Film review: COURT

FEATURE: The legacy of HBO's late LOOKING

/EW

In what has become a new trend for HBO, their latest series to be cancelled -- HBO’s Looking -- has been provided the opportunity to wrap up its story with a conclusive film. Even if it does represent a nice P.R. move for the pay cable network, it’s still an unprecedented gesture for fans of a show logging around 200,000 viewers per episode. HBO could have renewed Looking, sure, but it wouldn’t have made much sense to: their half-hour department has been ridiculously effective in the quality department of late, and this isn’t even a show that generated the kind of “Save this show!” campaign that the similarly-fated Enlightened did. Outlets including The AV Club, Vulture and Indiewire (wait, was that me?) stuck their neck out for the show last week, but ultimately, the conversation was too quiet to make enough of a difference.

I didn’t review the season of Looking in its entirety as I do for most shows, mainly because my mid-season thoughts didn’t change much and, as noted above, I wrote a healthy amount on its value and importance for Indiewire just before the series finale aired. But with this cancellation, I feel compelled to write a few more words...

Television review: FOX's EMPIRE

Television review: HBO's GIRLS

Postmortem: BLOODLINE and the illusion of family

(Netflix)

Spoilers for the entire first season of Bloodline ahead...

Glenn Kessler, Todd. A. Kessler and Daniel Zelman – after their big success with Damages – have now given us Bloodline, a star-studded family drama about secrets and lies and murderous treachery and bastard sons. The Rayburn family is a trademark in the Florida keys, with an established resort property dating back to 1968, and the Rayburn children serving as foundational pillars to their community. Meg Rayburn (Linda Cardellini) is her father’s lawyer, as well as an attorney connected to the city’s restrictive commercial development; John Rayburn (Kyle Chandler) is the respected town Sheriff; and Kevin Rayburn (Norbert Leo Butz) rents out boats to whoever might want them (those boats come in handy later, trust me). Yet a deep secret is brewing beneath the surface, coming to a boil when brother Danny (Ben Mendelsohn) returns home. He brings along with him buried pains and lingering resentments. Sally Rayburn (Sissy Spacek), with her agile spiritedness and brave smile, is an embodiment of what this family has attempted to repress for so long, and she believes she can make everything okay if she just tries hard enough. But the past is irreconcilable, and there are some things you just can’t fix. We know from the first episode that the season will end in Danny’s death, and irrevocable tragedies will ensue.

Television review: Netflix's BLOODLINE

FEATURE: BLOODLINE is time-shifting noir, but introduces a new way to binge

(Netflix)

Bloodline, Netflix’s new dramatic series, comes from Glenn Kessler, Todd A. Kessler and Daniel Zelman (KZK), the creators of Damages. Though that series concluded on DirecTV with little fanfare, the FX drama pioneered a genre that’s come to be very popular in cable drama: the time-shifting noir. Damages strung together a rather brilliant first season in particular, cutting forward and backward so fast that, by the time its juicy season-ending revelation was unveiled, we could only sit, breathless. It was a high-wire act, gripping, stuffed with terrific performances and knowing about its audience’s investment. The same approach has been taken, to predominantly diminishing returns, by such series as Showtime’s The Affair and HBO’s True Detective. If Damages used the device and style to subvert the legal drama, The Affair found a way to tackle infidelity, and True Detective true crime, in an innovative but ultimately gimmicky fashion. In all three, the question had to be: what happened?

As with any narrative device, it depends on how you use it. Damages, alone, fashioned some season arcs that ended randomly and incomprehensibly, while others landed as thematically rich and structurally admirable. But keeping the conversation to first seasons -- since most of these shows are so new -- few could do it better than Damages. The time-jumps and cliffhangers were intrinsic to the season’s progression, and were about as ravishing as anything on TV at the time.

It was a model that lost viewers due to its aggressive serialization and complexity. Week-to-week, it didn’t really work commercially, even though those that could commit have laid the foundation for an everlasting fan base (it’s had quite the afterlife on Netflix, as shows like Broad City humorously make note of). It would have done great on the binge model. So who better to get behind Netflix’s next big show than KZK, bringing along their trademark twisty narrative and star-studded casts.

