Musings On: AMERICAN GODS • TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN • UNBREAKABLE KIMMY SCHMIDT
My thoughts on some TV shows I’ve been watching just lately…
AMERICAN GODS: Season 1 ✭✭✭✩✩
I know Neil Gaiman’s novel won lots of awards and is generally well-regarded by fans and critics, but I never finished it. I remember getting frustrated by the spluttering storyline after awhile, and even the premise was difficult to grasp. It’s a problem I often have with books in adulthood, perhaps because the rhythms and conventions of film and TV have since programmed me a certain way. But I was excited to see what Bryan Fuller would do with Gaiman’s idea, because I love the ‘elevator pitch’ of American Gods, and Fuller’s already proven himself adept at putting a fresh spin on someone else’s work with Hannibal (which I’d argue improved on Thomas Harris’s books and the previous movie adaptations in many ways).
The resulting drama has been a visual feast with plenty to wash over your eyeballs, but one that suffers from style over substance issues that AMC’s Preacher also encountered. It’s beautiful to watch, bringing the same flair and style as Hannibal to a more supernatural world, and there are some very talented actors doing great work (Ian McShane, Pablo Schreiber, and Emily Browning being the standouts), but it feels like a show in love with itself and its ideas… and slightly unsure how to properly dramatise things. We’re approaching the end of the first season, and all that’s happening is Mr. Wednesday (the Norse God Odin) is travelling around the country recruiting fellow ‘Old Gods’ with his ex-con bodyguard Shadow (Ricky Whittle). It’s almost a ‘god-of-the-week’ show, having met Czernobog (the Slavic God of evil and darkness), and Vulcan (the Roman God of fire), amongst others.
In the series, numerous Gods of old religions and myths still exist in America, but they’ve lost their power because people have stopped believing in them. However, ‘New Gods’ have emerged that are deities of more secular things, like globalisation, media, and technology.
It’s a fun idea, even if it all falls apart under any scrutiny…
I mean, millions of people believe in a monotheistic God in the 21st-century, so does each one exist to wield genuine power on Earth? And does this consequently mean every religion is ‘correct’, if followers believing in them makes each religion “true”? Also, isn’t there an inherent problem of ‘competition’ between Gods from different cultures that represent the same thing, like Poseidon (the Greek God of the sea) and Neptune (the Roman God of the sea)? And why are there Gods of human concepts like media? People don’t “pray” before turning on BBC News. It’s more like idolatry. Maybe I’m thinking too much into this.
It’s a fun show, nevertheless. Archer’s Goon through the prism of Hannibal. It looks expensive and the cinematography’s to die for. Hit pause on any random shot and you have an amazing new desktop wallpaper. It’s also controversial and progressive with its attitudes, best exemplified by a sex scene between two gay Muslim men that went further than you’d expect.
Full frontal male and female nudity, lashings of profanity, bone-crunching violence… American Gods doesn’t flinch from much on Starz (a cable channel that arguably goes further than even HBO allow on Game of Thrones, as old fans of Spartacus will attest).
I encourage you to watch American Gods, if you’re not already, simply because almost every episode contains something you won’t have seen before: like a chubby middle-aged man getting shrunk and sucked inside a woman’s vagina during sex. That was a new one. I just hope the show finds delivers clarity about what it intends to do with these characters, makes the lead character Shadow more interesting (he’s the least compelling part of the show, which is a problem), and dramatises a battle between ancient and modern Gods that’s plausible and compelling. Oh, and doesn’t take years to actually happen.
Starz, Sundays (US) • Amazon Prime, Mondays (UK).
TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN ✭✭✭✭✩
It doesn’t surprise me that ratings for Showtime’s long-awaited revival of David Lynch and Mark Frost’s Twin Peaks have been low. The double-bill premiere only attracted 506,000 viewers after months of marketing hype, and that figure dropped to 195,000 only a week later.
