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Author Topic: Review the Last TV Episode/Season/Series You Watched  (Read 226388 times)

Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: Review the Last TV Episode/Season/Series You Watched
« Reply #350 on: July 22, 2014, 11:33:28 AM »
Collective though-piece on the first 3 seasons of The Sopranos (no spoilers):

The Sopranos and Psychological Abuse

After finishing the third season of The Sopranos, I realized what makes the show special. There are a lot of things The Sopranos does magnificently: it humanized a morally complex cast of characters that are brought to life by an excellent cast and presented through excellent visual storytelling. However, what makes the show special for me is that it legitimizes the idea of psychological abuse.

The brilliance of the show is that it presents this concept in the tough-guy world of mobsters. Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) ostensibly leads the Mafia in all but name in the New Jersey area. While he’s a physically intimidating force, he suffers from depression and anxiety attacks. Here’s a man that turns other men into frightening, blubbering boys, and he’s mentally and emotionally damaged to the point of breaking.

Tony starts seeing therapist Jennifer Melfi (Lorraine Bracco) concerning his depression and anxiety attacks. Throughout the seasons, Jennifer pulls back the layers of what is truly going on behind this. In the process, the show gives serious credence and weight to the importance of mental health and how psychological abuse can degrade and destroy the mental well-being of even a powerful, intimidating man such as Tony Soprano.

This allows the show to subvert the typical tough-guy image by exposing the vulnerability and weakness of a man who would be portrayed as powerful and dominating in the typical mobster film. Tony spends more time getting berated by his mother, Livia (Nancy Marchand), or dealing with his kids acting out than being the tough mobster in the fictional fantasies.

Livia is a controlling negative force in Tony’s live, a demanding mother that Tony can never do right by. Her relentless guilt-tripping and condemnation has built a life-long cycle of psychological abuse that has built up inside of Tony. By spending time reflecting upon and exploring the dynamics of this relationship, The Sopranos explores psychological abuse as a legitimate form of violence.

And the show goes somewhere truly bold by suggesting that this is a form of violence particularly deadly and masterfully wielded by the female sex. Before flinging accusations that this is a sexist charged, the show also explores how men can often commit psychological violence on others (in the same way that some women commit physical violence during the course of the show). Tony can often verbally abuse members of his crew, but the show often divides primary figures of physical and psychological violence between men and women respectively. To men, psychological violence is a secondary form of violence. Tony is more likely to use physical violence while women often retaliate with forms of emotional or verbal abuse that can be just as damaging and harmful.

For instance, Tony’s sister, Janice, is another figure of psychological abuse throughout the film. In one arc of the story, she tries to extort her mother’s caretaker by stealing her prosthetic leg. She’s also quick to turn every event where she’s done wrong into a guilt-trip for Tony who failed to protect her from whatever terrible thing she’s done. It’s always someone else’s fault, she’s never in the wrong, and in order to do this, she commits physiological violence on others by placing them in the role of the villain.

It’s worth explicitly stating that the show is not condoning either form of violence. There are some horrific scenes of misogynistic violence against women as well as some grueling emotional scenes of these same women verbally and emotionally abusing men. In a show that treats mental and psychological health as something as valuable and precious as physical health. These acts can be just as damaging as the horrible acts of violence.

Some people won’t like such an even playing field, some will accuse it of being an imbalanced and sexist portrayal, I’d argue instead it’s a well-rounded portrait that demonstrates that women are just as capable of violence as men. It may not take the same form, but it’s effects can be just as traumatic. The show certainly does not neglect sexism. It’s a thread that runs through the show as we see expectations of who women are and how they function in the world being usurped and overturned, such as when Tony goes to Italy to discover that the Mafia there is run by a woman and how men respond in sexist manners and attempt to challenge such behaviors.

In our society, mental health and psychological abuse are not taking nearly as seriously as they should be. Especially in male subcultures, psychological and verbal abuse are something that is simply supposed to roll off of people, but The Sopranos shows that words have real power and can leave deep scars. It’s a reminder that even the toughest man can be a victim of psychological abuse.

JakeIsntFake

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Re: Review the Last TV Episode/Season/Series You Watched
« Reply #351 on: July 22, 2014, 03:40:11 PM »
Revisiting/watching The Twilight Zone on netflix.

