Homecoming

Brown the walls, dark the coffee stains
The carpet maroon, dusty museum rope
Smell of age-old food and medication tethered ‘round my nostrils
and the snaky rattle of the drinking fountain
spitting out water, poisoned and polymer.
Nicotine rooms with flyspecked floors as an oxygen tank
that muffles the soft, raspy sweetness of your voice.

It was the eighth of November.
Words whispered through willows of the unconscious,
Taunted by distant gestures of a clock crucified to the wall
With each second, pulled farther from the seconds that were ours,
when sunshine bled into your venetian blinds like grapefruit
and a deck of cards lay scattered on your bed.
Gin and rummy and games I never bothered to remember
between the indifference of your machine and cigarette breaks.
Fresh spring flowers and watered-down insta-coffee
soaked into my nostrils as I wheeled your throne
on wood etched with trails of a thousand others.
The legless man who roamed the hallways and never missed a hello,
Where is he now?

For 22 months you called it “home” but as you jerked your hand
from a compendium of phone numbers—addresses—grocery lists,
and jerked my tears to diamond dust
we knew it was not quite that, a mere mat at the door.
So when I float back to that November frost and the
cerulean clouds clashed against crimson sky,
I think of that mat at the door where you went to die.

Called it a garden on the sign, but what a joke, we knew.
The only thing that grew – your own impatience,
and I guess sometimes my love.
Even if it didn’t always outpace the hasty fleets
of birthday cards—grocery lists—poorly-assembled desserts,
usually shipwrecked upon arrival.

“Tell them I’m not here” I said when the phone intruded,
grabbing the month’s worth of laundry and inhaling a petting zoo
and abruptly vanishing, because sometimes the car radio
was an easier conversationalist.
Your hands were soft as a pincushion
and your body a mere framework
and you shrank into a new wardrobe each week
to break the static, because there had to be some change that didn’t
make its way into the backs of the daily paper.

It was the eighth of November.
Your hand squeezed colors into mine
under a cotton candy sky,
whether an act of conscience or electricity,
of love or of urgency.

"Conduit"

The X-Files - Season One
Aired: October 1, 1993
Starring: David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson
Written by Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon
Directed by Daniel Sackheim

Following on the heels of three impeccably-filmed and engagingly-written episodes is no easy task. Couple that with a formula that starts to mold as any televised series progresses, and the element of surprise begins to wane. Unfortunately this episode falls victim to both obstacles, but in spite of itself proves a valuable character piece, capitalizing primarily on Duchovny's poignant and determined portraiture of Mulder in an episode that provides a vehicle into his character's backstory.

The plot of "Conduit" centers around an alien abduction not drastically unlike those from the pilot, yet follows a structure more akin to the previous episode "Squeeze." Like that episode, this one doesn't do much to further the main story arc. There's no presence of alien implants, government cover-ups, or shadowy figures lurking around the Pentagon. But all the same it is a story about aliens, and thus doesn't qualify as a monster-of-the-week affair.

This episode is perhaps most notable for its focus on the Samantha Mulder storyline briefly addressed in the pilot. In the teaser, a teenager named Ruby Morris vanishes while camping with her mother and brother at Lake Okobogee (there's one for the tongue), a presumed hotspot for UFO sightings. The case obviously has a personal stake for Mulder, who is all-too-reminded of Samantha's abduction that he is driven to some rather slipshod errors in judgment, namely tampering with a crime scene.

One particular point of interest to this episode is the character Kevin, Ruby's younger brother who seems to be perceiving binary code through television static. Later in the episode these numbers are revealed to be part of a satellite transmission, suggesting that Kevin is the titular "conduit" capable of decoding messages from space. While this is initially written as the crux of the episode, it's importance is never quite resolved, as Ruby is returned in the final act with no apparent link to Kevin's psychic ability. "Conduit" was in part written by Howard Gordon, who would go on to achieve greater fame as the eventual showrunner of 24. One unfortunate commonality of his episodes are red herrings that have little fundamental bearing on the main plot. This one is forgivable, as at the heart of "Conduit" is Mulder's personal journey to face the loss of his sister, and the denouement is quite beautiful to say the least, but it detracts from an episode that could have otherwise been far more compelling.

