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Reviews
The Morning Show: Love Island (2023)
NOW I know why everyone hates each other
After the way Season 2 ended at the start of the pandemic - it was startling to leap ahead to mid 2022 and find everyone sticking knives in each other in the first episode of this season.
THIS episode provides the needed backstory on how everything fell apart with Cory and Bradley, and the choices everyone made along the way prior to the first episode of this season.
I could have just guessed at a lot of this stuff, but I appreciate the choice to let the viewer's curiosity marinate for the first half of the season. It makes the gulf between everyone deeper and more real.
Thanks for holding back this reveal until now! I can't wait to see where it's going.
Ted Lasso (2020)
A Endless Delight from Start to Finish
If you're just starting "Ted Lasso," be warned. It's what Jason Sudekis says it is: a show about everyone having Daddy issues. It's less about the sport we call Soccer in the US, and more about transitions and changes. It's a show that is always delivering something unexpected and delightful.
"Ted Lasso" is also a classic "fish out of water" story. American Ted's hiring by AFC Richmond underscores two things: Rebecca's cold plot to wreck her ex-husband's team with a horrible coach choice after firing a bad coach - and Ted's global getaway after his marriage comes apart, to try and get his life together in some way, by making a stupid kneejerk life choice. Both are doing what they conclude that the situation demands of them, and both help each other and themselves grow beyond where they're stuck.
The delights in this show are many, and hardly any are intimately and intricately related to British football, in the way that "Slap Shot" is a movie about minor league hockey. The real story is about shaking off the person you thought you were, and becoming the better person you are meant to be. It's a complex and hard process in the case of Rebecca, Jamie and Ted - - and an easy process for characters who know themselves well, like Leslie Higgins and Sam Obisanya. Even journalist Trent Crimm, as we are finding out.
It's also a real treat when the show hits us with a plot reversal, i.e. Is Ted the fish out of water, or is it the rest of the UK, typified by Rupert or by Keely's locked-down CFO Barbara?
Don't watch this show if you want to watch British football - that's what Ryan Reynolds' "Wrexham" is for, so do watch that. If you want a twisty and pleasing drama that makes you think about your own path to your best self, keep watching this show. Thanks.
Battlestar Galactica (1978)
ABC Grabbeth the Cash, Droppeth the Ball
The reviews you'll read about this show are so varied, that they speak to the many missed opportunities that fill any post mortem of the original Battlestar Galactica.
Over and over in our history, we see this shared culture of ours spawning the same idea simultaneously in different locales. In the years just after 2001 A Space Odyssey and NBC's Star Trek raised the quality bar in Sci Fi like nothing before - - George Lucas and Glen Larson were crafting their huge space operas.
Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica TOS will remain forever linked by their proximity in time and their space-battlefield similarities, and this is unfortunate, because the success of Star Wars ultimately served to scuttle any chance that Battlestar Galactica had to succeed on its major DIFFERENCES. They were many and great, these differences, as we would finally see in 2003.
Battlestar Galactica starts with the destruction of a dozen human homeworlds and the deaths of billions of people at the hands of the Cylons, a reptilian foe. Decades later, Ronald D Moore and David Eick gave us this deep dark story in their excellent Battlestar Galactica 2003 and 2004, so we know this awesome dark potential existed right from the start in 1977. It really did. We all sensed it in the first two hours.
Why didn't we get that show? Because the TV industry which gave us crap like the Irwin Allen shows, and which undercut and ruined Star Trek years too soon, also dove in for a big cash grab while the Star Wars iron was hot. ABC gave no deep thought to what they had on their hands, or how to make it successful over a long haul.
What ABC did, was employ the recipes they used to create the other hits in their stable. They bought the series on a lowball budget that was presented and not possible to meet. They required kid-friendly elements and limited gunplay and violence (this is how the Cylons became a robot race - you could destroy dozens of them at a time since they weren't living beings after all). The budget meant the show veered from sci fi, to cheap episodes on backlot western town and historical drama sets, and struggled to explore the dark story and mystical supernatural theme that was introduced.
