The Avengers (2012)

Thor and Captain America

© Marvel

I gave The Avengers a second chance.

Yeah, that's right: second. I thought it was merely okay the first time around, but some smart people convinced me that I was missing something, so I did it again. Verdict? It's very good, but I wouldn't go further than that in part because you basically don't have the space to develop that many distinct characters in an ensemble piece whose main goal is kicking ass and in part because some characters, no matter who you get to play them, will never lend themselves to character development (yes, Hulk, we're talking about you). I'm going to skip talking about all the delicious Whedon-verse-ism, though, because that's been done, and better, in about 1 million other places.

I was, however, thoroughly enthralled by what they had going on with Captain America, right down to the make-up and wardrobe choices. He's so alien to them; so different in his approach to how and Why We Fight that ends up standing out far more than the actual aliens. If he seemed (intentionally, I would wager) flat in Captain America, then he comes into sharp relief here. He never needed as much push as the rest of them to do the right thing, but he needs a lot of help to figure out what the right thing is these days (or if it even matters). Plus he gets to be part of one of my fave visual gags. Well played, Chris Evans.

Well played to . . . pretty much everyone, let's be honest. I love The Hemsworth (though I seriously considered calling in a Wig Cop on that thing) (also, he got to deliver what might have been my actual favourite joke of the movie, so good for him); I love The Buffalo and his Peter Falk impersonation; I love, love, love Robert Downey Jr. (especially as Tony Stark); I don't understand why people have a problem with ScarJo in the role; I especially don't understand why people have a problem with Jeremy Renner (it's not his fault his character was in a coma for half the running time). Besides, if anyone was having a breakout movie, it was Tom Hiddleston, so clearly relishing the narrow pettiness of his particular goal. Will we ever not fall for that? Solid B+.

P.S. I do feel bad for Cobie Smoulders, as I don't think anyone had a kind word to say about her in the role or even about the role's existence. Probably because it was flatter than flat.

P.P.S Those aren't shawarmas.

"People don't realize this, but loneliness is underrated."

The only reason Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who uttered that line, doesn't appear on my Underrated List is time. If I had more time, each letter would have multiple entries. Even so, my A to Z guide to everything in movies you've been missing should have enough to pique your interest.

"You can't be gay for one person. Unless you're a lady. And you meet Ellen."

Oh, Lemon, you are wrong on that account. You can be plenty gay for just one person. It happens on damn near every TV show I watch. That's why my latest Culture article is a HoYay round up.

And if you're not keeping up with the advice column, you probably have no idea how to deal with the first of May. Send your May Day questions or questions about any other day of the year to advice@culturemagazine.ca.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008 - ?)

Last TV Thursday I told you about one of two shows competing for my Monday at eight attention. Now I shall tell you about the other.

Terminator (or T:TSCC, as I sometimes call it) came on at the exact right time: pretty much every other show that I watched and loved had disappeared thanks to the writers' strike (remember that?), and, hey, we all loved T2, didn't we? Plus, Lena Headey was in 300, Thomas Dekker played Zach on the only good season of Heroes, and Summer Glau rules. Should be alright.

And it is. It's exactly okay enough that you can watch comfortably without anyone (either the audience or the writers) taking anything too seriously. But there's always been something a little off about it, and it's not just the way that Cameron's (Glau) ability to act human varies wildly from episode to episode to suit the plot's needs.

At first, I thought it was Dekker. I didn't like his emo bangs or the whiny "Mommy, save me from the apocalypse!" attitude that went along with them. I can't imagine it's pleasant to have the weight of the world on your shoulders, but man up already. I never got why it was considered a good idea to put John in school, much less Cameron there "for his protection," and I honestly wondered how the writers were going to turn the little git into the warrior he was meant to be. Finally this season, John killed a guy (which they waited to confirm for several episodes as though it wasn't obvious), cropped his hair, and decided he was done with school. It looked like they were getting on the right track, but instead the development turned into John Connor - Least Likely to be a Hero.

