In Which Print Is Dead And So Is Patrick Jane

Rogue Intuitionist

by ELEANOR MORROW

For a long time I have felt that Patrick Jane has that Regina Spektor song on his iPod, the one about God coming down to earth and causing a serial killer to kill his wife and child.

Back then Jane was nothing more than a TV psychic who pissed off the wrong serial killer. It takes a very specific kind of person to piss off a serial killer. In fact here at This Recording we go out of our way to acede to the wishes of serial killers, especially Charles Manson, who is incredibly still alive as of this writing.

In the incredible season finale of this first season of The Mentalist, our favorite intuitionist got set up by the serial killer known as Red John, the same guy who punk'd his wife and daughter. At one point I was gripping the sofa so hard I almost broke a blood vessel. "Revenge is for fools and cowards," Jane once told a hot little mother-daughter combo after he solved their husband-father's murder (it was some dude pretending to be Special Olympics, spoiler alert stolen from Primal Fear).

Jane loves mouthing off to people, especially women. He sees men as the weaker sex, more transparent. After he talks to them and he believes they are innocent, he lets them go. All men are lost, Patrick Jane believes, because he is lost.

In a show that is essentially a procedural, Rome creator Bruno Heller has built in plenty of moments never before seen on television. Jane thinks of himself as a motive, his desire to avenge his family's deaths is his only reason to live. After Red John killed his family, he had a nervous breakdown and then started solving crimes. It's also how I've dealt with most of the challenges in my life.

We haven't seen much of Jane's wife. He had a little bb, and we can understand the general love of father for daughter, but not the love of a handsome Californian for his wife. What exactly he lost can only be inferred from the way he treats women on the show, a fascinating case study in alpha male behavior.

The show did a whole episode in which a pick-up artist was a prime suspect for the murder of a wealthy socialite. Of course it is Jane who is the real pick-up artist: at one almost got with a widow at her husband's funeral. He comes on as strong rhetorically as he does with men, but one word summarizes his treatment of women on the whole: forgiveness.

He takes mercy on all the show's women. He is always making allowances, for their gruffness, for their sexuality, for their life choices. It is how he pretends to understand them.

The women of The Mentalist are stereotyped into two major categories. First are vulnerable women, which Jane is usually hard on, because he's teaching them to be as tough as he is. This is of course a kind of mercy.

Then there's women he sees as equals. Often this kind of person is deceptive in some way, so he is appreciating them purely as a way to bring our the truth in their behavior. There are no strong women in the show's incidental characters. There are no strong people. Strength is merely a front for a greater weakness.

These is even true of the show's two primary female characters, Detective Teresa Lisbon and Detective Amanda Van Pelt. Lisbon is played by Robin Tunney, who has evolved into a strangely beautiful muppet-like creature with a weird body. She is the managing director of the California Bureau of Investigation, and as such she has little in the way of time for petty shenanigans like dating or friends.

Detective Van Pelt doesn't exactly have time for dating, either, except the one dude she was fairly fond of turned out to be a serial killer. Come on! Her Ross-Rachel like experiment with fellow detective Rigsby has only one probable conclusion -- she will hook up with Patrick Jane and ruin the whole thing. After all, he knows her better than she knows herself.

Are there any strong women on any show...on CBS...in history?

Eleanor Morrow is the senior contributor to This Recording. She tumbls here.

"Killing the Ghost" - Matthew Ryan (mp3)

"Jane I Still Feel The Same" - Matthew Ryan (mp3)

"They Were Wrong" - Matthew Ryan (mp3)

In Which It All Started With The Big Bang Theory

The Theatre of All Our Struggles And Ideas

by ELEANOR MORROW

The events of The Big Bang Theory occur in three primary locales, each of which bears a closeness to reality without touching on anything quote-unquote real.

The first are two apartments in California. One is a male dwelling, occupied by two men, Leonard and Sheldon. The other is the female side of the coin - messier, more colorful, occupied by Penelope. The second setting is a university lunchroom where the men gather to eat. It is the budget version of a cigar club, or group therapy. The third place is Penelope's work environment, a Cheesecake Factory, but an early one without the amenities we've come to expect from the venerable chain.

