The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com Arts Monday, September 12, 2016 — 5A Question: What goes great with your morning coffee? Answer: michigandaily.com Classifieds Call: #734-418-4115 Email: dailydisplay@gmail.com ACROSS 1 Is blessed with, as talent 4 Creator of Finn and Sawyer 9 Leave rolling in the aisles 13 That, in Spain 14 “Olde” store 15 Ring over an angel 16 Crustacean catcher 18 Out of town 19 Intent 20 OB/GYN procedure 21 Hiding spot for a cheater’s ace 22 Put off bedtime 25 Weapon in Clue 27 Brewery product 30 “Defending our rights” org. 33 Electrified atoms 34 Scans for injured athletes, briefly 35 __ Mawr College 36 Piece of pizza 37 To-do list entry 38 Worse-than- one’s-bite quality 39 Online TV giant 40 Since, in a holiday song 41 Fifi’s friend 42 Slip for a tardy student 45 Like the Arctic, compared to most of the planet 47 Two-base hit 51 Debate issue 53 Illness characterized by a red rash 54 Soon, to a bard 55 Decorator’s wall prettifier 58 Subtle look 59 Lion groups 60 Former AT&T rival 61 Former fast planes 62 Unemotional 63 Bladed gardening tool DOWN 1 Makes a difference 2 “I won’t tell __!” 3 Buffalo hockey player 4 Title venue for Hemingway’s old man 5 Sported 6 Kindle download 7 Wall St. debut 8 Volleyball barrier 9 SeaWorld star 10 Backyard bash 11 Jai __ 12 String-around- your-finger toy 14 Cooking appliance 17 Explore caves 20 Sailor’s word of obedience 22 Information that ruins the ending 23 Costner/Russo golf film 24 Basilica recess 26 Water down 28 Bank claim 29 Salinger’s “With Love and Squalor” girl 30 Palindromic pop group 31 Study all night 32 Keats or Byron, e.g. 34 Pageant title with 51 contestants (the 50 states plus D.C.) 36 Roe source 42 Partners’ legal entity: Abbr. 43 Madison Ave. bigwig 44 Most TV “operas” 46 Sounds from sties 48 “Mutiny on the Bounty” captain 49 Slow movement 50 Perfumer Lauder 51 Four-note lights- out tune 52 Singles 53 Prefix with care 55 Collectors’ albums ... and a hint to six puzzle answers 56 Gallery collection 57 Chihuahua uncle By Brock Wilson ©2016 Tribune Content Agency, LLC 09/12/16 09/12/16 ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE: RELEASE DATE– Monday, September 12, 2016 Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis xwordeditor@aol.com SEEKING PSYCHOLOGY GRADU‑ ATE student with interest/experience in OCD/Tourette syndrome to work as a home companion for a 20 year old male. Located in Brighton, 16‑24 hours weekly for $16‑20/hour. Contact Patricia Cagnoli, MD at (810)986‑6468 or patriciacagnoli@gmail.com. 4 BEDROOM HOME at 945 Dewey available now.1 mi to campus. $2100/mo plus utilities. Call 734‑971‑2533 WWW.CARLSONPROPERTIES.‑ COM 734‑332‑6000 KERRYTOWN MARKET & SHOPS NOW HIRING part‑time janitorial/main‑ tenance employee. College student ideal. Starting at $12/hr. 10‑20 hrs/wk. 3:30p‑ 9p typically. Email preferred: karen@ kerrytown; can call 734‑662‑5008 for more information and applying. HELP WANTED FOR RENT By BEN ROSENSTOCK Daily TV Columnist In many ways, TV has an advantage over other forms of storytelling when it comes to real- ism. There’s something artificial about fitting a neat, well-defined character arc into a 90-minute movie, even in the best of them. TV, though, allows storytellers to take their time and show gradual character development over the course of many hours. But there are certain things that even TV can’t show, things so mundane or trivial that they just don’t make for good TV. There’s one glaring absence from TV in particular that sticks out to me, an abstract one: the constancy of emotion. There was a week or so this past June when I felt like shit. It was a weird funk I was in, one that I can’t boil down to one spe- cific thing. I was a bit jaded still about not having gotten a summer internship, and I wasn’t working as many hours as I wished I was, so I felt a little lonely and direc- tionless, like I was waiting for the fall to start for my life to resume. Aside from that, I’d thrown up that week at a party and had a pretty debilitating hangover the next day or two. So for a few days, I felt bad physically and bad mentally, like time was moving so slowly and I was stagnating. And it kind of occurred to me that that’s something movies, TV and even books rarely depict: sus- tained sadness, anxiety or loneli- ness. I guess showing the same character feeling the same emo- tion for a long, drawn-out period of time naturally doesn’t make for good storytelling. It’s not enter- taining, and after a while it just gets tedious and boring to watch the same character being sad, or angry, or whatever. It even makes them unlikable. If we see a char- acter never smiling, we’re less inclined to like them, even if they have good reasons for it. I think that TV ignores emo- tional constancy for another big reason, though: it’s easy to ignore in real life, too. In life, it’s easy to completely gloss over these long periods of time. In real life, some- body might say “For a few years I was really depressed,” and we comprehend what they mean, but we don’t truly get a sense for how constant and terrible that crush- ing feeling of darkness must be. I’ve never experienced clinical depression, so that doesn’t quite apply to me, but I know that it’s something more constant and relentless than I can conceive of. It’s just hard for us to comprehend feeling the same steady darkness for interminable lengths of time. In the past few years, TV has begun to tackle depression — often an inherently constant, unchanging experience — in new ways, finding a way to make it work narratively. “BoJack