Television Review | The Cutprice Guignol

December 15, 2013

America’s Next Top Model: Redux

Last year, I wrote a protracted and essentially pointless rampage against America’s Next Top Model while drunk, that involved a whole lot of babbling about sandwiches and the conclusion that the show was a bit grim but essentially harmless. I was wrong. Oh, how wrong was I. Apparently, I feel the urge to devour a couple of seasons of this unrelenting tripe a couple of times a year, usually when I’m sick or fighting off some bout of crippling boredom or depression (pause for uncomfortable laughter; is she joking? Are we allowed to laugh at it if she is? If she’s not, isn’t that the sort of thing you just shouldn’t joke about? I mean, it’s a bit far, really, and frankly I hope The Guardian launch a liberal hate campaign against her, the scummy, anti-mental health “satirist” cow. Bet she’s sexist too. How many women have you employed, eh, Louise? That’s the question the public are clamoring for an answer to.).

In theory, the show actually comes from a pretty reasonable place. Tyra Banks, who spends much of her time forgetting to put on trousers, decided to re-define beauty in the fashion industry because….well, I don’t know actually. Maybe she had an afternoon free or something. Either way, I kind of respect her buisness acumen; being a model is a career with a built-in sell-by-date, so turning your attentions to becoming Oprah-building a TV empire seems pretty savvy. And giving less conventionally beautiful women (like all these hideously unattractive women here) a chance to break into an industry that would have previously simply laughed in their faces because they were plus-size or short is actually a really nice idea.

While much of the criticism for the show can be drawn for the fashion industry itself-with models being told they are “too slim for plus-size modelling” and the majority of winners being skinny, conventionally gorgeous women in their late teens-I’m going to focus on what’s off with the show alone. For one, not one-NOT ONE- winner or contestants have gone on to become what is, by anyone’s standards, a top model. A top model is an instantly recognisable name, someone who’s probably run around with rock stars for a while, somebody for whom their actual profession takes a back seat to the maelstrom of publicity surrounding them because they’re kind of fascinating and cool. Now, Cara Develigne has proved supermodels still exist-it’s just that the show doesn’t prepare it’s victims for the fashion industry in any way. Ex-winner Caridee English released a statement regarding the effect the show has on the models involved, after contestant Jael Strauss was discovered to be harboring a pretty sizeable meth addiction. Basically, she claimed that participants were greeted by a world in which they were lofty celebrities but unqualified and inexperienced models. There’s something tragically misleading about baring this in mind when watching the show, as the girls go through a heap of emotional distress, upsetting photoshoots and the constantly drilled-in belief that they will have a sky-rocketing career should they win the show. On a related note, both an ex-contestant and a judge have appeared on Celebrity Rehab since their stint of ANTM.

Backing away from the heavy stuff, there’s also the made-up words and phrases the show shoves down your throat at every opportunity. Smize, for example. Which is a word ellision, one that represents the notion of “smiling with one’s eyes”. Can I ask you something? Go to a mirror right now. And try to do that; try to imbue your eyes with emotion without moving the rest of your face. Can’t be done, can it? No, it fucking can’t. Maybe I’m stupid and a terrible model (it would explain the current faliure of my modelling career), but I like to believe that an expression requires some movement of your whole face. “Smizing” is not just an irritating anti-word, it’s also bullshit. This, along with forcing the attractive and charming British photographer Nigel Barker to continually use the word “fierce”, is enough to condemn the show to hell from my point of view.

Then, of course, there’s this: a collection of words so outrageous you’ll die, right here, in front of your computer or preferred device. On the All-Stars Cycle (What?), Tyra Banks filmed a “Motion Editorial” (eh?) for her novel (Come again)? Modelland, about an elite model’s boarding school (Okay, seriously now) featuring anthropomorphic people (I don’t even-), which starred the finalists from that series fondling blood oranges and gorging on whipped cream (a single flatline will suffice).

I first saw this monstrosity in the early hours of the morning and genuinley considered the option that I’d completely lost my mind. Basically, it sums up the show beautifully; a pointless, pretentious, unironically awful piece of crap that has less to do with modelling than my breakfast. Thank you, and kill me.

