The Miss: Is 'The Mist' This Summer's 'Under the Dome'?

IT was such a big movie that I haven't seen it, but I have heard of it. I've seen the memes. The memes are OK, and I watched the 80s movie which is frankly a pretty effective if silly horror movie. Stephen King is doing alright lately. But for every good media product, there is a subpar product created as reaction. Stephen King has provided society with a fair amount of media products as his bestselling books regularly get reconfigured into television and film, and that makes sense: King is a prolific writer with a huge audience. Sadly, his admirers often fail to elevate the material, and a recent case is all the example we need.

Today, we are gathered at this sloppy blog to discuss and explore The Mist - the 2017 Netflix special. Apparently it started its sad life as a new series for Spike TV. Spike TV's last major show was MXC and that was over a decade ago. You're going to ask something about why I would watch a show made for Spike TV. Because, let's face it: I should've known better, right? Let me answer for my actions: sometimes you know the trainwreck is coming and you just have to make sure you see it happen. I saw it on Netflix (where it had been dumped fairly quickly for an American exclusive), knew it would be pretty bad without any research, and dove right in.

I vaguely recall a movie of The Mist released in 2007, based on Stephen King's novel by the same name (at this point I won't read it anytime soon). The movie had weird bugs that the protagonists had to shoot when they were in a supermarket. Big things loomed in the dark. Were they dinosaurs? Then, at the apportioned time, the mist blew out of town, and everyone had endured personal struggles, survived, and grown as people. I assume this TV series is aiming to do the same, but since it was written by committee with little regard for coherence or impact, I also assume it will kind of spin around in annoying circles for 10 episodes.

All you need is a coping mechanism, and you can watch this show.

It opens, kind of like Under the Dome did, with the destruction of an animal. In Under the Dome it's a cow that gets split into two steak-like halves, in The Mist it's a dog that gets eviscerated. And a soldier wakes up without any memory of what's going on... oh yes, friends, you've entered a zone of mass entertainment you've probably stumbled over before. The dead dog looks a lot more realistic than the dead cow, though. If you have Netflix, you can see for yourself. Actually I'll spare you the trouble:

Big mystery: who did the dog piss off to get done like this? Also: nice one, SFX people.

The same team is responsible for The Mist as made Under the Dome. I'm sure that the key people are unchanged. There's a deep connection between the shows. I can sense these strange coincidences... the casting seems similar. The locations seemed to have been scouted the same ways. The special effects: again I'm getting some deja vu. The writing is what really seals its fate. Something about the situations and the handling of characters and the bizarre missteps they have to take in order to make plot lines viable just reminds me of the 8 or so episodes of Under the Dome I watched.

Under the Dome: The Newest, Dumbest TV Adaptation Miniseries

I haven't read the Stephen King book Under The Dome, but I got the idea it was like The Stand in length and mildly interesting in its content. Mind you, I haven't so much as read even the critic blurbs about the book, so I'm really guessing what it is like. Recently a miniseries adaptation of the book premiered. I watched the first episode and almost immediately it was apparent that this would be a great study in TV as the Dumbest Form of Entertainment (which I know is particularly a Cantankerous Old Fellow and Pessimist discipline, but I do concur with it on many points). Within five minutes, a hyped sequence involving The Dome coming down around the small town of Chesterfield or whatever leads to a cow being split in half... the best part is that the cow is depicted as being a mass of undifferentiated flesh, as if your given cow in a field were made of 100% American AA grade steaks, and little else. This is basically the execution and guiding philosophy behind the show, as I understand it, and its greatest symbol. Send the anatomists!

I don't know if it was pure stupidity, pure laziness, or pure necessity which led to this hilariously maladroit example of cartoon special effects, but it gets better. The writing is atrocious. The characters are like what you'd expect in a Stephen King novel if he were currently a self-publishing erotica/mystery/fanfic author – or in really bad television. The plot, if it is reasonably close to the novel's (I hope not for King's sake) is itself a good barometer that Under the Dome as a novel is 1000+ pages of tedium: a mini-dome for your mind to suffer in while you fill the time between plot developments and intrigue. This miniseries is going to be a third-or-fourth-rate Lost, except as a miniseries it will waste less of everyone's time.

