Why Are The Emmys Recognizing Game of Thrones Even Though It Sucked? Part 1, A Critical Comparison

I have made it clear numerous times on this column that I have no patience for Game of Thrones. I think it’s ridiculously violent, overly sexual, and so misogynistic towards its younger female characters that I’m rather amazed #MeToo never set up a criticism. But my biggest problem with the series is that for more than a decade, it has dominated the Emmy nominations and awards so much that a lot of my favorite series have basically been denies any form of recognition during its run.

So understandably, I was upset when the Emmys gave the series 32 nominations this year – a record for any program. What makes this even more remarkable is that throughout the final six episodes, the cacophony from critics and many of the series biggest boosters was at a crescendo before the final episode. Now this doesn’t necessarily mean that the series will win again (I’ll get to my logic there in the article), but it does kind of beg the question: why are the Emmy judges, especially in the middle of the Golden Age determined to over-recognize a final season that not only destroyed many fans faith in the series, but made just as many question why they watched the series in the first place?

Now, as a historian of television in general, and of the last twenty years in particular, I decided to see if there was another angle to this that other commentators and bloggers have not yet approached. So I decided to consider, has this kind of overreaction to a final season have any historical precedent? In order to do so, I decided that I would compare Game of Thrones final season, to four other series that have claim to the list greatest of all time, received a considerable amount of recognition from the Emmys, how they handled the build up to the final season, and how that final episode played out. I will then compare and contrast them to the last season of Game of Thrones.

The four series I have selected are, in order of their premiere dates, The Sopranos, Lost, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad.

(Note: I am assuming that everybody in the world knows at least some of the details of how these five series played out. For those of you who don’t: Decade Old Spoiler Warnings Ahead!)

1.      How the Final Season Was Planned

The Sopranos: David Chase announced in late 2004 that the sixth season would be the last and HBO would air 16 episodes over two years.

Lost:  Showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse announced in 2007 that there would be three final seasons, each sixteen episodes long, concluding in 2010.

Mad Men: Showrunner Matt Weiner planned for the show to end after seven seasons. AMC eventually decided to split the seventh season into two seasons of seven episodes each, ending in May 2015 because…

Breaking Bad: Showrunner Vince Gilligan decided to air Season 5 in two blocks of eight episodes, which concluded in October of 2013.

Game of Thrones: Showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss decided, after much debate to end the series after eight seasons. Season 7 aired in June of 2017, Season 8 started in April of this year.

2.      Did the Writers Have A Plan?

The Sopranos: It’s hard to say. One of the many things that made The Sopranos a groundbreaker is that so much of the series had no overarching narrative. Chase and his co-writers were notorious for planning to have major characters be at the center of later seasons, only to kill them off before they reached their full potential.

Lost: Cuse and Lindelof went to great detail to say that they the final season mostly planned out by the time they got there, but while they were writing it, they cut bait on a lot of ideas. For example, the Temple storyline, which the series had spent several seasons building two, ended quickly when the writers realized the folly of introducing new characters this late into their story.

Mad Men: Yes. Matthew Weiner had always planned to end the series with the end of the 1960s.

Breaking Bad: Yes. Gilligan opened the first part of Season 5 with a flashforward that played out in the final episode, and ended that same sequence with Hank finally learned that Walter White was Heisenberg.

Game of Thrones: In theory, Benioff and Weiss were working off the notes that George R.R. Martin had for A Song of Ice and Fire. But they had left the books in a couple of key instances in the fifth season, so it’s hard to say for sure.

3.      How Did Critics and Fans React to The Last Season Initially?

The Sopranos: Mostly critics were impressed. There was disappointment with some storylines (Vito in New Hampshire and Christopher’s heroin addiction), but some of the strongest episodes (Kennedy and Heidi, where Christopher dies, and The Blue Comet, the penultimate episode) are regarded as among the series best.

Lost: What is generally forgotten is how much fans were taken up with the flash-sideways timeline at least for the first half of the season. Ab Aeterno, the episode which reveals Richard Alpert’s history is considered one of the greatest episodes in the shows history. The problems began in The Candidate, when Sayid, Jin and Sun were killed in the sub explosion. After that, there was a real backlash.

Mad Men: Harder to measure because Mad Men had been one of those series that built up over the course of a thirteen episode season, and now they were cut in half. Still, the general consensus is by the middle of the second half, the show was firing on all cylinders.

Breaking Bad: Worked all the way. Watching Walter White finally complete his rise to power was exceptional TV. And the second half of the final season may be the greatest final season of any series in history. Some critics have mentioned that any one of the last four episodes could easily have served as a final episode, and fans would’ve been satisfied.

