In Which Another Unfortunate Event Has Yet To Occur

Children Lie

by ETHAN PETERSON

A Series of Unfortunate of Events
creator Mark Hudis & Barry Sonnenfeld
Netflix

The children at the center of the eight episode Netflix series A Series of Unfortunate Events are assholes. The first thing they demand after their parents die in a fire is access to a lavish library owned by a local attorney, Ms. Strauss (Joan Cusack). The three Baudelaire kids — Violet (Malina Weissman), Klaus (Louis Hynes) and Sunny (Presley Smith) — can't stop marveling at this new enclosure, which approximates the tony furnishings provided by their parents from an unknown and probably illicit income. They are so used to being rich that they are constantly clawing to return there in the years before Violett will inherit the family's money.

It turns out at the end of the very first episode that the Baudelaire's parents have escaped and were not murdered in a fire at all. Worse, they are portrayed by Will Arnett and Cobie Smulders. Perhaps nauseated by their kids' constant, insubstantial quoting from the books they have read, the senior Baudelaires escape to Peru, where various laws about miscegenation are relaxed. The two never show the slightest bit of affection for one another, and behave more as siblings than a married couple.

The aesthetic that surrounds the story of the Baudelaires being passed from guardian to guardian by Mr. Poe (K. Todd Freeman), the family's banker, can best be described as if Roald Dahl fell asleep. A few episodes that take place around the area of Lake Lachrymose are layered in a gloomy mist; the orphans' custodian Aunt Josephine (Alfre Woodard) lives on an imposing cliff over the water.

Josephine is afraid of absolutely everything except her surroundings, while the kids themselves are only afraid of their surroundings. Lemony Snicket (Patrick Warburton) explains the concept of dramatic irony in a lengthy sequence — these frequent breakings of the fourth wall are the only humor not provided by the antagonist Count Olaf (Neil Patrick Harris).

Mr. Harris has the advantage of portraying the only fulled fleshed-out character in this entire show. The role of Olaf is perfectly suited to his many talents, even if the singing bits are a bit forced. The extensive disguises he takes on are generally fun to simply look at, and every second that he is off the screen forces us to various dark conclusions about the actual meaning behind A Series of Unfortunate Events.

The thematic point of A Series of Unfortunate Events is that adults are children barely grown themselves, and can be relied upon for no more wisdom that any other potential source of information. Despite the fact that they meet many sinister such people, Klaus and Violet continue to look for adults to provide them with financial and emotional security. They do not learn anything more about themselves during this process, and indeed have no actual flaws or recognizable character traits beyond caretaking for a baby.

This aspect itself is most disturbing. Violett and Klaus do not appear to change their younger sister's diapers. The baby never cries or seems displeased, and is most happy chewing on hard things like a puppy. Author Daniel Handler's basic perception of young people is that they are blank slates upon which various things are imposed or arranged; he is just as guilty as Mr. Poe for being ignorant and Count Olaf for being greedy. His is the sin of pretending to know it all.

Barry Sonnenfeld is intent on casting many actors of color to replace the mostly white retinue that surrounded the Baudelaire children in the 2004 adaptation of Handler's books. These substitutions are well-meant I am sure, and putting Alfre Woodard in the role of a grammarian who is frightened of everything does play against her usual type. Race is completely obscured by a flattening that never permits any of the adults in the Baudelaires' lives to be altered by circumstance.

Without much in the way of character or plot, A Series of Unfortunate Events succeeds on a much more basic level. The show is an astonishing feast for the eyes. Sonnenfeld backed out of the feature film project in 1993 because he was concerned that the $100 million he was offered as a budget would not be enough to do justice to the many effects and costumes required.

With Netflix as the major backer, it seems that no expense has been spared. The reptile collection of Dr. Montgomery Montgomery (a hilarious Aasif Mandvi) actually gives the kids some of tangible world with which they can interact. Disappointingly, Dr. Montgomery only gets a single evening to engage the children. He wins their trust but never gives his own, leaving them as bereft of answers about their parents as when they arrived on his property.

The sheer amount of time spent going on and on about how awful the circumstances are for the Baudelaires is exhausting after the first couple episodes. Once Klaus is smacked across the face — the rest of the time the kids never suffer violence, never hunger and are frequented housed in massive estates with considerable resources. They complain about going to the movies, about the size of their bedroom, about having to do any kind of household work. Klaus, Sunny and Violet are merely victims of a pervasive mediocrity with which they never quite come to terms.  

