In Which There Is Nothing To Be Afraid Of

Lady Banjo Eyes

by DICK CHENEY

Breaking Bad
creator Vince Gilligan

True Blood
creator Alan Ball

Walter White (Bryan Cranston) is distracted from his job for a moment, but no more. On his 51st birthday, his wife slowly walks, fully-clothed, into the family pool. She can't get good with the way things are now that Walt is running his own business. She chainsmokes in the home, she begs for his cancer to return, she can barely manage to bake a chocolate cake. Her behavior is so exaggerated that she has turned into the Danielle Steele version of an adulterous wife.

It's a lot harder to write a character sketch like this about the protagonists in the eighteenth season of HBO's True Blood. What's that you say? It only feels like the eighteenth season? No matter. The typical scene on True Blood lasts only the thirty or forty seconds it might take you to get bored of it before moving onto the next character. It's like skipping from YouTube to YouTube, and in every episode, there are over a thousand.

not casting Fred Savage as Godric was an almost unforgivable mistake

The character I least understand on True Blood is Eric Northman. When the show began he was completely committed to the superiority of vampires over humans, now he walks around acting like he's Saint Ignatius. You have never seen a man so completely convinced there is no vampire god. He's become a Christian message board troll who waits for someone to espouse their faith in under 130 characters and then chimes in with a "Not likely!"

Understanding the motivations of a drama's personages is the first step to empathizing with their predicament. I almost admire how much True Blood eschews this. The only time it has its characters even react to the madness that surrounds them is when they cry afterwards. By the next episode, they are generally fine. The rule on True Blood - that everyone gets a storyline - extends even to the most peripheral characters, especially if they were kind enough to offer Alan Ball an on-set blowjob.

Alan Ball and Anna Paquin will not be doing any USO tours, of that much we can be certain

After a time, playing with the lives of fictional people becomes like moving things around on your desk. Alan Ball hates God so completely he had to become him.

Everything bad on True Blood is associated with religion, even the eating of a child. Ball believes that faith is the corruptor, the scapegoat instrument by which evil is wrought. His most sincere and good-willed individuals on the show are completely without faith; they feel lost in the world as he does, and simply by virtue of not knowing exactly what they are, are blessed and imagined as heroes.

No such luck for Walter White. He spent his entire life before he got brain cancer afraid of things, unable to decide who he was or what he should be doing with his life. Once he realized that, his new problems began.

I have lived longer than anyone I have talked about so far in this essai besides Eric Northman. One of mankind's most enduring cliches is that success comes with a price. (This cliche was first associated with Jesus, and later, Kristen Stewart.)

Whatever truth there is in this statement exists completely outside the realm of human experience. For those who aren't successsful, no price is too high. And for those who are successful, like the creators of Breaking Bad and True Blood, there must be some other reason for their unhappiness, an explanation that lies outside themselves. If they actually found they liked being miserable, success would feel like a curse.

taking Nancy Pelosi's dream and bringing it to life

Basically, it's easy to forget that you are the one who knocks. Many years ago my daughter came to me and explained that one of her classmates was afraid of me. What was I going to do about that? I offered to meet the young man, and he came over to our house for dinner. I asked him if he still felt afraid of me. "No," he said. I told him to wait.

Walter White is happy, perhaps the happiest he's ever been, but there is no one to enjoy it with him. Is this what it is truly like to run a critically acclaimed television series? Must there be a feeling in everything that they will be found out as a fraud, a charlatan? Did Matthew Weiner put his blood in a syringe and infect everyone in Hollywood with his identical insecurities?

I noticed some years ago that I find myself happier in the company of sad people, simply by comparison. And when I meet truly happy people - Oliver North comes to mind - I feel sorry for myself, that I cannot be as they are. Even more astonishing is that I am allowed to behave this way by the people in my life.

Beel, drain this woman while I watch the uneven bars

There might be another reason that this cliche keeps reoccuring in our popular fictions. Vampire leader Salome Agrippa (Valentina Cervi) has quickly become the worst character on True Blood. Her scenes are completely boring; she speaks with a vague monotone that is supposed to come off as threatening but in reality just lulls the viewer to sleep. Her idea of acting consists of brushing back her bangs. If I have to view her bare chest one more time, I'm going to start missing the acting "skills" of the guy who played Lafayette's top.

