The Factual Opinion

Television Of The Weak: Only Seconds Before America Shuts Down

This week, we've got a skeleton crew, with Venture Brothers, Fringe, Dexter, House & Sons of Anarchy.

The Venture Brothers: "Self-Medication" by Matthew J. Brady

And here's yet another example of the writing that makes this show so great. It's not just about misplaced nostalgia, or putting an "adult" spin on characters and concepts originally meant for children. That sort of "ha ha, cartoon characters getting drunk, having sex, etc." was done to death even before Robot Chicken started fucking the corpse of its dead horse. No, Venture Brothers treats its referential characters with affection, but imbues them with the sadness and failure that should be the result of living your life focused on the past, obsessed with the way things used to be. Plus, it's hilarious.

 

So that brings us to this episode, which sees Dr. Venture participate in a group therapy session with several other former boy adventurers, including stand-ins for Astro Boy ("When I see a giant robot, I just get so mad I wanna beat them up, and then, and then I wanna burn them. Sometimes I wanna burn the whole world!"), Johnny Quest ("I'm only here because Action Johnny had himself a little run-in with Johnny Law, and was ordered to attend by Johnny Judge. Not my fault. Somebody else's"), the Hardy Boys (who, in a genius touch, get crossed with the Menendez brothers), and Robin ("I can't even get an erection now unless I'm tied to a chair with a time bomb taped to my chest"). Their back-and-forth mocking and anxieties about their pasts are comedy gold, and provide a good opportunity for guest stars (Patton Oswalt and John Hodgman! Yay! Seth Green! Not a "boo", surprisingly!) to voice new characters, and the dorky sincerity of the therapist ("Chemical dependence. See what I just did there?") rounds the whole scene out perfectly. Also, they all end up going on an adventure and trying to solve a mystery which should have been obvious, given the opening in which the Monarch almost kills Dr. Venture but has to back off because he as a doctor's note. And then the plot eventually shows the character development that the show has done, allowing Dr. Venture to realize that while his life is pretty pathetic, he's not as lame as he could be. There's four seasons of storytelling for you; way to show growth, Doc!

The secondary plot involves Hank, Dean, and Sgt. Hatred all going to a Lord of the Rings-ish movie, with the latter freaking out when he finds himself in a theater full of children. Because he's a pedophile, you know. Amusing, but rightly positioned as a B-plot in comparison to the sublime main portion of the episode. Good stuff all around this week, but man, how long is it going to take before Brock returns? There's stoking anticipation, and then there's just making me impatient. Come on, guys, let's get that main plot moving, since I am obviously the one whose wishes are worth catering to.

Fringe: "August" by Matthew J. Brady

You know how every so often some Marvel comic or another has a story about the Watcher and his society, and how one of them or another has interfered with the planet they're supposed to be observing or something? One of Fringe's writers must be a fan, because that's totally what this episode is all about. The guys in the show are cannily called Observers, with the hope that nobody will make the connection, and we find out here that they've been present at key moments throughout human history, which makes me hope people will start acting like fans of The DaVinci Code and start searching old paintings for images of bald guys, because they confuse fiction with reality. Apparently, they also can see all of time at once, Tralfamadorian-style, which a nerdy scientist guy illustrates in this episode by pouring water through a tube for some reason. Whoa, stop confusing me with your scientific mumbo-jumbo, maaaan!

 

Anyway, the plot here sees one of the Observers kidnap some girl, and nobody can figure out why, until a plane that she was supposed to be on crashes. It turns out that she was a survivor of the 1989 San Francisco earthquake, and he saw her back then and has been watching her ever since. Now he's convinced of her importance, even though his fellow bald guys disagree when they all meet at their favorite Indian restaurant, so he's gotta figure out how to make her important enough to keep them from correcting (i.e. shooting) the error he caused. Aww, how romantic. If only they had managed to have him say (preferably in a robot voice) "WHAT IS THIS THING YOU HU-MONS CALL LOVE?", this would be my favorite episode of the show ever.

As it is, it's not bad, although the stuff with the rest of the cast is boring. Olivia needs to learn to never make personal plans, because she should know by this point that in this kind of show, those always must be cancelled, because her job is IMPORTANT. And Walter should just confess to Peter already that he stole him from a parallel universe as a kid after his real son died. Come on, how awkward could that conversation really be? Hmm, maybe they just need to re-title this The Bald Guy Non-Intervention Hour, and then the show could really take off. Hop to it, Fox!

Dexter: "Hungry Man" by Tucker Stone

The Worst Scene Of This Season So Far:

LaGuerta: Turkey wraps. Icees.

Angel: And Cuervo Silver. Only the best for you. [Gets himself ready.] You know, I was thinking. Carl Haas' wife gets mugged, boom. She's dead. Carl gets hit by a bus, boom, he's a vegetable. 

LaGuerta: You never know when you wake up in the morning what the day will bring--

Angel: --I love you. I love you. 

LaGuerta: [Removes Angel's sunglasses, then whispers] Are you saying that because you're afraid you'll get hit by a bus?

Angel: No. Well. Yes. But. I just want you to know what I know before I don't know it anymore. And I love you. I LOVE YOU!

LaGuerta: Shhh

Angel: I LOVE MARIA ESPENZA DI ALMA LAGUER - -

LaGuerta: Shh. I'm not gonna say it. 

Angel: [Confused, head cocks to left] You don't love me?

LaGuerta: I'm afraid. If I say it, something might happen. Like you'll get hit by a bus. [Friday Night Lights song begins playing softly] So watch out for moving buses. Because I love Angel Juan Marcos Batista.

[Kissing]

The Best Scene Of This Season So Far:

John Lithgow: "Shut up, cunt."

