2013 TV Year in Review: The Bad

As much as I enjoyed the year's TV lineup, I don't want it to seem like it was all good on the small screen. Per usual, there were a number of shows that simply didn't make the cut. So let's talk about them.

The Newbies:

I don't think anything proved to be a bigger waste of time on a weekly basis than Fox's The Following. I'd be shocked if any new series in 2013 had a bigger PR push leading up to the pilot. It seemed to have everything going for it. From Kevin Bacon making his debut as a TV leading man, to James Purefoy being fun and menacing, to the always preferable 13 episode season. And yet so much was missing or just lacking. The love story was pathetic and unbelievable, the multiple disciples Carroll had, all in exactly the place he needed them to be, strained credulity so much it was
laughable, the show never really deigned to show us exactly what it was about Carroll that made him so appealing and charismatic to these people in the first place, and so many things happened on a weekly basis simply because the plot required them to. Generally, when a story has plot elements that seem to come out of no where and have no basis in reality, it's because the writers haven't thought out their characters well enough for their decisions and failings or successes to seem organic. After the 6 episodes I watched (and 6/13 hours is more than enough to gauge a series in my opinion), the writers' sheer lack of clarity on who these characters were was obvious.

But just as bad as all that was The Following's pointless and egregious use of violence. As premium and even just cable shows continue to get more and more popular and more and more critical acclaim, basic cable has found itself in a position to ask what it is that sets these series apart from their own. As opposed to looking at the confidence and crispness of these shows' storytelling, it looks like Fox has decided it's just about the lax Standards and Practices these channels are allowed to employ on their programming. So the writers of The Following decided to cram in a lot of pointless and gratuitous violence and never understood that the presence of violence alone is meaningless without some kind of stakes behind it. 

In the end, The Following is a show of almost-but-not-quite. The Poe foundation could have been nice if the series actually seemed to know anything at all about Edgar Allan Poe beyond what has been made sensationalized over the years. The love triangle between the two not-so-gay guys and the cute androgynous psychopath would have been nice if the show actually understood the complexities of human sexuality instead of wanting to deal with it like a child who thinks kissing adults are funny and mysterious. And I say all of this acknowledging that enough people seemed to continue watching The Following to warrant Fox giving it a second season which starts soon, so maybe I'm the minority here (I actually know I'm not), but everything about this show reeked of bad storytelling tropes.

The other big deal new comer that fell horribly flat was Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I've already detailed my feelings about the first 7 episodes here, so there's not much more to say on the subject;

my thoughts haven't changed as the series has rounded out the 11th hour. But more importantly, after almost a full season by certain standards, AOS hasn't gotten any better and I've finally lost all desire to watch.

Possibly the most disappointing, if not outright offensive, thing the show has done thus far was to come out of hiatus with a huge campaign about finally giving answers on the Coulson mystery only to not deliver with the episode in question. Some light was shed on the issue, the story took a miniscule step forward, but the question of what actually happened to Agent Coulson still hasn't been answered. And the scant, pseudo-answer the episode provided did nothing to inspire me to even want to find out what the real answer is. So with all of the promise in the world, with the same team that was behind Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog leading the way, and with all of the might of Marvel's cinematic universe behind it, AOS turns out to be a bust. C'est la vie.

The Favorites?:

Forever proving that a series doesn't have to be new out of the gate to be a disappointment, last year saw a couple shows that simply couldn't get their shit together long enough to prove to be worth watching any longer.

Dexter had the unenviable job of trying to wrap up a series that had long outlived its usefulness in a lot of ways. This is a point upon which I certainly think I am in the minority, but while Dexter hadn't been great in many years, I don't think it reached a point of being fully unwatchable until it's final

season. Nothing the show has done since it's fourth season (which was a solid four years ago mind you) has been "good," but I don't think anything they did forced viewers to give up on the show en masse. And then there was Hannah McKay.

If there was one mistake Dexter made over the years, (and trust me there were many) it was in not understanding who their main character really was and trying to force more traditional TV storylines onto him. Dexter isn't the type of person to need or even really want a relationship. His whole thing with Rita was invented out of necessity and convenience, but somewhere along the line the show forgot that important fact and decided they wanted Dex to be a normal guy who just sometimes kills people. As a result we get characters like Hannah who have no purpose beyond being a love interest for a character who shouldn't have any more love interests. The character never really functions or gets off the ground in any serious fashion and as such she never really works.

On top of that, the show never really figured out what it wanted to do with the presence of Dexter's son, Harrison, so they invent an excuse to pawn him off on a number of equally useless nannies and baby sitters to justify daddy going off all night to murder people. Again it's an example of the show forcing events to fit the plot instead of developing organically. And with the opportunity to make Harrison into Dexter 2.0 given his experience with Rita's death, it's impossible to look at the route the show ended up choosing as being anything other than disappointing.

I haven't officially finished watching the last season yet, I gave up on it with about 3 or 4 episodes to go, but from what I've heard the ending did nothing at all to improve the show's overall standing, so I won't be rushing to finish up. But ultimately I think Dexter is just an example of how 8 years with a series is about 3 or 4 years too many.

The other show I said goodbye to in 2013 was Glee. The last time I gave up on a series in the middle of its run after years of dedicated, though declining, loyalty was the beginning of the fourth season of Heroes. At the time, no one realized that that season would the show's last, but after three years of diminishing returns, I finally had to say I'd had enough of the series. The same can be said of Glee, though I gave up on that series seemingly a couple years before it will officially reach its end.

