Michael Hayes (1997) s01e04 – The Doctor’s Tale

I’d forgotten how once upon a time the evils of liberal Hollywood meant trying to warn how for-profit healthcare in the United States was a terrible thing and now we’re twenty years on and it’s even worse. It’s such a lovely combination of distressing and depressing.

This episode opens with governor’s goon Gregg Henry (who’s such a perfect sleaze ball) coming to David Caruso’s office to get him to sign off on a letter saying the corrupt healthcare company the state is going into business with isn’t corrupt. Caruso won’t sign it because he’s not corrupt, he’s the only good white guy, leading Henry to whine to Peter Outerbridge about it, which doesn’t end up giving Outerbridge anything to do in the episode because while Outerbridge isn’t a bad guy, he’s not a good guy.

Only Caruso’s a good guy; it’s a lot of weight to carry but Caruso’s really good at it. This episode’s the smoothest so far; I’d been worried about it because Peter Weller’s back directing and he tried very hard to be hip with his previous episode but seems to have figured out his 4:3 composition by this one. And Roger Neill’s music is better than it’s ever been, so much so it’s surprising. It’s delicate at times.

The Doctor in the title refers to guest star Patricia Kalember, who’s going to have to be Caruso’s star witness against the insurance company whether she or Caruso like it. Allen Garfield is the slime bag attorney for the insurance company—the difference between Henry’s sleaze ball and Garfield’s slime bag is Garfield’s got greasy hair and a ponytail you wish Caruso would’ve cut off after their showdown—and he’s going to ruin Kalember’s life and Caruso’s case. Kalember tried to get some tests done, the insurance company denied them, little boy is now dying faster from leukemia. There’s actually a lot of character development for Caruso in the episode as he finds further resolve—he thought he could just wing it on his Irish male pride (this episode’s the first time they mention the Irish… impressive patience)—but the show can’t quite address it.

Garfield’s media takedown of Kalember only works because of sexism and misogyny and it only works on Caruso because of sexism and misogyny, so when he gets through it—because “Hayes” is a show written by dudes in the nineties—it hinges on a revelation about Kalember’s character. Her character’s character. They emphasize it as a “eureka” moment—desperate even with the best acting—but do at least give Caruso a good solo contemplation scene to work his way through it. More problematic is probably Rebecca Rigg’s embrace of the takedown, though there’s nothing like realizing she couldn’t just be super smart, she also had to be super smart and wear short skirts.

Rigg is the best lawyer at the U.S. Attorney’s office, something Philip Baker Hall (who’s got one scene to manipulatively inspire Caruso against the blue bloods) didn’t appreciate. This episode is Caruso and Rigg trying to work out the case, Caruso and Kalember not bonding but being stuck in the life raft together, and everyone else is background. Hillary Danner helps with the case but not significantly, Ruben Santiago-Hudson interviews a witness and tells a couple jokes (somewhat problematically since it’s a demotion—Santiago-Hudson’s much better with this material), and Mary B. Ward shows up for a single scene—in an apartment instead of the established house they’d been living in—to pretend the family plot line is essential. They even rush the talk about Ward’s terrible marriage to Caruso’s good for nothing brother.

Yet, even with Kalember being good with a “good for a guest star on a primetime drama” asterisk, it’s the best episode yet. There’s a really good balance between the lawyer stuff and emphasizing the actors—Caruso, Rigg, and Kalember—and it works. Weller having a better handle on his composition helps immensely.

I can’t decide if it’d be better or worse if they finally just let Caruso punch out one of the blue blood crooks instead of just silently judging them. Again, Caruso’s good at the righteous judgement and “Michael Hayes” does have enough tone problems already so maybe it’s time to trust Paul Haggis.

Never thought I’d type those words again. But it’s getting to where—with the nineties primetime drama asterisk—“Michael Hayes” is good.

Signs (2002, M. Night Shyamalan)

It’s impossible to overstate what a profoundly, risibly bad movie Shyamalan has made with Signs. As the end credits started rolling, after the most disappointing “epilogue” Shyamalan could’ve come up with—it’s not just disappointing, it’s also pointless (pointless is the probably the best adjective to describe scenes in Signs)—my wife joked the movie took two weeks to film. To which I responded, “Thirteen and a half days longer than it took to write.” Because even with all the bad in Signs—and there’s so much bad—the writing is the worst.

And Shyamalan does this non-committal “camera as POV” thing—cinematographer Tak Fujimoto should be ashamed of himself for enabling Shyamalan to do it and embarrassed with how poorly he shoots the thing; Signs looks terrible–so, in other words, there’s a lot of competition for what’s worst in Signs. Shyamalan’s direction of the talking heads scenes—and there so many talking heads scenes because Shyamalan, who’s ego is literally oozing from every grain of film–involves characters almost looking directly into the camera but then just a little diagonally. Shyamalan is going for something with Signs, with his very intentional direction, his very intentional casting of himself as the guy who kills star Mel Gibson’s wife in a traffic accident (Shyamalan was asleep at the wheel) and vehicular manslaughter isn’t a thing and it just turns reverend Gibson into an atheist (but they never say the a-word because while Signs is definitely a millimeter thinly veiled Christian movie, there’s still the veil and it’s never going to get confrontational about it). Also… Shyamalan wrote the movie, so he did kill the wife.

Symbolism. Pass it on. Like the dog tchotchkes at the end to remind the viewer there are dogs, even if everyone forgot about them because they don’t matter because Signs is insipid.

Signs is full of symbolism but not really full because there’s not much because Shyamalan gets frequently bored with things like mise en scène because there’s better things to do like write the awful scenes between Gibson and his family. I went into Signs at least thinking Gibson would get through it unscathed (performance-wise). No. No. Not at all. It’s a godawful performance. He is incapable of pretending to be a former reverend, a widow, a husband, a father, a brother, and a farmer. The scenes with Gibson and kids Rory Culkin (who’s kind of terrible; it’s not his fault, Shyamalan seems to be having him do a Macaulay impression circa Uncle Buck but he’s still bad) and Abigail Breslin, who gets terrible material and terrible direction, but is still phenomenal. Shyamalan can’t figure out how to direct her because she’s not terrible like the rest of his cast.

Though, not Joaquin Phoenix. He’s leagues better than Gibson, though it helps Phoenix’s character is a dope. Gibson’s ostensibly functional enough to get to this point in his life—whereas Phoenix apparently always had Gibson to lean on—yet Gibson is real dumb. Real dumb.

Other bad things about Signs? Cherry Jones. She’s awful. Ted Sutton is so bad SAG should’ve shut the production down. Bad editing from Barbara Tulliver; Tulliver’s editing, cut for cut, is probably even worse than Fujimoto’s photography. Tulliver—presumably unintentionally—screws up all of Shyamalan’s jump scares. Larry Fulton’s production design is bad.

James Newton Howard’s score, while inexplicably a complete Bernard Herrmann Hitchcock rip-off (oh, wait, was Signs in the middle of Shyamalan being the new Hitchcock era), and poorly utilized, isn’t poorly composed. It’s competent, just misapplied. Everything else is incompetent and misapplied.

I was looking through Rodale for a good, fresh adjective to describe Signs but I think vapid does the job best. It’s worse than I expected it to be, which is saying a lot, but it also surprised me. I had no idea Gibson would so spectacularly fail or Phoenix would be—with a lot of conditions—so much better. And I guess Shyamalan managed to be inventively terrible, it’s just he’s a pointless kind of inventively terrible.

Oh, you know what… there’s the word.

Puerile.

Signs is puerile.