2021: The Year in Television

With COVID-19 and its many increasingly sci-fi-sounding variants again curtailing group activities, trips to the theater were few and far between in 2021. (Read: I went once and was so paranoid and uncomfortable the entire time that I haven’t gone since.) Fortunately, between same-day streaming releases of theatrical films and the insanely high caliber of original television programming pouring out of our Smart TVs, we were at no loss for quality home viewing experiences in 2021.

Those of us old enough to remember when choices were limited to the big three (ABC/NBC/CBS) on network television thought that the addition of premium cable outlets like HBO and Showtime and Cinemax was monumental in and of itself. Then, basic cable expanded into original programming, and previously surfed-right-by filler channels like AMC and FX became destination viewing. Now, with the proliferation of streaming services (Netflix and Amazon Prime and Hulu and Paramount+ and HBO Max and Disney+ and Peacock and Apple+) our choices are myriad. Even the most diehard, dedicated TV aficionado has trouble keeping track and keeping up. We are truly living in another golden age of television.

The creative opportunities these streaming services have opened up for content creators have been unparalleled and have brought an exceptional diversity and quality of shows into our living rooms. Instead of three networks having to choose between hundreds of hopeful pilots for a limited number of primetime slots, television’s expansion into premium cable, basic cable, and (now) streamers has created an insatiable demand for new content that will attract new subscriber-viewers. That competition for must-see content has attracted high-end writers, directors, and actors to the medium. That’s especially great news for pandemic-weary audiences who desperately need the escapism right now.

2021 brought another exceptional slate of offerings into our homes. There were revivals of old favorites and murder mysteries and a historical drama chronicling the AIDS crisis. From notable literary adaptations to originals that explored weighty themes like ageism, racism, the cyclical nature of life and poverty in small towns, the concepts of agnosticism and atheism in religious faith, and man’s eternal, tail-chasing quest to discover happiness, television gave us much to enjoy and chew on this year. It was a year that brought career resurgence to comedic veterans Steve Martin and Martin Short, newfound respect for the versatility of perennial scene-stealer Jennifer Coolidge, and well-deserved accolades for the inestimable Jean Smart, who played the hell out of not one, but two, career-best roles in 2021. It was a year that saw adaptations of books by Ann Cleeves, Emily St. John Mandel, Philipp Meyer, and Liane Moriarty. It was a year that gave us two unforgettable limited series written and directed by guys named Mike that had everyone taking: The White Lotus from Mike White and Midnight Mass from Mike Flanagan.

Without further comment, these are my ten top television picks of 2021:

#10 Dexter: New Blood

#9 Station Eleven

#8 Only Murders in the Building

#7 It’s A Sin

#6 The Long Call

#5 Yellowjackets

#4 The White Lotus

#3 Mare of Easttown

#2 Hacks

#1 Midnight Mass

 

A few honorable mentions, in no particular order:

The Chair (the first season)

Halston

YOU (the third season)

American Rust

Nine Perfect Strangers

WandaVision

Yellowstone (the fourth season)

And Just Like That

Chucky (the first season)

Pose (the third and final season)

Them

Television Top Ten of 2018

Once again, the increased competition among network television, pay-cable outlets, and streaming services created a plethora of quality television from which to choose. The choices were many and varied with something to please even the most discerning viewer. Below, I list my year-end Top Ten (sorry, network television!) with a few words of free association about what tickled my television taste buds about each. Included at the end is a short list of shows deserving an honorable mention (There you are, network television!) that fell short of my Top Ten but nonetheless merit mention.

#10 – The Deuce (HBO)

At a glance: Hookers with hearts of gold and career ambitions set against a gritty Times Square backdrop circa 1977. Come for Maggie Gyllenhaal but stay for Emily Meade.

#9 – YOU (Lifetime)

At a glance: Based on a novel by Caroline Kepnes, YOU offers up a refreshing 21st-century take on stalking that leaves you questioning the real power balance between perp and victim.

#8 – TIE: The Alienist (TNT) and The Terror (AMC)

At a glance: Period piece terror at its finest.

#7 – The Kominsky Method (Netflix)

At a glance: Male version of Grace and Frankie. Come for the delightful camaraderie between Michael Douglas and Alan Arkin but stay for the ghostly advice of the divine Susan Sullivan.

#6 – Sharp Objects (HBO)

At a glance: Atmospheric Gillian Flynn adaptation dripping with gothic Southern tension. Come for Amy Adams, but stay for Patricia Clarkson. And Matt Brewer. And Elizabeth Perkins.

#5 – Pose (FX)

At a glance: Drag pageantry and pathos. Come for the colorful glamour and catty one-liners, but stay for Billy Porter’s career-turning performance.

#4 – American Horror Story: Apocalypse (FX)

At a glance: A fine return to form for the venerable anthology series. Come for Sarah Paulson and Kathy Bates as a terrible twosome, but stay for the delicious return of Joan Collins.

#3 – Killing Eve (BBC America)

At a glance: Oh, Sandra!

#2 – The Assassination of Gianni Versace (FX)

At a glance: Come for Darren Criss’s career-making performance, but stay for Judith Light who really shines.

#1 – The Haunting of Hill House (Netflix)

At a glance: Mike Flanagan continues to cement his reputation as one of horror’s best visual storytellers. Horror with family at its heart.

Honorable Mentions: Yellowstone (Paramount); Shameless (Showtime); Howard’s End (Starz); How to Get Away with Murder (ABC); Will & Grace (NBC); The Cool Kids (FOX); Murphy Brown (CBS).

