I’ve written in qualified defense of product placement in the past, arguing that when it’s used to subsidize repetitive competition shows or to prop up low-rated but quality programming where the audience is aware that product placement is ongoing, there’s no real damage to the creative integrity of a program. But switching up Bond’s martini for a Heineken in Skyfall, the next installment of the storied franchise, is going too far.

First, it would be hard to make the case that adding a Heineken sponsorship is actually necessary to help the production cut costs or make some sort of margin. The Bond franchise may be the most reliable product in moviegoing history, resistant to downturns, odd plots, and dreadful names—Quantum of Solace made just $5 million less than the far superior Casino Royale. Unless Sam Mendes, who is directing Skyfall, is doing something truly bizarre with the movie, there’s probably no particular need to lock in a little margin to ensure that everything will be okay.

Second, this is a case where Bond’s original product choice actually matters—the scene where he comes up with the particular formula for it in Casino Royale is all about the delight a self-made man takes in tweaking the conventions and the formulas of the class he’s joined. That Bond drinks his martini shaken not stirred, and therefore slightly weaker, is a nice little chink in his masculine armor because it means he’s drinking a weaker cocktail (shaking makes the ice melt faster and dilutes the drink). Characters’ tastes can be and often are arbitrary in popular culture, but Bond’s are carefully curated and a very important projection of his personality that helps provide continuity from one actor to the next. Turning him into a Heineken drinker is a betrayal.

More to the point, why does it have to be Bond quaffing the brewski? If Felix Leiter is back—and one has to hope he will be given how wonderful Jeffrey Wright’s been in the role of Bond’s American counterpart—why not have him knock back a beer while Bond drinks his martini? You’d still get the positive association, and you could get it in a way that tweaks Bond’s martini-drinking a bit, plays up the difference between American and British styles. That actually seems like it would be smarter, and more self-aware. And one of the things that’s made Subway’s product placement in recent years so successful is that it acknowledges that the audience is fully aware of what they’re doing and what they’re trying to achieve. It’s less about building desire for the product and more about generally positive associations for the brand, something that’s more sophisticated, but much more fun for viewers. Bond can be deadly serious, but as Casino Royale showed, he’s more fun when he’s aware of his own affectations, pretentions, and self-defense mechanisms. Heineken and Mendes might want to take a lesson.

Much will inevitably be made of this study that links teenagers’ viewing of movies to the rate at which they start drinking, and start binge-drinking. It’s worth pointing out, however, that other features are more significant, most importantly, the drinking behavior of a teenager’s peers, which is almost twice as influential as movies on whether a teenager who has tried alcohol moves into binge drinking. But the study still suggests that movie exposure is responsible for 28 percent of teenagers’ decisions to first try alcohol and 20 percent of their transitions from alcohol sampling to binge drinking, which is not insignificant. And if this gains traction, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see calls to treat alcohol like tobacco, getting it increasingly off-screen or consigned to period pieces, or for a crackdown on alcohol advertising or both.

Part of the problem, I think, is that it’s much harder to portray the fun you can have while you’re drinking than the non-fatal consequences you can suffer from over-drinking. Raccoon-eyed makeup like Claire Dunphy’s in the most recent episode of Modern Family doesn’t actually convey what it’s like to feel like your head is going to explode from within, or the arid sense of extreme post-drinking dehydration. Showing someone throwing up tends to be momentary, while partying takes up more extended space on screen because it’s narrative. It’s easier to fetishize and make jokes out of the objects of alcohol consumption, like the Big Joe and Big Carl wine glasses on Cougar Town, than it is to celebrate their absence. Movies about alcoholism can absolutely be an effective prevention tactic, but that’s the kind of material you generally have to seek out rather than encountering it randomly in the course of a romantic comedy or an action movie. Sober or straight-edge characters aren’t regularly incorporated into pop culture friend groups or social scenes. Bars are convenient meeting social spaces, and they haven’t entirely been replaced by alcohol-free settings.

