The Blogulator Presents: Episode of the Month, May 2012

It's been a crazy TV month in May, what with a month chock-full of cliffhangers, season-enders, and all-out balls-to-the-walls craziness. The Blogulator crew is here to discuss their favorite of that batch of individual episodes of the month. Bring it, gang.




Game of Thrones, "Blackwater", Aired 5/27/12 on HBO

We're now two seasons into this show and, much like how the novels are structured the penultimate episode of each season ends up being a total gutpunch. Whereas last season's "Baelor" was a gutpunch on a purely "holy @#$%, they just killed the show's biggest star!" level, the masterful "Blackwater", scripted by book author George R.R. Martin and directed by Neil Marshall, director of The Blogulator's favorite film of 2005 The Descent, is a gutpunch on an epic scale. And as we know from The Descent, few directors are as good at directing action sequences in the dark as Marshall is. Yet, it's the small scenes between just a few of the major characters that keep the episode grounded. Tyrion and Joffrey's banter before executing their plan is hilarious and true to both of their characters, while Cersei's downward spiral aided by a whole lotta wine gives her character an added layer of sadness, even though we also know she's pretty much a bad person. All of this makes the emotional devastation on Tyrion Lannister's face when he executes the "wildfire" plan as epic as the physical devastation of A Crapload Of Boats And People On Fire And Lit All Green. [Qualler]

Smash, "Bombshell", Aired 5/14/12 on NBC

 You guys probably realize by now that I don’t watch a lot of TV when it airs (why would I watch real TV when Netflix offers all 7 seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space 9??), so my choices for best episode of May were limited to two episodes of Smash.  Whoops.  So the Smash season finale, “Bombshell” it is!  And, really, if you remove all the stupid personal drama, all the cheating and the breaking up and the dating of celibate baseball fans, and just leave the professional drama of the musical itself, this episode is pretty good.  This is the first time we’ve been able to see the songs of Bombshell in succession, which mostly makes me want to see the fictional musical Bombshell. (So much tap dancing!) Plus, Karen’s performance gives at least a whiff of justification for her apparent inbred talent, something which has been self-evident to everyone involved in the show except its audience.  (Ivy is still way better, though.) (Can Meghan Hilty just have her own show?) (Can it also star Kristen Chenoweth?) (Can it take place in my apartment so that we can all be friends?)  Millennial Ellis has finally been fired, Dev is gone (sadly), and the show faces a second season of new creative direction and writing.  The rapidly-put-together final song, “Don’t Forget Me”, was beautiful and wonderfully sung, giving promise to a much-improved second season.  That Ivy swallowed a handful of pills in the last shot of the episode is something that I’ll willfully choose to ignore. [Sam]

Don't Trust The B---- In Apartment 23, "The Wedding...", Aired 5/2/12 on ABC

Comedies usually take a while to get going. Much like The Office and Parks & Recreation, Apartment 23 premiered mid-season and only a few episodes to make an impression (only 7 episodes this first season). But, much like Happy Endings before it, Apartment 23 has quickly developed into a hang-out show with characters that bounce off of one another interestingly and entertainingly. I'm not sure how far into production this episode was made(it's common practice for networks to shuffle eps around to put the best foot forward), but it can't have been too late as it includes James Van Der Beek's plotline of becoming a contestant on Dancing With The Stars (which is one of the many wonderful ideas this show has had). Whatever the case, this was one of the funniest episodes of television I've seen this season and it's also a great entry point for anyone that hasn't watched the show yet. In this episode, June is feeling depressed and decides to let loose, letting Chloe mold her into a fun-having machine. It turns into a Single White Female thing wherein June becomes so fun, JVDB starts hanging out with her more than Chloe. This all leads to a lot of great stuff for both Dreama Walker ("June") and Krysten Ritter ("Chloe") to play. There's also JVDB dancing and clips of him in a fake Guy Ritchie movie. All terrific stuff that shows what this now up-to-snuff series can do. This ep raised Apartment 23 to the ranks of Happy Endings, Community, Cougar Town and Parks & Rec as one of the funniest network comedies. [sarCCastro]

