#7 // I'm with her
#7 // I’m with her
Hi gang, sorry it’s been so long! Good news is, I’ve been watching a lot of TV. Some of it on TV, some of it ON THE INTERNET. Some of it, I’ve been formulating opinions about without even watching (what’s up, Mr. Robot—I know your plot twists). Anyway, as it’s Fall TV season, I thought I’d just run through some thoughts about a couple of standouts. And away, we, GO:
Fleabag (Amazon) //
We just finished this show, and it was terrific. The thing that you’ll notice first about Fleabag is that its protagonist breaks the fourth wall a lot, which, by and large, is a cliché and a terrible decision. (Also, don’t set your Shakespeare productions in Nazi Germany.) Alison Davis at The Ringer wrote a really great primer on why this is generally a bad move—hey, House of Cards, I also know your plot twists!—and it boils down to the idea that, more often than not, breaking the fourth wall only manages to tell the viewer what the viewer should already know. (This is true of a lot of TV voiceover as well—Outlander is a particularly egregious offender. We understand your heart is in two places and that that’s difficult for you, Claire! You don’t have to spell it out!) And, in that way, it can be grating and condescending.
But, as Davis points out, Phoebe Waller-Bridge (the star and creator of Fleabag) breaks the fourth wall because we would otherwise have no idea how she’s feeling. She’s performing for everyone but us. As Davis says, “There’s a certain kind of power in not leaving a story up for interpretation, especially for a TV show that’s told from the female perspective.” I’d go a step further, though, to say that the fourth wall is broken so much in this show because our relationship with Fleabag (her character’s de facto name) is the show’s central relationship. In other words, it’s not that we know things the other characters don’t; it’s that the other characters don’t know things that we know. That sounds like it’s the same thing, but it’s not. Or at least it doesn’t feel the same. The direct address is so constant, so dynamic, so much the root of Fleabag’s characterization, that it takes over the show’s bones. The rupture, I’m saying, doesn’t occur when Fleabag breaks the fourth wall. It occurs when she observes it, when she doesn’t let us in. This show is set in a confessional, and it’s a strange world outside with the lights up and the dirt under the rug.
In the final episode, Fleabag is confronted with her past when a secret even we didn’t know is revealed, and in that moment she tries to escape the camera. She jukes and dodges, the camera moves with her, she tries unsuccessfully to break eye contact. Fleabag’s primary intimate relationship is with the camera, with us but Fleabag has become just another unreliable narrator. It sounds like a trick—like an episode-length eyebrow-raise from Jim Halpert—and it is, but it’s also one of the more emotionally engrossing things I’ve experienced on TV recently. I’m with her.
Easy (Netflix) //
Oh man, do I dislike this show. We've only done two episodes—the second one exponentially better than the first, but still—and I think I'm done. The post-mumblecore canon contains a few really essential twenty-first century films (Drinking Buddies, Your Sister's Sister, probably Computer Chess), but Joe Swanberg's Netflix TV show does not belong in that company. I think the most evergreen criticism of these directors is that their films risk being observational but not insightful. They look like they’d be revelatory, but they often aren’t. And Easy’s, well, easiness is deceptive.
It aims for the kind of flannel-shirted, casual profundity intermittently achieved by other works in this mode, but sometimes I wonder how many of these epiphanies have been accidents. Is even a Joe Swanberg right twice a day? The second episode—about an interracial lesbian couple confronting the specter of veganism—is fine. Kiersey Clemons in the lead is wonderful. But, boy, that first episode is so tortured, so tired, so profoundly thick-headed and scattershot about sex and relationships that it feels like it was written by a space alien whose only experience of humanity was reading the Wikipedia plot synopses for the films of James L. Brooks.
I don’t mean to be unkind here, but, you know, this is just an email, and Joe Swanberg is a very successful filmmaker. And, honestly, so few people, from so few backgrounds, are given the artistic freedom to make intimate, personal television series. I wish they’d give more opportunities to artists who have something to say, and fewer opportunities to artists who seem like they have something to say.
Atlanta (FX) //
I’m still wrestling with what to say about this show. I think I love it. I think it borrows a lot from Louie—the scale, the naturalism, the jarring moments of surrealism, the implied soulfulness—but I think it might be better than Louie. For two related reasons. The first is that Donald Glover didn’t make himself the protagonist. He’s smart enough to realize that an ensemble of Louies is better than one Louie.
The other, relatedly, is that Glover isn’t the hero of his own show. Louis CK outdid the Mumblecore folks by stealing their aesthetic concept and then having actual interesting things to say. But Louie occasionally suffered from But-He’s-A-Good-Dad syndrome. In other words, even when the show’s protagonist was doing the wrong thing, that wrong thing was serving to emphasize the essential goodness of his character. And that sometimes felt self-serving. As a result, Louie’s plots always tilted at connection, saw generosity and fellow-feeling as the romantic endpoints of Louie’s quest—Parker Posey’s Manic Pixie Dream Girl, Amia, the people of China—but not real, actual subjects. These things were always offscreen, out of reach, otherwise foreign to the world and point-of-view of Louie, and thus Louie. Louie’s goodness was defined for us by his human, admirable desire to be good and his human, admirable desire to be connected. But Atlanta grows up out of the sort of real connections Louie romanticized, even as it shows a similar inadequate striving for goodness, and, even though its sensibility is younger, it’s also somehow wiser.
It’s also weirder. Donald Glover initially described the show as “Twin Peaks with rappers,” and while it doesn’t have Twin Peaks’ grim content, its spikes of surrealism and its sense of place are Lynchian-ish. Black Justin Bieber, the dog target at the shooting range, the silent smiling student in whiteface—these touches mesmerize at the same time that they keep us off balance. It’s not quite magical realism, it’s not quite Southern Gothic, it’s not quite Louie, and it’s not really quite David Lynch, either. It’s easy to pick out which new shows replace the old ones we liked. This Is Us is the new Parenthood. Westworld is the new Game of Thrones. And, because of that, sometimes it’s hard to acknowledge that a new show opens up a category that you didn’t previously have a spot for. Donald Glover isn’t re-inventing the wheel. I know about mid-twenties malaise, and I know about Entourage-style hang-out shows, and I know about auteur-y FX vignette series. That kid in whiteface, smiling at Van at the end of the last episode, though? I didn’t know about him.
***
Recommendations //
This Slate long read about the moneyball revolution—specifically, Mike Schur's blog Fire Joe Morgan—has a lot of interesting tidbits and some great interview material with Schur.
I love Kelly Reichardt, and this is about her.
I don't know when I'll end up seeing either of the Christine Chubbuck films, but I'm happy to just have this Miriam Bale piece on both to tide me over.
I think Marie Antoinette is Sofia Coppola's best movie, and here's Hazel Cills on its soundtrack.
He and I are going to write about this together soon, but Aaron Bady's got, I think, the most convincing case for being optimistic about Westworld.
This is a really insightful piece about the structural and non-structural reasons for the whiteness of TV criticism in the midst of a TV landscape that gets more diverse every year.
Donald Trump rallies are rendering the cinema obsolete:
But movies still matter to Hillary:
Finally, it was Maeve's first birthday this week, and here are the cupcakes we made her.
Honest Abe never told a lie,
Phil.