Television Reviews: Yellowstone Season 1

Yellowstone Season 1
created and written by Taylor Sheridan

I'm not sure if this Paramount TV drama should be considered trashy fun or funny trash. It was created by the man who wrote and directed Wind River, reviewed here. Sheridan also wrote Sicario, reviewed here, acted in Sons of Anarchy, and wrote the Oscar nominated Hell or High Water. So there is some skill behind this creation, but it's not always consistently super apparent in the first season.

There is some confusion in what the show is trying to say at times, something I think comes directly from the top. The creator has said that he doesn't really believe in the concept of white privilege and finds it very offsetting to those whites, who like him, grew up without what they saw as any privilege. 

On the other hand Sheridan's work seems to be at least partially influenced by the work of his brother, John Gibler, a journalist who has passionately detailed drug war atrocities in Mexico, environmental racism in California and Texas and other human rights issues. Sheridan has also written of how certain restaurants or bars out west refused to serve Native Americans, white police would wait outside reservations specifically to profile Native Americans and how gas stations would refuse to serve him once they discovered he was friendly with or working with Native Americans. So whether he likes all the language used by the modern "woke" audiences or not, Sheridan is certainly aware of racial disparities. The question is what to do about it.

Random Thoughts on HBO's Game of Thrones Finale (1)

I don't think that the final season of HBO's Game of Thrones ruined the entire series but I do think that the final episode tried and came close. If we assume that all of the events came from GRRM, which I doubt, GRRM will have some heavy lifting to do in his final books in order to make these plot points believable.

The idea that people who know nothing about Bran other than he is Ned Stark’s son, “fell” out of a window, and has a creepy personality would accept that he should be king, based on the word of a patricidal dwarf known continent wide as a drunk and whoremonger, makes no sense. This "best story" justification is crap. Everyone has stories.

That these same people would tolerate the North going independent boggles the mind. If Bran’s own sister won’t bend the knee to him, why would anyone else? Every region was independent before the Targaryen invasion, not just the North. The Iron Islands and Dorne are just as culturally, religiously and ethnically distinct as the North is. Having the entire continent be ruled by Starks AND the North be independent seems like too many bites at the apple, even for a Stark bannerman such as myself.

Grey Worm and the Dothraki likely outnumber other Westerosi forces in and around King’s Landing at the time of Daenerys’ murder. If not then it’s a close call. But Daenerys JUST gave a wildly popular speech promising permanent revolution and worldwide conquest to her soldiers, who LIVE for such things. Daenerys has also condemned Tyrion to die.

Daenerys Targaryen: Crazy Capricious Killer or Misunderstood Matriarch???

The Daenerys heel turn of burning King's Landing down and deliberately incinerating untold numbers of civilians caused a great deal of agita among some Game of Thrones fans.
Some people think that this is either Benioff's and Weiss's or even GRRM's commentary that strong women are always crazy women. I don't think that argument is worth discussing. FWIW, GRRM describes himself as a feminist. GRRM created many characters of different genders and sexualities, all of whom are varying mixes of good and evil, intelligence and stupidity, competence and ineptitude. It is almost certainly not a meta-commentary by  GRRM or show creators on the danger of female leadership to have Daenerys burn down King's Landing. The fact that so many people joyously read Daenerys as avenging feminist Messiah is a testament to GRRM's creative abilities, nothing else.

The second, more numerous and to my mind more legitimate detractors are not necessarily THAT bothered by Daenerys going Mad Queen but think that it wasn't earned in the show. The show is all we can go on here as these events have not taken place in the books. On a private board I frequent, and on quora too I might add, this last episode caused heated discussion. As one show watcher pointed out on this blog:  

This made no sense for her character as depicted in the show. Just last season she literally rebutted that she is "not here to be the queen of the ashes" when Yara and the Queen of the Sandsnakes urged her to burn King's Landing. That was 1 season ago. 1!!! Now all of a sudden she's the mad queen? Not buying it.

We must remember that unless and until Benioff ,Weiss and GRRM give us a detailed look at what were GRRM's contributions and what were Benioff's and Weiss' we may never know what events were GRRM's "true" ideas. For all we know GRRM might be reviewing screen events and decide to alter or more deeply explain story events. Still, for something this big and character defining as the near total destruction of King's Landing my money is on it being GRRM's intent all along. So Daenerys was always going to go bad.

