By Ross Lincoln
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| Citizen Kane: Is it our fault if you don't know how it ends? |
I once enjoyed a most amusing workplace argument thanks to my casual reference to the fact that Luke Skywalker is the son of Darth Vader during an unrelated conversation with two coworkers. One of my coworkers practically fainted for having this extremely well known thing revealed to her; then again, she also believed that Tim McVeigh wasn't a terrorist, so you can get the gist of her politics and maximum brain function. Still, her neanderthal right wing beliefs aside, she had somehow managed never to have seen The Empire Strikes Back, and my other coworker angrily berated me for having so rudely failed to take that possibility to into account. This was, I should point out, in 2007, when the film in question, available in multiple formats at that very moment, was approaching 27 years old.
'Fuck your spoilerphobia,' I wanted to say, 'and fuck you for making the rest of us cater to your refusal to participate in the culture at large in a timely manner.' I didn't say this because I was too busy being mystified by the idea that a nearly 30 year old reference so widely known even your parents get it can in any way be spoiled; plus I didn't want to get fired. But I can say it now, so please reread that first sentence, and commit it to memory. Because it's not the job of the rest of us to forever protect the precious your virginal ears from finding out things so widely known they've become cliches.
What makes the conversation about spoilers so maddening is that the vast majority of novels, movies, television programs, comics, you name it, do not contain stories that can actually be spoiled, at least not in the sense shrinking spoiler wimps mean. Much like how every religious person on earth is actually an atheist minus one in one form or another, you're already spoiled on almost everything ever written, and especially about things you've possibly never even read or seen. And frankly, it doesn't matter. Is Moby Dick really ruined by knowing before you read it that Ahab gets nearly his entire crew killed in the quest to kill the white whale? Hardly. Do you really need to be surprised by the revelation that 'Rosebud' is a sled in order to get the full Citizen Kane experience? Please.
You can argue that Spoilerphobia makes a kind of sense in the case of a story that contains an actual twist. Knowing that Bruce Willis is a ghost before you see The Sixth Sense takes a way some of the (limited) fun that film offers. And perhaps you'll want to experience the horrible fact that Battlestar Galactica ends approximately 150,000 years ago, on Earth, for yourself. If the surprise matters, then it's good to go in able to be surprised. But get the lead out and see them as quickly as you can, because these secrets are going to become public knowledge pretty quickly. Even if you fail to turn on your TV, open a book, or go to the movie theater in a timely fashion, you are guaranteed to be exposed to them regardless of your personal fastidiousness.
This makes the ardent hostility from people who hate being spoiled even more insufferable. These people insist the rest of the world cater to their nonparticipation in the same way parents expect the rest of us not to tell their special snowflakes that Santa Clause doesn't exist (Spoiler alert, kids: Santa isn't real. It's just your parents sneaking into the living room while you're asleep.) Not my job, people. Not my job.
Sure, out of politeness I'll refrain from spoiling something if I'm told in advance someone would prefer it remain secret. But that doesn't mean you get to be angry about stray references that might reveal plot points. Once something becomes part of the cultural conversation, it's up to those who refuse to take part to recuse themselves, not the other way around.
But there's something else worth considering, particularly when we're thinking about the importance of a good ending. A good story ought to remain good even if the story's gimmick no longer has any potency. Planet of the Apes remains thoroughly enjoyable even after you know what's coming because the film's actual themes have nothing to do with the reveal. On the other hand, try watching reruns of St. Elsewhere without laughing; no matter what you do, you can't escape the fact that the whole series is the delusional fantasy of an autistic kid. Lame. And that's the point: if the story loses entertainment value once the surprise is gone, then it's a bad story and it doesn't matter if you know the secret or not.
So consider this your warning: whatever we discuss in this space is going to be spoiled from here to hell and back.
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Political Animals: Unelectable
By Jeremy Oberstein
It doesnt seem fair to criticize the television network that gave us Psych. After all, any show modeled around a wannabe detective who hides behind his supposed ESP gifts to solve crimes can't take itself too seriously.
But then USA gave us Political Animals and opened the door to legitimate claims that it should never produce a drama. Ever again.
USA's newest entry into the political television field centers on Secretary of State Elaine Barrish, played by Sigourney Weaver. In the pilot, we learn that the former first lady lost a tough presidential race against a male candidate who would go on to win the White House.
After winning, President Garcetti (I was hoping for Carcetti) nominates his former rival to be secretary of state even as Barrish's personal life continues to scramble amid her husband's rampant infidelities. Ciarán Hinds plays her husband, a former president (and governor) during the 1990s who left office and became extremely popular except, see, he was from North Carolina, not Arkansas. He even features an incredibly authentic Southern accent that sounds like he was choking on collard greens the entire episode.
