Writer-at-large Jake Halpern recommended Eight Cousins bookstore in Falmouth, MA, and since Jake only recommends the good stuff, I dropped them a line, they dropped one back, and it all led to this: I’ll be part of their “Toast the Author!” series on June 21st. Fun starts at 6, goes until 7 (and a bit beyond, I’m assuming). The event is open to the public, so if you find yourself on the Cape this June–and what Bostonian doesn’t?–stop in and say hello. Or not. You don’t have to actually say anything. You can just wave.

Kingston University invited me to speak at their lovely school this October. We haven’t locked in a date yet, but I’m thrilled to be returning to the UK. My recent London trip suffered from a lethal combo of jet lag and cold rain–neither abated until the day we left for Paris. So the trip was only very fun rather than supremely fun. Spare me your pity, please.

What else, what else. Let’s see…

* Figure another two months left on the new book. The long writing sessions of my previous books now seem impossible–after a few hours I’m beat, making this the hardest thing I’ve written. Will that translate to it being the best? I’d like to automatically say “of course!” but that’s not how writing works. Hard to write=easy to read is true sometimes, which is another way of saying it isn’t true sometimes, which is another way of saying I haven’t a clue.

(Well, I have a few clues, but I’ll keep those to myself until the work is done.)

* The 2013 Best American Mystery Stories drops in October. If you missed the news, my piece “Quarry” (originally published in Glimmer Train) will be part of the collection.

The dog needs running. I’m off.

“They (city police) were very courteous and very gentle,” Bowie said. “They’ve been just super.”

Quiet and reserved, Bowie answered most of the reporters’ questions with short answers, shaking hands with them when they entered and left. Asked if the arrest would sour him on returning to Rochester, Bowie said “certainly not, absolutely not.” He also said he was “very flattered” by the fans who turned out for this arraignment. – Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, March 1976

 

It was a small reading (since you asked, yes I’ve had smaller) and I don’t believe I sold a single book but there was a photographer and several old friends showed up and one could do much worse than that.

So we talked about art, I told some stories (Tanya Roberts may or may not have been mentioned), and then we retired to a Hamburg bar/eatery, where decent Guinness was on tap. We kept talking about art. We also talked about happiness, disappointment, and our favorite high school memories. People came and went. The pizza place next door delivered chicken fingers. The bartender was from Phoenix and had returned home to Hamburg one year ago. She said she missed the sun. I told her I understood.

I’m often worried that I somehow come across as that guy–the guy who left and thinks he’s outgrown his hometown. He comes back to mingle, perhaps to observe with superior indifference (however feigned). This is a silly fear, of course. One can never outgrow one’s home. Instead, we transpose all that we remembered onto all that’s changed. The illusion comforts us. It never changed, we tell ourselves. It still waits. It will always wait. It will always wait.

Last month, Otto Penzler of The Mysterious Bookshop emailed me a letter, announcing acceptance of one of my stories into the 2013 The Best American Mystery Stories. My spam folder swallowed his email whole. Last night he sent a friendly reminder, I confessed total ignorance, he re-sent the letter, and, well…here we are.

So the announcement comes a few weeks late, but QUARRY will be part of this year’s The Best American Mystery Stories, published by Houghton Mifflin, edited by Otto Penzler and Edgar Award-winning author Lisa Scottoline. It’s an honor, it’s a thrill, and I’m humbled to join the gang.

from: Frank
to: Micah Nathan
date: Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 4:43 PM
subject: Sopranos v. Girls and other false competitions

Hey Micah,

Let’s start with something here.

Are you saying you didn’t make it through the first season of The Wire and you’re still ranking it in the upper echelon? And I’m deeply curious what you mean with your regards to your bias.

-Frank

__________

from: Micah
to: Frank
date: Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 5:30 PM
subject: Sopranos v. Girls and other false competitions

Yes, I rank The Wire in the upper echelon because though I haven’t made it through the first season, I have watched random episodes (with friends) and I never detected one false note. Not a bad piece of dialogue, not an interruption of the “fictional dream”, not a shaky performance. My bias refers to my dislike of drug dealer v. cops shows. Or what I can call my anti-police procedural bias. I simply find cops shows boring. But I recognize that while my taste may not run to shows like The Wire, that doesn’t mean it’s a flawed show.

