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Army of the Dead Review

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Norrie) — Sun, 23 May 2021 06:41:00 +0000

An Army of the Dead review in which I talk way too much about zombies.

There’s a certain cinematic nostalgia when it comes to zombie films, those soulless monstrosities that have shed their previous humanness only to now roam in growling and moaning hordes across dystopian landscapes. It’s a pretty simplistic venture. Someone got exposed, that person gets *turned* into an undead killing machine and now everyone is fucked. Wash, rinse, bite a neck, repeat.

So walking into a zombie movie is mostly old hat at this point. It’s something of a solved science. We know how they get made, how they take over, how the humans will react, and ultimately how we’ll win. There are only so many ways to skin this undead flesh.

That doesn’t mean new movies in the genre shouldn’t be made, but rather we can likely temper our expectations some. Zombie flicks are a go-to because we can eliminate one half of the equation outright. We don’t need to know why this particular bad guy is taking over the world. It’s mostly, “Mmm, brains, arghh” and we move on with our lives. What their lack of humanness provides is the ability to explore everyone one other side of the *human* equation (and to rack up a huge body count). The *reaction* to the zombies is often more interesting than the zombies themselves. The Walking Dead is going on infinity seasons about this very thing.

And that can make for rather mundane fare. Except that zombie movies continue to crank out because of their simplicity, because they offer a chance at ultimate humanness, because they have those things inherent to our own twisted psyche that allow for the good to wrestle with the bad. What would we do in this situation? How would we react when faced with our own loved ones being turned? Would I survive a world obliterated by flesh-chomping, iron deficient veiny corpse brides? I’d like to think I make it out, but who the fuck knows. I’m not all that great with a nail-scattered baseball bat.

We understand zombies as well as we understand most other characters in films. They are easy in this way, in that when they are the primary (in your face) antagonist. They allow for the humans fighting them to be more human. They represent both sides of the coin, with internal struggles, clashes with their own ethics and morality all while piling up an undead body count on the other side. It makes for “easy” filmmaking because one side, with all of its relatively predetermined rules, can act accordingly. After that, it’s human condition time folks. It’s why zombies keep popping up. Just like you can’t keep them down in the movies themselves, you also can’t keep them out of the pages of working scripts.

Zack Snyder, on a base level, likely understands this lack of juxtaposition and why he’s leaned this way more than once in movies before. When he hasn’t been recutting major superhero films or working his way through the broader parts of the DC Extended Universe, he got his start making a zombie film. 2004’s Dawn of the Dead put the director on the map, plotting a course for him through the industry for years to come. Now, nearly two decades later he’s come to finish the job in some ways. What we get with Army of the Dead is more a spiritual successor than a real sequel, a zombie movie about the humanity of others while they rob a casino.

In his first movie, Snyder was working from the James Gunn script and the two forged a path through the world of another zombie takeover with unclear resolutions. We don’t know the fate of the world and maybe it’s not important if we do. To some degree, Snyder is working from the same beats in this newest film. The world doesn’t matter. The fate of existence doesn’t matter either. It isn’t existential, it just “is”. When the world is held hostage by disease, giving up isn’t simply a justifiable recourse. It’s just the path.

Army of the Dead starts conspiratorially enough with a military convo from Area 51 that you know is doomed before it even leaves the secured gates. What gets released is an unkillable zombie monster that lays waste to everyone involved before turning his sights on Las Vegas. Then, through a very Snyder-ian montage over the appropriately score “Viva Las Vegas” we see how the city is laid to waste, the zombies complete the takeover, lives are lost, bombs are dropped, carnage abounds all before the city is eventually walled off into a quarantine.

It’s here we pick up Dave Bautista’s Scott Ward who lost more than he can deal with at the hands of the zombies the first time and is now riding out his days not as a mercenary soldier but as the most muscle-jacked line cook in the Western Hemisphere. We know that while Las Vegas was walled off and the zombie invasion contained, the government plans to finish the job with a tactical nuke to wipe out The Strip and its surroundings once and for all. If it's a thinly veiled attempt at metaphor for the cleansing of our human sins, it works.

From here, Army of the Dead turns into a “once last job” type of flick with Scott assembling his teams of mercenary misfits and ne’er-do-wells to retrieve the millions in cash still in the bottom of a casino vault before the city is scorched. Snyder tries to cover a lot of ground here, making us want to care about the humans involved with the mission while also establishing what Las Vegas has become since the apocalypse. It’s mostly a fool’s errand. We know most aren’t going to make it out alive anyway, so who gives a shit?

That being said, there are gems in this group. Tig Notaro who stood in for the axed Chris D’Elia is perfect as the helicopter pilot. Her current “real life” show” has the comedian not understanding or knowing the celebrities she’s put face to face with and that general gestalt comes through perfectly on screen. Matthias Schweighofer as the German safecracker, who only wants to understand the emotional layers of those with him before he hears the inner workings of the safe is great as well.

Army of the Dead does a couple of things “new” within the genre that are worthy of note. For starters, he does try to humanize the zombies. These new undead are different than you’d expect with a top-down hierarchy that helps a lot with how the group moves through Las Vegas. In this way he draws from Justin Cronin’s The Passage series or Guillermo del Toro’s The Strain. Both of those were vampiric, but these groups need organizational hierarchy so why not transpose some of the rules onto zombies?

Army of the Dead wants you to care about Scott’s relationship with his daughter, and about the broader government conspiracy, and about the rebel fighters who’ve come back to Vegas for a payday, and about the zombie King and his bride. There’s a lot going on here and taken individually could have all made for a very cool movie. Combined together and we get diminishing returns.

Throughout there are more-than-slick action sequences with plenty of shock value. Dude can slo-mo with the best of them and there are a couple of times when he plays off cinematic timing to hilarious returns.There are other highlights as well. Snyder is a master of the soundtrack, Bautista kicks ass and there are a few twists and turns. It’s not a perfect movie but it’s watchable and enjoyable if you don’t mind getting zombie guts spilled on your outfit.

But in the end, like with zombies, the point is that there is no point. As with any zombie takeover, there’s a lot of shit going on and it’s not all going to get resolved. We don’t need to account for all of the “bad guys” so why bother accounting for all of the good ones too? The main goal is to work your way through a zombie hellscape with your morality intact. Most (all) won’t get there, but everyone was doomed anyway. That’s why zombies exist in movies. To remind us of that very fact. We knew we were screwed from the beginning, but that’s cool. The blood and guts journey is worth it to just to see where we land.

Stranger Things Season 3 - A Breakup Letter to Friendship

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Norrie) — Fri, 12 Jul 2019 12:17:00 +0000

My thoughts on Stranger Things Season 3. If you haven't watched it, all of the spoilers are ahead. So tread carefully, like a Mind Flayer could be around the corner.

“But I know you're getting older, growing, changing. I guess, if I'm being really honest, that's what scares me. I don't want things to change.” - Jim Hopper

True friendship, at least to the Duffer Brothers, seems defined by finding those people who truly understand you. Who you don’t really need to explain your life to because they already get it. There’s shared happiness and shared trauma. They are those with whom you speak a common language, who understand what a Mind Flayer or Demogorgon are without explanation. Who can walk into your parents’ basements unannounced. They can get you up on the walkie-talkie at any time for a meetup somewhere on a D&D game, trip to the pool, walk at the mall or take down a secret Russian military base. These are true friends.

Friendships like these are tough to come by and they don’t always last. But in the moment they mean a connection to each other with all the passion and sometimes provocation that embody what it means to truly understand another person. No one has a more shared sense of this than the Party. They are inextricably linked with knowledge and experience the likes of which will never be recreated. They’ve been the true definition of the closest kind of friends. And that’s beautiful, until it ends. Because make no mistake, at some point it ends.

Season 3 of Stranger Things gave us a glimpse of these relationships over the spectrum of time. How the rules change as you get older. How friendships can last or change, or die, or maintain, or some combination of everything in between.

See, most of Hawkins, Indiana woke up July 5, 1985 to the news the Starcourt Mall was going to need some major repairs, a beefcake lifeguard lay impaled in the food court, the town newspaper’s editorial board was missing, the local sheriff dead, the US government had flown in choppers overnight, there may or may not be Russians involved and real estate values were almost certainly plummeting. Hawkins lay in a bevy of shit, now dealing with problems that had seemingly come out of nowhere. For a place that had been able to turn a relative blind eye to even the most obvious problems, this was uncharted ground.

But while the rest of the town had the (Under)world’s problems basically dropped off at their collective doorsteps out of nowhere, The Party was already trying to pick up the pieces. Mike, Dustin, Lucas, Will with the late additions of Eleven and Mad Max were dealing with a new reality. The horrors of a terrible night were already well behind them, turned to dust and glop with Mind Flayers defeated and loved ones lost. They’d move on to a greater loss: the true dissolution of their group and the friendships that had bound them from the beginning.

The group has grown to include Steve and Robin, Nancy and Jonathan with a very late Erica Sinclair add I suppose, but at its core it’s been this group of friends navigating the world of growing up. They are bound by the inexplicable part of life when you come of age, realizing the world around you is more than just what you get up to in your parents' basement. But now, as often happens, one family (with Eleven in tow) was moving away leaving the others to venture out as a new group, major pieces lost.

In Dungeons & Dragons, a party sometimes loses characters during a campaign. It can happen for a variety of reasons. Sometimes they choose to just wander off, called by some side mission. Sometimes they die. Sometimes they just can’t make the game and stop coming. The remaining participants are then left a choice: roll up new characters to add to the group, quit the campaign all together or forge ahead in a weakened and compromised state. The show left us at the edge of that decision.

One of the major themes of Season 3 was an extension of the Season 2’s finale when the Party began to pair off, a tough realization for sure. By way of critique, this season spent entirely too much time on the relationship angles, weaving the will-they/ won’t-they narrative into almost every conversation and off moment. I found it to be tedious and tiresome the more the show went on. It was unbelievably annoying and nearly derailed certain narrative arcs. Season 3 had its flaws for sure.

That being said, it felt most authentic within The Party itself. Will’s insistence on keeping he, Mike, Dustin and Lucas linked to the past within their D&D campaigns, and away from the girls was bittersweet and authentic. Him smashing Castle Byers was a bit melodramatic but it served its purpose. Because aging and maturity aren’t linear even within the same age group, it made sense that a few of them made the *leap* before others. Mike and El working overtime at making out. Lucas and Max already having entered a new realm of couplehood in which they constantly bicker while Dustin worked to convince them of Suzie (I met her at camp) left Will behind. Will’s outside-looking-in posture wasn’t actually too different than his role in Seasons 1 and 2. There he was lost in another world or overtaken by a demonic presence which made him a bit of an *outsider*. This season it was mostly because his hormones hadn’t fully kicked in.

