Witherspoon, Washington, Burning Bright: Little Fires Everywhere Review

Reese Witherspoon has always been one of the most exceptional actresses working, from her stunning debut in The Man of the Moon to Election  to her Oscar winning turn in Walk the Line, she has been one of the most superbly quiet performers in all of film. And just in the last two years, television has witness what some have called the Reenaissance, particularly in her incredible work as Madeline, the Monterrey mother who tries to be quietly forceful in everyone else’s life and can barely control he own, in the HBO powerhouse drama Big Little Lies.

Those have been watching her early work as Elena on Hulu’s new limited series Little Fires Everywhere could make the argument that her work is just a variation on Madeline. Elena is a busy mother with a seemingly happy marriage and four children. She had a career that she set ahead for motherhood, and she believes in the intricacy of planning every detail of her life. When her husband tries to persuade her to have sex, she gently tells him: ‘We have sex Wednesday and Saturday.’ But Elena’s world is far darker than Madeline’s was (at least in Season 1). Her real problem seems to be with her youngest daughter, Isabella. She has plans for all her children, and Izzy (as she insists on calling herself) has become increasingly hard to love as is going through some very dark turmoil (She sets fire to her hair, has a cut a way she doesn’t like, and when its time to do what could be a critical musical audition for her future, she writes on her forehead in black marker: “NOT YOUR PUPPET”  Elena can see that there’s trouble. Everyone else says she’s overreacting.

Witherspoon as always is engrossing to watch, but just as in every work she’s done in TV so far, she seems destined to be eclipsed by a brighter sun. In Big Little Lies, it’s Nicole Kidman. In The Morning Show, it’s Jennifer Anniston.  And here, it definitely looks like it’s going to be Kerry Washington.

Washington plays Mia Warren, and when we first meet her she and her daughter are living out of their car.  She and her daughter have clearly been on their own for awhile – Pearl tells Elena’s son Moody that they’ve been doing this so long that she never paints one of her rooms. Elena and Mia meet early and their behavior is combustible. Elena starts by calling the police and warning them about her car, she then shows them a place and makes an exception on renting, out of a combination of white guilt and her determination to ‘fix’ things, and then tries to ask Mia if she wants to me their ‘housekeeper’, an attitude that Mia rages about initially and clearly doesn’t like the way their children are hanging out. There is clearly some darkness in their past (we don’t know the details yet) but there’s clearly something that she isn’t telling us. The first episode ends with Elena learning that Mia Warren has already lied to her.

I’ve expressed my disdain for Washington’s work on Scandal repeatedly, but I’ve always known she was a great actress and there is more depth and range in one episode than I ever saw her show as Olivia Pope. Even if the only draw for Little Fires was watching these two actresses bounce off each other, it would be worth the draw. But there are several other actors I admire in this cast – Joshua Jackson and Rosemarie DeWitt continue to show why they are among the most undervalued actors in TV, and all of the children – especially Megan Stott as Izzy and Lexi Underwood as Pearl – reveal a level of depth that we rarely got, with some exceptions, on Big Little Lies.

Not that we don’t know there’s some trauma in the future. In the opening second we saw the Richardson family stand among the rubble of the house, and saw Elena being question as to who tried to burn it down – with her in it. I have no doubt everybody has suspects already, but I’m more than content to let the mystery simmer before igniting. I also admire Hulu’s restraint when it comes to releasing its series – you can’t binge it all at once, as you could on Netflix or Amazon, you have to have a little more patience. This may be the best reason to subscribe to Hulu for those of us who never could get into The Handmaid’s Tale. And for those of us waiting (and hoping) for a third season of Big Little Lies, this is a marvelous stopgap.

My score: 4.25 stars.

Better Late Than Never: The Kominsky Method Season 2 review

I have always been in quiet awe by the abilities of Alan Arkin. Going in to his seventh decade as a performer, he has always been one of the most understated comic – and occasionally dramatic – actors who’ve ever lived. When he won his Oscar for Little Miss Sunshine, I have no doubt many people were thinking it would serve as the Lifetime achievement award for his career. If anything, it’s started an entirely new life for him as a performer.  And rarely has their been a perfect setting of actor and role than his work in Netflix’s The Kominsky Method.

