Do you feel helpless and betrayed? Is your breathing rapid and shallow, your pulse racing? Do you feel angry, confused, hurt? Have you felt this way every since you heard that Oprah will be ending her talk show in September of 2011?
Then, like me, you're one of millions of American women who are suffering from abandonment issues as our televisual headmistress, virtual life coach and personal savior Oprah leaves her omnipresent, omnipotent post on the small screen.
Don't misunderstand how high the emotional stakes are here: Our love for Oprah burns brighter than the light from a thousand suns. We trust Oprah more than we trust ourselves. We would follow Oprah to hell and back, with or without the promise of a brand-new 2009 Pontiac G6 Sedan with sunroof and cruise control.
Oprah tells us what to read. We don't always love her taste in books, but we love chatting about books with her on her butter-yellow couches. Oprah tells us whom to love and admire. We don't always care what Barbra Streisand is up to, but we love watching Babs and Opes clash and subtly try to outshine each other, like colliding stars. Oprah feeds our souls. We never liked Dr. Phil that much after he exited Oprah's sacred circle of trust, but while he was basking in her glow, his words spoke to our very hearts. Oprah delivers us from evil. When Hurricane Katrina hit, we didn't wonder what George W. Bush or the Coast Guard would do to help those people, we wondered what Oprah would do. Maybe some of her ideas are a little weird, maybe some of her guests are quacks, but Oprah herself is smart and brash and so awesomely powerful but also so openhearted and so wise.
What will we do without her?
Yesterday, when word got out that Oprah will be wrapping up "The Oprah Winfrey Show," which has been on the air since 1986, so that she can focus on her new cable television channel, the Oprah Winfrey Network (or OWN), a nation full of women collapsed into the fetal position. Our husbands or roommates or dogs found us in a crumpled heap on the rug, mumbling through tears, "I want my imaginary black mommy! I want my imaginary black mommy!" Will we be like this for almost two years, until Oprah is really gone? Probably.
Of course the media isn't helping to put things into perspective. The Wall Street Journal suggests that Oprah's departure from TV will crush the syndicated television market and strike a devastating blow to book publishing. The New York Times warns that ABC's daytime ratings and evening news will both take huge hits, and Oprah's move to start her own cable TV channel will strike "a blow to the fortunes of broadcast television." An AP wire story called Oprah's departure a "blow to CBS" (which distributes her show in syndication). How can we begin to put this devastating personal loss in perspective, when all we read about is how Oprah will single-handedly crush every industry in America?
Meanwhile, naive journalists nationwide muse over who will ever replace Oprah. Um, did you just say replace Oprah? To those of us who've just locked ourselves into our closets so we can weep and swill cooking sherry and mourn this loss in private, that's like imagining ways to replace the sun, or the moon, or the Atlantic Ocean, or Chris Rock ... who, of course, has appeared on Oprah several times. But then, in America, appearing on Oprah is the rough equivalent to being knighted.
Oprah herself was in tears, like any good mommy should be when she announces that she'll be ditching her kids and moving on to more pressing and important things. She told us that, after a quarter of a century on the air, leaving her talk show just "feels right in my bones and feels right in my spirit." Oh, Oprah, even as you're kicking us to the curb, we understand and empathize! We feel you and we forgive you.
But … how will we survive without you? Our minds race back to the days when Oprah was fat, when she wondered if she and Steadman would ever get married. We were only teenagers then, and we naively thought of Oprah as just another talk show host. Then she took a supporting role in "The Color Purple," and our love for her blossomed out of nowhere. Later, when she was targeted by the beef industry, we got our hackles up over it. How dare those bad rancher men mess with our sweet, thoughtful, tough-loving girlfriend Oprah! When Jonathan Franzen sniffed at the notion of having an "Oprah Book Club" logo on the cover of his acclaimed novel "The Corrections," we hated him for it (even though we still loved his book), and vowed that if Oprah ever let our book into her book club, we'd happily throw out our book cover for an enormous close-up photograph of Oprah's right ass cheek. (I bet it's a pretty one.)
OK, maybe that was just me. But I doubt that I'm alone on this, because for most smart women in this country who are paying attention and care, Oprah walks on water. Why? It's quite simple: Oprah is not just compassionate and charismatic, she knows what's lively and informative to watch or think or talk about. She's a masterly interviewer. She's got a great sense of humor. She's more comfortable in front of the camera than anyone else in the world. She's fun. And when her audience at home starts to get bored, she's bored, too. You can see it on her face, that wrinkling of the nose and squinting of the eyes that means she's about to interrupt some sob story or self-involved digression and get right to the heart of the matter. Oprah always, always knows how to keep things interesting.
