“I’ll assume I’m dead already and go from there.”
Kino Loy (Andy Serkis)
Andor is not a work of leftist propaganda. It’s made by a leftist, calling for leftist revolution in the United States, but the show itself would be more accurately referred to as antifascist revolutionary propaganda. At no point do any of the characters – not Cassian Andor (Diego Luna), not Luthen Rael (Stellan Skarsgard), not even actual politician Mon Mothma (Genevieve O’Reilly) ever articulate once what kind of government they intend to replace the Empire with; there’s no talk of redistribution of resources or anything like that. We do get a deep dive into indigenous peoples seeking autonomy in the first season, but even this is part of how the show is far more concerned with showing the negative effects of fascism than the positive intentions of leftism.
There’s really no way it could have been about leftist policy in the dramatic storytelling sense, not because it’s a Star Wars product (if anything, there’s more room for this idea in the Star Wars franchise than any other, blockbuster or otherwise – as Abigail Nussbaum pointed out, Andor’s first season is essentially a complex retelling of the original film) but because any TV show like that would go on four more seasons after the fall of the Empire. That is to say, Andor finishes precisely one step before the end of act one of a tragedy; the characters are relentlessly pursuing a goal, and at the end of the first act, they should achieve it, with the rest of the story being the consequences for that.
(Michael Collins tells this kind of story – the first hundred minutes covers the Irish rebellion against the English, and the next twenty covers how they deal with success.)
Instead, Andor is a meditation on the emotions of a violent revolutionary. In a lesser sense, it covers how clownish and absurd fascists are; one notable part is when we discover that a superprison is causing environmental destruction to the area around it, but the show takes glee in presenting the Imperial forces performing banal and petty acts of evil; my favourite is Orson Krennic (Ben Mendelsohn), all half-confident gestures covering a complete lack of competence, but there’s also Jayhold Beehaz (Stanley Townshend), an Imperial Commandant who we see openly abuse his wife and son and threaten physical violence against for the crime of being bored and irritated.
The most major expression of this, of course, is Syril (Kyle Soller), an Imperial civil servant; he’s taken as a typical fascist, though I think he is more effective as a liberal civilian duped by fascist thought. The funny thing about him early on is that he’s the only Imperial who actually cares about solving the murders that bring Cassian to the attention of the Empire, and he’s revealed to be someone not particularly thoughtful about his place in the world, casually accepting the propaganda of the Empire and simply wandering through the world, trying to live up to an ideal of a Worker (fascism’s greatest strength is appealing to the natural human desire to be part of something bigger than oneself).
His death is actually a pretty funny Shaggy Dog Story, where he stumbles across Cassian (who he has been chasing all show) and, caught in the shell-shock of a brutal massacre, tries to kill him out of rage, to Cassian’s complete confusion (“Who are you?”). The show has gone out of its way to humanise Syril, to show his relationship with his domineering mother, to show his point of view and feelings (however little you might respect him) and how he fits into the larger world, and his sudden and pointless death that never affects anything going forward feels like a clear message: if you are a revolutionary, men like Syril are beneath your notice.
As for the revolutionaries themselves, they are defined by a total sense of exhaustion. The main theme they hit upon is that people become violent revolutionaries when they feel they have no other option; the first few episodes convey the sheer effort required to talk around the truth on all sides, with the most iconic example actually coming from an Imperial officer (Rupert Vansittart):
“They were in the brothel, which we’re not supposed to have, the expensive one, which they shouldn’t be able to afford, drinking Revnog, which we’re not supposed to allow. Both of them supposedly on the job, which is a dismissable offense.”
And this is before the constant humiliation of having to submit to pointless authority, violent crackdowns on behaviour, imprisonment over nothing (another absurdist action from the Empire: they actually catch Cassian after his robbery of an Imperial outpost, but as a result of a random pointless arrest and without ever knowing who he really was – even when they succeed, they fail), and genocidal violence (not for nothing is this the Star Wars property with the fewest aliens).
Compounded on top of this is that the revolutionary tactics take an inhuman toll on the rebels. Luthen, one of the leaders of the rebellion, has long surrendered anything resembling humanity for The Cause, and in one speech, he describes himself as forced to take on the tactics of his enemy in order to defeat them. He treats everyone and everything around him as disposable; I was particularly shocked towards the end when he murders one of his own spies – a man who has been nothing but loyal to him, who is terrified not only for himself but for his wife and child – in order to reduce the risk of his information getting out to zero.
The other rebels suffer moral and emotional blows almost as much. Allies who not only die, but die from stupid mistakes; that failed robbery of an outpost that gets quite a few people, including a clever writer working on a manifesto, killed; violence and torture and fear. Nevertheless, this is inevitably a part of their triumphs. The first season ends with Cassian, having survived and even escaped prison, concluding that he is going to die regardless and would prefer to die fighting the Empire than running away from it. His adoptive mother (Fiona Shaw) leaves behind a message to her people begging them to take up the cause she wished she’d given her whole life to.
As triumphant as this is, it leads to a horrible but fascinating conclusion: the role of a revolutionary is to die. Characters are never more effective than when they die, inspiring others to take up the cause in their name. Luthen understands this better than anyone; the single most boss moment in the entire series is when he realizes he’s surrounded by Imperials, and the only option left to him is to shove a knife in his gut like a samurai committing seppuku rather than fall into the Empire’s hands.
It makes sense that these people would not once consider what kind of world they’re building next, because they have no intention of living to see it. The argument of this show is that, if you seek to revolutionize this world – to destroy the System completely – you have to die. Not the enemy (though they will), not your allies (though they will), you personally. Not that you should be stupid and actively throw your life away – one of the best sequences in the show is the first three episodes of season two, when Cassian has accepted his role in the Rebellion and is scheming around some younger, less talented rebels – but you are freed from moral and practical responsibilities for your actions in exchange for your life.
