Finalist: Los Angeles Times, by Mary McNamara
For her searching television criticism that often becomes a springboard for provocative comments on the culture at large.
Nominated Work
February 5, 2012
In this land of egalitarianism, viewers are eating up this upstairs-downstairs tale — and rooting for the British gentry — with a silver spoon.
By Mary McNamara
When, during his recent State of the Union address, President Obama spoke of "an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same rules," I wasn't worried about the GOP response or changes to our tax codes. I was worried about Downton.
Everyone loves "Downton Abbey."PBS' biggest hit in years, it's won Emmys, a Golden Globe and the critics' hearts. We are all smitten with the elegant writing, the fabulous cast (Maggie Smith! Weekly!), the marvelous setting and the chance to wallow in the social mores and accouterments of another age.
Even with its high-lather soap factor, no one would consider "Downton Abbey" a guilty pleasure — it's "Masterpiece," for heaven's sake, the television equivalent of graduate school — though certainly creator Julian Fellowes makes it easy for an American audience to empathize with pampered members of the master class. So easy that one wonders why conservative Republicans would want to cut funding for PBS when it's delivering such a soothing message about the benevolent rich.
By conveniently blurring the class distinctions of the time with a lot of noblesse oblige and more than a dash of modern psychology, Fellowes and his writers allow their audience the benefits of a romantic period piece and none of the troubling drawbacks. The absence of race as a major issue may provide the American audience an instant comfort zone — Americans love to pretend that we, unlike our mother country, are an egalitarian and socially mobile society — but "Downton Abbey" is, after all, a British version of "The Help," the tale of an oppressive social and economic system that is finally being called into question.
Yet the tone of the two works could not be more different; in "The Help," the moneyed elite are portrayed as catty women devoid of human decency. In "Downton Abbey," decency does not even begin to describe it. In "The Help," the audience is justifiably outraged by what is clearly an untenable situation. In "Downton Abbey," well, yes, one supposes even a scullery maid deserves an education and the hope of life outside servitude, but mightn't we consider what will be lost as well? A more gracious way of life, a time when at least one knew where one stood?
Eulogies for a more stately past are invariably expressed by members of the ruling class, while behind them the teeming multitudes empty the chamber pots, chew on gristle and die in childbirth. But not at Downton. Oh, good gracious, no.
At Downton, the servants are part of the family; it says so right on the website. Certainly, they address their employers with a familiarity that would leave even literature's most beloved servants — P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves, say, or Dorothy L. Sayers' Bunter — gasping in horror. Not to mention unemployed.
But then, "Downton Abbey" is a modern television show, and modern audiences can no longer sympathize with anyone in the master or even "Mister" role. Atticus Finch may be the last American hero to get away with it; even Frodo and Sam's employer-servant relationship was almost entirely obscured by their friendship in the film version of "The Lord of the Rings."
Indeed, from the moment we met Robert Crawley, Earl of Grantham (Hugh Bonneville), last season, it was clear that Fellowes would not be wielding the stinging class satire of his own "Gosford Park" or even the strictly upheld divisions of "Upstairs Downstairs." The lordship had just learned the fate of his heirs aboard the Titanic, and his first thought was for the poor souls in steerage. And when discussing the future of Downton, he is not so much worried about his own status as he is wracked with concern for his servants — if this last remnant of the system should fail, where would they find jobs?
The first season of "Downton Abbey" put class very much front and center. When it became clear that the new heir was a young lawyer named Matthew Crawley (Dan Stevens), all manner of snobbery was exposed for the amusement of the modern audience. Led by Robert's mother, the straight-backed and sharp-tongued dowager countess (Smith), stands were made against this mingling of castes, with the eldest daughter, Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery), physically unable to disguise her disgust at the thought of marrying a working man, even to preserve her beloved Downton. Yes, her father entered a similarly financial-based arrangement with an American heiress, but Cora, Countess of Grantham (Elizabeth McGovern), is now so passionately and universally loved that one wonders what on earth those malcontents Edith Wharton and Henry James were yammering about when they wrote their scathing portrayals of similar matrimonial schemes.
Matthew and his mother, Isobel (Penelope Wilton), were also somewhat repulsed by the archaic class system, though Matthew, softened by his inexplicable love for Lady Mary, eventually accepted that being a lord was more responsibility than privilege. (All that job creation and what not.) Isobel, however, remains unmoved and in the second season has been increasingly portrayed as one of those tiresome women who think the rich should always be "doing something."
The other class division, that of upstairs and down, was — and continues to be — glossed over with a patina of sentiment. In the first season, one maid seeks economic independence by learning to type in hopes of becoming a secretary, but only three characters express angry dissatisfaction with the yawning chasm between upper and lower. Tom (Allen Leech), the socialist chauffeur, is the most promising, but by Season 2, he is more consumed with his love for Lady Sybil (Jessica Brown-Findlay) than he is with political fervor.
Meanwhile, the bitter lady's maid O'Brien (Siobhan Finneran) and her scheming (and homosexual!) protégé, the footman Thomas (Rob James-Collier), are clearly villainous. (For one thing, they're the only ones who smoke, often in a way that can only be described as furtively.) Even more so in the second season, when Downton becomes an infirmary for officers during World War I and Thomas is put in charge.
And upstairs, everyone has found a new common foe — the boorish and bullying Sir Richard Carlisle (Iain Glen), a newspaper editor (so, obviously, Satan in a dinner jacket) who vows to keep a family scandal at bay, but only if Lady Mary will marry him
Fellowes dutifully addresses the shifting social landscape both during and after the war, but our sympathy is always with the gentry. We root for Lady Sybil to marry Tom but exchange outraged glances with the current and dowager countesses of Grantham whenever Isobel suggests that Downton be more than a private residence and bare our teeth when Sir Richard tries to buy the things that one should simply inherit.
Most important, we want Lady Mary to be happy.
Why, I cannot tell you. Dockery is a lovely woman who gives a fine and nuanced performance, and Lady Mary does have an endearing capacity for frankness. But in another, more progressive time, it would be the scullery maid Daisy (Sophie McShera) or even the poor, angry, gay Thomas who would emerge as the true hero of "Downton Abbey," a character embodying the struggles of a brave, new society in which one's ambition and ability mean more than one's lineage.
Instead, it is Lady Mary who commands Fellowes' heart and the show's center stage. Downton has worked its magic, and even the most left-leaning among us find ourselves hoping for its preservation, and Lady Mary is key. If she and Matthew don't marry, who knows what will happen?
Never mind that this empire runs on the blood, sweat and tears of an underclass purposefully denied education, upper-ward mobility or any protection save the arbitrary generosity of its employers. Should Downton fail, a bit of brightness will fall from the air.