HBO Game of Thrones: Thoughts on Episode 3 - The Long Night

I rewatched the most recent episode of HBO's Games of Thrones (episode 3). I debated it and discussed it with friends, family, and associates online and offline. I read other people's takes. I heard some of what Benioff and Weiss had to say. Now that I've come down from the sugar high of Arya's heroism I think I can provide more sober analysis of what I didn't like in the episode.

There are three points that bear mentioning. (1) Medieval Warfare is a wonderful magazine, one which I read religiously. My points about military tactics are generally based on my readings of various issues of that magazine and other historical books. Mistakes and omissions are mine. (2) Obviously this is just my pov which I am writing for my own enjoyment and hopefully yours as well. I am certainly not stating that I am "right". The show belongs to the showrunners, not viewers (3) Arya is one of my favorite characters. Criticism of her character arc isn't based in the modern bete noire of misogyny.

The episode was entertaining. I was a little disappointed at the episode's fit in the larger tale. GRRM has shared plot points and character fates with Benioff and Weiss. GRRM believes the show and book endings will be broadly similar, although the paths will differ. I'm no book purist. The showrunners occasionally improved the tale by changing or eliminating some GRRM inventions. For example, I don't think the HBO series should have included Strong Belwas, a not too bright black Daenerys devotee who speaks in the third person and defecates on the corpses of those he kills. The show didn't need vivid description of the Mountain and crew's vicious gang rape of a preteen girl and murder of her brother.

But, when I heard that the showrunners had decided about three years prior to have Arya be the one to kill the Night King, a character not present in the published books, I thought that the decision, no matter how much I enjoyed the knife drop move, was a mistake, and one likely made purely for fan service reasons. Let's discuss more.

HBO Game of Thrones Final Season: Martells

Bad Writing Destroys House Martell

Dorne was, depending on who you talk to and how you understand the story, a way to bring in some storylines, settings and themes that weren't 100% based on Northern European patriarchal norms. In the books Dorne was a fantasy meld of Iberian, Welsh, Italian, and North African settings with minor Palestinian or even West African cultural signifiers tossed in for flavor. Dorne was not conquered by the Targaryens but voluntarily joined the realm via marriage. The biggest difference between Dorne and everywhere else in Westeros was that Dorne practiced equal inheritance between male and female. Dorne as a nation was founded one thousand years ago by Queen Nymeria. Nymeria led refugees to Dorne, burned her ships so no one could flee, married a Martell, and proceeded to curb stomp all of the squabbling states and regions of Dorne into one realm which she and her husband ruled as equal partners. 

In Robert's Rebellion, Lannister thug Gregor Clegane (and in books also Amory Lorch) raped Princess Elia Martell and murdered her and her children. The Dornish Prince Doran and his younger brother Prince Oberyn did not forgive or forget the atrocities committed against their blood. Doran played the long game, letting people believe that he forswore vengeance while building up House Martell. Oberyn took a different path. Oberyn went to King's Landing and made it clear to all that he was out for vengeance against Lannisters in general and Gregor Clegane and Tywin Lannister in particular. 

Oberyn had a chance for revenge when he defended Tyrion Lannister in a trial by combat against the fearsome Gregor Clegane. Oberyn showed that speed and poison kills. Unfortunately for Oberyn he forgot that Gregor Clegane, even mortally wounded, is freakishly strong and freakishly fast. Don't taunt Gregor until after he's dead. Otherwise THIS happens.

Twenty Years Since The Sopranos Started

The Sopranos was one of my favorite television dramas. It wasn't the first show to have an antihero protagonist but it was one of the most successful ones to do so. This wasn't just great acting by the series star, the late James Gandolfini, but excellent writing, direction and production by series creator David Chase as well as wonderful support by many other actors and actresses, including Edie Falco. It does seem odd to realize that it has been twenty years since the series debut. Chase and Falco reminisce about the show and of course that ending.