But Bloodline is not Damages. You have to go into it like you would a favorite novelist, whose latest work isn’t quite convincing you in those first dozen pages. It’s a slow burn, with the narrative device seated on the back-burner and the plotting much tighter, but also more geared to the long-term. Interestingly, the Damages team embraced the binge-model with open arms, but not in the way you’d think. Rather than being the instantly-addicting, uber-stylish thriller that was expected, Bloodline unfolds like a novel, trusting viewers (who trust them) to stick with their story, invest in their characters and prepare for one hell of a finish. They hold up their end of the bargain, anyway.

I’m not sure it will work, even if it feels groundbreaking. You could say that KZK find themselves in that unfortunate, paradoxical position yet again. The structure and narrative organization of Bloodline is new and perfectly-suited to the binge model, but it also requires serious commitment. Critics were sent out the series’ first three episodes, which while solid, incorrectly sell the show. These episodes are all relatively flash-forward heavy, and move very slowly. If you’re not prepared to be in the hands of these writers, you’d be within reason to call them boring. And as such, critical reaction wasn’t quite overwhelming. It was positive, sure, about as much as House of Cards’ but a fair notch down from Orange Is the New Black’s. And although House of Cards has never been a critical favorite, it’s got that Damages level of intrigue and suspense, which has worked wonders on the binge model. Bloodline doesn’t roar out of the gate. It takes its time. And, as such, it carries certain expectations.

Bloodline shares the beachy noir of The Affair and the swampy equivalent of True Detective. It also builds as Damages did at its best, albeit with more confidence and less reliance on a shifty structure. It is, in fact, very good. Excellent, even. I’ll have an official review up in a few days, but I put a lot of faith in Bloodline and was amply rewarded with a rigorously character-driven family saga. But I’m not sure the same can be expected of those not quite familiar with, or perhaps not quite as fond of, Damages. Because, to be clear, you can like Bloodline and not Damages. You can like Damages and not Bloodline. Or you can like both. They’re different beasts, created from the same minds. Bloodline is less fun but smarter, less twisty but more impressive in the handling of its characters and their relationships. And it’s still a pulpy, slushy thriller that, eventually, reels you in. It’s a binge show. Just not the kind that we’re used to.

Which is why the fate of Bloodline, with the critics, the public and the industry alike, is so fascinating to consider. It’s entering an extremely crowded television landscape, where it’s become more and more difficult to stand out. The limited number of episodes sent to critics have prevented Bloodline from making a bang. But, for those that stick with it, it should get there. The question is if enough do stick with it, and if those that do can make enough noise. Because Bloodline deserves some chatter, as a quality, form-defining piece of storytelling. It’s a risky gambit for Netflix, asking more of its audience but promising in return a fantastic, tightly-plotted season of television. We’ll see if it pays off.

Film review: WHILE WE'RE YOUNG

Film review: THE HUNTING GROUND

/Variety

The Hunting Ground is a startling documentary and a visceral confrontation with the paradox of higher education. It builds on the critique and methods of last year’s inferior Ivory Tower, which was as disturbing as it was flawed (significantly, in both cases). The enduring strength to Hunting Ground, however, is less rooted in its informational backbone -- intense and well-researched as it may be -- and more in its depth of feeling and empathy. In this account of the sexual assault epidemic that remains intrinsic to far too many American college campuses, victims and activists come to life with heartbreaking clarity.

The film is directed by Kirby Dick, and is framed around the ongoing efforts of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill students Annie E. Clark and Andrea Pino. Both Clark and Pino were sexually assaulted while on-campus, and struggled to re-integrate into the community after being attacked. They found activism, and being a source of support for other victims, as a way to come back from their own trauma. As Dick investigates the way collegiate athletics, administrative red tape and the question of “legitimacy” all jeopardize the acknowledgment and punishment of on-campus assault, we follow Clark and Pino listen to other people’s stories and begin to notice a trend in the way administrators and counselors actively undermine activists’ efforts. Yes, to make the college look good, and to avoid the suspension of star football players, and to make sure the money keeps flowing in, colleges actively suppress the voices of the victimized.

