Finalist: Los Angeles Times, by Mary McNamara
For her trenchant and witty television criticism, engaging readers through essays and reviews that feature a conversational style and the force of fresh ideas.
Nominated Work
June 21, 2013
Tony Soprano, as powered by the late James Gandolfini, made it manly to gush over a show
By Mary McNamara
After the news broke that actor James Gandolfini had died, media outlets everywhere scrambled to put him, and his beloved character Tony Soprano, into cultural context. But if you wanted to understand the importance of the man and the show, all you had to do was listen to sports radio.
Even as the NBA Finals moved toward a thrilling and decisive Game 7, ESPN sportscasters were talking about nothing but Gandolfini's death, reminiscing about "The Sopranos" with the tones of sorrowful obsession usually reserved for the passing of an iconic coach or star athlete.
It was the same on Thursday, one day after the death of the 51-year-old actor. On radio, television and the Internet, men you wouldn't consider terribly invested in entertainment or celebrity culture were still wide-eyed and clearly wounded.
"The Sopranos" is regularly touted as the show that begat the creative shift that lifted television over every other narrative art form including film. It did this in many ways, but perhaps the most significant is the simplest: Gandolfini's Tony Soprano made it possible for men to obsess about a TV show and not feel like a geek.
Obviously men have always watched TV, enthusiastically and, in the case of shows such as "The Tonight Show," "All in the Family" and "Hill Street Blues," religiously. But there was never a show that sparked in them the same emotional investment that many women felt for their favorite open-ended, character-driven dramas. Real Men didn't watch soaps.
Until "The Sopranos."
"The Sopranos" was an hour-long homage to the peril and prestige of Old World masculinity. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but balanced between Tony's fingers it was just the final grace note in a narrative so rich in symbolism it could, and would, be deconstructed as thoroughly as any Shakespearean play or Greek tragedy.
All the naked women writhing on stripper poles probably didn't hurt either.
Although it aired on Sunday night, no one considered it an opportunity to lean back in the Barcalounger with a beer and possibly doze off in preparation for the work week ahead. Every Sunday was suddenly the Super Bowl, and men rushed into each other's office on Monday to discuss the plot twists and imagery of each episode with the eagerness of "Sex and the City" fans exchanging romantic confidences.
Many people, including most recently Brett Martin in his book "Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution: From the Sopranos and the Wire to Mad Men and Breaking Bad," point to the fifth episode of the first season — in which Tony takes his daughter on a college tour as the day television changed. In the episode, Tony kills an informant he accidentally discovers living under witness protection and that is when many men of my acquaintance pledged their devotion to Gandolfini.
The bittersweet college tour is something with which most parents can identify, as is the desire to see in a child's eyes, if not adoration, then a belief in the best version of the truth about themselves. The gimmick of "The Sopranos" was sending a mobster into therapy, but through David Chase's writing and Gandolfini's performance, Tony became Everyman in extremis — wanting the right things but pursuing them the wrong way.
Tony was fat. Tony was in therapy. Tony had issues with his wife and his mother, but he did what he had to do for himself and his family, which is still the essential algorithm for manhood.
That "what he had to do" was murder someone, quickly, secretly and with his bare hands while still remaining sympathetic was simply intoxicating. Soon men were swapping insights and opinions with bar stool camaraderie.
"The Sopranos" made serialized storytelling manly. Suddenly it was cool for even those men who deplored the metrosexualization of everything to follow a TV show avidly, raptly, and in communion with other men.
These conversations occurred at every socio-economic level, granting fandom an unheard of credibility and creating a template for the engaged and devoted fan base every show, large and small, now seeks to win. "The Sopranos" canonized the antihero, but it also created the superfan — the same men who adored Tony would go on to fall for "Deadwood's" Al Swearengen, "Mad Men's" Don Draper and "Breaking Bad's" Walter White.
But no love is as powerful as the first love. The "Sopranos" male audience can still rattle off favorite scenes and lines like batting averages, still attack and defend certain characters with the same range of emotions they bring to discussions about Kobe Bryant or Ray Lewis.
To many, "The Sopranos" wasn't so much a show as a team, a great and glorious unprecedented team that rode to victory year after year after year.
And James Gandolfini was its captain.
November 16, 2013
By Mary McNamara
No one will ever accuse Mike Tyson of leading an unexamined life. With a Cannes-debuted documentary, a six-part Fox Sports miniseries, a one-man Broadway show and now a "tell-all" memoir, the former heavyweight champion has been self-chronicled within an inch of his life.
Now that one-man show, "Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth," will air Saturday night on HBO. While it shares a title with the memoir, it presents Tyson more as light-hearted raconteur than violently complicated man attempting to make sense of it all.
Produced by Spike Lee and written by Tyson's wife, Kiki, "Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth" is many things, but "undisputed" may be pushing it. It's instead a carefully curated, at times quite stagy, fan-friendly version of a very divisive figure.
In its opening moments, Tyson is seated in dark silhouette as Nat King Cole croons the fey ballad "Nature Boy." Not, perhaps, the first song one associates with a heavyweight champion who has done time, most famously for rape. Or for one who once bit off part of opponent's ear and has admitted to a lot of drug abuse throughout his life.
But that's the point. This is the other Mike Tyson, the one who knows he's made a lot of mistakes and wants to learn from them.
With his famously soft voice and considerable comedic timing, Tyson is very comfortable on stage. His still-formidable presence and athletic grace easily wins half the battle, but, the many references to his speech-coach aside, he handles a 90-minute monologue with relative deftness.
There are times when he lapses into incomprehensible street patter and others when he stands like a student groping for the next stanza of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." Still, it's no easy task engaging a live audience's attention for an hour and a half while talking exclusively about oneself.
Unfortunately, the novelty of seeing Mike Tyson lightheartedly discuss his wretched childhood and telling colorful tales of mentor Cus D'Amato soon wears thin. The script is too uneven. Some stories go on too long — a disjointed recounting of a brawl with Mitch Green and a bizarre encounter with a young Brad Pitt. Others, meanwhile, including and especially his rape conviction and the incident of Evander Holyfield's ear — are glossed over.
"I did not rape Desiree Washington," he says with sudden coldness, "and that's all I'll say about that."
So much for undisputed.
Tyson's jovial demeanor also chills to mean-spiritedness when discussing his former wife, Robin Givens, against whom he still apparently nurses quite a grudge. He doesn't feel much better about his former manager, Don King, whom he blames for his financial ruin.
Indeed, as "Undisputed Truth" proceeds, it takes on something of an aggrieved tone. Tyson "takes responsibility" by identifying the forces that conspired against him. That list ranges from Givens to larger, more amorphous things like sudden success and the huge gap between his Brownsville life and his celebrity.