The sad part about this is that I don't know that I can say Glee officially hit its rock bottom in 2013. Certainly the end of its fourth season left a lot to be desired, and featured the constantly offensive and deplorable Shooting Star which honestly should be brought up on charges for criminal negligence, but its return for its fifth season wasn't horrible. The two Beatles tribute episodes to kick things off weren't the worst installments the show had ever seen, and the Finn Hudson / Cory Monteith tribute was affecting no matter what logistical complaints I had about it. But where those first three episodes failed was in giving me a reason to continue watching. None of the storylines set forth in those early weeks seemed to be worthy of the screen time they'd wind up with (with the exception of the Santana / Demi Lovato love story that I actually am sorry to be missing), and the whole Kurt / Blane getting married thing was an active turn off for me. The best episode of the fourth season was The Breakup, and Kurt and Blane getting back together and then getting engaged on top of it totally undermined a lot of the brilliance of that particular hour.

But other than that, the problem with Glee in 2013 really just boiled down to More-of-the-Same-itis and I couldn't take it any longer. I couldn't handle more of Kurt and Blane drama, more of the show's misuse of characters like Tina Chang, more of the drastic shifts in characterization, or more of the ridiculous leaps in lack of logic that the show made on a regular basis. To an extent, I think that the fact that Glee stopped making any kind of sense years ago would be fine if it had at least continued to be funny. But that wasn't the case, and as such it lost pretty much all of its appeal over the years. The sad thing about the two most recent seasons of the show is that the New York based storylines have actually been enjoyable if not good while everything back in Lima has fallen into being unwatchable / offensive. If they'd just changed the series at its fourth season to be exclusively the story of the graduating seniors trying to make it in the world, I think it might have been a better choice. But I say that acknowledging that very few high school shows have ever successfully made the transition into college, and I don't trust Ryan Murphy with anything. But if we judge based on simple comparison, the New York stuff was way better and didn't constitute enough screen time to keep me watching the whole series, so I had to say goodbye.

Honorable Mentions:

1) Some of the best news to come out of the end of 2013 had to be the cancellation of True Blood on HBO. Much like Dexter, True Blood reached a point where it should have ended many moons ago, but there's a part of me that thinks this last season was the worst one yet. I don't know if it was the ultimately pointless Billith storyline, the continued insistence on keeping the peripheral characters at the forefront of the story (who honestly cared about Andy's kids?), or the show's complete unwillingness to allow Sookie to simply be single and ok, but whatever it was, this season never once found itself capable of being enjoyable. As opposed to previous seasons that saw brief flashes of entertaining storylines before the entire thing went down the toilet, this year it was just hard to get behind any aspect of the series. I will say that a lot of what they did with Jessica as a character was interesting, but I won't be sad to see the last of this show.

2) Ray Donovan was another series that started with a lot of fanfare, as Showtime shows tend to be, and very little payoff. I watched roughly the first 6 episodes and the different elements of the series never came together for me in a manner that would justify continued watching. Ray seemed like the kind of show with glimpses of good shows locked inside of it, but its inability to decide once and for all which show it wanted to be, which storyline it wanted to give the most weight, was a detriment. I think when a show, or any kind of story for that matter, tries to be everything, it succeeds in being nothing. But the glimpses nestled within it suggests the possibility that the show could be better in the future, or for all I know the last 6 episodes were much better than the first 6, but I doubt I'll be granted that information.

So there you have it, two posts about the highs and the lows of 2013's TV landscape. Stay tuned for my thoughts, hopes, desires, and excitements for 2014's TV season.

2013 TV Year in Review: The Good

I was having a conversation with a friend of mine a couple days ago and I told her that the fact that someone in Hollywood looked at the cinema landscape and honestly thought "You know what we need? A Robocop remake!" truly horrifies me. She asked me what I thought it meant about the state of Film today and this seeming nostalgia Hollywood has for almost all things 80's, and I told her I simply think it means that Film is frightened to try anything new while TV is bursting at the seams with innovation and boundary pushing. After watching the sheer amount of TV I did over 2013, and I'm honestly almost ashamed to admit to how much TV I do watch, I must say I stand behind that outlook. A lot of people have been saying for years now that we're in the middle of a TV renaissance, and I don't think it's ever been more obviously true than it was last year.

The Newbies:

Two of my favorite things about 2013 were Orphan Black and Orange is the New Black. I came across an ad for Orphan online a couple days before the series began and was just in time to catch the pilot airing on BBC America, and I was blown away. Initially, it was due to the show's willingness to have its protagonist be kind of hate-able from the get go, but as time went on, I fell in love with pretty much every aspect of the show. But of course I couldn't love anything about it more than I do Tatiana Maslany, who honestly has to the be biggest success of the year hands down. Watching Tatiana create each of her characters from the ground up was the most fun anyone could have had each week, but the rest of the show didn't disappoint either. Orphan Black told its story with a confidence I don't
think you generally get to see in TV outside of the upper echelon of series (more of them to come). It didn't waste any time getting around to the heart of the mystery of the show and had no interest in drawing out the reveal that the characters were clones. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D should take note on this point.

But maybe even more important than all that was the huge stride forward Orphan Black took by placing its story in the hands of a relatively unknown *female* lead!!!! Finally a show (a genre show no less) with the balls confidence to see that a woman can indeed carry a series! With any luck under God the rest of the copy cats in tinsel town will take note and we can finally start to get some more gender equality on the small screen!

And leading that charge is the other breakout new series of the year: Orange is the New Black. If Orphan Black was pushing boundaries by placing one female in the lead (playing almost every main character herself no less), then Orange was clearly out to throw grenades at the boundaries by placing multiple women of multiple races and ages at the forefront of its story. The outcome is a ridiculously funny, entertaining, heartfelt, thought-provoking 13 episodes that left everyone who watched them chomping at the bit for more.

