[7.6/10] To quote an equally regal television program, Agents of Shield, it turns out that the former King Edward is a “big fat friggin’ Nazi.”
Frankly, the episode works better as almost a news program or a recitation of historical events more than a drama. I knew through cultural osmosis that Edward and Wallis had cozied up to the Germans in some form or fashion over the years. I did not know that they fed intel to the Nazis, that Edward wanted to be reinstalled on the throne as a puppet king, that they’d seen concentration camps and continued to sidle up to Hitler and company, and that he encouraged the Germans to keep blitzing his home country to soften them up for “peace.”
Fuck him.
If I haven't made it clear in these write-ups, I think it’s important to separate these historical figures as they appear in a television show that needs tidy stories and drama from their real life equivalents. I’m sure many of the events that The Crown depicts don’t align with reality, but take advantage of poetic license or the usual excesses of adaptation to make things more palatable and interesting. So when I gripe about Philip’s attitude or chuckle at Tommy Lascelles’ stuffiness or the like, I do so as though they’re fictional characters, in full acceptance of my general ignorance about the real folks.
But not with Edward. I’m no historian, but there’s credible information in the public record to support this. And even if the worst isn’t true, enough is damn the man. So fuck him.
Honestly, that's the most compelling part of “Vergangenheit”. This is bombshell information to ignorant Americans like me more than half a century later. The history comes alive from seeing the aghast reaction of the Queen Mother, or the events illustrated with Tommy’s voice over. Reaction shots and camera angles and haunting music help sell the magnitude of the reveal. But by god, the information itself is plenty.
The show does a good job of selling the magnitude of the information through the grammar of television long before we know the details. The Germany flashback is unique enough to catch the audience’s attention. And the urgency with which the details are raced from desk clerk to supervisor to the highest levels of government tell you this is some big deal stuff. Hell, the simple fact that they brought back John Lithgow and Jared Harris to reprise the roles of Churchill and King George is a sign. The way it’s talked about with wide eyes and hushed tones sacross the government really leaves you salivating to learn the facts, however horrid they may be.
But truthfully, the character drama doesn’t do much for me here. On paper, I think there’s something intriguing about Elizabeth being a devoted Christsian who wants to practice Christlike forgiveness and struggles to do so given what she learns. You can see her noble devotion to ideas of grace and second chances, and the comfort she finds in religion as a place where she doesn’t have to be The Crown, but can just be “another humble Christsian.”
I have a couple problems with it though. For one, her catalysts for all of this is Billy Graham, whom I mostly know for his antisemetic comments, and his stances against women’s rights and LGBTQ rights. So him as the humble bastion of piety from North Carolina who moves the heart of the Queen doesn't do much for me, and if anything, makes his counsel seem like snake oil. Now maybe that's the point. Maybe Elizabeth is swayed by this man’s decent words without knowing the dark parts of his heart the same way she was with Edward, but you don’t get many hints of that in the text.
More to the point, the dilemma doesn't resonate with me once we find out what she finds out about Edward. I believe in forgiveness and second chances. And still, maybe I’m simply not as pious as Elizabeth is, but it seems like an ethical slam dunk to basically excommunicate him given his crimes. I completely buy that Elizabeth would wrestle with it given her mentality, but it’s hard to feel that in the same way when I’m mainly just aghast at Edwarad’s sins. Hell, the second most I’ve liked Philip (after his penitent Xmas address from overseas) is him telling his wife that she 100% did the right thing, (and the Queen Mother and Tommy agreed over drinks, no less!)
The show does suggest a little divine retribution for Edward. Just when he’s positioning himself for a return to public life, just when he thinks he’ll be able to live a life of purpose again, this damning revelation spills out and dashes it all. I don't really feel for him, since my sympathy for those who sympathize with Nazis is pretty slim, but you do feel his ennui living a life of opulent dullery, a bored showpony paraded about in vapid social engagements.
That's the one area of the divine angle here that really works. Elizabeth cannot forgive Edward, but pray’s for him to recognize the error of his ways, that they can forgive themselves. And maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I take his sullen look in the mirror to be a literal reflection of that, a recognition that this is a mess he made himself, that if insipid card games, silly costumes, and dull parties are his personal hell, he punched his own ticket with his sins against country and countrymen. That is a sad fate, even if it’s a deserved one.
Anyway, fuck him.
And shit has hit the fan for Claire (and her pretend witch friend).
Claire gets first hand the unjust treatment of women who did not abide by the repressive society who saw women of intellect as in league with the devil. Unfortunately for Claire, that also includes being killed for being a witch (which was punishable by death). But with Jamie out of town, Ned the lawyer is the only person in her corner to help her.
What I do love about the ep is seeing the frienship between the two women. Seeing Geillis stop with pretense and reveal herself as just a smart woman who married for convinience and ended up with Dougal over shared politics. She is no witch, just a woman ahead of her time.
Unfortunately for Claire, she has made enemies in an obsessed teenager. Even more surprising is seeing the Father who had failed to save a young poisoned boy use religious furvour against Claire, playing the part to woo the judges against her. The two things that will always be used against women: the jealousy of other women and men's inability to deal with women more powerful/intelligent than them.
In order to save herself, Claire must turn against her only friend, but she will not turn her back. Claire is loyal to a fault and also from another time. And in the biggest turn of events, Geillis takes the blame for witchcraft and also reveals herself to Claire as also being from the future, from 1968. Geillis' witch knowledge was just as Claire's, knowledge from a future time. Did NOT see this coming! Also Jamie coming in to save Claire at the knick of time with sword and dagger ready to throw down.
And finally we get Claire revealing to Jamie she is from the future, when he confronts her of being a witch, of having the same mark as Geillis, the scar from a smallpox vaccine. And Jamie's love for Claire is so great, he believes her and she lets him in to her story, no more pretense, no more made up stories. So great his love for Claire that he lets her go. He takes her to the very rocks on the hill that brought her to him, and he'll let her go back if that's what she wants and to keep her safe from the dangers of his time. Oh Jamie, you are grade A hubby material.
Love the scene of Claire looking at her two wedding rings, one representing Frank (and the future) and the other being Jamie (and this past/present), literally having to choose between which wedding band she will stay loyal to. Frank in gold and Jamie in iron. She chooses strenght and stability over a gliterring maulable maybe. She chooses Jamie. No longer is she stuck in the past, she is now choosing it with wide eyes.
5.5/10. It's funny, when diving back into the series, I realized that I couldn't really remember how Barney and Quinn broke up. Aside from the fact that I was not necessarily super-attentive when I bulldozed my way through this season the first time, I think it's because their break up doesn't make much sense, and feels like a reversion for both characters, and in some ways, everyone else too.
The Barney who would have a knee-high prenup demanding weekly weigh-ins and providing for "wives 2-8" doesn't feel like the same guy who was ready to throw out his old mugs, or who didn't mind his apartment being turned into a Hello Kitty shrine so long as Quinn was still there. It feels like a quick fix to shift us into hyperdrive toward Barney and Robin getting together, without nearly enough build or progress to that front to make their break up seem real and well-motivated. It just sort of happens because it needs to happen for the big plot arc of the series to get where it's going, and that's not good enough, or enough grounded in the characters and relationship we've gotten to know over the past season to really work.
Plus, the whole episode devolves into a pretty crass battle of the sexes, the type of cliche the show normally subverts rather than gives into. There's some solid character beats there -- Ted wanting to play the hero but not being able to stomach Klaus's eccentricities in particular feels in-character -- but for the most part it's a series of contrived conflicts that don't really have enough time to breathe in the episode of hoary tropes. (For instance, Marhsall and Lily's argument over how to play with their son could have been interesting but feels really slapdash and cartoony crammed into the rest of the episode.) And having the characters just announce directly how they feel (cue Futurama's Robot Devil) comes off as lazy rather than insightful.
