{"id":7905,"date":"2018-01-20T18:00:45","date_gmt":"2018-01-20T18:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thedorseypost.com\/?p=7905"},"modified":"2018-01-20T10:29:03","modified_gmt":"2018-01-20T10:29:03","slug":"going-with-the-flow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedorseypost.com\/?p=7905","title":{"rendered":"Going with the flow"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

Michael Dorman in Patriot<\/p><\/div>\n

When I put the last mark on a painting, it\u2019s almost never what I expected it to be during the first brushstroke. And I\u2019m usually surprised several dozen times while getting from start to finish by what I\u2019m required to do. So I can identify a bit with the protagonist in Amazon\u2019s original series,\u00a0Patriot<\/em>. It\u2019s a funny, poignant, and whimsically Kafkaesque series built around the personality of a sad-sack folk singer whose day job is working in Special Ops for the CIA. Actually, he has\u00a0two<\/em>\u00a0day jobs. The other is his NOC, his non-official cover, as an industrial engineer working in a bleak Rust Belt factory in Milwaukee where he specializes in the \u201cstructural dynamics of flow.\u201d In layman\u2019s terms: piping. His company, McMillan, builds conduits for anything and everything, creating perfect circles in a world of epic imperfection, both planetary and human. These indispensable imperfections are what drive the story forward through one entertaining absurdity after another.<\/p>\n

The theme of the show is \u201cthe structural dynamics of flow,\u201d the principles of moving anything from Point A to Point B, that could apply to both McMillan piping and counter-intelligence. Likewise, Lakeman, with the help of his family and a co-worker, attempts to get $11 million Euros through airport security into Amsterdam and then on its way to Iran via a courier in Luxembourg. (His family cohort includes Cool Rick, Lakeman\u2019s Beastie Boys-obsessed brother, and his father, who presides over most of the action as a seasoned but compassionate \u201ccontrol\u201d who is professionally imperiled by his son\u2019s mistakes.)<\/p>\n

Nothing and no one in the show gets from Point A to Point B as planned. McMillan is going bankrupt. The covert payoff is making the rounds of Luxembourg as more and more people try to get their hands on it. The show\u2019s surreal silliness reaches a pinnacle when its protagonist attempts to retrieve the stolen garment bag full of loot from a Brazilian baggage handler. The man has high-tailed it back to his apartment, where he\u2019s rooming with what appear to be half a dozen South American wrestlers. When Lakeman breaks in to steal the bag, the wrestlers, bare-chested and bald\u2014like mutant clones of Vin Diesel\u2014emerge from various doorways and impassively pile atop Lakeman, which evidently is their go-to jujitsu move. The vignette is more like an avant-garde Busby Berkeley number than hand-to-hand combat. There are no Jason Bourne tussles in this show. Lakeman has to stab one of the fighters to get away and finally delivers the money to the Iranian agent. But the Iranian loses the bag to a thieving puppeteer who then gets arrested for stealing a dog collar, and the money ends up in something like a casual evidence room while the puppeteer serves her five days in jail.<\/p>\n

In his spare time\u2014yes, he actually has enough of it to write music\u2014Lakeman performs his own folk songs in the manner of Sun Kil Moon, long rambling confessions (I kept waiting for him to say\u00a0blue crab cakes<\/em>) that don\u2019t rhyme but are as sad and funny as the show. He appears to be too depressed to recognize or care that he\u2019s doling out highly confidential state secrets as ironic confessional poetry. The dry tone that runs throughout the show\u2019s intentional absurdities becomes most acute when characters start riffing in pipe-speak. It\u2019s the inside gibberish of their profession, which is often hilarious\u2014a nerd\u2019s version of a rapper\u2019s own sort of flow. Here\u2019s an excerpt from one episode\u2019s\u00a0transcript<\/a>, the moment in Amsterdam when John\u2019s boss, Leslie, introduces him to the audience assembled in a grand theater, as if for a performance of Beethoven\u2019s late quartets:<\/p>\n

And now to explain the core of Donnely nut plate spacing and cracked reconfiguration, my associate, John Lakeman.<\/p>\n

(Light applause)<\/p>\n

Lakeman: Hey, guys. Hey. Ready to talk plate processing and residue transport plate funneling? Why don’t we start with joust jambs? Hey, why not? Plates and jousts? Can we couple them? Hell, yeah, we can. Want to know how? Get this. Proprietary to McMillan. Only us. Ready? We fit Donnely nut spacing grip grids and splay-flexed brace columns against beam-fastened derrick husk nuts and girdle plate Jerries, while plate flex tandems press task apparati of 10 vertipin-plated pan traps at every maiden clamp plate packet. Knuckle couplers plate alternating sprams from the T-Nut to the S. K. N to the chim line.<\/p>\n