Biggest Disappointment: Castle Rock (Hulu)

In Praise of the Understated Excellence of 'The Middle'

I'm going to admit it: Last night's series finale of The Middle reduced me to a blubbering fool. After nine seasons and 215 episodes, the Heck family said goodbye to their viewers with a pitch-perfect, lovingly-executed swan song titled "A Heck of a Ride" that honored the show's tone, characters, and—most of all—its audience.

For the uninitiated, The Middle is a half-hour ABC sitcom that premiered in 2009 and follows the misadventures of an endearing, perpetually cash-strapped Indiana family. And although the show never achieved water-cooler status, it did achieve an enduring charm. The show boasted no major cast changes over its nine-year run, a narrative consistency that established its own sense of history, and an upbeat warm-heartedness without the saccharine aftertaste. It was one of those shows that I began watching because it was likely wedged between two destination shows and became an accidental favorite over the years.

The end was on par with any of the great series finales in TV history, with Patricia Heaton (as family matriarch Frankie) having a roadside meltdown during a family road trip to deposit oldest son Axl (Charlie McDermott) in Denver for his new job and adult life. “It’s the end of an era,” she laments. “It's never going to be the same again.”

“That’s the way it’s supposed to be,” Neil Flynn's Mike (husband and family patriarch) says, as we flash-forward to the family's post-Middle lives, which leave every beloved character exactly where our hearts want them to be—especially Eden Scher's eternal optimist Sue. We even get a glimpse of a bright romantic future for her gay bestie Brad (played with such joyful zeal by Brock Ciarlelli, who has been a scene-stealing highlight over the years). The show ends with a certain character's reprisal of a beloved speech quirk, and I (literally) just sobbed.

In a world that moves so fast and in a medium that cancels shows in the space of a few episodes, the comforting consistency and longevity of The Middle is worth noting—and celebrating.

SCREAM QUEENS: A Bloody Mess of Good Fun

Comedy and horror are two distinct genres, each with its own formulas and structures, devices and characteristic stylings. Blending the two is tricky stuff and, inevitably, one genre proves dominant when this hybrid model is attempted. In the SCARY MOVIE franchise, for example, comedy is the dominant genre at play, with the laughs outnumbering – even overshadowing – any frights. Conversely, in the films of the SCREAM franchise, scares trump the laughs in equal measure. 

So when Ryan Murphy, then best known for the straightforward comedy GLEE and upfront horror of the AMERICAN HORROR STORY anthology series, announced a comedy-horror anthology called SCREAM QUEENS back in October of 2014, the passionate pop culture junkie himself had to know that successfully pulling off the feat was a tall order at the outset. Then again, maybe not, as Murphy seemed to think – with arguable arrogance or naiveté – that he was creating something new here with frequent collaborators Brad Falchuk and Ian Brennan.

Expectations were high. Murphy – who had by that time developed both a passion and a penchant for successfully casting actresses of a certain age – wooed perennial scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis back to the small screen amidst negotiations of limited time on the show’s first season New Orleans set. Anticipation was also high because Murphy had proven himself adept in both genres. As the FOX and Murphy PR machines launched massive amounts of advance press – including a much-touted and successful dual AHS-SCREAM QUEENS panel at San Diego Comic Con – SCREAM QUEENS promised to be a slam-dunk. 

SCREAM QUEENS bowed on September 22nd, 2015, to decidedly mixed reviews from critics and (seemingly) lackluster ratings, attracting a disappointing 4.04 million viewers while lagging in same-night numbers behind shows on CBS, NBC, and ABC. Being beat by THE MUPPETS reboot didn’t ease what must have been Murphy’s initial pain. But Nielsen’s first delayed-viewing snapshot of the season would tell a different story, with SCREAM QUEENS realizing a 65% gain – the night’s biggest in both raw numbers and percentage according to Nielsen’s “live plus-3” estimates.

As reported by VARIETY, SCREAM QUEENS would prove to be an example of modern-day viewing habits, with only a fraction of the show’s audience watching live when it aired and viewership increasing by 189% when time-shifted viewing and multi-platform viewers for the entire season were factored in. The inaugural season ended up bringing in a total audience of about 8.1 million viewers, no doubt aided by the buzz-worthy show’s sizable social media presence.

Ratings and critical notice aside, the first season of SCREAM QUEENS was a mixed bag. The plot for the show’s thirteen-episode first season focuses on a string of gory murders plaguing the Kappa Kappa Tau sorority at fictional Wallace University, triggered by events linked to a twenty-year-old murder mystery and cover-up. Curtis plays Dean Cathy Munsch, nemesis to the sorority’s president, Chanel Oberlin (Emma Roberts). Dean Munsch wants to see the snobby sorority system dismantled; Chanel wants to rule over it with a Prada-coiffed iron fist. Interrupting this battle of feminist wills is a red devil-masked serial killer who dispatches at least one hapless cast member each episode in increasingly outlandish ways.

Murphy and company wear their horror influences proudly on their sleeves with the elaborate murder set pieces here harkening back to the high camp sensibility of the giallo films of the mid- to late-70’s. Highlights of the pilot alone include a maid getting her face melted off in deep fryer, a prank involving a spray-tan tank spiked with hydrochloric acid, and the Red Devil tooling around on a lawnmower decapitating a sorority sister buried up to her neck in the sorority house lawn. Visually, the show is a treat with garish colors and flamboyant couture that give the gruesome proceedings a highly-stylized aesthetic.

