and important scene that showcases a taste of just what is possible through the senseate connection. If this is what can happen when just four of them Share with each other and use their skills to help one another get through a tough situation, then imagine what it will be like when all eight of them work in tandem. Honestly, I don't think it's spoiling anything to say that we won't have to wait for the realities of that too much longer. To give us the satisfaction of that in the midst of the first season is remarkable. And it feels, at least to me, like its happened sooner here than it would have in most other shows.<br />
<br />
The other stories drag a little through these middle passages as the show works to setup the final moments. A lot of what happens here is clearly just table-setting of everything to come. Felix gets shot and ends up in a coma with Wolfie by his side. It's a tragic thing that stems clearly from their theft and sale of the diamonds in the first act; before he's shot, Felix is panicking about the fact that he tried to get in touch with Abraham and hasn't been able to. But there's still something that feels a bit more liminal about it all. I was invested the first time I watched it, and even still invested now, but it's not as satisfying as the heist that came before it and the action that will follow. So you're left viewing these scenes as what they are: an excuse to get Wolfie and Kala more time together, and obvious setup for what's to come in Wolfie's story.<br />
<br />
The second act does at least represent the strong escalation of Kala and Wolfie's romance. When he shows up naked to her wedding (and shout out to the writers and directors for going with a full frontal male nude shot here when so many other shows shy away from such things while not at all second guessing the choice to show women naked), it starts the main portion of their story together. The track of their romantic relationship running alongside Will and Riley's is one of the things I like about the show. But in these middle moments it makes Kala and Wolfie feel more isolated from the rest of the group in a way that bothers me. I think the show has a slight problem with balancing who spends time with whom in the cluster, and that's hardly ever more glaring than in this story where Wolfie spends pretty much all of his time with Kala and she spends most, but not all, of her time with him. More on that to come.<br />
<br />
With that being said, I love their rooftop conversation about her faith and his atheism. As an atheist, I tend to side with Wolfie here, but I also really enjoy seeing and hearing stories about people who do have faith and who have thought about their faith and the reasons they hold it and have strong moments in their past that connect them to their faith. The scene of Kala as a child looking out through Ganesh's eyes and seeing the festival and becoming a true believer is beautiful and moving. And her assertion that her love and belief in science is not mutually exclusive to her faith is a really nice touch. The show's continued work of making these characters deep and three-dimensional is something that should be applauded.<br />
<br />
Sun's story finds itself starting in earnest while most of the others are at a middle. The scenes of her in prison are the best for the character. And the story of how these women have found a freedom and a sense of community only in prison, having been removed from the male dominated world they otherwise live in, is both beautiful and heartbreaking all at the same time.<br />
<br />
Lito is also at something of a beginning for his story. The first act for him served as nothing more than character introductions, while the second act introduces the real antagonist and the obstacle he has to overcome. Lito's story continues to be my least favorite, but I think I'll save most of my thoughts on it for the review of the last act.<br />
<br />
So through the first two acts of the show we've seen great character work, a solid foundation being laid, a clear process within the four episode arcs, and the beginnings of how in control and how strong the cluster is capable of being. All of which, I think, has been handled deftly and with a self-assurance that other shows don't have in their first season. Next week, we'll look at the way they bring these things together in the final act and maybe talk a bit about what I think of as the last reason I loved this first season so much: The show's strong sense of identity. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06235900666167642831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8445667746613343947.post-44425268429529787582015-06-20T14:03:00.000-07:002015-06-20T14:03:13.565-07:00Sense8 S1 Episodes 1-4<a href="http://conversationsabouther.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Sense8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://conversationsabouther.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Sense8.jpg" height="225" width="400" /></a>I heard about <i>Sense8</i> about a month or two before the episodes landed on Netflix. The trailer was intriguing, human, and sexy as hell. The buzz around the show was picking up quite a bit of steam on social media, and a lot of people I knew couldn't stop talking about how queer the show would be. Which, of course, was the first step in getting me to the point where I was more than excited to watch it. I started following a couple blogs on Tumblr about it, and everything I saw and everything I read from the showrunners only served to make me more and more excited for this show. I convinced myself that it would be the best thing on TV, and being helmed by the Wachowskis and J. Michael Straczynski, how could it not be? Fast forward a couple months and the first season arrives. I spend a weekend locked in my room watching all 12 hours over the course of two days and it all turns out to be even better than my ridiculously high expectations. I finished the 12th episode with an immediate desire to go back to the first and start all over again. Sadly, the pending release of <i>Orange is the New Black</i>'s third season put a slight damper in those plans, but I've just watched the first four episodes again, and I have to say, it hasn't lost it's appeal for me. I think I'm solidly in love with something new and <i>Sense8</i> has quickly worked its way into my top five favorite shows ever. This is an important development for me because I generally hate the first season of everything. The groundwork and foundation laying parts of storytelling which are always so necessary just aren't my favorite. So I went back to rewatch them in an attempt to find out why it is that those things don't bother me about this show. Hopefully over the course of these reviews, I'll figure that out, or at least I'll just have a damn good time watching the show again.<br />
<br />
In an interview he gave <a href="http://collider.com/" target="_blank">Collider</a> (which is well worth reading, honestly; you can find it <a href="http://collider.com/sense8-j-michael-straczynski-talks-collaborating-with-the-wachowskis/" target="_blank">here</a>), Straczynski said something that shaped my original viewing of the season:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I want people to watch all 12 hours, straight through. If you have
enough time on your hands to watch all 12 hours, straight through,
that’s the best case scenario. That being said, once we restructured for
12 episodes, we realized that it’s almost a three-act structure. It’s
four-episode arc is like an act. So, you could do four and four and
four. That’s one way to watch it because there are good break points in
there. But, my hope is that they’ll watch it straight through. From our
point of view, it’s really written as a 12-hour movie. Ultimately,
that’s what it is. When you walk into a movie theater, you don’t walk
out half-way through, and then come back the next day to watch the rest
of it.</blockquote>
On the one hand, this can bee seen as a showrunner trying his best to drum up business and get as many people in to watch his show as possible, thusly insuring they get a second season. But I thought of it as something more than that; I thought it suggested that they'd thought about this show in ways that you don't find people thinking about their shows before they air. It's something I lament in a couple of my reviews of the show <a href="http://adrianalexanderswriting.blogspot.com/search/label/empire" target="_blank"><i>Empire</i></a>, they seem to just be going from episode to episode without much thought or structure to the season as a whole. But from what Straczynski said, I assumed that they started with a story on <i>Sense8</i>, and then discovered their 12 episode format around that.<br />
<br />
The first three episodes are slow. I realized this when I watched it the first time, but I was engaged enough with the characters to overlook it. In this sense, the pacing felt deliberate to me. A lesser show would try to rush through the character introductions, lay that groundwork immediately, and then hit the ground running. <i>Sense8</i> wants to take its time, savor the introductions, and try to get you to connect with these characters on a real level. That doesn't mean that they don't paint with broad strokes in the early going like most shows do. But that's inevitable so like with any storytelling medium, you have to give them a little leeway. Will (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1668284/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t7" target="_blank">Brian J. Smith</a>) is a cop in Chicago, and when he finds a shot black kid in a bad neighborhood, of course he goes to save him against his partner's better judgement and of course he stands up to anyone looking to stand in the way of his noble and heroic action. In reality, he's just doing his job, but within the current climate of our increased awareness towards police brutality, it's the show's way of saying "We know he's a white cop in a big urban area, but it's OK, he really is the good guy!" You roll your eyes a bit, but you keep watching.<br />
<br />
This is because the introductions that are subtle are more impactful because of it. Kala's (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3867591/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t9" target="_blank">Tina Desai</a>) intro is that of an Indian woman about to get married and having doubts about that marriage. But what's remarkable about that is the way the show skirts around certain cliches. She is Indian, and she is Hindu, but her marriage isn't arranged. The man she's to marry is important, and dreamy, and he chose her, and went about his courting and proposal in the right fashion. Any woman would be happy to have him. But Kala isn't. The show doesn't try to explain why she's unhappy with Rajan in those first four hours. But it does make it a point to say that it's not for the standard reasons you'd assume this woman in this culture would be unhappy with her pending nuptials. In so doing, they immediately paint Kala as a real and complex person, and avoid certain racist stereotypes. <br />
<br />
Not everyone is given the same amount of development in the same short amount of time that Kala gets, but there are eight of them, so is it really realistic to believe that they could? Instead, the show is willing to allow the rest to fall into place over the course of those first four episodes; the first act of the movie if you will. Which is exactly where that belongs. In the first two episodes, we learn about Lito's (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1775614/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t1" target="_blank">Miguel Angel Silvestre</a>) secret relationship with Hernando, Nomi's (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3911870/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t4" target="_blank">Jamie Clayton</a>) relationship with her mother and the specifics of her identity as a trans woman, Capheus' (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1543989/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t3" target="_blank">Aml Ameen</a>) difficult life as a bus driver in Nairobi taking care of his sick mother, Sun's (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0046277/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t2" target="_blank">Donna Bae</a>) strained family relationship and her precarious position within her father's company, Wolfgang's (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0726262/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t6" target="_blank">Max Riemelt</a>) criminal activities, and a few things about Riley (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3095562/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t5" target="_blank">Tuppence Middleton</a>). Admittedly, Riley gets the least amount of development in those first four hours in spite of her story starting off with the most action and suspense. Either way, it's eight characters with eight different stories all capable of being the center of their own shows, and yet we get a solid foundation for each of them in the first four hours. It's an ambitious feat for any series, and one that I think <i>Sense8</i> handles as well as can be expected.<br />
<br />
A portion of the credit for that goes into the way the show chooses to introduce and wrap up storylines. Two great examples of this in the first four hours can be found in Nomi and Wolfgang's stories. Nomi falls off of a motorcycle while riding with her girlfriend in the San Francisco Pride parade. She wakes up in the hospital to find her horrible mother still insisting on calling her Michael (her birth name), and partnering with a Dr. Metzger to force her to have a brain surgery she doesn't want to correct a defect she may or may not have. In the first episode, Wolfgang and his best friend Felix race against a rival gang to break into a safe and steal a nice amount of diamonds. It's a tense sequence in which Wolfgang attempts to crack a safe we're told is supposed to be uncrackable. They succeed, of course, and make off with the goods at the very last minute.<br />
