403: 'Ink'
Wr: Aron Eli Coliete
Dr: Roxann Dawson
Synopsis: Peter must face the consequences of his actions and also meets a new female hero. Claire deals with others knowing about her ability. Samuel fights to find his brother Joseph's memories. When Sylar returns, Matt must struggle with his own inner demons.
Review: Heroes continues to keep the brakes on with 'Ink', taking its time to dwell on the minutiae of each respective narrative strand rather than whizzing straight through plot development after plot development. In some ways, this reflects the considered style of the show's much-lauded debut season and it proves greatly beneficial to the strength of the stories, while in others, it proves to be somewhat frustrating, making the viewer sit through elements of the plot that simply don't have enough weight to hold our interest. It works most potently in Matt Parkman's storyline, which is really getting a much needed lift from his pairing with Sylar. Quinto and Grunberg play exceptionally well off each other, and it certainly helps that the writing is top class -finally, Gabriel is back to his duplicitous, manipulative self, the insightfully sinister villain who wowed us all in year one, rather than the somewhat cliched cipher he turned into in the last couple of seasons. His goading of Matt is heart wrenching and truly frightening; credit too to Grunberg for doing a stellar job of demonstrating just how much damage this is doing to the poor cop. It truly is a joy to watch this story unfold.. let's hope the writing staff can keep up the good work.
Elsewhere, the Carnival strand also proves rather interesting. Coliete doesn't give too much away here - it's still not really clear what T-Bag's power actually is - but the process of 'recruitment', in which Knepper approaches Peter, is distinctly well written. Not too sure about the idea that he would burn down that building, mind... it seems a little too B-movie villain for a character who has teetered on the edge for the past few episodes, seemingly doused in shades of gray. It's also nice to see a new individual thrown into the mix; let's face it, she's a bit of a beaut. The concept of 'mixed senses' works incredibly well for a deaf character and it's expertly handled: some of the best cinematography and music that the show has seen in a long time is used throughout her sequences.
Where 'Ink' loses its way a little is in... yes, you guessed it, Claire's storyline, which continues to be as interesting as watching paint dry. The whole thing goes nowhere of note and just retreads beats of old - Claire struggles with the fact that someone knows she has a power - before finally climaxing with the oh-so-huge development of Gretchen deciding to be the girl's roomie! Well, wowsers, eh?! What a riveting piece of television! And no, I don't care that they were all scantily clad and giggly in that last scene, listening to Death Cab for Cutie, hinting at potential experimentation to come. Not my cup of tea, thanks. I'd rather see Thomas Dekker make a reappearance... minus any clothes, of course. Still, at least we're beginning to get somewhere with this one. Something of an improvement. 7.3
404: 'Acceptance'
Wr: Bryan Fuller
Dr: Christopher Misiano
Synopsis: Hiro's health continues to deteriorate as he goes on a mission to prevent a coworker from committing suicide. Ando finally convinces Hiro to tell his sister that he's fatally ill. Meanwhile, Tracy continues to struggle to find a purpose in life and to learn to control her powers. She returns to her old job as a political adviser, but leaves when she remembers how demeaning the job could be. Nathan-Sylar is also on a path of self-discovery, as his mother, Angela, helps him regain memories.
Review: You can certainly tell that Bryan Fuller's returned to the fold. 'Acceptance' feels more like an episode of Pushing Daisies than Heroes, and that's not just because the guy's made sure the wonderful Swoozie Kurtz has been granted a return appearance (in case you're wondering, she's the one putting the hit on poor old Nathan.) No, this is more of an exploratory character piece, the kind that made Daisies such a cult hit both in the States and over here. Fuller takes tie to explore the motivations of the episode's key players and uses a series of specific events - narratalogical tableau, if you will - to move them in entirely new directions. So, we have Hiro's quest to save his co-worker, a seemingly mundane slice of throwaway minutiae that actually feeds into the larger issue of his need to face the reality of his coming death. The moment in which he successfully accomplishes his mission ans realises what must come with it is refreshingly understated, giving Masi Oka a chance to do some of his most impressive work in one hell of a long time.
Fuller is a master of build, of progressing a story to crescendo, such that the epiphany is most satisfying; when something significant happens to a character towards hour's end, it feels all the more potent. Nathan is a good example of this; while his story is a little ludicrous (would Mellie really conspire to kill her best friend's son with such mindless glee? Must everyone on this show be so unrelentingly ruthless and cold-blooded?), it is distinctly engaging because it is derived from believable character beats. Pasdar successfully conveys the character's continued emotional breakdown, and the moment in which he supposedly dies is considerably shocking. Sylar's resurrection at hour's end prompts all sorts of questions and bodes well for the show; have they actually been brave enough to kill a main character off for good? The sequence is beautifully shot too, a feature that is becoming something of a staple of the season.
Elsewhere, it's nice to see Tracey Strauss getting some logical character development and also to be treated to another dose of John Sheridan. Only HRG's return to the investigative fold feels a little hokey; he needed the sage words of his college co-ed daughter (oh, and Tracey) to knock some sense into him and stop eating cereal all day long? Pah! There are shafts of light here too, since the conversations between Coleman and Panettiere are refreshingly naturalistic. While very little actually happens in 'Acceptance', what does is made all the more powerful through the episode's refreshing concentration on character. The writers could do with picking up the pace a little, but I'd rather have a hundred hours of this than anything from Fugitives. Oh, and no Gretchen! Win! 7.7
405: 'Hysterical Blindness'
Wr: Joe Pokaski
Dr: S.J. Clarkson
Synopsis: Lydia cautions Samuel against bringing in new members to their clan. Peter tries to connect with Emma, who wants nothing to do with him, and Sylar struggles to find the person he once was.
Review: 'Hysterical Blindness' is something of a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it provides further evidence that the Heroes writing staff are regaining control of their vehicles, getting a better grip on the motivations, strengths and weaknesses of their characters and using these to organically construct the show's storylines. Sylar's resurrection is the perfect example of this. Where in season three, this would've been an excuse to have the character murder a few dozen police officers and embark on some sort of outlandish revenge-driven conspiracy, here, Pokaski takes the road less travelled, flipping the coin (so to speak) and having him suffer from a form of amnesia (or is it? Does he think he's Nathan?) The resultant effects are highly engaging: Quinto works wonders with his new-found innocence and really makes you feel for the character. His English interrogator is good too, although the jury's out on Ray Park's stereotypical depiction of the cop (overworked, frustrated by psychologists, determined not to give his prisoner any leeway etc.) Still, the whole thing has a much welcome undercurrent of despair and suspense to it, accentuated by the dramatic irony that the viewer is made privy to, and certainly helped by SJ Clarkson's superlative direction; the blues, grays and blacks of the prison really convey the coldness and emptiness of the whole scenario.
It's unfortunate that the Carnival storyline melds with this one, since it becomes obvious from about a third of the way through that Gabriel is the one that will join the family, but at least it means this narrative is actually going somewhere. Peter and Emma's story is also rather well handled. The moment in which he acquires her power is a nice nod to continuity and is all the more refreshing for its subtlety. One does wonder how many times we'll have to see the pair staring, googly-eyed, at the 'colours' around them though.
The other edge of the sword, regrettably, relates to The Life and Times of the Hopeless College Girl. This week, we get a shockingly cheesy scene in which Claire starts babbling to Gretchen about 'possibility' or some such pseudo-characterial rubbish. While it is good to see the plot acquire some relevance to the main story in an unexpected way, - thank God Gretchen isn't the killer! - the whole thing is still going far too slowly for anyone's liking. We've seen all of this a million times before, in far superior shows like Buffy and, um, *cough* Dawson's Creek *cough* In fact, the Buffy comparisons have become all the more relevant now that Gretchen has the hots for Claire. We even get a lovely same sex kiss to make the fourteen year old boys shift uncomfortably in their seats. It's a perfectly sensible development, sure, but it's also just so damn obvious; consequently, our response is blase rather than excited. If Heroes just shaved off Claire's narrative, would it really make any difference? Really? We'd have more time to fit in the fantastic Greg Grunberg at any rate.
Again, a decent effort but as seems to be the unavoidable truth with Heroes these days, the bad begins to encroach on the good. 7.0
406: 'Tabula Rasa'
Wr: Rob Fresco
Dr: Jim Chory
Synopsis: Sylar starts to find his true identity. Peter and HRG go on a quest to find someone that can save Hiro.
Review: Zachary Quinto's tour de force continues apace with 'Tabula Rasa', which essentially acts as a vehicle for his considerable talents. The young Spock proves exactly how much he can do by effectively playing a different character - he gets the chance to be the thoroughly good guy, not just the rabbit in the headlights that he was last week, by depicting Nathan in Sylar's body and you buy it completely. Hell, it's as if the writing staff took one look at his performance in Star Trek and realised what a commodity that had. Quinto seems to excel at being taken out of his comfort zone, first with his entrapment in Parkman's head and now with this, and it helps to produce some absolutely stellar scenes. His introspective moment with Knepper is of particular note, but even the moments in the hall of mirrors succeed when they could so easily have been mawkish. The reappearance of the cop is certainly commendable, a nod to the attention to detail that has characterised this season. It's also good to see the writers throwing a curveball at us by not having Sylar automatically revert back to his former self... the process of development is no longer as easy as metaphorically flipping a switch. The show takes its time with such things and it's all the better for it.
The other narratives, despite being intriguing enough, don't quite reach the giddy heights of the Sylar stuff. Hiro's tet a tet with Emma drags somewhat, especially as it just seems to play out the same beats that we've been treated to for the last three episodes, but at least we have an actually likeable new character in the woman (and yeah, that 'magic' scene is damn cute.) Peter and HRG's encounter with Jeremy Greer, meanwhile, works fairly well for what it is but again, it seems like an excuse to pad out the season rather than a naturally grafted plot element. HRG wants to save those he may sort of have wronged in the past? Well... okay. Just play us a new record. Mind, the kid's sorta hot and at least his power is remotely interesting.
Another fairly solid episode then, just not one to get overly excited about. Which pretty much encapsulates the season at this point. 7.2
407: 'Strange Attractors'
Wr: Carlos Coto
Dr: Tucker Gates
Synopsis: Sylar continues to torment Matt. HRG and Tracy help a young boy who has suffered many hardships in his life. Claire and Gretchen have a problem with their new sorority sisters hazing them.
Review: Once again, the need to incorporate Hayden Panettiere hampers what is an otherwise rather fine little episode. Claire's college hazing continues to be less interesting than Chris Barrie's Intimate History of the Drillbit, utilising contemptuously predictable plot 'twists' and yawnsome hetero-male-teenager bait in an attempt to stir up some interest. Sure, it's brave of any primetime show to address the murkiness of sexuality, but do the production staff really have to do it through such a heterosexist lens? The teasingly innuendo-laden dialogue and situations (oh look, they're huddled together in a car boot! Tied up! PHWOAR!!), the wistful glances, the oh-so-tragic confusion on poor old Claire's face, the woefully stereotypical implication that college is the place everyone goes to 'figure themselves out' and that, yup, this should obviously include flirtation with lesbianism. Puh-lease. These beats are so outdated that your momma probably remembers them. Buffy the Vampire Slayer did this exact storyline infinitely better about ten years ago by embracing tact, sensitivity and refusing to pander to the lust-fuelled libidos of any horny straight viewers. Here, it feels like a gimmick, a desperate attempt to court interest in a storyline that is absolutely dead on its arse. I mean, just look at the minutiae: the girls get kidnapped and placed in some spooky Saw-esque warehouse where Becky attempts to kill Gretchen? Oh for God's sake - why would she risk exposing herself by performing such an over-the-top act? And while we're at it, what's with the woeful acting chops? Those extras need a few lessons in naturalism: their 'shock' at the revelation of Claire's ability is just plain cringeworthy.
It's a shame that this storyline is so hopeless as there's much, much promise elsewhere. Carlos Coto's script makes some very brave decisions, and not always ones that you might like. HRG and Tracey's narrative is particularly indicative of this. Finally, Ali Larter gets something interesting to do with her otherwise fairly redundant role, assisting the young harbinger of life and death in his quest to be released from prison. The whole thing has a decidedly humanitarian feel about it and it's really welcome. The concept of helping others to ground themselves (without conspiratorial intervention) hasn't really been touched upon in the show before and it seems to suit both characters. Just to compound matters, Coto wraps this up in the intricacies of the Carnival plot and does so with great skill. Using the boy to demonstrate Samuel's validity, the fact that he may actually have a point in secluding the heroes, both strengthens him as a character and genuinely shocks the viewer. Come on, hands up all of those who actually thought they'd kill the kid? Yeah, I thought so. It's a bold move and one that really resonates, precisely because it happens so infrequently. It's a stark reminder of the inate brutality of our kind and it makes for somewhat harrowing viewing.
Matt and Sylar's narrative traverses rather dark ground too, as first Quinto relishes doing the dirty with Janis (an excellently executed scene, by the way) and then Parkman appears to discover a way to silence him: by drowning him in drink. Once again, the pair get the best dialogue, their back-and-forth sparkling with antagonistic energy, and the scene in which Sylar finally appears to dissipate is just magnificent, a perfect example of how to play trauma and breakdown without overstatement or exaggeration. Every additional drop of alcohol adds pain to the viewing experience as the result is so clear... and yet, so compelling.
A difficult episode to rate this; if it werent for Claire's continued adventures in Sweet Valley High, 'Strange Attractors' might actually stand comfortably alongside some of the show's greats. As it is, you can't help feeling just a bit disappointed. 7.4
408: 'Once Upon A Time in Texas'
Wr: Aron Eli Coliete & Aury Wallington
Dr: Nate Goodman
Synopsis: A trip into the past may give Hiro another chance to save the love of his life.
Review: Okay Heroes, I'll give you one thing: while you may be dabbling in that age-old problem-generator time travel for the seven millionth time, at least, this time around, everything actually seems logical and fairly water tight. At least we aren't creating gargantuan paradoxes or a series of alterna-strands that serve only to boggle the mind and frustrate the quantum physicists in the audience. No, here, things stay strictly on the straight and narrow and the only concession made is Hiro's alteration to the untimely ending of poor Charlie's life. Thank the Lord for that. Problem is, while all of this works wonders, the same cannot be said of the meat of the plot, which is depressingly lean.
There is a nagging ambivalence coarsing through the entire episode and it somewhat hurts our enjoyment of it. On the one hand, Noah and Lauren's story is a rather brave move that opens up a entirely new set of doors for HRG's character, allowing us to see both the minutiae of his work life and exactly how it affects him (how lonely and torn he is), but it's also achingly predictable and more than a little questionable given his absolute devotion to his family. Oh yes fine, so nothing actually happens but the idea that he would even consider it seems rather out of step with his personality.
Similarly, it's great to see Masi Oka being more than a cipher for once, making some darker, more human, decisions, and hell, he gets a lot of great dialogue, but it's a shame that it all amounts to some glorified 'happily ever after' Hollywood fantasy; a trite love story that fails to surprise. Sylar's inclusion here is probably the best thing about the entire episode: honestly, give Zachary Quinto his own show, stat. It's incredible how effortless the slip is back into his former self. The 'OK corral' scene (you know the one I'm talking about...) is rather regrettable however, taking the Hiro/Sylar confrontation just that one step over the line into cringeworthy.
There are some other praiseworthy elements: Robert Knepper continues to be simply fantastic as Samuel, and the final scene is a genuine shocker, but overall, the episode feels too much like it's taking on water. For all this may, conceptually, be a fangeek and continuity freak's dream, there's not really enough engaging plot to go around and what there is becomes a little stale around two thirds of the way in. There's taking time guys, and there's procrastination... 6.6
409: 'Shadowboxing'
Wr: Misha Green & Joe Pokaski
Dr: Jim Chory
Synopsis: Claire tries to determine who is responsible for the attacks on Gretchen and Annie. Sylar maintains his control of Matt, and Peter uses his newly gained ability to help Emma.