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November 20, 2013

American Horror Story: Burn, Witch, Burn!/The Axeman Cometh

I’ve noticed something about this series of AMH; each pair of episodes seems to play out at a set-up/pay-off rate from week-to-week. One week there’s a plot heavy furore where we get introduced to all the shit that’s going to go down in the next episode. I don’t particularly mind this set-up, but it still leaves the season with an overall sense of uneveness and lack of coherency.

Take the last two episodes as an example: Burn, Witch, Burn! was a ridiculous, thrilling, breathlessly entertaining hour that blasted through a bunch of brilliantly fun plot points, climaxing in an outrageously slick finale/tribute to Resevoir Dogs in which a stake-burning took place to the strains of Right Place, Wrong Time. It was sickeningly cool; fuck, Jessica Lange lit to pyre with her cigarette. Also scattered around the episode were some cool zombies, Taissa Farmiga growing some balls (and wielding a chainsaw into the bargain), and Jessica Lange winning herself an Emmy in the course of five minutes, a hospital room and a stillborn baby. It was a manic, hilarious, grotesquely affecting episode that hit all the markers set up by last week’s outing.

Then the latest episode-featuring Danny Huston as real-life serial killer The Axeman of New Orleans-just seemed to be preparing us for what was about to happen. Aside from Angela Bisset delivering the line “white-ass cracker bitch” and some gratefully recieved Lily Rabe, there wasn’t much actually going on in The Axeman Cometh. It was still entertaining enough (and benefited from a lack of Kathy Bates, who the writers just don’t seem to know what to do with), but there was a real sense of tantric TV; they brought us to the pitch of excitement then did nothing about it because they’re saving their metaphorical ejaculation for next week’s outing.

On a side note, I’ve been doing a bit of research into this series (which Stevie Nicks has confirmed her appearance in, yeah!), and discovered that no less than three characters are based directly off people who really existed. The least offensive of these is probably Angela Bisset as Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans. Because there’s clearly a lot of mythos surrounding her anyway, adapting her into a kick-ass voodoo bitch-slapper isn’t really much of a leap. But then you’ve got Kathy Bates as Madame LaLaurie. Now, forgive me if you disagree, but when you take someone who genuinley existed, and did some really quite upsettingly horrible things to innocent people for a large part of her life, and whack her in a semi-serious show as an immortal, highly racist bit of comic relief, aren’t you somewhat undermining the nature of the astoundingly awful things she’s done?

So, this week on AMH: I over-analyse my over-analysing. Great.

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November 1, 2013

American Horror Story: Fearful Pranks Ensue

Ladies and Gentemen, we have horror. Repeat, we have horror. The latest episode of Murphchuck’s finest series opens with a brilliant three-minute sequence featuring racism, the 60s, voodoo nonsense, and revenge zombies. I’d pay good money to see that in a full-length movie, and it’s added to by the fact that AHS seems to have taken a step back from the innately uncomfortable LSD trip that was last week and embraced some familiar horror.

This episode is really an indulgent nod to fans of the past seasons, with Alexandra Breckenridge and Frances Conroy returning in substantial roles, and Denis O’Hare finally getting some solid (and brilliant) screentime. Involving a mute character is always a brave choice, especially when you consider O’Hare’s first appearance in the show where he goes like a wind-up toy, but the man’s got such talent and wit that he actually manages to sell all the disconcertingly surreal sequences this episode presents him with.

After a couple of shaky set-up episodes, Fearful Pranks Ensue features the cast in full flight as the series squares up to the insanity of the various plots. It’s a breathless dash through minatour rape, creepy tea parties, the utterly magnetic Angela Bisset, the Witches Council, undead Evan Peters, and some stuff which even might be an attempt at thematic consistency. What I like about American Horror Story, and what I have always liked about it, is the pace at which it rattles through ideas. I have the image of the writer’s room, filled with jittery scribes jacked up on greasy joe from the machine outside, going “Yeah, but what if we did THIS?” “But then what about THAT?” “What do we do with THEM?” until some sort of passably coherent script is churned out.

This makes it completely unpredictable-for the last few weeks, I’d been bemoaning how boring Sarah Paulson’s subplot with her boring, boring husband was and BAM! Left-turned the whole thing for no apparent reason. Thought Emma Roberts was going to be in the full series? Think again. You’ve worked out who the new supreme is? Nope. And that’s what keeps me coming back; because just when you’ve got a grip on the whole thing, it knees you in the groin and feeds you to the manatour.

