May 2018

ALIAS 1×06: ‘Reckoning’ | TV Review

May 31, 2018October 25, 2023 A J. Black

Alias is steadily building toward a larger point of revelation across its first season, as the title of Reckoning alludes to. Thematically, the journey of super-spy double agent Sydney Bristow continues to be about her own understanding of the bigger picture, and her place within it.

The complexities of the narrative inside J.J. Abrams show even facilitate, starting with Reckoning, a change to the recap preamble of the series’ concept. I’ve talked about how Alias doesn’t just employ a ‘previously’ recap akin to many other TV shows, but starts with a bigger explanation and contextualisation of the broader story the serialised narrative is telling. Here, Alias expands that recap by weaving the scene-setting around the four key characters at the outset of the series – Syd, her handler Michael Vaughn, her boss Arvin Sloane and her father Jack Bristow, the recap showing their faces and names just in case the people at the back AREN’T QUITE GETTING IT. I can’t recall another show which ever quite felt the need to prime the audience week by week with so much detail before even the previously recap.

Perhaps the choice was made because even just six episodes in, Alias is already starting to grow quite knotty and dense, and the show hasn’t even scratched the surface yet in many ways. Reckoning has a multitude of narratives bubbling away – Syd’s suspicion that Jack may have been working for the KGB, Vaughn and the CIA’s slow-burning backdoor hack into SD-6 established in the previous episode Doppleganger, Francie’s uncertainty about her boyfriend Charlie, Will’s investigation into the Kate Jones mystery. That’s just for starters, before any of the main episodic missions for Sydney are even covered, though really so far they have largely just been window-dressing around which the series can delve into these deeper storylines and building character arcs.

Reckoning, if anything, feels like the first example of what would have been a traditional two-part episode of a more conventional network TV show version of Alias.

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Essays, Roseanne, TV

ROSEANNE: Social Responsibility on Television | TV Feature

May 30, 2018October 25, 2023 A J. Black

If this feels like an addendum to my earlier piece about separating art from the artist, that’s because fate has taken a twist in that direction over the last couple of days. Roseanne, ABC’s successful re-launch of the hit 1980’s/1990’s sitcom starring Roseanne Barr as the matriarch of a middle-American family, has been cancelled after the star herself wrote a horrendously racist tweet about former Barack Obama aide Valerie Jarrett which rightly drew derision from all quarters. ABC’s entertainment president Channing Dungey swiftly responded with this brief statement:

Roseanne’s Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values.

While many have applauded Dungey and ABC for such a swift and decisive rejection of racist rhetoric by a star on their network, some such as Kathryn VanArendonk have made the point that the damage has already been done, that ABC don’t have a spotless record in terms of positive portrayals of race recently, and while Roseanne started as a huge hit upon its return, she subsequently had shed almost 10 million viewers by the season finale. Perhaps ABC found the excuse they’d been looking for to can the show.

Regardless of the reasons, Roseanne Barr’s banishment to the nether regions of disgraced celebrities is, without doubt, a long-time coming. While being a pro-Trump supporter for many would be condemnation enough, Barr has often gone one step further in promoting wild, divisive conspiracy theories which further suggest she has extremist views in line with many right-wing individuals who have taken Trump’s Presidency as a sign that their rhetoric has been validated. It should already have been clear that the gift of a revived TV sitcom career was misjudged and highly inappropriate.

This goes back to my previous piece, in which I used Roseanne as an example of being unable to separate art from the potentially unsavoury off-screen personalities of the people involved.

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Arrested Development, Essays, TV

ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT: Can we separate Art from the Artist?

May 27, 2018October 25, 2023 A J. Black

By now you no doubt have heard about how the Season 5 launch of Arrested Development has been a bit of a ‘fustercluck’ all-round.

The accusations of sexual harassment and abusive behaviour against star Jeffrey Tambor which led to his firing from Transparent, a questionable interview with the New York Times which landed Jason Bateman in particular in hot water, and now presumably trying to head off any more corrosive media troubles, Netflix have cancelled the U.K. press tour ahead of the Season 5 premiere on Tuesday.

It’s all just a bit of a mess all round, tinged with the whiff of scandal concerning the key issue rocking the entertainment industry this year – inappropriate behaviour of male actors against their female co-stars, in a variety of ways. It does, however, lead to an important question we haven’t yet achieved the distance to answer.

Does the personal fall of artists compromise the art they have worked on itself?

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Alias, Episode Reviews, TV

ALIAS 1×05: ‘Doppelgänger’ | TV Review

May 26, 2018October 25, 2023 A J. Black

Doppelgänger comes as something of a surprise when you look at it from the broader context of Alias’s first season.