SO HERE WE ARE. While you read the haters here who LOVE the cheesiness of the original and rip and belittle Eick and Moore, just remember what Glen Larson actually envisioned, and how Eick and Moore really refined it and NAILED it in an excellent way in BSG 2004.
You CAN love both. It's ok. I do. It's also OK to blame network TV of the 60s and 70s for ruining Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica, so we could have both shows made better, later on.
Battlestar Galactica: Episode #1.2 (2003)
And We Are Off And Running
Welcome to the conclusion to the introduction that we got, to what is perhaps the most game-changing science fiction ever produced.
This mini series is the equivalent of four regular series episodes, and they launch the basic ideas: that a totally separate human society can resemble us so deeply and believably, that the Cylons can pull off the ultimate tactic i.e. Perfect ruthless infiltration by remaking themselves into humans, and the most controversial one - that a Supreme Being guides or regards our mere mortal fates. I can't remember another science fiction premiere, where the characters and conflicts and the world they inhabit arrived so fully formed and launch into the big story.
Even on the seventh time, this miniseries retains its power to move one deeply. I choked up yet again on the moments we love, involving Roslin, the Adamas, Boomer and Helo; and at the best moments underscored by Richard Gibbs' soaring swelling themes, as Galactica drives forward into its dark uncertain future.
Every time I return to the BSG 2003 miniseries, I feel like I have been reborn. I hope this feeling never goes away. If this is your first time, enjoy it.
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: When Will Josh and His Friend Leave Me Alone? (2016)
A Show Designed To Make You Think
This is that rare thing, a surprising and original tv sitcom, and these first few episodes of Crazy Ex Girlfriend season Two have been among the finest this show offers.
Kudos to Ms Bloom and her co-creators and actors for this fine show. Many kudos as well to the departing Santino Fontana for his excellent and pitch perfect Greg Serrano.
I think however, I have to make like Greg and move on myself. I didn't have a perfect life trajectory when I was flinging myself through my own 20's and early 30s, and I have found this show to be just a little personally triggering, because I see my own self of that era in both Rebecca AND Greg's problems and demons, and my head ends up some places I don't want to be again.
Not to say this isn't an awesome show - it is. "It's a S**t Show" and "We Tapped That Ass" could be the most deviously brilliant songs of the series. For me. I'm bailing, with a lot to think about. Goodbyes are sad, especially when they must happen and you're not ever going to be ready. And, is it that easy to turn off a mind spirit? Not sure.
Keep on keepin on kids.
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (2015)
Don't Let The Musical Numbers Put You Off
I'm new to this series, only a few episodes in, which I started watching on Netflix due to the high rating and a friend's recommendation. I find this show to be fantastic!!
I'm drawn to creatively risky stories and ideas, and boy does that describe this show. It's the part real, part delusional tale of a middle aged woman for whom life has been traumatic. She's stuck at the maturity level of a middle school age girl, due to the implosion of her parents marriage and the effect it had on her. A hard-hearted mother shoved her relentlessly through college and law school; she's at the top NYC law firm, on the verge of partnership, and is barely aware of her surroundings at the same time she brilliantly handled her cases.
In a moment of clarity, she faces her emotionally stunted fixation on a summer camp crush from her high school years, when she chances to meet him on the street in NYC. She drops her entire career in NYC to follow him to his small hometown in California, convinced that her empty life will be fixed by having him as hers.
I can't say hilarity ensues, this isn't a normal comedy. There is hilarity, and great discomfort, and brutal honesty and full-on delusion, and some of the most bright, fun, bubbly, dark, subversive musical numbers ever performed, from a fabulous cast.
I love David Lynch's Mulholland Drive. The tragedy of Diane's madness is propelled to a dark finale in its two hour run-time. There too we see the delusional dream and bitter reality side by side. By comparison, this series is doing a slow episode-by-episode unpacking of Rebecca's madness, and I feel there's a way somehow for her to finally be where the rest of us are someday. I hope so. We'll see.
Star Trek: Picard: The Last Generation (2023)
Game Of Tropes
What a roller coaster ride! What a rollicking slam bang wrap up to the TNG saga! We have truly been a witness now, to the passing of batons and the final victory over the most dastardly foes ever faced. Yes indeed.
