Television reviews...

[shadowkat]

1. I May Destroy You - the Michaela Cole British Dramedy that is premiering on HBO this month...and got rave reviews in the UK Guardian and New York Times made me realize that my taste has somewhere along the line greatly diverged from today's television critics and pop culture's.

I tried to watch it. I made it through about three episodes before I gave up. It's well...an HBO series, and like 98% of HBO's series, feels the need to go towards graphic hyper-realism. Actually, in regards to this series? That may well be an understatement. Here, you feel like a voyeur, and not always in a good way - although I'm not sure there is a good way..

Micaela Cole is definitely brave - we see her on the toilet, we see her pee in an alley, we see her have "period" sex - complete with..her lover taking off her panties, and taking out her tampon and asking her what the bloody mess that came out with it is.

Lover: What's this? It's silky to the touch.
Arabella (MC's character): I don't know, a blood clot?
ME: No, it's the lining of your uterus - that is built up to house a child and an egg, when you don't get pregnant, that lining washes out of you with menstruation. Seriously sex education must be lacking in Great Britain. I learned that in the 6th grade. Also, eww...why are you showing this to me in graphic detail? Why?

Meanwhile, we get to see her room-mate and best bud having explicit sex with two guys. (Not at the same time at least.)

The story is about consent, and trust in relationships - and the lack thereof. Arabella comes back from a luxurious writer's retreat in Italy, and goes out partying with a group of friends. She's living the life as a social media personality, having reached fame and prominence on Twitter and acquired a lucrative book deal in the bargain. While partying, she partakes of various substances and experiences a blackout. Tells her friend, who had left early - that she had at least five different drugs that night (although she'd stayed sober that night due to having to work the next day) and thinks her drink might have been spiked. Not only that, she has flashbacks of a white male raping her in a toilet stall - Arabella is black.

Arabella is shown living a rather fearless and reckless lifestyle, until she gets raped while out with her "friends" and everything she thought she knew about herself, her friends, her world unravels, and she struggles to rediscover that fearless person she once was, again. It's a series about the effects of PTSD and how anxiety and PTSD from suffered trauma can destroy you. It's about how people may destroy you. It's been credited as a series that speaks to our anxiety ridden times. Having been someone who has had my trust broken by so-called friends albeit not through sexual violience (Thank god), I can kind of relate, but that's as far as it goes.

I found it difficult to follow (not helped by the thick urban East London slang), triggering in various ways, offensive in how explicit and graphic it was, and weirdly compelling. I don't quite know what to think about it. I want to see more and I really frigging don't at the same time.
I want to throttle the critics who adore it, yet praise it myself. Very weird drama.

Hyper-realism is weird. It likes to show the nitty-gritty of the human experience and the nastiness of humanity. And it's not always easy on the eyes.

Micheala Cole may be the reason why I want to see more of it and find it at all compelling. She is amazing. Has one of those faces that I can watch for hours. But, the story, and the explicitness is more than I can handle right now. It makes me cringe, and makes me angry on Arabella's behalf. But at the same time angry at Arabella herself.

So, once again, I find myself at odds with the television critics, and realizing how subjective an art-form television truly is.

2. Beecham House - it airs on PBS, and is one of the more compelling things I've seen on Masterpiece Theater - from the BBC in recent years. It's less soapy than Dowton, and does a better job with diversity than Sandition. I gave up on Sandition - since I adored the novel I read, and this kind of drifted away from it. Howards End - I also kind of gave up on. Beecham House is a bit more compelling and far more happens in it.

John Beecham and his family have made a life for themselves in Delhi. He has a son by a native of the country, who is also a member of an important family. And as a result, he must keep his son hidden along with the truth.
Unfortunately, an old friend shows up from London, and from the East India Company - which John has long since left. The friend who initially saves John's life, appears to have nefarious reasons for doing so. Nothing is quite as it seems, and the series revolves around political intrigue and a mystery. Well-cast, and compelling - also rather easy to follow for a historical - it's better than expected. It is directed and written by an Indian director/writer, and filmed in Delhi.

Takes place during the French occupation of India.

3. The Mandalorian this is written and directed by John Faverau and stars various people, including Nick Nolte in voice acting role, Takiti Wakiti, Carl Weathers, and various others. It's a space western that takes place in the Star Wars Universe shortly after the Rebellion won in Return of the Jedi. The Mandalorian is part of guild of bounty hunters, in his sect, they wear body armor and never remove it. He's kind of a gunslinger of sorts. Not unlike Boba Fett, but tougher. Needed more money that he's received with smaller bounties - he goes after a big score from an ex-Imperial leader. And given little to no information on what it is.

It's well-written, fun, easy to follow, and fits neatly within the Star Wars Universe. Faverau unlike Rian Johnson and JJ Abrahams, actually is a decent story-teller. He keeps things simple, and is a huge Star Wars geek, who fell in love with Lucas' world at an early age. Lucas, while not a great story-teller, is excellent at world-building. (If you enjoyed the stories in Star Wars, Empire and Force Awakens - you can thank Lawrence Kasdan for that.) Lucas is among the greats at setting the stage and building a world. But not that great at direction or story-telling. Faverau is good at story-telling, dialogue and direction, he doesn't need to worry about the world - someone else took care of it. Faverau as proven by the Marvelverse is particularly good at playing in someone else's world. Not everyone is.