His only sin, it seems, was being stupid.
Although the show does not truly build to a particular point, the narrative climax comes with Tyson describing the tragic death of his 4-year-old daughter, Exodus, in 2009. It is a moving moment that the show in no way exploits, but its presence points out the flaws of what has preceded it. Tyson does not mention either of his other two wives, or any of his seven living children.
In his book of the same name, Tyson seems to take a more rigorous look at his own culpability than in this staged version — which, in the end, appears to be more marketing ploy than personal or social excavation. The film feels more like Tyson's attempt to reconfigure his relevance in the social conversation, which he clearly hopes will continue to revolve around him.
May 11, 2013
By Mary McNamara
ABC's "Scandal" revolves around a beautiful, law-breaking Washington power-fixer with killer instincts and a matching wardrobe. She's madly in love with the very flawed president of the United States, who, among other things, recently murdered a Supreme Court justice. And they're the good guys.
This is the show that Twitter built.
Premiering midseason last year to tepid reviews (including mine) and low ratings, "Scandal," ABC's drama about crisis manager Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) and her love affair with President Fitzgerald "Fitz" Grant (Tony Goldwyn), now approaches its second season finale as a bona fide hit — the show's many and vocal fans call themselves "gladiators" because that is what Olivia calls her team. Some of this success springs from our eternal fascination with the dark side of D.C. and the simple delight many feel about a fast-paced drama starring a strong black female character.
But the essential ingredient is Shonda Rhimes. The creator of three successful shows, Rhimes has a sorcerer's ability to combine suspense with sentiment, soap with cynicism.
More important, the woman can work social media.
She regularly sends her close to 350,000 followers mash-notes of fan appreciation ("Gladiators: Scandal would not have the opportunity to be on magazine covers without all of you watching. Thank you for making it happen!"), personal professional insight ("Here comes my favorite Olivia Pope line I have ever written ever. #youwantmeearnme"), and perhaps more important, a feeling of direct "I'm Watching With You" connection — "West Coast Gladiators: GET OFF TWITTER NOW! #spoilers #752."
Many of the "Scandal" cast have followed Rhimes' prolific example; it is not uncommon for one or several to tweet photos of them on set, tweeting.
The audience has responded in kind. Gladiators reject the DVR experience to watch "Scandal" in real time, creating an enormous digital version of college friends arranging their schedules around a beloved daytime drama. For its returning episode in March, "Scandal" drew 119,000 tweets, beating longtime Twitter favorite "American Idol" by almost 80,000. This season's penultimate episode drew almost 9 million viewers and a series high in the coveted 18-49 demographic; needless to say, Twitter went wild.
The show is a new-media phenomenon, a flag bearer for Direct Courtship TV. Without Twitter to boost its profile and then its ratings, "Scandal" probably would have been canceled. Instead, it's held up as an example of social media prowess by networks and branding experts of every stripe, and its success further stokes the belief that somehow Twitter can save us all.
Anyone producing "original content" (including this story) has their hopes pinned on social media. "Follow me on Twitter" has become a standard sign-off on business cards and correspondence, and an industry of social media consultants now offer advice to institutions that once shuddered at the word "publicity."
Theaters, where cellphone tones have been known to spark onstage meltdowns, now have designated "tweet seats" to encourage live commentary during performances. Steven Soderbergh, after famously exiting film, is currently writing a novel with pictures, a tweet at a time. Stephen Colbert recently taught Bill Clinton to tweet, and then tweeted about the experience.
"Scandal" proves that Twitter can work. It also illuminates its price. Having drawn the beast's attention, you must now continually feed it. And it's a picky eater.
Social media is not built for subtlety — it's difficult to do nuance in 140 characters. The new, the outrageous, the quotable, the one-sentence insight, the exultant zinger, the sweeping statement — that is where the demographic lives.
Before "Scandal," Rhimes was behind the more spiritual show "Off the Map," which also drew disappointing reviews and poor early numbers. The show runner did her best, but could raise no fan base. The tagline for the show's Twitter account may offer one explanation: "The creators of Grey's Anatomy bring you an uplifting medical drama that explores how far you have to go to truly heal."
No one goes on Twitter — or nighttime TV for that matter — to "truly heal."
With its high drama, built-in political commentary and reliance on memorable declarative dialogue ("I am not a lawyer, I am a gladiator in a suit"), "Scandal" came out of the box Twitter-friendly. But even that wasn't quite enough. Originally constructed as a "crisis du jour" procedural, the series didn't achieve liftoff until fans became devoted to the Pope / Fitz love drama.
By the second season, the duo had become the soft, sticky center of every increasingly manic episode, undermining, to a certain extent, the image of Pope as independent and clearsighted, and ratcheting up the cynicism. Every episode is a cliffhanger, churning with amped-up reveals and hairpin turns that increasingly seem tailored more for commentary than continuity.
The plot has also grown increasingly dark. There was an assassination attempt, a waterboarding scene. A recent episode devoted to the back story of the much-beloved Huck (Guillermo Diaz) revealed that he had worked for a shadow wing of the CIA. Flashbacks of him torturing people were accompanied by an upbeat retro soundtrack. When, back in the present, Huck confessed to Olivia that he had done terrible things, she assured him: "We have all done terrible things."
Narratively and philosophically, "Scandal" is simply insane, and that insanity is precisely what makes it so tweetable.
And there it is, the snake in this garden of fan devotion and numbers success. For "Scandal" and, indeed, every product trying to navigate the vast yet splintered wilds of the digital universe, the big issue has become: How much effect should the medium have on the message?
With its episodic nature, television has always relied on shock and suspense to keep viewers coming back; now shows can thrive if they give good tweet.
In many ways, "Scandal" is a test case for the Big Four — CBS, ABC, NBC and Fox. It operates in a separate universe than slow-grow dramas like AMC's "Mad Men," Sundance Channel's "Top of the Lake," or even PBS' "Downton Abbey," which has managed to accrue a sizable fan base without asking Maggie Smith to wield a smartphone on set. ("Attention Proletariat! We will be live-tweeting in the drawing room.")
But there is no denying that network dramas have to do something, and perhaps creating a collective, multimedia experience where television shows once existed alone is it. Rhimes possesses a near superhuman ability to juggle many things, including solid writing and absurd scenarios. Watching how "Scandal" evolves as a television show is, in many ways, more tantalizing than the magical mechanics of Olivia's problem solving.
Honestly, it is hard to wait to see what happens next. I'll be live tweeting on that @marymacTV.
August 31, 2013
Al Jazeera America, which wants to enrich TV news, has yet to prove that it's up to the challenge
By Mary McNamara
Fires may rage and the U.N. roil, but let's scratch one hot-button concern off the national agenda: Al Jazeera America will not be overthrowing the American way of life any time soon.
