Dix-Neuf Deux

 

The Beloved Spouse™ and I recently discovered the French-Canadian series 19-2 and watched all thirty episodes in a week. (Full disclosure: Bruce Robbert Coffin told us about this show last July. It took until January for us to get around to it. That’s entirely on me.)

 

19-2 is the story of two patrol officers in Montreal; they ride in Car 19-2. Nick Berrof (Réal Bossé) is a bit of a cowboy who lost his partner to a serious brain injury in a shooting that occurred under suspicious circumstances. The bosses don’t like Berrof; some think he’s dirty. They partner him with an officer transferring in from the Quebec Provincial Police, Benoît Chartier (Claude Legault). Their relationship is problematic for multiple reasons which I’ll not go into as knowing too much will spoil the fun. Suffice to say they come to an understanding and the relationship grows.

 

I was never a cop but everything I’ve heard and have learned about street patrol and internal politics indicates 19-2 is as realistic a show as you’re going to find and is a sterling example of how realism, applied properly, does not make fiction any less compelling. Season 2 opens with Berrof and Chartier as first on scene at an active shooter event in a high school. I have never seen a more compelling episode of television.

 

There is plenty else to like. Unlike most American shows, these cops’ first impulse when arriving at a scene that does not lay out as they expected is to call for backup.  The friction between cops who want to do things right and those who expect their failings to be ignored is expertly examined. The storylines that deal with personal lives never become soap opera-ish and always have the ring of truth to them.

 

19-2 is also a wonderful example of how to be artistic in service of the story rather than being artistic just because the director knows how to do it. The school shooting episode is full of little things that put you right there. A later episode shows Berrof and Chartier approaching a house. The camera shifts to their backups as they seek another entry point; the two leads then appear in the foreground, out of focus at first, in an elegant way to show multiple things are happening without a lot of distracting jump cuts.

 

The show is in French—well, Canadian French, which the Francophone Sole Heir will tell you is not “real” French—with English subtitles; the subtitles are not always easy to read. That said, we discovered early on there was a parallel English version using different actors and we chose to stick with the French, as we had already come to identify with the actors and their characters. I don’t feel as though I missed anything by having to read the subtitles, as the photography allows ample time to also read the actors’ faces.

 

The only TV show I can think of that is on a level with 19-2 is The Wire, and you all know how I feel about The Wire. Placing 19-2 a notch above NYPD Blue is no slam to David Milch’s brilliant show. 19-2  is that good.

 

(We have since watched the entire series again after learning it was leaving Netflix later this month. The second time I took notes.)

Hill Street Moonlighting

 The Beloved Spouse™ and I recently opened the Hulu vaults for a couple of shows we loved when they were first aired, Hill Street Blues and Moonlighting. We did not last long with either.

 

Hill Street was first. Few programs have broken as much fertile ground as well as Steven Bochco’s premiere effort. The enormous ensemble cast, showing the cops’ lives beyond the station, the stresses no one thought about in the early 1980s. The list of what Bochco showed first could fill a blog post of its own.

 

That’s why I feel half guilty about cutting out near the end of Season 2. Bochco broke the ground, but a lot of people have since planted crops that flourished there. The Wire. The Shield. Even Bochco’s and David Milch’s NYPD Blue. All took the baton from Hill Street and ran with it, pushing the envelope ever farther. While they might not be here if not for Hill Street, Hill Street cannot compete.

 

Again, much of that is due to changing standards in television. Hill Street was among the first shows – and, I believe, the first cop show – to extend stories beyond one episode. This has become such a common thing it is now typical for crime series to invest an entire season in one primary line and hang lesser plots from that tentpole. Think of how clearly all five seasons of The Wire focused on a primary story while retaining others to flesh it out, sometimes going back all the way to the show’s origin.

 

Networks and streaming services now understand viewers have adequate attention spans to handle such programming; Bochco had to teach them. Watching several of the three-to-four-episode arcs we could not help but think that some stories deserved more time to breathe. Looking back forty years, Hill Street’s moves in that direction seem tentative. We’re past that now. Bochco’s genius was in many ways hoist on its own petard.

 

(Full disclosure: Hill Street left Hulu about the time we finished Season 1. We found it on Amazon, but after another handful of episodes they started charging $1.99 an episode, which adds up if you intend to watch them all. TBS found it on the Internet Archive, but that was more trouble than we wanted to take for a show we weren’t sure how long we wanted to stick with.)

 

Then there is Moonlighting. Both of us loved that show when it originally aired, but it fell flat with us after a few episodes on the re-viewing. What was wrong?

 

Personally, I remembered it as being funnier. I wondered why I didn’t think so this time – it’s not like my sense of humor has become any more elevated* – until TBS mentioned one evening how Bruce Willis’s irresponsible smart-ass act has been done to death. We were tired of it.

