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Yeah , I know. I didn't see this one coming either. And you know what? It's not bad. It's not good, either, but if there's one thing J.J. Abrams knows how to do, it's not tell you things you want to know. And in a television show, this leads the viewer to stick with it, not out of interest, not even out of pleasure. It's just human nature, man. WHAT IS IN THE GODDAMN BOX, JABRAMS? JUST TELL US ALREADY, IT'S BEEN LIKE TEN YEARS.
Ahem.
Anyway. At its heart, Fringe is basically The X-Files lite, built on the presumption that a series of connected, supernatural events are unfurling in the modern world because of the rate technology is expanding. No, seriously, it's not bad, sort of the intellectual substitute for real whisky or actual coffee. Sure, it scratches an itch, but it will probably leave a rash. The first season is pretty compelling, in a totality-focused conspiracy sort of way. Mostly, though, it just makes me want to want The Parallax View again.
READING...
Angela Carter, Burning Your Boats
What? I like fairy tales! Especially sexy, subversive ones. Also, in my defense, I have never claimed to be too cool for school. At least not to your face.
LISTENING...
I'm currently on a train halfway between Toronto and Montreal. What the hell else am I going to do? I had at least three or four episodes saved up, not to mention that I own all the compilations, so it's logical! LOGICAL, says I.
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So in a nutshell, it's funny, it's bizarre and it's smarter than it should be. Really, I can't sum up what makes Community so great in my own words, so I turn to DJ Steve Porter.
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I stumbled across this picture of Joshua Jackson,* a still from his current paycheck Fringe, and I had but one thought.
Two syllable damn, Pacey Witter: you are looking good.
And. I think Jackson might be winning the break-up. The Dawson's Creek breakup, that is.
I mean, sure, Michelle Williams clearly has the indie darling cred, but other than that Jackson has no competition for Best Post Show Showing. Katie Holmes married Xenu and if it wasn't for James Van Der Beek's hilarious one-episode stint on How I Met Your Mother, I'm fairly certain it would have taken me ten minutes instead of two to remember all the working parts in his name.
So to update, this picture made me lean towards declaring Jackson a first runner up. Then I saw Pacey-Con, and I had to revise the standings.
Let it be known: I would completely attend Pacey-Con. What? Are you too cool to admit you watched (NAY, LOVED) Dawson's Creek? Oh whatever, haters. Dawson's Creek was instrumental in my formative years; how else would I have formed a near-monastic tendency to construct the most difficult syntax possible? The first season was great, man. So many syllables, so little time.
And I was always on Pacey's side, for the record. He loved Joey for who she really was! Also he was sensitive! He remembers everything, ladies. But most importantly, he was just enough of a jerk/nice guy mix so every female viewer could theorize how they would change his wild ways. Personally, I would have given him a PUPPY!
Man-changin'--ain't that all we really want, gals? FEMINISM FOR THE WIN!
Now please excuse me while I resist the urge to look up old Dawson's Creek plotlines on Wikipedia. Oh, look at that, I lost. Shucks!
*He's Canadian, don't you know.
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I drove through Durham County yesterday afternoon. It was brighter than I expected. I thought of Hugh Dillon and power lines.
The show Durham County premiered in 2007, and its overall production values has none of the telltale signs that plague Canadian productions: in fact, despite some nagging familiarity, it didn't occur to me that it was set in Ontario until someone mentioned Toronto. The aforementioned passage through its namesake reminded how great the show was: a creepy and unendingly sinister tale of a rogue serial killer amidst the stiflingly ideal backdrop of a Canadian suburb. Into this mix comes Detective Mike Sweeney and his family, collectively recovering from the death of his partner and his wife's breast cancer diagnosis. The characters are infused with morbid fixations: Mike's oldest daughter reconstructs crimes scenes out of clay for fun, and his youngest, Maddy, never seems to take off the toy mask that erases her reassuring girlness into a bizarre, blank facade:
The bastardization of the once-comforting blankness of the Central Canada landscape is what earns the show's ranking as one of the better seasons of a crime drama to debut in the last few years, if not the last two decades (Twin Peaks, eat your heart out). The power lines, of course, were one of the show's best visual motifs, a bleak, commonplace reminder of the intrusions of modern life. They run through the vistas of perfect backyards; they hum in teh background buzz of important scenes; one of the characters, a mother, wonders if they're close enough to harm their growing children.
Perhaps what makes Durham County so refreshing is its wholesale subscription to the shift in cable television led by shows like Dexter and Mad Men: it doesn't answer every question upfront, and it doesn't mince on the disturbing content or flawed characters of its universe. In other words, in a medium famously created to sell soap, it's finally getting around to being an art form. In fact, the series make me downright excited for Canadian cinema. I haven't mentioned it before, but I always think of Canadian cinema in general suffering from arriving too late to the party, forced to play catch-up with a rancid bottle of raspberry vodka while the rest of the nations have been working on their buzz for hours. In other words, we came to the industry late, when the idea of film as a narrative device was fully formed, and had been exposed to too many weighty examples to emerge with our own voice fully formed.