It's not all so rough. For whatever reason, Robin's kink of being turned on by watching herself do the news (replete with a hilarious wink to future self) really tickled by funny bone in how absurd it was. And I forgot how much Bob Odenkirk is in this show! Even if he too goes pretty broad, his reunion with his dog, Tugboat was oddly sweet. Plus, even if I didn't like the execution, I like the idea of trying to contrast Barney's relationship with Robin down the line with his one with Quinn in the present as a means to show that he trusts Robin and that's why this is different. But it's a really loud, obvious way of doing that, which leans way more into the "tell" than "show" side of storytelling.
I don't know. HIMYM was once a show that, as Ted puts in a meta-gag, had big comedy but let you really care about the characters. But as the show grows long in the tooth, that comedy gets bigger and bigger, less grounded in anything approaching reality or genuine human interaction, and those characters start feeling less and less like real people and more and more like cartoons or cardboard stand-ins to hang cheesy jokes on. I remembered Season 8 being a pretty big nadir for the show, and my hope was that a rewatch would help me to remember the bright spots like it did with Season 7, but we're off to a pretty rough start so far.
7.3/10. I've been a big fan of South Park's trying out more serialization in recent seasons, but it means that, to some degree, we're in a brave new world when it comes to the show. If this were a Season 15 episode, I might call it unfocused. There are several stories in play: the titular member berries, Garrison vs. Hillary, the identity of skankhunt42, Cartman as a PC crusader, and the reboot of the national anthem. Sure, plenty of these stories intersect, but that's a lot of plates spinning and few of them get to any real resolution by the end of the episode. In a different season, that would be a knock.
But we're in Season 20 now, and what might have been scattershot in a prior season feels like it's setting things up to be resolved down the line in the current one. Who knows where the show is going to go with the Presidential election, or the reveal that {spoiler]Gerald is skankhunt42[/spoiler]. In the mean time, there's some of the show's usual biting satirical commentary, like connecting the recent push toward nostalgia-focused bits like the new Star Wars film with a Trumpian desire to go back to the "good old days." It's the neatest parallel the episode draws, while throwing in other bits about how we turn meaningful political acts into sideshow entertainment and co-opt it until it loses any meaning it might have had in the first place.
But maybe the most interesting person amid the tumult of this episode is Kyle. After last season, there was a push for Kyle to step aside a little bit, to not be so involved or active. The show connects his standing on the sidelines with the idea of collective guilt, with the notion that apathy, benign neglect, has its own form of culpability, and how in contentious times, people get painted with the same brush. Again, much of the episode takes the form of set up for things that will no doubt be developed further down the road, but it's an interesting place to start.
The comedy worked well regardless, whether it's Cartman's sarcastic (but maybe earnest?) comments about how women can be funny and seemingly showing off his troll bona fides, to the ridiculousness of the member berries, to bringing back the Douche vs. Turd dichotomy, to the way Congress fetes a reclusive and mystical J.J. Abrams to make things seem new again while reminding people of what they'd like from the old days. As a standalone episode, it's not the best South Park has to offer, but as the entree to a new season, it's a promising and intriguing beginning.
[7.9/10] I low key hate The Crown’s Philip. He insists on sending his son to a haven of cruelty that Charles is plainly unsuited for. He yells at him for being weak. He threatens his wife with a messy divorce over it all, after having cheated on her multiple times. Sure, he recognizes the bullshit around the monarchy better than most royals, and he’s got more than a few witty bon mots. But in the confines of the show, he’s a bad person.
And yet, through it all, he means well toward his son, and he is a fair bit better father than he ever had. “Paterfamilias” is a tough episode to watch, because you feel for the show’s version of young Charles. As my wife pointed out, he’s of a piece with the subject of Saturday Night Live’s “Wells for Boys” skit: shy, sensitive, and bullied at every turn. Seeing him subjected to such cruelty by one parent, who puts his foot down and threatens to destroy his marriage to prevent the other from putting a stop to it, is gut-wrenching.
But Philip isn't doing this to be cruel. I’m on the same page with him when he tells Charles that their life isn’t the real world, as servants cut his food for him. I understand his concern that sending his son to an uptight boarding school would produce a molly-coddled twit, unprepared for the rigors of the real world. The goal to give his son a crucible that will strengthen him, give him discipline, is not unreasonable, even the results are abominable.
More to the point, you feel for the show’s version of young Philip here as well. He too is a boy who faced difficulties in the way of bullying and separation anxiety. He too was treated harshly by the other boys based on who he was and where he came from. The experience was a miserable one for him too. And in the part we see, maybe the most miserable.
Because however rough Philip’s parenting is, he is Mr. Rogers compared to his own father. In a tragic series of events, young Philip gets into a scrap with another student at Gordonstoun, which prevents him from going home to visit his favorite sister over break due to his punishment. Without Philip coming to visit, the sister chooses to fly to a family wedding instead. And the plane she and her born mid-flight child take crashes, killing all aboard.
The boy blames himself. Rather than seeing this as tragic happenstance, his already wounded heart crumples to ashes. He reasons that if he’d behaved, he could have stopped this butterfly effect from happening. The scenes of this devastated child, suffering nightmares of his closest family member’s dead body, ready to do god knows what in the lake by his school, stopping and crying in the funeral procession, are truly harrowing.
But nothing tops the trauma of his deadbeat father, the one who’s supposed to have the adult wisdom to know this was a horrible coincidence and not the fault of an innocent child, laying the blame at his grieving son’s feet. The Crown’s Philip is a bad man. His father is a monster.
Thank god for Uncle Dickie. In past and present, the man is a saint. He is a release valve for Charles in the here and now, and he gives young Philip the support he needs in the flashback scenes. For someone presented as a conniving operator in season 1, he’s a remarkably kind and empathetic soul in season 2.
But young Philip doesn’t want empathy. He wants absolution. He wants penance. He wants to wring the guilt from his bones. So he finds salvation in his labors, punishing himself by building the wall whose construction was meant to be his sentence for fighting with his bully. In that, he breaks himself down, working himself to the bone, until he cannot help but ask for the assistance from his fellow students and headmaster. It is in that crestfallen moment, that Philip finds the strength, and the camaraderie, to build himself back up.
It is rousing, even inspiring in the moment. But in truth, I don’t love it. I’m amenable to the idea of letting people work through grief in their own ways. But the headmaster, who genuinely seems to care and to want to forge a better world, could do better than allow a traumatized young man to revel in an act of self-flagellation he doesn’t deserve.
Despite it all, the effort works, or at least works well enough, because there is an inner strength in Philip which, however lamentable, these sorrowful events bring to the fore. We see it in the cold shower scene, where Philip’s fellow students hype themselves up for two seconds of a freezing water wash, and Philip stands stoic beneath the spigot, proving his mettle to those who doubt them. He may want nothing but to curl up with his favorite sister, but that resolve is there within him.
It isn't in his son. I know little of the real Charles. But in the presentation of the show, this is a boy who is simply not built for this. He wants to make his father proud, but doesn’t have that same mettle, the same inner strength that simply needs to be summoned by the hard times to make better men. For a well-for-boys kid like him, the rigorous process is a futile one, and thus a cruel one, which results only in the suffering of someone not made for it who will fumble in pain for that which they cannot achieve.
Philip cannot see that. He can only see his own struggles, the way parents inevitably see themselves in their children, without realizing that this meat grinder is not the ladder out of them for Charles that they were for him. His intentions are noble and understandable , but at some point, to knowingly let it continue despite seeing the consequences, verges on abusive.
Uncle Dickie gives the cinch of the piece. He tells a young Philip that he may hate his father now, but that one day he will hopefully know what it’s like to be a heated father and yearn for forgiveness. Who knows, maybe Philip’s dad has his own complicated backstory to explain his actions. But he earns his son’s hatred fairly here. And whatever life raft Gordonstoun gave Philip in his hour of need, it produced a philandering scumbag who seems far less than a role model for anyone (in the show, at least).