 

That's Lithgow, and yes, he's talking to his wife. It turns out that Lithgow's happy family only looks that way due to a tightly maintained schedule of repetitive physical and emotional abuse. The wife is a broken container of terror (willing to let Dexter fuck her daughter, as long as daddy doesn't find out), the son is a seething pail o' hate, and the daughter--well, one of the daughters--is kept upstairs in a locked-from-the-outside room, designed to prolong constant adolescence. Prior to the line above, Daddy Lithgow has already taken his son's finger and snapped it in half, and when the family sits down to Thanksgiving dinner and then neglects to express their gratitude for his finger-snapping fatherhood, the monolithic nature of his power is fully expressed. His wife, so terrified of what-is-to-come, as it's clearly what-has-come-before, tries to calm him down. He calls her a cunt, and the bite of it hits harder than a slap. As he begins to orient the family back into the natural orbit that Dexter's uninvited presence has thrown out of wack, his son--motivated by the finger, the fear, and Dexter's manipulation--attempts to assert a bit of control as well. Taking it too far, he smashes the funeral urn, and in seconds, Lithgow is on top of him, choking the life out of his son like a real-life Homer Simpson.

And then Dexter steps in. 

It's worth noting that this was yet another scene where Michael C. Hall shows off the purpose behind the muscular physique he brings to the show--like Matt Damon's Jason Bourne, Dexter's body is constructed by brute necessity more than aesthetic design. He's strong and fast because he's a monster, and a monster needs to be able to dominate and destroy. Quickly removing his belt and using it to drag Lithgow into the kitchen, it's a scene that's physically accurate--unlike 24 or Sons of Anarchy, where violence doesn't completely make sense and depends on crash edits, this show just depicts it exactly as it would realistically occur. A guy drags another guy into another room by his neck and then jumps on top of him with a knife, hissing "I should have fucking killed you when I had the chance." You see him do it--unfortunately, so does the rest of the family, and like that, we're back to where we started from, with Dexter the number one suspect in what will eventually be the murder of John Lithgow.

And The Rest:

For those five minutes, Dexter hits the sorts of high that made it so compelling in previous seasons--after all, the biggest non-kill highs of the show have always been tangled up in whether or not he was going to be found out for what he was, and it's not a surprise that the trick still works. But the remainder, with the shock reveal that Deb's shooter is Lithgow's other, until-now-unknown, daughter, or the horrible scene mentioned above, continues the season's downward spiral. Rita might have an affair. Deb wants to solve the case. Angel likes LaGuerta. The funny Asian guy said something funny. It's a dead horse, and there's nothing new to say about that. But when it's as good as that family dinner scene, it makes the sting that much harder to shrug off.

House: "Ignorance Is Bliss" by Tucker Stone

Although shows like House--procedural, designed for syndication, dramedies--aren't really built for the long range story or shifting narrative styles that have become so popular in the last decade, that doesn't stop them trying. Even Law & Order--which I'm keeping up with pretty much solely because it's what my mom watches, and that gives us a non are-you-following-the-treatment-regiment conversation to have--continues to dip its toe in the water of the season-long tale, as we see Ernie Hudson earning (or destroying) karma credits with his epic succession of minute-long scenes where he tells a weed-smoking S. Epetha Merkson that cancer hasn't stolen her looks. House has always played with including that sort of multi-episode padding--his war with David Morse, his war with Sela Ward, his war with his fucking leg, etc. Thankfully, the House writers keep the long term stories contained, with most of them wrapping up after six episodes. After all, nothing has really changed about the appeal-of-House formula--it's the Watch Hugh Laurie Show, and the show's writers primary job is to come up with little pegs for Hugh Laurie to bounce off of. That, more than anything else, is why it's a good thing to lose Cameron, and it's also why Olivia Wilde is so consistently uninteresting to watch. It's unfortunate that they're the primary non-Cuddy females on the show, and it's plausible that the show's writers might just suck eggs when it comes to writing women, but the cause doesn't make that much of a difference. There's been no good watching between Cameron and Laurie in years, and watching Laurie make jokes about 13's bisexuality only worked a couple of times. (It's disappointing to tow the party line, but it has to be said: unless you're willing to go offensive, dick n' pussy jokes get old really fast.)

 

Of course, that runs up right into the current problem, which is that an episode like this one, where Laurie is given his strongest groups of comic foils ever (Olivia Wilde notwithstanding), should be really good, or at least, as good as House can get. At moments, it certainly was--Taub and House talking is apparently a concept that always wins, and seeing Chase get a chance to steal a page from the Book of Manipulation isn't too shabby either--but it collapsed at the lighthouse of the subplot that never dies, the subplot that consistently threatens to steal the entire focus of the show, the subplot of "Will House bang Cuddy".

Enough. I'll admit that I did want them to get together--mostly because I can think of a certain guy named Martin who enjoys reminding me of that sad fact constantly--but the show has spent the last year making it clear how little they have for the Cuddy character to do. It's odd, and possibly more evidence of a fucked up notion of women in general on the writers part, but Lisa Edelstein was actually a lot more interesting as a character back when all she did was wear low-cut tops that showed off her cans. Now that she's been shoved into the spotlight, stuck in the horrible position of playing unreadable dialog games with Hugh Laurie, the mere sight of her is like a flashing sign that the upcoming bridge is out. Gone is the sense that she was a woman of intelligence who House viewed as a worthy opponent--now he just responds to her with mindless juvenilia and plastic manipulation. She's boring, and she didn't used to be boring.

But what does one expect from something like House, or really, any procedural hybrid show? Even a successful one--and despite the round table of complaints lashed against it, House remains an incredibly successful show, one of the few big network ones left--is comfort food when it's at its best, and only one episode--"Three Stories"--ever broke free from the inherent limitations of this type of product. Having the luxury of a DVR permits an all-in approach to these shows that was formerly the purview of the lonely or obsessive, to their detriment. (Old ad campaigns about water-cooler conversations aside, didn't puberty and the ability to drive pretty much break everyone of the habit of appointment television?) House, for all of its implied innovations, is an old time television show, a sarcastic sequel to Nick At Nite, and when actual old time television shows almost invariably hold little but the promise of nostalgic masturbation, new versions can only rut on a stained mattress for so long.

And yet, the further down that road of rationalization one goes, the closer one gets to this: apology. Television--all entertainment products, actually--don't deserve the apology of an audience any more than they deserve audience scrutiny. They don't "deserve" anything at all, it's merely an exchange--financial, temporal--and the pros and cons are determined on a completely individual basis. On an individual basis, a viewer of one, House might--and probably has--lost almost all of its luster.

You know what though? I watch it with my wife. And I still enjoy hiding my eyes behind her back during the really embarrassing scenes, and I still like the way she rolls her eyes at Olivia Wilde, and I still, for now at least, like that when I get home from work on Mondays, she pokes her head out of her little office and says "Hey. When you get finished in there, you wanna watch House?" Until gay marriage brings about the end of the world, I'm good with that.

