Adventures in the Talkies: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

There are going to be spoilers eventually. Be warned, suckas.

There was a trailer I was going to make fun of/at/around--it is a Cannes participant, though clearly not in the official lineup, and it has a wise-for-her-years girl narrator, played by an "introducing..." young actress, and it is apparently about magic and poetry and nature and probably the state of America or health care reform or social networking... but apparently the title was so long and chock full of meaning that I completely forgot it.

Anyway, I saw The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel a day after seeing Battleship. I enjoyed them both, in their way, though it's easier to put my enjoyment of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel into words, since Battleship's appeal pretty much fit into one Tweet. You know, plus "Taylor Kitsch is handsome." The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel has an awkward title to type out, and if I were using the full title that appeared on the screen, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel for the Elderly and Beautiful, I'd probably get tired of talking about it pretty quick.

I kind of am. Right now.

Also, spoiler alert: stop killing Tom Wilkinson. I don't like that. If you're going to kill someone, kill the non-Tom Wilkinson, non-Bill Nighy English guy. Or kill Dev Patel, who was hamboning like he was Alfred Molina. I get it--he had to die so that everyone could marvel at what a wonderful, warm, positive man he was, and that way, spoiler alert, Bill Nighy could finally grow a pair and tell Penelope Wilton, a far cry from her pleasant Pickle-loving, delightfully airheaded mother in Shaun of Dead and even from her prickly, determined, yet loving character in Downton Abbey, that she was a horrible, horrible person to be around all the time. But still: quit it. I've watched him die too much. I want him to be always happy and alive and gay or stripping (or both, that's fine too).

The film was visually a treat--I fell in love with one of Judi Dench's throw pillows and wonder if World Market has a home furnishings line based on the decor--and I very much enjoyed seeing Maggie Smith be a racist. I wish more racists were like her--delightfully scowling and flapping their hands instead of,  you know, ignorant and horrible and gross. The best part, besides the racism, was the unexpected, fairly chaste love story of Bill Nighy and Judi Dench. It was great and turned me into a big mushball.

Oh, there were character names, but come on. Let's be honest.

Also has anyone ever thought to film one of these movies and cast Celia Imrie and Helen Mirren as the world's foxiest lesbian couple? I'd watch that in a minute, even if Dev Patel was Jerry Lewis'ing all over the damn set.

Adventures in the (On Demand) Talkies: Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol

Now with a dozen more colons!

Ha ha. Gross.

Anyway, here's my brief review of this film, in numbered list:

1. I have yet to see MI:3, but it felt like this latest chapter went back to all the things that made the first film so fun and appealing: teamwork, cool gadgets, multiple locations, kicking, punching, a conspiracy that the screenwriter thought way more about than you ever will.
2. Special notice to Tom Cruise: stop taking off your fucking shirt. Look, I'm not being ageist. I love dudes in their 40s and 50s who want to take off their shirts, e.g., Clive Owen and probably Liam Neeson, though I don't really want to see Taken. It's that you look like the lacquered crucified Christ at the Catholic church I used to occasional attend with my grandma in childhood. You look like someone Olde English'ed you real good. You always seem contorted, like you don't believe you can display your muscle definition unless you're doin' the Twizzler. And I'm not calling Jesus gross when I say this but: gross.
3. If you want to entertain yourself, you can replace the "Indian Playboy" that Paula Patton has to seduce in One of Those Typical Scenes Where A Lady Has To Seduce An International Horndog with Matt Berry from The IT Crowd. Bonus points if you can imitate the way Matt/Douglas would say "Jennnnnh!"
4. I love Simon Pegg. He's always doing something great, whether as the main focus of a scene or in the background.
5. Jeremy Renner...I don't know how you do it. Is it your odd, tipsy pronunciation of words? Your stubby-yet-rich eyelashes? Nope, it's probably that bodacious bee-hind, which seems alluring when packed into dress slacks. Dress slacks. I am telling you. Perhaps it is all those things and more. You are stocky poetry in motion, my friend(-with-benefits? Application pending?). I look forward to you as Bourne. Please feel free to take off that shirt. It looks too tight and like it is making it too hot for you.

Adventures in the Talkies: Friends With Kids

Let's get the trailers out of the way first...

1) I understand if you don't want to talk about What To Expect When You're Expecting. It is certainly very upsetting. But I can't remain silent about this any longer: as a somewhat engaged moviegoer, I can practically see the expression of strain on the marketing team's face as they build a way to spin this film as entertaining for guys. See? It's about a group called The Dudes! And kids fall down! And guys get hit! And kids eat cigarette butts and drag around dead cats that meow, I guess!

I realize this is all content included in the movie, so it's not as though the blame solely lies with the marketing; a lot of the blame clearly lies with the movie, which looks awful in ways that gives me hives. But something about the cynical way it is packaged, with snippets of "Big Poppa" and "Walk This Way" made me want to tear the movie screen apart with my bare hands. I love some of those comedic actors, but God almighty, I don't ever want to see that trailer ever again.

