Jessica Tandberg

HIMYM (How I Met Your Mother, for those of you playing at home, who have more time to type the full name repeatedly), is a show that once was a tightly-scripted, clever enough comedy, but now feels a little like watching Julius Caesar’s death in Rome, as dozens of senators stab him over and over and over until there is virtually no part of his body left unstabbed. He’s dead, guys. Come on.

An unfortunate pattern with American sitcoms (looking at you Scrubs, Frasier, Friends) is that there reaches a point where narrative takes precedence over laughs, and the show ceases to be a comedy, because it ceases to be funny. A comedian once told me that comedy should make you laugh, make you cry, make you horny, and make you think. Writers can try to make up for the lack of laughs with the last three, but when the laughs fail, the show fails. This is the unfortunate place we find ourselves as HIMYM wraps up its eighth season (well, to be fair, I did laugh, once, during the finale).

The problem that arises with sitcoms is that we have shallow, predictable, funny characters who, true to narrative form, are expected to “grow up” as the show progresses. For some reason, once this happens, writers almost invariably struggle to mesh plot with comedy, and the comedy suffers. I’ve had screenwriters tell me, for example, that it’s known the birth of a baby usually spells the death of a sitcom. See Friends’ Rachel or Scrubs’ JD. The only sitcom that didn’t encounter this problem was Seinfeld because the characters never learned from their mistakes, never changed, never grew up – and that was why we loved them. HIMYM hit the baby tipping point a year ago and any investment we still have in it is for closure on the characters’ narratives, and there’s a limit to how long we will hang around for that.

Show runners Carter Bays and Craig Thomas realised about three seasons in that this was no longer Ted’s show, it was Barney’s. Neil Patrick Harris and his legend-ary-ness are the forces that have driven this show. HIMYM’s quality carried through solidly to round about season five, when they explored Barney and Robin’s relationship the first time around, and there’s been a sense of increasingly lethargy since then. And now we are reaching the conclusion of Barney’s arc – his marriage to Robin – the show feels as if it is Return of the King-ing its ending. And we all desperately want to go to the bathroom already.

Bays and Thomas had plotted this season to be the last, while including an option to extend this already ridiculously long-winded narrative for another season - which really tells you all you need to know about how unnecessary season nine will be. In an attempt to inject life into Ted’s story – the foundation upon which this show was originally based – the writers decided to finally give us a glimpse of the enigmatic “mother” in the season finale. This “shocking reveal” -what Huffington Post punned as “the mother of all reveals” – ultimately did nothing but show us the face of a nameless woman we know is the mother. That information, on its own, given her anonymity, is pretty unengaging and doesn’t truly provide us with any new material. And it was juxtaposed with the penultimate episode of the season, which ended with yet another obviously doomed “moment” between Ted and Robin, who we were informed by Ted in the pilot episode was not the mother. Which, fond as I once was of this show, leads to an inevitable conclusion. The show has been stabbed enough, guys. It’s dead.

Jessica Tandberg

Parks and Recreation is a show which managed the remarkable feat of jumping the shark, backwards. Wheeeeee!!!

The first season was, pretty much, terrible. It borrowed heavily from the British Office in its mockumentary-style setup and its awkward humour. The characters were so bizarre as to be virtually unrelatable – something which is okay in short bursts, but generally does not spell long-running potential, unless you’re Seinfeld.

Season two was marginally better, as it started to feel its way, and bless the low ratings of NBC which meant that this show was given a much longer trial period than it would be on any other network with actual healthy viewership. Then something almost miraculous happened. Two new characters were introduced, one of them played by the continually awesome Rob Lowe, and the show took off and became a completely different beast.

 We’ve now finished season five, and my half-hour of Parks and Rec has firmly established itself as a highlight of sanity-restoring comedy in my week. It’s hard not to compare it to 30 Rock, with the central women of these shows, Amy Pohler and Tina Fey, besties in real life and both with comedy shows on NBC. 30 Rock was great, I loved it, but it was whacky at times to the point of French absurdist theatre. Parks and Rec started off like that, and while it maintains aspects of whackiness, it also has characters who are each adorably likeable, who we genuinely root for, and it tells stories that are grounded in the realities of life in a small town.

This season saw Leslie Knope’s first year on the City Council, having to deal with even more pissed-off Pawnee-ans than usual. It also saw another big step in her romance with Ben (one of the sweetest romances on TV since Denny Crane and Alan Shore). Ron Swanson finally almost settled down with a lady love (Lucy Lawless – that’s right, Ron Swanson is dating Xena) who has two girl children, no less. I cannot stress enough how much I love that man.

