AMC’s The Killing – Episode 4 Season Three

Loved the line the Detective Sarah Linden said to the old-timer and arrogant SOB, Detective Carl Reddick:

Why haven’t you made sergeant despite your 23 years of experience, [because] all you are is in the way.

That was the highlight of the show. Last week I did a write-up of the first three episodes of Season 3 of AMC’s The Killing. I felt quite positive about the show, despite the difficulties in dealing with a show about runaway kids, and a predator who makes some of them dead. So I had high hopes and was looking forward to the 4th episode.

Simply – for almost all of the episode, nothing much happened in terms of action. But there were some advances made on the case. They busted the motel proprietress known as ‘Mama Dips’ played by Grace Zabriskie who long ago portrayed George Costanza’s almost mother-in-law on Seinfeld. I did get a kick out the way Mama Dips snarled and acted all tough when she was grilled by the cops.

Twitch (foreground above) suffered at the hands of his parole officer before going out of his way, seemingly intentionally, to get beaten up by some young punks at a skating playground called Freeway Park. Bullet did her part by trying to dissuade Twitch, but he ignored her.

Magic City: Season 2 Opens with a Thud

So Magic City Season 2 launched its opening episode tonight on the Starz Network. Despite all the hype – there was no sign of James Caan as Sy Berman. Oh he was mentioned, but the first we saw of him was in the preview clip of next week’s episode.

Aside from that, Magic City was less than scintillating. I’ve seen better Magic from Mr. Clean’s Bath scrubbers. Talk about dull … oh wait I called the show dull last year. All the improvements made in the last five episodes of the first season were washed away between boring board room meetings about where and how to bail Ike out of jail and some agonizing jail house meetings between Ike and his ill-dressed attorney.

You recall that the cliff hanger finale from last year was that Ike was arrested for the murder of Jimmy ‘Shoes’ Clayton. State’s Attorney Klein thought he had his case all wrapped up with the testimony of the prostitute. But she recanted and beyond that, she told the Grand Jury that Klein had threatened her at gunpoint.

Even the judge, in an ex-parte discussion in the courthouse men’s toilet got a chuckle out of it. How could Klein not have seen that one coming?

Aside from that, the sexual content was diminished. Ben Diamond fondled a bare breast as he cooked up a business deal with a Madam to run a house of pleasure in Opa-locka that he would bank roll in exchange for 70% of the profits.

Ben to Ike: You have a choice to make – adapt or die

And they revisited, via flashback, the explicit lovemaking between Stevie Evans and Mrs Diamond as Ben watched from above. Once Ike was sprung from jail – they had a party in Atlantis, the subterranean poolside bar. Diamond came in, and Ike basically blew him off. Diamond didn’t like it and left with this oh-so-scary parting shot – Ike, I believe you have forgotten who you can, and who you cannot disrespect.

Ike must have been quaking in his boots upon hearing that.

Graceland: Episode 2 – Guadalajara Dog

Watched the Graceland series pilot (Show # 1) last week and did a write up of that show here. Last night was the 2nd show of the series, an episode called Guadalajara Dog. No, that reference isn’t about some case in Guadalajara – it’s just the third time in two weeks when our intrepid UC’s head off to a food stand on wheels. This week it was the Sun City Hot Dog truck and the specialty of this kitchen-on-wheels is a fanciful hot-dog called the Guadalajara Dog. But that’s getting a bit ahead of ourselves.

So, to get back in place, to open the show, Briggs takes Mike and Johnny to a place of gastric delights called Hector’s Taco Stand. Some kid steals a bag of chips and Mike high tails it after this perp. Until he’s intercepted by Johnny. Briggs and Johnny lay into Mike heavily – about possibly blowing his cover to chase down a thief of potato crisps in a bag. Lesson learned. We hope. Not to worry, it’s all part of Mike’s learning curve and that’s both necessary as well as fun for us.

As you know, FBI agent Mike Warren (Aaron Tveit), who is just out of the Academy has been placed into Graceland. His main job – to keeps tabs on Paul Briggs (Daniel Sunjata) who the FBI higher-ups suspect, no, believe – is dirty. But they need to catch him in the act of breaking the rules, and the law. They’re looking for an indictable offense.

But Briggs is no fool. From the jump he has been suspicious of Warren. Which creates a level of undercover within the undercover roles all these agents play. However this presents a structural problem for the show.

Briggs must be dirty – otherwise why is he so suspicious of Mike Warren. But if Briggs is dirty – we haven’t seen any evidence of malfeasance yet.

Warren is super smart. He’s clever. He can think rapidly while under duress. He’s very observant. The script has dropped more than a dozen visual clues at we viewers that Briggs suspects Warren. Warren is too smart, too observant to not have noticed.

So let us assume he’s noticed. How come he hasn’t reported this to his handler? How come he hasn’t suggested that he back off for a while and sever contact with HQ until Briggs is less suspicious?

Magic City – Season Two Starts June 14th

During the spring of 2012, the Starz Network introduced a new tv series called Magic City. It was set at the very end of the 1950′s in Miami Beach with Jeffrey Dean Morgan as Isaac (Ike) Evans, the majority owner of a fabulous Miami Beach hotel called The Miramar Playa.

