[Hot Tea] March 21st - April 3rd
Serving #15
Wow, it’s April already, readers. It seems as if just recently we were entering the darker days of winter (in the Northern hemisphere), but now here we are on the doorstep of spring — and, with the period of eligibility for Emmy hopefuls coming to a close at the end of May, I’m sure we’re in for a swath of ambitious television this season.
To that end, this week we have almost entirely all television premieres on tap, with one streaming début of a much lauded film from last year to round our tray out. Cups up!
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Thermae Romae Novae (Season 1)
Netflix - Animation - (Historical) Fiction Figments
Synopsis
A young architect of the ancient Roman baths finds his inspiration in the modern bathing culture of Japan.
My take
Get the chuckles out, reader; I had some of them myself when I first encountered this brilliant little show on Netflix. An anime series about an ancient Roman architect who time travels to modern Japanese onsen and “inn-sen” for inspiration is certainly a curious one. Part sci-fi, part history lesson, part travelogue, part inspection of the creative process, and part coming-of-age drama, the series is unlike any I’ve seen before and, here, that’s a great thing.
Charmingly humorous, well researched, and uniquely placed to cross-culturally bridge Western and Eastern traditions about a fundamental part of “well-being” — hot baths — the show is a well-spring of insightful reflection and relaxation. It made me wonder why the baths aren’t more a part of our current Western cultural traditions than they are, appreciate how carefully their legacies have been preserved in Japan, and long for a trip to one where I could enjoy the delights illustrated on screen.
That the woman behind the illustrations appears in live-action documentary footage at the end of each episode, to capstone it with a visit to an actual bath in Japan, adds meaningful depth and tangibility to the series. Not only do we as the audience get to enjoy her work about the creative process in the main text, but then in each appendix we get to witness her own creative process nestled within her contagious respect for the cultural institution she explores through her animated narrative. It is a simple and sublimely smart choice, elevating the show above the level of fascinating historical fiction about everyday humanity by grounding that fiction in real places and experiences that we as viewers could but for the costs of international transportation to Japan actually enjoy for ourselves. And, wow again, did I want to.
That the show doesn’t shy away from but rather readily embraces the legitimacy of the ancient Roman attitudes toward physicality, nudity, and sexuality is just the progressive and inclusive amenity atop this piping hot bath of a cake — er, show.
Temperature check
Steaming
Halo (Series Premiere)
Paramount+ - Sci-Fi - Man, Muscle, War
Synopsis
During a raid on her village, a young woman encounters a rogue battle chief who takes her fate into his hands.
My take
I never really played the Halo series of games for Microsoft’s XBox. Not only did I never own the XBox — I’m more of a Nintendo person — but I also never really found the gruff hyper-masculinized war game that was its signature appealing. If I were ever going to war, it’d be in Sid Meier’s Civilization.
In any case, because of my lack of familiarity with the history of the games, I can’t appreciate any of the Easter eggs or any of the thematic world-building for its accuracy to the games’ world and story. This take therefore is just on the merits of the show as a show, specifically a sci-fi drama concentrating around themes like genocide, morality, and the value of human culture and connection.
To that end, Halo in its single premiere episode is so far a lukewarm rewash of stories like Cameron’s (2009) Avatar, Eastwood and Hall’s (2014) American Sniper, and Disney’s Pocahontas (1995) — even if the adaptation to film of Blizzard Entertainment’s (1994-Present) World of Warcraft by Jones and Leavitt (2016) is in its creation a closer relative. A hardened soldier inserts himself (largely ignorantly) into a pre-existing conflict of an imperial force with the native population and, amidst their disjunct trauma, recovers the seed of (sub-masculine) human feeling he’d once had as a child but since lost to the duties of his military service. At this point, it’s almost a tale as old as time, as often as it’s retold on our American screens — and no small wonder why, with how obsessed the American mainstream can become with what are really coded romances with male appeal, in which graceful princesses bewitch against their “better judgments” thick, flexed dreadnaughts of men who once were children, filled with inspiration. It’s basically softcore erotica for a heterosexual readership, this time aimed primarily at men.
