The Hank Moody Complex

There are two types of episodes of Californication. The kind where David Duchovny's Hank Moody is a lovable rascal, albeit a drunk, pussy-chasing one. And then there's the kind where the rascal isn't so lovable, or where at the very least we see some of the negativity that we know would have to be inherent in his lifestyle, if he was a real person. There are a lot of instances in this show where "reality" isn't really priority one, and you can see the Hollywood machinations and glossification in the greasy sheen of Hank's charm. But sometimes the show takes a turn inward, examining what is very obviously a fucked up psyche in the guise of a womanizing boozehound, and it's always these instances that show me glimpses of what could very well be some of the finest characterization on television, perhaps even beyond that. Or maybe I just identify a little too much.

As a writer, it's easy to see myself in Hank. Writers seem to philosophize about writing in all the same generalized ways, and hearing what I think are my own personal ideas come out of Duchovny's mouth somehow validates them. I like to drink when I write, I like to wallow in writer's block for pity's sake, and I think cigarettes are sometimes vital to the creative process. Therefore, I often kid that Hank Moody is a vision of my future; somehow failed yet successful, with enough challenges in my life to motivate me, but not so much that I spiral out of control. Of course, this vision most often adheres to that first kind of Californication episode. So when I see Hank spiral out of control, maybe it hits a little closer to home for me. I know that I'm not necessarily doomed to become Hank (though it's not really all that doom-filled, in a big picture sort of way. He doesn't have it that bad), but watching a character I respect out of camaraderie descend to levels I hope I never have to stoop to myself makes me feel... well, I guess it just makes me feel.

Californication has continually infuriated me for this exact reason. Just when I think the show has settled into a certain world-view--like say, there are no happy endings--Tom Kapinos and Co. decide to pull the rug out from under me and (spoiler alert) decide that Karen will abandon her marriage to Bill and run away with Hank. As a viewer, I think I might have literally screamed as the seemingly happy family sped away, closing season 1 on a freeze-frame of the three smiling faces. For whatever reason, I felt that the show had not earned such an ending, that what made Hank so endearing was the fact that he seemed so condemned to lose no matter what he did, and was optimistic in spite of that. I was so angry that I didn't want to give the writers a chance to redeem themselves in the second season, but the allure of the character of Hank Moody is too hard to resist. Even just as a fictional character he's too charming to completely write off. I've said to multiple people that I could watch Hank Moody argue with a telemarketer for half an hour and enjoy it. Kudos to Duchovny for bringing that to the table, but that's not the point I'm trying to make. As enraging as it was to see the first season end on such an upbeat note after so much self-pity and -deprecation, I had to realize that there can't be any happy or sad endings until the actual end. Hank and Karen have had plenty of ups and downs, and that just happened to be an up.

Which brings me to the down. As I watched the season 3 finale, I could feel a sense of dread, knowing that the notorious Mia was due to return from her book tour and that if anything's going to fuck everything up, it's going to be the biggest secret Hank has left to hide. It was fairly obvious that this season was not going to end on an up. So it was hard to watch as Hank was forced to reveal his deepest and darkest self to Karen--who has had to put up with so much (so much) shit because of Hank--as "Rocket Man" drowned out the dialogue. We can't hear the words Hank says, but we know it's not good, because we know the secret Karen doesn't. And it tears me up inside just as much as I imagine it tore up Hank to have to tell her, to watch her cry, to avoid her flung fists, to be dragged into the street, to accidentally assault a police officer, and to be torn away from the family he's so desperately tried to make work. The recurring dream sequence of the episode summed it up quite succinctly. As Hank floats in a pool above a trio of swimming, nude nymphs (ghosts of trysts past) with a bottle of booze, Karen and Becca watch from the deck baiting him with accusatory questions before disappearing into the darkness. Finally, as Hank is on the pavement getting cuffed in real life, his dream self downs the bottle of whiskey and tips off the floating raft, sinking out of view, completely out of control.

It's rare for a show to walk a line so erratically, yet so effectively. These second sorts of episodes are few and far between, but when they come around, they hit me hard. The usual vague optimism shown by Hank, and generally supported by the rest of the show/characters as well sometimes just can't help him/me/us float above the shit that inevitably has to hit the fan. And so he and I sink to the bottom, to wait for the next chapter to take us one step closer to the ending, whether it's happy or not.

The Mash-Up: The Sopranos 1.4 X Jersey Shore 1.4

This is an experiment. It might piss some people off. But I'd like to introduce you to a new, hopefully recurring event that I'm tentatively calling The Mash-Up, in which I smash two recap/analyses together in order to form new conclusions about each show that would otherwise be hidden or perhaps just plain false without its point of comparison, all in a sort of Large Hadron Collider of Ideas. And like all good mash-ups, the things that seem to go together best are the critically lauded, musically complex beats topped with the trashiest, most ubiquitous, yet infectiously hooky pop tracks.

