#//I love Tobin just OBSERVING in the background

[curious-minx]

Review of the first episode of The Great North (plus some sad Bob’s Burgers’ news)

2021.

I was going to begin my review of the pilot episode of The Great North, the sister sister series of Bob’s Burgers, with my trademark  snarky and slanted curlicue wit... Instead, I am reckoning with the headline of the death of Bob’s Burgers character designer, Dave Creek.

Dave Creek.

Type his name out and put it in comic sans and you can see it’s a name meant to be involved with TV. One of the rare individuals to pass away from something other than Covid-19 or our rising totalitarian government. The artist contributed to the show in many ways, most profoundly with the design of Lady Tinsel from the Bleakening, one of Bob’s Burgers most visually ambitious episodes to date. I am ill-equipped to eulogize the man like his fellow peers are doing, but as someone who writes and thinks about the Bob’s Burgers series it is impossible to not address his passing.

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The Great North.

“Sexi Moose Adventure”

Look up there! What Do You See? Nature and stuff Like a rock And a tree Oh, The Great North Way up here we can breathe the air Catch some fish Or gaze at a bear Wow! Oh, The Great North Here we live, oh, oh Here we’ll stay, oh, whoo From longest night To longest day In The Great North

An Alan Thicke bop or the wimpy Cheers theme this aint. A jarring theme. I had to transcribe it to lay it out in front of me to see how wordy it is, but to my surprise the theme song looks more concise on paper. Still, I am not sold on this theme song. Mainly because I prefer the misheard lyric of “Here we’ll say (it’s actually “stay”): oh, whoo,” digging further into the regional grunts.

1:24, One minute and twenty four seconds in and there is already a  little bit of winking scatalogical humor by the ever youthful Paul Rust, or as I am sure he’ll be known for generations, Ham Tobin, the middle of the three Tobin sons. Compounded within these first two minutes is a stylistic swivel away from Bob’s Burgers comedic well with a Brokeback Mountain themed wedding cutaway joke with real-world celebrity cameos. Speaking of celebrity cameos, how about a side character conversation with an Alanis Morrisette  constellation (and she’s a recurring character!) you’ve never seen that in Bob’s Burgers! In the first three minutes and thirty seconds we have two instances of explicitly expositional dialogue, the first is the cleaner introduction of eldest Wolf Tobin (voiced by Will Forte) and his fiance Honeybee Shaw who has just moved to Alaska from Fresno and helps set up the reverse All in the Family Meathead and Gloria dynamic. What comes next is once again another moment I can only describe as jarring when the inexplicably normal named Judy Tobin explains to Alanis Morrisette constellation exactly what is wrong with sweetly overbearing father. The reason involving a somewhat convoluted background story about the former Tobin matriarch's  abandonment of the family and Beef, the Tobin patriarchy, is in denial of this  fact. Beef prefers to live in the reality where no wife of his would leave him she could only have been eaten by a wolf.  

What goes on throughout the episode is what I believe is a cardinal sin of episodic storytelling: Making jokes and observations at the expense of an off screen character. There are already WAY too many characters being thrown at me and not once throughout the episode was I able to identify any of the characters by any names other than the name of the celebrity voice actor. Minute six and yet again we are hit with Honeybee  generating another celebrity name for a joke and I really hope that the writers develop more of a game for her. Oh wait a minute the episode reminds me again at the eight minute forty sixth second mark that she is in fact from Fresno. More diarrhea and fart jokes snaking their way back into the scene as well, but Jenny Slate has always relished in the poopier jokes (see: any of her stand-up, Kroll work, or Obvious Child).

At the ten minute mark there is a quality character defining joke when Wolf distracts Beef by pointing out an indoor potted plant in a mall, which causes Beef, ever the Nature man, to take matters into his own hands by trying to rescue the potted plant. Beef is basically a combination of the two Rons from Parks & Rec, the emotional frugality of Ron Swanson and a touch of Sam Elliot’s Ron Dunn Earthiness. Julio Torres’ mall juicer character is also introduced with a perfunctory but enjoyable deadpan exchange with the awkward Judy, but it’s the kind of performance Julio Torres could give in his sleep (and probably did).

The eleven minute mark introduces a character that I was initially pretty jazzed about, Judy’s boss at the mall photography store Alyson Lefebvrere (gosh I hated typing out that name >.<) voiced by long-time Molyneux collaborator, Megan Mullally. On paper, much like the theme song, a heated exchange between an emotionally vulnerable Beef and a character voiced by real-life wife Megan Mullally should be dynamite, instead much like their podcast it feels like a wet fart in the sheets. Mullally’s work on Bob’s Burgers as Linda’s sister Gayle is terrific and with the power of animation having her play an unconventional looking character really works to her advantage. Alyson’s character design is boring and conventional cartoon  attractive as she’s clearly being set up as a potential love interest for our leading Beef man, but the whole thing in execution falls completely flat. The extended 69 joke between Beef and Alyson is supposed to be funny because we know it’s between a real life publicly beloved celebrity couple. You cannot coast on innate chemistry alone! The setting up of the love interest isn’t even coy, we see Beef get heart eyes and drool over Alyson, which is just the most predictable and least interesting choice. A route this show seems dangerously flirtatious with.

