Clip: First Three Minutes of ‘Fear the Walking Dead’

AMC has released the first three minutes of its upcoming spin-off series Fear the Walking Dead. In it, Nick Clark (Frank Dillane) wakes to find all of his friends dead and his girlfriend, Gloria, munching away on one of them. Set during the early days of the zombie plague memorably documented in The Walking Dead, Fear‘s zombies are more human-like and less decayed appearing – Gloria’s cloudy eyes are really the only thing that differentiates her from a living human. Well, that and the blood dripping from her mouth.

This scene will undoubtedly prove misleading to some of the loftier, gorier expectations set for the series. Early publicity has revealed that the series will take a slower pace as it builds to a widespread breakout of the zombie virus.

Fear the Walking Dead premieres Sunday night on AMC.

Making the Case for ‘Parks and Recreation’

Note: Over the next two weeks, 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. Share/retweet your favorites to build the buzz!

NBC’s Parks and Recreation

Metacritic: Not Available
Rotten Tomatoes: 100%
Nominations: 3
Major Nominations: Outstanding Comedy Series, Comedy Actress (Amy Poehler)

Parks & Recreation is a bit like the little engine that could.

When it started out in NBC in 2009, it was presented as an Office rip-off in promos (Amy Poehler’s Leslie Knope was even depicted as a bumbling boss a la Michael Scott). But it was when P&R started to kill ‘em with kindness and develop its own humblebrag style that the series really resonated with audiences.

P&R does something that very few shows do: It finds humor in good people. It’s easy to be funny when you’re poking fun at outlandish or morally reprehensible characters (Jim torturing Dwight Schrute or Michael providing a caustic aside about Lucille Bluth), but most of the characters on P&R are more normal, less cartoonish, which can be challenging when trying to garner laughs.

Yet, one of the funniest things about Leslie Knope is how good-natured and ambitious she is, especially when juxtaposed against anti-government grumps like Ron Swanson (submitted episode “Leslie and Ron” highlights the relationship between the two foils). P&R is very much an ensemble piece that finds its humor in the unique personalities that populate the Parks department. (It’s a tragedy that Nick Offerman has never been Emmy-nominated for his iconic role as Ron Swanson.)

It’s also rare for a show to get increasingly better year after year. Where comparatively The Office only declined in quality, P&R continued to build, despite going through cast changes (goodbye, Paul Schneider) and NBC schedule adjustments. When Rashida Jones and Rob Lowe exited, other characters like the acid-tongued Donna (Retta) and hapless Jerry/Larry/Gary (Jim O’Heir) stepped up and were given more to do. P&R withstood what might cement some shows in canceled obscurity. And the final season continued to take risks that paid off, including a time jump and an episode centered around Andy Dwyer’s Johnny Karate children’s show (also one of the submitted episodes for Emmy contention).

In another submitted episode titled “Pie-Mary,” Leslie encounters controversy when she tries to back out of a pie-making contest and as a result faces accusations of being a lackluster mother and wife. It’s tradition for the wives of political candidates (in this case, Ben Wyatt) to participate, but Leslie doesn’t believe she should have to. In this episode, Amy Poehler’s feminist viewpoints especially shine (“The last contest winner was June Hartwell’s buttermilk meringue. The last contest loser was all women”), and the show makes a cynical statement about gender politics (Ben bests Leslie for the Woman of the Year award)

And finally, in the series finale, the show goes out on top. “One Last Ride” shows Leslie Knope saying goodbye to everyone, with flash-forwards illuminating what would happen to all of our favorite Pawnee citizens. It’s kind of like Six Feet Under’s memorable finale, only less depressing. It’s heartfelt, hilarious (Jean-Ralphio Saperstein faking his own death), and true to itself, just like Knope.

If Emmy voters are smart, they’ll treat themselves by honoring this comedy.

