-Superstore isn't a heavily serialized show by any means. There are ongoing storylines and arcs that pop up here and there and little Easter eggs for devoted viewers (Like tonight's callback to Sandra's birthday at Dave & Busters, which she invited everyone to a few episodes back) but for the most part you can pretty much jump into any episode and easily figure out what's going on. That's true of Wellness Fair, which stands on it's own while bringing a couple big storylines to fruition, but I can't imagine watching Wellness Fair without watching all the episodes of build-up that preceded it. It's a hilarious capper to the Jeff/Mateo secret romance and Jeff/Sandra fake romance story that pays off a lot of things beautifully and a strong example of the benefits of light serialization.
-The action is kicked off when Amy, who's called in sick for work so she can see a movie with her daughter, sees Jeff on a date with Mateo. Since Sandra has been pretending to date Jeff for several weeks now, Amy naturally assumes Jeff is cheating on Sandra and despite Garrett (Who knows the truth of the situation but declines to tell her.) telling her to just stay out of it so the situation doesn't get out of control Jurassic Park-style, she confronts Mateo who discretely tells her the truth about the situation. Realizing how bad this would be for Sandra if the truth got out, Amy decides to not say anything. Unfortunately one person overheard Mateo, and within seconds Marcus is running around telling everyone he can find that "Mateo's banging Jeff and Sandra's insane", so Amy tries her best to contain the situation and it all explodes spectacularly. America Ferrara tends to be at her funniest as Amy when she's desperately trying to dig her way out of a situation only to make it worse and worse. So of course she was on fire tonight as Amy keeps piling lie on top of lie to convince Myrtle and the gang that Sandra isn't a maniac, until the entire store is convinced that Sandra is pregnant with Jeff's baby and might have an abortion.
-As I alluded to above, Wellness Fair is the culmination of multiple ongoing storylines and arcs that have been percolating through this season of Superstore and it works because of how well the writers have fleshed out the world of Cloud Nine. We have spent over 25 episodes getting to know these characters, how they respond to each other and how they respond to situations and that familiarity adds greater heft to both the comedy and the emotional beats. So things like Amy throwing on lie after lie to Marcus, Myrtle and Justine or Jonah and Glenn having a big argument about abortion in the middle of the store work better here than they would have in the first season because we know these characters well enough to understand why they're reacting to these situations the way they are.
-Glenn feeling inadequate about himself compared to Jonah is something that came up a few times in the first season (Most notably in Magazine Profile) but hasn't been explored much this year. When Jonah is surprised to learn that both he and Glenn wanted to be doctors at one point though while setting up for the store's wellness fair, Glenn takes offense at the implication that he isn't good enough to be a doctor. This leads to a funny story where Glenn keeps trying to prove his worth to Jonah, even though it's apparent that Glenn has much less knowledge about things like maintaining a healthy lifestyle (He's shocked to learn that the two litres of fruit juice he consumes a day isn't the best choice.) or riding a stationary bike than Jonah does. Mark McKinney and Ben Feldman play off each other terrifically and that chemistry allows them to get through a potentially tricky scene like their abortion argument with ease.
-The abortion argument comes out of nowhere (Through the natural and could feel very out of place, but it works because writer Owen Ellickson focuses on the absurdity of the situation and how out of place it is, rather than the argument itself. Jonah and Glenn are both men who are in no way qualified to speak about the toll childbirth or abortion takes on a woman's body and the middle of the store's wellness fair is certainly not the place to be having this discussion. It doesn't matter who's right because both of them are wrong here and the episode uses this, along with the sudden drop of Glenn's blood sugar thanks to him quitting juice cold turkey, as a catalyst to the big meeting scene.
-As I noted a couple weeks ago, Superstore has pretty much nailed the art of doing an employee meeting scene and while this one doesn't reach the heights of Valentine's Day, it comes pretty damn close. All the secrets and lies that have been piling up get unraveled one by one, as a confused Sandra assures people that she isn't pregnant before admitting that she isn't dating Jeff and went along with a misunderstanding to get attention, Mateo finally admits that he's dating Jeff so he can get some attention, Dina reveals that she and Garrett have been having casual sex, and Amy reveals that she's never seen Jurassic Park. Each revelation flows into the next one with a chorus of gasps, a barrage of jokes, and a nice wave of momentum until everyone's forgotten what they're supposed to be focused on in the first place. It's wonderfully choreographed by director Alex Reid who finds time for lots of great little moments in between each reveal without losing control of the scene.
-For all the chaos and disarray that came out of Amy's decision to meddle, the story ends on a positive note that suggests it was all worth it. Sandra's happy that she doesn't have to keep up this lie and continue amassing credit card debt anymore, while managing to emerge from this situation not totally humiliated, which is very impressive and welcome. Meanwhile as Jeff and Mateo have a whispered private conversation in a change room, they realize they don't actually have to do this anymore because their secret is out. After weeks of carrying on in secret, Jeff and Mateo proudly strolling out of the change room holding hands as Mateo proudly tells a customer "He's my boyfriend" is one of the more emotionally uplifting moments Superstore has ever done and is a wonderful payoff to this portion of Jeff and Mateo's story.
-Dina trying to prove that Amy faked her illness isn't the most original story in the world but it ties into Amy being unable to leave things alone well at the end when Amy's gentle mocking of Garrett's casual sex with Dina leads Garrett to blow up her spot and tell Dina she called in sick so she could go to Lego Batman. Lauren Ash's "What in God's name is Lego Batman?" is probably the funniest line delivery of the night.
-Best Interstitial: Sandra terribly photoshops a picture of her and Jeff in Paris.
-This Week in Mark McKinney is a Treasure: The scene of him trying to ride the exercise bike is a masterful bit of physical comedy but the best Glenn moment in this episode is him trying to come to terms with the fact that bland, normal-looking Jeff is gay. "I just don't get it. If you can be gay, that means anyone can be gay".
-Marcus, Myrtle, Sandra and Justine are in a Wine Club together, which sounds like the start to a great web series.
-I'm assuming there's a lot more scenes of Artemis Pebdani as the nurse at the Wellness Fair just lying on the cutting room floor somewhere. It seemed weird to cast someone as funny and well-known as her in what amounted to a bit part.
-Best joke of the episode: The mass shock and outrage that ensues when Amy admits she's never seen Jurassic Park.
-Second-best joke of the episode: Sandra can't get her deposit back on the carriage she hired to take her to "King Jeff" as part of the ruse so she gets in it and asks to go to the frozen custard place at the mall.
-Garret delivers an important announcement: "Attention, shoppers, Cloud 9 is not offering breast exams as part of our Wellness Fair. We have not hired someone to do that, and if we had, it would not be a teenage boy in a Twenty One Pilots T-shirt. Shop safe."
-Jonah's incredibly hurt reaction to learning Garrett didn't tell him about his casual sex with Dina is really funny. The low-key Jonah/Garrett bromance is maybe one of the best dynamics Superstore has and it makes for a really effective quick joke here.
-Fave Jeff moment of the episode: "So I checked. We don't seem to have any training videos about not discussing abortion at work, because we just thought it was so obvious, but you guys managed to surprise us, so good job".
-Again excellent episode all around.
Saturday 25 February 2017
Friday 24 February 2017
Riverdale: Chapter Five: Heart of Darkness
-So let's talk about Archie. Specifically let's talk about why the supposed main character of Riverdale and his ongoing storylines are so damn boring (Grundy thing aside, which is problematic in ways I've already gone on about at length), despite the solid performance of K.J. Apa. This is partly because Archie in the comics is mostly an audience-identification figure with a pretty vanilla personality that's difficult to make exciting, but a lot of it comes down to the context his storylines are in. Riverdale's Archie is probably the most down-to-earth character on the show and for the most part he has down-to-earth problems. He wants to connect with his dad and he wants to get into music and become a musician while still playing football and he wants to get over his heartbreak and have a good relationship. Now there's nothing wrong with any of this and all of these can make for some compelling teen drama. The issue is Riverdale is not a teen drama, it's a Teen Soap/Gothic Noir genre show and Archie's plots about typical teenager life feel mundane and insignificant on a show where essentially every other character is either investigating a murder, dealing with family secrets, dealing with biker gangs, or dealing with a century-spanning blood feud over a Maple Syrup business. Now on a show as heightened and fantastical as Riverdale, the Archie stories are theoretically there to ground the show in reality a bit, which is fine and necessary but since Archie is no longer tied to the central murder mystery in any meaningful way, his struggles aren't tied to any of the elements they're supposed to be grounding. They exist in a vacuum and so they flounder because they seem irrelevant compared to all the insanity happening elsewhere, which is doing a pretty good job of being emotionally grounded on it's own, despite how larger-than life it all is.
-Take last night's episode for example. Archie spends the episode trying to refocus his efforts post-Grundy on Football, but is unable to stop himself from chasing his musical ambitions, even when a potential mentor has a much harsher (And let's be honest, accurate) opinion of his work than the mentor he was sleeping with did. Meanwhile Betty continues looking into Jason's murder and how it's connected to him and Polly uncovering a blood feud between the Coopers and the Blossoms, Veronica and Cheryl have the world's most awkward sleepover and the Blossoms throw a memorial for Jason where they invite everyone they think could be a suspect. Oh, and the majority of most these other stories take place at Thornhill, the Blossom's creepy hillside mansion that looks like something straight out of Wuthering Heights. Archie's story has it's moments and does a great deal to develop Valerie and Reggie as characters but it just feels lesser than everything else that's going on and disconnected even when Archie is at Thornhill giving Penelope Blossom Jason's uniform and getting his face creepily felt up.
-The best part of Archie's storyline was definitely Val, who got the chance to show more character and personality than any of the Pussycats have in the past five episodes, and was instrumental in getting Archie to stop blindly trusting in other people's opinions of if he's good at music. The episode definitely seems to be setting up a possible romantic connection between her and Archie and I wouldn't mind if Riverdale took an episode or two to explore that before getting to the inevitable love triangle that they're thankfully still putting off.
-So Archie plays football pretty terribly for much of the episode and almost breaks his hand because he didn't study the play he was supposed to know but he gets offered the captain job because he decided to retire Jason's jersey and give it to the Blossom family without consulting anyone first? Why?! Yeah, yeah, it shows leadership potential or whatever but Reggie showed much better leadership potential when he encouraged Archie not to keep practicing with an injured hand (Advice Archie ignored because Archie's kind of dumb.) and much better skills on the field. Also why didn't the coach just retire that jersey in the first place instead of offering it up to whoever the new captain was? At least Archie had the sense not to take the captain job.
-Luckily the Archie stuff wasn't as all consuming as the Grundy storyline last week (Which Riverdale seems eager to just brush past), instead serving as the bland side dish to the episode's main course, our first in-depth examination into the Blossom family.
-From the beginning Cheryl Blossom has always been a larger-than-life character, getting the most ridiculous dialogue and never missing the chance to stir up trouble. Madelaine Petsch does terrific work taking Cheryl as close as possible to the realm of cartoon caricature but always managing to make her feel human. Heart of Darkness finally gives us a significant look into Cheryl's homelife and suddenly her whole character makes a whole lot more sense and feels that much more real and tragic. Jughead's narration sets the tone. She's the Gothic heroine who lives in the creepy house with the private graveyard surrounded by (figurative) ghosts and secrets. Her parents are emotionally withholding monsters all about keeping up appearances, maintaining feuds with their various enemies (There's an intriguing mention of the founding families of Riverdale that I want to see explored further), and going on and on about the maple syrup industry Riverdale is built on. No one wanted to be around her so she bullied and forced her way to the top of the social order through sheer will. She had an unhealthy attachment to her brother but that was only because he was the only one who ever protected her. No wonder she's become such a force of nature. Petsch gives her finest performance to date at Jason's memorial, as Cheryl gives the eulogy she was told not to give in the dress she was wearing the day Jason vanished. It's our biggest glimpse yet at how much of a broken human being Cheryl is and it's very effective at grounding the insanity of the Blossom family.
-Having spent the first few episodes building the bond between Betty and Veronica, Heart of Darkness sets to setting up a friendship or at least a frenemy bond between Veronica and Cheryl. Veronica and Cheryl don't get along by any means but Veronica was there for Cheryl when she had her pep rally breakdown and Cheryl remembers that, which is why she invites Veronica for a sleepover the night before the memorial. She isn't used to that kind of support and Veronica comes through again, encouraging her to give the eulogy she wants to give no matter the consequences (Cheryl is convinced her parents would kill her, which is very telling). It's nice to see Riverdale committed to fleshing out the complicated dynamics between it's female characters instead of just having them all be best friends or at each other's throats consistently.
-No Alice this week, but that's probably for the best, seeing that Penelope and Cliff Blossom are even more over-the-top than she is. Alice has basically been a crazy cartoon villain so far but the Blossoms make her seem like a well-adjusted average mom by comparison.
-Excellent production design on the Thornhill estate. It feels creepy and otherworldly and I hope we get to spend a lot more time there in the future.
-Hal Cooper has been on my radar for a couple weeks now, seeming much quieter, more passive, and more reasonable than his wife which is immediately suspicious. My suspicions got raised even higher when Betty, after learning that Jason started selling possessions and dealing drugs shortly after dating Polly asks him about what happened to her and he explains that he walked in on her trying to kill herself after a bad fight with Jason. It's the perfect motivation for murder and my suspicions became even more entrenched when Betty sees him tearfully watching old movies of Polly. The twist though is that Hal is lying to some extent (Maybe Polly did try to kill herself. We don't know). Polly and Jason were engaged to be married, despite a bitter feud between their two families and it's strongly implied that that's why Polly was sent away. It's a brilliant twist because it comes out of nowhere, yet it completely lines up with the information we have or suspect we have. Hal is just as manipulative and dangerous as Alice is, he's just a lot sneakier about it so it's very effective to see him suddenly blow up like this. Of course now I'm much less convinced that he killed Jason but we'll get to that in Murder Theory Corner.
-Why do the Coopers and the Blossoms hate each other so much? Because Cheryl's great-grandfather killed Betty's great-grandfather over the profits of the maple syrup business they started together, starting a blood feud. A blood feud! It's ridiculous, over-the-top, and more than a little nonsensical but I love this bit of backstory so much. It's just so odd and inspired and it turns the story of Jason and Polly into a weird, modern Romeo and Juliet. If the idea behind Riverdale was that there was always a darkness to the town that Jason's death brought to the surface, this is the most effective expression yet of that idea. Also now I'm just desperate for an episode that does a deep dive into the dark history of the Maple Syrup industry in Riverdale.
-So now that Betty knows the truth about Polly (Or at least much of the truth about Polly), does this mean we get to actually meet Polly soon? I hope so.
-No sign of Jughead's dad this week but the Southside Serpents do send a snake to Pop's as a warning to Hermione, prompting her to go to Fred for help prompting Fred to finally hire her as the bookkeeper for his company. It's more interesting than the Archie stuff but less interesting than the Blossom/Cooper stuff. Luke Perry and Marisol Nichols have solid chemistry though and this could be a good chance for them to get some much needed character development outside of their relationships to their children.
-This Week in Hot Archie: Shirtless Archie works up a sweat hitting the punching bag because he needs to stay in shape.
-This Week in Ridiculous Cheryl Blossom Dialogue That Madelaine Petsch Inexplicably Pulls Off: "To my surprise and chagrin, Mother added you to the guest list. In case you're thinking of stealing candlesticks: don't. We'll be searching bags". It's all in her inflections.
-The Maple Syrup Industry being so huge explains why the river is called Sweetwater and why the local sex act is called the Sticky Maple. That's something.
-The best moment in the Archie story is when Archie's dad walks in on him and Val and is both really awkward about it, while clearly really happy that Archie is with someone his own age. Archie's gruff potential mentor who wanted him to do things like write actual sheet music for his songs was also entertaining.
-Murder Theory Corner: So now that the characters are suspicious of Hal and we have confirmation that he's shady, I don't suspect him as much because I know how TV works. The Cooper-Blossom Maple Syrup Blood Feud is an incredible bit of backstory that's both operatic and ridiculous but it also feels like a huge red herring. Why'd Hal steal the original murder wall? My bet is he suspects Polly killed Jason and he's trying to protect her. So my suspicions have moved back to someone in Josie's orbit (Likely her mom but any of the Pussycats could also work). That being said though, with the episode working to establish a connection between the Lodge family and the Blossom family, maybe Hiram did it? He's got to show up by the end of the season and this would definitely leave an impression.
-Seriously guys, I can not overstate how excited I am about this blood feud thing.
-Take last night's episode for example. Archie spends the episode trying to refocus his efforts post-Grundy on Football, but is unable to stop himself from chasing his musical ambitions, even when a potential mentor has a much harsher (And let's be honest, accurate) opinion of his work than the mentor he was sleeping with did. Meanwhile Betty continues looking into Jason's murder and how it's connected to him and Polly uncovering a blood feud between the Coopers and the Blossoms, Veronica and Cheryl have the world's most awkward sleepover and the Blossoms throw a memorial for Jason where they invite everyone they think could be a suspect. Oh, and the majority of most these other stories take place at Thornhill, the Blossom's creepy hillside mansion that looks like something straight out of Wuthering Heights. Archie's story has it's moments and does a great deal to develop Valerie and Reggie as characters but it just feels lesser than everything else that's going on and disconnected even when Archie is at Thornhill giving Penelope Blossom Jason's uniform and getting his face creepily felt up.
-The best part of Archie's storyline was definitely Val, who got the chance to show more character and personality than any of the Pussycats have in the past five episodes, and was instrumental in getting Archie to stop blindly trusting in other people's opinions of if he's good at music. The episode definitely seems to be setting up a possible romantic connection between her and Archie and I wouldn't mind if Riverdale took an episode or two to explore that before getting to the inevitable love triangle that they're thankfully still putting off.
-So Archie plays football pretty terribly for much of the episode and almost breaks his hand because he didn't study the play he was supposed to know but he gets offered the captain job because he decided to retire Jason's jersey and give it to the Blossom family without consulting anyone first? Why?! Yeah, yeah, it shows leadership potential or whatever but Reggie showed much better leadership potential when he encouraged Archie not to keep practicing with an injured hand (Advice Archie ignored because Archie's kind of dumb.) and much better skills on the field. Also why didn't the coach just retire that jersey in the first place instead of offering it up to whoever the new captain was? At least Archie had the sense not to take the captain job.