Game of Thrones: Fans and critics started complaining almost immediately. There had been gripes in the penultimate group of six episodes that the characters were starting to act afield. But when the final contestants for the Iron Throne began to campaign, people started to get royally pissed.  They thought the romantic storylines were not playing out, they didn’t like how the alliances were being arranged, and they were incredibly angry that Danerys Targeyen, the character that had spent much of the series being built up as the heroine of the story, turned into a monster in the final few episodes. By the time of episode 5, there was a petition online signed by nearly a quarter of a million fans of the show demanded that HBO reshoot the final season.

4.      How The Ending Played Out

The Sopranos: When the show ended, or didn’t, millions at home wonder if the cable had gone out before Tony got shot. Even now, people are still arguing what happened, and David Chase will not enlighten anyone. The overall effect was that many people consider the ending diminished the series as a whole, though time has been a lot kinder to it than many of the others.

Lost: Oh boy. It’s been nearly a decade, and people are still pissed off about it ended. To the point that Lindelof and Cuse keep getting hate mail. There are those like Nikki Stafford, who thought that the final episode really did make sense, and helped bring the show to a satisfying conclusion, and there are those like Emily Nussbaum, who believe the entire series came down to a fight over a glowing cave and a bereavement holodeck. I have a feeling no one’s ever going to be happy with this.

Mad Men: As a general rule, critics were satisfied with how many of the individual storylines (Joan’s opening her own business; Roger settling down with a woman his own age) But the final shot of Don Draper seemingly using his enlightenment to come up with the idea of a Coke commercial, there are a fair amount of fans angry.

Breaking Bad: About the only complaint anyone gave about Felina was that it was Ozymandias, which many people (myself included) consider one of the greatest TV episodes ever made. Still, seeing Walter tell Skyler: “I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. It made me feel alive” is still one of the greatest moments in TV history.

Game of Thrones: The nuclear fallout from The Iron Throne is still descending. But I think it’s safe to say that the writers have royally screwed up. It’s one thing to isolate the critics. It’s one thing to alienate the fans. But when your lead actress tells magazines she doesn’t like how her character’s arc played out, you’ve reached a special level of mucking it up. The only series on this list with a similar level of controversy over its ending is Lost, and even now, nearly a decade later, none of the cast has ever publicly commented that they were disappointed with how the show ended. This is, to quote some friends of mine, next level shit.

There’s one last aspect about the final episode of Game of Thrones that I’d like to note for this article, and that as the official fan ranking for the series at imdb.com

Now, while imdb.com has many virtues, I’m not always wild about their system of ranking television. This is, after all, a system that has so few safeguards its easy to imagine the millions of die-hard fans coming aboard to buck up a series they love against all reason. However, that very shortcoming may illustrate better than anything else just how badly Game of Thrones screwed the dragon.

For comparison, I’ll list the final marks for the four series finales I previously mentioned:

The Sopranos, ‘Made in America’: 9.2

Lost, The End: 8.2

Mad Men, Person to Person: 9.3

Breaking Bad, ‘Felina’: 9.9

And for Game of Thrones, The Iron Throne’ (drum roll please…) 4.2.

Consider that for a very long moment. Some of the most divisive finales in history were still regarded very highly by their fan base. But ‘The Iron Throne’ was so loathed that it has the rating of badly made porn movies. Hell, this is literally at the same score that Plan 9 From Outer Space.  Which means this episode was considered nearly as bad as the worst film ever made.

And it’s actually more astounding than that. For the previous four series finales, I mentioned, the average number of critics was between 1500 for Mad Men and 75 thousand for Breaking Bad.  ‘The Iron Throne’ had over two hundred thousand people critiquing the final episode. It’s pretty clear that even the most rapid of Game of Thrones followers, the writers clearly and truly took a dragon-sized dump on what millions previously had considered one of the greatest series of all time.

So, if critics hated how the series ended, and the fans loathed how the series ended, why the hell did the Emmys go so overboard to recognize the show with 32 nominations? I’ve racked my brain for weeks trying to come up with a solution, and I can come up with only one plausible explanation.

The narrative coming out of Hollywood for the nearly two years leading up to the final season of Game of Thrones was that this was going to be a flashpoint in modern culture. Game of Thrones was, in the minds of many, the last true ‘water cooler’ series we would ever see on TV, the last show that would be a critical and ratings hit for the entire world. (I could make a strong counter argument for The West Wing or Lost, but let’s that go.) When it came to an end, it would be the end of an era for television. And when the final season turned out to be one of the biggest disappointments in the history of television, the Emmys decided, why let the facts get in the way of a good story?

That and the overall laziness of the Academy voters in general. As I have mentioned over and over, Emmy voters have the habit of nominating the same series year after year, no matter how much the quality of the series declines. It was true for House of Cards, for Will & Grace, and The West Wing (the series whose record the Emmys broke), and there’s no particular reason the Emmys should stop now when they’re considerably behind the curve.

So, this begs the question: will the Emmys follow their own track record, and decide to give Best Drama to the final season that alienated people so much that any hope HBO has of continuing the franchise in prequels may be seriously damaged?

