I feel like we’re entering a phase of GoT in which people are finally making the right goddamn decisions.
Hello and welcome to Game of Thoughts! This is a feature I’m testing out in which I do little, rambly recaps of the night’s episode. They WILL contain spoilers. They are nothing more than a recap and chance for GoT fans to have a bit of a natter and react as situations permit. They were inspired by the incredible, in-depth and insightful posts of Patrick Sponaugle, except his are intelligent and mine are just squeeing. There will be spoilers, but I will put everything behind a cut so as not to ruin anyone’s good time. I will continue with movie reviews, but just once a week or so.
Khal Moro. Khal Moro is no Khal Drogo, but he’s fun and his Blood riders are amusing. I look forward to seeing him shit his pants with fear/rage when he realizes he is no longer in charge.
Hello and welcome to Game of Thoughts! This is a feature I’m testing out in which I do little, rambly recaps of the night’s episode. They WILL contain spoilers. They are nothing more than a recap and chance for GoT fans to have a bit of a natter and react as situations permit. They were inspired by the incredible, in-depth and insightful posts of Patrick Sponaugle, except his are intelligent and mine are just squeeing. There will be spoilers, but I will put everything behind a cut so as not to ruin anyone’s good time. I will continue with movie reviews, but just once a week or so.
I fully recognize that Mr. Fleshler is not the characters he portrays, and as an artist has a wide range, bags of charisma, and probably a very vivid imagination. I expect he is also highly professional. I am also confident that were I ever to meet him in real life I would go through a 5-minute decompression thought process of “GGRAAAAGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!” before I could have a normal conversation with him. I wonder if this is something he and other brilliant character actors get all the time?
“Character actors! Who gives a f*ck if we’re fat?” – Patton Oswalt, quoting Brian Dennehy
*Spoilers for True Detective, Season 1; Hannibal, Season 3*
(This post will contain some pretty dark content – trigger warning for entertainment that involves harming children and mentally handicapped people – Proceed with caution!)
Forgive my hyperbole, but character actors must be some of the most patient, most compassionate people on the planet.
I say that because last year, I watched HBO’s amazing inaugural season of True Detective. It is magnificent, incredible, it’s filmmaking greatness, from the production value to the performances to the characterizations. It’s just the bees’ knees and the kitten’s britches, and it is ABSOLUTELY NOT FOR EVERYONE because of the disturbing content. Seriously, I was disturbed for weeks after I shotgunned it over a period of 3 days.
One thing I couldn’t get out of my head was character actor Glenn Fleshler’s portrayal of the villain.
Just a Deeply Troubled Man Painting a School
There’s a moment when the TD villain, a back-country inbred janitor with a scarred face, unusual size and strength, and a penchant for molesting and murdering little girls, relaxes at home. He watches some TV, which he responds to in a variety of voices (Fleshler’s voice has an amazing range and ability to mimic), then he has sex with his possibly mentally handicapped sister-wife, while still doing the voices.
So That Happened…
As you can imagine, this totally put me in the mood for a July 4th barbecue where I would be surrounded by my (now ex) boyfriend’s coworkers, most of whom we didn’t know and whom I realized I had nothing in common with after trying to chat with them for over two hours. I was ready to party, and by party I mean have some kind of existential nervous breakdown.
SERIOUSLY I AM FINE NICE TO MEET YOU WHERE THAT BEER AT LET US PARTY!!!!!!
Anyway, I’m all right now and going to pick up the Season 1 DVD soon and watch it again since I am mentally more prepared. I haven’t watched Season 2 yet since I don’t have HBO but I’m curious if it’ll cause the same kind of spiritual collapse as the first season. Time will tell!
I just need to take my hat off to Mr. Fleshler’s performance. I did start to wonder what it must be like to be an actor pursuing your dream in a nontraditional career full of gambles, where you get contacted about a part and find out it’s this sort of thing.
A friend of mine is a talent coordinator for a voice talent agency and I asked her about that the other day at a party. She said they try to handle it very professionally, even a little obtusely.
The Correct Way to Handle It:
“Hi! We have a part we think you’d be interested in. It’s very out there and we think you’re creative and talented enough to make it work. Interested?”
The Incorrect Way to Handle It:
We have this part we think you would be perfect for, we need someone deeply offputting to play a child molester who ritually murders his victims, is into incest in a big sloppy way, and will make the viewer lose all faith in humanity. Nothing about this guy is human and he should give everyone the willies, if not make them want to burn their television set with cleansing fire. Interested?
I fully recognize that Mr. Fleshler is not the characters he portrays, and as an artist has a wide range, bags of charisma, and probably a very vivid imagination. I expect he is also highly professional. I am also confident that were I ever to meet him in real life I would go through a 5-minute decompression thought process of “GGRAAAAGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!” before I could have a normal conversation with him. I wonder if this is something he and other brilliant character actors get all the time?
Mr. Fleshler is currently playing the character of Cordelle on season 3 of Hannibal, acting as Mason Verger’s caregiver. I cannot think of a more perfect role for him.I recognized the voice before the face, and by “recognized” I mean “fell into terrified crisis.”