X-Files Flashback: ‘The Calusari’

Season 2, Episode 21
Director: Mike Vejar
Writer: Sara Charno

In “The Calusari,” The X-Files revisits one of its most fertile genres – the “kids be creepy as shit” vein of horror. The best thing these episodes do is find The Perfect Child that either fortunately or unfortunately (depending on your vantage point) has the look of a Damien. In this case, young Joel Palmer embodies young Charlie Holvey, a potentially disturbed child, so effectively that he’s able to convey a foreboding sense of evil without much dialogue at all. If you’re wondering where that talent comes from, then look no further than my earlier statement – “kids be creepy as shit.”

“The Calusari” opens at a local park that is surrounded by a small train track and working locomotive. Young Charlie and his family are meant to enjoy balloons and ice cream until Charlie’s 2-year-old brother lets go of his balloon and falls into his ice cream, ruining the day as little brothers are want to do. I blame the parents because all of this could have been avoided if they’d simply tied the balloon to the child’s wrist, but whatever… Incidents escalate until the small child chases his second balloon (formerly Charlie’s balloon) into the path of the oncoming train which is unable to stop and kills him on the spot. Flash forward a few months and Mulder and Scully are investigating the crime – the reasons of which are slightly mysterious… Something about the father working for the State Department. At any rate, they discover through fancy photograph filtering that an entity was indeed dragging the balloon against the wind into the path of the oncoming train.

When they investigate, they find a whole batch of crazy. First, the house seems supremely possessed with fires randomly raging in the fireplace and spotty power outages. Also, there is a Romanian grandmother whose comic ancient ways – protecting the child by drawing a swastika on his fist – go against the grains of traditional family bonds. Scully is convinced that the grandmother was harming the twins because she suffers from Munchausen by proxy. After the father dies from a mysterious garage door hanging, the grandmother calls in the titular Calusari – Romanian priests – to cleanse the house and the boy using the blood of dead chickens. Charlie’s mother kicks the Calusari out of the house, and Charlie takes revenge against his grandmother by BRINGING THE DEAD CHICKENS BACK TO LIFE TO PECK HER TO DEATH. Clearly, one of the more inventive deaths on The X-Files to date.

When questioned about the incident, Charlie claims a boy named Michael did it – Michael being the stillborn twin he never knew he had. Convinced Michael and Charlie need to be separated, Mulder joins the Calusari in an exorcism ritual over Charlie, stopping Michael just before he kills Scully and his own mother. The spirit is separated from Charlie, but the leader of the Calusari warns Mulder that “it knows you.” The end.

“The Calusari” is an average-to-good episode of The X-Files. It is effectively tense and unnerving thanks to Joel Palmer’s performance as the boy. Kudos, too, to Helene Clarkson as his mother, Maggie, for effectively looking frightened and bewildered for much of the episode. The Calusari and grandmother scenes are also well-staged and efficiently unsettling thanks to the vast cultural differences between the Romanian and American families. I also found the grandmother’s death by chicken to be one of those great scenes where you can’t quite believe what you’re seeing, but you know that it’s completely, amazingly bonkers.

I have minor quibbles with the Michael side of the equation as it wasn’t developed well enough to be anything but a swift resolution to a complicated plot. The X-Files sometimes dangers in, largely thanks to the limitations of 45-minutes of television, too quickly resolving complex plots with a single, swiftly resolved explanation. It’s aliens. It’s a ghost. He’s possessed. Many people claimed the episode was a retread of The Exorcist, but I don’t really fault it for that. Just because it dabbles in an exorcism doesn’t make it a copy of that film. It doesn’t even attempt to elevate itself to that level. Instead, it looks for quick, cheap thrills that could be quickly dealt with.

Overall, “The Calusari” isn’t something I’m going to remember a week or two from now, but it was entertaining enough in a pinch. It did take guts to make the chief antagonist a possessed little boy and have him clearly lead to the death of his much younger brother. That’s not something easily pulled off. In that light, the episode was indeed an effective outing. It just doesn’t really grow beyond that central point of shock value.

