4B — Thursday, February 25, 2016
the b-side
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

By ALEX INTNER

Daily Arts Writer

The musical TV genre has 

experienced a massive creative 
growth recently. The relaunch of 
the genre started out with “Glee” 
in 2009, which used pop songs 
to tell its story. The show was a 
massive success for FOX in its 
first season, but it never really 
found an ability to tell its story 
through song. Then “Smash” 
arrived onto the scene, bringing 
in a mix of contemporary pop 
and original content. The show 
was touted as the next big hit by 
NBC when it premiered, but it 
never connected with the public, 
not lasting past its second season. 
Then along came “Galavant” and 
“Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” which 
have tiny viewerships, but are 
two of the best out there right 
now.

This leads to the question: 

is there something inherently 
limiting, from an audience per-
spective, about musical television 
shows? If so, that’s really disap-
pointing, because both “Gala-
vant” and “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” 
are brilliantly inventive, using 
their songs to tell their story in 
new ways.

Something astonishing hap-

pened during the second season 
of “Galavant.” The show elevated 
itself from a cheap musical I’d 
watch out of respect for the 
format to something fun and 
unique. Most of that change 
came from the music itself. In the 
first season, the songs told jokes, 
but they didn’t lead anywhere 
for the stories or the characters. 
Composer Alan Menken (who 
wrote the music for many of 
Disney’s ’90s musicals) expanded 
the scope of the songs, using 
them to address both humor and 
character growth. In the second 
season, the show lost its fear of 
advancing its characters through 
song. A moment in the show’s 
finale comes to mind. King 
Richard (Timothy Omundson, 
“Psych”) meets his “inner-child” 

in a song addressing his hopes 
and fears. He sings: “Will my 
star ever rise? / Will my life ever 
change? / Am I destined to be 
achievement-free forever?” This 
type of self-reflection through 
song is something the show 
would never have attempted in 
its first season, and shows a lot of 
growth on the show’s part.

Some of the songs end up 

in full-fledged parody. A song 
where Galavant (Joshua Sasse, 
“The Neighbors”) tries to set the 
mood for a date between Richard 
and Roberta (Clare Foster, “The 
Bill”) reminds me of a classic 
“Little Mermaid” tune, though 
its refrain of “Maybe you won’t 
die alone” is slightly different 
from “Kiss the Girl.” And one 
scene involving Richard and 
Roberta sharing the story of first 
sexual encounter to their zombie 
army features a similar tune to 
“Grease” ’s “Summer Nights,” 
complete with zombie grunts 
filling for in for the greasers’ 
responses.

“Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” is also 

pushing the musical-comedy 
boundary, using music to deal 
with some of the show’s deeper 
themes surrounding mental ill-
ness. During the series, there are 
a few moments where Rebecca 
(Rachel Bloom, “Fuck Me Ray 
Bradbury”), the show’s main 
character who moves to West 
Covina, CA to follow her former 
summer-camp boyfriend Josh 
Chan (Vincent Rodriguez III, 
“Hostages”), is upset because of 
something Josh did, and each of 
these moments features a song. 
The first, “Sexy French Depres-
sion,” puts Rebecca’s feelings 
front and center with a scene that 
uses berets and a black and white 
aesthetic. The second, from the 
latest episode, when Rebecca’s 
lies catch up to her and push Josh 
away, features Rebecca singing 
“You ruined everything, you 
stupid bitch / You’re just a lying 
little bitch who ruins things and 
wants the world to burn.” It’s 
heartbreaking to watch her bash 

herself like this, but it’s a beauti-
ful way to illustrate the impact of 
the moment.

“Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” also 

does something the best musi-
cals do: use its music to address 
character relationships. In a 
scene from earlier in the season, 
Josh addresses Rebecca after a 
moment of contention between 
her and the rest of the group, and 
the two share a reprise of “West 
Covina” where the two affirm 
their friendship. It’s a moment 
that only a musical could do, put-
ting two voices in tight harmony.

But I don’t want to discount 

the success of live musical 
broadcasts from NBC and FOX, 
which have been big fat hits for 
the networks, and pretty damn 
good as well. Those events are 
better able to draw an audience 
because the networks can push 
them as happening live. They 
also utilize big industry names 
who probably wouldn’t commit 
to a full series.

Still, despite all the warm 

critical reception of these new 
musicals, neither of the continu-
ing series is likely to see another 
year. “Galavant” ’s big supporter, 
Paul Lee, was just fired from 
his position as ABC’s President 
of Entertainment, and the rat-
ings for its recent run were just 
abysmal. And less than a million 
people watched the premiere 
of “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend,” with 
little growth in DVR views. That 
signifies one of two things: either 
viewers didn’t find the show or 
just outright rejected it.

