The Beginning Of The End

For those of you who may not know, Dexter is nearly at its end.  A great many folks out there feel this is overdue but I have enjoyed every season of the show so far.  Some more than others, of course, but I haven’t yet tired of it.  That being said, this is the series’s 8th season and god knows where else they could take our beloved serial killer.  I do NOT want to see him die, but I fear it’s inevitable.  I can’t decide whether I want it to be by Deb’s hands or not.

Here’s a combination trailer for both Dexter and Showtime’s newest series, Ray Donovan:

If you happen to be like me and simply can’t wait, you’re in luck.  Showtime released a 2 minute long sneak peak at the upcoming and final season of Dexter:

Timely or not, I hate goodbyes.

~Nikki

Fly Like Paper

I have been a faithful watcher of The Office nearly from its beginning and have loved the vast majority of its 184 episodes.  Naturally, Steve Carell’s departure left an obvious, gaping hole and at first, I admit I did think they should have ended the series when he left.  But this ninth and final season has been better, not quite hitting the bar set by those first few seasons, but much improved from the last couple.  I still do feel that the show has run its course and I’m glad this is the last season but I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t a part of me that is sad to see it go.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote this:

“I am bothered by the developments that this season has brought to the Halpert family.  Jim and Pam haven’t always been the focus of the show but their chemistry and the evolution of their relationship has been a constant.  Some viewers felt it got a bit stagnant after they got married and started their family but I always felt that theirs was a natural relationship.  After all, what marriage doesn’t lose some of its zeal after the realities of daily life and the demands of family set in?  They stuck by each other and that was enough reward for me.  Earlier on in this season, when Jim pursued a career change and lost sight of Pam’s needs and wants, I felt this, too, was an organic and plausible story line.  But I expected one of them to close the gap.  To sacrifice for the other and for their family.  To stop communicating so poorly, to take a leap of faith, to lay it all out once and for all.  Whether it would be Jim sacrificing his dream job or Pam sacrificing their comfortable life in Scranton, I expected one of them to give in.

One could argue that families fall apart all the time.  Divorce in America is by no means an uncommon thing and this show has always maintained a commitment to exposing the sad, dreary aspects of the mundane lives of the working class.  Perhaps the destruction of the Halpert family is just one more harsh reality.  Jim and Pam may be no more special than any other couple who falls in love, gets married, raises a family and eventually grows apart.  I couldn’t call it unrealistic.  But it certainly isn’t what I expected, nor is it what I want to see.  Sink or swim, I want to see Jim and Pam together.”

Last night’s episode finally gave me what I’d been waiting for.  It was emotional, subtle, tender and it moved me to tears.  And it surprised me.  No surprise that The Office, with a mere 3 episodes left, still has the ability to make me tear up, but surprised that I doubted it would.  While the American series differs in a great many ways from its British point of origin, it has kept true to the pace that the show’s creators set.  They know just how long to keep you waiting, to make you damn near desperate for the pay-off, so much so that you’re even beginning to doubt you’ll get it.  We saw it with Tim and Dawn in the original series and even though Jim and Pam are really very different characters whose story has veered from that of their British counterparts, they’ve held true to the remarkable sense of timing that makes even something as small and ordinary as a hug feel monumental.

Yes, it’s true.  The Office: I will miss you.

~Nikki

Don’t Wanna Play That Part

We’ve all heard the phrase: “Men are simple.”  Men have said it, women have said it, and I’m sure no one has ever meant for it to encompass all men at all times.  Recently, Lena Dunham said it in reference to writing male characters for her HBO series, Girls.  Dunham has been hailed by critics and fans alike for writing complex, multifaceted female characters, girls who aren’t reduced to one stereotype or another.  But her male characters have been criticized as being one-dimensional, men without ambition or goals other than to impress (or even just fuck) a woman.

I watch Girls and for the most part, I like it.  It’s weird and gross and often makes me uncomfortable but somehow, all at the same time, it is bizarrely appealing.  I would agree that the female characters are more fully developed than the male characters but I wouldn’t go so far as to call the men stereotypes.  At least, not male stereotypes.  Oddly, they seem to me to fit stereotypes more typically associated with women.  Charlie is so lovesick for Marnie in season one that he fails to notice how much she doesn’t want him around.  Even after she humiliates and breaks up with him, he gives her one chance after another to get him back, alienates his new girlfriend and eventually cheats on her with Marnie, and when Marnie finally admits that she loves him too and wants to be with him again, all he can say is, “That’s all I ever wanted.”

Adam, who I’ve always found more than a little scary, reluctantly falls for Hannah, then pines for her endlessly, never letting go of his adoration for her even after she treats him like garbage.  And when she calls him in a pathetic appeal for attention, does he tell her to fuck off, he’s got a new woman now, one who doesn’t mess with his head and call the cops on him for no reason?  No.  Instead, he drops everything and literally runs across town (shirtless, no less) to save her.  Save her from what, you ask?  Her own insanity.  That’s right.  She wasn’t actually in danger of anything except indulging in her obsessive compulsive disorder.