Making the Case for ‘Better Call Saul’

Note: Over the next two weeks, 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. Share/retweet your favorites to build the buzz!

Better Call Saul

Metacritic: 78
Rotten Tomatoes: 100%
Number of nominations: 7
Major nominations: Outstanding Drama Series, Outstanding Lead Actor Drama Series – Bob Odenkirk, Outstanding Supporting Actor Drama Series, Jonathan Banks

Once upon a time, Vince Gilligan created Breaking Bad. Half-way through the second season, in an episode written by Peter Gould, Walt and Jesse feel the need to take it upon themselves to get the help of a rather low-level lawyer who has cheesy TV adverts broadcasting in the middle of the night. His name is Saul Goodman. Saul will likely represent you in all things dodgy, but he is something of a smart egg, and here negotiates his way from being kidnapped and threatened to being the paid “legal” aid of Walt. Saul instantly became a fan favorite, one of the most popular supporting characters on television at that time. And his appeal had so much longevity, that Gilligan and Gould have teamed up once again to produce a show were Saul is in actual fact the central character.

Better Call Saul (which was the name of that first Saul-appearance episode back in 2009) is a kind of spin-off, but takes place years before the events in Breaking Bad – barring the opening montage of the very first episode of Better Call Saul which appears to take place much later. of course, Bob Odenkirk reprises the role he barely had time to shake off. As of yet, in the 10 episodes of this extremely successful first season (a 13-episode second season already confirmed), there are no signs of Walter White or Jesse Pinkman, or Skylar or Hank, but thankfully there is a grand contribution from Jonathan Banks as Mike Ehrmantraut – another favorite from Breaking Bad.

From pre-production discussions right through to the current audience reactions, the debate has been stirring as to whether Better Call Saul is actually a drama or a comedy. And you can understand the varying perceptions given the humor of the character and his predicaments, as well as the refreshingly affecting and serious sprinkles of drama this show clearly has. My view? Most definitely a drama with a whimsical central character. Better Call Saul then is set in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the days before Saul was called Saul, in fact his original name is Jimmy McGill. The show also features strong roles for Michael McKean as Jimmy’s brother Chuck, Patrick Fabian as Howard Hamlin, Chuck’s law firm partner, and Rhea Seehorn as former associate, current friend, and not-quite-love-interest Kim Wexler.

Jimmy is ambitious, trying to work his way out of his storage room office through the back of a nail salon to make it big as a lawyer. One of the sad things with learn early on is that Jimmy also appears to be living there. A lot of his time and energy though is spent acting as a kind of care-giver to his brother Chuck, who was a successful law firm partner, but now claiming to suffer from electromagnetic hypersensitivity, thus becoming a recluse. Mike is a toll booth operator, he and Jimmy share semi-hostile banter, but he ultimately can not resist a piece of the action. They soon team up to out-fox a fraudulent family, and to foil a couple of detectives, among other escapades – there is of course something in it for both of them.

I’ll hold my hands up now and say Better Call Saul is breath of fresh air as far as television goes. Somehow holding onto a little bit of that tension and unpredictability of the Breaking Bad days, without appearing to copy it nor is it in any way gimmicky or without depth. The initial skateboarding scam is farcical at first, but always enjoyable, and transforms into borderline thriller material by the time Tuco Salamanca (remember him?) shows up and a couple of legs are broken. From there we venture through the old firm and it’s bad treatment of Jimmy, all the while he tries to stay on his feet and stay one step ahead of whatever life throws at him next.

The show uses flashbacks on numerous occasions too, and never do they seem out place or mis-used. They take the narrative back a few years, there were times when Jimmy was in trouble with the law and it was Chuck who helped him out of a pickle – seemingly not wanting Jimmy to stray and get his life in order. We also discover a close friend of Jimmy’s with whom he had a fake Rolex scam going on, a story-thread that is prominent in the final episode of the season. The most memorable flashbacks though are dedicated to Mike, as we see the backstory of his own son, who also was a police officer, involved in police corruption. We see Mike at his most broken, as well as his most ruthless, and it is some of the most compelling TV in years.

