My thoughts on 'Bates Motel' (so far)

   

   Just caught the latest episode on A&E's website. My reactions in a nutshell: Dylan and the sex slave plotline continue to be my least favorite parts of the show, and every scene dealing with them strikes me as campy and ridiculous. Unlike some other reviewers, I didn't feel the stuff with Norman and Bradley came out of left field; she's been ignoring him for two or three episodes now, and it was obvious she was going to end up blowing him off (just as Norman himself has been blowing off Emma for the past few weeks). I thought all that was pretty true to how people interact in situations like this - Person A likes Person B, Person B catches on and tries to distance themselves, Person A doesn't get the hint and ends up getting hurt, etc. We've all been there, on one side or the other.

   I also like the flashes of Scary Norman we've been getting - the violent temper, blackouts, hallucinatory conversations with his mom, etc. I think this would be a better show if Dylan and the sex slave nonsense were left out entirely; just give us the police and townspeople being (justifiably) suspicious of Norma, Norma trying to run the motel, and the interpersonal drama pushing Norman's crazy buttons and slowly driving him over the edge. That's a much more compelling show to me. Rejection and romantic disappointment suck no matter who you are; when you've already got a screw loose, not to mention an inappropriately close and needy relationship with Mother, they just might be the one-two punch that turns you into a woman-hating serial killer in seven years or so.

   To that end, I loved the scene on the road between Norman and Bradley. I like that they're not afraid to make Norman - who's usually such a lovable, if clueless presence, even in his adult incarnation - come across as scary and borderline misogynistic, when he needs to be. I also thought the show's portrayal of Bradley was more sympathetic and nuanced, ultimately, than I was expecting.

   All in all, I say focus on the murder mystery and interpersonal intrigue, get rid of the silly conspiracy plotline, and find a way to integrate Dylan into the family dynamic more firmly, rather than feeling like he has to have his own storyline, one that often feels like a different show running parallel to this one. If the town needs to be creepy, do it with mood, not human trafficking bullsh*t and puzzling Burning Man shenanigans. That's my personal wishlist for [the already greenlighted] Season 2.

Something to chew on: My thoughts on NBC's 'Hannibal'

   

   You know, it's not often that watching an episode of TV actually ticks me off, but I got a little hot under the collar watching last week's Hannibal. For those not familiar, the show is a take-off on Thomas Harris' first Hannibal Lector novel, Red Dragon, only set a few years before the Doctor's incarceration. At present, he's helping FBI investigator Will Graham - the man Harris fans know will eventually put Lector behind bars - catch serial killers and the like. The set-up for last week's episode is a little involved: basically, Will took out a serial killer in the pilot, saving the man's teenage daughter in the process. Now Will feels protective toward the girl, Abigail Hobbs, while Will's boss, Harris mainstay Jack Crawford, is convinced she may have been in cahoots with her dad all along.

   Essentially, I just didn't like the premise. There's never any evidence that Abigail was involved in her father's murders, yet Crawford is stubbornly convinced that she's guilty anyway. Why? Because Will feels protective of Abigail, and a threat of some kind is needed (above and beyond the fact that she's just lost her family and Hannibal's sniffing around, I guess) to bring that protectiveness to the fore. It's also worth noting that, given certain developments that take place later in the episode, it'll be a convenient source of tension for Crawford to be suspicious of the girl going forward. And therein lies the problem: Crawford's behavior doesn't make sense. It's not believable at all. It's a textbook case of a character behaving in a completely counter-intuitive way, solely because that's what the plot requires of them.

   The show also happens to be saddled with one of the more annoying supporting characters in recent memory, a blogger/tabloid vulture named Freddie Lounds. It literally makes my skin crawl every time this woman is on screen. The version of Lounds from Red Dragon made sense, to some extent - he was a disillusioned middle-aged guy who'd missed his chance to make it as a legitimate journalist, and he was essentially just doing what he had to do to pay the bills. His sleaziness was born out of cynicism, not malice.

   But what kind of excuse does a young, attractive, tech-savvy chick like the TV incarnation of Freddie have? She seems to enjoy flouting the law, not to mention writing insanely irresponsible smear stories about people, for the sheer hell of it. It would be one thing if she were set up as more of a crusading journalist type - "the people have a right to know" and all that - but she's not. I can't map this character's behavior to any sort of relatable motivation. She's a caricature of a caricature, one that no longer bears any resemblance to the real-world analog the original caricature was based on.

