Fargo (2014) s04e09 – East/West

East/West does not make up for the previous episode but it does call the whole shark-jumping into question. Because East/West is director Michael Uppendahl and writers Noah Hawley (I really want to know how much he does on these episodes where he’s co-credited) and Lee Edward Colston doing a big ol’ Barton Fink homage.

A big ol’ obvious Barton Fink early 1990s Coen Brothers homage. And it’s somewhere between fine, good, and excellent.

The episode’s about Ben Whishaw and Rodney L. Jones III on the lam from the regular series. It’s mostly in black and white, with the color being a little obvious but fine because of how they set it up. Frankly, it shows the whole season should’ve been in black and white—oh wow, Dana Gonzales shot this episode. Gonzales was the season’s worst director until last episode. The photography’s fine, but it’s not great black and white photography by any stretch. They could’ve used some more contrast filters in post. But when it’s endless snowfields and lone buildings and whatnot? Excellent stuff.

Whishaw and Jones are holed up in this in-the-middle-of-nowhere giant old hotel amid snowfields, run by two sisters who hate each other so everything in the house is split east and west. There’s a great desk clerk (Patrese McClain, who somehow manages to better indirectly and directly address the racism the Black characters experience than anyone else has in the rest of the show) and a bunch of weird guests. It’s like Barton Fink, but with a kid—Jones—in the lead.

And Jones ought to be “Fargo: Season Four”’s secret weapon but the show doesn’t acknowledge it needs one. Anyone else, including Whishaw and Gaetano Bruno (who’s on their trail to kill them), would bring too much baggage to lead this episode. Though Whishaw’s a lot better away from the regular cast and in black and white and dealing with racist fucks, but still. Jones is the perfect hero here.

Corey Hendrix also gets a bunch to do at the beginning; he’s the Black mobster trying to take out Bruno for killing Jones, even though Bruno didn’t actually kill Jones—the opening turns out pretty okay thanks to Hendrix, though the present action then backs up a day to Jones and Whishaw to get them caught up and there’s a somewhat rocky transition until the episode fully establishes itself as Uppendahl’s Coen Brothers homage project.

And “Fargo” could definitely work as an anthology of different directors doing their odes to the Brothers Coen. Heck, if they’d done the whole season like this episode in any way—same style, or just the anthology idea—it wouldn’t be anywhere near as in trouble as it’s gotten.

Hunters (2020) s01e10 – Eilu v’ Eilu

So when I thought “Hunters” was going to use the tenth episode to set up next season… turns out I was mistaken. There’s some setup for next season, complete with some betrayals and cast changes and very big surprise surprises, but it’s mostly a resolution to this season. To things the show never established needing resolved.

It opens with a flashback to the year before, when Jeannie Berlin originally does to Al Pacino to tell them they have to hunt Nazis in their golden years and whatnot. Berlin and Pacino sit for a very awkward, could be good if Michael Uppendahl’s direction of the actors weren’t so terrible and David Weil’s writing weren’t so blah. It’s a wasted opportunity, but will just be the first of many in the episode.

The next one comes in the present, when Logan Lerman—back to being a good boy after last episode—goes to visit Pacino and Pacino’s disappointed in him because Lerman’s not bloodthirsty enough. So Lerman bitches to his last friend left—Henry Hunter Hall—because the girl is gone this episode. What a red herring she turned out to be on like four different levels. Anyway, Lerman bitches about how Pacino doesn’t like him anymore because Lerman’s not a killer. Hunter Hall—completely straight-faced—is like, “well, you know Jean Grey and Spider-Man both went on to kill the big bad” or something to that effect.

One really has to wonder what superhero movie Weil desperately wants to write because it’s desperately obvious he’s elevator pitching.

What else—meaning what else won’t be a spoiler to the multiple big twists—oh, Greg Austin. Greg Austin, even though he’s just playing a psychopathic neo-Nazi at this point, is back to doing well. Show really didn’t end up treating him well, which is fine; “Hunters” doesn’t treat anyone well in the end.

Except, of course, Dylan Baker. He’s a lot of fun.

