Netflix update/New Girl

As some of you know, my first series upon returning to Netflix was House of Cards, which I liked a lot.  I checked out Orange is the New Black next, but I shut it off partway through the third episode; my exact thought was, "I'm not sure if I can handle this at all, and I definitely can't handle too much of it at once." Also crossing my mind: "I am NEVER doing ANYTHING illegal, because I would not last a DAY in prison." There's this whole hierarchy you have to figure out, and, as illustrated in the second episode, if you mess up, there might even be organized attempts to starve you, and there won't be a thing you can do about it, and-- yeah.  I've heard good things about this show, but I just don't even want to think or know about what might go on in prison. 

I then switched to the second-to-last season of Weeds, which I liked better for a couple of fairly shallow reasons: the episodes were short, and funny sometimes.  However, the problems the characters were dealing with were along the lines of, "my prison girlfriend just got out of prison, and she's being all clingy, so I'm going to burn down my new boyfriend's house and make it look like she did it so that she'll get out of town and leave me alone" and, "I accidentally took over another drug dealer's turf and now I'm in a war." Even though I've watched this show in the past and like and care about some of the characters, I just don't feel like I want to know about any of this.

Enter New Girl, in which Zooey Deschanel plays Jess, a middle school teacher who moves in with three random dudes she finds on craigslist following the demise of a six-year relationship.  The dudes are as follows:

First is Nick (Jake Johnson), a cranky bartender and law school dropout who spends most of the first season getting over the demise of his relationship with a woman named Caroline.  He dates a lawyer at one point.  At another point, he meets up with an old friend who is working on his Ph.D. and starts hooking up with a bunch of college girls as a result.  He eventually "backslides" back into a relationship with Caroline.  He and Jess will almost certainly get together at some point.  Since there have been two seasons of this show and I've only seen one, they probably already have.  I hope they already have.  I get impatient with "will they or won't they" nonsense both in real life and on television.

There is also Winston (Lamorne Morris), who played basketball in Latvia for a couple of years and replaced Coach (Damon Wayons Jr.) as their roommate after the first episode, at which time I assume Damon Wayons Jr. joined the cast of Happy Endings (R.I.P.).  During the first season, he works as a temp, then a nanny, then eventually becomes the assistant to some big-time sportscaster on a radio show.  He eventually gets into a serious relationship with a woman who apparently did not make a big impression on me, because I thought her name was Stephanie and IMDB tells me her name is Shelby.

Finally, there is Schmidt (Max Greenfield), who I saved for last because he is 1) my favorite, 2) ridiculous, and 3) the most difficult to explain.  His personality is such that his roommates keep around a Douchebag Jar that they make him put money in when he says or does something particularly douchey.  He is an obsessive clean freak and loves to cook.  He used to be overweight.  He spent most of the first season hooking up with Jess's model friend Cece (Hannah Simone); the two of them clearly like each other a lot, but keep getting in their own way.  This description really doesn't do him justice, though, so here is a compilation of his best first season moments. Thanks, Youtube!

The plots of my two favorite episodes of the first season are as follows:

1) Schmidt gets fed up with Nick trying to fix things around the house and calls a plumber.  Nick is offended by this, and a war ensues in which Nick "unfixes" everything he's fixed.  At one point, they wind up shouting at each other because Schmidt once spilled a pitcher of Midori sours on a blanket Nick's nana made for him. The conversation goes something like this:

"I gave you a check for $30!"

"My nana is dead, Schmidt! I'm not trying to make money off of her!"

"Yeah, well, she gave you that blanket for free, so as far as I'm concerned, you're up $30!"

"Who drinks Midori sours anyway?"

"Everyone does!"

"Would I ever drink a Midori sour?"

"It's a melon liquer with ancient influences!"

"Would Winston ever drink a Midori sour?"

 

Meanwhile, Jess tries to teach some of her students to play hand bells.  Winston gets involved and gets way too intense about it.

2) Jess realizes that she and her new boyfriend (Russell, a rich older dude played by Dermot Mulroney) only ever stay at his place, so she invites him to spend the weekend at the apartment.  Nick falls kind of in love with Russell.  Schmidt is oddly competitive with him.  To break the tension, Jess suggests they play a ridiculously complicated drinking game called True American.  Also, Nick and Schmidt try to pitch Russell a product called Real Apps, which appears to be basically the stuff you would find on a Swiss Army knife attached to a phone case.  Schmidt actually only came up with the name, but as he says, "people wouldn't line up around the corner for the iPhone if they called it the Smelly Germ Brick."  Russell is eventually accidentally stabbed with the product.  He and Jess have their first fight.