So in conclusion, Durham County is a fun place to visit. If the show's any indicator, however, you may not want to live there.
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This post is dedicated to my friend Adam, whose love of bears and bears-related topics inspires me almost every day (...that he mentions this passion).
It was because Cambridge wouldn't let him get a dog. Badass. He later suggested that the bear apply for a college fellowship. Badass. His ultimate goal was to make the bear his best friend. MOST BADASS OF ALL.
Loose interpretation of the event.
I wish Childe Harold's Pilgrimage had been about Byron and his bear roaming the English countryside and solving mysteries. Not only would that make a much better poem, it has serious sitcom potential: like The Odd Couple, but with BEARS!
Bears represent so much more than the last thing you'd want to meet in the woods. Especially in children's literature and film, bears become a great example of the place in the imagination where fear meets anthropomorphism: look no farther than the high quantities of "friendly" bears to tell us how much we like to paint the scary corners of our fears in bright colorful polka dots.
Indulge me, if you will, to take a look back through the greatest bears of pop culture history.
Baloo (The Jungle Book)
Troubling racial messages aside, Disney's The Jungle Book features one hep cat in the form of Baloo the bear. He sings, he dances, and BOY. Does he love honey. Some of the most bizarre imagery of my youth came from watching Baloo eat a mouthful of bees. Is honey delicious enough to warrant a tongue full of bee stings? The question haunted me so I didn't put on my food until age 17. Regardless, this laissez-faire attitude is what puts Baloo on this list: the "Bare Necessities" is less a runaway pop hit and more an anthem of a strangely-spartan hedonism.
In the original Kipling work, Baloo was basically the exact opposite of his screen portrayal. He was stern, and often used beatings and other punishment methods to get through Mowgli's thick human head. That backwards stiff has no business on this list. One stiff and disciplined, the other carefree and hip. Makes you think of the Wakefield twins, really.
Paddington Bear
Let me tell you, it is HARD to pull off red and blue without looking like the political split down American soil. Paddington Bear does that and then some, managing to get himself adopted by humans and conforming to a charming British befuddlement.
Smokey the Bear
Did you YOU leave fire unattended in the forest? Yeah, I didn't think so. I sure didn't. Mostly because I don't ever go in the forest, but ALSO because of Smokey's simple, elegant threat against my well-being.
Fozzy Bear (The Muppet Show)
A beloved fixture from my youth, I still can't pinpoint why Fozzy Bear is so charming. Is it his fuzzy, over-sized digits? Perhaps it's his little cravat, making him both clownish and fancy in one fell swoop? Personally, I think it was the deep level of pathos he carried with every lame duck of a joke; he's a clown who's not funny, giving whatever laughter he earns the slight tinge of sadness. He's that one uncle who thinks you'll still laugh at the same joke you liked when you were two. Those guys are hard to shake. I know what a cow sounds like, Uncle Geoff. I'm 25. God.
Sleeping Bear (Legends of the Fall)
Skip ahead to 1:20 to see the only bear that has EVER bested Brad Pitt.
Bear Grylls
Convince me this man is real. You can't. I saw him use his own bloody fist as bait! BAIT! There is so much wrong with that sentence that it doubles back into right. Though I know at least one person that would disagree with me, Bear Grylls impresses me in the same moment I reach the dictionary to look up the definition of Batshit Crazy (verb, meaning to be foolish or impractical to the point of insanity; intensely involved with LAUGHING AT THE LIMITS OF THE HUMAN BODY). His mother was probably Hera or something, which makes him a demi-god, not a television host. Nice try, Discovery Channel, but you can't fool me twice!
Wojtek the Bear
Orphaned as a cub, this real-life bear was adopted by the Polish army and trained to transport ammunition, in addition to eating cigarettes, drinking beer, and --reportedly-- interrogating Nazis. Let me repeat that--this bear supposedly sat himself down across from Nazi spies and asked, "WHAT'S UP, BADDIE?" in Bear. To be fair, it's the move of a brilliant tactician--what wouldn't you tell a bear who's demanding a full confession? What a way to serve your country; did you hear that, Von Trapp family singers? Do re methinks you've been served.
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Got a favorite bear? Leave it.
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Well, I'd blame Encyclopedia Brown, but it's alarming how often I've started to do that. You're off the hook this time, Boy Wonder. I guess I'll have to point the finger at the spitfire acting, top-notch snarky dialogue, and the empty bottle of hooch where this show's heart is supposed to go.
You'd think a detailed account of the historical narrative of the celibacy movement wouldn't be sexy in the least. You'd be wrong. I'm generally an Elizabeth Abbott fan, but this one is a stand-out. Please note: the picture I've chosen makes a great case for the single entrendre, don't you think?