-Luckily the Archie stuff wasn't as all consuming as the Grundy storyline last week (Which Riverdale seems eager to just brush past), instead serving as the bland side dish to the episode's main course, our first in-depth examination into the Blossom family.
-From the beginning Cheryl Blossom has always been a larger-than-life character, getting the most ridiculous dialogue and never missing the chance to stir up trouble. Madelaine Petsch does terrific work taking Cheryl as close as possible to the realm of cartoon caricature but always managing to make her feel human. Heart of Darkness finally gives us a significant look into Cheryl's homelife and suddenly her whole character makes a whole lot more sense and feels that much more real and tragic. Jughead's narration sets the tone. She's the Gothic heroine who lives in the creepy house with the private graveyard surrounded by (figurative) ghosts and secrets. Her parents are emotionally withholding monsters all about keeping up appearances, maintaining feuds with their various enemies (There's an intriguing mention of the founding families of Riverdale that I want to see explored further), and going on and on about the maple syrup industry Riverdale is built on. No one wanted to be around her so she bullied and forced her way to the top of the social order through sheer will. She had an unhealthy attachment to her brother but that was only because he was the only one who ever protected her. No wonder she's become such a force of nature. Petsch gives her finest performance to date at Jason's memorial, as Cheryl gives the eulogy she was told not to give in the dress she was wearing the day Jason vanished. It's our biggest glimpse yet at how much of a broken human being Cheryl is and it's very effective at grounding the insanity of the Blossom family.
-Having spent the first few episodes building the bond between Betty and Veronica, Heart of Darkness sets to setting up a friendship or at least a frenemy bond between Veronica and Cheryl. Veronica and Cheryl don't get along by any means but Veronica was there for Cheryl when she had her pep rally breakdown and Cheryl remembers that, which is why she invites Veronica for a sleepover the night before the memorial. She isn't used to that kind of support and Veronica comes through again, encouraging her to give the eulogy she wants to give no matter the consequences (Cheryl is convinced her parents would kill her, which is very telling). It's nice to see Riverdale committed to fleshing out the complicated dynamics between it's female characters instead of just having them all be best friends or at each other's throats consistently.
-No Alice this week, but that's probably for the best, seeing that Penelope and Cliff Blossom are even more over-the-top than she is. Alice has basically been a crazy cartoon villain so far but the Blossoms make her seem like a well-adjusted average mom by comparison.
-Excellent production design on the Thornhill estate. It feels creepy and otherworldly and I hope we get to spend a lot more time there in the future.
-Hal Cooper has been on my radar for a couple weeks now, seeming much quieter, more passive, and more reasonable than his wife which is immediately suspicious. My suspicions got raised even higher when Betty, after learning that Jason started selling possessions and dealing drugs shortly after dating Polly asks him about what happened to her and he explains that he walked in on her trying to kill herself after a bad fight with Jason. It's the perfect motivation for murder and my suspicions became even more entrenched when Betty sees him tearfully watching old movies of Polly. The twist though is that Hal is lying to some extent (Maybe Polly did try to kill herself. We don't know). Polly and Jason were engaged to be married, despite a bitter feud between their two families and it's strongly implied that that's why Polly was sent away. It's a brilliant twist because it comes out of nowhere, yet it completely lines up with the information we have or suspect we have. Hal is just as manipulative and dangerous as Alice is, he's just a lot sneakier about it so it's very effective to see him suddenly blow up like this. Of course now I'm much less convinced that he killed Jason but we'll get to that in Murder Theory Corner.
-Why do the Coopers and the Blossoms hate each other so much? Because Cheryl's great-grandfather killed Betty's great-grandfather over the profits of the maple syrup business they started together, starting a blood feud. A blood feud! It's ridiculous, over-the-top, and more than a little nonsensical but I love this bit of backstory so much. It's just so odd and inspired and it turns the story of Jason and Polly into a weird, modern Romeo and Juliet. If the idea behind Riverdale was that there was always a darkness to the town that Jason's death brought to the surface, this is the most effective expression yet of that idea. Also now I'm just desperate for an episode that does a deep dive into the dark history of the Maple Syrup industry in Riverdale.
-So now that Betty knows the truth about Polly (Or at least much of the truth about Polly), does this mean we get to actually meet Polly soon? I hope so.
-No sign of Jughead's dad this week but the Southside Serpents do send a snake to Pop's as a warning to Hermione, prompting her to go to Fred for help prompting Fred to finally hire her as the bookkeeper for his company. It's more interesting than the Archie stuff but less interesting than the Blossom/Cooper stuff. Luke Perry and Marisol Nichols have solid chemistry though and this could be a good chance for them to get some much needed character development outside of their relationships to their children.
-This Week in Hot Archie: Shirtless Archie works up a sweat hitting the punching bag because he needs to stay in shape.
-This Week in Ridiculous Cheryl Blossom Dialogue That Madelaine Petsch Inexplicably Pulls Off: "To my surprise and chagrin, Mother added you to the guest list. In case you're thinking of stealing candlesticks: don't. We'll be searching bags". It's all in her inflections.
-The Maple Syrup Industry being so huge explains why the river is called Sweetwater and why the local sex act is called the Sticky Maple. That's something.
-The best moment in the Archie story is when Archie's dad walks in on him and Val and is both really awkward about it, while clearly really happy that Archie is with someone his own age. Archie's gruff potential mentor who wanted him to do things like write actual sheet music for his songs was also entertaining.
-Murder Theory Corner: So now that the characters are suspicious of Hal and we have confirmation that he's shady, I don't suspect him as much because I know how TV works. The Cooper-Blossom Maple Syrup Blood Feud is an incredible bit of backstory that's both operatic and ridiculous but it also feels like a huge red herring. Why'd Hal steal the original murder wall? My bet is he suspects Polly killed Jason and he's trying to protect her. So my suspicions have moved back to someone in Josie's orbit (Likely her mom but any of the Pussycats could also work). That being said though, with the episode working to establish a connection between the Lodge family and the Blossom family, maybe Hiram did it? He's got to show up by the end of the season and this would definitely leave an impression.
-Seriously guys, I can not overstate how excited I am about this blood feud thing.
Friday 17 February 2017
Superstore Loses It's Mind In Super Hot Store
-This week Superstore got renewed for a 3rd season, which is terrific news! The show has really stepped it up this year to coalesce into something special and the ensemble has proven they can handle anything thrown at them. The show has been on a real hot streak as of late and tonight's episode really turned up the heat, literally.
-There's something about extreme temperatures, heat in particular that make us lose our minds. Small annoyances seem bigger, tempers run hotter, and it's just easier to lose total control. That's the thrust for the action in Super Hot Store, which finds a malfunctioning thermostat heating up the store to unbearable levels and setting the stage for some hilarious madness.
-Amy has to put up with a lot in her life. Between wasting her potential in a dead-end job that cares more about the bottom line than people and her ongoing marital issues, it's shocking that she's able to keep it together as well as she does. It's also very not shocking when a large yogurt spill, some warehouse laziness, and a couple choice misogynistic remarks from new Warehouse Manager Marcus are enough to send her over the edge and into a rage. Amy has snapped before but never like this and America Ferrara plays her indignation very well. Ben Feldman is also great going from trying to keep the peace to quickly jumping into the madness when Marcus insults him as well. It's a lot of fun watching Amy and Jonah go "cray cray" (As Mateo reluctantly puts it) and the way things quickly get out of hand is a masterpiece in comic escalation as they fire Marcus (Something they can't actually do not that Marcus realizes that) and the entire warehouse walks out in support, causing them to try and get the store staff to unload a truck that none of them are qualified to unload.
-The whole unloading sequence that leads to Amy flying down the conveyor belt herself is gold but the highlight is Sandra who gets herself trapped behind boxes, which she tries to bust out of after Amy's fall only to be hilariously ineffective.
-The Store Workers V.S. Warehouse Workers could feel like a carbon copy of something The Office perfected over the years (Before forgetting how to do warehouse plots once Daryl was in the office proper with everyone else), but the dynamic is different here thanks to the presence of Marcus, everyone's favourite clueless numbskull. Jon Barinholtz has quickly gone from being a minor presence to one of Superstore's better recurring characters and moving him over to the warehouse (Following a promotion he got so he wouldn't sue over that time he sliced his thumb off on store property) is a strong move because it gives him a defined role that lets him be an antagonist, albeit a hilariously ineffectual one. His conflict with Amy and Jonah works because while he's annoying and clueless and a misogynist (That Amy didn't punch him after he told her to smile was impressive), but he's not trying to be actively harmful. He's easy to root against, but you also don't hate the character.
-Once Amy and Jonah literally cool off, they quickly realize how insane they'd been acting and decide to go beg Marcus to come back. However Marcus beats them to the punch and begs them to rehire him (Despite the fact that he was never actually fired.) first. It's a satisfying conclusion to the plot that gives Amy and Jonah (But mostly Amy) a well-deserved win and lets us actually get to see her light-up-the-room smile.
-Meanwhile feeling frustrated with corporate and after some manipulation by Garrett to get him out of his cool, A.C.-controlled office, Glenn sets out to try and fix the heat himself with Cheyenne's help. Of course when he gets to the roof and gets a look at the system, it's immediately clear that he's in over his head and he starts spiraling. Glenn is one of the saddest characters on the show, a cheerful guy who's life has been an endless series of disappointments that he's pushed aside and buried deep. So there's something poignant about his roof breakdown about being a "useless, pathetic, old man" even if the whole thing is ridiculous.
-Glenn and Cheyenne don't get a whole lot of stories together but they make a good combination, with Nichole Bloom's sweetness playing off of Mark Mckinney's increasing desperation nicely as Cheyenne tries to get Glenn through his existential crisis. Cheyenne reluctantly going along with Glenn's idea that the two of them are going to travel the world together is funny, but it's also very sweet. As is the moment when Cheyenne realizes the heat has been fixed, and is able to get out of the trip by convincing Glenn that this proves the store does need him, even though they didn't actually do anything.
-Garrett and Dina spend the episode holed up in Glenn's air-conditioned office and repeatedly having sex because they can't stand talking to each other. There isn't much to the story but it's funny and Colton Dunn and Lauren Ash continue to be one of the show's best pairings. By the end it looks like Garrett and Dina having casual sex is going to be a recurring thing, which can only end in beautiful disaster.
-The one false note in Glen and Cheyenne's story was Cheyenne's inability to think of any time when Glenn had helped his employees. The man literally got fired for fudging the system so that Cheyenne could get some paid maternity leave. How has she forgotten that?
-Corporate's ongoing carelessness quietly returns tonight as the representative Glenn speaks to about fixing the heat is quick to assert that it has to be a manager error since the computers don't make mistakes. Later while Glenn is on the roof trying to fix the problem, the representative calls back to inform Dina's Glenn impression that there was a computer error and it's fixed now, never once admitting fault or that they were wrong. It's a quiet beat but a very funny one that underlines the many ways in which Corporate lets down the stores they're supposed to be helping..
-Best Interstitial: Brett triggers the automatic doors to open so he can get a quick blast of cold, eventually getting joined by the security guard.
-This week in Mark McKinney is a treasure: Glenn slipping and struggling to crawl out of the spilled yogurt gets increasingly funnier the longer it goes on and the more desperate that Glenn becomes.
-Last week Glenn learned that the way he got his wife to go out with him back when they started doing was some serious sexual harassment. This week he realizes that his ancestors who "built the ships that brought the very first African-Americans to this country" were definitely slave-traders.
-Marcus really took offense to Amy telling him to go to hell over the intercom. "I'm Catholic. That's the worst place we can go".
-Glenn works on his and Cheyenne's world tour itinerary but can't decide whether to do "London, Atlantis, Hong Kong", or "London, Hong Kong, Atlantis".
-There's something about extreme temperatures, heat in particular that make us lose our minds. Small annoyances seem bigger, tempers run hotter, and it's just easier to lose total control. That's the thrust for the action in Super Hot Store, which finds a malfunctioning thermostat heating up the store to unbearable levels and setting the stage for some hilarious madness.
-Amy has to put up with a lot in her life. Between wasting her potential in a dead-end job that cares more about the bottom line than people and her ongoing marital issues, it's shocking that she's able to keep it together as well as she does. It's also very not shocking when a large yogurt spill, some warehouse laziness, and a couple choice misogynistic remarks from new Warehouse Manager Marcus are enough to send her over the edge and into a rage. Amy has snapped before but never like this and America Ferrara plays her indignation very well. Ben Feldman is also great going from trying to keep the peace to quickly jumping into the madness when Marcus insults him as well. It's a lot of fun watching Amy and Jonah go "cray cray" (As Mateo reluctantly puts it) and the way things quickly get out of hand is a masterpiece in comic escalation as they fire Marcus (Something they can't actually do not that Marcus realizes that) and the entire warehouse walks out in support, causing them to try and get the store staff to unload a truck that none of them are qualified to unload.
-The whole unloading sequence that leads to Amy flying down the conveyor belt herself is gold but the highlight is Sandra who gets herself trapped behind boxes, which she tries to bust out of after Amy's fall only to be hilariously ineffective.
-The Store Workers V.S. Warehouse Workers could feel like a carbon copy of something The Office perfected over the years (Before forgetting how to do warehouse plots once Daryl was in the office proper with everyone else), but the dynamic is different here thanks to the presence of Marcus, everyone's favourite clueless numbskull. Jon Barinholtz has quickly gone from being a minor presence to one of Superstore's better recurring characters and moving him over to the warehouse (Following a promotion he got so he wouldn't sue over that time he sliced his thumb off on store property) is a strong move because it gives him a defined role that lets him be an antagonist, albeit a hilariously ineffectual one. His conflict with Amy and Jonah works because while he's annoying and clueless and a misogynist (That Amy didn't punch him after he told her to smile was impressive), but he's not trying to be actively harmful. He's easy to root against, but you also don't hate the character.
-Once Amy and Jonah literally cool off, they quickly realize how insane they'd been acting and decide to go beg Marcus to come back. However Marcus beats them to the punch and begs them to rehire him (Despite the fact that he was never actually fired.) first. It's a satisfying conclusion to the plot that gives Amy and Jonah (But mostly Amy) a well-deserved win and lets us actually get to see her light-up-the-room smile.
-Meanwhile feeling frustrated with corporate and after some manipulation by Garrett to get him out of his cool, A.C.-controlled office, Glenn sets out to try and fix the heat himself with Cheyenne's help. Of course when he gets to the roof and gets a look at the system, it's immediately clear that he's in over his head and he starts spiraling. Glenn is one of the saddest characters on the show, a cheerful guy who's life has been an endless series of disappointments that he's pushed aside and buried deep. So there's something poignant about his roof breakdown about being a "useless, pathetic, old man" even if the whole thing is ridiculous.
-Glenn and Cheyenne don't get a whole lot of stories together but they make a good combination, with Nichole Bloom's sweetness playing off of Mark Mckinney's increasing desperation nicely as Cheyenne tries to get Glenn through his existential crisis. Cheyenne reluctantly going along with Glenn's idea that the two of them are going to travel the world together is funny, but it's also very sweet. As is the moment when Cheyenne realizes the heat has been fixed, and is able to get out of the trip by convincing Glenn that this proves the store does need him, even though they didn't actually do anything.
-Garrett and Dina spend the episode holed up in Glenn's air-conditioned office and repeatedly having sex because they can't stand talking to each other. There isn't much to the story but it's funny and Colton Dunn and Lauren Ash continue to be one of the show's best pairings. By the end it looks like Garrett and Dina having casual sex is going to be a recurring thing, which can only end in beautiful disaster.
-The one false note in Glen and Cheyenne's story was Cheyenne's inability to think of any time when Glenn had helped his employees. The man literally got fired for fudging the system so that Cheyenne could get some paid maternity leave. How has she forgotten that?
-Corporate's ongoing carelessness quietly returns tonight as the representative Glenn speaks to about fixing the heat is quick to assert that it has to be a manager error since the computers don't make mistakes. Later while Glenn is on the roof trying to fix the problem, the representative calls back to inform Dina's Glenn impression that there was a computer error and it's fixed now, never once admitting fault or that they were wrong. It's a quiet beat but a very funny one that underlines the many ways in which Corporate lets down the stores they're supposed to be helping..
-Best Interstitial: Brett triggers the automatic doors to open so he can get a quick blast of cold, eventually getting joined by the security guard.
-This week in Mark McKinney is a treasure: Glenn slipping and struggling to crawl out of the spilled yogurt gets increasingly funnier the longer it goes on and the more desperate that Glenn becomes.
-Last week Glenn learned that the way he got his wife to go out with him back when they started doing was some serious sexual harassment. This week he realizes that his ancestors who "built the ships that brought the very first African-Americans to this country" were definitely slave-traders.
-Marcus really took offense to Amy telling him to go to hell over the intercom. "I'm Catholic. That's the worst place we can go".
-Glenn works on his and Cheyenne's world tour itinerary but can't decide whether to do "London, Atlantis, Hong Kong", or "London, Hong Kong, Atlantis".
Riverdale: Chapter Four: The Last Picture Show
-Riverdale has been off to a pretty good start so far but one plotline has been notably weaker than all the others. You know, the plot where Archie is sleeping with Ms. Grundy. It's been easy to ignore so far because literally everything else going on has been much better but this week it took centre-stage. The good news is it looks like it's mostly wrapped up. The bad news is it wrapped up in an incredibly clumsy, open-ended fashion that made this the weakest episode so far. Which is a shame because there was a lot to like about The Last Picture Show, it just got swallowed by the Ms. Grundy of it all.
