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Arts
Tuesday, December 1, 2015 — 5

TV REVIEW
‘Dead’ disappoints

Mid-season finale 
of AMC series is its 

worst yet

By BEN ROSENSTOCK

Daily Arts Writer

The concept of a “mid-season 

finale” has traditionally been 
helpful for “The Walking Dead,” 
a show primar-
ily made up of 
eight-episode 
arcs. 
Each 

mid-season 
finale since the 
third 
season 

has featured a 
game-changing 
moment; while 
the third sea-
son left us won-
dering whether 
Darryl 
(Nor-

man 
Reedus, 

“Sky”) or Merle (Michael Rook-
er, “Henry: Portrait of a Serial 
Killer”) would survive their bat-
tle to the death, the fourth and 
fifth mid-season finales killed 
off main characters and scat-
tered the show’s characters to 
the wind, with no destination in 
sight.

As this season began to 

unfold, it quickly became clear 
that 
the 
entire 
half-season 

would take place over a com-
pressed time rate, only a few 
days. That was an appeal-
ing idea, especially because it 
would allow the show to tell a 
self-contained arc with a great-
er sense of immediacy. Unfor-
tunately, there’s hardly any 
urgency to be found in “Start 
to Finish,” the show’s weakest 
mid-season finale yet. There’s 
no real cliffhanger in the end; 
the story simply stops in the 
middle of what it’s doing, letting 
us wonder for a couple months 
what the outcome of the cur-
rent big zombie battle will be. 
As a structural experiment, the 
time compression of the sixth 
season has failed, resulting in a 
four-episode stretch of boring 
episodes without even a finale 
to coax the season back to life.

The episode either delays or 

entirely eschews all the big out-
comes viewers were waiting for: 

a fatal confrontation between 
Carl (Chandler Riggs, “Mercy”) 
and 
Ron 
(Austin 
Abrams, 

“Paper Towns”), the emotional 
reunion of Glenn (Steven Yeun, 
“I Origins”) and Maggie (Lauren 
Cohan, “The Vampire Diaries”), 
the reveal of the identity of the 
person pleading for help over the 
radio and the arrival of Darryl, 
Sasha (Sonequa Martin-Green, 
“Once Upon A Time”) and Abra-
ham (Michael Cudlitz, “South-
land”). Most notably, though, the 
massive zombie attack, instead 
of delivering a surge of action 
and high stakes, is presented as 
a minor background nuisance 
throughout the episode.

The episode, at least, isn’t as 

bad as the season’s worst install-
ment, “Now.” There are inter-
esting threads here. Deanna’s 
(Tovah Feldshuh, “Holocaust”) 
death is appropriately heroic as 
she finally musters up the cour-
age to fight back against the 
walkers, and her final conver-
sation with Michonne (Danai 
Gurira, “Mother of George”) 
hopefully promises a bigger 
role for the latter after a half-
season that has largely ignored 
her. Carol (Melissa McBride, 
“The Reconstruction of Wil-
liam Zero”) and Morgan (Len-
nie James, “Low Winter Sun”), 
the most compelling characters 
of the show, have a fun fight 
based on their disagreement 
over whether to keep their mur-
derous prisoner alive.

Still, even these two theo-

retically compelling subplots 
are marred by old issues and 
new frustrating developments. 
Deanna’s death doesn’t have 
nearly as much impact as it 
would last season, since she has 
spent most of this season in a dull 
PTSD-induced stupor, staring 
blankly at the walkers threat-
ening to kill her and repeatedly 
being saved by Rick (Andrew 

Lincoln, “Love Actually”). And 
while Carol and Morgan’s fight 
would typically be fascinat-
ing, it feels petty amid a mas-
sive zombie attack. Their fight 
also ends in a painfully predict-
able manner, with the prisoner 
escaping. This development in 
particular is frustrating because 
it proves Carol right in her mer-
ciless attitude toward prisoners. 
“The Walking Dead” is a show 
too often bogged down by pes-
simism and ruthlessness, which 
is why Morgan’s optimistic no-
killing policy is so refreshing 
this season. A character being 
justifiably merciful for a change 
would give the show a neces-
sary shock to the system, but the 
prisoner proving Morgan wrong 
only serves as another unneces-
sary reminder that the only way 
to survive is by being merciless.