But now he knows what it’s like to be on the other end, to hope that you’re doing the right thing and that one day your child will thank you for it, or at least forgive your mistakes born of good intentions. As the closing text tells us, Charles tried to do better for his own kids, but is having his own intergenerational struggles as we speak.
There is no perfect way to do this. Everyone makes mistakes in caring for the next generation. All we can do is strive to do a little better each time. I sympathize with the Philip of The Crown, for his unspeakable traumas and for his desire to give his son the same strength he forged through hardship in the frozen reaches of Scotland. But I sympathize more with a poor helpless boy, made to suffer cruelly and needlessly, as old sins find new purchase once more.
[8.2/10] I’m reminded of two pieces of received wisdom. “The grass is always greener” and “There’s no right way to be a woman.” “Dear Mrs. Kennedy” is an illustration of both ideas at once. Two iconic figures of the twentieth century -- Queen Elizabeth and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, are envious of one another’s lives, which spurs each to try to put down or top the other. But in the throes of the tough expectations placed on each, they recognize one another’s plight and find common cause, as one of the only two people who know what it’s like to be women in this kind of spotlight.
The episode writes it all on the screen a little too much for my tastes. Aside from the final scene, there's no internal thought either woman, or any character really, has that doesn’t get vocalized or beat the audience over the head with. But the performances are spectacular. Claire Foy is superb as always. Conveying Elizabeth’s self-loathing, her attempt at openness, her hurt quality, her triumphant joy, her queen bee preening, and her deep sympathy -- nothing’s too much for Foy. And guest star Jodi Balfour does a great job as Jackie O, giving the sense of her as the picture of glamor in public, but also a wounded dove behind closed doors.
But what I most like here is the trajectory of The QUeen’s feelings toward her erstwhile confidante and rival. The swings back and forth between hating and sympathizing with Jackie, trying to upstage her and trying to comfort her, in ways that feel true to the character and interweave perfectly with historical events.
You sympathize with Elizabeth when she gets a look in the mirror at the wrong angle on a rough day and starts to feel bad about herself. So when a woman comes to London who’s the same age, but who is the talk of the town for her beauty, charisma, and education -- three things that Elizabeth is already insecure about -- you can understand why she’s so put out. It doesn’t help when the Queen Mother and Elizabeth’s own husband fawn over Jackie. And while I think the show goes a little overboard in conveying the sense that Mrs. Kennedy is this adored object of fascination and desire, it soundly sells the idea of why Elizabeth would bristle at this interloper who seems to be everything she’s not.
And yet, if only to keep Jackie away from Philip, the Queen invites her closer, rather than pushing her away. There's a magnanimousness to Elziabeth here, allowing Jackie a certain intimacy despite the fear that this woman is outshining her, and her ignorance of decorum (watching the private secretaries balk at the Kennedys using the wrong protocols and titles was hilarious). They bond over mutual shyness, over being married to strong-willed men, over loving animals. With an olive branch, Elizabeth turns a potential enemy, someone she’s jealous of, into a friend she can relate to. If the episode had stopped there, it would have been good and interesting enough.
Instead, the pendulum swings the other way to devastating effect, when word gets back to the Queen about some harsh things Jakcie said at a local dinner party. (As an aside, I love the fact that Margaret is the one who stirs up trouble with all this, being practically vindictive in her efforts to undercut her sister’s joy.) By all outward appearances, Jackie betrayed the Queen and, as Elizabeth herself later puts it, “the spirit” of their interactions.
Elizabeth invites Jackie into her private spaces within Buckingham palace, the most inaccessible and reserved areas of her home, and Mrs. Kennedy’s purported response is to call it run-down and dilapidated. Elizabeth opens herself up to this stranger, and the report she gets back is of personal insults that cut her to the bone: about her age, about her “incuriousness”, about her responsibility for the declining state of the U.K.’s place in the world. The combination of envy and apparent camaraderie put Jackie in a unique position to wound Elizabeth, and the bombs she lobbed more than do the trick. Foy sells the hell out of the QUeen’s hurt to hear the report.
But Elizabeth doesn’t take it lying down. I’ll admit my ignorance of the big Ghana trip. I thought this was a plot that ended in, if not tragedy, than at least embarrassment. The Queen felt stung by being seen as a “puppet” and wants to upstage Jackie’s ability to smooth things over for the Americans in Paris. So she makes an ill-considered jaunt to an African country that's been sidling up to the Soviets in a bid that all of her advisors, formal and informal counsel against. Ghana President Nkrumah’s self-aggrandizing reception of her only further suggests it’s a grievous error and she’s being used.
Only then, she dances. I’ll admit, in an episode that's fairly blunt, it's hard for me to perceive how a simple foxtrot is able to win over Ghana’s leader back to the Commonwealth’s side. But as with the Kennedys, it’s a hoot to see stuffy British functionaries fret like schoolgirls over their beloved monarch daring to do a box-step. And taken generously, you can read it as the Queen being willing to show respect to another leader, relax and let out some of that personality that Lord Altrincham implored her to demonstrate. Even if it was mostly for show, you can see Elizabeth practically glowing at the gesture’s success, a subtle message to her arrival in Washington that two can play at this game.
Except things are not so wonderful for Jackie, despite Elizabeht’s image of her. That's what I most appreciate about the episode -- the reveal that each woman puts the other on a pedestal to some degree, and that each struggles to see the ways in which they’re both fighting against the same forces. It’s no coincidence that the direction and editing focused on Elizabeth during the Kennedys’ visit to London mirrors the direction and editing focused on Jackie at one of JFK’s speeches. The same subtle looks and worries about a wandering eye, the same fears that she’s being humiliated by her husband’s attention to their women, reveal that however much there's a perceived rivalry, Jaqueline and Elizabeth are in much the same place.
(As an aside, it has to be said -- I’m a big fan of Michael C. Hall from Dexter and Six Feet Under, but he is pretty awful as JFK. His accent sounds atrocious, and his acting style here seems dissonant from the other performers in The Crown.)
Jackie learns from her husband (who gives Philip a run for his money in assholery), that the whole Ghana trip was spurred by Jackie’s comments. Again, the show writes it all on the screen ehr, but I appreciate that knowing ehr comments got back to Elizabeth makes Jacki want to express her contrition.
The differences in presentation between the two women’s first meeting and their second is striking. The tour of Buckingham is reserved, intimate, personal. The latter reception at Windsor Castle is grandiose, formal, showy. One was to invite someone in. The other was to show off the weight of your office. This is Elizabeth not trying to be the bigger person, but instead to be the grander person, feigning an uncaring air about Jackie’s statements, even as everything from the dolled up guards to the formal tea service to the slathering of jam on crumpets screams “I’m confidently better than you.”
Only this time, it’s Jackie who opens up. She talks about her own hardships with Elizabth, intimating the troubles at home and the reason she was so apt to want to shine in Paris. She talks about the jealousy she dealt with from her spouse, with hints of abuse. She speaks of being basically drugged against her will, all giving Elizabeth an insight into the plight of this person whom she’d formerly seen as a mean demigod. And most importantly, for my purposes anyway, Jackie expresses her regret because of how much she admires Elizabeth -- for her grace, for her leadership, for being , in so many ways, all the things that Jackie fears she herself isn’t. There's a subtle implication that on both sides of the equation, these efforts to outshine or put down was a product of each woman looking at the other, and feeling less than.
That is profound and pathos-ridden. As I’ve said before, I see the central mission of The Crown to be to reveal the underlying humanity of these distant figures. And it’s hard to imagine what could do that better than showing that even these exalted, iconic women feel measured by one another, pitted against one another, envious of one another, when each is facing battles public and private that give them common cause and common understanding. It is, like so much on this show, a metonym for broader societal changes and societal pathologies that are still with us today.