But besides the fact that Salome can't act and looks completely unappealing without clothes, the various travails of Salome don't interest me or my wife because she is truly satisfied with herself. Salome is incapable of change. Eventually this will be her downfall as she tries to take over the world for her vampire God, but until then I guess I have to keep watching Bill (Stephen Moyer) penetrating her with his ass raised high in the air, like he's about to hammer a nail.

you killed off Christopher Meloni FOR THIS?

True Blood and Breaking Bad, as they ascended to their first heights, made a point of portraying strong and powerful women. Now that these dramas near their conclusion, these women are actually revealed only as exceptions to the general rule of female archetypes - power and vulnerability can no longer exist within one human person. There may be sexism behind this, and I'm sure there is, but I can suggest another cause as well.

sexism, yoWhen a man changes his mind, or becomes something different than what he is, it is not a betrayal. This is expected of him: it happens when he begins a household, settles down with his partner, has children. These are all changes for him, and the responsiblities are said to improve who he is.

When these things happen to a woman, it is thought to be no more than a natural extension of herself. Lies. This vicious canard is completely subsumed in how men think of the opposite sex. But the reality is not that women aren't changed by the contours of family and marriage. It is that, on a conscious or even subconscious level, women are better at understanding what change implies than men will ever be.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. He is the former vice president of the United States. You can find an archive of his writing on This Recording here. He last wrote in these pages about the beginning of Breaking Bad's season.

"We Are Not Good People" - Bloc Party (mp3)

"Octopus" - Bloc Party (mp3)

The new album from Bloc Party is entitled Four, and it will be released on August 20th.

In Which We Show A Great Deal Of Compassion For Others

The Crystal Ship

by DICK CHENEY

Mercy is almost the most useless of human compunctions. Once, as part of a therapeutic exercise, my analyst asked me to name the ten human emotions which I felt held the least value. Number one was obviously mercy; the rest of the list went like this:

10. Jealousy

9. Morning boner

8. Joie de vivre from listening to "Call Me Maybe"

7. Hunger

6. Condescension

5. Anticipation as to whether a boomerang will come back to you

4. Envy

3. Patriotism

2. Guilt

When she asked me what I felt the difference between jealousy and envy was, I responded, "How long do you have?" She directed my attention to No. 6. I explained that just because you believed something was useless didn't mean you were immune to it.

After the untimely death of his boss Gustavo Fring, Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks) was at a bit of a loss. Some people just enjoy being told what to do, until they don't. He was willing to take orders from a megalomaniacal businessman, but Walter White is not a businessman, he's a scientist. And there is nothing more futile than arguing with someone who always has the facts on their side.

When newly revealed associate and Madrigal executive Lydia comes to Mike in a coffee shop with concerns about how the rest of Fring's operation will fare under the hard glare of the law, he brushes her off. His seeming lack of interest was, I suppose, itself a kind of mercy. This was her first opportunity to forget what she had asked of him. By hiring someone to kill him, she earned the privilege of a house call.

A person's home either says everything or nothing about them. Which of the two it is depends entirely on that individual's humility. Walter White may seem to think a lot of himself, going around issuing commands like he's a white Gus Fring, but in reality, it's all just a carefully constructed facade designed not to betray the real truth of his desperation. His home reflects this underlying point of view; even when he made his money, he didn't allow himself to purchase a new dishwasher. I can't even look at his walls without imagining the mold in them.

In contrast, Condoleezza Rice's house has a vibrator made of solid gold instead of a doorbell. I have other examples. When I moved into the habitat of my predecessor as vice president, Albert Gore, I found a toy car that actually emitted carbon dioxide. It scared my balls off of my balls. The only thing in Al Gore's garage is a giant teapot in the shape of his wife.