The rest of the episode fea-

tures boring scenes of little 
consequence. Tara (Alanna Mas-
terson, “Men at Work”), Eugene 
(Josh McDermitt, “Retired at 
35”) and Rosita (Christian Ser-
ratos, “Ned’s Declassified School 
Survival Guide”) hide from the 
zombies for a while, then break 
out and fail to save Denise (Mer-
ritt Wever, “Nurse Jackie”) from 
being abducted by the escaped 
prisoner. There’s also a fight 
between Carl and Ron, foreshad-
owed by last episode’s falsely 
intense cliffhanger. If there was 
ever a real risk of Ron killing 
Carl, this fight could be thrill-
ing, but the pacing of the scene 
is listless and obligatory, as if 
everyone involved knows both 
annoying kids are going to make 
it out alive. Besides, in the wake 
of the kerfuffle with Glenn sur-
viving, the odds are against the 
main character’s son dying any-
time soon.

Though the sixth season of 

“The Walking Dead” started 
strong and featured some stand-
out episodes, the past four have 
seen it backsliding into stag-
nancy, recalling the weak early 
seasons. Hopefully the upcom-
ing second half of the season 
will use the comics’ deep well 
of story for some more consis-
tently fun episodes. But if the 
mid-season finale is any indica-
tor, there’s a long way to go to 
rebuild.

C+

The 
Walking 
Dead

Season 6 Mid-

season Finale 

AMC

Sundays at 9 p.m.

GENDER AND MEDIA COLUMN

Hamilton, Ruth & I
I

’ve been thinking a lot 
recently about history. 
How stories are told and 

repeated. How people become 
figures and figures become 
idols. How 
others are 
forgot-
ten, their 
lives only 
lived once 
in their 
own bod-
ies rather 
than in the 
memories of 
generations.

This newfound, morbid pre-

occupation with legacy? All due 
to one man: our least-appreci-
ated founding father, Alexan-
der Hamilton. Good ol’ Alex is 
the subject of a new Broadway 
musical that is breaking rev-
enue records and taking over 
Spotify accounts. “Hamilton” is 
a hip-hop opera composed by, 
written and starring buoyant 
auteur Lin-Manuel Miranda, 
creator of Tony-award-winning 
“In the Heights.” It tells Ham-
ilton’s incredible unsung story, 
from a young orphan living 
in the Caribbean, as George 
Washington’s aide de camp in 
the revolution, the creator of 
the Federalist Papers, the first 
Secretary of the Treasury (and 
creator of big bad Wall Street 
as we know it), to millions of 
other accomplishments, so 
much that Miranda has to rap 
in order to get them all out. It’s 
really, really good.

The final song of the musi-

cal, taking place after Hamil-
ton’s death, is a soft, wandering 
ballad sung by his ever-patient 
wife Eliza. “Who Lives, Who 
Dies, Who Tells Your Story,” 
is Eliza’s promise to continue 
working in her husband’s 
honor, so that he is never for-
gotten; it’s also Lin-Manuel’s 
attempt to remember the 
female voices in Hamilton’s 
life, those that Hamilton him-
self seemed to often forget.

“Hamilton” is unapolo-

getically the story of a man 
— a man who is brilliant, rash, 
tireless, selfish and ultimately 
vulnerable. And he is a man 
in a world ruled by men, sur-
rounded by male compatriots 

and adversaries. The women in 
his life are love interests; one a 
confidant, one a supporter, one 
a temptress. Lin-Manuel does 
what he can with the little his-
tory recorded of the women in 
Hamilton’s life, but ultimately 
what we know of them is only 
in reference to Hamilton. His-
tory doesn’t tell their story.

***
As I obsessively listened to 

“Hamilton,” I was also read-
ing Irin Carmon and Shana 
Knizhnik’s recent biography of 
Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Fueled 
by Tumblr public policy nerds, 
82-year-old Supreme Court 
Justice Ginsberg has become 
something of a celebrity over 
the past few years, most sig-
nificantly after a few blister-
ing dissents in conservative 
decisions made by the court. 
Notorious RBG, as the Internet 
calls her, is Millennial-famous 
now, but this octogenarian was 
badass long before we all were 
born.

