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Meanwhile, Back In ‘Wayward Pines’…

Fox’s surprise summer 2015 hit Wayward Pines returns to confront dubious opinions of a sequel season

I will be the very first to admit that I was at the front of the “anti-Wayward Pines season two” line. The beauty of Wayward Pines season one was the way it deftly handled its Twilight Zone-like premise, well-acted melodrama, stunning deaths, and major, logic-defying revelations at every turn. Watching season one was, to use a cliche, truly like peeling back the layers of an onion – each mind-blowing layer brought about tears of joy. I was hard-pressed to see what season two could offer with early press and trailers giving more of a Wayward Pines, 90210 vibe than something equally as sinister as season one.

Funny thing about expectations… They’re so often wrong. Wayward Pines season two may not prove to be as ultimately fulfilling as season one, but the premiere was far better than I ever imagined it would be.

The season begins with Jason Patric stepping into the lead role as Dr. Theo Yedlin, a “Group C” doctor who was recruited in a flashback by the departed Sheriff Pope (Terrence Howard). After the events of season one, the citizens of Wayward Pines are at war with each other: the Revolution, led by Ben Burke (Charlie Tahan), against the First Generation, led by Jason (Tom Stevens). The two camps immediately had an amusing, likely unintentional allusion to Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Yedlin is thawed out to operate on Kate Hewson (Carla Gugino), a former revolutionary leader injured in the season one fallout. The episode is also peppered with flashbacks to Yedlin’s strained relationship with his wife (Nimrat Kaur).

What’s missing thus far is the sense of mystery and discovery that the first few series episodes had in spades. What exactly was Wayward Pines? Season two throws us back into that mindset through Yedlin’s perspective, but that doesn’t exactly have the same end result. The surprise fact is gone, and what’s left is a somewhat routine militaristic thriller where the First Generation rules through fear and oppression.

That said, surprisingly, there are still surprises to be had in Wayward Pines. Somewhat adjusting for the loss of Melissa Leo, Hope Davis makes a welcome return as Megan Fisher, the full-on believer in the Wayward Pines mystique. This time, she’s confined to a wheelchair after near-death at the hands of the creatures that lurked outside the fence. We don’t yet know how the First Generation retained control after season one (or how Megan survived certain death), but that’s almost incidental. What’s left is a remarkably art directed (clearly someone has been playing Fallout 4) and well photographed piece of drama that still manages to throw up a surprise or two at the end of the episode.

The jury is most definitely still out on Wayward Pines. But the biggest surprise season two has offered yet is that it doesn’t completely stink. It could prove to be more dumb, suspenseful summer fun.

That’s the best you can hope for in Wayward Pines…

How Keith Powell ‘Broke His Leg’ and Merits an Emmy

You may know Keith Powell as “Toofer” from NBC’s 30 Rock, but the cool kids on the Internet know him from Keith Broke His Leg, the web series that follows his semi-autobiographical adventures as he hobbles around Los Angeles. All 10 episodes are available on getbroken.com.

The series was nominated for seven 2016 Indie Series Awards and won for Best Lead Actor (Powell) and Best Web Series. With the Primetime Emmys opening eligibility for Web Series in 2016, could “Toofer” be on his way to an EGOT next to Tracy Jordan?

I talked with Powell about the inspiration behind his web series, some of the standout episodes (watch “Baller” as soon as you’re done reading this), and why he thinks it’s the perfect time for web series to join Emmy contention.

AwardsDaily TV: So when I first starting watching your web series, I had trouble viewing it on my laptop before I finally broke down and watched it on my smartphone without any issue. Then, it dawned on me that I’m old and this is probably how most people are viewing everything nowadays. Is that one of the reasons why you decided to venture into a web series, since it’s short and easily digestible?

Keith Powell: Yeah, I wanted to do a series that showed that I could act, write, and direct a body of work. I also felt like my voice wasn’t really being heard. I’m an actor for hire, so a lot of the time the stories I want to tell have to be foregone for the stories that other people want to tell, which is totally fine. That’s my bread and butter, but I really wanted something that was 100% me out in the world so I could share it with people. I have an entire philosophy on writing and directing that’s always a fun anecdote around the dinner table, when I have dinner parties, but I wanted to share something that said this is who I am, this is my voice, and this is the way I believe in comedy and the way you should tell a story. Then, I took the short form genre and really wanted to exploit that. I really wanted to tell a complete full story in 10 minutes. So often web series just give you part of a story or give you half a story. I wanted to have each episode have a beginning, middle, and end, and be about something. And each episode, I’m very proud of, is about something.

ADTV: Is the show all scripted? Do you have a lot of improv?

KP: It is 100 percent scripted. Actually I wanted to make sure that it was still authentically my voice so I only gave myself one rewrite of each script. So it’s scripted and what came out of me in the first draft is pretty close to what you see in the final draft. Especially for the “Chocolate” episode, which I really wanted to do like a fever dream (Keith eats weed chocolate and sees a version of himself with a regular leg).

