The Invisibles Vol. 2 #15: 'The Philadelphia Experiment'

After the overture last issue, ‘The Philadelphia Experiment’ goes a bit more in depth, setting up the major issues at play in the Volume closing ‘Black Science II.’ There’s a lot of brilliant stuff in this issue, but it’s a bit restricted by the need to set up so many plot points.

We open with Takashi, now a total believer in the possibilities of the time machine. The opening instruction, “Imagine we could move in time the way we move in space” is all about creating in the reader this 4-D perception of time. Reading the series through this time, I see a lot of moments that seem designed to ease the reader into this view of time, and I’m totally following what he’s saying. But, I remember reading the series for the first time, it took me until the revelation of the time worm in 3.2 to fully understand this concept. I got that Robin could jump through different times, but I didn’t realize that they were all one until then. But, all these hits throughout the series are part of creating that mentality....

I've taken down my posts on The Invisibles because they're all coming out in book form. The book, Our Sentence is Up, features revised and expanded versions of each blog post, covering every issue of The Invisibles, plus an extensive interview with Morrison himself. Visit your local comic store and order a copy now!

The Invisibles Vol. 2 #14: 'Only Lovers Left Alive'

A quick note first, I've got some non-Invisibles posts coming up later today, including the first review of Crusade, a look at the new Sopranos, and tomorrow, a look at the new Heroes. But, for now, more Invisibles.

Kissing Mister Quimper is my favorite book of all time. This may seem ridiculous, to say that the sixth volume of a comic book is better than everything written in the previous thousands of years of human existence, but I can think of nothing else ever written that is simultaneously so emotional, so cool, so thought provoking, so challenging and mind expanding. Rereading this book for the first time, I was stopping on nearly every page just to put the pieces together and attempt to fully comprehend what I was reading, and by the end I thought I understood what Morrison was saying. Volume III quickly obliterated that idea, but my love of the Volume persists. This is The Invisibles to me, everything great about the series contained in one volume....

I've taken down my posts on The Invisibles because they're all coming out in book form. The book, Our Sentence is Up, features revised and expanded versions of each blog post, covering every issue of The Invisibles, plus an extensive interview with Morrison himself. Visit your local comic store and order a copy now!

The Invisibles Vol. 2 #13: 'American Death Camp: Part 3: Counting to Ten'

The highly challenging, difficult to enjoy ‘American Death Camp’ wraps up with an issue that clarifies a lot of what came before, and fits thematically, but leaves the viewer with the same frustration King Mob has. I think this is easily the best issue of the arc, but this is still one of the weaker arcs in the volume.

First off, it’s annoying that the speech bubbles on the cover aren’t reprinted in the trade. By cutting those out, we lose the entire point of the cover. The issue itself opens with Boy ready to assassinate King Mob. The idea of abaddon ties in with what we’ve heard many times before, chaos vs. order as incarnated in various gods. This is just one layer of it. I like how Grant transitions out of the scene by using the countdown in the caption....

I've taken down my posts on The Invisibles because they're all coming out in book form. The book, Our Sentence is Up, features revised and expanded versions of each blog post, covering every issue of The Invisibles, plus an extensive interview with Morrison himself. Visit your local comic store and order a copy now!

The Invisibles Vol. 2 #12: 'American Death Camp: Part 2: Counting to Five'

The Boy arc continues to be confusing and full of layered realities that don't pay off much in this issue, but we do get some great stuff with the other members of the cell. Having Grant Morrison write a scene that starts with "David Lynch directs..." is pretty much a dream for me.

We open with Boy in insect mode, immersed in the world of the outer church. This scene reminds me a lot of Miracleman 15, in which we saw a bunch of bodies spiked on poles, and other really nasty destruction. This is really nasty, with the Ku Klux Klan looking rider, and the hive looming in the background. It's a bad world....

I've taken down my posts on The Invisibles because they're all coming out in book form. The book, Our Sentence is Up, features revised and expanded versions of each blog post, covering every issue of The Invisibles, plus an extensive interview with Morrison himself. Visit your local comic store and order a copy now!

The Invisibles Vol. 2 #11: 'American Death Camp: Part 1: Counting to None'

This is an odd issue, and arc in general. A central theme of the series is the fallacy of individual identity, and the lack of distinction between the two sides in this war. So, on a thematic level, this is working at the heart of the series, but the constant succession of identities and cover stories becomes exhausting. I think that’s the intention, to baffle the reader in the same way that Boy is baffled, but it’s a tough arc to deal with....

I've taken down my posts on The Invisibles because they're all coming out in book form. The book, Our Sentence is Up, features revised and expanded versions of each blog post, covering every issue of The Invisibles, plus an extensive interview with Morrison himself. Visit your local comic store and order a copy now!

The Invisibles Vol. 2 #10: 'Sensitive Criminals: Part 3:Parisian Pierot'

This wrapup to ‘Sensitive Criminals’ is one of the most important issues of the series, drawing together so many disparate threads into one time hopping journey. The first time through, you’re not equipped to deal with everything here, but having already read the series, this is full of interesting stuff, the highlight of this trade....

I've taken down my posts on The Invisibles because they're all coming out in book form. The book, Our Sentence is Up, features revised and expanded versions of each blog post, covering every issue of The Invisibles, plus an extensive interview with Morrison himself. Visit your local comic store and order a copy now!

The Sopranos: 'Stage 5' (6x14)

My favorite episode of the entire series is still season two’s ‘D-Girl,’ in which Christopher comes extremely close to leaving the family and going off to Hollywood, but eventually decides to give up his dream and focus full time on his work. This episode brings us back to that same emotional place, with Chris drifting away from Tony and his crew as he becomes aware of a life that doesn’t involve violence, substance abuse and criminal activity.

