“The Stand” thoughts, Episode Five: “Fear and Loathing in New Vegas”
It’s as if on the Vegas Strip did Randall Flagg a stately pleasure dome decree. People in fetish gear fuck freely in public. Everyone’s drunk, and some are doing blow right out the open. It’s a bacchanalia—and it’s being staged around a gladiatorial pit where slaves are made to fight each other with chainsaws.
In other words, it’s the nightmare scenario of people who used to want parental advisory stickers on Marilyn Manson records. Is it a plausible setup for a dystopian society run by a demon in denim? I’m not so sure. Where did he find all the hardbodied models, male and female, who are gyrating and pole-dancing and having sex out there? Does no one find the blend of hedonism and ultraviolence a little much? Could a new society really coalesce around that particular kernel?
The funny thing, and I use funny very loosely here, is that we’ve scene what an American dystopia would look like just last week. And while there is a certain cathartic venting of violent desires, it’s against perceived enemies to the desired order of things, not randos dumped into a thunderdome scenario while onlookers hump each other. It seems to me that the pitch Randall Flagg made to Lloyd Henried in prison—don’t you want the chance to get even with the kind of people who did this to you?—is a much more compelling and plausible way to structure New Vegas. Everyone there is attracted to the darkness Flagg embodies, so promise them the chance to extinguish the light (specifically in Boulder)! Turning the place into a sex club with a death-match arena in the middle just rings hollow. It’s a Hollywood idea of what fascism looks like.
I reviewed this week’s less-than-promising episode of The Stand for Decider.
“The Stand” thoughts, Episode Four: “The House of the Dead”
I get the feeling that this iteration of The Stand is meant to focus on the whole life-in-the-aftermath aspect of the story, to the near-exclusion of the pandemic, and relegating the dark vs. light conflict—the titular stand!—to second place, at least for now. But it’s running out of road for this approach. Sooner or later, and probably sooner than later, it’s going to come down to Mother Abigail and her crew against Randall Flagg and his own. (A crew we simply have not seen at all yet, aside from that one episode when he rescued Lloyd Henried from prison.) I think the tone it’s struck for the material on which it’s concentrating its efforts is appropriately elegiac and surprisingly gentle. But if you’re gonna knock the house down again, it pays to have sturdily built it, and that I’m not sure the show has done at all.
“The Stand” thoughts, Episode Three: “Blank Page”
It is kind of a feat, when you think about it: an audience in 2020 not knowing what’s going to happen in The Stand. This unusual, mix-and-match adaptation of one of the best-known horror novels in the English language continues to unfold in non-linear fashion, making familiar characters and plot points seem strange and unexpected. Sometimes this is very effective, like how it allows Nick-the-outsider and Nick-the-high-priest-of-Mother-Abigail to be directly contrasted with one another in the episode where we get to know him in the first place. Sometimes it doesn’t work as well, like how it races through the creation of the “committee” established by the survivors to govern Boulder; here it’s all the work of Mother Abigail, who picks them to be her emissaries first and a governing body second (if at all).
The 10 Best TV Needle Drops of 2020
5. Lovecraft Country
“Lonely World” by Moses Sumney
I’ll admit it: I’m a huge mark for musical sequences about the power of dancing. I remember Spike Lee’s Scorsesean serial-killer movie Summer of Sam as much for Mira Sorvino and John Leguizamo dancing to “Got to Give It Up” by Marvin Gaye than for anything involving the actual Son of Sam; I’m the guy who remembers the short-lived Vinyl for the “Wild Safari” scene, period. As such, I’m primed to appreciate the scene in Misha Greene’s ambitious but uneven Lovecraft Country in which Michael K. Williams’s closeted Montrose loses himself to the music of Chicago’s underground gay ball culture. (It’s just where I live, musically speaking.) But the moment here isn’t whatever song Montrose and his drag queen boyfriend Sammy (John Hudson Odom) are actually listening to — it’s Moses Sumney’s gorgeous, tremulous song “Lonely World,” an exceptionally beautiful paean to the place we all live in before human connection carries us away. Sumney is a soundtrack staple in recent years, and for good reason. You don’t need to recognize the music, this sequence seems to say; you need only recognize the need for music, and the rest takes care of itself.
The annual holiday tradition returns: I wrote about ten of the year’s best TV music cues for Vulture.
“His Dark Materials” thoughts, Season Two, Episode Seven: “Æsahættr”
If I felt like His Dark Materials was going to grapple with Asriel’s crimes and weigh them against his liberatory potential, a la Game of Thrones forcing you to confront Daenerys Targaryen’s bloodthirstiness even after she’s fought against an existential threat to humanity, or even a la The Lord of the Rings showing you the horrible shit that went down in the Shire while Frodo and friends were off questing, that would be one thing. But there’s no sign that this is the case, any more so than it was in the novels, in which Asriel and Coulter alike are given a free heroism pass more or less for being sexy — and how can you trust this show to wise up when, as seen in this episode, it’s capable of fucking up so many fundamentals?
