Rasher Report #7: Many Hours of Quality TV
New Sarahthon just dropped
I have made you a playlist, but this one is episodes of TV. It's inspired by "Long, Long Time," the instant classic installment of The Last of Us in which the zombie action pauses to tell a soul-crushingly beautiful love story. I sought out episodes of other TV shows in a similar mold: episodes that diverge significantly from the usual format of the series and stand alone as satisfying short films apart from continuity. This was both easier and harder than I thought, and I back-formulated a bunch of rules to define a true stand-alone format-breaker. I ended up with 30 episodes, each from a different TV series, spanning a wide range of genres and almost 50 years. And then I watched every one - plus several that didn't make the cut - while reporting back to some friends on Discord.
I hope that someone other than me watches the whole list in order, because I thought this was fun and wonder how it will play out for others. People share playlists of songs all the time, and a well-built Spotify set is recognized as a transformative creation in its own right. But when it comes to TV, we're steered in the opposite direction, where completeness is the only goal. There's no cultural room for sampling, only binging.
It didn't used to be like that: into the early 00's, TV was more ephemeral and episodic, created with the assumption that any episode might be the viewer's first, and that we might dip in and out as schedules and syndication allowed. Now, with streaming as our dominant method of watching TV (and the DVR and DVD box sets as increasingly obsolescent backup plans), we're expected to watch a show from beginning to end, in order, one binge at a time. Surely, this is a more cost-effective norm for streaming services, but the broader culture of TV was moving toward serialization and interconnectedness by the mid-90s. Episodes of most TV series are chapters in a novel.
Some good recent shows are moving away from this, like Strange New Worlds and Poker Face, and these more episodic series are described as refreshing and experimental. But both Strange New Worlds and Poker Face draw on '60s and '70s inspirations to the point of pastiche. They're purposely and purposefully going back to older ways of telling stories on TV. They show that we need to make more cultural room for different modes of TV storytelling, and that there's nothing simplistic about an episodic format.
Breaking serialization, in the way of the episodes on my Sarahthon list, is a different kind of move, but it speaks to the same need. Heavy serialization is so expected now that it can get boring if a show doesn't occasionally break its usual rules. But there are rules to the rule-breaking: format-breakers tend to break format in the same set of ways. The episodes on my list have a lot in common with each other, and together, they form their own coherent anthology of a specific, interesting thing that TV sometimes does. And most of them are really, really good.
The World Junior Figure Skating Championships happened
And I got to watch most of them live, since they took place in the convenient time zone of Calgary, Canada, and American viewers had free access to the ISU live stream. As expected, Japan's Miura Kao slayed in the men's event; his Beauty and the Beast free skate is one of my favorites this year, and it's been fun throughout the season to see him nail it again and again. His teammate, Shimada Mao, had a similar lock on the women's event, on the strength of a quad toeloop that none of her competitors could match. Nonetheless, other skaters almost overshadowed her as breakout stars, especially China's An Xiangyi, who skated in one of the earlier short program groups and looked like she was at a completely different competition from everyone who'd come before her. Ice dance was kind of a mess, with the winners mostly representative of who made the fewest mistakes rather than who is really best in the world right now, so I'm choosing to pretend ice dance didn't happen.
But the program that sticks with me the most is such a deep cut that the ISU hasn't made it available for replay on YouTube except as part of the full replay of the men's free skate. Kyrylo Marsak of Ukraine has been performing his free skate to Star Wars this season, and boy, is this a program about a war against an evil empire. He's not the most polished or the most technically adept - he placed 15th, which was above expectations - but his performance is the one that hit me in the gut. The version embedded below is from the Latvia Trophy a couple of months ago, and it's a bit less emotionally charged than his skate from Junior Worlds, but it will give you an idea of what he's going for.
The Batman Bake-Off
My wife and I watched a whole lot of Batman stuff, and then we chose our favorite screen adaptation of each Batman character. (We finally watched the 2022 The Batman film last night, and it was surprisingly not bad!) Ami's words are her own, although she let me proofread.
Commissioner Jim Gordon
The Contenders: Most Batmen have a Commissioner Gordon to play off of. Neil Hamilton manned the Bat Signal and the Bat Phone in the ‘60s TV series. Bob Hastings was a mainstay of the DC Animated Universe for years, and Mitch Pileggi, Kurtwood Smith, Gary Cole, Ray Wise, Hector Elizondo, and Fred Tatasciore gave memorable performances in later animated series and films. Pat Hingle played Gordon throughout the Burton/Schumacher films, Gary Oldman took over the role for the Dark Knight Trilogy, and Jeffrey Wright played him in The Batman. He’s only shown up briefly in the DC Extended Universe, played by J.K. Simmons. Gotham put the spotlight on a brooding, younger Jim Gordon, played by Ben McKenzie, and Christopher Meloni had a recurring arc on Harley Quinn.