The fifth episode of a twenty-two episode season, structurally, is never going to contain too many of the bigger mythological revelations, character turning points, and narrative surprises that you might expect from a mid-season two-parter or particularly a season finale, and while Doppleganger doesn’t buck that trend, it cuts surprisingly deep to the core conceptual idea crucial to the entire show, namely: do we really know the people closest to us?

Before we touch on that philosophical question, we must remember that we are still watching Alias. This is not The Wire, riven with harsh social commentary, or Hannibal layered with creeping metaphysical discourse. This is a show about a young spy “jumping off buildings in three-inch heels while napalm explodes all around me”, as Sydney Bristow deftly sums up her career at the end of the series finale way way into the future. That is not to cheapen the writing or character work, which has far more substance than on the surface you might expect, but we should always be aware that Alias first and foremost is a piece of escapism. Which explains the extended, ten-minute opening sequence which kicks Doppleganger off.

I’ve discussed before about how Alias structures both its cliffhanger endings and how it opens each story by continuing the previous episodes’ narrative, concluding that thread, and launching off into another. Doppleganger does the same but it arguably makes it work better than either Parity or A Broken Heart did in terms of operating like a James Bond pre-credits sequence. Those films are famous, historically, for telling a condensed, mini-plot in the first 10-15 minutes before the title song, and then kickstarting the main mission for Bond once the credits have rolled.

Doppleganger feels like the first episode which really manages to achieve this, as Syd & her partner Dixon stop Euro-goon Luc Jacqneau by blowing up UN peace delegate Dhiran Patel by removing the bomb from his chest while in the midst of a high-speed car chase through Sao Paolo.

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Alias, Episode Reviews, TV

ALIAS 1×04: ‘A Broken Heart’ | TV Review

May 20, 2018October 25, 2023 A J. Black

As we emerge from the initial phase of establishing the central concept of Alias, A Broken Heart continues developing the relationships between Sydney Bristow and our central collection of characters.

While the least important and arguably most throwaway episode of the first season so far, Vanessa Taylor’s script nonetheless has several key interactions and narrative points which give the episode a purpose, and further suggest that Alias’ approach to ongoing, serialised storytelling means this won’t be a traditional 22-episodes marked by too many points of ‘filler’.

Not every episode of Alias has too deep a clear emotional or thematic through line, but A Broken Heart quite clearly is all about broken relationships, or relationships which are in danger of shattering. The title itself is a rather pointed pun with a double-meaning; ostensibly it suggests the climactic beat of the episode, in which Syd witnesses a bunch of Euro-terrorists place a small but hugely powerful bomb in the pacemaker of a UN diplomat, but it also rather directly refers to Sydney’s emotional state, and to some degree that of her father Jack Bristow. Both of them have suffered the trauma of losing the people they loved to sudden and rather violent deaths, and both of them have had their hearts ‘broken’ in the process.

It becomes clearer that while Syd is trying to repair her damage, Jack’s may well be irreparable.

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Designated Survivor, Essays, TV

Goodbye DESIGNATED SURVIVOR: Your heart was in the right place | TV Feature

May 14, 2018October 25, 2023 A J. Black

So imagine you’re in a pitch meeting with a major studio (in this case ABC). You have all your ideas stacked up ready to go and then one of the studio heads says “you know what we really want? A mash up of The West Wing and 24. Politics! Action! Conspiracy! Bills! Sounds cool, huh?”. Of course, because you’re a writer who wants to put food on the table, you say: “uh, sure…”.

And there you have it: Designated Survivor is born.

Now, let me be clear: that’s not how Designated Survivor, which has just been cancelled by ABC in what is fast becoming an infamous ‘Cancel Friday’ where several well-known, fairly long-running shows have been axed, came to be. I think. I’m pretty sure David Guggenheim, the creator, didn’t have to be talked into developing a hybrid of Aaron Sorkin’s erudite look at Democratic politics in the White House, and the pulse-pounding, 9/11-reactive action madness of 24 – especially not for an actor as engaging and charismatic as Kiefer Sutherland.

Nonetheless, of all the shows given the axe in this latest cull (including Lucifer and Brooklyn Nine-Nine – until it was saved last minute by NBC), Designated Survivor is by far the weirdest and, honestly, probably the most deserving.

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Alias, Episode Reviews, TV

ALIAS 1×03: ‘Parity’ | TV Review

May 13, 2018October 25, 2023 A J. Black

If Alias, in its opening two introductory episodes, flirted with the idea that the show is a post-Cold War espionage thriller attempting to understand and resolve the consequences of the 20^th century’s longest-running and defining ideological conflict, then Parity absolutely goes for broke and seals the deal with a loving kiss.