Also, I refuse to believe this movie only had two screenwriters.

2) The Lucky One, a movie based on a Nicholas Sparks "book" (in that, I suppose, it was a bound volume of words, though I bristle that his particular version of glopping melodramatic circumstance and convenient, manipulative disease or death together is really defined as anything resembling...anything), appears to be about former soldier Zac Efron (okay, movie), who loves dogs (ugh), and travels thousands and thousands of miles to find a girl he met through found art (or a dusty photograph in a war zone, which is one of those premises that seems romantic on celluloid, purportedly, but in reality is fucking creepy as shit). And then she's a mother of a delightful child actor, runs a kennel, and has an ex played by Jay R. Ferguson. Romance and sex and probably some kind of ironic mauling death ensue.

Seriously, have any of you seen Nights at Rodanthe? Fuck that guy Sparks. He's the worst.

3) The Five-Year Engagement, which I will actually see, despite a child shooting an adult with an arrow; I think I covered my feelings on such Old Dogs shenanigans in 1).
---
So Friends With Kids. As I was telling someone in another social media venue, I feel very ambivalent about the film. I know Kissing Jessica Stein is a divisive film, in that most people either found the lead heroine played by (and written by) Jennifer Westfeldt too annoying, or people like me found her ability to play "neurotic" as a quirk that is genuinely annoying a lot of the time brave and unapologetic and made the relationship building more interesting.

In Friends With Kids, I feel like there was more determination for a story to follow very specific beats, and within that pat storytelling, the characters were more strident, shrill, and unlikable than they were intended to be on the page. Some of the actors overcame it with their natural charisma, but a lot of the time, it felt like I was squirming to get away from everyone in the story and was trapped with them--not in a Blue Valentine way, where I felt anxious and voyeuristic and subjected to gritty emotional drama, but in a crappy-party-where-I-sort-of-know-these-people-and-can't-gracefully-exit-a-conversation way.

I feel like Jennifer Westfeldt has a tendency (based on this movie and Kissing Jessica Stein) to aim for male characters that are "regular guys," but they often come across as direct or indirect assholes 65% of the time, soft-hearted, good, emotional human beings 35% of the time. And it doesn't always work. Also I feel like it puts the women characters in a nearly perpetual position of shrieking or fighting or weeping because their feelings are hurt, which is sort of gross.

I liked the general idea behind the film, a story that shows parenthood and marriage are not universals that work the same for each person or couple combined with a love story about two very good friends. I thought Adam Scott was terrific as Jason, even though he got handed the hard business of being one of those commitmentphobe, borderline misogynist characters I don't really like to spend time with in any romantic comedy or dramedy. Westfeldt had her moments as Julie, though her scenes with Edward Burns made me die inside, with the one-two punch of Westfeldt leaning on her Steinian talk-too-much crutch and Edward Burns existing with his stupid face. I liked that the characters played by Maya Rudolph and Chris O'Dowd's were shown as a lasting, ultimately loving relationship, existing through peaks and valleys. It felt like Kristen Wiig was wasted and that Jon Hamm...I don't know what that was all supposed to be about. I felt like all that business was poorly executed (save the unintentional laugh that escaped me when Hamm's character dismissively referred to Megan Fox's character as Titty McTitterson).

And Megan Fox... I was torn, because she wasn't actively terrible, but her character was like having life breathed into all of Megan's super, super annoying interviews where she's all "I'm just like a boy! I like video games and comic books and probably farting! My boobs are amazing, right! But I'm really smart!" And I didn't blame Westfeldt's character for disliking hearing about Megan's character...but I also resented Westfeldt for writing the character like that in the first place.

There was one moment I keep thinking about that felt very genuine and reminded me of a similar-yet-different scene in Kissing Jessica Stein: Julie's mom, preparing to babysit her grandson while Julie gets a night out with The Bachelor Burns, says to her grandson, "That's my baby," indicating Julie, "You are your mama's baby, but she's my baby." And something about how tenderly it was delivered, not long after Julie's mom says that she wishes she could babysit more often with no passive-aggressive guilt trip attached, was really touching. Westfeldt writes those mother-daughter moments that exist in her romantic journeys so well, that I wish she'd do a movie more focused on a mother-daughter relationship as a primary story and shenanigans as a secondary.

Adventures in the Talkies: The Hunger Games

It is rare that Kate is giddy about media. It is less rare that I am giddy about media. For example, here are a list of things that I can work up a bubbly-hearted froth about with very limited external prompting:

1.      The Avengers

2.      The new Bourne movie starring Jeremy Renner

3.      Jeremy Renner (I have been saying very gross things about him; I feel like I can't help myself...but I probably could help myself if I tried)

4.      Sherlock

5.      The Mayhem commercials starring Dean Winters

6.      Any of the shows I watch on TV, really

Kate, on the other hand, is fairly monogamous and chooses to commit a lot of her bubblehearts to one particular cause for a signficant period of time. One such cause is The Hunger Games. She talked me into reading them. She was psyched to see the movie, not only because she loved the books, but because Jennifer Lawrence was amazing in Winter's Bone and seemed like a perfect fit for Katniss. So it was fun to get to experience something with a friend where I wasn't the person being all goofy and dorked out.

