Premium-Cable Premiere Night brings us the return of "Looking" and "Episodes"

HBO's trailer for Season 2 of Looking -- the new season launches tonight.

by Ken

It's Premium-Cable Premiere Night tonight, meaning most importantly the start of the new seasons of HBO's Looking (Season 2) and Showtime's Episodes (Season 4), both of which had simply spectacular seasons last time out. At the same time it's possible to be cautiously optimistic about the return of Showtime's Shameless for Season 5, in which (I see from the promos) the Gallaghers will be grappling with the onset of gentrification in their heretofore lost-and-forgotten slice of Chicago. And HBO has a new series called Togetherness that looks to be worth at least a look.

Then there are HBO's Grrlz and Showtime's House of Lies, which I know will be welcomed back by their devoted fans. And I suppose a case could be made that, because they deal almost exclusively with characters so vile and obnoxious that one could hardly wish enough bad things to happen to them, and not nearly enough do, they are truer representations of real life. However, I had the misfortune, while rewatching the whole of Season 1 of Loving, of being subjected to endless repetitions of the promo for the new season of Grrlz, and it looks even more revolting than when I finally gave up on it despite its creator's obvious talents.

(You know how lately I keep enthusing over shows that dish out spectacular scripts to spectacular writing to spectacular casts and puts the actors in circumstances to produce their best work? Here's one that dumps assaultively cretinous writing on actors who may or may not have talent but here puke up mostly inept, repellent work, in the apparent service of the revenge fantasies of a young person who, although one of the luckier people on the planet, sees herself as one of life's great victims. It's hard not to appreciate the element of fiscal reality captured in the lives of these young people, and it may just be an unreasonable personal reaction that even this is undercut by their creator's personal unfamiliarity with those circumstances. Nevertheless, it's hard to care about characters who for the most part don't seem even to try to grapple meaningfully with the hard questions of life. There's no easy answer to the question of which proposition is truer: that the only thing more appalling than the Grrlz of Grrlz is the Guyz," or that the only thing more appalling than the Guyz is the Grrlz.)

ON A MORE HOPEFUL NOTE --

Season 4 of Episodes (created by David Crane and Jeffrey Klarik) really caught me by surprise. I'd been kind of dutifully following the story of British TV writers Sean and Beverly Lincoln (Stephen Mangan and Tamsan Greig) who come to the U.S. to write what they assume will simply be an adaptation of a hit series of theirs, which turns out to be a total degradation rewritten to the talents, such as they are, of a fictionalized version of Matt LeBlanc. But somehow last season, either I finally really "got it" or the show itself took off -- I thought it was sensational. And since the season ended with Sean and Beverly, determined to haul their battered bodies and souls back to England, being powerfully lured to stay on in Hollywood to work on what they're assured will be a correctly done version of a show they're actually interested in writing, there's plenty of room for fun in the new season.

But the show I'm really looking forward to is Looking. I reallze that it may be of less interest to viewers who aren't interested in gay-male relationships, but the thing about the central characters of Looking, produced by a creative team of a Brit, Andrew, and an American, Michael Lannan -- and the peripheral ones too, for that matter -- is that their sexual orientation is merely a part of who they are, and really doesn't have much to do with the struggles they're going through to make sense of their lives.

It's impossible for me to ignore the mad crush I have on Patrick (Jonathan Groff), both the character and the actor, a San Francisco transplant from Colorado who at 29 has been historically unable to open himself up personally enough to have a shot at a real relationship, until last season he began to do so with a chance-met Mexican hottie named Richie. Late in Season 1 we finally got to meet Jonathan's family, who turn out to be terrific, and refocused our view of the strain his his relationship with his mother (a really spectacular performance by Julia Duffy).

But the second time through I found myself significantly more engaged with his friends Agustin (Frankie J. Alvarez; a college friend and, since then, longtime roommate), a struggling artist, and the turning-40-waiter Dom (Murray Bartlett), an even more personally closed-off type than Patrick. There's an awful lot more, including another really spectacular performance by Scott Bakula as a successful businessman who gets involved in Dom's dream of opening up a restaurant featuring Peruvian peri-peri chicken. One just hopes the team can sustain the level of Season 1 into Season 3.