This fracture defined the best, worst and most authentic piece of Season 3. While the conversations at times delved into the cliched ridiculous (of which I found much to be tongue-in-cheek) the thematic issues were real. With the rest of the Party hanging around in Hawkins, it’s tough to know what becomes of Will whose tether to the world took much of its strength from his friends. I get the overwhelming sense that things won’t end well for him when it’s all said and done. And Eleven, now stripped back to Level 1 powers, or at minimum needing a significant long rest, is a new character almost entirely.

This is what happens in middle school and high school. Things change, friendships are altered, people grow and grow apart. The Party’s three-season campaign is coming to an end after having shouldered the burden of facing the Big Bad, completed most of the side missions, leveled up, gained things and lost them, dispatched (for now) relentless and unmitigating evil. They’ve closed portals into other dimensions. They’ve handled the town bully once and for all and also took down a secret Russian program intent on destroying the United States without any fanfare, medals or accolades. And now they splinter.

Like I said before, this season was problematic in a number of different ways. The writers relied much too heavily on the love/ relationship angle for ALL of the characters to the point where I actively thought at one point, “Is Dustin going to cheat on Suzie with Erica?”. (Not a joke)

But the worst part was the Hopper/ Joyce Byers storyline. Outside of pushing along a narrative arc, the “sexual tension” (a 0.0) was borderline unwatchable at times. Hopper’s constant curmudgeon negativity with unending “goddamnits” and snarky responses to Joyce, really just everything that spit out of his mouth until the very end (which we’ll get to momentarily) was a disaster. It essentially ruined a rather layered character who’d worked his way up from the absolute pits of despair by finding/ unearthing enough buried love in his heart to raise a new daughter. So much of this was undone by what the writers did with his character for basically all eight episodes.

My friend Pac and I were texting about the show leading up into to us finishing the season and I wrote to him:

“Not finished (with Stranger Things) yet but can easily say Hopper could have died three episodes ago and it would have been a net positive for this season.”

Let me start by saying, I didn’t really mean it. I was more just frustrated with Hop reduced to almost no redeeming traits besides a sense of bringing the Russians to justice and protecting El. Dude was unbearable, right until the end.

I’m sometimes overly apologetic to flawed shows that happen to just get endings right (something else I’ll get to in a bit), but Hopper’s defeat of the Russian Terminator costing him a chance at escape, trapped behind the forcefield of power was a very sad moment. And I instantly felt bad for wishing him dead.

For as much as the writers mishandled Sheriff Jim Hopper this season, I have to give them credit though. The dude went out with a bang. Accepting his fate, knowing he’d done the *right thing* and understanding that he’d never meet Joyce at Enzo’s for their date was a crushing moment, made so because we had just enough *real* Hop from previous seasons. This last season alone wouldn’t have gotten us there, but the backstory thankfully gives credence and sadness to his sacrifice.

And yet, this was nothing compared to Hopper’s real *goodbye*. The letter he’d penned to El, the voiceover that ended the season, was gorgeous television. A look into Hopper’s true self, what had originally made him so flawed, endearing, loving, angry, introspective and human during the course of the first couple of seasons. Here is the transcript of that note:

“There's something I've been wanting to talk to you both about. I know this is a difficult conversation, but I care about you both very much. And I know that you care about each other very much, and that's why it's important that we set these boundaries moving forward so we can build an environment where we all feel comfortable, trusted, and open to sharing our feelings.

Jesus. The truth is, for so long I'd forgotten what those even were. I've been stuck in one place. In a cave, you might say. A deep, dark cave. And then I left some Eggos out in the woods and you came into my life. For the first time in a long time, I started to feel things again. I started to feel happy. But lately, I guess I've been feeling distant from you. Like you're pulling away from me or something. I miss playing board games every night, making triple decker Eggo extravaganzas at sunrise, watching Westerns together before we doze off.

But I know you're getting older, growing, changing. And I guess, if I'm being really honest, that's what scares me. I don't want things to change. So I think maybe that's why I came in here, to try and maybe stop that change. To turn back the clock. To make things go back to how they were. But I know that's naive. It's just not how life works. It's moving, always moving, whether you like it or not. And yeah, sometimes that’s painful. Sometimes it's sad. And sometimes, it's surprising. Happy.

So you know what? Keep on growing up kid. Don't let me stop you. Make mistakes, learn from 'em. And when life hurts you, because it will, remember the hurt. The hurt is good. It means you're out of that cave. But, please, if you don't mind, for the sake of your poor old dad, keep the door open three inches.”

This letter could end up being the show’s finest moment. It’s almost certainly its best single piece of writing. This isn’t just a letter to Eleven. This is a letter from parents to their kids. This is a letter about life, a sad missive, wishing for time that isn’t coming back. This is about growing up and moving on. This is about life and love and loss and friendship and everything else from the Real World to the In-Between to the Upside Down, and back.

This letter is very simple. It’s so simple that it’s gorgeous. I watched this scene in a quiet room with headphones on, my wife and two daughters sleeping quietly nearby. I teared up throughout because I was thinking about them in that moment. If this scene didn’t touch you then, man, I don’t even know.

And though Hopper’s tortured sadness doesn’t resonate with me, the message about growing up did. El was Hopper’s daughter. He was her father. He didn’t want her to grow up, but at the same time, he did. This was a letter about understanding the true nature of letting go but how he’d be there to protect and watch out for her above all. And just how she’d risked her life twice to save everyone, ultimately he died saving her (and maybe himself).

Stranger Things is a show named for and about the things that go bump in the night. But this season showed that it’s just as much about the strangeness of growing up and what happens along every step in the path. I wrote last season, that I thought the real threat to the Party was the slow, steady and sad march of time. That the simple act of growing up would do more to separate them than any single thing/ act. In fact, Russians conspiring against the country and unstoppable Mind Flayers not taking “no” for an answer were the kinds of things that actually brought them together.

On that front I think I was correct, but not in a way I’m necessarily happy about. It’s tough to leave your friends. It’s tough to pass things from your childhood on to the next generation because you don’t *need* them anymore.

When Hopper mentions “The hurt is good,” there are a lot of ways to take this. The hurt I think, at its core, stems from just loving things too damned much. It’s almost a curse worse than evil at your doorstep. When you love those in your life more than you can explain (because you really don’t even need those kinds of words), it hurts. But it’s a hurt you want to hold on to forever.

I think for The Party, the hurt is the idea that they’ve had the greatest friends in the world and it’s different now. It’s not dissimilar to the end of Season 2, except in that moment of school dance flux there was no definitive dividing line. At the end of Season 3, there is. The Byers+Eleven leaving Hawkins is the unmistakable tear in the fabric moment. It’s when the scales truly tip. This is the real end.

Sure, life has a tendency to keep you connected with people. Hell Pac (my good friend from high school) and I are texting each other 23 years later late at night about Stranger Things. You end up staying close with those you’re meant to stay close with. The inevitable can be a blessing when it comes to that. But the son of a bitch is there’s a reality in which we don’t just get a *three months later* tag, but rather a *10 years later* warning and everyone has gone their separate ways. This would be the true scary movie. Because unfortunately it’s all too real. This is what happens when life marches forward. Friends move on, and though you promise you’ll steal Cerebro so much you’ll wear the thing out, we often know this isn’t the case. These are best laid plans but rarely ever come to fruition.

Season 4 will presumably be about that reconnection. And it won’t be the kind where someone misses answering a Code Red or gets home from summer camp to no fanfare. This will be something much different. It will be about the strength of the Party, the power derived from an unending and unflinching bond of friendship with the kind of friends you’d gladly step in front of dark, evil, gooey, gloppy, disgusting traffic for. This is what Stranger Things has been about and Hopper summed it up best:

“Keep on growing up kid. Don't let me stop you.” - Jim Hopper

--- Other thoughts ---

- I didn’t mention it, but I loved the Scoop Troop storyline as they cracked the Russian Code and broke into the underground super fortress. This angle had so many great 80s storylines right down to the typecast Russian army general and doctor, Red Dawn references and much more. It was really awesome.

I loved Steve’s character all season and his ditzy approach to almost everything. That his character didn’t really *grow* in any meaningful way was just fantastic really. Not everyone needs to have a moment of understanding or transformation. Sometimes bros just basically stay bros. Steve fucking up the video store interview summed it up perfectly.

We didn’t even really need the tension between him and Robin because, as I said before, the story didn’t need this kind of will they/won’t they angle at every turn. But the Steve, Robin, Dustin, Erica combo was awesome. Erica understanding and believing everything about The Party’s trials and psychokinetic tribulations, but not getting how her dopey brother could be involved was a highlight.

- What’s the resale downgrade on a house in which a Demogorgon ripped through the plaster? Century 21 Hawkins Realty wants to know when they are trying to figure out the Byers place. That kind of thing is mandatory reporting, right?

-I really hope that it isn’t Hopper in the Russian cell during the mid-credits scene at the end. I mean I guess I do hope it’s him, but not really from a story perspective. His ending was fitting, it wouldn’t do him justice to bring him back.

Game of Thrones Finale - The Iron Throne

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Norrie) — Mon, 20 May 2019 14:02:00 +0000

"When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives." - Sansa Stark.

Thoughts on the Game of Thrones finale, "The Iron Throne". Spoilers and more ahead...

"When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives." - Sansa

I think a lot about television shows, probably too much really. In the grand scheme of things, they aren’t important, simply blips on the artistic or entertainment radar and nothing more. Hell, most of us don’t even watch the same shows anymore. There’s so much stuff *on* to choose from (some of it good, a little bit really good, most of it very bad) that generating *water cooler* talk about television these days is nearly impossible. It really just doesn’t even happen. Gone are the days of a show airing on Sunday night and you made damn sure you caught it because if you missed it you’d be out of the loop. Except for this one.

So before we start to pick apart the Game of Thrones season finale or final season for any of its missteps (and there were some, kind of a lot) let’s just stop and give the show some deserved props. I’m not sure another will come along any time soon (or even ever again) that is legit *appointment* television. The kind of show that if you missed watching in the moment, there was a solid chance you’d be out of the discussion the next day in an uncomfortable way. Entering the zeitgeist in this way is next level shit and for that GOT deserves monumental praise. In the era of prestige television, Game of Thrones sits up there with the very best simply because of what it’s been able to capture as part of the public consciousness. Whatever you thought of the final season/ episode/ moments, you have to give it that. Any feelings about the ending are built solely on how amazing it was for such a long run. Bad shows end all the time and no one gives a shit. This season finale mattered.