If 2013 becomes the year that all doubts or questions about Netflix's viability as a source for original programming were put to rest, then I venture to say that Orange is the New Black is the reason why.  It's a series grounded in great acting and directing that just so happens to be equally entertaining on a binge watch as it is when taken in small doses, and it's the only series Netflix has put out thus far that I feel totally comfortable saying that about.

The Favorites:

Not to be outdone by the newbies, a few of the perennial favorites also had (expected) great years, or at least great episodes as was the case for AMC's The Walking Dead. When it aired back on March 3rd, I was very quick to hail the episode Clear as the best episode of TV that 2013 was likely to see barring entries from TV's top dogs Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and Game of Thrones which hadn't started their seasons yet.

Clear turned out to be the quietest most well contained, and overall best, episode the show had seen since its first season. Indeed, the core of the story harkened back to storylines from that first season. The Walking Dead is a show that works best with a bit of forward momentum. So long as the characters are moving forward and driving towards something, it tends to be enjoyable and worth watching, but once they become stagnant, the show lacks much of what makes it special. This was the problem with all of the second and a lot of the third season. And just when I (and a lot of others) was starting to think that the show was going to lose all coherence and watchability, the (then) future showrunner, Scott M. Gimple, penned an episode so good that all of my faith was renewed. I didn't know TWD was capable of being as good, enjoyable, and introspective as Clear turned out to be, and I'm so happy to find out that it could. The beginnings of season 4 that aired last fall were equally good, proving that Gimple is exactly the man for the job, but nothing really surpassed Clear if for no other reason than because it was just so much better from start to finish than I thought the series was capable of being any longer.

While The Walking Dead revived its storytelling ability, Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones merely solidified their constant places at the top of the TV pyramid. Game of Thrones has long been a favorite of mine, but I think it truly set itself apart by taking something that a lot of people knew was coming and still succeeding in making it completely affecting and seriously entertaining.  The Rains of Castamere is great. From start to finish it's just great, and there's not much more anyone can say about it. But I'm going to try anyway. I think there are three main points to be made about the episode's greatness:

1) It teaches you how to watch the show.

In the event that there was anyone uncertain that they needed to be watching the ninth episode of each season ready for something epic to happen, The Rains of Castamere put that doubt to rest. I hadn't read the books when I watched through the first season, so if I had a knock against the show, it was that its pacing didn't make sense. To hit the penultimate episode and kill off your protagonist only to follow it up with the boringest episode the season had seen was ridiculous to me. Now that I understand the rhythms of the series, I don't feel that way anymore. I know exactly what to expect from a season of GoT. I know the first 2 episodes will play catch up with all of our characters, I know that the 9th episode will be the most epic thing we'll ever see, and the finale will just be a bit a place-setting for the next season. This should have been clear to most people after the second season, but two points make a line and not a pattern, per se, so the ability for the third season to reiterate these things was important and enjoyable. And the fact that they did it was a set piece as amazing as the Red Wedding was sheer brilliance.

2) The title!

It would have been so pathetically easy to call this episode The Red Wedding and be done with it. Everyone who'd read the books (and even just those of us who were only on tumblr) knew what was to come. The Red Wedding is one of the most iconographic moments of the series, and maybe all of Fantasy as a whole. But instead what the showrunners did was take this song which has its own sense of mystique and put it at the forefront. One of the smartest adaptation moves D.B. Weiss and David Benioff have made has been to have The Rains of Castamere orchestrated (at least I hope that was their decision) and to make sure they've had it playing on the show's score during some of the most important and shocking moments. In that sense, the song has just as much meaning to the viewers as it does to the people of Westeros. This way, when the song starts playing at the wedding, we don't even need Catelyn's reaction shot to tell us shit is about to go down. The title of the episode and the song carry all the weight and some subtlety to anyone still a bit too slow to get it.

3) The Stark-centric nature of the entire episode.

After focusing 2012's Blackwater fully on King's Landing with Sansa being the only Tully Stark on screen, it was nice to toss King's Landing aside and focus only on the stories surrounding the other Stark children. While I think the show and the series have been making it a point to ensure the cast of characters share top billing in a lot of ways, I don't think we've ever really left behind the notion that this is primarily the Stark's story. Dany and Tyrion factor in greatly to everything that's happened and will happen, but I think we're all left with the general feeling that the overall fate of Westeros is in the hands of the remaining Starks, so focusing on them as they lose 2 more members was a great way to heighten the episode. Again I say Sheer Brilliance.

Rounding out the best of the best of 2013 TV are the two best installments the medium has ever seen, or might ever see in future: Breaking Bad's Ozymandias and Felina. I swear I don't think it's even remotely possible to say anything about these episodes that hasn't already been said, and said far more eloquently than I could ever imagine. While the greatness of an episode of The Walking Dead could be found in the series reaching heights it didn't seem to possess any longer, and the greatness of Game of Thrones could be seen as a relatively young show simply continuing to solidify itself at the top, the genius of these two episodes of Breaking Bad is all about the final and inevitable death of a king finding a way to go out on top. BB doesn't simply end its run on a note that continues its stance as a great show, it burns the house down behind it and challenges everyone to even try and achieve what it's achieved in its six years on air.

