Welcome back from the U.S.’ long weekend, readers. I hope that Presidents’ Day afforded you time to relax and take in a new cup of tea. I know that’s how I spent it.
On tap today we have the return of two beloved comediennes, the new adaptation of a video game to series, and a retro-futuristic workplace drama, among others.
Cheers! ☕️🫖
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Season 4 Premiere)
Amazon Prime - Comedy - Getting there
Synopsis
A determined Manhattanite grapples for traction in her life and career, after an on-stage faux pas costs her an upward trajectory.
My take
For years now, Amy Sherman-Palladino’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel has been the cornerstone series of Amazon Prime’s original offerings. A surprise hit for the platform, which until the series’ début had mostly trafficked in initially promising but ultimately lackluster series including Transparent (Soloway [creator], 2014-2019) and The Man in the High Castle (Spotnitz [creator], 2015-2019)1, the series has sustained its appeal on the virtues of its excellent cast and, critically, its nimble writing. The high gloss of the series’ second and third seasons — no doubt the by-product of the critical and commercial success the series found after its first season’s release — has likely helped, by making the show a kind of fashion standard: one not attempting to design or style for today per se, except to inspire on the basis of the comeliest looks of the midcentury past. Second and third season nominations and wins of the Creative Arts Primetime Emmys for make-up and hairstyling, period costuming, and cinematography readily agree.
The lack of a Primetime Emmy award nominations of the series for comedy writing since its first season’s win of the category, however, suggests that the series may be lacking a degree of inventiveness as it matures. Now entering its fourth season, a time point by which many a flagging show has started to show if not wallow in its own morass, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel must confront the question, “What am I still doing on the air?”
Considering how the show has handled its central narrative so far, readers, I can say confidently that I haven’t yet wondered about the show’s answer. Perhaps it’s the internal chemistry and comradely dysphoria among Brosnahan, Borstein, Shaloub, and the other members of the central cast (whose Emmy nominations have been sustained over the years); perhaps it’s the sustained personal appeal of the wit and timing of the writing, despite any Emmy-related appearance of its meeting rather than exceeding expectations over time; or perhaps I’m just gaga for mid-century glamour. Whatever the cause, I’ve been contented, if not delighted, to tune in each season to this perky “underdog drama” of a comedy, enshrining feminism and a related perseverant adherence to one’s own passions and talents into the fabric of our nostalgically recollective social consciousness.
Well, I haven’t wondered, that is, until now. The fourth season opener to The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel finds our beloved protagonist struggling to reset herself after fumbling a break-out opportunity at the end of season 3. In a way, this reset is a hard one. The writers play it as a chance to literally reset the drama of her narrative within the original apartments where the series began, only now amped up by the even greater proximity of her surrounding cast; and this play, alongside coincidental others of its kind, makes me wonder whether the writers and show-runners have committed the egregious story-telling sin of recycling an old yarn instead of spinning a new one. We have mourned many an aging series’ failure to mature with its story in exactly this way before — the “shell game” mating rituals of any ensemble series that pairs characters in its cast as if it were trying to complete a listing of the possible outcomes from a combinatorics exercise come quickly to mind — and at least I would hate to see another great show stumble into the same sticky trap.
The question is therefore open, readers, as to what will happen with the rest of this new season. The premiere two episodes are enough to suggest, but not describe, what the possibilities are; and I’m sensing the aforementioned concerns in the array. To put it bluntly, Midge must find herself advancing challenges and opportunities of a new and sensible kind (viz., establishing herself as a headlining entertainer) in order to pass this test of screen-writing scrutiny. In a story of personal and social progress, a back-to-basics set-up typically rewards only when it’s used as a loaded spring, tight once again with the potential energy of its now familiar origins, yes, but tight enough to launch the ball of its story to even greater heights than we’d seen before.
Spring forward, Mrs. Maisel. We’re saving daylight for you.
Temperature check
Hot (but is there a chill in the air?)
Ali Wong: Don Wong
Netflix - Comedy - Stand-up
Synopsis
The powerhouse comedienne makes her second return to the Netflix stage, with updates on her life, love, and well-being.
