Category Pop culture

Californication Season 4: “It’s getting dark, too dark to see…”

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“My heart was beating outside my chest… It’s been almost too much to bear.”

Written by Tom Kapinos and directed by David Duchovny, Suicide Solution was abundantly soulful, transcendently raw and eerily beautiful.

It’s fair to say this episode was Duchovny’s finest moment yet in the series. From Becca’s lonely guitar playing, through Hank’s heartbreaking realization (beautifully, subtly played by Duchovny) that for now at least, he has lost her, to the extraordinary power of its conclusion, when the scuffed poetry of Hank’s words to Becca was overlaid with hypnotic, melancholy dream-imagery, as Hank’s self-medication finally took him down, the show reached a new level. “It’s getting dark, too dark to see,” Hank said in voice over as the waves crashed over him, swallowing him whole.

With this season, the show as a whole is delivering on everything it has promised in the previous three seasons, and more. It’s better at everything now. Executive producer and creator Tom Kapinos is flexing new dramatic muscles, and the show has come back as though it spent the hiatus working out: it’s leaner, stronger, tougher, and its core twin strengths (the genuine love of Hank for his family, and the don’t give a f**kness of it all) are back in full effect, but this time used more precisely and to more subtle, devastating effect.

This season is all sinew, muscles and veins, exposed and raw. It’s all about facing the music in the worst possible way. It’s about staring into the eyes of your daughter who hates you. A life in painful shards, slicing the skin. Season Four of Californication is drawing blood. It’s harsh, unforgiving. And still it’s damn funny. Whether it’s Hank getting unexpected relief from Marcy, or Rob Lowe channeling Brad Pitt’s Floyd and Gary Oldman’s Drexl from True Romance to play Eddie Nero, the crazy A-lister who wants to play Hank in the movie of his book, the show jabs humor with southpaw precision. It’s great to see the show full throttle like this. Its one liners are sharper, its gonzo situations more outrageous. It’s pulled off one of the most difficult tricks in TV: treating darkness and humor just the same, combining them into one scathing, blistering, pain-fuelled but hilarious blend that charms, horrifies, moves and makes you laugh, hard.

There were moments in season three when the show located itself – charmingly to be sure – in the quirkier areas of its world. The drama of it all was traded down in favor of priceless humor. This was a good trade, for a time, but ultimately Kapinos brought the show to the darker place it needed to be, where every seed Hank has sown is reaped.

Throughout the first three seasons, Hank played at self-loathing, played at being the one everyone hated, knowing, or at least hoping, all along that it wasn’t quite true. But now, it’s real, and Duchovny is giving a virtuosic rendering of a man realizing his life really is disintegrating, and flashing that smile or being rogueishly adorable means nothing anymore to those whose hearts he has truly broken. It’s a tough, excruciating experience and lesson: watching Hank learn it is heroically compelling.

Californication is at the top of its game, and getting better.

******

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Occasionally those passions explode: Southland, Punching Water

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“Start with the truth.”

So screamed Shawn Hatosy ‘s Sammy Bryant, handily summing up the show’s mantra in the opening scenes of this week’s Southland, the thrilling, brutal, blistering and frequently hilarious second episode of the show’s new season. Phenomenally written by Cheo Hodari Coker, and directed by Christopher Chulack with an even surer eye for movement, detail, light and Los Angeles locations than usual, Punching Water was the series’ high point to date, eclipsing past career best eps like Phase Three and What Makes Sammy Run?, raising the bar even higher for the show, and for TV drama.

What made this episode special was the heightening of the show’s fundamental elements, and the way they were combined with such sure control. Every element was punched up: the tight narrative style, the dry humor, the raw treatment of violence, and making small moments count for everything. Impressively, considering the budgetary restraints faced by the show this season, the episode not only featured all of the main cast (Lydia, Nate, Sammy, Sal, Cooper, Sherman, Chickie and Dewey), but even managed to bring all of them together in one superbly written, acted and shot, highly charged scene that also delivered one of the series’ greatest moments to date: the sight of Lydia slapping down Dewey. This was the flash forward that opened the episode, with the accompanying voiceover describing what happens when you bring together a bunch of cops passionate about their jobs: “Occasionally those passions explode.”

Despite being driven by a brutal sequence of multiple retaliatory murders across the MLK weekend, this episode also managed to be the funniest in the show’s history. There were many comic moments: Nate and Sammy’s back and forth (“playa, playa”), the other cops’ jibes about Sherman’s new lady friend, or, my personal favorite, Cooper screaming off in the patrol car with Sherman, leaving Dewey behind with a none-too-thrilled Chickie. Throughout, Punching Water ducked and dived with the confidence and sure step of a pro, like Ali, knowing when to hit you hard, and when to dance around.