Of course we knew this day would come eventually! There are only so many years you can spend, being surrounded by people who treat you like the second coming of the Lord, before you want to expand your empire and spend most of your time running it (much like God) instead of chatting amiably to a camera about green smoothies or obscure Nigerian authors or Nicole Kidman's baby (more like God's disciples -- tenacious, but often bewildered and/or martyred). God Himself may enjoy your devotion, but it's not like He can be bothered to have heart-to-hearts with you about how to make over your man.
Oprah does promise that the final 18 months of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" are going to be the greatest, most memorable months ever, but that's sort of like your mom taking you for an awesome trip to Disney World before dropping you off at the local orphanage. We can picture the final days of Oprah's show already: The Dalai Lama himself will teach us how to bake a quick and easy soufflé, Katie Holmes will jump up and down on Oprah's butter-yellow couches to announce her joy over divorcing Tom Cruise, Michael Jackson will rise from the dead to sing "Thriller" to a live studio audience, and every woman in America will receive the keys to a brand-new 2011 Pontiac Solstice with GPS navigation and built-in video iPod.
But until then, Oprah is going to have to help us to peel our snotty faces off the floor. In fact, Oprah should probably consider buying time on every channel for a very special public service announcement, in which she'll coax us all, very softly, to splash a little cold water on our faces and run a comb through our hair and have a sandwich. You can do it, she'll tell us in that warm, loving growl of hers, and we'll believe her ... until we start shivering and sobbing again. Eventually, of course, Oprah will have to dedicate a weekly segment to Dealing with Oprah Abandonment Issues, and thoughtful psychologists and clinicians will have to come and explain to us several techniques for letting go and moving on by ourselves, stronger and better than ever.
And we'll try, very very hard, to follow their instructions, mostly because Oprah told us to. But all the while, a voice deep inside us will be screaming, "Stronger? Better? Without Oprah?!! That's just not possible."
And on that front, Oprah herself can hardly disagree.
"When this is over there will be much more fear in the world." -- Lashkar-e-Taiba operative on the phone to terrorist subordinates during the Mumbai attacks
Generating fear in the world doesn't require elaborate training or flight lessons. Fear can be created just by handing out grenades and AK-47s to a few barely trained, disenfranchised young men. Fear can be disseminated through the packed crowds at a train station or a popular local bar. Fear can be broadcast over national TV, just by torching a few rooms in an expensive landmark hotel. And fear will stay in the picture for as long as hostages are held while the police mill around outside, armed only with pistols, wondering what to do next.
Fear is easy, but untangling the logistics of fear can take time. While the inner workings of a terrorist attack generally remain shrouded in mystery for months or years after the attack takes place, the mass murders in Mumbai by Islamic militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba last November are an exception. Not only did investigators have access to extensive footage of the terrorist operatives carrying out their horrifying tasks in the Taj Mahal and Oberoi hotels and at a crowded train station, not only did they manage to capture and interrogate one of the attackers, but they also tapped into a Lashkar-e-Taiba leader's phone during the attacks, giving them a clear taste of how humans are actively manipulated into committing atrocities in the name of some imagined higher cause.
HBO documentary "Terror in Mumbai" (premieres 8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 18) cobbles together surveillance footage and video of the interrogation with cellphone audio to present a comprehensive picture of the events that left 170 dead and more than 300 wounded. But we're not left in awe of the precision and strategic cunning of the terrorists' plan as we were in the wake of 9/11. Instead, with every shot of the young men milling around or trying to kick in hotel-room doors, with every coaxing word over the cellphone, what's stunning is that such a haphazard attack could've resulted in such a staggering loss of human life. The Lashkar-e-Taiba leader on the phone hauntingly cajoles the terrorist operatives to set things on fire, to find more people to kill. At some point, one of the terrorists marvels over the phone that the Taj Mahal hotel has computers with "30-inch screens" and that the windows go from the floor to the ceiling. His boss ignores his words, trying to refocus him on more killing.
Meanwhile, captured suspect Ajmal Amir Kasab explains that he was trained for just three months in Pakistan, that his father made the deal because his family needed the money. "Who were you supposed to kill?" the investigator asks. "Just people," Kasab replies.
"Just people" includes a young boy's mother and father. "What harm did we ever do, for them to kill so many people?" the boy asks the cameras. "What do they gain from all this killing?"