Exquisitely rendered and perfectly displayed, "Downton Abbey" is a beggar's banquet and, while Occupiers protest and the politicians argue, while the international economies shiver and the gap between rich and poor grows too wide to be breached by any staircase, we eat it up with a silver spoon.
April 13, 2012
By Mary McNamara
Toward the end of the first episode of HBO's "Girls," Hannah (Lena Dunham), in the hopes of persuading her parents to continue supporting her, hands them the half-dozen pages of the "book" she has been writing for the last two years. To finish this proposed nine-chapter opus, all she wants is $1,100 a month, for two more years.
It's a wonderful moment, capturing the inevitable divide between generations. With all the gloriously narcissistic conviction of an academically coddled, white, upper-middle-class publishing "intern," Hannah truly believes she is writing a memoir — she just has to live it first. Her parents, played briefly but brilliantly by Becky Ann Baker and Peter Scolari, can only stare, dumbstruck, hearts full of love perhaps, but also the realization that their daughter now lives in a world light years away from what they consider reality.
The world of the privileged urban twentysomething.
Like a greenhouse, that world has the illusion of being one with the greater universe but it is a very particular biosphere, small, steamy and fecund. Whether by chance or design "Girls" premieres in what has become television's official Year of the Woman, joining approximately 157 shows designed to celebrate the power of female bonding and the earthier aspects of feminine sexuality. But while the other shows go wide and laugh-tracked, "Girls" goes micro and all but live.
At 25, Dunham is also the creator and writer of "Girls" and if, career-wise, her own post-college years are radically different from that of her characters, the heady mixture of insecurity and self-righteousness, winsomeness and insensitivity that infuses "Girls" all seem freshly harvested, providing both its undeniable potency and its one real flaw — though wildly smart, "Girls" is a difficult show to love.
Hannah is busy generating her memoir in a surprisingly spacious Brooklyn apartment, which she shares with Marnie (Allison Williams), her best friend and polar opposite. Hannah is sardonic and unemployed; Marnie is controlling and works at a chic art gallery; Hannah insists on having a vaguely masochistic relationship with the emotionally uninterested Adam (Adam Driver), Marnie is bored with Charlie (Christopher Abbott), her loving boyfriend of four years.
They have two other friends to round out the quartet — Jessa (Jemima Kirke), a British free spirit who has just returned from her many international adventures to live with her cousin Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet), a straight-arrow nerd who speaks in dorky abbreviations and uses the characters from"Sex and the City"to define herself.
If the framework of "Girls" is surprisingly traditional, what Dunham layers on top is not. The frankness with which the young women expose themselves, both emotionally and physically, is nothing short of revolutionary.
Many of this year's female-centric shows too clearly pride themselves on going toe-to-toe with the boys in graphic language and sexual posturing, but at the end of the day, they are all grown-ups doing a little role-playing. "Girls," on the other hand, reports live from the murk of post-adolescence, a time when everything is both remarkably simple and a perpetual crisis. The sexuality of these "Girls" is truly their own, graphic and far from erotic, played less for humor than to convey a perpetual state of ambivalence: In one particularly disturbing and wonderful scene, Hannah appears just as perplexed by her partner's dehumanizing sexual fantasy as she is by whether she wants a post-coital Gatorade or not.
She is a coveted creature, the girl on the edge of womanhood, almost as rare as a unicorn and just as difficult to capture on film. Too often infantilized or eroticized, women in their early 20s make people nervous, which is why most shows about these topics skew either nostalgic or older; "Sex and the City," to which "Girls" certainly owes a debt of gratitude, managed to push the archetype into the peri-menopausal years. But Dunham is no more afraid of herself or her peers than she is of her own body, which is shown in all its non-Hollywood-ideal splendor.
She is also a witty and observant writer, deftly spinning moments of truth and beauty and handing them to her uniformly strong cast, who know just how to wear them. Her dialogue shines over territory familiar (Marnie sighs that she knows Jessa will show up "late, wearing some fabulous blankety dress from a Grecian marketplace and be like 'oh I can't remember where I got this'") and uncharted (Hannah agonizes over how to tonally frame her mention of an abortion.) If occasionally, things go one ironic twist too far — well, you don't know where the wall is until you bang into it.
Like its main character, "Girls" is, essentially, a memoir in the making, and as recognizable as the characters may be and as powerful as the moments are, it is, in its own way, just as stylized and romanticized as "Sex and the City." In early episodes, these girls too spend most of their time talking about boys — no one reads a book or sees a play or discusses politics or has a bizarre encounter on the subway. There is a cool cleverness to the show that is both attractive and off-putting; the characters are flawed and hyper-aware of their flaws, the stories so bent on covering every angle of self-examination that there is no real role for the viewer to play.
Which makes watching it an intellectual rather than emotional experience. It is easy to laud the courage and talent behind the piece, to watch with great interest where the show will go, how it will push the artistic boundaries of television. It's more difficult to care about the characters themselves. Obliviously insular in that small space behind the glass, they are essentially incapable of real connection. Which is, after all, Dunham's point.
May 2, 2012
Since a court decision loosened restrictions, the expletive has been showing up everywhere — often to great comedic effect. But is there a larger trend at play?
By Mary McNamara
Last year, when the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals curtailed the Federal Communications Commission's powers to punish networks for "fleeting expletives," many worried that network television would become a battlefield of exploding F-bombs and barely bleeped C-words. Turns out, all the decision, currently under review by the Supreme Court, did was unleash the "bitches."
Sure, there have been a few more "damns" and "hells" and S-words, some F-bleeps and a lot of playful word compounds beginning with "ass." But the previously daring expletive that has been served most frequently, and with the most relish, is the B-word. Those "bitches" are everywhere.
They're being dropped by the old — Betty White on TV Land's "Hot in Cleveland" — and the very young — Jane Levy's Tessa on ABC's "Suburgatory" — and in scripted and non-scripted shows alike. A recent episode ofBravo's new reality show "Shahs of Sunset" was titled "It's My Birthday, Bitches." Two of ABC's midseason comedies brazenly revolve around the word — "Don't Trust the B— In Apartment 23" and "GCB," which was originally titled "Good Christian Bitches." (Well, maybe not so brazenly. The network eventually decided the actual word was too incendiary for a broadcast audience.)
But it's a term that remains problematic no matter how many times "30 Rock's" Liz Lemon says it. Not that it isn't a fun word to say, the soft comforting "b" followed by the pinched little "i" and then that deliciously dismissive welter of "tch," which is as close to spitting as you can get while still actually speaking.
It's no wonder that many now want to extend the linguistic pleasure by sneaking an "a" after the "i" and turning it into two even more expressive syllables. Indeed, tweens of my acquaintance seem to think that if you round out the vowels, pronouncing it "bee-yotch," you can slide under parental censorship into the PG land of "freaking" and "shiitake mushrooms." (For the record: No.)