Ever since ‘Long Term Parking,’ and Christopher’s dilemma over what to do with Adrianna, the series has been obsessed with escape from mob life. There, we saw Christopher seriously considering leaving it all behind and running away with Adrianna, only to be scared off by a white trash family who lacked the luxury and style he’s so accustomed to. He chose to kill Adrianna rather than live that life, much like Vito abandoned a chance for happiness up in New Hampshire because he just couldn’t do an honest day’s work. They were both so spoiled by the system they’re a part of, exploiting other peoples’ labor rather than doing their own, that the prospect of an ordinary life is utterly repellant.

After the dim drawing back in of the first part of this season, this episode offers some hope. Now, it may very well be dashed later on, but for the first time, we’re given a character who has left the drive for power of the mob world behind and chosen to do something else, Little Carmine. The scene with him and Tony was central to Tony’s dilemma since being shot. When he first came back, he didn’t feel like the person he was, and I don’t think he wanted to be that person anymore, but he didn’t see anyway out. As we saw with Eugene back in ‘Members Only,’ there’s no retirement from the mob. Speaking with Little Carmine, Tony seems almost baffled, how could someone choose to walk away from all that power? But, the story makes it pretty clear why, as Tony himself has constantly emphasized, it’s not easy to be boss, and if Little Carmine has enough money, he’s got no reason to get back in the game.

Could Tony just walk away now? That has to be what he’s wondering, I’d argue that he couldn’t because that’s not the character we’ve seen over the course of the series. It’s been dulled as things have gone on, but I think Tony still holds a romantic image of the mob, believes that he’s doing this for a reason, and to walk away would be to admit that was all a lie.

I think a large part of Tony’s angst comes out of the fact that he saw Christopher as his successor. He’d been grooming Chris to take over since the beginning of the show, and once he realizes what the film is saying, it crushes him. If this is his legacy, what’s the point of everything he’s done?

Going along with all this, we’ve got Phil’s angst at the end of the episode. Here’s another character who’s chosen to sit out the conflict that’s got his brother and protégé killed. Looking back, he can only wish he did more to help his brother, and disregarded the code of conduct that locked him in prison for twenty years. His associate tells him it was the right thing to do, but Phil doesn’t believe that anymore. In that same scene we also get the hilarious Leotardo/Leonardo material. It was perhaps a bit broad, but it definitely worked.

On a general level, I really liked the way they presented Cleaver, giving us something that isn’t so over the top ridiculous it makes Christopher look stupid, instead it feels like a fairly typical 00s horror film. There’s a tendency in films within films to make everything extremely broad, you can’t have the film within a film more real than the film itself. Cleaver also had enough parallels to be obvious to the viewer, but it’s also plausible that Tony wouldn’t have immediately seen the connection. He’s the only one who knows for sure that he never had sex with Adrianna, so he might read that scene differently than the others. I liked Chris’s defense of the scene, saying that it couldn’t be Ade because “she’s an oriental.”

The vast majority of shows or films about movies are actually about the business surrounding films. On Entourage, we never actually see the creative process, but I think that process is some of the most fertile ground, examining where ideas come from and how they reflect the characters’ lives. I suppose that’s easier to do in a show where the characters actually have lives outside of show business. In this case, the film works almost like a dream sequence, presenting a totally subjective view of reality form Christopher’s perspective. As Carmela says, the film is a revenge fantasy, and the fact that he decides to tell this story indicates that Adrianna’s death is still a source of deep pain.

I love the fact that Chase has kept Adrianna present in the story because her death was an incredibly traumatic event. I always viewed her as the hope of the series, that one day she might be able to take Christopher out of that world and start a new life. The others were locked in, but she had a chance. I think part of the reason people were so down on the sixth season was that without her, we lost that hope, that outsider viewpoint, and are only left with a crumbling infrastructure of depressed people.

Carmela’s major arc throughout the series has been her grudging acceptance of Tony’s way of life. She has sought outs, and even separated from him, but, much like the mobsters themselves, she’s unable to function outside of their system. She is financially dependent on him and even her attempt at independence, the spec house, was only possible because of Tony’s funding and manipulation of the building commission. But, right from the first moments of the season, we’ve seen Adrianna haunting Carmela, and discovering that Tony and Chris killed her could totally shatter the justification she’s built for the life she’s leading. When she asks Chris why she hasn’t called, I have to assume she really wants to ask if Ade is dead, but can’t do that outright. I’m not sure how she would find out the truth. There’s a bunch of potentially melodramatic ways, but Chase is unlikely to go for something traditional. However, I have to believe that all this buildup is there for a reason and it will come to a head at some point later in the season.


The structuring of Christopher’s arc this season has been very unconventional. It was a bold choice to make Kelli such a non-character, to just have Christopher get married without it being a big deal, but I think it works because both he, and we, are still hung up on Adrianna. Nobody’s going to warm up to a replacement for her, so instead we get a total non-entity, someone who’s just there. That makes Christopher’s domestic life seem all the more hollow, a concession. He may be happy with her, but it’s not the same kind of love he had with Adrianna.

But, this episode indicates that he’s on a good path. He’s three months sober, having bottomed out with Julianna and gotten a new mentor. He made an admirable effort, but as long as he was in the mob culture, working out of a bar, he was never going to succeed at maintaining his sobriety. Now, he stays out of the Bing, something that clearly irks Tony. I’m uncertain how to read Tony’s reaction to Cleaver, at first I think he’s genuinely happy for Christopher, but after he finds out he was an analogue of the boss, he’s quite hurt. Now, on one level, that pain comes from the representation of him in the film. But, I think part of it is also that Christopher has had a success outside the mob world, that he’s growing beyond Tony in some ways. Previously, Tony thought it as a money making venture, after realizing it was so closely tied to Chris’s own life, he recognizes that making the film was a personal achievement. Christopher was able to realize his dream, and we know from “The Test Dream” that Tony still has deep feelings of shame about not living up to his potential.

