Ian Thomas Malone

Monthly Archive: July 2019

Monday

29

July 2019

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Revisiting Veronica Mars’ “Meet John Smith”

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Despite its relatively small audience, Veronica Mars made an impact in 2004 with its strong feminist lead and mature themes that took high school life seriously. The show took on grief, mental illness, and income inequality among other hard-hitting topics, rarely content to dive into the kind of melodrama that defined other teen narratives. While the show typically handled complex issues with grace, its early first season episode “Meet John Smith” made an absolute mess of transgender rights.

The episode begins with Justin (Bobby Edner), a run of the mill, mildly misogynistic teen who enjoys ranking girls based on their attractiveness with his buddies. Justin works at a video rental store, where a customer (Melissa Leo) seems to enjoy his recommendations. A visit to the store by Veronica and Keith leads to Justin enlisting Veronica’s help to find his long-lost father.

From the first scene of the episode, it’s clear that something’s up with Justin’s case. Not only is it odd that a one-time character with a seemingly sympathetic case would be introduced in a scene painting him as a desperate womanizer, it makes little sense that Justin would know so little about his own father’s absence. There is no trace of “John Smith,” cut out from family photos and rarely spoken of by Justin’s mother. Justin suspects something is astray, but wants to find his dad to help with his family’s poor financial situation.

The case gets weirder when Veronica asks Wallace to pull Justin’s file after an extensive letter-writing campaign aimed at finding the John Smith in a haystack. It turns out that Justin’s father died while he was in the first grade, a detail he declined to share with Veronica. To muddy the waters further, Veronica receives a letter from one of the John Smiths with impeccable handwriting. An effort to track the local John Smiths based on the letter’s area code narrows the field down quite a bit.

A convenient grocery list in one of the John Smith’s cars leads Veronica and Justin to uncover the mystery. The man they thought was John Smith turns out to be a parole officer, dating the woman who wrote to Veronica. John Smith is actually Julia Smith. Justin’s father is a transgender woman, the very same one who relies on his movie recommendation prowess.

There’s more than a few things wrong with this whole “better dead than trans” narrative. It’s unclear how the custody battle over Justin played out, but Julia clearly isn’t okay with being completely absent from her son’s life. She drives 90 miles just for brief interactions with her son, a painfully sad notion. Justin’s mother doesn’t appear in the episode, but Veronica lets her off the hook, noting that she understands why her mother opted for the whole false-death narrative.

What’s missing in all of that is how messed up it is for anyone to have told a young child, a first-grader, that they had lost a parent who was alive and well. “Well” being the keyword here. Julia is shown to be in a stable relationship with the man they mistook for John Smith, leaving grocery list post-it notes on his rear-view mirror. There simply isn’t a compelling reason why Julia couldn’t be a part of her son’s life.

Justin’s initial “circus freak” reaction is a bit more understandable, given the shock and the idea that trans issues were hardly mainstream in 2004 let alone to a high school boy, but what’s missing from this narrative is any time to process those emotions. After a conversation with Veronica, Justin extends an olive branch to Julia, letting her know that a film he’d recommended was in stock.

To some extent, the brevity with which Veronica Mars engages with its transgender moment is perfectly understandable. Justin isn’t a main character, with this episode being his sole appearance on the show. This episode also has to deal with Duncan’s struggles with his anti-depressants and Veronica’s own relationship with her mother.

There are some aspects of the way the show handles transgender issues that can be forgiven due to the time period, such as casting Melissa Leo in a trans role. That issue, in particular, persists to the present day. Film and television have only recently begun to take trans representation seriously, taking much of the weight off an episode that aired in 2004 to get everything right.

This episode mines transgender issues for a cheap plot twist without dedicating the time to adequately grapple with the consequences of its narrative. “Meet John Smith” ends on a relatively happy note, though nothing can make up for the needless time lost between Justin and Julia. For any closeted trans people watching, Veronica Mars paints a bleak portrait of what lies ahead. For a show that handled so many issues with grace and dignity, this episode was among its lowest moments.