Still, I feel the need to stick up for seasons 1 and 2 of this series, as this 3rd season has represented a righting-of-the-ship to many fans who hated the first two seasons a bit. Strange New Worlds, Discovery, even the JJ Abrams films, and the first two seasons of Picard didn't sit well with everyone - old plots and characters were dredged up, carelessly ret-conned and repurposed through some kind of plot-line osterizer. Inside of all of so-called "Nu Trek" I felt people sincerely reaching through and trying to bring forth something new and interesting, and they had some nice successes at that. Sure, ST Picard ret-conned mama Picard and the family vineyard history - it created a giant anti-AI backlash in the story universe that was a little problematic. Nice story-telling opportunities came out of it all too. So thanks to the Nu Trek bunch.
ST Picard Season 3 was different, and it was for the big "F" Fandom. For me, this season had all the things I found tiresome about the ENT franchise, in terms of too much reliance on fan service, at the expense of really innovative story ideas. In fact, Enterprise and Picard Season 3 make perfect bookends for the whole TNG franchise. Boring bookends, with the former saying "Here's how TNG got this and that" and the latter saying "here's what later happened to this and that."
I feel like I tagged along on a complicated, multiphase bank heist. At the middle phase the bank saw us coming and moved the loot. We saw them move the loot, BUT we still carried out every step of the plan to the letter because the PLAN was the point, not the loot.
Last episode we lost Shaw, fulfilling the purpose he was invented for. We lost Admiral Shelby, who possibly eclipses Gaius Baltar in the ability to leave a planet's defenses vulnerable to attack. In the first seconds of this episode, we lose a son of Chekhov, who sacrifices himself to warn others to stay away from earth. We lose Starfleet space dock, but hey we can build more of those.
We beat the final Borg threat and that's what counts. It was as thrilling at the late end of history, as seeing humans go to Raisa the first time was in Enterprise. (I wasn't happy with Brannon Braga while Enterprise was on due to its overall stale fan service - yet we all saw him show us how to keep telling exciting stories in the TNG mold on "The Orville" so kudos dude.)
When you tease us about a new future of ST stories, don't forget to stop mining old scripts long enough to tell some new stories. That's all I ask. I wish more fans were asking too.
Russian Doll (2019)
I Would Give This Show A 5-effing-Hundred
I will settle for giving it as many tens as I can.
This show starts as an intimate weird mobius strip mystery and by the end of it, you've been on a who-in-gods-name-knows-what-just-happened trip, over and over. I mean that in a good way, the best way.
You never see it coming.
At the end of each episode, you will actually say out loud, " Hmph. Didn't see THAT coming." And you'd be right.
You peel your way, later by layer to the center of a big onion of life. And as you mobius your butt around and through things, you veer towards light, you veer toward dark, you veer through dim and doors and vestibules.
I can't understand people who'd watch this whole magnificent thing, and give a "1" rating after imposing their own wants and needs on the outcome of things. Some things are bigger than your own wants and needs. Like this show.
Sprung (2022)
Best Thing COVID Brought Us Is This Show
If you haven't seen this show yet, I envy you. Once you decide to start watching, you're going to see a surprisingly amazing comedy - a satire, a farce, a comedy of manners, and above all a voyage of discovery, against the backdrop of the months during 2020 when the nation was dealing with the Covid 19 pandemic.
The A-List cast of this show takes their well written material up through the stratosphere. Garret Dillahunt and Martha Plimpton are a special treat, as the co founders of the most unruly crime family that random chance ever created.
The only tiny complaint I have is that there wasn't more for the great Fred Grandy to do, as the rich incontinent husband of a corrupt US congresswoman. Grandy is mostly remembered as Gopher from The Love Boat, but I was lucky enough to call him my real US Congressman when I lived in Iowa in the 80s and 90s. A very minor point.
SEE THIS GREAT SHOW!!!
