Miscellaneous Debris: July 2010 Edition

Our end-of-the-month wrapup of reviews, news, and observations that didn’t get a full post.

Here come the dog days of summer, but it’s not a complete loss. For as blah as the summer has been so far - and it’s been a giant yawn, by and large – the coming weeks show plenty of promise. In the meantime, last weekend’s San Diego Comic-Con and the upcoming fall television season has given probably half the Internet several weeks worth of blogging and complaining fuel.

Some of our own complaints and blogging fuel are listed below. All opinions are our own, and as always they’re presented in no particular order of importance.

1. Actually, first things first: Mad Men‘s fourth season premiere was a virtuoso bit of television, as good if not better than the series’ vaunted pilot and a jump ahead in quality from the season three debut. With its characters entering the post-JFK era – some leaping, some getting pulled along by the undertow of changing times – the show seems at once re-energized and recommitted. Jon Hamm continued to bring new range and depth to Don Draper, as Matthew Weiner’s script stood the character on his handsome head, while Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) and Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss) finally emerged as the confident grown-ups fans have waited for them to become.

Weiner made some comments last spring that the show would only run six seasons, and it’s not hard to see this ep as the halfway point in the story’s evolution. This coming week’s episode reveals – just in time for summer – the first-ever Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce Christmas party.

2. It’s fun to get what we want. After complaining last year that we wished some former A-list leading men deserved and were due for comebacks, two of our picks have movies opening this week and next. Kevin Kline’s indie comedy The Extra Man, co-starring Paul Dano and John C. Reilly, opens in limited release this weekend. Next week’s The Other Guys, starring Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell, co-stars Michael Keaton; we’ll mention again that The Merry Gentleman, Keaton’s directing debut, remains one of our favorite films released since this blog began a couple of years ago.

In the meantime, here’s the trailer for The Extra Man:

3. Nothing came out of the San Diego Comic-Con that really amazed us, but a few things surfaced that sort of disappointed. We’ve made the case before that Joss Whedon isn’t the best choice to write or direct the upcoming Avengers movie, but now that he’s confirmed to do both we’ll give him an even chance. Mark Ruffalo (Zodiac) is a trade-up in replacing Edward Norton as the Hulk, and it’s good to see Jeremy Renner finally confirmed as Hawkeye. All the same, it’s still a bummer to hear that Avengers founding member and mainstay Hank Pym will not appear in the film. The full cast list was revealed at the convention’s panel.

For no good reason, here’s an episode of The Avengers: United They Stand cartoon from the late 90s. Actually, it’s so painfully 90′s it might as well be sporting a pair of Doc Marten’s and a Friends haircut.

4. Better late than never: we’re happy to report that The Unusuals, the exceptional police comedy-drama that Renner headlined last year, has been available on DVD for a while now. Co-starring Terry Kinney, Amber Tamblyn, Adam Goldberg and Harold Perrineau, the show mixed black humor with sometimes surreal drama and plot twists, creating something unlike anything else on network television. Naturally, it lasted just ten episodes before ABC pulled the plug. Renner immediately went on to acclaim in The Hurt Locker, so hopefully the network regrets its cancellation. Nine episodes are available for streaming on Netflix.

5. October sees the release of The Social Network, which except for its pedigree might seem cause for suspicion; still, an Aaron Sorkin script directed by David Fincher is too good to pass up, and anyway a film that’s intelligently made about current events is seldom a bad thing, if ever.

Based on Ben Mezrich’s book The Accidental Billionaires and starring Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake, the film chronicles the rise of Facebook. By the way, please join our Facebook group.

The film opens nationwide October 1.

6. In previous installments of Miscellaneous Debris we chastised both Rescue Me and Leverage for their egregious product placement, devoting too much time to mentioning or in some cases outright singing the praises of their commercial sponsors. Happily, both shows have toned that down quite a bit in their current runs. After a hit-or-miss second season, Leverage seems to have found its legs, with each episode by and large more entertaining than the last. Meanwhile Rescue Me, though too quick once again to fall back on the Tommy Gavin (Denis Leary)-as-human-trainwreck plotlines, has returned to ideas from earlier seasons that worked well before getting abandoned. In particular, the ace comic chemistry between firefighters Sean Garrity (Steven Pasquale) and Mike Silletti (Mike Lombardi) and the reappearance of slain firefighter Jimmy Keefe (James McCaffrey) improve every episode in which they’re used.