In television miniseries adaptation the book works out to this: little bit of characterization, then plot device is introduced, then show sputters about trying to create action and tension... then it becomes a huge bottle episode. A massive bottle episode, possibly the biggest and dumbest one ever attempted. In a way, one might even consider this art, not in a sneering 'populist vein' way – but as a true statement from this weird consumeristic world, where a cow being made entirely of ground beef is just this side of believable, and won't get an FX artist fired, or anger the censors (who as always are right on point: what really matters in a show where a guy's pacemaker explodes out of his chest is that the cow being split in two doesn't get too realistic or gruesome for primetime, but somehow remain cartoonish enough to get views).

I don't know why I am watching. Part of me thinks you need to eat a lot of shit (a.k.a - consume lots of mass media entertainment) before you can try selling your own. You got to get the spirit of the times right, and TV is still a grand social barometer, if a bit sterilized. It beats the internet, which can warp a person's perception of reality in bizarre and monotonous ways. But, to continue with the matter at hand, I am watching Under the Dome, and it is fucked. It's going to go down in history as a dumb bastard and, sometimes, amidst the ridiculous dialogue and illogical plot points, I enjoy it. (Eating shit. Gross. I really ought to rethink some things.)

My favorite part so far happens in the fourth episode, where a character who is supposedly a doctor or person with creditable medical knowledge tells a boy that an EEG machine "measures the electronic activity in your brain". A statement so broadly incorrect and dumb, so baldly and ridiculously wrong, that it got me to make this blog post about a TV miniseries in 2013. This show must be written by the texts of high school drop-outs. Fact-checking must have been outsourced to Antarctic Gerbils. It's insane. It sets a great tone for a show which may, despite its best intentions to be generic and dull, become a sleeper comedy of errors. If I look at it just right, it's the best comedy on a mainstream network all year: it got me to laugh out loud. There are all kinds of social commentary going on in this show: like how kids use smartphones (but only to take pictures of themselves right!?), or how everyone is secretly cripplingly irrational. This show has the self awareness of an invisible teenager and the attention span of a troubled child. It will never be glorious. Alas, we hardly knew it...

'Ok, Johnny Kidd, your brain is showing normal levels of electronic activity, what this means is that we don't know about this mystery of the dome at all, but we don't yet know if it even IS the dome so stay tuned while we whittle the device down into something underwhelming so we can keep telling human stories, like yours, getting your electronic brain activity levels checked, by me: a lesbian woman trapped in Small Town America with my wife and child all because of a Mysterious Dome...'

RIP Perfect Couples... You Were Just Getting Good

I like to bring up the NBC series 100 Questions, because it used to air after Community – the disconnect from a nimble, funny show to a clunker with a laugh track was so insane that it used to make tears well up in my eyes. Going from Community to 100 Questions (with only one commercial break in-between) was like finding yourself passive and bored with the rebound relationship after a short and incredible but ill-fated relationship with someone you genuinely liked and understood.

In September 2010, with Community safely renewed and airing its second season, NBC seemed to throw the same type of curve-ball at me. By this time I knew exactly the flavor of heartache to expect. Perfect Couples was a huge stinker. Generic, had a laugh track, was about three yuppie couples. I turned the TV off in disgust, "They're going to shit-can that show so hard all the actors will need neck-braces."

Between September 2010 and February 2011 Perfect Couples became a decent show to watch. It was a pleasant surprise. Apparently they had learned from their errors and made improvements. The cast was alright, and even though the show was still on the generic side, it actually had some funny moments. Of course the show was shit-canned recently and replaced by a bizarre and twisted wreck that nobody loved. I was right, but at what price?