In the midst of all this, though, I realized that my problem isn't John or Dekker as John at all. My problem is right there in the title: Sarah. It's not Headey as Sarah either (although her occasional wounded-bird body language can be distracting). It's the way they write Sarah and, specifically, the fact that she can't kill a man. Back in season one, Derek (Brian Austin Green) rolled in and totally shot some guys. Sarah was all, "Oh, no, you couldn't possibly kill that sweet nerd who was totally building Skynet, could you?" And Derek said no, but he so did.

And that's the trouble with Sarah. She doesn't get, no matter how many times over it is demonstrated, that burning down people's houses and stealing their hard drives isn't enough. Sometimes you've got to man up and put a bullet in their heads. Cameron gets that because she's driven by her mission, Derek gets that because he's a solider first and foremost, and John gets that because it's his only chance for a future. But Sarah just doesn't and the writers won't do a thing about it. Part of the premise they are asking you to buy is Sarah as a total badass, and everything about her - her clothes, her hair cut, her walk, her dialogue - is meant to convey that fact. But how can you believe in someone as a badass when she can't kill someone even to protect her son?

That said, the show's not all bad. At worst, you get explosions and cool robot fights. At best, you get Cameron and Derek heavy episodes. I never thought I'd be saying this about anything involving the former David Silver, but there it is. He's grown up hot and surprisingly well acted. It's even worth putting up with Jesse (Stephanie Jacobsen, and, no offence to the actress, it's again the way she's written) just to check in with Derek. As for Glau as Cameron, she's the show's strongest element, and the best episodes are built around her ever evolving humanity. We're forced to put all of the show's philosophical and pseudo-religious underpinnings into question whenever we see her form a connection with the world around her, and it's smart of them to do so. It's just that sometimes it's too bad it's not Terminator: The Derek and Cameron Chronicles.

Gossip Girl (2007 - ?)

I think by now my feelings about Gossip Girl may have come across on ye olde blogge. They are simple: I love this show. I acknowledge that it's not for everyone (though I'm still working on accepting that fact).

I had heard pretty good buzz about it when it premiered, and I kept an eye on Jacob's recaplets when the show started last fall. While channel surfing one day, I discovered that the CW was rerunning episodes Sundays at six, and I watched "Dare Devil." I was completely, horribly entranced from the word go.

I am going to confess something to you now that some people know about me, some people don't, and everyone treats like it's crazy, although I think it makes about as much sense as anything else: I watch soap operas. There was a crazy time when I was juggling four; there was a low time when my combined effort added up to one. I watch about two now. My love of soap operas is threefold: 1) only the least likely thing is allowed to happen on a soap opera, 2) they are always on, and 3) I'm something of a narrative junkie. As long as there is something to read/watch/follow that mildly holds my interest, I will do just that.

Now, what does any of this have to do with GG? It's simple really: I love it because it's so perfectly insane. It's a soap opera on mescaline. Blair (Leighton Meester, she of the impeccable instincts and questionable headbands) can lose her prized virginity to the sluttiest guy she can find (Chuck, played to such unbelievable perfection by Ed Westwick that you might lose your mind), go through a slut spiral, fall in love with Chuck, sleep with Nate (Chace Crawford, to whom we'll come back), and have a pregnancy scandal that reveals the entire sordid affair to everyone and dethrones Queen B in one fell swoop inside of seven episodes. A lesser show would draw this out for an entire season or even longer but not GG. They've got coke whores who sell their horses for blow and murder to get to before the season's out.

Before you start thinking that that is all crazy and weird and you want none of it, don't front with me. From Les Liaisons Dangerous on down, we plebes have been obsessed with what happens when you can afford to buy not only everything you need but also anything you want. All GG does every episode is look at a bunch of people who have wealth and power and say, "Now what?"

