Liars and Saints

My idea of the ideal haircut is "Helen Mirren hair." I realize that today's youth may not look to an octogenarian British actress for hair guidance--but that doesn't mean I need to be happy about the realization. Inspector Jane Tennison of "Prime Suspect" is flawed, but she is certainly not an insubstantial human being. She makes use of her time. I'll bet she does not worry about lice; she has a short, striking bob, and so I suspect that the lice leave her alone. Also, I think that the unfussy hair improves her agility; she can take down criminals because she is not tripping over her own flowing locks. It seems to me that 2026 Demi Moore--for example--would have a harder time saving the world. She would have a harder time because of all that hair. I have to allow my daughter to make her own hair choices--because the alternative would be insufferable. But it is so exhausting to bear witness. Susie wants the Demi Moore style, but she doesn't want to do...

  In some ways, "Primate" is a missed opportunity. The setup is so great. A family of idiots in Hawaii keeps a pet chimp. The chimp gets Rabies-via-mongoose--then goes on a killing spree. This could be a chance for intriguing character development. Trapped in a swimming pool, the humans could have a kind of popularity contest. Who should brave the proximity of the chimp in order to retrieve a cell phone from the house? (The chimp won't enter the pool, so the pool is a type of panic room.) Secrets could be revealed; bargains could be attempted. This could be like the final episode of "Succession"; I had issues with that hour, but I loved when Shiv dragged out the memory of a certain corpse to discredit her own brother. Unfortunately, "Primate" has almost no interest in its humans. The main star is the chimp, Ben. He demonstrates creativity by inserting two fingers into a human mouth--then detaching half the face from the rest of the body. He terrorizes ...

  I enjoy stories about schemes--stories where people deliberately play roles to win prizes (prizes that apparently could not be achieved through honest work).  This is a big part of why I'm so fond of the TV series "The Outs," which repeatedly has its lead characters attempting little performances. Oona conscripts her gay bestie to play the role of "boyfriend"--to make an old ex jealous. Mitchell has an ex pretend to be a *current* boyfriend--because Mitchell needs to seem like a "relationship expert" for a specific audience. Inevitably, the schemes fall apart. The Broadway version of "The Outs" is "Hello, Dolly!" Dolly Levi doesn't want her client Horace to court a young woman named Irene--so Dolly mentions (falsely) that Irene's first husband "may not have died of natural causes." Later, to lure Horace to the Harmonia Gardens, Dolly (falsely) promises a fabulous date. When the date implodes, Dolly moves in for t...

  To me, it's strange for a survey of one artist's work to be emotionally overwhelming--but the Renoir show at the Morgan is moving in the way that a good film is moving. You see approximately fifty years of one person's work. As Renoir ages, his arthritis makes his career difficult. But he doesn't give up; he starts using red chalk, which is apparently easier for his hands. Then he moves into sculpture--he collaborates. The collaboration lets him keep an eye on his health. It would be impossible to give up. I have been interested in Renoir since taking a trip to Paris when my son was very little. Staring at Renoir's many images of his own children, I understood that the artist was mainly compelled by the idea of different kinds of flesh. He wanted to show how the light hits a child's cheek--and how it hits a mother's cheek. The light behaves in different ways in different contexts. That one apparently small observation can be the "reason" for maki...

 There is a divide within my family, and the source is Taylor Swift. I think the new album is a stunning failure--utterly uninspired. I think a high-school student might feel embarrassed to submit a sophomore poetry assignment with the following lines: It's about to be the sleepless night you've been dreaming of! And: Don't care where the hell you've been cuz now you're mine! And:  Daisy's bare naked, I was distraught. He loves me not, he loves me not. The final clunker asks us to believe that "distraught/not" is a persuasive rhyme. It also uses a cliche. It also uses a cliche that Taylor herself has employed before . ("I picked the petals, he loves me not.") My husband feels more enthusiasm for this enterprise. Though he has an overall "thumbs down" response, he does enjoy quoting from "Wood." ("Sounds like Travis has a magic wand!") My niece just likes the album. She plays it quite a bit. She isn't discount...

 For a long while, Val McDermid's bread-and-buttter was the world of serial killer stories. McDermid's Tony Hill series often featured a killer on the loose; there was a ticking clock; yadda yadda yadda. At a certain point, McDermid began to pursue a different kind of story, the cold-case story. This was through her Karen Pirie series. Cold-case narratives are a nice way of steering around one problem of a serial killer narrative. Serial killers can become dull and repetitive; I began to sense this in the Tony Hill stories. Is it conceivable that there are *not* inexhaustible options for making a crazed "spree killer" seem interesting? With a cold case, it's possible that someone committed one terrible crime--then chose to "self-correct." But failing to acknowledge the crime is a kind of societal disease. It's a disease because victims of the crime may still be trying to live their lives; they have "ingested" the idea that someone can terro...