The scene with Tony and Melfi was one of the best therapy scenes in a long time, with a devastating performance from Gandolfini. I love the moment where he acknowledges that, after spending so much time with Melfi, the construction of the film was no accident. Things end with Chris and Tony embracing, but the embrace is filled with tension, and the future for these two does not look good.

All that and I haven’t even touched on Johnny Sack. Like Phil, he’s annoyed that he played by the rules, only to wind up screwed, with cancer. His progressive slight into depression and illness is well executed, and the character gets a nice farewell. He was pretty much done in “Mr. and Mrs. Sacrimoni Request…” This episode just makes it official.

One of the things that makes The Sopranos stand out over everything else on TV is the density of the episodes. There’s so much going on here, all revolving around the same themes. There’s at least five great scenes I haven’t even mentioned, including the hilarious bit with Peter Bogdonavich and the jarring murder of the Hairdo. Again, I hesitate to predict what Chase will do, but it looks like things are revving up for something big, and with only seven episodes to go, things should start happening fairly soon. Last week’s episode was a fine way to ease back into the story, this episode starts to set things off. It’s been a really strong start to the season, and I can’t wait to see where things go next week.

The Invisibles Vol. 2 #9: 'Sensitive Criminals: Part 2: Mad Dogs and Englishmen'

Sensitive Criminals rocks on with a solid bridge issue, that further develops the world we began to explore last issue, and sets us up for the big time spanning climax of the finale. The most instantly notable thing about the issue is the change in artist, with Chris Weston subbing for Phil Jiminez. Now, I love Weston's art, and I'd argue that his work in Kissing Mister Quimper is the best art in the entire series, with the exception of Quitely's work on 3.1. But, at this point in the series, we're still in the glam world of Jiminez and it's jarring to move to his cruder style. It doesn't help that the first page is his weakest, with a really ugly looking Fanny and odd Robin over King Mob's bed.....

I've taken down my posts on The Invisibles because they're all coming out in book form. The book, Our Sentence is Up, features revised and expanded versions of each blog post, covering every issue of The Invisibles, plus an extensive interview with Morrison himself. Visit your local comic store and order a copy now!

Universal Traveler

For the past few months, I've been working on my senior thesis film, and I finally wrapped editing the other day on Universal Traveler. It's a 12 minute short that draws inspiration from people like Grant Morrison and David Lynch, but hopefully has a lot of my own voice in there. If you enjoy reading the blog, you probably like the stuff I like, and this movie is all stuff I like, so I'd highly reccomend giving it a look. Here's a couple of images from the film:





Yes, I did read Zatanna right around the time I was writing this. Check out more on the film here, download it, or stream it below. It's from Revver not because of my desire to make money, but simply because Youtube has a 10 minute limit.



I'd love to hear any comments you've got on the film, and if you want to check out my previous work, it's all online at RespectFilms.com.

The Invisibles Vol. 2 #8: 'Sensitive Criminals: Part 1: Poor Little Rich Girl'

‘Sensitive Criminals’ marks a retreat from the hyper-violent stylization of the volume’s first two storylines, returning to something that’s a bit closer to Volume I era storytelling. But, we keep the hyperpop style of Volume II, creating a perfect merge of the two Volumes. Only Grant could make an issue primarily devoted to setup so strong and emotionally engaging....

I've taken down my posts on The Invisibles because they're all coming out in book form. The book, Our Sentence is Up, features revised and expanded versions of each blog post, covering every issue of The Invisibles, plus an extensive interview with Morrison himself. Visit your local comic store and order a copy now!

Friday Night Lights: 'State' (1x22)

The season finale, and hopefully not series finale, had pretty much everything that makes the show great, but also made a couple of missteps. Still, I think this will be remembered as one of the best seasons of any network show ever, and if it isn’t renewed, it’ll appear on countless “Shows that Shouldn’t Have Been Cancelled” lists.

I’ll start with what didn’t quite work in this episode. I’m not sure that it was a mistake to win state, not winning would have meant we’d spend all next season dealing with the same goal as this one, winning state. Winning opens up new possibilities, will the players be as motivated now that they’re state champions? Will they get cocky and complacent? This season was all about Dillon as the underdog, what do you do when you’re not the underdog anymore? So, I don’t think them winning was a major mistake.

However, I do think the game itself could have been handled better. This episode needed a lot more time, I’m sure there was easily another 45 minutes of stuff in there. The two best games were in the pilot and in ‘Mud Bowl,’ games that brought things to massive emotional heights, making me desperate for the team to win. Here, it felt more like the midseason games, where we’d see some highlights, then move on. The game never felt like the real focus, and that was a mistake in the season finale. The only moment that really had me emotionally was the half time speech, and the shots of everyone in the crowd.

I also am not thrilled with having Tami be pregnant. If the series is over, it’s fine, but if it continues, it’ll mess with the mature dynamic between Eric and Tami. I’d imagine the goal is to bring in more conflict, can Tami still work at the school, how will Eric deal with having to give up his dream? But, that’s obvious conflict, and this show has done a good job of avoiding those usual pitfalls. Pregnancy seems to be one of the go to plots for TV writers, but it rarely leads anywhere good. I’m not expecting an X-Files style debacle, but it’s still not a great choice.

Other than that however, this was a wonderful episode. We had the humor, in the Landry stuff, some sadness, in the banquet scene and the Matt and Julie on the stairs scene, and some inspirational stuff from that speech and in the last scene. I feel like everyone got some good moments in the episode, and the state game did keep things unified. If the show is over, I think it went out with everyone in a good place.

I think the best way to gauge the success of a TV episode is to see how much time is spent without dialogue. Here, we had the great sequence where the team walks out into the stadium, and just marvels that they’ve gotten there. There was also the fantastic parade sequence, which united everyone one last time, and showed where they all were emotionally. It was wonderfully scored and a really great capper to the season.