Horse- man,” “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” and “You’re the Worst” are all comedy series that have avoided becom- ing stagnant by showing how their protagonists’ mental illness impacts their relationships with others, and how they make strides to reach out and get the help they need. Yet few series depict the often mundane, boring reality of feel- ing like shit, whether it’s rooted in biological or human causes. No mainstream, accessible TV show depicts long periods of sobbing in grief, or sitting and staring out a window for hours at a time, won- dering where it all went wrong. Shows that do dwell on the same internal conflicts over and over tend to disappoint; the first half of this season of “Mr. Robot,” for example, has repeatedly shown Elliot (Rami Malek, “Short Term 12”) struggling to accept the spec- ter of his dead father (Christian Slater, “Heathers”) in his life. While it may be realistic to see him resisting so persistently, it makes for redundant viewing. This doesn’t only apply to nega- tive emotions, though. It can also apply to emotions like love. Think about all the great will-they- won’t-they relationships on TV and how many characters were caught up in years of unrequited love, years desiring another per- son and seeing them begin rela- tionships with other people. What about Jim (John Krasin- ski) from “The Office?” Remem- ber the night when Pam (Jenna Fischer) kissed Jim at Chili’s? From what I recall, the only reac- tion we really see is a surprised smile from Jim. But can you imagine, realistically, how much Jim must’ve been freaking out about that? I bet he went home that night and just smiled in his bed for hours and barely got any sleep because he couldn’t stop running it over in his head, try- ing to remember what exactly it felt like and trying to interpret what exactly it meant. It probably haunted him for weeks after! And Jesus, how did Jim get through the entirety of Season 3 still being in love with Pam? Maybe Karen (Rashida Jones) distracted him a little, but I’m sure he still had so many inter- nal conflicts, so many moments where he thought about how Pam was honestly a lot better than Karen, moments where he lay next to Karen in bed and felt guilty. I understand why “The Office” didn’t depict these moments; among many reasons, it’s an ensemble show, and not a show that can dip directly into one character’s head to show us his internal demons. But realisti- cally, within the context of the story, I bet a lot of them were there. To be fair, I know that I’m more annoyingly self-reflective than a lot of people. But I think almost everyone must have some moments where their thoughts are entirely consumed by one thing, whether that’s romantic obsession, or anxiety about some upcoming event, or grief. Every- one has moments when they can’t stop thinking about something, no matter how much they try to distract themselves. And the truth is, stories rarely depict that. In the end, this may be an unsolvable problem. Narra- tive, which is usually defined by change of some sort, may be dia- metrically opposed to sustained depiction of any one emotion. To make being sad into an exciting, dynamic conflict, by showing one person grieving in a multitude of different ways, is to betray the reality of it. In reality, the truth is that being sad is usually bor- ing and redundant. And nobody wants to watch boring TV. Rosenstock is being a Sad Boy. To ask for his favorite Frank Ocean track, email bdrosen@umich.edu. TV COLUMN What TV leaves out Half-hearted biopic leans on impersonations By REBECCA LERNER Daily Film Editor In our largely nostalgia- fueled culture, supporters of President Barack Obama are feeling melan- choly about his departure from office. Many, after seeing the sorry state of the current election cycle, have resorted to siding with neither Hill- ary nor Trump, but rather Obama. Facebook and Twitter newsfeeds are inun- dated with posts and clickbait articles about the way the people will miss him after January 2017. Obama himself seems more than aware of his increased popularity — he walked up to the podium at the last White House Correspon- dents’ Dinner to Anna Kendrick’s “Cups (When I’m Gone).” “Southside with You” is the latest product of this anticipatory nostalgia. The directorial debut of Richard Tanne, the film fol- lows Barack Obama (Parker Saw- yers, “Zero Dark Thirty”) and Michelle Robinson (Tika Sumpt- er, “Get On Up”) on a semi-fic- tionalized account of their first date. Michelle is his advisor at the Chicago law firm where he’s working as a summer associate. She thinks it’s inappropriate for them to be romantic, but he’s trying to convince her to pri- oritize their feelings over office politics. During one of Sumpt- er’s most compelling scenes, she explains that she first has to prove herself as a woman, and then must start again to prove herself as a Black woman. Despite her reservations, they spend the entire day together, walking around art museums and going to a community cen- ter to see Barack in action, end- ing the night with a viewing of Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing.” Unlike the film that it’s often been compared to (“Before Sunrise”), the pacing of the film drags, forcing us to comfort ourselves with the fact that we know the very happy ending. “Southside With You” has less of an actual plot and more of the makings of a political com- mercial. In all fairness, the aim- less wandering does feel slightly reminiscent of “Before Sunrise,” if the audience had walked into the Linklater film with eight years of preconceived notions about the plot and main