I still like the show Girls

HBO's Girls gave birth to the modern thinkpiece culture that we see in writing about TV and film today.  Or at least the show was one of the things that gave that angle the power to dominate modern pop culture conversations.  When the show hit the scene in early 2012, it was met with equal amounts of acclaim and vitriol.  Many critics praised the series for its singular voice, focus on female friendships, and frank depiction of sexuality.  But others criticized it for a number of things like its overwhelmingly white cast, privileged and unlikable characters, and the alleged nepotism involved in assembling the show.  In its debut season, it seemed like a new thinkpiece about Girls was posted once an hour.  The haters and fans fueled each other.  For every article that applauded the show's groundbreaking nature, there was a rebuttal accusing it of being problematic garbage.

But there are only so many ways to talk about a show.  At a certain point, writers ran out of unique takes on it, and the people who excoriated the show got bored and stopped watching.  Since the intense hate that certain corners of the internet have for Girls is what drove its supporters into an aggressively defensive position, there was less reason to keep its positive traits in the collective conversation once the negativity died down.  Occasionally, there would be something that got the internet talking -- who can forget about Marnie getting rimmed last season? -- but in general, the critical community has moved on from intensely discussing it.

What a shame too, because Girls is still a good show.  The difference is that it doesn't feel as special as it did in those first two years, when everyone was talking about it.  Such is the case with art that has a significant influence on its medium.  Because there are so many shows with indie film sensibilities on television now, it's easy forget that there wasn't much else like Girls in 2012.  Its most obvious ancestor would be Louie, which had already existed for two years and was indeed the main point of comparison for reviewers at the time.  Now we've got Togetherness, Transparent, Casual, and countless others.  An increase in peers, coupled with a decrease in its auteur-driven sensibilities, made Girls appear less unique, despite only minor drops in quality.

Pure watchability is a highly underrated quality when it comes to television, and what these past few seasons of Girls have lacked in innovation, they've more than made up for in watchability.  I never feel the urge to look at the clock when I'm watching an episode of this show.  In fact, I'm often surprised when the credits start rolling, given the way half an hour just breezes by.  After the severe dramatic turns of season two (still my favorite season), Lena Dunham made a conscious effort to slide back over to the comedy end of the spectrum.  In the process, the show went from being a raw look at the lives of a certain demographic of women to a somewhat more cartoony version of that.  Girls has always been funny, but the most recent seasons have bumped up the comedic energy, giving the show more laughs than many traditional sitcoms.  Part of that is because Dunham and her writers have such a strong sense of the characters at this point, knowing how to perfectly play off of what makes these people tick.

There might not be a better example of knowing the characters inside and out in the entire history of the show than this season's decision to pair Adam and Jessa together.  It's one of those decisions that I wouldn't have thought to make, but it makes total sense now that I've seen it.  They're the show's two most impulsive, eccentric, and destructive characters; so naturally, they would eventually end up together.  Of course, these two are bound to destroy each other, especially once Hannah finds out.  But for the time being, I want to just enjoy them in this current, blissful state, because it's absolutely delightful.

Season five is only four episodes in and it's already full of rock solid choices like that.  After four years of tinkering, the show has finally found the perfect blend of comedy and drama.  One of its other problems was that as the series went on, it became less logical that these characters would even still be friends, let alone in the same room with each other, and as a result Girls felt like four different shows running in parallel.  Season five has the main characters interacting more and in ways that make sense, a welcome return because they bounce off of each other so well.  Most importantly, the show still manages to show off some of its indie film flair, as it did with the Shoshanna material in Japan, which felt very Lost in Translation.  There are still a few frustrating moments this season -- a comedic scene in a coffee shop a few weeks ago was over-the-top and annoying in an extremely "written by Lena Dunham" way -- but Girls has always been a show whose tiny frustrations make it even more fascinating.

Before the fifth season began airing this year, Dunham announced that season six would be the final season of the show.  Perhaps that clear stopping point has given the show a sense of direction, a goalpost to shoot towards.  This has never been a plot-intensive series, so it didn't need an endgame on a story level, but more on a character level.  Seasons three and four felt like the work of a show that was wandering around aimlessly in some middle space with its characters in a way that season five does not.  Girls has always been good, but this year represents the first time in a while that it has felt truly significant and urgent.

