Horrible Bosses Deserves a Promotion

by Jon James

Horrible Bosses starts off with a cast rock-solid enough to sink a body with. Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston, and Colin Farrell star as three supervisors despicable enough to lead average men Nick (Jason Bateman), Dale (Charlie Day), and Kurt (Jason Sudeikis) to consider homicide. Spacey shines brightest, playing a manipulative, demanding, white-collar company president who would probably make a pregnant woman work until her water broke and then bill her for carpet cleaning. Aniston delivers a sex-addicted, extorting dentist that makes you really start to see the advantages of Novocain over nitrous gas. Colin Farrell kicks it up with a sleazy, coked-up, chemical-waste-disposal-company heir that would personally dump DDT right into a lake if it would save him ten bucks for more blow. The morbidly-inclined employees bring a synergy that’s not unlike the (original) Three Stooges, if they had turned into a manhunting trio. Day steals the show with a whiny, dim-witted but lovable incompetent that is straight out of his It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia character, only slightly less malefic. Bateman’s character is also similar to the role he’s known for in Arrested Development, but minus the family holding him together. Sudeikis’ womanizing character leaves something to be desired, though whether that is the actor’s fault or is just a universal trait of Jung’s ancient archetype “Himbo” is hard to say. The three play off each other well, though, and their chemistry really drives the humor part of this dark comedy.
Jamie Foxx also shows up, as a heavily tattooed “murder consultant” whose name would have more asterisks than letters if it were printed here. The character is used to make a few jabs at the racial ignorance and stereotyping that is still present in well-meaning middle class white men, but the character himself stands out as being just slightly more absurd than the other characters, like a mime corpse in a clown hearse. As with many movies with all-male leads,the movie’s next big jokes revolve around homophobic humor. A few of the scenes were funny and contributed to the development of the plot, such as when a urophilic gigolo shows up instead of a hitman, but mostly the jokes are passe and only distract from the tension-comedy waltz that fuels the movie. The pacing is well-orchestrated and effective, culminating in a plot climax that coincides with, well, another sort of climax. The humor and suspense develop up to this point is unrelenting, without a slow moment, and managing to generally avoid the awkward comedy motif that has been in vogue since The Office started airing in the U.S. The plot itself is driven by a decent degree of unexpected twists without falling back on various unjustified dei ex machina. In the meantime, Horrible Bosses manages to take some jabs at such cultural absurdities as movie piracy, outsourcing, stereotyping, and male sexual harassment, while keeping the jokes light and nondistracting.
In all, Horrible Bosses uses its A-list cast well, and revisits the Shakespearean art of balancing comedy and drama. Most of the jokes are fresh, with the exception of a bit of stale homophobic and chauvinistic humor, for which the creators should be berated. But if you’re looking for a refreshing comedy and don’t mind plenty of justification for an R rating, Horrible Bosses is worth a shot.

Motor City Blues

Spoiler Alert!: The most important spoiler for the season so far is in this review.

by Courtney Hilden

Oh, hi, Detroit 187, it's been a long time since we've checked in with you.
The first thing this episode covered, and probably the biggest change on the show, is the death of Detective Stone. He sort of died off screen, as the audience watched him get shot and then they ended the episode there. And when we returned, there were the detectives, mourning his loss. Given that Stone was one of the few white and young actors on the show, it's surprising that they killed him off. This is actually sort of admirable, because usually when they kill off characters they are the person of color who has always been relegated to a side character anyway. Here's hoping the show will allow the other characters, almost all who are people of color, will be the focus of the show. They are far more interesting.
That said, the characters got over Stone's death pretty quickly. By about fifteen minutes into the episode, it was easy to conclude that no one on the team had died, judging by how business as usual the characters were. Sanchez, as a woman (and the only woman really on this team, as one of the others is a boss and the other is federal) was the only one allowed to mourn, which adheres to our culture's insistance that only women can (should, are weaker for) showing emotion and that men never feel anything, especially not for a colleague or friend. The scene between Sanchez and Fitch, talking about Stone, rang incredibly false. The actress playing Sanchez seemed to struggle to be sad.
Speaking of feminism, it would have been easy for this show to turn Fitch's wife, Linda, into a sterotype, but instead, they showed her as someone who wanted her son to know his father and wanted to avoid a confrontation with him. This is possibly the most heartaching and realistic-kid-centric divorced couple I've seen on television.
That said, taken in the context of Sanchez, Latina as female stereotype and Linda, white woman as not a female stereotype, I was bothered. Linda, a white character, is allowed to be more than her identity as a white woman, while Sanchez is confined to the stereotypes of Latinas as histronic. Or, put another way, Sanchez, as a woman of color has been defined solely as a woman of color, and nothing beyond that.
(As of this episode, Sanchez is also the character with the least to do or the least backstory. The show has spent time showing the audience Fitch's family problems, Washington's relative family bliss, Longford's struggle with whether or not to retire, and Mahajan, with his romantic life. When are they going to give Sanchez something to do other than be a love interest of Stone and Fitch? When is she going to be defined as more than a woman for male characters to desire?)
That said, this show as a whole has done been doing some wonderful things with their soundtrack and set. The soundtrack has been a wonderful blend of old school and new school, with an emphasis on music that has come out of Detroit. The graffiti in this episode was also great. "At least Katrina was quick." That's a wonderful bit of on-the-nose politics. Nice. And the best moment? Bobby freaking out Washington by calling him on the phone.