Archive for the ‘showtime’ Category

#9 of 2007: Dexter

Friday, December 21st, 2007


Since I experienced both the first and second seasons of Dexter in 2007 (and in the same three-month period leading up to this list), it seemed impossible to leave it off.  I feel kind of dirty about my bandwagoning considering how long it took me to jump on board.  My general (and waning) skepticism of Showtime series and my desire to perfectly preserve my TV memories of Michael C. Hall as David Fisher made me avoid Dexter until the flu and an empty DVR forced me to watch the first run over the span of one weekend.

Most arc-driven serial drama aims to entertain viewers in a way once traditionally reserved for the movies.  Dexter’s high-gloss finish and grindhouse-quality gore don’t definitely don’t hamper their attempts, but it’s their cinematic approach to storytelling that raises the bar.  TV tends to dwell on ensembles and avoid fully fleshed out character studies.  Even shows focusing on titular characters can lose focus when the actors who play them aren’t up to par or the writers let the supporting cast become too interesting or appealing to fans.  But Dexter, the show and the character, deftly navigates a stellar supporting cast without ever straying too far from the absurd mind of the protagonist.  He’s made me love first person narration again – and somewhat tolerate flashbacks.

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Dexter Season Finale: “The British Invasion”

Tuesday, December 18th, 2007

The first season of Dexter could not have been tied up with a prettier bow. In the span of an hour, he tracked down the ice truck killer, uncovered their connection, saved his sister and took out his nemesis/soul mate by faking a suicide. It has seemed clear, from the very first episode, that this could not possibly be the case for season two.

Yet somehow the main arc of the season (the search for the Bay Harbor Butcher, Dexter) was resolved in the first five minutes. Weirder still, it was pulled off really, really well. Super-psycho-tramp Lila stole Dexter’s GPS and followed it to the the cabin where he’d been hiding Doakes. When Doakes told her that Dexter was the butcher, she freaked out, mustered some composure and then proceeded to blow him to kingdom come. The prime (and falsely accused) suspect in tens and tens of murders took the blame, and Dexter got off scot-free. With the biggest issue already resolved, the remainder of the episode focused cleaning up the annoying Lila mess. She hit the road after a botched attempt on Dexter and Rita’s kids’ lives, and the show seemed over. But no one gets away from Dexter, so he followed her to Paris to take care of the matter once and for all. We all thoroughly appreciate the fact that she will not be sneaking back into the picture ever again. The story had run its course.

I think it’s safe to assume, at this point, that our Dexter does not prefer the company of other crazies. He’s had plenty of opportunities to seek comfort with those more similar to himself, but time and time again he’s chosen the companionships of people like his sister and Rita. Killing Lila was hardly as rough as offing his murderous (albeit loving?) brother, so whatever kook the next season’s arc focuses on will have to go in a different direction. Dexter isn’t pretending to be normal because it’s convenient – it’s how he likes it.

Even among sitcoms, the cliffhanger has become the obligatory way to end a season of television. It makes the decision to conclude each season of Dexter so perfectly kind of a brave move. It’s not like they’re concerned with ending the show on a fitting note in case of cancellation – Showtime has always been in Dexter’s corner. (A third season was alluded to last month and confirmed after the finale.) So, if anything, these big pay-off finales are just another reflection of the show’s confidence in its own storytelling – and it’s audience.

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Dependably Darling Dexter

Friday, September 28th, 2007

Dexter isn’t just America’s favorite serial killer, he’s one of the most charming and strangely lovable characters you’ll ever meet. A great ensemble, smart writing, super-stylized filming and radically mixed tone (just watch the titles!) all make this possible, but let’s be honest… Michael C. Hall is god’s gift to the tube.

If there were ever a greater departure from Six Feet Under’s neurotic, conservative, semi-closeted David Fisher, it’s creepy, blood-lusty Dexter Morgan. And Hall has played them both (the only highly exposed roles of his career) to a level of perfection the characters’ creators probably never dreamed possible. Dexter is not without its issues though. How does a serial about a serial killer ever hope of topping a first season where his soulmate/nemesis is killed off after just 12 episodes? The answer is: surprisingly easily.

Showtime loves to offer season premieres online before their airdate, and the recent epidemic of torrent leaks has been Dexter heavy, so if you’re at all a fan of the show, you’ve probably already seen Sunday’s episode. Season two finds Dexter with a slew of problems. Sergeant Doakes is on to him. His victimized sister is living in his small Miami apartment. And his girlfriend, Rita, is having suspicions of her own. Fulfilling his desire for ritualistic murders is hard enough, and now he has to deal with a curious loss of libido.

These obstacles alone can’t provide a suitable arc for a show that’s already set such a high standard for tension and mystery, so Dexter’s underwater dumping ground for victims is unearthed to a media firestorm in the first episode. His reaction? Grim delight! This season Dexter will flirt even more with the notion of getting caught and find something he prophetically mused on last season: fans! When the unsavory identities of the mystery killer’s victims come to light, Miami is polarized by their desire to capture a deviant and salute him for ridding the city of its worst scum. They’re just as conflicted over what should become of him as we are. I couldn’t have less of an idea what will happen; Dexter is that good at keeping me on my toes. So if you’re looking for something to transfix you this season, look no further.

