'Low Winter Sun,' EPISODE TWO: The Bodies Electric

Any new series, but especially an ensemble drama, has so much real estate to sell in its pilot episode. The first show has to introduce all the characters, explain their relationship to each other and to the plot, establish the overarching premise, tone and atmosphere of the show – oh, and if it could be a riveting tale that leaves room for the storyline to grow and enthralls viewers so they can't wait to tune in next week, that would be good, too.

Last week's premiere of Low Winter Sun didn't accomplish all those objectives as efficiently as it might have. But given those ambitions, there were two ways to look at the series opener: through Detroit eyes ("Gee, great to have a TV show shot in my town" "Happy to have new jobs created here" "Lord, hope they don't make our city look too bad") and everybody else's ("Geez, what a grim and post-apocalyptic city Detroit is" "Look at all those burned-out buildings" "THIS is the show that's going to replace Breaking Bad?"). 

If only he were better looking. (Credit Frank Ockenfels3/AMC)

That is, if you looked at it at all. Of the record-setting, almost six million people who clicked to AMC to see the first of Breaking Bad's historic final eight episodes, the bad news is that nearly four million of them clicked away without giving Low Winter Sun, which followed it, as much as a blink – even resisting the network's shrewd ploy to withhold scenes from Breaking Bad's second episode until the first commercial break in LWS. (Longtime AMC viewers know the previews of their upcoming shows generally are disconnected scenes that tell them nothing about the episode itself, so they knew they wouldn't be missing much.)

Let it be remembered, however, that the 2008 debut of Breaking Bad, when Walt was still a wimpy, cancer-ridden chem teacher years before he became a vicious drug overlord, wasn't immediately hailed as a classic-in-waiting either. As is the case with practically every TV series, the key for LWS will be how much patience AMC shows to let it find and grow its audience within its 10-episode commitment, and how disappointed the network will be if it feels Sun is squandering viewers in weeks to come from its blockbuster lead-in.

As to Episode Two, "The Goat Rodeo," airing Sunday (Aug. 18), for the second week in a row the hour opens with a long, lingering closeup of Det. Frank Agnew's face. If executive producer Chris Mundy (who also wrote the episode) intends to keep using this device, let's hope he and director Ernest Dickerson at least vary the faces from time to time. Athena Karkanis (Det. Dani Khalil) would be a lovely change of pace. I mean, Mark Strong (Agnew) has an interesting, rugged mug, but no one is likely to mistake him for Bradley Cooper. He could be scaring off prospective viewers by himself.

However, as ace Detroit homicide detective Agnew, he has bigger problems to face. He and fellow detective Joe Geddes (Lennie James) have succeeded in killing Geddes' boozy, bloated partner, Brendan McCann, and making appear to be a suicide, only to discover a nasty, unanticipated detail once McCann's Cadillac is fished out of the Detroit River: an even more bloated body hidden in the trunk, devoid of a few minor details like his head, hands and feet. (But not the dismembered body of Frank's beloved Katia, the possibility suggested by Geddes that put murder in Frank's mind in the first place.)

As you might expect, this new development ratchets the tension between the two co-conspirators even higher. The scrutiny surrounding the death of a Detroit cop is going to be intense enough, but the appearance of an extra corpse is certain to make this whole affair a cluster. And of course, snooty Internal Affairs Det. Simon Boyd (David Costabile), described early in the episode as a "self-righteous, gel-wearing b---h," is determined to spread his scent over every inch of the case. In fact, Boyd and Agnew, who ironically was put in charge of the investigation by his boss, Lt. Dawson (Ruben Santiago-Hudson), get into a pissing match over an issue as simple as whether Boyd may enter McCann's house/crime scene. Boyd makes a cryptic reference to his love of duck hunting as a way of telling Frank he has the patience to wait until he gets what he wants.

