Opie and Ned: The Effectiveness of Emotional Investment

SPOILER ALERT: Stop reading here to avoid spoilers about both Game of Thrones and Sons of Anarchy.






Forward thinking shows have less and less of a problem offing main characters. Recently, however, certain shows have taken the next leap by having very popular main characters, often representing the "good" in the show, murdered.

The first that comes to mind for many is Lord Eddard (Ned) Stark from Game of Thrones. Amidst all the royal intrigue and jockeying for the Iron Throne, Ned was the ever loyal right-hand man who tried his damnedest to stay a bit above the fray and always do what is right. Despite this, all his good deeds got him, once his homeboy King Robert died, was a shocking (for the TV audience) decapitation. I remember, at the time, sitting in shocked silence with two friends not knowing what to make of this. Game of Thrones, the trend setter that it is, had just killed off a character that had, until that moment, seemed like an integral and necessary part of the show to the viewing audience. HBO was playing a dangerous game as, at least as far as I can remember, a TV show had not killed of such a character until the very end of the show's run. Even Tony Soprano, despite all the beefs he had and the fact that he was a mob boss, did not maybe die until the last episode cut to black.

Ned Stark was very much in my mind this past Tuesday when another favorite show of mine, Sons of Anarchy, killed off the biker gang's Vice President, and Pres Jax Teller's best friend, Opie. The response was a little bit different here as shock was replaced with a light sadness mixed with a tad bit of outrage. Opie was the only character on the show who truly felt fundamentally unchanged by the club and true to who he was. He seemed relatively untarnished. He was easy to like. Not to mention the fact that the initial shock provided by good ole Fast Eddard helped soften the blow of a similar move being made. All that being said, whether it was conscious move by Kurt Sutter and the other show runners, there were striking similarities between the situations. The "good guy(s)" in the viewers' eyes were in the clutches of there enemies and there were scores to be settled. Blood had to be spilled as "blood will have blood." Even how the scenes were shot are strikingly similar (see above). Both main characters take up the center of our (the viewer's) screen as the off-center and only partially seen murderer does his work. And though there are slight differences in the characters' expressions, Opie with his face forward defiantly wearing a smirk and Ned head and shoulders down waiting for the steel, they are both accepting of their fates. Ned is just reluctantly accepting while Opie, due to all the tragedy he's faced, is ready and more than willing for the cruelty of his life, and this life in general, to be over.

The shock and/or sorrow felt by myself, and viewers generally, is quite effective in tying the viewer to the show if done right. And it most likely will be done right since the fact that you are tied enough to the character to care, the writing is pretty damn good already. I guess what I am saying is it in an interesting evolution in television, but future practitioners might want to tread carefully. If the audience is not already invested in the character, it is just a gimmick that will fall flat. But not for you Justified. Make moves.


IMAGES: both Google Images; upper left is Ned Stark and lower right is SAMCRO's Opie.

StewBeef's No-no

Old post that I did not manage to get to the past month. But that glorious screenshot is from Jon Stewart's self-shot video of his reaction to Johan Santana's no-hitter for the Mets last Friday that was aired on The Daily Show on Monday. As a fellow Mets sufferer fan, I know how he feels.

The Mets, very surprisingly after the loss of Jose Reyes, have been winning with an unheralded squad (outside of David Wright) and are currently in second place in the NL East, right behind the almost as surprising Nationals. The poster boy for this squad would have to be knuckleballer R.A. Dickey who just recently went on a historic run on 1-hit shut outs.

Long story short, much like Stew Beef, I love this Mets team and their equally unheralded manager, Terry Collins. I think it may be time for people to start meeting these Metropolitans and do some heralding.

Image: Daily Show screenshot via Huffington Post

Angry Men in Miami, But Still No Mad Men

Why does Magic City not succeed where Mad Men does? I'm sure it is a question that Starz execs ask themselves every day while cursing AMC's name. They are both period pieces featuring good actors, star Jeffrey Dean Morgan is an always good and very frequently underrated actor and Danny Huston is pretty fantastic as Anthony Bourdain the gangster Ben Diamond, that let us look into a better dressed and more booze-soaked era. Family drama often caused by an overbearing patriarch feature in both. As Mad Men is essentially an office drama, Magic City has much lusher settings. One could see that Starz was making a play for a similar audience, much in the way that Spartacus and Game of Thrones were shooting for similar audiences. So what went wrong? There are a couple of easy answers. Starz does not have Matthew Weiner and, in a similar vein, probably does not have as good of a writing staff. And it shows a little bit. Further, Starz does not have nearly as many subscribers as, say, HBO and thus has no hope of matching the possible eyes that could be on the screen. Starz doesn't have AMC's cache. That all makes sense. It is interesting, though, that the show is not getting any critical love. The writing is not bad by any means. Many of the settings are gorgeous. The acting can be quite good and, in particular, I think Danny Huston is fantastic in the show. He always seems on the edge of violence, smarmy and shark like, without really nearing a "jumping the shark" moment. The show throws in the obligatory historical references, a possible Jackie O visit, etc., but to no avail.

