This Is Us

The new NBC show which is appearing on Channel 4 is one of those shows that comes along once in a while, and it is the sort of feelgood show that a nation in crisis needs.  Offering escapism from the trying nature of day to day life, the series offers a heartwarming glimpse of a life full of homespun notions of goodness and wellbeing.

Starting out with a silly Wikipedia reference, stating that any person shares their birthday with 18 million other people on the planet, we witness four people sharing their birthday. They are all 36, and it seems this is the mid-point crisis level for all three people.

Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) is with his pregnant wife Rebecca (Mandy Moore) who is expecting triplets on his birthday.  When her water breaks they rush to the hospital.  We then switch to Kate (Chrissy Metz), an obese woman who is keen to lose her weight this time in spite of self-help post it notes adorning her fridge, she has a twin brother Kevin (Justin Hartley), an actor at a fork in the road of his career, between being taken seriously as an actor in spite of appearing in lowest common denominator comedy where he frequently takes his top off to show his washboard abdominals.

The fourth person is black man Randall (Sterling K. Brown - who was excellent in The People vs OJ Simpson), a modern day successful professional who has found his biological father by way of a private investigator. Randall is reluctant to make contact with him, as he left him outside a fire station on the day he was born.

Having seen shows of this sunny disposition before (Thirtysomething, Ally McBeal) falling into the trap of having a good cast without the necessity of a solid script, This Is Us has the admirable quality of having a well written script that helps bring the best out of this well assembled ensemble and vice versa.

The script is clever as well such as when Randall describes his interaction with his father to his wife, as if it is some lame sitcom like 'The Man-ny' which Kevin is appearing in within the show; this willingness to refer to the intertextuality of lives and how similar people may watch the same shows in spite of racial differences is indicative of this unified world the show wants to picture.

The moments Randall confronts his estranged father and Kevin's breakdown on the set of his sitcom are neither histrionic striking the right balance between being heard and making sure they are said in the right way. Even the pediatrician who delivers Jack and Rebecca's triplets gives Jack a pep talk in the hall after the birth; it could be construed as too sweet for a serious moment, but the balance between the light and the delivery by Gerald McRaney is expertly handled.

While moments of saccharine may grate on bah humbugs in this seasonal time of year, those moments are necessary to the plot such as the birth of children or reunions of lost family members. The show does not ask too much of its audience, nevertheless, it leaves you smiling and beaming.

The reveal at the end of the pilot episode of the connection between the four thirty somethings is a real eureka moment of plotting by creator Dan Fogelman, ably assisted by co-directors John Requa and Glenn Ficarra. The twist allows for a more expansive exploration of the characters which will certainly get this viewer returning for more of this show's positivity.

This Is Us screens at 10pm on Channel Four weekly.

How OJ Simpson changed things

The People vs OJ Simpson - a prime time dream

Three episodes into The People vs OJ Simpson, and you get struck by how much of a cultural moment his arrest and subsequent trial was back in 1994 to 1995.  How much of a big deal it was, how it was the only story of note of that year culminating in his eventual acquital of first degree murder on two counts against his estranged wife, Nicole and her new partner, Ronald Goldman.

The trial became such a cultural phenomenon because OJ Simpson was quite possibly the last famous sportsman or personality you would expect capable of murder or such a heinous violent act.  The modern day equivalent would be say Tom Brady or Russell Wilson killing their partners. And yet the notion of a famous former footballer being able of such a violent act was unheard of, and yet since the OJ trial we have had numerous incidences of pro footballers being engaged in violence. From the case against Ray Lewis to Aaron Hernandez, it is not uncommon to see footballers in orange jumpsuits and handcuffs.

OJ's mug shot from 1994

Now the idea of a celebrity being above the law has fallen by the wayside, as we in the UK have learnt due to the ubiquity of Operation Yewtree and the fall-out of the Jimmy Saville scandal; those you believe to be pure and of entertainment, are just as capable of violence and depravity.

OJ Simpson's eventual imprisonment for armed robbery in Las Vegas came to the forefront the idea that these professional atheletes due to the serious hits and collisons they suffered on the gridiron, had a quite possible detrimental effect on their mental wellbeing and led to the uncovering of CTE trauma by NFL players.  The story goes that Simpson was such a physical specimen that they had to take the padding out of his helmet just so he could get it on to play, with no protection is it any wonder he might have suffered possible long-term damage to his brain.

Certainly Cuba Gooding Jr's portrayal of Simpson, shows a man who is unable to handle pressure in everyday situations nor understand or make sense of his decision making which is both irrational and unsafe.

The trial of OJ Simpson altered the landscape of television news coverage and the idea of celebrity, prompting the birth of true crime as a means of profitability across magazines, television series, non-fiction books and various spin-offs.

If you were charged with murder, this was the new fifteen minutes of fame but not for doing something heroic or celebratory, but instead for something immoral and fundamentally wrong. Even if you were found innocent, the celebrity continued in terms of  'My side of the story...' biography or memoir, television appearances and sponsorships.

And these spin offs occur for peripheral characters in the piece. Robert Kardashian, was OJ Simpson's attorney and confidante, who played a prominent role in Simpson's initial arrest as representation for him with Robert Shapiro; yet Kardashian's lineage and immortality continued due to the rise of his children's celebrity.