And his magnificent moustache.

At the end of season five, certain things have changed in Pawnee, Indiana (the town is now ninth in obesity, down from fourth!), but this show and its characters are still the ones we love. Andy and April are still trying to figure out how to almost-be-grownups, Jerry may be retired, but he still hangs around to be the butt of everyone’s jokes (Dammit, Jerry!), Tom is still pursuing his entrepreneurial dreams, Chris is trying to keep his many neuroses under control, and Ron Swanson will always be, totally, boss. (Ann: Exercise? Ron: Woodwork, and lovemaking).

This is not to say that Parks and Recreation doesn’t have its off moments – every time Tom’s friend-and-sometime-business-partner Jean-Ralphio appears on screen it’s like nails on a blackboard (and with the inclusion this season of his sister, now there’s two of them). Leslie’s nemesis on the city coucil, Councilman Jamm, is pretty much a single bad joke in the form of a pun repeated over and over. But we can forgive these irritations because not only are the main cast of characters quirky, funny and lovable, but the storytelling is always engaging.

Like almost everything on NBC, this show is a perennial ‘bubble’ show, so it’s not yet confirmed for a sixth season, although one is likely. It certainly looks in far better shape to be renewed than the ailing Community. We can only hope so, because Parks and Recreation is getting better and better.

Jessica Tandberg

Yes, this review has come several weeks after Girls finished up its second season. The reason for this delay is I gave up on Girls’ second season after episode seven, and only ended up watching the remaining three episodes because my housemate kept bugging me about it. Also, I love Ray.

And Ray hates everything.

I was also a little reluctant to add to the white noise surrounding Girls out here on the internet, with discussions on everything ranging from what’s wrong with our generation to Lena Dunham’s butt. So I’ll just write this once, and be done with it, because I won’t be returning for season three.

I can’t pinpoint the exact moment when Girls jumped the shark for me, but (and I’m perhaps unfairly picking on Dunham here – there are other writers, but she’s the show runner, it’s her baby) – it was around the point when Dunham was overwhelmed by the hype surrounding her show and confused the importance of character with that of abstract themes and social commentary. And unlike the way a mishmash of themes and plots is done in Banshee, (it’s a heist show! it’s a cop show! it’s a gangster show! let’s do all those things because they’re fun!) in Girls this ambition just makes it contrived, and rather tedious.

When Girls debuted, it knew what sort of show it was, and what it was rang true for a lot of the twenty-somethings watching it. Being in your early twenties is hard – trying to figure out what to do after uni (if you went at all), how to make money, where to live, how to negotiate relationships and friendships and all the while being bombarded with lifestuff. Girls initially set itself up as a show that was going to deal with that. The very opening scene has Hannah (Dunham) being cut off financially from her parents. Foolishly, we as viewers believed that this would actually be part of the plot.

Apparently not. I don’t know what world Hannah is living in where she can get away with not working, not having financial support from her parents, and still pay rent – but I want in.

Season one dealt with it somewhat – Marnie apparently covered Hannah financially while she searched for a job she could hold down for more than two minutes – but when Marnie moves out, it’s simply never addressed again. Eventually Hannah gets another roommate, who also moves out, we rarely if ever see her working at her shitty café job…so just where is the money coming from?

The reason I harp on about this is because it’s indicative of the endemic problems in Girls season two. We’re no longer dealing with characters we can relate to, trying to negotiate their early twenties while being witty and entertaining, no: now we’re dealing with increasingly bizarre situations involving characters with whom we have little emotional investment. Hannah herself is disengaged from her life – in order to “experience” things as a “writer” – so how are we supposed to engage with her either? Even her friends – with the exception of Shosh, who is the one patch of warmth in this show – hold very little affection for one another now. Jessa was always selfish and didn’t make her friendships a priority, but now none of them do. One character with that flaw still makes for good television; four central characters with that as a defining characteristic makes for tedious, unengaging storytelling.

My breaking point for this was episode seven, where Hannah follows Jessa to meet her father, but again, appears only to do so for some “abstract experience” (in this case sleeping with a strange teenage boy), and certainly not out of any desire to support her friend. And that, fundamentally, is the issue: Lena Dunham has underestimated just how unlikeable she’s made her protagonist. This is a serious problem.