charac- ters. The acting of the film is not so much acting as it is imper- sonation. Sawyers captures the essence of the President, down to his self-assured stutters and compulsive smoking to calm himself down. But while his stylistic acting remains more subtle, with only a few pure Obama-isms, Sumpter’s impres- sion of Michelle Obama’s speech patterns is jarring and extreme. If you close your eyes, it’s like listening to Michelle Obama practice her enunciation; if you keep them open, it’s like watch- ing a stale and tedious “SNL” sketch. While we watch them go through the perfectly lit, picturesque day, it is impossible to forget that they are characters playing real people we know, that this is a movie. Tanne is overly cautious, not pushing into unknown territory or exploring new emotional ground. He stays safely at a kind and almost boring portrayal of two people falling in love. It’s too comfortable, shot on location with beautiful shots of Chicago overlaid with dreamy music. The film is so soothing that it lends itself to being good white noise if you happen to drift off in the theater. There’s also the contentment that comes with knowing how everything is going to work out — they may be driving broken down cars and living with their parents now, but we know this story ends in the White House. ‘Southside’ is a cinematic snooze C- Southside With You Get Lifted Film Company State Theater GET LIFTED When she tells you she hasn’t seen the “Before” trilogy. ‘Things’ laughs at parental mundanity By SHIR AVINADAV Daily Arts Writer We open on a young girl cry- ing. She tugs at the arm of her mother, whose indifference clearly perturbs the woman sitting on the bench next to them. The wail- ing goes on, its grating sound irritating, yet compelling. In these few short moments, “Bet- ter Things” wordlessly establishes the unique narrative language it uses to tell the story of Sam Fox (show co-creator Pamela Adlon, “Louie”), a single mother of three trudging through the frustra- tions of everyday life. Sam turns to the disapprov- ing woman and bluntly asks, “Do you want to buy her the earrings?” revealing the reason for her daughter’s incessant cry- ing. In the simplest and tersest way possible, Sam asserts her confidence in her parenting — a quality that defines her charac- ter and foregrounds the premise of the series. This teaser speaks volumes about the kind of char- acter we can expect Sam to be and the kind of series we can look forward to, without actually expressing much verbally. Though a half-hour comedy, FX’s new series, co-created by Adlon and Louis C.K. (“Louie”), dips its toe into drama territory — delivering its honest comedy (a particular brand of C.K.’s and Adlon’s) with the same nuance that presents itself in real-life, everyday challenges. This cross- ing of genres feels both natural and instinctively relatable — requiring minimal exposition in the delivery of both narrative content and comedy. The scene following the epi- sode’s teaser illustrates the succinct and often speechless manner in which information is delivered to us. In the shopping mall bathroom with her previ- ously crying daughter, Duke (Olivia Edward, “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt”), Sam receives a phone call from a man whose identity is revealed to us only through her exasperated moan and a hesitant “Hi, Richard,” then a cut to shot of him sitting in his office. A series of awkward vocal- ized pauses ensues before Sam curtly says “I’ll see you in school things,” putting an end to the painful conversation. The cam- era cuts back to a tightly framed two shot of Sam and Duke, evok- ing their close relationship. Sam’s honesty when Duke asks who was on the other end of the line and Duke’s knowing “Ew, eww!” in response echoes this closeness. With little spoken, this sequence conveys a network of meanings that provide a window into both the plot and theme of the episode as it gradually unfolds. Adlon skillfully delivers a sub- tle range of emotions that convey the complexity of Sam’s relation- ships with her daughters, her struggles as a single mother and her vulnerability within her per- sonal and love life. The artful pre- cision with which the episode is cut and the often vague dialogue gives us just enough informa- tion to satisfyingly arrive at our own conclusions about the plot. And while dramatic in tone, the witty dialogue and physical com- edy tactfully provide moments of relief when the burden of Sam’s exasperation become too much to bear. A scene in which Sam shops for school supplies with her daughter Max (Mikey Madi- son, “Bound for Greatness”) is characterized by Sam’s irrita- tion with being unable to find graph paper while Max, the ste- reotypical teenager, dejectedly plods ahead through the aisle. At one point, unable to contain her frustration, Sam yells out into the store “Does anybody work here?”, an extended gesture of her own isolation. Just when her frustration reaches a climactic point, she receives a comically unexpected response from a store employee over the loud- speaker, and her anger dissipates. It’s a moment that feels hilarious- ly relatable, reflecting the trivial annoyances that culminate in a catharsis of anger and frustra- tion before subsiding. “Better Things” is emotional without being mawkish, hilari- ously self-deprecating without being slapstick and likely to be one of the best new shows this fall. Adlon demonstrates her skill as the much deserved lead of the show with an undoubtedly thrilling evolution to come. A- Better Things Series Pre- miere Thursdays at 10:30 FX TV REVIEW FILM REVIEW