[For The Jim Gaffigan Show‘s “Pilot” or any other recaps on Fetchland, assume the presence of possible spoilers.]
TVLand Summary:
Jim Gaffigan juggles family, fatherhood, comedy and food.
If you know the comedian Jim Gaffigan then you already know the premise of his new half hour sitcom. He’s a version of himself, a comedian and father of five living in a tiny Manhattan two bedroom. A delicious blend of self deprecation, food love, quirky but believable friends, and solid jokes – this is one of those where-have-you-been-all-my-life sitcoms… Especially if you have kids.
Gaffigan has a familiar voice and comfortable manner that makes this show feel like sweatpants. You know this guy. You love this guy. You might even BE this guy. Either way, somebody has sweatpants on in this scenario.
As the “Pilot” begins we see Gaffigan leaving his onstage life as a stand up and returning home to his lovely wife Jeannie and five children (a blonde brood of far-too-young-to-know-better types). He describes what this level of parenting feels like perfectly:
“Imagine you’re drowning… and then somebody hands you a baby.”
This description — along with lots of other info in the “Pilot” — we get via Jim’s voice over narration, not a preferred method in most shows, but it’s Gaffigan and he’s hilarious. Another reason it works: It’s an opportunity for us to hear him do standup while the show still delivers that sweatpants comfort of a story in sitcom format.
Right after that drowning joke Jim’s wife — a “shiite Catholic” — tells him she’s pregnant and we, the viewers, get pulled right into the underwater feeling too. Thanks, Jim! He handles the news better than most would, and she’s clearly thrilled about it. But somehow, despite her infinite predilection to procreate, Jeannie stays likable – could be because she has the whole “shiite Catholic” excuse… Or maybe it’s because he so clearly loves her and Jim’s good people.
Next we meet Dave (Adam Goldberg), Jim’s friend and fellow comedian who hears the pregnancy news and immediately tells Jim he needs a vasectomy. Gaffigan reacts to this suggestion as most owners of gonads do, with horror and revulsion. The precious, etc. But then in the next scene Jeannie isn’t really pregnant and they’re talking about looking at bigger apartments. Things are looking up.
Turns out they’ve been looking for a bigger apartment for many years and Jeannie’s ex is a broker, Daniel (Michael Ian Black), who seems to always be happy to show them places for years and years even though they never make an offer. If you know anything about NYC real estate then you know it’s the least realistic aspect of this sitcom, a show about a family of seven living in a tiny two bedroom.
But then Jim tells Jeannie about the vasectomy suggestion and she says, “Like that would ever happen.” He can’t even stand the pain of a nail clipper, etc. Uh oh, big mistake, wife. Never issue a challenge such as this. Gaffigan gets haughty, his machismo deeply offended. He nibbles a cracker and insists he’s going to see a urologist about the procedure. The mission is set. She simply can’t always be right about him. He won’t stand for it.
The best part of the episode is in the urologist’s office where Jim ends up despite his best efforts to head in every other direction. His whole family, kids and all, shows up for his appointment. Jeannie even brings along the broker, Daniel. Jim’s good buddy Dave is there to support him and also ask for a free penicillin sample with perfect timing. Guest star Fred Armisan is just right as Dr. Weiss, a urologist accustomed to never even finishing an explanation of what the procedure is before guys shut down the whole vasectomy idea.
Turns out Jeannie pulls the kids out of the consult when Dr Weiss pulls down the penis chart so, all alone for the explanation, it takes approximately ten seconds of actual consultation before Jim says no way, Jose. Then he sits awhile in the office just prove that he considered it. He bluffs straight through until the end of the episode, pretending to be getting a vasectomy in the hopes that his wife doesn’t know him as well as she thinks. But, surprise surprise, she does. So, there’s that. Then it turns out he knows her pretty well too and she’s the real reason they can’t settle on a new apartment. She’s sentimental about the apartment where her babies were born and he’s sentimental about the sack where they originated. They’re two peas in a pod.
Even with the implausible real estate broker relationship this is a great NYC show. In the “Pilot” alone there’s Katz’s deli, multiple Shake Shack references, a scene on an actual subway car, and in a genuine city playground. The kids play a surprisingly small role in the show, with few appearances and almost no lines. This is a good choice because the show’s really all about Jim and his particularly hysterical world. Jim loves his family, food, and NYC even with all the extreme limitations therein and that’s the sweet spot where all the funny stuff lives. It’s a rare pilot that’s already establishes such a self assured and consistent voice but that’s because this is true blue Jim Gaffigan and we all know that guy. We love that guy.
If you are at all like me — and not like the lucky stiffs who got to attend advance screenings — you will be queuing up to see Paul Rudd in the brand Ant-Man movie this weekend — the latest jaunt into the Marvel cinematic universe. You will probably also be very wary of spoilers before you see it. Well fear not true believers because this edition of Spoiler Alert contains, as always, no actual spoilers. I guess there are some inherent spoilers in the trailer but videographer David Troth Wright does his best every week to unencumber you with any facts by the time they tear your ticket at the theater.
[For True Detective‘s “Down Will Come” or any other recaps on Fetchland, assume the presence of possible spoilers.]
HBO Summary:
The detail works a pawn shop lead to close in on a suspect in the Caspere case.
It’s easy to forget that the main plot line of True Detective is a murder mystery… What with all the backlash, booze, and personal histories owning the majority of screen time; and this episode is no exception. Thankfully the opening credits remain a creepy reminder of the investigation as they are seemingly spoken by the killer himself.
