Fargo (2014) s04e07 – Lay Away

I was really happy to see Dana Gonzales directed this episode because the direction’s bad and since I no longer have any confidence in “Fargo” anymore whatsoever I was worried it was one of the good directors this season going to pot.

This episode seems to reveal the big problem—and not just co-writers (with Noah Hawley) Enzo Mileti and Scott Wilson, they’re definitely contributing to the worst episode—and it’s “Fargo: Season Four” doesn’t have enough story. Too many characters, not enough story. They’re benching actors—so like, Timothy Olyphant not showing up to episode three is in a different light—this episode Jessie Buckley gets off the bench at the beginning.

We’ve been promised a Buckley vs. shitty WASP Stephen Spencer since episode two or so and we finally get the resolution. It’s predictable and not very good and then segues into Buckley being too inept to have been as successful at her proclivities without getting busted. But the show also wants enough suspension of disbelief for Jason Schwartzman–who you can actually watch not be able to figure out how to act in his scenes before he picks the worst possible choice—as the mob boss, so I guess Buckley not being reasonably intelligent enough is just another thing. Another fail for “Fargo.”

Lots more flashbacks. Some of them are risible, like the multi-panel ones of Schwartzman and brother Salvatore Esposito bickering. Now, Esposito is benched this episode until the very end. He was benched most of last episode too. I’m not sure if the show’s really missed him exactly. I’ve missed him, but only sort of. It’s not when he’s in play he’s doing anything particularly good anymore. And if Gonzales is directing, it’s downright bad.

Jack Huston’s got an original flashback, which is something at least. I haven’t softened on Huston’s performance but it’s a terrible part. No one in “Fargo: Season Four,” it turns out, gets a good part. They get a potential Emmy win, but not a good part. Because they’re all fighting for the same two awards or whatever and no one gets anything good.

Though James Vincent Meredith is quickly becoming a real asset as one of Chris Rock’s guys.

And Chris Rock has a fine enough episode. But he’s not, like, great. It’s not the Actor’s Workshop with Chris Rock or whatever. He’s good, sometimes better than good, but he can’t rise about the material.

Big obvious Miller’s Crossing shot at the opening. Sadly it’s the best direction in the whole thing.

After giving J. Nicole Brooks—Chris Rock’s wife—a big, pointless scene opposite Gaetano Bruno, the show cheats her out of an important real scene later.

It’s hard to imagine what’s going to happen in the four remaining episodes, except—hopefully—everyone getting killed off so they won’t be back for “Season Five.” Though, at this point, unless they take the show away from Hawley and company… there’s no point in anyone coming back for a “Fargo: Season Five.”

It’s finally as bad as I figured it would be hearing about it. Though, again, it’s not “Fargo: The Series,” it’s “Miller’s Crossing: The Series.” It’s like Hawley’s betting the “Fargo” audience hasn’t seen Miller’s.

Oh, and the stupid ghost is back.

Would the ghost be stupid if Gonzales weren’t directing? Not sure. Probably. But it’s a slug of a show.

Fargo (2014) s04e06 – Camp Elegance

So it’s another lackluster episode and it’s hard not to notice Dana Gonzales directed this one too. And Noah Hawley has three co-writers on it. Enzo Mileti, Scott Wilson, Francesca Sloane. Not sure any of them are at fault more than any of the others.

Though the one who had private hospital doctor Stephen Spencer (apparently he got the job for his Christopher Walken impression, which does not scale up to an actual performance and also isn’t a great impression anyway) talking about the Human Resources department in 1950 is at fault. That person is at fault.

The others are just along for the ride, which now includes a bunch of flashbacks. Bad flashbacks. Risible flashbacks.

The episode opens with E'myri Crutchfield’s birthday party. It’s a sad birthday party because both she and her parents have life changing secrets. Only they don’t talk about them because Crutchfield and the family aren’t at all important this episode.

We do find out Crutchfield sent an anonymous letter to Spencer about Jessie Buckley, who apparently is supposed to be so good in the show we want to see her doing bad things but no, she isn’t. At all. She’s better than Spencer but Spencer is just doing a Christopher Walken impression. Buckley’s fairly one note but at least it’s not an obvious note.