Of course, none of this would work if you couldn't believe that any human being, real or imagined, would do any of the crazy shit that goes down from week to week, and that is exactly where Josh Schwartz, Stephanie Savage, et al. got it right. Teens treat pretty much everything that happens to them as life or death, so you've got to find actors who will play things that way without ever once winking at the camera, and, in that respect, this show is perfectly cast. Perhaps even more than perfectly because everyone pretty much goes for broke all the time. When you look at a wildly crazy construct like Chuck, your instinct would be to play him for laughs (as Em said, that's what happened with some of Edward's intensity in movie-Twilight). Instead, despite the deliciously deranged get ups and the insane lines, Westwick plays him like this is what would naturally happen to you if you were brought up the way Chuck was. Somehow you find yourself thinking that yes, this is just how I would have turned out if that had happened to me.

Even when you think you can pinpoint the weak link (say, Crawford or Taylor Momsen as Jenny), if you pause to consider who that character is and who that character is supposed to be, you end up believing that someone as blank as Crawford can be plays Nate exactly the way Nate should be played. He's fiercely loyal when it comes to his family, he was raised to basically not go around embarrassing them, and everything else just sort of falls by the wayside. When he plum forgets the girl that he and Dan (Penn Badgley) had a total threeway with weeks earlier and then laughs it off, you realize that Crawford is playing it exactly right. And as for Momsen, last season was sort of touch and go, but this year she is hitting it out of the park. Jenny believes that every chance is her last chance, and Momsen plays that urgency so well that even as you are like, "Damn, Jenny, get a hold of yourself," part of you still thinks, "Shit! Make it work!"

It doesn't help that Chris and Jessica are completely obsessed with the show to the point where they renamed the tag "The Greatest Show of Our Time." Nor does it help that Jacob refers to it as the same in his philosophical, mood-altering, possibly life-changing recaps. It's hard to imagine that you could dislike anything that Jacob writes about given the way he writes. He pours so much passion and imagination into simply trying to explain to you what he sees happening and how that may or may not be exactly what's going on in your life that I think if the show went off the rails to the point where I should hate it, Jacob's recaps would completely blind me to that fact.

To be honest, as much as I want to tell you about this show I love so much, I have struggled massively not to repeat that which Jacob has already said in more detail and with a better vocabulary. Think of it this way: everyone is pretty and crazy and only the most deranged shit happens in any given episode, but it's always ground in real, accessible, believable human emotion. If anything, it's exactly the show that Heroes pretends it is.

Pop Culture Round Up: November 15 - 21

Yay! Pretty much any colour other than white excites me, though.

Punk's great, and I totally want you to read about it, but a pop culture curator? How do I get that job?

Didion and Linney are enough to make me forget pretty much anything. Including the fact that I don't get HBO. Sigh.

You should read this entire gallery because Seth Green is great, but what the? How far into the bell jar have I gone that I didn't realize he was going to be on Heroes? Just when I was thinking of breaking up with Heroes for real.

Oh, wait, maybe I should. Tim Kring is an idiot.

They are all good reasons to go see the movie, but it's A that really excites me. Wouldn't it be great to point to something you've done and say, "That about sums me up"?

It is extraordinarily quotable, and it does lend itself to repeat viewings, but I don't know if I'm down with a road trip to Kentucky just for The Dude. Well, maybe I am.

I'm down with that.

A Center for Future Storytelling? Again, how do I get it on that?

Now French cinema is being rejuvenated? Was it withering before?

I think that's an excellent pick. It was my favourite show when I was a kid, and he was a total badass.

Yes!

I should probably be upset by some of these, but I find them too funny instead.

You guys, my mom is not going to be impressed when I tell her about this.

So, my obsessive reading and sometimes overwhelming social schedule of late have made me happier? Actually, that makes sense.

Is it bad that after six years, I've still never been there?

Why is there only one photo with this profile?

See? All stolen art stories are WWII related. Or maybe not.

Aw, poor unscripted shows. No, wait, I only watch one unscripted show. Never mind then. Ha.

