Writing Blind: Oz S2

Welcome to a feature called "Writing Blind."  In this series, I will be writing about seasons of television that I watched in the past year or so, but failed to write about at the time.  I call it writing blind, because I will be sharing my thoughts months after I have already finished the season.  This is both because I want to write about these seasons, but don't have the time to re-watch them and because it is a challenge to hopefully improve my writing.

Oz is probably the best show in existence with characters who have flexible characteristics and motivations.  That's not really a compliment.  Oz is primarily focused on plot more than character.  The strength of the actors add character to places where there isn't.  The show seems a little less concerned with getting inside the head space of individual characters than it does in making sure the plot is interesting.  If it does attempt to do that, it does so bluntly.

The reason why I think this is the case is in its introduction to new inmates.  It shows them in present day, and through a different camera filter, shows what they did to get in prison.  This isn't a show particularly interested in delving into the complexities of man.  These people are defined by what they did.  This strategy helps with creator Tom Fontana's impatience with storytelling.  He can consistently shift character motivations in order to do what he wants to do.

In this season, Nazi supporter Vernon Schillinger and formerly sane and normal person Tobias Beecher continue their feud.  The smartest thing the show ever did was making Beecher crazy, in my opinion.  It's more entertaining, it's different than what you'd expect, and there's not a lot of places to go by placing a normal person in Oz.  So you get a cat-and-mouse game between the two that might not ever end.

The casting on this show is sometimes so goddamn good it's unbelievable.  Schillinger has tried the direct approach, but being a good villain that he is, he decides he wants to hurt Beecher in the most painful way imaginable.  So he sets Chris Keller in Oz to make Beecher fall in love with him.  And it works.  And it only works because Christopher Meloni is fantastic.  Seriously, he makes the entire thing believable.  It's cruel at the end when they break Beecher's arms and legs, and while that is the show's pulpy side, it's still affecting because Beecher was starting to gain some of his humanity back.

The other extremely disturbing storyline is undoubtedly Ryan O'Reilly, who begins the season in a power struggle for control of Oz with Adebisi.  That changes quickly when he has cancer, which Dean Winters of course excels at playing.  This is right up his wheelhouse.  Acting tough while showing you are actually vulnerable on the inside because you are scared to death.  Blink and that's sort of Dennis Duffy on 30 Rock.  But then it takes a very dark turn.

Like I said, this show has no interest in making its characters in any way redeemable.  You get the sense that they pretty much all deserve to be in prison for the rest of their lives and it's kind of a bold decision.  The fact that the show was able to pull that off while still condemning the prison system successfully is something I'm not sure how they did.  Because in theory, seeing that these are all evil sons of bitches would in some way prove the prison system works.  These are bad guys.  They are getting what they deserve.  And yet, the show doesn't hold punches in the flaws of the system.  Somehow it doesn't come across as hypocritical.  This is actually the first time I'm noticing the contradictory nature of it in fact.

Anyway, O'Reilly ends up falling in love with Dr. Gloria Nathan.  This seems innocent at first although he very quickly starts showing stalker tendencies.  Stalker tendencies is one thing, but nothing prepared for me for when he has his mentally disabled brother Cyrus, kill her husband.  (I have LOADS of problems with that character, but I'll get into that in season 3 when he's more prominent.)  He does end up sacrificing himself for his brother so that his brother will get sent to Oz, which well that's like the bare minimum of having human decency.  I mean he had his own brother, incapable of making decisions for himself or at the very least not in a position to say no to his brother, kill someone.  So yeah he deserves it.

Said continues to be a compelling character, but looking over the season, he doesn't get a lot to do.  That's a strange thing to say where I'm pretty sure he had something to do in each of the episodes, but he's still seeing what his purpose is after he orchestrated the riots.  He provides legal counsel to multiple inmates, including Schillinger, and helps Poet get out of prison.  The one false note to me was that Poet immediately got sent back to prison.  As we've known him, I just don't really buy how quickly he got sent back.

Miguel Alvarez at first is clearly the leader of his gang, but he's threatened when Raoul Hernandez comes to prison and immediately takes control.  Hernandez, played by the great Luis Guzman, challenges Alvarez and doesn't think he's tough enough for the gang.  So he basically gives him an ultimatum where he has to rip out the eyes of a former gang member to guard or he himself will be out of the gang.  So he does it.  The ramifications of this are explored in the third season, but needless to say between that and when he withholds information about who raped Glynn's daughter, he was a pretty shitty person.  (Side bar: Don't really like how they handled the rape.  It's not shown, but it's clearly used as a plot device and it feels icky throughout)

Lastly, Oz's least interesting character, Scott McManus, who the show unfortunately finds interesting apparently has a bunch of "White Male Problems."  God I hate McManus.  Am I supposed to hate him?  Terry Kinney is just a really shitty actor so I feel like that's where most of my hate is directed, but he just comes across as whiny and entitled.  I think I was supposed to care when he lied for Diane, but yeah I didn't give a shit.  He's such a boring character, no doubt to Kinney's performance.

