100 Favorite Shows: #91 — The Spoils of Babylon
“When the wine runs out, it’s time to go. That’s the rule. That’s the rule as old as the hills.”
Will Ferrell and Adam McKay’s production company, Funny or Die, spent most of its early days creating viral comedy content for the Internet. For two months at the start of 2014, though, they made a big leap to television with The Spoils of Babylon, a six-part miniseries that aired on IFC and eventually netted an Emmy nomination for Kristen Wiig’s acting (she played Lauoreighiya Samcake as Cynthia Morehouse). The IFC-Funny or Die joint production was a send-up of epic television miniseries from the 1970s and featured a number of actors (Wiig, Tobey Maguire as Dirk Snowfield as Devon Morehouse) portraying fictional thespians, who starred in this series about an oil baron’s family torn apart by love and schemes for power. (Jonas Morehouse (Tim Robbins as Sir Richard Driftwood) seeks political upheaval while Devon and Cynthia just want to be together.) Introduced by Eric Jonrosh (Ferrell), the auteur behind the series, The Spoils of Babylon was a silly spoof from the team of Matt Piedmont and Andrew Steele, who later went on to create a follow-up series for IFC, 2015’s The Spoils Before Dying.
(Somehow, The Spoils of Babylon spoilers lie head. Beware the sanctimonious code of one, Eric Jonrosh.)
I haven’t seen any of the 1970s and 1980s novelistic, multi-night event miniseries that The Spoils of Babylon is allegedly spoofing (according to Wikipedia, they include Shogun and Rich Man, Poor Man; I’ve heard of neither), but I do understand the concept of high melodrama. After all, I grew up exposed to General Hospital and One Life to Live on a semi-frequent basis. From this, I know what it means for characters to dial up their acting in an attempt to milk every ounce of praise from the most prominent television critics. Every blood-curdling sob session and each scream of human horror landed with me throughout The Spoils of Babylon because I knew that melodrama was the key to the satire, rather than the most acclaimed miniseries of decades gone by.
Furthermore, thanks to “director bullshit” (a term coined by Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald of The Watch, I believe), I also know what it means for the creators of these high works of art to dial up their own melodrama. Every time a director of a superhero movie compares their film to something like Taxi Driver or 2 Days in the Valley, I always wonder why they’re not content to just say, “This is gonna be an awesome superhero extravaganza, mate.” But when I see the character of Eric Jonrosh (brought to life by a Ferrell donning a Kurt Russell in The Hateful Eight-type get-up) insisting that his novel-turned-miniseries is “not wonderful,” but rather, “momentous” and “epic,” I understand that inflated auteurs have been around as long as their respective mediums.
The Jonrosh character (who slept with the majority of his “cast”) introduces the fictionalized Spoils of Babylon as a product of his repressed artistic vision (he always fought with vaguely defined network executives). This labor stretched for three years and hours upon hours of footage (filmed on very niche, cinephile-branded film that can only be understood by Sean Baker’s Letterboxd profile) to complete. With its sweeping score, Breath Take-O-Scope production origin, and insistence on 93 mm film, The Spoils of Babylon could have been plucked directly from a summer event series on ABC in 1974. However, with its blatantly obvious miniatures and costumes potentially purchased from iParty, Babylon instead feels like Tommy Wiseau taking a pass at Lawrence of Arabia. It works because this is exactly the joke, as well as a loving introduction to sincere melodrama that would later result in A Deadly Adoption, a Lifetime film played straight by Ferrell and Wiig.
Their collaborations are pretty much uniformly interesting (if not always electric), but what sets Babylon apart from being another SNL-alum fueled experiment is the presence of Tobey Maguire. Released in 2014 (after The Great Gatsby, Brothers, and Tropic Thunder), The Spoils of Babylon might be the last truly great Maguire performance. He’s taken on the role of a producer in Hollywood, but before he dipped, he starred in the Bobby Fischer biopic, Pawn Sacrifice, and this delightfully absurd IFC series. At least before he retreated to the shadows of stardom, Maguire gave us all an unabashedly silly performance.
At the outset of the second episode, “The War Within,” Maguire’s Devon Morehouse is serving as an Air Force pilot in an unclear war featuring the U.S.’s involvement. It’s completely over the top (he ignores his superior’s request to eject when his plane gets shot down because the “big man” in the sky “punched his ticket”), but it’s also profoundly goofy (while firing at enemy planes, Devon makes shooting and airplane noises with his rippling cheeks and pursed lips). In the scene, Maguire is mocking a character like Devon, who would think himself a bad-ass pilot and then make noises equating himself to a parent who just wants her baby to eat his vegetables. However, he’s also sending up the classic American values that prompt “pure-hearted patriots” to put their lives up for grabs in war. (“Is it a fool who goes up in flames at the altar of freedom?” Devon asks before resigning himself to a highly preventable death.)
