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Good Game (2017)
A Slow Burner
It took until roughly episode three for this show to find its stride, but once it did it's really enjoyable.
Yes, Dan and Arin's acting chops aren't as good as the rest of the cast and it did show a lot at times, but I feel that they still held their own for this being their first classic acting show. As for the humour either took a few episodes to get into the groove, or perhaps it just takes a couple episodes to get into the tone of the show as a viewer, but either way the jokes had me and my housemates cackling at a rapid rate from episode three ownwards.
It really does have that Community feeling to it, whether that's a product of Dan Harmon producing or just the creators of this show also dig that vibe, I love it. The ominous credit scenes were my favourite—very reminiscent of the darker tone of Community season six's end scenes. They were just so dark and so ominous from script to music that I couldn't help but laugh my ass off, even when the poor game creator died at the end I was still laughing because of how ridiculous yet perfect the dark tone was.
The formula of focusing each episode on one member of the team definitely worked, especially as a first season. I think there's something in each one of these characters that the audience can find relatable, and Sam was a particular shining star tome. It was nice to see a wide range of race, gender and sexualities represented while they were all still multifaceted characters, and the kind that you both love parts of and hate parts of.
Editing and music was one of the subtle highlights—the team involved with that did an amazing job, highlighting the point of every seen from zany comedy to the ominous but hilarious end scenes. I don't think the show would work half as much without such tight editing and music.
So, though I wasn't hooked from the first episode, by then end I was completely sold, and even my housemate who has no interesting in gaming came in halfway and loved it. My only gripe is that I wish it wasn't on Youtube Red, because I'm sure a lot of viewers who would love this show and help it be successful probably won't be tuning in. Regardless, I'm gunning for a second season.
Orange Is the New Black: Toast Can't Never Be Bread Again (2016)
A heartbreaking success, but a moral gray area.
I tentatively give this episode a nine, on the grounds that I know it was incredible television. The emotion was there, the humour was there, and the drama was there. But the one thing lacking was a fan favourite character, which held this episode back from a ten and could easily have turned it into a one.
I thought that critically speaking, from a technical standpoint, this episode was beautiful. The writing was tight, the cast pulled off incredibly heartbreaking performances, and the message was clear.
The thing that is the most hard to swallow however, is the death of Poussey. Or alternatively put, the death of a black lesbian woman in a year for TV that so far has seen the death of at least six lesbian and/or bisexual women, and then killing her in a violent way that so vividly reflects the real world problems being faced by black Americans currently. And boy is that a tough pill to swallow.
Focusing first on the positives, we have basically everything excluding the specific way that Poussey Washington died. We are given a strangely cold and distant collection of starting scenes where we don't see any characters breaking, until gradually throughout the episode, one by one all of Poussey's friends break down. And this is with the juxtaposition of Poussey having the most magical and dreamlike night out in her flashbacks. I think this choice was beautiful as it not only highlights the specific tragedy that a life once so full is now over, but also gives the audience an oddly bittersweet final shot to close on so that some of them can choose to believe she's still out there somewhere, smiling across a river.
The two most emotional character moments to me came from Norma and Brook, and Taystee. Taystee's breakdown in the penultimate episode was an incredible and gut wrenching performance, and then in this episode she holds herself together. We see her icy and numb at the start, until finally in Caputo's office she breaks down in an incredible scene from the actress. The rage she exhibits at the end of the episode is something I'm sure many viewers were cheering for.
Then we had one of the smaller moments with Norma and Brook, as Norma who has been shown on the show to be a mute who had a difficult stutter in her past, sings to a crying Brook. It is so quick and subtle in this moment that casual viewers could not understand the levity, the sheer image of this speechless woman singing to a broken friend is so simple.
The focus on Baley, the unfortunate accidental killer of Poussey, was also heart breaking in its own way. Choosing to have the most innocent and genuinely moral of all the guards commit the crime is brilliant, but almost rage inducing as you wish you could blame him more. You wish it were premeditated, that it weren't an accident. The other C.O. telling Bayley that he strangled a woman to death once was brilliant, showing the audience kind of guard we /want/ to be responsible for her Poussey's death, there were real killers in that prison, and yet the audience is left with the prison guard equivalent of a puppy to place the blame on.
The way everything was done on this episode was fantastic, that's the part I'm struggling with the most in my internal review of the episode. It's now how it was done, but what was done. The writers intention is clear, they want to accurately represent the struggles and violent deaths currently being seen in society at the hands of armed guards and police officers. I won't deny that this is portrayed in a shocking, but stellar fashion that will have TV audiences reeling over the story for years. The problem really just becomes; should they have done it? Queer women and African Americans are already seeing people like themselves being killed every other day in the real world, and although fiction is not solely meant to be a reprieve from that, it is where the appeal comes from. And as the representation for these minorities, is so few and far between of them being represented as real and unique characters on our screens, the killing of one to mirror real life tragedies seems rather futile. The kind of audience that OITNB pulls are typically not the kind of audience who would be blind to the real life deaths that Poussey's was representing, so if the point was to bring these issues into the spotlight it can only ever very marginally succeed.
I think it was a beautifully crafted episode that accomplished everything it set out to, but I'm not sure whether it should have set out to mirror the real deaths that it did. I can't help but feel the emotional impact of an inmate's death, particularly one so sweet and gentle, could have been achieved in a way that was not so traumatizing for the viewers.
I worry the show may never come back from this for a lot of its fans, which is a shame considering the quality it gave us on a technical level.