What I'm Enjoying Right Now

HALT AND CATCH FIRE - To fill the void left by Mad Men on Sunday nights, AMC slotted in the new '80s computer programming drama Halt And Catch Fire which revolves around an enigmatic and brash tech entrepreneur Joe McMillan (Lee Pace, from The Hobbit, Pushing Daisies, The Fall) whose desire to build a computer to rival IBM sees him recruiting a punk rock klepto tech genius college student who dislikes wearing bras and a sad sack drunk married father of two whose flash of genius years before went unnoticed by everyone except Joe. The show is built around the two men whose life goals are diametrically opposite, yet the venn-diagram of their desires slightly overlaps when it comes to building the machine that they believe the world is waiting for. Scoot McNairy plays Gordon, the programmer who is struggling with a teetering marriage (Fun Fact: his wife is played by Kerry Bishe, who also played his wife in the Ben Affleck film Argo) and alcoholism while wasting away in a cubicle in the office of a tech firm. Joe belittles Gordon but quickly lets his intentions be known and recruits Gordon and Cameron, the rebellious young woman who struggles to trust the suits who want her skills. Joe is a mix of someone somewhere between Don Draper and The Wolf Of Wall Street. He can whip up a room into a froth with an improvised speech of stolen catchphrases and cliche sentiments but has the confidence and determination to walk away from any confrontation the winner. It's a nice little period piece to be a placeholder for a few months before Mad Men comes back.

COLD IN JULY - This film is a cold, black, dirty little piece noir. Joe R. Lansdale wrote the book about a man who shoots an unarmed burglar in his home one night in small-town Texas and struggles to cope with the aftermath. Soon, the dead mans father (Sam Shepard) shows up in town, fresh out of prison, looking for vengeance. Halfway through the film, the plot takes a turn and becomes something altogether different but tests Richard (Michael C. Hall) in unimaginable ways. Don Johnson shows up in the larger than life role of Jim Bob, a PI with a personality the size of Texas and Hall surprisingly keeps up with Johnson and Sam Shepard. His role as Dexter Morgan for almost a decade prepared him to play Richard, a man hiding secrets from his family and more capable of violence and vengeance than anyone would assume. All three men are forced to confront the darkness they know exists in the world and which resides within them and see if they make it out of the darkness alive.

WORLD CUP SOCCER - The World Cup, held every 4 years, is perhaps the most beloved sporting event in the world, even more than the Olympics. Soccer, still struggling to gain footing as a serious sport here in the United States, is the sport of choice for almost every other nation on Earth. The US Men's National Team, USMNT, is always a dark horse to make the tournament, let alone be considered a real threat to compete but this year, thanks to the presence of coach Jurgen Klinsman, a German who has both coached in and played & won a World Cup, the US have a decent chance of advancing into the later stages. The traditional powerhouse nations Spain, England, Italy and Portugal are all out or will be finished by week's end and heavy favorites Brazil, Germany, the Netherlands and Argentina are all awaiting opponents in the Round of 16. Worldwide soccer superstars (most players are members of multiple national, club and professional teams all around the world) like Lionel Messi, Christiano Ronaldo, Robin Van Persie, Wayne Rooney, Mario Balotelli and our own Clint Dempsey all had a major impact on their teams performance, making this one of the most entertaining and exciting Cups ever. In addition to the action on the pitch, the brutal Brazilian heat and humidity has been a major topic as it wreaked havoc on many of the players, including just about everyone who has had to play in Manaus, in the middle of the Amazonian jungle, where the US had a heartbreaking draw with Portugal on Sunday after giving up a goal on the final touch of the game, where for the first time in history, the match was paused for a water break. There were allegations of match fixing, favoritism among the referees, flopping (all standard for the sport of soccer) and even an incident involving Luis Suarez of Uruguay, who bit an Italian player on the shoulder today (the third time he's bit an opponent during a match). All this and we're not even through the opening round of the tournament. The NBA and NHL Finals were just a few weeks ago but those games pale in comparison to even the most middling matches of this tournament. The levels of athleticism and the sheer explosiveness and excitement that some of these players can display at any given moment is unmatched by almost anything else out there and anyone who isn't watching out of some misplaced desire to be opposed to what everyone else is watching and talking about is really missing out on some world class entertainment and drama. If anyone is reading this before Thursday the 26th, do yourself a favor, go to a sports bar on Thursday morning, or somewhere public with people watching the US versus Germany game to determine first place in their group and let yourself get washed away in the enthusiasm and excitement that comes with watching this sport on the biggest stage the world has to offer.