The conveyance of this idea is extremely effective. As the scope of the problem magnifies, just in terms of numbers and second-hand evidence, the stories and struggles of women like Clark and Pino mount. Unlike a far more-jumbled Ivory Tower, The Hunting Ground sets out a clear path, with several self-contained stories told within a progressing narrative (I'd rather not get too specific, seeing as the film's revelations are so directly connected to the viewing experience). In effect, the film -- perhaps inadvertently -- highlights a much larger and more troublingly-systemic problem in higher education. If the demands of money and the popularity of college sports are influential enough to derail the efforts of rape and assault victims to find justice, a horrifying underlying narrative emerges, ripe for extraction, about the state of higher education in America. And it's everywhere, from state institutions like UNC to Ivys like Harvard to liberal arts colleges like Swarthmore.

The movie hits its beats with an excellent sense of pace, keeping the focus on the victims and on the shocking, pervasive injustices they continue to face. The work of Mr. Dick is extremely personal and thus affecting, even as what these students have to say points to broader, even cataclysmic issues. It’s a testament to his structuring that even as these stories come in harder and faster, the documentary never feels repetitive, or as if it’s wallowing. Rather, solutions are presented. Meaning and fulfillment is achieved by activists. And the problems identified only build in severity. There’s depth to the cinematic evocation here, in the method in which issues are raised and solutions are presented. It’s made clear that this matters without any overwrought underlining.

We’re in an age where documentaries seem to be thriving in form and flexibility, from the work of Joshua Oppenheimer to HBO’s recent phenomenon The Jinx. And as something like Citizenfour can prove, documentary film can touch a nerve and really galvanize action and conversation. The Hunting Ground isn’t as cinematically-rigorous, nor does it opt for a more controversial approach. It is, simply, an account of a serious problem that demands recognition. But as a compelling, informative and moving watch in its own right, The Hunting Ground proves that docs need not be flashy to be effective.

Grade: A-

FEATURE: Lee Daniels, Pop Art for TV and EMPIRE

2014-15 TV SEASON: MAD MEN, EMPIRE, BLOODLINE and the fascinating year in drama

(AMC)

Emmy season is briefer, far less gluttonous and blessedly less predictable than the four-month Oscars slog. Preceding the Emmy nominations announcement are independent selections from only two groups: the Broadcast Television Journalists Association (BTJA), a large group of mainstream TV writers who confusedly name their award the Critics’ Choice (they’re more of an intermediary between industry and critic); and the Television Critics Association (TCA), the high-brow, long-standing critics’ circle for television whose awards more accurately represent the tastes of critics than the BTJA.

In impact and quality, between the TCA, the BTJA and the Emmys, we’re provided a lasting and intriguing picture of the TV season that was. It’s why I prefer Emmy season: with film, you have the Oscars, and a bunch of groups either consciously voting predictively, or consciously not voting predictively. Perhaps it’s because the Emmy doesn’t have as much stature, or because neither BTJA nor TCA have much to gain by emulating the industry’s standard TV award, but when the TV season comes to a close you wind up getting true, independent consensus from three distinct and relevant groups.

Last year, the three only agreed on a trio of dramatic series, all of which could boast big ratings and critical acclaim: Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones and True Detective (which, for the record, competed as a miniseries at TCA). The BTJA and TCA – as in, those groups out of the industry – both lobbed for The Good Wife and The Americans, the former of which actually took Best Drama at TCA. Meanwhile, the stuck-in-their-ways Emmys went for Downton Abbey yet again, but also were the only ones to stand behind Mad Men for a seventh consecutive cycle. Finally, while the Emmys and TCA threw a bone at House of Cards, the final BTJA slot went to Showtime’s acclaimed-but-low-rated Masters of Sex.