During its first week on air, even with a news cycle heavy on Syria, none of the reporting or anchor-desk chatter promoted the cause of the Muslim Brotherhood or blamed American foreign policy for the region's unrest. The many female anchors and correspondents were not forced to cover their heads and most of the reporters were either American or BBC-European. (Love those accents!)
But if Al Jazeera America is not the airwave infiltration by a proselytizing enemy many feared it would be, neither is it the solution to American journalism it seems to think it is. At least not yet.
Kicking off last week with an hour-long introductory promo in which the network's high-profile journalists explained how they were now going to do TV news the right way, Al Jazeera America swore it would provide a rich and informative alternative to all those other slick, sound-bite-addicted and politically biased news networks.
Unfortunately, that promo was the best hour of television Al Jazeera America has put on the air so far.
The two evening showcase programs — "America Tonight" with Joie Chen and "Consider This," hosted by Antonio Mora — come closest to realizing the network's aspirations, which look very similar to those of "Frontline" and other PBS in-depth news coverage.
During the first week, each show proved how refreshing and rewarding it can be to see a topic given as many as 30 minutes of air time with journalists who are smart, informed and engaged in the conversation rather than forcing it to hit time-determined talking points.
It also proved how long 30 minutes can seem if the reporting gets repetitive or the guests run out of things to say.
Al Jazeera America's refusal to go hyper and slick is its big selling point. But there is a difference between hyper and energetic, between slick and polished. Sheila MacVicar, reporting on Syria, quickly emerged as a potential network star, but in general, the news programming, anchored in the evening by John Seigenthaler, did not differ in any meaningful way from other networks except in its regrettable tendency toward technical difficulties.
Blurry footage, glitchy sound, suddenly black screens and sloppily framed correspondents plagued virtually every program during the first week. Uninspired sets and amateurish graphics flattened the daytime news; the half-hour "Fault Lines" not only relied almost entirely on talking heads, it often put those heads in front of preposterously dull backdrops.
Across the board, producers struggled to find the sweet spot between "thorough" and "enough already." Interviews rambled only to be cut off mid-sentence, film footage sometimes appeared barely edited and far too many experts seemed uncomfortable in front of the camera; certainly many looked like they had been thrust in front of the camera without benefit of a comb, much less a stylist.
Forget slick, Al Jazeera America, we'll settle for groomed.
It's a new network, yes, but the raggedness of the coverage fuels the more worrisome suspicion that in their desire to bring old-fashioned, hard-hitting journalism back to television, the executives and producers are taking a too-literal read of "old-fashioned."
Good graphics are not silly, they're smart. More important, in a visual medium, they are necessary.
Relying on Skype conversations during the social-media driven daytime hour "The Stream" may have sounded good in a meeting, but Skype barely works for personal conversations. On television, unless the person involved is describing a dramatic real-time event, it looks absurd.
More can be more, but not always. On a recent "America Tonight," an in-depth look at Britain's vote against intervening in Syria was fascinating, but a trip to Detroit ran minutes too long and was followed by a trip to New Orleans. Honestly, how many American-cities-in-crisis stories can a person handle in a single hour?
Indeed, in its quest to return to TV news' statelier past, Al Jazeera seemed to be choosing topics that, though earnest and solid, rang undeniably retro.
There were several "Shame of Our Prisons"-like reports hooked to the hunger strike in California, a story about nuclear waste, a report out of Haiti and a series following attempts by former gang members to clean up the streets of Chicago.
"The Stream" held a digital debate about creationism just as nutty as you might assume it would be and "Consider This" hosted a heated conversation about circumcision (which did not advance the eternal debate even with Mora's queasy observation that the circumcisions he had witnessed did not appear to hurt the babies all that much).
Starting a television network is a perilous proposition, even for those with positive name recognition (Al Gore) or an enormous built-in fan base (Oprah Winfrey). Al Jazeera America faces a unique double-decker challenge: Before it can establish its name as a brand, it has to overcome its name as a brand.
The decision to pitch the network with an emphasis on national, rather than international, coverage may have seemed necessary — no shifty-eyed foreign agendas here, folks, we have a bureau in Nashville! — but it also undercuts the news organization's most marketable resource, the very reason many Americans wanted an Al Jazeera station in the first place.
The preponderance of ads for AARP-geared spa systems and the Nation during the first week of broadcast was not accidental. The non-Arabic folks who actually want to watch a network with an Arabic name may be a bit taken back by a shortage of HD footage but they do not need the kind of nationalistic reassurance the network has been offering. Specializing in international news, particularly in the perpetually incendiary Middle East, should not be considered a drawback.
Because despite the Fox News-led shift toward personality-driven news, there is plenty of objective, in-depth coverage of the prison system and nuclear waste and even Haiti already, on "Frontline," "60 Minutes" and the wonderful documentaries being shown on virtually every network including ESPN. Problem is, not enough people watch them. Which is why the news networks have stockpiled bells and whistles, developed multi-platform stars and brands (Anderson Cooper Outerwear, your time has come) that viewers now complain overshadow the actual news.
Unlike the government-funded BBC, so often held up as a gold standard, American news networks need to draw eyeballs to get the dollars required to report any news.
The early ratings for Al Jazeera America have been, not surprisingly, laughably low, in the double-digit thousands. Backed by the royal family of Qatar, the network has said it does not have to worry so much about ratings. But it does have to achieve relevance — people like Chen and Soledad O'Brien are not going to stick around if it doesn't — which it can do only if people are actually watching.
As the first week turned into the second, the pace picked up a bit. The video wall that had seemed stuck on Standard Screen Saver offered some horrifyingly beautiful footage of the Rim fire that has spread into Yosemite and the devastation in Syria; "America Tonight" did a terrific and exclusive feature on the Afghan forces that will be taking over from the U.S. military and Mora intercut his multi-pronged look at Syria with an overly earnest but interesting conversation about Miley Cyrus at the Video Music Awards. (Memo to journalists everywhere: Sheepishly admitting you don't know what twerking is does not make you look smart.) The fast-food workers' strike prompted a well-choreographed series of pieces on virtually every show, including "Real Money With Ali Velshi" (the network's top-rated program in early days.)
And though there was no reference to the infant Prince George, there was at least one story about Britain's potentially pregnant panda. Because no matter how hard-hitting a network wants to be, you gotta bring the pandas.
September 19, 2013
By Mary McNamara
Going into Sunday's Emmy telecast, all eyes are on "Breaking Bad." It's picked up a slew of acting awards during its five-season run and is this year's odds-on favorite for drama series; as the show moves toward its Sept. 29 finale, its ratings have almost tripled since last year.