You will operate under the faith that others will be inspired by your death to pick up the cause after you, just as you were inspired by others. You will set extreme action in motion knowing you won’t live to see it pay off. You’ll sacrifice material comforts – not just a nice house and dying in a bed, but family, a spouse, seeing whatever children you have grow up – for the sake of The Cause. It’s on this level that Andor absolutely needs to be a prequel; we know Cassian’s story ends with him dying during a mission, and his life was spent observing examples of that and hearing arguments for it. If you’re not willing to die for The Cause, then you aren’t a revolutionary.
I was nudged into watching this by my fellow Magpies, with them having understandably forgotten that I’d already watched the first seven episodes back before the second season aired and found it disappointing. While my take is more moderated, unfortunately, I do still find it has fatal flaws undermining my enjoyment. For one thing, while the first season ultimately does have a complete and satisfying arc, it has the infuriating habit of ‘prestige’ television of our time of being unbearably, obnoxiously slow; it feels like one character makes an actual decision every twenty minutes of screentime, with much of the rest being quiet, moody scenes illustrating a point.
The easiest example to point to here is actually Syril; in the first few episodes, he’s fascinating to watch as a guy trying to sincerely solve a problem by navigating a fascist bureaucracy, but once his superiors shuffle him out of the way, he spends much of his time getting into pissy discussions with his mother that do nothing to advance the plot and little to advance the theme (though much to advance the emotion that fascists are silly and uncool).
The difference between the first and second seasons is like the difference between the first two seasons of The Shield – more propulsive, more plot, holding together as a unit more effectively. I put a lot of this down to the show being reduced to one more season as opposed to a five-season run; the crew are forced to crush five years of action into twelve episodes, skipping over things I know they would show, like Syril changing jobs to go undercover for Dedra (Denis Gough). And yet, not only does it have some of the same problems, it introduces another and fails to deal with fundamental issues at its core.
The most infuriating thing about the show is that Cassian is, for the most part, the least interesting part of it. In the first season, he’s mostly a reactive figure; the first episode is about his search for his missing sister, but that gets dropped pretty quickly, so he’s mostly reacting to things without any clear direction; characters without motivation are almost as dramatically frustrating as characters with muddy motivation, even if this pays off in the end of the season when Cassian takes up the Rebel cause.
Irritatingly, though, the second season simply puts Cassian through this arc again instead of building on top of it; rather than choosing between his life and the Rebel cause, he chooses between his girlfriend Bix and the Rebel cause, which is really just the same thing over again. It’s a shame, because those first few episodes of season two are the most fun the show ever is to watch and where all the great elements of Cassian are brought to the surface; he’s surrounded by young rebels still caught up in ego and ideological splits, and he’s politely giving them advice (despite being their prisoner) and working out how to stay alive and get the Rebellion mission done.
None of this, though, makes up for the conceptual element of the series: it’s a narrative of good vs evil, and like all narratives like that, it’s predictable even beyond its nature as a prequel. Like, yeah, the less important good guys will die, (Cinta (Varada Sethu) was an obvious one in there), all the bad guys who don’t lose and die in Rogue One will die. The surprise was less that things ended the way they did and more the scale on which they ended (again, Luthen’s death was totally fucking boss). I ended up most compelled by Syril’s story simply because I had no idea how exactly it would turn out.
Part of the reason I delayed in writing an essay on Andor was because I wanted to research the things it drew on. In his youth, Diego Luna was a member of the Zapatistas – a Mexican armed revolutionary group that, in 1994, seized control of five towns in Chiapas, on the border of Guatemala. They went on to attempt greater political action in Mexico and disentangle the country from neoliberal policies and globalization, and I’m told were an influence on Andor. I prioritized getting this article out in a timely manner as opposed to thoroughness, so I only had the time, energy, and money for one book on the subject: Zapatistas: Rebellion from the Grassroots to the Global, by Dr Alex Kasnabish.
So far as I can tell, the Rebellion as presented in Andor and the Zapatistas could not be more different in their tactics. The Zapatistas came from a merging between urban intellectuals and peasants, with the former very much choosing to submit to the latter. The Zapatistas didn’t so much seize territory as support it; their philosophy and goals are extremely clear, choosing to build off and support indigenous values and autonomy. They wear masks to downplay the individual, avoiding charisma-based issues in organization; no one Zapatista will gain control, no one Zapatista will be targeted, no one Zapatista falling will fell the movement.
Furthermore, unlike the Rebellion, violence is strictly downplayed; they began as an armed force, but so far as I can tell, the only violent action they’ve taken was the initial seizing of territory. Under orders from their community, the Zapatistas have been largely nonviolent since then, with their most major action being a nonviolent protest storming Mexico City in 2001. While they dedicate themselves to teaching other revolutionaries around the world how to, uh, revolutionize, their main priority is to expand and maintain their state with as little violence as possible, and to serve as an example of autonomy. What similarities exist between the Rebellion and the Zapatistas appear to be some philosophical points as opposed to tactics; specifically, the destruction of the individual and subsumption of individual material success for the greater collective good.
(If there are tactical similarities, they’re actually the tactics of both the Empire and the Mexican government, who responded to the Zapatistas seizing territory with brutal violence that, ironically, only bolstered support for the Zapatistas nationally and internationally.)
Tactically, the Rebellion seems to have much more to do with the Russian Revolution than anything else; the use of bank robberies to fund revolutionary activity, spies within the ranks of the Empire, and of course, revolutionary violence. Comparisons between Josef Stalin and Cassian seem overstated to me; Cassian lacks his middle class education, his total dedication to organization, and even much of his ruthlessness, and their stories end totally differently. Cassian strikes me as one of the guys Stalin sent out on a mission more than Stalin himself.
Much has been made of the show’s greater realism, but I strongly suspect this is exaggerated; whenever people tout ‘realism’ as a virtue in fiction, they’re really saying that it conforms to their expectations. To be less dismissive about it, I suspect it’s emotionally realistic – this is how revolutionaries feel as opposed to how they should specifically act. I recall when The Bear first came out, and some people pointed out how unrealistic the idea of a restaurant with a new menu every day is, whilst every chef I knew begged me to watch it because they insisted it was totally realistic, and I see comparisons there.
