TV Review: How to Get Away With Murder

The new Thursday night entry on ABC is called How to Get away With Murder.  It is about an attractive African-American woman who is a top criminal defense attorney who wears red leather outfits while teaching first year criminal law at a prestigious law school and who recruits students to work with her in high profile criminal cases.

This premise is so outrageous it makes Lost look like a Ken Burns documentary.

Where to begin?  No top criminal defense attorney teaches a regular first year class at a major law school.  They are too busy putting in billable hours to take time off to teach first year law.  A top criminal defense attorney may teach a third year seminar, but first year professoring is pretty much a full time obligation (although I did have a civil procedure professor who was on a sabbatical from practice).

Second, what she is teaching is not anything resembling “law.”  For example, one student ingratiates herself to the professor by calling optometrists, pretending to be the secretary of a prosecution witness, and learns that the witness is color-blind.  And what legal theory does that support? All of her stratagems are based on facts, not legal principles, so the kids aren't learning anything about law.

The professor has each member of the class take 60 seconds to offer their best theory for a defense to an actual murder case.  These are first year students who know nothing about law, certainly less than any actual member of the bar, yet she spends a couple of hours (it’s a large class) listening to their uninformed, half-baked ideas.  Ideas that they are given 60 seconds to present, so heaven forbid the explanation be the least bit complicated or require legal research.

The winners of the competition get a highly prestigious position at her law firm. Despite the fact they know nothing about law.  And aren't licensed to practice. And, again, know less than just about any person who actually had finished law school and passed the bar. And they work at her firm while maintaining a full law school work load (she makes it clear in the pilot she expects the students to ditch their other classes while working on her case).

The preposterousness of the premise is matched by the insipidness of the plotting.  One of the eager first year students gets a bright idea late at night and so goes to the professor’s house (which is inexplicably on the campus). He arrives at the dark house, rings the bell, and when no one answers he tries the door and finding it unlock walks in.  Who walks in to a strange house at night when no one answers the door? He walks in on the professor occupied in flagrante delicto with a hunky detective.  I guess they were too distracted to hear the doorbell or the student yelling “Professor Keating! I’m breaking into your house late at night because I have something important to say!”

For years now I’ve said the Lost episode titled “Eggtown” set the record for most boneheaded legal errors in a single TV show, but How to Get Away With Murder’s pilot may break the record; I can’t say for sure as I threw in the towel about 2/3 of the way through.  In Eggtown, a character was being tried in Federal court on California for state crimes committed in Iowa, the defense was allowed to call a witness before the prosecution (because the prosecution’s opening statement, which has zero evidentiary value, was “devastating”), the main witness for the prosecution was allowed to talk with the defendant before the trial, and the sole witness for the defense is someone who met the witness months after the crime took place and who was in love with her.  That’s a load of BS to top, but How to Get Away With Murder topped it in under 40 minutes.  Congratulations.

Heaven knows I know that any realistic show about the law would be as boring a watching paint dry. And yes, I watched Allie MacBeal faithfully as she filed lawsuits against God and sang karaoke instead of putting in billable hours.  But there is a limit to how far outside the lines you can color before you have to conclude that the show is science fiction, taking place in a parallel universe where human concepts of logic do not apply.

I like science fiction, but How to Get Away With Murder was just too far out there for me to buy into. I just hope the show doesn't inspire hordes of impressionable college students into thinking law school looks like a lot of fun.

Maybe Weird Al isn't that weird after all

I've always been fascinated by the mayfly-like lifespans of pop acts.  One hit wonders are one thing, but if you go back and look at the length even a super group has on the charts, it’s a wonder anyone produces a second hit album.  Okay, there are outliers like The Rolling Stones who will be touring three years after Keith Richards dies, but on the other hand The Beatles lasted (in America) from 1964 to 1970, six years.  ABBA lasted eight years, from 1973 to 1981. Sheryl Crow first hit the top ten in 1994 and last hit the top 20 in 2003, a nine year span.