So we went to a noon show yesterday, and I got my elbow squeezed at least twice as we waded through commercials and trailers. And it was totally worthy of two elbow squeezes, because it was a terrific movie. Gary Ross did a great job of what John Carter consistently failed at and showed instead of told: showed that despite Katniss and her family living a hard-scrabble life that there was strength and love at the center of their daily interactions; showed her friendship with Gale; showed that Katniss was, at times, panicked and brave and serious and unintentionally funny and intentionally funny and sharp and smart; showed her building relationships with Haymitch and Effie and Cinna--though Kate was right, the stuff with her style team seemed much depleted from the book--and then Peeta and Rue (seriously, the part of the book and the part of the movie that gave me that heart-run-over-by-a-mower feelings is always Rue); showed the far-reaching implications of what Katniss's brief moments of defiance mean to the oppressed and why it tips the precarious balance of power...


It was directed well, tight and fast-moving, but not without emotion. It reminded me that one of the best moments in Big (which Gary Ross scripted...so I hope he was semi-responsible for this) was the drawn-out moment of seeing "big" Josh react to being in the scary hotel all alone, so that in the midst of a fantasy story, you felt for the kid at the heart of all the improbability. And as far as literary adaptations go, Kate made the observation that some of the choices made to delete or add or change chronology ultimately made sense. I know there are fans who want to see the book cover-to-cover, but as someone who saw that happen in the Timothy Dalton version of Jane Eyre, it isn't always what it's cracked up to be: sometimes literary pacing and cinematic pacing are two whooooooooooolly different things.

Kate and I spent some small portion of our post-movie conversation talking about Jennifer Lawrence. Boy, Jennifer Lawrence is pretty, and her body is hecka slammin'. Clearly that is not at all the point of the story, but it feels like a lie if you don't recognize that she's speckled in beauty marks like Rachel McAdams, only she's tall like an Amazon, with curves and curves and legs. She's put in some great costumes, but she never looks more beautiful than when she is in her numbered form-fitting training suit when she heads in to shoot an arrow at Seneca Crane. She walks towards the camera, and it's just pow!, y'know?

I feel like all the casting was wonderful, from the big characters to the one-off tributes who die brutally in the first charge to the Cornucopia. I have a particular soft spot for Elizabeth Banks, and she was so spot-on as Effie, big and vacuous and funny without crushing entire sets with her jaw or overdoing it, that I feel like she must have some kind of secret kernel of affection for the character (she certainly has been Tweeterpating as Effie a lot).

In conclusion: it seems cruel that Catching Fire isn't already finished and ready to debut next weekend. Also, watch the comments for Kate to let me know if I forgot/missed anything.

And for those who like the Coming Attractions junk, the trailers were okayish: Breaking Dawn pt. 2 (guys, now I’m spoiled forever for the books! Bella Swan becomes Die Vampira?), What To Expect When You're Expecting (cleverly repackaged in this trailer as a movie largely focused on a dad group made up of Rob Huebel, Thomas Lennon, and Chris Rock), Snow White and the Huntsmen (it looks bonkers and sort of badass and made up for the fact that I had to see Kristen Stewart hunting a deer, good Lord, people enjoy those movies? Seriously? Not with RiffTrax, as God intended?), and Lordy Lou, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (my favorite non-Hunger Games moment of the afternoon was the collective laughter of young and old when that title hit the screen... I appreciate that the movie is taking itself seriously, but...I saw that movie, and it was called Priest, and the best part about Priest was that the priest was not Abraham Lincoln... and isn't that book meant to be all wokka wokka like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies? Who cares. I don't. No thanks. No thanks, even if Dominic Cooper is fun. Also: Dark Shadows can go straight to Hell. God damn it, Tim Burton and Johnny Depp, why do you make me regret ever drawing breath and taking back my initial dislike of Big Fish?)

I'll get a breather on Tuesdays now: Southland finale (hopefully just season, not series)

Maybe because it's Friday or because I've spent what I'd quantify as too much time thinking about it without talking it all out with friends first, I'm going to keep this brief: Southland is an awesome show with awesome actors, and it was totally, totally awesome this season.

I feel like the last episode, after a season of focusing on building new partnerships and defining what partnership is and means (and sometimes doesn't mean), there was a stark, isolated feel to that final sequence where each of our four leads--John, Sammy, Ben, and Lydia--are essentially very much alone with their secrets, their truths, and their disappointments. It reminded me of--wait for it--Mad Men, the way that I feel at the end of an ep where despite seeing relationships played out, grow, and bear fruit, Don and Peggy seem to spend a lot of time feeling left out, misunderstood, or lonely.

I don't know that I'd label it an unhappy message. I mean, John is still working towards his 20 years and 1 day, still bringing new boots into the world with a slap on the ass (metaphorically...y'know, with his sarcasm and intimidating manner) and Lydia finally closed book on her expectations of her unborn child's married father and is preparing to spend her remaining months of pregnancy off work.