Review: With 'Shadowboxing', Heroes begins to feel like it's going somewhere for the first time this season. Dangling narrative threads start to come together and we acquire an idea of where it is that the volume appears to be heading. The Carnival developments are interesting, even if they take a complete U-turn from where we were last week (really, couldn't we have had some sort of acknowledgement of the HUGE Mohinder-related cliffhanger/bombshell we were treated to? No?) - seeing Robert Knepper without eyeliner is decidedly unnerving after eight episodes, but his transformation to 'normality' works very well. He's excellent with Hayden and the pair seem to have good chemistry. Becky's ignomny with HRG is logical, if a little repetitive (haven't we seen this a dozen times in the show before?), and it's questionable whether she can carry this sort of emotional gravitas, but at least it doesn't descend too far into absurdity. The scene in the car park is well choreographed, pointedly tense and just the right side of dramatic. The effect on Gretchen is neatly handled, and kudos for not having her change her mind and be sat in Claire's room at the end of the episode. It's actually a little touching when young Bennet sheds a tear, which is a sign that this storyline is moving in the right direction.. let's just hope they don't abandon all the good stuff in favour of some hot, meaningless, unbelievable lesbian action next week. If they handle the issue with sensitivity, as here, who knows... maybe they CAN compete with Buffy's handle on the scenario.
As ever, Matt and Sylar are amazing together, with both parties putting in some fine, angsty performances. The dialogue continues to sparkle, with Parkman's about turn into manipulative SOB working exceptionally well... it's a nice change of pace, after all. It's a little irritating that the writing staff couldn't give him an ounce of sense when it came to the concept of Sylar using his body to kill... that seemed obvious to everyone and his or her cat from that fateful moment at the end of episode seven, and it takes a brutal murder for Matt to realise the gravitas of the situation. Still, this doesn't detract from how genuinely intense the sequences are; particularly the final, parting (supposedly) gasp, as Matt sacrifices himself in order to put an end to the 'Brain Man's sinister legacy. It's a genuine jump-out-of-your-seat moment, a 'mouth wide open' shocker... of course, they have to bookend it with footage of the guy being driven to the hospital and what's the betting that Peter is able to heal him next week?! Ack, if that happens... for now, I'm happy to think positive and commend the writers' bravery. Hell, even threatening to do away with one of the show's favourite characters shows they clearly have some balls...
Peter and Emma's story is really the only lightweight element of the hour. There is some good character development to be found here, a product of the heroes' abilities rather than some grafted on swerve. The writing staff have done a damn good job of fleshing out Emma, to the point where she actually feels like an integral part of the show, and we want to see her develop. Her scenes with Milo have a delicacy that the show is often lacking, and they really are a joy to watch. Sadly though, after four or five episodes of amazement at the fact that she can 'see' sounds, it is beginning to become apparent that she is pretty directionless; that her story amounts to little more than musing over psychological issues and being taught how useful and all round great it is to have abilities. It's threatening to become tired, and the last thing we want is for this to besmirch an otherwise wonderful character. Let's hope they do something different with her soon...
The other big news, of course, is that Nathan's back. Well, sorta. Zachary Quinto'll probably rear his ugly head pretty soon... but at least we have some actual plot development here; dramatic ironies are demystified and revelations made... if 'Brother's Keeper' picks up where 'Shadowboxing' left off, we should be in for some interesting sequences between Pasdar and his televisual family. On the whole, this is a pretty competent episode, steadily moving pieces across the board at a decent pace and finding the time for some encouraging character development and one mother of a shocker at the same time. There are gripes, and this certainly isn't an all time great, but 'Shadowboxing' is certainly one of the better offerings that Heroes has served up this year. 8.2
Saturday, 14 November 2009
Tuesday, 10 November 2009
Live review: Biffy Clyro (support: Manchester Orchestra, Pulled Apart by Horses), O2 Academy Leeds, 06/11/09
BIFFY CLYRO (Support: Manchester Orchestra, Pulled Apart by Horses), O2 Academy Leeds, 06/11/09
Biffy Clyro are probably the quietest noiseniks in the world. The Scottish trio have been minding their own business for the better part of fourteen years, making colossally addictive rock music without really causing a fuss. The Biff don't bother themselves too much with anything other than their deeply ingrained work ethic: it's heads down, nose to the grindstone, just get on with it. This attitude seeps through into everything they do, and, refreshingly, even with the eyes of the Zeitgeist trained on them, they still haven't changed one bit.
Live, this approach makes for quite the thrill ride. From the moment they shuffle onto the stage, bereft of fanfare, there's an inexplicable intensity in the air, a palpable energy that threatens to rip through the walls of this converted cinema and tear apart its foundations. As soon as the spinetingling reverb of opener 'That Golden Rule' begins, it kicks into gear; the venue surges forward, the band go full throttle and the insanity commences. Bodies fly everywhere, devotees scream every word, Simon Neal acts like a man possessed, hacking and slashing at his guitar, climbing the speakers during 'Who's Got A Match?', leaping and bounding across the stage with spasmodic glee.. and it never stops. The aggression is unrelenting: one wall of noise bleeds into another and the singalongs just keep getting bigger and better. 'Living Is A Problem' is an even heavier and faster beast than on record and 'Glitter and Trauma' sounds like it's about to knock you to the floor, so infuriated are its guitars. This is no frills rock indulgence, a show that knows better than to let you stop to catch your breath... and even when it does, during an achingly tender 'Machines' and equally as moving 'God and Satan', the physical intensity just gives way to an emotional one, with the poignancy of Neal's cracked delivery threatening to choke you up.
Thankfully, the handful of tracks that are played from long-awaited 'Puzzle' follow-up 'Only Revolutions' bode very, very well. 'Bubbles' has hit single written all over it and a ludicrously catchy hook, 'Born on a Horse' introduces keyboards to the Clyro arsenal without compromising their sound and current single 'The Captain' has to be the pop song of the year, brash, bold and bloody magnificent.
As if all this wasn't enough, we are also treated to two wonderful support acts: Leeds' very own Pulled Apart By Horses are a cacophonous amalgam of choppy guitars and hardcore sensibilities, and while tonight, they seem a little more subdued than usual, there's no denying the addictive ferocity of their music. It's Manchester Orchestra that practically steal the show though. They play a meagre five song set, all from current album 'Mean Everything to Nothing', but every pained, melancholic note is just superb. Lead singer Andy Hull spits and snarls the confrontational lyrics to 'Shake It Out' while his keyboardist convulses in the corner; 'Pride' is as aggressive a dirge as you can possibly imagine and 'The River' washes over you with the force of a tsunami, so powerful is the music. By the end, you're converted, desperate to see more and resolved to invest in everything they've ever produced.
With two outstanding support acts and one blitzkrieg of a performance, this gig, ladies and gentlemen, can only be considered a triumph. They don't come much better than this.
Biffy Clyro are probably the quietest noiseniks in the world. The Scottish trio have been minding their own business for the better part of fourteen years, making colossally addictive rock music without really causing a fuss. The Biff don't bother themselves too much with anything other than their deeply ingrained work ethic: it's heads down, nose to the grindstone, just get on with it. This attitude seeps through into everything they do, and, refreshingly, even with the eyes of the Zeitgeist trained on them, they still haven't changed one bit.
Live, this approach makes for quite the thrill ride. From the moment they shuffle onto the stage, bereft of fanfare, there's an inexplicable intensity in the air, a palpable energy that threatens to rip through the walls of this converted cinema and tear apart its foundations. As soon as the spinetingling reverb of opener 'That Golden Rule' begins, it kicks into gear; the venue surges forward, the band go full throttle and the insanity commences. Bodies fly everywhere, devotees scream every word, Simon Neal acts like a man possessed, hacking and slashing at his guitar, climbing the speakers during 'Who's Got A Match?', leaping and bounding across the stage with spasmodic glee.. and it never stops. The aggression is unrelenting: one wall of noise bleeds into another and the singalongs just keep getting bigger and better. 'Living Is A Problem' is an even heavier and faster beast than on record and 'Glitter and Trauma' sounds like it's about to knock you to the floor, so infuriated are its guitars. This is no frills rock indulgence, a show that knows better than to let you stop to catch your breath... and even when it does, during an achingly tender 'Machines' and equally as moving 'God and Satan', the physical intensity just gives way to an emotional one, with the poignancy of Neal's cracked delivery threatening to choke you up.
Thankfully, the handful of tracks that are played from long-awaited 'Puzzle' follow-up 'Only Revolutions' bode very, very well. 'Bubbles' has hit single written all over it and a ludicrously catchy hook, 'Born on a Horse' introduces keyboards to the Clyro arsenal without compromising their sound and current single 'The Captain' has to be the pop song of the year, brash, bold and bloody magnificent.
As if all this wasn't enough, we are also treated to two wonderful support acts: Leeds' very own Pulled Apart By Horses are a cacophonous amalgam of choppy guitars and hardcore sensibilities, and while tonight, they seem a little more subdued than usual, there's no denying the addictive ferocity of their music. It's Manchester Orchestra that practically steal the show though. They play a meagre five song set, all from current album 'Mean Everything to Nothing', but every pained, melancholic note is just superb. Lead singer Andy Hull spits and snarls the confrontational lyrics to 'Shake It Out' while his keyboardist convulses in the corner; 'Pride' is as aggressive a dirge as you can possibly imagine and 'The River' washes over you with the force of a tsunami, so powerful is the music. By the end, you're converted, desperate to see more and resolved to invest in everything they've ever produced.
With two outstanding support acts and one blitzkrieg of a performance, this gig, ladies and gentlemen, can only be considered a triumph. They don't come much better than this.
Sunday, 27 September 2009
Television review: Fringe #202: 'Night of Desirable Objects'
#202: 'Night of Desirable Objects'
Wr: Jeff Pinkner & J.H. Whyman
Dr: Brad Anderson
Synopsis: The Fringe team travels to Pennsylvania to investigate an underground tunnel full of human remains. Meanwhile, Walter experiments using frogs to travel between realities.
Review: Fringe treads water for the second week running with 'Night of Desirable Objects', which sees the show return more explicitly to the formula it adopted in the early stages of its first season. Once again, we take a trip down X-Files lane as the gang investigate an unusual occurrence in a sleepy town, and any mythology elements, any movement in the progression of the ongoing story arc, are relegated to the narratalogical second division. In theory, there's nothing wrong with this set-up; some of Chris Carter's show's greatest achievements are to be found in its stand-alone hours, but it doesn't seem that the Fringe writing staff have yet discovered how to make their 'curiosities of the week' actually hold the viewer's attention for the duration of the programme's forty five minutes.
Too often, as here, the plot feels like it's stretched thin, lacking the sort of substance and intrigue that pushes the need to advance the ongoing plot to the back of our minds. The central conceit, that people are going missing 'on the spot' (so to speak) in Lansdale, may be deftly executed – Brad Anderson uses long shots, pregnant silences and disconcerting set pieces (the scarecrow, the train) to manufacture a potent level of eeriness – but it's regrettably predictable. The 'human mutation' storyline has been done so many times in the show already – some successful ('Inner Child'), some not so much ('The Transformation') – that it feels tired; it no longer surprises us and as such, it's a struggle for the viewer to invest in it, to be as apparently psyched as Walter by the whole thing. Worryingly, it also becomes obvious from the moment that we first see Hughes's boots trawling through the underground 'tunnel' that he has a distinct emotional investment in the case, and it's only a few beats later before we put two and two together and realise that his apparently dead son is still alive and (very much) kicking. Consequently, the ultimate pay-off in the graveyard falls depressingly flat: the fact that the boy is not in the coffin is built up as if it's the most shocking of revelations when actually, it couldn't be any more signposted if it tried. This sort of thing smacks of lazy writing; it really wouldn't take much to expand the scope of the plot, to incorporate further minutiae to help disguise these developments.
Even more problematically, it becomes clear at various points in the episode that Whyman and Pinkner are struggling to keep their script afloat. There are a number of disposable scenes included that, in more complex and interesting hours, would undoubtedly end up on the cutting room floor. The most notable of these is Olivia and a fellow agent discovering the body of Mr. Hughes in a sequence that opens the act immediately following the depiction of his suicide. It adds absolutely nothing of relevance to the plot as the viewer is already privy to all of the intricacies. Seeing Olivia connect the dots is superfluous; the same effect would be created if she was simply informed by someone else, or if we returned and she was already in acquisition of the knowledge. Curiously, the converse is true of the narrative's denouement; there is simply not enough here, as we spend all of two minutes with the creature before it meets its ungainly end by being speared by a police car. There is a minor scuffle between it, Peter and Olivia and hilariously, that's it. While the 'monster' had previously secreted paralytic venom to ensnare its prey and clearly has the geographical and psychological upper hand in the situation, it decides to sit back and rest on its laurels when faced with our protagonists, just jostling them about a bit and dragging Dunham off for a tet a tet or something. Ergo, the story's resolution is completely anti-climactic and far too sudden. Could we not have learned more about the creature's genetic make-up, something about what makes him tick or simply spent more time involved in the struggle?
It's somewhat frustrating that too little time is spent on important sequences like this one, and the development of the mythological elements of the narrative (we still don't know the specifics of Olivia's encounter with William Bell), when Whyman and Pinkner manage to incorporate pointless rehashes of previously established minutiae, such as the inclusion of a scene in which Walter tells the audience about the existence of parallel universes; you know, just for those who have forgotten or have only just joined the show. 'A New Day in the Old Town' tried this trick too and frankly, it's irritating; would it really hurt the production staff to give their audience some credit, or to leave the recapping to the 'previously on Fringe' segment?
Naturally, there are elements of 'Night of Desirable Objects' that are somewhat more successful. Aside from the superlative execution of the more macabre portions of the narrative, there's also much to be gained from the character beats too. It's good to see Olivia suffering the after effects of her car accident. All too often, television sacrifices believability for the sake of re-establishing the status quo, but thankfully, not here; Anna Torv is excellent at depicting Dunham's fatigue, the fact that she's run down, and it really helps the viewer to invest in the story. Elsewhere, Walter and Peter's burgeoning relationship continues to provide a number of decidedly sweet moments, particularly Peter's offer to take his father fishing which could have seemed mawkish in the hands of lesser actors but is actually rather moving here. And finally, Agent Francis's transformation remains thoroughly entertaining; it's great to see the mysterious 'back room' again, with its typewriter-to-another-world, and kudos to Kirk Acevado for choosing to underplay the character's new-found evilness instead of hamming it up.
Once again, Fringe decides to slam the brakes on rather than speed down the highway. The writing staff have abandoned the forward momentum they initiated towards the close of last season in favour of returning to the bog standard 'monster of the week' formula from which the show began. There are minor developments in the ongoing narrative but they simply aren't enough, especially when one considers the wafer thin nature of the remainder of the plot. While 'stand alones' can often prove more successful than the big, revelation-heavy episodes, they have to contain enough meat and a weighty enough concept to keep the viewer engaged. Sadly, 'Night of Desirable Objects' has neither of these: the 'human mutation' trope is highly unoriginal and its execution is mired in predictability – the viewer figures out the 'mystery' and can piece together the denouement within the first fifteen minutes. With a little more work and an amping up of the plot, this could've been a triumph but as it is, it's distinctly average. 6.3
Wr: Jeff Pinkner & J.H. Whyman
Dr: Brad Anderson
Synopsis: The Fringe team travels to Pennsylvania to investigate an underground tunnel full of human remains. Meanwhile, Walter experiments using frogs to travel between realities.
Review: Fringe treads water for the second week running with 'Night of Desirable Objects', which sees the show return more explicitly to the formula it adopted in the early stages of its first season. Once again, we take a trip down X-Files lane as the gang investigate an unusual occurrence in a sleepy town, and any mythology elements, any movement in the progression of the ongoing story arc, are relegated to the narratalogical second division. In theory, there's nothing wrong with this set-up; some of Chris Carter's show's greatest achievements are to be found in its stand-alone hours, but it doesn't seem that the Fringe writing staff have yet discovered how to make their 'curiosities of the week' actually hold the viewer's attention for the duration of the programme's forty five minutes.