There’s some more with Jack Huston where we’re supposed to feel bad for him, which is weird. This season is very “love thy cop.” Including love overtly, devoutly racist Olyphant (unless in the “Fargo” universe Mormons are somehow different) and so on.

Chris Rock wages an offensive, leading to an effective scene with Salvatore Esposito, Karen Aldridge, and Kelsey Asbille, and a good monologue from Rock about equal rights.

There’s lots of plotting from Jason Schwartzman to get the action going, with a long sequence putting a child in danger because it’s effective no matter how cheap it comes off. Especially when they get to do a Miller’s Crossing thing with it. Seriously, they should’ve just called it “Fargo: Season Four: Miller’s Crossing: Season One.” Especially once they, you know, lift the some trailer action from Miller’s for this episode.

Sean Fortunato’s a standout performance here.

Ben Whishaw gets another big sequence here and he’s fine. He’s not a failure. So much of “Fargo” is a failure whenever something doesn’t go well, it seems like an achievement. But it’s just not bad.

The ending “teaser” involves Buckley and an abject eye-roll.

Oh. And the ghosts are back.

Blah.

Fargo (2014) s04e05 – The Birthplace of Civilization

Until the end of the episode—which brings in the Fargo theme fully for the first time—everything is character revelation and potentially development. Oh.

And a Trump reference.

The Trump reference is really bad.

The most character revelation revolves around dirty cop Jack Huston. We find out from Chris Rock some of his back story—while Huston has got the cops cracking heads and stealing the Black mob’s money—and then more later when Huston is telling Timothy Olyphant about it. See, Rock really hurt Huston’s feelings and you need to be nice to the dirty cop because he’s white and has a sad backstory.

Maybe it’d be better if Huston were better. Instead, once again, Olyphant’s got to hold up their scenes with his good but very broad character.

Olyphant gets a little more to do than usual; he threatens teenager E'myri Crutchfield later in the episode to find out where outlaw aunt Karen Aldridge is holed up and Crutchfield’s got to make a choice. Simultaneously (basically), her parents have to make the same choice because they owe Rock. Anji White’s getting ready for Crutchfield’s birthday that evening and it all goes to crap thanks to Andrew Bird not being smart about paying off loan sharks.

It provides an effective scene for Rock, who’s really amping up the villain status here, complete with yelling at his wife and mother about being the man of the house or something. But it’s not, like, good. It works, it’s effective, but it’s not good drama.

Similarly the stuff with Crutchfield and Aldridge is somewhat pointless. Aldridge and girlfriend Kelsey Asbille tell Crutchfield all about the outlaw life and why it’s not like being a criminal and it’s not bad. Asbille’s not good but Aldridge is able to carry their scenes and this one’s no different. But it doesn’t really add up to anything. Maybe someday Crutchfield will be an outlaw too. Or not. We’ll either find out or they’ll drop it.

Salvatore Esposito gets a good monologue about what’s wrong with Americans. It’s amid a bad scene—director Dana Gonzales does a rather bad job of directing this episode. There are painfully obvious tropes and no understanding of them.

Glynn Turman gets a decent monologue but it’s opposite Gaetano Bruno, who’s got an exceedingly one note character even if Bruno’s okay enough at it.

The episode’s got its effective moments—Turman, Crutchfield facing off against Olyphant, Rock threatening people—but they’re all pretty shallow.

There’s a big development at the end and it seems like “Fargo: Season Four” just has to be getting going now. Even though last episode promised this one would be the second act kick-off. Instead it’s more first act stuff.

Like… Gonzales’s direction is really not good. Not just for “Fargo” but for directing. I don’t know. The further the season gets along the less likely it seems it’ll prove my concerns unjustified.

The Cabin in the Woods (2011, Drew Goddard)

I didn’t have much hope for Cabin in the Woods; though, I mean, director and co-writer Drew Goddard… he’s gone on to stuff. Good stuff. Right?

But if I’d known it was written in three days—it shows—and cost $30 million—it actually looks pretty darn good for $30 million, saving the money shots until the final third or so. And I guess it’s well-paced? Like, it’s terribly long and exasperating as the film threats the various unlikable cast members but then once it gets into the “final girl” sequence, it’s a lot better. I foolishly even had the wrong final girl picked; I thought Goddard and co-writer Joss Whedon were going to do something interesting with genre. Or maybe I just assumed they were going to try to do something interesting. Maybe feign something interesting.

