New York for 24 hours to see
“Hamilton”
off-Broadway.

Sitting in the second row and
being spat on by Jonathan
Groff
dressed
in
full

monarchial garb is still one
of the best experiences I’ve
ever had. Thomas Jefferson
and Alexander Hamilton’s rap
battle is one that awill live on in
my heart forever. “Hamilton”
keeps the audience’s attention
through its subtle humor and
quickly executed lyrics and
presenting a figure of American
history often overshadowed by
his presidential counterparts.

I am currently taking an

English class titled American
Adolescence, which focuses on
common themes throughout
children’s and young adult
literature, such as revolution,
rebellion
and
friendship.

“Hamilton” is truly a story of
America in its adolescence,
morphing into different ideals
and setting the precedence of
what is to come. It speaks to
and incites youth with ideas of
uprising and transformation,
and reminds the world of the
fragility of the era. Rather than
staying stagnant as a play about
the past, Miranda creates a
story that allows people to
become deeply nostalgic for
not only America’s history, but

their own.

“Hamilton” makes history

accessible
to
a
younger

generation and inspires others
to look into their own past.
Despite how important we
may think we are, millions
have lived before us and
millions more will live after
us. In focusing on the life of
one man and watching his
impact on history, it forces
the audience to recognize its
relationship to others and the
influence they have on lives
around them.

“Hamilton” ’s story is one

that identifies the brutality of
war, the pain of defeat and the
glory of success. So … what is
your story?

Tuesday, September 29, 2015 — 5B
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

By BRIAN BURLAGE

Daily Arts Writer

“I grew up in a neighborhood

that was mostly girls and old peo-
ple,” John Hughes once said about
his upbringing. “There weren’t
any boys my age, so I spent a lot of
time by myself, imagining things.”

Hughes, one of the most pro-

lific and talented moviemakers
of the 1980s, did what no other
director before or since has been
able to do, even with half the same
heart or reality: tell the stories of
teenagers.

Let me elaborate.
In the span of years between

1982 and 1990, John Hughes
wrote or directed 10 films that
still run repeatedly on TV and are
widely beloved today. You know
them as: Some Kind of Wonder-
ful; Sixteen Candles; Breakfast
Club; Weird Science; Pretty in
Pink; Ferris Bueller’s Day Off;
Planes, Trains and Automobiles;
Uncle Buck; Christmas Vacation;
and Home Alone.

Think about that for a second.

How many of those movies have
you seen or heard about? How
many of them can you quote line-
for-line? How many memorable
scenes or songs immediately come
to mind?

If Shakespeare created the

human being, John Hughes cre-
ated the teenager. For better
or worse, he catalogued those
pubescent years with a genius’s

eye for detail and a poet’s sense of
heart. His characters were jocks,
nerds, troublemakers and home-
coming queens. They were cyni-
cal (Cameron Frye), irresponsible
(Uncle Buck), resourceful (Kevin
McCallister), dedicated (Clark
Griswold), criminal (John Bend-
er) and larger-than-life (Ferris
Bueller). We remember them not
as stars or icons or archetypes,
but as unrealized versions of our-
selves.

And it all goes back to Hughes’s

upbringing, a time of imagination
and introspection. He quickly
figured out that knowing people
— knowing what they think, how
they feel, why they behave the
way they do — is really an act of
imagining them as slight varia-
tions of ourselves.

Take Andrew, Emilio Estevez’s

character in Breakfast Club, for
example. As a star high school
athlete, Andrew has a differ-
ent way of thinking about things
than, say, Brian, the class brain.
And Andrew and Brian each have
different ways of thinking about
things than Allison, the girl with
personal issues. But in Hughes’s
films, these differences don’t mat-
ter because, as Andrew explains,
“We’re all pretty bizarre. Some
of us are just better at hiding it,
that’s all.”

It’s a cliché thing to say, but

when John Hughes died in
2009—at the age of 59—he left
an enormous void in the world of

Hollywood. The greatest docu-
menter of teenage angst left
without having taught us how to
approach the current generation,
without giving us a blueprint for
telling the millennial story. And
that’s a problem.

Of all the generations that

have come to pass in the world,
the millennial generation, our
generation, is the hardest to
connect with, the hardest to
pin down. We come from cities,
small rural towns and suburbs,
from the East Coast, West Coast,
Third Coast, from rich and from
poor, from private schools, pub-
lic schools, boarding schools,
charter and trade schools, from
countries on the North Ameri-
can continent and countries
that aren’t. As young adults
bombarded with information
in just about every variety and
from every screen, we develop
individualized, highly personal
opinions. We love to look at our-
selves, but we hate to talk about
ourselves.

