Archive for August 1, 2016

“Preacher” thoughts, Season One, Episode Ten: “Call and Response”

August 1, 2016

I’ve never seen a show fail as spectacularly as Preacher did in its Season One finale. I mean that in every sense of the phrase, honestly. As is the show’s custom, “Call and Response” went as far as it could possibly go, then pushed even farther. Graphic violence of virtually every variety, narrative zig-zags and head-fakes and dead-ends that would make Lost go “now hold the phone,” gross-out moments as stomach-churning as a basic-cable show can get, more tragically hip music cues than a mid-‘90s Miramax movie soundtrack, a complete and total abandonment of taste, decorum, or even just the sensible fear of being corny as hell: Preacher has always been willing to go for it, and went for it the finale did. It just so happens to have gone for the goddamn face of a cliff. It was spectacular, yes. It was also a failure. A complete, total, spectacular failure.

I’ve simply never seen anything like last night’s episode of Preacher. I did my best to explain what I mean in my review for the New York Observer.

“The Night Of” thoughts, Episode Four: “The Art of War”

August 1, 2016

Say what you will about what happens in this week’s The Night Of: At least you can see it, for a change. Titled “The Art of War,” this episode was directed by The Theory of Everything and Man on Wire’s James Marsh — the only episode in the series not helmed by co-creator and, as of next week’s installment, co-writer Steven Zaillian. Marsh eschews the ostentatious, obfuscatory camerawork that has marked Zaillian’s contributions: no characters talking while out of focus, no shots of the back of people’s heads, no endless series of close-ups of inanimate objects, no random portraiture of brick walls or puddles. When he does isolate elements of the setting — a dripping hot-water faucet, cigarette smoke wafting up to the ceiling, the harsh overhead lights of the cellblock — these shots have meaning to the characters. You can, and probably should, complain that that meaning is getting doled out with a trowel (the episode ends with a shot of smoke right after Naz makes a deal with the devil! Get it???), but it sure beats spending multiple minutes of screentime zoomed in on the corners of tables just to prove that this is a gritty environment, or whatever.

There’s good news and bad news about last night’s The Night Of. The good news is above. The bad news you can read in my review for Decider.