And so, The Sopranos and Jersey Shore seem to be destined for each other. The broad connections are obvious, i.e. a pretty raw portrayal of Italian-Americans (both raw enough to be damned as mere "stereotypes" by some of the media), set predominantly in New Jersey, not to mention that I happen to be on the 4th episode of the 1st season of The Sopranos, and that the 4th episode of the 1st season of Jersey Shore happens to air this week. And if these broad connections seem tenuous to you, I say: That's the point. Mash-ups rarely make any sense. But when they work, they're sometimes better than either original song was to begin with (at least until you listen to it too many times and get sick of it). Think of it like Dark Side of the Rainbow; it might seem really stupid, but it's still really fun to do sometimes. So here, for your pleasure (or extreme pain and displeasure, for some of you I imagine) is your Dark Side of the Rainbow of Italian-American-Based Television Analyses.

"Meadowlands" X "Fade To Black"
There are always repercussions to violence. A shot in the face, whether fist or bullet, premeditated or spontaneous, deserving or not, never goes unheard. Dr. Melfi said she doesn't understand "the climate of rage in American society; the casual violence." I wonder what she would think of what happened to poor Snooki.

Yes, Snooki got socked in the kisser, and even though MTV decided to black out the shot in question the whole event was really rather anticlimactic and didn't have much of a bearing on the episode as a whole. But it proved that violence has a profound affect on us as humans. The threat of it frightens us, but the prospect of seeing it firsthand excites us. The lead-up to it makes us talk about it and the climax of it inevitably lets us down. Violence is never what we expect, what we want, or what can solve what ails us. Tony Soprano knows this, which is why he has opted not to throw down with Uncle Junior and let the old man have his title while slowly working to dig out from underneath him. Even his colleagues acknowledge it's a smart move as they gather for the funeral of the fallen Jackie, having finally succumbed to his cancer. It's a death that I feel Tony in particular finds most unbecoming of the kind of man Jackie was (which of course we never really got to see). "What kind of God?" he lamented while Jackie laid on his deathbed spouting incoherent memories of his life, none of which having to do with The Family or the business that Tony will soon be burdened with, and this lament points us back to Tony's desire to die for a reason, as if he would prefer Jackie got bumped off instead of going relatively quietly in a hospital bed. Snooki, on the other hand, probably wishes she had had more of a reason to get knocked the fuck out, instead of just running her mouth to some jackass at a bar on the Jersey Shore.

The motivations of each of these two groups of proud Italian-Americans seem to be pretty disparate at first glance. One group wants power, the other seems to only want pussy (or just action in general I guess, but I was going for alliteration). But in the end isn't it all the same thing? The way the boyz on Jersey Shore manipulate and connive and control is strikingly similar to the power plays of the Soprano clan, the wardrobe is just different. Instead of track jackets and gold chains, they have... well, they're shirtless with gold chains instead. There's a camaraderie, a downright brotherhood between these doods that rivals that of Tony's gang for loyalty. DJ Pauly D dives on a "Grenade" for The Situation, a Grenade being an annoying uggo cockblock (I'm paraphrasing what Pauly wouldn't stop more or less implying) just so The Situation can blow the whole shebang (hah) by being way too wasted. Maybe it was when they ditched the girls the first time to follow some other girls in a Mercedes like flies to a bug zapper. Maybe it was when they told the Mercedes girls to beat it when the first girls came back, and told the first girls the whole situation. Or maybe it was Pauly bailing on being wingman, followed closely by The Situation bailing on even trying to entertain the Grenade. But it was pretty obvious from the get-go that the whole situation for The Situation was pretty fucked, and not in the way he might have preferred.

But the group o' Guidos (MTV has decided this isn't racist right? It's a "lifestyle choice") hang tuff together. They even convene in a barbershop to talk shop (their shop being, you know, banging) just like Tony and his boys talk their shop (killin' and such) in the back of a strip club. And whether it be talking sexual conquest over a couple of haircuts or talking Mafia power grabs over a couple of lobsters, it gets the job done. These are the rituals of the clans. Tony speaks to his uncle in very prepared, proper prose, so as not to offend. The Jersey Shoremen "beat the beat" and do the Fist Pump in the club. These are two very different Jerseys we see in these two shows, but somehow, they connect. Everything is interchangeable. The habits are different but serve similar purposes. Everyone is very close to their mothers. The accent is mostly the same across the board. And appearances are of the utmost importance.

Tony's paranoia and apparent narcissism are again on display as he doubts the safety of him continuing therapy and risking exposure as a nutcase. Ronnie's paranoia and blatant narcissism are on display as he stalks home shirtless from the club because a girl he is sort-of-but-definitely-not dating gave somebody her number as he danced with another girl. The two are one and the same. Ronnie cried into the bosom of his beloved Sammi while Tony popped another pill. The world was right again. Until next week, that is, when the repercussions kick in.
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Alright, so that was pretty fucking difficult. Maybe I wasn't in the right frame of mind, or maybe Jersey Shore is just a completely vapid, empty show compared to The Sopranos. But it couldn't be the latter. Anyway, the big hullaballoo about the Punch That Rocked The Snooki was all I really wanted to talk about in doing this, and I think I achieved my purpose.