If all that read a bit jumbled, here’s a handy comparison (winners bolded):

EMMY                                   TCA                                       BTJA

Breaking Bad                         Breaking Bad*                       Breaking Bad

Game of Thrones                    Game of Thrones                    Game of Thrones

True Detective                         True Detective*                       True Detective

Downton Abbey                      The Good Wife                       The Good Wife

Mad Men                                 The Americans                        The Americans

House of Cards                       House of Cards                       Masters of Sex

[The asterisks make note of 1) Breaking Bad winning TCA’s Program of the Year award, and likely losing the Drama Series award as a result, and 2) True Detective competing as a miniseries with TCA.]

The snapshot of last year illustrates a burgeoning divide between critical and industry preference. Both The Americans and, ironically, The Good Wife – as in, the one broadcast show that could (and ultimately didn’t) compete for Best Drama at the Emmys – did very well with both BTJA and TCA, but were passed over by the Television Academy. Both shows, as I’ll discuss in a moment, remain critical juggernauts in the 2014-15 landscape. But by holding onto Downton Abbey and treating House of Cards – a show critics like but don’t take all that seriously – as a mainstay, the Emmys have certainly established a fair distance from their lesser awards counterparts.

Of course, the Emmys six selections work as a pretty solid aggregation of the most impactful/quality shows of the season; it’s a fair fusion, even if the BTJA has conjured up a better one by dropping Downton for Masters of Sex. In their own way, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, House of Cards, Downton Abbey, Mad Men and True Detective have all been culturally-penetrating, and more to the point, have enjoyed (at least during some of their respective runs) solid critical acclaim (all have been a TCA nominee for Drama Series). So if a conservative six, it’s not an unsurprising one, nor is it in any way egregious. But collectively, these three bodies provide those six mainstays along with under-rewarded critical darlings (Americans, Good Wife and Masters).

***

(CBS)

If the results of the 2014 season were plenty illuminative, this year’s should be even more-so: expect chaos in a year plenty-filled with fascinating narratives and qualitative milestones in regard to hour-long drama series. Last year, Breaking Bad marched to victory with all three groups; True Detective was the one-and-done phenomenon that probably belonged in miniseries; the House of Cards and Game of Thrones crazes were starting to subside; and The Americans and The Good Wife were too good to ignore… until they were, in fact, ignored. Oh, and The Good Wife was single-handedly keeping critical interest in the broadcast drama alive.

In 2015, we’ve got a lot more to talk about. Firstly and most importantly: who the hell is out front? With both Breaking Bad and True Detective ineligible, only Game of Thrones returns having been recognized by all three groups. But given the source material, it’s expected to have its weakest season; and more to the point of Emmy recognition, it hasn’t pulled out a win yet and its peak has passed. The same goes for House of Cards, while Downton Abbey should resume its bubbling along at the back of the pack.

Then things get interesting: we’ve got a four-time winner approaching the end of its run, a television phenomenon as we haven’t seen in decades (seriously!), a spinoff that’s actually good and interesting (and popular), an upcoming Netflix drama suffering from prestige overload, the equivalent Golden Globe winner on a network that’s great at campaigns and is itching to get back in the race, and, yes, The Good Wife and The Americans still exist in critics’ minds, as does the return of Sundance’s magnificent Rectify. Things are happening, and the field for what might get recognized is blessedly chaotic.

Let’s start with Mad Men, which would become the first show in history to win back Drama Series after losing three years in a row. If this short season of Mad Men were against the end of Breaking Bad, it would lose. Against the first season of Homeland, lose. Against any of Mad Men’s first four seasons, lose. But the spot is open, and Mad Men has a narrative to drive home if there ever was one. Though the critics rather disappointingly backed away from it, there’s no real perception of the show dropping in quality, and the significance of Mad Men’s conclusion has been well-entrenched weeks before the season has even started to air. AMC is effectively rebuilding the Mad Men Emmy narrative, and they also, fortunately, have a new kind of TV Academy: though they used to be averse to rewarding shows in their last seasons, both The Sopranos and Breaking Bad went out on an Emmys high-note. Granted, those seasons generated big ratings and a lot of chatter – not quite as Mad Men’s swan song will. But Mad Men was never especially popular, but beloved was it ever among the industry. The show has been steadily dropping in nominations, so a comeback in major categories (writing, actors like John Slattery or Elisabeth Moss, etc.) would signal a changing tide.