This — this — was a story 

that needed to be told.

A woman who passed 

groundbreaking cases in equal 
rights for women and men 
when it came to family leave 
and employment discrimina-
tion, who intelligently (and 
presciently) argued against 
Roe v. Wade, believing that a 
woman’s right to choose was 
only secure when there wasn’t 
an opportunity for loopholes 
in the law. A woman who was 
only one of two other women 
in her class at Columbia Law, 
yet who graduated first in her 
class. A woman of whom her 
daughter once fondly spoke: 
“Mommy does the thinking, 
and daddy does the cooking.” 
A modern marvel, a winged 
herald.

It was thrilling to read about 

a woman who had shaped the 
country during my own life-
time. In the constant rebirth 
of a nation, she is in some ways 
a founding mother, helping 
develop a new system to foster 
our diverse, complex country. 
It was refreshing to read of 
her husband Marty’s constant 
support and deference to her 
intelligence and industrious-
ness. It was refreshing too, to 

see Marty, a wildly successful 
tax attorney in his own right, 
be discussed only in reference 
to Ruth. Because this was her 
story.

***
I sat in the movie theater, 

tears pooling into my woolen 
scarf, Mom holding my hand 
tight. “Brooklyn,” about a 
young Irish girl immigrating to 
the United States in the 1950s 
and starring the luminous 
Saorise Ronan, wasn’t an espe-
cially tragic movie. I wasn’t 
crying because of a great death 
or misfortune that had fallen 
upon Eilis, who was smart and 
scrappy and thriving.

I was crying because I was 

able to see myself in her story. 
While there have been many 
films created about those 
immigrating to the United 
States, this one is different. 
Eilis’ freckled face fills every 
frame of the film, as she says 
goodbye to her family, becomes 
seasick on the boat over and 
homesick once there, as she 
speaks in her meek brogue at 
the department store where she 
works. As she falls in love, and 
as she makes achingly difficult 
decisions. This is not a fam-
ily saga, nor even a two-sided 
romance. This is purely Eilis’s 
story.

Based on Colm Tóibín’s novel 

of the same name, “Brooklyn” 
is complete fiction. Eilis isn’t 
a Ruth, nor is she a Hamilton, 
real figures with real impacts 
on American history. In a 
world where the stories of the 
powerful are told most often, 
and men’s a large percentage 
of those, Eilis’s story is small. 
But as another young Irish girl 
(admittedly a few generations 
removed), who is soon moving 
thousands of miles away from 
her family, Eilis’s story beat 
more powerfully in my chest 
than Hamilton or Ginsburg’s 
triumphs ever could. And I’m 
goddamn grateful someone told 
it, because stories like Eilis’s 
are usually the ones we never 
get to hear.

Gadbois is waiting for a 

Notorious R.B.G. musicial. 

To pitch her, e-mail 

gadbnat@umich.edu.

NATALIE

GADBOIS

‘10 Bullets’ shows 
empathy for subjects

By SOPHIA KAUFMAN

Daily Arts Writer

After Michael Dunn, a white 

man, shot and killed Jordan Davis, 
a Black 17-year-old boy, in a gas 
station parking 
lot in Florida, 
Jordan’s father 
Ron 
received 

a 
text 
from 

Trayvon Mar-
tin’s 
father, 

welcoming 
him to a “club” 
that none of 
them 
wanted 

to be in.

The documentary “3 ½ Min-

utes, 10 Bullets,” directed by Marc 
Silver, (“Who is Dayani Cristal?”) 
chronicles the trial of Michael 
Dunn in 2012. Unlike the sev-
eral other recent cases involv-
ing young Black people killed by 
whites, there was no dispute over 
whether Dunn was guilty of kill-
ing Davis — which he did after 
asking Davis to turn that “thug 
music” down. Dunn’s defense 
relies on his insistence that under 
Florida’s stand-your-ground laws: 
He was in the right, as he thought 
Davis had a shotgun. But when 
Dunn’s then-fiancé Rhonda Rouer 
is cross-examined, she says, in a 
wavery voice, that Dunn had never 
told her anything about Davis hav-
ing a gun. No weapons of any kind 
were found in Davis’s car. At one 
point, we hear Dunn complaining 
to Rouer that he feels he’s being 
victim-blamed in the same way a 
scantily-clad woman might be.

