Awards Daily TV

Season 2, Episode 25
Director: R.W. Goodwin
Writer: Chris Carter

For The X-Files‘s second season finale, “Anasazi” is thisshort of being a near-total dud. Even if it were a standard midseason entry, it would still be near the bottom of the pile. It lacks any sense of intrigue, urgency, thrill, or audience engagement. For a season ender, that’s inexcusable.

“Anasazi” starts promisingly enough: after an Earth tremor, a Navajo teenage boy finds an object buried beneath some rubble on a Navajo Indian reservation. The boy returns home with a mysterious object in tow – the shriveled corpse of what appears to be an alien. It’s all downhill from there. The remainder of the episode deals with Mulder receiving some encoded information from a source who hacked into a government computer. Mysteriously, Mulder is exceedingly agitated, even going so far as to punch Skinner in the face at one point. Scully tries to help by taking the encoded data to a Navajo translator, but she is referred to a Navajo code breaker – the young boy from the prologue’s grandfather who used to work with the government in World War II.

Mulder’s journey through the episode involves his father who was visited by the Smoking Man, informing him that Mulder has the secret data. Mulder’s father tells Mulder to come home with the intention of revealing the “whole truth,” but he is shot and killed by Alex Krycek before he can share any information with Mulder. Scully takes Mulder’s gun to prove Mulder didn’t kill his father, and Krycek tries to assassinate Mulder but is stopped by Scully who ends up purposefully shooting Mulder in the shoulder. Literally none of that made sense. Scully then drives two days with an unconscious Mulder (his aggression was caused by a chemical placed in his water supply by an unknown source) to the Navajo reservation while the boy’s grandfather decodes the material. The close of the episode shows Mulder investigating the submerged object – surprisingly, a railroad tanker – and discovering a large pile of burned out alien corpses. The Smoking Man calls Mulder and is able to track the signal. He arrives on the scene as Mulder sits inside the tanker and instructs a subordinate to blow up the tanker.

The problem with this particular season finale is that it stuffed way too much fan service into the proceedings. Lone Gunmen? Check. Smoking Man? Check. Aliens? Check. Mulder’s father? Check. It’s the overall mythology that begins to suffocate the material here. Mulder and Scully’s actions are all guided by plot mechanics rather than organic character growth – the biggest evidence of this being Scully’s shooting of Mulder in the shoulder to avoid killing Krycek but losing Krycek in the end anyway. Plus, the entire midsection is dedicated to the unravelling of the Navajo code that encodes the top secret data, and the progress is slow and maddening.

At the end, the revelation of the alien cargo is hardly a revelation at all. Clearly, there are aliens on Earth, and clearly the government has been using their genes and technology to advance the human race as much as humanly possible. So, none of this is particularly surprising or shocking. Perhaps the episode will be rescued by the Season Three premiere, but it has a lot of ground to cover as “Anasazi” now hold the title as the least memorable episode of the series through the end of Season Two.

Note: Wrapping up this week, the Awards Daily TV Crew will be making the case for each nominee in the Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Drama Series categories in random order. We’ll be dropping one each day leading into and through the Emmy voting period, which ends this Friday. Share/retweet your favorites to build the buzz! 

Netflix’s Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt 

Metacritic: 78%
Rotten Tomatoes: 94%
Number of nominations: 7
Major nominations: Outstanding Comedy Series, Outstanding Supporting Actress Comedy Series (Jane Krakowski), Outstanding Supporting Actor Comedy Series (Tituss Burgess)

“Unbreakable! They alive, damnit! It’s a miracle!” The instantly clever, quirky title sequence of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is a viral video mash-up video of a neighbor being interviewed following the discovery of the mole women in an underground bunker, held there for fifteen years by a cult leader “reverend.” A familiar-sounding, disturbing premise, bravely given a comedy makeover – and I would like to say handled gracefully. A show essentially about acclimatizing to the reality of the modern world had you been completely sheltered from it. It also pokes fun and makes acute observations about today’s society (race perceptions, cosmetic surgery, the American law system – want me to go on?). And primarily the plight of women – “but females are strong as hell.”

On deciding upon a stay in New York City, a misunderstanding in communication lands Kimmy (wonderful Ellie Kemper) a job with rich, privileged, but completely unable to take care of herself Jacqueline (hilarious Jane Krakowski). In fact her friendship with the clueless, neglected housewife also prospers after a rocky start. Though on their second meeting, Jacqueline forgets Kimmy’s name, “Cornmill, is it?” she asks, one of many absurdly amusing quips. Jacqueline’s step-daughter Xanthippe appears as a pain in the ass teenage girl who thinks she knows it all (“I will chew you up and spit you out like my food.”), as we endearingly later discover though she knows very little and is actually a rather vulnerable.

