New Show Review: The Carrie Diaries

A couple reasons why I like The Carrie Diaries better than Sex and the City

'The Carrie Diaries': High School Origin Story

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The Carrie Diaries
keeps that trademark narration, but maintains the idea that it’s comprised of diary entries. No one assumes that people are interested in reading the inner thoughts of a 16-year-old Carrie, and no one is paying her to write it. That detail alone makes The Carrie Dairies more endearing than its adult counterpart. If the lessons Carrie learns are a little too pat, if her sentiments are a little too treacly, and if her word choices are clunky and awkward, it’s okay. That’s what teenage diaries are for.

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The consumer-oriented, label-obsessing focus of Sex and the City is also thankfully absent from The Carrie Dairies. Instead of rattling off the names of fashion houses, the names the girls drop are ‘80s cultural touchstones: Indochine, Interview magazine, Rob Lowe. When Carrie talks about how much she prizes the few possessions she has of her mother’s—a purse and a pair of sunglasses—the brand names are never mentioned. She treasures them for emotional reasons, not status-seeking ones.

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Click through to read the entire review at PopMatters.

DVD Review: Girls - The Complete First Season

Forget the Baggage. Just Watch 'Girls: The Complete First Season.'

“I don’t want to freak you out, but I think I might be the voice of my generation. Or at least a voice of a generation.”
– Hannah Horvath

 

Of all the shows that premiered in 2012, Lena Dunham’s Girls—a series about four 20-something friends trying to make their ways in New York City—debuted with the most baggage. Detractors had all sorts of complaints: The cast is too white. (Fair or not, it’s a criticism that didn’t hit the show’s similarly composed and obvious predecessor, Sex and the City, quite so doggedly.) The actors are too privileged. (Sure, but one could argue that Laurie Simmons is more famous for being Dunham’s mother and not the other way around, since Simmons isn’t exactly a household name.) Dunham herself doesn’t have quite the right body for the amount of nudity typically found on HBO shows. (Or is that to Girls’ credit?)

The thing is, these debates could—and did—rage on without having to watch a single episode. You can get all of the fuel for these attacks from the posters used in the show’s ad campaign.

If you could quiet the arguments around Girls for long enough to actually watch it, you could see the show’s content is not nearly as polarizing as the cultural discussion surrounding it. The series touches on themes of young adulthood that, if not universal, are pretty darn relatable: figuring out your place in the world, discovering the boundaries of your friendships, feeling simultaneously mature and childish. Of course, this all unfolds in a very specific, liberal-arts-educated, Brooklyn sort of way, which is why audiences may have felt excluded.

Still, Girls provides an honest snapshot of this ambiguous time of life, and it should be able to reach beyond its core demographic. Nothing illustrates this better than the show’s two central relationships, between wannabe writer Hannah Horvath (Dunham) and her type-A best friend Marnie (Allison Williams—yes, the daughter of Brian Williams), and between Hannah and her sort-of-boyfriend Adam (Adam Driver). Most girls have had a friendship like Hannah and Marnie’s, a bond so close it can’t help but alternate between giddy alone-in-the-apartment dance parties one moment and screaming, kick-you-out-of-the-apartment fights the next. And most girls have advised a friend to get rid of a boyfriend like Adam, the kind of person who could disappear for weeks at a time but return and focus on you so intently that you feel like you’re the only person in the world that matters to him.

It’s entertaining enough that Girls captures these kinds of post-adolescent relationships so perfectly and presents them in a way that makes you alternately squirm and feel moved. But Girls is also really, really funny. When the naïve Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet—yes daughter of David Mamet) accidentally takes drugs at a party (the “crackcident”), you might feel for her and relive some of your own wilder days, but when those drugs kick off a mile-a-minute monologue about how they inspired her to do better in her kickboxing class, you can’t help but laugh. And, when she busts out those kickboxing moves later in the episode, you might just die laughing. (Anyone who asserts that Mamet only got the part based on her familial connections probably hasn’t seen the seventh episode—she’s damn near perfect in it.) 

