In Dreams

A few shows lately have taken as their premise the existence of dreamlike mental powers with effects on the real world. I’m interpreting this broadly, but there is a sense in which all of these concern the power of dreams to define and control reality, and although the shows are quite different from each other, they share a similar trust in the magical potential of dreams.  In some of them (Beyond, Falling Water), characters have the ability to manipulate a persistent dream-world, which in turn gives them special powers in the real world.  In some of them (Cleverman, Channel Zero, Legion), characters have telekinetic powers that allow the things they invent and imagine to manifest in the real world.  In one (Westworld), the persistent dreamlike memories of androids allow them to transcend their programming.  Each is a bit of a bewilderer, some more than others, but each comes back for grounding to some idea of a world that’s real, and a world that isn’t, or at least not quite so.

Each of these shows that excels does so despite its high concept, not because of it.  The concepts provide interesting platforms, but that’s all those platforms can do. The shows that work hover above those platforms rather than resting on them.  Each is a story about how love can make someone exceed limits—the limits of physics, of technology, of reality, of their own troubled pasts.  The shows don’t work nearly as well when they get too impressed with their own concepts.  The puzzle boxes of Westworld and Falling Water too often water down characters’ passion and triumph with the writers’ brain-teasers, making us stare at their shows’ shiny objects rather than sharing their characters’ struggles or listening to their hearts.

I’m not sure why all of these shows are happening now.  It’s not like we’ve never seen similar concepts—I’m sure we can all reel off a few off the top off our heads—but it’s in the particular zeitgeist right now.  Whatever the reason, there’s something comforting about the idea that imagination—something we learn to do in our earliest developmental stages—can make us better.  I want to believe that’s true.  Imagination fuels innovation, art, the ability to define oneself.  So the idea that this thing that we all have innately can allow us to transcend our predicted boundaries, and can make us better, can allow underdogs to triumph …that feels good.  Perhaps that’s why, although all of these shows are fantasies, they work best when they don’t feel quite so fantastic.

Cleverman (Sundance, Summer 2016.  Supernatural drama.)

Watched: season

Premise:  In an Australia where Neandertal-esque aboriginals are imprisoned in a special “zone,” an unsuspecting mixed-race young man inherits the powers of their spiritual leader.

Promise:  The production story of this show is particularly interesting:  it was originally commissioned by the Australian Broadcasting Company’s Indigenous department, and it has an 80% indigenous cast.  It has gone out of its way to hire indigenous inters for crew jobs, and the storyline is very intentionally aimed at tackling Australia’s colonial history and the persistent issues of colonialism and race that plague Australia, New Zealand, and the US (the three producing countries).  So although the pilot was really unpromising, but I went out of my way to give this show more of a chance.  I’m glad I did, because it improved considerably.  I felt more attached to its themes than its individual characters, many of whom seemed archetypal rather than personal, but its themes were moving, and there was a lot of good to be found in its individual story of a young man finding his power and maturity while embracing his heritage, and in the cultural story of a people refusing to be relegated.

Verdict:  I’m planning to tune in for the second season.

Westworld (HBO, Fall 2016.  Science Fiction Drama.)

Watched: Season

Premise: Sentience gradually dawns on the android performers in a Western-themed park.

Promise: This is one of those Quality Television shows that one is supposed to love, and it’s undeniably gorgeous and well-acted.  But as well done as many things about it are—I watched the whole season—my chief reactions are critical rather than admiring.  I hate to be one of those people who cries “overrated!” but I suppose that’s what I’m doing, here.  So buckle up for what may turn out to be a bit of a rant.

I appreciate the show’s exploration on the rise of sentience and the nature of thought and humanity.  As with many shows of its type, the androids often show more so-called humanity than the humans, who manifest their basest impulses when placed in a world without consequences.  I appreciate the show’s desire to explore what actual consequences might look like for overdogs.  I respect the show’s observation of the moment in which the worshipper identifies the fallibilities of its god.  But I rebel against the show’s messages, largely because the show’s beliefs seem at best hollow, and at worst cynical.  Its questions about the relationship between humanity and sentience feel too shallow, too recursively exploitative, too self-satisfied.  For those questions to really work, we’d need to care about the characters, and there are only a few we are able to care about.  Instead, we focus on the puzzle.  Puzzles are fun to solve, but lack emotional depth.