Don't get me wrong. I love Mad Men and Magic City is no Mad Men, but it is a show worth checking out at least. And maybe with some more critical love, more people would.

Image: Vanity Fair

The Usual Suspects: A Continuation

File this one under random thoughts in the shower, but how embarrassed must have U.S. Customs Agent Dave Kujan felt after the credits rolled in The Usual Suspects when he rolled back into the precinct, head hanging low, knowing that he had to tell everyone else that he just got played by mythical criminal Keyser Soze and then let him walk? I'm going to say pretty embarrassed. I mean, to start, he already broke a coffee glass, spilled coffee everywhere, and wasn't fast enough to a fake cripple (fakripple?). First of all, what the hell was a U.S. Customs Agent doing interviewing the sole witness capable of talking about this vast conspiracy, multiple murders, and shoot out at the docks. Does he even have the training for that? Who let him have at it like that? I'm guessing Sgt. Rabin got some shit for this debacle as well. Some other off the top of my head questions I'm sure he faced from Special Agent Baer and others post-credit rolling:

• Didn't someone tell you that a fax with Soze's likeness would be coming through? Why wasn't someone on that immediately?
• Oh, my bad, I forgot that you are an mother#(%^Q)@ U.S. Customs Agent so of course not.
• Sidenote, who the hell let you in there anyway?
• Oh, you let him go because you were satisfied that Keaton faked his death again? So that's what makes sense? Good police work, dickbag.
• Nobody looked into this Kobayashi character? Maybe checked out some known associates? Really, nobody? Wow.
• What kind of name is Verbal Kint anyway? Anyone look into that one? No? Fantastic. 
• Again, and I don't mean to make too fine of a point out of this, but he was the only go@%)&@#n survivor of a massacre and only witness the state has and no one thought to look after him? Maybe follow him a little bit or have a uniform take him home?
• Ugh, you are the worst. Get the hell outta here and go back to chasing down counterfeit CDs and Nikes or whatever the hell it is you actually do regularly. But, seriously, how the hell were you the one doing this interview? F&%* me in the goat ass....

Poorly Played Home Box Office...

HBO recently decided to renew their new show Enlightened, while canceling Bored to Death, Hung, and How to Make it in America. I am fairly certain that top HBO brass have deemed this "How to Kick America in the Balls: an enlightened method to bore the watching public to death until they death by hanging" (Disclaimer: this is probably not true). I like Laura Dern and all, and admittedly I never really gave that show much of a chance, but how could you re-up that while canceling Bored to Death, one of the better shows, with one of the best casts, on TV (in my humble opinion). Hung and How to Make it... were not nearly as innovative but seemed like they would appeal to a better target demographic than a middle aged female office drone who flips out in the office after an affair with a co-worker and then gets all zen.

I hope the next group of shows they have lined up strike a chord with viewers, because it seems to me that HBO has been steadily slipping as of late as Showtime and AMC continue to pickup faithful viewers (a.k.a., market share). Considering HBO's track record (or even just The Sopranos and The Wire), however, it's hard to doubt them (he said at the end of a post that is composed almost entirely with HBO doubts). Just do us all a favor and get Zach Galifianakis back on TV HBO. You owe us that much...

"Homeland"- An Apology to America for Excesses of "24"?

Homeland, Showtime's excellent new show about the possibility of an American POW(s) turned to terrorism that just ran its absolutely bananas season finale this past weekend, is brought to you, me and everyone else by the creators of 24, Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa, and seems (to me at least) to be a full throated mea culpa for the world view presented in their previous terrorism related television show. Don't get me wrong, this is not an attack on 24. I watched regularly and thought it was a delightful piece of escapism... it just presented a very binary and dark world. There was Jack Bauer and CTU on one side and then there were terrorists on the other. Something really bad would be happening in the next 24 hours if Jack Bauer did not stop it. Being under this single day time crunch, Jack might have to toss some civil liberties aside, maybe torture someone, and just get the job done. This has unfortunately been an inspiration to many Republicans, who think its legitimate to cite a fictional TV character in discussions about proper interrogation techniques.