She's a hard-working multi-tasker, Miss B., happy to switch from noun to verb, pejorative to endearment, even female to male (the possessive prison slang has become increasingly popular, as has the tendency toward the plural) with the flip of an inflection. So it's not surprising that the B-word is tossed about with the most abandon in comedies, often — though not exclusively — those written by women; "Suburgatory," "30 Rock" and CBS' "2 Broke Girls"are big fans.
This is not without historical precedent. Feminists have long seen the empowerment potential of the word, attempting, over the years, to reclaim it as a term born of male fear. "The Bitch Manifesto" called on "uppity women" everywhere to stop sublimating their feminine strength.
Subsequent books with titles including "Getting in Touch With Your Inner Bitch," "Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women," "The Bitch in the House" had a similar message: The characteristics the word turned ugly were just manifestations of women fighting to control their lives and be heard. "There are no bitches," read one platitude of the women's movement, "only sisters in difficult situations."
It would be wonderful — weird and highly ironic, too — if the increased use of the B-word on network TV was proof that women were finally becoming a real voice in the industry. Alas, the numbers do not bear that out. The vast majority of writers, directors and television executives — in other words, those writing and approving the use of the word — are still men.
Yet there is no denying that this has been a gynocentric year in television, especially in comedy. As everyone scrambled to echo the critical success of Tina Fey and the hit status of last summer's "Bridesmaids," viewers were introduced to a lot of very tough-talking and openly sexual young gals who seem happy to be considered queen Bs.
Which should, in itself, give us pause. What does it mean that as female characters finally proliferate, the word "bitch" is suddenly everyone's go-to joke? Even the adorkable "New Girl" uses it, in both its mono- and polysyllabic forms. There is, after all, no action without a reaction, and shifts in the female population on TV almost always bring with them some sort of backlash.
Back in the '80s and '90s, some feminists pointed out that as more women were seen on camera, whether as news anchors or performers, the ideal silhouette for these women became increasingly slender. The incredibly shrinking women of "Friends" and "Ally McBeal" were often held up as examples — yes, there were more women aggregately, but less of them individually.
Is the price of having more female characters on TV now that they must proudly admit to being bitches? The denizen of"Apartment 23"is a more riot grrrl version of the term, but those "Good Christian" gals are just garden-variety harridans.
Tellingly, on the drama side, the word retains more of its original sting. Maria Bello's detective on NBC's now-defunct"Prime Suspect" was on the receiving end, and though the word wound up tarring user more than recipient, it was still clearly meant as a vicious insult, for which there is no male counterpart.
Any individual righteously reclaiming a hateful term, be it "fat," "nerdy," "slut" or worse, commits an act of rebellion, and rebellion is power. We needn't fear the "bitch"; it's a great word, often funny, frequently apt, which is why it has become so popular. It's a high-caliber word and, as with any firearm, it should be used with, if not caution, then at least awareness.
And not just as another way to slap down those bitches at the FCC.
May 20, 2012
Take it from someone who knows: The struggle with childhood obesity, illustrated vividly on television, is a battle of both the mind and the mouth for an overweight kid.
By Mary McNamara
I was a pioneer of childhood obesity.
By the time I was a junior in high school, I weighed more than 200 pounds. I was a fat kid before being a fat kid made you the topic of a national conversation and the first lady's pet project, back when Gatorade still tasted gross and no one knew how many calories there were in anything.
For most of my childhood, I was the only fat girl in my class — I can still name the other two fat girls in my grade. Now, fat kids fill the playground and the high school bleachers, including a whole new breed of fat girl who wears skin tight jeans and mid-riffs and dares anyone to say anything. Seeing them, I must admit I am torn between despair and envy.
I never expected to see my childhood reflected on television — overweight young characters are still rare even post-"Hairspray" — but there they are, my modern equivalents, on "Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution," "Too Fat for 15 and Fighting Back" and, most recently, HBO's multi-pronged documentary "The Weight of the Nation," all part of a collective attempt to address America's childhood obesity epidemic.
According to these shows, and many reports in other media, the root system of this crisis is insidious and widespread. A deluge of cheap junk food, the ubiquity of high fructose corn syrup and other sugars, the absence of physical education in schools, outrageous marketing aimed at children, cost-cutting in school cafeterias — all make it far too easy for children to eat themselves sick.
As a former obese child who fights all these forces to remain a normal-sized adult, I applaud every show, every article, every effort. But here is what I know about being a fat kid: It is at least as much about your head as it is about what you put in your mouth. Yes indeed, bad foods are cheaper and more seductive than healthful foods, and we need to call a cease-fire on the endless barrage of junk kids face. But it is also true that fat kids eat differently than non-fat kids, something that is rarely discussed.
It takes a lot of hard, dedicated eating for a 16-year-old girl to weigh 200-plus pounds, even with the aid of Pringles and a genetic inclination. I became obese by eating pretty much all the time; I regularly ate until it hurt. This required an elaborate, and often exhausting, set of rationalizations, delusions and outright lies. As in: "Well, I'm going to eat all of this Halloween candy eventually so it might as well be in the next two hours." As in: "I don't understand why I'm so heavy when all of my friends eat as much as I do and they're not heavy."
Here is what I also know about being a fat kid: Your thighs chafe, your joints ache and your stomach churns; you can't run or do the monkey bars; people say very mean things and at some level you always hate yourself. But you keep eating anyway.
I did not eat like a fat kid because the television told me to, or because the boxes were pretty, or because there were no apples in my house. I ate that way because I was afraid, because I was angry, because I often felt alone and hopeless. I ate because the taste and feel of the food in my mouth distracted me from the grim rattle of my own thoughts and the often out-of-control things that were happening around me, including my ballooning self.
In many ways, it's easier to be a fat kid these days. When I was young the only place I could find clothes was the Chubby section of the Sears catalog; now there are lots of pretty clothes, and though the standard of feminine beauty remains in the single digits, the self-esteem movement and Oprah have encouraged us to love ourselves no matter what our size.
But as the (very brave) children participating in the various shows can, and do, tell you, obesity and self-esteem are pretty much mutually exclusive. Many of these kids eat for the same reasons I ate, feel trapped in the same cycle of shame and denial that I did. Unraveling the stories they tell themselves about why they are doing this is just as important as limiting the high fructose corn syrup and introducing them to quinoa.
Kids today are, perhaps, even more confused than I was. During the uproar over anorexia and girls who go on diets at 5, the word "fat" itself has been relegated to hate speech. In our laudable effort to end bullying and build self-esteem, Americans decided that weight was a cultural issue, that it isn't your pounds that matter but how you feel about yourself.
