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Mondays with Mason: Chapter Five

“Having Lord Krishna in hand, but searching for butter”

Tamil drama aficionados would immediately recognize this line from Crazy Mohan’s (literally) crowning glory of dramatic achievement- Chocolate Krishna,a stage recording which is now streaming on youtube due to the pandemic. 

Yes, somehow Krishna worked himself into the Perry Mason recap too and with striking similarity to the aforementioned line. 

Somehow it seemed only last week, yes it was in last week’s Perry Mason recap was when we praised the show to the skies on how well they are doing character development and the time taken to do it, this format suits the writers well it seemed, take four episodes to paint them with detail. 

But maybe it’s the halfway point, or it’s the rush that comes towards the ending. 

Last week, we knew that this would be the last of E.B.Jonathan,as one character exits the frame, there needs to be someone who should take up his place in the story. A gentle reminder that the murder of Charlie Dodson is still ver much open and honestly this episode does little to further the investigation. 

What it does instead is fastrack changes in character which comes off as a little too easy, all along Perry had been the washed up- what-hope-do-we-even have detective, frankly we were surprised with the turn in this episode, he even gets to be with his son- like a real dad and that probably instills into him a sense of responsibility. 

Meanwhile at the church, Sister Alice with her powers is able to bail out Emily Dodson and give her hope,the best part of the episode is the miracle work that she does in the congregation and the one of the show’s most engaging storylines is about whether Sister Alice is indeed a voice of God or not. The ambiguity still remains. 

The connecting tissue of the primary characters in the series has been Della Street, she is also in some ways the moral compass and now with E.Bs demise she looks for a north star to forward the case. 

And that brings me to the opening drama quote, we all know that she is searching for butter when she has Krishna at hand. 

Slightly disappointing but, let’s get through this.

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TV

Serial (Killer) Stuff: Run

thenewsroom

Run was the second episode of the third and final season of The Newsroom. 

If you had noticed, we are made up of people who like movies; an understated fact is that we don’t have much time to watch TV, which actually implies that we are not really fans of television (current, past anything). The time invested in something as a TV show is more than what we can risk.

Although we would like to be surprised with something like The Newsroom, brilliantly written and acted, each episode stands firmly on its own feet and doesn’t depend on cliffhangers. The fact that The Newsroom is written by Aaron Sorkin also tilts it in our favor.

It is like if you have started seeing the Newsroom, you can simply pick any episode from any season and there would be very little loss of juice.This is probably because of the themes the Newsroom chooses to address and how it is connected to our current world.

‘Run’ is about ethical dilemmas. A pair of millennials are trying to buy out ACN because it is not profitable. Should they buy it out and invest in something lucrative or stick on to the news division because of the ideals it stands for?

Neal Sampat(Dev Patel, who is our second favorite on the show) wrestles with his conscience and an overbearing lawyer in the matter of revealing a source who has leaked government documents. Should he reveal the source and protect himself or should he protect the story itself?

Associate producer Maggie Jordan overhears a government official spilling out what he shouldn’t on a train from Boston. Should she make her unauthorized recording into a sensational story or not?

There are other accessory moral dilemmas happening to other characters through the course of the show, but the biggest question that the staff of Newsnight face is to ultimately follow up a story or not.

The story here is of course the documents jointly unearthed by Neal Sampat, which is internally consistent with the theme of this episode but it is also a question that the members face every time they sit down for a story in editorial meetings.

Newsnight is of course Sorkin’s retelling of the King Arthur myth, a band of  knights at the round table racking their brains on a looking question, something which is directly referenced in this episode; but we can see the editorial meetings themselves as a round-table meeting of knights (although a round table is not involved, literally). But each Knight has their own quest, while their collective quest remains in motion.

Take something from the past, run with it and leave enough threads for the future; each episode of The Newsroom does this, but ‘Run’ from season 3 is exemplary as evidence in how to write a perfect episode, while not being too suffocating, but by being fun all the way through.

The fact that the Newsroom doesn’t solely depend on the ‘what will happen next’ but focuses on ‘what is happening now’, this is a great achievement.

As to how the characters work their way out of their dilemmas, you will have to watch the show.

Inspired writing inspires easy imitations, The Laureate, as we would like to think is the Sub-urban Chennai print version of Newsnight, of course we don’t deal with earth shattering revelations such as government document leaks and such.

Serial (Killer) Stuff is an occasional column which comes about when we occasionally watch TV