Join Salon staff as we discuss Episode 8 of "The Wire."
Salon contributors will include: Heather Havrilesky, TV critic; Sarah Hepola, Life deputy editor; Alex Koppelman, staff writer; Kerry Lauerman, New York editorial director; Farhad Manjoo, senior writer; Laura Miller, senior writer; Joan Walsh, editor in chief.
BEWARE: Spoilers ahead!
Havrilesky: Sweet Jesus! So Omar drops, just like that, without fanfare or suspense. You had to figure it was only a matter of time, him hobbling around like he had a death wish or something. Even so, that was seriously brutal. At least those who’ve complained that “The Wire” has turned to neat resolutions, convenient coincidences and Hollywood endings this season should be silenced by that sad little exit.
Leave it to McNulty, of all people, to unknowingly sum up Omar’s end: “You start to tell the story, you think you’re the hero, and then when you get done talking…” Omar, the hero of the street — hell, the hero of “The Wire” — is on his valiant crusade one minute, and the next minute, there he is, on the floor of a corner store, shot in the head by a little kid. He even turned and saw Kenard walk in the door, but didn’t suspect a thing. Watching that scene was like seeing Tony get his head blown off in a diner in the last scene of “The Sopranos” (except without the Journey playing in the background).
You think you’re the hero, and then the paper doesn’t even have the space to run a short piece on your murder. You think you’re the hero, but to the cops who once knew you and used you as an informant, you’re just a passing anecdote. You think you’re a hero, but even the morgue gets your birthday wrong, and mixes up your body up with another corpse. The message is clear: Omar may have been a legend on the street, but the street doesn’t mean shit to anyone outside of the street.
McNulty’s fall is next, but not until we have a little fun at the FBI’s expense. Clownish though it was, I loved the FBI bigwig marching in to brag about his TV appearances. “What the hell, it’s a chance to get the word out for the bureau and sell some books… ‘Human Hunters: The Rise of the American Serial Killer’?” A little obvious, maybe, but you can bet that’s how that conversation would sound if a guy like that happened to stumble on two strangers who didn’t work for him and therefore didn’t give a damn about his books and TV appearances.
“We don’t see a lot of serial stuff actually,” McNulty replied. “Drug murders. 300 or so a year.” You know, those insignificant 300 or so murders that no one is losing any sleep over? But forget those, serial killers are sexy.
FBI guy: Art was actually lead investigator on the Unabomber thing.
Greggs: That was like 16 years, right?
FBI guy: Yep.
McNulty: Yeah, then his brother ratted him out?
But the joke is on McNulty in the end, as the FBI suits come up with a profile of the killer that fits him to a T: The mythical serial killer is likely “employed in a bureaucratic entity,” “has trouble with lasting relationships” and seeks to “assert his superiority and intellectual prowess.” Ouch.
There’s a lot more to dissect here, but I don’t want to hog all the good stuff. So in parting, let’s all raise a glass to Omar, best TV character ever. We’ll miss you!
Lauerman: To Omar! And to Michael K. Williams, for helping create — I agree — the best TV character ever! Now, I really need a drink.
The banality of the hit made it awful, especially after his superheroics this season. But that it came at the hands of Kenard, that little angel-faced devil, made it all the worse. I loved how they showed Kenard about to light a cat ablaze in a back alley (and thank the lord they had the discretion to show no more), just to make sure we knew he had no redeeming factors, a pure baddie. I guess it would’ve been worse if Marlo, Snoop or Chris had pulled the trigger, but not by much. Kenard reminds me of those pre-adolescent thugs in “City of God,” it’s uniquely unsettling to see young kids, the presumed next generation, show the potential to be even more cold-blooded than their predecessors.
I have to say, I thought the scene with the celebrity FBI profiler (obviously aimed at “Mindhunter” John Douglas) a little too broad and clownish. But that scene with McNulty smirking/squirming through the profile of the serial killer was my favorite scene of the season so far. Dominic West does a pretty great job portraying McNulty as a man self-aware enough to know how screwed up he is, but doubtful there’s anything he can really do about it. When he finally breaks a little, and tells Beadie about the scam — with the quote you cite, Heather — it ends brutally when she points out that instead of being a hero all he’s really done is jeopardize everyone around him.
I’m enjoying the slow unwinding of Scott Templeton, and I thought the way Gus spiked the lead to his homeless story was a particularly accurate depiction of how newsrooms operate. It’s a completely exposed environment, and so it would make sense that Gus would find some backup support with a few key peers before he launches his attack, and then do it as loudly and as publicly as possible, making it much tougher for Klebanow to bigfoot him like he did the last time, editing it himself behind closed doors. I still think Gus is maybe a little too saintly (the bit where he told the reporter to “take a few weeks, see what you see” on a potential profile of Bubbles? Only a true newspaper romantic like Simon could come up with that). But I now find myself thoroughly enjoying the Sun storyline, and look forward to the way it ends — though it’s the only one that’s remotely predictable at this point.
Walsh:No, Heather, I didn’t see that coming. I was distracted by the rolls of toilet paper and paper towels haloing Omar’s head in the grim convenience store when lil’ Kenard whacked him. Kenard, the one who called Omar “gimpy as a motherfucker” when he appeared on the corner last week. We thought Marlo was Simon’s idea of the ultimate amoral killer spawned by Baltimore’s streets, a new mutant superpredator without even the street code of Stringer Bell, Prop Joe or Omar. Now we’ve got Kenard, who we first see trying to set a cat on fire; a few minutes later he takes down Omar as he waits for his softpack of Newports. Omar deserved better.
But let’s think happy thoughts: How great is it to watch Scott coming undone? Terry Hanning, the homeless Iraq vet whose story Templeton shamefully embellished, could be speaking for both fake plotlines when he snaps, in his meeting with Haynes and testy Scotty: “There’s some things that happen, you don’t ever fuck with them.” I think I’m being slowly corrupted by the violence in this show: Was it just me, or did everyone want Hanning to just sock Templeton in his pink little pouting face before Gus got him out of the room?
Now that Omar’s been dispatched with so little sentimentality, I’m dreading watching McNulty meet his fate. I thought an angry Beadie set up one possible ending, chillingly, talking to a suddenly contrite McNulty about whether his drinking buddies will be around to come to his wake. “They don’t show up at your wake,” she tells him, because they don’t even know his last name, he’s just “Jimmy the cop,” if they know him at all. “Family, that’s it, family, if you’re lucky, one or two friends. Everything else is just…” Beadie trails off, and I could hear Bunk finish her sentence: “random pussy.” McNulty is then moved to tell Beadie about his hoax, and how worried he is about it, and she’s furious and walks away. The very next scene is the morgue, where a cold, dead Omar has the wrong name and birthdate on his body bag. No family there.
