The best show on TV comes back tomorrow night on The Sundance Channel, to start its third season. Almost nobody is watching it.
Rectify was created by Ray McKinnon, best known as a character actor who played the reverend in Deadwood, Holly Hunter's suitor in O Brother Where Art Thou, and a handful of other things. He also won an Academy Award, shared with his late wife Lisa Blount and producing partner Walton Goggins (Boyd Crowder on Justified), for their 2001 short film The Accountant. The Bitter Southerner recently posted a great feature on him and on the southernness of Rectify.
Rectify is full of faces almost as familiar as McKinnon's -- Michael O'Neill from The West Wing, Sean Bridgers from Deadwood, J. Smith-Cameron from a lengthy career on stage and screen, including the excellent Margaret -- though it's not the kind of character actor grab bag that something like The Good Wife is. Everyone feels hand-picked for the part -- like it was just a matter of the right show coming along that would shine a spotlight on them. I have my favorites -- even for an overlooked show, I think it's insane Abigail Spencer doesn't have an Emmy nomination -- but there's no one in the cast who doesn't deliver a masterpiece performance at some point in the show's first two seasons.
At the center of it is Aden Young, who plays Daniel Holden.
In the first episode, Daniel is released from prison, where he's been on death row for 19 years -- half his life -- having been convicted of the rape and murder of his high school girlfriend. DNA evidence has now shown he's not the rapist, and the state has to decide whether or not to try him again or drop their case against him.
Daniel is quiet, thoughtful, deliberate in his movements, and -- especially at first -- easily overwhelmed. His adult life has been spent in confinement under constant surveillance. He's returning to the same small town he grew up in, where his father is dead, his mother is remarried, and he now has a stepbrother positioned to take over the family business and a teenage half-brother to whom he's a stranger. His sister Amantha (Spencer) has devoted her life to fighting for his release, working with (and in a relationship with) the lawyer from Daniel's appeal, an advocate from the Innocence Project.
What is Rectify about, though?
It's not about solving the murder of who killed Hanna. That doesn't mean that question isn't addressed or answered, but that it's not what. the show. is about. It's not structured like the "an innocent man has been released from prison - what happens next?" show that most people and all network execs would be imagining at this point in hearing about Rectify. It's not a mystery.
I'm sure there's a thinkpiece out there that sums things up succinctly, but Rectify is about a lot of things. It's about what happens next. It's about Daniel getting used to being out. It's about what it was like for him being in. It's about his family adjusting to him being out - to not quite knowing him the way they did, not knowing how he fits in with them, and in the case of his half-brother and his step-brother's wife, getting to know him for the first time.
It's about the uncertainty: Daniel doesn't remember what happened, so is he even innocent? It's about how the community reacts to Daniel being released when no alternate suspect has been named, and how that affects the state senator who had been Daniel's prosecutor, the new district attorney, the new sheriff, Hanna's family, and the witnesses who testified that they saw Daniel do it.
It's not a mystery except that of course it is, because anything that deals decently and honestly with its portrayal of people deals in mystery.
It may sound somber or bleak, but it can be surreal, it can be funny, it can be touching, it can be uplifting.
It's not just that it's the best show on TV. It's the only show like it on TV. I can't say "if you like ___, you'll love Rectify," because while Rectify is doing something better than anyone else, most of the toys it plays with have not left the box before. Like The Sopranos or The Wire, it's not doing the TV people have done before. It's doing something else.
You want to start at the beginning, so find it on Netflix or watch one of the marathons.
Wednesday, July 8, 2015
Wednesday, July 1, 2015
emmy ballot
There is something about being a fan of a particular medium that makes some of us compulsive list-makers, right? Our desert island discs (Carried to Dust, Everywhere at Once, Challengers, In the Wee Small Hours...) and books (Little Big, House of Leaves, The Talisman, Swamp Thing...), top ten lists every year, and so on. I have to admit, when I first thought of doing this TV blog, one of the things I thought of was Sepinwall's annual "if I had an Emmys ballot" post.
Well, voting for Emmy nominations closed last week. Who would I have nominated?
Comedy
Series
Broad City was the single funniest thing on TV this year. I keep grouping it together with sketch shows in my head, because it's rare that a sitcom not only has such a strong voice, but for that voice to be that of the performers. I mean, Community, Taxi, Arrested Development, those shows have strong voices, but they belong to Harmon, Brooks, and Hurwitz, not anyone on screen. Broad City feels as personal as Key and Peele or Inside Amy Schumer, it just happens to be a sitcom.