7. Ten years ago, Ang Lee’s martial arts epic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon caused something of a quiet sensation, re-defining how audiences (particularly sci-fi and fantasy audiences) thought about the limits and potential of the action film genre. The  film’s luxurious cinematography and eye-googling special effects, combined with a simple but moving story of revenge and deferred love, made larger Western franchises including the then-popular Matrix and Star Wars prequel trilogy seem instantly cumbersome and outdated. Subsequent imitators and similar wuxia efforts trickled through Western multiplexes for years afterward.

A Blu-Ray edition was released this month (a previous edition was available in a three-film wuxia box set), and though we haven’t seen it yet we can only imagine how Lee’s incredible vision appears in high-definition. If you haven’t seen the film, you should. If you have, it might be time to revisit it.

8.  Criterion has officially announced the Blu-Ray and two-disc DVD release of Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line. Set to debut September 28, Criterion’s edition includes a new digital transfer supervised by Malick, thirteen minutes of outtakes, interviews with cast members, newsreels of the actual fighting on Guadalcanal and the Solomon Islands, and audio tracks of the Melanesian chants heard throughout the film.

To reiterate what we said a couple of months ago: Upon its 1998 release the film was unfairly ignored by a public that preferred the more simplistic jingoism of Saving Private Ryan (released earlier that year) or felt leery of its sorrowful, meditative tone. Nevertheless, Malick’s eye for arresting imagery didn’t dull one bit after an almost twenty year hiatus from filmmaking; the trailer alone is more picturesque than the entirety of most films, and also more moving. 

Our annual summer hiatus runs through next week. We’ll return Tuesday, August 10 with more of what you come here for. Thanks for reading.

- Michael Kabel

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Goodbye to Life, Life On Mars, The Unusuals

A last look back at three recent television series cancelled before their time.

As the 2008-2009 television series ends with a whimper, it’s hard not to feel a sense of relief spiked nevertheless with frustration. For months we’d followed the efforts of three very good shows to find their audience, hit their creative strides, and sometimes to accomplish both at the same time. Even as formerly reliable and exciting shows collapsed around themselves – most notably NBC’s The Office and Heroes – the lesser known weeklies Life, Life On Mars, and the late season replacement The Unusuals foundered beneath increasingly merciless ratings thresholds.

All three shows had promise, all three sometimes fell short of their potential, and each one offered something more intelligent and ambitious than the sludge pool of reality-TV and cop procedurals that still lay, like a wet tarpaulin, over most of the network playing field. Like CBS’s Swingtown, which misses inclusion in the group only by virtue of its summertime airdates, they all deserved longer and better fates.

Of the three, only Life survived past its inaugural season, airing eleven episodes before the 2007-2008 writer’s strike. The intricate, melancholy story of police detective Charlie Crews (Damian Lewis, Band of Brothers), returning to the LAPD after serving twelve years in prison for a gruesome double homicide he didn’t commit, the show used veracious documentary-style interviews with its supporting characters to paint a sketchy, emerging back story of conspiracy and paranoia. Surrounding Crews were his recovering addict partner Danni Reese (The L Word‘s Sarah Shahi), skeptical police lieutenant Karen Davis (Robin Weigert, Deadwood), and cellmate-turned-housemate Ted Earley (the terrific Adam Arkin, Chicago Hope). The conspiracy subplot gave an X-Files-like dread to each episode that intrigued without remaining deliberately opaque, so that each revelation begged for more information without necessitating it.

The Season 2 cast of Life.

NBC, in what must be the cruelest act of generosity in recent memory, renewed the ratings-challenged show for a second season but scheduled it during the Friday night wasteland. The show correspondingly took a tremendous dip in quality, downplaying Crews’  Zen ethos, the conspiracy side story, and Crews’ illicit love affair with his attorney (Brooke Langdon, Melrose Place) in favor of a far blander romance with his married ex-wife. The episode scripts languished, too, often involving more gimmick than substance and sex appeal over innovation or suspense. Four episodes into its second chance, the show teetered on the verge of becoming yet another network crime show, indistinguishable from the rest.

Worn down by Life: Lewis

A scheduling shift to Wednesdays brought a return to quality but didn’t significantly help ratings, even as the characters grew and the cast settled into working with one another. Donal Logue’s (The Tao of Steve) Captain Brian Tidwell, replacing Weigert as boss, was a charming romantic interest for Reese, while the show amplified first-season antagonist Roman Nevikov (Garret Dillahunt, No Country For Old Men) into the hub of the resurgent conspiracy backstory. A second-season finale brought satisfactory, if rushed, conclusions to its major storylines without taking narrative shortcuts. As a result the show has a definite beginning, middle, and (premature) end. Ultimately, the show makes ideal fare for marathons on DVD or on NBC’s undernourished Sleuth cable network.