Sarah: It’s hard to go wrong here, with many of my favorite character actors having held the keys to the Bat Signal over the years. The only one I don’t endorse is Gary Oldman, whose histrionic and over-serious performance epitomizes everything I hate about the Dark Knight films. Simmons is a pleasure in Justice League, but he’s on screen for like five minutes in what is frankly a trash fire of a film. Meloni is hilarious but more of a parody than a character in his own right. McKenzie slogs bravely through Gotham’s soapiest narratives as well as any actor could. Wright, in The Batman, gives an understated interpretation that's noble and fatherly. But the fact is, nobody wants Commissioner Gordon to steal the show - we just want him to pound the desk and rock a formidable mustache. For that, Bob Hastings is the unmatched champion.
Ami: So how do you like your Jim Gordon? Sunny Side Up? Fried? Maybe, Scrambled? I usually start my day with some Sunny Side up, with a dash of cheese, so I’m going to give it to Bob Hastings from Batman the Animated Series, who’s an unquestionably moral man, and on the good side of things, but still has a solid range of emotions to him.
Penguin/Oswald Cobblepot
The Contenders: Burgess Meredith played the Penguin in numerous ‘60s Batman episodes and even showed up on The Monkees once. Ted Knight voiced him in several early animated incarnations, including Filmation’s The Adventures of Batman and several Scooby-Doo movies. Paul Williams voices Penguin in almost all of the DC Animated Universe, except for one movie where David Ogden Stiers takes over. Other notable voice performances include Tom Kenny in the animated The Batman and several animated films, Stephen Root in The Brave and the Bold, and Wayne Knight in Harley Quinn. Danny De Vito is the primary baddie in Batman Returns, and Colin Farrell portrays a fledgling Penguin in The Batman. Robin Lord Taylor is a series regular on Gotham.
Sarah: Penguin is another character who’s been portrayed memorably and well many times, with lots of diversity of interpretations. Paul Williams’s voice work is iconic enough to have influenced The Comics, and Burgess Meredith’s weird, fishy laugh is a pop culture classic. Although Tim Burton’s gruesome, cartoonish vision of Penguin is not my favorite, De Vito does a great job of making him simultaneously pitiful and nightmare fuel. However, Robin Lord Taylor is far and away the winner for me, and the main reason I watched Gotham all the way through. Taylor’s androgynous, multilayered Cobblepot - socially awkward but ruthless, physically weak but mentally formidable - is the Batverse’s most killer Penguin.
Ami: I’m going to give it to Burgess Meredith, while there are other versions of the Penguin that technically were better performed, when I think of the Penguin, the warbling 1960s version is always the first thing that pops into my mind. Wah, wah, wah, excellent, excellent!
Some More of My Favorite Movies
In late 2020, at the height of the pandemic, I made a list of my 124 favorite movies and started watching them all in alphabetical order. Here are my thoughts on two films from the list.
Deadpool remains my favorite romantic comedy about cancer. If a measure of excellent filmmaking is that everything is intentionally crafted and goes off exactly as planned, this movie is among the best. It's funny, it's cathartically gory, and unlike some superhero films I could name, the plot is seamless. Ryan Reynolds performs gleefully throughout, with a tortured warmth that keeps the viewer on Wade's side even when we know better. Some of the casting is already unfortunate - nobody wants to look at T.J. Miller or Gina Carano these days - and Dopinder's character leans on stereotypes a bit. But the opening credits sequence is flawless, as is the bullet-counting highway brawl scene that kicks the film into motion. All genre films should aspire to this level of getting it right.
It's hard to believe that Devil in a Blue Dress is almost 30 years old, because it looks and feels like it could have dropped on Netflix last week. When I first saw it, I think it was the first movie I'd ever seen in which Black faces were lit flatteringly and effectively. Denzel Washington, at the height of his classic screen idol handsomeness, has never looked better, and I'm hard-pressed to think of a better performance he's given. The whole film is a riff on Chinatown, embracing the brilliant filmmaking and storytelling of its predecessor while savagely taking down its careless ethics, casual misogyny, and glossing over of the racist structures of midcentury Los Angeles. It uses the apparatus of film noir to dissect how the Great Migration both transformed and entrenched systemic racism in ways that the Civil Rights movement wouldn't be able to undo, but it ends with an image of utopian hope for Black participation in the American Dream. All this, and jokes and fight scenes, too! This film deserves to be seen as a classic and to be reconsidered alongside the many excellent films by and about Black experiences that are coming out now.
And Another Thing
Song of the Week is Ramin Karimloo's version of "Bring Him Home," my favorite interpretation of my favorite song from Les Miserables.
This week's top ten cat breeds.
Top Ten Cat Breeds
— Cats of Yore (@CatsOfYore) March 10, 2023
1. Trash Diamond
2. Loaf Pro
3. Le Coodler
4. Cozy Plumpus
5. Great Northern Derpling
6. Hail Destroyer
7. Miscellaneous Scrambler
8. Alley Pal
9. Potato Royale
10. Pointy Friend
And a fuzzy orange towel cat photo.
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