Finally, at minute:second mark 13:15 we get introduced to a potentially fun and quirky sitcom character, Londra the neighboring fish mongerer. Voiced by Judith Shelton, an actor I am sure we all remember as Sally from Seinfeld and Angela from the Gregory Hines Show. Instead she gets instantly shut down and shuffled by in favor of advancing the plot of the episode. Moving on to the birthday party. Yep Honeybee makes another pop culture reference this time the Minions (it was Squidward last time, but I was too faint of heart to mention it at the time). We also find out in a forced confession from Ham that he is gay. I am glad the show has hired an openly gay actor like Julio Torres to play a bit recurring character, but it feels weird having Paul Rust a thoroughly heterosexual actor portray a gay goofball character. I feel like there easily could have been an actual gay goofball Paul Rust type out there deserving of the job, but this show does do right by having Dulce Sloan as Honeybee and Aparna Nancherla as MVP, Moon Tobin (Who I’ll get into later). Therefore I should not let this irk me, but clearly this show and I are not seeing eye to eye. In an era of gestures towards meaningful representation I would just like to see some consistency. Rust will probably go on to join the ranks of the many other hetero men who have also portrayed perfectly competenent and sensitive gay characters, but with gay characters should come paychecks for gay voice talent. In the end of this dead end debacle I much rather  Paul Rust have the role  and be spared the unimaginative Randy Rainbow casting. Back on track.

There’s a four square action sequence of the four siblings that also feels like the show attempting another stylistic flourish to separate itself from Bob’s Burgers. The episode, all one straight ahead single narrative, comes to a happy ending to also establish that the Bob’s Burgers sister sister series is also interested in being a sentimental sitcom to its core. An unfortunately okay first episode that got worse for me with a repeated viewing. The only character and overall performance that sticks out to me is Aparna Nancherla playing what is essentially the show’s Tina and  Louise lovechild of a character Moon Tobin, an animal identifying gender flipped peculiar savant-like child. She’s one of those comedians that I will always root for and appreciate whenever she pops up and I really hope that this show treats her right. She really elevates the material. Everyone else does just fine. The first episodes and first seasons of any sitcoms are rarely all that innovative or memorable so I am certainly going to allow this show to grow on me.

For the time being, this first episode of the Great North is deserving of Two Sexy Moose Antlers out of Five Forced Pop Culture References

[chiseler]

Gail Patrick: Malice Aforethought

The ultimate in resting bitch face, Gail Patrick could do more with a slight malicious smile than most actors could with the nastiest lines of dialogue. She was always sizing people up on screen, looking at them as if she could spot every weakness in their character and every humiliation they had ever suffered. Patrick knew instantly where she could stick all her knives, but the funny thing about her is that she seemed too basically cool and sedentary to really do too much damage, like a cat who stretches out and just scratches a canary before going back to sleep in the sun.

A brainy Southern girl, Patrick was born Margaret LaVelle Fitzpatrick in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1911. She graduated from Howard College and did two years of law school at the University of Alabama, saying later that she thought about running for state governor. But in 1932, for what she termed “a lark,” Patrick entered a Paramount Pictures beauty and talent contest and got the fare to Hollywood. The winner of the contest would get to be the “Panther Woman” in the Universal picture Island of Lost Souls (1932), starring Charles Laughton, and surely Patrick would have put a scare into both Laughton and co-star Bela Lugosi, but she didn’t get that part, which went to Kathleen Burke. (“It kind of ruined a career for her because nobody would take her seriously after that,” Patrick offered.)

She was presented with a standard studio contract by Paramount, but the strong-minded Patrick wouldn’t sign until her salary was raised from $50 to $75 a week and part of the contract was taken out. “I also read the fine print and blacked out the clause saying I had to do cheesecake stills,” Patrick said. “In the back of my mind I had this idea I could never go home and practice law if such stills were floating around.” She was groomed and coached until she lost her Southern accent, and then Patrick was ready to steal any scene she was in.

She made her first impact in Mitchell Leisen’s Death Takes a Holiday (1934), where she was filmed in stylish gowns and wore blond hair. Patrick is a distinct screen presence because she cannot help that “bitch” quality of hers from rising to the surface, no matter how hard she smiles or how hard she tries to be appealing in Death Takes a Holiday (much like such sisters in 1930s movie bitchery as Verree Teasdale and Genevieve Tobin). There is always something strained in her attempts at good spirits, as if she were a wicked stepsister just waiting to make some vicious remark about everyone in the cast. “I really put my all into that one,” she said. “It gave me a big career boost.”