The series is about the complicated friendship between Sandy Kominsky (Michael Douglas, whose work I’ll get to momentarily) and his agent Norman (Arkin) After Norman’s wife passed away in the Pilot, Sandy followed his late wife’s wish to take care of his friend who was considering suicide for awhile, whose only daughter has been in and out of rehab (she went through a stint last season), and who seems to spend much of his life now going to funerals of former clients. It was at that most recent funeral that he finally met one of the last girlfriends he had before he got married, Madelyn (Jane Seymour, showing comic timing I honestly never thought she had) and slowly she and Norman are finding their way into a relationship again. In the last episode, I watched Norman went out to Santa Barbara with her, and after a lovely evening, suddenly realized Madelyn wanted him to sleep with her. This led to a terrified call to Sandy, where the discussion involved whether or not the plumbing still worked, and more importantly, what it would be like to have sex with a different woman after nearly half a century of marriage.  The end scene of the episode was both touching and wry at the same time, and demonstrated yet again what gifts Arkin has possessed.

Of course, as anyone who watches this series knows, Douglas has great comic ability as well. It has been a great joy to see that Michael Douglas has finally cut loose all the burdens of being SO intense for two generations of movie goers and has regained the comic timing he rarely got a chance to demonstrate in his film work. His major storyline this season so far has involved his relationship with his daughter Mindy, who just revealed to him that she’s been seeing an older man. Actually a man about Sandy’s age. For about a year. Sandy, who’s spent much of his life dating much younger women, is appalled at this (and not at all comforted by the fact that Mindy tells him about a prostate drug her boyfriend’s on) but agrees to have dinner with them. What follows is pure joy as Sandy meets this new man (a nearly unrecognizable Paul Reiser), and they start getting along when it becomes clear that her boyfriend has more in common with Sandy then he does with her. (Poor Mindy can only relate to their references by saying: “He’s dead, right?” and getting steadily more drunk)

The Kominsky Method is one of the more joyous comic experiences on a service that has more than its fair share. It’s not as mind-bending as Russian Doll or as thrilling as GLOW – it’s just fun. And much as with Grace and Frankie, there’s always so much joy in seeing some of the greatest actors of the past demonstrate their magic. (In a wonderful scene, Sandy’s ex-wife is played by Kathleen Turner. The marriage seems to have gone nearly as well as it did when they were co-starring in The War of the Roses.) And trying to deal with the world of Hollywood being the killer of dreams is also fun. When Sandy tells his class that they may not all make it as actors, they all assure him that they’re going to do with the hopefulness of the young. Is it art? No. But hey, this is Hollywood. Art isn’t part of consideration most of the time.

My score: 4.5 stars.

Last Night Jimmy Became Saul

I don’t normally review individual episodes in TV history, but last night’s episode of Better Call Saul may have been the most significant episode in the series history. This is where Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk)  stopped even the pretense with his nearest and dearest that he was ever going to be a good man and officially became, well, Goodman.

For the past three episodes, Kim has been doing everything within her conscience to stop an old man from being evicted from his home, so that Mesa Verde, the major client that has kept her going financially for the past three years, can build a call center. In a desperate move, she asked Jimmy to step in and start represented the victim.

In a sense, Kim knew what she was getting into: she’s had front-row center to Jimmy’s increasingly extensive showmanship and she was counting on this very behavior to call the dogs off. But in trying to hold to her ethics, she didn’t count on Mesa Verde CEO Kevin (an exceptional Rex Linn) becoming so determined on winning that he dug in and kept Kim on rather than let her recuse herself and refusing to surrender. It can be said that Jimmy gave her multiple chances to get out – most notably, when the PI he hired did some shady things, and she remained firm. But Kim only was willing to give up when her own job was placed in jeopardy.

The problem is, Jimmy has now embraced Saul, and that is winning out over anything else. After spending an immense amount of time on producing a series of commercials, Kim came to him and basically called the operation off.  Jimmy seemed like he was going to go through with it, but then after committing a truly horrendous (if hysterical) prank on long time nemesis Howard, he decided to basically do what we know Saul Goodman does. The big difference was, this time Kim didn’t know it was coming. And when his entire performance began, you felt equal amounts hilarity and genuine foreboding as Kim finally realized just how far gone the man she loved is.