I loved the FBI scene, hokey as it was. Kerry’s right: Watching McNulty squirm as the analysts describe, well, McNulty was one of the best scenes of the season. Not only is the homeless killer using the crimes as “an opportunity for him to assert his superiority and intellectual prowess,” he’s “sexual to a point, but inhibited,” and an “alcoholic” who has a “problem with authority.” Ouch.
Every week McNulty descends another level deeper in hell. First he was the good Father McNulty, blessing strong police work; then he heard himself being called “boss,” and it stopped being fun. This week a cop who’s trying to blackmail him into funding a golf trip to Hilton Head is back with the Father Jimmy imagery, accusing him of “taking the detail money and doling it around like a priest passing wafers.” A miserable McNulty signs his paperwork. Maybe he can start to see how Clay Davis slid into end-stage corruption.
The background plot of Dukie making his way around the city looking for work broke my heart, especially when he wound up riding on top of the junkman’s cart – a young prince, or just more junk? — and calling out to Bug like he was in a parade. I’m already making my deals with Simon; I can handle anything but something happening to Dukie or Bug. I’m losing hope for Michael, who mouthed off about whether he should tell Marlo that Omar killed Savino, “If I was Marlo,” he ventured, only to get a shove in the chest from Snoop. “You ain’t Marlo.”
I find myself worrying what Greggs is going to do, now that she knows about the homeless hoax. She did not seem happy, at all: Is it possible she snitches? I don’t think so, but her alienation seemed complete, and Lester looked devastated. Bunk is happier now that McNulty helped him get the DNA work done to link Chris Partlow to the murder of Michael’s stepfather. But when does he serve the warrant? How long will Lester and McNulty ask him to wait so they can ensnare more of Marlo and the gang? And will their audacious plot somehow undo what Bunk’s accomplished with “no shuckin’, no jivin’ police work”?
And did anyone watch the trailer for next week? I’ll be watching Episode 9 asap Monday night.
Koppelman: I agree with Joan — Omar deserved better. If he had to go, and I think it’s been clear for a little while now that he was going to go soon enough, I wanted him to have a hero’s end. But then, I think Omar’s death was exactly what we deserved. I can’t help but compare it to the overwrought scene from the last season of “The Sopranos” where Bobby Baccalieri met his end. There was no onrushing train as a metaphor for the approaching end, no drama, just an unseen little kid well on his way to being a sociopath getting a lucky drop on Omar. Made me sad, same way I was sad when Bodie fell, and Joe, and D’Angelo, even Stringer. But it was a great scene, precisely because it didn’t succumb to what I’m sure must have been great temptation to kill Omar off in the Shootout Of The Century.
But Omar’s death was just one of the factors that I thought made this the best episode of the season thus far, if not of the entire series. I may not have liked the initial arc of the homeless killer plot, but I love seeing it shatter. The other day, I was reading an interview David Simon did with Newsweek, in which, asked about the serial killer plot and its connection to reality, he said, “We legalized drugs in West Baltimore in season three and did so in full view of half the police department, if not the community itself. Certainly, on that basis it required as much a leap of faith as anything conjured in this season.” I don’t agree — I think that on the face of it, both are pretty implausible, but what made Hamsterdam feel more real was that Bunny Colvin had just been introduced and wasn’t acting out of previously established character with his actions. Now that we see the toll McNulty’s actions are taking on him, his realization that he’s no hero here, this feels a lot realer to me.
Hepola: I feel a bit speechless, guys. I was just sitting there, contemplating the brand of cigarettes Omar smokes (Newports? And what does that meaaan?) when suddenly, the contents of his brain were splattered on the glass. I don’t know what end I expected for Omar — although the Shootout of the Century sounds about right — but I never expected him to go at the hands of a little boy. From its first season, “The Wire” has been challenging our romantic ideals of childhood, but damn if I still don’t get sucked in by the idea that these children could be saved somehow. I’m a former high school teacher, dammit. Still, even Omar wasn’t cynical enough to think a little kid could do him in. Like Heather pointed out, he saw Kenard come in and never even blinked. Omar was a hunted man, and he had to screw up sometime. But the mistake I never expected from Omar was to misjudge the streets. Turns out, shit’s worse than even he knew.
Boy, McNulty was the confessor tonight, wasn’t he? I felt vindicated that Greggs was outraged. I’ve been waiting all season for someone to slam a few doors about this — someone other than Bunk, who finally caved. (Moral compromise or just another good man eroded by the system — or both?) Speaking of outraged, I wanted to cheer when Beadie finally gave McNulty the who’s what (“this is my fucking house”). I loved the speech Joan quotes — “They don’t show up at your wake” — but frankly, she should have given this talk to him about 10 anonymous blondes ago.
By the way, does anyone else worry Gus just signed his walking papers? I envision a scenario where he gets the boot, and Templeton stays. Grim times for heroes, indeed.
Do we still need Black History Month?
Three great documentaries air, including "More Than A Month," where one filmmaker explores his conflicted feelings
A still from "More Than a Month"
Black History Month is an idea that filmmaker Shukree Hassan Tilghman finds passé. In his documentary “More Than a Month,” which premieres Thursday on PBS’ “Independent Lens,” he walks around with a signboard that says END BLACK HISTORY MONTH and receives plenty of dirty looks. But he also gets more support than he suspected — after he explains that history should be part of the American story, told even during months with more than 28 or 29 days.
As he goes about his somewhat whimsical quest, some caution him that without that annual anchor, there’d be even less black history taught than before. He takes his campaign on the road; peers into the home of the month’s originator, Carter G. Woodson in Washington, D.C.; meets with the Association for the Study of African American Life and History; and goes to Virginia to see what black history means to big fans of the Confederacy.
Eventually he gets more serious about his task, realizing that while history may convey how we were, the way we tell history conveys how we are. And he’s had one direct effect: His mother, an activist, moves the date for a black history performance she had been planning out of February to help demonstrate that it is part of the fabric of U.S. history all year round.
One day, even television networks may spread their black-heritage documentaries beyond the confines of February as well. Unfortunately, two remarkable documentaries air at the same time Tuesday in many markets.
After demonstrating that he’s a sensitive observer of life in black America with “Hoop Dreams,” Steve James is back with “The Interrupters” – a more ambitious film that follows a fearless group of activists and amateur psychologists determined to end urban violence. It makes its national TV debut this evening on Frontline (check local listings).
That James and author Alex Kotlowitz (“There Are No Children Here”) decided to focus on Chicago at the precise time its youth-killing rates and lurid viral videos made it a national news story put them in the center of the cyclone. Their alarming footage, from the center of exploding violence and retribution, put the superficial approach of the national news media and government officials — who did little more than hold press conferences — to shame.