The end result of it all is sympathy and a desire to support one another. It doesn’t excuse Philip, but I take Elizabeth’s quip on happiness to indicate that while she still bristles at Philip’s flirty behavior and general unruliness behind the scenes, she recognizes in Jackie that it can be worse. And so when those grim events of 1963 take place, she sees Jackie’s strength and defiance in the famous deliberate choice to wear the same outfit with her husband’s blood on it. She uses the levers of state to pay tribute to her and to her loss. And she writes a personal letter, not as a rival, but as a friend, as one of the few people who can understand what it’s like to feel the pressures of that envied but unenviable position, as an icon, and as a woman.
Therein rests the cinch. With the weight of gendered expectations, both of these admired women feel like they don’t measure up and yearns for the other’s life. But when they get to see it up close, truly understand what it entails, in the end, all they can feel is kinship.
[7.3/10] This is a weird episode. It seems meant as a resolution to the marital difficulty storyline that's been percolating through the opening of this season. The shit finally hits the fan, as the Parkers’ divorce goes public and suddenly the shining good feelings that seemed to wash over both Elizabeth and Philip are overwhelmed by the torrent of rumors and speculation that follows in that wake.
The problem is that The Crown all but gave away the game in the opening of the season. We already saw Elizabeth and Philip sniping at each other in the aftermath of all this as the opening scene of the season. So there’s not much in the way of dramatic tension here. We know that things will explode. We don’t know exactly how, but given what was set up in the prior two episodes, it’s not hard to guess. SO much of this episode feels like playing out the string.
There is some personal investment in seeing Elizabeth react to Philp’s affairs not just being a personal challenge, but now being a public humiliation that she’s forced to deal with and have paraded around in the papers. Once again, since The Queen must be reserved in everything, seeing Claire Foy emote or betray clear hurt, anger, and bewilderment as this state of affairs, while putting on an air of placidity on the surface makes for a masterclass of acting.
Otherwise, though, there’s a lot of shots of people looking pensive on beautiful vistas, or a score of grand drama playing over a tabloid newspaper story. As much as I admire the production design and impeccable cinematography of The Crown, it all starts to feel like a bit much.
I also find Philip’s reaction to Mike Parker kind of odd. The tenor isn’t “Well, we’re both shits and it got out. Sorry, but you have to take the fall on this.” Instead, it’s for him to chastise Mike for writing about it and “breaking the rules.” It’s not crazy behavior from a self-absorbed philanderer like Philip, but I don’t know. Something about the presentation makes it feel like the show’s on his side at least a little, and I have trouble sympathizing with the side of “Shame on you for writing an indiscreet letter that shined a light on our misdeeds.”
That said, strangely enough, I found the non-royal parts of this one much more interesting. I’ll admit my ignorance of modern English political history once more. But purely within the confines of the show, I find the persona of Anthony Eden fascinating. The idea that he wasted his best years in Churchill’s shadow, waiting for the man to retire, and by the time he was too desperate and in too ill-health to make an impact as Prime Minister is its own kind of tragedy.
Elizabeth seems to recognize that. And while the man’s fiery speeches show he’s already doomed, you get the sense that he was played by a conniving operator in Harold MacMillan, which only makes his downfall seem more like a sad end. Despite his flaws and mistakes, he gets a certain absolution from the Queen for his predicament, which makes us apt to sympathize with him too. It doesn’t excuse, you know, an unnecessary war and supply crisis that he had a firm hand in, but it makes him an interesting and pathos-ridden character on a personal level.
ALso outside of the explicitly royal circle, Eileen Parker is kind of my hero. I’ve made no secret of my disdain for prickly Tommy Lascelles. So seeing him try to come out of retirement to lean on ehr to delay making any public announcement of the divorce, only for her to tell him off as a shill and a sucker, is a hell of a hoorah for me as a viewer.
More substantively though, despite sympathizing with Elizabeth, I like the way she kind of tells of The Queen even more. I’ll confess, at one point in this episode, I told my wife that it was hard to take some of this interpersonal conflict as seriously as high drama when there are legitimate national and international crises going on just beyond the Queen’s windows. So there’s something roundly satisfying about the Queen personally asking this (I think?) commoner to delay her announcement as her favor, only to be told that she’s already suffered through years of any unhappy marriage as a “favor” t o the Crown, so as not to disrupt thing during Margaret and Peter’s to-do, and that Elizabeth is ignorant of how many such royal “favors” have wrecked lives and marriages to date.
I kind of love that. The interpersonal issues among the royals are interesting from a television narrative perspective. But I like Eileen’s part of this story as an acknowledgement and rebuke that such drama rests atop real people, who aren't insulated by the same kind of wealth and privilege, who have to live their far more regular lives in the shadow of the monarchy’s needs and pleasures. To have some say “enough is enough” and do what they need to do for their own sanity and well-being in that situation is courageous and low-key inspiring.
All that said, I do feel for Elizabeth in this. It’s not subtle, but I like the scene where she welcomes the new prime minister who laments “Eden’s War”, only for the Queen to balk a little, remind MacMillan that he supported the war, and make the point that one must “clean up their own mess.” She’s clearly dressing down MacMillan when she means to dress down Philip, who’s inconveniently absent. But I like that as a nice bit of psychological projection, showing how the personal bleeds into the political.
That said, I don’t know how I feel about the resolution to all of this. The conversation between Elizabeht and Pihlip in Lisbon is still an excellent bit of acting and dialogue-crafting. But it doesn’t have that much more power now than it did in the season premiere. We already knew that Philip had been having affairs. The firm details don’t matter that much. So while I don’t mind watching it again, it’s not as if the context changes much the second time around.
But what I find particularly odd is that the solution to the problem is...giving Philip the royal title of prince? Okay, I guess? The dialogue tries to dress it up, basically saying that Philip wants a title to command some respect from the palace stagehands who infantilize and micromanage him. But it’s a strange ransom to not cheat on your wife, especially since Philip seemed to already have his “Come to Jesus” moment about the error of his ways in the last episode.
I don’t know how it solves anybody’s problems. Maybe that's the point. Maybe it doesn’t, and we get plenty more of this stuff in the episodes to come. (I wouldn't really look forward to that -- three episodes is plenty.) But considering it’s the climax these three episodes have been building too, the connection between the marital issues the Windsors have been aching and the answer of basically giving Pihlip a promotion seems strained. (Plus hey, I’m sure it’s true-to-life, but it doesn’t help that Philip looks pretty darn silly in his floofy crown and furry cape.)
His closing conversation with Mike is a little more interesting -- an acknowledgement that a certain era is over. And the commentary about Elizabeth’s views of her children as mere appendages of the crown, reminders of her own death and replacement, is intriguing as a possible future tack toward exploring that part of her world -- something that's been mostly kept to the side until now. But the suggestion of more kids as a response to all this also feels like a peculiar connection to make.
Now look, this is history (at least kind of) not fiction. The writers are stuck with the events as they happened. But the way they draw lines between personal or psychological reactions and major public developments lacks a certain narrative catharsis. Framing matters. Juxtaposition matters. The suggestion of cause and effect matters. People are strange creatures. Their choices and reactions don’t always fit neatly into narrative boxes or straightforward plots. But as a three-episode arc at least, The Crown struggles to weave its historical facts into a comprehensible, meaningful, or complete story.
[7.6/10] It’s nice to get an episode focused on Philip’s personal journey. He’s had subplot before, but making him the protagonist for an episode allows the series to dig deeper, explore what’s going through his mind with more conviction. I haven't loved The Crown’s Philip as a person, but I have found him fascinating as a character: a compelling mix of personal shittery but professionally in favor of royal reform, with a good smartass wit to go with it. It’s too much to call him an antihero, but he has enough of a mix of good and bad qualities to make him stand out enough to support the hour.