-So after learning that Ms. Grundy was at the river July 4th weekend at the same time as Archie, Betty puts two and two together and figures out exactly what's going on because Betty isn't an idiot. So naturally, she confronts Archie about it when she sees him, his dad, and Grundy out for dinner together and Veronica also learns about the affair because why not? Archie insists that Betty just stay out of it because he knows what he's doing, which tracks because Archie likes Ms. Grundy and is blind to the implications of the situation because of that. Betty doesn't drop it though because again, she isn't an idiot and finds out that Ms. Grundy appeared out of nowhere a year ago. More digging and some light B and E courtesy of B and V reveal that Ms. Grundy's real name is Jennifer Gibson (The one time you'll see that name in this review because they don't really use it) and she has a gun hidden in her car, which Betty takes to show Archie. The show later tries to frame Betty's actions her as that of someone who's doing this out of love in a way that suggests that she was out of line for what she did but she really wasn't. Breaking into Grundy's car instead of just tipping off the police that something might be up isn't great but looking into the mysterious new teacher who seems hella sketchy isn't a bad thing. It's smart. Well sort of.
-When Archie confronts Grundy, she tells him that she was married to an abusive drunk who put her in the hospital so she fled to Riverdale for a fresh start where she fell for Archie. It's your typical tragic backstory but it has some interesting implications for the Ms. Grundy/Archie relationship. There's a compelling story to be told about a woman who was repeatedly victimized romancing a student despite it being wrong because it gives her a sense of power and control over her life that's been taken from her. It wouldn't justify what she's done but it would make it more complex and nuanced in the way that Riverdale clearly wants to make this relationship. It'd be an interesting route for the story to go. Instead things go a different, much more frustrating way.
-Where things really get off-track is when Alice Cooper finds the gun Betty took and the diary where Betty wrote about everything (Really Betty? You have a manipulative, controlling mother and you didn't think she might go snooping and find the incriminating stuff you're hiding?). Alice has the right instinct to immediately tell Fred what's going on and then confront Ms. Grundy and informing the police is the right thing to do in this situation. Except Alice's motivation is to prove she's been right about Archie this whole time because he's a dumb kid who slept with his teacher. She doesn't care about justice, she cares about being vindicated. So Betty and Fred turn against the idea of turning in Ms. Grundy even though they definitely should turn her in and Betty threatens her mother into backing down. Then they all agree to let Ms. Grundy quit and leave town instead of making this whole thing public and Betty apologizes to Archie for not leaving it alone even though she did nothing wrong (Besides letting her mother find out) with Archie still convinced there was nothing wrong about what Ms. Grundy did. Agh! SO DUMB!
-Look I get it, they're trying to make the situation complicated and not clear-cut. Fine. Again, I have no problem with Archie insisting he isn't a victim and there's nothing wrong with Ms. Grundy because he's young and doesn't know any better and hasn't been given much of a reason to think that. I get that Alice's grudge is driven by a desire to avoid having what happened to Polly happen to Betty and she's projecting a lot of stuff onto Archie. I get that Betty is still in love with Archie and that might impact her decision-making in negative ways. However the way all of this is executed makes it feel like they wanted to get out of this storyline but also take Ms. Grundy off the board in a way that left things open-ended so they came up with the most contrived solution possible and tried to cover it with character work that came across as shoddy. The scene of Alice being vulnerable in front of Betty and Betty telling her off should've been a big moment for the arc of the show but it suffered because of how we got to that moment. Lili Reinhart and Mädchen Amick deserve better than that. Also I have no clue what's going on with Fred at all beyond not wanting his son to get hurt.
-The final glimpse we get of Ms. Grundy is her ogling some more teenagers on her way out of town as Betty's diary voiceover suggests that maybe she was right about Ms. Grundy. It's supposed to be an unsettling button for the story, a dramatic reveal that Ms. Grundy probably was bad news after all. The problem is it's not the surprising move they seem to think it is and it ends things on an unclear, ambiguous note when some clarity was badly needed to put the events of the episode into better perspective. The show is clearly aiming for complexity with the Ms. Grundy character and her motivations for romancing Archie but by leaving her true intent a mystery, it just muddles everything. Was Ms. Grundy telling the truth about her abusive ex-husband or was she making it up to get Archie's sympathy? Is Archie the first student she's romanced or has this happened before? Does she have actual feelings for Archie and if not, what was she getting out of the relationship? Trying to genuinely tackle any of these questions instead of just hinting at it could've made for a much more interesting episode than the one we got. Instead the show leaves it up to us to decide what the real story was with Ms. Grundy and I'm left wondering if Riverdale even considers her to be a predator at all or if they're just unaware of how she's been coming across. Of course it's very possible and likely that Ms. Grundy will return at some point and we'll get some actual answers about her, but given what a mess this episode was I'm not sure if I would even want that.
-The show does throw people upset with this young, sexy, predatorial version of Grundy a bone by revealing that the real Geraldine Grundy (And only one Betty could find on the internet) was a polka-dot clad old woman the way nature intended. She's also been dead seven years but hey, you take what you can get.
-Of course, thankfully the Ms. Grundy story wasn't the only thing going on in Riverdale this week as Jughead tries to save the closing drive-in he loves and works at but hadn't brought up at all before now and it turns out that Riverdale has a thriving criminal element that also hadn't been brought up before. It's all fairly contrived and at odds with the idea of nothing obviously bad happening in Riverdale pre-Blossom murder but it's more interesting than the Archie plot and features Skeet Ulrich as a gang leader so I can give it a pass. A street gang is the one thing Riverdale has been missing so far and now it has it with the Southside Serpents, a group of hooligans from the bad side of town who do things like deal drugs and loudly heckle the drive-in with hiss noises or something.
-Jughead is back to being mostly brooding this week but they actually take the time to justify it and to flesh out his backstory a bit in some interesting ways so I'm officially on board with Cole Sprouse and his brooding, angsty Jughead. Jughead is someone who didn't have a great family life and the drive-in represents both good memories and a safe haven for him. That makes his futile efforts to save it compelling, even if the scene between him and Fred seems mostly there to set up exposition about Fred firing Jughead's dad for stealing on the job.
-Meanwhile Hermione Lodge gets more complicated this week as we see her dealing with a Southside Serpent and making shady backdoor business deals with that money Hiram sent her in the pilot to acquire the land the drive-in is built on. It turns out Hiram paid the Serpents to devalue the land the drive-in was on so he could snatch it up at a cheap price with the last of his money for unknown purposes. Marisol Nichols hasn't been given a whole lot to do yet as Hermione and this complicates her character nicely by making her unopposed to the kind of shady dealings needed to afford the lifestyle her and Veronica were accustomed to. It's a lot to process for Veronica however and Camila Mendes does a great job portraying Veronica as she has to grapple with the idea that both of her parents aren't who she thought they were. This should hopefully provide for a lot of good story material in the weeks to come.
-Riverdale seriously fumbled the Ms. Grundy reveal but it was almost redeemed by the twin reveals about Jughead that the episode ended on. It turns out that when he was pretentiously narrating at the beginning about the drive-in being a home for him, he was being very literal. Jughead has been living in the projection booth at the drive-in. It's a strong twist that raises a lot of interesting questions about Jughead's background and I honestly didn't see it coming. The second twist, that Skeet Ulrich's gang leader character is actually Jughead's dad was less shocking (At least it wasn't shocking to people who read casting announcements/the show's Wikipedia page and knew the character's name is F.P. Jones and he was connected to Jughead.) but it was equally well-done and suddenly gives the Southside Serpents a compelling reason to exist beyond needing a gang to cause trouble. It's a dramatically different take on Jughead's home life and father than what we've seen in the comics, but it's also much more interesting than if Jughead had a normal home life and it makes him a better character.
The big question that goes unspoken is what happen to Jellybean Jones, Jughead's sister? Is she simply living with Mr. Jones wherever he lives? Or did something bad happen there?
-I'm a bit confused as to what Jughead's job was at the drive-in. He ran the projectionist booth but he also had complete control over what movies played? Shouldn't there be a manager to make those decisions? The drive-in's dead now so it doesn't really matter but it's odd.
-Kevin gets a love interest this week. His name is Joaquin and he's a Southside Serpent so they're totally going for a star-crossed lovers thing that is going to end in disaster and I'm excited for it. Casey Cott is in dire need of getting to do something besides being the Gay Best Friend and even Kevin's dad knows it.
-This week in Absurd Cheryl Blossom Dialogue That Madelaine Petsch Inexplicably Pulls Off: "I spy with my little eye, Hermione Lodge full of secrets. Riddle me this hair models of the damned, why is Veronica's mother having a clandestine tête-à-tête with a Southside Serpent behind a dumpster at Pops?"
-Cheryl also inexplicably crashes Veronica and Kevin's friend date at the drive-in so she can hang out with them/randomly cozy up to Veronica and it's hilarious.
-The last movie the drive-in plays is Rebel Without A Cause. A very obvious and on-the-nose choice considering how much of this episode was about parental issues, but they showed the "You're tearing me apart!" scene so it's cool.
-Murder Theory Corner: The murder was on the back burner this week so we could focus on other things, though Jason was a former student of Ms. Grundy. Was she involved? Maybe. Again, I'm torn between wanting her to come back because of how terribly this story resolved and wanting her to never come back and them just washing their hands of this whole mess. Anyhow, on the suspect front, Mayor McCoy showed that she's kind of shady this week and Hal Cooper continues to seem like a very passive individual so that's also shady. Also someone broke into the Keller house and trashed the murder wall, which is interesting but also came out of nowhere.
-So after learning that Ms. Grundy was at the river July 4th weekend at the same time as Archie, Betty puts two and two together and figures out exactly what's going on because Betty isn't an idiot. So naturally, she confronts Archie about it when she sees him, his dad, and Grundy out for dinner together and Veronica also learns about the affair because why not? Archie insists that Betty just stay out of it because he knows what he's doing, which tracks because Archie likes Ms. Grundy and is blind to the implications of the situation because of that. Betty doesn't drop it though because again, she isn't an idiot and finds out that Ms. Grundy appeared out of nowhere a year ago. More digging and some light B and E courtesy of B and V reveal that Ms. Grundy's real name is Jennifer Gibson (The one time you'll see that name in this review because they don't really use it) and she has a gun hidden in her car, which Betty takes to show Archie. The show later tries to frame Betty's actions her as that of someone who's doing this out of love in a way that suggests that she was out of line for what she did but she really wasn't. Breaking into Grundy's car instead of just tipping off the police that something might be up isn't great but looking into the mysterious new teacher who seems hella sketchy isn't a bad thing. It's smart. Well sort of.
-When Archie confronts Grundy, she tells him that she was married to an abusive drunk who put her in the hospital so she fled to Riverdale for a fresh start where she fell for Archie. It's your typical tragic backstory but it has some interesting implications for the Ms. Grundy/Archie relationship. There's a compelling story to be told about a woman who was repeatedly victimized romancing a student despite it being wrong because it gives her a sense of power and control over her life that's been taken from her. It wouldn't justify what she's done but it would make it more complex and nuanced in the way that Riverdale clearly wants to make this relationship. It'd be an interesting route for the story to go. Instead things go a different, much more frustrating way.
-Where things really get off-track is when Alice Cooper finds the gun Betty took and the diary where Betty wrote about everything (Really Betty? You have a manipulative, controlling mother and you didn't think she might go snooping and find the incriminating stuff you're hiding?). Alice has the right instinct to immediately tell Fred what's going on and then confront Ms. Grundy and informing the police is the right thing to do in this situation. Except Alice's motivation is to prove she's been right about Archie this whole time because he's a dumb kid who slept with his teacher. She doesn't care about justice, she cares about being vindicated. So Betty and Fred turn against the idea of turning in Ms. Grundy even though they definitely should turn her in and Betty threatens her mother into backing down. Then they all agree to let Ms. Grundy quit and leave town instead of making this whole thing public and Betty apologizes to Archie for not leaving it alone even though she did nothing wrong (Besides letting her mother find out) with Archie still convinced there was nothing wrong about what Ms. Grundy did. Agh! SO DUMB!
-Look I get it, they're trying to make the situation complicated and not clear-cut. Fine. Again, I have no problem with Archie insisting he isn't a victim and there's nothing wrong with Ms. Grundy because he's young and doesn't know any better and hasn't been given much of a reason to think that. I get that Alice's grudge is driven by a desire to avoid having what happened to Polly happen to Betty and she's projecting a lot of stuff onto Archie. I get that Betty is still in love with Archie and that might impact her decision-making in negative ways. However the way all of this is executed makes it feel like they wanted to get out of this storyline but also take Ms. Grundy off the board in a way that left things open-ended so they came up with the most contrived solution possible and tried to cover it with character work that came across as shoddy. The scene of Alice being vulnerable in front of Betty and Betty telling her off should've been a big moment for the arc of the show but it suffered because of how we got to that moment. Lili Reinhart and Mädchen Amick deserve better than that. Also I have no clue what's going on with Fred at all beyond not wanting his son to get hurt.
-The final glimpse we get of Ms. Grundy is her ogling some more teenagers on her way out of town as Betty's diary voiceover suggests that maybe she was right about Ms. Grundy. It's supposed to be an unsettling button for the story, a dramatic reveal that Ms. Grundy probably was bad news after all. The problem is it's not the surprising move they seem to think it is and it ends things on an unclear, ambiguous note when some clarity was badly needed to put the events of the episode into better perspective. The show is clearly aiming for complexity with the Ms. Grundy character and her motivations for romancing Archie but by leaving her true intent a mystery, it just muddles everything. Was Ms. Grundy telling the truth about her abusive ex-husband or was she making it up to get Archie's sympathy? Is Archie the first student she's romanced or has this happened before? Does she have actual feelings for Archie and if not, what was she getting out of the relationship? Trying to genuinely tackle any of these questions instead of just hinting at it could've made for a much more interesting episode than the one we got. Instead the show leaves it up to us to decide what the real story was with Ms. Grundy and I'm left wondering if Riverdale even considers her to be a predator at all or if they're just unaware of how she's been coming across. Of course it's very possible and likely that Ms. Grundy will return at some point and we'll get some actual answers about her, but given what a mess this episode was I'm not sure if I would even want that.
-The show does throw people upset with this young, sexy, predatorial version of Grundy a bone by revealing that the real Geraldine Grundy (And only one Betty could find on the internet) was a polka-dot clad old woman the way nature intended. She's also been dead seven years but hey, you take what you can get.
-Of course, thankfully the Ms. Grundy story wasn't the only thing going on in Riverdale this week as Jughead tries to save the closing drive-in he loves and works at but hadn't brought up at all before now and it turns out that Riverdale has a thriving criminal element that also hadn't been brought up before. It's all fairly contrived and at odds with the idea of nothing obviously bad happening in Riverdale pre-Blossom murder but it's more interesting than the Archie plot and features Skeet Ulrich as a gang leader so I can give it a pass. A street gang is the one thing Riverdale has been missing so far and now it has it with the Southside Serpents, a group of hooligans from the bad side of town who do things like deal drugs and loudly heckle the drive-in with hiss noises or something.
-Jughead is back to being mostly brooding this week but they actually take the time to justify it and to flesh out his backstory a bit in some interesting ways so I'm officially on board with Cole Sprouse and his brooding, angsty Jughead. Jughead is someone who didn't have a great family life and the drive-in represents both good memories and a safe haven for him. That makes his futile efforts to save it compelling, even if the scene between him and Fred seems mostly there to set up exposition about Fred firing Jughead's dad for stealing on the job.
-Meanwhile Hermione Lodge gets more complicated this week as we see her dealing with a Southside Serpent and making shady backdoor business deals with that money Hiram sent her in the pilot to acquire the land the drive-in is built on. It turns out Hiram paid the Serpents to devalue the land the drive-in was on so he could snatch it up at a cheap price with the last of his money for unknown purposes. Marisol Nichols hasn't been given a whole lot to do yet as Hermione and this complicates her character nicely by making her unopposed to the kind of shady dealings needed to afford the lifestyle her and Veronica were accustomed to. It's a lot to process for Veronica however and Camila Mendes does a great job portraying Veronica as she has to grapple with the idea that both of her parents aren't who she thought they were. This should hopefully provide for a lot of good story material in the weeks to come.
-Riverdale seriously fumbled the Ms. Grundy reveal but it was almost redeemed by the twin reveals about Jughead that the episode ended on. It turns out that when he was pretentiously narrating at the beginning about the drive-in being a home for him, he was being very literal. Jughead has been living in the projection booth at the drive-in. It's a strong twist that raises a lot of interesting questions about Jughead's background and I honestly didn't see it coming. The second twist, that Skeet Ulrich's gang leader character is actually Jughead's dad was less shocking (At least it wasn't shocking to people who read casting announcements/the show's Wikipedia page and knew the character's name is F.P. Jones and he was connected to Jughead.) but it was equally well-done and suddenly gives the Southside Serpents a compelling reason to exist beyond needing a gang to cause trouble. It's a dramatically different take on Jughead's home life and father than what we've seen in the comics, but it's also much more interesting than if Jughead had a normal home life and it makes him a better character.
The big question that goes unspoken is what happen to Jellybean Jones, Jughead's sister? Is she simply living with Mr. Jones wherever he lives? Or did something bad happen there?
-I'm a bit confused as to what Jughead's job was at the drive-in. He ran the projectionist booth but he also had complete control over what movies played? Shouldn't there be a manager to make those decisions? The drive-in's dead now so it doesn't really matter but it's odd.
-Kevin gets a love interest this week. His name is Joaquin and he's a Southside Serpent so they're totally going for a star-crossed lovers thing that is going to end in disaster and I'm excited for it. Casey Cott is in dire need of getting to do something besides being the Gay Best Friend and even Kevin's dad knows it.
-This week in Absurd Cheryl Blossom Dialogue That Madelaine Petsch Inexplicably Pulls Off: "I spy with my little eye, Hermione Lodge full of secrets. Riddle me this hair models of the damned, why is Veronica's mother having a clandestine tête-à-tête with a Southside Serpent behind a dumpster at Pops?"
-Cheryl also inexplicably crashes Veronica and Kevin's friend date at the drive-in so she can hang out with them/randomly cozy up to Veronica and it's hilarious.
-The last movie the drive-in plays is Rebel Without A Cause. A very obvious and on-the-nose choice considering how much of this episode was about parental issues, but they showed the "You're tearing me apart!" scene so it's cool.
-Murder Theory Corner: The murder was on the back burner this week so we could focus on other things, though Jason was a former student of Ms. Grundy. Was she involved? Maybe. Again, I'm torn between wanting her to come back because of how terribly this story resolved and wanting her to never come back and them just washing their hands of this whole mess. Anyhow, on the suspect front, Mayor McCoy showed that she's kind of shady this week and Hal Cooper continues to seem like a very passive individual so that's also shady. Also someone broke into the Keller house and trashed the murder wall, which is interesting but also came out of nowhere.
