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YOU (2018 - 2025) 5.03 "Impostor Syndrome"

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every opera production would be made funnier/possibly better if you had one of the characters give a powerpoint presentation

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I swear “these female artists are setting feminism back!” discourses are worse than anything a female artist who isn’t actively trying to get legal rights removed has ever done.

Actually insisting that women stick to some arbitrary standard is bad for women. Insisting that everything a woman in public do be empowering is bad for feminism. People insisting otherwise should take a good hard look at themselves and why they are so upset over someone not obeying there strict rules for everyone.

Sabrina Carpenter love of wearing fancy lingerie, and singing and writing songs about how she likes to have fun with boys, but keeping them as long term companions often frustrating or worse, isn’t bad for feminism. Her album cover that plays on that theme isn’t bad for feminism. (The first single from the album is called “Manchild” if you’re unfamiliar with her work and need a hint.)

I recently read Mary Gabriel’s biography of Madonna. This discourse now makes it feel like we’ve learned nothing over the past four decades.

(A lot of things are making me feel this way.)

The Sabrina Carpenter discourse is so fucking stupid and puritan.

Like there is a very clear difference between being objectified and being a willing and active participant in your own sexuality.

Someone snapping a picture of you performing and going "I would like her to do these sex acts to me" is vastly different from willingly posing for a suggestive album cover.

"But she's setting feminism back!!!1!!"

No she isn't. Celebrities do have a level of power and influence, I'm not going to deny that, but Sabrina does not have the level of power and influence to set back an entire movement. Also, being an active participant in your sexuality isn't incompatible with feminism, in fact it's the opposite, it's very compatible to feminism.

One of the main points is that women shouldn't be viewed as inherently sexual and have a choice on when and if they are sexual. Wanting women to not be sexual at all because men will be disrespectful is literally Christian Puritan sex views repackaged under the thin veil of "feminism." This is how far right movements like trad wives get people.

I can also smell the "women who have a kink for being submissive are bad" wafting off of the people upset at the album cover.

God forbid a women likes to be dominated and isn't quiet about it.

And the album cover also doesn't have to be this big commentary on sex or how men view women, to be acceptable. It doesn't even have to be about her being an active and willing participant in her sexuality either.

It could very well just be "this photo looks good", and that's an acceptable enough reason too

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My Peak TV Journey Dark Winds

My interest in this series was piqued by an anecdote in Maureen Ryan’s Burn it Down. In it, Graham Roland (I think? I can’t look at a copy of the book and double check) told Ryan about how even with the help of Robert Redford and George RR Martin, it was hard to get this series green lit. HBO turned it down saying it was too like True Detective, which I haven’t watched, and probably won’t. But it’s also probably a racial thing, as these are the stories of Navajo Nation police in the 1970s based on a series of novels by Tony Hillerman, a member of said nation and later his daughter, Anne Hillerman. Though the Native American perspective make it feel unique amongst cop shows, period pieces, and even revisionist Westerns.

I’m not a big Western person. There are plenty famous films in this genre I haven’t seen at all. So I found myself grateful that I hqd at least listened to the TCM podcast The Plot Thickens season on John Ford. It let me know what kinds of jobs were available in Navajo Nation in the decades preceding Dark Winds story. (The big employers at the time were a uranium mine and John Ford. On reservation oil mining is very important to multiple Dark Winds stories.) And some of the things that the series has to work against, like Monument Valley having been used as the setting of many tribes who are actually from elsewhere. Time to correct that with a specificity of Navajo life, starting with how they refer to themselves and their language as Diné. Every episode of the series has a Diné title and an English translation.

But I’m really in no position to judge the series on authenticity. I can’t comment of the actors’ accents in Diné, or anything about them belonging to different tribes. Nor can I say anything about historical accuracy with regards to anything, from what songs were on the radio to the timeline of NASA missions.

What I can comment on is that Joe Leaphorn/JimChee is an interesting variation on the older cop-mentoring-younger cop dynamic. Leaphorn’s relationship with his wife, Emma is interesting, believable as people who have gone through a lot, some of which was just wrong. (Emma was sterilized without her consent after the birth of her first and only child. Joe Junior then died while working at an oil mine because of a dispute between who controlled the rights to it.) I like the burgeoning romance between Jim Chee and Bernadette Manuelito, I even commented on how glad I was in a TVLine article about best first kisses. Also, Emma and Bernadette are interesting characters in their own right and that is great to see

The show builds an intriguing mystery in a way that flips some conventions on their head. I don’t love that the seasons start in media res at the mid point and then flash back, but I am always interested in the story.

The third season is the longest with eight episodes, instead of the six episode like season that preceded it. It includes a border patrol plot that doesn’t interact much with the Navajo Nation plot. One episode is devoted to a dream that Leaphorn has while injured. For some this was a beautiful showcase of dream like imagery Zahn McClarnon’s acting. For others it was a self indulgent waste of time. I did not love that the actor playing the abusive priest in Leaphorn’s past was accused of abuse in real life. The episode had some beautiful imagery, but it didn’t help with the challenge to pacing that plotting in two locations created.