Which is absolutely true as far as it goes. And as far as it goes should be the limits of the medically recommended weight for your height and age. No child should be encouraged to diet themselves to a Hollywood template but neither should she, or he, be encouraged to accept being 40 pounds overweight.
May 21, 2012
By Mary McNamara
Time takes a toll on us all, no more so than characters of long-running TV shows. All narrative demands transformation of one sort of another and multiple seasons of revelations, realizations and shifting relationships work like the pounding surf against rock, softening the edges of even the most complicated personalities. By the final season of "MASH," everyone was a good guy; it took only three seasons of "Glee" to turn Sue Sylvester into an applauding fan of New Directions.
So it is worth pausing for a moment to salute the people behind "House," namely creator David Shore and actor Hugh Laurie, two maestros who have pulled off a near-miraculous feat: After eight long and occasionally crazy seasons, their title character departs with all his amazing faculties and flaws intact.
Dr. Gregory House is arguably the best and certainly the most influential character to appear on network television in the last decade. As played by Laurie, he answered the question many of us ask ourselves daily: What would life be like if you honest to God didn't care what anyone thought of you? Loosely based on Sherlock Holmes, House was brilliant and clearly broken (both physically and emotionally). He saved lives by solving cases, but his satisfaction came from the solution, not the salvation. "Everybody lies" was his mantra, proving it his life's work -- the truth would out, no matter what the cost to him, to his patients, to those around him.
In the wake of the show's success, that template became standard issue; every other TV detective (including a modern relaunch of Holmes himself on BBC) now comes equipped with a special ability to detect mendacity and a broken heart protectively rimed. But eight years ago, it was quite breathtaking; House was as instantly iconic as Tony Soprano. Along with the limp, the Vicodin addiction and the refusal to shave, Shore and his writers wisely gave their medical detective a quick, black humor, which made Laurie an inspired casting choice. An accomplished comedian and musician, he not only nailed the punch lines and the pain, he infused them with an ecstatic soulfulness. House may have been an avowed atheist, but there were times when he looked like nothing so much as a hollow-eyed prophet, wandering the halls of Princeton Memorial waiting for the gods to speak.
Not every season of "House" worked as well as others. Chances were taken, with cast and story, and not all of them panned out. And there was a certain level of degeneration built into both the genre and the character; even Arthur Conan Doyle famously got tired of all the brilliant deductions. More so than most shows, "House" often seemed to rest almost entirely on the strength of its main character, and one wondered just how long Laurie, and those writing for him, could keep things going.
Eight seasons, as it turns out, was just right. It isn't often that a show's final year is as good as its first, but it's true in this case, even with the rather crazy jail time (House in the big house) that opened things. The final arc, which concludes along with the show Monday, has been especially affecting -- House's best friend, Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard), learns he has terminal cancer, and watching the men figure out how to cope, separately and together, has made for great television. Despite the rather predictable drama of this final twist -- in a show about life and death the killing off a major character is always tempting -- Shore and his writers refuse to make House someone he's not.
Alone, perhaps, among television leads, House is neither good nor bad, and it isn't really accurate to say that he's a bit of both. Rather, he exists in a place outside good and bad, or at least their conventional definitions, a moral satellite that allowed the show to explore the big questions in ways that rarely seemed forced or silly.
That distance was also the character's greatest strength -- without the blinders of sentiment or judgment, he does see things more clearly than others -- and his greatest flaw; empathy is not always a hindrance and knowledge is not our only power.
Even in the face of loss from which there is no escape, neither the character nor the show surrenders to sentiment. Of course there is much wrapping up to be done, and the final episode includes appearances from past characters, including a couple who are dead. House, like most of the current characters on the show, will end up in a different place in his life than where he began. But if, over the years, he has made certain admissions, learned certain truths, he is, essentially, unchanged. After eight seasons and more than 160 episodes, he is just as unpredictable and unclassifiable, just as seductive and fascinating, as he was when he began.
June 22, 2012
Although 'Newsroom' has strong acting and some nice moments, the writer lectures rather than entertains.
By Mary McNamara
If you ask a smart, talented, prolific, highly opinionated and possibly overextended writer to create a series for you whenever he gets the chance, you might get a terrific television show. Or you might get "The Newsroom," which is what HBO got when it approached Aaron Sorkin with just such a request.
Sorkin, of course, is the man behind "Sports Night" and "The West Wing," two of the truly great workplace shows of our time, as well as the short-lived "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip" which was not. He has also written a fistful of admirable screenplays, including last year's Oscar-winning "The Social Network."
"The Newsroom" fits neatly into his TV oeuvre, revolving around "News Night," a fictional cable news show helmed by Will McAvoy (Jeff Daniels), an anchor who once dreamed of being a real journalist like Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite before the nattering nabobs of numbers-crunching, the gossipification of news and his own fear of rejection apparently turned him into a media milquetoast.
But behind that placid exterior lurks a true Sorkinian hero, another Great White Hope rising to talk, Talk, TALK some sense into the American public. It begins almost instantly when McAvoy, trapped onstage at a journalism school panel between two nitwits of each party, suddenly goes ballistic, answering the question "What makes America the greatest country in the world?" with the scathing announcement that it's not, and here's why.
And we're off, into a statistic-studded, fury-fueled and occasionally amusing diatribe that could just as easily have come from the mouth of Martin Sheen or Bradley Whitford on "The West Wing."
Indeed, "The Newsroom" is, essentially, "The West Wing" by way of "Broadcast News." It's not necessarily a bad idea, although clearing one extremely high bar is difficult enough, never mind two. For the first hour, the show seems promising, especially for Sorkin fans. After that, things go into a baffling free-fall in which plot exists almost solely to support the political and cultural points Sorkin wants to make, often in non sequitur monologues.
After his meltdown sends him into corporate-imposed hiatus, McAvoy returns to discover that news division head Charlie Skinner (Sam Waterston, delivering the show's most interesting performance, as usual) has brought in a new producer for "News Night," the indomitable MacKenzie McHale (Emily Mortimer), who just happens to be Will's ex. Aside from the inevitable tension (he's angry and wounded, she's wary and apologetic), MacKenzie is there to remind Will that there once was a fleeting wisp of glory known as ... well, she uses "Don Quixote," rather than Camelot as a reference point -- the couple's quixotic journey is to produce a news program that delivers sobering truths and big ratings.
Now, it's hard to argue against the observation that, in the face of obstacles both economic and cultural, media outlets have squandered opportunities to disperse vital information in favor of pandering. Nor would many take issue with "The Newsroom's" second great insight -- that the political and social divisions between left and right have been exploited by certain forces, many of them television personalities, to create an endless cycle of predictable arguments that are both absurd and extremely dangerous.