You know, realistically, if I’d wanted to study a violent revolution that was successful not only in seizing power, but in building a government and system that lasted hundreds of years, I’d have studied the American revolution for independence.
Andor is going to be a show that defines leftists and anarchists for the next fifteen years. I believe we’ll have ‘Andor leftists’ the way we’ve had ‘West Wing liberals’ over the course of the Obama administration. I don’t think there’s been a more effective work of propaganda over that decade than The West Wing; the primary movers-and-shakers – by which I mean, the primary workers – of the Obama administration filtered their jobs and lives through the symbols, messages, and morality of that show. I don’t feel that The West Wing or any of its creators can be ‘blamed’ for what Obama and America became or are now, because they were as much a product of Americans hungry for the world to look like that as they were presenting a specific vision of American politics to aspire to, but you must admit, there’s enough of a correlation to make blaming them fun as hell.
Andor will bear as much responsibility for where leftists go from here. There will be a generation of leftists who see their struggle in Andor terms, who will name themselves Cassian or Luthen or whatever; their enemies will be Syril and Dedra and Krennic. They’ll use the language of the show – carefully chosen for strongest effect – to motivate themselves; they’ll compare things that happen to them to events in the show. Andor has set out to be revolutionary propaganda, and it will, within the limits of its world, succeed.
About the writer
Tristan J. Nankervis
Tristan J Nankervis (aka Drunk Napoleon) has been a writer, pop culture critic, dishwasher, standup comedian, waiter, potato cake factory worker, gamer, TV worker, and various other things. You can find him in Hobart, Tasmania.
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"Obi-Wan never told you about your father."
"I love you." / "I know."
"I'm terribly sorry - no no, please don't get up--"
"I don't believe it." / "That is why you fail."
Department of
Conversation
What did we watch?
Just Shoot Me!
Watching a few random episodes of this now, I can recognise it as a bit of a Newsradio-lite show.
Red vs Blue, Season One, Episode Six
I’m fascinated by how this structures its comedy around more traditional TV-style plotting – not quite dramatic, though that’s definitely a part, because it also depends on gradual reveals of exposition, like the reveal of O’Malley the evil AI infecting Caboose and being driven out. Actually it is also pretty intimately connected to video game-style plotting, where the characters are constantly trying to achieve things that push them through the world and reveal things about that world (I’m reminded of the plotting for Starcraft, for example). It gives the comedy something to play off, because characters are trying to accomplish things and other characters are undermining it.
On top of this is the fact that the writers have mastered making every line funny, mainly through knowing that comedy is easy to generate simply by having someone be either a dick or an idiot.
This has a classic comedy setup with the characters going into Caboose’s mind and getting his flawed image of them – my favourite is Sarge, who has a pirate accent (“Yar, I be havin’ a Southern accent!”).
There’s a joke about Tucker having a wank rock. The shot of it ‘spray-painted’ kills me. There’s also a turn of having Simmons be turned into a cyborg (as well as Grif getting Simmons’ old parts after nearly being crushed by the warthog).
“Tucker, there’s a very fine line between not listening and not caring. I like to think that I walk that line every day of my life.”
“If you’re lucky, you may even get a copper rectum.”
“Well, Tex, that was a great story. I especially liked the part about Church getting pantsed in high school.” / “I found that part to be entirely out of context.”
When Church and Tex are in Caboose’s head, they get Caboose’s mental imagery of the other characters (“Man, I am so unbelievably stupid!”).
“I just don’t know who would do such a thing!” / “Was it you?” / “Yeah. Wait, uh, no.”
“I wonder what jeeps ever did to those guys.”
“First of all, you? You don’t have a best friend. You know why? You’re Church! You don’t need one! Knowing other people just waters down the experience. Live the dream, buddy!”
“Normally I would just shoot at you guys and steal your girlfriends.”
“From now on, if anybody’s gonna make my girlfriend cranky and psychotic, it’s gonna be me.” / “Aw, that’s sweet.” / “Shut up, bitch.” / “Asshole.”
“We pretty much replaced all the internal organs, and some of the more disgusting external ones. Except for Simmons’ spleen, which will be inflated and used for general recreation and esprit de corps.”
“I try not to think when I’m sleeping.” / “That’s pretty much how you function when you’re awake, too.” / “I think consistency is important.”
“Who left the spleen ball where someone could trip on it?!”
Started Frasier, “Secret Admirer,” but once it was clear that Frasier was going to screw up a perfectly good new relationship chasing women who’d dumped him to find out who his secret admirer was, I stopped. Just was not in the mood for Asshole Frasier. But this one was important to the Maris/Niles arc as she was the admirer and Niles the admiree. And as when he said no to her one more time, she got even meaner and cut off his money. So on to “How to Bury a Millionaire,” where Niles is forced to give up his insanely expensive (and large) apartment for a furnished studio. Niles-centered episodes are reliably entertaining in part because Niles is rarely insufferable in the painful way Frasier is. And seeing him adjust to his new place was funny and oddly touching. But the slow motion divorce has been going on for three seasons now, and it’s getting a bit stale. Less stale, though, than Frasier’s dating life. (I know the show rebounded. But this might be the low point until we start getting workplace humor again.)
Cloud — *Cryptkeeper voice* a reseller of online goods gets more than he BARGAINED for! And Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s latest has a lot more in common with Creepy than Cure in terms of the dark vibes containing dark humor, there are a lot of tense laughs here. Early on, Masaki Suda’s protagonist does one of those classic bits of pretending to not be home when his boss comes by, it is funny to see him so upset but Kurosawa films it straight so the unease is true too. And maybe Suda is not wrong to be worried. He is ripping people off for their merch and then ripping off the online folks he’s selling to (even when the merch is not outright stolen or fraudulent he is jacking up prices) and the online folks are getting madder and madder about this. Masaki contributes nothing, he is purely a conduit for price gouging and predatory sales, and the internet facilitates this as well as the conduit of resentment toward him. But I don’t think this is an anti-internet screed, the second half of the movie goes to an unexpected Tarantino-y place with a big empty real world that is just as dangerous, and the very ending reveals that Kurosawa has been stealth remaking an older Japanese movie the whole time, it’s a great and nasty recontextualization. Sometimes slow and disjointed, but everything comes together to leave you uneasy, Klassic Kurosawa!