Ben, shading his eyes and laying poolside, was a different story: I feel as though it was fairly ambiguous where he is at with all that happened with Ronnie, Amber, and Daniela (Danielle?). It's more clear that Sammy is distraught and disappointed, likely feeling far more responsible for what happened than he actually is.

The final confrontation between Cooper and Tang was easily my favorite dramatic part of the episode. I'm going to miss Cudlitz and Liu as scene partners. They struck such a great balance early in the season, with their tentative, prickly bonding and their moments of levity, and the slow boil that resulted in the two of them having it out in the alley was so well-acted. I don't know how Cudlitz managed to dial his normally intimidating physical presence back, but he did, so that when he and Liu were nearly toe-to-toe, it didn't seem for a second like he was crowding her or looming over her. But perhaps that had to do with Liu's ability to play Tang's defensive and angry dismissal of Cooper.

Good stuff. I'm sad another season has come and gone, but good gravy, between this show and Justified, I need a little break from the constant ass-kickings and tense showdowns.

Adventures in the Talkies: John Carter (of Mars)

Yes, let's engage in a dialogue, Fandango, a service I didn't even want to use, but I couldn't figure out how to get my AMC Stubs account to work online, and I was lazy, so I paid the service charge. So glad I did, or else you and I would not be having this conversation. I'm going to invite my friend Kate to talk to you as well, because I feel she has some valuable feedback regarding this film as well.

How did I like it? Well, I liked Taylor Kitsch. He's handsome and charming, less dour than Timothy Olyphant, more normal than Ben Foster--I'm still puzzled that the Vulture feature about Taylor Kitsch's bankability found Ben Foster to be his comparable peer--and, in Kate's words, not as bulky he-man as Channing Tatum, but nonetheless defined and pleasant to the eye, particularly in a film where his shirt comes off 30 minutes in and doesn't grow back until the last three minutes.

Direct from Kate:
May I suggest things that would have made the movie better. 

1.  About 30 fewer minutes

2.  Not casting a black hole of suck as the princess. [Ed. note: Lynn Collins, who I should have recognized for her similarly listless tough girl performance in X-Men: Origins: Wolverine: The One Where Liev Schreiber Has Enormous Sideburns]

3.  An explanation of why Dominic West was the only character with a British accent [Ed. note: I also liked when Kate mentioned she was waiting patiently for DW to bust out "What the fuck did I do?" a la Jimmy McNulty on The Wire]

4.  A shot of TK's  bare ass.

I have to admit I spent a lot of the film silently mouthing the word "What?" In terms of exposition, it felt like the movie was stuck somewhere between the breezy "Here's a couple of paragraphs. Got it? Good!" of the original Star Wars trilogy and the dense, fucknutty world of Frank Herbert's Dune. There was some allegorical shenanigans involving the various peoples who shared the planet Barstool (or Bazooms), which I imagine is what Edgar Rice Burroughs explored a little more in the original stories (I won't be reading them, so feel free to let me know if I guessed right), lots of stuff about arranged marriages and secret daughters and struggles for leadership roles, which only drew my eye because Ciaran Hinds apparently walked off with his Rome costume and let a designer glue some Muppet remainders to it in order to play the leader of the most human-looking Martians.

After the movie, which was a treat to Kate for her birthday--I envy her making out better than I did last year, when the two of us when and got emotionally drummed by Blue Valentine; happy birthday to me!!!--we talked a great deal about how long it was. There's no earthly--ha ha Mars--reason that movie should have been over 2 hours. Some serious, serious editing and rework needed to be done. But I'm guessing, based on the pedigree of the director (Andrew Stanton of Toy Storys and WALL-E fame) and writers (Stanton, some other cat who is credited with a lot of storyboard work, and MICHAEL CHABON, PULITZER-PRIZE WINNING AUTHOR), enthusiasm ran away with everyone, and no one was able to say no to any portion of the story being cut (not even the addition of an unnecessary storytelling device of having Edgar Rice Burroughs himself in the film, played by Daryl Sabara, who was doing some level 5 The Goonies-styled rounded eyes of surprise acting).

But I have to admit that it was rollicking in many spots.

1. I sort of sighed and rolled my eyes over the gladiator arena scene, but Kate rightfully defended it as a pretty cool and fun and stirring part of the movie.
2. Some of the running and jumping and flying the dragonfly-looking ship-bikes were cool. 
3. There was some old-school Disney wackiness with the Jim Henson's Labyrinth-looking Woola and John Carter (of Mars) trying to figure out how to navigate the planet without pancaking into the surface after Flubbering himself 60 feet into the air. 
4. James Purefoy, never my favorite charming rogue on Rome, turns up for a rescue scene and is so bewilderingly charming and roguish that both Kate and I wondered where he'd been the whole movie.
5. Mark Strong... god, was it weird, whatever he was doing. He was sure doing it confidently, though. I guess he was sort of a Superman II-ish villain who acted like--nerd alert--The Silence of the Doctor Who-scape, manipulating events and madness through the subtle control of one ambitious monkey man (that's Dominic West, in case you haven't seen him...boy, he looks like a monkey).
6. Samantha Morton and Thomas Hayden Church did great voice work. I didn't realize the two of them were some of the green folks until the very end.
7. Bryan Cranston showed up for some stuff at the beginning. I get the feeling there was a whole other movie going on in someone else's mind where he and John Carter (of Mars) team up for banter and shenanigans a la The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. (which, by the way, did a much better, small-scale job of balancing olde-tymey and sci-fi kooky).