What I find particularly engrossing about “A Company of Men” is that, by god, the time away really did settle Philip. I don’t know if it’s exactly in the way that either Elizabeth or the Queen Mother intended. But by hook or by crook, he comes back not merely chastened from the experience, but appreciative of what he has and even homesick. I imagine the real life Philp’s transition wasn’t nearly as neat or cinema-ready (if he had such a transition at all). But as a character story, I love the idea of someone going away only to realize the value of what they left behind.
To the point, as another character describes it, Philip and his private secretary, Mike, are on what is basically a “five month stag party.” They pal around with the seamen aboard the royal yacht. They canoodle with the local indigenous population, which is uncomfortable at multiple levels. They smirk through various official functions and make goo goo eyes at reporters and just generally act like frat boy pricks.
It causes trouble at home. And in an episode that puts the spotlight away from Buckingham Palace, it’s nice to see someone only tangentially connected to the Royal Family (at best) get to lead the B-story. Mike’s wife, Eileen Parker, has had enough and is ready to file for divorce, only to find that she needs hard proof of Mike’s infidelity or worse to be able to get one.
I like the choice to show her trials and travails to wrangle what ought to be hers by right on multiple levels. For one, it’s a fascinating case study of the institutional thumb on the scales of marriage in the 1950s. For another, it’s a good vehicle to explore the culture that permitted, if not promoted, this sort of behavior for powerful men and left few avenues for their spouses to do anything about it. For a third, it shows the royal apparatus that sees one woman’s visit to a solicitor work its way through a byzantine collection of amateur tennis players and ladies who lunch back to the Queen’s private secretaries. And it neatly sets in motion the letter that presumably set up the blow-up between Philip and Elizabeth that opened the season despite Philiip’s apparent change of heart at the end of this episode.
That change of heart comes from a reflection on his own childhood and difficult life that's prompted by the reporter who used some long distance flirting to set up a veritable journalistic ambush. I like the show highlighting the fact that Philip’s own father had his mother committed and then abandoned the family to take up with his mistress. The revelation both establishes that Philip didn't exactly have the best role model himself for being a good partner, and it forces him to reflect on how that situation made him feel as a son, in a way he doesn't want to repeat.
So when we see a little bit of nobility from him, using his status to rescue and return a local sailor, it’s cause to reflect. He sees a father welcomed home. We see him look at happy children, basking in joy with their parents. We see him...implied to take advantage of the indigenous’ women’s generosity. So it’s nice that the show doesn't simply pretend that he woke up one morning and completely changed his ways. But the experience gives him a lot to think about.
One of my favorite scenes in the show happens when Philip and Elizabaeth trade Xmas radio addresses. Both of them can’t exactly speak frankly with an audience of millions. But each also expresses their love and longing for one another amid their separation. The fact that they’re unable to connect by phone makes this one of the few opportunities to speak when they know the other will be listening. Philip speaks about his regret and missing his family, understanding what he has, even if it’s not in so many words. And Elizabaeth’s revised opening statement that basically gives him an open invitation, is reservedly and unreservedly sweet, in that characteristically English way. Taken with her note, it reminds him that whatever the flaws of the family he grew up in, he has a new one, and the chance for it to be a better one.
Obviously, there’s still storm clouds on the horizon. But despite the rocky waters to come, it’s nice to see smartmouthed, bristling Philip have a chance to pause, reflect, and reevaluate, and maybe strive to do better than his own father ever did for his family.
I'll start off by saying that I did enjoy this movie, and I'm satisfied with the experience it gave me.
Other than that, I'm a little disappointed in the way the story is told.
the first half of the movie is extremely confusing. The pacing is so fast, it felt like watching the trailer of the movie instead of the actual picture. It was such a bizarre experience, I really was wondering why was it going so incredibly fast, it was super hard to keep up and grasp all the info since I didn't actually know Elvis's story at all before this movie.
Also, the scene where he is walking on the street and Doja cat starts playing, no. Just no. It doesn't mix AT ALL with the rest of the movie, it's so out of place in my opinion. Thank God it was pretty much the only moment when they went modern with the music, the rest was kept in line with Elvis style.
So, first half of the movie, really confusing, most of the info felt like it was thrown at my face instead of told and the cinematography felt really intrusive.
Second half of the movie? It got better, because they actually took their time, focusing on less events and giving them their due screen time. Narrating stuff with more calm and detail, the scenes definitely felt more developed and important, the way the first half of the movie should have been told pretty much.
Overall it's a good movie, the story gives a decent look into Elvis.
The actor for Elvis is insane, he looks precisely like him, he acts and moves like him, I've seen videos after the movie and the amount of detail is insane.
It's a worthy experience, but the first half of the movie should really be slowed down A LOT.
I think this is my favourite show at the moment. There was a period where I was watching this (The Good Friend, as my sister and I stupidly refer to it) as well as Big Little Lies and Feud, and I couldn't have been happier. Strong, female-led drama is what I crave in a TV show (one of the stereotypically gay things about me). This season has been a belter, as well. They're playing with the form of television, having started to break the mould set by network television in the first couple of seasons, now they are going all out to see how far they can push the medium, and still tell a compelling, dramatic and at times, hysterically funny story.
The confrontation referred to in the episode title is just one of the moments where the show breaks out of traditional television narrative to great effect. There are odd moments when people start singing (I can't even begin to understand what was going on with Michael Sheen singing the Jackson Five song "I'll Be There" over the closing moments of a recent episode), and real-world back stories to the events in the show are told in song, with accompanying animation. These disparate elements really should not work together, but somehow the whole is greater than the sum of its parts (and the parts are already fairly heavyweight, amazing cast, showrunners honed on a decade of network television, being let loose on a niche streaming service).
Even if you never really got into The Good Wife, this show is still worth a look.
If you are, like me, in Australia, The Good Fight is available weekly on SBS.
https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/program/the-good-fight
9.2/10. There's a line in Season 8 that feels like the show's mission statement. Ted's describing a german television show as big comedy, but points out that you still really care about the characters. And I feel like that's HIMYM at its best, balancing goofy, out there humor and structural experimentation with grounded, human moments, and that's basically what each of the stories here were.
The story of Marshall trying to keep he and Lily's "pause" going as long as possible, including trying to "bang his wife to sleep" is a pretty zany sitcom plot. But the premise has juice in it, and it has a lot of great comedic performances from both Jason Segel (especially when talking to himself) and Alyson Hannigan. But then they unpause, and you get this raw, kind of ugly fight between the two of them, where Marshall brings up Lily leaving for San Francisco and (most shockingly to me) calls her dream of being an artist "a hobby." Lily is visibly hurt by all of this, and talks about Marshall's broken promises and the extremely legitimate point that he lost the right to have them calmly discuss this when he agreed to become a judge without talking to her about it. It's a legitimate conflict of conflicting dreams, and that makes Lily's storm out feel meaningful and not just a stunt. The pause/unpause dynamic represents the show's ability to go back and forth between those painfully real moments and the broad comedy perfectly.
The same is true in the Barney/Ted/Robin storyline. The idea of reaching a level of drunkenness that you basically become a passive truthteller is pure sitcom hokum, and yet the show has so much fun with it. From callbacks to his claims to sleeping with secretaries of state to the recurring bit about Barney and Ted's mom to the whole ring bear(er) fake out, the show uses a pretty exaggerated narrative device to good comedic measure. Turning the reveal of what Barney's job is into a tale of him getting revenge on the guy who stole his girlfriend and prompted him to become "awesome" is a little too tidy for my tastes, but Barney's job has always been a pretty outsized part of the show, so I'm okay with it having an outsized, pretty convenient resolution.