Kimmy is also greatly appreciative of the box room with a window in the apartment share with Titus (flamboyantly good Tituss Burgess) – one of the biggest queens in New York, and wannabe Broadway superstar (ooh that rhymes with “Pinot Noir”). His highly-strung nature and Kimmy’s naivety make them somehow a likely partnership. Titus is plain and simply uproarious, we’ve seen this kind of over-the-top camp characters portrayal before, sure, but this is convincingly unique. These principle relations form a strong part of the way these oddball, but realistic characters all get along as well as contributing to the show’s chop-chop narrative.

In just ten tiny, super-paced episodic outings (binge-watch on Netflix immediately), Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt flies through the season, offering plenty of intelligent and refreshing laughs. Of course with Tina Fey on typewriter duties (Outstanding Guest Actress Emmy nominee for her cameo here) the comedic aura of 30 Rock is certainly a blessing. Similar in clever, witty quips and character interactions, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt stands on its own two left feet, dearly and enticingly amusing all the same – and consistently so.

The jokes and the plots are unquestionably captivating, and although often seem far-fetched or outlandish (that the bunker girls would sing, to the tune of O Christmas Tree “Apocalypse, apocalypse, we caused it with our dumbness.”), the execution of the whole affair mean you are not needed to even be reminded this is a sit-com, let alone that the more bizarre bits of humor and story-lines are portrayed in a straight-forward way that make them easy to swallow. Even when somehow dating (if you can really call it that) an elderly man clearly on a different planet mentally, the writers go to town on the slapstick routine, but also temporarily giving Kimmy an outlet for the troubles of her recent past.

One of the central  themes that shines through is that is it not just Kimmy that is adapting, these new people in her life have enough problems and insecurities for their own show. And the comedy phrases and one-liners follow suit by being spread across the vast array of these socialites or misfits (“Hey you respect your step-mother, she step-gave birth to you.”). There is too some background music that might belong somewhere in a melodrama or the more classy New York comedy film, but you hardly notice it here (a bit like elevator music?), but it works a treat against the comedy landscape.

The performances are top-notch, and not to be faulted, providing superb comic timing and bringing to life some of the best characters on TV at the moment. And characters that have heart and that you want to have better lives – we care about them and want to be around them. At the core is Kimmy, a warm, care-free soul, inspired to learn about the world in the most delightful and calamitous way. “I’ve been Googling you.” the suspicious Xanthippe threatens at one point, to which Kimmy alarmingly responds “Have you, I didn’t feel it.”.

There is of course no Kimmy quite like this without Ellie Kemper.  At times she is so charming, cute and cool in this I would struggle to find someone else I would rather spend some quality time with. It is great that Emmy showed Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt some love (well-deserved), but to not find a spot for Kemper is pretty hard to believe regardless of the level of fan you are of the show. Obvious to say that Kemper is Kimmy, but she embarks on the journey and inhabits the character so convincingly, a terrific performance, proving to us all about any potential she had after The Office to carry her own show. The lack of the Best Actress nod may sway voters towards voting for Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt as Best Comedy (stranger, and more predictable, things have happened). A kind of guilt trip right to the big prize, perhaps. The comedy category is cram-packed with diverse, quality shows (even with the absence of Orange is the New Black) so the competition is fierce, but given the creators, the broad appeal, and extremely positive response this might well be too hot to completely ignore. That and fifty other reasons why Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt might well be the freshest, best comedy show out there right now.

On today’s Water Cooler Podcast, the Cooler gang offers their favorites in television theme songs. The offerings range from classic themes to the themes of the modern sitcom era to orchestral greatness. Amusingly enough, no one manages to overlap significantly in their selections, proving there is indeed a wide array of television theme music out there.

But before we dive into TV theme music, we tackle a few news topics including word out of the Television Critics Week that there’s too much TV, NBC is up to its old tricks again, and the E! network is courting some legal action with an upcoming project.

Make sure you like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter for more from Awards Daily TV.

2:54 – Too Much TV?
13:29 – NBC’s Upcoming Powerless
17:36 – E!s The Arrangement Scandal
22:23 – Our Favorite TV Theme Songs

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

AMC’s The Walking Dead largely began (following a brief prelude illustrating his near-death experience) in media res with Frank Grimes (Andrew Lincoln) waking after the zombie apocalypse was already well underway. Frank’s unconsciousness and subsequent revival was a good way to quickly integrate the audience into the new world and quickly introduce them zombie gore. Its spin-off, Fear the Walking Dead, has a trickier setup as it details the beginning of the new zombie order in the culturally diverse setting of Los Angeles.