And it’s really hard to get at the nuances that make drinking both enjoyable and manageable. It’s hard to dramatize that process where you realize that National Light tastes terrible and you can afford Knob Creek and it tastes better, or where you have a divine meal and realize that the wine and the lamb are working together and you want to learn more about that. In the real world, drinking isn’t a matter of abstinence or addiction. But it’s a lot easier to show ecstasy and despair than this kind of aesthetic experience:

If you like seeing Aaron Paul make sad puppy addict eyes and need your fix until the return of Breaking Bad; still haven’t gotten your heart back from Mary Elizabeth Winstead after seeing Scott Pilgrim vs. The World; wish The Help would mainly serve to get Octavia Spencer better parts; or wonder what it would be like to hear Ron Swanson talk dirty to one of the Tammys, Smashed may be the movie for you. This slight addiction drama, which I saw at Sundance, feels unfortunately abbreviated, but it’s anchored by one hell of a performance by Winstead. And it’s honest and explicitly ugly about addiction without being grotesque, striking a difficult and effective balance.

I imagine it’s not news to any of you that the dude who portrays Jesse Pinkman can play an addict. But as Charlie, half of a married couple, both of whom are drunks, Paul tones thing down a bit. His alcoholism means he’s reckless—he’ll ride a bike drunk—and that his relationship to the universe is often blurred and softened. When he wakes up to find that his wife Kate has wet the bed in an alcoholic stupor, he jokes that his real job is to change their sheets. But Charlie is a music blogger, and apparently successful and functional enough in that occupation (plus, his parents helped buy the house he and Kate live in) that his drinking is never going to force a crisis.

That is not the case for Kate, whose alcoholism appears to be somewhat more severe than Charlie’s. She doesn’t just work outside of their house—she teaches elementary school, an environment that’s not particularly friendly to people with hangovers so bad they throw up in class. To avoid confessing that she’s a drunk, Kate lets her class and her coworkers think she’s pregnant, an impression that’s particularly dangerous giving that her principal (Megan Mullally) has never been able to conceive, and gets overinvested in the idea of Kate having a child.

As Kate stumbles towards recovery, stops drinking, and relapses, Winstead gives a remarkably un-vain performance. Bottom for her turns out to be not just the night she drunkenly decides to take a hit of crack and wakes up under a bridge, but relieving herself on the floor of a liquor store that refuses to sell her more wine. And the movie is blunt about exploring the link between Kate’s drinking and her sexual aggressiveness. In one disturbing scene, when Charlie falls asleep while he and Kate are having sex, she hits him while trying to keep him awake, and then continues to have even when he can’t be roused. When Kate relapses, she pushes herself on Charlie even when he’s trying both to get her to stop drinking and rejecting her advances. Stories about women assaulting men tend to be treated as if they’re non-existent or limited to police procedurals, and I appreciate that Smashed has the integrity to treat Kate’s behavior for the disturbing boundary-crossing that it is. Kate may not be a feminist ideal, but presenting her actions with honesty and nuance means the movie is a refreshing break with gender types in these sorts of stories.

I wish the movie had spent a bit more time showing Kate digging her way out of the enormous hole she’s dug for herself. We get to meet Jenny (Octavia Spencer), her sponsor, who tells us that “All I knew about taking care of myself was fucking people over…Maybe I’ve have replaced alcohol with chocolate chip cookies and nacho cheese…From now on I will enjoy my donuts. but I prefer them to hangovers” but it would be nice to see more of her life beyond her role as a mentor to Kate. And while I appreciate James Ponsoldt’s decision not show Kate in the cliche throes of detox, the movie could have spent more time watching her rebuild a sober life. Drinking isn’t like a breakup: leaving alcohol behind has required Kate to rebuild her entire life, and I’d have been curious to see more of her path to professional, emotional, and sexual health.

If I was in possession of a large amount of extremely valuable and beautiful beachfront Hawaiian land that I wasn’t allowed to continue owning, and if I cared about my family’s legacy and the future of my state, I would have a number of options. I could sell it. I could work with the National Parks Service to set up the first National Seashore in Hawaii. I could collaborate with the Hawaii State Parks agency to preserve the land and make it accessible to people other than my family. I could spin it off into an independent charity. I could donate it into a university. I could sell some of it and purchase a small piece of it at market price to preserve as a family compound. Matt King, the wealthy lawyer portrayed by George Clooney in Alexander Payne’s smug The Descendants, considers only that first option. It’s a movie that ultimately argues that the highest moral cause is a rich man keeping what’s his. And that’s not the only thing that I disliked about the second painfully politically-misguided (and oddly out of touch) movie George Clooney gave us in 2011.