ADTV: My favorite episode is “Baller,” when you’re advertising commercials for Black cruises (“cruises with two z’s”).

KP: Oh! That’s the one that I’m putting up on the For Your Consideration site. Thank you for that! There’s a lot of debate on which episode we should post. It’s between “Soup” and “Baller.” “Soup” is the one where I get my finger caught in the blender.

ADTV: I love that one, too! I also like “Class,” the one where you’re teaching the kids.

KP: It’s so weird because when I wrote that, there’s a line in it where I go “I guess I didn’t realize how strongly I felt about George Takei” and that’s really what happened in the writing process. Cause I started going, “How do I know so much about George Takei?”

ADTV: Each episode has its own tone. Sometimes it’s really funny. Sometimes it’s really moving. Sometimes it just makes you think as in “Id,” where a woman tells you the story of her dream about having a baby made of ice.

KP: I’m so proud of that one, too. I wrote that one at the last minute, and it wasn’t originally on the shooting schedule. But we found ourselves with an extra two hours. And that dream really is a dream I’ve had after the death of one of my parents. I had written that dream down, and I’m not exaggerating, 12 years prior. I wanted some way to get it out into the world because I’d been sitting on it for so long and I wanted to share it because I think there are a lot of layers in that dream for me. And so that’s how it manifested itself in the show. And that’s why the episode is called “Id.”

ADTV: That actually leads me to my next question. Does the inspiration for your episodes come from real life? After all, your real-life wife Jill Knox plays your wife in the series.

KP: Yeah. 100 percent. I always like to tell people that the show is just the events of my life put in a blender and you press pulse. So everything that happens in the series happens to me in real life. Just not in the order and out of the mouths of the people that are saying them in the way it is presented. Most of it is autobiographical. It’s a series of stories I want to tell. The karaoke episode (“Mellow”) when the police officers come – that actually happened. I wanted to tell a story about the Black Lives Matter movement, but I didn’t want it to be didactic or preachy. I wanted it to be light and fun, but talk about a serious thing about harassment. What happens in the episode is much lighter than what happened in real life. It was the way I wanted to get the story out. The way I begin each episode is I want to reveal a truth and work backwards. Each episode ends with mostly my character, and sometimes Jill, revealing a truth that you didn’t know before the episode. And it’s a slow revelation of truth.

ADTV: Speaking of truths, will we ever know how Keith has broken his leg?

KP: Never. (Laughs.) In my mind, he breaks his leg in a new way every episode.

ADTV: It could be in a variety of ways because he’s kind of klutzy!

KP: I’ve never broken a bone (knock on wood), but the show came about because I wanted to have a visual metaphor for the growth and change my life was making. In a way, the character of Keith juggles between being aloof and angry with everybody. He doesn’t want to engage with the world. Through the breaking of the leg, it makes him more active and more involved and sympathetic. Like a healing leg, he’s healing into something that’s more of the world – to be a better person. That’s kind of the idea behind the whole show. I’ve written a draft where the cast comes off and where we find out how he broke his leg, but I don’t know if I’ll ever reveal that to the world. It depends on what kind of shape the show takes going forward.

ADTV: The show reminds me a little of Curb Your Enthusiasm. Were you influenced by Curb?

KP: I never thought about it like that. I did in the promotional material because it says it in the promotional material.

ADTV: It does?

KP: Yes, it says: “Like Louie with a Los Angeles sensibility, Curb Your Enthusiasm with heart, and Inside Amy Schumer with a black dude.”

ADTV: Really? (Laughs.) The last one?

KP: Yes. [Laughs] Somebody said that to me about Curb before, but I never thought about it that way. But to be honest with you the inspiration behind the show was Mad Men. Matt Weiner is a friend of mine, and I actually got Matt on the phone and talked to him about Mad Men for a while, to help write one of these episodes. Just because, picking that man’s brain is one of the most satisfying classes you can take. He’s so smart about writing and so smart about storytelling and how it gets told. Each Mad Men episode is about something very specific. It has its own theme, and that is what I wanted for Keith Broke His Leg. At the end of “Baller,” the character goes into a refrigerator and pours a beer into a martini glass. That was the oddest way I could visually show what I wanted the episode to be about. And that is directly from an inspiration on how Mad Men does its shows. Mad Men ends its episodes with a visual about what the whole episode was about, and that’s what I wanted to do with the martini glass.

ADTV: 2016 will be the first year of Emmy eligibility for web shows. Why do you think it took so long for Emmy to take notice?

KP: Daytime Emmys have recognized web series, but Primetime Emmys haven’t. We’re in a new medium. There are 400-plus shows on television, and technology is changing. We’re in a revolution with the television industry. We’re now seeing that some shows are only 15 minutes long. There’s only really one network that does that at the moment, and it’s Adult Swim. So with places like Vimeo and Amazon and YouTube Red, there’s a lot of avenues now for short form shows to be seen, and I think it’s just the right time for the Television Academy to start recognizing that. They’re trying to get ahead of the curve. Web series have been around for at least ten years, but we haven’t had the technology to make them look as good as television until just recently.