Folks like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have, in fact, been making these same points, brilliantly, for years. Not that there's anything wrong with having another go at raising consciousness -- as Cynthia Ozick once observed: "In stating the obvious, never choose cunning; yelling works better."
Sorkin is certainly a big fan of yelling; unfortunately, by choosing to use real past events like the British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico as a timeline, he surrenders the ability to create drama from scratch. Instead, he must build it around that which has already happened, which cuts not one, but two narrative hamstrings: We already know how the big things go, and real journalism, like most things worth doing, is nine parts hard boring work, one part Big Moment.
So the real tensions must come from the various personalities in the newsroom, boiled down here to brilliant idealist versus corporate numskull, and a series of thwarted love stories. Along with MacKenzie and Charlie attempting to rekindle Will's inner-Cronkite, there's winsome intern Margaret Jordan (Alison Pill) balancing nascent career and clearly doomed relationship with Will's former executive producer, Don (Thomas Sadoski).
Margaret (Maggie to her friends) is also the instant object of affection of Jim, a self-effacing, smartphone-wielding news-junkie superhero. There's also Neal (Dev Patel), a blogger and requisite geek-savant, and Olivia Munn as Sloan Sabbith, one of those mythical young women TV writers love so much -- brilliant and gorgeous, yet socially inept.
It's an altogether splendid cast and there are some truly lovely moments, especially in the first two episodes. Mortimer is always a pleasure to watch, even when she is forced to pretend she doesn't understand email. Her ability to transform from anguished apology to steely-eyed professionalism is perhaps the show's biggest draw.
But try as they might, the actors cannot make their characters anything but what they are: mini-megaphones for pronouncements on blogs, morning shows, reality TV, celebrity news sites, the tea party, handguns, the history of the FCC and Bigfoot. McAvoy is "a registered Republican," something he mentions with alarming regularity, which is almost as hard to swallow as the idea that he was, before his meltdown, considered the Jay Leno of news anchors. We discover in Episode 4 that he is on a rather vitriolic mission "to civilize" all those TMZ-reading, "Real Housewives"-loving morons who threaten the very fabric of our nation.
Watching "The Newsroom," it's impossible not to think of the wonderful moment in "Broadcast News" when the head of that news division smirks at Holly Hunter's producer and says: "It must be nice to always believe you know better, to always think you're the smartest person in the room," and Hunter, truly stricken, shakes her head and says, "Oh no. It's awful."
That transcendent mixture of confidence and fear, of humility and clear-eyed self-assessment, evident in so much of Sorkin's other work, is what turns a sermon into a work of art. And that is precisely what is missing here.
'The Newsroom'
Where: HBO
When: 10 p.m. Sunday
Rating: TV-MA (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 17)
September 9, 2012
The host of 'The Colbert Report,' a devout Catholic, is the rare comedian who is comfortable joking about faith, religion and morality.
By Mary McNamara
Like everything Stephen Colbert does on television, it's set up as a joke.
A nun and a television host walk into a studio. They discuss the recent papal censure of American nuns for "perpetrating a feminist agenda." The host takes a hard line.
"The pope has said, 'Knock it off with the social liberalism,'" he says. "You're not socially conservative enough, at least admit that."
"What I'll admit is that we're faithful to the Gospel," says the nun. "We work every day to live as Jesus did, in relationship to people at the margins of our society. That's all we do."
"That's a cheap applause line, Jesus," the host says with a dismissive wave. "But if we're just concentrating on helping the poor, that's leaving the rich people out. Guys like me need more help … the poor shall inherit the kingdom of heaven...."
"You need help to be generous," says the nun. "There's enough to go around if we would only share. It's this American ideal that we should hoard and hold onto the individual things that we have that creates the problem."
"Jesus said, 'I got mine, Jack,'" the host interrupts.
"Jesus broke the bread and gave it to everybody and said, 'Eat and be filled,' and there was enough. If we share."
"Well," says the host, with a shrug. "I'm not going to debate the Gospel with a nun."
But it's not a joke, or at least not really. At a time when the term "God-given," as used in the Democratic platform, caused enough controversy that it was removed and then reinstated, it's the one place on television where liberal Christianity is given a place at the table. The Passion of the Colbert. No one in popular culture talks about religion the way he does.
According to the old saw, polite people do not publicly discuss sex, money, politics or religion. Which is why comedians, our socially appointed purveyors of necessary rudeness, spend so much time talking about sex, money, politics and religion.
In these days of partisan rage and general raunch, it's easy for comedians to talk about the first three. Religion is trickier — through some quirk in our cultural evolution, one's thoughts about a Supreme Being and the nature of worship have become more closely guarded than our habits in the bedroom. There has been no Kinsey report on religion.
Fortunately there is instead "The Colbert Report" on Comedy Central, which is having a very good year. During the last election, Colbert took performance art to a new level by running for president; this year he established his own "super PAC," raising hundreds of thousands of dollars while exposing the absurdity of campaign financing laws, which super PACs were invented to flout.
But for all the adulation Colbert and his team have received for their seven-year run of grade-A political satire, the most consistently revelatory aspect of the show is its theology.
The man, in reality and character, is a devout and out Catholic, observer of Lent and teacher of Sunday school. Unlike other comedians of his persuasion — liberal though disguised as conservative — Colbert does not hide, ignore, downplay or make light of his faith. On Ash Wednesday, he shows up with the obligatory smudge on his forehead. He has been known to recite bits of the Nicene Creed on air. He has appointed a smart and articulate Jesuit, Father John Martin, as official chaplain of his show.
He plays his Catholicism for laughs, of course — one Lent, it was what he chose to give up — but, as is befitting the father of three, he is able to keep hold of the baby while disposing of the bathwater. Colbert's humor is not so much an attempt to separate politics from religion as it is a reminder that what many people call religion simply isn't.
On the same show in June on which he hosted Sister Simone Campbell (who went on to speak before last week's Democratic National Convention), he also interviewed Martin Sheen, ostensibly there to promote his role in the then-upcoming "Spider-Man." Here's how some of that exchange went:
Colbert: "You're a super lefty liberal, you're like Sister Commie who was here a few minutes ago. You've been repeatedly arrested for activist activity.... Who inspired you to be such a liberal?"
Sheen: "It had something to do with what that same Gospel Sister was talking about. We are called to be a voice for the voiceless, to be a presence for the marginal. So if you have capabilities and you don't have to work full time, you're required to be on the line and work for the common good."
Colbert: "I should pepper spray you right now. Just for good measure."
On television, discussions of religion most often fall into clearly delineated camps — the sticky sentiment of the divine intervention drama ("Touched by an Angel," "7th Heaven"), the therapeutic forces of personal spirituality personified by Oprah Winfrey and the moral preachings of the conservative right via tea party members and news coverage of the current political conversation.