Stunned Euro guy in audience: Whoa.<\/p>\n

One of the story lines is that Lakeman, the protagonist, has to compete with Stephen, a bright and cheerful Asian applicant for a job at McMillan, which Lakeman\u00a0must<\/em>\u00a0land since McMillan does business in Iran\u2014where he needs to go in order to help stop Iran from building a nuclear weapon. Lakeman doesn\u2019t stand a chance against Stephen, since Lakeman never quite gets his piping in order, through most of the showSo he leans back on his special CIA training and decides to shove Stephen in front of a bus. As a result of his head injury, Stephen can still do his work at breakneck speed on a laptop, but he needs someone else to actually open the laptop for him, at which point he begins typing furiously and far too productively for Lakeman\u2019s comfort, prompting Lakeman to quietly shut the display, putting both computer and Stephen back into sleep mode.<\/p>\n

Stephen\u2019s most serious injury is the loss of his sense of humor. He no longer can make jokes or recognize irony. His therapist is determined to rehabilitate his sense of humor. What\u2019s amusing about this conceit is that the pretty young therapist could just as well have devoted herself to getting Lakeman himself to lighten up. He rarely smiles and never laughs in the series. He executes his mission in a somnambulistic funk, which at times actually becomes useful as a badass numbness, enabling him to kill whoever needs killing, as occasion warrants. The lead actor, Michael Dorman, has a face that looks designed by Gary Trudeau, locked into a rueful, stunned melancholy at the duplicitous life he\u2019s chosen.<\/p>\n

In this world, the life of an intelligence operative is hardly romantic, rarely satisfying. Budgets are lean. An administrative aide from Langley can\u2019t even come up with the scratch to buy a chair for Lakeman\u2019s flat. Screw-ups abound and when the agency issues Lakeman a fake Social Security card, there are ten numbers for McMillan HR to choke on, so he nearly loses his job because of one too many digits. There is no Aston-Martin with turrets for headlamps here. He has his wits and a knife, some duct tape and a guitar string, to accomplish his mission.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a beautiful show, full of dolorous slow comedy. Sometimes, the movie\u2019s mannerisms become too whimsically Wes Anderson. One stylistic tic is to present a character\u2019s face in the center of the screen, staring at the camera, often with an architecturally symmetrical backdrop, a practice that grows a little old as you get deeper into the episodes. By the end of the season, Lakeman has achieved deep wisdom in the structural dynamics of flow. As he tells the detective in the final scene, \u201cWherever you\u2019re going, you\u2019re not going to be able to get from here to there as easily as you think.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the best things about the show is the opening title sequence. As is true of many shows, it\u2019s at least equal or even superior in emotional power to everything in the story. It has the same delicate balance between humor and sadness, a similar wry take on human endeavor as a whole, sending you into a timeless dream state for the semi-pitiful goofiness that ensues. In the case of\u00a0Patriot<\/em>, the opening number is a folk song from the 60s,\u00a0The Train<\/em>\u00a0by Vashti Bunyan. It\u2019s lyrics are a kind of simplified version of\u00a0The River Merchant\u2019s Wife: A Letter,<\/em>\u00a0the Chinese\u00a0poem<\/a>\u00a0Ezra Pound translated. It plays behind a medley of home-movie clips, which feels like a quiet salute to the opening of\u00a0The Wonder Years<\/em>. You see Lakeman\u2014the character\u2019s real name in the show is John Tavner\u2014as a little rambunctious kid risking his health and safety again and again, doing a jig after dismounting from a miniature dirt bike, riding a sheep in a rodeo until he gets slammed into a wall, showing off a missing tooth for the camera, and finally, taking aim at a target with a scoped rifle, maybe steadying himself to shoot a gun for the first time in his life. The sequence ends with the kick of the rifle as he fires, nearly knocking the boy onto his back as the song enters its poignant chorus. The poetry of it is moving and perfectly done. Everything in the story follows from the spirit of that shot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I put the last mark on a painting, it\u2019s almost never what I expected it to be during the first brushstroke. And I\u2019m usually surprised several dozen times while getting from start to finish by what I\u2019m required to do. So I can identify a bit with the protagonist in Amazon\u2019s original series,\u00a0Patriot. It\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nGoing with the flow - represent<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/thedorseypost.com\/?p=7905\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Going with the flow - represent\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When I put the last mark on a painting, it\u2019s almost never what I expected it to be during the first brushstroke. And I\u2019m usually surprised several dozen times while getting from start to finish by what I\u2019m required to do. So I can identify a bit with the protagonist in Amazon\u2019s original series,\u00a0Patriot. 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