"Breaking Bad" exemplifies a new sort of television series, one conceived with its ending in sight. Wonderfully written, powerfully acted, gorgeously shot, its seasons serve as chapters that take on the Big Four of literary conflict: Man versus Man, Man versus Nature, Man versus Society, Man versus Himself. The ending comes not in reaction to dwindling ratings or actor fatigue but because, as with any great work of fiction, it suits the story.
Television isn't just the new film, it's the new novel.
Following in the footsteps of "The Sopranos," "The Wire" and then "Mad Men," "Breaking Bad" is one of Those Shows, prestige dramas, mostly from basic and premium cable, that now drive cocktail party conversations and demand grad-school-level dissection. Recapping is rapidly eclipsing the book club as our primary form of communal literary analysis.
Liberated from the censors, ratings pressure and lengthy broadcast TV seasons, these are also the shows that ate the Emmys, filling nearly every drama category in this year's nominations. Even culture snobs admit to liking "Breaking Bad," "Game of Thrones," "Homeland" or at least one member of TV's ever-growing Literary Salon (some of which, like "Justified," are actually drawn from literature).
DVR queues have become the new nightstands, with episodes stacking up like back issues of the New Yorker until, stricken with some minor ailment or surgery, we can binge-view and catch up. Which one really needs to do because, increasingly, admitting that you have never seen "Mad Men," "The Wire" or "Damages" is like saying you never quite got around to reading "Catcher in the Rye" or "Pride and Prejudice." Just not done, darling.
Indeed, the new Netflix full-season dump is a complete capitulation to the watching-is-the-new-reading model. Here ... here it is, Netflix says, the whole darn thing. Take it to the beach/bedroom/backyard and hunker down.
While actual novelists are forced to think in terms of sequels and franchise, American television writers are experimenting with the finite.
"Breaking Bad," the tale of Walter White's descent into power, is a near perfect example of this new form. We met the mild-mannered high school chemistry teacher (Bryan Cranston) as he was receiving a death sentence. His cancer went into remission as another sort of corruption set in, but still the clock was ticking and creator Vince Gilligan was very clear about his intentions.
While the many other members of TV's "antihero society" struggled toward illumination, Walter breathed in the dark. Gilligan repeatedly said he wanted to turn Mr. Chips into Scarface, and, more important, it was the journey not the result that interested him.
It was not an immediate hit, even by cable standards. For years, the show seemed to have more essays written about it than actual viewers — Gilligan has long credited Netflix for the mid-life ratings growth that led to this year's explosion. Which makes the upcoming finale close to revolutionary — "Breaking Bad" is ending because Gilligan's story is ending. (A prequel spinoff, "Better Call Saul," is in the works because, well, AMC is not a philanthropic institution.)
"The Sopranos" may have begun the literary trend, tonally and thematically, but it followed a structure made famous, and then ubiquitous, by "Hill Street Blues." Although it clearly focused on Tony (James Gandolfini), "The Sopranos" had the huge cast and smorgasbord of B and C plots that traditionally ensure a show's longevity. It was so open-ended that virtually every season saw creator David Chase debating whether this would be the last, before finally delivering a finale that ranks among the most ambiguous conclusions of any story ever told.
Now television is tinkering as much with form as function. Cable brought us series with far fewer shows per season than broadcast's traditional 22; Showtime's "Episodes" has just nine, all of which are shot from one script, as if the season were a nine-hour movie. The miniseries may still lie dormant, but a "limited run" resurrection of "24" is being discussed while the recent "television event" adaptation of Stephen King's "Under the Dome" was launched with the understanding that it could have ended, story-wise, with one season had it not been so popular.
Showtime's "The Big C," though radically different from "Breaking Bad" in tone and intention, also used cancer to create a naturally limited timeline. The show's final season was just four episodes, allowing star Laura Linney to be nominated for an Emmy in this year's miniseries/movie category. Based on a series of novels, "Dexter," which ends a week before "Breaking Bad," had the traditional structure of a procedural, but it also had a built-in expiration date — even a devoted audience can stay true to a serial killer for only so long.
But AMC's first two original series are the flag-bearers of the new form. Although much more of an ensemble piece than "Breaking Bad," "Mad Men" is driven by protagonist Don Draper (Jon Hamm) as he grapples with seismic shifts both cultural and personal caused mostly by the simple passage of time. While most television shows start from a place of many possible paths and often shift cast, intent and tone to increase ratings, creator Matthew Weiner's vision of Don's journey is very controlled, with a novelist's approach to character development. Don Draper is a fixed point around which the show's universe spins and "Mad Men," Weiner has announced, will end with its seventh season divided into two short runs in 2014 and 2015.
As with "Breaking Bad," it's an ending that really matters.
Finales always fascinate, but usually because of the acrobatics required in bringing a show to some sort of cogent close; audiences flock to see how the writers are going to tie up the zillion loose ends that result from years of seasonal reinvention. "Lost" might have been conceived as a four- or five-season series, but emotional satisfaction was the most viewers could hope for at the end of its sixth and final season; certainly none of the show's "mysteries" were actually explained. Many finales are so bad ("Seinfeld") or divorced from the shows they close, they become separate entities, codas judged by their own set of rules.
The finale of "Breaking Bad," on the other hand, will, or should, make some sort of statement about modern morality. No other show has pushed the boundaries of graphic violence and moral depravity, with such lack of censure. No other show has both catalyzed and benefited from the recently universal conclusion that television is this century's ascendant art form.
Unless Gilligan conjures a trick similar to Chase's black screen, the fate of Walter White will inevitably send a message not just about the moral imperative of all these antiheroes, but also the courage of this new narrative form.
Will justice, cynicism or brand survival prevail?
July 18, 2013
It's a wide-open field -- but not for 'Walking Dead's' zombies
By Mary McNamara
This year's Emmy nominations reflected a lot of change in TV. Netflix got creative validation; there are more female-led dramas than ever. But one rule has become calcified: No zombies need apply.
Even as hordes of network executives and publicists hawked their wares at Comic-Con, AMC's genre hit "The Walking Dead" was once again shut out of the Emmys.
On lists that ran as long as seven slots, every show and its brother seemed to get a nomination — except, you know, the show that's the No. 1 scripted drama in the key 18-to-49-year-old demographic. Even "Scandal" and "Nashville" made lists, for heaven's sake.
You would think the television academy, of all institutions, would understand the shortsightedness of genre elitism. For years, television has felt the sting of snobbishness, perpetually playing second fiddle to film and diminished by epithets such as "the boob tube" or "the idiot box."
Now, of course, the tide has turned; film stars, writers and directors flock to TV, sparking a creative melee that is as rich in both promise and peril as the logistical implications of Netflix.
