Kings is a new, high-budget show on NBC about a superpower (Gilboa) led by a king (Silas) who is assisted by a young farm boy (David). It’s full of biblical allusions, and is something of an allegory for modern America…well, no. It’s set in a place that’s basically the same as modern America, but this alterna-verse isn’t really saying anything groundbreaking about, y’know, the state of our nation.
And what better way to deconstruct a weird allegory than to offer a play-by-play? In the spirit of “if it’s new, I’ll review it,” I offer you two solid hours of my thoughts on this compelling show. With commercial breaks.
8:00 Okay, we’ve got a farm boy named David and a…
8:01 My goodness, a king! And it’s a king who likes God (and is liked back).
8:02 The king appears to be a good father: “You won’t be warm enough” is classic Parent Talk.
8:03 This America-imitation country is called Gilboa, and its new capital is Shiloh. Gilboa sounds Portuguese (if there’s a biblical analogue, I’m not catching it), which is interesting—it hints at a possible re-writing of the history of conquest in the New World. In other words: Take that, Spain and England!
8:05 My attention is drifting. Time to Google. According to Wikipedia, Gilboa is the mountain range where Saul battled the Philistines. In other words: I’m sorry, Spain and England. You may have your colonialism back.
8:06 Wow, in this imaginary land, touching people you’ve never met on this face is evidently a-okay. God bless real America.
8:08 Gath is Canada. It’s pronounced “gaaath,” like it’s being uttered by Robert Forester (Peter and Nathan’s dad on Heroes). It’s also an allusion to the home of Goliath, whom David slew. Here, a Goliath is a tank. And I think our farm boy might be up to something.
8:13 Is this show actually about how duct tape can save the world? Because I’m a fan of that premise.
8:16 David is rescuing the king’s son Jack. And David defeated the Goliath.
8:25 Wow, look at all those spoons.
8:26 I should email Billie and tell her how much I like the new banner on the home page.
8:27 Jack the Prince is not-so-much a prince. More of a spoiled brat. The LA Times review compared him to Chuck Bass, and I really can’t top that.
8:30 King Silas is quite the tyrant. He disregards his daughter’s petition and feels like he owes nothing to no one, as John Wayne surely said once. Will David help him learn something about himself?
8:37 Interesting…we got some back-story on this Nation of Allegory. There was a unification war less than a generation ago, and army service is not compulsory. If this series lasts a season, I’ll wonder if we’ll get a flashback episode.
8:38 David looks like he’s a fan of the king, but we know from the opening that he puts work and duty (repairing that guy’s car) ahead of admiration and star-gazing. Since that guy is the Reverend, this could be useful for David, who of course wouldn’t think of it as pragmatically “useful”—the good guys are never that plotting.
8:42 Leonard Cohen was right. David does know the secret chord that pleased the Lord. Well, the Lord’s daughter.
8:52 Commercials? I shall defeat you, Mammon of capitalism, by catching up on my Bible reading. The David and Saul story, which is pretty long by Bible standards, looks like it will indeed make for good TV. Jealousy, lust, dancing…and something going on between Jonathan (who is Prince Jack, right?) and David. The story starts at I Samuel 17, but beware of spoilers!
8:54 Ian McShane does chew the scenery, doesn’t he? Every thing he says is a declamation, even in the family kitchen. This drove me crazy about Deadwood, too.
8:59 David now has the most important position in the military. Homeboy hero made good! His role is mostly that of a figurehead, of course—he’s just supposed to read what’s on the teleprompter.
9:00 Or maybe he’s supposed to go off-script and answer in a way that, unintentionally on his part, makes the royal family look good. Sneaky. Don’t those royals know that corrupting the innocents always just gives them the ammunition they need to eventually topple those in power and usher in a glorious paradise of donuts and puppies?
9:05 David’s brother is potentially in trouble, but Gath is offering a peace treaty. I imagine any mid-season replacement has both a thirteen-episode plan and a five-year-or-so plan. Where’s this show headed? Are we supposed to hope for the end of monarchy, that evil beast so inimical to quality of life and reserved for such backwards places as Norway? Is this going to be a show about revolution?...
(9:10 Well, it’s certainly going to be a show about David and Silas’s daughter.)
9:11 …Revolution, or the actual horrors of war, seem a bit too messy for this show. It’s so glossy, and focused so specifically on the royals, that a revolution would feel distant—assuming, of course, that this tone and premise stay constant.
9:12 Is Jack gay? His dad certainly seems offended by his homosociality, if not his homosexuality. The role of young princes and kings with too many male friends who have too much fun is pretty interesting. Edward II died a brutal death. Richard II was deposed and killed. Yes, my mind wanders.
9:17 The proclamations are written in pseudo-Shakespearean archaisms on a PDA. Why?
9:18 CrossGen, which stands for the entire military-industrial complex, has a stake in war with Gath, and that evil CrossGen guy has just bribed King Silas into continuing the war for the sake of a war economy.
In an essay on the mode of allegory, Erich Auerbach notes that true allegories are always a bit unsatisfying: the story that stands for something else is filled with irrelevancies—his example is of the knight Yvain who, while on a journey, turns left. Left has no relevance for the reader. It doesn’t refer to any absolute direction the reader could relate to, like north. It’s just in there to make the point that Yvain isn’t on the right path.
This CrossGen thing feels the same way—a bloated allegory of the modern American dependence on the manufacturers of war. But it’s not an allegory that tells us anything new: the symbolism is just describing what we already know, and not very well.
9:27: “We are king, and we do what seems right in mine eye.” Just because it sounds old, doesn’t mean it’s poetic. It just means it’s derivative and not innovative.
9:29 The Reverend is getting hot under the collar. I wonder if this is a Christian society. The obvious answer is yes, but no one’s mentioned anything particularly Christian, and there haven’t been any crosses. It would be kinda cool to see them invent a new religion to go along with their imaginary country of Gilboa.
9:34 David is surrendering. That’s pretty gutsy, and a damn interesting twist. I thought he was going to bring King Silas the foreskins of the Philistines.
9:36 Shakespeare, great guy that he is, has bequeathed us a horrible legacy: generation upon generation of overwrought actor has convinced us that the height of art—grand art that describes the human condition in epic strokes—is composed of shouting, declarations, and heroic last stands. This can sometimes be true, but isn’t there something at least a little heroic in the casual, non-self-aggrandizing gesture? Great art doesn’t have to be stiff.
9:52 Shiloh is a bit more than a capital city, isn’t it? It’s really the metropole, as though the rest of Gilboa is just the provinces. Is Gilboa really a superpower? Or is it a much smaller country than the US?
9:55 Help! I’m being attacked by butterflies!