Arts
michigandaily.com — The Michigan Daily 
12 — Wednesday, November 18, 2020

Contrary to popular belief, the 

multi-cam sitcom isn’t dead. 

Several cameras centered around 

one set to simultaneously record a 
scene. It’s an easy, painless setup 
that was popularized in 1951, when 
“I Love Lucy” won the hearts of 
the American public and left a 
permanent imprint on our 
digital culture. Since then, 
the multi-camera setup has 
given birth to some of the 
most iconic moments of 
our country’s history. From 
“Seinfeld” to “Friends” to 
“The Big Bang Theory,” it 
is impossible to discuss the 
story of television without 
it. 

Yet, 
throughout 
the 

last decade, the cultural 
relevance of this production 
style 
has 
undeniably 

dwindled. 
Single-camera 

comedies like “Community” 
and “The Office” have 
ushered in a new norm for 
television humor, without 
laugh tracks or flat visual 
styles. It’s a medium that 
has fared far better among younger 
audiences. I hadn’t introduced 
myself to a new multi-cam sitcom 
in years.

Nevertheless, pressing play on 

the pilot for CBS’s latest “B Positive” 
felt strangely comforting. There’s 
a sentimentality in the style. It can 
be argued that it exists purely on 
nostalgia, but the palatable format 
just makes starting a new show so … 
effortless.

It’s ironic, then, that a series 

so 
seemingly 
lighthearted 

is built around such a dark, 
dramatic premise. Drew (Thomas 

Middleditch, “Solar Opposites”) 
is a divorced father in need of a 
new kidney. Facing his potential 
death, he struggles to find someone 
supportive enough to give him their 
own. That is, until he runs into Gina 
(Annaleigh 
Ashford, 
“American 

Crime 
Story”), 
an 
airheaded 

substance abuser with a heart of 
gold. At a mutual friend’s wedding, 
Gina drunkenly re-connects with 
Drew over a vague high school 

friendship and spontaneously offers 
him her own kidney. 

Thus, an odd couple is formed. 

If Drew wants to live, he must help 
Gina stay sober. If Gina wants to do 
good, she must defeat her addiction 
to drugs and alcohol.

Along with a heavy setup, the 

pilot teases at jokes that stray far 
from where its peers are often 
comfortable going. When the doctor 
recommends a family member 
for the kidney transplant, Drew 
remarks, “Oh great, a Republican 
kidney.” There are references to 
Xanax use, visible bongs and even 

cocaine dust. The show’s opening 
credit sequence, most notably of all, 
is fantastically disturbing and gory. 
(Seriously, check it out).

Politics, gore and drug abuse are 

all things that you don’t often find 
directly in multi-cam sitcoms. In no 
way would I call the first episode a 
failure (I am certainly intrigued to 
see where they take it), but I’d have 
to imagine it’s not going to be easy 
to strike a working groove with the 

medium chosen. Even so, 
I’m glad to see risks taken 
and 
envelopes 
pushed 

in a format that so many 
consider outdated. 

“B Positive” exists in a 

weird space of time where 
the future of multi-cam 
comedies 
is 
uncertain. 

Though “The Big Bang 
Theory” put up numbers as 
high as “Game of Thrones” 
last year, there is most 
definitely a feeling in the 
air that the style has lost its 
vigor.

While I’m not overly 

optimistic that “B Positive” 
will 
be 
the 
show 
to 

change that stigma, some 
genuinely 
interesting 

seeds were planted. I hope 

they continue to take risks and 
find their foothold in the Golden 
Age of Television. To say that 
this past week was stressful is an 
understatement. I found it difficult 
to focus on anything, whether it was 
homework or watching a lecture for 
more than 30 minutes. But recently 
I’ve rediscovered something very 
special: the Charlie Brown holiday 
specials. I know these are important 
parts of the holidays, but for 
whatever reason I had completely 
forgotten about them — until now.

Daily Arts Writer Ben Servetah 

can be reached at bserve@umich.edu.

Netflix’s ‘Jingle Jangle’ 
makes Xmas exhausting

Christmas 
comes 
earlier 

every year. The day after 
Halloween, nowadays, 
plastic 
trees 
and 

twinkle lights fill store 
shelves, 
DJs 
across 

the world queue up 
Mariah Carey’s classic 
Yuletide 
anthem 

and 
Starbucks 
puts 

gingerbread in their 
coffee. In 2020, this 
seemed like a welcome 
distraction. 
The 

Holiday Season began 
as a warm, colorful 
respite 
from 
the 

pandemic and election 
uncertainty.