While it doesn’t necessarily skimp on the Dead‘s familiar thrills and gore, Fear inevitably suffers in comparison because it needs to give us something new in this extremely familiar world. Dead‘s characters, and to a great extent the audience as well, are mostly numb to the potential that anyone could die at any given moment. Fear doesn’t know that gruesome reality yet, so its characters are still in this perplexed and horrified state as they gradually wakens to the terrors around them. As a viewer who has been there/done that, I grew slightly impatient with Fear‘s finished product.

To its benefit, the show introduces us to an extremely multi-cultural cast, something that the Los Angeles setting necessitates. Kim Dickens (Gone Girl) and Cliff Curtis star as dating teachers who must deal with her druggie son’s recent accident and hospitalization. Much of the pilot is spent with this fraying family unit, sort of an emotional deep-dive into these characters with whom we need to quickly sympathize. Dickens’s son, played by Frank Dillane, is a heroin junkie living in an abandoned church when he has the series’s first encounter with a zombie, his former girlfriend. He spends the next several scenes trying to determine if that was a side effect of bad drugs or if it was reality. The question is definitely resolved for him by episode’s end when he shoots and repeatedly runs over his zombified drug dealer. Meanwhile, Los Angeles slowly begins to crumble as a mysterious virus begins attacking healthy humans.

The most effective scenes of Fear are not the traditional zombie scenes because, frankly, The Walking Dead does them a lot better. The Fear zombie attack scenes are small and contained. There are no hoards, yet, so it’s typically restricted to one-on-one encounters. But the show rises in tension because the living have no idea what they’re facing. They do dumb things like walk into dark rooms and approach lumbering people because they don’t expect what we know is the obvious outcome. What I personally found the most interesting in Fear was one of the closing scenes in which a zombie attacked EMT after a car accident, captured on camera by local news affiliates. It reminded me of the recent round of police brutality captured and published on You Tube, and that association was truly chilling.

Still, you can’t help but feel like you’ve pressed reset on The Walking Dead. Granted, I’ve only seen the pilot, so I’m hoping for a different tone to the remainder of the series that would differentiate it from the original. It certainly has a more unique look to it with amber hues and graffiti-stained walls giving us a vastly different canvas than the back woods of Georgia. If Fear can effectively establish itself as a different entity, then only then will it deserve to stand with The Walking Dead without seeming like a cold and calculated money grab (which it most certainly is, but the creators need to at least try and hide that fact).

As it stands now, Fear is a mildly interesting diversion that will live or die by its originality alone – a tough task given how much zombie material has come before it.

Season 2, Episode 24
Director: Rob Bowman
Writer: Frank Spotnitz

The X-Files continues on its conspiratorial path to make vegetarians of us all in “Our Town,” an episode dedicated to the joys of both cannibalism and poultry processing. Aside from yet another weak reliance on the “Scully’s in danger” running theme, the episode is clinically effective and deserves a far better reputation than it seems to have amongst viewers and critics alike.

We begin with a variation of the “teens parking in the woods” introduction. In this case, middle-aged George Kearns parks with his younger lover Paula. Rather than make out in the car, she runs off into the woods, enticing George to follow her. Disoriented, he loses sight of her and is quickly surrounded by multiple torch-bearing entities. George turns to face an axe-wielding man in a tribal mask who quickly cuts off his head. Mulder and Scully are brought in to investigate because George Kearns was a federal health inspector who was writing up multiple violations against Chaco Chicken, a local chicken processing plant. Through the course of the investigation, they discover that George suffered from Creutzfeldt-Jakcob disease, a rare illness that causes dementia. They uncovered this because multiple people in the town, Paula included, began suffering from similar symptoms, eventually leading to their deaths.

Turns out that Walter Chaco, Paula’s grandfather and the owner of the plant, had crash-landed in New Guinea in 1944 near a local cannibalistic tribe. Having learned their ways and the supposed age-defying benefits of cannibalism, he devised a plan to kill and cook local citizens and feed them back to the chickens, keeping both Chaco and selected local towns people young beyond their years. After Scully is kidnapped by Chaco, a ceremonial bonfire is held to effectively kill and eat her, but the townspeople turn against Chaco due to the ramping disease that will kill them all. Even the town sheriff is in on it, serving as the mask-wearing axe man. Mulder shows up just in time to free Scully but was unable to save the beheaded Chaco whose remains are likely fed to unsuspecting chickens in the final scene.