The clever critic might say: “Yeah, Micah, but the genius of great art is that it isn’t about what it CLAIMS to be about. The genius of great art is that it addresses universal themes, the themes we all share, regardless of taste. Great writing transcends genre.”

To which I respond…

Well, I think I just talked myself out of granting The Wire top tier status. In fact–I think I put it up there as some sort of subconscious attempt to prove my impeccable taste. What bullshit! You know what’s a better police procedural show than The Wire? Terriers. Top tier? Nah. But still better.

And so The Sopranos stands alone. Greatest show ever.
__________

from: Frank
to: Micah Nathan
date: Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 6:00 PM
subject: Sopranos v. Girls and other false competitions

Okay micah this is interesting.

So I want you to know that I think you’re a super smart dude and has nothing but a ton of respect for you. Especially for teaching. I taught. My family taught. Teaching means everything to me. But let’s talk about why this conversation is interesting.

The first reason is because you’re saying you have a bias against police procedural, but the thing that makes the wire so damn resonant is because it is anti-police procedural too. In fact, half of it’s construction is built on erasing our preconceptions based on other procedurals.

So it makes it double weird that you’re evaluating like this and saying the reason you can’t get into it is because of the very thing you think it is, but it’s secretly not. Does that make sense? I’m not trying using this as some conversation stopper, it just highlights the problem of trying to place “worth” on something that is an incomplete experience for you.

The funny thing is your right in the fact the wire the show is impeccable. Not one false note indeed (until a few things later)… But we might be having two different conversations about what conventionality actually means.

You understand writing no doubt, but every criticism you’re giving to girls is the criticism one would give to a show wanting to a conventional story. You talk about “buying” a characters actions, when I talk ad nauseum about how much of the show is not really about buying what the characters actions. The ray/shoshanna moment is absolutely 100% supposed to feel like it’s coming out of nowhere. A lot of times the show is making you not want to buy things so that you sit back and don’t engage it in the traditional way. That being said you’re all for shows being able to build beats in a way that ring true and that means disguising them (which the wire is good at once again), but as I’ve talked about so much, the show is not trying to do that.

And honestly, it’s kind of weird that you’re making this argument about the show’s predictability but is that really how you read the thomas john/jessa dinner scene? Because you’re missing out on all the great stuff going on.

Like the fact that despite all tj’s bluster, he was really doing the whole jessa marriage thing to piss off his dad. It’s written all over his face with each look in that dinner. And then the dinner actually isn’t horrible (all things considered). His dad doesn’t end up minding her and flirts with jessa, which is the thing that is the actual trigger for tj’s anger and the source of the “whore” line comes. And tj wasn’t acting like a different person. We knew exactly who he was from the moment we were introduced to him in season one. It was the next time we saw him that he was putting on a different face. Now it’s just both characters coming back to reality.

And you’re right. Drama is about a show not feeling like an obvious ending is coming. But again, girls is not about drama. Of course tj and jessa were going to implode. I didn’t care. What I cared about were all the interesting little details that came along the way and happened to reveal a lot about the two characters psyche.

You don’t need to tell me about the value of conventional drama. I’ve been living in that world for a long, long time. But what I love about girls is how it shines away from that do something I find enthralling. If you don’t? That’s fine. But you can’t tell me it isn’t there.

Also, I just see a lot of weird assuming here, and then because you’re already assuming it you’re saying a scene is playing one way, when in my humble opinion it’s not playing that way at all.

Like with “the dissatisfied married guy, the wealthy momma’s boy, the damaged hipster, the cocky artist, the sensitive ex-boyfriend”

… Is that really how you see those characters? Whatever surfaces you are seeing, I see waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more going on than that. And even if you could reduce all those characters to those archetypes, it’s about all the details that make them unique and interesting, not “what they are.” … I don’t know what to say because it feels like a completely alien comment, and possibly every single person I know who loves the show.

***

I’ve been in this business awhile now.

