Killing
off
a
television
character tends to present a
strange paradox: A character’s
absence can be so deeply felt
that it manifests as an unsettling
ghost-like
presence.
This
is especially true of a show
like
“Roseanne”’s
successor,
“The Conners,” which has not
simply lost a character, but the
character. It’s true. Roseanne
(Roseanne Barr, “The Roseanne
Show”) — the dry, divisive, titular
materfamilias who started it all
— is dead.
“The
Conners”
moves
on
without her with grace and,
of course, the Conner family’s
signature brand of droll, piercing
humor. It’s no easy feat: The
show was tasked with explaining
a character’s death (we learn it
was an opioid overdose), giving
its characters room to grieve and
still providing humor all within
a half-hour, Roseanne’s absence
hanging over the episode like the
patchwork afghan draped across
the Conners’ living room couch.
It was a huge gamble for the
executives at ABC, who bet that
there might be something left for
the show to work with following
Barr’s abrupt firing last May. It
paid off; turns out there’s a lot left
for “The Conners” to work with,
namely some sharp writing and
excellent performances. Jackie
(the splendid Laurie Metcalf,
“Lady Bird”) is coping with
her sister’s death by frantically
re-organizing the kitchen; Dan
(John Goodman, “Argo”), now
without
a
sparring
partner,
is roped into helping his gay
grandson deal with his crushes;
and Darlene (Sara Gilbert, “The
Talk”), now the real core of the
show, is the one left making sure
everyone’s OK.
Without
Roseanne
in
the
picture, Metcalf, Goodman and
Gilbert prove themselves the
strongest actors on television.
It quickly becomes apparent
that it was, in fact, Roseanne
Barr herself who prevented last
season’s “Roseanne” reboot from
really being “Roseanne.”
When
“Roseanne”
was
revived, ABC was quick to
guard against Barr’s distasteful
political views by touting the
show’s new progressive bona
fides.
Roseanne
Conner now had a
Black
grandchild
and another who
was gender non-
conforming.
But
it
was
the
real
Roseanne,
and
not the fictional
one, who loomed
over
the
reboot.
How could anyone square those
characters
with
Roseanne
Barr’s documented racism and
transphobia? How could a show
about a regular family star a
notorious Trump supporter?
Last
year’s
“Roseanne”
promised frank discussions and
good faith attempts to bridge
the divide, but ultimately it was
an empty promise. In the first
episode of the season, Jackie,
clad in a “Nasty Woman” T-shirt
trades barbs with her Trump-
voting sister. Roseanne calls
Jackie
a
snowflake.
Jackie
brings Russian salad to dinner.
Roseanne
says
something
about taking a knee. It wasn’t a
discussion; it was an assemblage
of punchlines. And it was an
enormous disservice to the fact
that the original “Roseanne” had
always been intensely political,
without calling much attention
to it.
Old “Roseanne” was about a
family’s improbable resilience
in the face of life’s anxieties.
It captured the way families
really experience politics: not
through
reductive
strawman
arguments in the kitchen, but
through struggling
to pay the bills and
dealing with the
IRS and striking at
the plastics factory.
That insight was
on full display in
the first episode
of “The Conners,”
which
saw
the
family
weather
through grief and also come to
terms with the sobering reality
that the bills have to be paid and
the trivialities of life go on.
In the episode’s final scene, for
the first time since Roseanne’s
death, Dan sleeps in the bed he
shared with his late wife. He
tosses and turns, readjusts the
covers, makes his peace and
closes his eyes. It’s unfamiliar,
even strange, but there’s a way
forward.
MAITREYI ANANTHARAMAN
Daily Arts Writer
WRLD ON DRUGS, the latest
innocuous
rap
collaboration
album, follows its predecessors:
interesting in theory, fun on first
listen but expectedly reductive.
Not since Watch the Throne
has an album collaboration
between two major rappers
resulted in something other than
the sum of its parts (but that
album at least takes on a quality
unique to that collaboration).
What
makes
many
of
the
recent
collaboration
albums
bland is their inability to attain
this quality. Often there’s the
sense they’re not even trying,
that these crossovers exist as
industry moves rather than as
organic efforts to coalesce skill
sets and aim for a gestalt.
