Category: TV

If you’ve never lived in Canada, you probably don’t understand the odd relationship we have with Canadian culture. There’s very little of it, you see, and it’s frequently not very good. American programming tends to drown out Canadian entertainment, Hollywood draws in a lot of Canadian talent, and the few Canadian TV shows tend to look like American TV shows shot on half the budget.

The CBC, being the official national public broadcaster, tends to do things a little differently. They often go the other way and produce TV shows about the experience of being Canadian. They, too, are often shot on a relatively low budget and don’t end up being very good, but at least they’re trying. And sometimes the come up with a real gem: The mid-90s brought the wonderful Twitch City and the brilliant satire The Newsroom. A few years ago there was the amusing This is Wonderland, though I’m not sure if anyone other than my family and I watched it. And now, perhaps, CBC has created another unique, if somewhat flawed, series in Being Erica.

(Observation: The producers put together a nice site leading up to the show with Erica’s blog and video diary, but it appears to have been abandoned since the show actually started. That doesn’t seem like a great idea.)

The premise is that Erica is 32 years old and leading something of a disappointing life. Unsatisfying job, non-existent lovelife, surrounded by people who are doing the things she wished she could be doing. Then she meets a mysterious therapist who, though unexplained means, offers her the opportunity to go back in time and re-live some of the key moments in her life that led to her current predicament.

The good news is that Erin Karpluk is wonderful in the title role. She’s smart, sympathetic, and witty, and while she’s certainly a bit of a fuckup, she’s not so much of one that she becomes a complete loser. At times she’s incredibly self-aware and observant, and at other times… not. She hasn’t so much ruined her life as she thinks she has, which is the sort of sentiment I can get behind. (Though I’ll come back to that in a moment.)

She’s also terribly attractive, though I have problems lusting over a woman with the same name as my sister.

But the flip side of that is that the writers seem to have crafted a star at the expense of the supporting cast. Barely any of the supporting characters are at all interesting, most of them existing only to serve plot points or counterpoints to Erica’s life. Some are just there to be successful and intimidating: Her mother frequently expresses disappointment in one way or another, her best friend is a lawyer, her sister is a doctor, her former best friend is a successful newspaper columnist.

And those are the best examples. The lesser half of the cast consists of characters whose sole purpose is to be mean to Erica. Her sister’s fiancée has no redeeming features whatsoever, which stands out even worse because her sister seems like a nice, reasonable person. Her boss is a bitch and a bit of a ditz. Her old professor yelled at everyone. She joins a super-secret fraternity run by super-jerks. Most of her ex-boyfriends turn out to be shallow jerks.

One or two such characters would be fine, but the continued parade of People Who Are Mean to Erica robs the show of potential conflict. Erica is almost always right, and far too many episodes run with the theme of a) Erica taking revenge on the mean people, or b) Erica realizing the mean people were mean and she didn’t really care what they thought in the first place.

Sometimes, this works, largely because of Karpluk’s charm: We love Erica, and hate the people who are mean to her. And she’s just really, really good sometimes: The mild overdose of high school nostalgia in the pilot is wisely countered by Erica’s diatribe, to a slightly baffled teacher, that teenagers are just really stupid.

The formula can get predictable at times: Erica has a problem in her life. She goes back in time to revisit a moment that somehow relates. She learns a valuable lesson, which she then applies to her current problem. Sometimes the lesson involves making out with a lesbian.

But every now and then, the show breaks out of the formula, or at least maximizes its effect. Til Death focuses on Erica’s sister’s wedding, and the regret in question is that Erica helped her sister get back together with her (still really a jerk) boyfriend after a fight several years ago. When given the chance to fix her mistake, events unfold differently yet still remain the same, and the life lesson isn’t applied nearly so smoothly. It’s an extremely strong episode, in no small part because of its unpredictability; for the first time, we get the sense that it might not work out in the end.

The preceding episode, Adultescence, also works quite well, though for different reasons: It’s a fairly simple character piece, with Erica reliving her Dirty Dancing-themed Bat Mitzvah after suffering an embarrassment at a baby shower. She goes back, toughs out the embarrassing party, and puts down the local bully, only to have her mother tell her not to worry and that she certainly won’t be single and unsuccessful by the age of 32. And it’s all pulled off by Samantha Weinstein, standing in for the 12-year-old Erica.

Michael Riley’s Doctor Tom remains an uneven character: His excessive reliance on famous quotes is funny at times, and grating at others. He’s at his best when he’s being a relatively stoic sounding board for Erica, and can be downright annoying when he shows up to explain the moral lesson of the episode. Similarly, the show can be prone to excessive narration from Erica the beginning and end: If you really need the main character to explain what the show was about, you’re probably doing something wrong.

