I
watch a lot of TV. This is old
news. Sometimes, though,
my obsession with keeping
up with TV gets unhealthy,
particularly when I’m unwilling
to quit a show I don’t even like
anymore.
It’s “The Walking
Dead.”
“The
Walking Dead” is
what
I’m
talking
about.
Critic Matt Zoller
Seitz
calls
“The
Walking
Dead”
an example of the
“Bad
Relationship
Show,
taking
its
audience
for
granted or treating
it like garbage for weeks, then
doing or saying something that
momentarily makes you think the
series is delivering on its promise,
only to backslide quickly and
become ostentatiously mediocre
again.”
I’ve stayed committed to far too
many Bad Relationship Shows.
I watched all eight seasons of
“Dexter” and all six seasons of
“Glee,” two shows that repeatedly
sprinkled hints of potential in
their later, bad seasons, only to
fail at delivering on that promise.
When Debra (Jennifer Carpenter,
“Limitless”)
from
“Dexter”
discovered her brother’s secret
at the end of the sixth season, the
show impressively depicted the
fallout, giving her the agency to
break off her relationship with
Dexter (Michael C. Hall, “Six Feet
Under”) — only to lionize him
and slaughter Debra’s character
development with an ill-advised
quasi-incest plot.
“Glee”
was
the
ultimate
example of this pattern, waffling
between promising and abysmal
so rapidly it induced whiplash.
Rachel (Lea Michele, “Scream
Queens”)
and
Kurt’s
(Chris
Colfer, “Struck by Lightning”)
move to New York
briefly
revitalized
the show with a
new
setting,
but
the new characters
back home were left
in the dust when it
came to interesting
storytelling.
Subsequent seasons
featured countless
plots
that
went
nowhere, and yet
I
kept
watching;
it felt wrong to invest so much
time in the show only to stop
five years in. I thought, at least,
that the show would end on a
high note, recovering with an
emotional
series
finale
that
made you remember the show in
its prime; that’s what happened
with “The Office.” Nope. It was
bad.
“The Walking Dead” is the most
prominent show in pop culture
that fits this mold, still getting
huge ratings despite its repeated
violation of the audience’s trust.
The fourth season was a recovery
season of sorts, and the fifth
season was by far the best of
the show’s whole run. Then the
sixth season happened, and I got
burned worse than ever.
Enough think pieces have been
written at this point, so I don’t
need to explain why the latest
“The Walking Dead” premiere
was so bad. I’ll just say that after a
horrifically bad season finale last
year, a lot would have to be done
to earn back my goodwill, and the
premiere did not do that. It was
more of the same, and it should’ve
been the straw that broke the
camel’s back. I should’ve just
made the definitive decision to
stop watching.
And then the second episode
aired, and it was pretty good. The
new character of Ezekiel (Khary
Payton,
“General
Hospital”)
instantly established himself as
the most interesting one on the
show — at this point, most of the
main cast has far outstayed their
welcome — and the episode had
a surprisingly hopeful message,
with a healthy dose of levity and
a refreshing element of surreality.
(Ezekiel leads a community called
the Kingdom, reigning as a “king”
with a CGI tiger at his side).
To be clear, I don’t think
this means the show’s going to
actually continue on its upward
trajectory. “The Walking Dead”
has done this countless times,
and I have no faith that it’ll
suddenly improve and stay good
for more than a couple episodes
at a time. There’ll be some decent
episodes, then one that comes
close to breaking me. As Zack
Handlen from The AV Club said,
the ideal way to watch the show
is to “Enjoy the moments, but
don’t necessarily expect them
to add up to anything more than
themselves.”
Part of me knows, though, that
even if the show gets to a point
where I don’t enjoy any of the
moments — even if every episode
is dull, pseudo-philosophical, and
unrelentingly, mundanely grim —
I’ll probably still keep watching.
That’s the burden of the hopeless
completist.
Mel Gibson returns to
top form with ‘Hacksaw’
Subversive war film puts Andrew Garfield through hell
BEST CONCERT EVER
The burden of being a completist
The critic-coined ‘Bad Relationship Show’ continues to haunt Ben
AMC
This seems like an intimate moment.
FILM REVIEW
Mel Gibson’s films ordinarily
treat violence as a symbol of
passion. William Wallace leads a
bloody revolution for the freedom
of Scotland in “Braveheart.”