My no-fail source for music recommendations has come through for me this week, pushing me onto Local Natives' Airplanes. It is so splendid: light, rhythmic and achy in the heart place. Thanks, Bug.
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I don't even watch Lost, but this video on the music of a typical episode just transfixed me. Even for non-viewers, I'm sure its moody soundtrack has become somewhat iconic, so to see the instruments make the familiar sounds is really neat.
I'm generally a big of Michael Giacchino's work, so it's nice to see him doing really well (for the record, winning the Oscar for Best Score is the definition of 'doing well'). It doesn't hurt that something about a film'television composer's job has always fascinated me. But then, I'm esoteric. Natch.
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Look. I know, okay? It's a bunch of "teenagers" singing and dancing along to pop classics, which makes it thinly veiled karaoke, and it's hardly reinventing the hour-long drama wheel-- just halfway through the first season and we're already seen a teen pregnancy, a gay son struggling to find a way to tell his father, and an unrequited love rhombus or two. I'm not proud, but I'm not ashamed, either. At the close of the day, Glee is smart, relevant and grimly wholesome, with shiny production values and a cast full of double if not triple threats.
What brings me to this confession? It's not the season premiere or anything, but there are new episodes beginning to air April 13th after a long hiatus -- the result of a bizarre decision by Fox to chop the first season into two halves, airing months apart. Hey, whatever. That's Past Me's problem. The second half is almost here.
But it amazes me that no one has thought of the formula before. Take sunny versions of songs everyone knows, characters we grow to care about, musical number: rinse and repeat as necessary. Artists have been tripping over themselves to have their musical catalogues immortalized by the cast -- an upcoming episode is entirely centered on Madonna's music, and Billy Joel already gave his blessing to use anything in his repertoire.
Most likely trying to replicate said formula, many have rushed to attribute its success to the recent onslaught of tween super-franchises like High School Musical, that Rock Camp thing and anything that Miley Cyrus touches. It makes sense in a short-sighted way: they do both feature music. But I beg to differ. Sure, it deals with the same teenage problems that every teen drama does -- but I'll be damned if it doesn't find a way to make old cliches seem fresh. For instance, when Kurt, the barely closeted gay teen I mentioned earlier, finally does come out to his monster trucks and football father, it isn't met with the hostile homophobia you'd expect from a stock character: the father is not only wholly accepting of the boy, but he also admits he knew all along, all without betraying the macho sensibilities of his character. It's heartwarming, damn it. My heart was warmed!
In my experience, it isn't the kids who love Glee the most -- it's the twenty and thirty somethings who respond with the most ardent, well, glee: after all, at its heart, Glee is an acerbic little show about expressing yourself inside a bureaucratic world. There's the bureaucracy lurking about the edges of the club itself, from the rulebook that periodically pops up in reign in the fun, not to mention the machinations of Jane Lynch's malicious cheer-leading coach. But then there's the vicious pecking order of high school, filled with the absurditities that consume kids in that hormally fuelled epoch.
So what could explain why people who haven't seen the inside of a high school for the better part of a decade are devoting themselves to the small-scale dramas of singing kids in Ohio? Personally, I think it's the reminder that Glee doles out through its adult characters: no matter how mature or successful we think we are, we never really leave those safely neutered hallways in the end. The adult world is a high school with better cars, higher stakes, and credit cards.
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Glee is just another in the long line of television offerings to pop up in the last few years that give me hope for the medium: quality programming that is clever without pandering and entertaining without being preachy. It's eye candy, sure, but it's not dumb. And it's original in the sense that it's tapping into something no else has
Personally, I've always been annoyed at so-called purists who will snidely claim they just don't watch television -- though on most days, it's actually true of my own watching habits. My own TV watching is targeting and strict, and doesn't amount to much more than your average DMV visit. But those who sniff they just can't find the time should lighten up; they're missing some downright chipper entertainment.
The jury's still out on the show itself, but the opening for the new HBO offering How to Make It in America is a solid addition to their enviable roster of title sequences so far. Plus, NYC! That's my boy. That's your real face.
As much as I love their minimalistic, FUTURA EXTRA BOLD efforts, they created a monster. Everyone and their dog is aping this ultra-stylized, high-stakes opening montage with mouth-wateringly skillful typography---which is great, actually. I don't know what I'm complaining about. "Oooh, I'm having such a bad day. My wallet's too small for my 20's and my diamond shoes are too tight."
I always bank on a quality opening sequence -- it's like beautiful gilded wrapping paper. Even if the gift is rubbish, the anticipation was almost pristine...!
For your consideration, some other memorable HBO openers ---but be warned, I love these credits. Their imagery is like a short story that precedes a novel.
Deadwood
True Blood
Band of Brothers
And of course, Six Feet Under, the one that arguably started it all.
Got any other favourites? Television's lousy with 'em these days.
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