Tuesday 14 February 2017
Jane The Virgin Lets The Light Back In For Chapter 55
-This week in titles: Jane The Widow. Definitely the saddest title so far but it had to be done and the narrator is quick to assure us not to worry. Jane's got this.
-"It will always feel different. You will always feel different. But your life will be beautiful again... just in different ways". "Now come. We need to let some light in. Just a little bit". As "Jane" officially moves into the post-Michael stage of the show, it's only right that we begin with Alba giving Jane (and by extension us) assurance as she's done so many times in the past. Alba is the only person in Jane's life who has gone through this kind of loss so she's the only one who can say with authority that Jane can come back from this even if she'll always miss Michael and the only one who can say with authority that Jane has to come back from this for the sake of her child. It's a strong opening that establishes new emotional grounding for the show going forward even as we jump ahead three years. Michael is gone and it will always hurt but that doesn't mean the light can never come back.
-Some people are going to take issue with the fact that after the opening flashback, Michael's death is backgrounded and we're back to light-hearted antics in our new now and I understand that. It's been three years for the characters to adjust but only a week for us so it feels weird going right from the most heartbreaking scene the show ever did to troublesome Mateo and Rogelio's fake wedding like nothing. However like I said last week, I feel the time jump was both a smart decision and the only decision the show could've made and I'm standing by that statement this week. "Jane" has never been afraid to tackle dark, serious subject matter, but it's always managed to filter that darkness through a light, optimistic goodness that would feel out of place if they spent even one episode fully exploring the immediate aftermath of Michael's death before jumping ahead, let alone how it would feel if they hadn't jumped ahead at all. It would make for bleak, sad television even if they tried to go for the "celebration of Michael's life" route, any jokes or attempts at lightness would feel forced and any efforts for an uplifting conclusion would feel disingenuous. By jumping ahead and giving us mere glimpses of Jane when her grief was at it's most powerful we still get to see the impact of Michael's absence on Jane's life and how she manages to overcome it, but we also get to see how she's changed and grown a few years removed from the event and all the different ways in which her life has become beautiful again, just like Alba promised. It's a more nuanced, complex approach that allows "Jane" to explore this huge loss while remaining the show it was and while it's going to rub some people the wrong way, it works for me. I'm a bit of an emotionally detached robot though, so maybe that's why I'm fine with it.
-Jane hasn't actually changed that much as a person in the past three years, at least not in the ways that matter most. She still loves her family above all else, tries to do the right thing for her son, is very opinionated and is a big fan of vigorous research. She seems older and less idealistic than she used to be but she's still our Jane and Gina Rodriguez is as terrific as ever giving you a strong sense of who Jane is as a character now.
-The big character shifts come from Rafael and Petra. Rafael has grown a great beard (Jane hates it but she's wrong.) and has come out of his time in prison as more peaceful and easy-going about things, "Zen Rafael" as Jane and Petra call him. After two and a half seasons of watching Rafael in a constant state of stress and pain and making poor choices because of that stress, it's refreshing to see Justin Baldoni switch things up and play a mellow version of the character, albeit a version who still knows how to tap into the passion and ferocity of his old self when needed, and Baldoni is clearly having a lot of fun with the change. Petra meanwhile has become the alpha mom/business woman we always knew she could be, reinventing the Marbella as a family-friendly pirate themed hotel, raising two perfect, well-behaved daughters (Anna and Ellie because she finally got tired of the Frozen connection), running the PTA at the preschool Mateo and the twins go to, and looking fierce and stylish while doing it. The insecurity and doubts that have plagued the character for so much of the season are mostly gone and while she still makes questionable relationship choices (She's hate-sleeping with Chuck, the sleazy owner of the adults only Fairwick hotel next door.), she's in a much better place than she's been for much of the series and it's nice to see.
-Of course the biggest shift is from Mateo, who has become a bit of a little terror these last three years which makes up the biggest story of the episode as Jane and Rafael try to handle him. Jane has been trying an incentive-based system of marking days as "sun" or "storm" (A week with five sunny days gets Mateo a treat) but it's clear it isn't working. When Mateo's teacher suggests getting him an aide though, Jane and Rafael are resistant and try other methods to get Mateo under control which only cause new problems. Mateo's not a bad kid by any means, as the episode assures us by showing how sweet he can be under all the bluster. He just has impulse control issues that get him into trouble. Jane's concerned though that she's failed him and hasn't been a good enough mother in the wake of all that's happened, which is what's keeping her from really being able to do something about Mateo's problems. In the end though they spring for the aide and it should be interesting to see how Mateo develops through the rest of the season.
-Season 2 kept feinting towards a Jane/Petra friendship only to have it ultimately be derailed and initially it seemed like that was still the case three years on. Jane is frustrated by Petra's efforts to get involved with disciplining Mateo and the way she seems to hold all the help she gives over them. It's an interesting story that goes deep into the twisted family dynamic between Jane, Rafael, and Petra but Jane and Petra at odds is a story that has been done over and over again so it's a relief when Petra assures Jane she has not dropped the ball with parenting because of Michael's death and we see the unspoken truth about their dynamic. It turns out when Rafael went to prison a couple years ago, Jane and Petra made a pact to support each other and to have weekly brunches no matter what was going on between them or in their lives. They may not always see eye to eye but they have become real friends who care about each other and help each other, even if that only comes out once a week. It's an excellent twist and seeing Jane at brunch with her new family as the narrator repeats what Alba said about Jane's life being beautiful again is the most heartwarming moment of the episode.
-The Jane and Rafael dynamic has also changed and grown in the last three years. They still have different ideas about how to raise Mateo but they're more collaborative and supportive now, with Rafael less eager to be combative than he was in the first part of the season. When Jane has a Michael-related breakdown near the end of the episode, it's Rafael who knows exactly what to say to get her to snap out of it and spring into action. They've become best friends as Jane puts it, and it's good to see them so cordial with each other. Their friendship raises a big question though, which is how long until the show starts building to a romance between them again now that Michael's out of the picture? As someone who started as Team Rafael, I hope the answer is never. Seeing them as platonic co-parents is much more interesting than seeing them in a relationship. In addition, no matter how well it was done, it'd feel like a slap in the face to everyone who loved Michael from the get go. It's not that Jane shouldn't love or date again and maybe Rafael would be a more appealing prospect a year from now, but the writers should be careful not to rush anything. They're pretty smart though so I'm not too concerned.
-Jane still has her dream publishing job, but it's turned out to be kind of a nightmare. It does get her a chance to be in a showcase for authors to watch though, which is where the episode springs a big twist. Jane's written a book in the three years, but it's not the one we watched her work on about Alba and her family, it's a book about her relationship with Michael, only with a dramatically different ending. After an episode spent on lighter thoughts and complications, it's a swift gut punch that's more effective than it would've been if the episode was mostly about grieving. Jane didn't get the happy ending with Michael she deserved so she made one and the scene where she finds the strength to read it in public after an assist from Rafael is just as effective as last week's scene where she found out about Michael's death. It's also a good reminder from the show that no, we won't be moving past Michael anytime soon, especially since Jane has been offered a book deal for it. Jane's on the cusp of achieving one of her biggest dreams and it's wonderful but also bittersweet.
-Jane and Professor Donaldson are actual friends now that Jane's done the grad program and Donaldson is no longer hiding how much she supports Jane and it's wonderful.
-So the wedding is Rogelio and Darci's but it's not a real wedding, it's all show for the supposed series finale of The Del La Vega Factor Factor. Rogelio and Darci can't stand each other and can't get through a conversation without shouting when the cameras aren't rolling. It turns out the pressures of doing the reality show, the way the show has portrayed Xo as a jealous ex thanks to an out-of-context clip and fertility problems have soured Del La Vega Factor. As a fan of that couple it's a bit disappointing, but it should lead to interesting stories and Justina Machado and Jamie Camill are still great together, even when they're fighting and we're bound to get a lot more of them fighting when Rogelio agrees to a 3rd season of the show to finally get his Passions of Santos remake, The Passions of Steve (One of the best joke names the show's ever done) off the ground.
-Xo and Bruce are living together and it's going well but Xo and Rogelio are fighting because of the aforementioned false portrayal of her on the reality show that has caused her to become a hated figure among fans of the show and Xo's assumption that as a producer on the show, Rogelio was complicit in making her that way. Xo and Rogelio at odds is nothing new so happily, it doesn't last long when Xo learns that Rogelio turned down the 3rd season of Factor Factor at the expense of his dream so she wouldn't have to put up with more public scrutiny. This sacrifice is enough to get her to make a sacrifice of her own and give Rogelio her blessing to do another season of the show, while reestablishing their bond. The Xo and Rogelio bond has been getting downplayed so far this season while Rogelio pursued his dream of having a kid, but could those two be finding their way back to each other? Since we also learn that the real reason Rogelio and Darci haven't had any kids was that Rogelio just could bring himself to commit that fully to Darci, it seems possible. Look out Bruce.
-Oh poor Scott. When Rafael brings him up, you know there's more to the story than Petra's "he moved away after he and Anezka split" explanation, especially when they remind us of him blackmailing Petra, and as the last scene keeps cutting back to the Marbella treasure hunt you know something will go wrong but it's still a shock when his skeleton turns up on the beach (Or at least a skeleton wearing a vest that says Scott on it. We have no clue if that's really him yet.). The twisty crime mystery stuff has been on the backburner this season after growing stale in season 2 but the apparent death of Scott brings it roaring back to life with a fun, new mystery that ties in a lot of our characters much more organically than Sin Rostro and Mutter did. Who killed Scott? Was it Petra? Anezka? Magda? Rose? Rafael? Swashbuckler Sean? Were they also behind the attempted sabotage of the Marbella's expansion? It gives the show a lot to play with in the coming weeks and I can't remember the last time I was excited about the more overtly telenovella stuff in the show.
-Hey, Minka Kelley is here! She's plays Rafael's long-term girlfriend who owns a greeting card company and who has never fought with Rafael. She gets almost nothing to do in this episode (Which the narrator points out when she pops up near the episode's end) but hopefully that changes soon.
-Jane and Mateo are back living in the Villaneuva home with Alba, which is totally understandable but I hope Jane gets out of there again before the season ends, if only so we can finally explore the idea of Alba having to live on her own that the last episode feinted towards.
-If there was any doubt that Jennie Urman and the "Jane" writers know what they're doing, hopefully this stellar episode erased them. It's a new chapter for "Jane" and it's different, but still beautiful.
-"It will always feel different. You will always feel different. But your life will be beautiful again... just in different ways". "Now come. We need to let some light in. Just a little bit". As "Jane" officially moves into the post-Michael stage of the show, it's only right that we begin with Alba giving Jane (and by extension us) assurance as she's done so many times in the past. Alba is the only person in Jane's life who has gone through this kind of loss so she's the only one who can say with authority that Jane can come back from this even if she'll always miss Michael and the only one who can say with authority that Jane has to come back from this for the sake of her child. It's a strong opening that establishes new emotional grounding for the show going forward even as we jump ahead three years. Michael is gone and it will always hurt but that doesn't mean the light can never come back.
-Some people are going to take issue with the fact that after the opening flashback, Michael's death is backgrounded and we're back to light-hearted antics in our new now and I understand that. It's been three years for the characters to adjust but only a week for us so it feels weird going right from the most heartbreaking scene the show ever did to troublesome Mateo and Rogelio's fake wedding like nothing. However like I said last week, I feel the time jump was both a smart decision and the only decision the show could've made and I'm standing by that statement this week. "Jane" has never been afraid to tackle dark, serious subject matter, but it's always managed to filter that darkness through a light, optimistic goodness that would feel out of place if they spent even one episode fully exploring the immediate aftermath of Michael's death before jumping ahead, let alone how it would feel if they hadn't jumped ahead at all. It would make for bleak, sad television even if they tried to go for the "celebration of Michael's life" route, any jokes or attempts at lightness would feel forced and any efforts for an uplifting conclusion would feel disingenuous. By jumping ahead and giving us mere glimpses of Jane when her grief was at it's most powerful we still get to see the impact of Michael's absence on Jane's life and how she manages to overcome it, but we also get to see how she's changed and grown a few years removed from the event and all the different ways in which her life has become beautiful again, just like Alba promised. It's a more nuanced, complex approach that allows "Jane" to explore this huge loss while remaining the show it was and while it's going to rub some people the wrong way, it works for me. I'm a bit of an emotionally detached robot though, so maybe that's why I'm fine with it.
-Jane hasn't actually changed that much as a person in the past three years, at least not in the ways that matter most. She still loves her family above all else, tries to do the right thing for her son, is very opinionated and is a big fan of vigorous research. She seems older and less idealistic than she used to be but she's still our Jane and Gina Rodriguez is as terrific as ever giving you a strong sense of who Jane is as a character now.
-The big character shifts come from Rafael and Petra. Rafael has grown a great beard (Jane hates it but she's wrong.) and has come out of his time in prison as more peaceful and easy-going about things, "Zen Rafael" as Jane and Petra call him. After two and a half seasons of watching Rafael in a constant state of stress and pain and making poor choices because of that stress, it's refreshing to see Justin Baldoni switch things up and play a mellow version of the character, albeit a version who still knows how to tap into the passion and ferocity of his old self when needed, and Baldoni is clearly having a lot of fun with the change. Petra meanwhile has become the alpha mom/business woman we always knew she could be, reinventing the Marbella as a family-friendly pirate themed hotel, raising two perfect, well-behaved daughters (Anna and Ellie because she finally got tired of the Frozen connection), running the PTA at the preschool Mateo and the twins go to, and looking fierce and stylish while doing it. The insecurity and doubts that have plagued the character for so much of the season are mostly gone and while she still makes questionable relationship choices (She's hate-sleeping with Chuck, the sleazy owner of the adults only Fairwick hotel next door.), she's in a much better place than she's been for much of the series and it's nice to see.
-Of course the biggest shift is from Mateo, who has become a bit of a little terror these last three years which makes up the biggest story of the episode as Jane and Rafael try to handle him. Jane has been trying an incentive-based system of marking days as "sun" or "storm" (A week with five sunny days gets Mateo a treat) but it's clear it isn't working. When Mateo's teacher suggests getting him an aide though, Jane and Rafael are resistant and try other methods to get Mateo under control which only cause new problems. Mateo's not a bad kid by any means, as the episode assures us by showing how sweet he can be under all the bluster. He just has impulse control issues that get him into trouble. Jane's concerned though that she's failed him and hasn't been a good enough mother in the wake of all that's happened, which is what's keeping her from really being able to do something about Mateo's problems. In the end though they spring for the aide and it should be interesting to see how Mateo develops through the rest of the season.
-Season 2 kept feinting towards a Jane/Petra friendship only to have it ultimately be derailed and initially it seemed like that was still the case three years on. Jane is frustrated by Petra's efforts to get involved with disciplining Mateo and the way she seems to hold all the help she gives over them. It's an interesting story that goes deep into the twisted family dynamic between Jane, Rafael, and Petra but Jane and Petra at odds is a story that has been done over and over again so it's a relief when Petra assures Jane she has not dropped the ball with parenting because of Michael's death and we see the unspoken truth about their dynamic. It turns out when Rafael went to prison a couple years ago, Jane and Petra made a pact to support each other and to have weekly brunches no matter what was going on between them or in their lives. They may not always see eye to eye but they have become real friends who care about each other and help each other, even if that only comes out once a week. It's an excellent twist and seeing Jane at brunch with her new family as the narrator repeats what Alba said about Jane's life being beautiful again is the most heartwarming moment of the episode.
-The Jane and Rafael dynamic has also changed and grown in the last three years. They still have different ideas about how to raise Mateo but they're more collaborative and supportive now, with Rafael less eager to be combative than he was in the first part of the season. When Jane has a Michael-related breakdown near the end of the episode, it's Rafael who knows exactly what to say to get her to snap out of it and spring into action. They've become best friends as Jane puts it, and it's good to see them so cordial with each other. Their friendship raises a big question though, which is how long until the show starts building to a romance between them again now that Michael's out of the picture? As someone who started as Team Rafael, I hope the answer is never. Seeing them as platonic co-parents is much more interesting than seeing them in a relationship. In addition, no matter how well it was done, it'd feel like a slap in the face to everyone who loved Michael from the get go. It's not that Jane shouldn't love or date again and maybe Rafael would be a more appealing prospect a year from now, but the writers should be careful not to rush anything. They're pretty smart though so I'm not too concerned.
-Jane still has her dream publishing job, but it's turned out to be kind of a nightmare. It does get her a chance to be in a showcase for authors to watch though, which is where the episode springs a big twist. Jane's written a book in the three years, but it's not the one we watched her work on about Alba and her family, it's a book about her relationship with Michael, only with a dramatically different ending. After an episode spent on lighter thoughts and complications, it's a swift gut punch that's more effective than it would've been if the episode was mostly about grieving. Jane didn't get the happy ending with Michael she deserved so she made one and the scene where she finds the strength to read it in public after an assist from Rafael is just as effective as last week's scene where she found out about Michael's death. It's also a good reminder from the show that no, we won't be moving past Michael anytime soon, especially since Jane has been offered a book deal for it. Jane's on the cusp of achieving one of her biggest dreams and it's wonderful but also bittersweet.
-Jane and Professor Donaldson are actual friends now that Jane's done the grad program and Donaldson is no longer hiding how much she supports Jane and it's wonderful.
-So the wedding is Rogelio and Darci's but it's not a real wedding, it's all show for the supposed series finale of The Del La Vega Factor Factor. Rogelio and Darci can't stand each other and can't get through a conversation without shouting when the cameras aren't rolling. It turns out the pressures of doing the reality show, the way the show has portrayed Xo as a jealous ex thanks to an out-of-context clip and fertility problems have soured Del La Vega Factor. As a fan of that couple it's a bit disappointing, but it should lead to interesting stories and Justina Machado and Jamie Camill are still great together, even when they're fighting and we're bound to get a lot more of them fighting when Rogelio agrees to a 3rd season of the show to finally get his Passions of Santos remake, The Passions of Steve (One of the best joke names the show's ever done) off the ground.