I hope the show comes back, but if it doesn’t, it went out strong and I’m sure I’ll enjoy future episodes on DVD. I think it was near impossible to top the power of ‘Mud Bowl,’ but this episode still did more to me emotionally than virtually everything else on TV. I think the greatest strength of the show is the way it make things that would feel sappy on any other show feel totally true and emotionally real. I sincerely want the best for these characters, and if I never see them again, I wish them well.

The Invisibles Vol. 2 #7: 'The Sound of the Atom Splitting'

The series hits its most violent level in this issue, which has some really memorable moments, but ultimately this storyline winds up as the only Invisibles arc that feels a bit padded. It’s a lot denser than most comics out today, but compared to the density of ‘Sheman’ or ‘Entropy in the UK,’ there’s just not that much here.

The cover of this issue is my least favorite Bolland cover. It feels more like a Preacher cover, an attempt to shock the reader. Luckily, it’s not a Glenn Fabry level of nasty, but still, I’d rather have seen Jack and Fanny dancing on the cover than the Harlequin....

I've taken down my posts on The Invisibles because they're all coming out in book form. The book, Our Sentence is Up, features revised and expanded versions of each blog post, covering every issue of The Invisibles, plus an extensive interview with Morrison himself. Visit your local comic store and order a copy now!

The Invisibles Vol. 2 #6: 'The Girl Most Likely to'

After a run of brilliant issues, the series stumbles a bit with ‘The Girl Most Likely to.’ While there’s still a lot of good stuff here, it goes a bit too far out of reality, turning more sci-fi than usual, and that doesn’t really fit with this series. Particularly in Volume II, the series is all about a heightened version of our reality, not an entirely other reality. It seems to come out of nowhere, despite the groundwork laid with Jack’s experience in Volume I. But, there’s still some good stuff here, particularly in the future segment. ...

I've taken down my posts on The Invisibles because they're all coming out in book form. The book, Our Sentence is Up, features revised and expanded versions of each blog post, covering every issue of The Invisibles, plus an extensive interview with Morrison himself. Visit your local comic store and order a copy now!

Babylon 5: A Call to Arms

A Call to Arms brings this boxset of generally inconsequential films to a close by trying to bring some consequence back. This is certainly the most significant film since In the Beginning, giving us a major development in the B5 universe and setting the stage for another five year saga. I’d imagine this movie played quite a bit differently back when it aired than now, when I know that Crusade doesn’t even make it through a whole season, and this thread of the world’s narrative will wind up essentially abandoned.

But, I’m not aware of how things will fail, so this movie does provide an intriguing glimpse into at least a bit of new B5 material. The stuff with Galen is great, and the ending is quite powerful, however, in general, the film is less consistently successful than Thirdspace or River of Souls. Those two films had minimal ambition, and didn’t really go anywhere, but were fun along the way. This one is much bigger, and does take us places, but suffers from a haphazard narrative structure, part of which is the inevitable tension of bridging B5 and Crusade.

From the standpoint of a B5 viewer, it’s a bit frustrating to not get any meaningful character development for the major players. Sheridan has a new hairstyle, but other than that, everything seems pretty much the same. We gets hints about the telepath war, but no development of that, and my general feeling is that things have been in stasis since the series ended. A large part of the fun of this movie should have been catching up with the characters and finding out how they’ve changed, but the majors feel plugged into roles here, with a narrative imposed on them, not arising organically out of their personalities.

I’m not a big car or tech guy. I love computers, but I’m not someone who’ll drool at the prospect of a 2.3 ghz processor, so the lengthy sequence designed to show off the Excalibur didn’t do much for me. I think JMS was more in love with the ship than most viewers will be, it’s not that exciting to be told what it can do. I can see why they did this, to set up the powers and limits of the ship, but it’s not particularly exciting on its own. The power draining main gun feels like a plot contrivance, specifically designed to create narrative tension.

The new characters are more interesting. Galen the technomage has a bit of a Dungeons and Dragons vibe, but he’s got a lot of potential. The dream sequences where he communicates with Sheridan were visually striking, though a bit let down once you see that they’re just on a stage with painted backdrop. Still, he should be a cool character on Crusade, even if his magical powers seem designed specifically to create easy standalone stories. Hopefully we won’t see too many episodes with Galen senses something mysterious, and sends the crew on a cryptic mission.

Dureena is a more interesting character, infused with a moral ambiguity lacking in most of B5’s characters. Other than Londo and G’Kar, everyone on B5 was pretty standup, having a thief on the ship, even one committed to this mission, will create an inevitable tension. I’d like to see her maintain her edge as the series goes on, she’s certainly got some cool fighting abilities, as seen in the thieves’ guild scene. She reminds me of a Whedon heroine, and that’s a character type I always enjoy. She’s not quite there, but she’s certainly more emotionally believable than any of the characters in ‘The Gathering.’

My major issue with the film is that all the narrative action happens because of outside manipulation. Galen sends Sheridan on a mission, he gets a couple of people together, then goes to defend Earth, all based on these visions. I suppose we needed an excuse to have the thief join the team, but there’s no reason this couldn’t have come out of some detective work, rather than a deus ex machina. It was likely designed to show off Galen’s power, but it winds up feeling cheap.

The final battle over Earth was well executed, but lacked the emotional engagement of the fight against Clarke, which it was clearly meant to echo, right down to a ship sacrificing itself to save Sheridan. When that’s over, the ending is a nice segue into future stories, and makes me eager to watch Crusade. In that respect, the movie accomplished its mission, however it could have been a bit stronger.

In the Beginning was filled with continuity porn, targeted at the hardcore fan. This film could have used a bit more of that, throw in a reference to the Drakh control of Centauri Prime, or even just mentions or Lyta or other characters. They got some in there, but I wanted more updates. I suppose JMS might have done more of this in Crusade, but if this was meant to be the farewell to the original B5 crew, I would have liked a bit more.

Still, if the goal is to start a new series, it’s probably not the best idea to get bogged down in references to the past, and had Crusade gone on to a five year run, I imagine people would look back on this movie fondly. As it is now, it’s a solid story, with some really strong bits. I’m certainly glad I watched it, and I’m ready to move on and judge Crusade for myself.