Then 
came 
the 

Netflix 
film 
“Jingle 

Jangle.”

Watching 
“Jingle 

Jangle” is like being 
dragged 
behind 
the 

Polar Express, curb-
stomped by Ebenezer 
Scrooge and, finally, 
run down by Santa’s 
sleigh, all while the 
shrill laughter of elves 
fills your ears. 

Forest 
Whitaker 

(“Rogue One: A Star Wars 
Story”) 
plays 
an 
inventor 

named 
Jeronicus 
Jangle, 

who has lost the Christmas 
spirit and turned his once 
wonderful 
toyshop 
into 
a 

dilapidated 
pawn 
shop. 
It 

is up to his granddaughter, 
Journey, played by Madalen 

Mills 
(“Reality 
Cupcakes”), 

to breathe festive life into his 
dusty heart and even dustier 

store. 

They live in a place called 

“Cobbleton,” 
which 
is 

appropriate, as the story is 
completely cobbled together 
from other Christmas films. 

The power of belief 
from 
“The 
Polar 

Express,” 
Santa’s 

toyshop and a barely 
remixed version of “A 
Christmas Carol” are 
thrown into a faux-
iron pot with a large 
helping of steampunk 
flavor 
and 
musical 

numbers a step below 
even the worst made-
for-TV movies. 

Whenever the music 

swells, one braces for 
it. Every song goes on 
at least a minute too 
long, and the lyrics 
and 
instrumentation 

are 
the 
kind 
one 

hears waiting in line 
at a crowded, sweaty 
department 
store, 

last-minute 
gifts 
in 

hand, 
wondering 
if 

this whole Christmas 
thing is really just an 
expensive 
waste 
of 

time. 

It could’ve worked. 

Whitakter 
is 
great 

in the film, as are Madalen, 
Keegan Michael Key (“Key and 
Peele”) and the rest of the cast. 

The set design, costumes and 
visual effects are immaculate. 
The movie’s snowy, clockwork 
Victorian aesthetic is unique, 
and quite beautiful. There’s a 
robot named Buddy 3000 who, 
even if he skews a little too 
close to WALL-E, is absolutely 
adorable.

Still, 
“Jingle 
Jangle” 
is 

almost sickening, like a pile of 
over-iced Christmas cookies 
shoved right in your face. 

The film is devoid of any 

sort of bite. There is not one 
scene in “Jingle Jangle” where 
one wonders, even just for a 
moment, if things will turn out 
alright. There’s just smiling, 
and singing, and smiling and 
singing, and more smiling and 
more singing. It’s exhausting. 

“Jingle 
Jangle” 
may 
be 

marketed 
for 
a 
younger 

audience, but that doesn’t mean 
there shouldn’t be conflict. 
Christmas classics like “Frosty 
The Snowman” and “Rudolph 
the Red Nosed Reindeer” still 
have active antagonists, and 
moments of threat or peril, to 
give a hint of winter chill that 
makes the Yuletide warmth of 
Christmas so comforting. In 
November 2020, sugary sweet 
won’t cut it. 

Additionally, 
the 
sci-fi 

element of the movie ranges 
from silly to disturbing. The 
magic 
system 
of 
Jangle’s 

word is a mixture of math 
and 
mysticism: 
Characters 

draw glowing equations in 
the air (a la “Doctor Strange”) 
and perform equations like 
the “Square root of possible.” 

That’s the silly bit. 

More upsetting is a sentient 

toy named Don Juan, bizarrely 
played 
by 
Ricky 
Martin 

(“American 
Crime 
Story”), 

who is created, and (spoiler 
alert) 
shut 
off, 
essentially 

“killed,” by Jangle at the end 
of the film. Jangle says Don 
Juan will be reprogrammed to 
be more obedient. A life with 
agency, emotion and sentience 
is extinguished, and everyone 
smiles away. Whenever I watch 
“A Christmas Story,” the last 
thing I say is “This needs just a 
bit more existentialist horror.”

If one is looking for a Holiday 

escape, stay far, far away from 
Cobbleton.

Daily Arts Writer Andrew 

Warrick can be reached at 
warricka@umich.edu.