Well, let’s consider as an example the four previous series. It worked for The Sopranos, which prevailed in 2007. (Hell, the voters even gave ‘Made in America’ the Best Writing award.) They were more than willing to give Breaking Bad its due. However, the final season of Mad Men didn’t do as well (mainly because Game of Thrones was the big winner the last year.)  Lost had its best year at the Emmys, getting twelve nominations, but the stigma of the finale may have loomed so large that the Emmys didn’t recognize it. (Then again, the competition included Breaking Bad and Mad Men both of which had enjoyed superlative seasons, so it’s hard to say here.)

Casual observers may say: well the Emmys gave the show 32 nominations, so it’s a done deal. But this is not necessarily the case. The series that set the original record that Game of Thrones broke – NYPD Blue in 1994 – was an even larger groundbreaker than Game of Thrones ever was. Yet it ended up losing Best Drama to Picket Fences that year. The very next season ER - which was a far bigger popular success than Game of Thrones can ever claim to be – got twenty nominations, but lost Best Drama – to NYPD Blue. The Emmys is notorious for setting up overwhelming favorites in the nominations, and then having them end up doing very badly when it comes to the big prize. Game of Thrones knows that better than most: during the years the series was at its peak – the first four seasons – it would constantly dominate the nominations, but end up losing –twice to Breaking Bad.

And there are signs that many critics feel the same way. As I mentioned in an earlier article, the TV Critics Association chose not to even nominate the series for Best Drama and give its top prize to Better Call Saul. The Peabodys chose to honor Killing Eve and Pose. And earlier this year, the SAG Awards chose to give their top prize to This is Us. All of these series are up for Best Drama, and all have a better argument for winning than Game of Thrones does, much of which comes down to Game of Thrones has won three times. None of them have.

So, is it likely that Game of Thrones is going to end up winning the prize for Best Drama in about six weeks? Unfortunately, it is. But it is possible that Emmy voters, having seen the episode, and more importantly, knowing just how bad the critical response is, might decide to go with another, better series? You can’t rule it out, which is one of the reasons I like the Emmys so much. Let’s hope that they remember the Starbucks cup in Westeros before they decide just how great this series was.

Deadwood Episode Guide: Full Faith and Credit

Written by Ted Mann

Directed by Ed Bianchi

Another problem with the third season of Deadwood is that, more often than not, there are episodes like this where things seem to be happening, but they are buildup with no apparent climax. Where the season works is when it calls back to the past and reveals the harsher divides in the camp and, in a larger sense with society.

This is clear in the major action of the episode. Fields and Hostetler, who left the camp in search of the horse that trampled William Bullock  now return. (Fields has sent a telegraph to Jane announcing their eminent return, but Jane who knows what a bad idea this is, can barely read it to Charlie before the two have ridden back in. In the interval, the overly angry Steve has been caring for horses in the livery. We see him in a rare moment of peace, but the second he sees Hostetler back, he returns to the Number 10, and starts berating his bad fortune which he blames on blacks in general. He becomes so belligerent that after he leaves, Tom actually gets a gun which he holds beneath the barn.

Hostetler’s immediate concern is to bring back the horse and to apologize to Bullock for what he has done, and to try and resume the plans he discussed with Fields when we last saw them. The possibility that Seth is channeling whatever residual grief he may have over William’s death into the rage that powers him is a possibility, but it is more likely the inexorability of the conflict he sees coming is filling him with anger. When Hostetler and Bullock enter the Number 10, and Hostetler simply tries to offer thanks, Steve basically tells Bullock ‘to translate for him’, and continues to ‘indirectly’ use every single slur imaginable – ‘ape’ is the kindest word he uses. Bullock practically has to yank Hostetler outside to stop the two from coming to blows right there.

Bullock then tries to negotiate a ‘plea agreement’ – Hostetler, who was planning to go to Oregon will sell the livery to Steve. He manages to get both parties to agree to it, then goes to the new ‘Bank of Deadwood’ (we’ll get to that in a moment) and negotiates a loan and papers. But when the time comes for both parties to sign off, each man wants the other to sign first – a clear point that the two can’t coexist in the camp. Sol comes to a solution – have them sign simultaneously the next morning ‘when their dicks are down’. But that night Seth confides in bed with Martha that he just can’t see this ending well, though I’m pretty sure not even could foresee what was coming.

Swearengen is still in recovery from Hearst’s attack on him. When the episode opens, Hearst waves at him from his ‘veranda’, and Al doesn’t even acknowledge him. Dan take on itself when Hearst says good morning:

“Best time of day to go fuck yourself.”