ADTV: I wonder if the Oscars will eventually recognize more web-based films.

KP: I would love to sit down in a room with Netflix and say to them, “Please invest in short films and 15-minute web series because there is a market for them.” Netflix is completely blowing the idea of day-and-date release out of the water. They released Beasts of No Nation in a movie theater for a week in order to qualify for the Oscars and then really just put it on their platform. So the Oscars at some point have to contend that the way Netflix is doing it is just because of a parliamentary procedure they’re asking for and that they need to get rid of that parliamentary procedure. Sometimes it’s not such a bad thing to do a day-and-date release on a streaming platform and in the movie theaters. But we’re still figuring all that out. It’s all still a mystery for us.

ADTV: Unlike many artists and filmmakers who crowdfund their projects, you didn’t with this web series. Why did you decide not to?

KP: Because the story was very personal for me. Because it just didn’t feel right to ask people to believe in a project that didn’t exist but know this is all telling very personal stories about my life. It just felt exploitative to do that. Season 2 might be another story, who knows! I’d like to self-fund Season 2. Season 1, I didn’t feel like going to people and saying, “Hey! Give me money for this thing you’ve never heard of! That I’m going to have star my wife! That’s set in my house!” It just felt so masturbatory. Honestly, it would distract from the stories. I feel like people connect more to the show because they stumble on it and realize that each episode is its own story. If it were more of a crowdfunded publicity thing, I don’t think people would be able to connect to the episodes in the same way.

ADTV: The final episode in season one has one of the most moving scenes, something more emotional than a lot of things seen on network TV. When can we expect new episodes? Will a new season explore this cliffhanger?

KP: That is such a wonderful question, and I’m now trying to figure out how to answer without revealing too much. There will be a season two. I don’t know when. The show is now starting to hit its stride in terms of people who are seeing it, and I want to give that its due and its time. I have outlined season two and what I love about the show is how there is a loose plot that overarches the whole show, that slowly reveals itself to you. I want to keep that going. So it’s not so much as picking up with the cliffhanger, but it’s about the cliffhanger being something that slowly reveals what the show is ultimately about. And so we’re going in that direction. We’re getting there. And season two will start revealing more about the mystery of the show and what the overarching theme of the show is. But it won’t handle it in the most direct way. Season one starts to lay the groundwork of that last moment throughout the season.

ADTV: Do you know when those new episodes will start being available?

KP: No. Because we haven’t shot them yet. I normally like to shoot them all. It’s my never-ending fear of rejection. I held on to all of these episodes for six months before I released them because I don’t want to be rejected. (Laughs). I want to make sure I have them in my hand, they’re mine, they’re perfect.

ADTV: (Laughs.) Even after you’ve won awards for it? You still have that fear?

KP: Yes. Because I didn’t expect to win those awards. I always feel like eventually it’s going to be revealed as a sham. (Laughs.) The first season was actually 12 episodes. We shot two extra episodes that I’m holding on to. Those episodes are really good. I haven’t released them because they didn’t fit into the arc of the season, but that doesn’t mean they won’t show themselves at some point. I almost guarantee that they will. I’m still kind of figuring out how I want to show this to the world. I’m hoping before the end of the year we’ll have new episodes. But I’ve made my peace with the fact that KBHL is a show that people will discover slowly and so I want to give that time.

Watch season one of Keith Broke His Leg at getbroken.com and follow Keith on Twitter at @KeithPowell.

Emmy Spotlight: Worthy ‘American Crime’ In Tight Race

The Limited Series and TV movie categories are going to be the most nail-biting of the entire Emmy season. They are crammed with excellent entertainment and stacked with insanely strong ensemble performances. Going into the summer, it seemed that ABC’s American Crime (not to be confused with American Crime Story: The People vs. O.J. Simpson on FX) was sure to get a boatload of attention–and it’s still probably true. Keep your fingers crossed that this drama still resonates with voters.

The first season of American Crime landed a surprising 10 nominations, including four acting nominations for performers Felicity Huffman, Timothy Hutton, Regina King (who walked away with the show’s only win), and Richard Cabral, respectively. The presence at last year’s nominations seemed to impress and surprise a lot of people (myself included), so it feels like the show has a lot to live up to. It feels like it’s on a lot more radars anyway.

Does the second season have the possibility to replicate last year’s success? Yes, I believe it does. Limited Series is extra competitive this year, however. What can John Ridley’s drama realistically be nominated for in this crowded year? One might want to start with the acting nominations.

Felicity Huffman is an Emmy Award favorite. She was nominated for Crime‘s first season last year, and she’s a previous winner for ABC’s beloved Desperate Housewives. Her name alone should guarantee her a nomination in the Lead Actress category, but her character is not the most likable. In the first season she played a grieving mother who loses her son to a horrific crime, and time around she’s harder and more ambitious. It’s a tricky role, but Huffman leaves you leaning in the entire time. She’s watchable as all hell.

