Archive for December 4, 2015

“Jessica Jones” thoughts, Season One, Episode 11: “AKA I’ve Got the Blues”

December 4, 2015

The gravity of the situation is consistently undercut. This begins almost immediately, right there in the restaurant where Hope stabbed herself to death and four others came within a hair’s breadth of hanging themselves. Jessica wants to orchestrate a cover-up in order to avoid entangling the cops in Kilgrave’s web, but her goofball neighbor Robyn, who unleashed the telepath as part of an extremely dumb plan to get to the bottom of her brother Ruben’s death, isn’t having it. “We tell our truth,” she says, “for Ruben.” Then, referring to Hope, whom Jessica has shrouded under a tablecloth, “For tablecloth girl.” Nothing says “We take this seriously” like a cutesy nickname for a distraught woman who just slit her own throat! I get gallows humor, but this is too much too soon, and it jibes with neither Hope’s death nor Robyn’s horrifying close call.

I reviewed the eleventh episode of Jessica Jones for Decider. It was bad.

“Jessica Jones” thoughts, Season One, Episode 10: “AKA 1,000 Cuts”

December 4, 2015

About the best thing you can say about Jessica Jones’s tenth episode is that Carrie-Anne Moss and Robin Weigert have a horrifying fight scene. With encouragement from Kilgrave and an accidentally lethal last-second rescue by Pam, Jery and Wendy’s vicious divorce turns violent, with the doctor attempting to make emotional “death by a thousand cuts” the lawyer dealt her all too literal. The assault goes on for an uncomfortably long time, with Wendy counting out every slash of the knife against the body of the woman she once loved more than anything. She winds up dead with a glass table embedded in her skull, staring forward with dead unseeing eyes at the woman it turns out she didn’t see clearly in life either. The superhero genre is powered by the use of violence as metaphor, a spectacularly physical way of speaking the unspeakable, and this is as good as the show has ever gotten in that area. Too bad the rest of “AKA 1,000 Cuts” fails just as spectacularly.

I reviewed the tenth episode of Jessica Jones for Decider. It was bad.

“Fargo” thoughts, Season Two, Episode Eight: “Loplop”

December 2, 2015

But the real tragedy, it seems to me, is Hanzee Dent, Dodd’s right-hand man turned murderer. He’s killed people for a living twice, first as a highly decorated soldier in Vietnam, then as an enforcer for the Gerhardt family. Now, as he seamlessly transitions from hitman to spree killer, he’s killing on his own, for his own reasons. (Maybe he always was.) Given the ease and skill with which he’s been shown to pull the trigger, the scene in which he’s taunted by racists at a Sioux Falls bar (complete with vomit-soaked plaque commemorating the hanging of 22 Sioux in the alley out back) is soaked in schadenfreude. I mean, you just know these assholes are gonna get what’s coming to them. But it’s still somehow very, very sad to watch Hanzee snap—to see him humiliated for being who he is despite the sacrifices he made for the country that despises him, to see the rearguard struggle of his people against centuries of genocide reduced to wisecracks about Wounded Knee, to watch him wearily decide to shoot two people and murder three others, including two cops who arrive on the scene and call him “Cochise” immediately, out of sheer fatigue with being treated like garbage, by everyone, all the time. He puts it best himself later, when he tries to get a haircut from Peggy, whom he’s finally tracked down. “‘Professional,’ you said?” she asks regarding his preferred style. “Yeah,” he replies. “Tired of this life.” His exhaustion is so total he doesn’t even include himself as the subject of the sentence.

I reviewed this week’s Fargo for the New York Observer. This show is just tremendous.

“Jessica Jones” thoughts, Season One, Episode Nine: “AKA Sin Bin”

December 2, 2015

The biggest problem with the episode is structural. Since it begins with Kilgrave locked away safely in his soundproof, hermetically sealed, electroshock-equipped prison cell, we know that he’ll have to escape by the time it ends. I mean, there’s five more episodes left in the season, including this one, when he gets locked up, right? If he doesn’t get out, what are they gonna be about, Trish and Simpson getting engaged and picking out items for their wedding registry? And if he has to escape, that requires someone on the other side of the glass to do something to help, either by going inside and falling under his control or letting him have access to the outside and control whoever he wants—in other words, doing something unimaginably stupid.

