Joan Rivers: A Personal Remembrance

1933-2014

Farewell, Funny Lady...

In Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, we hear a line that I think best captured the type of comedienne she was.  If memory serves correct, she was on the phone with someone and asked if she thought she should refer to (or could get away with referring to) First Lady Michelle Obama as 'Blackie O'.  In turns shocking and funny, I remember both gasping and laughing at this quip. 

Joan Rivers was a trailblazer, was a legend, but she also found those types of accolades both dismissive and insulting.  She never wanted to be held up as some figure who did much to put female comics on equal par with men.  Joan Rivers, above all else, wanted to be taken seriously, which given her line of work is a curious paradox at best. 

It does seem strange that the death of an 81-year-old is considered 'sudden', but then Joan Rivers appeared to be totally unflagging.  She had finished a concert appearance the night before she went in for what should have been routine throat surgery, and she had bookings in Great Britain for another tour (which, in her characteristic style, she had dubbed Before They Close The Lid), and she was a weekly presence on the television show Fashion Police, where she and her merry minions would skewer celebrities who dared to wear less than the best.  Rivers was just so full of energy, of vitality, of a relentless work ethic.  With her always being busy (her greatest fear, she said, was in having an empty calendar), it looked like she would go on performing and shocking, that she would keep on asking in her gravelly voice, "Can we talk?" and offer us more "Gossip, Gossip, Gossip".

When one looks back at her decades-long career, full of spectacular rises, disastrous downfalls, and astounding comebacks after comebacks, it seems quite shocking that a simple medical procedure, so simple Rivers didn't even bother to go to a hospital but to an outpatient clinic, could have killed her.  In a certain way, it seems a horrible irony that she probably would have made a joke about: a woman famous for her voice and her mouth died as a result of someone working on her throat, and a woman who was forever active and on-the-go never regained consciousness after going into cardiac arrest.

It seems curious to me that Rivers was so often hailed as a trailblazer in comedy, in particular for female comics, but she never commanded the respect all those that came after her received.  In the sixteen years since the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor was established, Rivers was not once honored (or apparently considered for recognition).  Somehow, it must have stuck in her craw (or something that sounds similar to 'craw') that people like Tina Fey, Will Ferrell, Billy Crystal, Ellen DeGeneres and most recently, Jay Leno(!?) were honored while she was passed over again and again.

Seriously, Jay Leno?  Bad enough when David Letterman received a Kennedy Center Honor, but this...

When was the last really funny movie Will Ferrell made? 

Tina Fey?  She was the youngest winner at age 40, but while millions of critics love her I never found her as amusing as she finds herself.  I find her smug and pretentious, but in fairness I never saw 30 Rock (like most of America), so perhaps Sarah Palin's doppelganger is some sort of genius.  Then again, apart from Mean Girls, what can Fey point to and say, "I AM LEGEND?"  Baby Mama?  Admission? Muppets Most Wanted? Cue those Kennedy Center Honors clips, please!   

"The Mark Twain Prize recognizes people who have had an impact on American society in ways similar to the distinguished 19th century novelist and essayist best known as Mark Twain."  So it says on the prize's official website as the criterion for being recognized.  If people can tell me how Ellen DeGeneres, a woman who has made her whole career out of being almost thoroughly docile, has had that 'impact on American society in ways similar to...Mark Twain', please let me know.

As a side note, should the Kennedy Center opt to posthumously honor Rivers or Robin Williams for the prize, if I were either of their families, I'd tell them to stuff that Mark Twain bust up Fey or Ferrell's...

Joan Rivers was far worthier of recognition than most of the Mark Twain winners, but again despite everything she did, she couldn't get respect. She'd get praise, a pat on the back, but no respect, which was about the only thing Rivers ever wanted.

I reject the idea that Rivers was a precursor to people like Chelsea Handler or Sarah Silverman.  Rivers was raunchy, sometimes shockingly so, but everyone was in her cross-hairs, especially herself.  Handler and Silverman have always struck me not as funny, but as vulgar, vicious, crass, ugly.  Rivers had wit behind her commentary, while Silverman and Handler confuse coarseness with cleverness.  Rivers never had to be like the men to be funnier than the men.  Rivers targeted everyone, Silverman and Handler only target their enemies, making them crabby commentators rather than actual comics.

Joan Rivers, if nothing else, was a survivor.  I believe Johnny Carson had in mind to have Joan Rivers take his place on The Tonight Show whenever he decided to finally retire.  He had all but put her in the big leagues, and made her his first 'permanent guest host'.  When she decided to host her own late-night talk show, things got ugly and confused.  No one ever fully agreed on what exactly happened: Rivers insisted she had called Carson to let him know, Carson's camp insisting he was blindsided.  His wrath knew no end: not only was Rivers never to appear on The Tonight Show during his reign, but he never spoke to her again.  Even after Rivers sent a condolence note to Carson on the death of his son, he steadfastly refused to forgive his protégé, and went to his grave an angry, bitter man (at least when it came to Rivers).  Her career was in free-fall: her late-night talk show bombed, she couldn't get bookings, and with someone as powerful as Johnny Carson making his fury clear she had become persona non grata.  Add to that the suicide of her husband and it must have looked like it was all over.