Still, I’m glad that the show was renewed for a fourth season in advance of the third. I want to spend more time with these characters. Maybe I’ll even get around to reading the books.

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School Spirits 2x04 "A Walk-In To Remember"

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My Peak TV Journey Elsbeth

As someone who watched every episode of The Good Wife and The Good Fight I was immediately making time to see Elsbeth a spin off of the eponymous reoccurring character. Only in some ways it’s not really a continuation of those. People who have probably rewatched the earlier series, (unlike me) have pointed out some differences in Elsbeth’s character. An example of the change is she was more amoral there. In the earlier series she was less interested in justice, than in playing the technicalities of the law. Though many of her eccentricities, such as always carrying around multiple bags and her smiling enthusiasm remain. The transition can be explained in how an inspiration for the series was realizing that older, episodic mysteries like Colombo are actually better for binging than more modern serialized shows. It was designed a a throw back with a mystery of the week, where a high profile guest star is likely to be a murderer. Elsbeth gets to get close to them and prove their culpability as they feel like they’ve gotten away with murder. Elsbeth also has complex relationships with colleagues at the precinct, including Kaya Blanke and Captain C.W. Wagner, who she mentors and befriends and a series of rotating detectives.

These relationships are the basis of longer term plots. The end of the series premier reveals that contrary to what had previously been stated, Elsbeth is actually there to investigate possible police corruption. This is surprisingly pinned on one racist and resentful detective. It’s treated in a perfunctory manner. The real tension is how this will affect her relationship with Captain Wagner, the original target of her investigation, an the rest of the precinct. The second season is the mystery of what led Elsbeth to abandon Chicago, and how that leaves her vulnerable to attacks by corrupt Judge named Milton Crawford. That plot also seems to wrap up suddenly. Or does it?

Elsbeth’s fusion of throwback to 1970 procedurals with a continuation of TGW/TGF world creates some uncertainty about what guidelines it will follow. I was genuinely surprised that Elsbeth’s son Teddy becomes an on screen character in season two. I thought he, like Colombo’s wife would be always off screen. On the other hand the plot with the Judge Crawford gets weirdly apolitical in comparison to what the ear . We learn that he’s a member of an organization known as The Historic Law Society, which would seem like an obvious stand in for The Federalist Society. Only unlike on the earlier shows executive produced by the Kings, they don’t do an on screen acknowledgement of the source material, before essentially nodding in agreement that whatever the inspiration, this version is fictional. (For examples see Chum Hum as the in world Google on TGW/TGF and Congo Run as Amazon on Evil.) They also never mention “Originalism”, the legal theory The Federalist Society promotes that says laws should always be interpreted in relation to how they would be historically interpreted by their writers. Judge Crawford likes to point out that he is a descendent of Pilgrims from the Mayflower, but that’s a stretch to get to Originalist philosophy. The plot is set in motion by the Crawford preparing for nomination to the federal bench, something greatly influenced by the executive branch. But there isn’t even a mention of how there was a presidential election in 2024!

I have more to say about the Judge plot, but first I want to praise various guest stars. Despite being a spin off, some reoccurring actors from the earlier shows have appeared as victims (Linda Lavin) or murderers (Nathan Lane). I’d complain, but I like seeing them perform too much. I also enjoyed getting to see Elizabeth Lail as an Elizabeth Holmes like tech fraudster turned killer after associating her so strongly with Beck the victim on You. Jane Krakowski and Rhetta slightly adjusted their sitcom personae to be women who kill and conspire. Keegan Michael Key, as a controlling, nervy accountant who kills his son in law at the wedding. I was glad to see his story feed into a second season plot with Alyssa Milano as a Mob kid-turned-Matriarch whose story has already been told in an epic film. (Never mind how off the timeline seems to the history of the mob in NYC.) Only disappointed he did not show up there too. I loved that the second season finale got to reunite with so many in pre-trial detention. Pamela Aldon’s character wasn’t one of the guest stars in that episode, but her earlier presence and later absence really made me wish I had watched Better Things already.

The episode with Laurie Metcalf brought up a lot of my ambivalent feeling about fandom and shipping. Metcalf being the killer here reminded me of my first time seeing Scream 2. I was so enthusiastic about the first movie I followed all the promotional material I could for the second. So much of it was about how the movie had these hot young stars in the making, many of them already in teen show ensembles. While there was discussion of the type of role Metcalf had in that movie, when she actually was on screen I was shocked. It was the first I heard of her being in it all. Her character started out looking like a wannabe/hanger on of Gail Weathers, the Courtney Cox character, and I remember wondering if this was a meta commentary on the success of the sitcoms they were on respectively. (Roseanne on the decline, Friends dominating pop culture.) The idea that they’d hire a recognizable actress and not put in promotion didn’t make sense to me until she was revealed to be one of the killers. Then I felt so naive, of course that’s what they were doing! Seeing her as a killer here brought up some feelings about the changing nature of my media literacy, and how fandom affected it can be.