Star Trek: Picard: Võx (2023)
Random Thoughts
1. Ronald D Moore, unquestionably without equal in the nuts-and-bolts understanding of the Star Trek franchise, turned that whole creative process upside down and inside out in his creation of the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. In their wars against a sentient AI race, the Cylons, human war ships had minimal tech and computer networking which the enemy could exploit. This episode of ST Picard really showcases the wisdom of not leaving a back door for your own tech to be used against you. So we have that. Thanks.
2. Another thought - ALL of our significant sci fi since the mid 60's has exposed our constant fear of The Cyber-mind and the slippery slope of creating such minds. From HaL to Colossus to Ash to Cyberdine Systems Model 101 to T1000 to RDM's Cylons, we have blindly stumbled into building our Destroyers over and over again. And now thanks to MIT and others we're on the precipice of doing it For Real. Interesting.
3. Another thought: drones. That's all. Just drones. Pretty drones making laser shapes in the sky at huge public gatherings.
4. The casualty list in this ep is big and especially disheartening. Not sure I can continue at all, definitely can't continue in the same spirit of future expectations that I had at the start of this episode.
5. WE GOT THE TNG REUNION MONEY SHOT AT LAST. Gotta watch that last ep now. Good work.
Star Trek: Picard: Surrender (2023)
Sticking it out for a few good things
I have hopes, just a few.
Earlier this week on the main show page I put up a somewhat sad/angry five-star review of this series and the franchise as a whole - severely split in some kind of behind-the-scenes civil war, over the innovation toward more modern ways of developing new stories and ideas, versus a reactionary dive toward fan service, packing the franchise with recycled beloved characters and unresolved plots from the past in a frenzy of retconning.
I'm very bothered by a lot of things about this series, as the latest source of any new Star Trek material. The trope of "we make our own enemies", the four-time head fake of a genetic son from bachelor Picard, THAT is tedious. Artificial not-very-logical reasons to bring back Data in "get off my lawn" geriatric trim, are tedious. The TNG cast is somewhat tedious. Plummer's villain is kind of tedious.
What is vastly interesting, still out there as an untapped potential, is the still-young fire of Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine, who could command this franchise in a future direction. Also interesting - the real-guy no BS snark of Todd Stashwick as Captain Shaw who earned the chair the hard way.
I'm watching and smiling through the tedium, just waiting for the good new stuff to shake off the old crap and run away from it, upward toward excellence.
I hear those craving newness, AND those craving faithful fan rehash giving praise to Terry Matalas for his running of this show (much like the praise given Manny Coto for helping Enterprise over the finish line.) He truly does stand at The Fork In The Road and I wonder how it will go, whether this franchise continues to be mired in the blockbuster movie trope rehash it delivers, or will dare to assemble a writers room to rival the best of the best days of TNG and DS9 and strike out in new impressive directions.
We shall see.
Project Runway: Suit Yourself (2020)
Great episode in this season
Wow, so many thoughts about this episode.
The designers are given the task of updating the Tuxedo, in terms of today's forward view and considerations of male, female and gender-fluid models.
The designers are assisted by past eliminated contestants, who are given the option to kick the designer they'd want to assist.
My wife and I got quite involved in the episode, to the point of wondering early-on why nobody was considering the KILT as a valid part of a winning design.
We felt heartbreak for the losing designer, who had run out of material for fashioning appropriate pants for their male tuxedo and was prompted to consider SHORTS as an alternative.
WHY NOT A KILT?? A STYLISH ASYMMETRIC KILT? I wondered loudly to my wife's consternation.
We noted with no little smugness that the winning design, also male, included a cut and drape of the lower jacket that was heavily kilt-like, to where the guest judge even suggested that the one improvement to the design would have been PLEATING of the lower drape. Yesss.
Well done all, right down to the save at the end.
Star Trek: Picard (2020)
Pale Shadows - Wretched Fansturbation
I hate writing this review, I was just going to quietly endure this but darn it something HAS to be done.
What horrible process of evolution has taken this franchise from its revolutionary beginning in TOS, struggled and found sure footing then excellence in TNG, DS9 and VOY, then fell into a retconning fanshipping mess in Enterprise, the Bad Robot movies, to bring us to Paramount Plus's current strip-mining of old scripts???
