PART TWO: WHY I HATE (MOST) CONTEMPORARY TV DRAMA - An Ultra-Grumpy-Pants Film Corner Editorial Commentary by Greg Klymkiw

Part Two: Why I Hate (Most) Contemporary TV Drama

Film Corner Editorial Commentary By Greg Klymkiw

In 1977 I bore witness, along with millions upon millions of others, to the birth of event television - the mini-series that started it all, Roots. Alex Haley's fictionalized recounting of his slave ancestry was a must-see and I waited with the kind of anticipation I've seldom ever experienced for anything.

Everyone just knew you couldn't miss this event - a powerful, brutal, reality-based series of the slave trade: from the jungles of Africa, to the horrendous slave ship journey, the demeaning slave auctions and the eventual life of misery on the plantations of Southern Whitey, spanning decades and eventually ending with the freedom of the slaves after the Civil War. The mini-series hammered home what we all knew about, but had never before experienced in such stark detail in any dramatic rendering of this shameful period of American history. Night after night, millions of us returned to our TV sets faithfully as the drama unfurled with all the compulsive qualities great drama must have.

Still, even as a kid, I remember feeling my attention flagging a bit, and then a lot, from the mid-point and onwards. You still had to keep watching, though, because you were now so emotionally invested in the characters and mostly because this was the cutting edge - the first major TV event to take the perspective of the African-American slaves.

I knew, though, that something wasn't quite right with Roots anymore and damned if I could figure it out. Eventually it didn't matter because the series delivered a major wallop in the final episode that was the thing that stayed with me and millions of others.

That was the first and only time I saw Roots until about five years ago when I purchased a DVD box-set of the whole series. The first three instalments were as chilling and compelling as I remembered, but then the sag occurred and it didn't take long to figure out why I had lost all interest in the series and investment in the characters.

The narrative settled into a soap opera - a kind of General Hospital or As the World Turns on the old plantations. This certainly wasn't the horrific, mind-bending melodrama of Richard Fleischer's feature film of Mandingo, but a kind of creaky, lazy and dull piece of television that retained one's interest by the sheer weight of TV-storytelling tropes - the emotional cliff-hangers, if you will. And damn, you not only experienced a letdown, but you knew exactly what it was that kept you watching, only this time, I was able to see the stitching and believe you me, it was a mighty sloppy job in the garment factory for the remaining episodes.

At least cliffhangers in the serials of the 30s and 40s were infused with dazzling derring do and not the oodles of soap suds found in serial-styled TV series.

This, of course, is the very thing that turned me off to television's so-called "New Golden Age". Like clockwork, everything felt like a bit of hook 'em, reel 'em in and toss 'em in the nets from which it was impossible to escape. This time, though, I was having none of it. Escape I did.

Why? Because I didn't sign up for soap opera. Hell, if I want soap suds, I'm just going to slap on a Douglas Sirk movie and watch the very best - one that's rooted in the genuine post-war ennui of the very times in which the films were made.

So, this brings me to True Detective, another series that everyone and their dog - people whose tastes and opinions I respect - began the mantra I'd been experiencing for so long about this serialized form of contemporary TV drama, this so-called "novelistic" approach to visual storytelling with an accent on character, supposedly great writing and stellar performances.

Happily, I did not succumb to Season One of True Detective, but an opportunity presented itself to me with respect to Season Two. A dear friend of mine, much younger, but highly educated and intelligent, mentioned he was going to be watching an episode from the Second Season. He suggested I absolutely had to give it a whirl and for once, I didn't argue. I said, "Yeah, sounds great."

However, before the show began to unspool, my friend insisted he explain a few things about the characters and the plot thus far.

"No, please don't."

He insisted I needed this tutelage since he was sure I'd have no idea what was going to be happening.

"Don't worry," I assured him. "I'll figured it out all too quickly and easily."

And guess what? I did.

I didn't need to know any of the machine-tooled storytelling gymnastics of the previous episodes, they were all too apparent. (This kind of surprised me because it was the kind of thing I delighted in when I watched great 60s crime shows like Perry Mason, though where it seems like great writing there, here, it just seemed like sloppy writing.)

A trio of rogue undercover cops are hanging out in a seedy motel as they uncover a huge conspiracy involving the Russian mob and politicians of all stripes, including a highly influential and respected Attorney General figure. I learned in short order that Colin Farrell was used by a scumbag mob boss to bump off a bad egg in the syndicate under the ludicrous pretence that he was in fact whacking the man who raped his now-estranged wife. Colin is now under this scumbag's thumb, but he's working shit out in order to get back in the good graces with both his conscience and the police force.