While I’ve been focusing familiar actors/stars it’s also been a delight to see it as a chance to see newer faces as they become familiar. In one episode Eric McCormack played the leader of a wellness center who kills someone threatening to show how he violated the terms of a wrongful death settlement. I was thrilled to recognize the actor playing the victim, Michael Hsu Rosen, as one of Kimberly’s later boyfriends on The Sex Lives of College Girls. After Officer Kaya Blanke gets promoted to Detective and Elsbeth needs new officers to escort her the actors playing them include b, who also had a reoccurring role in the final season of You and Ethan Slater, better known for his messy personal life than onscreen presence. I hope to see both of them in the next season.

Back to the judge plot.

Judge Milton Crawford (played by Michael Emerson, Carrie Preston’s real husband) is introduced to the by murdering someone who just had sex. Then he’s the presiding judge in the trail in which the victim’s sex parter is accused of his murder. It is an audacious way to introduce a reoccurring villain. How can you keep him around and build on this? I suppose that is part of why he did get abruptly killed off before the finale. Here, due to casting, this also felt like a continuation of Evil. Emerson played antagonist Leland. In the final episodes of that series he became aligned with an incompetent looking, but actually demonic lawyer, played by John Carrol Lynch. Here after Emerson’s Judge Crawford dies, Lynch is introduced as Judge Edwin Dousant, a friend of the late character. Dousant recognizes Elsbeth from her interaction with Crawford, and immediately sends her to jail for a misdemeanor charge. While Elsbeth’s allies are eventually able to get her released, the possibility that Crawford’s i allies will continue to cause problems, empowered by the fact that his crimes were never proven, is intriguing. Elsbeth generally takes place in less of an ethical quagmire than the shows from which it spun off. But the second Judge Crawford season brings in a theme of how getting justice tends to leave a complicating destructive aftermath. The season premiere had an early scene of Elsbeth and Kaya walking and talking with signs of the first season cases and the business destroyed, and lives disrupted. The first season case where Keegan Michael Key killed his son in law leads direct into the case of Alyssa Milano trying to kill her husband (and reveals another murder she took part in years earlier.) Solving the murder in the season finale might actually make the lives of people in pretrial detention worse, and that is unjust.

So, where does it go from here? I’m not sure! I’d like to meet Elsbeth’s ex-husband, Teddy’s father. I hope that we spend more time with the rotating detectives and officers, and of course more Captain Wagner and his wife. I’d like to see more reoccurring characters from past cases, including Laura Benati’s semi retired model, Jordana Brewster in her hard to define career, Jess Darrows survivor of a deadly throupple, and Greg Hildreth’s aspiring DJ with a back story that is horrific if you stop to think of it. And of course, more high profile guest stars.

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Godspeed Brian and Sly. Hell of a jam session in the afterlife.

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RIP Sly Stone

March 15, 1943 – June 9, 2025

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For those who don’t know:

The word comes from 16th Century Venice, modern Italy, then the Republic of Venice. It described the area of the city the republic’s leader, the Doge, compelled Jews in which to live.

Wikipedia article for support:

Listen, before you say something like “Jim Crow laws were the template for the Holocaust” make sure you know the answer to this question: what’s the etymology of the word ghetto and when and where was it coined?

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My Peak TV Journey Ghosts

I’ve watched this show since the beginning. I look forward to it every week. Some of the appeal is because of familiarity with the cast especially living leads Rose McIver (Sam, previously iZombie) and Utkarsh Ambudkar (Jay, previously The Mindy Project and Never Have I Ever). But also Brandon Scott Jones (Isaac, previously The Other Two). I also like seeing actors I’m familiar with from elsewhere in reoccurring and guest roles from past favorites like Superstore, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, The Upright Citizens Brigade etc. It is like combing the best of both worlds between something new and something familiar. It’s my comfort show.

When I wrote about the final season of *What We Do in the Shadows* I mentioned that in my draft for this I called *Ghosts* a meta sitcom, and gave a definition that fit both shows. Then, while watching the recent episodes I realized that wasn’t the only reason. It’s also because the ghost characters can treat the living characters as if they are in a tv show. They watch and the comment, and through Sam they are able to essentially give audience feedback, show notes that influence the action. No wonder I thought of this concept while watching *Ghosts* and not*WWDINTS*.

The ghost characters are often more in a reference of pop culture that depicts their time, than an accurate depiction of people of their time. This is most clear with a Michelle, the ghost of a teenage girl who was murdered in 1980s by a chainsaw wielding maniac escaped from a hospital. This isn’t something that really happens often in the 1980s, but a reference to the slasher films popular at the time.

Thor is a living cartoon of the pop culture idea of a Norse warrior.

Isaac is a would be founding father with a personal animus towards Alexander Hamilton because of the popularity of the *Hamilton* musical that debuted just four years before this series.

Sassappis has the unenviable job of being a counter point of over a century of not great, and inaccurate descriptions of Native Americans. He doesn’t get many opportunities to give the correct information, but I honestly can’t judge how correct the information given is.