I cannot wait to see what else the future holds for him and I wish him all the best with his career! He will certainly go far!
I love Orange is the New Black. Unflinching without being obnoxious, it was brave and awesome and it took a huge risk and totally paid off. It brought Laverne Cox onto the world stage, and started a lot of intelligent conversations about race and how people of color are portrayed in the media. It was AWESOME. And to compare apples and oranges, I am comparing it to HBO’s brilliant prison show OZ.
Welcome to Apples and Oranges! This is a new feature I’m trying out where I compare incomparable things only because of a thin thread connecting them.
[Some spoilers, but I haven’t finished the 3rd OITNB season yet so please avoid spoilers in the comments!]
Ain’t no party like a Litchfield party! Also this is clearly from season 2.
I love Orange is the New Black. Unflinching without being obnoxious, it was brave and awesome and it took a huge risk and totally paid off. It brought Laverne Cox onto the world stage, and started a lot of intelligent conversations about race and how people of color are portrayed in the media. It was AWESOME. And to compare apples and oranges, I am comparing it to HBO’s brilliant prison show OZ.
OZ was literally what gave HBO its middle name of “god damn this is some fine television right here.” It began airing in 1997 – almost twenty years ago! – and depicted the lives of inmates and staff at the fictional Oswald State Correctional Facility. It contains many alumni of other HBO shows, particularly The Wire. OITNB is similiar in a lot of ways, although WAY less brutal.
I admit it’s unfair to compare the shows because OITNB takes place in a prison, and OZ takes place in a max facility. Basically, it’s the prison where you go if you don’t behave in regular prison and they get tired of your shit. Please also note that I am not going to try and make some grand point about the difference between men’s and women’s prisons, because that would be asinine; these are fictional products inspired by reality, but do not function as examples of such.
In OITNB, people get their feelings hurt and sometimes get beaten up, or even beaten to death.
In OZ, they got their faces caved in or fed ground glass until they bleed out.
So, you know, different playing field, different rules.
Oz’s legacy is so ubiquitous its title sequence was lampooned on the Venture Bros, which is a major benchmark of pop culture– sort of like being parodied by Weird Al.
AND when Homer went to jail on the Simpsons, his little hat was a nod to Simon Adebisi’s own ever-present accessory. THAT Is a whole other level of pop-culture achievement!
Requirement of Being Cocked at A Sassy Angle: Check!
And the original in all it’s glory:
Granted it’s a little bigger, but it’s ALL in the angle. Also if you find this picture frightening, you should; Adebisi is not a nice man.
That photo accurately depicts the real Simon Adebisi; he’s a handsome, highly intelligent man played to the hilt by the magnificent Adewale Akinnouye-Agbaje, but my GOSH was Adebisi a great villain. On the show, almost every character, no matter how brutal, was given some kind of humanizing moment that allowed another facet of their personality to shine through. My memories of the show are hazy but I don’t recall Adebisi ever having that moment (although dropping his pants and fiddling with his bits during his physical was hilarious, and apparently the actor’s improvisation).
One thing that OZ did so much better than OITNB was letting the viewer pick their narrative; for white, middle-class viewers like me, the story of Tobias Beecher heading to prison after drunken vehicular manslaughter was our window to this world. But the beauty of the show was how it drew us into those other windows as they opened wider and wider, providing other characters – Alvarez, Augustus, Poet, Kareem Said, Wangler, a forum for their stories.
I will totally admit that the premise of the first season of OITNB, of a ‘good girl’ going to prison, was what drew me in. That and curiosity about what women’s prison might be like, especially since I’m too lazy to go read about it myself. And naturally at the base of such curiosity is the self-absorbed First Wonder of the First World, Could I make it on the inside? Piper’s story was the main narrative, and that got me watching. But you know what? By about midway through the second season I was absolutely done caring about Piper because the characters around her were so much more compelling and had eclipsed her. At this point, everyone else in the prison is more interesting to watch.
So when season 3 began with her reunion with Alex and the selfish thing she did to achieve that, I sort of stopped giving a shit. Now obviously I have a lot more of this season to get through and since it’s OITNB, shit will go down and things will happen, but I’ll be honest, every time Piper is onscreen my mind starts wandering. She doesn’t seem to be growing as a character and her emotional gurning is so infuriating. When Red tells her to get in touch with her inner Russian and she immediately puts that into practice by pretending to ignore Alex and then having hatesex with her, I threw my hands up into the air because I just didn’t care. And then Alex forgave her! I get that they’re stuck inside and have to make the best of it; I suppose the one character’s (can’t find her name, sorry!) monologue about how prison is a band-aid and nobody who’re friends on the inside can sustain their relationships outside comes into play here, or will later in the season.
I wouldn’t mind if the story wandered away from Piper and her boring entitled bullshit to focus on more worthy characters. I know that Taylor Schilling is doing her best with her performance, and the show has certainly pulled back from her narrative, but I wouldn’t mind if it left her even farther afield. It still feels like she’s the sun and all the other characters orbit around her, but she’s very slowly collapsing in on herself and in danger of becoming a black hole.
