Scarpetta

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I don't often write about television. A nonexhaustive search at the archives suggests I've only ever written about (chronologically) Planet Earth, Pushing Daisies, 30 Rock (in a post that has since fallen victim to entropy), Dexter, and, the only two recent enough to also appear on Thubstack, She-Hulk and Wednesday.

So the fact that I'm taking time to do this? Please take that as evidence that I feel strongly about this show, one way or another.

Let me start by admitting I don't watch a lot of tv. And even tv I like, I often abandon. To stick with the Amazon ecosystem for a moment, I watched the first two seasons of The Boys and all but the last episode of the first season of Invincible—and I liked them both—but I just reached a moment when I was done. And that was it. I've never been tempted to pick them back up.

TV's just a bigger commitment than I'm willing to make. And unless it's something Lady Steed and I want to watch together, I probably won't.

And then there's the fact that it's difficult to advertize to me. Even things I want to hear about, I often don't because I've set up my life to be nearly ad-free. I'm quite happy with my ad-free life, even though the movies I've missed because I don't see ads are...voluminous.

Plus, even if an ad were to make its way to me, I probably won't pay attention to it or remember it. I think I may have seen a little square or something on Amazon with SCARPETTA in big red allcaps, but beyond recognizing it was a Prime Video offering, I'm not sure I even noticed. Even with me actively noticing Nicole Kidman for a few decades now. (Probably since my friend made me watch Far and Away and certainly since she was in Batman Forever [in fact, one moment with her and maybe Jim Carrey's laugh might be all I remember about that movie now].)

So what caught my attention this time? Criticism. I was driving home from somewhere and David Bianculli's Fresh Air review of Scarpetta was riveting, compelling, fascinating, and kept me in the car a couple minutes after arrival to reach the end of his observations, which ended: "I realize this whole series structure sounds complicated, and it is. But it's rewarding, too. I've seen all eight episodes, and the plots and the characters really hold up.... There's a lot to applaud here and a lot to absorb. And the way Prime Video is streaming it, you can gobble it up as fast as you can to help keep things straight, just like a good novel—or two good novels."

Okay, David. I'm convinced.

I started watching it a couple weeks later on April 1st and finished April 22nd, which is a fast watch of eight episodes for me.

Before I start talking about what I did and did not like, let's talk about how the show works.

As hinted at by David Bianculli, the show is based on two novels in Patricia Cornwall's 29-book (so far) Scarpetta series. One from the early years, the ’90s, when Kay Scarpetta is just starting out as a chief medical officer, and one from the recent past, when she has three decades of storied excellence behind her. I've seen Cornwall's name on many a massmarket paperback, but I'd never been tempted to pick one up. Although I've been making an effort to read more mysteries and thrillers of late, I have a natural antipathy to The Biggest Names Out There.

Because there are two time periods (primarily two, but there are flashbacks to even more) the characters are played by (at least) two different actors. For instance, ’90s Nicole Kidman is played by Rosy McEwen (in what must be a star-making turn) and ’90s Bobby Cannavale (most recently seen in Only Murders in the Building—which I really like and have not written about) is played by his son, Jake Cannavale. This is great. Nicole Kidman is beautiful but she doesn't look 29 or however old she's supposed to be in the other timeline. And letting two excellent actors work on the same character lets the audience triangulate the "actual person" in a way that feels somehow deeper than what even the most excellent actor can do on their own. As an acting showcase, Scarpetta shines. And the way the two plots work together to create levels of dramatic irony and offer different surprises than either plot would on its own is also impressive—especially considering this script is based on previously existing properties that go back thirty-seven years.

Which is a chance to offer props to Cornwall. Clearly, she is a master planner.

But now let's get to why I almost quit watching the show during and after each of the first three or four episodes.

The show is largely about cracking serial-killer cases, one in each timeline, that seem like they might be related. The show has very few qualms about showing us violent, sexually grotesque murders. We see women suffering awfully, tied up, stabbed, you name it. It does have a few boundaries it won't cross but they are indeed few. It's unpleasant stuff.

But Dr. Kay Scarpetta is dedicated to treating the dead with respect. She treats corpses with dignity and demands of herself, on their behalf, to discover and tell the truth about the dead for the dead—and for those who love them.

This is noble and fine, but the camera does not share this dedication. The camera in Scarpetta is much more like the serial killers than our hero. The number of times a mid-autopsy corpse is positioned so her nipple is just visible in the corner of the sceen is dispicable. I find it fascinating how perverse and cruel the camera is in this show. Scarpetta desires to make her space one of dignity for the dead. The camera can't stop gazing at them as if their corpses are starlets in a Russ Meyer picture.