All this is to say that, well,

we’re all very different from one
another. As it stands now, there
exists no great record of who
we are as a generation. We don’t
have our Breakfast Club yet; we
don’t have our Ferris Bueller.
Without such stories and char-
acters, we remain faceless in the
chronicles of history.

So I ask: will the next John

Hughes please stand up?

‘Limitless’ can’t live
up to its full potential

By BEN ROSENSTOCK

Daily Arts Writer

CBS’s new series “Limitless”

is the latest story to build on the
misconception
that
humans

only use 10%
of their brains,
and
if
we

were
able
to

access
100%,

we’d
become

superhuman.
Like
the

eponymous
film, and like
other
movies

that utilize this
same myth, the show rarely
exploits the moral quandaries
that naturally arise from the
premise. At least the film
“Limitless”
and
last
year’s

“Lucy” had a lot of stylish fun
with the wacky ideas, and the
“Limitless” pilot occasionally
attains that sense of absurd
entertainment. Unfortunately,
the show seems to promise little
to sustain an ongoing series
past its premiere.

Jake
McDorman

(“Manhattan
Love
Story”)

stars as Brian Finch, the basic
equivalent to Bradley Cooper’s
character in the film. When his
father (Ron Rifkin, “Brothers
and Sisters”) becomes sick,
Brian realizes he hasn’t done
anything in his life to make
his dad proud. Luckily, Brian’s
friend Eli has access to NZT,
a drug that allows its user to
access the entirety of the brain.
Now Brian can solve complex
math
equations,
vividly

remember every moment of his
life and digest huge quantities
of information with the quickest
of glances.

From the beginning, there

are signs that the show won’t be
able to match the heights of the
movie. McDorman works fine
as a protagonist, but he’s not
nearly as charismatic as Cooper,
so when he uses his powers to
suavely show off and flirt with
women, he’s not as amusingly
smug. He’s also saddled with
the most pointless, annoying
voiceover
since
the
later

seasons of “Dexter,” explaining
every move he makes instead
of just allowing the viewer to
watch it happen.

The rest of the main cast is

mostly uninteresting. Jennifer
Carpenter as FBI agent Rebecca
Harris is disappointingly tame
after her erratic performance
on “Dexter,” and a third-act
reveal that her late father used
NZT fails to make her a three-
dimensional
character.
The

other two agents who round out
the cast, played by Hill Harper
(“CSI: NY”) and Mary Elizabeth
Mastrantonio (“The Color of
Money”) are stock types, two
bland agents who serve only
to question Harris when she
blindly trusts Brian.

At least most of the pilot burns

through plot at an impressive
rate. Brian becomes addicted
to NZT, solves the murder of a
friend, faces off against Harris
on multiple occasions, schemes
to move his sick father to the
top of the liver transplant
waiting list and meets Eddie
Morra,
Bradley
Cooper’s

character from the film. The
episode’s kinetic pace keeps it
entertaining until the last act,
when Brian and Harris enter
into a partnership that promises
a boring procedural structure
for upcoming episodes. As soon
as Harris calls Brian’s abilities
a ‘resource’ and utters the
world ‘consultant,’ it’s clear
the show isn’t interested in
maintaining the fun of its first
episode. This was all meant
to set up a standard boring
formulaic cop show, with the
‘twist’ being that the consultant
has pharmaceutically-induced
superhuman abilities.

TV shows based on movies

and books often struggle to
find a way to tell a similar
story stretched out to the
format of an ongoing series.
“Limitless” tries to solve that
problem by turning the story
into a procedural, a reliable
way to have a new plot each
episode to distract from the
sluggish main narrative arc.
Ironically, though, “Limitless”
would improve by sticking
more to the plot of the movie,
having Brian do something
new and interesting with his
powers instead of just helping
out another law enforcement
agency.
The
ending
of

“Limitless” was so compelling
because Morra acted entirely
in self-interest, using NZT
to indulge his delusions of
self-grandeur and ascend to a
position of power in the Senate.
“Limitless” would do well to
have its protagonist be a little
more selfish and a little less
noble.

C+

Limitless

Series Pre-
miere

Tuesdays at

10 p.m.