Sons of Anarchy: "Culling" by Tucker Stone

Is two music montages one too many? Sons of Anarchy says no, I kind of say--well, okay, whatever, it keeps the actors I don't like from talking. And while those montages weren't backed up by the bloodshed I was hoping for, that's my fault for thinking they'd kill the bad guys that gang raped the main character's mother before the season finale.

 

No such luck. This episode wasn't a complete placeholder--hell, Henry Rollins took time off from pinching his mouth into his best old-lady-face to shoot a couple of women in the back, and then he blew some guy's brains all over the wall. (Like--meat on wall brains, FX don't give a fuck. I'd bet money there's somebody who works for FX corporate who "just doesn't give a fuck", you know what I mean? He's one of those guys who says "Gonna go Ballz Deep tonight", but without any irony, you know? Like, his favorite author is Chuck Palahniuk, and he bought a motorcycle because of this show, and he still hides the fact that he masturbates from his wife? You know what I mean. I do it too sometimes, I'll eat a whole fucking Sara Lee Pecan Coffee Cake at four in the afternoon when I'm on vacation, but you know, I'm on fucking vacation. I don't live my life by vacation rules.)

Besides Henry Rollins and his grandma face, there was also a really over the top scene where Jax's girlfriend choked her boss and threatened her with a loaded handgun. It was as viscerally entertaining as those sort of scenes always are--well, unless you've never had a boss you truly fucking hated, in that case, the scene is probably "offensive" or "immature"--but it was also as stupid as those scenes always are, because seriously, people who physically attack their boss, at their job...that's just crazy stupid shit to do, and no amount of writing can change that little truism. And meanwhile, the show's just playing tease-the-fight, with all of the main characters acting all "get the squad together, we got some retribution a-brewing", and then, when the time comes...yeah, nothing happens. Sure, there's a big fight, but Henry Rollins gets arrested before Jax can kill him. And then there's a big gun-to-head scene with Adam Arkin and his Nazi daughter, but they both get arrested before Ron Perlman can kill Arkin. (There was a really primo moment though, with one of the Sons placing his hand on Nazi daughter's face, shoving it away so she would have to watch her father die through his splayed, blood-covered fingers. I'm a big believer that they should use more camera tricks on this show, and that would have been a great opportunity to do something really fucking twisted.) 

But no dice. Everybody still has to die, but they have to cross the t's first, and I guess that'll happen next week. I'd like to say I'm not looking forward to it, but why lie? I can't wait.

-Matthew J. Brady & Tucker Stone, 2009

The Virgin Read: Letting Her Pick Herself Is Sure Turning Into A BAD ROMANCE

Each week, the non-comics reading Nina Stone picks out one random comic book based off her own made up criteria, reads it, and then writes about that experience. While she's been doing these columns for awhile, she's only successfully managed to enjoy, remember, and keep up with one series. This week, she picked the latest issue of Phonogram.

Phonogram: The Singles Club # 5
Written by
Art by
Published by Image Comics

Earlier today, when I opened my bag to pull out my wallet and pay for my lunch, I had that awful moment of searching the bag repeatedly, looking for my wallet. I was both panicked and embarrassed. It's just a weird feeling, suddenly being at a complete loss when seven dollars and fourteen cents have been demanded. I decided to calm down, assumed I had left the wallet at home -- it probably escaped my bag during the whole pizza ordering thing -- and I'd just look for it when I got back there.

Well, I just had the heart pounding five minutes of searching everywhere and not being able to find it. And suddenly realizing that if it actually had been stolen, then whoever got my wallet probably had already cleared the bank accounts, as they'd certainly had plenty of time. Then came the sinking realization that not only was my financial well-being in a potentially tumultuous state, but now my husband's was as well, since we share the account. I mean, it's one thing if it's just me, it's just my problem--but now I'm (sort of) responsible for screwing somebody else over. And that particular somebody is the same person that I would've turned to for help in this exact situation, but I can't....oy, ow, yowch and yikes.  

Just before sitting down to type this, I found the wallet. Seconds before. Immediately before. And I thought that made a great jumping off point for writing this review because, you know what? I thought Phonogram was annoying. Right this second, it's even more so in comparison to the "trauma" (or rather, drama?) I just put myself through - even though all has turned out to be okay. 

The comic seems even more trite. Maybe I'm not being fair. Let's get into it. 

I found the whole quoting-lyrics-thing to be an irritating trip to high school. It reminded me of when my various friends that I'd known since preschool started developing groups that they hung around. Several were music related. It was pretty sudden. One day, everybody splintered off, with some band dictating everything they wore and thought about, everything they said. And yes, they quoted lyrics all over the place...wrote them on their folders. It's really an exclusive sort of thing - remember?

(I have a whole other reaction to that phenomena, too. I spent Hight School dancing three hours a night and listening to/hearing music of all kinds at dancing school -- classical, jazz, pop, avant garde -- and never suddenly found The Cure to be my savior. I just didn't understand the intense identification surrounding me. Even my childhood best friend...around 13 she became all about U2. And, they were pretty cool at the time, but I didn't LOVE them. And in her quest for a pop culture identity I felt excluded. That time, for whatever reason, was the beginning of us growing apart and although U2 wasn't the reason, it still served as the point where you can see the relationship began its collapse. In retrospect, I'm not sure what I expected her to do with her time while I was off at dance every night, and reflecting back on it, I'm struck by how obviously selfish I was being. She liked U2, and getting into U2 was something that she liked doing. If I'd been more available, maybe I would've gotten into them as much as she did. Instead, I made it personal--she chose U2 over me, when it's clear that both of us chose our own lives over each others.)   

I'll admit, maybe I'm just too old for this kind of story, maybe I'm just done with it. I'm always going to come at these picks with as much good faith as I can muster, especially now that my options have opened up to include 70-100 comics. But all of the willingness and openness I showed up to this comic with was gone once I read the 10th quote from Long Blondes. A band I never heard of, although I understand it's on my "shared" iTunes library. Oh, and no. Stop. Don't tell me who they are. I don't care about the Long Blondes. I came here to read a comic book, and the general shtick in this comic book kept me feeling excluded and distant. (I know!)