<br />
It makes sense to introduce these stories in these early moments. The scenes serve to tell us a lot about the characters in question and setup a lot of the story moving forward. And the impressive thing is how they're both granted soft endings in the fourth episode. Wolfgang and Felix steal the diamonds in the first and find a way to sell them in the fourth. Boom, that's done (of course their overall story is only just beginning, but more on that in awhile). Likewise, Nomi's escaping from the hospital and right out of Dr. Metzger's clutches by the end of the fourth episode, but more importantly it also marks the last time we'll really see her mother for the rest of the season. The actions and choices made in the fourth will have consequences for the episodes to come, but if you're interested in the story about this trans woman being held against her will and trying hard to have the people in power validate her identity, and protect her body and her rights to make her own choices about said body, well then that story's been told and now it's time to move on to what comes next.<br />
<br />
The other thing that works here is balance; not every story ends in the fourth episode. Lito doesn't have much of a cohesive story in the first four hours, but what will be the major conflict of his story for the rest of the season gets started in the third episode with the introduction of Joaquin. As I mentioned before, Wolfgang sells half of the diamonds they stole and brings some portion of that story to a close, but the selling the of the diamonds only serves to bring more trouble for him and Felix in the long run. Likewise, Capheus finds himself drowning in customers for his van in the wake of the events in the third episode, which seems to signal an ending to his financial and professional struggles. But he's also immediately introduced to Silas Kabaka, a shady businessman who has exactly the medicine Capheus' mother needs and will of course ask Capheus to do something underhanded in order to get it. So where one story might reach an ending, another springs up to take its place and set the tone for much of the rest of the season. The overall effect is that you can stop after the fourth episode if you so desire, but the storytelling is so well planned and executed that you really shouldn't want to. When a question is answered, another question, just as compelling as the first, is asked and the cycle continues. It's simple storytelling 101 kind of stuff, but the deft hand they employ to make it work this early in the show's run bodes very well for the rest of the season and for seasons to come.<br />
<br />
If it seems like all there is to talk about with this show is the human drama elements, then that's because at its core <i>Sense8</i> is a drama. The sci-fi elements of the show are brilliant and important, but they really only serve to enhance the human drama and to offer some really cool kick ass moments. The <a href="http://www.avclub.com/tv/sense8/" target="_blank">AV Club reviews</a> of the show lament the early episodes' reliance on ending on major action sequences. And they aren't wrong per se, but I think they miss the point to a certain extent. The first hour ends with Riley in a tense and bloody shootout in a drug dealer's living room while her friends try to rob him. The second ends with Will in a high speed car chase. And the Third ends with Sun using the power of the Senseate bond to "Share" with Capheus and use his body to employ her great martial arts skills to kick some ass. But to say that these scenes are nothing more than perfunctory action sequences to hold the viewer's attention through these slower moments is to miss the nuances of each.<br />
<br />
Will's been having a lot of weird things happening to him, and at the end of the second episode, he meets someone who seems to have the answers he needs. The problem is that at the beginning of that episode he was told by a higher authority that this person is a wanted terrorist. So while the scene that follows is a standard action-y car chase through Chicago, the character motivation that fuels it is important. Will had to choose on the spot between his years of cop training and doing what's "right" within those parameters, and listening to his gut to get the answers he needs. He did what makes sense and as a result Jonas (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0004710/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t13" target="_blank">Naveen Andrews</a>), the one person with answers, is taken into custody. It's smarter than your average Michael Bay car chase. It's not action for action's sake, it's action for the purpose of greater characterization. Likewise, Sun's scene with Capheus severs the purpose of showing us what the Senseate bond is capable of. We get a quick rundown of the difference between "Visiting" and "Sharing" from Jonas after he's been arrested, but the fight sequence to end the third episode puts all of it into motion. We see how Sun's abilities can be used by Capheus to help him out of his situation. In the same scene, we also see Will imparting a bit of his gun training at the shooting range. This kind of thing is only possible from within the Cluster, and that fact will be very important later on. But for now, the show gives us these action moments in an attempt to show us these things instead of just telling us.<br />
<br />
But as I said earlier, the first three episodes are slow and can be a bit boring at times. So while the action based endings aren't, in my opinion, solely about spicing things up with a little excitement, I do think that they have that effect. And it's a solid and valuable reward for sitting through what otherwise might be an hour of tampered enjoyment. But it all leads into the biggest takeaway from the first four episodes: <i>Sense8</i> is not a sci-fi action show; it's a drama with sci-fi elements. This fact is brought home in the best scene in the first four episodes, and maybe even the entire season. That's the singalong to 4 Non Blonde's <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NXnxTNIWkc" target="_blank">What's Up</a>. It's a fairly standard 90's song that I don't have a particular attachment to, but it's impossible not to have a deep emotional reaction to the sequence. It's simply so very very human. Two of the cluster members just so happen to be listening to and singing this song at the same time (Riley on her mp3 player, and Wolfgang at karaoke), and that leads to it kind of vibrating through all the rest of the members and bringing them together emotionally if not physically as it does Wolfgang and Kala. I think this has less to do with the song in particular, which is a great choice and certainly resonates with the themes of the episode, and more to do with the sheer universality of music in general. I think it's something all cultures share, and having a deep emotional reaction to music is something I'm sure everyone's experienced at one point or another. So you know what the characters are feeling at this moment in time, and you know what it's like to be in a car with friends, or at a concert with a bunch of strangers all listening to the same thing and all feeling close to the same emotion because of it. This scene is the reason you watch through the first four hours. If you make it through the song and you aren't all in for this show, then I'm not fully sure you're all together human.<br />
<br />
These are the things I think the first four hours do exceptionally well. What doesn't work as well are some of the choices on when to release information. Lito's story suffers from this in a visible way over the course of the first four. He takes Daniela to a movie premier as his beard, and when she presses for the evening to end in sex he turns her down. This in and of itself is actually a nice moment as it shows that Lito isn't closeted because he's denying his sexuality, he's only showing a straight face to the press so he can keep getting the action movie roles he likes. He's not cheating on his boyfriend, he's simply hiding him away from the rest of the world. It's not that that makes it better, but it does make his story feel different from similar stories on TV. But what fails is when Daniela shows up at Lito's place a few hours later drunk and making a scene so he'll be forced to let her in. What follows is a scene where she barges into his home, makes an attempt to basically rape him, and then runs up to his bedroom without an invitation to find Hernando laying in bed in his briefs. It's a scene that's played for laughs in a lot of different ways, as are most of Lito's scenes throughout the season, but Daniela's insistence and forwardness, which could have come off as nothing more than a female character in control of her sexuality, actually came off as predatory in a way that didn't work for me. If the genders of the two characters were reversed, it wouldn't be a funny scene at all.<br />
<br />
In the next episode, we find out that the real reason she was acting that way was because she needed a place to stay since her crazy ex-boyfriend, Joaquin, is looking for her and she's just looking to lay low until things cool down. The truth is that she's in trouble and needs help, but since we don't learn that until after she's introduced to us as a raving, sex-craved, near-rapist, it's hard to have much sympathy for her. If they'd had her find out about Hernando in a different, kinder, fashion, it would reshape our view of the story early on.<br />
<br />
Nomi's story suffers from the same problem. Her's is the one with the highest stakes in these first four hours since she's being held against her will and is about to be lobotomized. But the truth is that without knowing anything at all about Metzger, it's hard to take her story seriously. His introduction is handled in a fashion that suggests he's just working on her mother's orders and is looking to perform this surgery for no real reason. That's not the case, but we won't find that out for another episode or two. And when you couple the hospital's actions with those of the Nurse turning Will and the gunshot kid in the first episode away from treatment, you're left thinking that the writers just don't know what healthcare in this country really looks like. It's not legal for any hospital to refuse treatment to someone who stumbles in with a gunshot wound, and it's also not legal for them to hold a healthy adult woman in custody to perform brain surgery on her without her consent. Indeed, if her mother and the doctor wanted to force the issue, they could, but first they'd have to have her declared incompetent or otherwise incapable of making her own decisions, or prove she's a danger to herself or others before they could get that ball rolling. Again it's a situation where information given at a point after these first four hours will shine more light on these events and allow them to make a higher level of sense, but for the time being it has the effect of pulling you out of the narrative. Knowing when's a good time to reveal certain information can be a tough tightrope for a story to walk, and for me personally, <i>Sense8</i> doesn't do a very good job of getting it right in these first episodes.<br />
<br />
But the good far outweighs the bad, and it all left me thinking that sticking with the show would be worth it. And I was right. I think there's a confidence to the show's storytelling. It knows who it is in a lot of ways, and that's something I don't think you get from very many shows in their first seasons. Shows usually have to try on different stories and different scenarios before figuring out what story they want to tell and how they want to tell it. Through four hours, I didn't get the impression that that would be a problem with <i>Sense8</i>. So that's one thing I think this first season has that others don't, but it's not the only thing. I'll review the second act of this 12 hour long movie next time and dig a little deeper to get at one of the other important distinctions that I think sets this show apart and launched it into the space of my top shelf favorites. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06235900666167642831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8445667746613343947.post-19476031696790737552015-06-02T15:09:00.000-07:002015-06-02T15:09:48.426-07:00So You Think You Can Dance S12E1<a href="http://www.eonline.com/eol_images/Entire_Site/2015026/rs_560x415-150126172220-1024-so-you-think-you-can-dance.jw.12615.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.eonline.com/eol_images/Entire_Site/2015026/rs_560x415-150126172220-1024-so-you-think-you-can-dance.jw.12615.jpg" height="296" width="400" /></a><a href="http://www.cbs.com/shows/survivor/" target="_blank"><i>Survivor</i></a> is one of the longest running Reality TV shows. Clocking in at a whopping 26 seasons, it's easily become a TV staple that doesn't seem to be slowing down anytime soon. Part of its longevity is due to its two seasons a year format, part of it to its placement on CBS, and part of it has to do with the show's ever evolving format. The core of the game hasn't changed, and when you get down to it, no matter what you think of the show, it's a pretty brilliant game. Strangers forced to live together and work together to succeed are then forced to turn on each other to advance in the solo game, and are then forced to convince the people they turned on to give them votes for a million bucks. The dynamics shift so often and so completely that it can be hard to keep track of, and it's one of the few places where a person can be rewarded for what would otherwise be seen as despicable behavior. But while those elements remain constant over the years, the road to get there has often changed. The way contestants are chosen, who's competing for the 1st time vs who's back again, things like Exile Island, and the dynamics of setting up the original tribes have all be refined, included, and excluded over the years to keep the product fresh. That seems to be one key to making sure viewers keep coming back.<br />