CBS

‘Reborn’ a heroic but
unnecessary effort

By DREW MARON

Daily Arts Writer

“Heroes” returns to televi-

sion for the first time in six
years with the 13-part mini-
series
“Heroes:
Reborn.”
Instead of
re-intro-
ducing
viewers
to
the

world
of

“Heroes,”
however,
“Reborn”
settles for
making the
same mistakes as its predeces-
sor.

The story picks up sev-

eral years after the events of
“Heroes.” In the years since
the events of the fourth season,
those with powers (now called
“Evos”) have revealed them-
selves to a world that has come
to fear them. It’s a concept
we’ve seen thousands of times
in comics, television, and film,
and “Reborn” doesn’t improve
on or reinvent what “X-Men”
and “True Blood” already
accomplished years ago.

That
being
said,
the

series
opening
did
seem

like an interesting place to
start for fans: the absolute
destruction of the Primatech
building. The fatal incident
occurs
at
the
beginning

when,
during
a
peace

rally held by the reformed
Primatech,
an
explosion

levels
Odessa.
Hundreds

are killed, including Claire
Bennet
(Hayden
Panettiere,

“Nashville”), or so we’re told.
Mohinder
Suresh
(Sendhil

Ramamurthy, “Covert Affairs”)
has
claimed
responsibility,

and things are becoming less
and less like we remember
them:
invulnerable
Claire

dies in explosion? Flawed but
ultimately noble Mohinder is a
terrorist? The surprises with
known characters were one
of the more welcome aspects
of “Reborn,” however, killing
the Haitian, one of the best
characters of the series, seems
like the wrong move.

Another unfortunate aspect

of the series is that like the

original
“Reborn”
lacks
a

cohesive storyline. Instead,
the show gives its audience
misappropriated,
unwanted

new characters that confuse
and use unearned melodrama
in a way that devalues its
already questionable status as
a serious television drama.

The end product is a show

that
frustrates
fans
and

newcomers alike, falling apart
long before it even comes
together.

The attempts to combine

superhero tropes with social
commentary in the Carlos (Ryan
Guzman, “Step Up”) storyline
is admirable and at least at the
moment, the most interesting
of the series’ additions. Creator
Tim
Kring
(“Heroes”)
and

his fellow writers should be
applauded for giving us a Latino
superhero, and Carlos, a non-
Evo, could prove a fascinating
answer to this world’s Batman.

The other storylines are less

fruitful, to say the least. Tommy
(Robbie Kay, “Once Upon A
Time”) does feel pleasantly
old-fashioned, something like
an homage to the teen angst
of classic Spiderman comics.

Unfortunately, his home and
high school life feel much less
fleshed out than Claire’s did
back in 2006.

We’re also introduced to

Luke (Zachary Levi, “Thor: The
Dark World”) and Joanna (Judi
Shekoni,
“Backstrom”)
who

lost their son in Odessa and are
now indiscriminately killing
every Evo they can find. It’s an
incredibly disturbing story and
one that does create interesting
and
darkly
understandable

villains, but it seems like we
needed more than just a lost
son before having the couple go
full-on “Natural Born Killers.”

But the single biggest sin has

to be the Kiko story. Her power,
the ability to transport between
the real world and a video
game, is a cool idea, if it had
been done right. Unfortunately,
here
it
just
feels
out
of

place,
under-developed,
and

incredibly cartoonish in a show
whose melodrama constantly
undermines its aims at making
quality drama.

We
seem
to
have
an

unquenchable
desire
for

superheroes.
There
is

undeniable evidence in comics,
film, and television that the
genre can sustain a certain
level of prestige. “Marvel’s
Daredevil,” for instance, proved
to have more in common with
“The French Connection” than
the city-destroying madness
and pretentiousness of “Man
of Steel.” “Reborn,” however,
falls far below the genre’s best,
making the return of “Heroes”
feel
neither
deserved
nor

needed.

C-

Heroes:
Reborn

Series Pre-
miere

Thursdays at 8 p.m

NBC.

John Hughes and the
value of teen movies

TV REVIEW
HAMILTON
From Page 1B

CBS

Life moves pretty fast.

NBC

You either die a hero, or you live long enough to become a bad show.

FILM NOTEBOOK

We have an

unquenchable
desire for the
superfluous.

Lovelorn?
Need nurturing?

Write to Gilian for a Cultural Cure and your
question may be published in her column!

e-mail her at

deargilian@michigandaily.com

TV REVIEW