In nearby Cuba, Fidel Castro was about to take over the country, and that would mean that the big Havana tourism industry with its triple threat attractions of the exotica, the beaches, and sex, all found at the hotels, would be nationalized, and US interests in Havana, including those of organized crime, would have to find a new place to put their stakes into the ground. That would of course be Miami and Miami Beach.

Evans was a widowed man with two grown sons, and small daughter. He had remarried and he had met his new wife when she worked at a dancer at Havana’s Tropicana Club. She’s played by Olga Kurylenko.

Danny Huston portrayed mobster Ben (the Butcher) Diamond who was Ike’s silent minority partner. When Ike Evans was facing a strike threat by the hotel workers, he had to go to Diamond, who promptly took care of it by the simple measure of having the union boss (with a gun pointed at his head) call off the strike.

Once that was done, the union boss, Mike Strauss, who was Ike’s boyhood friend, was quickly sent to ‘sleep with the fishes’. So Ike owed Diamond.

Diamond’s wife Lily (above) played by Jessica Marais, was the lover of Ike’s son Stevie Evans. This would run all through the first season, and involve blackmail, murders, and ultimately, as Season One ended, would lead to the cliff-hanger finale of Ike being arrested for murder.

I had watched the first three episodes of Season One, and did a review (<—click), and basically wrote the show off. I didn’t like the casting, thought the stories and characters were dull and uninteresting. I also stated that I thought the show spent far too much time in dark interiors watching people drinking, smoking, or having sex. Not that people shouldn’t do those kind of things, but the show lacked dramatic intensity as well as balance because of this.

I later went back and watched the last five 5 episodes of the 1st season. I haven’t changed my mind. However I will state that the show showed decidedly positive signs of improvement. Topics like voyeurism, adultery, and criminal activities are fine topics for adult TV. When you bundle those against a period when people didn’t have cell phones or personal computers, when Castro’s forces were taking over Cuba, and set the whole show in Miami Beach, with ever-increasing amounts of time given to AT & T – alcohol, tobacco, and tits, I can see the appeal to viewers better now than I did after just three episodes of April 2012.

Two by Three: A Look at AMC’s The Killing and Netflix’s The Fall

Here I am approaching June’s midpoint and I’m up to my eyeballs with a TV serial killer addiction. I’m watching two shows – The 5 episode psychological thriller, The Fall, which screens on Netflix, and The Killing Season 3, which I am watching on the AMC Network.

Up until a few days ago I hadn’t heard of either of these shows. A family member urged that I watch The Killing. He compared it to Top of the Lake with the qualifier – that this is how a multi-part drama involving criminal activities, detective work, and capture of the perpetrator – should be done. He said that this was a police procedural that was top of the line. He even went so far as to call the performance of Mireille Enos, who plays Detective Sarah Linden, as the best work of any actress currently on tv.

To be totally upfront, I did not watch Season One or Season Two of The Killing, so I came into Season Three without any background about the show other than it was about solving one case. I’ve watched the first three episodes of Season Three, and while there are references to the past seasons – one can watch Season Three as a stand alone.

Detective Sarah had left the force, shattered or at least seriously emotionally damaged. Rather than working Seattle’s mean streets also known as The Jungle, she’s working on the Vashon Island commuter ferry as a deckhand. Her former partner, Detective Stephen Holden, played by Joel Kinnaman, who was a somewhat green, naive, and inexperienced detective in the first two seasons, now has a new partner, Detective Carl Reddick, a 25 year veteran who has seen it all, and done it all.

As Season Three begins, Holden is more self-confident and assured. He and his partner catch a new case – a young woman has been brutally killed. Reddick suggests they hand the case off to another Detective, but Holden decides to pursue it.

He goes to talk it over with Linden at her home, and – on purpose –  he leaves the case file in Linden’s house. And as expected, she’s drawn back in. So it is ‘Adios’ to the ferry and welcome back to the force Sarah.

Graceland

Graceland, the new USA Network series premiered its pilot episode a couple of nights ago. The premise is rather simple despite its layered approach. Agents from the DEA, the FBI, and Customs have been set up in a waterfront penthouse, called Graceland in an unnamed California beach town. The penthouse apartment is called Graceland because its former owner, a drug lord, was a hard-core Elvis fan, and the property was seized in the raid when he got busted.

Our agents work out of this apartment in undercover operations and their stories for the neighbors and other locals are that they’re surfers, a Tae Bo instructor, a trust fund baby, an artist, and other assorted types usually found in beach towns. The apartment is right on the beach and has two levels – the main floor has the living room, kitchen, dining area and this is where the agents live and play. There’s one rule – no guns on this floor. Upstairs is the operations center, called the phone room, and the bedrooms, and there’s one rule up there which is – no one with out a badge is permitted on that level – meaning no outsiders which means no local women.