Ethan Peterson is the reviews editor of This Recording.

In Which We Escape Back From The Future

Will's Face

by DICK CHENEY

Travelers
creator Brad Wright
Netflix

In the United States, Will & Grace was just a show about a woman who had decided it was more important to have a man around than to have a man who could return her love. It was an incredibly mean-spirited situation on both of their parts. In Canada, however, Will Truman was a sensation that instructed all of the people of that great nation that a gay could be acceptable to their sensibilities if he wasn't actually portrayed by anyone gay or American: namely Canadian actor Eric McCormack.

Despite his run on one of the most successful and educational comedies on a major network, McCormack was banished to a basic cable wasteland after casting directors heard his off-set accent. In addition, he has a disconcerting mole on the right side of his face that he should probably get checked out. Stargate SG-1 creator Brad Wright has parlayed Hollywood's loss into his own gain.

Netflix's Travelers stars McCormack as a man from the future who inhabits the body of FBI agent Grant McLaren. Set in the Pacific Northwest, the show makes great pains to suggest that all of this could potentially be happening in Canada and never exactly nailing down any of its locations. McLaren has no kids to complicate matters, but he does have a wife (Leah Cairns) who is slowly noticing her husband suddenly does not eat meat or have intercourse with her.

The Canadian vision of the future is quite bleak. We only get hints of it, but starvation looms large, everyone has Holocaust-esque tattooing and has returned to their natural hair color. In order to avoid this situation entirely, McLaren and four other randoms (a heroin addict, a single mother, a high school quarterback and a developmentally disabled woman) have their bodies similarly possessed before the moment of their natural passing.

Try not to think too hard about this premise. Instead of simply taking over the body of one very powerful person, the time travelers just become basics who are immediately out of place in the unforgiving world that surrounds them. Since the Canadian prime minister has no way of stopping a dangerous asteroid headed for the Earth's surface, Wright has been forced to set these events in the U.S., where the team befriends a scientist (Kyra Zagorsky) who looks like an even older Olivia Munn.

Even though they have inhabited completely new bodies, and some of the Travelers have even swapped races, the adjustment to their new lives is relatively seamless. At the FBI, McLaren misses a variety of meetings and even forgets the password on his computer, his partner Walt (Arnold Pinnock) suspects nothing. This situation we are in of naming black characters Walt has to stop, and this is not the only way that Travelers seems to be echoing its artistic progenitor, Lost.

You see, these castaways are stranded in new lives, where they try to forget about the island. I keep waiting for Matthew Fox to scream, "We have to go back!" and actually Fox would have been a welcome addition to this show. Spending most of every episode disappointed and upset with his new life does not suit McCormack's strengths at all – he is a lot better when he has the funny lines as opposed to being the straight man, and he has no one to play off of here at all.

Most of the comedy on Travelers comes from far away the best part of the show – the life of Traveler 0115, Trevor (Jared Abrahamson). Slipping in and out of his Canadian accent, Trevor immediately quits the football team and snitches on his girlfriend for bullying another student. His abusive father tells him not to worry about his grades and to focus on his football. Even though Trevor has a trained scientist inhabiting his body, he still has to complete his homework.

Also entertaining is Canadian actress and ingenue Mackenzie Porter's romantic storyline where she leads on her love-sick social worker. There is just something warm and comforting about a man and a woman living together when only one of them wants to have sex with the other.

The only one who gets to have sex on the show is Eric McCormack, who not only gets it in with his second-in-command Carly (Nesta Cooper), he also is forced to satisfy his wife. In these scenes McCormack makes all the requisite noises of passion, but you can see his heart is not really into it. He immediately turns around his romantic partners, facing them away from the disturbing mole which mars one side of his face. Entering from that angle, he could be fucking anyone.

Travelers feels like a show from the Will & Grace period. Everything is done on a considerable budget, and half the locations are a massive warehouse with high ceilings – at one point it was used to represent three different places in consecutive episodes. We are fortunate that Canada is filled with inexpensive acting talent, since the show's gifted cast keeps Travelers from feeling entirely cheap. You can almost forget that none of this makes any sense.