My take
As Wong herself supplies in this third Netflix special of her personally insightful stand-up, there are few pleasures more grandiose than a powerful woman’s blow-job; and, Ali, to give here is certainly to fucking receive.
Wong has crafted a show that walks the tight line between the ambitiously lazy flout that she used to be and the lazily flouting success that she now is and, in writing that line, sensibly matures her own public narrative. It spoils little to tell you, readers, that this maturity is explicit, Wong carefully updating her meme-worthy segment on leaning in vs. lying down from her first special, Baby Cobra (2016), for her (and, by extension, our) present times; and I for one applaud it. It’s rare — isn’t it, readers? — that we see comedy in general competently maintain a progressive through-line in its successive iterations, rarer still that we see stand-up comedy do it. Sure, we might see or even seek out consistency in the theme and tenor of stand-up material whenever we return to a particular comedian’s audience, but an actual material through-line? Finding it is like seeing a great series renewed for an unexpected season (cf. seeing another series of the same genre by a popular writer).
The blush of this careful attention to a narrative aside, readers, this special even in its own right is a good one. Wong employs irony and hyperbole heavily to her and our own benefit, and carries us alongside her through another hilarious introspection of her own internal contradictions and curiosities, which purposefully reflect larger social themes — purposefully, yes, because amidst it all Wong still finds the space and time to advocate for the social causes she herself has worked off stage to promote. More hot Asian men in the mainstream? Yes, please.
Ultimately, as Kevin Wong for Complex: Pop Culture writes:
It feels good to laugh with an Asian woman who is putting herself out there, flaws and all, without a self-censoring need to make herself presentable or palatable to other people’s conceptions of what she should be. She is who she is. And to love her is to recognize her humanity, at a time when Asian Americans sorely lack that recognition.
Temperature check
Hot
The Cuphead Show
Netflix - Animated Comedy - Video Games Meet Their Exposition
Synopsis
Two wayward cups disregard the advice of their Elder Kettle, only to find themselves lured into the Devil’s soul-sapping clutches.
My take
Those of you who have played or watched Twitch streams of Cuphead the video game (Studio MDHR, 2017) likely know it well to be a challenging platformer, combining separated “run and gun” levels with creative boss fights, all themed in a 1930s cartoon style that purposefully appears quaint but actually is quite devilish.
The main storyline of the game implicates the two playable characters, the heedless Cuphead and his risk-averse pal Mugman, in a mercenary quest to save their very souls at the expense of others’ who also gambled and lost big at the local smoke- and alcohol-filled casino. The casino’s owner, the unctuous King Dice, looms large as ‘bookie’ to their debts on behalf of the literal Devil, whose fiery claws want what is owed them.
If that concise description of the game’s plot did it any justice, readers, then you’ll have sensed correctly that the original Cuphead isn’t really for children. Even setting aside the fact that the gameplay itself is notoriously difficult, requiring an articulate deftness and precision to succeed, we can see that the game is aimed at older audiences. Yes, the game’s animation employs a nostalgically cartoonish style that harkens back to the earliest days of moving drawings and, yes, the overriding qualities of those earliest animated movies are likely best characterized by the cherubically sing-song Steamboat Willie (Disney, 1928) and the comically pugilistic Popeye the Sailor Man (Paramount, 1933). However, what is animated in Cuphead is far sharper than any peppy cartoon violence. Against a backdrop of perfectly frenetic music, the game’s hand-drawn cells portray a world corrupt with greed, vice, and mortal danger. As the imagery suggests, this isn’t your six-year-old’s bedtime fable.
So, then why, readers, has Netflix given us a show that courts exactly those youngest viewers? Is it the tired cultural stereotype that animated storytelling is inherently for children? Is it a callous indifference to the original material it adapts? Is it the simple capitalistic fear that making a show true to that original material would generate suboptimal earnings? Perhaps it’s all of the above.
Whatever the reason, readers, The Cuphead Show is a lukewarm version of its piping hot predecessor.