<br />
So enter a show like So You Think You Can Dance. It's a show where young people skilled in one specific thing (dance) get together and compete against each other for America's votes and the right to be named America's Favorite Dancer. There's not much room for improvement on the process. Which is probably why in ten years the only major change to the show's format has been the introduction of the All Stars. But coming into the 12th season of the show, we now have an all new format: Street vs Stage! And after this horrendous first episode, it appears to be as bad of an idea as I assumed it would be back when it was first introduced.<br />
<br />
Basically, it seems to go something like this: The contestants are being split up into two teams. The Stage team will be comprised of dancers with formal training in the core genres this show is centered around: contemporary, ballroom, ballet, jazz, etc. The Street team will be self-taught dancers in Hip Hop and....well Hip Hop. I know that Hip Hop will ostensibly include things like Krump and Jookin which we get a nice look at in this episode, but let's be honest, on SYTYCD all of those things fall under the Hip Hop category.<br />
<br />
It's horribly obvious to anyone who's watched so much as a single episode of this show that the Stage team will have an unbelievably unfair advantage. They're trained and well versed in multiple types of dance, they're being mentored by the great Travis Wall, and they're generally less likely to spend as much time outside of their comfort zones than the Street team is. What remains to be seen in this format is how the pairs will be formed once we get to the top 20. I have a lot of thoughts about the holes in that as well, but I'll reserve judgement until I see what the producers have come up with. Either way, in the 11 seasons of this show, only 3 Hip Hop based contestants have gone on to win. So one team starts out with an uphill battle ahead of them, and that fact should have been obvious to whoever came up with this ridiculous idea.<br />
<br />
Also changed this year is the Judge's Panel. <a href="http://tvline.com/2015/01/12/mary-murphy-fired-leaving-so-you-think-you-can-dance/" target="_blank">Gone is the staple that was Mary Murphy</a>, and brought in on a weekly basis will be <a href="http://www.paulaabdul.com/" target="_blank">Paula Abdul</a> and <a href="http://www.jasonderulo.com/" target="_blank">Jason Derulo</a>. Abdul should be fine; she can't replace Mary who's high energy might have been grating to some, but who was always more than welcome to me. But she's knowledgeable enough to provide observant, if at times too gentle, critiques. Derulo might be the worst thing to ever happen to this show. He was useless, unhelpful, and too complimentary when he guested last season. This episode proves he doesn't have a dance vocabulary to be of any real use to the dancers. Ostensibly, you could say he was brought on to add a Hip Hop strong judge to the critiques, which will be useful under the new format, but I'd challenge you to give me one good Hip Hop observation he made in the whole two hours.<br />
<br />
Instead, what Derulo offers is the chance to steal the spotlight and stage time from the people the show is actually about: the dancers. He gets up twice in this episode and goes on stage: once to sing, and once to dance. No one who watches this show is tuning in to see Jason Derulo. But what makes him an even worse judge is his obvious homophobia. Or maybe homophobia is a strong word, he doesn't make any beyond the pail hateful remarks, but he is clearly and unabashedly uncomfortable by effeminate men. There are two moments in this episode where Derulo's disinterest in feminine men shined through brightly, and both of those moments were so inappropriate and uncomfortable that it left me wondering if watching the season would even be worth it. Nigel's come under fire before for remarks that were just a shade too homophobic to have any place on a show like this one, and the big problem with Derulo being on the panel is that he gives Nigel a way to double down on that kind of behavior. I hate to stereotype too much; the fact is that gay men are just as capable of playing sports as they are of being great dancers, but the fact remains that SYTYCD has seen a large number of clearly gay contestants. So why would you bring in a judge who is seemingly so uncomfortable with homosexuality that he can't even be bothered to give the auditions by these people the benefit of his attention?<br />
<br />
Of the episode itself, I'll say this: the audition process is lessened by removing the choreography aspect of the audition. Not everyone deserves to go right to Vegas, and not everyone who doesn't quite make the cut deserves to go right home. The choreography aspect of this stage made the complexity of the show and of dance in general more obvious. Either make it or go home is a process that works on <a href="http://www.americanidol.com/" target="_blank"><i>American Idol</i></a>, but not on here.<br />
<br />
And as for the contestants, the only person that left a real impression was Jojo. If she makes it through Vegas, she'll be someone to keep an eye on. But what I really want to talk about is the rhetoric around Steven Ban's audition.<br />
<br />
Cat starts with a rundown of what is needed to make it on the Street team, and then they cut to Steven. He's a young, lanky, white guy in glasses and with an undeniable nerd quality. This is something he embraces and plays up for the camera; the music he chooses even has a kind of video game quality to it. And it's all anyone can talk about: he doesn't look like your typical Street dancer. But here's the thing, he's actually good. He's not as great as some of the best Animators we've seen on the show. He's a bit static, and his pops and locks aren't as strong as we've seen. But his tricks and his quality of movement proves he knows what he's doing. In any other season, he'd be complimented and enthusiastically sent on to perform the choreography. Here, all anyone can talk about is how he doesn't "look" like a Hip Hop dancer. All of this is coded language for White. They shroud it in talks of him being a nerd, and he is certainly that, but when you get down to it, what it feels like Abdul is talking about when she says he "need[s] the rest of the 'stuff'' to fill out [his] vocabulary" is that he needs to be black.<br />
<br />
The odd thing about this is that I don't know where to place it. Is it racist? You can't be racist against a white guy (this is not a point up for debate, if you disagree, I really don't care, it's a simple fact), but by implying that only black guys are fit to dance in this style, you're certainly implying something that feels pretty racist to me. Realistically, it's probably less about race and more about class. Hip Hop is urban, and I'm sure a white guy who clearly grew up in that kind of urban space wouldn't be insulted for trying out for the Street team. Indeed, I'm sure we'll see white people on the Street team, but more on that later. But even if it isn't about Race specifically, and it is about Class, it all boils down to something really problematic: the team makeup of this season is horribly limiting. The people likely to find themselves on one team or the other will fit into small boxes and it will be impossible to break out of them.<br />
<br />
This isn't necessarily something new to this season. The Hip Hop dancers who've done well on this show have often been complimented on how well they dance in other styles <i>for a Hip Hop </i>dancer. This isn't often turned against the typically Stage dancers who then dance Hip Hop, or anything they aren't trained in. Contemporary dancers are generally expected to be good at Ballroom too. When they aren't it's surprising, but when Hip Hop dancers are good at ballroom, that's when the judges are surprised. My expectation is that given the increased number of Hip Hop dancers we'll see this season, we'll have to sit through a lot of this kind of thing, and I can't help but to wonder a bit what fuels it. At what point does "untrained" become code for "poor," and then an extension for "black?"<br />
<br />
I don't generally review these early audition episodes of the show, but this year I wanted to change that because I wanted to get these complaints out of the way early. I think the best bet for this season, which honestly might be the last the show sees, is that the talent on display overshadows these format changes. And this is possible since the group of dancers seem to get more talented each year this show airs. And that's the claim to fame for SYTYCD. Viewers keep coming back to this show because they're certain to see even more talented dancers, even more breathtaking routines than they did last year. So while format changes might be what's kept <i>Survivor </i>fresh over the years, maybe this is one instance where what's good for the goose isn't good for the gander. Let other reality competition shows change it up each year; all SYTYCD needs to do is deliver on the high quality we've come to expect and we'll keep coming back.<br />
<br />
Randoms:<br />
<br />
--I don't intend on reviewing another episode until the Top 20 is set, so I should see you in a few weeks. Unless something really dramatic happens and I have too many thoughts not to make a post.<br />
<br />
--There's also a review of this episode up over on <a href="http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/so-you-think-you-can-dance-auditions-1-memphis-and-220220" target="_blank">AV Club</a>. Oliver and I are pretty much in agreement on this one.<br />
<br />
--The final tally after the first two cities is 43 stage dancers and 37 street dancers. We'll see how those dynamics continue as things move forward. On one hand I expect the number of street dancers to always be a bit below stage numbers, but this isn't a very big difference, so there's that at least.<br />
<br />
--The power failure was a disappointing ploy for drama. Not that the producers created it just for that reason (although I wouldn't put it past them), but the resolution was a bit sad. Or at least the way they engaged with it was lackluster. I would have preferred to see more for this trimmed down, streamlined audition process.<br />
<br />
--Or if that day of auditions was really going to have to be cancelled, then I would have liked to see how the show would have resolved that. I think the people who showed up would have deserved a chance to audition one way or another, and if that was just taken away from them, that would have been fucked up.<br />
<br />
--Back to the point I made about the probable racial breakdown of each team. I honestly can't see a way around this ending up being the season of black dancers vs white dancers. It's possible that as the auditions leave the South (this week was Memphis and Dallas), we'll see a bit more racial diversity, but if there's more then two white people on the Street team or two black people on the Stage team, I'll be shocked. This is a problem on a show that has racial diversity issues to begin with.<br />
<br />
--The last performer of the episode was interesting. Not him, himself, because I can't remember anything other than his great body and nice looking ass in those shorts, but he was a contestant last year and Nigel asked him "Why do you think you didn't make the cut last year?" I can't remember ever hearing that question asked before, which is surprising given the number of repeat auditions this show gets, but I like it a lot. And the kid's lack of an easy answer means he probably didn't spend much time thinking about what kept him out of the top 20 and devoting himself to changing that aspect of his technique in order to be better this time around. Either way, it's a question I'd like to see asked more often.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06235900666167642831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8445667746613343947.post-83532663360387622592015-03-19T16:56:00.001-07:002015-03-20T09:46:14.958-07:00TV Review: Empire Episodes 11 & 12<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nAxa-UiLMyU/VQtCQVkB5SI/AAAAAAAAAa4/q-QVNvYaogo/s1600/960.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nAxa-UiLMyU/VQtCQVkB5SI/AAAAAAAAAa4/q-QVNvYaogo/s1600/960.jpg" height="225" width="400" /></a>I think the last two episodes of <i>Empire's</i> first season are the most perfect encapsulation of what this season has been. I know that that might sound a bit like a compliment, but I don't think it's really intended to be. Because truth be told, the first hour in this two hour long extravaganza, "Die But Once," is brilliant for a number of different reasons, but the second hour, "Who I Am," is a train wreck. <a href="http://www.avclub.com/tv/empire/" target="_blank">The Av Club Reviews</a> of this season have often chided the show when it tackles issues surrounding the company or the music industry as a whole, but praised the show's work on the family and character level. In a nutshell, "Die But Once" is all about the characters and the Lyons family, and "Who I Am" in spite of its title is all about Empire Records and hostile corporate takeovers. As such, the writing is on the wall about which episode is the better of two. I also think that it's generally a better idea not to air two separate episodes back to back like this. I think there are a lot of good things to be said about a two-part episode being aired this way, or even two episodes of a show that's more tightly serialized than <i>Empire </i>is (look no further than the last day of <a href="http://abc.go.com/shows/how-to-get-away-with-murder" target="_blank"><i>How to Get Away With Murder</i></a> episodes for an example of this). But what we had here were two very different episodes of the show that could have benefited from a week long break in between them. <br />