Even more remarkable are the counselors and community-minded people, many of whom learned their lessons in the streets, who put their lives on the line to defuse the mayhem out of a regard for love and doing what’s right.
Among them, Ameena Matthews deserves to be some kind of national heroine for her street sense, humor, decency, insight and bravery, which seem to change everyone she approaches. No matter how explosive the situation, she can enter, speak sensibly and have people listen.
James and Kotlowitz do treat their subjects seriously, listen to what they have to say and show how the activists are getting things done. For the inches of progress made before our eyes, it’s a hopeful film.
“The Loving Story,” on HBO, may seem like it is tied to Valentine’s Day. But it’s only providence that the couple at the center of the story is also named Loving.
But loving is the key. Richard Loving and Mildred Jeter were both members of a small community in Virginia where whites and blacks freely worked and socialized. They met and fell in love, and like anyone else might do, got married.
But there were laws in Virginia, as there were in more than a dozen other states, outlawing any such mixing of races through marriage, using a word that is as ugly as the prejudice, miscegenation.
Somebody called the cops and the happily married duo were hit with a felony charge in 1958 — and a year in jail – which would be suspended if they’d just leave the state. Any visits back to see family or friends would have to be done individually, lest they risk arrest. They decided to fight the law, not only for their own sake, but as Mrs. Loving says in the sweetest possible way, for other people as well — because “it isn’t right.”
“The Loving Story” is in some ways the exciting case of the two young American Civil Liberties Union lawyers who agreed to take the case on and brought it to the U.S. Supreme Court. But that’s only because lawyers like to talk, especially looking back at what they can now see was the biggest case of their lives. Although there is a surprising amount of footage of the Lovings in the film, they never do say very much. They just want the right thing done. And in the end, it is.
The two are not around to tell their story, though one of their daughters is. He died in a car accident in 1975; she in 2008 at 68, surrounded by family and friends. The last anti-miscegenation law wasn’t repealed until 2000 in Alabama. Theirs is a love story that hasn’t been fully told previously — and may not have had a showcase had it not been for Black History Month.
Ricky Gervais: My conscience never takes a day off
In a Salon exclusive, the comedian answers critics, explains his hilarious new HBO show, and talks "Office" sequels
Warwick Davis and Ricky Gervias in "Life's Too Short"
Ricky Gervais is not listening to those who say he should pick on someone his own size.
“Life’s Too Short,” which begins next Sunday on HBO, is a mockumentary that follows Warwick Davis, a real-life showbiz dwarf with a very real small-man syndrome. Like David Brent on “The Office” and Andy Millman on “Extras,” Davis suffers a mean case of self-delusion, even as his career tanks, his wife leaves him and a massive unpaid tax bill comes due. He compares himself to Martin Luther King Jr., while also talking about the importance of his dignity, all while falling out of his SUV or asking strangers to press doorbells he can’t reach.
It’s painfully and excruciatingly funny, yet in early episodes, at least, Davis is an extraordinarily likable Napoleon. In an interview last week, Gervais insisted that the show is not making fun of Davis or little people. And in a wide-ranging discussion that might surprise some after his controversial and sometimes mean turns hosting the Golden Globes, Gervais says that comedy and humanity can’t be separated. “Comedy is about empathy,” he says. “Comedy is about the blind spot, comedy is about rooting for them, comedy is about flawed characters.”
You have a tradition of writing and playing characters who are dangerously self-deluded, who can’t see the blind spots everyone else notices right away. “Life’s Too Short” follows a dwarf actor who not only says he wants to be the Martin Luther King Jr. of little people, but believes that if anyone takes offense at that, he points out that he’s never seen a black person shot out of a cannon before. Was part of the challenge for you making it both OK to laugh at a dwarf in these circumstances, but also somehow humanizing him so completely?
Well, the thing is, we wanted to make it clear that we weren’t laughing because he was a dwarf. There’s nothing mildly amusing about that. He doesn’t have to be a dwarf at all, really. It’s that he’s got small man complex. He’s conniving, manipulative, pretentious. When he falls out of his car, we’re laughing at him because he chose a car that’s not right for him. Way too big for him. And he was just saying, “I carry myself with dignity.” It’s about getting his comeuppance.
So, we want people to see the difference between a show that exploits little people and a show that shows exploitation of little people, and this is clearly in the latter. And Warwick is so likable, we had to make him into a little Hitler to feel that you could laugh at him and want him to get his comeuppance. Because despite everything, he’s drenched in humanity.
You’re right, we had to make sure people knew that they were allowed to laugh. And there will still be people that aren’t sure – around England there are people saying, “Oh, why is it funny that he’s caught in a cat flap” [trying to get back into a house after his wife changes the locks]. It’s funny if anyone gets caught in a cat flap. How is that not funny? [Warwick] is a fantastic physical actor. He’s like Chaplin or Harold Lloyd or something. So we’re going to exploit that. And I mean that in the sense of exploiting his skills, as opposed to exploiting his height, which we don’t. And if people think that a dwarf actor is not allowed to do slapstick, that’s their prejudice. How dare they say that Warwick Davis can’t do slapstick in case someone might think that we’re just laughing at him because he’s a dwarf falling over, as opposed to all the other reasons.
Some people might think that’s convenient: You get to make the joke about the dwarf falling over, after all, and immunize yourself from criticism. Or are people just too quick to take offense?
Some people believe it’s their job. And what you’ll notice is, it’s always someone taking offense on someone else’s behalf. You know? It’s always the person saying, I’m not a dwarf myself, but I find that offensive. It’s crazy. You see that all the time. And I’ll tell you why, it’s because whenever you do something slightly taboo, or contentious, or you’re dealing in any irony or satire, people mistake the subject of the gag with the target of the gag. You can tell a joke about race, without it being racist. You can tell a joke about disability, without it being disabilist. And I have done it all my career. David Brent (Gervais’ character in “The Office”) felt uncomfortable around people of difference.
So he goes up to a black man in “The Office” and assures him “I love Sidney Poitier.”
Right, clearly we’re laughing at him not knowing how to behave. When he grabs the girl in the wheelchair and says, “I’ll take her down the stairs,” because he wants to be seen helping out on camera. And when Gareth says, “Well, the disabled should be tested to make sure they are claiming benefits and they’re really disabled. Stick pins in their legs, or something like that.” We’re laughing at their stupidity. And, let’s not forget, people like that exist. People like that exist.
As cynical as people think I am with the subject matter I deal with and the flawed characters I show, I’m a romantic. There’s always hope in my characters and there’s always hope in my shows. And there’s nothing more exhilarating than redemption. Forgiveness is very important as well. I like to take an absolute asshole, and show him the error of his ways, and have him say sorry. Who can’t forgive when it’s a genuine apology.
