The Office 6.02: “The Meeting”

One awkward conversation after another.

Note: my goal is to get these reviews up on Friday or Saturday rather than the following Tuesday, we’ll see if I can achieve that this week.

A friend recently told me that he’s through with The Office because it has long left any sense of realism behind. His primary example was the antics of one, Michael Scott. Well, needless to say, he hated this episode and may never watch another. This week’s episode, “The Meeting,” which opens with Michael asking Oscar, a homosexual, how he should prepare for his colon exam, is a good example of why Michael should be fired from his job as manager of Dunder Mifflin-Scranton.

Another example arrives as Michael’s paranoia and narcissism are almost at an all-time high when his boss, David Wallace, has a private meeting with Jim. Michael finds ridiculous ways to eavesdrop (the best involving Andy and an “elegant” cheese cart) on the meeting but he never learns what it’s about. As it turns out, the meeting is about Jim interviewing for a promotion. Michael’s paranoia gets the best of him and he finds a away to thwart Jim’s promotion and inadvertently thwarts one for himself as well. What’s ridiculous about this is that realistically, Michael’s word would mean virtually nothing to Wallace after all the ways he’s seen Michael screw up.

But this leads to one of the necessities of watching this show (and just about any TV show): the suspension of disbelief. Why does Michael keep his job despite his many screw-ups and failures? Because it’s a TV show and not real life, that’s why. In real life people lose jobs by doing a tenth of the things that Michael does but that wouldn’t be funny to watch.

While Michael and Jim are caught up dealing with the meeting, Pam is trying to make sure that none of their co-workers come to her wedding, which will be at Niagara Falls. (It’s easy to understand Pam’s fears when remembering the terrific season three episode, “Phyllis’s Wedding.”) But in the world of The Office, co-workers come to your wedding when you don’t want them to, but they don’t come to your art show when you want them to.

The greatest surprise of the episode is the pairing of Dwight and Toby as they investigate Darryl’s worker’s comp claim. Their hilarious partnership is the highlight of the episode as Dwight’s arrogant assertiveness combines with Toby’s trepidation. The second biggest surprise of “The Meeting” (and the biggest disappointment of Dwight’s career) is the announcement at the end of the episode that Michael and Jim will now be co-managers of Dunder Mifflin-Scranton.

This is the beginning of a new story arc that has the potential to deliver a lot of laughs. Will Michael straighten up? Will Jim improve Scranton? Will Dwight explode over this new development? It’s hard to say, but for the first time in a couple seasons I’m really looking forward to what happens next.

Grade: A-

Odds and Ends/Favorite Quotes:

-Michael lying about Jim being in the room and then pretending he was coming into the room was great.

-Darryl: “Why would you think a lady is me?”

-Creed: “Do you think they’re talking about me in there?”
Michael: “No, I think they’re talking about me.”
Creed: “Oh, that’s makes so much more sense.”

-Toby: “You’re into trains?”
Dwight Schrute: ” Have been my whole life. I’m rebuilding a turn-of-the-century steam engine in my slaughter house.”
Toby: “That’s so cool! Wow I’d love to take a look at that.”
Dwight Schrute: “Yeah it’s just a run of the mill slaughter house but sure, anytime.”
Toby: “Well, you know, because of the trains.”

-Michael: “I have so much work to do, I feel like I’m gonna blow my brains out.”

-Best line of the episode: Michael: “Jim is like, Big Bird. He is tall and yellow and very nice. But would I put him in charge? No. I don’t think so. Big Bird doesn’t make the tough decisions. If I was gonna put someone in charge I would put Bert in charge. Or I would put one of the real grown-ups in charge like Marie or Gordon, maybe.”