<br />
But first things first, I'm going to try for a little optimism here and suggest something: What if the overall story of <i>Empire</i>'s first season is a story about a hubristic man planning to bring his family together and unite them under his singular vision only to succeed in pushing them farther and farther apart? When you look at "Die But Once," that seems to be the suggestion. In the aftermath of Lucious' confession about his paternity of Lola, sending Camilla away, and leaving Andre alone with his illness, everyone (except Jamal, oddly) has just jumped clean off of the Lucious bandwagon. Cookie is off having a romantic weekend with Malcolm in the Berkshires, Hakeem is getting ready to sign with a different label and compose a freestyle that will be a blatant Fuck You to his father, and Andre is ready to turn in his resignation and give his life over to the Lord. Or to Jennifer Hudson, at least, and who can blame him on that front? And so it's in the penultimate episode that we finally see the fruits of all of Lucious' seeming labor. If when he sat his sons down in that first episode and purposed this little competition what he was hoping for was a moment when all of them would be standing shoulder to shoulder to bring Empire Records to the next step, then he was vastly mistaken.<br />
<br />
But does that reading of the season track through all 12 episodes? His family didn't seem to be too torn apart at the beginning of that first episode. So what might he have been intending on bringing together? And at what point did we ever see Lucious doing anything that would ever benefit someone other than Lucious? So while I don't really accept that particular reading as gospel, it was the closet thing I could find to a seemingly full story that would have drawn to a close in these two episodes.<br />
<br />
But that's to take nothing away from "Die But Once" itself which is a wonderfully engaging and entertaining episode for the show. Everything from Cookie and Malcolm's sexy fun times, to Becky's priceless sass, to Hakeem's revenge worked wonders. But the star of the hour had to be the latest in a season long run of Lucious and Jamal scenes; this one featuring the two of them banding together to make music. It's the honest culmination of their relationship. It's beautiful, moving, and powerful; the song they create is one of the better tracks the show produced all season, and it all can't help but to leave you feeling a bit warm and fuzzy inside.<br />
<br />
If there's one downside to the scene, it's that it left me in a state of disbelief that Lucious could possibly have gone all this time without fully realizing just how talented Jamal is. I think the jealousy arc they set up back towards the beginning of the show (and never really touched on again) might account for some of that, but Jamal's been killing it on a level that Hakeem hasn't, and I'm simply not capable of believing that it would have taken this much time for Lucious, musical genius that he allegedly is, to see it. Here in lies the problem with Lucious' cartoonish level of homophobia. If you want me to believe that Lucious might try to deny that Jamal is his son, I'm willing to go with that, but if you want me to believe that because of Jamal's sexuality, Lucious would have spent years and years of his life ignoring his obvious talent, I can't really wrap my brain around that.<br />
<br />
It's a powerfully moving scene when watched on its own, but it can take on a more sinister light when pitted against the scene where Lucious tells Jamal to get the rights to his old music by any means necessary. The scene where the two of them are making music is inter-cut with scenes of a murder Lucious committed. And then we see Jamal ready to throw Beretti from the roof in order to get what he wants. The suggestion is that in order for<i> </i>Lucious to fully accept Jamal, Jamal's got to become more like him. It also makes you wonder if Lucious' motivations for going off with Jamal and singing with him weren't this dark all along.<br />
<br />
All of this brings us to the point where Lucious names Jamal the next leader of Empire records. These two episodes are written by Ilene Chaiken and Danny Strong, but both of them clarify just how much of <i>Empire</i> was always meant to be an exercise in Lee Daniels' own wish fulfillment. Daniels has been open about his own <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/lee-daniels-gay-man-loathed-dad-article-1.1516789" target="_blank">relationship with his father</a>, and it's easy to see the parallels between his and Jamal's story. So I can't help but to think that Jamal getting the company and finally gaining Lucious' love and acceptance is meant to be something cathartic for Daniels. Whether or not it all rings true is is something I think everyone has to answer for themselves. I don't buy it, personally. I think especially in the wake of the news that he doesn't have ALS after all and won't necessarily be dying anytime soon, I think it's more likely that Lucious would put off making his decision for one more season just to give Hakeem more time to come around and find himself in a position to take over.<br />
<br />
But Lucious naming Jamal as his successor is the decision that kicks off "Who I Am" and that leads to some of the most nonsensical moments of that finale. I mentioned before that these two episodes didn't have to be paired together on one night, but some part of me wonders whether or not Fox looked at them individually, saw how ridiculous this last one was, and then paired them together in the hopes that the first episode would carry enough positive momentum to propel viewers through the second and into hiatus without much complaint.<br />
<br />
Lucious' decision has been made, the silly competition for who will run the company is over, and instead of allowing the brothers to heal and move past it, it simply incites a new revelry between them. Andre and Hakeem band together to unseat Jamal, and for some reason that isn't at all made clear and that I wouldn't buy anyway, Cookie joins them. Jamal and Cookie's relationship has been nothing but strong for this entire season, and yet in the course of one episode Jamal is pissed at Cookie for even entertaining the notion of killing Lucious, and Cookie seems to no longer think that Jamal should run Empire but that he should have immediately split it with Hakeem as soon as Lucious offered it to him.<br />
<br />
Don't get me wrong, that's what I want too. I've been saying for weeks now that the perfect outcome for all of this would be the three bothers running company together. But the ease with which Cookie seems to jump from team Jamal to team Hakeem is ridiculous and it makes me think that she's less interested in her sons succeeding than she is in hitching her wagon up to whichever star will have the most benefit for herself. It's the first time I honestly stopped to wonder if Cookie was actually any better than Lucious at all. I'm also not saying that Jamal needn't be a bit disappointed in his mother for her homicidal intent, but the extent to which he looks shocked and disgusted was surprising to me. I think more of a "Well that's fucked up, Ma, but yeah I get it, he is a total dick after all," would have been more believable. But the look of betrayal on Jamal's face when Lucious showed him the tape of Cookie with the pillow was just a bit much to me.<br />
<br />
"Who I Am" suffers, as all the worst episodes of this season did, from <i>Empire</i>'s inability to slow the fuck down. It's a breakneck episode rushing through setting up the Empire Records line of succession, the hostile takeover, and Lucious' arrest for Bunkie's murder (yes the same Bunkie that none of us have really even thought about in many many weeks). In its rush to setup some of the foundation for next season, <i>Empire</i> forgot that they needed to produce a strong caper to this season. <br />
<br />
The majority of what happens within it is ridiculousness without the excitement of typically good <i>Empire</i> ridiculousness. Vernon dies because little old Rhonda hits him with what looks like a small candle holder in order to get him off of Andre? Give me a break! I neither believe that she's strong enough or that that weapon was hefty enough to do that much damage. It's a scene that reeks of forced drama intended to set the stage for their major crisis next season, but it doesn't feel real or earned by any means.<br />
<br />
The scenes where Lucious gets arrested and where Cookie and Anika finally get into the fight we've all been waiting for are far better earned by the show simply because they've been setup from the very first episode. Granted the show forgot all about Bunkie's existence until this week, but it was still a storyline we all knew would have to be addressed sooner or later. The only problem with both of those scenes is that neither of them have any sort of long standing consequences to the show as a whole. Cookie and Anika are agreeing to work together immediately after throwing blows, and we all know Lucious won't be in jail long. So why get invested?<br />
<br />
It's a bit weird that a show so perfectly encapsulates everything it's been all season in two episodes, but there you have it. It was shocking, juciey and entertaining in parts, and boring, convoluted, and nonsense in other parts. But seeing as how this inconsistency is exactly what we'd been given for the 10 episodes prior to these two, should we really have been surprised?<br />
<br />
Random Thoughts:<br />
<br />
--I mentioned it once but didn't go into details, but Lucious isn't dying after all. Instead of ALS he has Myasthenia Gravis which is actually a <a href="http://www.myasthenia.org/Home.aspx" target="_blank">real thing</a>. I expected there to be some kind of cop out with his march towards death, but I was hoping it would come in the form of some kind of miraculous new treatment, or some change in circumstances that just caused his symptoms to slow down or something. His not having ALS at all annoys me and I'm not totally sure why.<br />
<br />
--Snoop Dogg was great in "Die But Once," and Hakeem's freestyle was a lot more skillful than I expected. It wasn't perfect, but given Hakeem's silver spoon issue and the thought that he would have ultimately bypassed that underground kind of rap battling left me unsure as to how good he could be expected to be.<br />
<br />
--Mario Van Peebles and Debbie Allen directed these two episodes. I didn't notice anything remarkable about the direction of either, but I'll have to watch them through a second time to make sure. Either way, <i>Empire's</i> ability to draw in big names both behind and in front of the camera has to continue to be commended. Especially since Snoop Dogg and Patti LaBelle also found themselves in these episodes.<br />
<br />
--I'm very sad to see Malcolm go right when he and Cookie were getting started. We'll miss you, Derek Luke. And your great abs too!<br />
<br />
--Speaking of which, I think the sex scene between Malcolm and Cookie was award worthy!<br />
<br />
--Also great was the Cookie and Anika fight. Partially because it was a long time coming and everything we hoped it would be, but also partially because of how surprised I was that Anika honestly held her own in it. I didn't expect it to be such a close bout.<br />
<br />
--The speed with which Jamal seems to start serving his own interest over those of his brothers when he's named the successor is ridiculous and unbelievable. The suggestion seems to be that he's had this darker, more Lucious-like, seed within him all along, but I don't buy that for one second. They could have done much better.<br />
<br />
--Going forward, I would love to see <i>Empire </i>finally start to slow down and take its time with more of its storylines, plan its seasons out in advance instead of just playing it episode by episode, and get to the point where its capable of making the business storylines just as entertaining as the family drama. I can't think of anything I'm less interested in than this hostile takeover story.<br />
<br />
--Thanks for sticking it out with them through this first season. Hopefully I'll be able to do this again next year with the show's second season. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06235900666167642831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8445667746613343947.post-69314377623877805652015-03-16T19:06:00.000-07:002015-03-16T19:06:00.103-07:00TV Review: Secrets and Lies: Episodes 1-4<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bSM0mw0iR5Q/VQdxnyLrsyI/AAAAAAAAAak/npL35tCB0n0/s1600/SECRETS-AND-LIES_612x380.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bSM0mw0iR5Q/VQdxnyLrsyI/AAAAAAAAAak/npL35tCB0n0/s1600/SECRETS-AND-LIES_612x380.jpg" height="247" width="400" /></a>I've developed a new addiction in the last couple weeks. This one to ABC's new drama <a href="http://abc.go.com/shows/secrets-and-lies" target="_blank"><i>Secrets and Lies</i></a>.
It's yet another American import of an overseas original. I haven't
seen the Australian version of the show, and I can't help but to assume
that that's a good thing. Not knowing what similarities or differences
can be found between the two series has got to be a part of the reason
I've enjoyed the show's first 4 hours. After all, it was the specter of
the great <a href="http://www.bbcamerica.com/broadchurch/" target="_blank"><i>Broadchurch</i></a> which stopped me from being able to watch more than the first 15 minutes of <a href="http://www.fox.com/gracepoint" target="_blank"><i>Gracepoint</i></a>.