Babylon 5: River of Souls

General consesus seems to be that these TV movies aren't particualrly good, and I think that's actually made my viewing experience a lot more satisfying. If I'd just heard that River of Souls was a movie set after the end of the series, I'd be expecting something that would address the major issues, forward the characters' lives and tell me something new about the world. But, based on the buzz, I wasn't expecting much of anything, and like with Thirdspace, I wound up pleasantly surprised by this film. It's not one of the best things in the series by any means, but it's a fun story, with a lot of nice character bits. For me, this movie box is basically a segue out of the series, giving me some final moments with the characters to close out the experience of watching the series.

That said, the opening of this movie had me expectng the worse. The lame dialogue and Indiana Jones knockoff character weren't intriuging at all. Outside of my attachment to the series, there's not that much strong stuff in this film, and the opening scene just dragged with lameness. I'm sure Ian McShane is great on Deadwood, but his scenes were the weak link in this film, it wasn't until we got to the station that things got rolling.

Most of this film centers on Captain Lochley and I have to say, contrary to typical fan opinion, I think she's a superior character to Ivanova. Ivanova was really harsh, and only occasionally would moments of humanity shine through. Her speech in 'Rising Star' was one of the highlights of the series, but other than that, I can't think of many great moments with her. I'm guessing that the Byron arc was meant to develop her in the way that Garibaldi's season four brainwashing did for him, but as it was, she was just sort of there, never the center of my interest. Lochley seemed a bit more human, less abrasive. On the journey from Laurel in The Gathering to Ivanova to Lochley we can see the evolution of the same character type, moving from a near robotic inhumanity to a strength mixed with emotional vulnerability.

I think a large part of what makes her stand out in this film is that she's the undisputed leader, not subject to Sheridan. He was such a strong personality that he overshadowed her during season five. Here, she gets to command the station and do her own thing. Even though Garibaldi is back, he doesn't take control of things, and is just part of the team. I could definitely see why people would be frustrated to spend so much time with her, but I think it generally worked.

Because we've already seen 'War Without End' and 'Sleeping in Light,' it's not as big a thrill to see past the end of the series on this show as it would be on others. We can piece together most of the characters' lives post 2262, but it's still nice to check in with them again. It was great to see some new stuff for Garibaldi and Zack, and even Corwin, who once again fails when gving a gift to his commanding officer. This isn't quite as bad as the awkward time with the roses, but the bat doesn't work so well. The bat gag is pretty funny, but I don't know that it's quite as funny as JMS thinks it is. The design of the bat doesn't work so well either, if it's meant to be a love bat, shouldn't it look a little warmer?

The big guest star on this episode, a person I was surprised to see doing the show is...Robbie from Six Feet Under. No, actually it's Martin Sheen. During his initial entrance, I was thinking this must have been the nadir of his acting career, wearing the goofy makeup, speaking with an odd cadence, desperately hoping that he gets cast in this pilot called 'The West Wing.' But, as the film goes on, he gets into character and pulls things off fairly well. It's certainly no Apocalypse Now, but he puts in a good performance, and engages with the reality of the universe better than a lot of other guest starts.

Of the two plots, the Soul Hunter stuff was less interesting to me than the idea of the holo-brothel, but I do like the way JMS used the two as parallel narratives, both dealing with the concept of identity and memory vs. soul. The holo-brothel ties in nicely with 'Deconstruction of Falling Stars,' where we see the crews' image co-opted for use by a fascist government. The holo-brothel brought back some of the seediness of the pilot, and having Lochley as a part of it was an obvious, but satisfying gag. The best moment here was when Robbie says she's more popular with women.

'Soul Hunter' was probably my least favorite episode of the entire series, despite the ties in to future series mythology. But, I think this episode did a better job of dealing with the same concepts. I particularly liked Lochley's out of body experience, and the idea that this race was actually evolving, not dying. This ties in with the Vorlons, and is a precursor of humanity's future. It also works nicely with Morrison's concepts, the idea that evolution means a move beyond the physical, towards a pure energy state. I'm glad to see a work of fiction exploring this idea. There's a lot of rich themes here, all centerng around the question of what is the essential self, is it the physical form or is there something other?

Still, the basic plot is pretty goofy, and it was more the peripheral things that engaged me than the central narrative. As a continuation of the Babylon 5 saga, it's not much, but as an added bonus, it's nice. I'd like to see Lost Tales do something bigger and more meaningful than this, but if it doesn't, I wouldn't mind catching up with our characters and just going on another adventure.

The Sopranos: 'Soprano Home Movies' (6x13)

After reading advance reviews of the first couple of episodes of the season, I was prepared for a premiere that doesn’t exactly propel things forward. ‘Soprano Home Movies’ is a pretty unconventional episode, keeping the focus almost exclusively on the events at Bobby’s country house. At this point in the series’ run, the characters are so well developed that they basically write themselves, and I’d imagine once they came up with the idea of putting Janice, Tony, Bobby and Carmela in a confined space, everything that happened pretty much flowed from there. I thought this was a masterfully executed episode, and a return to a more focused, probing style after the drift of last year’s final run.

The thing that frustrated me about the end of last season wasn’t so much that nothing of significance happened with the plot, it was that not much changed for the characters. Even though the New York/New Jersey conflict has been in a perpetual loop, it never felt so teasing as at the end of last year. But, that wouldn’t even matter if the characters were vital. The major events that did happen seemed to occur in passing, we weren’t placed in the characters’ heads, but here, we’re totally immersed in where these people are at the moment, and allowed to feel everything they feel.

For me, everything in this episode took place in the shadow of the scene at the end of season five’s ‘Cold Cuts,’ in which Janice talks about her success with anger management. Tony, jealous of her progress, taunts her until she snaps, then he walks out of the house, satisfied with himself. It’s one of the many low ebbs for the character, a moment in which his pettiness comes to the fore.

