The Cutprice Guignol

I am perhaps the hardest-core Will Arnett fangirl in the country. When I went to Google for images for this article, the first suggested result was “Will Arnett Smile” because I was drunk and had to show pictures of his lovely, lovely face to everyone in the room. Bojack Horseman, the brilliant animated comedy in which he stars, is pretty much the best thing I’ve seen in years. Gob Bluth is without a doubt my favourite thing about the near-flawless Arrested Development. I will fight you on this. I will fight you on this.

He’s…super tan in this series, I’m just now realizing.

So, when I heard that he was co-writing and starring in a new Netflix dramedy, Flaked, I was pretty pumped. And sure, maybe Love didn’t live up to my expectations, but this was Will Arnett, matched up with Mitch Hurwitz (of Arrested Develoment fame) as executive producer. This would be a terrible distraction from the last few weeks at uni and I was going to adore it.

The show revolves around Chip, played by Arnett, an apparently sober alcoholic who killed someone drunk-driving ten years previously. Surrounded by friends and lovers in the sun-soaked backdrop of Venice Beach, he’s become hooked on platitudes and mantras to try and prove to himself that he’s still a worthwhile person, able to help the people around him, particularly those in his Alcoholics Anonymous group. And yes, if you’ve seen Bojack Horseman, you’re all too aware that Arnett has already done a nigh-on perfect midlife crisis show that successfully subverts scores of tropes that genre suffers from. All the tropes, in fact, that Flaked wheezingly plods through over it’s excruciating eight-episode run.

Will Arnett’s face is the only thing I consistently enjoyed about the show.

When you’re treading territory as old as this- a middle-aged white guy has problems, let’s make a show/movie/book about it!- it’s inevitable that you’re going to hit some issues, but come on. Arnett bangs a series of hot young women, as do his equally middle-aged cohorts, even as almost every woman in the show proceed to reveal themselves as liars, emotionally abusive crazies, or vindictive bitches, several of whom are treated like utter crap by the male cast only to come sweetly, passively back. And then there’s Arnett’s on-screen ex-wife, played by Heather Graham- a blond, successful TV actress who apparently always “makes him feel small”. I’m not saying Arnett intended to take a swipe at his real-life blond, successful TV actress ex-wife Amy Poehler with this character, I’m just saying that one could pretty easily read it that way.

When you write a show which also stars you and features certain aspects that could be construed as reflecting your own life, you run the risk of falling into fantasy territory. Arnett is a folk hero for the local community, a stud with decades-younger women, beloved by all- and yes, I understand that a lot of it is meant to be a façade, but it all swings uncomfortably close to cheap wish-fulfilment, and that’s never interesting to watch. Again, I’m not saying it actually Flaked actually is the fantasy of the people behind it, but it certainly reads like that way too often for my liking.

Don’t get me wrong- I still think this is a pelter of a performance from Arnett (and, indeed, the rest of the oft-underserved cast), I’m just not sure the show has any clue what to do with it. Chip is so full of shit that it’s frequently impossible to figure out when he’s being sincere and when he’s just trying to snake his way into the pants of some inevitably-younger woman. Moral ambiguity- hell, having an outright bad guy as your leading character- has been done so well over the last few years (yo, Breaking Bad, haven’t thought about you in a while), Flaked really has no excuse for how ill-defined they make Chip’s motivations. He’s a tantalising, so-close-to-brilliant character that falls painfully short at every turn. As he spouts the story about his drunk-driving to his AA group in the opening seconds on the show, is he doing it to change lives or to garner sympathy? Hnadfuls of these moments are sprinkled throughout the show, scenes and conversations and lines that could have been so impactful is the show actually made a decision about his character. Is he an ultimately good guy using glossy lies and platitudes as a way to cover up his personal failings? Or is he a manipulative douchewad who doesn’t care about the people around him but still wants to feel needed?  It’s not ambiguity if it’s just straight-up confusion. If Flaked had made a decision one way or the other, it could have been brilliant.

And there’s the sad part about Flaked. Much like Love, it could have been something absoloutely great. Yeah, the genre’s been done to death, but Arnett and the rest of the cast put in solid performances and there’s flashes of something nuanced and insightful under the tropey bullshit and the refusal to flesh out characters and the central indecision about Chip’s character. With another season already commissioned, I can only hope that Flaked gets in bearings and leaves it’s weird, confusing first season behind it.

