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.

Millennials For Bernie and Other News From The Modern Gutter

Wow 2016 has certainly been a year, between celebrity deaths, political chicanery, imminent race war with shooting-a-day news, terrorists wilding out everywhere, a surprise coup in Turkey, and the grand return of Pokemon combined with augmented reality, the Age of Indifference seems poised at the cusp of its Golden Age. It's almost possible to forget the insanity of the first four months of the year based on the last three months of the year. It's almost possible, even tempting, to think that we are at an all time high of crazy happenings


But things have been shitty for a very long time, haven't they? And it's probably our fault. In fact it is certainly our fault. We've done this. Some of us try to do better, some of us try to fuck things up, and the majority don't care. I like to think I fall outside of all these groups. I don't care; but I do. I want to do better; but I don't. I never really considered the option of making things worse... it seems there are plenty people on each side of every confrontation who can do that better than I could ever hope to.

So I was trying to come up with a good overview of the past ten months or so but there are so many squawking heads yakking about it that it doesn't matter. Plus, I'm a piece of shit idiot with nothing new to add or a redeeming perspective. Suffice it to say I get it: everything looks pretty grim. Things looked bad in 2003, and they look roughly as bad now, except there is more bad stuff? (I'll look into this after I kill myself, because fuck making that graph.) But there's also good stuff: like consumerism! So I'm going to recommend some pretty good stuff that'll help you get through July without killing yourself or fantasizing about killing every last human in an insane laser drug apocalypse in a doomed attempt to fix Earth and right all the wrongs.

4 Media Products Recommended by the Sloppy Blogger in Lieu of Depressing Screed About Modern World

The Return of Community

It was a long time, and now the show has returned for all of four weeks. There has been a Halloween episode, a premiere, an episode about an in-joke, and just this past evening the first episode in the busy itinerary to actually take place in a more or less normal day at Greendale. I think it's been a long time since I've talked about the show. I'd like to make some comments about it.

Firstly: I'm glad it's back. The four month delay was probably because NBC was considering shit-canning the show for good. Season three was almost unbearably meta at certain points, but then again so was Season 2. Any purist would only accept Season 1 minus the paintball episodes as the true greats. If you want, you can identify a purist by how they will maintain that the paintball episode 'was a bit too much the first time and definitely overplayed as a two-part special.'

For the record, the first paintball episode was what drew the show into a 'hype updraft' which lasted roughly until the end of the first half of the third season. By that time, several characters lay in ruins, multitudes of fans felt betrayed and increasingly disturbed by the show's directions and obvious funding cuts, and every casual viewer had stopped watching entirely. Season 1 had become a memory of a brighter time, when the show had no popular appeal because it was simply excellent and fresh and 'too smart' or whatever down-talking supporters tell themselves. To be fair, Community Season 1 was a damn lot brighter than Two and a Half Men or the Big Bang Theory, and easily more fun to watch than anything that year.

What happens if you talk to a purist now, and you like the show? Tough question. Good luck with that, actually: I can't answer it. I have no idea what would happen, but it would be like admitting you prefer the second season. I was a particularly rabid fan during the time of the first season, but that was only because there were not a lot of good TV shows on network television at that time, and essentially zero good new series, and I needed distraction because I was a useless head case with a shaky full time job that would ditch me just in time for the Christmas Episode - which can be compared to anything the show has done since and still be puzzlingly superior despite how basic it is.

2009, around the time Community premiered, was another era. Dollhouse wasn't cancelled yet. The Recession was still fresh in everyone's mind. The 2012 elections only took up 15% of daily newscasts. Ghaddafi was still alive. Glee hadn't yet fallen so astoundingly low, and making fun of it was still sportive. 100 Questions hadn't premiered yet – and to me, this is important to note, because when it premiered in May it was return to the awful network television standards that made Community stand out so much in the first place. There have been few television experiences as jarring as Community finale-ing one week and the Worst Show Ever premiering the next, ushering in the season where healthy people stop watching TV. I am still kind of incredulous about 100 Questions. It is my Abed Moment, and makes absolutely no sense to the observer.