Cast is uniformly excellent, with Murphy’s knack for attracting talent on full display. Roberts seems born to play the uber-bitchy Chanel, with Billie Lourde (real-life daughter of Carrie Fisher and granddaughter of Debbie Reynolds), Abigail Breslin, and pop ingénue Ariana Grande ably rounding out her clique of Chanels. Keke Palmer (in a breakout role here) plays sassy KKT pledge Zayday Williams, while Skyler Samuels plays fellow pledge Grace Gardner, who’s drawn into a Nancy Drew-like amateur detective role as the murderous goings-on escalate. Oliver Hudson (replacing originally cast Joe Manganiello) plays Samuels’ alumni father, while Diego Boneta takes on boyfriend-sidekick duties as journalism student Pete Martinez.

On the fraternity side, Glen Powell emerges as a real breakout star playing the narcissistic dumb jock Chad Radwell, President of the Dickie Dollar Scholars; pop hunk Nick Jonas as Boone, his gay best friend and fraternity brother; English actor Lucien Laviscount as the appropriately named Earl Grey, and YouTube twins Aaron and Austin Rhodes as Roger and Dodger, respectively. Niecy Nash is the genuine scene-stealer throughout the show’s first season, her uproarious portrayal of skittish security guard Denise Hemphill marked by over-the-top shrieking, screaming, and zippy one-liners.

Interestingly, the show’s first season both succeeds and fails in the same key creative aspect: the writing. With writing duties shared and handed off between Murphy, Falchuk, and Brennan (or MFB, abbreviated), one could reasonably expect some problems with consistency. But what we get with the first installment of SCREAM QUEENS is painstaking attention to detail when it comes to character dialogue and an overall disjointed larger narrative.  MFB have an uncanny knack for dialogue, and their work here on SCREAM QUEENS is exemplary with lines that snap, crackle, and pop with the precision of heat-seeking missiles. Roberts’ lines, in particular, are razor-sharp with snarky, cringe-worthy political incorrectness. Her petulant coffee-shop rant over an incorrectly made pumpkin spice latte boils over with brilliant social commentary on millennials and entitlement. Curtis, meanwhile, is handed lovingly-crafted monologues that anchor the show’s abject silliness in weightier themes of feminism, politics, and the inherent evils of social hierarchies.

Plot-wise, SCREAM QUEENS maintains strict adherence to the slasher formula while borrowing heavily from Agatha Christie’s AND THEN THERE WERE NONE model, complete with a sizable body count that slowly narrows down the identity of the killer through a bloody process of attrition and dramatic drawing room-like denouement. One would think that such a solid (if clichéd) narrative structure would lend itself to an easily sustainable level of coherence – but it doesn’t. MFB, while giddily constructing tongue-twisting lines of deliciously glib dialogue for their characters to spew at each other, quickly lose sight of what matters most in a murder mystery – plot. The narrative zigs and zags all over the place, with illogical twists and turns that smack of convenience. It’s as if MFB use the parody element of SCREAM QUEENS as an excuse to lazily eschew any and all semblances of logic.

The first season of SCREAM QUEENS ultimately wallows in its own absurdity, with cartoon pacing and overblown…well, everything. It’s gaudy, glitzy excess in every sense of the word. But it’s deceptively mindless fun, with an underlying satirical brilliance that peeks through its garish coating in snippets of spot-on pop culture deconstruction.

Halfway through the first season, it was obvious to most that SCREAM QUEENS would enjoy a single-season run. Viewers were torn – too macabre for comedy fans, too silly for the horror crowd – and ratings were dropping. The show would finish its inaugural season on December 8th, 2015, with 2.53 million viewers, losing 1.51 million of its screaming queens along the way. Although Curtis garnered a well-deserved Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance in a Television Series by an Actress – Musical or Comedy (which she’d lose to newcomer Rachel Bloom), and the show won both a People’s Choice Award for Favorite New TV Comedy and a Critics’ Choice Television Award for Most Exciting New Series, cancellation seemed all but a certainty.

But Hollywood is a weird little machine that plays by its own set of rules – and Ryan Murphy clearly boasts some serious say-so around town. It was announced in January that SCREAM QUEENS would indeed be back for another go-round.

Five episodes into the show’s sophomore season, SCREAM QUEENS seems to be finding its tonal footing. MFB have opted to set the new season in a hospital for medical oddities, already seeming a more authentic match for the show’s Grand Guignol-style of madcap macabre. Curtis is back as Cathy Munsch – now an honorary PhD who buys the hospital for as-yet unknown reasons – and MFB, wisely, have made her more front and center (likely to do with the more Curtis-convenient Los Angeles set). Niecy Nash also returns as Denise Hemphill, now an FBI Special Agent, but no less crass and smart-alecky. Zayday, along with the surviving members of the Chanels, are all back as medical students, with the ageless John Stamos and (thoroughly unappealing) Taylor Lautner joining the ensemble as doctors. Lea Michelle, whose first season deeds have finally caught up to her, is also back as Hester, now hysterically Hannibal Lecter-like, as is Glen Powell’s even-funnier himbo scene-stealer Chad Radwell. Kirstie Alley rounds out the second season cast as Ingrid Hoffel, the stern hospital administrator.     