And also, where were the police? Armed only with pistols and small guns, we're treated to footage of at least a dozen policemen shuffling around confusedly at the train station, wondering what to do next. The few who try to intercede are shot down immediately. Several calls are made requesting heavily armed backup, but help doesn't arrive for hours. Meanwhile, several police officials, including the chief of the anti-terrorism squad, are killed when the terrorists stop their vehicle on the street. The Taj Mahal hotel is controlled by a few terrorists with grenades and guns, but police make no organized attempt to storm the hotel. One injured victim waited in a hotel restaurant among dead family members for 16 hours before she was rescued.
"Terror in Mumbai" provides a harrowing glimpse of how unprotected most citizens are, even in the face of a seemingly primitive attack. But most of all, the film gives us a front-row view of the soul-crushing spectacle of young men who are easily convinced to murder innocent people. "You're very close to heaven, brother," the Kashar-e-Taiba operative on the phone tells one of his men when it looks like the man will soon die, dozens of hours after the attacks started. "Today's the day you'll be remembered for, brother."
Jean-Christophe Novelli was born to play himself on TV. An acclaimed chef with restaurants in London, France and South Africa, Novelli has movie-star good looks, a thick French accent, a piercing gaze and a real talent for making cooking students feel intimidated, then adored, then unnerved, then undermined. Reality TV loves good-looking, temperamental, outrageous experts, of course -- particularly the ones whose sociopathic urges seem to kick in every time that little red light on the camera flickers on.
And from the opening moments of Bravo's "Chef Academy" (premieres 11 p.m. Monday, November 16 on Bravo) Novelli is dutifully outrageous. He doesn't care that his hammy new assistant Joel once worked for Tori Spelling, but he would like to know if Joel can arrange a meeting with "the biggest star ever," Peter Falk of "Columbo." Joel offers an exaggerated frown for the camera.
But Novelli is sincere. He and his fiancée Michelle Kennedy love "Columbo" and meeting him is their dream. Novelli imitates him, pressing his fingers to his face and saying, "Oh, just one other thing!" "This man is the biggest legend ever in American cinema," he explains.
"Are you sure he's still living?" Joel asks. Is this Joel person a plant? Is Novelli being tortured in the hopes that he'll fire Joel within hours of meeting him?
Sadly, though, Joel serves as a warning of more chafing choices to come: Novelli informs us, quite dramatically, that he must get his new culinary academy up and running quickly. Why -- because the show's production schedule is tight? I hate it when made-for-TV scenarios are treated as important by a reality show's stars. One of the reasons shows like "Top Chef" and "Project Runway" do well is that their premises don't hinge on our suspension of disbelief.
Next, we meet our parade of culinary students: Suzanne (OC housewife eager to play the lovable fool), Emmanuel (hot, charming French guy happy to play the hot, charming French guy), Kup (Navy submarine cook), Kyle, (respectably skilled but slightly pretentious sous chef) and Carissa (aspiring housewife eager to please her future husband and mother-in-law by learning to cook), among others. At first glance, the mix of students makes no real sense: A few of them have been to culinary school, but the rest are amateurs with very little experience.
After the fifth or sixth student tells a joke or makes a cutting remark or otherwise shows off for the camera, it becomes clearer. Like Novelli, they've been chosen for their personalities.
"Chef Academy" will be more of a "Police Academy" for amateur cooks than another "Top Chef," in other words -- and that's sad, because most die-hard "Top Chef" fans would happily watch another hour of that show each week. But this show is like "Hell's Kitchen" meets "Flipping Out." The cast is packed with outspoken oddballs. The interactions between Novelli and his students are cheesy and overplayed. The pace is a little frantic. We're treated to shots of Kennedy marveling at her new L.A. digs. A lot of what we see feels superfluous, like outakes from similar Bravo reality-entrepreneur snoozefest "Blow Out."
And then whenever things get interesting -- Novelli teaches his brand new students a few quick cooking techniques, for example – the camera cuts away, or we're offered a quick montage of similar scenes. This is Bravo, not TLC or Discovery Health, after all. Learning is not in the cards.
What is in the cards, based on the teasers at the end of the show? Angry outbursts, teary breakdowns, moments of triumph and revelry, and lots of Novelli, firing up his temper while the cameras roll. "Chef Academy" looks amateurish and predictable, in other words.
And yet, Novelli was born to make arrogant pronouncements, interrupt, demean, cajole, coax and do bad imitations of "Columbo" on TV. So will we watch?
As "Columbo" himself might say, "I respect your talent, but I don't like anything else about you." In other words, probably.