And the true tragedy of this series is that Jimmy will never get it. In a scene so bravura I guarantee you it will be part of the FYC envelopes this year, Kim finally exploded on Jimmy, explaining to him just how horrible he was and that it was truly impossible for her to be with him anymore.  But what made it resonate was the teaser where we saw a teenage Kim being belatedly picked up by her boozing mom from her cello recital, and determinedly walking home.  Then we heard those words from her mom: ‘You never listen, Kim.”

And now we see the tragedy of Kim as well. Because this is the same warning flares that Skyler got when she elected not only to stay with Walt but start laundering his money. And Kim clearly sees those flares … but the last words out of her mouth in the episode are: “Or we get married.” I love watching everything Rhea Seehorn does (if she doesn’t get an Emmy nod this year, she really should call Saul), but this made my heart break. Kim Wexler doesn’t seem to be in Saul’s life during Breaking Bad (then again, we never saw him at home) but she definitely didn’t go with to Omaha.  Jimmy and Kim are true soulmates, which is their tragedy. If Jimmy had been willing to listen to Kim, maybe he would’ve been a better man.

But earlier this season, we knew Jimmy’s fate was sealed. In the ongoing backstory of the feud between the Salmanaca clan and Gus Fring, he was enlisted by Lalo to help get one of his dealers as a CI to work against Gus. Jimmy did everything in his power to get out of it, but Lalo just told him ‘You’ll find the time’. We still don’t know how his loyalties will shift from Lalo to Gus (my guess is Mike will play a critical role), but we know once he does, it’s essentially all over him. He’s on the direct path that will lead him to Walter White and doom him from being the hero of his own story to another victim of Heisenberg.

 What has made Better Call Saul a true masterpiece that I’m willing to bet not even the most loyal Breaking Bad fans could’ve anticipated it would be is that it has revealed the true tragedy of so many of the stories behind the characters we thought we knew.  Jimmy McGill could have been a good lawyer, maybe even a good person. But the man who should’ve loved him the most never believed in him, and because of that the woman who loved him because of his imperfections could not save him.

On Showtime, Monday Only Gets Blacker.... And Not In A Good Way

I have raved about many of Showtime’s series over the past several years, but that doesn’t mean that they haven’t made some major mistake over that same period. And sadly, one really has to consider Black Monday, the 1980s Wall Street comedy, as one of their more prestigious failures.

Considering the level of the cast, and the fact that I tend to like period pieces in general, I was willing to give the series a fair amount of rope. All it did was refuse to tie itself into anything resembling a knot. The series centered around Maurice ‘Mo’ Monroe (Don Cheadle really needs to talk to his agent about taking Showtime roles), a trader who spent all of Season 1, trying to engage in ‘The Georgina Play’ , a plot that would make him and his firm a shitload of money. Throughout the first season, the big play seemed to be that when October 19, 1987 came, someone vital to the cast would die among the market crash. To say that eventual revelation of who the dead man was an extreme anticlimax was not even the greatest failure of the series. Everyone in the cast seemed determined to completely flip their loyalties based on obscure reasoning, and by the time the final double cross was over, Blair (Andrew Rannels), the corn-fed yokel who seemed to be set up as the fall guy had been positioned as the villain and Mo was actually heroic. And if you really were willing to buy into that, you had far more patience for the series than I did.

Part of me was really hoping that, now that the series was free from the baggage of being tied to a single event, the writers might be able to give the show some new life. Based on the two episodes that premiered last night, much like most of the cast, Black Monday is doubling down. It’s been a year, and Mo has been blamed for the ‘act of financial terrorism’ known as Black Monday, and is on the run.  Dawn (Regina Hall)  is now running Mo’s group, has stocked it with women, and is trying an S&L scheme. She’s still partners with Blair, who is now being considered a financial and political genius (he’s still neither) and is making rounds of lobbyists with his trophy wife (Casey Wilson). Mo is on the run, along with Keith (Paul Scheer) the only man who seems to be fully liberated from everything that has happened. And Mo seems about to get dragged back into everything he left behind.

Under  better writers, one could definitely see a genuinely good idea here – the fact that all the people involved in trying to take over Wall Street are the ones who are permanent outsiders. But Black Monday either doesn’t have the energy to make the effort or doesn’t want to try. Almost every line out of every characters mouth is some kind of horrible pun or play on words that would barely past muster in a real 1980s comedy. The most offensive thing the series can seem to say about the REAL Lehman brothers was that they were incestuous twins, which as sick as it is  pales in comparison to everything that company actually did when it was active. And by far, that is the most imaginative thing about the series.

