"Why do I waste so much money to live like this?" the urbanite asks as he or she nears middle age. "Can I allow the balance of my days on earth to tick down while I endure this squalid existence, elbowed by strangers, breathing in exhaust?"
A midlife crisis doesn't always mean divorce, younger mates, hotter cars and Botox. In a story as old as the skyscrapers themselves, urban dwellers reach the age of 40 and suddenly grow weary of long work hours followed by chatter over cocktails. A weekend trip to the country trains their imaginations on a new image of themselves, sweetly milking cows and baking bread and cupping baby chicks in their hands. "Wouldn't life feel more wholesome and peaceful on my very own farm, purchased for half of the cost of my New York City apartment?" they ask.
When author E.B. White left Manhattan to live on a farm in Brooklin, Maine, he left behind his job writing the "Notes and Comments" page of the New Yorker and began writing a monthly column for Harper's magazine, many of which were republished in his book "One Man's Meat." Although friends warned White not to muse relentlessly on the idle country life like some privileged bore, White set about documenting the ways his busy, city mind was forced to adjust to a more pastoral setting, sometimes by obsessing about how to build a better barn door, sometimes by fussing about the perpetually askew rugs in the hallway of his farmhouse. As easy as it might be to dismiss rambling treatises on raising cows, White's second-guessing himself, outlining his neurotic tics, and overthinking everything under the sun are precisely what make "One Man's Meat" such a richly satisfying read. White is just the sort of writer who we can't help feeling grateful once suffered from bad allergies (the summer catarrh!) or was filled with dread at the approach of World War II.
The new half-hour reality show "The Fabulous Beekman Boys" (premieres 9 p.m. Wednesday, June 16, on Planet Green) presents us with the modern version of this story: Like White, longtime partners Josh Kilmer-Purcell and Brent Ridge leave their New York City lives behind at middle age to purchase and run the Beekman Farm in Sharon Springs, N.Y. Instead of thoughtfully contemplating this new, slower pace of life, though, Josh sells a book about his new life ("The Bucolic Plague") but keeps his full-time job in the city as an ad exec, and Brent, former V.P. of Healthy Living for Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, arrives with visions of a Beekman brand that will produce everything from goat cheese to soap to "fine edibles."
And then the filming begins, just in time for Josh to lament that, the second he drives in from the city on the weekends, Brent puts him to work. "This is so not what I envisioned my life being," Josh explains, and we flash to images of his former life as a drag queen named Aqua. "I was famous for having clear plastic breasts that had goldfish swimming around in them," he explains. So how will our former party boy and Omnimedia executive adjust to their new project? Not very smoothly, as you might imagine.
Brent: The tractors aren't lined up.
Josh: They're tractors, Brent.
Brent: It doesn't take any more effort to park the tractors and the other equipment in a nice, orderly fashion.
Josh: (voice-over) He's always been a real type A go-getter, and I'm always the one that just wants to kick back and relax in a hammock.
Josh: There's not, like, parking lines out there in the yard.
Brent: I don't want the barnyard to look like a barnyard.
Josh: Of course not.
E.B. White outlined this preoccupation with seemingly minor tasks as one of the main hazards faced by new farmers. "There will be plenty of them (farmers) who will get sidetracked, probably along the line of some special hobby, hitherto unindulged," White wrote in his essay "The Practical Farmer." But Brent seems sidetracked by several big hobbies at once. Unlike Josh, who doesn't seem to have any drive at all when it comes to hard work and just seems to want a simpler, quieter life, Brent is always fixated on some new challenge. All it takes is a few glimpses of Brent, busily covering a wheel of artisanal cheese with black ash or speaking to a crowd of guests who've come for an event they've organized that he refers to as "Beekmanpalooza," to know that Brent isn't in this for the relaxation. This guy is building a brand.
In other words, while "The Fabulous Beekman Boys" could be encountered as a commentary on the increasingly avid pursuit of respite, of authenticity, of satisfying work by city-dwellers, while it might be deconstructed as yet another search for deeper meaning in the sound of birds chirping and the smell of goat manure, while it might even be taken as a commentary on the twisting of E.B. White's escape from New York into a modern parable on how true escape is impossible as long as you're blogging about it, this show is really just a screwball comedy in which a mismatched couple gripe and bicker and then fall into a big puddle of mud.
Thankfully, though, both Josh and Brent are charming in their own, unique ways (and charming on their blogs, I might add). And if neither of the "boys" appeals to you, there's always their helper, Farmer John, who looks like a big, bulky macho farmer but speaks like a soft-spoken kitten. "The Beekman was a place for me to bring my goats, which are my life," he tells the cameras in tears. "Sorry, my goats are very important to me. Shoot. Um, without Josh and Brett, I would not have been able to keep them. One of my best and worst traits is that I can become very emotional about my animals."
Farmer John and the Beekman Boys themselves -- along with the usual wickedly funny editing by the producers at World of Wonder -- make this show an entertainingly absurd, voyeuristic treat. Because, just as White referred to his own farm as "merely a private zoo" compared to the real self-sustaining farms nearby, the Beekman boys' humility and sense of humor in the face of this daunting new life are their salvation. Like so many other smart overachievers, Josh and Brent might be enamored of farming and animals in theory, Josh may enjoy tooling around in his vegetable garden and Brent might love watching goats giving birth, but on our TV screens, what we mostly see are two people who don't seem all that connected with this gorgeous mansion or to its verdant fields or to the animals that their helper is weeping over. What they are exceedingly good at is embodying the playfully quarrelsome couple -- and how better to promote their brand? In fact, in a moment of meta-midlife-self-branding madness at the end of the first episode, all of these tumultuous factors tumble to center stage as Brent and Josh sweep the porch.