A brand new FBI graduate, Mike Warren (Aaron Tveit – recently seen as Enjoiras in Les Miserables) is assigned, as his first posting, to replace a member of this team who was shot in a drug buy gone bad. We learn this in a rather intriguing cross-cut opening – while we listen (and watch) Courtney Vance as Deputy Director Sam Campbell of the FBI is giving a speech to a graduating class at the FBI’s National Academy at Quantico – we are also watching a meet and drop (where H is cooked and tested prior to a buy).

We will meet the house members shortly after. There’s Paul Briggs played by Daniel Sunjata, Catherine ‘Charlie’ DeMarco played by Vanessa Ferlito, Johnny Tuturro played by Manny Montana, Lauren Kincaid played by Scottie Thompson, and Dale Jakes played by Brandon Jay McLaren. We will also meet Donnie Banks, the agent who was shot in the opening scene. He’s played by Clayne Crawford.

In the pilot, the bad guys are Russian mobsters with ties deep into law enforcement, and Mexican drug dealers. The Russian boss is quite good, but the Mexicans have only a brief cameo. Jay Karns is also on hand as the agents’ boss.

I belive the cast of series is some-what fluid – meaning not everyone in the pilot will make it through all 11 episodes of Season One. But the essence isn’t just who we meet, but rather than what they do and how they do it. Sunjata’s Briggs will tell us that everything they do will be based on lies. From this moment on – your lies are your life.Yet despite this – Charlie will tell us, You’re going to find out real fast – there are no secrets in Graceland.

Top of the Lake Closes Its Run: Did It Work for You?

Now that Top of the Lake, the seven episode dramatic series has finished its run on the Sundance Channel – I’m left with more questions in the ‘post resolution aftermath’ than I had before the series ended. Whether or not this was the intent of the series creators Jane Campion and Gerard Lee is a question I can’t answer.

Though the questions of what happened to Tui did get resolved, there’s a whole slew of other head-scratchers for we viewers to ponder. Reader FD and I are going to sit down to discuss the show, and with no specific agenda in mind – we will just see where our talks take us.

***** MAJOR SPOILER WARNINGS GOING FORWARD*****

JMM: In the last three minutes there a number of questions left unanswered. The first one is what actually happened at Al’s house, 2) what was Robin rinsing out in the lake (was it Al’s blood?), and 3) GJ walks off as the show ends. Without specifically tackling those questions, were you happy with the way the show ended?

FD: I was impressed by the cinematography and the cast, particularly Elizabeth Moss (Robin), Holly Hunter (GJ) and Peter Mullan (Matt), but I was unimpressed with the plot and the editing. Even though I guessed who the villain was early on, each episode made less sense to me than the previous one. And like you, I have a shipping container full of unanswered questions.

Here’s a few of them: 1)Were Robin and Johnno really related or was Al also lying about their DNA test? 2) Why did Matt whip himself repeatedly at his mother’s grave site? 3) Why didn’t Matt suspect Al might have been involved with Tui getting pregnant? 4) Why did Matt try to shoot Tui’s baby if it wasn’t his? 5) Why did GJ decide to go to Reykjavik? (to get as far away from this story as possible?) I could list a lot more questions, but, my biggest question is: What was Ms. Campion thinking? Didn’t she notice any of these loopholes?

JMM: To respond about the five questions you just listed: 1) Matt told Robin that he was her father making Johnno her half-brother. Johnno said that was a Matt mind game. Then Al told Johnno that Matt wasn’t his father – making it even more of a puzzle. 2) I have no idea about why Matt whipped himself – guilt I suppose. Because surely he had so much to be guilty about. 3) & 4) Not sure about either of these – need an explanation. 5) GJ was all about money – at least in the closing episode. Seems like that was tossed in as an after-thought. However it all seemed so extraneous. And what was the point of her leaving – especially as the closing image.

Tui intercepts GJ, but moments later, GJ will walk off anyway as the closing shot

Maybe it was all symbolic – NZ: bottom of the world, Iceland: top of the world. Maybe GJ was a stylization of Campion herself – you know, in it for the money. Big emphasis on the maybe. So the key element must be the program Al was running to rehabilitate the kids – because it was clearly something else entirely at least below the surface.

FD: I don’t think there’s a way to perfectly explain this story. Some things were purposely left ambiguous. Other aspects seem to have been inadequately tied up at the climax. But, here’s my quick attempt to summarize. 1) Al was involved in child porn/prostitution, which paid for his two million dollar home. 2) Al also ran a training program for the local kids getting them employment at the cafe/restaurant. April Stephens was a child sex victim who became a murder victim when she knew too much. Al investigated and declared Stephens’ death a suicide. Bob Platt saw the videos made at Al’s house (the terrible thing his wife talked about) and wound up dead (this could have been done by Matt when he dragged him behind his boat but Al’s investigation failed so he may have been involved in the second murder). When Tui disappeared, Al made Wolfie his third victim (scapegoat for Tui’s disappearance/pregnancy).

Tui said “no one” got her pregnant because she was drugged and didn’t remember any sexual encounter (this is supported by Tui later saying she didn’t know how the baby got insider her). This is the basic plot line, but there were many subplots and diversions, most of which undermined the central story’s power. Before we discuss these, do you buy my analysis?