In Which We Ride For Years On The Bloodline

We Never Said That

by DICK CHENEY

Bloodline
creators Todd A. Kessler, Glenn Kessler & Daniel Zelman

I have spent a lot of time in Florida over the years. Remember when Al Gore tried to steal an election there? At the time, people were really upset about Al Gore losing, even though they didn't realize that his marriage best resembled the relationship between Bob Odenkirk and Michael McKean on Better Call Saul and that the main words in his vocabulary were 'solar' and 'lockbox."

It was honestly amazing that Gore got that far.  The Clintons all hated him, he was wacky as fuck, sweat a lot and talked with a weird lisp. The character of Daniel Rayburn on Netflix's original series Bloodline is based on Gore, and the show's storyline is actually a long metaphor for Gore's position in the Democratic party.

Daniel (Ben Mendelsohn) has a long history of squandering his family's goodwill as the black sheep. Once he arrives back at the family's hotel in the Florida Keys for a ceremony honoring his parents, shit starts to go south very quickly. He enters into a sex relationship with Chloe Sevigny, always a critical mistake, and learns some things about his childhood that drive him kind of crazy. Because he is broke, he begs to be accepted back by his family. Instead of saying no, his father demands the other children vote on it.

Al Gore had a far worse haircut, but other than that, twinsies.

His two brothers John (Kyle Chandler) and Kevin (Norbert Leo Butz), and his sister Meg Rayburn (Linda Cardellini) are a bit aghast to see him back in the fold. Chandler is the local sheriff, and he gets most of the screentime in Bloodline. Chandler vacillates between an asexual angst and a pent-up Steve McQueen-esque burning.  He never touches his wife during Bloodline except for some chaste kisses, treating her more like a sister he has to protect than an equal partner.

This relationship model is inherited from his parents Robert and Sally, portrayed by Sam Shepard and Sissy Spacek. The two run Rayburn House, a beach-situated hotel, and yet spend most of their days apart. They also have a weird distance between them and their children. "We never say that in this family," John explains to his sister Meg at one point. "What?" she asks. "I love you," he replies, and he adopts an expression that resembles the meme face afterwards.

Sam Shepard and a dark past go together like juicy juice and Empire

It's apparent from the show's opening episode that something very untoward has happened to Danny Rayburn/Al Gore. By the time ten episodes later that the circumstances of this depravity are actually explained and put in context, any sympathy we might have for Danny has completely evaporated. His main complaint about his life is that he was blamed for the accidental drowning of his sister thirty years ago.

the flashback glow needs to be retired ASAP

This dark moment is relived in flashback, although the particulars of the day seem sort of besides the point. The soon-to-be dead daughter caught her hand in a coral reef; Danny was unable to pull her out and was blamed by his father, who beat the hell out of him. He could have done much worse; when George W. Bush was caught drunk driving, I hit him with my car.

Paul Feig created you and he can destroy you.

Linda Cardellini plays Meg against her nervous, shuffling type, exhibiting massive dimples that do an astonishing job of conveying at once who she used to be and what she is. She is cheating on her boyfriend of five years when Bloodline opens, and when Danny finds out about this, he threatens her with the information as a means of inserting himself into his father's will. She becomes grateful for the threat, because it prevents her from marrying a man she does not love.

She ruined Mindy Kaling's life, and yet still finds gainful employment. What...a world.

Danny's not done. He gets involved in smuggling immigrants and heroin. Then he hires someone to beat the shit out of his brother Kevin after he seduces Chloe Sevigny one tortured Florida night. Kevin uses the beating as the motivation he needs in his business and marriage. When he finds out Danny is the culprit, he is no more angry than he was before. People tend to believe they deserve the bad things that happen to them.

Between these moral dilemmas are wide shots of the interlocking bridges that take vehicles out to the Keys, but most of Bloodline seems to have been shot elsewhere, and whatever holds it together as a place is never clear except this: you do not want to go to there. There is only one nice person in the entire show, and he gets the hell out of Southern Florida as soon as he can.

He'll always be my coach

Money is always flowing in and out of the state precisely because it is so electorally important. Gore did not win Florida, but his votes there allowed him to easily attain the popular vote. There really is no reason a popular, mandatory vote should not occur. This small matter has been forgotten over the last fifteen years, but how it must have hurt Al, knowing that 500,000 more Americans actually wished him to be what he almost was.