The insertion of the word "drama" as a stand-in for emotional confrontation tells us a lot about our psychological state in this self-conscious, unenlightened age. While e-mailing, texting and tweeting are acceptable ways to communicate important feelings and ideas these days, shrugging, proclaiming noncommittally that "it is what it is" and outright avoidance are widely embraced means of signaling our shifting emotional needs. Conversely, by stating your feelings directly to another human being face to face, you risk becoming known as someone who loves "drama," standing in sharp contrast to "sane" individuals who "don't want any drama," i.e., would prefer that, instead of expressing yourself, you'd simply drop off the face of the earth, or at the very least have the common decency to boil your feelings down to 140 characters or less.
But in a world of passive-aggressive drama-avoiders, the tiniest understated droplet of emotion makes a gigantic splash. When everyone is cautious to the point of becoming polite, back-patting yes men with the same appreciative professional smiles plastered on their faces, see how easy it is to misinterpret a neutral gaze? When no one tells you what they're really feeling or thinking, when no one mentions being disappointed or disturbed by another person's actions, see how easy it is to misunderstand a gap between phone calls or a long-delayed Facebook response? When everyone coats their words in the same tone of supernatural friendliness and acceptance, see how tough it can be to word that e-mail in a way that doesn't cause offense?
We're all slowly backing away from each other, nodding and smiling reassuringly, our fingers poised over our hand-held devices, eager to tap out a few soothing parting words to smooth our transitions to the next impoverished non-engagement.
Bed-headed stepchild
Maybe this is why it's hard not to crave a good TV drama these days. The pace of adult life is hectic. And aside from occasional meaningful conversations with old friends (by phone, mostly) our lives are filled with idle chatter and niceties. Who can blame us for retreating to our beds at night, turning on the tube, and leaning in to the high stakes, weighty stares and tense exchanges as another hour of scripted catharsis comes to a rolling boil?
But what dramas are truly worth our time these days? "Mad Men" wrapped on Sunday, and Joss Whedon's "Dollhouse" just got canceled. (Yes, I was watching it regularly and, yes, I am seriously disappointed.) TNT's "Saving Grace" is being stretched out through next summer, but only because there won't be a fifth season.
Sure, there's FX's "Sons of Anarchy," CBS's "The Good Wife," Fox's "Lie to Me," CBS's "The Mentalist," Showtime's "Dexter" and a handful of other reasonably good hour-long shows. But if you're often bored by procedurals (I am) and don't always want to consider another brutal murder or climactic courtroom confession (I don't), then the possibilities are limited.
After browsing the sparse dramatic offerings on my DVR, I usually end up puffing uninterestedly on some medical melodrama. At least hospitalized soft porn has complicated women falling in and out of love, surrounded by supportive himbos and deeply soulful, expressive patients, bleeding and crying out in pain and dying in their arms as the camera circles, hungry for more wet eyes and heavy sighs.
Or maybe I'm just taking pains to express my continuing, somewhat shameful itch for a weekly dose of "Grey's Anatomy" (9 p.m. Thursdays on ABC). Despite countless highs (Torres discovering her love for Hahn) and lows (Izzie hallucinating making sweet love to dead Denny), this drama remains a brilliant manipulator of viewer emotions.
Now let's be clear: The staffing decisions on this show have defied logic. Get rid of the brilliant Brooke Smith, why? Because she's convincing as a self-possessed lesbian doctor? Hire Jessica Capshaw to play a perky, wrinkly-nosed, ultra-patriotic lipstick lesbian instead, because it makes the gay story line more palatable to the general God and country and lipstick-loving populace? And then, let T.R. Knight (who plays George) walk without a fight, but keep whiny Katherine Heigl (who plays Izzie) and build a big, soppy, tedious cancer story line around her? Pair her first with dead Denny (snore) then dull Alex (Justin Chambers)?
But the truth is, even the bad characters on this show are reasonably fleshed out, thanks to the fact that the writers make sure that every character's dialogue adheres very closely to that character's guiding principles. Christina Yang (Sandra Oh) is an obsessive surgical badass who hates touchy-feely bullshit. Alex is, as the Mercy West newbies so aptly put it, sort of a douche. Lexie (Chyler Leigh) is idealistic and naive. Owen Hunt (Kevin McKidd) is thoughtful and haunted and heroic under pressure. Somehow, as simple as these basic profiles are, they work. Even Arizona (Capshaw), with her rousing patriotic monologues (Do you sniff a little of stepdad Spielberg's "greatest generation" sentimentality floating into the mix here?), sort of works as a nurturing, courageous, principles-first girly-girl.
