“Mercy” Shows The Walking Dead Is a Shell of Its Former Self

While The Walking Dead has never been a great show, I used to think it was a compelling one. Season 4, especially the Daryl and Beth focused “Still” episode, had some fascinating character studies. I loved how the show broke the characters apart and reassembled them in unexpected groups all traveling towards the same eventual destination at Terminus. Sure, there were uneven episodes that season (I mean, two Governor backstory episodes?), but the writers were trying not only to expand the narrative but also make us attached to the characters. That’s why big deaths were so painful, and earned.

Watching last night’s 100^th episode called “Mercy,” I realized that I don’t care about the characters anymore. Maybe it’s been the extended focus on Negan, who despite being played by the charismatic Jeffery Dean Morgan is continuously one-note. Have all the storylines buckled under Negan’s shadow? Did the show really lose something with last year’s slaughter of both Glenn and Abraham in Negan’s big debut? Villains have brutally killed main characters before (Hershel’s death was particularly painful). Yet, something changed with Negan. He broke our spirit with his vicious, hyper-masculine, and random terror that seemed like it was never going to end. Given where we were as a country last fall and winter (and still are), this seemed like masochism.

One of the tenants of good storytelling is that putting characters in danger endears them to the audience. Maybe that’s why we can never connect with Negan—because he’s never in any real danger. We know that no matter what situation he’s in that he’ll survive (at least until the end of this season, probably beyond). How else could he escape unscathed from being about 20 feet away from dozens of automatic weapons firing directly at him? Why put him there in the first place if there’s no risk? That’s just lazy storytelling.

Instead, the story jumps around in time to try and trick viewers into thinking it’s more complicated than it really is. We’ve seen this technique before and done much better, such as in Season 5’s tragic puzzle, “What Happened and What’s Going On” with Tyreese. The difference was back then we were invested in the outcome. We felt it intensely, but last night’s episode rendered nothing. Maybe it’s time to do the merciful thing and stop watching.

GLOW Surprises with Chemistry and Compassion

I have a confession to make; I don’t know anything about wrestling. I remember it around when I was a kid. The theatrics were vaguely interesting to me, like a play, but it just seemed too much. I’m not even sure it was wrestling’s fault, but instead all of the terrible pantomimes I witnessed from those around me. There seemed to be something about professional wrestling that begged bad imitation.

Needless to say, I wasn’t expecting to like GLOW necessarily. Then again, I wouldn’t have predicted that I’d connect to the experiences of inmates in an upstate New York prison in Orange Is the New Black. I’m happy that both proved me wrong. So little in entertainment seems surprising. That’s what makes it thrilling when something actually is.

I think that we as a culture spend so much time under the “male gaze” that it’s almost disconcerting when we encounter something completely outside it. We’re starting to see this more and more, with female-focused shows like Transparent, Orange Is the New Black, and now GLOW. I was listening to Marc Maron’s WTF podcast last week with co-stars Alison Brie and Betty Gilpin, who play Ruth and Debbie, the show’s main characters. In it they discuss how freeing it was to work in an environment built around the female experience. Rather than the stereotypes of women being competitive or catty, the show encouraged community, support, and safety. It’s almost like those assumptions about women are projected onto them, or something.

GLOW represents the 80s in all its big hair and hyper color clothing splendor. Alison Brie is nearly unrecognizable as Ruth, at least at first, with her permed hair and lack of makeup. Her character is interesting because she skates just over the line of desperate and cloying. The chemistry she has with Marc Maron’s director Sam is at once exasperated and flirtatious. I’m not sure where they’re going with those two, but I could see them having either a life changing friendship or a soulmate-like relationship. I’m not sure it matters which.

Another surprise in GLOW is just how good Marc Maron is. It’s kind of amazing how he can be more at home playing this character than on his own show where he’s depicting a version of himself, but Maron is able to sit so comfortably inside his character, a grouchy, smoking, cocaine addled, sarcastic, and ultimately fascinating man. I hope they get a second season so we can see where Maron takes him.

The other obvious chemistry on the show is with Gilpin, the beautiful and furious Debbie. On WTF, Brie and Gilpin talk about how they instantly connected, even before they were cast. In fact, they tried not to fall in love with each other in case one of them didn’t get the part and they didn’t get to work together. These emotions certainly show on screen. We can see their deep affection for each other, even if Debbie has all the reason in the world to hate Ruth right now. Sam uses this tension to create the scaffolding for his new show. I love how Debbie and Ruth were transformed into the pinnacle of 1980’s conflict—the Cold War between the U.S. and Russia. Who would’ve predicted how prescient that story line would be in today’s world?