Anyway, it was no super-crapulent disaster, like Wild Wild West, but it certainly could have used a producer or two hounding the artists to reel it in. And as you can see, I refuse to learn its lexicon, so they probably won't get me to watch the sequel, whether it be on the big screen or direct-to-On-Demand. I look forward to the inevitable RiffTrax or How Did This Get Made? podcast. Until then, I plan on peppering nearly every personal conversation I have with, "In the movie I saw most recently, John Carter..." whether or not it is germane.

Adventures in the Talkies: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

I have to get this out of my system: with the decided lack of original songs nominated for Academy Awards in 2011, does anyone else wish that Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy had a theme song? It would have been great if it had started like a Bond theme, all brass and soaring, sexy vocals, and then after, like 60 seconds, just degenerate into a sad instrumental mostly done on a cello.

Of course, I have not studied music, per se, unless you count "imitating scores with slightly mocking mouth noises" a study.

But enough about what I do whenever I hear the score to The Artist. I saw Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy this weekend at the Sundance (608 version), a movie theater chain specifically for individuals such as myself who aspire to have champagne tastes but also like to play at being an engaged liberal nerd once in a while.

I have never read Le Carre, and though I was familiar with the title, I didn't have a great deal of background on the characters or storyline. I had also only read one or two reviews, both of which were positive but focused on the film's glacial pace. There are so few films I go into with that decided lack of prep work, and I feel like I was greatly rewarded for it.

(And then spoilers happen after this.)

The tone and time and place of the film seems like it could almost be a sibling to Mad Men in a way: the business end of British Intelligence is largely unglamorous, all very proper and businesslike, until you get to the swinging Christmas party or listen closely to any of the words that fall out of Haydon's mouth. Suits are tweedy or polyester. Smiles are few and far between. And underneath it all is a melancholy that permeates the fabric of the film but is almost invisible save a few moments where it emerges and punches you in the gut. The few individuals who have dared to show empathy or affection--Ricky Tarr, Peter Guillam, and even George Smiley--seem to be punished for being human for a moment or two.

I loved how the movie had its own lexicon and did not provide a key, instead making it such a regular part of the characters' exchanges that I eventually caught on. I liked that everyone seemed suspect, not due to choking moments of foreshadowing, but because everyone was so distant and quiet. And the movie parceled out enough sudden, shocking violence to remind everyone of the stakes without making it seem like the whole point of the proceedings.

I found myself thinking a lot about not only the conspiracy and the search for the mole, but about some of those aforementioned moments of humanity. I don't think I realized how pivotal the scene was when Smiley describes to Guillam his meeting with a potential Russian defector, a general, appealing to the man's domesticity and inadvertently exposing more about himself than he ever intended. Ultimately, it is that meeting that gives Haydon the idea to approach Smiley's wife Ann for an affair. When Haydon says the words "Nothing personal" to Smiley, it's so, so haunting how very much Haydon means it.

Colin Firth plays Bill Haydon, and for anyone who remembers Colin Firth before he became Mr. Darcy or Mark Darcy or Colin Firth (whatever his character's name was in Love Actually), seeing him kick ass as a viper disguised as a seemingly innocuous, charming middle-management type isn't much of a surprise. He excels at being a sexually manipulative creep, right, people who saw Circle of Friends? The most graceful part of the performance is that the degree and depth of his duplicity, the level to which he uses affection and sex for personal gain and protection of his little shell game isn't even truly apparent until you really start thinking about that soft, sensual smile he gives Prideaux in the Christmas party flashback at the very end of the film.

Gary Oldman is incredible, too, so placid, his determined investigation of his former peers barely seeming like an effort until you see his right hand, Guillam, sweating f'ing bullets trying to get in and out of their building with files. I think my favorite scene wasn't necessarily all the Oscar reel footage that got played, but the cool, honest way Smiley promised Tarr that he'd do what he could to locate Irinia, knowing full well from Prideaux that she was long dead. He may have loved his unfaithful wife too much, and it may have weakened him at the game for a moment or two, but he still knows how to give people what they want when the job calls for it.

I was doomed to love Guillam from the outset, since he was played by Benedict Cumberbatch, which meant that on occasion, he smiled in that particular way that always touches my heart. Because I'm still all mopey and emotional over s2 of Sherlock, watching him break down into tears at one point probably doomed me to then dissolve into incoherent half-sentences about how much I like his face and feel invested in character's safety, even though he is wearing a Robert Redford circa Butch Cassidy heap of wig on his head.