Like the show itself, Jimmy wanders in and around the more comical side of everyday life, while juggling the true dramas that surround him. But he is a smart, calculated man, and great fun to watch. There is a brilliant homage to All That Jazz as Jimmy echoes Joe Gideon’s “It’s showtime!” daily routine, painting a little bit of glitz into his current tensions. Another sea-saw sequence has Jimmy searching comically in a dumpster for shredded documents, only to be rifling through the wrong one to begin with. Later, completely exhausted, he falls asleep surrounded by paper shavings, and Chuck sneaks in to help him assemble some crucial documents. A sweet moment indeed. The tragic paradox comes much later in the season when we learn the cruel truth about Chuck’s opinion of Jimmy’s true worth. We love Jimmy, you have little choice, when he is lying his way out of a tight spot, or when he is losing his shit in a bingo hall, or shutting himself in an office to sob at the despair of potential failure.

There’s a ridiculously strong case for acting nominees Bob Odenkirk and Jonathan Banks to win an Emmy here – be it one or the other or both. Odenkirk consistently oozes charm and ultimate likability in his acting here. He has no problem carrying the show as the lead, and a further credit to him is his vulnerable side that shines through at just the right times. Banks brings with him the gruff, dead-pan crook from the Breaking Bad days, but is far more sedate in these prior story-lines. Brilliant throughout, he of course peaks in the episode dedicated to Mike and the poignant revenge flashback following the death of his son. Whether the votes tally up their way or not, their appeal contributes heavily to the already real popularity and momentum for Better Call Saul – more than enough energy to keep it in serious contention to nab that Outstanding Drama Series prize. And this would be no surprise.

X-Files Flashback: ‘Humbug’

Season 2, Episode 20
Director: Kim Manners
Writer: Darin Morgan

In Season Two, The X-Files finally reached that moment where episodes and dollars could be spent on episodes that were pure imagination. “Humbug” is one of those episodes. It doesn’t weigh itself down with heavy mythology themes or pretentious conspiracy theories. Instead, it focuses on a fun exploration of quirkiness. This is one of my personal favorite episodes.

It would be near-impossible to fully describe the plot of “Humbug.” At its core, there has been a bizarre murder of an equally bizarre man – the self-proclaimed alligator man. Mulder and Scully are brought in to investigate the crime, and their exploration of the side show and the surrounding oddities is a fascinating journey into the bizarre. If you want more than that, then the Wikipedia has a great explanation. Better yet, go watch the episode yourself. Even if you’re not an X-Files obsessive, it’s well worth the hour.

The prologue to the episode is as close to a feat of art that the series as obtained thus far. We open at night with two young boys playing in an above-ground pool. They are stalked by a mysteriously deformed figure from the woods. As the figure (and the camera) comes closer, they scream, initially with fright but then with joy. Their father, the alligator man, has surprised them. The art in the scene comes next when the camera effectively recreates everything we’ve just seen, but, this time, the alligator man is murdered. It’s an accomplished trick and a signal that The X-Files has come to play.

The tone of the episode from its frequent monologues about the nature of freaks to its exploration of side show history most closely resembles the tone of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks. I suspect this is by design – the closest the two celebrated cult shows have come to intersecting. It’s no accident that Twin Peaks‘s dancing dwarf (Michael J. Anderson) has an extended cameo here. It also reminded me a great deal of the recent American Horror Story: Freak Show, a frequent Awards Daily TV punching bag of late. “Humbug” manages to improve upon the themes and overall sensibility in one hour-long episode that Freak Show took over a dozen episodes to convey years later. Granted, I personally think much of the point of Freak Show was a celebration of the visual splendor of a 50s-era freak show, something The X-Files didn’t have the budget to cover. Yet, in an hour, “Humbug” gives us a wide array of side show performers and a slice of their personal lives without becoming so Freak Show self-indulgent.