In another episode of WTF, Jenji Kohan talks about how fascinated she is with characters who wouldn’t normally interact with each other being forced into the same space. She explores this wonderfully on Orange Is the New Black, and we see it here on GLOW as well. The diverse cast of 14 women have just barely scratched the surface in this first season. Given how polarized we are culturally and politically, it’s inspiring to see people from all different backgrounds and experiences coming together rather than apart. I can’t wait to see where they go from here.

Well Planned Twist on Jane the Virgin Delivers a Punch

Dramatic twists can be difficult to accomplish because writers need to prepare the audience for them while still keeping the suspense. That’s why The Sixth Sense works so well. We’re given clues all along, but we’re constantly redirected to other plot points. When done well, writers follow Chekhov’s famous quote about foreshadowing, “One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it.” Keeping this in mind, Monday’s episode of Jane the Virgin delivered on a long promised, yet still shocking, plot twist killing Jane’s beloved husband, Michael.

Way back in the first season, the narrator told us that Michael would never stop loving Jane. In fact, “For as long as Michael lived, until he drew his very last breath, he never did.” We can’t say they didn’t warn us, but once Michael survived getting shot in the chest at the end of Season 2, I thought he was safe. Looking back on Monday’s episode, though, it’s clear that the writers built the entire story around this tragic twist.

When Michael tells Jane about his worst Halloween when he was too sick to go trick-or-treating the narrator talks about flashbulb memories, a phenomenon where “memories around big events seem clearer, but the periphery disappears. You remember the feeling, but not the details.” The spotlight flashes in the scene here illuminate the point both literally and metaphorically.

We revisit this idea again at the end of the episode when Jane tells Michael, “I am so proud of you,” before he leaves for his big LSAT exam. Little does she know that these tender words are the last she’ll ever say to him. Then the narrator gently tells us, “And, friends, it should be noted that Jane would play this moment over and over until it became a memory.” From there we follow Michael as he completes his test and starts to walk up to the front of the room to turn it in before collapsing and ultimately dying from complications from the gunshot wound he suffered. I suppose it was fatal after all.

As we watch helplessly, Jane gets the phone call that her husband is gone. We cry along with her as she falls screaming to the floor while Rafael tries to console her. Nothing can, of course. I think that’s why in the next scene we jump forward three years. It would be too painful otherwise. At least now we know that Jane will be okay, and so will we.

One Day at a Time Remake Is Kind of Perfect

When I was a kid I remember watching reruns of One Day at a Time on TV and thinking that their family was so different from mine. In the sheltered suburbs, I don’t think I knew anyone who lived in an apartment rather than a house, and most if not all of my friends’ parents were still together, mine included. I remember it fondly though. Bonnie Franklin’s  lead character possessed a strength that I didn’t see on other shows. Mackenzie Phillips as Julie pretty much terrified me with her impulsiveness and unpredictabilty. Valerie Bertinelli as Barbara was one of the most beautiful girls I’d ever seen.

I wasn’t sure what to expect in the Netflix reboot. I have to admit I had my reservations, especially since I read that it was a traditional sitcom with a live audience, which I assumed would be unbearably cheesy. Instead, the new One Day at a Time is a lovely and surprising gift.

Updating the characters to a multi-generational Cuban American family in Echo Park, Los Angeles is genius. In today’s world, with the irrational hysteria over immigrants, One Day at a Time brings us the vibrant and irresistible Lydia, played by the irrepressible Rita Moreno, a character so delightfully dramatic that she makes her first entrance by bursting forth from behind curtains. Her daughter, the main character Penelope, played with such warmth and approachability by Justina Muchado, is a single mom of two teenagers who seem to do the impossible on TV—they’re not annoying.

I think that warmth and approachability, combined with excellent writing and acting, is what drew me into the story and made me care about the Alvarez family. Even within the heightened atmosphere of the traditional sitcom they still feel real. Penelope, a nurse and war vet, deals openly with financial strain, bureaucracy at the VA, sexism at work, dating, single parenthood, and raising a wonderfully feminist daughter who is figuring out her sexuality. The stories are told with such affection and authenticity. Rather than play on our cynicism or divisiveness, they tap into our empathy and compassion. I don’t know about you, but given what’s going on in the world right now I needed this more than I realized.