Despite my best judgment I ended up watching KAOS on Netflix. The premise seems to be, "What if O Brother Where Art Thou met American Gods and had a threesome with a high school book of Greek Myths?
Which sounds fine, I guess. The main problem - or attraction - is its use of a device I call Stolen Valor. (I'm aware that calling something Stolen Valor that isn't Stolen Valor is in itself Stolen Valor, but I can't think of another name.) This Stolen Valor - Mark II, perhaps - is bringing in legendary slices of pop music at chosen moments to substitute for an Eyeball Kick the visuals can't provide. I can understand why it's done, but the calculatedness takes me out of the moment.
The very first scene of the series is double-underlined and italicized by the use of the stonking introductory riff of Dire Strait's "Money For Nothing." Whatever you may think of Dire Straits and their legacy, there's no doubt that guitar sound makes the heart beat faster. What was weirder is the director kept it going when the vocals started, yea unto the line "Look at them yo-yos." Slight loss of dignity there, I thought.
One after another the hits kept coming, with a high point for me being a few bars of The Kills' "Future Starts Slow," another track where the guitar sounds as if it's about ready to burst its skin and swoop down to eat your face.
By the third of fourth episode I'd gotten used to it, and then they used just a smidgen of Dawn Penn's 1993 reggae classic "You Don't Love Me (No No No)."
2 comments:
So what you're saying is that focusing on the use of music is the way to get past the horrible writing and performances? I actually made it through the first episode, but could go no further.
Sorry, Blogger has given up telling me when people comment. I just saw this. Yes, the music being excellent certainly took the edge off the rest of it. I thought the writing was okay, assuming you like your Greek Myths severely mangled, which I don't. (Why would King Minos be the Minotaur's father? Plot reasons!) I thought it was a bit like Brand New Cherry Flavor in tone and it certainly made more sense when I realized it was British in conception.
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