Too often, as here, the plot feels like it's stretched thin, lacking the sort of substance and intrigue that pushes the need to advance the ongoing plot to the back of our minds. The central conceit, that people are going missing 'on the spot' (so to speak) in Lansdale, may be deftly executed – Brad Anderson uses long shots, pregnant silences and disconcerting set pieces (the scarecrow, the train) to manufacture a potent level of eeriness – but it's regrettably predictable. The 'human mutation' storyline has been done so many times in the show already – some successful ('Inner Child'), some not so much ('The Transformation') – that it feels tired; it no longer surprises us and as such, it's a struggle for the viewer to invest in it, to be as apparently psyched as Walter by the whole thing. Worryingly, it also becomes obvious from the moment that we first see Hughes's boots trawling through the underground 'tunnel' that he has a distinct emotional investment in the case, and it's only a few beats later before we put two and two together and realise that his apparently dead son is still alive and (very much) kicking. Consequently, the ultimate pay-off in the graveyard falls depressingly flat: the fact that the boy is not in the coffin is built up as if it's the most shocking of revelations when actually, it couldn't be any more signposted if it tried. This sort of thing smacks of lazy writing; it really wouldn't take much to expand the scope of the plot, to incorporate further minutiae to help disguise these developments.
Even more problematically, it becomes clear at various points in the episode that Whyman and Pinkner are struggling to keep their script afloat. There are a number of disposable scenes included that, in more complex and interesting hours, would undoubtedly end up on the cutting room floor. The most notable of these is Olivia and a fellow agent discovering the body of Mr. Hughes in a sequence that opens the act immediately following the depiction of his suicide. It adds absolutely nothing of relevance to the plot as the viewer is already privy to all of the intricacies. Seeing Olivia connect the dots is superfluous; the same effect would be created if she was simply informed by someone else, or if we returned and she was already in acquisition of the knowledge. Curiously, the converse is true of the narrative's denouement; there is simply not enough here, as we spend all of two minutes with the creature before it meets its ungainly end by being speared by a police car. There is a minor scuffle between it, Peter and Olivia and hilariously, that's it. While the 'monster' had previously secreted paralytic venom to ensnare its prey and clearly has the geographical and psychological upper hand in the situation, it decides to sit back and rest on its laurels when faced with our protagonists, just jostling them about a bit and dragging Dunham off for a tet a tet or something. Ergo, the story's resolution is completely anti-climactic and far too sudden. Could we not have learned more about the creature's genetic make-up, something about what makes him tick or simply spent more time involved in the struggle?
It's somewhat frustrating that too little time is spent on important sequences like this one, and the development of the mythological elements of the narrative (we still don't know the specifics of Olivia's encounter with William Bell), when Whyman and Pinkner manage to incorporate pointless rehashes of previously established minutiae, such as the inclusion of a scene in which Walter tells the audience about the existence of parallel universes; you know, just for those who have forgotten or have only just joined the show. 'A New Day in the Old Town' tried this trick too and frankly, it's irritating; would it really hurt the production staff to give their audience some credit, or to leave the recapping to the 'previously on Fringe' segment?
Naturally, there are elements of 'Night of Desirable Objects' that are somewhat more successful. Aside from the superlative execution of the more macabre portions of the narrative, there's also much to be gained from the character beats too. It's good to see Olivia suffering the after effects of her car accident. All too often, television sacrifices believability for the sake of re-establishing the status quo, but thankfully, not here; Anna Torv is excellent at depicting Dunham's fatigue, the fact that she's run down, and it really helps the viewer to invest in the story. Elsewhere, Walter and Peter's burgeoning relationship continues to provide a number of decidedly sweet moments, particularly Peter's offer to take his father fishing which could have seemed mawkish in the hands of lesser actors but is actually rather moving here. And finally, Agent Francis's transformation remains thoroughly entertaining; it's great to see the mysterious 'back room' again, with its typewriter-to-another-world, and kudos to Kirk Acevado for choosing to underplay the character's new-found evilness instead of hamming it up.
Once again, Fringe decides to slam the brakes on rather than speed down the highway. The writing staff have abandoned the forward momentum they initiated towards the close of last season in favour of returning to the bog standard 'monster of the week' formula from which the show began. There are minor developments in the ongoing narrative but they simply aren't enough, especially when one considers the wafer thin nature of the remainder of the plot. While 'stand alones' can often prove more successful than the big, revelation-heavy episodes, they have to contain enough meat and a weighty enough concept to keep the viewer engaged. Sadly, 'Night of Desirable Objects' has neither of these: the 'human mutation' trope is highly unoriginal and its execution is mired in predictability – the viewer figures out the 'mystery' and can piece together the denouement within the first fifteen minutes. With a little more work and an amping up of the plot, this could've been a triumph but as it is, it's distinctly average. 6.3
Saturday, 26 September 2009
Album review: Flood of Red: 'Leave Everything Behind'
FLOOD OF RED: 'Leave Everything Behind' (Dark City)
Flood of Red are a difficult bunch to pin down. Their penchant for the tenants of post-hardcore, marrying riff-splattered lead and choppy rhythm guitars with introspective and melodic vocals, tends to find them sitting comfortably next to scene dahlings like We Are The Ocean and The Blackout, but debut album 'Leave Everything Behind' is a far more complex and diverse listening experience than such comparisons suggest. As with many who hail from the murky mists of bonny Scotland, their sound seems to have a grounding in the social climate from whence they came; like the Biff, Twin Atlantic, Idlewild, Sucioperro and about a dozen others, they just can't seem to escape the innate melancholia and dereliction of their surroundings.
This eerie undercurrent runs through the course of the record, and it's manifested in the unusually scuzzy nature of much of the music. While the guitars are certainly heavy enough to give your head a good seeing to, they also sound distinctly wayward, as if they've been swept up in a hurricane before being unleashed on your poor, unsuspecting ears. Tracks like 'The Harmony' and 'A Place Before the End' threaten to envelop you in their windswept, Glasvegan sonics, but the process is a distinctly delicate one: Jordan Spiers's lilting, wailing vocals feel rather like a friendly hand guiding you through this cruelly melancholic world, the bitter chill and unforgiving winds of a Glasgow winter, and it seems all the more welcoming and fascinating for it.
Flood of Red have a fondness for the playful too: current single 'Home Run (1997)' starts life as a marathon sprint, a jaunty, slightly punky slice of the anthemic, before hitting the wall and transforming into an aggressive behemoth of noise, standing stock still but shattering all of our earlobes. Then there are the more multi-layered moments - 'Like Elephants' and 'I Will Not Change' are colossally epic slow-burners that build and build before exploding in a haze of fuzzy noise rock. The band centre the tracks on low-key piano pieces that sound highly evocative; 'Elephants'' is haunting and disconcerting, while '...Change' has a more heartbreakingly gentle motif that complements the track's negative metaphors very well. In fact, it's essentially Brand New's 'Daisy' (the song, not the album) writ even larger.
At fourteen tracks, 'Leave Everything Behind' does sometimes feel a little bloated; by the time we get to '...Fell Point' and 'Hope Street', things become rather familiar, but on the whole, this is a highly assured piece from a band who are quite clearly light years ahead of the majority of their peers. There's intensity, diversity and a surprisingly skilled grasp of evocation; at times, you can feel the weight of the band's experiences bearing down on the record, like a millstone slung heavily around its neck. It's a highly fulfilling recipe and one that Flood of Red would do well to hold on to; definitely ones to watch out for. (8/10)
Flood of Red are a difficult bunch to pin down. Their penchant for the tenants of post-hardcore, marrying riff-splattered lead and choppy rhythm guitars with introspective and melodic vocals, tends to find them sitting comfortably next to scene dahlings like We Are The Ocean and The Blackout, but debut album 'Leave Everything Behind' is a far more complex and diverse listening experience than such comparisons suggest. As with many who hail from the murky mists of bonny Scotland, their sound seems to have a grounding in the social climate from whence they came; like the Biff, Twin Atlantic, Idlewild, Sucioperro and about a dozen others, they just can't seem to escape the innate melancholia and dereliction of their surroundings.
This eerie undercurrent runs through the course of the record, and it's manifested in the unusually scuzzy nature of much of the music. While the guitars are certainly heavy enough to give your head a good seeing to, they also sound distinctly wayward, as if they've been swept up in a hurricane before being unleashed on your poor, unsuspecting ears. Tracks like 'The Harmony' and 'A Place Before the End' threaten to envelop you in their windswept, Glasvegan sonics, but the process is a distinctly delicate one: Jordan Spiers's lilting, wailing vocals feel rather like a friendly hand guiding you through this cruelly melancholic world, the bitter chill and unforgiving winds of a Glasgow winter, and it seems all the more welcoming and fascinating for it.
Flood of Red have a fondness for the playful too: current single 'Home Run (1997)' starts life as a marathon sprint, a jaunty, slightly punky slice of the anthemic, before hitting the wall and transforming into an aggressive behemoth of noise, standing stock still but shattering all of our earlobes. Then there are the more multi-layered moments - 'Like Elephants' and 'I Will Not Change' are colossally epic slow-burners that build and build before exploding in a haze of fuzzy noise rock. The band centre the tracks on low-key piano pieces that sound highly evocative; 'Elephants'' is haunting and disconcerting, while '...Change' has a more heartbreakingly gentle motif that complements the track's negative metaphors very well. In fact, it's essentially Brand New's 'Daisy' (the song, not the album) writ even larger.
At fourteen tracks, 'Leave Everything Behind' does sometimes feel a little bloated; by the time we get to '...Fell Point' and 'Hope Street', things become rather familiar, but on the whole, this is a highly assured piece from a band who are quite clearly light years ahead of the majority of their peers. There's intensity, diversity and a surprisingly skilled grasp of evocation; at times, you can feel the weight of the band's experiences bearing down on the record, like a millstone slung heavily around its neck. It's a highly fulfilling recipe and one that Flood of Red would do well to hold on to; definitely ones to watch out for. (8/10)
Friday, 25 September 2009
Album review: Bowling For Soup: 'Sorry For Partyin''
BOWLING FOR SOUP: 'Sorry For Partyin'' (Jive)
The popular consensus about Bowling For Soup is that they're a bit of a one-trick pony; a band stuck perpetually in adolescence, forever making wise-cracks about their personal ineptitude, but never delving any deeper, never daring to peel away the mask created by their penchant for humour. Such a notion is complete nonsense, of course, as it presupposes that there's something less artistic and less worthwhile about making people laugh; but why should there be? Why should it be any more meritable to write allegorical lyrics than comedic ones? Why are we embarrassed by the fact that Bowling For Soup generally manage to do what their remit (as outlined on 2007's 'I'm Gay!') says: 'make [us all] feel better on a really shitty day?' Such an achievement is admirable, not risible, and sure, their music may be bog-standard, three-note pop punk, and their albums might all sound exactly the same, but admit it, every time they worm their way onto your stereo, a great big smile runs rampant all over your face.
So yes, 'Sorry For Partyin' WILL make you laugh your socks off. There are the usual pointed snipes at the musical Zeitgeist: 'I Gotchoo' tries its hand at a sort of Kid Rock-esque fusion of country, hip hop and rock and ends up quoting the Fuzzy Bear song, while 'A Really Cool Dance Song' takes the same approach as 'Punk Rock 101' in its rip on the current popularity of electronica, littering the track with the various trappings and conventions of the genre and admitting to the listener (or rather, pretending) that it's the band's attempt at having a number one hit. The utterly shameless chorus - 'this song sounds like a dance song/Cos dance songs are cool now/So shake what your momma gave ya' - is just genius, but even this is topped in the final thirty seconds when the track falls apart because the drum machine stops working, leading Jaret to admit that 'it doesn't sound good anymore.' There are several rather more crass moments too: lead single 'My Wena' takes a thinly-disguised metaphor and runs a marathon with it (a woman called Wena? Who cries herself to sleep at night? Hur hur), while 'Hooray For Beer' is just plain ridiculous, a three minute paen to the delights of alcohol, delivered in the kind of overly verbose language usually reserved for love letters. It's this sort of linguistic playfulness that allows the band to get away with being purile, because they rarely lapse into cliche and when they do, it's designed to be ironic.
It's also worth pointing out that, for all their supposed immaturity, there's actually a poignant emotional core to many of the tracks on offer here. Bowling For Soup often wear their hearts on their yellow polka-dot sleeves: for all 'Only Young' seems to be a bit of a mickey-take of contempo pop punk bands like Boys Like Girls, with its over-abundance of keyboards and sacharrine lyrics about staying sixteen forever, the message is still fairly endearing. 'I Don't Wish You Were Dead Anymore', meanwhile, derives its comedy from its bluntness, but the song remains heartfelt - the kind of thing you might say to your ex if you were forced to tell the truth. And then there's 'BFFF', probably the best moment on the whole record, in which Jaret delivers a laugh-out-loud celebration of the joys of bromance. It's effortlessly sweet, giving a series of amusing anecdotes ('I accidentally chopped your finger off your writing hand, oh well/Now you get disability' etc.), before crescendoing with a brilliant tell-all chorus of 'I'm just trying to say I love you in a heterosexual way.' This is Bowling For Soup's power: to have you simultaneously rolling around on the floor in hysterics, and celebrating the beauty and absurdity of the everyday minutiae of existence.
Most critics will probably write off 'Sorry For Partyin' as a record with little artistic merit and shame on them. Sure, this isn't the most intellectually fulfilling or emotionally complex album of the decade, but it doesn't have to be. Writing good comedy is one of the hardest literary tasks there is, and the fact that Bowling For Soup are able to make you laugh out loud so many times over the course of forty minutes just demonstrates the depth of their skill. We need no further justification for their existence than that they make us feel so much better... so guys, don't be sorry for partyin', it freakin' rocks, man. (7/10)
The popular consensus about Bowling For Soup is that they're a bit of a one-trick pony; a band stuck perpetually in adolescence, forever making wise-cracks about their personal ineptitude, but never delving any deeper, never daring to peel away the mask created by their penchant for humour. Such a notion is complete nonsense, of course, as it presupposes that there's something less artistic and less worthwhile about making people laugh; but why should there be? Why should it be any more meritable to write allegorical lyrics than comedic ones? Why are we embarrassed by the fact that Bowling For Soup generally manage to do what their remit (as outlined on 2007's 'I'm Gay!') says: 'make [us all] feel better on a really shitty day?' Such an achievement is admirable, not risible, and sure, their music may be bog-standard, three-note pop punk, and their albums might all sound exactly the same, but admit it, every time they worm their way onto your stereo, a great big smile runs rampant all over your face.
So yes, 'Sorry For Partyin' WILL make you laugh your socks off. There are the usual pointed snipes at the musical Zeitgeist: 'I Gotchoo' tries its hand at a sort of Kid Rock-esque fusion of country, hip hop and rock and ends up quoting the Fuzzy Bear song, while 'A Really Cool Dance Song' takes the same approach as 'Punk Rock 101' in its rip on the current popularity of electronica, littering the track with the various trappings and conventions of the genre and admitting to the listener (or rather, pretending) that it's the band's attempt at having a number one hit. The utterly shameless chorus - 'this song sounds like a dance song/Cos dance songs are cool now/So shake what your momma gave ya' - is just genius, but even this is topped in the final thirty seconds when the track falls apart because the drum machine stops working, leading Jaret to admit that 'it doesn't sound good anymore.' There are several rather more crass moments too: lead single 'My Wena' takes a thinly-disguised metaphor and runs a marathon with it (a woman called Wena? Who cries herself to sleep at night? Hur hur), while 'Hooray For Beer' is just plain ridiculous, a three minute paen to the delights of alcohol, delivered in the kind of overly verbose language usually reserved for love letters. It's this sort of linguistic playfulness that allows the band to get away with being purile, because they rarely lapse into cliche and when they do, it's designed to be ironic.