What humanizes them is that gap between the way they see themselves — the aspirations they have, who they hope to be — and the person they really are.
That’s a staple of British comedy. It’s always about the blind spot. It’s always that we’re laughing at the difference between how David Brent sees himself and how the rest of the world sees him — particularly with middle-aged, midlife-crisis males. Men as boys, men who never grow up — the man wants to be cool and loved. And Warwick’s a branch of that tree really. He wants to be thought of as the Martin Luther King of little people. He’s not and he never could be. And he doesn’t really care about dwarf rights; he cares about himself. He exploits dwarfs, he takes all the best jobs for himself. [In a later episode] he goes on the board of the Small People’s Society – he’s the deputy president, but he wants to be president. That’s what annoys him more, he wants to be president. So he’s more worried about being top dog – he doesn’t care about their rights. In fact, one episode he’s there and there are a lot of little people there, and he’s trying to recruit them to be human bowling balls. And the president says, “I don’t think this is the right forum for that,” and he says, “This is the perfect forum, it’s full of dwarves, isn’t it?” He’s like David Brent: He thinks he’s going to try to fight sexism and racism, but he doesn’t really know how to. Because he’s a bit sexist and racist himself.
And yet, on some level, we’re all a little afraid that we have some David Brent in us, aren’t we?
We see ourselves in them, of course we do. We look at David Brent, and everyone, it’s fundamental — everyone is worried about their reputation. David Brent wasn’t a bad person at all. People say, “Oh, nasty boss from hell, bastard.” He wasn’t any of those things. His worst crime is he made the mistake of confusing popularity with respect … But the downfall of society will be people just wanting to be famous. And everyone is now. Everyone on Twitter is a broadcaster. TV shows are obsessed about what people say on Twitter. It’s bizarre. Just make the show!
I use Twitter as a bit of a social experiment. I’m working on a show at the moment, so I do the odd tweet to see what happens. And I think people might think I’m schizophrenic cause I’m playing a few different characters now and again because I’m trying to see the reaction. It’s fascinating what comes back.
What can you share about the characters?
It’s a new sitcom set in an old people’s home and it’s about the forgotten — everyone’s forgotten. Just like all sitcoms, when it comes down to it, it’s them against the world. It’s a family. It’s all these arbitrary people who didn’t know each other, and they’re in there now because they’re in the last years of their life. And it’s about the people who help them, who themselves are losers and have their own problems. It’s about a bunch of people with nothing, but making the most of it, and they’re together.
It’s a show about kindness. Kindness is more important than anything else. Kindness is more important than intelligence, than success, than rewards, everything. Kindness is the most important thing. And it’s about that. So, it’s a very good experiment for me, Twitter. Because you see the absolute worst and best in people.
It’s interesting that you use the word “kindness,” because that’s exactly what Tom Hanks accused you of not being when you hosted the Golden Globes last year.
Right, “He used to be a tubby, kind comedian.” “And neither of those things he is now.”
Were celebrities genuinely offended at your jokes, or was it all a game to generate attention?
No, no, they weren’t. A couple of people said that people were, so that goes into legend. But who was really offended by it, you know? And the other thing is that I’m not going out to hurt people’s feelings and embarrass them; I’m going out to make people laugh. But I also have to make a decision as a comedian – do I pander to the 200 people in the room, or the 200 million people watching at home?
There were critics this year who expected an edgier performance.
I started with a backlash. If you’re going to stand up there, and you’re going to say what’s on your mind, and you’re going to take contentious subjects head-on, as many people are going to hate you as love you. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. I cherish the gasps as much as the cheers. And the groans as much as the laughs. I look at it in Darwinian framework. I’m going to do what I do – not so much proudly, but because I have to do this – and I’ll either survive, or I don’t. And so be it.
Seeing as it’s televised, there’s no doubt about it. If you just want a sycophantic back-slapping session, by all means, but don’t put it on telly, because there’s nothing in it for us watching at home. There’s nothing in it. Winning awards is the most boring thing to watch you’ll ever imagine, so I try to make it a spectator sport. So that was doing my job as a comedian, I think. Two, whatever you say, someone will claim it’s offensive. And to that I say, offense is taken, not given. It’s up to you whether you’re offended. And I’ll add one more thing: Just because you’re offended, doesn’t mean you’re right.
If people are offended, they certainly have a funny way of showing it — Sting, Liam Neeson and Johnny Depp are all among the celebrity cameos on “Life’s Too Short.”
Well, I understand why they do that now. Because I’ve had a taste of my own medicine recently when I did “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” When you play a twisted version of yourself, you realize that the more awful you are, the more armor you wear, in a way, because you’re saying, “Oh, I can’t be like this, because that’s too mad, it’s too terrible.” And so, it’s sort of like you build a credibility shield.
There’s a line in the first episode of “Life’s Too Short” when you’re doing an excruciating improv session with Liam Neeson and he makes an awkward AIDS joke. You and Steven Merchant both try to talk him out of it. Neeson asks, well, why can you do it? You both just shrug. Well, why can you do it?
Because I know what I’m doing. And I know the real target of the joke every time. I’m not one of these people that thinks comedy is your conscience taking a day off. My conscience never takes a day off. I can justify everything I’ve done. I can tell anyone why that joke is justified comedically. Comedy is an intellectual pursuit – as soon as you bring real emotions into it, it stops being comedy and starts becoming rallying. I’ve seen comedians go out there and go, “Why are there so many immigrants?” and get a round of applause. And I go, well, where’s the joke? That’s not a joke; you’re just with like-minded bigots. And the reason why a real racist joke isn’t funny, why an actual racist joke isn’t funny, it’s not because it’s offensive. It’s because it’s not true. It’s based on a falsehood. As soon as someone says, “Why is it that Mexicans always …” I’ll say, well, they don’t. That’s not true. I’ll stop you there. You can’t go on. The punch line’s irrelevant to me now, because the premise is false. So, as I said, I can justify everything I do. And that’s why I can do it. And the fact that there’s anyone in the world that gets it, makes me know that it’s gettable. If everyone in the world said, “That joke’s terrible,” I’d have to go, “Wow, I’m the only person in the world that thinks that works.” But that doesn’t happen. It doesn’t happen at all. It’s the opposite. Ninety-nine percent of the people say that’s fine and 1 percent say you can’t say that. Well, watch me.
Do you have a line you won’t walk over? Or a Potter Stewart-sense of when a joke has gone too far?