However, true to the title of one of her books, Rivers found herself Bouncing Back!  She went to daytime, and won an Emmy for Outstanding Talk Show host (beating out Oprah Winfrey).  In a tearful acceptance speech, the mask she kept on slipped (no pun intended) to reveal a woman who was deeply human, aware of all the chaos she had gone through and to find that at the end she had not just survived but thrived.  Later on she would even make jokes about her husband's death, but not out of spite.  She truly believed in laughing, one heals. 

Joan Rivers was funny.  She was catty and unapologetic about what she said or thought about people.  She knew she was as easy a target as anyone, and she laughed hardest about herself.  She knew all her plastic surgeries were fodder for jokes...most of them she made herself about herself.  She called them as she saw them, knocking down the pretensions of people she thought should know better.  Her quips were clever, outrageous, but always true to how she saw the world.  She could shock you, but she never failed to make you laugh (even while you were stunned at what she said). 

Joan Rivers wanted to be taken seriously: as an actual actress, as a writer, as a person.  Sadly, she was never accorded the respect her hard work should have given her.  Fortunately, in her efforts at being taken seriously, she ended up being one of the funniest women in America.

Not THAT'S comedy.

IN MEMORIAM

The African Queen: A World War I Romantic Comedy Review

THE AFRICAN QUEEN

While The African Queen involves World War I, the war really is secondary to the main plot: that of two complete opposites falling in love.  There certainly is a "Hun" menace (and one or two moments that do not shrink from showing German brutality) but for the most part The African Queen is a love story, and a very funny one at that.  It also brings two of the great stars (the Number 1 male and female stars according to the American Film Institute) in their only collaboration, making it a showcase of the acting prowess of Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart.

It is German East Africa, September 1914.  Missionaries Rose Sayer (Hepburn) and her brother Samuel (Robert Morley) are reaching out to the East Africans, who look rather disinterested in what these two stiff and formal white people are doing and more interested by their occasional visitor.  That would be Charlie Allnut (Bogart), the coarse riverboat captain who delivers supplies and mail but whom the Sayers tolerate.  Things, however, take a quickly ugly turn when war between Germany and Great Britain is declared.  The Germans take the village, burning it to the ground and spiriting away the residents.  Brother gets a beating physical and emotional, and the shock quickly kills him.

Mr. Allnut comes to this sorry sight: a burned village, a dead man, and a woman in shock.  He quickly suggests that they flee to safety and basically hide out until this is all over.  Rose, after hearing that there is a German gunboat nearby, suggests they attack it with Allnut's ship, the African Queen.  Allnut is shocked by this idea: it means going past Germans and dangerous waters, but she will not be denied.  With that, it's off down the river, where they not only face Germans and their African allies but leeches, alligators, hippos, and eventually fall in love.  In the end, they are captured separately, and after the briefest (and slightly comic) wedding at sea, the African Queen does her duty for King and Country.

There is something delightful in seeing two great actors play to and against type.  You have Hepburn's rather haughty patrician and Bogart's rough-and-tumble Canuck, and while you don't really question why Hepburn's Rose has little to no British accent it is her imperious nature in the beginning that marks her out as a loyal servant of the Crown.  However, as the journey down the river continues, we see that both slowly soften to each other, and John Huston has this in a very subtle way.  As the journey continues, we see how much in love they are when she slowly goes from "Mr. Allnut" to asking his name, then calling him "Charlie", and he too goes from "Miss" to "Rose". 

Everyone aboard The African Queen (pun intended) knows that this is a romantic comedy, but is smart enough to not overplay it.  After surviving a fierce set of rapids, the spinster Rose tells Charlie, "I never dreamed that a mere physical experience could be so stimulating", with a perfectly straight (albeit enthusiastic) face.  If one doesn't get the double entendre of Huston and James Agee's screenplay, one isn't listening.  This is primarily a two-person show, and Hepburn and Bogart manage to hold our attention because they are simply that good.  They compliment each other with their styles to where they become real-life people in this odd circumstances, and as they start to fall in love with each other, we start to fall in love with them.

Subtlety is a key here.  After they kiss, the screen fades to black, and while nothing overt is shown, one can only imagine that Rose found more physical experiences to be equally stimulating.

The greatness of The African Queen is that it is less a film about war than about romance between the two most unlikely of people, and people who are not 'sex symbols', but people who are going on in years but still have a lot of life in them.  This isn't to say that the war is not important: it is patriotism (along with a chance to avenge her brother) that motivates Rose's actions (and sets the plot moving).