Mad Men "The Other Woman" Aired 5/27/12 on AMC

Everyone that knows who Joan Harris (née Holloway) is will likely be talking about this episode for years. We'll be at the senior center for our pancake feed, complaining about the haircuts the kids have these days, and one of the volunteers pouring us pulp-free orange juice will have crimson red hair. One of us will say to the other, "whoa, she looks like Joan fromMad Men L-O-L." And then the other one will say, "awww I miss having Don Draper on my TV every week." And then the first one will respond with, "oh man, remember when Pete pimped out Joan to that Jaguar guy?" The conversation will then drown in a flood of nostalgia that the kids with the bad haircuts and the redheaded juice pourer will not understand one iota. It may not be the most powerful episode of the vanguard series, and it's certainly not my favorite episode of Mad Men (it's not even my favorite of this season), but it needs to be noted here because it's a touchstone for its ballsy "it-went-there" storytelling, officially placing the series in a pantheon of not only great dramas, but fantastic conversation starters. I still feel weird about it, and am not sure I want to be having this conversation about our dear beloved Joan, but it's a hell of a conversation nonetheless. And that's why we write about television dammit. [Chris]

Revenge "Reckoning" Aired 5/23/12 on ABC

O. M. G. Revenge knows what a season finale should be.  Holy Hamptons. As soon as the episode begins, you can feel it.  The plot points quickly become infinitely more absurd, the dialogue more stilted, the facial expressions more overly-wrought.  In fact, I would bet that if you cut out all the moments in this episode where a character was just looking at something or someone silently with anger, shocked recognition, or despair, the show would run just ten or fifteen minutes. Without providing too many spoilers, "Reckoning" kills characters (at least two, maybe more!) and relationships, and sets up a hellva season two (long-lost parents! a love triangle, with pregnancy!). The waves of sheer delight and deliciously frothy over-the-topness will inspire many a dream for me until the waves of the Hamptons once again grace my television screen. [Jerksica]

Smash: Come on, Eileen

Good news, you guys! Smash is getting a second season given its lackluster but steady ratings, which is a shock to all of us that thought the show would implode from the weight of all its excess storytelling. This most recent episode was entitled “The Coup”, which could not be a more fitting title given that the lead writer and creator of the show has been ousted, citing the fact that she was attempting to drown the viewers in melodrama. Since this development last week, the show has already lobbed off two unnecessary storylines—writer Julia’s affair with actor Michael and her son’s legal troubles—which, thank God. Now can we work on weeding out Derek and Ivy’s relationship and find a real love story? Nevertheless, there was still an excess of unnecessary story line in this episode (Why was Eileen’s daughter there suddenly? Why did Ryan Tedder from One Republic need to guest star for that three-line cameo?), but strangely it was not the most frustrating part of the episode.

Bernie wasn't in this episode, but doesn't she look great last week? 

The workshop ended with mixed reviews, so the coup in this episode is that director Derek and producer Eileen decide to ask that awesome band, One Republic, to write an abysmally pop-tacular (it was pretty terrible, right?) song for Marilyn behind writers Tom and Julia’s backs, using understudy Karen to perform it/pitch it to the rest of the crew. Obviously, it failed, given that, you know, it was totally unprofessional. Tom and Julia were pissed, Ivy was scandalized, and Karen realized that she’d unwittingly made the biggest mistake of her career and now had three new enemies. It finally takes Eileen’s daughter and personal assistant Ellis (ELLIS?!) to diffuse the situation. The whole story was ridiculous (no way would anyone believe original pop songs like that could ever carry an entire musical), but the most frustrating part was Eileen’s role in the whole debacle.

That's One Republic in the background, in case you couldn't tell. 

Listen, I understand that this is Eileen’s first post-divorce solo run at producing a musical, but on what planet would decades of work in show business leave her this inept? I’ve never been involved in the production of a musical (unless you count my high school’s production of Les Mis, which, let me tell you, was a tour de force), but even I could guess that undermining your writing team by creating some piece of crap song and then asking them to create other piece of crap songs in the same vein is probably going to be problematic. I get why Derek did it, and I understand that overly-trusting Karen was misled. But why did it take Eileen’s 20-something daughter to give her professional advice before she realized the whole situation was not only insensitive, but just bad business? She’s been in this business for years! Also, apparently Ellis has switched teams (he said, outright, to his “girlfriend”, “I want to try producing”), and Eileen has latched on to his ill-advised espionage and his forcing himself into the production process and rewarded this behavior by stealing him from Tom (in Julia’s pitch-perfect words, “I’d say good riddance, but we’re still stuck with him”). I’m glad that Ellis is staying on the show because Julia’s animosity towards him is probably my favorite dynamic in the show, but Ellis’ brown-nosing and interference is painfully obvious, and the fact that Eileen encourages it undermines her professionalism. Get it together, Eileen. Your ineptitude and doe-eyed love of “slumming it” in bars that serve $7 martinis (do those exist in New York? They don’t in Minneapolis) make you unlikeable, but not in the fun I-love-to-hate-you way, but more in the get-off-the-screen kind of way. Her character needs a new direction as much as the show does.