The story opens as Velcoro and Bezzerides circle the evidentiary Caspere car while Velcoro argues the virtue of not giving a crap about how things have always been unfair in Vinci. We’re not supposed to solve this! It’s a setup for us to fail! etc. But Bezzerides insists she’s “just here to solve a murder.” Thanks for reminding us what the show’s about, Detective Antigone.
Bezzerides and Velcoro then visit Betty, who appears to be smoking something from a giant lit up dildo. She’s the one we only glimpsed for a moment in the last episode because she shut the door in Antigone’s face so fast. Turns out Betty had a crazy mom who got committed and killed herself but she doesn’t want to talk about that. Bezzerides then says her mother also died when she was a kid which draws out Betty a bit more so that she adds the fact that her Father was “a very bad person,” then leaves abruptly.
Tell me that doesn’t look like a giant dildo.
Frank Seymon gets back into drug dealing and club running even though the business partners he approaches seem reluctant to join a guy who appears to be circling the drain. Thank goodness Seymon knocked that guys teeth out last week, so he can prove his worth with vague threats about tooth decay. He’s going to get the club going again no matter how many teeth it takes.
Woodrugh wakes up from a blackout in his ex-boyfriend’s bed. “Let yourself be what you are. It ain’t bad,” his ex tells him but we all know Woodrugh disagrees and this time he can’t even ride his bike at 100+ miles an hour to burn off the self hate because it turns out his bike got stolen while he was visiting bonertown. Thus Woodrugh does a squat and lets some screaming on the sidewalk rip right before he gets confronted with the media and his “war crimes” … Geez can’t a guy shriek his self-hatred in peace for even a second? No, because now his girlfriend is effing pregnant too and of course she wants to keep it. But Woodrugh doesn’t see this as a bummer. He’s psyched. Yay! This means I’m straight. “I love you. Let’s get married.” His girlfriend is decidedly less thrilled with, “I guess I love you too.”
The deeply tanned shrink who never takes off the sunglasses, Irving Pitlor, gains momentum as a villain when it turns out he was the shrink that treated Betty’s mom right before she killed herself. Bezzerides visits her Dad to talk about how he and the shrink knew each other. The main takeaway from the convo with Antigone’s Father – Pitlor is suspicious with a shady past and ties to the corrupt Mayor. Also, the revelation that Velcoro has a Herculean aura comes as little surprise.
Bezzerides and Velcoro find out that circles of land Caspere was visiting right before he died are no longer farmable because of toxic chemical levels. An EPA representative calls them contaminated sites and thus “useless.” In the next scene these same circles represent the “last pork barrels” to Frank Seymon and we start to see the link between Caspere and Seymon’s dream to own all the circles of land even though he won’t have a kid to leave it to. One man’s useless contaminated tract of land is Vince Vaughns’s pipe dream.
Bezzerides puts in a good word for Velcoro and gets accused of sexual misconduct with her subordinate. She says, “This wouldn’t be happening to a man,” and is then suspended until the investigation into her naughty ways concludes. Her boss mentions her gambling debts and thus we see a bit more of the personal detritus that fouls Antigone’s mood. Lucky part is she’s still on the Caspere case because it’s “special.”
In a hellbent finale, Bezzerides, Velcoro, and Woodrugh lead a team of bullet-proof vested-cops through a dusty alleyway on their way to bust some heavily armed bad guys and face a shootout from Hades. Bezzerides chases an SUV on foot and shoots with such balls and abandon that it’s clear this job is all she cares about. She shoots until her gun is empty then reaches for the ankle knife, ready to go down fighting even if that means throwing a knife at a guy with a machine gun.
Suddenly Woodrugh’s value to the team becomes abundantly clear. He’s an ace shot and fearless under fire. In fact the three of them suddenly make sense. They’ve got nothing to lose. They put their collective asses on the line, covering each other with precision and collective competence. Even Velcoro, who insists he couldn’t care less in every other scene, puts his life on the line over and over in this scene. The shootout scene blows the rest of the show to pieces with shattering deaths of known characters, criminals, and a bus full of innocent strangers. It’s impossible to watch it without wondering at some point if every single person is going to end up dead.
The episode’s ending brings to mind the magnificent chase scene of True Detective Season One, an edge-of-your-seat race that trespassed people’s living rooms and backyards with amazing camera work aplomb. But this one’s different in scope. It felt like an old Western rising like a phoenix in the California sun. The scene drives home a new idea as the three stand in the dust, the only survivors of a gunfight that puts the Old West to shame. It shines a spotlight on the present day West coast with all its complications, heartbreak, and three cutthroat gunslingers. Maybe this team isn’t meant to fail after all.
I have gotten into the habit of saving up shows I want to watch for the purposes of a good binge. I saved up half the third season of Orphan Black before diving in. Hannibal was already canceled before I even took my first nibble of what is (for) now the final season. Sunday nights at 9pm has been the only non-sports appointment television running right from Game of Thrones and into True Detective. Having a week to ruminate about the episode, lament the lack of water coolers in your life, and really think about what you just watched is a completely different experience than letting episode after episode crash over you without time to breathe. (I just started watching Mr. Robot on USA Network and I think I am going to try sticking with the weekly schedule as it seems to have lots of theorizing that can be done between episodes.)
Having that time to think about last week’s Night Finds You left me in a week-long version of Eddie Izzard’s wonderful bit about Engelbert Humperdinck. He tells the audience that he just learned that the singer had died. The audience murmurs a little uncomfortably and Izzard lets them off the hook telling them that he is not dead. He then proceeds to vacillate back and forth, including a good 30 seconds of hysterical head shaking, nodding, and eye rolling as he flips back and forth on the fate of the erstwhile Arnold George Dorsey.