This slim frustration rankles more than a massive slight for Danny. He can accept that his father wants him gone from Rayburn House, because at least he isn't hiding his true feelings for the boy. It is Danny's siblings who really anger him, who pretend to care and then in that same moment treat him like a stranger.  We all want to know where we stand.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording.

"Nothing's Fair In Love and War" - Three Days Grace (mp3)

"One Too Many" - Three Days Grace (mp3)

In Which We Jenga For Days In The Dark Recesses Of Our House Of Cards

Spoilers for the third season of the Netflix series House of Cards appear in the following essai.

Douglas Stamper's Romper Room

by DICK CHENEY

Doug Stamper (Michael Kelly) saw that movie where Jennifer Aniston complains a lot about being in pain and took it to heart. Lynne calls Doug Stamper 'Stampsies', and every time he does something that requires a questionable amount of moral integrity, such as squirt whiskey into his mouth with a syringe or pitch a crying fit in the oval office, she cries out, "Oh Stampsies, what will you do next?!"

This season of House of Cards oscillates from utterly boring to bald-head-to-the-wall fascinating in mere seconds, which makes it a difficult show to review in my inimitable style. The point of this constant temperature change is to echo the real pace of politics, which most of the time consists of sleepy policy proposals and pseudo-scandals about Hillary Clinton chucking her hard drives into the Chesapeake Bay or you know, lying about the murders of American ambassadors.

It's disgusting that Jon Stewart could give a shit whether or not he is lied to. All politicians lie, he moans between clips of the man he is dangerously obsessed with, Bill O'Reilly. You can judge someone pretty much completely by the types of people they take seriously. Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) doesn't take anyone seriously except his wife - and that abiding belief is erased by the events of House of Cards' third season.

At times in his rise to power, Underwood had various crises of faith and through her officious and cold decision-making, Claire Underwood (the stunning yet vaguely asexual version of Robin Wright) pulled her husband past the crisis. That he is unable to save her the way she has done for him is the through-line here.

To obtain the presidency, Frank had to do a lot of messed-up, implausible shit. Now that he is the president, he has to do a lot of moaning, spinning around in a chair, and gripping the throats of women with his non-masturbating hand. Frank is no longer the asynchronous terror he once was, and this season of House of Cards has been accused of being dull, watered-down, and excessively foreign policy focused.

The last charge comes with a new antagonist, Russian president Viktor Petrov (Lars Mikkelsen). Featuring the real-life situation of the suddenly disappeared Russian president in the real world hews a bit too close to home, making us realize there are tyrants far worse than Frank Underwood. That an aging and more sympathetic Frank comes across like a weak baby in comparison to the strong Russian president is an easy irony, but it doesn't really help the narrative of the show. House of Cards has not lost the breakneck pace or compelling, theater-esque characterization that propelled it to success, but this season does seem to be missing a lot.

Spacey has aged precipitously since the last Cards ended with the Underwoods' ascent to the Oval Office. His virility has dissipated more quickly than any of us could imagined. I know the feeling: I lived it. At one point in my life I had hair, and then I didn't. (Likewise, Putin has returned from his sabbatical, where he received medical treatment to restore his low testosterone, but he will never really be as threatening to the West again.)

In order to sell the public on his brilliant American Works program that would employ every person currently sitting around during the day watching House of Cards on Netflix, Frank hires a novelist (Paul Sparks) with whom he has a weird, ambiguously sexual relationship after admiring a video game review the man wrote about iOS smash Monument Valley.

This entire threadline is setup for what will surely be played out in the show's fourth season, reminding us how much we lost, character-wise, from the first two. Peter Russo was a gentleman and a scholar; Zoe was a witch but at least she was our witch; Christina had a certain something I once saw in a young Courteney Cox before her smile became frightening; Claire's ex-boyfriend who she reverse cowboyed was a terrible photographer, but at least he provided something in the way of relief. It can't be all-Underwood, all-the-time. That's the mistake the Democratic Party made before the 2000 election.

Even in this season characters which might have been further fleshed out or reappropriated - like Benito Martinez's savvy and handsome Hector Mendoza or Derek Cecil's disturbingly manipulative Seth Grayson - don't get much in the way of screen time. If you measure it out, more than half the show's scenes feature Claire flipping her hair or being subtly disgusted by her husband's misogyny. A hammer can only pound a nail so many times. Ask Lynne.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. He is a writer living in an undisclosed location. You can find an archive of his writing on This Recording here.

