Medium Mashup

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  • Better Call Saul Season 2 Review

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    There are two different moments in Better Call Saul’s second season in which a character defends Jimmy McGill to his brother Chuck while knowing that Jimmy i in the wrong. First, it’s Kim Wexler insisting that Jimmy did not alter the address of Chuck’s Mesa Verde documents, and then in the finale, it’s Chuck’s assistant Ernie claiming that he called Jimmy to help Chuck after his accident. In neither case is the audience actually told that the defending character knows what Jimmy is up to, but based solely on how well the characters are defined, we know that they’re aware. Beyond that, we understand why they lie. As sneaky as Jimmy is, and however unfair or illegal his methods, we know where he’s coming from, we like him, and it’s not at all surprising that the characters in the show feel the same way.

    Like Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul is sometimes subtle but rarely ambiguous. Vince Gilligan, Peter Gould, and the whole team of writers, directors, and editors are masters at getting complex characterizations across in the most direct (and often visual) ways. They use color, and montages, and careful scene construction to establish the tone of the show and the motivations of the characters.

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  • Quantum Break Review

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    Quantum Break is a highly-experimental, groundbreaking attempt to fuse the worlds of video games and television. It’s not the first time that some sort of synthesis was attempted; just three years ago Syfy and Trion Worlds tried a similar thing with TV show/video game project Defiance. However, Microsoft and Remedy Entertainment’s Quantum Break really goes all-in on the connection between the two by packaging them together and placing the episodes at particular points in the game’s narrative.

    The result is far more effective than I expected going in. While the episodes occasionally feature awkwardly-written dialogue and have trouble introducing the show’s central characters mid-narrative, later episodes are very engaging, and the production values and aesthetic are roughly what you would expect to see in a Fox TV show. The two mediums are used to inform each other in some really cool ways. While somebody could play the game without watching the episodes and still follow the events and character motivations, playing it with the episodes lends a lot of extra insight and depth to the proceedings. Certain moments are far more significant because of the background information gleaned from the TV show.

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  • Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice Review

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    The sequencing of scenes in a narrative is one of the most important and oft-overlooked elements of storytelling. As South Park’s Matt Stone and Trey Parker have talked about, one of the best ways to form an engaging narrative is to look at your consecutive scenes, and if the only way they’re linked is that one happens “and then” the next happens, rethink things so that they are linked with the words “therefore” or “but.” For a storyteller, it’s a simple way of reminding yourself that causality matters, and that if your story is just a series of things happening with no obvious relation, then, in the words of Trey Parker, “you’re fucked.”

    Of course, in complex narratives, it is not always possible to do this with every single scene transition, but it should always be a goal. The biggest problem in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice’s laundry list of issues is that it so seldom manages any sort of connection between its consecutive scenes. While you can look back at most of them and justify their necessity in the story, they’re so haphazardly thrown together that it becomes nigh-impossible to care about anything going on onscreen. It’s just scene after scene of shit happening, “and then” more shit happening for completely different reasons.

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  • 11.22.63 Review

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    One of the most notable things about  Hulu’s miniseries 11.22.63 is that, despite having never read the book that it is based on, I can still tell that it is exceptionally true to its source material. Author Stephen King has a very distinct narrative style, predicated on introducing a clever idea and then letting it take him wherever he deems the most interesting. His best stories live in the moment, guided only by the faint and distant light of a Macguffin device. The problem he tends to have is that, when it comes time to actually catch up with his Macguffin, he doesn’t quite know what to do with it.

    This is the case with 11.22.63. It’s a story about time travel with a unique set of “rules:” one can only go back to a particular date in 1960, whatever changes you make apply to the world when you return to the future, and re-entering the past wipes your previous changes. Also, when somebody tries to make changes to the past that will significantly alter the course of history, “the past,” a vaguely-defined mystical force, will fight back and try to stop it. It’s a fantastic and relatively unique take on time-travel, adding an almost video-game like element to the goal Jake Epping (James Franco) takes on: at any time, he can “wipe” his progress by returning to the future and starting over.

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  • The Walking Dead Season 6 Finale Review

    season-6The Walking Dead finale has set off a wave of fury across the internet, with fans swearing off (and at) the show and its writers. This isn’t the first time Scott Gimple and company have pissed off their fanbase; in a series fueled by tragedy and character deaths, fans are bound to get angry (or start riots) from time to time. However, for the second time this season, the fan outrage isn’t because of a character loss, but because the writers are lying or withholding information from their audience to boost ratings.

    Like with Glenn’s magical dumpster escape, the finale’s manipulation comes from the way that the camera is situated rather than anything organic. It would be one thing if we weren’t seeing Negan bash somebody’s skull in because the characters themselves didn’t see it, or because the episode ended before that moment. But the characters DO see it, and the scene transpires. The director and showrunner simply decide not to show us.

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