It is interesting that The African Queen, albeit briefly, did not shrink from making the Germans in the beginning rather brutal (burning down the village and taking the villagers away, perhaps never to be seen again).  However, by the end, when first Charlie then Rose are being questioned, the Germans appear more comical and goofy.  "I now pronounce you man and wife.  Proceed with the execution", the Captain says after marrying Charlie and Rose. 

There's something to be said for German efficiency.

Alan Gray's score suggests that this is a light, comic film, one where we get adventure but more importantly, romance, where the determination to strike at the enemy isn't as important as finding these two wildly different people find themselves in each other's arms.  This being a comedy, it was important that they succeed in their mission, even if it took longer and a different route than they expected. 

The African Queen is rightly described as a classic.  Why?  It has two brilliant performances, beautiful imagery (when location shooting, especially in a rather inhospitable place like Uganda and the Congo was rare), a solid script where the story flows naturally.  However, what really sets The African Queen apart from other films of the time and time-frame is that it isn't afraid to be funny, to present characters who at times can be terribly unlikable, but whose flaws go along with their virtues. 

War was never so amusing.

DECISION: A+

Wrong African Queen, Whoopi...

The Americans: Cardinal Review

THE AMERICANS: CARDINAL

Motherhood Vs. Mother Russia...

Cardinal is the episode where we see just how much the roles the Jennings have played all these years are finally affecting their work as KGB agents.  After the shock and horror of Comrades, Cardinal keeps the story moving forward, but we also see that the normally rigid Elizabeth (Keri Russell) has been shaken to the core of her being, finding a growing paranoia over the protection of her own children.  She now has to struggle over whether her role as a mother will trump that of a spy, and of whether she can maintain that balance.

Elizabeth is minding the kids, Paige (Holly Taylor) and Henry (Keidrich Sellati) while Philip (Matthew Rhys) investigates Fred (John Carroll Lynch), the man who brought their friends that information that got them and their daughter killed.  Fred is absolutely terrified about everyone, but Philip, who literally got 'the shock of his life' with Fred's booby-trapped box, takes a lot of convincing to see that Philip is on his side.  Fred tells him that they are all in a race against time to find out the submarine information he was handing over.

Elizabeth, for her part, is growing more and more fearful about what could happen, seeing danger everywhere.  A road crew repairing the street across from the Jennings' home may be something else, something more sinister, something that will kill her children.  They don't know much about what's been going on in the Rezidentura.

Bruce Dameran, who works at the World Bank, has walked in, offering his services to the Soviet state.  Double agent Nina (Annet Mahendru) offers this little tidbit to her minder/lover, Stan Beeman (Noah Emmerich), who is excited in every way possible.  Nina, by now bitter towards Stan because of his killing of her friend Vlad, has turned cold but with him, she still whispers sweet nothings, playing a game she may not be able to control.

Cardinal gives us great moments.  A particular highlight being Philip's breaking into Fred's house.  The tension of whether he will be discovered is heightened when we hear Fred's approaching car followed by Philip being literally stunned by the trap.  We know there's no way out for him, so we are left with great tension as to what will happen.  Having Philip face up against a gun, tied up, and powerless make this more intense.

What Cardinal also has is how it treats the two main female characters.  By now, we find the roles slightly switched.  Nina, who appeared to be truly falling for Stan, has become cold and emotionally distant.  In voice-over, we see just how detached she has become.  We hear her type out a report, where she coldly describes how she orally serviced before she allowed Stan to penetrate her (her words).  Mahendru I don't think has done better to make Nina into someone who has died a little bit.

Russell, on the other hand, has shaped Elizabeth into a woman for whom the State, for the first time, has taken a back seat to being a mother.  Russell's Elizabeth has grown more paranoid and fearful about the safety of Paige and Henry, and every little thing, no matter how innocuous, sets her off into panic.  She still has the power to rally (as she did when she helped a junior agent with her target) but by and large she is now a fully-committed mother, one who now realizes just how in danger her children are.  Oddly, it is Elizabeth, the parent who has struggled to be close to her children, who is the more haunted and emotional one, while the more tender Philip is the one who wants to see things rationally. 

I say 'wants to' because at heart he too is haunted by what happened not just to their friends but their children: one dead, the other orphaned, unaware of what his parents were.  Will the Soviets really take care of Paige and Henry should something happen to Elizabeth and Philip?  What will be the effect on the Jennings' children to find out the truth (if they were ever to find out)?

Cardinal also is giving us great teasers for the season.  We have Oleg (Costa Ronin), who has little interest in work but may be playing a longer game, and we have the espionage that Philip and Elizabeth are now taking over for the Connors.  Nina's relationship with Stan is also going to play a major role, as that of Dameran. 

I don't think anything will top Comrades, but Cardinal continues to make The Americans an intense and brilliant show.

8/10

Next Episode: The Walk In

Sweet Smell of Success: A Review (Review #662)

SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS

All For a Little Publicity...