As far as this show in concerned, there are very few places in the world. There isn't really an outside "world" as we conceive of it. There are just a series of interiors. And we can believe, in fact we don't even have to be convinced, that there is no other world than this.

"nerdier! more nerd! more nerd!"On the back of his phenomenally successful Two and a Half Men, executive producer Chuck Lorre was driven to create a sitcom even more sexist than his first. In short, he has done it, but not in the way you might have imagined it.

The centerpiece of the show is Sheldon Cooper, played by 37 year old Jim Parsons. Dr. Sheldon Cooper is the smartest man on the planet. He is at the very least the smartest Texan on the planet. His work in physics is on its way to being legendary, and when he took up residence in California, he put out an ad that said, "Roommate needed, no whistling."

leonard got the time machine on ebayThis is how he found his partner Leonard. For although there is no explicit homosexuality in The Big Bang Theory - indeed in Chuck Lorre's world gay men are heterosexuals with a fey way about them - we are dealing with individuals who are barely able to relate to women.

Thus we meet Penelope, or Penny. Although she might have been cast as a dumb blonde in another generation, she is actually the show's protagonist in disguise. Penny is a relatively normal young person in her twenties, and because of this she represents something of a television first. Beyond St. Elmo's Fire and Cameron Crowe's Singles, sheis here to tell us with all certainty that the young people of this generation are completely lost.

your nerdiness is comforting right now leonard. i will give you a handjob, but only one handjob

She moved into her apartment with vague dreams of becoming an actress, before realizing that she was neither pretty enough or ugly enough or thin enough or good enough to do exactly what she wanted. She toils in a job she is overqualified for, and she meets men, the best of which can only be considered boys.

"who's up for a circle jerk? sheldon?"Naturally, Leonard (Roseanne's Johnny Galecki) is infatuated with her from the moment he sees her pretty blonde tresses. The show's first season saw her date the inevitable series of jerks, culminating in the jerk of all jerks, who blogged about their sex life in the internet in a storyline shameless lifted from news headlines, Law and Order-style. Leonard took that opportunity to offer the possibility of himself as a mate. She said, "Why not?"

one of many possible reasons why notThis is a terrible lesson for both men and women to absorb, although I am not entirely sure if it is sexist or not. It is probably unfair to both the sexes. It is unfair to women because it gives them a false agency - they can choose their partner, but their choice is more of a concession than a selection, and ultimately disempowering. It is unfair to men because it suggests that all they have to do to win a woman is to wait. This isn't really unfair so much as it is true.

you think WHO is a cylon?There were days in which natural selection mandated that women had to be recruited and pursued with all due force, or there was to be no reproduction to ensure the future of the species. These days all men have to do is text a lot and hold down a regular job. What possible incentive is there to lead a life without peer with standards so low?

that's the 'you weren't on roseanne, were you?' stareLeonard and Penny did get together, but it was as unsatisfying for both of them as you might think. Now she's patiently waiting for Leonard in California while he spends the next two months in an Artic hut doing hard research with Sheldon and the boys. Leonard doesn't know it yet, but he gets far more out of his relationship with Dr. Sheldon Cooper. And this is how nerds could potentially end the reproductive potential of the human race.

Sheldon Cooper, Dr. Sheldon Cooper, and his band of merry intellectuals aren't too keen on reproducing. One day we may have to take a more eugenics-based view of the reproductive enterprise, but for now childless lives are deemed more fulfilling to the upper middle class, and they have the benefit of being cheaper too. You never see a child in The Big Bang Theory, which is strange since the show's title describes the most important birth in history. You never see a child except when he is in a man's body.

Eleanor Morrow is the senior contributor to This Recording. She lives in Manhattan, and tumbls here.