Have YOU always wanted to see a Judd Apatow movie, but have it dragged out over the course of five hours? Boy howdy, have I got the show for you!

So, it’s International Women’s Day; a day to celebrate all the wonderful women in your life, whether they’ve inspired you from afar or helped you move out of your flat after a very stressful week. In day to celebrate amazing women capable of anything and everything the world has to offer, I’m going to do something apocalyptically girly; something so feminine that my ovaries will swell to three times their size and my period will last for a month while I birth a litter of children that follow me around like the graceful earth-goddess I am. While Alanis Morisette and Sleater-Kinney play in the background.

I’ve decided to indulge the media’s proscribed fantasy for twenty-something women, of which I am one, the most stereotypically womanly thing I can think of: paint my nails, drink an entire bottle of Rose wine, and watch an episode of the most definitively girly show I’ve ever seen, Sex and the City, to see what fulfilling the stereotypes of ladydom is actually like. Won’t you join me on this, most womby of adventures (if you want something a little more serious, please check out the blog directory feminism section)?

0:00: Right, the wine is poured, I’ve acquired nail polish, the cat has been firmly warned that if she comes near my hands for the next twenty minutes we get stuck together. Let’s get this show on the road!

0:12: NUH-NAH-NE-NE, NUH-NAH-NE-NE- fuck, I love this theme song, just give me a minute to get up and dance to it.

0:24: My wine is going everywhere. Right, I should sit down.

1:31: Blah, blah, blah, the hot uptight one has a bad kiss on a date and the girls are chatting up over brunch. I hate all of this, till Kim Catrall delivers some filthy pun in a drawl reminiscent of a thousand post-coital cigarettes and I can’t. I might crack out a face mask, really get this party going.

2:31: Kristin Davis is a terrible fucking actress. Sometimes I forget. It looks like she’s about to giggle or cry at any given moment, except when the script calls for her to do either of these things.

4:00 I picked the episode called “No If Ands or Butts”, because it was the first pun that jumped out to me. Better be some anal in this.

5:31: Oh, this is the one where she meets Aiden, the man a thousand times too good for her! The face mask is on, and it feels nice, except the knowledge that I will have to go and remove it in three-five minutes time which means standing up and potentially tripping over my cat. God, they should make a sitcom about me- not a good one, mind, just one where most of the characters turn to camera every five minutes and shake their heads at my fucking ineptitude.

6:22: Sarah Jessica Parker and John Corbett have no chemistry. I don’t remember it being so egregious before.

7:00 Wine, wine, lovely wine. Ugh, I already have nail varnish on my knuckle, somehow.

8:41: Ah, lovely Steve. If it weren’t for his initial ability to fucking take no as answer, he’s really sweet! Some face mask has gotten in my ear, and it feels funny. It’s not that I don’t enjoy the odd pampering session with junky TV, it’s just that when I’m making a pointed effort to do all the girly things at once, it all just feels a bit…stern?

9:15: Miranda has “Ralph Lauren Paint”. Please tell me-What the fucking fucking-

10:00: I’m already a glass in. I quite want to turn this off and clean the house, but I will indulge my feminine side, god-darnit.

10:54: Oh, it’s also the one where Samantha dates a black guy and the show attempts some racial commentary. It’s…questionable. I’ve absent-mindedly run my wet nails through my hair and now I have to start over.

13:54: Aiden won’t kiss Carrie because she smokes, which seems kind of an overreaction. I have smudged blue nail varnish on to my sofa.

15:31: Bad kisser guy is turning into a subplot. It’s ten times less interesting than the crazy gay dude obsessed with dolls subplot, which I reckon should crop up in every show in the world. I’d love to see The Walking Dead work that in. I’m taking the face mask off, because it’s burning a little bit. I don’t even know why I keep face masks in the house as they always make my skin break out.

20:23: Samantha is informed she may not date a black guy because his sister doesn’t approve. Ah, great for this show to finally acknowledge the fact that there are fucking black people in New York after about eighty seasons!

20:41: Everyone tells Carrie to quit cigarettes for Aiden. Not because they’re murderous sticks of death or anything.

21:21: I would turn down sex with Kim Catrall for a cigarette right now. Damn you wine!

22:12: Steve gets uncomfortably angry that Miranda won’t support some dumb-luck basketball thing the plot didn’t bother to get us invested in. Yeah, this plus future cheating with the nanny put Steve down a notch. I jerked my hand up with surprise when he started yelling and very nearly smeared nail varnish on the cat, who did not heed my warnings.

