Favorite Characters: Nicky Nichols (Orange is the New Black)

Season 3 of Orange is the New Black, released earlier this summer, of course got me thinking again about that fine show.  Not surprisingly, this led me to thinking about one of my favorites from the series; Nicky is an obvious supporting character and benefits from some of the advantages thereof, but in my book, she’s too awesome not to love.

By the time Piper comes to Litchfield, Nicky has been there long enough to be unimpressed by it.  She generally varies between a lackadaisical deadpan and bemused irony, making her own, slightly disinterested fun where she finds it.  She helps Piper find her footing during her earliest days in prison, filling her in on finer points like Litchfield’s racial separatism (“Just pretend that it’s the 1950s, it’ll make it easier to understand.”)

For the most part, Nicky has gotten to the point where she can take prison in stride.  While she may have smart comments about her work detail, other people’s feuds/affairs/catastrophes, or Litchfield’s latest dehumanizing cost-cutting measure, they don’t tend to actively bother her.  But she’s not like Poussey and Taystee, either, who are lively and always finding ways to entertain themselves.  Nicky is a little more ground down, most likely because she’s been there longer; she conveys a lot of genuine amusement, attraction, and even delight, but she does it in a more muted way.

Nicky’s main indulgence is girls, in whom she partakes liberally.  She has a steady supply of sexual partners in the name of pleasure and fun, though she naturally has her favorites – there probably aren’t many people in Morello’s life who care about her as much as Nicky does, and she has a definite thing for Alex.  This brings her a little hardship, because she’s prone to falling for women who are already hung up on someone else, but it never gets her down for long.  And she’s not one to let second-choice status stop her.  She has a detached, casually vulgar flirting style that she employs on whoever she pleases, and when there’s relationship drama to be had, she comments on it way more often than she gets involved in it.

Because this is Orange is the New Black and you may have picked up the pattern from the other character write-ups I’ve done for the show, Nicky isn’t all about laidback comic relief and enthusiastic sex scenes.  The most humorous characters in this series still have their demons, and Nicky is no exception.  In truth, going to prison might have saved her life, because it forced her to give up heroin due to nonexistent resources.  Though she does well enough when there’s no temptation, it’s clear that her addiction still has a powerful hold on her, and if the opportunity presents itself, she’s not entirely confident in her own ability to resist.

Her own introduction to Litchfield came with a big dose of withdrawal, and she looks to Red, who helped her through it, as a surrogate mother on the inside.  Nicky’s relationship with Red might be more intense than her connection to any other character.  With Morello and Alex, I think she’s able to internalize the fact that she likes them more than they like her and come to a kind of peace about it.  Red, however, she cares for deeply, and she knows that Red feels the same.  This means that when she and Red clash and she falls out of Red’s favor, it’s a hard blow, as she feels the weight of what she stands to lose.

The Fosters (2013-Present)

*Disclaimer: While I really enjoy Noah Centineo on this show and prefer him as Jesus to Jake T. Austin’s 1.0 version, I acknowledge that it’s not a character he should’ve played. He’s one of a long line of white actors in Hollywood who’ve been cast as Latinx characters, something I didn't realize when I was first watching the series. The show also features a late-series ongoing plot in which an able-bodied actor plays a character with a disability (for the sake of spoilers, I won’t mention who.) How many more times do we need to see this happen?*

 

This ABC Family show has been on my radar since it premiered, but I’ve never taken the time to seek it out until now.  Very glad I did.  It reminds me a lot of Huge or Skins in that, even though the teen drama can sometimes be overwhelming in its sheer, ridiculous insanity, it’s also capable of really great things, with some truly excellent storytelling and wonderfully engaging characters.  (I don’t think I like it as well as Huge or Skins, but I do enjoy it a lot.)

Equal parts teen drama and family drama, The Fosters follows the household of Stef Foster and Lena Adams, two women who’ve been raising a family together for over ten years.  At the start of the series, their own brood – Brandon (Stef’s biological son from a previous marriage) and adopted twins Jesus and Mariana – sees the addition of foster kids Callie and Jude Jacob.  Callie is a girl with a big heart but a long history of hurt and abandonment.  She comes to Stef and Lena’s fresh out of juvie, on her guard and out of her element.  She has no trust for the Fosters until they take in her little brother Jude as well, seeing how unfit his own foster situation is, but it’s still a struggle for her.  In time, though, as everyone adjusts to the new dynamic, Callie sees that they have the potential to become what she’s always longed for:  a forever family.

Make no mistake – this show can be, at times, a mess.  A lot of the romance plots are contrived adolescent nonsense, and the series sometimes feels addicted to melodramatic twists.  Storylines can race along at breakneck speed, piling on drama so fast and so far beyond the point of believability that you can’t help but roll your eyes at the craziness of it all.  That said, when it reins itself in and focuses on characters instead of plot-plot-plot, it’s pretty amazing.  There’s a beautiful narrative to be told here about the different ways to make a family, and the show’s best moments are undeniably the ones that are rooted in its rich potpourri of familial relationships.