(FOX)

Aged, long-respected Mad Men will begin to mark the end of the TV season just as its definer, the FOX phenomenon Empire, comes to a close. As the subtle AMC period drama exits after seven graceful, award-winning years, there’s a new scene to take its place – and it is loud, soapy, delirious fun. Empire, which comes from Oscar nominee Lee Daniels and Emmy winner Danny Strong, has earned ratings of stunning magnitude all while keeping critics comfortably on its side. It’s been revolutionary for more reasons than the obvious – its predominantly black cast, a landmark in TV representation and the cornering of nonwhite markets – as this has been the greatest success story for network television in decades. It’s the kind of show that, despite its pedigree, probably would get skipped over by Emmy considering the show’s soapy, hyperactive nature. But the ratings (and cultural conversations) are too substantial to ignore, and with a pair of Oscar-nominated actors in leading roles – Terrence Howard and Taraji P. Henson – the show might make a serious dent in this year’s race. Moreover, considering the brilliance (and intensity) of Henson’s performance, the fact that Best Drama Actress could come down to a pair of African Americans – Viola Davis is the clear frontrunner for How to Get Away with Murder – is a rather remarkable leap forward.

Better Call Saul, meanwhile, may have seemed like an exercise in regression – but it’s anything but. With excellent ratings, solid reviews (that actually seem to get better by the episode), the show has effectively built on the mammoth success of Breaking Bad while also maintaining its own identity. But how will the Academy treat it – and how will critics treat it? While Mad Men is sure to be re-embraced by critics, and Empire should fare well across the board, Better Call Saul occupies a strange space. It feels like an Emmy show, both in production and quality, but its status as a spinoff doesn’t help it. It’s not a clean label, nor a flashy one. It’s that fan-service-thing that Vince Gilligan did – and look, it turned out well! Of course, it’s more than that, but the climate this year is just ridiculously competitive, and I’m not sure it has the grit to stand out beyond its Breaking Bad-ish identity. We’ll see. In any case, it’s a success story in its own right, and we’ll see to what degree that holds up come awards time.

There’s another show whose premiere is still a week out, and who could really dismantle this whole “structure” that’s been established. Bloodline, sure to get a heavy push from Netflix, is higher on pedigree than just about any newcomer: it comes from the creators of Damages, a two-time Emmy nominee for Outstanding Drama Series (it received a TCA nomination, but aired before the establishment of the BTJA), and features a juicy cast. In leading roles are Emmy winner Kyle Chandler (Friday Night Lights), Emmy nominee Linda Cardellini (Mad Men), Tony winner Norbert Leo Butz (The Good Wife) and, said to be the standout, Starred Up actor Ben Mendelsohn. And competing in supporting, among others, will be Oscar winner Sissy Spacek, nominee Sam Shepherd and Golden Globe winner Chloe Sevigny. Plus, it’s on campaign-savvy Netflix, and advanced reviews from Variety and The Hollywood Reporter have been more than favorable. Set in the sun-soaked Florida Keys and fashioned as a twisty family thriller, the show seems like an Emmy show, and it’s slow-burn and tightly-structured narrative should help it greatly given the binge-watching release strategy from Netflix. It could be a real game-changer in a category looking for a frontrunner, assuming the acclaim holds up and viewer response is positive.