If the main question surrounding the pending end of the most addictive show on television was whether or not it would be able to live up to the series' storied run, Ozymandias and Felina put all those questions to rest. Two hours of amazing storytelling, great visuals, pulse pounding action, wrapped up lose threads, and questions finally answered. Vince Gilligan and company finally took a firm stance on the long-standing question of Walter White's sympathy or morality and told all Walter White apologist to STFU once and for all with the series' most riveting moment: "I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And I was really....I was alive." It's all of a minute long, and it's some of the best acting and one of the most jaw dropping moments in all of TV history in my not so humble opinion.

But that's to say nothing about the other great moments of those two outstanding episodes. Everything from Hank's death, to Skylar standing up to Walter (and if the way the camera holds on the shot of the knife and the phone while she makes her decision isn't just the most amazing thing you've ever seen, then I don't know what), to the final fracture and eventual heal (band-aid at least?) of the Walter--Jesse relationship was handled with the utmost skill, respect, and appreciation. I think that there will always be people who refuse to watch Breaking Bad for one reason or another, but in the end, the reason all of us and all of your friends have been harping on you about this show is simple: It's the best thing that the small screen has seen in many many decades. It's a show that pushed the medium forward and definitively showed what long-form storytelling was truly capable of, and I just don't know that anything will surpass it.

Honorable Mentions:

1) Scandal is a show that it can be tough to admit to loving, and recommending to others, but when a season premier features a scene like this one, how can you not throw yourself behind it? Very few shows have as many "Oh Shit!" moments as Scandal does on a weekly basis, and the third season opened with one that perfectly encapsulated a lot of what the show is about, what it stands for, and what the rest of the season was really going to be. It also might be the single most perfect foundation laying scene ever as we're finally introduced to Eli Pope not as just the strong shadowy figure getting shit done, but as Olivia's father. It was great!

2) Hannibal was an early surprise for the 2013 season because I didn't think anything on NBC would be capable of being that enjoyable, but I honestly should have known better than to bet against a genius like Bryan Fuller. Great performances from Hugh Dancy and Mads Mikkelsen center this show, a great balance between being serialized and episodic elevate it, and a visual beauty that's unprecedented on network TV truly marked it as one of the greats of 2013. Small audience numbers will probably doom it and the other NBC break out Dracula to being cancelled before their time, but I'd strongly suggest enjoying them while they last.

3) On the Comedy tip, I think attention has to be paid to Fox's Brooklyn Nine-Nine. I honestly don't watch very much comedy (when you've got Archer, I don't think you really need much more), but Brooklyn turned out to not only be effortlessly funny, it's also astonishingly diverse. It's characters are fully realized and unique, and its comedy is derived from those characters being placed in great situations not the typical racist, sexist, homophobic humor that got old back in the early 2000s. With any luck this could be the future of network comedy, but so long as Seth MacFarlane is being contacted to make TV, I wouldn't bet on it.

4) The Americans had a very quiet opening season, and while I don't know that it'll be one of the shows 2013 is truly known for, I do think it was a great start to what will hopefully be a long run. It perfectly integrated its marital troubles story into its spy craft in a way that I didn't expect heading in. It was interesting each week, and there were always funny wigs, so there's that.

So I know I droned on for awhile, but this is something I'm passionate about and I felt I needed to make up for a month's worth of not posting. I'm going to spend the next couple days working on a post focused on The Bad aspects of 2013 TV, and maybe a separate post dedicated to where I hope TV is and isn't going in the future based on these findings, so keep an eye out for that. And here's to the year to come in Storytelling!

TV Review: Dracula (Season 1 Episodes 1-5)

I'm a graduate of the Whedon School of television. I've watched all of his shows, most of which while they were on the air, and have been a fanatic of his for a very long time. I like to think that this means I know good long-form storytelling when I see it, but I think it mostly means I've gotten used to "good" or "enjoyable" shows getting cancelled before they've had a chance to really find their audience. But when Dracula on NBC gets cancelled, as I'm almost certain it will be, that's going to be fairly tough pill to swallow.

It's not that Dracula is as good as Firefly or anything, it really isn't even in the same league, but it's surprisingly entertaining and enjoyable and delivers a lot of good things to look for in a series. And for it to be on NBC makes it even more surprising, but that fact also seems to spell its doom. Add to that its Friday night time slot (also known as the kiss of death), and its falling ratings and it seems like the show is doomed. Which is too bad because for the first time in a number of years NBC finds itself poised to deliver some real quality programming if they'd only sit back and allow the story to take hold and find its audience. Granted the show hasn't been cancelled yet, and after giving Hannibal a second season, some of the signs seem to point towards NBC finally learning it's important to be patient in the current TV market, but I won't rest easy until the show is officially picked up for a second season and we see what it and Hannibal are capable of doing with a little word of mouth press and some time under their belts.

There are two facts potentially coloring my view of Dracula: 1) I had very low expectations going in. And those expectations were only barely surpassed by what was ultimately a weak Pilot. 2) I binge watched episodes 2-5 in one morning. So it's possible that the show is only as good as I think it is when its being consumed all at once, but in the day of the DVR and Netflix and such, I don't think that this is a bad thing.

But enough about the fact that I think the show is good, here's why I think it's good (spoilers to follow):

1) Character, character, character!
I can't stress enough how important clearly defined characters with clearly defined goals and motivations are to just about every story. Dracula seems to understand who its characters are and what drives them to do the things they do. Everything from Van Helsing (Thomas Kretschmann) helping Dracula (with no pleasure from the action for either of them), to the complications in Mina (Jessica De Gouw) and Harker's (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) relationship make perfect sense. The show has yet to make a character decision that doesn't feel understandable and organic, and the few main characters we don't know as well yet (Lady Jayne Wetherby comes to mind) we know well enough to understand the decisions being made in the moment and I have faith that they'll get origin type episodes like Renfield got most recently.

