The Book of Rannells: The New Normal: Season 1, Episode 11 – “Baby Proofing” (2012)

Another holiday episode, Christmas this time.  It’s decent enough, pretty funny and put together fairly well – although, after a terrific episode like “The XY Factor,” it can’t help but be a bit of a letdown.

The guys are both stressed out by the fearmongering baby-proofer going over their house with a fine-tooth comb, Bryan because he thinks she’s being unreasonable in saying no to everything, David because her scare stories are feeding into the anxieties he already has about the baby’s safety.  As a result, both are overindulging in their bad habits – wine for Bryan, sweets for David – and the excess of the holiday season doesn’t really help them to curb those habits.

This is a little similar to “Unplugged” in that we really haven’t seen any prior evidence of the problem it focuses on, but this episode does a better job of showing why it’s ramped up so much at this particular moment, between all the Christmas goodies and the stress of the coming baby.  The baby proofer (played by Cheri Oteri) does the exact opposite of assuaging worries, and by calling the Christmas tree a death trap when the baby isn’t due for another five months, it’s easy to see why Bryan is annoyed by all her demands.  While the point is definitely belabored at times, the idea of baby-proofing is tied into the larger theme of the story in a pretty good way, and it’s brought together nicely by the all-but-requisite nighttime scene between the guys.

(Side note:  despite the show’s faults, it definitely knows that its greatest strength is the relationship with Bryan and David, which is why those lovely scenes of them wrapping up most episodes as they get ready for bed never feel repetitive – they’re always welcome, because they’re always wonderful.)

Another amusing conceit of the episode is Goldie’s explanation that Jane gets “eggnog nice” around the holidays, mellowed by the combination of rum and cream.  It gives Ellen Barkin a chance to interact positively with the rest of the cast for once, and she and Bryan make surprisingly-good buddies this episode.

Andrew Rannells has some good lines here, my favorite being his exasperated, “Why is the toilet locked?!”  (Easy baby-proofing joke, well delivered.)  I also like the way he and Justin Barta play the way both guys recognize their partner’s bad habit while denying their own.  On both sides, the gentle nudging comes from a place of caring but starts to dip into nagging, especially as each gets defensive about their own indulgence.  It could’ve easily become sniping or bickering, but Rannells and Bartha strike a good tone with it.

Favorite Characters: Charley Bordelon (Queen Sugar)

After Queen Sugar’s pilot, I expected that Nova would be my favorite Bordelon sibling, and she’s undeniably wonderful, but over the course of the first season, Charley found her way deep into my affections.  Like all the Bordelons, she’s flawed, damaged, and prone to making bad decisions when she lets her emotions get the better of her.  She’s also amazing (some Charley-related spoilers.)

Even before you get into the main thrust of the show, in which Charley is often the biggest mover and shaker, there’s a tremendous amount of story potential in this character.  Charley at the outset of the series reminds me a little of a modern-day version of Marnie from The Hour, a woman who’s does everything “right” and yet still sees her “perfect” life crumbling around her.  Ambitious, whip-smart, and totally classy, Charley has cultivated a fine image for herself, her basketball star husband Davis (who she manages,) and her teenage son Micah.  She has the gorgeous house, tons of money, the well-to-do friends, and a reputable name as the woman behind a renowned sports celeb.  She has everything she could want.

Even when the plates start to wobble, Charley keeps them spinning.  When rape accusations are made against several of Davis’s teammates, Charley stands in support of her husband and immediately goes into damage-control mode to make sure the vile actions of his teammates don’t negatively impact his career.  As the story evolves, news is brought to light that implicates Davis in the rape, and even as Charley cracks wide open, letting her private life spill out in front of news cameras in a moment of abject disgust, she stitches herself back together and clings to the increasingly-flimsy hope that it’s all lies, that Davis would never, that her perfect life isn’t being eaten from the inside out.

It’s in the midst of all this that Charley’s father unexpectedly dies, leaving her, Nova, and Ralph Angel his Louisiana sugarcane farm.  At first, Charley tends to the business side of the farm distractedly, as an afterthought to be seen to only after she gets her house in order.  But as the foundations of the life she knew erode further and further, she allows herself to be wrapped in the complicated task of managing the farm.  It’s partially an escape, literally getting out of town with Micah, away from paparazzi, judgmental faces, and fair-weather friends, sequestering herself among family.  It’s also something to pour her energy into, something to take her mind off of everything that’s fallen apart.  Finally, it’s a chance for her to prove – to others, but more importantly, to herself – her worth as a businesswoman.  For Charley (and Ralph Angel, in a somewhat different way,) the farm is a symbol of what she’s capable of, and she attacks the work like her life depends on it.