Live music — small bits, after Cloud I stopped in at the live music bar for some happier vibes and the cover band (of god damn CHILDREN, they looked like HIGH SCHOOLERS, no I am not OLD) provided them, especially a surprisingly great rock cover of Poker Face that added punch without denying the pop. We swung by a resistance group gathering the next day, music was promised and instead a mope with an acoustic guitar was provided, pure “I Gave My Love A Chicken” guy in Animal House and yet no heroic fatso was there to smash his bullshit. Soporific and stultifying, we got the hell out of there.
Singles — now here’s some music! The live footage of Soundgarden and Alice in Chains is pretty cool, less cool is Campbell Scott just standing there during it, why are you not rocking man? Maybe this is why Almost Famous is more beloved, Cameron Crowe gets into the music more instead of the relationships. Crowe’s warmheartedness is is his great strength and biggest weakness, he just wants the best for his characters and knows how their foibles will get in the way, as a detailed observer he’s very good (and the Xavier McDaniel gag is an all-timer, had me howling). But earnest and well-meaning vibes run into shambolic structure and thin characters (Kyra Sedgwick in particular is doing “we have Julia Roberts at home” throughout), and the very end is misguided, Crowe working too hard for what he thinks should be a happy ending instead of relying on Bridget Fonda and Matt Dillon to just find their own ending. Still a decent watch and a fun capsule of a particular moment in time, when Paul Giamatti was playing one-scene comic relief horndogs literally sucking face in a coffee shop.
Wrote about Singles in Paste and came to similar conclusions though I also found the main couple REALLY annoying. Just talk, don’t do an idiot plot!
Oooh, link? The answering machine business was very frustrating — Scott has to do his Big Cameron Crowe Heart On The Line speech, I know what I’m getting into here, but the movie can’t let it land because the movie needs to keep going for another half hour, so it just breaks the machine. Feels very cheap! And especially because letting Sedgwick hear it and decide to not react would also work, but would run the risk of making her look mean or something.
An odd thing I noticed here — Scott and Fonda are quite good together as friends, but in terms of not just age and platonic support but character vibe and even look/appearance, they are extremely similar to Judge Rheinhold and Jennifer Jason Leigh as brother and sister in the Crowe-scripted Fast Times At Ridgemont High, right down to the supportive trip to a doctor.
Woooooooo live small bits!!
Going to have to go short with all of these because I’m slammed this morning:
The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad!
Rewatched to gear up for seeing the new movie. There is no write-up I could do of this that wouldn’t just be a list of my favorite jokes, so I’ll say instead that I love George Kennedy and am always thrilled to see him in anything. He’s a wonderful (relative) straight man here, too, which makes his tearful breakdown at the end all the better.
Bad Genius
Rewatched for Movie Club (my pick this time). Loved getting everyone’s thoughts on this.
The Naked Gun
As everyone’s been saying, this completely lives up to the highs of the original series, with a real ZAZ feel of constantly throwing jokes at the audience and being willing to vary between absurdity, slapstick, deadpan humor, etc. My personal highlights may be Drebin’s surprising investment in CCH Pounder’s husband’s promotion and work drama (“But Ronald trained Bill!”), using a claw machine device to remove a car from the water, and the absurdist storytelling spin on the typical threat of “oh, a cute guy like you, they’ll love you in prison.”
Palm Springs
I don’t think I could ever learn advanced physics. I’d just have to learn cruisey existentialism instead. But I think I’d be pretty good at being stuck in a time loop, ultimately.
“The Chair”
Overrated horror short, albeit one that musters a couple good scares.
Taken, “God’s Equation,” “Dropping the Dishes,” and “John”
Saving thoughts on this for the weekly TV round-up, at which point I’ll also be able to talk about the finale.
Simmons as well as Miloti learning physics were cool developments for a time loop movie! Hadn’t seen someone try to *figure* their way out of this.
Superman – Fuck it, I really liked this and though I sometimes find Gunn’s humor undercutting (and there were two lines my mom and I both rolled our eyes at, which is a pretty good number for a superhero blockbuster), this is the best movie he’s made since Super about how trying to be a good person is really fucking hard. I even have encouraged my brother-in-law, a Jesuit, to write about this because he and I both cottoned to how Superman’s life is a struggle: his morality means he MUST save people and mourn their loss, that every life has value, whether a squirrel or the woman holding a turtle in a box or the falafel stand guy, whereas Luthor is an egoist convinced only his life and status mean anything. (Hoult is naturally very good at building up the rage and jealousy here until he’s screaming video game control moves just so he can pound this guy into the ground.) This also makes the reversal of his parents’ message, cribbed from Smallville and other texts, very smart, that Jor-El and Lara wanted Supes to have Luthor’s point of view and he has to find his own way to reject this. A good arc! On a more shallow note, this is so damn comic-booky and colorful and that puts the Marvel movies to shame, whether it’s Luthor’s pocket universe filled with a thousand monkeys typing at computers, hehe, Mr. Terrific’s casual cool, or Krypto’s mere chaotic existence.* And Pruitt Taylor Vince as Pa Kent made me cry.
*My mom’s dog is a lot like Krypto in her sheer exuberance and overexcited energy, which is to say all the treats should go to Krypto.
Another great comic book-style visual: that interdimensional rainbow fight outside Lois’s window while she and Clark talk.
I might be the only person in creation who wants Krypto to be as intelligent and as well behaved as a human, since the few Krypto appearances of my childhood made him out that way. I suspect I am literally the only person who even remembers that version of Krypto. But then, dogs being dogs doesn’t do anything for me. (Note: haven’t seen the movie yet so I might be surprised.)
without spoiling any plot, it is thematically important that krypto is not particularly good dog.