Mike's home is that of a retired man inching towards his extreme old age, except for one instantly evident detail: his walls are covered with paintings so small they require another image nearby in order to properly cohere. We can infer from these details, as well as the presence of Hungry Hungry Hippos in his home, that Mike's Myers-Briggs personality type is INTP, and that the T in question is making a slow, Benjamin Netanyahu-esque move to F. Giving more weight to social implications than logic is the kind of nonsense that allows Maureen Dowd to go on living.

But give Mike more credit than that. He knew, from the moment he entered Lydia's lavish lair, that she had no man of the house to offer any kind of asylum — or else why is she showing up, frantic, in his favorite coffee shop and priggishly making sure the waitress will never forget her? And what kind of place doesn't have English Breakfast; was this a coffee shop in Fallujah?

Mike also knew that he would show her mercy; he did not simply decide it when he saw the relative size and brainpower of Lydia's daughter. He would not walk into a situation without knowing how it's going to come out, it's simply not part of an INTP's makeup to do something like this. From the moment he left the DEA's office, telling Hank Schrader nothing more than the fact that he has a permit to carry a concealed weapon in every state (including Colorado), he knew that he would be joining up with Walter White and Jesse Pinkman in a triumvirate. Naturally, he's Pompey.

Children have always been handled with a certain care on Breaking Bad. They are usually sheltered and protected by everyone except for Walter White. When he observed that Gus Fring did not care what the age of the obstacle he removed from his path was, he took on the same moral framework for himself. In truth, he sees children for what they actually are: slightly younger versions of ourselves that serve as an excuse for leverage in a negotiation.

By the end of last night's Breaking Bad, the true disgust that Mike feels for himself isn't because of the countless murders he's committed, or the fact that he has to go in business with a chemist he describes as a "ticking time-bomb." No, it's that he still requires a master. But hey, we all have someone we have to answer to, except for Alex Balk.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording. He is the former vice president of the United States and a writer living in an undisclosed location. He last wrote in these pages about summer television, and you can find an archive of his writing on This Recording here.

"Night Drops" - Indian Wells (mp3)

"Love Frequencies" - Indian Wells (mp3)

The debut album from Indian Wells is called Night Drops, and you can listen to more of it here.

In Which We Wonder Where Her Toy Is

The Wishing Well

by DICK CHENEY

I have a hard time focusing for the length of time it takes to watch a television show. It's not like I reach for my phone or iPad right away. I usually don't. It's that I see someone else doing it, and I immediately think, "I could also be checking the price of Paul Krugman voodoo dolls on Amazon while I watch Hot in Cleveland." Granted, I am not the most adventurous sort. I was suspicious of what sherbet was for over forty years; Doug Feith once sent me 52 e-mails trying to convince me to take MDMA before I relented.

A few hours after any woman meets up with Elijah Wood, she thinks to herself, "That was fun, but do I really need to be nuzzled by Frodo twice?" Then again, it's hard to find something worthwhile to watch on television when it's so evident that we live in an age where Aaron Sorkin's latent anti-semitism has reached its nadir.

Wilfred

Wilfred posits that talking to your dog is unusual, when it's one of the most common behaviors in existence. The most common behaviors are something like:

1. Mouthing the words to songs

2. Being a little grossed out by Emma Stone

3. Always thinking of the same subject while peeing

Things I say to my dog include:

1. What's going on champ?

2. That's a good girl.

3. Where's your toy?

When you ask my golden retriever where her toy is, she begins to get very excited. The recipe is so simple sometimes I quietly wonder why no one will ask me where my toy is.

The everpresent score of Wilfred is heavily reminiscent of everything Jon Brion has ever done. It's supposed to be some kind of Alice-in-Wonderland tinkle to represent the descent of Ryan (Elijah Wood) into madness. In reality it gets more and more annoying, which is kind of the point — we are almost as frustrated with Wood's lawyer-turned-wastrel as he is with himself.

Ryan is heavily invested in an extremely mediocre woman. Her name is Jenna (Fiona Gubelmann), and she tells you everything you need to know about the show. It is only interested in taking one meaningful risk at a time. Barely distinguishable from the lesser broke girl or the corpse of Kaley Cuoco, the only character more underwritten than Jenna is a gastroenterologist played by Robin Williams.