Addenda et cetera
-- The theme for this week being "there are always repercussions," it's an interesting subplot developing with Anthony Jr, who now knows that his father is not just a garbage man. His longing gaze at his dad at Jackie's funeral tells me that this kid is seriously disturbed about all this. At least until he sees the kind of power it brings him and totally gets corrupted.
-- The dream sequence at the beginning of this episode answered a question that's been brewing in my head for a while now: Tony definitely finds Dr. Melfi attractive. 20 bucks says something comes of this. Also fairly telling that this is the dream he has when he is post-coitally napping with his mistress.
-- This week was all about punching people in the face: Snooki got herself popped, as did Tony Jr, as did Mikey the Henchman (along with a couple of staples to the chest... eesh. Dr. Melfi wasn't kidding about the climate of violence).
-- A question I wrote down for myself that will most likely continue to be dealt with: Is Tony a good father? He seems to have a good relationship with the boy (though that's probably about to change), but the daughter is too busy taking crystal meth. So at this point it's kind of a toss-up.

Loaded Lines

• "Focus through distractions. That's a lesson for you." - Tony to Tony Jr.
• "Don't ever say you hate life. That's blasphemy." - Christopher to Meadow
• "Those people went through World War II." - Tony re: his mother and Uncle Junior
  

So the experiment may or may not have been successful, but it was a good try. Maybe I'll get better at it with a little more thought given to subject selection, but I think it went over pretty well. The suggestion box is open for future mash-ups, doesn't have to be Sopranos related, I just wanted to break up the monotony of these write-ups. I promise I'll do some other TV coverage soon, but The Sopranos is too addicting; I just want to watch them already. But keep checking back because I still want to write about: The Faux-Seinfeld Reunion, The It's Always Sunny Xmas Special and Why The F-Word Isn't As Funny As Some People Think, and maybe some coverage of the ubiquitous Holiday-Themed Programming we're all going to be subjected to if we haven't been already. Stay with us, we'll be right back.

Watch Me Watch: The Sopranos 1.3 -- "Denial, Anger, Acceptance"

"And the Romans, where are they today?"

"You're lookin' at 'em asshole."

I proved myself eerily prescient in my first recap with my off-handed comment on the similarities between Italian mothers and Jewish mothers. Lo and behold, the very next episode is all about a tenuous (at best) relationship between The Dons and The Rabbis (sounds like a couple of plus-30 softball teams). And we finally start to see some fallout from past crimes committed.

The repercussions are minor, for the moment, mostly shunted to the side with a quick "Call the police" from the owner of the trucking company when Christopher and his doof friend (whose name is rendered unimportant by the conclusion of the episode) return the truck they stole. Of course, nothing comes of the supposed call, or the idea is abandoned all together when Christopher fires his gun in the air and tells the guy he owes Tony Soprano a thank you. Either way, we never see any cops.

The other, more significant consequence of previous violent outbursts comes to the chagrin of poor, restaurantless Artie Bucco. Sure, Tony burned the place to the ground to help Artie. If he hadn't, increasingly menacing Uncle Junior woulda shot a guy in the middle of all the suburban families that frequented Bucco's to begin with and he would have been even more shit out of luck than he is with a pile of burnt embers. But he still put the guy out of a job. And it tears Tony up inside to see his friend in such dire straits.

Tony's guilt is ripe for Dr. Melfi's office, which taunts him with the barn painting above. Tony assumes the painting is some kind of trick, a mockery of his supposed "condition," meant to make him feel small, and he does not take this kind of treatment lightly. Dr. Melfi (and we as an audience, mostly) knows that there is no malice in the painting, or if there is, there is only that which we put in it ourselves, and Tony's reaction to it falls in line with the episode's title. It's damn near terrifying the level of emotion Tony releases on us, a credit to James Gandolfini for sure, and it comes out in (maybe not-so-)surprisingly violent ways. There is a point in the episode where Tony is threatening to castrate a man who does not comply with his demands, and when they cut away from that scene to another location, I found myself unsure whether or not he would actually go through with it. He certainly looked capable of it. And it was pretty scary.

Tony is afraid of the rotted out tree and ominous barn because of what it forces him to acknowledge within himself. He feels terrible for Artie Bucco losing his restaurant, so much so that he invites him to cater a fundraising event Carmella somehow got talked to putting on. Carmella's subplot would have been utterly useless if Tony didn't use it as a vehicle for redemption with Artie, but I'm sure Mrs. Soprano will get her day in the sun. But in the end, Tony and Artie end up flinging hors d'oeuvres at each other. Once again, the scene is unclear if Tony and Artie are actually really fucking pissed at each other, until you realize they're flinging hors d'oeuvres at each other. Mobsters do not have food fights. Soon their small laughs escape and tell us (and a lurking Carmella) that all is calm, for now.

But all was not calm up to this point. A stubborn Jewish son-in-law proves difficult to the normal handlers of Paulie and Silvio (and I'm getting the hang of who's who... slowly) when they realize that the man will not give in, to the death if necessary, and they're forced to call Tony. Enter the Big Man himself, and proceed with the almost-castration. But the whole culture clash between the Jews and the Romans (as referenced in the quote I pulled at the top) pointed to some pretty hefty thematic luggage.