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October 25, 2013

American Horror Story: Boy Parts/The Replacements

I’ve been re-watching American Horror Story recently, and one the things that got me about this show is the balance of crazy shit and genuine storytelling. In one scene, Jessica Lange is gleefully feeding the mashed-up remains of her husband to the dogs; in the next, Evan Peters is committing a harrowing school shooting. Occasionally, AHS strikes this balance perfectly and the show shines. A lot of the time, it doesn’t, but usually it tips over into batshit lunacy and retains some entertainment value at the risk of throwing any semblance of plot out the window.

And that’s how I plan to dissect the two latest episodes of Coven. Take apart each plot thread and examine it for levels of ridiculousness, emotion, style, finesse and scary shit. Because that’s the only way you can come close to looking at this show scientifically and not get distracted by Jessica Lange.

Plot Thread One: Frankincest

Let’s get right into the juicy stuff; Emma Roberts and Taissa Farmiga sneak into the morgue where the victims of episode one’s bus crash are being held and assemble a franken-frat boy from the remains so Zoe can have her boy toy back. That’s all well and good, and (with a brief detour to an inexplicably alive Lily Rabe channeling a hotter Stevie Nicks under their belt), it looks as if Zoe might have a fuck who won’t have an aneurysm every time they get past third base. Then Taissa makes the stunningly stupid decision to bring Kyle back to his mother in the hopes of reviving some of his ebbing humanity. What follows is essentially a panning shot of the truly horrified faces of the audience; Kyle’s mum, realizing his body is not as she remembered it, is revealed to have indulged in a whole lot of incest with her recently-deceased son. Which we are then briefly privy to. Luckily for us, Kyle then resolves the issue by beating his mother to death in a fit of poorly-articulated rage. But that image of his ma going in for a handy? Nope.

CRAZINESS: 8
STORYTELLING: 5, at a push.

Plot Thread Two: Goings-on at Hogwarts

Pheeeeeoooow, so, a hot new neighbour has moved in next door (his mother played by a bible-bashing Patti LuPone), but seems more interested in Nan (played with incredible competence, wit and style by Jamie Brewer) despite Madison (Emma Roberts-still solid, by the way) practically impregnating him with one, short-skirted quip. Meantime, Kathy Bates is adapting to modern life, haunted by the gruesome deaths of her family and by the fact we have a black president (hot tip for line reading of the decade for Bates’ reactive delivery of “liiiieeeeeees!”). Matters aren’t helped by the fact Jessica’s made her Gabourey Sibide’s “slave” (subtle move for racial equality there, Murphchuck), or the return of the brutal minatour figure that she created in the first episode. Which Queenie then goes on to seduce. Yes, fact fans, we’ve vaulted the boundaries of bestiality and incest in one episode.

Craziness: 9
Storytelling: 7

Plot Thread Three: Jessica, Demon Sex, misc.

Jessica Lange’s Fiona is still swanning around, winning acting forever, but only one main event directly involves her in this two-parter: she murders a young witch who she believes threatens her place as the supreme. Apart from amusing herself, tormenting Kathy Bates and committing minor misdemeanors, The Replacements begins with a superb speech, courtesy of writer James Wong, in which Lange bemoans her aging and her declining health in the most beautifully clever way. Then she fucks some shit up.

Angela Basset is still killing it, the only woman who can hold a candle to Jessica Lange, as the sinister voodoo witch priestess nonsense. Unfortunatley, she doesn’t seem to have a lot to do with what’s actually going on, aside from poking around Sarah Paulson’s womb in a pointless infertility subplot that grossly wastes the talent of everyone involved (but involved Paulson having sex on what appeared to be a set from The Exorcist). I like her laid-back cool and the sharp writing that defines her character, and at the moment I’m just waiting for the mighty trio (Bates, Bisset, Lange) to come together in what will be an earth-shattering Clash of the Titans.

Craziness: 7
Storytelling: 8

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October 11, 2013

American Horror Story: Bitchcraft

Hoo-fucking-rah! American Horror Story has returned, and not a damn minute too soon. This genius series from the makers of Glee has smashed it’s way back onto my TV screen with the third series, Coven, following the jolly larks of a group of young witches.