I can see how in this comic it might read like a clever idea.  I mean, back in the 70s, there were these 45s by Dickie Gordon that would come out with some guy asking interview questions and all the answers were snippets of popular songs at the time. I thought that was clever. In fact, I loved those records. I felt like I was always waiting for the radio DJ to play them, because I was a little girl. I'm not so little anymore, I menstruate and everything. I'm guessing, but neither are these comic creators. And some clever ideas are just clever ideas, and never really become clever creations. What am I saying? I'm saying that for me, the Dickie Gordon 45s worked when I was a kid, but this didn't.

There's a plot in here somewhere, right? I think so. But I'm not too clear on it because I got so distracted with lyrics, or the fact that at times the dialogue and action didn't make sense to me. That page where our leading lady and that guy are sharing a taxi was particularly confusing? And like, sure, she makes makes some stark statements about him, to him? I don't even know if they're true. "This isn't about changing the world. Lloyd. You're scared of anyone getting close to you, as that risks giving up you." I don't really know the backstory, so maybe that's a true statement. But her reason for saying such things, and the way she hits on him and then leaves him - what the hell is that about? I feel like someone just wrote down a break-up fantasy and plugged in whatever character was available. She makes this huge leap in four panels, from realizing that she wants to be his first choice for this crazy "world-changing" band idea he has. When she realizes that she'd be second choice, she decides to "put him in his place." But is that his place? And then those last two panels?! Leaning in close, seductively and saying, "this is about getting you off. And Lloyd....I'm the one who's getting off. Driver! Stop the car!" I mean, please. If they'd stopped with "this is about getting you off" it might be fine. Like, "This is about getting you off. Dream on, douchebag. Driver - let me out." But I feel like someone just wanted to use some double entendre in a diss and tried to make it work.

Oh, and I guess I am a bit curious--what's with the empty eyesockets? Is she actually some sort of evil being? Or just a not-so-great person? I'm not sure if her eyes are supposed to look like that, or if someone forgot to draw in eyeballs. If that does have something to do with something supernatural, there's not enough info in this issue to let me know, well, that I'm supposed to know that. It just seems like a comic about a night at the club. And reading this makes me feel like I just had to spend the evening with grouchiest girl. Bummer, man.

-Nina Stone, 2009  

Comics Of The Weak: Break Me Off A Piece Of That Beautiful Dick

Justice Society of America 80-Page Giant # 1
Written by who cares
Art by don't know
Published by Time Warner Entertainment Conglomerate

DC doesn't make any sense. They publish about eight million pages of comics that feature no-explanation erect nipples, and then, when their bustiest female character escapes from a block of ice, they can't pull the fucking trigger. Seriously, that situation--female character with gigantic tits is encased in a block of ice whilst wearing a white t-shirt--is the prime number intellectual argument answer to the question "When is it appropriate, nay, a must, to feature one of our countless hotties-in-space-thongs with oxytocin pumping at speed-dick rates?" She just escaped a block of fucking ice. Somebody should dig up Mister Wizard.

Big Questions # 13
By Anders Nilsen
Published by Drawn & Quarterly

This is pretty, it's about birds and shit. Life. There's a talking snake, but he's not the devil or something cheesy like that. One of the birds sings a Will Oldham song about having a hard life. It'll make you think about stuff, but it'll be personal stuff that you don't feel like sharing with people, so you'll probably say it in the dark while the only person you'd actually consider sharing it with sleeps. There's a Will Oldham song about that too.

Ghost Attack!?
By Zack Soto
Published by Zack Soto

The big secret of independent comics, mini or otherwise, is that most of them are really fucking horrible--bad art telling shitty stories with too high a price tag. That's why the main group of people who buy and keep up with them are usually tied up in the process of making some version of a shitty fucking piece of crap comic themselves, because it's in the best interest of all involved to maintain the lie, which is that there's a whole crop of independent alt comics that are really great, totally different from those g.d. super-hero comics, "puke". It's not true, and all it takes is a half ounce of honesty and 7 minutes of reading time to figure it out that no, five dollars worth of "what I thought about the customers at my old job" comics or serialized fantasy elf stories that come out in annual 16 page installments aren't the future of anything, other than a heaping dose of gunpowder based brainstem cleansing. Ghost Attack? This shit is actually pretty great, and at the end of the story, Zack Soto tells you what the idea behind the main story was about. Usually mini-comics like to play the whole "smarter readers will understand me" or "I don't care if I have an audience", both of which crash on the rocks of "you need any readers before you get 'smarter' ones, cuz friends don't count". After that, Soto includes a short installment previously published in Papercutter, which is also a pretty great mini-comic, despite being an anthology. It's like comics threw a curveball, and now your nuts need some frozen peas.

Pluto # 6
By Naoki Urasawa
Published by Viz

What else is there to say about this one? (Besides the "second best Urasawa series published this year" comment.) It's got action in it, and it does the action better than just about any other comic book that's come out this year. It's got fucking emote-ing in it, and it does the emote-ing better than just about any other comic book that's come out this year, excepting that part of Asterios Polyp where the girl asks dude why he never stands up for her to the pansexual frog monster's come-on lines. And, in opposition to the Big Two's tendency to quote-whore the exact same 4 writers on every single installment of the new Let's Rip Off Alan Moore Comic, this one has a vocal fanbase that includes the likes of Junot Diaz and Sergeant Fucking Moebius.

Oh, well there's the fact that this is the best volume of the series so far. That might be something new.

Hellblazer # 261
Written by Peter Milligan
Art by Giuseppe Camuncoli, Stefano Landini & Trish Mulvihill
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics

Camuncoli gets to draw India, and hey, it turns out that comics characters in India aren't just white people colored differently, which clashes pretty severely with DC continuity. Is that what makes Vertigo different? The innovation of not being lazy doesn't completely stop there, with Milligan also bringing what looks to be a story along as well, and while part of that story includes the requisite scene where some ex-friend of John Constantine has started up a new life as a conman religious leader type, and another part is the 700th pair of cynical local cops, the comic looks so CrazySexyCool that it doesn't read like a retread, even if parts of it pretty much are. At the end, you'll find your yearly reminder that India's various gods are way scarier than lame assholes like Satan.