In all, I don't think the quality diverged greatly from the first season and it managed to still remain mostly original.  The storylines aren't stale and that remains true of just about every character.  None of the characters feel the same and they haven't repeated anything yet.  The only recurring elements of the first season - the Beecher-Schillinger feud and the power struggle for the prison - still don't feel repetitive or boring.

Still it's a bit of a case of diminishing returns.  The show isn't exactly predictable, but you know what to expect at this point.  I think originality and wow factor of the first season is lessened here.  So while I don't think I liked the first a ton more than the second season, for whatever reason, I do think this season is marginally worse.

Grade - B

Rewind: The X-Files S5

Season five is a weird season and it's one that's weird almost by necessity.  In the summer after the fifth season, The X-Files movie came out in theaters, which means that either before or concurrent with the shooting of the fifth season, they shot the movie.  So Gillian Anderson, David Duchovny, and the writers weren't exactly available for your regular full TV schedule.

Hamstrung by time constraints, the show was forced to get creative with how to make a season of television while also making a movie for theaters.  This led to inventive and exciting new episodes while also having the most duds of any season since the first season.  Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny are both either missing or barely present in multiple episodes.  One of the show's two primary directors, Rob Bowman, only directed two episodes in this season because he was also directing the movie.  He had directed 23 episodes in the first four seasons.  (I find it interesting he was chosen for the movie.  Kim Manners directed more episodes of the show and also directed the finale.  Despite his obvious talent, he didn't seem all that interested in movies so maybe that was the reason?)

So the fifth season ends up becoming uneven and unfocused (especially contrasted with the extremely cohesive fourth season.)  But that's not a huge problem with a show as creative as this one got.  In "Unusual Suspects," The X-Files had a spotlight episode on its tertiary characters, the lone gunmen.  These weren't exactly characters I would have guessed could carry an episode on their own, even knowing they eventually got their own (failed) TV show.  But by focusing on the most normal one of the group, John Fitzgerald Byers, it ended up being similar to a typical noir story where the everyman is duped by a woman.  Predictable maybe, but still entertaining.

"Post-Modern Prometheus" evokes an old-fashioned type of horror by being shot in black-and-white where we are dropped into a small town.  The X-Files episodes that focus on small towns are at the very least always interesting and tend to seem like real places.  But this is definitely considerably different than most X-Files episodes.  "Bad Blood" is one of the best episodes they've ever done with a "Rashomon" like story where we get two skewed perspectives and no sense of the truth.  "The Pine Bluff Variant" puts Mulder in a position where he robs a bank!  "Foile a Deux" is one of the creepier monster of the weeks they've ever done.  Just the idea that you can see a huge insect-looking thing coming towards you and nobody else can is one of the most terrifying things imaginable.

With the excellent come the very bad episodes as well though.  "Schizogeny" is confusing, not scary, and doesn't have a compelling monster of the week.  It's a slog to actually watch.  "Chinga," the Stephen King-penned episode, is quite awful.  Those two at least have good reasons for being bad.  Stephen King works haven't really tended to work that well either on television or in movies unless someone takes his idea and goes in a different direction.  The other one was a spec script that they accepted because they needed another episode.  "The End" has no such excuses with a child prodigy who can read minds and a forced love triangle from a completely new character.  That was the last episode of the series so even if the movie was on your minds, you'd think you'd actually put your best foot forward.

The fifth season, as I look at all the episodes I talked about, wasn't quite as uneven as I thought.  It has a rough middle stretch and the mythology episode at the end is probably the worst one thus far, but most of these episodes are good.  In fact, I'm not sure there've been so many off-the-wall ideas in any season thus far and nearly all of those ideas work.  The fifth season is rarely in its typical format which lends an unpredictability to the season.  While previous seasons have been better, when you click on the next episode, you usually know what you're getting.  That is definitely not the case in this season, for better and for worse.

So I'm pretty intrigued going forward to say the least.  I have seen from a number of people that Duchovny at some point stops giving a shit.  I can't help but speculate that the heavy workload this season could have been a factor, if true of course.  But this season, while somewhat of a letdown from previous seasons, in no way indicates a drop in the show's quality.  The top episodes are as good as the show has ever been and the weaknesses can simply be explained by the tough schedule they put themselves in.

Grade - B+

As an added note, I plan to watch The X-Files movie and the sixth season before the special six episode season coming out in January.  Since most people have recommended I stop after seven seasons, I'll probably end up recording the newest season, watching the seventh season and then finally watching the new episodes.  So it might be fair to say I won't get to the new episodes until March.

Reviewing the Netflix Comedies

Netflix released two comedies in back-to-back weeks recently, Master of None and W/ Bob & David.  Coincidentally, I just finished the first season of Bojack Horseman and not too long ago finally was able to finish Wet Hot American Summer television show.  So since I have trouble reviewing comedies, I'd thought I'd combine all four of these comedies into one post.

Master of None
Aziz Ansari's Master of None is brilliant.  This is the lone comedy that has a near one-hundred percent chance of making my top ten at the end of the year.  (To be fair, possibly unjustifiably angry readers, I have quite a bit of 2015 comedy still to watch.)  It feels natural in a way that most comedies don't.  It tackles issues that most comedies don't.  It's also funnier than most comedies.

