Lessons Learned From Episode Two of Vinyl

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If you thought you were going to get some recovery time after last week’s balls to the wall, full frontal rock ‘n’ roll recount, you were mistaken. Despite Scorsese’s absence from behind the wheel that drives episode two of HBO’s Vinyl, it is still every bit as jam-packed with questionable motives and bad boy behaviour as its predecessor.

If you missed the pilot, catch it on NEON* before watching the second episode or you’ll find yourself thrown into the very deep end that is record label owner Richie Finestra’s hectic life.

Life Lessons from Bruce Lee

Every movie goer’s worst nightmare is Richie, who, in the opening scene of episode two, stands at the front of the movie theatre during a screening of Enter The Dragon, karate chopping and roundhouse kicking the air in an unconvincing Bruce Lee impression. The scene might’ve been as simple as a building block addition to the soon-to-tumble tower that is Richie Finestra, but it’s impossible not to read a little further into the film of choice. Enter the Dragon’s most talked about scene is one set on a boat where a New Zealand (shout out) named Parsons tries to coax Lee into fighting him. Lee tells Parsons about his “fighting without fighting” technique, and promises to battle on a different beach. Lee has Parsons board a dinghy and pushes his nemesis out to sea. Thus wrapping up a lesson on how to win a fight by avoiding said fight altogether. It might be the amount of cocaine residing in his sinuses, but Richie takes the antithesis of the film’s message as his motive for the remainder of the episode.  Back at American Century, the German businessmen, Zac, Scott and Skip await Richie’s arrival, in a meeting meant to seal the deal between the two companies, officially handing AC over to Polygram. Until, in true Parsons style, Richie enters, terminates the buyout, shouts about music, and calls the German group "Nazi pricks" before kung fuing his own team into submission. HI YA.

A New Ray Romano

My parents watched Everybody Loves Raymond when it was on TV, like the real, not-computer TV. You've probably caught yourself watching the show at some point, it used to fill one of those after-dinner time slots when everyone was TV-bound, and then it started playing reruns in the mornings. And if you sat through that one episode, you sat through them all. It was formulaic. Every episode opened with Raymond screwing up royally to his wife’s unknowing. Raymond would then lie to Deborah about said screw up. Then Raymond’s brother Robert, who lived in his basement by the way, would out Raymond’s lie and Raymond would be in trouble, then forgiven in time for the next episode. After Vinyl's pilot, audiences were left unsettled, because Ray Romano's character, Zac Yankovich is Raymond's polar opposite. And now, after episode two, it’s abundantly clear that Ray Romano, as an actor, cannot be confined to his character in Everybody Hates Raymond. His Yankovich, is the angel to Finestra’s devil. They’re flipsides of the same coin. Finestra is in industry for the music. For passion and for soul. Yankovich is in the business for exactly that, the business. The money and the profits. Not to make him sound like the downbuzz of the series, he's just sensible, the guy has commitments. He’s loyal to a wife we already hate because she won’t let him go to the bathroom without permission. He’s in financial strife trying to pay for his daughter’s extravagant bat mitzvah. And to top it off, Richie totally uppercuts his face and he spends the episode looking like a rhinoplasty gone wrong. Come the episode's end, audiences wind up feeling sorry for Zac, who ends up contemplating OD-ing on Valium, an emotion we've never felt for Romano's down-and-out suburban father figure, Raymond.

Season Two

With a cache of widely watched shows in its repertoire, HBO has the security that comes with knowing it houses some of the most popular series on screens right now. Hoarding viewers to climax ratings was never really the point of Vinyl. Epitomising quality over quantity, the team behind Vinyl are in pursuit not of populous eyes, but of critical acclaim, prestigious awards and furthering its relationships with crowd favourites, like Scorsese, Jagger and Terrance Winter (Boardwalk Empire) – the show’s solo writer. And for these reasons, after just two episodes the show has been picked up for a second season, so get comfortable.

Devon is Badass Turned Bad Mother

Olivia Wilde’s Devon is the highlight of Vinyl’s second episode. We've seen the dejected housewife plot before, in the likes of Mad Men's, Betty Draper, although Devon is already more likeable, and more interesting than her 1960s counterpart. We watch as Devon cleans up after her husband’s drunken tirade from the night before, and follow her flashback to the night she met Richie at Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable party during a Velvet Underground performance. The two flirt. Get randy in the bathrooms. Then she gets pregnant leading to her current suburban state. We’re pulled from one flashback into another, where Devon sits alongside actress Karen Carpenter singing the Carpenters’ Yesterday Once More, before assuming reality when Devon realises she’s left the kids at the diner. We’ve seen it before, negligent mother loathes her housewife life and longs for party days past, but Wilde turns up to the part and honestly, the mild negligence plays a necessary interval to the darkness that is Richie’s entire world.

It's the Little Things 

It's too early to know whether the story behind Vinyl is going to have us utterly and irrevocably hooked for many seasons to come. There's undeniable potential. The characters are shrouded in secrets and mystery that have us both intrigued and grateful the episodes are dropping weekly so we can't cede to our curiosity and skip to the finale for answers. We're yet to fall for the personas themselves, but that's part of the fun, since many, like the antihero himself, are intentionally unlikable. Regardless, the actors behind the characters have us convinced and you're there to fall in love with the industry drama and New York City circa 70-something anyway. Those defining factors aside, one of the highlights of Vinyl and one of its defining elements is just how polished each episode is. There are some moments of pure genius that’ll stick with you. For me, the winning moment of episode two goes to nothing more than a scene cut. I know what you’re thinking, a scene cut. But this is no ordinary transition. The camera focusses on a line of cocaine atop Richie's television set, cuts, then zooms out, and we find that Richie's cocaine has been replaced by a pile of icing sugar on his offspring’s pancake breakfast. Its twisted and somehow, it’s brilliant.

The Rock and Roll

Say what you will, the show is true to its theme, and continues to serve nostalgia with every dish. Following the musically saturated pilot, the second episode doesn't relent, with a menu of back to back wistful hits. Here's a snippet of the lineup we're treated to in episode two:

• Bowie's Jean Genie.
• Velvet Underground's Venus and Furs and Run Run Run.
• The Carpenters' Yesterday Once More. (Also the episode's namesake.)
• Jethro Tull's A Passion Play Pt 1.
• Bobby Bland's I'll Take Care of You.
• Blues Image's Ride Captain Ride.
• Lee Dorsey's Everything I Do Is Gohn Be Funky.
• And an honourable mention to the Kinks’ All Day and All of the Night which we will almost certainly hear from the show's up and coming talent, The Nasty Bits, on episode three.

Vinyl’s got a lot going for it, from its talented cast, its witty banter to its taking place in a world impossible not to love. But in the end, it’s the music that’ll keep us coming back for more.

*What is NEON?

NEON is a subscription video on demand service (SVOD) powered by SKY TV.

When you sign up to NEON you get immediate access to a wide range of great movies and TV series, new and old, including exclusive SVOD content like Game of Thrones, Girls, Fargo, Younger, Manhattan, Fear The Walking Dead, Ray Donovan, The Wire, The Sopranos and of course Vinyl. NEON also have loads of exclusive movies, for example 50 Shades of Grey, Cinderella, Guardians of the Galaxy and Star Wars: Episodes I-VI.

Everyone can enjoy a 30 day free trial when you sign up at neontv.co.nz. Conditions apply.