I feel sorry for NBC. Perfect Couples could've been one of those shows that ends up being better than what it copies. Friends wasn't as good as nostalgia leads you to believe. It was, quite often, an arid wasteland of puerile yuppie pretensions and sexual tension (which really sold the show). With Perfect Couples the relationship units were already established, so there was less tension,  but then again, one of them contained Olivia Munn. The rest of the cast was also good, but everyone is waiting to see if Olivia Munn is going to end up anywhere other than the one-a-month reports for Jon Stewart.

There's not much more to say. I can't find the show anywhere and I don't want to look around for it. If it was still on TV I might've watched it another two or three times in my life, and it probably would've amused me. It just worries me that networks don't have the patience to try out many shows beyond the first season, and that their analysts apparently don't give breathing room for increased performance.

Remember Cheers? Cheers was not at first a smash hit, but TV afficionadoes still refer to it like it's a god. But I guess Cheers was a 'critical success'... who holds those keys, anyway?

Survivor Watch: 22. Pt.2

What they'll never be able to reproduce is the novelty. Other features of this gilded idol may be failing, but the one thing that cannot be produced (via magic or trickery or money) is any significant excitement to parallel the drawing power the show had in its first season.

Survivor 22? 23? 22.

This is shaping up to be a great season of the world's favorite ongoing simulacrum of what happens when real people are thrown against the elements (and each other!) without the support of the 21st century. Survivor used to be all about hoping the one cute girl wasn't about to get voted out, and wondering about whether pee on a jellyfish sting was actually a remedy, and cheering for the old man. Ten years later the show is about: watching the cameramen oggle the women (of whom 3/4s are HOT and/or CUTE), debating whether or not the 'social game' is tricky editing, and knowing the old men tend to look older than they are and are not likely to make it far, regardless their competitive spirit or ability. Most long time viewers have a reasonable chance of predicting how each episode will end, and the sneak peeks are not likely to throw them off.

This change in emphasis has not detracted (much) from the appeal of the show. Now that most of the competitors are actors, bartenders, or other service industry lackeys the show looks great – and the realest people don't even complain that they're outnumbered (if they are, in fact, real people). The most used objection to Survivor is that it's stupid, meaningless, empty, misleading, over-edited, false, scripted, and something only consumerist nincompoops would watch. So, basically, this is exactly the sort of elite-and-artiste-bait that should be widely employed for the detection of snobs, fobs, and hob-nobs.

But background be damned (the Survivor motto), let's talk about this new fancy season with the new feature (new only if you have watched only American Survivor). Redemption Island. Sounds pretty exciting, and includes duel systems for epic showdowns and promises to return a castaway to the game, hopefully to shake up the rather predictable slide into 'end-game' that keeps happening. This gives the scriptwriters all kinds of options for narratives, but since the island is likely to return only one player to the game, it will result in one narrative that will end in failure.

There's at least 6 beautiful women, and there's no Jane from Last Season (or even a Shambo), there's a hillbilly style dude who runs around, and Russell and Boston Rob have returned. Russell was voted out tonight, and was last shown residing on Redemption Island. Boston Rob, of course, is ensconced in his very trusting and safe tribe. Plenty of drama, slick editing, and skulduggery are likely to take place this year and are already occurring.

I'm impressed that Russell was voted off so quickly, though his team was very passive-aggressive about admitting they (quite openly) failed a challenge on purpose to vote him out. Julie, the swing vote, played a wicked double-play and has definitely shewn herself a contender. Stephanie, his brunette lackey and Sarah Silverman's little sister, was too confident and is next week's most obvious target. This is when the purple tribe will likely enter a multi-challenge slide into obscurity. So Sarah Silverman's little sister is probably going to be voted out next.

The irony is, this slide is when Russell is at his best, and you know he'll be annoyed to miss it – unless he loses next week's duel and finally stops haunting this series like a portly, hatted, scheming, rather confident ghost. He might lose, because the narrative of the betrayed, white-bread, surfer Christian coming back to win is more compelling than the narrative of the schemer returning to exact revenge on his passive-aggressive enemies.