Reliving Freaks and Geeks

Here is a terrific video essay about of one the best canceled shows ever made:

It Was Ten Years Ago Today: Reliving Freaks and Geeks | Video Essay by Matt Zoller Seitz

(Video has been working off and on. If it doesn’t play click the link below.)

more about “It Was Ten Years Ago Today: Reliving …“, posted with vodpod

Arctic Monkeys: Humbug

Perhaps it’s intentional that the title of Arctic Monkeys third album, Humbug, would remind us of a crotchety, old man from a Charles Dickens’ novel. After all, in Brit-rocker years, the Arctic Monkeys are reaching middle age right about now. Their fine, albeit ridiculously hyped, debut record Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not is a fast-paced, back-to-basics rock’n'roll album which garnered the group a slew of awards during 2006. Although it is a thrilling album, it’s also a bit monochromatic– each track barely distinguishable for the one before it. They quickly solved this problem with their next record, Favourite Worst Nightmare, in 2007. It’s a record that revealed that the Sheffield, England-natives were not a flash in the pan, instead, it proved their best work may lie in the future and it solidified them as one of the next big things in British rock.

With Humbug, the Arctic Monkeys don’t really take huge strides away from what they did so well on Nightmare. Instead, they have settled into a steady groove of making good ole old-fashioned, energetic rock’n'roll. That’s not to say that the record lacks the diversity and creativity they displayed on their previous record, far from it, in fact. These guys are perfecting the sound they’ve developed in their first two albums and for fans of those, Humbug will likely please.

The guitars are still jagged, the rhythms still tight, the energy still decidedly youthful, and the whole thing remains delightfully British. They are doing what they do best and as a result “My Propellor,” “Crying Lightning,” and “Dance Little Liar” will all likely become classic Arctic Monkeys songs. Although they are mostly covering familiar terrain here, there some signs of forward movement. The band members haved been together long enough that now they play off one another with proficiency and ease. It also doesn’t hurt having another important member of rock’s new class, Queens of the Stone Age frontman, Josh Homme, holding down productions duties here. He helps the band manage this balance between the familiar and the fresh.

Those looking for some straight-up, classic rock’n'roll will be hard pressed to find a more satisfying record in the deluge of rock albums released this year.

Grade: B+

What are Quentin Tarantino’s movies about?

That is one of the most annoying questions anyone can pose about a record or film that you really like because often the question-giver is implying the answer is a big, fat “nothing.”

Ed Howard, in a conversation with Jason Bellamy at The House Next Door, offers one of the best answers to the above question that I’ve ever seen. Here’s a quote from the convo:

…it’s a mistake to go looking for substance and depth in Tarantino’s work independently of his pop cultural and cinephiliac obsessions. What Tarantino has to say is about film, is about pop culture, is about the ways in which people of his generation and later ones interact with the world through the prism of culture. His films are about people who have learned how to act from TV, who have grown up in a culture that surrounds them with images, with narratives, with readymade characters whose behaviors and attitudes they can absorb into their own lives. Certainly that’s the way I’ve always viewed the thugs in Reservoir Dogs. They seem like movie tough guys not (or not just) because Tarantino only knows about movies, but because the movies are where these guys learned how to behave as criminals. After Mr. Blonde (Michael Madsen) and Mr. White (Harvey Keitel) have a standoff, nearly coming to blows, Blonde gives a lopsided grin and asks White if he’s a fan of Lee Marvin. He knows, from the way the other man acts, the things he says, the way he carries himself, that White likes Marvin’s movies. They both like these movies. In a way, they’re the same man because they’ve adapted their schtick from the same source.

Tarantino’s films are a pastiche of film history because that’s the way he views the world, but also because that’s how his characters view the world. In fact, that’s the way a lot of people have viewed the world for the past several decades. What does Tarantino believe? He believes people today are defined by pop culture, that consciously and unconsciously they construct their identities from the fabric of the culture they’ve been exposed to. He believes that the ephemera of the past are invested with new and possibly deeper meanings by those whose formative years were spent with these transitory things, this cultural junk. So he treats these things with a seriousness that befits the process: he gives us movie tough guys who bleed and cry, a Shaw Brothers samurai epic about a mother’s desire for vengeance, a blaxploitation icon resurrected as a struggling airline stewardess.