 

The Jon Stewart / Juan Williams Interview

Apparently on the 27th of June at some point there was a discussion between two individuals about certain things regarding, vis a vis, et cetera... partisanship in the media. Jon Stewart being a media person, and Juan Williams as well, it was kind of interesting. I'd recommend it for anyone looking for hope, really. Were that discussion to be multiplied a millionfold, or at least the questions involved, things might look a bit better for everyone.

American Heroes in Action, or 'Everyday Joes'?

And that's kind of why America is still a sort of beacon, though distorted and melted, because at various times and places certain important questions still manage to bubble to the surface. This happens everywhere and has always been happening alongside its counterpoints. Because, who knows, maybe there's some evolutionary advantage to willful ignorance. The Darwin Awards beg to differ, but how trustworthy are those who would mock serious clusterfucks?

It was simply interesting to hear the issue addressed, because perhaps the time for mocking dysfunction is actually past and we are in more serious times. Or most likely of anything, dysfunction needs to be analyzed and only then mocked, once it has been brought out of the dim caverns where it assembles its myopic empire.

The interview asked one question that so imposed itself on my imagination that I couldn't shake it, and consequently missed part of the interview. I'll paraphrase for the gentle reader's convenience, but the bit deserves to be watched by a wide audience and some of it filed away. "What would a non-partisan news agency look like?" Would it be CNN, with its gaping loss of viewership in the last decade? According to Stewart/Williams the liberal paragon is NPR and the conservative paragon is Fox News.

I admit, their delineation does not shake my weak conception of US politics. It's kind of a no-brainer and since they are de-facto Kings of North America... all I know is Canadian Prime Minister Harper is planning to built condominium jails in Toronto. Back on topic: what would such a network look like? Are there global examples? Does Canada have that sort of reportage? Yes Canada is also a theme.

Well we have recent Fox News rat finks Sun Media, aka Part One of the Royal Plan to Put Conrad Black in 22 Sussex. Furthermore, the CBC is kind of our NPR. And of course I jest frivolously, but I learned something important from the Stewart/Williams interview – inflate and deform everything to hideous dimensions. That's how demons were made in the olden days and that's how honesty can be beaten. And the whole partisanship media shenanigan is proven by the past, and that is why it can be correctly attributed as a strategy of both progressive and regressive social elements anywhere. Like any currently known tool it is ultimately directed by some person, and like any old trick it is a pedigreed thing.

And is there any uncolored information? Along with the general increase in raw volume of information, our ignorance and pettiness seem to increase as well. Our famed high-density areas are largely full of indifference and spite, and that microcosm is played out on the screen and even in governance, apparently. Which begs the question: which is the true show and which is the farce? Or is it simply that they're both fucked?

The Moment of Zen was an uncanny failure, perhaps only because July 26 2011's episode had one of, if not the best Moment of Zens I've ever seen.

Community: The Retrospective

I am still finding it kind of a serendipitous and unimaginable fact that NBC's Community was renewed for season 2. Then imagine my complete astonishment that a third season is forthcoming. An unfair comparison would be to say that Community is to sit-coms what Late Night with Jimmy Fallon is to late-night talkshows. I mean, there's kind of an angle there, because both shows are recent entrants to their format, somewhat irreverent and Modern-Quirky and all, but it's an unfair comparison to both shows. Mostly because Community was possibly an even longer shot, and it came out of the proverbial darkness, and it airs less often which makes it easier to love.

Yeah, a third season. It's so good I ought to tweet it, but alas, nobody gives two fucks about my twitter account – myself included. I use it primarily as a sort of 'one-way mirror facebook including celebrities and nonsense'. I don't know how to work that system. I guess I'm a failure. Or, maybe, 140 characters per post doesn't fly with my propensity for lyrical largesse*.