As the weekend begins, Janice notes the way that the relationship between her and Tony has improved. However, when she discusses the way he’s changed since being shot, he starts to get defensive. I would argue the reason he keeps pushing to insult her during the game of monopoly is precisely because he wants to show that he’s still the same. But, when we see him sitting in the chair, staring out at the water, or mentioning after how he’s on the downhill part of life, it’s clear that he’s still feeling the effects of the shooting. It’s particularly notable that Bobby is the one to instigate the attack, not understanding the dynamic Tony and Janice share. Clearly he’s still got some major rage issues, but I would argue that the insulting of Janice is more a nostalgic revisiting of their old dynamic than a genuine expression of malice.

The whole episode had a really overbearing atmosphere, the feel of many years lived, many shared experiences. While the show gets most of its attention for the big violence, it’s the way that they are able to give mundane, everyday happenings grandeur and significance that makes the show so strong. No show is able to provide as much subtext as this one. The characters’ fully developed backstories allow for a shorthand. In this episode, Livia hung over all the events, and in Janice’s treatment of her daughter, we can see a repetition of the exact treatment she was decrying her mother for. She won’t let her daughter go into the water without her, and she’s not likely to deal any better with separation in the future. Janice claims that she inherited more of her father’s traits, but it’s clear there’s a lot of her mother there too.

A lot of writing on the show claims that Livia was the axis around which everything revolved, and there’s been a general lack of purpose since her departure. I’d argue that’s true of the first season, but I think by the end of year two, they’d pretty much outgrown her, and there was nowhere left for her story to go. Even if the actress hadn’t died, I think it would have been wise to remove her in the third season, and develop storylines centered around other things. That said, I like that this episode brought her back to the fore, and showed the way that these characters are largely defined in relation to Livia. I think that’s a central tenet of Chase’s worldview, present right from the first episode when Tony claims that he got in too late, and will never be able to live up to the idealized world of mafia past.

That’s what makes AJ’s story interesting. He’s rejected the fancy world of Tony and Carmela to go live with Blanca, a social regression. Tony justifies everything he did as service to his family, ensuring that they can go to the best schools and have an easier life than he did. However, AJ has jumped back to poverty, and is doing things on his own. I think the character’s transition happened a bit quick, from wayward Blockbuster employee to stepfather, but it works well on a thematic level. I would assume that later in the season, AJ and Blanca will face some real troubles, and then he’ll have to decide whether to run back home, or fully embrace his new life. That would be the logical trajectory of this storyline, but Chase rarely goes for the obvious stories.

But, that’s more about the future. I really admire the decision to do a bottle episode, trap us in the growing awkwardness between the two couples. With no escape, how can they deal with the tension that arises? Basically, they say that it’s ok, but the issues simmer underneath. Tony’s pride suffers, and Janice takes some kind of joy from the knowledge that her husband can beat up Tony. I really loved just spending time with these people again, seeing how they’ve changed and behave in this situation. There were so many wonderful, small moments that only this show can do.

We eventually do get some action, when Bobby ‘pops his cherry,’ by killing the drummer. This scene was really well executed, with the ominous clunking of the shoes in the washing machine. Things wrap up with the astonishing ‘Magic Moments’ sequence. This was a perfect fusion of moment and visual, with Bobby walking in to a kind of dreamscape, this perfect moment of happiness. He may have killed a man, but his daughter still loves him, and as he looks out at the lake, it feels like everything will be okay. That final image was powerfully iconic, one of the best episode closings in a long time.

While I still liked the backhalf of season six, I had some issues, and I think this episode resolves most of them. We’re much more in the characters’ lives, things feel more emotional and events feel more important. It’s not a conventional opener, and I think it’s going to draw a lot of ire, but it’s a great episode, and I’m thrilled they chose to open the season this way. It’s the characters that interest me, not necessarily the mob stuff, and this is a rich character study.

And it does leave us with a lot of issues looking ahead. One is Tony’s mental state. All last season, he struggled to define who he was post shooting. Is he still changed, or has he slipped back to the old ways? His relationship with Christopher is clearly on the edge, and how will Chris deal with being replaced by Bobby as Tony’s right hand man. Plus, we’ve got the federal investigation into Tony’s doings, which seems to be heating up. It’s a lot to look forward to, and if the writing remains as strong as this episode, it’s going to be a great conclusion.

Friday Night Lights - 'Best Laid Plans' (1x21)

Until The Sopranos comes back on Sunday, and perhaps even after that, the best show on television is Friday Night Lights. Every week, this show gives us something amazing, with the most realistic, gritty acting and photography ever on a network television series. This is like the best kind of 70s filmmaking, but airing every single week.

While this week’s episode was great, I’m going to jump back and talk about lat week’s ‘Mud Bowl,’ the series’ best episode yet. I’m not someone who cries watching movies, I get emotionally involved, but I think knowing so much about the filmmaking process makes me approach things in a different way. I’m more awed by an incredible shot than the typical plot twist. But, the best directors, like Wong Kar-Wai or Terence Malick, use incredible technique to create intensely emotional moments. This show is probably the closest thing to Malick that’s ever aired on TV, using the filmmaking style to immerse you in the characters’ mindsets.

One of the reasons I enjoy longform TV series so much is that they give me the satisfaction of getting lost in a story. Watching most movies, I can see the seams of the three act structure, and the shortcuts used to develop character. Compare the TV show Firefly to the movie Serenity. On the show, the characters are just there, living their lives, sometimes they’re at the fore of events, other times they’re in the background. The events come out of their actions, but on film, the actions are imposed, and they are slotted into designated roles to fit with the story. Everyone has a little trait that is emphasized, an easy character arc that is resolved by the end of the film. It’s still a well done film, but it has nothing on Whedon’s TV work.