It's also worth pointing out that, for all their supposed immaturity, there's actually a poignant emotional core to many of the tracks on offer here. Bowling For Soup often wear their hearts on their yellow polka-dot sleeves: for all 'Only Young' seems to be a bit of a mickey-take of contempo pop punk bands like Boys Like Girls, with its over-abundance of keyboards and sacharrine lyrics about staying sixteen forever, the message is still fairly endearing. 'I Don't Wish You Were Dead Anymore', meanwhile, derives its comedy from its bluntness, but the song remains heartfelt - the kind of thing you might say to your ex if you were forced to tell the truth. And then there's 'BFFF', probably the best moment on the whole record, in which Jaret delivers a laugh-out-loud celebration of the joys of bromance. It's effortlessly sweet, giving a series of amusing anecdotes ('I accidentally chopped your finger off your writing hand, oh well/Now you get disability' etc.), before crescendoing with a brilliant tell-all chorus of 'I'm just trying to say I love you in a heterosexual way.' This is Bowling For Soup's power: to have you simultaneously rolling around on the floor in hysterics, and celebrating the beauty and absurdity of the everyday minutiae of existence.
Most critics will probably write off 'Sorry For Partyin' as a record with little artistic merit and shame on them. Sure, this isn't the most intellectually fulfilling or emotionally complex album of the decade, but it doesn't have to be. Writing good comedy is one of the hardest literary tasks there is, and the fact that Bowling For Soup are able to make you laugh out loud so many times over the course of forty minutes just demonstrates the depth of their skill. We need no further justification for their existence than that they make us feel so much better... so guys, don't be sorry for partyin', it freakin' rocks, man. (7/10)
Television review: Heroes #402: 'Jump, Push, Fall'
#402: 'Jump, Push, Fall'
Wr: Adam Armus & Kay Foster
Dr: Ed Bianchi
Synopsis: Claire discovers her roommate has been killed. HRG asks Peter to help him and ends up in a difficult situation. Hiro tries to undo his wrongdoing from the past and Matt finally decides to use his powers again.
Review: With ‘Jump, Push, Fall’, the season four premiere continues to perch its foot delicately on the accelerator, taking care not to go too wild and, you know, actually do something surprising with the plot. Adam Armus and Kay Foster take a leaf out of Tim Kring’s book and cling to the brakes, making sure they maintain the rather depressing averageness that plagued ‘Orientation.’ The run-of-the-mill plots, predictable tropes and blasé character beats are still mostly present and correct, ensuring that Heroes continues to feel like a watered down version of its own second season. On the up side, however, a number of narrative threads begin to move the show’s characters in rather more interesting directions, suggesting that there may be promise for the future success of the volume.
Frustratingly, Claire’s Creek: The College Years isn’t one of them. Following the most barefaced product placement sequence in the history of television, in which the words ‘guitar’ and ‘hero’ are uttered 6,732 times and we actually waste precious screen time watching Claire and Gretchen attempt to play some Jimi Hendrix, Armus and Foster bump off the irritatingly smug and self-serving roommate stereotype in a plotline straight out of Murder, She Wrote. Oh wait, that’s too generous… Diagnosis Murder, yeah, that’s it. So, what happened to the poor algebra-loving, trajectory-obsessed girl, huh? Well, she simply had to go, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to service the burgeoning friendship between our budding heroine and the awkward flares-wearer. Just look at the two of them now, bonding over conspiracy theories and cod-psychoanalysis, conspiring to steal crash test dummies and throw them out of Ms Bennet’s window. That’s the kind of storyline that really gets the ratings soaring. Who cares about what actually happened to Little Miss Overconfident when we get to see Gretchen realising that Claire, shock of shocks, has healing powers? Well fancy that! Who would’ve thunk? Sigh. It really feels like the entire ‘mysterious death’ trope exists solely for the purpose of creating this moment of discovery and frankly, it’s lame. You would think that after having been caught in the act so many times in the last four seasons, Claire would just stick to her new-found mantra and come straight out with the truth the moment she meets anyone new; ah, but then the production crew wouldn’t be given the opportunity to gross us all out with shots of Claire’s disfigured body being shunted back into place (props to the effects guys here, by the way, that was truly sickening), so no, tiresome predictability it is. And it’s hard to decide whether or not this moment is satisfactory in terms of the ‘murder mystery’ too; Claire’s dialogue suggests that perhaps her roommate did commit suicide, although you suspect that this is something of a red herring. However, it would probably be a darn sight more interesting if this were the case, since it would give the character an additional dimension; she would cease being a cipher, and develop a complexity to which we weren’t previously privy. On the other hand, it would also draw this narrative to a close and we’d be forced to watch Gretchen and Claire playing BFFs for the next three or four weeks, until the other heroes required the (ex) cheerleader’s services. So perhaps it’s better if the enigma continues and the two play Scooby Doo for a while, although the jury’s out on whether this will be any more engaging than the codswallop we’ve had to endure for the last two episodes.
Hiro and Ando’s narrative generates a similar degree of ambivalence. After an episode of pussy-footing around, we finally get to the heart of their story and it’s certainly refreshing: having our comedic, ever-reliable protagonist knocking at death’s door, resigned to his fate, is a marvellous conceit that gives Masi Oka a chance to demonstrate that he’s more than just a catchphrase machine. He’s particularly good when he’s forced to be aggressive, as in his conversation with Ando about the morality of time travel. It’s also good to see the Carnival weaving its way into the wheels of the central narrative, even if it is a little convenient that it just so happens to be the place where Hiro’s mission to be a superhero started, so the writers have an easy route into connecting the two apparently disparate strands. Still, we can forgive this since Robert Knepper continues to be just about the best thing in the show at the moment, beguiling you with his refusal to be pigeonholed into black or white, good or bad, and he and Oka have an instantaneous chemistry that bodes well for the future, since it appears that the writers are throwing them together in a sort of dysfunctional ‘master/pupil’ relationship that will undoubtedly have disastrous consequences. It’s nice to see Hiro making decisions that are human rather than moral, thinking with his heart instead of his head, and, on the face of it, his new-found Quantum Leap-esque mission to ‘right the wrongs’ of his past seems promising. Unfortunately, it also relies on a frustratingly paradoxical interpretation of time travel that, while consistent with the show’s representation of the trope from as far back as season one, still doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. The idea that Hiro is ‘out of time’, that he somehow exists outside of causality and is aware of the myriad changes and redundant timelines that he has produced, contradicts the fundamental physics of the process: if Hiro goes back in time and alters the past so that Ando and his sister fall in love, then this is what will always have happened, and Hiro will remember it as such. Here, while everyone else acts like nothing has changed, Nakamura remembers the redundant timeline, which, frankly, is preposterous. Now, to be fair, we could discuss the concept of time travel all day and never reach a satisfactory conclusion about its minutiae since it’s all speculative, but this sort of thing just demonstrates why it’s probably best to stay away from it, or at the very least to avoid using it to adversely affect the lives of the central characters.
Elsewhere, we get a not-entirely-subtle delineation of the parallels between loner Peter and, um, loner Noah as they work together to retrieve the Carnival’s missing compass, and while the idea is sound, the execution falters somewhat. The occasional flashes of Bennet’s home life are a nicely underplayed touch and his phone call to Sandra is genuinely heartbreaking, but when he starts waxing poetic to Peter about the need to surround yourself with people and the counterproductive nature of isolation, it comes across as rather forced and heavy-handed. Armus and Foster would’ve done better to illustrate the analogy rather than make it explicit, as the dialogue feels grafted on when it should be organic. There are other problems too: Noah acquires the key far too quickly; in fact, it’s almost as if he knows where to look, which certainly doesn’t seem to be the intended reading. In fact, his analysis of the body – that the nature of the wounds suggest it was not a vengeance killing – is dubious enough without this little slice of convenience, so it ends up smacking of lazy writing. Would it really hurt to have it take a little longer, for them to have popped down to a medical lab to give Danko an X-ray or something? Oh wait, yeah, that would’ve intruded on the Guitar Hero product placement time… sorry, my bad, stick to the deux et machinas. Peter’s need to extract himself from what he sees as the ‘destructive’ nature of the heroes, while fairly mature in concept, is rather frustrating in practise: we all know that the gang is going to come bounding back together within the space of a few weeks because it always happens, so these feel more like backward steps than logical progression (come on, would he really leave Noah with the compass after having been confronted by knife-wielding maniac? That’s just plain malicious!) And then there’s Tracey Strauss, who has magically transformed from ruthless, revenge-obsessed killing machine to caring, sharing, Noah-comforting sweet pea in the space of eighty minutes. She ends the episode by the bedside of the man she tried to drown meagre hours ago, and is she strangling him while he sleeps? Stuffing his mouth with the fluids he may or may not have been fed intravenously? No, she’s keeping him company, making sure he isn’t alone, and offering glances that can only be described as ‘suggestive.’ (Don’t think it couldn’t happen… remember Matt and Daphne?) Now call me reactionary if you like, but I don’t really think this sort of antithetical character swerve can believably occur overnight. It’s just silly, and it betrays the simple fact that the writers really don’t know what to do with Ali Larter’s somewhat redundant character. Here guys, I’ve got an idea: make a bold decision and actually keep her dead! No? Oh well.
Speaking of characters that refuse to snuff it, Zachary Quinto’s Sylar has more of a role in this one although, refreshingly, the writers manage to do something a little creative with him. Armus and Foster play to the actor’s strengths and pitch the character as Matt’s self-deprecating conscience, delivering cuttingly insightful and vindictive dialogue that really gets to the heart of Sylar’s malice. This is the sort of thing that made him such a potent menace in Heroes’ first season, that gave viewers throughout the globe the opportunity to love such a loathsome individual; instead of being bombastic and over-the-top, Gabriel is cutting and heartless, psychoanalysing instead of proselytising. Greg Grunberg plays well off him too, demonstrating Parkman’s inner turmoil with suitable aplomb, and never veering too far into the excessive. The only lamentable element of this storyline is the inclusion of Roy; while Armus and Foster clearly need something to cause Matt to finally break, the ‘jealous lover’ trope is so hopelessly over-used in televisual narratives that its essential beats (misinterpretation, over-reaction, discovery, impasse, rift) frustrate rather than engage. Here’s hoping we don’t see any more of the long-haired plumber from… um, somewhere other than Liverpool (see what I tried to do there? No? Okay…) and that Janis never finds out about Matt’s little indiscretion; I just can’t cope with playing the cycle of martial strife any longer.
‘Jump, Push, Fall’ steps up a little from the lethargic pace of the season opener, but the series still feels like it’s running on auto-pilot. The narrative progression remains fairly slow and this hinders the episode’s success. Armus and Foster do attempt to introduce some fresh conceits and some of them are quite engaging – Sylar’s game of wits with Matt Parkman is superbly handled and Hiro’s dalliances with the Carnival give his character refreshingly new dimensions – but unfortunately, a great many problems remain. Claire’s narrative continues to be about as interesting as watching paint dry, relying on the sort of beats that were out-dated when they tried them in season two, and the Peter/Noah/Tracey storyline is fraught with problems and inconsistencies, not the least of which is Strauss’s sudden about turn which is frankly risible. This is an improvement on ‘Orientation’ but it still doesn’t feel like Heroes is really trying hard enough, and when your show is on as icy ground as this one, that really isn’t a good sign. 6.2
Wr: Adam Armus & Kay Foster
Dr: Ed Bianchi
Synopsis: Claire discovers her roommate has been killed. HRG asks Peter to help him and ends up in a difficult situation. Hiro tries to undo his wrongdoing from the past and Matt finally decides to use his powers again.
Review: With ‘Jump, Push, Fall’, the season four premiere continues to perch its foot delicately on the accelerator, taking care not to go too wild and, you know, actually do something surprising with the plot. Adam Armus and Kay Foster take a leaf out of Tim Kring’s book and cling to the brakes, making sure they maintain the rather depressing averageness that plagued ‘Orientation.’ The run-of-the-mill plots, predictable tropes and blasé character beats are still mostly present and correct, ensuring that Heroes continues to feel like a watered down version of its own second season. On the up side, however, a number of narrative threads begin to move the show’s characters in rather more interesting directions, suggesting that there may be promise for the future success of the volume.
Frustratingly, Claire’s Creek: The College Years isn’t one of them. Following the most barefaced product placement sequence in the history of television, in which the words ‘guitar’ and ‘hero’ are uttered 6,732 times and we actually waste precious screen time watching Claire and Gretchen attempt to play some Jimi Hendrix, Armus and Foster bump off the irritatingly smug and self-serving roommate stereotype in a plotline straight out of Murder, She Wrote. Oh wait, that’s too generous… Diagnosis Murder, yeah, that’s it. So, what happened to the poor algebra-loving, trajectory-obsessed girl, huh? Well, she simply had to go, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to service the burgeoning friendship between our budding heroine and the awkward flares-wearer. Just look at the two of them now, bonding over conspiracy theories and cod-psychoanalysis, conspiring to steal crash test dummies and throw them out of Ms Bennet’s window. That’s the kind of storyline that really gets the ratings soaring. Who cares about what actually happened to Little Miss Overconfident when we get to see Gretchen realising that Claire, shock of shocks, has healing powers? Well fancy that! Who would’ve thunk? Sigh. It really feels like the entire ‘mysterious death’ trope exists solely for the purpose of creating this moment of discovery and frankly, it’s lame. You would think that after having been caught in the act so many times in the last four seasons, Claire would just stick to her new-found mantra and come straight out with the truth the moment she meets anyone new; ah, but then the production crew wouldn’t be given the opportunity to gross us all out with shots of Claire’s disfigured body being shunted back into place (props to the effects guys here, by the way, that was truly sickening), so no, tiresome predictability it is. And it’s hard to decide whether or not this moment is satisfactory in terms of the ‘murder mystery’ too; Claire’s dialogue suggests that perhaps her roommate did commit suicide, although you suspect that this is something of a red herring. However, it would probably be a darn sight more interesting if this were the case, since it would give the character an additional dimension; she would cease being a cipher, and develop a complexity to which we weren’t previously privy. On the other hand, it would also draw this narrative to a close and we’d be forced to watch Gretchen and Claire playing BFFs for the next three or four weeks, until the other heroes required the (ex) cheerleader’s services. So perhaps it’s better if the enigma continues and the two play Scooby Doo for a while, although the jury’s out on whether this will be any more engaging than the codswallop we’ve had to endure for the last two episodes.
Hiro and Ando’s narrative generates a similar degree of ambivalence. After an episode of pussy-footing around, we finally get to the heart of their story and it’s certainly refreshing: having our comedic, ever-reliable protagonist knocking at death’s door, resigned to his fate, is a marvellous conceit that gives Masi Oka a chance to demonstrate that he’s more than just a catchphrase machine. He’s particularly good when he’s forced to be aggressive, as in his conversation with Ando about the morality of time travel. It’s also good to see the Carnival weaving its way into the wheels of the central narrative, even if it is a little convenient that it just so happens to be the place where Hiro’s mission to be a superhero started, so the writers have an easy route into connecting the two apparently disparate strands. Still, we can forgive this since Robert Knepper continues to be just about the best thing in the show at the moment, beguiling you with his refusal to be pigeonholed into black or white, good or bad, and he and Oka have an instantaneous chemistry that bodes well for the future, since it appears that the writers are throwing them together in a sort of dysfunctional ‘master/pupil’ relationship that will undoubtedly have disastrous consequences. It’s nice to see Hiro making decisions that are human rather than moral, thinking with his heart instead of his head, and, on the face of it, his new-found Quantum Leap-esque mission to ‘right the wrongs’ of his past seems promising. Unfortunately, it also relies on a frustratingly paradoxical interpretation of time travel that, while consistent with the show’s representation of the trope from as far back as season one, still doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. The idea that Hiro is ‘out of time’, that he somehow exists outside of causality and is aware of the myriad changes and redundant timelines that he has produced, contradicts the fundamental physics of the process: if Hiro goes back in time and alters the past so that Ando and his sister fall in love, then this is what will always have happened, and Hiro will remember it as such. Here, while everyone else acts like nothing has changed, Nakamura remembers the redundant timeline, which, frankly, is preposterous. Now, to be fair, we could discuss the concept of time travel all day and never reach a satisfactory conclusion about its minutiae since it’s all speculative, but this sort of thing just demonstrates why it’s probably best to stay away from it, or at the very least to avoid using it to adversely affect the lives of the central characters.
