thoughts on the series finale of Smash

Okay, so-- I enjoyed every musical number in this episode, even though none of them really made any sense. The "Under Pressure" number, for example: I've never really liked the fantasy musical numbers on this show (you know, the ones that take place in a character's imagination, as opposed to onstage), but how great to have all of the major cast members onstage together, and how else could that ever have happened, except in a fantasy? And we've heard Tom and Jimmy both sing before, but we've never gotten to hear them hit notes like they did in that song. I daresay it might be my favorite thing this show has ever done, as in, the only song that I will probably look up and watch again. I will say this for Glee, which I haven't watched since early in the third season and which really frustrated me by the time I stopped watching it: in nearly every episode, there was at least one musical number I wanted to watch again, and though I honestly think that Smash was a better show (how sad that I have to write about it in past tense now), hot mess that it was sometimes, I was never really like that with this show. I enjoyed the music, but would never seek it out to listen to or watch independently from the show. I really dug "Under Pressure," though, along with "Broadway, Here I Come." Again, I don't know if anything like that would ever really happen on the Tonys-- "Oh, hey, Daisy, Derek here. I don't really have anything to do with this production of the Tonys, but guess what, you're not singing anymore, and hey, cast of Hit List, come on out and do an a cappella version of 'Broadway, Here I Come.' Don't worry about costumes or anything." But, it was great, and it made Jerry look like a dick for not just planning for them to do something like that in the first place: it was the perfect song for their show, which featured mainly first time Broadway performers, and they deserved to be all onstage together. Finally, I don't know WTF was up with that last number, which seemed completely thrown in-- "Oh, hey, Julia, let's watch a video of the number we missed when we were still backstage. You know, that random duet between Karen and Ivy that we never saw them practice ever." Again, it made sense to have the series end with Karen and Ivy onstage together one last time, but the set-up for it was pretty weird.

As for the awards acceptance speeches, Ivy's was the best. Jimmy's was good, but kind of vague; I wish he would have called Karen by name, and been more specific about what he meant when he thanked Julia. Tom and Julia's was crap: "Oh, we wrote a speech, but we forgot it. Thank you!" Isn't Julia a professional writer? And until the last minute, wasn't Bombshell supposed to be their last show together for the forseeable future? And haven't they been partners for years but never won? In other words, get your heads out of your asses, Tom and Julia.

It was hard to care too much about the outcome of a lot of the awards. I came to prefer the Hit List storyline this past season, and if both shows were real, I would go see it any day over Bombshell. But, it came across as kind of thrown together, so while I'm glad that Kyle won and it won some other awards, yeah, Ivy probably deserved to win over Karen, and I guess it's good that Tom and Julia won. Basically, Bombshell was a bunch of people who had been working hard for a long time without being rewarded, while Hit List was a bunch of up-and-comers, and they will presumably have other chances. Also, Marilyn Monroe was more of a career-type role for Ivy than Karen's role was. So-- yeah, it was fine.

Ivy and Derek are in love now? Hmm. Yes, obviously they have a history, get along, understand each other, and have some chemistry...but didn't he spend most of the past two seasons mooning over Karen? Who even was that guy that Eileen was with at the end? And, Jimmy's story...he couldn't have found out sometime in the past five years that that girl didn't die?

Basically...I enjoyed the episode as a whole, but I think the creators weren't really ready for the show to be over and felt like they had to tie up every single loose end and do every musical thing they've ever wanted to do. As a result, the episode felt kind of weird and thrown together. However, I will miss this show. RIP, Smash.

thoughts on the Nashville season finale.

Well. I thought that was brilliant, though I didn't think the whole car crash cliffhanger ending was necessary. For one thing, enough exciting stuff happened during this episode; trust me, Show, I'm tuning in next season. For another, I feel like storylines like what this could potentially turn into-- by which I mean Horrible Tragedies that cause all of the main characters to reevaluate their priorities, reflect on What's Really Important in life, and forget about the current, very real, problems that they are facing (I'm looking at you, Smash, with your whole "Kyle's death magically cures Jimmy of his drug addicton and makes him a better person" nonsense)-- are really cheap from a storytelling perspective. Maybe this storyline won't turn into something like that. Here's hoping.

Aside from that, though, like I said: brilliant. I was really dreading Rayna's secret coming out. I thought that it was awful of her to not tell Deacon that he was Maddy's father for all those years, and I thought that at this point, she really just needed to take it to her grave. But the thing is...

1) She very well might have taken it to her grave, had Maddy not figured it out on her own, and let's face it: Maddy is thirteen years old, and she figured it out on her own pretty darn easily. If Deacon didn't at least suspect she could be his, he had to be in pretty deep denial. Or if, like Rayna suggested, he simply didn't remember that he had slept with her within the timeframe that she could have become pregnant with Maddy, that speaks volumes about his state at the time, too. Also...