Louie is of course the other sitcom for which that's true, though it is even less like a traditional sitcom than Broad City is. This season wasn't as ambitious as last season's multiple multi-episode arcs, but being more low key isn't a bad thing. I really hate the Louie/Pamela relationship, especially at this point in its history, but that doesn't mean it doesn't provide good comedy material.
I might put Transparent here even if all it did was give Judith Light a good role again. But Jill Soloway's show has even more going on than that, and although the transition of Jeffrey Tambor's Maura is the main focus, there's plenty going on in the rest of the family -- all of whom are self-absorbed, obnoxious, and various degrees of broken, which isn't surprising for a show created by a Six Feet Under vet.
The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt seems more like a network show than any other Netflix show does, but only because the work Tina Fey previously did on 30 Rock changed what network sitcoms can feel like. In a world that hadn't already seen 30 Rock, this show might be almost too weird, and maybe that's why NBC passed on it at the last minute. But it's one of the best things to come along in ages -- it's like Fey and her co-creator have realized that what sitcoms like to do is let their performers really ham it up, so they put something together where (just as in 30 Rock) hamming it up somehow works because of who the characters are (a girl recently escaped from a cult, an out of work actor, a wealthy trophy wife) instead of being yet another grating schlub of a husband rolling his eyes at his grating blonde of a momwife.
There are a lot of animated series that deserve at least consideration here. Rick and Morty didn't air last Emmy season, it turns out -- I didn't discover it until late -- but Adventure Time had a very strong season as it delves deeper and deeper into its own mythos and gets weirder and weirder. Bob's Burgers is of course always great. But I think the best thing in this mini-category this year was Netflix's Bojack Horseman, with Will Arnett as the anthropomorphic horse former star of a TGIF-type 90s sitcom. There are so many great things about this darkly funny and sometimes very bleak show, though my favorite is probably Vincent Adultman.
Lead Actress
Although Britta was underused in some of this year's Community episodes, Gillian Jacobs was still the funniest part of more episodes than not. While everyone on the cast has always seemed thoroughly comfortable in their characters, Jacobs really nailed Britta's combination of physical comedy, intellectual pretensions, and lack of self-awareness, bringing one of my all-time favorite TV characters to new heights of greatness. She's a large part of why this was one of the best seasons (despite the missing cast members, only the first two seasons were better).
Both Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson have to be on here for Broad City. And although I'm not going as far as imaginary nominations for guest stars, I'll reiterate that Kelly Ripa was fantastic, and really emblematic of what the guest star Emmy often represents: an actor working outside their usual boundaries and making something excellent happen there.
I'm not sure this was Amy Poehler's funniest season of Parks and Rec, but it was consistently one of the funniest shows on the air and even her weakest season would put her in the top five performances on TV, no question. Besides, there is something so joyful about Leslie Knope that it's always fun to see good things happen for her.
Ellie Kemper anchored The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and made it look easy, though I realize I'm including her at the expense of Julia Louis-Dreyfuss on Veep, Gaby Hoffmann on Transparent, and Constance Wu on Fresh Off the Boat.
Lead Actor
Jeffrey Tambor has had a hell of a career, hasn't he? He's come a long way since The Ropers, but even if Larry Sanders was the thing he was remembered for, that'd be a pretty great career. But then came Arrested Development, and suddenly he was at the center of two all-time great shows. And now a third with Transparent. Somehow you can always find him right there wherever the most innovative and interesting work is happening, and this time, he's anchoring the whole thing.
Louis CK is never not going to be on this list, not as long as he's making his show.
Keegan Michael Key and Jordan Peele are consistently funnier than the vast majority of sitcoms out there, and even their goofiest, most ridiculous stuff -- okay, maybe especially that -- always makes me laugh, from "A. A. ron" to "L'Carpetron Dookmarriott" to, well, this.
Did Review actually come out during the just-ended Emmy season, or was it the one before that? Well whatever, I'm going to say Andy Daly here, the lead of Review, a show that might not sound amazing -- fictional TV show host "reviews" real-life experiences like "stealing," "being a racist," and "eating ten pancakes" -- until you see it.