I haven’t seen the Friday Night Lights movie, but I’d imagine it’s a similar situation. I seriously doubt we would have gotten as deep into the cast as we have on this series. It’s particularly notable that characters who were initially on the periphery, like Landry and Tyra, have become central to the series, while one of the initial core characters, and most typical of TV, Lyla, has been drifting away. The series has evolved and become less about football and more about these peoples’ lives. If you’re not watching the show because you don’t like football, that’s like not watching Six Feet Under because you’re not a fan of funerals. The football is just a device used to center the action around, and with the exception of the mud bowl, most of the time I’m not as interested in the game as I am in the characters’ general lives.

This is a long way of getting to the point that the end of ‘Mud Bowl’ was the most emotionally affecting piece of cinema I’ve seen in a long time, probably since Inland Empire. Looking at the end of Babylon 5’s third season, I said it was a mistake to intercut a battle with the Shadows with Dr. Franklin’s bleeding death crawl because the two events didn’t have equivalent interest levels. Intercutting is tricky, particularly between a big conflict and something personal. There, I just didn’t care about Dr. Franklin and the intercutting dragged both stories down.

Here, they made the potentially dangerous choice to intercut an assault on Tyra with the muddy football game. By equating an attempted rape with a football game, you could wind up making the crime seem too insignificant, but in practice, the emotion of both situations compounded on each other, leading to a feeling of total desperation. The game itself became almost a greek chorus, commenting on Tyra’s struggle. This is what intercutting should do, make things more than the sum of their parts.

Tracking back, I’ve always been a fan of Landry, he was comedy gold throughout the series, and early in this episode, we got more of the same. I loved how he says he wants to move from supporting actor to leading man, and I was so frustrated when his car wouldn’t start. I figured we were headed for more comedy, with Landry desperately trying to reach Tyra.

So, I was really shocked when that guy attacked Tyra. Mix this in with the desperation of the game, and it was just total emotional immersion. I liked that they didn’t have Landry ride into the rescue, and when he finally does meet her, it’s clear that his character has been knocked out of his fantasy, comedy world into harsh reality. It was a masterful episode, and even though this week’s didn’t quite hit those heights, it was still brilliant.

I’ll start with the Landry/Tyra stuff. I love the way they skip over the obvious plot machinations we’ve all heard before, we don’t need to see Tami and Tyra talking about what happened, once she sees Landry in the car, cut to the police station, and we know everything we need to.

Landry’s ending speech to Tyra was an interesting mix of accurate and hurtful. I like that we’re not just focusing on him with a kind of puppy dog crush, instead we get to see that what she said to him affected him, and he wants a bit of revenge for it. And, even though it’s a classic TV thing to do, having Riggins show up right when Landry was telling her how he feels. But, it’s clear that what he said made some impact on her.

A potential relationship between the two of them raises on a lot of issues. While I love Freaks and Geeks, I think the show’s biggest mistake was putting Sam together with Cindy Sanders. Even though the relationship was fun to watch, it hurt the realism. As Joss Whedon said, you have to give the audience what they need, not what they want, and this was a clear case of giving the audience what they wanted. It also felt sort of like the writers using the show to retrospectively reject the girls who had rejected them. But, the biggest crime was that it was a very TV thing to do. In the world of TV, it only takes a few episodes for a popular girl to recognize that the geeky, but sensitive guy is the one she really should be with. We all want it to happen, but it’s just too easy, and if Landry and Tyra were to get together, it would be a clear case of what we want, not what we need.

This puts them in the unfortunate position of having to crush Landry, but I think it’s what must be done. Maybe down the line that could bring him and Tyra together, but not here. It just doesn’t make sense considering the characters’ disparate levels of life experience. But, I think his speech to her was brilliant because it was so cuttingly accurate. He moved right through the bullshit and told Tyra that she was going to become her mother, married to a jerk, with no agency in her life. If anything, it’ll make Tyra want to leave Dillon even more.

These two are maybe the eighth or ninth most important characters on the series, but each of the actors brings incredible power to the scene. The ensemble here is one of the best ever assembled on television, primarily because they don’t seem to be acting at all. The Academy Awards are all about transformations and mimicry when handing out their awards, but to me, the best kind of acting is the kind that doesn’t feel like acting at all. These people are their characters, and that, combined with the documentary style photography, gives the show a feeling of realism that few shows achieve.

The only actress who doesn’t consistently work for me is Minka Kelly as Lyla, but I’m not sure if her slight unnatural quality is who the character is actually supposed to be. Lyla seems marooned from The O.C., a more typical teen drama character. I’m happy to see her and Street break up, because at this point, he seems much more suited for Susie. My reading of Lyla is that she wants her life to be like the idealized high school experience you’d see on a teen drama, and when Street lets her down, she reacts in that sort of bitchy, whiny way the characters there would. Only occasionally are we let behind the image she projects to the outside world. What grates her so about Street’s infidelity is that he is moving outside their world. With her and Tim, they’re both football players, it’s an acceptable betrayal, but by being with Susie, Street is leaving her behind, evolving beyond her. That’s what their trip to Austin was about, showing that he doesn’t need her anymore.

That’s why I’m a bit uncertain about Street being a coach. I think it fits with his desire for competition, but also is a move backwards from his new life built with Herc and the Austin crew. I would guess that they developed that plot as a way of reintegrating Street into the main action, but I was cool with him being off in his own subplots, and I’m not sure this will work in the long term. But, for now, it does let us see him recapture some of the joy he lost after being rejected from the Olympic team. While the show frequently questions the culture the town has built around the football team, it never questions the basic joy of the game. That’s why the mud bowl episode was so powerful, particularly when Eric and Tami stand amidst the cows and imagine the field they could build there.