2) Until this episode, we had never seen what Deacon was like when he drank. We only knew him as a nice, reliable, in-control guy. We've seen the clear love and chemistry between him and Rayna. Despite the discussions that he, Rayna, and other characters have had about his alcholism and his multiple stints in rehab, Rayna-- am I right, people?-- seemed kind of cold for turning her back on him and marrying Teddy so quickly all those years ago. It seemed like she had decided just not to "let" him be Maddy's father because she wanted to be with Teddy, and it made things easier for her. That seemed like a selfish decision. But this episode? First off, as my mom said when we talked about this on the phone, it didn't really take that much to make Deacon start drinking again. If this is the type of thing that could set him off, then Rayna really, truly had good reason to suspect that she was not going to be able to count on him to stay sober and be a father. Second of all, when he drinks, he drinks CONSTANTLY, from the time he wakes up until the time he passes out, every day. Third of all, he is violent and a liar when he drinks. So, yeah. It makes sense that Rayna was willing to let Teddy raise Maddy as his own and not even tell Deacon that she was his. She honestly had no way of knowing what he might do in that situation, and she had every reason to be scared. The only thing I don't get (and my mom agreed with me about this, too) is why Teddy even took a paternity test. If he was willing to raise Maddy as his own and didn't care that she might not be his, why even find out? It might have one day been necessary to find out for medical reasons, or something, but even then Rayna would have had plausibile deniability, like, "Oh, we knew she COULD have been Deacon's, but it was such a slim chance..."

3) So, Deacon reacted to the news that Maddy was his in a way that proved that Rayna had very good reasons for not telling him. Maddy's and Teddy's reactions were actually pretty great. Yeah, Maddy shouldn't have run and told Deacon. Yeah, she flipped out on Rayna a little bit. But that scene near the end, where Rayna told her that she hoped that she wasn't mad at her forever because they need each other, and then Maddy came and sat on her lap and cried, was just amazing. Yeah. Not everyone has great parents, I realize, so what I say next isn't going to apply to everyone, but the thing is-- even though you might not agree with or understand everything your parents do, they generally do have your best interests at heart. Rayna may or may not have done the right thing by keeping this secret from Deacon; at this point, I understand her reasons and don't feel like making a judgment on whether she was completely right or completely wrong. Life's more complicated than that. But I do believe that she did what she thought was right for everyone, not just herself. I'm glad Maddy was at least willing to let her in at the end, even if she will probably be dealing with this for a long time. And Teddy? Man. Generally, I think he's kind of skeezy, making shady deals with Rayna's father and sleeping with Kimberly Williams-Paisley (Peggy, I guess her character's name is) and all. But I loved when Maddy said she wanted to come live with him, and Rayna started to freak out, and Teddy just calmly said something along the lines of, "This is how she needs to work through this. Trust that I won't keep her from you." It's nice to see Teddy and Rayna start to learn to deal with each other as rational adults post-divorce, you know? Because they do need each other and are tied to each other no matter what, you know? I also loved-- LOVED-- when Deacon drunkenly came at him, like literally trying to ram him in the stomach with his head, and Teddy was just like, "You were a drunk and still are. Rayna and Maddy both deserved better, and still do." But then when he turned away and straightened his clothes, you could see that he was about to cry. Great acting there, Eric Close!

So, obviously this was the storyline that dominated most of the show, and my attention. However, Hayden Panetierre also did some very nice acting as Juliet dealt with her mother's death, and it was very touching how all of the other characters, including Rayna, rallied around her. Aside from that, Gunnar proposing to Scarlett was stupid; though yes, they have known each other for awhile, they became a couple in the wake of his brother's death, and he has spent the majority of their entire romantic relationship-- which seriously, hasn't it only been going on for like a month or two?-- dealing with it very badly. However, I LOVED the end, when they cut between the different characters with just music and us unable to hear their dialogue: Rayna and Deacon fighting; Gunnar proposing; and Will (a.k.a. the cowboy played by Luke from The OC)just shaking his head barely, almost imperceptibly, at the guy he had presumably hooked up with. Very effectively done.

Oh. And Peggy's pregnant. Of course she is. Stupid Teddy, getting himself in over his head all the time.