While on some level it sounds reductive and even insulting to suggest that Tarantino’s movies are only about movies, it’s actually just descriptive of what interests him. It’s often said of Tarantino, not just by Matt, that he knows nothing about life, that all he knows how to talk about is movies. This criticism ignores the fact that for an increasingly large number of people today, to talk about the movies, to talk about pop culture, is to talk about life. In the West, where we’re saturated with media practically from birth, people are more and more defined by the culture they consume. If you’re of a certain generation, you grew up watching certain cartoons, watching certain movies, listening to the pop music of the time, and these things become touchstones in your life, markers of your identity. You know someone is like you if they talk about the music you know, the movies you know, the TV shows you know. Tarantino’s obsessive pop culture riffing isn’t just a tic, isn’t just a way of showing off his own encyclopedic pop culture knowledge, it’s a way of grounding his characters in a society where these things matter, where what you watch and what you listen to in some way defines who you are. If you listen to K-Billy’s “Super Sounds of the Seventies,” that locates you as a certain kind of guy, maybe a guy of a certain generation or a guy with a certain level of taste; it says something about you. This is Tarantino’s big point, his central idea: pop culture matters, damn it, it is not meaningless, it is not empty, it is increasingly a big part of our lives and we should acknowledge that, should engage with it. In this light, Tarantino’s films aren’t disconnected from reality. They’re all about reality, because reality in the 21st Century has increasingly imitated art, rather than the other way around.

Read the rest of the conversation here.

Wow. Well said, Ed. Not only does he peg Tarantino here, he also pegs me and nearly everyone I know. Almost every I do is probably influenced by the media I’ve been imbibing since I was a kid. Of course, the fact remains that for some viewers what Tarantino offers theater-goers will be satisfying and for others, it will not.

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The above quote was taken from the conversation series at The House Next Door. For anyone interested in Quentin Tarantino this is essential reading. Part 1 chronicles all of Tarantino’s career pre-Basterds. Part 2 is only about Inglourious Basterds. Warning they are LONG, but worth the read if you are interested in this sort of thing.

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Ed Howard blogs at Only the Cinema.

Jessie Torrisi: Brûler Brûler

This review first appeared on Blogcritics.org.

After playing drums for a slew of rock bands in New York City, Jessie Torrisi has set out to try her hand at being a front woman. To kick things off she has recorded a delightful batch of country-tinged indie songs for her debut record, Brûler Brûler (“burn burn” in French).

Although it may seem like a strange album title, it’s a fitting one; these songs reveal Torrisi to be a woman who is both passionate and curious about the world and she also seems to burn with a creativity and excitement for life that makes her record really enjoyable to play.

Bearing similarities to classic country singers like Patsy Cline and current indie queens like Cat Power, Torrisi is able to exist in a space between country music and the indie scene. Thus, it makes perfect sense that she currently resides in Austin, Texas, a city which blends these two worlds more than any other Texan city.

One of Torrisi’s most obvious gifts is her knack for crafting melodies. There are moments, like on “Cannonball” and “The Brighter Side,” where her melodies are reminiscent of brilliant songwriters like Randy Newman. Yet her lyrics are also notable as they alternate between poignancy and humor, sometimes in the same song. “X in Texas” is an example of this. “You put the X in Texas… you are a wrecking ball,” she sings to a former flame and she sells the humor and sadness of each line without undercutting the other. “You can have Texas and every woman in it,” she sings to him later and she really means it.

It’s moments like these which capture Torrisi’s personality well. Torrisi brings a certain swagger and sexiness to these songs. Through her words and voice she presents a persona which is easy-going, energetic, and fun. At one point in “Cannonball” she sums it all up with this great line: “I want to sing as loud as I can/Be a one-woman rock and roll band.” And it’s easy to believe that she could do it. Most importantly, she sounds like she is having a blast while making this record and that is clearly communicated while listening to Brûler Brûler.