To differentiate between a first season that failed to meet expectations that the advance hype promised and the second season reboot, Murphy and company have wisely opted to visually distinguish SCREAM QUEENS, version 2.0, from its predecessor. While the highly-stylized aesthetic that made the first season such a visual treat to watch is maintained, the show has ditched the bubblegum pink and red hues that colored fictional Wallace University and the Kappa Kappa Tau sorority and adopted an alien-green and blue color palette to tint its dingy hospital interiors. The visuals pop amid the lurid, nightmarish colors.

More importantly, MFB have seemingly settled into a creative comfort zone with the writing, opting for ghoulish comedy versus humorous horror. It’s a small distinction some might dismiss as semantics, but it’s key here. It’s no longer horror trying to be edgy with the humor; it’s comedy trying to be edgy with the horror. The dialogue still snaps, and MFB continue to write deliciously sharp soliloquies for Curtis.

Unfortunately, it may be too little, too late for the millions of initial viewers who gave up on the series. Ratings for the second season premiere were down by almost 50%, with World Series and election night preemptions doing little to keep attention-deficit viewers in place and focused in subsequent weeks on the macabre mayhem at the CURE Institute.

Prediction: SCREAM QUEENS is headed for almost-certain cancellation following its sophomore run. Murphy will move Curtis over to AMERICAN HORROR STORY in a much-ballyhooed return to her roots or to one of his other properties, depending upon the themes of future installments of AMERICAN CRIME STORY and FEUD. I’m already squealing in anticipation of shared AHS scenes between Curtis and Kathy Bates, so I’m rooting firmly for the former scenario. Roberts will also return to the AHS fold, and it’s not the last of Powell or Michelle we’ll see in the Murphy universe either. SCREAM QUEENS, the concept and the show, will go down with a lackluster legacy of having more style than substance, likely being better remembered in the Curtis filmography versus television history itself.

Women in Hollywood: Clear Skies and Good Visibility

Ladies, start your engines. I’m calling bullshit on the myth that Hollywood discards women of a certain age – namely, the forty-plus set. Internet obsession over Renée Zellweger’s recent red carpet appearance and the endless dissection of her did-she-or-didn’t-she cosmetic surgery choices have dragged up another well-worn hot topic: The purported invisibility of women over 40 in Hollywood. What was once an upwardly trending reality is now nothing more than a myth used – both conveniently and erroneously – in bigger (and more important) discussions on feminist topics.  

It’s an easy fallback for folks to trot out the same old adage about women over 40 in Hollywood being dead, invisible, or [insert your own adjective here] in our (largely) ageist society. But it’s an assertion with little evidence to back it up these days and an old, misleading headline that needs to be retired.

In fact, the opposite is true. Women of a certain age aren't merely enjoying greater visibility on the screen – they’re dominating the field. What’s even better is that these demographic-defying actors come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and ethnicities. Some come au naturel with their marvelous character-defining lines and wrinkles intact, others nipped and tucked and plumped to varying degrees. But they’re here and ever-present – not some forgotten castoffs relegated to background scenes. These women are proving that they've got the acting chops and audience appeal to carry their own shows, and even those in supporting roles are increasingly being elevated with juicy material that renders them veritable scene stealers, in comedic and dramatic arenas alike.  

In ten minutes of free association, I was able to compile the following list of over seventy-five actresses, age 40 and above,  who are currently either headlining or featured as series regulars on TV shows within the past season or two: Juliana Margulies, Téa Leoni, Jessica Lange, Viola Davis, Kathy Bates, Jane Lynch, Bebe Neuwirth, Christine Baranski, Halle Berry, Linda Gray, Vera Farmiga, Margo Martindale, Octavia Spencer, Laurie Metcalf (headlining two shows), Judith Light, Susan Sullivan, Angela Bassett, CCH Pounder, Frances Conroy, Mariska Hartigay, Madeline Stowe, Julia Ormond, Gillian Anderson, Heather Locklear, Dame Maggie Smith, Famke Jensen, Melissa McCarthy, Swoosie Kurtz, Toni Collette, Tina Fey, Debra Messing, Alison Janney, Madeline Stowe, Wendi McLendon-Covey,  Jackie Weaver, Edie Falco, Holland Taylor, Robin Wright, Laura Linney, Laura Dern, Amy Brenneman, Betty White, Valerie Bertinelli, Fran Drescher, Jane Leeves, Wendie Malick, Connie Britton, Kate Burton, Bellamy Young, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Katey Sagal, Anna Gunn, Elizabeth McGovern, Linda Hunt, Jessica Walter, Patricia Heaton, Courtney Cox, Laura Leighton, Elisabeth Shue, Frances Fisher, Joan Cusack, Ann Dowd, Sherry Stringfield, Sophia Vergara, Julie Bowen, Susan Lucci, Rebecca Wisocky, Roselyn Sanchez, Mary McDonnell, Jada Pinkett-Smith, Stockard Channing, Marcia Gay Harden, Carrie Preston, Virginia Madsen, Mädchen Amick, Nancy Travis, Kate Walsh, Andrea Parker, Dee Wallace, Conchata Ferrell, Courtney Thorne-Smith , and Mimi Kennedy, with Alfre Woodard, Melissa Leo, and Carla Gugino slated to soon join them. And this was without trying; there are likely more.

Even vets like Shirley MacLaine, Linda Lavin, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tyne Daly, Dame Diana Rigg, Lili Taylor, Megan Mullally, Elizabeth Perkins, Margaret Colin, Veronica Cartwright, Mare Winningham, June Squibb, Carol Kane, Rita Moreno, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Morgan Fairchild, Patricia Kalember, Gail O’Grady, and the late Elizabeth Peña have shown up recently in meaty guest roles on hit TV shows.