The theme that drives Southland is what it means to be a cop, and Punching Water advanced this further, with awesome levels of gravitas courtesy of Michael McGrady, in a welcome return to the show as Detective “Sal” Salinger. He rallied the troops to get out to the streets to find the killer of a four year old, the latest victim in the wave of murders. Coker wrote a great speech, and McGrady completely nailed it. In doing so, he anchored the scene, the episode, and likely the season as well. He also initiated a first for the show: a montage sequence, which also marked the first time (more or less) the show has used a soundtrack since it ended the pilot episode Unknown Trouble with The National’s Fake Empire (which I talked about here). It was a departure, but it worked perfectly.

Although everyone in the cast did classy work in this episode, it was McGrady that landed the killer punch.

And that’s what the show ended with: a devastating emotional killer punch that concluded the show’s underlying theme this week, as summed up by Sherman: “love’s a bitch.” Love or lack of it was the catalyst of everything that happened in the episode, and the final scene was the perfect example of how this show can devastate you in seconds. Like a high performance car, this thing can shift gears seamlessly and quietly. You don’t even know it’s happening until it’s too late, the tears rolling down your face. This episode was a full court press throughout, saving its best shot for last.

Damn, this show is good.

Shamelessly Brilliant

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On Sunday 1/9/11 at 10pm ET, the Warner Bros./Showtime remake of the wild, raucous and charming British show Shameless will begin.

Overseen by the prolific and talented John Wells (ER, Southland), and the show’s original creator Paul Abbott (State Of Play), the pilot episode does an extraordinary job of translating the anarchic heart of the original, transplanting it successfully from a run-down Manchester district into a raw, snow-covered, beaten-down Chicago setting.

It’s hard to overstate how much the original show meant to me when it aired seven years ago in 2004. It was unlike any other British show at the time: unflinching, inspiring, heartfelt, emotionally brutal and bloody funny – much like family life, no accident as Paul Abbott was always upfront about how shamelessly autobiographical the show was meant to be. The show centers around alcoholic patriarch Frank Gallagher, father of six kids of various ages, abandoned by their mother, and left to fend for themselves. Frank dedicated himself to getting as drunk as possible, leaving oldest child Fiona to hold it all together. Out of these dark events, Abbott created an incredibly charming, outrageous and moving comedy drama, which just happened to be hilarious, and heartwarming, with its biting, whip-smart humor and belief in the power of family.

British shows don’t always, or even often, fare well when they get remade for American TV. For every success story like The Office, there are others that miss the mark. I have to admit to a sense of trepidation with Shameless: the original was so… original, and raw. Would it be possible for an American channel, even a cable network like Showtime, to pull this off?

Hell yes.

From the very beginning, this new incarnation barrels along, sharper and harder than the original, and any doubts about the show getting softer in its transition to the US are decisively kicked aside with a razor sharp sense of abandon that is wielded with hysterical precision. The script by Wells and Abbott crackles with a new electricity: the show is invigorated with its new setting and cast. Yes, the cast. The cast of the original was one of the most charming, likeable and funny collection of rude, stick your middle finger up at authority misfits. How would this aspect of the show translate?

Again, brilliantly. The cast feel instantly at home inhabiting these characters, managing to normalize their good looks to the extent that you realize that Shameless is our Hamlet, a great play waiting to be reinvented for a new era, and these are the latest players to bring it to life. They do it with utter conviction. Three in particular have their work cut out for them: William H. Macy as Frank, Emmy Rossum as Fiona, and Justin Chatwin as chancer Steve, who in the first episode tries to win Fiona’s heart with charm, wit, and a new washer. Macy does a great job of taking over from David Threlfall’s iconic version, embodying Frank’s “to hell with the world while I have a drink” mentality, and is perfectly at ease with the many physical tics and mannerisms that seem to make up Frank’s existence. Likewise, Chatwin steps up manfully to the unenviable task of taking over from the frankly legendary James McAvoy, whose career was launched with this role: it’s great to see how easily Chatwin handles the challenge, bringing a new level of charm, wit and cheekiness to Steve.

But Emmy Rossum is the true star of this show.

In the original, Anne-Marie Duff brought a raw, fragile roughness to the character. Rossum goes one better, exposing Fiona’s delicate mix of in your face attitude, desperate vulnerability, her longing for more from life, and her overwhelming desire for things to be different. Rossum embodies and evokes all this beautifully, with a raw, real, sensual honesty. I’m not the first to say it, but an Emmy for Emmy seems assured.

