The Month That Was - August 2022

The opening of the Dexter Cider Mill is a local indicator that the long slide into Autumn is nigh.  Truth in advertising: I haven't been to the Cider Mill in many years, but I drive by it nearly every day.  People come from far and wide.

I find I don't dread winter as much as I used to.  Perhaps because it is no yard work to worry about.  Or perhaps I've survived so many of them they no longer phase me.  Or perhaps my fears of terrible drives to work are abated by the ability to work from home. In any event Winter is still months away.  I don't know why my mind went there.

Regarding my next book.  The name of it will be The Hawk Sahib.  It is a murder mystery set in Lhasa, Tibet in the 1890s.  How's that for esoteric?  It is on the dark side for me. I like to think there is a bit of Kipling and a bit of Conan Doyle in it.  I do not expect any people outside my personal demographic to have the slightest interest and then only a tiny minority with that demographic.  Such is the benefit of writing without concern for an audience; I can write to suit myself.  More details once I get the damn cover issues sorted out and find some time to actually push it up to Kindle.

[TV] End of Saul

[TV] The Bear

[Good Links, Rant] How to Twitter

[TV] The End of Saul

So good that even though I was left a bit unsatisfied with the final 10 minutes, I still stand in deep appreciation.  More on the ending later.  As I have harped on before, this concludes the short but happy moment in history when television was not just a common culture but a proper art form.  Let me be specific about what is gone.

1. Action emerging from characters.  Now actions emerge from events. If you're lucky the characters will react in accordance with their individual personalities but more often characters react to these events in a way that will allow the writer to trigger the next event, and so barrel on to the conclusion.  I suspect this is symptomatic of some deeper societal ill, perhaps a loss of sense of agency, but I am not qualified to say.  Everything in Saul was the result of specific character traits of the primary characters, going all the way back to Howard's jealousy of Jimmy for their mother's attention and Jimmy's yearning for Howard's approval.  That led Jimmy into a kind of righteous shadiness and Howard to a kind of grandiose mental illness.  Jimmy/Saul and Kim responded to difficulty by embracing the very streak of nihilism that they saw in each other, ultimately leading to their spiral into tragedy.  Even Saul's ultimate capture grew from his hubristic faith in the dark underbelly of the world. True Greek Tragedy in that all the characters were brought down by their own flaws.

2. Action over exposition.  This is more of an implementation detail but, in Saul, motivations could be summed up in a look or a camera angle or the intonation in dialogue.  You trust the audience to understand and build, or interpret, the narrative.  You don't have to do that with other shows these days because the writers will have the characters tell you exactly what to think.

In the absence of those two things, we can safely resurrect the notion of TV as a wasteland: Entertaining at times, but uninspired. It's a product, not a creation.

As far as the ending goes, I just don't think Saul would have given up his sweet deal like that.  Even for Kim.  Even for his brother. Vince Gilligan did the same thing with Breaking Bad. At the end the gray was gone and it was clear who the bad guy was and that justice was done.  

I should be more nuanced.  Both Saul/Jimmy and Walter White eventually faced and acknowledged their own guilt.  In the name of that guilt Walter got himself killed and Jimmy/Saul will spend his life in prison.  This too, a la the Greeks, is a very traditional and even virtuous narrative path. It probably should be admired that Gilligan had the courage to do this in the face of the deep cynicism of the current culture. I still don't think it would have played out like that.  I think, especially in the case of Saul/Jimmy, they would have still attempted to dodge consequences.  Accepting your own guilt and accepting the consequences are two very different things.  My experience is that even the acknowledgement of guilt doesn't stop the fight against the consequences.  Human nature can rationalize just about anything including the magnitude of just desserts.  Perhaps my disappointment with it says more about my personal cynicism than anything else. 

Lastly, Odenkirk deserves every award possible.

So the era that started with The Sopranos, peaked with Deadwood and Mad Men, and ultimately dwindled into the long tail of Better Call Saul is over.  We will not see its like again. But hope springs eternal, perhaps at some point in the future someone will find a way to generate artistic value out of 30 second social media videos. May I live to see it.  In the meantime, thank goodness for streaming.