Beau Is Afraid – I went into this knowing very little. But for some reason I thought this might be a more straight-ahead drama from Ari Aster. Boy, was I wrong. It’s tedious, challenging, visceral and disturbing. It’s a very expressionistic 90s indy film – Dysfunctional family dynamics, awkward dinner table moments, crazy road trip, generational traumas, mommy and daddy issues, anxiety, grief and guilt are all examined. Beau is afraid of facing all his inner turmoil and the surrounding chaos until the final judgment. Both rough and brilliant.
I’ll agree with “tedious!” I went into this knowing only it was supposed to be Aster in a more overtly comedic mode, and I thought Midsommar was a better comedy than horror flick so was intrigued by that, but I couldn’t bother finishing it. It felt like an I Think You Can Leave sketch stretched to 3 hours and played at 33 1/3 instead of 45 rpm to boot.
I can see why it was divisive. I did almost dnf after being in the city but found myself getting into it after that.
incredibles and incredibles 2.
Big argument here in favor of wearing your influences shamelessly; not just the gold-silver age comics but also the syd cain and ken adams for production design and bernard hermann for the score.
Much has been made of the allegedly Randian message. I don’t think it’s there. The supers act out of a self-imposed duty to help. But they do also transcend the rules normies follow. It’s like a left nietzscheanism. Sometimes from each according to their ability to each according to their need might not exactly follow the dictates of law, especially within the heightened reality of genre fiction.
avenue 5, up to s2e1. This should be a much better show. It’s got Iannucci. It’s got Hugh Laurie making a good case that he’d crush it as Doctor Who. It’s got a bitterly dark tone. It’s got a solid premise—commercial space cruise gets set off course, so it’ll take them much longer to get back. But how far off course they are keeps changing arbitrarily; there are somehow many random things they can do to change their course but only for the worse? They have engines and they’re capable of rendezvousing with a shuttle from earth; there is no internal reason that they can’t simply use their engines to correct course.
Also, it takes more than a second for a body to freeze in the vacuum of space. It is not instantaneous.
seconds it would take, but also I’ve seen 2001. I know it takes longer than that. On the other hand, bravo to Iannucci for how insane that sequence is otherwise, and having them go for it three times. It’s a synecdoche for the show as a whole—it should be surreal
and horrifying and the humor would come from how bizarre the situation is, like the Exterminating Angel, but the idea is marred by the execution. This is also a good case for wearing your inspirations proudly. A sitcom that was shamelessly part battlestar galactica, part veep, part exterminating angel, and part gilligan’s island? That would have a lot of potential.
Its always sunny, the gang goes to the dog track. They are in classic form this season. This may have their darkest joke thus far. (Worse—since Frank was lying the whole time, the dog track might not even have been closing). The moral of the story: when you’re raw dogging it, don’t get your dog too raw.
Grant wrote about the airlock scene in one of our TV moments articles:
https://www.mediamagpies.com/the-tv-moments-of-2020-with-special-guest-wallflower/
But, yeah, the show should be a lot better than it is. I bailed after the first season.
“it’s most base and ridiculous scene is its most accurate” is way too spot on; this should be really trenchant satire but it’s just not working.
Tripling down on it is bold, but in the “that’s a bold strategy cotton”
sense.
Re-posting this in the correct place this time.
SATURDAY
Mad Men
Season 6, Episode 9. “The Better Half”. First time.
Six seasons in, it makes a lot of sense that the personal histories all these characters have with each other are eating them inside out. This is the kind of thing Don is prone to, but it’s fascinating to see everyone else struggle badly with it too.
Don of course is the focus here, but it intersects (no pun intended) with Betty also being at a point in her relationship with Henry where desire lures her out of comfort and stability, as foreshadowed by how her teasing one guy at the party becomes foreplay with Henry. She later sleeps with Don, and of the two of them, she seems far more adjusted. She’s at a point in life where she’s able to divest herself from the act in ways he never could, tell Don some hard-won truths in the aftermath and laugh with her husband the next morning. Her reasoning that “this happened long ago” is classic cheating logic but ultimately fair to their circumstances, and far less harmful than the pretexts some of the show’s other characters would tell themselves. Pretty sad that Don is far more open with her than he is with Megan earlier in the episode, barely being able to exchange anything other than basic pleasantries.
Pete is also caught in a similar bind. It’s funny how he was the most stable, solid character at SCDP for a long while then spiraled out of control the last year, specially after the merger. His talk with Duck Phillips (talk about complicated histories) is clarifying, as is his reaching out to Joan (again, so surprised by how their relationship got to where they are now), but it seems that Bob Benson might have just gotten what he actually needs. Bob is a very different guy from the SCDP mold, though it might just be a matter of time before this place gets his neurosis out of him. Getting in the way of another flare-up in the Joan/Roger relationship certainly won’t be good for him.
And finally, there’s Peggy. Normally a voice of the reason, she’s still reeling from the merger, and she gets caught in Don and Ted’s gamesmanship. This would be bad enough of its own, but the collapse of her relationship with Abe compounds it. It drives home this season’s message of SCCGDCP being cursed, but after a while it gets really fucking funny, capped by a perfect punchline of a final shot. Sorry Peggy, you’ll probably find a better one. Ditch that apartment though.
SUNDAY
Old Henry
First time. Had lunch at my old folks’ and my dad picked this Western off Netflix to watch with me. It’s a handsome, straightforward cowboy flick with a great performance from Tim Blake Nelson at the center as an old farmer, trying to take care of his kid and ranch, until one day he comes accross a nearly-dead man and a bag of money, with naturally invite trouble. This particular trouble comes from a very good Stephen Dorff as the villain, and from Nelson navigating the immediate threat while dealing with the kid and the nearly-dead guy. All in all, pretty standard Western but well-made in a very traditional manner. Fun fact: My dad was watching some of the Yellowstone shows before starting and I didn’t quite noticed when he switched for a movie, so for some fourty minutes I thought this was like a self-contained episode of one of the shows. This was helped by the dialogue, which has some of that Taylor Sheridan grough, ornate style, though lacking in his self-aggrandizment.