Elsewhere, we get a not-entirely-subtle delineation of the parallels between loner Peter and, um, loner Noah as they work together to retrieve the Carnival’s missing compass, and while the idea is sound, the execution falters somewhat. The occasional flashes of Bennet’s home life are a nicely underplayed touch and his phone call to Sandra is genuinely heartbreaking, but when he starts waxing poetic to Peter about the need to surround yourself with people and the counterproductive nature of isolation, it comes across as rather forced and heavy-handed. Armus and Foster would’ve done better to illustrate the analogy rather than make it explicit, as the dialogue feels grafted on when it should be organic. There are other problems too: Noah acquires the key far too quickly; in fact, it’s almost as if he knows where to look, which certainly doesn’t seem to be the intended reading. In fact, his analysis of the body – that the nature of the wounds suggest it was not a vengeance killing – is dubious enough without this little slice of convenience, so it ends up smacking of lazy writing. Would it really hurt to have it take a little longer, for them to have popped down to a medical lab to give Danko an X-ray or something? Oh wait, yeah, that would’ve intruded on the Guitar Hero product placement time… sorry, my bad, stick to the deux et machinas. Peter’s need to extract himself from what he sees as the ‘destructive’ nature of the heroes, while fairly mature in concept, is rather frustrating in practise: we all know that the gang is going to come bounding back together within the space of a few weeks because it always happens, so these feel more like backward steps than logical progression (come on, would he really leave Noah with the compass after having been confronted by knife-wielding maniac? That’s just plain malicious!) And then there’s Tracey Strauss, who has magically transformed from ruthless, revenge-obsessed killing machine to caring, sharing, Noah-comforting sweet pea in the space of eighty minutes. She ends the episode by the bedside of the man she tried to drown meagre hours ago, and is she strangling him while he sleeps? Stuffing his mouth with the fluids he may or may not have been fed intravenously? No, she’s keeping him company, making sure he isn’t alone, and offering glances that can only be described as ‘suggestive.’ (Don’t think it couldn’t happen… remember Matt and Daphne?) Now call me reactionary if you like, but I don’t really think this sort of antithetical character swerve can believably occur overnight. It’s just silly, and it betrays the simple fact that the writers really don’t know what to do with Ali Larter’s somewhat redundant character. Here guys, I’ve got an idea: make a bold decision and actually keep her dead! No? Oh well.
Speaking of characters that refuse to snuff it, Zachary Quinto’s Sylar has more of a role in this one although, refreshingly, the writers manage to do something a little creative with him. Armus and Foster play to the actor’s strengths and pitch the character as Matt’s self-deprecating conscience, delivering cuttingly insightful and vindictive dialogue that really gets to the heart of Sylar’s malice. This is the sort of thing that made him such a potent menace in Heroes’ first season, that gave viewers throughout the globe the opportunity to love such a loathsome individual; instead of being bombastic and over-the-top, Gabriel is cutting and heartless, psychoanalysing instead of proselytising. Greg Grunberg plays well off him too, demonstrating Parkman’s inner turmoil with suitable aplomb, and never veering too far into the excessive. The only lamentable element of this storyline is the inclusion of Roy; while Armus and Foster clearly need something to cause Matt to finally break, the ‘jealous lover’ trope is so hopelessly over-used in televisual narratives that its essential beats (misinterpretation, over-reaction, discovery, impasse, rift) frustrate rather than engage. Here’s hoping we don’t see any more of the long-haired plumber from… um, somewhere other than Liverpool (see what I tried to do there? No? Okay…) and that Janis never finds out about Matt’s little indiscretion; I just can’t cope with playing the cycle of martial strife any longer.
‘Jump, Push, Fall’ steps up a little from the lethargic pace of the season opener, but the series still feels like it’s running on auto-pilot. The narrative progression remains fairly slow and this hinders the episode’s success. Armus and Foster do attempt to introduce some fresh conceits and some of them are quite engaging – Sylar’s game of wits with Matt Parkman is superbly handled and Hiro’s dalliances with the Carnival give his character refreshingly new dimensions – but unfortunately, a great many problems remain. Claire’s narrative continues to be about as interesting as watching paint dry, relying on the sort of beats that were out-dated when they tried them in season two, and the Peter/Noah/Tracey storyline is fraught with problems and inconsistencies, not the least of which is Strauss’s sudden about turn which is frankly risible. This is an improvement on ‘Orientation’ but it still doesn’t feel like Heroes is really trying hard enough, and when your show is on as icy ground as this one, that really isn’t a good sign. 6.2
Thursday, 24 September 2009
Television review: Heroes #401: 'Orientation'
#401: 'Orientation'
Wr: Tim Kring
Dr: David Straiton
Synopsis: Our heroes are trying to find ways to cope with recent events. Some (Claire, Matt) trying to find normality and others (Hiro, Ando, Peter) trying to use their abilities to do good. Angela worries about Sylar, and a new threat arrives in the form of a mysterious carnival.
Review: Four months after the curtain fell on a thoroughly lacklustre third season of Heroes, in which characters abandoned their well-established histories to service gimmicky, flash-in-the-pan plots and the narrative shunted from relentless over-indulgence to repetitive mundanity over the course of two volumes, Tim Kring is unleashing his ‘Redemption’ on us and he’s absolutely, undeniably determined to get it right this time. This is ‘back to basics’, ‘new beginnings’, the return of what supposedly made the deliciously creative, potential-fuelled monolith such a phenomenon in its freshman year… only, therein lies the fundamental problem. Going backwards to move forwards is a flawed endeavour at best, and one that it’s notoriously difficult to pull off. Heroes is such a different show now, such a well-established show, that it seems fruitless to deny it; what we need, Tim, is originality, fresh blood, an injection of something that we haven’t seen a hundred or so times before. A pity, then, that from the evidence of ‘Orientation’, our season four opener, Kring seems hell bent on recreating season two… only without that troublesome Mohinder Suresh to have to slot into the story somewhere.
So we start, ladies and gentlemen, with the question, ‘what do heroes do when forced to return to normality?’, the answer to which can be found in the first few hours of ‘Generations’: bore the audience to death. This penchant for pressing the reset button on the protagonists’ complicated, evil-fighting, end-of-the-world-preventing lives may seem appealing at first glance, given that it tends to avoid the sort of out-of-character repositioning that littered, and somewhat spoiled, last year’s ‘Villains’, but it quickly becomes dry and uninteresting, especially when you consider that, having spent so many years getting to the point where everyone was seemingly quite comfortable with their special abilities, we really just want them to get on with it already and become the extraordinary people that they really are, not retreat into themselves and deny their inherent heroism. Yet again, we find the ‘collective’ disbanded, going their separate ways, living their own lives, but you just know that in the space of five or six episodes, they’re all going to be reunited, working together to prevent some as yet undisclosed catastrophe or getting at each other’s throats in an endless cycle of pointless deceit and double cross. It’s just such a repetitive formula, and it’s bloody difficult to swallow.
We really have seen it all before. How many times is Kring going to have Matt Parkman renounce his ability before he realises it’s getting old? How many new educational institutions does Claire have to frequent before she gets an interesting story? When will Noah actually right his wrongs and stop lapsing into the same mistakes two seconds later? These are simply the same frustratingly banal character beats that we seem to spend a good chunk of every successive volume of the show deliberating over and you would think that by now, by year bleeding four, the production staff would realise that they are as predictable as day turning to night. But no, sadly; Kring clearly thinks that having Peter be a paramedic again, complete with uber-friendly everyman best mate, obligatory loner complex and a nifty penchant for rescuing the helpless just in the nick of time, is tantamount to innovation. In reality, it’s just tiresome. He also seems to be obsessed with showing us every baby step in Claire’s educational career; this year, she’s in college, making a vow (somewhat refreshingly) to tell the truth. Woo hoo! How thoroughly engaging! And look, there’s a caricature, straight out of Stereotype 101, of an annoyingly over-confident and over-enthusiastic roommate, designed to provide cheap laughs and guide young Claire towards her real college destiny… realising that popularity and academic super-stardom are nothing compared to the integrity and true friendship you’ll find by befriending the awkward outsider. Euck, this story is so moralistically archetypal, it’s almost sickening. Claire’s roomie is completely unbelievable, a one-dimensional cipher whose ludicrousness increases and increases with each passing scene. You just know she’s going to get her comeuppance; in fact, she’s there for precisely that purpose. If I were being generous, I’d say that Kring had been watching too much Joss Whedon, since the story is taken straight out of the first few episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s fourth season, only without the added bonus of the irritating one actually being a demon (well, we presume at any rate.) However, unlike Whedon, Kring does nothing with the archetype, preferring instead to let it run its course in the laziest, most monotonous fashion possible (she’s got a trajectory? Really?); in fact, it’s essentially the West storyline all over again… I’m just waiting for Gretchen to start breathing fire or something.
As if these stale narratives weren’t enough, we also have Tracey Strauss’s killing spree to contend with, which gets all of about five minutes of screen time, despite seeming like a rather significant plot point when it featured in the small preview of volume five that we were treated to at the end of last year. It’s questionable whether Ali Larter should still be hanging around, given that she struggles to convincingly portray her myriad characters at the best of times, but at least it does give us the chance to witness the rather nifty attempted murder of Noah Bennet. Of course, it’s stopped by Zelkjo Ivanek’s Danko, who is still loitering like a bad smell, trying in vein to kill off, lock up or just generally get on the heroes’ nerves for no good reason. Really, what is his investment in all of this these days? Personal vendetta? Megalomania? Fetishism? No matter, we need him around to die a dramatic death at hour’s end that, rather depressingly, was spoiled by TV.com days before the episode aired. Sigh. Oh, and then we have poor Hiro and Ando, who Kring continues to bastardise by lumbering them with a bunch of lacklustre comedic beats. ‘Dial A Hero’ might raise a smirk or two but it’s complete fluff, and only actually shows signs of beginning to go somewhere about ¾ of the way into the episode. The strand is saddled with some hopelessly clunky dialogue too, as the need to re-establish Hiro’s sister as Ando’s unrequited love interest results in a chunk of unvarnished exposition being lumped into their diction. Ando essentially reminds Hiro that he’s in love with the woman, despite this being a well-known, well-established fact between the two of them. It would be rather like you having a conversation with your mother about the wallpaper in your bedroom, and stopping to tell her that the bedroom is the one at the top of the stairs, next to the toilet. It’s just completely unnecessary and, as such, it comes across as forced; as a function of the narrative rather than an organic part of the story. Regrettably, it happens at several other points in the episode too, and most memorably during Angela’s conversations with both Noah and Matt. They essentially recount the events that occurred at the close of season three, obviously for the benefit of the casual, forgetful or brand spanking new viewer, but it’s entirely pointless from a realist perspective since they were all there in the first place.
Tellingly, it’s when Kring bothers to do something new or out of the ordinary that ‘Orientation’ begins to gain momentum. The Carnival is probably the best thing about the show right now, beautifully depicted with its luscious cinematography, Batman-esque camera work and unusual, unnerving underscore. The new characters all seem interesting and fairly well rounded, with powers that are engagingly different: the use of ink for foresight, depiction and manifestation is a particularly fascinating trope. The strand has a feeling of complexity to it; the individuals we see here aren’t simply ciphers or determinable heroes/villains, they are people, with all their foibles and difficulties. Robert Knepper is just excellent as Samuel, bringing a real sense of uncertainty to the role, painting the character as simultaneously compassionate (the scene at the graveyard) and disturbing (his interactions with ‘knife-man’.) Speaking of acting chops, kudos to Cristine Rose, Adrian Pasdar and Zachary Quinto for some top notch work in the scenes between Nathan, Angela and ‘Sylar’ in the restaurant. This is really engaging stuff, with Quinto as deliciously eerie as he’s ever been and Pasdar showing a real talent for subtlety, taking care not to give too much away in Nathan’s minor lapses into Gabriel Gray. Rose finally gets a fresh set of character beats to play too; rather than depicting a maniacal power monger, here she gets to be a fragile, concerned mother, desperately trying to hold things together. Her subsequent phone call to Matt Parkman positively reeks of desperation and it’s all the more moving because of it. These elements bring a fresh emotional quotient into the mix, reliant on the events of volumes past, and it makes you wish that Kring would spend a bit more time trying something new instead of resorting to half-baked rehashes of former glories.
As an introduction to the fifth volume of Heroes, ‘Orientation’ disappoints more than it engages. Kring’s script is so keen to press the refresh button, so desperate to erase what the Zeitgeist perceives as past mistakes, that it ends up tripping over its own good intentions. The preoccupation with going ‘back to basics’ proves to be the episode’s undoing, as it results in a narrative littered with predictable story developments, lazy, one-dimensional characters and uninteresting motifs. A good chunk of the hour is spent rehashing the fundamental tenants of the show’s second season, which is far from a good thing, getting bogged down in the question of ‘how extraordinary people return to ordinary lives’, which is exactly what we don’t want to see in the show. There is some promise here, the most encouraging of which is the successful introduction of The Carnival, the show’s new blood, but, then, that’s rather telling in itself: when the production staff take the time to create something, to delve into that pesky pool of originality, to look forwards, they tend to come up trumps. It’s when they lock eyes on the past that things start to go astray and unfortunately, there’s just far too much reflection and navel-gazing in ‘Orientation’ for it to be considered anything other than decidedly average. 5.8
Wr: Tim Kring
Dr: David Straiton
Synopsis: Our heroes are trying to find ways to cope with recent events. Some (Claire, Matt) trying to find normality and others (Hiro, Ando, Peter) trying to use their abilities to do good. Angela worries about Sylar, and a new threat arrives in the form of a mysterious carnival.
Review: Four months after the curtain fell on a thoroughly lacklustre third season of Heroes, in which characters abandoned their well-established histories to service gimmicky, flash-in-the-pan plots and the narrative shunted from relentless over-indulgence to repetitive mundanity over the course of two volumes, Tim Kring is unleashing his ‘Redemption’ on us and he’s absolutely, undeniably determined to get it right this time. This is ‘back to basics’, ‘new beginnings’, the return of what supposedly made the deliciously creative, potential-fuelled monolith such a phenomenon in its freshman year… only, therein lies the fundamental problem. Going backwards to move forwards is a flawed endeavour at best, and one that it’s notoriously difficult to pull off. Heroes is such a different show now, such a well-established show, that it seems fruitless to deny it; what we need, Tim, is originality, fresh blood, an injection of something that we haven’t seen a hundred or so times before. A pity, then, that from the evidence of ‘Orientation’, our season four opener, Kring seems hell bent on recreating season two… only without that troublesome Mohinder Suresh to have to slot into the story somewhere.
So we start, ladies and gentlemen, with the question, ‘what do heroes do when forced to return to normality?’, the answer to which can be found in the first few hours of ‘Generations’: bore the audience to death. This penchant for pressing the reset button on the protagonists’ complicated, evil-fighting, end-of-the-world-preventing lives may seem appealing at first glance, given that it tends to avoid the sort of out-of-character repositioning that littered, and somewhat spoiled, last year’s ‘Villains’, but it quickly becomes dry and uninteresting, especially when you consider that, having spent so many years getting to the point where everyone was seemingly quite comfortable with their special abilities, we really just want them to get on with it already and become the extraordinary people that they really are, not retreat into themselves and deny their inherent heroism. Yet again, we find the ‘collective’ disbanded, going their separate ways, living their own lives, but you just know that in the space of five or six episodes, they’re all going to be reunited, working together to prevent some as yet undisclosed catastrophe or getting at each other’s throats in an endless cycle of pointless deceit and double cross. It’s just such a repetitive formula, and it’s bloody difficult to swallow.