Okay, I’m cherry picking data; let’s not talk about Elvis, Elton John, or acts that were successful for decades like Sinatra. The fact is that if a pop act can last for more than a decade, they are special. Weird Al Yankovic first hit the top 20 of the US album chart in 1983. His latest album, Mandatory Fun, became his first number 1 album ever in 2014. That’s 31 years of accordion solos and song parodies; given that his gift is impersonating other acts, that demonstrates an amazing capacity for evolving with the popular times.

Weird Al Yankovic is a singular genius, literally. In a profession where imitation is the sincerest form of creativity, no one has EVER tried to copy what Weird Al Yankovic does, at least not on a regular basis. He has a knack for taking the melody of a hit song, finding the perfect way of changing the lyrics that both work with the music and are internally consistent, and afterwards it sounds like the song should have sounded that way to begin with. The rise of YouTube has fostered some imitators, but none operate on the scale Weird Al does.

Some of his early efforts are fairly obvious; it is no great feat of imagination to change “I Love Rock and Roll” to “I Love Rocky Road,” or “Another One Bites the Dust” to “Another One Rides the Bus.” But his creativity grew as he became more successful.  Converting “Gansta’s Paradise” to “Amish Paradise” is a stroke of genius, giving him not only one of his better parodies but also arguably his best videos.

Talking about videos raises another factor of his creative growth. From 1993 to 2003 he took over directing his own music videos, demonstrating additional skill in creating funny visuals to match the humor in his lyrics. His videos also reinforced his attention to detail; the parody of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” used the same actor who played a janitor in the Nirvana video, and the video for “Bedrock Anthem” was filmed on the same desert location that the Red Hot Chili Peppers used for their video.  It seems like Yankovic puts such confines on himself in order to be more creative.

As I mentioned above, another amazing facet of Weird Al’s success is his ability for follow the changes in the music industry.  He started out doing pop songs, but eventually produced parodies of rap songs, grunge songs, and songs whose genres have probably been forgotten.

Mandatory Fun is the first Weird Al album that I’ve heard that I have no idea what the source material is.  I am so divorced from modern music that the only melody I recognize on Mandatory Fun is Pharrell’s ubiquitous “Happy,” transformed into “Tacky.” But being unfamiliar with the songs he’s parodying doesn’t make them less funny.  “Foil” starts off as an ode to an alternative to Tupperware and devolves into warning about the Illuminati. “Word Crimes” is probably the first song in history to mention the Oxford comma and establishes Yankovic’s cred as someone who may act silly but he sincerely wants his fans to know the difference between “doing well” and “doing good.” The album ends with the epic, 8 minute long “Jackson Park Express,” an original song about a love affair that takes place entirely in a guy’s imagination during a bus ride.

I have some problem with the song “First World Problems.” First of all, the phrase “first world” no longer works; it was coined back when the Soviet bloc was the “second world” and non-aligned countries were called the “third world.” With the fall of the Soviet Union the phrase no longer makes sense. Second, the problems Weird Al details (a pixel being out on his laptop, not having small enough bills for vending machines) are not problems all people in first world countries have, they are problems rich people have. It should have been called “One percenter problems.”

I also find “Mission Statement,” a song that strings together meaningless phrases used by business consultants, to be kicking too easy of a target (it is also very easy to convert the phrases into lyrics as most end with a long E sound (synergy, efficiency, functionality)). The song is not a parody of any song in particular but is a general pastiche of Crosby, Stills and Nash’s style, down to sampling Suite: Judy Blue Eyes at one point (in addition to parodies of specific songs and original songs, Weird Al sometimes writes songs that are merely in the style of an artist; for example, Dare to Be Stupid was an homage to Devo).

Weird Al’s future has been the subject of speculation. An interview with a newspaper in Allentown, PA, was largely misinterpreted his announcing his retirement when what he said was a desire to do no more CDs but more digital distribution.  Part of the success of Mandatory Fun comes from his decision to release videos of the songs on the album for free on YouTube.  Leave it to Weird Al to adapt to the digital revolution.

Belated TV Review: Continuum

I’ll say it once—spoilers ahead.

