lenvm Reviews

True Detective (2014– )

Standing by my view of this as student work

[7/10 · 27 June 2016]

Written and directed by young people, this show features the best and worst aspects of student work. What made the first season so brilliant is that the writer hadn't been around the industry long enough to need to "unlearn" the habits of TV writers, because he never learned them in the first place.

Instead of drawing on TV clichés or on life experience, writer Nic Pizzolatto worked from the fiction and philosophy he liked. The result was philosophical dialogue which most TV writers would have edited right out, but HBO was wise enough not to try to clean it up, and this made the show wonderfully unrealistic and refreshing. The best part is the way all of this rich literary and philosophical material plays against the stunning cinematic imagery.

The second season exposed the writer for what he is: a writer who can craft wonderful sentences but can't tell a story or fashion credible dialogue. The plot of season two is far more complicated, and therefore also full of more holes as Pizzolatto tried to make the story cohere, which it really didn't.

I think it's a strong compliment to say that the first season can be seen as among the best student films ever made. It'll be interesting to see Pizzolatto evolve as a writer.

After the Thrones (2016– )

Right direction, bad format

[6/10 · 14 June 2016]

I like the way that the show seems detached from GoT even though it has the network's imprimatur. Thankfully, there are no actors or directors as guests, which would turn the discussion into a mere celebration of the show. In fact, "After the Thrones" avoids evaluating the show at all. At its best, the show offers a helpful focus on themes and "big ideas." (In this respect, it's better than the weekly discussions of GoT on TYT's "What the Flick," for example.)

The two hosts are amateurs who are unlikely ever to get another show, and this makes them likable. Their willingness to be corrected by GoT expert Mallory made them sympathetic at first, but after a few episodes this repeated format gets annoying. Other aspects of the format that seem forced are the "Who Won the Week?" discussion, as though they were forgetting that the show is fiction and not a sports contest.

The two hosts and two guest experts are likable, although they try too hard to steer a middle ground between being too geeky on the one hand, and too cool on the other; their references to "bros" and sports figures feel like forced attempts at sophistication. There's an annoying tendency to play everything for laughs.

The best parts of the discussion are when the hosts play their roles as really smart English majors and take a stab at synthesizing the big ideas. Hearing that kind of discussion is thought-provoking. It's harder to come up with an argument than with a ton of sophisticated pop-culture references. Stick with the big ideas rather than the fireworks.

Billions (2016–2023)

A televised graphic novel

[8/10 · 28 February 2016]

This show provides very little insight into anything, really, whether into Wall Street or human psychology. But its examination of bullheaded alpha males is a lot more fun than House of Cards. The show is held together by outstanding performances and direction. The practice of using a slow zoom-in on the main characters' faces as they build up to a zinger reminds me of a graphic novel, obscene word balloons blossoming from the superheroes' mouths. The central conflict is a stylized caricature, but the cat-and-mouse game never gets dull because the editors are very good at using timing, cross-cutting, and musical cues. In the end, the key, however, is Maggie Rhoades, who is the most important, and the only psychologically complex, character on the show. At this point, halfway through the first season, it's not clear that she can maintain her delicate balance between her husband and her boss. She's fascinating to watch.

Satisfaction (2014–2015)

Very intriguing opening, then mostly downhill

[5/10 · 18 June 2015]

The well-titled "Satisfaction" is about a couple who believe that there is something missing from their basically contented, affluent lives. The show begins with something out of a dream: having discovered that his wife is paying an escort, the husband takes his rival's phone and decides to take up the business. His wife's infidelity does not sadden him so much as it provides not only a motive but an opportunity, presented here in a very ingenious way, as the husband follows headlong into another life. His wife, too, despite being far too stunningly gorgeous to be paying for sex, has her own power as a character, though she is offered a kind of international compensation at the end that is highly implausible. The show's very interesting, plausible view of the complications and kinks of husband and wife will be exciting to anyone who has experienced married life, though the same cannot be said of its view of parenting; the daughter and her boyfriend are utter bores.

The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore (2015–2016)

A thought-provoking improvement on the recent Daily Show

[8/10 · 2 March 2015]

The Nightly Show is still figuring things out, but it's been for the most part an improvement on the recent years of the Daily Show, which have descended still further into the political hopelessness and wry gloom embodied by Jon Stewart. "The Daily Show" was best when it leaned on the in-depth reporting of its correspondents, but the brilliant heyday of its best contributors seems to have passed as the show becomes more Stewart's monologue.

This is where The Nightly Show offers a nice tonic. Rather than just reacting to the latest depressing news as Stewart does, Wilmore presents organized panel discussions around pre-set topics. He's a good moderator and an amiable host. What he isn't really is the satirist that I'd thought he was, judging by the great reports of the "Senior Black Correspondent" on The Daily Show.

And that's OK. The show prompts my wife and me to pause it several times every episode to talk about the topics being discussed. We don't actually laugh that much -- this is not the brilliant satire of the Colbert Report. But satire runs dry after a while, and in the end an intelligent, lightly humorous discussion is equally valuable.

Where I think the show needs to improve is its over-reliance on audience participation. Larry is not great at coming up with responses to viewer tweets, and the tweets aren't really very interesting either. Something needs to fill that space.