And where we always seem to get into trouble is when people start talking about a show’s worth and saying what is in this tier or that tier or whatever. If I can steal your phrase to a different purpose, it’s “a false competition.”

a shows relative worth isn’t so much about its flaws, as it is with its successes. The wire is the best show ever if you value sociological import and pitch perfect characterization. The sopranos is the best show ever if you value brillian psychological examination. Breaking bad? Tightly gripping central performances. Six feet under? Brazen audacity of theme. Mad men? Subtlety into pitch perfect construction of episodic theme. Heck, I think buffy is a candidate for best show ever and it had like 30 outright bad episodes. It’s about the highs and not the faults.

This is art. Almost everything has faults. And it’s not about going around and pointing out what is faultless, but what inspires us. What gives us meaning and hope and the feeling that we so much more. Girls gives me that. And I’m sure we aren’t here to go around appraising the faults, unless it’s a part of the constructive understanding.

You obviously get story.

I get story too. I understand every convention you mention, I just feel like you’re applying them in a situation where they don’t apply. I still feel like you’re missing what girls is really  up to.

Is that okay to say? Are we at an impasse? I hope not.

-Frank

__________

from: Micah
to: Frank
date: Mon, Feb 25, 2013 at 9:06 PM
subject: Sopranos v. Girls and other false competitions

Yes, it is interesting. Which is why you’re in no danger of offending me. I don’t bruise easily, especially in the middle of a discussion about art.

I can’t defend my position on The Wire because I don’t have enough experience with it. All I can offer you is an old T. Monk quote: “You either dig it or you don’t.” I gave it six episodes. I tried again. I even watched it with the subtitles on, and still I just…lost…interest.

So while I’m certain it becomes an anti-police procedural (otherwise it wouldn’t rank so high in our cultural canon), I can’t speak to it. Even though I just did. Sort of. It simply didn’t hold my attention, and I’m beyond the point in my artistic career when I blame myself for “not getting it.” Same goes for Breaking Bad. After two and half seasons I lost interest. I just didn’t dig it.

But let’s get to the gravy, here. You like Girls, I loathe Girls. You claim the show isn’t about buying the characters’ actions, that such “disconnects” force the viewer into viewing the show in a non-traditional way. Moreover, the show’s unwillingness (or inability) to frame beats in a traditional manner is exactly what makes it so interesting, and ultimately, so unexpected.

To which I respond: That’s cheating.

:)

Look, I’m not demanding Aristotelian story structure in every single piece of art (okay, maybe I am), and I acknowledge that experimental forms are wholly necessary for art to thrive, change, expand, challenge, etc. At one time, The Tale of Genji was avant-garde. The Iliad blew so many minds that they attributed a single, god-like author to it (if we subscribe to Borges’ belief in the mythology of Homer). Now those texts are staid old classics. They make students yawn. That’s a good thing. It demonstrates the ubiquity of their influence.

Girls, however, is not at the forefront of experimental art, and I think some of its flaws are being placed into the “misunderstood genius” category rather than where they belong: a young writer flexing her muscles, sometimes to great effect, more often to shoulder-shrugging indifference. Girls is like a first novel written by a talented, precocious writer–I don’t fault its aim but its execution. It’s both bloated and too lean. What you call unpredictable I call unearned. Ray’s confession to Shosh is supposed to come out nowhere? I can’t accept that, because there’s no room for the arbitrary in art. Great art (I am sick of that phrase) achieves the extremely difficult task of disguising the artifice, of making the random feel organic. When taken to the extreme, we get contrivance (like Dickens at his worst), when ignored completely we get short films by grad school film majors.

Nothing, save meteor strikes (and even then), comes out of nowhere. Randomness is the death knell for any story. I’m not saying Ray’s confession was random, I’m just saying its execution felt rushed, sloppy, and unearned. When Ray chased a crack-infused Shosh down that dark city street, I thought “Well, here comes a creative meet-cute.” And now we see them struggling through the age difference thing, and Ray confesses his love while the train rushes by (in true On the Waterfront fashion) and I wanted to throw my shoe at the TV because I wanted to be surprised. What should have been a powerful moment was ruined (in this man’s not-so-humble view) by poor execution, poor acting, and not providing enough tension during that dinner party to then ensure his confession is a cathartic release.