He doesn’t provoke Hearst, but he does provoke Turner, who comes to the Gem with a message for Swearengen. When Swearengen makes an offhanded remark about his attack, Turner ignores him, and concentrates on the offense Dan gave, which he considers more pressing.  Dan has now decided that he’s going to ‘kill that cocksucker’, and Al responds: “All in good time”

But Al is more disturbed by this then he lets on. The message Turner comes says for him to meet with Hearst and Tolliver later, and he is clearly unmanned by it. This leads to another monologue while Dolly is trying to fellate him, only this time he is angry because he is unable to ‘come and clear his head’. He blames Dolly for her technique, and then, for small talk asks who does she favor in the election. She tells him Starr for Mayor and Manning for Sheriff, and when he tells her he prefers Bullock, she says: “Bullock yells at you.”

At the meeting, Tolliver is fully willing to act as ‘Hearst’s dog’, but by now Al has given up even the niceties of negotiating. He refuses to kowtow to Hearst any more, and finally gets to the point where he says he will not even meet with Hearst, and that he will have Adams as his representative from here on out. Even at a loss, Al is still the strategist. He demeans Silas in a public, and then makes it clear that the reason he’s chosen Adams as his second is because, not knowing him, Hearst might think Silas will betray his boss – something that Dan, for example, would never do.

But Al is still trying to deal with his own sense of impotence. He ends up confiding in Langrishe – the last person who’d understand and yet already the one person Al is willing to confide in – about the situation, and Jack suggests trying a different hour. Al does so, and then starts blaming Dolly again, and then gets to the core of the matter, by telling another story, comparing how Turner held him reminded him of a similar situation at the orphanage, where he says the proctor stopped him from getting to go with his mother on a ship to New Orleans. This sounds wrong (Milch himself said in his writing that this is Swearengen lying to himself) and that he doesn’t like being held back. Dolly tells him that she doesn’t like it either, and in  a rare moment of self-realization, he realizes he’s been doing the exact same thing to Dolly. When she doesn’t hurt (Milch says by this point ‘she has fallen in love with him’, he hands her some whiskey, and adds ‘Bless you for being a fucking fibber.”

There are other actions going on within this episode, one critical, one less so. As I mentioned earlier, Alma officially opens the Bank of Deadwood, a move that will eventually lead to Hearst escalating his war against her. Unfortunately, at this critical juncture, Alma has decided to impede herself again. This episode confirms what the Doc suspected before – Alma has become addicted to laudanum. And if she was subtle in a way that Trixie didn’t suspect, she flaunts it now. Leon, Tolliver’s opium addicted craps dealer, comes to the bank to secure a loan. Trixie immediately picks up on what is going on, and if Bullock wasn’t so caught up in the Hostetler-Steve drama he might too,. That night, we see married and engaged in the luxury of a new house, but rather than spending time with her child, she is watching for Leon to show up. When she appears, the impression is of a vampire detecting the scent of blood. In a matter of days, all the progress she has made since coming to the camp is gone, and she is the ‘haughty cunt, weak for dope’ that Farnum related to Hearst in the last episode.

The other story going on involves Langrishe’s search for a theater for his troupe. In the last episode, he approached Joanie, and she basically told him to ‘fuck off’ before he could make his intentions clear. In this episode, he comes forward and tries again. Joanie is still unsettled, but goes to Charlie first with her own doubts. As is the case in their unlikely friendship, Charlie (who is dealing with the mess with Hostetler’s arrival) takes the time out of his schedule to try and work the issue out. Joanie admits that she’d been willing to do it, if Langrishe would be willing to build a schoolhouse for the children to replace the Chez Ami’s role. Charlie then approaches Bullock in the midst of his crisis, and in dealing with the idea, Seth actually manages to calm down for a moment. Jack then goes to talk to Al about it, and again we see some insight into his own character. Despite the fact she worked for Tolliver, and was, however, briefly a rival to him, he understands what happened to her, and gives his opinion: “She’s all right.” Considering he can only tolerate Bullock in small doses, this is praise from Caesar.

That night, Joanie agrees to the sale of the Chez Ami at a more than fair price. One of the sweetest moments in a dark series comes when Joanie tells Jane about it, and Jane says that she can sleep anywhere ‘south of the graveyard’. By now, it has become crystal clear that the two are falling in love, even if neither is acknowledging it, even to themselves.  Only when they say their niceties does Jane ask: “So where do you think they’ll put the stage?” Joanie admits: “I don’t know. Ain’t our calling, I guess.”

Perhaps in retrospect, ‘Full Faith and Credit’ is the last bit of calm before the storm. The events involving Hearst are bubbling beneath the surface, and starting in the very next episode, every single problem is going to erupt.

This Spinoff Doesn't Suit Gina Torres: Pearson Review

As I have said, and will continue to say, there are so many series on the air that even very successful series I will have no choice but to bypass. One such show was USA’s Suits. A legal drama ostensibly centered on a New York law firm, involving two protagonists, one of whom (Patrick J. Adams) was hired even though he didn’t have a law degree. I have a fan of the legal-based drama, but this series sounded a bit one-note, and frankly, I was kind of astonished how successful was the longer it stayed on the air. Even though it had several actors whose work I admired, and even though actual royalty worked on the series (I’d never heard of Meghan Markle before she marked Prince Harry), I just couldn’t bring myself to get involved.