But, of course, it’s too early to tell – how can Bloodline be evaluated when the fate of shows airing right now such as Empire and Better Call Saul is so up-in-the-air? And these shows don’t begin to comprise the list of contenders in Drama Series. Showtime, after losing out its Drama Series placement (which had been in-tact since 2008) last year, is back in the game with Showtime’s The Affair, a psychological drama which already won the Golden Globe for Best TV Drama. Take that with a significant grain of salt, however, considering the Globes’ affinity for new shows and the muted critical response to the season’s second half. It won’t be as big a player on the critics’ circuit, and viewership numbers were quite low – if the Emmys wouldn’t go for Masters of Sex, it’s hard to see The Affair figuring in. But it has hardware, prestige and acclaim to boot. And, for that matter, neither The Good Wife nor Homeland, the quickly-forgotten 2012 winner which is fresh off a creative resurgence, should be overlooked either, in a category that could go any number of directions.

I’m eager to see how these three distinct groups size things up. There will likely be more variety between the nominations slate, which is a great way of acknowledging the boom in quality TV drama this past season. These aren’t Breaking Bad-level shows, and consequentially, the landscape is more chaotic. There’s much to choose from and little to agree on. But that’s a captivating narrative to explore as reflection on the season that was begins. What compels recognition? What shook us, what captured the nation – and, more importantly, what was great? Between the BTJA, TCA and TV Academy, you get a sprinkle of it all – and a surprisingly holistic salute to what continues to be the era of too-much-good-TV.

Television review: HBO's TOGETHERNESS

(HBO)

The contrived, explosive and surprisingly cathartic conclusion to HBO’s Togetherness ended in customarily messy, empathetic fashion. By keeping things relatively unrefined and unusually compassionate, the half-hour series (from Mark and Jay Duplass) has skirted around similarly-conceived “indie TV” to hit the air recently. It’s maintained a distinctiveness.

I wrote about the first half of Togetherness some weeks back, so I’ll merely link to that piece here before offering up some brief thoughts on the HBO freshman as a whole.

The ending of the first season of Togetherness is very, very good. In fact, within this show’s universe, it’s probably as good as it could have been. The show’s structural challenge, to this critic anyway, has been to maintain dramatic stakes and emotional investment in a cast of characters who can be irritatingly prickly but are, through-and-through, fundamentally decent. They’re also unremarkable. There have been criticisms that claim Togetherness is the latest in a long line of cable-situated, upper-white-middle-class chronicles; I don’t quite see the evidence for lack of originality. The kind of specificity that drives supposedly-related series such as Transparent on Amazon or Girls on HBO is absolutely intrinsic here. But the perspective is different; perhaps, even fresh.

Togetherness is so mild and familiar that it does, in fact, feel unoriginal. If the same could go for a standard episode of, to keep the analogy going, Transparent or Girls, at least the people on-screen – a transgender parent and her identity-conscious children in the former, a group of spoiled, creative 20-somethings in the latter – aren’t usually the ones front-and-center in the stories we consume (or the worlds we live in). In Togetherness, it’s a suburban family doing fine with money, contending with problems that are recognizable if not relatable to most everyone. But even though the Duplass Brothers present a pretty-exclusively white and heterosexual group of characters, the perspective is still as “insider” as is the Jewishness of Transparent or the hipsterism of Girls.

In that way, investment is everything. As I described them before, this is a cast of people taken very seriously, and sympathized with greatly, by the show’s creators. How you react to Togetherness, then, depends on whether you can fall on their side. Storytellers have to meet you halfway, give you reasons to relate and connect and invest; but when the nature of the material is this specific and this naturalistic, there’s an element of insider knowledge that has to come into play. It’s the kind of idea that has so severely plagued Looking, a show which delves into a very specific part of the gay community, in the ratings.

The season finale gently fissures its two central relationships. The budding attraction between Steve (Steve Zissis) and Tina (Amanda Peet) was never meant to be – despite the obvious connection and affection shared, he’s just not the kind of guy she could ever take seriously (because, mostly, she doesn’t take herself seriously enough) – while the distancing marriage of Michelle (Melanie Lynskey) and Brett (Mark Duplass) appears to be headed for a reconciliation before a tragic season-ending development. A lot of it is left unfinished, and there’s still a second season (and likely more) to go, but the damage is irreparable: Steve goes to shoot a film in New Orleans, while, just as Brett prepares to profess his newfound commitment to the marriage, Michelle gives in to her attraction to David (John Ortiz). The final montage in particular hit me much stronger than I expected; the show is so casually involving that only when a game-changing development took place did it occur to me how much I’d come to identify with these characters, and invest in their relationships.