The scumbag mob boss is played by Vince Vaughn. Even though he's saddled with a whole lot of terrible dialogue, he strikes an imposing figure nonetheless. His performance might be the best and only watchable element of this whole series. At least he gets a genuinely great scene where he interrogates a scumbag who's betrayed him, smashes a whiskey glass into his face, pounds the shit out of him, shoots him in the gut and then watches him die in agony while he pours himself a fresh tumbler of booze. Alas, this isn't a kickass feature length crime picture from a real director like David Ayer and starring Vince Vaughn as the main character, a sleazy, reptilian, but kind of sexy killer.

This is just another TV show.

Taylor Kitsch is along for the ride as a cop being blackmailed for his penchant for homosexual dalliances. His wifey doesn't know, of course, and he doesn't want her to find out. Worse yet, Taylor's in so deep on this idiotically convoluted situation with Colin, that he fears for his wife's safety and needs to place her in hiding. Wifey whines about it and just keeps up with the pressures being placed on their marriage by hubby's activities.

And then, we get the most ridiculous character of all played by Rachel McAdams. Oh boy, does she get herself an opportunity to act up a storm here. She's not only a rogue undercover cop, but she's trying to come down from a drug-induced high when she attended some weird-ass Russian Mob orgy as a "prostitute". She keeps going on about all the weird things she saw and participated in, but we figure out that nothing really happened to her at all. Even though she was pumped full of drugs and booze, she was still able to escape being porked by some slimy old man and is now feeling guilty about killing a scumbag lower-drawer thug.

Worse yet, she has "intimacy" issues. Oh Christ, help me! At one point she tries to get some Colin Farrell schwance twixt her thighs, but it dissipates into nothing. We get the brilliant dialogue in which she blames the drugs and Colin justifying not boning her because she's out of his league.

Fuck, this was getting stupid.

I finally had to laugh uproariously when the tough, but sensitive McAdams goes to visit her weak-ass father played by David Morse. We find out how he was kind of responsible for her being abducted and raped as a kid and Morse, with considerable sorrow, self-pityingly blames himself for everything. Morse also seems to be adorned with the stupidest looking hippy tresses I've ever seen, adding, no doubt, to the hilarity of every dreadful line he must utter.

In fact, some of the dreadful dialogue in this scene has been seared into my brain with a branding iron.

"God damn everything,” Daddy laments.

McAdams brilliantly-scribed retort is, "That’s what I say."

Give these writers an Emmy!

Jesus H. Christ! That's what I say? Did a monkey write this dialogue?

And then comes the pièce de résistance. Morse asks his daughter if she'll turn herself in for the killing, but he makes the stupid gaffe of not even querying her if she really did it. This kind of pisses her off and she wonders why he wouldn't ask. Guess what his brilliantly written reply is.

"I don't have to," he says with more than a touch of regret, guilt and paternal love in his voice. He looks at her soulfully before uttering the next knee-slapper which is, "You’re the most innocent person I know."

COME ON. ARE THESE WRITERS ON LITHIUM?

You’re the most innocent person I know?????????

This is beyond the pale. Not even the worst poverty-row noir picture, not even the most abominable 70s crime picture, not even the most godawful TV cop procedural has ever stooped to such hackneyed, soapy dialogue.

At this point, I got up and announced to my friend that I needed to take a crap. He kindly offered to pause the program. "No need," I said, perhaps a bit too smugly. "I know where all this is going."

I stumbled into the water closet, plopped myself down on the throne and enjoyed a healthy expunging of putrid faecal matter whilst I enjoyed a few games of Scrabble on my iPhone.

Once again, I am agog at what constitutes great television and convinced even more that great television these days might well be one of the biggest oxymorons in the history of oxymora.

Ah well, I'm still happily ploughing through The Wire. And yeah, I'm still pissed off at how long it's taking to slog through, but at least I'm enjoying every second of it and have at least one example of contemporary TV drama I like so I'm not totally accused of being a big, fat, grumpy pants.

For further elaboration on my "history" with TV and a review of the Criterion Collection GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICAN TELEVISION, please visit the super-cool online UK-based film mag: "Electric Sheep - a deviant view of cinema" and read my in-depth article in my very first COLONIAL REPORT (ON CINEMA) FROM THE DOMINION OF CANADA column from 2010, pictured left, by clicking HERE.