Dick Cheney is the senior contributor to This Recording.

In Which We Pray At Length For Max Landis

A Max Landis Joint

by ETHAN PETERSON

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
creator Max Landis
BBC America/Netflix

If you need to save the most scattered, implausible story with a completely awkward tone, there is only one thing for it: hire Elijah Wood. It is a damn shame that Wood was born Frodo-sized, he should have been Gary Cooper and Rock Hudson all rolled into one. Looking back on it, Wood was the only thing that made the Lord of the Rings trilogy even tolerably watchable. His FX series Wilfred contained zero jokes and he carried that to a few seasons. Elijah's facial expressions are absolutely second-to-none; he always seems genuine and present in the moment, and he only gets more appealing to both sexes as he ages. He is like a time capsule in himself.

Creator Max Landis finally took time from his busy schedule appearing on one billion of his friends' podcasts to write something. In this case, it is an adaptation of a Douglas Adams "novel", co-produced by Netflix and the BBC. (All episodes come to Netflix in December.) Landis' recent screen efforts have been something of a mixed bag, but his chatty dialogue fares much better on television. Max has a tic where he constantly forces his characters to repeat each other's words. This gets kind of annoying in most contexts, but in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency what is happening is usually so random and distracted from itself in general that it helps to hear it twice.

Like a lot of Adams' work, the plot itself is just a wacky bunch of skits and ironies that exist to set up various punchlines. Landis has smartly reduced that garbage to one conflicted relationship; that of Todd (Elijah Wood) to his new British friend Dirk Gently (Samuel Barnett). When the series begins, we find Todd working as a bellboy in a fancy hotel. He happens upon the scene of several murders that appear to be the result of an animal attack, and becomes a person of interest in Gently's holistic investigation.

Landis' instinctive sense for how a scene should visually unfold pairs nicely with the direction of Dean Parisot, the man who helped turn 1999's hilarious Galaxy Quest into such a sensational comedy. When Wood isn't onscreen, the narrative suffers greatly, but Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency deserves credit for not just dropping in token characters of color but instead giving specific motivations and backgrounds for all the performers in the ensemble. It is just that there is so many of them: Fiona Dourif plays a disturbed assassin with Mpho Koaho as her frightened sidekick, Hannah Marks is Todd's ill sister, Richard Schiff, Dustin Milligan, Miguel Sandoval are agents of the law.

Landis has spent the time since writing the box office bomb Victor Frankenstein and his direct-to-video L.A. story Me Him Her giving detailed recapitulations of all the pitch meetings he has had in Hollywood since Barack Obama took office. He loves being on a podcast more than anyone: even Jim Norton. In these interviews, Landis seems generally perplexed at why he was not given the reins to Ghostbusters and other major franchises. Since his comedies have not generally been all that funny, it is no surprise that Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is less amusing than generally dark and noir-ish.

Landis' first, and some cynical persons would say only, success in the industry came with the 2012 smash Chronicle. Despite its substantial financial earnings, no one seemed all that interested in a sequel. Chronicle's tortured handcam direction was a bit hackeyed, but it definitely worked for the compelling story about three friends who can't handle their burgeoning powers. Landis is at his best when he takes familiar genres into darker places than you expect. As a writer, he has no real fear of going too far, and honestly his version of Ghostbusters (I believe he took credit for the idea of an all-female cast as well at one point) was substantially better than what Paul Feig produced.

This should be promising for future episodes of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. A straight adaptation of Douglas Adams' novel would be something of a disaster – Adams can never resist explaining a mystery that he has created mere moments earlier, and his plots are usually hit-or-miss. Despite the fact that the titular character is something of a cipher, there is a lot more here to explore. Watching Wood rub abrasively up against a universe that seems completely dead set against him surviving is enough in itself to keep us watching.

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is evidence enough of Max Landis' mercurial talent, but it is also emblematic of his inability to connect with audiences at times. He grew up in Hollywood and it is the only world he knows. As a result, his wide imagination is so polished, so ready for the screen that it sometimes comes off as too overly planned and determined. He really needs to hit up a retreat in Napa and decide what actually is personal to him. The man is just all business.

Ethan Peterson is the reviews editor of This Recording.