The Worst Witch it ain’t; the opening scene (featuring an electric Kathy Bates playing her best psycho since Misery) jumps straight into the dark side of the show, with viscous torture and a rather clumsy handling of the RACE ISSUE in 1870s New Orleans. After that, the episode starts smacking us around the face introducing it’s familiar actors playing new roles; Taissa Farmiga as a young witch whose power causes her unfortunate lovers to die while bleeding profusely from every facial orifice, Sarah Paulson as the head of the secretive academy that protects the dwindling number of the supernatrually blessed, Lily Rabe as a fresh-faced witch from the Deep South whose burned alive for her powers, and Frances Conroy as an eccentric grandmother (“I’m simply mad for tartan!”).

Bitchcraft really acts as a world-building episode; we meet the other students at Paulson’s Magic nursery (Emma Roberts, Gabourey Sibide, etc), and learn the place these people hold in society. While most are forced into hiding their powers (“I’M A HUMAN VOODOO DOLL!”), there are some who embrace them, exploit them and live through them.

One of this number is Jessica Lange. It’s difficult to explain how I feel about Lange without being reduced to guttural howls of delight, but suffice to say she once again dominates every second of her screentime. The first shot of her character-a heeled foot stepping out of a car, followed by a crane shot where we can only see her umbrella and her arching shadow-defines it perfectly. She’s sexy, self-assured, darkly hilarious and oozes the sort of charisma Clooney can only dream of. How this show has hung onto her I’ll never know; but I am so glad they did.

Back the episode. Once again, AHS seems to be setting itself for another series full of utterly spectacular female characters. One of the running themes of Coven’s predecessors was the complete lack of women as victims-almost every single wronged woman has taken her fate into her own hands and come out on top. Bitchcraft has a few instances of this; for example, Roberts’ pouty movie star is gang raped at a party (in a scene which could have been horrendously crass and upsetting, but was handled subtley and allowed Emma her dignity). Afterwards, the perpetrators flee onto a bus to make there escape and, as a distraught Farmiga looks on, Roberts’ simply steps into frame and waves her hand at the bus, causing it to flip over and kill almost everyone on board. Later, Farmiga’s Zoe uses her special Jedi skills to rape one of the surviving boys to death in hospital. When Lange is refused a substance meant to restore her youth, she simply sucks the life out of the offending scientist. Whatever you think of what they’re doing-and it’s often violent, frightening, or downright horrific-these are a bunch of women you do not fuck with. And I can get behind that for this series.

Jessica Lange Line Reading of the Week: During an argument with Sarah Paulson (also her daughter, by the way), she delivers a shudderingly caustic “Don’t make me drop a house on you”.

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August 16, 2013

A Yellow Marriage: The Simpsons

Now, I don’t have many rules in life. Don’t trust a student to do anything in the time frame you’ve given them; don’t try and fix the towel rack in your bathroom while your mechanically-minded roommate is out of the country; never, ever arrive early for a bus in Scotland. But one rule-one defining, thrusting, pulsingly huge rule-I live my life by is this: NEVER trust someone who doesn’t like The Simpsons.

I’ve been watching The Simpsons for literally my entire life (in fact, the episode Homer: Badman was broadcast on my birthday. Almost as impressive as the fact I share an anniversary with Bill Nye the Science Guy). And it is, unequivocally, my favourite show- I watch when I’m down, when I’m sick, when I’m happy, when I’m working, when I’m sleepy, when I’m horny-the point I’m trying to make is that there is no conceivable mood I could have where watching The Simpsons would be off the emotional menu.

It’s a beautifully constructed show; in equal parts touching, romantic, and sweet, while never losing sight of the fact that it should entertain first and foremost. It’s fucking hilarious; even the undoubtedly weaker new series (twenty-four series! That’s older than my parent’s marriage!) are consistently amusing fare, even if they’ve lost the touch to make me weep like a clinically depressed toddler whose just been told Rosie & Jim isn’t being renewed for the rumored final season.

What’s truly wonderful about The Simpsons is that everyone has a character they relate to. For me, it’s Lisa-I mean, come on. The irritatingly precocious, know-it-all, reliant-on-overachieving little sister? Nah, no idea what you’re talking about. But, as you grow up, you see more of yourself in older characters, as horrendously grounding as that is; when you start looking at Homer and Marge and realise you’d quite like a marriage like that, for some reason. I, myself, aspire to be Mr Burns. It’s incredible that the programme has created such sympathetic, relatable characters out of some four-fingered yellow sketches voiced by Hank Azaria and co. And, yeah, it’s gone downhill-but it still shows flashes of true, unadulterated brilliance, underscored by that pop-culture dobbing and genius writing. Whatever happens, The Simpsons is part of me-it’s influenced what I want, how I write, and who I am. Here’s to another twenty-four years.

