In Which We Were Supposed To Do This Together

Needs A Certain Something

by ELEANOR MORROW

Feed the Beast
creator Clyde Phillips
AMC

There is a scene in the first episode of the new AMC series Feed the Beast that typifies Clyde Phillips' writing style completely. Tommy (David Schwimmer) shows up at a group meeting where they workshop his grief over the death of his wife Rie. The group's leader asks Pilar (Lorenza Izzo) to stand in for Tommy's wife in a role-playing exercise. "I miss you," Tommy explains to this woman he has just met. "I need you. We were supposed to raise our son together. We were supposed to open a restaurant together. I love you. You're like a phantom limb." Pilar listens with a look on her face like she just won the lottery. In Phillips' vision of the world on shows like Dexter and Nurse Jackie, the deepest pain imaginable also brings the most unlikely pleasure.

This paradigm is exemplified by Tommy's best friend, recent parolee and gifted chef Dion (Jim Burgess). Burgess is the central performer on Feed the Beast, and to be completely honest the show would be quite drab without him. Fortunately, Burgess needed a role exactly like this one and he found it. Not only is he the most gorgeous, irresistible creature ever to saunter into a room and slice a leg of lamb, Burgess's performance as the cocaine-addled Dion naturally projects a non-physical threat to any established order. Just looking at him is dangerous.

Feed the Beast creator Clyde Phillips rarely concerns himself with deep, emotional connections, seeming to favor the abcesses constructed by various forms of sociopathic or antisocial behavior. The person Tommy Moran cares about the most is his son T.J., but that cannot help feel like a stand-in for his dead wife. Because of his grief, every relationship that follows can exist only on a surface level.

But that is entertaining enough for television — if Dion were not such a deceitful person, he would never have ended up in jail, where he became popular by cooking for the guards. His talent at cooking, and by extension, shaping his personality around his gift, is what makes him attractive to others. If God did not bless him in this way, he would simply be a piece of shit.

Dion owes money to a mafioso named Patrick Woichik (Michael Gladis), fresh off his disappointingly flimsy run as Paul Kinsey on Mad Men. Gladis tries to imbue the role with all the menace he can muster, but at his core he seems nothing like a Bronx mobster. It is not that Gladis is the wrong age or type for the part; it is more that the role of paper-thin villain with a funny nickname does not really suit his particular set of skills. Vicious men are usually at least one other thing, if not two.

I understand trying to cast against type and not reinforce certain Italian-American stereotypes, since Feed the Beast pretends to set itself in a Greek community. But the decision hurts the show by trying to offer something that is different but still ultimately the same.

Dion and Tommy decide to open a Greek restaurant in the Bronx by reclaiming money owed to Tommy by his racist, wheelchair-bound father, Aidan (familiar character actor John Doman). Tommy's father is something of a drain on the show as well. It is difficult enough to constantly re-experience one painful backstory in the case of Tommy's wife — but to have a second, peripheral tragedy that consumes him distracts from both.

The Danish series Feed the Beast bases itself on had a larger cast of characters surrounding their protagonist, and I applaud the move to a darker feel and shorter focus. These two male antagonists unfortunately seem muted and a bit powerless in comparison to our heroes, and end up detracting instead of adding to the milieu. Even with these criticisms in mind, I don't fully understand the reviews Feed the Beast has received, which are overall rather horrid for a show of this pedigree. For me, watching Schwimmer's foray into drama opposite the insanely charismatic Burgess would be enough for several seasons. There is no arguing that there is something missing from the story being told, however.

I think the main mistake is with Burgess' character, since he must carry the show. Giving him career success to reclaim is a marvelous start and we want to see him overcome his issues, but having him win the love of a family and a woman would make him even more sympathetic. Instead he fucks his beautiful lawyer and Tommy's son already seems to like him for no reason. No one can or should succeed at being that much of a misanthrope.

Eleanor Morrow is the senior contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in Manhattan. You can find an archive of her writing in these pages here.

"Be Careful Where You Park Your Car" - Cat's Eyes (mp3)

In Which You Better Start Thinking Of Ways To Make It Up To Him

A Lively Marriage

by DICK CHENEY

The Mindy Project
creator Mindy Kaling

I miss Cliff. Ever since Mindy finally consummated the mediocre sexual attraction between her fellow gynecologist Daniel (Chris Messina), The Mindy Project has turned into a show about a relationship.

In a recent episode of The Mindy Project, a major plot point concerned Mindy's boyfriend's talents at cunnilingus, and her telling all the other characters about it. Not only does this make me look bad in my relationship, but I am pretty tired of some asshole being redeemable simply because he is good at giving head (I'm looking at you Michael Caine).

It's so important to emphasize how good the sex is, because the chemistry that Mindy and Daniel share is largely based on how good his dancing is. He does a short dance in every episode, and usually punctuates it by thrusting his pelvis in a lewd manner. Eventually people had to tell Fred Astaire to stop doing this, and Fred Astaire was a lot better dancer than Mindy's boyfriend.

What you and every other man did to Chloe Sevigny is unforgivable.