Dexter airs Sundays at 9pm on Showtime

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Weeds: Pot is the New Evangelism

Tuesday, September 18th, 2007

Let’s be frank. Selling marijuana is not a big deal. This might be why I don’t see the hullabaloo over Nancy’s unconventional career on Weeds. Heroin, however – that’s interesting. So when Nancy found herself with a trunk loaded with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of scag at the end of last week’s episode, my interest was officially piqued.

Ok, so maybe Nancy isn’t dealing said heroin. The presence of the contraband is posing quite the dilemma for her though. Plus, we finally got to meet someone from the oppressive right-wing regime that is Majestic (Agrestic’s neighboring town)… besides Matthew Modine. Mary-Kate Olsen joined the cast for the first episode of her several week stint as Silas’s new love interest, Tara. Both a stoner and a Christian soldier, Tara is the face of the third season’s focus on looming religiosity, threatening to lure the Botwins from their hedonistic lives. “Smoke me out, and I’ll tell you about my friend,” Tara coyly says to Silas, like a Christian siren. He’s not yet keen on hearing about Jesus, but I imagine it won’t take much dry humping before Silas focuses that angst on blowing up abortion clinics. History has shown that he’s easily swayed by women. In the few moments she was on screen, Mary-Kate held her own, and while Tara may seem like an annoying caricature, she’s frighteningly realistic.

The evening’s real surprise came with the premature departure of U-Turn, Nancy’s menacing drug-pimp with an even more intimidating vocabulary. After making Nancy play his bitch for the whole episode, he collapsed mid-jog. When Nancy went to look for help, his disgruntled buddy, Marvin, smothered him with his vengeful and obscenely large forearm. U-Turn’s little idioms were fast becoming the highlight of the show, and his parting lesson may have been his most profound: “thug means never having to say you’re sorry.” Well, maybe thugs should apologize, lest their cronies take the first opportunity to suffocate them.

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Weeds & Californication Keep Me Ambivalent Over Showtime Originals

Monday, August 13th, 2007

I’m not sure if it’s on account of my residual anger over the cancellation of Dead Like Me or something deeper, but I have the hardest time connecting with Showtime’s original series. After spending the first two seasons of Weeds hoping to be charmed like the critics and pretty much everyone I know, I remain uninspired. Whether I continue to watch it out of obligation or peer pressure, I do not know, but I forge on with hopes of it becoming a more deserving venue for Mary-Louise Parker.

The last season ended with a quadruple threat cliffhanger of ludicrous proportions. Between all of the new questions and the bizarre introduction of Mary Kate Olsen to the show’s cast, tonight’s premiere finds Weedsy buzz at a fever pitch. So does it come through or completely disappoint? Keeping with my dedicated ambivalence, I think it falls somewhere in the middle. Mary Kate’s cameos come later in the season and 30 minutes isn’t nearly enough time to tie a bow on all of the finale’s dramatics, but it does set the stage for Nancy finally embracing her criminal life this year. It’s funny, it’s smart, and there’s always something about it that tries too hard. They want you to want them, and, for viewers who don’t love the chase, Weeds is above average programming.

Elsewhere on Showtime, the “what’s the point of all this?” torch won’t be laying around unmanned for long after last night’s beautifully stylized and supremely pointless John From Cincinnati finale (everyone is still clueless except Dylan McKay, right?). David Duchovny’s new TV vehicle, Californication, premieres right after Weeds, and while not nearly as vague of a look at life in southern California as JFC, the pilot does suffer from a similar lack of trajectory. Duchovny plays “Hank Moody” – an oversexed, creatively bankrupt writer and recent New York transplant – and he does so quite well. There’s too much sex, but that’s how it goes with premium cable – they know their bread and butter. Californication is at its most interesting when addressing what an earnest but bumbling father Hank is to his prematurely mature daughter (who looks like a living incarnation “Emily the Strange”). The reliance on sex makes the opportunities for exploring the familial issues unfortunately few and far between.

Californication provides an interesting enough character, a more than capable actor and potential for a lot of compelling comedy, but something seems lost in the execution. It leaves you wanting more from the show than of it. And just like with Mary-Louise Parker and Weeds, Duchovny is reason enough to watch Californication – I just wish there were others.

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Meadowlands Ups the Odd Ante

Thursday, June 14th, 2007

I’m not sure what’s worse: pretentious & weird or over-sexed & weird. But I’m tempted to go with the latter in the instance of our newest batch of summer cable series. John From Cincinnati may have a largely retarded cast and a plot that’s going nowhere fast, but Meadowlands has unattractive people masturbating and a premise that is either completely ludicrous or a drearier knockoff of Lost.

For some unknown reason, the Brogan family has been placed in a witness protection program. The first scene finds them blindfolded and mysteriously dropped off in the town the series is named after. By the end of the hour, we learn that absolutely every member of the community is in hiding as well – their every moment being monitored by a large staff from a secret security hub. It doesn’t seem as though they all know it though, as the sinister, mustachioed cop and Mr. Brogan are the only we know to be aware for sure.

