As I wrote last week, The Simpsons is one of the shows that made me, and Matt Groening, by extension, is one of the creators who I’m constantly interested in: beyond The Simpsons, Futurama and Life in Hell are both fucking fantastic in their own ways, so when Disenchantment, his new show with Netflix, came out, I knew I had to slam myself face-first into it at dangerous speeds.
What is the media that made you?
Look, I get it, I do. There are some stories to be told that are going to piss off a lot of people. I’m publishing a book called Rape Jokes. I’m no stranger to the notion of media that tries to shove up against those uncomfortable edges, that takes on sensitive issues in a brash way in an attempt to demystify the unpleasantness at their core.
It’s been interesting to note, over the course of writing these recaps, the differing reactions to Sharp Objects as a whole. We’re deep into the season now, with only two episodes left after this one, and it seems like the divide in opinions is pretty sharp (ho ho): you either buy into the show’s dreamy, icy layers and buried thematic elements, or you think it’s a load of pretentious old tosh.
In case you haven’t guessed, I’m firmly in the former category, but I do understand where those other opinions come from. Sharp Objects is a difficult show, and I don’t mean that in the sense that it’s complex or heavy (though it is those things too). Jean-Marc Vallée’s directorial style is dense, the writing is evasive and at times deliberately frustrating, and the story is winding closer to it’s explosive center in a languid, thoughtful fashion. It’s not the hectic, forward-focused crime drama that we’re used to, and I understand and accept criticism of the show as punishing instead of rewarding.
(trigger warning for discussions of self-harm and suicide)
When you’re a teenager, adolescence feels like an eternity.
And not just that the bad hair, cheap make-up, and roiling angst feel as though they’re going on for decades: no, when you’re a teenager, there doesn’t feel like a way out of the place you’re in now. The only other life you know is childhood, and you can’t go back there – adulthood feels impossibly distant, until it suddenly isn’t. Adolescence, for many people, feels impossibly eternal, like there could never be anything different than this.
Bit of an old trigger warning for self-harm right here, if that kind of thing bothers you.
I don’t think it’s a particularly bold statement to say that we look for ourselves in the fiction we enjoy. There’s something about seeing yourself reflected in a story that feels grounding – someone experienced something similar to something you experienced, and they found it profound and important enough to build a story around. A lot of the reason I consume so much media, and certainly the reason that I write (hello you can read about my upcoming debut novel Rape Jokes here thank you bye), is because I’m looking for bits of myself reflected in the stories other people tell and want to do that for other people when I put expose little chunks of myself to the world at large. We define ourselves with stories, the ones we tell and the ones we consume, and that’s become all the more potent in the last few years as the stories that reach mainstream media become more diverse, the topics wider than ever before.
“Wait, there’s a serial killer in Zoo?” My significant other, raising his hand to stop me mid-flow as I talked about the show I’m working my way through at the moment, furrowed his brow. “I thought it was about animals.”
“Well, it is,” I rolled my eyes impatiently. “But the serial killer was the reason the wolves burned down that prison-“
And that’s when I realized I had a problem.
Well, you voted for it, so here it is: the first of my new blog series, Best Episode Ever. In this series, which will run for about ten weeks, I’ll be looking at exactly what makes a great episode of television: from premiers to finales to bottle episodes to action, sex, and character studies, I’m going to be breaking down precisely what makes an episode of TV brilliant, drawing on a number of shows, old and new, in the process.
And it makes sense to start at the beginning, so I’m kicking off this series with a look at what makes a great first episode. And the show I’m using to investigate that? The Walking Dead.
So, I’ve been giving this blog post a lot of thought recently, and with Riverdale taking Yet Another Break for three weeks, I feel like it’s about time I wrote about it. Why do I love bad television so much?
A few weeks ago, I wrote a Riverdale recap that focused on the lead four (Jughead, Betty, Veronica, and Archie) and how their stories and arcs had been unfolding this season so far. But in doing that, I missed out on the chance to talk about my favorite arc of the show so far: Cheryl Blossom.