Women in the 40+ demographic were also well-represented in the 2014-2015 pilot TV season, with Jamie Lee Curtis, Rosie Perez, Paget Brewster, Sharon Gless, Molly Shannon, Felicity Huffman, Tracy Ullman, Meg Ryan, Margaret Cho, Marcia Cross, Mary-Louise Parker, Patricia Wettig, and Ellen Burstyn (who’s nonetheless been a visible TV presence in adaptations of two V.C. Andrews’ novels for Lifetime) all attached to shows vying for slots on the network’s fall and midseason schedules.

Women are faring well in feature films as well, headlining blockbusters and dominating nominations throughout awards season. Sandra Bullock, Cate Blanchett, Jennifer Aniston, Cameron Diaz, Glenn Close, Dame Judi Dench, Dame Helen Mirren, Emma Thompson, Julia Roberts, Melissa McCarthy (again), Naomi Watts, Nicole Kidman, Tilda Swinton, Sigourney Weaver, Susan Sarandon, Diane Lane, Helena Bonham Carter, Julianne Moore, Marisa Tomei, Bette Midler, Jodie Foster, Sally Field, Diane Keaton, Joan Allen, Sela Ward, and, of course, Meryl Streep – all viable, all working.

Even in a traditionally male-oriented market like horror, women of a certain age are being afforded great reverence and opportunity. Lifetime’s recent adaptation of Stephen King’s novella BIG DRIVER featured a mostly female cast, all over the age of 40: Maria Bello (47), Joan Jett (56), Ann Dowd (58), and Olympia Dukakis (83). TALES OF POE, an anthology film by Bart Mastronardi and Alan Rowe Kelly, features genre vets Adrienne King, Amy Steel, Lesleh Donaldson, Desiree Gould, Debbie Rochon, and Caroline Williams – all actresses well into their 40s and 50s, some of whom have worked only intermittently since their earlier heydays. Or there’s THE SURVIVORS, a project currently in development by William Butler, which is slated to feature a veritable who’s who of final girls and femme fatales, all of whom are 40-plus.

In horror-themed series television, Ryan Murphy seems to be the pied piper of actresses over 40, creating attention-grabbing dream roles and single-handedly making last names like Lange and Bates water cooler-worthy topics of conversation. Arguably, THE WALKING DEAD’s most popular character right now is Carol Peletier, a strong, pragmatic zombie-survivalist who’s kicking ass and taking names – played by 49-year-old Melissa McBride. To note, THE WALKING DEAD is viewed by upwards of 15 million people per week.

But, admittedly, there are roles that women over the age of forty are routinely being locked out of: The ingénue. And that’s because (wait for it) they’re no longer ingénues. There’s a difference between realism and relevance that gets muddied when these misguided laments start. No, Goldie Hawn can’t pull off the ditzy ingénue anymore like she was lucky enough to do well into her early 40s in films like PROTOCOL, WILDCATS, and OVERBOARD. No filler or lifestyle lift can bring those offers back to her. Jamie Lee Curtis can’t likely perform a striptease like she did in TRUE LIES again and expect to achieve the same effect on audiences that she did at the age of 36. No amount of Activia or clean living is going to contradict that fact. But neither of these actors is less than because of those age-related realities, nor is either rendered less relevant because of them. As mentioned earlier, Curtis – at age 55 – was the lead in a CBS pilot this past year, and she remains attached to an ABC Family pilot. She guested on three episodes of FOX’s THE NEW GIRL in 2014, shot a film with George Lopez and Marisa Tomei, and showed up in a cameo role in the VERONICA MARS movie. She’s far from irrelevant.

Bringing it back full circle to the topic that started me down this road of thought, Ms. Zellweger is a seasoned Hollywood player, not a naïve ingénue. She knew exactly what she was doing when she stepped out onto that red carpet and what kind of reaction it would elicit when she did so, smiling and posing for photographers. Unless she's lived under a rock, she knew exactly the kind of scrutiny her appearance would bring and what kind of media trolls it would summon. Now she's getting more media attention and sympathy for the vitriol hurled by the Internet hobgoblins than she's had in years. Sorry, but she (and her publicist) knew exactly what they were doing and have played their hand exceptionally well. When was the last time Renée Zellweger was a top-trending topic anywhere?  PEOPLE, VANITY FAIR, THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER...almost every major entertainment media outlet is spinning this in a Zellweger-positive direction. You couldn't buy this kind of publicity. In our celebrity-obsessed pop culture, the haters are going to hate anyway...at least exploit that hate and gain some seriously good PR for a talented actress who stepped out of the limelight a long time ago.

It's called a silver lining.

Mark my words: There’s a new movie or TV role announcement forthcoming that will welcome yet another actress of a certain age back into the fold. Bet on it. 

Truth, Consequences, and Duck Calls

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Honey, I Shrunk the Psychopaths

Serial killers seem poised to usurp the vampire and – to lesser extent – the zombie in television popularity, at least according to your local television listings. While the lumbering undead of AMC’s THE WALKING DEAD continue to shuffle across the countryside in search of human flesh and the sexy, soap opera-esque bloodsuckers of HBO’s TRUE BLOOD continue to thirst for plasma, it’s the well-mannered, maniacal psychopath who’s emerging as the new villain du jour in pop culture right now.