A lot of this has to do with the attention paid to each individual character. Michelle, specifically, is so far away from the unfulfilled domestic that could have been. Togetherness, over four hours, invites us to see many facets of her character, from her not-so-lonely night on the town to her fight for a community charter school. And though initially introduced as the wife-that-doesn’t-want-to-have-sex, the story unfolds in a way where she and Brett are equally complicit and equally guilty about their struggle to maintain intimacy. The study here is equal among characters, in the simultaneous pursuit of individual dreams and familial responsibility and subsequent gratification. The casting, particularly of the two female leads, has helped things out enormously. The show’s tracking of Michelle’s crisis of identity, or Tina’s crisis of confidence, has been aided by Lynskey’s conveyance of soft-spoken strength and Peet’s shaky but spirited performance. As the episodes roll on, Lynskey and Peet come to be so comfortable and so deep into their characters that it’s hard not to feel them.

Which leads me to the series’ climactic event: an act of infidelity. It’s not unexpected, nor is it original to Togetherness. But the execution is markedly different. The time we’ve spent with Michelle individually leads to us practically rooting for her to sleep with David (though partly because John Ortiz is, let’s get real, quite the charmer); there’s a general question as to what would make her happy, which the show effectively builds around, and she’s been reluctant enough to demonstrate a genuine internal conflict. Yet when Brett has his little breakthrough, the sensation turns the exact opposite: in a rich bout of dramatic irony, we make the emotional (and moral) shift at the exact moment Michelle does, but just before the Duplass team throws a clever switcheroo. By the time Brett is driving to find her, and Michelle is closing in on spending the night with David, the dynamics are so messy and the simple question of “what’s best?” so confusing that we can only watch with our heartbeats a little faster and a little louder. Here, Togetherness put its money where its mouth is: it rallied us to its side, as we rooted helplessly and unknowingly for a group of irritable, decent and completely familiar human beings. That’s special. And it’s also, regardless of how conversant we may think ourselves to be in such matters, undeniably unique. 

Grade: A-

Television Review: UNBREAKABLE KIMMY SCHMIDT

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt was too raunchy and weird for HBO, so they moved on over to Netflix, where now you can binge-watch all 13 episodes and discover Ellie Kemper’s comedic genius. For those of you who haven’t seen it, Kimmy Schmidt is your average, happy-go-lucky girl who's been convinced to live in a cellar for several years with three other women (one who can’t even speak English... supposedly). The apocalypse has occurred, but – when the FBI has found them – they realize they’ve been duped.

Convinced she needs to break out of her “mole woman” image, Kimmy ventures off to New York in order to make something of herself. She finds a roommate, Titus Adromedon (Tituss Burgess), a gay, black, bald drama queen with a fabulous voice and debonair demeanor. She finds a job working for Jacqueline Vorhees (Jane Krakowski), an uber-rich New York woman who is as incompetent as she is superficial.

Many characters round out this world of utterly absurd figures, from fellow mole woman  Donna Maria Nunez (whose brand of “Mole” sauce is now a big hit, after her publicized exodus) to the insanely paranoid landlord Lillian Kaushtupper (Carole Kane), who wants to stop New York gentrification at any cost. The Titus Andromedon exploits run the satiric gamut from werewolf gayness to union galvanizer for the costumed pamphalteers at Times Square. They're all clever subplots which draw us into this strange and fascinating world the extremely Tina Fey and Robert Carlock have provided for us.

But Ellie Kemper’s Kimmy Schmidt grounds the show, and all of the incisive and sharp writing simply would not work with out her dynamite timing and unshakeable optimism. She is the predecessor of Will Ferrell’s Elf, riding a subway with utmost glee and kissing boys with girlish enthusiasm. This is a show about a woman coming to terms with the new world, and it’s certainly at its best when she’s trying to add up change on a delivery run or confiding in senile billionaires about her PTSD in the bunker. 