Geddes: Bad as He Wants to Be (Ockenfels 3)

Inside McCann's palatial (for a DPD officer) home, the squad finds all the normal accoutrements for a crooked cop: cocaine, booze, wads of cash. (Although anybody who keeps rabbits for pets in a spare bedroom can't be all bad, can he?) But it's a surprising text message Frank finds on one of McCann's throwaway cells that sends his head reeling about Geddes and the murderous act they share.

Elsewhere, crime-boss-in-training Damon (James Ronsone), having just busted into a stash house, shot the lookout dead (I know, I know, but at least in Low Winter Sun a black man was the second person to die) and stolen $200,000 in cocaine from Greektown mob kingpin Alexander Skelos, is rallying his ragtag band punks to expect retaliation and nervously pondering what his next move should be.

Meanwhile, Frank sends Geddes home – ostensibly to get him away from the case for a while, but more likely just to get Geddes out of his sight – and we learn a few disturbing things about ol' Joe. He lives with his mama. He's not above doing a few hits of the white happy dust himself. And, he and Damon appear to know each other quite well.

Boyd's patience does pay off, and he gets to stand in alongside Agnew as the autopsy is performed on McCann. In the process, the medical examiner arrives at some conclusions that test Frank's ability not to squirm in public. The "perfect" crime seems to grow less and less perfect by the minute.

Late in the series pilot, Frank is overwhelmed by the sudden knowledge that Geddes had played him to be the prime mover in McCann's murder. Now, as the full depths of Geddes' corruption are peeling away like the layers of an onion, like Fred MacMurray's classic analogy in Double Indemnity Frank knows he and Joe are stuck together on this death car till the end of the line.

I would be remiss not to mention one beautiful bit of cinematography in this episode. In a flashback scene, as Frank recalls an intimate moment with his beloved Katia, the low winter sun (get it?) glows between their kiss as their lips part. Nice touch, Ernest.

Among the Detroit references in this episode: coneys, Van Dyke Avenue, the Rouge River, the Dream Cruise (although linked to a sexual favor I'm fairly certain isn't a standard part of the weekend experience), the Free Press and, sadly, stripping copper from abandoned houses. Keep that authenticity coming, folks.

Grade: B

(Just in case you didn't get the Double Indemnity analogy.)

'Low Winter Sun' Review: Detroit, Even Darker

My review of Low Winter Sun can be found in the "Reckless Eyeballing" section of blogs for the (Detroit) Metro Times, where I occasionally write about TV when I'm not populating these pages.

So as not to draw eyeballs away from the Metro Times posting – hey, they actually pay me! – I'm simply linking to it from this site. You can read the review by clicking here.

In weeks to come, however, subsequent episodes of Low Winter Sun will be previewed, reviewed or discussed right here. So don't go too far away.

Let me know what you think of Low Winter Sun. I'm really interested in your reaction to the pilot. This show holds tremendous promise for the future of AMC...and my adopted home, Detroit.

Preparing for the Rise of 'Low Winter Sun'

Lennie James (L) and Mark Strong Star in 'Low Winter Sun.' (AMC/Frank Ockenfels)

This Sunday (Aug. 11) at 10 p.m. EST, the next chapter in Detroit's storied television history officially begins. Low Winter Sun, the intense new cop drama that has been filming on the streets of the Motor City for the better part of a year, premieres on AMC. It will occupy the wonderfully cushy time slot following the final episodes of the landmark, Emmy-winning series Breaking Bad, the show it essentially is expected to replace in the eyes and hearts of AMC viewers.

One promo commercial for the new 10-week series describes Detroit as "Broken City." At the moment, it may even be a broke city. But in The New York Times last week, AMC executive vice president Joel Stillerman also describes it as "the most inherently cinematic city in the country, which is both unfortunate and true," and it is that element that may help lift Detroit out of its current perceptual black hole in the national discourse, if only a tiny bit. It is that quality ABC must have sensed when it greenlighted Detroit 1-8-7, the 2010 police series that was canceled after one season, far too soon. There is a horrid yet mesmerizing beauty to Motown, and it surely will be captured within the span of these episodes.