Great first season, Nashville! Seriously, this has consistently been the most compelling show this year. Loved it!

thoughts on Oz the Great and Powerful

I don't have a lot to say about this one other than that I liked it a lot. James Franco was really well-cast as Oz, a shady magician who finds himself mistaken for a wizard in the land of Oz. In this role, you have to believe that he is good deep down while also being somewhat suspicious of him for much of the movie, and I think he does this well. I have read some criticisms that the witches-- Evanora (Rachel Weisz), Theodora (Mila Kunis) and Glinda the Good (Michelle Williams)-- weren't particularly well-developed characters, and I can see that; we are supposed to believe that Theodora gives in to her latent evil tendencies because she is spurned by Oz, which doesn't make a lot of sense since she hasn't really known him that long, and he hasn't really done anything so terrible at the time she decides to become as heartless as Evanora knows she can be. They were all pretty fun characters, regardless-- Evanora is evil and power-hungry but kind of gets in over her head when she helps turn Theodora evil; Theodora gets to do the patented Wicked Witch of the West cackle and fly around on a broom; and Glinda is actually the most well-developed, seeing the good in Oz and encouraging him that it's enough to make the people of Oz believe he's the Wizard. It's also pretty clever how Oz and the others use their skills to outwit the evil witches.

Bottom line: fun performances, beautiful visuals, a good overall message. I had a good time.

thoughts on Smash 5/11/13

So, I hear this show is getting cancelled. I'm very disappointed about that, though they have pulled some major soap opera bullshit the last couple of episodes. Ivy is PREGNANT? And of course it's Derek's. Sigh.

So I've figured out that Tom is the type of character who you hate even when he's technically in the right, and Derek is the type of character that you want to like even when he's being very, very bad. Yeah, Julia probably shouldn't be spending so much time helping out Hit List...but whenever Tom brings this up, he comes away looking like a major douche. And Derek completely and totally sexually harrassed that Daisy girl and then let her blackmail him...and yet when he said that "Oh, of course, you're making this about you," line to Karen, I was like, "Yeah! Shut up, Karen!"

Basically...pretty irritating developments this past episode. I'm still really enjoying it, though.

thoughts on The Great Gatsby

I'll preface this review with this: I know that The Great Gatsby is considered a classic, and I personally know at least a couple of people who consider it one of their favorite books. I personally only read it for the first time about three years ago, and I thought it was just okay. The book is told from the perspective of an outsider, Nick Carraway, and to some extent I understand why that was necessary; the author is trying to build up suspense around the Gatsby character, and it's useful to see the lifestyle depicted from the perspective of someone who, like the audience, is not really part of it. However, the problems with this are that Nick himself is not a particularly compelling character; you don't get to see the Gatsby and Daisy relationship from the perspective of the two people in it, which makes it difficult to care about it as much as we need to for the story to work; and I actually found what was eventually revealed about Gatsby to be fairly anticlimactic.

The movie has the same basic problems, plus the added nonsense that the whole thing is told in flashback by Nick while he is institutionalized, telling his story to the doctor, and eventually writing what will supposedly become The Great Gatsby. It is visually stunning; Baz Luhrmann does a great job with the party scenes, especially, which are decadent and over the top and, well...awesome. He's doing what he does best there. However, I still didn't care all that much about the characters, and-- okay, so I hate Tobey Maguire so much that one of the first comments I made to my friends after the movie was, "I hate Tobey Maguire's stupid face." Later, at dinner, long after we had moved on to other topics of conversation, I continued, "I hate Tobey Maguire's face so much that it's, like, offensive to me that people keep putting him in movies." Basically, the takeaway there is, I didn't care for the character that much in the book, and having him played by an actor I hate did not help one bit. I also-- and yes, I realize I'm nitpicking here-- did not care for Leonardo's speaking voice in this movie.

What it comes down to, I think, is this. Also after the movie, I commented to my friends, "For a movie that included murder, adultery, and that many parties...it was awfully boring." You can have characters doing any number of "exciting" things, but if you don't care about the characters, it's still not going to be interesting. There were aspects of it I liked. I didn't like it overall.

recent thoughts on Smash

1) I'm pissed that they killed Kyle. I know that even the characters on the show see it as shocking and unfair, but from a storytelling perspective, I feel like they did it just to give Jimmy a reason to straighten out and to bring Jimmy and Karen back together, which is shitty. He was worth more than that. How about having JIMMY-- drug addict/former drug dealer/all around shitty guy-- die, and then having Kyle and Karen dealing with their guilt over pushing him away, and Kyle dealing with trying to move forward in his career without him, and Karen turning to Derek for comfort and then realizing that she has just used him? I know that life isn't fair and that sometimes someone who doesn't deserve it at all dies suddenly, but again, from a storytelling perspective alone, wouldn't Jimmy's death create more opportunities for character development than this, when getting fired from Hit List could have been enough to make Jimmy realize that he needs to change, and when Karen had already pretty much realized that she still loves Jimmy even though she doesn't want to? I don't like it one bit. It seems like it gives a lot of characters-- Karen, Jimmy, even Tom and Julia-- an easy out for their recent behavior and their problems, like, "Oh, Kyle's dead, so now we should all come together and forgive each other," even though they've all done things that they need to deal with for real and face the consequences for. Yeah. Hate it.