We really have seen it all before. How many times is Kring going to have Matt Parkman renounce his ability before he realises it’s getting old? How many new educational institutions does Claire have to frequent before she gets an interesting story? When will Noah actually right his wrongs and stop lapsing into the same mistakes two seconds later? These are simply the same frustratingly banal character beats that we seem to spend a good chunk of every successive volume of the show deliberating over and you would think that by now, by year bleeding four, the production staff would realise that they are as predictable as day turning to night. But no, sadly; Kring clearly thinks that having Peter be a paramedic again, complete with uber-friendly everyman best mate, obligatory loner complex and a nifty penchant for rescuing the helpless just in the nick of time, is tantamount to innovation. In reality, it’s just tiresome. He also seems to be obsessed with showing us every baby step in Claire’s educational career; this year, she’s in college, making a vow (somewhat refreshingly) to tell the truth. Woo hoo! How thoroughly engaging! And look, there’s a caricature, straight out of Stereotype 101, of an annoyingly over-confident and over-enthusiastic roommate, designed to provide cheap laughs and guide young Claire towards her real college destiny… realising that popularity and academic super-stardom are nothing compared to the integrity and true friendship you’ll find by befriending the awkward outsider. Euck, this story is so moralistically archetypal, it’s almost sickening. Claire’s roomie is completely unbelievable, a one-dimensional cipher whose ludicrousness increases and increases with each passing scene. You just know she’s going to get her comeuppance; in fact, she’s there for precisely that purpose. If I were being generous, I’d say that Kring had been watching too much Joss Whedon, since the story is taken straight out of the first few episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s fourth season, only without the added bonus of the irritating one actually being a demon (well, we presume at any rate.) However, unlike Whedon, Kring does nothing with the archetype, preferring instead to let it run its course in the laziest, most monotonous fashion possible (she’s got a trajectory? Really?); in fact, it’s essentially the West storyline all over again… I’m just waiting for Gretchen to start breathing fire or something.
As if these stale narratives weren’t enough, we also have Tracey Strauss’s killing spree to contend with, which gets all of about five minutes of screen time, despite seeming like a rather significant plot point when it featured in the small preview of volume five that we were treated to at the end of last year. It’s questionable whether Ali Larter should still be hanging around, given that she struggles to convincingly portray her myriad characters at the best of times, but at least it does give us the chance to witness the rather nifty attempted murder of Noah Bennet. Of course, it’s stopped by Zelkjo Ivanek’s Danko, who is still loitering like a bad smell, trying in vein to kill off, lock up or just generally get on the heroes’ nerves for no good reason. Really, what is his investment in all of this these days? Personal vendetta? Megalomania? Fetishism? No matter, we need him around to die a dramatic death at hour’s end that, rather depressingly, was spoiled by TV.com days before the episode aired. Sigh. Oh, and then we have poor Hiro and Ando, who Kring continues to bastardise by lumbering them with a bunch of lacklustre comedic beats. ‘Dial A Hero’ might raise a smirk or two but it’s complete fluff, and only actually shows signs of beginning to go somewhere about ¾ of the way into the episode. The strand is saddled with some hopelessly clunky dialogue too, as the need to re-establish Hiro’s sister as Ando’s unrequited love interest results in a chunk of unvarnished exposition being lumped into their diction. Ando essentially reminds Hiro that he’s in love with the woman, despite this being a well-known, well-established fact between the two of them. It would be rather like you having a conversation with your mother about the wallpaper in your bedroom, and stopping to tell her that the bedroom is the one at the top of the stairs, next to the toilet. It’s just completely unnecessary and, as such, it comes across as forced; as a function of the narrative rather than an organic part of the story. Regrettably, it happens at several other points in the episode too, and most memorably during Angela’s conversations with both Noah and Matt. They essentially recount the events that occurred at the close of season three, obviously for the benefit of the casual, forgetful or brand spanking new viewer, but it’s entirely pointless from a realist perspective since they were all there in the first place.
Tellingly, it’s when Kring bothers to do something new or out of the ordinary that ‘Orientation’ begins to gain momentum. The Carnival is probably the best thing about the show right now, beautifully depicted with its luscious cinematography, Batman-esque camera work and unusual, unnerving underscore. The new characters all seem interesting and fairly well rounded, with powers that are engagingly different: the use of ink for foresight, depiction and manifestation is a particularly fascinating trope. The strand has a feeling of complexity to it; the individuals we see here aren’t simply ciphers or determinable heroes/villains, they are people, with all their foibles and difficulties. Robert Knepper is just excellent as Samuel, bringing a real sense of uncertainty to the role, painting the character as simultaneously compassionate (the scene at the graveyard) and disturbing (his interactions with ‘knife-man’.) Speaking of acting chops, kudos to Cristine Rose, Adrian Pasdar and Zachary Quinto for some top notch work in the scenes between Nathan, Angela and ‘Sylar’ in the restaurant. This is really engaging stuff, with Quinto as deliciously eerie as he’s ever been and Pasdar showing a real talent for subtlety, taking care not to give too much away in Nathan’s minor lapses into Gabriel Gray. Rose finally gets a fresh set of character beats to play too; rather than depicting a maniacal power monger, here she gets to be a fragile, concerned mother, desperately trying to hold things together. Her subsequent phone call to Matt Parkman positively reeks of desperation and it’s all the more moving because of it. These elements bring a fresh emotional quotient into the mix, reliant on the events of volumes past, and it makes you wish that Kring would spend a bit more time trying something new instead of resorting to half-baked rehashes of former glories.
As an introduction to the fifth volume of Heroes, ‘Orientation’ disappoints more than it engages. Kring’s script is so keen to press the refresh button, so desperate to erase what the Zeitgeist perceives as past mistakes, that it ends up tripping over its own good intentions. The preoccupation with going ‘back to basics’ proves to be the episode’s undoing, as it results in a narrative littered with predictable story developments, lazy, one-dimensional characters and uninteresting motifs. A good chunk of the hour is spent rehashing the fundamental tenants of the show’s second season, which is far from a good thing, getting bogged down in the question of ‘how extraordinary people return to ordinary lives’, which is exactly what we don’t want to see in the show. There is some promise here, the most encouraging of which is the successful introduction of The Carnival, the show’s new blood, but, then, that’s rather telling in itself: when the production staff take the time to create something, to delve into that pesky pool of originality, to look forwards, they tend to come up trumps. It’s when they lock eyes on the past that things start to go astray and unfortunately, there’s just far too much reflection and navel-gazing in ‘Orientation’ for it to be considered anything other than decidedly average. 5.8
Tuesday, 22 September 2009
Album review: New Found Glory: 'Not Without A Fight'
NEW FOUND GLORY: 'Not Without A Fight' (Epitaph)
It must be hard to be in a pop punk band; to be entrenched in a genre that allows so little scope for natural progression. Oh sure, you might find that, over time, your lyrics become less preoccupied with the girl who works behind the counter at your local record store and more concerned with little things like the meaninglessness of life and the pointlessness of existence (or, if your name's Billie Joe Armstrong, POLITICAL ISSUES MAAAAAN), but unfortunately, your genre of choice just won't let your music scream anything other than "look at me, look at me! See how simple, catchy and down right irritating my melodies and power chords are!" Yes folks, pop punk is one of the world's most straightforward musical styles and, to be honest, therein lies its charm. Problem is, when you've been in a band for over ten years and you've started growing facial hair and getting mortgages, its monochromatic palate starts to feel a little restrictive.
So what are your options? Well, you can do a complete swerve and abandon the D chords in favour of something different, but then you risk alienating your loyal, perpetually eighteen-year-old, audience (Brand New, we're looking at you... but of course, we love you for it.) Or, if you're New Found Glory, you can suck it up and pretend that change has passed you by, that you're stuck in a state of suspended animation, forever young, whiny and strung up on love; after all, why take the risk of doing something more representative of your current lives when you've got a formula that sells out amphitheatres all across America and gets you slots on Jay Leno (probably)? (Actually, they tried that a bit with 2006's 'Coming Home'... well,they slowed things down a little on, like, four tracks.)
So sixth album 'Not Without A Fight' is pretty much just more of the same: twelve tales of heartbreak and unrequited love set to a resolutely familiar and gloriously unoriginal verse-chorus/play chord, strum strings formula. So, we have forlorn song titles like 'I'll Never Love Again', 'Such A Mess', 'This Isn't You', 'Don't Let This Be The End' and 'Truck Stop Blues' (to name but a few), as well as a few galvanising numbers designed to emphasise the importance of your homies and their fastidiousness; the oh-so-subtle 'Listen To Your Friends' and, even better, 'Don't Let Her Pull You Down' spring to mind here. It's all completely ludicrous, utterly simplistic stuff and hell, NFG know it: the opening track's called 'Right Where We Left Off', for God's sake. Chad and co. aren't afraid to wear their shamelessly formulaic hearts on their sleeves and, in the end, that's why the album works. Unlike their younger, more trend conscious contemporaries, New Found Glory make no claim to be anything other than what they are, and thus they are about a million times more genuine (you get the feeling that a band like Youmeatsix would happily play skiffle music if their record label said it was popular.) Sure, the record probably isn't going to change lives and it certainly isn't going to stand alongside the all time greats, no matter how much producer Mark Hoppus might think it's a work of colossal artistic integrity - fine, so the guitars are a bit heavier and the vocals have more grit... it's still not bloody 'OK Computer'! - but as an example of how to marry the thrilling backbone of punk rock to the melodic sensibilities of pop, it's about as good as you can get. So just like all those other New Found Glory albums then... (7/10)
It must be hard to be in a pop punk band; to be entrenched in a genre that allows so little scope for natural progression. Oh sure, you might find that, over time, your lyrics become less preoccupied with the girl who works behind the counter at your local record store and more concerned with little things like the meaninglessness of life and the pointlessness of existence (or, if your name's Billie Joe Armstrong, POLITICAL ISSUES MAAAAAN), but unfortunately, your genre of choice just won't let your music scream anything other than "look at me, look at me! See how simple, catchy and down right irritating my melodies and power chords are!" Yes folks, pop punk is one of the world's most straightforward musical styles and, to be honest, therein lies its charm. Problem is, when you've been in a band for over ten years and you've started growing facial hair and getting mortgages, its monochromatic palate starts to feel a little restrictive.
So what are your options? Well, you can do a complete swerve and abandon the D chords in favour of something different, but then you risk alienating your loyal, perpetually eighteen-year-old, audience (Brand New, we're looking at you... but of course, we love you for it.) Or, if you're New Found Glory, you can suck it up and pretend that change has passed you by, that you're stuck in a state of suspended animation, forever young, whiny and strung up on love; after all, why take the risk of doing something more representative of your current lives when you've got a formula that sells out amphitheatres all across America and gets you slots on Jay Leno (probably)? (Actually, they tried that a bit with 2006's 'Coming Home'... well,they slowed things down a little on, like, four tracks.)
So sixth album 'Not Without A Fight' is pretty much just more of the same: twelve tales of heartbreak and unrequited love set to a resolutely familiar and gloriously unoriginal verse-chorus/play chord, strum strings formula. So, we have forlorn song titles like 'I'll Never Love Again', 'Such A Mess', 'This Isn't You', 'Don't Let This Be The End' and 'Truck Stop Blues' (to name but a few), as well as a few galvanising numbers designed to emphasise the importance of your homies and their fastidiousness; the oh-so-subtle 'Listen To Your Friends' and, even better, 'Don't Let Her Pull You Down' spring to mind here. It's all completely ludicrous, utterly simplistic stuff and hell, NFG know it: the opening track's called 'Right Where We Left Off', for God's sake. Chad and co. aren't afraid to wear their shamelessly formulaic hearts on their sleeves and, in the end, that's why the album works. Unlike their younger, more trend conscious contemporaries, New Found Glory make no claim to be anything other than what they are, and thus they are about a million times more genuine (you get the feeling that a band like Youmeatsix would happily play skiffle music if their record label said it was popular.) Sure, the record probably isn't going to change lives and it certainly isn't going to stand alongside the all time greats, no matter how much producer Mark Hoppus might think it's a work of colossal artistic integrity - fine, so the guitars are a bit heavier and the vocals have more grit... it's still not bloody 'OK Computer'! - but as an example of how to marry the thrilling backbone of punk rock to the melodic sensibilities of pop, it's about as good as you can get. So just like all those other New Found Glory albums then... (7/10)
Sunday, 20 September 2009
Television review: Supernatural #502: 'Good God, Y'All!'
#502: 'Good God, Y'All!'
Wr: Sera Gamble
Dr: Phil Scriggica
Synopsis: Hunter Rufus Turner calls in Bobby, Sam, and Dean to deal with a demon infestation in his town, but they soon discover the truth is much more horrifying. Meanwhile, Castiel goes to seek the only entity that can defeat Lucifer.
Review: Well, this season’s turning into a right royal soiree, isn’t it? First we get Chuck, Castiel, Zachariah and age-old fan favourite Meg returning to our screens, fresh faced and raring to cause insurmountable bother for our brotherly leads, and now the hunters of years past are blazing a trail of destruction, intrigue and unfortunate misinterpretation right across the ongoing narrative, as Rufus, Ellen and Jo find themselves embroiled in a dastardly plot, woven with much malicious bravado by one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Thankfully, unlike the clusterfuck rush job of ‘Sympathy for the Devil’, in which dramatic developments unfolded in decidedly flat fashion, Sera Gamble’s script treats everything with the care and attention it deserves, taking time to meticulously construct scenarios and build up story tropes so that pay-offs develop significance; consequently, the return of the three characters feels much more organic (well, this is a hunt, after all) and acquires purpose. Oh, and naturally, it helps rather a lot that they’re all familiar faces and top notch actors, selling their lines with the appropriate levels of aplomb or reservation, whereas Meg has been given a new meat suit and the jury’s still out on the actress’ ability to portray the character.
‘Good God, Y’All!’ (great title) is also careful with its plot, taking time to establish the threat at the heart of the story and weave it intricately around the various character beats with which we are currently preoccupied. Gamble turns the pacing down several notches from last week’s effort and greatly simplifies the melting pot, throwing in a few choice ingredients rather than the entire contents of the kitchen cupboard. So, we are treated to what, at first, seems like a fairly conventional ‘demon infestation’ plot but this is certainly no bad thing. The orchestration is absolutely spot on: everything from Sam and Dean’s initial apprehensive walk into town, beautifully underplayed by the two actors and quietly directed by the wonderful Phil Scriggica (there’s barely a sound once ‘Spirit in the Sky’ stops playing, which is considerably unnerving), to the claustrophobic binarity of the narrative, in which the two warring factions are purposefully separated and only meagre glimpses of the supposed ‘demons’ are allowed, is designed to disturb and disquieten, to keep the viewer gnawing his or her nails to the bone. And as if all of this wasn’t delicious enough, the plot does a fascinating about-turn at the halfway mark, introducing a highly unexpected twist that bolsters the episode’s originality. The idea that there are no demons and that this is a piece of sadistic frivolity from a horrifically malevolent God, is brilliantly disturbing.
It certainly helps that the actor cast as the quite literally mesmerising Wart is a dab hand at the old cult television thang, and imbues the character with just the right levels of arrogance and black humour to accentuate his maliciousness. He plays it absolutely straight, despite the hints of comedy that filter through in the dialogue, and this perfectly sells the role, allowing the viewer to invest wholeheartedly in events. His two-hander with Sam is particularly brilliant, cutting to the heart of the warped psychology behind his ‘experiment’ and the unquestionably horrifying truth in the notion that we are this easy to manipulate and coerce. Supernatural is always at its best when its minutiae act as metaphor, speaking to the horrors of the human psyche with all its woes, faults and issues and this episode is no exception. Gamble uses the fantastical to illustrate our brutality, paranoia and fear of otherness and does a superlative job of delineating it in War’s disturbingly matter-of-fact, laconic dialogue: his references to ‘being there in Germany, then again in Germany, and then Vietnam’ hammer the point home without seeming ham-fisted or preachy.
