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Thursday, May 12, 2016
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
ARTS
TV REVIEW
‘Boxes’ resorts
to tried and true
By SOPHIA KAUFMAN
Daily Arts Writer
The most played song on my
iTunes library in 10th grade was
probably The Goo Goo Dolls’s
“Slide”
from
Dizzy Up the Girl
in 1998. It was
the
song
that
first introduced
me to the band.
I fell in love
with the guitar
rhythm
that
felt weightless,
a
cascading
opening melody
and lyrics that, as cheesy as it
sounds, hurt to listen to — just the
way songs do when they ring true.
The Goo Goo Dolls’s latest
album, Boxes, doesn’t feature
anything as poignant or tightly
crafted as some of their previous
work, but that doesn’t make it any
less pleasant to listen to. Boxes
reveals a more mellow side to
the group. As always, frontman
John Rzeznik’s voice adds a bit of
texture to the song’s sentiments
without pulling focus from the
song as a whole — which is almost
always a good thing.
However, the album’s first
song, “Over and Over,” feels
bizarrely too young for this
album and The Goo Goo Dolls
as a group. It would be the kind
of fun mindless track you forget
you’re actually listening to until it
stops, if it weren’t for the chirpy
chorus of “Turn it up!” This kind
of chirpiness works better later on
in a light, dancing piano melody in
the song “So Alive.” “Souls in the
Machine,” which follows it, picks
up the pace a little bit; it feels like
the antithesis to something like
Pink Floyd’s “Brick in the Wall.”
When the chorus of “Flood”
hits, it’s more gentle than you
expect, making it much more
pleasant
and
somehow
more
subtle, despite its obvious love-
song-like
quality.
“The
Pin”
and “Boxes” deal with the less
passionate parts of a love story:
with the comfort and safety that
comes with a love that feels like a
home. The first lyrics of “Free of
Me” — and the way they’re sung
in an ever-so-slightly petulant
tone — sound unusually similar
to Simple Plan. The next two
songs, “Reverse” and “Prayer
in My Pocket” follow suit. The
beginning of “Lucky One” sounds
like a mashup between a Taylor
Swift and a Sam Smith song (I
promise, it’s true). “Long Way
Home,” the final song on the
album, includes a sprightly piano
sequence, emphatic drum beats
and a familiar return to home — a
warm way to round out the album.
Boxes is, more than anything,
comfortable.
The
Goo
Goo
Dolls fall back on safe melodies,
unsurprising beats and lyrics
that feel like they could have
come from an Imagine Dragons
or One Republic album. The
amount of repetition and the
similarity of styles to other artists
in the album stand out. It feels
slightly been there, done that
— nothing like the freshness of
songs like “Slide,” “Iris,” “Black
Balloon”
or
dancing-in-the-
rain kind of hits like “Rebel
Beat” or “Last Hot Night.” The
sentiments are comfortable and
comforting in their familiarity,
but they don’t make me laugh
or cry or do anything other
than find comparisons to other
songs. Nothing sticks with me,
which is slightly disappointing
— especially considering that
“Slide” is probably still within
the top ten of my iTunes, even
five years after I’d heard those
opening four measures.
B
Boxes
The Goo
Goo Dolls
Warner Bros.
Records
‘Good’ finale dismays
“Good Wife” finale
fails to properly honor
series.
By ALEX INTNER
Summer Managing Arts Editor
“The Good Wife” said goodbye
after seven seasons with an epi-
sode that didn’t take much time
to
celebrate
the show, its
characters
or
anything
that made it
great. Instead,
for better or
worse, it put
the focus on
closing
the
story arc of the
past
several
episodes. To me, that’s a damn
shame. Over the course of its
remarkable, yet imperfect seven-
year run, this show built a stable
of characters who deserved more
appreciation than a plot-based
finale like this one allows. The
finale didn’t do as much as it could
or should have to show off what
made “The Good Wife” so fun to
watch and exciting at its peak.
The main focus of the series
finale is the conclusion of Peter
Florrick’s (Chris Noth, “Sex and
the City”) trial for deliberately
setting free the son of a major
donor while he was the Illinois
State’s Attorney. The trial has
been ongoing for several episodes,
and it seems like an odd way to
spend the final episode. The key
source of drama is Alicia Florrick
(Julianna Margulies, “ER”) and
Diane Lockhart (Christine Baran-
ski, “Chicago”), Peter’s lawyers,
trying to find some way to present
new evidence to the jury, think-
ing it might help their case. The
story meanders along through
the episode, as writers Robert
and Michelle King (“In Justice”)
somehow find a way to add more
twists than were already done in
earlier episodes. While it was nice
to return to the courtroom, there
wasn’t enough here to justify
spending a substantial chunk of
the series finale on a boring, epi-
sodic storyline like this.