OK, so a lot of this episode makes absolutely no sense at all. Why would the government, after shutting down the cannibalism factory / chicken processing plant, allow someone to feed the suspect slop to chickens at the end of the episode? How is a small town able to keep that big of a secret when 87 people have died in a relatively short amount of time? If the sheriff is in on the crime, then why did he allow the dragging of the local river to uncover all those bones? Why did they even dump the bones in the shallow river to begin with? If the disease is passed through consumption of another diseased person, then why did Paula go insane so quickly after George’s death? Seems like that would take longer than 24 hours to take hold. Plus, she had obviously been experiencing symptoms long enough to warrant receiving medication from the plant doctor which she takes just before going insane. Why did Walter Chaco keep heads in his red cabinet of death? How did that not smell? And at the end of the episode, the plant floor manager is apparently trampled to death by terrified townspeople. How did that even happen? It’s not like there was any question as to which way to run when Mulder shot the axe man. They were in a field. Run anywhere… just not on top of somebody. Repeatedly. Killing them.

Despite the six or seven plot holes I just thought of in as many minutes, I did like “Our Town” for its intrigue and admittedly disgusting plot. What I felt was really missing, though, was an increased sense of irony. Clearly, the writer had irony in mind when he titled the episode “Our Town,” referring to Thornton Wilder’s early 20th century play about an idyllic small American town. Yet, none of that irony is inherent within the actual episode itself. The director and cast play “Our Town” in a deadly serious and straightforward manner, which is fine but a lighter, more satiric hand would have greatly benefitted the material.

I mean, after all, they are feeding human remains to chickens. There’s gotta be a joke in there somewhere. Right?

On Monday’s Water Cooler Podcast, the Cooler gang gather around to discuss their favorite television theme songs. Whether they’re pop or orchestra-based, certain theme songs are inevitably stuck in our heads and are often the first aspects we recall of a classic TV show. Favorites like Cheers, The Simpsons, and Mary Tyler Moore are just a few of the many theme songs we plan to fondly discuss as we try to dig into the reasoning behind why they’re so successful. 

Before we jump into our main topic, we jump off the Emmy bandwagon for a week and take a look at some recent news stories. It’s a packed week at the Water Cooler, and we look forward to having everyone gather-round the Cooler with us. 

Season 2, Episode 23
Director: James A. Contner
Writer: Vince Gilligan

Late in its second season, The X-Files lucked out and stumbled upon a writer that would remain a large series influence for the remainder of its run. The same writer would move on to create one of television history’s greatest dramas and its recent, Emmy-nominated spin-off. That writer is Vince Gilligan, and “Soft Light” was his first produced X-Files episode. Gilligan’s contributions would substantially grow over the course of the series, but “Soft Light” gets things started on an appropriately sinister note.

We kick things off in a Richmond, Virginia, hotel (Gilligan grew up near Richmond and frequently visited his grandparents there) where Chester Ray Banton (Tony Shalhoub) bangs on a hotel room door in a dimly lit hallway. Across the hall, another resident of the hotel watches from his hotel door peephole. As Banton backs up, his shadow extends under the door, and the observing man disappears into a black, burnt spot on the floor. Mulder and Scully are called in by a former FBI academy student of Scully’s who was assigned the disappearance – the latest of many – as her first case. They eventually discover Banton’s involvement thanks to his penchant for hiding out in a brightly lit (the “soft light” of the title) train station. Banton was experimenting with dark matter and accidentally exposed himself to a particle accelerator, causing his shadow to effectively become dark matter that absorbs those who touch it. It wasn’t entirely clear if the accident was entirely accidental given the nefarious acts of his partner later.

Mulder reaches out to X who attempts to kidnap Banton but ends up releasing him by accident. Banton wants to kill himself in the particle accelerator after killing Scully’s former student, but he is trapped by his colleague who immediately contacts X. X shoots the colleague and removes Banton from the chamber, using the colleague’s body as a decoy. We close with X supervising experiments on Banton in a government facility.

“Soft Light” bears little thematic resemblance to Breaking Bad. There is, I suppose, the occurrence of bad things happening to good people (Scully’s student’s intentional murder), but it’s not an unusual happening with the larger context of The X-Files. This episode bears a stronger resemblance to Gilligan’s earlier cinematic work like Wilder Napalm. The interest in the supernatural. The inability for a man to control his inflicted abilities. It all stems from the comics that heavily influenced Gilligan. What is highlighted here is the excellent dialogue, the confidence that Gilligan employs to convey the silly plot, that carries the episode.