Transformers # 1
Written by Mike Costa
Art by Don Figueroa & J. Brown
Published by IDW

This comic ends with Optimus Prime surrendering both his command of the Autobots as well as surrendering to the American authorities intent on capture/killing him, the same way they just killed Shortround, or Lockjaw, or Cockblock, whatever they call these toy advertisement characters. The comic opens with Optimus Prime quoting George Bush. (Either one.) That's not the recipe for something that's going to be very good, but then again, it's a fucking Transformers comic book, so maybe the story of how Glenn Beck became French is exactly what they're supposed to read like. God knows how you anyone could tell, IDW publishes about 16 versions of these characters every single week. This one was, at the very least, comprehensible.  

Adventure Comics # 5 
Written by Geoff Johns
Art by Jerry Ordway
Published by DC Comics

This isn't the only comic to feature comic book characters acknowledging the presence of snark on the internet this week, it's just the DC one. But unlike Dark Avengers, which shoves a line in the middle of a normal conversation with so much forced subtly that you can practically hear Nick Fury whine "leave me awwooonnee" before he says it, Johns just goes fucking full bore with the concept. Superboy is screaming about spoilers, he near strangles a comic shop employee, and then a zombie Lex Luthor from Earth 16-Z ejaculates in his pants when he sees how much the DC Comics Message Boards hate a DC Comics character--it's all just a really specific joke for a really specific person, sure, and it tries to have a "don't take this shit so seriously" attitude while also saying "but make sure you still take it seriously enough that you buy all these dumb comics and keep freaking out about them". It's problematic at best, horribly stupid at worst, and yet...it's sort of adorable in how far it takes the central gag. Superboy terrorizes his parents, he's obsessed with comic books in a way that goes way beyond the meanest stereotype...there's really nothing else that can be done with him, there's really no other character that would fit with this story. And while the immediate response to that sort of remark is usually something along the lines of "but is it a story worth telling"--hell, there hasn't ever been a story "worth telling" about Superboy-Prime, so why not just do one that caters exactly to his needs? Based off this depiction, dude has a diaper full.

Flash Rebirth # 5 
Written by Geoff Johns
Art by Ethan Van Sciver
Published by DC Comics

If Iris has been drinking coffee since she was in the third grade--and god knows, nothing in Flash Rebirth seems to have anything but surface value, so one can assume she means that--wouldn't she pretty much sound like Tom Waits by this point? And if Professor Zoom--seriously, that's the guys name, Professor Zoom? If that guy has spent his entire life pushing a kid down a flight of stairs, and leaving open same kid's back door so the dog would get hit by a car...like, just fuck and get it over with. That isn't "I'm your arch-enemy," that's stalking, that's what that is. That's "I love you", that's what you call it when you travel back in time to push somebody down a flight of stairs when they're running to science class. When you kill their mom? What, you get sick of hiding his car keys and unplugging the refrigerator? "I set it so that your toaster always burns your waffles! When you loaned your best friend your copy of The Goonies I switched the tape with Black Draft so he'd think you were coming on to him! I put roofies in your milkshake before the homecoming parade!" How far are they taking this? Like, after they do the whole "think your clothes on and your clothes will think on" panel. Seriously? This is where they take it? And sure, the guy runs some in it--hell, except for the little girl, who Sciver depicts as hopping in the wrong direction, everybody actually runs really fast--but it's the same general problem that they had in every issue before, which is that they aren't going anywhere. Over and over again, fists lifted over their head in some weird approximation of movement, they say shit, they move their ass, and then, at the end, they swear they're going to do it again. 

This ain't a comeback. This is Weekend at Bernie's.

Dark Avengers # 11
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Mike Deodato & Greg Horn
Published by Marvel Comics

The goofy thing about Dark Avengers is that it really doesn't have anything to do with Dark Reign at all. Sure, it needs Dark Reign to exist, otherwise it would just be the continuing adventures of the Ellis Thunderbolts series, but with longer sentences and more interruptions between them. But it's really just the apex of the Bendis team comic philosophy, which could most succinctly be understood as "bad asses being bad ass". Which--hey, you want to play anti-populist, play away, but what Bendis does works out pretty fucking well for the Avengers franchise. (Up until Bendis took over, the word "Avengers" wasn't plastered across four separate titles, and Marvel didn't even have a spinal book.) Dark Avengers is basically the king of all that shit--it's not the New Avengers style "look, all of your favorite characters HANGING OUT", but it's the Ultimate of the My Way Counts Comics, with a bunch of mean fuckers getting ready to wreck shit. And the mean fuckers are supposed to be mean fuckers, they're supposed to wreck shit, and while it still doesn't make sense why Bullseye all of a sudden cares about ruining anybody's reputation besides Daredevil, and Dark Wolverine is only interesting when Giuseppe Camuncoli is drawing him as a fruity trollop, this is a comic that usually delivers everything it promises--nothing more, but as long as it doesn't tie in with the collapsing X-Men franchise, rarely less. This issue, it spent half the page count yammering weak-ass exposition about some lesbian accountant who lived in a Skinemax movie, and then Greg Horn swiped old romance novel covers for a couple of pages. That would be depressing, but then again, it's not like you can get really mad at a prostitute for not bringing you to orgasm. You're just paying them for the shame, after all.

-Tucker Stone, 2009

Advanced Common Sense

The latest episode of ACS is now freely available for those of you with the time and interest to spare. If you'd prefer watching it in HD--god help you, he doesn't get prettier--it's available in that format on the Youtube and comiXology pages.

Television Of The Weak: I Wonder What People Who Liked That Show Eat For Breakfast, Besides Failure

This week, we've got Fringe, Dexter, House, Sons of Anarchy, V, It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia and The Prisoner.