Five minutes in to the pilot, and I can't help but think how the real story of when this happened in 2008 to Hillary Clinton was so much more more interesting. But there's more. A journalist - Susan Berg, played by the beguiling Carla Gugino - angles for a scoop on Madame Secretary by dangling a story she swears is in her back pocket about a Barrish son's suicide attempt. Also in the pilot, former President Barrish is shtupping a hot latin actress, the Iranians abducted three journalists, Douglas Hammond - their son and the secretary's chief of staff - is engaged to a woman with bulimia and Elaine Barrish loves elephants. This last point seemed so, so relevant to the writers who made sure we understood her love of the maternal, independent and strong willed nature of pachyderms. It's a metaphor! Get it?
Perhaps a show like Political Animals would have been fine 15 years ago, when dramas valued characters over writing. Today, though, television viewers have never had it better. One reason is simply the plethora of choices viewers have today that were not at their fingertips even 30 years ago. It could also be because we live in a society that pushes boundaries, and not all for the better. Man v. Food is an abomination in which its host challenges himself to eat too much food in a certain amount of time while folks cheer him on like a gladiator.
We watch shows about "real" housewives, degenerates on the Jersey shore and competitions that intentionally set people up to fail.
But we also have shows that challenge us, expose our minds to new levels of thought and inspire conversations.
Somewhere in the vast middle is USA - a network that carved out a spectacular niche as a second tier alternatives when your favorite show isn't on. Monk and Psych are great shows to pass the time and I've heard the same about its other offerings. USA is the trade school of televisions in which they know their offerings will never be nominated for Emmy's but that's ok because they are damn good at what they do.
Then they had to go and throw Political Animals in our faces - a show as much an affront to the network's viewers as it is to our senses. My main issue with the show is not that it is tightly based on a present day figure, though that is an issue which inhibits escapism fictional television is supposed to inspire. (I can only think of two reasons why the creator would write a show about Hillary Clinton: Either he is so unimaginative that he has to rely on the present to replicate story lines or he so loves her that he wants to tell the "real" story about Clinton that will then catapult her into the West Wing. Either way, it's a troubling state of affairs.)
No, the real reason why I found the show loathsome is because the writing seemed like a carbon copy of what I imagine the How to Write Your First Script reads. From start to finish of the pilot, there were such awful one-liners I thought they were pressed for time, until I realized the pilot was 90 minutes and there more story lines than a Christopher Nolan script.
A few choice examples:
- Former President Bud Hammond: "I dont eat shit, I serve it.";
- Secretary of State Elaine Parrish: "When the president asks you to serve, you serve.";
- Washington Globe reporter Suasn Berg, re: journalism: "They only love us when they're not busy hating us."
With a cast as stellar as Sigourney Weaver, Ellen Burstyn (the matriach) and Ciarán Hinds, Political Animals aims for greatness yet falls absurdly short. It's soapy without being deliciously indulgent and dramatic in ways uninspiring.
By the end of the first episode (without spoiling anything), alliances were made, backs were stabbed and plans were hatched, as they are in any good show about politics. What sets this apart from other shows of similar ilk, however, is not only that it does not deliver a political junkie fix but I'd rather watch CNN for my daily dose of political drama.
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By Ross Lincoln
No matter how great a story may be, a botched landing retroactively ruins everything preceding it. Battlestar Gallactica might have been the greatest science fiction show of its era, but the last 15 minutes turns everything that came before into a confused, and frankly, amoral mess. Lost probably lost* steam in the beginning of season 4, but the series finale, in which Everyone Gets To Be Together In Heaven, turned entire seasons worth of character building into a silly greeting card. At least neither one of them ended as the delusion of an autistic boy, but the result is the same: a serious work of art turned into a joke in the final minutes. Maybe for this reason, discussing the end of Breaking Bad, which finally kicked off its final season last night, feels like trolling.
You'll always find people willing to insist either that a terrible ending was actually brilliant, or that even if it wasn't, what came before was still watchable even if you can't shake the knowledge of where it all goes. Whenever such a show comes up, it feels like thanksgiving dinner with your family; you desperately pray that your father won't angrily let some racist crack slip during dinner, you practice your technique for veering the conversation away from the President's birth certificate, you're constantly on guard for the moment when Uncle John has too much wine and wants to rant about why affordable health care is a threat to national sovereignty even as he accuses anyone opposed to free trade agreements of "protectionism."
Breaking Bad has for four seasons been an almost perfectly constructed story, and going into the final season, I'm filled with dread. How on earth can a show this good not stumble in the conclusion?
I can't help wait for the moment when the series finally runs out of steam and it's revealed that the writers never actually had any idea where they were going with the insane and pitch perfect look at the underbelly of the Great Recession. Thank fucking Christ that, at least in the first episode of the final season, it's as good as ever.