The finale, aptly title “The Iron Throne” is for sure going to be polarizing, or maybe even worse in that I think more hated it than loved (or liked it). I suspect many will be disappointed in the ending. After some fumbles leading up to the finale, it was going to be difficult getting viewers all the way on board almost no matter the outcome.

But let me start by saying, by and large I felt satisfied with “The Iron Throne”. And I’m picking my words carefully here. I didn’t shut the TV at the end and think, “Wow, they nailed it!” or “Wow that sucked!”. My feelings lie somewhere in between. I felt it was an episode bookended by a beautiful sense of self that got a little sloppy in the middle. That maybe even sums up the show as a whole.

Visually, “The Iron Throne” was near a masterpiece, of this I don’t think there’s any debate. It had some downright stunning moments, almost too many to name. In fact, the first 45 minutes of the episode, amidst the fallout of Daenerys’s fire breath on King’s Landing were a satisfying slow burn. Jon walking through the ashen streets, Tyrion finding Jamie and Cersei buried, Jon walking up the stone steps with the tyrant-rule feeling of evil all around, Tyrion tossing the The King’s Hand emblem down the steps. These were all meticulously shot and executed.

Really everything up until the moment Jon meets with Daenerys in the ruins of the throne room, held such a fantastic feeling of a world upended. The lighting and music were gorgeous. You can tell D.B. and D.B.W. took their time with these moments and it paid off. This just isn’t how television looks, this is how award-winning movies look. The difference shouldn’t be lost. Game of Thrones changed the way we look at the scope of what television can be. The mark has been set ultra-high from a production point of view. On this GOT is a clear winner. On the story they left some things hanging.

“Love is the death of duty” - Jon
“Duty is the death of love” - Tyrion

The dude made every wrong choice in the book, until he made the right one. It took him way (way, way) too long to realize Dany was out of her mind, but when he finally got his shit together and his head out of the love fog he did what needed doing. It was a bit of a schmaltzy scene, replete with the high camera angle so we couldn’t see him plunge the knife, but I suppose Jon’s final win was just not fucking things up until the very end. At best it’s damning with faint praise, at worst it’s a backhanded compliment.

And being sent back to the Wall, essentially a cast off bastard criminal was also a fitting end, made bittersweet with the understanding that this is where he belonged from the beginning. Dude never wanted much from the Lords and Ladies of Westeros, couldn’t be much bothered with the pomp and circumstance of castle life and had lived his life an outsider even in his own family. Now, he starts a new watch on the wall, once again guarding the realms of men, but ultimately becoming a Free Folk when it was all said a done. As he was led back North to the gates of Castle Black, a single horn sounded - the Watch’s code for “Ranger Returning”. This blast, along with Ghost waiting for him was all the parade the dude needed.

“You were exactly where you were supposed to be.” - Bran

From the very beginning of the show / book the Stark children are a battered bunch. Bran is chucked out of a window and paralyzed in the fall. Sansa meets Joffrey which begins a run of relationships in which she’s abused (almost) beyond recognition. And Arya witnesses her father unceremoniously beheaded. Their mother is killed. Two brothers offed as well. Honestly, the list of bad stuff that happened to them throughout the course of the show is too long (and sometimes too grizzly) to mention.

That these three spent so much time bruised and broken only to *win* in the end, heading into the unknown mostly of their own terms is fitting. Bran’s reluctant acceptance to be King of Westeros struck me more as him *seeing* the future and taking the job because that’s what the universe intended rather than actually wanting it. (I’ll get to this scene later btw, spoiler alert - I hated it.) Prophecies and gods and lineages be damned, the path sometimes is just the path and the Three-Eyed Raven *sees* what needs seeing. Bran the Builder was the first Stark, the builder of The Wall and Winterfell. Now Bran the Broken becomes King of a *new* Westeros.

If you think that he saw all of this from the beginning, that the only way to truly “Break the Wheel” like Daenerys wanted was to burn this mother to the ground and then start over again anew, then Bran *seeing* all the angles and letting them play out accordingly makes sense. Maybe that’s more credit than is due the storytellers, but I’m sometimes overly apologetic for this show. The pieces fall into place a bit better if this is the angle. Danny’s vision of the world was something she wouldn’t have ever been able to fulfill, but by lighting the fire she got the wheel started. Bran taking over, in the end, was Westeros’s best chance to actually attain peace.

If you watch the scene of Arya getting into her boat, and hum the opening melody to Simon and Garfunkel’s “America”, the scene works a lot better. What’s west of Westeros? I suppose Arya is now going to find out (in a spinoff maybe?).

Game of Thrones’ best character got surprisingly little play in the final episode, barely registering a blip on screen when it was all said and done. In many ways, this was disappointing, though after offing the Night King and barely surviving the fire-scorched streets of Kings Landing, I suppose there wasn’t much else for her to do (not every character gets to kill Daenerys). Arya Stark, a girl who truly became No One, only to return to Westeros to finish the job of saving the world, mostly avenging her family now sets off across the sea.

It was something of a hokey way to end her character, turning her into a bystander for much of the end only to ship her off to parts unknown. It makes sense she’d fly solo from here on out, I guess I was just left wanting more from a character whose arc was as good as anyone on the show.

And finally, Sansa. Sansa who started a girl wanting to be a lady and ended up seeing all of the angles. She, correctly, sections off the North in the end, making it a free state and working to remove it from the drama that will undoubtedly unfold when people get back to being people again. Such is the cycle of the world. But in the end, Winterfell and the Starks are basically the only original House left standing. And it was because of Sansa.

The rest of the episode? Well…

Apart from the Starks, this episode had plenty of awkward moments and some clear narrative fumbles. Basically, everything they tried to do outside of the Stark (and Snow) kids was, to me, a mess. The Seven Kingdoms Board Meeting with the first item of business being “Kill Tyrion and Jon” somehow turns into Tyrion getting the floor and Robert’s Rules of Order go right out the freaking window.

Bran chosen as King, while kind of a nice story, seemed out of place and awkward. I get that it was a chance to pile key characters back on to the screen for one last moment, to remind us they were important at some point. But man did this whole scene ever feel out of place.

They tried to infuse it with some comedy here to really no avail. Edmure Tully makes an awkward case for his own claim to the throne. Robin Aryn looks every bit of awkward. The new Prince of Dorne throws off that blasé Dornish swagger. Samwell pitches an ill-suited case for democracy (oh the hilarity!). And Tyrion’s plea for a storyteller to take the throne, someone who the people could rally behind, wheelchair and all seemed the writers throwing their hands in the air and letting their indecision come through the Imp’s words. Who should rule Westeros? Fuck if we know. How about Bran? Cool. Cut, print, end of show.

The same can be said for the first King’s council meeting. This scene alone, with its little bit of hijinks and tongue-in-cheek attempts at humor was nearly record-scratch, bring the show to a halt territory. It was so poorly conceived and so obviously shoehorned in so as to A: get Bronn and some others back on screen for 3 minutes and B: make a commentary on how the more things change and burn into fire and ash and get everyone killed and there aren’t many happy endings, the more things stay the same (or however that saying goes). I hated this with such a fiery passion that when Bran said he was going to find Drogon I hoped the scaly beast would actually just fly through the window and end things once and for all.

And I suppose that’s the theme of this last season of Game of Thrones and the finale in general. To me, it was a series and show of incredible hits and incredible misses. Game of Thrones took the “go big or go home” route and when you do that, there are going to be mistakes along the way. Time spent on overdone and excessive battles could have been given to these characters.

We spent too much time on some characters and not enough on others. The story meandered at times only to go into crazy sprint mode at weird moments.

Prophecies came and went without meaning much of anything (which may very well have been the point of prophecies). Magic is real, and it also kind of isn’t (which maybe is the point of magic). Your house name and your family really matters (except maybe in the end, it doesn’t).

These ideas were all central to Game of Thrones and mattered, until they didn’t. If they really mattered to you, then I suspect this ending was a massive disappointment. And it’s tough to blame you on that accord. The show worked real hard to make you believe some things were of the utmost importance, that some characters were absolutely critical, that the show hinged on every little piece mattering.

I want to believe, at its core, Game of Thrones was about three kids, a bastard, their wolves and unrelenting commitment to family. I feel better about the show when I think of it that way and judging by the ending I think the writers wanted it that way too. They took a circuitous path to get there with plenty of blood (and boobs) along the way. They made errors aplenty. It wasn’t a perfect show, far, far from it. But I left satisfied by the ending, knowing “the pack survives.”

Game of Thrones - The Bells

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Norrie) — Mon, 13 May 2019 13:20:00 +0000

Some thoughts on Targaryens, Daenerys, character arcs and more as we wind to the close with "The Bells".

Spoilers ahead...

What’s the point in having a pet dragon unless you get to lay waste to and incinerate a whole city with hundreds of thousands of innocent lives inside the walls? When you’ve got a sports car, you need to open that thing up every once in a while. Dragons are no different. And Daenerys opened that mother up.

From the moment Missandei’s capa was detated from her head at the end of last episode and Daenerys did her rather symbolic heel turn away from Cersei and the rest of the city, I suppose we could see this coming. She’s been increasingly unhinged over the last few episodes with the writers building to a not-so-happy ending for Danny, or at least something different than we thought they’d built to over the last seven+ seasons. I think some will make a ruckus that this was, in fact, a complete 180 for her character, going from 0 to nuts all too quickly. I’m not sure I see it that way.

Much has been made in the Song of Ice and Fire canon about the batshit crazy piece of Targaryen blood. Hell her dad, nicknamed The Mad King mind you, wanted to torch Kings Landing when he knew his reign was coming to an end at the hands of Robert Baratheon. He was only stopped because Jamie Lannister “betrayed” him, earning the nickname “Kingslayer”. Daenerys finishing the job does make sense from narrative perspective.

And that she’d be just a little (or in this case, a lot a) bit nuts makes sense as well. After all, she’s essentially inbred, seeing as how her dad (Aerys) married his sister (Rhaella) and had a bunch of kids, she being the last born. So yeah, her going nuts does make sense from a certain genealogical perspective.

But because of the timing, it does seem like she goes nuts because she kind of had a bad week. She gets a cold welcome at Winterfell. The Night King taunts her on the battlefield. Arya gets all of the credit for the icing that guy. She finds out Jon is actually her nephew (which doesn’t creep her out in any kind of sexual way, she’s a Targaryen after all) and has a better claim to the throne. Her right-hand man and right-hand lady get cut down a couple of days apart from each other. Tyrion goes behind her back. Varys makes a play for Jon. You couple all of that with a screw or two loose PLUS all the stuff that’s happened to her throughout her whole life and now all of a sudden her actions don’t appear out of character at all. Upsetting? Sure. Off script? Not really.