24:50: Carrie gives up cigarettes for Aiden, and they kiss, and John Corbett stands about two feet away from her as he does it, somehow. This subplot feels chemically castrated.

26:17: Kim Catrall is actually a seriously decent actress, and she’s deserves more credit. She even manages to instill some grace into this weird racial supblot.

28:23: Carrie runs out on her date to smoke a cigarette, which is certainly not what I’m fighting the urge to do right n-

28:24: Let’s pretend that five-minute break and the fact I’m now stinking of fags didn’t happen, right? Right. The nail polish is fucked; I’m horrifically bad at this. The wine drinking I am handling, that said.

29:54: This show would be twenty times as palatable without Carrie’s voiceover. Half the bottle of wine is gone, and I have no doubt that it’s because of her.I just glanced in the mirror in the way back from the bathroom and I have wierd clumps of face mask in my eyebrows.

30:21: ROLL CREDITS! Wait, was there anal in this? I’ve asked that question more than I should have in the last couple of months.

So, I’ve enjoyed/endured my stereotypically girly evening, and now I’m off to watch some wonderful women-centric TV (check out my last Women’s Day post if you want some suggestions!), flick through my copy of Vindication of the Rights of Women, and finish this bottle of wine. Happy International Women’s Day, everybody!

Is…is John Travolta wearing a wax John Travolta mask? Otherwise, this is awesome!

So, after a the disappointment of Deadpool in terms of it’s female characters, I’m looking forward to anything that gives us a bit more vag action in the cinema in the upcoming blockbuster season. And this year’s Ghostbusters reboot promises just that, so let’s take a look at the trailer!

So, after a the disappointment of Deadpool in terms of it’s female characters, I’m looking forward to anything that promises a bit more vag action in the cinema. And this year’s Ghostbusters reboot promises just that, so let’s take a look at the trailer!

0:10: Right, okay, even just the reminder of the unbelievably brilliant Ghostbusters theme song is enough to have me pre-booking tickets.

0:14: DID YOU KNOW that this theme song didn’t get an Oscar? An international outrage and definitive proof, if anyone needed it, that the film industry hates anything even tangentially related to horror.

0:25: WOMEN GHOSTBUSTERS WELL ALLOW ME TO TAKE OFF MY FEDORA IN DISGUST AT THIS DISGRACEFUL DISPLAY OF MISANDR-

0:28: Sorry, I was possessed by the soul of a shitlord for a moment, carry on.

0:32: Man, I fucking love Kristen Wiig. I also crave this skirt-suit she’s wearing.

0:42: Pleased to note that this ghost would have given me the appropriate amount of heebie-jeebies when I was a kid, as tradition dictates.

0:52: Is this…a dubstep remix of the Ghostbusters theme song?

0:54: I love how old-school and goofy all the equipment looks-it would feel dirty and wrong for Ghostbusters to have anything slick or modern or even remotely difficult to fumble up a last-minute Halloween costume out of in it’s arsenal.

1:00: Shit, I already have an enormous crush on Kate McKinnon based only on that wink/those goggles.

1:12: I’ve seen a lot of people declaring this movie’s plot (based on this trailer) the same as the original, which…well, no, not really. Move along, move along.

1:27: If there’s anyone on Earth who doesn’t secretly want to own one of those uniforms, they’re lying to themselves and are not to be trusted.

1:32: Ha, Kristin Wiig and Melissa McCarthy are just a pleasure together.

1:37: This is definetly a dubstep remix of the Ghostbusters theme song. I don’t know how to feel about this. Actually, I do, and I hate it.

1:45: This plot reminds me vaguely of Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed, which is a GREAT thing.

1:52: Whatever that thing that just walked by was, I’m pretty sure it’s my fashion inspiration for the next six months.

1:57: Oh hai Chris Hemsworth! I like you better with Thor-hair.

2:12: I’ve never seen Leslie Jones in anything else that I can think of, but I like the idea of someone on the team because of their practical knowledge, not their ghosty stuff.

2:22: I do enjoy the fact she has a necklace with her name on it also. The blindingly obvious Exorcist joke? Not so much.

2:28: Overall, a tickets-on-a-weekday-night n a scale of prebook to boycott.

Historical Scottish romance makes it to the small screen in style.

