In the current DVR back-catalog
stock-taking, I’m struggling, because most of the shows that have been sitting
on my DVR are ones I already know I like, but haven't had time to keep up with. I’m abandoning some of the shows that are "on
the bubble" for me, or at least I'm taking a break to see whether I miss them—but there
aren’t many shows on the bubble right now. So how am I deciding what to cut? I’m probably influenced by a
sort of television endowment effect: I
value things that I’ve already invested time in—however short that time—than things
I haven’t, since I know the former better, and their characters seem more like friends. I also have to consider the show’s trajectory. If it’s something I’ve been watching for a
while, have I been enjoying recent iterations more, or less, than the previous
ones? If the show’s on a downward
trajectory, I’m more likely to cut my losses.
Most important, though, is whether I want to spend more time with the
characters as people. If I like them--or at least find them interesting--I'm much more likely to be curious about
who they are and what they’ll do. The result is that shows about
unlikeable or unsympathetic people, even though they’re often
thought-provoking, tend to drop off early in the spring-cleaning process. Even if the plots are interesting, watching those
shows feels like work.
So this week’s assemblage has
nothing in common except that they’re all waiting for reviews, and in the
spirit of stock-taking, I’m moving them off my plate and onto my blog.
I’ll begin with two SimonBakers for The Red Road (Sundance,
new. Drama), a glum, grey-area drama about
a sheriff who makes moral compromises, shot with indy-film pacing in indy-film
tones. It was relatively well reviewed,
but I was so bored 20 minutes into the pilot that I traded my time for whatever
quality might be hiding there.
The
100 (CW, new.
Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi).
Watched: First two episodes
Premise: 97 years after the Earth is irradiated by nuclear
war, the remnants of humanity send 100 teenagers to Earth to see whether it has
become habitable.
Promise: The show was moderately well reviewed, and
someone I respect described the pilot script as having “lost him in the first
10 pages and gotten him back by the end.”
As promised, the show totally lost me within the first ten minutes. My
thinking went like this: So let me get
this straight. The geopolitical situation on earth is bad enough to wipe out
the planet by nuclear war, and then the 12 nations with space stations managed
to settle their differences in a few short years. Wow.
But OK, Iet’s accept that. So
they decide to merge their space stations create a joint habitat in space,
which apparently is totally technologically feasible. Got it.
To keep population low, they execute anyone who commits even the tiniest
infraction, unless they’re minors. I
guess they took their legal system from that Star Trek episode where the aliens
wanted to execute Wesley for playing ball wrong. OK. So
when they decide to test Earth’s habitability using the extremely scarce materials they have to build a space capsule
capable of reentry, they have a lot of choices, including sending a small team
of scientists with EVA suits, instruments, communications technology, a clear
mission, and an authority structure.
Instead, they send 100 convicted/incarcerated teens, with no gear, no
instructions, no mission, no authority structure, and—given that they’re all convicts
of one sort or another—widespread contempt for any attempt to impose such
structure. Yep, that’s totally the best
choice.
But ultimately, my friend’s
assessment was right. The interesting
part here is the group dynamics among these kids as they experience the
challenges of an unfamiliar and unmonitored environment. The kids are just as diverse and impulsive as
you’d expect, and the result is an interesting social laboratory. The same is true for the adults,
who are monitoring the kids’ health and struggling with the sociopolitical
challenges of extreme scarcity. And the
new Earth is a sort of character in itself, as we learn about how different it
is from the Earth we know and—as we discover at the end of the episode—has both
threats and promises we didn’t anticipate.
As for the characters, they’re
mostly archetypes rather than people (all the way down to <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GogglesDoNothing">Goggles
Boy</a> and <a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/NotSoDifferent">“We’re not so different, you and I”</a>), but they’re archetypes of
the sort I expect will gain nuance over the season. Nearly everyone has some moral ambiguity,
which gives us hints of complexity to come.
They’re all CW beautiful, and the show provides a surprising diversity
of gender and race roles, although its models of leadership trend irresistibly toward
men as violent dictators and women as peacemakers and caretakers. (The boys are also generally horndogs about
the girls. I would love to see a gay
subplot in there somewhere.) But in all, it could be a lot worse. It’s still full of plot gaps, and it’s still
full of SF tropes. But mostly it makes you
not notice so much.
Verdict: I was really wishing I could delete this for
space. (Ahahahaha, space and
scarcity. How apropos.) But I really quite enjoy it so far.
Last
Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO, new. News satire.)
Watched: First 7 episodes
Premise: Daily Show alum John Oliver’s weekly
news/satire roundup.
Promise: Strong, funny
satire, very much in the same vein as The Daily Show, although a bit more
ascerbic. The show begins with a news
roundup and then alternates longer, more in-depth segments on topical subjects with
shorter, but equally topical, gags. If
Saturday Night Live’s Weekend Update segment is The Soup, this is The PBS
NewsHour, often tackling harder topics than The Daily Show, with less
mercy. Unlike The Daily Show, there are
no regular reporters or correspondents; Oliver delivers all of the information
and humor. It’s adroitly done and
satisfying for those who, like me, enjoy observational satire.
Verdict: A funny and sometimes trenchantly thought
provoking half-hour.
Halt
and Catch Fire (AMC, new. Period
drama.)
Watched: first two episodes
Premise: A trio of innovators with difficult
personalities team up to change the future of personal computing in the 1980s.
Promise: The show takes its title from a fabled
computer code at the time that would (I’m paraphrasing) force the machine
to treat every process as an emergency, thereby irretrievably paralyzing the
machine by taking away its ability to prioritize. It’s an interesting metaphor for the show, in
which the characters’ disorganized rush toward innovation is often at
cross-purposes with itself. The show is
a period piece, and (like other AMC period pieces) is a loving portrait of its
era. It’s a less accurate portrait of
intellectual property law, but if that were its only problem I’d let it slide (as
I have with Orphan Black). Like other
AMC period pieces, it’s basically a story about difficult people being
difficult with each other. It’s manifestly Quality Television, and
the interactions aren’t boring, but they don’t provide a lot of forward
momentum either. The result feels like
work to watch.
The dynamic is one of reluctant
interdependency: the asshole salesman
needs the engineer and the coder. The
weak-willed engineer needs the salesman and the coder. The anarchically antisocial coder needs the
salesman and the engineer. And that’s
sad to me: I want to see the
anarchically antisocial coder be able to make it on her own, but that is not to
be. Fundamentally, it’s a show with one
interesting character—the coder, a prodigy with a bad attitude played with
prickly intensity by Mackenzie Davis, channeling Mary Stuart Masterson's character in Some Kind of Wonderful.
She is, regrettably, a man’s vision what a rebellious woman is, and that’s
frustrating. In a show that oozes
authenticity all the way down to the throwback cans of Dr. Pepper, I want her not
to be scripted to think, for example, that giving a guy a blow job is a way to
take her mind off of work. But she’s also the smartest one in the room, and she knows
it, and that’s awesome. And I’d watch
the show that’s just about her, but this show can’t be just about her. It can’t even just be about her and the
engineer’s wife, who seems to be a competent EE in her own right, but for some reason
nevertheless embodies the AMC stereotype of wives as mercurial and
demanding. It also, alas, has to be about the
two guys who complete her, and frankly, they’re boring.
Verdict: Cut for space.
On the DVR/Unreviewed: Dominion. A few other new shows are coming down the pike, too.
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