The other major star of “Soft Light” is actor Tony Shalhoub who harnesses his by-now patented set of quirks and ticks to convey Banton’s sleepless neuroses. His is a great performance despite somewhat being limited to a series of “Don’t come near me” histrionics. His strongest moment comes at the end when he cries a single tear at an unpleasant future as the subject of government experiments. That is one of Gilligan’s more substantial contributions: the enhanced sinister nature of X.

Overall, the episode is a solid entry in The X-Files collection. It’s perhaps better known for the future promise of greatness (Gillian, Shalhoub) than for greatness displayed now.

Fox has dropped Andy Samberg’s first promo as host of the 2015 Emmy Awards. Take a peak…

The American Horror Story series is infamous for several things, particularly the uncanny ability to garner multiple Emmy nominations for each season. One thing fans and detractors alike consistently comment on is the state of their season teasers, which are traditionally scarier and more artful than the main season itself.

Will American Horroy Story: Hotel prove different? We won’t know until October 7 if that again proves true, but here are the latest teasers to whet your appetite or disappointment, depending on your expectations.

Fox’s Empire shows up on another list of awards that isn’t the Emmys – this time, the Casting Society of America’s first-round Artios Nominations. Empire received two bids and was joined by other snubbed Emmy series Bloodline, Blackish, Jane the Virgin, Grace and Frankie, How to Get Away With Murder, Gotham, The Good Wife, and The Affair.

The CSA Artios awards will undergo an additional round of voting August 24 through September 8. Winners will be announced at the Film and Television joint ceremony in January 2016.

The full list of nominees (including theatrical events) is as follows:

TELEVISION PILOT COMEDY
Blackish
Grace and Frankie
Jane the Virgin
Transparent
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

TELEVISION PILOT DRAMA
The Affair
Better Call Saul
Empire
Gotham
How to Get Away with Murder

TELEVISION SERIES COMEDY
Episodes
Orange is the New Black
Silicon Valley
Transparent
Veep

TELEVISION SERIES DRAMA
Bloodline
Empire
Game of Thrones
House of Cards
The Good Wife

TELEVISION MOVIE OR MINI-SERIES
American Horror Story: Freak Show
Olive Kitteridge
The Slap
Wayward Pines
Wolf Hall

CHILDREN’S PILOT AND SERIES (LIVE ACTION)
Austin & Ally
Dog with a Blog
Girl Meets World
Instant Mom
Lab Rats

TELEVISION ANIMATION ADULT
American Dad
Bob’s Burgers
Bojack Horseman
Family Guy
Robot Chicken

TELEVISION ANIMATION CHILDREN
The Adventures of Puss in Boots
Bubble Guppies
Dora & Friends: Into the City!
Sanjay & Craig
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

NY BROADWAY THEATER – COMEDY
Fish in the Dark
Living on Love
Love Letters
You Can’t Take It with You

NY BROADWAY THEATER – DRAMA
The Audience
Constellations
The Elephant Man
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
This is Our Youth

NY BROADWAY THEATER – MUSICAL
An American in Paris
Finding Neverland
The King and I
Something Rotten!
On the Twentieth Century

NY THEATER – COMEDY
39 Steps
A Month in the Country
Big Love
The Flick
What I Did Last Summer

NY THEATER – DRAMA
Between Riverside and Crazy
The Glass Menagerie
Hamlet
Punk Rock
The World of Extreme Happiness

NY THEATER – MUSICAL
Fly by Night
Found
Clinton, The Musical
New York Spring Spectacular
Revolution

REGIONAL THEATER EAST
Ain’t Misbehavin’
Arcadia
Can Can
Carousel
Diner
First Wives Club

REGIONAL THEATER WEST
Bright Star
Les Miserables
Othello
Arms and the Man
One Man, Two Guvnors

LOS ANGELES THEATER
What the Butler Saw
The Country House
Hair
Race
Spring Awakening

SPECIAL THEATRICAL PERFORMANCE – EAST
Oliver!
Paint Your Wagon
Parade
Tick, Tick … Boom!
Zorba

SPECIAL THEATRICAL PERFORMANCE – WEST
The Addams Family
Hello Dolly!
Tarzan
Unscreened Summer Series

THEATER TOURS
Irving Berlin’s White Christmas
Kinky Boots
Matilda The Musical
Rodgers + Hammerstein’s Cinderella
Blithe Spirit

SHORT FILMS
Day One
Dragula
Muted
Rita Mahtoubian Is Not A Terrorist
Share

WEB SERIES
Cop Show
Deadbeat
Karl Manhair: Postal Inspector
Olive and Mocha
Resident Advisors
Side Effects