My first instinct after the end of last week’s episode was that Detective Ray Velcoro could not possibly be dead due to the billing Colin Farrell has received for the show. Second reaction was a full frontal flashback to the radical pelvectomy that Casper received from a close range shotgun blast. The show has used flashbacks of Velcoro as a young officer already and they utilized multiple timelines extensively in season one. It seemed perfectly reasonable that he could be dead but still be featured prominently for the next six episodes. Multiple people I spoke with — including a good friend who works at HBO — seemed to think his character might actually have been killed which, of course, forced me into the opposite position because I am a contrary jerk. Back and forth until last night when we would finally find out…
I wrote that last week’s episode felt like an ode to James Ellroy. This one started out positively Lynchian with a blue-lit lounge performer — Jake La Botz credited as Conway Twitty — singing Twitty’s cover of Bette Middler’s The Rose. Sitting in a booth is Velcoro but the dream-like setting of the night club makes it seem like he is dying, in a coma, or —
OH MY GOD IS THAT FRED FUCKING WARD!?!
Regardless of how anything else resolves itself this season I am in for the long haul if there is the promise of more Fred Ward. If you are not familiar with his work you should immediately stop what you are doing and watch Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins (spoilers; the adventure also ends there as well), Tremors, and — most importantly — Miami Blues, one of the greatest dark noir comedies ever made, based on the book by the magnificent Charles Willeford.
I will resist the urge to shift topics to the work of Willeford — possibly saving it for a future Fetchland piece — and get back to the booth where we find that Ward is playing retired cop Eddie Velcoro, Ray’s dad. It is not obvious at first as Ray looks down at his bruised knuckles while Eddie tells him that he has his father’s hands.
“My father made me nervous,” says Ray.
“Maybe you were already nervous. Maybe you lacked grit.”
Eddie sneers in the way only a disapproving TV dad can muster talking about Ray getting shot to pieces. Ray takes in the oddity of the situation and the surroundings. “Where is this?”
“I don’t know… you’re here first,” answers his father as Ray looks down at his own bloody chest. The live performance fades into a more hollow rendition squeaking out of a clock radio. The clock reveals that is 7am and Ray is laying on the floor of Casper’s fuckpad where the man in the bird mask left him last week. There is still a chance he could be dead but after a moment of stillness he gasps to consciousness and rips open his shirt in the cop-show classic “I was wearing a vest” maneuver. He was not but his torso is pocked with shot and largely intact.
He reveals to a livid Bezzerides that the shotgun blast were “just” riot shells, the type cops use, and he only suffered a couple of broken ribs. Bezzerides heads into the crime scene and gets into a jurisdictional shoving match with Lieutenant Kevin Buress (played by James Frain, who has fallen into a dead last in the hide-my-accent power rankings).
Next up is the Semyons who are trying to get pregnant via IVF. Jordan is trying to entice Frank into a cup via her mouth but he pushes her away and pulls up his trousers. He insists “that” has never happened to him before. Stress can affect a man’s performance and he acknowledges plenty of it in his life at the moment.
“There is no part of my life not filled with live-or-die importance. I take a shit and there is gun to my head saying ‘make it a good one, don’t fuck up’.”
Frank pushes away from Jordan’s attempts at intimacy and they go down a well-worn road of blame with Frank extolling the virtues of his motility, implying that the fertility issues must originate with her. Jordan is quick to point out that his equipment is pointing in the wrong direction for that to even matter and flings the plastic cup at him before storming off.
“Suck your own dick!”
Bezzerides and Woodrugh get some alone time and she scores the first smile I think we have seen out of Woodrugh through the first three episodes. She is sending him out to canvas local prostitutes and wants to know something about his celebrity run-in from the first episode. He bristles immediately and makes it clear he has no intention of answering any questions about whether or not he did it. Bezzerides was actually just going to ask him if his new found notoriety from the appearance on the TMZ homepage was going to interfere with his ability to do his job. In fact she thinks he should sue to the would-be Lohan when all of this is done. There is a moment of connection between them and Woodrugh is even able to tease her about her ever-present e-cigarette. It was the first time Kitsch gets to anything but glower from the back of his closet and it was a good moment to see him in some other light than just his struggles with his sexual identity.
Velcoro confronts Semyon about the shooting, and who else knew about Casper’s house, over a pint glass of water in the same booth from the opening scene. No booze for Velcoro who wants to hold onto his anger and not dull it with alcohol. Semyon is not comfortable with the new-found bark of his Vinci lapdog.
“There’s a certain stridency at work here. I am going to chalk it up to you getting blasted.”
“I’m apoplectic.”
“I’m feeling a little apoplectic myself.”
Woodrugh and Bezzerides are greeted at the door of Mayor Chessani’s Bel Air mansion by someone they mistake for his daughter Betty but who turns out to be her stepmother Veronica. She is wearing a rumpled party dress, has tousled hair and makeup that is beyond a smokey eye — let’s call it a smoggy eye. The two cops push past her into the house and begin asking questions about Casper while she takes a hit from what she assures them is a medical marijuana balloon bag — what is it with this show and vaporizers?
While Veronica purrs at Woodrugh, Bezzerides begins to explore the house. She sees pictures of the mayor with various high profile politicians alongside a life-sized cardboard cutout of his wife in a bikini. She is rummaging around his desk when she hears a noise and rushes towards the sound. Upstairs she finds Betty Chessani sitting quietly in a room. When asked if everything is OK Betty just closes the door on her. Betty is played by Emily Rios who is a veteran of many hour long dramas — most notably Breaking Bad and The Bridge — and I trust/hope that she will get more/anything to do in the coming weeks.