I didn’t expect them to mix together a few standard sci-fi tropes, the Evil Dead, a not-Ace Ventura Jim Carrey vehicle, a pseudo-gory Texas Chainsaw knock-off, Whedon and Goddard’s celebrity “Lost” fanfic, maybe two other things I recognized and forgot, plus all the horror in-jokes and references I didn’t get. I got the Hellraiser one, of course, because that one was peculiarly… not desperate but maybe wishful. Like for a moment it became a different movie. Though I was confused the whole time because I thought it was supposed to be the merman not the Hellraiser guy. Cabin is often very talky and very fast and it’s not clear during the first half they’re ever going to painfully detail the big secret with a special genre guest star (if you’re willing to stretch genre). It’s a solid guest star “get,” but it would’ve been better with just a voice over and maybe just been Jamie Lee Curtis.

Even getting past the bad writing—because it’s not just a string of tropes fit into very specific, very literal boxes, it’s still terribly written—the acting is all atrocious as well. Cabin creates a role just for Bradley Whitford—paired with Richard Jenkins like they’re Lemmon and Matthau or something—and it’s bad. Like, the part’s bad and Whitford’s obnoxious. Jenkins is better, but definitely not good. He too is obnoxious, with a more explicit misogyny thing thrown in for good measure.

But the leads—Kristen Connolly, Anna Hutchison, Chris Hemsworth, Jesse Williams, Fran Kranz—they’re bad. Hutchison, Hemsworth, and Kranz are really, really, really bad.

It’s bad writing on the characters and all, but the acting’s still bad. If Connolly and Williams were really good, there might be some relief but they’re not. They’re just not as bad as the rest of them. They don’t get actively worse. When it seems like Connolly might be getting better but then doesn’t, it’s not a negative. It maintains. Hemsworth, Kranz, and Hutchison get worse throughout.

Good photography from Peter Deming, okay editing from Lisa Lassek (Lassek’s cuts are fine, the content’s just bad), strangely unmemorable score by David Julyan. I remember a lot of emphasis music but not any of the specifics about it, which is probably for the best.

Goddard’s direction is confused for the first half, when he’s homaging left and right, but it’s at least a low competent for the second half, as the film movies into a new realm.

The second realm is… technically more interesting than the first and the film definitely doesn’t get as bad as it sometimes threatens. But there’s only so good it’s ever going to get given the leads. And the writing.

Maybe it would’ve been better as a TV show? They could’ve called it “Lost in the Woods” or something.

What We Do in the Shadows (2019) s02e08 – Collaboration

Traditional sitcom writer team—seriously, IMDb them (“Frasier” and “Newsradio”—Sam Johnson and Chris Marcil contribute this episode’s script and… well, maybe things make more sense now. Also they don’t seem up on the show because they don’t know how to use Natasia Demetriou at all. Distressingly don’t know how to use her.

Anyway, the main plot involves Kayvan Novak’s familiar from the seventies (Jack O'Connell) remembering he was Novak’s familiar and showing up at the house, causing some tension with current familiar Harvey Guillén.

O’Connell returning isn’t actually the main plot, but Guillén once again getting upset about Novak not making him a vampire, which drives Guillén to the house of a newly changed vampire (Greta Lee), who promises he won’t have to wait so long to become a vampire.

It seems weird the show never came up for a good reason the vampires don’t want to make new vampires, because this episode just has Novak and other vampires staring blankly into the camera, offering empty promises about vampire-making. It’s completely unthought, not just wishy-washy. It gives Novak and Guillén some rather weak scenes to act through at times.

And O’Connell’s nowhere near funny enough, not as actor or character.

It seems like it should be funny—if they’d gotten Fred Willard or someone—but then they didn’t. They just got a bland guest star.

Meanwhile, Demetriou, Matt Berry, and Mark Proksch have a subplot about how Berry actually wrote all the popular songs in the world and didn’t get any credit for them. He and Demetriou start writing new music and driving each other nuts so, of course, Proksch wants to get them to a live music venue so he can feed off the discomfort of all involved.