After watching Sweet Smell of Success, one feels like bathing to wash all the grime and sleaze off him/herself.  Few films have dived headfirst into the gutter that was (or perhaps is) the publicity gristmill that promotes people and places but which come at the price of personal integrity and decency.  Sweet Smell of Success is an angry film, brilliant, but highly cynical, reflecting the moral morass that the characters in this demimonde of nightclubs and backroom deals to get a line in a newspaper column work in.

Sydney Falco (Tony Curtis) is hustling to get a mention of a club in the column of J.J. Hunsecker (Burt Lancaster), the most powerful gossip columnist around, who with a single mention can make or break anyone, be he mere entertainer or powerful politician.  Falco is persona non grata with Hunsecker because he couldn't do what Hunsecker wanted him to: break up the romance between Hunsecker's sister Susan (Susan Harrison) with Steve Dallas (Marty Milner), a jazz guitarist with the Chico Hamilton Quintet. 

Sydney, desperate and angry, concocts an elaborate scheme to get in Hunsecker's good graces.  He would plant a false 'blind item' suggesting Steve was both a drug user and a Communist, then get Hunsecker to 'correct' this smear, but fully aware that the moral Dallas would want nothing to do with the sleazy Hunsecker, reject his offer of help, which in turn would cause Susan to reject Dallas.

The plan starts working well, but once Dallas tells Hunsecker what he really thinks of him, J.J. is enraged to find someone who dares insult his 'readers' (read, Hunsecker himself).  So infuriated is J.J. that he wants Sydney to frame Dallas with drugs and have him 'interrogated' by Hunsecker's sleazy detective friend Lt. Kello (Emile Meyer).  Sydney, who hasn't shrunk from prostituting a cigarette girl he knows (how well we can only guess) and who has done all sorts of sleazy works for Hunsecker, shrinks at going this far.  However, Hunsecker dangles the possibility of Falco taking over his column while Hunsecker is on vacation, and this is a prize too rich to resist. 

Still, when Dallas is left at a hospital Falco is struck with a sense of guilt.  Getting a call he thinks is from Hunsecker, he goes to the penthouse to find a disheveled Susie, about to jump from the balcony.  Hunsecker comes in, finds his precious sister in her nightgown with Falco over her, and figures Falco has decided to take Susan.  A highly possessive Hunsecker gets his goons to beat up Falco, but in all this Susan has discovered J.J.'s duplicity.  In the end, she walks out on her brother, telling him she feels not hatred, but sadness for him.

Sweet Smell of Success finds us in a dark and sleazy world, enhanced by James Wong Howe's bleak cinematography and Elmer Bernstein's jazz score, which highlights the urban, noir feel.  This world is dominated by dark, by night, with few scenes taking place during the daytime (and even then we are inside).  It is only when Susan leaves her evil, possessive brother that the film is bathed in sunlight, as if we the audience is allowed to escape the dark night of the city's soul and have a sense of hope.  It's curious that in this world of show-business, of places like The 21 Club and backstage there is an air of grime and sleaze. 

While the cinematography and score enhance the film, it is really both the performances and the screenplay by Clifford Odets and Ernest Lehman (based on Lehman's novella) that are the highlights of Sweet Smell of Success.  Lancaster's Hunsecker, a thinly veiled portrayal of powerful New York columnist Walter Winchell, doesn't appear much on the screen, but every time we see him we see Hunsecker as an angry, bitter, evil man.  He has a controlled rage where his arrogance masks his repulsiveness.  From the moment we finally see him, sitting at his usual table where with some remarks he makes clear that he knows he yields great power over the powerful, we see that he will stop at nothing to get what he wants.

What he wants is to control Susan, and he will use the needy, sycophantic Sydney to get him to do his dirty work.  It isn't as if Falco hasn't done favors for him before, but Hunsecker makes clear that he will use his power any way he wants to.  "Match me, Sydney," he tells Falco, holding his cigarette out to him.  Hunsecker has no qualms, no morals, and that makes him all the more dangerous. 

Curiously, Sweet Smell of Success strongly suggests (but never overtly states) something almost incestuous in the J.J./Susan relationship.  Hunsecker's intense need to keep Susie away from any man except for him, his desire to keep her with him always, makes it almost appear that there is something grotesque in his fixation on his sister.  It doesn't help that in real life, Harrison was 18 and Lancaster 44 when they made the film.  Never does anyone get the sense that they are brother and sister, but more father and daughter.  It doesn't take away from the suggestion, however small, that Hunsecker, for all his moral uprightness and patriotism, harbors a sickening sexual desire for his own flesh and blood.

However, the real standout is Curtis.  This was his real breakthrough as an actor.  Prior to Sweet Smell of Success, Curtis had gained fame as a 'pretty boy', one whose main attributes were his good looks and easy charm.  Here, we see just how good Curtis was: his Sydney Falco is not just unscrupulous but fully aware of it and not bothered by it.  This is a man who is not above basically offering a good woman to a rival columnist in order to set his plan to cull favor with Hunsecker in progress, who uses inside information to fool a standup comic into hiring him to represent him as his publicity agent, and who would blackmail someone to get them to print the blind item.  Curtis' Sydney is amoral, someone who uses his wits but who is deplorable.  Sweet Smell of Success is really his story, about how he finds himself in this morass of amorality but who discovers that the sweet smell of success is built on quicksand and muck and mud and sleaze.