Assuming you can stand watching 'reality crap that's shoveled down our throats by the entertainment complex in a vain attempt to distract us from pressing issues', Survivor is going to be the best reality show option for the next few months. If TV is a social barometer, Survivor is the TV barometer.

Conan Attacks the Youth, DC Comics

I had to laugh at the Thursday episode when I caught it on the web just now. Somebody points at Conan and he points back, then a whole row of audience members point back, and it begins a thing. Leno does the high-five thing and contributes the flu, everyone claps, but Conan O'Brien consistently involves the audience some types of chicanery. Not all types of chicanery, of course.

Then Conan actually, if you'll believe this, told a member to point at the stage for the entire show. I don't know if it's just me, but when Conan said "That's what's wrong with your generation." I laughed but moreover, was deeply offended. Nobody can hold up their arms that long... it's discouraging to see him promoting this kind of angst just about finger pointing.

The entire DC Comics segment was great. The criticism of various lame superheroes and Conan even made the artist laugh. Or payed him to laugh. Either way, the criticism part made laugh heartily, though it was as heartless as his assault on the youth during the opening. Sarah Silverman is the kind of guest who is bound to act funny and kind of steal the show, and Michio Kaku is the intellectual twist and obligatory science guest. Sounds like a good Thursday night to me, except, well, the e-show delay. It's still good a day later.

Obligatory science guests, in this case speaking about sacred quests. Bit of rhyming. Really a good guest though, you really don't hear enough about Unified Field theory these days.

EDIT: If you look right now (Sat, ~4 AM EST) on the film & animation section on YouTube you can see a large amount of trailers posted for the new Transformers movie, and to be honest the number is not what you'd expect after Transformers 2. This fan enthusiasm has to be synthetic as the robot monster it has become.

Late Night Talkshows: Fallon vs. 'The Veterans'

I'm talking about the really late shows, even though 'really late at 12:35' isn't late at all if you're nocturnal or caught up in something.  Craig Ferguson is the veteran of that time-slot. Conan is obviously out of it for good now. Fallon is the plucky newcomer. These three names mean (or meant) late night TV.

Craig Ferguson is probably the best interviewer on TV right now. I don't know if he manipulates the guest or the situation but generally his interviews are enjoyable to watch, he remains very funny, involves the guest and doesn't fall back on hack discussion half as much as anyone. Of course that approach isn't 100% successful, and there are still interviews where I know I'd be better off brushing my teeth and going to sleep. His openings can throw off newcomers who expect things of TV, but the show despite its grim set is mostly fantastic. There's a type of weirdness that's unlike Conan O'Brien - in some ways more direct. I realize weirdness is subjective, but if anyone has a monopoly on weird puppets it is Ferguson.

Fallon replaced Conan in 2009 and it was lamentable how it worked out in the end, but the important thing is that in many ways his show (especially in the last few months) has supplanted the hipness factor of Conan. The fact that The Roots play on the show is mind-boggling, and Fallon and guests graciously remember to acknowledge that. Of course that also lets you know that the show is backed all the way. It's less vicariously crazy than Ferguson, and less subtly oddball (?) than Conan was, but it works.

I don't know why people dumped on Fallon so much at the start. I get the feeling many of them are Conan loyalists and the rest didn't like Conan anyway and just carried over the old prejudices. Fallon's definitely nervous on TV and this is even true a year later, but if anything that humanizes the man. Just because Larry Sanders was on laudanum or Xanax all the time and Letterman and Leno know how to work crowds does not mean that Fallon is totally incapable of being on TV.

Sure, Fallon does not always nail interviews. Ferguson outclasses him here in all respects, but Ferguson's show caters to a different audience. Fallon's interviews are usually on par with Leno and Letterman, and sometimes he gets a better reaction. The games he plays with guests can be seen as gimmicks, but they do create instant rapport and more importantly they shake up the format; the late night TV format can be very grim if the guests are bored or jaded, or the host is hungover.

