The Team on TV: Masters of Sex S3

Last week we kicked off a new weekly series in which we assemble a few rotating members of Team Experience to discuss various TV shows. Here's Dan, David, Deborah, and Manuel on discuss Masters of Sex - Editor
 

Dan: Hello everybody, welcome to our roundtable discussion on Masters Of Sex. I want to begin with a general topic: How do you all respond to time jumps in TV shows? Masters of Sex does this a lot, with several months often taking place offscreen either in between episodes or even during a single episode (S2's "Asterion" comes to mind). The second season ended in 1961, and this season began in 1966, skipping anything dealing with finding a publisher and marketing the study as a book. Did that throw you? Did you miss anything that would have been covered in the years we didn't get to see?

I was taken aback when it turned out Isabelle Fuhrman was Virginia's daughter Tessa, because last we saw Virginia had given up custody of her kids and Tessa was still a little girl. Now she's all grown and sneaking alcohol and drunkenly attempting to kiss Bill.... what happened to our sweet girl?

Deborah: Hi Dan and all!  I'm a Mad Men fanatic, so I don't mind time jumps in theory. But Masters of Sex has been clunky with it. A big time jump at the halfway point of a season (Asterion) is awkward. At the time, I wrote "Halfway through Season 2, Masters of Sex decides 'to hell with this.'" It was strange. Jumping forward between seasons is a more elegant way and it makes sense. Here's what doesn't make sense: The show clearly wanted to get to the publication of the book, because all the years of research for the book were bound to become repetitive. That being the case, now that they've brought us to the book, why put so much attention on Virginia's kids and Bill's marriage?

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'The Wiz Live!' Has Its Full Cast

Margaret here with your live TV musical update. NBC has just announced the final principal cast members for its live production of The Wiz: R&B singer Ne-Yo as the Tin Man, Elijah Kelley (aka the showstopping dreamboat from Hairspray) as the Scarecrow, and Common as the Emerald City gatekeeper. 

The full cast, then, is set:

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New DVD: The Knick, Hot Pursuit

Still annoyed that Reese Witherspoon blew her post Wild goodwill on Hot Pursuit, to be honest. Was hoping for a Legally Blonde level mainstream comedy, though that's an admittedly high bar to clear. It's too strenuously acted to be truly fun though it might well play better on cable and DVD when it will likely be seen in pieces because some of it is funny. Its part of this week's DVD/BluRay batch which includes:

• Hot Pursuit (reviewed) 
• I Am Big Bird: The Carol Spinney Story  -documentary
• I Am Chris Farley - documentary
• Match (reviewed) - Patrick Stewart as a gay ballet instructor
• Police Story: Lockdown - with Jackie Chan
• Unfriended - group chat horror flick 

But the big news this week is that The Knick's 1st Season is finally available which means that if you don't get Cinemax you can finally see what the fuss was about Steven Soderbergh's series and why TFE was so thrilled to have Cara Seymour guest blogging earlier this summer to celebrate her terrific work as a tough talking complicated nun. 

It's a hospital show but not, thankfully, a procedural. Instead it's about scientific advances, urban madness, and the state of public heaelth and medicine at the turn of the 20th century. Clive Owen plays a brilliant Chief of Medicine who is also a junkie. It's an uneven show all told (though the design team does a super 1900s New York, not all of the performances are eager to go for period texture so it sometimes feels out of time) but when its on it's really on. Perhaps the show aired too long ago to catch Emmy's attention or perhaps Emmy votesr just won't look at Cinemax when they're too busy with HBO and Showtime series, but it did win a Globe nod for Clive's performance and one Emmy nomination for Soderbergh's direction of the pilot. 

On "Mr Robot" and "Humans"

Welcome readers to a new series, currently without a name (help?), in which various members of Team Experience will be discussing a television show or shows each Tuesday. It's our way of expanding our horizons a bit but without drowning the site in TV or limiting us to only one show as has previously been our habit with "Mad Men" or "American Horror Story". To begin, please glance furtively around, turn up your paranoia sensors, and slip into something uncomfortable with us as Lynn and Nathaniel discuss the somewhat menacing pair of "Mr Robot" (USA) and "Humans" (AMC). 

NATHANIEL R: Hi Lynn. If you want to know why I'm pairing these two shows it's because I fear we've reached the tipping point of contemporary film and television's obsession with autism or any one on the spectrum thereof (i.e. everyone in our age of staring at our phones instead of each other). Lately I've been thinking a lot about E.M. Forster's Howards End and its edict "only connect"  It seems so transgressive now, to demand as much. 

This preference for disconnection paired with the still raging epidemic of antiheroes has made the television landscape rather chilly. The danger is that everything starts feeling the same or at least like variations on the same. How radical would a really warm and friendly prestige cable series feel now?  I bring this up mainly because, though, "Mr Robot" is confidently acted/written/directed and does feel like its own show... I couldn't stop thinking of "CSI: Cyber"(my deepest apologies) as its sort of brain-damaged country bumpkin cousin because of the cyber crimes that feel like sci-fi and "Dexter" as its more sociopathic father because of the confessional 'i am deeply crazy but I'll attempt to explain myself' narration. 

Mostly I bring up "only connect" because I find both shows almost painful to watch; everyone needs a hug. Do you want to hug them?  [More...]

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Cast This: Patti Smith & Robert Mapplethorpe in "Just Kids"

Surprising news broke today that John Logan (Penny Dreadful) has successfully won a behind the scenes battle to adapt the best-selling memoir "Just Kids" as a limited series for Showtime. Why is the news surprising? Well, right here at The Film Experience, as you may recall, Patti Smith was horrified by the idea of this happening in our 2014 interview.

Our exchange went like this...

She appears to have had quite a change of heart as she was emphatic on this point when we spoke and she is still very much among the living!

So since she's changed her mind, it's time for CAST THIS!
Who should play these two iconic American artists in their twenty-something years for the miniseries? You'll need actors who can play raw emotion, uninhibited sexuality and bohemian charisma (For extra credit you can also cast playwright/actor/ex-partner of Jessica Lange Sam Shepard since he was also Patti's lover in the early 1970s and Sam Wagstaff who became Robert's older lover around the same time and his devoted mentor/patron/lover until his death.)

Both Smith and Mapplethorpe were poor 21 year-old transplants to NYC in 1967 (they were the exact same age) and lived together as roommates and lovers and later, he was homosexual after all, as devoted friends until 1974. Their fates were tied together and they both became famous, she as a musician with the release of her debut album "Horses" in 1975. His fame built more gradually as the fame of photographers and artists, tends to. 

Photos from the early 70s after the jump... (NSFW)

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