setsuled

Jon Watts and Christopher Ford returned to pen last night's penultimate episode of Skeleton Crew. It was kind of odd because I recognised the story beats of a kids' adventure story from the '80s and Treasure Island and felt like I ought to be enjoying it. Unfortunately, I still feel like the show is out of touch with how sympathy works.

I don't believe stories have to be about sympathetic characters but one thing you need sympathetic characters for is illogical writing. If your audience sympathises with the characters, they're generally more willing to overlook leaps in logic that allow them to win. When a leap in logic favours a character you don't like, you feel cheated. Brutal but sound logic can be devastating but part of a good experience.

When the droid, SM-33, cited a piece of Pirate Code that said a captain could only claim one ship at a time, it was part of the leap in logic that allowed the kids to escape. If I liked the kids, this would've been a happy and exciting moment. But never did I prefer them over Jude Law's character, Jod. So it felt like a cheat. The rule doesn't make any sense. Real life pirates commanded multiple ships. Pirates like plunder and the ships themselves were part of that plunder. Maybe if Jod changed his title to "admiral" the droid would've been more amenable.



So it turns out that there's truly a massive stockpile of wealth which At Attin's gated community is sitting on. Do I have the slightest desire to see Jod prevented from obtaining this wealth that's apparently just gathering dust in over a thousand vaults?

I realise full well that this is likely all a set up for Jod to be revealed as a less villainous character in the final episode. I mean, that is the only way this could be satisfying. But the writers seem to think I'd be conflicted at this point and I'm just not. Is it supposed to be endearing when Wim shouts, "Attack!" and tries to take the whole pirate crew with his fists? Am I supposed to be impressed by Fern's calling "unclaimsies"? I had to check the closed captioning before I even understood what she said. The fact that that worked was a huge leap in logic and maybe I'd have been willing to go with it if I thoroughly despised Jod. But I have the exact opposite feelings so it was entirely a frustrating experience.

Skeleton Crew is available on Disney+.

The third episode of Skeleton Crew is definitely an improvement on the previous two despite being directed by David Lowery, director of that detestable adaptation of The Green Knight from a couple years ago. At the same time, I'm getting a better sense of the show's fundamental flaws.

Episode three works entirely because of Jude Law's character, both for the writing and Law's performance. He's obviously patterned on Long John Silver and his position in the story is very similar to Long John's position in Treasure Island--he's a surrogate father figure for the point of view child protagonist and the problem of his true moral character is constantly in play.

I don't like the name "Crimson Jack". I know, having written pirate fiction myself, how difficult and yet tempting it is to find variations of "Red" and "Black" and other simple, lurid adjectives invoking death and violence. But for a pirate's name, it has to be something you believe people would casually say in conversation and "Crimson Jack" doesn't roll off the tongue like Long John Silver.

Law's performance is good and you can see the layers of thought in his mannerisms and line deliveries. I like the moment where he's challenged with a line about never leaving a man behind being a Jedi ethic. He starts saying, "That's not--" and then catches himself and says, "That's not a Jedi thing." Just something about Law's attitude and inflection makes me feel like he was about to say, "That's not true." I think the idea hit close to home, that he feels he was left behind by Jedi he formerly trusted. The fact that I'm compelled to speculate and read into his motives is an indicator the character has been effectively created.

I also liked the line from the otherwise lame owl alien character in which she cautions one of the kids not to listen to her gut but to her head. It's believable that someone would stridently offer this advice and yet, at the same time, it's not really useful since, when we talk about our gut, we are actually talking about our heads. In a dangerous situation where the kids have to make decisions quickly they don't always have the luxury of doing so with all possible evidence gathered. So it sounds like logical advice but really all it does is raise the tension.