So the major beats of Girls fall into two camps: 1. Unearned; i.e. not foreshadowed effectively and thus they feel tossed in for melodramatic effect 2. Woefully telegraphed and playing right into the audience’s expectations

Now let me take a break from all this Girls-bashing and give an example of when it succeeded. Gloriously.

The season 1 relationship between Hannah and Adam was unlike any dramatized relationship I’d ever seen. I could not predict where it was headed, and yet every time it “arrived” at some new place I was both stunned and thrilled. It was only after the season ended that I thought: “I didn’t see it coming, but now that it’s over, of course they would evolve/devolve into a sexual power-play relationship and of course this bizarre game would result in Adam finally breaking down/opening up, but man, I had no idea how Dunham was going to do it!”

Inevitable yet unexpected. I loved it. What has happened to season 2? How come not a single relationship subverts my expectations?

Perhaps the answer lies in your very insightful claim that Girls is not about drama.

I think you’re right, which means we are at an impasse, because I demand drama from all my shows. The Sopranos was nothing but drama. Not melodrama, but drama. You insist that knowing where the characters are headed isn’t nearly as interesting as watching them get there. To which I ask: Why not give us both? Why not surprise us with Jessa and TJ’s marriage AND show us its dissolution (or not!) in unique ways? Hannah and Adam reached an unpredictable “end” in season 1, AND along the way they revealed parts of themselves. Awesome!

Jessa and TJ? Not so awesome. The dinner scene, even with his dad flirting (and I concede your point about TJ calling Jessa a whore due to his father’s flirtations), still played into my expectations. The uptight mom, Jessa pushing her, TJ getting uncomfortable. I mean, come on–we’ve seen this so many times before. Here we have another dinner scene that ends too soon. You want to subvert expectations? Make the entire show about that scene. Force them to remain there. Maybe Marnie shows up–distraught, freaking out, fresh from her own awful dinner–and the dad insists she join them, and Marnie resists but TJ also asks her because he’s trying to prevent this whole thing from crashing down. Now the wine is flowing. Now Jessa finds herself unexpectedly (but inevitably!) jealous of the dad’s attention to her prettier friend. The mom is even more threatened. Jessa is threatened. TJ is confused. Marnie is confused. Maybe TJ makes a clumsy remark about Marnie, and Jessa’s attention is brought back to him. And so on, and so on. We all get to watch this awkward, funny, wonderful trainwreck, and along the way it both fulfills and subverts our expectations.

Instead we have Dunham and Co. stacking the deck so that she’s the free-willed hero and the mom is the controlling bitch. It’s a sitcom moment. No catharsis, no surprises. I don’t care if it revealed little pieces of each character’s psyche because I didn’t need to be told. I already suspected as much.

-Micah

I love arguing about art. My students often confuse this with a love for criticizing art, which is entirely different. Criticizing is one-sided; it smacks of lecturing, which is, of course, the unenviable position most professors finds themselves in. Criticizing quickly becomes boring. Better that someone should push back. Hard. Even rudely, if needed. ¹

And so whenever possible, I find worthy opponents and look for disagreements. GIRLS is perfect for this search–I liked (adored, at times) the first season, and have given up on the second. It’s become trite, predictable, amateurish. Dunham has either reached the limits of her talent (and there is considerable talent) or all the pressure has gotten to her, resulting in that cliched “sophomore slump” that is only cliched because it so often proves true.

I’m a giddy fan of Todd VanDerWerff’s work for the Onion A.V. Club. His write-ups of The Sopranos were terrific pieces of critical analysis. If you haven’t read them, please do, because they have the rare effect of improving the viewing experience rather than merely repeating it. Todd places The Sopranos where I place that show–in the upper echelons of TV entertainment (we can call it “art” if it makes you feel better). So we agree on that. We also agree on The Sopranos unusual narrative structure (though I see a more traditional set-up than Todd), and Todd extends this praise to HBO’s new flavor-of-the-week: GIRLS.

