Everything that is wrong in „Mozart in the Jungle“, season 4, episode 10, „Dance“ LAST EVER EPISODE!!!
Rodrigo is back! And this time he has to manage a household with dozens of kids, as Hailey has morphed into an uncontrollable birthing machine…no wait, it was a dream!
As the lovable series about classical musicians arguing, doing drugs and having lots of sex starts its 4th season, the writers are clearly on the look for new and crazy ideas to keep Rodrigo busy (he’s a social worker! he’s a waiter! he’s a philosopher!), Pembridge in the picture (he teaches Hailey! he humps Gloria! he’s a pop star!) and Hailey as lovable as possible (she’s a talented conductor! she teaches tweeting kids! she visits her parents!).
Of course this also means that a lot of stuff is going on that would never happen in real life classical music world. Or would it? Let’s find out…
1) 00:55: and again, this is NOT the way to conduct the first bars of Beethoven’s 5th symphony. And it wouldn‘t be a piece you‘d try with this kind of youth orchestra…
2) 2:15 In her apartment in New York…Hailey has the acoustics of Carnegie Hall, even if she practices!!!
3) 5:20 Egon is telling Rodrigo that he can perform…today? Without any dress rehearsal, not having practiced the stupid „Faust“-piece in weeks? How can that work, I wonder?
4) And Egon is depending on a chance meeting in Central Park for a performance that is about to start in… three hours???
5) 7:50: This hall must have the best acoustics in the world, when everybody can just go out on stage and talk normally without a microphone…
6) Also, it is weird that Rodrigo makes his speech before the orchestra entered the stage, because all the entering, setting up and tuning usually takes ages, and nobody wants to kill the tension with an endless break after such an announcement.
7) 8:50: Even though these are unexperienced kids they enter the stage faster than any professional orchestra in the world and are ready to play after only 6 seconds (without tuning, I might add!).
8) Frère Jacques is nice, but doesn’t really make for a good concert piece. And when did they rehearse it?
9) 11:18 This applause from a jaded classic audience is super-fake-enthusiastic, even if it consists only of mums and dads of the kids. 1 minute of a lame canon and you break out in standing ovations?? What would they have done had the played Beethoven? Also Timpani-boy basically had nothing to play, so why do his relatives scream so much?
10) 12:00 sneaky „Freaks“ reference is well-placed, but I have never met a classical first violinist who actually knew the film…
11) 14:00…eh, ok, but who is going to play the oboe part now that Hailey conducts??? As I composer I would be pretty pissed if an instrument was missing in my premiere….
12) 14:21…all this talking, talking, talking to the audience…but so far practically no music has been played!
13) 14:38 So Betty will play a demanding contemporary piece sight-reading it, on a foreign oboe with a foreign reed, with no time to prepare? No professional oboist would do that, even if he/she knew the piece…
14) 15:00 conducting an orchestra with 8 years of age is practically unheard of, but it seems to happen in Oaxaca…
15) 15:30 All this audience for a matinee concert with a kid orchestra playing „Frère Jacques“ instead of Beethoven, followed by a piece by a contemporary composer who doesn‘t even like himself. New York truly is the centre of world culture!
16) 17:00 so it was all a ploy by Egon for Rodrigo to „discover himself“? One could have known beforehand given the dodgy circumstances of this „performance“.
17) The piece by „Hesby“ is actually „Asyla“ by Thomas Ades.
18) 18:40 Mozart exists only in Rodrigo‘s mind, but he can physically catch a ball with his crotch!
19) I will not say anything about Hailey‘s conducting…
20) 20:00 I’m sure even Thomas Adès never got this kind of applause!
21) 20:40…all this screaming, and the composer of the piece is completely forgotten and apparently doesn’t even take a bow even though it was a premiere!
And with wise words by Mozart to the “little piece of Scheiße” the series ends on a huge cliffhanger…only to be not renewed for a 5th series by Amazon, the friggin’ bastards!!! Will Rodrigo finally start his career as a full-time waiter? Will Hailey finally learn how to actually conduct instead of pretending to? Will Gloria finally get sober? Will Thomas finally find peace? Guess we’ll never find out.
And with this sad note I end my complete nit-picking of every episode of “Mozart in the Jungle”. I hope you enjoyed it!
Moritz Eggert
Komponist