What did we play?
Villainous
This is a board game where each player is a Disney villain trying to win their various goals, and it’s fascinating for not only creating a fairly unique gameplay system (as far as I know), but by working it to make the player really feel like their respective villain. I played as Prince John of Robin Hood, for example, and my goal was to collect a lot of the money, and I achieve that mainly by using my minions to fend off the heroes. My sister played as Hades from Hercules, and her goal is to get all the Titans to Mount Olympus. Players mainly stick to their own goals and attempt to sabotage each other. Fun time.
Absolute Balderdash
This is a unique trivia game in which players knowing the actual answer isn’t expected – one gives a convincing explanation and hopes other people will vote for it.
Snake Oil
Highly recommended – a party game where, each round, one player takes a turn as a customer (designated by the card they pick up – Caveman, Zombie, etc) and the others, combining cards in their hand, attempt to sell an item to them. Each player is given a turn to pitch, but once everyone has had a say, it inevitably turns into everyone yelling over each other like the Gang on Always Sunny, which is insanely funny to me.
Labyrinth
This is a tabletop game based on the movie of the same name that my sister bought and got me to look over. It actually looks like a lot of fun – the gameplay is essentially the Dungeons & Dragons 5e system reduced to its absolute essence, and you play through the book like a choose-your-own-adventure game, except with one person doing all the reading and four or five people working together to solve puzzles. It’s very much in the spirit of the movie (one can play as a human, a goblin, a dwarf, or even the firey or worm from the movie); it’s not about combat, it’s about adventure, puzzle-solving, and character development. Also, the art itself is beautiful.
Six Cats Under
Short, endearing point-and-click game that’s free on Itch. You play as the ghost of an old woman who’s just been unceremoniously killed when her bookshelves collapse on her, and as this is how I will almost certainly die, I found her journey very relatable. Her main concern is finding a way to get her beloved cats out of her apartment so they won’t run out of food now that she’s gone, but you don’t have enough ghostly strength to just open the door, so you have to engage with the environment around you and get your army of adorable cats to unknowingly go through a Rube Goldberg-like process in order to escape. Very endearing game, great cat content. If vomas hasn’t played this yet, he needs to.
The Supper
Another short point-and-click adventure (and like the above, it’s far less baffling than its ’90s counterparts) where you play as an old woman, but this time, it’s horror! You move around Mrs. Appleton, a green-skinned cook with peg legs and a visible air of exhaustion, as she sees to the dinner orders of three pirates (?) that the uncanny voice in her head suggests she has some bad past experiences with. But tonight could change everything. Simple but pleasingly dark and weird, with some great art, and it actually generates some real emotion towards the end. Free on Steam.
(For what it’s worth, I heard about both of these through John Walker’s Buried Treasure blog, which tries to unearth games that haven’t gotten much attention and which has pointed me towards a lot of good, interesting indie stuff.)
Fake Screen Drafts
Okay, this is not a traditional game, but it is at least game-adjacent. Since I got hooked on the Screen Drafts podcast, I introduced a friend of mine to it, and after much mutual messaging about how obviously bungled a particular draft was or how we needed to watch [x] that got mentioned in another draft, we decided it would be fun to swap out our usual movie-watching one afternoon for doing a Screen Draft of our own. (Although with a top 10, which they don’t generally do.) The topic was serial killer movies, and we had a blast, and also walked away with a fresh appreciation for how often people wind up leaving off obvious picks, since we both had something that should’ve made the top 5 and, due to us wrongly assuming we could fuck around in our first couple picks and play relative wild cards, didn’t even make the top 10. Terrific time, and we’re certainly going to do this again.
SATURDAY
Mad Men
Season 6, Episode 9. “The Better Half”. First time.
Six seasons in, it makes a lot of sense that the personal histories all these characters have with each other are eating them inside out. This is the kind of thing Don is prone to, but it’s fascinating to see everyone else struggle badly with it too.
Don of course is the focus here, but it intersects (no pun intended) with Betty also being at a point in her relationship with Henry where desire lures her out of comfort and stability, as foreshadowed by how her teasing one guy at the party becomes foreplay with Henry. She later sleeps with Don, and of the two of them, she seems far more adjusted. She’s at a point in life where she’s able to divest herself from the act in ways he never could, tell Don some hard-won truths in the aftermath and laugh with her husband the next morning. Her reasoning that “this happened long ago” is classic cheating logic but ultimately fair to their circumstances, and far less harmful than the pretexts some of the show’s other characters would tell themselves. Pretty sad that Don is far more open with her than he is with Megan earlier in the episode, barely being able to exchange anything other than basic pleasantries.
Pete is also caught in a similar bind. It’s funny how he was the most stable, solid character at SCDP for a long while then spiraled out of control the last year, specially after the merger. His talk with Duck Phillips (talk about complicated histories) is clarifying, as is his reaching out to Joan (again, so surprised by how their relationship got to where they are now), but it seems that Bob Benson might have just gotten what he actually needs. Bob is a very different guy from the SCDP mold, though it might just be a matter of time before this place gets his neurosis out of him. Getting in the way of another flare-up in the Joan/Roger relationship certainly won’t be good for him.
And finally, there’s Peggy. Normally a voice of the reason, she’s still reeling from the merger, and she gets caught in Don and Ted’s gamesmanship. This would be bad enough of its own, but the collapse of her relationship with Abe compounds it. It drives home this season’s message of SCCGDCP being cursed, but after a while it gets really fucking funny, capped by a perfect punchline of a final shot. Sorry Peggy, you’ll probably find a better one. Ditch that apartment though.