NOOOOOOOOO! I cannot underestimate my reaction to this news to you. It's melancholy that's been bubbled over by rage. I don't mean to alarm you, but I love Lee Pace now. Also, that show is genius. But where am I going to get regular doses of Lee Pace? Or Jim Dale? Or Chi McBride? Fuck, Television. Why do you have to be like this? That's gangsta love.

Prison Break (2005 - ?)

Since the last TV Thursday was devoted to Heroes, it seems like I should write a little bit about the other competition for my attention Mondays at 9: Prison Break.

Or as I called it in season 2: Prison Broke.

Then in season 3 it was Prison Break (Panama Edition).

Now in season 4 it's Stay out of Prison by Taking Down the Company, which isn't really as catchy, so I just call it Prison Break.

There are quite a few things that PB has in common with Heroes, and, although Heroes has been better in the last two episodes, PB still does those things better.

1) The Company

In Heroes' land, the Primatech Paper is a front for the shadowy and mysterious "The Company," a nefarious organization behind pretty much every bad thing that happens on the show: the virus, the formula, kidnapping, murder, synthetic abilities. You name it, they did it. The Company on PB is much the same: an overarching, multinational corporation that is responsible for every bad thing, ever. In season 1 we learned that they sent Linc (Dominic Purcell) to prison, and they've been behind everything that has happened to the brothers ever since (although it's kind of funny that Michael's (Wentworth Miller) the genius who engineers prison breaks and all manner of escapades, but they still consider Linc a serious threat). Both Companies can be difficult to swallow at times (just like the hotels in Monopoly), but the difference is the way they are treated on the shows.

In Heroes, the Company is a catch all. The bad thing (e.g. the formula) is invented first and then linked it back to the Company (turns out they used it years ago to create synthetic abilities, felt bad about it for unspecified reasons, and hid the formula rather than destroy it).

On PB, however, the Company is the show's driving force. What the Company does and why is almost a Macguffin at this point, but it's existence is enough. What they've already done (put Linc in jail, killed his ex-wife, set up his son for her murder, put Michael back in jail, Head in a Box,* etc.) is reason enough to want to take the Company down. Their nefarious dealings in Laos or anywhere else are just the icing on the evil cake. Each person as his or her own personal reason to want revenge, which makes it all the more interesting to watch. It's not just blathering about heroes and villains.

2) The Brothers

At the centre of both shows are a pair of brothers: the older, former bad boy (Linc, Nathan) and the idealistic, fatally loyal younger one (Michael, Peter). Nathan's conversion from bad to good happened onscreen over the course of season 1, while Linc's seems to have happened before we even met him. Linc was never that bad a person to begin with (he never plotted to blow up New York and his brother), but he's still trying to be a better person, brother, and dad. He's even put aside his quest for revenge against the man who killed his father, Alex Mahone (William Fitchner), and offered to help Mahone track down the man who killed his son instead.

Michael's a tougher nut to crack and, like, Ventimiglia, also had trouble with the Blue Steel early on. Miller's less reliant on it and more expressive as the seasons go by, and he gets to do something new this season: jokey Michael! When Scott Tobias pointed out earlier this year that, "as an actor, Ventimiglia seems incapable of having any fun," it was one of those thunderbolt moments for me. That's totally the problem. He never smiles or laughs ever even when it would be appropriate, script-wise. Miller, on the other hand, now gets to joke at least once an episode, and it allows him to keep sharpening Michael as a well developed person.

Though both shows have large casts, Michael and Peter are definitely their central characters, and it can be limiting to build a show around an actor who is, well, limited. Kristen Bell could take whatever the Veronica Mars writers threw at her (the subject of another TV Thursday, I suppose); others cannot. Despite the outlandish plots, the PB writers respect that they have a genre show/live action graphic novel on their hands and have carefully and slowly developed their characters (for the most part) accordingly.

Also, they are not afraid to kill a bitch. Roland, Whistler, and Cameron are characters that died just this season. Who will be next? That's half the fun of watching.

*Sadly not as cool as Chief Head in a Box, largely because the head in question turned out to be a fake.