In season one, Hannah was irritating, sure – she was self-entitled, spoiled, made questionable decisions – but she at least exhibited some redeeming features. We understood her warped-yet-occasionally-sweet relationship with Adam. We understood her terrible self esteem wrapped up in early-twenties egotism. And, while neither I nor any of my girl friends have ever bathed together (what was that?!) – Hannah’s friendships with Marnie, Jessa and Shosh at least provided an emotional grounding for the show. Marnie, Hannah and Shosh waited for Jessa at the abortion clinic with ill-advised cupcakes, even if Jessa herself was more interested in self-destructing over a white Russian cocktail.

The distinct lack of this kind of cohesion is what made season two such a hard slog to watch. The rare moments of character engagement really shone – whether it was Hannah and Elijah duking it out over his ill-advised sexual decisions, Jessa and Thomas’ brilliant break-up scene, or Shosh and Ray heartbreakingly trying to negotiate a relationship that really wasn’t working. Even Hannah’s desperate, pissed-off call to Jessa’s voicemail gave us a sign of what the show could have been, if we’d been given a reason to care about what happens to these characters now. (I do still love Ray, and Shosh, but that’s not enough to keep me tuned in). Finally, the ending that my housemate raved about, which made me reluctantly watch the end of the season, was sweet – but it’s not a pay-off if we’ve suffered through nine episodes of Hannah’s never-ending selfishness, and then are supposed to feel for her at the end.

Jess Tandberg

Contains mild spoilers for season four.

“A spy comedy? Because that has been done”, the well-hung accountant of ISIS, Cyril Figgus, uttered in one of the early episodes of the funniest show on television. Done it has been, but not like this.

Archer is the kind of show that has you snorting out loud with laughter while watching it on your iPad on a crowded train. It’s the kind of show with humour so wrong it makes you cringe, but follows it up with sentiment so honest, if disturbed, that you find yourself connecting with these characters – which also leads to the philosophical conundrum about precisely how wrong it is to be attracted to someone who’s animated.

Ladies

Archer has just finished up its fourth season on FX, but it only takes five minutes of watching this show to know that it’s not your regular spy comedy. Sterling “Codename Duchess” Archer is not some bumbling Pink Panther or, heaven forbid, Johnny English-type spy. He’s more like the love child of James Bond, and Charlie Sheen.

He’s impulsive, trigger-happy, a high-functioning alcoholic, and an asshole, as he is frequently reminded by his colleagues – but he’s also a bad-ass super spy. The most memorable sequences in Archer come as he angrily battles his mommy issues while still managing to take out swarms of bad guys. Because mommy issues he has – in the form of the incomparable Jessica Walters – who basically reprises her role of Lucille from Arrested Development, but animated.

Archer’s been around a while now, long enough to develop those running gags and familiar tropes that fans begin to work into their own vernacular. We know who the characters are, how their jokes work, and how they’ll react to certain situations. We know Archer will oscillate between being (very occasionally) endearing, and relentlessly annoying. We know big-handed Lana will battle her frustration with her attraction for him, while trying to keep the mission under control. We know Ray will be very, very gay, and sporadically paraplegic; that Mallory will continue to be her ascerbic, alcoholic self, and keep Archer in a state of perpetual arrested development. And we know that Pam will just be downright badass.

“Sorry about your homie”

The trouble many shows face when they reach their fourth season is to tread familiar ground while still keeping it fresh. Archer has already taken us many strange places – deep-south Deliverance territory and pirate islands and outer space – and there is the sense now that the writers are stretching themselves somewhat to deliver a finale in any location that they haven’t done before. This time, it’s the depths of the ocean, to face a villain voiced by Jon Hamm – a double episode which in many ways feels like a reprise of the outer space finale of the previous season. Sometimes these locations shifts are great, as in season two when Archer runs barefoot through broken glass – Die Hard style – through Moscow while being chased by countless Russian henchmen, still managing to keep up the witty one-liners. But often, the best Archer episodes work in simple concepts with great character interaction – as is the case this season in the episode where Archer and Lana go undercover as a married couple in a hotel (and Archer still manages an “I’m coming! Phrasing!” gag as he dives off the building to rescue her). It’s the character interactions that make this humor work so well.