It’s sporadically funny thanks to the actors and the actual singing is funny but… it’s like Johnson and Marcil didn’t know Berry could do singing and so on. Or, worse, they did and this subplot’s the best they came up with.

It’s not bad.

It’s just nowhere near as good as the other episodes this season. It feels very season one.

What We Do in the Shadows (2019) s02e06 – On the Run

In addition to being the most Matt Berry episode of “Shadows” ever, this episode also has the best Mark Hamill performance since… 1983? 1980? He’s only in the episode maybe five minutes so it’s hard to compare with the Original Trilogy or Big Red One.

Hamill’s another vampire, one who Berry stiffed for rent on a beach house in San Diego in the late 1800s; Berry had been trying to sell his soul to the Devil to get better at the guitar, but went to the wrong place. Also there was a floater in the toilet, so Berry definitely wasn’t paying. It’s a hilarious argument, leading to a duel, with everyone in the cast getting something to do.

But then Berry runs for it and it becomes his episode. He’s not going to duel, he’s not going to pay the rent, so instead he’s going to pretend to be a human named “Jackie Daytona” and run a bar in rural Pennsylvania. Berry’s beloved by all—well, not the people he’s killed and drained of blood, but everyone else, particularly bar waitress Madeleine Martin. And then the entire town after Berry starts supporting the high school girls’ volley ball team in their quest for the state championship.

There’s a little bit back at the house with everyone dealing with Berry being gone, but mostly it’s an excuse for a great Mark Proksch scene. Natasia Demetriou’s distraught, obviously, and Proksch takes advantage for some great feeding. Kayvan Novak and Harvey Guillén are background the whole episode, with the occasional knowing look from Guillén and a one-liner from Novak. It’s like the show realized Berry can’t really go all out with the main cast; “Shadows” has gradually become Demetriou’s show, with Berry acting as her main support but support. Giving him a side adventure really works out.

Two crises arise in idyllic Pennsylvania however—the town can’t afford to send the volley ball team to state and Hamill has tracked Berry to the area. He doesn’t recognize Berry because of the foolproof human disguise, but Hamill knows he’s close. Great stuff with Hamill and Berry, just great.

The end seems like it might not connect, but then does—Stefani Robinson’s script is outstanding. Nice direction from Yana Gorskaya too.

Hopefully Hamill will be back.

Or just get his own show with the character. They leave him with an excellent setup.

But it’s finally a Berry showcase. Since the first episode, he’s been reining it in so as not to walk off with the show. It’s show much fun to see him not have to worry about it and just let loose. Jackie Daytona indeed.

Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness (2020) s01e08 – The Tiger King and I

At the end of The Tiger King and I, host Joel McHale—sitting in his living room because the coronavirus pandemic has him in lock down (the Trump Flu plays a big part, presumably, in all the interviewees ready availabilities)—makes a crack about how there’s nothing he won’t do for money, implying Netflix hired him to do the special.

Except McHale’s an executive producer. Did Netflix have to woo him with that credit—and did it actually work—or did he pitch them on the idea, sitting around in his living room, FaceTime-ing with eight of the “Tiger King” regulars. Not Carole Baskin, who everyone thinks killed her husband. Instead it’s all Joe Exotic’s former pals; they all think he belongs in prison, some hoping he dies in there, some thinking he deserves to be released.

Pretty much everyone except “still wants to be a campaign manager” Joshua Dial and “still an abject scumbag ‘Inside Edition’ producer” Rick Kirkham think the documentarians—not involved with this after show—did a terrible job as far as accurately presenting them. Given Saff Saffery is a man, yeah, they did a bad job presenting people. Also, McHale shouldn’t be the one to finally address whether or not the suicide Dial witnessed (on camera too) was intended as a suicide.

Spoiler: per Dial, it wasn’t. Might have been nice to know during that section of the documentary.

At the same time you have John Finlay talking about how the shirtless interviews were his idea.

Does current zoo owner Jeff Lowe come off better? A little. A government conspiracy seems a lot less likely all of a sudden for whatever reason. And his wife, Lauren Lowe, shows more agency than she ever did in the actual show.

Lowe’s still a scuz and can’t resist the opportunity for a homophobic Joe Exotic impression.