See? Episodes that basically start with a normal roommate/single person problem and then escalate into hilarity.  I was a big fan of the show Happy Endings, and the things I praised about it was that "80% of the storylines are completely ridiculous" and "I like that it's not trying to be about some big thing"; at the time, I was getting frustrated with the time it was taking to meet the mother on How I Met Your Mother (another show I like a lot, though less now than I did during the first few seasons) and was happy to watch a show without some big goal.  The thing that I think makes New Girl a little bit better than Happy Endings, though, is that though it doesn't have "some big goal," you get the sense that it is going somewhere.  The characters' lives progress in realistic ways.  Jess's first relationship following the demise of her six-year relationship is with a guy who is very nice, but basically exactly like her; I think we all eventually figure out that we're better off with someone who challenges us a little bit.  Her next relationship, with Russell, lacks passion; as of the end of the first season, she hadn't yet realized that she has that with Nick.  Similarly, Schmidt comes across as a womanizer, but it only takes about halfway through the season before he's only sleeping with one woman consistently; they may or may not make it work, but he actually shows that he is growing and maturing as a person.

Also? The season ends with all of the characters rocking out alone in their rooms to "You Shook Me All Night Long" by AC/DC.  Enough said.

I really like it, everyone.  It came along at just the right time for me-- both when I was looking for some lighter summer viewing and shortly following the cancellation of Happy Endings-- and I definitely want to stick with it.  I hope that the second season is released on Netflix before the third season starts this fall.

thoughts on The Way, Way Back

Summer. Man. When I was a kid, it was setting up the little kiddie pool in the backyard and taking my swimsuit everywhere I went, because my friends probably had their kiddie pools set up, too. As a tween and young teen, it was riding my bike all morning, swimming at the local pool all afternoon, and then sometimes going back in the evening for the night swim. Starting the summer after my junior year in high school, I pretty much always had a summer job, and as an adult, I usually teach for at least part of the summer, but still: summers are different. You take up new hobbies. You watch different stuff on TV.  You find yourself rarely seeing some of the people you normally hang out with, you hang out with others way more than normal, and you usually meet at least a few new people.  You go to cookouts and go swimming. You drink beer from a can outdoors. You watch baseball games and go see the fireworks on the 4th of July.

In The Way, Way Back, fourteen-year-old Duncan's (Liam James's) summer includes a lot of the normal summer things.  He goes to cookouts.  He watches the fireworks.  He spends some time in the water.  Unfortunately, he has to do all of these things while getting used to Trent (Steve Carell), his mother's (Toni Collette's) boyfriend.  Trent is the type of guy who rates Duncan a three on a scale of one to ten, right to his face-- and acts like he's just given him helpful information that he can use to improve himself.  He gets militant about the rules of Candyland, even though they're all way too old for the game and are only doing it to kill time while it's raining, anyway.  He says and does little things that aren't terrible in theory (reminding Duncan to clear his own plate from the table, requiring Duncan to wear a life jacket when they're out on a boat); however, because Duncan is the only one he singles out in these types of ways, it comes across like he's picking on him, or trying to embarrass him, or simply trying to show him who's boss.

Duncan finds refuge in a summer job at a water park called the Water Wizz, which he takes secretly while staying with his mother, Trent, and Trent's daughter, Stephanie (Zoe Levin), at Trent's beach house. His mom and Trent wonder where he goes all day and sometimes seem mildly annoyed when they can't find him, but they're too busy partying with the neighbors (a couple played by Rob Corddry and Amanda Peet and a recently divorced woman played by Allison Janney) to pay much attention.  At the water park, he meets the manager, Owen (Sam Rockwell), a man who is maybe around the same age as Trent and who becomes something of a surrogate father figure over the summer.  He also eventually gets to know Susanna (AnnaSophia Robb), his neighbor for the summer and the only person who cares enough to actually investigate where he disappears to all day.