A film about the descent into chaos we've had would be more entertaining than the messes we've been served over and over by people who couldn't care less about ideas and epic visions. (I'm always sad that an attempt to make a streaming series dramatizing the actual making of TOS was scrapped. THAT was a steamy little soap opera itself).
Fandom gets the mess it deserves, and shame on the powers-that-be for both of their sins: on one hand letting true ego-maniacal non-fans work the franchise characters and tropes as if taking their turns on an inflatable sex doll via the bad robot movies and things like Picard season 2 and 3; on the other hand, the sin of destroying the artistic good-faith pact the writer and actor make with the audience to honor and improve the product.
Ronald D Moore has been quite vocal about how TNG and DS9 writers fought hard for the gains that viewers enjoyed from Star Trek, as well as how monolithic and unmoveable the studio suits were in the limit-lines they drew that could not be crossed. The studio-centric edicts of what "was" and "was not" Star Trek drove Moore out, and resulted in the subversive perfection of his Battlestar Galactica reboot, among other things. It also resulted in a new Trek culture that solved the problem by simply declaring Star Trek to be whatever momentary feel-good thing they wanted to make it be, and dress it in the clothes props and tech-babble fans knew.
So here we are. Viewers who want fresh newness are pitted against loudly complaining fans who demand fealty to the past, and studio bean counters serve up crap like Picard S2 and S3 and the Bad Robot movies. Sadly, it seems some interesting new things that are coming from Discovery and Strange New Worlds are just going to be dropped, while the suits double down on fan-diddling like Picard and Lower Decks and whatnot.
*SIGH* I should have just kept quiet. Seeing this in print has made it more real and just sad.
Battlestar Galactica: The Hub (2008)
"Double dealing. You never got that, Eight."
I rate all episodes of Eick-Moore Battlestar Galactica at 9 or 10, and I give "The Hub" a ten only because there's no way to push it to 20.
This particular episode of this particular series captures the highest level of sublime excellence, subtle nuance and exciting drama that BSG is capable of. And the frosting on the cake is that this episode manages to clearly bring out the lasting message of the series: the missing ingredient, whether you're a sick self absorbed individual or a sick society, is Love.
Elosha is the perfect messenger for Roslin, because Roslin needs to get that message in the most simple and certain way she can get it. Her biggest stumbling block is her suspicion and hatred of Baltar; facing the choice of what to do with his life in her hands shows her that Love in this show, is like that thing Captain Kirk said in the hokey Star Trek episode where he explained the Preamble of the US constitution to post-nuclear savages: Love, like Freedom, applies to EVERYONE, or it applies to NO ONE.
Roslin gets this message in this episode at last; meanwhile Cylons themselves join humans to strike a crippling blow against the war machine, and give up their greatest prize - trading the assured immortality of Ressurection for the mere human hope of an afterlife on faith. They jointly destroy the Resurrection Hub, to some of the most hauntingly beautiful music ever from Bear McCreary.
This is a pivot point to a new reality, with no turning back. It is a reckoning and a revelation. It's the start of dynamic forces which determine how the old humanity in all its forms goes down in flames, for a new hybrid humanity to ultimately rise and maybe break the cycle of history.
I give this episode a 100.
Galactica 1980: The Return of Starbuck (1980)
A Flawed Show Musters a Final Bang to Exit On.
One year after ABC cancelled Battlestar Galactica to conclude its first and only season, the network put an end to its half-hearted attempt to bring the show back in a cheap, unsatisfactory format. "The Return of Starbuck" marked the final goodbye to Battlestar Galactica.
I could appreciate this as a Star Trek fan. The third season of that show was a creative letdown, and NBC flipped the 'off' switch after airing a mundane mid-season ep about a crazy ex girlfriend with a body swapping machine who almost left Captain Kirk permanently singing soprano. That show's last fadeout left us with the final image of Kirk wondering " if only " ............. about his ex. Not a good look.
Battlestar Galactica, for its shorter more fiery arc, swung for the fences and went out sliding through the mud of a horrible second season into home plate to score the game's only run with this episode - - which stands as a well told legend about this show's undeniable breakout star: Starbuck.