Being Erica can be incredibly frustrating to watch at times. It’s so good at times, and shows such potential, that it’s all the more infuriating when they trot out another cliché plot twist or yet another one-dimensional supporting character. It needs to be bold and daring to work, it needs to take some chances and not be afraid of failure. There are some encouraging signs: The next episode features Erica travelling back to the events of a previous episode, which could be fascinating or may just turn out to be pseudo-clever navel-gazing, and the finale will apparently deal with the as-yet-unexplained death of her brother.

I want it to succeed and be the show it could be. I want Erin Karpluk to be a star, and I want the CBC to have a genuine quality hit and something to show for being one of the few sources of unique Canadian entertainment. But mostly, I just want to really love it and look forward to it every week, instead of wondering if it’s going to be a good episode or a bad episode.

As I’ve said before, Aaron Sorkin’s Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is full of potential, but seems to have problems making good on it. That trend seemed to be reversed in the last few episodes, culminating in the fantastic Christmas episode. Finally, it looked like the show was hitting its stride: The show effectively spread the work around the ensemble cast, Sorkin wasn’t forcing one or two plots to dominate the show, and chemistry among the characters was working on all cylinders.

But the first episode after the Xmas break, Monday, seems to be another setback. It’s better than most of the early episodes, but displays more uncertainty than one would expect from Sorkin.

For one thing, Matt & Harriet seem to be back to their bickering. After The Kiss on the Christmas episode, one would think their relationship might move forward, but apparently not. On the up side, it doesn’t dominate the show like it did earlier on, and it does create a fun subplot with Matt bidding on charity auction for a date with Harriet, with the proceeds going to a Christian-run “Abstinence for Teens” organization.

Things begin to fall off the rails with the introduction of Hallie, the new VP of “Alternative Programming” – or, much to Jordan’s chagrin, reality TV. Her role is simply too obvious: She’s Jordan’s new adversary. She’s all about Reality TV, while Jordan hates it. But because she’s obviously Jordan’s foil, and we’re supposed to like Jordan, she comes off as automatically unlikeable, even after Jordan is an unprovoked bitch towards her. It doesn’t help that the general operation of the network detracts from Studio 60‘s focus on producing a late-night comedy show. The “Reality TV is bad” angle is just too simple, as is the seemingly inevitable compromise Jordan must come to in overcoming her prejudices. Hallie is a very clumsy and unlikeable stand-in for Ainsley Hayes, The West Wing‘s resident loveable Republican sex kitten.

As much as I don’t like Studio 60 losing focus on the TV show itself, by far the strongest aspect of Monday was Jack Rudolph’s ongoing effort to face down the board of directors, who want him to give in and accept a fine for airing an obscenity during a live newscast. Steven Webber has quickly set himself apart as one of the best actors on the show, and he’s been gradually giving Rudolph more dimension and life: He started out as a fairly one-dimensional (yet frequently hilarious) executive sterotype, but he’s increasingly been forced to break out of that mold. While Rudolph has traditionally been the most important person in any room, Sorkin now puts him on the defensive: He has to plead his case to the board of directors (even if diplomacy isn’t his forté), and then come up with a new plan to save both his ethics and, most likely, his job. It’s a great twist for the previously invincible character, and Webber pulls it off beautifully.

The Jordan/Danny relationship takes a very odd turn here. It was nicely built before the break, but one wonders if Sorkin hasn’t reconsidered the whole thing now; that, or he’s grossly miscalculated his dialogue and Bradley Whitford’s performance. It wasn’t hard to see a bit of an obsessive streak in Danny during The Christmas Show, but it was in that cute and loveable manner Whitford does so well. But here, he verges into distinctly creepy territory. It’s probably true that Jordan is rejecting him based more on their respective situations than on anything personal, but if Sorkin and Whitford are aiming for “charming and convincing”, they’ve missed their mark pretty badly. If they’re really aiming for something darker, it could be interesting, but they’re definitely treading a fine line. This is the one plot thread that needed more time to develop and digest – time that could have easily been found by dispensing with Hallie and her “Alternative Programming.”

There are a lot of plot threads that only begin here, and will obviously require more development: The potential romance between Tom and Lucy, as well as the falling out of Simon and Darius. The brief pitch session for Dylan’s “Husky Gymnast” is a highlight, proving if there’s one thing that’s certain, it’s that Mark McKinney needs to be on screen much, much more.

There’s still so much potential on display, and it continues to make the show fairly frustrating to watch. It looked like everything was pulling together, but Sorkin couldn’t resist rocking the boat.