The show benefits hugely from its transition to the tough, unyielding urban setting of a decaying Chicago neighborhood. It’s excellently directed by original Brit director (here a co-producer too) Mark Mylod, and perfectly shot by DP extraordinaire Jimmy Muro in a gorgeously crisp and sharp style, with outstanding location choices that enhance every exterior scene. Its use of loud, raucous songs kicks up the joyous, crazy energy. And its handling of a teen struggling with his sexuality is commendably done.

As soon as the pilot ends, you want more, lots more. You want to binge on the rest of the episodes like Frank with an open tab at the bar. It takes everything great about the original, makes it better, and adds new outrageous and heartfelt elements, while easily sidestepping sentimentality. It moves faster, hits harder: it’s even more uncompromising than before, and more brilliant for it.

Simply put, Shameless is the most thrilling, exciting TV drama debut of the 2010-11 season. Watch it.

The return of Southland: 3.1 “Let It Snow”

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The highly anticipated Season Three of Southland began on TNT with “Let It Snow,” an episode that continued the series’ signature high-impact simplicity with an elegantly propulsive momentum.

The writers (executive producer John Wells, and the creator of the show, Ann Biderman) had a complex task on their hands with this one: keeping the show running at full throttle on a newly reduced off-network budget, while making the episode fully accessible to newer viewers, essential for the show’s continued survival.

Southland has traditionally never made many concessions to the viewer in the way it tells its stories, which has always been one of its strengths as a drama. Its world is detailed and real, and we need to catch up and keep up, just like the patrol cops and detectives in the complex situations they encounter. Wells and Biderman negotiated the complex demands of this season opener skilfully; sketching with the lightest of touches enough details of the key players’ back stories to allow new viewers to know them, while accelerating them into new challenges. There were delicate echoes of the pilot “Unknown Trouble,” and also of the last episode aired, “Maximum Deployment,” but these echoes were artfully reframed, with quiet evolutions shaded in.

Southland has always been a minimally presented, high impact drama, but this latest episode brutally honed that style even closer to the bone. Each scene was a brutal street haiku, containing just a few, perfectly chosen details that illuminated whole worlds, telling us almost nothing but showing us everything. “Let It Snow” was a masterclass in starting scenes late and ending them fast. The actors had never had long to make their impact, and they took advantage of every precious second. Michael Cudlitz was the MVP of this episode as John Cooper, fighting his excruciating, debilitating back injuries, and desperately begging for the help of his ex-wife to sustain his painkiller addiction. His tragic, haunting expression as she rushed away from him in tears was the key moment of the episode, locating the show’s heart amidst the chaos and tension. Ben McKenzie also did great work executing the path the writers seem to be laying out for his role, as Ben Sherman drifts from the hotshot, by-the-numbers rookie, to a more experienced, weary, rule-breaking patrol cop. Regina King hit her emotional beats compellingly as Lydia Adams, perpetually dealing with the horror that her detective faces, and never quite getting numb to it.

All in all, it was a fascinating start to season three, with director Christopher Chulack combining great character work with tough, almost unbearably tense set pieces and raw street-level action. It promised much for the nine episodes to come. It’s great to have this show back, and on the leading edge, where it’s always been; where it truly belongs.

2010: A Year Of Black Swans

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2010 has been a unique year in culture. It was a year of chaos and a million little details, the year of Twitter and hashtags, the year of ‘that Facebook movie.’ It was a year of significant endings, notably with Lost and 24 coming to a close after six and eight years respectively, and the publication of Mockingjay closing out the Hunger Games trilogy.

It was also a year of wonderful discoveries and surprises. This post is dedicated to those cultural events: moments that seemed to defy expectation and hope, or seemed to come out of nowhere, but in retrospect, made absolute and wonderful sense. Cultural items that approached the status of perfection in the midst of an unruly, chaotic year. Seven cultural moments that captured and defined this element of welcome surprise.

These are the Black Swans of 2010.

(1) Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan.

The fierce intelligence of Natalie Portman’s haunting performance alone would put Black Swan on this list, but there was so much more to talk about in Aronofsky’s always surprising, moving and terrifying ode to the relentless search for perfection. It’s a favorite theme on this blog, the lengths to which an artist must go to bring us the truth, the extent to which they must go into the darkness to bring back the light (particularly here, and here). Aronofsky’s beautiful, painful retelling of Swan Lake is a near-perfect capturing of this struggle, this destructive of question of how far we are willing to go for art, for the thing we love. The screenplay by Mark Heyman, Andres Heinz and John McLaughlin was a deft reworking of the tale, and Clint Mansell’s wonderful score masterfully interwove Tchaikovsky’s themes with a darker, more electronic menace.