Dirk Benedict and a hot-wired Cylon companion voiced by Gary Owens make this among the great hours of Battlestar Galactica to air on ABC in either season. And like the whole BSG series, it carried secrets we would find out only much much much later.
Hidden earlier in this second season, was the underlying surprise that would fuel David Eick and Ronald D Moore's 2003 reboot: that Cylons also came in HUMAN form. This like many other good dark dramatic devices, were given but never ever explored in the first Battlestar Galactica, which I declare to be a victim of its shortsighted commercial TV era and the way networks programmed and created by committee instead of reaching for artistic vision and excellence.
This episode's special secret for the ages: Humans and Cylons were compatible, mutually sympathetic, and were destined to stand side by side in brotherhood, if only
Final image, Starbuck, alone on a rocky windy planet, blessed by the ethereal woman with child who he helped, destined we think to join the Beings of Light.
Final note: to everyone who hates the theological elements of the Eick/Moore BSG, don't forget that this original BSG had some crrraaaazy ideas too. Thanks all.
Battlestar Galactica: The Magnificent Warriors (1978)
A Town Called Serenity
I'm not adverse to stopping to review a 45-year-old television episode, especially on viewing it with new eyes and a fresh context. On a second view 45 years after its premiere, I found myself really liking "The Magnificent Warriors."
I wandered out of my dorm room partway through this episode on the night it aired and never saw it again. The "Shane" homage and "Guns of Navarrone" homage just weeks earlier were a bit obvious, but a deep troll into classic westerns wasn't quite what I signed up for.
Fast forward four decades. I've done a complete binge of the all-to-brief series "Firefly" at least a half dozen times, loving it dearly each time. Last night, during a just-started rewatch of the original BSG, I arrived at this episode that I remember walking out on, and started viewing.
There were things a Firefly fan could appreciate about this episode, that I had no patience for in 1978, so thanks again Joss Whedon. The rag tag circumstances, need for under-the-table barter, the naïveté of a handshake deal with a local shyster, all were part of the best Firefly episodes to be honest.
At the end, a great idea from Starbuck arrived at the nick of time, making the Colonials the Big Damn Heroes, aaaand weren't they just?
And everyone wears a brown coat. At last I felt at home here.
Poker Face (2023)
You Had Me At Hello
Two seconds into the opening credits I swore allegiance to this show, as a perfect homage to classic early Columbo / Police Story cold opens played before my eyes. I was delighted to see great names in the opening credits. The premiere episode of this series established a great overall theme - the blessing and curse of an inconvenient and unwanted superpower, and the trouble it gets you into. I can't wait to see this series move this story along as Charlie keeps herself moving one step ahead of the mob, and into new opportunities to call liars on their BS. I look forward to many more fine episodes of this great show. The bad reviews here have to be from mindless bots.
Saturday Night Live: Amy Schumer/Steve Lacy (2022)
Sick of the Hater Army
I'm getting pretty tired of the Hater Army that does nothing but trash Amy Schumer in every public forum they can shove their fat ridiculous typing fingers into. This episode of Saturday Night Live greatly benefitted from the comedic stylings of Ms Schumer, and was at most points of the show, significantly funnier than at similar points in many other SNL hosted by both the talented hosts, and the what-the-eff-were-they-thinking host spectrum. Funny. Created by comedy experts. Enjoyed by millions in spite of the dark dark shade and negative crap you want to redecorate it all with. Ok the Tina the Trucker bit during Weekend Update blew chunks, but the rest was awesome. Really. Cut it out. Go away.
The Anarchists: Leaving (2022)
Final Thoughts and A Little Anger
It's been a month since I viewed the final episode of "The Anarchists" on HBO. I continue to recommend this doc to anyone who loves the doc genre, and anyone who wants to understand the rise and fall of this specific event.
Fall it did. This final episode brought the wild churn of the previous five episodes to a place of balance in the lives of the subjects affected by the events surrounding Anarchapulco. Lily found the support systems in Mexico and the US to put her up on a new life path. And thanks to the top organizer's snap misjudgements, a person who gave their livlihood to a movement (as he saw it) was kicked to the curb, with tragic results.