Three new shows featuring serial killers debuted in the second half of the TV season – two bringing iconic movie killers to the small screen, the third an original creation inspired by a classic literary figure. THE FOLLOWING, HANNIBAL, and BATES MOTEL are the latest in a series of high-brow, thrill-a-minute serial killer/crime procedural dramas competing for your bloodlust, each vying to fill the future void that will be left by Showtime’s departing DEXTER this summer. But are all serial killers created equal? And how do icons of murder and mayhem stack up when shrunk down for the small screen? Let’s examine the evidence.

THE FOLLOWING, which introduces the only original serial killer of the trio, is also the most ambitious of the three dramas. Penned by Kevin Williamson, the heavily pedigreed genre writer of SCREAM, I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, and TV’s THE VAMPIRE DIARIES among other dark fare, THE FOLLOWING isn’t content to give us a serial killer – it gives us an entire cult of serial killers. Kevin Bacon toplines as former FBI agent Ryan Hardy, in pursuit of one Dr. Joe Carroll (James Purefoy), a professor of English literature and failed novelist whose penchant for Edgar Allan Poe and the “insanity of art” leads to the evisceration of fourteen female college coeds. Imprisoned at the hands of Hardy, Carroll uses both his charisma and a computer to build a cult-like network of copycat killers who methodically slaughter, kidnap, and even throw themselves on their own proverbial swords if need be in order to help Carroll escape prison, reclaim his ex-wife and son,  and exact a master plan of revenge against Hardy.

HANNIBAL, which uses Thomas Harris’ RED DRAGON novel as source material, brings the iconic Dr. Hannibal Lecter to television and explores his budding relationship with FBI special investigator Will Graham. For the uninitiated (aka those living under a rock), Lecter is perhaps best known to American audiences in the form of Sir Anthony Hopkins, whose articulate, über- elegant forensic psychiatrist with a culinary predilection for human body parts tangles with Jodie Foster’s Clarice Starling in the 1991 blockbuster THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (before less memorably tangling with Julianne Moore in the Starling role in 2001’s sequel, the eponymous HANNIBAL). In this small screen prequel to the events of the ’91 film (which was also tackled with mixed results on the big screen in 2002’s RED DRAGON, again with Hopkins as Lecter and Edward Norton as Graham), it’s a slowly escalating game of cat-and-mouse between Graham (Brit Hugh Dancy) – whose ability to empathize with serial killers and mentally re-create their crimes with garish detail haunts him with nightmares and night sweats – and Lecter (Danish actor Mads Mikkelsen), who is coolly and casually insinuating his way into Graham’s head and becoming his most cunning adversary.

BATES MOTEL also takes on an iconic cinematic villain as its central focus – the stammering, socially-awkward Norman Bates – and subverts the audience’s knowledge of the character by focusing on his mentally unstable mother as its villain. As perhaps film’s most lurid example of an Oedipus Complex come to life, Bates – as once famously portrayed by the late Anthony Perkins– is best known for donning women’s clothes and stabbing Janet Leigh’s ill-fated Marion Crane to death in the shower in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 shocker PSYCHO, before going after Meg Tilly, Diana Scarwid, and Olivia Hussey in a trio of ill-conceived sequels and prequels. This isn’t even the first time a show called BATES MOTEL has been up to bat; NBC aired a 1987 television movie spin-off of the same name that was originally produced as a pilot for a weekly TV anthology series based around the titular lodging. Aired over the 4^th of July weekend, it tanked in both ratings and reviews, and the network abandoned the idea. Fortunately, this latest incarnation of BATES MOTEL looks to fare significantly better – drawing record ratings for A&E, strong reviews, and an early second-season renewal after airing only three episodes.

Hailed as a “contemporary prequel” to Hitchcock’s PSYCHO, which was loosely based on characters from Robert Bloch’s 1959 novel of the same name, BATES MOTEL (version 2.0) explores the early life of Norman Bates (Freddie Highmore), here depicted with his overbearing, considerably left-of-center mother, Norma (Vera Farmiga). Significant liberty is taken with the source material, most notably relocating the iconic Bates house and motel from Fairvale, California, to coastal White Pine Bay, Oregon, and giving the story a modern-day 21st-century backdrop.

At the heart of all three shows is a focal relationship between two central characters, and the strength – or lack thereof – of each show largely depends on both the execution and believability of that relationship. In THE FOLLOWING, the build-up to the adversarial relationship between Hardy and Carroll is seen through flashbacks and is largely based on Ryan’s own guilt over failing to pinpoint Carroll as a suspect after their first meeting, resulting in the deaths of five additional victims. Carroll baits, Hardy pursues in almost Pavlovian response. There is a life-or-death urgency to the Ryan-Carroll rivalry, with lives hanging in the balance and a clock that’s ticking down quickly. The relationship between Lecter and Graham in HANNIBAL is less urgent, more a slow waltz of wits. It’s largely a doctor-patient relationship at the show’s onset, with a gradual reveal of Lecter’s true nature. Lecter’s duplicity – although obvious to the audience because of both its familiarity with the source material and Mikkelsen’s robotic creepiness – is easy for him to conceal amongst Graham’s twitchy neuroses and the gory distractions of other cases.  In BATES MOTEL, it’s straightforward mother-son, nature versus nurture dynamics that drive (and increasingly unravel) the relationship between Norman and Norma. Norma largely employs motherly guilt, shame, and even self-deprecation to manipulate Norman who, after the death of his father under suspicious circumstances, totters on the edge of manhood, with everything from being cast into the “man of the house” role to raging teenage hormones likely playing into his impending unbalance and burgeoning psychosis.

