Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away".

Well done to the Breaking Bad team, with special mention to Vince Gilligan, Michelle MacLaren, Rian Johnson, Bryan Cranston, Aaron Paul, Anna Gunn, Dean Norris, Bob Odenkirk, and (especially) Betsy Brandt and RJ Mitte (who both broke my heart last night), not to mention everyone else. You've all managed to accomplished something rather incredible: you've created something truly special, memorable, and unique; you're stuck the landing (so far, at least); and you've managed to get the world at large at least tangentially interested in poetry. Well done to you all. 

In Appreciation of Good Television

I was browsing the internet this morning when I came across a banner ad for... this:

Now, I admit I may have been tangentially aware of this show's existence, but until today I had never been confronted by the pure, unrelenting truth of the matter. There's really a show called fucking Cougar Town, and what's more it's not even on Fox! Somehow I find this more appalling than the existence of Dance Your Ass Off, although I recognize that the reality show is probably more indicative of the apparent cultural apocalypse. But come on, seriously. Seriously. Cougar Town? Wasn't that a joke on 30 Rock a few years back? How did this happen? Where did we go wrong?

Honestly, I'm playing it up a bit. I don't actually consider this a sign of the end of days (culturally or otherwise). If there were such a thing we'd have passed that road sign years ago, at breakneck speed and probably drinking at the wheel. However the bald fact of the existence of Cougar Town (shudder) made me realize that I'm long overdue in making a post about the amazing TV shows I've been watching recently.

Sidebar: how many people read the title to this post and saw the Cougar Town picture and stuck around just to see if I was blogging while drunk again?

This fall I was made aware of the wonderful show, Community (actually someone told me about in the summer but it generally takes me a few months to appreciate anything brilliant that people recommend to me. Thanks Sandy). It's a show about a study group at a community college (featuring Donald Glover and the incredible Chevy Chase). That's the premise to get a bunch of character archetypes together anyway, really the show is about television. It's too reverent to be a satire, but basically the narrative is little more than a set up for a lot of jokes in appreciation of TV. And not just good TV but all TV. M.A.S.H. and Friends are treated equally by Community's writers, who clearly just love culture in all its forms. The show spent an excellent first season (self-awarely) going through the motions of the typical romantic will-they-or-won't-they plot, but then ditched that in season two in favour of episodic genre spoofs. They've done the zombie apocalypse, they've done the mystery thriller, they've even done Apollo 13 (and yes that's a genre now).  The dialogue is so densely packed with TV and film references that it demands multiple viewings, and that's a heavy emphasis on multiple. Not since the glory days of Arrested Development (RIP) had I found myself laughing so hard at new things every time I rewatched old episodes. Truly, Community is one for the books, a rare contemporary classic in a sea of otherwise unexciting and horrible television (see above).

Or so I thought. Then last week I finally took another long overdue recommendation (thanks everyone, you know who you are) and started watching Archer.

Archer is a cartoon about a James Bond-esque super spy named Sterling Archer. Or at least that's his character type in the general sense, really he's a buffoonish womanizer who sometimes manages to get the job done in spite of himself. He works for his mother (voiced by Arrested Development alum Jessica Walter) at the International Secret Intelligence Service (ISIS) and goes on international espionage missions. The whole thing is a great spoof of Bond and spy movies generally, and each episode holds new hilarious surprises (the Skytanic one is particularly great). The show features an outstanding voice cast, including the aforementioned Walter as well as H. Jon Benjamin, Judy Greer, Chris Parnell, and regular appearances by Jeffrey Tambour (also of Arrested Development fame). As with Community, the writing on Archer is incredible and demands multiple viewings to catch all the nuanced and self-referential jokes. There aren't many episodes and so I managed to get completely caught up in no time, so I highly recommend you dive into Archer immediately. It just began its second season with a stellar opening that guarantees the show will only get better.

And you know what? I take that "sea of unexciting and horrible television" comment back. Despite shows like Cougar Town, television actually is pretty damn good right now. Community and Archer are among my favourites, but there's also shows like Modern Family and Parks and Recreation, both of which I'm told are fantastic. I'm also partial to the more traditional but still quite good How I Met Your Mother, and while I can't speak for it now I will vouch for 30 Rock circa 2008. For all the reality schlock we have to sift through, there really is some good stuff going on out there. What's more, everything I've mentioned here is at least somewhat popular and successful! As you can probably tell I'm a diehard Arrested Development fan from way back, so I am acutely aware of how important it is for something to be not only intelligent and hilarious but also bankable. Good people are getting paid to write good shows, and we are reaping the rewards. That's not something anyone should take for granted.

It's a good time to be a fan of intelligent humour on TV. To that I say this: fuckin' bangarang.