Meanwhile a naked woman plunges into the pool just outside the terrace doors where the mayor’s wife and Woodrugh have been talking. We see that she has been tossed from a balcony by Tony Chessani, the mayor’s son whom he was lamenting about last episode. Bezzerides confronts Tony who is putting on a gang accent that she sees through immediately. Tony confesses that it is a put on and that his job as an “event organizer” calls for him to play different roles. He throws them out with the threat of his father’s lawyers and increasingly bad accents.
“How many times do you expect to be paid for the same thing?” pleads Bart Sallis. a contractor who bought his business from Frank, who now wants 25% every month from Bart despite that not being part of the original deal.
“Things change. They changed for me they can change for you.”
Frank is back to his transplanted Chicago mobster roots. He makes it more palatable by explaining he can keep the teamsters and electrical workers from walking off the job. He can keep the note from being called in on the loan underwriting the project. To make sure he being ultra clear he also points out that he knows where the family lives and where the kids go to school. Bart acquiesces but only if he can get some concessions on the electric crews and receive weekend deliveries.
Bezzerides reports back to her overseers on the contents of Casper’s safe deposit box which included articles of incorporation and a stash of blue diamonds. Her superiors are much more interested in hearing about Velcoro and whether or not he could have staged his own shooting. The state wants to prosecute a crooked Vinci cop and they have their sights set on Velcoro. She should do whatever it takes to get them leverage on him.
“He’s a man for Christ’s sake.”
“Yeah, so what?”
“I am not saying fuck him but maybe make him think you might fuck him.”
The language in Vinci is even coarser than it is at the State Attorney’s office where the Mayor will only refer to Bezzerides as “that cunt” after she barged in on his wife and kids. Woodrugh appears to be spared his wrath but the Mayor will not be happy until Bezzerides is running a yogurt stand instead of investigations. Velcoro tries to extract himself from the investigation but he can’t get away. The mayor, the police chief, and his lieutenant all want him to wrap up the hooker angle on the Casper murder ahead of the State investigation into their department. He should not worry about any land deals. Nobody is going down over any land deals.
“You could just drink out of the bottle.”
We get bonus Fred Ward scenes with the old man struggling to get a shot glass to his lips without spilling the contents while his son drops off a bag of weed. Ray notices an empty spot on the bookshelf where his father’s lucite encased badge is supposed to be. He fishes it out of the garbage despite Eddie protests that there is no PD anymore. Ray grills his dad about the Vinci brass who used to be on the job with him in LA before they left to set up shop after the riots and OJ trials.
Things are not going well for Semyon whose deal with Osip is slipping away. Frank is tired of playing nice and tells him not to let the door hit him in the ass on the way out. As he glowers out at his wife sitting alone on the casino floor he wonders if perhaps Osip had some hand in Casper’s death. To make matters worse for Semyon not all his men are accounted for and one of them — Stan — later turns up murdered. Semyon needs an outlet for all his frustration and calls for a meeting of all the usual suspects at Santos’ club.
Woodrugh is hanging with one of his Blackrock buddies drinking beer, watching motocross and talking about letting sleeping dogs lie. Except that maybe his buddy doesn’t want to deny the past. He begins to reminisce about time they spent together in a village separated from their unit. Woodrugh gets visibly upset and does not want to talk about it. He throws his buddy down to the ground to end to the discussion while someone who looks an awful lot like Dixon takes surveillance photos of them from afar.
Back at investigation HQ Velcoro lumbers in despite his best efforts to get kicked off the task force. Pictures of a Cadillac license plate the night of the murder lead them to a film set that Casper was a producer on in exchange for California tax credits. Velcoro befriends a set photographer who relates a story about Casper and the director attending a “wall to wall pussy” party.
Woodrugh is working the local prostitute angle to no avail when he meets a male hustler who recognizes Casper’s photo from the club Lux Infinitum, Santos’ place. Despite *ahem* only wanting the tip, Woodrugh realizes he will need more from the informant to get anything resembling a lead at the club.
“They probably wouldn’t even let you in. This angsty cop drama you are rolling.”
Bezzerides and Velcoro are at his house when his ex-wife and her current husband (sitting in the car) shows up. She tips him off that State investigators called on her to ask about extra cash or perhaps about the death of the man who attacked her. She offers him $10,000 in cash to walk away from his custodial claims on Chad but he tells her to put the envelope away. Bezzerides was listening from just inside the door. She steps back into the apartment before he can see that she was spying on him. She asks if everything is okay and seems to be developing some sympathy for him — earlier in the episode she appraised him as a burnout to her superiors.
At Lux Infinitum Woodrugh and Semyon bump into each other and have a stare-off with Woodrugh coming up short. He requires multiple double scotches to talk to another hustler who has performed with a girls for Casper. The thought that this man could have sex with a woman is a source of discomfort for him. And his response does little to assuage Woodrugh who needed a little blue bill to hook up with butterfly girl in the first episode.
“You do girls?”
“In a pinch…with the right medication.”
It turns out the girl the hustler hooked up with is Tasha — the same girl that Santos introduced to Semyon and led to Casper’s hideaway. She works expensive private parties but has not been around in a while.
While Woodrugh continued his investigation upstairs Semyon was downstairs with Santos and the assorted criminals who run woman in the local clubs. He hands out pictures of Casper and demands that he is told anything that any of them hear about him. Santos crumbles the photo and sneers that Semyon “ain’t that thing no more…what you used to was.” He declares the meeting over but Semyon grabs him by the lower lip. Santos is eager to fight and begins to take off his jewelry.
“You can leave your rings on. It won’t matter to me.”
Santos lands a few shots but Semyon lays him out and, with one hand holding him down by the neck, proceeds to remove his gold grill with a pair of needle nosed pliers.