I suppose people aren’t going to like it. I imagine a criticism will be that the writers built up a good, strong character female character only to have her break bad in the end. But on a show essentially dominated by its strong, intelligent, independent female characters What happened in Kings Landing after the bells tolled surrender, in my opinion, is mostly in line with what’s happened throughout the show and in line with what we know about her family line. My real beef is in how the writers have handled some of these larger pieces this season. They did it with the Night King, boiling his motivations down into an almost throwaway sentence by Bran before the Battle of Winterfell. In some ways, though not nearly as egregious, they did it with Daenerys here. Varys’s final whisper, when he reminds Tyrion about the Targaryen volatility, is the writers reminding us more than anything. I wish this season there had been a few fewer minutes spent on frantic and big-budget battle scenes a little more about these story pieces that end up as the major pivot points of the show. It seems like something of a missed opportunity.

Let’s touch on a few other characters in this episode.

Jon “Don’t Call Me Aegon” Snow
If Daenerys got the crazy Targaryen gene, then Jon was left with all of the idiotic scraps. In keeping with his character’s numbskull-y insistence on always doing the Exact. Wrong. Thing (on this the writers have been amazingly consistent) he kept the streak alive in this episode. Basically, all he had to do was shut his eyes, shag his aunt and there’s a decent chance everyone in Kings Landing remains un-barbecued. But he can’t even get that part right. He puts Danny in the you’re-my-queen friend zone and that’s basically her last straw.

Arya and the Hound
The Hound’s fight to the death with his dead brother had a number of solid payoffs. There was the stunning realization that Sandor simply couldn’t kill that which was already dead. His stabs through the gut and then through the head acting as mere bug bites to Gregor who’d long since stopped living. But he got the revenge he sought, taking his brother into the fires that had marred The Hound’s face as a child (caused by big bro).

Meanwhile, Arya gets to see the carnage up close and personal getting her set up with a possible final confrontation with Daenerys. That she skipped a person on her list (Cersei) at Sandor’s insistence was a touching moment between two “friends”. He essentially saved her life and she recognized it on the way out. Again, Arya is easily the best character on the show and not just because she’s taken the hero’s turn somewhat late. The writers have kept her consistent throughout. Building her up to a virtuosic killer who still is something of a kid when it’s all said and done.

And finally, Jamie and Cersei
Man, does this one ever seem mishandled. Jamie and Cersei having the weight of the city literally be more than they can handle in the end makes the former’s trysts with Brienne make even less sense to me. I’m happy to have someone explain this, because I’ll fully admit that maybe I’m missing something here. But now I have the sneaking suspicion that he shacked up with Brienne simply so he had something to do in Winterfell. What else was the point? It doesn’t end up being redemptive.

After an emotional scene with Tyrion in the army outpost (and I thought that scene was excellent) Jamie and Cersei get a rather anticlimactic death in which the writers almost seemed like they wanted you to feel for Cersei as she breaks down in the tunnels of Kings Landing.

It does seem apropos that Cersei would ultimately “bring Jamie down with her” considering the power she’s had over him since, well, forever. Them dying together does make sense. And maybe my confusion/ disappointment is because I wanted something out of these two story arcs that I can’t necessarily describe. Considering how many folks wanted Cersei's head, it made since for Jamie to be last standing with her. I don't love how there was a play on the emotional side, Cersei begging not to die but maybe that's just me feeling guilty for feeling guilty.

All in all, I enjoyed “The Bells” and it sets us up for a final episode which appears to be able to go only a few different ways.

Game of Thrones - The Last of the Starks

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Norrie) — Mon, 06 May 2019 16:25:00 +0000

I was basically (over) forgiving of last week’s “The Long Night”, willing to look past some obvious narrative fumbles in order to (mostly) enjoy the episode. It was the battle Game of Thrones had been building toward for seven seasons and there were, for sure, missteps.

But I understood, for the most part, the writers’ willingness to end the rather problematic Night King saga in order push the show’s main players into a final conflict. And that was ultimately the point of this week’s “The Last of the Starks”, getting Jon, Daenerys, Tyrion, Jamie, Cersei, Arya and others face to face for a final confrontation that would ultimately decide the fate of the Seven Kingdoms and the GOT world as a whole. So yeah, I get it. But man was this episode had some real problems.

Forget the rather obvious gaffs like the Starbucks’ coffee being served in the Great Hall through final edits. Mistakes, I guess, are made from time to time, whatever. But the path they’ve taken on some of these characters in an effort to produce, well, I don’t know what, is unbelievably perplexing. I’m going to work small to big here, and sort through the timeline of the episode to outline kind of what I mean.

Jamie and Brienne

Um, what? I am going to need to have someone really explain this one to me. I’d rather both had just lost their life in the Battle of Winterfell than to have them awkwardly shack up. I mean I suppose after years of 0.0 sexual tension between these two, it only made sense for them to fall in love before Jamie leaves to get back/ kill his *real* true love. This was a total and complete mess. Seasons of Brienne as a strong, fierce soldier, knighted two episodes ago by Jamie in a truly emotional scene only to be *knighted* by him here was a borderline disaster; narrative malpractice. Having her wail in agony as he rode away undid (in my mind) all the great work they’d done with her character. What a mess.

Tormund and Ghost

As Tormund and Ghost trot off to their eventual GOT spinoff, a buddy cop show called “Best Friends Beyond the Wall” (on CBS this fall) I was generally happy with how they treated our favorite, big-woman-loving Wildling. He had the quote of the episode, proudly wondering, “Which one of you cowards shit my pants?” before striking out with Brienne one last time. It makes sense the Tormund would bring the Free Folk back North. It made little sense for Jon to just will Ghost over to him, severing one of the last cool aspects of the opening scene of the entire show when the Starks find their direwolves. Because this episode is called the Last Stark, each remaining Stark had to have his/her moment of finally dismissing the family name. This was, of course, Jon’s. That it got like 37 seconds of air time and dude couldn’t even summon the intestinal fortitude to pet Ghost on the way out was such a missed opportunity. So, good for Tormund, probably bad news for Jon.

Sam and Gilly

Sam lived through the Battle of Winterfell despite Jon’s best efforts to just let the guy get devoured by the dead in the final moments. He’s knocked up Gilly and will now live out his days reading good books and singing songs. It was a sweet moment, the lovable loser bookworm getting the girl he rescued from Craster’s Keep seasons ago. A fine ending for Sam whose main purpose in the show was making sure we understood the 1.5 ways to kill the dead before disrupting the entire flow of throne lineage (because Bran doesn’t do that kind of thing), setting Jon and Daenerys on a “who wants it more?” collision course.

Bran

Speaking of Bran, dude had long since dismissed himself as a Stark, converting fully to the Three-Eyed Raven and basically sitting around doing ??? for the better part of a couple of seasons. He’s left behind in Winterfell and I really don’t know if we’ll ever see him again. He fulfilled his role as milky-eyed historian weirdo who seems like he can kind of do anything he wants, and yet just doesn’t really do anything at all. If he never makes another appearance, I wouldn’t be shocked. If he is the lynchpin to the entire show I guess I wouldn’t be shocked either (but I doubt it).

Arya and the Hound

This, in my estimation, was easily the best and most authentic couple of minutes of the episode. Arya’s character is easily (and this really isn’t even close) the best character on the show. Her story arc, while not complete yet, has been handled with such a deft touch, working the long game since the very beginning and keeping her true to GRRM’s (I believe) original intent. That she eschewed Gendry’s offer to become a “lady” (the one thing she despised from the beginning) made total sense. That she wasn’t even around to hear her name ring out in honor after the battle (because she was practicing her shot) made total sense. And the conversation between her and Sandor was brilliant.

Sandor: You’re the big hero.

Arya: I don’t like heroes.

S: Must have felt good sticking your knife in that horned fucker.

A: Felt better than dying.

…

S: I don’t plan on coming back

A: Neither do I

S: Will you leave me to die again if I get hurt?

A: Probably.

This scene was perfect.

Tyrion and Varys

The two thinkers, who’ve made it through basically every bloody battle without picking up a weapon (Battle of the Blackwater for Tyrion aside) are now locked into something of a chess piece stalemate in which it’s almost inconcevable both come out alive in the end. Varys, likely has picked the better of the two sides, understanding that Daenerys is losing touch with reality and Jon makes for the better King when it’s said and done. I don’t mind this interplay, even if if does appear borderline suicidal on the part of Varys whose character has essentially perfected the art of keeping his head fully attached by saying/ doing the right thing at the right time.

Sansa

Well, she kept that secret for about 1.5 seconds. Jon, who from the very beginning of the show has been a tactical dolt, misreading every obvious sign in social situations, formulating cognitively-impaired battle plans, seeming dense to the point of stupidity and yet coming out clean (and alive) time and time again might have made his last and final mistake here. He ditches the Stark name once and for all when he tells Sansa who he really is, expecting her to like, keep the secret, is one last final nail in his decision-making coffin. Of course she would blab, who could blame her? Sansa is of course the last of the Starks, the only one set on preserving the family name and the power bestowed on the House. She’s played this game correctly since feeding Ramsey to the dogs and almost no matter which way the show goes in the final two episodes, it seems clear she’ll be alive and well as the Lady of Winterfell.

Daenrys and Jon

And finally, these two. I wish I had written this last week, mentioning it in a conversation I had later on as a prediction for how the show would turn. But after dispensing of the Night King, I didn’t think it would be *enough* to have Cersei as the last remaining Big Bad. I thought the show would possibly set the final conflict between these two and it sure looks like that’s how it’s going down. Cersei, by way of The Mountain, decapitating Missandei is probably the final straw before Danny does the best impression of her dad and tries to torch King’s Landing to ash. I’m going to hold out full opinion on how this plays out until the end of the series, because there are a couple of ways for it to go. I do think Daenerys going Mad Queen would make sense considering her bloodline (though Jon has the same blood and he doesn’t seem as much crazy as just plain dumb).

With two episodes left, there is still time to wrap things up in a tidy(ish) bow. I don’t mean ride off into the sunset happy ending mind you, Game of Thrones doesn’t need all the feels in order to end “correctly”. But I’m holding out hope for something that just makes sense. That’s probably not too much to ask, but after these last couple of episodes it might be.