2) The story is simple and interesting.
Dracula (the constantly sexy Jonathan Rhys Meyers but I mean really really sexy) is resurrected by Van Helsing so the two of them can embark on a quest for revenge against the shadowy cabal that ruined both of their lives. Everything Dracula does from taking on the persona of an American entrepreneur (bad accent and all) to getting involved in a Victorian race for renewable energy is dedicated to eliminating his enemies. Along the way he meets Mina Murray who happens to be the spitting image of his murdered wife and romantic wackiness ensues. The story is never convoluted or difficult to follow, but the focus on intrigue and the traffic of information leaves the series with the ability not to rely too highly on big action set pieces to keep your interest. This lack of reliance on pulse-pounding action was one of the first things I noticed when watching Game of Thrones, actually, and the same sensibility is found here.

3) A dedication to diversity.
This might not be a big deal to some people, but I think the way that this genre show is showing a dedication to presenting a story with queer characters and characters of color when it really doesn't have to is brilliant. The story is set in Victorian London, so it could easily get away with the idea that blacks and gays just weren't all that prolific. Instead they've made it a point to introduce important queer characters (yes plural!) and people of color into their early episodes. Compare that to another genre show, Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and you've got a study in opposites. And worse, AOS has no excuses since it takes place in a contemporary world. But I digress, the point is that I don't doubt that each viewer will be able to see his/herself in this show by the time the first season is over, and the stories they're telling about race relations, gender equality, and queer visibility in their world are fun, interesting, and entertaining.

In the end, we're simply left with a good and enjoyable show. Now if only I could do something to ensure NBC would be smart for once and let it take its time to find an audience.

Film Review: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

In the interest of full disclosure, I hated the second Hunger Games book. I also wasn't a huge fan of the first film because I thought they tried to stay too true to the book (book purests who, incorrectly,  think the books are always automatically better are hating me right now) instead of focusing on making a good adaptation of the source material. But I didn't hate the first film, and I didn't hate the first book either, so those are the caveats I feel obligated to make before starting this review. I guess logic dictates that my next statement be that I hated The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, but I really really didn't.


Here's the major mistake that I think Collins makes that the films, by necessity, rectify: The First Person, present tense narration. Even though the films (the first more than the second) pull almost all of their dialogue from the book, they were smart enough to avoid the too easy trap of including some kind of voice-over narration from Katniss. I don't know if this is because the film makers know how horrible voice-over generally is, or because, like me, they found the narration of the books to be the weakest element. Being stuck in Katniss' head while she repeatedly and willfully makes the worst deductions and most illogical leaps about the things in front of her face is one of the most torturous experiences I've ever had. Per usual, the films take place in third person, and the difference it makes to Collins' story is tremendous.

The story of the film shouldn't be surprising to anyone at the this point. Katniss (played by the most glorious human being ever, and someone I totally wish was my best friend, Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson) have returned home from their defiant triumph in last year's Hunger Games. Now they're in a position to play up their false love (false from Katniss' point at least) for the cameras in an attempt to quell the burgeoning rebellion of the districts that their actions in the games have started. This is complicated by Peeta's (understandable) lack of interest in allowing his very real emotions to be placated by Katniss' farce, Gale (Liam Hiemsworth or, I mean, sorry, maybe this one is better?) starting to make his long standing feelings for Katniss known, and the continued threats from President Snow (Donald Sutherland in a continuously fun and evil performance) that if things in the districts don't get any better, he'll take his frustrations out on Katniss' loved ones. So in an attempt to do his part to eliminate Katniss' status as a symbol of hope, President Snow uses the upcoming Quarter Quell (a special version of the Games that takes place every 25 years) to enact a rule that this year's Hunger Games Reaping will take place from the previous winners of each district. So of course Katniss and Peeta (after he volunteers to take Haymitch's place) find themselves heading back into the games.

(Spoilers follow) As an adaptation, Catching Fire is pretty much everything I look for. The core story elements are there and pretty much unadulterated, some of the things that are a little more implicit in the book are made perfectly explicit in the film (the relationship between Katniss and Gale is one of the things that I feel is being firmly taken out of speculation and the subtext and placed firmly on the screen, and the scene in which Katniss saves Gale from being publicly flogged is one of the more powerful in the film), and the things that are being left out are more or less inconsequential, while the scenes that are added do a lot to add color and context to the story and the characters we don't get to spend as much time with in the books (the scenes between Snow and Plutarch Heavensbee [the constantly amazing Phillip Seymour Hoffman] come to mind).

There are a couple moments in the book that don't make the cut which could be argued as being important, but I'm not sure the storytelling experience is truly lessened by their absence. As for Peeta's amputated leg, while I agree that leaving this out was an oversight, I also think it's a flaw to be held against the first film and not this one, which couldn't have fixed this issue without a hugely problematic retcon. As a result, what you get is not only an intelligent and highly entertaining film, but a rare adaptation that truly surpasses the experience created by its source material.

If I have one complaint about the film, it's that the pacing still feels to be a bit off. Where I think Collins had a tendency to allow the pre-games scenes to take their time and build character and suspense, and for the pace to be picked up during the life and death games, I feel like the films have tended towards the opposite with the earlier scenes flying by while the games lack a more pulse pounding tempo. That isn't to say that the scenes in the Arena aren't exciting, tense, and suspenseful, because they often are, but the general feeling of death coming and passing the characters by in a blink is lesser here than I felt it was in the book.

But in the end, I'm left with one simple fact: The Hunger Games: Catching Fire was an exceptionally entertaining way to spend two hours and twenty-six minutes. I left the theater very excited for the next two films, which is way way more than I can say for how I felt putting the book down.