In retrospect, considering its pedigree, film-worthy ensemble cast and mind-blowing premise, ABC’s remake of the BBC series Life On Mars should probably have hit the ground running as a better show than it ever actually became. Struck by a car in 2008, NYPD detective Sam Tyler (Jason O’Mara, In Justice) awakes in 1973 to find himself a just-transferred detective assigned to the crumbling 125th precinct, a sweaty fiefdom of crime and corruption dominated by bitter, lupine Lieutenant Gene Hunt (Harvey Keitel) and his overbearing henchman Ray Carling (Michael Imperioli, Goodfellas). Tyler found solace in the friendship of fledgling policewoman Annie Norris (Gretchen Mol, 3:10 to Yuma) while trying to determine if he was dead, comatose, or actually a time traveler.

The Life On Mars cast

Early episodes excelled thanks to the strong chemistry of the various cast members and plot points that were hard not to envy: the chance to meet one’s parents, to see oneself in early childhood, to capitalize on knowledge of the future. Unfortunately, it also went to the well of stranger-in-a-strange land pop culture references too often and sometimes didn’t carry its plots through to their conclusion. An early episode revealing corruption among Hunt and his cronies was dropped too soon, and a storyline involving the criminal activities of Tyler’s father (Dean Winters, Rescue Me) never got the attention it demanded.

Feathered, leathered: Mol and O'Mara

Ultimately, Life On Mars may never have been too much of one thing or another to draw in fans of science-fiction television or the cop procedural audience, both of which typically have very defined sets of expectations and demands. Underachieving in its Thursday night time slot, ABC moved the program to Wednesdays after Lost. The show dramatically matured in quality as the season went on, though, and episodes including a hospital hostage standoff and the death of a newspaper reporter who may have been a fellow time traveler were both series standouts.

The film is a saddening bore: the LOM finale

ABC cancelled the series well enough in advance to allow the show’s creators to give it a conclusion, and while their solution wasn’t very good it was nevertheless memorable. Departing wildly from the British series’ melancholy resolution, Tyler awakes to find he’s an astronaut en route to the planet Mars itself, and that his time in the 70s was a malfunctioning virtual reality dream during his suspended animation. A bold and clumsy middle finger held up to the show’s small but devoted audience, it’s a case study in the dangers of television done not well but quickly.

Finally, while no official notice of its cancellation shows up on search engine queries, its ratings and expert speculation alike suggest that ABC’s The Unusuals won’t survive past its original ten episode order. A dark serio-comedy that proudly held M*A*S*H as a primary influence that applied that show’s light on top/dark beneath texture to a seemingly normal “cops on the beat procedural,” often to stunning effect. Critics didn’t get it, and with a late-season starting date the show still hasn’t found its audience.

The cast of The Unusuals

It’s hard not to think of The Unusuals as the best cable drama on network television. The dark subject matter and characterizations – Detective Eric Delahoy (Adam Goldberg, The Hebrew Hammer) lives in denial of his brain tumor diagnosis, while his partner Leo Banks (Harold Perrineau, Lost) suffers a constant fear of death at any minute – takes a certain mindset to quickly embrace. Likewise its plots, which included a “zombie” hospice patient walking across New York to the site of his childhood home or the “crime slut” who romanced men to help her commit brutal robberies.

The show worked best based on the strengths of its ensemble cast, including neophyte detective Amber Tamblyn (Joan of Aracadia) as neophyte detective Casey Shraeger and Jeremy Renner (28 Weeks Later) as disgraced baseball player Jason Walsh, her possibly-corrupt partner. As good as they, Perrineau, and Goldberg were, the show was finding its standout in Kai Lennox (Yes Man) as Detective Eddie Alvarez. The spiritual descendant of M*A*S*H‘s Major Frank Burns but hobbled by such low self-esteem that he only speaks of himself in the third person, the multilingual Alvarez was the wet blanket to all the strangeness surrounding the group’s Second Precinct, even as Renner’s detective was its brains and Goldberg and Perrineau its sadsack heart.

As with Life On Mars, from which it inhabited the post-Lost death slot, The Unusuals may not have been one-thing-or-another-enough to find its audience. Saddled with a series title that could win a MacArthur grant for blandness, audiences likely couldn’t figure out what it was about or why it was different. Too, there’s something to be said for the twilight of cop shows theory predicted for some time now, as years of Law & Order‘s and CSI‘s have worn out the public’s welcome or nailed down their time slots past the point of usurpation. Or possibly the public reflexively looks to cable for offbeat fare now – USA regularly mines quirk for most of its original programming, and AMC’s Breaking Bad is one of the best shows anywhere on the dial. So The Unusuals, like the other two shows fading into DVD releases and likely cable network spotlights, was possibly just too unusual for where it found itself.