It could be construed that Tony sees himself as the ruler of an empire, and that empire is not to be fucked with by those it threatens, or even those that hire them to threaten those it threatens. In the end, when the Rabbi tries to (pardon the phrase, but it's especially apt in the metaphor) "Jew out" of the deal struck at the beginning of the episode, Tony nearly "Romans out" all over his ass. Tony might think of himself as Augustus Caesar holding down a tentative pax Romana, but if he's anybody he is Nero, a paranoid pseudo-king sitting on a hill that will be soon be consumed by flames. Coincidentally, Nero's rule happened to cement him into both Jewish and early Christian tradition, the latter even suspecting him of being the Antichrist. There's a lot to read in Tony in this episode and it all comes back to the barn. He practically screams, "I know I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid ENOUGH?" in Dr. Melfi's face.

So Tony's power comes at a price. As mentioned in the last write-up, he must walk a line that seems to be getting thinner under his very feet, and he seems to be continually forced to deal with the dilemma of offering someone his help who is reluctant to take it (Artie), and giving his help to someone who is unable, or unwilling, to pay for it (the Rabbi). Both of these cases realize the blessings and burdens of Tony's seemingly benevolent hand, but the two have a very different level of respect for it. Bucco's Italian, he knows what'll happen if things go sour, and how he can avoid things going sour at all, while the Rabbi tries to play Tony for a sap. Nero does not stand for that kind of shit.

Tony concludes his therapy for this episode with a contemplative thought on his own humanity. He is not afraid to die, if he has to die for a cause. A war, love, something he can believe in. But to be helpless over your own fate, something Tony doesn't realize that most of us will have to deal with at some point, terrifies him. Watching his close friend slowly die from cancer, dying without a cause as it were, tears him up inside, just like watching the Buccos reject his attempted charity, just like the dream about unscrewing his penis, just like the rotten tree. Every last bit of it tortures him beyond belief. 3 episodes in and I'm already talking like this?! I have a feeling Tony is going to go through hell before this series is over.

Addenda & et cetera
-- Tony was almost too densely packed, I hardly talked about anyone else. Meadow (which is a weird name for a person) cautiously approached Christopher and his doof friend about acquiring some "crystal" as a "study aid." Sorry honey, tell your wonky-looking gal-pal that crystal meth will probably not increase your SAT score. I can only expect this plotline to end badly.
-- Speaking of Christopher's doof friend, he's dead now. You can only fuck up so many times before you're kicked off the team. He had an awesome death scene though. The first of many I hope.
-- Alluded to above, Uncle Junior is becoming more ruthless than I bargained for. Watching two old people (him and Tony's mother) subtextually talk about murder while standing in a retirement community is downright unsettling.
-- The sound design was absurdly oppressive in this episode. Cars whooshing by, background noise so distracting it makes me rethink what I said about Jersey being not so bad. It was noticeable in a mostly good way.
-- In contrast to Tony's view of death, consider Christopher's reaction to being dragged to the end of a pier by assassins that don't even speak his language. His fear, and subsequent gratitude when the gun turns out to be empty (and the non-English-speaking assassin crosses himself, in another pretty badass scene), prove that maybe Tony was right. Kids today don't believe in The Family, can't commit to its ideals, or maybe just aren't ready to die for its causes like Tony is. I'd like to know what Christopher is willing to die for.
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And as a bit of a preview:
Come back for treatises on why cartoons aren't just for kids (but some are), David Duchovny, the Faux-Seinfeld Reunion, more Sopranos, and other possibly exasperating topics, after I return to some form of sanity after being on the road alone and in silence for two straight days. Forgive me if I begin to refer to the TV schedule in CDT, or if I subject you to a dissertation called The Road to Rhode Island: Campbell's Heroic Journey as Portrayed By Brian and Stewie Griffin. I'll have nothing to do but think while I'm out there, so some weird things might come out. Maybe it'll be cool. We'll just have to wait and see.

Thursday Funnies, or: The NBC Thursday Night Comedy Line-Up Is Akin to The Best Supergroup You've Ever Heard or the NBA All-Star Game

Maybe a little superfluous, but let me explain.

From what I understand from reading "trades" (ugh.), NBC seems to be a 4th place network in a 4 man race (The CW isn't even running at this point, chugging along out of breath at about the 2K mark, if you wanna run with the metaphor, and make bad puns about running with the metaphor about running), and it's not exactly helping its own case most of the time. That guy with the chin that won't go away now takes up a full hour of primetime every evening, even though nobody (don't let the ads fool you) asked for that kind of "gift" from NBC. But if NBC doesn't have the best one-night lineup in all of television, I couldn't tell you what does. And that night is NBC Comedy Thursday.