Glee On The Word "Fag"

Last night's episode of Glee featured a great scene that I was surprised to see on network television. In it the show's writers explicitly address derogatory use of the word "fag" and identify it as a hateful slur on the same level as words like "nigger" and "retard." It's an extremely powerful sequence that sends a fantastic message and I want to share it because the statement it makes cannot be reiterated enough.

To give a little context, in this episode Finn, a typically moral football player, finds out he's moving in with Kurt, a gay classmate and fellow member of the Glee club. Finn's mother recently started dating Kurt's father, Burt, who quickly became an important masculine role model to Finn. When Finn and Kurt start sharing a bedroom it puts a lot of stress on both of them, and the rising tension finally explodes in this fantastic scene:

I'm going to try to have a better clip soon

I don't have anything to add to Burt's speech, it's a powerful testament to the fact that using such hateful language is disgraceful. Considering Glee's popularity it's always admirable when the writers tackle important social issues. They're quick to criticize rural American culture but clearly aren't blind to their own faults, as seen in episodes like the racially-charged "Throwdown." There's also a brutal honesty to Glee that saves its moralizing from sounding like the stuff of after-school specials, as seen when they discussed disabilities in "Wheels." Burt's speech this week exhibited each of these strengths as he admitted his own guilt in having shared a hateful prejudice and indicted its perpetuation. Because so many people watch Glee it presents a a real opportunity for positive cultural influence, and moments like this show the writers are taking that possibility seriously.

If the sequence above had taken place in reality I would accuse Burt of being overly hard on Finn. The kid has repeatedly shown that he has a good heart and more than that he's struggling with his own serious issues. There's no doubt that Finn's treatment of Kurt is reprehensible, but Burt should have handled the situation better. He has taken it upon himself to become a father-figure to Finn, yet his exemplary criticism of the boy's language quickly devolves into an excommunication. Finn is wrong and he isn't Burt's real son so he has to go. No high school kid deserves to be so brutally devalued and disowned, period.

But this isn't reality, it's the television show Glee, and an episode entitled "Theatricality" no less.  Finn's a good kid, the audience likes him, and so hearing him use the word "fag" is especially shocking. Burt's rage is  righteous but hard to watch with Finn on the receiving end, and the divide between the audience's loyalty to Finn and their moral sensibility makes the whole event feel especially tragic. This elevated drama makes the scene all the more effective in sending the message that words like "fag" are hateful, hurtful, and unacceptable.

Joss Whedon's Glee Episode

Last night's episode of Glee, "Dream On," was directed by the incomparable Joss Whedon, and featured a guest appearance by Whedon-regular Neil Patrick Harris. As an admitted fan of both Glee and Whedon I was understandably excited, and with the added bonus of NPH the episode seemed sure to become an instant classic. And you know what? It sort of was.

The episode was certainly not without its problems, but overall I think it's the best we've seen from Glee since they won sectionals. It started out a bit rocky with the first act being almost entirely story driven; the story wasn't bad by any means, but on a musical show it was strange that there wasn't a single musical number for the first third of the episode. The next half hour made up for it in spades though, with a couple of incredible duets from NPH and series regular Matthew Morrison. There was also a special focus on wheelchair-bound character Artie, resulting in a heartbreaking fantasy rendition of "Safety Dance" that ranks among the best performances the show has ever had. On top of all that we got a surprising development about Jessie that could potentially change a predictable subplot into a much more interesting (if slightly contrived) story arc.

Overall it was a great episode that focused more on individual characters than the general ensemble, which makes sense given that Whedon was directing. He is a master with character development and in this episode he managed to interweave three different character-specific stories and have each of them feel equally relevant and interesting. The Glee cast is fairly large and so the focus on a few individuals was unsurprising and probably wise. To Whedon's credit none of the characters felt absent even if they didn't have any lines, which is more than you can say about a lot of the recent episodes. Most importantly the song choices were amazing and perfectly accentuated the characters' individual arcs. I really enjoyed the episode and hope Whedon comes back to direct another one soon. We certainly haven't seen the last of NPH's character...

Primitivism in Contemporary Science Ficiton

I've been noticing a growing tendency in popular science fiction to express an ideology of romantic primitivism. As Wikipedia summarizes, the concept holds that "life was better or more moral during the early stages of mankind or among primitive peoples (or children) and has deteriorated with the growth of civilization." Unless you're one of the two people on the planet who didn't see Avatar you should easily be able to see the relevance of primitivism in popular culture. Furthermore a few other major sci-fi properties express similar philosophical leanings: the TV show Battlestar Galactica concluded last year with (spoiler warning) a futuristic human society abandoning all of their technology and knowledge to colonize a primitive Earth; now Steven Spielberg's upcoming show, Terra Nova, will apparently show a family from the year 2149 who go back to the time of the dinosaurs to alter history and save humanity from its "devotion to science."

Ok, so what the fuck?