Drama
Series
Mad Men had a fantastic season, albeit one with a rocky start -- I'm still not sold on the necessity of Diane, even as I recognize how she got us from point A to point B (and maybe that's the problem, since who fondly remembers a character as the route from one place in the story to another?) and am ambivalent about a few other aspects. But I think it's probably a show that should leave you feeling that way.
With Mad Men and Breaking Bad done, the best dramas by far are Rectify and The Leftovers, both of which can be slow and thoughtful in novelistic ways, though I recognize that is frustrating for much of the potential audience. It isn't for me. I'd be on board for a Rectify that was twice as slow. These shows are exactly why TV is great these days, because when else would we have a slow-paced show about a man recently released from prison from death row for a murder he isn't sure if he committed or not, or a bleak portrait of families (and communities) gradually falling apart in the wake of a Rapture-like event?
Better Call Saul is way up there, it's just a little harder to call it a drama at times. But that's not a new problem, right? Ally McBeal was nominated for comedy Emmys but felt like apples and oranges against its sitcom competitors, and before that, St Elsewhere got drama awards but was funny at least as often as BCS.
Took me a minute to think of what the fifth nominee should be. The Good Wife had too uneven a season and the nonsense with Archie Panjabi and Julianna Margulies reached its show-affecting peak. Justified had its strongest season since the Bennetts, but still felt like it was treading water at times. The Americans, on the other hand, dealt with some of its strongest material, though I am still having trouble swallowing some of the plot developments (or the lack of certain plot developments occurring, I suppose) where Clark and Martha are concerned.
Lead Actress
Elisabeth Moss is the best actress on television in the 2010s, period. Okay, Connie Britton could give her a run for her money if Nashville gave her material to work with as strong as Friday Night Lights did, but between Mad Men and Top of the Lake, there is just no one else who has done better than Moss in recent years. The final season of Mad Men includes some of the best Peggy moments, especially the final two episodes. I really hope we don't lose Moss to movies. There is a particular joy in seeing the way an actor develops a character over time, one you can only find in television.
Carrie Coon and Amy Brenneman are the strongest performers on The Leftovers, doing very different work that -- like that of Moss and Christina Hendricks on Mad Men, for instance -- is grounded in their shared world. I knew Brenneman was good, of course, but it's great seeing her have something so meaty to work with, while Coon has been a revelation.
Speaking of revelations, Keri Russell somehow keeps getting better and better. Felicity is a pretty underrated show in the first place -- I think it's too easily summed up by its sort of wincey "girl follows crush to college" premise -- and Mission Impossible aside, she didn't have a lot of high-profile movie work in between series. But holy shit is she good on The Americans. If we weren't in such a golden age of drama, it would be no contest, hers would be the best female performance on TV.
Although Orphan Black hasn't stayed as strong as its first season, that's largely because of the rambling plotting. Tatiana Maslany continues to do heroic work in half a dozen roles -- differentiating them by more than just their hairstyle would be hard enough, but she manages to bring nuance to characters who could easily seem straight out of Central Casting, especially soccer mom Alison.
Lead Actor
Look, lots of guys were great this year, and it's a shame Aden Young hasn't already got an Emmy for Rectify, but he'll have time, as will Bob Odenkirk for Better Call Saul. This year has to be Jon Hamm. There is no close second. It has to be Don Draper. Come on. Teach the world to sing.
Supporting performances
I would nominate everyone on Transparent, Mad Men, and Rectify who doesn't qualify as a lead. Sam Elliott is probably an obvious choice for Justified; same with Michael McKean from Better Call Saul. Speaking of which, I was unfamiliar with Rhea Seehorn before BCS, but she's terrific. The whole Togetherness cast has submitted as supporting actors, and they all deserve nominations. Lorraine Toussaint and Uzo Adaba are the obvious choices from Orange is the New Black. Anybody on The New Girl or Parks is Emmy-worthy -- like a lot of the best sitcoms (Taxi, Mary Tyler Moore, Community, Happy Endings), the strength of those shows is their combinations of characters, much more than any one central performance. Zach Woods and T.J. Miller deserve nods for Silicon Valley, too, as does Kether Dononue for You're the Worst.
Well, voting for Emmy nominations closed last week. Who would I have nominated?