"Mad Men" may have set the template for the new basic-cable-goes-scripted model that every network and streaming service is now following, but "The Walking Dead" made it critically acclaimed and commercially viable.
Smartly written, beautifully acted and gorgeously shot, "The Walking Dead" tells the same intertwined tales of physical and moral survival, of family bonds, fractured passions and social collapse that have become the hallmark of our "prestige" dramas while creating a post-apocalyptic world as vivid and detailed as ever seen on any screen, big or small.
But it's about, you know, zombies. And though the purveyors of awards have been forced with great reluctance to accept that warrior-based fantasy is as genuine and effective a sub-genre as, say, gangster epics or CIA thrillers, they draw the line at the undead.
"Downton Abbey" and not "The Walking Dead"? Nothing for Andrew Lincoln or at least Norman Reedus, whose Daryl has become so iconic he shows up in Super Bowl commercials?
I understand that horror is not for everyone and popularity among young people is not synonymous with quality, but members of the television academy must take degree of difficulty into consideration. Horror is the hardest genre to sustain with depth and dignity. Even "Game of Thrones" has the advantage of taking place in a truly alternate universe.
Year after year, despite all its well-publicized internal drama, "The Walking Dead" continually transcends the confines of its own decaying flesh. It isn't even about zombies at this point.
"The Walking Dead" is, obviously, not the only name on the "shoulda been" list. The rise of television has been slow and steady and much-chronicled by those who cover it, but this year's nominations provide the quantifiable proof of its scope. Every category is bursting at the seams, and still there are the shadow lists of those just as deserving.
The female leads, in drama and comedy, were particularly gratifying. Just a few years ago, putting together a list of five was something of a chore (name a woman in a leading role who isn't Mariska Hargitay!). Now seven (drama) and six (comedy) don't quite cover it.
But where is Tatiana Maslany for "Orphan Black"? It's an amazing show and she plays six characters, people! Where, for that matter, are Julianna Margulies for "The Good Wife" or Keri Russell for "The Americans"?
Let's hear it for Laura Dern, whose excellent and revolutionary HBO comedy "Enlightened" got canceled this year (please win, please win). But shouldn't Patricia Heaton have been nominated for "The Middle" by now?
Heaven only knows what they're going to do next year with Netflix's "Orange Is the New Black." Steal "best ensemble" from the SAG Awards? The academy certainly can't ignore it, as it did the Netflixian resurrection of "Arrested Development," for which only Jason Bateman was recognized.
Peter Dinklage and Emilia Clarke were nominated, but "Game of Thrones" could have easily filled the supporting/drama category — Lena Headey was also fabulous this year, ditto Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Gwendoline Christie.
And though it was gratifying to see the new and moody "Top of the Lake" on several miniseries or movies nomination lists, the wonderful "Rectify" was conspicuously absent from drama's acting and writing lists.
I could go on, and many will, as the "what-were-they-thinking?" lists jam up new and old media. Everyone will have their top causes of exultation and aggrievement, and no doubt the category issue will be re-examined.
Netflix made history, as did Kerry Washington — the fact that almost 20 years separates her from the last black woman who earned a lead actress nomination is truly horrifying. But more important, television made history too.
It has become so good that even the Emmys can't keep up.
July 11, 2013
Netflix's comedy 'Orange Is the New Black' is fresh, feisty and binge-worthy
By Mary McNamara
As the fourth series in Netflix's attempt to change television and the world as we know it, "Orange Is the New Black" may feel a bit like the last bridesmaid, trailing in the petal-strewn wake of "House of Cards" and "Arrested Development." But as any rom-com addict knows, it's precisely that gal, the one bringing up the rear with the broken heel and the tilted headdress, who winds up stealing the show.
And so it may be with "Orange Is the New Black." Jenji Kohan's fine and feisty adaptation of Piper Kerman's memoir, which chronicled Kerman's yearlong stint in federal prison, may not have the star power of "House of Cards." But a women's prison is certainly a fresher landscape than power-mad D.C. And the distance between the frenzied expectations of "Arrested Development" and its very mixed reception clears a nice space for a comedy that is a deceptively ambitious mix of the innovative and the dependable. Netflix's fourth series is the horror thriller "Hemlock Grove."
In the beginning, "Orange" plays up the dependable. The "yupper" middle class is always fun to toy with and Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling) is no exception. A waify blond with a nice Jewish boyfriend named Larry (Jason Biggs), Piper is so Style section she has a fledgling artisanal soap business with her sister. ("We're in Barneys," she tells anyone who will listen.)
She also has a secret. In college, Piper had an affair with (gasp) a woman, Alex (Laura Prepon), who was (double and slightly doubtful gasp) a drug dealer. During a European vacation, Piper once picked up a big bag of money from an airport. So now she's going to jail.
That the crime is played down as an essentially benign lapse in judgment, and that Alex is one of the hotter, smarter drug dealers ever invented is immediately annoying. But the deft footwork of both Schilling and Kohan make it easy to overlook this small narrative cheat as we are launched into a well-executed rendition of the privileged-fish-out-of-water story line.
Although Piper has done all the reading and made certain fitness resolutions — "I'm going to get ripped," she tells Larry, who responds by proposing to her — she is utterly unprepared for a life in which she has no privacy, no amenities and no control. "Private Benjamin" goes to jail.
It's always amusing, and uncomfortably revealing, to watch a middle-class white American stripped of the privileges too often considered rights. The phone, the money, the shoes, even the language — Piper literally does not know how to communicate in a way that does not assume equality.
But this is a comedy, so there's a limit. "This isn't 'Oz,'" Piper is assured by Lorna (Yael Stone), an inmate who, with her lipstick and cute haircut, seems much more "Grease" than "Caged Heat."
The women-in-prison genre has traditionally served as a voyeuristic sexual exercise, either violent or erotic — there is no "Cool Hand Luke" or "Green Mile" for gals. Kohan quickly, and firmly, acknowledges the fetish potential with guards who run the (mild) gamut of obsession — with lesbians, with dominance — before moving on. Yes, many inmates have sex, with each other and with themselves. And, yes, it's graphic and often overlong, but it's never gratuitous.
Because "Orange Is the New Black" is not just about a slightly deluded Everywoman renegotiating her understanding of the universe, it's about the fact that Piper is most decidedly not Everywoman, a revelation that may take television executives by surprise. Piper quickly lands on the bad side of the head cook (Kate Mulgrew) who runs the cellblock like a Russian mobster, and then finds herself entangled with a possessive black woman called "Crazy Eyes." Eventually, she's bunkmates with a Haitian woman (Michelle Hurst) whose rumored crimes scare everyone, including the very swaggering butch played by the always fabulous Lea DeLaria.