The saga of Nathan Freeman has stayed with me, and the anger I felt over seeing how he was treated hasn't faded.
My mind, oddly enough, is drawn back to the 2008 political conventions, and a room full of Republicans laughing at Obama's resume entry "Community Organizer." They belittled it as being akin to a childrens T-ball coach or something, and Obama went on to beat them at election time like a red-headed stepchild. A Community Organizer is the true power, and the true conduit of energy and progress in a social movement.
Freeman proved to be a community organizer in the best sense of the term, in his capacity at the top of Anarchapulco. He provided a coherent vision at every level, and worked to create a safe and productive space for people to really work on what "anarchy" as a social movement would mean to them. He gave his family, his material resources and his life to this movement by his work in this event.
The year round work of movement building, and the growth of the annual event itself, presented new problems, and it fell to Jeff Berwick to be part of the solution. From what we see in the documentary, it's not clear at all that Berwick took time to understand the layers of the community that existed, and ways to contribute to the ongoing effort of building the movement. He hired an expert in corporate event planning, from the world that is antithetical to the movement, and this expert did her job. She created a strong corporate event, and the event shut out the man who was trying to build the infrastructure of the movement the event was meant to serve.
Berwick's apparent lack of support for the movement building done by Freeman was breathtaking, and his momentary on-screen regret over not understanding what he should feel about Freeman seems to bely the heart of the problem itself - a superficiality at the very top of what some thought was a movement, but maybe not a movement.
I see online that this event. And a second event, are set for early February 2023. Before you buy the tickets, take a moment to think of Nathan Freeman, and maybe think about ways to make use of some of his vision, right where you live today.
The Anarchists (2022)
Well-made doc asks: What is anarchy and do we need it?
I just finished watching the sixth and final episode of The Anarchists and I'd like to recommend this documentary to everyone.
I know there are those reviewers here who watched one or two episodes and dismissed this project as a waste of time, a predictable tale of people making bad choices and paying the price. But there's so much more here to experience and consider, and I found it speaking to me about the divisions and problems happening in the US today.
Google the term "anarchy" and you'll see this definition: "absence of government and absolute freedom of the individual, regarded as a political ideal." Many today are worried about the growth of the surveillance state, the kleptocracy, the Beltway, just name your favorite villain. Many wonder how one can build into their lives a new level of personal privacy and security.
This is the story of one man who envisioned an annual festival in Acapulco Mexico to bring like-minded people together in the name of individual freedom from "statism" and corporatism.
This is also the story of another man who put his life, family and resources on the line to build and strengthen a year round community for these people, using the event to facilitate societal change.
And this is the story of yet other people, who found the notion of an organized annual event for "anarchy" to be a huge contradiction in terms.
The saga of "Anarchapulco" is a story of dreamers, organizers, gypsies and thieves. Find out what it will say to you.
Better Things: Rising (2017)
Confessions
I have a confession. Over the course of the first season of this show, I became quite enchanted with this show. It's fresh, it's raw, it's real.
During this episode, I came to realize I was nursing a bit of a secret crush on Pamela Adlon. Her prickly ironic/sarcastic wit, her oddball charisma really drew me in.
9 minutes and 50 seconds into this episode, I knew I had this crush because that's the moment that the crush totally popped like an overstressed zit and vanished.
The cool thing is, this is the story of a life, and lives, and big-L Life. It's a rotten and beautiful thing, like life. Well done. Too bad the stars only go to 10. This show is an easy 11.
Life & Beth (2022)
Nicely done Amy Schumer. I love this show.
It was a pleasure to discover this series freshly released on Hulu at Midnight last night. I found it early this morning and am binging the final couple of episodes. Wow.
"Life & Beth" is a fresh take on the "awfulness" comedy pioneered by Seinfeld, and sewn into some of the finest dramas of the past two decades. This show is outstanding, in the way that the characters sail full-steam through each others' turbulent wake, yet fight to keep each other upright and moving.