Jaguar Paw must
kill his captors to
return to his wife
in
“Apocalypto.”
Jesus is tortured
and crucified to
save his followers
in “The Passion
of
the
Christ.”
With that in mind,
it’s strange that
Gibson
would
choose a project in which the
main character shows his passion
through
staunch
peace
and
nonviolence. That’s not to say that
“Hacksaw Ridge” isn’t a violent
movie, but Gibson utilizes the
violence here to sharply contrast
with Desmond Doss’s (Andrew
Garfield, “The Amazing Spider-
Man”) vow not to take a life. He
tells the story of a man surrounded
by darkness who refuses to let
it consume him, and injecting it
into a film with a perfect cast and
action set pieces that are nothing
short of incredible.
As jaw-dropping as those war
scenes can be, the opening scenes
of the film, which paint a picture
of Doss’s upbringing, are just as
powerful; the audience witnesses
the poignant evolutions of the
relationships and ideals which
come to define Doss through
the war. As he does for most of
the film, Garfield carries these
scenes with a charm that could
have been grating had it not come
across as so incredibly earnest.
There’s never a moment when
it seems like he’s deliberately
overplaying a certain part of the
character for effect, whether in
his scenes opposite Teresa Palmer
(“Lights Out”), with whom he
shares adorable chemistry, or
in his scenes with his father
(Hugo
Weaving,
“The
Matrix”),
which are nothing
short of quietly
devastating.
As
Desmond’s PTSD-
stricken
father,
Tom,
Weaving
gives one of the
best
supporting
performances
of the year as he
portrays a man completely broken
by war and killing who doesn’t
want the same fate to befall his
sons. He’s a hard man, and the
film doesn’t excuse his behavior,
but Weaving manages to make
him one of the most sympathetic
characters.
Once Doss leaves for boot
camp, Gibson draws on well-
worn war movie tropes, but even
in doing so, cleverly subverts
them. Vince Vaughn (“Wedding
Crashers”) plays Doss’s drill
sergeant, Howell. At first, he
acts as is expected; he hates
Doss, considers him a coward
and makes life hell for him as a
result. There’s nothing here that
hasn’t been done in just about
every war movie ever made. It’s as
their relationship progresses that
Howell becomes a more complex
character,
and
his
actions
become less straightforwardly
antagonistic and more believably
human.
Then comes the war. There’s
no mincing words here: these
scenes are brutal, as brutal as war
movies have ever been. Instead
of,
say,
Spielberg’s
approach
to “Saving Private Ryan,” in
which he followed Tom Hanks’s
Captain Miller for most of the
Omaha Beach scene, Gibson
frequently switches the point of
view between the characters of
the supporting cast, leading to
a feeling of disorientation and
chaos that is likely similar to
what soldiers at Okinawa felt.
The enemy Japanese soldiers
are rarely seen, and the soldiers,
along with the audience, feel
completely blind.
Still, what is most surprising
about “Hacksaw Ridge” is the
deft way Gibson deals with the
complexities of war. America is,
of course, in the right here, but
it is clear that not every decision
an American soldier makes is
the right one. Doss’s convictions
are never called into question,
but neither does Gibson dismiss
those who disagreed with him
completely out of hand. It shows
remarkable maturity from a
director
who
has
obviously
had issues dealing with those
different from him in the past.
“Hacksaw
Ridge”
is
a
remarkable war film. Its cast
is nearly perfect, and both
Garfield and Weaving may garner
awards consideration as the
year continues. The characters
are complex and, likable or not,
achingly human, and its war
scenes are both devastating and
awe-inspiringly crafted. With his
first film in ten years, Mel Gibson
has crafted a testament to true
bravery, exhibited in both those
who choose to fight and those
who don’t.
JEREMIAH VANDERHELM
Daily Arts Writer
A
“Hacksaw Ridge”
Rave & Quality 16
Summit
Entertainment
BEN
ROSENSTOCK
I was irrevocably taken with
Avril Lavigne’s “Sk8er Boi” when
I heard it for the first time in 2nd
grade. My best friend Sophie and
I had started to move out of our
respective “girly-girl” phases and
into “tomboys,” stars in our eyes
at the possibility of shedding our
tutus for skateboards and baggy
jeans. If our childhood were a
Disney Channel show, you would
have seen us sharing a split frame,
cross-legged on our respective
beds, each with a red Discman in
hand and the lyric booklets at easy
reach where we would memorize
and analyze them like holy texts.