But then the show stops using that device for comedy and starts using it for character. Robin and Barney have always been a hard sell for me as a viewer, but when Ted asks Barney how he's doing with the whole wedding, and Barney says that he's nervous but good, that he always felt a little broken but that he doesn't feel that way with Robin, and that he loves her and will do everything he can to show it, you'd have to have a heart of ice not to be at least a little moved by that. Maybe it's just that I have the same feelings about Mrs. Bloom, but however convenient and unlikely the truth serum device is, hearing these as Barney's true honest feelings about the woman he's marrying helps make their relationship at least feel like something you want to root for, even if the show hasn't exactly earned or proven that the two of them can work.
But more importantly, it's a great example of how this show can take something it uses to wring humor out of a pretty wacky set up and then turn it around to make you care about the characters and their hopes and dreams and damage a little bit more. It's the reason that this show was something more than just a gimmick, or a flash and the pan, or a series that gave into its worst impulses of lazy humor and convoluted plotting. It's a show that knows how to go big and zany, and how to go small and personal, and that ability lets the show move me even as it nears the end of its run here.
8.2/10. So this has most of the things I hated from "The Final Page": implausibility issues, people lying to those they claim to love, and characters intentionally making each other miserable. So why do I like this so much better?
There's a few reasons. The firs and easiest is that his is supposed to be for laughs, rather than the flashpoint for people deciding to get married. Setting up this elaborate scheme to give Barney the best night of his life by giving him the worst night of his life in order to prank him is a surprisingly fun premise. This isn't an attempt to trick Barney into marrying anyone or the thing that convinces him someone is right for him; it's just a wild and wacky lark, which makes it easier to swallow.
(It's also just one night of terror for him, not days and episodes of it.)
Also, it flows the right direction. I like that Robin is the architect of this because it's one of the few things in the past few seasons that have shown that she actually "gets" Barney. It makes way more sense that Barney would be impressed and enthused at an elaborate scheme to fool him than that Robin would be convinced to marry him by his pulling a similar trick.
And last, but certainly not least, it's damn funny in the process. Bringing back Quinn was a nice choice, and the idea of her putting on a show for everyone but Barney was amusing. (I have to admit, I'm still a little Team Quinnson). Pairing up Robin with Barney's Mom and showing them talking about sex was broad but enjoyable awkward humor. Ted and Marshall arguing over who should be the hostage and other details of the plan was cute. And bringing in Ralph Maccio, who, to Barney's chagrin, is a lot like him despite his hatred, and then revealing that the clown was the "true" Karate Kid the whole time was a neat little reveal.
Overall, this was a fun lark that, in contrast to "The Robin," new how to play its scheming for fun rather than for drama.
[6.8/10] I want to cut The Crown some slack here. If it followed Queen Elizabeth’s life long enough, it was either going to have to recast or start using an array of prosthetics and old age make-ups. Either option comes with significant drawbacks. I love Olivia Colman in everything from Broadchurch to The Favourite. I’m a fan of Helena Bonham Carter’s work with Tim Burton and beyond. I...vaguely remember Tobias Menzies from Game of Thrones. Regardless, the creative team made the right call here.
And yet, it is undeniably jarring to go from the performers who’ve embodied Elizabeth, Philip, and their coterie for twenty episodes and move onto an almost entirely new cast. The production is the same. The sets are the same. The writer is the same. But there is an undeniable disconnect from episode 20 to episode 21.
It’s understandable, and well within the realm of willing suspension of disbelief. “Olding” cheekily makes reference to it with the Queen selecting a new portrait for stamps and currency that acknowledges the change. But it’s also hard to adjust on an emotional level to the fact that we’re only a few months along the timeline, but Claire Foy and Matt Smith are gone, and there's some veritable strangers wearing their clothes and living in their home. It will take some time to acclimate.
The Crown does its best to accommodate us. A surprising return from John Lithgow as a dying Winston Churchill provides connective tissue between one period of the show and the next. Colman’s Queen arrives to give her mentor one closing benediction, and a kiss on the forehead that mirrors the one he gave her upon his last departure. The icon’s death helps seal that we are at the end of one era and the beginning of another.
And, it must be said, Bonham Carter is the perfect casting to take the baton from Vanessa Kirby as Margaret. Beyond the physical resemblance between the two actors, Bonham Carter has made a career out of embodying the same chaotic, rebellious, off-beat energy that ran through Margaret’s veins in her performances as the Queen’s sister. Time will tell the tale, but at the jump, the casting directors nailed that one.
The problem is that, even if you can forgive the necessary but friction-filled transition of the cast, the writing here is below the series’ usual standards. Big picture, there's an interesting theme at play. The Queen is not a neophyte anymore. She listens to her husband, to her high society gossip mongers, and suspects that her new prime minister, Harold Wilson, must be a KGB spy. She’s confident in her political and social instincts after years on the job.
Only now, she discovers via her spymaster, that it is instead the art surveyor in residence at Buckingham Palace whom Elizabeth has been geeking out with, who has been doing dirty work for the Russians. The high society fops she’s been rubbing elbows with having been leading her astray, and the unlikely, comparatively salt of the earth economist she looked upon with skepticism is, unexpectedly, more on her wavelength.
There's something there! The changing of the tides isn’t just symbolized by Churchill’s passing, but by the arrival of the first Labour Party PM the Queen has ever had. Beyond her individual political affiliations, she’s only ever had Tory PMs, and in Winston’s wake, there's a certain comfort to that. Having that discomfort lead you astray, challenging your preconceived notions and forcing you to reevaluate your immediate reactions and maybe your broader prejudices is a good tack to follow with Elizabeth. It sets the season on a good thematic course as season three launches.
Hell, it even ties into the meta elements of the recasting. Baked into the story is the notion of giving new people a chance, even if they’re not what we’re used to, because they might surprise us with how much they’re on our wavelength. If the Queen herself is willing to expand her horizons and find common cause with a comparatively common man, who are we to turn up our noses at some new performers?
The problem is that even if the story is good, the nuts and bolts writing isn’t great. All of the scenes involving the spy mystery seem overblown and melodramatic, rather than elegant and/or naturalistic. This show’s never shied away from high drama before, but whether it’s breaking in a new cast or embarking on a new storytelling cycle, the delivery feels miscalibrated here.
More to the point, the episode’s dialogue is strewn with tortured, blunt metaphors. When Anthony Blunt, the double agent art historian, is giving his big speech before his arrest, he gives an on-the-nose oratory about truth that stings the ears. The Queen’s speech at his art event after the revelation comes down about palimpsests and the like, and double-identities in portraitures leads to painfully obvious coded exchanges with the appropriately-named Blunt expressing her distaste. And her closing exchange with Prime Minister Wilson about how numbers don’t mislead, but rather what-you-see-is-what-you-get, just like the man himself, could hardly be more ham-handed if the PM was wearing bacon-wrapped mittens.
Sure, there's some juice to Philip trying to threaten the turncoat to watch his back, only for the seemingly soft-spoken art dork to turn the threat around and intimate that he’ll expose Philip’s shenanigans with the Russian-entangled osteopath from last season, another piece of connective tissue. But the whole presentation of it feels a step down from the intimate, lived-in vibe The Crown managed to hone over its first two seasons.
With any luck, season 3 will find its sea legs again. Season 2 was already a bit of a step down from season 1, despite some major high points. You can tell that the show has already eclipsed its original premise. Reloading is a way to freshen things up a bit, but also a chance for things to go awry in a whole new way. The Crown has earned the leeway to figure itself out anew, but fresh cast or not, this isn’t the most confident start to the new era.
7.2/10. A perfectly fun Kill Bill homage (which is itself a pastiche -- we're through the looking glass here people). I remember some controversy about the gang dressing up in Asian garb for the "training" scenes, but I think it's in the spirit of kung fu movies the show is imitating here. Like I said the last time we did one of these, I'm pretty tired of the slap bet business, and frankly I think it should have been a one hit wonder, or at least something brought out to punctuate an episode like it was with Barney's one-man show than building entire episode around it.