That’s such a sad thing for me. 

People will watch the live broad-
casts of known musicals, but they 
either can’t find or won’t watch 
the weekly series. This is an 
unfortunate situation, because 
both the shows are using songs 
to tell stories in ways that other 
series just can’t. They’re explor-
ing new ways of advancing story 
and character through their orig-
inal music, and it’s a shame that 
they probably won’t be able to tell 
these stories for much longer.

TV NOTEBOOK

EPISODE REVIEW

This season of “Shameless” 

launches the Gallagher family 
into new 
territory. 
The family’s 
dynamic has 
always been 
at the core of 
the show, but 
it approaches 
a turning 
point now 
that the kids 
are grown 
up (with 
the exception of Liam). Fiona 
(Emmy Rossum, “The Day After 
Tomorrow”) must cope with 
her siblings’ resistance to being 
told what to do, and she seems to 
lose her sense of purpose in the 
transition.

The episode “Pimp’s 

Paradise” shows the calm before 
the storm. After getting evicted 
when their house is foreclosed, 
the Gallaghers navigate a series 
of hurdles to regain ownership of 
their home. They hope to return 
to a sense of normalcy, when 
their lives aren’t getting torn 
apart by drugs, jail or romantic 
strife.

This is normalcy for the 

Gallaghers: Liam getting 
lice, Debbie (Emma Kenney, 
“Epic”) seducing her employer 
recovering from cancer, 
Lip (Jeremy Allen White, 
“Afterschool”) getting his 
professor fired after nude 
pictures of her are leaked from 
his phone and Carl (Ethan 
Cutosky, “The Unborn”) using 
his (likely) drug money to pimp 
out their house with a slide and 
DJ booth.

As the family’s individual 

subplots drift further apart 

from one another, the episode 
struggles to reincorporate the 
driving element of the show’s 
drama: Frank (William H. Macy, 
“Fargo”), the only character 
who never changes. His attempt 
to reclaim his status as head of 
the household prompts Fiona to 
throw in the towel and move in 
with Sean (Dermot Mulroney, 
“The Grey”). With Fiona’s 
history of doomed relationships 
and Frank’s pattern of flighty 
opportunism, another upheaval 
is bound to hit soon.

- SHIR AVINADAV

SHOWTIME

B-

Shameless

Season 6, 
Episode 7

Sundays 
at 9 p.m.

Showtime

TV musicals and you

D

ear Gillian,

Sometimes it feels 

like 
I’m 
constantly 

‘looking for love.’ However, I have 
lost 
sight 

of 
what 

that truly 
means. In 
this 
day 

filled with 
Tinder, 
hookup 
culture 
and 
increased 
sexuality, 
how 
can 

I look for 
love with all this sex in the way? 
Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t 
turn down the opportunity for 
sex but I often feels like it gets in 
the way of finding a relationship. 
I’ve never been good at finding 
the love part, and the sex part 
just seems to complicate it for 
me. I desire both but one seems 
like an immediate gratification 
and the other seems like exit 
out of a long complicated maze. 
Please send me advice on how to 
navigate between desire for sex 
and longing for love. Are they 
mutually exclusive? Is it possible 
to be on the hunt for sex and find 
love along the way? Or do I have 
this whole thing upside down? 
Please help.

— Lovelorn and Lonely
Dear Lovelorn and Lonely,
People 
have 
been 
sitting 

around musing on the topic of 
what love and sex do to and for 
each other since Eryximachus 
proposed that for the post-
feast entertainment in Plato’s 
“Symposium,” everyone should 
belt out a little oration in praise 
of Eros, the god of love. This 
wine-fueled series of exegeses 
on the subject yielded some 
thought-provoking 
opinions 

that have stood the test of time. 
But they were so wide-ranging 
that the only conclusion from 
them is that there is no coherent 
consensus on the topic, one 
which is destined to dominate 
everyone’s little black book of 
eternal mysteries of human 
existence.

Plato — well, the words of the 

prophetess 
Diotima 
through 

Socrates’ speech — posits that 
the erotic desire of romantic 
love cannot be satisfied by sex 
and is really an existential 
yearning to transcend our own 
beings and mortality. Exactly 
what you have in mind every 
time you bring someone home, 
right?