10 Cloverfield Lane tucks a taut little thriller away in a larger universe

The "web show" feels a concept from an completely different of the internet, especially given the rise of Youtube and vlog culture in this decade.  But it was only a few years ago that they were thriving, with entire networks hosting shows that got tons of viewers.  One of those networks was Revision3, which was responsible for bringing The Totally Rad Show into the world.  TRS was a show hosted by friends Alex Albrecht, Jeff Cannata, and Dan Trachtenberg, where they reviewed movies, TV shows, video games, and comics.  It was a pretty seminal work of my adolescent years -- something about its savvy insight and friendly riffing really made an impact on me as a young pop culture enthusiast.  The show ended in November 2012, partially due to Trachtenberg's burgeoning career as a film director, and four years later we finally get to see the results of that in the form of 10 Cloverfield Lane, his directorial debut.

Being a Bad Robot production, 10 Cloverfield Lane was shrouded in pre-production secrecy, so much so that it was operating under the code name Valencia for years, and didn't get revealed as a Cloverfield film until a little over a month ago.  The movie itself doles out information gradually too.  After getting run off the road by a mysterious force in the beginning of the film, Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) wakes up to find herself chained to a wall in a windowless room with a bum knee and an IV in her arm.  It turns out she was rescued by Howard (John Goodman), who informs her that there was some sort of "attack" that has contaminated the Earth and left it unlivable for a year or two.  A paranoid ex-military man, Howard built a self-sustainable bunker years ago in preparation of such an event, with the help of Emmet (John Gallagher, Jr.), who tells Michelle that he saw the attack firsthand and fought his way into the bunker.

Howard insists that the three of them are the only people alive, despite the fact that Michelle hears noises above her room in the bunker.  Is Howard a psycho who's keeping them captive?  Is the outside world really contaminated due to this strange attack?  10 Cloverfield Lane weaves a neat thriller out of those questions, containing these three characters in one location and letting the mystery slowly unravel.  Gallagher, Winstead, and Goodman are all terrific together, bouncing off of each other as tensions rise.  It's Winstead especially who stands out.  She's been an underrated actress for a while, showing her talents in Smashed, and being one of the only redeemable things about the American remake of The Returned.  But her performance here might really put her on the map.  Winstead is constantly shown thinking, calculating, and weighing her options, allowing the audience to place themselves perfectly within her head.  It helps that Michelle is a wonderfully conceived character: smart, resourceful and tough, without being unrealistically perfect.  She belongs up there with Rita Vratski from Edge of Tomorrow and Imperator Furiosa from Mad Max: Fury Road as one of the great female protagonists of the last few years.

The script written by Josh Campbell and Matt Stuecken (with a pass from Whiplash's Damien Chazelle) is clever and nimble, balancing the tonal shifts it constantly throws at the audience with aplomb.  10 Cloverfield Lane is mostly a Hitchcockian thriller, but it's not afraid to be a character drama, while also fitting a few laughs into the proceedings.  (There's a scene in the middle of the film where the characters play Taboo that manages to be tense and hilarious at the same time.)  And the film has more than a few genuine surprises up its sleeve, always delivering them at moments that charge up scenes that have lulled you into a false sense of security.

It would be cruel to give away any of those secrets though.  This is one of those movies that is best to go into with as little information as possible.  Given its title, everybody will have some clue of the general direction 10 Cloverfield Lane heads toward.  And admittedly, the moment when the film's flirtation with the franchise in its namesake becomes a full-on relationship is a little disappointing, especially since the self-contained nail-biter before it was satisfying enough.  Still, this well-crafted tale is not only a triumph of feature-length debut directing from Trachtenberg, but it also establishes Cloverfield as an anthology series that is capable of telling diverse stories within its universe.

2016 Academy Award Predictions

Tonight is the 88th Academy Awards, and what better way to celebrate this bizarre circus by making predictions about who will win?  I usually am pretty good at predicting these categories -- I've gotten at least 19 out of 24 picks correct in the last few years -- but I don't know how to feel about this year's odds.  It seems like for a long time there was no narrative to the award season, so it was hard to tell who the favorites for some of the big categories were, especially Best Picture.  It should make for a fun award show -- well, as fun as these can be -- but a possibly ugly ballot.