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is starting to tick me off.

I love Aaron Sorkin. West Wing, the first 2-3 seasons in particular, rate among the best television I’ve ever seen. I really don’t mind that he’s elitist or left-wing, because I happen to be both, and I actually enjoy stories about people who aren’t average schmucks. He writes great scripts and collects great actors, and doesn’t assume his audience is too stupid to follow complex ideas and stories.

So it’s no surprise that I’m enjoying Studio 60. It’s different from West Wing – much lighter in tone, obviously – but still shows off most of Sorkin’s strengths: Snappy banter, fast-paced plots, and a fantastic ensemble of characters. Unfortunately, it’s also snagged on two of his weaknesses.

Sorkin doesn’t write romance terribly well. West Wing was at its best when it focused on the characters and their jobs, and tended to lag when it tried to get more personal. The early attempt to make Mandy a main character was quickly abandoned, and Sam’s relationship with the hooker was never as compelling itself as it was when it was crashing into Sam’s career and White House public relations. The only romances that really worked were the President and the First Lady, which was more of a married couple setup that allowed someone to point out when Bartlett was being an ass, and Josh and Amy, who were so inseparable from their jobs that their personal relationship couldn’t be separated from their professional one.

So it’s unfortunate that Sorkin has fixated on the romance between Matt (Matthew Perry) and Harriet (Sarah Paulson). Almost every episode thus far has been about their romantic history, and it never entirely gets off the ground. Only once, in The Long Lead Story, has their relationship been particularly compelling, and that was the point at which it was revealed that their romance came about almost entirely because of the show: Harriet was Matt’s muse, and his inspiration made her a star. That was the point of their relationship, and it took far too long to get to it and hasn’t really been touched on since.

The show has accordingly lagged when focusing on the will-the-or-won’t-they romance, not only because the story isn’t that great, but also because it obscures the rest of the cast. What’s the point in having such a great (and high-priced) ensemble cast if you’re hardly going to use them? Bradley Whitford has hardly had anything to do, which is unfortunate considering how much fun he usually is on screen; in this week’s episode, he manages to take control for a while and we see why he’s actually necessary to the cast. What’s more, both Perry and Paulson seem to be much better interacting with others than with each other: Perry & Whitford in particular have great chemistry which hasn’t been used nearly enough since about the second episode.

The other snag is Sorkin’s obsession with the Chrstian right. It was a popular target on West Wing – the first episode began with Josh nearly getting fired for insulting an evangelist on television – but it didn’t get anywhere near the attention that it has on Studio 60. It’s been in nearly every episode, which is entirely too much; as much as America may be divided into Red and Blue states, a comedy show shouldn’t be that obsessed with it.

Sorkin clearly wants to make Harriet the dividing and unifying force on the show: She’s openly and devoutly Christian, which alienates and angers some, yet she’s also a gifted comedian and a nice person, so everyone who knows her likes her. But still, it feels like overkill: I don’t talk about my co-workers’ religious or political beliefs on anything approaching a regular basis. Like her relationship with Matt, Harriet’s religion should come up once in a while, not every episode. What’s more, Sorkin has already explored this territory before, yet with considerably more subtlety and skill, on West Wing, where the President of the United States was a devout Catholic (who almost became a priest, even), and his staff included several Jewish characters. It simply wasn’t a big deal most of the time; everyone accepted, or at least understood, Bartlett’s beliefs, and if the staff of the White House can accept a religious boss, one would think the cast and crew of a TV show should be able to deal with it.

Despite the fact that the two big flaws revolve around Harriet, I do quite like Sarah Paulson. She’s a talented actor, doing drama and comedy capably. She’s great when she’s not being tied down to the show’s two big subplots, and even rises above them occasionally: Calling Matt a “Whoremonger with the sensitivity of a cabbage” was priceless, and her explanation of her Christian roots to the reporter was also well done. Unfotunately, Sorkin is doing her, not to mention the rest of the cast, a disservice by going back to the same story well every week.

Studio 60 has all the ingredients to be a great show, but Sorkin is holding it back. The recent two-parter shows signs of busting out: It got the whole cast in on the action, covered a variety of stories, and had a nice guest spot from John Goodman. Bradley Whitford and Steven Weber finally got the screen time they deserve – the two have great chemistry together, and Weber seems to be having an awesome time chewing up scenery. But the Christians vs. Hollywood theme continued to rear its head, and the show, a nice ensemble piece, yet again closes on Matt and Harriet. It was a nice scene, but it didn’t sum up the episode terribly well; unfortunately, it sums up the series fairly effectively: Too much focus on elements that aren’t working all that well.