The series’ first four episodes especially go down like cold SpaghettiOs, establishing the core tension of the cups’ debt to the literal Devil with as much sting as The Simpsons’ now classic episode “Bart Sells His Soul” (Archer [dir.] & Daniels [wri.], 1995) before chasing it with Pedialite versions of sitcom. problems that the characters must solve before the plot finally moves on. I mean, why think of one’s Damoclean debt to a literal demon when an interloping baby is being fussy? It just didn’t make any sense. It felt like the “morning cereal”-ization of a fabulous cocktail hero, and I wasn’t about to sit for it quietly.
That heavy criticism levied, I do have to balance myself now and admit that the series really picked up after episode 4. Episodes 5 through 12 strike a much fairer balance between darkness and lightness, one that isn’t wholly discordant with the feeling of the original game. The storylines have a fiendish edge, if also a somewhat honeyed sensibility. I actually chuckled a few times. While far from perfect, these latter episodes essentially find the right direction of charm I was looking for and are the only reason I’m not recommending that you avoid this series altogether.
Considering everything I saw, I honestly wonder whether a studio executive ordered the first four episodes mistakenly as a children’s show, was then corrected by a more than cursory adaptation team, but ultimately released everything together anyway because “more is more, right?” or something…
In any case, my best and final word here is: If you’re interested, start with episode 5 and don’t look back; and, if you can, ignore the fact that the lovely Ms. Chalice has been transformed from a benevolent spirit, akin to Arthur’s the Lady of the Lake, into a spritely conwoman, akin to Bonnie sans Clyde…
Temperature check
Cold (at first, but much warmer five sips in)
Severance (Series Premiere)
Apple TV+ - Drama - Workplace Woes
Synopsis
Concentric circles of mental firewalls obstruct a determined woman and a hesitant man from fully understanding their connected lives.
My take
Apple TV+’s new workplace drama is an immersive televisual experience — no, not like Netflix’s “Bandersnatch” (Slade [dir.] & Brooker [wri.], 2018), the interactive stand-alone episode of its popular series Black Mirror (Brooker [creator], 2011-2019), but only not like it because Severance isn’t a two-way street. By design a puzzle in the tradition of Fincher, Brancato, and Ferris’(1997) The Game and Mepham and Sullivan’s (2018-2020) The Hollow, the series employs the disconcerting but effective tactic of first-person surrogacy, or near third-party ignorance, to unfold the story of the woman on the table and the voice she hears over the nearby speaker. Set in a retro-futuristic office environment, the result feels like the hybrid offspring of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Gondry [dir.] & Kaufman [wri.], 2004) and Mad Men (Weiner [creator], 2007-2015) and that feeling so far is captivating.
To say more, I fear, would mean chipping away at the puzzle’s edges for you, readers. So, let’s just leave it here:
Temperature check
Hot.
The King’s Man
HBOMax / Hulu - Action - Noble Spy vs. Spy
Synopsis
During a series of missions to quell what would become World War I, the Duke of Oxford and his over-eager son pattern the independent British spy agency that would later become the Kingsman.
My take
I loved Vaughn and Goldman’s (2014) Kingsman: The Secret Service — not as an all-time great piece of film-making, no, but as an all-time clever one for how spendidly it both embraced and critiqued two fairly tired subgenres of story-telling:
the “super spy” subgenre of action story, best known for its James Bond (Fleming [creator], 1953), and
the “the chosen one” subgenre of fantasy drama, especially young-audience-geared fantasy drama, best known today for its Harry Potter (Rowling [creator], 1997).
With a keen eye for action-based cinematography but production design and costuming that could suit a drawing room, the film patented a high-low counterpoint in tone and style that I found impossible not to admire. The output was F-U-N and, frankly, had a lot of intelligent things to say about the threads of our modern social fabric. Queer scholars, I hope, took note: With the exception of its final coda, Kingsman was and remains a valiant queer-coded cornucopia, charting (among other things) the importance of delicacy and culture over brutishness and arrogance in obtaining and then sustaining authority and respect. I mean, it was no accident that the film’s young lead, Taron Egerton, immediately went on to play Elton John in Rocketman (Fletcher [dir.] & Hall [wri.], 2019).