Heroes (2006 - ?)

First I saw Sarah's DVR Break-Up, and I thought, "I didn't think it was that bad." Then the rotation of TV Clubbers have been (not unfairly) hating. Couch Baron even outed the show as a soap opera. Last Monday's episode was the final straw for me.

SPOILER (ish) Alert: If you haven't already watched the episode that aired on Monday, October 13, 2008, read no further, as I intend to discuss it at length.

I talked up Heroes to pretty much everyone I knew when it premièred two ago. It was the one new show you had to watch. When it went off the rails in season two, I stuck by it, sure that it could pull itself out of its funk. When Tim Kring apologized and promised that he could do better in season three, I took him at his word. As it turns out, that was a mistake.

Last week, Hiro and Ando dug up not-at-all-dead Adam Monroe's (the always welcome David Anders) grave, thereby undoing the coolest thing that Hiro has ever done on the show (other than be Future Hiro, of course). This week, Hiro spends several of my viewing minutes popping Adam in and out of the coffin during their negotiations. Why, pray tell, did Hiro and Ando have to dig up the grave in the first place then? It's time consuming and difficult, and, as Hiro just proved in the very next scene, completely unnecessary. Exactly how brain-addled are the writers that they can't establish internal logic for a single subplot?

This development also goes against the graphic novels that have never have (and probably never will) tie into the show on air. Early this summer, back when I used to read them, an entire issue was devoted to Adam's many wives over the years, and it ended with his conviction that his current wife, whoever she might be, would rescue him. Since he was still down there when Hiro went to pick him up, that didn't happen. No doubt, we will never meet this mysterious wife nor will she be mentioned again. She can live on the Beach of Dropped Plots with Micah, Monica, and Caitlin, the girlfriend Peter is content to abandon in the future. Her family's dead, too!

Adam leads Hiro and Ando to a bar and shakes them off his tail. So Daphne shows up. Alright, fine. We've had a quite of bit of Daphne in this episode, but I don't care. I don't know a damn thing about Daphne, and I don't care if that ever changes. I liked Brea Grant on Friday Night Lights last year, but there writing's not there to back her up when it comes to Daphne. She's a construct, a cardboard cut-out, and she'll probably stay that way.

Somehow, this latest confrontation between Hiro and his "nemesis"* leads to Hiro killing Ando. For real. Hiro murdering his best friend for the greater good has the emotional devastation of a paper cut. No one stays dead on this show. If they do die, the actor just comes back as another character (hey, Ali!). That's what makes this show a soap opera. It's not that I don't loves me a soap. It's that I don't love a soap that takes itself so seriously yet never pays out.

What happens every season, really? Someone goes into the future, sees something terrible, and heads back to prevent terrible thing (explosion/world ending, virus/world ending, formula/world ending) from happening in the first place. It ends with Peter going nuclear. Maybe Peter will destroy a lab full of the formula in nuclear explosion come May sweeps.

The problem with characters changing personalities and loyalties to fit the episode's needs has been around a while and well covered elsewhere (from Monday, for example - Claire wants to take bad guys down, Claire wants to help them reunite with their families, Claire hates Sylar and wants to kill him, Claire doesn't want her dad to kill Sylar. Huh?). Let's move on to the final moment: Arthur Petrelli lives.

Listen, it's not that I don't want to more about Pa Petrelli. I'm sure that it would be interesting to know more about the early days of the Company, what Pa's power(s) might be, how he was with his sons, and what they know about him. There was an arc over several graphic novels way back in the day about how the elder Petrelli and Linderman met (short answer: Nam), which was probably my favourite. It's just that . . . reviving a character that established to be dead in the pilot? What's the point? Let's bring back the elder Suresh while we are at it. I bet he could find an antidote.

I'm probably not at the breaking point just yet; I am getting very close. I have lost any confidence that the show could take a development like that and make it exciting. They've already used it poorly: paralyzing Angela. She's one of the good (read: interesting to watch) characters! Maybe Elle can come back and zap her out of it. Sigh. I miss Kristen Bell.