   Despite all this... I like the show. I like Hugh Dancy as Will, I love Mads Mikkelson as Hannibal, and I dig the dark, contemplative mood they seem to be going for. And I'd be lying if I said I wasn't intrigued by this excerpt from a recent interview with the show's creator, Bryan Fuller, where he gives us a much-needed hint of where he may be going with the show in the years ahead:

For me, Red Dragon is Season 4, and splitting the time over Season 5 and Season 6 would be the era of Silence of the Lambs -- we don’t have the rights to any of the characters that originate in [Silence], but that’s not to say Clarice Starling was the only trainee that Jack Crawford ever sent to interview a serial killer.

   For those who are interested, by the by, portions of the episode originally slated to air later this week - which was pulled by Fuller himself due to concerns over its subject matter - are available on YouTube as a series of webisodes. The murder of the week plotline has been completely excised, with the remaining scenes focusing on Hannibal and Will's therapy sessions, Will's paternal feelings toward Abigail, and Abigail's relationships with Hannibal and Alona Bloom. Neat tidbit for fans: a throwaway line during one scene establishes that Lector's parents died when he was young, at which time he was adopted by his uncle. So we now know that TV-Hannibal shares at least that much backstory with his literary counterpart.

And again...

Thought I'd try my hand at making a short slideshow!

On my affinity for green superheroes...

   What can I say - I watch the TV show Arrow. I recently, against my better judgment and in flagrant disregard of all known laws of god and man, purchased a DVD copy of The Return of Swamp Thing. And my favorite character in The Avengers was, by far, the Hulk. I even thought the Green Lantern movie was better than anyone gave it credit for.

   My general preference for green-tinted heroes aside, I've been thinking about one Big Green Guy in particular, and about the depressing reports we've gotten that there probably won't be another Hulk movie until after Avengers 2 comes out, if then. Supposedly the Hulk has long been one of Marvel's most reliable sellers in comic book form, and he was clearly a big hit in The Avengers, but he hasn't had much luck headlining his own flick so far, box office receipts for both his films falling far, far behind those of Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, and so on. The Hulk carried a successful TV show for several years back in the 70's - unlike Cap or Spidey, who were both given a shot at doing so. So what changed between then and now? What went wrong?

   I think what the TV show got right was to put the sympathy of the audience pretty squarely with Banner, the Hulk's human alter ego. This was not long after The Fugitive, remember, and Hulk pretty closely followed that mold... mild-mannered hero traveling from place to place, helping people in need, etc. The same approach wasn't necessarily a good fit for the most recent solo Hulk film, unfortunately. 

   There's a certain conflict involved when you ask the audience to care about a character and invest themselves in his journey (a cure for his Hulk transformations, in this case), while at the same time realizing that, if that journey comes to fruition, there'll be no more fun adventures to follow. Audiences are forced to choose between Banner and the Hulk - and because the Hulk is more fun, they choose him. Nobody watching one of these movies really wants Bruce Banner to get cured; Avengers managed to sidestep that issue, I think, by making Banner's journey in that film more about self-acceptance. About accepting the Hulk, rather than trying to get rid of him.

   What the comics get right that the movies before Avengers missed, on the other hand, is that they characterize the Hulk as something more than just a fun distraction... a spectacle that pops up every now and again and then eventually peters out. In the early comics, the Hulk is portrayed much like the Frankenstein monster in the old Boris Karloff films: as a sympathetic, simple-minded brute who often only unwittingly causes harm, and is constantly being harassed by sinister military types (in place of the customary villagers with torches). In the later books, which I read as a kid, it's basically a Jekyll-and-Hyde tale, albeit one where the reader's sympathy is pretty much evenly divided between the hero and his alter ego. The movies haven't yet found a way to strike either of those balances, instead focusing on a tired Banner-looks-for-a-cure-while-the-Hulk-gets-chased-by-tanks template. 

   Here's hoping they get it right the next time around.

Look... up in the sky...

 

   So now we've got Man of Steel coming out in a few months. I know much of the geek community is pretty roundly contemptuous of the Big Blue Boy Scout, but overly Batman Begins-ish trailer notwithstanding, I think it'll be interesting to see what Christopher Nolan and company do with the property. And I'm unabashedly a Zack Snyder fan, so I'm anxious to see him put his stamp on it, as well.

