Welcome to The Friday TV Five, a column where we pull out five of the best, worst, and weirdest highlight-worthy things from the week of television, and present them all in a handy list format where the numbers don’t particularly mean anything. We have fun.
1) The similarities between Arya Stark and Jason Bourne can no longer be ignored
The most recent episode of Game of Thrones featured a foot chase that caused a lot of people to start shouting about Terminators. This was fair and understandable, as Arya was scurrying and leaping all over Braavos in an attempt to escape The Waif and The Waif stayed hot on her tail by walking very purposefully with a blank, robotic expression on her face. She was one “Have you seen this girl?” away from nailing the whole thing right on its head and driving it straight into the audience’s brain. Yes, fine, excellent.
But the more I thought about it, I realized Terminator wasn’t quite the right analogy because for that to be true, Arya would have to be John Connor, and that is impossible because Arya is Jason Bourne.
Let’s tick off the similarities. She is:
- an assassin
- who was trained by a secretive organization
- that demanded she cut off all ties to her past and give up her old identity
- and is now trying to kill her
- because she went rogue
The only real difference is that Jason Bourne has amnesia and Arya doesn’t. Although I imagine, given everything that’s happened to her family since the show started, she might appreciate a little amnesia here and there. Selective amnesia. Is that a thing? Feels like it could be a thing.
And then, as if all of that wasn’t enough, they went and gave us that chase scene that saw Arya parkouring through the city and skipping across rooftops, which was straight out of The Bourne Ultimatum. Like, straight out of The Bourne Ultimatum.
If we flesh this analogy out a little further, it means The Faceless Men are Treadstone, Jaqen H’Ghar is whatever the name of David Strathairn’s character was, and Lady Crane is kind of a more stabby version of Franka Potente’s character from the first movie. I guess. I don’t know. Admittedly, this is where the analogy starts falling apart. Hopefully the season finale features Arya tearing ass around King’s Landing in a Mini Cooper while techno music plays.
I suppose the point of all of this is to tell you that I made this video, and I feel really, really great about it.
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2) Comedies sure are getting serious these days
There was a really interesting essay by Matt Zoller Seitz at Vulture this week. The thrust of it all is that comedy has overtaken drama as the outlet for high-quality prestige-y television, with shows like Transparent and You’re the Worst blurring the lines of traditional sitcoms to tell powerful stories that are occasionally funny, or funny stories about very powerful subject matter. It’s a good piece. You should read it. Here’s a little slice.
You’re the Worst and Netflix’s BoJack Horseman tackle depression head-on, more brutally than most dramas; the latter is outwardly an animated showbiz satire set in a world where anthropomorphized creatures jostle against humans, but with each passing season, its fascination with narcissism and delusion makes it feel like the continuation of Mad Men by other means. Silicon Valley and Veep are more stinging in their critiques of power centers (respectively, the Northern California tech scene and Washington, D.C.) than their dramatic analogues Halt and Catch Fire and House of Cards. Netflix’s Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, starring Ellie Kemper as a woman raised in a religious cult, is as joke-filled as a show can be, but it’s also about somebody recovering from something so horrific that if the show were a drama, it might be too bleak to watch (Hulu’s The Path, about members of a present-day religious cult, essentially lives within the past that Kimmy left behind — and it’s a tough sit, to put it mildly).
Which, yeah. No argument here. But something jumped out at me while I was reading it: I really miss Parks and Recreation. Make no mistake, I love You’re the Worst and BoJack Horseman, and I watched both seasons of Catastrophe in about 12 total hours, but there’s definitely a limit to the amount of time I can deal with those kinds of heavier comedies. (I’m excluding Veep, Silicon Valley, and Kimmy Schmidt because those are mostly satires and super-dense joke carnivals.) And I rarely find myself re-watching old episodes.
But with a lighter show like Parks (or New Girl or 30 Rock), I can just fall into a three-hour marathon of episodes I’ve already seen a dozen times. Maybe that’s just me. I very much appreciate the quality of the other shows and I’m glad to see comedy get a little artistic recognition, but man, sometimes I just want jokes, you know?