In closing, I have continued to think about the film over the last 24 hours and will myself to see brief moments of it so I can feel it out more. I not only enjoyed it, but I feel like I'm still benefiting from sorting it out.

Also, Tom Hardy has disconcertingly plush lips.

Southland 4x07 "Fallout"

I have been loving Southland this season, which is unsurprising, I suppose. The last episode did more of what I like best: focus on what it means to be a “partner,” and what happens when that relationship is in conflict.

I have to admit that Tang and Cooper have been my surprise favorites this season. Their progression from precinct-house jokes to a competent, tightly knit team doing good work and getting to quietly know each other the way two guarded, prickly, but generous and funny people would. I have to admit that Cooper being all mock-“Meh-meh-meh-meh-meh” at Tang at the beginning of the ep gave me a odd overflowing of affection for the two of them.

Naturally, nothing good lasts forever, and Tang, suffering through a bad personal day, makes one snap decision—to take the bright orange tip off the toy gun she caught a glance of while chasing a suspect, resulting in her shooting an innocent kid—and all the goodwill and connection is immediately placed in jeopardy. Much like Cooper, Tang is stubborn and defensive, bristling at being told what to do by her new partner. And Cooper... man, Michael Cudlitz did some of the best work of the season (and that’s saying something) as he turned in on himself, silent but struggling mightily under the weight of wanting to share the truth.

One of the things I’ve always liked and respected about Southland is that they’re never trying to play tricks with tone or psych the viewer out with the way they present a scene. So when Cooper is charging down a dark alley, agitated and hurting, to meet a cool cucumber who asks him about Oxy and Vicodin, the actors, the writing, the direction is all very deliberately upfront, at least if you’ve seen an ep or two of the series: there was nothing furtive in Cudlitz’s performance as Cooper to try to indicate that this was a drug buy, the man he is talking too seems too forward and level-headed to be a dealer. I don’t think the show intended to trust the long-time audience to immediately recognize the differences and know ahead of the reveal that John was meeting his sponsor, looking for support and guidance.

Also, I need to annoy everyone: Dee! D’Angelo from The Wire! That actor is great.

And to reiterate: I am loving Lucy Liu as Jessica Tang. I enjoyed the opportunity to get to know more about her personal life, even in limited slivers, and I like that this storyline isn’t about a female officer being incompetent—I think the way the sequence of events leading up to the shooting was filmed, particularly the split-second POV shot where the audience sees the gun suggested it was indeed a decision made out of training and instinct—but about a police officer making a poor choice she didn’t have to make in a moment of doubt.

Anyway, in Ben and Sammy’s world, the two of them are still working out from under Ben’s momentary lapse of trust. Ben is frustrated by Sammy’s passive-aggressive (or, uh, plain ol’ aggressive) sniping; he apologizes again and again to no avail. Finally, Sammy drops his swagger, looks his partner in the eye, and reveals the philosophy that has been so ruptured by Ben’s slip-up: trust is critical to a partnership when the daily world the two people enter is filled with danger and distrust. It’s a nice moment of direct sincerity from Sammy, who immediately gets zinged, and good, by Ben, who apologizes bitterly for not living up to Nate. I loved the slow way that seeped into Sammy’s expression. The show hasn’t put a lot of focus on how large Nate’s shadow must loom, and I don’t know that Sammy has talked a lot about it, but I can’t help but imagine that Ben isn’t too, too far off base and that the show has intentionally made the decision not to lay that on too thick.

Also: Sammy, just get laid already. Please. Your resentment/enjoyment of Ben’s multiple conquests are messing with your head, man.

The Lydia/Ruben storyline has been the quietest of the three partner arcs, though I think that’s partially due to how low-key and awesome the performers are. After Russell, who inspired some kind of codependent mess in Lydia’s heart—and it was never clear if it was because she was in love with him, or if it was because he was the one constant in her life besides her mom—Lydia went through a string of partners, with whom she seemed to be indifferent or in conflict. Ruben has been a great fit for her: a dedicated family man who views the job as a job…one he does well and takes seriously, but one he disengages from at the end of the day, a crucial balance to Lydia’s default of taking the job Too Seriously (although when measured on the Olivia Benson Scale of Too Seriously, I still think Lydia only rates about a 3 at best) and mashing up personal and professional (though, to be fair, it was sort of an accident with Josie…initially, she didn’t KNOW that the dude she was flirting with was Josie’s son…initially…which was before she chose to sleep with him, oh, Lord…).

Anyway, the question of trust is ironed out over the course of several scenes, wherein Lydia feels that the captain sniffing her out for potential preggo-ness MUST have come from Ruben, and Ruben gently, but tactfully, points out that Lydia herself is showing her hand by trying too hard and drawing attention to her trying-too-hardness. I loved how confident and genuine the moment was when Ruben said that anything shared between the two of them remained sacrosanct and confidential. I am always eager to see how Lydia is progressing as she continues to think about what parenthood will mean for her and for her job.