Saturday

27

July 2019

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Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Is an Entertaining, Overstuffed Tribute to Showbiz

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Hollywood has a certain affection for films about its own lore. As a city that welcomes so many, myself included, Los Angeles is an easy city to dream about. The very notion of living here is itself a part of the fantasy, opportunities seemingly lurking around every corner.

This city has been very good to Quentin Tarantino, one of the few bonafide superstar directors capable of drawing crowds to the theatre just with his own name. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is his love letter to Los Angeles, a film so occupied with its location that it barely felt the need for much of a narrative. Tarantino is too busy soaking in the nostalgia of an era gone by to concern his script with the notion of a plot.

Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a washed-up Western actor who failed to make the transition from TV to film, back in a day when that distinction mattered. He can’t get his stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) much work, instead keeping him employed as his personal assistant. The two are a good fit for each other, mostly getting by on the laurels of their glory days.

Dalton and Booth’s occasionally separate narratives make up two-thirds of the narrative, mostly leaving Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) with the remainder. Tate isn’t given much to work with, a seemingly intentional calculation. Robbie plays the young starlet with a kind of energy that makes her role in the film clear without a ton of dialogue.

The film blends fact and fiction quite effectively, constantly challenging the audience’s perception of reality. Dalton appears to largely be a composite of Steve McQueen and Burt Reynolds, with some nodes of Clint Eastwood. Tate, a real-life victim of the Manson family’s killing spree, is also very much a figure of Tarantino’s fantasy. This isn’t a biopic, even though plenty of Hollywood icons show up throughout the film.

Tarantino soaks in each scene in his film with a runtime of two hours and forty minutes. There are plenty of sequences that don’t really play any larger narrative purpose, contemplative moments that are perhaps a bit too self-indulgent. The cinematography is beautiful, showcasing the beautiful sets that faithfully recreate the era.

Perpetually present is the sense that Dalton serves as a commentary on the current state of Hollywood. Tarantino, DiCaprio, and Pitt are in many ways A-list stars of a different era, before superheroes and franchises took over the box office. To his credit, Tarantino doesn’t write Dalton as particularly sympathetic, a man too consumed with his own fading stardom to see the immense fortunes he’s been afforded.

Putting aside the notion that this film is little more than an aging director’s nostalgia-powered vanity project, it’s a lot of fun to watch. Tarantino is clearly having a blast, as are most of its star-studded cast. At many points, the film feels like watching a rich man perform karaoke at his fiftieth birthday party, prolonging a fun event with unnecessary interludes. It is a well-crafted movie that is too long for its own good, the kind of narrative that doesn’t seem poised to stand up to repeat viewing. Tarantino showcases the skills he’s refined over the years, along with a lack of restraint that longevity often affords.

Friday

26

July 2019

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The Cure – Anniversary 1978-2018 Live in Hyde Park Celebrates Forty Years of Gothic Rock Excellence

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The timeless angst that The Cure has expressed in their music over the years can make it easy to forget just how long this band has been around. Few groups last long enough to put on a fortieth anniversary concert, let alone an extravagant production in front of tens of thousands of fans. The Cure – Anniversary 1978-2018 Live in Hyde Park London captures the magic for those who didn’t get a chance to be there in person.

The film showcases the immense energy that Robert Smith still brings to the stage after all these years. His voice hasn’t lost any of its range, remarkable for a performer who’s been at it for decades. While he often lets Reeves Gabrels perform most of the guitar work while he’s singing, Smith still showcases his skills, perhaps most memorably on the intro “Pictures of You.”

A highlight of the film is the way the band takes on plenty of hits from their early years. The lightning-fast pace of songs like “Play For Today,” Boys Don’t Cry,” and “Jumping Someone Else’s Train” is a bit slowed down, but the band brings plenty of energy to these renditions. Time has softened a bit of the melancholy from more downbeat albums such as Disintegration, which is featured extensively throughout the set.

The Cure is undoubtedly a different band than the one that excited audiences in the early 80s, but the two-hour-plus performance demonstrates their commitment to playing their hearts out. Plenty of other older groups are perfectly content to go out on stage and play a muted greatest hits set aiming to evoke nostalgia from its audience. The Cure plays like a band ready to excite the crowd for the present with plenty left in the tank.