If there’s any justice in this world, Lili Taylor will be nominated as the ferocious mother trying to protect her son from a privileged and vicious high school world. It’s consistent and heartbreaking turn, and Taylor imbues every scene with a terrified strength. As much as I adore Huffman, Taylor is the real series standout.

I hesitate to think that Timothy Hutton will get himself a second consecutive spot since it felt like he was barely in the show (he’s featured a lot more in the last few episodes). Maybe Ridley should have had Hutton bawling his face off in a dirty restroom again? Connor Jessup is the true lead of the show this season, but he’s being campaigned in the Supporting Actor category. He’s quiet and reserved. It’s such a long shot in crowded year. Hutton would be the best shot in a field dominated with actors from American Crime Story and All the Way (not to mention yearly favorites like Benedict Cumberbatch and Idris Elba). Jessup stands out more than Cabral with his vulnerable performance.

Regina King might come back as a repeat nominee this year. Like all the categories with Limited Series, it’s tough to standout. Her tough, no-nonsense mother gets more screen time in the first half of the season, so it’d be wise for ABC to submit of her King’s earlier episodes.

The season itself is locked for Series and Writing. One of the great things about Ridley’s series is how it opens up a dialogue about the characters and their actions. Unlike Ryan Murphy’s sexy true crime saga, American Crime succeeds because the characters are fictional. There’s no direct connection to real life events (no matter how true they ring), and it starts conversations about privilege, race, and behavior that not a lot of other shows can boast.

Guaranteed Nominations
Limited Series
Writing
Felicity Huffman, Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie

Probable Nominations
Regina King, Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie
Timothy Hutton, Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie
Casting
Directing

Possible Nominations
Lili Taylor, Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie
Connor Jessup, Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie

‘This Is Us’ Trailer Among Tops of New Fall TV Trailers

Milo Ventimiglia nudity has driven views of the This is Us trailer to near-record heights

The This is Us trailer premiered last week, and, if trailer views amount to anything, then NBC may have a massive hit on its hands. The trailer notched over 17 million views in less than three days on Facebook. In a week on YouTube, there have been over 6 million views. To put it into perspective, the Facebook numbers smash the record set last year for TV trailers by The CW’s Legends of Tomorrow. Only Fox’s Prison Break reboot tops This is Us with 20 million Facebook views. That, though, is largely attributed to the baked-in fan base for the reboot.

Starring Milo Ventimiglia and Mandy Moore, This is Us comes from the team of Dan Fogelman (Tangled, ABC’s Galavant) and the directing team of John Requa and Glenn Ficarra (Crazy, Stupid, Love). The plot is largely unknown at this point with NBC’s description referring to the way the character’s lives “intertwine in curious ways.” Apparently, they have the same birthdays. Like, omg. Megan and Joey should be on this show.

It is set to premiere this fall on NBC.

Robin Wright On Acting and Her Next Career Direction

ADTV discusses the challenges of acting and directing with House of Cards‘ Robin Wright

House of Cards season four ended with TV’s powerful and ruthless couple Francis and Claire Underwood (Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright, respectively) creating fear, terror and war. As a growing power influence both in front of and behind the camera this season, Wright recently made headlines, and deservedly so, for fighting to receive an equal pay check to that of co-star Kevin Spacey. This season, Wright directed four episodes of House of Cards and is also an executive producer.

I met with the actress, director, and executive producer recently. On TV, actress Robin Wright plays the icy and fiercely powerful Claire Underwood, but, off camera, she is anything but that as she cracks a joke about how cold London was while she was there filming….

AwardsDaily TV: Congratulations on another fantastic and phenomenal season of House of Cards. Did you ever watch the original UK version of the show?

Robin Wright: I did not. I deliberately avoided that. I never did that in the past. Even in the past, if someone was making a remake or adaptation, I’ve never wanted to watch the original so as not to be influenced. Actually, David Fincher said, “There’s not a necessity for you to watch it because the character that we’re developing, Claire Underwood is going to be exponentially larger.” Was that true? Did you watch the UK version?

ADTV: I did. I have to say, Claire Underwood is in a league of her own.

RW: Yes. Good, that was the intention.

ADTV: When you first got the script, did you base her on anyone?

RW: I didn’t base her on a female politician. I didn’t base her on a human being. When David Fincher said, “I don’t know what to tell you. Here’s a template idea for you to start with.” This was long before the episodes were written. The one description that stood out was that he said, “Imagine she’s a marble bust, that you would see in a museum and that she’s an iconic figure and there’s a stoicism, and you can crack that marble. That’s what we’re gonna do over the course of the show. We’re going to slowly make cracks in her marble.” I read it, and said, “OK, I get it. That’s enough.” That’s all I needed really.