There was a time when Sheen's brand of liberation theology drove social and political conversation. Now Colbert is its most visible proponent — if he wasn't married and didn't make so many jokes about "lady parts," he could be this generation's hot radical priest.
The brilliance of "The Colbert Report" is its refusal to dismiss or denigrate the religion with jokes that equate faith with idiocy or churchgoing with bovine surrender. Instead Colbert attempts to extricate what he sees as the essential message of Christianity from the piles of intellectual rot and political carpet bags that have been piled on and around it in the last 10 years.
In May, Father Thomas Reese of Georgetown University joined Colbert to discuss the "brave financial ministry" of Rep. and now vice presidential nominee Paul D. Ryan. Reese and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops had called Ryan's proposed budget cuts essentially un-Christian.
By arguing basic catechism — Jesus may have said it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, but he said "nothing about job creators" and "he said love thy neighbor, but I got some pretty well-off neighbors, so if I let them keep their tax cuts aren't I loving my neighbor?" — Colbert elbowed aside any conservative interpretations to clear the runway for Reese's message.
And a very good joke: "The way we love our neighbor who is rich," Reese said, "is to encourage them to be good Christians and help those who are in need. And pay their taxes. Jesus did say pay your taxes."
"I don't remember that part," Colbert answered, shaking his head. "But if we did keep the wealth in the hands of the wealthiest people," he concluded slyly, "wouldn't that be good for the kids who want to go to Georgetown, which costs like $800,000 now? Isn't that a little hypocritical?"
"That's why we're also upset about the cuts to Pell grants," Reese said with a laugh.
"I teach Sunday school, sir," Colbert interrupted in high dudgeon, "and Jesus said nothing about Pell grants."
Now, there are many comedians who can make a good joke about the morality of conservative policy or Ryan's budget or even the contradiction of a priest working for a tony university. But there's only one man alive who can pull off a line about Jesus and Pell grants.
Instead of running for president, perhaps Stephen Colbert should consider running for pope.
FOR THE RECORD: In the Sept. 9 Calendar section, an article about how religion is dealt with on "The Colbert Report" identified the show's official chaplain as Father John Martin. His name is James Martin.
November 8, 2012
By Mary McNamara
Some fuss was recently made over the role President Obama plays in "SEAL Team Six: The Raid on Osama bin Laden," a docu-drama premiering on National Geographic Channel on Sunday. There were accusations that the timing — days before the election — and the late-hour insertion of additional footage of the president, including a voice-over describing the decision-making process, were designed to boost Obama's reelection bid.
Despite subsequent protests from the network and the filmmakers, the partisan kerfuffle can work only to their advantage; no doubt more people will watch "SEAL Team Six" in light of the mild controversy. And perhaps for a moment our nation will be united on one point: The president's screen time, which, frankly, does not seem excessive, is the least of this film's problems.
Docu-dramas are often dicey enterprises, especially when they involve a) classified material, b) political assassination, and c) an event that occurred in recent memory. It's one thing to engage in a little "loosely based" fudging about the court of Marie Antoinette or even the rescue of American Embassy workers in 1979.
But the dust from Operation Neptune Spear has barely settled. And despite the credentials of those involved, including director John Stockwell ("Into the Blue"), "Hurt Locker" producer Nicolas Chartier and the Weinstein Co., "SEAL Team Six" was worrisome from the get-go.
Predictably, the filmmakers have chosen to use a mix of real and staged footage to tell the story. Less predictably, and far less wisely, the staged portions include a series of expository "interviews" with the principal characters, though who they are being interviewed by, or for what purpose beside narrative laziness, is never made clear.
The film's most troubling aspect is the cartoonish nature of these characters, who get the lion's share of screen time. Including and especially, Vivian Hollins a female CIA analyst played by Kathleen Robertson in lip gloss and pencil skirts.
According to "No Easy Day," a first-person account written by real-life former SEAL Team Six member Matt Bissonnette under the pseudonym Mark Owen, there was indeed a key female analyst involved in promoting the mission, and possibly she is quite young and attractive. But, honestly, do we always have to go blond hottie behind smarty-pants glasses for roles like these? (At least in "Homeland," Claire Danes' comely CIA agent Carrie has a genuine mental illness. Also, no fake glasses.)
Vivian is clearly the Carrie stand-in here. After a prisoner in Guantanamo gives up a name that belongs to an Al Qaeda courier, she has him tracked, discovers the mysterious Pakistani compound and is soon insisting — correctly, as it turns out — that the 6-foot-5 guy strolling around behind the walls is Bin Laden. William Fichtner plays her immediate supervisor (with Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta represented only by phone), an equally trite character, who keeps saying things like, "I need more evidence." This is what passes for ancillary plot.
Vivian isn't the only character pulled from the Idiot's Guide to Stock Characters. There are the team members themselves, who break down essentially into the white redneck charmer Cherry (Anson Mount), the white preppie team leader Stunner (Cam Gigandet) and the black family guy Mule (Alvin Joiner a.k.a. Xzibit). Cherry and Stunner have some "issues": Cherry thinks Stunner is too young for the job, Stunner worries he is right. And this is what passes for character development.
Although particularly insulting when you consider the true heroics and canny intelligence the operation entailed, "SEAL Team Six" is undone by the inevitable conundrum of any docu-drama: Which side do you favor — the docu, or the drama?
If it's the documentary, then the story rests on the revelation of true and historic detail. We all know how it ends, so getting there must provide the tension. If it's the drama, then you have to be willing to sacrifice certain intricacies of plot in the interest of fleshing out the characters.
"SEAL Team Six," though inevitably exciting in its conclusion and touching at times, refuses to commit either way. This failure of nerve not only dooms the film as both docu- and drama but also contradicts its main theme.
Because when the president and those around him were faced with ordering a mission that could just as easily failed as succeeded, they did make the call.
November 24, 2012
Lindsay Lohan is a bad fit for Elizabeth Taylor's captivating grown-up charms in 'Liz & Dick,' but what really works against the Lifetime movie about Taylor and Richard Burton's relationship is that it tries to cover the whole exhausting decades-long affair.
By Mary McNamara
An epic love story, like a good horror movie, relies more on possibility than actuality. Surprise and anticipation, of what is to come and what it might mean, are what draw viewers in, binding them in fetters of pleasure and pain. Subtlety and nuance create the space between word and glance, between shadow and revelation, where imagination digs in and magnificence blooms.
None of which happens, in any way, shape or form, during Lifetime's television event "Liz & Dick," a wildly graceless biopic that careens through the decades-long relationship between Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton with more petulance than passion, knocking down gin bottles and rumpling silk sheets for no better reason than that's what it says to do in the script.