2) Even though Derek is sometimes pretty oblivious and needs to have the obvious pointed out to him-- like Ivy basically telling him last night, "Okay, Derek. I get that nothing is happening between you and Karen NOW. I'm still hurt and insulted that you're only with me because you can't have her."-- I love that lately, he is the only one who consistently acts like a grown-ass adult. No, Karen, what happened between the two of you was not NOTHING just because you didn't actually have sex. And no, Karen, there is no reason that anyone else on Hit List needs to know anything about it. GOD!

That's all I care about. I still hate Tom.

thoughts on Mud

Basically...this was surprisingly and disappointingly boring for a movie in which Matthew McConaughey plays a character named Mud who has a snake tattoo and hangs out in the woods eating beanie weenies out of a can and insists that while it's fair enough to call him a hobo, he is NOT!!! a bum. (I will admit that I, in the very recent past, have also had a conversation about the difference between a hobo and a bum. I thought it was that hobos ride the rails. According to Mud, hobos work for a living but just travel around a lot and don't have a permanent home. Learn something new every day!)

I walked into this movie a few minutes late, and for a few minutes after I got there, only the sound was working, not the picture. This was fairly disorienting because I hadn't realized I was so late; I thought the previews would still be playing when I got there, and for awhile I was convinced that not only was the picture not working, but they had started the movie in the wrong place. I quickly determined that this was not the case, but the bottom line is, I'm not entirely sure why the main character, a fourteen-year-old boy named Ellis, and his friend, Neckbone, initially head out to the woods and encounter Mud. I think that it has something to do with a boat that is stuck up in a tree, and where they find Mud living. Within a few days of the boys' initial meeting with Mud, the following events occur:

1) Ellis learns that his parents plan to divorce, and that regardless of which parent he chooses to live with, he will likely have to move out of the houseboat that he has lived in all of his life.

2) Ellis punches a high school senior in the face for getting handsy with May Pearl, an older girl who Ellis has a crush on. She is impressed, and tells him to call her if he can find her number.

3) Ellis and Neckbone learn more of Mud's story. Basically, Mud has been in love for years with Juniper (Reese Witherspoon). She has a habit of leaving him for guys who get violent with her, then returning to Mud, who takes her back and then goes and beats the most recent guy up. The most recent time, he actually shot and killed the guy. Now, Mud is wanted by the police and hiding out until he can come up with an escape plan for him and Juniper. He is also being hunted down by the family and friends of the guy he killed. So, Ellis and Neckbone agree to help him get the boat down from the tree and get it running again. Ellis does this because he is all upset about his parents' divorce and is moved by the fact that Mud claims to be doing this for love. Neckbone does it because Mud agrees to give him his gun once they've helped him.

This obviously is all going nowhere good, but it doesn't all go bad in exactly the way you expect. Basically, Ellis's parents' divorce, what ultimately happens between him and May Pearl, and what ultimately happens between Mud and Juniper causes Ellis to lose his faith in love, but then he sort of gets his faith back in humanity because Mud saves him from dying from a snake bite even though it is dangerous for him to do so for a number of reasons. And then after this, which seems to be the resolution of the movie, happens, the movie continues for something like another ten minutes and gets moderately ridiculous.

I feel like this could have used another rewrite, or something. It had potential. McConaughey's character is skeevy and possibly dangerous, which we all know he does well. Witherspoon's character is kind of trashy, which Witherspoon has done before but not for awhile, which could have been interesting. There are two main problems, however:

1) The movie is interesting for as long as Mud's story remains a mystery, and then quickly becomes boring once we learn what's going on. We spend an awful lot of time just watching Mud and the kids fix the boat, and waiting around to see whether Juniper actually sticks around for him, which we don't really care that much about. Mud and Juniper are onscreen together for a grand total of maybe ten seconds in the whole movie. We believe that he loves her; she isn't onscreen enough for us to really know what she's thinking, though a character played by Sam Shepard tells Ellis that she's no good and basically only with Mud when things don't pan out with someone else. This appears to be true, and because unlike Ellis, we don't have some deep personal reason to root for their relationship, we just don't care. I think that the Mud and Juniper characters, and McCounaughey and Witherspoon as actors, could potentially be interesting together, but in this context, they're not. We don't know enough about their relationship and they're almost never onscreen together, so we have no idea whether they even have chemistry.

2) There is all this ridiculous, over the top stuff going on that has the potential to be really wild and fun. The stuff with the snakes, and Mud being hunted down by both the police and some random bad men, and Juniper being somewhat shady...it's all there. And yet, this is mostly Ellis's coming of age story, and most of the other stuff comes to a head in a scene near the end that doesn't really belong. Everything's played too straight, like the director didn't get how over the top and ridiculous a lot of this is and decided to make a serious coming-of-age film that just happened to have all of this other random stuff in it.

I don't know if this movie had the potential to be great. But it had the potential to be entertaining, trashy, and fun, and it wasn't really even those things. Disappointing.