I really enjoyed this, everyone.  As I alluded to earlier, it just captures the feeling of summer perfectly-- that feeling that even when things are going badly, they're going badly in a different way than they might be going during the rest of the year, just because circumstances are so different.  Duncan starts off as such an awkward kid that he barely even talks to anyone; the thing is, though, he's sweet, and he's game for pretty much whatever, as becomes obvious during a scene where he is sent to break up a crowd that has congregated around a spontaneous dance demonstration at the water park and winds up learning some moves that earn him the nickname "Pop-N-Lock" for the rest of the summer.  He gains confidence under Owen's wing, and Owen perhaps grows up a little watching out for him.  There are some moments of pure joy in this movie that center around the types of things that, again, can only happen in summer-- an ambush with a water gun that quickly turns into a full-scale water fight; a race to see if it is possible for someone to pass the person going down the water slide ahead of them.  There are also some really nice moments between Owen and Caitlin (Maya Rudolph), who manages the water park with him, and Duncan and Susanna, his summer crush.  The fact that Duncan may very well never see Owen or Susanna again after the summer's end doesn't even matter, because, as we've all experienced, the stuff that happens in the summer might not necessarily be permanent...but it's important.  

My Return to Netflix/House of Cards (spoilers)

First of all, I haven't had Netflix for a few years, and when I did, I just had the DVDs mailed to me; I couldn't (or perhaps just didn't) watch stuff on my computer. Even though my computer is kind of a piece of crap and sometimes freezes up, Instant Play is still an amazing thing to me. It keeps track of where you are in the series, or even in the episode, so if your computer *does* freeze up, it will take you back to where you left off when you come back again! Amazing! The whole computer-freezing-up-thing does make me want to get a tablet of some sort, though, or a TV made after the year 1990 that lets you watch Netflix right on it. As I learned when I got my first SmartPhone a few months back, technology kind of just makes you want more technology. Oh, well.

House of Cards was the first series I watched upon my return to Netflix; I watched all thirteen episodes over the course about six days. Here are my thoughts, in no particular order:

1) Francis "Frank" Underwood is like the perfect role for Kevin Spacey, right? For most of my adult life, I have understood that Kevin Spacey is a good actor, yet I've felt vaguely like I hate him and have never quite been able to put into words why. I've talked with friends about this, and while not all of them have shared this view, I have found that he is a fairly polarizing actor. I know at least one person who loves him. I know another who has told me that she finds him scary-- not because of any one particular role, but just in general.  Somehow, watching this, every single one of those attitudes toward him-- vague hatred, love, fear-- made sense. In the first few episodes, I thought he was a badass; he did what he needed to do to get results, but hadn't done anything particularly reprehensible yet. Then he started sleeping with Kate Mara's character (Zoe Barnes), and I started thinking he was pretty skeevy. Then he full-on MURDERED PETE RUSSO (Corey Stoll), and my mind was blown with how evil this guy is. The scary thing is that he is an evil *genius*; though I don't believe that murdering Pete was part of his overall plan, Pete's demise (falling off the wagon and into disgrace) clearly was.  Which brings me to...

2) One thing I really love about this show is how you usually think you understand characters' motives, especially with Frank talking to the camera and cluing you in every once in awhile. Then you get more information, and you realize that they did things for a different reason than you initially thought.  Example: Pete had defied Frank in some sort of minor way around the time that Frank basically set him up to get drunk before his radio interview. At the time, I thought Frank was just being all, "Well, I can't keep him in line anymore, so screw him. I'll set him up to fail and get someone else to do his job." Then you find out that he was ALWAYS setting Pete up to fail, and in fact chose him to run for governor because he knew he COULD set him up to fail. Again: mind blown.

3) In case you can't tell, Pete was my favorite, and I am still pretty sad that he is dead.  Pete! With his bald head, and his kids, especially the daughter who didn't like to talk to him when his "voice sounded funny" because it "made [her] sad"! And he was trying so hard to be good, but he just couldn't beat that addiction, and he had Frank out there, you know, ACTIVELY PLOTTING HIS DEMISE! It seemed by the end of the season that he may have been in deeper than we were led to believe, but still: sad.

4) Kate Mara's character, Zoe, was another character who my opinion kept changing about throughout the season.  I initially was pretty disgusted by her sleeping with her source and all. By the end of the season, though, I was really rooting for her, Janine (Constance Zimmer), and Lucas (Sebastian Arcelus). The early part of the season made it seem like everything Zoe (and to some extent the other journalists) was doing was just to advance her own career, and I was pretty dismissive of her. By the end, though, it became clear that the journalists were the only ones who were even trying to get to the bottom of everything and had ANY HOPE of exposing Frank.  I'm guessing they won't be completely successful, but there's something to be said for at least trying to learn the truth and put it out there.  I also kind of found myself feeling for Zoe with regard to Frank. Sure, she shouldn't have been sleeping with a source, or with any married man, for that matter...but she had no way of knowing the extent of the evil she was getting involved in.  Damn.