Awful But Accurate Depiction. Also I think they PS’d Chapman’s eyes blue; in the show her eyes are dark brown. Also Daya looks AMAZING here! That glow! Those lips!
Oz’s strength lay in the showrunners following ALL the stories, not just one. It feels like when Piper finishes her sentence, OITNB will end, and that’s just not what the show is anymore. It’s done too much for the LBGT community (Laverne Cox was on TIME MAGAZINE!) and for actresses of color to go out that way.
Have you watched either show? What are your thoughts?
Look, I’m not going to pretend I’m anything other than a white woman who watches a lot of TV and movies. But as an American, Baltimore’s strife kills me for a lot of reasons; I know that I live in a different America than a lot of people, I know that I am privileged. I am also struggling to understand both sides of a conflict that has made a lot of bodies and broken a lot of lives. In thinking about it, I remembered I had watched this amazing show and wondered how many other people were aware of it.
Watching a television show won’t make someone understand what’s going on in Baltimore, but The Corner introduced me to a conversation going on in this country that I wasn’t previously aware of, and helped me find an orientation to that conversation. Hopefully it can do the same for others.
I love The Wire. It was one of the most important shows on American television and yet all it garnered was critical acclaim, and a few awards. You always know when someone has seen it, because we can’t stop ourselves from talking about it. David Simon, the creator, has talked about what’s going on in Baltimore because as a resident of the city he has long been privy to its inner workings.
A lot of people are probably looking to The Wire or recommending it to others who don’t understand what’s going on in Baltimore right now. And rightfully so, as it is one of the few television shows of the last twenty years that addressed some of those very problems. But The Wire was still required to be a commercial property, and so the stories were sometimes hampered by the need for some kind of cohesive narrative to draw the (white, middle/upperclass) audience in. It was thought-provoking, it was hard-hitting, but at the end of the day it still had to be entertainment.
The Corner paints a much more interesting picture, of the city in particular and America in general, and was made by many of the same people. Short of going to Baltimore and living there for a few years, it’s the closest some of us watching the news can get to understanding what’s going on.
Directed by Charles S. Dutton, The Corner is a dramatization of the nonfiction book The Corner: A Year In the Life of An Inner City Neighborhood. Many of its actors are recognizable from The Wire and elsewhere, and all of them give knockout performances.
As the title indicates, the six-episode miniseries shows a year in the life of a neighborhood that has fallen apart for a variety of reasons. Drugs, economic disparity, civic corruption, it’s all there on display. No punches are pulled by Dutton’s direction or the writing of the show- the grim realities are all exhibited without agenda other than ‘this really happened.’
For example: Francine, a drug addict and mother to one of the main characters, decides to get clean. She goes to a nearby center where she’s been told she can do so. However, the program has a limited number of beds, and sees people eager to turn over new leaves every day slide right back into addiction. She’s told to come back and apply again for four Tuesdays in a row so that they know she’s serious about getting clean. Basically, another month on the street.
It seems simple enough to us, who are reading this article or watching the show in our comfortable living rooms, with smartphones we can program to remind us where to be on certain days at certain times. Or even if we’ve been trained by parents or school programs about time management and basic organizational skills, being somewhere four times in a row sounds easy! We have cars we can use to get around, or means to check the bus schedule fare to get us there.
Francine has none of that. Her ‘normal’ doesn’t require her to know what day it is, or be anywhere at a certain time. As an addict, her internal clock is timed to her next fix, not “Humpday Happy Hour” or “Casual Friday” or anything that might help her get to the center at the right time on the right day. And a month in Bunchie’s neighborhood is a very, VERY long time frame in which a lot of things can happen. The show does not belabor the point, just makes it and steps back.
Another powerful thing about the series was getting to see so many actors I recognize from other shows display such range. Many of the people from the Wire play characters diametrically opposed to their characters in The Corner. Maria Broom, known as Lt. Daniels’ politically-savvy wife Marla in the Wire, is totally torn down as Bunchie, an unemployed addict who sits on her stoop all day. Likewise Clarke Peters, who played natty and understated badass Lester Freamon plays Fat Curt, so named because of the grotesque swelling in his hands and feet that years of drug use have caused. Seeing people of color displaying their range in such a way was a huge eye-opener; I started really thinking about how few roles there are for people of color in American entertainment, and how limited those roles usually are.
Look, I’m not going to pretend I’m anything other than a white woman who watches a lot of TV and movies. But as an American, Baltimore’s strife kills me for a lot of reasons; I know that I live in a different America than a lot of people, I know that I am privileged. I am also struggling to understand both sides of a conflict that has made a lot of bodies and broken a lot of lives. In thinking about it, I remembered I had watched this amazing show and wondered how many other people were aware of it.
Watching a television show won’t make someone understand what’s going on in Baltimore, but The Corner introduced me to a conversation going on in this country that I wasn’t previously aware of, and helped me find an orientation to that conversation. Hopefully it can do the same for others.
The Corner is not available on Instant Watch, but is available through Netflix Disc service and HBO GO or NOW.