Rekindling my relationship with Degrassi

Almost everybody in my generation has some sort of connection with the Canadian teen drama, Degrassi.  The constant "every episode ever" marathons that The N/TeenNick used to air pretty much ensured the show's cultural osmosis.  We all have shared reference points in the show's biggest moments like Paige's rape, the school shooting that gave us Wheelchair Jimmy, or JT dying in a pool of urine.  But you're likely to get a laugh of recognition from people in their 20s if you make a passing mention to smaller things like Cokehead Craig or that time Manny wore a thong too.  Degrassi: The Next Generation was for teens what General Hospital is for housewives and also my brother.  It wasn't always good, but its juicy soap operatics made it an easily digestible and oddly satisfying watching experience.

Most people I know drifted away from the show after JT's tragic death in season 6, which is actually when I really started getting into it.  Of course, I had seen every episode in scattered order from those aforementioned "every Degrassi episode ever" marathons, but post-JT-dying-in-a-urine-puddle was when I first remember watching the show in chronological order on a weekly basis.  It's a shame that many of my peers never experienced the handful of seasons that followed, because they actually have their own unique charm, to the point where I almost have more affection for them than the "golden years."  Primarily, the next era is notable for the introduction of Holly J Sinclair, the greatest character to ever attend Degrassi High School.  A majority of Holly J's greatness can be attributed to an entertaining and highly sympathetic performance from Charlotte Arnold, one of the only members of the cast who seemed like she had the skills to progress beyond teen soap operas.  In her hands, Holly J evolved from a blatant attempt to recreate Paige to the show's folk hero, the beating heart that gave life to every storyline she was involved in.

A show like Degrassi lives and dies on the strength of its ensemble, so its revolving door nature always makes things dicey.  Once Holly J left the show at the end of season 11, there were hardly any characters worth watching anymore.  And when you don't like any of the characters on Degrassi, you can get annoyed with the writing very quickly.  It didn't help that season 12 was a low point in that regard, full of storylines that were both over-the-top and incredibly boring.  So with the show at its worst and missing the character I cared about the most, I decided to quit somewhere near the end of that 12th season.  Occasionally I'd feel remorseful about leaving behind a series that had been a part of my life for so long, but never enough to put myself through the pain of popping back in on it.

After the show was cancelled by TeenNick at the end of its 14th season last year, it was picked up by Netflix, and the producers chose to use the revival as an opportunity to do some rebranding. Thus, Degrassi: Next Class was born.  And though the series mostly features characters that debuted in the last two seasons of its previous incarnation, the writers spoke about their desire to go back to basics and capture the spirit of the early years.  In that sense, Next Class functions both as season 15 and season one.  I saw a few tweets from TV critics I follow praising this new Netflix season, which was enough to finally convince me to watch.  Because I never watched seasons 13 and 14, I didn't really know the backstories of some of the characters, but the dialogue does a good job of giving you the gist, which makes it easy to jump back into.  And I recommend that you do so immediately, because the new season is absolutely incredible.

Even if you didn't like season one, American Crime is must-see TV this year

The fun of the seasonal anthology series is that not liking the show now does not necessarily mean you won't like it forever.  So what if one season is bad?  The next season is a completely different story with totally different characters.  The possibilities of that slate-wiping are endless.  (Of course, the same team of writers are most likely going to be working on the show, so you could end up disliking it in any iteration.  Five seasons of empirical evidence have shown that American Horror Story is always going to be bad to me.  So it goes.)

Put simply, I didn't enjoy ABC's American Crime very much last year.  Network drama has been frustratingly staid in recent years, so I appreciated the first season's efforts to transcend broadcast expectations.  But in an effort to be more than "just a network drama," the show oversold its prestige factor.  What resulted was a season of television that shouted "THIS IS IMPORTANT" at the audience at least three times per episode.  And despite its declarations, most of its points about race, class, and crime were lazy and surface-level.