Elsewhere, we get the family drama surrounding Eric’s job offer. I love the opening sequence of the episode, a montage style succession of scenes showing his awe at the stadium and program he could be a part of. Eric is living out his dream, and he just doesn’t understand why Tami and Julie can’t see that. He thinks in an objective way, that Austin is better than Dillon, but doesn’t understand their emotional connection to the place. I was assuming that he’d be turned around by the end of the episode, after the roast, and was really surprised to see him remain committed to going to Austin. That final scene, with Eric holding Tami, both looking toward the camera, had a fantastic air of menace, neither willing to budge, but giving up the fight for the present.

The first act of the episode was backed by a fantastic piece of music, I believe an Explosions in the Sky song. The opening of the episode was full of character conflict, and the swelling music united the disparate pieces into a coherent emotional whole. I was wondering how much worse things could get after this opening, it made the roast sequence incredibly tense because I kept waiting for some kind of major blowup.

There were so many highlights in the episode, I can’t go in depth on all of them, but here were some of the great things: Julie’s tearful talk with Matt, leading to his antagonistic stares at the coach for the rest of the episode, the way Eric refused to budge at all on Tami’s suggestion they stay in Dillon, and on a lighter note, the theft of the e-mail joke was classic.

So, this was another masterpiece, and I really hope that the show gets renewed next year. And, I’m looking forward to next week’s finale, I’m sure things will end on a high note.

The Sopranos: Approaching the Final Season

After a layoff of over a year, The Sopranos is finally returning for its final season, and the press coverage about the return has been very frustrating, for a number of reasons. The main one is the way that nearly every article has a headline like “Who’ll get whacked? Sopranos returns for final season.” It may be a mob drama, but I think treating potential character death as a kind of sweepstakes dilutes the emotion of what’s happening.

I think it’s indicative of the fundamental divide between the show’s two audiences. One is looking for a Scarface style embrace of over the top violence, a glorification of the mob lifestyle, while the other is viewing the show as a character drama, which just happens to take place in the world of the mob. I grew up in a suburb similar to where The Sopranos live, and the episodes focusing on Meadow’s struggle to get into college are as accurate a depiction of contemporary high school life as anything I’ve seen on TV. For me, the genius of the show is the characters feel completely ordinary, despite being in the mafia. Much like with the slaying in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the mob storyline is used to turn ordinary conflicts into massive, life or death drama.

And that’s why the show is so much more than either The Godfather or Scarface, it’s got some of the most complex, challenging characters on TV. Most shows flirt with the idea of moral ambiguity, but exist in a TV universe, where I want them to do bad things because it’ll lead to more interesting stories. When Buffy goes through her dark time in season six, I want to see her go further with Spike because it’s such compelling viewing. Because the characters are fundamentally good, it’s exciting to see them be bad. However, here, the characters are so flawed, I desperately want them to get out of the mob world and find something better. This is the conflict that played out in the first part of season six, with Tony’s struggle to deal with his new morality. It’s also the struggle that defined Christopher’s character in the early days of the show, culminating in the devastating finale of ‘D-Girl.’

That I want them to be better people is a testament to the reality of Chase’s universe. He refuses to play by typical TV rules, and that’s what can make the show frustrating at times. While I love the first half of season six, the second half was frequently frustrating. Not only was he rejecting traditional TV rules, he was rejecting basic storytelling principles, crafting a narrative that’s so loose, drifting over major events and dwelling on smaller things, it’s difficult to understand what he was doing. I’m really curious to see how this season relates to what we saw there. I get the feeling that the final six or so episodes of this season will tighten things up, but not rely too closely on what we saw at the end of last year. Adding the additional episodes was a storytelling experiment, that would allow him to take a more rambling approach to the finale. But, it’s impossible to say, more than any other TV auteur, Chase is completely unpredictable.

So, I’m eager to see the new season, as much out of curiosity as anything. I have no clue what he’s doing to do, and I’m eager to find out. One final gripe I’ve got, I’ve seen a bunch of articles that mention the missing Russian from ‘Pine Barrens’ as some kind of grievous loose end that must be rectified. That is completely missing the point of the episode. First, the Russian is just a macguffin, to get Christopher and Paulie into the woods. Also, the whole point of his fate is the ambiguity, that we don’t know if he’s alive or dead. To answer that definitively would kill the episode. No answer could live up to the mystery. The only reason people care so much is because it’s such a good episode. It’s the equivalent of viewing the Gentlemen from Buffy’s ‘Hush’ as a major loose end. Just because they were in a classic, it doesn’t mean they’re any different from the countless other standalone villains who’ve disappeared from the series. So, please, don’t ask for resolution about the Russian, that conversation Chris and Paulie had about him last season was the closest you’ll get.

The Invisibles Vol. 2 #5: 'Time Machine Go'

After the hyper compressed pop excess of the end of 'Black Science,' it's nice to pull back a bit and have a bit of a break with this issue. At first it fees a bit too slow, since we've been made so accustomed to the frantic pace and action stylings of 'Black Science,' but once you dig into the issue, there's some truly fantastic stuff. Only Morrison can make an issue that's largely setup so emotionally engaging and thought provoking....

I've taken down my posts on The Invisibles because they're all coming out in book form. The book, Our Sentence is Up, features revised and expanded versions of each blog post, covering every issue of The Invisibles, plus an extensive interview with Morrison himself. Visit your local comic store and order a copy now!

The Invisibles Vol. 2 #4: 'Black Science: Part 4: Safe'

The first storyline of the volume ends in pretty spectacular fashion with a hallucinogenic burst of pure action and conceptual insanity. It’s close to The Invisibles at its best, and it’s certainly The Invisibles at its most.

The opening page draws us right into the world, with Austin’s dancing. This gets right to the core of the previously established between traditional, natural magic, and the lifeless mechanisms of the Outer Church. As Dane says “This is fucking mental, man. It’s brilliant but it’s mental.” There’s another line that sums up the whole series....

I've taken down my posts on The Invisibles because they're all coming out in book form. The book, Our Sentence is Up, features revised and expanded versions of each blog post, covering every issue of The Invisibles, plus an extensive interview with Morrison himself. Visit your local comic store and order a copy now!