Game of Thrones - The Long Night

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Norrie) — Mon, 29 Apr 2019 17:47:00 +0000

My thoughts on Arya, The Night King and maybe the most polarizing Game of Thrones ever.

As the Night King walked into the weirwood, smirking as only the *unkillable* leader of a 100K (and counting) undead can and stared down an emotionless (and motionless) Bran I thought, “Well it’s certainly not going to end like this. There are too many episodes left.”

So when Arya did her very best Cat of the Canals leap onto an unsuspecting Night King it was for sure a momentary, “What the?” surprise. But after a beat, it really wasn’t much to have seen it coming. Of course, Arya had been set up for this very encounter, given the Valerian dagger by Bran, trained in just this kind of combat, told by Melisandre she’d close eyes of all colors, set about with a singular purpose to avenge all those in the world who would seek harm on her family.

It couldn’t have been Jon. Dude makes every tactical mistake in the warfare book (see: Battle of the Bastards, see: Walking the Watch out beyond the Wall, etc). And Daenerys already shot her shot with a “Dracarys”-led fire breath that didn’t even singe the bony eyebrows on the Night King’s head.

Everyone knew Theon maybe had “the balls” but wasn’t likely to be the man. And Bran’s warging only takes him so far. He’d seen the end and probably knew, in a Doctor Strange-like way that there were 14 million ways to die and only one out. This was it.

That it was Arya wasn’t necessarily surprising, but it sure was easy. 90 minutes of the dead running roughshod over Winterfell culminated in a leap, a grab, a stab, a shatter and silence. Seven plus seasons of filming, 1,000s of pages of source materials and eons of waiting for Winter to come was undone in an almost Thanos-like snap.

I know some folks appreciated the wow factor of the kill. It was a pretty damn cool move. Others were rightfully disappointed by the solution. The living army at Winterfell had like zero outs and yet still pulled off the W. Being annoyed is justifiable.

The Game of Thrones writers are a spectacular bunch. The moving of chess pieces to get just about every relevant character back to Winterfell rather seamlessly in the narrative is a feat all on its own. Staging a hectic and frenzied battle with this many moving character parts is damn near impossible. Were their problems? Sure, but they mostly tackled them.

But ultimately, the writers (and George R.R. Martin) had boxed themselves in. They had a Big Bad who was virtually indestructible which is tough enough. That this icy mother had nearly infinite *followers* at his back makes it all that much harder.

With this in mind, the writers really only had three ways out:

Option A: Night King wins, kills everyone, starts the real Long Night and the show’s effectively over. If this was the last episode, I think this would have been the way to take it. Akin to The Sopranos cut to black inside Holsten’s, HBO might have had a mutiny on its hands. But the GOT folks have always had a knack for the unexpected like this.

Option B: The folks at Winterfell are able to withstand the siege, drive back the dead and one (or a few) of the characters go 1v1 (or like 3v1) with the Night King and take him out. This would’ve also been problematic because he’s just way too powerful and an interaction like that would have been sliced and dissected to death.

Option C: We get the quick hitter and get out of the mess.

Of course, Option C was the way to go and the *girl* who’d once been “No One”, who’d carried a list of those she’d kill, who’d reasserted herself when she said, “A girl is Arya Stark, and I’m going home” was the one to carry it out.

No matter your opinion on how it all shook out, I think you have to view “The Long Night” as a feat of television production. The moment the Dothraki ride, arakhs-a-flre, into the cold dead abyss only to be extinguished with nary a sound was among the most tension-filled moments I can ever remember watching ever.

Melisandre lighting the trench at the last moment was beautiful. That it mattered not, was tragic.

Beric Dondorrian using his last life to save Arya and allowing Sandor Clegane to (nearly) fully complete his character’s arc (he’s got one more showdown to come with his half-dead bro) was gut-wrenching.

Sansa and Tyrion accepting their fate in the crypts as those who had hid away from the battle, those who had probably been pretty good for each other and those who would now probably die together was a beautiful moment.

The episode had so much like this that, in my mind, it made up for the uneven nature of the battle. It made up for the nonsensical moments like Arya hiding in the castle which somehow, with like World War 3 happening outside, was a quiet room.

If I had one (somewhat) major complaint to file it’s that the writers couldn’t pull the trigger on having this be more characters’ endpoints. For a show that never pulled punches on icing a main character when the time was right, they got soft in this episode. Characters like Grey Worm, Brienne, Tormund, Podrick and Gentry saw rather fitting narrative culminations last episode. This would have been a time to, sadly, let them go. There’s some credibility lost by having them all march fit and fiddle down to King’s Landing. This hasn’t been a show built on many happy endings. If they are saving all these characters to walk hand in hand into the sunset together it just wouldn’t fit at all with the previous seasons (or books).

But all in all, I found myself oddly satisfied with The Long Night. These are usually the kind of deus ex machina solutions that drive me nuts. This one didn’t and now we march south take out an even bigger bad.

Stranger Things 2 - The Scariest Enemy is Time

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Norrie) — Wed, 15 Nov 2017 02:15:00 +0000

Spoiler Alert: If you haven't binged on Stranger Things 2 then stop here. Please...

“If you’re lost you can look and you will find me, time after time” - Cyndi Lauper

By the time the gate closes, the Hawkins Lab shuts down and we reach the Snow Ball slow dance with Cyndi Lauper’s iconic refrain to “Time After Time” playing in the background, something is abundantly clear in Stranger Things 2: The real enemy to the Party hasn’t been the Demogorgon or the Demodogs, or the Shadow Government facility workers or even the all-powerful Mind Flayer. Rather, the greatest existential threat to Mike, Will, Dustin, and Lucas is Time.

It’s the threat of growing up and leaving behind the things that at once made them (and really all of us) innocent, sweet, selfless, and brave.

It’s the difficult and confusing slow burn into their formative teenage years and the prospect of time changing everything they fundamentally know about themselves and each other. If life is like a string of movies then puberty is the horror genre.

That’s the truly scary thing about Stranger Things 2. That as we move through this world there’s a real chance we’ve seen the last of the Party as a true unit of friendship.

Stranger Things 2 is a lot of things. It’s a horror tale replete with all the things that go bump in the night, scaring the bejeezus out of us. It’s an homage to the eighties and all of the movies, music, Farrah Fawcett hairspray and style therewithin.

It’s a classic science fiction tale with mind-bending action, superpowers, and government testing. It’s a fantasy flick with Dungeons and Dragons at its backbone. But at its very core, it’s a coming-of-age story about friendship, growing up and navigating through the formative middle school years.

As the group slowly breaks off and dances their way through the Snow Ball we see the beginning of the end. They’re paired off rather predictably, but no less sweetly into Mike and Eleven, Dustin with a huge solid by Nancy, and Zombie Boy Will with a brave stranger, Lucas, and MadMax.

This is, more than any other time in Stranger Things, the ultimate turning point. This is where they’ve truly walked through a gate into a new world. The mystery that lies beyond here isn’t parasitic vines or ashy snowflakes but rather a teenage landscape that will ultimately challenge the bonds of friendship as strong in this group as any you’ll ever see.

Growing up is hard enough on its own without all-encompassing evil breathing down your neck, spreading like a virus underneath your town, possessing your best friend. And yet at no point does it feel like this is the ultimate danger to The Party.

We rarely remain friends forever with our best friends from middle school. Too much life happens during the in-between. While the Upside Down represents the true darkness on the other side of the world, the passage of time and growing up offers a greater threat.

We see this happening in stages. When the group shows up on Halloween in “Trick or Treat, Freak,” proudly dressed as The Ghostbusters, realizing they’re the only ones donning costumes, it's the beginning of the end of their youth. That moment you realize the world has grown up without you totally noticing.

And we see other threats to their Party. The decision about whether to add Max to the group threatens to divide them more than at any other point. Bringing Mike around to her Zoomer skills isn’t instantaneous and the reasoning from Lucas and Dustin bringing her on isn’t necessarily because she possesses any great immediate need to the group beyond those dudes crushing on her hard.

Even the simple act of Lucas and Max grabbing hands after the narrow Demodog dodge in the junkyard is painful in Dustin’s reaction. He sees it, he knows what it means and there’s nothing he can do to stop it (even if he wanted to). These are all little things, but when added together paint a picture of a group in serious pubescent flux.

Hopper and Joyce, as adults understand this. It’s why there’s comfort (even in their darkest hour) in looking back with fondness at stolen moments smoking cigarettes in stairwells while running from teachers. It’s their own look back at a more innocent time before they grew up and realized the world was kind of (seriously) fucked up.

I don’t think it was just overwhelming popularity that made “Time After Time” and “Every Breath You Take” the final two songs of the season. Sure, they were top of the charts in 1984 and 1983 respectively, but it’s the message of the two that really mean something here.

“Time After Time” is about the unbreakable bonds of love and friendship, it’s about being with someone despite their flaws and how really nothing can come between people who love each other unconditionally.

This is analogous to the group’s bond. They’ve literally been to hell and back with each other. That simply can’t be undone.

But “Every Breath You Take” (while a perfect 80’s slow dance) is about something else. It’s about a breakup. It’s about the sadness and regret of moving on from a relationship. It’s about looking back at someone and knowing you won’t be with them again.

I think this is the ultimate lesson and enemy in Stranger Things 2: the Mind Flayer sits in the upside down waiting for another chance, the government is still tracking down Eleven, Billy the Bully stalks the halls and demodogs will eat your brainy boyfriend.

But group friendship is only as strong as it’s weakest link. The real test for the Party lies ahead in the challenge of fulfilling the ultimate act of friendship that “If you fall I will catch you, I will be waiting, time after time”.

Michael Scott Says Goodbye

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Norrie) — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 21:22:00 +0000

Last night was Steve Carrell’s final episode of The Office and with it ushered Michael Scott out of the Dunder Mifflin world, presumably, for good. It was a touching goodbye, bringing back a number of little moments from previous seasons and wrapping up Michael’s story in more fairy tale fashion than really anyone would have predicted at the start of the series. Hell, Jim cried telling Michael how good a boss he’d been. If you’d told me that in Season One, I would have thought the show had gone completely off the rails. But it didn’t, and while this wasn’t the series, or even season finale, I think last night’s episode was as close to culminating as any show can be.

The place of Michael Scott in the television lexicon sits right next to the other biggies, the folks whose characters almost transcended the greatness of their already transcendent shows. The Sam Malones, Jerry Seinfelds, and Homer Simpsons of the world who occupy a place in our hearts beyond just the world within their respective half hours. Much of it is a testament to Carrell’s adeptness at playing a character so incredibly and naively flawed, that even in Michael’s worst moments, we could still believe his sincerity.

