The Remote Island : Generation Kill

Corporal Ray Person's Keen Powers Of Observation Haven't Dimmed Since The War

Bryan Christian — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 21:52:00 GMT

“I am literally shocked that [Michael Phelps] lost the fucking Kellogg's endorsement. It’s a fucking cereal. What do you think stoners eat?”
-- James Ransone, actor

[via Vulture]

PREVIOUSLY:

Oprah Wants To Ask Michael Phelps About Pot

"60 Minutes": Michael Phelps Indulges Anderson Cooper's Hard-On For Water Sports

Did "True Blood" Tank?

Ben Kallen — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 21:25:00 GMT

Fans of True Blood may want to start worrying. With 1.44 million viewers, the premiere of HBO's Louisiana vampire drama had half the viewership of the first episode of John From Cincinnati on the network a year ago. (Of course, that one followed the finale of The Sopranos.)

On the other hand, it's still a little more than watched the premiere of HBO's Generation Kill.

Meanwhile, creator Alan Ball says he tries not to think about ratings anyway. "My job is to do the best type of show I know how to do, and let other people worry about what it's going to do for HBO."

Previously:
True Blood: HBO Gets a Cool Adult Comic Book Show After All
True Blood: A Haiku Review

"Generation Kill" Is Oscar Mike, Over

Bryan Christian — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 17:37:00 GMT

Is it just us, or did last night's Generation Kill finale seem like a movie of its own? It was markedly different in tone, rhythm and execution -- epic where other eps had just been frenzied, with touches of pathos, adventure, and even -- gasp -- self-awareness and metaphor that the previous installments had not quite dared to attempt. We can't be the only ones a little shocked that our final moments with the men of First Recon began with the letters "USA" written in piss, included a wickedly fun sequence depicting Marines infiltrating a building that had already been seized by the Americans, and ended with a football game marked more by infighting than sportsmanship -- a climax if not borrowed from than at least referential to Robert Altman's antiwar classic M*A*S*H. Sure, it's probably in the book -- which we confess we are now reading -- but the decision to leave it in the script can't be ignored.

The new, expansive approach to the filmmaking gave the unraveling of the invasion an added poignancy, most notably in how it allowed the actors to fill small or quiet moments with their growing unease. As Lt. Fick, Stark Sands had one great scene -- his refusal to send his troops into the field until dawn, which came off as both indignant and self-doubting -- but the real stars of the episode were Alexander Skarsgård, James Ransone, and Jonah Lotan as Iceman, Ray, and Doc Bryan. Their moments of hushed disappointment were as affecting as any of the senseless violence that had come before, and Ray's blowup at the football game brought his character into a sharp, unexpectedly intimate focus that caught us wholly off-guard. Nearly everyone in the series did some great acting -- including Rudy Reyes as himself, something we just realized -- but those four guys need to be stars as of yesterday.

"Generation Kill": Same Same But Different

Bryan Christian — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 18:30:00 GMT

Anyone else ever been in Thailand or Vietnam? You ever do any shopping over there, in the street markets or anywhere, you're gonna hear this phrase: "same same but different." Meaning "This is basically like the thing you were just looking at, except it's more like what you want," -- even, of course, if it's not.

We've come to the conclusion that Generation Kill is kinda like that: each successive episode a broad recapitulation of the themes and predicaments and characterizations of the previous one -- waiting on bridges, waiting for supplies, waiting for the brass to do something idiotic -- but with each successive episode the pattern is tweaked a bit, the stakes are raised higher, the hole is dug a little deeper, bringing the series closer and closer to... Well, to the end that we've come to simultaneously fear and desire, and a moment that only truly works if the story is told by slow degrees: the moment that one of the men of the First Reconnaissance Battalion realizes that the war in Iraq has been a mistake.

We fear seeing this moment, of couse, because we've grown to admire the men of the First Reconnaissance Battalion, and the hundreds of thousands of manhours they've put into their effort; and yet we want to see this moment because, it's increasingly clear, it might well be the only cathartic thing possible in this story.

Are we gonna ever actually get a moment like that? Who can say. (We could, perhaps, if we'd ever gotten around the reading the book! It's been sitting on our shelf for months...) Sure, Iceman, Fick, and the rest have demonstrated their dissension, even derision, of their commanding officers and the orders they give. But no one's implied yet that the entire effort was a bad idea. That is, until last night, with the discovery of an insurgent who had come to Iraq only days after the invastion to fight the Americans. The looks on Fick's face as he realized the war was attracting terror, not vanquishing it, or in Iceman's as another innocent Iraqi was killed at a roadblock, were in their small way, the first time that any of these guys have to come to know (or perhaps admit) what we already know about those days in March 2003.

It's a canny strategy, one that confounds and rewards our narrative expectations all at once -- and, we're sure you've noticed, very similar to the approach writer/producers David Simon and Ed Burns used in The Wire: noble, hardworking, flawed people, working towards an impossible goal and, in ways over which they have no control, failing. Whether it's the war on drugs or the war in Iraq, if there's a better way to illustrate the whole "love the soliders, hate the war" scenario, we've never seen it.

Generation Kill ends two weeks from last night. In our minds, we've pictured its final few moments unspooling like Kids or The Candidate: the off-hand, candid question that brings the whole enterprise into sharp, tragic focus. But that's in our mind, in the part of our brain that likes neat endings. The rest of our brain just wants to know that all those kids got out of there OK, because in terms of a happy ending, that's pretty much the most we could hope for.

"The Two Coreys": How Could An Intervention With Pauly Shore And Willis From "Different Strokes" Go Wrong?

Bryan Christian — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 14:28:00 GMT

Holy crap, dude!!! Did you guys catch the cluster-f of failure that was last night's Two Coreys?