Lemme break it down for ya:

Community
The new kid on the block, Community had the privilege of debuting with a lead-in from The Office, before being pushed to the beginning of the night to give 30 Rock its seat back. Community is like the DJ that spins at the party early, before anybody cool really shows up, but is playing deep cuts off The Knife's Deep Cuts for nobody but himself. This is a show that is in love with itself, though without a chip on its shoulder, a show that is too good for an 8pm time slot, a show that holds its head high in a crowd of giants. There are a few good reasons for this, but number 1 with a bullet in my book is Donald Glover.

I'll devote a lot more time and effort to the laudable qualities of Donald Glover here, but to put it shortly, I've never seen anyone on TV that makes me crack up like Donald Glover. Charlie Day comes close, but think about it: Donald Glover wrote for 30 Rock, jumped that ship (that's right. He was too good for 30 Rock) to star on Community, along with producing albums, updating a very funny twitter account and posting a blog with Kanye levels of cool shit, and generally being the funniest person on NBC. Aziz Ansari has been outstanding as well (more on that below), but Donald Glover has a je ne sais quois that makes me giddy. Check out this clip from this week's episode:



That is a dedicated delivery. Plus, Troy and Abed are truly a Dynamic Duo of Comedy. Those two could have their own show and I'd watch it. But aside from my career-crush (not a man-crush, but similar) on Donald Glover, the cast is solid (Joel McHale and Chevy Chase are two more strong points, as well as Annie, the most hopelessly pathetically endearing character on primetime), the writing is solid, the setting is solid. A good start to the evening. Which brings me to...

Parks and Recreation
NBC made a good choice putting its two most similar (and probably strongest, viewer-wise) shows in the heart of the order. P&R is the up-and-comer. No longer a rookie struggling in a new league, it's found its own way to contribute to the team, due in no small part to the mentoring it received from its predecessor The Office, a show it emulates without being a total rip-off of. Again, the cast is the show's ace-in-the-hole, with Amy Poehler, Aziz Ansari, and Nick Offerman standing out as the heavy hitters.

Aziz Ansari (who I once saw browsing the noodle aisle of Trader Joe's in Silverlake, which I will never tire of telling people about) is somebody to watch out for especially, as demonstrated by one particular sight gag from last night's episode that I can't find a clip of (the whole "Do I look sad? Look at my face." bit) that was particularly noteworthy. Plus he's friends with James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem, which I will always regret not knowing when I saw him at the grocery store, because I could have totally been friends with both of them. But yes, Parks and Recreation has gone from an awkward Office-Lite to something all its own, probably paradoxically by modeling itself after a show with its own growing pains that was based on something already beloved. That of course is...

The Office
The Office is the old veteran, still putting up good numbers but showing signs of age (though don't think it can't still hit it out of the park every now and then). It's the cornerstone of the comedy block, giving America a new, apparently much-needed Ross-and-Rachel, Luke-and-Laura situation. America needs to root for love I guess, because America is a nation of escapists, but that's beside the point (and not meant to stir up any shit), but The Office provides, and while the entire cast has arguably been turned into caricatures, the writers somehow manage to eke out new bits of character and emotion. It makes me think that this could be a show like The Simpsons (blasphemy to some people I know) that could go on for years and hit its stride somewhere between seasons 5 and 9, the difference being that it's much harder to hold a cast for that long on a live action show, and it's fairly obvious (or at least implied, if you think I'm reaching) Steve Carrell is gearing up for an exit within the next couple years, if not at the end of this one.

This week's episode reveled in the excruciating awkwardness of seasons past (always a good thing), and slowly continued the show's evolving plot of Jim's gradual decline into Michael-hood. It's really the most excruciating thing the show has ever subjected us to (and remember the Dundies? Excruciating. Am I saying excruciating too much?), watching who was once the show's most sympathetic, down-to-earth character turn into the show's most cartoonish, buffoonish, outright foolish one. It's an interesting set up, since Dwight's (and now Ryan's) plan to systematically destroy Jim may end up saving him from going full-on middle management, and becoming everything that he hates (but maybe secretly loves, or at least has empathy for?) about Michael. That is, depending on which side wins.

But anyway, The Office is basically the center star that the rest of the night revolves around, offering the peak possible comedy viewership, and for many might be the end of the evening. But those many are missing out on...

30 Rock
The comedy culmination. After an hour and a half of comedy, 30 Rock takes it to its logical conclusion: completely, absurdly insane. Those uncomfortable with 30 Rock's type of comedy most likely switch off after The Office, leaving Tina Fey for the rest of us weirdos. Sure the show saw a little boost with the elections and Sarah Palin, but that was mostly Tina Fey's exposure, not the show's, and didn't necessarily prepare anybody that saw her on SNL for the show she left it for. Because it's fucking weird sometimes.

There's been a backlash of late that 30 Rock "isn't as good as it used to be" (which in my opinion is so bullshit a criticism of any show it makes me blind, but I'll save that rant for later), and that in part could be blamed on the heaps and heaps of critical success piled onto it, as well as the SNL connection. People hear good things from so many different directions, they start to notice, and then the network notices that people are noticing, and things go to shit. In my opinion, and what is this blog but my stupid opinions, 30 Rock's been pandering a little, but not so much as to make it into King of Queens in a writer's room, and it's still capable of its former greatness, like Geovany Soto (at least I hope Soto's capable of former greatness, but that's a different blog). This week's episode was an edifying example of what 30 Rock is capable of, and what it's capable of is insanely layered self-referential winking postmodernism.