I’m getting to this very late because for some reason I missed Continuum season 3 and just caught up with the entire season via streaming.  Continuum is an outlier, a television sci-fi show that sometimes has more ideas and better ideas than most literary science fiction.  In an era where much television science fiction is under-thought and over-wrought, Continuum is just about the sole beacon of light.

To recap quickly, the show is about a cop from 2077 named Keira Cameron (Rachel Nichols) who, while attending the execution of a band of terrorists, is caught up in the wake of their time travel device and is thrown, with them, back to . . . 2012 (they were supposed to travel back in time 5 years but missed). The group, calling themselves by the catchy name of Liber8, start plans to win the future by subverting authority in 2012; Cameron manages to insinuate herself with the local (Vancouver) police department, teaming with a hunky detective who has the very Canadian name of Carlos Fonnegra (Victor Webster).

I like Webster’s performance a lot; it is great that he establishes an immediate rapport with Keira, but there is zero sexual tension as her character tells him she is married (to her future husband).  He is a rare actor who can bring the beefcake but acts like he doesn't expect a woman to drop her panties at the sight of him. I also liked the dynamic between Carlos and the police cyber expert Betty (Jennifer Spence); it is immediately clear that she adores him (and is jealous of Keira), but he ignores her not because she isn't gorgeous, but because he is too just too self-effacing and clueless to notice her signals.

The series has always reveled in unclarity about motives; flash-forwards to the year 2077 reveal that Liber8 are pretty much psychotic murderers who are never the less fighting for freedom, while Keira is a descent, moral human being who defends a fascist corporate state. She spends much of the first season mooning over her son, wanting desperately to get back to him. But, realizing that Liber8 can prevent her world from ever existing, stays to fight Liber8 even as she slowly realizes that despite the high body count, they have a point.

She is helped by a teenager named Alec Sadler (Erik Knudson), who (in the future) invented all the technical gizmos that came back with her from 2077.  The younger version of Alec is able to communicate with Keira’s cerebral implant, view through her eyes, and monitor her uniform which, among other things, can make her invisible.

If it sounds a little confusing, it’s because Continnum has never shied away from some of the more troubling literary aspects of time travel. Early on, the mother of a character is killed before he is born, and he fails to fade away like Marty McFly.  At the end of season 2, Alec travels back in time a week to rescue his girlfriend, followed by Keira; the fact that there are now two of both of them propels much of the action in season 3.

The series grew more assured and daring in season 3.  One episode was set almost entirely in 2077; new characters were introduced as sort of “time cops” whose morality and aims were hard to suss out; a regular character was suddenly killed; and while Cameron’s police superior (Brian Markinson) embraced greater corporate control of the police department, her partner Carlos became increasingly uncomfortable with corporations treating the police as their personal security team.

One of the more frightening aspects of Continuum is how easy it is to project the current state of corporations into a dystopian future where there are no civil liberties and all decisions are made by a “corporate congress.” With US Supreme Court decisions giving corporations the right to spend unlimited amounts of money in the political process and impose the corporation’s “religious beliefs” on their employees, such a corporate controlled future seems a lot closer than 2077.

Towards the end of season 3, all of the characters begin to realize that there is no way to win “the” future because there is no “one” future, but a plethora of futures. Keira accepts that she can never return to her son, who no longer exists in the time line created by her time travel, just as Liber8 members realize that they may free one time line, but that means leaving their time line enslaved. This causes some major shifting of loyalties that none the less feels organic.

Season 3 ended with a doozy of a cliffhanger; here’s hoping that the producers of Continuum get a season 4 to prove that they weren’t just making it up as they went along.

In defense of Ben Affleck

Success in the entertainment world is such a fragile thing.  Talent isn’t enough.  Looks aren’t enough. Luck isn't enough.  Talent, looks and luck doesn’t cut it.  Sometimes someone succeeds and someone else doesn't for reasons that can only be described as ephemeral.

In 1997 two charismatic young actors won Oscars for Best Original Screenplay.  Forget the persistent rumors that William Goldman actually wrote the script, the fact is that Matt Damon and Ben Affleck were on top of the world.  Where things went from there is two stories.