Quite bipolar, the townspeople are fine executing their own brand of vigilantly justice one minute and breaking into synchronized dances the next. Among the most prominently featured are a pseudo-rapist plumber, an emotionally unstable neighbor and her obese, prima donna daughter – the town’s pride and joy. The Brogans themselves aren’t very normal either, with the son a slik-glove-clad, voyeuristic, mute burn victim and the daughter shaping up to be quite a daft little slut. As for Brogan and wife, whatever caused them to move seems fairly likely to be his fault, and it’s driven quite a rift between them.

The pilot plays out like a story from The Twilight Zone or a darker episode of Dr. Who, but it’s filmed and paced like a British soap opera (think Hollyoaks on acid). It’s not as suspenseful as the premise should afford, but there is a lot of potential. With every episode likely to explore the different reasons people found their way to Meadowlands, how the Brogans themselves came to seek hiding, and the ambiguous origins of the town itself, the show should really be able to pick up the pace.

Meadowlands premieres this Sunday at 10pm on Showtime.

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Life After Death

Tuesday, May 1st, 2007

A long time ago, there was a little program that saved my relationship with the tube. In the wake of the most devastating blow of my tv-watching career, came this low-budget cable dramedy, with an uninspired premise and a rag-tag cast of 90s refugees. It appeared to be just the latest in a long line of shows to try and capitalize on the commercial and critical obsession with mortality that had peaked about a year earlier.

But Dead Like Me was so much more. It perfectly captured the melancholy that comes from biding your time, uncertainty and the gap between youth and adulthood. Grim reapers as cosmic temps may have been a heavy-handed metaphor, but it worked. The frequency of absurd deaths allowed for a dark humor that made the frustrations of the protagonists more stirring than desperate, and each episode balanced the line between poignancy and hysterics flawlessly. Unfortunately our time in the sun with Dead Like Me was short-lived. After only 29 episodes, Showtime canceled the show, and as has been the case with so many others before and since, we were left with a disappointing finale and too many loose ends.

Naturally, this week’s news of its reincarnation initially prompted more excitement than anything, but the vagueness of this announcement compounded with the most unusual timing poses more questions than I care to think about. There has been no information on whether or not the cast will return or whether the story will be a retelling or a continuation – only that it will be told in a direct to DVD film and a director and writer have already been slated. Given all the time that’s elapsed, and the other projects that are being pursued by some of the cast-members, I don’t have the highest hopes. But stranger things have happened.

If Dead Like Me does get the treatment it deserves, with the bulk of the original cast and a chance to finish the story, it would serve as another example of how shows with loyal enough fan bases (however small) are more frequently being resurrected in different incarnations. If they go a different route, in the grand tradition of straight to video, and just try to bleed a little extra cash from an unrecognizable stone, I imagine I’ll keep it in my Netflix queue for a couple of months until I grow tired of pushing it back down whenever there’s a threat of really having to watch it.

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Too Much of a Good Thing

Monday, April 2nd, 2007

I was taught the history of Tudor Britain by a lascivious, buxom woman from Northern England. So consumed by her field of study, Professor Thompson often looked like she had come to class directly from the Renaissance Fair, completely draped in crushed velvet. She would roost on top of her desk and stroke her long raven hair as she recounted the more tantalizing exploits of the Royal family, lost in her own words. In retrospect, it’s a little unseemly, but at least I can thank her for fully preparing me for The Tudors.

As anyone who’s seen an ad or trailer no doubt assumes, The Tudors is mostly about sex – which is initially entertaining and ultimately unfortunate. The cast is absurdly attractive, but they’re too easy. There’s no chase with The Tudors, so much of the thrill is lost. Any scene could easily segue into a romp in the sack, most do, and there are moments when it flirts with absurdity. Star Jonathan Rhys Meyers is oozing enough pheromones to play Henry VIII well, but he has a tendency to take it too far. He doesn’t know how to not be aroused, so he gives the same bedroom eyes to his mistresses, his barber and his pomegranates. Every lingered glance looks like it’s going to end in some sort of erotic encounter.

For all of the efforts on the part of Meyers and his legion of semi-nude women, the best performances on The Tudors come from the supporting men in their respective struggles for influence with the King. Sam Neill is convincingly creepy as the vampirical Cardinal Wolsey (one of English history’s more remarkable ass-hats), but Jeremy Northam’s portrayal of idealistic and self-loathing Sir Thomas More is the biggest reason to watch the show. His fatherly love for Henry and good intentions are even more desperate given the betrayal and suffering we know he’ll endure later in life. Unfortunately for The Tudors though, our knowledge (or easy access to knowledge) of the characters’ fates may prove too much of a suspense-killer for the story to thrive in a serialized show – a genre whose bread and butter is the almighty cliffhanger.

After watching the first two episodes, there isn’t yet a great deal of focus on substance. With Showtime spending a record amount of money on costumes, locations and an impressive cast, the backbone of The Tudors is still the gratuitous sex. So while it is less captivating than their subway marketing would have you believe, the show’s ability to cram so much smut into one hour without actually crossing the line into pornography is a triumph in and of itself.

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