Thursday, July 16th, 2009
07.00 Riptide
08.00 Barney Miller
12.30 Arrested Development
Riptide. Episode 7. "The Hardcase" Who are the thugs on the new boat in King Harbour?
The bad guys are way over-the-top, and some of the humour falls flat, but this is an episode with a good story and you can always rely on the chemistry of the three stars to make the show entertaining.
William Smith is one of the best bad guys on TV (or in movies). But, in this episode, he gives a relentlessly one-note performance. And he's hampered by two sidekicks who laugh hysterically like goons every time he threatens some cute girl. Cartoon villains.
The script gives Boz a lot of funny dialogue that just isn't funny. And it's painfully hard to watch sometimes. Likewise Marsha Warfield, who joins the cast in this episode, is given some very unfunny stuff to deliver.
However, this is a good story. The boys have no client in this episode, they stumble into the middle of something and it's a lot of fun to watch them figure it all out. Definitely an inventive private eye story. There's also some very amusing business involving a book that Cody has read. It advocated active listening as a means towards calming aggressive people and the guys keep trying it out, at various stages in the story. Very chuckle-worthy.
In general when the script doesn't try to be funny and just lets the actors interact on-screen together the show is a lot of fun to watch. Perry King, Joe Penny and Thom Bray click. It's that simple.
Barney Miller. Episode 8. "Ms. Cop" The guys adjust to lady cop in the squad room.
Fish is hysterical. Abe Vigoda completely steals the show. In this episode, he delivers a succession of one-liners that had me in stitches every single time. He's rapidly becoming my favourite character on the show. I watched Barney Miller as a kid, but I never saw the early seasons so I never saw Fish until now. He's fantastic.
Story-wise, this is the one where Linda Lavin joins the squad for a while and they adjust (badly) to the presence of a female detective. The episode has nothing much to say, really, and it escapes being dated by just being honest about the real reasons why a bunch of male cops would be slow to trust a female partner when they never had one before.
A lesser show might have preached, or taught a lesson, but BM just told the story of what happened and (thanks to Fish) made us laugh.
Barbara Barrie showed up as Barney's wife. She's a wonderful actress, and they give her good material to work with but it's obvious that the character is a a bad fit for this show. It's a cop show, and it needs to stay in the squad room to work and it's more interesting when the stories focus on the cases and people that come through the squad room, not on the guy's personal lives.
Arrested Development. Episode 20. "Whistler's Mother"
Arrested Development has (at least) two unusual ways of telling it's stories and getting laughs. The narrator never shuts up, thus becoming a vital character in the show, and they end every episode with fake scenes from the next episode.
There's a great scene in the middle of this chapter where Tobias and Gob go for a coffee to brainstorm (badly) on ideas for making money. Michael meets them and jumps to the wrong conclusion about what they are doing, and consequently offers to invest in their scheme. Realising that they are (very, very, very, very) likely to screw this up if they speak the two men remain completely mute and slowly back away from him. It's a truly hilarious scene (probably the best in the episode) but it really only works because the narrator explains it. Remove Ron Howard and many viewers might not understand what exactly is happening. Even more significant, and rare, the tone and frequency of the narration is a major source of humour in the show.
Then there are the false endings. Every episode comes to it's natural end. Then, the episode breaks the rules of storytelling/television by adding a few short snippets of scenes from the next episode. In fact, they are not from the next episode, they are just sneaky ways to continue the story and get a few more laughs.
The use here is particularly noteworthy. Michael and his mother have a (rare) tender moment, when she comes to his rescue. There's a twist, too. A powerful one. A decisive one. To end the episode.
However... after this the episode just keeps on going... for a couple of extra short scenes that - if regarded as the actual ending of the episode (which they are) could easily be described as chaotic and unsatisfactory. Yet, despite the fact that they are, in fact, the true ending of the episode, the show makes us believe that the much-better stuff that went before is how it ended.
Arrested Development, in this way, totally breaks the rules of the epilogue. Every show has had the epilogue: the happy bit at the end, where everything calms down and is neatly tied up in a bow. It's the way that 75% of TV ends it's weekly chapters. Everything else is usually a continuing show, with cliff-hangers and such.
Arrested Development is neither. And, rather than give us actual closure every week, they cleverly create the illusion of closure and then proceed to piss all over it before treating us to the End Theme.
Mitchell Hurwitz is a clever bastard.
I love him.
I also love Jeffrey Tambor. Long before this show, or "The Larry Sanders Show", he was impressing me on "Max Headroom" and (especially) "American Dreamer". In this episode of AD he plays the character of Oscar for the first time and, from the moment he appears on screen, he is mimicing Tony Hale's performance as Buster. It's remarkable.
Highlight? Arrested Development (unusual ways of getting laughs)
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Riptide, Barney Miller, Arrested Development
