The Week in Review! 2: Electric Boogaloo!

Sopranos is absolutely magnificent at the moment, it really is. I was concerned that the whole supernatural/philosophical theme they were looking at with the coma episode would peter out once Tony was back in the real world, but thankfully that has turned out not to be the case.

Fortunately for me, this first episode of Full Tony Consciousness saw the introduction of a John Schwinn, who blew Tony’s mind with his deep talk about how we are all one consciousness, and duality like good-evil, and even one boxer vs. another, cannot really exist due to the universe being one big random gloop of molecules reassigning their form seemingly at random.

Between that, the mysterious Ojibwe saying, and anti-Evolutionist stance proffered by the Christians, it seems the central core of the show has been redefined, and more central to the show than ever before.

That ‘core’ is, of course, Tony Soprano, not as some ‘Analyze This!’ extended punch line, but more like the Silver Surfer of HBO drama. He goes about his business (fighting super-crime, maintaining organised crime – two sides of the same coin) with a level of professional detachment, but with various pauses for philosophical pondering.

I love how the emphasis has shifted from ‘he’s got issues!’ to a genuinely pretty deep look at the nature of existence, why we’re all here etc. While some may hate its being valued over the gangstery, I loved Tony’s look at the world after leaving hospital with fresh eyes, and remarking that every day would be a gift. Especially as it presumably foreshadows some hardcore action to come…

I caught the last half of what seemed to be a really bloody good hour-long episode of Emmerdale last week, too. Emmerdale. I’ve not really watched the programme too much since leaving there (as some of you are aware, I was in the story office for a while in 2005), and usually with good reason.

Occasionally, though, there is a really good story. More often than not, it involves Cain Dingle. Over Christmas, for example, we had the storyline where his daughter, Debbie, gave away her baby and he obviously went crazy when he found out. As maligned as the Dingles are for Chuckle Brothers-esque comedy, they routinely have the most emotionally affecting storylines on the show.

So I caught this most recent episode with Cain holding Sadie (Patsy Kensit) King and Tom King hostage, asking for two million quid. It was all a big swerve, as he made off with the money, I cahoots with Sadie, after convincing the King family that she’d got killed.

In a great villain move (and one of those few moments where he really lives up to his evil potential), Cain flies off on a seaplane with the money, leaving Sadie on her tod, after giving her a speech about how he’d end up killing her if they stayed together. Excellent.

To ramp up the emotional impact, though, there was a touching scene where Debbie caught up with Cain, as she turned up at the ransom drop and begged him not to leave her. As she has consistently been his weak spot, he was reduced to tears as he told her ‘I have always loved you – I’m just not good at it’.

Sentimental and schmaltzy as hell, but this was easily the most affecting moment in television drama in quite a while for me.

The Week Is Still Being Reviewed!

In more dramatic fare than a couple of posts below, I have found much to enjoy in the current series of The Sopranos. It seems the powers that be on the show (most likely Exec Producers, as I doubt a writer would have that much power on the show) have decided to follow the current trend for TV by throwing us a swerve to begin the series.

This, of course, is nothing new in the last couple of small-screen years. The last season of 24 started with a number of major characters getting variously shot and blown up, including the ex-President (but 24 is a law unto itself, ending as it did with Jack being beaten bloody and hauled off to China), and the co-creators of Lost wanted to kill their own Jack in the pilot episode originally (they wanted a star like Michael Keaton back when they were going to kill him. It was going to be instead of the pilot, when he gets grabbed out of the plane).

So, after what was essentially an episode of exposition, with the audience catching up with the characters and meeting some new ones (the bloke who wanted out of the game was new to me, at least), Tony got shot by his increasingly psychologically deteriorating uncle, and was rendered comatose.

I don’t know why it is, but I am fascinated with the mind of the person in a coma. I mean, I’m into psychology in general, and dreams specifically, so a subject like that intrigues me; what goes on in the mind of someone nearly dead to the world?

This is one of the many reasons why I loved the Mars Volta debut so much. The dodgily monikered De-loused in the Comatorium concerned the coma dreams of one of the band’s friends, and the journey his mind took. It was dark and surreal, and really added to the uber-Proggy sound the band had been developing.

And so we return to this Sopranos story strand. Tony got shot at the climax of the season opener, and spent most of the next two episodes in a dream world where he was being mistaken for a ‘Kevin Finnerty’ (read that name aloud), with whom he had accidentally traded briefcases. He was trying to find Finnerty, while the latter’s enemies (Buddhist monks, mainly) hassled our protagonist.

So the execution was rather like Lost’s flashback structure, as the audience was sent between this hotel and the everyday life of the Family, only this flashback had never happened. Or at least, it wasn’t a flashback, as it was currently happening, just not in the physical world.

Before long, he arrived at a party in a mansion, but was afraid to go in, as he kept hearing his daughter’s voice in the distance, pleading with him not to go. Of course, that was him hearing her in the hospital, and he soon woke up. While I’m glad he’s back in the world of the living, I have to admit I was enamoured both with the execution of this aside, and with the fact that it was introduced for some variety.

I eagerly await the rest of this series. Especially as Lost is finishing next week…

We had a decent storm last week…

And here are some pics of it. I love the rain so much; the heavier, the better, and this was a grand storm indeed.