Still, it was a fun entree into seeing Marshall go all Enter the Dragon. There was a lot of physical humor here, between the rapid-fire slaps and the slapping tree and the slow motion (poorly green screened) slaps. There was also a lot of the usual slap-related word play. It was fairly enjoyable, even if it's more of the broad humor and empty calories the show seems to have given into at this point. It was nice to have the angle that Barney had become inoculated against the fear of the slap, and then the kung fu story restored his anxiety, only for them to treat it very matter of factly afterward.
The Boys II Men appearance was pretty superfluous, but there's a bit of a pointless guest star-palooza going on this season anyway. This all makes me sound pretty down on an episode that I mostly enjoyed. It was basically cotton candy -- perfectly nice but pretty empty after the fact.
8.3/10. First things first, I am still amazed at how well they introduce The Mother. There was such potential for disaster in writing a character who needs to be perfect for Ted but also feel like a real and distinct person. Grand kudos are owed to the writers' room and Miloti for what they pulled off. Pairing her up with Lily was an ingenious move, both to show how The Mother would fit in with the group with how quickly the two of them bond (albeit a little conveniently) and to show how she and Ted are well-matched via Lily's complaints about him (the "Mrs. Tedwina Slowsby" gag had me in stitches). Miloti and Hannigan have a great rapport and it pays dividends for The Mother's first outing as an actual character.
Barney and Robin thinking they might be related was mostly fluff, but it was entertaining fluff! I like the continuity of Barney rooting for the bad guy (his comment about King Joffrey of GoT having parents who were related and nevertheless growing up to become a "fair and just ruler" was a big laugh) and the reveal that their shared cousin Mitch was adopted after his biological parents were eaten by wolves, and the couple's ensuing relief, was a nice dark gag resolution to the whole ordeal.
In a storyline that was pure fluff, Marshall also attempts to tell his mom how to delete a facebook photo over the phone, so as not to reveal to Lily that he accepted a position as a judge. Most of the humor was pretty mild, with "old people don't know how to use technology" and "baby miraculously solves problems" leading to cute but pretty unadventurous jokes. That said, there were some mild stakes to the storyline which kept things humming, and Lily not wanting to look at the picture despite the alert because of Judy's "emotional blackmail" was a nice touch.
I'm less enamored with Ted as the real "wild card" at the wedding. I forgot how late in the game HIMYM introduces the whole locket thing, and I've already said my piece on the love triangle angle of the whole thing. Still, I like the meta-sweetness of Ted giving Robin a picture of the gang when they first started hanging out (hey! that's the picture from the show's title screen!) which works in-universe as a fakeout for the locket and out-of-universe as a nod to this being the show's final season.
Overall, a nice way to kick of the last year of episodes of the show and set a number of the season's major storylines in motion.
8.1/10. A surprisingly good episode. Having people we mentally would put in "the pit" is one of those classic HIMYM concepts that starts out with lots of great comedic potential, but then leads to, as Ted puts it, a moment of "emotional clarity." Marshall jinxing Barney is one of those goofy friend group bits that the show does so well. And the laughs were mostly there too.
Ted going after an architecture professor who decried his skills as an architect to brag about his building, and realizing that he needs to move on and that the best revenge is living well was a nice little story for him, that showed some nice growth for the character. Similarly, Marshall and Lily running into an old college acquaintance (in a nice mini-Buffy reunion with Seth Green!) is mostly for laughs, but Green plays it well and the whole twist on "The Pit" is nice. Heck, even though I still pretty well hate Robin's arc at this point, her harshness to Patrice is at least mediated by Robin not firing her and Patrice comforting her.
As typical at this stage, a lot of it is still pretty broad, but I like the theme of the episode -- letting yourself out of "the pit," and moving on, and the show explored it in a nicely comedic way for the most part. Good stuff!
[7.6/10] In some ways, “Homer vs. Lisa and the Eighth Commandment” is one of The Simpsons’’s most dated episodes. Its main plot centers on stealing cable through adjusting the hook-up between your T.V. set and the bundle of wires that connects it to the outside world. For one thing, it rests on a schism between over-the-air television and “pay T.V.” that doesn't really exist in the same way given the multitude of entertainment options and avenues. The very idea of “getting cable” is a bit outmoded given the variety of ways people consume T.V., movies, and other entertainment. And the simple notion of a shady guy making it all happen through a few misplaced wires is downright quaint.
But in others, the episode is timeless. While the sources and methods of obtaining premium content have varied considerably since 1991, when it originally aired, we live in an age of an increasing number of cord-cutters and cord-shavers and others tired of subsisting on traditional entertainment offerings. And while rewiring one’s cable box has gone the way of fixing the tracking on your VCR, piracy, illegal streams, and bootleg DVDs are still the province of average joes galled by pricey packages and an increasing number of walled gardens.
And even more universal is the moral dilemma at the core of “Homer vs. Lisa and the Eighth Commandment.” The episode is anchored around the biblical admonition “Thou Shalt Not Steal.” And whether that means swiping a graven idol from a shop in ancient Sinai, using an illegal cable hook-up in the Springfield of the 1990s, or running a shady bitcoin scam today, the ethical conundrums of what constitutes theft, immorality, and upstanding principles in the life of the nuclear family are just as compelling and applicable.
What’s funny is that when the episode aired, America’s moral guardians were wringing their hands about The Simpsons as a bad influence, and yet, Homer’s part of this episode reads almost like a Chick tract. Homer is the instigator of the cable-stealing (recreating North by Northwest to get it), and at first, everything’s good. He’s thoroughly seduced by his drug of choice, glued to the T.V. set 24/7, and everything from being able to entertain his family to being the toast of the town for hosting the big prize fight suggests a big win for the lovable oaf.
But then things start to crumble. The normally immovable object of television’s affections grows disillusioned and disinterested even with cable television’s cavalcade of offerings. He starts to grow increasingly panicked about everyone from his boss to his bartender finding out the various ways he’s bent or broken the rules over the years. And after a well-done sequence where he imagines a fanciful, if more secular-than-divine punishment for his ill deeds, has a change of heart, and desperate to escape his guilt and paranoia, he begrudgingly becomes a pioneering cord-cutter once more.
And he does so at the behest of an earnest voice encouraging him to save his soul. One of the unique things about “Homer vs. Lisa and the Eighth Commandment” is that, in contrast to some of the other “versus” episodes in The Simpsons catalogue, there’s not really much antagonism between the two title characters in this one. It’s more that Homer is on the highway to hell, and Lisa is the Jiminy Cricket on his shoulder, calmly but firmly encouraging to be a more moral man, but in a way founded more on childlike protest than direct confrontation.
There is, as was even more potent in the show’s early seasons, some subtle social commentary in that. There’s something well-observed about the way the show presents Lisa’s position in relation to the adults in her life. She’s taught that the Ten Commandments are absolute hard and fast rules, where the punishment for violations is eternal damnation. Her parents seem to care enough about these core precepts to take her to church, but then they do things like steal cable, or sample a pair of grapes without paying for them. Sure, the latter at least may seem too minimal, but if it’s a biblical stricture, and the risk is going to hell, why wouldn’t you be extraordinarily wary of even the slightest misstep?
Lisa, then, is the conduit for the show pointing out that however much folks believe in the basic moral principles behind the Ten Commandments, people’s devotion and belief only runs so deep, otherwise we’d all be acting like Lisa. There’s an innocence and willingness to take things at face value in childhood, and as usual, The Simpsons points out how, in American society at least, the way that people bend the rules suggests they don’t always practice what they preach.
As is typical for the show in its early going, the humor derived from that idea is softer. Lisa shouting at the supermarket, Homer freaking out about office supplies he swiped from work, and Marge being excited to make her own band-aids is all pretty mild, but its rooted in wry observations about how we compartmentalize our religious tenets rather than let them interfere with our daily lives. The bulk of the straighter comedy is picked up more by a cavalcade of wide-ranging cable T.V. spoofs, and with Bart up to his traditional hellraiser tricks. But as usual, early season Simpsons is content to pull humor from the shape of whatever situation its deposited its characters in rather than setups and punchlines.