#

TV Watch: Is there anything "Shameless"'s Frank Gallagher won't do if he's paid? (Not that we know of)

"Apparently, I've caused a ruckus because I said that gay folks deserve certain . . . civil rights. Rights that the breeders don't want to bestow upon me. [Chortles]" Watch this great clip from last week's episode of Shameless -- Frank Gallagher as impassioned gay-rights crusader -- here. (I had it successfully embedded but discovered that then I couldn't have any line breaks in the post. Sigh. I thnk someone should be shot, but then, nobody asked my opinion.)

by Ken

What? Is Frank Gallagher gay? This drunken galoot with six children (that we know about), who'll nail any woman who makes the mistake of getting within his nailing range -- gay? Well, as I recall Frank himself answering the question as put to him by somebody from his circle, he can be whatever he has to be. And in this case defending same-sex partners' benefits for city employees has served his latest pure-Frank freeloading scheme, to leech off the poor soul -- who isn't gay -- who has taken him in thinking Frank can help him as his AA sponsor.

Naturally, once Frank discovers just how effective his gift of gab can make him as a gay-rights fund-raiser, his sights are set higher than some lousy health benefits. He's a rain-maker now, and expects to be compensated accordingly. Which works swimmingly until he gets a better offer -- a new sugar daddy who wants to see him "cured" of his gayness, and not only is prepared to up the previous benefactor's ante but has a whole new fringe benefit to offer: the women who'll be brought to him as part of his "cure"! Okay, so things don't work out exactly the way Frank was fantasizing. He still knows how be whatever he has to be to make it pay.

It was, I thought, the best use the writers have found for Frank's customary verbal diarrhea (a character trait that William H. Macy is obviously supremely well equipped to enact). The key thing is that they didn't try to make him any more likable or justifiable. If anything, his shamelessly flaunted shamelessness adds a new level of monstrousness. But it was a brilliant way to add some dimension to the character, or at any rate to make an existing dimension more immediate. It occurs to me that when I go back to rewatch the earlier seasons' worth of episodes, I may be more intrigued and less instantly annoyed by the earlier uses of Frank's gift of gab.

All in all, I'd have to say that the Shameless team has had an outstanding season keeping the struggles and dreams of the Gallaghers and their friends going. I've never had any trouble caring about the struggle involved with all the other characters. But Frank himself has always been a problem for me. Suddenly I'm finding myself actually enjoying his, um, appallingness.

#

"He'll be back, Debs. He always comes back" -- "Shameless"'s Fiona Gallagher to her sister, about their father

He's ba-ack! Frank (William H. Macy) has rewarded the devotion of Debbie (Emma Kenney), his last remaining fan among the Gallagher offspring, just the way you would expect.

"The only way to make money when you're poor is to steal it or scam it."

-- Lip (Phillip) Gallagher (Jeremy Allen White),
in Episode 2 of Season 3 of Shameless

by Ken

It's one of the most dependable plot formulas the people behind Showtime's Shameless having going: the return, yet again, of the utterly useless, parasitic Frank Gallagher (William H. Macy) to what he always points out is his home. And darned if the producers didn't work it yet again for the opening episodes of Season 3.

You have to give them credit. They've already done Frank Being Dumped in Canada, which relatively speaking is a hop, skip, and jump from the Gallagher domicile in Chicago. The operative comparison is Mexico, where Frank ever so torturedly woke up from his customary alcoholic stupor in the season opener -- following a gap of 137 days, as we know because of the virtual shrine assembled by young Debbie, the last of the seven Gallagher offspring to retain her devotion to this waste of a human being. Forget "devotion"; setting aside baby Liam, Debbie is the last of the Gallaghers to retain as much as an impulse to tolerate Frank.

Even if we didn't know that William H. Macy is thought to be one of the show's major attractions, we would have known after two seasons with the Gallaghers that Fiona was unquestionably right: Frank would be back. And so as not to be a total spoiler, I will just say that the eventual working out of the relationship between Frank and Debbie yielded a grand scene that was the subject of a wonderful on-air feature with interview clips from a number of cast members, obviously including young Emma Kenney, who as the heartbreaking Debbie has been one of the show's consistent treasures.