TV Review: Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Season 1 Episodes 1-7)

I purposefully wanted to wait until about six episodes in before offering up a review of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.EL.D. because 1) all series need a little time to get their legs under them and 2) the last time Joss Whedon had a TV series (the amazing Dollhouse), it wasn't until the sixth episode that everything took off. Granted, that time, everyone involved with the show repeatedly reminded viewers that the sixth episode would be the best and we just needed to hang in there to reach it. No such assurances were offered for AOS, and after seven episodes I've realized why: It simply isn't going to get any better. Another thing I've realized about the show is that no matter what anyone says and no matter how much ABC wants to promote it as such, AOS isn't a Whedon show in the traditional sense. It lacks Whedon's trademark humor and quick fire dialogue, there's no standout character for the viewers to really latch onto for better or worse (the fan favorite Agent Coulson not withstanding, more on that in a minute), and there's no real season long story arc yet (which after 7 hours is a significant problem). Acknowledging early on that this was not a Whedon show changed my expectations and allowed my enjoyment of the show to increase, but it didn't make the show any "better," and as someone who really wants to like this show, I find this to be problematic.

I think the biggest and most glaring problem facing AOS is how episodic its format has been. Coulson's team tackles a specific threat each episode. Instead of setting the team against an enemy and allowing them to do battle intermittently throughout the course of the season, the creators have decided that it would be better to give them an ever changing threat or problem to solve. This could be a good thing as it would give the writers the opportunity to expand the already established Marvel Cinematic Universe, but for some reason the show doesn't appear to be doing that. The threats are typically contained to the episode in question and they haven't done much to expand our understanding of the world in which the characters operate. Nor have the episodes done anything to enhance our understanding of the characters themselves. At this point in the show's run, we've really only been given two separate serialized stories: What really happened to Agent Coulson, and what's the story behind Skye's parents, and both stories have been done poorly. Skye's story is arguably the most interesting of the two at this point, but that's only because it's new. Its novelty, however, also works against the show as the story's introduction in the fifth episode feels rushed and comes out of nowhere without giving the audience time to really care. The fact that Skye is looking into the S.H.I.E.L.D. in order to discover the truth behind her own origin should have been introduced in the first episode to allow suspense to build around it organically. It also wouldn't hurt to have the story center around someone more interesting than Skye, but that's another issue we'll get to in a bit. The Coulson story was the main thing I took away from the first episode and it was the primary source of interest for me as a viewer. But as the show has dragged on and on with no real headway being made on that front, I've found my interest to be lessening with each passing week. Again, this would be easily rectifiable if either Coulson came off as a significantly different character than he was in the Marvel films, or if the show just showed us some kind of forward momentum towards a resolution instead of just teasing us with hints that he's "different" every week.

The characters are the second problem facing the series. None of them are interesting. Besides our previous ties to Coulson (which as I mentioned already have been growing thinner each week), Malinda May is the only character that seems to be even remotely three-dimensional at this point, and I can't help but think that this has something to do with the fact that she hardly ever speaks. If the writers gave her as much dialogue as they do the others, she'd probably be ruined just as quickly. None of the characters feel like fully developed people yet so much as cardboard cutouts who exist to do the one thing they each do. The show doesn't strive to surprise us with out of left field character beats. This is most obvious in one of the show's better episodes to date: F.Z.Z.T. Simmons is infected with some kind of Alien virus transmitted through static electricity and the team, Fitz in particular, rush to try and find a cure before she basically explodes and kills them all. Even though the scenes that follow are entertaining, nothing in them is surprising. Of course Simmons would throw herself from the plane instead of risking the lives of all of her team, of course Fitz and Simmons combined brain power would come up with a cure that works in time, and of course after complaining the entire episode that he needed something action-y to do, Ward would jump out of the plane before having his parachute fully fastened and save her. Again, this was all very entertaining in the moment, but I don't think it did much to add coloring to the characters we'd been faced with for five hours already. But the worst character ever award certainly goes to Chloe Bennet's Skye. She's boring, she's annoying, and her continued presence on the team is totally unjustified. She's a double agent and then she isn't, she's a computer hacker who has to be fitted with a bracelet to stop her from hacking computers because she can't be trusted, and her sole purpose continues to be to tell the team "no" for some reason or another each week. It's pathetic.

Shows in general, and Whedon shows in particular, work best when each major player's position within the group makes narrative sense. The best example of this from the Whedon-verse is Firefly. Not only do the characters have an immediate purpose (pilot, mechanic, doctor, muscle), they also serve a deeper role of representing elements of Mal's soul that he's lost over the years. There's never a question about one of them being left behind or replaced with someone else capable of doing their jobs because the audience understands why they're there. Or as Mal puts it when asked why he'd come back for Simon and River, "You're on my crew. Why we still talking about this?" The same cannot be said about Skye; surely if her only purpose is to be a computer hacker, the team could find one far more trustworthy and reliable.

All of this boils down to a show that's not in full command of itself yet and is falling into bad storytelling methods. These problems are problems I would expect to have been ironed out after two or three episodes. That they're still so prevalent and that they're all so easily fixable, tells me that the show probably won't get much better than it's been thus far. Or at the very least it'll require an entire overhaul to make it better. I don't want it to seem like I hate the show outright. I actually find all of the episodes watchable if not enjoyable. But I'm not rushing to my TV set each week to make sure I've caught the latest installment. I had high expectations for the series given the stellar work Marvel's been doing with its cinematic universe and the names attached. It's sad how hard those expectations of a great show have come crashing down around the reality that it's little more than middling at best. Do we really want to dedicate 22 hours to something that will never be more than mediocre?