In truth, it's hard to decide which of the two is sleazier.

The script is pitch-perfect, not just in the story that flows real fast in its remarkably brief running time, but in its crackling dialogue.  "From now on, the best of everything is good enough for me," Falco declares to his secretary.  When Hunsecker at first dismisses Falco, he sneers, "You're dead, son.  You're just not buried".  Later, as Falco sets his plan into motion, he assures his master, "Cat's in the bag and the bag's in the river".  Sweet Smell of Success is an extremely quotable film, and an excellent exploration into the dark side of the underbelly of fame and those who seek it.

This is one of the great films about the power of the pen and those who misuse it for their own selfish and nefarious ends.  The film is brilliant, but we find that the Sweet Smell of Success is a pungent odor. 

DECISION: A+

1897-1972

Re: Hearse. Personal Reflections on Sherlock: The Empty Hearse

And THIS you call 'genius'?

PERSONAL REFLECTIONS ON

THE EMPTY HEARSE

I have already submitted my formal review for The Empty Hearse, Sherlock's Season/Series Three opening episode.  In short, I HATED almost everything about both The Empty Hearse and probably Sherlock.  Many Sherlockians (fans of Sherlock the television show), who are not necessarily Holmesians (fans of Sherlock Holmes the character or Canon), have insisted to me that Sherlock is not just the Greatest Sherlock Holmes adaptation in the history of all television/stage/cinema, but perhaps the apex of human existence, on par with the creation of fire and another Watson (Watson & Crick of double helix fame).  It isn't my place to take away a person's pleasure (unless it's something like excessive amounts of alcohol or any amount of heroin). 

However, I stop at this juncture because I genuinely worry that Sherlockians have gone from mere fans of a show and slipped into insanity.  I don't mean the metaphorical version of insanity.  No, I mean the quite literal version of insanity. 

In short, I think Sherlockians are flat-out bonkers and a danger to themselves and others.

I say this because The Empty Hearse, rather than being this brilliant piece of writing by Mark Gatiss (whom I'm sure fancies himself some sort of genius given his generally uppity manner), is really flat-out rubbish.  Perhaps some of the more devoted Sherlockians can answer my queries, and perhaps I may be persuaded to see the genius in Sherlock that has so far eluded me (a man of average intelligence).  However, I doubt I will change me mind.

Question Num. 1: Anderson's Conversion

When last we saw Philip Anderson, he was one of the two members of DI Lestrade's Scotland Yard team who are absolutely convinced that Sherlock Holmes, whom they have endured like one endures waterboarding, was guilty of major crimes and then 'solving' them (what I called a criminal version of Munchausen by proxy).  Now, in The Empty Hearse, Anderson has apparently gone insane in the intervening years.  Having grown obsessed with how Sherlock could have faked his death in The Reichenbach Fall, he has not only come up with elaborate theories, but even formed a like-minded group of believers (it is all sounding very cult-like, isn't it): The Empty Hearse Club.  Moreover, he has even created a motto for both the group and himself.

Certainly doesn't have that ring to it that "I Believe That We Will Win" has, does it?

My question is WHY does Anderson 'believe in Sherlock Holmes'?  Anderson has spent many cases enduring Sherlock's brazen arrogance and even cruelty.  They've never been close (not that either of them in Seasons One or Two would want to be).  Sherlock deduced correctly (like he always does, God-like) that Anderson and Donovan were schtupping despite Anderson's marriage.  Anderson so disliked, even detested Holmes, that he was willing to believe the worse of Holmes (that he was some sort of evil genius who kidnapped little girls then came to said girl's rescue). 

What then occurred in Anderson's life that so transformed him from Holmes Denier to Holmes Worshipper?  The Anderson in The Reichenbach Fall bears no resemblance to the Anderson in The Empty Hearse (and not just physically).  As far as I know, no real explanation was given for Anderson's change of heart, or how he had apparently been driven mad by Holmes' death and resurrection.

As a side note, when Inspector Lestrade raises a cup of coffee with Anderson in honor of 'old friends', I thought, 'Are either serious?'  NEITHER of them had ever, as far as I know, liked Holmes as a person, and Anderson at one point thought he was a fraud.  Lestrade might have respected Sherlock (though given how quickly he gave in to Anderson and Donovan's accusations it seems more likely that he was either weak or as willing to believe the worse of Holmes as they were).  To have them in this 'mourning' phase seems so disingenuous, so false. 

Still, Anderson's slip into near-insanity is something I both never believed or felt was explained.