And that conclusion, readers, is undoubtedly where this story is headed. The one young beautiful female human who happens to live among monsters calls out to the one man who happens to stand out from the rest, to be her destiny, fired with the simultaneous passion of enmity and attraction. If only she (and we) can worship the stoic manliness enshrouding him enough that it may melt away from benevolent and gentle influence, then we can learn more about him than just his will and ability to fight — which, literally, is all that we know about him for the majority of the first episode. I could basically write the whole rest of the story here for you now, with I’m sure a high degree of predictive accuracy.
The one wrinkle that saves the drama from being endlessly rote is the addition of an intelligent young female character to the cast. She, the sole survivor of the initial attack on her village, is, I hope, the actual main character of this drama (even though experience tells me not to hold my breath). At least she’s around to throw in the necessary and obvious questions at the soldier and the military establishment he (ostensibly at least) represents, and otherwise foil the general vibe of the series. How her role (and to a lesser degree the role of the “mother” of the main character) will play out in the series, however, is yet to be determined.
While I’ll hang my hat here on the hope that the writers and show runners will add some justice to an otherwise too familiar story, I ultimately can’t say that I really expect any better than:
Temperature check
Cold
Starstruck (Season 2)
HBOMax - Comedy - Romantic Comedy
Synopsis
After deciding not to decide to leave England separately, an actor and the “quirky” woman he’s fallen for must learn to live with the consequences of their decisions.
My take
The first season of Matafeo’s Starstruck was one of the most marvelous miniseries a person could hope to find, especially in the romantic comedy section, a notoriously lackluster subgenre. The writing and acting worked together with panache, to create a charmingly eccentric yet immediately recognizable dynamic between two people who happen to meet and fall in love in London. If you haven’t seen it, think the early train scene of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Gondry [dir.] & Kaufman [wri.], 2004) meets the at-Sam’s-home scenes of Garden State (Braff, 2004) steeped in the thematic worldview of Juno (Reitman [dir.] & Cody [wri.], 2007), minus the harsh scrape of misanthropy in each.
The series’ new second season, however, I think has missed the mark. While the same direction of feeling is there, the overall effect to me is more like that of a sophomore’s attempt to live up to her freshman-year home-run than that of a genuine player on its prime: The batter may believe that she knows what she’s doing, but is actually overcompensating for her true underconfidence in grip, stance, and timing. (Look at me, making a baseball analogy! lol) Ultimately, the plot is just a bizarre, contrived recycle of the narrative arc of the first season — and, readers, you know how I hate artificial resets of plot.
I suppose, it’s not as if there weren’t any joy to be had in this recycle, but who’s really excited about reading a reprint of yesterday’s news? Come on, Starstruck; star-strike me harder than that. I know you have it in you.
Temperature check
Cold
Pachinko (Series Premiere)
Apple TV+ - Drama - Now & Then
Synopsis
At two points in her life, a Korean woman must choose whether to live for herself or for others around her.
My take
If you’ve followed Hot Tea closely, readers, you’ll know: The recent slate of Apple TV+ shows has had me thinking that the platform recently turned a corner in terms of the quality of its original programming. While nothing so far has rocked me deeply to my core, everything has at least had me shouting investedly at the TV.
My hope was that Pachinko would continue the trend, but the reality is that it hasn’t — not even with last year’s ‘Rich Pick’ nominee (and Best Supporting Actress Oscar winner) Yuh-Jung Youn in one of the leading roles (as the older version of the Korean woman at the show’s center).
In short, it’s pretty; it’s just also kind of dull. It took me until the end of the third episode of the series’ premiere three episodes, to feel as if I were starting to understand the full story and its appeal — no ringing endorsement.
But I’ll stick with this series. I am curious now about where it’s going, and the historical period and related consequences it uses as settings (i.e., seaside Korea under imperial Japan) are largely unfamiliar to me. Still, I won’t be surprised if my attention wanders while following it.
Temperature check
Tepid
Julia (Series Premiere)
HBOMax - Comedy - Making it
Synopsis
A newly published chef looks to public television for the promise of a substantial life by career.