Torrisi hasn’t gotten here alone, however. Some of her influences clearly crop up in these songs. For example, “Breeze in Carolina,” which finds Torrisi highlighting her country side over a gently plucked acoustic guitar, is a lovely song, one which was probably inspired by Ryan Adams both in its style and subject matter. However, even when it’s possible to pinpoint Jessie Torrisi’s influences it doesn’t detract from her songs. One of her greatest strengths is taking disparate influences from pop, rock, and country and combining them into something that sounds very fresh and original.

Yet, it’s the closer, “The Brighter Side,” which really convinced me of Torrisi’s talent and potential as she sings matter-of-factly in a Texas drawl over a steady piano and shimmering slide guitar. The song lacks some of the energy of earlier songs but makes up for it with a compelling emotional tenor. It’s a terrific vocal performance by Torrisi and makes the song endlessly repeatable.

This song combined with the R&B-country of “So Many Miles” and the rest of this record serve as a reminder that Jessie Torrisi is an artist who can’t be tied down with expectations.

Grade: B

The Office 6.01: “Gossip”

After what I considered to be a shaky fifth season, The Office opens its new season with a memorable piece of physical comedy involving Michael, Dwight, and Andy. To me, the show is usually at its best when it involves some combination of these three characters. In this cold open we find the guys obsessed with creating their own video of parkour, an internet phenomenon that involves people moving from location to location as creatively as possible. It is, as Jim informs us, a fad from 2004 and it is provides some utterly hilarious moments as these three guys move in awkward and totally uncool moves around the office before a predictably disastrous ending outside. A great opening sequence for the season.

However, it doesn’t take long before the show turns our attention back to Jim and Pam. One of the reasons that season five was a little weak (and this might even be true for season four as well) is that the Jim and Pam relationship has grown a little boring. Ever sense they began dating the delightful tension of that relationship has vanished. I wonder if it would have been better off to come up with new and creative ways that these two people ,who were clearly made for one another, to continue not to date. I can think of several shows that revolved around these type of relationships and didn’t allow the characters to get together until the final episode. However, those shows have their own frustrations.

(One of the things that British version of The Office did well was let the arc of the “Jim and Pam” relationship (in the UK version they were called “Tim and Dawn”) match the arc of the show. We never had to endure the endlessly cute smiles and winks of Tim and Dawn and thus their relationship was much more satisfying.)

We learned at the end of season five that Jim and Pam are preggers and this will likely be one of the major story arcs of the sixth season. Thankfully, “Gossip” is fairly light on cutesy Jim and Pam moments. The only thing they really do is reveal that they  haven’t told anyone in the office about the pregnancy yet and they want to keep it that way for now (which in The Office means everyone will know by the end of the episode). This ties in to what “Gossip” is really about.

“Gossip” revolves around another Michael Scott social faux pas. (It’s true The Office has done many episodes involving Michael’s sheer ignorance about social norms, but they can continue to get away with doing it because it works so well and it’s always funny.) After becoming frustrated that he is always the last to know the secrets of the office, he finds out that Stanley might be cheating on his wife. Michael quickly spreads this juicy information around for the same reason he does anything– it makes him feel cool. Upon finding out that this piece of gossip is true and realizing the effect it may have on Stanley’s life, Michael then spreads ridiculous rumors about everyone in the office thereby making Stanley’s affair seem like a ridiculous rumor. This is Michael Scott logic.

This leads to much hilarity culminating in an impromptu office meeting in the conference room, which is easily the best scene of the episode. Of course things are never that simple: one of the rumors Michael makes up is that Jim and Pam are pregnant. Whoops! Didn’t see that coming.

“Gossip” is a good season opener because it provides classic moments for nearly every character in the office including particularly funny moments from Creed, Andy, and Kevin. It also works with a formula which fans of The Office are more than a little familiar. But it also does one of the things that the show does best, it holds up an American social convention, ie. remaining quiet when you know a co-worker is having an affair, and causes us to question it.