Two Gay Tuesday Evening Birds With One Stone: Glee and Southland

Last night, Glee had a scene where The God Squad, the Christian characters of the Glee menagerie—Mercedes, Quinn, Sam, and some guy I assume is from The Glee Project, because he was introduced in a way that sort of assumed we knew and liked the performer and were damn well going to be invested in and charmed by him and his quirks—had an Official Discussion as it related to their position on gayness (“Is Gay Okay?” the whiteboard helpfully anvilled in the background of the scene).

The discussion was led by Mercedes, who regularly attends slumber parties with Kurt.

While I always assume that Glee is perpetually suffering from short-term memory loss when it comes to storylines, happenings, and character development, perhaps I do not give the show enough credit. Perhaps it intended, with this gesture, to show the hypocrisy of a group taking A Position, when the individuals within said group have pre-established friendships, benefit from the assistance of the gay community (Sam, who was homeless at some point or another, received clothes and support from Kurt), or are themselves such morally void, corrupted individuals that who gives a shit what they think (uh, Quinn, even though she actually made lucid points not growing out of a black void that began living in her soul). As for Adam Duritz Jr., who cares what he thinks as well, just on principle.

But I’m guessing that I’m right and it was just the writing team’s opportunity to breeze through dialogue writing by cutting-and-pasting previous David E. Kelley/Aaron Sorkin speechifying about what is and isn’t condemned in the Bible (MO-RAH-TORIUM! MO-RAH-TORIUM! We’ve ALL SEEN THE FWD: FWD: FWD: EMAIL ABOUT THIS; PLEASE STOP MAKING ME LISTEN TO TV CHARACTERS RECOUNT IT).

In better gay news, Dave Karofsky returned, and I guess he’s in love with Kurt, which occurred in offscreen moments/fanfics that happened after the two of them met up at Scandals (remember that whole night at Scandals, where Sebastian was that annoying pretentious high school kid we all knew who has refined tastes and maturity beyond his years and won’t let anyone forget it; wish that character has stuck around, and not the Snidely Whipgay that he is right now. Ha ha, also, Blaine perilously walked the Seems Like Date Rape Rope, remember that? Why don’t more people talk about how gross that was? I mean, that was pretty much as invasive as Karofsky’s hate-kiss, if we’re dealing with reality and not, like, Glee reality).  As slapdash and oddball as the execution was, I’m not opposed at all to Kurt and Dave being friends/possibly more, if only because Chris Colfer and Max Adler are better overall scene partners. Even when things are fraught, neither is prone to go BIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIG!!!, and it’s nice to pretend like Glee is capable of that occasionally. Also, they are cute together, and I love the whole beanpole/burly thing. And Darren Criss’s scene-gobbling, open-mouth mug-o-rama is dumb.

But the scene ended with one of Glee’s typical DUM-DUM-DUMMMMMMMMMMM vaudevillian organ trills: one of Karofsky’s 32-year-old fellow West Lima students was at the Sugar Shack, conveniently, to see Karofsky tearily storming out  on his admission of love. Naturally. It was like one of those scenes in a soap where you have to suspend your disbelief that the regular residents on the canvas spend days upon days missing out on totally unsubtle cues; therefore, it stands that a day player we’ve never seen and will never see again was able to either read body language in a way only a 32-year-old teenager can, superhumanly overhead the quiet conversation Kurt and Dave had, and/or runs the costume shop where Dave rented his gorilla suit and followed him to his wholly-too-elaborate plan to win Kurt’s affections. Other theories welcome. Anyway: Dave is probably going to get his ass kicked, which will, unhappily, invest me even more in this whole stupid thing because there will be bedside visits and shit, and I’m a sucker for that garbage. Just like I was a sucker for the way Dave gently placed his hand on the table, palm up, and awaited a hand-holdening that would never come.

I love Brittany and Santana. Yay for their kissing; boo for how the show, in its typical fashion, thought that by breaking the fourth wall it was actually addressing anything.

Over on Southland, the topic of gay bullying was addressed, but the message seemed more complicated and ambiguous (you know, not like Glee at all): John Cooper, who has been gay since the pilot episode on NBC—subtle enough that a lot of folks missed it, I guess, though I thought the scene last season where we was naked in bed with another naked dude was a telegraph in all caps, stop—and his partner, Jessica Tang, were called to a domestic disturbance, which involved parents reacting loudly and poorly to their son’s desire to return to school after he was unceremoniously outed (he sent nude photos to a boy he believed “liked him;” and if that isn’t frustrating, realistic teen behavior—you know, unlike some kind of gorilla-gram—then I don’t know what is).  John has a quiet conversation with the teen, Mike, about the difference between not being ashamed and setting yourself up as a target for teenage idiots. Ultimately, Mike leaves for school…

…and he ends up on the roof of a building after being dragged into a school bathroom, forced into makeup and a dress, and having his ass kicked. John is quietly, firmly honest with Mike—he is gay too; it does get better; those guys are idiots—but Mike jumps anyway. After John Wellsian heroics, Mike is rescued by John’s quick thinking and the strong arms and backs of some of LAPD’s finest. Mike and John have a bedside chat—yes, John was being honest about being gay; and while John has many problems (said with such a terrific sad-sly smile), “being gay ain’t one of ‘em”—and one gets the feeling that maybe this is going to be a wonderful story of intervention and a life saved.