There are a number of other strong character moments too, particularly in relation to Sam’s struggle to keep himself away from the ol’ demon blood. The scene in the supermarket is astutely shot in a deliberately understated way again, and Jared Padalecki sells the moment in which Sam is tempted exceptionally well. Of course, all of this is simply leading to the pay-off in the closing scene which is, hand on heart, one of the most melancholic and moving double-headers in the show’s history. Credit to Jared but also to Jensen Ackles for some fine, fine performances that use body language as well as vocal delivery to communicate the palpable rift between the brothers. Dean’s agreement with Sam’s assertion that they need to be apart is genuinely shocking and feels like the end of a relationship… which, in essence, it is. Again, Gamble and the crew manage to convey gravitas without bombast and that’s certainly no small feat.
‘Good God, Y’All!’ is a considerable improvement on ‘Sympathy for the Devil’; rather than throwing story developments at the plot and hoping they’ll stick, Sera Gamble takes a smattering of narrative threads and pores over them, giving them room to breathe and space to manoeuvre. By concentrating on a fairly simple conceit – the supposed take over of a town by several demons – the episode is able to provide some truly outstanding character development that feels natural rather than grafted on, and also deliver a thoroughly satisfying mid-narrative plot swerve. While Marc Pallengrino is nowhere to be seen and Castiel is left with minimal screen time in a rather odd teaser sequence that has no bearing on the rest of the episode, Gamble’s script still stands and head and shoulders above most other US television and sits comfortably next to some of Supernatural’s finest work. A real triumph and frankly, a bit of a relief. 9.1
Wr: Sera Gamble
Dr: Phil Scriggica
Synopsis: Hunter Rufus Turner calls in Bobby, Sam, and Dean to deal with a demon infestation in his town, but they soon discover the truth is much more horrifying. Meanwhile, Castiel goes to seek the only entity that can defeat Lucifer.
Review: Well, this season’s turning into a right royal soiree, isn’t it? First we get Chuck, Castiel, Zachariah and age-old fan favourite Meg returning to our screens, fresh faced and raring to cause insurmountable bother for our brotherly leads, and now the hunters of years past are blazing a trail of destruction, intrigue and unfortunate misinterpretation right across the ongoing narrative, as Rufus, Ellen and Jo find themselves embroiled in a dastardly plot, woven with much malicious bravado by one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Thankfully, unlike the clusterfuck rush job of ‘Sympathy for the Devil’, in which dramatic developments unfolded in decidedly flat fashion, Sera Gamble’s script treats everything with the care and attention it deserves, taking time to meticulously construct scenarios and build up story tropes so that pay-offs develop significance; consequently, the return of the three characters feels much more organic (well, this is a hunt, after all) and acquires purpose. Oh, and naturally, it helps rather a lot that they’re all familiar faces and top notch actors, selling their lines with the appropriate levels of aplomb or reservation, whereas Meg has been given a new meat suit and the jury’s still out on the actress’ ability to portray the character.
‘Good God, Y’All!’ (great title) is also careful with its plot, taking time to establish the threat at the heart of the story and weave it intricately around the various character beats with which we are currently preoccupied. Gamble turns the pacing down several notches from last week’s effort and greatly simplifies the melting pot, throwing in a few choice ingredients rather than the entire contents of the kitchen cupboard. So, we are treated to what, at first, seems like a fairly conventional ‘demon infestation’ plot but this is certainly no bad thing. The orchestration is absolutely spot on: everything from Sam and Dean’s initial apprehensive walk into town, beautifully underplayed by the two actors and quietly directed by the wonderful Phil Scriggica (there’s barely a sound once ‘Spirit in the Sky’ stops playing, which is considerably unnerving), to the claustrophobic binarity of the narrative, in which the two warring factions are purposefully separated and only meagre glimpses of the supposed ‘demons’ are allowed, is designed to disturb and disquieten, to keep the viewer gnawing his or her nails to the bone. And as if all of this wasn’t delicious enough, the plot does a fascinating about-turn at the halfway mark, introducing a highly unexpected twist that bolsters the episode’s originality. The idea that there are no demons and that this is a piece of sadistic frivolity from a horrifically malevolent God, is brilliantly disturbing.
It certainly helps that the actor cast as the quite literally mesmerising Wart is a dab hand at the old cult television thang, and imbues the character with just the right levels of arrogance and black humour to accentuate his maliciousness. He plays it absolutely straight, despite the hints of comedy that filter through in the dialogue, and this perfectly sells the role, allowing the viewer to invest wholeheartedly in events. His two-hander with Sam is particularly brilliant, cutting to the heart of the warped psychology behind his ‘experiment’ and the unquestionably horrifying truth in the notion that we are this easy to manipulate and coerce. Supernatural is always at its best when its minutiae act as metaphor, speaking to the horrors of the human psyche with all its woes, faults and issues and this episode is no exception. Gamble uses the fantastical to illustrate our brutality, paranoia and fear of otherness and does a superlative job of delineating it in War’s disturbingly matter-of-fact, laconic dialogue: his references to ‘being there in Germany, then again in Germany, and then Vietnam’ hammer the point home without seeming ham-fisted or preachy.
There are a number of other strong character moments too, particularly in relation to Sam’s struggle to keep himself away from the ol’ demon blood. The scene in the supermarket is astutely shot in a deliberately understated way again, and Jared Padalecki sells the moment in which Sam is tempted exceptionally well. Of course, all of this is simply leading to the pay-off in the closing scene which is, hand on heart, one of the most melancholic and moving double-headers in the show’s history. Credit to Jared but also to Jensen Ackles for some fine, fine performances that use body language as well as vocal delivery to communicate the palpable rift between the brothers. Dean’s agreement with Sam’s assertion that they need to be apart is genuinely shocking and feels like the end of a relationship… which, in essence, it is. Again, Gamble and the crew manage to convey gravitas without bombast and that’s certainly no small feat.
‘Good God, Y’All!’ is a considerable improvement on ‘Sympathy for the Devil’; rather than throwing story developments at the plot and hoping they’ll stick, Sera Gamble takes a smattering of narrative threads and pores over them, giving them room to breathe and space to manoeuvre. By concentrating on a fairly simple conceit – the supposed take over of a town by several demons – the episode is able to provide some truly outstanding character development that feels natural rather than grafted on, and also deliver a thoroughly satisfying mid-narrative plot swerve. While Marc Pallengrino is nowhere to be seen and Castiel is left with minimal screen time in a rather odd teaser sequence that has no bearing on the rest of the episode, Gamble’s script still stands and head and shoulders above most other US television and sits comfortably next to some of Supernatural’s finest work. A real triumph and frankly, a bit of a relief. 9.1
Friday, 18 September 2009
Television review: Fringe #201: 'A New Day in the Old Town'
#201: 'A New Day in the Old Town'
Wr: J.J. Abrams & Akiva Goldsman
Dr: Akiva Goldsman
Synopsis: Olivia returns from the alternate reality and Peter tries to get information about her visit. Walter makes some custard for his son's birthday, while Broyles deals with the threat of a government shutdown of the Fringe Division.
Review: And the award for the most ironically appropriate episode title goes to... This is 'the old town' indeed, as virtually everything about Abrams and Goldsman's script feels incredibly familiar, and not always in a good way. While the ease with which the writers and actors slot back into the show's central characters is certainly commendable, the same cannot be said of the intricacies of the narrative, which are often frustratingly low-key and predictable. When we left Broyles, Dunham and the Bishops at the end of season one, things had gone to hell in a handbasket with the shooting of Nina Sharp, David Robert Jones's ill-fated attempt to cross over into the alternate reality and Olivia's actual successful trip there, in which she came face to face with the one, the only, William Bell himself, who turned out to be Spock in a three piece suit. The show was riding the crest of a decidedly addictive wave, propelling its central storyline forward with considerable momentum. Now, after being deprived of any developments for four long, drawn out months, we return to find the writers stalling for time, working extremely hard to prevent anything but the barest scraps from being given away, essentially playing silly buggers with their audience. Oh look, we return to the story once Olivia's come back from her oh-so-important meeting with Bell and don't get to experience it first hand. Well, okay, maybe they couldn't get Nimoy back for another round, perhaps he was too busy filming the Star Trek DVD commentary or something. Fine. But to have her not remember anything about the encounter other than that something is being hidden? And that the information she acquired is 'imperative to the survival of everyone'? Sigh. These water-treading tactics just become frustrating; sure, they set up key mysteries to be resolved later in the season, but would it really hurt to give us some sort of juicy morsel now? To treat us to something, anything, that would make the episode feel like it had any sort of point?
Of course, the die-hard supporters among Fringe's ever-burgeoning fanbase will probably point to the shapeshifter storyline as evidence of fresh intrigue being imbued into the show. This is a fair point, as the concept is certainly an interesting one and it is introduced to the narrative in a superlatively macabre way. The teaser sequence (as always, it seems, with this programme) is just superb, playing all sorts of mind games with the viewer before the horror of what is actually going on eventually becomes clear, and the effects used within the actual transformation process are actually pretty nifty. It's good to see gadgetry being incorporated into the process too; while the technology is evidently science fiction, at least there is an attempt being made to maintain the illusion of reality. The scene in the miscellaneous back alley store is also wonderfully mysterious: the 'typewriter conversation between realities' is quite simply a genius idea, directed in a beautifully understated, matter-of-fact way by Goldsman. Where this strand begins to fall down is in its lapses into predictability. The shapeshifter's jumps between bodies are never surprising, and while this works to a certain extent with its acquisition of the nurse's countenance, since the tension in the scene is essentially predicated on our dramatic irony as we anticipate the reveal, or Olivia's realisation, it proves rather less than successful when the focus is turned to Agent Francis. The poorly placed cut away in their confrontation nullifies any ambiguity whatsoever, practically screaming "he's dead!" at the viewer, and so the final scene, the big, shocking reveal, falls flat on its sorry arse. Of course, it doesn't help that his departure from Fringe was made public knowledge a month or so ago, so those viewers who keep up with the show's news spend every moment after he first appears in the episode waiting to see how he's going to snuff it.
There are many other distinctly calculable narrative developments too, which make the episode's composition feel depressingly lazy. The manner in which the Bishops uncover the truth behind the mysterious deaths recalls the frustrating penchant for the old deux et machina that plagued many episodes in the early stages of Fringe's freshman year. Fair enough, Walter has an established, significant history in the field he is investigating but come on... would it hurt to present him with something he hadn't seen before? Does he always have to have postulated about the existence of the mysterious science that features in the 'curiosity of the week', or have some convenient piece of exposition on hand to magically provide all the answers? The girl on the video tape provides far too succinct an explanation of events; so much so that it makes the previous steps taken in the investigation seem utterly pointless. Then there is the bizarre custard-making C-storyline, which is entirely throwaway and superficial, and the closure of the Fringe Division itself, which is rendered completely ineffectual by essentially being resolved by the end of the episode. Look guys, if you're going to rip-off The X Files, at least do a respectable job of it (the inclusion of a sequence from the 'Dreamcatcher' two parter was far more satisfying...); Chris Carter's show got it right by actually keeping Mulder and Scully apart, at least in job title, for almost half a season. It gave us consequence and realism; here, the trope's entire function appears to be to give Joshua Jackson some ludicrously hyperbolic bravado to spout at Lance Reddick. His assertion that 'we're not reacting any more!' (paraphrased, that) is hopelessly hamfisted and somewhat negates the effect of the plot thread that it is paying off: Broyles and Peter's beautifully scripted two hander in the admittedly wonderful first act, which concentrates on the effects of Olivia's supposed death on each of the characters.
Speaking of characters, how about Meghan Markle as brand spanking new Junior Agent Amy Jessup, huh? Well, wasn't she just a peach, eh? Didn't we all just immediately warm to her wonderfully rounded, highly complex and thoroughly believable character? Oh, okay, I jest. Jessup wins the award for most transparent cipher yet to be introduced to the show, as her one-dimensional treatment and lack of virtually any character development whatsoever exposes her central function: to replace Agent Francis and make the number of people in love with Joshua Jackson increase to 7,452. Oh sorry, and provide a form of interpretative transference for casual or first-time viewers. The vast majority of her dialogue, and the conversations she takes part in, function to reiterate facts about the history of the show that we already know, the most blatant of which is her introduction to the Harvard University setting, in which Peter essentially guides the audience around Fringe's basic premise. It's as if the network called Abrams, panicking about whether viewers would be able to follow the show given its penchant for ongoing narratives, or even remember what they'd seen last year, and insisted he had to retread everything before he could get on with the actual plot. To be fair to the writers, the character's introduction is at least a more organic way of solving this problem - all too often, regular cast members suddenly start telling each other facts that they are all too familiar with - but it does make her feel rather useless. Her willingness to accept the bizarro world of Fringe Division is suspicious too. The conspiracy nut in me reckons there's more going on here, that perhaps she's going to turn out to have more involvement with 'The Pattern' (unusually enough, not mentioned once in the hour) than at first thought, but perhaps this is just wishful thinking. Maybe I don't want to acknowledge that actually, this amounts to little more than a careless, quick-fire way of getting on with the story.
All of this criticism makes 'A New Day in the Old Town' sound like something of an atrocity; in actuality, it's a reasonably enjoyable episode, provided you don't think too much about its composition, or expect too much from its narrative. There are some excellent orchestrated scenes and character beats, particularly Peter and Broyles in the bar, Olivia and Charlie in the hospital, and everyone's reactions to Dunham's potential death in the first act. Goldsman does a delicate, sophisticated job of directing the piece and the actors all slot back into their personalities perfectly. Where the episode falls down is in its predictability; none of the reveals actually surprise you, and the central plot feels underwhelming when one considers the gravitas of events that occurred in season one's top notch finale. What Fringe really needs right now is to keep the momentum going and this one, sadly, is a bit of a slow burner. 6.5
Wr: J.J. Abrams & Akiva Goldsman
Dr: Akiva Goldsman
Synopsis: Olivia returns from the alternate reality and Peter tries to get information about her visit. Walter makes some custard for his son's birthday, while Broyles deals with the threat of a government shutdown of the Fringe Division.
Review: And the award for the most ironically appropriate episode title goes to... This is 'the old town' indeed, as virtually everything about Abrams and Goldsman's script feels incredibly familiar, and not always in a good way. While the ease with which the writers and actors slot back into the show's central characters is certainly commendable, the same cannot be said of the intricacies of the narrative, which are often frustratingly low-key and predictable. When we left Broyles, Dunham and the Bishops at the end of season one, things had gone to hell in a handbasket with the shooting of Nina Sharp, David Robert Jones's ill-fated attempt to cross over into the alternate reality and Olivia's actual successful trip there, in which she came face to face with the one, the only, William Bell himself, who turned out to be Spock in a three piece suit. The show was riding the crest of a decidedly addictive wave, propelling its central storyline forward with considerable momentum. Now, after being deprived of any developments for four long, drawn out months, we return to find the writers stalling for time, working extremely hard to prevent anything but the barest scraps from being given away, essentially playing silly buggers with their audience. Oh look, we return to the story once Olivia's come back from her oh-so-important meeting with Bell and don't get to experience it first hand. Well, okay, maybe they couldn't get Nimoy back for another round, perhaps he was too busy filming the Star Trek DVD commentary or something. Fine. But to have her not remember anything about the encounter other than that something is being hidden? And that the information she acquired is 'imperative to the survival of everyone'? Sigh. These water-treading tactics just become frustrating; sure, they set up key mysteries to be resolved later in the season, but would it really hurt to give us some sort of juicy morsel now? To treat us to something, anything, that would make the episode feel like it had any sort of point?