Names like Trayvon Martin 

and Michael Brown are whis-
pered or shouted throughout 

this documentary as it rightly 
puts the trial in context of the 
exploding outrage over racial 
biases (whether conscious or 
subconscious) that play a part 
in the killings of Black people 
in America. For example, the 
documentary adds context by 
focusing on both the news cov-
erage of this trial as well as the 
trial itself. In light of recent 
events, this documentary feels 
more subtle and controlled in its 
representation of Dunn, when it 
could have very harshly thrown 
him into sharp relief. The doc-
umentary, 
though 
focusing 

heavily on how racial prejudice 
played into this tragic event and 
the subsequent trials, also dedi-
cates a substantial amount of 
time to the second-amendment 
rhetoric and discourse on gun 
laws that surrounded this case.

The documentary pulls on 

our emotions without cheapen-
ing its story; we see Jordan’s par-
ents crying at their table, trying 
to figure out how this could have 
happened five minutes from their 
home, when he was with a group 
of “good” boys.

Aside from the interviews 

with Jordan’s parents, the most 
riveting moments of the docu-
mentary are the interviews with 
Jordan’s friends, all young Black 
teenagers. They’re fully aware 
of the camera and the context 
in which they’re being inter-
viewed. They’re sad, but they’re 
not confused. They know why 
Dunn pulled out his gun, and 
why the first jury didn’t agree 
on a first-degree murder charge. 
They talk about the racial over-
tones of the shooting and the 

trial more than anyone else in 
the documentary does. One of 
Jordan’s friends says, shaking 
his head, “ ‘Thug’ is the new 
n-word.”

The documentary is uneven in 

its coverage of the first and sec-
ond trials, focusing more on the 
first, but the courtroom scenes 
are captivating. It ends with 
the fact that Dunn was given a 
life sentence without parole for 
murdering Jordan Davis and an 
additional 90 years for attempt-
ed murder of Leland Brunson, 
Tevin Thompson and Tommie 
Stornes, Jordan’s friends who 
were also in the car.

“3 ½ Minutes, 10 Bullets” 

isn’t exceptional in terms of 
aesthetic 
cinematography 
or 

directorial choices. The music 
sometimes feels out of place, and 
often the interview audio bites 
or recordings of phone calls are 
played over extraneous shots of 
cars driving on highways. But 
you get the feeling that the peo-
ple involved in making it really 
couldn’t care less about that. 
They know that what is impor-
tant is the story and the context 
in which this story unfortunate-
ly unfolded. 

TV REVIEW

A-

3 1/2 
Minutes, 
10 Bullets 

HBO

Pulling emotions 

without 

cheapening the 

story.

TV NOTEBOOK
Memories of Macy’s

By HAILEY MIDDLEBROOK

Daily Arts Writer

For 89 years, Thanksgiving 

morning has meant one thing: 
Macy’s 
Thanksgiving 
Day 

parade.

Rain or shine, it’s a tradition 

as holy as turkey, cranberry 
sauce, football and your drunk 
uncle’s political rants. Because 
whether you’re a 10-year-old kid 
or a senior home from college, 
watching the balloons in person 
on New York City’s Sixth Avenue 
or streaming it from NBC on 
a favorite sofa at home, you’re 
guaranteed to get a bit emotional 
when Santa Claus floats by for 
the grand finale.

And when Mariah Carey 

sings “All I Want for Christmas 
Is You” from atop a stack of 
Christmas presents, wearing a 
cherry-red ball gown and a fur 
shawl, you might just burst out 
in tears.