The whole show being about a show very similar to Tina Fey's old show, this week stepped it up a notch to include yet another allusion to real life: Liz Lemon leaves TGS (temporarily) to film her own talk show, and finds herself a victim of all the trappings of performing that she has to deal with with Tracy and Jenna in every fucking episode that came before, much like how Tina Fey left her (not-so?) cushy writing job on SNL to star in her own show (that show being based on the show where she had the cushy writing job that she left to star in her own show... whoa.). This is why 30 Rock is the perfect way to wash down a night of comedy. It's just absurbly meta enough to keep the smartie-pants intellectual NPR-types the show continually ironically lampoons (knowing that that's their actual audience, in yet another example of your typical 30 Rock headspin) watching, or perhaps not to continue watching, but turn on in the first place, as these smartie-pants intellectual liberal-types seem to think themselves too good for the old tricks of The Office (this smartie-pants liberal not included, for the record). But the fact of the matter is, those who decide to end their NBC viewing at 9:30 are missing out on the most demanding show on television (besides Glee, which is demanding in a different, more infuriating way).
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So why is NBC a 4th place network? My answer: Jay Leno. And Ben Silverman (the guy who ran the whole network into the ground in the past few years, who not-so-coincidentally is responsible for Jay Leno at 10pm). But that's missing the very funny forest for some stupid trees (or is it vice versa?). This is the best 2 hours on television (at least until the Lost season premiere), all on one network . Another great thing about Thursday? All your network comedy is over just in time to switch over to It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Because who wants to watch the news?

Having said that (and I can now never say that without thinking of Curb Your Enthusiasm, which I am considering as a topic for this space some point in the future), there remains the ever-looming quandary of on-demand viewing, where people can set their own TV schedules on a whim. I have my own personal lineup for these shows when I watch them on Hulu, but that's just my preference. In a dying age of TV programming (as in the literal programming and lineup choices, not necessarily the programs themselves), NBC has given us a lineup of Yankee-ian proportions. Mixed sports metaphors and all, it's a block I will continue to visit, at least until all these Thursday TV friends move away.

Watch Me Watch: The Sopranos 1.1 and 1.2 -- "Pilot" and "46 Long"

First off, I have to admit to something. I have never seen an entire Godfather film. I went through 4 years of film school and never sat through what many believe to be one (two?) of the greatest American films of all time, one that shaped and humanized the crime drama into what we (or at least I) today identify with Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, dons, "whacking," and the East Coast, particularly NYC and Jersey (complete with accents). So admittedly, watching The Sopranos with no working knowledge of the genre is almost akin to having never read a superhero comic and deciding to start with Watchmen. But the gangster genre, while I've never really gravitated towards it (never seen Goodfellas, Casino, or Scarface either, though I do happen to love Raekwon's Only Built 4 Cuban Linx), is so ubiquitous, so uniquely American that we all already have at least a preliminary knowledge of the devices and stereotypes found within it. And perhaps this is why The Sopranos, and the Godfather films, never really appealed to me. Plus I'm not Italian. But as the decade comes to a close and I read over and over again the debate between The Wire and The Sopranos as the best shows of the past ten years, I find myself curiously drawn to the HBO crime drama (not the one in Baltimore, though I've only seen one season of that as well), more as a student of television than out of some cliched love for gangsters and made men.

That said, I can see why The Sopranos was so insanely popular at the turn of the millennium. It's the perfect mash-up, one of Girl-Talk-ian proportions, combining as many possible different premises into one entity, and just like Girl Talk or Super Mash Bros., the fun part is identifying the parts of the whole and how they fit together. It's a workplace/family/psychological drama, and I get that only from the first two episodes. Who knows how much more will come to light like a barely recognized Journey sample over the course of the show's six seasons?

I should also premise this admittedly ambitious endeavor to chronicle the series by saying that not much has been spoiled for me. Yeah I know how it ends, but it seems like it was so ambiguous that it doesn't really matter. And really, knowing the ending without having the in-between isn't as much of a loss as I once thought (at the same time, if anybody spoiled Lost for me right now, I'd flip a shit, so it's goes both ways I suppose). I know most everyone eventually dies, but at this point I can barely tell you anybody's name outside of Tony, so it doesn't really matter as long as I avoid any specifics from here on out. So in my opinion, this is as about as virginal a viewpoint as anyone's really going to get, given how insanely popular the show was in its original run.

All this brings me to the first two hours. I'm not really sure how I plan to go about these recap/reviews, but I suppose it'll be just that: a little recap, a little review, with some hopefully entertaining ramblings and philosophizing sprinkled in for flavor.