Josh: Why are we cleaning so much? It's not just all the work that we're doing, I don't see you. I'm in the city for five days a week and then I come out here, and I only see you for 48 hours. And then the whole 48 hours all we do is clean or nag. I miss you.
Brent: Well, I don't know how you want me to respond to that, because in my mind, I've already convinced myself that we have to make sacrifices this year.
Josh: I want you to respond like a human!
Brent: Yes, I miss you too, but if we want to get to the point where this farm is self-sufficient, we have to work towards that. Having a country place was your dream, and I feel like I'm the one making sacrifices.
Josh: No, this is what happened. Like everything else, yes, it was my dream, I wanted a nice little country place, but I have a dream and then you take it, and you turn it into this whole production.
Brent: Somewhere along the line you decided you wanted to be up here full-time, and I'm working to try to figure out a way to make that come true.
Josh: No, somewhere along the line you decided to make an empire out of this place.
Brent: How else do you think we're going to afford it?
So there's the answer, for those of you longing to escape your lives of urban squalor. Sometimes, even when you move to a farm in the middle of acres of open, green space, your midlife crisis comes with you -- along with your obsessive type-A behaviors, your ego needs, your financial woes, and your fixation on transforming your entire life into a robust, multitiered global brand. The fact that we're granted access to this friction is what makes "The Fabulous Beekman Boys" so surprising, and so enjoyable.
But even though their cheeses look delicious and the floors to the mansion are spotless, even though the squabbling matches are hysterical and the hurled insults are far too cutting to be faked, there's still something that's a little depressing (and relatable) about the Beekman Boys, poster children for an era of unbearably high expectations. Even when you escape to a simple, picture-perfect life, it's never that simple or that perfect. If you don't want the barnyard to look like a barnyard, you'll never be happy.
Or as White puts it, "When I was a child people simply looked about them and were moderately happy; today they peer beyond the seven seas, bury themselves waist deep in tidings, and by and large what they see and hear makes them unutterably sad."
"The one time in my entire life I thought I was happy, I was a zombie." -- Tara (Rutina Wesley),"True Blood"
Sometimes I wonder if I'll wake up from these happy, golden years as a TV critic and say the same thing. But then the third season screeners of "True Blood" (returns 9 p.m. Sunday, June 13) arrive in the mail, and I forget all of that and instead plummet into a world so dark and dirty and hilarious and unnerving that it glamours me into a placid state, then leaves me wanting more.
How does Alan Ball do it? His vampire tale serves up the stickiest, filthiest, most delicious debauchery imaginable with reckless abandon. Whether Bill is throwing a flaming lamp at someone's head or Eric is biting into a foe and then apologizing to his hostess by saying, bashfully, "I got your rug all wet," whether Tara is weeping snottily into a bottle of Wild Turkey or slugging some racist rednecks in the face, whether Sam is earnestly discussing his roots with some strangers or ripping off his clothes and running through the woods as a dog, this show is filled with the kinds of curveballs that keep you slightly off-kilter, unsettled and unprepared for what might happen next.
While the orgiastic madness of Season 2 might be hard to top, the first three episodes of Season 3 look promising indeed, serving up one juicy twist after another, plus a steady flow of great dialogue, intense conversations, brutality, blackmail, mystery, suspense and, best of all, some wickedly funny moments that are beyond compare. Despite all of the campy, overly obvious commentary on prejudice, bigotry and marginalized subcultures that were always gumming up the works in the first season, "True Blood" had an addictive second season and now the show is reaching a new high. The cast's Southern accents finally sound reasonably natural, their performances are better than ever, and the storytelling has blown past X having a crush on Y and Z wanting to kill X, and landed in some slippery realm where everyone is trying to get over on everyone else -- you know, like "The Shield" except with vampires instead of bad cops and werewolves where the drug cartels should go.
Yes, werewolves. There's nothing quite like throwing a whole new demonic segment of society into the picture, and then letting the audience piece together what the motivations of this new group might be. Werewolves are scary but apparently conquerable, as long as they don't have any vampire blood to drink. If they do, their strength grows exponentially, as a few of the key players on "True Blood" soon find out.
But there are other power plays in the mix, including the reemergence of Queen Sophie-Ann (Evan Rachel Wood) plus a new menacing figure who seems to have Bill stuck in a tight spot again. Somehow, though, "True Blood" never feels repetitive, partially because each scene is driven by some palpable conflict or tension. This is exactly what was missing from the show in its first season, a sense of underlying friction and energy, a feeling that every character is moving inexorably toward either self-discovery or self-destruction. Instead of just marking time, the show treats us to a new revelation, a new dynamic, a new problem every few minutes, and every scene has one or two great lines or wickedly nasty jokes. The second and third episodes of the season in particular made me shake my head, cringe, jump a little, chuckle, and laugh out loud several times.