So regardless of the new beginnings season two promised, I wasn't very excited about more grandstanding and chest-puffing from creator John Ridley.  The fact that the male-on-male sexual assault angle this year felt like it was pitched down the middle for that kind of self-importance only made things worse.  And yet, the first three episodes of the season have done nothing but blow away all expectations.

The show narrows its scope this year
Season one focused on the aftermath of a home invasion in Modesto, California that led to the death of veteran Matt Skokie.  But from that simple premise spun all manner of tangents, introducing characters and subplots that barely felt related to the core of the story.  It felt like the season wanted to address race and class issues in America, but couldn't find a way to connect those themes to the narrative without making the murder feel like an afterthought.  The second season tells a different story, one that involves an underprivileged male student at a private school in Indianapolis who is allegedly raped by a member of the prestigious basketball team at a party.  Unlike last year, season two locks into its central story and stays with it, roping in the same themes Ridley was toying with in the first season without any wandering.

Essentially, both seasons are about the ripple effects of a single crime, but in the first season that crime feels like it swallows up a whole city, while the second season's crime is rooted in an individual community.  That tightening of focus proves to be the right move.  Where American Crime often felt like it was biting off more than it could chew in season one, this year is a perfectly sized morsel.  So far, season two has been significantly more straightforward, and that's one of the reasons why it's so much more compelling.

Season two corrects many of the first season's mistakes
You'll know you're in good hands very early into the premiere, when Ridley (who wrote and directed the episode) subverts expectations that the audience might have, not just based on years of television viewing, but also from watching his own show last year.  There's a scene where Kevin (Trevor Jackson), the African American star of the basketball team, is driving down the street and blasting rap music when the lights from a cop car begin flashing in his rear-view mirror.  But once the cop pulls up aside him, it's revealed that the he's a friend of the family and just wanted to relay a message to Kevin's mom.  It's a small moment, but one that lets you know that this season isn't interested in the pat story turns it may not have been able to resist in the past.

Another moment introduces us to basketball coach Dan Sullivan (Timothy Hutton) sneaking a video of a cheerleader doing a provocative dance during practice.  Our first instinct is to groan at another creepy teacher plotline, but a few scenes later we learn that it's his daughter, and he's only recording her dance to show her mother what their child gets up to at school.

The first three episodes haven't entirely rid themselves of the anvilicious details that dragged season one down.  A scene in the premiere involves members of the basketball team passing around pictures of various female classmates in the locker room after practice.  "I so wanna rape that," one of the players says about a girl, and the clunk of that inelegant line threatens to drown out the rest of the scene.  Another scene features two black teens making out while a Kendrick Lamar song intones "Complexion don't mean a thing" in the background.  But these moments are much easier to swallow when they happen once or twice an episode as opposed to once or twice per scene.

It also accentuates season one's positives
Even in its less interesting narrative moments, the show was always a visual powerhouse.  Season one tried to present itself as "more than your usual network drama" in many ways, but the one aspect where it completely succeeded was in its cinematic direction.  This season is no different, and now that they are servicing a story that's more compelling, the visuals take on even more weight.  Ridley and his team of directors frequently employ tight, searching closeups.  These episodes are full of emotionally charged scenes, and you get to see all of the subtleties through the micro-expressions on the characters' faces.

Many of the actors who appeared on the show last year make a return in season two, and they all get the opportunity to show their range by playing characters who are much different from the ones they played in the previous season.  Felicity Huffman, Timothy Hutton, Lili Taylor, and Regina King are all giving incredible and nuanced performances.  Some new actors, like Hope Davis, get added to the rotation and fit right into the ensemble too.  But what's most impressive are the younger actors, who carry the most weight, given that the crime of the season is centered around them.  Season one's biggest acting weak spots were all found within the teenage characters, but Trevor Jackson, Joey Pollari, and Connor Jessup rise to the occasion.  With such rock solid work from the whole cast, the season is able to sell moments that could otherwise come off as overwrought.

We're only a third of the way through the season, so it could easily fly off the rails, sinking into all of the pitfalls it has managed to avoid.  But evidence from these three episodes alone indicate that everyone involved has figured out what they're doing, and are executing a carefully constructed plan.  If that's the case, we may have one of the best network drama seasons in a long time on our hands.