Last
year’s
collaboration
albums between Future and
Young Thug (SUPER SLIMEY),
21 Savage and Offset (Without
Warning),
and
Quavo
and
Travis Scott (HUNCHO JACK,
Jack Huncho) all evidenced
this. The artists in that list are
each dynamic and boundary-
pushing in their own right, so
it’s strange that these albums
can be played back to back
and sound like a relatively
consistent
piece
of
music.
What they’re going for on these
projects is the continuation of
a sound, owed to Atlanta and
centered approximately around
the Quality Control label.
Like
those
projects,
WRLD ON DRUGS aims for
a commercial middle. Juice
WRLD,
of
up-and-coming
fame, should add some vitality
to storied rap giant Future;
Future’s
reverence
in
the
Atlanta rap scene should act
as a sign of confidence to the
upstart. To give them credit,
this goal is ostensibly achieved.
The very existence of this album
achieves it.
With that box checked, the
songs feel tacked onto this
accomplishment. Right from
opening track “Jet Lag,” Juice
WRLD takes on a shiny new
persona as a confident drug
rapper that renders the sad-
boy aesthetic he rode to fame
unrecognizable. Future sounds
great
as
always,
perfectly
content to ride yet another
victory
lap
around
in
his
Bentley to help out the newbie.
But Future’s best work is when
he’s least satisfied, swallowing
pain down with a cup of codeine
and dredging up the past with a
heavy snarl, and just as WRLD’s
emo tendencies are gone here,
so are Future’s.
The moments that work best
are when Future and WRLD
give each other some distance,
allowing WRLD to feel more
comfortable as himself. “Fine
China” and “Realer N Realer”
both are standouts. On the
latter,
WRLD
gives
some
tongue-in-cheek thoughts about
money in sing-song: “People
love to talk about the money
that they make / Nobody wanna
talk about the money that they
save / Who am I to talk about it?
I blow money every day.” In the
former, Future’s higher pitched
flow plays off WRLD’s autotune
well, and it makes for a track
that manages to make Atlanta
rap a little bit funny, à la Lil
Yachty, while avoiding being,
well, Lil Yachty.
“Astronauts,” “Red Bentley”
and “Transformer” all find
Future taking on the same kind
of
approachable,
consistent
flow he donned for much of
SUPER SLIMEY, which makes
it easier for those along for the
ride to keep up (though Nicki
Minaj mostly holds her own
on “Transformer”). They’re all
bouncy, bass-heavy tracks that
fit easily within Future’s more
recent discography. But it’s not
clear why WRLD needs to be
on any of them, and such is the
problem with many of these 16
tracks.
It’s strange that the two have
decided to land at this happy
commercial brag for so much of
the album given Juice WRLD’s
debut last year, Goodbye & Good
Riddance. It’s an album all
about pain, filled with cringe-
inducing admissions and riding
along the dark “emo-rap” style
recently popularized by Lil
Uzi Vert. WRLD channels the
energy just right of the occult
that Uzi dances with, and it’s
a big part of what made him
so palatable to an audience
increasingly interested in this
genre
crossover.
It
doesn’t
make him look dynamic to
wipe this persona away on this
collaboration
—
nearly
any
rapper in 2018 can sound like
he does here with the right
producer. Even Usher gave it
his best shot this week with his
surprise Zaytoven collaboration
A. It does the opposite, and we
come off this album wondering
if Juice WRLD might not
be
wondering,
like
we’re
wondering, exactly who Juice
WRLD is.
‘Drugs’ is just anonther
mediocre rapper collab
MATT GALLATIN
Daily Arts Writer
ABC
WRLD ON
DRUGS
Future & Juice
WRLD
Epic Records
We should all be so lucky
as to have a grandmother like
Laurie Stode. By the beginning
of the most recent entry in
the
“Halloween”
franchise,
the
original
final
girl
has
grown into a badass bound
and determined to protect her
family from Michael Myers, the
Shatner-masked
serial
killer
who turned her life inside out
40 years ago, by any means
necessary. Played, as always,
by a riveting Jamie Lee Curtis
(“New Girl”), the same moxie
that endeared her to audiences
all those years ago is still there,
but there’s something broken,
too – something that Michael
took from her that she never
got back. A more focused film
would see Curtis’s rendering of
that brokenness and know to
focus the movie on that, but in
its quest to replicate as much
about the original as possible,
the newest “Halloween” misses
out on the greatness right in
front of it.
