Dorks And Losers

It shouldn’t be a sur­prise to any­one that sex rules the media world. Look at the pub­lish­ing world and you’ll see hun­dreds of authors try­ing to repli­cate Daniel Steele. Look at the music world and you’ll see midriffs and cleav­age abound when you should be hear­ing angels sing. Look at the film indus­try and the only things impor­tant about the pre­view trail­ers are the rat­ing and the rea­sons behind the rating.

Tele­vi­sion is no dif­fer­ent. In fact there are many shows that explic­itly adver­tise their sex con­tent to grab that ultra impor­tant hormone-crazed teenage crowd. On that front, there have been plenty of hits and misses. Look­ing at the suc­cess of some shows from net­work TV boundary-pushing NYPD Blue to Play­boy–pro­mot­ing The Girls Next Door to Dick Wolf’s fail­ing Con­victed, tele­vi­sion has always tried to sell sex with its shows. HBO’s Tell Me You Love Me falls some­where in the middle.

The pre­mium cable chan­nel heav­ily pro­moted the show’s graphic nudity and sex, but ulti­mately both feel awk­ward and forced. As with all sex on cam­era, it never seems nat­ural. That’s where the other 95% of the show comes in, and thank­fully there is an attempt to por­tray real and hon­est relationships.

Tell Me cen­ters around four cou­ples, each hav­ing their own dif­fer­ent set of prob­lems. In order of appear­ance, cou­ple one includes David (Tim DeKay of Car­ni­vale fame) and Katie (Ally Walker) who have trou­ble being inti­mate with one another. Cou­ple two includes Jaime (Michelle Borth) and Hugo (Luke Kirby) who have trou­ble being monog­a­mous. Cou­ple three includes Car­olyn (Sonya Wal­ger) and Palek (Adam Scott) who have trou­ble becom­ing preg­nant. Cou­ple four includes Dr. May (Jane Alexan­der) and Arthur (David Selby) who have trou­ble with some­thing that has yet to be revealed.

The most con­vinc­ing cou­ple is David and Katie. Their strug­gles are the most real­is­tic, and the most truth­ful. David and Katie are two peo­ple who love each other, and for many rea­sons stopped show­ing each other that love. They have two chil­dren and they devote them­selves to their fam­ily. The love exists, just not the spark. This sit­u­a­tion prob­a­bly occurs more often than not in the era of the mod­ern fam­ily. There never is enough time for just the two of them to be alone. They have been mar­ried for eleven years, but will not hav­ing sex with each other for more than a year cause their rela­tion­ship to sour?

The least con­vinc­ing cou­ple is Jaime and Hugo. Well, the story is really about Jaime and her quest to have the per­fect life — the mar­ried kind. She and Hugo were engaged, but as the wed­ding date drew closer, Hugo couldn’t hon­estly com­mit to Jaime nor could Jaime hon­estly believe Hugo would be com­mit­ted to her. It wasn’t enough for Jaime.

The story wouldn’t be com­plete with­out a strug­gling young cou­ple added to the mix. But Jaime plays more as an imma­ture and spoiled brat who wants every­thing and noth­ing at the same time. At first you think it’s just that Jaime doesn’t know what kind of man she wants. But then you slowly begin to real­ize that Jaime just doesn’t know what kind of woman she is.

Car­olyn and Palek are the most com­pli­cated. They have been mar­ried for a while and are try­ing unsuc­cess­fully to have a baby. It wouldn’t be a big deal if it weren’t for the fact that the two have been try­ing for over a year. It wouldn’t be a big deal if it weren’t for the fact that each is fer­tile as the Gar­den of Eden.

Preg­nancy isn’t a right, it’s a gift. Tim­ing is every­thing, but Car­olyn can’t under­stand that. She con­sumes her­self into the con­cept of fam­ily that involves hav­ing chil­dren. Palek is more under­stand­ing. He can go about his day with­out con­stantly won­der­ing what’s wrong. He doesn’t spend his day tak­ing a preg­nancy test alone in the bath­room of a drug­store nor does he con­tact old flames ask­ing what-if ques­tions. While I can’t believe he doesn’t think about their prob­lems, he is able to deal with those prob­lems with­out the stress.

The most con­trived aspect of the show is that through the first six episodes most of the char­ac­ters even­tu­ally seek ther­apy with Dr. May. It isn’t con­trived that peo­ple who want help seek a ther­a­pist, it’s con­trived that they seek this one per­son and that even­tu­ally the cou­ples, their lives, their sto­ry­lines will inter­twine and this one ther­a­pist is in the mid­dle of it all. Even Dr. May has her own rela­tion­ship prob­lems and she’s a couple’s coun­selor for cry­ing out loud.

The show has a funny way of pro­vid­ing answers to var­i­ous ques­tions. In some cases, Dr. May pro­vides guid­ance and tips. In other cases, answers are ran­domly aired out in pass­ing by other char­ac­ters, but with no real sub­stance. Take, for exam­ple, why David and Katie’s daugh­ter Isabella (Ais­linn Paul) had her period so early. It’s the nitrates in the bologna that’s caus­ing her increas­ing hor­mones. A rea­son is just thrown out there with­out any real con­se­quence or follow-up. Who really knows why puberty is strik­ing chil­dren sooner than in pre­vi­ous generations?

This may be spec­u­la­tion, but I sus­pect that the show will con­tinue to offer up answers and rea­sons to any and every prob­lem. While it’s thor­ough to exam­ine all pos­si­bil­i­ties, it’s unfair and irre­spon­si­ble to do so with­out giv­ing per­spec­tive or com­plet­ing that path. I know some of the dia­logue is spo­ken in argu­ment and frus­tra­tion, and in those sit­u­a­tions ran­dom­ness occurs more fre­quently and very out of con­text. That’s real­ity, but very much believable.

It might be just that the show is try­ing to find its legs, and hope­fully that’s the case. It would be very dis­ap­point­ing if the show was all about ask­ing ques­tions, but never offer­ing any solu­tions. I’m sure many peo­ple would watch the show to help alle­vi­ate con­cerns about their own rela­tion­ships, and in some cases it might be help­ful. But insight­ful the show isn’t, so no one should take the show that seriously.

As the title points out, the show is about being loved. But what is love? Is it sex? Is it the ring on the left hand? It can’t be just the word being spo­ken? Any def­i­n­i­tion of love is gen­eral and non-universal, but that shouldn’t block these four cou­ples from real­iz­ing what kind of love they want and need.

HBO has already renewed the show for another sea­son, so this train isn’t slow­ing down yet. How­ever, if the bulk of the prob­lem is admit­ting that there is a prob­lem, then what’s really next for these couples?

____

Inter­est­ing tidbits:

1. The U.S. gov­ern­ment is finally pay­ing our top boys the big bucks.

2. The jurors in the now famous R.I.A.A. vic­tory against Jam­mie Thomas have their rea­sons.

3. List of politi­cians tak­ing con­tri­bu­tions from the very unpop­u­lar R.I.A.A.

4. The courts have repeat­edly ruled that Major League Base­ball does not own the rights to its play­ers’ names and stats. MLB has been try­ing to grab a hold of the lucra­tive and very pop­u­lar fan­tasy sports mar­ket but try­ing to cre­ate a monop­oly. Didn’t work.

5. A funny look into the choice stylings of Linkin Park. They all sound the same, some­what, is the con­clu­sion.
____

Quote from Homi­cide: Life On The Street:

Det. Beau Fel­ton: “You have the right to remain silent; although per­son­ally, I don’t feel remain­ing silent’s all it’s cracked up to be… Smoke?”

Pop­u­lar­ity: 7% [?]