My take
If you’re like myself, readers, then your greatest encounter with Julia Child’s biography — especially until the documentary film Julia (Cohen & West) from this past year (2021) — was with Nora Ephron’s semi-execrable (2009) film Julie & Julia, semi-execrable because while half of it was fascinating and lovely the other half — well, let’s just say, “didn’t become the caliber of actress we know Amy Adams to be.” Meryl Streep’s fortunate half, however, about Julia’s initial transformation from emotionally restless wife of an American diplomat to motivated and published chef of French cuisine takes the decades of reverence that followed the publication of her, Simone Beck, and Louisette Bertholle’s (1961) Mastering the Art of French Cooking and ultimately led to Child’s being enshrined in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C., almost as forgone conclusions naturally or even inevitably resulting from the prestige of that publication and the tenacity of the woman who got it there (through years of toil over onion-skin-based copies, rewrites, and rejections). While perhaps in that light it comes as no surprise that Julia was eventually as prolific and popular in American culture as she became, it nevertheless bears an explicit statement here: Julie & Julia is at best an incomplete record of Julia’s road to becoming ‘the Julia Child.’ The perseverance that did carry her through to the publication would need to carry her through much more, in order for American households to regularly receive her Emmy-award winning The French Chef (1963-1973) on their television screens. That much is abundantly clear, after only the first ten minutes of the new series Julia on HBOMax.
Yet, while it’s true that in a market with two already available narrative histories of Child’s life Julia (2022) does a great job at immediately attesting to the benefit of its own addition to the pool, the show I’m not sure has too much more to offer us in terms of fantastic storytelling. Sure, yes, it’s Julia; Sarah Lancashire, a two-time BAFTA Award winner for her work on British television, delivers a skilled portrayal of the woman we all know and cherish. And, yes, the supporting cast does well with their roles also, David Hyde Pierce as Paul Child and Isabella Rossellini as Simone Beck especially. However, beyond continuing the line of stable character traits we can recognize from Julie & Julia and other media, this Julia offers little more than the promise of more of the same to any cheer of “encore, encore”: essentially, a fitting reply but none that will awe or inspire. It’s as if the show were the unofficial “second season” of Streep’s half of Ephron’s film, with some central recasting decisions to make it viable for television.
Now, to be fair, I am ready to be fascinated by learning about the hard work and specific negotiations the real Julia had to undertake in order to push her television show into its eventual national syndication; a visit to Child’s home and world is never an uncharming one; and, I’m sure, many an audience member will be delighted to learn just how irreverent the real woman actually was, we having only had the merest taste of it in the 2009 film — so mere in fact it was excusable as an eccentricity (i.e., pasta “‘hotter than a stiff cock!’”). So, readers, have at it if you will; there are many extremely valid reasons to like and watch this show.
I just wouldn’t ever expect to be wowed by perhaps more than the show’s impressive sets and costumes.
Temperature check
Tepid
Slow Horses (Season Premiere)
Apple TV+ - Action - Underdog Spies
Synopsis
A professionally ambitious young man in the British intelligence endures a potentially silver-lined penance after flunking a high-stakes drill.
My take
Unlike Apple TV+’s other show this serving, Slow Horses begins with a bang: a secret-intelligence-clinched show-down in an airport. This high drama only later becomes mundane, once it’s already “hooked you” by inducing you into wanting to know more about the central actors in that opening bang of a sequence. It’s a leaf out of the ‘Dan Brown Handbook for Exciting Writing,’ an intangible guideline that exists sadly because, like disinformation, it works.
Let me be clear: Not all opening sequences that fit neatly within the action genre conform with the techniques I’ve cited; only those that hype mise-en-scene drama and then cut away to mundanity without a clue about how the two components may be connected fit there — and for these sub-cases only is the dramatic resolution of the episode sufficient to tell whether the gimmicky gambit might make something more of itself than addiction.
In this sub-case, Slow Horses is aptly named, as an imperative, not a noun phrase. “Slow the horses down” is what the show does, both at diegetic and narrative levels; not only do we as the audience settle into what’s really an office drama tinged with espionage — one more along the lines of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Alfredson [dir.], O’Connor, & Straughan [wri.], 2011) than along the lines of The Bourne Identity (Liman [dir.], Gilroy, & Herron [wri.], 2002), a semblance which makes the casting of Gary Oldman, who was Oscar-nominated for his role in the former, seem all the more appropriate — but so do the characters themselves, by their own necessities. The protagonist, at least of the opening action sequence, literally refuses to be tempered by his handler (played by Kristin Scott Thomas in a chillingly authoritarian role, which I truly hope will later reveal many hidden layers) and instead runs straight into catastrophe, consequently halting his career by sending it into a kind of professional purgatory, where it turns out we also find ourselves after that opening drama.