(2) Wolf Hall.

Hilary Mantel’s extraordinary novel told the life of Thomas Cromwell in luminous, preternaturally poetic prose that had a rawness and directness as she incisively laid bare the brutal psychology of the man and his world, turning the events of Henry VIII’s time with Anne Boleyn into a superior, terrifying and ultimately haunting thriller. The sheer brilliance on display is staggering. The only response as a writer is to bow down before it, and then raise your game accordingly. One of the most best written, plotted and executed novels of all time; this is no exaggeration.

(3)(a) Colin Firth’s revelatory performance in The King’s Speech.

This wasn’t surprising in itself – the man is a fantastic actor, who sublimates the full panoply of human emotion into such subtle, compelling renderings – but what was surprising was the way it took him from his habitual under-the-radar brilliance to a more publicly noted recognition, which hopefully will result in an Oscar for Firth, who seems to be criminally underrated at these events.

(3)(b) Colin Firth’s sparring with Geoffrey Rush in The King’s Speech.

It was a huge pleasure to watch Firth’s tightly-wound, emotionally fraught monarch-in-waiting go up against the magisterial ease and laconic skill of Geoffrey Rush’s speech therapist. Watching these two highly skilled performers go at it was never going to be anything other than excellent, but their scenes together truly elevated the movie. Both are extremely skilled technically, but both know how to submerge all that in simple truth, beautiful details that reveal soul, a life of emotional pain in the flickering of eyelids, a cry for help from a man with no voice, the response from the man with many who needs to find which is true. Exhilarating.

(4) Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross’s score for The Social Network.

The way David Fincher used this brilliant electronic score to add the most important layer to The Social Network, giving it a deep, dark sci-fi edge, and adding the thrilling, exhilarating element of creativity and innovation happening before our eyes. The screenplay was beyond outstanding, one of Aaron Sorkin’s best, and Fincher was absolutely at the top of his game in the way he layered in the speed of thought, the scheming psychologies, the sheer sense of invention – but it was the score that made this movie exceptional.

(5) Kanye West, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

I blogged extensively about this album here. Simply put, this album was a raging against the light, a paean to creativity and innovation unleashed and uncensored. Thrilling to listen to, it laid out Kanye West’s interior world in all its fabulous, deranged and joyous glory. Given the darkness from which West had to emerge, it’s simultaneously all the more remarkable and all the more likely that he would return with a barnstorming, take no prisoners set of tracks is likely his opus, his masterwork.

(6) The rise of Emma Stone.

Her warm, witty, engaging ascension to stardom with her never less than brilliant performance in Easy A elevated Stone from her previous roles as cute, funny girl who stole scenes, to her natural arena: owning a movie from start to finish, and marrying a raw emotional soul to a killer sense of comedy and goofiness. Smart, engaging, warm, and funny as hell. It wasn’t unexpected, in fact it was long overdue, but the way it happened was one of the more happy surprises of the year. A true leading lady.

(7) The renewal of Southland.

I blogged about Southland when it first started on NBC here, and why TNT should renew Southland here. Despite the show’s diamond-hard brilliance, its brutally unsentimental yet deeply moving shooting, acting and writing style, such a renewal was not guaranteed. The show had a rough beginning, getting canceled by NBC mid-production on season two, but thankfully TNT realized they had hold of one of the sharpest, most real, raw and immediate cop dramas ever made, and did the right thing. The renewal was a true black swan event, seemingly impossible yet utterly necessary. It was above all a huge relief: in so many ways, Southland is unparalleled in the world of TV drama. Season three commences on 1/4/2011.

Honorable mentions:

AMC’s The Walking Dead, Christopher Nolan’s Inception.

The one…

If I had to choose one of these seven black swans to truly represent the defining cultural truth of 2010… well, that would be a tough choice. Of these, which was the most thrilling, exhilarating, perfectly detailed and beautiful moment of the year? Perhaps unsurprisingly, my choice would be Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan, which said everything about beauty, perfection, drive, talent, and creativity, and did it all with a melancholy and ferocious brilliance.

Next time, on Dreaming Between The Lines...

Coming soon in 2011… a review of Southland season three, a look at YA fiction, the state of TV drama, and more.

Happy New Year!