For the most part though, the show gives us morality tale. There’s a goofus and gallant routine between Homer and Lisa, the simple oaf lured by the glow of the television, contrasted with the principled young woman worried for her mortal soul. It wasn’t the first time that Lisa led her father to be his best self, and it wouldn’t be the last. But there’s still something unique about this one, where Lisa is still definitively a kid, Homer is less idiotic and more easily seduced than usual, and when the pair’s trajectories crash into one another, Lisa brings her father to the side of the angels.
The specifics of the story may be rooted in the particulars of 1990, but the ideas at the core of this one -- bent and broken morality, the situational malleability of religious beliefs for most people, and the way good influences in our lives can remind us of our better selves -- are timeless.
8.6/10. Oh man, I just love it when Adventure Time gets straight up weird like this. The idea of Treetrunks, who comes off like a sweet old lady, but who is (a.) kind of cattily angry with and opposed to Princess Bubblegum on principle and (b.) this strangely sort of sexual being, having alien babies is so delightfully out there. In particular, the sequence where she goes to the alien cloud land or whatever, and everyone talks slowly, and there's little green elephants with alien faces, is definitely the kind of strange set of scenes that will make you briefly wonder if someone spiked your drink.
Still, beyond the creative art and stylistic choices, it's just a neat little headscratcher of a story with some good comedy thrown in for good measure. Treetrunks running into Starchy (who's still, apparently, a conspiracy nut) and a collection of supposed alien abductees (including the hilarious Booshi) and trying to turn it into a militant group is, again, weird, but hilarious stuff. (And little throw ins like the banana guard trying to save P-Bubs from being abducted and dropping to the ground when he fails, or Starchy's secret passageway taking them right back where they started were great.)
But overall, this episode comes down to a story about Princess Bubblegum and Treetrunks. As strange as the conflict is, AT sets it up well, with Treetrunks wanting to protect her children, and P-Bubs wanting to protect hers too in a way. For Princess Bubblegum, annihilation with this band of idiot candy people seems perilously possible, so colonizing other planets is a way to ensure the candy life force doesn't go out. The fact that they understand each other in those terms, and that Treetrunks helps PB after PB realizes the damage her goo-buds were doing, gives an oddly emotional undercurrent to everything. The exchange about not liking each other, but still being able to respect each other is, amid the abject weirdness, a very mature sentiment.
And again, as weird as it is for Treetrunks to say goodbye to her Alien husband, only to then introduce him to her pig husband, it's also a little sweet. That's what this show is, a ton of on the surface weirdness, with a core of real feeling and surprisingly complex interpersonal relationships. It amazes me still.
7.7/10. I'll admit, the Jeanette thing didn't really do it for me. There were some amusing bits to it (Ted and Marshall reprising their Departed impression when learning that she's a cop, the Boba Fett getup, and Marshall and Barney's denial of her being there), and I appreciated the resolution that "crazy" is a two way street, but it just didn't capture me for whatever reason.
That said, I really liked the B-story with Robin and Lily. Again, I'm a total sucker for the story in the past (or in this case present) recontextualized in the future, a well which this show goes to with some frequency, and the continual time jumps forward, which continue to add to Robin's story of not wanting to hold Marvin, all the way up to the reveal that the stranger who helped her out wasn't some kindly old lady, but rather, Mike Tyson, was a perfect instance of gradually building ridiculous that kept paying off. Plus, I like the emotional throughline of Robin coming to terms with holding a baby as in character with her reticence about children in general.
Not a perfect episode by any means, but some fun non-linear storytelling and a lot of fun clever humor to boot. We're on a nice little run in the eighth season here.
Ah man, HIMYM, how many times have you pulled some big moment out of your ass at the end of the episode and saved yourself from the absolute doldrums. This one was headed for "meh" or worse in my book, but you put together a well-edited montage, hint toward the grand finale, and throw in some "Funeral" by Band of Horses, and I am a complete sucker. That ending, replete with Klaus's trite but sweet speech about an overwhelming feeling for someone, is nice, but doesn't cover up the flaws of the rest of the episode enough to make it good.
Where to begin? Well, Ted wanting Victoria to leave a note is in character, and a nice consolation to him being an accomplice to someone else being left at the altar even knowing how much that hurts someone else. There's even some laughs as he's coaching Victoria on how to write it. But most of the sneaking around goes pretty broad, especially the East German bridesmaid guard, and the conflict is something of a dud. Klaus is funnier than I remembered (his not being sure what German words Ted knew or didn't know was a nice bit), especially considering I remembered thinking he was kind of annoying, but for the most part this was a wacky caper dropped into something a little more serious and heartfelt and the tonal clash didn't mesh well.
The shtick that Marshal and Lily were so exhausted from child-rearing that they couldn't understand what anyone was saying and were basically zombies was too broad as well. We're getting to some pretty hacky humor about parenting here, without any of the show's clever insights.
But the worst is the Robin and Barney stuff rearing its ugly head again. Even if you buy them having this strong attraction to one another, which I don't, the contrived plot twist of Robin suddenly having yet another boyfriend who you just provides another convenient obstacle, and Barney not having told Quinn that they used to date and it being this huge thing, screams of romantic drama for the sake of romantic drama. We know where this is heading (even if the opening gives us some reason to doubt), but it's just not believable, or at least not sold well enough, that Barney and Robin are carrying torches for one another, and that storage locker full of mementos from the time they were dating is trying too hard to make up for what the show can't sell in the way it writes the two characters to try to make them make sense together and convey that they have actual feelings for one another. If anything, the show is actually being like Ted here -- offering big gestures rather than actual substance. Sometimes, like the big moments in the end of episode montage set to affecting indie rock, that gets you pretty far, but it's a bandaid, not a cure. Let's hope it's not as much of a trudge to the finale as I remember.
7.3/10. Obviously the musical number at the end is awesome, and it alone bumps this episode into good territory. But it's very hit or miss otherwise. There's some nice additions to the mythos going on with the return of the yellow umbrella, and Ted briefly dating The Mother's roommate while catching glimpses of his ideal mate. But for the most part it's a pretty standard issue Ted dating story with not a lot to it beyond the end-game bait to liven it up.
By the same token, Barney's scheme to seduce the new bartender is one of his usual capers, and while the whole girls vs. suits angle gives it at least a bit of stakes, the humor is pretty broad and the whole thing really only works as a setup to the tremendous musical number at the end. The business with the rest of the gang hanging out at the bar--Lily trying to get Marshall to admit that the new bartender is hot, Marshall being nonplussed but then hurt that Lily thinks the bartender is hotter than him, and Robin being offended that she's not considered the hottest girl in the bar anymore--is much funnier than the rest of the episode, and leans into the hangout, silly argument vibe that the show does so well.
This is a boxed experience, by which it's clear whom has written it. Style can be great. This is intense, which is cool. It's convoluted. Can be very good. It's not complicated, but often a dirge in reverse; the dialogue is basically the same for all characters, which are all dressed differently. That's an issue that I dislike with Sorkin's films. Well, while a lot of people often behave similarly in real life, it's a murky feature to me, that stands out like broken pixels in a computer screen.
Having stated the above points, the film succeeds in displaying Jobs as a flawed person, but given all the hoo-hah that occurs during the film, due to everything happening during Apple events, it's hard to see his self. Well. I can't say I could or would have seen his self during other times, but the documentary "Steve Jobs: The Man In The Machine" gives much more flesh to Jobs' bones, where this film appears quite shallow. Good acting and, at times, stellar writing is interesting, but as a whole, this film does not work for me. It's scatterbrained, amidst all of its seemingly good intentions and radiance. I rather recommend the documentary to this film.