Then again, I don't think much in Sherlock is ever explained, or explainable (and don't start with this 'it's all too complicated for you' nonsense.  I followed the plot of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy quite well, thank you very much, and if you want to see 'intricate' plotting, go watch a movie that has both Sherlock AND the so-called War Doctor in the same film.

Question Num. 2: The Empty Hearse Club

Far be it for me to try to read into the minds of Sherlock producers/writers Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, but in The Empty Hearse I did not see what Sherlockians saw.  With The Empty Hearse Club, Sherlockians saw a nice spoof of the hard-core Sherlock fanbase.  They might even have seen themselves and giggled.

I saw a mean-spirited, even vicious portrayal of those people who are making Gatiss and Moffat rich and famous.  They had their fan-fiction, coming up with elaborate theories and even downright 'shipping' to explain what should really be unexplainable.

I see this with the upcoming Sherlock season.  In The Reichenbach Fall, Andrew Scott's Moriarty blows his brains out.  In His Final Vow, apparently Moriarty is alive and well, taunting all Britain with "Did you miss me?".  There are two ways of looking at this.  I look at this at flat-out cheating and nonsense.  Moriarty had shot himself in the head.  His corpse was 'commandeered' as Sherlock's in one of the scenarios.  Now, Jim Moriarty looks like he survived shooting himself in the head and looking none the worse for wear.  As a result, I would have said at this 'twist', 'that's not possible'.  Add to that I would say Steven Moffat clearly is throwing nonsense at us, and as a result, he cheats death in more ways than one.

However, I find that many people are going in the opposite direction.  Rather than object to the illogic of a possible comeback...no, return for Jim Moriarty, they instead are coming up with wild and elaborate and intricate scenarios to justify all this, picking on minutiae to spin wild yarns.  Truth be told, I don't believe Moffat or Sherlock co-producer Mark Gatiss have or have ever had this very methodical, long-thought out scenarios for vast seasons.  Rather, I think they work season by season and then work backward, coming up with reasons to explain what can't or wouldn't be explained in another world.  As such, in Season Three they thought, "wouldn't it make for a shocking twist for Moriarty to come back?"  "Well, yes, it would, but how?  He shot himself in the head and we've operated that he's dead?" "Well, we'll give that big shock at the end, then come up with some scenario to rationalize it later". 

You get your shock, you get the publicity, you get the praise, you get the Emmys, and then you come up with some wild, perhaps even irrational explanation to make all this 'plausible'.  The Sherlockians, for their part, accept everything thrown at them without question.  Their reaction to "Moriarty's ALIVE" isn't to say "That doesn't make any sense".  It's to say, "Let's think of a way to make this possible".  That is why they read so much into things. 

Perhaps in this case, the Empty Hearse Club isn't too far from the truth: this collection of sad, lonely, generally witless figures who dress up like their favorite characters and spin outrageous scenarios to make the illogical logical. 

However, my question about all this is 'Why do they all get together?"   What joins them together in their admiration for Sherlock?  Do they have social lives outside Holmes?  It's a bit sad to see a show so gleefully ridicule its fanbase.

Question Num. 3: The Actual Resolution

It's interesting that in something like The Empty Hearse, we never get a 'definitive' answer.  We are given three scenarios of various degrees of plausibility, with even Sherlock's answer being questioned by Anderson.  Sherlock, for his part, leaves unheard and unseen before he can answer Anderson's questions of logic.  I think what Martin Freeman's John Watson said it best in a line that has stuck with me.  "I don't care HOW you did it, Sherlock.  I want to know WHY".  THIS I think is what Moffat, Gatiss, and Sherlock want us to focus on.  As far as they are concerned, we need not really care how it was all done.  We should focus on the emotions, not the logic.

For a show that holds itself in high regard for being highly intelligent and with its hero relying solely on logic and facts, Sherlock is not about intellect but about emotion.  Anderson's questions are fair, and Sherlock leaving is both Gatiss and Moffat's "F-U" to all the fans who actually cared about how someone escaped death, but also their admission that there really was no resolution possible.  Going on what we were given, Sherlock Holmes jumped to his death in The Reichenbach Fall.

He could not have survived.

Similarly, should Jim Moriarty really be alive in the Season Four Sherlock opener, it is impossible given what we were given.  Rather than answer or even admit that they write nonsense, their response is to ask us to focus on the emotions, not the logic.  Even if Moriarty turns out to be his brother (which seems unfair to never suggest there were more than one Moriarty), I don't think there will ever be a real, logical answer to how Moriarty could be alive.

In the same vein, having Sherlock never answer how it was done shows that far from being brilliant, The Empty Hearse and Sherlock in general is a mockery of intellectualism, that Sherlockians won't think, and that this show is one that is less than the sum of its parts.   

  

World War I in Classic Film: A Blogathon

Now that I've written this movie/television/culture blog for five years, it has come to my attention that I've never done a blogathon before.  Truth be told, I'm still a bit muddled into what exactly a 'blogathon' is.  The way I understand it, a group of bloggers write on a particularly topic and publish on our own site at a particular time.