I am more sure that some things Flower, the hippy says are wrong and anachronistic. Firstly, I doubt someone like her would recognize that she was in a cult and talk about it under that name and so casually. Also, there have been jokes about her sleeping with the male and female members of Fleetwood Mac, but I don’t think there were female members in the band at the time of her death in 1969. (I know when people hear Fleetwood Mac they think of the lineup that made *Rumors*, but they had a lot of other lineups.)

Hetty, the ghost of the robber baroness who was one of the first to have lived in the building in which most of the series takes place, frequently has lines that would have fit on *Another Period*. I’m especially thinking of jokes about the time’s mainstream popularity of cocaine and hating the Irish. In the most recent season she found out she was part Irish, leading to her power of being visible to the living on St Patrick’s Day.

Alberta, the jazz age singer has fun roaring twenties reference, and for the first couple of seasons, a murder mystery. The murder mystery was one of the most emotionally involving stories the show has done. For most of her time as a ghost, Alberta had insisted that she was murdered, while the other ghosts rolled their eyes. Eventually it’s proven that she was poisoned, and the idea becomes less exciting. It doesn’t just burnish her reputation as an exciting figure in a dangerous time, it means she has to think of how and why her various romantic and professional rivals would want to kill her. This eventually leads to the reveal that Hetty’s son, (a romantic rival of whom Alberta was unaware) killed her and Hetty knew the whole time. This thorny reveal gives plenty for the characters to mull about their lives and what they have become since then.

Finance bro Trevor is a light parody of the kinds of people who caused the 2008 crash. But as he died almost a decade earlier, he has a kind of innocence to him. At various points as he becomes less sleazy, more humane I wonder if he is only able to develop into decent person because of when he died.

Finally there is Pete, the dad who died in the 1980s. He and Jay, who was a child in that time, have a love of films and games from that era. Which makes it appropriate that his plots involve a lot of revelations about how he did not see the adult complications in his life. These include his wife being unfaithful with his best friend and his travel agency business was a money laundering front for the mafia. It’s a real realizing times weren’t really simpler at an earlier time.

There are going to be at least two more seasons, and I’m glad for that. But recent plot points, including the introduction of Patience, the ghost of a Puritan who got stuck in the ground for over a century, and a couple of reoccurring characters who died and became ghosts on the campus, makes me wonder if rotating the ghost characters would be good? What if some of the leads got “sucked off” or “gone down on”, the terms the ghosts use to indicate ascending to heaven or descending to hell. (Lots of the phrases to describe the distinct aspects of the ghost experience have sexual double meanings that most ghosts don’t know.) Would it be satisfying to see someone get their happy ending and meet someone else who undead existence could amuse? Would it just mess too much with the ensemble? Would it give a sense that some characters are more “valuable” than others? Maybe it would be necessary to continue the shows appealing “familiar, but new” feel. Maybe it would stop being able to be a comfort show.

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Because with you, love has a price. This is where it was headed the whole time. Peak romance.

YOU | 5.10 "Finale"

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Ghosts (CBS) | 4.21 - "Kyle"

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Firstly, I am afraid that the general idea that pop culture "doesn't really matter" has created a room for misinformation. And as somebody who worries a lot about how misinformation is affecting our society, I hate it an should probably fight back against it more.

This incident did reminded me of similar misattribution to Sofia Coppola A few years ago I went to a trivia night and an answer said that Sofia Coppola was the first woman nominated for a best director Oscar. I have a childhood memory of the first time I watched the Oscars Jane Campion being nominated for The Piano. (She lost to Steven Spielberg for Schindler's List.) And I knew that she wasn't the first woman nominee because of vague memories of the coverage at the time. I didn't know who the first was then, but I've looked it up and it was Lina Wertmüller for Seven Beauties.

Which brings me to another thing that troubles me. While I think a general society attitude of "entertainment business doesn't really matter" is a huge reason why this happens, I think there is another reason, and I also find it troubling.

I think people who make these kinds of declarations want to believe in some have a clear sense of progress in the art and there really isn't. They don't want to think that there was almost two decades between the first two women to be nominated for best director. They would rather have the first woman nominated be setting off a trend that quickly turns into winning. (Not to mention they don't want to deal with how messy and politically fraught these women's work actually are.) Whoever wrote this doesn't want to acknowledge how certain movies have been known as "women's pictures", and that they have been in and out of fashion. They don't want to deal with how that is a sign that that progress isn't linear, things aren't getting better for women all the time.

And maybe they can't think of a reason to be celebratory about a woman's work if it is not the first. (That would involve being familiar with some really uncomfortable works.)

insane thing to say about cinema in general (okay let's erase decades of female filmmakers) but also INSANE THING TO SAY ABOUT THE VIRGIN SUICIDES WHICH IS LITERALLY TOLD THROUGH A MALE PERSPECTIVE?