In fact, the only time characters drop their signature concerns and sound like a more generic Grey's Anatomatron is when they have some big, emotional message to communicate to another character, and then they slip into Grey's Anatomospeak, which I'll demonstrate using my Grey's Anato-Mad Lib:
"Look, I know you don't like the fact that I (past tense verb) your patient's (noun). I know that I (past tense verb) on your (part of body). But I care about (value or principle). I care about (same value or principle), and I can't just (verb) along knowing that (same value or principle) has been trampled on. (Same value or principle) makes you (verb). (Same value or principle) sometimes makes (noun) look like (noun). But (same value or principle) matters. It matters, and I can't pretend it doesn't. That's not me. That's not how I was raised. That's not the (woman, man, doctor) who is your (wife, husband, friend, boss, intern). (Verb) if you want to (verb), but that's not me."
As you can see, the Grey's Anato-Mad Lib produces exactly the sort of stirring monologue you need to get from the Big Relationship Crisis to the Vagina Music Montage. Formulaic though it may be, those thoughtful voice-overs and that repetitive emotional prose and that vagina music and that big, weighty value or principle du jour make us feel things that tweets and small talk and status updates can't touch.
As little as I care about whether Izzie and Alex get back together, or whether Chief (James Pickens Jr.) and McDreamy (Patrick Dempsey) stop clashing – and really, who could care? – this show continues chugging along like the little hospital tugboat that could, with new, almost-believable life-or-death battles and almost-moving romantic confrontations each week. Despite its very idealized, sugary take on the medical realm, I still find "Grey's Anatomy" emotionally engaging and relaxing at the same time. It's not a work of genius, no, but it's lively and clever and sweet and there are ideas and feelings in the mix that make it far superior to the more typical, flatly macho conflict we find on other dramas. Thus do I find myself, every week without fail, rolling this sweet medical melodrama into a fat doobie and smoking it until it's cashed -- or until the strummy love ballad seeps in and MerDer fall asleep spooning while the Seattle rain pitter-patters pensively outside.
Ming the Mercy-less
Despite "Grey's" high ratings, there are plenty of viewers out there who remain suspicious of the show and its sentimental formula of gorgeous, principled, smooth-talking upper-middle-class doctors who are not only, every last one of them, the very best (insert medical specialty) in the country, but who also care so deeply about their patients that they're right there, holding hands and tapping out e-mails to mommies and thinking long and hard about which expensive, highly experimental course of treatment makes the most sense for this or that terminal patient in spite of the fact that he or she is most likely going to die anyway. (And no, a few minutes of Chief shouting about costly tests isn't going to erase the inherent fantastical nature of this picture.)
Of course, anyone who has actually spent a little time in a hospital knows that the truth is a far cry from the soft-porn, professional-class velvet painting of "Grey's Anatomy." And as much as the sudden flood of shows about nurses has tried our patience with the same picture, maybe that's mostly because "HawthoRNe" was rotten enough that it got a little stink on the rest of them.
Also, the shows about nurses make being a nurse look seriously frustrating. It's not so much that we don't find ourselves relating to the nurses on these shows, it's that we relate to them so well. After a long day at work, carefully tiptoeing around the enormous egos in our midst, most of us can't handle settling onto our couches just to see nurses deal with the same bullshit from doctors that we encounter all day long. Bad enough to put up with bad decisions by supervisors and bosses who have power over you and think they know best. But to endure them in a setting where bad decisions lead to sickness and death? And to be surrounded by patients who underestimate your education, your intelligence and your expertise, day after day? It's almost too much to bear. No wonder most of us would rather shadow McDreamy as he thoughtfully scans X-rays than watch a frantic nurse make desperate calls to other hospitals for a rabies vaccine that might save a woman's life.
It should be noted, though, that unlike Showtime's "Nurse Jackie" (which was fun but retread the same ground each week without revealing anything about its characters) and TNT's "HawthoRNe" (which flatly sucked), NBC's "Mercy" (8 p.m. Wednesdays) presents a grittier, more realistic alternative to the "Grey's Anatomy" universe of privileged, gorgeous medical badasses.
"If you want to get right then you'd better get right with me!" the opening theme song insists in a tough-girl Stevie Nicks growl, and we see the three nurse friends at the center of our show, Veronica, Sonia and Chloe. Sure, these women advocate passionately for their patients when the doctors around them come and go distractedly, but that's at least a little bit closer to reality than the more typical TV drama's favored image, of doctors who stay up all night, poring over charts, while nurses scamper around them fetching IVs like anonymous waitresses. Later, the nurses of "Mercy" toss back shots at their favorite corner dive and, when the A.C. there fails, break into a city pool and float around in their underwear, sipping cold bottles of beer.