Maybe she's just distracted by that vest. 

The show is obviously undergoing some major changes and you can see that the writers are trying to cut off all the excess and hone in on the things that are working: the professional rivalry between Ivy and Karen as well as each woman as a character; Tom and Julia’s working relationship and Julia’s family (without all the adoption, legal issues, and adultery); Ellis’ millennial feelings of entitlement and his overall evilness. But can what’s happened be undone? Will Smash turn into a really quality television show and, like with Parks and Rec or Star Trek: TNG, we’ll just forget the first season ever happened? Who knows? But if not, at least we know we’ve got a second season of it.

Smash: It's All About Relationships

Okay, so remember two weeks ago when I said that the most interesting part of the show is the fact that the two potential stars, Karen and Ivy, are actually very nice but that the ambiguity about who deserves the part would be dispelled because Ivy is obviously going to end up sleeping with the director, Derek, and get the part not based on her merits? Well, I TOLD YOU SO. Except not quite in the way I expected. Ivy is strangely invested in making her relationship with Derek work in a non-sexual way, which is weird to me because dude’s a big toolbox, but it adds this strange naiveté to her character that is both annoying and endearing. Meanwhile, writer Tom is absolutely indignant when he finds out Ivy is sleeping with Derek (because, yes, when it comes to relationships with men in power, it’s always good to jump to the conclusion that the woman is a power-hungry witch willing to sleep her way to the top) until he finds out that Julia had an affair with Michael, the guy they cast to play Joe DiMaggio (it happened in sepia tones on the Brooklyn Bridge, apparently), and then decides it’s all okay. I expected that Tom would be upset and I was surprised by his eventual complacency with it but I was disappointed that the whole story played out in the course of a single episode. These conflicts are unexpectedly interesting and draw out personality traits that I wouldn’t expect from these characters; unfortunately, thus far, the stories have all been resolved way too quickly.

The promotional shots for this show are AWESOME.

Meanwhile, cut to Tom’s personal assistant, Ellis, who is apparently not gay (REALLY!?) and is evil. Or not evil, but just well-meaning and misguided? I can’t tell. It’s hard for me to believe that someone who wears that many sweater vests and smiles so dopily could be so sinister, but I’m sure, like a siren, he is luring me in to kill me. In a way, Ellis is like the entitled hipster Millennial, shaking up the establishment, demanding things he doesn’t deserve, and causing way more drama than he’s worth by claiming that Marilyn was his original idea. I think the writers were trying to portray Julia in a bad light when she gives points out that mentioning that you like Marilyn Monroe in passing doesn’t mean you came up for the idea for a musical, but everything she says makes sense in the face of Ellis’ bizarre idea that he’s integral to or deserves to be part of the creative process. I like that Julia hates him and makes no effort to hide it, getting increasingly exasperated by his weirdness. It’s like he’s a psychopath who has easily won everyone over except the one person who’s creeped out by his weird lack of empathy and then becomes the psychopath’s Cassandra-like victim, trying to show everyone he’s totally nuts while he slowly turns her friends against her (see: The O.C. when Oliver tries to steal Marissa by turning everyone against Ryan and Luke, or that one episode of House when the psychopath tries to get 13’s medical license revoked). It’s one of the only totally professional relationships in a show that’s largely about how show business affects personal relationships.

Look at those eyes. EVIL.