In all three shows, these central relationships and resulting conflicts are the product of egregious breaches in trust. The villains – Carroll, Lecter, and Norma Bates – are all initially placed in positions of trust to the respective protagonist in each show. Carroll, as trusted academic and consultant, betrays Ryan and shakes his confidence to the point of vulnerability. Lecter, as trusted psychiatrist, is permitted access by Graham to his private thoughts and feelings. He’s using those – and his access to FBI case files – to undermine Graham’s work and stay steps ahead of the authorities. Norma, as trusted parent, uses subterfuge to hold onto Norman’s innocence, in the process screwing with his psychosocial and psychosexual development to the point of creating a second generation monster.

Of the three shows, BATES MOTEL holds the most promise. In addition to award-worthy acting by Highmore and Farmiga, the show’s writers have been careful not to box themselves into the well-known trajectory of the Norman Bates mythos. While the mother-son interplay of Norma and Norman remains rightfully at the heart of the show, the change of locale from the original colorless California landscape of the films to the more visually appealing coastal Oregon location gives the show some geographical texture. The writers have wisely imbued the show’s backdrop with a Twin Peaks vibe, a menacing undercurrent of small town secrets and conspiracy that calls to mind Stephen King. How Norma and Norman – along with newly introduced older rebellious brother, Dylan – will interact with their surroundings is half the appealing mystique of BATES MOTEL.

Up until a week or two ago, I would have called a tie between BATES MOTEL and THE FOLLOWING. The latter came crashing out of the gate hard – relentless in its pacing, audacious in its storytelling, and top-notch in its acting. And while the acting – particularly from the two male leads and actress Natalie Zea as Carroll’s ex-wife and Bacon’s current love interest – has remained on point and the pacing brisk, the storytelling is already showing some signs of fatigue and over-ambition. There is an increasing reliance on otherwise intelligent characters doing stupid things to move the plot forward, which is downright wearying at times. Disconcerting lapses in logic, particularly where the FBI's continued naiveté when it comes to dealing with strangers is concerned, are becoming the weekly norm. By this point, anyone from outside their vetted circle with whom they come in contact should be fully investigated and physically searched. How many times do they allow themselves to be violently ambushed before they become (rightfully) paranoid in dealing with outsiders? It defies logic and is a potentially fatal flaw in the writing that, if left unchecked, will distract viewers and pull them farther and farther out of the story.

Although I’ve been singing the praises of BATES MOTEL and THE FOLLOWING frequently and loudly on social networking sites, I’ve been uncharacteristically quiet about HANNIBAL. Truth is, three episodes in, and I’m not at all sold on the show; in fact, I’m bordering on disliking it. Unlike BATES MOTEL, which also casts an iconic cinematic villain at its center, HANNIBAL hasn’t taken many risks with its source material and it suffers in its safety. It’s almost too familiar, and I’m left hungry for more at the end of each episode – and not in a good way. Although Bryan Fuller brings the same lavish visual panache to HANNIBAL as he did to the regrettably underrated PUSHING DAISIES, the show teeters on the edge of bringing more style than substance to the table, the television equivalent of empty calories.

The cast and acting are a disaster. For as much as Dancy overacts and chews the scenery with his over-the-top neurosis, Mikkelsen under acts. I understand and can appreciate the subtleties of an understated performance, but this is like watching an exercise in the repression of all discernible human emotion. Neither Dancy nor Mikkelsen are particularly likeable characters, leaving the viewer with no one to root for. The supporting cast doesn’t fare much better. Sulky Laurence Fishburne – here as Jack Crawford, head of the FBI’s Behavioral Sciences division and Graham's boss – is woefully miscast. Caroline Dhavernas, as consultant profiler Dr. Alana Bloom, is equally bland and ineffective in her role as Graham’s confidant. Only plucky Lara Jean Chorostecki, as Fredricka "Freddie" Lounds, a pesky tabloid blogger, shows any kind of promise. She’s fortunately blessed with a great character, who you might remember was male in the big screen adaptation of RED DRAGON and played with sleazy, gleeful abandon by Philip Seymour Hoffman.

The killer characters of all three shows prove that like vampires and zombies, serial killers come in all variations – some, like HANNIBAL’s Dr. Lecter, with a better fashion sense than others. But for all their distinctions, at the core of each one’s madness is their twisted world view colored by the world around them – and those who inhabit it. Serial killers – again, like the vampire and the zombie – aren’t born; they’re created. What ultimately sets the serial killer sub-genre apart from its contemporaries is that while there are but a few tried-and-true paths leading to vampirism or to the dead rising, there are myriad routes to the warping and unhinging of the human mind. A traumatic past, an obsession with a literary figure, even the clichéd overbearing mother are all different ingredients that can be used in the same recipe. But THE FOLLOWING, HANNIBAL, and BATES MOTEL prove that it’s how you mix those ingredients and how long you bake the characters and story that ultimately determine how good the dish will taste. Doesn’t matter how it’s plated up and served.

Best of the Rest - 2010 Edition

Over the past few days, I’ve shared with you my picks for the ten best albums and songs of 2010. But what about the rest – movies, television, and books? I had to do more in 2010 than just listen to music, right? So here a few of my other “Best of…” selections that colored last year.