The other aspect of “Humbug” to celebrate is the emergence of Mulder and Scully’s morbid senses of humor. Dark jokes and sly comic references have crept up in the series before, but never has their collective lighter side been pushed to the foreground and used so effectively as in “Humbug.” Yes, the identity of the murderer was fairly obvious, but that’s not really the point. The murder is but a backstory to the overall celebration of the odd and the macabre.

Could “Humbug” be The X-Files best episode? Time will tell…

Making the Case for ‘Silicon Valley’

Note: Over the next two weeks, the Awards Daily TV crew will be Making the Case to win for each nominee in the Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Drama Series categories in random order. We’ll be dropping one each day through the Emmy voting period. Share/retweet your favorites to build the buzz!

HBO’s Silicon Valley

Metacritic Score: 86
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 100%
Number of Nominations: 3
Major Nominations: Outstanding Comedy Series, Direction (“Sand Hill Shuffle”), Writing (“Two Days of the Condor”)

Looking at the number of nominations awarded to HBO’s Silicon Valley, you’d think the show stood no chance in Hell at winning. And maybe it doesn’t. Much like the characters within the show, Silicon Valley isn’t perfect. It’s a scrappy upstart of a show whose best moments rival that of the most acclaimed and awarded shows on television, but it also features lovable, forgivable imperfections that, in a weird way, endear the show to me more than most comedies I see. And, as often happens within the series itself, sometimes a miracle can happen, and the scrappy underdogs go all the way.

Silicon Valley Season Two continues the saga of the Pied Piper team, the aforementioned rag-tag team of developers who, by all rights, should be miserable failures. They have no experience in the business world. Their business model, despite governance by financiers and mentors, is tenuous at best. They fight a lot. Like, all the time. Yet, they are held together by the near-autistic intelligence of their leader, Richard Hendricks (Thomas Middleditch), and his revolutionary compression algorithm that shrinks massive amounts of data – both audio and video – to record levels and facilitates smooth data transfer. They are fighting Hooli, a Google-like entity, other more established start-ups, and effectively themselves as they seek to turn a profit on this idea.

The series shuffles along amiably at a leisurely pace which, if you love the characters as much as I do, ultimately doesn’t matter. The point of the show isn’t necessarily plot momentum – it’s a character-driven comedy whose individual parts are often more substantial than the overall sum. And that’s okay. It doesn’t have to be the sleekest comedy on television to be great. In fact, if it were expertly plotted and brutally efficient, then it would somehow feel like a cheat when compared to its easily distracted, pot-smoking, girl-crazy cast members. Looking back over the great second season, I’m more often reminded of hilariously inventive moments than I am of the overall plot structure. For example…

  • Richard and Erlich Bachman (T.J. Miller) learn of Peter Gregory’s death (Gregory, their former mentor played by Christopher Evan Welch who passed away during Season One filming) during a hilariously slow and drawn-out sequence. It lasts only a few minutes, but it’s some of the sharpest writing I’ve seen on television this year.
  • Bachman leads some lavishly insulting scenes during Pied Piper’s many venture capitalist presentations and the ensuing penance sequences when the tables turn.
  • Jared Dunn’s (Zach Woods) extended interview sequence in which the phrase “Are we to understand you did not ‘crush it’ in 2012?” is born unto the universe and settled directly in my heart forever. And, honestly, just any scene with the criminally underrated Zach Woods in it.
  • Pied Piper’s side venture with energy drink “Homicide” is a smarter sequence than you remember as it pitch perfectly nails an extreme sports-loving millennial’s business model and overall life philosophy. Emmy voters will never understand how true-to-life these sequences are.
  • Pied Piper visits a porn convention to insert their business model into the data-heavy porn industry. Sure, later, there’s a massive tech hole in the plot that would legitimately never happen in the real world, but that’s ok. The porn convention was hilarious – an easy joke, yes, but one that garnered many belly laughs here.
  • And, finally, the saga of Nelson “Big Head” Bighetti (Josh Brener) who, for reasons you have to see to fully grasp, rises the corporate ranks of Hooli without ever displaying an ounce of inventiveness, talent, or drive. His effortless saga serves as a fantastic companion piece to Richard’s try-anything approach to success. And it’s really, really funny. Particularly the sequence in which he spends hundreds of thousands of Hooli dollars on what effectively becomes a giant potato gun.