And Mike commits suicide a day later. Ugh.

The episode ends with Tang and Dewey and a boisterous group of cops celebrating John’s 20 years (officially—unofficially and correctly, John mentions early on, it’s actually 22) at a bar. There are stories and toasts and admissions of love (on Dewey’s part, God bless that fucking idiot). And after John gets his fill of revelry and heads out, Tang follows John to quietly let him know Mike died. John already knows and shares his pragmatic view on the situation: it’s a tragedy, yes, that another gay kid has taken his/her own life, but John feels he did his job, and any dwelling or second-guessing or overpersonalizing presents a roadblock to Doing The Job. Tang returns to the group, Dewey offers to buy a round, and John stands outside, listening to the glory, a hard-to-read non-expression on his face… and you have to wonder how many of the group toasting him and swapping stories really know all about John Cooper. Is the sacrifice he makes to Do The Job keeping his sexual orientation quiet? Is John heralded by one and all amongst his acquaintences because they believe he's "just like them?" It feels like you can hear his advice about not making yourself a target still in action 20+ years later. But maybe not. Maybe so. It all seemed very unresolved, which seems more honest to real life than you usually get out of an hour-long drama.

To 180, the show is barely concealing its delight in getting all the leads, particularly Hatosy, undressed. And I love it. I also love the continual development of the partnerships: Ben and Sammy and their good-natured tussling; John and Jessica and their whatever-it-is that makes me love them so (the beanpole/burly thing? the balance of charming, affectionate teasing and mutual respect?); and Lydia and Ruben (I can’t imagine any of her previous partners handling her preggo-nancy so deftly).

And to close: I appreciated that Sammy continues to harp on Why Marriage Is Blah Blah Blah Divorce Blah (ha ha ha Ben’s eye-rolling disinterest), yet never devolves into a total misogynist (his dry, lamed-out “Really?” to the Extra Cop’s stupid “Don’t trust anything that bleeds for seven days…” recitation was such a relief, as well as a beacon of hope for him getting laid yet).

I felt this scene in last night's Southland was missing something

Long story short: Sammy Bryant accidentally shot a dog in the leg in last night's ep.

So naturally, he had to take his white tee off in order to make a tourniquet. Of course he did. Medical science being what it is and whatnot. But I feel, though the scene spoke to me as a person who likes medical science, as well as strong, stocky, well-built men who save animals in danger, like the scene was missing a few other things to appeal to me, y'know, as a woman...

There. That's better. And you're welcome, ladies.

It's sad when Will Schuester's awkward horridness isn't the worst part of an ep...

I can hardly keep up with the everchanging pro/con list I have in my mind when it comes to Glee. But I'll tell you what I wrote on it with mental crayon (ha ha ha, Becky is handicapable!): Sue Sylvester's grossness has reached the point where the massive suspension of disbelief I perform to watch this show (it requires several bungee cords and a bone-lengthening surgery that is super painful) has snapped atwain.

Asking students for sperm? I mean, I get it: ha ha with the jokey jokes so we can fit as many references to spunk and jizz into a 7 PM Central time-slotted show as we can. I'm not dumb. I'm also not going to give you laughs, you desperate lame-o teenage boy. Ugh. It's not like I haven't laughed at a Jane Lynch character bringing strange either. I own 40-Year-Old Virgin, as well as every Christopher Guest but For Your Consideration on The DVD. And what made it even worse was the sharp right-hand detour into Emotional Panderville with Sue's reasons for wanting a child fathered by Will. I can't even quantify that entire episode arc as uneven or sloppy. It's willfully terrible. And in case I didn't stress how gross it was: it was super, super gross.

So congratulations, writing team! You managed to make something be more dumb-butt and awkward and stink than Will Schuester wearing the bullfighter outfit from "Take a Bow."

Also, I'm prepared to complain more about Sebastian next week, because, apparently, "he's not just targeting Blaine anymore." Oh, really? Is he targeting a school bus full of orphans from a local Catholic school? Is he devouring kittens? Is he growing a long, curly mustache and wearing a stovepipe hat and fighting with Dudley Do-Right? I hope Glee names their next villain Pantomime Jones, and it's a dude in a cape who leers into the camera like Vincent Price in his heydey.

Stupid idiot show.

Nice job on "La Isla Bonita," though. Kudos. Dicks.

ETA: So basically what the reviewer at Vulture said.

I have just one question, "Southland"...

Two shirtless cops too much? Don't want to CHiPs or Starsky and Hutch out?

Look, I'll take what I can arms. I mean, arms are very arms. So. Arms.