Bringing back a convention not seen since season 2's epic plane crash, last night's premier began with a cold open set during a flash forward in which Walter White has assumed a false identity other than 'Heisenberg'. Bearded, scraggly haired and carrying around what looks like a lot of turmoil, we see him accepting what appears to be a contract killing or, perhaps, simply the acquisition of a weapon capable of dealing immense damage to his enemies. "This isn't going to get out of the state?" asks Walt Sr.'s guns dealer. "It won't even get out of this town". We're forced to wonder if we're seeing Walter in the establishing stages of yet another reinvention, or the preface to his going out in a blaze of glory.
But just as we were beginning to wonder how the hell the show skipped ahead however many months, it returned to the final moments of season 4, when an exhausted, fugue-state Walter informed his terrified wife Skyler that he'd engineered the destruction of Gus Fring. "I won," he says in footage reused from the last season finale, only now we see the immediate aftermath of Walt's Victory, and it isn't pretty.
Since the moment in Season 1 when Walt impulsively decided to cook meth after learning he'd contracted cancer, Breaking Bad has been about the slow manifestation of Walt's true personality. He was never a mild mannered man pushed to the edge by personal tragedy, he was a bitter, resentful prick with a shriveled ego that needs constant tending who kept this from himself due to a lifetime of having ran from even a hint of possible failure. His illness freed him from pretense, not from restraint, and one can't help but think that had Walt not decided to embrace narco-economics, he'd be spending his time wearing powdered wigs at political rallies and demanding that the Government stay out of his medicare.
With every criminal success, Walt validated his sense of total superiority and embraced just a little bit more of the entitled, white male jerk he really is and now, with the eradication of his bitterest enemy, the mask is off for good. It's made even more clear in the first 10 minutes that Walt's declaration of victory wasn't intended to make his wife feel better, it was bragging. Much like his drunken refusal to let Hank believe that Gale was Heisenberg, or his pathetic (at the time) boast to Skyler that he is "the one who knocks," it's an expression of his need to feel like a balla.
That need colors every moment of the season premier, particularly his relationship with Jesse Pinkman. Early on, Walt realizes that despite having rubbed Gus out, he still has a lot of shit to clean up, particularly the matter of Gus' copious records. Indeed, the DEA discovers rather quickly that Fring kept a camera in the meth-making facility, and manage to impound the laptop on which he kept the footage. Walt and Jesse are forced to recruit Gus' right hand thug Mike (still recovering after his gut shot injuries in the previous season and absolutely hungry to put a bullet in Walt's head) to clean up the mess. Walt and Mike's dislike for one another keep them from coming up with anything useful but Jesse, unaware of what Walt did to manipulate him into helping him kill Gus, still has his wits and suggests a rather clever solution to the problem.
The solution (we won't spoil it for you) works like a charm, but Walt's need to be balla almost ruins everything. As the three of them leave the scene of the crime, Mike freaks out about a very serious mistake. "It worked," Walt smugly assured Mike. "Because I say so," suggesting not only that Walt is positioning himself to be the new leader of Albuquerque, but that he believes his own bullshit to the point that he's actually going to take credit for Jesse's idea, at least in his own mind.
Uh Oh.
Meanwhile, Skyler has returned home, and she's terrified, not only of her revealed-to-be-a-stone-killer husband, but of the fact that her scheme to force her former boss and ex-lover Ted to pay the IRS might blow up in her face. However, when she visits Ted in the hospital, he swears never to tell a soul about what happened, looking at her with the same dread Skyler gave to Walt only minutes earlier. It's almost as though the 'be a criminal' virus has gone airborne in Albuquerque, and if Walt is the disease vector, Skyler is patient zero. Like it or not, she's a gangster too.
Not that Walt thinks so. Saul Goodman also gets a few moments of typical hilarity, not only bringing the news to Skyler that Ted had woken from his coma, but also confessing the whole Fiasco to an enraged Walt. Clearly terrified by the emerging monster in front of him, Saul tries to quit, only to be told "You're done when I say you're done." Walt clearly doesn't give a fuck anymore, but for now, at least, he seems to grasp that he needs to at least look like he does. Perhaps it's a scintilla of humanity, but more likely it's the need to feel like a Benevolent dictator, but when Walt goes to confront Skyler about the cock up, his reaction to her confession is to give her the world's most terrifying hug and tell her "I forgive you," as though she did anything even half as bad as Walt does before breakfast, or that he has the moral high ground necessary to offer forgiveness at all. Skyler hugs him stiffly and the moment feels like "the call is coming from inside the house!". It's a brilliant final moment that leaves you feeling sick at the fact that you ever liked Walter at all.
Thinking back to the opening, while waiting for his business contact, Walt has ordered bacon and eggs and spends the time breaking the bacon strips and rearranging the pieces to spell '52'. "It's my birthday today," Walt tells the waitress, suggesting that by the time we reach the end of the line, we're looking at almost two years to the day (in universe time) since Walt first entered the drug trade. Two years isn't a long time to be the most powerful person in your little region of the universe, but it's more than long enough to completely destroy everything in your life.
* hah.
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