That conviction that Matt’s only options are turning the land into money or keeping it for himself doesn’t just give us a narrator who is painfully self-absorbed. It’s of a piece with the movie’s odd tendency to treat the land deal part of the plot as if it’s hugely momentous and then to dissipate all the tension surrounding it. There’s essentially no debate about what to do with the land because the positions of the family members who don’t want to sell are never articulated: it’s just asserted that there are people out there who would prefer to hold on to the land even though the law says they can’t. The closest thing there is to an argument is about whether to sell to a local developer or one based out of another state. We know that Matt thinks some of his relatives are shiftless spendthrifts who would prefer to take a higher price from the non-local developer, but no one on the other side talks about what it means to them to support the Hawaiian economy, or what, if any, responsibilities they feel they have to their state. They’re just bodies there to indicate that there are substantial votes on each side. And ultimately, the big decision we’ve been told has to be made at this family gathering is actually seven years away from its deadline and pushed aside until King can find another solution.

The same shallow approach applies to every other discussion of Hawaii’s economics in the movie. The Descendants deserves credit for getting lots of non-white people into the camera frame, often on planes next to Matt King’s head as he jumps from island to island. But the movie focuses most directly on native Hawaiians during Matt’s opening monologue, as illustrations of troubles in the paradise that he declares “can go fuck itself.” The vacant, the indigent? These are things that Matt King has to endure, along with his wife’s coma. If what makes one Hawaiian is a fondness for comfortable clothing and a sense of noblesse oblige without the oblige, there are regional and ethnic identities I’d be more interested in spending time exploring.
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One of the things about living on a frontier is that everyone’s hustling to survive and there isn’t an enormous amount of time for everyone to sit around the Gem and talk about their feelings, even if the Gem was the kind of establishment where you felt inclined to be vulnerable in more than the conventional ways. But it’s extremely satisfying in this pair of episodes to watch three characters snap themselves out of bad circumstances.

First is A.W. Merrick, who has had his presses wrecked and his hopes for a romance with the new schoolmarm dashed after running afoul of Commissioner Jarry and the Hearst interests. Al comes to pay a visit through a connecting door he was previously unaware of, though as A.W. explains “Several of your patrons in different stages of undress have illuminated me” of its existence. “I’m in despair,” A.W. explains to his neighbor. “The physical damage may be repairable, but the psychic wound may be permanent.” But Al gives him a smack and some good advice: “The world ends when you’re dead. Until then, you’ve got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man and give some back.” A show like The Wire might have deepened the despair, but Deadwood believes that there’s still goodness in the world. When A.W. exerts himself, befriending his new office-mate, the Russian telegraph operator, they’re rewarded with one of the most joyful scenes of the recent golden age of television, Tom Nuttall’s bicycle ride:

Then there’s Jane, who is in a dangerously bad way, telling Charlie, who finds her with bloodied lips, that “I woke up on the dirt in the fucking graveyard, questioning dusk or dawn.” Charlie tries to bring her back to herself by finding a way for her to do for others since she won’t do for herself, suggesting she visit the bereaved Joanie Stubbs because “Seeing as you know about losing friends, you might be a good person to go on and talk to her,” but he tells Bill’s grave that he doesn’t have much confidence in her recovery. Still, when Jane bestirs herself to visit Joanie’s mausoleum of a whorehouse, there does seem to be a spark. When Joanie offers Jane a drink, Jane initially explains that “Yes, but my opening position is no,” before explaining that her preference in booze is “That it ain’t been previously swallowed. Bourbon, if you got it.” And if Joanie gets Jane wanting to drink in a moderate way, Jane gets Joanie talking about the terrible fate that’s befallen her.

Joanie’s been the most beaten-down character in the show practically since its beginning. So there’s something particularly powerful about seeing her bestir herself for the first time since the murders. Cy can’t figure out that Joanie is looking for new patterns, asking her, “What the fuck did you come here for if not to be protected?” And when Joanie smashes her bourbon bottle against Wolcott’s head and tells him to get out of establishment or she’ll kill him, I actually cheered. Maybe Joanie wouldn’t have been able to ward off Wolcott if Charlie Utter hadn’t softened him up for her, but I’m so glad that she saves herself. I understand why Alma’s dithering about Ellsworth’s (totally adorable, btw) proposal; I understand why Martha speaks to Seth in code. But in the case of these terrible murders, backed by powerful institutions, it’s wonderful to see Joanie get her own justice when the law can’t, or won’t, protect her.