Otherwise, this is a fine addition to the TV lineup -- it's rare to find something that is neither depressing nor shrill. Thanks to his likable demeanor, Larry makes for welcome viewing.

Dexter (2006–2013)

Brilliant synthesis

[7/10 · 2 September 2013]

Earlier review after watching first 6 seasons:

Dexter began as an adaptation of a Jeff Lindsay series of novels, which provided the basic premise for the plot, and provided an example for the dark humor and poetry of the interior monologues (I don't know any other film or TV show that has handled these monologues so well). Even as early as the first season, however, the show elevated itself above the novels through greater psychological subtlety and much more adept plotting. (I've read all of the Lindsay novels and he isn't that great at either; the show stops following the books by the end of season one.)

Above all, in Michael Hall's incarnation of the role, the show features the single greatest TV performance of all time. Psychologically speaking, Hall embodies a crazy combination of whimsy and muscularity, authenticity and fakery the likes of which I haven't encountered anywhere else. At its best the show's depiction of an evil superhero delves into some heavy philosophical territory, examining how a sense of duty to one's fellow humanity can coexist with an indulgence of sick individual appetite.

The show is also a smart inversion of the police procedural (the closer the police get to the killer, the more despondent Dexter and his audience become). While there are definitely some low points (season 6 and any plots involving Quinn), these can be excused because the show is, as a whole, pretty tight, certainly by comparison with the longueurs on, say, The Sopranos. Seasons 1, 2, and 4 compare favorably with almost anything else out there, and shouldn't be missed by anyone interested in compelling and addictive TV. The seasons stand alone pretty well, so you could probably skip a season or two without missing that much.

Edit after end of season 8:

Sadly, the last three seasons oblige me to lower my rating. The Clyde Phillips era was a complete success; seasons 1-4, and parts of 5, are among the best seasons ever made. At that point, the writers made glaring mistakes; with its focus on religion, season 6 could have been a fitting place for Dexter to reflect on Rita's death in a real way, but instead it was the worst, most superficial of all of the season. Scott Buck simply could not bring the show back to its prior form. Even the over-hyped season 7, despite a strong performance from Ray Stevenson, fell off because Stevenson's character was simply a fairly ordinary bad guy, a mob boss with some charismatic qualities, rather than one of the colorful psychos of other seasons. What Dexter seems to have learned from Stevenson's character was the importance of love, which was an unfortunate lesson as far as the show went: introducing Hannah was a disaster for the show. The final season began brilliantly and seemed to offer a worthy synthesis but ultimately plodded along nowhere, with too many offensive absurdities (cars in water, a treadmill, a hurricane) to name here. By the end, the writers had finally put the show itself on Dexter's table.

Revenge (2011–2015)

Some watchable characters, though far from brilliant

[4/10 · 25 August 2013]

The basic idea here of adapting the Count of Monte Cristo should make for compelling TV. Unfortunately, the result is mixed.

The big problem is the main character. She just isn't interesting enough to win our sympathy. It may be that the actor who plays Emily isn't up to the challenge, but the writing fails her, too. Don't get me started on Jack and Declan, who walked right off the set of Melrose Place.

Two characters make the show worth watching: Madeleine Stowe as the eeeeeeevil Victoria and Gabriel Mann as the delightful Nolan, who has the complex character Emily lacks. Why Nolan helps Emily despite her abusive treatment of him is not sufficiently explained.

Despite my gleeful response to Victoria, it must be admitted that, at the most basic level, the show promotes a lie about the 1%, which is that they work really hard to be evil. In reality, the evil that the extremely wealthy do is far more banal, and generally within the bounds of legality, since the laws exist to protect them. The show perpetuates a fantasy about social class which is essentially wrong.

Breaking Bad (2008–2013)

Brilliant in its simplicity

[10/10 · 16 August 2013]

Compared to the other great TV shows, Breaking Bad is spare and stripped-down. The creator seems to have taken a very basic literary form -- the classical tragedy in five acts -- and set out to expose the self-destructive hubris at the heart of one of the greatest TV characters of all time. Walter White is the White Whale to Hank, and Lear to himself. I don't actually know how it's going to end, but it plays with the foreknowledge of tragedy we have in our gut (those flash- forwards are a particularly good way of evoking this feeling). Contrast it with, say, The Killing, where absolutely nothing was predictable, which left viewers feeling played with. Maybe we actually like shows that have some element of predictability.

It's easy to see just how completely this show breaks the TV mold by slicing away the other genres that have both enriched and bloated pop entertainment: soap opera, novelistic realism, black comedy. For all its greatness, The Sopranos was bloated with soapy elements; The Wire, greater still, was committed to a certain kind of naturalism; Weeds always had the complex tone associated with black comedy, and (completely failing to sustain that complexity) eventually degenerated into a sitcom. You don't get any of this with Breaking Bad: there are just a few larger-than-life characters (no wasted ones, really), and a pretty small universe. It mostly looks like it's been made on a post- recession shoestring budget (at least compared to AMC's inferior costume drama Mad Men). It is brilliantly acted and directed.