If it seems like I’m being hard on a basically well-intentioned and well-made show… well, I probably am. Because I want to like the damn thing! I’m in the liking-things business, I wouldn’t even be a critic if I weren’t. As a matter of preference, I’m particularly in the liking-fantasy and liking-killing-God business, so you’d think this would be right up my alley. You almost have to try to screw that up… and yet screw it up His Dark Materials has. This despite lively and game performances from Dafne Keen, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Amir Wilson, Ruth Wilson, Will Keen, and Simone Kirby. This despite — and I can’t stress this enough — being about one randy British aristocrat’s mission to find and kill God. To get an enthusiastically lapsed a Christian as me to root against this clown is an achievement in and of itself. But that’s the story of His Dark Materials, I think. It makes the impossible feel far more laborious than any fantasy worth its salt ought to do.
I reviewed the season finale of His Dark Materials for Fanbyte.
“The Stand” thoughts, Episode Two: “Pocket Savior”
Overall, this episode functions less as a successor to the premiere and more as a part two. Showrunners Josh Boone and Benjamin Cavell are still introducing characters, weaving their pasts and presents together in that same dreamy way—a million miles from Stephen King’s relentless forward pace at this same stage in the story in the book version. In effect, we’re just seeing pieces of the puzzle at this point, and waiting for the final picture to take shape. Until then, it’s hard to judge the show as a success or failure, though the game cast, impactful score, and occasional flash of post-apocalyptic imagery (like the George Washington Bridge covered from one end to the other by stalled cars filled with dead passengers) are keeping my interest. It’s kind of like we’re in the early stages of the superflu, before it’s had a chance to really take off. We’ll see what kind of world we’re inhabiting when we reach the other side.
STC & Matthew Perpetua vs. Rock & Roll on Fluxpod
I’m back on Matthew Perpetua’s Fluxpod in a free-ranging discussion about rock’n’roll, covering Tears for Fears, Human League, Aerosmith, Guns n’ Roses, Nirvana, Lenny Kravitz and more. It’s a Patreon-exclusive episode, so go and subscribe already!
“His Dark Materials” thoughts, Season Two, Episode Six: “Malice”
“They consume what makes us human, so I just hid that from them,” Mrs. Coulter says of the spectres who eat people’s souls. “I suppress myself.” Would that we were all so lucky. Less an episode of television than a staccato succession of individual scenes — a series of unfortunate events, you might say—the penultimate installment of His Dark Materials’ second season puts all of the show’s characters through their paces, marching them relentlessly from one plot beat to the next over the course of its relatively brief 45-minute running time. Precious little humanity, in the form of the emotional and intellectual forces that actually drive people to do what they do, remains.
I reviewed this week’s oddly paced episode of His Dark Materials for Fanbyte.
“The Stand” thoughts, Episode One: “The End”
So that’s what The Stand 2020 is. I can tell you what it isn’t, though: It isn’t anything like Stephen King. I mean, the characters are all there, sure, and the story beats too, albeit shuffled; what I’m talking about is (paraphrasing Barton Fink here) That Stephen King Feeling. King, as he himself has written about extensively in his treatise on horror Danse Macabre, nearly always establishes a situation-normal status quo, then introduces some world-ending catastrophe or soul-eating demon-thing that overturns the whole Apollonian apple cart. You have to see little George Denbrough make his toy boat, kiss his big brother goodbye, and head out into the rain in his yellow slicker before you can meet Pennywise the Dancing Clown, you know? It’s the most King-feeling thing in all his work: You set up the house of cards, and then you knock it down.
In the book version of The Stand, the house of cards was the entirety of human society—specifically the American subsection thereof—and the knocking down was performed by Captain Trips. And boy, was it ever! For my money there’s no more thrilling section in all the King books I’ve read than the opening quarter or so of The Stand, where we meet all our main characters as civilization stumbles, crumbles, and completely collapses around them. Hell, they don’t even need to be main characters at all: There’s a chapter that simply follows the virus across the country from one random person to the next, establishing the virus as history’s most lethal chain letter, that’s just gleefully dark and frightening. It’s as good as King gets.
And The Stand’s 2020 TV adaptation will not be going there at all, it seems. It is, to put it mildly, a bold choice. And you know what? I like bold choices where adapting Stephen King is concerned! The most slavish recreations of his work tend to be the most boring; even in a case like the recent Hulu series Castle Rock, which was not a straight adaptation at all but an attempt to do for King’s oeuvre what Noah Hawley’s Fargo did with the Coen Brothers’ filmography, the effort to nail all those little King-isms came at the cost of doing anything actually memorable, let alone frightening. (I’m old school in that I think horror TV shows are supposed to be scary. Go figure!) Compare and contrast with Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining: It’s very much Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, not Stephen King’s, and it just so happens to be one of the greatest movies ever made; King, of course, despises it.