Bottom line: I really enjoyed this, even though pretty much every character was at least a little bit shady.  I started feeling a little sad when I realized I had only a few episodes left.  Definitely enjoyed the experience of having a show that I could just watch an episode or two of when I had some spare time.  Looking forward to the second season.   

thoughts on The Heat

Noteworthy previews: The To Do List, starring Aubrey Plaza, Rachel Bilson, and Scott Porter (a.k.a. Jason Street!!!), among others, and Runner Runner, a movie in which Ben Affleck threatens to feed Justin Timberlake to some crocodiles. I'm not kidding: I can't wait.

Anyway, so the plot/formula of The Heat is fairly standard buddy cop/odd couple stuff, which isn't necessarily a bad thing; The Other Guys also followed that formula, and it was hilarious.  Here, Sandra Bullock plays the uptight, by-the-book one in the pair, while Melissa McCarthy swears a lot, roughs people up, and dresses and does her hair in such a way that Bullock's character twice mistakes biker dudes for her.  There are several laugh-out-loud funny moments; McCarthy gets most of the best one-liners, but Bullock is also good as a character so lonely that she sometimes "borrows" her neighbor's cat for company. There are also a couple of gross-out moments (one involving a stabbing and one involving an emergency tracheotomy, which Bullock's character thinks she knows how to do because she once saw one performed on TV), as is unfortunately (or unfortunately for me, anyway) often the case in comedies. Anyway, I enjoyed it. I would be up for seeing more of the two of them as a crimefighting duo.

thoughts on The Bling Ring

Sofia Coppola's The Bling Ring follows a group of L.A. teens who rob a series of celebrities' houses (Paris Hilton, Rachel Bilson, Lindsay Lohan, etc.).  The houses are all so easy to get into that I would find the robberies unbelievable if this film weren't based on a true story.  I'm used to these elaborate heist movies where the would-be thieves spend considerable time researching how to override or sidestep security systems; here, the teens simply find out via the Internet when specific celebrities are going to be out of town, then walk into their homes by way of keys hidden under the mat, through dog doors, or through back doors carelessly left unlocked.  Once in, the teens basically just go shopping; they typically just take an item or two each, seemingly more interested in having things that are owned by celebrities and hanging out in their houses than in seeking out specific items, or the most expensive items. 

I suppose that is what is compelling enough about the real-life story to make it into a movie: these kids are not your typical thieves, but rather a group of teens living just outside the celebrity world and wanting to find a way in.  They party at the same clubs as people like Kirsten Dunst and Paris Hilton but don't personally know them.  Two of the teens, Nicki and Sam (Emma Watson and Taissa Farmiga), are homeschooled by Nicki's mom, Laurie (Leslie Mann), and Laurie presents a "vision board" of Angelina Jolie as a role model that the girls should aspire to as part of a school lesson.  Nicki and Sam also at one point discuss going on auditions for modeling and acting roles, but other than that, none of these kids seem to have any real goals or interests or really care about anything.  After one robbery, they casually brag at a party that they "were at Rachel Bilson's," as if Rachel Bilson had invited them there.  At another point, a character named Chloe (Claire Julien) gets a DUI, and she just laughs about how high her BAC was; there doesn't seem to be any concern about how this might affect her future.  Even when the teens face charges for the crimes, Nicki talks about it as a "learning lesson" and uses the experience as an opportunity to get interviews/exposure.  Another character, Rebecca (Katie Chang), asks, during her interrogation, whether the investigator has talked to the celebrities and eagerly wonders aloud what Lindsay Lohan said.  Only one member of the group (Marc, played by Israel Broussard) seems to feel any guilt or unease about the robberies, and only he and Rebecca seem particularly upset about having been caught.

The end result is a movie that I found fairly disturbing. I can kind of understand why the kids are the way they are; the only parent we spend much time with is a complete flake, and most of the other parents seem to be largely absent from their kids' lives, which is maybe why they have so little fear of consequences. At times I almost got all "Kids these days!" about the movie, but not only are the teens in this movie not typical thieves, I also don't really believe they represent that many teens. If we were to believe that the teens in this movie are simply extreme examples of teens in a culture that celebrates/glorifies fame and wealth, the film could, theoretically, be making a statement about the perils of celebrity and surveillance culture.  Because I believe the teens in this film are pretty far off the map in terms of morals, values, and life goals, though, I think it's basically just an interesting, well-told and reasonably well-acted story.