Mention of this appears in the series, when Mr. Kardashian takes his children to a Chinese restaurant and jump the long queue because the hostess recognises him from his albeit brief television appearance; the father makes sure that his children are aware that fame is only fleeting and that honour is more important. If only that were true, sir. David Schwimmer elicits real feeling in a character obviously conflicted over the behaviour of his best friend, and having to believe that maybe his friend is capable of such heinous acts.

Now you can throw all sorts of criticisms the way of the show. From the histrionic performances of John Travolta, who is being out acted by his eyebrows; to the casting of Gooding Jr., as Simpson himself, and yet the further into the series we go the better he is as OJ bringing that sense of vulnerability and determination you would expect but were never privy to twenty years ago.

A good thing in the writing is the awareness of the main players role in a game-changing trial and piece of popular culture. The trial of OJ Simpson transcended all spectrums of culture, from politics to entertainment and sport to race relations between blacks and the police.  Members of the prosecution are aware of the possible risk of another race riot in Los Angeles should OJ be unfairly treated, and Shapiro mentions how the case is now part of the twenty four hour news cycle.

In this country, Great Britain, it filled up the graveyard slot of Sky News after Newsnight had finished; and with the eight hour time difference we Britons got uninterrupted coverage of the afternoon sessions in Judge Ito's court. The era of sensational news coverage was born, Sky News had its Lindbergh baby.

OJ not only changed the way American football played, his acts during his retirement years had far reaching ramifications that no-one could have envisioned.

In praise of...Breaking Bad

Last night, I had the pleasure of completing my first box set. Breaking Bad. It has taken just about five weeks but me and my girlfriend, have witnessed countless deaths, numerous cooks and shady dealings in Alburqueque. We have followed the transformation of high school Chemistry teacher Walter White from fighting lung cancer to the horrific Heisenberg, the empire builder who would stop at nothing to get what he wants.

Oddly enough, when the conclusion of series 5 first aired in America on AMC I avoided any spoilers as best I could, thankfully the Internet community found it necessary not to ruin it for non-watchers as it is something best experienced first hand, much like The Mousetrap.

The ending was to me a complete finite ending deserving of the legacy that Vince Gilligan and his team have created.  Usually when series come to a finish, it is perhaps two series past its sell by date or the characters have outstayed their time.

Breaking Bad was good because it did not take a series as  the same temporal period for the viewer, for example, the original audience did not witness a White family Christmas when they did. The action started in series one around Walt's 50th birthday and ended a day after his 52nd, therefore the condensing of all the narrative action in to a timeframe of five years served a greater reality to the drama; things change dramatically from day to day in our lives, so why can that not be reflected in our viewing pleasure?

A lot has been made of the writing by Gilligan and his writers, yet while the show has been rightly heralded as the perfect amalgamation of talent, special mention must go to the acting of Bryan Cranston and the ensemble who infused all the characters with not just a belief but a humanity not seen before in American television drama. Whereas, characters in the West Wing or The Sopranos, where highly stylised versions of political and gangster conventions, in Breaking Bad these were actual people doing what comes naturally to survive and exist.

Yet that was the appeal and motivation for Walter to begin with. We meet a man on his 50th birthday, who feels unfulfilled in his life. A teacher who is not respected, mocked by his alpha male brother in law who works for the DEA. Had things been different for him he would have been a CEO of a Fortune500 company, yet fate dealt him a bad hand seemingly, and he cancer diagnosis leads him to reassess his options. His lack of insurance coverage means his family will be bankrupt should he die, so he attempts to cook Crystal meth and get close to the $700,000 he requires for the medical bills and pay his disabled son through College in his absence.

In the final episode, when Walter and his wife Skylar talk for the last time, she believes he will say he did it all for the family. Yet he surprises her by saying he did it for himself and he liked doing it. That was a good line to have Walter say, as the series has predominantly been about pride and the things people do when their ego is out of control. And it was this battle of wills sometimes between Walter and Jesse. I say sometimes as too often Walter seemingly got away with his malicious acts of violence, in contrast to the mindset of Jesse who has seen too much bloodshed and wanted to avoid it as best he could.

The story would ask if it was possible to avoid violence, or if it was the only course of action with say the murder of Gus in the nursing home.  It would also make you root for the villain as Walter slowly became one, and made you root for Hank and Mike who were oddly purveyors of justice and attempted to make you get the bad guy.  Through the last series, you were still rooting for Walter until he crossed the line of domestic violence in the episode containing Hank's death, that was the act that made you want to get caught, or die and ultimately the act that made him leave New Mexico and go into hiding.

I saw an interview with Gilligan, where he said his writers stole from the best in reference to their ending matching The Searchers. I think they also stole from The Godfather, in that Walter is similar
to Michael Corleone played by Al Pacino; a man so vastly different from that young idealistic soldier,
that he is almost unrecognisable. Yet the way in which he slips into the skin of malevolence and murder is the most unsettling aspect of it all. Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of Mario Puzo's novel was as a watershed moment in American film history, as is Breaking Bad in American television history.

Is Walter the devil or just a bad man, I believe he was not a changed man, he was a man who learnt a lot about himself and became a version of himself he did not know was possible nor capable of such acts. How do we know what we are capable of doing until we do it the first time?

Breaking Bad is as close to the perfection people have envisioned in this box set culture. A show that was brilliantly written, wonderfully acted and produced week in, week out not missing a beat and containing surprise that kept you gripped throughout without going for cheap way outs and belittling the audience it treated with intelligence and respect.  The ending was as close to perfect to, because it tied up all the loose ends with a sense of gravitas and humanity befitting a show about living and dealing with your own mortality.