Then there’s Aristophanes’ 

creation myth of primordial 
beings with two bodies in one 
before they were split in half 
by the gods, leaving a world 
of “individuals” trying to fuse 
back together with their other 
halves. This stands now, 2500 

years later, as not only one of 
the most striking metaphors on 
the topic, but also as a bountiful 
source of pickup lines at Rick’s. 

The mystery was not solved 

by Xenophon’s response to Plato 
(also titled “Symposium”), nor 
in the many Symposia since. 
Heaven knows that in the 
Symposium held at my house 
last year featuring History Prof. 
David Halperin’s students in 
togas, the love/sex mystery was 
hopelessly 
compounded 
and 

shrouded in a dense enigmatic 
fog that, for many of us, has yet 
to lift.

A 
little 
later, 
Aristotle 

maintains 
in 
his 
“Prior 

Analytics” that erotic desire is 
actually more a desire for love 
than it is a desire for sexual 
intercourse. 
If 
Aristotle’s 

on to something and love is 
actually the aim of sex, why is 
it often so detached and void of 
emotion or commitment? And if 
it’s not for love, what is it for? 
That’s the question Halperin 
will take up in a forthcoming 
article “What is Sex For?” in 
which he will attempt to tie this 
Aristotelian paradox into the 
no-less-mysterious topics of gay 
bathhouses and Adele.

Since figuring out what sex is 

for seems doomed, do we have 
a better chance with love? We 
turn to essayist Susan Sontag, 
who managed to demystify the 
art of photography and then 
took on the question what is 
love for. “We ask everything of 
love. We ask it to be anarchic. 
We ask it to be the glue that 
holds the family together, that 
allows society to be orderly 
and allows all kinds of material 
processes to be transmitted 
from one generation to another. 
But I think that the connection 
between love and sex is very 
mysterious.” 
Thanks 
a 
lot. 

Sontag 
continues: 
“Part 
of 

the modern ideology of love 
is to assume that love and sex 
always go together. They can, 
I suppose, but I think rather 
to the detriment of either one 
or the other. And probably the 
greatest problem for human 
beings is that they just don’t.” 
Well, Lovelorn, at least you’re in 
good company.

But 
let’s 
move 
up 
from 

philosophy and intellectualism 
to the arts, which, I believe, 
are better at eternal mysteries. 
There’s a film from 1971 called 
“Carnal 
Knowledge,” 
from 

the Jules Feiffer novel, in 
which Jack Nicholson and Art 
Garfunkel meet as freshmen 
roommates at Amherst. In terms 
of your letter, LL, Nicholson’s 
character can be said to be sex 
and Garfunkel’s, love. The film 
follows them through their 
lives, and although there are 
many lovely insights and some 

great lines, by the end, the 
question of which one fared 
better is … you guessed it, a 
mystery.

Some have weighed in on the 

relative merits of love and sex, 
elevating one above the other. 
 

Plato and Aristotle saw love as 
the higher pursuit. Freud saw 
sex is primary, driving virtually 
everything we do, and love as 
just one of many constructs we 
use to get more sex. In her novel 
“Love,” Toni Morrison explored 
infatuation, a kind of half-sex-
half-love minotaur:

“Do 
they 
still 
call 
it 

infatuation? That magic ax that 
chops away the world in one 
blow, leaving only the couple 
standing 
there 
trembling? 

Whatever they call it, it leaps 
over anything, takes the biggest 
chair, the largest slice, rules 
the ground wherever it walks, 
from a mansion to a swamp, and 
its selfishness is its beauty ... 
People with no imagination feed 
it with sex — the clown of love. 
They don’t know the real kinds, 
the better kinds, where losses 
are cut and everybody benefits. 
It takes a certain intelligence to 
love like that — softly, without 
props.”

Looking at history, I don’t 

think our world of dating sites, 
apps and i-things has yielded 
an era of more sex and less love. 
But I do think they have made 
finding and losing sex and love 
more impersonal and reduced 
our accountability for how we 
carry ourselves in doing so. 
This may be pushing sex and 
romantic love further from each 
other and I think this is what 
you are sensing, Lovelorn.

Yet there’s no correct recipe 

for finding genuine love, as 
Stendahl illustrates in his novel 
“The Red and the Black,” which 
locates love in the spontaneity 
of the moment and not the 
strategic love games of jealousy, 
drama and roles.

So 
with 
no 
formula 
or 

equation for solving for love 
with the variable of sex, I hope 
I’ve been able to prove you are 
not alone in feeling your way 
through the complicated maze 
of yours. No, the two pursuits 
are not mutually exclusive, but 
no one’s been able to calculate a 
correlation coefficient.