(* - also available on Twitter, see user: FitzQuatzlevsky)
 
Obviously the real and serious matter at hand is to praise the one television program that's brought me any joy, and to write a little more about it. In order to do this I have to take notice of what has been said about the show's creator, Dan Harmon, who allegedly considers the second Halloween Episode to have been too much, too soon, too far, or some other overweening gesture. I can see whereat he draws the line: how the fuck does anyone cure a zombie outbreak with no plot-related casualties? It's outrageous.

But then again, look at how the season ended. Yes, the finale duo of episodes was entertaining, funny, and hit many of the right notes. The scene with Abed and the janitor seems evocative of whichever of the shows admirers were feeling let-down or burdened by the recurrence of a paintball apocalypse. You shouldn't have been. But, then again, people complained about the Christmas Episode at first. How they sobbed and bitched.

As if the show owed them less effort than what went into that impressive stylistic gesture. Even the opening credits (which include a song that almost nobody I know can stand) were changed for the Christmas episode. People still bitched. There was still doubt, and that's alright, because people have different ideas about thing. By the way, Harmon's discomfort with the Halloween episode is reflected in the plot when Chang does not end up being the father of Shirley's baby. That's some metavision shit wherein he says: "Nay, the father is the character representant of progress; not the character representing madness."

I really dug the zombie outbreak episode. It wasn't perfect. Yes, other things might've happened. Whatever. It's a TV show. It does not belong to a single person, and no single idea rules it (except perhaps the sudden aversion to making it the Jeff Winger show). So the episode was great, for me, especially the scene with the cat towards the end, or, well, basically any part of it. There's not much I'm able to take from Halloween 2010, except for a sense that I was cheated out of glory once again.

Then they topped that off with a wicked Christmas episode and the Paradigms of Human Memory (or whatever) episode. Holy shit, it's still alive! Therefore, ultimately, the show becomes its own zombie episode, and you know there will be a vampire pastiche next Halloween.

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.

Television Event of the Week

It was a big night on the television...

Community arrived as if nothing had happened, to start its second season. The show was perfectly nonchalant about this, which I approve of. This was probably the only reason I even turned the TV on tonight, because I wasn't about to miss it. Last year, I had pretty much given up on television as a drug, but I experimented with an episode of Community and sure enough I was in the ditch the next day.

Anyways, for those who missed the show but enjoy synopses (and who doesn't like either of those): nothing really happens. There were the prerequisite zeitgeist moments including a recurring gag aimed at Shit My Dad Says, which is later dismissed as "bad development planning' by Abed, in a moment of delicious metavision. Oh and Betty White was on, but as much as I am happy for her, the whole thing is getting out of hand, and I don't know if any show that is supposed to be self-aware can actually invite her to guest star. On the other hand, it makes perfect sense, and will attract hordes who aren't feeling blue about her sitcom, or her new upcoming movie, or the Snickers commercial (which is funny, after all). In my mind, overexposure is iffy, but then again the elderly have been given short shrift for so long that it makes sense that everyone will vote for Betty White on Facebook. It makes sense to me, and that's not saying much, so: have fun out there Betty, for the rest of us and especially for the rest of your under-appreciated cohort. 

Anyways, the Betty White overdose seems to have made me a little overbearing – if not outright annoying. Time to digress: the best part of Community S2x01 was when Chang got the pay-as-you-go thing on his phone, let it report his balance, and told Jeff he was "Chang-ed"... outrageous, pathetic, inexplicably funny: this is how I remember the show working best. New professor Betty White's anthropology course is as madcap as you'd expect. After the paintball episode, of course, the fanbase was split among the lines of 'plot 'n writing' versus 'outrageous exploit' and... well I won't go there. No point in it.

This post is too long, and it might upset you, but even if it does, you (yes, you) must return to read it again. I can't wait to see where Community goes this season. This first episode is kind of exactly what it had to be, all things considered, and more or less a smirking send-up of the pilot.

And later that night Ferguson had Betty White on his show, while Jimmy Fallon countered with Pavement, Amy Poehler, and Rashida Jones. Why do I list it so? Why indeed...