I will be reviewing the debut episode of Low Winter Sun online this week as a blog entry for the Metro Times, where I occasionally write about television, and will link it back here to Big Glowing Box. Subsequent episodes will be recapped and discussed right here.

If you just emerged from your cave on the East Side and have heard nothing of the show, here's the AMC trailer:

And here's virtually everything else you need to know about Low Winter Sun, through a major feature I did on the show for the Metro Times back in March. Mine was the first story of any substance written about the series in America. (Ahem.)

You can read it here.

If you're in the metro Detroit area, you can bet there will be viewing parties a-plenty for the series throughout the area Sunday night – a Hollywood-style screening was staged Monday night in Ann Arbor's Michigan Theater – but here's one of special note. The Baltimore Bar and Grill, a prominent shooting location for the series (albeit under a different name), will host a screening of the show Sunday with music by Detroit blues luminary Jeff Maylin preceding and following the 10 p.m. telecast.

Doors open at 6, music starts at 8 and there is no cover charge. The Baltimore is located at 1234 Randolph Street downtown. Let the Sun rise.

Anna Gunn on Life After 'Breaking Bad:' 'I'm Interested in Complicated, Complex Female Characters'

Anna Gunn as Skyler White in 'Breaking Bad.' (Frank Ockenfels/AMC)

Even people who've never watched Breaking Bad – both of 'em – know that the eight-episode arc beginning Aug. 11 on AMC will mark the end of one of TV's most extraordinary, genre-bending series.

Star Bryan Cranston, winner of three consecutive Outstanding Lead Actor Emmy Awards for his portrayal of meek chemistry teacher turned drug overlord Walter White, has transcended Hollywood's typecasting jinx even before the show's fifth and final season concludes. He appeared in six major motion pictures in 2012 alone, including the Oscar-winning Argo. (Then again, Cranston landed the role of Walter after playing goofball dad Hal on the sitcom Malcolm in the Middle, so maybe he's just really talented.)

But what of the rest of the cast? For example, will Anna Gunn, who has become the dictionary definition of "longsuffering" after six years playing White's wife Skyler, now be confined to stereotypical spouse parts once Breaking Bad shutters its set?

Hardly. In a live-chat interview a few days ago hosted by the Los Angeles Times, Gunn says she's already found work in a leading TV role a world away from Skyler White.

"I did a pilot with a pretty interesting character," Gunn relates. "She's a teacher, a blue-collar woman who teaches at a very entitled private prep school on the East Coast. She's a sort of unfiltered, kind of wild, very honest person, and she's very passionate about her teaching. But she's struggling to deal with the bureaucracy of the school and the entitled parents.

"She's also raising three kids, two of whom are already out of the house and one who's still in school and struggling with coming out. And she's saying, 'Be who you are and come out.' She's a very flawed, interesting, different kind of character, I think. It's got sort of a dark comedic edge to it, too. It reminds me of Nurse Jackie. And because [the show] deals with education and teaching, I think it's also very interesting. So we're waiting to hear about that."

Gunn's high television profile as Breaking Bad's heroine also has helped open professional doors previously closed to her and many other actors.

"I just got back yesterday from the Sundance Institute where I was workshopping a new film, playing sort of my own female version of Walter White," she says. "It's the psychological portrait of the making of a zealot, essentially. She's a woman who goes from being a normal housewife to being a radical. So it was a really interesting piece of work and we shot about five scenes from the movie at the Institute."

She says the Institute experience was her first time working with co-writers and co-directors. "It was one of the best things I've ever done," she beams, high praise considering her recent body of work. "It's amazing to be there. Sundance is like a little filmmaker's Utopia."

Clearly, then, if someone ever decides to make a new version of Breaking Bad with a woman in the lead, Gunn's up for the challenge.

"I'm really interested in complicated, complex female characters, and Skyler certainly was that," she says. "So I'd like to do some more of that. Doing the pilot was fine. And I'd like to get back and do some more theater in New York. That's on the agenda as well."