Grade: B

"Tabula Rasa"

Lost - Season One
Aired: October 6, 2004
Starring: Naveen Andrews, Emilie de Ravin, Matthew Fox, Jorge Garcia, Maggie Grace, Josh Holloway, Malcolm David Kelley, Daniel Dae Kim, Yunjin Kim, Evangeline Lilly, Dominic Monhagan, Terry O'Quinn, Harold Perrineau, Ian Somerhalder
Written by Damon Lindelof
Directed by Jack Bender

This is my first review of 2011 (I started this week's other post two days before Christmas and took a break in between - getting four teeth pulled tends to do that to you), so Happy New Year, followers (ok, follower). Hopefully this year will be a time of much inspiration and motivation to write, but we will take things one week at a time.

This is the first episode to air after the two-part pilot, and while the premiere set the stage for a number of different story arcs to come, "Tabula Rasa" is perhaps a better example of the type of storytelling we will be seeing from the remainder of this series. While much of the same action and tumult from the previous two episodes continues to brew here, the script is almost entirely centered on the character of Kate, contrasting flashbacks of pre-island life with her post-crash story. I would have expected this episode to center around Jack with the weight given to his presence in the pilot, but it was a much more astute decision on the writers' part to focus our attention on a far more enigmatic character.

So just what do we learn about Miss Austen? Well, not a whole lot that couldn't have been left to the imagination, but enough to keep us hooked for more details. Grungy and penniless, a pre-island Kate stumbles onto a ranch in Australia and takes refuge for the night. The following morning she is discovered and awakened by a sympathetic farmer named Ray (Nick Tate), who offers to accommodate her in exchange for her accepting a job on the farm. When Kate agrees to a ride to a train station from Ray, it turns out to be a set-up. Ray has contacted the authorities, and the odious Marshal (Fredric Lane; last seen with a bread-basket sized hunk of shrapnel in his gut) is hot on her trail.

Things on the island don't fare much better. The Marshal is in critical condition and his death will surely sever the last link to Kate's criminal past on the island, but the situation becomes further messy when Jack stumbles upon her mugshot in the Marshal's luggage. Though he is unforthcoming of his findings (despite the much less discreet Hurley, a character destined to be a bastion of comic relief, too finding the photograph, and becoming particularly skittish in a subsequent encounter with Kate).

This episode is a bit short on concrete answers. We don't know what Kate did that put her on the run, why she fled to Australia, or just how personal the relationship between her and the Marshal was prior to the island. But faithfully "Tabula Rasa" adheres to the rich canvas of characterization established in the dual-pilot. When Kate crashes Ray's truck in an effort to escape the Marshal, rather than leaving Ray to die, she sticks around to salvage him from the wreckage. There is a powerful compassion to her character that strictly belies her opaque criminal background. Even as the Marshal, barely conscious and bleeding to death, continues to provoke her in his final moments, she makes the magnanimous decision to spare him a slow and painful demise. She doesn't kill him, but rather enlists a trigger-happy Sawyer, who doesn't really kill him either, but...it's better this scene be watched than recounted.

There's a motley of other "oh no, we're fucked!" moments to be found, namely a cryptic radio transmission found by Sayid (Naveen Andrews) and gang that Shannon (Maggie Grace) ruffledly translates from French into a distressing mayday that's presumably been on a loop for sixteen years. Elsewhere, the mysterious Locke (Terry O'Quinn) discloses the occurrence of a miracle on the island. But more on this next week...

Grade: A-

"Squeeze"

The X-Files - Season One

Aired: September 24, 1993
Starring: David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson
Written by Glen Morgan & James Wong
Directed by Harry Longstreet

One interesting feature of this show is its capacity to attempt different types of storytelling.  The first two episodes focused on setting up a standard for the larger alien/government mythology arc that would encompass the entire series.  "Squeeze" is something entirely different.  In-between the UFO chases and close encounters with the third kind, the writers would choose to branch away for a more anthologized version of the show, which would often include one-off characters with little to no impact on the core mythology.  These characters are often termed "monsters-of-the-week," due to their extrasensory and often grotesque capabilities.  Eugene Victor Tooms, who appears in this episode, would be the first in a long line of ephemeral baddies to come.

"Squeeze" is also notable for being the first script penned by Glen Morgan and James Wong, two of the show's most renowned writers who were responsible for many of the seminal, character-centric episodes that would serve as the archetype for a number of inferior replications by a number of inferior writers.  While the still-creepy "Squeeze" is certainly not their best, or even their most frightening script, it can be viewed as a harbinger of many great things to come.