I’ll tell you how I find that line myself. My own sense of morality. And that’s the problem with offense, it’s not right or wrong, it’s personal. It’s feelings, and feeling are personal. I’ll give you an example. I did a stand-up show and I played this non-reconstructed character who gets everything wrong. I say things like, “Steven Hawking. They say he’s a genius, but he’s not. He’s pretentious.” So it’s me getting stuff wrong, I’m the idiot. “I saw a documentary about this little Indian girl. She had to walk 12 miles every day just to get water. She should move.” It’s things like that. It’s getting it all wrong. I made jokes about famine, the Holocaust, cancer, AIDS, everything. Right? And I got a letter saying, we enjoyed the show, but we didn’t appreciate the jokes about the Holocaust. And I wanted to go, but you enjoyed the jokes about AIDS and famine? That’s your thing, and everyone’s got a thing. But it’s personal.
You studied philosophy for several years. How did that shape your perception of how comedy works?
I think there’s a similar train of thought with a joke: start with a real premise and take it through to its logical conclusion. There’s a flowchart of choices, and there’s a certain scientific method to comedy. Where, experimentation, the proof’s in the pudding. Particularly with stand-up. The audience picks your best jokes for you. It’s an evolution. The jokes are the genes, and it’s the survival of the fittest.
My first love’s always been sort of science and nature, and the arts, in equal proportions. It’s myth that if you’re a logician or you’re an atheist you can’t appreciate the beauty of nature. It’s a total myth. It makes it more beautiful to me that it was random events. I don’t see the problem in it. I just did this show with Richard Dawkins, it’s about the meaning of life and everything. My bit was “Well, if you’re an atheist, what’s the meaning of life for you? What do you get out of it? What’s the point of living?” And I just listed them: It’s friends, family, loved ones, a decent job of work, making a difference and creativity.
Right — things you can actually do in this life, without waiting for the next one.
I think religion was born, really, out of a certain spirituality. But the two are very different. Spirituality is a personal thing and there’s nothing wrong with that. If that helps you, thinking a superior being created the universe in six days and he loves you — if that gets you through and you do good things in his name and not bad, then good for you. I think the Dalai Lama said, ask me my religion, my answer is kindness. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I don’t think they’re right, I don’t think there is a God, and I don’t think they are going to go to heaven. But whatever gets you through, whatever makes you kinder, is fine by me.
Then there’s religion, which is a different kettle of fish. Now these are people who are arguing over whose God’s right and are killing people in the name of it. They’re stoning people to death for believing in the wrong God. That’s what I’ve got a problem with. I don’t think there is an afterlife, and what’s strange about even the kindest people among religious folk is they often say things like, “Well, if you think that this is all there is, then what’s the point?” Which is such a strange thing to me — because that’s why I cherish every moment more. Because it’s not going to last forever. And who wants to live forever, really. Fuck all. Terrible. Terrible idea.
Lastly: We live in such a nostalgic, reunion culture. And yet you’ve really never gone back and revisited these shows. They’ve had really well-defined lives and no matter how popular or influential they’ve become, you’ve probably resisted millions for another “Office” special. Why not show us where David Brent is now?
Because they’re important to me. They’re really important to me. And I’ve seen people let me down in the past by doing a series too often, one too many times. I think they should survive in their own world, and that’s it really. And also, it begs the credibility a little bit if a fake documentary team is still hanging around Slough for 10 years. I think one of the reasons for the success of “The Office” was the realism. I think that’s what resonated. Because nothing comes close to real life. It’s like how art tries to emulate the beauty of nature, and sometimes it nearly, nearly gets close. Well, sometimes comedy and drama create the excitement of real life, and the closer you can get to it, the better you’ve done. You can have the greatest movie of all time – you can be watching “The Godfather” at home – and if there’s a screech of tires and a shout of the neighbors you’re at the window, because real life wins.
“Walking Dead” creator: Get ready for breakneck pace
Robert Kirkman heard fans' howls about Season 2 being dull, and promises to bring the action starting Sunday
(Credit: AMC/Gene Page)
“The Walking Dead” returns Sunday to AMC to finish its second season, with sheriff Rick Grimes’ revolver still smoking from the first half’s shocking finale. While audience numbers have stayed high, the show has run into problems other than the packs of drooling undead. Showrunner Frank Darabont left for unspecified reasons, the pace of action noticeably dropped – to what creator Robert Kirkman admits now was “a little bit slower than it should” — and the zombies, when they did appear, seemed to be moving a lot faster than you’d expect from a group called walkers.
The affable Kirkman, 33, who also created the bestselling “The Walking Dead” comic book series, paused to address these issues as well as hint about new threats and locales to be encountered by the characters, and discuss the approach of new showrunner Glen Mazzara, who he says will bring a comparatively “breakneck pace” to the show as it resumes. (For those who haven’t finished the first half, there may be one spoiler included.)
What are you calling this point in the series, anyway, Part 2 of Season 2?
We call it all kinds of different things in the writers’ room: It’s Season 2.5; it’s the second half of the second season, which sometimes seems a little cumbersome, so I don’t know. It’s the last six episodes of Season 2.
I guess cutting it in half is now a common way for cable networks to present its seasons. How do you look at starting in the middle like this?
There’s a lot of different ways to look at it. I sort of enjoy the “mini-season finale” thing because I think season finales are really kind of cool and I’m a big fan of cliffhangers. Also, it’s nice to have a little break. It’s also nice to structurally make your season have some sort of punch in the first half and more punch in the second half. So structurally, it’s kind of cool. It helps writing-wise. But I don’t know, I could take it or leave it.
Consensus on the first half of the season is that it had a much different pace than the first season. Did you just want to slow the storytelling down?
It appears that the first half of second season moves a little bit slower than maybe it should. And I think that’s a byproduct of building to our midseason finale and knowing where we were going to end up, and putting all our pieces in place, and trying to tell the story in a somewhat cinematic kind of way, which may or may not work in episodic television.
I will say that’s one of the holdovers from Frank Darabont. He really wanted to take things slow and spend a lot of time dealing with different things. He was very much a big fan of the slow burn. Because he’s no longer on the show and Glen Mazzara took over as showrunner, he’s a big fan of much more fast-paced storytelling. So I think there will be somewhat of a shift when we come back with the season where we’re going to be a little more action-packed and are going to move at kind of a breakneck pace compared to the first few episodes.
And I think, looking at whole season together, when you see the first two parts, you’ll see that the first half of season kind of works, because we were building towards an event. And once that event happens — when Sophia emerges from the barn — things just continue to escalate. So it will make sense and the whole season will be cool to watch as a whole. But there is going to be some drastically different pacing issues now that Glen Mazzara is running the show.
Do you regret that it went as slow as it did in the first half?