There continue to be rumbles about a possible Breaking Bad feature film in the near future, but to get to that point fans have to know how the series ends over the last eight episodes. And Gunn, like her show's co-stars, aren't giving up those details just yet.

"People sometimes think they can trick me into it if they get me talking," Gunn says, smiling. "Perhaps buy me enough drinks. At the Sundance Institute there was a night we were out, having a good time, and people thought if perhaps there were enough drinks flowing that I might spill some beans. But we are well trained. We are very well trained. We never spill the beans."

'Mad Men' Season Six Premiere: Of Death, Dante, Sex and Puking

All photos credit: Michael Yarish/AMC

If you were enticed by the live ACM Awards or that Throne of Games show Sunday night, or just wanted to watch the one-year-delayed, season-opening episode of Mad Men on AMC without being distracted by engaging in social media (and really, who does that anymore?), you missed some rousing and provocative Twitter commentary during the broadcast. And not necessarily by the Big Glowing Box guy, although my live Tweets throughout the show have been compiled and are reprinted below.

This was a true modern-day television event, although early feedback suggests some viewers were less than thrilled by the episode. "Disappointed" is a word I've seen used like a mantra after the two-hour return called "The Doorway." I have a theory (actually three) as to why that may be.

In this strange new TV age where "season premieres" seemingly take place every weekend, audiences aren't used to waiting a year to see new episodes of anything, even a show with the obvious quality and attention to detail that Mad Men emanates. Or, after winning four consecutive Emmys as the best drama on television, the show has set its own bar so impossibly high that viewers expect nothing less than Eugene O'Neill perfection. Every week, please.

Or (and this is my personal favorite), creator and executive producer Matthew Weiner, like every one of us, is a creature of habit. The downside of having a megahit show is that sometimes networks ask you to create a two-hour "special" episode when you've been accustomed to building one-hour story arcs for years. Flow, pacing and story development can be victims of process. Longer doesn't always mean better, though I'm sure Don Draper would disagree.

And speaking of our favorite tortured antihero, we may never know how he responded to that blonde who asked, "Are you alone?" at the end of Season Five. Sunday's episode – after a jarring anachronism to begin the show – finds Draper and wife Megan on the beach in Hawaii. After Lane Pryce's in-office suicide last season and the passing of Roger Sterling's mom in this episode, Don's clearly searching for the meaning of life and death: I think he's determining that it's sex.

Here, with a few embellishments for clarity and to break free of 140-character bondage, is the compilation of our running Twitter commentary beginning at 9 p.m. EST Sunday, April 7 on AMC:

(8:59) Time to begin @MadMen_AMC tweeting! As Matthew Weiner said in season preview: We left in the summer of '67: nothing but chaos in the U.S after that.

CPR on a doorman? Not quite the #MadMen opening scene I expected.

Now this is more appropriate: Draper reading 'Dante's Inferno.' (He's on a working vacay in Hawaii.)

One review I read today said Jon Hamm doesn't speak a word of dialogue for the first SEVEN MINUTES. Somebody put a stopwatch on this guy! (9:03)

This Hawaii opening beats the heck out of a Manhattan skyscraper, doesn't it? 

Five minutes and counting. Hamm hasn't spoken yet.

Apparently while we were gone, Megan landed a role in a soap opera! At least she's signing autographs! Anyone confirm?

He did it! Don Draper is serving as best man at a total stranger's beach wedding! Never thought of him as a stand-up guy.

Nice to know Betty's still reckless (driving). We need some consistency in these characters. 

I pray Megan never asks me, "How are you feeling?"

It's official: Don Draper's first word of dialogue in 2013, after a seven-minute wait: "Army." I want to be Jon Hamm.

Christina Hendricks in a new Johnny Walker Black commercial? That'll make drunks out of many sober men. #Breathtaking

"She's in the next room. Why don't you go in there and rape her?" Betty, Betty oooooh! Yuck! More class, less crass, please. 

"People are naturally democratic if you give them a chance." Betty: "Are you on dope?" 

The episode is set during the holidays, and they have plumped up January Jones like a Christmas turkey.