Unfortunately, the episode also highlighted how poorly conceived and written the children are. Their home planet's odd resemblance to Earth is like a bone fracture that gets worse the more the show walks on it. The worse part was when the two kids were so excited to shoot at the X-Wings chasing them. What in their backgrounds has made them so eager to shoot at people? When Long John Silver gave Jim Hawkins a pistol, Jim wasn't chomping at the bit to blow someone's brains out. The scene was obviously meant to echo the Death Star escape from the first Star Wars movie but the makers of Skeleton Crew evidently don't understand what motivated Han and Luke shooting at the TIE Fighters. Luke had been dreaming of being a fighter pilot all his life and now he and Han were both fighting for their survival. The kids in Skeleton Crew don't know if the X-Wings are trying to kill them and, as far as we know, all they've been dreaming about are sterile descriptions of Jedi on tablets. The problem is the kids are written more as Star Wars fans than as characters who are organically part of this universe. I wonder if this show was originally conceived as something more like The Last Starfighter; maybe the kids were originally supposed to actually be from Earth but someone at Disney or Lucasfilm thought the idea was too far outside of what Star Wars should be. I would agree, but the fact that filmmakers are looking for postmodern concepts shows their imagination is somehow blocked from properly exploring what should be a galaxy sized field of opportunity.

Skeleton Crew is available on Disney+.

I'm not really sure if Star Wars: Skeleton Crew is a good show. I didn't like the trailers and watching the first two episodes didn't raise my enthusiasm. I didn't like the concept of '80s American suburban kids in the Star Wars universe and the show has done nothing to convince me I should. But, on the other hand, if you do like the concept, it's entirely possible you'll like the episodes. They have a basic competence in their execution. They come from John Watts and Christopher Ford, the minds behind Spider-Man: Homecoming, and I did like that movie.

Why can't I get behind this concept? It seems only natural. Elliot in E.T. and a few other kids in those many junior high school aged stories of the '80s were seen playing with Star Wars toys. What could be more natural than putting such a kid in a Star Wars story? Oddly, it drains the show of nostalgia because, unlike Stranger Things, older viewers like me can't look at what the kids are interested in and say, "Oh, wow, I remember liking that." These kids like Jedi and Jedi is all they know. It's not just the nostalgia, it kind of shaves the tree down to the trunk. There's no sense of fullness to it. Like a lot of Disney Star Wars stuff, the galaxy it depicts feels very small and the odd similarity to '80s suburbs makes it feel even smaller.

The elephant kid is kind of cute. Maybe this show will win me over, I don't know.

Star Wars: Skeleton Crew is available on Disney+.

The two part Agatha All Along finale was good television. Not amazing but nonetheless satisfying and possessed of a storytelling integrity notably lacking in most of the Marvel series on Disney+. I suspect this is something Drew Goddard alluded to in a tweet about the new Daredevil series, that Disney/Marvel is abandoning the "treat series like movies" policy and going back to the format that made the Marvel Netflix series so consistent. Even the weakest of those, Iron Fist, benefited from the lack of the indecisive committee mentality that I think undermined so many big budget Disney+ shows.

The contrast is particularly clear when it comes to the differences between Wanda/Vision and Agatha All Along. Both series were created and ran by Jac Schaeffer but while Wanda/Vision had suspiciously odd plot twists, the most infamous being the Ralph Boehner one, Agatha All Along had elements that were clearly planned from the start and which Schaeffer followed through with in the finish. There was Patti LuPone's mental dislocation last week, and this week we get the reveal that Agatha knew from the start about Wiccan/William and that the Witch's Road was entirely his creation. If one goes back and watches the series again, the reveals at the end will lend new meaning to everything in a way that a Boehner style twist does not.

That's not to say I don't think people making film and television can't change course in the middle of production, that such a thing can't yield good results. I think the motivations behind such course changes matter, though. If it comes from a good storytelling instinct, it can be as interesting as the Darth Vader hallway sequence in Rogue One. But if it's a studio being indecisive over issues of branding and product roll-out, the results tend to be pretty lame.

Agatha All Along sure made good use of that song. Good thing it's a good song. Wanda and Wiccan creating realities, and thus creating narratives, is kind of reflected in Agatha and Nicholas' creation of the song. It's like micro-propaganda; Agatha took a melody crafted with artistic sincerity and then used it as a tool to manipulate her victims (I'm so happy the show didn't try to morally redeem her). It's like the Nazis using Wagner or the Soviets using Eisenstein, just on a micro-level. Of course, it's very Postmodern.