Bezzerides and Velcoro investigation from the movie set has led them to the front door of someone with access to the caddy who has quit the production. Before they can ask anything significant they hear a crash and the whoosh of flames. The Cadillac they were searching for is around the corner and has just been torched. They pursue a masked person fleeing from the scene across a homeless encampment and onto the freeway where Velcoro dives to save Bezzerides from an oncoming truck. The arsonist escapes in the aftermath while Velcoro — who had multiple broken ribs from the shooting — groans on the ground. Bezzerides thanks him for saving her life but when he asks what the state police have on him — if she wants to really thank him — she says she knows nothing.
Frank returns home and Jordan is up waiting for him. She asks if he want to make up, to talk, as he fixes a drink at the bar and dumps a fistful of gold teeth in the trash.
(If you have watched the first episode of Kitchen Table Gaming then you have already met one of my oldest friends in Paul Yellovich. In addition to carrying a tube of cookie dough with him at all times Paul has given over no small portion of his life to watching martial arts films. Like me, Paul grew up in New York where these films were shown on the Drive-In Movie most weeks on Channel 5. In the 90’s our group of friends starting digging into the canon of Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Chow Yun Fat, John Woo, and Tsai Hark — among others — and would venture into the cavernous Sun Sing Theater under the Manhattan Bridge to watch the movies on a big screen while eating pork buns and being serenaded by fornicating cats.
In 2000 Paul got his first DVD player and he went down the rabbit hole of martial arts films the way I went down the Magic: The Gathering rabbit hole a few years prior. He has since collected more than 2000 films — and watched more than half of them — and for years maintained a web database on alternate titles for martial arts films. In his own words, he is nuts — but in the best possible way.
I still love the genre especially with the luxury of having my experience curated by Paul. And now you have the luxury of that experience as well as Paul brings us his Top 8 martial arts fight scenes of all time — BDM)
Top 8 Fights in Martial Arts Movies by Paul Yellovich
So BDM said, “Give me a Top 8 of the best fights in movie history.”
I said,” Kung Fu/Martial Arts? Weapons, no weapons?
Then he said, ”Your choice.”
So I started making a list. Problem is after a while I felt I had a lot of apples and a couple of oranges. So I decided to make this a Top 8 Martial Arts Fights in Movies.
Don’t get overly concerned with the order, we are all friends here.
VIII. Alley fight from Martial Club (1981) Gordon Lui vs. Wang Lung-wei
Your kung fu is no good. You must go to Shaolin!
From the legendary Shaw Brothers Studio and legendary director Lau Kar Leung, starring legendary martial arts superstar Gordon Lui comes… an ok movie. Which happens all the time; amazing fights in mediocre films.
This scene screams old school. Rivals pause to call out kung fu styles as they move along an impossibly twisty-turny, narrowing alley. An alley built for no other reason than to be another character in this scene.
VII. End Fight from Hong Kong Godfather (1985) Bryan Leung & Norman Chu vs. Wang Lung-wei & The Rest of the World
Who the hell’s going to clean this mess!
Wang Lung-wei walks out of the alley in Martial Club and goes on to direct this dull movie. But if you made it till the end you were rewarded. Sometimes it’s not about subtlety. Sometimes it’s about an obscene amount of bad fake blood, wholesale murder, a million stuntmen, and falls that make your back hurt.
VI. Old Vs New School fight from Pedicab Driver (1989) Sammo Hung Kam Bo vs. Lau Kar Leung
A beautiful dance of violence!
This is the equivalent of the Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly dance scene from Ziegfeld Follies. Few have had the impact Sammo Hung Kam Bo and Lau Kar Leung have had on Hong Kong action films. This scene is about a clash of styles. Lau Kar Leung is old school and Sammo Hung Kam Bo new — new being the 1980s. And that premise gives us kung fu comedy that isn’t cringe-worthy.
V. Castle fight from Wheels on Meals (1984) Jackie Chan vs. Benny “The Jet” Urquidez
Is that the killer from Grosse Pointe Blank?
This is new school martial arts. Gone are the silly costumes and animal styles. Now we have awful 80s clothes, more stuntiness, and more of a western boxing influence. Not that Bruce Lee didn’t give that to us a decade before, but this is the 1980s and Jackie was king.
IV. One Take fight scene from Tom Yum Goong aka The Protector (2005) Tony Jaa vs. The Editor
Let’s do it again.
When BDM was in Thailand years ago he asked me if there was anything he could bring for me. I wanted a dvd of Ong Bak. You see, Tony Jaa was going to save us. Save us from the crappy martial arts films of the later 90s. Save us from cheap CGI and pop stars who couldn’t fight. He was the new Jackie Chan. But after The Protector he stumbled.
The gimmick of this scene is the single shot with no cuts. The action is a little more tentative and slower than what we usually get from Jaa. But who cares. I would have hated to be the guy that screwed up that take!
III. Alley Fight from SPL aka Kill Zone (2005) Donnie Yen vs. Wu Jing
Who brings a baton to a knife fight?
Kill Zone is a depressing film with an ending so brutal and controversial it didn’t make it to some countries. This fight is brutal, mean, bloody and to me a little painful to watch. I want to say it’s more realistic, but let’s face it, you’re never going to see two guys in an alley doing this in real life. Let’s just call it raw and less choreographed.
II. Dojo Fight from Fist of Legend (1994) Jet Li vs. A Dojo
A guy walks into a dojo…
You either love or hate this film. The hate may come from the fact it is a remake, one of many, of Bruce Lee’s classic Fist of Fury from 1972. The love? Jet Li always looks cool. And when he’s tying his shoe at the end…
I. 3 Masters are revealed from Kung Fu Hustle (2004) 3 Masters vs. The Axe Gang
Best of the best!