However, there was one actress on the series who I did admire before she appeared on suits: Gina Torres. Known to me for her work on two of Joss Whedon’s cult classics, as well as the early years of Alias, another series dear to my heart, I have always admired Torres’ capabilities, and have always figured that she deserved to play the lead of something. In July, my wish was fulfilled, as her character from Suits actually got the title role in Pearson.  And she is every bit as good as I thought she could be. I just wish she had better material to work with.

Jessica Pearson apparently lost her law license in an earlier story on Suits, but still seems to have a lot of the savvy that her character had. She has landed the role as the Mayor of Chicago (Morgan Spector) fixer – a job she seems to have landed in order to drop a lawsuit against developers tearing down a housing project, where among others, her estranged cousin and her family live.

In what is becoming a rather tired gimmick for so many of these series, no one is happy when she takes her new job. Not the Mayor’s legal counsel Keri, who in the grand tradition of so many series, is having an affair with the mayor. Not the mayor’s bodyman, Nick, an ex-cop, who seems to be the mayor’s half-brother. And certainly not Pat McGahm (Wayne Duvall), the construction magnate who seems to be the power behind everything in Chicago, and is clearly holding something over him. Her family seems to bear a grudge, and her boyfriend, a U.S. Attorney (DB Woodside) thinks taking the job is suicidal. Only the mayor’s idealistic press secretary and Jessica’s intern seem to give a damn about what she does.

By far the best thing about the series is Torres’ work as Pearson. It would be easy enough to write her off as a poor woman’s Olivia Pope. But Jessica actually seems to give a damn about people almost despite herself. Her whole reason for taking the job was to get her family a new place to live, even if none of them are particularly warm to the idea. And Jessica still seems to have a level of idealism mixed in with her realpolitic – she is willing to give a person who trashed her on social media a job, not so much to help herself, but because there is a genuine connection there.  And she does seem to worry about what this job will do to her soul – something no one in Shondaland ever seemed to care about.

Unfortunately, everything else connected to Pearson is rehashed from other series. So much of the politics involved were done so much better in The Good Wife, particularly to bit done with Peter Florrick and Eli. Talking over each about perception versus policy is basically a poor man’s Aaron Sorkin. Even the idea of a show about the Mayor of Chicago was done better in the failed Starz series’ Boss. None of the other characters seem capable of rising above two dimensions. Even the efforts to show that McGahn, who everybody in this town quakes at, is basically a big fish in a small pond, is something we’ve basically seen on other USA shows.

I don’t know if Pearson has a life as a series. One wouldn’t think Suits could’ve lasted eight seasons, much less inspired a spin-off. It has some intriguing ideas, but it’s hard to know of they’d go anywhere. Pearson seems to be stuck between the dark anti-heroine types of cable, and the crisis a week idea of network shows, and frankly is more successful with the latter than the former. Maybe if Jessica were just a fixer the series would be more solid, but there’s so much baggage attached – there’s a killing, and at least one formal investigation into the Mayor – that it doesn’t seem willing to stand on its own merits. Torres is resplendent – she is what Kerry Washington spent seven seasons on Scandal trying to be – but ultimately, this show plays far too small to be a success at either.

My score: 2.5 stars.

Infinity Train and the Glory of Cartoon Network

As a rule, I have basically let animation in all its forms fall to a sideline in the majority of my reviews here. This isn’t because I don’t appreciate, but more often it’s due to the fact that it is difficult to adequate pay tribute to the often stunning visuals that make up the best of today’s often great animation. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot of it out there. And I think the best way to pay appreciation to one particular show that has just emerged is by looking at its source: the Cartoon Network.

I am old enough to remember when the network originally debuted in the autumn of 1992. Like so many other networks of the time, it was steeped in the nostalgia of an earlier era, most often used to let a new generation have access to the wondrous worlds of Tom & Jerry, Bugs and Daffy, and the Flintstones and the Jetsons. It didn’t go much beyond that until the mid 1990s, when it began to dabble in original animation. Some of it was very good: Dexter’s Laboratory and Powerpuff Girls had remarkable staying power, but a lot of it was hit or miss.

The network didn’t start to reach its sweet spot until the century turned, and it officially created Adult Swim, cartoons that aired late night, usually on weekends. Again, there were moments of genius - Robot Chicken, a very dark satire of motion-capture animation is one of my all-time favorite shows – but a lot of it was still bizarre without being entertaining. I never did understand what the appeal was of Sealab 2021 or Aqua Team Hunger Force, two of their longest running hits. But overtime, their original animation for young adults became stronger as well: sometimes in likely places, such as with Teen Titans and Justice League; other times with more daring material like the legendary Samurai Jack.