PART ONE: WHY I HATE (MOST) CONTEMPORARY TV DRAMA - Grumpy-Pants Film Corner Editorial Commentary By Greg Klymkiw

Why I Hate (Most) Contemporary TV Drama

Film Corner Editorial Commentary By Greg Klymkiw

I pretty much stopped watching television in the 1980s. There were, mind you, a few exceptions to the rule. In Canada, our public broadcaster, the CBC, used to have great news and public affairs programming on both regional and national levels. In recent years, this has not been the case. Regional coverage has plummeted and the style of presentation became so much glitzier (in that pathetic Canadian way of "glitzy").

I was also enamoured with some of the CBC's original dramatic productions.

To this day, Jerry Ciccoritti's Trudeau holds up as one of the best movies for television - ever, Canadian or otherwise. The solid writing by Wayne Grigsby and a superb cast went a long way to making it riveting viewing, but most brilliantly, the epic film was endowed with a directorial voice. Replicating the styles of filmmakers Richard Lester, Costa-Gavras, Bernardo Bertolucci and Alan J. Pakula, director Ciccoritti deftly captured four key periods in the life of Canada's superstar Prime Minister. This was not mere replication, either, but a stylistic springboard to visually capture Trudeau's personal and political life over two decades. Trudeau was imbued with the kind of stakes, scope and directorial razzle-dazzle that felt like genuine cinema - much like the phenomenal 70s run of ABC's Movies of the Week (Spielberg's Duel being a case in point).

Dramatic series at the CBC during this period also put a nail in the coffin of its horrifically folksy Canadiana like "The Beachcombers" and Kevin Sullivan's wretch-inducing L.M. Montgomery adaptations with limited series like Ken Finkleman's meta-satire The Newsroom, Bruce McDonald and Don McKellar's insane Kensington Market-set Twitch City and William D. MacGillivray's sadly short-lived comedy about Maritime cabbies, Gullages.

For a time, TV seemed cool again and shockingly, it was Canadian, and even more jaw-dropping was that it was coming from one of the most uncool broadcasting entities in the history of television, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). Alas, the new millennium brought horrendous changes to the public corporation and supposed "vision" began to turn it into a pallid ratings-grabber of the lowest order (albeit politely vulgar as this was Canada).

As well, I found myself enamoured with truly cutting edge educational, documentary and kids programming at the publicly funded TV Ontario (TVO) and over at upstart Showcase came the most truly, genuinely vulgar (in all the best ways) comedy The Trailer Park Boys.

As a Canadian, it made me feel mighty good that my disdain for television continued with American programming, but that Canada was bursting at the seams with product that made everything else look as awful and unwatchable as it was. For years I proudly proclaimed I had never bothered watching even a single episode of Seinfeld, but one night in a hotel room, I succumbed to that single episode, hoping that maybe I was just being a big grumpy-pants and that maybe, just maybe, I would watch more. I didn't. I sat there agog at what had been proclaimed great television. It wasn't funny and I had no idea what the show was about. I didn't want to know.

During the 90s and 2000s, a new wave of television began to take hold. Programs like The Sopranos, Deadwood and Six Feet Under - supposedly "adult", character-driven and "novelistic" series-TV became all the rage. I refused to succumb. Then, after enough people (whom I believe in retrospect should have known better) urged me to give this stuff a whirl, so I did. The Sopranos felt like bargain-basement Scorsese, Deadwood felt like bargain-basement Sam Peckinpah (astoundingly it even felt like bargain-basement Walter Hill, the show's chief cook and bottle washer) and most egregiously Six Feet Under felt like a horrendous rip-off of a talented young Canadian filmmaker's acclaimed short film, Exhuming Tyler, an original, darkly funny little film that should have been made into a hit series, but was never taken beyond the development stages and dropped like a hot potato for being derivative of Six Feet Under. I still feel for Merlin Dervisevic, the filmmaker of that little short film.

So again, none of this acclaimed stuff did it for me. As the new millennium forged forward, programs like The Wire, Mad Men, Boardwalk Empire and most recently, True Detective were trotted out to me by friends and colleagues as being the kind of television I should watch, that it made mincemeat out of the new Hollywood feature film penchant for empty roller coaster rides. Aside from The Wire, it didn't happen for me. Hell, even The Wire is pissing me off because of the time-investment I need to make in order to follow its labyrinthian serial-styled drama.

Hilariously, this is the very thing people keep telling me - that I need to watch more than a handful of episodes for them to take hold. Uh, no. Life is short. Besides, I can put on an episode of Perry Mason from the 60s and know immediately who its main characters are and instead of following their story arcs, I'm able to follow their exploits with a different story and guest star every episode. The 50s and 60s delivered the ideal form of series television drama - it was anthology-styled, delivering a new story every week with new characters. And of course, there were straight-up anthology series like the long form Playhouse 90 and phenomenal genre anthology programs like The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits. What hooked you here was the revolving door of characters and stories, not the dull time-wasting crap which too many refer to as the "New Golden Age of TV". It might be gold-plated at best, but for the most part, it's bronze.