We marveled at Avril’s attitude,
how she’d put her feet up on the
table when she did interviews and
swear and shop in the boy’s section
for her clothes. We giggled at
Avril’s lesser known song “Naked”
and shamefully memorized all the
words to “Nobody’s Fool,” where
she raps. Although we were still in
a phase where we refused to admit
that we found boys anything less
than revolting, I know that we both
applied Avril’s angsty heartbreak
lyrics to our first crushes.
Aside from being incredibly
catchy and often easy for my
almost tone deaf voice to sing along
to, I isolated lyrics from Avril’s
lyrics that sounded like they just
“got” me. Exhibit A: on “In my
World” she sings “I never spend
less than an hour / watching my
hair in the shower / it always takes
five hours to make it straight” (I
have and have always had a frizzy
and unruly mane of hair). On
“Nobody’s Fool,” “I’m not the milk
and cheerios in your spoon” (hey,
I’ve eaten those!).
The
heart-wrenching
stuff,
although it hadn’t materialized
practically in my life, was still
down there somewhere I think.
Avril gave big f-yous to guys who
treated her like crap and sang
about feeling out of place. I loved
to rock out to hits “Complicated”
and “My Happy Ending” although
my deep love for Avril’s work was
mildly pretentious. Sophie and I
claimed a fierce loyalty beyond
the hits — we held fast to the deep
cuts.
Here, I want to thank my mom
for being a cool mom. Not the
“Mean Girls” type of cool mom;
she was not about underage
drinking or letting us call her
Michele. She’s a cool mom because
she let me skip school 12 years ago
to see Avril perform live. It was
November 1st and she wrote me a
note excusing me from that day of
fourth grade. I sat with my mother
somewhere in the nosebleed seats
of the FleetCenter and wore an
overpriced Avril Lavigne shirt
that fit me like a dress.
I felt the stadium vibrate
beneath me and it was so loud
that my mom gave me earplugs. I
remember clutching her arm, with
some certain level of fanaticism,
saying “I can’t believe it’s really
her.” I kept my eyes forward,
and my mouth moving quietly to
the lyrics, not wanting to miss a
moment of sharing that celebrity
space.
In “Happy Ending,” Avril sings,
“All the things you hide from
me / all the shit that they do.” I
anticipated this line painfully
and when it came I blushed at the
thought of listening to the same
song I’d listened to hundreds of
times on my own with my mom by
my side. Although I worshipped
at the feet of a punk princess, I
was a rigid rule-follower and as
much as I wanted to get loud and
provocative, I was anxious at my
mother knowing I even existed in
the same world as the word “shit.”
As I said, my mom is cool mom,
so of course she did not comment
about the lyric and later noted
that Avril had a beautiful voice
and sounded a little like Sinead
O’Connor (I did not know who
Sinead O’Connor was).
That night, I fell asleep in a
dreamy haze and returned home
where I continued my religious
listening for maybe a year or so.
That said, Avril as we knew her
was changing — she was adding
pink to her hair and getting
married and straying from the
moody and darkly stubborn tones
to catchier radio pop-punk that
Sophie and I refused to listen to.
We chose to hold on to the Avril
I saw live in 2004, the one we saw
as our rebellious older sister who
inspired us to buy skateboards we
would barely learn how to ride.
We’ve changed our red Discmans
for Spotify premium. My spot in
Avril’s stadium is now in a small
venue somewhere filled with
PBR and manbuns. That said, the
magic is still in there somewhere
in the form of pop-punk and room
shaking as it did when I saw Avril
live for the first time 12 years ago.
We’re 21 now, and if you need
us, we’ll be in the corner defending
the merits of Under my Skin
and Let Go, lyrics committed to
memory and a lifelong promise to
never end up like that sad ballet
girl in Sk8er Boi.
MARIA ROBINS-SOMERVILLE
Daily Arts Writer
Coming of age alongside Avril Lavigne
In this series, Daily Arts writers reflect on their favorite concert experience
TV COLUMN
6A — Monday, November 7, 2016
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com