I’m not going to act like
there’s no pleasure to watching
Laurie and Michael go head-to-
head “Clash of the Titans” style.
When it happens, it’s a sight to
behold, an edge-of-your-seat,
knockdown-dragout fight with
crowd-pleasing moments and
breathless tension galore. It’s
unarguably awesome, but you
have to sit through an hour of
the plot spinning its wheels and
director David Gordon Green
(“Stronger”) running down his
“Halloween” checklist to get
there.
So not only is “Halloween”
about Laurie hunting Michael
after his escape, it’s about
Laurie’s granddaughter, Allyson
(Andi
Matichak,
“Evol”)
running around on Halloween
night dealing with relationship
trouble and trying not to get
murdered. It’s about Allyson’s
friends, who also try not to get
murdered but don’t have the
good fortune of being the direct
descendant of the first movie’s
heroine. It’s about a doctor who
believes Michael is pure evil
and has developed a strange
fascination with him, and who
is explicitly called “the new
Loomis.” All of these have some
direct analogue to the first film,
and while Green’s staging of
these homage-driven plotlines
clearly shows his love of the
original film, homages alone
aren’t enough to make them
interesting. They inevitably feel
like distractions from the main
event instead of stories and
characters worth caring about
all their own.
Even
the
cinematography
cues meant to play on audience
nostalgia fall flat. The 1978
“Halloween” famously opens
with a tracking shot from
Michael’s
point-of-view
that
follows him as he murders
his sister. It’s an iconic shot
for a number of reasons: the
technical accomplishment of
it, the innate cheesiness — why
does Michael turn to watch
the knife in the middle of the
stabbing? — the voyeuristic
thrill, the twist ending that
the murderer is a six-year-old
boy, the list goes on. The new
film shoots much of its action
in the same way, but here the
tracking shots feel strangely
perfunctory.
They
lack
the
kinetic thrill and immediacy
offered by the best historical
uses of the technique, and this is
coming from someone so prone
to praising films that include
tracking shots that it arguably
constitutes a form of bribery.
What’s more, when the new
film actually goes off the beaten
path, it can be a treat. The
Laurie-Michael storyline should
have been given far more focus,
but it’s still engaging thanks
to the catharsis of watching
Laurie regain her agency. The
cinematography
apart
from
the tracking shots, can be
downright gorgeous at times,
especially in its use of wide
shots and inventive available
lighting. The cast is mostly
game, with Jibrail Nantambu
in his big screen debut playing
what is objectively the best
character of the year in film.
The nostalgia cues aren’t all
bad, either, with a kickass new
score from original director /
composer John Carpenter, his
son Cody Carpenter and Daniel
Davies (“Zoo”) that plays on
the original but adds a number
of propulsive new layers. More
importantly, Green makes the
wise choice to keep Michael in
the background for most of the
first act, his murderous intent
removed from the forefront of
the frame but never from the
forefront of Laurie’s and the
viewer’s mind. The director’s
understanding of what works in
the original film can’t be denied,
but that all too rarely carries
over into understanding what
works in his own film. When it’s
good, it’s good, but far too often
it’s a monotonous retread of the
original’s greatest hits.
Nostalgia can’t carry the
limp ‘Halloween’ reboot
JEREMIAH VANDERHELM
Daily Arts Writer
FILM REVIEW
UNIVERSAL PICTURES
Rosanne-less ‘The Conners’ moves
on from its former star with grace
“Halloween”
Ann Arbor 20,
Goodrich Quality
16
Universal Pictures
TV REVIEW
“The
Conners”
Series Premiere
ABC
Tuesdays at 8
ALBUM REVIEW
EPIC RECORDS
Wednesday, October 24, 2018 — 5A
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com