As a film, Live in Hyde Park London does leave a bit to be desired. Director Tim Pope, whose work with The Cure spans almost their entire career, does an excellent job making a massive larger than life event feel intimate. The film captures the extent of the crowd, but the audio and camera angles create the sense that the group is performing exclusively for the audience in their living room.

As the film’s name suggests, the fortieth anniversary is a big deal. Being just a concert film that solely presents the music, Live in Hyde Park London falls a bit sort in conveying the magnitude of the event. There’s no interviews or backstage clips from Smith reflecting on such an achievement. The music may speak for itself, but it’s certainly not the only voice the audience would want to hear.

The great achievement of Live in Hyde Park London is how little it makes you wonder about the future of the band. A fortieth anniversary celebration naturally draws one’s attention to the simple fact that there won’t be many more of these momentous milestones left to celebrate. The way The Cure plays suggests differently. The band is still at the top of its game, a group still able to evoke wonder and awe, not simply memories of better days. These days are pretty great.

Tuesday

23

July 2019

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Big Little Lies’ Second Season Doesn’t Know What to Do with Its Characters

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Much of the drama over the first season of Big Little Lies centered around who bit Amabella, hardly the kind of mystery that inspires legions of true crime fans. The show has always been at its best not when it’s focused on plot, but on the interactions between its all-star cast. Even in these crowded television landscapes, the idea of being able to watch Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, and Laura Dern every week is still a novelty worthy of appointment viewing. Throwing Meryl Streep into the mix was just about the only way the show could have upped the ante for a totally unnecessary second season.

As the finale notes, the very notion of a “Monterey Five” was always kind of a spectacle. Big Little Lies isn’t really a show about murder. The plot is by and large an excuse to get these A-list actresses together, with the one primary exception being the abuse that Kidman’s Celeste suffered at the hands of her husband Perry (Alexander Skarsgård). It makes sense that season two would center its primary plot around the fallout of Perry’s death, the result of being pushed down the stairs by Bonnie (Zoë Kravitz), prompting a cover-up by the other women.

Season two is only sort of about Perry’s death. The primary drama of the season is driven by Mary-Louise (Streep), who wages a two-pronged war on Celeste powered by skepticism over the cause of her son’s death and a belief that her daughter-in-law is an irresponsible mother. The second half of the season is almost entirely driven by the custody battle, always a highly unrealistic proposition considering how rare it is for a grandmother to triumph over a parent.

The narrative struggles can be best illustrated through Amabella’s disco-themed birthday party in episode four, an outlet that seems far more designed for the grownups than the children. It’s a sequence that makes little sense given the Klein family’s financial trouble, but Big Little Lies has always been a show about moments, rarely the bigger picture.

The finale, “I Want to Know,” includes plenty of powerful acting from Kidman and Streep, but it’s all in service to an outcome everyone knows is coming. The show never really tried to sell this custody battle as anything more than filler, a plotline created to give its leads something to do.

Season two’s biggest shortcoming is the way it prioritized Mary-Louise at the expense of Bonnie. The show doesn’t completely ignore the guilt she feels over killing Perry, but it’s rarely given much focus either. Bonnie isn’t particularly close to the other leads, but the show is far too content to keep the character at arm’s length.

Just as season one wasn’t really about a murder, season two isn’t really about the aftermath of Perry’s death. Both seasons have plenty of subplots that don’t factor into the show’s overall arc, largely because it only sort of needs one. Madeline’s entire season two plot could be erased from the show and little would change.

Big Little Lies didn’t need a second season, but a lack of purpose isn’t really a problem for the show. Season two’s biggest shortcoming was that it injected a predictable custody battle into the heart of its narrative. Mary-Louise’s efforts to get the police to reopen the case ended up largely being a feint, something to pass the time rather than a predominant storyline. The show treats the biggest moment of its first season as a weird afterthought.