Each of his ten episodes are singularly focused on one thing whether that's parents, the idea of having kids, or getting into a relationship with somebody who is married (or in a committed relationship.)  And yet it somehow never feels forced and maintains its naturalistic setting.

Aziz Ansari is playing a character who I'm fairly certain is essentially Aziz Ansari in real life.  The other major character in this season is played by former and seldom-used Saturday Night Live cast member Noel Wells.  The two of them together make a believable couple.  Ansari casts a few friends who he talks about his problems with throughout the show, the standout of which is Eric Wareheim, a big hulking giant.  A notable recurring guest star is H. Jon Benjamin (Bob's Burger's, Archers), a welcome person for Ansari to spill his relationship troubles.

It's also very well-directed.  It adds to the naturalism and they take full advantage of the high definition.  It makes New York seem to pop off in the screen as if you could simply walk your way into New York through your computer.  (Don't do that, stupid people).  I absolutely recommend this show to everyone who can watch it.

Grade - A

W/ Bob and David
I didn't watch Mr. Show with Bob and David so I was unaware of their type of comedy.  This is a sketch comedy where all of the sketches are related in some way.  So that's an interesting twist on your usual sketch comedy show.  This show definitely made me intrigued to go back and watch Mr. Show with Bob and David.  Unfortunately, I don't want to go back and watch it because W/ Bob and David was amazing.

W/ Bob and David largely failed for me.  I'm assuming they have basically the same format in the original show, which is a weird live audience monologue followed by weird sketches that connect in some way.  My main problem with this show is that I didn't find it that funny.  The only consistently funny part for me was John Ennis.  He's part of why I want to watch the original.  But it's also because it's really easy imagine me loving this show if the performers involved are just a little better at writing and a little better at performing.

It just felt very amateurish to me.  I think that's part of the joke, but that doesn't mean it feels any less amateurish.  One jarring scene for me was when Bob Odenkirk plays all of the characters on "What if Seinfeld cast played Star Wars characters?"  The joke was that it was a stupid skit that David hates.  But at the end of the episode, he's getting huge laughs from a presumably "fake" audience because nothing he was doing was funny.  I think it was supposed to be funny because of how bad it was.  And... that's usually not a great source of comedy.  Basically that entire scene made me suspect the live audience was nothing more than a laugh track sitcom disguised as a live audience because they seemed to be laughing on cue more than at jokes.  (I feel like a lot of my complaints could be responded to with "That's the joke" but it's not a funny joke!)

Grade - C+

Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp
What also made me interested in the idea of revisiting the old show was that a lot of the humor in W/ Bob and David seems similar to Wet Hot American Summer.  Since the show precede the movie and since original ideas almost always look better even after you've seen the copiers, I think my impression of the original would be improved.

That's a long-winded way of saying that I think the television series Wet Hot American Summer did the type of humor W/ Bob and David tried doing much better.  (It's not a perfect comparison since one is a sketch comedy)  Part of that undoubtedly is the actors involved.  As much as I love Bob Odenkirk (I'm mostly indifferent on David Cross), Paul Rudd and company are just so much better on delivering the weird than those two.  This is a cast so good it'd be worth watching no matter how bad it was.  It just simply seems impossible for the caliber of this cast to be anything other than above average.

Watching the series, it seems written with that in mind.  Like I don't want to disparage Michael Showalter or David Wain, but I can't imagine this was that funny purely on paper.  Just look at every scene with Paul Rudd in it.  Try and tell me that's funny with anybody but Paul Rudd doing it.  Or every scene with Josh Charles being as close to a perfect parody of a frat boy as possible.  Or Elizabeth Banks being a self-important reporter.  Or Ken Marino macho posturing in a way where he is clearly doing it because he's insecure (how does he do that so well?)  And yes the writers realize it so I'm not saying it's bad writing.  It's just writing for the medium.  Anyway, watch this for the performances.

Grade - B+

Bojack Horseman Season 1
Last year, when Bojack Horseman started, my roommates had it on.  I watched a couple of the early episodes, out of context, and wasn't impressed.  I returned to it about two weeks ago and the first episodes still didn't impress me, but I soldiered on and kept watching because I heard it would get better.  And it did.

It also started to be clear what the show was about more than anything.  The main appeal of this show is its portrayal of a man in a deep spiral of depression.  He has fucked up in his life and he isn't happy about it.  He doesn't think the spiral will end.  The fact that this is happening while a pretty funny television show is happening is an added bonus.  A large amount of credit goes to Will Arnett for making him a multidimensional character, who is talented, a goofball, an asshole, and depressed.  (It's not all that different from his character on Arrested Development, Gob actually.)

The show is particularly adept at small little moments of animal humor and its recurring Hollywoo subplot.  Also, I have to commend the show for making a gag out of Princess Carolyn dating three boys in a trench coat AND have it go on for three episodes AND somehow making it funnier and funnier the longer it goes on.  The Todd storylines mostly fell flat to me - not necessarily because of Aaron Paul - but because they were extremely broad.  Anyway, I'll be watching season two for sure.

Grade - B