Lately I've been thinking about a trending criticism, the tendency to say some people act like "they're the main characters of their own stories". This one really puzzled me for a while until I realised most peoples' exposure to fiction is much more limited than mine so they assume "main character" is another term for "hero". Naturally, if your life is a story, then you're the main character. If not you, who? Name anyone and you'll sound pretty pathetic. "My boyfriend/my mother/my dog is the main character of my story." Oof. It's Wiccan and Wanda who actually make everyone else be supporting characters in their own stories, a much better way of getting at the egocentrism the criticism is supposed to be aimed at. Agatha may be the main character of this series, but from Wiccan's perspective, she's definitely a supporting character, a morally complicated villain.

One of the things I really liked about Wanda/Vision is that Wanda did not act heroically. Yet there were people who defended her, taken in by the tone of the story and sympathy for Wanda's love for her children. Agatha All Along's superior artistic integrity allows that moral complexity to sit in the minds of the viewers unfiltered, allowing for more interesting debate. I'm happy about that.

Agatha All Along is available on Disney+.

Jeri Taylor passed away a couple days ago at the age of 86. She wrote the above episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, "The Drumhead", of which she was particularly proud. Not seen in the clip is legendary screen actress Jean Simmons who played a key role in an episode about a witch hunt and subtle racial discrimination.

Taylor wrote for three Star Trek series: Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager, the last of which she co-created. Her work was often very thoughtful, political, but not ever, as I recall, truly polemical. I don't remember Voyager very well, I tend not to re-watch it. But her two parter for Deep Space Nine, "The Maquis", introduced the rebel group that remained a part of Star Trek for years afterward. It facilitated many of the show's signature, thought provoking analyses of war and attendant issues of loyalty and retribution. Taylor was certainly integral to what was best about that silver age of the franchise.

X Sonnet #1893

Permission froze the words to mean enough.
The heart cannot escape the metal arm.
The coat was cold from sleeve to ruffled cuff.
Embedded code creates computer smarm.
The hand contains intentions weird and dull.
A ceiling swarm attracts the blinding drunk.
A group of eyes were clustered 'round the hull.
Assorted lives fulfilled the secret trunk.
A secret word was passed amongst the mob.
To threaten ants was normal work for men.
A candy corn erodes the wholesome cob.
The holiday was rife with feinted sin.
The pastry shop displayed imprisoned rolls.
Pervasive fear creates reflexive trolls.

Last night's Only Murders in the Building, directed by the ever reliable Jamie Babbit, revealed the killer for this season. As usual, there were no real clues that could have enabled any viewer to reason out the killer's identity but I found it to be a very satisfying reveal anyway.

Spoilers ahead

So, yes, the guy with imposter syndrome turns out to be an imposter! I love this idea, especially because I think so many people with imposter syndrome are imposters. How could it not be so when American colleges have basically become expensive daycare centres for adults, particularly in the humanities department? Do you know how many students I met at college who wouldn't dream of reading a book through, let alone going to the trouble of developing their own thoughts? An obscene number, I assure you. But every time someone says, "Gee, I don't think I'm actually qualified for my job," we're all supposed to say, no, no, you just have cold feet. We could be encouraging them to do their diligence instead. Try making an effort, you might feel better.

It's not to say the average professional imposter is a murderer like the guy on Only Murders in the Building. But the kind of whiny hustler he is certainly familiar. His fake beard is even funnier now.

Only Murders in the Building is available on Hulu in the U.S. and on Disney+ elsewhere.

I don't know what video to post so here's another Selena Gomez video:



I liked the joke last night about her "erotic non-sexuality" and her sad reply, "It's the sweaters." I think I was right that it was Gomez's dissatisfaction that led to her sexier look last season.

I got caught up on Agatha All Along and watched the newest episode last night. It's not a bad show and there are several moments I really enjoyed. It has a song, "The Ballad of the Witches' Road", written by Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, who also wrote the song entitled "Agatha All Along" for WandaVision and are best known for writing the music for Frozen. And it's a good song.

The show's ratings have been low from the beginning and have declined further and further. Agatha All Along was created by Jac Schaeffer, who also created the successful WandaVision, which goes to show how much that show's success owed to it being tied to a still vibrant MCU. A lot of talk has been about who these new movies and shows are for. Agatha All Along seems very clearly aimed at wealthy, middle aged women. With the characters jumping from realities that include one that parodies (but really cosplays) Big Little Lies, one that adopts the aesthetic of late psychedelic rock, and one that resembles a slumber party from an '80s horror film, it's no stretch of the imagination to say the show's target is very clear. And it's not a target classically associated with Marvel fandom. At least they kept the budget down this time.