Even when Tara (Rutina Wesley) and Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis) are talking about the darkness in their family or Sam (Sam Trammell) is trying to track down his birth parents, there's always some absurd detail or punch line lingering there. At a vampire dinner party, one of the hosts pours a drink for a guest, saying, "Chilled, carbonated blood. It's cruelty-free, all willingly donated. Note the citrusy finish. This one ate only tangerines for a week."
And I love Pam (Kristin Bauer), Eric's (Alexander Skarsgard) lesbian vampire sidekick, whose tone lands somewhere between madame, enforcer and high-end real estate agent. "Now, why'd you have to go and kill that Maenad?" she asks Sookie (Anna Paquin) upon entering her house. "She's a terrific decorator." These are the little touches that bring this series to life, and make you want to run out and buy Charmaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse novel series to read in between episodes.
The story itself is richer and more provocative than it's ever been, and everyone seems to be working at cross purposes. Sookie wants to find Bill (Stephen Moyer). Eric wants to get with Sookie. Eric has a strange alliance with the Queen, and with Lafayette. Lafayette wants to be left alone, but he needs to take care of Tara in the wake of Eggs' (Mehcad Brooks) death. Arlene (Carrie Preston) has a problem. And Bill? Bill is struggling with a few choices about how to keep Sookie safe.
Everyone is struggling this season, even Jason (Ryan Kwanten), who feels terrible guilt in the wake of killing Eggs. "I'm not sure what normal is anymore," he tells Andy (Chris Bauer). Andy's response? "For now, you gotta be the Jason Stackhouse everybody knows, so conscience off, dick on, and everything's gonna be all right." Soon Jason discovers a higher calling, though -- as is his habit -- but will he ever really escape his essential "conscience off, dick on" animalism?
Newly minted vampire Jessica (Deborah Ann Woll) is wondering the same thing about herself: Can she get the upper hand on her urges, or is she doomed to follow her hungers and desires straight to hell? "We can fight our natures together!" her optimistic true love Hoyt (Jim Parrack) tells her, but is that even possible? Can anyone really overcome their nature? That seems to be the underlying theme this season, and mostly what we see at the outset are characters who feel powerless against their own fatal flaws.
If you've been bored by most of the dramas on TV this spring (I know I have),"True Blood" is here to refresh your palate with something truly delightful, absurd, riveting, and above all, depraved. If that doesn't sound tempting, well, as Eric would say, "With all due respect, I fear you're not considering all the angles."
"Glee" may go down as one of the most promising but inconsistent, thrilling but hopelessly awkward dramas in TV history. After starting off with a bang last fall and becoming a big hit overnight, the show stumbled with stilted performances, droopy storylines and clunky, overwritten dialogue.
Even so, it's tough not to cheer for "Glee," admire its ambition, hope that it might regain its former glory. This deliriously silly, over-the-top love letter to high school and show choirs and geeks and masochistic cheerleading coaches still has its peculiar charms. Just like an actual teenager, "Glee" is moody. It vacillates between being snide and earnest, mean-spirited and sappy, dour and bubbly. Although the overarching tone of this show lingers in the danger zone of too-earnest-to-stomach, it offers a sly take on our pop cultural moment, on the perversely sophisticated yet hopelessly naïve perspectives of teenagers, on the paradoxes and trials and juvenile dependencies of the modern adult. Like overachieving, compulsive starlet Rachel (Lea Michele) herself, "Glee" teeters on the brink of brilliance, then manages to mess everything up anyway.
Now that the first season has finally come to an end, with a big, Journey-filled bang, here's hoping that this fall, "Glee's" talented producers can avoid some of the pitfalls that threatened to turn this vibrant show into the most rapid flameout of the 2010 TV season. Here's my take on how to ensure that "Glee" reaches its full potential in its sophomore season:
1. Cut out the psychobabble!
This is Dramatic Writing 101: Characters who march around communicating clearly, explaining everything to each other and admitting their own particular psychological shortcomings are characters that leave nothing for the audience to figure out for themselves.
Quinn to Mr. Schu: You really think I can get it all back again?
Rachel to Jesse: I have this pathological need to be popular.
Jesse to Rachel: I should've been enough for you, Rachel!
Jane to Emma: If you want to get better, you need to start communicating your feelings.
Rachel to Puck: You need a song that's going to help you to express your inner pain!
Mercedes to Mr. Schu: You are glee club. You're in all of us now.
How did we wander into this group therapy session, and when will it end? Psychobabble was just fine on "Glee" creator Ryan Murphy's "Nip/Tuck," since that show is filled with scary humans who run around threatening and undermining each other using their 2-cent psychoanalysis. Here, the babble is twisted into a much less savory form: on-the-nose assessments, self-esteem boosters and You-Go-Girl-isms that not only sound absolutely out of place, but block the dramatic momentum every time they rear their ugly heads. Don't tell us everything. Leave us some subtext to uncover. Great characters layer over their feelings with coded small talk. Even on "Six Feet Under," the psychobabbliest show ever, they argued about the wine instead of addressing their underlying resentments. Rent all five seasons of that show and then rethink your compulsive attachment to laying out every single motivation and pathology for your viewers. Your new mantra should be: Shut up and sing.