Devon survives, of course, to escape from his crash landing in a jungle environment and return to Cynthia by the end of the episode. It’s never quite so simple with the Morehouses, though, as Devon comes home with his new wife, Lady Anne York (a mannequin voiced by Carey Mulligan), kicking off a Notebook-esque love triangle.
Wiig’s Cynthia is immediately jealous of Lady Anne and she devolves into the hysterics promised from the series’ first episode, “The Foundling.” When the Morehouse patriarch espouses vague, FDR-level hope (he wants businesses to be “taxed out of business”) and smokes a “business cigar” with his fellow corporate fat cats, Cynthia and Devon eavesdrop. She turns to him and innocently asks, “What’s the economy?” Devon chuckles shortly and replies lovingly, “Gosh, you’re a dummy.”
Wiig’s portrayal of Cynthia is kind of “a dummy,” but it’s also just a straight parody of the kind of abiding, tortured woman in a male-driven story, who does whatever her biggest crush demands of her and expects her to accept it when he completely turns his back on her (like joining a war completely unprompted). It’s what makes Wiig’s hysteria so hilarious, as she grapples with her place in a family that blatantly disrespects her (Jonas attempts to slap sense into her through a series of intercutting close-ups. Her food is stabbed repeatedly while she makes small talk with Lady Anne).
Wiig has always been deft at fully committing to this level of outright buffoonery (Cynthia Morehouse seems descended from SNL’s Dooneese), but it’s incredibly fun to watch other stars prove that they’re able to let go of the tendency for actors (who play other actors) to take themselves too seriously. From names like Gumdrop Howard (Jellybean Howie) and Bobcat Maccaulie (Val Kilmer) to Bagpipes O’Toole (branded vodka in-universe), Babylon obviously exists in a heightened realm that demands anyone who comes to play in the Funny or Die universe to be silly and willing to be mocked.
Whether it was the always-game Marc Evan Jackson (as Bank Man), the better-than-he-lets-on David Spade (as Joseph Sol and Talc Munson), the scene-stealing Haley Joel Osment (as Marty Comanche and Winston Morehouse), or the let-it-fly Michael Sheen (as Christopher Smith and Chet Halner) and Jessica Alba (Dixie Melonworth), Babylon got the best out of their performers. It’s always delightful to see actors so desperate to break into comedies (Sheen and Osment, at the time, were regarded for their dramatic efforts primarily) get the opportunity from proven veterans who know how to be silly.
Silliness was the main goal of Babylon with most of the humor revolving around jokes that go on for a long time (like Devon and Cynthia’s first kiss, the list of names best ascribed to Devon, and the inscription on his watch). There were also moments of occasional satire (like the “laboring under the belief that hard work is a religion” platitude that encapsulates more depth than the entirety of the first episode), but Babylon was mostly just an excuse to kick back and have some laughs with some friends.
With its velvety production design that ranged from a Gatsby-era drama to an Apocalypse Now (complete with Doors-vibe introductory music) style war story to a John Waters-flavored sex film, The Spoils of Babylon wasn’t so much a spoof of a specific 1970s miniseries, as it was just a spoof of all sorts of convoluted melodrama in stories. With layered storytelling delivery (Devon provides narration, Eric provides TCM-style presentation segments), it gets incredibly tricky to follow the actual narrative of Babylon. But the plot is beside the point. In a parody, the story is always second to the humor and when matters become obfuscated, it’s fine because the rest of the series is fun already. At just six episodes, though, Babylon invites us back for a rewatch or two to fully unpack all that is unfolding throughout the series. It’s a two-hour long miniseries that exists in perpetuity for us to witness and have fun with, if ever we miss Maguire or Sheen, Wiig or Ferrell, as they all slowly move away from being in the zeitgeist of their generation’s stardom.
Eric Jonrosh knows what it’s like to feel stardom slip away, too. Even if he’s still sitting in his tiny booth with that “same moribund look” on his face. He’ll be there during any rewatch of the series. As will the glint in Ferrell’s eye that suggests the real spoils of Babylon are the laughs we shared along the way. Seems pretty melodramatic to think of it that way.