On that side of things, I like that Charley, while very competent at what she does, has a steep learning curve.  Running a farm isn’t much like managing a pro athlete, and there’s a lot she doesn’t know.  She makes rookie mistakes because she’s too proud to admit she needs help, her determination to make this work can cause her to be reckless, and in part because she’s the one with the money, she tends to do things unilaterally without talking them over with her siblings.  But at the same time, she has a good head on her shoulders, and as she gets dinged up, she also learns.  She learns to use her resources and listen to good advice.  Once she comes at the farm from a humbler, more committed perspective, she proves a quick study and understands the business better everyday.  And although the work is very different, the skills she cultivated as Davis’s manager still come in handy.  In particular, she knows what she has to do to demand respect within a boys’ club, and when someone tries to play her for a fool, she outmaneuvers them in a show of strength. 

From the fields to the Queen Sugar mill (the first owned by a Black woman in Louisiana,) making boardroom deals and surviving racist/sexist a-holes, Charley continues to make mistakes, but she also continues to fight.  She’s a force to be reckoned with, and she won’t let you forget it.

Some Thoughts on Movie Musicals

This is something that started rattling around in my head a while back, when news was first coming out about a movie adaptation of Cats.  I found the casting news – Taylor Swift, James Corden, and Jennifer Hudson, among others – to be mostly meh or perplexing, and additionally, I couldn’t shake the sense of, “Why?”  To be fair, Cats has never been one of my favorites, but it’s also very inherently theatrical, and I’m not sure how that would work in a film.  For me, its strongest aspect is the feline quality of the choreography, but I can’t picture a Hollywood movie these days doing makeup-and-costume cats rather than CGI cats, so what’s the point?

But I digress.  These were the thoughts that got me started, but a larger question came out of that:  namely, why do I keep placing hope on movie musicals?  If I’m being honest, there have been plenty that I’ve enjoyed, but when we’re talking modern movie musicals, that enjoyment usually comes with major caveats.

At this point, I ought to know what to expect from a movie musical.  Generally, that means a bevy of stars whose singing ranges from sort-of-passable to pretty-good, with a few exceptions at both extreme ends of the spectrum.  Another option you see sometimes is pop/rock stars who can tear up the singing but whose acting falls more into that sort-of-passable-to-pretty-good range.  So it’s hard to get the whole package in a movie musical.  While you’ll occasionally see legit Broadway actors pop up in roles large (Jeremy Jordan as Jamie in The Last Five Years) or small (Laura Michelle Kelly as the Beggar Woman in Sweeney Todd,) these aren’t the norm.  Which I understand – movies are expensive to make, and producers want star power, but you can’t just put Hugh Jackman in everything.  It means, though, lots of film casts that can’t deliver the way a stage cast can.

But there’s another issue of translating musicals for the screen, and the cast can’t help much with that.  (RENT featured most of the original Broadway cast, but that didn’t make it a good movie.)  Adapting well is incredibly tricky – great songs get cut, the pacing feels awkward when there’s a big finish but no expectation of applause, and the overall effect seems to fall in a weird in-between place that’s not fully cinematic or theatrical.  Even something transposed pretty directly from the stage to screen winds up feeling stilted, not like a show anymore but also not enough like a movie (see, The Producers.)

And yeah, often enough, it basically works, but if you take a step back and look at the musical it came from, it’s clear that the movie is just getting by.  I’ve seen quite a few movie musicals made in about the last 20 years, and other than animated musicals like Disney stuff (which seem largely exempt from these problems,) I’m hard-pressed to come up with many that feel on par with the show but in a way that’s fitting for a movie.  Honestly, Hedwig and the Angry Inch might be the only one.  Being an indie movie probably helped, because no one was trying to earn $100 million, but that movie keeps key members of its original off-Broadway cast and makes narrative and stylistic changes to better suit the film medium while still feeling true to the spirit of the musical.

But sadly, Hedwig is the exception, not the rule.  Obviously, the experience of live theatre can’t truly be replicated onscreen, but when it comes to musicals and movies these days, I find that the best bet is almost invariably a stage show that was filmed for distribution (like Newsies, Falsettos, or the old-school Sondheim recordings from the ‘80s) – I’d kill for more of these.

I’m still left with the big question, though.  If the overwhelming majority of movie musicals pale in comparison to the “real thing,” why do I keep looking forward to them?  Is it a hope-springs-eternal situation where I keep waiting for someone to get it right?  A morbid curiosity to see what movie stars’ singing voices are like?  Am I just so hard up that I’ll take it anyway?  I’m not sure what the answer is.