2. When in doubt, give Mercedes (and the cheerleading dance crew) center stage.
When your mind goes back to some of the best musical numbers of "Glee's" first season – "Beautiful" by Christina Aguilera, performed at the school assembly, "Break Your Windows" by Jazmine Sullivan -- who do you see the most often? Amber Riley, who has a giant voice and dynamic performance style but who never, ever makes her songs feel stilted, strained, goofy, or out of place -- ever. Mercedes is not only one of the show's most likable characters, but she brings exactly the right spirit of showmanship and sophistication to her pieces. Throw in the cheerleaders (and if possible, the marching band! Fleetwood Mac's Tusk?), and you've got a winner.
3. Break Sue Sylvester out of her repetitive villain role.
"I am going to crush the Glee club if it's the last thing I do!" Sue Sylvester told us in the first episode of the first season, and she's said the same thing in every single episode since. This is what you do with the funniest woman on the show? You give her the exact same storyline in every single episode? You have a whole summer ahead. Think of something new for Jane Lynch to do besides sucking down energy drinks and insulting Will's hair. Her change of heart in the finale -- kept to herself, of course -- suggests we might be headed in that direction.
4. Keep Will Schuester in check.
We've been trying to forget boy bands for well over two decades now, but here's Mr. Schu (Matthew Morrison), bringing all the agony of New Kids and 'N Sync back for us with his funky white boy snapping and jiving, with his growly soul voice and his gelled hair. It's time for someone to say to Mr. Schu: Tell, don't show. Because we don't need you turning Kanye West and Young MC and yes, even Vanilla Ice into something that makes us all feel dirty and shameful inside. Next time, let's give one of the kids a shot at the hip hop, and leave Mr. Schu out of it.
5. Give more performances to Santana, the brown-haired cheerleader.
Did you notice, when the girls were singing and dancing to Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance," how fantastic Santana (Naya Rivera) was? This woman has an impressive voice and a strong stage presence. Why isn't she performing solos occasionally? This makes "Glee" a lot like an actual high school show choir, where the same two teacher's pets are handed all of the best songs. While Finn and Rachel might dominate the storylines most of the time, we simply can't watch those two perform again and again and again, because it's boring. Rachel has a beautiful voice, so does Finn, but they're both a little one-note, let's face it. Same moves, same expressions, same sorts of songs. Plumb the depths of the cast and find more interesting performers there, starting with Santana.
6. Make Kurt one of the lead characters of the show, and give him the prominent storylines to match.
We all love Kurt. Chris Colfer is brilliant and has an amazing voice and stage presence. Give this guy a boyfriend. Give him a dog. Give him a castle. Give him anything he wants, because he is sheer perfection. His performance of "Single Ladies" was hysterical and one of the best of the season. His bit with the interior decorating swatchboard for his and Finn's shared room was genius. Dream up some crazy stories for the guy, because he can pull them off, he's proven that. And we would much, much rather learn more about him than Rachel and Finn.
7. Get a little more eclectic: Cole Porter, yes, but also Leonard Cohen, Sufjan Stevens, Kate Bush, Bob Marley, The National, Bon Iver, KD Lang…
You've done the equivalent of "The Big Chill" soundtrack several times over. We know all of those R&B classics by now. Consider any song that played in a Nora Ephron film off limits. Throw out everything by Journey. And no, we don't need to hear Sinatra again – it plays at the local outdoor mall five times a day, and how can New Directions possibly compete with a giant dancing water fountain? We've been through all of the '80s hits from "Can't Touch This" to "Another One Bites The Dust." In "Glee's" second season, it's time to get a little more eclectic. First of all, there's Cole Porter, one of the greatest songwriters ever. Can't you imagine the choir singing a really restrained version of "In the Still of the Night" that starts very, very softly and builds? But don't limit yourself to old-school classics and pop hits. How about Mercedes singing a Nina Simone-style version of Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne"? Does every single song have to fit into some storyline? Why should it? Why not throw Sufjan Stevens' "Chicago" or "For the Widows in Paradise" into the mix? How about the rollicking weirdness of Kate Bush's "Suspended in Gaffa"? Doesn't Bon Iver's "Re: Stacks" just cry out for a melancholy library scene between two heartsick kids? As long as you're catering to the former frat boy demographic, is it so hard to imagine a really odd arrangement of Bob Marley that the choir might tackle?
The point is, don't be afraid to take risks and get a little crazy. And now that I sound just like Will Schuster, I'll call it a night. Let's salute "Glee" for its bold, ambitious, uneven first season, and hope for a fantastic second season this fall.
Oh, to be an artist! To splash paint onto canvases, or carve things out of wood, or smear chocolate pudding across your body, each act turgid with meaning, with messages! To remain brave and strong and confident in your art, even when everyone treats you like a recalcitrant child who refuses to give in to the demands of the mainstream world, who avoids gainful employment like it's contagious.
"This is art. I made it," the artist says, thereby justifying a fantastical existence, in which every extra hour of sleep, every wild experience, every heated conversation, is fuel for his or her creative fire. Imagine valuing every moment that much, believing that anything you do could add up to something weighty, regardless of whether or not anyone else can grasp its weight!
I envy artists. But I still have to wonder, should such idealistic little lambs be paraded into the crass slaughterhouse of reality TV, for the butchers to slice away at their bluster, to rip at their swagger, to tear apart their fragile egos?
Well, of course they should. But is it possible for people to make great art, or talk about art in any worthwhile way, or to concern themselves with what makes art meaningful while cameras are aimed at their faces? Isn't that a little like expecting porn stars to make sweet love to each other, out of nothing at all?