From Veronica (Taylor Schilling), who's still traumatized by her stint in Iraq, to Sonia (Jaime Lee Kirchner), who has a drug-dealing brother, these nurses are tough, straight-talking, self-possessed women who went into nursing precisely because they've been blessed with more than the average share of empathy -- not that this shows in their rough and tumble talk to each other. Take some of Veronica's recent declarations:
"I'm not the pope. It's not my job to keep the girl from humping."
"I don't care if it's Jennifer Aniston, I just kind of want a chick on my money."
"Kids are horrible. They fail math and crash cars and get arrested."
"I'm not really, like, a joiner. I mean, I don't really see myself trotting down to a church basement to drink bad coffee, all of that talking and sharing."
Veronica is a good character -- you could even say that she's a better Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) than Meredith Grey herself. Her bluster, her denial, her tomboy spirit, these things were apparent from her first scene on the show. She really loves her husband, but she's also in love with Chris (James Tupper), a doctor she had an affair with in Iraq. The scenes with Veronica and Chris or Veronica and her drunk, half-crazy family are always compelling and funny. "Think about how many people know," Sonia tells Veronica at a family party at her house, urging her to come clean to her husband about her affair. "Then think about how much those people drink." In the background, we see Veronica's brother stumble out her front door, burping loudly.
Unfortunately, Sonia and Chloe aren't nearly as interesting as Veronica so far. Sonia's tough, Chloe's shy, and that's about all we get. While "Grey's Anatomy" is often criticized for having too many characters to service, when you watch a few episodes of "Mercy," you start to want some new faces to break up the monotony. Seeing Veronica withhold her emotions while Chloe stutters nervously and Sonia lets loose a tirade over and over again isn't going to keep audiences coming back for more. The problem here is not that they're nurses. The problem is that they're boring nurses.
And then there's the dialogue. Half the time it's smart and funny. But when things get serious, the writers don't know how to pull back and keep things subtle.
"You put your ass on the line for strangers. That's why I love you," Veronica's macho, simple, good-guy husband tells her, even though we're obviously supposed to feel that Chris is her true soul mate. Do we feel conflicted? Yes, but only over whether or not this guy would really spell it all out for her that way.
"The universe hates love!" Sonia barks at a cooing couple, and like magic, the scene falls flat, proving that the universe also hates overly obvious, on-the-nose dialogue.
"You're using this hospital and its patients to fend off your own demons!" shouts Dr. Harris (James Legros), the insensitive dick physician, to Veronica, because -- little known fact -- insensitive dick physicians are nonetheless quite sensitive to the psychological demons haunting the nurses on their floors.
"How the hell did I fall in love with someone as stubborn as you?" Sonia's hot cop boyfriend Nick (Charles Semine) asks her as she refuses to get into his car after a spat. The real question is, how the hell do we suspend our disbelief at such clunky, awkward dialogue?
Worst of all is Chloe (Michelle Trachtenberg), who just isn't believable as a dorky, intimidated, shy nurse. This character fits Trachtenberg like a cheap suit. Maybe Trachtenberg is closer to the know-it-all, bossy bitch she plays on "Gossip Girl." Maybe it's the dialogue. All I know is that every scene with Chloe in it feels like an extended stay in a waiting room crowded with strangers coughing up lungs.
That said, every week "Mercy" gets a little better. The writers really do seem to be ironing out the kinks and playing to the show's strengths more and more. And if we were to look back at the first season of "Grey's Anatomy," I shudder to think of the awkwardness and badly scripted moments we'd find there. For every lackluster plot line (Sonia worries that Nick is dead, Chloe makes a pass at Chris, a stereotypical old couple relishes celebrating their wedding anniversary) there's a compelling one (Veronica struggles to tell Chris the truth, Veronica helps a cancer patient brave chemo, Veronica and Dr. Harris become unlikely friends in the wake of his wife's death). This show is getting steadier on its feet, Taylor Schilling is really fantastic in this role, and, well, who knows? Maybe one day before I float off to MerDer McDreamland, I'll get right with my girlfriends in Jersey City instead.
Until then, I back away from you slowly, nodding and smiling reassuringly, bidding you adieu until our next impoverished online non-engagement.
Imagine waking up in the middle of a vast desert with no memory of who you are and no idea how you got there. A dazed, bleeding man stumbles up to you, mumbling some words and numbers, and then dies. You wander into a strange town where the houses are colorful and prefabricated. The people seem to know you and refer to you as Number Six.
