Television
-
We watched a Netflix series called Feel Good. I suppose that the series title must be taken ironically, because throughout the first two seasons, not one character seemed to feel even slightly positive or healthy. Just about everyone was miserable — their unhappiness usually linked to romantic or more specifically sexual dissatisfaction. The program introduced…
-
We watched the first season of Yellowstone (eight episodes, or about 350 full minutes, all told). It's not our usual fare, but because a close relative, an accomplished actor, has just contracted to appear in Season Four, it seemed important to investigate. Yellowstone sustained our interest but in my opinion it's mighty derivative. I think…
-
"Now for my life," the doctor* boasted, "it is a miracle of [eighty] years, which to relate, were not a history but a piece of poetry." Sir Thomas didn't know the half of it; if his life was a miracle, then mine is a hundred times more so. Yesterday the miracles started first thing in…
-
1958: First batter of the game is Smith. He's batting .278. First pitch is a ball. Smith is 5'9", 155 pounds. Married, two children, makes his winter home in Fort Smith, Arkansas. Sells tractors in the off-season. Good curve ball hitter. 2018: First batter is Smith. He's batting .278. His slugging percentage is .342. His…
-
There's this woman of a certain age, good looking, usually blonde. Generally, she's a detective but she could be reporter or a spy — some sort of investigator. She has an instinct for her work, an unusual insight or gift. There's a murderer or villain out there and she's determined to get him; it's personal…
-
We binge-watched the seven-hour mini-series Godless in three marathon nights. Godless is a Western, or more exactly a fantasia on Western-movie themes and incidents. To the genre-literate, almost every plot element or character will be familiar, but shootouts and jail breaks and horse-rustling and miraculously healing bullet wounds were re-combined in ways that kept our…
-
Now that we've at last come to the NBA playoffs and are heading toward another Warriors-Cavaliers showdown, it's fitting that we reflect on basketball jargon, which is distinguished by its many colorful monosyllables: hoops, hops, bigs, stuff, slam, jam, slash, dish, board, glass, dunk, pick, screen, paint, lane, point, wing, trey, rim, post, trap, "D", roll, box,…
-
In Breaking Bad, Walter White disappears for a few days when he is kidnapped — he escapes only by murdering his meth-addled drug dealer. In order to cover his tracks and account to his family for the missing days, he feigns amnesia. And he's persuasive, possibly because everyone has seen so many amnesia movies. He's so persuasive, in fact,…
-
I tried the first three installments – a netflix diskful of episodes — of House of Cards. I plan to watch a few more, but I'm deep into negative enthusiasm, not at all sure that I'm going to continue. Cards certainly grabs you, and it's startling and theatrical, but it's also far too cynical and depraved for my rose-colored tastes. I just don't…
-
I've now sometimes zoomed but sometimes plodded through seventeen hours of Downton Abbey. The series is lovely to look at but also at various times lugubrious, false, and shamelessly gimmicky — but apparently I'm easily seduced. Let me confess: I fell for it, mostly, but always against my better judgment. Let's face it, the primitive parts of my brain simply overwhelmed…