The Buccaneers
Back in the nineties everyone was obsessed with the new adaptation of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice with moist Colin Firth. I wasn't an exception to this rule, I was fully committed, six tape VHS boxset and all watched over and over again. But there were two other period pieces I gravitated towards more often, mainly because you could always stumble across one or the other in the middle of the night on upper cable channels. I'm talking about Louisa May Alcott's The Inheritance and Edith Wharton's The Buccaneers. For years I didn't know what either was called, in my mind it was TV movie with mom from Family Ties with Greg from Dharma and Greg and the miniseries with girl from Son in Law. And yes, that's the Pauly Shore movie. I don't think it was until the advent of Netflix that I was finally able to watch all of The Buccaneers in order, but I loved watching it knowing so much of the cast from other shows I loved. I recently had time to rewatch it and the ending left me cold. The women were pushed aside for the men to take center stage which narratively made absolutely no sense at all. Which made me super excited when I heard that Apple was going to be making a new adaptation of the Wharton book. And not to put to fine a point on it, but she never finished the book so there's a lot of liberties you can take, which Apple of course was quick to capitalize on, hello Lesbians! But I was also worried, would they go all Gossip Girl with this? Or, horror of horrors, Bridgerton? And while yes, you could see they were veering toward the wisteria laden land of the Bridgertons, thankfully without trying to pass off modern music as "art," there was actually a more Clueless vibe. I had hope. At least in the beginning. I was baffled by them starting the show quite far into the story and making Saratoga Springs out to be like it's in the sticks, when it wasn't, it was about new money versus old money, and then there was the swapping of character traits and backstories in an attempt to make it fresh. OK, I can kind of see where you're going, but the main problem was they created this to be a series so while the adaptation in the nineties covered ground fairly quickly here, once the girls get to England, the story stagnates. Nothing happens. They brood over their lives and then get together and scream. A lot. There's a lot of childish hen night behavior used to pad the episodes. And Nan's courtship would never drap on this long. The episode though that broke me was the Christmas episode. Nan's love interest looks like he's wearing Colin Firth's sweater from Bridget Jones's Diary. In the library there's a globe with Alaska on it. And then to add insult to injury, they take the loving governess Miss Testvalley and turn her into Mary Kay Letourneau. It's not spelled out, but given how her three charges turned out, I think she sexually abused them all, preying on them from the shadows. It's just so fucking creepy. There could have been depth here but there's no depth at all, it's all lets run around and giggle without evolving. And as for the "ending!?!" Nan gives everything up for her evil sister? Nope. No way. That's it for me. The least I expected was a reveal that Miss Testvalley was Nan's mother, instead Miss Testvalley is a pedophile and they decided to do a Dynasty and hold the reveal of Nan's mother until next season to see if they can get a big name star. My advice to anyone offered this role? Run, don't walk. You do not want to be involved in this trainwreck.
Matrix by Lauren Groff
First impressions are important. Yes, you could get an inaccurate impression but only time will tell. My first impression of The Confessions of Frannie Langton sadly bore out. Because a show that starts with the year in a big large font, 1826 if you were interested, and then follows it up with all the characters wearing Empire waisted dresses, well, that's such a glaring inaccuracy that I just couldn't look beyond it. Every second a character was on screen I was aware that the costuming was entirely wrong. What's more there were flashbacks and they were wearing the same clothes! Fashion changes. You could make the argument that Frannie herself was poor so she would still be in older fashions, that doesn't apply to ANYONE ELSE. The Empire silhouette ended six years before this story starts. SIX YEARS. How can a costume designer get it this wrong? It's like the time I watched a documentary on the Adnrew Davis adaptation of Sense and Sensibility and the costume designer said they purposefully changed the style to add more color. And I'm still pissed about those costumes all these years later. That and David Morrissey's bad wig. But it's not like I'd actually recommend The Confessions of Frannie Langton to anyone so I guess it can go about being historically inaccurate all it wants behind everyone's back, except that there's me here stewing, I will NEVER let this go. I really want to know what was the point of making this other than to make us angry and depressed about the world we live in as well as pissing me off about costume design? We have slavery, we have implied vivisection, we have drug addiction, we have miscarriages, we have incest, we have prostitution, we have murder, and in the end, we bury our gays. Some reviewers have pointed out that the "unapologetic" nature of the love between Frannie and Marguerite somehow makes the story rise above the fact that they both die in the end. Were they watching the same show I was? Because their relationship is toxic, Marguerite turns Frannie into an addict and then cheats on her with her own "son." Oh and I totally forgot, that Marguerite then killed herself. Yeah, I'm spoiling it for you, but as I said, you shouldn't be watching this anyway. This was only four episodes long and that was four too many. There were so many good actors just doing bad material I just couldn't bear it. I was looking back at my notes from when I was watching this and I literally only like the cat. All the other characters were grasping, mean, evil, ruinous sorts. Maybe an author the likes of Dickens could have made these people interesting, but Sara Collins, adapting her own book, couldn't. And you know what, when her book came out I was excited to read it, and then excited that it was being adapted, but a dark tale told by an unreliable narrator done by incompetents wasn't what I was looking for. This was a tale dark in nature and just dark, as in the crew obviously didn't understand that lighting was needed for the viewers to see the characters and it was glaringly obvious they had never lite a dark skinned person in their lives. So all those people out there decrying that a show about lesbians is morally reprehensible, first off, I will never agree with you, but more importantly, if you watched this you'd have legitimate reasons to complain.