Then in the last decade, they began to fire on all cylinders, and some of their cartoons are among the best I’ve ever seen, even if I only occasionally watch them. My favorites include Teen Titans Go!, a general satire not just of the superhero genre, but of so much pop culture in general. (Teen Titans Go to the Movies was an incredible superhero movie parody that, unfortunately, didn’t find the audience that so many comic book movies do.) Others favorites include Steven Universe, a half-comic, half epic story about a group of heroes called the Crystal Gems who work with a adolescent named Steven to protect the world, that has gone beyond its usual source material to become a bastion of equality, and The Amazing World of Gumball, a slightly less ambitious but no less funny world that takes the idea “What if The Simpsons took place in a world where everybody was an animal”, and has gone to some pretty ambitious places.

If there is a flaw with any of these series, it is that which has plagued so much animation in general: these series are so popular and the characters never age, so why bother ending them? The Cartoon Network has often avoided these by bringing many of their more popular and imaginative series (I am thinking of Adventure Time and Regular Show) to conclusions after long enough runs. They also do limited series, which often air all of their episodes over the course of a week. And it is one of those series I wish to discuss, because in its way it represents everything the Cartoon Network is capable of.

Infinity Train is one of the rare shows where the title actually tells you what you need to know. The story is centered on a pre-teen named Tulip, who trying to make her way to computer camp in Osh Kosh, boards a train, and then finds she hasn’t gotten on Amtrak. Each car is even more bizarre than the last one: one is made up entirely of a crossword puzzle, one is populated by Corgis, and one is entirely filled with ducks. Tulip’s goal is simple: she wants to get off the train. And there may be urgency to it: when she boarded, a luminescent number appeared on her right hand, and it seems to be counting down, though she can’t figure out what the correspondence is.

Her main aide is a half depressed, half childlike artificial intelligence called One-One, sort of a cross between Hal and Marvin from Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. She also so far has encountered a salesman cat, and Atticus, a dog ruler of a kingdom called Corgopolis. And while much of the dialogue is very funny (when Tulip learns that an unsolvable puzzle just involved turning a doorknob, the Corgi king said: “It’s puzzled our people for generations!), there’s also a lot of suspense and genuine poignancy as Tulip, who is a science geek at heart, tries to realizes that so much of what she has to do goes against the rules of logic.

But all of this pales from the dazzling visuals, which often remind one of a Del Toro film crossed with the Impressionists. Every car is basically its own TARDIS, but each also unique in its detail that you almost wish Tulip would slow down just so the eyes could marvel at what’s she seeing. The last episode took place entire in a car of crystals, and the flora and fauna were at a level that would make Chuck Jones weep.

I don’t know how Infinity Train will end, but its handled at a level that so many mythology series could learn from. Brief fifteen minute episodes, one overriding problem, several small steps to get there.  The Cartoon Network is brilliant when it comes to entertaining series with great visuals. With Infinity Train, they do series with confined stories so well it puts so much of J.J. Abrams work to shame.

My score: 4.75 stars.

Reaction To The Peabodys And The TCAs

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Deadwood Episode Guide: True Colors

Written by Regina Corrado & Ted Mann

Directed by Gregg Fienberg

The problems with Deadwood’s third season are twofold. One of them has to do with the fact that Swearengen, so much the manipulator of events until this point, now seems utterly paralyzed when it comes to dealing with Hearst. Had anyone else even made a threat towards his holdings, much less attacked him the way Hearst did in the climax of the previous episode, he would be food for Wu’s pigs within minutes. Instead (in a rarity for the series) the show makes a two week time jump, and we find Trixie openly go into Al’s rooms, where he has been holding forth, and trying to give him a pep talk, telling him ‘the last shot ain’t been fired’. Much as Al’s illness allowed Wolcott to achieve a greater hold in the camp last season, his psychological paralysis has given Hearst far more time to get a hold in to the camp. And it’s very hard to get an understanding as to why.

The other problem is far more direct, and occurs in this episode. Jack Langrishe, a theater impresario, rides into town with his theater in company, and unlike most residents who clearly show themselves as supplicants to Al, he raises his hat and tells him: “I’m barely speaking to you.” We become aware very quickly that Al and Langrishe have a history – they knew each other in Virginia City, and even though Langrishe is clearly gay, Al has a clear friendship with him, even though he feels a bit uncomfortable with his presence. He actually walks through the camp with him, serving as a tour guide, with some genuinely wry comments. (When Langrishe sees the celestial’s pigs, and cries out ‘Bacon!’, Al says: “Might have a human affect.’) He treats Langrishe as an equal, and never once talks down to him.