And here we have another import show based around a young boy's murder,
so I can't help but to think that the best way to tackle this series is
to go in blind. Having done so, I can say that this is yet another
flawed, but supremely enjoyable TV series.<br />
<br />
<i>Secrets and Lies</i> starts off with Ben Crawford (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000202/?ref_=tt_cl_t1" target="_blank">Ryan Phillippe</a>) stumbling across the body of his young neighbor Tom Murphy. Distraught over the fact that he just found a young boy's body in the woods, and also by the fact that this was a child he was particularly close to, Ben rushes to call the cops and try to put the wheels in motion to find Tom's killer. Enter Detective Andrea Cornell (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000496/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t7" target="_blank">Juliette Lewis</a>). Her job, of course, is to find out who killed Tom, but for all intents and purposes she's decided that the answer to that question is Ben Crawford, and all of her work over the course of the first four episodes has been about trying to prove that. What follows is a series of events in which Ben works to clear his name and make sure the finger of blame is pointing everywhere but at him, and Detective Cornell does some of the worst detective work imaginable as she tries to get enough evidence against Ben to make a conviction stick. And, of course, the news that a young boy from their neighborhood is dead and that their father and husband is suspected of the crime tears the Crawford family apart.<br />
<br />
What sets <i>Secrets and Lies</i> apart from other whodunit mysteries is that it's not really about solving the mystery. The steps Ben and Cornell are taking to clear his name and convict it respectively are just pathways through which the real story flows. The important thing about this show is right there in the title (subtlety is not their strong suit). This crime and the subsequent investigation serve to out the Crawfords and their neighbors' many different secrets and expose their many deceptions. The family and town drama aspects are the better and stronger aspects of the show; on another series the reverse would be true. Just today I was talking to a friend about this series and she said she doesn't even care who killed Tom, she's just tuning in each week to see what new salacious tidbit will be revealed. And I couldn't agree more because the truth is that no resolution to this story is capable of being as fun or interesting as the things we've seen thus far and still stand to see in the future. The strength of <i>Secrets and Lies</i> is in the journey not the destination.<br />
<br />
But for as good as the family drama and the episodic twists and turns are, the basic framework of the show is really shoddy. When they aren't dropping atomic truth bombs, they're fighting against a number of elements that continually pull me out of their storytelling. For starters, no one on the show seems to honestly believe that Ben is innocent. The people firmly in his corner are thus far limited to his youngest daughter Abby (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm5617092/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t6" target="_blank">Belle Shouse</a>), and his best friend Dave (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0283945/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t3" target="_blank">Dan Fogler</a>). Dave is a deadbeat who spends the first four episodes living in a kind of mother-in-law-suite in Ben's backyard, so maybe take his support with a grain of salt. Tom's mother, Jess (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2358540/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t4" target="_blank">Natalie Martinez</a>), is also on team Ben, but whether that's because she honestly believes Ben wouldn't be capable of that, or because she still harbors feelings for him after the fling they had which produced Tom (not so incidentally) is a matter that's still up for debate.<br />
<br />
But everyone else from the detective to his other neighbors to his wife and his oldest daughter all seem to think he did it. Or, at least in the case of his wife and oldest daughter, they don't seem to be sure one way or another. This surprises me most in the case of the wife and the neighbors. It's not that you wouldn't be sure of Ben's innocence were you close to him, but to think that he was at all capable of this act seems to be a base betrayal. We see Ben interact with people and it presents us with a picture of a man who's got along great with his neighbors for years now. All of a sudden they all think he's a child killer who should burn in hell? That's a big leap to take over night. And as for his wife, Christy (<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2358540/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t4" target="_blank">KaDee Strickland</a>), if she's ready to believe it's at all possible that her husband is a murderer, then why is she still with him at all? <br />
<br />
The biggest place where the show seems to be straining credability is in the mystery and the murder investigation aspects. Ben is doing a lot of his own detective work to try and clear his name, and he's oddly kind of good at it. He at least finds Jess' abusive military husband who's on the run from the MP's and kind of from the cops too, and yet is found by Ben after an episode of looking. Ben Crawford is a painter, so where'd he get all these detective skills? Or is it that police work is so easy that anyone could do it? Because if that's the case, then why is Cornell so incapable? I don't think that the show is actually making the point that she is incapable so much as unwilling to look anywhere other than at Ben, but the extent to which she lacks any kind of counterbalancing is odd. No one else in the police department thinks she might be better served using the smallest amount of the effort she's putting into proving her suspicions to maybe look at other options?<br />
<br />
Other than that, the show has a few logistical concerns to work out, some bad acting (or at least I think it's bad acting, it could just be poor character development) to overcome, and my overall biggest concern for it: how do you sustain this story over the course of multiple seasons? As I said before, I don't think that the question of who killed Tom Murphy is the central aspect of the show, but it is the skeleton holding all of these pieces together. And if it takes longer than a season to find out who killed Tom, or more importantly to prove once and for all that Ben didn't, then I think we're just in shoddy storytelling territory. But on the other hand, if that particular mystery is solved by the time this season is up, then what? Without the stress of the investigation, without the continued interactions between Ben and Cornell, then what is the show about? Do we stop revealing people's secrets and just start dealing full time with the fallout from those secrets? And even before that inevitability comes along, how long can the show continue to milk this shocking surprise for shock's sake methodology? Everyone has secrets and everyone lies, but for now those secrets are at least novel enough to keep us watching. Eventually they might either stop being surprising or have to get bigger and sillier and juicier just to keep our interest, and that'll put the show in shark jumping territory sooner rather than later. But for now, I don't think anyone is concerning themselves with those kinds of questions. The fact of the matter is the one thing this show does with great skill is reveal big sloppy secrets that can make jaws drop and people gasp with shock and anticipation. If that's their strong suit as well as the focal point of the series, then I'll continue to look forward to how they manage that each week. <br />
<br />
Random Thoughts:<br />
<br />
--About the bad acting thing, is it just me or is Juliette Lewis just the worst in this? I can't tell if her one expression, cardboard robot routine is the result of bad acting or something deeper going on with her character, but I think we need answers quick. If her character is somewhere on the autism spectrum, then I'd like to know for sure and I'll engage with her differently, but if she's not, then I'd like for her to develop a bit of range and more emotions.<br />
<br />
--I hate to put this on a child but there's some odd choices being made with Ben's youngest daughter too. I don't want to think that Belle Shouse is a bad actress, but I also can't tell. I think the problem is probably more of the script's fault. She seems to be written a lot younger than that actress appears to be. A lot of her lines and affectations at least feel like they'd be better on a 7 or 8 year old, and while I don't know how old Shouse is in real life, my guess is around 11. <br />
<br />
--Back on the subject of Jess' abusive military husband: I find him to be laughably unbelievable as a villain. He's a super military guy with specialized training who breaks into Ben's house in the night in order to stand over and him and make stupid threats. I'm not saying people like him don't exist, I'm just saying I have a hard time taking him seriously.<br />
<br />
--One aspect of the story that I didn't talk about is the core spiral of Ben's mental state as he deals with these accusations. He no longer knows who he can trust, his family is kind of imploding, his teenage daughter is being as teenagery as you can get, and his paranoia is causing him to lash out at those closest to him and do stupid things. It all makes perfect sense and it's ridiculously fun to watch. To the extent that this is a story about how hard and impossible it is to keep it all together in the face of being accused of a murder you (probably) didn't commit, it's really quite brilliant. In fact, after the last two episodes, I'd say that that story is even better than the who's hiding what aspect of the show. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06235900666167642831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8445667746613343947.post-76483639114300974962015-03-11T20:28:00.002-07:002015-03-12T08:09:02.119-07:00TV Review: Empire Episode 10: Sins of the Father<a href="http://1-ps.googleusercontent.com/xk/b3315gUECnjZu_7jXJv_iPn4L3/www.tvfanatic.com/images.tvfanatic.com/iu/t_slideshow/v1425464884/xi-confess-empire.jpg.pagespeed.ic.cwp_sX0zMOfncEtcCTxp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1-ps.googleusercontent.com/xk/b3315gUECnjZu_7jXJv_iPn4L3/www.tvfanatic.com/images.tvfanatic.com/iu/t_slideshow/v1425464884/xi-confess-empire.jpg.pagespeed.ic.cwp_sX0zMOfncEtcCTxp.jpg" height="276" width="400" /></a>There's a common theme that creeps up in a number of stories and shows and countless other places: It doesn't matter where you start, it only matters what you become. I think it's a quintessentially American point of view. In a country that's founded on, or at least that has greatly embraced the principals that anyone can transcend their parents' station and just pull themselves up by their bootstraps and become anything they want to be, the idea that someone can start as a pauper and end as a prince is not only fanciful but believable. It's a story that I enjoy, but as a method of storytelling, it's something I find suspect. This is because in a perfect world the story would track at a consistent quality and pace throughout. But the world isn't perfect, and sometimes stories stumble out of the gate only to pick up steam in the middle and then rocket home at the end. And sometimes there are stories like the one about Jamal's alleged daughter. It was a horribly problematic beginning, a pointless and mostly absent middle, and then an explosive and surprisingly moving end. So I ask, if two thirds of the story were problems, but the last third totally sticks the landing, does it really matter? And what does this mean for the series as a whole? Empire started out strong, waned a bit in the middle, and now seems to be heading towards an entertaining if disconnected season finale. So what does that mean for the show as a whole through its first season?<br />
<br />
I'm not sure about the answers to these questions. Chances are they're all purely subjective, but this episode was so enjoyable that I can't help but to ask them. It's not that I think this is the first episode that's been legitimately good in awhile. It's just that this is the first episode where the good soapy silliness was so good as to make the unbelievable ridiculous moments moot by comparison. Malcolm is declaring his deep love for Cookie after sharing only like three scenes with her and just last week explaining why she's off limits to him? Who cares, I ship it anyway so let's just get on with the sexy fun times. Olivia's back with her abusive boyfriend who's basically come back in order to get her and her daughter back so he can kill them? Who cares so long as we get the bombshell that Lola is actually Lucious' daughter and not Jamal's! The last few episodes of the show have had some fun moments, a few zingers, but no revelations on par with this. Jamal's coming out isn't as big a moment since we've known he was gay all along. Even Andre's psychotic break isn't all that surprising as you could have guessed it was coming since the moment the word bipolar was spoken. But this? You may have guessed that Lola wasn't Jamal's. You may even have speculated that she was Lucious'. But there's no way to guess at the effect that that news would have when divulged in this manner.<br />
<br />
And that's the real treat of the episode. The news that Lucious is the father is actually secondary to the fact that he would tell everyone not in a moment of self-aggrandizement, not in an effort to hurt Jamal, but at a moment when he thinks that that information might actually save everyone's lives. Is it a purely selfless act? I'm not so sure I'd go that far, but it's certainly as close as I think Lucious Lyon is capable of getting. And it's this element that impresses and intrigues me the most. Not even half an hour after telling Jamal that Lola doesn't need to be raised "In that lifestyle" (we'll come back to this issue later), he's willing to throw himself in front of a bullet in order to save Jamal's life. If there's one place <i>Empire</i> has been consistent throughout these ten episodes, it's in the complications in the Lucious/Jamal relationship. Lucious seems to hate him, and yet he'd take a bullet for him. Jamal undermines Lucious at every turn, and yet he's ready to sing on the family song after hearing that Lucious is dying. Their relationship goes so much deeper than just gay son and bigoted dad, and that will forever be to the show's credit. I've complained about the uselessness of Lola's presence multiple times since she was introduced four episodes ago, and I stand by those complaints wholeheartedly, but if this is where the show was heading all along, I'll scale back my criticism.<br />
<br />