Above all else, season two isn’t much fun. While that might have been understandable considering the way the last season ended, the show minimizes that event in a way that draws too much attention to the gaping hole at the center of the plot. There’s joy to be had watching Meryl Streep perform, but the show seems to have forgotten to give her a reason to be there.

Tuesday

23

July 2019

0

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Veronica Mars Shows Its Story Can Look Forward While Its Characters Linger in the Past

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The television landscape has changed quite a bit since Veronica Mars made its debut in 2004. Its first network, UPN, hasn’t been around for more than a decade. Its current home, Hulu, didn’t exist yet, as cable networks were only just starting to focus on original programming, let alone streaming. The quirky high school detective show felt like a breath of fresh air, taking on the youthful territory of rival network The WB with an adult sense of maturity.

Like practically all high school dramas, Veronica Mars experienced some growing pains after graduation. The UPN/WB merger left plenty of shows fighting for space on The CW, which cancelled Mars after its third season, the first overall on the new network. The show’s cult fanbase has ensured that its legacy has lived on, first in a 2014 film of the same name, and now a fourth season of eight episodes.

The fourth season follows its predecessors’ lead in having one big mystery, but the shortened episode order leaves this case as the predominant narrative. The early years let the cases unfold over the course of a twenty-two-episode arc, allowing plenty of time for character development and other various subplots. This season manages the balance between mystery and character, but its execution leaves a lot to be desired.

Plenty of Veronica Mars characters return over the course of the fourth season, but only Veronica (Kristen Bell), Keith (Enrico Colatoni), and Logan (Jason Dohring) remain at the heart of the narrative. Trouble is, the show doesn’t really have anything new to say about Veronica’s relationship with either man. There’s still plenty of witty banter between Veronica and Keith, but Logan mostly mopes around while on leave from the Navy.

The “will they/won’t they” relationship between Logan and Veronica existed at the heart of the show’s narrative for its entire run. Season four maintains the status quo to its own detriment, pursuing this well-trodden turf at the expense of any other kind of character development. For all the ways this season managed to put high school in the past, the melodrama between two grown adults feels like misplaced nostalgia.

The mystery at the heart of the season involves the bombing of several Spring Break destinations across Neptune. Patton Oswalt and J.K. Simmons stand out as newcomers Penn Epner, a pizza delivery guy and amateur sleuth solver, and Clyde Pickett, an ex-con serving as a fixer for Dick Casablancas Sr. The mystery has plenty of twists and turns, serving as the season’s primary focus without feeling overly drawn out.

To its credit, season four hardly lives in the shadows of what came before it. Old Veronica Mars characters return infrequently, almost always with purpose. Fan favorites such as series regulars Wallace (Percy Daggs III), Weevil (Francis Capra), and Dick (Ryan Hansen) aren’t around much, consistent with the passage of time since these characters would have played natural roles in each other’s lives. The show demonstrates a sense of maturity for not picking the low hanging fruit of forcing these people together to recapture the good old days.

Season four exists in a state of limbo, a revival that doesn’t cling to the past while not being overly committed to the idea of a future for Veronica Mars either. High school is over. The show knows that, but what comes next remains oddly up in the air. As a revival, this kind of makes sense since no one really knows what the future will hold for the series, but the narrative doesn’t face the same obligations.

Veronica Mars is still a fun show to watch. It’s decidedly less fun than it used to be. Thoughts of its theme song’s refrain, “we used to be friends,” remain ever-present. We all have memories of days gone by. Television possesses the ability to bring those dreams alive again, but some of the magic is lost when wishful thinking becomes reality.

Sunday

21

July 2019

0

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John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum Ups The Ante Without Getting Lost in Its Own Lore

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The John Wick franchise is seemingly built to last forever, with a consistently bankable lead and a premise that carries a ton of replay value. It’s hard to go wrong watching a seemingly ageless Keanu Reeves perform well-choreographed fight scene after fight scene. Perhaps the only potential downside would be for the series to lean in too much to its own mythology.

John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum expands on the mythology of the High Table, a minor element of the first installment that saw its role expand in the second film. Parabellum starts off almost immediately after the events of the first, with Wick on the run after being declared “excommunicato” for committing murder on consecrated grounds. For those who loved the simplicity of the original film’s premise, the heightened importance of the High Table might prove to be unnecessary, but Parabellum integrates the lore into its established premise fairly well.