Things only get more confusing from there. Just like the 1960s British cult classic that AMC's miniseries "The Prisoner" (premieres 8 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 15) is based on, the big questions -- Who is Number Six? Why is he here? Who are these people? -- keep us imprisoned in this pristine, brilliant desert town that everyone calls "the Village" until the end of the series. Over the course of this three-night, six-hour adventure, we experience a confusing jumble of impressionistic scenes, tense exchanges shot at extreme close-up, stark images, buried secrets, misdirections and some scattered flashbacks to Six's former life in New York City -- although he doesn't know where that place is, how to get there or what he did there.
What is it with the British and their discombobulated creepiness? Like an unholy mix of the surreal dramatic experiments that the original "Prisoner" series spawned, from "The Singing Detective" to "Life on Mars" to "Lost," AMC's remake (which the press materials call a "reinterpretation") is more of an allegorical plunge into the void than a cohesive sci-fi mystery. Six (Jim Caviezel) meets his brother -- or is he an impostor? Six makes a friend -- or is she an operative working for Number Two (Ian McKellen), the white-haired, semi-demonic Willy Wonka of this repressive desert hamlet? Six is enlisted to spy -- or is he being spied on? He falls in love -- or is that, too, just another trick to produce some desired response in him?
Two has his own strange issues -- an unconscious wife who lies in bed all day, a son who wants to know if there's another world outside of the Village. Visits to the Clinic, where people get treatments, are feared by the people in the Village. Characters mysteriously disappear or they're murdered when they start behaving suspiciously. By the end of each hour-long episode, there's a twist. The loose narrative unravels even as some detail is revealed, and the maze becomes more twisted.
In truth, most of AMC's "The Prisoner" feels like a playful little experiment in nonlinear narrative, flashing from one unnerving scene to another with the hopes that it might all add up to something, anything. If you were a big fan of the original series, you might enjoy a nostalgic tour through some of the same landmarks, but I suspect that this somewhat gutless iteration is still likely to enrage die-hard "Prisoner" fans.
Of course, you might choose to encounter AMC's remake as a disturbing tale about identity and the skin-deep cultural influences and daily distractions that we inevitably begin to mistake for the meat of our lives. The miniseries does offer some evocative moments -- spaced-out, impressionistic stills from an art film that come close to resembling a meditative journey through the evanescent nature of modern life. For example, when Six is enlisted to spy for Two, he and a fellow spy discuss a suspect they've been asked to track.
Spy: Question: Why does he go swimming after work?
Six: Answer: Because he likes swimming.
Spy: We're looking at a man who doesn't want to go home.
Six: And that makes him suspicious?
Spy: He knows he's being watched. Everything is suspicious if you look at it properly. Everyone has secrets. No one is without guilt. You just have to work out what it is they're guilty of.
This is the way people talk in "The Prisoner" -- in curious little verses, like the characters from "Alice in Wonderland," but without the wit and the fun costumes. By divorcing these people from all familiar signifiers -- landmarks, jobs, real families, names -- we can experience their blind, fearful adherence to the rules, their empty insistence that they are who they say they are, that they simply like to swim, that they have no independent thoughts inside their heads -- as a reflection of our own collusion in the underlying corruption and toxicity of our culture. We're all guilty, get it?
"I am not a number!" Six shouts at anyone who'll listen. "I am a free man!" Personal information is power -- power that Two wants, and that Six withholds. But without a constant reminder that this is weighty ground, that like a George Orwell novel, everything here is a stand-in for something bigger and more important, without an understanding that the absurd details here are cultural commentary dressed up in clown garb ("Get a pig -- for Stability!" posters in the Village urge residents), then we're in danger of becoming exhausted rather quickly by this endless labyrinth that may never lead anywhere. Somehow, even with the clumsy special effects, it's obvious that the original was far more vibrant and intriguing:
Will there be a big payoff at the end, and will it be worth it? I don't want to spoil it for those of you who loved the original and can't miss the remake, or who simply find the notion of a fantastical story with this kind of star power intriguing. Yes, I watched the full six hours of this miniseries, but even after the first two hours it was clear not only that we might never find out the secrets of the Village, but that even if we did, we were bound to be disappointed. Suffice it to say that the destination of this elaborate six-hour allegory is meant to be far less important than the journey.
And that would be fine, if this particular journey didn't feel quite so much like doing hard time.