For me, I'm not interested in having to slog through the lugubrious, serialized, near soap-operatic nonsense puked up as "character-driven, novelistic" drama. It's nothing of the kind. It's all bargain-basement attempts to replicate feature film drama, but over a much longer period of time. Uh, who wants that? Life is short. The only way I'm going to commit to this sort of thing is when it's truly cutting edge like Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz or Edgar Reitz's Heimat or Lars von Trier's The Kingdom - work that lives beyond the notion of "great television", but is, in fact, "great drama" with strong directorial voices.

Some argue that I'm clearly not interested in character-driven drama and in fact, prefer plot-driven drama. "Hogwash!" is my response to this. The characters in this "new wave" seem like machine-tooled archetypes who overstay their welcome in properties designed solely to keep me watching as if I were some brain-dead content junkie.

Where TV is indeed excelling, especially over at HBO and CNN Films, is the stream of superb feature documentaries from the likes of Nick Broomfield (TALES OF THE GRIM SLEEPER) and Joe Berlinger, as well as feature length movies like Beyond the Candelabra and The Normal Heart, movies so good they should have been released theatrically first (which, thankfully, WHITEY: UNITED STATES OF AMERICA V. JAMES J. BULGER indeed was).

Some argue that feature films today are awful because the studios only do roller coaster rides and/or comedies which are little more than glorified television. To the latter I'll admit to hating it when I go to the movies just to watch TV, but some of the best comedies never feel that way - they have scope and strong directorial voices. As for roller coaster rides, they only bug me when they're miserably directed by clowns who have no aptitude for delivering the goods (Christopher Nolan, Sam Mendes). Even here, though, the exceptions to the rule belonged to George Miller, who knocked us on our butts this summer with Mad Max: Fury Road, just as Christopher McQuarrie knocked it out of the park with Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation.

Besides, what's with holding up studio dross as the be-all-end-all of cinema? Does anyone bother to look at independent American cinema and, God Forbid, movies in other languages that aren't English? The past few years have yielded a myriad of genuinely great feature films from all over the world (The Tribe, anyone?).

I have maintained a regimen, since early childhood of watching at least one feature film per day, often more. This is where it's at. TV ultimately can't hold a candle to the joys inherent in films which are crafted by real filmmakers and not, ugh, "show runners" (even the phrase "show runner" makes me want to gag).

TV stinks. Face it.

If you don't face up to it, you're buying into what the Man wants you to buy into. Me, I'm going to pop on an episode of Perry Mason right now!

TO READ PART 2 (TWO) OF WHY I HATE (MOST) CONTEMPORARY TV DRAMA (WHEREIN WE CRAP ALL OVER TRUE DETECTIVE), CLICK HERE.

For further elaboration on my "history" with TV and a review of the Criterion Collection GOLDEN AGE OF AMERICAN TELEVISION, please visit the super-cool online UK-based film mag: "Electric Sheep - a deviant view of cinema" and read my in-depth article in my very first COLONIAL REPORT (ON CINEMA) FROM THE DOMINION OF CANADA column from 2010, pictured left, by clicking HERE.

PARKS AND RECREATION: Ruinous Optimism - Tea Time w/ Thomas Zachary Toles

Click Above To Get More Info on Thomas

The Ruinous Optimism
of Parks and Recreation

By Thomas Zachary Toles


More TV Trash Talking from
The Film Corner's
Tea Time Columnist

The series finale of Parks and Recreation was as saccharine and excessive as a Sweetums Child Size soda. With astonishing conviction, the episode whipped up embarrassingly perfect futures for each of its recurring characters. Tiny fleeting conflicts were drizzled onto certain epilogues as if a couple squirts of lemon could deepen the flavor of 512 ounces of refined sugar.

When did the once tasteful show let itself go?

It did not start in Season 7. Parks and Recreation has, for years, been such a staunch defender of the goodness of its characters that it refused to let anything truly bad happen to them. This was no doubt an attempt by the show runners to distance the series from their previous hit, The Office. Indeed, early in the run of Parks and Rec, it was oft-described as an Office knock-off.

Hoping to escape this identity crisis, creators Greg Daniels and Michael Schur sought an alternate characterization for the show’s central character, Leslie Knope. Between Seasons 1 and 2, Knope transformed from bumbling manager type with delusions of grandeur to one of the most stubbornly ambitious, generous, and hard working characters on television. The joke was no longer on Leslie, but on the whiny, ungrateful people of Pawnee for whom she so tirelessly advocated.