I kind of love with all the intersectional dynamics at play here.  For relationships, we have same- and opposite-sex couples, biological and adopted siblings, biological and adopted parents, interracial couples, blended families (Brandon’s dad is still involved in his life and connected with the whole family,) foster relationships, and friendships.  For identity, race (including mixed race,) orientation, family history, gender (included gender norms and gender identity,) societal expectations, and economic background are all factors.  It’s so interesting see Latina Mariana (who was, of course, raised by white Stef and black Lena) navigating the quinceañera her moms throw for her, or to feel the history and kinship that comes through when lesbian Lena has a gentle conversation with questioning Jude about safety, homophobia, and internalized shame.  I also like getting a dramatized crash-course in the foster system – the ways it succeeds, the ways it can fail, and the myriad ways it can affect a child and their upbringing.  Luckily, it opens up to a fairly wide field of supporting characters, so Callie and Jude don’t have to be the sole representatives of an entire system, and other kids’ stories have a chance to be told as well.

Plus, this show has a teenage girl who does both dance and STEM.  Just saying.

Warnings

Language, sexual content (including references to abuse,) drinking and drug use, occasional violence, and thematic elements.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 (2011, PG-13)

If there were ever a pair of films made to advocate splitting adaptations of a book in half, it’s probably The Deathly Hallows.  I’ve already sung the praises of part 1, and part 2 is every bit as excellent.  Exciting, emotional, engrossing, and invigorating, this movie brings the franchise to a fitting close (and, for me, it does so even better than the book.)

Considering how little major plot remains, the film fills out surprisingly well.  Harry, Ron, and Hermione’s quest to find and destroy Voldemort’s Horcruxes takes them back to Hogwarts.  As they race to complete their mission, the school becomes the backdrop for the final stand against Voldemort and his followers.  Harry is horrified to see friends fighting and dying for what he feels is his battle, and in the end, it of course comes down to the Dark Lord and the Boy Who Lived, seeing which will carry the day.

Much like part 1 makes the long camping/trekking sequences impressively watchable, this film does wonderfully with what’s mainly a big fantasy battle.  Now, I’m all for a good fantasy battle, but as The Hobbit:  The Battle of the Five Armies shows, you can’t base an entire film around it.  It just gets to be too much, and the whole thing devolves into sameness.  Then, no matter how cool or well-performed the fighting is, you kind of resent it for giving you such a surfeit.  The trick with The Deathly Hallows:  Part 2, I think, is that there’s still quite a bit of story woven in the same time.  As the battle rages around the castle, Harry and his friends are still chasing Horcruxes, solving mysteries, and discovering hidden truths about themselves.  This provides a lot of variance in the flow of the story, and even if some of these sequences are action-heavy (like the confrontation in the Room of Requirement,) it’s a different sort of action to the fight going on outside.  In this way, the big fight never flags or feels repetitive.

The action also remains grounded in the characters.  There are some gorgeous friendship moments among the trio, lots of supporting characters get a chance to shine (I like Luna giving Harry what for, and I love Neville Longbottom his inner badass while still being so completely Neville,) and Harry’s own journey is gripping to the end.  And emotional – wow!  I mentioned it above, but it’s true.  In the last hour, this movie wrecks me.  The whole Prince’s Tale sequence is beautifully, flawlessly executed, and the Resurrection Stone scene is sublime.  Everyone’s acting is just crazy on-point, and the direction is fantastic.  Knockout, all the way.

A few more fine faces in British acting I should mention.  A nigh-unrecognizable Ciarán Hinds (who I’ll always know best as Capt. Wentworth from the Amanda Root version of Persuasion) turns in a nice performance as Aberforth Dumbledore, and the terrific Kelly Macdonald (State of Play alum!) is great in her scene as the Grey Lady.

(As much as I love the movie, though, the epilogue is still ridiculous.  That treacle didn’t work for me in the book, and the only reason it’s any better here is because there’s less of it.  Ayiyi.)

Warnings

Fantasy violence, frightening images, and thematic elements.

Ashes of Time (1994, R)

This Wong Kar-wai film is a singular experience.  With all the swordsmen of ancient China running around doing their highly-stylized thing, the easiest label to give it is wuxia, but that doesn’t quite cover it.  Because, while there are some excellent, beautifully-shot fight scenes set up at pivotal moments in the story, the fighting itself isn’t what drives the proceedings.  In the end, it’s part wuxia, part drama, part romance, part existential desert wander.