-Xo and Bruce are living together and it's going well but Xo and Rogelio are fighting because of the aforementioned false portrayal of her on the reality show that has caused her to become a hated figure among fans of the show and Xo's assumption that as a producer on the show, Rogelio was complicit in making her that way. Xo and Rogelio at odds is nothing new so happily, it doesn't last long when Xo learns that Rogelio turned down the 3rd season of Factor Factor at the expense of his dream so she wouldn't have to put up with more public scrutiny. This sacrifice is enough to get her to make a sacrifice of her own and give Rogelio her blessing to do another season of the show, while reestablishing their bond. The Xo and Rogelio bond has been getting downplayed so far this season while Rogelio pursued his dream of having a kid, but could those two be finding their way back to each other? Since we also learn that the real reason Rogelio and Darci haven't had any kids was that Rogelio just could bring himself to commit that fully to Darci, it seems possible. Look out Bruce.
-Oh poor Scott. When Rafael brings him up, you know there's more to the story than Petra's "he moved away after he and Anezka split" explanation, especially when they remind us of him blackmailing Petra, and as the last scene keeps cutting back to the Marbella treasure hunt you know something will go wrong but it's still a shock when his skeleton turns up on the beach (Or at least a skeleton wearing a vest that says Scott on it. We have no clue if that's really him yet.). The twisty crime mystery stuff has been on the backburner this season after growing stale in season 2 but the apparent death of Scott brings it roaring back to life with a fun, new mystery that ties in a lot of our characters much more organically than Sin Rostro and Mutter did. Who killed Scott? Was it Petra? Anezka? Magda? Rose? Rafael? Swashbuckler Sean? Were they also behind the attempted sabotage of the Marbella's expansion? It gives the show a lot to play with in the coming weeks and I can't remember the last time I was excited about the more overtly telenovella stuff in the show.
-Hey, Minka Kelley is here! She's plays Rafael's long-term girlfriend who owns a greeting card company and who has never fought with Rafael. She gets almost nothing to do in this episode (Which the narrator points out when she pops up near the episode's end) but hopefully that changes soon.
-Jane and Mateo are back living in the Villaneuva home with Alba, which is totally understandable but I hope Jane gets out of there again before the season ends, if only so we can finally explore the idea of Alba having to live on her own that the last episode feinted towards.
-If there was any doubt that Jennie Urman and the "Jane" writers know what they're doing, hopefully this stellar episode erased them. It's a new chapter for "Jane" and it's different, but still beautiful.
Saturday 11 February 2017
Superstore Looks For Love on Valentine's Day
-Romance is tricky. It can be hard to tell when someone is interested, where you stand with someone, when someone might be misrepresenting key things about themselves, when someone in a relationship is feeling neglected, or if you've crossed a line in your efforts to create romance. All of this confusion can get amplified on Valentine's Day and all of it is on display on another very funny episode of Superstore that has a couple smart things to say too.
-The episode is kicked off when one of the Cloud Nine employees, Miles, proposes to another one Lisa via flash mob. This is the second time in Superstore that someone has proposed via flash mob and it's even more lame and overdone now than it was when Bo did it to Cheyenne back in season 1 (Though everyone just goes with her assertion that flash mobs were cool a year ago), which is used for comedic effect. And even though Lisa was in the bathroom causing Miles to have to start the whole thing over, it gets Glenn wondering what other employees might be good couples. Amy tries to dissuade him on the grounds that matchmaking is a terrible idea in general, especially at work, but when she sees kindly elderly greeter Arthur pining for Myrtle, she can't help but get involved. Her own marriage might be on the rocks but maybe if she's able to get the two oldest people at work together, she'll know love is still out there and the day doesn't have to be a complete waste. So Amy and Glenn engage in typical matchmaker activities, like arranging Arthur and Myrtle to work together, watching them through the cameras, and filling Myrtle's locker with stuff allegedly from Arthur, but the storyline takes a sudden turn when Myrtle breaks down crying because Arthur won't leave her alone and files sexual harassment complaints against all of them.
-Sexual Harassment is a thing that a lot of TV comedies don't tend to take that seriously. Even the first season of Superstore had a couple scenes where harassment was basically played as a joke. While Valentine's Day has plenty of jokes related to the subject though, none of them are at the expense of the victim or imply that the actions taken are OK. When Glenn and Amy are on the phone with HR, suddenly all their innocuous matchmaking activities take on a sinister turn ("She's alleging that you used your positions of authority to force her to work with an employee in hopes of engaging in a physical relationship with him. And she also claims you broke into her locker. Now, what's your side of the story?" "Um, factually similar." "Yeah, but you can prove anything with facts."). Because Arthur seems so sweet, Amy has a hard time believing he could have said lewd things to Myrtle and when the offending comment turns out to be him complimenting Myrtle's sweater, Amy is convinced there was a misunderstanding, ignoring Myrtle's (accurate) insistence that he was talking about her breasts. Because she doesn't want to be an accidental harasser, Amy ignores the fact that Myrtle felt uncomfortable, regardless of Arthur's intention and winds up accidentally victim blaming. It's a smart story that shows how easy it is to enable or aid harassment, even if we have no idea that's what we're doing.
-Eventually Amy lands everyone in a meeting watching a training video on sexual harassment with Jeff supervising in the episode's best scene. Superstore has been getting better and better at doing these big meeting scenes and this is probably their best one yet as everyone tries to determine proper boundaries for asking someone else in the workplace and Michael Bunin plays the harried straight man (Always an excellent use of Jeff). As Amy continues to attempt to defend herself until Arthur winds up going on at length about Myrtle's breasts during his apologizing, Dina attempts to create a database of who's interested in who so no one crosses a line by asking out someone not interested, Miles and Lisa discover they have differing opinions on having kids, and Glenn comes to realize that asking his wife out every day for a year before his father threatened to fire her if she didn't say yes constitutes harassment, everything keeps piling up and up in a cacophony of hilarious chaos that shows how complicated finding romance can be. It's a masterstroke of writing, direction, and acting and it'll be a while before this particular meeting gets topped.
-Arthur is played by Bernie Koppell, an acting veteran best known from his roles on Get Smart and The Love Boat. Koppell is delightful, giving Arthur a sweetness and vulnerability that makes it understandable why Amy would be so skeptical to believe Myrtle and her harassment claims. His turn when he starts going on about Myrtle's breasts also feels believable and earned.
-The Sandra/Jeff fauxmance saga continues as Sandra sends herself a bunch of expensive gifts from "Jeff", including a 140 dollar bouquet, puppies, and a rose gold watch. Even though Mateo knows that those gifts aren't real, he continues to be jealous of Sandra's fake relationship with Jeff because it seems better and more romantic than Mateo's actual relationship with Jeff. Mateo's been dating Jeff for a while and he's not sure where they stand or where it's going so he lets himself get caught up in the fake version of Jeff who sends extravagant gifts even though the relationship is secret These feelings are also egged on by Garrett, who is let in on the secret by Cheyenne and proceeds to just mess with Mateo for the episode. When Mateo is cold to Jeff though, Jeff lets it slip that he considers Mateo to be his boyfriend and it changes everything. Suddenly Mateo isn't some guy dating Jeff, Mateo is Jeff's boyfriend. It's a rare moment of vulnerability from the character that Nico Santos plays terrifically. And once Mateo has a real sense of commitment from Jeff, he feels secure enough that his relationship is real to embrace Sandra's fake relationship. It's a nice turn to a story that was in need of a new direction though I'm curious how long they intend to keep this storyline up.
-Jonah being sent undercover by Dina to catch a woman he's convinced is a repeat shoplifter, only to fall for her and start courting her instead is a small story but a good one with lots of funny Jonah/Dina interactions. Lauren Ash plays Dina like a frustrated police captain/handler in a crime movie and it's terrific. The ending is also great thanks to the fact that we never find out if Shannon was actually a shoplifter or not. There's a nice bit where Jonah realizes his wallet is gone seemingly confirming their initial suspicions, only to immediately remember his wallet was actually in his other pocket, because his chiropractor had recommended switching it up. Typical Jonah.
-Cheyenne has the smallest of stories about working as a greeter so Arthur can work with Myrtle and her growing excitement with each person she greets is delightful.
-When it comes to the Jonah/Amy "Will They Won't They", Superstore likes to zig where you think they'll zag. Their big scene together at the end comes to the two of them just taking out all their frustrations on the Valentine's Day merchandise in brutal and hilarious fashion. There's no awkward exchanges or hidden glances, just two friends fighting back against the most romantic day of the year. As they finish though, we see Brett setting up the merchandise for St. Patrick's Day and the message is clear: for all the meaning and stress we might put into Valentine's Day, in the end it's just another day.
-Best Interstitial: A service dog just goes to down ripping up a teddy bear.
-This week in Mark McKinney is a treasure: Glenn's tearful phone call to his very confused wife after he realizes the dark implications behind how they got together. "Jerusha, our whole marriage is based on a sex crime. No, no, no, you only think you love me. You were my victim!"
-Amy's new short hair officially debuts this week and it's terrific.
-Glenn apparently gets Cupid and the love bug mixed up and is convinced that Cupid spreads his love through bites, which is hilariously creepy.
-The fact that we did a sexual harassment episode and there was no sign of Creepy Sal (As there hasn't been all season) is probably confirmation that they've discontinued the character. Which is a good thing because he was not a great character and it was not believable that he had managed to not get fired for all his creepiness.
-Amy's effort to explain what happened with Myrtle to customers does not go well. "Okay, none of you know the story. She asked me to set her up, so I set her up. She was asking me for it. She asked for it."
-Once again, Garrett is more interested in the people involved with the training video they watch than the content of said video and Jeff is fine with trying to answer the question. "I got a question. The actress in the video, does she get paid per video, or is it more of a flat rate for the whole day kind of thing?" "My guess is flat rate."
-And later: "Found her on IMDB. She was on NCIS. She played "Lady in Pool." Acting life is tough."
-Best line delivery of the week goes to Colton Dunn for "Why does everyone want to f**k Jeff?"
-The episode is kicked off when one of the Cloud Nine employees, Miles, proposes to another one Lisa via flash mob. This is the second time in Superstore that someone has proposed via flash mob and it's even more lame and overdone now than it was when Bo did it to Cheyenne back in season 1 (Though everyone just goes with her assertion that flash mobs were cool a year ago), which is used for comedic effect. And even though Lisa was in the bathroom causing Miles to have to start the whole thing over, it gets Glenn wondering what other employees might be good couples. Amy tries to dissuade him on the grounds that matchmaking is a terrible idea in general, especially at work, but when she sees kindly elderly greeter Arthur pining for Myrtle, she can't help but get involved. Her own marriage might be on the rocks but maybe if she's able to get the two oldest people at work together, she'll know love is still out there and the day doesn't have to be a complete waste. So Amy and Glenn engage in typical matchmaker activities, like arranging Arthur and Myrtle to work together, watching them through the cameras, and filling Myrtle's locker with stuff allegedly from Arthur, but the storyline takes a sudden turn when Myrtle breaks down crying because Arthur won't leave her alone and files sexual harassment complaints against all of them.
-Sexual Harassment is a thing that a lot of TV comedies don't tend to take that seriously. Even the first season of Superstore had a couple scenes where harassment was basically played as a joke. While Valentine's Day has plenty of jokes related to the subject though, none of them are at the expense of the victim or imply that the actions taken are OK. When Glenn and Amy are on the phone with HR, suddenly all their innocuous matchmaking activities take on a sinister turn ("She's alleging that you used your positions of authority to force her to work with an employee in hopes of engaging in a physical relationship with him. And she also claims you broke into her locker. Now, what's your side of the story?" "Um, factually similar." "Yeah, but you can prove anything with facts."). Because Arthur seems so sweet, Amy has a hard time believing he could have said lewd things to Myrtle and when the offending comment turns out to be him complimenting Myrtle's sweater, Amy is convinced there was a misunderstanding, ignoring Myrtle's (accurate) insistence that he was talking about her breasts. Because she doesn't want to be an accidental harasser, Amy ignores the fact that Myrtle felt uncomfortable, regardless of Arthur's intention and winds up accidentally victim blaming. It's a smart story that shows how easy it is to enable or aid harassment, even if we have no idea that's what we're doing.
-Eventually Amy lands everyone in a meeting watching a training video on sexual harassment with Jeff supervising in the episode's best scene. Superstore has been getting better and better at doing these big meeting scenes and this is probably their best one yet as everyone tries to determine proper boundaries for asking someone else in the workplace and Michael Bunin plays the harried straight man (Always an excellent use of Jeff). As Amy continues to attempt to defend herself until Arthur winds up going on at length about Myrtle's breasts during his apologizing, Dina attempts to create a database of who's interested in who so no one crosses a line by asking out someone not interested, Miles and Lisa discover they have differing opinions on having kids, and Glenn comes to realize that asking his wife out every day for a year before his father threatened to fire her if she didn't say yes constitutes harassment, everything keeps piling up and up in a cacophony of hilarious chaos that shows how complicated finding romance can be. It's a masterstroke of writing, direction, and acting and it'll be a while before this particular meeting gets topped.
-Arthur is played by Bernie Koppell, an acting veteran best known from his roles on Get Smart and The Love Boat. Koppell is delightful, giving Arthur a sweetness and vulnerability that makes it understandable why Amy would be so skeptical to believe Myrtle and her harassment claims. His turn when he starts going on about Myrtle's breasts also feels believable and earned.
-The Sandra/Jeff fauxmance saga continues as Sandra sends herself a bunch of expensive gifts from "Jeff", including a 140 dollar bouquet, puppies, and a rose gold watch. Even though Mateo knows that those gifts aren't real, he continues to be jealous of Sandra's fake relationship with Jeff because it seems better and more romantic than Mateo's actual relationship with Jeff. Mateo's been dating Jeff for a while and he's not sure where they stand or where it's going so he lets himself get caught up in the fake version of Jeff who sends extravagant gifts even though the relationship is secret These feelings are also egged on by Garrett, who is let in on the secret by Cheyenne and proceeds to just mess with Mateo for the episode. When Mateo is cold to Jeff though, Jeff lets it slip that he considers Mateo to be his boyfriend and it changes everything. Suddenly Mateo isn't some guy dating Jeff, Mateo is Jeff's boyfriend. It's a rare moment of vulnerability from the character that Nico Santos plays terrifically. And once Mateo has a real sense of commitment from Jeff, he feels secure enough that his relationship is real to embrace Sandra's fake relationship. It's a nice turn to a story that was in need of a new direction though I'm curious how long they intend to keep this storyline up.
-Jonah being sent undercover by Dina to catch a woman he's convinced is a repeat shoplifter, only to fall for her and start courting her instead is a small story but a good one with lots of funny Jonah/Dina interactions. Lauren Ash plays Dina like a frustrated police captain/handler in a crime movie and it's terrific. The ending is also great thanks to the fact that we never find out if Shannon was actually a shoplifter or not. There's a nice bit where Jonah realizes his wallet is gone seemingly confirming their initial suspicions, only to immediately remember his wallet was actually in his other pocket, because his chiropractor had recommended switching it up. Typical Jonah.
-Cheyenne has the smallest of stories about working as a greeter so Arthur can work with Myrtle and her growing excitement with each person she greets is delightful.
-When it comes to the Jonah/Amy "Will They Won't They", Superstore likes to zig where you think they'll zag. Their big scene together at the end comes to the two of them just taking out all their frustrations on the Valentine's Day merchandise in brutal and hilarious fashion. There's no awkward exchanges or hidden glances, just two friends fighting back against the most romantic day of the year. As they finish though, we see Brett setting up the merchandise for St. Patrick's Day and the message is clear: for all the meaning and stress we might put into Valentine's Day, in the end it's just another day.
-Best Interstitial: A service dog just goes to down ripping up a teddy bear.
-This week in Mark McKinney is a treasure: Glenn's tearful phone call to his very confused wife after he realizes the dark implications behind how they got together. "Jerusha, our whole marriage is based on a sex crime. No, no, no, you only think you love me. You were my victim!"
-Amy's new short hair officially debuts this week and it's terrific.
-Glenn apparently gets Cupid and the love bug mixed up and is convinced that Cupid spreads his love through bites, which is hilariously creepy.
-The fact that we did a sexual harassment episode and there was no sign of Creepy Sal (As there hasn't been all season) is probably confirmation that they've discontinued the character. Which is a good thing because he was not a great character and it was not believable that he had managed to not get fired for all his creepiness.
-Amy's effort to explain what happened with Myrtle to customers does not go well. "Okay, none of you know the story. She asked me to set her up, so I set her up. She was asking me for it. She asked for it."
-Once again, Garrett is more interested in the people involved with the training video they watch than the content of said video and Jeff is fine with trying to answer the question. "I got a question. The actress in the video, does she get paid per video, or is it more of a flat rate for the whole day kind of thing?" "My guess is flat rate."
-And later: "Found her on IMDB. She was on NCIS. She played "Lady in Pool." Acting life is tough."
-Best line delivery of the week goes to Colton Dunn for "Why does everyone want to f**k Jeff?"
Friday 10 February 2017
Riverdale: Chapter 3: Body Double
-Last week Riverdale ended on a dramatic cliffhanger where Cheryl got arrested and admitted she was guilty. Now since the show is only a couple episodes old and serialized TV murder mysteries never get resolved two episodes in, the cliffhanger was obviously a mislead that only the most gullible viewers would fall far (Schmuck Bait, as TV writers call it). So I appreciate that Body Double starts off with Cheryl immediately clarifying that she meant that she was guilty of lying about the events of July 4th, not that she killed Jason. It's ridiculously anti-climatic but it's also not trying to hide how anti-climatic it is so it's dumb enough to work.
-After the first two episodes of Riverdale set up the characters, the world they live in, and the big mystery that surrounds their lives, Body Double is the show's first real chance to show how Riverdale will function as an ongoing series. So we get a bit more on the murder and the continuation of various character arcs and we also get an episodic story that blends high school drama with noir genre trappings nicely and promises to have impact on future stories, while still standing alone as a complete story. Introducing an episodic element is a very smart decision because it gives the episodes a spine to build off of as they continue the mystery, preventing things from feeling formless (A problem a lot of serialized television runs in to). And while there's always the risk of the episodic stuff feeling like filler, when done right like it was tonight, it can build up the world and provide key character insight in interesting ways.