As you can see, the individual pieces of Silicon Valley are as endearing and accomplished as its shaggy-dog cast. And about that cast who has suffered two seasons now without a single acting nomination. Emmy voters, do you think these guys are really computer programmers? Do you think they’re just playing themselves? Hardly! Each actor gives a unique and fully realized comic performance that contributes to fellow cast members’ performances without becoming overly showy. Silicon Valley is perhaps THE show to use as the perfect same of why the Emmys need an Outstanding Cast award. Although I would argue that Miller, Woods, and Middleditch all merit serious Emmy consideration, they operate solely within the confines of the bonds formed by the tight-knit cast members, which also includes Martin Starr, Kumail Nanjiani, Amanda Crew, and Matt Ross . Take one away, and the whole thing falls apart. Yet, their comic rhythms are perfectly in tune and allow them to play off each other brilliantly.

Let that be the ultimate reason that Silicon Valley deserves to win Outstanding Comedy Series. Yes, it’s funny. Yes, it’s urgent and timely. Yes, it’s intelligent and has something to say about the world we live in – so dominated by the tech industry that power plays are made every day with the average American blissfully unaware of how these moves will impact them years down the road. It takes the time-honored concept of the American workplace sitcom and brings it into the 21st century by layering modern technological complexities over its office politics. It just so happens that its office is a ranch-style house in the Valley. All of that aside, award Silicon Valley because it features one of the more deceptively hardest working casts on television today. It takes a great deal of effort to look that bumbling and yet still appear smart enough to make your own company thrive.

Perhaps Silicon Valley should be a little more polished and a little more narratively coherent. Personally, I wouldn’t write the show any other way. It’s perfectly imperfect as it is.

Note: No computers were harmed in the writing of this Making the Case piece.

X-Files Flashback: ‘Død Kalm’

Season 2, Episode 19
Director: Rob Bowman
Writer: Howard Gordon, Alex Gansa

“Død Kalm” (and I’m making every effort to maintain the fancy, international punctuation here) gives us Mulder and Scully aging together, staring to the abyss of an unnatural death due to old age, and still failing to express their true feelings for one another. Even though the episode is marred by rapid-aging makeup that makes them all look like extras from Dick Tracy, “Død Kalm” is still an entertainment because you’ve really never seen much like it before. Given the unique plot and the casual moments of Mulder/Scully tenderness, it isn’t a great episode, but it still merits a high five if not a full on embrace.

The prologue begins when young crewmen of the USS Ardent are abandoning ship, referring to “what happened to the others.” After a few hours, the same men are picked up by another vessel, but they have all aged decades.  Mulder hears whispers of the discovery and, along with Scully, sets out to find the root cause in the Norwegian Sea after all crewman eventually die of old age. They find a local captain, a long way from his native Florida, who will take them into the spot where the ship was last seen. There, they run into the vessel, which now appears ancient and fully corroded. Someone living on the boat manages to escape using their boat, so Mulder, Scully, and the captain are all stranded, isolated, on the Ardent. Over the course of the episode, Mulder and Scully discover that the ship’s drinking water has been contaminated (there are vague references to green lights glowing in the sea), and the only water fit for drinking is the recycled waste water.