That’s where Todd lost me. I Tweeted my dismay; he responded, as did a few others. One of those particularly intelligent “others”–I’ll call him Frank–and I engaged in a spirited email debate. Since Frank hasn’t given me permission to post his emails verbatim, and I’m not the type to blindly pluck whatever I’d like from personal correspondence without regard to privacy, what follows is a series of my responses, interspersed with lightly-paraphrased emails from Frank. I’ve done my best to reproduce the essence of Frank’s arguments. Any lack of clarity on his part is my fault–blame the messenger, in this case.

I’ll put up part 2 next week. Feel free to join the discussion.

from: Micah Nathan
to: Frank
date: Fri, Feb 22, 2013 at 8:14 PM
subject: Sopranos v. Girls and other false competitions

Hello Frank,

Man, do I loathe criticizing. Takes a little piece of my soul away every time I attempt to convince someone who likes something that they shouldn’t like it. What right do I have? What makes my opinion more valid than theirs?

This might be the kind of post that requires a few drafts but I have a book to work on and my brain is mushy from too many iced teas, so to hell with it. Smoke if you got ‘em, right?

The NYT posted this letter today:

To the Editor:

Re “Shooting in the Dark” (Feb. 12): Whether or not it can be proven that violent video games are linked to real-world violence, there is no question that such games do shape players’ attitudes toward violence, war and masculinity. Until our elected representatives finally step up to the plate and regulate the video game industry, parents should keep all violent games out of the hands of their children.

The Lazy Skepticist’s Guide (© 2013) warns us about the word “regulate.” Regulation–especially in art–implies that They Know Better, that someone else should determine what is appropriate for me. No, sir. I am an adult. I do not grant that power. I do not accept anyone else’s opinion about my tolerance for violence or obscenity. I will decide for myself what my limits are. How? By testing those limits, and determining my own level of comfort.

I will also not be a narrow-minded idiot (sometimes ad hominem attacks are necessary, especially when dealing with narrow-minded idiots) and lump all violent games into one category, nor will I suggest that other parents–other adults!–follow this fanatical prescription. Fanatical, you say? Oh, yes. The LSG  warns us about phrases like “there is no question” because it reeks of divine authority. Everything should be questioned, including a topic that the author of that letter admits cannot be proven either way. So the author is asking us to take his word on faith alone and apply it without exception, without question. Sounds…fanatical.

I shall spend no more time addressing the uptight ramblings of that fascistic thought-cop. I have to go create disturbing art for adults who can think for themselves.

Kelly was my first experience with mortality. I’d experienced death before—grandparents, pets, a beloved babysitter—but Kelly was my age, and we’d been friends in high school, and I was nineteen or so when I visited her in the hospital. I hadn’t seen her since graduation. I’d heard rumors of a brain tumor gone into remission. Now the tumor had regrown. She wore a wig. She still had that amazing smile. She died a few months later.

Since that time I’ve known more than a few cancer patients who didn’t make it, and in their final months they looked gaunt, with sunken cheeks and wispy hair, their voices unsteady, their eyes dull from chemo and experimental drugs and God knows what else.  Kelly didn’t look like that. She looked young. Already a full-cheeked girl in high school, steroids had made her bloated. The jutting facial bones of late-stage cancer were absent; instead she seemed to be getting younger, reverting to the chubbiness of a toddler. She was still quick to laugh. Her eyes, hidden behind Prednisone-puffed cheeks, were still very much alive—calling them defiant may sound like a cheap rallying cry, but it’s true. Despite the IV’s taped to her arms, and the beeping machines, and the pill bottles that stood among books, cards, and half-eaten cookies, Kelly talked to me about the future. She said she was going to finish college. Her mother, sitting in a small chair pushed against the hospital bed rails, grabbed Kelly’s hand and nodded. That’s right, her mother said, and I’d be prettying this up if I told you I believed her.

Kelly was a cheerleader; as such, she was, in high school terms, out of my league. Even though Kelly never acted in that stereotypical manner we (unfairly) associate with the popular girls, I still shied away from appearing too interested in her. She was the girl everyone liked, constantly surrounded by football players and fellow cheerleaders, the whole of them cutting a swath through the crowded halls, leaving a wake of pink perfume and boyish cologne. To reveal how much I adored Kelly would seem so obvious, I feared—is there anything the high school boy dreads more than appearing to be exactly what he is?—and so I hid behind that most common shield: feigned nonchalance. We sat together in Spanish class. We passed notes. She let me copy her quizzes. We developed inside jokes, we compared tans. A profound friendship? Of course not. We never interacted outside of school. I didn’t know her family. I can’t tell you the sort of music she liked or her favorite foods. Perhaps my nonchalance wasn’t as feigned as I remember. I had other friends. I had a girlfriend. Perhaps my friendship with Kelly was born from proximity, like so many other high school relationships.