Physically that’s the way I work over just replicating or emulating someone in particular. I take the fabric of things. I went for an animal. I thought about the bust, and I thought, “What acts like that stoic bust with a regality?” It was the American eagle. I studied the American eagle on YouTube, and they way they hover over their prey. When they go for the kill, it’s with the utmost force and conviction. It was so smooth and stealth like. That’s what I used for her as an idea. Then once you put on her outfit or a dress and Louboutins, you’re kind of there.

It was a lot of physical stuff to help me find her to tell you the truth.

ADTV: Well, on the subject of physical was the dream sequence – the fight. Did you get injured at all?

RW: I used a piece of that in my episode that I directed. We were shooting very late that night because we had to get that scene. That was a mother bear of a day… a 16-hour day. Kevin and I were so giddy because you’re living on ether at that point, you’ve been working for so many hours. We were padded up, and had stunt people there, but we both went for it. We were both very bruised I have to say. We were giggling about it, saying we didn’t have to go for it 150 percent but we did. We threw ourselves on the desk. We had fun shooting it.

ADTV: What about directing yourself? Claire is such a complex character. What’s it like directing yourself in this?

RW: Kevin and I do this in our sleep at this stage. There’s not a lot of forethought needed with separation. So, it’s really not that complicated. It’s like anything, like any skill that you have. It’s like someone who rides a unicycle every day. They’re not even thinking about it anymore. They get on the unicycle and do it. It wasn’t an interruption to be directing myself while directing the show.

I would have much preferred to not be in front of the camera because I love being behind the camera now. I can’t wait for my scenes to be over, and I can get back behind the camera. That’s the truth. [laughs]

ADTV: How did Beau Willimon approach you this season to direct more episodes?

RW: I think Kevin was considering directing an episode or two. I remember being in the room when they were talking about it. I said, “Hey, I wanna direct one.” Beau said, “Let’s investigate that.” I said, “Yes, I’m scared shitless, but I’ve been in this business over 30 years.” I’d been on the show long enough, I knew the protocol, and I know the story and the style. I know the crew, they know me, and they’ve got my back. We all just joined forces and said, “Let’s make it happen, and they did.”

ADTV: It is tough to direct the smaller scenes with you and say one other, or are the larger scenes, like the church scenes harder?

RW: That is definitely tougher, when Kevin and I are in the same scene, and it’s a complicated scene. Like the scene where he discovers that she puts the earrings in his safe deposit box. That was a tough scene to direct. We didn’t have time to rehearse it. It was also re-written at the very last minute. We were getting changes moments before. We were all collaborating on the changes because once you get out there and you rehearse that long scene, that was a 7-page scene which we shot at the end of the day. That was just a disservice to all of us because we were all so tired. That was really tough. You learn from those mistakes as a director. I would never do that again to Kevin, myself, and the crew. I’ll never do it. I will make sure that we allot a whole day for a scene like that, especially given the nature of pace. We don’t even know if we’re going to have time to rehearse it. It’s going to evolve into something else. We need to give it time and to allow for that time as the production board. But, you live and learn. Always living and learning.

ADTV: Another fantastic moment this season was having Ellen Burstyn in the show. Those scenes. What was that like working with her and directing her?

RW: She was fantastic. I was so honored doing that. She was one of the first actresses I remember watching in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. Ellen was one of the first I remember witnessing. There was a specialness.

ADTV: You are a leader. You’ve got a role as a leading lady in a top show. You’re also a female director in a field that’s dominated by men. What is that like for you?

RW: We can use the cliche of female empowerment. There’s something with that union of Team Underwood, with Francis and Claire, and the point of their unification is to say she is the best of both sexes. There’s almost an androgyny there. She is strong like male and female, and that in concert with Francis in the power seat, is almost like, she is the side car. They’re both propelling each other. They’re both a part of the same vehicle. She’s both.

ADTV: They’re quite a couple. They’re very addictive.

RW:[laughs] That’s a good word for it.

ADTV: Aside from Fincher, who else has influenced your work?

RW: Anthony Minghella was the one that touched a lot of people clearly. His process resonated. His delicacy with actors with when and how much do you speak to. You don’t want to drown out your actors. You need to let them breathe. There’s a way to let them breathe while simultaneously feeding them active verbs to play.

He was very good this way. He would tell a story instead of saying, “Give me more energy on this take, or be more sadder on this take.” You can’t play energy. What gives you energy? Give me an example that would make me feel “I have more energy.” Or give me an example or a memory or something that creates a factor in my body. Don’t just say, be sadder or be happier. He was a storyteller and a beautiful director that way. He created an environment and a world for you to embody the character within.

ADTV : It’s so apparent that you have the directing bug. Would you like to do more of it and direct a film one day?

RW: Definitely, I am pursuing directing. Yes.

ADTV: When did you first get the bug?

RW: I had it in my mind years ago. I think I was too scared, I wasn’t ready, but I knew I always wanted to do it. I just wanted to feel qualified to do so. Again, you don’t get qualified until you keep doing it which I realize now. Practice makes perfect.