Film Review: Thor: The Dark World

I finally got around to seeing Thor: The Dark World for a second time and I must say that I found it a lot more impressive upon rewatch than I did initially. The problems I had with it on a macro level (which I'll get to in due time) are still there, but the problems I had with it on the micro level of the sheer storytelling in the moment have vanished. Where I initially thought that the film had eliminated some of the storytelling flare of the previous Marvel Cinematic Universe films in favor of straight action, I now see that the story is a lot stronger than I gave it credit for and the manner in which it is being told is actually rather masterful. I held off on writing my review of the film after my first viewing because I have a lot of faith in Marvel's ability to create good films (at the very least, I have faith in their ability to create good films in this Avengers dominated run. I'm willing to simply gloss over the flaws in some of the X-men and Spider-Man movies and the complete ridiculousness that was Fantastic 4 as anomalies), and so I left the theater acknowledging that if I didn't enjoy the film as much as I should have, then the problem was probably with me as a viewer and not with the film. In the end, I think this proved to be the right move.

The film opens with Odin (played as always by the incomparable Anthony Hopkins) giving a voice over recap of the the beginning of the universe and the war fought between Asgardians and Dark Elves over the elves desire to return the universe to the darkness from whence it came. Malekith (Christopher Eccleston) is the leader of the Dark Elves and he's looking to use a MacGuffin weapon known as the Aether to basically end the world as we know it. Odin's father stops him, hides the weapon somewhere where it'll never be found (because that always ends well) and tells the world that Malekith, who scampered off when the battle was lost, is dead. Fast forward a few thousand years and Loki (Tom Hiddleston) is being locked in the Asgardian dungeon for the rest of his life for the crimes he committed on Earth during The Avengers, and Thor (Chris Hemsworth) is fighting to restore peace and balance to the nine realms which fell into chaos after Loki's actions in the first Thor. And of course there's Jane Foster (Natalie Portman), Thor's mortal, earthbound love interest who's moping about since Thor left her two years ago, but who's been spending her downtime using her awesome scientist brain to track gravitational anomalies over London. So things are tough all over for our group and, of course, when the Aether is found in the place no one would ever find it, and Malekith and his elves wake up from their thousands of years of slumber, wackiness ensues.

The movie is fun and entertaining. The story is straight forward and easily comprehensible (something I didn't realize when I watched it slightly drunk the first time around). And, somewhat surprisingly, it's really funny; consistently funny throughout much of it's 112 minute run time. It wasn't that I doubted Marvel's ability to bring the humor, but after spending so much time with the ever refreshing and snarky Tony Stark, it seemed odd that one of their films could pack in so much humor without him. But more than all of those reasons, I was surprised by the film's subtlety in its storytelling on the second watch. A lot of the story progresses without words, relying on the visual to convey the intricacies of what's happening. I found this to be especially true during a major action set piece towards the mid point of the film where the characters allowed to act and react to the situations before them without any real exposition about what was happening. (general spoiler) When Heimdall (the always amazing Idris Elba) moves to raise the protective barrier around Asgard, he doesn't talk aloud to himself about what he is doing or needs to do; he simply does it and there's never any confusion as to what is being done. So while this can leave things seeming a bit murky to the slightly inebriated brain, it makes perfect sense when sober, and I'm sorry for initially thinking the film was cumbersome and convoluted before, Marvel, I was wrong.

But that's not to say that I don't have problems with the film, or more specifically with its place within the series as a whole (significant spoilers and specific story elements to follow). Aside from the extreme lack of scenes featuring a scantly clad Chris Hemsworth (only one shirtless scene? really?), I only have two serious complaints. 1) I feel that Thor is the only Avenger with his own franchise thus far who isn't getting very much emotional development. 2) I think the series would have been much better served by allowing Loki to remain dead. I'll admit, that I'm more capable of being swayed on that second one, but in the moment it kind of irks me.

About Thor's emotional development: While it's clear that Thor underwent a great change in character after the first film, I don't feel as though the same can be said about this one. I'll admit that it's possible that the filmmakers intended the moment when he confronts Odin at the end of the film to tell him he can be the protector of the nine realms but he can't and won't take his rightful place on the throne to be the defining character moment, but if that's the case then I have to say it didn't work for me. First off, I was never under the impression that Thor becoming king of Asgard and ruling from the throne was ever going to happen. Given everything they want to do with the Avengers franchise, that just never realistically seemed to be in the offing to me. Secondly, I never really got the impression that Thor was interested in taking the throne to begin with. Early in the film Odin tells Loki that the plan is for Thor to finish bringing peace to the nine realms and then to become king, but we never hear that aspiration from Thor himself. It's set in stone by way of his birthright, sure, but what reason are we given to believe that all of the fighting and struggling to bring the nine realms to heel is being done, on his part, simply so he can get to his throne sooner? Giving up something someone else wants you to have but that you never really wanted in the first place (and something that would stall the story progression were you ever to possess it anyway) doesn't really count as character growth to me. Furthermore, Thor's mother, Frigga (Rene Russo), dies in this film and it's clearly a moment meant to spark a change in everything, but beyond his grief, I'm not sure I feel comfortable saying that Thor emerges from the incident as a different man than he was prior. Compare him to Tony Stark who underwent a serious progression within his most recent film, and Steve Rogers who appears to be being confronted with the same kind of big character moments in his upcoming film (based on the trailer at least), and you've got a character who seems to be being left behind by the Marvel writing staff.