And yet, when I’d heard she was back in the hospital, something compelled me to visit. One of my roommates (himself a former high school acquaintance) said it was smart that I was going to visit Kelly because if she ever “got better” then maybe I could “ask her out.”

In the movies such a statement might lead to punches thrown. In real life, I said nothing.

#

I’m certain I had to check in at the front desk but I don’t remember that. I do remember entering her room for the first time. I remember how it smelled, an antiseptic odor reminiscent of pre-injection skin-swabbing and bleached bathroom floors. A television hung in the far corner. Kelly sat up in bed, her hair darker and somehow different than I remembered. When she adjusted it I realized it was a wig. Her mother took away her tray of food—red Jell-O, peas, a chicken cutlet—took out a brush, and began to brush her daughter’s hair. It’s such a mess, Kelly said, and now I realize she could have been referring to anything.

We talked. About college life, about the few people we still kept in touch with after graduation, about cancer. Kelly explained what it was like when the tumor came back. She paused often, and her mother would squeeze her hand until Kelly started talking again, her voice shaky but soon regaining strength, and after a while I forgot we were sitting in a hospital room. We’d gone back to Spanish class, laughing, comparing tans, passing notes. It was all wonderfully banal. I imagine the terminally-ill long for the days when banality was their most constant companion. We’re presented scenes of the dying always wanting to discuss profundities and lessons; we unfairly expect them to offer us some wisdom, as if the closeness of death makes the mystery any less mysterious. Kelly didn’t pretend to have learned any great truths, and if she did, she didn’t want to discuss them. She only wanted to act normal, asking if I’d seen any good movies (I hadn’t), if I was still dating Eva (I was), what my major was (anthropology) and then, as I was getting up to leave, if I was happy.

What an unusual question. Who asks a nineteen year-old if they’re happy? A brain tumor hadn’t diminished  her essence. That wisdom hidden behind an indomitable grin, that empathy combined with youthful grace—it all still shone. Yes, I told her. I’m doing okay. My father and I were going through a rough patch and I was having girl problems, but whatever—how could I complain? I’m healthy, I said. I have no right to complain about anything.

She shrugged and said Hey, if it sucks, it sucks. Then she smiled. I visited Kelly expecting to provide comfort. Instead, it was Kelly who comforted me.

#

The next week she called and we talked. She asked if I was going to come back to the hospital for another visit, and I assured her I was, that the semester was picking up but we’d figure out a time. A week passed, then another. She called again. I didn’t call back. The next month, I heard she’d died.

I’ve considered myself a coward for not returning her calls. I didn’t attend her funeral—I had no interest in seeing anyone else from high school—and I’ve considered myself a coward for that, as well.  But I finally accept my cowardice as normal. Hospital beds and beeping machines break the promise of immortality. The young don’t want to be reminded that bad luck doesn’t care about age or potential. It strikes blindly and unerringly. I was afraid of being near Kelly. I didn’t want to notice how sad her mother was or how the wig didn’t look anything like Kelly’s hair. There was nothing I could do make her better and I told myself that’s what Kelly really wanted: my youth, my health. I couldn’t give it to her. I wouldn’t give it to her.

Of course Kelly didn’t want any of those things from me. She wanted to talk and forget, if only for a little while. I won’t pretend she gave me any thought in her final moments or that she lamented never seeing me again—that girl was leaving behind far deeper relationships. Still, I like to believe she understood why I never came back, and that maybe, if closeness to death does provide an insight not yet granted to the rest of us, she understood that it wasn’t my fear of mortality that kept me away. It was fear that I might fall in love with her. Once again.