Damon was cast in The Bourne Identity and became the most famous spy in filmdom since Sean Connery was cast as James Bond.  He worked with Steven Soderburgh in the Ocean’s Eleven films. His career even survived The Brothers Grimm, no mean feat.  Success after success, with only a few bumps.

Ben Affleck became a punchline. He battled a killer asteroid in Armageddon.  He single-handedly nearly defeated the Japanese in Pearl Harbor.  The duo that was “Bennifer” begat Gigli, one of the ten or so worst films ever (although my money is still on Zardoz for all time worst).  He married another Jennifer, Garner not Lopez, and made Jersey Girl and Saving Christmas. 

I want to give a full throated defense of Ben Affleck, but I find it hard because frankly I've never understood all the hate.  I liked Daredevil, despite its 42 Metacritic rating (I will not defend the horrible sequel, Elektra; that’s all on Mrs. Affleck).  I liked Paycheck, the John Woo directed flop that Affleck starred in with another of my favorite actors, Aaron Eckart, that got a similar Metacritic score of 43.  He gave a solid supporting performance in the Oscar winning Shakespeare in Love, and did a great job re-teaming with Damon in Dogma. For that matter he was the best actor in a number of Kevin Smith vehicles, most notably Chasing Amy.

But weep not for Mr. Affleck.  For one thing, did I mention he is married to Jennifer Garner, a beautiful and talented actress (who was robbed by not winning a Best Actress Emmy for Alias)?  Professionally things started looking up for him in 2006 when he co-starred in Hollywoodland, where he played tragic TV star George Reeves.  He was nominated for a Golden Globe and his failure to get an Oscar nomination was considered a major snub.

He then started an impressive directing career with 2007’s Gone Baby Gone and 2010’s The Town.  That of course was followed by 2012’s Argo, winner of the Oscar for Best Picture despite the fact that its director, one Mr. Affleck, failed to get nominated for Best Director. This snub was completely unwarranted, as Argo was a period film with exquisite attention to detail and done with nearly unnoticeable technical craftsmanship. The only knock on Argo was that Ben Affleck was wildly miscast as protagonist Tony Mendez, and Affleck gives one of his most subdued performances.

Ben Affleck is now receiving the best reviews of his acting career for Gone Girl, the David Fincher directed film about a man whose wife disappears and he becomes the leading suspect in the media.  Fincher, best known for the technical brilliance and the visual look of his films, has always gotten exceptional performances from his actors (Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt in Seven, Jodie Foster in Panic Room, Edward Norton and Brad Pitt in Fight Club, Pitt again in Benjamin Button).  It should hardly be surprising that an actor with Affleck’s background should flourish under his direction; maybe Affleck will finally get that Oscar nomination for acting.  Of course he’ll still be trailing Damon who has two Oscar nominations for acting.

Of course Ben Affleck’s next role is taking over the cowl of the Caped Crusader, a role that seriously damaged the careers of Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer and even George Clooney.  I think he’ll be okay as long as his Bat-costume doesn't have nipples.

Ten years later and we're still Lost

It is common for people to decry network television as being a vast wasteland, a medium that serves up nothing but bland pablum.  And they’d be right—mostly. But networks have to produce three hours of programming nightly, 15 hours a week, 780 hours a year, plus all the non-prime time programming.  Any beast that voracious demands to be fed, and oatmeal isn’t always available. 

Every so often the networks produce something completely original; networks produced TV fare such as Arrested Development, Pushing Daisies, and Quantum Leap.  Sometimes these shows are short lived, filed in the “brilliant but cancelled” category. Occasionally they last longer; Doctor Who has survived in some form for over fifty years now.

The last great innovative network TV show debuted ten years ago this week.  It was called Lost, which also describes how its audience felt over most of the next six years.  For six years water coolers in America were the scene of people discussing smoke monsters, The Others, fate, Benjamin Linus, the Black Rock, and a boy named Waaaaaaaaaaalt. It featured a group of castaways led by a doctor with a compulsion to fix things, a paraplegic named after a philosopher who was their best hunter, a bickering couple who were deeply in love, and the most sympathetic character happened to be a former torturer who had worked for Saddam Hussein.