ANDREW WARRICK

Daily Arts Writer

NETFLIX

Highlights from this year’s 
virtual Polish film festival

In its 27th year, the Ann 

Arbor Polish Film Festival has 
been virtualized as a result of 
COVID-19. The slate of shorts, 
feature films and documentaries 
are streaming on the Michigan 
Theatre website in lieu of live 
screenings. One of this year’s 
feature films is “Jak Najdalej Std,” 
or “I Never Cry” in English. 
Written and directed by 
Piotr Domalewski (“Silent 
Night”), the film explores 
the cruelly ubiquitous loss 
of a parent through the eyes 
of a young woman. “I Never 
Cry” prompts the viewer to 
reconsider their role in the 
lives of others. 

Ola (Zofia Stafiej, “25 

Years of Innocence”) is 
seventeen years old, and 
desperately wants a car. She 
has failed her driving test 
three times (though the last 
failure was definitely not 
her fault), and can’t afford 
to take the test a fourth 
time. She wouldn’t be able 
to afford a car, either, but 
her father promised to send 
her the money as soon as she gets 
her license. Ola’s dad is in Dublin, 
working for a shipping company 
and sending money home to 
Poland where Ola lives with her 
mother (Kinga Preis, “53 Wars”) 
and brother (Dawid Tulej) who 
has a disability. Coincidentally, 
Ola misses a call from her father 
during driving test number three, 
and finds out later that same 
day that there was an accident 
involving a shipping container. 
Her father had been crushed.

Thus begins Ola’s journey. 

Since her mother does not speak 
English, Ola must be the one to 
fly to Ireland and retrieve her 
father’s body. At 17, Ola must 
rescue a man she hardly knew 
from the purgatorial bureaucracy 
of death. Confronted by long lines, 
expensive cigarettes and unfeeling 
doctors, the Polish teenager must 
grapple with the life lived by her 
father, independent of his role as 
absent patriarch. Through such a 
struggle, Ola gains perspective on 

herself in relation to others.

“I Never Cry” is a poignant 

meditation 
on 
loss 
and 
the 

sometimes 
strange 
distance 

between kin. As she meets the 
people who knew him, Ola seeks 
to reconcile the father she knew 
with the man she did not, but 
comes away with little more 
than limp placation: “He did his 
best.” Despite the mundanity of 
this remark, uttered first by the 
foreman of the shipping company 
where her father worked, it 
becomes something of an anchor 

for Ola as she faces her father’s 
flaws, flaws which help Ola 
come to terms with her father’s 
interiority and selfhood. A life 
only appreciated in death is the 
film’s sad irony. 

As a coming of age tale, the 

film 
has 
an 
unconventional 

rawness. The challenges faced 
by 
the 
protagonist 
are 
not 

contrived, rather all too real. Ola’s 
growth culminates in a moving 
catharsis at the film’s end, as her 

relationship with her 
father is grounded in 
personal 
significance. 

As a criticism of a very-
contrived 
bureaucracy, 

the film lands precise 
blows. 
Investigating 

all of the gratuitous 
processes 
surrounding 

death, civid, sacred and 
social, 
Domalewski 

recenters the emotional.

Watching 
Ola 

endure the death of her 
father in international 
isolation, those of us in 
some degree of COVID 
isolation may be able 
to 
empathize. 
Those 

who have lost a parent 
can 
empathize 
with 

Ola on another level. 

No matter one’s situation, the 
viewer is encouraged to pause 
and appreciate the lives of others, 
especially the lives of our parents. 
As we tumble through even the 
most quotidian bureaucracies of 
modern life, seeing the interiority 
and humanity in one another 
demands a concerted effort, one 
we all ought to eagerly make. 
Contrary to popular belief, the 
multi-cam sitcom isn’t dead.

Daily Arts Writer Ross London 

can be reached at rhorg@umich.
edu. 

ROSS LONDON
Daily Arts Writer

CBS

‘B Positive’ puts a darker 
spin on multi-cam sitcoms

BEN SERVETAH

Daily Arts Writer

Watching “Jingle 

Jangle” is like being 
dragged behind the 
Polar Express, curb-
stomped by Ebenezer 
Scrooge and, finally, 
run down by Santa’s 
sleigh, all while the 

shrill laughter of elves 

fills your ears. 

One of this year’s 

feature films is “Jak 

Najdalej Std,” or 
“I Never Cry” in 

English. 

“B Positive” exists 
in a weird space 
of time where the 
future of multi-
cam comedies is 

uncertain. 

ADREV PUBLISHING