Another story seems to end this week but this one simply fizzles out instead of getting the bang that Lola and Olivia get. Camilla is gone. Hopefully for good, but ultimately who knows. She spends a lot of time this week trying to makeover Hakeem, give him a new sound, and using the word "we" when she's talking about his career, but by the end of the episode Lucious has shipped her back to her homeland not to return until he's dead. On the one hand, I'm happy to see her go, on the other hand what did we actually learn about her, or through her about Hakeem, while she was with us? In my notes while watching the episode, I question who she was, what was her motivation, and what was she getting out of this entire relationship? We can do a lot of the shading in of this character ourselves, and perhaps that's the show's ultimate goal, but I would like to at least feel like the show has the answers to these questions instead of putting it all on the viewer, and I'm not sure I left this episode feeling as though that was the case. It would have been an interesting development had she actually taken the money and we saw that she'd been just using Hakeem all this time to get out of her considerable debt. But she didn't, so it seems as though she wasn't, and if not that then what? Love? Camilla truly loving Hakeem is a possibility that would make sense, but I'm not sure how interesting I'd find it in the grand scheme of things. Either way, what a waste of Naomi Campbell that turned out to be.<br />
<br />
There are also two small moments in this episode that reek of the show wanting to make mention of a big issue only to then skate over it and not engage with it fully. The first comes at the beginning of the hour when Cookie makes a passing mention of how bipolar disorder and music therapy are just silly white people nonsense. Here's a moment when the show could fully engage with the problematic manner in which the black community tends to view mental illness and how that often leads to people of color not getting the help they need to make it through such troubled waters. But instead the show treats it as a funny Cookie throwaway one liner and moves on. Even later in the episode when Jamal calls Lucious on the way he ignores issues about his kids that don't fit in with his perfect little world view, it's treated more as just another instance of Lucious' bigotry than the deeper racial problem that it is.<br />
<br />
The other moment is in Lucious' conversation with Vernon. He mentions how he would expect the power grab move from Andre since Andre is book smart, but he never would have expected it from Vernon who's street smart and therefore should have known better. The difference between the two and the manner in which Lucious clearly values the latter over the former could be important. It's a subject the show has touched on a couple times now. But yet again it's just a quick one off mention meant to spur Vernon's drug fueled pity party and make him the catalyst for the episode's big climax.<br />
<br />
Next week is <i>Empire</i>'s big two hour season finale. Based on the preview, I can't say that I'm not ridiculously excited to see what the big soapy drama that will have everyone talking on Thursday will be. But what I'm more interested in is whether or not they can stick the landing. <i>Empire</i> started strong, got bumpy in the middle, and now has the ability to finish strong as well. If it does that, they'll have bookended the first season well, and I think most people will easily forgive the questionable middle passages. But if it simply fizzles out like the Camilla storyline did, then a few people might find themselves questioning why they spent those thirteen hours going along for the ride in the first place.<br />
<br />
Random Thoughts:<br />
<br />
--I mentioned early on in these reviews that one of the good things about this show could end up being the way it was capable of zigging when you expected it to zag. One place where I would have liked to see that happen is in Lucious' conversation with Jamal about why Lola shouldn't live with him. It'd have been funny if Jamal was assuming he meant he didn't want Lola raised by a gay guy when what he actually meant was he didn't want her to be raised by a poor person in the hood. Still problematic, but since I've recently become exhausted with each new iteration of Lucious' extreme homophobia, it would have been a breath of fresh air.<br />
<br />
--I understand the easy interpretation of Lucious coming clean had more to do with him stepping in to save Cookie than it did him stepping in to save Jamal, but I like my reading better. <br />
<br />
--When we got around to the reappearance of Olivia, I found myself thinking that she didn't seem to have any of the same manic fire that she did when she was dropping Lola off in the first place. One thing this ending did was give me the ability to re-conceptualize that earlier scene. If her manic presentation was more about a woman stressing out over coming to the conclusion that her only option to save her daughter was to give her away, then I think it makes a bit more sense. It'll be interesting to rewatch those scenes with this outcome in mind.<br />
<br />
--With that being said, however, I would have liked to see a bit more emotional distress from <span class="P66RVY-C-e">Raven-Seymone in the scene where she's about to leave the state. If you're upset you had to leave your baby with Jamal in the first place, maybe you can also be upset that you're about to flee the state and officially never see her again at all. </span><br />
<br />
--Nice work from <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1617685/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t151" target="_blank">Jennifer Hudson</a> in her first guest starring episode. The scene where she asks Andre to pray with her when it looks like she's about to seduce him was another nice moment of the show subverting viewer expectations. Although the "Pray your troubles away" approach might fall in the black people not getting the mental help they need category.<br />
<br />
--The flashback hair in this episode was just atrocious.<br />
<br />
--Ryan left Jamal when Jamal decided he wanted to be a full time father to Lola. It's a development that I honestly don't care about one way or another as I'm not really attached to Ryan and because I'm not at all attached to the idea that Jamal had actually grown enough as a character to make that decision on his part make any kind of sense. But I did like the way they were capable of having a grownup discussion about it in which neither of them had to come off as the bad guy. It places them a step up above Jamal and Michael as much as it pains me to say it. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06235900666167642831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8445667746613343947.post-24421478204082406502015-03-05T15:48:00.000-08:002015-03-05T21:49:47.268-08:00TV Review: Empire Episode 9: Unto the Breach<a href="http://i.ytimg.com/vi/dvENlEkUF2o/maxresdefault.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://i.ytimg.com/vi/dvENlEkUF2o/maxresdefault.jpg" height="225" width="400" /></a>I think this week saw one of the better episodes of <i>Empire</i> that we've seen in awhile, but I also think that the heydays of the show's first block of episodes is officially dead and gone. That's not to say that the show isn't entertaining any longer, because nothing could be farther from the truth on that one. But the revelatory nature of the show's early movements are gone. Gone are the days when I thought we were in for some grand sweeping pronouncements and deep storylines dealing intelligently with topics that we just didn't see being touched on as often in TV. I'm mourning for those (seeming) losses, but still nowhere near close to wanting to give up on this show. Because at the end of the day, even considering the ridiculous lows this show is capable of hitting, it never ceases to be fun to watch.<br />
<br />
One of the places the show teeters on the line between important storytelling, and silly soapy nonsense is in the Andre storyline this week. Allow me to start with a disclaimer: I do not have, nor have I lived with or spent an abundance of time with anyone who does have bipolar disorder, at least not to the extent that Andre seems to. All of my limited experience on the subject comes from storylines on other shows and years of watching <i>ER</i>. With that being said, I don't buy the progression of Andre's illness and symptoms this week. I'm not saying that it's impossible; again I have no extensive knowledge of this kind of thing. I'm simply saying that I don't buy it. I don't believe that someone could stop taking their meds and in the course of less than 24 hours proceed from a relatively stable state into a complete manic state such as we see Andre in before the episode's midway point. It's another situation where the show needs to (say it with me now) slow down.<br />
<br />
Had Andre gone off of his meds in the last episode, and slowly spiraled into his manic state, this wouldn't be a concern. Or if the episode had taken place over the course of a couple days instead of the one day it's clearly established to have taken place in, this wouldn't be a concern. But when I spend more of my time saying "It doesn't make sense for him to have hit this low this quickly," then my attention is taken away from what he's doing and how the other characters are reacting to same. Which brings us to one of the more pivotal moments in the episode: the elevator scene. I think this scene would be important even without being underscored by Andre's mania since its really the first scene between the three brothers without the divisive influence of their wives or parents. But I couldn't help but to imagine just how much better the entire thing would have played out with more build up to it. What if Andre went off his meds an episode or more ago and we watched a progressive spiraling of his mental state over time? And what if two or three episodes back we were treated to a flashback scene of the boys living in that bad neighborhood and gunshots are heard and Andre is the one that rushes to get Jamal and Hakeem, both of whom are crying, and get them both down on the ground in case more gunshots ring out. And while they're all down there crying and afraid, Andre starts to sing Lean on Me, and Jamal quiets down with tear streaks all down his face, and baby Hakeem even stops squalling to listen. And then you jump to this episode where Andre, hitting the rock bottom of his days long cycle, freaks out while trapped in the elevator and in the midst of his yelling and panicking, all we hear is Jamal and Hakeem starting to sing and beat box Lean on Me, and it calms and quiets their older brother down. The benefits of those changes, of that little bit of per-planing on behalf of the show would have worked wonders. You're welcome, <i>Empire</i>, I fixed the scene.<br />
<br />
Not that the scene, as is, is fully broken, per se. The truth is that I watched that scene and felt the intended emotion from it. It didn't bring tears to my eyes or anything (though I think had it happened the way I prescribed above, then it would have), but I certainly understood where they were going with it all and I was able to meet them halfway. All I'm saying is that those little things that the show still isn't doing to the best of its ability takes a scene that could be great and meaningful and important and leaves them just good. Maybe to a certain extent this is just me trying to enforce my own view of what the show could and should be onto it. Maybe <i>Empire</i> has no interest in being great or important on that level. But if that's the case, then I think there's a serious problem with some of what they've leveled against their characters. If you don't have something meaningful to say about living with bipolar disorder, then making one of your main characters bipolar starts to feel like a gimmick. It feels exploitative and reductive to people living with it if the only reason you made Andre bipolar is so that you could have scenes of heightened drama and explosiveness. There's more to a person with mental illness than that, but I'm not sure that there's more to Andre than that. In the end, I feel as though none of the writers have ever dealt with mental illness, and as such, Andre feels like a token. I may be wrong around that, but if I am and if this is something the writers have first hand knowledge of, then they need to do a better job making it feel real and accessible to the rest of us.<br />
<br />
The rest of the episode is pretty standard <i>Empire</i> fare. Lucious' bigotry is kicked up a few notches in the wake of Jamal's coming out. It was expected, but I thought the show missed an opportunity here. If Lucious' anger had been based more on Jamal's ability to take one of his old songs and update it, personalize it, and make it into something that was even more successful than before, then I think that would have been a more interesting development than the basic "I'm not going to respect any of the good you do just because you're gay" angle. Cookie's in rare form as she plays a drinking game with a group of men in order to ensure one of Empire's artist doesn't jump ship. She gets in a few great lines with Derek Luke's character, and then is magically sober again a couple hours later and ready to go for a meeting to bring Tiana back into the fold.<br />
<br />
Speaking of which, it would appear that my prayers have been answered on the Tiana front, by which I mean that she came back around for another episode. I think the way she's handled in this episode is the equivalent of praying for food and someone handing you a poisoned apple. She's staying with Empire, but there's no real evidence that we'll be seeing more of her in the future, there's no mention of her sexuality (in an episode where Jamal's sexuality is a topic on just about everyone's lips no less), and for some reason that I don't even think the writers understand she wants to get back with Hakeem. Where was it established that she and Hakeem were meant to be some kind of deep forever love? I was under the impression that for Tiana at least their's was always more of a show relationship than anything deeper. Or is that still the case and all she wants is to be back with him for the boost it'll offer her career? Not knowing the answer to this question doesn't bother me nearly as much as my feeling that the writers don't know either.<br />
<br />
But for all of this complaining (and really it's a lot more complaining than I originally intended there to be), the episode was fun, funny, and entertaining. The soapy moments are ridiculous, no one believes for a second that Lucious' and Baretti's men would be found in a Mexican standoff in the middle of the streets in broad daylight, but that doesn't make it any less fun to watch. And one place where the show's breakneck speed continues to work for them can be found in the first scene where Cookie outs Anika's backstabbing to Lucious. In another show, this would have hung over the characters heads for a lot longer, but here one episode ends with Anika going to Baretti's office and the next episode begins with Lucious being told about it. It's something I'll continue to respect the show for, I just wished they knew how to balance it. After all, anyone who drives with their foot constantly on the accelerator is eventually going to end up wrapped around a lamp pole somewhere.<br />
<br />
Random Thoughts:<br />
<br />
