Deborah Lipp

Tuesday night’s House had a guest star that looked very familiar to me, so this morning I looked her up. It’s Azura Skye.

On House, Skye played a young woman who believed she could talk to the dead. On Buffy, Skye played a young woman who could see the future, and knew the date of her own death. She then came back as a ghost (except it wasn’t really her, it was the First).

Psychic Dead Girl. I’m thinking that’s the most specific typecasting in television history.

I watched about ten minutes of Viva Laughlin, which was notable for being the most horrifically bad television to have ever assaulted my eyeballs. And ears. Cuz it’s a musical. It’s already been canceled.

I have to say that, having read the blurb that the show was going to be on, I was both interested enough to make note of the date of the premiere, and certain it would be cancelled. It’s a musical. About a casino owner. Except it’s also a drama. Y’know, like Cop Rock. So you had to kind of guess. Except it was, in every way, more awful than you could picture. Okay, let me put it this way: The stars lip-synched to well-known songs. I mean it. “Viva Las Vegas” and “Sympathy for the Devil” with very bad choreography while walking through plot points with jazz hands. Oh. My. Gods.

Moonlight may have made it all the way to the half-hour mark. Except, y’know, one hour show. The lead actor is a screaming nightmare of bland. The plot unfolds like an amalgam of every other plot you’ve heard of. And in that style of pretty people on pretty TV, everyone looks alike. Awful.

K-ville fared better. One might legitimately like this show. “One” meaning not me. The acting was excellent and the cast has chops. The cinematography (can you say that about TV?) was wonderful, gritty and appealing. But the relationships felt very forced and the plot was very cliched. It was all just-another-cop-show except for the cut-above quality. Can’t be bothered to come back to this one.

My one true pleasure of the fall season is Life. I am loving every minute of this. Damien Lewis is fascinating, I just want to watch and watch and watch him. Adam Arkin is, of course, welcome on any show I’m watching. In fact, maybe he should do a guest spot on all of them. And Christina Hendricks has a recurring role.

The show is doing a good job of blending back story, character development, and murder-of-the-week. The only thing wrong that I see is two of the three primary female characters are that bland-pretty-we-all-look-alike type. Why can’t I see more interesting women, dammit?

The premise is that police officer Charlie Crews was convicted of murder and spent twelve years in jail. Freed because of DNA evidence and the work of his devoted lawyer, he’s been paid a large settlement and his badge has been restored. Now Charlie is trying to solve the crime he was convicted of, trying to adjust to life on the outside, solving crimes, and having a personal life. It’s all rather intricate and usually handled with some delicacy.

Other than that, there’s nothing much going on. Grey’s Anatomy is not quite as bad as the latter half of last season, but the magic is gone. ER is actually better than last season, and in many ways has a lot of juice. In other ways, it’s a lot like, am I still watching this thing? But yes, I am.

The Good Shepherd (2006) 7/10
Edward Wilson (Matt Damon) is recruited to head Counter-intelligence in the newly-formed OSS, and then to do the same in the newly formed CIA. In what amounts to a roman à clef, Philip Allen (William Hurt) is Allen Dulles, Bill Sullivan (Robert DeNiro) is “Wild Bill” Donovan, and many historic incidents are fictionalized. Directed by Robert DeNiro.

I wanted to like this movie more than I did. In fact, it does a lot of things right, it’s intelligent, thoughtful, and shows the paranoia, devotion, and destructiveness at the heart of a life of secrecy. It also has a lot to say about the hidden elite running the U.S., perhaps moreso in years gone than now, but the Bush family are members of the very same Skull & Bones Society so crucial to the film. It’s easy to say, oh racism, oh anti-Semitism, or whatever, but this movie examines the consolidation of power, and the obsessive kind of secrecy that makes distrust (especially distrust of the “other”) fundamental. So gays must be violently removed from the inner circle. Catholics can get in, but they must be limited. Women are there to wear pretty dresses and produce children.

Unfortunately, this sort of stifling tight-lipped quality can feel as oppressive to the audience as it must to the people living it. The movie often achieves a kind of bird’s eye view of paranoia, but just as often it’s just dull. Kind of, O my GODS they’re still telling this story they’re still fighting World War II IT’S STILL THE FIFTIES! (Made painful because the movie opens in 1961 and then flashes back.)

There’s an underlying theme of silence. Crucial news is delivered off-screen. Two key people in Wilson’s life are deaf. The idea seems to be that we try to listen, but are often isolated instead. Like I said, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.

The cast is almost overwhelming, there are so many notable actors of real quality, but few of them are used to good end, as Damon carries most of the show single-handedly. Angelina Jolie has almost nothing to do, and Billy Crudup is little more than a cameo. Tammy Blanchard as Wilson’s first love is wonderful, and Damon, in addition to doing a great job, is an actor particularly suitable to a decades-spanning role. His boyish looks let him pull of the extended sequence of his college years, which for most actors would make me snort through my nose.

In terms of spying, The Good Shepherd is marvelous at delivering the minutia of uncovering the truth, of planting falsehood, and of the shifting sands of who is on whose side.