-If you look at the basic outline of most of the "slut shaming game" story, it reads like the kind of typical Betty and Veronica story you come across all the time in the comics. Betty and Veronica stumble upon an injustice, Veronica gets righteously angry and decides to right the wrong, Betty is more measured in her response but is right there with her, the two team up and enact a scheme, Betty experiences some anger of her own near the end because she and Veronica aren't that different, and the two successfully right the wrong. It's all formula but it feels fresh here because of what they're taking on: a group of football players led by team captain Chuck Clayton slut shaming their "conquests" real and imagined, broadcasting it all over the internet while secretly keeping score in a book that assigns point values to the girls. It's a relevant story tackling a serious issue, but it never feels like a "very special" message episode where everyone learns a valuable lesson about respecting people. The girls are mad and unable to be taken seriously by the system that's supposed to protect them, they take matters into their own hands. Again, Camilla Mendes and Lili Reinhart continue to be great as Veronica and Betty, behaving exactly as their comics counterparts would in that situation. I was particularly impressed with how well Mendes captured Veronica's righteous anger in the aftermath of her humiliation, especially once she learns how far it goes.
-Where the story really gets interesting though is when Betty, Veronica, Ethel and a skeptical Cheryl find the scorebook and it's revealed that Polly's name is in there right next to Jason. Suddenly Betty has confirmation that her sister meant nothing but a game to the man who caused her to break down and Cheryl can no longer deny that her brother was part of this game. It makes things much more personal for Betty who's been advocating for not taking things too far up to this point and leads to a sequence where she and Veronica lure Chuck to a hot tub, tie him up, drug him a bit and then basically torture him into confessing. It's dark and unexpected, but it makes perfect sense based on how humiliated Veronica feels and how angry Betty is about Jason and her sister. As dark as it is though, it's only the beginning.
-Betty wearing a short black wig and uncharacteristically revealing outfit is our first sign that something more is going on with her, but it's still a shock when she suddenly starts pouring syrup on Chuck, attempting to push his head down into the hot water demanding he apologize for everything, and calling him Jason, while seeming to be Polly. Even more shocking is the part where she doesn't remember anything about what she did afterwards. She brushes it off when a concerned Veronica brings it up but Betty going into a disassociative state is super alarming and raises a lot of questions about how well we know Ms. Cooper. It takes what to that point had been a good one-off plot to the next level. Something dark is going on with Betty (I have a theory about what's going on that I share down below in Murder Theory Corner) and I'm super stoked to find out more. Seriously who needs boring Archie at all when you have characters as great as Betty and Veronica?
-It's hard to feel bad for Chuck's hot tub ordeal when he walked into such an obvious trap. The friend of the girl you just shamed uncharacteristically propositioning you to come to the house of a different girl you shamed is the first big red warning sign that something is amiss. The girl you shamed also being at the house and implying you're going to have a three-way, despite the fact that you lied about her performing a sex act is the second big sign. Seriously Chuck, you deserved what you got.
-Sticky Maple is a dumb name for a sex act by the way.
-Shannon Purser AKA poor Barb from Stranger Things makes her debut as Ethel Muggs and she's delightful, humanizing a character who was so often relegated to a punchline in the comics (When she notices her name in the guys scorebook has a "big girl" bonus, it's a gut punch of a reference to the character's "Big Ethel" nickname that followed her for much of her history). Also while I can't be sure if Ethel's house having a large swimming pool is an intentional Barb reference, having Cheryl spout the hashtag "#JusticeForEthel" definitely is. Kudos to Riverdale for beating everyone else to the punch when it came to making that joke.
-So Chuck and his goon squad getting kicked off the team will apparently have consequences. Makes sense considering how big football is supposed to be in Riverdale and that assumedly a lot of top players were kicked off. How many people were kicked off though? The episode is pretty unclear with how many football players actually participated in this game but it feels like it was probably a fair amount. Are we going to start next week with just Archie, Moose, and Reggie on the team? Also what are the chances that Archie becomes the new captain for some reason? Pretty good, I'd say.
-Cheryl Blossom is a big, broad character and Madelaine Petsch gives a big, broad performance to match that is fun to watch but also doesn't have a lot of room for subtlety. So it really stands out when Cheryl has a quiet moment, like the part of this episode where she has to grapple with the reality that her perfect brother whom she loved more than herself wasn't actually that perfect or innocent (Though she probably should've figured that out when he asked her to help fake his death). The moment where she apologizes to Betty for what Jason did to Polly as they burn the score-keeping book together is beautifully underplayed by Petsch as she finally accepts that Jason was flawed.
-I have some questions about Betty suddenly restarting the Riverdale High Blue And Gold. Why is the school just letting her walk in and put out a newspaper that's been apparently defunct for some time? Did she work on this thing before? How big an operation is this thing? Are her and Jughead the only people working on it? Is there no teacher supervision? Does she actually have complete editorial control to just print whatever she wants without anyone looking over it first? Is this going to be an ongoing part of the show or is it just going to be forgotten whenever it's not important to whatever the story this week is? Are people really going to have to turn to a rinky dink high school newspaper to get actual facts about a murder investigation? Why must almost all TV high school newspapers be a void of endless plot holes? We'll probably never know.
-Jughead, investigative reporter is a lot of fun though. I like Cole Sprouse's performance more and more with each passing week and he was great here as he slowly but snarkily figured out the truth about what Dilton Doiley was hiding. He also drinks a kid's milkshake as a power move and it's hilarious.
-The mystery of the gun shot Archie and Grundy heard gets solved this week and it turns out not to be connected with anything murder-related at all (Though Archie coming forward does corroborate Cheryl's alibi). Dilton Doiley had fired it as part of his scout's lesson because he's a hardcore survivalist who's convinced the town is going to explode into chaos or something like that and so he wants his scouts to be prepared. It's a logical resolution and it's a pretty funny take on Dilton, but it also renders basically all of Archie's murder-related angst since the pilot irrelevant, making it all sillier in retrospect. The Dilton thread does bring with it an interesting new complication though as Dilton reveals that he saw Ms. Grundy's car along the river in an effort to keep Betty and Jughead from going public with the whole "Teenager teaching children how to shoot a gun" thing. So hopefully that means we'll be wrapping that particular storyline up soon enough.
-Archie comes forward about what he heard this week (Though he claims to have been alone with his dog working on his music), which costs him his music lessons with Ms. Grundy and gets him grounded for lying but earns him a "wish" from Cheryl (It can be used for anything but her body) that he cashes in to get a chance to work on music with Josie and the Pussycats. This leads to the biggest spotlight yet on the Pussycats. Melody and Valerie even gets some lines in this time around, and they seem much more willing to embrace Archie sitting in on their practice than Josie is. Ashleigh Murray continues to rock it as Josie, giving the character a lot of attitude and feistiness but also a vulnerability that comes from years of being under scrutiny and fighting and clawing for what she has (hence the name Pussycats).
-Of course the highlight of the Archie story is a scene where Archie suggests that he wants the Pussycats to perform songs that he wrote before inexplicably implying stating that he feels qualified to write songs for three women of colour who he doesn't know and who have been doing this a lot longer than he has. Josie immediately and rightfully rips him a new one for being an ignorant white boy and it's terrific. Songwriting is an incredibly personal act and Archie can't remotely begin to put himself in Josie's shoes or experience the kind of things she's had to experience (Archie tries to claim he understands because he campaigned for Josie's mom when she ran for mayor. Oh Archie, no.). This sets Archie straight and once he apologizes with his privilege properly checked, he's able to actually help them develop a song they're working on and consider their perspective, instead of trying to foist his own stuff on them. It's a smart beat that also nicely lays the groundwork for that day in the future where Archie decides to start his own band where he has an actual avenue to express his experiences.
-If the Josie stuff was all there was to Archie this week, I'd be happy but we unfortunately get a subplot where Archie gets in trouble for sneaking out while grounded, isn't allowed to go see the Pussycats perform the song he helped with (He sneaks out anyways) and then tries to make his punishment into really being about how Fred doesn't support his interest in music. Now Archie and his dad struggling to connect as Archie begins going down his own path is good story material, but the way it comes up here is really dumb and totally ignores the actual reasons why Archie is being punished. For whatever reason though, Fred decides that Archie has a point and after a talk with Ms. Grundy (Ugh) that convinces him that Archie might go somewhere with his music, he decides to soundproof the garage to give Archie a place to practice his music. Nice father/son moment? Sure. Totally forced? Definitely yes.
-Three episodes in and I still have no idea how Josie and Cheryl are friends, partly because apart from one hug at the pep rally we never actually see them interact. With what we know about both Cheryl and Josie though, they don't seem like they'd get along at all so I'm really curious to see what their dynamic is.
-Jughead's opening and closing narrations are always really overwrought and not as epic as the show wants them to be. It works well enough when he's talking specifically about the characters and their relationships, like his spiel on the core four last week and this week's "forged in fire" thing about Betty and Veronica's friendship but once he gets back to talking about stuff pertaining to the murder mystery, it's much harder to take. He uses the term "Pandora's Box" non-ironically this week for crying out loud!
-The adults don't have a whole lot to do this week besides snipe at and argue with each other at Mayor McCoy's Taste of Riverdale event but Mrs. Blossom slaps Alice so that's a lot of fun.
-This week in Hot Archie: Betty and Veronica barge into the guy's locker room where Veronica pushes aside a towel-wrapped Archie. See, the locker room is an appropriate place to show off Archie's body unlike last week's midnight run escapade.
-Alice compares Betty to Lois Lane but single-handedly running a school newspaper is much more of a Chloe Sullivan move.
-This week's Betty-Alice "Alice tries to impose her will" scene doubles as serious product placement for Covergirl, down to the point where Betty and her mom literally mention actual brands as they debate what colour lipstick works best on Betty. Just like the resolution of the cliffhanger from last week, it's just dumb enough to work.
-Murder Theory Corner: While Mayor McCoy is still my prime suspect, I'm starting to think that whatever happened between Polly and Jason is the key to the entire mystery. After all we don't really have a clear timeline on when whatever happened between them went down or where everyone was. We know Betty was gone for the summer but how much of the summer? When Betty dissociates and starts acting like she's Polly and calling Chuck Jason, was that a repressed memory of something she doesn't know she witnessed? It's something to keep an eye on for sure because something's going on there, and while there's no way Betty killed Jason, Alice seems too obvious, and Polly feels like a red herring, the oddly quiet Hal Cooper is on my radar now as my number two suspect.
-After the first two episodes of Riverdale set up the characters, the world they live in, and the big mystery that surrounds their lives, Body Double is the show's first real chance to show how Riverdale will function as an ongoing series. So we get a bit more on the murder and the continuation of various character arcs and we also get an episodic story that blends high school drama with noir genre trappings nicely and promises to have impact on future stories, while still standing alone as a complete story. Introducing an episodic element is a very smart decision because it gives the episodes a spine to build off of as they continue the mystery, preventing things from feeling formless (A problem a lot of serialized television runs in to). And while there's always the risk of the episodic stuff feeling like filler, when done right like it was tonight, it can build up the world and provide key character insight in interesting ways.
-If you look at the basic outline of most of the "slut shaming game" story, it reads like the kind of typical Betty and Veronica story you come across all the time in the comics. Betty and Veronica stumble upon an injustice, Veronica gets righteously angry and decides to right the wrong, Betty is more measured in her response but is right there with her, the two team up and enact a scheme, Betty experiences some anger of her own near the end because she and Veronica aren't that different, and the two successfully right the wrong. It's all formula but it feels fresh here because of what they're taking on: a group of football players led by team captain Chuck Clayton slut shaming their "conquests" real and imagined, broadcasting it all over the internet while secretly keeping score in a book that assigns point values to the girls. It's a relevant story tackling a serious issue, but it never feels like a "very special" message episode where everyone learns a valuable lesson about respecting people. The girls are mad and unable to be taken seriously by the system that's supposed to protect them, they take matters into their own hands. Again, Camilla Mendes and Lili Reinhart continue to be great as Veronica and Betty, behaving exactly as their comics counterparts would in that situation. I was particularly impressed with how well Mendes captured Veronica's righteous anger in the aftermath of her humiliation, especially once she learns how far it goes.
-Where the story really gets interesting though is when Betty, Veronica, Ethel and a skeptical Cheryl find the scorebook and it's revealed that Polly's name is in there right next to Jason. Suddenly Betty has confirmation that her sister meant nothing but a game to the man who caused her to break down and Cheryl can no longer deny that her brother was part of this game. It makes things much more personal for Betty who's been advocating for not taking things too far up to this point and leads to a sequence where she and Veronica lure Chuck to a hot tub, tie him up, drug him a bit and then basically torture him into confessing. It's dark and unexpected, but it makes perfect sense based on how humiliated Veronica feels and how angry Betty is about Jason and her sister. As dark as it is though, it's only the beginning.
-Betty wearing a short black wig and uncharacteristically revealing outfit is our first sign that something more is going on with her, but it's still a shock when she suddenly starts pouring syrup on Chuck, attempting to push his head down into the hot water demanding he apologize for everything, and calling him Jason, while seeming to be Polly. Even more shocking is the part where she doesn't remember anything about what she did afterwards. She brushes it off when a concerned Veronica brings it up but Betty going into a disassociative state is super alarming and raises a lot of questions about how well we know Ms. Cooper. It takes what to that point had been a good one-off plot to the next level. Something dark is going on with Betty (I have a theory about what's going on that I share down below in Murder Theory Corner) and I'm super stoked to find out more. Seriously who needs boring Archie at all when you have characters as great as Betty and Veronica?
-It's hard to feel bad for Chuck's hot tub ordeal when he walked into such an obvious trap. The friend of the girl you just shamed uncharacteristically propositioning you to come to the house of a different girl you shamed is the first big red warning sign that something is amiss. The girl you shamed also being at the house and implying you're going to have a three-way, despite the fact that you lied about her performing a sex act is the second big sign. Seriously Chuck, you deserved what you got.
-Sticky Maple is a dumb name for a sex act by the way.
-Shannon Purser AKA poor Barb from Stranger Things makes her debut as Ethel Muggs and she's delightful, humanizing a character who was so often relegated to a punchline in the comics (When she notices her name in the guys scorebook has a "big girl" bonus, it's a gut punch of a reference to the character's "Big Ethel" nickname that followed her for much of her history). Also while I can't be sure if Ethel's house having a large swimming pool is an intentional Barb reference, having Cheryl spout the hashtag "#JusticeForEthel" definitely is. Kudos to Riverdale for beating everyone else to the punch when it came to making that joke.
-So Chuck and his goon squad getting kicked off the team will apparently have consequences. Makes sense considering how big football is supposed to be in Riverdale and that assumedly a lot of top players were kicked off. How many people were kicked off though? The episode is pretty unclear with how many football players actually participated in this game but it feels like it was probably a fair amount. Are we going to start next week with just Archie, Moose, and Reggie on the team? Also what are the chances that Archie becomes the new captain for some reason? Pretty good, I'd say.
-Cheryl Blossom is a big, broad character and Madelaine Petsch gives a big, broad performance to match that is fun to watch but also doesn't have a lot of room for subtlety. So it really stands out when Cheryl has a quiet moment, like the part of this episode where she has to grapple with the reality that her perfect brother whom she loved more than herself wasn't actually that perfect or innocent (Though she probably should've figured that out when he asked her to help fake his death). The moment where she apologizes to Betty for what Jason did to Polly as they burn the score-keeping book together is beautifully underplayed by Petsch as she finally accepts that Jason was flawed.
-I have some questions about Betty suddenly restarting the Riverdale High Blue And Gold. Why is the school just letting her walk in and put out a newspaper that's been apparently defunct for some time? Did she work on this thing before? How big an operation is this thing? Are her and Jughead the only people working on it? Is there no teacher supervision? Does she actually have complete editorial control to just print whatever she wants without anyone looking over it first? Is this going to be an ongoing part of the show or is it just going to be forgotten whenever it's not important to whatever the story this week is? Are people really going to have to turn to a rinky dink high school newspaper to get actual facts about a murder investigation? Why must almost all TV high school newspapers be a void of endless plot holes? We'll probably never know.
-Jughead, investigative reporter is a lot of fun though. I like Cole Sprouse's performance more and more with each passing week and he was great here as he slowly but snarkily figured out the truth about what Dilton Doiley was hiding. He also drinks a kid's milkshake as a power move and it's hilarious.
-The mystery of the gun shot Archie and Grundy heard gets solved this week and it turns out not to be connected with anything murder-related at all (Though Archie coming forward does corroborate Cheryl's alibi). Dilton Doiley had fired it as part of his scout's lesson because he's a hardcore survivalist who's convinced the town is going to explode into chaos or something like that and so he wants his scouts to be prepared. It's a logical resolution and it's a pretty funny take on Dilton, but it also renders basically all of Archie's murder-related angst since the pilot irrelevant, making it all sillier in retrospect. The Dilton thread does bring with it an interesting new complication though as Dilton reveals that he saw Ms. Grundy's car along the river in an effort to keep Betty and Jughead from going public with the whole "Teenager teaching children how to shoot a gun" thing. So hopefully that means we'll be wrapping that particular storyline up soon enough.
-Archie comes forward about what he heard this week (Though he claims to have been alone with his dog working on his music), which costs him his music lessons with Ms. Grundy and gets him grounded for lying but earns him a "wish" from Cheryl (It can be used for anything but her body) that he cashes in to get a chance to work on music with Josie and the Pussycats. This leads to the biggest spotlight yet on the Pussycats. Melody and Valerie even gets some lines in this time around, and they seem much more willing to embrace Archie sitting in on their practice than Josie is. Ashleigh Murray continues to rock it as Josie, giving the character a lot of attitude and feistiness but also a vulnerability that comes from years of being under scrutiny and fighting and clawing for what she has (hence the name Pussycats).