The great strength of the show, for me at least, has been the convincing depiction of the human potential of all of the older-than-infant Gallagher kids (except for the ragingly sociopathic young Carl), potential all but certain to be wasted owing to the circumstances of their barely-making-ends-meet life, attempting to raise themselves with poor Fiona (Emmy Rossum) sadly forced into the role of fill-in mom. So many of the Gallaghers have so many appealing qualities, as do so many members of their circle in their South Side Chicago neighborhood, that it's easy to keep returning and keep rooting, and there's ample room for comedy.

I do worry, though, about the long-term potential for warmth and fuzziness as the Gallaghers' challenging day-to-day realities give way to the long-term crushing kind. For example, the creative team has made such a persuasive case for Lip's brilliance, his unlimited intellectual potential, along with his limitless personableness and resourcefulness, that for all the street-sassiness of his refusal to fall in line for other people's hopes and expectations for him, is there much hope of a future for him that is other than a tragic waste?

That said, now that I've finally caught up with the new season of Shameless, I'm relieved. I had sort of half-watched some of it, then went back via "On Demand" to rewatch the final episode of Season 2, and was much relieved to have quite a good time when I attacked the season opener again.

I also half-watched part of the season openers of Showtime's Californication and House of Lies, and while I've formed some interest in some of the characters (most obviously in the case of the many seasons of Californication), I had a pretty terrible feeling about the general repulsiveness of so many of the characters -- really, all the characters in House of Lies. My feeling going in is that by and large they deserve whatever happens to them. Same deal with HBO's Girls and Enlightened.

I guess I really am too old. There appears to be a whole other ethos among the target audience of today's TV developers. If this is the new face of "hip" TV, I guess I'll be having a lot of free time opening up.

#

I'm loving the new season of "Nurse Jackie" and rewatching "Shameless," but I've got a bad feeling about "The Borgias"

A preview of tonight's new episode of Showtime's Nurse Jackie, which airs at 10pm ET/PT

"Don't take this the wrong way, sweetheart, but you are an amazing fucking liar. World-class, genius."

-- Eddie (Paul Schulze), to Jackie (Edie Falco),
on last week's episode of Nurse Jackie

"Every now and then a child comes along who makes me believe in the existence of Satan."

-- the principal or assistant principal (depending who you believe),
about 9-year-old Carl Gallagher, in Shameless Episode 6, "Killer Carl"

"No getting around it, the Borgias are hot. They've even got their own series coming up on Showtime, debuting April 3, with Jeremy Irons playing the patriarch of the clan, that sweetheart Rodrigo Borgia, better known to us by his later professional name, Pope Alexander VI. Always ahead of his time, Will Cuppy here offers a characteristically affectionate portrait of the apple of Rodrigo's . . . er, Pope Alex's eye, his cutie pie of a daughter, Lucrezia. It's in this piece, by the way, that Will describes the Italian Renaissance as "that great flowering of this and that."

-- me, in a "Will Cuppy Tonight" post, presenting his Decline
and Fall of Practically Everybody profile of Lucrezia Borgia

by Ken

As I mentioned last night, I had planned to do this post then, before the airing of the second episode of Showtime's new "dramatic" serires The Borgias, but decided it would be more productive to hold off till I had another episode under my belt. On the whole I find my apprehensions tending to be confirmed, even though I can't say I watched the episode all that carefully. Is it possible to watch the show carefully? Despite its pretensions to be grappling with major historical and dramatic issues, it's so insubstantial, when it's not being downright silly, that it really isn't easy to focus on. I have to do some serious reckoning as to whether I want to try to watch the episode again, and then some more reckoning as to whether I want to even record another episode.

So let's talk about something else, namely the Showtime shows I like. I've been continuing to rewatch the Season 1 episodes of Shameless, and not only am I picking up all sorts of stuff that went over me the first time through, I'm appreciating the show even more -- although I have to say I'm not finding it as exhilarating as I did the first time through. Even though there is that surface crackle and pop, the realities for which all of these characters are forced to settle seem to me so monstrous that I find myself increasingly in despair for them.

