“You people are monsters.”
If part one illustrates a Carrie Mathison who is intelligent, capable, and determined, part two illustrates a Carrie Mathison who is adrift, out of place, and drowning. Her home is in the field, outside of the United States and far away from her baby–and therefore her past–and she’ll do anything to stay there because without the work, she has no idea who she is.
“What have we done to each other?”
This is the question Nick Dunne poses to the world in the first minute of Gone Girl, and it hangs over every single plot development and over every ounce of characterization in the remainder of the David Fincher-Gillian Flynn film. It’s a mesmerizing ride, a two hour-plus piece of glorious filmmaking and pure entertainment that immerses you in an atmosphere that never lets go of its frenetic pace, that never ceases to be compelling.
60 MINUTES: Political openings haven’t been the show’s strong suit, and this sketch isn’t changing anything. It avoids really tackling the issues it’s looking at and instead decides to structure everything around lampooning social media, and it doesn’t work very well. GRADE: C
MONOLOGUE: The sequence with Silverman and the audience member is pretty funny, and it’s a good incorporation of the audience into the monologue. Although the rest of the monologue goes on for a bit too long to really deliver the laughs, it delivers nicely for Silverman as a comedian. GRADE: B
“Coach…he’s the best.”
The past is important. The memories you’ve shared with those around you stick with you throughout your life, influencing your decisions and your future relationships. Sometimes, there’s that one moment that fundamentally changes who you become. Maybe, for example, it’s a meeting with a football Coach, someone who takes jail and lying in a ditch somewhere out of the equation.
“I’m going out on my own terms.”
Throughout “Happy Birthday, Zeek”, responsibility to a family is placed alongside an individual’s desires, and the question for Zeek becomes not only whether he wants to do the surgery or not, but also whether what his family wants outweighs his insistence on going out on his own terms. There’s an interesting framing device to the episode in the birthday party–considering a birthday is probably the most personal day of each year–and the show utilizes that party to wonderfully execute its stories, bringing the Bravermans together for one of the last family gatherings we’ll be seeing.
“I’m not like you.”
At the heart of the show, we’ve always had Marco and Sonya, two people with different ways of going about the world, but two people who work well together. Over the course of the season, we’ve seen them grow distant, tension simmering between them after Marco’s murder of the Juarez cops, but we’ve also seen them move toward each other again. In “Jubilex”, they will both be moving forward knowing the other has his or her back.
“It wouldn’t be the meaning you want.”
“It’s the only meaning I have.”
The first half of “Nautilus” throws us into what seems to be another “case of the week” episode, but a flip is switched at the midpoint of the hour when it’s revealed that Samaritan is behind the creation of the game Claire’s playing. Through this revelation, the writers begin to draw ideas and characterization from last week’s premiere, effectively setting up the rest of the season when all’s said and done.
“People vote their hopes and not their fears.”
The opening sequence of Part 1 is masterfully executed, with each scene flowing into the next and building a sense of dread as we see characters in dark places. Sharon, closed off and distraught over the “death” of her daughter. Tyrol, beating Cally after he has a nightmare of his suicide. Baltar, behind in the polls and taking Hera’s death as his own daughter’s death. As we see throughout the two episodes, there’s a bigger picture to all this dread: with a presidential election coming up and with morale so low, if hope should present itself in the form of a new planet, then people will even go so far as to elect Gaius freaking Baltar as President.
“The key is, it takes both of you to make a leap of faith, of trust, working together.”
A high level of trust is needed to be intimate with someone, to bare all like so many people do in this finale. The highest level of trust–the deepest bond–that we see is between our two central figures, Virginia Johnson and Bill Masters, and the interesting thing about this relationship is that the more they trust each other, the harder they fall. By putting faith in each other, by trusting each other, by working together, they wind up losing the other people in their lives.
That’s more like it. After three weeks of solid, but not quite great, episodes, Boardwalk delivers a thoroughly entertaining hour of television that makes good use of the indelible history seeping up through every orifice of the show’s relationships. Some things never change, indeed, and even though power shifts and people die, the cycle of the environment will always pull you back in.
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