ADTV: Do you have a favorite episode looking back on the season?

RW: I do like the one with mom and Tom. I like that one. I also like episode four – the assassination attempt. That was full and two very different ones at either end of the spectrum. I was very blessed with the writing of those two.

ADTV: Would you ever consider writing?

RW: I wish I could write. I can’t write. I can re-write a scene. We do it with the writers, restructuring and juxtaposing words and arc. I do that all the time. If somebody said sit down at a typewriter and write a story, I’d panic.

Robin Wright and all seasons of House of Cards are now streaming on Netflix.

Podcast: All the Way with Lady Dynamite, Grace, and Frankie

Episode 77: As the Emmy eligibility window close at the end of May, HBO rolls out All the Way and Netflix rolls the dice on Lady Dynamite, Grace and Frankie season two.

This week at the Water Cooler, we’ve decided to push our discussion of the hotly contested Emmy Limited Series/TV movie categories another week because there was such a tremendous volume of new content. After a brief discussion on why Megan can’t pay attention to Game of Thrones, the gang dives into HBO’s big Emmy year-end premiere of All the Way, starring Bryan Cranston as LBJ. Does the telepic live up to the hype, and is it as strong an Emmy contender as buzz would have you believe?

Next, we dip into the Netflix comedy pool with two entries. At the scary deep end is Maria Bamford’s Lady Dynamite, a unique entry that blends Bamford’s unique alternative comedy style with personal revelations about her life. Then, at the safer shallow end of the pool, we look at the second season of Grace and Frankie. While the show isn’t always the most edgy comedy out there, we take a look as to where it fits in the comedy world and whether or not a more broadly comic approach to the material will resonate with Emmy voters.

As always, we close with our TV Flash Forward. Please check back with us on Memorial Day as we finally deep-dive into the hotly contested Limited Series/TV Movie categories at the 2016 Emmys where All the Way‘s actors compete directly with those from People v. O.J. Simpson. Could these be the most interesting races this year? Find out next week (we promise)!

ENJOY!

4:51 – Game of Thrones
12:48 – All the Way
41:01 – Grace and Frankie
47:18 – Lady Dynamite
59:51 – Flash Forward

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Netflix’s Lady Dynamite: A Real Firecracker

You’ve never seen anything quite like Lady Dynamite. And that’s a good thing.

When Awards Daily TV’s Clarence Moye, Joey Moser, and yours truly revisited Arrested Development‘s Season 4 on the Water Cooler Podcast, we all remarked how we wanted to see more of Debrie Bardeaux, Tobias Funke’s love interest in Method One (put it together) played by the hilarious Maria Bamford.

Well, be careful what you wish for. Because Netflix’s Lady Dynamite almost appears like a continuation of sad Debrie’s story, only this one loosely follows Bamford’s life. Like her character, Bamford has struggled with depression and anxiety and is a comedian. Whether or not she told off a baby on the set of the ill-fated Baby on Board sitcom (about an infant CEO) or dated a bisexual meth addict remains to be determined.

Warning: This show is not for everyone, and while watching the first episode, you may feel like you need Adderall with all of the jokes, time settings, and rat-a-tat pace.

Not many series pilots have the balls to make their “Hello, World!” episode about the installation of a park bench, but Lady Dynamite does (and even features Sugar Ray’s Mark McGrath at the inauguration of said bench—talk about audacity). Maria tells her clueless agent Bruce Ben-Bacharach (played by the hilarious Fred Melamed) that she wants to do more with her life. During her emotional breakdown in Duluth, she put together a dream board that consisted of nothing but park benches, and thus, her dream of adding sedentary lifestyle to her neighborhood is born.

The show is at times hilarious, fascinating, and baffling all at once. It takes place in three different time periods: the Past, Present, and Duluth (which is the more recent Past shot in a blue lens). The show perfectly depicts the highs and lows of emotions, presumably mirroring Bamford’s own bipolar disorder. When things seem to be looking up in the Present, the show takes you back to Duluth, where the positive wave comes to a screeching halt. When Maria starts a band with her family (Ed Begley Jr., Mary Kay Place, and Mo Collins), she breaks down on stage at their first show, which serves as a heartbreaking moment of reality on an otherwise surreal show.

You’ve never seen a show quite like this, and I suspect, in the future, we will look back on it as ahead of its time. Lady Dynamite may not be the appropriate title. Maybe Lady Live Wire, because the show’s structure is the equivalent of grasping a live wire and holding on with every fiber of your being.

It’s worth a look, though, because there’s something deeply touching at its core as Maria Bamford lays it all on the line just to make you laugh.