Since that’s far too soppy a sentiment to leave the blog on: Cocks.

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August 13, 2013

Friends: An All-American Love Affair

I was sitting with my consort and one of his numerous family members (frankly, I only need three or four on a good day), watching Friends, when said family member merrily pointed out that it was essentially a hollow facade, as we could very probably recite the dialogue by heart, and perhaps act out each episode in avant-garde reproductions with hilarious wigs. Or something.

Her point, however, stands; I have been aware of Friends as long as I can remember (it started the year I was born) and watching it for most of my adolescence. I could probably give you a reasonably accurate rundown of the plot for every episode ever made, even though I wouldn’t class it as one of my favourite shows (for future reference, my favourite TV show ever is The Simpsons. A blog post is currently gestating but will likely be nine months in my mind-womb). And that’s wierd for me; I rarely attach myself so fully to a show I don’t completely adore, but watching Friends is like slipping into a warm bath with Stephen Fry-comforting, lulling and not something I would object to on any level. Because of the sheer vastness of the series, I’ve decided to simply take apart each of the main six characters for my own amusement (hey, maybe even yours!).

1. Rachel

An almost garishly girly girl, the writers didn’t really bother with a character for Rachel until the later series; instead, she was defined by her relationship with Ross and her general incompetence in the face of real life in any facet. It wasn’t until the later series that I really began to like the character that had begun as a hairstyle-she’s smart, ambitious, a little cynical, but ultimately a good person. Not as hot as Courtney Cox, though.

2. Joey

There’s still a huge part of me that wants to be the big spoon to Matt LeBlanc. He’s a horrendously smarmy, promiscuous, proto-Stinson who once shagged the hot one from Sex and the City-but he also practically originated the man-slut-with-a-heart-of-gold. He’s also one of the most consistently funny characters-intellectually a blancmange, but socially pretty canny and the king of physical comedy on Friends. Not as hot as Courtney Cox, though.

3. Phoebe

Urururururgh. Phoebe, for me, is the only character that makes me flinch a little-it’s less because she’s poorly written, and more because she represents the kind of person I dislike in real life. Her flightly, airy, hippy-dippy nature is well-pitched but irritates the hell out of me-her only real redeeming factors being her wonderfully handled relationship with Joey, and her acting as a catalyst to get both Giovanni Ribsi AND Paul Rudd onto the show. Not as hot as Courtney Cox, though.

4. Ross

Simultaneously pathetic and sweet, arrogant and adorable, David Schwimmer puts in a deliciously Eeyore-ish performance as the hapless paleontologist. Everything’s said with a drooping head and that cuddly drone, he’s the understated comedy lynchpin of the series-and, as the only person with a kid from the start, brings a pleasant sense of emotional balance to the show. Not as hot as Courtney Cox, though.

5. Chandler

Chandler is my spirit animal. As much a source of mockery as a source for it, he’s fully rounded from the beginning-the try-hard joker in the pack, cynical, bitter, sad, but crushingly quippy and brutally funny. When you get too drunk and start trying to make socially incisive witticisms about your social group, this is who you imagine you are. Not as hot as Courtney Cox, though.

6. Monica

By far the best of the women, Cox shares mountains of chemistry with her on-screen cohorts, usually acting as the stepping stone for all the best jokes and emotional moments. Her partnership with Chandler is superb, the ultimate in unlikely-likely sitcom romance. Not as hot as..um, actually, yeah.

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July 19, 2013

Weasels, Mulder, and the Summertime

So it’s been hot around here recently. So hot that going outside causes me to burst into spontaneous flames. So hot that last night I had a dream about ice-skating around a museum of giant mutant weasels. So hot I have an amusing anecdote about me, groggy with sleep and in the nude, the curtains on my ground-floor flat, and a very noisy painter I knew nothing about till we were face-to-tits at ten in the morning. In short: it’s fucking hot. I don’t like it.