Fallon's monologue delivery seems absolutely canned in comparison to Ferguson or Conan or even L&L on a good night. This is more or less what I would expect from somebody whose background in stand-up isn't particularly outstanding. Also, and you hear this a lot, he has some dead weight writers which make the problem worse than it is. If he got better material to open with I think he could do it justice.

Jimmy Fallon banks on his impersonations, especially during the opening sequence. Most of the time they are on the right note. Recently he did Neil Young and sang with Bruce Springsteen which was probably one of the best things I've seen on late night TV. That anecdote brings me to the other focus of the show: music. No other late night talk-show is as intense about it.

The whole Bruce Springsteen episode also highlights the guests on Fallon's show, who used to all be character actors from SNL but now are actually real celebrities. It's largely what you'd expect to see on a 'hip' 'youth-segment' type of show, but it's usually a good lineup.

I've been watching this show more often since August '10 and I have to say it is sporadically brilliant. There was a Hubble Space Telescope Rap which sounds like a failure waiting to happen but was actually good. There was an audience claque in one instance who went into free-associative rants with Fallon, and then walked out in affront after getting out-rhymed, which was an honest attempt at hilarity. To me, it was a rousing success, because I actually laughed after 12 on a weekday. So you know not all the writers are slacking.

The Clip Remixes on Thursdays are worth seeing at least once. If the clips don't amuse, the technical prowess of Questlove is a treat. The audience contests get a little too 'zany' sometimes, but you have to admire the effort that goes into some of them, and some of the contests deliver. I wouldn't be surprised if Jimmy Fallon becomes established in 2 years or moves on due to uncontrollable, crushing anxiety. Either way he has a show he can be 50% proud of.

Undercover Dross

If anyone can answer the following question for me, I'd be much obliged: Is Undercover Boss just a capitalist circlejerk? I am all for a cathartic show in this post-financial binge era, but those binging on dollars are still binging on dollars. But don't get me wrong. I'm not some sort of perverse thinker. I like the positivity of the show, and the genuine concern the boss shows for the workers he finds (picked out by the producers no doubt) while ignoring the larger issues. People who listen to their guts are born leaders, and all people are born from people who had to listen to their guts. It all makes perfect sense.

Last night's episode had a fat boss dealing with his skinny minions and getting out of breath while working the roomservice beat, the maintenance beat, and even (briefly) the sales beat. I'm getting out of breath just thinking about the goodwill he showed by giving one man five thousand dollars for a suit. I admit, I am not the sort to like largesse, but when largesse is dressed up as charity I lose my breath. A good suit can be bought for a thousand dollars or less, easily. The deals get better if you know a good tailor. Maybe, I don't know, and this is obviously a heretical thought, but the whole show could be replaced by one or two executives agreeing to forfeit raises and bonuses in order to raise the general level of pay.

The part that really gets me is how the minions meet the boss in his office, and he goes "Remember me?" all condescendingly, and tells them that he is really Robert Rupert Maximilian Guildenstern III. Then they're expected to cry, and the bosses have a habit of talking about their parents and crying. Oh everyone is sad about their parents, especially those of us who owe our parents much, but on television you should keep your composure, even if you're dealing with a woman (your employee) who got kicked out of her house as a pregnant teen and now works the graveyard shift at your motel. It's almost as if the tears of the minions are sustenance to both the impressionable audience and the boss.

I find it sickening. This is the sort of cloying 'populism' that is the new PR face of industrial callousness. CBS no doubt is paying out the 'prizes' the boss awards, and the boss learns a few lessons, and everyone is richer. Except for, you know, the rest of the employees who are still toiling as ever, and probably a little riled that they didn't get picked. Then again, what business do I have trying to equate reality with TV? Enjoy your cake, capitalists, and when you feed the scraps to the dogs and invite the cameras to educate the plebeians about your good heart and kind nature, feel good about that too. This is your time, revel in it and be glad...