Last night’s episode, replete with individual (or group) goodbyes acted more as a character summation than it did walk off into the sunset (or airplane terminal). It reminded us of the guy Michael had been and what he’d become. Effectively apologizing to Phyllis for spurning her oven mitt Christmas gift, finally impressing Ryan with something (even if it needed to light up), grinning and bearing the thought of having to hang out with Toby’s brother in Boulder, understanding that Jim needed no goodbye, making one last petition to use the bailer, finding humor in how little Oscar thought of him (maybe the funniest moment in The Office’s history), making good on the paintball session with Dwight and recognizing the greatness Dwight embodies in his job as a salesman, and finally just watching as he hugged Pam leaving their conversation something just between friends. It was a fantastic way to encompass a rather layered character.

Michael Scott wasn’t always the best guy and the show made its early bones on his almost irredeemable obtuseness.(Here was a guy who fake fired his secretary because he thought it’d get a laugh out of the new intern.) But The Office really hit its stride in the subsequent seasons when Michael effectively played a character analogous to Dorothy’s three friends on the Yellow Brick Road. Sometimes he lacked a brain, sometimes he needed a little more courage and many times he just had to find a heart, but like the Tinman, Scarecrow, and Lion, we always rooted for him in spite of the flaws.

There was always a sense that Michael cared deeply for those around him, he just never understood how to effectively bring that out in his everyday interactions The transformation of his character over the last half of this season (and really culminating in his final episode) into a real life working human being was entirely believable because A) we knew enough about his history to know he always had it in him and B) it is easy to believe that when someone is happy, he makes others happy. Meeting and finding love was the cure for all the ailed Michael.

Michael’s world WAS work, and I think he always struggled with those who didn’t see it the same way. (Even mentioning as much in the last episode in his quote about work and funerals). But that overly optimistic view culminated when he found everything he was looking for in a mate, right there in the same office. That she happened to be the one living being who not only enjoyed Michael’s unique brand of humor, but also replicated it, is besides the point. Meeting Holly validated everything Michael thought work to be (a place of true family and best friends) and in doing so allowed him to ultimately leave the very place he’d tied his life to (even once promising to be buried in the office). He could leave, there was nothing left for him to accomplish.

I think that last idea is what made Michael’s secret goodbye so sincere and true and really so Michael Scott-ish. He did the very last thing anyone would have expected.

Friday Night Lights Final Season Thoughts

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Norrie) — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 19:19:00 +0000

I plan on writing in earnest about the final season of Friday Night Lights (the second time around, it’s already aired on DirectTv) and over the next three months or so suspect you’ll be treated to at least 500 instances of me using the term “bittersweet.”Granted, I have no idea how the whole thing ends (avoided internet updates like the plague), and yet I sit here contemplating the significance of the final season, the show’s role in the greater television landscape and how exactly a series chooses to sign off the airwaves once and for all.

There is a sentimental side of me (and maybe everyone) that would like to think Friday Night Lights ends with the Lions (and maybe the Panthers too) carrying Coach Taylor off on their shoulders after a last second championship win. This would of course be after a stunning finale in which the major cast members from Smash to Street, Tyra to the Swede (kidding) came back to pay their last respects in some way to the Coach and family and town that shaped their lives. The writers have a chance to turn the final season into a long procession of memories and homages to a great thing (think: event planning your own funeral) But at the same time, an ending like that would leave me disappointed, because it wouldn’t sum up the show as a whole.

Friday Night Lights has never been about the last second wins (a few too many for my liking as it is), never stuck exclusively to a redemptive ideal for each character’s inevitable flaws, or even necessarily tied the fates of its players to how they performed on the football field. If anything, the show has gone out of its way to emphasize that the characters’ successes, or lack thereof, on the football field holds little to no bearing on how the rest of their lives turnout. Heck, the star quarterback broke his neck at the 50 minute mark of the pilot episode (and then went on to be a sports agent). If that doesn’t send a clear message about relationship between football success and life success, then I don’t know what does.

So it begs the question: What should the final season be? And maybe more importantly, should endings have closure or leave us speculating? Exponentially more popular shows, with wildly anticipated final acts, like Lost or The Sopranos sold the viewer on the idea of finality ** (even if the ends were, to some degree, polarizing) and left little doubt that the show was indeed over. These programs knew their time was up and wrote accordingly instead of scripting for another season of treading water and ultimately limping into the finish (I’m looking at you Alias). And for those shows, closure was ultimately vital.

** Let’s remove the argument about Tony Soprano for a second. He’s dead people.

And while Friday Night Lights has afforded itself the ability to write “The End” after the last scene, it is a wholly different entity than those other shows. The writers of Friday Night Lights have produced something more organic. They’ve created a show about a town rather than about a group of characters. Just like any town there are the mainstays (the Taylors, Buddy), the folks who’ll never leave (Riggins), those itching to get the hell out (Tyra, Julie, Smash to some degree) and those who’ll always just marvel at life in the so-called outside world, only to eventually return (presumably Saracen, Street maybe). This is the unique nature of the show, in that the writers have stuck to a simple rule of: the more things change, the more they stay the same. Characters come and go, games are won and lost and though the faces change (infinitely more than any other show I can think of) the problems remain relatively the same. This is decidedly new ground for television. Just think if Brandon, Dylan, Kelly and company had moved on after season two of 90210 and a whole new group of kids just started hanging out with Nat at the Peach Pit (which Steve now co-managed). And yet Friday Night Lights pulls it off because its grounded in the Taylor family (who’ll never go anywhere) and town of Dillon. Everyone else can come and go as they so please, for better of worse, and that’s pretty much life.

Granted, Friday Night Lights is not transcendent television (although it’s awfully close), but it does reflect a certain, increasingly rare and even possibly cliche’d (in a good way) American sensibility of values and community. And though it never really caught on in the mainstream, the show probably relates to a wider range of viewers than anything else I’ve seen. I don’t have hard proof of this of course, but everyone I’ve ever talked to who’s watched, young or old, has latched on to something within the story’s walls. The sad irony is that just too few folks ever gave it the chance.

But I also suspect the miniscule viewing audience also allowed the show’s writers to take chances beyond the normal scope of television. Namely, they kept the town moving along without having to come up with new story arcs for the same old characters. The hardcore viewing audience (because that’s pretty much all that watches) were there to stay, so the writers simply worked to make the show reflect actual life. No easy feat, and probably something that won’t soon be replicated. Television is much too fickle, fast-moving, and quick to judge. Long story short: Friday Night Lights is in a world (or town, rather) of its own. I doubt anyone else will try to replicate it. After all, it wasn’t too terribly successful.

And so that leaves us rushing downfield towards the endzone and into the locker room once and for all (only two sports analogies used, not bad). I suspect the writers have discussed the idea of closure and what it means for this television show. How will Friday Night Lights end? I suspect much like it started. With expectations on Coach Taylor. With Tammy standing faithfully by his side. With a group of high schoolers seeking something tangible in their lives. And with the town of Dillon waking up for another day of living, breathing and thinking about football. It’s not sexy. There won’t be a cliffhanger.

Instead, think about Friday Night Lights less like a television show and more like a town you’re leaving. Just because you left, does the town cease to be? Of course, this is a television show we’re talking about, but really its something more. We’ll remember the good times, the familiar faces, the heartache, the neighborhood, the Riggins boys causing trouble, the day Matty Saracen’s father passed, what Jason Street could have been, that one Crucifictorious show, the state championship, when the high schools split, the tornado, the pep rallies and the “For Sale” signs on Coach Taylor’s lawn. Because Friday Night Lights isn’t really ending. We’re just moving out of Dillon. Bittersweet indeed.

Five Questions for Mad Men Season 4

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Norrie) — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 20:06:00 +0000

The end of Mad Men’s Season 3 saw Don Draper’s work and home life in a state of flux. He’s entering a world without Betty and into a new business with familiar faces. With this universe upheaval comes some questions for the season premiere airing this Sunday on AMC at 10pm.

1.What’s ahead for Sterling Cooper Draper and Pryce?
When Roger and Don stood in the gutted Sterling Cooper offices at the beginning/end of their coup Roger asked, "How long do you think it'll take us to be in a place like this again?" to which Don replied, "I never saw myself working in a place like this."

We can probably assume the days of hard drinking, endless partying and general debauchery are over in the new company. Who would they party with anyway? There’s so few of them. But it also means an end to doing business the old way. Don has always been a master salesman; it’s his true gift. But after the falling out with Conrad Hilton, I can’t help but think the new agency will go about their business in a very different, much more progressive way. I like this idea from the context of the show because it gives the chance for business to change with the times. These are the sixties after all.

2.The Draper marriage, kaput or on hiatus?
Season 3 ended with Betty on a plane to Reno alongside new beau Henry Francis and Don promising to not meddle in the split. It also detailed painfully just how difficult a divorce like this would be on their kids as they sat watching television without either parent.

Given that January Jones is up for an Emmy, she will certainly continue to be a major focus of the show. But how? Does she realize life with Henry isn’t so different from life with Don? Does Don do what he does when he’s trying to land an elusive account? Make great sales pitch after great sales pitch? Or do they reconcile Tony and Carmela-style with more a business approach to fidelity than a loving one? Whatever the answer, there’s no easy way to completely separate them.

3.Is Don finally over Dick Whitman?
The end of Season 3 showed us the death of Dick Whitman’s father (murder by horse hoof). And with it, I can’t help but feel the story of Don’s secret life may finally be over. To some degree that happened when Betty found his memory box, and in some ways freed Don from his past.

Much of Mad Men has been about the Don vs. Dick debate waging inside Jon Hamm’s character, but the move out of his old office, his heartfelt pleas to retain Peggy and Pete, his divorce and final move into the new company looks like it could finally merge the two personas into a powerful and personal combination. Or he could remain dichotomous but now with an Old Don vs. New Don inner debate.

4.How goes the empowerment of Peggy Olsen?
Peggy has always been, in my opinion, the most mysterious of all Mad Men characters (outside of Don, of course), mainly because I’ve struggled to come to grips with her motivation. Is she searching solely for respect? Does she want to believe in herself? Does she just yearn for success? Or does she epitomize the gaining steam of Women’s Lib Movement? This last one is probably the best explanation; she wants equality after all. But Peggy goes about her empowerment more as a one-on-one war without involving the strength of her sisters. If anything, she just doesn’t get other women and doesn’t understand their complacency. Is this the season she has an awakening outside of her own job?