And William Sadler’s got a good glorified cameo.

Lerman continues to disappoint. He gets to do his whole “seeing the signs” thing with information again this episode, but he gets all that information from Nazi-hunting notes his grandma has been hiding around the house for a calendar year and Lerman never noticed. Weil’s writing has so many “duh” moments.

As for where the show leaves it for the season… it’s pretty cheap, it’s kind of lazy, but I imagine I’ll be back for the next one. At least to see what’s up with some of the cast, though it’s lost a few major draws.

Hunters (2020) s01e08 – The Jewish Question

Well… while this issue has some great stuff for Carol Kane and Saul Rubinek, pretty much everyone else is at the other end of the stick, which seems like a mixed metaphor but basically there’s some not great acting this episode.

The Nazis blowing up a subway was the final straw to convince Logan Lerman he needs to start torturing Nazis to get information—Victor Slezak, who’s a long way from The Bridges of Madison County—and the episode charts Lerman’s growing radicalization. The scene where Louis Ozawa is mortified at Lerman’s inhumanity while Al Pacino looks on proudly would be something… if Lerman weren’t so insufferable when he acts tough.

At the beginning of “Hunters,” I wondered why Lerman—save looking fourteen years old at twice the age—hadn’t made it. Range. Tough Lerman this episode is a slog.

Also a slog is Jerrika Hinton finally joining the team and facing off against Kate Mulvany. Hinton doesn’t come off well, which is a problem. Hinton joins the team after the blackout starts and she threatens Pacino a bit about how he better be telling her the truth about the Nazis she already knows about.

It seems like they’re going to go out and save the day but really they just meet up with the team, have some cries when the extent of the tragedies unfold, then have a funeral. The funeral’s the next day, which is fine, Jewish funeral and all, but it seems like there’d be some trouble getting the body that fast. Like… finding all the parts.

Anyway.

This episode does have some promise of happiness for Hinton, whose dying mom (Myra Lucretia Taylor, who’s got a seriously thankless role) not only knows she’s gay but loves her for it. Good because not only does dad Andre Ware hate her for it, he also thinks her job (saving the world) isn’t important.

It ought to make Hinton more sympathetic but… not really sure she’s going to to be able to have a successful character arc.

Greg Austin’s writing also disappoints. He’s just an idiot Neo-Nazi psychopath. His sidekick this episode, Jonno Davies, is good. Austin’s fine, it’s just disappointing his role’s so shallow.

Dylan Baker’s only got a couple scenes. Doesn’t help.

Great Judd Hirsch cameo. He faces off with Pacino, comes out ahead, which is cool but not great for the show.

What else… we get Pacino’s secret origin from the Holocaust finally. It’s horrific but not as horrific as it could be; it’s measured. Pacino’s got a monologue about being the dark night. “Hunters” seemingly couldn’t exist without superheroes being in pop culture due to the movies of the last fifteen years, which seems very odd for a show set in the seventies.

But Kane and Rubinek have some amazing work here. Not playing old spies and whatnot, but just a married couple. Lovely work.

Oh, and the secret Nazi plan reveal at the end… could be great if the show has the right idea but I’ve got no confidence it does. Not anymore. “Hunters” has started coasting.

The Hot Zone (2019) s01

I don’t get to make this statement very often anymore and even less about bestsellers and TV miniseries but I’ve read the book.

The Hot Zone. I’ve read the book by Richard Preston (who is sadly not this guy, Robert Preston). Well, okay, I haven’t read the book. I listened to the book. It’s a good book. Highly recommended if you want to see how “popular non-fiction thrillers” can be done well. It’s so good at that format when I listened to Console Wars and got super-creeped out by the casual misogyny, sometimes downright silly bad writing, lionization of middling White capitalists, and odd “Japanese voice” thing, I kept going because it reminded me of Hot Zone.

I eventually gave up on Console Wars because there’s only so much time in the world and the book has actually got zero to say.