Recently, through Facebook I came in contact with the site Silent-Ology, which is devoted to silent films.  However, they along with another silent film-centered blog, Movies Silently.  As I too love silent films, I approached them about participating and they welcomed me.  Now, the films covered for this blogathon, those that have something to do with World War I, are not all silent films.  They merely have to do with the First World War, which this year marks its centennial.

I consider myself fortunate to be invited, and encourage my readers (all 12 of you) to look at the other sites and wish me well as I participate in this endeavor, the first for me. 

My film is The African Queen, and I'm very excited about both the blogathon and the selected films (including my own). 

Hopefully I'll do this right and be a credit to the other blogs with which I'm participating with.

Finally, as we go through this blogathon, I hope we take time to pause and remember the terrible cost World War I took on those who fought it and those who lived through it, all gone now.  If you don't think the aftereffects of the First World War don't matter, think on this.

It was after World War I that the European powers broke up the dead Ottoman Empire, creating the current states of Jordan, Syria, and Iraq despite the aspirations of groups like the Kurds, who wanted their own independent state.  It was after World War I that the Balfour Declaration, where Britain stated a support for a Jewish state in Palestine, planted the seed for the eventual state of Israel.  Ho Chi Minh went to the Versailles Peace Conference, hoping for an independent Vietnam (then called French Indochina) from colonial French control.  The collapse of Germany led to chaos and the rise of both Weimar decadence and ultra-nationalist groups like the National Socialists in Germany and the Fascists in Italy. 

Our world today, with the horrors in Iraq, Syria, and Israel in particular, were basically created by this 'war to end all wars'.  Rather, it was the war that began all wars.

Still, let us also look towards a great retrospective on films made during and/or about World War I.

Franklin & Bash: Love is the Drug Review

FRANKLIN & BASH:

LOVE IS THE DRUG

The Scent of Love is In the Air...

After having two disastrous episodes, Love Is the Drug is the first good Franklin & Bash story this season.  This, sadly, isn't to say that it is particularly good or engaging, but at least it isn't as horrible.  I think what made Love Is the Drug better than what had come before is that Malcolm McDowell's Stanton Infeld, at least in theory, is there to rein in the excesses of Breckin Meyer's Jared Franklin and Mark-Paul Gosselaar's Peter Bash. 

Infeld returns to the firm that bears his name, interrupting the hijinks of a F&B staff meeting (no one can speak without holding a football, with those that interrupt having to run laps around the table).  They have two cases.  The minor one involves Twilera, a prescription sleep medication that apparently has made people do irrational things, like shop in a haze, or with the case the firm has, hire a dominatrix unwillingly and after having wax poured into their rectum they would like a refund.  Enter Ellen Swatello (Rhea Seehorn), the most sensible person at IDFB, who naturally is given this case against her will.  However, once we get a look at the plaintiff, Bob Allen (newcomer Alan Santini), she doesn't mind too much.  The much shorter and less attractive Jared, who still harbors conflicted feelings for Swatello, does mind.  Despite himself he 'accidently' gets their investigator Danny Mundy (Anthony Ordonez) to look in on how Swatello is making out with Bob (read into that whatever you will).

The big case involves Jimmy Lavanos (Derek Miller), a cab driver with an impeccable sense of direction who is being accused of stealing celebrity handbags, with Sadie Juvonen (Carrie Wiita) as his accomplice.  He denies stealing anything and calls upon Franklin and Bash (whom he's driven home after both were hopelessly drunk...again, aren't these guys both 40?) to help him out.  Things don't look good for Jimmy when Sadie, who had gone by an alias when with Jimmy, is located by the boys and at her arrest shouts out that Jimmy made her do it.  Things continue to go bad for our human GPS when she pleads guilty in exchange for information to get Lavanos, but we find that in a way, Jimmy has a chemical imbalance caused by Sadie that renders him disoriented.

Finally, in the actual subplot (since the Twilera case really goes nowhere and is just an excuse to make Jared jealous), Infeld finds himself punching a snooty restauranteur, Dominic (John Michael Higgins), with whom he's had a bitter rivalry going over 20 years over the most idiotic of reasons.  As a way to avoid having charges filed (and not having to pay extortion), Dominic agrees to give Stanton a punch.  However, the ever-wily, ever-bitter Dominic, using a clause in the contract, gets a substitute, none other than Iron Mike Tyson!  Needless to say, Iron Mike doesn't take kindly to having his friends mocked.

I'll admit that the Mike Tyson sequence was funny (especially how the tiny Meyer could think of taking on the champ), but there's something a bit sad that Iron Mike could do better than two actors who have spent nearly their whole lives on camera.  "I do theater now," Tyson at one point yells at them as he walks away, which is true (though at more than $50, I opted not to go to his one-man show when he came to El Paso).  Apart from that a lot of Love Is the Drug was a little flat.