I reviewed the ninth episode of Jessica Jones for Decider. It was bad.

“The Leftovers” thoughts, Season Two, Episode Nine: “Ten Thirteen”

December 2, 2015

But the most entertaining thing about this mightily entertaining episode (if you find dark shit entertaining, which, if you don’t, why are you watching this show) is simply its context in the series. This season, The Leftovers has proven itself to be a carnival ride through humanity’s grimmest emotions. A new family of main characters, a sudden switch to old ones we’d all but forgotten, seamless shifts backward through time to events we thought we’d seen the last of, an entire episode taking place in a hallucinated dreamworld, in-depth grappling with cult deprogramming and reprogramming, one-on-one conversations as intense as any action sequence—each new installment has the potential to do something entirely different than its predecessors. In an era where prestige drama has a tendency to be consistent from episode to episode, perhaps to a fault, The Leftovers mixes it up while remaining true to its core thematic and emotional obsessions each time. It’s impressive, risk-taking work—doubly so given Lindelof’s oft-stated preoccupation with the reactions of his audience. What will happen in the finale next week, then? To paraphrase Megan, I’m guessing it’s gonna be pretty fucking amazing, what they’re gonna do.

I reviewed the penultimate episode of The Leftovers Season Two for Decider.

“Ash vs. Evil Dead” thoughts, Season One, Episode Five: “The Host”

December 2, 2015

The coup de grace against Eligos is the moment that brings it all together. Once Pablo lures the entity out of their friend, Ash is ready to blow it to kingdom come with his shotgun, except the beast teleports far too quickly for the boomstick to get a bead. Then our hero flashes back to something he said during his drug trip last week: “Shoot first, think never.” It’s a terrific credo for the character, not least because Bruce Campbell hilariously plays any instance where thought is required like the strain might cause his head to explode.

And it leads to a kick-ass climax: El Jefe tosses his shotgun in the air, then takes a swipe at the demon with his chainsaw-hand in slo-mo. The creature disappears. The shotgun lands back in his hand, he levels it where it lands, and just before he pulls the trigger, bang, that’s where Eligos reappears. BOOM — the demon is dispatched in a spray of green jelly. Instinct prevails over logic, chaos over order, magic over reason, fun over not-fun. For both the character and the show itself, nonsense makes perfect sense.

I reviewed last weekend’s Ash vs. Evil Dead for Rolling Stone.

“The Affair” thoughts, Season Two, Episode Nine (209)

December 2, 2015

Relative to Helen, Alison’s situation is straightforward. She goes into labor. She needs her fiancée. He’s not there for her, due to the combination of a misplaced smartphone, a coked-up sex party, serial philandering, and an unseasonal hurricane. She gives birth to a beautiful daughter without him, with the help of a doctor she mistakes for a nurse due to her youth and, let’s face it, her gender. During labor she seems to commune, on some level, with her ex-husband Cole as he hits rock bottom. And when she emerges, she finds she needs Noah less than she did before. Maybe that’s what she and her romantic rival Helen ultimately have in common. Whatever it is they really need, Noah isn’t it.

Meghan O’Keefe and I reviewed the penultimate episode of The Affair Season Two for Decider.

“Jessica Jones” thoughts, Season One, Episode Eight: “AKA WWJD?”

December 2, 2015

There’s a certain irony to “AKA WWJD?”, the title of Jessica Jones’s eighth episode. Asking “What would Jessica do?”, it then does something the series has consistently failed to do throughout the season so far: something (anything!) surprising. Often unpredictable, frequently subtle (at least by superhero standards), it’s the show’s best episode so far, by far.

I reviewed the eighth episode of Jessica Jones, which I thought was good, for Decider.