The most telling complaint about The Hobbit is its uneasy mix of adult/childish humor (note the difference between “child” and “childish”). I haven’t seen the movie. I’ll probably wait for Netflix–a long wait, I know–and not because I’m one of those annoying film buffs who refuses to see anything popular. I just don’t have any interest in Jackson’s Middle Earth, especially after finishing season two of GOT, and especially after the dwarf jokes in Two Towers.

So the elves have readied their bows, and our heroes stand atop the battlements as the orc army–war painted, chitined, snarling–approaches. Amid this foreboding vibe we see Gimli struggle to see over the wall. Legolas asks if he needs a box to stand on. Gimli laughs. An attempt at gallows humor? Perhaps. But gallows humor is supposed to be dark, it’s supposed to magnify hopelessness to a grotesque extent.

Instead, we get a cheap joke, as if the writer/director feared the scene was too heavy and wanted to give the viewer a break. No, sir. We don’t want a break. Why must scenes with conflict require occasional respites? This is a bizarre rule in the film biz–witness the number of cops-n-robber shootouts featuring wisecracking good guys. It’s the equivalent of interrupting a comedic scene with moments of horror–a decapitation, a burning body–in an attempt to silence all that laughing. ¹

Even worse, the cheap joke cheapens Gimli, reducing him from Dwarf to dwarf. Tolkien’s Dwarves were not “little people.” They were fierce warriors, a proud race of metal-and-stone smiths that would never hop up and down (especially while complaining) in an attempt to look over a wall at an approaching army. They would be accustomed to such difficulties. They would either have brought their own damn box (hewn from Warg bones) or, more likely, stood in stoic silence, battleaxe hefted, mouth set in a grim line.

Purists may argue that Tolkien himself poked fun at Gimli’s stature, especially with that dwarf-tossing joke later in the battle. Okay. So what. Jackson had no difficulty adding extra scenes, faking Aragorn’s death, etc. Why be true to the worst parts of the source material? ² My (unverifiable) theory involves the ratings board. Much as the Tooth Fairies in Hellboy 2 were given those insufferable “cutesy” voices in an attempt to lessen their impact (they ate people, tooth to toe) and distract the ratings board, so too with the Gimli jokes.

This, by the way, will provide no such vibe-killing humor.

________________________

Character A: But I don’t understand.
Character B: I cannot tell you now.
Character A: You must!
Character B: Your father is not who he claims. He is–ACK! ARGGH!
Arrow flies into Character B’s neck. Plot twist is artificially extended another week.

One of the more annoying aspects of serialized television is the keeping of secrets. We’ve seen it in Lost. ¹  We’ve seen it in silly (albeit pleasant) diversions like Grimm and True Blood, and in higher-quality fare like Mad Men and Justified. The KOS is a cheat–it prolongs narrative twists, frustrating the audience while saving the writers from having to create real conflict. A secret is not actual conflict; it may lead to conflict (and it should, otherwise the writers have completely missed their mark) but too often a show will rely on one character withholding crucial information while every other character refuses to sit that secret-holder down and force the truth out of them. Our gut tells us this is not the way the real world works–we know people are lousy at keeping secrets, especially big secrets, and we know when the tip of a secret is revealed it’s impossible to conceal the remainder–yet we tolerate it in the fictional world because…well, we crave tension. Even contrived tension. ²

Enter Game of Thrones. Comparisons to The Sopranos are too easy, yet the most important similarity is what makes those two shows epic: the writers had an abundance of imagination. There is no shortage of plotlines, no prolonged KOS. Character opacity is perfectly exploited–when they lie, they suffer for that lie. When characters suspect a dupe, they behave as we would: they investigate. Schemes quickly unravel, creating even more tension than the original misdirection. Without giving away too much, I point to the secret kept by Cersei and Jaime Lannister. Lesser shows would have drawn that secret out the entire season, yet Game of Thrones refused to make it the central storyline. The reveal arrived unheralded. It felt organic. How rare. How delightful.

This, dear reader, is the mark of superb plotting. It is also one of Shakespeare’s legacies. The truth will out. The sooner, the better, so we may move on to the next lie.

On a slightly-related note: my new Glimmer Train essay “A Fatalist’s Manifesto” may be found here.

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