Many shows torpedoed once their long-single protagonists found love, since it is never actually interesting for other people to hear how satisfied you are by your partner. An emotional time was had by all when Ross made love to Rachel in that planetarium; however I once had the job of cleaning a planetarium at a Wyoming-based history museum and it is nowhere you would want to spread a blanket on.

Ross (David Schwimmer) had a much better thing going with this British woman, Emily. Emily (I'm assuming her last name was Bronte?) was very needy and suspicious of Rachel, but considering the situation I guess she had a right to be. Once Rachel and Ross became a very boring couple they moved into an apartment together. I hated the color scheme of this apartment, and all my memories are of Ross complaining there. Eventually they started doing a Joey and Rachel storyline which did not make much sense, and Pheobe married Paul Rudd, which made all the sense in the world for everyone except Paul Rudd.

At least Friends had a variety of eligible men that Rachel could potentially end of the rainbow with.  It must be weird to have a baby on a TV show but not in real life.

Sadly, his nascent sexual attraction to his sister Monica would never be consummated in quite this fashion.

The men in Mindy's life are all extremely terrible. Danny let his mother disrespect Mindy at an excessively long brunch, and even briefly let his mother think that Ms. Kaling was his cleaning lady. He is constantly looking for things to complain about when he comes to his girlfriend, and should he even suffer the slightest indignity, he tells Mindy, "You better start thinking of ways to make it up to me." She accepts this for some reason.

Mindy's other colleagues regularly cheat on their girlfriends, sometimes even with each other. There should be a lot of options for an attractive single gynecologist, but instead she has to get with a police officer who is twenty years older than her (Tim Daly)? Despite his offensive accent, Tim Daly was by far the most handsome of these men; Danny's lips look like they are permanently sealed in a frown.

I still don't understand why it was such a big deal to talk to a guy while in a pool.

I'm still mad about what they did to Cliff, though. He was a suave lawyer one second, the next he was singing a Sarah McLachlan song for an entire episode, and projecting a creepy vibe never present in the original Cliff.

It's not even like you can bring another man into Mindy's life at this point to complicate things. She will just look flightly after lusting after Castellano for so long and bragging about how good he is at oral, and Daniel would never tolerate an actual competition for the love of a good woman. I'm starting to worry if it is going to be another year of romanticizing a union that never should have happened.

Blake Lively has no chance of pulling that dress off or eating anything but baby food without assistance.

It really chars my balls that Ryan Reynolds was taken, and even now has a baby on the way with that blonde older woman he's been seeing. If it weren't for Blake Lively, he would be getting all of Matthew McConaughey's roles, but who can stand to hear him relating tales about how Blake is absolutely "hangry as all get out when she's on a cleanse" or his innocent general questions about her, like, "Do you guys think it's common for a grown woman to say 'chomp chomp' when she bites into a carrot?"?

I'm sorry, but Danny Castellano is an asshole for not giving Mindy space in his closet, or telling her that she can't tell her friends about his proficency with his mouth. A relationship is only actually fun for the people in it.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording.

"Avalon" - The Alarms (mp3)

"Famous Kids" - The Alarms (mp3)

In Which We Try To Talk About Everything

Sex Education

by TANIA ROHAN

The year is 1986. The movie is Top Gun. I’m sitting in a dark theater with my parents on one side of me, older brother on the other. The movie itself is a blur, other than the sound of jet engines and Val Kilmer’s teeth and of course, that infamous love scene. You know the one: two silhouetted bodies connecting to the soundtrack of “Take My Breath Away,” Tom Cruise weirdly dipping his tongue into Kelly McGillis’s mouth. A second or two into it, my mom leans over to ask if I want any popcorn.

I decline, eyes fixated on the blue-tinted, slow motion sex on screen.

At six years old, I haven’t yet learned to feel embarrassed. It’s only in hindsight that I realize my mom’s popcorn offering was an attempt to distract me from the sex. By seven years old, I would know better.

My brother and I are in our thirties now, but we still panic at the suggestion of anything remotely sexual in the presence of our parents. Watching TV and movies, listening to music, even socializing with anyone outside our immediate family is potentially uncomfortable. Oh, you’re making a joke about 50 Shades of Grey at the Thanksgiving table? Awesome. We’re laughing on the inside. Just the other day, I had to excuse myself during a Friends rerun — Friends! — in which, pre-divorce, Ross tries to orchestrate a threesome with his wife and her new love interest.

That might seem over the top, but in our family there is no such thing as sex. We don’t talk about it, we don’t joke about it. Hell, we can’t even say the word. We look for workarounds, even when we’re not referring to the act itself. We don’t ask if you want to know the baby’s “sex,” we ask if you want to know “if it’s a boy or a girl.” A person’s actions aren’t “sexist,” they’re “chauvinistic.” A couple doesn’t have “sextuplets,” they have “twins times three.” Okay, so I’ve never actually needed to say “sextuplets” to my parents. Thank god.