Even if it slices and dices art into something consumable and therefore disposable, I love the audacity of Bravo's "Work of Art: The Search for the Next Great Artist" (premieres 11 p.m. June 9). This show takes all of the petulance and nastiness and passion of "Project Runway" or "Top Chef" and applies it to the rarefied realm of fine art. Even though there's something a little off-kilter about exposing the hothouse flowers of the art world to the inhospitable chill of mass media, even though executive producer Sarah Jessica Parker keeps clomping in on her tall shoes to remind us that she totally la-la-loves art and artists because she's just a big, fussy, important New York City connoisseur that way, even though I just know that some talentless hack will win the title of "Next Great Artist" but the title itself will prove to be a terrible curse and the winner will spend the balance of his or her days being assaulted by strangers on the street (the one experience that doesn't fuel even more great art), I still love this show, and I will watch it religiously. Fear me.
Because there is some little peek at glory here, among these odd people who can take a concept and translate it into an image or an object. There's patience and sensitivity and raw nerve, and it's good to see this kind of focus on the abstract, particularly when your life has become hopelessly concrete — and whose hasn't? How should experienced artist Judith Braun, 62, capture dolled-up hottie artist Jaclyn Santos, 25, in the premiere episode? Should she try to capture her femininity, or the audacity of her work? What kind of an image will reflect her essence? This is heady stuff — and stuff that's well worth watching on TV.
Why is it worth watching on TV, specifically? Because, while I might find the comments of the judges unfair or hopelessly pretentious or flatly irritating, while I might balk at the fact that China Chow's main claim to her role as the show's host is that she's an aristocrat who "was born into a family of collectors." (Hey, me too! My grandmother collected cottage cheese tubs and orange juice bottle tops!), I still love the fact that I'm not actually at an art gallery, teetering on bad shoes, drinking Sauvignon Blanc with a bunch of sniffling wieners with overpriced scarves tied jauntily around their smug throats. I love that I don't have to self-consciously lean in to view the little speckles of paint on the canvas, knowing that I appear to be just another one of these preening fools with appreciative or dismissive or critical looks plastered across their faces. I don't have to hear the murmurs of "Mmm, vibrant use of color!" or "This reminds me of Vermeer, a little — the darkness," or other Art History 101 vomitry.
What is it about art that makes us hate art lovers so very much? It's easy enough to love artists themselves, particularly artists who can convey emotion beautifully on the canvas but who struggle to express simple thoughts in conversation. I like that over-abstracting flavor of awkwardness in a person. What I don't like is the sorts of people who speak fluidly and easily and steadily at art openings, stuffing green grapes and Brie into their faces while deciding which painting will go best in their guest bathroom. Do I hate their big, dusty piles of cash that much? Or do I hate this urge to own something that came from such a pure place, to frame it and show it off and use it to service their own egos? But aren't we all ego-driven louts?
I am allergic to sophistication, is the bottom line. This must be why I get a strange tickling feeling in my throat when presented with "Work of Art's" Tim Gunn: Simon de Pury, "a leader in the international art world," who was the chief auctioneer at Sotheby's for many years. I love this description of him from his business's website: "He generates excitement in the saleroom, displays great charm and wit, and can conduct sales in four languages — English, French, German and Italian."
"My approach to art is purely phys-ee-cal," offers de Pury. "I normally know in the first split second if it's a great work or not." Oh sweet Jesus. Have you ever heard anything so deliciously pompous in your entire life? This guy is my new TV hero. But what is he doing on TV?
Some of the show's competitors seem to be wondering the same thing about themselves. "This is the first time my art's been out of the house, " says Erik Johnson, 30. "I just don't want to fall on my face."
Too late for that. Judith describes Erik's first piece as "high-school amateurish," and Mark Velasquez, 32, who has a day job as a fry cook, says, "That's what you make when you're a cool, angsty guy freshman year in college."
Yes, the artists on this show have clearly been chosen not just for their art, but for their propensity for criticizing each other. There's certainly no dearth of bluster among them — at least not yet. Nao Bustamante, 41, a well-known performance artist, says, "I feel like I've already won, and so I think that I can be really generous with my criticism." What a charitable soul!
After the first challenge, it's hard not to pick a few favorites. Abdi Farah, a 22-year-old artist from Dover, Penn., is my personal favorite, along with Miles Mendehall, 23, who says he has OCD and doesn't recognize Sarah Jessica Parker when she walks in the door, God bless him! Ryan Shultz, 26, sort of reminds me of the Liam Gallagher of the bunch (in a good way, if that's possible), proclaiming grandly, "Although I am broke most of the time, I live to create, and I create to live." Apparently he wakes up at noon and paints until 5 or 6 in the morning — which should prepare him well for the grueling weeks ahead.
Mostly, though, it's hard not to wonder how these very sensitive human beings will weather this surreal experience. And who will win the big prize, which includes a solo show at the Brooklyn Museum of Art? "It would be pretty hard to get excited about anything else for a long, long time," says Abdi of the prize. (Leave it to an artist to paint a huge victory in terms of the relative drabness of everything else.)
And still, there's something refreshing about these artists. To have so much conviction in your talent, to turn your back on conventional means of survival? There's something honorable about casting the typical career trajectory to the wind and just setting up a space to paint. Live to create, create to live.
And it'll be entertaining to see their bold and daring spirits crushed between the merciless snapping jaws of reality TV. I feel like I've already won!