Needless to say, the parade 

is a Thanksgiving tradition that 
millions of Americans have 
adopted as their own. Though 
the famed march to Macy’s 
flagship store in New York City 
has shortened, condensed to 
just two and a half miles from 
the five-mile route of previous 
years, the parade continues to 
blow up bigger every year — no 
pun intended — and 2015 was no 
exception.

Hosted 
by 
Matt 
Lauer, 

Savannah Guthrie and Al Roker 
of NBC’s “Today” show, this 
year’s march brought the usual 
favorites: the long-legged New 
York City Rockettes, Snoopy and 
Woodstock, 
600 
plus-person 

dance crews, marching bands and 
that group of old geezers with 
bagpipes, all snaking through a 
crowd of three million spectators.

Different from previous years, 

however, was the not-so-subtle 
hint of heavy surveillance, a 
precaution taken in response to 
the recent bombings in Paris. 
The New York Times reported 
that close to 2,500 police officers 
lined the streets, both in uniform 
and undercover, watching for 
any suspicious activity amongst 
the crowd. Thankfully, like the 
unseasonably warm weather, the 
parade proceeded as perfectly as 
everyone hoped. The only glitch, 
according to the Times, was a 
41-year-old man who violated 
city code by flying a drone near 
Central Park. 

Drone aside, the air was filled 

with whimsy. Along with Snoopy, 
the oldest recurring balloon on 
display (appearing 38 times since 
being introduced in 1968), familiar 
friendly giants included Hello 
Kitty (introduced in 1976), Ronald 
McDonald 
(1987), 
Pokemon’s 

Pikachu 
(2001), 
Spongebob 

Squarepants (2004), “Adventure 
Time” ’s Finn and Jake (2013) 
and the Red Power Ranger (2014). 
New to the crew this year was 
Scrat, the lovable and frantic 
squirrel from “Ice Age,” who 
floated through the air clutching 
— what else? — his precious acorn. 
Red from the “Angry Birds” video 
game also flew for the first time, 
in anticipation of “The Angry 
Birds Movie” coming to theaters 
in May.

Hovering below the balloons 

was the real action: the musical 
performances and dance acts. For 
as much as I love a giant inflatable 
Spongebob, 
watching 
Panic! 

At the Disco (“I Write Sins Not 
Tragedies”) on a Teenage Mutant 
Ninja Turtles float is a bit more 
exciting.

In 
the 
past, 
Macy’s 
has 

attracted artists from across the 
country and across generations 
— from Hilary Duff (2003) and 

the Kidz Bop Kids (2012), to the 
Beach Boys (2005) and KISS 
(2014). Though almost everyone 
lip syncs, wearing microphones 
for show — parade acoustics are 
pretty terrible — the singing’s not 
the focal point.

Really, we’re all watching to 

see what float the stars arrive 
on and what holiday-chic outfit 
they’re sporting.

This year, Mariah Carey, the 

queen 
of 
Christmas 
herself, 

won 
best-dressed 
and 
best 

performance hands down. (I’m 
biased, I know, but it’s officially 
the holiday season after all!) 
Other strong showings were 
Jordin Sparks, who sang “Right 
Here Right Now” dressed in an 
on-point cranberry pea coat; 
Shawn Mendes, who performed 
“Stitches” 
while 
adorably 

steering a ship of kiddy pirates; 
and the “610 Stompers,” posing in 
short shorts and sweat bands like 
an army of “Juno”-era Michael 
Ceras, who killed a hilariously 
impressive step routine. Along 
with Panic! at the Disco, the 
Plain White T’s also appeared, 
giving us all some nostalgia for 
the 2000s.

But most deserving of praise 

was the troupe of spirited high 
school cheerleaders, dancers and 
marching band members who 
never stopped smiling, though 
they’d probably been locked 
in tight formation since 6 a.m. 
Props for doing your thing while 
the rest of us were in college-
induced comas. 

For me, Macy’s Thanksgiving 

Day 
parade 
isn’t 
so 
much 

entertainment as it is therapy, a 
nostalgic relief from the stress 
of the semester and a tradition 
that the whole family — drunk 
uncle included — can agree 
on. And that’s something to be 
thankful for. 

The show is 

backsliding into 

stagnancy.