3) If you wanna see half of Tony Shalhoub’s brain get squeezed out of his ear BrainDead is the show for you!
I discussed the new CBS summer series BrainDead earlier in the week in my review, but if you missed that and refuse to do me a solid and click that link, here’s the short version: A meteor filled with evil space ants crash-lands on Earth and the evil space ants start scurrying around Washington, D.C., and burrowing into the ears of our elected officials and turning them into teetotaling hyper-partisan zombie zealots. It’s a surprisingly fun show. A nice little summer watch.
Anyway, in my review I referenced something that happened to Tony Shalhoub’s character, Senator Red Wheatus (if there’s not a “Teenage Dirtbag” reference at some point, I will scream), that totally blew me away. I danced around it then because the show hadn’t aired yet, but now that it’s a few days old, I want to talk about it. So here goes.
The space ants crawled in through his window. Then they crawled up onto his bed. Then they crawled into his ear.
Then Senator Red Wheatus sat up and started thumping on the side of his head, a bit like you would if you had water in your ear, or if your head was filled with ants from space. And on the last thump, his brain started squeezing out his ear. That what’s happening in the image at the top of this section. That’s his brain.
And then, with half his brain hanging out of his ear, he scrunched up his face and made the same type of strained expression you’d make if you were passing a disagreeable stool, and squeezed the rest of it right out of his head and onto his pillow.
You know, when 2016 started, I expected a lot of things to happen during the year, but I’ll be totally honest with you guys: I did not expect to see Tony Shalhoub squirt half his brain out of his ear on account of evil meteor ants from outer space. Life is full of surprises.
4) Peaky Kingdom? Animal Blinders?
On the BBC/Netflix drama Peaky Blinders, Finn Cole plays a young man named Michael who is reunited with his mother after a long period of estrangement. It turns out his mother is a high-ranking member of a local crime family, whose members also include his three cousins. One of the cousins is the brains and leader, another is a lunatic with substance-abuse issues, and the youngest is violent with a rebellious streak. Despite the mother’s initial wishes, the cousins pull him into the criminal organization, and he starts committing acts of violence on its behalf.
On the TNT drama Animal Kingdom, Finn Cole plays a young man named J who is reunited with his grandmother after a long period of estrangement. It turns out his grandmother is a high-ranking member of a local crime family, whose members also include his four uncles. One of the cousins is the brains and leader, another is a lunatic with substance abuse issues, and the youngest is violent with a rebellious streak. Despite the grandmother’s initial wishes, the cousins pull him into the criminal organization, and he starts committing acts of violence on its behalf.
If the next episode of Animal Kingdom opens with J putting on a hat that has razor blades sewn into it, someone might have to sue somebody.
5) What the hell is going on in this chocolate commercial?
It’s important to note, before you click play on that commercial for Dove Chocolate’s Fruit and Nut Blends, that chocolate is candy. Fancy it up all you like. Still candy. Okay, click play.
What the hell is going on in that commercial? I mean, she’s floating in a giant fishbowl, she’s running with a horse in a desert, she’s getting dirt and paint heaved at her. At one point, for reasons I have yet to comprehend, she’s holding a whip. And there’s a bird in there, too. A MYSTERIOUS BIRD EMERGING FROM A POOF OF SMOKE. What does any of that have to do with candy?
(Imagine being the actress in this commercial, landing a gig for a chocolate commercial and thinking you’ll get to sit around nibbling nummy morsels on big luxurious couch, only to get flown out to the desert where two union crew members named Tony inform you that it’s their job to heave buckets of dirt and paint at you. Imagine that call to her agent.)
I’m all for getting a little fancy with your commercials to make your product seem like a high-status luxury item. Victoria’s Secret has been blowing things up and having supermodels in high heels strut defiantly around empty mansions for years in an attempt to distract the world from the fact that they’re just trying to sell people underpants. I get it. That’s capitalism, baby. But there has to be a line somewhere, and wherever that line is, Dove galloped across it like that horse in the ad that’s sprinting through the desert. You’re selling candy, my dudes. Keep it simple. No mysterious birds necessary.