The way Girls expertly mixes humor and nostalgia and squeamish embarrassment has a lot in common with the previous work of another of the show’s executive producers: Judd Apatow. Just like you didn’t need to grow up in Chippewa, Michigan in the early ‘80s to understand the genius of Apatow’s Freaks and Geeks, you don’t have to go to a party in Bushwick to feel for the characters in Girls. The theme of putting yourself out there for either greater success or total rejection runs through both shows. 

Apatow shows up here and there on the extras included with the Girls Blu-Ray, in a conversation with Lena Dunham and also an extended commentary on one of the episodes. But he doesn’t need to stump for the show—Dunham is a pretty good advocate for herself. You can hear her fast just-shy-of-a-ramble opinion in the wealth of special features, which includes a roundtable discussion with the cast, Dunham’s interview on Fresh Air, and quick “inside the episode” segments where Dunham gives a brief explanation behind the inspiration for each one. (There’s even a booklet of her tweets. Example: “Right after HBO announcement I got stuck in the bar bathroom & had to phone for help.”)

Unfortunately, by the time some of these extras were made, all of the heated opinions surrounding the show had already hit the internet, and the extra interviews spends time directly and indirectly addressing the flurry of criticism. It’s better to do what some of the early critics of Girls did not: Just watch the show.

 

Click through to see the review on PopMatters.

TV Review: Elementary

'Elementary': Lucy Liu as Holmes' Sober Companion

...Moving the story to the States and changing Watson’s gender seem to be where the creativity ends for Elementary. Through the rest of the premiere, the show is intent on hitting all of the typical Sherlock Holmes beats. There’s a scene where he rattles off a list of personal details about someone he’s just met based on a few quick observations. There’s another where he leaves veteran police detectives flabbergasted by making headway in a case through a small detail they all overlooked. And there are many, many moments where Holmes acts rudely or inappropriately, ignoring social norms. These moments are necessary for Sherlock Holmes stories, but with each Holmes adaptation, they become a little less novel.

That lack of originality spills over into Elementary‘s visual style. Too often, it feels like it’s been run through the network TV cop-procedural grinder. The premiere’s New York City location, shaky-camera aesthetic, and easily digestible one-hour mystery made Holmes less a creation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and more like any number of damaged investigators with superb mental powers, from The Mentalist‘s Patrick Jane to Unforgettable‘s Carrie Wells. (It doesn’t help that Aiden Quinn is cast as the show’s NYPD captain, recalling his earlier stint as Lieutenant Kevin Sweeney on another British import, Prime Suspect.)  At least Holmes spares us the seemingly unsolvable mystery from his own past that haunts him in the present, the only touchstone of these formulaic dramas that seems to be missing—so far.
 
But if Elementary is a standard detective procedural, it is at least well done. This is largely based on the strength of Miller, who brings a rejuvenating energy to a genre full of morose investigators. He has an easy rapport with Liu, even if it’s sometimes used in an antagonizing way. He may not be the best Sherlock out there, but he’s perfect proof of why people still feel the need to tell Sherlock Holmes stories 85 years after Arthur Conan Doyle.

Click through to read the full review at PopMatters.

TV Review: Boardwalk Empire Season Three

 

 

Seven curse words, at least four racial slurs, and a raft of other insults, ranging from “short pants” and “midget” to “breadstick in a bowtie.” That’s how Gyp Rosetti (Bobby Cannavale) announces his arrival in Atlantic City, directing his invective at Nucky Thompson, (Steve Buscemi). It’s a feat of virtuosic vulgarity, coming after we’ve already seen him gratuitously murder a Good Samaritan for a perceived slight—and then steal the Samaritan’s dog—so we know he bites as hard as he barks. Okay, Boardwalk Empire, you have our attention.


The show needed Gyp Rosetti. At the end of the second season, it was in the strange position of winding down and hitting its stride simultaneously. It had spent the season beginning to reap the benefits of more than a year of narrative build-up, as we felt fully invested in a number of stories, stories that were quickly developing. Then, just when it could’ve coasted off its accumulated good will and anticipation,Boardwalk Empire raised the stakes instead.


