Category: Television

Daredevil’s battered body

I really like Netflix’s take on Daredevil and have been waiting–maybe too long–to write anything about my binge view that first week.  The series is gruesome in the unflinchingly dark psychology of its murderous Kingpin (bone-chillingly brilliant Vincent D’Onofrio)–and probably too explicit for some–though in my view, it stops short of glorying in his violence.  It is pretty darn smart in its pacing, maybe one of the better uses of the all-at-once-available season I’ve seen.

It is also doing something interesting with how it depicts its hero’s body.  Continue reading Daredevil’s battered body

Paige and the Peril of Coming of Age American

On The Americans‘ season finale,  Paige breaking her parents’ confidence was one of the series’ most damning depictions of the American project in series so far.  And yes, I do remember the episodes on CIA in Central America, but this time the series  opened up space for critically reflecting on what American culture–not just its military industrial complex–yields and what we found is not heartening.

As Paige dialed that phone to call Pastor Tim, the show again played on one of its most interesting features: the tension for viewers about who, after all, we are rooting for.  Initially the show took hits from critics who felt that by making the Jennings our protagonists producers encouraged viewers to root against America in the Cold War.  Fans of the program are likely to find things far more complicated than that, however.  There’s no doubt that we come to care about Philip and Elizabeth, that we root for their marriage and cringe during shoot-outs in hopes of their survival.  But we’re likely to prefer Philip–at least in season one–as it becomes clear that he has come to enjoy and internalize certain parts of America far more than his wife.

Paige’s indiscretion about her parents true vocation is a step toward American victory in the silent war being fought with KGB “Illegals” on American soil.  It is also the sympathetic, literal cry for help of an average teenage girl–perhaps a better than average one–faced with too much adult responsibility, too much moral quandary, and too many lies to handle on her own.  We get it, Paige.  We do.

And yet we don’t.  Or at least I don’t.  Watching Paige pick up that receiver, I felt something in me recoil from her (and a tinge of disappointment that the writers went this slightly more predictable path with her character).  My disgust with Paige wasn’t triggered by any pinko leanings; no amount of Putin Olympic agitprop nor episodes in the confidence of the Jennings has produced sympathy for the Communist cause.   It was activated by the sense that Paige, the born-and-bred American, ultimately operated in a world of thinner choices, of too clean edges, of too much desire for simplicity to handle herself in the high-risk, consequence-laden world her parents brought her into.

Continue reading Paige and the Peril of Coming of Age American

Stretching the Rayburn Family to the Brink… and maybe its viewers, too (Bloodline, part 2)

Netflix’s Bloodline ultimately plays a storytelling gambit not unlike its antagonist’s approach to getting what he wants from his family: How many times will you reengage with Danny Rayburn before you finally lose patience and just let yourself off the hook?

Revealing a key event of the season’s ending during the first episode was a risk that wagered heavily on the pilot stoking viewers’ initial curiosity and establishing empathy with its characters  Several intense images and sounds of the Rayburn brothers struggling against the elements–the swampy morass of the mangroves and the choppy surf of the Gulf during a pounding rainstorm–with one of them apparently passed out or dead gave us a glimpse of a high-stakes “what” without any of the “how” or “why.” The tactic would act either as provocative inducement to keep on watching or as eye-roll-inducing gimmick that even the near-immediate goodwill produced by seeing Kyle Chandler on the small screen could not sustain. Continue reading Stretching the Rayburn Family to the Brink… and maybe its viewers, too (Bloodline, part 2)