Two Hour TV Shows-

Mad Men launches into its fifth season this Sunday with a two hour premiere.  Very few tv series can support a 2 hour episode.  I'm betting even Mad Men won't be up to the challenge.

Thoughts on "Wanderlust"

I didn't see Role Models.

I love Wet Hot American Summer.

I hadn't realized going in that Wanderlust was a David Wain movie.

I'm assuming this is a classic example of what happens when a funny, independent, creative director - qualities I'm assigning to David Wain sheerly based on my obsessive love of Wet Hot American Summer -  comes under  the studio system's thumb.  Or perhaps script sucked all along...

Aside from the bad script the main thing that struck me was that Jennifer Aniston constantly fails to be a movie star.  Her presence does not hold the big screen - it never has.  Even the small screen challenges her.  It was the ensemble nature of "Friends" which made it fun to watch - and truly any time Ross and Rachel were left alone on the screen the charm of the show fizzled.  Neither one is particularly funny (although David Schwimmer does an excellent job being an ass hole in Kissing the Fool).

Anniston exists solely to be the paradigm of airbrushed pop/glamour magazine cover girls.  There's a fascination with her in that medium that fails to translate to any other.  

The big problem - as desperate as she is to be funny, she isn't.  There's a seriousness to her that no end of "I'm letting my hair down and showing the world my wild side" roles will alleviate.   We've all known people who think they're funny but are not.  They try so hard.  It's an awful thing to watch - particularly in women.

But what's most interesting to me is my desire to watch Anniston's characters (or ostensibly her)  suffer.  I mean truly suffer in a "beneath this put together exterior I'm a fucking wreck" kinda way.   And I think it might be the one element to her character that would be both truthful and watchable - if she could just get to that place.  I think I need to see "The Good Girl"

I dated a woman with low self-esteem.  She was (and remains) beautiful, smart and an exceptionally social being.  But after a time - her self-esteem issues began to erode the foundation of our relationship - and by the end -  I'd become an out and out ass hole to her.

I don't think I'm usually an asshole  - and I don't generally like to make people suffer at my hands.  She liked me.  We were connected in a relationship.  And her lack of self esteem reflected on me.  It was a warped mirror in which i could see my own reflection.  And in that reflection I was a man who had allowed himself to become engaged and connected with a woman who didn't think very much of herself.  In fact, a woman who saw me as a better person than she was.  I was dating somebody "less" than I was.  I didn't think that.  But she did.  And it pissed me off.  And after a while I wanted to teach her a lesson - I wanted to hurt her.   So on our final night dating we went to West Hollywood together - and could there be any more apropos place to reveal one's inner sadist than West Hollywood.

All this is to say - some part of me wants to see Jennifer Aniston in real pain.  Everything else she does is fake.  Sometime it's necessary to wallow in doubt and self loathing…I think she's actually full of it.   But it's okay to hate yourself a little bit from time to time.  And if you're able to wake up the next day and go on - you'll know there's some inner element of ego or pride you can use to pull yourself up out of the muck and start to believe you're as good as any other mother fucker out there.

Reading Greg's blog (http://publicmusings.blogspot.com/) made me think comparatively about my two favorite shows on TV - Justified and Downton Abbey.

Greg writes well about Justified - effectively examining the grand scope of Justified's storytelling arsenal.  Justified doesn't fit neatly into any one genre definition.   The show dabbles in procedural (its weakest suit in my opinion), character profile, hardened bad ass criminal fun and, though Greg refers to it as Michael Mann mano vs. mano stuff - I believe he's really referring to its roots in westerns (a genre from which M. Mann has mined untold riches).  All of this is rightly true and and does make Justified one of the best show on TV.

So then what similarities does Justified share with Downton Abbey?  It must share something for me to like them both so much - but I'm having a tough time seeing it.

Downton Abbey's greatest strength is planting in its audience's mind the exact wants of each character involved.  This can come into play on both a micro or a macro level.  We know what Thomas wants - we know what Mary wants - we know what Matthew wants and all the show does is keep throwing up obstacles to keep our characters from getting to whence we know they're destined to go.

Some of these story lines have run out of believable obstacles to utilize - the audiences emotions having been frayed so thin countless times - there's no longer so much depth to plum.  For how long can Anna and Mr. Bates continue to toy with our emotions?