I don’t know that I regret anything. I think that despite the criticisms of it being slow, it was good to take the time to know the characters a little more and it was nice to see them interacting at that farm and I think that that sense of security and that tranquility, when it’s played against the chaos of coming episodes, will make chaos seem that much more intense. I think it will accentuate these episodes. So I liked it. But if I had to do it over again, I might have tried to cram some more stuff in.
From this side of the screen, it appeared that there were fewer zombies so far this season, and setting it at a farm seemed a little less expensive than clearing out part of the city. People assume it was a cost-saving measure.
No, it wasn’t a cost-saving measure at all. It was just adapting what we did in my comic book series. If you read the comics, you’ll see that eight years ago, when those stories were being told, there was a little bit of Atlanta action and then they moved into the more rural parts of Georgia and went there for safety. So it was just a decision to follow where the comics went. Filming out in the woods is not as cheap as you might think.
What has it been like for you to write for two different versions of your story, first for the comic and then for TV? Do you consider them the same story or separate?
I kind of have to view it as separate. That’s really the only way to do it. I still write the comics month in and month out, putting new issues out. If I weren’t able to separate the two into two separate projects, it would be a little confusing.
But I’m having a lot of fun on the show. The collaborative medium of television is a really cool thing. I really do enjoy working in the writers’ room and getting to experience working in a group and forming a kind of a hive mind to try and tell stories. It’s a very different way of doing things for me.
Comic books are also kind of a collaborative medium in that you work with an artist and you tell that story together through words and pictures. But the artist on “The Walking Dead,” Charlie Adlard, he lives in the U.K, so I’m never in a room with him saying, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we did this.” It’s a very solitary working environment, where I’m in a room — I was in Kentucky and now I’m in Los Angeles — and then he’s in his room on the other side of the ocean, and we’re making a product together. But working in a room with guys and coming up with ideas and really having that exchange and pushing each other is a lot of fun for me. I really enjoy it.
We’re actually in our third or fourth week of working on Season 3 right now in the writers’ room. And one of the first things we did is we basically blocked out what happened in the comic book series in a chunk of time, from issue X to issue whatever, and said, “This is the story that we want to cover in our third season. What from this do we think is essential? What do we want to keep? Is there anything we want to add?”
It’s kind of cool to look at the comic book as a framework to improve upon; being able to have seven other talented writers look at your previous work and say, “Oh, you could have expanded this, I would have glossed over that, it would be cool if this had happened instead of that.” And for me to be involved in that process, it’s kind of a cool thing.
I guess it can be a little nerve-wracking to sit in a room with seven people and pick apart something you wrote seven years ago, but I don’t know, I think it’s a fun experience and I like being in the mix. And even I’m going, “Well, this led to this and it might be good to leave that out and it might be better if we did this instead and this really worked, people really liked this, I think we should definitely do this.” Being able to do that, and have this give and take, is a lot of fun.
But at the same time you want to have surprises for fans of the comic book.
Absolutely. That’s why there are so many differences in the show. People who read “The Walking Dead” comic, I think one of the appealing things about it is when you sit down and read an issue, you have no idea what’s going to happen. So to lose that in the show, for people who have read the comic, I think, would be a horrible thing. So even when we adapt something in the show, we try to arrive upon an event in such a different way that it still holds a bit of surprise for people who are absolutely familiar with the comic. I like to change things up, and keep people guessing.
The comic is so similar in form to a storyboard. Does that explain why the series is so much more visual than most?
Yeah, well, it’s not really an action show. But there is definitely a lot more to be done with the visuals in this show than I think other shows. Because we’re adapting the comic, I think there are a lot of visuals to adapt from the comics. I think Charlie Adlard in particular is a fantastic artist who has been doing some real cool stuff. To leave that stuff on the cutting room floor would be a mistake. Also we have Greg Nicotero doing an amazing job bringing our zombie creatures to life. His team at KNB Efx are really essential to the show. So there’s definitely a wealth of visual storytelling for us to draw upon in order to make this series happen.
But there’s quite a lot visually happening, with those big wide establishing shots, or those subtle scenes, like the one Sunday where Daryl and Carol just sit there and don’t even speak a word. A lot of shows don’t do that.
Yeah, well, I think that’s good storytelling. When you’re making people talk just to make people talk, I think that’s when things start to be kind of fake.
So what is it about zombies in general that people are so interested in them these days?
First of all, they’re awesome. They look cool. They do cool things. There’s definitely a lot of reasons to love zombies. Culturally, the last time zombies were this popular was the height of the Cold War. So I think any time there’s a sense of unrest in society, it tends to drive people toward stories of the apocalypse and the end of the world. It makes it interesting to sit on your couch and think: OK, if society did collapse, would I be like Daryl Dixon? Would I be like Shane Walsh? Would I be like Rick Grimes? Which person would I be like? What decisions would I make? And analyzing that kind of stuff makes it easier to ignore the economic collapse or the crisis with oil prices, or whatever is going on in the world today. It’s much easier to sit in the safety of your living room and analyze it rather than to actually think about all the horrible things that are going on out in the world.
With the current cultural zombie takeover, is there a possibility of reaching overkill, as vampires seem to be doing?
Vampires cycle in and out every few years; they get really popular, then they go on the back burner for a while. I think that zombies reaching this level of popularity is a cool thing. In the history of entertainment, zombies have never got that kind of height of popularity where there is an overkill of people making zombie things and telling zombie stories. It’s kind of a cool thing for zombies to reach that level.
But I definitely feel the big budget World War Z movie with Brad Pitt and things like that that will carry it along, ‘The Walking Dead’ included. It will shoot back down eventually. But I think “The Walking Dead” hangs its hat on drama. And isn’t necessarily just a zombie adventure. It’s about human characters dealing with survival after the fall of civilization and I think that kind of story is always going to hold a vast appeal for audiences, whether it’s got zombies running around or unicorns or whatever.
While vampires (and unicorns, for that matter) seem to have their rules set in stone, things seem to be not quite nailed down yet for zombies.
One of the things I was trying to do with “The Walking Dead” was canonize zombie lore. Most people do try to reinvent the wheel when they do the zombie thing. Sometimes you have to dismember them completely, sometimes you have to shoot them in the head. Sometimes they eat brains, sometimes they eat flesh — people try to play around with it a little bit too much.
With “The Walking Dead,” I try to take the best part of the Romero model – George Romero by far did the best zombie movies in history — and his films are all consistent. Then I wanted to use most of those rules, because those are the best, and then add a few of my own — things that are logical; things that to me make sense. To just to try and say: Look, there should be some set rules on zombies. There are certain set things that make zombies cool, and we should try to maintain them.
That said, it seems like the zombies in “The Walking Dead” are a little speedier the second season than they were in the first. And why weren’t, say, the dead people in the highway pileup at the start of Season 2 not all turned into zombies as well?