Lost’s unique combination of character-driven story lines, over the top fantasy elements, kaleidoscopic cast mutations and perpetual cliffhangers spawn dozens of imitators, all of who failed miserably. Lost remains a singular accomplishment. Like the movie Citizen Kane, it is undeniably brilliant, yet we can learn nothing of why it is brilliant. It is more than the sum of its disparate parts.

Most people associate Lost with the more fantastical elements, the smoke monster, time travel, and such nonsense.  My mother, who described anything resembling fantasy as “silly” stuck with Lost even during season 5, which should be called The Season of Time Travel. Why? Lost gave us a collection of the most interesting, complex characters ever assembled for a single show.  Heck, the totality of programming on CBS doesn’t have as many interesting characters as the first season of Lost.

But they didn't stop at season one; it is astonishing to realize that the motivating force for the last three seasons of Lost was the character of Benjamin Linus, who showed up calling himself “Henry Gale” late in season two.  The last great episode the show produced, season four’s “The Constant,” was a love story about Penny and Desmond, also not original characters.  The show endlessly evolved, reinventing itself with each new season, which is an even better trick than creating an original show in the first place.

Lost had its flaws.  I still don’t believe creators Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof had a plan for the middle section of the show.  The first six episodes of season three are six of the worst episodes ever produced for television (in one, the main plot is John Locke’s quest to rescue Mr. Eko, who was kidnapped by a badly animated polar bear); they were clearly spinning their wheels, and got back on track once an end date of six seasons was determined. The episode Eggtown contains more legal errors than the entire run of LA Law.  After its first season, in which it won the Emmy for Best Drama, it won “only” four more Emmys, two for supporting actor (Terry O’Quinn and Michael Emerson) and two for technical categories, which is a small haul for such an influential show.

Lost unfortunately shares a fate that more recently befell How I Met Your Mother, namely a final episode that was deemed so disappointing that it tarnished all that preceded it. [SPOILER ALERT] They’re all in purgatory?  Sayid ends up with Shannon, not Nadia? The smoke monster is Allison Janney’s son? We knew the end would be weird, but seriously, Allison Janney?

Maybe Lost’s epitaph should be something Jacob uttered in the final episode of season five; “It only ends once; anything that happens before that is just progress.” There was a lot of progress before Lost got to its inevitably unsatisfying conclusion.  Lost came along at the perfect time, when the internet could propel it into the social media stratosphere but before the internet got too spoiler-y.  Probably no series in the future can produce so many surprises, because now everything is spoiled.

But I won’t say networks can’t produce another show like Lost; to paraphrase John Locke, I won’t tell networks what they can’t do.

TV Review: Gotham

At this point in time we have to conclude that the origin story of Batman is our culture’s Iliad and Odyssey. The tale has been told, retold, re-imagined, re-booted, and translated into every language on Earth.  So while most of time it is safe to call yet another remake a lack of creativity, in the case of the new TV series Gotham it’s more like another caveman gathering us around a campfire to tell the tale for posterity.

Gotham has been described as “Batman without Batman,” which is both fair and unfair. Fair, if the pilot episode is any indication, because the series is going to endlessly tease us with references to what young Master Bruce Wayne will become someday. Unfair because by now the town known as Gotham City has evolved into an entity in its own right, as vibrant and realistic as New York City or Oz. Why shouldn't we be clued in on its origin story as well?

It main character is a neophyte detective named Jim Gordon, who we know will one day become Commissioner Gordon, the man who turns on the big spotlight with the bat symbol on it.  Ben McKenzie, fresh from Southland, plays Gordon with an intensity that was missing from the Commissioner Gordon on the 1960’s series. The dialog tells us he is a war veteran whose father was a crusading District Attorney.  Either that was a long time ago or he didn't crusade enough, because now Gotham is an utterly corrupt metropolis, with the police department barely feigning any interest in fighting crime.

The corruption is embodied by Gordon’s partner, Harvey Bulloch, played with his usual scruffiness by Donal Logue. Before Bulloch can show is new partner “the ropes” they are stuck with a big case, the murder of Thomas and Martha Kent in an alley, in front of their son Bruce. Instead of seeing it as a career making case, Bulloch is annoyed that it will be so high-profile he won’t be able to sweep it under the rug. Gordon makes a promise to Bryce Wayne that he will find the killer, but the audience knows that things won’t be resolved that neatly.