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My Peak TV Journey: Severance vs. Matlock (2024)

n my blog post about Severance I made a vague comparison between Matlock’s character, Julian Sr. and Jame Egan on Severance. They have similar roles in their respective series, but Matlock’s works better and not just because Julian Sr. is played by Beau Bridges. It was a kind of throwaway comment. But I kept thinking about it, and comparing the two series intrigued me more. While watching the second season Severance, I realized that the only show that had me as intrigued about what would happen next on a week to week basis was Matlock. When the Severance’s season finale disappointed me in a way that had me questioning my investment, it also raised the stakes for Matlock’s finale.

On realizing that these were the shows that had the greatest hold on me, I also realized that you could do an outline for each where you can more or less drop proper nouns into identical show descriptions. Both series are about a person in the midst of overwhelming grief (Mark Scout/Maddie Kingston). Because of their grief they decided takes on an alternate, friendlier persona (Mark S/Maddie Matlock) while taking a job a mysterious company (Lumon/Jacobson and Moore) with some shady history regarding pharmaceuticals. The double life takes its toll. At their job they meet a woman (Helly R./Olympia) in the midst of her own split from another life (the severance procedure between Helly and Helena/ Olympia’s divorce from Julian Jr.) Despite some misgiving they become close with their new colleagues. They also have a couple of other office mates who are great and could carry their own series. (Irving and Dylan/Billy and Sarah). The person the new colleague is separating from is the adult child of the distant patriarchal figure who is important to the company (Jame Eagan/Julian Sr.) The adult child has never felt like they received their father’s affection, and the patriarch openly prefers the person from whom they are separating. Meanwhile the main character’s outtie/home life is so dedicated to their grief they can hardly see how dysfunctional it is. Also both leads have complicated relationships with their respective sisters.

After this I have to get into their differences and more explicit spoilers. In my Severence post I mentioned that by the end of the second season it is easy to interpret the series as indirectly being about the opioid crisis. (Self destruction in the pursuit of a life without pain is a big theme for the series.) Matlock is much more explicitly about living with it. Maddie and her husband Edwin’s daughter, Ellie died of an overdose after years of addiction, leaving them to parent her young son, Alfie. Maddie’s decision to take on a persona and work at Jacobson Moore is to investigate rumored malpractice at the firm that could have removed opioids from the market much earlier, possibly saving their daughter’s life. If you’ve read books like Patrick Radden Keefe’s Empire of Pain some plot reveals should feel familiar. The fact that Mark gets involved with the company that is responsible for his wife’s “death”/disappearance is more of a fated coincidence.

While watching Severance one of the most striking aspects of the office is how sparse it is. The white walls and ceiling, green carpet, cramped set up for four people’s desks together in cubicle like setting despite a lot of unused space. The office is also set up in a labyrinthine fashion, to discourage departments from interacting. Jacobson Moore is much more crowded. The office Maddie shares with Billy and Sarah was made for two people and is noticeably smaller than any of the offices for senior associates or partners. Also while the color palette is not as severely limited as Severance there is a distinct coordination going on. Olympia always matches her make up to her jewel toned power suits. Julian Jr. keeps extra suits in his office that are the same color as what he’s already wearing. Everyone is dressed in business formal, with the exception of Julian Sr. who is in business casual with lots of plaid shirts and occasionally dressed for golf. Authority is asserted, even in a location that allows at least the illusion of mobility and security.

Matlock shows more of its characters’ home lives than Severance. because they can speak about their home lives at work and vice versa, they do. We see Maddie interact with her husband and grandson every episode. We don’t see the outies, let alone their home lives, on every episode of Severance. We also get a lot more detail about the things going on in their lives, from Maddie and Edwin having tense discussions of their experiences parenting their daughter and grandson, to how Olympia and Julian’s divorce affects their shared property. We haven’t gotten anything like that kind of detail for any of the Severance outties. And while a lot of that is just because they’re telling different stories, I can’t help feeling like I would have been less frustrated with the season finale if it had given more detail to some questions in the outies lives. Like how did Mark and Devon’s parents lead to their relationship issues? Why is Helena’s mother never spoken of? Most importantly, is there anything going on in the public facing Lumon than will be affected by the innies creating a real Macro data uprising?

Throughout the second season of Severance I found myself wondering what did Helena know and what did she understand about what her family’s company does. Season two did not begin to answer that. In writing this, I decided that Helena’s Matlock was Junior. So, in determining I’d Matlock would have satisfying finale it had to answer the question, what did Julian Jr know and what did he understand about what his family’s company did? And it did! Was it satisfying? That’s more complicated. In the finale it is revealed that Junior did remove the documents in question at the behest of his father. He saved them in a bank deposit box, where a shocked Olympia finds them. By this point we know how much this revelation will hurt Olympia, and we also have seen that Junior now wants to put distance between himself and his father in a way he didn’t before. He’s even quit the firm. We don’t know if his belief that his father always judges him harsher than other associates is true, but we know he feels it, and that it informed his decision to hide evidence. The season ends for him and Olympia with him begging her not to reveal what he did for the sake of their family. It’s pathetic. It’s nerve wrecking. I look forward to seeing where it moves from here.

