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With greater direction (which is, I admit, a byproduct of basing it on a series of novels) than The Wire or Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones is showing us how plotlines create character, not just reflect it. Events in Game of Thrones are like living things that die and leave their bones inside of characters, slowly fossilizing and then being ground into the shale and coal and oil that become a character’s fuel. Although it doesn’t do everything exactly right, it does this thing better than any other show I’ve ever watched.
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As long as you demand that working for free is the price for admission to an industry, you cut out a lot of talent at the start.
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The characters are young enough to waste a day camping out in an unclaimed parking space, old enough to know better, and yet bored and directionless enough to do it anyway. It’s the friction of all that free time that fuels the comedy and adds a grace note of yearning to all the carefree boning. Unlike more prurient sitcoms of the past, on New Girl — original title: Chicks and Dicks — sex isn’t something you save for when you’ve got things figured out. It’s one of the very best ways to do the figuring.
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Here is how it goes: Paul Pierce gets the ball and squares shoulders that are broader than you’d think. Arms that are less-defined than the NBA norm hang with ball in hand as he lowers his 6-7 frame. There is a look on his face that suggests maybe mild indigestion, or that his feet hurt. Then he flinches, head and shoulders and arms at once, and whoever has been tasked with defending him—a decade and a half’s worth of defenders, at this point in his NBA career—flinches with him. They bite, because they always bite.
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[Nicole] Holofcener specializes in female antiheroes who dare to be unlikable and are obliviously self-centered, but end up being appealing despite their awful qualities. They are the grown-up versions of the girls on Girls. Holofcener is the rare director who makes movies for and about grown women. Her characters are caustic, angry, and passive-aggressive, just like real people.
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J.A.Yang has slummed it in the valley with the Wakefield twins; slumber partied with Huey, Dewey and Louie; joined Krakow in stalking Angela; and climbed every mountain with the Von Trapps.
www.jonyang.org