Current top 5 episodes (in no order)
Time Enough at Last (S1E8)
The Silence (S2E25)
Judgement Night (S1E10)
Living Doll (S5E6)
The Dummy (S3E33)

Right now, I'm kind of just jumping around, watching the one's with the most interesting plot sums. The anthology style doesn't really encourage a properly ordered viewing of the series anyway. Love it, though
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Tequila

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Re: Review the Last TV Episode/Season/Series You Watched
« Reply #352 on: July 24, 2014, 06:28:59 PM »
Been watching a lot of TV this past week.

I'm not sure why but I caught with season 3 of Homeland and somehow ended up liking it quite a bit. A lof that ot has to do with Patinkin along with F. Murray Abraham being given bigger parts (I even started wondering if Carrie works better as a less powerful, all-consuming character than she was in S1+2). The main plot line is much more streamlined and less cat&mouse too which I appreciated. The downside is Brody and in particular his family, which pretty much get shoved out of the way in the second part of the season. Just why we spend so much time with them in the first half I'm not sure. Brody basically gets a a few episodes of drug addiction/detox, followed by a Rocky training montage with the Marines. He's really only there to tie up all the lose ends they could find.

I also finally started watching The Americans. I'm only two episodes in but pretty much loving it. Unlike The Assets (and most espionage thrillers, really), another show I've been watching, this really isn't all that concerned with setting up story lines and goals and more about the players. So far I'm particularly enjoying the relationship between Stan Beeman (the friendly FBI neighbor, played by Noah Emmerich) and Phillip and I also like the different attitudes the spouses have to their job. I may have even been won over by the more subtle elegance of the show's visuals.
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Junior

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Re: Review the Last TV Episode/Season/Series You Watched
« Reply #353 on: July 30, 2014, 12:17:14 AM »
Friday Night Lights: Pilot.

Why did none of you tell me how good this is? I kid, I kid, you all told me. And it's quite good.
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Sam the Cinema Snob

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Re: Review the Last TV Episode/Season/Series You Watched
« Reply #354 on: July 30, 2014, 11:01:44 AM »
Edgar and I take a look a b-list Batman villains in this round of Batman: The Animated Series episodes.

JakeIsntFake

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Re: Review the Last TV Episode/Season/Series You Watched
« Reply #355 on: July 30, 2014, 11:54:52 AM »
Gonna have to bookmark those, Sam. I've been meaning to start that show for a while.
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JakeIsntFake

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Re: Review the Last TV Episode/Season/Series You Watched
« Reply #356 on: July 31, 2014, 04:47:39 PM »
Started Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and I'm four episodes in. I'm enjoying it so far, even though they don't know their Godard or Truffaut.
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mañana

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Re: Review the Last TV Episode/Season/Series You Watched
« Reply #357 on: August 01, 2014, 12:50:09 PM »
Masters of Sex (1.1 - 1.6)
The expansion of Allison Janney's character in 1.6 finally gave me something to hang on to. Lizzy Caplan is really appealing, but I've generally found this series pretty aimless and dull.

Fargo (Season 1)
Turns out Coen Brother fan fiction is considerably better than one might expect.

Orange Is the New Black (2.1 - 2.8ish, I think)
Really struggling to finish this out.

The Shield (Seasons 2 & 3)
It's like NYPD Blue infused through the sensibility of a Nickelback video. It's wearing me out, but I do want to see the finale I heard so much about.

Game of Thrones (1.1-1.3)
Pretty good so far.
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Junior

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Re: Review the Last TV Episode/Season/Series You Watched
« Reply #358 on: August 01, 2014, 12:51:39 PM »
Fargo (Season 1)
Turns out Coen Brother fan fiction is considerably better than one might expect.

So much yes.
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tinyholidays

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Re: Review the Last TV Episode/Season/Series You Watched
« Reply #359 on: August 01, 2014, 12:53:50 PM »
Masters of Sex (1.1 - 1.6)
The expansion of Allison Janney's character in 1.6 finally gave me something to hang on to. Lizzy Caplan is really appealing, but I've generally found this series pretty aimless and dull.

I quit after 1.4 because I was so bored. It would take a lot to get me back in again. Warily looking forward to watching Fargo.

 

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