This brings me back to my initial comparison, between James Eagan and Julian Sr. and why the latter works more as character than the former. As I said, neither character gets much screen time, there are multiple episodes in which they don’t appear nor are mentioned. They have a “rules don’t apply” attitude towards themselves demonstrated by Senior’s manner of dress and casual use of substances in the office, and Jame taking credit for an invention while telling the actual inventor that to do so would be an act of egotism that goes against the teachings of his ancestor and cult founder, Kier. Both patriarchs are supposedly imposing figures, though notably not the founders of their respective companies. They are both on the older side, and probably not in their peak health. But Senior is active enough that you can see why people want to please him. At one point he tells Maddie a story about getting revenge for the death of his brother. He’s vague on the details but it’s clear he ruined lives, like Maddie is trying to in vengeance of her daughter. Unlike Maddie, Senior seems to have no remorse for the havoc he caused. He doesn’t belong to anything as explicitly cult coded as Lumon, but he has an ideology that I consider cultish. He is a right wing, pro-business in a way that he thinks no one making money should have second thoughts or apologize for anything they have ever done. When an oil client moves into green energy he sees that as a sign the guy lost his mind. But he’s still a good, billable client, so they take a case involving his new business. He loves to point out how his son isn’t self made like he is. The only time he seems at all upset is in the finale when his son declares that the time and energy he spent trying to impress his father was a waste. Jame Egan doesn’t have that kind of presence and he is always ill at ease. We don’t see interact with anyone at the party where we are introduced to at the end of the first season. The only person we really ever see him interact with is the various personas of his daughter. But mostly we see her respond to his absence while being seen by other people. We know he wants to create a world without pain and is not directly involved in the experiments and technological developments to get there. But we don’t know what kinds of instructions he gives, or how much his employees are working on their own. These could be interesting questions, but there is little indication that the show is interested in them. Britt Lower has said that Helena feels protective of him as he is unwell. That could be an interesting dynamic. It’s not really on screen. Everything about him is more told than shown. He mostly feels like a void. I’m not sure how much to attribute to writing or acting. Would the actor having scenes where he interacts with his staff make things work more? If he was played by an actor with more charisma and essentially the same screen time, would I feel his presence when he’s gone? I don’t know, but I feel like this show rests a lot of plot on this character. By the end of the season it felt like things were collapsing because this character wasn’t built to support the weight.

While writing this I started remembering the 2006 German film The Lives of Others. The film mostly takes place in 1984. The plot involves a successful playwright being observed by a Stasi officer, tragedy ensues. The part of the movie that this comparison reminded me of was the scenes of one of the playwright’s being performed in the beginning of the movie and then in the end after a flash forward to 1991. In the first production the set and costuming clearly indicates that this takes place in a factory and is about factory workers. Even the leading lady’s psychic visions are played in a warm and grounded manner. In my analogy this the Matlock production. The latter production in the film is in a near bare set, where the actors playing factory workers move like modern dancers. This is Severance in my analogy. Within the movie, it’s fair to say the difference in production is as much about the change in politics as much as aesthetic. Being too much from a country that no longer exists could prevent the contemporary audience from relating to it. Better to remove the details, let them see their lives in the missing parts. But then, sometimes it’s easier to connect with details, even if they tie things to a culture that you’ve never seen.

[postguiltypleasures]

My Peak TV Journey Matlock (2024)

I wasn’t entirely sold on the new Matlock from the trailer. I thought it looked good and was intrigued by the decision to reference the earlier series with which it shares a name. But was it worth making the time in my limited TV watching schedule for? I didn’t watch the first episode as it aired, but I saw articles about it having a twist. I read spoilers for the twist, realized the show runner was Jane the Virgin’s Jenna Snyder Urman and was sold. As probably one of only a few people to watch both Jane and Matlock, I understand that the tv executives didn’t think there was enough crossover appeal to feature that in their advertising campaign. (Later while watching I also noticed the name Sarah Gertrude Shapiro as a “Consultanting Producer” This excited me because she was the creator of UnReal and I had recently read Emily Nussbaum’s Cue the Sun! The Invention of Reality TV in which Shapiro was interviewed, and I was hoping for good things for her after that.) Anyway having Kathy Bates, one of the most celebrated actresses of our time as the lead Madeline Matlock was always going to be the main attraction. Hinting at how manipulative and cunning she could be was what gave it allure, and the twist made me happily commit to it.