Everyone on Homeland, however, lives in increasingly complex shades of gray. Is Sgt. Brody a patriotic hero, a terrorist, a family man, suffering from PTSD, all of the above? Is Carrie Mathison good at her job in spite of suffering from bipolar disorder or do the manic episodes drive her to be great? Abu Nazir is a terrorist, but he showed Brody compassion and went into a quiet mourning period when his son died (or did he show Brody compassion just to turn him and go quiet just to plan an immensely complicated terrorist attack taking out most of the national security apparatus using two turned Marines?). David Estes and Vice President Walden have ostensibly devoted their lives to protecting the American people, but ordered a drone strike on a school killing nearly a hundred children, including Abu Nazir's youngest son, and then covered it up in furtherance of their careers. This is without delving too much into the intertwining relationships between Brody/Mathison, Nazir/Brody, Mathison/Estes, Estes/Walden, Walden/Brody and Mathison with her mentor Saul Berenson. Nothing is as it seems and clearly divided into good and bad. 

Further, and more importantly in comparison to 24, Carrie's efforts to stop terrorist attacks on the nation do not involve torture at all. There is nary a gun to a prisoners head to be seen. Instead, she uses legal (most of the time) surveillance, legal (skirting the line, but still okay) interrogation, old fashion chasing of leads and hard work to connect the dots of why things have happened and how that indicates what is likely to happen. Even the turning of Brody indicates what type of interrogation is successful. Al Qaeda affiliates beat the hell out of him, but he doesn't turn and doesn't "talk" until he is shown kindness. In its willingness to look at the contradictions in life that make up the shades of gray, the multitude of mixed motivations for why people do what they do and its much more realistic portrayal of how terrorist attacks are investigated (or should be) and stopped, Homeland is like Gordon and Gansa taking a mulligan and promptly thwacking a hole-in-one. I cannot wait to see where this show goes next season and I can only hope that our lawmakers pay as much attention to the actions of Carrie Mathison and Saul Berenson (and learn a lesson from Walden/Estes) as they did from Mr. Jack Bauer. 

Plus, I am pretty sure that Clare Danes never attacked a Christmas tree.

Getcha Nerd on with PBS' New Nova Series

I caught pieces of a new series on PBS called the "Fabric of the Cosmos" last night and found it incredibly interesting. Though I am in no way literate in physics or math, I find it all very interesting and will wrap my head around the little that I can when it comes to string theory, quantum mechanics, quarks, higgs-boson, black holes and anti-matter. Dr. Greene is very engaging and the material is presented in a (somewhat) accessible light. I would recommend the series, which stretches over 4 weeks starting yesterday, for anyone interested in this material.

Oh, no one else? It's just me? Ok, groovy... I'm just going to sit in this corner with my Greene and Kaku books now. Thanks.

The Applicability of the RICO Act to SAMCRO (A Study in Extreme Nerd-dom)

Ya, that's right. I'm doing an analysis on the legal applicability of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act to the Sons of Anarchy Motorcycle Club, Redwood Original (SAMCRO) as shown in the fictional show (I am not completely convinced it is not a documentary) Sons of Anarchy. Wanna make something of it?

Sons of Anarchy, in my humble opinion, is a WAY underrated show. Led by the acting chop filled troika of Ron Perlman (Hellboy), Katey Sagal (Everything, EVER, and Married With Children), and the painfully under-appreciated Charlie Hunnam, who killed it in Green Street Hooligans (drama) and in the Judd Apatow created show Undeclared. Not to mention that it features a motorcycle club, the IRA, Shakespearean overtones in the first season calling MacBeth to mind, the IRA, a season in Ireland, copious amount of fight scenes, and the IRA (sorry to pull a Peter King... I think the spirit of my great-grandfather slipped in there somehow).

Annyyywhhooo, this season features an overzealous Assistant U.S. Attorney who is trying to take down the Sons, as well as some other gangs, a Mexican drug cartel and the Real IRA, by putting together a large and interconnected RICO case (I'm not even gonna get into the pressure put on Juice. Suffice it to say, almost none of the evidence he gives is admissible in court). Using RICO became popular in prosecuting the mob, and thus in pop culture, because racketeering is defined so broadly If you are in an enterprise that is engaged in a pattern of illegal activity, from robbery/murder to neighborhood "protection/loan sharking/neighborhood lotto, you are in violation of the RICO Act. "Pattern" is also broadly defined as two or more acts in violation of the act, at least one after the enactment of RICO and one within 10 years of prosecution. Clearly, SAMCRO would satisfy these two requirements. The Asst US Attorney also nails what they would need for RICO on the show which is, needless to say, pretty impressive for a television show. Further, the broader reasons for pursuing RICO charges on SAMCRO are also valid as both the Galindo drug cartel and the Real IRA would clearly be co-conspirators that could likewise be charged under RICO if evidence of the co-conspiracy was presented. This would be pretty easy in regards to the drug cartel but much more difficult with the Real IRA, which is why the Asst US Attorney is stepping up pressure on Juice for info pertaining to the IRA/SAMCRO meet up.

Basically, Sons of Anarchy did a good job this season of illustrating why the motorcycle club, not to mention their gang/cartel/RIRA cohorts, has something to worry about. I am now through with my over-long geek out. Please don't judge me...