The more I watch William H. Macy as pater familias Frank Gallagher, the more appalled I am -- all the highfalutin self-justifying bullshit that comes out of his mouth becomes just about unbearable. There are other factors, of course (there always are in life), but his life is what it is because he's lazy and shiftless and hasn't a clue about personal responsibility, and for all the beatings he takes (and I mean not just psychological but just plain physical beatings, which he earns regularly), he's having a way better time living life as a leech than he ought to.

And to have brought six children into the world? With a woman, poor Monica (Chloe Webb), who at least meant well and might not have been such a crap mother if she hadn't been chained to such a piece of human garbage. The older kids -- 21-year-old Fiona (Emmy Rossum), 17-year-old Lip (Jeremy Allen White), and 16-year-old Ian (Cameron Monaghan) are at least well-socialized human beings, for all the waste and destruction of their lives -- notwithstanding Fiona's complete package of brains and beauty and loyalty and compassion; or Lip's genius-level brilliance, which makes him so smart that he can't see any payoff for the path to academic legitimacy suddenly offered the the University of Chicago professor (played by that spectacular actor Dennis Boutsoukaris), who in his moonlighting job as an investigator for the Education Evaluation Service catches Lip in his SAT-taking scam; or Ian's unique brand of smarts and capacity for focus and discipline (as with his ROTC commitment).

But what about the younger kids? At one point Fiona, left with the burden of makeshift motherhood by Monica's abandonment, voices an obviously deeply felt dread that she's failed her younger siblings. Well, it's not her fault, but my goodness, what can we hope for 10-year-old Debbie, so bright and sweet and sensitive and also so whacked-out that she lives in her own world and kidnaps a two-year-old boy? (Why? Because there wasn't a girl available. So she dressed and made up the little kidnap victim as a girl.) And 9-year-old Carl? That quote from the principal (or assistant principal, as executive producer John Wells refers to him in one of Showtime's promotional videos) is no exaggeration. This poor child shows no signs of mental activity or desire that isn't directed at inflicting pain. Is it possible for a child to be beyond redemption by such a tender age? Carl makes a good case.



And all this while I'm totally grabbed by these characters, who've been created with such believability and texture and depth that I find it all but impossible not to care about them. I begin to wonder, though, whether a second season, if done as relatively honestly as the first, will be such a treat.

The level of desperation is of course much less intense in Nurse Jackie, but beyond the enormous personal appeal of Edie Falco's Jackie, these characters too have been created by the writers and actors with almost unbelievable grabbingness. Incredibly, after all of Jackie's lies seemed to blow up on her at the end of Season 2, she seems to be trying to just pick things up where they left off, though her husband, Kevin (Dominic Fumusa), remains so distrustful that he's taken over parental responsibility for their two girls' schooling.

It's been fascinating to discover in recent episodes that all the time Jackie was having her affair, or whatever it was, with Eddie the pharmacist (Paul Schulze), neither he nor anyone else at All Saints had any idea that she was married. (Wow, is that fascinating or what?) Again, it's hard to resist the appeal of the characters -- Jackie's not-really-prot&eacuteg´e Zoey (Merritt Wever); her once and no doubt future friend Dr. O'Hara (Eve Best), even hospital administrator Akalitus (Anna Deavere Smith), with her current fixation on taking advantage of the (real-world) demise of St. Vincent's Medical Center, offering the possibility of wangling its promised visit from First Lady Michelle Obama, over the wily opposition of her ruthless counterpart at Bellevue, and even not-so-lovable clod Dr. Cooper (Peter Facinelli).

As much as I'm filled with dread by the unreachable darkness of Jackie and Kevin's older daughter, I really love the show. I guess what it comes down to is that for all the characters' troubles, I really enjoy their company.

And then there's what now appears to be a program "categor": Showtime pseudohistorical drama, where character names and identities drawn from real history are set loose in a mounting potpourri of silliness. Jeremy Irons as that ultimate conniver Rodrigo Borgia, who managed to get himself elected Pope Alexander VI in the first episode, chews every rug in sight. For one episode it seemed as if there might be something going on, or worth waiting for. After a casual semi-viewing, the pattern is looking familiar. I actually made it through a whole season of Showtime's The Tudors before bailing out.