--If you want to see what I think of as a bipolar storyline done well, look to Showtime's <a href="http://www.sho.com/sho/shameless/home" target="_blank"><i>Shameless</i></a>. The way that show has been handling Ian for the past two seasons, and the things they were capable of showing with Monica in the first few seasons have just been stellar. The rest of the show is crap, but it continues to get the Ian storyline right on multiple levels.<br />
<br />
--Another slight problem I have with the show is that we're only 3 episodes away from the season finale and it still doesn't really feel like we're building towards anything. I'm worried that when everyone looks back at the overarching story of the first season, we'll all be disappointed to find that there really wasn't one. <br />
<br />
--Lucious as much as admits that he's tapped Hakeem as the person he wants running Empire when he's gone. This is what I suspected from the beginning as being the only reason the competition was introduced back in the pilot. Andre's got the most business sense and has worked there for years, so he makes the most sense, but it was clear from the start that Lucious wanted Hakeem. Which makes so much of the foundation of the show seem a little faulty in a couple ways.<br />
<br />
--But along those lines, if there's one thing I'll continue to say for sure about this story, it's that all three of the brothers running the business together continues to be the outcome that just makes the most sense. The elevator scene confirmed this for me.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06235900666167642831noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8445667746613343947.post-2375264024654983422015-02-26T08:38:00.000-08:002015-02-26T08:38:06.510-08:00TV Review: Empire Episode 8: The Lyon's Roar<a href="http://www.ew.com/sites/default/files/i/2015/02/25/empire-recap.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.ew.com/sites/default/files/i/2015/02/25/empire-recap.jpg" height="276" width="400" /></a>What came first, the Character or the Story? I know it seems like a very writerly riddle, but I do think it's a perfectly valid question. If I have the most amazing story ever told, does it matter if the characters within it are a little bland and two-dimensional? Conversely, if I have the most fascinating characters, can I get away with a story that's a little less interesting? I think the best stories strike a balance between those two forces; placing interesting characters in interesting situations and having them do interesting things as a result is always the best way to go. But in a show's first season, typically, I think we might be more likely to have to choose one or the other. I don't think this is anyone's fault; it's simply down to the logistics of storytelling. How well rounded and flushed out can a character be within an ensemble after only seven hours? So if the character work is improbable after such a (relatively) small amount of time, then the story should swoop in and pick up the slack, right? But if I were to ask you what the central story of any given <i>Empire</i> episode was, could you tell me?<br />
<br />
I was bored at work not too long ago and I asked a few friends of mine to name <i>Buffy</i> episodes for me to watch. A couple people responded by telling me that they don't remember the names of individual episodes, so they couldn't really help me. To this I responded, "Simply tell me the story of the episode in question, and I'll tell you the title of the episode." I'm capable of doing this partially because I've watched through <i>Buffy</i> more times than I can count, but mostly because <i>Buffy</i> is a show in which almost every episode is centered around a specific and memorable storyline. This is where I'm starting to think that <i>Empire</i> is facing the biggest problem. Any given week with this show is less about a central storyline and more about a string of things that happen. This week, there's a party, Cookie and Lucious hook up again with Lucious promising to dump Anika, Jamal comes out, and Andre and Vernon work together to try and get Andre on the books as the Interim CEO in case Lucious is incapacitated at any given time, but those are plot points within a story, not a story in and of themselves. So what is this episode centrally about? What is any episode of this show about when you get right down to it?<br />
<br />
It's not that <i>Empire</i> hasn't been facing these problems all along. In spite of my praise of the show, these cracks have always been there. It's just that the ride was so much fun before now that it simply didn't matter. "The Lyon's Roar" just isn't fun. Nor is it particularly enlightening outside of a couple small moments. Ultimately, what we're left with is an episode that doesn't really get its characters or its story right, and it's all left feeling messy.<br />
<br />
On the character front, I think we need to talk about Andre. This is one of the few Andre focused episodes of this first season, and I think everything suffered because of it. <i>Empire </i>has big and important things to say about art and artists, but as such, it doesn't seem to know what to say about the only non-artistic Lyon in the group. Andre's initial position within the show seemed to be about mental illness, and living with bipolar disorder, but that seems to have taken a backseat as of late. So all that's left for him is his status as a good business man. But is he even that in this episode? The idea to be the interim CEO comes from Vernon, not from Andre. That seems like a simple enough idea that someone with all the learning Andre's amassed should have been able to come up with much sooner. His next big calculation in an attempt to get the votes he needs to make this happen is to pimp his wife out to one of the board members. This seems like the kind of thing that can work, until the plan goes wrong, Rhonda sees who she's supposed to be seducing, and decides she doesn't want to play anymore. And the closest thing a backup plan that Andre has seems to be calling another board member and simply asking him for his vote, which works out just fine. So why were we put through that painful dinner scene in the first place? <br />
<br />
It all boils down to <i>Empire</i> not really knowing who its characters are. And how could they when the characters seem to change at the drop of a hat. One week Andre is a seeming business genius, the next he can't even figure out a way to make sure he can get the votes needed to be named interim CEO to the company he's worked at all his adult life. One week the Lyons are all banding together in the face of the knowledge of Lucious' illness, the next week Lucious is laying bare the long list of problems he has with Andre's wife. The sad thing about this moment is that it's actually a great storyline for <i>Empire</i> to tackle, but it comes so fast out of nowhere that you're only left with a vague feeling of WTF instead of a serious idea of what it all means. <i>Empire </i>continues to be a show with a lot to say, but with very little understanding of the best way to go about saying it.<br />
<br />
That is, on just about every topic except for Art and Jamal's sexuality. At this point, I'm left wondering why the entire series isn't just a string of scenes about Jamal being gay and arguing with Lucious and other characters about the importance of Art and Music. The entire sequence of Jamal's coming out is about as perfect as we've seen from the show. From he and Lucious' discussion about why they do what they do (for the music of course, which will live on long after both of them are dead), to the overwhelming support coming from everyone in the audience except Lucious when they hear how Jamal's given a queer edit to the song. The entire audience cheers, the camera lingers on every one of the major characters in attendance, all of them give nods and salutes of approval, and Lucious simply stands there stone faced. It's the culmination of what the show, and Cookie, have been saying all along, and Cookie isn't shy about saying it again: no one but Lucious cares about Jamal's sexual orientation. He came out, he's been a huge story on the 24 hour news cycle, and the world keeps spinning.<br />
<br />
But when all is said and done, will "The Lyon's Roar" be remembered as Jamal's coming out episode? Is that the core story of the hour? It's true that the issue of Jamal coming out is brought up early in the hour in the scene between him and Hakeem at the church, and then culminates in the act itself, but I don't know that I feel like there's enough there for it to even be the B-plot of the episode. Especially in the face of the story being teased out over the course of all eight of these first episodes. It feels more like the culmination of a season long story than anything self-contained within this hour. This episode left me feeling like <i>Empire</i>'s actual longevity might be in question. The meteoric rise in viewership over this first season will probably be more than enough to keep it on the air through two, maybe even three seasons, but ask yourself this: What will <i>Empire</i> look like upon rewatch, or more specifically on binge watch. When people sit down to either relive this first season, or to introduce their skeptical friends to it during the upcoming hiatus, will they be as impressed and excited as we were through those first five or six hours, or will they struggle to latch onto any of the flat characters or find any of the non-existent episode to episode storylines? <br />
<br />
Random Thoughts:<br />
<br />
--I'm also really just pissed off at the show's treatment of Tiana. Given the fact that we haven't seen her again since her own big coming out episode, it feels like everything about her only served to further Hakeem's storyline, and I'm sick of seeing interesting female characters sidelined or used as props in a male character's story.<br />
<br />
--Unless I'm mistaken, this is the first episode that's both written and directed by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0834960/?ref_=rvi_nm#director" target="_blank">Danny Strong</a>. Danny's had some serious writing success lately, and as a Buffy Alum I wish him all of the best, but this was not a very good showcase for his talents. All of the characters basically just say what they're thinking, and there wasn't any kind of special flare to the directing that I could see. I think he should stick to writing, but I also think he can show himself as being a stronger writer than this episode presented him as.<br />
<br />
--The White Party at the center of the episode must be a different <a href="http://whiteparty.org/" target="_blank">White Party</a> than the one I'm thinking of.<br />
<br />
--I can't express enough how disappointed I am that this is the first we're hearing about Lucious' feelings towards Andre marrying a white woman. I think Andre's self-consciousness about his lack of musical ability has been an undercurrent to the show and the character all along, so that doesn't surprise me, but the thought that he married a white woman and went to school in order to be accepted within white culture is new. As well as Lucious' feelings towards same, and the idea that no matter how hard Andre works for that acceptance, it's not possible. There are so many threads that the show could tease out here, and yet it does a disservice to all of them by speeding through them in that one scene.<br />
<br />
--Something else that felt rushed, or at least unearned by the show was Hakeem's statement that he's always felt like Cookie loved Jamal more than she loved him. On the one hand, I want to say that that's a fair and succinct way to bottle up all of Hakeem's anger and frustration towards her, but on the other hand I don't get it. Cookie was in prison for 17 years, all of Hakeem's life basically, but he says she always paid more attention to Jamal than to him. For all those years, was she sending Jamal birthday and Christmas gifts from the slammer and not sending any to Hakeem? She wasn't really in a place, I assume, from which she was capable of reaching out, so what specifically happened to make Hakeem feel that way? Also, why then is all of his anger over that placed on her and none of it towards Jamal? It makes more sense that that feeling of neglect would sour his and Jamal's relationship as well, and yet it doesn't seem to have done so.<br />
<br />
--Point to fact, Jamal and Hakeem seem to be great at a number of points in this episode. The scene at the end with Hakeem telling his big brother just how proud he is of him and just how brave he is was the single best moment of the night. That relationship continues to pay dividends.<br />
<br />
--What does Jamal having a daughter add to the character or the overall plot and story of the show? So far I continue to say nothing, but it's possible I'm just missing something. It all seems like a horrible waste to me though. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06235900666167642831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8445667746613343947.post-54543867401412516322015-02-18T20:43:00.000-08:002015-02-19T10:52:43.571-08:00TV Review: Empire Episode 7: Our Dancing Days<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://bitchentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/152.jpg?w=1100" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="261" src="https://bitchentertainment.files.wordpress.com/2015/01/152.jpg?w=1100" width="400" /></a></div>
I think that sometimes it can be easy to forget that at its core <i>Empire</i> is about family. Or at least it ostensibly wants to be about family; on a week to week basis, <i>Empire</i> is about a million different things. But the show is rooted in family and I think most of its best moments stem from that root. If the chaos of the last couple episodes caused anyone to forget this important point, then here comes "Our Dancing Days" to help us remember. <br />
<br />
But before the episode can be all family all the time, there's some fallout from last week they need to take care of. Namely, Michael's leaving Jamal. After he refused to come out during his interview last week, Michael has decided that it's a better idea to end things now before it gets worse. I've spoken before about <i>Empire</i>'s refusal to slow its storytelling down and how that works both for and against the show at times, this is an example of the latter. How are we supposed to feel about Michael's decision? For that matter, how are we supposed to feel about Michael? Is he the first casualty of Jamal's meteoric rise to fame, or is he just a selfish nearsighted weakling who doesn't have the guts to stick it out. If I'm being honest, I'm inclined to take option number two, and I kind of think the show feels that way as well. Over the course of the last two episodes both Cookie and Lucious have mentioned that Michael isn't the one for Jamal because he doesn't understand how hard it is to love an artist. And in the end, they're right. I don't know that it necessarily is harder to love an artist than it is to love anyone else, but I do know that given the way the story has gone, Michael doesn't seem to have been cut out for it. It's not that Michael's desire to be acknowledged publicly (as well as privately) isn't valid, of course it is, but if he's unable to understand that at least for the moment he's got to be ok with being second to Jamal's young career, then he really isn't worth Jamal's time. In a situation where Michael has been number one for the duration of time that they've been dating, I don't think Jamal was asking too much expecting him to take a backseat briefly while his music took off.<br />