So, when I sat down to watch this past year’s prequel to the 2014 film, I was eager for another dose of the high-low, queer-coded, and elaborately choreographed action I had come to enjoy in Kingsman. Unfortunately for me, The King’s Man did not deliver.
Though written and directed again by Vaughn, The King’s Man was instead a poor facsimile of what I’d seen before. Not only was the palette duller, but also was the theming and story-telling. Fights were less well choreographed, dialogue lacked the brightness of the wit of the original screenplay, and the one explicitly queer character was the most physically repellent member of the villain’s team, a man whose vile visage one would sooner Mace than kiss. The whole thing was just stale and, frankly, a bit homophobic.
It didn’t even hold up well when compared with other World War I dramas (e.g., War Horse, 2011; Joyeux Noël, 2005), but appeared instead to almost plagiarize 1917’s climactic run through no man’s land amidst fire and explosions (Mendes [dir./wri.] & Wilson-Cairnes, 2019).
I’m sad that this film is where the legacy of the original has come to rest — at least for the time being, until Kingsman: The Blue Blood opens next year. Nothing against Ralph Fiennes, Harris Dickinson, Djimon Hounsou, or Matthew Goode, but perhaps the return of the original cast, the contemporary setting, and the original writing team on that expected fourth film in the franchise will help rethread the needle.
Temperature check
Cold
Titane
Hulu - Horror - Body Horror
Synopsis
A young woman prefers the company of cars over the company of people.
My take
Winner of the 2021 Palme d’Or for her directing, Julia Ducournau and her new film Titane were definitely in the conversation when we started to close out this past year in film. As France’s official submission for the “Best International Feature Film” category at the upcoming Oscars, the film aimed purposefully at figuring among the year-end highlights — and, to a certain extent, it has. A “Top Five Foreign Language Film” according to the National Board of Review, an award-pending nominee for “Best Director” at the British Academy of Film and Television Awards (BAFTAs), and a noteworthy selection by many a city’s film critics’ circle, Titane, despite its rough subject matter and lack of an official Oscar nomination, has found significant admiration in the crowd of this past year’s releases.
And, to a certain extent, it very much deserves that admiration. A nominee now to be the ‘Rich Pick’ Foreign Film of 2021, Titane is outstandingly directed. Ducournau’s vision is unwavering, proud, and complete, offering little excess or respite except the character’s own lapses between one all-out-effort struggle and the next. More than complete, the vision is brave. Centralizing the story of a mechanophiliac pariah who can easily be frustrated into acts of aggression, Titane pulls no punches in exploring the downstream consequences of a brash and necessarily sexual premise. Ultimately like the hybrid child of Carax’ (2012) Holy Motors and Jenkins’ (2003) Monster, the film occupies a unique place in the current landscape of cinema and by extension storytelling culture, for its forwarding of themes on gender and sexuality in a dark fairy tale for modernity.
That said, while the film opens a lot of questions — especially about gender and sexuality in micro-social worlds — it answers few of them. The theoretical equivalent of an explosion blasting open the doors of discourse on what men and women want from each other and society, Titane perhaps adheres a bit too closely to the realistic in-world consequences of its characters’ actions, leaving as a result little room for postulations of any response except the ones most likely dictated by preëstablished individual motives. Is this directorial decision itself a purposeful commentary on what social networking analysts would call emergent phenomena? I wouldn’t know. The film offers no indication.
Ultimately, like Breillat’s (2011) La Belle Endormie a beautiful exercise in fabular film craftsmanship, Titane is worth watching, if you’re a cinephile without a weak stomach.
Temperature check
Tepid
Retrospective
We again skip our retrospective this episode, readers, but use this space to give a special shout out to two biscotti on our horizon:
this upcoming Sunday’s televised Screen Actors’ Guild (SAG) Awards, which for anyone following the end-of-year races in acting is usually an important bellwether for who’ll eventually take home the Oscar statuettes, and
the header image all subscribed e-mail recipients of this and likely future episodes of ‘Hot Tea’ received as the newly minted banner image for the series. Do you like it, readers? Feel free to let me know in the comments.
Until next pour!
Mozart in the Jungle (Coppola et al. [dev.], 2014-2018) is a possible exception.