Monday, July 13, 2009

Home Boys Office

Has anyone else noticed that since the death of HBO’s Sex and the City, any premium cable channel original series that centers on women airs on Showtime?

Entourage, which kicked off its sixth season last night with “Drive,” seems to be a microcosm of this trend. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve loved Entourage since its premiere for its refusal to take itself too seriously as it satirizes an industry known mostly for taking itself too seriously. The characters are just outrageous enough to be believable, creating the kind of entertainment that makes you shake your head at the state of the world while secretly rooting against a remedy that would make this kind of comedy impossible. I always buy the seasons when they’re released on DVD, and once that first DVD goes in the player, I am dead to the world until I’ve finished the season.

It was actually season five before I started to marvel at how disposable women really are on this series. Maybe I didn’t notice because I was too busy marveling at how Entourage’s writers have done what most series have found impossible: taken a concept that originated in the naïveté of kids that hit it big and allowed them to grow without killing the comedy. I mean, come on, do you really think that Gossip Girl is going to survive graduation?

But this growth seems very resistent to women, who have always been little more than disposable arm candy for the boys. In the season five finale, writers made a lot of Vince (Adrian Grenier) reconnecting with his childhood sweetheart Kara (Mercedes Masöhn), but she now appears to have been a fixture as temporary as Vince’s period of slumming it in Queens.

On the contrary, what allows the show to progress is its return to an unapologetic celebration of dysfunctional fraternity where none of the boys: Vince, E (Kevin Connolly), Drama (Kevin Dillon), Turtle (Jerry Ferrara), and even the married-with-children super-agent Ari (Jeremy Piven) want to progress beyond Neverland. And women—-with the exception of the appropriately billed Mrs. Ari (Perrey Reeves) who gets to tag along in a Wendy-like fashion—-rock the fairy-tale boat of lost boys far too much.



I mean, come on. They still dress alike.

I don’t take the terminal relegation of promising women co-stars like Emily (Samaire Armstrong), Sloan (Emmanuelle Chriqui), Shauna (Debi Mazar) and even Ari’s partner Barbara Miller (Beverly D’Angelo) as misogyny on the part of the show’s creators-—they’ve proven that they’re far too smart for such transparent commentary. Instead, I see a much more subtle comment on the underbelly of Hollywood made by the story’s arc—-the only way it can continue is through a permanent miring in dysfunction that exposes Hollywood’s lingering sexism along the way.

So even though Weeds, the now cancelled L Word, and Nurse Jackie, the brand-new show from longtime HBO property Edie Falco of Sopranos fame all live at Showtime, I wouldn’t say that HBO quit talking about women Sarah Jessica Parker jumped ship.

Monday, July 6, 2009

Why, Jada, Why?

OK, I’ll admit it: I completely bought into the hype about HawthoRNe that TNT inserted into their never-ending parade of Law and Order re-runs. I like Mrs. Will Smith. Besides, I reasoned, the wife of a man that thwarted his destiny of Fresh Prince syndication hell to become the most popular movie star alive would surely have learned good judgment in picking projects, if only through osmosis, right?

Did you READ the script, Jada? Maybe next time you should let Will take a peek?

TNT has done very well with the summertime lull, hitting consecutive home runs with The Closer, Saving Grace, and Raising the Bar—nice, easily consumable law dramas with very recognizable female leads that serve as nice capstones for the daytime line-up of Law and Order and Without a Trace endless syndication. I guess that HawthoRNe was similarly meant to draw a viewership from fans of their arsenal of ER re-runs. And on paper, the show brings a lot to the table: Jada is half of one of Hollywood’s least-criticized power couples, the show is only the third hour-long series to cast a black woman as a lead, and it’s not like it’s set in an arena that lacks controversy or important issues. I was psyched for a new heroine of the idiot-box to emerge.

Unfortunately, HawthoRNe reaches ER levels only in the innumerable mistakes in the representation of the medicine, the idiotic portrayals of the inner workings of hospitals, and, given these insurmountable technical errors, how ridiculously seriously the shows take themselves.

Jada has said that the project speaks to her because her mother was a nurse. Oh yeah? What does SHE think about the show?

You can almost hear here rationalizations, can’t you? Hey, TNT has provided a productive home for Kyra Sedgwick and Holly Hunter—two more movie stars that everyone’s heard of and no one can remember what they’ve done! Holly Hunter’s won an OSCAR for God’s sake!

It’s my turn, right?




Right?!

The real kicker is, with summer sending the networks into reality TV autopilot, this show had NOTHING to trip over coming out of the starting gate—except itself. And it managed to do just that as it embarked on a confusing set of fractured story lines—each suggesting that something meaningful is looming on the horizon, but none of them actually advancing enough to make us care. The only thing that’s happened so far is a deepening of everyone’s doubts about healthcare and me beginning to wonder if there might be something more engaging in the summer’s onslaught of D-list celebrity mea culpa shows—maybe Kathy Griffin and Denise Richards ARE victims! Maybe Tori and Dean’s marriage will be the first to break the curse of celebrity couple reality shows!

Even Jada looks bored.

Friday, July 3, 2009

Just because we love Buffy around here...




Click here.

Of course she could shut down the most obsessed over fictional character in recent memory. Duh.

And now for something completely different... but not really...

I don’t usually deal with books here, but Commencement, a first novel by fellow Smith College ’03 alum J. Courtney Sullivan, hit rather close to home.

You can find it here: http://www.amazon.com/Commencement-novel-J-Courtney-Sullivan/dp/0307270742/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246679278&sr=8-2

And it made the New York Times Book Review (no small feat for a first-time author): http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/books/review/Russo-t.html

I read this book with the same set of emotions that accompany any serious consideration I do of my time at Smith College: very mixed ones. I laughed at Celia and Bree worrying about gaining “the freshman fifty” after seeing the upper class women (for the record, I only gained thirty and lost it all after spending a semester abroad). I fondly remembered the uniquely engaging controversy over changing the student constitution from “she” to “the student” in honor of trans-gender rights. I smiled at April shaving her head in a euphoric moment of celebrating shock value. I frowned at the enduring experience of displacement that haunts all the characters—in their lives at Smith and beyond. I cried (well, almost) at a fall-out scene between the four friends—it reminded me that Smith created both my most supportive and devastatingly critical relationships. And I resented the idea that such a complicated experience could be contained within a book’s covers.

And, like my Smith education, I’d do it again, even with the benefit of hindsight.

The book risks making a spectacle of the most formative experience of my life—and I don’t hate it for it. And, in my book, that makes it worth a read.

Thursday, July 2, 2009

Huh?

Another moment of shame here: I've always liked Kelly Clarkson. Don't laugh. She's done more with her American Idol win than anyone but maybe Carrie Underwood, and she didn't have the benefit of going through the established publicity factory the show became in later seasons. She even survived From Justin to Kelly. Perhaps most importantly, she doesn't seem to compromise herself: she didn't starve herself even though everyone told her she was fat, and My December told the world quite clearly that she doesn't do what Clive Davis wants. And I'll even admit: I know the words to "My Life Would Suck Without You."

But come on, did she roll out of bed and meander to the So You Think You Can Dance set in a hung-over stupor for tonight's performance? Remember that scene in Blues Brothers where the band crashes a truck stop bar and spends the night singing "Stand By Your Man" and "Rawhide"? She looked like an extra.

Maybe she thinks that getting in touch with her inner honky tonk bar singer is the next logical step in the war she's apparently waging with her commercial success?