The regular people employees of the park—Erik Cowie, John Reinke, Saff–seem more than willing to talk about Joe Exotic shooting animals so you wonder why the documentary makers didn’t talk to them about it. At the end, Rick Kirkham seems to start to say, “I shot a tiger,” but changes it over to Joe Exotic. They were talking about the regularity of shooting tigers… big slip there. Can’t imagine it’d have gone over on “Inside Edition.”

There are some horrifying further stories about the zoo and Joe Exotic’s running of it, which also seem like they should’ve been part of the main series. Incidentally, McHale mentions multiple times it’s the most popular documentary of all time, which is true and terrifying.

For the streaming equivalent of a cash grab, it’s not bad. It’s nice to get some idea of just how much the filmmakers of the series were manipulating things. Misgendering a main interviewee seems like a big one.

The special’s just as manipulative, of course; between the whitewashing of Kirkham and McHale’s “gesturing down” mentions of Wal-Mart, it’s not like it’s so Netflix can retroactively establish some integrity for it. Should they? Eh. But I’d probably rather watch a diss series against the filmmakers than the movie version everyone keeps talking about.

Especially since no one casts it as well as I did….

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (2018) s01e13 – The Passion of Sabrina Spellman

Big development this episode… Satan, Lucifer, the Dark Lord, et cetera, is an active character. He appears as a goat-headed demon and whoever does the voice isn’t credited (whoever’s doing it isn’t the right casting) and He wants to get Sabrina (Kiernan Shipka) to do his bidding. Not because He needs her to do His bidding for any particular reason, but because Michelle Gomez bets Him Shipka’s not really a bad girl and the Devil needs Shipka to be a bad girl for His future plans for her. She’s going to be His herald when the gates of Hell open, which is either in continuity with the Sabrina comic or the Afterlife with Archie comic. Or both. But I think the former.

So while the Devil is trying to tempt Shipka to misbehave and she’s trying to resist, He starts messing with the people around her, just like she worried… last episode. Things happen pretty fast between last episode and this one, with Ross Lynch and Jaz Sinclair basically ready to get busy if only Lynch would break it off with Shipka, which does seem to end up happening this episode, but more to get Shipka ready to pursue things with warlock Gavin Leatherwood. Sinclair fairly ingloriously disappears this episode, which also has Shipka returning to Baxter High as a student. Just in time to watch Sinclair and Lynch practice Romeo and Juliet while she’s stuck with bully jock Ty Wood. Wood should be sympathetic as the show has previously suggested he was raped in summer camp years earlier by other boys and his parents beat him to shut up about it but… well, somehow the show manages to make him still unsympathetic.

Like, he’s unsympathetic to the point when he gets his graphic, gory comeuppance… they could’ve held the shot a little longer. Would’ve been fine.

Meanwhile, Shipka’s still doing evening classes at witch academy, where Richard Coyle has tasked Miranda Otto to direct the annual performance of The Passion of Lucifer Morningstar, which turns out to be a terribly written play and the scenes with everyone congratulating the kids over a shitty school play is some real talk. Leatherwood’s the lead, Shipka’s the understudy for the female part—Lilith, you know, Michelle Gomez only back in biblical times—and the Devil thinks Shipka should have the main female part.

Also Miranda Otto has to deal with the other teachers at the academy being catty to her, which gives Otto some great material but it eventually turns out to be Gomez’s episode. Especially given Coyle’s adaptation of the Satanic Bible story has been updated to be misogynist and reduce Lilith to a subservient position because Coyle’s a shitty guy. Gomez gets to watch the play and her silent performance is phenomenal stuff. So good.

“Sabrina” is basically Gomez’s show at this point.

It’s a fairly good episode, with Lynch’s teenage cruelties to Shipka a little weird all things (like Coyle’s misogyny, not to mention him slut-shaming when she decides it’s not the right time for them to have sex for the first time) considered. Lynch has been a sympathetic character to this point, but he’s quickly—and effectively—doing a one eighty on it.

I’m very curious what happens next episode as pretty much everything outstanding has been tied up here; “Sabrina”’s got no patience for its B and C plots. Kind of like how Shipka can’t make it though an episode without magicking something better without thinking about the repercussions of her magicking.

Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness (2020) s01e07 – Dethroned

Based on his interviews this episode, it appears Jeff Lowe spent years getting Joe Exotic more and more enraged over Carole Baskin so at some point Lowe would be able to convince Exotic to hire someone to kill her. Possibly even just Allen Glover. Both “Doc” Antle and Joshua Dial think Joe was set up. Lowe attests he did mean to encourage Joe to do it, which isn’t a crime apparently.

A number of people find it highly suspicious the government let Lowe and Glover go, including reporter Sylvia Corkill. Meanwhile federal prosecutor Amanda Green cooperates with the filmmakers so much she performs some of her closing arguments at Joe’s trial for them?

Except they didn’t just get Joe on trying to hire someone to kill Baskin, they got him on violating the endangered species act because it turns out Joe killed five tigers at some point. It really pissed off the zoo employees at the time, which means directors Eric Goode and Rebecca Chaiklin maybe knew about it and decided to just keep it quiet for best effect later.

The jury finds Joe guilty and he’s sentence to twenty-two years. Once instead he decides to sell all the big cat owners he knows out to PETA, which is good. There’s a card at the end about how “Doc” Antle got raided; Joe says Antle has a gas chamber to get rid of the aging tiger cubs, so, you know, fuck him.

Despite “investigating” her for murder, “Tiger King” gives Carole Baskin a positive send-off. Her husband comes off like a tool but whatever.

And things don’t go well for Jeff Lowe. He screws over major creep Tim Stark leaving him without a zoo partner, which really just screws over the tigers. No one really gives a shit about the 200 tigers Joe Exotic had in his zoo. Given one of the interviewees even brings it up, you’d think it’d get some attention but no.

Rick Kirkham plays victim again, says how bad he felt showcasing an abusive-to-animals Joe Exotic and making him appear loving, which doesn’t track with his previous interviews or the other footage of him….

As for Exotic, there’s at least some footage showing he’s aware of the damage he’s done to the animals.

Oh, and James Garretson playing himself as the hero in the whole thing is ick.

“Tiger King” is extremely compelling and ultimately distressing.

I don’t think I want to see a movie of it, even with a dream cast. It’s too much, too sad.

Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness (2020) s01e06 – The Noble Thing to Do

So now we’ve got the downfall of Joe Exotic, promised in the first episode, the pieces not aligned until now.

Businesses undefined businessman Jeff Lowe has returned to Oklahoma after basically getting run out of Las Vegas to discover Joe has been forging his name on multiple documents in addition to using zoo money on his presidential and gubernatorial campaigns. Like, campaign manager Joshua Dial is obviously on the premises all the time, clearly Joe wasn’t hiding it too much.

So after hearing the Feds are investigating Joe Exotic and now the embezzling, it’s time for Joe to go. Somehow he has enough time to burn all the documents showing his fraud and all the computers, plus sell a bunch of the animals for cash, and run off with new husband Dillon Passage and at least one cub. Joe’s on the lamb. From what, no one knows yet.

Except James Garretson, strip club owner, who’s helping the Feds investigate Joe Exotic. See, James knows how Jeff Lowe and Joe Exotic planned to have Carole Baskin killed. Or something. Jeff Lowe talks about it a lot, so he’s clearly not worried about being prosecuted—he was the only one who could use Google Maps—but then again, maybe it’s just the deal Jeff made because after James turns CI and sells out Allen Glover (prison Nazi maybe Allen Glover so he’s completely unsympathetic), Jeff Lowe wants to rat out Joe Exotic too. Everyone wants to drop the dime on Joe Exotic.

A lot of it is low-key homophobic. Something about the way Glover and James talk about Joe and the husbands… plus last episode established Lowe’s a bigot too.

But, wait, given the show plays so fast and loose with its interview timelines and whether or not interviewees are alive or dead… did Glover kill Carole Baskin? Nope, he took Joe Exotic’s money and got high and didn’t do it and can’t remember anything, which sounds like absolute nonsense but then… what’s Glover going to admit on camera.

The episode ends with Joe in prison, whining, and one hoping local news reporter Sylvia Corkill, who covered a lot of Joe Exotic news, gets to write a book about it at least.