Some of the character progressions worked well this season – Pam becoming an agent makes the kind of crazy sense that you can’t believe they haven’t done it before – but some seemed old-hat. Lana and Cyril reviving their relationship didn’t take us to any new places, and given his rampant infidelity during their first stint, it seemed very un-Lana-ish for her to take him back. Mallory’s new husband came out of nowhere, but some of his interactions with the group were great, we just didn’t get enough of them. Bionic Barry was also back, but only briefly, and with little impact. It felt as if the writers were chipping away at new territory in an experimental fashion, but then were happy to fall back into old patterns. They did amp up the tension between Lana and Archer, however, which is always a good thing. (My personal favourite – Archer screaming “LANA!!!” after she’s shot at in Rome, and Pam in the backseat informing him that “Me too, asshole”).

I can criticize the structure, in the lack of cohesion of the story (season two is my favourite, for the way it deals with themes like abandonment and mortality in gut-bustingly funny ways – and season four had very little of that). I can also criticize the ways in which storylines were picked up and just as quickly discarded, as if the writers weren’t sure of the direction they were going. But none of that really matters, because, even in this much patchier installment, Archer is still the funniest show on TV.

Danger Zone!

Jessica Tandberg

Damn, the Americans. I wanted so bad for you to be good.

At face value, this show looks like a sure thing. Executive produced by Graham Yost – of Justified awesomeness – and on a network which produces consistently quality television – the Americans is about two undercover Russian spies living suburban life in the US in the final decade of the Cold War (for those of you playing at home – that’s the 80s). The pilot opens with a fantastic sequence set to Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk, a perfect, thumping soundtrack that accompanies a well-shot chase through darkened streets. It’s an attention-grabbing opening.

And then I got bored. Which is remarkable, in a show where there’s a fair amount of stabbing.

The key problem, when it boils down to it, is this: the “action” of the series begins fifteen years after “Philip” and “Elisabeth” were smuggled into the United States and began their life in an arranged marriage. We’re led to believe that the ensuing decade and a half was filled with absolutely nothing happening, although presumably they had sex twice, since they have two children who are nearing puberty. The children are the only reason I can imagine FX have inserted this fifteen-year-black-hole into the middle of their story; because children raise the stakes, and if their children were toddlers, it wouldn’t be an FX show.

This gap in the narrative wouldn’t be such a logistical problem, if these two characters had been just biding their time until the Cold War got hot, but we’re also led to believe that after being married fifteen years they still haven’t set up the boundaries of their relationship. When Philip tries to canoodle Elisabeth in the kitchen, she awkwardly edges away. Shouldn’t he know by now what her physical boundaries are? Shouldn’t she be more comfortable around him, given he’s been her husband for rather a long time? Between working at their travel agency jobs (that’s what normal American suburbanites do, right?), making dinner, and having sex the requisite two times in order to produce offspring, it’s established that they haven’t disclosed any detail of their former lives, either. So…what have they been talking about for fifteen years? This is an inherent problem, and, as I watched up to episode ten with growing boredom and occasional distaste, it occurs to me that I never got over it.

Then there’s the lack of insight into their motivation. Philip willingly performs increasingly despicable acts for the Motherland without a second’s pause; but it’s a bit of a hard swallow from a man who casually mentions defecting in the pilot episode. Elisabeth is fiercely loyal, more so than he, but again, we’re not given any insight into why. We’re supposed to assume idealogical reasons here, but these are never fully articulated in regards to the personal narratives of the characters. It’s a shame, because it limits them, and Matthew Rhys in particular is an actor with depth – he manages to convey a great deal of sensitivity in his face, and affects an unassuming manner while still, at times, being undeniably badass.

Which leaves me, by episode ten, disappointed that I still fail to be engaged emotionally with the show, with the single great exception of Noah Emmerich as Stan, the FBI agent who unwittingly moves in next door – AKA the coincidence upon which this entire series rests. Emmerich has an everyman face, with a surprisingly deep voice and a gentle demeanour which belies his quiet, occasionally brutal effectiveness as an agent. We know he worked undercover in white supremacy groups, and is still recovering from the years of living in constant danger. He is tormented by the choices he makes and struggles to reconcile the man he has to be at work with the man he is at home. This is one journey that is subtle and yet well-articulated.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have Philip and Elisabeth running around in a seemingly endless supply of bad wigs, having sex with anyone except each other, clambering in and out of car boots for reasons passing understanding, and nonchalantly engaging in acts of random brutality for motivations even they don’t seem to understand.