It would be easy to blame Lindsay Lohan, who plays Elizabeth Taylor, for the film's failure, if only because Lifetime has gone out of its way to market the movie as Lohan's comeback picture and to play up the similarities between the two women. These are, as far as one can tell, limited to them both having been child actresses and afflicted with addiction issues. Alas, Lohan is not at all convincing as Taylor but in her defense it is difficult to imagine why anyone actually thought she would be.
Playing a well-known person is always difficult (hence all those biopic Oscars) but Elizabeth Taylor is in the K2 range. Famously contradictory — so ethereal on film, so bawdy in real life, inevitably self-destructive yet inarguably generous — she wasn't just beautiful, she was radiant, and that is a tough quality to evoke, particularly if you haven't got it yourself. Which Lohan does not.
When not in mug-shot mode, Lohan is certainly lovely, but she has never really played a full-grown woman on film and they don't come any more full-grown than Taylor. Even in "Lassie Come Home," Elizabeth Taylor projected a maturity beyond her years; as an adult, she all but defined "womanly." It would be tough for many contemporary actresses to pull off that mink hat, but even in the trademark slip, Lohan too often seems like a teenager playing dress up.
And she's not just playing Taylor, she's playing Taylor in Love. At least, technically that's what she's playing. Unfortunately Lohan and co-star Grant Bowler have about as much sexual chemistry as Kermit and Miss Piggy and none of that couple's tenderness.
The film is loosely structured around a conceit that could be called Liz and Dick, Dead at the Actors Studio. Youthful and dressed in black, with Liz smoking like a chimney, the two sit against a black backdrop in directors chairs and discuss their life together. It's narratively absurd, but during these scenes one does see a glimpse of what Lohan might have been able to do if screenwriter Christopher Monger hadn't decided to do it all.
Because the real problem with "Liz & Dick" is that it attempts to tell the whole story of the couple's relationship, from trite beginning (Burton falling for Taylor across a crowded pool party) to melodramatic end (Taylor prostrate on Burton's grave.) In between there's "Cleopatra," a lot of kissing, drinking, crying and bottle throwing, breakups, breakdowns, suicide attempts, reconciliations, more drinking, more crying, more bottle throwing, two divorces, money troubles, paparazzi troubles, yacht issues, diamond ring issues, Oscar drama, the displeasure of the pope, the death of Burton's brother, more drinking, more kissing and more crying. Then, finally, Taylor in that big '80s hair.
It's exhausting just writing about it, so pity the poor actors who had to bounce along from scene to scene, hitting all the well-known notes without a moment of stillness in which to breathe and gaze and make the audience believe that their characters are experiencing not just passion, but a love that defied (if not quite conquered) the individual insecurities and narcissism (not to mention alcoholism) the two clearly shared.
Bowler easily steals the film; he's good and Lohan makes him look better. Although his face lapses more into lines of worry than anguish or passion, he does seem like a man besotted and often sloshed. He certainly has Burton's voice down, which is more than half the battle, a battle Lohan never comes close to winning.
Her Taylor always seems one tic away from saying something like "Oh my God, Mom, like I care" and the prodigious amounts of alcohol she consumes do little more than make her cry like a jilted prom queen. Which is just embarrassing — you're Elizabeth Taylor for God's sake.
Scenes of obligatory passion are followed by scenes of obligatory rage/sorrow, rinsed with Scotch and repeated. Rather than pay homage to one of the most famous romances of the 20th century, "Liz & Dick" manages to make it boring.
Which may be one of the few sins that Liz and Dick never got around to committing.
December 16, 2012
Whether it's 'Revolution,' 'The Hunger Games' or 'Downton Abbey,' the scenes on TV and film of society facing a cataclysmic event capture today's zeitgeist of fear of a world-changing event.
By Mary McNamara
Frankly, it sounded pretty stupid. For reasons unknown, electricity fails worldwide, sending humanity into a post-technological free-fall. Weeds grow in the Capitol (very "Logan's Run"), young women defend their families with bows and arrows (very "Hunger Games"), and no one seems to remember that people made ice cream and bullets long before electricity was harnessed as a personal power source.
But NBC's "Revolution" surprised everyone; not only was it good, it was a hit. Big Concept shows are always a gamble; too often creators pick the wrong big concept — dinosaurs, say, or a remake of "V." "Revolution," through insight or sheer luck, struck thematic gold, mining the vein running through our collective unconscious: Where once we feared corruption, we now fear collapse, a technological, social or political cataclysm that will Change Everything.
More important, where once we looked to the individual as the key to conflict — man versus nature, man versus man, etc. — we now worry more about society, what it will look like, how it will survive. Gazing rapt at screens that redefine the borders between home and office, work and play, isolated and social, our fingers hover over the reset button. Like good Spenglerians, we anticipate the inevitable fall — of technology, of government, of social structure, of human ascendancy. How long, really, before the grand experiment of democracy fails, before a super flu emerges or an alien race, before the melting polar ice does us in?
If the folks living by the Mayan calendar or featured on a rising number of reality shows like "Doomsday Preppers" and "Doomsday Bunkers" are to be believed, not too dang long; on the upcoming Spike TV reality series, families can compete for an underground bunker.
We may laugh at those wacky survivalists (though perhaps not quite so loudly in the wake of Hurricane Sandy), but the fear, if not of the world's literal end than of the tremulous nature of everything, slips through the themes of our favorite stories these days. In "The Walking Dead" and "Downton Abbey," "Falling Skies" and even, if we stretch just a bit, shows like "Mad Men" and "Hatfields & McCoys," the floor, or our perception of it, drops out from the bottom of the world and those who do not plummet instantly scramble to adjust.
Many of these After the Fall fables question our modern level of simple competence. Sci-fi and fantasy writers have always suspected we will be outdone by technology — enslaved by the mechanically higher intelligence we created or wiped out by whatever really lives in a galaxy far, far away. Thoughts of a pre-Industrial-world, however, were more of a Hudson Valley School/Walden Pond variety.
Now, the ever-morphing digital tablet comes with a dark-mirror image of Square One. On "Falling Skies," it's the classic alien invasion; on "Revolution," a failure of basic technology; on "The Walking Dead," it's a zombie apocalypse. Looking to the cineplex, there's more of the same, whether in "The Hunger Games" (totalitarian takeover) or even "Les Miz" (rise of the singing proletariat). Watching on our flat screens and cellphones, we look at each other and wonder: How many of us can shoot a gun, much less an arrow? Or make fire from flint? Who among us could stitch a wound, identify a poisonous berry or, for that matter, carry an unconscious man through the sewers of Paris?