Roseanne Barr Goes Full Racist

On twitter, actress Roseanne Barr compared former Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett to an ape. She then gave an half-hearted apology and deleted her tweet, saying she was leaving twitter. White racists have always made comparisons of black people to apes. "Planet of the Apes" is a particularly popular metaphor when used to refer to black people. I've seen that one used by numerous bigots over the years. The thing about the phrase is that the person using it is basically waving a flag saying "I'm a racist!". It expresses the essence of white supremacy, the belief and practice that the black person isn't fully human. This is what allows people to justify slavery, police brutality, segregation, exploitation, and murder. If Black people are not human but instead a subhuman primate of some kind then obviously normal human morality does not apply to whites' interactions with Blacks.

Roseanne Barr, one of ABC's biggest stars, apologized after a bizarre, racist Twitter rant Tuesday morning, and then announced she's "now leaving Twitter."
ABC had no immediate comment. Following the rant, one of the show's consulting producers, Wanda Sykes, said she's done with the show. "I will not be returning to @RoseanneOnABC," Sykes tweeted.
Barr is notorious for tweeting about pro-Trump conspiracy theories and other controversial topics. This week she repeatedly attacked prominent Democrats.

In one of the tweets, she wrote, "Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj."
Barr was responding to a comment about Valerie Jarrett, a top former aide to President Obama. CNN reporter Andrew Kaczynski responded to Roseanne on Twitter about the Jarrett comment, which she replied was "a joke."

Bates Motel Series Finale

This A&E series lasted for five years. It didn't overstay its welcome. It featured very intense story lines and acting by the two leads (Farmiga, Highmore). But every recurring character in this story was well written. Even the minor characters fit well into the story. This series may have started out as a prequel to the Psycho film but the producers and writers made it clear that Bates Motel was much much ambitious than a prequel. It was something that may have been inspired by Psycho but was not tied down by that film. It was a re-interpretation and reworking of the Psycho movie. Although there was the obvious bad guy the viewers also came to understand that the man, Norman Bates (Freddie Highmore) was not in control of himself. He was a very disturbed one. He was capable of great kindness upon occasion. He ran into more attractive women than you would expect a weird loner to find. But Norman was never going to enjoy happiness for long because he was increasingly divorced from reality.

At the end of Season Four a depressed and angry Norman decided to kill his mother Norma (Vera Farmiga) and himself in a murder-suicide. However although his mother died, Norman didn't. In a stroke of luck for Norman the authorities, with Norman's connivance, assumed that the breakup note that Norma wrote for her husband Sheriff Alex Romero (Nestor Carbonell ) was actually a suicide note.  So everyone believes that Norma was actually the crazy one who tried to kill her son via gas poisoning. Well that is everyone except Alex. He knows how dangerous Norman is. He blames Norman for his wife's death. And he intends to do something about it. He's put people in the ground before. Unfortunately for Alex though before he could make his move some of the evidence of his corruption has caught up with him. He's arrested and later convicted.

Bill O'Reilly Fired From Fox News

Apparently because of a combination of spousal pressure, bad publicity, and advertising losses Fox News owners Rupert Murdoch and his sons Lachlan and James decided to let go of long time employee and number one cable news host Bill O'Reilly. O'Reilly had a long history of sexual harassment settlements. The New York Times recently ran a story detailing that the settlement amounts and number of settlements were higher than was publicly known. Bill O'Reilly took a previously scheduled vacation. Unfortunately for him this was right around the time of the Times story and new allegations of sexual approaches by former Fox news personalities or other associates. Faced with the loss of advertising revenue from departing companies, all of this O'Reilly mess was apparently too much for Murdoch and sons, who told Bill O'Reilly not to come back from his vacation. As Smokey might say, you have to be a stupid muyerfuyer to get fired on your day off. 
O'Reilly is a stupid muyerfuyer in many ways. He's also a very racist one. What's ironic about advertisers and O'Reilly's employer parting ways with him now over sexual harassment allegations is that O'Reilly has a very long history of making covertly and overtly racist comments. This is not just a question of people being too sensitive to someone born in a world that's for good or bad now gone. It's much more than that.