This new approach borrowed significantly from Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life. Capra’s film centres on the personal sacrifices George Bailey must make for the sake of his average little town. Despite the film’s euphoric ending, these sacrifices weigh heavily on George, pushing him to the brink of suicide. He severely compromises his own needs for the sake of others—the perfect metaphor for devoted public service.

In its first few seasons, Parks and Rec followed Capra’s example by ingeniously making comedy out of Leslie’s wildly under-appreciated labor. Historically, comedy thrives on that particular Chaplinesque brand of optimistic hopelessness and all sitcoms especially benefit from such cyclical premises. For a time, Pawnee’s stubborn mediocrity landed its Parks department reliably back where they started, reaching like George Bailey for detectable impact from the drab valleys of Indiana.

Parks and Rec bravely imbued modest goals in potentially soul-draining circumstances with real value. Not everyone had Leslie’s ambition, of course. Ron’s primary commitment was always to avoid any government action; Tom’s commitment was to himself; April’s to macabre cynicism. There was more to these people than those simple descriptions, and fortunately they were allowed to develop over time under Leslie’s arm-twisting, inexhaustible guidance. Yet all the show’s main characters were most interestingly defined by their confinement in the feeble Parks department, a station that seemed to suit none of them perfectly, including Leslie. The possibility of doing meaningful work in such imperfect conditions was the faint ray of sunshine Leslie tenaciously sought after.

Unfortunately, as time went on, Parks and Rec allowed the clouds of stifled ambition to float away to Eagleton and beyond. Its writers became so attached to Leslie’s tireless optimism that they refused to place any immovable obstacles in the way of its characters’ desires. The exception that proves the rule is the Parks department’s incessant bullying of Jerry, which is too endless and frivolous to sustain any bite.

Eventually, Leslie could do anything, putting inhuman amounts of work into even the least significant projects. With seemingly unlimited resources and energy, compromise was less and less a part of her life. The same came to be true of the rest of the cast, who grew increasingly successful separate from the Parks department and ever more enamored with each other.

Parks and Rec remained only superficially about the importance of teamwork in adversity, overlooking all the underlying struggles that might make such collaboration inspiring. Without real conflict, like so many sitcoms before it, its characters were allowed to transform into Platonic ideals of themselves, losing their human complexity:

Ron should say something manly here.

April should be cynical to hide her sweetness.

Andy shouldn't get it.

As early as Season 4, an uncomfortable shift can be felt in the ethos of Parks and Rec. Convincingly awkward comic figures like Mark Brendanawicz and Dave Sanderson were replaced by absurd caricatures like Chris Traeger and Craig Middlebrooks. Caricatures were always a colourful part of the show’s background (Jean Ralphio often soars during his infrequent appearances) but had no place in its main cast, further undermining whatever shreds of emotional stakes remained. Ethan Alter noted the somewhat surprising absence of former principle Mark from the finale but the city planner’s credible disenchantment simply would not have made sense in the exaggerated world of the series’ later seasons.

By the finale, the caricaturization reached its apotheosis. As Parks and Rec had already abandoned pain and complexity for broad humour and shallow positivity (becoming as vacuous as the hollow self-help literature affectionately mocked in this final episode), it seemed a fait accompli for every major character to find seamless happiness in both their work and personal lives.

Tom’s improbably bestselling book literally boiled each figure down to three generic traits; meagre summaries as empty and hackneyed as the type of book Tom is peddling.

“April: Individualistic, intense, intimidating."

"Ron: Self-reliant, uncompromising, inner-directed."

"Leslie: Leader, tireless, optimistic.”

Optimism—and comedy—separate from struggle, compromise, and disappointment, does not have much impact. By the end of the series, Leslie’s overbearing idealism was the sole lens through which we were forced to view Pawnee, and governmental work more generally.

A once wonderful, weird, feminist delight deteriorated into a gang of cartoon characters embarking on a happiness scavenger hunt. In the series finale, we were assaulted by a future of boundless false satisfaction.

By that point, to put it in the show’s terms:

Parks and Recreation was beating a dead mini-horse.

It's TEA TIME with THOMAS ZACHARY TOLES, The Film Corner's All New Columnist: Draw up thine comfy chairs for some High Tea at Oxford University, as Rhodes Scholar, young Master Thomas Zachary Toles gives BREAKING BAD a jolly good thrashing.

If you require a better view of Thomas and his illustrious credentials, please click on the friendly masthead just above.

