August 31, 2008

Labor Day Special

Just kidding. There’s nothing special about this column except that there was barely anything on TV this week.

Eureka (Sci-Fi) — I won’t lie and say I suddenly don’t mind the love triangle, because even a mild declaration like that wouldn’t come close to the truth, but this episode didn’t bother me as much as last week’s. Perhaps part of this stems from the fact that no major characters died as a result of poorly written storylines. Even with its reliance on the awkward post-death non-triangle between Carter and Allison, what worked in the episode overshadowed what didn’t.

I will say I’m a little concerned about Lexi, Carter’s sister. Introduced in last week’s shitfest, they tried to flesh her out a tiny bit this week. Unfortunately, the writers have opted for over-the-top stereotypes and have not given her the delicate nuance of some of this show’s better characters. And do we really need another character whose sole function is to point out how uptight and law-abiding Carter is? They don’t think Zoey is annoying enough? It’s disappointing, because Ever Carradine starred in a hilarious movie called Dead & Breakfast, and here they’re trying to allow her to bring some comic relief, but what they’ve written for her…isn’t funny. She does the best she can, but I find myself looking forward to her deadly serious turn on the next season of 24.

Lexi brings me to the episode’s other major flaw: the ridiculous, coincidence-induced deus ex machina involving her horrible, sitar-dominated music. See, because crazy, free-spirited hippies only listen to and compose music using sitars. Because they go to India and smoke dope like the Beatles. Get it?! Anyway, the idea of the musical frequencies drawing the attention of the ancient insects wasn’t the worst idea in the world, but they handled it rather clumsily. I’m not usually the best at predicting what’ll happen on a show (I’ve called Bones unpredictable—that has to lower my credibility somewhat, right?), so when I can call in the first scene that something will be important later, the writers have done something very, very wrong.

However, they get bonus points because (a) the “bad guy” didn’t turn out to be an angry (ex-)employee introduced earlier in the episode, and (b) the shady documentarian did kinda make me laugh. He certainly had better material than Ms. Carradine.

Mad Men (AMC) — I wanted to be annoyed at Mad Men for skipping ahead 15 months, then employing flashbacks in this episode to bridge the gap. I didn’t mind them skipping ahead—it’s just, either move forward with the occasional glimpse back, or do a better job of planning. And then we got that possibly hallucinated scene in which Don visits Peggy at the hospital (for the record, I don’t believe she hallucinated it, but the writers left it ambiguous just to be irritating). In fact, Peggy’s entire arc in this episode—starting with her obedience and submission with Don’s drunk-driving fiasco, and ending with her growing a pair (literally?) and calling him “Don” instead of Mr. Draper—and the trajectory it has set for her character made me love this show even more.

Speaking of loving this show more: every time Pete acts like an asshole (which is often), I just sit, slackjawed, wondering how a person like that could exist, in 1962 or any other time, and go through life without having a sledgehammer pounded into his skull. He makes Jimmy Barrett seem like a nice guy.

I admire this show for allowing quiet moments to breathe. It’s not that they won’t use any non-diegetic music (like, say, The Wire)—it just seems that they understand the intensity and suspense that pin-dropping quiet can bring. Everything about the car accident, which fed into Peggy’s story, had a slow pace to it—but it was exactly the right speed. I’ve complained about shows rushing their endings or frontloading their teaser and first acts, but one thing Mad Men always gets right—even in an off episode, not that this was one—is the pacing. They hang around and let the drama unfold, instead of cutting right to the peak of drama, then moving on to the next big dramatic moment.

The Middleman (ABC Family) — Should I be amazed merely by the fact that they’ve introduced a spoof of a Steve Jobs-like eco-friendly CEO, or that they’ve cast Mark A. Sheppard (Badger from Firefly) in the role, all but guaranteeing he will turn out to be some sort of arch-villain/Big Bad?

This episode really brought the show’s A game, which makes me fear even more its imminent cancellation. The main plot, which found Wendy and the Middleman stuck inside HQ as a result of an evil, intergalactic nanobots infestation, was The Middleman doing what it does best: the Die Hard and Fantastic Voyage references, the trip into Ida’s brain, the aching sincerity of both the Middleman and Wendy’s “we’re going to die” recordings—everything was top-notch.

However, it was Tyler’s Parallax View-esque (and don’t think I’m not bitter that the episode did not contain any direct references to that 1974 classic) interview at Manservant (pronounced “Mahn-SUR-vahnt”) Neville’s Fatboy Industries that made me realize The Middleman intends to become more than a joke-a-second spy spoof. It’s edged toward sincerity and tragedy in the past few episodes, but right now they’re setting up Tyler—who, remember, was another favorite to be the Middleman-in-training—for a hard fall. As Manservant’s assistant, he’s headed down a bad road. I am sensing something on par with Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s rise of Angelus on the horizon…

…that is, assuming The Middleman ever makes it to a second season. ABC Family, come on. What do you have? Kyle XY and GRΣΣK? You can’t make room for more Middleman? Come on, I’ve seen its special effects—it can’t cost that much to keep the Middleman in Eisenhower jackets.

Next week is the season finale. If it turns out to be a series finale, I hope they make it good and relatively complete.

D. B. Bates is a film critic and television viewer who has often shouted at fictional characters who probably wouldn’t listen to him even if they could hear him and existed in reality. Interested in explaining to D. B. the many ways he got it wrong? E-mail him.

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