- Michael Kabel
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TV Review: The Unusuals

Smart, intriguing ABC cop series is a treat for viewers with offbeat tastes.

One cop is suicidal while his partner lives in fear of a deadly family curse. A New York Yankee-turned-cop with a dark past builds trust with his new partner, a Park Avenue scion who’s turned her back on wealth.  Their sergeant is a retired astronaut with a full-sized space suit in the corner of his office. They chase serial killers who prey on cats, the oldest and dumbest family of crooks in New York history, and the killer of one of their own. Circling around them all are more strange police and even stranger criminals, with a corruption conspiracy in the background that’s only hinted at in murky but clever revelations.

ABC’s new cop comedy-drama The Unusuals is a smart whirlwind of offbeat comedy and slow-simmering paranoia that manages to stay above the too-pervasive trend towards preciousness, thanks to its gritty texture and the perfectly-pitched acting of its talented ensemble cast.  Early ratings results have not proved promising, which is a shame. Like Life On Mars, its predecessor in the post-Lost death slot, it’s a vigorous effort to make original television.

partners: Tamblyn, Renner

The two episodes so far have kept the action moving confidently forward while gradually shading in character detail without seeming overly expository. Casey Shraeger (Amber Tamblyn), a journeyman vice detective working undercover prostitution stings, transfers to the Homicide unit of the NYPD’s Second Precinct, a station house where seemingly every detective and officer has something to hide or something off about their personality. She’s partnered with charismatic detective Jason Walsh (Jeremy Renner) to solve – as her first case – the murder of Walsh’s partner. Charges of corruption and illicit behavior swarm the fallen officer, providing the viewer with a gateway into a larger tangle of allegations and deeper meanings that likely involve their fellow officers.

From left: Perrineau, Goldberg, Curnen

It seems the precinct’s Sergeant Kowalski (Terry Kinney) has brought Shraeger in as a means of cleaning house, whether she wants to help or not. Shraeger, meanwhile, goes to lengths hiding her silver-spoon past. Circling this central story are long-time partners Eric Delahoy (Adam Goldberg) and Leo Banks (Harold Perrineau), two detectives at a crossroads: Delahoy is suicidal thanks to a recently-diagnosed brain tumor, while Banks has become convinced he’ll die sometime in the next year. He’s just turned 42, the same age his father, grandfather, and uncle reached before dying in terrible accidents. That Delahoy miraculously survives a shotgun blast in the first episode only makes them more agitated with themselves and each other.

All of this was just the first two episodes, the beginning of ten that ABC has ordered. Hopefully every one will get the chance to air, because show creator Noah Hawley (Bones) has stuffed the show with characters and situations that must represent a career’s Rolodex of ideas. What’s probably most surprising is how accessible the show actually is, and how well it works. There are no clumsy wads of backstory filled in at odd places, no scenes of a guest-star getting brought to speed about details for the sake of audience clarity. Instead almost everything is rooted in character development, coming out of each their interactions with each other and the strange world around them.

Though it’s still too early to predict standout performances, Renner (The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford) shows a relaxed confidence as the mysterious Walsh. Tamblyn, a long way from Joan of Arcadia, mixes her character’s confusion and resolve into a controlled performance that shows strength without resulting to TV-woman-detective superficiality. Goldberg and Perrineau, playing different kinds of panic bouncing off one another, are all manic aggression and self-loathing. Goldberg’s made a career of playing shifty oddballs, and he’s well used here. Perrineau, having jumped the Lost ship at the right time, seems at greater ease as the more clearly-defined Banks. Only one character, detective Allison Beaumont (Monique Gabriela Curnen) has yet to define herself in relation to the others, though a revelation at the second episode’s conclusion is likely a step in the right decision.

Where’s it all leading? Can the show realize its potential? It’s hard to say after two episodes, and it’s been a while since ABC could build a hit drama out of a midseason replacement. (We’re tempted to say since Grey’s Anatomy, though there’s possibly a more recent example than that.) Ultimately there’s a Cable feeling permeating the show, as if its character-driven nuances might be better served by the USA Network or possibly FX. If all else fails – and the show deserves to succeed – we hope it finds a berth where it can flourish. Television this promising deserves room to grow.

- Michael Kabel
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