Walter White Privilege: Facile Empathy in Breaking Bad

By Film Corner Tea Time Columnist THOMAS ZACHARY TOLES

Given that Better Call Saul, the spin-off of Vince Gilligan’s universally acclaimed Breaking Bad has placed its first record-breaking season six-feet-under (in slavering anticipation of the second season, ordered by AMC before Season One even aired), it’s high time for a critical reexamination of the series that started it all, a show that pretends to test the limits of our empathy while rewarding its viewers for lazily aligning with a singular, dominant perspective.

Let us examine what is broken and bad with Breaking Bad.

"Let's just blow EVERYBODY the fuck away!"

Walter White (Bryan Cranston), an overqualified chemistry teacher with an ego, is driven to meth dealing and murder by the onset of lung cancer. He hopes to earn enough to cover his exorbitant treatment costs and posthumously bequeath a large sum for his family. The apparent premise of the show is: to what extent can this ordinary man justify his increasingly immoral behaviour with ostensibly compassionate motives? How long will the viewer’s allegiance to Walt last before siding with him becomes impossible?

Breaking Bad’s great fault, however, is that it creates a warped world in which there is effectively no human alternative to Walt. He is the cleverest, coolest, most compelling person in the show, unquestionably a better meth cook than any Hispanic cartel member who preceded him. The genius middle-class white man with crazed ambition (the American dream!) is glorified in his corruption while the devastating effects of meth addiction on impoverished communities are only shown once or twice in the entire series. Walter White is “Whiteman,” America’s presiding figure--a superhero of narcissistic greed.

The emotional consequences of Walt’s actions on his family and other major characters are deceptively insubstantial. The wronged family includes his wife Skyler (Anna Gunn), a character so unsympathetic to most fans that desperately cheating on her lying drug-dealer husband was widely deemed unforgivable. Then there are his children: Walt Jr. (RJ MItte), whose primary arc consists of driving lessons and breakfast consumption, and Holly (Elanor Anne Wenrich), a baby forgotten as frequently by the show’s writers as Maggie is by Homer Simpson.

Skyler is a controversial case because, as Erin Gloria Ryan (writer and managing editor of JEZEBEL) argued, fan hatred for her was due to misogyny, despite the show’s loud assertions of her blamelessness. I counter that her blamelessness reflects Gilligan’s inability to imagine a rich inner life for the character. Skyler’s existence separate from Walt’s endeavours, and her pain, become increasingly vague as the show takes Walt’s continuing survival as its central concern. Walt also causes anguish for Jesse (Aaron Paul), his partner-in-crime, but Walt’s final sacrifice for Jesse allows the older man’s manipulations to be overshadowed by the real villains of the show.

Breaking Bad ends by establishing a ludicrous dichotomy between Walt (a human with flaws--like us) and the fantasy of truly evil people (neo-Nazis) who, unlike Walt, don’t have their reasons. Walt confesses his selfishness (self-awareness achieved!) and redeems himself by vanquishing actual, uncomplicated evil and rescuing Jesse.

Walter White and Edward Hyde: Happy Bedfellows!

For the show’s legions of viewers, Walt has been a surrogate Mr. Hyde, allowing us to tacitly revel in his immorality from the safety of our couches. Breaking Bad relies on the seductive illusion that our dark sides can be outsourced to Walt, vicariously embraced, and then neutralized with Walt’s death and his accompanying self-awareness (that we are invited to share).

Gilligan expresses his desire to redeem Walt and provide a satisfying, palatable ending in his comments on a possible alternate ending in which Walt shoots up a jail to free Jesse:

“[W]e kept asking ourselves, ‘Well, how bad is Walt going to be at the end here? Is he going to kill a bunch of upstanding, law-abiding jail guards? What the hell kind of ending is that?’”

Gilligan wants closure and gratification for his audience; he does not want to leave them frustrated or confused. Walt’s redemption purges the viewer’s guilt for fetishizing him, tying up the show’s loose ends on a chilling note of admiration.

Fiction has the power to vividly portray disorder and ambiguity, in ways that may help us reach a wider, more empathetic outlook. Yet Breaking Bad rewards its viewers for lionizing its slick, troubled protagonist, not challenging us to peer at the peripheral figures beyond him.

Countless Americans are indifferent to the commonplace killings of unarmed people of colour by police officers—proclaiming that Mike Brown, Miriam Carey, Eric Garner, and many others just shouldn’t have broken the law. Undoubtedly, many of these same Americans readily accepted Walt’s violent criminality.

Breaking Bad dangerously inhibits empathy for real-life abuses of power because it predominantly asks its viewers to identify with the one character with both authority and explicit motives. Walt is a complex figure surrounded by stereotypes like Tuco’s homicidal cousins, whose non-existent personalities are only justified by their brutish foreignness.