In addition to Lorna, a host of other women try to help Piper survive, including a promiscuous but kindly former junkie (Natasha Lyonne), a male to female transsexual (Laverne Cox), a young Latina (Dascha Polanco) who develops a crush on a guard, a cheerful yoga instructor and an activist nun.
That it takes a tale set in prison, appearing on Netflix, to display the most racially diverse cast in a show not created by Shonda Rhimes says a lot about the limitations of even this golden age of television.
We still do not "forgive" female leads the crimes allowed our male antiheroes — hideous violence, rampant promiscuity — which is why "Orange" is a comedy and the general likability factor on this particular cellblock is pretty high side for the slam. "The Wire's" Snoop would definitely not fit in. But this is the most impressive group of female characters ever assembled in a series, and it's not just window-dressing; each woman has a story and that story will be told.
Netflix may wind up changing the world after all.
July 27, 2013
Defensive, rambling and downright odd with Matt Lauer on 'Today,' she fails to clean up her mess
By Mary McNamara
Things got a little weird on the "Today" show Wednesday morning when celebrity chef Paula Deen showed up for the appearance she bailed on two days ago to speak publicly about her use of racial epithets.
Appearing defensive and more than a little paranoid, she contradicted her own court testimony, claiming to Matt Lauer that she only used the "n-word" on one occasion, 30 years ago, after she had "a gun put to my head … [by] someone I had gone out on a limb for."
She blamed black people for making it hard to know if the n-word is even offensive.
"It's very distressing for me to go into my kitchen and hear what these young people are calling each other.... For this problem to be worked on, those young people are going to have to take control and start showing respect for each other and stop throwing that word at each other."
Then, after getting violently biblical -- "if there's anyone out there that has never said something that they wish they could take back, please pick up that stone and throw it so hard at my head that it kills me" -- she summed the whole controversy like this: "There's someone evil out there who saw what I had worked for and they wanted it."
And this, for reasons known only to him, is where Lauer decided to say, "Let's end on that."
Really? Really Matt Lauer? Let's end on Deen saying there is some super baddie who has orchestrated this entire scandal to somehow claim Deen's culinary empire? You don't want a name? I want a name or, at the very least, a Twitter handle.
One can only assume she means the employee who brought the lawsuit claiming that Deen and her brother maintained a racist and sexist environment at their restaurants. Although perhaps she, like others before her, has come to believe in a malignant entity lurking behind the media, social and otherwise.
Certainly she spent a large portion of her time with Lauer expressing outrage, though nary a detail, over the lies people have been spreading about her.
Which was a bad choice, from a public relations standpoint. As of Tuesday evening, the crisis had entered something of a backlash; after the initial shock and condemnation of what many saw as Deen's fairly cavalier attitude toward racial slurs -- "yes, of course," she answered when asked if she had ever used the "n-word" -- many were coming to her defense, and not just the perpetually addled Glenn Beck.
Fans were calling for a boycott of the Food Network, which dropped her show, and John McWhorter, an African American associate professor at Columbia, wrote in Time that Deen was merely a product of time and place: "Deen is old and she's sorry. She should get her job back," he concluded, referring to the Food Network's decision to dump Deen's show.
Which was where Lauer, in full stern-face mode, began his interview, pointing out to Deen the importance of this interview and asking if she was doing it simply to stop the financial bleeding.
Not surprisingly, Deen insisted she was there instead to "tell you what I believe and how I live my life. I believe every creature on God's earth should be treated equal. That's the way I was raised and that's the way I lived my life."
Her message seemed to be: If you knew me, you would understand that these words are not a reflection of who I am. Which would have been fine if Deen hadn't apparently coached herself by viewing clips of Richard Nixon on YouTube. She's been in the public eye for quite some time and endured controversy before -- her high-fat, high-sugar cooking style put her at odds with the current obesity crisis, a fact underlined by her announcement last year that she had Type 2 diabetes.
But she hasn't learned that less is more, in terms of personal outrage as well as buttermilk.
"I'm not going to say all the things I've done for people of color," she said, "I'll let someone else do that."
"I'm heartbroken," she added. "I've had to hold friends in my arms as they've sobbed because they know what is being said about me isn't true and I've had to to comfort them and tell them, 'If God got us to it, he'll get us through it.'"
Who's the victim here? Deen, because "there's someone evil out there" who wants what she has.
Seemingly determined to cry, she worked herself into a state of emotional breakdown midway through the interview with an anecdote about her 7-year-old grandson who refused to lie about her letting him stay up past his bedtime. ("This is how I raised my children," Deen said, her voice cracking as she told how the boy "put down his iPad" to look her straight in the eye).
April 21, 2013
By Mary McNamara
A ruthlessly self-aware political wife reconsidering her choices. A sensual socialite facing down an oppressive age with informed good humor. A group of young women so busy defying social expectations they've forgotten to have any of their own. A working mother with a gift for passionate stillness. A recently recovered drama addict determined to save the world. A bipolar CIA operative, an optimistic bureaucrat, a frightened sex slave turned canny warrior.
The female leads of "House of Cards," "Parade's End," "Girls," "The Good Wife," "Enlightened," "Homeland," "Parks and Recreation" and "Game of Thrones" are very different sorts of women who share one important trait: We have never seen their like before. While everyone was fixated by the rise of the television anti-hero, on "The Sopranos," on "House," on "Dexter" and "Breaking Bad," female characters quietly went post-archetype.
More than 40 years after Mary Richards and Maude Findley made their Modern Woman debuts (and 130 since Ibsen's Nora slammed the door heard 'round the world), another group of groundbreaking women has emerged on television. They work and they parent; love but don't always marry; betray or suffer betrayal but don't necessarily divorce; have flaws, including mental illness, but are not destroyed by them. Most important, they falter, they despair, and then they move on .
Although lacking in demographic diversity — they are all white and mostly middle class — these characters are the fruits of both the feminist revolution and television's increasing ascendancy. Shut out of the new blockbuster economics of Hollywood, the middle-aged actress and the creators of midlevel films have turned their attention to TV, especially cable series, creating leading ladies of a whole different caliber.
How else to account for Robin Wright's terrifyingly splendid Claire Underwood in "House of Cards"? Having made a deal with the devil to avoid boredom, she finds the devil himself boring. Or Tom Stoppard and Rebecca Hall's Sylvia Tietjens of "Parade's End," so different from her literary progenitor, with her insights into the era's sexuality, laughing as she batters herself against the brick wall of Edwardian society. "Good Wife" Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies) and Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) in "Game of Thrones" may live in worlds apart, but each accepts the inevitability of compromise and twists it into a new source of power.
They are refreshing because their choices are so unexpected, and their choices are unexpected because they actually have them.
