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Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
"Rome" burns but doesn't ignite. Plus: The comedic stylings of J.D. from "Rock Star: INXS"!
Aug 28, 2005 | Beware of dog
I've got to level with you, veal cutlets. I've watched about 30 pilots for the new fall season this week, and I'm much worse for the wear. Nothing really does justice to the experience of watching hour after hour of untested televised entertainments for a week straight, but suffice it to say that it's not unlike eating three chili dogs, taking a ride on Space Mountain, and then vomiting down the side of the nearest trash can at Disneyland.
Pilots suck. It's amazing, really, that lots of smart people get paid millions of dollars to make a handful of shows that are about as refreshing and clever and original as a Grateful Dead cover band. And the same actors are in all of the pilots every year! And the plots of the pilots are always the same! It's like they take the same four dogs and dress them up in different outfits every fall and hope that no one will notice.
See how I have to show you dogs in funny outfits just to keep this interesting? The sitcoms aren't funny. They're always about hip young folks who make jokes about plastic surgery and how their gaydar is malfunctioning -- you know, the stuff that made you chuckle about five or six years ago -- but they haven't found Mr. Right or they don't know how to approach the bland-looking Love Interest across the room. Yawn. The dramas are unoriginal and soapy, and feature blandly pretty actors who make your skin crawl every time they open their mouths. The cop shows have all the same crimes and the same detectives with haunted pasts (Her parents were mysteriously murdered! His former partner was killed in the line of duty!).
And every single one of the law shows features the same exact self-righteous yet poignant climax, where the lawyer wobbles at first but then gets his/her footing and delivers an achingly earnest, teary-eyed appeal to the jury to make sure that justice is served. Hell, I could probably write a compelling closing argument to a murder case all by myself -- one that rhymed and sounded really good when sung to the tune of "Shoeless Joe From Hannibal Mo." (Who says this whole damn case is a joke?/ Our John Doe, who lies like a pro!/ He keeps to himself, says the neighbor next do'!/ Creepy Doe, don't let him kill mo'!)
That said, there are a few good new shows in the mix, the most surprising of which has to be CBS's "Threshold," which looked cheesy as hell in the promos, but in the second half hour, shifts from slightly dark to downright disturbing. Actually, thanks to "Lost" and the global struggle against violent extremism, there are a bunch of shows this fall that are both violent and extreme. Hurray!
Slow-cooked meats at play
But I'm getting ahead of myself now -- you have to wait for the big fall preview exposé to learn more about how the TV studios are in cahoots with al-Qaida to scare the bejeezus out of the American populace. In the meantime, let's leave our tumultuous world behind and travel back in time, to ancient Rome. Glorious, lusty Rome, with its elaborate feasts and its gladiators and its fat-bottomed girls, who even then made the rockin' world go round.
Those were simpler times, indeed! While the blood-thirsty armies of Rome wandered far from home to conquer those pathetic, hairy foreign peoples, plundering their riches and scoffing at their subpar plumbing systems, the people of Rome feasted on roasted pig and tossed back goblets of wine and indulged the desires of the flesh and danced the night away, and soon they lost sight of any guiding principles and values, so numb were they from so much booze and babes and slow-cooked meats.
Oh those foolish Romans! If only they had the wisdom and foresight that we have now, they might've put down the vino and taken some interest in those wars waging in foreign lands. But at least their depravity makes for good television, especially on HBO, where they can leave behind the noble stares and bland pronouncements and British accents of every other depiction of ancient Rome we've seen, and show us the fat-bottomed girls and frenzied orgies we crave. If "Deadwood" could make the old West interesting, after all, just think of what HBO can do with the Roman empire!
Ahem. And those of you who caught Sunday night's premiere are probably still holding out hope that things will get grittier or some of these characters who, right now, are about as compelling as guests at a retirement community toga party, will be transformed into sandal-wearing Al Swearengens overnight. Unfortunately, HBO's "Rome" not only doesn't color outside the lines nearly enough, but the characters have very little to offer. Having watched five episodes of "Rome," I know about as much about these characters as I did after the first hour, and now that I know they're not going to interest me or surprise me, the whole pretty picture puts me right to sleep.
What can you do if you're HBO? They've hired absolute visionaries and given them total freedom, but how many David Chases are there in the world? How many Alan Balls and David Milches are roaming around out there? It's pretty absurd to expect that every historical drama created by HBO could possibly be as jarringly original as "Deadwood," or as complicated and as real and as dark as "The Sopranos."
But even as "Rome" has its saving graces -- it's beautiful, the dialogue is sharp, the villainess looks and acts just like Julie Cooper from "The O.C." -- after several episodes, it's almost alarming how little we know about Caesar himself. What drives him? How does he come to his decisions? What's his favorite color? Not only do we see nothing of, say, Tony Soprano or Al Swearengen here, but there's nothing here at all. Even if you end up enjoying this series, you have to really wonder what they were thinking, giving us a lead this flat and lifeless. Even his character description on the HBO site asserts that Caesar "can be witty and charming or warm and caring, but these qualities are always performances, produced as needed, and rarely prompted by genuine feeling." So our lead is a big fake, yet even this isn't demonstrated clearly through dramatic action?
