Author Archives: Matt Fowler

The Starling premieres Friday, Sept. 24 on Netflix.

Melissa McCarthy and Chris O’Dowd trade in their usual, more traditional comedic personas and performances to play a couple struggling through grief and loss in Netflix’s sappy and unfocused The Starling, featuring a distractingly out-of-sync CGI bird causing pesky problems while also being a metaphor for, you know, life’s mysteries and stuff.

McCarthy and O’Dowd do their darnedest and give their utmost in a film that wants very much to be an exploration of sorrow and heartache, but also one with a quirky Garden State-style dramedy vibe that sanitizes and just about sinks the entire thing. Throw in the bird (the titular starling) that whisks around in a cloud of overly sentimental pandering, feeling like the feather in Forrest Gump, and the actual serious and wrenching subject finds itself washed out to sea by a tide of silly hokum.

Kevin Kline, who we’d all do better in seeing more of in general, feels wasted here. Not because of his screen time, as he’s the third lead here, but in his character’s role and arc. In the aftermath of the loss of their young daughter, McCarthy’s Lily and O’Dowd’s Jack find themselves in starkly different places. While Jack spends time in a mental health care facility, Lily trudges on, more or less refusing to address her own anguish. Kline plays her default therapist, a local veterinarian who used to be a counselor but now prefers the company of animals. Throughout the story, Kline’s curmudgeon warms to Lily and, through a few conversations about the territorial bird in her front yard, helps her realize various vague platitudes to aid her recovery. You’ll want a Good Will Hunting-type of breakthrough, but you’ll get Farmer’s Almanac wisdom.

The film even seems to know that it should make use of Kline’s abilities more, putting him on screen in ways that are wholly unnecessary. There’s a moment between Jack and Kline’s Dr. Fine that serves no purpose other than to bring those two in a scene together. And since we’re talking about wasted talent here, there are huge draws — former and current leads of their own TV shows — who pop in for little-to-nothing roles.

Timothy Olyphant is supposed to be comic relief but comes off as fake as the bird, while Hamilton and Snowpiercer‘s Daveed Diggs is relegated to barely a blip. Emmy winner Loretta Devine, meanwhile, best represents The Starling’s mixed-up attempt to convey a cathartic story for those who don’t want to endure anything too heavy or revealing.

There are a few moments of genuine wonder, and you don’t often see a story about a couple trying to find a way forward after the loss of a child. Usually these stories focus on one parent over the other, or even eliminate one completely by having the relationship bust and that partner leave, but The Starling actually weighs both of Lily and Jack’s obstacles (more or less) equally.

In doing so, however, and by throwing in a computer bird that never fails to pull you out of any and all emotional territory, The Starling muddies its own waters gives us a tale that pretty much demands a happy ending brought about by convenient revelation and cheesy reconciliation. Again, this is a serious topic that’s been sugar-coated in bizarre, and often boring, ways.

Directed by Theodore Melfi (St. Vincent, Hidden Figures) — and with songs by The Lumineers, Judah & the Lion, and Brandi Carlile — The Starling isn’t too far removed from a Hallmark condolences card. In spare moments, the subject matter is granted permission to go to honest places, but mostly it’s painted into a corner by whimsey and obfuscation in the form of a bird that gives both the main characters and us a shield against introspection.

Spoilers for Y: The Last Man’s “Karen and Benji,” which aired Monday, Sept. 20 on FX on Hulu, follow.

Y: The Last Man’s fourth episode steps away from President Jennifer Brown’s D.C.-based turmoil to follow her children, Yorick and Hero, as they separately navigate the harsh and cutthroat world outside. “Karen and Benji” is a better and more focused entry than the show’s previous ones, though the poor, childish choices made by both Yorick and Hero (particularly Yorick) continue to make the series a frustrating trek.

There’s something about Yorick’s flighty goofball qualities that worked on the pages of the comic, but just doesn’t easily translate over to this series. What was once quasi-charming comic relief is now an absolute abhorrent attribute. Yorick has gone full “apocalypse teen,” meaning the whiny character in the midst of world-collapsing chaos who’s still selfish and unhelpful. Normally, you’d find this quality in poorly written teenage characters who somehow find a way to still get stubbornly furious with their mom and dad while meteors are falling from the sky.

Here, it’s a full-grown man who’s being a baby. That makes sense given Yorick’s man-child qualities, but “Karen and Benji” literally shows him blowing his cover and endangering everyone around him because he thinks he spots Beth — a woman he’s convinced he needs to save, but in reality, she’d all but broken up with him right before the world fell because he’s a cloying clown. Now, he just watches old videos of her on his phone, as if he somehow lost a thriving relationship.

Pairing Yorick with Agent 355, who’s been the bright spot of the series (and carrying a heavy load), is a fun dynamic. He’s all nonsense and emotion and she’s all practicality and logic. And she’s ruthless in a way that he can’t fathom because, as she notably schools him this week, he’s never had to feel small or unseen. Now that he is literally the genetic nuclear football, he can’t handle it. His privilege bought him a life of being important without anything asked in return. As a result, Yorick and 355 inherently make for a sublime odd couple — less so, though, when she’s warming up to him.

It’s possible she’s playing nice, at the end of this chapter, as a way to “manage” him. Knowing she can’t bark orders at Yorick because he has to feel like his actions are his own idea, 355 suffers through Yorick abracadabra-splaining to her why card tricks are beneath him (“I’m an escape artist,” ugh) just to let him know that she’ll help him find Beth… after the geneticist stuff. As if he’ll be just free to leave.

Hopefully Yorick grows up sooner than later, because he’s practically unbearable right now. He doesn’t want anyone to get hurt or die, but he’ll put everyone in immediate harm’s way when it suits him and his insane whims. Then, it somehow becomes 355’s fault if bodies drop.

To the show’s benefit, it’s difficult to make creepy dystopian hellscapes boring. The gloomy and foreboding quality of apocalyptic aftermath, with everyone willing to turn on each other, is usually fraught with tension. Y: The Last Man has the added anomalous element of all these badlands crimes, from muggings to murders, being committed by women. Yorick and 355 have a run-in with some would-be thieves and Mafia-style “Staties Wives” while Hero and Sam, after picking up Nora and her injured daughter, Mackenzie, have their own harsh episode with the armed remnants of a women’s shelter. Despite a close call, it seems to end okay for all of them, especially Hero and Sam, as they’re brought into what seems to be a giant warehouse/market full of food and supplies.

That doesn’t make up for Hero’s own myopic motivations, of course. While not as juvenile as Yorick, Hero is an absolute mess who all-but refuses to head to her mom for safety. She argues, plots, sabotages a car, and even tries to seduce Sam as a way to prevent, or even just delay, seeing her mother again. Like Yorick, her wants and needs are a really tough sell in the face of everything else happening. We understand that she and her mom fell out, and have horrible history between them, but to shirk the President’s help in the face of a global catastrophe, where finding a safe haven means the difference between life and death, is an oversized pill.

355, as a woman of action and a seeker of straightforward purpose, is still a boon for the show. Most of her interactions with Yorick work, as she’s tasked with this escort mission from hell, and at the same time we’re also getting small peeks inside her psyche. “Karen and Benji” begins with 355 imagining herself in a glitzy cabaret number, singing Ella Fitzgerald’s “Taking a Chance on Love” as she seemingly sleepwalks toward the edge of a cliff. She’s an expert at compartmentalizing her emotions, but it would seem that the events of the previous weeks are enough to crack even the toughest of nuts. The show would benefit from showing more layers to her (without forsaking her edge) while also infusing Yorick with basic survival smarts (and maybe even a smidgeon of personal responsibility).