Of course, the die-hard supporters among Fringe's ever-burgeoning fanbase will probably point to the shapeshifter storyline as evidence of fresh intrigue being imbued into the show. This is a fair point, as the concept is certainly an interesting one and it is introduced to the narrative in a superlatively macabre way. The teaser sequence (as always, it seems, with this programme) is just superb, playing all sorts of mind games with the viewer before the horror of what is actually going on eventually becomes clear, and the effects used within the actual transformation process are actually pretty nifty. It's good to see gadgetry being incorporated into the process too; while the technology is evidently science fiction, at least there is an attempt being made to maintain the illusion of reality. The scene in the miscellaneous back alley store is also wonderfully mysterious: the 'typewriter conversation between realities' is quite simply a genius idea, directed in a beautifully understated, matter-of-fact way by Goldsman. Where this strand begins to fall down is in its lapses into predictability. The shapeshifter's jumps between bodies are never surprising, and while this works to a certain extent with its acquisition of the nurse's countenance, since the tension in the scene is essentially predicated on our dramatic irony as we anticipate the reveal, or Olivia's realisation, it proves rather less than successful when the focus is turned to Agent Francis. The poorly placed cut away in their confrontation nullifies any ambiguity whatsoever, practically screaming "he's dead!" at the viewer, and so the final scene, the big, shocking reveal, falls flat on its sorry arse. Of course, it doesn't help that his departure from Fringe was made public knowledge a month or so ago, so those viewers who keep up with the show's news spend every moment after he first appears in the episode waiting to see how he's going to snuff it.
There are many other distinctly calculable narrative developments too, which make the episode's composition feel depressingly lazy. The manner in which the Bishops uncover the truth behind the mysterious deaths recalls the frustrating penchant for the old deux et machina that plagued many episodes in the early stages of Fringe's freshman year. Fair enough, Walter has an established, significant history in the field he is investigating but come on... would it hurt to present him with something he hadn't seen before? Does he always have to have postulated about the existence of the mysterious science that features in the 'curiosity of the week', or have some convenient piece of exposition on hand to magically provide all the answers? The girl on the video tape provides far too succinct an explanation of events; so much so that it makes the previous steps taken in the investigation seem utterly pointless. Then there is the bizarre custard-making C-storyline, which is entirely throwaway and superficial, and the closure of the Fringe Division itself, which is rendered completely ineffectual by essentially being resolved by the end of the episode. Look guys, if you're going to rip-off The X Files, at least do a respectable job of it (the inclusion of a sequence from the 'Dreamcatcher' two parter was far more satisfying...); Chris Carter's show got it right by actually keeping Mulder and Scully apart, at least in job title, for almost half a season. It gave us consequence and realism; here, the trope's entire function appears to be to give Joshua Jackson some ludicrously hyperbolic bravado to spout at Lance Reddick. His assertion that 'we're not reacting any more!' (paraphrased, that) is hopelessly hamfisted and somewhat negates the effect of the plot thread that it is paying off: Broyles and Peter's beautifully scripted two hander in the admittedly wonderful first act, which concentrates on the effects of Olivia's supposed death on each of the characters.
Speaking of characters, how about Meghan Markle as brand spanking new Junior Agent Amy Jessup, huh? Well, wasn't she just a peach, eh? Didn't we all just immediately warm to her wonderfully rounded, highly complex and thoroughly believable character? Oh, okay, I jest. Jessup wins the award for most transparent cipher yet to be introduced to the show, as her one-dimensional treatment and lack of virtually any character development whatsoever exposes her central function: to replace Agent Francis and make the number of people in love with Joshua Jackson increase to 7,452. Oh sorry, and provide a form of interpretative transference for casual or first-time viewers. The vast majority of her dialogue, and the conversations she takes part in, function to reiterate facts about the history of the show that we already know, the most blatant of which is her introduction to the Harvard University setting, in which Peter essentially guides the audience around Fringe's basic premise. It's as if the network called Abrams, panicking about whether viewers would be able to follow the show given its penchant for ongoing narratives, or even remember what they'd seen last year, and insisted he had to retread everything before he could get on with the actual plot. To be fair to the writers, the character's introduction is at least a more organic way of solving this problem - all too often, regular cast members suddenly start telling each other facts that they are all too familiar with - but it does make her feel rather useless. Her willingness to accept the bizarro world of Fringe Division is suspicious too. The conspiracy nut in me reckons there's more going on here, that perhaps she's going to turn out to have more involvement with 'The Pattern' (unusually enough, not mentioned once in the hour) than at first thought, but perhaps this is just wishful thinking. Maybe I don't want to acknowledge that actually, this amounts to little more than a careless, quick-fire way of getting on with the story.
All of this criticism makes 'A New Day in the Old Town' sound like something of an atrocity; in actuality, it's a reasonably enjoyable episode, provided you don't think too much about its composition, or expect too much from its narrative. There are some excellent orchestrated scenes and character beats, particularly Peter and Broyles in the bar, Olivia and Charlie in the hospital, and everyone's reactions to Dunham's potential death in the first act. Goldsman does a delicate, sophisticated job of directing the piece and the actors all slot back into their personalities perfectly. Where the episode falls down is in its predictability; none of the reveals actually surprise you, and the central plot feels underwhelming when one considers the gravitas of events that occurred in season one's top notch finale. What Fringe really needs right now is to keep the momentum going and this one, sadly, is a bit of a slow burner. 6.5
Thursday, 17 September 2009
Album review: Muse: 'The Resistance'
MUSE: 'The Resistance' (Warner Bros)
A little over ten years ago, three snotty-nosed, fresh-faced young upstarts from Teignmouth, the actual arse end of the real nowhere, quietly nudged a record into the hands of indie's (spit) makers and shakers. 'Showbiz', as it was modestly titled, was met with much indifference and bemusement (pardon the pun) from an unforgiving, self-obsessed media, who likened it to 'Bends-era Radiohead and brushed the band aside in favour of pretentious nobodies like Godspeed! You Black Emperor and Add N to (X). Well, more fool them. Right from the start, the potential for world domination has always been within Muse's grasp: from the impassioned colossus that is 'Muscle Museum' to the tender dramatics of 'Unintended', you just had to open your eyes, to bother to look a little closer. Naturally, less than a year later, the band were making some of the most outstandingly gargantuan noise to ever have come out of a studio. In subsequent records 'Origin of Symmetry' and 'Absolution', Muse provided us with the kind of music that makes you feel stoked to be alive, that makes life an enriching, emboldening experience. All that from just three men, their guitars, drums, a piano and the occasional satellite (have you seen their live shows? Geez!) With such an impressive resume, what do we now expect from Teignmouth's finest, ten years on? Well, more, to put it bluntly. Loads more. Bigger. Harder. Faster. Stronger. Taking over the multiverse instead of just this poxy little universe. Music that it doesn't feel right to listen to unless you're surfing naked on the back of a comet or watching a million-strong battle from atop the highest mountains on Mars. Got that guys? Good. Well get on with it then.
And to be fair to the boys, they pretty much did. 'The Resistance' is an unquestionably grandiose record, full of outrageously big and ludicrous ideas and pompous, hyperbolic sounds. It's a massively gaudy work that proudly wears its stark splashes of primary colour on its sleeve; from the almost tacky brashness of its cover to the forty orchestral musicians put to work on the symphony (yes, you read that right) that closes it, everything about the album is bold, dramatic and wonderfully obvious. Muse embrace their campness rather than shying away from it and as such, they harness the same sort of genius-in-stupidity that propelled Queen to mega stardom. Indeed, at times, they don't sound too far removed from Freddie Mercury's band of merry men: 'United States of Eurasia' has shades of 'Flash' in its fantastically OTT chorus, and the closing whoosh of an aeroplane flying overhead is just the kind of stupendously dumb gimmick that Mercury would've loved.
Interestingly, while there is a rather paranoid political allegory running rampant all over the record - just listen to the brilliantly euphoric call to arms of the title track and the Goldfrapp meets 'Supermassive Black Hole' stomp and swagger of first single 'Uprising' for proof - Muse temper its apocryphal naysaying through personalisation, telling a delightful little love story at the same time. As a motif, this implies that love saves and redeems, thereby offering us a solution to the bleak proselytising that begun with 2003's 'Absolution.' It's hard not to be moved by the simplicity of the message, especially in lieu of the complexity of the album, and it produces some truly beautiful moments, not the least of which is 'I Belong To You' which, despite featuring a rather dodgy beginning, quickly morphs into a paradoxically monumental, yet tender, musical maelstrom.
There really is no doubt that this is a technically excellent record. You cannot help but be over-awed by the depth of skill and craftsmanship that has gone into its quite superb construction: 'Exogenesis', the symphony, provides perhaps the best example of this, clocking in at eleven minutes of absolutely mind-bending, breathtaking over-indulgence. However, at times, 'The Resistance' does have a tendency to feel a little cold, as if heart and soul have been temporarily sacrificed in the quest to be sonically impressive. It's certainly the band's most focused album but this threatens to be its downfall: Muse are at their best when they're messy and sprawling, not concentrated and thought-out. 'Absolution' and 'Origin of Symmetry' work so well because they're out of control, whereas 'The Resistance', for all its bombast, feels distinctly refined. Some have criticised its lack of guitars, but this is not necessarily the cause of the problem; too often, Muse seem to be checking themselves, making sure they don't give too much away, and do so by quite literally ripping themselves off. The aforementioned 'Uprising' is not only 'Supermassive Black Hole' but the mid-section of 'Knights of Cydonia'; 'MK Ultra' is the less interesting cousin of 'Exogenesis' and 'Assassin' and 'Unnatural Selection', heralded as the most Muse-like song on the album, is disappointing for precisely that reason (it's effectively just 'New Born' crossed with 'Dead Star', and not as good as either.) Regrettably, when they do try something dramatically different, as in the softly, softly R 'n' B stylings of 'Undisclosed Desires', they end up sounding like Craig David which is certainly no good thing.
Perhaps Muse are simply trying too hard; while the musicianship and production here are second to none, the album sometimes feels a little over-thought. Certain tracks lack the passion that usually imbues their work, and as such they feel rather tame in comparison to virtually anything on 'Origin' and 'Absolution.' When they get it right, of course, they blow you away: the gargantuan 'Exogenesis' is phenomenal, 'United States of Eurasia' is deliciously camp and 'I Belong To You' is painfully beautiful; indeed, 'The Resistance' is quite a brave record. The band's sound is evolving in an interesting way and the piano-centric route they seem to have adopted is actually quite welcome, as it further embraces the unashamed bombast that has always been at the heart of their genius. It's just that, while the pomp and circumstance sweep you along, once the dust has settled, you're left feeling unsure rather than amazed. (7/10)
A little over ten years ago, three snotty-nosed, fresh-faced young upstarts from Teignmouth, the actual arse end of the real nowhere, quietly nudged a record into the hands of indie's (spit) makers and shakers. 'Showbiz', as it was modestly titled, was met with much indifference and bemusement (pardon the pun) from an unforgiving, self-obsessed media, who likened it to 'Bends-era Radiohead and brushed the band aside in favour of pretentious nobodies like Godspeed! You Black Emperor and Add N to (X). Well, more fool them. Right from the start, the potential for world domination has always been within Muse's grasp: from the impassioned colossus that is 'Muscle Museum' to the tender dramatics of 'Unintended', you just had to open your eyes, to bother to look a little closer. Naturally, less than a year later, the band were making some of the most outstandingly gargantuan noise to ever have come out of a studio. In subsequent records 'Origin of Symmetry' and 'Absolution', Muse provided us with the kind of music that makes you feel stoked to be alive, that makes life an enriching, emboldening experience. All that from just three men, their guitars, drums, a piano and the occasional satellite (have you seen their live shows? Geez!) With such an impressive resume, what do we now expect from Teignmouth's finest, ten years on? Well, more, to put it bluntly. Loads more. Bigger. Harder. Faster. Stronger. Taking over the multiverse instead of just this poxy little universe. Music that it doesn't feel right to listen to unless you're surfing naked on the back of a comet or watching a million-strong battle from atop the highest mountains on Mars. Got that guys? Good. Well get on with it then.
And to be fair to the boys, they pretty much did. 'The Resistance' is an unquestionably grandiose record, full of outrageously big and ludicrous ideas and pompous, hyperbolic sounds. It's a massively gaudy work that proudly wears its stark splashes of primary colour on its sleeve; from the almost tacky brashness of its cover to the forty orchestral musicians put to work on the symphony (yes, you read that right) that closes it, everything about the album is bold, dramatic and wonderfully obvious. Muse embrace their campness rather than shying away from it and as such, they harness the same sort of genius-in-stupidity that propelled Queen to mega stardom. Indeed, at times, they don't sound too far removed from Freddie Mercury's band of merry men: 'United States of Eurasia' has shades of 'Flash' in its fantastically OTT chorus, and the closing whoosh of an aeroplane flying overhead is just the kind of stupendously dumb gimmick that Mercury would've loved.
Interestingly, while there is a rather paranoid political allegory running rampant all over the record - just listen to the brilliantly euphoric call to arms of the title track and the Goldfrapp meets 'Supermassive Black Hole' stomp and swagger of first single 'Uprising' for proof - Muse temper its apocryphal naysaying through personalisation, telling a delightful little love story at the same time. As a motif, this implies that love saves and redeems, thereby offering us a solution to the bleak proselytising that begun with 2003's 'Absolution.' It's hard not to be moved by the simplicity of the message, especially in lieu of the complexity of the album, and it produces some truly beautiful moments, not the least of which is 'I Belong To You' which, despite featuring a rather dodgy beginning, quickly morphs into a paradoxically monumental, yet tender, musical maelstrom.
There really is no doubt that this is a technically excellent record. You cannot help but be over-awed by the depth of skill and craftsmanship that has gone into its quite superb construction: 'Exogenesis', the symphony, provides perhaps the best example of this, clocking in at eleven minutes of absolutely mind-bending, breathtaking over-indulgence. However, at times, 'The Resistance' does have a tendency to feel a little cold, as if heart and soul have been temporarily sacrificed in the quest to be sonically impressive. It's certainly the band's most focused album but this threatens to be its downfall: Muse are at their best when they're messy and sprawling, not concentrated and thought-out. 'Absolution' and 'Origin of Symmetry' work so well because they're out of control, whereas 'The Resistance', for all its bombast, feels distinctly refined. Some have criticised its lack of guitars, but this is not necessarily the cause of the problem; too often, Muse seem to be checking themselves, making sure they don't give too much away, and do so by quite literally ripping themselves off. The aforementioned 'Uprising' is not only 'Supermassive Black Hole' but the mid-section of 'Knights of Cydonia'; 'MK Ultra' is the less interesting cousin of 'Exogenesis' and 'Assassin' and 'Unnatural Selection', heralded as the most Muse-like song on the album, is disappointing for precisely that reason (it's effectively just 'New Born' crossed with 'Dead Star', and not as good as either.) Regrettably, when they do try something dramatically different, as in the softly, softly R 'n' B stylings of 'Undisclosed Desires', they end up sounding like Craig David which is certainly no good thing.
Perhaps Muse are simply trying too hard; while the musicianship and production here are second to none, the album sometimes feels a little over-thought. Certain tracks lack the passion that usually imbues their work, and as such they feel rather tame in comparison to virtually anything on 'Origin' and 'Absolution.' When they get it right, of course, they blow you away: the gargantuan 'Exogenesis' is phenomenal, 'United States of Eurasia' is deliciously camp and 'I Belong To You' is painfully beautiful; indeed, 'The Resistance' is quite a brave record. The band's sound is evolving in an interesting way and the piano-centric route they seem to have adopted is actually quite welcome, as it further embraces the unashamed bombast that has always been at the heart of their genius. It's just that, while the pomp and circumstance sweep you along, once the dust has settled, you're left feeling unsure rather than amazed. (7/10)
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