The series looks great, with Gotham alternating between grim dayscapes and even gloomier night scenes (this city must get maybe one day of sunshine per year). Of course it is filled with colorful characters, like Fish Mooney (Jada Pinkett Smith) as a crime boss, Oswald Cobblepot (Robin Lord Taylor) whose odd gait and bad teeth make people call him a penguin, and Selina Kyle (Cameron Bicondova) who moves around with a certain feline grace.  Nudge nudge, wink wink.

The pilot does an excellent job of setting up the players, making it clear (but not too clear) whose side everyone is on, The acting is first rate (for a show based on a graphic novel), and heaven knows the Batman mythos is deep enough to expand upon.  The challenge will be to bring out the interstices in the Gotham mythology while not violating the story line the world is so very familiar with.

Gotham is off to an excellent start. But then I also thought Arrow got off to an excellent start, and while it is enjoying continued success I grew weary of it halfway through its first season. It is one thing to start off occupying a known space; it is another to find new ways to make it interesting. Gotham benefits from the long exposure it’s had in the public imagination, but that just means it will need to contribute to the mythology and not just feed off it.

TV Review: Forever

 Forever is an amalgam of several other television shows and movies, which is what passes for creativity in the TV industry. The main character works in New York City law enforcement (as a medical examiner) and is immortal (New Amsterdam); his long life has trained him to be hyper-observant and he can deduce things based on trivial evidence (Elementary, Sherlock, Psych); we see flashbacks of his previous lives in other eras (Highlander); the main character is a physically attractive male non-police officer working with an attractive and unmarried female detective (Castle); the main character’s secret is known by a shadowy figure who apparently stages mass accidents in order to locate people who are immortal (um, spoiler alert, but that’s the plot of M. Night Shamaylan’s film Unbreakable).

The show’s biggest asset is its star, Ioan Gruffud. Probably best known for the inane Fantastic Four movies, Gruffud exudes an easy charm, aided by a crooked grin and a lilting accent (he’s Welsh). He hasn’t had much luck with American TV since his breakout role starring in the British adaptations of the Horatio Hornblower novels, shown in America on A&E; he co-starred with Sarah Michelle Geller in the one-season 2011 series Ringer, and he played a lawyer in the very short-lived (four episodes) 2004 show Century City (which can be accurately described in four words: LA Law in 2030).

But Gruffud’s charm is actually part of the problem. His attitude is light and breezy, but at the same time he talks about immortality being his curse.  It’s nice that he is multi-dimensional, but the disparity in tone is occasionally jarring. I know that the “morbid medical examiner” is a stereotype of mystery television, and that breaking clichés is good, but an ME who is happy-go-lucky is hard to accept.

The pilot episode established a few other tidbits of information. Gruffud’s character fell in love with an Army nurse in WWII and adopted a baby rescued from a Nazi concentration camp (in a nice reveal, the baby is now played by Judd Hirsch). Hirsch’s character is the only one who knows Gruffud’s secret, except for someone who keeps calling in a whispery voice claiming to also know. Gruffud is suspected of murder by an attractive New York detective (played by Alana de la Garza) who initially thinks he is the creepiest man she ever met (to be fair, his home is filled with death-related tchotchkes), but she eventually comes to appreciate his deductive skills.  She’s a widow whom we meet leaving a one-night stand, so there is the requisite sexual tension.

It is always hard to judge a show by its pilot. Can the producers come up with clever ways to keep using his immortality as a way to solve crimes? Will the characters prove to have interesting back stories? Can they mesh Gruffud’s jaunty insouciance with the downbeat aspects of his “curse?” The pilot has a lot going for it, but it fails to feel fresh or distinctive.  Elementary is doing the “Sherlock Holmes in modern New York” thing, the flashback devise was done to death by Highlander, and MEs solving murders got worn out with Quincy.

There is potential, but it is hard to imagine Forever pulling out of its cliché nosedive and living longer than 13 weeks.