How much the show wants us to make of this obvious parallelism between protagonist and viewer I’m not yet sure. It could be merely the device the show writers choose to use, to draw the viewing audience in more closely to the central story and induce the people in that audience into empathizing more than we otherwise might with that story’s main character. Or, it could be the show’s as-yet mostly unattested diagnosis of us the audience: too headstrong to do the hard work of slowing down, taking stock, and learning therefrom, whether the subject be the environment, our self-government, or even our individual selves. We’ll really have to see.
For me, it’s the promise of this interesting take on the plot points, not the almost trashy-level way of structuring them, that is going to keep me the most interested in seeing where the show goes in its first season. But for that possible take I might have to toss this show into the bin of underserved if spirited televisual dramas like the later seasons of Netflix’ once powerful House of Cards (Willimon [creator], 2013-2018) and AMC’s Turn (Silverstein [developer], 2014-2017).
Slow Horses, eh? By nature or by structure?
Temperature check
Tepid (just barely)
Jerrod Carmichael: Rothaniel
HBOMax - Comedy - Stand-up
Synopsis
Comedian and storyteller Jerrod Carmichael discusses his fears and the origin of his name in front of a live audience.
My take
Recent Grammy Award winner (for his work on his fantastic pandemic special, Bo Burnham: Inside, 2021) Bo Burnham sensitively directs what I’d call in mood at least a ‘candle-lit confession’ from comedian Jerrod Carmichael, who carefully and creatively meditates on his past and his future, with special attention to the origin of his actual first name. While not dramatic or flashy by any degree (as many stand-up specials tend to be), this special is soulful and interesting — even if it does take a minute to unfold itself — in a way that most other stand-up specials don’t even try to be. For that alone, it deserves mention here.
Temperature check
Tepid
Atlanta (Season 3 Premiere)
Hulu - Drama / Comedy - Blackness in Society
Synopsis
While Earn wakes up from oversleeping on his management of Paper Boi’s performing career, a young boy inadvertently draws the cold shoulder of the “well-meaning” adults around him and must struggle to correct his ‘mistake.’
My take
It’s been a long time coming, but as always I’d rather wait years for worthwhile television than have mediocre substitutes regularly thrust upon me.
The opening pair of episodes of the much anticipated third season of Glover’s (2016-Present) Atlanta stays true to form, as one of the most thoughtful and exciting narrative dramas available on all streaming platforms. One episode a haunting parable about the current status of blackness — especially male blackness — in American society and the other an international look at how American perceptions of that blackness interface with extra-cultural norms and traditions, this third season heaves piano-sized questions at the viewers and makes no apologies for posing them. Achieving a phenomenal presence and groundedness amidst its signature surrealism, the show operates intelligently on the premise that a healthy dialogue can proceed from the listener making it clear to the speaker what he thinks was said. How the speaker then acts on that information is the nature of this method of progress and, by design, Glover’s exact intent in stimulation.
While this small review is of course far too short to say anything substantive about the highly complex interconnections of race, gender, nationality, history, and compassion on which the various stories of Atlanta weaves their plots, I can at least use this space to say that in viewership of those tapestries and, consequently, in participation in that dialogue Glover set up is a worthwhile investment of your time.
Temperature check
Hot
Mass (2021)
Hulu • Drama • Parental Grievances
Synopsis
Two sets of parents meet in the back room of a church, to discuss the circumstances that led them there.
My take
I didn’t want to let this serving of Hot Tea go without taking the opportunity to extol the virtues of this small independent film, official ‘Rich Pick’ for Editing from the past year and additional ‘Rich Pick’ nominee for Anne Dowd’s stunning supporting performance, because it is only recently available for streaming on Hulu.
I won’t say too much about it, lest I spoil the emotional impact of the story by giving away too much of the plot, but it’s altogether a drama worth watching. Were the other acting categories in my yearly awards not already so competitive with other performances, other actors from this film would certainly have made the cuts as nominees also. A tight internal piece, extremely unflashy and reigned totally by directing, acting, and — crucially — editing, the film is perhaps the only reason you’ll ever see me encourage you, readers, to go to Mass.
Temperature check
Hot
Retrospective
On hold until next time, readers.
Cheers! 🫖
So sad the Julia Childs show is tepid, gonna try it out anyway.