5.Mad Men and the Vietman War?
Historical events have mostly operated around the periphery (and sometimes in the margins) of Mad Men. Of course the Kennedy assassination in the penultimate episode of season 3 was a story in and of itself, whereas things like the Cuban Missile Crisis and Marilyn Monroe’s death were dealt with in the context of how Sterling Cooper did business.

But like JFK, the Vietnam War is just too big to ignore or cast off as a simple historical subplot. As we saw in Kevin Arnold’s kitchen in The Wonder Years, the Vietnam War was the first one televised and these guys work in advertising. Is the war an opportunity for them? A distraction? An office joke? (Mad Men has joked about worse.) Whatever it becomes, the war will certainly play a role.

Huge Reaction - Live Action Role Play (I wish the real world would just stop hassling me)

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Norrie) — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 03:05:00 +0000

I’m excited to lose weight, I think. I just can’t imagine what it will be like, if it’ll actually change anything. - Alistair

“Live Action Role Play” showed us each character seeking a little power in his or her life, real or fantasy. All of these kids came to Camp Victory to lose weight, but beyond that, they’ve also come seeking something else. Whether it’s love, friendship or confidence they’ve come looking for a way to feel accepted, which isn’t easy for everyone. Because even at Camp Victory, solely populated by a group of kids who’ve surely been picked on their entire lives, some still can’t help reveling in the ability to finally be the one throwing sticks and stones rather than deflecting them, making Alistair’s quote even more prescient. Read the rest of my reaction at CinemaBlend.
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Friday Night Lights Reaction - I Can't (The Kids Aren't Alright)

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Norrie) — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 16:47:00 +0000

"I Can't" dealt with two heavy issues without ever getting heavy handed about any debate. Instead, the writers focused on kids making adult choices. Above all, Friday Night Lights is a story about growing up and Becky and Vince were forced into impossible situations. Continue reading my full reaction at CinemaBlend.

Emmy Nominations: Outstanding Drama Screws the Pooch

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Norrie) — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 02:02:00 +0000

I'm not asking a great deal from the Emmy's. I generally don't care too much. But when two clearly undeserving shows make the list over two of the best shows of the season? Then my friends, we have a problem. Read the entire rant on CinemaBlend.

Huge Reaction - Letters Home

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Norrie) — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 00:59:00 +0000

“Letters Home” began to explore the pain these kids feel concerning the outside world while they continue to find their own place in Camp Victory. If the outside world has chosen to mock and deride these kids for their weight, Camp Victory forces them into the very situations with which they’ve become the most uncomfortable. There is logic in this strategy. After all, once a camper leaves Victory, the same problems still exist. So goal one seems to be “lose weight.” But goal two is “learn to deal, because the world’s a mean place.” You can read the rest of my reaction at CinemaBlend.

Friday Night Lights Reaction - The Lights of Carroll Park (I feel a lot better now)

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Norrie) — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 00:40:00 +0000

"The Lights of Carroll Park embodied much of what we've come to know and love about Friday Night Lights. Finally taking to the time to explore the pain behind Vince's struggle to do right made a character out of just a role. You can read the rest of my reaction on CinemaBlend television.

American Idol Review - The Top Two (Is the winner clear? Crystal)

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Norrie) — Wed, 26 May 2010 02:39:00 +0000

Tonight wrapped up a down year for Idol in terms of talent. I know that's been written about ad nauseum, but it's true. Thankfully, the best two made it to the finals and had decent performances tonight. Read my reaction at CinemaBlend where I break down each song.

24 Finale Reaction - The Final Beeps (Thanks Jack)

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Norrie) — Tue, 25 May 2010 13:12:00 +0000

Last night was the series finale of 24. Jack spent his last hours as a man on a mission and the show wrapped up a remarkable, and groundbreaking run. Jack was always a symbol of justice (however flawed the means) and stayed true to his character throughout the show's run. Check out my reaction to the last moments of the real-time classic on CinemaBlend.

Lost Reaction - The End (A World Apart)

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Norrie) — Mon, 24 May 2010 14:52:00 +0000

One of my biggest fears in recent memory centered on whether the Lost series finale would live up to expectation. After all, like you, I’d spent incalculable hours over the last six years watching, reading about, discussing, re-watching, re-discussing, analyzing and writing about a series that defied so many television conventions that it probably entered into a genre all its own (serial, sci-fi comicbook romance we’ll call it).

I didn’t know what my expectation was exactly, and I wasn’t the kind of person who sat on the edge of my seat waiting to hear why exactly Walt was so special or why in God’s name the writers ever decided to introduce Dogen and the Temple-ites so late in the game only to kill them off. I’m a classic nitpicker, but for the Lost finale I was willing to just go along for the ride. So I was afraid, not that my questions wouldn’t be answered, but that the finale would instead leave me wanting too much more of something I knew I’d never get. It was an almost impossible situation as a viewer, but as Jack laid down in the bamboo patch and closed his eyes I felt oddly satisfied; pleased even.

Lost is many things. It’s a story about love and violence, morals and monsters, time travel and numbers, plane crashes and pushing buttons, questions and some answers (that often led to more questions), commitment and family, The Others and The Tailies, good and evil, friendship and choices. These are only some of the things that Lost encompassed and making a list of everything that happened on the most mysterious island ever is a fool’s errand. Ultimately, Lost was about what you wanted it to be.

Like the characters, the island (and Lost itself) means different things to different people. Were you like Jack who never, until the very, very end knew exactly what he wanted from the island? Were you Ben, who just wanted a little power over it and a little understanding so the whole story (and all the work) wasn’t for nothing? Were you Hurley, who just basically, also until the end, saw the island as one big form of entertainment? Were you Sun and Jin that saw the time on the island as a love story? Were you Sawyer who ended up there by accident and just could never get the hell off? The island is a metaphor for a lot of things and one of them is for how we watch television.

Some people will be disappointed by the two and a half hour finale. That’s inevitable. It won’t take on the vitriol of The Sopranos ending and we mercifully weren’t subjected to a cut to black (or to the Lost sign) without some stories wrapping up. Were all the questions answered? Of course not, we knew that going in. But did “The End” serve as a culminating piece of work that acted as a definitive stopping point? Most assuredly.

If you loved Lost for the characters and the stories, then “The End” was nothing short of a masterstroke (cheesy religious overtones aside). It brought to light (no not that light) an over-arcing sense of finality and closure to the relationships that vacillated back and forth from the very first episode to the final closing seconds. If stories are circular, then Lost told its in a spiral; where we started on the outside, walked to the middle and walked right back out to the start.

I don’t know if it’s worth recapping all of the machinations that brought the Losties back together in the church (or gateway to Heaven, or whatever it was) and I actually don’t think it’s worth getting too caught up in where exactly the sideways story was happening (purgatory maybe?). Because to do that would be to miss the jungle for the trees. It never really mattered where Oceanic 815 landed in the first place. Sure it was the coolest island ever, and for that purpose it acted as more a plot device than a central idea. If you saw it that way, then “The End” was satisfying and final.

If you we were caught up in the mythology, the mystery, the Dharma initiative, the button, the light, the underground island shifting donkey wheel, and other mysteries, then “The End” was most likely one big long disappointment. I hope that wasn’t the case because Lost told its story with a singular purpose: keep these people together for better or worse. And, in “The End” we understood they were forever attached.

Friday Night Lights Reaction - After the Fall (Picking up the pieces)

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Norrie) — Sun, 16 May 2010 18:26:00 +0000

"After the Fall" is exactly where this week's episode picked up, a day after the characters had reached new lows. Coach Taylor forfeited, Riggins is homeless and Saracen doesn't know which direction he's headed Click here to read the rest at Cinemablend.

Friday Night Lights Reaction - East of Dillon

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Norrie) — Sun, 09 May 2010 15:06:00 +0000

Although Friday Night Lights has already run its course on DirectTv this year, the show returned to NBC on Friday to begin its fourth season. Simply stated, Friday Night Lights is on the short list of best television shows out there right now. It is a program that clicks on almost every conceivable level from dramatic, to humorous, to touching, to tough, to redeeming. Friday Night Lights sets the bar extremely high for what a network, hour-long drama can accomplish if given the freedom to create something outside the normal realm of crime-solving stand alones.

Coach Taylor’s (and half the town’s students) move to newly reopened but overly dilapidated East Dillon High (with its equally rundown supply of quality football players) has the town divided between the haves and have nots. When the town redistricted, at the behest and direction of Joe McCoy: the wealthy thug and father of suddenly very douchebaggy, star quarterback J.D., it set in motion an outline of how far down people are willing to go on the morality scale in order to ensure a winning football product. “East of Dillon” did as much to remind us of the built tension between Taylor and McCoy (with Tami caught directly in the middle) as it did to remind us what happens to those who finished high school, but can’t ever really leave Dillon.

Tim Riggins lasted, what appears to be, exactly two weeks in college before deciding higher education wasn’t really his thing. Not surprising considering he barely graduated high school. But he, along with Matt Saracen who forewent a chance at art school in Chicago to take care of his ailing grandmother, offer harsh glimpses of how quickly the high school football star falls after throwing their caps in the air at graduation. This is somewhat new ground for Friday Night Lights, but an important look at how the world forgets, almost instantaneously, your exploits on the gridiron. And while Riggins never struck me as the kind of guy (or Saracen for that matter) who reveled too much in the glory football provided him its another thing to look at the lack of prospects for guys hanging around the town that once provided them with an insular bubble of local fame. Riggins’s return home to an unwelcoming brother and pregnant sister-in-law, subsequent sleeping with the towny, quasi milf bartender, and breakdown of his truck mean he may have left high school, but he’s just still the same Tim Riggins.

It’s clear from the beginning of the episode that this season of Friday Night Lights will be about Taylor’s forced reclamation project of a football team. It’s an interesting move from the writers’ standpoints seeing as how there weren’t too many more directions for Taylor to go with the powerhouse Panthers. The rebuilding process comes in a variety of forms from fixing a field littered with beer bottles, ridding raccoon-infested locker rooms of vermin, and training a group of players that not only lack the respect Taylor once enjoyed, but the relative discipline he once maintained in his old digs. The reclamation also comes in the form of running back Vince Howard (the anti-Smash Williams) who’s quiet and subdued, but also a kid looking to avoid going to juvenile hall with another offense against his record.

And although we were treated to a signature “Clear eyes, full hearts...can’t lose,” before the first game, the tale on the field told something completely different. The East Dillon crew, so overmatched and underprepared, forced Taylor to reevaluate his mission at halftime. This final scene of the episode encompassed everything beautiful and perfect about Friday Night Lights. With Sufjan Stevens’s “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” playing in the background, Taylor sized up his battered army, the players that stuck with him (including Landry), the players that emulated Taylor’s toughness in their refusal to admit pain or defeat and he saw the scene through clear eyes that told him he had begun to shape young men again, but a full heart that knew he couldn’t send them back out on to the field. So he forfeited, but I saw this less an admission of defeat and more prologue to a long season; a sign that although a battle may be lost, the war is what counts.