As an excuse not to go outside (as if I ever need one), I’ve been re-watching The X-Files. The X-Files is one of those series I watched back-to-back a few years ago in a naked frenzy of “I SHOULD HAVE FUCKING SEEN THIS BY NOW”. Thusly, I didn’t really appreciate it the first time round; it took until my consort tempted me into watching “Just the Stephen King episode!” with some wine and doughnuts (a classic combination) last weekend till I found myself gently spooning the screen in sheer delight at how utterly wonderawful it is.

Allow me to explain: I LOVE The X-Files. In many ways, it’s a superb show; few programmes have managed to capture the superb chemistry between a devastatingly handsome David Duchovny and a I’d-nail-her-so-hard-you-could-hang-potraits-from-her Gillian Anderson, or the flashes of extraordinarily good scriptwriting, or those occasionally brilliant guest performers. But it’s patchy. I always felt the show was at it’s best when it was doing the freak-of-the-week stuff; throwing Mulder and Scully’s banter at whatever creepy, outrageous or downright silly creature is prancing around America this week. My main issue with the show is that it got too wrapped up in it’s own mythos; by the last few seasons, all the aliens and Smoking Men and mysterious pregnancies got in the way of the fun parts of the show. I do appreciate building a universe around a show, adding depth and shadow to the programme, but I LIKE IT BETTER WHEN THEY’RE MONSTER-BUSTING DAMMIT.

On a side note, I’ve started a new project. After originally planning to do some vague articles about, officially, “Ghosts n’ shit”, I ended up with no less than fifteen interviews, two confirmed invites to go on some official paranormal investigations, and more ideas than I knew what to do with, I’ve decided to turn the whole thing into a bit of a book. Should be fun, and I’ll keep you updated; I’ll be posting the chapter about my ghosthunting trips up here on due course, so keep an eye out for some potentially paranormal antics. If the heat doesn’t kill me first. Urgh.

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June 28, 2013

Charlie and the Chopped-Up Factory

In short, it’s been a rough week. I’ve been writing (yes, writing is my actual job, living the dream, sell-out, whatever you want to shout at me) enough to castrate my sleep pattern, my body has been going so mental I half-expect to wake up tomorrow with my thumbs on fire or something, and I had to get up at seven this morning. SEVEN! I’m a student AND freelance writer! I shouldn’t even know the morning exists!

So the week’s been a blur. But one thing that stands out loud and clear is watching Bates Motel back-to-back. I may have casually dropped into this blog perhaps once or twice that I don’t really mind a bit of horror here and there, so I decided to get down on the prequel of Psycho, starring Freddie Highmore (welcome to a world of painful Charlie and the Chopped-Up Factory jokes, darling) as a teenage Norman Bates, Vera Farmiga as the eponymous Mother, and Max Thieriot (whose name I swear I read as Max The Riot for seven episodes) as half-brother his name escapes me. I’ll go out on a limb and guess the surname’s Bates.

Now, I wasn’t sure about this series from the start. I put off watching it so long because the basic premise-a Psycho prequel set in the present day-seemed so thunderingly pointless. Origin stories are almost inevitably disappointing, as we almost need no more than an implication of background for a character as iconic as Norman Bates. I just need to know what they are now (or, confusingly, 1960 in this case). But hey: I’ll give everything a go once. That’s why my nose is squint.

The show, I soon discovered, has several wonderful points. Max Thieriot, for example, took the kind of shitty role he was given and ran with it, becoming a vain, snippy voice of reason against the increasing tidal wave of absurdity. I couldn’t tell you specifically why he was my favourite-maybe because I came to the series with no preconceptions about his character-but I loved Thieriot and he’ll be delighted to hear I shall be following his career with interest after Bates Motel. And there were some really fantastic touches-the recreation of the motel and house on the hill was grand-as well as a couple of seriously unsettling Oedipal moments between Norman and Norma (there’s a scene when she’s sitting on his bed, just chatting, and touches his leg as she leaves, and the barely-perceptible leg shuffle Highmore does afterwards made me cringe). I like the few nods to Hitchcock’s Psycho, too-there’s a spot-on recreation of a shot of Norman from above that made the pretentious part of me put down it’s Merlot and raise an eyebrow.