Star Wars due in part to how well Lucas built the world, and how open-ended he left it, lends itself quite well to fanfiction, franchise writing, and spin-offs. You can do a lot with Star Wars. And unlike Star Trek which has a rather rigid rule-book (just ask Ron Moore and the folks who tried to break the rules in DS9 etc), Star Wars is fairly open-ended. You're not stuck with the Federation. People don't have to be moral or nice. There's no political correctness. It can be gritty and quite dark, or the exact opposite. It's in some ways more like our own - in part because Lucas wrote it as a parable on the Vietnam War and wanted it to be gritty, yet hopeful.

You don't need to be a fan to follow this - I don't think. But I also wouldn't know - since Star Wars was among my first fandoms or film franchises that I fell in love with. It's actually responsible for my love of science fiction. Before Star Wars - I thought science fiction was horror movies with scary monsters. One of my best friends at the time loved monster movies. We watched them all the time at her house. She adored the horror genre, and in particular anything with monsters. As a result of our friendship - I saw all the old 1950s and 60s Japanese Horror films on Television, saw King Kong in the movie theaters with her and her family, saw Night Gallery, saw Outer Limits, Twilight Zone, Lost in Space, etc. There was also Space 1999, Star Trek, and well, briefly Doctor Who. All had monsters or scary creatures. All were horror in my opinion. And horror kept me up at night.

The year Star Wars came out - it was immediately followed by Alien, which my father contemplated seeing - and I talked him out of, because it was scary and it was R-rated. My mother watched Alien when it came on television once, and I ended up leaving the room. Horror movies don't bother my mother. She's afraid of heights, not horror films or critters. So for me and my little brother - we were about 11 and 9 at the time, Star Wars was a treat. I adored it. It wasn't until I was a freshman in college that I came to appreciate Star Trek.

So, I actually know the world fairly well. Even though I've not watched all the cartoons, or read all the books and comics. I did see all the films - in the movie theater, except for the last one - Rise of Skywalker - which I saw on Demand, mainly because I'd lost interest in the franchise after The Last Jedi. Rian Johnson is a lot of things, but he's not a coherent story-teller.

People want different things from film, television and books. Some want a thematic structure or theme that validates their worldview or furthers that worldview whatever it may be. Others, like myself, want a good story with interesting and relatable characters. Others want great special effects and lots of action, and good plotting that follows a specific through line, that can be tracked. I'm willing to handwave effects and plot, which while important - aren't as essential as good characterization and story. And theme? I don't tend to care about that much at all - mainly because you can for the most part interpret art however you want - good art can be interpreted more than one way. The more mediocre the art - the more didatic and preachy it tends to be, and it tends to exclude those it wishes to teach preaching and appeasing the choir.

I don't like preachy movies and television shows and books - regardless of what they are sermonizing about. David E. Kelly, who is very liberal, used to annoy me to no end with his series - I gave up on him eventually. He just loves to get up on a soap box. Rian Johnson also likes to get up on a soap box, but is less coherent. JJ Abrhams in marked contrast has zip to say about anything, and likes to write what amounts to an amusement park ride or video game - which I've lost patience for.

I want story, dammit. Save the sermonizing for church. And plot-hijinks and special effects bombastery for gamers.

Thank you.

And two episodes in? Guess what? The Mandalorian delivers on story. It's tightly plotted. Good dialogue. And interesting characters, building well on world-building. Theme? It's there too, very simple, but there. About being kind and helping people. And the main character appears to be on a redemptive arc.

That's more than I can say for the last three Star Wars flicks. Excepting Rogue One - which I felt told a cohesive story, had interesting characters and a strong plot, building on the world in which it was set.

This leads me to believe that perhaps the future of the franchise lies in the stories of side-characters or characters not previously explored by George Lucas and company. And perhaps this is true of other franchises as well? Perhaps playing within the world, and creating original characters within it - is a better choice than attempting to continue the story of pre-existing ones?

At any rate, so far, I'm enjoying Mandalorian more than I had expected and have recc'd it to my poor mother, who got Disney + in order to see Hamiliton, and is desperately hunting things to watch with my father - who has the attention span of a twelve year old boy.



4. Heart and Souls - old Robert Downey Jr. flick, circa 1980s, with Kyra Sedwick, Alfre Woodward, Charles Grodin...

It's not as good as I remembered. And I apparently blended it and the one he was in with Cybil Shepard and Peter Gallagher in my head. They are two separate films. The best part of this film is Downey Jr singing Walk Like a Man with the four ghosts who are haunting him on a street. The movie is rather cliche in theme and places, falling into sentimentality more often than it should, with cringe-inducing scenes that don't quite work. The writers attempt to inflict a rather rigid rule structure on the film, but that structure hampers both characterization and plot. Giving them little to no elbow room.

Instead of eliciting true emotional moments, it attempts to manipulate them with well-meaning but often empty platitudes. Also quite a bit of it feels contrived or rushed. The only story-arc that works is possibly Charles Grodin's and the stamp burgular, but Alfre Woodward's feels a bit too neat. And Kyra Sedgewicks which in marked contrast is almost too realistic, to the point it is jarring, is also rushed. We spend a lot of time, pointless time, with Downy Jr arguing with the four ghosts - who start to grate on my nerves as much as his.

I remember enjoying this film far more when I initially saw it in the movie theaters in the 1980s. Now, it feels dated and off in more ways than one. In short, it does not hold up well.

I saw it on HBO of all places.