"Pilot"
To return to the mash-up analogy, the pilot episode sets up a number of different premises. This is a show about a man in therapy. This is a show about a man's issues with his family. This is a show about a man who is, literally and figuratively, a boss, and all the pressure and dilemma that that might entail. This is a show about Italian-Americans in New Jersey. This is a show about many things but immediately from the pilot you can tell, and this is true of all great shows, that this is a show about characters. No matter how you choose to pick apart the series, the characters are what make you invest your time, and I find it interesting how these particular characters fall into established norms. Each person we meet in the pilot is almost archetypal (in as much as television and filmic entertainment in general has created its own archetypes. Yes, I'm elevating it to that heady of a level, get used to it, it's kind of my thing), the conflicted criminal, the infidelious husband, the young buck trying to make his way up the ladder, the mother-daughter conflict, every single thing about the show isn't necessarily something we haven't seen before, but like I said, it's a mash-up.

The pilot opens with the brooding mass that is Tony Soprano in therapy. Having recently suffered an anxiety attack, he's been forced to subject himself to the humiliating process of sharing his feelings. The disparity is immediately obvious, the tough gangster having to talk about his feelings about the ducks that lived in his pool. As he relates the events leading up to his collapse and we meet the population of Tony's world, it's never not clear that the ducks he keeps coming back to are the avatar of a deeper problem. A heavy-handed metaphor perhaps, but in a pilot it's probably better to get your point across as clear as you can. If the series wasn't more nuanced over its run, I can't imagine it holding its audience as long as it did. But ham-fisted or no, it's a credit to Tony's intelligence that he doesn't need to be told outright that the ducks are an outlet for his own inadequacies as a family man. He gets it. The comparison is right in front of him. He just doesn't want to admit it to himself that someone like him could be so affected by a family of ducks in his pool, just because of the emotional parallels he draws between the ducks and his own kin. (Interesting side-note, and I may have just missed seeing him, but I believe the father duck is absent when we see Tony dip into the pool, bathrobe and all, just to feed the ducklings. A telling detail)

As we meet his compatriots in crime, and learn of the tumultuous times occurring in organized crime we see that this apparent softness has a very real effect on Tony's livelihood. The Family (capitalized so as to designate itself from Tony's actual family) is in flux, and Tony has been indirectly accused of not being as hard-nosed as his predecessor. He certainly doesn't seem all that pussified when he runs over a terrified debtor in a car that's not even his, in broad daylight. In fact much of the violence committed in the first two episodes, particularly that committed by Tony himself, comes off as nothing more than an Act of God, an inevitability, something that just happens and you can't really do anything or complain about it. I'm sure the series will explore the consequences of its violence, but starting off this way implies the innate (and admittedly terrifying) power of the Family, and especially of Tony, The Patriarch. It makes you scared of the man, but at the same time, Tony himself muses on the fine line he must walk, one thinner and more treacherous than that of anyone else, since if he goes too far one way or the other, too hard or too soft, he's liable to piss somebody off and get himself whacked, which is most likely one of the most persistent tensions throughout the entire series. In short, the pilot achieves a lot in 50-odd minutes. Tony's almost immediately deified, iconic, something to feared and loved at the same time. Probably why everybody watching latched on so quickly.

"46 Down"
The second episode makes us get our hands dirty. We're hijacking trucks full of DVD players (a "new technology," apparently, dating the show in a way I wasn't really expecting) and Italian suits. But the interesting part of this episode for me isn't the crime aspect of organized crime, but rather twofold: Tony's mother, for one, and the more meta- elements sprinkled in, for another.

I can see Tony's mother becoming one-note pretty quickly without some variation on the "poor me, I'm old and nobody loves me" schtick, but up front, I find her one of the more fascinating problems in Tony's life. And it never occurred to me the parallels between a typical Italian mother and a typical Jewish mother. It's clear that she's really the biggest thorn in Tony's side, moreso than a bumbling Christopher and his meth-head associate, moreso than a wife that barely trusts him (and rightfully so given his past and present indiscretions), moreso than having to go to therapy even if he doesn't want to. In fact, the relationship between Tony and his mother is almost necessary for the therapy device to work (since as Tony even points out, therapy is all whining about your issues with your mommy), so it makes sense that she's so goddamned infuriating.

The other, more postmodern aspect, and what probably makes The Sopranos so critically acclaimed (critics love postmodernism), is the constant references to what we already know. The episode opens with the mobsters watching former mobster John Gotti being interviewed and talking about the current state of organized crime, i.e. it's falling apart, it's not the same as it once was, it's a cliche now, which is exactly what I was thinking all the times people told me to watch The Sopranos and I didn't want to. Gangsters are cliche. But when you take cliched gangsters and have them comment on how cliched they themselves are, it all of a sudden is acceptable. This is more a critique of how accepted postmodernism is, and how easy it is to take something that's been done a thousand times before and all of a sudden transform it into something credible and worthwhile than a critique of the show itself, but most of the time it works. Toying with genre conventions is fun and cool, but sometimes it seems too easy to me. But of course, in the postmodern age, it's not easy to escape genre conventions, or the comparisons to genre inventions, so I suppose the fact that The Sopranos embraces it and addresses it right away is somewhat admirable. Much like the mother-Tony relationship though, this postmodernism is tied into the themes of the show, as well as Tony's character. He himself laments the passing of the old ways, how nobody's willing to serve some time for the Family, instead eating cheese and turning government witness, pretty much fucking over the entire organization on a fundamental, structural level. Again, probably another reason the show had so much success, but more from a critic's angle than an audience's angle.