First Peggy sighting! (9:28)

First Roger sighting, at 9:30 – thankfully, hilariously, in therapy.

Soldiers cutting off ears in Vietnam? I remember none of this. I do vividly recall  the knee-jerk reactions of real-life ad agencies, tho.

(Retweet from HuffPostTV:) Hey, there's James Wolk playing a SCDP account guy trying to chat up Don. Shades of how a young Draper annoyed Sterling

"I always get two, I don't want to share." Crazy '60s white people.

Are they really smoking dope in the creative bullpen! This IS the '60s! And a black woman secretary, too! Progress!

Don Ho and 'From Here to Eternity' in the same breath? Smooth, Roger. That sums up the mainland's knowledge of Hawaii in the '60s.

"We want that electric jolt to the body. We want eros. It's like a drug. It's not domestic." And there defines Don Draper's life.

Roger's mother died. At 91. And Carolyn is more shattered than he is. "She was always so nice, when she could hear me."

Peggy has become Don Draper with breasts.

This should be good: Don in a photo shoot. But he now realizes he brought back the wrong cigarette lighter from Hawaii.

As much as Don Draper smokes, how could he JUST NOW realize he had that soldier's lighter?

The photographer says to Don, "I want you to be yourself." Yeah, like he knows who THAT is. 

Megan can't attend the funeral of Roger's mother because she has a TV call. That independence is not going to sit will with Don.

Looks like Betty has a new (little) friend.

Roger Sterling is about to have a field day at this funeral.

"Do you want to bury her with this ring?" Roger: "We already burned her up."

Given a choice, you'd probably rather attend a funeral like this drunk like Don.

Wheelchair-bound mourner: "I have a few words to say. I insist." Roger: "Of course. Why don't you roll on over here?"

And Draper upchucks in the umbrella stand! Gotta love this show? Roger: "This is MY funeral! Everybody OUT!"

Now it all comes into focus: this #MadMen premiere is a multifaceted look at death. What a cheery way to begin a season.

My boy Roger: After erupting at his mother's funeral, then momentarily being overcome by grief, he still tries to hit on Mona.

Looks like a jar of pee to me. #RiverJordanWater

"Refrigeration. It's the wave of the future, Daddy." Sounds more like the '40s than the '60s. (10:25)

The doorman's near-death experience at the very top was Don's opportunity to ask, "What did you see?" while you were dead.

"So you'll still love me, even if I'm a lying, cheating whore?" Can't believe that's Megan talking to Don, not vice versa.

"Is marijuana expensive?" Dear Betty, still more guts than brains. Like I said, reckless. (10:32)

"Those workers aren't surprised, because they know that they're lazy." – Betty. Like I said before, Draper with boobs.]

I had no idea Adrien Brody was alive in the '60s. #PeggysBoyfriend (Better comparison, from another Tweeter: Frank Zappa.)

Introducing the Invisible Partner: We've seen more of Christina Hendricks in her booze commercials than in the episode.

"Well, heaven's a little morbid. How do you get to heaven? Something terrible has to happen." Thanks, Don. God, your thoughts?

The Don Draper I remember never would have been so accommodating to clients' dumb comments. Hawaii must do something to a man.

Whoa! Betty as a brunette? Anyone? Anyone? I'm kinda channeling Annette Funicello here.

(Retweet from @NicoleW:) Betty went Veronica.

And now, everyone, a '60s discussion of gay sex.

Oh, no! The obligatory Hawaii vacation slides. Can we return to the gay sex conversation, please?
 

Can't look at Kevin Rahm without thinking of "Judging Amy." Oh, I did love that show.

Don Draper got very existential in this episode. Don't think his questions are going to be answered anytime soon. 

Somehow sweet to see a rotary-dial phone again.

THERE's the big surprise I'd heard about! I don't believe that's Megan! Don's in bed with his neighbor's wife. Episode had to run to 11:08 to squeeze that in!

And we're off – and Don Draper, like a rabid rabbit, is back in. Thanks, folks. It was fun.