In Which We Choose A Woman And A President

Arlington

by DICK CHENEY

Choosing someone can be so difficult. Can you really expect a man from Iowa to really know what exactly is good for him? President Obama has not been to Iowa since the primaries for several reasons: he feels awkward around the Bachelor, Chris Soules, and he despises the smell of cowshit.

Given that he owns 800 acres, you think he could get the people of Arlington a fucking grocery.

Obama has privately expressed a determination to stay out of the 2016 presidential race. There is a not-so-quiet movement coming from some Republicans and Democrats to ensure Hillary Clinton never attains the presidency. They have trouble agreeing on what exactly is going to drive her out of Iowa, with some even resorting to the guy who was the corrupt Baltimore mayor in The Wire. Matt Drudge appears to be in love with this man:

Hillary cannot believe she is getting railroaded by Tommy Carcetti

If this seems like a stretch, maybe it's time to consider that no one actually wants to be the president. If you value your own time or ypur own family, the presidency is not really for you. There is a WH staffer who specifically updates the president on his daughters' moods and suggests how much child support he will be expected to pay once Michelle leaves him for Peabo Bryson.

If we are going to elect another unknown as president, I would prefer it be someone who is not negatively represented on The Wire, like Omar Little, or Heather Dunbar.

I actually hissed when I saw her as a brunette.

Frank Underwood wanted to be president more than anything in the world, although it is not completely clear why. Once in office, all he does is have intimate chats with his biographer and lash out at his wife for not finding a two-state solution as efficiently as he would like.

The new season of House of Cards makes you realize how difficult it is to go on living after you have seemingly gotten what you wanted. Most people don't want power or happiness; they just couldn't think of anything else they did want.

Maybe don't give someone a speech before they propose to you? It's rude.

Having a blonde Midwestern wife seems like a lot of work, maybe just as much work as occupying the Oval Office. Chris Soules chose the disturbingly vocal Whitney Bischoff as his bride-to-be. Before he proposed to her in one of his many barns (he owns 8 farms!), she interrupted his proposal with a gushing soliloquy about how she had the best time with him. She even talked through their first wintercourse, informing him of the entire plot of Hart of Dixie from beginning to end.

If he dumped her in a barn, she probably would have murdered him and his parents. He made the right call.

Whitney was a pill to be honest. Right before they had sex for the first time (Reality Steve reported that it would be missionary style, as God intended), she uttered the famous words, "Check, please!" Whitney, who will be giving up her job as a Chicago fertility nurse to produce "lots of babies" for the man she calls Ka-Ryse, has a very large sexual appetite. Her main drawback was her limited vocabulary, which began and ended with the word Amazing. Her kisses were somewhat subpar as well.

Everyone wants the smell of hay permanently ensconsed in her nostrils.

hris struggled with his choice of woman just like we struggle with our choice for president. The other woman involved treated Chris like he was a slightly overbearing uncle, and yet he still found himself deliberating over his final decision. The producers of The Bachelor couldn't choose either: instead of selecting one mediocre woman that Chris dumped to be the Bachelorette, they went with two.

The concept of two presidents isn't the worst idea I have ever heard. I guess we already had that, considering I made plenty of George W. Bush's decisions, including what cereal he would have for breakfast and what game modes he would play in Call of Duty: Black Ops.

If Becca said, "I'm just not there yet" one more time, I was going to key her asexual Lexus

The two women going on The Bachelorette that Chris perhaps unwisely parted ways with were Britt Nilsson and Kaitlyn Bristowe. The former basically did not shower her entire time on the show and wept through the entire hour of The Women Tell All. Meanwhile, Kaitlyn's accent ultimately doomed her to third place in the competition, as did coming on too strong in Bali. She should never have told him how cute she found the local monkeys; on a subliminal level a man wonders if she sees him the same way.

Who we choose says a lot about us. The important part of electing Barack Obama seemed to be how often and how effusively we could compliment ourselves for voting for him, and perhaps also saying that we voted against that Alaskan woman. An unattractive accent is everything.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. You can visit our mobile site at thisrecording.wordpress.com.

"Break the Fall" - Laura Welsh (mp3)

"Unravel" - Laura Welsh (mp3)