The fight scenes remain the series’ bread and butter. Reeves is spectacular, almost looking like a ballet dancer as he moves with such grace, raining blows down upon his enemies. There are a few sequences that require a heavy helping of suspension of disbelief, but the film doesn’t try to top itself to the point of self-parody. Over the top is a fine line to walk, but Parabellum keeps its balance.

The supporting cast is perhaps a bit too bloated for the series’ own good. The “senior mentor” lane once occupied by Ian McShane and to a lesser extent, Lance Reddick now includes the returning Laurence Fishburne and newcomer Anjelica Huston, all vying for screen time in a series that works best when its characters are fighting, not talking. A detour to Morocco gives Halle Berry the chance to shine as Sofia, a close friend of Wick who shows off plenty of her assassin skills.

Parabellum is similarly split on its villain front. Asia Kate Dillon serves as the primary antagonist in the role of the Adjudicator, tasked with restoring order after Wick rattled the High Table. Jerome Flynn and Mark Dacascos also serve as hindrances to Wick as he tries to stay alive while trying to clean up his mess. The film likely more characters than it needs, struggling at times to justify its somewhat frantic pacing.

The bloated cast isn’t necessarily a detriment, but there is the sense that John Wick’s broader lore is reaching its saturation point. With a runtime of just over two hours, about thirty minutes longer than the original, Parabellum squeezes a lot in as it tries to serve a narrative that’s bigger than one single film. After two straight films that build on the mythology of the High Table, you’re not exactly left with much of a desire to see that trend continue.

Parabellum ups the ante in a good way, an action-packed adventure bolstered by Reeves’ dedication to his craft. The film builds on the foundation of the first films while keeping the formula as fresh as you could expect the third time around. There may come a day when the John Wick franchises becomes too much of a good thing. We’re not there yet.

Friday

19

July 2019

0

COMMENTS

The Lion King Is a Disappointing Remake Stuck In the Shadows Of Its Predecessor

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Necessity is a problematic concept with regard to filmmaking. The very idea of asking if a film “needs” to be made opens up a can of worms that can be applied to countless new movies made each year. It’s not as if there has to be an answer either. If a property is valuable, studios look to capitalize on their assets, whether it be in the form of a sequel, reboot, or this latest trend of making live-action adaptations of beloved animated classics.

The original version of The Lion King may have been the best film of the Disney Renaissance. The animation was stunning, the cast was top-notch, and the film was a joy to watch from start to finish. By evoking nodes of Hamlet, the plot added a layer of complexity that plenty of children’s films avoid, instead sticking to more conventional storytelling, the kind of stuff you find in fairytales. Its release in 1994 felt like an important achievement in filmmaking, a high in traditional animation that likely hasn’t been topped to this day.

With that impressive legacy in mind, it’s hard to see what 2019’s The Lion King was trying to achieve. Jon Favreau’s live-action remake is more of less completely tethered to its 1994 source material, though the film itself is about thirty minutes longer. The script hits many of the same notes, with only a few noteworthy deviations.

The photorealistic animation does the script no favors. Unsurprisingly, these animals are far less expressive than their traditionally animated counterparts. The audience is left watching characters deliver lines that everyone knows are coming in a way that lets all the air out. Obviously, these computer images aren’t actual actors, but they still look kind of bored to be there.

Part of what made the 1994 version of The Lion King feel larger than life was the way the musical sequences felt married to the colorful imagery on the screen. The characters performed in grandiose sequences, with the overpowering orchestral numbers daring to overload the senses. Everything felt larger than life.

For the 2019 version of The Lion King, too many of the sequences came across as joyless, almost obligatory in nature. The sound editing does the music no favors, at times feeling more like background music than anything else. It doesn’t help that actors like John Oliver aren’t particularly good singers, and the film doesn’t follow its predecessor’s lead in bringing on additional actors to help with the singing.

