Tuesday TV Touchbase: The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and Snowpiercer

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
I got started on season 2 last week. I've commented on the witty and sharp writing and acting on this show but I am also impressed at how beautiful this show looks.

This show has looked good with clever editing, fluid camera motion and lighting but the premiere of season 2 shows The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel setting the bar even higher.

This episode has Midge and her father Abe going to Paris to retrieve Rose, Midge's mother, who apparently isn't just visiting Paris but is now living there, much to Abe's chagrin. 

(Rose very explicitly tells Abe she's leaving him and moving to Paris. Abe doesn't quite pick up on that. By the way, I don't think it's fair that Tony Shalhoub should be so good at every thing he does; Tony's Abe Weisman is a complex, irritating and yet still somehow endearing character.) 

There's a scene where Midge is walking down a Parisian street at night with a variety of clubs and cafes. The composition of this scene is astounding in the use of sound, light and color. You can almost feel the pleasantly cool French air and smell the warm bread with conversations and music fading in and out as Midge's heels click on the cobblestones lit with a warm golden glow from the street lights. This sequence is a visceral experience. 

There's a sequence at the end of the episode where Midge in the Palais-Royalhas just finished a phone call to Joel in New York. She turns from the phone as the camera follows her a long panning shot, then the camera holds while Midge walks away into a long row of columns, framed symmetrically on either side of her. It is a scene that powerfully conveys Midge's sadness, her aloneness and her journey taking her farther from Joel and the life she once knew.  

Beyond the writing and the acting, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel excels as a work of visual art.  The show has a distinctive look that bolsters the narrative.  

Snowpiercer
Melanie Cavill has a lot on her plate. 

With the murder mystery solved, LJ Folger, the young sociapath daughter of the Folger family, was put on trial for murder.  The severed male genitals she kept in a box were particularly damning and a jury finds her guilty.  

Then Mr. Wilford intervenes to commute LJ's sentence.  

First class isn't happy because they think this whole thing was a farce and an insult.

Third class isn't happy as the murder victims were from Third Class and they're pissed off that a guilty verdict means nothing if Mr. Wilford is just going to overrule that. 

Which is a lot of pressure for Melanie Cavill since she is "Mr. Wilford".  

And speaking of that secret identity...

Andre Layton who got sent to the Drawers because he glommed unto Melanie's secret is no longer in the Drawers. Layton is not recovering well from his time in suspension in the Drawers, is thinking erratically and goes after Melanie Cavill with a scapel to her throat. Layton's angry not just for being betrayed and pushed into the Drawers but he now has info that Cavill has been putting other people in the Drawers for an unknown and possibly nefarious purpose.  

Melanie Cavill's bad day is getting worse. 

She is surprised that Layton is out of the Drawers and is running loose around the train enough to get to her with a knife to her throat.  

And the train is about to crash. 

There's a doo-hickey of some kind that has come loose under the train and at the next sharp turn, the whole damn train, all 1,001 cars of Snowpiercer, will derail and the last vestiges of humanity on a frozen, dead world will face extinction.  

Melanie Cavill convinces Layton not to slit her throat. The deal with the Drawers is not what he thinks it is. It's a Plan B to preserve humanity because Snowpiercer is dying.

And speaking of which, she needs to move quickly to save the train. 

"I designed this train; I can fix it!"  

So Melanie spends several harrowing minutes dangling outside underneath the train trying to stick a thing into another thing. 

Be careful what you wish for. Just last week, Melanie lamented that she wished she could just open a damn window for some fresh air.  

What we have in Snowpiercer is a microcosm of the world we're living in. Like the train, our world is a fragile ecosystem in danger of collapse while people are divided up in a class warfare that eats up time, resources and attention when life itself is on shaky ground.  

Fun fact: Sunday's episode was directed by Helen Shaver, the same woman who starred in Desert Hearts which I wrote about in the Cinema Sunday post from two days ago.  

I have been watching Stargirl. Since we're nearly at the half way point of the first season, I think next week's Tuesday TV Touchbase will focus on what's going on there.