When the captain locks himself with the clean water supply, the ship ruptures, causing his room to flood. Now aging some fifty years, Mulder and Scully hunker down, prepared to die together. Scully shares with Mulder a touching secret from her last near-death experience – that death isn’t really that scary, and they can approach it without fear. As they pass out, a rescue crew appears and takes them to a nearby hospital. Based on Scully’s on-board observations, the doctors are able to provide an aging reversal process that effectively cures Mulder and Scully. The Ardent, Scully is told, sank not long after their rescue, so the cause of their rapid aging is lost forever at sea.

The X-Files attempts an isolation theme once again, but this episode is uniquely plotted and original enough to overlook the thematic repetition. The ship is appropriately claustrophobic, allowing for interesting sound and lighting effects in the fog and inside the ancient ship. There’s an attempt at “the killer on-board,” but that is quickly abandoned for the real meat of the episode – Mulder and Scully aging rapidly nearly to the point of death. Their old-age scenes, again marred by really overdone makeup, are kind of touching. They effectively convey through their performances an impression of how the characters would interact with each other at that advanced age.

And that makeup… Well, you can’t have it all, I suppose. Rather than beat a dead horse, I will look to particularly strong performances by David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson to highlight “Død Kalm.” As my great friend Craig Kennedy said, “[The X-Files is] using its confidence to color outside of the lines a bit. Love it when a show gets to that point.”

Literally couldn’t have said it better myself.

X-Files Flashback: ‘Fearful Symmetry’

Season 2, Episode 18
Director: James Whitmore, Jr.
Writer: Steve De Jarnatt

It’s admittedly odd that, after all the loss of human life on The X-Files, the appearance of a dead elephant strikes a note of sorrow deep within me. It’s really the first time the show has elicited a reaction other than fear or pure, unadulterated joy. Something of a supernatural variation on PETA videos and the Sea World/killer whale documentary Blackfish, “Fearful Symmetry” dives into territory that many viewers will find incredibly upsetting – the capture and torture of innocent animals for human observation and pleasure. Still, this being The X-Files, the episode tries to take the Earth-bound topic and spice it up with a potential alien-abduction slant. The result? A Frankenstein’s monster of a mess.

In the prologue, a mysterious force tramples through a downtown area, causing mass destruction and crushing the spine of a construction worker. The next morning, a trucker meets the elephant head-on in a bank of fog. He avoids hitting the elephant, which later dies due to exhaustion. Mulder and Scully investigate the nearby zoo which is fraught with drama – animals keep disappearing potentially due to a PETA-like group, a gorilla (Sophie) that communicates via sign language is basically being deported, and the zoo’s animal trainer (known for his cruel treatment of animals) is forced to report to Willa Ambrose (Jayne Atkinson, House of Cards), a woman who cares deeply for the animals. After a member of the militant animal rights group breaks into the zoo, a tiger disappears into a blinding white light, and the animal rights group member is mauled by an invisible force, most likely a tiger. But who’s counting really?

Mulder immediately believes these mysterious events to be the result of alien abductions – kind of an intergalactic “Noah’s ark” as he describes. When the zoo is shuttered, Sophie is boxed up and ready to be shipped out of the country, which is unfortunate because she is the missing link (no pun intended) between the mysterious disappearances and the bright lights – something she communicates via sign language. In the end, Ambrose garners the assistance of the animal trainer to kidnap Sophie, causing the accidental death of the militant animal group’s leader. Mulder tracks down the gorilla and is locked in a room with her. She attacks him out of fear but signs to him “man save man” before disappearing in a blinding white light.

So, the problem with “well intended” episodes like “Fearful Symmetry” – it never hurts to dedicate an hour of primetime television to animal preservation – is that the focus on the message overtakes dramatic credibility. The various pieces of the episode are only connected by the theoretical alien abduction, and I personally found that to be an incredibly weak plot device. Granted, it is The X-Files, and there’s always the sense that they could write themselves out of a corner by being beamed up. The invisible animal segments were intriguing enough, but you definitely have the sense that the writers had a great idea (invisible animals causing mass destruction are super cool – see Chuck Palahniuk’s Haunted) but had no idea what to do with it. As a result, the alien abductions are never confirmed, and the invisible animals are never truly explained (maybe in a throw-away moment by Mulder).