-Of course the highlight of the Archie story is a scene where Archie suggests that he wants the Pussycats to perform songs that he wrote before inexplicably implying stating that he feels qualified to write songs for three women of colour who he doesn't know and who have been doing this a lot longer than he has. Josie immediately and rightfully rips him a new one for being an ignorant white boy and it's terrific. Songwriting is an incredibly personal act and Archie can't remotely begin to put himself in Josie's shoes or experience the kind of things she's had to experience (Archie tries to claim he understands because he campaigned for Josie's mom when she ran for mayor. Oh Archie, no.). This sets Archie straight and once he apologizes with his privilege properly checked, he's able to actually help them develop a song they're working on and consider their perspective, instead of trying to foist his own stuff on them. It's a smart beat that also nicely lays the groundwork for that day in the future where Archie decides to start his own band where he has an actual avenue to express his experiences.
-If the Josie stuff was all there was to Archie this week, I'd be happy but we unfortunately get a subplot where Archie gets in trouble for sneaking out while grounded, isn't allowed to go see the Pussycats perform the song he helped with (He sneaks out anyways) and then tries to make his punishment into really being about how Fred doesn't support his interest in music. Now Archie and his dad struggling to connect as Archie begins going down his own path is good story material, but the way it comes up here is really dumb and totally ignores the actual reasons why Archie is being punished. For whatever reason though, Fred decides that Archie has a point and after a talk with Ms. Grundy (Ugh) that convinces him that Archie might go somewhere with his music, he decides to soundproof the garage to give Archie a place to practice his music. Nice father/son moment? Sure. Totally forced? Definitely yes.
-Three episodes in and I still have no idea how Josie and Cheryl are friends, partly because apart from one hug at the pep rally we never actually see them interact. With what we know about both Cheryl and Josie though, they don't seem like they'd get along at all so I'm really curious to see what their dynamic is.
-Jughead's opening and closing narrations are always really overwrought and not as epic as the show wants them to be. It works well enough when he's talking specifically about the characters and their relationships, like his spiel on the core four last week and this week's "forged in fire" thing about Betty and Veronica's friendship but once he gets back to talking about stuff pertaining to the murder mystery, it's much harder to take. He uses the term "Pandora's Box" non-ironically this week for crying out loud!
-The adults don't have a whole lot to do this week besides snipe at and argue with each other at Mayor McCoy's Taste of Riverdale event but Mrs. Blossom slaps Alice so that's a lot of fun.
-This week in Hot Archie: Betty and Veronica barge into the guy's locker room where Veronica pushes aside a towel-wrapped Archie. See, the locker room is an appropriate place to show off Archie's body unlike last week's midnight run escapade.
-Alice compares Betty to Lois Lane but single-handedly running a school newspaper is much more of a Chloe Sullivan move.
-This week's Betty-Alice "Alice tries to impose her will" scene doubles as serious product placement for Covergirl, down to the point where Betty and her mom literally mention actual brands as they debate what colour lipstick works best on Betty. Just like the resolution of the cliffhanger from last week, it's just dumb enough to work.
-Murder Theory Corner: While Mayor McCoy is still my prime suspect, I'm starting to think that whatever happened between Polly and Jason is the key to the entire mystery. After all we don't really have a clear timeline on when whatever happened between them went down or where everyone was. We know Betty was gone for the summer but how much of the summer? When Betty dissociates and starts acting like she's Polly and calling Chuck Jason, was that a repressed memory of something she doesn't know she witnessed? It's something to keep an eye on for sure because something's going on there, and while there's no way Betty killed Jason, Alice seems too obvious, and Polly feels like a red herring, the oddly quiet Hal Cooper is on my radar now as my number two suspect.
Wednesday 8 February 2017
Jane The Virgin Looks To The Future in Chapter 54
-Generally I don't put spoiler warnings in my reviews because I figure it's a given that there will be spoilers but if you have not seen last night's "Jane", I would stop reading now unless you have no intention of ever watching it because seriously... SPOILERS!
-Um, wow. I don't even know where to start. This week in titles, I guess: Jane The Mom Covered In Vomit... Who Has A Cool New Job Opportunity!
-Ten episodes into the first season of Jane The Virgin, Michael, who was currently broken up from Jane, tells Xo that he'll never stop believing that he and Jane belong together, prompting this ominous line from the narrator that served as the episode's cliffhanger: "And for as long as Michael lived, until he drew his very last breath, he never did." Those words have hung over Michael's time on the show ever since, warning us not to get too detached because at some point he would draw his final breath. It was only a question of when. The problem was it was hard not to get attached to Michael. Brett Dier gave such a winning, likeable performance and he and Jane were so good together that Michael's initial character flaws eventually faded away and only the most hardcore of hardcore Rafael fans weren't eventually won over by sweet, loveable, beam of pure goodness Michael (I held out until the middle of the second season). So when the second season ended on him being shot in the chest on his and Jane's wedding night it was a gut punch of an ending that made the wait for season 3 almost unbearable, and when he pulled through in the season 3 premiere, it was such a relief that it was easy to put the fact that he was still going to die out of mind, even with the ominous hints that things weren't going to work out like Jane and Michael were planning. So when Michael suddenly drops dead out of the blue upon completing the LSATs, the victim of an Aortic Dissection that resulted from stress put on his heart following his shooting a few months back, it's absolutely devastating and totally unexpected, even with all the warnings and foreshadowing.
-Kudos to The CW advertising department for not hinting what an eventful episode this was going to be. Often when it comes to big moments on shows like this, especially the death of a major character, advertising is all over it with promises of an "unforgettable episode" to make sure ratings are as big as possible at the expense of the element of surprise (When Grey's Anatomy did a similar big death a couple years back, the promos basically spelled the whole thing out for us.). Going into Chapter Fifty-Four though, it seemed like the biggest thing that would happen would be lots of discussion about Rogelio's penis. That made the big moment much more shocking when it came.
-The thing that's really surprising about Michael's death is how ordinary and random it is. Because he was often tied to the more fantastical crime elements of the show, it seemed a given that he would die in heroic fashion, trying to bring Sin Rostro to justice or something like that. Yet, while you can trace his death back to the dramatic shooting at the end of the 2nd season, the suddenness and mundane nature of his death is a stark shot of reality into the fantastical world of Jane The Virgin. People don't just drop dead of a simple heart condition in telenovellas and yet here we are.
-I seldom ever cry and I made it through the collapse and the fading of Michael's heartlight all right, but I came incredibly close to full-on tears in the scene where Jane gets the news about Michael. Gina Rodriguez is terrific week in and week out and she is absolutely heartbreaking here. It starts with the look on her face right before her phone tumbles out of her hand and goes to the way she drops to the ground uncontrollably sobbing with a guttural scream that's going to haunt me for a while. You fully believe that this woman has just lost the love of her life and it's that moment that the reality that Michael has actually, truly died sets in.
-It's obvious in retrospect that the episode was building up to Michael's death. The episode opens on a Michael flashback instead of a Jane one, there's a lot of emphasis on memory and how we remember how we feel about the big moments, we spend a long time following Jane and Michael recreating their first date, showing how far they've come as a couple and serving as kind of a final tribute to their relationship, and there's a lot of focus on planning for the future, courtesy of a pregnancy false alarm that gets Jane and Michael thinking about moving up the timetable on their family. There's even a discussion about reliable and unreliable narrators, which reminds us of all the things the narrator promised would happen and whether we could trust him (Turns out we can.). It's subtle enough and typical enough for the show that if you didn't know what was coming, you wouldn't notice how you were being set up for it. The biggest indicator that something is about to go down is the memory spotlight (One of the better visual motifs the show has come up with) on Michael as he goes out the door after Jane tells him how proud she is, which becomes very significant once you realize this is the last time Jane will ever see Michael.
-I hope Jennie Urman and team realize that they can never use the heartlight motif again after making the audience watch Michael's (which is connected to Jane's in keeping with the "final breath" thing) go out. There's no way they'll ever be able to top that moment in terms of sheer emotional power.
-Of course Michael's death is only the first big twist "Jane" springs on us. As the narrator announces that we are at the end of Book 2 (Book 1 was the first season), Book 3 kicks off three years later with Jane and 4 and a half year old Mateo getting ready for a wedding. The time jump is smart for a few reasons, the biggest being that "Jane" is a comedy that has always been committed to honestly exploring the emotions of the characters. So if we were to explore Jane's grief in real time, it would either totally consume the tone of the show, which would drag down the quality or it'd be pushed aside in a way that'd be unfair to Jane's relationship with Michael. So by jumping ahead, the show allows itself the chance to have Jane farther along in the healing process, while still being free to jump back in time and show how she got to this point.
-The other good thing about the time jump is it allows the characters the time to have actually gone through with some significant changes. Rafael spends the episode trying to decide if he should just plead guilty and go to jail for those white collar crimes it turns out the show hadn't forgot about. If the show was continuing in real time, clearly he wouldn't wind up in jail because the show couldn't keep him offscreen for very long but with the jump, now he can go to jail for a time and we can catch up with him having gone through that. Likewise, it was hard to get invested in Xo and Rogelio's relationships with Bruce and Darci because it seemed clear that they'd eventually break up but the jump opens the possibility of those relationships continuing and thriving for three years. Xo goes into the jump ready to move in with Bruce having smoothed things over with Tess (Thanks to how she handled things with Bruce after Tess showed up at Jane's drunk) and Rogelio goes into it having shown Darci he cares about her enough to star in her reality show with her, even if that wasn't how he planned his acting career to go (After some more penis-related silliness and a hilarious rant that goes viral). Could one of them be the ones getting married? It's possible (I hope it's Rogelio and Darci, because I've become a huge De La Vega Factor shipper. All of the storylines in this episode set up promising possibilities for the future and now we get to see what became of those possibilities. It's very exciting.
-Before Jane gets that devastating phone call, she gets much, much, much better news when she secures a job as a publisher's assistant. After all she went through to get this job (Which she was able to secure even after accidentally sending naked pictures of Rogelio instead of the treatment she was supposed to submit thanks to help from Michael), it doesn't seem likely that she would quit it, even after the death of Michael. That means we'll get to see Jane further along in her quest to be a writer (hopefully), which I'm assuming will eventually lead her to write the books of the show we're watching (Hence why the show is putting things in books and all the literary references).
-Scott and Anezka are out and in the open now that they have Emilio's will to hold over Petra's head. The consequences of restoring that will have yet to happen but since we now know for sure that the narrator is reliable, the other shoe is bound to drop sooner or later.
-Also Rose is back, with a new identity (Eileen) and actress (Welcome Elisabeth Röhm). Turns out Luisa couldn't quit Rose after all and after taking the face of a woman she paid 10 million dollars to take a bunch of medical tests to satisfy Rafael and then leave the country, Rose is ready to give up crime for the love of her life. Based on how she threatened the woman though, that might not be so easy for Rose. This isn't going to end well.
-I'm going to miss Brett Dier. I wasn't a fan of Michael at all in the beginning, but Brett's earnest, goofy, loving performance wore me down and won me over. As Michael became more and more of a saint, I became concerned that he might grow boring as a character, but Dier always made him interesting a human, even as he grew more and more perfect. "Jane" just won't be the same without him.
-Following the episode, show creator Jennie Urman published this open letter to fans, where she gives tribute to Brett Dier and explains why Michael had to die and why we've jumped ahead three years. It's well worth a read if you still need help processing things.
-Seriously, for all the pain at the end, this was an incredible episode of television and I can't wait to see where the show goes from here.
-Um, wow. I don't even know where to start. This week in titles, I guess: Jane The Mom Covered In Vomit... Who Has A Cool New Job Opportunity!
-Ten episodes into the first season of Jane The Virgin, Michael, who was currently broken up from Jane, tells Xo that he'll never stop believing that he and Jane belong together, prompting this ominous line from the narrator that served as the episode's cliffhanger: "And for as long as Michael lived, until he drew his very last breath, he never did." Those words have hung over Michael's time on the show ever since, warning us not to get too detached because at some point he would draw his final breath. It was only a question of when. The problem was it was hard not to get attached to Michael. Brett Dier gave such a winning, likeable performance and he and Jane were so good together that Michael's initial character flaws eventually faded away and only the most hardcore of hardcore Rafael fans weren't eventually won over by sweet, loveable, beam of pure goodness Michael (I held out until the middle of the second season). So when the second season ended on him being shot in the chest on his and Jane's wedding night it was a gut punch of an ending that made the wait for season 3 almost unbearable, and when he pulled through in the season 3 premiere, it was such a relief that it was easy to put the fact that he was still going to die out of mind, even with the ominous hints that things weren't going to work out like Jane and Michael were planning. So when Michael suddenly drops dead out of the blue upon completing the LSATs, the victim of an Aortic Dissection that resulted from stress put on his heart following his shooting a few months back, it's absolutely devastating and totally unexpected, even with all the warnings and foreshadowing.
-Kudos to The CW advertising department for not hinting what an eventful episode this was going to be. Often when it comes to big moments on shows like this, especially the death of a major character, advertising is all over it with promises of an "unforgettable episode" to make sure ratings are as big as possible at the expense of the element of surprise (When Grey's Anatomy did a similar big death a couple years back, the promos basically spelled the whole thing out for us.). Going into Chapter Fifty-Four though, it seemed like the biggest thing that would happen would be lots of discussion about Rogelio's penis. That made the big moment much more shocking when it came.
-The thing that's really surprising about Michael's death is how ordinary and random it is. Because he was often tied to the more fantastical crime elements of the show, it seemed a given that he would die in heroic fashion, trying to bring Sin Rostro to justice or something like that. Yet, while you can trace his death back to the dramatic shooting at the end of the 2nd season, the suddenness and mundane nature of his death is a stark shot of reality into the fantastical world of Jane The Virgin. People don't just drop dead of a simple heart condition in telenovellas and yet here we are.
-I seldom ever cry and I made it through the collapse and the fading of Michael's heartlight all right, but I came incredibly close to full-on tears in the scene where Jane gets the news about Michael. Gina Rodriguez is terrific week in and week out and she is absolutely heartbreaking here. It starts with the look on her face right before her phone tumbles out of her hand and goes to the way she drops to the ground uncontrollably sobbing with a guttural scream that's going to haunt me for a while. You fully believe that this woman has just lost the love of her life and it's that moment that the reality that Michael has actually, truly died sets in.
-It's obvious in retrospect that the episode was building up to Michael's death. The episode opens on a Michael flashback instead of a Jane one, there's a lot of emphasis on memory and how we remember how we feel about the big moments, we spend a long time following Jane and Michael recreating their first date, showing how far they've come as a couple and serving as kind of a final tribute to their relationship, and there's a lot of focus on planning for the future, courtesy of a pregnancy false alarm that gets Jane and Michael thinking about moving up the timetable on their family. There's even a discussion about reliable and unreliable narrators, which reminds us of all the things the narrator promised would happen and whether we could trust him (Turns out we can.). It's subtle enough and typical enough for the show that if you didn't know what was coming, you wouldn't notice how you were being set up for it. The biggest indicator that something is about to go down is the memory spotlight (One of the better visual motifs the show has come up with) on Michael as he goes out the door after Jane tells him how proud she is, which becomes very significant once you realize this is the last time Jane will ever see Michael.
-I hope Jennie Urman and team realize that they can never use the heartlight motif again after making the audience watch Michael's (which is connected to Jane's in keeping with the "final breath" thing) go out. There's no way they'll ever be able to top that moment in terms of sheer emotional power.
-Of course Michael's death is only the first big twist "Jane" springs on us. As the narrator announces that we are at the end of Book 2 (Book 1 was the first season), Book 3 kicks off three years later with Jane and 4 and a half year old Mateo getting ready for a wedding. The time jump is smart for a few reasons, the biggest being that "Jane" is a comedy that has always been committed to honestly exploring the emotions of the characters. So if we were to explore Jane's grief in real time, it would either totally consume the tone of the show, which would drag down the quality or it'd be pushed aside in a way that'd be unfair to Jane's relationship with Michael. So by jumping ahead, the show allows itself the chance to have Jane farther along in the healing process, while still being free to jump back in time and show how she got to this point.
-The other good thing about the time jump is it allows the characters the time to have actually gone through with some significant changes. Rafael spends the episode trying to decide if he should just plead guilty and go to jail for those white collar crimes it turns out the show hadn't forgot about. If the show was continuing in real time, clearly he wouldn't wind up in jail because the show couldn't keep him offscreen for very long but with the jump, now he can go to jail for a time and we can catch up with him having gone through that. Likewise, it was hard to get invested in Xo and Rogelio's relationships with Bruce and Darci because it seemed clear that they'd eventually break up but the jump opens the possibility of those relationships continuing and thriving for three years. Xo goes into the jump ready to move in with Bruce having smoothed things over with Tess (Thanks to how she handled things with Bruce after Tess showed up at Jane's drunk) and Rogelio goes into it having shown Darci he cares about her enough to star in her reality show with her, even if that wasn't how he planned his acting career to go (After some more penis-related silliness and a hilarious rant that goes viral). Could one of them be the ones getting married? It's possible (I hope it's Rogelio and Darci, because I've become a huge De La Vega Factor shipper. All of the storylines in this episode set up promising possibilities for the future and now we get to see what became of those possibilities. It's very exciting.
-Before Jane gets that devastating phone call, she gets much, much, much better news when she secures a job as a publisher's assistant. After all she went through to get this job (Which she was able to secure even after accidentally sending naked pictures of Rogelio instead of the treatment she was supposed to submit thanks to help from Michael), it doesn't seem likely that she would quit it, even after the death of Michael. That means we'll get to see Jane further along in her quest to be a writer (hopefully), which I'm assuming will eventually lead her to write the books of the show we're watching (Hence why the show is putting things in books and all the literary references).
-Scott and Anezka are out and in the open now that they have Emilio's will to hold over Petra's head. The consequences of restoring that will have yet to happen but since we now know for sure that the narrator is reliable, the other shoe is bound to drop sooner or later.
-Also Rose is back, with a new identity (Eileen) and actress (Welcome Elisabeth Röhm). Turns out Luisa couldn't quit Rose after all and after taking the face of a woman she paid 10 million dollars to take a bunch of medical tests to satisfy Rafael and then leave the country, Rose is ready to give up crime for the love of her life. Based on how she threatened the woman though, that might not be so easy for Rose. This isn't going to end well.