For those who don’t know, Maddie Matlock is not who she’s been presenting herself as for most of the pilot. She’s in her seventies, previously worked as a contract lawyer and is coming out of retirement while caring for a middle school aged grandson named Alfie after the death of his mother, her daughter, Ellie. She is also well aware of how older women tend to be over looked and knows how to use that to her advantage. But she’s using it to her advantage to make sure people accept other parts of her backstory at face value. For starters, she was a much more successful lawyer than she lets on, and doesn’t need the money. Her husband, Edwin Kingston, is faithful and never had a gambling problem, both of which she claimed during her first day at work. Most importantly, she has chosen the name “Matlock” as a nom de guerre to infiltrate the law firm of Jacobson and Moore. She and her family found an anonymous claim that the firm hid documents that could have taken opiates off the market earlier, in time to save their daughter. As the narrator of Jane the Virgin would say, “Just like a telenovela!” There are several time throughout the season when having a narrator make this remark would be appropriate, but no narrator. Anyway, a perhaps more useful analogy is Matlock (2024) is to prime time legal procedurals of the 1980-90s what Jane the Virgin was to telenovelas of the 1990s-2000s. But I don’t think I can get into that in more detail right now.

Despite the Jane the Virgin direct connection, Matlock (2024) really fills the hole of topical legal procedural with a twist that The Good Fight and The Good Wife left. (I do watch Elsbeth, the actual spin off of those shows. It is different, and I will get to it later. ) Like The Good Fight/The Good Wife it the cases are mostly civil and most of the work is done outside of the courtroom, which is such a change from what I remember of late twentieth century legal procedurals. The cases of the week tend to involve a lot of in the news discussion such as tech startups, abusive corporations acting as landlords, covert anti-union action from corporations, and various reasons people mistrust the pharmaceutical industry. Also, as plot, the cases of the week tend to slow down the more serialized plot. This captures the feeling of “the world seems to be falling apart, but I still have to go about my daily life,” in a way that I really admire. The solutions to cases are rarely absolute victories. There are often complications due to conflicts of interest. Maddie has to deal with more than one person who reminds her of her relationship with her daughter, and/or the case itself has an interesting parallel to Maddie’s personal investigation.

Which brings me back to discussing Maddie and her family’s double lives. The situation they’ve created for themselves is messed up, and the show knows it. The whole Kingston family is involved in the investigation including thirteen year old grandson Alfie, who sometimes wants to skip school or sleeping to work on it. Until recently they were based in San Francisco and this project not only required relocating to Westchester, but getting an apartment in Queens where Maddie and Alfie can pretend to live if anyone from work visits. Alfie also visits his grandmother at the firm on “Family Day”, helping in her espionage plans while he is there. There is always tension that they will be found out. But over the first few episodes when the plot seemed to include an “accident” that would expose them, then flashbacks would reveal how Maddie and her family planned things to get more access to information her new colleagues have. These scenes could just make the viewer feel relieved, but they also are unsettling. The people we’ve decided to follow can be manipulative and deceitful. Also the Kingston family dedicating themselves to get revenge like this sometimes seems to get in the way of their ability to heal and move on. Besides, it’s something of a leap to say if certain documents were not hidden, the whole pharmaceutical industry would stop making opioids and they also would cease to be available in any black market variety. Proving this malfeasance won’t bring back Ellie, nor make her parents feel better about any decisions they made during her life.

The office life part of the show relies on a tricky balance. The characters Maddie works with the most have to be engaging and likable, while the greater structure, and the mostly unseen partners retain some suspicion. Maddie shares an office with Junior Associates Billy and Sarah. I am going to take this opportunity to say that when Kathy Bates decides to wrap things up and retire, I hope Billy and Sarah get spun off so I can keep watching them. The Sarah character in particular seems to trigger a lot for me. She’s unapologetically abrasive in a way that reminds me of how when I was a teenager I thought the phrase “never change” sounded like a curse. She’s gotten far with her manner of being, but there are also ways it feels like self sabotage. In my early notes on Matlock I called her the “Petra” of this series, referencing the character from Jane the Virgin. I’m not sure how much I agree with this by the end of the season. But it’s worth noting that the actress who played Petra, Yael Grobglas, has a reoccurring role as a Jury Consultant named Shae. She is a minor antagonist, land always fun on screen.

The most important relationship Maddie h develops is with partner track Senior Associate Olympia Lawrence, played by Skye P. Marshal. They quickly become a kind of professional confidants, but reluctant to call each other friends. There is a tension between who is mentoring who, the elder person, or the one who has been at the firm longest. When we meet her, Olympia is in the process of getting divorced from Julian Markston, Jr., son of one of the firm’s partners. Olympia, her soon to be ex and his father have been selected by Maddie and her family as the people most likely to have destroyed the documents that could have taken opioids off the market. So some of the tension is will their burgeoning trust be destroyed be the reveal that Olympia is who Maddie would find most culpable? Or by the various ways Maddie manipulates her over the season? Also how can you worry about their personal conflicts when they are in trying to take down the most evil beverage company since iZombie’s Max Rager?

It’s worth noting that the Julians, Junior. played by Jason Ritter, and especially Senior, played by Lloyd Bridges, are used sparingly throughout the season. Maddie interacts much less with them, so there is much less dramatic tension with how a reveal of their culpability would play out. We’re told that they have a messed up relationship, but we mostly don’t see it. What we do see fits that description, but it’s not a tension for the viewer. The opacity around these characters makes you hope that they are the guilty ones, unto the show confronts you with how much that will affect the other characters we have met at Jacobson Moore.