Reality TV has an interesting effect on the human beings who agree to appear on it. Some seem to flourish under the hot lights, unveiling witty quips or appearing genuinely crestfallen on cue, creating the sorts of robust personal brands that will lead to multi-tiered marketing strategies that include speaking tours, consumer product launches, and of course, more reality TV shows. Bethenny of "Real Housewives of New York City" epitomizes the sort of person who makes the unreal pressures of reality work for her personal brand: She and her BFF Jill Zarin had a huge fight in season 3, but Bethenny still emerged with a handsome fiancé, a baby, and two brand new BFFs (Alex and Ramona), plus bonus branding points for being Relatably Heartbroken all season.
But then there are the others, the reality TV stars who sweat under the lights and are often at a loss for words but cobble together some semi-aggressive nonsense out of desperation. Instead of alternately playing the hero and appearing vulnerable ("Women age 18-49 relate to vulnerability!" shout their marketing consultants), instead of valiantly sallying forth in life despite enormous challenges, they pick fights, lash out, become paranoid, implode, seethe, grind their teeth, turn the screw, break a heel and get something stuck in their hair. And, in some of the more colorful cases, their marriages fall apart, they get in violent fights with their boyfriends, they redecorate their luxury apartments to look like Vegas hotel rooms, they get drunk with Hooters girls, and their personal brands spin out of control, swerve off the road, and explode into flames. Yes, Kelly, Jill and LuAnn: We're talking about you.
Now, in the wake of the third season finale of "Real Housewives of New York City," you might think that the second group, those "Housewives" wobbly and flawed and genuine enough not to present a bulletproof brand to the cameras, would win our hearts and our empathy. If you think this, you haven't watched much of this show, and therefore don’t understand just how dramatically some of these women transformed themselves into gigantic losers overnight.
But maybe they were gigantic losers to begin with? It's honestly a little bit tough to tell. Granted, Kelly, whose words and actions most resemble those of an overgrown teenage boy, is a pretty clear-cut case of Wackadoo, as Bethenny calls it (and she writes on her blog, "I grew up in an insane asylum, so I can sense when someone is unstable from the beginning.") Kelly's meltdown on Ramona's getaway was truly epic, made great TV and proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the real show here should be "Real Housewives of New York City on a Slow Boat to China," because the claustrophobic quarters and omnipresence of cameras that week resulted in some truly memorable panic attacks and enraged outbursts (followed by tears, furious texting to frenemy backup at home, rifling through enormous suitcases of string bikinis, etc). The low/high point had to be Kelly lashing out at the other women's stubborn insistence on discussing their emotions. Kelly expressed her disgust for feelings in general as "so 1979." (Oh my god. Remember 1979? Back when we had feelings? That was a good year.) According to Bethenny, Kelly's lashing out at the others repeatedly was only the tip of the iceberg. "Truth be told, what aired was very tame compared to what actually happened. I think that to air the full scope of it would terrify the viewers. We were truly terrified ourselves, and I must point out that none of us came home from that trip and told anyone about what went on there. We understood how serious it was and we were all scared."
But even Kelly's glorious crash and burn (or whatever we saw of it) couldn't touch Former Countess LuAnn's slow and steady decline this season. Somehow she went from being the only restrained, polite, reasonably well-dressed, dare I say borderline normal human being on the show to being a giant, flashy disaster in ass pants. Once, LuAnn attended polo games and brunches and she wore pretty hats and refused to indulge in idle gossip. Yes, she gave impromptu etiquette lessons to anyone who would listen and she was a big fake who never relaxed or managed to seem remotely human-like while the cameras rolled, but at least she looked pretty good and didn't fling poo with the other monkeys. Cut to LuAnn, whining that Ramona's husband called her "Count-less" in the wake of her divorce, curling up in Jill's bed and giggling like a coed on holiday, making googly eyes and necking with a deeply strange man, and – this is really the kicker – recording a "dance hit" with a cheesy producer, then lipsync-performing it for a fraudience. "Money can't buy you clah-hass!" LuAnn sang on Thursday night's finale, and a nation of women aged 18-49 thought, "Apparently money can't buy you talent or self-respect or a good producer either." It should be noted, however, that money can buy you a plucky boyfriend who looks like a French version of David Schwimmer and is just European enough to dance along to your terrible song without picking up on the deliriously cheesy nature of the whole event, thanks to its confusing resemblance to a really good disco party he attended in the Cote d'Azur one summer. Or, in the words of LuAnn's song, "Elegance is lear-hur-hur-hur-hurned!"
But even with Wackadoo Terror Cruise and Ass-Pants-Wearing Fallen Royalty in the cards, you have to give it up for Jill Zarin. Jill, who almost seemed likable last season, spiraled into madness in season trois. And listen up, lady friends, because Jill presents the classic case of The Envious BFF: She's your pal. She loves you when you're down. You weep and snot into her big shoulder pads. You can call her any time of the day. The more desperate and broken you sound on the phone, the more delighted and warm and helpful she is. She loves feeling needed, essential, sane. She loves playing mother hen to messy, needy chicks.