It’s a real shame because there’s a very good cast here that is genuinely being wasted. The only cast member who really seems to know what she’s doing is Regina Hall as Dawn.  The most realistic moment in the season premiere came when Dawn, who isn’t getting credit for what she’s accomplished, reads an article about herself in The Wall Street Journal – and it’s a puff piece, complete with a cheesecake picture. Her genuine rage at everybody is a genuine cry out to the world that the series can’t approach as well as the fact that she truly still misses – and understands – Mo’s problems. Yet when she finally finds him in the next episode, in a matter of minutes they’re making horrible puns about sharks on cocaine.

There’s so much potential in Black Monday, and just as in Cheadle’s previous series House of Lies, it is utterly wasted. Showtime has gone out of its way to portray this series as a true 1980s product, right up to using their old logo. Unfortunately, the 1980s product is not any of the good 1980s comedies (like say, Cheers or The Jeffersons) , but rather ALF or Head of the Class or any of the other brainless series of that era. I don’t know what the intended audience for this show is, but in an era in which were dealing with Wall Street and financial deregulation more than ever, I think this series wouldn’t work in any of them.

My score: 1.75 stars.

Shondaland, Shipping and Why The Twain Shall Never Meet

I had really hoped I could spend the rest of my career as a critic not writing another word about Shonda Rhimes and anything she did. Scandal’s gone, How to Get Away With Murder is near the end, and even Rhimes herself has departed ABC for the greener pastures of Netflix (where she can no doubt have her characters use the word most associated with their favorite activity) I figured I could just run out the clock on TGIT, and be thankful for what Shonda did for Million Little Things.

And then this Thursday, Alex Karev departed Seattle Grace. This was going to happen at some point – after fifteen years, Justin Chambers one of the few original characters still standing had announced he was leaving Grey’s Anatomy. The fact that he had filmed his final episodes before the writers could come up with an appropriate departure was inevitably going to disappoint those few steadfast fans of the series.  And then it was revealed that Alex was leaving the hospital to live with Izzie Stevens. You know, his first wife who he had a child with before she departed for greener pastures, and who as far I know, they never explained just how he ended up divorcing her. And the inevitable outrage followed from all those who had been invested in the Alex-Jo marriage.

Full disclosure. I was an Alex-Izzie shipper when I watched the series. Considering all the obstacles they went through just getting to the point where they could be together, I was more invested in their relationship than Mer-Der. The fact that Katherine Heigl ended up leaving Grey’s Anatomy without any real explanation was, along with the death of George O’Malley, the major reason I gave up watching the show more than a decade ago. So the fact that Alex and Izzie ended up being together, even in absentia, gives me a real sense of closure that I really thought would never happen.

But I can understand why some people were still invested in a relationship that had been going on for six years onscreen, and whose disruption would make people unhappy. To which to all of you who are still watching Grey’s after all these years: Seriously, have you learned nothing from what the show?

Shonda Rhimes and whoever’s running the series now (I could just easily look it up but I don’t think it makes a huge difference) made it abundantly clear that on Grey’s Anatomy, love is as best temporary. There’s no such thing as a happy ending. And by the way, why are still you watching anyway? Didn’t you all swear up and down that after Derek Shephard ended up dying that you were never gonna watch the show again? There’s an online petition there to prove it.

I have said over and over I never understood the appeal of Grey’s Anatomy, but I think I do now. Its precursor is now ER, where at least some people cared about saving lives, nor St. Elsewhere, where we actually gave a damn when characters were killed off, but rather Melrose Place.  The difference is, Melrose Place never made the mistake of taking itself seriously. It knew it was a guilty pleasure, and its entire cast and writers leaned into it with relish. When Michael Mancini divorced and kept having affairs with the same women, you knew it was playing as a satire. Grey’s Anatomy has spent its entire run, trying to convince its legions of fans that it’s about medicine or love. But its no more about that Scandal was about politics or How to Get Away with Murder is about law. It’s about sex, sex, and whoever you feel good sleeping with at the time. Relationship, marriage are at best minor delays in screwing someone strange. If you really doubt that, ask yourself this. How many times in the series run has a doctor married someone on staff, divorced them, and married someone else? This is a lot closer to incest than Game of Thrones ever was.