SUNDAY
Old Henry
First time. Had lunch at my old folks’ and my dad picked this Western off Netflix to watch with me. It’s a handsome, straightforward cowboy flick with a great performance from Tim Blake Nelson at the center as an old farmer, trying to take care of his kid and ranch, until one day he comes accross a nearly-dead man and a bag of money, with naturally invite trouble. This particular trouble comes from a very good Stephen Dorff as the villain, and from Nelson navigating the immediate threat while dealing with the kid and the nearly-dead guy. All in all, pretty standard Western but well-made in a very traditional manner. Fun fact: My dad was watching some of the Yellowstone shows before starting and I didn’t quite noticed when he switched for a movie, so for some fourty minutes I thought this was like a self-contained episode of one of the shows. This was helped by the dialogue, which has some of that Taylor Sheridan grough, ornate style, though lacking in his self-aggrandizment.
Hollow Knight on Nintendo Switch
Funny moment this week: I beat the Mantis Lords, then go into Deepnest. I get killed and realize I’m better off not exploring until I get a light to see in there, so I plan to get my ghost back and make it out.
I get the ghost and make a hard climb out of Deepnest. Once at the top, I can go left or right. I go left first, find some new enemies and a big NPC, then I realize it’s yet another new unmapped area. I decide I’m not up for it right now and I’m better off going to a save point, so I go back and take the right path.
At which point the ground immediately caves in and I fall all the way down to the bottom of the aforementioned hard climb. LOL. All the funnier because the ground had never caved in like that before.
Anyway, I got out from there and now I’m scouting where to go next, since a lot of options opened nearly all at once.
Shinobi: Art of Vengeance (Demo) on Nintendo Switch
Not much in yet, but I love the way it looks, like a moving comic book and very videogame flashes of fancy. Will try and at least finish the demo before the full game is out at the end of the month.
Lots of great stuff here. Although I’m not sure about “You know, realistically, if I’d wanted to study a violent revolution that was successful not only in seizing power, but in building a government and system that lasted hundreds of years, I’d have studied the American revolution for independence” — I think there were some unique factors there (geography and shared ethnicity) that played an enormous role and are less likely to be replicated now. But on the other hand, the first one probably never occurred to the Brits until it happened, there are probably similar unconsidered and accepted places to exploit today.
I still need to watch this (and will watch it!) but have suspected this — “The most infuriating thing about the show is that Cassian is, for the most part, the least interesting part of it” — for a while, solely on how much the discussions about the show seem to revolve around other people as opposed to the dude who’s name is on the tin. This was something Rogue One had to deal with as well, Luna is a fine actor but he isn’t given much to deal with. And although it’s been a while, I don’t recall him in Rogue One giving the impression that he has internalized this: “It makes sense that these people would not once consider what kind of world they’re building next, because they have no intention of living to see it. The argument of this show is that, if you seek to revolutionize this world – to destroy the System completely – you have to die.” He gets there of course but it’s not there from the start the way it is with Lino Ventura in Army of Shadows, which you need to watch yesterday. That movie is about resistance as opposed to revolution but the end result — total destruction of the current system — is shared, and it’s interesting to think of Star Wars’ various heroes labeled as Rebellion or Resistance, as opposed to Revolutionary. Because it’s a movie I think it will eliminate your pacing problems in general, but it also offers no relief, no place to pause, no “well Andor made it through this episode” — it is relentless and exhausting, not even in action so much as existing in a world where you are always in opposition and may even be opposing and killing your friends.
Thanks!
I’ll get back to you on the American revolution – you’re probably right, but I’ll still look it up. And sadly I can’t seem to find Army Of Shadows even on Tubi, where I’ve found all my French films.
Quelle horreur! I know it had rights issues for years and was essentially “rediscovered” in a re-release back in the mid 2000s, Criterion put on an edition and that’s what I got from the library.
Great, interesting, well-argued piece. I’ll admit the various shortcomings in terms of visualizing revolutionary action didn’t bother me, in part because I wasn’t watching it through that particular lens or expecting it to be all that accurate about the process, but this all checks out to me: the show, like the movies themselves, keeps a tight focus on resisting and overthrowing, not on imagining or envisioning what will come next. And you’re 100% right that having, say, Mon Mothma do that, even as no one else is, would’ve been good and would’ve highlighted the difference between her approach and role as opposed to Cassian’s or Luthen’s.
I kept thinking of the Rebellion here as more akin to the French Resistance than organized revolution/resistance–the focus is strategy and tactics rather than ideas or community-building. Which I think does let the show lean into some very traditional sources of drama that it’s good at exploring (Tony Gilroy and I have approximately the same fondness for dramatic death ownage, and I suspect we both like some cheesy WWII war films) but I can absolutely see the argument that it’s leaving other possibilities on the floor; it doesn’t explore different kinds of conflict as much as it could.
100% agreed on Syril being the most compelling character, and the one with the most pathos, because he’s the one who most feels like he could have made different choices and gone in different directions–others may be locked into their roles by virtue of it being a prequel or by sheer intensity of commitment (Luthen), but Syril’s principles were at odds with the life he was in, and there was always the question of what would happen, and which part of himself he would commit to, when he realized the full extent of that.
In the end, the strength of the show for me wasn’t in its ideas, it was in creating (or further developing) vivid characters and letting them make revealing choices and act in ways that illustrated who they were: I’ve seen this called very un-Star Wars-y, both in a complimentary sense and in a derisive one, but I actually think it captures the general mythmaking feel of SW pretty well, just in a different context. And in the second season, it feels like the show packs in a ton of moments that have, for me, the emotional impact of Han coming back with the Millennium Falcon to help Luke with the Death Star. So–as with pretty much everything I watch/read/etc.–I come at it heart-first.
The lack of politics isn’t so much a flaw as a choice the show made – a logical one that works within, amongst other things, the choice to make it a prequel to a prequel to a fifty-year-old movie that already had multiple sequels. I actually would argue the show’s closest cousin is Fight Club in terms of showing a character getting radicalised into fanaticism with a backdrop of a specific political ideology, where the story begins and ends with one guy’s development as opposed to seriously exploring the consequences of an ideology.