I would be more into the show if before every airing they had Cesar Millan come out and say, "This is what would happen if dogs could think."

get it?

Anger Management

Charlie Sheen's face is slowly crumbling; it looks like a bunch of stucco deteriorated over hundreds of years. His new show, Anger Management, features him parenting a teenage girl, whose new stepfather is a heavily tattoed Brian Austin Green. The only situation more unfamiliar to Sheen would be climbing onto his house and actually redoing his roof so it doesn't look so much like his face.

Sheen's character plays a Harvard educated psychologist who sees patterns in everything, even labels on soup cans or in the lining of a yarmulke he received at a bar mitzvah. His major love interest is played by Kiefer Sutherland, and his minor love interest is portrayed by Jim Caviezel.

Every woman who sleeps with Sheen's character on Anger Management has to repeatedly emphasize how much she enjoys the experience, until it becomes the world's most extensive case of the lady doth protest too much.

Anthony Edwards now plays Maura Isles on "Rizzoli & Isles"

Falling Skies

Aliens noticed Noah Wyle's neckbeard from another nebula and were like, "Doesn't that thing itch?

what could make me feel this way?

Veep

I always wonder, thinking back on the eight long years of Bill Clinton's presidency before I arrived, what did Al Gore do with all that time? My main guesses have generally been: Xbox, a variety of lotions, washing his car with recycled water, Mike & Ikes and watercress.

It is unclear which sort of person the creators of Veep think less of: women, or vice presidents. The presentation of Vice President Selina Myers (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) as constantly ignored and neglected is wildly implausible. Even less believable is that she would have a sexual relationship with the guy who played David on The Office.

Fortunately, even single movement of Anna Chlumsky's face inspires hope and joy in every part of my being. She is a sensation. The show should have been about a proud lesbian relationship between the two women, and the cliffhanger at the end of the first season should have been whether or not they can tell Selina's father (Ed Asner?). Veep started out a little slow before finding itself. The show's constant denigration of the office of the Vice President is potentially grounds for treason charges, or at least litigation based on whoever isn't giving Buster Bluth the punchlines he deserves. How dare they.

did you order the code red?Game of Thrones

People come up to me in the supermarket, at the gynecologist's office, in sniper towers, asking me one thing: What did you think of the Thrones finale? Wasn't it stupid when the White Walkers of the North marched forth at about 5 mph?

I quickly tell them I don't care. Only one thing in Westeros matters or will matter to me. You. You there.

Stay away from Robb Stark. Stay away from him. What kind of name is Talisa? Why do people assume a woman healer is a nurse instead of a doctor? There's no doctors in the Seven Kingdoms, why do you think Sansa Stark knows so little about her menstrual cycle? You know nothing, Jon Snow.

Health care reform

I wonder what B.O. will do with himself once he's out of office. On the negative side of the ledger, he'll have to avoid urinating all over the toilet bowl for the first time in several years. On the positive side, Jimmy Fallon doesn't have to worry about booking guests anymore.

Louie

In the first episode of Louie's third season, he purchases a motorcycle and crashes it. He reveals his ex-wife is a woman of color. Each new possibility is both completely bizarre and made into something familiar and universal by CK's performance — he's basically reinventing the concept of being a mime for a new millennium. In playing himself, he rarely speaks except to grumble, make an excuse, or apologize. It is very funny, but it is also very sad that he writes himself this way.

When a person's low self-esteem becomes so extreme in comparison to their actual self-worth, it's called a reverse Alex Trebek.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording and the former vice president of the United States. He is a writer living in an undisclosed location. You can find an archive of his writing on This Recording here. He last wrote in these pages about Tim Burton's Dark Shadows.

"Hanging By A Thread" - Ami Saraiya & the Outcome (mp3)

"Soundproof Box" - Ami Saraiya & the Outcome (mp3)

The new album from Ami Saraiya is entitled Soundproof Box.

the undersecretary of defense of the white walkers