True Detective reviewed

There are a couple of shows on TV that quickly gain a large following a few episodes in their first season, thus making it hard to keep an open mind starting to watch them with a little delay - being flooded with first impressions. Although I don't read stuff about anything beforehand, I can never completely avoid those flashy headlines. A review for each new episode on blogs seems excessive, but it's not unusual.

It shows that a series does something right in terms of presentation during the first crucial episodes, being the cool new thing to talk about. I'm not saying it's not OK to be enthusiastic. But it immediately raises more than a few expectations in regards to where a show is heading (and oftentimes before it has found its pace).

The flavor of these last few months appeared to have been HBO's True Detective. It's an anthology crime series, mysterious, with nods to film noir and an eery, almost romantic gloom hanging overhead. I might even go as far as say that I got a little depressed watching it, realizing that there is little happiness to be found for any of the characters, just a nihilistic sense of loss, guilt and regret moving them forward. The title True Detective stems from a factional crime magazine by the same name. Award-winning writer Nic Pizzolatto wrote each of the episodes, and in many ways the concept for the show builds on his 2010 mystery novel Galveston.

It didn't take long for it to grab me. There was something about Harrelson's narration that left me wanting more. A few episodes in I also noticed what I didn't like, namely that it has become somewhat of a stylistic means of expression to have writers argue out what feels like personal beefs over certain topics, to utilize characters as messengers of outrageous dialogue. OK, this is mainly an HBO thing. After nudity and violence, it is about questioning other forms of expression and overcome boundaries, things you weren't allowed to say on TV a mere ten years ago.

"Safe to say that nobody in here is going to split the atom, Marty"  


People enjoy a writer's defiance. Strangely enough it makes an audience feel empowered. But since it has become a trademark of progressive shows to be anti-establishment, being known for scandalous dialogue can get old. Adding that to the fact that within the last few years it has risen to be a standard to depict main characters moving within the dark grey areas of morality makes it even harder to find a truly new angle. We're forced to empathize with not-all-good people. And even if we find someone who seems OK at first, it turns out the good people have a skewed moral compass as well, and maybe even worse so than those who promote their flaws more loudly.

Since it's such a commonplace, it takes away from some of True Detective's visionary sense. Yes, there is novelty to the show, in cinematic style, production and writing. The show is very ambitious. But aside from presentation and directing toppings as for instance demonstrated in the awesome 6-minute single-take tracking shot during episode 4, the plot is pretty run-of-the-mill. I see an end to this trend of finding new ways to tell old stories, and soon. After a lot of antiheroic types have braced the TV landscape, it's time for the opposite; classic narratives to tell new and exciting stories. As long as stories feel stale, there is no further value in neat packaging (except to ruffle people's expectations).

It would be a refreshing change of pace to empathize with protagonists who believe in something beyond their own rationalization. Like, for example, to create suspense, a story needs a certain element of impulse, even plausible screw up on the part of the characters to create misconceptions and prejudice on the part of the audience, especially in the crime genre. It's true to genre to deflect the audience while they're trying to connect the dots. At least if the plan is to create that one surprise moment at the end that no one suspected, but, in hindsight, wasn't far-fetched at all - the ideal goal of any story, if you ask me.

The mystery part turned out to be a disappointment. It seems True Detective stumbled over its own sense of mystique. The character arcs, well, I see what they were heading for. It ended about halfway between where it started and where it wanted to be. For the next season, there are other quests to be undertaken by an all new team. I think I'll miss Harrelson and McConaughey the most.

Girls reviewed: Survivors of the 20th Century

One of the things I like to do whenever I start watching the first few episodes of a new TV series is to watch myself slowly getting attached. As long as I don't have a clue about who these new characters are, siding with them is like trying to find a dance routine to a song whose rhythm I haven't yet figured out.

There are a bunch of quirky shows out there these days, portraying even quirkier people, which makes it hard to get behind them, and to uncover the traces of their humanity.

The great thing about Girls is that the show found a quirky pitch to realistically portray what it is like to be a young woman, and painfully so. For me that is like hitting the bulls eye of quirk.

Although I don't always succeed in it, I always try to pinpoint the moment a story wins me over, whether it being a book, a film or a TV series. I consider it good practice to be aware of the moment I'm sold on something, and knee deep invested in characters. With Girls it only took two and a half episodes, which is pretty atypical compared to my usual slow-bonding habits.

Regardless of what you've heard about it, and albeit being referenced a couple of times, the show is nothing like Sex and the City, not even close to a "prequel" to the glamorous, occasionally funny but otherwise emotionally void series. In fact, Girls has as little to do with a "gay man's perspective on women" as speed metal does with chocolate. Girls is the show created, written, directed by and starring Lena Dunham, which is to say she carries a lot of weight. Maybe you've seen her around. She wrote and directed the indie drama Tiny Furniture, which may be considered an early remnant of what would later become Girls.

The show is about a group of twentysomethings living in the heart of New York, not exclusively girls, also the boys who surround them. Portraying the lives of young people, the series picks up on Generation Y's balancing act in regards to age, gender, job and vocation, and very successfully so.

Yes, it does get a little explicit and dirty at times, in the way you'd expect it from an HBO show. Nudity serves a purpose though, and every exposed body part leads to a new discovery about women, men, what they each have in common, and what it is that divides them.

Thus far each of the episodes reeks of personal experience, and while it is keenly observed and well written, the comedy comes from a dark place. It's rare to witness comedic dialogue that unerring without the writers having to aim for those quick puns.

The four main characters live in and share shitty little apartments, they struggle to survive each week at a time, getting by on badly paid jobs and unpaid internships. The pilot episode starts with Lena Dunham's character Hannah being cut off financially by her parents, and during the season we witness her struggles with the consequences of the umbilical cord being cut, financially as well as emotionally.

Talented leech that she is, she does find ways to survive, sponging off of her best friend Marnie for a little while. Marnie is the stuck-up type who strives to have a career. They're both friends with Shoshanna who lives in her own little world; she's the only one who hasn't graduated from college yet, and shares her place with wild child Jessa, who makes money as she goes, traveling around the world as an au pair and a nanny - obviously horrible choices for someone as irresponsible and flighty by nature - but she doesn't seem to realize it yet.

I don't exactly know why, but seeing the show made me think back to My So-Called Life, which was a teen series I loved when I was 17. I still like to revisit it from time to time, because it says something true about being a mid-nineties teenager.

Girls says something equally profound about the times that come thereafter, having outgrown the teenage phase post 2000, and being a blank slate in a world of adults and grown-up expectations.

The clip is taken from the infamous job interview scene and it exemplifies where the show hits the right notes. This is how Hannah blows a job interview, overstepping her boundaries, due to lack of experience. Well that, and cheekiness.




This is also what I like this series for - it finds non-judgmental ways to describe familiar feelings and scenarios, not from the perspective of someone who has long outgrown the phase and looks down upon these girls, and not from the perspective of someone in the middle of it either. Like a third eye, the point of view moves in and out, never siding too much with anyone.

Lena Dunham did find a unique way to tell her story - and who knows, she may really be the voice of her generation after all. Or - as she put it - at least a voice. Of a generation.