The Venture Brothers: "The Revenge Society" by Matthew J. Brady

This is one of those episodes where characters mock the goofy premises of their world, but still take it deadly seriously, which is kind of one of the foundations of the shows appeal. They recognize the tawdriness, unhappiness, and failure of everything around them, but hey, when your head is attached to another person's body, you gotta just keep doing whatever you can to survive, right? And that's exactly what happens here, with Phantom Limb returning to get revenge on the Guild of Calamitous Intent, having renamed himself, um, Revenge. The opening his pretty hilarious, as he breaks in and picks off several of the silhouetted members of the tribunal that we saw in last season's premiere, revealing them to be a bunch of old white guys who take themselves too seriously ("These rooms have no alarms or anything; I don't even know where you guys are!" "Are we even in the same building?"). He then dismembers a couple of them and sews one's head on another's body (with the help of a kidnapped Billy Quizboy, who he blames for helping with the experiment that originally deformed him) as part of some sort of nonsensical scheme to have them read the Guild's charter and regain leadership (also, he turns out to have gone kind of crazy). That means a showdown of sorts with David Bowie, the current Sovereign ("You! Call Iman. Tell her I'll be on tour."), as well as an anticlimactic resolution of sorts to the ORB subplot that was introduced last season.

Surprisingly, the best stuff here comes from the double-headed Guild guys, who manage to make their situation pretty hilarious, fighting over control of the body and arguing like doofuses. It seems surprisingly fresh, even though it's a concept that's been done before, whether in animation (Futurama), or in live action least as far back as the movie All of Me. In fact, Phantom Limb yells at them for becoming a vaudeville routine ("I've been piloting this bone-bag for like 73 years; I'm not giving it up to a talking pimple!" "Talking pimple that can make you...noogie yourself!"), so it's a routine that probably dates back much farther. Maybe it's that the characters are pompous old men ("I'm afraid the streets are overrun with teenage gangs." "They're cruel, and they will undoubtedly taunt us because our trousers are not in style anymore!"), or it might just be good writing and voice acting. Whatever the case, they make a good enough of a comedy duo that they had better show up again in the future. We also get some good character moments from the regular cast, as Sergeant Hatred has another bathroom-floor crying jag, this time about Hank not liking him, and Dean and Dr. Venture bond over the easy cleanability of fear-induced vomit off the super-scientist's speed suit.

So, yeah, good times as always, with that character stuff selling everything as usual, not to mention the funny details like Billy spending most of the episode tied up in a sack or the oft-hilarious dialogue ("What is this, an episode of Gilligan's Island? Everybody gets hit once, and they are instantly unconscious?"). Forward plot motion of a sort? That's cool, but it's just icing; the cake is spending more time in this world, and laughing and laughing the whole way through.

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia – “The Gang Gets Racist,” “Charlie Wants an Abortion” by Martin Brown

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s pilot episode, “The Gang Gets Racist” doesn’t quite hint at the absurdist rabbitholes that the show’s recent seasons dive down, but it does clearly outline the genius of its creators—not only as comics, but as TV business people. Sunny has become known for its irreverent treatment of hot-button issues, and the subjects of racism and homophobia approached in the first episode couldn’t be more blatant targets. White dudes’ befuddlement at black slang, someone misunderstanding advances by someone of the same sex, quotes taken out of context that sound racist—this is all tired ground, but “The Gang Gets Racist” plows it again, happily. It’s a testament to the four major performers’ chops—their willingness to underplay scenes, their perfect timing, their abilities to keep pushing the story forward while running off on tangents—make the clichéd subject matter an afterthought. It’s a testament to their acumen that they chose to kick off their series like this—even though the jokes are well worn, there’s still a thrill to watching the cast have the balls to make them.

Of course, the racist episode could only be followed by the abortion episode. Mac, Dennis and Dee each take sides on the controversial issue and then use their points of view to help them achieve their own selfish goals. Meanwhile, Charlie looks after a ten year old kid that may or may not be his. Paired with “The Gang Gets Racist,” “Charlie Wants an Abortion” proves that, while it took the cast a couple of seasons to develop its comic voice, the characters and the relationships between them came fully-formed out of the womb. Even before the writing has had time to catch up with the talent, it’s obvious that there’s something special about Sunny—and that mostly has to do with the rapport of the actors. In the meantime, the show hits its funniest moments when it’s unafraid to return to the comedy classics, like saying “Why?” after everything someone says and ten year-olds vomiting and dudes getting kneecapped with pool cues.

Fringe: "Of Human Action" by Matthew J. Brady

God, this show is stupid, but that's what makes it enjoyable, since it tries so hard to be smart. This episode features what seems at first to be a nice bit of misdirection, until you think about it at all and realize it was just a bunch of cheating. The plot involves the kidnapped teenage kid of a scientist at the evil Massive Dynamic corporation, and the first scene sees a standoff in which some cops confront the kidnappers, then suddenly freak out, with one of them walking off a ledge and falling to his death and another shooting everyone else and then herself. Mind control! One of the kidnappers, an actor who looks kind of like Tom Savini, does some hilarious work here, squinting and arching his eyebrows like a goofball, so he must be the mind controller. But! When a big showdown involving a bunch of FBI agents, a ransom handoff, and a ridiculous scheme of Walter's involving a bunch of headphones and a white noise-emitting teddy bear (if you're wondering, it's because he thinks the mind control is auditory, but I'm sure the FBI has some noise-cancelling audio equipment on hand) occurs, it turns out that the real kidnapper is the kid himself. Oh snap, didn't see that coming! Of course, that's because he looked terrified in every previous scene, and the camera focused on Mr. Evil Squinty-Face. Cheating! And what was going on in that first scene anyway? Did the kidnappers call up the cops for a meeting on the roof of a parking garage, just for the hell of it?

 

So anyway, the kid escapes, with Peter as his new hostage, and they take off on a cross-country chase that involves a lot of grimacing and grunting as Peter tries to fight his mind control (which, by the way, was brought on by him stealing experimental brain-wave-enhancing drugs from his dad, because why not?), and there's a brief bit in which the government thinks the kid is some kind of foreign agent and tries to call the FBI off the case, but that goes nowhere, then there's a big showdown in which the kid faces his long-absent mother and has Peter shoot Agent Broyles (who seems to be getting a lot more field action now that Charlie is dead) without killing him, because Peter must be an awesome brain dude to resist so well when everybody else just took themselves out without much struggle. Finally, there's a car chase with one last bit of pseudoscientific silliness as Walter uses some sort of brain EMP to knock out the kid for a few seconds so Peter can crash the car. Why Peter wasn't affected by the brain zapper, I have no idea.