The satire in this show lands effortlessly from the very beginning, and the characters never feel overwrought or off-putting (that’s saying something, considering how over-the-top everyone is). Let’s consider Jane Krakowski, whose Jacqueline Vorhees is about as ridiculous a person as they come. Kimmy encounters her by accident, mistaken for the dog masseuse who never showed up. I can totally picture the majority of actresses botching up this role by making her larger-than-life or lifelessly opaque; Jane Krakowski provides us with refreshing humanism, fashioning out a character who is at once utterly absurd but recognizable. It might be easy to overlook her performance, given the amount of talent present on the show, but, from such insane scenarios as burying a robot at a dinner party to doing calisthenics while repeating, “I'm not here, I'm not here,” to being, in her past life, a Native American teenager with a desire to be a white girl, a vulnerability is always present in her eyes. She gives this satiric role its astounding believability, and that is quite an accomplishment. My favorite line of the show is hers:

        

         Son: Mom, we used to own people! (On planning his family tree)

         Jacqueline: We still do honey.

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is dense on jokes, drawing on the vast and absurd panorama of contemporary America. It feels original, unchartered comedic ground, a meta-exploration of how the culture of media shapes our perception of the world. But it’s still very 30 Rock, down to the surprise cameos. (When Martin Short appeared as her dermatologist, a man whose face is literally made of plastic, who found it almost impossible to talk without pursing his lips together, I almost died.)

Perhaps where the show is weakest is when it engages in more serialized efforts, as in the love triangle with Dong and Logan, or the drawn-out trial which I'm convinced could have been handled in an episode (even if Jon Hamm is an absolute revelation as the cult leader, someone who we now know is equally, if not more so, adept in comedic roles than he is in dramatic ones). The show tends to feel static if the writing doesn’t take the characters to new places. Unlike 30 Rock, which has the advantage of being a show grounded as a work-place comedy where the plot can easily string along, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is mainly reliant on spectacle and the-next-funny-thing.

The worst criticism I can give the show is that it’s humor and first six episodes promise more than it can deliver, given that it aspires to be more sitcom-like in tone than we’re originally led on to believe. Yet it’s never not entertaining, which is a good thing. But why did it feel more serialized by the end than it did in the beginning? Perhaps it was the mistaken notion that plot is what will keep a viewer hooked, something that the Netflix model is based around: “addictability.” Attempting to fit this mold, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt does a disservice to itself, rather than sticking to its strengths, we’re all too-aware of its weaknesses by the very end.

Okay, this sounds negative, but, overall, it’s still a great show. The ensemble has immediate chemistry, rare for even the best sitcoms. Titus Andromedus singing ‘Pinot Noir’ as a tribute to the black male penis is hilarious; Kimmy and Dong dancing at what they believe to be the Friends fountain; Lillian ready to kill Jacqueline; Logan on a small and incompetent horse: all hilarious moments!

But plot is not this show’s strength; comedy is, and social commentary is. David wrote that maybe a show like this is simply not meant to be binge-watched. I disagree. The show, given its platform, just needs to take more risks, both structurally and comedically. I’ll definitely be re-watching my favorite episodes of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, and I’ll be looking forward to the next season where, hopefully, it will have a better sense of what it wants to be.

“Kimmy Goes Outside” A

“Kimmy Gets a Job” A

“Kimmy Goes on a Date!” A-

“Kimmy Goes to the Doctor” A-

“Kimmy Kisses a Boy” B+

“Kimmy Goes to School” B+

“Kimmy Goes to a Party” A-

“Kimmy is Bad at Math” B

“Kimmy Has a Birthday” B
“Kimmy’s in a Love Triangle” B – (Jon Hamm A +, yes I'm crazy)

“Kimmy  Rides a Bike” B – (Jon Hamm A +)

“Kimmy Goes to Court” B – (Jon Hamm A +)

“Kimmy Makes Waffles” B +