Episode Grade: B+

Odds and Ends/Favorite Quotes:

-Michael on the phone with Stanley’s wife was classic M. Scott.

-Andy’s struggle throughout the episode about the possibility that he is gay was really funny. I wonder if this will come back up in future episodes?

-Michael: “It’s like the end of Spartacus. I’ve seen that movie half a dozen times, and I still don’t know who the real Spartacus is, and that is what makes that movie a classic whodunit.”

-Dwight: ”Michael…You told people I use store-bought manure, when I showed you where my manure comes from.”

-Kevin: “Who’s been saying that there’s another person inside of me, working me with controls?”

-Creed: ”Hey, did one of you tell Stanley I have asthma? Because I don’t, and if it gets out, they won’t let me scuba. If I can’t scuba, then what’s this all been about? What am I working toward?” [Winner--best quote of the episode.]

Joe Henry: Blood from Stars

(NOTE: This was easily the most difficult review I’ve ever written. Not because I didn’t know what to say, but because I had too much to say. I wanted to write about every lyric and ever saxophone solo, but obviously I couldn’t do that. I literally sat staring at a half completed review for weeks. I write all of this not so you’ll excuse my attempt at a review below (though I hope you will excuse it) but I write it so you’ll know just how essential this record is. It is unlikely anything better will be released in 2009 and it is definitely on the short list of best albums released this decade. Seek this record out, I don’t think you’ll regret it.)

This review originally appeared at Blogcritics.org.

The blues is one of the most spiritual of all musical styles. No other genre bemoans the brokenness and suffering of the world or longs for redemption from evil quite like the blues. So it was only a matter of time before Joe Henry, a songwriter for the soul if there ever were one, would craft an album deeply rooted in the blues tradition. The result, Henry’s eleventh studio album, Blood from Stars, is a rich and complex listen on which Henry drinks deeply from the wells of blues and jazz while considering the relationship between suffering and redemption.

Henry takes the spiritual themes of the blues to their logical conclusion on Blood from Stars. He has crafted an album on which the music is as deep, dark, and mysterious as its themes, and yet its conclusion is one of hope reminding us that though shadows and fear cover us, so do love and grace. These are not new themes for Henry, but have been with him throughout his lengthy career showing up noticeably on his 2003 album, Tiny Voices. Although that record could be considered a more impressive work, Blood from Stars may be a better – and indeed, the best – Joe Henry album in that it showcases his wide array of talents better than any single disc in his oeuvre.

One of those talents displayed prominently on Blood from Stars is Henry’s skill as a producer. Already 2009 has seen two Henry-produced records: Ramblin’ Jack Elliott’s A Stranger Here and Allen Toussaint’s brilliant The Bright Mississippi. If there was any doubt, it’s clear now that Henry’s role as producer is fueling his creative fires as a songwriter and bandleader. On Blood from Stars, Henry incorporates some of the rugged blues folk of Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and some of the New Orleans jazz of Allen Toussaint into his own recording.

Of course, it’s easy to incorporate the sounds of these other artists since Henry uses the same band for all the records he produces and records. This group of musicians, who play together like a well-oiled machine, includes David Piltch on bass, Patrick Warren on piano, Tom Waits collaborator and all-around terrific musician Marc Ribot on guitar, and the inimitable Jay Bellarose who seems to be able to conjure thunder with his drums. This record is distinct in that it becomes more of a family affair as Henry’s own 17-year old son, Levon, plays saxophone and clarinet on many of the tracks including a romantic instrumental number, “Over Her Shoulder,” which Henry wrote specifically to showcase his son’s saxophone playing.

As terrific as the music is on Blood from Stars, it provides the perfect compliment to Henry’s unrivaled lyrics. He is as skilled at writing lyrics as he is pinpointing the great truths of the universe, so it’s significant that he seems to begin things backwards on Blood from Stars. Most blues songs begin with the narrator decrying the evil that’s been done to himself and in some cases, the singer eventually realizes that ultimately they’ve brought some of their hardships upon themselves. However, Henry begins his blues album, not by lamenting the evil that exists outside of him, but by bemoaning the evil within.