But even though it's pretty ridiculous, that's kind of to be expected at this point. At least this episode did some interesting stuff, like staging that FBI showdown with nothing but white noise playing on the soundtrack, and Joshua Jackson was surprisingly good at fighting with himself (he's no Dwight Schrute, but who is?), although he probably burst a few blood vessels in his face by holding his breath to make it red. And there's a decent coda at the end that shows some real misdirection, as we learn that the kid gaining mind control was all part of a Massive Dynamic experiment, reminding us that even though they've been helpful lately, they're still an evil corporation, which should have been obvious when Leonard Nimoy threw Olivia out that skyscraper window. Live and learn, I guess.

The Prisoner - "Arrival" by Sean Witzke

Everything looks cool, means nothing. The big difference between the original Prisoner and whatever the fuck this is so far is that the original one had the balls to use it's own ideas. Which isn't to say that this a total ripoff. No, it's just fucking stupid. These cocksuckers want to make Lost, they want to make Battlestar Galactica, they want to put a fresh spin on something outdated. The Prisoner isn't outdated, it can't be, because it's far too fucking singular for it to have a datestamp. The guy who played Jesus plays No. 6, because apparently they didn't see Frequency. Actually, Dennis Quaid would have been better, he would have just portrayed "out-of-his-element" better. The guy who played Magneto is playing No.2. That's better, but it's all kinds of fucked that they gave him a convalescent wife and a teenage kid and everyone walks around in abject fear of him. That's fucking stupid.

We find out that this No. 6 worked at a company that processes CCTV footage from around the world. He's not a spy, he's an analyst. They replaced the man who could have been Bond and the Saint with an analyst. I guess that could have worked, like that Phil Hester Timselip thing where the Punisher was an accountant and all he did was even out civilian casualty numbers with criminal deaths? That actually was pretty cool, so the idea isn't the problem. Really, this show should have taken another person who is very different from 6. As long as they remain unbreakable, you could've put any badass through the same thing. Someone like Omar Little.

Quirk has replaced surrealism, flat Lost-style harsh lighting has replaced set design, the assaultive cutting style of the pilot is now faux filmic shifty blurriness of really bleak desert and drab interiors, eerie, unsettling acting of the BBC day players is now actual sympathetic Law and Order witness rejects, fine-ass 60s nymphs replaced with limey botox victims. The constant, banging questions of "WHY DID YOU RESIGN?" and " WHO IS NO.1" they're not here. The drugs-and-brainwashing-then-more-drugs-get-in-the-operating-chair-my-dear-chap sense of menace is gone, screaming fuck you into the face of everyone and everything around you because goddamn they will not have one miserable piece of your head that's gone too. It's paranoia on xanax, all the edges sawn off of the stark existential hole that is self vs. not-self. No this show is going to have 6 trying to function IN A COMMUNITY. That's what the ultimate individualist had in mind when he spent the last dozen or so years of his life trying to get a movie of his tv show off the ground, right? And I'm sure all he wanted to do was to use post-9/11 imagery of twin towers in the distance and cafe bombings and television clips shouting at us close up and blurry like its 1985 all over again. It's not awful, it's tedious and that's fucking worse. How dare you follow something like The Prisoner with anything less than your best or your worst, mediocrity is exactly the kind of thing that McGoohan was terrified of (that and gaining power and becoming what he hated, it seems). The whole point of the Prisoner, the whole goddamn point was that there was no plot the way that any tv series had a plot. Decades later we still don't know what order the episodes go in, we just now that the first one goes first and the last one goes last. The show, unlike any show up until maybe the last 10 years, was built on ideas. The whole point of the show was to show an individual being hammered again and again by the entire world around him. It's not class, it's not power, it is society as a whole, it is the entire universe against one man. Dropping another character into that scenario, maybe someone who wasn't an unbreakable unblinking ball of hate-fuck that is McGoohan - there's a story there. Getting someone to play McGoohan's raw unchecked individual intellect against a different environment (although who? Daniel Day Lewis is the only one who could dare).

Wait... Brian Wilson? Really? A fucking lava lamp? Suck my dick, everyone who worked on this shitty show. You held a fucking boom mike? You fetch a latte? This shit is still partially your fault. You could have fucking said something, you cowards.

We find out why he resigned. It was because his bosses at the cctv company wouldn't listen to him. He tells someone this unprovoked. Fuck this garbage.

Dexter - "Road Kill" by Tucker Stone

Watching Michael C. Hall and John Lithgow do acting exercises is fine and dandy, but it's a little obnoxious to see the whole "Dexter screwed up and killed an innocent man" subplot be treated as a mere obstacle to escape from so early after it had happened. But that's exactly what you'll see here--Dexter looked at some more of his victim's photography, claimed to be "disturbed" by it, and then he half-handedly used his supposed grief to manipulate Trinity into a road trip, never realizing that Trinity wasn't planning to kill anyone but himself. By the close of this episode--yet another ridiculously convenient scene, where Dexter ends up arriving just in time to "rescue" Lithgow from an attempted suicide, his bloody hands forced into the savior position due to the arrival of unwanted witnesses--Dexter's back to where he was before. With the season still hours from conclusion, it's difficult to figure out exactly how Dexter will pull off killing the guy--he's been seen operating under a false name in Trinity's presence roughly 800 times now--and his behavior is almost completely at odds with his previous excursions into predatory violence. While this episode presented him preparing a kill room for Lithgow, it was in the very hotel in which both men were staying and Dexter's entire behavior was completely at odds with what we know of him thus far. He was planning to kill Trinity, cut up the body, steal Trinity's car, drive the pieces all the way back to his boat, and do all of this mere minutes before the sun comes up? Crazy is one thing, but Dexter's never been portrayed as stupid, the whole marriage thing notwithstanding.

That's not to say that watching Lithgow emotionally terrorize a bewildered family in a hotel diner doesn't hold a certain amount of charm, it does, it did, yes sir. But when it's mashed up to the raft of clunky writing that bedeviled the lead actor as well as the horrifying prospect that Rita will apparently be getting more screen time with which to fend off the advances of a sleazy next door neighbor--seriously, we're coveting the wife now?--it makes for a boring ass way to spend an hour. Also, my wife has taken to making a retching noise whenever Angel & LaGuerta are onscreen in any capacity, a disgusting sound that only drives what was once a looked-forward-to portion of the week further into the make-believe obligation that it has most recently become. Five hours to go? I need to join a bridge club.