Kung Fu Hustle is Stephen Chow’s love letter to the films he saw growing up. I had heard people say Kung Fu Hustle might be the greatest kung fu movie of all time. Actually I’ve said that myself.
When I thought about why I find this scene worthy to be on this list I thought I’d discuss the music. I love it. It takes it to another level. But then I thought no, I love this scene because it’s heroic.
Three masters come out of hiding to save the people of their little crappy town.
Heroes. That’s what makes a great martial arts fight. We root for the hero. We want them to win. Winning sometimes means literally cutting the other guy to shreds. Sometimes it’s just showing how much better of a fighter they are.
I could not be more excited than if they found the actual Ark of the Covenant. I received an email from Bing Luke today with the following link in it. He knew that I had been searching for this WPIX promo to Raiders of the Lost Ark for years to no avail. He reached out to someone at Tribune Media — as had many other New Yorkers who vaguely remembered the comical lyrics to the Indiana Jones theme song — who finally wrote back to him that they had unearthed this treasure that was created exclusively for WPIX in New York.
You can read all about how the video was unearthed as well as the actual lyrics on the WPIX website. Good luck getting the lyrics out of your head once you have heard them!
My partner-in-crime if off to Italy with his life partner and progeny until after the Fourth of July weekend. I should be able to muddle through a little bit of HTML until then (maaaaaaybe) but the real blow is the absence of Katherine which means two weeks of True Detective recaps fall on my shoulders. You can find Katherine’s take on the first episode elsewhere on this site (although unlikely via a hyperlink in this recap since I really don’t know what I am doing) and she was cautiously optimistic about where it was going.
My takeaway was how much the first episode reminded me of a James Ellroy novel. Colin Farrell doing his best accent-suppressed take on the trainwrecked Bud White, Taylor Kitsch jamming his secrets into Danny Upshaw’s closet, and… well there is no analogy for Rachel McAdams’ character since you don’t get a POV woman in an Ellroy novel until Kay Lake’s chapters in Perfidia. That comparison might not be there but there is zero chance that W Earl Brown isn’t a Buzz Meeks stand-in and the dildo-laden crime scene that is Casper’s home is pretty much every dildo-laden crime scene in the first half of Ellroy’s career. More Ellroy tropes would follow this week.
So where does NIGHT FINDS YOU find us?
As the episode opens with Vince Vaughn’s Frank Semyon laying awake and talking about water stains with Kelly Reilly’s Jordan Semyon I visualized one of those focus groups they trot out during election season to judge how the candidates fared during a debate. Each member of the group has their hand on a perception analyzer dial and they turn the dial right when they feel favorably toward the candidate and they turn it left when they don’t.
Vince Vaughn, in the immortal words of Dr. Peter Venkman, buried the needle in the opening. I just kept wondering how this scene would have played out with any other actor — hell, any other Vince, was D’Onofrio too busy? — but especially kept thinking about how much better Pizzolato’s dialogue sounded with McConaughey delivering the lines. I also wondered if there was any way Vaughn could unjam that needle from the left-most position.
We move from the water stained ceiling to the acid stained eyes of Casper on the coroner’s table. We also get a glimpse of the wreckage of what was once his junk — taken out with a point blank shotgun blast. File away for later how devastating a point blank shotgun blast can be. While Frank Velcoro, Ani Bezzerides, and Paul Woodrugh are getting the rundown from the coroner they are also given conflicting missions from their various higher-ups at the city, state and highway patrol bureaus. Bezzerides is put in charge of watching Velcoro, Velcoro reports back to Semyon and the mayor, and Woodrugh just wants to get back on the bike.
Semyon discovers that he has been left out in the cold by Casper with an under the table deal now undocumented. Five million dollars, earmarked for twelve parcels below Monterey, is not only missing but the price for those parcels has gone up. Semyon has also liquidated assets to get in on this deal and is suddenly willing to strip away his businessman’s veneer to claw his way back into the equation.
“My business partner takes my money and gets torture-murdered and what? I’m waiting on the Velcoro burnout to make like Rockford?”
Was that the needle unwedging itself from the left-most position?
We get some more insight into the players as we meet Woodrugh’s mom, played by Lolita Davidovich, in her trailer park getting her big, strong son to peel the skin off her KFC while deriding his ex-girlfriend as fat. Bezzerides and Velcoro start investigating and begin to take measure of each other while discussing vaping and robot fellatio. Bezzerides grills Mayor Chessani about Casper’s known associates while Velcoro plays along but ultimately cuts things short when her arrows start getting closer to the mark.
The task force is headquartered in what appears to be an airplane hangar where W. Earl Brown’s Teague Dixon is trying to help Woodrugh understand why he was so really so upset while getting hit on by a guy at the bank. Velcoro shows a glimpse of some real Rockford instincts pointing out that Casper’s regular bank withdrawals coincide with blank days on his calendar but he can’t stay to follow up as he has to meet up with his son to give him a new pair of sneakers.
I am always happy to see Abigail Spencer, who has had recurring roles on Mad Men and Suits and was stunning in Rectify, and I hope she gets more screen time as Alicia Brune, Velcoro’s ex. She is not happy with the way he brass-knuckled down on the father of Chad’s classmate’s father over the stolen shoes. Sole custody is the only solution that Alicia can find to keep Chad from Velcoro’s lack of decency and he responds by threatening to burn the city to the ground but the threat of a paternity test quickly backs him down.
Semyon comes to the aid of a man on the receiving end of a bump and beatdown under the freeway and he glibly lets the man know that he must have done something to piss someone off like writing a book on Vinci sweatshops. Vaughn gets the needle past 9 o’clock in this scene.