While Twin Peaks: The Return is being discussed and dissected by critics and Peaks fans online, the general public appear to have given it a wide berth. I don’t know anyone who’s watching it on Sky Atlantic here in the UK, or has even mentioned it being on. I think people forget that Twin Peaks was a short-lived phenomenon, only lasting two seasons, of which the majority of the second are seen as a disastrous mess without David Lynch’s direct involvement.
Showtime probably thought brand recognition was enough to try and recreate what ABC had on their hands in the early-1990s, but times have changed…
However, that’s not to say Twin Peaks: The Return is a creative mess or qualitatively bad. It’s just utterly unlike what anyone was expecting. And that’s actually a good thing, despite the frustrations this also creates. I won’t even attempt to fully explain what’s happening, beyond to say that Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle Maclachlan) has returned from another dimension after 25 years, to inhabit the body of a doppelgänger his own “evil twin” created, only to struggle with his mental faculties. OK, got that? Moving on…
Most of the action doesn’t even take place in Twin Peaks, because the story’s expanded to include a wide variety of other characters and locations. I’m sure it’s all leading back to the titular town, but for now it’s bracing to note how removed things are from the quirky small-town murder-mystery show audiences fell in love with... that gradually revealed itself to be an existential paranormal nightmare.
Lynch is directing all 18 episodes, and appears to have taken this opportunity to tell a truly epic and mind-bending “movie” (dished out in 18 weekly chunks), which in some ways owes more of a debt to Lynch’s movies Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive than Twin Peaks.
I don’t know what my thoughts will be in several week’s time, because there’s a chance Twin Peaks: The Return is going to become an exhausting and tedious indulgence of Lynch’s that I lose patience with. It’s walking a thin line already, and could tip over into failure any moment. However, right now, having watched six very bizarre episodes, this is one of the most daring and innovative shows I’ve seen in years. It doesn’t adhere to the established “rules” of storytelling, and there are moments that seem utterly pointless or totally confusing, but you also sense the guiding hand of a master at work. Who knows if Lynch and Frost will manage to bring this tapestry of madness together for an emotionally rewarding and comprehensible climax, but I’m hopeful. And even if they don’t, just keep the journey there interesting.
Showtime, Mondays (US) • Sky Atlantic, Tuesdays (UK).
UNBREAKABLE KIMMY SCHMIDT: Season 3 ✭✭✩✩✩
I was a big fan of the first season of this Netflix comedy, created by Tina Fey and Robert Carlock (30 Rock), about an irrepressible woman who spent 15 years in an underground bunker as part of a doomsday cult, before being freed into modern-day New York, where her closeted upbringing and naivety helps transform the lives of those around her. It was bright and colourful, very lively, packed with jokes, and yet with a slightly dark underbelly.
But now we’re into the third season (with a fourth on the way), and I’m noticeably less amused. Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt’s still enjoyable fare and makes me smile a few times each episode, but I’m nearing the end of this current season and there haven’t been very many truly memorable instalments. I think part of the problem is that Kimmy Schmidt (Ellie Kemper) herself was a breath of fresh air when she bounced onto the screen in 2015 with her bright purple trousers and piano keys smile, but her fist pumps are beginning to feel like shtick.
The further we get away from Kimmy’s twisted backstory as a “molewoman” in an underground bunker, and fact there’s a 15-year gap in her pop culture knowledge, the more conventional Kimmy seems to me. The show seems to realise that the core joke of its eponymous character is fading (she can’t be oblivious to modern norms too much now, and has to move past her tragic past already), so they’ve understandably started emphasising the rest of the cast. Quite a big arc this season belonged to Kimmy’s frumpy landlady Lillian Kaushtupper (Carol Kane), which was pleasant enough, but it’s hard to summon much enthusiasm for her character. I still enjoy Titus (Tituss Burgess) because the actor’s performance is so infectiously camp and mesmerising, but everything else is beginning to get a little played out.
Netflix, all episodes available now.