-I'm going to miss Brett Dier. I wasn't a fan of Michael at all in the beginning, but Brett's earnest, goofy, loving performance wore me down and won me over. As Michael became more and more of a saint, I became concerned that he might grow boring as a character, but Dier always made him interesting a human, even as he grew more and more perfect. "Jane" just won't be the same without him.
-Following the episode, show creator Jennie Urman published this open letter to fans, where she gives tribute to Brett Dier and explains why Michael had to die and why we've jumped ahead three years. It's well worth a read if you still need help processing things.
-Seriously, for all the pain at the end, this was an incredible episode of television and I can't wait to see where the show goes from here.
Saturday 4 February 2017
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: Can Josh Take A Leap Of Faith?
-Wow. Just wow.
-One of the best jokes in the first season of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a scene where Paula finally explains to Scott exactly what's going on with Rebecca and the two do a line-for-line spoken rendition of the season 1 theme song. It's a great joke that comes out of nowhere and brings the song into the world of the show. All of season 2 I wondered if something similar might be attempted with season 2 theme "I'm Just A Girl in Love" and sure enough, lines of "I'm Just A Girl In Love" did turn up in the show tonight but in a darker and more surprising context than anyone could have expected. It turns out that Josh isn't the first time Rebecca has put our hopes for happiness onto a man who wasn't right for her and the emotional thesis statement Rebecca has been following all season that's worded to sound like a legal argument has roots in the actual legal argument made in the fallout of the last time Rebecca was just a "girl in love".
-From that moment in the pilot where Rebecca cheerfully throws away all of her medication, it's been clear that she has some serious mental health issues that she isn't properly dealing with but tonight is the first time we're shown the full extent of those issues and how dangerous this really is. It turns out that back in Harvard, Rebecca had an affair with a married professor named Robert who was going to leave his wife and marry her until he suddenly decided he couldn't. As a result Rebecca set fire to his house and was committed to a mental hospital to avoid conviction, despite her protestations that she "has no underlying issues to address". It's a brilliant, brutal twist that comes out of nowhere but makes total sense. Suddenly everything about Rebecca starts to add up from the fact that she went to Harvard and Yale Law to her aversion to therapy and medication to why her mother pushed Josh to marry her to those musical numbers she escapes into whenever reality becomes too much to bear (The one flash we get to her time in the mental hospital has a nurse commenting that a heavily medicated Rebecca is always singing to herself) has a fresh context. Rebecca is caught in a destructive cycle of seeking love and validation from men who always wind up abandoning her because she doesn't believe she's worthy of love. It's a cycle that goes back to the moment her well-meaning but emotionally unavailable father walked out the door and now the latest cycle is over and rather than burn down Josh's house (Or rather, his parents house), Rebecca tries to throw herself off of a cliff.
-Rebecca's daddy issues were introduced to us in a throwaway line from "I'm So Good At Yoga", way back in the second episode of the show. Rebecca envisions Valencia as everything Rebecca isn't, rubbing her perfection in Rebecca's face with a series of taunts culminating in "My father didn't lea-ve me". The next episode went further into this showing us the moment Silas Bunch walked out on his wife and young daughter as the basis for Rebecca's fear of throwing a party. After that the daddy stuff was mostly backgrounded before becoming a key part of Rebecca's dream ghost journey and then going back to the background until last week but it's always been there informing who Rebecca is and what she wanted. Now everything wrong with Rebecca can't completely be attributed to her father issues, particularly her need to throw herself into fantasy and narrative whenever she has to confront real life, but they do affect a large amount of her behaviour whether she knows it or not. The episode begins with her composing a text to her father that's almost exactly like the text she sent to Josh in the pilot but whereas Josh's eventual reply is a request to grab dinner sometime, her father's is a rejection, a delay until the rehearsal dinner he's obligated to attend and it crushes her. Rebecca knows her father is bad news but she can't help but feel that if he were to accept her, then everything would be OK.
-Silas Bunch is a complicated figure and he's perfectly played by John Allen Nelson. Lesser hands might make Silas into a purely despicable figure, unworthy of Rebecca's love but Nelson brings a lot of charm and affection to the guy. He's mostly there to hit his daughter up for money but he doesn't leave after he gets what he wants. He tries to give Rebecca what she wants and you understand why Rebecca wants him to love her so much. He's a toxic parent and he's not emotionally available enough to understand Rebecca or give her what she needs but he doesn't want to hurt his daughter and you can't help but feel for the guy a little (until the end at least). He's pretty similar to Josh and it makes sense that they'd hit it off.
-Josh spends much of the episode trying to get to the bottom of the "Robert" mystery set up when Rebecca accidentally says "I'm sorry Robert" in front of him and passes it off with an easily debunked lie. Josh should confront Rebecca once he figures out it's a lie and have an honest conversation with her where they get to the bottom of this, but instead he keeps looking for reasons he doesn't understand, inching closer and closer to a valid reason to back out of this marriage he doesn't really want. Then Trent shows up with an envelope containing all of the answers he needs and he becomes even more conflicted.
-This season of the show has made it clear that the problem with Josh is that he runs to a pretty girl to validate him every time he has to confront himself. Father Brah basically tells Josh as much tonight. When Sarah was introduced last week, I became wary that Josh was going to leave Rebecca for her and this episode definitely began seriously heading that direction before Josh suddenly stops and realizes that's his problem. So he decides to do the right thing and go talk to Rebecca about this envelope and her past. Until he doesn't. Josh's inability to be by himself has been in the foreground of his character, but quietly humming along in the background is his strong faith. There's a reason he runs to Father Brah whenever he's facing a moral crisis. So instead of running towards a new pretty girl, he replaces the girl with church and decides to suddenly become a priest. It's a stunning bait-and-switch that completely tracks with Josh's character. He's not fixing his destructive patterns, he's just replacing what he escapes with.
-Josh does get a crucial moment of character growth though when he chooses to not read the envelope on Rebecca's past. He knows if he reads it then he'll have some kind of a justification for leaving but he chooses not to. He's making a cowardly choice but he's owning that choice and it's kind of admirable. It's also dangerous because he has no idea what he's actually unleashing by leaving Rebecca but again, kind of admirable.
-Before everything goes to hell and she tries to throw herself off a cliff, Rebecca stands over that same cliff singing a song officially called "Rebecca's Reprise". It's a medley that combines "You Stupid Bitch", "I'm The Villain In My Own Story", "I Love My Daughter" and "We'll Never Have Problems Again" into a triumphant number about how Rebecca is on the precipice of having everything she's ever said she's wanted. It's a sad number because we know this won't be that simple and things are going to collapse, even if we don't know how they'll collapse yet. Rebecca doesn't know this though. She's at the height of her delusion, the climax of the narrative she's been building for herself the moment she moved to West Covina.
-Love and hate are almost exactly the same thing. They're both strong emotions driven by a focus/obsession with another human being and caring about their well-being. The only difference is intent. Do you want this person to be happy or do you want them to suffer? Rebecca spent two seasons trying to get Josh to love her and it's brought her to the edge of a cliff. Paula rushes in to support her because that's what Paula does but just like she's done throughout the show so far by encouraging Rebecca to chase Josh, she makes the wrong call in the advice she gives because she doesn't know the whole story. She doesn't know the kind of help Rebecca actually needs or that Rebecca has been institutionalized because of something just like this. She just knows to enable so she tells Rebecca not to blame herself (good call) but to blame Josh and her father. And just like that, love turns to hate and Rebecca has a new mission. Her father turns to leave and she finally, definitively rejects him. He calls her crazy and she replies "little bit" with a smirk, owning the label for the first time. Then with Paula, Heather, and Valencia all by her side she makes a vow to destroy Josh Chan. It's a strong, powerful moment to end the season on that opens up a lot of narrative possibilities for next season.
-Rebecca is just like Josh. She thinks that by rejecting her father, and by extension Josh, she's breaking the pattern that's causing her to be miserable but she's not breaking the pattern at all, she's merely replacing the focus of the pattern. Trying to ruin Josh's life won't make her happy just like becoming a priest won't make Josh happy. It's something they're both going to have to learn the hard way though.
-Rebecca focusing on destroying Josh also Chan brings us to the most traditional meaning of the phrase "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" so that'll be fun to explore.
-White Josh and Daryl are set up for trouble this episode when White Josh admits he's not someone who's interested in marriage. He gets why people have kids but he doesn't get why people get married. Daryl is able to come to terms with this but he also decides that he and White Josh should have a child and from the look on White Josh's face, that is definitely not something he's ready for. We'll see how this plays out next year but it doesn't look great for the longevity of that relationship.
-The other song in this episode is "What A Rush To Be A Bride", a heavy metal head-banger number that contrasts the beauty of marriage with a manic beat and screaming voices. It's a bit of a filler number, but it's a lot of fun and it shows that Paula and Rebecca are once again totally on the same page.
-So after weeks of focus, Nathaniel turned out to be mostly a non-factor in his finale, but him telling Silas to "Have fun flying coach, dick" after Silas assumes he can get a private plane back to Alaska was perfect. Nathaniel has really grown on me so I'm excited to see more Scott Michael Foster next season.
-Heather and Valencia is a really fun dynamic that gets a lot of play as Heather assists with Valencia's wedding planning, mostly by sardonically pointing out when things get ridiculous and apologizing for Valencia.
-As I said at the top, wow. I had high expectations for this finale and writer/director/show co-creator Aline Brosh McKenna exceeded every one. This has been a terrific season of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and I'm incredibly thankful it's not the last one. The wait for season 3 is going to be hard.
-One of the best jokes in the first season of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is a scene where Paula finally explains to Scott exactly what's going on with Rebecca and the two do a line-for-line spoken rendition of the season 1 theme song. It's a great joke that comes out of nowhere and brings the song into the world of the show. All of season 2 I wondered if something similar might be attempted with season 2 theme "I'm Just A Girl in Love" and sure enough, lines of "I'm Just A Girl In Love" did turn up in the show tonight but in a darker and more surprising context than anyone could have expected. It turns out that Josh isn't the first time Rebecca has put our hopes for happiness onto a man who wasn't right for her and the emotional thesis statement Rebecca has been following all season that's worded to sound like a legal argument has roots in the actual legal argument made in the fallout of the last time Rebecca was just a "girl in love".
-From that moment in the pilot where Rebecca cheerfully throws away all of her medication, it's been clear that she has some serious mental health issues that she isn't properly dealing with but tonight is the first time we're shown the full extent of those issues and how dangerous this really is. It turns out that back in Harvard, Rebecca had an affair with a married professor named Robert who was going to leave his wife and marry her until he suddenly decided he couldn't. As a result Rebecca set fire to his house and was committed to a mental hospital to avoid conviction, despite her protestations that she "has no underlying issues to address". It's a brilliant, brutal twist that comes out of nowhere but makes total sense. Suddenly everything about Rebecca starts to add up from the fact that she went to Harvard and Yale Law to her aversion to therapy and medication to why her mother pushed Josh to marry her to those musical numbers she escapes into whenever reality becomes too much to bear (The one flash we get to her time in the mental hospital has a nurse commenting that a heavily medicated Rebecca is always singing to herself) has a fresh context. Rebecca is caught in a destructive cycle of seeking love and validation from men who always wind up abandoning her because she doesn't believe she's worthy of love. It's a cycle that goes back to the moment her well-meaning but emotionally unavailable father walked out the door and now the latest cycle is over and rather than burn down Josh's house (Or rather, his parents house), Rebecca tries to throw herself off of a cliff.
-Rebecca's daddy issues were introduced to us in a throwaway line from "I'm So Good At Yoga", way back in the second episode of the show. Rebecca envisions Valencia as everything Rebecca isn't, rubbing her perfection in Rebecca's face with a series of taunts culminating in "My father didn't lea-ve me". The next episode went further into this showing us the moment Silas Bunch walked out on his wife and young daughter as the basis for Rebecca's fear of throwing a party. After that the daddy stuff was mostly backgrounded before becoming a key part of Rebecca's dream ghost journey and then going back to the background until last week but it's always been there informing who Rebecca is and what she wanted. Now everything wrong with Rebecca can't completely be attributed to her father issues, particularly her need to throw herself into fantasy and narrative whenever she has to confront real life, but they do affect a large amount of her behaviour whether she knows it or not. The episode begins with her composing a text to her father that's almost exactly like the text she sent to Josh in the pilot but whereas Josh's eventual reply is a request to grab dinner sometime, her father's is a rejection, a delay until the rehearsal dinner he's obligated to attend and it crushes her. Rebecca knows her father is bad news but she can't help but feel that if he were to accept her, then everything would be OK.
-Silas Bunch is a complicated figure and he's perfectly played by John Allen Nelson. Lesser hands might make Silas into a purely despicable figure, unworthy of Rebecca's love but Nelson brings a lot of charm and affection to the guy. He's mostly there to hit his daughter up for money but he doesn't leave after he gets what he wants. He tries to give Rebecca what she wants and you understand why Rebecca wants him to love her so much. He's a toxic parent and he's not emotionally available enough to understand Rebecca or give her what she needs but he doesn't want to hurt his daughter and you can't help but feel for the guy a little (until the end at least). He's pretty similar to Josh and it makes sense that they'd hit it off.
-Josh spends much of the episode trying to get to the bottom of the "Robert" mystery set up when Rebecca accidentally says "I'm sorry Robert" in front of him and passes it off with an easily debunked lie. Josh should confront Rebecca once he figures out it's a lie and have an honest conversation with her where they get to the bottom of this, but instead he keeps looking for reasons he doesn't understand, inching closer and closer to a valid reason to back out of this marriage he doesn't really want. Then Trent shows up with an envelope containing all of the answers he needs and he becomes even more conflicted.
-This season of the show has made it clear that the problem with Josh is that he runs to a pretty girl to validate him every time he has to confront himself. Father Brah basically tells Josh as much tonight. When Sarah was introduced last week, I became wary that Josh was going to leave Rebecca for her and this episode definitely began seriously heading that direction before Josh suddenly stops and realizes that's his problem. So he decides to do the right thing and go talk to Rebecca about this envelope and her past. Until he doesn't. Josh's inability to be by himself has been in the foreground of his character, but quietly humming along in the background is his strong faith. There's a reason he runs to Father Brah whenever he's facing a moral crisis. So instead of running towards a new pretty girl, he replaces the girl with church and decides to suddenly become a priest. It's a stunning bait-and-switch that completely tracks with Josh's character. He's not fixing his destructive patterns, he's just replacing what he escapes with.
-Josh does get a crucial moment of character growth though when he chooses to not read the envelope on Rebecca's past. He knows if he reads it then he'll have some kind of a justification for leaving but he chooses not to. He's making a cowardly choice but he's owning that choice and it's kind of admirable. It's also dangerous because he has no idea what he's actually unleashing by leaving Rebecca but again, kind of admirable.
-Before everything goes to hell and she tries to throw herself off a cliff, Rebecca stands over that same cliff singing a song officially called "Rebecca's Reprise". It's a medley that combines "You Stupid Bitch", "I'm The Villain In My Own Story", "I Love My Daughter" and "We'll Never Have Problems Again" into a triumphant number about how Rebecca is on the precipice of having everything she's ever said she's wanted. It's a sad number because we know this won't be that simple and things are going to collapse, even if we don't know how they'll collapse yet. Rebecca doesn't know this though. She's at the height of her delusion, the climax of the narrative she's been building for herself the moment she moved to West Covina.
-Love and hate are almost exactly the same thing. They're both strong emotions driven by a focus/obsession with another human being and caring about their well-being. The only difference is intent. Do you want this person to be happy or do you want them to suffer? Rebecca spent two seasons trying to get Josh to love her and it's brought her to the edge of a cliff. Paula rushes in to support her because that's what Paula does but just like she's done throughout the show so far by encouraging Rebecca to chase Josh, she makes the wrong call in the advice she gives because she doesn't know the whole story. She doesn't know the kind of help Rebecca actually needs or that Rebecca has been institutionalized because of something just like this. She just knows to enable so she tells Rebecca not to blame herself (good call) but to blame Josh and her father. And just like that, love turns to hate and Rebecca has a new mission. Her father turns to leave and she finally, definitively rejects him. He calls her crazy and she replies "little bit" with a smirk, owning the label for the first time. Then with Paula, Heather, and Valencia all by her side she makes a vow to destroy Josh Chan. It's a strong, powerful moment to end the season on that opens up a lot of narrative possibilities for next season.
-Rebecca is just like Josh. She thinks that by rejecting her father, and by extension Josh, she's breaking the pattern that's causing her to be miserable but she's not breaking the pattern at all, she's merely replacing the focus of the pattern. Trying to ruin Josh's life won't make her happy just like becoming a priest won't make Josh happy. It's something they're both going to have to learn the hard way though.
-Rebecca focusing on destroying Josh also Chan brings us to the most traditional meaning of the phrase "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" so that'll be fun to explore.
-White Josh and Daryl are set up for trouble this episode when White Josh admits he's not someone who's interested in marriage. He gets why people have kids but he doesn't get why people get married. Daryl is able to come to terms with this but he also decides that he and White Josh should have a child and from the look on White Josh's face, that is definitely not something he's ready for. We'll see how this plays out next year but it doesn't look great for the longevity of that relationship.
-The other song in this episode is "What A Rush To Be A Bride", a heavy metal head-banger number that contrasts the beauty of marriage with a manic beat and screaming voices. It's a bit of a filler number, but it's a lot of fun and it shows that Paula and Rebecca are once again totally on the same page.
-So after weeks of focus, Nathaniel turned out to be mostly a non-factor in his finale, but him telling Silas to "Have fun flying coach, dick" after Silas assumes he can get a private plane back to Alaska was perfect. Nathaniel has really grown on me so I'm excited to see more Scott Michael Foster next season.
-Heather and Valencia is a really fun dynamic that gets a lot of play as Heather assists with Valencia's wedding planning, mostly by sardonically pointing out when things get ridiculous and apologizing for Valencia.
-As I said at the top, wow. I had high expectations for this finale and writer/director/show co-creator Aline Brosh McKenna exceeded every one. This has been a terrific season of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and I'm incredibly thankful it's not the last one. The wait for season 3 is going to be hard.
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