So no, a lack of fidelity isn’t going to get on my nerves per se. It never does! So I’m not interested in comparing chapter and verse, describing what the series got “right” and “wrong” about the details or even the broad strokes. In the end, it’s all in the execution. And in this early going at least, the execution is intriguing enough to keep me watching. The fading between times and places, the freeform mixture of “now” and “then,” gives the show the feel of a dream, or a nightmare (several of which punctuate the action, after all). The lush, traditional score (no John Carpenter knockoffs here) by Nathaniel Walcott and Mike Mogis contributes beautifully to that dreamy feeling. Will it last? Or, in the absence of the harrowing rise of the superflu plague, will the flashback/flashforward device wear out its welcome before the real action kicks in? These are open questions, but compared to “Why the hell am I watching this?”, they’re questions I don’t mind asking at all.
I’m covering The Stand for Decider, starting with my review of the premiere. It’s bold, I’ll give it that!
‘The Stand’: Tracing the Stephen King Epic Through Its Many Mutations
Take a pandemic. Add the paranormal. Make it a uniquely American story of survival horror. The result: “The Stand,” Stephen King’s epic post-apocalyptic novel from 1978, a new mini-series adaptation of which debuted Thursday on CBS All Access.‘The Stand’ Review: Stephen King’s Pandemic Story Hits TV AgainDec. 16, 2020
Conceived in the pre-Covid era, the show has taken on new resonance since, telling the story of a weaponized virus that wipes out 99 percent of the population. But that’s only the beginning. The real battle happens afterward as supernatural forces of darkness and light — embodied by the demonic dictator Randall Flagg (Alexander Skarsgard) and the holy woman Mother Abagail (Whoopi Goldberg) — duel for the souls of the plague’s survivors.
Since the original novel’s original release, King’s saga has entered the pop-culture consciousness in many different incarnations, including an expanded edition of the book and an earlier mini-series adaptation. In anticipation of the show’s arrival, we’re tracing the story from its point of origin to its latest mutation.
STC on Industrial Music on Fluxpod
I’m the guest on the latest episode of Matthew Perpetua’s Fluxpod podcast, talking about industrial music! Specifically we’re talking about this industrial music playlist we curated together. Enjoy!
“His Dark Materials” thoughts, Season Two, Episode Five: “The Scholar”
Watching Mrs. Coulter navigate this brave new world and the people she encounters in it is the episode’s greatest pleasure. Coulter herself, however, is not any sane person’s idea of a pleasure. She’s so openly and obviously vicious and deceptive that Lord Boreal’s hamfisted attempts to impress and seduce her with his (other)worldly ways make him look more like an out-and-out moron than an overambitious suitor.
But it does engender some fun reactions on Coulter’s part: choking back boredom as she sits curled up on his couch in bare feet while he plays world music to set the mood; marveling at the presumption it took him to buy her a change of clothes in order to make her look more at home in Will’s world; silently bristling at his unthinking sexism regarding the women of this world’s perceived arrogance; responding to the pass he makes at her with “If you actually got me, you wouldn’t begin to know what to do with me.” He’s so eager to ignore all this that when she asks him for information about the spectres haunting Cittàgazze, he seems to believe the game is afoot once again. No subtle knife required here — the line between horny and stupid is pretty thin.
I reviewed last night’s episode of His Dark Materials for Fanbyte.
STC on Imaginary Worlds
I appeared on the latest episode of the Imaginary Worlds podcast to talk about my Polygon piece on Jurassic Park‘s carnivore capitalism. Enjoy!
“His Dark Materials” thoughts, Season Two, Episode Four: “Tower of the Angels”
The knife business is well and good, and it obviously will be a major factor in Lyra and Will’s adventures moving forward. But as is so often the case with this series, it’s stronger television when humans make sincere contact with other humans, not when knives make contact with interdimensional planes. You can see Will’s trauma over accidentally killing a burglar last season written all over his face when he’s forced to fight Tullio. You can feel the frisson of unarticulated attraction and affection when Lyra’s daemon Pantalaimon violates her world’s taboo and brushes up against the injured Will to comfort him.
You get the sense that for all her prophetic destiny Lyra is still just a kid trying to do the right thing when she walks backwards up the stairs in their hideout so she can drop off some towels for Will without spying on him in the bath. When they say goodnight to each other using their full names, it’s like the verbal equivalent of doodling your crush’s name on your notebook. It’s a small, endearing bit of business that, in terms of emotional impact, puts all the angels and witches to shame.
I reviewed last night’s episode of His Dark Materials for Fanbyte.