The real lesson of any good post-cataclysm tale is internal, not external: Always the true enemy walks among us. "We've been running from Walkers for so long we forgot what people do," says "The Walking Dead's" Maggie after she and Glenn have been savagely beaten by thugs answering to the Governor, a despotic leader of one group of survivors. On "Revolution," scrappy bands of revolutionaries fight similar fascism in the form of the Militia.
Not every apocalypse is literal. The rise of such new/old tribalism seems to reflect not just the deep political divisions that, we have been told ad nauseam, afflict our nation today but also a general anxiety over the social order. As retailers and politicians, movie studios and fundraisers set out to identify and conquer each demographic splinter, it's difficult not to feel that the general populace is in a perpetual state of subdivision.
The white male suits of "Mad Men" and the dress-for-dinner residents of "Downton Abbey" all face the inevitable obsolescence of their class system. Though they may not need to reacquaint themselves with medieval weaponry, in each show, the characters must adapt or be left behind.
In a work of breathtaking ambition, History's miniseries "Hatfields & McCoys" managed to take on all of the above. After the Civil War, two families struggled to fit into a newly arranged social order that remained more myth than reality in their still-primitive world. Relying on Old Testament values even as the world around them embraces the New, many of them literally ran mad.
Fear has always shadowed change. From the discovery of fire to the creation of Facebook, every advance causes us to conjure a Worst Case Scenario; the reading of novels was once condemned as vociferously as any video game. As public cameras and data-mining increase, so does our anxiety over the cold vast reaches of cyberspace. The petty mischief done via text in "Gossip Girl" and "Pretty Little Liars" is about to get more serious; in two upcoming series, "The Following" and "The Cult," social media become the ultimate tools of charismatic sociopaths. Where will it all end?
Increasingly, we seek comfort or even instruction in stories from other times, be it post-apocalypse or just period. In "Mad Men," "The Hour," and "Downton Abbey" we are reminded that people once communicated with eye contact rather than emoticons, that they had productive even heroic lives without a laptop or cellphone in sight. Indeed, in these shows, new technology, be it telephone, television or Sputnik, is inevitably viewed with a certain amount of suspicion.
And why not? If the stories we now tell ourselves at night are to be believed, the new technology is just as likely to kill us as make us stronger. When the zombies rise, the government is overthrown, or the lights go out, you'd best trade your iPhone for a whetstone, pull on a pair of sensible shoes and find shelter before dark.
To the judges:
This is how Mary McNamara pithily began her review of a television romance: “An epic love story, like a good horror movie, relies more on possibility than actuality.”
This is a writer with a consistently fresh perspective in an area in which too many are content to put their thumbs down or up.
Who else last year wrote a considered column about Steven Colbert's faith, and explained with passion the importance of liberal Christianity's being represented in the mass media?
McNamara's voice is instantly recognized by Times readers. Simultaneously chatty and thought provoking, she writes frankly from the point of view of an educated, liberated but hardly doctrinaire woman. (“Honestly,” she wondered about an inferior docu-drama, “do we always have to go blond hottie behind smarty-pants glasses for roles like these?”)
Knowingly she homed in on what made the show “Girls” unusual: “She is a coveted creature, the girl on the edge of womanhood, almost as rare as a unicorn and just as difficult to capture on film. Too often infantilized or eroticized, women in their early 20s make people nervous, which is why most shows about these topics skew either nostalgic or older.”
McNamara is especially shrewd about storytelling and the art of narrative; this may well be her calling card. This is someone who's seen a lot of TV and swims in popular culture, easily making allusions and references to other shows.
“Indeed, 'The Newsroom' is, essentially, 'The West Wing' by way of 'Broadcast
News',‟ she declared, proceeding to describe very clearly why its narrative framework is anti-dramatic and a dud. In panning a cable docu-drama, she made a light reference to the Idiot's Guide to Stock Characters.
In diagramming why “Girls” failed to be especially moving, she wrote
memorably: “There is a cool cleverness to the show that is both attractive and off-putting; the characters are flawed and hyper-aware of their flaws, the stories so bent on covering every angle of self-examination that there is no real role for the viewer to play.”
Writing acerbically about the much-lauded “Downton Abbey,” McNamara wondered whether American audiences were missing the significant subtext of the charming show: “Eulogies for a more stately past are invariably expressed by members of the ruling class, while behind them the teeming multitudes empty the chamber pots, chew on gristle and die in childbirth. But not at Downton. Oh, good gracious, no.”
Mary McNamara puts her brains, her heart and her soul into this work.
Please read her remarkable first-person piece on being a fat girl (with its memorable lede, “I was a pioneer of childhood obesity”). Here McNamara went extra miles, describing her own tortured youth in stunning terms. She looked at how TV portrays overweight kids and then offered a personal perspective on popular health bromides of the day.
An unforgettable piece from a critic of fervent originality.
We are proud to nominate her for the Pulitzer Prize in Criticism.
Sincerely,
Davan Maharaj
Editor
Winners
Prize Winner in Criticism in 2013:
Philip Kennicott
For his eloquent and passionate essays on art and the social forces that underlie it, a critic who always strives to make his topics and targets relevant to readers.
Criticism
Finalists
Nominated as finalists in Criticism in 2013:
Manohla Dargis
For her enlightening movie criticism, vividly written and showing deep understanding of the business and art of filmmaking.
The Jury
The Jury
Johanna Keller(Chair )
director, Goldring Arts Journalism Program
Mark Feeney*
arts writer
Dan Neil*
senior editor and columnist
Alisa Solomon
associate professor and director, arts and culture concentration master's program
Jeff Weinstein
critic
Winners in Criticism
Wesley Morris
For his smart, inventive film criticism, distinguished by pinpoint prose and an easy traverse between the art house and the big-screen box office.
Sebastian Smee
For his vivid and exuberant writing about art, often bringing great works to life with love and appreciation.
Sarah Kaufman
For her refreshingly imaginative approach to dance criticism, illuminating a range of issues and topics with provocative comments and original insights.
Holland Cotter
For his wide ranging reviews of art, from Manhattan to China, marked by acute observation, luminous writing and dramatic storytelling.
2013 Prize Winners
Adam Johnson
An exquisitely crafted novel that carries the reader on an adventuresome journey into the depths of totalitarian North Korea and into the most intimate spaces of the human heart.
Ayad Akhtar
A moving play that depicts a successful corporate lawyer painfully forced to consider why he has for so long camouflaged his Pakistani Muslim heritage.
Sharon Olds
A book of unflinching poems on the author's divorce that examine love, sorrow and the limits of self-knowledge.
Caroline Shaw
A highly polished and inventive a cappella work uniquely embracing speech, whispers, sighs, murmurs, wordless melodies and novel vocal effects (New Amsterdam Records).