I never had a real problem with Langrishe or his theater company. Part of it had to do with the fine work of Brian Cox, a truly gifted actor who never quite seems to get credit he deserved for his work. (That has changed since the end of the series, when Cox moved on to play a billionaire media mogul in Succession. Perhaps he borrowed some of what he learned from Milch into his portrayal.) Admittedly, the problem is trying to figure out why, with everything that is going on with Hearst, the series should suddenly start dealing with the actions of yet another new set of characters, this time in an area that really doesn’t pertain to the action.  It is possible that, had Deadwood not been canceled, there would have been a payoff for all of the theater storylines in future seasons. Milch would certainly demonstrate that he would be able to do so with several storylines from the second season here. As it is, with characters like this taking up time from the already large cast, it is very likely that the fans of the show didn’t want to deal with it.

What is more important in a way is one of the other new rivals, Aunt Lou Marchbanks, an African-American woman who is Hearst’s cooks. She is one of the only character who Hearst seems willing to open up to, in which he seems willing to relate some of the problems he has in these camps. But it becomes clear very quickly, that the only reason Hearst relates to her is because he considers a nonentity. (The real George Hearst was from Missouri, which was a slave state when he was growing up, and it is very clear that he basically considers the Civil War has changed nothing, at least for him.) He makes it very clear that he doesn’t like to talking to anyone who doesn’t subvert himself to him. Once again, he mentions his name ‘Boy-The-Earth-Talks-To’, and it becomes increasingly clear that he doesn’t want to have a conversation with anyone else. It is made up for by the fact that Lou goes to play with the celestials, and she completely dismisses everything she thinks of Hearst and the high talk she has.

This becomes increasingly clear with the two other major events that are going on throughout the episode. The major one involves Alma who seems to have recovered from the abortion that was performed in the previous episode. There is, however, an undertone when Doc asks whether or not she has disposed of the laudanum that she took in order to deal with the pain. Alma objects very loudly, and profusely, and the phrase ‘the lady doth protest too much’ has never taken on a greater meaning. If you considering the possibility that she is still on laudanum, there is  the logic of the junky in what she does next. She has arranged for a meeting with Hearst to try and discuss how the handle her holdings. Even Trixie can see this is a bad idea, and Ellsworth, compliant in so many other things, is very hostile to the idea in general, and insists on coming with her. The entire first meeting, Ellsworth seems like its taking all his energy to stop from reaching out and snapping Hearst’s neck, and it’s impressive that Alma manages to maintain her cool all the way through it.

But it’s not until the second interview that Alma truly realizes the depths of the pit she has dug. Alma offers 49% of her claim in exchange for five percent of Hearst’s.  Hearst puts her down with four words: “Your proposal offends entirely.” He then he says he is going to buy her out, and when Alma sees just how badly she misjudged events, she tries to leave… and Hearst tries to prevent her from leaving. (He later cheerfully admits to Tolliver than he came very close to raping her, and that he chose not to, because it bored him.) When she unreels in front of Ellsworth, and tries to explain how badly things have gone, he tells her that: “I only wanted to protect you.” Alma simply says: “You can’t.” If she knows how much death has already gone on because of Hearst’s presence, she knows far worse is to come.

The larger problem comes when Bullock interviews another miner about a murder in Hearst’s mine, where another Cornishman tells him that this man was murder because they were trying to organize. Bullock’s reaction is to go to Hearst, and ‘put him on notice’. Hearst all but ignores it, and talks about the murder of his men in the Gem two weeks ago, as being nearly as important, and openly mocks Bullock for his indignation. “I identify a pattern in these events, I put you on notice.” He then slams down a shot of whiskey with similar disdain. Bullock then goes to the Gem, and demands the Cornishman’s body from AL, which he then has to go through a comic bit of business between them about how Wu has been keeping them in the freezer.

Hearst cements his place over the town by finally turning Tolliver into one of his ‘dogs’. There should be some joy in these, seeing that Tolliver’s attempted con of Hearst over his part in cleaning up Wolcott’s mess is revealed to be an utter fiction, and now he will no longer have even the hint of independence. But there just seems to be something pathetic about Tolliver now, seeing as how Hearst visits him basically in bedclothes, and the fact that he seems so willing to turn himself into one of Hearst’s pets. (“If the good lord had given me a tail…) Does he really think he might still get some kind of reward from Hearst for loyalty? He must know by now Hearst is a man with none, if literally getting the truth from the horse’s mouth.

The camp really does seem to be losing more the closer it gets to civilization. Even Al admits he doesn’t know who owns a lot of the houses, and Doc, who seems to be the conscience of the camp, taking on a heavy cough can’t be a good sign. Near the end of the episode, when Bullock says that the elections ‘have to stand for something’, he is trying to invoke the veneer of law. But as this episode has made clear, law means nothing if there are always going to be people who will have the resources to flaunt it.

A Reflection on Jane The Virgin

When the final words of Jane the Virgin were spoken, and the title card, which had always read ‘To Be Continued’ read ‘The End’, I did something I’ve never done at the end of any TV series – not even Breaking Bad or The Americans. I applauded. Because that really was the only appropriate reaction for a series that has been so joyous and moving and wonderful as this series.

