Learning to Appreciate February
Winter is coming. I mean spring. I mean Game of Thrones. Before March rolls in let’s reflect on the surprising richness of late-winter television. Celebrity Wifeswap may have Happy Endings in its crosshairs, but not all is bleak.
House of Cards
Damn it Netflix, you get America. Clearly the major flaw with broadcast television is that there isn’t enough of it. Thanks for solving that problem. Seriously. I felt like I was in a race to finish the show before anyone could review it to tell me what I was supposed to think. I won. Nice.
The first episode is jarring. Watching on my laptop, it was as if Kevin Spacey and I were skyping. Soon, however, I got used to the asides and it seemed more like Ferris Buehler had grown up, become jaded, and moved to D.C. The first ¾ of the series is taut and exciting. Like all things democratic, it spirals out of control just in sight of the finish line.
My favorite thing about House of Cards was how easily it manipulated me into rooting for the wrong people and then, just as easily, had me switch allegiances. This may have been a side effect of trying to fit 13 hours of television into a single evening (NB, there is not enough time between dinner and bedtime to do this and go to work the next day), but my loyalties were more fluid than Kevin Youkilis’.
Multireferential Summary: In an unlikely alternate reality where South Carolina has democrats and Princess Buttercup is an adulteress, Rooney Mara’s little sister Bernstein-and-Woodwards her way (without clothes) to the middle of a Washington where things get done.
The Americans
Tovarish, mad people sweat this show. I’m undecided. Kerri Russell is great and, with the addition of Margo Martindale as Granny Andropov, things are bound to improve. Through the first three episodes, however, the show lacks the intense pull of other spy shows and the characters are still too bland to really care about. Somehow, 80s spy craft, in the shadow of Zero Dark Thirty,Homeland, and drone strikes seems tame.
We know how this story ends. No matter how much damage the Jenningses manage to inflict, they lose. It makes me less invested in their comparably tame manipulations and dead drops. Really, a secret code in a newspaper? A poisoned umbrella?
The show feels true to an era I never experienced. By grounding it in references to real events and people without compelling us to care about the fictional ones, The Americans needs the viewer to settle in on the couch with some Cold-War nostalgia to feel an emotional connection to the plotline. But, I’ll keep watching, unless Kareem Abdul Jabbar turns out to be a really good diver.
Summary: The wall’s coming down… or is it?
Oh, also, the History Channel has a show about Vikings, Benedict Cumberbatch is about to be on HBO for 5 hours and Community is back. I’m starting to reevaluate February.
Sam Cohen is really glad that 'Do No Harm' got cancelled. That show was an insult to a brilliant title.