Side One Track One Of Can't Buy A Thrill

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Other writing:

• Shōgun is a great war epic that never shows us any war at Polygon

Even though I never finished my recaps for Shōgun at Vulture, I was lucky enough to write a series wrap-up for Polygon that I think is smart and interesting and maybe you will, too.

Wait a minute. Series wrap-up, or season wrap-up? Oh, brother…

Everything’s a Franchise If You Want It to Be

When I wrote my series wrap-up of Shōgun at Polygon, I saw a fair amount of people in the comments clamoring for a second season of the show. “That’s silly,” I said to myself, sipping at my coffee. “They adapted the entire novel. How would they make a new season?”

“Now let me just (weeks later) take a look at the news while sipping this same cup of coffee,” I thought, leading to a comical spit take when I saw that FX has greenlit two more seasons of the show.

Personally, I think this is a bad idea. Maybe half of that is wrapped up in the fact that I wrote a very nice capper about the show and how it was a full and complete story. But it was a full and complete story! We even got to see flash-forwards of Blackthorne on his deathbed to confirm his ever-repeated declaration, “I will not die in Japan.” I have to imagine in the second season we’ll see a moment of Blackthorne’s death bed again with a record scratch and voiceover coming saying, “Yeah, that’s me. I bet you’re wondering how I ended up in this deathbed back in England when there are two more seasons announced.”

I’m not too bothered by the fact that the show is going to extend beyond the scope of the novel, to be honest. The show was based on the book which was based on actual historical events. There’s plenty to pull from to push a new story forward. My gripe is that the show was clearly created as a self-contained miniseries and was marketed as such for nearly the entire run of its episodes. The finale felt different from any other TV finale in that it had a sense of finality. Here are our main characters dealing with the fallout of the actions taken place. Here is a vision of a future that might come to be. Here is closure. Hard to imagine how future seasons will undo that in a delicate and careful way.

A big point of the Shōgun announcement is that the primary creative team is all returning, which is nice. They’re the reason the show was good. At the same time, we also had news recently that there’s a Gollum movie in the works. And I don’t think I’ve seen anyone thrilled about that coming back. The IP-ification of everything has given us so many subpar spinoffs that we didn’t want but will watch anyway because we’re curious. And it feels bad that audiences are being gamed by intrigue instead of intrigued by quality. Am I curious what a Leslye Headland Star Wars show will be like? Yes. But I’m not sure if The Acolyte needs to exist. Are the themes and ideas in this show unexplorable outside of the Star Wars universe? Or is it just impossible to make anything that isn’t tied to a money train barreling down the tracks?

I wish I had better analysis I could contribute, but the most I can muster these days is a simple, “I’m tired.” Writing about Shōgun was one of the most involved projects I’ve ever dedicated myself to, and I was really happy to have a very complete series of pieces that I’m incredibly proud of.

At this point, I’m not sure I even will watch the new Shōgun seasons, much less want to write about them. Maybe I just need to take a TV break.

Maybe I should work on writing another novel manuscript.

Read

• Lapvona by Ottesa Moshfegh

There’s something some incredibly brutal about Ottessa Moshfegh’s writing: every character is stupid, mean, physically grotesque, and morally dubious. And yet, it’s impossible to not want more. I’m a sucker for modern novels framed in medieval storytelling methods (The Buried Giant, anyone?), and the narrator of Lapvona does a great job of keeping things breezy with strong momentum. It’s a great piece for examining ideas of family structure and inherent, incipient hatred.

Watch

• The Insider on Criterion Channel

Okay, okay, we know I’m absolutely smitten with everything Michael Mann does and The Insider is no different. But what’s fascinating about this movie is how Mann directs an investigative journalism procedural like a bank heist thriller. Pacino and Crowe are both great in this (Pacino fully in quiet Pacino mode here) but the entire cast is bonkers. Bruce McGill, Christopher Plummer, Phillip Baker Hall, Gina Gershon, Diane Venora, Debi Mazar, Stephen Tobolowski… it’s a great reminder that Michael Mann once had major cultural cache and had free reign to do what he wanted even if his movies didn’t really bring in the box office numbers studios wanted. If you haven’t seen The Insider, it’s an incredibly well-made movie about the power of journalism that questions if journalism actually has any power in the first place. It’s also a careful and well-considered movie that I think is key for unlocking the Mann-esque details in all his other films.

Listen

• In These Times by Makaya McCraven

My friend Trevor put me onto this album from percussionist and producer Makaya McCraven. It’s brilliant. McCraven is an extremely talented composer, and each song has an ever-evolving structure based on nearly impossible back beats that somehow develop into a chill, easy-going jam. Slightly maudlin in tone, it’s a great album to set a mood of quiet contemplation.

Consume

• Cheeseburger

Have you ever had cheeseburger? It’s good.

Artwork by Ashley Elander Strandquist. You can view her illustration work here and check out her printing business here.