   The big problem with the last attempt to bring the character to the screen, I think, is that director Bryan Singer was way too slavishly devoted to Richard Donner's vision of Superman. There are numerous similarities between Superman Returns and the Christopher Reeve/Richard Donner-era films; Singer's film was, quite simply, a pretty shameless attempt to emulate Donner's style (and Reeve's performance, and Gene Hackman's characterization of Lex Luthor, and... well, you get the idea). 

   I'm not a huge fan of the earlier Superman films - they're great on the level of 70's/80's-era popcorn entertainment, but they don't hold a candle to even the more mediocre entries of the modern superhero boom, and they don't share those films' more down-to-Earth, character-based sensibility... the Spider-Man films are about Peter Parker, and the Iron Man films about Tony Stark, in a way that none of the pre-2001 (or so) superhero flicks can even touch. Hence why Returns felt like such a throwback.  

   I dig the character, though, and I'd love to see Hollywood liberate themselves from the aesthetic of Donner's film and make a truly great Superman movie. We'll find out soon if this is it, I guess.

Another short post

   

   Caught up on the first ten episodes of the current season of Shameless this week. One thing all the talk about Lip getting out of the ghetto, Fiona being "a doctor's wife," and so on has me thinking about is the sort of... determinism? Fatalism? Or whatever you'd call it, of watching a show like this. I mean, basically, if the main characters ever manage to significantly improve their situation - by finally getting a decent, stable job in Fiona's case, or getting a free ride to MIT in Lip's - well then, the entire mission statement of the show would change, wouldn't it? This is a show about living in the ghetto, after all; not a show about getting out of it.

   I enjoy watching the show, and it's certainly often funny; and I'm emotionally invested in many of the characters. But can any of them ever really rise above the circumstances that they're in? Depressing as it is, I'm inclined to think that Lip will screw up at MIT, and probably end up knocking up (and marrying) a girl not unlike Mandy, and that Fiona will be living in that house in the ghetto, taking care of other people's kids, until the day she dies.

   Frank, on the other hand, is like the show's version of Kramer: while the other characters' storylines are at least rooted in relatable, real-life experiences - dating someone with weird habits or personality quirks, or getting into an awkward situation with your boss - Frank's misadventures have become increasingly outlandish as the show goes on. Pretending his kid has cancer to con money out of the Make-a-Wish Foundation? Unwittingly becoming the face of the gay rights movement? I'm sure next year he'll somehow find his way onto the Russian space station. Now that I'd pay to see.

    Oh, well. Maybe there's still hope for Debbie, at least.

On wearing out your welcome

   

    I was thinking the other day about what the ideal length for a "long-running" TV show might be. I decided it's around six seasons. Off the top of my head, I can't think of a show I've watched that made it to season  7 without feeling at least a little bit tired by that point.

   At any rate, when you get to the point where every new-season renewal is met with a rousing chorus of "What? Again?" from pretty much the entirety of the internet, I think it's definitely time to pack it in. The final two seasons or so of Smallville were like that, and I'm starting to get that vibe from the Supernatural fandom as well. Hopefully the announcement that next season (its 9th) will be the final season of How I Met Your Mother means that that show's writers have finally learned this harsh, but vital truth. Not so with Dexter, unfortunately; that Season 8 would likely be the show's last has been the prevailing wisdom for at least a year now, but the producers have tentatively started making noise to the contrary.

   Gold help us all.

Has it really been almost 3 years...

   Yes. Yes it has.

   It's interesting. I still think back on Lost from time to time; mostly I think about exactly where and when it is I feel the show went wrong. Based on some interviews I remember reading before and during the final season, I think it had a lot to do with the infamous 'Sideways' plotline, and basically the whole structure of Season 6 - but not exactly in the way that most people think.

   Essentially, I don't believe the writers were ever fully invested in the island/mythology-driven part of the storyline. In fact, I think if they'd had their druthers they would have gone with the Sideways world entirely, and not bothered with any of the Jacob vs. the Man in Black stuff. I think DreadLocke, the candidates, the glowy center of the island, and so on were all filler cooked up at the last minute in order to satisfy viewers who wanted resolution to the show's mysteries, rather than its character arcs.