The first three episodes, in fact, have been entirely about trust and relationships, rife with past infidelities, overt displays of caring (mostly in monetary form), and power dynamics. The relationships are varied and interesting and open to a lot of complication, but, thus far, it’s like the writers have just been reading these people’s connections and past experiences off of a character map instead of letting these things come out organically. Did we need to know Julia had an affair with Michael in the same episode that his character (complete with wife and child) is introduced? No. Did Ivy and Derek need to sleep together in the second episode? Probably not. Did we need to establish in the first 10 minutes of the first episode that producer Eileen is in the midst of a divorce and doesn’t have the money or clout to get this show created? Not at all. These first three episodes have laid out a smorgasbord of conflicts with trite little back stories instead letting these enticingly complex storylines play out on their own. So if we’re talking about relationships, I think Smash needs to learn to trust its viewers enough to slow down its rabid storytelling and let these characters and their relationships speak for themselves.

SMASH: How the Pilot Smashed My Dreams for a Quality Television Show

I really dislike pilots. I can only think of three that are honestly good (The O.C., Friday Night Lights, and Glee, and I’d add LOST to this list if the show weren’t so dumb), the rest of which sit in a range from passable to abysmal. (Remember the pilot for Pushing Daisies? I’m surprised the show got made.) Pilots tend to be overwritten and annoyingly expositive, like 43-minute indie films written by recent college graduates who have to include one out-of-place scene because it’s sort of autobiographical and profound and has been festering in their post-adolescent minds for years (see: Gilmore Girls and Lorelei’s stupid conversation with the bursar’s office for Rory’s school). Even when I think pilots are well-crafted, it usually requires the distance of an entire season of character development before I can forgive two-dimension characters shoved into contrived situations.

I’m saying this as an explanation for my lukewarm response to NBC’s new smash, SMASH, which aired on Monday to much buzz. Like the sucker that I am, I was drawn in by the impressive list of stars. Emmy-award winning actress, Debra Messing? Academy-award winning actress, Angelica Huston?! KATHERINE MCPHEE?!

I'm such a McPhan, you guys.

The idea of a process show about creating and producing a Broadway musical, complete with songs and dance numbers, solidified my desire to tune in. I imagined a process-type show about creating a musical, about watching this production unfold from its conception to its last performance. I imagined that characters would exist in separate worlds until they were introduced to the project slowly, allowing for character growth, intrigue, and drama. Unfortunately, this episode, like most pilots, disappointed.

The script was absolutely rabid in its storytelling. The amount of plot they crammed into a one episode could have filled an entire half a season. In the course of this single episode, the writers conceived their musical, wrote three songs, found a producer, auditioned a director, and whittled their audition pool down to two possible stars. It was established that writer Julia (Debra Messing) is adopting a kid and having marital woes, that producer Eileen (Angelica Huston) is getting a high-profile and expensive divorce, that writer Tom (Christian Borle) and director Derek (Jack Davenport) hate each other for reasons unknown, and that Karen (Katherine McPhee) is a girl-next-door Iowan transplant with the cutest boyfriend ever. The characters are all placed in easily-recognizable tropes (I’m eager to see if the homosexual character will have as advanced a non-professional storyline as have been established for the heterosexual characters, because, right now, he’s got nothing except being annoyingly nice, which is our new expectation for gay characters), which will hopefully be deconstructed as the show progresses. Nevertheless, despite its efforts to be exactly what you expected of it, SMASH actually dealt an interesting hand with the two women vying for the lead role in the musical. While watching the promotions for the show, you may have thought that his was a homely-girl-next-door-underdog-battles-experienced-but-less-talented-vixen situation, but in actuality, both women are incredibly nice, and pretty equally talented, and trying to achieve their dreams despite unsupportive parents. There’s this air of ambiguity about who is going to get the part and, more importantly, who deserves the part, which could turn into really quality character drama. Are they going to destroy that ambiguity by having Ivy, the blonde, sleep with the director? Probably. Judging from the next-on teasers, I’m guessing this ambiguity is an oversight the show’s writers will be addressing. Which one will get it? Probably not the one who sleeps with the director...

So while what I had hoped for was an engaging plotline with characters unfolding slowly over the course of many episodes, what I got was an intense hour of slapdash, very punctuated story-telling establishing easily-identifiable character types with very little non-clichéd conflict. But such is the fate of pilots. Perhaps the show will slow down now. Perhaps less emphasis will be placed on spectacle and more on the logistics of writing, producing, and performing in a Broadway show. Or perhaps I’ll stop watching after 3 episodes and put my Monday nights to better use, namely, watching old episodes of Parks and Recreation and Mad Men or playing Zelda. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from my years of TV-watching, it's to never judge a show by its pilot.