Cartoon-ish

I’ve been off the grid. Now I’m back and dabbling: Billions, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, The Gilded Age, for example. And I’m struck by just how damn cartoonish it all seems to be. Here’s my take: please tell me I’m wrong!

Season six of Billions is a huge disappointment. Without Damian Lewis/Bobby Axelrod, I feel like none of the characters (or actors) are sufficiently challenged. By the end of last season, Wendy had finally come out and declared her love for Bobby (and vice versa). But now under Michael Prince’s watch, she’s examining her transactional nature but…not pining for Axe. Why is that? Shouldn’t Lady McWendy be secretly sending Bobby inside gossip about the Prince shop to help plot his return, or at least his revenge?  

And Wags- has he also totally capitulated, without a whiff of ambivalence--to the new sheriff? He’s lost his joy and that’s part of the arc, but without access to his delicious diabolic side, he’s just… a middle aged minion waiting to collect his eight-figure pension. And the whole Rosencrantz and Guildenstern thing with Prince’s Wags, Scooter? It feels very forced.

Perhaps I feel the weight of Bobby’s exile most palpably in the story arc Paul Giamatti’s Chuck Rhoades has to endure. Chuck’s still on his high horse-- preaching from the tractor, shrieking from the top of the car, but his ‘man of the people’ shtick—‘slay those billionaires’-- bla bla bla—it doesn’t feel like the real Chuck. Or like the real Chuck’s passion. I miss the Chuck strapped in leather and under Wendy’s leathered stiletto heel, the Chuck whose ambivalence about his own relationship to power and money drove his masochism. Now I’m not sure what drives him.

Which brings me to the best character—and possibly the best actor in the show, Jeffrey DeMunn, who plays Chuck’s father, Chuck Rhoades, Sr. DeMunn’s character almost died of kidney failure last season, but Bobby found him a kidney, temporarily undermining Sr.’s sort-of-reliable allegiance to the junior Rhoades. Now papa Rhoades is a new man, with a young wife, a baby girl, and a twinkle in his eye that shows how much damn fun he is having—playfully toying with his son and stealing every scene he is in. How I would love to have a drink with this character, if only to scratch our heads at the spectacle of his son’s flailing. 

The other thing that’s bothering me is the writing. Take episode four, Burn Rate. That one is about how easy it is to spend money when you have it. And how dangerous. But why did the writers think it was ok to throw those little text bubbles on the screen throughout the entire episode --  listing how much this or that character spent on their watches and shoes and yachts. And that cast/family portrait at the end — so many text bubbles with their spending habits on the screen—well, it nearly was… a cartoon. For me, the jury is out on the character of Michael Prince. The actor who plays him, Corey Stoll? He doesn’t have great material: for example, I don’t really believe his personal motivation for bringing the Olympics to New York -- to get his wife back—because their chemistry on screen to me suggests that other than their two daughters, their bonds are, at this point, only transactional. Maybe, alas, six seasons is just too many—Bobby or no Bobby.

The second cartoon, I mean show, I’m sad about is The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. For seasons one through three, I bought the conceit—didn’t let the techno-color sets, costumes and dialogue get me down, because I’ll give the benefit of the doubt to almost any story about a woman pushing beyond her pre-ordained confines. But Sarah Silverman and the British comic David Baddiel have since alerted me to the dangers of “Jewface,” the casting of non-Jewish actors to play Jewish parts.

Rachel Brosnahan is a fine actress, dramatic and comic, but she doesn’t come off as authentically Jewish. Partly that’s because the actors cast as her parents, Tony Shalhoub and Marin Hinkle, don’t either, nor does the opulence of their Upper West Side apartment, their clothing, or their staff of maids and nannies play as Jewish, so much as someone’s fantasy of a post-war assimilated Jewish family. To be sure, Alex Borstein as Susie Myerson, Michael Zegen as Joel Maisel, Kevin Pollak as Moishe Maisel, and Caroline Aaron as Shirley Maisel, do feel, to me at least, authentic. And lo and behold, they are actually Jewish. I’m not even sure the not casting of Jews for Jewish roles is the total deal-breaker.

The real issue is that I’m very distracted by the volubility of nearly every choice—color, lighting, furniture, clothing. Is it all some subtle way of signaling “this is a show about loud New York Jews?” The only time the show doesn’t feel like a cotton candy confection is when Mrs. Maisel is performing. And even then, the smoky feel of the lower Manhattan comedy cellar feels also a tad, um… like television, at a time when the best television lets you relish in story and character, and forget about, or at least ignore, the zillions of choices behind what finally airs.

What do you think? And tell me what you’re watching—I’ll take a look and chime in.

And to the first three of you who send this link to friends and suggest they subscribe, I’ll send you a surprise from my temporary West coast outpost in Ojai, California, the peaceable kingdom of pink sunsets.

Julia

p.s. Kudos to Rebecca Donner, whose All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days just won the PEN Literary award in Biography. Respect! And, sadly, Camp Confidential did not make the short list for the Oscar’s short subject documentary. But a movie buff I know says Queen of Basketball is a must.