Primarily, it killed off major characters, including Jimmy (Michael Pitt). Now we have to think about the show differently. None of our favorite characters has protected status due to their prominence or popularity, and anyone can go at any time if it serves the greater narrative. (Please, let Margaret Schroeder make it through the end unscathed!) These deaths served other, more plainly narrative purposes: they opened up a vacuum of villainy. Nucky had clawed his way to the top and now looked unopposed.


But if Boardwalk Empire preaches one thing, it’s this: just when you think you’ve solved one problem, there’s another waiting in the wings. Gyp Rosetti’s introduction suggests that he’ll be a scoundrel every bit as violent, wily, and ruthless as we’ve seen before in the series, if not more so. By the second episode of the new season, he delivers on that promise.

 

Click through to read the rest of the review at PopMatters. 

I Become the Subject

Kari Ann Marquart of L7 Women's Magazine asked me to weigh in on the upcoming TV season.

Five New and Five Returning Shows to Watch This Fall

"Boardwalk Empire created quite a stir with its season two finale that caused many to be taken completely aback when the writers killed off a main character. 'The events in the last episode make it hard to wait for its return,' LaScala said. 'I have to just put it out of my head or else I get too anxious for the show to start again.' Watch to see how season three of this Prohibition-era television show plays out on Sept. 16th at 9/8c on HBO."

Click through to read the rest (and see many more examples of me stumping for my favorite shows).

Q&A: Ben Schwartz

I interviewed Ben Schwartz about his TV projects: Parks and Recreation, House of Lies, and Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja, but this was my favorite question I got to ask:

Finally, when certain people in this office are in kind of a down mood, it's possible they use this video of you and Zooey Deschanel signing "You Belong to Me" to cheer up. Can you say how that came about?

That’s amazing! That’s so sweet. That came about because my friend Sophia Rossi created a website called HelloGiggles with the talented Zooey Deschanel and Molly McAleer. Sophia asked me to do a video for them around the time when they launched, and I asked Zooey if she wanted to sing an old song that Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters sang from The Jerk. Zooey is a professional singer and amazing at just about everything, so I was so lucky when she said yes. She learned the song on her ukulele in two seconds. We hit record on Sophia’s laptop, sang it a few times, and picked our favorite take. I love that people are watching it. The trick is to get someone who is an amazing singer to sing with you, then hopefully she sings loud enough to make everyone forget that you are singing, too.

 

Click here to read the full interview.

 

Photo: DISNEY XD/RICK ROWELL

TV Review: Go On

'Go On': Matthew Perry's Sarcastic Charm

Ryan joins a group for people “in transition.” While so many new sitcoms in the wake of Modern Family‘s success are offering different permutations of “the family,” this one sets up early to showcase people learning to cope without theirs. But this deviation from the current trend doesn’t mean that Go On is devoid of all sitcom tropes. Ryan is all too familiar in a couple of aspects. First, he’s a diehard sports fan who can’t talk about his “feelings.” As the typical alpha male, he cracks jokes about his own tragedy and denies that he needs to grieve: “If I go see a shrink,” he says, “My dad would roll around in his grave. At last I think he’s dead. We don’t talk about that kind of thing.” He’s also conventional in his need for help.  Like Will in Good Will Hunting and pretty much every reluctant-patient-in-therapy TV show or movie except One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ryan finds the group helpful.

 

Click through to read the rest of the review at PopMatters.

New Show Review: Veep

'Veep' Finds Humor in Office Politics

"At an event in New York to promote the show, Louis-Dreyfus noted that most films and TV shows portray politics as noble, like The West Wing, or sinister, like Three Days of the Condor. With Veep, politics is drudgery. It’s bureaucracy and backstabbing in small, cramped spaces. They might as well be running a paper company."

Click through to read the rest of the review at PopMatters.