Tag: #TV

  • The Hits Just Keep Coming…

    Goodbye Chuck. You are a great musician who also had a great sense of humor.
  • ODDS and ENDS: Quantum Renaissance, Stupid Tottenham, and Mother’s Day

    ODDS and ENDS: Quantum Renaissance, Stupid Tottenham, and Mother’s Day

    (Bust with the whippets…)

    In the evening, it’s hard t find a tv show that me, the wife, and the kid can agree on. The stuff me and my wife watch is way too adult for the kid, and the kid thinks she adult enough for it, which she isn’t. But, the wife came up with an idea, which was to watch old TV shows on Roku TV and Tubi. (This is not a plug for either service.) As of late, the show we are all enjoying is Quantum Leap, which still hold up very well. (Though Sam does seem to fall in love with the ladies rather easily…) The most surprising aspect of watching this show is how latched on and invested my daughter is. Like, it’s what she wants to watch, and has even gone a little into a few fan theories about the show; how much Sam is influenced by the person he leaps into, and so forth. No real surprise here as dramatically, each episode is different from the last, which keeps you engaged as to see what happens next. But the kid totally got wrapped up in the show when Sam leaped into a DJ from the late 50’s, and it dawned on my daughter that the “teenagers” in the show would have been her grandparents. (MIND BLOWN!) It never dawned on the kid that her grandparents were once young and rowdy!

    Looks like Tottenham went on won their second match against Glimt in Norway, and now they are in the Europa League final against Man United. Damn It! Just when I had completely given up hope, and written off the whole Spurs season, that stupid team has gone on to position themselves with the opportunity of winning a trophy, and qualifying for the Champions League next season. Damn it, man! Now I have hope, and excitement again! That’s the last thing I wanted at this point in the season.

    Mother’s Day is Sunday. Call your mom. Sure wish I could.

  • Late to the Party: Review of “Perry Mason” (2020)

    This is my continuing series of reviews of tv, movies, or music that has been out for a while, that I am just getting around to… As always, there are SPOLIERS!

    I am a sucker for noir films and TV shows. From Sam Spade, to Chinatown, to The Long Goodbye, to LA Confidential, I love noir’s visual style, the dark stories, and also how these noir stories show the dark criminal world that is just under the surface of the cities we inhabit. I will even throw The Third Man in as well.

    When I saw the previews of Perry Mason on HBO in the spring, I was hooked and ready to go. I never watched the original Raymond Burr 1957 television series of the same name, so I had no attachment to anything that had happened in the past, but I was aware that Perry Manson was “the best” defense lawyer around as he could get criminals to admit their crimes on the stand. When I saw that the cast was lead by Matthew Rhys, and also that Tim Van Patten was directing many of the episodes, I felt that I was in very safe hands.

    And for the most part I was.

    We meet Perry in 1932, who at this point is a detective for the lawyer Elias Birchard “E.B.” Jonathan. Jonathan takes the case of defending a mother who is accused of killing her child in a kidnapping plot. It was a very dark subject matter to have the show revolve around, but I do admit that it did create a feeling of uncomfortableness in me for all the characters that are involved in the murder. What also became apparent very early on is that this was going to be the origin story of Perry Mason becoming a lawyer, and his drive to defend people who seemed to be undefendable.

    What I was given was a show that hit all the right noir notes that this type of genre demands, as well adding a very relevant depth to the inherent racism in the LA Police Department, and the indignities black police officers faced. Most of the characters did have backstories of pain that they were still dealing with, or secrets they couldn’t share, or of living lives not out in the open. It created a solid foundation of why all of these very different people would be drawn together to fight for justice.

    The series had a nice slow simmer to it, hitting its marks, and then at the crux of the show, episode 5, after E.B. Jonathan’s suicide, the show starts an awkward sprint to the end. It comes across as jarring and very out of left field. Somehow, with a little coaching, Perry is able to pass the California Bar exam, which I do happen to know that you do not need to go to law school for, and POOF! He’s a lawyer now!

    After a few stumbles at the start of the trial, Perry has no issues to working his way through the courtroom. And when Perry wants to put the corrupt cop who is behind the murder on the stand, he is told that no one confesses under cross examination, but then the show doesn’t put the cop on the stand. A choice that left me very confused. I thought that was Perry Mason’s whole thing. At least let him try and fail, right, as that would be realistic. In the end Perry pays off a juror to deadlock the jury, only to learn that two other jurors also felt the mother was innocent, which I guess was meant to make us feel that Perry did a better job than he thought. It left me with the feeling that Perry isn’t going to become a good lawyer one day, but that he’s just not a good lawyer at all.

    Sadly, it felt like all the pieces are there to make a really good show that is moody, honest, and can be relevant as we examine what justice denied in the past looked like. Perry Mason was renewed for a second season, so I hope that the next time around, with all the characters in place, that they will be able to stick the landing.

  • Trump or the Emmys?

    These are the first two thoughts that popped into my mind when I thought about writing a blog today; do I write about Trump or the Emmys?

    I could say that writing about Trump, again, will do nothing but make me feel defeated and powerless. Yet again, we have another situation where Trump has gone and done something illegal, and then ho goes and gaslights the world into believing that he was doing everyone a favor for doing this thing, which in his opinion, wasn’t illegal at all. I think Bill Maher had the best reaction this past Friday which was that this will follow the same cycle of denial, then admitting to it but it wasn’t wrong, and then starting another scandal to make everyone forget about the first scandal. I also expect this to happen, which is why I feel defeated and powerless.

    Speaking of defeated and powerless, I watched part of the Emmys, and it was a rather dull affair. The only take away I had was the free broadcast television was now officially dead. SNL was the only over the air broadcast show to win, and the rest went to cable or streaming. This is the new entertainment world we live in. It is a little sad that free tv is no more, as what I mourn for are all the great 15 and 30 second commercials we will never see, as no one watches commercials. All of those jingle writers will be out of a job. Sad.

  • Compartmentalizing

    I just have trouble saying that word, let alone spelling it.

    I think that was what I was trying to write about yesterday when I was speaking about Brett Kavanaugh.

    I don’t think I was very good at it, as a day later, I now feel I know what I was trying to say.

    And then that white dude got fired from SNL before he every performed on the show. This is another white guy, who should have known better.

    There was a piece about Shane Gillis getting fired that I think was very insightful. The comedian who wrote it made a very good point that most comedians punch down with their jokes, and most comedians are white men. It’s just lazy humor, and it always has been. As some comedians were lamenting that we live in an age where you “can’t joke about anything anymore,” but I have to disagree. If I might point out, 40 years ago, Asian Americans weren’t “cool” with being made fun of by white guys because 40 years ago, no one asked Asian Americans, “Are you cool with being made fun of by white guys?” The funny thing is that 40 years ago you would have gotten the same answer you are getting today, the difference is other people are now asking and listening to the answer.

    Either way, he lost a job for what he said, and he will have to live with that.