Franklin & Bash's biggest problem, from what I see, is that the show stubbornly refuses to let the boys grow up.  The first season showed how they could be a bit wacky and offbeat but still have some sense to them.  This season, and last season, and the season before that, show they are devolving in mental age.  Nothing really captures this better than when they go to find the photographer who took TMZ-style shots at celebrity events where Sadie was spotted.  At the photo shoot, a beautiful woman comes up to them and asks for their opinion on whether she should or should not wear a bra.  Is it me, or is there something idiotic about two 40-year-old men giggling like horny teenagers looking at the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue when this woman approaches them?  Seriously, I thought, could she not tell that these two 'brilliant' lawyers who have had hundreds of women between them (and in Jared's case, perhaps a few bi-curious moments) were all but drooling over the thought of a braless woman? 

That, perhaps may be forgiven, but given that she asked them that because she needed, as she put it, their "Queer Eye" (yet another 'people think they're gay' bit) it's puzzling how this woman could be so dumb.  With their 'drunken vomiting', their 'dart shooting games', their 'wacky meetings', and their giggling over models, Franklin & Bash has got to make our leads either a bit smarter or a bit more mature.  We had a lot of trouble accepting them as 'brilliant' lawyers when they appear to be nothing but goofballs who couldn't put two-and-two together.



Frankly, ANYONE
would be jealous...

In regards to other aspects, Love Is the Drug at least has a touch of the old Franklin & Bash logical insanity to it.  The idea that the Pink Sapphire perfume of Sadie would so set Jimmy off that he basically went haywire may not pass the smell test (pun intended), but at least it isn't as idiotic a reason as we've seen before.  The long and drawn out battle between Dominic and Stanton wasn't particularly clever or amusing (apart from Tyson), and I don't think Higgins did anything that would make us want to rally to his side (has he ever played anything other than 'fussy'?).  However, at least it gave McDowell a chance to look more sensible than he has been in ages (which is saying a lot) and puts him back into the stories rather than being a satellite that floats in and out (physically and mentally).

Poor Ordonez still hasn't been able to make Danny into anything other than downright creepy, even probably psychotic, and nowhere near a potentially good character who is a solid investigator.  With his wild, wide-eye expression (as if he never sleeps, and last time we saw him, he did indeed sleep with both eyes open, making him look even crazier than he comes across), Ordonez's Danny is not winning fans.  It almost seems like Jared & Peter just picked Danny as their investigator because he wandered in and they needed ANYBODY to fill Carmen's place.  Again, I still put the blame on the scripts than on Ordonez, who like the admittedly beautiful Santini (who had nothing to do apart from being beautiful) is starting out in his career. 

It's just sad that with Mundy, Franklin & Bash appears to be trying to mix the now-gone characters of Carmen and Pindar into one.  It isn't working, because Carmen and Pindar worked well separately: Carmen's sensible nature to balance Pindar's eccentricities.  Putting two of them into one creates an imbalance that no actor, particularly one who is in the first steps of a career, can pull off.  Even seasoned veterans like Gosselaar or Meyer would have difficulty with Danny Mundy, so Ordonez is given a thankless task.

It's also interesting that with Reed Diamond's Damien Karp missing entirely, we see just how important he was to the show.  He was the antagonist, the prime factor in Jared and Peter constantly 'going against the system', which he smugly personified.  With their main nemesis gone, who really are they going to be dueling wits with?  Our heroes need a figure to fight against, someone who will hinder them.  Stanton Infeld isn't going to do it: he gives them more carte blanche than they deserve.  Swatello is in no position to do it.  Last season's Rachel King couldn't do it (and poor Heather Locklear proved disastrous to the show overall).  Diamond was the only one who could make antagonism against Jared and Peter seem rational, potentially threatening, and at times, even endearing.  He has always had the talent for it, but seeing him gone only shows what a hollow show Franklin & Bash is now (not that seeing both Dana Davis and Kumail Nanjiani gone didn't make that clear already). 

Finally, the music was terrible.  It was as if they couldn't help themselves with the musical cues suggesting 'oh, this guy's hot' and/or 'oh, the girl turns him on'.  I get it, thank you very much.  I don't need to have music enhance what I already know.

However, there are some good things in the episode. 

Seehorn has softened her Swatello to be less hyper-aggressive and more the level head in a madhouse.   It's too bad that perhaps the best character will be gone too, as Seehorn is going to be in the Breaking Bad pre/sequel Better Call Saul.  Wonder why she would leave Franklin & Bash for something like Better Call Saul?

As far as episodes go, Love Is the Drug happens to be the best Franklin & Bash of Season Four, though only by default (the other two so far being simply horrid).  After two false starts perhaps having Infeld at least try to rein in the boys may pull the show out from being a train-wreck.  It remains to be seen whether Stanton Infeld will turn Franklin and Bash around, or whether Franklin and Bash will instead push Infeld (and the show itself) into the swamp of cancellation.   

Bet Jared Franklin had THIS
in his locker...

3/10

Next Episode: Good Cop/Bad Cop