I mentioned James Ellroy earlier and there is no moment where the the similarities to the LA Quartet ring more true than when Bezzerides and Velcoro pay a visit to Casper’s botoxed psychiatrist played by Rick Springfield. As they walk through the clinic we see patients recovering from plastic surgery and I can only imagine they are working girls being cut to look like Veronica Lake. After putting up some token resistance about doctor patient confidentiality, Springfield gives up some details of Casper’s treatment. He had a weakness for young prostitutes but was making progress at the time of his death.
“There are kinds of secrets in the world all kinds of truth,” says the doctor as he makes the connection between Bezzerides and her father’s work with the Good People. Bezzerides wants nothing to do with talking about the past. Velcoro has no such reluctance as he basically fesses up to killing the man who raped his wife and being in the back pocket of Semyon as a result along with his assorted bad habits. Bezzerides does not like to distinguish between good and bad habits which seems like a fine time for Velcoro to ask about her knives.
“Fundamental difference between the sexes is that one of them can kill the other with their bare hands. Man of any size lays hands on me he is gonna bleed out in under a minute.”
Velcoro reveals that the reason they have been thrown together to investigate this crime is to fail but he won’t explicitly tell her exactly how compromised he is. Meanwhile Woodrugh and his butterfly-loving girlfriend break-up over a TMZ piece about his alleged blowjob shakedown from the previous episode. He heads downtown to smoke cigarettes and drink straight from the bottle while watching male hustlers get in and out of cars.
Semyon finds Casper’s fuckpad (another Ellroy trope) and points Velcoro in that direction while dangling a police captaincy in front of him but it holds no interest. Semyon reminds him that there are not many options for him other than a life in prison or doing what he is told to do.
“Everybody’s got the one option, you want it bad enough.”
My life has led me in a non-traditional job direction and I rarely regret that except when there are watercooler moments on television like the closing scene from this episode. Velcoro follows Semyon’s lead which is the where the murder clearly took place, only to get shotgunned twice — the second time point blank to the torso — by a man in a bird mask.
We have already seen the evidence of what a shotgun at this range can do to a man’s pelvis and it is hard to imagine how he can survive. Farrell certainly does not appear in the trailer for next week’s episode but we do hear someone discussing the crime in the context of “one of my detectives gets shot” and not in the context of “killed” so maybe there was a rock salt load in the shotgun or Velcoro was wearing a vest. Either way, I will be back next week, hand on the Vaughn-dial, to recap.
[For Banshee’s “The Rave” or any other recaps on Fetchland, assume the presence of possible spoilers.]
Amazon Summary: The Rave.An underling of Kai Proctor decides to hold a rave, selling homemade E pills to Banshee youth–including Carrie’s daughter. Catching wind of the plan, Lucas and his team orchestrate a raid, but the effects of a tainted batch of pills leads to trouble.
Welcome back to our recap / Power Rankings mashup of the made-for-Cinemax celebration of sex, violence, and authority that is Banshee. In case you missed last week’s first recap, you can check it out here or explore any and all things Banshee on Fetchland.
At the time of this writing I’ve actually seen nine of the ten first season episodes of Banshee. I wanted to get a little context and perspective before jumping into tv recaps with both feet. But my reaction having seen most of them is the same as the initial reaction I had watching “The Rave” the first time last week… I don’t understand how they ran this as the second episode of the first season. The first episode was like the surface of the sun: a bazillion nuclear explosions all detonating simultaneously, every single second. Forget about how tv pilots work in general (introduction of all the main characters, the setting, the conflicts)… It set our expectations with an over-the-top car chase that would have been perfectly satisfying in a summer action flick: Not something you see on television.
“The Rave” was a precipitous letdown by comparison. The scale of the conflict essentially deflated, and characters who were doing super cool things one episode earlier, um, suddenly weren’t.
I actually don’t mean this to be a negative, or at least not too negative. Even a show with all hits has a worst episode… I just don’t know why, coming off of that great pilot, you would position your worst episode second. If you’re a new viewer don’t get too down: Banshee bounces back quickly.
Power Rankings for “The Rave”:
III. Preacher
Up!
Previous Ranking: N/A
Previous Best Ranking: N/A
Wow this dog. Just wow. For a “character” with so little screen time, Preacher really made an impression. The slice-and-dice setup by Kai and the yum yum rapport with this beast would make the famous hunting pair Drizzt Do’Urden and Guenhwyvar positively jelly.
II. Hood
Neutral
Previous Ranking: 2
Previous Best Ranking: 2
While clashing with Brock might have been ill-advised, the de facto alliance made with Hopewell over the rescue of Deva more than makes up for it. Plus, Hood cashed in on his usual trifecta of [anonymous] sex, rave-ravaging violence, and pilfered police authority through the second episode.
I. Kai
Neutral
Previous Ranking: 1
Previous Best Ranking: 1
Kai moved with seemingly impossible speed in his final encounter with Hanson. “Sixty seconds”? Jeez. You really get the feeling that, between how quickly he lopped a guy’s finger off, tossed it to calibrate a taste in his ravenous murder-mutt, and had him out the door that this is not the first time Kai has dealt thusly with an out-of-line employee. Alongside the episode’s post-credits scene at the meat packing plant… You’ve really got to wonder what kind of wares Proctor is packing / purveying at the meat factory.
Banshee Biggest Loser: Hanson
Ah fiction: The Venn diagram overlap of “greedy” and “stupid” crooks just never fails, does it?
[For “The Western Book of the Dead” or any other recaps on Fetchland, assume the presence of possible spoilers.]
HBO summary: The disappearance of a city manager ignites a police investigation.