Where is this sudden regressive impulse coming from? The philosophy certainly isn't new but its prevalence in science fiction lately is noteworthy and unnerving. Science fiction has always existed as a vehicle through which to consider and critique human society by imagining a different one. The genre allows us to question aspects of human life such as political structures or belief systems, and in that way to really question ourselves. Now the most popular sci-fi stories are placing the blame for humanity's woes squarely on the shoulders of technology and the individuals who propagate it... Huh?

This type of reductive thinking produces no room for analysis or discussion but instead encourages a moralistic mob mentality and a "get rid of the bad guys / things" type response, as seen at the end of Avatar. BSG started out as a liberal and critically minded examination of contemporary politics through the lens of a space opera, promoting new ways of thinking about concepts like race, religion, and war. When the show ended it suddenly devolved into an imperialistic treatise about faith, cyclical patterns, and the evils of technology. This ran completely counter to many of show's focal points, including the idea that the "evil" Cylons were for all intents and purposes people, a reflection of their human creators. The show's conclusion didn't make sense thematically, and fans of the show reacted accordingly.

Tellingly the endings of BSG and Avatar were essentially the same: 

the main characters integrated with alien noble savages by fucking them

What is the deal with all this romantic primitivism? The root of all human problems is always the humans themselves, and sci-fi has traditionally been a medium for exploring this issue in all its complexities. Now some of the most prominent examples of the genre are spouting off some ridiculous ideology about how technology is to blame and we should all abandon it to be more in touch with nature? I say again, what the fuck? I'm all for environmentalism but don't try to sell me some two-bit theory that shirks our responsibility and ignores the vast amounts of good that has come as a result of technological advancement. The solution's not as simple as that, and frankly it's not as stupid either. We need better answers and we deserve better stories.

Good News Everyone! Futurama Is Coming Back!

Words cannot express how excited I am for the new Futurama episodes starting this June on Comedy Central. It's hard to believe that the show was actually canceled in 2003. That's seven years ago. I've been watching it with a feverish regularity for the past four years running and it still seems as fresh as ever. The four DVD movies they released were a welcome treat, though they did not reach the level of quality the show had risen to by seasons three and four. I'm chocking that up to the awkward format (each movie also had to be four "self-contained" episodes for broadcasting) and eagerly awaiting the new season. From what we've heard it should be very interesting.

Above is the teaser trailer for the new season of Futurama on Comedy Central. Below is the first official image from the new episodes. Apparently Comedy Central Insider is going to be releasing new details about the upcoming season every weekday from now until the premiere on June 24. Depending on how awesome they prove to be I may also post them here. Hooray!

From Around the Web - 1/30/10

Adam Giambrone REALLY wants to be the mayor of Toronto, but somehow seems like a disingenuous tool

Kanye West is blogging again. This is fantastic news. I may write an entire post on this tomorrow.

The most amusing new blog I've encountered in weeks

RIP Joss Whedon's Dollhouse. io9 discusses some of the reasons we loved you during your brief and problematic run.

On Glee and ChristWire.org

I've been meaning to post about Glee for a while now. I initially saw posters advertising the show in subways stations throughout the fall and didn't think much of it. Generally speaking, TTC ads and bad television seem to be attached at the hip. With Glee, however, I caught wind a good buzz through the /Filmcast. I figured it was worth a look and ended up stunned by how amazing the show is. Glee is fun, heartwarming, snarky, politically incorrect, and has an incredible soundtrack. I had forgotten how great musicals can be when they're done right. The show quickly became my favourite show of 2009, and I'm eagerly awaiting the April 2010 premiere of the second season.

Now Stephenson Billings from ChristWire.org has written a guide for parents, warning them against the evils of this show about a high school glee club. The post makes it seem like the author has absolutely no sense of irony, but I think it's actually a case of them having an incredibly astute one. It is one of the most hilariously conservative, homophobic, racist, and idiotic things I have read in recent memory. It's worth a read if only for an incredulous laugh, which is exactly why it was written.

The Continuing Struggle for Dollhouse to Realize Its Promise

Dollhouse is a problematic television show. There have been some significant disagreements between the creative minds involved and the FOX network, all of which have only hurt the show. The first season asks viewers to slog through seven or so boring and formulaic episodes before giving us any real reason to come back. Then, after a series of incredible concluding episodes, the second season begins with another set of lackluster installments that reeked of network intervention. The best, and in a sense final, episode of the entire series was never even aired on television.

Despite all this I keep coming back to it, for a whole mix of reasons. Because I love and trust Joss Whedon. Because this is potentially the most mature content he has ever tackled. Because the concept of Dollhouse has so much potential. Because when it's good, it's really good.

The episode that aired this past Friday night was really, really fucking good.

If you've seen the episode then check out this great post on io9 discussing the plot points of the episode and what they mean, with in depth analysis and clips from various sequences. I'll get around to an extended discussion of Dollhouse at some point, but for the moment consider this post as largely indicative of my thoughts.