And Rhimes and her cohorts have always emphasized this. Why else would Richard Weber lose both his mistress and his wife to early onset Alzheimer’s? So that he could sleep with someone else guilt free.  Remember when Lexie Grey and Mark ‘McSteamy’ Sloane died on the same plane crash? Both actors were planning to leave the show. It would’ve taken no effort for Rhimes to write and ending where they leave Seattle together and live happily ever after.  Not only did she do that, she actually had the gall to say when it was over: ‘Now Mark and Lexie can be together forever” Aaron Spelling at his most outlandish was never that cruel.

I’m honestly amazed Grey’s fans actually believe that a happy ending is possible. Remember, Rhimes refused to kill Christina Yang when Sandra Oh was going to leave because she didn’t think Meredith would ever get over it. But having to pull the plug on your husband/lover for a decade is something you can?!  I’m amazed she actually had the nerve to say that friendship matters, considering that almost nobody on this series (or again, any Shondaland show) has ever had a friend? You have colleagues; people you sleep with, and people you may sleep with later. That’s about it.

I could spend pages ranting and raving about everything wrong with Shonda Rhimes in general and Grey’s Anatomy in particular, but I’ve done enough of that for a lifetime. So I’ll just say this to Grey’s fans. Alex Karev left Seattle Grace (or whatever the hospital’s called now) alive. Very few cast members have. And he’s going to get a happy ending. As far as I know, nobody does on this series. If that doesn’t make you happy, well, I’m sorry; you know damn well the showrunners have never really cared about your happiness as long as you watch. You want your favorite characters to be together; there’s fanfic for that, and believe me, it can often be more satisfying than what you get on this show.

This Comedy Truly Is One of TV's Better Things

The longer I watch Better Things, the more I begin to realize just how much I like Pamela Adlon. Adlon has been around television for a very long time. She was probably the only thing that made Californication worth watching, and her fine work on Louie seemed to be leading to a great collaborative process, until Louis C.K. disgrace caused her to cut ties with him two years ago. None of that has rubbed off on one of TV’s quiet masterpieces FX’s Better Things.

Adlon plays Sam Fox, a struggling actress still trying to make a living as she turns 50. The entire world has always seemed to be turned against her.  Her rarely seen husband is a monster who torments her through her divorce. Phil, her mother (the incredible Celia Imrie) may be the single coldest maternal figure in television history. It’s not just that she doesn’t seem to care for her daughter; its that she seems incapable of caring for anyone or how her actions affect them. In the fourth season premiere, she clearly had what was some kind of cardiac episode that cause them to put a defibrillator on her. (No doubt this stunned those of us who have watched her, and were pretty certain she never had a heart at all.) The near death experience has just made her more careless to her own family.  Sam’s three daughters are some of the most exceptional children in all of TV.  Frankie  is clearly a genius with a genuine eccentric style to her, who can barely tolerate her mother. Max went to college last year, and basically went through a long process where she seemed to drop out. Duke is by far the youngest, and at times the most compassionate of the children.  All of them have their own way of being a joy and a curse to their mother – Frankie just turned fifteen and wants her first huge birthday party – a quinceanera. This irks Sam not only because her daughter is ‘too Jewish for this’ but tradition is the mother must invite the father – who as we’ve already established, is a prick.

  Some might complain about the often glacial pace of so many episodes of Better Things – the entire fourth season premiere was basically a lazy vacation day for the Fox family. But in a world where even the best TV series rush along from event to event, Better Things lackadaisical pace is something to admire. As I have found as I rapidly approach the age of so many of the characters in this series, I find that life can move not only too fast but not fast enough any more. This isn’t a show about nothing, the way Seinfeld was, this is a show about the way life progresses even so little seems to happen. Shows have centered on Easter egg hunts, lazy parties, and how Pam has begun the process for that joyous event, a colostomy. They may not seem obviously funny, but they’re what life is about sometimes – the small incremental moments of it.

One of the bigger problems I had with last season’s Emmys was that there was no place at all for Pamela Adlon anywhere, among acting or writing. Granted there was a lot of solid competition – particularly among her fellow hyphenates – but it was still inexcusable. Considering that Julia-Louis Dreyfus, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and (so far) Natasha Lyonne will not be present this year, there’s definitely going to be room for her this year. For their consideration, I submit Adlon and Better Things, currently the best female run comedy on the air – until Insecure returns next month.

My score: 4.25 stars.