‘Preacher’ Spins an Unrecognizable Sermon

AMC’s Preacher suffocates the audience with overwhelming smugness

I don’t have a whole hell of a lot to say about AMC’s Preacher. There are some shows that are so incredibly desperate to simultaneously shock and please that the resulting combination is vaguely off-putting. Desperate to recreate the success of The Walking Dead, AMC appears high on Preacher‘s ability to pull in audiences week after week. Sure, people tune into The Walking Dead for zombie gore, but it’s really the human interest – whether people want to admit it or not – that keeps them coming back. Preacher, though, is dead-set on incinerating everything remotely human, leaving something of a carnival freak show that quickly becomes tiring.

The pilot episode, directed by the producing team of Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg, meanders haphazardly through a pastiche of comic book fantasia. There’s an apparent energy source flying from outer space that causes human bodies to spontaneously combust. There’s the titular preacher (Dominic Cooper, nicely wallowing in self-pity) who’s apparently preaching sermons in which he no longer believes. There’s an Irish vampire who murders a plane full of men before falling 30,000 feet and walking away. There’s mysterious Tulip (Ruth Negga) who enlists the aid of two young children to build a homemade bazooka to fight unseen assailants. There’s even a teenage boy with a mouth sunken in like an asshole.

None of this, at least based on the pilot, seems connected at all except through the character of the preacher who eventually discovers he can make people do whatever he wants. There’s zero actual human interest to drive the story forward. Instead, there’s only the above-mentioned freak show characters who, in any normal presentation, would be the spice that accentuates a central story. Instead, they’re all served up as the main course here, and, as I’ve said before, you never serve up only spice as your main course. Cooper does his absolute best with the role. He’s so surprisingly good in the role that, in a world with less great television, I might have continued watching just to see where he took the character. There’s certainly a dark sense of humor on display here to which some people will most assuredly respond.

And I’m convinced, because this is based on a popular comic series, that all of this eventually manages to make some sort of narrative sense and that I don’t need to be completely high to appreciate it all. There’s just not enough hours in the day for me to spend with a show that’s so smugly pleased with itself.

Watching the pilot, I just couldn’t help but think I’ve just watched a giant steaming turd. This is just not my kind of joint. Good on you if you found more in it than I did.

Cranston Plays LBJ ‘All the Way’ to the Back Row

HBO’s All the Way earns respect but not adoration

This being an election year, anything relating to politics will get attention this television season. With HBO’s adaptation of All the Way, the network transfers the Tony Award-winning play, bringing TV titan Bryan Cranston along for the ride. While handsomely produced and well-acted, this adaptation feels a bit like a high school drama you were forced to watch in history class.

Lyndon B. Johnson took office after President Kennedy was shot in November 1963. The quiet, smooth opening shot shows us the bloody backseat of JFK’s Lincoln convertible, and we are thrown into the chaos of Johnson taking office. Johnson is determined to honor Kennedy’s legacy by passing the Civil Rights Act, and he is being pressured on both sides by both Martin Luther King Jr. (Captain America: Civil War‘s Anthony Mackie) and Senator Richard Russell (Frank Langella).

This is a television movie filled to the brim of men in dark suits in superbly designed offices. It’s as if HBO finally found the budget to go back in time and film sequences in the 1960s. Parts of the script, however, seem to only point out that we aren’t on a stage anymore. This is a painful time in American history, and the themes resonate with the headlines of today (particularly the in-fighting at and leading up to the Democratic convention). When playwright Robert Shenkkan’s script allows for some emotion, it can hit hard (the deposition by Fanny Lou Hamer – Aisha Hinds – later in the film is a highlight).

Cranston won a Tony Award for originating the role of Johnson on Broadway, and his performance reaches for the back row. Is it too much? In some scenes, yes, but his quieter moments are effective. All the Way doesn’t paint Johnson as a saint, and Cranston allows him to be loud, broad, and mean when the script allows. Still, something feels obligatory about the performance and the production, making it ultimately fall flat — as if they were banking on Cranston’s powerhouse performance to carry the entire film. Plus, Ava DuVernay’s Selma travels the same territory to much greater effect, making All the Way play like a weaker B-side to that great work.

Melissa Leo, as Lady Bird Johnson, isn’t given much to do, and she feels wasted in the role of Johnson’s supportive wife. Anthony Mackie, unfortunately, lives in the shadow of David Oyelowo’s magnificent rendering of Dr. King Selma. They should have saved some money in the makeup department (the prosthetics are insane in All the Way) to transform him a bit more.

The efforts from this huge cast should not go unnoticed. Cranston will be lauded for his immersive portrayal of a president stuck between appeasing his fellow politicians and effectively changing history. But in a year full of stellar limited series and television movies, All the Way falls a bit short. I can respect it for its efforts, but I don’t like it.

Do IMDb, Television Academy Have a Problem with Women?

Does a recent analysis of IMDb’s user ratings of women-centered shows extend to the Television Academy?

Earlier this week, stats-based website FiveThirtyEight published a piece that studied the way gender directly affects IMDb ratings of television shows that are, more or less, “skewed” in targeting one gender over the other. The piece proposes that the members of the opposite gender sabotage shows that are not “made” for them. In considering this analysis, I have to wonder whether or not the same bias extends to the Television Academy and the Emmy Awards.