   The final episodes of Lost provide us with two separate answers to the question of what this whole crazy journey has all been about: why these characters were guided by fate (or whatever) to this mysterious island. In the island-based story, the answer is that the Man in Black wants to escape, so his nemesis Jacob has drawn these people to the island as candidates to replace him and prevent that, and so on, etc., ad infinitum. Very fantastical, very fan service-y, and very much rooted in the 'rules' governing this show's particular sci-fi world. Geeks love that sh*t, which is why they were so angry when they didn't get all the answers they wanted, and many of the answers they did get were ill thought-out and ridiculous (frozen donkey wheels, magic pools of light and whatnot).

   In Sideways world, on the other hand, the answer is that these people were simply always meant to be together - fate would have drawn them into each other's lives no matter what, regardless of whether they'd ever wound up on the island. Accordingly, fate draws them together again in the weird Purgatory-like setting they find themselves in years, possibly decades in the show's future, after they've all died. Much simpler, more sentimental, and more nitpick-resistant to portray without a bunch of nonsense about mad scientists, giant alligator statues, atomic bombs and the like.

   It's pure fanwankery, but I think the Lost writers' preferred vision of Season 6 would have taken place entirely in the Sideways realm, which may well have been portrayed as an actual alternate timeline, rather than an afterlife-induced fantasy. (Otherwise, why all the nonsense about the bomb at the end of the previous year?) The finale could still have involved their memories coming back once they all got together again, just without the whole New Agey 'moving on' thing in the church at the end.

   Which is not to say that would have been my preferred version of the show. I enjoyed the Man in Black stuff, as cockamamie and ridiculous as it often was. But I think the downfall of Lost's final season was that its creators were being pulled in two different directions: between making the show they wanted to make, on the one hand, and making the show they felt their viewers expected, on the other. Now Lindelof, Cuse, etc. are by no means innocent in all this - they trained us exceedingly well over the years, teaching us to become increasingly caught up in and addicted to the show's convoluted backstory and mythology. So in terms of fan expectations, they got exactly what they paid for. I just think it got away from them at some point, ultimately forcing them to compromise their own vision (whatever that would have been, and mine is certainly just one theory) and throw a bunch of haphazard fantasy stuff on the screen that they ultimately didn't really care about, hence why it was so sloppily conceived.

   Of course that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.

Coming Soon: Dext- er, Hannibal, v4.0

   Saw the trailer (which is linked in my post on prequels a few clicks down, so I won't bother pimping it here), and so far I like what I'm seeing. They're not showing much of Mads Mikkelson as Hannibal yet, unfortunately, but I sure got my fill of the new show's incarnations of Will Graham and Jack Crawford.

   A few observations: I recently re-read Red Dragon (and wow, isn't that a tongue twister), and there's nothing in there about Lecter helping the police, or about he and Will having a mentor/pupil [or any other sort of] relationship before he was caught. In the book, one of Lecter's patients is a victim in the serial case Will is investigating: Will goes to interview Lecter, sees a diagram of a dissected corpse in his office, and intuits that Lecter is the killer; Lecter senses this, and stabs Will in a rather clumsy attempt to avoid being captured. He's caught shortly thereafter. So the idea of Hannibal and Will working together to catch killers (at least pre-Tooth Fairy) is entirely an invention of the film franchise, and doesn't exist in Thomas Harris' novels at all.

   Also, they've updated the storyline to the present day, so I don't think Lecter's WWII-era backstory in France and Lithuania (as detailed in Hannibal Rising) would work with this show's timeline at all. They'll have to tweak that quite a bit, if they get into it at all.

   Finally - will Lecter even be a proper serial killer at this point? An interesting approach might be to say that he went dormant for a while after killing the guys in Rising, and has been living more or less on the up-and-up in the years (decades?) since then. Maybe getting sucked into Graham's investigation is part of what reawakens his bloodlust and eventually gets him killing again.

   I remember reading in an interview a while back that showrunner Bryan Fuller, of Star Trek and Pushing Daisies fame, had a seven-year arc for the show in his back pocket before he ever pitched it to the network. I'm very curious as to what his plans are. Will the entire run take place before the events of Red Dragon or Silence of the Lambs? If not, will the series try to explore some of the in-between periods, like Lecter's time in prison after tangling with Will for the last time, but before meeting Clarice Starling? Will we ever see Clarice on the show? (You'd think they'd want to give Mads at least one chance to say his character's most memorable line, save perhaps the one about the fava beans). Would Fuller even be so bold as to attempt a re-imagining of the events of Dragon or Silence?  

   We won't have the answers to many of these questions for years, of course (and that's assuming Hannibal even makes it past its first season). I, for one, think that I'm going to enjoy waiting for them, though.