At the center of Ashes of Time is the semi-reclusive Ou-yang Feng, who’s resided in the desert since he was on the receiving end of some disappointments in love and life.  Reclusive in that he doesn’t get out much, semi- in that he gets a number of people coming to him.  Ou-yang serves as a middle man between swordsmen in need of work and people in need of swordsmen, be it for revenge, protection, or escape.  The narrative meanders through a series of interconnected vignettes as, through Ou-yang, we learn the stories of the people he meets, as well as a little more about what brought Ou-yang to his present situation.

The film offers up an arresting assortment of characters played by nearly everyone Wong has ever worked with.  Leslie Cheung (Happy Together, Days of Being Wild) plays Ou-yang, and even though his performance is a lot more subdued here than the other roles of his I’ve seen, it might actually impress me the most.  Besides Ou-yang, I’ve only ever seen him play mercurial, magnetic types like Po-wing in Happy Together, eye-catching and unpredictable, and it’s cool to see him command the screen with the opposite approach, being so still.  Brigritte Lin (Chungking Express) is fascinating as a woman masquerading as her own brother.  So much to unpack in her plot, and I love watching Ou-yang get to know both of them.  I just adore Tony Leung Chiu-wai (practically all of Wong’s films) as a swordsman with fading vision who’s trying to earn enough to make it home before he goes completely blind.  He carries the role with such quiet, soulful grace, and he has the most gorgeous fight scene in the film. 

Meanwhile, Jacky Cheung (As Tears Go By, Days of Being Wild) plays a poor but confident swordsman striving to make a name for himself, and Tony Leung Ka-fai (who I’ve not seen outside this film) has an interesting plot and a role that ties many of disparate threads of the story together.  There are also briefer appearances by Charlie Yeung (Fallen Angels,) Carina Lau (Days of Being Wild, 2046,) and the flawless Maggie Cheung (too many to list.)

That’s a big chunk of the review spent on the cast and characters, but I’m at a bit of a loss for how else to talk about it.  If you go into the film expecting something like Hero or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, you’ll be disappointed, because there are really only a few big wuxia sequences.  Each is important and stunningly filmed, but the larger point of the movie is the small, fleeting connections made between these people.  It’s a film that’s kind of saturated with loneliness, heartbreak, and a sad sense of arriving just a hair too late, and there’s something wonderful about seeing that lift, if only briefly, in the moments when they’re able to look past their own stories and see someone else’s.

Warnings

Violence (including a few graphic shots) and mild sexual content.

Top Five Love Interests: Buster Keaton

“The girl” in Buster Keaton’s films can be hit or miss.  All of them are, of course, products of their time, and some are little more than pretty still lifes for Buster’s heart to go pitter-patter over.  However, others are surprisingly fun, funny, and/or capable.  Here are Buster’s best girls!

The Girl (Sherlock Jr.)

Don’t sell her short for not having a name – after all, Buster’s character here is called “the projectionist.”  The girl loses some points for being easily swayed between suitors by the size of their chocolates (not a euphemism,) but she doesn’t lose faith in the projectionist when he’s set up to take a hit in her and her father’s estimation.  Furthermore, while the projectionist spends the second half of the picture dreaming about solving the case and exonerating himself, the girl is the one who actually does it, performing some fine detective work of her own.

Betsy (The Navigator)

I kind of love Betsy.  Like Rollo, she’s a sweet but spoiled rich kid utterly unprepared for being marooned at sea on an ocean liner, and her early attempts to help them provide for themselves are just as laughable as his.  But again, she brushes up right along with Rollo, learning the ins and outs of ship life and actually making contributions in the big climactic sequence.  I really like the way she looks out for Rollo when he’s in the diving suit.

Annabelle Lee (The General)

Since Annabelle Lee first thinks Johnnie’s a coward who refuses to join the army and doesn’t believe him when he insists otherwise, she’s fairly borderline.  She’s not initially very nice and she gets damseled early on, but once she and Johnnie connect again, she steps up quite a bit.  She does her part: stoking the furnace on the train, driving it a few times, and going back for Johnnie when they get separated.  Bonus points for possibly being named after an Edgar Allan Poe poem.

Kitty King (Steamboat Bill, Jr.)

Kitty is just too cute.  I adore the shot of her and Willie seeing each other in the barber shop, and the way she gets him suited up to work on the boat is very sweet.  She’s got a bit of an attitude that’s awfully fun, too.  One of her best scenes has her coming up behind Willie, ready to make amends after an earlier quarrel, but she loses her nerve at the last second and starts sashaying away in the other direction just as Willie turns around.  His bewildered look, trying to figure out how he could have missed her walking by him, is priceless.

Sally Richards (The Cameraman)

I know, MGM sighting – horrors, right?  But it’s The Cameraman, so it still essentially counts as a Buster movie.  Sally is maybe a bit too good to be true, but I like her kindness; poor, bungling Luke could use a little of that.  Their first scene together is lovely, and I like her continued efforts to help him in his news-reel aspirations.