Writer Walt Hickey found men’s influence on female-skewed shows to be overwhelmingly more present in television shows than women’s influence on male-skewed shows. At the heart of the piece, he highlights the the way the true value and merits of a television show aren’t being assessed properly or fairly if people purposely vote down a show that is simply not targeted at them. The problem becomes gendered because, according to his findings, men make up 70 percent of the voting base on IMDb, which disproportionately favors the judgment of people who have lived from the male perspective.

The example Hickey uses to justify his theory and to put his statistics into perspective is Sex and the City. The show’s overall score on IMDb is 7.0; when broken down, the average score by women for the HBO series was 8.1, whereas men rated it at 5.8, which is a huge disparity. He questions this fact considering Sex and the City’s laudable reputation in general, having won several Emmy awards (one for Outstanding Comedy Series) and a plethora of Golden Globe awards. Hickey makes a point to acknowledge that differing opinions exist and everyone is entitled to their particular view, but objectively, it’s probably not a stretch to say a show with the record of Sex and the City is not subpar.

This is not to suggest men who do not enjoy Sex and the City are misogynist, but their position of power over more disenfranchised voices allows for insidious, unconscious sexism to permeate through art forms.

When I read this piece, I found it to confirm observations and struggles I have battled as an IMDb user and as someone who is active participant among the film and television community. The reality of the situation is that products made for the (heterosexual, white) male audience dominate just about any medium and art form, and more times than not, it is members from that group of people who are allowed to vocalize their opinions and establish their interpretation of quality.

In a way, the quandary FiveThirtyEight describes mirrors the problem with the entertainment industry, and most institutions, at large: only some voices are heard about quality, and similar people given the power to make artistic decisions about what kinds of shows are produced in the first place. It’s a circular journey. Television shows (and movies for that matter) are created targeting men, and those shows go on to be well received by men who have the privilege of watching and loudly expressing their views.

For this FiveThirtyEight article to make sense, one has to accept, more or less, that there are “girl shows” and “boy shows” based on target audiences, which is a sentiment I personally dissent but understand is a cultural reality. But with that, shows aimed at men are often recognized as the industry standard. Shows aimed at women are forced to the sidelines as trivial and foolish. Men – in particular heterosexual, white men – are granted the privilege of having the power to express how they feel about artwork, even when it’s not made for them.

The territory FiveThirtyEight uncovered does not live in a vacuum. It lives and breathes in just about any forum of subjective discourse about television and media. Because they outnumber women specifically with voting on IMDb but in general areas of power, men have the power to dictate what’s “cool” and “not cool.” Even the hint of femininity and a non-heterosexual, white male perspective in film and television projects can tarnish a project’s status as shown with Sex and the City’s take on “modern women” and women’s agency over their sexuality.

The IMDb debacle can be applied to the politics of the Emmy races. Women-driven comedy series especially tend to do well. Sex and the City actually won the Emmy for Comedy Series, and Veep, the incumbent winner, has a woman protagonist. Yet, particularly in the Drama Series race, a woman lead is toxic to their chances of being voted into the club. Recent years of The Good Wife, Bates Motel, and The Affair all come to mind among others. That makes sense when considering the fact that men historically make up the majority of Television Academy voting blocks.

Shows that dominate the drama series race rarely feature “female-skewed” shows. Some have broken through such as Orange is the New Black which works in even deeper ways than just gender equality, but with intersecting sexuality and racial components contributing too its success too. Orange is the New Black, in its heart, has evolved to an ensemble show and has a particular advantage of being on Netflix, the industry’s cutting-edge method of watching media.

But don’t be deceived by shows that would seem to fit the bill for “female-skewed” shows breaking past the cool “boy shows.” Homeland, a series which has been riding a comfortable wave through the Outstanding Drama Series category over the years, shouldn’t be counted as a “female-skewed show,” since the female protagonist was coupled with a male, co-lead counterpart for the first three seasons and, despite Carrie being the main character, it’s still a story being told largely from a masculine perspective.

Shows like The Good Wife and Scandal that are not afraid of the fact that their sole lead characters are capable, complicated women are not even allowed to be in the conversation for awards like Outstanding Drama Series. We live in the days of male-centric shows dominating the big category at the Emmys. The worst example of this anti-female-protagonist shows at the Emmys was in 2014. After having its most critically acclaimed season ever, The Good Wife was trampled over in the Outstanding Drama Series category while the cooler, “male-skewed” shows like Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, and True Detective reaped the rewards.

Similar to that of the author in Hickey’s original FiveThirtyEight article, the point I’m trying to make is when “male-skewed” shows are raised to the highest standard more easily than their “female-skewed” equals (in quality), it’s difficult not to see how cultural privilege is working to advance some shows (“boy shows). Conversely, other shows not manufactured for the (masculine, straight, white) audience are presented to look inferior. It’s a circular cycle of cultural oppression.