But I didn’t give up on “The Hot Zone,” the event miniseries (aired/run on National Geographic, but produced by Fox TV); even though the miniseries only reminded me of The Hot Zone the book, I finished watching it. Because why not. Even though it never gets to the best parts of said book, even though it’s a terribly plotted television show—Kelly Souders, Brian Peterson, and Jeff Vintar are questionable show runners. James V. Hart, who might have written a movie treatment back when Hot Zone was a best-seller and Outbreak hadn’t come out yet, writes a bunch of the episodes too. Or contributes. He gets the “created by” credit, even though he doesn’t write the first episode, which breaks with tradition. At least with tradition as I understand it from watching television too much for too long.

If you’ve read the book and you remember the cave, the cave isn’t in the movie. Instead you get created for the miniseries fictional White guys Liam Cunningham and James D’Arcy hunting the disease in Africa, taking stories away from, you know, Africans. Cunningham is a Scottish Indiana Jones type—the young-age makeup on him, which is mostly just foundation and hair dye, works; it’s a shame Cunningham has zero chemistry with “lead” Julianna Margulies in the present. The present being 1989, flashbacks being 1976. D’Arcy is the square who gets roped into Cunningham’s mad quest to find a lethal virus. The show wants to pretend he’s some kind of zealot but he’s not, neither in script or performance. Maybe it’s because the writers wouldn’t know how to give him that amount of character; the directors (Michael Uppendahl and Nick Murphy) wouldn’t know how to direct for it anyway. They’re really bad.

Canada also doesn’t stand in for Washington D.C. well. The show says it’s “inspired by true events” while the book was true events told in an inspired fashion. It’s a bummer because a good show runner could do wonders with the book. They even have some of the “do wonders” possibilities in the show and do jack shit with them.

The casting doesn’t help either. “Golden Globe-winning star of ‘The Good Wife’” Margulies plays the ostensible lead, who fights against sexism in the U.S. Army’s infectious diseases institutions and basically loses that fight. Margulies’s performance in “Hot Zone” is about the same as a lazy episode of “Good Wife.” She’s fine, never anything more, which is fine for “Hot Zone.” Good for “Hot Zone,” actually.

Topher Grace is bad as her de facto sidekick, the sexist civilian scientist who gets the most sympathetic arc when he thinks he’s got Ebola and has to go to get tested in an AIDS testing speakeasy. The show has this whole juxtaposing of AIDS and Ebola reactions, which I don’t remember in the book but if it was in the book, it wouldn’t have been as poorly handled as in the miniseries. It’s not a bad idea, it’s just the show doesn’t have the producers, writers, or directors to properly explore good ideas. It’s a bummer.

Cunningham and D’Arcy are caricatures, but who cares. They’re not as bad as Grace or as comically ineffectual as Noah Emmerich, who’s Margulies’s husband and the family’s Mr. Mom. One of the many lazy character “development” moments has Emmerich telling Margulies she’s more important to the family than him, even though he’s the only one who does anything with the kids except drive them to school. Once. She takes them once. But only because it can work in the “AIDS panic” sub-sub-subplot and Margulies changing from her Alicia Florick outfit to her Army camo in her car because she’s that kind of go getter.

The show also chokes on the Chuck Shamata as Margulies’s dying dad subplot, which has a lot of potential but not with these writers, not with this show.

Robert Wisdom is fine as Margulies and Emmerich’s commanding officer but it’s more of an extended “Oh, shit, it’s Bunny Colvin!” cameo.

Paul James isn’t good, isn’t bad as Grace’s flunky.

Robert Sean Leonard is similar. He’s there to make things feel less Canadian. Ditto racist Nick Searcy (not his character, just Nick Searcy; he’s not a nice man). Unfortunately, Searcy gives a fantastic performance. At least as far as the script takes him, which isn’t very far because the teleplays aren’t good. Even when they’re not bad.

Twenty-five years after The Hot Zone, given all the advances in scientific knowledge, television narrative, streaming narrative, CG, whatever, you’d think it’d be the perfect time to adapt the book. But “The Hot Zone” ain’t it. I’m not sure Outbreak is much better, minute-by-minute, but it’s a lot shorter and a lot less disappointing.

Read the book.