The third episode, the first not penned directly by series creator J.J. Abrams, cements and solidifies existing, introductory concepts and brings in key new ones which will help frame Alias as a show with a sense of unique, genre identity. In many respects, Alex Kurtzman-Counter (as he was named originally, before losing the Counter) and Roberto Orci’s script is one of the most crucial in Alias’ first season.

It is the first episode which directly picks up from the cliffhanger established in the previous episode. It introduces one of the most interesting (and underused) characters the show ever gave us. And, most importantly, it truly kickstarts the mythology Alias would embrace, grapple with, struggle with, and never truly satisfy its audience with over the next five years.

Parity is a key, early touchstone for Abrams’ series.

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Essays, Film, James Bond

What if killing off Daniel Craig’s JAMES BOND makes sense? | Film Feature

May 10, 2018October 25, 2023 A J. Black

Another day, another James Bond rumour. Of all the great franchises out there, 007’s—perhaps appropriately—seems to play its cards the closest to its chest.

Eon Productions always rations information about where their legendary character is going right up to the point they are ready to announce his destination, and for what looks to be Daniel Craig’s fifth and final outing in the role, this time is no different. Yet this time the rumour mill, courtesy of a story in The Express, has thrown up an unusual possibility.

The as-yet-untitled Bond 25 will end, apparently, with the death of James Bond.
This got me thinking, because the typical reaction to this would be a shocked gasp, a firm shake of the head, and a stiff dry Martini. “James Bond can’t die!” You can almost hear the clamour of middle-aged men who have been following this franchise since Roger Moore bedded women half his age in a safari suit angrily huffing those words, shaking off another nonsense newspaper report with various rebukes. “Bond is the main character!” “Bond is the hero!” “Bond, in the end, wins the day, kills the bad guy, saves the world and shags the girl over a load of diamonds which were being used to power a gigantic laser in space!” (or something).

Here’s where I’m wondering… maybe Daniel Craig’s 007 should bite the bullet.

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ALIAS 1×02: ‘So It Begins…’ | TV Review

May 7, 2018October 25, 2023 A J. Black

The big picture.

This is something we are going to see our erstwhile heroine Sydney Bristow struggle with a great deal as we work our way through Alias, and right from the beginning of So It Begins…, it is very clear that Syd is way too close to the mess she’s involved in. This is understandable. Her fiancee has been murdered, she has found out she is working for a global crime syndicate rather than the US government, and to top it all off her Dad has been lying to her all her life. If Season 1 of Alias is about anything, broadly, it’s about Sydney coming to accept the life she has always been destined for.

So It Begins… honestly has quite a task on its hands. Truth Be Told remains one of the strongest pilot episodes of a genre TV show in US TV history. J.J. Abrams established the premise of his retro-futurist spy saga while taking his protagonist on a real journey over the course of that opening hour. How does a second episode, meant to kickstart the first season after the introduction of the pilot, possibly measure up? So It Begins… as a title almost feels like a nod to that very question. You can almost feel Abrams, who returns to pen this one, saying “yeah, I know, how do I follow that?”.

What he does is, essentially, re-establish the mission statement he put across in Truth Be Told, by throwing the audience right into the thick of Syd’s life and work in a similar fashion the pilot did.

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Essays, TV

When did Humans become the Black Hats of Modern Fiction?

May 5, 2018October 24, 2023 A J. Black

When did we become the bad guys?

When I say we, I mean it in the Royal sense. A collective we referring to modern society. Humanity. For decades in cinema, television and half a dozen other entertainment mediums, we were the good guys. Human beings, men and women, we understood right from wrong and saved the world from monsters – demonic, alien and who knows what all. In the last few years, particularly, something has changed. Westworld is just the latest returning show in a line of hugely popular TV shows that make this very clear.
We have become the monsters we always imagined we were fighting against.

Westworld is all about the relationship between man and machine. In a near-futuristic theme park setting, where android ‘hosts’ play out narratives for human gamers (with money) so they can indulge their basest desires, the first season of Jonathan Nolan & Lisa Joy’s adaptation of Michael Crichton’s original 1970’s movie was all about the confluence between machine and consciousness, tied up with the moral treatment of what are considered hardware, but steadily come to realise they are much much more.

Westworld plays out as a high-concept genre thriller in the making, with philosophical overtones, but the message within Nolan & Joy’s take on Crichton’s cautionary tale is clear: we are not the heroes of this story.

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