So naturally this episode combines great moments of TV horror while simultaneously building on the characterization of the previous two episodes.  Tom Colton (Donal Logue), an ambitious colleague of Scully's is assigned to a case in which the livers of four victims were extracted with no discernible points of entry or exit.  Colton is happy to welcome Scully to the case, but there's no love lost for Mulder, whose loony reputation has made him a laughingstock in the Bureau.  Of course, Mulder doesn't let this stop him from taking over the case, and his scenes with Colton make for some rather hilarious dry humor.

Doug Hutchison puts in a fine performance as our very first monster, the aforementioned Tooms, a genetic mutant capable of contorting his body to fit into small spaces.  If that's not enough he's found a fountain of youth in human livers, the consumption of which having provided him the subsistence to hibernate for thirty years at a time.  While the alien mythology asks us to accept the existence of paranormal life in the world outside our own, episodes like "Squeeze" go a bit further and ask us that same question applied in the context of the commonplace and the mundane.  What is lurking inside the darkness of a sewer or behind the screws of an air vent?  There's a bit of judgment reservation required here - it's sci-fi after all - but it's interesting how the show juggles the improbable with the impossible and manages to make them both equally compelling and horrific.

Grade: A-

Songs I Love, Vol. 1: My Bloody Valentine - "Sometimes"

Happy New Year, everyone. I haven't felt up to posting anything since I had my wisdom teeth pulled two weeks ago, but like a trooper I was a victor to the pain and have compensated for it by indulging in banquets of fattening foods. As you can tell I didn't come with any good New Year's resolutions...

Until I muster up some good ramblings and reviews, I'll wedge in some musical intermissions here and there. This is a song and band I discovered relatively recently, within the past couple years or so, and have grown a fondness for. You can't really discern the lyrics in this song, but I think there's a message here that shines through in the overall ambiance. Really a beautiful piece of music, perfect for strolling rainlogged alleys while staring at your sneakers. An orgasm of unbridled emotion.

"Deep Throat"

The X-Files - Season One

Aired: September 17, 1993
Starring: David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson
Written by Chris Carter
Directed by Daniel Sackheim

It's a commendable feat when a television series, by default constrained by budgetary and punctual limitations, can produce a successful pilot.  When the second episode proves to be equally as engaging, it can be considered a milestone.  Such is the case with "Deep Throat," the first episode of the series proper and one widely regarded as an X-Files classic.  Taking the man vs. the man construct from the pilot and delving a tad deeper into its mythology, "Deep Throat" touches on a number of different concepts that would serve as a cornerstone for a number of threads to follow.

As with the previous episode, the plot here is relatively simple.  Pilots at an Ellens Air Base in Idaho are being abducted for months at a time and subsequently returned to their homes with faulty memories and altered personalities.  Despite a warning from a mysterious figure (Jerry Hardin, whose daughter Melora may be more renowned for her role as Jan on the American version of The Office), Mulder decides to jump on the case.  Of no certain coincidence, Ellens Air Base is described as a "Mecca" for UFO nuts.

One notable thing about these early episodes is the almost-overwhelming aura of nineties that came to define the seminal first season.  From Scully's haircut (altered in hue and style from the previous episode, indicating some time had passed between the abductions in Oregon and this case), to the homely Oldsmobiles, to the very-dated grunge garb of the two drug-addled teenagers (one played by a hirsute Seth Green), to Mark Snow's electronic soundscapes, revisiting these episodes always gives me a weird nostalgia.

Another nostalgic quality about these first season mythology episodes is how far removed they are from the core plot threads that would carry later seasons.  While those will surely be covered in later reviews (provided I continue this blog), episodes like "Deep Throat" barely graze the surface.  We get the idea that experimental aircraft is being used at the air base but only once do we get a fleeting look at it.  Mulder, in an imbecilic but appropriately consistent move, slips into the base at night to get a front-row view, only to be detained, wheeled into a curtained hangar, then deposited to the front gate the following morning with no recollection of the preceding events.  This effectively ends the episode on the same bleak, unpromising note as the pilot, in that the same secrecy and government cover-ups prevail, once again leaving Mulder and Scully empty-handed.  A cryptic, if frustrating, informant may prove to be a beacon for the two, but it is clear from this episode that the journey to the truth will not be a matter of plain sailing.

MULDER: "They're here, aren't they?"
DEEP THROAT: "Mr. Mulder, they've been here for a long, long time." 