Send an email to deargillian@

michigandaily.com or anonymously 

here describing a quandary about 

love, relationships, existence or 

their opposites. Gillian will attempt 

to summon the wisdom of the arts 

(literary, visual, performing) to 

soothe your troubled soul. We may 

publish your letter in the biweekly 

column with your first name (or 

penname). Submissions should 

be 250 words or fewer and may 

be edited prior to publication.

CULTURAL CURES COLUMN

I’m looking for love, 
but just finding sex

GILLIAN 

JAKAB

By RACHEL RICHARDSON

Daily Arts Writer

During 
the 
classical 
film 

era, theorists grappled over 
the importance of shooting on 
location. Those who encouraged 
it claimed that it evoked a layer 
of depth unmatched by the 
sentiments the actors produced 
when recording on a sound stage. 
This was extremely critical for 
“Rome, Open City,” where the 
suffering emitted by the people 
lining the decimated streets of 
Italy constantly reminded the 
actors of the brokenness their 
characters felt and enhanced the 
emotional authenticity. Others 
argued that it didn’t matter 
where the film was shot as long 
as the director could convince 
his audience that the story took 
place in the exact location that 
he told them it did. Nowadays, 
few directors prioritize filming 
on-site, as audiences willingly 
accept 
the 
idea 
of 
feigned 

locations.

To 
disguise 
one 
city 
as 

another, 
directors 
carefully 

select 
indistinguishable 
areas 

to shoot their films in addition 
to 
employing 
other 
creative 

techniques. For example, “The 
5th Wave” is set in Cincinnati, 
Ohio, yet it was shot in Macon, 
Georgia 
though 
it’s 
almost 

impossible to tell since the tall 
trees and dirt covered ground 
make 
the 
woodland 
setting 

appear like the forest you’d 
expect to see in Ohio. There’s also 
a clever shot of a sign indicating 
how many miles the heroine 
must travel until she reaches 
the Wright-Patterson Air Force 
Base, which is located in Dayton, 
Ohio. So, although the movie 
itself was far from believable, I 
was thoroughly convinced that 
the action happened in the exact 
location that I was informed it 
did. 

However, for Ohio residents, 

this effect may not have been 
achieved. To locals, it doesn’t 
matter how average the forest, or 
how many cutaways to city limit 
signs the director uses, they will 
always be able to discern that it’s 
their city. My familiarity with 
Grand 
Rapids 
unfortunately 

led to a state of temporarily 
disillusionment. 
I 
vividly 

remember the morning I learned 
that Jessie Eisenberg and Jason 
Segel were downtown shooting 
“The End of the Tour.” In that 
moment, I felt a sense of pride 
knowing that my hometown was 
going to be featured on the big 
screen. Sadly, this exhilaration 
subsided once I actually watched 
the film.

Initially, 
it 
was 
exciting 

to hear the little voice in my 
head 
exclaim 
“I’ve 
walked 

past that” (the office building 
at 50 Monroe Avenue), “I’ve 
seen 
that 
restaurant,” 
“I’ve 

driven on that stretch of I-196” 

and “I think I’ve actually been 
inside that building.” But, this 
also emphasized that the story 
isn’t 
actually 
unfolding 
in 

Bloomington, Illinois. Now this is 
not to say that I didn’t thoroughly 
enjoy “The End of the Tour,” just 
that I became frustrated with its 
lack of genuineness.

With a much bigger production, 

“Batman V Superman: Dawn 
of Justice,” having been shot in 
Detroit, it will be interesting to 
see if Michiganders will notice 
any familiar buildings or streets. 
Typically, 
the 
background 

tends to lose its significance 
in films dominated by special 
effects, 
computer 
graphics 

and 
fight 
scenes 
whereas 

in 
calmer, 
narrative-driven 

features such as “Tour,” the 
characters’ interaction with their 
environment is salient.

While in the early days of 

cinema, all elements equally 
determined a film’s success, 
contemporary 
Hollywood 

heavily depends on acting and 
post production work. Audiences 
have come to rely on movies for 
a 
complete 
manipulation 
of 

reality, not a beautiful recreation 
of it. Thus, the importance 
of 
on-location 
shooting 
has 

sadly 
diminished. 
But 
this 

strategy cannot be completely 
neglected, especially when its 
absence can prevent the viewer 
from 
completely 
engrossing 

themselves in the film.

FILM NOTEBOOK

Location, location ...

WARNER BROS.

“The People Mover is even worse than I thought.”