Henry’s very first words on the record form one of its most startling admissions: “Nobody knows the man that I keep hid.” He continues by adding another line indicting himself and every listener: “You say you’ve changed/But fear you won’t/I say I’ve changed/And prove I don’t.” Herein lies the zenith of the blues as one realizes that, at times, they really are their own worst enemy. It’s a shocking truth which will ring true in a deep place in some listeners.

As fans of Joe Henry might expect, he is not held back whatsoever by the repetitive nature of blues songs; instead, these self-imposed constraints seem to have only aided his writing. The lyrics that float over Ribot’s bluesy Flamenco guitar on “This is My Favorite Cage,” fit together like puzzle pieces forming a final picture that is unforgettable. Other examples of Henry’s lyrical skill appear on “All Blues Hail Mary” and “Bellwether,” which both build narratives using series of repeated lines and phrases.

Henry’s doesn’t focus only on the darkness within the human heart; he acknowledges the darkness outside of us as well. But to hear Henry tell it, even the darkness and trouble of the world isn’t something to fear. “Trouble is so underrated,” he declares in the blues stomper, “Death to the Storm,” which is reminiscent of another Henry lyric from several albums ago: “Trouble comes to those who need it most.” In Henry’s thinking, times of darkness sometimes reveal the brightest lights. Or as he sums up the record in its final verse: “So light no lamp when the sun comes low/Pull the dark close to your face/Shadow’s fears cover you like clothes/But likewise so do love and grace.”

To state it plainly, Blood from Stars may number not only among the best records of 2009, but among the best of the decade. Perhaps the greatest achievement of the album is how it illustrates for us the miracle of redemption. Henry shows us that the world we live in is mysterious and beautiful and it’s a place where life blossoms out of brokenness, light bursts forth out of darkness, and blood flows from stars.

Kristina Train: Spilt Milk

A small controversy arose in 2002 around the time Blue Note released the debut record of jazzy pop singer, Norah Jones. Apparently, some jazz elitists felt that Blue Note Records, one of the most important jazz labels of the 20th century, was selling out by releasing a pop album. Blue Note CEO Bruce Lundvall defended his decision by stating that Blue Note was committed to attaining quality jazz artists, which he believed Ms. Jones to be. Norah Jones remained a Blue Note artist and the rest, as they say, is music history.

After the exceptional success of Jones, it comes as no great surprise that Blue Note has sought other female artists with similarly beautiful, bluesy voices. The label’s latest such artist is Savannah, Georgia native, Kristina Train. Train, who seems to have appeared on the music scene out of thin air, bears a couple similarities to Jones in that she is a beautiful woman with a sultry, intoxicating voice. There are, however, some significant differences between them. While Jones is rooted in the tradition of jazz singers, Kristina Train clearly bears more than a little influence from Southern R&B and gospel music (imagine a voice between Aretha Franklin and Bonnie Raitt and you’re close to Kristina Train). There’s also a bit of restrained swagger present in Train’s songs imbuing them with a pleasing Southern charm. If Norah Jones’ Come Away with Me feels like a New York City record, then Spilt Milk is somewhere on the road between Nashville and Memphis.

Read the rest at Stereo Subversion.

Film of the Decade?

My friend Josh Hurst has recently declared that he thinks There Will Be Blood might be the best film of the 2000s. Film critic Brandon Fibbs seems to agree.

I honestly haven’t given much thought as to what my favorite film of the decade might be. According to my Flickchart, it is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. As great as that movie is, it certainly doesn’t match the epic length, performance, or theme of There Will Be Blood.

I feel very compelled to revisit There Will Be Blood (which I recently purchased) and mull this over.

In the meantime, what are some other contenders for Film of the Decade?