In all, the first two episodes proved to me, a non-believer, that there is life left in the gangster genre, something I had written off and previously had no interest in. Watching the series from a 2009 point of view might skew me a little, but when I remind myself that this postmodernity seems trite now, it was pretty revolutionary in 1999.

Addenda and et cetera
- I hope to use this setup as a way to pace myself, seeing as how I tend to watch in large chunks, marathonning 5 episodes in a row or more, but I'll do my best to slow myself down, so as not to subject you all with massive 6-episode-recaps-in-a-single-post kinds of scenarios.
- I also hope that this wasn't too long-winded and that everybody made it through. It's a work in progress, and although I'm more or less using the AV Club's TV Club template I hope it evolves into something a little more unique.
- Unmentioned above: Tony's truly terrifying dream described at the end of the pilot episode, where he unscrews his belly button and his penis falls off, only to be scooped up and flown off with by, you guessed it, a duck (or at least some kind of waterfowl).
- Also unmentioned above: In relation to the overall meta-ness of the gangster genre, one of my favorite moments of the second episode was a brief, and completely pointlessly gratuitous, cameo by Martin Scorsese. Christopher's response of "Marty! Kundun! I loved it!" was a nice punchline.
- At first I laughed at how dated and ugly a lot of the clothing and hairstyles were in 1999 (God, it doesn't seem that long ago, does it?), but I'm starting to think it's more of a comment on the Jersey/faux-riche culture the show takes place in. Were we all really still wearing track suits and teasing our hair like it was the late 80s in the late 90s, or are these people just stuck in the past? I'm thinking the latter.
- Speaking of Jersey though, for being hyped as an industrial wasteland, its representation in a lot of pop culture doesn't seem so bad. The whole state's basically a glorified suburb, but really, who can compete with NYC? And between this and Garden State, Jersey doesn't seem so bad. Quite lush and green in fact.

This is the beginning of what may be an arduous endeavor, but I hope I can continue with some fresh (and maybe a little more original) observations. As for future plans for the space here, I'll present you with some TV history, ponderings on the current and future state of television, and some unnecessarily academic readings of some of my favorite shows. I hope everyone is ready to hear why Lost is our generation's Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, and The Odyssey all rolled into one.

Why I Watch

Let me begin by explaining just how much I love television. There are days when I have nothing to watch, and these days are the bane of my existence. A day gone by without at least an hour of new, compelling television is more or less a day I could have done without. I habitually binge-watch, burning through series I haven't seen (or certain ones I have that I can't get enough of). I read television reviews, something that I feel is relatively new and exciting, in terms of week-to-week coverage of shows I watch. And I watch a lot of shows.

We're in a Golden Age of Television; quite possibly the last age of any kind of television before we head to a more Non-Spontaneous-Dissemination (i.e. OnDemand, Hulu, et al.) model. It's the last gasp of a dying (or maybe just evolving) industry, and it's turning out to be its most profound. Where, when, and in what circumstance could you possibly see the widest possible variety of programming, ranging in quality, subject matter, presentation, and pretty much every other variable you can think of? There are comedies, there are dramas, there are dramedies. There are hour-long shows, half-hour long shows, made-for-TV movies, multi-part miniseries, and pilots that time has forgotten. There are "absurdist" comedies, "mainstream" comedies, "edgy" dramas, "popcorn" dramas and everything in between. There are shows about cops, and shows about criminals (and some about both). There are science fiction shows and western shows. There are shows set in the past, the present, the future, and shows set in a time all their own. There are shows you can't miss, and there are shows that you can pick up anytime like an old hat and it'll fit just the same. There are news shows, reality shows, competition shows, niche shows, cartoons for kids, cartoons for adults, shows that are made just for the awards, shows that are made just for the cheap laughs, some shows that are good, some shows that suck (some that suck in a fun way, others not so much), and some shows that are just plain fucking phenomenal (and the amount of these on the air at this very moment is insane). I try not to discriminate.

Television is quite possibly the most underrated art form in existence, relegated to archaic nicknames we're all so tiredly familiar with. "Television rots your brain," they say, but who doesn't watch an episode of Lost or Battlestar Galactica and have their mind blown apart? Television can be almost Dickensianly serialized at times, a long-form storytelling device that spins worlds that can rival that of Marvel, or more Hardy-Boys-ian-ly episodic, week-to-week stories that shift over time to incorporate new characters and adventures, and it's this incredible range of possibility that makes television so impressive. We're creating the mythologies of our age in the shows we watch, and I intend to study and document these myths with vigor and vim. I watch things, I think about them, I share them with you. That's the plan. And I leave you now with what I imagine you've all been expecting me to leave you with: Stay tuned. There's a spot on the couch for you.