A while back, I had a conversation with a friend who’s a fan of the show, and I expressed my misgivings as a matter of intersectionality.  He retorted, accurately, that the show’s most interesting characters are women and people of color.  But…I’m not convinced that solves the problem.  This is a show whose coercion isn’t universal, whose cruelty lands disproportionately on the non-normative.  Throughout the show, those same interesting women and people of color are stripped of their agency, objectified literally and figuratively, made toys and puzzle-boxes rather than whole people, for the use, enjoyment, satisfaction, and fascination of an overwhelmingly normative straight, cis, male gaze.  And to the extent that’s being done by the story and couched as unjust, I’m fine with it.  Stories about injustice need to show the injustice.  But it’s not only the story that does it.  It’s also the production itself, which seems to want us to stare and figure rather than care and think.  Fundamentally, the show embraces the very inhumanity it decries, parading titillation and violence before its viewers.  It does its own violence without ill consequence, objectifying characters and getting awards for it.  Its normativity undermines the profundity:  where are the gay bachelor parties?  Where are the people experimenting with gender identity?  And where are the people who really, truly, want to be kind? 

Verdict:  As eye-candy, solvable puzzle, and occasional provoking of thought, it’s very nice.  But for a show about the meaning of sentience, I recommend the infinitely more empathetic HUMANS.

Channel Zero: Candle Cove (SyFy, Fall 2016.  Horror.)

Watched: Season

Premise: A man returns to his hometown to understand what happened to his twin brother and other children who were killed there when they were kids.  This is an anthology show, so future seasons will have different premises.

Promise:  This show was genuinely spooky and compelling.  Its deliberative pace seemed affected at times, but added to the atmosphere, allowing us time to consider the difference between truth and delusion, the emotional weight of the characters’ struggles, and the extent of its horror.  It’s not a violent or bloody show; instead, it explores how wrong psychological harm can go, and its bleed-through between imagination and reality allows its characters to experience extremes of fear and heroism they had not known they were capable of. 

Verdict:  Good stuff.

Falling Water (USA, Fall 2016.  Supernatural Drama.)

Watched: Season

Premise:  Several individuals experience an interconnected dream and wrestle with a conspiracy that puts a child at risk.

Promise:  Each character strives after someone with whom they cannot communicate—a son, a girlfriend, a mother—and a conspiracy whirls around them that neither they, nor the viewer, understand.  This one walks the line between action drama and bewilderer, and for that reason it never quite succeeds at either.  Its puzzle box verges on the incomprehensible, and never quite lands in one place long to make figuring it out seem emotionally imperative.  So we’re left not really knowing who’s a good guy and who’s a bad guy, and not really caring that much. 

Verdict:  Its non-linear puzzle-box storytelling piqued my curiosity, but if it had come along at a busier time, I would have deleted most of it instead of watching, and I found its resolution (such as it was) unsatisfying.

Beyond (Freeform, new.  Supernatural drama)

Watched: season

Premise:  Young man wakes from a 12-year coma into the middle of a conspiracy surrounding him and the dream-world he inhabited while he was comatose.

Promise:   This show was kind of all over the place, but it had some touches that surprised and kept the show effective despite what could seem like a too-standard reluctant-hero beginning.  The show doles out information slow enough to keep viewers wondering, almost too slow.  Even at the end of the first season there are things we don’t know.  But the world is fleshed out enough that we suspect those things exist.  I’m also pleased by the humanity and depth of the show’s characters—even the relatively minor ones—whose motives are complicated and who are seldom just one thing. 

Verdict:  Not appointment television, but better than I expected.

Legion (FX, new.  Supernatural drama.)

Watched: Season so far

Premise: The trippy, unreliable experiences of an extremely powerful, schizophrenic mutant in the X-Men mythology.

Promise:  Be warned, this show becomes more of a bewilderer as it goes on, not less of one.  But it’s excellent on nearly every level, even in the sense of disorientation it imposes on the viewer.  I had misgivings about Dan Stevens in the lead role, but he does well, as does Rachel Keller.  Aubrey Plaza hits it out of the park as a mixed-gender friend who resides in his mind.  The production design is stunning in its multi-era/era-less contribution to the show’s dream-like atmosphere.  I do wish the show gave us more reliable emotional background on the characters sooner, because it takes too much time for our emotional engagement to kick in, but even so, it’s not just a puzzle-box:  It’s a box for which one may willingly welcome insolubility.  It’s both a portrait of mental illness and a meditation on the relationship between mind and body:  nearly every major character has some sort of dramatic dissociation between their mind and body (body switching, body sharing, exploration of others’ memories, mind sharing…), with the power and horror that accompanies those breaks from expectation.  The result is psychedelic, touching, often fascinating, and occasionally moving.    But the show floats atop its emotion, and I wish it didn’t.  It has the potential to make us really feel, and it falls just short of that.

Verdict:  High quality, and for the most part, also excellent.

In the hopper:  Many!  I think I may be chipping away at the backlog, but I’m not positive.