She was a rival to Joan Crawford in No More Ladies (1935), which showed that Patrick was ready to rattle the most intimidating figures, taking in Crawford as if she can see the former chorus girl in her from a mile away. She drunkenly confesses to a dalliance with Crawford’s husband Robert Montgomery in a manner that tries for rumpled girlish candor but inevitably reads, as always with Patrick, as sheer malice. “I was hired because I towered over Joan,” she said. “She didn’t get temperamental—she simply expected blind obedience from cast and crew.”

Patrick coolly observed the “nasty” fights on the set of Mississippi (1935) between Bing Crosby and W.C. Fields and did her time in programmers before coming to the part that really set her up, Cornelia Bullock, the big bad sister to Carole Lombard’s daffy socialite Irene in My Man Godfrey (1936). Cornelia is the rich bitch incarnate, flaunting her privilege and power like a spoiled child, but with a wide streak of womanly sadism to make many of her scenes deeply unpleasant. Yet Patrick said that she was so afraid of the camera and nervous that she never saw her own films until she showed a friend My Man Godfrey in 1979. “My fright emerged as haughtiness and I can see where I got my image as a snob, a meanie,” she said. “And it’s the movie that typed me and the one I’m still asked about.”

Gregory La Cava, the director of My Man Godfrey, told Patrick to “suck on lemons and beat up little children” to prepare for her role, and maybe she was just a skeptical, smart girl scared of being in the movies, but that’s finally a little hard to believe. You don’t play Cornelia Bullock in the scathing way Patrick does without at least knowing something about inherent meanness and it uses and effects. Then again, fear has often been known to make people behave badly, and shyness can be seen as unfriendliness. “She had to be bratty, mean, demanding, and no winks to show I wasn’t really like that,” Patrick said of Cornelia.

She followed up Cornelia with her finest bitch performance of all, Linda Shaw, erstwhile roommate to Ginger Rogers’s Jean Maitland in La Cava’s great Stage Door (1937), where she engages in wisecracking duels with Rogers so brutal that it comes as no surprise when Rogers’s Jean ends one of them with the line, “Well, so long, if you ever need a good pallbearer, remember I’m at your service.” Patrick enjoyed working with Rogers in Stage Door because she said they could try scenes different ways, whereas she sniped that with the “Great Kate” Hepburn every scene was done the same way. “She never took direction and always walked around with that haughty air,” Patrick said of Hepburn. “Ginge was everything Great Kate wasn’t. The crews loved her and hated Kate for the airs she put on.”

Patrick was only 26 when she made Stage Door, but she reads as a lot older and more experienced, and so it’s believable when Rogers, who was the same age as Patrick, seems to have youth and freshness on her side as she diffidently snags jaded Linda’s man, the theatrical producer Anthony Powell (Adolphe Menjou). Patrick goes as far with verbal bitchery as it is possible to go in Stage Door, and her snobbery is at its most cutting and armored, too, and yet there are a few moments here when we can see that Linda is just as subject to the vagaries of men and show business as the other girls at the theatrical boarding house she lives at. Linda has a freezing sort of dignity when she realizes that Jean is replacing her with Powell, for the time being, and she has the confidence and lack of illusions that can wait to get him back. This has nothing to do with lack of pride, for Linda has plenty of that where it counts, and then some. It has to do with understanding how the world works and how unfair it can be without ever feeling sorry for yourself.

There’s a brief scene in Stage Door where Patrick relaxes a little for once as Judy (Lucille Ball) talks about the moment when she first wanted to go into show business. Patrick smiles almost easily here, as if her guard is just slightly down briefly, and the effect is touching because there is no other moment on screen when she opens up just a little bit for us. In the end, Linda gets Powell back, and she probably has the guts to keep him until another new blond comes along, and when that game is all finished at least she’ll have the fur coats he bought her to keep her warm on the cold nights ahead. Whatever happens to her, Linda will be all right because she takes nothing seriously and never gets her emotions, if she has any left, involved. That’s one way of getting through life.

Patrick’s most notable role after that was as Cary Grant’s wife Bianca in My Favorite Wife (1940), where the frustration of “the other woman” does not really suit her brand of steely control backed up by a witchy talent for insults and vindictiveness. By the time of Claudia and David (1946), Patrick could see the writing on the wall. “One day, we were sitting around the set and dear, sweet Dorothy McGuire started chattering about her great pleasure in working with such veterans,” Patrick said. “Well, I was seven years her senior, and Mary Astor was only 40 at the time. Mary bristled, but I just kept on with my knitting.”

Patrick, who married four times, had a successful second career as a television producer, where as Gail Patrick Jackson (the last name of her third husband), she put her law background to use as executive producer on the Perry Mason series, which starred Raymond Burr and lasted from 1957-1966. She let her hair go white and was still a handsome and stylish figure around town in this period. Patrick died in 1980 at age 69 in her home in Hollywood, in the arms of her fourth husband. Whenever she turns up in a movie, I think of that old saying, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, come sit next to me.”

by Dan Callahan