For centuries, female characters were for the most part allowed two endings: marriage and death. Early feminists, including Louisa May Alcott, Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf and later Kate Millet created memorable women who often railed against the narrowness of society, but in the end they either got married or died, often by their own hand. Alcott did her best to have Jo March remain "a happy spinster," but in the end, even she capitulated to the demands of her audience. In "A Doll's House," Nora left her narcissistic husband, and that is where we left her — even Ibsen couldn't quite imagine what would happen next.
Now we can. Through characters such as Claire and Sylvia, Alicia and "Homeland's" Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes), we can imagine Anna Karenina if she believed she had a future, Jane Eyre with self-esteem, Elizabeth Bennet granted a real education and maybe a trip or two to London. We can see Tess of the d'Urbervilles provided legal counsel or Jo March allowed to run away and be a soldier.
Access to birth control, equal pay for equal work and the invention of Lycra are all important hallmarks of increasing freedom for women, but so is the existence of "Parks and Recreation's" Leslie Knope (Amy Poehler), an unrelenting optimist with goals both lofty and ludicrous and whose marriage was worth an episode or two before the show moved on. Or "Enlightened's" Amy Jellicoe, whom Laura Dern infuses with all the hope, anxiety and awkwardness that comes with conscious personal transformation.
Being a modern invention, television had a starting point a bit further along the liberation timeline than "The Taming of the Shrew" or Kate Chopin's "The Awakening." Lucy Ricardo was certainly quite unhappy with the limitations of being a housewife rather than a singing star or even a career gal, but she stopped short of throwing herself under a train.
There have always been exceptions — the oeuvre of Norman Lear, "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," "Julia," "Cagney & Lacey," Helen Mirren's Jane Tennison in "Prime Suspect" and more recently, the women of "Bones," on which Emily Deschanel's Dr. Temperance Brennan is marked by the brilliant-but-socially-stunted personality that is the hallmark of a male lead. Even so, most female characters came and went in a fairly limited number of shapes and sizes. Tina Fey was welcome and wonderful as the creator of "30 Rock," but Liz Lemon was an updated Rhoda Morgenstern — a beautiful, brilliant woman cloaked in overeating and self-deprecation.
And for better and worse, many of these archetypes are alive and well today — on "House of Cards," Kate Mara's character is absurdly outdated as a young reporter who thinks she can sleep her way to success. But even as recently as five years ago, characters such as "Homeland's" Carrie and "Enlightened's" Amy simply didn't exist, and women such as Alicia Florrick or Leslie Knope would have been one-dimensional wives or working gals whose real passion was passion. "Sex and the City" took "That Girl," tricked her out in Manolos, poured her a Cosmo and handed her a condom, but the Fab Four were pretty much fixated on their love lives.
Still, the idea that women could be just as sexually predatory and analytical as men was a game changer and perhaps the secret reason women seemed to vanish from television in the years after "Sex and the City" ended — where on earth, network executives seemed to wonder, were we supposed to go from here?
They didn't disappear entirely, but for several years it did seem as if "Law & Order's" Mariska Hargitay, "Bones'" Deschanel and "30 Rock's" Fey were the only three left standing, at least on the networks. Cable was a different story. After the success of "The Sopranos," which did almost as well by its women as its men, both premium and basic were suddenly attractive to actresses who had aged out of the increasingly narrow scope of feature films. Holly Hunter and Kyra Sedgwick went to TNT with shows that played more like cinema than television, and when Glenn Close brought Patty Hewes to life on "Damages," things really began to change.
Patty was a cipher, a woman you loved to hate, with the sort of delicious contradictions usually reserved for male leads, and her love life had nothing to do with it. Indeed, her primary relationship was with another woman, a daughter figure whom she tried to curry and kill. Patty was almost Shakespearean, but far more King Lear than Lady Macbeth. "Damages" struggled to sustain its complicated narrative structure, but Patty Hewes did more than make her mark; she punched a hole in the wall.
Two years after "Damages'" debut, "The Good Wife" appeared. What many anticipated to be simply a novel narrative twist — what happens after the loyal political wife assumes the position during her husband's fall — became something more profound. Not only did creators Michelle and Robert King re-invent the procedural as true character drama but they and Margulies also created a new sort of woman, quiet where one expected hysterics, contemplative where scheming seemed more predictable.
Critics were charmed, but more important, so were audiences. Not surprisingly, a spate of new female-centric shows sprung up in its wake. Some were instantly terrific ("New Girl") and some were instantly terrible ("The Playboy Club"); many were just smart new renditions of old characters.
Increasingly, though, they were filled with characters we had never seen before, women allowed to make mistakes without paying the ultimate price, who not only survived the third act but also went on to the fourth.
Which is usually where the good stuff happens.
March 16, 2013
Not quite. Lena Dunham can do better with 'Girls' than just provocation.
By Mary McNamara
Once upon a time not so very long ago I was a young woman living a writerly life of working poverty in New York City, which, for better or worse, engendered certain expectations from HBO's "Girls."
I admired though did not love the first season and felt hopeful about the second — creator Lena Dunham is smart and sharp-eyed, unafraid to wallow in the sticky brine of self-love and self-loathing that marks a certain time of many people's lives.
But lately watching "Girls," which has its second-season finale Sunday night, just makes me feel old. And impatient in a vaguely maternal way, like when you see a lovely but irritating wild child running naked around the playground, shouting "vagina" at everyone and peeing in the sandbox.
Yes, yes, creativity expresses itself in many ways, and it's good to know the correct terms for the female genitalia, but at some point someone needs to put that kid's clothes back on and show her where the bathroom is.
n this season's penultimate episode, Hannah (Dunham) wanders the streets of New York with no pants after jamming a Q-tip in her ear. Marnie (Allison Williams) sings a terrible song in public, then has sex with her ex (also in public). Adam (Adam Driver) ends his sobriety and then, in an act some viewers considered date rape, ejaculates on his new girlfriend's chest.
I didn't see it as rape so much as a very unfortunate sexual encounter, but then I was too busy being angry about so many other things, including how Adam's character has been jerked from one extreme to another and back again in service of the increasingly disjointed thing that passes for the show's plot.
Dunham keeps telling everyone that the second season of the show was about the characters experiencing free fall, and she apparently felt the show should go with them. For me, "Girls" hit bottom in the previous episode, when Hannah suddenly developed full-blown, eye-rolling, head-twitching, potato-chip counting OCD.
The script tried to pass it off as a stress-induced reoccurrence. Instead it played like the introduction of an Evil Twin, a narrative Hail Mary that only served to instantly expose Dunham's limitations as an actress.