Other thoughts:

- While I’m not necessarily happy it happened, it was an interesting direction to go with J.D.’s character as he became the typical cliché, QB-1 for a winning football program. The show has been almost devoid of guys like this (Smash for all his “me first” attitude, was still extremely likable), even though they exist in every town in America.

- I know a couple of guys just like new assistant coach Stan Traub. A guy so excited to just be doing something he loves, he can’t come up with a single thought of his own. He added some much needed comic relief to a heavy episode.

Lost - Sundown: The Long Journey Right Back to the Middle

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Norrie) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 16:37:00 +0000

Either the Lost writers are total geniuses and are building to something so unbelievably awesome that I can’t conceivably predict what it might be; or more likely, they have totally gone off the rails and spent the last couple of years throwing darts at an “idea board” in the hope that something would stick. After last night’s “Sundown,” I am going with the latter. I have a great deal of patience with Lost; even writing last week that I was content to sit back and watch the cards fall as they may. I wrote about how my patience level remained intact because of the character development-focus this season had employed. And then I watched “Sundown,” and instantly dismissed any positive collateral I’d kept from “The Lighthouse.”

“Sundown” was a classic example of marketing a solution to a problem needlessly created. Think: cutting down trees that could fall on powerlines. It makes no sense to punish the tree for our own folly. This is exactly what Lost has done with Esau AKA Dead Locke AKA the Smoke Monster. To illustrate, I’ll start with the ending of the episode first where Smokey runs roughshod through the temple scooping up those unfortunate few stupid enough to stick around the temple after the sun went down. Smokey picked off each one by one, except for Kate (hid with Claire), Miles, French chick, et al (hid in the wall?). He was like Terry Tate Office Linebacker but less funny. My problem with the Smoke Monster here isn’t his inclusion in the story necessarily because the concept is fine. It's his sudden all-encompassing importance in the storyline. A storyline, I might mention, that has been seemingly created out of nowhere for the sake of creating a new antagonist in a place (the coolest, craziest island of all time) that didn’t need anything else pushing the protagonists anymore.

Of all the questions Lost has created over the years (too many to count), why would the writers choose to make this storyline the central focus of the show’s last season? Ignoring for a second the alternate timeline, a total throwaway in this episode, the Lost writers have gone a long way to basically find themselves right back square in the middle of a plot line that makes almost no sense. Sure it boils down to the fight between good and evil (I assume), but they’ve done it in a way equivalent to an author starting off a chapter by saying, “In this chapter I will talk about how evil so and so is and I will show you that when he kills someone.” Is the Smoke Monster evil? Of course, we knew that in previous seasons. Is it an all-powerful being, a literal unstoppable force, with end game unknown? For the most part. Can it inhabit and change others? It appears so. Did we need four episodes of new character intros (Dogen, his translator) only to have Sayid unceremoniously kill them just to prove the point? I vote no. It’s just lazy and needless. It’s especially puzzling because it begs the point: why bring Dogen and his crew in the temple in at all? Smokey destroyed it just to prove to us that he’s got some violent chops. Again, we already knew that.

So now the temple is gone (back to square one), Claire and Sayid are with Smokey (nothing really too outlandish considering Sayid’s character would probably never be redeemed), Kate is with them (not for long), Miles, Sun, Lapidus and the French chick are in the wall (starting the resistance?) and that’s about it.

Another frustrating aspect of Esau’s recruitment of the various Losties is how exactly he sways them. You can get off the island and go home, you can get Nadia back. Great, except that this theme has been retread ad nauseum throughout the entire history of the show. If Lost has proved one thing it's this: Once you’re there, you really can’t leave. You can even blow up a nuclear bomb. You know what happens? You end up right back on the island. Once you lose something, it’s gone. Even if the characters are inclined to believe him, why should the viewers? Ultimately, that might be the point: empty promises are just that. They are especially false coming from something evil like smokey. Or maybe he really IS the only way off. I suspect Sayid and crew will learn it the hard way.

Now, the diagonal time reality. (I really don’t know what else to call it). This episode’s arc with Sayid reuniting (kind of) with Nadia was particularly frustrating in its lack of movement. Again, here, Lost goes a real long way to end up in the exact same place. The diagonal reality is supposed to mirror the island story line in its themes and character development. We learn that as much as Sayid wants to be a good and peaceful guy, he can’t. Again, this is something we were already well aware of. Did we really need him popping off some low level mafiosos (even if one was the soldier from two seasons ago, don’t remember his name) in order to show that Sayid is too far gone to ever seek redemption? I am growing increasingly concerned that the diagonal reality theme is strictly a device to show that these characters are hopelessly connected for better or worse. In this case they’ve done almost too much showing and not enough telling. Throwing random Lost folks into each of these little flash sideways lost its appeal totally for me during this episode. Because the more they bring them in, and kill them off, the less and less it means to everything else that’s already happened. Even finding Jin in the freezer wasn’t enough to pull everything back towards any intrigue because at this point, who the hell cares how Jin got there?

Next week will almost certainly be a Jin or Sun-centric episode where we find out exactly how diagonal Jin got out of the airport security and into the freezer. It will probably mirror some problem Jin is having on the island (finding Sun, etc), but it’s just too much too late. Until all characters are reunited and begin conflicting on a meaningful level, the rest of the story is strictly filler.

Look, I’m not saying I need answers all the time. And I certainly don’t mind new answers producing new questions; that’s one of Lost’s go-to devices after all. The problem with “Sundown,” was that it gave us neither. Literally, nothing was accomplished. Nothing of real, end of series, only a limited number of episodes left, importance. Again, Lost went a long way to bring us right back to the beginning of the episode.

This Rotten Week - Alice and Brooklyn's Finest

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Norrie) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 19:35:00 +0000

Do you know what people do when they hit rock bottom? When they're out of options? When they find themselves in their backyard, in a t-shirt, in the middle of winter getting pelted with tomatoes because they're convinced of some movie critic conspiracy out to get them? What do they do? They get help and go back for some more. That's what they do. Click here to read the rest of this article.

Rules of Engagement Season 3 Review

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Norrie) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 01:17:00 +0000

I realized something pretty quickly while watching the first minute of Rules of Engagement's Season Three premiere: I don't watch any shows with laugh tracks. I hadn't really thought about this at all until the first line of the episode. Patrick Warburton and David Spade sat around in a diner, one of them said something supposedly witty and the "studio audience" erupted in laughter. I almost did a double take. Had it really been that long since I watched a show where I was, in essence, being told when to laugh? Click here to continue reading this review on Cinemablend.

American Idol Reaction - Top 12 Guys

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Norrie) — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 13:42:00 +0000

Tonight the Top 12 guys performed on Idol. To say it was rough would be a massive understatement. At this point I can safely plug Casey James and Andrew Garcia into the next round. Otherwise almost every other performer tonight could take a hike and I wouldn’t bat an eye (believe me, it’s no secret these two went last tonight). Click here to read the rest of the post on CinemaBlend.

Lost Reaction - The Lighthouse

noreply@blogger.com (Doug Norrie) — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 15:18:00 +0000

If we learned something from the "The Lighthouse" it was this: sometimes just sitting back and listening is the best way to find the most important answers. I can imagine Lost fans are reaching their breaking point. With every episode that goes by and some major question isn’t answered the more people are tuning in and thinking, “What the hell is going on here?!?! Get on with it already!” I was definitely right in the same boat. Every time a Lost promo promised to have “Questions answered,” I got my hopes up a little more that I’d learn everything Island-related. Typically I’d leave each episode frustrated. Until last night. I decided to take a new approach. Like a performing a trust fall where I needed to assume someone was there to catch me when I fell back blindly; I’ve decided to do the same with the Lost writers. I decided to just sit back, relax and trust that the writers would take care of the rest. “The Lighthouse” was the perfect episode to start this new line of thinking.

Jack-centric episodes are usually my favorite because he, and to some extent Locke, are the most complex, frustrating and tortured people in the Lost universe. For better or worse, and in Jack’s case it’s usually for worse, they make decisions based on this unrelenting need to find and fix something in their other’s lives. That Jack usually does the thing exact opposite of what he should makes episodes like “The Lighthouse” even that much more intriguing. But where “The Lighthouse” differs from many of these other episodes is that, for the first time, Jack’s machinations and choices seem to serve some greater, and hopefully more positive, purpose. When he and Hurley set off into the woods on Jacob's quest I couldn’t help but wonder what stupid, ignorant or misguided thing Jack would do to unknowingly f-up his current situation. I didn’t have to wait long because when he smashed the compass mirror I mumbled, “Here we go again.” But who can blame the guy?

If any character reflects the feelings of the entire Lost fan-base it’s Jack. He was the one, like us, that couldn’t wait to get back to the island. He needed to get back to island because “I was broken and I was stupid enough to think this place could fix me.” What Lost fan hasn’t thought some approximation of those words along the way? Jack is the one constantly, and fruitlessly searching for answers. And eventually he’s the one, who strictly out of frustration, smashes one of the most interesting devices (both physical and plot) we have seen on the island. Just when we are getting these imposed images of temples and houses and whatever else as the compass turns, Jack sees his name, loses his mind and smashes the thing to bits. And just when Jack’s actions seem unredeemable, rash and just plain stupid, we find out that his destruction of the lighthouse was exactly what Jacob wanted.

In the diagonal-Lost World (for lack of a better name) Jack’s character deals with David, his son?!!? I can’t help but think that Jack’s son is some sort of reflection of all the other characters on the island that Jack so desperately wants to help and save, even though he doesn’t have the ability to do so. Sure he wants to be a good dad, but he’s never been taught how. He doesn’t have the answers. But what we learned at the end of the piano recital, and what hopefully Jack learns as well, is that the answers sometimes come in the form of just sitting back and listening (and doing little else). That is a character trait Island Jack most definitely does not have. When he just appreciated David’s playing for what it was, brilliant, he actually formed one of his first good and hopefully non-destructive relationships in Lost history. I hope it leads to Island Jack mirroring some of the same things in his remaining time with Jacob.

“The Lighthouse” was chocked full of those “little” moments that would be easy to miss if the viewer is concentrated solely on “finding the answers.” I think the writers do this purposefully and use Jack as the message delivery man.

Will post some other random thoughts in a little bit.