But once you straighten up and fly right? She hates you with the white hot passion of a thousand suns. You find your man, you get pregnant, you don't need her quite as much, and she goes straight to your enemies and whines about something totally below the belt, like "When my husband was sick with cancer you never called!" Now, pay attention here, because a true friend calls you and says: "My husband is sick with cancer. Why don't you ever call?" It's a conversation. You're busy running your personal empire and posing nude for PETA and blogging wittily, and she gets it. You're working out the last kinks in the contract for your next reality spin-off, "Bethenny Getting Married." (premieres next week on Bravo!). You're getting your big boobs stuffed into a fashionable top for your next "tell it like it is" voiceover session. Your BFF understands. She's a wee bit envious, sure, but she takes an extra yoga class and gets over it.
Not Jill Zarin. Jill tried to make Bethenny look like the lowest form of gutter rat for weeks, she refused to allow Bethenny to explain, apologize or even exist in the same room with her, she exploded in rage when Bethenny called, and she ran to the arms of – cringe – Ass Pants LuAnn for lots of fake kissing and bitching and moaning and plotting revenge. My God, remember when Jill put Bethenny on speaker phone when Bethenny was calling to sort things out, so that LuAnn could hear, too? You don't? Boy, you really should've watched this season. I'm serious. It was like when Mr. T stole that taco truck on "The A Team" and he almost ran over a hooker and a hot dog vender but then he rammed the truck into that criminal carrying a big bag of cash, and the cash floated all over the place as Hannibal growled "I love it when a plan comes together." Except in this case, Kelly was driving the taco truck, and she killed a few pedestrians, whom she referred to as "evil bitches" when she texted Jill a few minutes later at a nearby Starbucks.
God I love this crazy show. The third season was a trillion times better than the first and the second combined (many episodes of which amounted to elaborate infomercials), and let's be clear, the New York housewives are a trillion times more interesting than the Orange County, Atlanta and New Jersey housewives combined. Sadly, though – and perhaps this is an omen of things to come -- Thursday night's finale was pretty dull. Ramona got her hair cut, put on a fancy white dress and wept as she told the cameras and the guests in the room how happy her stupid husband Mario has made her for seventeen years now. Or, as Kelly put it, "The whole thing was so concocted. Seventeen years? I mean seventeen is such a random number. But if I were doing something, I'd want her to just come, I wouldn't want her to judge me. So I decided that I was going to be the bigger person, again, and that I was going to show up." Kelly, at 6' 5" or whatever you are, aren't you technically always the biggest person?
The Housewives are now divided into two teams: Team Jill includes Jill, LuAnn and Kelly, Team Bethenny includes Ramona and Alex, and new-girl Sonja (who is self-deprecating, fixated on sex, and possibly gay, all of which make her far more human-like than the others straight out of the gate) is leaning toward Team Bethenny. And then there's possible addition Jennifer Gilbert, who appears willing to say nasty things for the camera, and therefore may be necessary to create more chaos and emotional flameouts that are really thinly-veiled branding opportunities next season. Until then, we can only seethe and grind our teeth and long for more.
Oh, and watch Bethenny get her pregnant belly waxed. Sorry, Jill.
If you've ever been fired, dumped, evicted or displaced, you know how a sudden shift in your circumstances can rattle your sense of identity in unexpected ways. You never know what grounds you until the ground beneath you disappears. Without that job title, will you have the same bluster? In a different house, on a different street, will you still feel at peace with yourself? Without your boyfriend or your wife, without regular calls from this friend, will you still feel sure of yourself? We'd all like to imagine that we're confident enough to forge through the world without status or support, but the truth is a different story. Maybe becoming a mature adult means understanding what makes us happy, what keeps us alive, and what might be holding us back.
This search for identity and happiness takes center stage in the second season of Showtime's "United States of Tara" (finale premieres 10:30 p.m. Monday, June 7), from Tara (Toni Collette) herself, who's starting to discover that merely being healthy isn't enough for her, to Max (John Corbett), who's thrown himself into such a supporting role with Tara that he can't remember what he wants anymore. Meanwhile, Marshall (Keir Gilchrist) is grappling with his gender identity while Kate (Brie Larson) searches for some meaningful life after high school.
Whether or not these characters succeed at finding themselves, "United States of Tara" certainly has, digging into the emotional whiplash of modern adulthood in bold, smart new ways this season. Instead of treating Tara's alters (or alternate personalities) as the main attraction, the writers have begun to dig into a richer, more thoughtful exploration of identity: How do we define ourselves? How do our surroundings and circumstances define us?
The biggest surprise this season may be Max (John Corbett), Tara's husband, who, after playing the blandly supportive spouse through the first season, has finally started to freak out in earnest over the never-ending nightmares of being married to an army of different personalities. Max may have been comfortable playing the good guy when Tara was sick, but when she seems healthy but still acts selfishly, he reaches his limit. Max has spent so long defining himself as the giving husband that he's not sure how to behave when he's got a legitimate reason to be pissed off. Even when one of Tara's alters, Buck, ends up having an actual relationship with a local bartender, Pammy (Joey Lauren Adams), on the sly, Max takes his anger out on a shady contractor instead of confronting Tara. Later, as he scurries around cleaning the house before a visit from Social Services, Tara traipses in with Lynda (Viola Davis), the artist whose friendship Tara stole from her daughter, Kate, and engages in a meandering conversation. Suddenly those years of giving up a normal life to take care of her start to look like masochism to Max. And even as Max is doubting their bond, Tara has the audacity to suggest that he might not have stayed with her if not for her illness.