There were definitely a few zombies trucking around in the first season as well. I don’t know if people didn’t notice them, or maybe they should just go back and watch it. One of the rules that we have in “The Walking Dead” is, depending on how fresh the corpse is, or how rotted it is, would logically make it fast or slow.
I don’t think we have any Olympic sprinters or anything like that. But a fairly recently formed zombie would be able to move somewhat like a human, but not quite. And we definitely have zombies that are much slower and mill about as they get more rotted. We’re trying to do things that are logical and make sense. And then every so often, you have an overzealous extra who is moving a little bit too quick, and we have to edit around that.
What about those bodies in the cars?
That’s the whole ting. That’s part of the fun of “The Walking Dead” is that you don’t really know all of the rules yet. What’s going on with those dead bodies? Why are they not zombies? Why are they just sitting in cars? That’s part of our specific set of rules that will be revealed over time.
So there are going to be mysteries like that: Why is that guy a zombie and the other guy isn’t? What happened with that guy, and various different things. I think by the end of Season 2, you’ll have a better understanding of what makes a zombie, and what goes into it and why those zombies in the car weren’t walking around.
So, in the short term, what can we expect?
We’re getting off the farm a little bit, and we’re introducing a lot of new characters and new threats. The very first episode that we come back on, on Sunday, we introduce new characters that represent a larger threat that is going to be coming after Rick and the rest of the group. And that’s really going to be a driving force that gets us right up to our finale. We’re going to be dealing with a lot of big problems.
There are a lot of questions as to whether or not Hershel knew that Sophia was in the barn, or how he and Rick are going to deal with that. And that’s not really what we’re going to be dealing with. We’re not going to have time to rest on our laurels and analyze the whole Sophia situation. There’s so much more happening and so many more threats coming into the forefront that we’re going to have to hit the ground running and deal with all these problems on our feet as we go.
“The Walking Dead” resumes its second season Sunday at 9 p.m. on AMC.
The civil rights battle ignored by the U.S. media
The documentary "Black Power Mixtape" tells a counter-history of the 1960s, through the eyes of foreign journalists
A still from "The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975"
It was tough enough to track the social and political upheaval of the 1960s through domestic news coverage, let alone to pay attention to what the rest of the world was reporting. But journalists from abroad were fascinated by the roiling changes — and often saw it quite differently.
Though U.S. network coverage of civil rights cruelties helped rally the country against the worst offenders in the South, coverage of revolutionary groups such as the Black Panther Party more often took J. Edgar Hoover’s extremist stance that it was the most dangerous internal threat to the U.S. Rarely did it look at the accomplishments of its free breakfast programs, community organizing and determination to stand up to police harassment and brutality.
Swedish newsmen and filmmakers who didn’t follow the FBI line came to America to learn what they could, looking at life in largely segregated black America, talking frankly and seriously with black leaders and closely following their trials.
Footage of the era, said to have been sitting in a Swedish basement for three decades, became the eye-opening documentary “The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975” making its U.S. television debut on PBS’ “Independent Lens” Thursday night as part of its Black History Month series.
The modernist title owes in part to filmmaker Göran Hugo Olsson using modern-day commentary, from musicians in many cases, to accompany the found footage. Talib Kweli, Erykah Badu and Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson of the Roots add their contemporary revolutionary musing among commentaries by professors and historians.
The wealth of Swedish footage owes in part to the Panthers’ desire to see their movement as an international one, or one that certainly relied on support from outside the U.S.
It is the Panthers’ Embassy in Algeria where Eldridge Cleaver holds court, for example, far from the threat of FBI invasions. Martin Luther King Jr.’s visits to Stockholm to meet King Gustaf VI Adolf that are well preserved, and King’s traveling partner Harry Belafonte recalls the meeting.
Some of the earliest footage in the film shows a young Stokely Carmichael speaking in Stockholm in 1967, stating in the simplest terms the recent history of black movement in the U.S., carefully stepping beyond the nonviolent action approach by King.
“In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent has to have a conscience,” he points out coolly. “The United States has none.”
In some ways, it is the footage of Carmichael, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and honorary “prime minister” for the Panthers, that is the revelation of “The Black Power Mixtape.” How suppressed has his voice been over the years, even at a time of black history mining?
It’s certainly eye-opening for modern-day commentator Kweli, who exclaims, “He has so much passion and fire inside of him,” yet remains quite cool. “He seemed like a regular dude.”
After telling reporters in Stockholm, “I’m not as patient as Dr. King,” Carmichael takes over a Swedish interview of his own mother in Chicago to get to the point: The family’s struggles and limited opportunities can be boiled down to the fact that they are black.
One gets the sense that Swedish journalists enjoyed visiting black ghettos, where they tried to get a taste of life as they paused for interviews with Huey P. Newton and Kathleen Cleaver.
The coverage was noted in the U.S. as well, when TV Guide in a cover story complained about its negativity. Swedish reporters interviewed the story’s writer, balancing it with the view of director Emile de Antonio, who dismisses TV Guide as “an absolute nothing magazine.”
Officially, Sweden had been so critical of America’s role in Vietnam that the U.S. pulled its ambassador from Stockholm in 1968 and ended diplomatic relations with the country altogether for a time in 1972, after Prime Minister Olof Palme compared the bombings of Hanoi with the worst atrocities of Nazis.
Whatever the diplomatic relations, Swedish journalists certainly took the black revolutionaries more seriously and were plainly excited to be the first TV reporters to talk to an imprisoned Angela Davis. Still, because they worked from the same script, the question soon boiled down to: Do you have to use violence to reach your goals? Davis, receiving her first media visitor, was plainly annoyed by this, in just about the only footage that’s in color rather than black-and-white.
“When somebody asks me abut violence, I just find it incredible,” she says. “What it means is that the people who ask have no idea what people have gone through, what black people have experienced in this country since the time the first black person was kidnapped from the shores of Africa.”
The revolutionary tone of the film may provide grist for those on the right who erroneously see PBS as some kind of government-funded left-wing propaganda machine. When was the last time Louis Farrakhan was given a forum to talk about white devils?
But “The Black Power Mixtape” qualifies as a social history of a revolutionary movement, one quashed by a mid-1970s drug infusion to black neighborhoods that film participants are quite sure was caused by the government.
More than that, the modern voices in the film are resolute that lessons of the past need to be learned as the struggle goes on.
“Smash”: An irresistible take on Marilyn, musicals
A much-hyped musical -- maybe you've noticed the promos -- pays off big, even for non-theater fans
Katharine McPhee as Karen Cartwright, Megan Hilty as Ivy Lynn (Credit: NBC/Mark Seliger)
I’m a bad gay. I don’t like musicals. I am not a “Gleek” (though I am awestruck by “Glee’s” bold portraits of gay adolescent life — I’d have given anything to watch a show like that when I was 15). I have trouble suspending disbelief when people spontaneously break into song; I get squirmy and my eyes dart around as if the singer is prancing naked in front of me, and I’m trying to give her privacy, whether or not she wants it.