*Which, Hiro is supposed to be my age, if not older, right? Adults do not talk this way. The time gap between Hiro and Future Hiro is closing, but the personality gap remains vast.

You were just looking for crowns in all the wrong places.

I was pretty exited when I discovered that Slate was publishing a Fall TV Issue. Love Slate though I do, their television coverage isn't the most expansive, and I felt like it took a while for Troy Patterson to find his footing after Sufergirl Liz Penn moved on to film review. Besides, I watch a lot of TV. More articles from a source I love about those very shows? Sign me up.

The very first article I clicked on was Matthew Gilbert's "Too Many Heroes: The Plague of Cast Overpopulation." The title gives away at least one of the shows Gilbert will single out for his criticism, but he also briefly touches on the massive Grey's Anatomy cast. And there, my friends, is a missed opportunity.

It's simple: Heroes makes its massive cast work; Grey's doesn't. Gilbert claims that the cast overpopulation has turned Heroes into a mess: it's just too difficult to follow. Maybe years of watching soaps has prepared me for this challenge, but I don't find a damn thing difficult about the overlapping plotlines. I've watched a fair number of twisty and complicated shows in my day, and Heroes has to be one of the most deft at integrating the characters and plotlines in a way that is engrossing and rewarding for the audience.

How do they do it? That's pretty simple, too, actually: most episodes don't feature every character, and they regularly kill off secondary and tertiary characters (goodbye, George Takei!). Gilbert ignores the former and suggests the latter is a flaw. He alleges that, "In the last few seasons, Lost, 24, The Sopranos, Desperate Housewives, and Heroes have all goosed their ratings and left fans buzzing by rubbing out a character or two." I don't or no longer watch a fair number of these shows, but I will tell you this much: I have seen every season of 24, and killing off a character is not a recent development. If anything, the show's willingness to kill just about anyone (except Jack, of course) is its claim to fame.

As for the rest of it, what, exactly, is wrong with goosing the ratings or leaving fans buzzing? Why shouldn't a show with too many characters, as Gilbert feels, get rid of a few? Especially a show whose major arc involves a serial killer. A ratings stunt, maybe, but Sylar was pretty much killing off a character an episode, not too mention those taken out by the other heroes or Bennett and The Company.

If anything, Heroes has to deal with its massive cast a lot more intelligently than other shows that boast larger groups. He mentions Brothers & Sisters, er, and GA. All of these shows link their characters through a single point: family or work. Heroes uses both and often neither. The cast is more geographically and generationally expansive, and, yes, the writers do use family and work to bring the characters together, but they also rely on the show's overarching mythology to bind them into working toward common goals and against a common enemy. They never have to stick together simply because they are family, and they never have to run into people they'd rather not see because they all work in the same place. It is their abilities that bind them, in the end, and how the show weaves characterization and ability together is not only clever, it's reminiscent of the genius that went into the first three seasons of Buffy.

Of course, when it comes to dealing with the negatives weigh down a voluminous population, Heroes has an ace in the hole: the graphic novel. Why waste screen time on reams of exposition and backstory? Put it in the novel! Want to introduce a new character? Give 'em their own novel or even multi-novel arc! And, if you want, you can kill 'em off there, too (bye, Hana!). Big cast or no, the novel streamlines things for the audience.

Heroes has two things going for it: the forward momentum of the plotlines (minus a handful of gaffes, e.g. most of the stuff that goes down with Hiro) and, yes, its many characters. We never spend too much time on anyone person or ability, so we get the impression that any time we do spend is going to be exciting and important. The opposite is true for GA: every character is shoehorned into every episode, but the writers have lost their ability to balance the focus between the different characters and their arcs. As a result, last season saw mass character assassination and egregious "twists" to the point of turning viewers off of watching the show.

So, think it through next time, Mr. Gilbert. Of course we're going to find someone to hook onto. The subtitle might as well be Parade of Pretty People who can do Cool Shit.