I’ve never been an enormous fan of The X-Files, but I am an enormous fan of getting drunk on cheap red wine and shouting at the TV with my friends while watching The X-Files, a tradition I’ve been upholding for more than three years now. And hey, I do have a small soft spot in my heart for the goofy, earnest, occasionally brilliant show; it brought us the inimitable Gillian Anderson, for one thing, and despite a violently overwrought mythology, it crammed in a lot of great sci-fi and horror. I’m also dating a person who has an “I Want to Believe” poster over his bed, so I have had it inflicted on me perhaps more than I would have otherwise.

And however I felt about the show, I was pretty pleased to hear about the reboot. With just six episodes, it seemed like a chance for the show to tie a neat bow around it’s sprawling mess of a backstory and provide the vaguely satisfying ending that fans had been praying for for over a decade. It might not be groundbreaking television, but it was a chance for some great actors, writers and directors to chill in a well-realized sci-fi world, and I’m all for that.

So, I gathered the appropriate amount wine and friends and curry and watched the two-parter opening. And it was…there, I guess? Even though it was only broadcast last month, I’m genuinely struggling to remember the actual plot of either episode. Magic…children? Right wing internet news host? Um, Scully has an iPhone? Mulder and Scully were there, but the show seemed worn-out, grasping, outdated, even. I was excited when I first heard that fabulously nineties theme tune for the first time, but the show had insisted on bringing creator Chris Carter’s angsty-teenage writing to the present day too.

And honestly, forgettable is about the best accolade I can give to the miniseries run. After one slightly alright comedy episode, the show took a sharp downward turn, generally limiting Scully’s plot to clunky mother issues (Scully’s mum! Scully AS a mum! Scully as a baaad mum!) and having an increasingly bored-looking Duchovny drag himself through rehashes of older, better stories. Even their once-electric chemistry-  twixt the leads the launched a thousand ships-seemed wheezingly belaboured this time around. With only six episodes, the show was positively drowning in it’s old mythology, apparently unwilling to do a serious freak-of-the-week episode (for my money, the best outings of the show’s original run) because they had so much fucking explaining to do. Explaining that couldn’t be done in nine seasons and two movies, apparently. Explaining that even this season left still unfinished.

(This seasons also seemed to be a Fox News viewer’s wet dream, as well- with some pretty cringe-worthy transphobia, a suicide bombing plot that swung between unthinkingly racist and insanely goofy, and a finale that revolved around an anti-vaccination plot. Yes, The X-Files always took on edgy topics of the day, but all of this seemed as if the show had sort of…not bothered catching up with what was actually genuinely controversial and not just crap spouted by hard-right pundits on late-night TV? Anyway, on with the review.)

As ever, the overarching plot for the miniseries could be summed up in this ever-relevant meme:

-a story- though that moniker might be a little grand for what we actually got- that came to a head a few nights ago in the finale. It’s probably on of the most notably bad finales I think I’ve ever seen- not just fustrating, like The Sopranos, or divisive, like How I Met Your Mother- this was just straight-up a bad piece of television. Written as though Chris Carter had made a bet about the number of times he could put “Alien DNA” in a script, plotted with all the subtlety and nuance of swift kick to the genitals and eye-gougingly dull, My Struggle II- an episode title I am certain turned up in an episode of Scrubs at least once- is bad TV to set your watch by.

An hour-long mess than included such jaw-droppingly awful scenes as Scully morphing into a badly-VFX’d alien to underline some point Chris Carter’s catastrophic script was too lazy to get across, Monica Reyes being dragged back into the plot, presumably because Annabeth Gish lost that “Alien DNA” bet with somebody, and, perhaps most gallingly of all, a cliffhanger. Yes, that’s right- with no future episodes confirmed, the episode had the fucking audacity to end on a cliffhanger. And that about sums up my feelings towards this miniseries as a whole, or rather, how Chris Carter’s feelings to it came across.

This miniseries was a piece of wank. And I mean that in the most literal way possible- this was a giddy little circle-jerk for Chris Carter and his kin, or, at least, that’s how it came across. In refusing the answer any real questions fans had about the show’s mythology, dumping a bunch of weirdly politicized plot points into almost every episode, and rounding off with the inkling of a resolution if fans just stick with it for a few more godforsaken episodes, these six episodes seemed more like Chris Carter pandering to himself over listening to his fans. And he’s totally welcome to do that. And I’m totally welcome to call it an embarrassing piece of shit.

The cream of this year’s new Netflix Originals crop.