Television Reviews: Bates Motel and Damien

Some stories don't lend themselves to rewarding and interesting prequels. Not everyone has the talent or desire to dream up new backstory for a pre-existing tale, particularly if he or she didn't create the original story. Since we already know the story ending, the narrative conclusion is fixed. The creator may be unable to hold interest with a prequel. But if the original story left previous events unexplained or only vaguely detailed, the creator could make a lavish backstory that's independent.  The creator can birth a new work that expands on and gives new insights into the original story. Sometimes this works. Sometimes it doesn't. Two A&E series, Bates Motel and Damien, provide different examples of prequel/reboot success. Bates Motel, a updated prequel of Psycho, featuring Norman Bates (Freddie Highmore) and Norma Bates (Vera Farmiga) is an example of a prequel that works. It has its own energy and plot. Though it's apparently inexorably moving toward the day where Norman will commit matricide and live out his remaining days pretending that he's his mother and "talking" to her, Bates Motel has enough quirks to lure the viewer and get him or her excited and unsure about what happens next. We know the big picture, but the devil's in the details. The Psycho story is stuffed to the brim with Freudian and Oedipal overtones. The show's writing and incisive acting of the two main characters breathe life into a trope that's almost a cliche now. Although the displayed unhealthy mother: son relationship is mostly subtext it's still noticeable enough to make the viewer and some in-universe characters more than a little creeped out. For most parents not named Norma Bates there comes a time when certain parental behaviors or activities aren't appropriate with their child, particularly if the child is opposite sex and post-puberty. Norma Bates is not necessarily an evil woman but she is a manipulative, deceitful and frequently bossy one. In the current season Norma has finally realized that her son Norman is unwell. She can't protect Norman from the outside world or his own demons. 

Well actually, Norma is more worried about protecting herself from Norman. It must be a scary thing to know that a loved one who is physically stronger than you has gone round the bend. Or from Norman's pov it must be a scary thing to know that your mother sees you primarily as an extension of herself.

The viewer can decide if Norma knows that her mollycoddling of and frequent lack of modesty around Norman, recurrent sleeping with him in the same bed, or sudden bouts of rage have helped to further psychologically twist her son. Norman may have just been born bad. At this point (Season 4), Norman has murdered at least 5 people, some of whom Norma doesn't know about. Norma has all sorts of serious emotional damage of her own to process. As a young woman, Norma may or may not have been raped by her brother Caleb (Kenny Johnson from The Shield). The product of this act, Norma's first son Dylan (Max Thieriot) is the relatively reasonable member of the Bates clan. Dylan is surprisingly well adjusted considering that he's recently learned that his father is also his uncle. Dylan has a love-hate relationship with both of his parents.  Dylan tries to look out for his little half-brother Norman when he can. Dylan is also a low key drug dealer/producer/wholesaler with a heart of gold. But that's ok as Norma's new husband, the local sheriff Alex Romero (Nestor Carbonell), is a ranking member of a local syndicate that primarily produces and distributes marijuana. The taciturn, sarcastic, and pragmatic Sheriff Romero is no stranger to murder either, as long as he can justify it by claiming to protect the town. For quite some time Romero has been carrying a torch for Norma while feigning indifference.  Romero agreed to marry Norma so that the couple can put Norman on the Sheriff's medical plan. Got all that? Good because having been guilt tripped by Norma into signing himself into a home for psychologically disturbed people, Norma has come to believe two contradictory things (1) he is Norma and (2) it's Norma who's doing all the killing. It probably doesn't help his fragile state of mind that when Norma's away Norman likes to play dress up. 

For a man who is frightened, resentful or disdainful of most people, ESPECIALLY women, prissy Norman ends up in far too many situations where good looking women want to share something special with him. This usually doesn't end well. So that's a wee bit unrealistic. Bates Motel could continue for another season before I would think it's just going through the motions. There are few signs of rot. Farmiga's Norma is a perfect maelstrom of repressed anger, touching naivete, unreasonable optimism, biting sarcasm, unearned entitlement and frightening coldness. Farmiga is a really good actress. I also believe she's a show producer and director. I freely concede the show can be melodramatic and well, cheesy. But it's good cheese. Maybe catch it before the mold takes over.