But there are many, many things wrong with the show. It makes Norma into a constant victim, then villain, then victim, then villain, then…and so on. I like moral ambiguity in a show-Bryan Cranston in Breaking Bad, anyone?- but there’s no grey area here. There’s just black and white very, very quickly; it’s like driving past a field of zebras on a segway. Then there’s the problem of Freddie Highmore. No, that’s wrong- I don’t know if he’s good or not. Norman Bates is a jackpot of a role for someone trying to break into the real acting industry after being a pretty well-known movie baby- you’ve got one of the most iconic performances ever to work off of and some sterling source material in the form of the film and the book. But I’m torn. Sometimes I think he’s giving an astoundingly perceptive performance of an emotionless psychopath and sometimes I think he just can’t act. Either way-he’s not Norman.

And therein lies the rub. The show, while occasionally showing flashes of being interesting and quite dark, isn’t and shouldn’t have tried to align itself with Psycho. Tap into small-town politics, have a creepy mother-son relationship, make it wierd and unsettling-but let’s face it, lads, the minute you gave Norman an iPhone I disassociated Bates Motel from Psycho in my head. The show is pointless. Interesting, but pointless. We don’t need Psycho: College Years. The show itself seems to realize this early on and gives up making Norman into NORMAN BATES; aside from a few cursory “LOL HE’Z A NUTTER” moments, Bates Motel is going to be looked back on as another hanger-on, a vaguely interesting premise that threw out it’s source material by episode four. That said, it’s been renewed for a second season, and I will be watching, to see if anyone can taxidermy up this joint. Somebody hand me a segway.

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June 23, 2013

Death: XXX

I’ve expressed countless times, both on this blog and in endless pub arguments, that violence in entertainment is not just justifiable but traditional; for years, we’ve been entertained by every genre of generalized human suffering. Something I don’t think I’ve expressed as fully is my aversion to sexualised violence. I’m not sure why, but the addition of a sexual element to torture or murder or what have you makes me a little…uncomfortable. It could be my horribly old-fashioned view of sex as being best when shared with someone you love and care about, and when you start adding in, I don’t know, a naked woman frolicking in the blood of a beautiful, scythed young nymphet (yes, I fucking hate Hostel), it gets a bit rough. Nothing against the BDSM community, mind- Safe, Sane and Consensual is the general rule there. Three words, ironically that do not apply to 1000 Ways To Die.

1000 ways to die is your usual dumping ground for terrible actors, spurious experts and boundless “true stories”. Basically, it features dramatized versions of various horrible and unlikely ways people have met their maker. It’s hilarious viewing for the first episode or two-a sort of less-funny, poorly animated version of The Darwin Awards, accompanied by a hi-larious voice over which would be infinitely if it were just me with a swanny whistle and a whoopee cushion. By episode three, you’re feeling a bit grubby. By episode six or so, you’re weeping in a corner in a mixture of fear, disgust and heartbreaking self-loathing. I counted up, and, of the thirty-seven episodes of the first three seasons, there are forty-one stories involving sex in some way or another. And this isn’t all jolly larks, like a woman masturbating with a carrot (HAS SHE NOT HEARD OF YEAST INFECTIONS?!) and sending a deadly air bubble to her heart. This is someone mistaking a grizzly bear for a member of a furry group and having his intestines torn out. This is someone trying to seduce a builder and being bisected by a buzz saw. This is someone choking to death on a ball gag after his dominatrix mistakes his protests at his hitherto-unknown deadly latex allergy for moans of pleasure. This is Death: XXX.

And this is all rated TV-14. Right, I’m not getting into the ratings debate (again) but seems to me like this is cheating a little bit. Just because the show doesn’t people getting their guts ripped out or their genitals electrocuted or a frankly questionable amount of stuff to do with violent death and farts doesn’t mean it doesn’t put that idea in someone’s head. Now, I was a particularly neurotic and easily frightened child (I used to get terrified by the descriptions of CSI in the Radio Times), but even by age fourteen I don’t think putting the concept of pretty intense BDSM death or violent brain hemorrhage in MY violent brain hemorrhage would have been something I could cope with. Something like Saw incorporates hideous death into a story (or at least a semblance of one), but this show simply presents money shot after money shot as entertainment with no sense of moral or character or depth. It’s exhaustingly pointless-less compassion fatigue than sheer acceptance of your own limits as a human. Why is this harmless entertainment? Why is this acceptable because of a slightly sarcastic voiceover? If I make pithy comments over House of 1000 Corpses will it be required viewing in primary schools? Why isn’t anyone making me dinner? Where’s my wine? What was I… oh, forget it. I’ll keep fighting the good fight.

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Category: Television Review