House - "Teamwork" by Tucker Stone

"Putting the team back together" episodes can be pretty entertaining, but House has gone to that particular well so many times that it can't help but be a bit mundane. Sure, there was another one of those Patient of the Week as tie-in, with a porno star raised in a Don't Take Chances household whose life-threatening illnesses stemmed from his parent's obsessive desire to keep him so fresh and so clean, clean, which is a rough approximation of the way Cameron and Chase have tried to keep their relationship safe from dirty old House, only to find that they'd gotten too crusty over the years to repair the damage done.

The problem is--well, besides the fact that it's just stupid, that believing Cameron's logic requires agreeing with Cameron's awful description of Chase as being little more than sock puppet weakling, too simple and pathetic to make decisions outside of House's domineering influence--is that none of it was necessary. The goal with the episode is a pretty easy one, and it's success is easily attainable as well. All that's wanted is for House to put together a team of doctors, solve a case, and be mean to Cuddy. See all the scenes between House and Taub--funny and smart. See the scene where House is mean to Cuddy--immature, but accurate and decently played. And while the Patient of the Week stuff is rote and lacking in inspiration, the truth is that those portions of the show are invariably rote, with dopey Dave Matthews plays a rutabaga stories far outweighing the occasional Zelkjo Ivanek hostage situations. Cameron doesn't need her hateful bile turned up a notch, she just needs to get the fuck off the team, a team she never wanted to rejoin in the first place. Simply put, it doesn't need to be this hard, it doesn't need to be this off-model. Having her recycle the old "I loved you" subplot from years ago while telling House that he's "broken" the man she spent the better part of two seasons claiming to love--none of this is fun, none of this is worth watching. (Not to mention the fact that Chase has actually become both a better doctor and person simply by hanging around and being the hot white guy that House has around based off accent fetishes.)

Admittedly, I'm not the best judge of this one. Chase has almost always been my favorite of House's Baker Street gang, and watching the show put his character through a random emotional obstacle course rivals 13-dates-Omar as my least favorite subplot of the series. And while there's definitely a part of me that's ecstatic about the possiblity of Chase being single again, as the relationship scenes with Cameron had rapidly turned into a weekly dive into a painful study of how badly these writers are at people-in-love, it's going to be a pain in the ass watching the weekly "Chase falls apart" show that the show apparently plans to create.

At the same time, this could begin the advent of multiple years of the Taub-en-House hour. That's the sort of stuff I wake up wishing for, so fuck it. Bring it on.

V - "A Bright New Day " by Tucker Stone

Yeah, so this isn't very good. It doesn't seem like it's going to get much better, either. They've got some okay moments, here and there, but one of them was killing Alan Tudyk a second time, and considering that the best part of the pilot was when they killed Alan Tudyk the first time--look, this isn't a fucking Radiohead song, where the repetition of various "raindrop" phrases on multiple albums speaks to some kind of tangled obsession. This is just a stunt based around the small portion of the audience that looks at Tudyk and goes "hey, I like that guy a lot", and while it was a decent stunt the first time, the kind of stunt where Whedon fans could share a couch with the don't-give-a-fuck-bout-writers crew and enjoy the shock on their own special levels, repeating it almost immediately--that's just fucking lame. Even lamer is that the second go around of the shock-kill-Tudyk stands out as the best part of the entire episode. (Is there a reason we couldn't see Morris Chestnut shoot his old revolutionary pal in the face? That would've been great, especially considering that Morris has already shown himself to be a fine killler-of-others type.) Instead, there's one of those terrible Transformers scenes where a boy and a girl use the threat of hormones to trick their mom and a horribly telegraphed scene where the lead actor finds the magic surveillance room that the aliens just happened to leave empty right at the moment when she shows up to try the passcode she just so happened to see somebody use earlier.

Yeah, I'm out. You see that puff of smoke? That's when I hit the ground. Tell my mom I wasted my life.

Sons of Anarchy - "Service " by Tucker Stone

Although this episode opens like the necessary epilogue that last week's "Gemma reveals all" requires, there turned out to be something quite different in store after the requisite "tell the club about my wife's gang-rape incident." Following in the same footsteps as shows like The Wire or the Soprano's, the scene began simply enough--Tieg (the man originally tasked with murdering Opie who ended up accidently murdering Opie's wife) walked up to Opie, talked to him briefly about his bike, and then, after a moment of strange confusion, blurted out the question he'd been holding back on for months. "Why was Donna in the truck?" Within seconds, he'd gone much, much further, and Opie had already ripped open his face with one of those many rings that all the Sons wear. No music cues, no dramatic lighting, nothing more than a moment of wearied confession followed by instantaneous brutality. Tieg confessed, he blamed the ATF, but before he was finished talking, Opie had torn off a part of his face.

I'm not sure what it is I'm missing about Sons that keeps me from joining it's more vocal supporters--smart, clever critics are fully behind it, pointing to it as one of the best shows on television--but it's hard to deny its nasty appeal when given episodes like this one. Watching an actor like Ryan Hurst obsessively track down and dominate each of the people responsible for Donna's death while believably choosing not to kill them, seeing Katey Segal turn a wretched and manipulative plot twist into some kind of long-form treatise on the stunted immaturity of the men around her, all of whom she clearly loves, and, as always, the raw enjoyment to be found when a bunch of hard men definitively say "We kill all of them"--no, this isn't the The Wire, it isn't Breaking Bad, and it isn't The Shield. It's a pulpy melodrama that gets most of its kicks out of a bunch of character actors who could probably play these roles in their sleep, and it's yet another chapter in the decades-plus story of how successful television can be when it focuses on a bunch of criminals. Sets are cheap, the cinematography is the 800th version of anti-art you've seen on any of these types of shows, and the "relatable" leads are played by a couple of pretty-faced chumps who lack the charisma required to seal an envelope. At the same time, it's a catchy, addictive show that I find myself looking forward to as much as any of the other crap I love. Whatever it is, the scenes from next week implied that the Sons are going to instigate an actual race war. If it were anybody else, I'd think they were joking. These guys though?

Doubt it.

-Sean Witzke, Matthew J. Brady, Martin Brown & Tucker Stone, 2009