Breaking Bad encourages empathy for yet another white authority figure (who kills, like Darren Wilson or George Zimmerman, when he “fears for his life”), while disregarding the humanity of those less powerful than he.

A narrow vision, indeed.

Breaking Bad is available in Canada by clicking HEREand in the United States of America by clicking HEREand in the Jolly Old United Kingdom by clicking HERE The first 10 episodes of Season One of Better Call Saul premiered on AMC on February 8, 2015.

All photo collages by GJK

Klymkiw Watches TV (Starz) on Anchor Bay Ent. Canada Blu-Ray: MAGIC CITY - Review By Greg Klymkiw

"Hi there! My name is Olga Kurylenko. I'm Ukrainian.
If you've ever desired to see me in various states of nakedness,
you'll get to see plenty of my supple flesh in Magic City.
And ladies, you'll see why I only eat kapusta  (cabbage),
& avoid Ukraine's national comestible salo (salted pig fat with garlic)."

Lily (Jessica Marais) learns a valuable
lesson from her kind, loving hubby
Ben "The Butcher" Diamond
(Danny Huston) on how
quickly beauty can
become UGLY!!!

Magic City (2012, 2013) ***
Creator, Head Writer,
Executive Producer: Mitch Glazer
Starring: Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Olga Kurylenko, Steven Straight, Jessica Marais, Danny Huston, Matt Ross, Christian Cooke, Dominik García-Lorido, Elena Satine, Yul Vasquez, Kelly Lynch, Alex Rocco, Sherilyn Fenn, James Caan

Review By Greg Klymkiw

When Danny Huston utters the word "whore", he sounds and even looks like his grand old man John Huston and gives us one very important reason to watch all 16 hours of Seasons 1 and 2 of Mitch Glazer's TV series Magic City. The young Mr. Huston is magic and not a second of screen time involving this great actor is a wasted moment. The man is electricity incarnate! He sears a hole in the screen as surely as the tip of the Havana cigars he sucks onscreen with sheer phallus-obsessed aplomb and he comes close to stealing every scene he's in because it's utterly impossible to remove one's eyeballs from his snazzy ultra-vulgarity. He's a generous actor, though, and holds back enough to allow his fellow actors the opportunity of going ma-no a ma-no with him. Huston isn't the only reason Magic City is worth watching, but he comes damn close. If anything, it's the fabulous cast and their varied looks and approaches that come very close to overshadowing the flaws of the series which, are not inconsiderable.

Conceived as a continuing series, the show was cancelled before it could go a 3rd season and thankfully creator Mitch Glazer wrapped up the loose ends. As the two seasons play out, Magic City feels more like a mini-series and I believe it would have profited so much more if it had been planned that way in the first place. Alas, a mini-series wouldn't have allowed the same degree of production value. In fact, season two was supposed to be ten episodes instead of eight, but I think the impending cancellation was a blessing in disguise.

You will BELIEVE in GOD
when you get a load of the
FORMIDABLE SCHWANCE
of Danny Huston!

Set against the backdrop of a lavish Miami hotel just after Castro's takeover of Cuba, Magic City charts the rivalry between hotelier Ike Evans (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) and his silent partner, local Jewish mob boss Ben "The Butcher" Diamond (Danny Huston). Ike sees himself as a visionary businessman, Ben just wants more and will stop at nothing to keep accumulating power and wealth. Losing the hotels in post-revolutionary Cuba has taken a huge bite out of the Mob's cash-flow and they desperately need the State of Florida to make gambling legal in Miami to build a new empire of sin to replace what Castro has destroyed. Ike is no mobster - at least so he tells himself. He does, however, need to consort with the devil to get what he wants and when a local union lobbyist is bumped off, it's Ike who becomes the prime suspect to Dade County's crusading D.A. Jack Klein (Matt Ross). This is a shocker to everyone except those in the know. Ike might well be a family man, but what family is he really beholden to? His family-family or the one he's embroiled with in the various gangster shenanigans he dips his pinky finger into.

You can't go wrong with
JAMES CAAN as a Jewish
Mob Boss fixing a big mess
caused by Ben The Butcher.

Our happy hotel keeper has three kids from his first wife, now deceased. Stevie (Steven Straight) is his eldest son, a longtime bartender in the hotel bar and part time pimp, numbers runner and really moronically, the secret lover of Ben the Butcher's beautiful wife Lily (Jessica Marais). Middle son Danny (Christian Cooke) is in law school and on the verge of taking an internship with the District Attorney's office. (Not a great idea, kid.) Ike's daughter is on the cusp of having her Bat Mitzvah and is closest to Ike's second wife, the former head dancer at the Tropicana in Cuba and gypsy-shiksa-beauty Vera (Olga Kurylenko).