The voice acting isn’t really the film’s biggest problem, but The Lion King as a story isn’t particularly conducive to maximizing the talents of an all-star cast. Donald Glover and Beyoncé are fun to watch as the adult Simba and Nala, but that doesn’t change the fact that they don’t appear until the third act. The film does its best to capitalize on the amusing banter between Billy Eichner’s Timon and Seth Rogen’s Pumbaa, but the narrative is too much of a shot-for-shot remake up to that point that it’s hard to see their efforts as anything other than a welcome distraction.

The Lion King overhunts the terrain of its predecessor, a lifeless remake that inhabits the shadowlands of nostalgia. Director Jon Favreau brought something new to the table with his 2016 remake of The Jungle Book. Here, there’s nothing but the memory of one of Disney’s crowning achievements. Films shouldn’t need mandates to exist, but The Lion King never tries to be more than a shell of its predecessor.

Wednesday

17

July 2019

0

COMMENTS

Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted Showcases a Softer Side of the Fiery Chef

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The idea of Gordon Ramsay doing a travel show exploring the foods of different cultures around the world seems a bit ridiculous when you consider the personality attributes that made him popular in the first place. It’s one thing for Ramsay to unleash his signature temper on reality show contestants, but such behavior would hardly be fitting for guests eager to show him a bit of their local culture. Fortunately, Gordon Ramsay: Uncharted showcases another side of Ramsay than audiences might be used to.

Uncharted has a fairly simple premise across its first season. Ramsay travels to exotic locations to visit with chef friends and to explore their local foods while collecting ingredients for a feast that he prepares for his hosts. Destinations include the Sacred Valley of Peru, the Middle Atlas Mountains of Morocco, and the Hana Coast of Hawaii. Many of the ingredients he collects require a fair bit of physical activity, requiring Ramsay to swim, climb, and dive in order to acquire them.

The camera crews do an excellent job capturing the beautiful landscapes that Ramsay visits. The local experts are also great at giving the audience a crash course on their history, making it quite easy to follow along. Many of the foods depicted are exclusive to these specific locations, staples of the local diet that Ramsay himself is often trying for the first time.

Ramsay proves to be an excellent host, showcasing elements of his personality that general audiences might as unfamiliar with as the locations showcased. He engages with his local guests with such enthusiasm that you can’t help but smile as he bites into another exotic treat. There’s still a number of bleeped-out expletives, but it’s refreshing to see them directed at circumstances rather than people.

The highlight of each episode is almost always watching Ramsay prepare the food he’s collected, combining local methods with his own spin on each recipe. Ramsay does a great job explaining the new techniques to the audience, which often use the local landscape itself. After watching Ramsay slow cook food in a hole he’s recently dug, you might get the culinary urge to try to recreate some of the magic in your own backyard.

One area that Ramsay still needs to work on is his method of communicating the taste of the local foods to the audience. In almost every instance where he tries something he likes, Ramsay exclaims that the food is “delicious,” while often forgetting to expand on what exactly makes it good. He does occasionally provide a bit more insight into the flavor, but it can be hard to follow along. Ramsay meets with plenty of different people in each episode, perhaps explaining the repetition in his descriptors.

Uncharted showcases a lighter side of Ramsay’s personality, trading in his fiery temper for gleeful exuberance as he explores new cultures. It’s a delight to watch, the kind of show where you feel like you’re along on the adventure, learning alongside Ramsay. Culture and food often go hand in hand. Uncharted presents both with a ton of culinary insight, a perfect summer program to take you on vacation from your standard cooking practices.

 

Monday

15

July 2019

0

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South Side Is the Funniest New Show of 2019

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Plenty of great sitcoms have made their settings feel like characters in their own narratives. It’s hard to think of Cheers or Seinfeld without the culture of Boston or New York coming to mind, putting aside the inconvenient fact that both shows were filmed in Los Angeles. With Comedy Central’s new show South Side, from Late Night with Jimmy Fallon alumni Bashir Salahuddin, Diallo Riddle and Michael Bliedenl, Chicago lies at the forefront of the narrative. Filmed entirely on location, using actors who grew up in the city, the show delivers laughs at a mile a minute against a backdrop that puts the audience at the heart of the narrative.