Where the finale did look back
on its run was in its moments
between Alicia and Will Gardner
(Josh Charles, “Sports Night”).
Alicia, questioning whether she
wants to choose Peter or Jason
Crouse (Jeffrey Dean Morgan,
“The Walking Dead”), ends up
fantasizing conversations with
her former lover, Gardner. In
these fantasies she makes realiza-
tions about her case, but she also
talks to him about their relation-
ship and the law they practiced.
Until Charles left in the middle of
the fifth season, Will and Alicia’s
connection was one of the cor-
nerstones of the show, so to have
them together again onscreen
made of a highlight of the episode,
especially because it allowed the
finale to actually look back on the
series’s run.
The oddest choice of the entire
episode occurs in the final scene,
where “The Good Wife” ends on a
moment of bitterness. After Alicia
stands by her husband through
his resignation announcement,
she runs offstage thinking she
saw Jason in the doorway. It turns
out not to be him, but as she turns
to walk back to the stage, Diane
walks by and slaps her across the
face for revealing Diane’s hus-
band’s affair in courtroom testi-
mony, and Alicia is left alone. So,
“The Good Wife” ends with a slap.
It’s a bitter and angry choice by
the Kings. Though there’s no need
to artificially insert a happy end-
ing, at the beginning of the finale,
Alicia and Diane are at a point of
mutual respect, trying to build an
all-female law firm. The episode
had to work to get the characters
to a point of tension like this, and
the legwork just wasn’t there to
support this final twist.
That kind of artificial charac-
ter work shows what was miss-
ing from this finale, the authentic
drama that made the series great
in the first place. When “The
Good Wife” was at its peak, the
story twisted and turned in new
and surprising ways, without ever
feeling like it was too much or too
crazy. Each scene flamed with
tension or crackled with energy
as the cast members bounced off
one another. The series would
always go 10 or 15 minutes before
cutting to a commerical, often
using the time to build and build
to the point where I forgot there
were even breaks to take. Never
was this more true than in season
five. I’m rewatching the opening
of the episode “Hitting the Fan”
as I write this, and watching Will
confront Alicia about her plan to
leave the firm … the feelings of
betrayal are palpable. Something
the finale sorely lacked was this
dramatic tension, or any kind of
character-based payoff like “Hit-
ting the Fan” had.
Some of the credit for “The
Good Wife” remaining so good for
so long belongs to this fantastic
ensemble, in which each member,
from Margulies at the top to guest
stars at the bottom, crafted well-
rounded characters with poise
and skill. I will always remember
the series for taking advantage of
New York City’s long list of actors,
bringing in everyone from Broad-
way stars Baranski and Alan Cum-
ming (“Tin Man”) in series regular
roles, to actors like Martha Plimp-
ton (“Raising Hope”), Michael J.
Fox (“The Michael J. Fox Show”),
Carrie Preston (“True Blood”),
who is probably my favorite of
the show’s guest stars as Elsbeth
Tascioni, and David Hyde Pierce
(“Frasier”). That barely scratches
the surface of the deep roster of
talent this series employed. (In
fact, the finale also pissed me off
by completely wasting an appear-
ance from “Bunheads” star Sutton
Foster, who was barely onscreen
at all).
“The Good Wife” also repre-
sents a faded breed of network
drama, one that tells a serialized
story over the course of 22 epi-
sodes. The broadcast business
model is changing — to the point
where some shows don’t need to
reach the traditional 100 hours
to become successful. In fact,
Margulies has said that nothing
would convince her to do another
22-episodes-per-season network
drama. For me, there’s still value
in a show that can maintain its
story over this many hours, and, if
the industry goes towards shorter
seasons as predicted, “The Good
Wife” will go down in history
as one of the last carriers of that
torch.
I may have had problems with
elements of the final season and
how “The Good Wife” spent its
time in the final episode, but I
will dearly miss the drama. Over
its seven-year run, it gave the
television landscape fascinating
legal cases, beautiful character
moments and brilliant dramatic
payoffs that few on network tele-
vision have come close to match-
ing.
WARNER BROS. RECORDS
Drums are cool, apparently.
MUSIC REVIEW
B
The Good
Wife
Series Finale
Sunday at 9 p.m.
CBS