OK, so, last night, we was all into Generation Kill, and you know how it goes longer than an hour, right? So, when it was over and we were sufficiently wowed/depressed, we jumped into Two Coreys kind of midway -- and all of a sudden there's a screaming match going on -- not so weird -- with Todd Bridges and Pauly Freaking Shore singing backup. We said it before, we'll say it again: holy crap, dude!!! What was that all about?

OK, so, we know what that was all about. That was about Corey H being a total fuck-up and showing up to gigs messed up on pills and Corey F enlisting the help of some of his sober friends. We get that. What we don't get is, you know, Willis and the Wiez!!! You can get those two guys in the same room? Without a witch doctor played by Jm J. Bullock?

Of course, the real question is "How could an intervention -- or whatever it was supposed to be -- go so badly?" The ep ended with Corey and Corey on the outs again, Corey H and Mrs. Corey F swapping Mom insults, and some Corey H art therapy (which, we're not gonna lie, was kind of less crummy than we had anticipated). Will they patch things up? Will Corey F kick his meds? Will A&E ever be able to mash-up two of their most successful series in such a trashy manner again? Here's hoping they arrest Criss Angel for that Florida debacle, he jumps bail, and Dog the Bounty Hunter teams up with Bob Goldthwait and Mr. T to go track him down. We'd watch that if we had no eyeballs.

PREVIOUSLY:
Would Anyone Rather Corey H.?

"Generation Kill": Pretty Much Everything We'd Hoped It Would Be

Bryan Christian — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 15:33:00 GMT

There's been a ton of chatter already about how great Generation Kill is, and after last night's engrossing and deliciously foulmouthed opener, we're not likely to disagree. We just wanted to mention something that we said offhand to someone at a party on Saturday. Generation Kill came up in conversation, as did HBO's recent troubles with original programming, and before we knew what we were saying, we opined "People will be happy with Generation Kill as long as it ain't Band of Brothers." Meaning, that it avoids the soaring score and classy, brassy enthusiasms that characterized the 2001 mini, while still being packed with some of the most interesting young actors around.

If last night was any indication, it shouldn't have any trouble there. We're not sure what we liked more: the Altman-esque layering of profane asides that littered each scene (we smell a great DVD extra there), or the way supporting characters from The Wire -- people that should have had more lines than they did, like James Ransone (aka Ziggy Sobatka) -- kept popping up. (Dude, that one po-lice with the 'stache looks kind of handsome without it!) We also like how the Evan Wright character really does seem to be in the background for the most part, just kind of pecking away at his story, but -- at least for now -- not trying for some deep understanding. Which means we're right there with him, getting our bearings, as he tags along for the ride. Some critics have complained that GK suffered from Black Hawk Down-syndrome, meaning a bunch of white guys screaming at each other. We didn't have that problem -- we thought everyone in the company got differentiated pretty darn well...

But enough about us. What did you guys think?

Sounds Like They're Freaking Out Over At HBO Original Programming

Bryan Christian — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 16:28:00 GMT

The story so far... After the demise of its most prestigious and successful original programs -- and with few successes to show for itself (but a couple might have beens) in the intervening months -- HBO has seemed for some time poised to lose its reputation as "more than TV" to rival pay cable network Showtime. To our mind, that hasn't quite happened yet. No matter how navelgazing/boring In Treatment or Tell Me You Love Me were, Showtime didn't overcome HBO in the last year or so so much as supply an alternative to it. They don't have any comedies as idiosyncratic as Curb Your Enthusiasm, nor do any of their hour-long shows acheive the grandeur of The Sopranos or even HBO's misfires, like Carnivàle. (Possible exception: This American Life, which since it's a doc we're thinking doesn't count.)

Still, HBO knows they've got a title to defend. And it looks to us like their solution is to throw lots and lots of money around developing new shows. None of which sound particularly great.

Just in the past couple days, we've heard of their developing a comedy club-based show for comedienne Lisa Lampanelli, with Jim Carrey exec-producing; an adaptation of Sloane Crosley's humorous essay collection I Was Told There Would Be Cake; and Bored to Death, which sounds an awful lot like The Singing Detective as written by Jonathan Lethem but is, in fact, from the very funny New York writer and performance artist Jonathan Ames. Previously reported shows being developed by the net include that vampire show from Six Feet Under's Alan Ball; Hung, from Election's Alexander Payne and The Riches' Dmitry Lipkin, which is about a guy whose "superpower" in life is his humongous cock and balls; and, according to the New York Observer, "a Darren Star adaptation of Tracy Quan’s Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl, and Surburban Shootout, based on a U.K. series, about a woman in the suburbs stuck between two housewife gangs."

Anything there tickle your fancy? Yeah, we not so sure either. Nor are we so optimistic about David Simon's New Orleans show, but that may just be because we thought that show's theme song got progressively way worse each season and figure that doesn't bode well for a show about musicians. (Generation Kill, on the other hand, we await with baited breath -- but that's a miniseries.)

The one show that we'd heard about being developed by HBO that we were hardcore excited about was Preacher, an adaptation of Garth Ennis' epic and deeply profane comic book about God, vampires, and rednecks. And that project is apparently stalled, even though HBO and DC/Vertigo (which published Preacher in the '90's) are part of the same company and you'd think they could share a few resources getting it right. (BTW, there's a big hubbub about trouble at DC here and here, which may shed light on that situation. Don't skip the comments.)

So, what do we do? Wait for HBO to get it right again -- or for Showtime to finally put together an hour-long drama that knocks it out of the park? Or are we just gonna have to rely on a diet of Mad Men and Damages for a while?