<br />
Therefore, lines like Michael's "No I love you, you love music," don't feel earned. Every so often, <i>Empire</i> is going to fall into the trap of playing up it's soapy elements a bit more than it probably should, but something like the Michael--Jamal dilemma simply doesn't work. By rushing through the plot and forcing the story to take place over the course of two episodes, it leaves the entire thing feeling hollow. It also says something very negative about a character I had grown to like. It's really not that the storyline is a bad one for the show to run with, it's just that it doesn't make sense for it to happen in the 7th episode of a 12 episode season. Especially when the seeds for it were only planted one episode ago. For what I'm sure won't be the last time, I have to tell <i>Empire</i> to slow the hell down!<br />
<br />
While the relationship drama fell flat this week, the family drama was perfect. Everything from Lucious falling sick at the beginning of the hour and being forced to pick Anika over Cookie to accompany him to the hospital, to the ongoing feud between Jamal and Hakeem, to the scene where Lucious finally comes clean about his ALS worked wonders. In life, things change, and of course in <i>Empire</i> things change rapidly, but family is the one constant. That's accentuated in this episode in the scene between Lucious and Jamal, and of course in the scene where Lucious tells his family about his illness. The Lucious--Jamal scene is the latest of many, but I think it might also be the best one yet. For what seems like the first time, they aren't yelling or insulting one another, they aren't at each other's throats, they're simply being there for one another. Jamal, in a moment that I do think reeks of the show's particular penchant for throwing consistency out the window, goes to his father for solace over Michael leaving and over the mess he finds himself in with his new found daughter. Lucious, to his credit, actually offers kind words of wisdom and some serious help on both fronts. He even expresses his hope that one day Jamal will meet a person who can love him the way he deserves. He says person! It's not as much of a victory as it would have been if he had said man, but it's no where near as dismissive as it would have been if he had said woman, so that's some serious progress for Lucious Lyons.<br />
<br />
The capper to tonight's episode is of course the scene where Cookie and Lucious finally find themselves in bed together after 7 episodes of sexual tension so thick you could cut it with a knife. The entire thing is soapy and a bit contrived, but the fact that it's been building for the entire season at least allows it to make a certain kind of sense. Is it hackneyed that Cookie and Lucious sleep together after he shows himself to be vulnerable and tells her about his ALS? Of course it is. Is it horribly played out that Anika just so happens to come home and catch them sleeping together? You know it! But it's the payoff to 7 long hours of the two of them flirting around the issue, and of Henson and Howard lighting the screen on fire with their chemistry, so we'll take it.<br />
<br />
Cookie and Lucious is actually the closest thing to a slow burn that the show has had thus far. While the two of them haven't come a long way from where they were in that pilot episode, the seeds for this development have certainly been germinating long enough for it to work. It was obvious and predictable is so many ways, but it was something the writers took their time getting to and allowed to develop organically. The best case scenario moving forward would be that they found the patience to treat more of their storylines this way and fewer of them the way they treated Jamal and Michael. I don't expect that to be the case, but I certainly hope that it is.<br />
<br />
Random Thoughts:<br />
<br />
--Even though I've felt that the Hakeem and Jamal rivalry of the last few episodes has been a bit forced, their truce in this episode, however brief it might turn out to be, was highly moving. Some part of this is because I like the show a lot more when the two of them are on the same side. But I also find reconciliation storylines to be cathartic in general.<br />
<br />
--This marks another week without Tiana. Even though she's mentioned in passing between Hakeem and Camilla, she doesn't actually show up. I find the possibility that she wouldn't be at the huge event at the center of tonight's episode to be laughable at best and her continued absence is problematic. I think I'll give them one more week and then I'll start yelling for them to bring her back. It's a horrible waste of a fascinating character and a great storyline if they don't use her again. And with the extreme lack of fascinating female characters on TV (esp queer female characters) this would be unforgivable. <br />
<br />
--Forgive me while I digress a little here, but the moment when it became clear that <i><a href="http://www.fox.com/glee" target="_blank">Glee</a> </i>wasn't going to be worth anyone's time anymore was when the show started to introduce interesting and important story developments only to then forget them the very next week. I bring this up because I feel like I'm starting to see a lot of that same tendency in <i>Empire</i>. Both shows come from Fox, both are musicals, and both are soapy to an extreme. But I think we have to continue to hope that <i>Empire</i> is capable of reaching far higher than <i>Glee</i> ever did. These comparisons might come more frequently in the future, but for now I think it's important to remember that <i>Glee</i> was equally as promising through its first 13 episodes as <i>Empire </i>has been through its first 7.<br />
<br />
--From the Hot Mess Pile: Camilla continues to be hot mess fodder. It feels like she's falling prey to the show's inherent lack of consistency. This week, she's sick of just being Hakeem's secret side piece and wants more. Where did this come from? She didn't seem to have a problem with it before. Just go with it I guess.<br />
<br />
--So I guess we're to assume that Jamal really is that girl's father? Does this add anything at all to the show, the character, or the story in general? I was initially excited for the manic injection of life I thought Raven-Seymone would bring to the series, but if we've lost her and are just keeping the kid, then I'm going to say that this is stupid and pointless. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06235900666167642831noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8445667746613343947.post-55575398636270931982015-02-14T16:25:00.001-08:002015-02-14T16:25:42.994-08:00TV Review: Empire Episode 6: Out, Damned Spot<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://tamikanews.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/106empire_ep106_scn_22__0368_f_hires2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="276" src="https://tamikanews.files.wordpress.com/2015/02/106empire_ep106_scn_22__0368_f_hires2.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
I've been sitting with my thoughts on this episode for the last couple days and I still don't fully know what to say. I think this week's <i>Empire</i> is the weakest the show has been thus far, but I don't think it was a boring or a bad episode. If we start with the good, I've got to say I like the focus on Jamal and Michael's relationship. They've always been cute and a high point of the series for me, but their scenes until now have mostly been the two of them being adorable with one another and not much more. I think a cute lovey relationship is great, but without some kind of complication it won't be believable. They get complicated, and it makes them seem more real than they were before, but I'm not sure how I feel about the tone of the storyline thus far. More on that in a bit.<br />
<br />
Also in the good category is the introduction of a couple new guest stars. While I don't know that I like Elle (played by <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001482/?ref_=nv_sr_1" target="_blank">Courtney Love</a>) or Olivia (played by a fired up <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0712368/?ref_=tt_cl_t7" target="_blank">Raven-Symone</a>) just yet, I do maintain that the show's ability to draw in stars of this caliber bodes well down the line. Which isn't to say that either Love or Symone are a-listers or anything, but still, it was nice to see their faces.<br />
<br />
Sadly I think that that's about where my compliments end this week. "Out, Damned Spot" was a bit of a mess in a lot of ways, but more importantly it was evidence that <i>Empire</i> hasn't got a very strong grasp on its serialized storylines thus far. Where was the fallout from Cookie having an innocent man murdered last week? The show going away from Tiana for an episode isn't a problem, but why has the Titan storyline, a story I thought should be a cornerstone for the show thematically going forward, not been brought up again since its introduction. Partially my frustration with this is rooted in my own opinion that that shouldn't have been a one time throw away episodic plot point. But the other part of my annoyance has to do with the fact that the other aspect of that story (Lucious' dealings with the nation of Islam) seemed to be seeds that could and should have germinated into full bloom by now. Or at least the buds should be opening. Instead the show's simply forgotten that it dropped that juicy tidbit for us at all and is on to other things. <br />
<br />
The big stories are still progressing. Lucious' ALS takes another large step forward and he starts a highly unsafe (and really stupid) experimental drug trial which isn't even legal in the States. In the stand out moment of the episode, Cookie finds out that Lucious and Anika are getting married and blows up at them both. The entire episode was well worth it to see Taraji Henson in that sexy lingerie though. And Hakeem continues to spiral in the wake of his discovery about Tiana cheating on him. But while those stories are all touched on here, nothing really moves decidedly forward. There are more beginnings in this episode than there are middles or endings, and that just leaves it feeling kind of aimless.<br />
<br />
And some of the beginnings in questions might leave a bit to be desired. As I stated before, I enjoyed the fact that Jamal and Michael were getting complicated in this episode, but the idea that Michael was worried he'd get left behind in favor of fame and fortune and the only way to combat that is for Jamal to agree that they go away for a weekend felt a bit hackneyed. I don't think that those concerns are invalid in any way, but I do think that we've seen that story a million times before and played out in many different ways, so do we really need to see it here. I don't think that Michael's pain at being dismissed by Jamal's statement that there isn't anyone important in his life right now is the wrong way for the story to go. I think the show's insistence on showcasing the homophobia in the black community has to include the ways in which that homophobia can be internalized. Cookie is seen off stage while Jamal is giving his interview, and her reaction shots to the questions are left open to interpretation. Is she warning him not to do it, or is she commiserating with him that this moment was inevitable and she knows it's tough but he has to make his own decision? I'm inclined to think the latter given her previous interest in throwing lavish coming out press conferences for him, but the truth is that I'm not sure. The scene between Cookie and Michael, and a later scene between her and Jamal suggest that she might have some reservations after all. If she's not concerned that her son is dating another man, then she's at least not happy about the man he's chosen.<br />
<br />
Which brings me to another problematic aspect of the episode: Cookie doesn't think Michael is right for Jamal because he wants to be a chef? Don't get me wrong, I understand that Cookie would value ambition over what she might see as settling for a regular job, but I think the show should steer clear of the suggestion that finding something other than music or art that you enjoy and are good at and pursuing it as a career is somehow an unworthy goal. And in any event who's to say that Michael doesn't have ambitions of opening his own restaurant some day? I don't think Cookie's position should be that Jamal find someone in the same line of work or with the exact same drive and passion as himself.<br />
<br />
All of that combines to make up what I thought was the weak link in an otherwise strong chain of six episodes. I don't think the series has stumble so hard that it can't recover, but it needs a return to stories that feel fresh, and to remember the stories that made it more than just a simple nighttime soap. I think primetime soap is a fine thing to be if that's all you're striving for, but I think <i>Empire</i> wants to be more and it's shown itself as capable of being more, but in order for it to accomplish that it needs to not peter out at the midway point of its first season. <br />
<br />
Random Thoughts:<br />
<br />
--Really Michael? You want to go to Fire Island? Do gay men in New York really still go to Fire Island? I haven't been, so I speak from no point of authority on this, but that line felt like it was written by a straight man who has only read about what gay men do in books.<br />
<br />
--Also in the really Michael? category: expecting Jamal to just drop everything and go away for the weekend. I mean in his defense, if Jamal agrees to do something, I think he could try a little harder to keep his promise, but I think we all know it was an unreasonable request to begin with. No one with a new job can just drop everything at the drop of a hat and go away for a stretch of time, so expecting Jamal to be able to do so when he's embarking on something way bigger than just a regular nine to five is a bit silly.<br />
<br />
--I think we'll skip the hot mess pile this week since the entire episode was a bit of a hot mess.<br />
<br />
--Andre: “You ever put your hands on me again, I’ll slit your throat.” Was it just me or was that the single funniest line of the episode. And the extent of just how earnest he was when he said it just made it all the funnier. He's cute when he gets angry and thinks he actually has some level of power. If he really thinks Uncle Vernon couldn't break him without even breaking a sweat then he's even dumber than he looks.<br />
<br />
--This episode was a fairly nice showcase for <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0948272/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t6" target="_blank">Malik Yoba</a> who I've thought has been under utilized thus far. Hope we get to see more of him.<br />
<br />
--Also hope we get to see more of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1035682/?ref_=ttfc_fc_cl_t9" target="_blank">Derek Luke</a>'s Malcolm the security specialist in the weeks to come. I'm already shipping him and Cookie like there's no tomorrow. Plus Derek Luke is a ridiculously talented and exceptionally good looking guy, so the more of him the better it will be for everyone. Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06235900666167642831noreply@blogger.com0