Also outstanding: Ms Schumer herself in this role. I personally come at this as a longtime fan of Schumer's comedy, in all of its outrageous cycles. Here her persona is superbly matched to the material, with an excellent supporting cast all around.
It has been a somewhat bleak season for new shows from the streaming services. Do see this.
Don't Look Up (2021)
If "Idiocracy" married "Dr Strangelove" and had a baby .....
A lot of people just want a movie to fill 85 minutes of their lives with juvenile humor, ignited flatulence, brief nudity and a few explosions. This is not that movie, as any 0 to 3-rated review here will tell you.
What this movie IS, is a pretty bang-on-target satire of the worldwide culture we now live in, and the way that everything is held hostage by mass media and social media, to our potential doom. The inescapable prospect of the planet's complete destruction sets the stage for a deep dive into the many ways mass media and social media are used to divide and nullify us by the wielders of power, for their own ends. It also illustrates how far you really have to go as a public figure to break through the box you're placed in by the media, in order to reach people directly.
Like "Strangelove", the doom is unstoppable, and those charged with stopping it can only watch helplessly as the system seals its own fate, at the hands of an insane visionary's hidden agenda. Like "Idiocracy," the writers are able to show us how close we are to a President Orleans or a President Camacho winning high office, and all that that implies.
This movie shows how facts are shoved to the back of the bus, again and again, as we face big problems like climate change, coronavirus, hazardous waste, just name it. And all the way through, a great script and a wonderful ensemble really bring the story home.
There are just a few places where the political satire is a bit clunky and obvious, but overall it's a ten from me.
Travelers: 17 Minutes (2017)
Best Of The Series
I just watched this ep again on my latest total watch of Travelers, for what is now the third time through. I had considered this to be among the absolute best episodes of the series, and after this third viewing, I could call this THE best one with no problem.
Up to this point in the series we have learned some things about the Director, but not all. This episode's main character IS the Director, and the point of it all is the desperate acts carried out to achieve a vital objective, and the expendability of everyone involved.
Subplot: the power of love. Grace talked with Marcy about her unwanted reboot last episode, and in this one Grant tells Marcy the missing connection is love.
Nice.
The Goode Family (2009)
Professional Comedy is Rarely About Laughter
I remember when this show came out in the Spring of 2009. I watched each week; actually amazed that an ABC show was daring to buck what was already a heavy Hollywood trend of slavishly adoring Democratic politics and personalities, while working doggedly to bury, or ridicule-then-bury, the persons and politics of the Republican Party.
Each episode was funny, and trailblazing in terms of who was the target of the satire. The Goode Family was a pitch-perfect sitcom laying bare the foibles of ALL politics, to be fair; from the over-correctness of the Goode family and the consequences of it, to the grating and raspy Texas-style over-conservatism of Helen's father.
There's an abundant supply of comedy stemming from the family's good intentions, but sloppy follow-through. The baby they adopt from Africa and raise, named Ubuntu, is actually a big blonde Afrikaner who's having a constant inner war between his conservative genetics and liberal upbringing. The dog they've trained to be a vegan, is a closet carnivore catching and eating all the pets in the neighborhood when his master's out of sight. Their daughter just wants to live a real and genuine lifestyle, and she questions her parents' good intentions but bad, fearful and reactionary outcomes in practicing the life they aspire to live.
The critics' predictable response to the show ranged from "meh, no laughs here," to outright offense at Mike Judge's apparent lack of understanding of who society's REAL enemies are. And THERE is where we get to the modern dilemma, is it possible for a show that makes a political statement to stand apart from the partisan co-opting of show biz that the modern Democrats have achieved, and had certainly already achieved by 2009? Aside from South Park, a show that manages to skewer everyone everywhere, I can't think of anyone who pulls it off.
Our power to laugh is as energy-filled as our power to express sadness and outrage. People who get results in today's national politics are skilled and schooled in how to use media and message to tap into our inner fears and control where our national energy does and does not dare go. Finding and laughing at The Goode Family, for the things it gets right as a vehicle for entertainment and political satire, is a thing you can do for yourself on your own terms, if you dare.