South Side features an ensemble cast of predominantly black actors, using the local appliance rental store Rent-T-Own as its primary setting. Salahuddin’s brother Sultan stars as Simon, a recent community college graduate looking for more upward mobility than life as a repo man. Kareme Young co-stars as Kareem, similarly looking for a better life, especially since his brother Quincy (played by Kareme’s real-life brother Quincy Young), serves as Rent-T-Own’s manager, constantly struggling to encourage a semblance of professionalism amongst his uninspired staff.

Chandra Russell is perhaps the show’s breakout star as Sergeant Turner, a police officer constantly unsure of whether to do good or take care of herself in the process. Alongside Bashir Salahuddin’s “Officer Goodnight” the two cops are absolutely hilarious to watch as they skirt ethical lines, taking sides on disputes over Xbox repossessions and Air Jordans that give plenty of food for thought well after you’re finished laughing.

The writing on South Side is absolutely superb. Salahuddin and Riddle have the rare ability to sneak nail-biting jokes into dialogue when you least expect it, the kind of comedic timing that’s intertwined into the plot rather than as a throwaway gag. They find humor in just about every subject, from child-support disputes to Coretta Scott King.

The narrative finds the sweet spot between episodic and serialized across its first season. You don’t necessarily need to watch every episode in order to follow along, but there’s plenty of references that reward those who do. Much of the plots are presented almost like vignettes, but there is a sense of character growth as the show progresses. These characters are here to make you laugh, but the actors engage with them in a way that brings out a level of authenticity you don’t necessarily expect from most sitcoms.

Perhaps the greatest triumph of South Side is the way it feels culturally relevant without being overly political. Police corruption, racial injustice, and income inequality are hardly conventional comedic topics, but the show presents them in a humorous fashion that never feels like it’s making light of the broader issues. National politics are left out entirely, instead focusing in on the struggles of Chicago that have existed for decades. This is a show about the South Side by people who grew up there, presented in a fashion that’s quite accessible for an audience that may not be very familiar with the local culture.

South Side is the funniest new show of 2019. Each episode has more laugh out loud moments than plenty of other comedies manage in an entire season. The writing and acting are spectacular. Salahuddin and Riddle’s love letter to their community is the must-watch show of the summer.

Friday

12

July 2019

1

COMMENTS

Wonder Explores the Unique Challenges Presented to Gender Diverse Youth

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Being a gender diverse kid is often a lonely experience. One’s inner sense of self constantly clashes with an outside world that reinforces the idea that there’s something wrong with being different. The changing times can hopefully alleviate some of that rather needless turmoil that too many of us have lived through, but Javier Molina’s new short-film Wonder reminds us of the challenges that too many children still have to face.

Sammy (Benji Siegel) is a young boy growing up in the hood, surrounded by the rigid gender structure that has little place for anything other than strict adherence to traditional masculinity. Sammy wants to be Wonder Woman for Halloween, but his interactions with his peers demonstrate that such a path is perilous to walk.

His father Frank (Gabriel Furman) is a typical blue-collar “man’s man,” able to talk sports and the needs of boys entering puberty, but not necessarily the nuances of gender identity. Like Sammy, Frank lives in a world that doesn’t give that subject much thought beyond thinking that anyone who would buck gender norms must be sick in the head. It’s not so much prejudice as it is a more viscerally charged form of indifference.

In many ways, Wonder is a film crafted more for people like Frank than Sammy, parents who never in a million years expected to be presented with a gender diverse child. Parents don’t always get it right on the first try. Without dismissing the angst that rejection, even of the reflexive variety, can cause, life isn’t a one and done game. What matters is the long term sense of acceptance for a child who is just as scared as their parents.

The triumph of Wonder comes from the way it handles a complex subject with a sixteen-minute runtime. This isn’t a portrait of Sammy’s life, but a snapshot of a pivotal moment. It does so with immense grace, though its continued use of homophobic slurs perhaps steps on its broader message late in its narrative. Acceptance is hardly universal, but a parent’s love can make the cold world a little less daunting.