Where Bates Motel transitions beyond its source material, Damien takes a different approach. It quotes from the source material in every episode. It uses flashbacks and props from the first Omen movie. Damien tries to position itself as the heir to that movie. It's a sequel of sorts. Obviously the story must play around with the timeline a bit but just as Jesus Christ did not start his ministry until he turned 30, the AntiChrist or first Beast of The Book of Revelation won't discover his purpose until his 30th birthday. Now, given that according to the Book of Revelation, the AntiChrist, the Devil and all their assorted minions, worshippers and supporters will ultimately lose and spend eternity in hell, you might wonder why the forces of darkness would want to start the End Times. Either they are people who lack future time orientation or they think the prophecies are wrong, at least in terms of who wins in the long run. #TeamEvil is ready to throw down. Their putative leader , 30 year old Damien Thorn (Bradley James doing his best to impersonate Supernatural's Jensen Ackles) is an orphaned heir and war photographer who while caught in Middle Eastern turmoil, has an unexplainable experience with an old woman who speaks to him in dead languages. Before too much longer he's having strange dreams, remembering events from his childhood (the first movie), having odd people talk to him about the Beast, and seeing accidents occur all around him. This last is really the ONLY dramatic event that occurs in every episode. I'm serious. About a third of each episode is Damien emoting bewilderment, whining about his life or doing Biblical research. Another third involves people from #TeamEvil or #TeamGood wondering if Damien really knows who he is and if so what that means for their future plans.

And the balance of every episode depicts people who mean Damien harm or are looking too closely into his business coming to unpleasant, bloody and fatal ends. Often this involves Rottweilers. Big nasty silent Rottweilers. If you see a Rottweiler hanging around your house that is your final warning to stop looking into things the Devil doesn't want you to know. On those occasions where a Rottweiller is too obvious, corporate executive Ann Rutledge (Barbara Hershey) is always in the background to defend Damien and deflect attention away from him by any means necessary. She tells Damien, who doesn't remember her, that she's been there since his youth. Apparently she's also the representative of the Thorn estate. The sybaritic Ann is old enough to be Damien's mother but pretty obviously has some intense non-motherly feelings for him, which are not at this time reciprocated. Ann wants to make Damien aware of his true nature. Although Ann is a high ranking member of #TeamEvil, she's not in charge. She doesn't have the whole picture. There are other people aware of Damien's nature who have completely different ideas about how to proceed. But pretty much by definition you don't make your bones as a member of #TeamEvil without being willing and able to do a little judicious backstabbing when needed. And Ann's a vet. She combines a hidden fanaticism with real world wheeling and dealing skills. Like any good corporate player when faced with an order she finds displeasing, Ann will studiously ignore it or reinterpret it to her own advantage. 

Megalyn Echikunwoke provides some babe factor as Simone, the sister of Damien's deceased girlfriend Kelly. Simone didn't want to believe it at first but is starting to become convinced that Damien really is the AntiChrist. It probably won't be too long before Simone starts seeing Rottweilers hanging around her yard. Of course as the damsel in distress/babe you might wonder if she has narrative immunity. Look the first Omen movie was good. The gleeful suicide, ominous dogs, strange accidents, classical music and grim murderous nannies all made the movie work. But times change. In today's world where US allies rape little boys while US military personnel are ordered not to interfere, where people murder albinos for their body parts, where people bomb Easter celebrants just because, where people would rather spend scarce resources on nuclear weapons instead of preventing public defecation and resultant health issues, it might be difficult for some modern viewers to be frightened by the possibility of the Devil and his crew taking over. In some localities it looks like #TeamEvil is already firmly in charge. So this show tries and in my opinion fails to convince us why we should care if Damien accepts that he's Lucifer's son and Hell's champion. Whether it's the writing or the acting or both, James' Damien comes across as nothing more than an empty vessel. He's boring. Of course he's not the only one. Most of the characters are more symbols than people you care about (the clueless good friend who's being set up to be a sacrifice, the skeptical cop, the babe, the Big Bad, etc). 

Only Hershey brings some real brio to her role. It's unusual in American television to see a 68 year old woman vamping it up in a non-ironic or non-comedic role. All the same I don't see how this show makes it to a second season. My interest declined a bit with each episode. The subject matter doesn't lend itself to episodic storytelling.

Bates Motel Season Four Trailer
Damien Trailer