Lets Go To Fargo

After the conclusion of yet another once-in-a-generation show, it's time to debate with myself about where it belongs in the pantheon of great contemporary shows. Fargo, in all its snowy, bloody glory, just finished its first season (or first incarnation, depending on whether it holds with the anthology format that seems to be the new TV model) and with it, the inevitable comparisons to True Detective, the most recent Is It Great? show.

First off, we have to discuss this new model of the limited series, miniseries, anthology series (whatever you like to call it) that has started to show up on television. American Horror Story, a show I dislike for too many reasons to discuss here, has, admittedly, been doing that model very well the last three years, bringing back some of the same actors each year but in a new locale and with a new theme, while keeping with the general tone of something creepy and unsettling. AHS was definitely a model for what FX and Noah Hawley want to do with Fargo. This season was different than the movie and the (possible) next season will be different yet again, presumably while keeping the main ingredients of snow, murder and dark comedy. But the most important thing that an 8 or 10 (or even 3, 4 or 6 as per usual in the UK) episode season brings with it is the ability for the show to attract big names. AHS annually gets a large, talented cast and Fargo has the deepest bench in television right now, including Billy Bob Thornton who will surely be a contender come awards season. True Detective became the behemoth it was because of the above-the-title names of Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson. People who may not have normally watched a gritty detective drama tuned in to bear witness to the McConaissance and expectations perhaps became too high, even if people's expectations of what the show was going to be was never what Nic Pizzolatto was going to do with it. This format can really only work with the type of show that has a central mystery to solve; a workplace comedy wouldn't be able to muster up enough intrigue after 8 episodes to warrant the closed ending, never to be explored again. Sitcoms need time to flesh out their characters & relationships and procedurals live and die on their formula, episode after episode, year after year.

The second point I want to discuss is the current state of quality television, which is in a very good place. Breaking Bad finished recently and Mad Men is technically halfway through its final season, and as previously noted, True Detective has a brief, successful run a few months ago and the ever present Game Of Thrones just finished its fourth season this week. Then, there are the shows like Sherlock and Orphan Black and The Americans which are critical darlings and extremely well-made but still manage to stay under the general public's radar. Game Of Thrones is the only show that has one foot firmly in the high concept genre camp and one in the quality, Sunday night must watch, Monday morning must discuss camp. The Walking Dead is a show that mostly applies to the former while Mad Men is firmly in the latter. Ratings usually come from the former while accolades come from the latter. Breaking Bad was the program that transcended both labels and became a must-watch for the way it satisfied the gangster bloodlust of its casual fans and the attention to detail in the writing, directing and acting that had critics salivating every Sunday night on Twitter. The reasons I don't like Game Of Thrones are mostly the same reasons I don't like The Walking Dead, although Walking Dead is more frequently enjoyable than GoT, which is a slog through middle earth following the attempted power grabs of loathsome, incestuous, stubbornly prideful characters. Game Of Thrones is like all the most boring parts of the Tolkein universe made into a television show that looks really beautiful. The problem with both shows is that there's nobody to root for, the threat of your favorite character being killed off at any time doesn't create enjoyable suspense, it creates a sense of time wasted investing time and emotion in their journey. Perhaps people like the escapism and exoticism that comes with shows like these, watching people in foreign situations so far from their own lives. A man shooting a crossbow into a zombie or a knight raging in medieval battle is interesting because it's not something they have to compare to their own life, it has a certain "epic" or "badass" quality to it. The most talked about, highest rated episodes of these shows are the ones with the biggest shootouts or the most brutal battle scenes. In contrast, Mad Men and Matthew Weiner are able to convey a lifetime's worth of emotion and pain in a scene with no dialogue in an episode that has fewer viewers than the evening news. If Mad Men were on any other network, it's ratings alone would've been the nail in the coffin years ago, but it's hard for AMC to deny the armload of Emmy's it wins every year. Don't get me wrong, I love genre fiction, television and movies, but I'm just tired of the best shows on television getting canceled because they don't have a high enough shock value. I have faith that the powers that be will see that smaller scale shows like Masters Of Sex and The Americans can be big on substance and draw a crowd with discerning tastes for quality television.

