Recaps/Reviews

I’ve been trying to write all morning about the second episode of FX’s Fargo which aired last night, but it’s like pulling teeth.

I went into the first episode with a deep skepticism based on my unconditional love of Joel and Ethan Coen’s film. After a shaky start, I thought the whole thing went pretty well and, on balance, showed enough promise to look forward to future episodes. At the very least, the developments in the episode seemed to suggest showrunner Noah Hawley intended to pay homage to the Coens while definitively striking out in his own direction.

Last night’s episode definitely left the movie further behind, but rather than head anywhere interesting, it just kind of seemed to wander around in the snow.

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Season 2, Episode 8: Meltdown

I’ve had long-standing issues with the A&E series Bates Motel. The central characters Norma (Vera Farmiga) and Norman Bates (Freddie Highmore) are fascinating, fully realized variations on the originals introduced to wide audiences in Alfred Hitchcock’s original 1960 Psycho. Sticking to the central locale of the Bates house and vacant motel is the key to the series success. The claustrophobia of Farmiga and Highmore bouncing off each other like seasoned theater pros is exhilarating.

But the Bates Motel creators have surrounded Norma/Norman with one of the blandest casts on television. They are interferingly boring, diverting our attention from the core story without adding to the mythology in any productive way.

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Ladies and ladies, we’ve hit the top six! And as Darienne Lake would say, “Any little slip can take you out of this game.” Which is why girlfriend was throwing banana peels everywhere.

For this week’s mini-challenge, RuPaul asked the queens to cover their bodies in paint to create a “Twerk of Art” inspired by marriage equality. These ladies, grinded, twerked and humped their canvases. (Do these mini challenges actually mean anything anymore? Did they ever? The only thing that it did provide was the opportunity for Ru to make artist puns throughout the entire sequence. “Andy Whore-hall!” “Georgia O’Queef!” “Very Tyra Banksy!”)  Ru asked each of the queens to talk about their work of art, and Bianca del Rio won the mini-challenge.

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Mad Men made me kind of sad last night for the first time in a long time, if ever in fact. It was a little thing I guess, but seeing Peggy be an asshole to her secretary hurt a little. I use the word asshole because it’s not a sexually loaded word like bitch or that other one that starts with a C. It’s not Peggy’s femininity that made it hurt – Roger would also be an asshole in the same situation – it hurt because Peggy has always been my “in” to a show I didn’t much care for at first. She’s had to be prickly at times with her equals and those above her on her way up, but that was justified and necessary. Last night was the first time I can think of where she was mean to someone below her and it was not at all called for. I didn’t like seeing it.

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AMC has made a serious miscalculation in offering its newest dramatic series, the Revolutionary War spy drama Turn, in the increasingly competitive Sunday night line-up.  The intent, I suspect, is to wed it to their flagship show, Mad Men, to boost the ratings out of the gate. But let’s be honest, it airs in the same time slot as HBO’s Game of Thrones. If your show airs and no one watches it, then does it make a sound?

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[Ed. Please welcome the first of what will hopefully be many contributions from Clarence Moye (@chmoye). There’s no new girls tonight, but it’s a perfect time to look back at how this season went.]

“Guys, we’re so disconnected now. I thought that this would be a good opportunity to have fun together and prove to everyone via Instagram that we can still have fun as a group.” – Marnie Michaels

That quote is from the “Beach House” episode of HBO’s Girls, Season Three. The episode is the pinnacle of a blisteringly honest and brilliant third season that seismically shifts the series in new directions. In its short running time, “Beach House” typifies everything we’ve come to expect from the show, namely lead character Hannah Horvath (Lena Dunham) spending the entire episode hanging out of a lime green 2-piece bikini, and elevates it to Osage County levels during a hilarious moment of “truth telling” amongst Horvath’s circle of friends.

It’s an intense moment, at once comically cathartic and intensely uncomfortable. Many shows have attempted it, but not to this level of authenticity. Emmy voters take notice: these Girls are perfecting the art of aging gracefully.

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[Spoilers abound. Do not read if you haven’t seen the first episode]

“Some roads you shouldn’t go down. Because maps used to say ‘There be dragons here.’ Now they don’t… but that don’t mean the dragons aren’t there.” – Billy Bob Thornton as Lorne Malvo

FX’s 10-episode limited series Fargo – inspired by Joel and Ethan Coen’s 1996 film of the same name but eventually striking out in its own interesting directions – begins at dusk along a lonely road moving in a straight line through a flat, white, winter endlessness. First, there is an assurance that what we’re about to see really happened (I haven’t read any of the show’s press, but I assume this is as much a lie as the Coens’ similar claim before the original film), and then there is a single car. The driver is Lorne Malvo played by Billy Bob Thornton wearing a Mephistophelean beard and curiously boyish bangs like some kind of beatnik from hell. Disturbingly, the noises from the trunk seem to suggest there’s someone in there and they really want out. Then, before the exact meaning of all this can be parsed, there’s the flash of a deer in the road, and another, and a sickening crash, and then Thornton’s ’93 New Yorker flies off the side of the road into the snow. Up pops the trunk and out jumps a fleshy man in nothing but his boxers who proceeds to stumble off pathetically (and probably fatally) into the snowy dark.

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Even though last week fans were treated to Rupersized episodes of “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” only one queen went home in the two-part installment, so it was really only like one episode (a moment of silence for our fallen queen Laganja Estranja. . .mmmmk?).

So now it’s down to seven queens. We’re getting very close to the end of season 6 when Ru will crown the next drag superstar (or superdud if she goes with Adore).

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You may or may not have seen last night’s wicked installment of Game of Thrones. But if you have you probably don’t want to read further. But if you’ve already seen it, and/or read the books, you will already know which character was ejected from the series.

Finally, that little twerp Joffrey got what he had coming from him. My only objection was that it wasn’t a violent enough death, particularly after the way he tormented Tyrion. I had read the spoilers so I knew not to expect a major Joffrey beat-down but still, given the way he was asking for it, begging for it, I wanted something along the lines of pouring melted metal atop his head.

All Men Must Die indeed. Now, we merely have to wait for the women to rise to power.

I bet when First Lady Michelle Obama came up with the “Let’s Move” campaign she didn’t envision a bunch of drag queens stroking melons.

But in Monday night’s “Glamazon by Colorevolution” episode (the first of two in a Rupersized series), Mrs. Obama was the inspiration behind Mama Ru’s first challenge of the night: queens man-handling fruits and veggies while adorned in bright press-on nails.

As BenDeLaCreme stripped a banana, pulling each layer apart seductively, Ru yelled out, “One skin, two skin, three skin, four skin.” Laganja Estranja ended up being the best at this challenge, which was probably as objective as a breathing contest.

But the main challenge of the night was filming a 30-second cosmetics commercial, with the ladies split up in pairs. While Ru would probably tell you that they were randomly assigned partners, CLEARLY producers set up one pair with the idea of generating some fireworks: BenDeLaCreme and Darienne Lake, who’ve been rivals in recent weeks and created some awkward tension during Ru’s work room interrogation.

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