Such is the boldness of middle-aged people, pushing on the walls around them to see if everything will cave in. The problem with speaking such big, ugly questions out loud is that they echo around, begging for an answer. Suddenly Max has to ask himself what he wants -- something he's obviously avoided doing for years. As long as Tara is wandering off, trying to find her most authentic self, why can't he? The trouble that's stirred up when these two stop sacrificing everything to keep the family together captures the perfect snapshot of the midlife crisis.
But this is the glory of "USOT" in its second season: Instead of devolving into the sort of weightless, farcical domain that's all too common in half-hour cable dramedies, this show stopped using Tara's alters to inject a little action into the story and started using them to add new layers of depth and understanding to the mysteries and character conflicts already in play. When Shoshanna, Tara's latest shrink alter, shows up and asks Max how he feels about "all of this" she presents something irresistible: An alter who's wiser and calmer than Tara herself. Max finds himself soothed by her presence, even though he knows it's absurd of him to feel that way.
Their daughter, Kate, is on her own solitary search for meaning, albeit a somewhat haphazard one. Her attempt to find a reasonably interesting pursuit after graduating from high school first lands her a job at a debt collection agency, then brings her into the company of Lynda. When her friendship with Lynda is usurped by Tara, Kate retreats to her room, dressing up as Valhalla Hawkwind (Lynda's cartoon character) and engaging in mildly pervy acts -- sitting on balloons and layer cakes! -- for strangers on the Internet. While Kate doesn't see herself as someone who needs saving, her new paramour Zach (Seth Gabel) wouldn't mind casting her in that role. It was brilliant of the writers to present Kate with this hero -- handsome, interested, supportive and rich – who has the power to throw all of Kate's dreams out the window in one fell swoop. This is the perfect subplot for a compact show like "USOT" – it's satisfying to see Kate get a little attention from someone mildly more deserving than a manager at Barnaby's, but it's also riveting to try to figure out what's wrong with this guy (because something has to be wrong with him). Somehow, even as he arrives fully prepared to deliver Kate from the messiness of her family ties, it's tough to believe that Valhalla Hawkwind will be swept away quite so easily.
Tara's sister Charmaine (Rosemarie DeWitt), on the other hand, is more than ready to ride off into the sunset with whatever prince will have her. Nick (Matthew Del Negro), like Zach, is just what the doctor ordered: stable, handsome, kind. But are Charmaine and Nick a real pair, do they actually have good conversations or even meet each other's gaze? Unlike Charmaine and Neil (Patton Oswalt), they don't seem to have much of a rapport. Charmaine reacts to the sinking realization that Nick is all wrong for her in slow motion. Instead of shoving her big foot into the glass slipper like Cinderella's stepsister, screeching, "I'll make it fit!" Charmaine unravels gracefully, almost. It's as if she enters some state of suspended animation, in which the world acts on her and she merely floats along, not entirely connected to the events unfolding around her. By the time she discovers that her baby is Neil's, not Nick's, she relays this information to Tara casually, as if she's talking about one of the amusing but not all that important events of her day. Rosemarie DeWitt brings Charmaine so much awkward, needy longing that your heart aches for her whenever she's on-screen (unless she's talking to Max alone, and then she's just flirtatious and gross). What's really been rewarding this season is that Charmaine grew from a "Wheee, wedding!" cartoon princess to a wiser, more mature adult. Not that Charmaine is anything approaching wise or mature, mind you. But somehow, since she became pregnant, she's more pragmatic and able to look directly at the truth, maybe for the first time in her life.
And then there's Tara's son, Marshall, whose process of coming out of the closet has been the most genuine, sweet and also disastrously awkward affair that can be imagined, which is to say it's one of the most realistic depictions of sexual awakening to appear on the small screen. Keir Gilchrist is delightful as Marshall, and every single scene between him and his new boyfriend Lionel (Michael J. Willett) has been spot-on, funny and riveting.
What's really remarkable about this second season of "United States of Tara" is that Diablo Cody and the other writers have managed to create stories around a tight theme -- identity crises and the search for a true self -- while continuing to reveal new dimensions of the show's characters. It's worth noting that two of the show's writers, Jill Soloway and Craig Wright, also wrote for "Six Feet Under," because many of this season's finest moments (Marshall and Lionel go cruising in the park, Kate meets Lynda for the first time) echo the intelligent, soulful spontaneity that was "SFU's" trademark.
It's wonderful to watch as a show like "United States of Tara" finds itself, dodging the skin-deep curse of the half-hour dramedy ("Californication" anyone?) for something a little more substantive and weighty. By setting aside the flashy antics of Tara's alters and focusing on the deeper challenges faced by all of the characters on the show, "United States of Tara" has matured into a sweet, largely gimmick-free exploration of the trials and tribulations of growing up. Because, whether you're a wise teenager or a hopelessly immature middle-aged parent, you probably still have a lot of growing up to do.
Heather Havrilesky is a senior writer for Salon.com who covers television, pop culture and all other empty distractions that impede our progress as a species. She cocreated Filler, a popular cartoon on Suck.com, with illustrator Terry Colon. Her writing has appeared in New York Magazine, the LA Times, the Washington Post, Bookforum and on NPR's All Things Considered. She's been dispensing bad advice from the rabbit blog since 2001, and her memoir, "Disaster Preparedness," is due from Riverhead Books in the fall of 2010.
Twitter: @hhavrilesky
E-mail: hh@salon.com
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