So I am not exactly the ideal audience for “Smash,” the new series NBC has been promoting like crazy (the pilot is already posted on Hulu), by playwright Theresa Rebeck (“The Understudy,” “Seminar”), about the making of a Broadway musical about Marilyn Monroe. (That’s this season. If the show gets renewed, we will watch another musical develop throughout the next season — a sort of musical-theater procedural. “Law & Order: The Musical!”) The pilot opens with “American Idol” runner-up Katharine McPhee belting “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” daydreaming of her Broadway debut while auditioning before an underwhelmed director: For a curmudgeon like me, that has skin-crawl written all over it. Except that I was absolutely, instantly bewitched. By the writing. By the acting. By the story and the stories within the story. Even by — especially by — the music. That credit goes to the Tony-winning team Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman (“Hairspray”), who wrote more than a dozen original songs for the series, classically great musical-theater numbers that recall Jule Styne, even a little early Sondheim, and are performed only by those striving to be on the stage (no, Debra Messing will not break into song, nor will Anjelica Huston) — at auditions, or practiced at home, or in fantasy sequences — with lyrics that masterfully mirror both the theatrics of musical in progress and the goings-on of the actors’ lives.
A show about theater demands as much drama behind the scenes as on the stage, and “Smash” won’t disappoint: There are betrayals, divorces, complicated adoption stories, sordid seductions, dreams fulfilled and quashed. We meet songwriting duo Julia Houston (an understated, lovable Debra Messing) and Tom Levitt (the equally terrific Christian Borle) who’ve been enjoying a successful run on Broadway and London’s West End with their breakout show “Heaven on Earth,” and who’ve vowed to take a year-long breather because Julia is pursuing an international adoption. It’s a promise quickly broken when Tom’s ambitious, crush-worthy new assistant, Ellis (Jaime Cepero), suggests the team do a musical about Marilyn Monroe — a concept that has previously failed on the Broadway stage (meta data: In 1983, a Marilyn show with a happy ending was a critical and commercial disaster) despite the subject’s perennial popularity — and it’s a challenge they can’t resist. For Julia, it’s about creating a work that honors a subject who said in an interview before she died “Please don’t make a joke out of me.” Julia says, “There was just something about her, how much she wanted to love and be loved … Reminds me of a saint. I don’t want anyone else to do her.” For Tom, it’s the prospect of writing the baseball number about Joe DiMaggio.
The duo swears they’re going to write just one song. And maybe record that song with an ensemble cast member from “Heaven on Earth,” Ivy Lynn (Megan Hilty). Which is fine except that Ellis secretly films it with his phone to share with his mother, who posts it online, and the recording goes viral. Julia’s husband, Frank (Brian d’Arcy James, a Broadway musical actor in his own right), predicted this would happen — he knows songwriting is Julia’s gateway drug to a full-on production, and that means possibly losing her for at least another year to a show in development, and to her gay partner, Tom, to whom she can seem more closely committed than to him. (Not to worry, this is not a setup for a Grace Adler/Will Truman redux dynamic, or even Grace/Jack McFarland. Julia and Tom are far more realized — neither goofy, nor batty, nor undermining.) Will this adoption be shelved?
Broadway producer Eileen Rand (Anjelica Huston) is eager to get involved with the show-in-progress, now that her pet project — a revival of “My Fair Lady” — is stuck in escrow, along with her money, due to an acrimonious divorce battle with her rich soon-to-be-ex-husband. She sees in the biographical musical an opportunity to assert her independence in the theater world. But she needs to lure away some of the talent he’s locked into place, in particular, the “My Fair Lady” director, Derek Wills (Jack Davenport), a pompous, indisputably talented English lothario — he reads like a Broadway Simon Cowell, an incongruous misstep that I can only hope was the result of network notes — who hates Tom (the feeling is mutual), and who believes Marilyn’s bleak track record speaks for itself and wants to stick with the original plan. But “Marilyn Monroe,” Eileen argues, “is an American Eliza Doolittle.”
This “My Fair Lady” trope carries through at least the first two episodes: Is Marilyn an American Eliza Doolittle, and do the creators want to take one on and mold her into a Marilyn? Indeed the Marilyn project is a very clever entrée into the insular realm of Broadway musical theater, allowing us to see the subject’s biography bisected, and follow her evolution from Norma Jean to Marilyn Monroe, not only through the musical itself, presumably, but through the experiences of the two hungry actresses vying for the title role. With her blond hair and hourglass figure, and a vague air of tragedy with her perpetual singledom and hardworking background, veteran ensemble actress Ivy Lynn appears a no-brainer for the iconic Marilyn and she is desperate to lead a production (and is played to perfection by seasoned Broadway actress Hilty — also in need of a breakout role). Karen Cartwright (McPhee), the other actress in contention, is a very green Midwestern brunette beauty with an incredible voice (and the only person at the open audition not dressed as Marilyn — she sings Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful,” seeking to evoke her romantic innocence). She’s the Norma Jean. Or, if you will, Eliza D. Unlike Ivy Lynn, Karen has a boyfriend, Dev (Raza Jaffrey, who last starred as a cuckolded husband in the English answer to “Sex and the City,” a deliciously overwrought BBC series called “Mistresses”), as well as well-intentioned provincial parents (real-life couple Becky Ann Baker, Lindsay and Sam Weir’s mother from “Freaks and Geeks,” and Dylan Baker, perhaps best known as the pedophile in “Happiness”), as a safety net — Dev encourages her to follow her dreams; her parents gently suggest she shelve them.
The project, even as a work in progress, demands a charismatic star. Tom and Julia have been workshopping the songs with Ivy, who they feel is perfect for the part, and they want to reward her. But with Derek and Eileen on board, they are forced to open the door to other Marilyn options, which is why they’re faced with the unanticipated quandary: Do they want a ready-made Marilyn, who they know can do it, or accept the challenge of a Pygmalion-Marilyn story within a Pygmalion-Marilyn musical? That’s the pilot cliffhanger, presented with a goosebump-inducing closing number, “Let Me Be Your Star,” a cross-edit duet between Karen and Ivy Lynn, as they prepare for the final callback, tracking them from their respective apartments to the their face-off, each singing the story of her plight, until their voices, naive and knowing, yet equally exhilarated and earnest and fervent, converge in a fever pitch: “And what you’ve been needing/Is all here and my heart’s bleeding/Let me be your star!” I guarantee you’ll be genuinely torn.
Page 1 of 495 in Television
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