#

Some further thoughts on Showtime's "Shameless" in anticipation of tonight's season finale

At the end of last week's episode Lip and Ian Gallagher were arrested in a stolen Porsche. In this preview of tonight's season finale, we see some chickens coming home to roost. But are they the right chickens, and is it the right roost?

"People ask, 'Why did Monica leave?' And I say, 'Have you seen the show and watched Frank? [Laughs.]'"

-- Shameless show runner John Wells,
in a clip we saw with last week's post

by Ken

In my piece last week about Shameless, the American adaptation of Paul Abbott's apparently in good part autobiographical British series about a working-class family without any working parents -- Monica Gallagher having flown the coop nearly two years ago (but returned for a couple of recent years in the person of that singularly lovely actress Chloe Webb), leaving the six Gallagher kids in the "care" of Frank Gallagher (William H. Macy) -- "care" in quotes because it's hard to think of anything Frank contributes to the family's upkeep (the money he scams from assorted government programs all goes to his own bar and other expenses) or well-being of anyone but himself, and he in fact requires a fairly high level of care, more probably than any of the children except baby Liam.

As I wrote, I've become a growing fan of the show, produced and in good part written by John Wells. It's by turns raucous (what the Gallaghers and their friends do for day-to-day survival rarely falls strictly, or even generally, within the law, or even socially acceptable behavior. But then, for how many seasons did we watch Tony Soprano and his associates, of course thoroughly disapproving of his criminal enterprises, and yet cheer them on in their conflicts with mobsters we told ourselves were even worse?

But what I want to go back to is some things the master of Shameless said in that clip we had last week about the return of Monica Gallagher, successfully lured by a scam of Frank's with the promise of some quick cash. (He needed her to cosign a settlement that actually would yield cash.) Now I love the quote I put up top on this post. But then Wells went on to say:

Her argument for it is that she was being emotionally smothered by Frank. That's a perfectly legitimate Oprah, Dr. Phil response to leave, this kind of pop-psychology thing. The truth is, you left a family with a bunch of children in it. But Frank, for all of his many faults, has never deserted them.

Now I'm hardly an expert on Dr. Phil, but it's my impression that he's not big on people justifying bad behavior, but never mind. It's pretty cheeky of me to question the guy responsible for the show about what one of his characters said on it, and it's possible that going by the words in the script he's right, that Monica said this, but it sure isn't the impression I got of what explanation she manages to provide for her flight -- into the arms of a butch lesbian truckdriver, with whom she's formed the daft scheme of expropriating baby Liam so they can have their own family.

Was it really not clear that Monica wasn't talking about being emotionally smothered? She was talking about fleeing for her life. Think back to Wells's crack about Frank? The show is real enough in its depiction of the family to give us a pretty strong whiff of what it would be like to be married to Frank and trying to raise six children. (And it's still possible that as many as five of them could be Frank's; we've got two definite yeses, Liam and Lip, and only one definite no, Ian.) It was an inspired stroke hiring as gentle and sympathetic an actress as Chloe Webb for this difficult role, and she was wonderful -- including the grim reality that Monica, for all her good intentions, just isn't very good at mothering.

Certainly she got her crack at it under pretty rotten circumstances, with Frank contributing neither financial nor any other kind of support either to his wife or to his children, and with his constant whining and moaning about how he's always victimized, what he mostly does is suck the life out of people. Would it not have been reasonable for Monica to be scared silly

And what's this business about Frank not deserting the family? Except in the physical sense of being under the same roof, when was he ever there? He has everyone taking care of him, and does no taking care of. What would there be for him to desert? And it isn't even literally true. Did we not early in the season see him run away from home?

My point in raising the issue isn't to duke it out with Wells, but to credit him having created and maintained the show at a high enough level of honest that we can actually debate such questions. Not much in the world of Shameless is black and white, cut and dried. It's been, I think, a heck of a season. I'm looking forward to continuing to work my way through the episodes a second time (I'm amazed at how much I'm filling in, and how much I'm simply enjoying the shows, more even than the first time now that I have so much more context for the characters), and then I'm looking forward to a second season (which our commenter last week confirmed for us is now a done deal) as good as the first.