I would even say the character of William (Joe Locke), whose identity was revealed in last night's episode, is not there to attract a young, gay, male audience but to please older women who like young gay men. His story was kind of interesting. I liked the idea of him being a spirit that takes control of a young man whose consciousness dies in a car accident. That it occurs after his bar mitzvah has a nice symbolism to it.

I preferred the previous episode, though, in which Agatha (Kathryn Hahn) was able to act as a real (if conflicted) villain. I liked the ambiguity over how much control she has over draining the powers of other witches. It kind of takes her into Rogue territory, I suppose.

Agatha All Along is available on Disney+

X Sonnet #1890

The common break was cruel as glacial Coke.
Replacement soda crushed the child's heart.
Reclining bears alone observe the joke.
Commercials sold the shop around the cart.
A sandwich love would launch a hoagie house.
Resemblance haunts the darling angel cop.
Collected dolls surround the frightened mouse.
To rise, the geese have sold a feather crop.
A pretzel dog beheld the river harps.
A king was sleeping over swords and dames.
A million questions stirred the summer carps.
These pictures melt beyond their paper frames.
The changing road was lit with cash and wine.
A billion dollars burst the human dime.

Meryl Streep wrestled Melissa McCarthy on last night's Only Murders in the Building. And even then, Streep came off as effortlessly natural. That's a great actress.

The main trio go to hide out at Charles' sister's house. She turns out to be McCarthy, an obsessive doll collector with a husband who lives in a boat in the driveway. I guess this has become the show where every major star whose career is lagging goes. She was funny enough, I guess. Her heartfelt dialogue with Steve Martin about her missing spleen was a little better than her broad comedy with Martin Short just because it was so intriguingly odd.

I feel like this show should have guest appearances from Selena Gomez's contemporary pop stars. Here she is looking disconcertingly sexy in one of her old videos:



I'm not complaining about the sexiness by any means. It just goes to show what a different world she comes from than her costars.

Only Murders in the Building is available on Hulu in the U.S. and on Disney+ elsewhere (like Japan).

While I do like Steven Moffat, my favourite Twelfth Doctor episode of Doctor Who was written by Jamie Mathieson, "Mummy on the Orient Express". It's odd because the next episode, also written by Mathieson, is just so-so, "Flatline".

I like the concept of the Doctor and Clara facing two dimensional aliens. I also like how the asshole foreman of the community service workers isn't killed off as a moral retribution for being an asshole.

The shrinking TARDIS in the episode is cute and I like how Clara carries it around in her purse. I wonder what Hitchcock would make of that--purses in Hitchcock movies are said to symbolise female anatomy. That first season with Twelve and Clara was supposed to be moving away from romantic subtext between the two but of course every attempt the writers made to do that ended up intensifying it.

I think "Flatline" is the first one where Clara attempts to adopt the role of the Doctor, trying to act as he would while he's stuck in her purse. It adds a nicely somber note to the comedy when you know where it ultimately leads her.



X Sonnet #1883

Concerted dogs could trust the trains and sleds.
Partakers told the tell of radish rum.
These skulls of yours are only in your heads.
The mindless snow was made of sugar gum.
Authentic castles change the trodden stage.
As night delivers day, the ghost remains.
The numbered year was never given age.
For all the sweat, no summer's yet retained.
The flattened people seek to kill the round.
Resentment burst forbidden gum at birth.
A cautious tread concludes where nothing's found.
And yet a castle's shadow carries worth.
Offensive eyes would stick to hair like glue.
The sky remembers something close to blue.

I watched The Hand of Fear again last week, the Doctor Who serial from 1976. The whole four part serial is good but I especially admire the first episode. I mean, I guess the special effects for the first few minutes don't hold up to-day, though if you're like me, it's no impediment. But I'd unabashedly stand by everything else after that. It's a magnificent cascade of suspense.

You have the suspense while the Doctor and Sarah play around foolishly in the quarry while we can see the demolition crews. Then there's the suspense as the Doctor frantically tries to find Sarah in the rubble. And the wonderfully weird moment when Sarah grasps a severed stone hand. I love how quickly the episode turns the show on its head.

All the stuff in the hospital is good, too, and the nuclear power plant in the second and third episode.