Grade:  A-

"Pilot: Part 2"

Lost - Season One
Aired: September 29, 2004
Starring: Naveen Andrews, Emilie de Ravin, Matthew Fox, Jorge Garcia, Maggie Grace, Josh Holloway, Malcolm David Kelley, Daniel Dae Kim, Yunjin Kim, Evangeline Lilly, Dominic Monhagan, Terry O'Quinn, Harold Perrineau, Ian Somerhalder
Written by Jeffrey Lieber, J.J. Abrams, Damon Lindelof
Directed by J.J. Abrams

One consequence of dividing a 2-hour premiere into halves is the inevitable trimming of plot and character introduction.  If the first half can't engage the audience while at the same time providing a baseline for the events to follow, the ramifications can prove to be of a capsizing nature (refer to Joss Whedon's cult favorite Firefly, whose pilot episode wasn't even aired until well after the series had launched, and was one of a number of poor executive decisions that resulted in the series's untimely cancellation).  By dividing the pilot of Lost in two, ABC could have easily heralded the death knell for Abrams's latest project, and while I still maintain that this would have been more effective as a unified whole, the quality of the show's writing up to this point has averted this pitfall.

(To summarize the final couple acts of the previous episode, Jack Shephard, Kate Austen and Charlie Pace set off to find the plane's cockpit, which had landed in the middle of the waterlogged jungle.  There the three find the plane's transceiver and a barely-living pilot (played by Abrams regular Greg Grunberg), who is subsequently vacuumed out of the ruins presumably by whatever entity was responsible for the thunderous noises heard the previous night.  Charlie has some odd preoccupation with the plane's bathroom, a detail worthy of note.  With transceiver in hand, the three dash back to camp.)

Part 1 introduced us to a wide array of characters, most notably Shephard, the stouthearted if slightly nervous spinal surgeon from Los Angeles, and Austen, whose character is a little more fleshed out here.  In flashbacks it is revealed that she was a prisoner handcuffed to a US Marshal (Fredric Lane) for as-yet-unknown circumstances.  The Marshal fared less fortunately in the crash and has wound up on the beach with a sizable chunk of plane shrapnel in his stomach.  How this drama is going to unfold will likely be answered within the next stretch of episodes.  What is quite evident for the time being is how at ease Kate is with handling a gun (after Sawyer shoots and kills a wild polar bear) despite her claim that she's never used one. 

Speaking of which...there's a freaking polar bear!  As a group consisting of Kate, Sawyer, Charlie, Shannon Rutherford, Sayid Jarrah and Boone Carlyle branches off to find higher ground for the transceiver, they are attacked by none other than an Arctic bear who appears to be thirsting for more than just Coca-Cola.  As Shannon so cleverly notes, "Polar bears don't usually live in the jungle."

Of course the show can't maintain viewer interest without internal friction within the camp, and the wide racial palette of the cast allows for conflict.  Sayid, being an Iraqi, is perhaps the most obvious scapegoat, and Sawyer won't stop to grant him quarter.  When the Marshal's handcuffs turn up in the jungle, Sawyer turns the spotlight onto Sayid, and the results aren't so pretty.  While Sawyer's nicknames (especially "Al-Jazeera") strike a humorous tone, there is also something very unsettling in knowing that his chauvinistic inclination isn't too far removed from that of the American public.  By portraying Sayid as a comparatively more sagacious, rational character, he is also one that elicits sympathy, a rare and rather daring depiction of a Middle Eastern man.  Sawyer on the other hand is probably the least likable person on the island up to this point.  In addition, we get a few immediate pre-crash flashbacks of Charlie, who (surprise) had a stash of heroin stored in the lavatory, explaining his desire to accompany Jack and Kate to the missing third of the plane. 

This episode effectively maintains the momentum of Part 1, and gives us a more magnified view of several of the castaways.  One concern I would imagine may have been in the minds of some viewers is the extent of the season's budget that went into this monolith.  As mentioned in the previous review, the cost of building (and subsequently disassembling) and transporting the wreckage set was not cheap.  Had the producers invested too much funding into the pilot, the only logical result would have been resorting to bottleneck episodes for the remainder of the season, episodes that would have been filmed on relatively inexpensive sets and would have likely done little to advance the plot.  Fortunately, as someone who has already seen the entire series, I can put these fears to rest.  There is still a smorgasbord of great things to come, polar bears and all, and I look forward to hitting them all in successive reviews.

Grade: A