"Symmetry" - Little Boots (mp3)

"Stuck on Repeat" - Little Boots (mp3)

"Hearts Collide" - Little Boots (mp3)

listen to the new album in full on her myspace

In Which We All Go A Little Crazy Sometimes

Mentally Chill

by ELEANOR MORROW

There's a scene near the end of the first season of The United States of Tara when I realized what was different about Diablo Cody's season-long stage play about mental illness. While the title character and her husband are trying to figure out where Tara went splitsville, Tara's sister Charmaine is babysitting the kids. After dinner, Patton Oswalt, Charmaine's sometimes fuck-buddy, stops by to watch Lost...with Charmaine's new bf and the rest of the kooky family. The camera pans across as they all watch Jack and Kate and Locke and Hurley and Sayid and Sawyer time-travel, and they're all absorbed in the mise-en-scene of Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse.

That's when I asked myself: when have I ever watched characters on TV consuming TV? It's an everyday fact of existence except for those charming people who drone, "I don't waaaaatch TV." Above all, this show is Zola and all the other naturalists. The United States of Tara may not be real life, but it's definitely life. United States of Tara works better for people who have seen all the dreck that television has to offer, and are capable of appreciating how far the medium has come in the hands of Spielberg and Diablo.

Yet United States of Tara also offers some old-school TV pleasures: the kind of people you would actually want to know in real life, would want to emulate, are terrified to see fail and are elated when they succeed. In this way, Tara is a lot more like say, Home Improvement than Juno.

To be fair, the show's also attempted plenty of storylines you'll never see on TV: workplace harassment, therapy failing, women ending up with the wrong guy, bi crush makes out with your Mom's 16 year old alter ego. Because Tara isn't the same old shit, it falls on its face sometime. But once you acknowledge this show isn't going to be all giggles, you do like Charmaine does - you lower your standards.

Some can barely stand watching Tara's sister Charmaine, played effortlessly but subtly by Rosemarie Dewitt. She's a mess. Her character got a bad boob-job, so she flashed her parents. They gave her the money to fix it. Her sister's practically ruined her life, but she still loves her sister. She's a little overwrought for a secondary character, but rarely have women been the centerpiece of a comedy or drama in this fashion, and flawed women at that.

That's the way it is for pretty much every member of Tara's family. Their lives revolve around her, and her insanity. At first it was daughter Katie (Brie Larson) who gave her mother the most shit. But really that was the show's clever subterfuge. Of course the moody Katie can empathize with her nutso mom - it's the men who have the deeper problems, who have to pretend to be OK with Tara long after they're not. Tara's children could be the same little Juno-clones they were when the season began, but they're both better actors than Ellen Page, and they bring a lot more depth to the role of witty tween.

The mystery of Tara's problem took hold of the show after I reviewed it many moons ago. According to people in a position to know, Tara was raped by this dude named Trip at boarding school. What we basically learn in the season finale is that it's a lot more complicated, and that Tara's gay son Marshall wishes he had gotten sent off to CT boarding school instead of being the only feglia in Kansas. The dark depths of what actually occurred to change Tara are to be saved for the show's well-deserved second season. Despite getting panned by MSM critics, audiences flocked to the show in droves and made it Showtime's most watched serial.

The setting (Overland Park, Kansas) is totally besides the point - Tara's family is the setting, and they are led by John Corbett tolerably well. I give him credit because he was so terrible in Sex and the City, but he's really bringing the My Big Fat Greek Wedding charm to this great role opposite the masterful Toni Collette. By the end of the season, the show is able to take the reins off Collette and do her thing, and the result is Primal Fear-believable, and funny, too.

United States of Tara puts us in the same position as Tara's family. We're as frustrated by her changes as they are. While the different Taras - T, Alice, Gimme, and Buck - are entertaining, and sometimes empathetic in their own way, we just want the real Tara. We don't care if she's boring, we don't care if she's just a charming homemaker, or a mediocre mother. We just want Mom back.

Eleanor Morrow is the senior contributor to This Recording. She tumbls here.

"Kingston College" - The State (mp3)

"Sherlock Holmes" - The State (mp3)

"Better Seats" - The State (mp3)