But they're not like Russ Meyer's girls because they are dead. And since the camera has decided it won't show us certain elements of living intercourse, it subsitutes with penetration of the dead. Scalpels cut into the flesh, gloved hands dig around in severed necks, fingers push inside bullet holes. Frankly, it's gross. Recounting it for you, I'm amazed I kept going. Because, no joke, it's...just really gross. It feels like violation after violation that can only be justified because, listen up, this is Prestige Television.

The only thing that brought me back in those early episodes was the excellent character work and, later on, questions of plot and identity that became too compelling to ignore.

And this is where I'm throwing out a spoiler warning because now I'm going to start talking about important things that resolve (or do not) towards the end of the series. If you want to continue, resume after the image. Otherwise, feel free to skip down to comment-leaving.

did you know "scarpetta" means mopping up the sauce on your plate with bread?
so appropriate!

As you might guess from what I've already said, these questions of who did what and how does who feel about whom wouldn't matter if we weren't so invested in the characters. Kay and her sister Dorothy are fighting with a constantness I find wild, but they also have moments of deep connection. In both timelines. Their relationships with their husbands are complex and messy, and we're not sure, not consistently, how much we're rooting for either marriage to survive. Kay's niece / Dorothy's daughter, whom they co-raised (messily), is a precocious child then a suffering widow, who can't quite find her footing.

These things matter. Should Lucy be spending so much time with an AI version of her dead wife? Do our feelings change when we learn the dead wife invented the tech but did not approve of it and made Lucy promise never to use it? Does Pete actually love Kay more than his wife, Dorothy? What are his responsibilities to his boss versus his wife? does the longer length of the former relationship alter that math? Is Kay's husband a sociopath who uses his job as an FBI profiler to get men to confess to his murders? And hey—who killed the AI wife? Is Lucy safe with the grief counselor with a grudge against the family? Is that possible danger part of why she's there? Who in the world is Kay looking at in shock as her blood-spattered face stares off-camera in the final shot of the season?

Yes, the show ends on a cliffhanger. An excellent one. But still. Cliffhangers....

These questions work better because all these people are total messes. The heroes are screwed up in deep and painful ways. But this isn't really a matter of engrained cynicism. Kay's a mess but she genuinely is on a mission to serve the dead in righteousness. Ben really is a sociopath attracted to serial murder but he's also doing a good job not murdering women. (It's a higher bar for some people than others.) Pete probably could love Kay but he's mostly a gentleman. Even if he is a cop about to face consequences (for the first time) after beating a suspect.

All people are a mix of good and bad. You have to see both to tell the truth about them. And, in melodrama (even with good lighting and acting, this is still melodrama), the good and the bad need to be n-times greater.

That's what Scarpetta offers.

For all my reservations, in the end, I think I loved it.

(I wonder if the second season will arrive quickly enough for me to return?) 

Initial thoughts on Wednesday

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I decided long ago not to write comprehensively about television the way I attempt to do with books and movies. In part because when do you write (episode? season? entire show? —what if I don’t finish?), in part because I don’t watch a lot of tv, in part because tv viewing can be incidental in a way sitting down with a book cannot be, in part because I just don’t take television as seriously, etc etc etc.

This does mean I haven’t written about show I could say much about (Ted Lasso, Tales from the Loop, Mrs Maisel, Severance) but it also means that when I do actually watch tv (not that often, alas) I don’t feel any pressure (which means I didn’t have to talk about how terrible Loot was). It remains meaningless in a way I’ve lost with books and movies. Don’t get me wrong—I LIKE writing about all books and movies—but I am more intentional there.

I love Charles Addams and his kooky creations and I love most of the first half of Tim Burton’s career, but if it weren’t for a couple “surprised” reviews of Wednesday, I would have assumed he was just falling deeper in the hole of cliche he’s been digging the last twenty years.

But here’s where the fact that it’s television works in its favor.

So by request of the 13yrold and the peer pressure he feels, we have now watched the first four episodes of Wednesday and I am loving it. The world has entered my dreams every single night since we started. I love the aesthetics and the sets and the acting.

But I realized recently that I probably would not like it if it were a movie. The show does go against some of my perceived rules for the Addams Family universe and it does engage, lightly, in some of my pet peeves re stories about teenagers. It takes some shortcuts with characterization and it can be sloppy with geography and this and that and th’other things—stuff I would likely complain about and would ruin the Time Burton movie called Wednesday but which roll off me like water since it’s “just” television.