Throughout this year, I have been wondering which of The CW’s exquisite female driven comedies – Jane the Virgin or Crazy Ex-Girlfriend – I would end up considering the greatest series, not just of the CW’s history, but for the entire decade. And it’s been a really tough call. Both series featured flawed but hysterical heroines, both series involve convoluted love stories, both series had a wonderful roster of supporting characters, both were perfect satires of their genres (for Jane, the telenovela; for Crazy, the musical comedy). And both were exceptional in the way they let not only their lead heroines, but their entire cast grow over the course of their run. Indeed, there’s a real possibility I may still put both shows on my list. But, after much debate, I have concluded that while Crazy Ex-Girlfriend featured the more multi-faceted talent at its center (whatever Rachel Bloom’s next project in, I’m all in for it), Jane was the better series.

And I think that comes in part due to the work of Gina Rodriguez, who rates as the most shafted performer of the decade by the Emmys. (At least Bloom got quite a few nominations for writing those glorious songs at the center of the show.) Rebecca Bunch, for all of the charm of the series, was for at least the first half, a really unlikable character if you looked closely. Whereas as Jane was always likable, and someone you always could root for. Many of the horrible things that happened to Rebecca were self-inflicted wounds, whereas Jane so much of the time had no control of what happened to her. (Hell, that’s how the series started.) Rodriguez always found a way to tap into Jane’s basic goodness, and the way she saw the comedy that unfolded – as well as the tragedy.

The series also probably had a better ensemble cast than Ex-Girlfriend, though not by much.  And that’s because almost every regular had their own journeys to go through before they reached the end. I could give a complete accounting of just about everybody in the cast to demonstrate this, but I’ll settle for Petra. For much of the first season, Petra was the ostensible heavy of the series, the obstacle between Jane and Rafael, who was involved criminal activities from a terrible mother. And her last action (inseminating herself with Rafael’s sperm) seemed despicable. And then, as the series unfolded, something remarkable happened. She became a real person. We learned the reasons for so much of her horrible behavior (most clearly indicated by her twin sister, played so well by Yael Groglas you almost didn’t realize it was the same actress), and as a mother she slowly became, almost against her will, a sensitive and someone capable of giving love. When the final season began, Jane told Petra that she hadn’t grown up with a sister, but she felt like she had one now, and Rafael wanted her to stand up for him at their wedding. I don’t know of any other series that would do that – well, maybe Crazy Ex-Girlfriend.

And as a series that stayed forever true to it’s telenovela roots, it featured some truly remarkable things. The Jane-Michael-Rafael love triangle may have been the best one of this decade, because it demonstrated more clearly that any other show that you can have more than one soulmate. Of course, this was because of two of the greatest twists arguably in television history  For the first half, I was rooting so hard for Jane and Michael to be together, and I think I felt gutted when he got shot on their wedding night. I think every viewer of the show, myself included, collapsed in a pile when he dropped dead at the exact halfway point of the series. It is a credit to the writers that they didn’t have Jane and Rafael immediately get together (it took a year and a half in real time, and more than four in the series) before they finally got together. And then, just when they were on the verge of happiness, the series does the second greatest twist – Michael was alive after all. I don’t know of any series that could’ve spent two years making us root for Michael, and then the second he showed up, he kind of seemed like not just an obstacle, but a douche.

Jane the Virgin despite all of the occasionally soapy tendencies, always insisted it was a telenovela. (In one of the funniest lines from the finale, a young Jane is upset why her favorite show is ending, whereas her friend’s mother is watching Days of Our Lives “And its in season 34”.) So the writers decided to wrap up the crime story that had been so much in the background for the entire series in the penultimate episode (and in a typical grotesque fashion) and concentrate the entire last episode on the normal struggle of Jane and Rafael’s wedding and all the other consequences. Also, unlike far too many series in the Golden Age, which end in darkness and chaos, Jane the Virgin chose to end in laughter and joy. Oh, there were tears of course – this show has been rich in them -   but the finale was all lightness. Jane finally realized her dream of becoming a best-selling novelist. Rogelio, who spent the entire series trying to achieve crossover success in America, finally did – but that meant less to him than his new son-in-law being able to call him ‘Dad’. Petra was reunited with the love of her life – J.R., brought back when her ex-husband told her how her much his ex-wife missed her. And in a truly moving moment, we learned who the series’ narrator had been – Mateo, telling their story from some unknown time in the future. Even the one great struggle for our leads was left unsaid – after struggling all episode to write her wedding vows, neither Jane nor Rafael could speak past their tears of joy.  The series always knew when to leave things unsaid.

The last line of the episode involved Raf asking his wife what the new ending to her book was. Jane said: “She turns her book into a telenovela. Who knows? Maybe it that alternate universe, that love story gets all the Emmys it never got in the real one. For now, it will have to settle for being what it was: one of the greatest shows in this century. And something that the world will treasure. Bravo.