There are numerous other characters and story threads, but herein, for me, lies the problem with the continuing series medium. It's too much, already! I'm happy following the businessman-gangster rivalry, all the immediate family stuff, all the crime stuff involving the central figures, but being forced to follow so many other threads gets in the way of the really juicy stuff. I also enjoyed the Jewish mob backdrop to no end and getting healthy dollops of Yiddish sprinkled throughout was tons of fun. Kudos to Magic City for this. Hell, the show even has a lavish Bat-Mitzvah sequence, a gunfight outside a synagogue PLUS we get to hear Alex Rocco as Ike's Dad, kvetching over how much he hates religion.

Judy Silver (Elena Satine)
Hot Tamale HOOKER
with a Heart of Gold
and a price on her head.

A subplot involving Judi Silver (Elena Satine), a whore with a heart of gold who becomes a target for a hit and another involving Meg Bannock (Kelly Lynch), the rich and powerful Miami socialite and sister of Ike's first wife and of course, the thread involving Sy Berman (James Caan) the really big mob boss from Chicago, are all integral to the central arc of the story. Slowing things down is a thread involving Ike's Cuban-born manager (Yul Vazquez) and his attempts to get his wife out of Cuba and his daughter Mercy (Dominik García-Lorido) and her love affair with Ike's "good" son.

Most of all, though, is that after 16 hours of following this story, one realizes how stock and derivative much of it really is. This wouldn't be so bad if it had the full courage of these trash convictions. An even shorter mini-series format or even a really long feature - possibly even in two parts with one kick-ass director - might have really delivered the shot in the arm Magic City so desperately needs. As is, the series is trying so hard to be capital "P" profound AND jamming in a whole whack of cliffhanger subplots. Having the cake and eating it too severely diminishes the overall satisfaction level.

Whatever format might have been chosen other than this one with less emphasis on "quality" might have yielded something way more rat-a-tat pulpier which, Magic City so desperately ALSO wants to be. In spite of this, there are great things in the series. The art direction and costumes are out of this world, the cool soundtrack of period tunes rocks the lid off the piece and a clever, recurring montage motif at the end of each episode delivers more than its fair share of frissons. The cast, even those struggling through threads less compelling, are all at the top of their game here. I must, though, come back to the estimable Danny Huston. He's so foul, reptilian and crude that he injects just the sort of B-movie vulgarity the entire series needed. And make no mistake, Magic City is loaded with explicit sex, tons of nudity, plenty of salty dialogue and blood splattering violence - all of this is terrific. Unfortunately, when things slow down into either soap opera territory or worse, PROFUNDITY, the narrative takes a nosedive. What this results in is not so much a roller coaster ride, but a drama that suffers from being intermittently and annoyingly bi-polar.

There is clearly much to enjoy here and I suspect the logical home for this series IS on Blu-Ray. It looks and sounds terrific and with 16 one-hour episodes, one can spread the viewing out in one's own preferred time-frame and at the end, still wind up owning a series that has individual episodes and sequences that are so garishly, genuinely and grotesquely delightful that selective repeat viewings will be inevitable.

And, oh, the nudity, the glorious nudity. One will see generous helpings of naked flesh from all the leading ladies and gentlemen, but after all is said and done, my biggest thrill came from seeing Danny Huston's trim body and healthy, dangling schwance and getting huge kicks out of Huston leeringly watching his wife fuck his business partner's son via a two-way mirror and jerking off. Of course, because Danny Huston always manages to sound like John Huston during his more vile spouting, I'd occasionally flashback to the old man himself as Noah Cross in Chinatown or the wonderful moment in Winter Kills when Huston appears in a golf cart with two gorgeous women and a blanket covering their legs and torsos and he asks: "You know what these here girls are doing under this blanket? They're playing with my nuts." Danny Huston has several great moments here to rival his old man and that is certainly nothing to sneeze at.

Too much of Danny Huston (and we get plenty here) is never, ever too much, already!

Magic City from the Starz Network is available as a two season box set from Anchor Bay Entertainment Canada. The transfer is stunning and the only real disappointment is an entire disc used up for what amounts to 15 uninspired minutes of promotional interviews. A few of the episodes would have benefitted greatly from some Mitch Glazer commentary tracks and given that the series had some stellar guest directors like Carl Franklin, Nick Gomez and Clark Johnson, commentaries from those three on their episodes would have rocked big-time. Feel free to order directly from the links below and in so doing, contribute to the ongoing maintenance of The Film Corner.