This is good tv drama. A fun mix of procedural/serial/workplace comedy/ domestic drama. I’m glad it exists, and continue for at least one more season.

[postguiltypleasures]

My Peak TV Journey Land of Women / Tierra de Mujeres

While sitting down to write this, I realized that I took no notes. Which is a shame as I really liked it and would love to champion this not yet renewed series. I want more! I’m not sure if I’d accept star/producer Eva Longoria’s CNN docuseries Searching for Spain as a substitute. I was thrilled by the trailer for Land of Women, especially when I recognized Carmen Maura as Longoria’s mother. As someone who has watched a lot of the films of Pedro Almodóvar I am always happy to see the star of films like ¿Qué he hecho yo para merecer esto! and Mujeres al borde a un ataque de nervios. At one point in this series there is a homage to the famous gazpacho scene in the latter film. It doesn’t go as well.

As one of the few people who watched Longoria’s short lived sitcom, Telenovela I was also happy to see supporting actors from that here. Diana Maria Riva is in the first episode as friend of Longoria’s character Gala. I think they have great best friend chemistry and if there is a second season, I hope she is in more. Amaury Nolasco plays the type of character his character in Telenovelas would play. If that makes it seem like the earlier series was doing more to break his typecasting, it did. But he’s good in both, so glad to see him. (I feel like I am going to disappoint people by not Malian comparisons or connections to Desperate Housewives. I didn’t watch it regularly, or much at all after the first season. I do think that there is enough dark comedy to this series to appeal to fans following Longoria, but I’ve got no insight on greater connections.)

The story involves Gala, an expert in wine from her childhood working in a Mexican vineyards. She was raised by her single mother, Júlia, played by Maura who is from a small village in Spain but has not returned since before Gala’s birth. She is in the early stages of dementia, but she’s sharp enough to deal drugs in her retirement community and be an active member of their “Spanish Club.” Gala is married and has one child, a daughter named Kate, played by new comer Victoria Bazúa, who is finishing high school at a boarding school to prepare for art school. Gala is planning to start the next phase of her life by opening a high end wine store. Only during the store’s opening ceremony two men approach her revealing that her husband, Fred, is in millions of dollars of debt to their boss. (Much more than it would cost to open Gala’s store.)

Gala gathers all the cash she can, including by attempting to sell some jewelry that she discovers is fake. She then cajoles her mother and daughter on a “girls trip” (to a Land of Women) that she also decides should be to her mother’s small Catalonian village, Las Mugas. None of them have been there since Júlia left. Gala and Kate speak Spanish, but from start spending large chinks of their lives in México. They don’t have native accents and when in a place where people frequently speak Catalán, their outsider status is enforced. Trying to get the three of them there while not letting them know that they are on the run is untenable. Especially as it turns out Júlia has misled Gala about the circumstances under which she left. (Kate is too young to have any deep secrets from her family.)

Carmen Maura’s has the cutest tight lipped smile. It speaks to a life filled with mischief and generally happy about it. She gets to wear it a lot while walking around people shocked by her appearance. She’s done a lot of mischief in her life, intends to do more and enjoy it. One of the things she lied about is the identity of Gala’s father. She thinks he might be her sister’s husband, and she left before having to deal with any of that. She also has not kept in touch with anyone, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that her sister thought she was dead and sold the family home without her input.

Longoria as Gala is more, well, desperate. She’s always fining herself needing to negotiate in situations Eve here she has barely any standing. Her husband’s betrayal has her rethinking things she thought she knew, and this is amplified by the lies her mother told. She knows she loves her daughter, who’s angry at her for suddenly taking her out of school and away from her girlfriend. (Also Gala has encouraged Kate to break up with said girlfriend for reasons she refuses to get into.) Gala also knows wine, and is certain about her taste there. Which is helpful in a Catalonian wine village. Especially as the town’s economy is dependent on a recently formed all female wine cooperative. (One more reason this series is called Tierra de Mujeres.) Finding a place for herself involves finding a way to make herself useful to this collective, without rubbing to many of them the wrong way. Fortunately, everything and everyone looks gorgeous the whole time here. As do the locations, great small old town with modern refurbish

It’s here that I mention that Kate is trans. She is accepted by all members of her family and the only way that her identity affects the plot is how she’s put in an awkward spot when she tries to get a local doctor to wright her a new prescription for HRT after she realizes this trip will be longer than expected. The doctor is indiscreet, but Kate has the support of her family and new friends, including the hot mechanic in training with whom she has reminded herself she has a girlfriend back home .

The series has tension between how much it wants to be about these women finding a new/old home for themselves, and these women are on the run from a loan shark’s goons. While the loan shark stuff kept things moving quickly, I wish we got to spend more time with the people in the wine collective.

The season ended with a couple of cliffhangers. One I hope to continue, another I wish would wrap up quickly. But I have to admit it probably is necessary for maintaining the pace to which I’ve become accustomed.