It looks like Don Draper might finally grow up after all! Instead of running for the hills at the first sign of trouble as is his habit, Don discovered in Sunday night's third season finale of "Mad Men" that there are some things in his life that he has the conviction to fight for: the survival of Sterling Cooper in some new form. His friendship with Roger Sterling. His professional and personal relationship with Peggy Olson.
But Don (Jon Hamm) also discovered there are things he's no longer interested in fighting for -- namely, his marriage. After greeting the news that Betty (January Jones) wants a divorce in his usual condescending way ("Maybe you can see a doctor -- a good one this time," he tells her as she grimaces at his arrogance), then shifting into angry drunk mode when he finds out about Betty's new caretaker/husband/father figure Henry Francis (Christopher Stanley), Don finally lands in even-handed territory.
"Listen, Betts. I want you to know I'm not gonna fight you. I hope you get what you always wanted," he tells her in a phone call at the end of the episode.
"You will always be their father," Betty replies -- typical tone-deaf Betty, unable to express her emotions in the slightest, and preoccupied with patriarchs to the end.
But Don always wanted more than a good, obedient, perfectly coifed wifey at home, as evidenced by his far less groomed, more spirited love interests elsewhere, from Midge (Rosemarie DeWitt) the devil-may-care intellectual to Suzanne (Abigail Spencer), the pure-hearted but unorthodox schoolteacher. Even as Betty and then Peggy (Elisabeth Moss) dress Don down with their unforgiving words, he almost seems to lean into their disapproval, as if he's relieved that finally someone's going to call him to the carpet for his clumsy, caddish behavior. Maybe he realizes he's been as much of a presumptuous asshole as Conrad Hilton, who cast aside his professional and personal relationship with Don the second he was no longer useful. Still, Hilton may be the one whose past keeps him overworked and friendless indefinitely; Don's days of lamenting his tragic upbringing are drawing to a close. The flashback to his father's death seems to signal that Don is finally going to put his daddy issues aside and shake off the shadow of his real identity once and for all. Now that his fake life is crumbling around him, something resembling an authentic life seems possible at last.
In fact, Sunday night's finale was particularly satisfying because all of the show's best characters look poised to move on to a new era in their lives. Peggy was clearly overjoyed to finally be acknowledged as talented and valuable by Don. Pete (Vincent Kartheiser) for once found himself perfectly positioned, thanks to his exit strategy of gathering clients to take to another firm, to get the promotion he'd always dreamed of. Joan (Christina Hendricks) came alive again when she was called back into action as the new firm's office manager, returning to a role that exploits her remarkable knack for attention to detail, propriety, pragmatism and pretty much everything that the partners and associates of the new firm so dearly lack. Even Lane Pryce (Jared Harris) found himself unexpectedly handed a chance to avenge his heartless bosses in London with the same air of casual cheer they'd employed when dragging him over the coals for years.
Breathtaking, really, that each character's deepest desires and drives could be satisfied without screwing up the story or turning it into a fairy tale. In particular, the difference between Peggy and Joan and what they each want was beautifully expressed in seconds: Roger, Joan and Peggy are hunched over the books at the old offices, exhausted from their scrambling attempts to bring as much with them to the new firm as they can before they're locked out, when Sterling asks, "Peggy, can you get me some coffee?" Without wavering, Peggy snaps back, "No."
Next we cut to Don informing Joan, "I'm at the Roosevelt, but I'll need you to find me an apartment."
"Furnished?" Joan asks without skipping a beat, in that tone of professional nonchalance that makes her such a star. Sure, Joan's made to be a caretaker and organizer of men's lives, but does that make her miserable? No. She absolutely glows when she's s given an opportunity to do what she does best.
Even the Draper kids look reasonably happy camped out on the couch in front of the TV set with big glasses of chocolate milk, the housekeeper (who's far more nurturing than their own mother, after all) perched between them. The only character whose fate feels slightly tragic is Betty. How heartbreaking was that shot of her on the plane to Reno, holding her little, worried-looking baby as Henry Francis snoozed in the seat beside them? Now Betty has the dull life and the dull Daddy of her dreams, and not surprisingly, there she is, looking as hopelessly alone as ever. (And really, someone should give that baby an Emmy for encapsulating the angst of that scene in his poor little face. Another boy goes barreling off into an unknown future with a dad who's not his own. Is Francis even a good guy? Who knows?)
Although his baby's plight echoes his own sad past, Don's future looks far less bleak than it has in a long time. As he returns from his last phone call with Betty, what does he see? The chaotic, cramped temporary offices of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce, filled with the people who have always been his true family, for better or for worse.
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