And Ray, the male character who showed the most promise as far as depth and range were concerned, has been written into a lazy slacker who lacks the drive to do anything with his life until he falls for Shoshanna and suddenly, wants to be a better man so as to keep her from leaving him.

We’re used to seeing women in these roles – desperately seeking the object of their affection despite obvious signs of said object’s indifference.  (There are so many of these women, in fact, an entire book has been written and published to snap them out of it.)  And it is refreshing not to see women in these roles but it would be even better to see no one in them.  Not that Dunham’s men are complete caricatures; there are moments wherein they display real depth and honesty.  And, of course, I’m not suggesting that no man should ever be depicted as lovesick.  Personally, I don’t think Dunham has done quite as bad of a job with her male characters as some do.  But she is a woman and for that reason alone, I’m sure it’s easier for her to write women.

Nor do I think that her comment about men being simple was intended to deride men as inferior creatures.  She spoke specifically of the relationships men have with women in comparison to women’s friendships with each other, which she believes are more complicated because they aren’t based on sex or romantic love.  I can’t say that that’s always true but I’m sure it is some of the time, especially for women and men in their twenties when so many of their relationships are about figuring out who they are and who they want to be.  What I find more special about Dunham’s Girls is that her characters are as (or more) tortured over their troubled friendships as they are over their sexual relationships, which isn’t something we’re used to seeing in female characters.  And I think that’s actually her point.

~Nikki

Across The Harlan County Line

The concept of duality isn’t new to storytelling, nor is it played out.  When used effectively, it can draw together characters and opposing plot lines and provide them with a kind of symmetry that enriches every aspect of the story.  From its pilot episode, Justified has been an example of duality done well with main character Raylan Givens and the character who has grown into a second male lead, Boyd Crowder.  (Side note: the character of Boyd Crowder was originally intended to die in season 1 but fans and critics alike found him so irresistibly appealing – due in no small part to Walton Goggins’s brilliantly charismatic portayal of him – that Justified’s makers rewrote his story arc and invented a new, much larger purpose for him.  To the folks who made that decision, I say: thank you.)  Raylan and Boyd each have opposing goals; one is a man of the law, the other a determined outlaw.  Their paths continually cross, their lives invariably intertwine and while they claim to be more enemies than friends, there is no mistaking the connection that exists between them.

Boyd and Raylan have had a kinship from the start.  They “dug coal together” and apparently, formed some manner of unbreakable bond while doing it.  Raylan proved incapable of killing Boyd in season one and has found himself defending or helping him in one way or another since.  Despite Raylan’s interference in Boyd’s illegal affairs, he has voluntarily saved Raylan’s life a time or two as well.  But in season 4, the connection between these two reached a new depth, their lives and characterizations so intricately paralleled, it now feels as though one cannot exist without the other.  This 4th season of Justified hasn’t intertwined their plot lines as much as mirrored them, giving us viewers the gift of perfectly executed duality in its telling.

At the season’s start, both Raylan and Boyd were planning for a bright future, taking extra work and storing expendable cash, all the while keeping their eyes on the endgame.  Raylan has a baby on the way and wanted more than anything to be a better father than his dad was (to his bitter end).  Boyd wanted to rid himself of the illegal, seedy business he inherited from his father.  You see, not only do their individual characters alternately mirror and oppose each other, but within each man opposing forces exist, good and evil fight to gain ground.  Raylan and Boyd come from the same stock of hardened criminals, men who earned their living in illegal and violent ways, men who lived and, as it turns out, died by the sword.  Raylan tried to break the cycle when he became a deputy U.S. Marshall and focused his efforts on capturing criminals but has struggled with dark impulses all along.  As Nicky Augustine pointed out in the season’s closing episode, he “hides behind his badge” but it’s murder all the same.  Like Raylan, Boyd’s history is full of back and forth between the good and bad within him.  Sometimes it’s hard to remember him as the thieving white supremacist he was in season one, that is, until we see the word SKIN tattooed across his knuckles.  He found God and changed his life, genuinely reformed until his followers met their untimely end thanks to Boyd’s family ties, a tragic affair that shook him to his core and sent him back to a life of crime, this time determined to be smarter, better, determined not to lead innocent men to their slaughter but instead to profit from the wicked and eventually build a gateway to a better life, a legitimate life with limitless possibilities for the future.

But by this season’s end, both Boyd and Raylan had failed.  Boyd couldn’t climb out of his daddy’s shadow any more than he was able to climb the social ladder in Harlan county, just as Raylan failed to shake off Arlo’s legacy of morally bankrupt rationalizations and violence.  They began the season full of hope and promise, looking forward to the future.  Each ended it with their eyes on what lay behind them, consumed with the sins of the past, haunted by loss.

~Nikki