#

It says something about Showtime's "Shameless" that it's made me want to watch the earlier episodes again

Shameless producer-writer John Wells talks about the impact of the return of the Gallagher kids' mother, Monica (Chloe Webb), in the episode "But at Last Came a Knock," which aired two weeks ago. A new episode airs tonight at 10pm and again at 11pm ET, with repeats all over the Showtime schedule.

by Ken

There was never any question that I was grabbed enough to continue watching Showtime's Shameless, adapted by John Wells from the British series of the same name created, produced, and (apparently more or less autobiographically) written by Paul Abbott, who's also listed as an executive producer of the American series. But there were so many characters to get to know that it's taken me all these episodes -- tonight's is no. 11 of (I believe) an initial 12 -- to build to my present level of enthusiasm, which is pretty considerable.

Now that I've developed a relationship of sorts for all six of the barely-scraping-by Gallagher kids, ranging in age from over-18 Fiona (Emmy Rossum) to baby Liam, not to mention their extravangant drunkard father Frank (William H. Macy) and even, in the last couple of episodes, the mother who abandoned them nearly two years ago, not to mention the assorted other neighborhood characters who are woven into the plot, I've found myself impelled to begin rewatching the earlier episodes via On Demand (they can also be watched online). Sure enough, I'm picking up all sorts of stuff that went over, under, or around my head the first time through.

I expect that viewers will respond differently to different characters. I think Fiona's double bind was obvious and immediately compelling. She's bright and beautiful and ought to have the world at her feet, and yet in her family's day-to-day struggle just to keep a roof over their heads and keep everybody fed, she can't see a path to daylight open for her in any direction, on top of which, since the departure of her mother, she has the added burden of keeping her five younger brothers and sisters above water. Of course the truth is that the kids didn't have a mother even when they had a mother. I think it was Lip (i.e., Phillip) who observed after their mother's return that as useless as their father is, he turns out to be the good parent.

So Fiona, as I say, is easy for the audience, I think, and it was fairly easy to take in the confusion in a possible relationship with the newly appeared Steve (Justin Chatwin). As it happens, her wariness about Steve is altogether appropriate, though not for any of the reasons she imagines -- not lack of sensitivity to her (he really is crazy mad for her) and not because he's a rich kid who thinks of her as casual entertainment or a laboratory specimen. No, for better or worse -- and as often happens with Shameless, that "better or worse" question isn't easily puzzled out -- what she doesn't know about him is really different.

I'm sure the ready accessibility of Fiona's -- and, by extension, the whole family's -- plight has been part of the immediate appeal that kept me coming back. The characters, not just individually but even more as a pair, who really reached me on a deeper level, and made me look deeper into the show, are the next-oldest Gallaghers, the infinitely resourceful Lip (Jeremy Allen White) and the oddly focused Ian (Cameron Monaghan). I don't know that we've been given actual ages, but they're presumably barely a year apart, and as we learned in the pilot, it's been at least Lip's perception that there have never been secrets between them, a pretty remarkable thing if you think about it.

Perhaps it's not surprising that this came out when Lip discovered that Ian had in fact been keeping a secret from him, and a huge one: that he's gay. And rewatching those first couple of episodes, I was even more fascinated watching this plot line develop. For Lip too there's a double whammy: Given where he comes from, dealing with this new fact about Ian is tough enough, but he seems if anything more disoriented from learning that there's this whole part of his brother's life that's been kept from him. Again, it may just be my particular focus, but this relationship has seemed to me continuously fascinating.

As producer Wells points out in another interview Showtime has posted, the Gallaghers and their friends engage in some mightily unacceptable behavior, but as he also points out, life is different when you're living day-to-day, as they are -- different for the people and different for the writers. As episodes have unfolded, the American Shameless has seemed to me increasingly different from at least what I recall of the British original, but it's all to the show's credit that it has established its own environment, its own tone, its own outlook. The writing and acting are all pulling in a productive direction, and everyone involved is producing a terrific product. I'm really looking forward to the season's remaining episodes, to re-viewing the whole first season, and of course seeing what's to come in upcoming seasons.


In this preview of tonight's episode, Lip and Ian get a shock when they track down an uncle, one of Frank's brothers, they've never met. (POST-EPISODE UPDATE: It turns out that the Gallagher kids have never met any of their father's brothers. The trip they take out to visit their grandmother for info on their uncles is priceless.)

#