Comedy
Series
Broad City was the single funniest thing on TV this year. I keep grouping it together with sketch shows in my head, because it's rare that a sitcom not only has such a strong voice, but for that voice to be that of the performers. I mean, Community, Taxi, Arrested Development, those shows have strong voices, but they belong to Harmon, Brooks, and Hurwitz, not anyone on screen. Broad City feels as personal as Key and Peele or Inside Amy Schumer, it just happens to be a sitcom.
Louie is of course the other sitcom for which that's true, though it is even less like a traditional sitcom than Broad City is. This season wasn't as ambitious as last season's multiple multi-episode arcs, but being more low key isn't a bad thing. I really hate the Louie/Pamela relationship, especially at this point in its history, but that doesn't mean it doesn't provide good comedy material.
I might put Transparent here even if all it did was give Judith Light a good role again. But Jill Soloway's show has even more going on than that, and although the transition of Jeffrey Tambor's Maura is the main focus, there's plenty going on in the rest of the family -- all of whom are self-absorbed, obnoxious, and various degrees of broken, which isn't surprising for a show created by a Six Feet Under vet.
The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt seems more like a network show than any other Netflix show does, but only because the work Tina Fey previously did on 30 Rock changed what network sitcoms can feel like. In a world that hadn't already seen 30 Rock, this show might be almost too weird, and maybe that's why NBC passed on it at the last minute. But it's one of the best things to come along in ages -- it's like Fey and her co-creator have realized that what sitcoms like to do is let their performers really ham it up, so they put something together where (just as in 30 Rock) hamming it up somehow works because of who the characters are (a girl recently escaped from a cult, an out of work actor, a wealthy trophy wife) instead of being yet another grating schlub of a husband rolling his eyes at his grating blonde of a momwife.
There are a lot of animated series that deserve at least consideration here. Rick and Morty didn't air last Emmy season, it turns out -- I didn't discover it until late -- but Adventure Time had a very strong season as it delves deeper and deeper into its own mythos and gets weirder and weirder. Bob's Burgers is of course always great. But I think the best thing in this mini-category this year was Netflix's Bojack Horseman, with Will Arnett as the anthropomorphic horse former star of a TGIF-type 90s sitcom. There are so many great things about this darkly funny and sometimes very bleak show, though my favorite is probably Vincent Adultman.
Lead Actress
Although Britta was underused in some of this year's Community episodes, Gillian Jacobs was still the funniest part of more episodes than not. While everyone on the cast has always seemed thoroughly comfortable in their characters, Jacobs really nailed Britta's combination of physical comedy, intellectual pretensions, and lack of self-awareness, bringing one of my all-time favorite TV characters to new heights of greatness. She's a large part of why this was one of the best seasons (despite the missing cast members, only the first two seasons were better).
Both Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson have to be on here for Broad City. And although I'm not going as far as imaginary nominations for guest stars, I'll reiterate that Kelly Ripa was fantastic, and really emblematic of what the guest star Emmy often represents: an actor working outside their usual boundaries and making something excellent happen there.
I'm not sure this was Amy Poehler's funniest season of Parks and Rec, but it was consistently one of the funniest shows on the air and even her weakest season would put her in the top five performances on TV, no question. Besides, there is something so joyful about Leslie Knope that it's always fun to see good things happen for her.
Ellie Kemper anchored The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and made it look easy, though I realize I'm including her at the expense of Julia Louis-Dreyfuss on Veep, Gaby Hoffmann on Transparent, and Constance Wu on Fresh Off the Boat.
Lead Actor
Jeffrey Tambor has had a hell of a career, hasn't he? He's come a long way since The Ropers, but even if Larry Sanders was the thing he was remembered for, that'd be a pretty great career. But then came Arrested Development, and suddenly he was at the center of two all-time great shows. And now a third with Transparent. Somehow you can always find him right there wherever the most innovative and interesting work is happening, and this time, he's anchoring the whole thing.
Louis CK is never not going to be on this list, not as long as he's making his show.
Keegan Michael Key and Jordan Peele are consistently funnier than the vast majority of sitcoms out there, and even their goofiest, most ridiculous stuff -- okay, maybe especially that -- always makes me laugh, from "A. A. ron" to "L'Carpetron Dookmarriott" to, well, this.