I’m not sure what the moral for me is here. I mean—we all need some candy in our diet, so I don’t feel like I need to up my tv game. I watch so little compared to most people and I’ve been disappointed by pretty much every Marvel show so I’m still capable of being snobby (perhaps the end of Wednesday will ruin it the same way the ends of WandaVision, Loki, etc, lessened those shows for me).

Maybe it’s just that the Addams Family is so deeply nostalgic for me that I can forgive minor failures as long as the whole rings true for me. I dunno.

But I’m loving it and I hope that continues.

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Thoughts on She-Hulk (and no, I have not done my research)

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We just watched the first two episodes of She-Hulk and what I feel like saying would be quite the series of tweets, so a post of some kind makes more sense. But, in short, I’m on team bad-cgi.

Like a lot of pointless pop-culture brouhahas, I was perfectly happy not to form my own opinion. Some people said the cgi was bad. Other people said the first people were sexist. And some of them probably are, based on what I also heard about the “woke dialogue.”

But the thing is: the cgi is bad. It is!

And this is not a comment, as Disney PR would have it, me being dismissive of certain body types (excellent defelction, Disney PR! way to put me on the defensive!). The cgi just ain’t good.

Jennifer Walters’s rendering is not good. Bruce Banner’s is better (probably because they’re lifting it from the movie?) but it hardly matters because the animation for both charactersn is first-Shrek level. When He- and She-Hulk rumble in the jungle, they genuinely look like Shrek and Fiona jumping around. It’s embarrassing. And so out of place given the wit in the writing and performances.

As mentioned above, I have not done my research, but the tweet that blamed this on non-unionized animators seems like a pretty occam way to explain the failures here. Just pay your animators enough to care! Give them the time to do their jobs!

Not that anyone should be surprised if Disney is shafting people. I mean—it’s been two years and nothing’s changed here, after all.

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Dexter: season four

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I don't  usually write about tv. For a lot of reasons. 1) I don't really watch that much. 2) I'm hardly a completist. 3) I'm already writing too many words on books and movies and Mormon art. 4) Tv is a burden---so much time required and more being required all the time. Perhaps someday I'll regret not having a record of tv like I do of movies and books, but what's life without some regret. Surely I need more.

Anyway, I'm writing about Dexter season four for a few reasons. First, I recently read the original novel and liked it. Second, I had liked the first season when it appeared on CBS during the writers strike. Third, when this season was new, everyone constantly spoke of John Lithgow's excellent (and terrifying) performance. Fourth, like the novel, I happened upon the dvds in a Little Free Library.

Also like the book, it's been sitting in my classroom for a few years waiting for my attention. Somehow, time alone during covid campus in my empty classroom seemed like a good time to first read the book then watch the dvds during my lunches. Time well spent. (Though interrupted by other movies and other tv shows and a slewton of news reading.)

John Lithgow is as wonderful as advertised.

But, while I enjoyed the show overall, I did find a number of things annoying. The soap opera nonsense ---with the office romance, for instance. The bad policing (in more than one sense). And the talking-to-dad thing got old. It's a fine device, but they rely on it too much. And, perhaps most disappointing, Dexter's kills. I'm not sure what I would prefer, because the minimal violence is really my preference, but one of the best things about the novel was how important the kills were to Dexter---and they weren't the show's hammer-to-the-skull quick either, they were slow dissections, keeping the victim alive as long as possible, as Dexter tries to understand his compulsion. It would be horrible to watch and I would not enjoy it, but without that slowness the kills didn't have much meaning or purpose, imo.

Anyway, none of that is what led to me writing this post.

One of the annoyances to me early on was the relationship with Rita. Although I liked what they were attempting, it took most of the season for me to start believing in it. At that point, I was riveted, genuinely interested in what next steps they might take. This became, by far, the most exitting part of the season those last couple episodes---more than the live-saving or the life-ending.

And then

* * S * P * O * I * L * E * R * * A * L * E * R * T * *
* * S * P * O * I * L * E * R * * A * L * E * R * T * *
* * S * P * O * I * L * E * R * * A * L * E * R * T * *

Rita's murdered. Just like that. In the final moments of the season.

I went to Wikipedia and read plot recaps for the remaining seasons and, as I've mulled over it the last couple days, I've realized that this murder was a worse storytelling decision than I first realized.

My initial reaction was sadness because I had finally come to love Rita and was hoping for things to work as well as possible.

Then I was annoyed because what the hell.

Then I rolled my eyes when I realized she'd been fridged.

And then I became angry because she wasn't even fridged. Rita was not murdered so Dexter's character could develop. Rita was murdered so Dexter's character would not develop.

And that. That pissed me off.