As for Loki's death, allow me to say that I fully understand why the creative team would want to keep Hiddleston around. Even though I'm not one of the many many fans of the series who thinks that Loki is just the greatest thing since sliced bread, I do understand how invaluable Hiddleston has been in the role and how much fun he's constantly been on screen. I also understand the desire to stay true to the comics the films are based on. But seeing as how the films in most of the MCU have been adapted from Marvel worlds and characters more so than direct stories and comic runs themselves, I'm not of the opinion that the films have to remain as staunchly true to the source material as a Harry Potter or a Hunger Games adaptation has to. I would also point out that between Agent Coulson being returned from the dead in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Bucky making his return in The Winter Soldier, I'm starting to wonder if the series (and I do view all of these independent films as one whole series in a lot of ways) has the balls to pull the trigger on something as big and important as a major character death. I love Frigga, but sorry she doesn't count. I felt as though the film had the chance to do something significant with Loki's death and the redemptive elements of it in this film and they squandered it with that ending.

With all of that being said, Thor: The Dark World is a ridiculously entertaining and enjoyable film. The performances always seem to toe the line between headstrong seriousness and self-aware camp (or maybe it's just the Elizabethan language that makes it seem that way), the romance between Jane and Thor is crazy moving and fun to watch, and the film is told with a frankness and confidence that still surprises me when I find it in action films. You'd think after so many Marvel films I'd be used to it. Between this and Iron Man 3, I think Marvel's Phase 2 is shaping up to be every bit as good as Phase 1 was.

Film Review: 12 Years a Slave

I watched Steve McQueen's 12 Years a Slave last night and I'm still not sure how to go about processing what I saw. I hope it's not hyperbolic for me to say that not since Roots have we seen such an unflinching portrayal of Slavery in America. But even more important than that (or at least more important within the confines of this blog) very rarely have we seen a more confident and capable filmmaker than McQueen. If this man doesn't finally get his (long overdue) Oscar, a great disservice will have been done by the academy.

The Story (possible spoilers to follow): 12 Years a Slave is based on the novel of the same name by Solomon Northup and it details his experiences in slavery. Northup is a free black man living in New York with his loving wife and their two children. As a talented violinist, he is offered a job playing for two magicians in a traveling circus, and he goes with them to Washington DC in faith and friendship only to wake up one morning after a night of hard drinking chained in a slave market. Without easy access to his papers, and working within a system that clearly doesn't want him to have access to his papers, he is quickly given a new name, and a story claiming that he is a run away slave from Georgia. What follows is an amazing story of a kidnapped black man being sold into slavery for 12 years and forced to try and survive.

The story is powerful and amazing to witness, but the film is really a triumph of excellent direction from McQueen. I honestly don't have words to accurately describe how amazing McQueen's work is here, and somehow that's the most fitting reaction since the most powerful things McQueen does within this film have nothing to do with the words. This is a triumph of visual storytelling. I first noticed this signature from McQueen when I watched Shame in theaters. There are so many moments in that film where McQueen was content to just let Fassbender sit and allow the thoughts and emotions of the character to play across his face. Often during the numerous sex scenes of that film, the camera was trained on Fassbender's face instead of on the bodies of the characters, and the affect of this choice was to bring the viewer into Brandon's head and witness the turmoil of a person suffering from a sex addiction. McQueen brings that same sensibility to 12 Years and the affect is twofold: you get a great human story watching Chiwetel Ejiofor allow Solomon's emotions just bubble up to the surface or forcing them down and out of sight, and you get an uncomfortable experience of witnessing the horrors of slavery.

In one of the more remarkable scenes of the film, Solomon is being lynched after he dares to challenge and then repeatedly strike his first Overseer, Tibeats (Paul Dano in a very understated and ultimately thankless performance). One of the other Overseers saves Solomon's life, but leaves him hanging from the tree, his toes barely scraping the muddy ground and supporting enough of his weight to stop him from suffocating, until the plantation owner, Ford (played by the eternally amazing Benedict Cumberbatch) arrives home and cuts him free. McQueen holds the shot of Solomon hanging from the tree for the most amazing interval. It might have been five minutes, it might have been five hours, I'm not sure, but the impact of it is undeniable. As Solomon struggles in the foreground, life goes on around him in the background. Children play, men and women continue their work, the lady of the house looks on briefly before heading back inside, one woman sneaks up to him to give him a drink of water before quickly rushing off again, no one speaks, no one other than that kind slave woman acknowledges him, and the audience is left with the impression that this is just business as usual. It's nothing short of brilliant.

The film always stays in the moment and never really crosses into judgmental territory. I can't say that the slave owners are ever portrayed as sympathetic, but they aren't unduly demonized either. McQueen presents the situations as they happened and leaves the audience to draw their own conclusions. There are two moments in the film where it feels, however briefly, like the filmmakers are trying to make a message or tip their hands a bit more than necessary. One exceptionally illuminating conversation with Alfre Woodard and the conversation between Fassbender and Brad Pitt's characters. But both scenes work well and fit within the confines of the story. Oddly enough, the resonant moment in the film, for me, was something Ford said to Solomon. "Whatever the circumstances, Solomon, you are an exceptional nigger, but I fear no good will come of it." If you're looking for a line with implications that echo through time to the present, look no further.

12 Years a Slave is not for the faint of heart. It earns its R rating through unflinching portrayals of abuse and sexuality that were as much a part of Slavery as the hard back-breaking work. But for those with the stomach to take it, 12 years is an amazingly powerful and exceptionally well made film. Great direction, breath taking performances from all of the film's stars, and an emotional experience that will move you and open your eyes.