“His Dark Materials” thoughts, Season Two, Episode Three: “Theft”
In general I pride myself on being able to follow dense, tangly narrative. What kind of critic brags about feeling otherwise, I’ve often wondered? If you can’t tell one house in Game of Thrones from another, or one mafia underboss in The Sopranos from another, that’s hardly anything to crow about like it’s the show’s fault rather than yours. But His Dark Materials’ narrative is such a latticework of deception and competing-but-overlapping quests for various magical items and people that trying to read it as an actual story about actual humans governed by actual human-behavior patterns is a punishing task. (Seriously: When they figure out that Lord Boreal has stolen the alethiometer, why on earth would Will and Lyra just show up at his house and walk up to the front door?) This story, these characters, need room to breathe. Watching them run up and down various narrative staircases isn’t enough.
I reviewed last night’s episode of His Dark Materials for Fanbyte.
“Fargo” thoughts, Season Four, Episode Eleven: “Storia Americana”
But it’s Mike Milligan/Satchel Roy who must bear the weight of all this. It’s he who’s cursed to remember, he in whom the bloody history of this war is imprinted. And for the purposes of this episode, it renders him speechless. Who fits in and who is rejected? For whom is the power of violence sufficient to gain entry into the promised land? How many people must watch their loved ones die in front of them to feed the maw of the money machine? Mike has no history report to offer us. He stares out at the great American nowhere and fiddles with a gun and does nothing—and if that isn’t the “Storia Americana” that gives the episode its title, I don’t know what is.
I reviewed the season finale of Fargo for Decider. The final scene made the whole season for me.
“His Dark Materials” thoughts, Season Two, Episode Two: “The Cave”
This is what I keep bumping into as I think about this show: I don’t think that the villains have the complexity and nuance that would merit their share of screen time. Coulter is a completely transparent liar who’s personally unpleasant to be around; the men of the Magisterium are varying degrees of toady, fanatic, and coward; Boreal is like a dastardly Dr. Who baddie. The more they all puff themselves up, the harder it is to take any of them seriously, or to desire any more time in their company. The whole show feels off-balance as a result; outside of Will and Lyra and maybe Mary (it’s a bit too early to tell), no one behaves in a way that feels recognizably human, and the whole thing feels like it would fall apart if looked at too closely.
Compare all of them to the care with which Mary is introduced. We first see her as she attempts to take care of a family of wrens outside her office window. She and Lyra share tea and cookies, but the cookies are stale, probably having sat forgotten in a desk drawer for months. After Lyra’s visit, Mary tells a colleague what happened over beers. She feels like a person, not a parody of religious extremists crossed with the iconography of the Empire from the Star Wars franchise, nor a Coulter-esque figure of permanent, obvious mendacity. More Marys and fewer eeeeevildoers would go a long way towards making His Dark Materials appointment viewing.
I reviewed this week’s episode of His Dark Materials for Fanbyte. Less mustache-twirling please!
“Fargo” thoughts, Season Four, Episode Ten: “Happy”
In thinking about this episode, it’s the details that jump out at me, despite all the major goings-on. The black comedy of the cops explaining their presence in Oraetta’s apartment by simply saying “He woke up.” Oraetta’s taunting of Ethelrida: “What does it feel like to be so sure you’re right and nobody cares?” Josto and Gaetano literally bragging about the size of their dicks. (“Big like a pickle?” Gaetano asks his brother, quoting “The Humpty Dance” of all things.) The lovely slo-mo shots of strutting gangsters and lethal shootouts in the episode’s opening gang-war montage. Josto trying to lift his brother up affectionately and failing miserably. Josto’s baffled “What the fuck?” when Gaetano dies. Odis’s smile. Gaetano’s flapping skull. Loy’s forgery of a painting he grew fond of when he saw it in a magazine, and Ethelrida’s ability to identify it.
If this season of Fargo is to be considered a success, it’s in these little things, these images, these exchanges of dialogue—moments that accumulate and tell a story of their own, even if the big picture has yet to come together.
I reviewed the penultimate episode of Fargo Season Four for Decider.
“Fargo” thoughts, Season Four, Episode Nine: “East/West”
Deliberately disorienting and strange, the better to mimic the world in which Satchel Cannon now finds himself alone, this episode of Fargo (“East/West”) is by far the season’s best. Coming as it does after the bloodbath of Episode 8, it relies less on sheer body count for its power than on the mysteries described above—the meta mysteries of why the show uses the techniques it does, the in-world mysteries of Satchel and Rabbi’s fellow guests at the Barton Arms hotel (it hardly needs to be said that this is a reference to Barton Fink, which is itself set largely in a strange hotel), and the general feeling that some horrible future awaits.
I reviewed this week’s episode of Fargo, the season’s strangest and best to date, for Decider.