That’s an interesting point on the French Resistance – I’ll throw that on the pile next to the American revolution.
Yeah, Syril is compelling because there’s a version of this where he recognised his role in fascism much earlier, which of course would require him to be more curious than he ever actually is. Kyle Soller’s performance is so great – and so great for what Andor is aiming for – because he shows Syril not registering things, let alone processing them, in exchange for an easier narrative.
Year of the Month update!
This August, we’ll be covering 1959. Check out all these movies, albums, books, et al
TBD: Bridgett Taylor: Pillow Talk/Some Like It Hot
Aug. 8th: Gillian Nelson: Noah’s Ark
Aug. 15th: Gillian Nelson: I Captured the King of the Leprechauns
Aug. 18th: Sam Scott: Imitation of Life
Aug. 2oth: John Bruni: Shadows
Aug. 22nd: Gillian Nelson: Khrushchev Goes to Disneyland
Aug. 29th: Gillian Nelson: The Monorail
Aug. 31st: Tristan J. Nankervis: North by Northwest
And in September, we’re covering these movies, albums, books, from 1938!
TBD: Cori Domschot: Bringing Up Baby
TBD: Bridgett Taylor: Rebecca
Sept. 22nd: Sam Scott: Holiday
Calling the Maya Pei Brigade arc, which most people agree is the weakest part of the show, the most fun to watch is a classic Tristan move. By sheer coincidence I was reading my episode notes last night, and I did note that the arc illustrates very well what makes Cassian so valuable to the Rebellion: he is competent, has steady nerves and resolve, but also, look what we’re dealing here, man. Still, I didn’t find the beat-to-beat action in that arc very compelling, and I don’t think the direction gets the tone right.
100% agree with your assessment on the role of the revolutionary here, illustrated most clearly by Luthen. He’s not alone though: Saw Gerrera is another Rebel who’s fully internalized the notion that he has to die for the cause, though the difference between them is that Saw has taken the idea to the extreme and believes he must kill as many as he can before going out the door. Luthen has no issues with killing of course, but he’s much more judicious in picking his targets. (Kleya too.)
I don’t buy the notion that this show bears responsability for what liberal/leftist discourse does with it. First because I don’t think any fiction should be beholden to real-life politics in that way, and more importantly because political actors and activists mostly react to history and real-life necessities, rather than fiction or even ideology. (Though I do believe the opposite: political fiction must reasonably reflect/transmute/channel real-life politics in order to resonate; there’s plenty of positive examples of that in this show.)
But another issue is that the world has changed since the days of The West Wing. That was a drama with a faily pervasive reach on a broadcast network, placed squarely on the center of four-quadrant American media (workplace comedy, family show, “realistic”, historically comtemporary, reflective and encouraging of “normalcy”), widespread popularity and acclaim, and a DVD mainstay when large amounts of people in the mainstream still consumed media that way. All of that is very appealing for up-and-coming centrist politicians in ways that a streaming (i.e. walled) show in a disreputable genre, covering a small part of a massive ongoing multimedia narrative that varies wildly up-and-down in popular appretiation, simply won’t be.
Calling the Maya Pei Brigade arc, which most people agree is the weakest part of the show, the most fun to watch is a classic Tristan move.
<3
I don’t buy the notion that this show bears responsability for what liberal/leftist discourse does with it.
I agree with your points here; its responsibility will be limited to the responsibility people attribute to it. But I do believe, without a shadow of a doubt, that there will be a people who call themselves Andor leftists in one way or another, and that these people will probably be the ones on the ground floor of the work. Whether there’s a majority, a lot, or a few people like that is irrelevant to me, though I do believe it’ll be a significant amount.
Andor’s politics suffers from the same problem as the politics of Star Wars generally: Even when George Lucas does everything short of walk out on camera, face the audience, and say “America is the bad guys. The good guys are the communists. You should be a communist,” the metaphor just won’t click for people. There is no metaphor so hamfisted that large chunks of the audience won’t get it or, worse, will participate in the metaphor by deciding to just be fascist. See also Starship Troopers and the perennial discourse there on, where fascists say, roughly, that it can’t be antifascist because the subaltern enemy is repellent and the heroes are all a blond and attractive.
That said, a star wars that closely followed the period in the Russian revolution between the march and october revolutions (where you had a fight between liberal constitutional monarchists, anarchists, bolsheviks, and democratic socialists) or the mexican revolution after the overthrow of the porfiriato (where madera is immediately killed and it turns into a fight between conservative reformers, liberal reformers, and radicals villa and zapata) would be great. The ideological clashes in the rebellion between reformers who wanted to go back to some form of the late republic status quo and space communists and droid liberationists and bourgeois pro-democratic human supremacists etc. would be great (eg, if you had a scenario where you had the U.S. founding fathers, the haitians, the bolsheviks, the diggers and levelers, all in one space).
Gilroy is a confirmed fan of mike duncan’s Revolutions podcast; Gilroy and Duncan were both recently on the daily show podcast where they very carefully did not endorse committing any crimes.
The other thing about Andor and real world politics is that I think it will psychologically help people make the jump from legal to extralegal resistance, for good or for ill. Of course, it’s hard to know when one should make the jump and if one should make the jump you definitely shouldn’t say it, and most individuals who make that jump are not going to make that jump at the right time. It’s a catch 22. Rebellions need organization but you also need people willing to break the rules which makes them hard to organize.
Your last sentence reminds me of reading on the Spanish Civil War, where the (moral, not political) anarchists were doing pretty great until all the guys who didn’t want to be told what to do showed up.
you just need two things for a successful rebellion:
1) A critical mass of people willing to fight and die for their beliefs, including the overthrow of the government.
2) Rigorous military discipline and obedience along the chain of command.
Hold on. I’m sensing a problem here.
This is only touched obliquely in Andor but I love what we see of Yavin and the transition from isolated cells of guerilleros to a military, a shift that some people like Vel handle better than people like Cassian.