There’s impotence at hand for the trio of men and even the woman at the helm of this season’s True Detective. Vinci Police Detective Velcoro (Colin Farrell) doesn’t know if his son is his or the product of a rape his wife suffered nine months before the child was born. Even if he were over that uncertainty, the kid endures bullying at school so… Velcoro drinks booze all day and pounds the face of the bully’s dad on his own front stoop.
California Highway Patrolman, Woodrugh (Taylor Kitsch) deals with literal impotence and takes a little blue pill then waits for it on the toilet while his hottie girlfriend awaits in her butterfly-themed bedroom on the other side of the door. His wartime days as a mercenary left him scarred in every way possible… And thus Woodrugh drives his motorcycle over a hundred MPH without a helmet, his pretty cheeks flapping in the wind.
Although he appears to have a bountiful bank account, Semyon (Vince Vaughn) can’t catch a break either in this episode. It’s unclear if he’s as shady as he seems but one thing’s for sure, he wasn’t this well dressed in the 90s when he helped Velcoro get some info on the guy that raped his wife. Nowadays he’s well off but bummed. Not only can’t Semyon get his wife pregnant but he also can’t seal a business deal. Osip, the guy on the other side of the transaction, insists on seeing Vaughn’s pal Caspere. Problem is, Caspere’s missing and then ends up dead.
The family frustrations faced by Bezzerides (Rachel McAdams) are forced into her day by job duties for the Ventura Sheriff’s office. She runs into her sister while busting up a porno webcam business… And then gets shamed for giving a sh*t. We find out her first name is Antigone when she later has an awkward father/daughter chat when investigating some sort of yoga cult her dad seems to be running. Her father’s distance and weirdness may explain Bezzerides interest in knives and kinky sex stuff.
All the characters end up swirled around Caspere. Valcoro, a detective who works as muscle for Semyon on the side, investigates him as a missing person. Woodrugh finds Caspere dead, propped up on a bench by the side of the road with his wallet placed neatly on his lap. Bezzerides and Valcoro are then separately called onto the scene in their respective highly intoxicated states and Semyon is cursing Caspere’s name for bungling his deal through absence.
The characters are as embroiled in secrets and inner turmoil this season as they were in the first round of True Detective but there’s promise here for a greater symmetry between the sexes. Season One treated women with a less than equitable measure of narrative but granted them all the nudity. Now we have Bezzerides and Semyon’s wife, his business partner, is even described as “brainy.” Sing it sisters! It seems you will master many a plot line this season and we can’t wait to watch you swinging those knives.
Amazon summary: Pilot.Lucas Hood, a recently paroled master thief, assumes the identity of a rural Pennsylvania sheriff to elude mob vengeance and reunite with Carrie, his onetime lover and partner in crime.
I am Jon Snow.
I know nothing; well, nothing about Banshee.
Actually I know one thing from the Top 8 Magic podcast; which is that my BFF BDM is watching Banshee on the treadmill these days. That sounds like a recommendation, no?
I turn on the Banshee without so much as reading the Amazon summary you already have. This is what I find:
30 seconds in – Hood leaves a pretty rough-looking prison, walking into the dusty wilderness, before
1 minute in – Hood meets a super hot waitress at a roadside diner, then engages in some silent-but-serious bedroom eyes (resulting immediately in conversation-free sex in a not-bedroom with her), whereupon
1 minute 30 seconds in – Hood steals a pretty sweet sports car and drives to NYC then
2 minutes 40 seconds in – Hood busts up the seemingly legitimate salon-front of his old criminal associate Job (finally engaging in some dialogue); upon leaving he gets back into “his” car and
4 minutes in – Hood gets in what must have been a massively expensive street chase (production-wise) that results in an impressive orgy of crashing cars, flying bullets, collateral damage, and the upended doubledecker tour bus from this post’s hero image
At 6 minutes in Hood burgles a motorcycle and rides off into the sunset, evading a second salvo of gunplay.
AND THEN opening credits roll.
SIX MINUTES IN!
Well, they certainly got my attention.
“You had me at hello.”
The Banshee pilot slows down considerably from credits on, but never to the point that you can actually un-glue your eyes from the screen.
I certainly liked it enough to resolve to write something for our fledgling site!
Rather than traditional “episode recaps” I decided I would punch up some simplified Power Rankings for each installment. Here goes for “Pilot”:
III. Job
While Job’s sashay getaway was a mite predictable, it was still cool (as in “refreshingly cool”) to see the difficult-to-peg salon-owning computer hacker blowing up the ostensibly much tougher / hella masculine bad(der) bad guys while pulling up stakes.
II. Hood
On the sex-violence-authority scale Hood really cashed in during the “Pilot”. He gets laid thirty seconds after his prison release; racks up 2.5 criminal bodies; and assumes the identity of the local constable, all before the Easter Egg. How great a day (or episode) did the next guy have to beat Hood out for El Numero Uno?
I. Kai
The show’s nominal antagonist shows off more twists and turns than the letter S in the first sixty minutes of Banshee. He seems to have enough resources to buy up all the local authority, is quick to knock out every tooth of the odd insubordinate subordinate (and instruct he puts them back in his mouth)… And then gets intimate with one of his [presumably criminally] kept women but not before dressing her like an Amish girl and revealing an as-yet-unexplained Jesus back tattoo to the audience mid-moaning. Authority! Violence! Sex! What’s up with this guy? More twists and turns than the letter S for Kai.
Banshee Biggest Loser: Moody
If you ever asked yourself how bad a day could get before it got really, finally, bad for a tv character… Find Moody’s ghost and ask him. Maybe he’ll be able to gum an answer out for you.
Tell me that doesn’t look like a giant dildo.