So the point of this piece was to discuss Fargo, a show that is severely underrated, underappreciated and underwatched. I can't find a single person discuss the show with because nobody has seen it in it's entirety, if at all. Fargo is a show that shouldn't really be as good as it is. On paper, an adaptation of one of the most beloved & successful Coen Brothers films into a 10 episode series by the guy who created My Generation does not look promising. However, Hawley dispensed with the flesh & blood characters of the film and instead, decided to explore perhaps the most important character; the snowy landscape of the upper Midwest. The dark humor, the unforgiving weather and the brutality the region's unimposing people are capable of are all present in the show, as they were in the Coen's version, but the most striking creation of Hawley and the writers of the show is the creation of the character Lorne Malvo. Billy Bob Thornton has not been this lively and entertaining on screen in years as Malvo, who is the very definition of evil, the wolf at the door of the good, humble folks of Bemidji. Malvo, at one point, decides to enact the biblical plagues on, of all people, the man he is working for, just for the pleasure of it, just to see what happens. Watching the series as it goes on, one can't help but wonder if Malvo is something beyond human, pure evil come to earth in the form of a man, sent here to wreak havoc and corrupt good people and spoil the pristine snowy landscape. He makes the sniveling, petty, cowardly King Joffrey look like an innocent little blonde kitten on the throne of swords. Malvo would have a field day with Joffrey, he'd bring him to his knees and make him beg for his life and then slit his throat with a smirk on his face. Malvo's body count in these ten episodes is astounding. The cast is full of fantastic characters whose humble civility is tested by the changing norms of society. The police captain at one point laments the disappearance of the time when folks used to shovel each others drives instead of having to watch over their shoulders. It's a similar sentiment that lingers in, among other places, the Coen's No Country For Old Men, with Tommy Lee Jones as the sheriff who is struggling to keep order in his Texas border town as the presence of the drug wars start to creep in. Malvo is definitely a chip of the same block as Anton Chigurh, a man who lives to inflict chaos and pain and lose no sleep over it.

Another notable thing about the show is the presence of a second villain, who, played by Martin Freeman, is remarkably receptive to Malvo's influence. His Lester Nygaard is a man with a thin layer of civility that is quickly broken through at the arrival of Malvo and goes forward with no worry as to what kind of man he has become. The final sequence at the end of the penultimate episode is so absolutely tragic, so pitch black evil and devastating as we watch one of the most innocent characters in the show fall prey to the two headed wolf, that it's almost impossible to watch. It's more shocking than the scene where we find out Walter White poisoned Jesse's girlfriend's son. These shows of late have been great at providing conflicted antiheroes somewhere in the gray area between good and bad, and at a certain point, it seems that Lester will redeem himself but that notion is quickly and utterly extinguished. Through it all, Fargo was able to balance the brutality and bloodshed with the humor that you would expect from a Coen Brothers property and with a cast of comedic veterans like Freeman, Key & Peele, Bob Odenkirk, Oliver Platt and even Thornton whose desire to inflict a trail of chaos wherever he goes is frequently quite humorous. His deadpan delivery and insistence on talking his way out of every imaginable situation provides a lot of unexpected humor. It's a show that was made with the intention of being different and working outside the norms of cable television. Ratings weren't off the charts but it is definitely a success for the network and Hawley can write his own ticket for whatever he wishes to do in the future, whether it be Fargo-adjacent or not. There are a few characters begging for an extended backstory to be explored, most notably Keith Carradine as an ex-State Policeman whose own history with a wolf at his door would make for fantastic television, however, it doesn't sound like Hawley wants to go back to Fargo, at least not right away, since he just finished post-production on the series two weeks before the final episode aired. I'm sure he's on vacation, perhaps somewhere warm & sunny, plotting his next project that FX will undoubtedly write him a blank check for the privelege to air.