Monday, August 8, 2005

BAD PUN TITLES FOR THIS REVIEW: SO OVER THERE; BLACKHAWK DONE; TAKE THE UNDER ON OVER: Spiders (Kidsmoke), the third song on Wilco's outstanding A Ghost is Born, spends most of its time ruminating over a tightly-coiled two-note bass line. The tension in the song accumulates through this long monotone, like musical Chinese water-torture. Then the song kicks into a big arena-rock anthem bridge, releasing all of the pent-up tension. Taken separately, the song's two parts are pointless. The quiet drum-and-bass part is frustrating; the bridge is, standing alone, not particularly exciting. What is great about the song is the sudden unspooling of all of the buildup in the transition between the two.

Spiders (Kidsmoke) makes an appearance on the first episode of Steven Bochco's aggressively advertised Over There. The way that director Chris Gerolmo uses the song is a pretty good encapsulation of the problem I have with the show. Gerolmo cuts away all of the monotonous build and gives us only the soaring bridge, making it sound like just so much noise on an already loud soundtrack. He does the same thing with the plot of the pilot -- perfunctory one-card introductions of the characters followed immediately by a lot of shouting, some look-at-us-we're-basic-cable obscenity, a long slo-mo gunfight with hyper-violent images (like the top half of a guy getting blown up while his legs stagger forward), a little bit of race-baiting, and then a main character getting his leg blown off on a beer run. It's all punchline, no setup. Over There seems to want the release without putting in the effort to get the tension.

Add to that a ridiculous 80s heavy-metal score (do they even sell guitars with a whammy bar nowadays?), the even more ridiculous Hard Rocking Erik Palladino, and the topical ridiculousness of a show about the war in Iraq that avoids taking any position on the war in Iraq, and it's a recipe for mediocrity. The second episode was a little bit better -- particularly with the addition of an Arab-American private with a Sorkinesque omniscience -- but barely worth the money I paid for it.

One other note: There should be a rule against director/producers using their own musical material on TV shows. Gerolmo's title song is just bad.

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