What we’re left with is an idealistic episode in “Fearful Symmetry,” one that highlights the dangers and ill-effects of caging wild animals, that ultimately goes absolutely nowhere by the end. What we’re left with is a lingering sense of sadness over the death of innocent animals and a broad sense of confusion over what exactly happened.

Making the Case for ‘Mad Men’

Note: Over the next two weeks, 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. Share/retweet your favorites to build the buzz!

AMC’s Mad Men

Metacritic: 83
Rotten Tomatoes: 87%
Number of nominations: 6
Major nominations: Drama Series, Actor Drama Series, Actress Drama Series, Supporting Actress Drama Series

If you’re like me, you were plenty irritated when AMC announced they were dividing the final season of Mad Men into two mini-seasons ala Breaking Bad. For one thing, Breaking Bad included a shit-stopping cliffhanger to merit the break. Mad Men included an eerie death/dance sequence that could have been a 1960s GAP ad. Mad Men is not an intense, edge-of-your-seat show like Breaking Bad (last year’s Emmy winner for Oustanding Drama Series), which is why the columnized formula didn’t work as well.

So Mad Men returned in April doing pretty much the same shtick it was doing a year prior. The “premiere” felt like a mid-season episode (which it was probably designed to be). It took about three episodes for the show to find its finale footing, and when it finally did, things really started to pay off. We got resolution from season 1 storylines (Peggy’s admission to Stan about the baby she gave up for adoption) and even followed up with familiar faces (creepy Glen grew up to be kind of hot—and still creepy!). There were sad goodbyes (sniff, sniff, Betty Draper) and welcome departures (Au revoir, Megan!). But most importantly, Don Draper made amends with himself and created one of the most recognizable commercials of all time.

Given how much the buzz had died down with the AMC darling, I expected the show to go out with a soft clink of an old-fashioned instead of the applause from a Zou Bisou Bisou party, but it did the reverse and clawed its way back into pop culture relevance. Everyone talked about the finale episode for weeks. (I personally couldn’t sleep that night I was so thrilled with the end.) Not many shows can do that. When they’re down and out, they’re down and out (Boardwalk Empire got only one Emmy nomination for its final season).

Of all of the Outstanding Drama Series nominees this year, Mad Men is truly the most iconic. People will be dissecting the shows for years to come. If Breaking Bad won the Emmy for never missing a beat with its tightly-wound narrative, then Mad Men should win for using its missteps to its advantage, for making Don’s quest out west not about drippy Diana (Elizabeth Reaser) but about Don learning how to share a Coke with Dick Whitman. Diana was a red herring for a greater storyline.

The old Don might have found Diana and tried to fix her. But new Don realized he had to fix himself.

Water Cooler Podcast: Episode 37 – If We Had a Ballot (Emmy Style)

This week around the Water Cooler, Joey, Megan and Clarence cast their virtual ballots for the major 2015 Emmy categories. Official Emmy voting starts today, so the Cooler gang decided to lend their expert opinions and advice to those undecided Emmy voters who may need a little assistance. Again, this episode is not designed to be a “Who Will Win” revelation – it’s just who we would vote for if we were in the Television Academy. Also, there is a little unexpected tension in the voting process…

The entire episode is dedicated to our votes, so sit back, enjoy, and send us your votes either here in the comment section or email them to Clarence to be included in a future podcast as we look to see what Awards Daily TV readers would vote for if you, too, had ballots.

Have an opinion or a comment you’d like to share? Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter @awardsdailytv.

Just as a reminder that on Labor Day’s podcast, we will be kicking off another Water Cooler Flashback with Arrested Development Season Four. Make sure you’ve caught up to it on Netflix so you too can follow along at home.

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