Slings & Arrows: The Complete Third Season (2006)
Note: From late 2006 through the start of 2009, I volunteered to write content for and redesign a film-review website run by a former college professor. The arrangement didn’t end well, and as a result I removed my association from the site and decided to publish the reviews on my blog instead. Read about my misadventures with the site here.
I feel no shame in saying the first season of Slings & Arrows struck a serious chord with me, so serious in fact that I’m willing to declare it a perfect, if truncated, season of television. Perhaps the perfection comes from its abbreviated episode count; where other shows might have a few more episodes to breathe, every single second of Slings & Arrows counts. Overstuffed with entertainment and insight, the six episodes feel like 13 or even 22. Funny, heartbreaking, well-acted—I can’t say enough about the quality.
Setting the bar so high with the first season could only lead to disappointment in the second, and it did—but not by much. It had a few missteps, like the lack of development on the couple playing Romeo & Juliet and Richard’s misguided subplot at a cutting-edge PR firm (which started funny but went a little too long and broad for my tastes), but in the end it came pretty close to capturing the genius of the first season.
I felt myself looking forward to the third. Would it match the consistent brilliance of the first season, fall just under with the second, or slip even further?
Turns out, it bounced back pretty seriously, doing what Slings & Arrows does best: counterpointing the real lives of the actors, technician, and administration of the fictional New Burbage Festival with the play they are putting on this season. Even more than that, they counterpoint the Shakespeare group’s King Lear with an original musical called East Hastings, a mutant combination of the unbridled optimism and grunge of Rent and the goofy “urban” theatricality of West Side Story.
Riding high on the success of last season’s Macbeth (which, as we begin, has just finished a successful run in New York), artistic director Geoffrey Tennant (Paul Gross) wants to put on King Lear starring legendary actor Charles Kingman (the late William Hutt). The only problem? Kingman has brain cancer and a heroin addiction. When Geoffrey learns this, he’s put into a difficult situation: shut down a production that rapidly becomes a trainwreck, or continue it to fulfill the wish of a dying man. Geoffrey keeps Kingman’s secret at the expense of nearly everything—the actors’ and technicians’ increasing frustration when Kingman blames them for his own line and blocking mistakes, executive director Richard Smith-Jones’s (Mark McKinney) increasing apprehension in light of Kingman’s erratic behavior, and Geoffrey’s relationship with Ellen Fanshaw (Martha Burns).
Of course, the relationship with Ellen is already complicated by another problem Geoffrey faces: the emotional issues stemming from his brief insanity and his seeing the ghost of Oliver Welles (Stephen Ouimette) have led to impotence. Combined with Ellen’s annoying TV star friend Barbara (Janet Bailey) moving in, Geoffrey decides to leave.
Meanwhile, Richard teams up with notoriously difficult Darren Nichols (Don McKellar) on East Hastings, while three newcomers (Sarah Polley, Melanie Merkosky, and David Alpay) fight over housing arrangements and become embroiled in a romantic triangle and an endless “Shakespearean actor” vs. “musical actor” argument. These younger characters get much more development than last season’s Romeo & Juliet stars, but they aren’t nearly as well-drawn or interesting as the first season’s Kate McNab (Rachel McAdams) and Jack Crew (Luke Kirby). It’s a pretty minor nitpick, though—their storyline falls flat once or twice but ultimately matches the quality of the rest of the show.
The DVD includes special features: interviews with Paul Gross and Susan Coyne (Anna), extended scenes of King Lear, a blooper reel, deleted and extra scenes, a trailer, production notes, a photo gallery, song lyrics, and cast filmographies. The interviews and production notes are nice, but a few episode-length commentary tracks would have been nice.
The third season stands higher than the second but doesn’t quite match the first—of course, it’s comparing apples and apples. The three seasons, combined, form one of the best shows ever aired on television. It also builds to a difficult but satisfying conclusion to the series as a whole. When we’re given characters as rich and interesting as the men and women of Slings & Arrows, it’s difficult to say goodbye, but the finale serves as an emotional, well-earned capper for an excellent series.
Posted by Stan on September 23, 2007 12:00 AM | Permalink | Print-Friendly | Reviews | Digg It
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