My parents aren’t very religious, so the only explanation I have for their prudishness is culture. Swinging 60s fashion may have made it to the Middle East, but its sexual revolution did not. My mom, who was born and raised in Baghdad, Iraq, is hardly a conservative woman. As a teenager, she wore micro-minis (I’ve seen the photos) and had her share of boyfriends (I’ve seen the Facebook comments), but from what I understand, sex just wasn’t part of the equation. And it certainly wasn’t part of the conversation.

She might not describe it as such, but my mom loves a sexy outfit. Me? Not so much. Over the years, our sartorial choices have been the source of so much mother-daughter drama. I will never forget a trip to Price Club with her in the summer before 8th grade, before which I was coerced into putting on the following outfit: supershort orange shorts, clear plastic belt (it was the early 90s) and tight black crop top. She probably thought it was cute, a kind of faux sexy, like a toddler in a bikini. After all, I was just a kid. What she didn’t realize was that girls my age were already giving blowjobs. I couldn’t wait to change.

Since the birds-and-bees discussion was never going to happen at home, the burden of sex education fell entirely on my peers and teachers. Luckily, they delivered. And early. One day in the fifth grade, all of the girls gathered in a dark classroom to watch a fuzzy VHS video, our introduction to reproduction. In it, the former child star Aileen Quinn (of Annie fame) talked about how her body had changed, and how ours would, too. I already knew about periods thanks to Judy Blume and a clumsy conversation I’d had with my mom the summer before, but that video cleared up so many of the hows and whys. By middle school, sex ed was co-ed, steering the lessons in an entirely new direction. Anonymous question boxes yielded queries like does peeing after sex prevent pregnancy and hey Mr. Trolango, are your pubes gray?

I don’t know if it’s because the topic of sex was so off-limits at home, or if all teens and tweens are like this, but my interest in the subject — in learning about it, talking about it, everything except doing it — was strong, at times recklessly so. Freshman year of high school, I heard through the gossip mill that an old friend of mine had lost her virginity. I called this girl up — this poor girl who I hadn’t spoken to for at least a year since we’d gone to different high schools — to tell her I’d heard the news and to ask for all the dirty details while my best friend sat beside me listening in. Is it true that he’d kept his Doc Martens on the entire time? Did you use a condom? What was it like? Do you feel different now? I could hear the reluctance in her voice, and yet she continued to answer my questions, as if obligated to do so. Not my finest hour.

But in my defense, there weren’t a lot of ways to get answers back then. We didn’t have Google or blogs or vlogs, no Sex and the City or Girls. Even The Real World’s treatment of sex was — in true 90s fashion — more cerebral, focusing on STD awareness, abortion rights and the politics of sex. To sneak a peek into the lives of the sexually active, you had to talk to people you knew. Friends and friends’ older sisters and that precocious girl in your P.E. class whose stories were obviously fake but still fun to listen to.

+

One year, we were given a homework assignment that required us to talk to one or both of our parents about sex: when was it okay to have it, what precautions should be in place, and so on. I considered making the whole thing up and forging my mom’s signature, saving everyone the embarrassment. But I wanted to know how my parents would answer those questions, to learn something, anything, about how they felt about this thing that’s apparently so awful, we can’t even talk about it. And maybe more than anything else, I wanted my family to be more like my American friends’ families, or like the ones I’d seen on television — the kind of family that can talk about anything.

I went to my mom. I knew it might be a little uncomfortable, but I figured it’d be fine once I broke the ice; that the whole experience would bring us closer; that this would be the first of many conversations to come! Instead, she was mortified, then angry. “They can’t force me to do this,” she said, and without making eye contact, handed back the assignment and suggested I talk to my father. So much for that mother-daughter gabfest.

Homework in tow, I made my way to the den where I found my dad playing solitaire on his computer. He’s Middle Eastern too, and a lot more conservative than my mom, so you could argue this was a riskier endeavor than the first. But his Palestinian family had moved to Kenya when he was just six years old, which thrust him into the British colonial school system and a more western worldview. Plus, he’s an engineer. Pragmatism always triumphs, and we needed to have this chat or I couldn’t finish my homework. He agreed to do the assignment with me and in ten excruciating minutes, I learned that yes, my parents are conservative, but not to the extent that I’d previously imagined. I decided then that their silence on the topic was, more than anything else, a matter of decorum, maybe even of shyness. We’re never going to be the kind of family that talks about sex or watches Showtime together. I don’t know why I thought I could force it.

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At this year’s Super Bowl half-time show, Beyoncé steps onto the stage in a leather and lace bodysuit over fishnet stockings. “Wow, I love what she’s wearing,” my mom says, and then pouts: “Why don’t you ever wear things like that?”

“No one wears clothes like that in real life,” I say.

“If I were your age, I would,” she says. And I believe her.

But when the nerd and the model start to French kiss in that GoDaddy commercial? Holy shit do I want popcorn.

Tania Rohan is the senior contributor to This Recording. She is a writer living in San Francisco. She last wrote in these pages about summer in San Francisco. You can find her twitter here and her website here. 

"Strangers in the Same Bed" - Fletcher (mp3)

"Swim Through the Mouth of the Whale" - Fletcher (mp3)