Which leads me to the greatest disappointment for me with this show, as I consider dropping it before even reaching the finale of the first season:

If the show had covered those first few years, when two young KGB agents move to a foreign country, have to establish themselves in their new identities, and negotiate a marriage and a life together as strangers – all the while doing cool spy things and facing off against the FBI – man, that is a show I would have watched. I would have watched the hell out of that show. The “raised stakes” the writers evidently thought they were getting with the bratty kids was not enough of a trade-off for the awkward fifteen-year logic hole in the story, since both Philip and Elisabeth only seem to care for the children in an abstract way, and certainly don’t seem too conflicted about the way their children’s lives will be shattered if they’re caught. But the Philip and Elisabeth of fifteen years ago, still establishing their lives and their covers and figuring everything out in this spy game? That show would have been great, and not left me so cold. (Ah! Bad pun!).

Jessica Tandberg

Alan Ball left off executive producing the supernatural orgy of sex and violence that was True Blood, to executive produce Banshee – a pulpy/crime/noir/thriller orgy of sex and violence (no supernatural element to this one, despite the name). It’s just finished its first season on Cinemax, HBO’s sister channel. And it’s awesome.

The wonderful thing about this show, once you embrace the need to fully detach yourself from reality – which is round about the five minute mark of the pilot episode when our nameless protagonist is chased through NYC in what must have been a Michael Bay wet dream – is how insane it is. And continues to become.

The violence is extreme and Tarantino-esque. The fight scenes go on for a ludicrously long time, as do the sex scenes. The plots are, well, fairly implausible. The main character gets more levels of crap beaten out of him than Daniel Craig in Casino Royale. The bad guys range from an Amish gangster with kinda-naughty feelings for his niece, to a body-building, Albino rapist with permanently erect nipples. It’s a thrill ride.

The basic premise, which it veers off quite spectacularly in some episodes, leading me to think that the creators weren’t quite sure which show they wanted to make, so they ended up making one that incorporated all of the things, is this:

A nameless thief is released from prison after fifteen years, and chases down his lady love in the small Pensylvannian town of Banshee. There he winds up taking on the identity of the recently-deceased Sheriff, making heist plans with his transvestite-Asian-hacker-buddy Job, having sex with Amish chicks and battling with Amish gangsters, and dealing with PTSD from some traumatising events from his prison days. Oh, and he’s being hunted by Ukranian gangsters who want to torture and kill him. I think that about sums it up.

It’s bloody and sexy, at times ludicrously so, and thoroughly enjoyable if you can suspend your disbelief for the requisite amount. All that being said, there is also enough emotional heart to this story to keep you engaged. The romantic subplot works because the two leads have chemistry – and the layers of hurt, sacrifice and betrayal add dimension to this. The resident villain, Kai, is also profoundly interesting – I certainly wouldn’t presume to rate him with the great Al Swearengen, but their complexes are similar. Kai battles with his exile from his Amish roots, and the violence he performs is, by and large, done out of necessity. His niece also provides an interesting foil for him, and I look forward to seeing where they take that in season 2, which has already been commissioned, as the ratings for this show were a record for Cinemax.

The lead actor is Kiwi Antony Starr, who has a quiet IMDB profile before this, and looks somewhat like a young Titus Pullo from Rome. He does a great job of inhabiting his gritty antihero, particularly in bringing the physicality to the role. Job, the Asian transvestite, is certainly a random, funny, and welcome addition to the ensemble. It’s B-grade pulp at its best, but with heart, and a healthy dose of insanity. Thoroughly recommended.

by Phil Peters

In an article on torrentfreak.com, a site devoted to Bittorrent, copyrighting and generally sticking it to the man, a list was released of the top 10 most downloaded shows this spring season.

Notable inclusions in the list were the ever popular “How I Met Your Mother”, Chuck Lorre’s nerd-flavoured cash cow “Big Bang Theory”, whiskey sipping drama “Mad Men”, as well as “Modern Family”, “Revenge”, “Desperate Housewives”, “Family Guy” and surprisingly, the new series of “Supernatural”.

The second season of HBO’s boobs and swords extravaganza “Game of Thrones” took the number one spot with nearly 3.9 million estimated downloads per episode. For perspective, the number of average US TV viewers per episode was 4.2 million. So why are there so many people pirating it I hear you ask? Well gather round children and I shall tell you a tale of a weird and wonderful place called America.

You see, in America, there is no free to air TV. Well, none worth watching anyway. So in order to gain access to ANY form of worthwhile television, you pay a price. In years gone by, that existed as cable TV, which is not dissimilar to FOXTEL here in the homeland. Now this service still exists, but as has been happening more and more these days, big studios have been deciding to cut out the middle man and distribute their shows using their own services and subscription models. These services include Hulu, Netflix and, of course, HBO GO.

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