THE IRRATIONAL, s1 (2023-24)

(***+ / *****) :: Loved the characters, the stories, Ariely's source material, and the central idea, but: the "Professor Mercer factoid" dialogue – which I'm guessing was intended as a fun character quirk and a way to showcase Ariely's research – came across not only as lazy writing that yanked me out of the narrative for unnecessary exposition, but made an otherwise great character grate. Were it anyone other than Jesse L. Martin delivering the dialogue, I probably wouldn't have given the show a full episode, nevermind a (truncated) season.

That being said, those Professor Mercer factoid moments are essential to the show: they’re what makes it unique – but I have to believe that someone would've conjured a less intrusive way of handling it, like an annotated extra on Peacock. Have Ariely do commentary on each episode? A podcast where he discusses each of the irrationalities used in the show? Something, anything: hope they figure it out for season two because the expository clunk was more than a bit onerous – even from the mouth of Jesse L. Martin.

POKER FACE, s1 (2023)

Took our time savoring each and every episode of this bit of throwback magic and antidote to standard streaming doldrums. Lyonne finally – along with RUSSIAN DOLL – gets the vehicle and the credit she's long-deserved for her talents; that she also directed one of the best episodes of the season, a welcome screen return for Nick Nolte (which, coupled with my recent BAY OF ANGELS viewing really made me want to watch Neil Jordan's Nolte-starring BOB LE FLAMBEUR remake, THE GOOD THIEF), makes her triumph here all the more satisfying.

Highlight remains the Judith Light guest-starring senior living episode: that was amazing. My only gripe – other than a tepid boredom with the Tim Meadows / Ellen Barkin episode (which may be a result of it coming after my favorite episode and my aversion to dinner theatre) – being the wrap-up of the season finale: enjoyed 90% of the episode, but a fork that should, IMO, have been taken, one that would have infused the second season and the show's formula with even more-heightened stakes (instead of the same stakes with a different voice(s) on the phone), wasn't taken, an opportunity lost, in favor of more cut-and-dry off-screen one. Maybe Johnson, et al, weren't sure that a second season was in the cards when that was written? Quite possibly: finale did feel like it could be a season or series finale. Relief that it's only a season finale – though I do wish they had taken the more challenging path.

That being said, count me in for whatever path Johnson, Lyonne, and company choose to take: what a great show – and what a joy to see Lyonne finally get the quality of role and the accolades she's so long-deserved.

TÁR (Field, 2022)

(Written and directed by Todd Field; starring Cate Blanchett, Noémie Merlant, Nina Hoss, Sophie Kauer, Julian Glover, Allan Corduner, and Mark Strong. Released 07 October 2022; watched: 2023w05 via Peacock).

Given my creative history in the world of classical music, a world for which I hold both such utter love (the output) and utter contempt (the milieux) – fairly or otherwise – that Field and Blanchett capture with such startling accuracy, writing about TÁR with any objectivity has been a challenge: experiencing the film triggered more than a little bit of heretofore unknown and seemingly unresolved PTSD from my music school / conservatory days – none of it having anything to do with the film's overarching subject matter, but rather the onslaught of a creative doubt that I haven't felt since I ran away from the hallowed caocophy of institutionalized music education 20 years ago.

(It's not often that I can write the following words so I'm going to write them here, because they sum up the entirety of my music school experience: I should've listened to Branford Marsalis.)

Nonetheless, objectivity: Cate Blanchett is mesmerizing – as if she ever isn't – in a career-best performance in a career of career-best performances, thanks in no small part to the inspired writing (the pace and tone and subject matter brought to mind John Patrick Shanley's DOUBT) and directing of Field (I want to say he needs to make more films, but if we get a film like TÁR 16 years after the remarkable LITTLE CHILDREN, he can take as much time as he needs) and supporting players, especially Nina Hoss and Noémie Merlant – and a welcome small part from Julian Glover.

The thing that sticks with me, the thing I'm drawing into my own work, though, is Field's deft handling and rhythmic manipulation of the smallest elements into the most unmooring reverberations: a masterclass in the value of (hyper)vigilant attention to detail.

SHE SAID (Schrader, 2022)

(watched sat/20230107-sun/20230108 via Peacock; directed by Maria Schrader from a script by Rebecca Lenkiewicz adapted from the book and New York Times investigation by Jodi Cantor and Meghan Twohy; starring Carey Mulligan, Zoe Kazan, Patricia Clarkson, Andre Braugher, Jennifer Ehle, Samantha Morton, and Ashley Judd. Released 13 October 2022)

A powerful film that everyone should see brimming with phenomenal performances – especially Mulligan (my favorite performance Mulligan performance remains David Hare's 2018 BBC series COLLATERAL), Kazan, and Ehle – but a powerful film that should have been so much more.

Still trying to put my finger on it – writing this being a process of processing – but my current thinking is that it was the direction of the whole that left me wanting, an amplifcation of a powerful story but an amplifier with a flickering spark: I was hoping for the heir apparent to ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN and SPOTLIGHT (perhaps my expectations were at fault?); certainly the source material, the most transformative and tectonic investigative reporting since the Boston Globe revealed the decades of child sex abuse allowed by centuries of systemic rot running rampant in the Catholic Church in 2002, warrants that treatment but – though Schrader's telling occasionally reached for it – SHE SAID never quite broke through its own restraint and left me wondering what a more visceral director like Lynne Ramsey, Mary Haron, Ava DuVernay, Kathryn Bigelow, Chloe Zao, Dee Rees, or Sam Taylor-Johnson would have done with the source material – if not with the script itself.