[TV] The Bear

Now, having written that anti-TV rant, along comes The Bear.  A former star chef at the a world renown fine dining establishment, returns home upon inheriting the Chicago Beef sandwich shop from his brother who committed suicide.  Seems like a basic fish-out-of-water sitcom trope, but it's well handled.  Grief lingers in various ways over the people who were close to his brother, and much resentment comes from the existing blue-collar employees who are very attached to the way things were and resent the snooty fine dining protocols.

The characters are truly well-drawn. Everyone has a dark side and a light side and is fully human.  There is growth and change and acceptance --let's call it character arcs -- over time, but it all occurs within the framework of their imperfections.  Sometimes, just when you have these characters figured out, they surprise you, but they still stay within their own skin.  In fact the whole thing is -- dare I say it? -- character driven.  Think of that: a new TV drama that is character driven and not about crime or crime-adjacent activities.

It falls short in some places.  It attempts to draw a picture of a Chicago that I don't think really exists.  There is an overtone of shady/mafioso style characters (big fat Italian looking guys), even to the point of them claiming the sidewalk in front of the restaurant as their turf.   That is patently nonsense. It ends up being just contrivance for atmosphere. 

But if it fails as a love letter to Chicago, it succeeds as a love letter to the restaurant industry.  Having once been a part of that, I can attest to how well it captures the madness and the rush it can provide and why you would keep your restaurant job despite the lousy pay and all the frustration.

Nicely done.  Lots of holes, lots of contrivance, but terrific character based drama.  Ebon Moss-Bacharach and Jeremy Allen White and fine as the lead "cousins", but Ayo Edebiri as the hyper-ironic, overconfident, post-millennial stood out even more. It's no Better Call Saul, but it might be given a chance to grow.  Nicely done.

[Good Links, Rant] How to Twitter

Don't tweet.  Unless you have something you particularly need to promote -- meaning you are selling something, including yourself -- don't tweet.  No good will come of it.

I have a Twitter account but I don't tweet.  If you ever see a tweet from me, I've probably been hacked.  I do have folks I follow on twitter -- if you dig deep enough, you can get some useful info and some entertainment out of it.  You just have to be very judicious about whom you follow and never read replies.  That last part is very important.  Never think of Twitter as a discussion board.  It is for dissemination not collaboration.  Every once in a while somebody will do an AMA.  But beyond that never engage or expect constructive engagement.

Here are a few accounts I have found that are worth following.

David Burge (@iowahawkblog) / Twitter -- Consistently the most sharp and funny guy on the internet.  Keen comments, old car identification, Iowa football, nostalgia, driving thru  liquor store windows.

CarDealershipGuy (@GuyDealership) / Twitter -- Independent car dealer.  Lots of good insight into the car dealership biz and the auto resale market (Carvana, etc.)

StripMallGuy (@realEstateTrent) / Twitter -- Some flip houses, this guy flips strip malls. Fascinating window into a rarely considered corner of suburban life.

BabelColour (@StuartHumphryes) / Twitter --  Finds old washed out autochromes (early color photographs, early 1900s) and cleans them up in Photoshop -- not colorized, the color is the original.  End result is often photos taken more than a century ago that have the same vitality as something from your iPhone.  It was never so clear that the people of the past were just like us.

Massimo (@Rainmaker1973) / Twitter -- Prolific poster of fascinating science and nature videos.  

Super 70s Sports (@Super70sSports) / Twitter -- Savage nostalgia from the 70s, plus or minus a few years.  Mostly, but not entirely, sports.  Lots of bad language, but that was also true of the 70s.

Three Year Letterman (@3YearLetterman) / Twitter -- I have a twisted appreciation for a good troll and Three Year Letterman is the best, and it's not even close.

Elon Musk (@elonmusk) / Twitter --- I have a twisted appreciation for a good troll…er, OK Elon isn't really a troll, except occasionally.  I like Elon, he doesn't spew corporate jargon or take fashionable poses. He can be snide or sarcastic or sentimental, but he seems genuine with a touch of eccentricity. Basically, he's just like most of us, which is a good quality for the richest man alive to have.