Did Review actually come out during the just-ended Emmy season, or was it the one before that? Well whatever, I'm going to say Andy Daly here, the lead of Review, a show that might not sound amazing -- fictional TV show host "reviews" real-life experiences like "stealing," "being a racist," and "eating ten pancakes" -- until you see it.
Drama
Series
Mad Men had a fantastic season, albeit one with a rocky start -- I'm still not sold on the necessity of Diane, even as I recognize how she got us from point A to point B (and maybe that's the problem, since who fondly remembers a character as the route from one place in the story to another?) and am ambivalent about a few other aspects. But I think it's probably a show that should leave you feeling that way.
With Mad Men and Breaking Bad done, the best dramas by far are Rectify and The Leftovers, both of which can be slow and thoughtful in novelistic ways, though I recognize that is frustrating for much of the potential audience. It isn't for me. I'd be on board for a Rectify that was twice as slow. These shows are exactly why TV is great these days, because when else would we have a slow-paced show about a man recently released from prison from death row for a murder he isn't sure if he committed or not, or a bleak portrait of families (and communities) gradually falling apart in the wake of a Rapture-like event?
Better Call Saul is way up there, it's just a little harder to call it a drama at times. But that's not a new problem, right? Ally McBeal was nominated for comedy Emmys but felt like apples and oranges against its sitcom competitors, and before that, St Elsewhere got drama awards but was funny at least as often as BCS.
Took me a minute to think of what the fifth nominee should be. The Good Wife had too uneven a season and the nonsense with Archie Panjabi and Julianna Margulies reached its show-affecting peak. Justified had its strongest season since the Bennetts, but still felt like it was treading water at times. The Americans, on the other hand, dealt with some of its strongest material, though I am still having trouble swallowing some of the plot developments (or the lack of certain plot developments occurring, I suppose) where Clark and Martha are concerned.
Lead Actress
Elisabeth Moss is the best actress on television in the 2010s, period. Okay, Connie Britton could give her a run for her money if Nashville gave her material to work with as strong as Friday Night Lights did, but between Mad Men and Top of the Lake, there is just no one else who has done better than Moss in recent years. The final season of Mad Men includes some of the best Peggy moments, especially the final two episodes. I really hope we don't lose Moss to movies. There is a particular joy in seeing the way an actor develops a character over time, one you can only find in television.
Carrie Coon and Amy Brenneman are the strongest performers on The Leftovers, doing very different work that -- like that of Moss and Christina Hendricks on Mad Men, for instance -- is grounded in their shared world. I knew Brenneman was good, of course, but it's great seeing her have something so meaty to work with, while Coon has been a revelation.
Speaking of revelations, Keri Russell somehow keeps getting better and better. Felicity is a pretty underrated show in the first place -- I think it's too easily summed up by its sort of wincey "girl follows crush to college" premise -- and Mission Impossible aside, she didn't have a lot of high-profile movie work in between series. But holy shit is she good on The Americans. If we weren't in such a golden age of drama, it would be no contest, hers would be the best female performance on TV.
Although Orphan Black hasn't stayed as strong as its first season, that's largely because of the rambling plotting. Tatiana Maslany continues to do heroic work in half a dozen roles -- differentiating them by more than just their hairstyle would be hard enough, but she manages to bring nuance to characters who could easily seem straight out of Central Casting, especially soccer mom Alison.
Lead Actor
Look, lots of guys were great this year, and it's a shame Aden Young hasn't already got an Emmy for Rectify, but he'll have time, as will Bob Odenkirk for Better Call Saul. This year has to be Jon Hamm. There is no close second. It has to be Don Draper. Come on. Teach the world to sing.
Supporting performances
I would nominate everyone on Transparent, Mad Men, and Rectify who doesn't qualify as a lead. Sam Elliott is probably an obvious choice for Justified; same with Michael McKean from Better Call Saul. Speaking of which, I was unfamiliar with Rhea Seehorn before BCS, but she's terrific. The whole Togetherness cast has submitted as supporting actors, and they all deserve nominations. Lorraine Toussaint and Uzo Adaba are the obvious choices from Orange is the New Black. Anybody on The New Girl or Parks is Emmy-worthy -- like a lot of the best sitcoms (Taxi, Mary Tyler Moore, Community, Happy Endings), the strength of those shows is their combinations of characters, much more than any one central performance. Zach Woods and T.J. Miller deserve nods for Silicon Valley, too, as does Kether Dononue for You're the Worst.
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