I also got some music last week but, as I didn’t do too much listening to it, it’s going to happen on a future Week In Review. So look out for Mastodon, Mars Volta and probably the new DJ Shadow, which has gorgeous packaging.

The Week In Review

The first episode of series two of Extras aired tonight, and I was most pleased with it. Initially concerned about Keith Chegwin (seemed rather like a contrived attempt at Les Dennis mk. 2, on paper) and Orlando Bloom, they both worked out really well.

Bloom was on fine form as the narcissist obsessed with his imaginary feud with Johnny Depp (‘the prat’) – although I understood his motivation, Bloom’s fixation with Maggie was a bit of a stretch.

Anyway, Cheggers worked out really well. It helped that he was pretty much the polar opposite of Dennis’ character on the show; whereas Les was very wet and pathetic, in an endearing kinda way, Chegwin was a racist homophobe, with a disarmingly chilling delivery. His scene was also the funniest of the episode, where they were trying to get his one line of dialogue down. He failed so miserably that I was laughing so hard, I literally thought my neck was going to explode.

That Mitchell And Webb Look wasn’t as resounding a success. I loved Peep Show. I thought the first series was the best by a mile, but I loved Peep Show. I also don’t like sketch shows. I don’t like Little Britain, Bo Selecta! or The Fast Show. I liked bits of them, but there’s the rub with sketch shows – they tend to be hit and miss.

So with Bo!, you had stuff like Craig David and Michael Jackass, which were pretty damn hilarious (til the kind of idiots who wear short sleeved shirts while drinking outside pubs in the winter ran the catchphrases through the ground, past the Earth’s core and into Australia). Then you had other parts of the show, like Lorraine Kelly or whatever, where he just wanted to say rude words. And the less said about the Avid Merrion bits, the better.

Big Train was a good sketch show, though. Mainly because it didn’t tend to fall into the trap that too many programmes do in terms of catchphrases; the same characters saying the same thing week after week until laughing is less an expression of amusement than it is a Pavlovian reaction… Fast Show especially.

I’m completely nonplussed by the kind of comedy where everyone knows what the punch line is, and we’re all just waiting for it to come. Oh, that bloke on the Fast Show was talking about all this amazing stuff that happened to him, and then he just said ‘…which was nice’! Oh, the bathos!

Anyway, Mitchell And Webb. We know they’re really funny, but (as someone who doesn’t have digital and didn’t see whatever programme it was on BBC3530) how does that translate to sketches?

Well, I didn’t hate any of it, but if the drunken snooker commentators become a weekly thing I’ll be happy to change my mind. The crime fighting team of ‘Angel Summoner’ & BMX Bandit, wherein the latter would hatch a complex plot involving wheelies, and the former would just get a bunch of angels to do everything, was good stuff. Just not every week.

One thing that did completely make me laugh was ‘Numberwang’. A parody of those nonsensical daytime quiz shows that only the participants and presenter seem to understand, it was random and concise enough to have me rolling in the aisles. OK, just sitting down and laughing, but it was still good.

I guess the success of the series will hinge on how many good ideas they have – will it be different every week, or will it slide into Catchphrase Hell? Or will it just meander about, in rather clueless fashion, like Man Stroke Woman? Yeah, you forgot about that already.

And finally, season 5 of Curb Your Enthusiasm came out this week. I’ve wanted to ration myself, so have only seen about half of it thus far. I like it. I like it a lot.

The episode with the racist dog has been the best thus far, partly due to the fact that it is unbelievably awkward (being called a homophobe and a racist? Wait – that rings a bell…), and also because it features what have now become staples of the show.

And by that I mean two things. First off is the look Larry gives anyone he thinks is lying. He’ll go silent and squint into their eyes, moving his head slowly, as though in an attempt to pierce the falsehood and get to the truth within. I think it’s hilarious, especially when it comes to how the different defendants react.

The other is his ‘catchphrase’, which I think only I actually notice. And that is his ‘pretty good. Prettyyyy, prettyyyyy, prettyyyy, pretty good’ line. It always cracks me up. It reached its zenith when he used it (after subtly doing so for four seasons) in a wedding vow renewal (‘the marriage has been pretty good…’ when he has misplaced the vows he had written for the occasion), but it’s always gold.

And what’s the difference between this and the sketch show catchphrases I hate with such passion? Context. The Curb… lines are ensconced within excellent comedy scenarios, as opposed to being the sole reason for the existence of those scenarios. Now, roll on that Arrested Development Season 3 DVD set…

POSTSCRIPT: I finally got to reading some of last week’s Weekend Guardian, and it’s a comedy-focused issue. In it, among other luminaries, are Mitchell and Webb. Funny thing is, I never reconciled the fact that the writing pair and acting pair on Peep Show had different names and, because it was a writing duo, assumed the actors wrote it.

How wrong I was. Jesse Armstrong and Sam Bain wrote it. They also wrote the hilarious The Thick Of It. While the pair wrote on That Mitchell And Webb Look, that also had a bunch of other writers working on it. I’ll just assume they wrote Numberwang and Angel Summoner & BMX Bandit, the rest of them wrote the other stuff, and we’ll have a tidy little solution.