BEST MOVIE: It was trippy, hallucinogenic, artfully directed, and buoyed by a pair of stellar performances. I’m speaking, of course, of Black Swan, Darren Aronofsky’s brilliant psychosexual suspense thriller revolving around a young ballet dancer performing dual roles in Swan Lake. Natalie Portman catapulted herself onto Hollywood’s A-list with her powerful turn as Nina Sayers, the driven ballet ingénue who finds her rise to stardom within a New York City ballet company complicated by one hell of a nervous breakdown. Barbara Hershey turns in a career-best performance with her role as Nina’s stage mother-from-hell, a relentless, driving force of maternal over-protectiveness who’s sporting some serious baggage of her own. Filmed with a stylistic franticness by cinematographer Matthew Libatique, Black Swan is an outlandishly melodramatic throwback to 70’s-style giallo that’s visually arresting, intellectually captivating, and just plain nail-bitingly good.

BEST BOOK: It was hard to make a call on a “best” book this year. There were so many great titles in 2010 that I really enjoyed, making my third year of book reviewing duties at Dark Scribe Magazine more of a pleasure than ever. There was Sparrow Rock, Nate Kenyon’s seriously creepy apocalyptic chiller about teens trapped in a bomb shelter after a nuclear attack. And Lisa Morton’s spooky debut, The Castle of Los Angeles, about a haunted theater and the ghost of a serial killer who decides to upstage a production based on his crimes. There was The Wolf at the Door, Jameson Currier’s gorgeous elegy to gay midlife wrapped within a traditional ghost story narrative set at a haunted New Orleans gay guesthouse. In the same vein (albeit a different genre), there was Stephen McCauley’s Insignificant Others, another beautifully rendered look at gay men at the crossroads of their lives and the myths of monogamy. John R. Little continued his trend of making me cry at the end of every one of his brilliant time-slip novellas with Dreams in Black and White. Peter Straub and Stephen King both added to their impressive – and ever- expanding – bibliographies with A Dark Matter and Full Dark, No Stars, respectively. Needless to say, neither was a disappointment.

But the best book of 2010, hands down, was also the weirdest and hardest to categorize. With magicians and sorcerers (here referred to as “hexslingers”), gods and monsters, western shootouts, and more audacious gay sex than anything you’ve likely read last year, A Book of Tongues by Gemma Files is one of those novels for which no number adjectives is adequate in describing it. But I’m going to try! That this ambitious, wildly imaginative, Aztec mythology-laden slice of genre-defying speculative fiction set in the post-Civil War American West is a debut novel makes its merits even more noteworthy. Everything here in Files’ debut is carried out with sheer precision – language, dialect, setting, mythology. The very definition of enthralling. Best part: This is part one of a planned trilogy.

BEST TELEVISION SHOW: Yes, True Blood and Dexter continued to deliver with stellar new seasons this year. Modern Family continued to make me howl with laughter, while freshman comedies Hot in Cleveland and Mike & Molly harkened back to a time when sitcoms were actually funny. And, yes, even an old(er) ratings stalwart like Desperate Housewives showed what a quick trip to the ladies powder room (in this case, the cast addition of the delectably slinky Vanessa Williams) could do to freshen up a tired face starting to show its age. But it was a gory, plot-light little survival drama on a basic cable network that gets my vote as last year’s Best Television Show.

The Walking Dead – based on the long-running monthly black-and-white American comic book series of the same name – turned out to be the water cooler show of the year and the most watched show in AMC’s history. The story is simple: In the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse, a group of survivors travel across a ravaged American landscape trying to dodge the shuffling, flesh-eating undead while attempting to wrap their heads around immense personal losses and their own seemingly insurmountable odds. While the former offers nothing new – we’ve seen and read about the decaying dead noshing on the living ad nauseum since 1968’s Night of the Living Dead – it’s the latter that makes this show the unlikely hit it has deservedly become. While the show – the brainchild of frequent Stephen King adapter Frank (The Mist, The Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile) Darabont – has taken some heat for its uneven writing, this is still a surprisingly engaging, moving drama about people and their relationships with each other and the (in this case, quickly dying) world around them.

A few unfinished pieces from the music-oriented “Best of…” lists:

BEST MUSICAL RETURN: Jennifer (The Power of Love) Rush returned to fill the power-diva void left by the late Laura Branigan and Celine Dion, who has unwisely opted to curtail her vocal acrobatics on more recent recordings. Although the material on Now Is the Hour – her first album of new material in more than thirteen years – may be Euro-generic in spots, Rush’s distinctive throaty warble is like the return of an old friend.

BEST GREATEST HITS COMPILATION: After releasing eight albums and selling more than 57 million copies of them worldwide, it’s a head-scratcher why the UK’s Robbie Williams isn’t a bigger draw here stateside. He’s got photogenic, boy-band good looks, possesses a terrific, multi-octave singing voice, oozes charisma and that British wink-wink wit we seem to gobble up, and has that outlandish bad boy image that keeps him in the media spotlight for myriad vices and oddities including chain smoking up to 60 cigarettes a day, prescription pill addiction, alcoholism, and drug-induced UFO sightings. By all accounts, the guy’s the male equivalent of Amy Winehouse. So, if you’ve yet to experience the former Take That member’s solo efforts, may I humbly (albeit strongly) suggest that you pick up a copy of his superb second greatest hits compilation, a comprehensive, marvelously packaged three-CD set called In and Out of Consciousness: Greatest Hits 1990–2010? Includes 39 songs that explore William’s diverse pop sensibilities, his ear for clever hooks, and his talent for some of the most witty, engaging lyrics in the modern pop era.