But then, as any therapist will tell you, this is what happens when you reward the use of ambient nudity, urination and graphic sexual acts as a replacement for story — you will get more of the same.
When midway through this second season Hannah played topless ping-pong, I figured Dunham, who is at her most brilliant when nailing the increasingly self-referential nature of popular culture, was commenting on her own propensity for nudity and the media's fixation on that propensity. Because honestly, does anyone ever play ping-pong naked?
But when, last Sunday, John Cameron Mitchell's disappointed e-publisher rejected Hannah's book, asking "Where is the pudgy face slick with semen and tears?" just as if that were not precisely what "Girls" has been offering us since Day 1, I began to wonder: Is this a cry for help? Has Dunham gone so meta she's forced to self-cannibalize her own self-cannibalization?
Taken separately, I don't mind any of the nudity, urination or even the show's troubling view of sex. Hannah entered our consciousness on her hands and knees in joyless relations with Adam, after all, and Marnie was, at one point, locked in a cage that passed as an art installation and came out not angry, but aroused.
I do mind that none of it seems to serve any purpose beyond providing high-octane Twitter fodder and racy recap talking points.
After two years of "Girls" it is still unclear what Dunham has to say about life, beyond the unsurprising revelation that it is difficult and confusing to be young. And her decision to tell her characters' stories almost exclusively through their sexual lives is the opposite of revolutionary; young women have been reduced to the sum of their parts and partners since time began.
Even the insistence that Hannah/Dunham is heroic in her willingness to expose her haphazardly tattooed and non-swimsuit issue-type body and her neuroses has become tiresome. Exposing oneself is what writers and performers do, and at some point it has to transcend self-narration.
It's difficult to write a television show, particularly when it's been granted the HBO pedigree and relentlessly touted as the Next Big Thing. Heaven forbid Dunham write an episode of her half-hour comedy that is just funny or touching.
No, with the voracious media attention so seriously outweighing the show's actual viewership, each and every episode has to throw something outrageous against the wall, most usually in the form of a bodily fluid.
Dunham is young and inexperienced, but she is also quite talented and increasingly influential; the ability to stand up to pressure, from the network or the media or the craven zeitgeist, is now part of her job whether she likes it or not.
A television show written in real time by one of its own characters loses the often-weighty baggage of hindsight, but it also loses the benefit. Many tales of youth are undone by unrealistic nostalgia or a patronizing tone, but there is undeniable value in knowing where the story is going.
"Girls" has always relied more on mood than structure, more on observation than analysis, but the point of naked realism is insight not nudity. Dunham knows how to nail down a moment with a look or a line, but too often she seems so busy looking for a tree to pee on, she forgets to consider the breadth and depth of the forest that surrounds her.
To the judges:
If American television programming were reliably rewarding, we might not need Mary McNamara at all.
But need her we do. Whether she‟s acting as a historian of the medium or your plaintalking sister at the other end of the sofa — and she does both, often in the space of a sentence — McNamara thinks and writes with striking insight and precision. She'll spot that split-second of transcendence, or that long moment of hypocrisy. And she'll speak truth to network power.
There's no denying that our infatuation with television is growing, that the small screen is challenging the big screen in the race for pop culture dominance. McNamara is unusual because she can participate in this great cultural conversation but doesn't fall victim to the hype machine that proclaims “television is the new cinema.” The new TV is, simply, the new TV. It‟s a raucous, glorious, frustrating medium.
McNamara is at once chatty and thought provoking. She writes frankly from the point of view of an educated, liberated woman, but she is not doctrinaire.
She often seems to be saying what you were about to think, but more powerfully. Frustrated by some of the stunts on HBO‟s edgy series “Girls,” McNamara reported that the second-season finale made her feel “impatient in a vaguely maternal way, like when you see a lovely but irritating wild child running naked around the playground, shouting 'vagina' at everyone and peeing in the sandbox.”
And when Paula Deen tried to huff her way out of trouble after being caught uttering a racial slur, McNamara wickedly counseled that “with personal outrage, as with buttermilk, less is more.”
Yet from the sandbox, hospital and kitchen, McNamara leaps easily to Wharton, Woolf and Ibsen (in a discussion of female protagonists that also takes in Julianna Marguliesand Amy Poehler). She's ready to dissect the flawed rollout of Al Jazeera America (“Forget slick, Al Jazeera America, we‟ll settle for groomed.”). She bemoans the absence of zombies in the Emmy nominations, horror being “the hardest genre to sustain with depth and dignity.”
Often, she reaches her conclusions through unexpected journeys. To better understand how new media came to the rescue of ABC‟s “Scandal,” McNamara probes the Twitter stream of creator Shonda Rhimes. To inform an analysis of “The Sopranos,” the series that “made it possible for men to obsess about a TV show and not feel like a geek,” she listens in on sports radio.
Even McNamara's plot summaries bristle with wit and self-awareness. Recounting the women-and-jail setup of “Orange Is the New Black” from Netflix, she writes: “It's always amusing, and uncomfortably revealing, to watch a middle-class white American stripped of the privileges too often considered rights.”
Now and again, she‟ll send a flaming arrow into a network executive suite, often when it comes to the treatment of female characters. But McNamara‟s great strength is drawing connections that reach farther and mean more than most inside-baseball stories about the industry. She's looking for a bigger picture on that flickering screen, and when it comes to sharing what she's seen with readers, she's a rare talent.
Sincerely,
Davan Maharaj
Winners
Prize Winner in Criticism in 2014:
Inga Saffron
For her criticism of architecture that blends expertise, civic passion and sheer readability into arguments that consistently stimulate and surprise.
Criticism
Finalists
Nominated as finalists in Criticism in 2014:
Jen Graves
For her visual arts criticism that, with elegant and vivid description, informs readers about how to look at the complexities of contemporary art and the world in which it's made.
The Jury
The Jury
Alisa Solomon(Chair )
professor, Graduate School of Journalism
Johanna Keller
director, Goldring Arts Journalism Program, S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communication
Debra Leithauser
publisher
Michael Phillips
film critic
Jeff Weinstein
critic
Winners in Criticism
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.
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.
2014 Prize Winners
Donna Tartt
A beautifully written coming-of-age novel with exquisitely drawn characters that follows a grieving boy's entanglement with a small famous painting that has eluded destruction, a book that stimulates the mind and touches the heart.
Annie Baker
A thoughtful drama with well-crafted characters that focuses on three employees of a Massachusetts art-house movie theater, rendering lives rarely seen on the stage.
Alan Taylor
A meticulous and insightful account of why runaway slaves in the colonial era were drawn to the British side as potential liberators.
Megan Marshall
A richly researched book that tells the remarkable story of a 19th century author, journalist, critic and pioneering advocate of women's rights who died in a shipwreck.