 

Again, it’s not Bruce Willis’s fault that he helped to create such a lasting trope. That still doesn’t make it any fresher after all this time. Each episode seemed like something we’d seen before, and done better.

 

(Even fuller disclosure: It also did not help that I have since learned Cybill Shepherd was a pluperfect bitch on the show. This is why it’s never good to know too much about performers’ backgrounds.)

 

I feel badly that two shows I loved when they were fresh and new no longer entertain me. It’s a little like seeing an old flame years later and expecting him or her to look the same. Even if their personalities haven’t changed – and certainly Hill Street’s and Moonlighting’s have not; I mean, they’re on videotape – they look and feel old.

 

So do I. That means I don’t have the time to stick with something because I might like it down the road; I don’t have as much road left as I used to, and it’s a dead end. I might watch Hill Street Blues again on my own sometime as research for a book, but probably not. There are far more timely and incisive examples today.

 

Thank you, Steven Bochco and Glen Gordon Caron, as well as everyone involved with each of your projects, for not only providing the younger me with wonderful and memorable entertainment, but also for raising my standards in such a manner your programs have lost much of their appeal, though not their luster.

 

(* - We watched both Cheers and Frazier start to finish a couple of years ago and loved them. All in the Family also holds up well.)

BritBox

 The Beloved Spouse™ and I recently subscribed to BritBox to take advantage of its plethora of outstanding crime shows. We’re three series in and, of course, I have thoughts.

 

Line of Duty. I’d heard enough good about this one that it piqued my interest in BritBox in the first place. Outstanding in every regard, LoD follows Anti-Corruption Unit 12 (AC-12) in a fictional English Midlands city, based on Birmingham. AC units are England’s version of Internal Affairs in the States, and the show focuses on a different angle of police corruption in each season. There is more to say, but noting the common thread that runs between seasons (and occasionally shows wear as time goes on) is a potential spoiler, so I’ll leave that for now. Suffice to say, LoD gets high marks.

 

Karen Pirie. Another winner, if only one season long so far. Based in St. Andrews, Scotland, Karen is a young detective who is assigned to a cold case as a way of brushing off the investigation because she’s both inexperienced and a woman. Needless to say, while Karen is young and inexperienced, she’s also smart and dogged. The quality here is just as good as Line of Duty, with one caveat: you might want to turn on the subtitles. While not Glasgow, the St. Andrews accents are at times indecipherable. We watched the first episode and thought it was okay, then watched again with the subtitles turned on, turned to each other, and said, “Whoa. This is good.”

 

Wallander. One of the two crime series I’d heard a lot about before subscribing to BritBox, along with Prime Suspect, which we haven’t got around to yet. Each episode is a 90-minute movie based on a single novel by Swedish author Henning Mankell, not unlike the series created for Ken Bruen’s Jack Taylor. (Exception: the last two episodes come from the same book, a la the end of the Harry Potter movies.) Filmed on location in Sweden with UK actors, the show stars Kenneth Branagh as Wallander, a detective in the resort town of Ystad who seems to discover more bodies than he’s assigned. Broody and dark, Wallander’s inherent goodness and fallibility come through to make him as human a cop as one is likely to find. As one might expect, Branagh is superb. I’ll have more to say about Wallander, but in a different post, as there will be spoilers.

 

You can’t go wrong with any of these. The only complaint we have with BritBox is the service itself, which some nights makes us kiss ass to watch it; some nights we give up. It’s more reliable on a laptop, but I’m paying for a service to watch its programming on a screen the size of those made before I was born when I have a 65-inch television across the room. Not with my eyesight.

The West Wing

 The Beloved Spouse™ and I recently watched The West Wing start to finish. She saw the show in its original airing; I had seen only a handful of random episodes. The thoughts brought to mind could fill multiple posts if expanded on, so I’ll use bullets to cherry pick what sticks most with me. Please leave a comment if you’d like more of a discussion of any aspect, including things I do not mention here.

 

·       Let’s start with an acknowledgement: it’s network television at its best. I didn’t find it the mind-blowing event I remember hearing about at the time (two good friends named their dog Bartlet), but there are likely good reasons for that:

o   It’s been twenty years. We’ve seen a lot of groundbreaking stuff since then.

o   Much of the show aired during the presidency of George W. Bush. A lot of liberals thought Jed Bartlet was the president they deserved.

·       The acting is wonderful throughout. I can’t say who I thought did the best job. Even bit player guest stars were outstanding.

·       Much of that has to do with the words they were given to say. Even after Aaron Sorkin left the show and the plots weren’t always as tight, the dialog sparkled.

·       The production values were incredible. I don’t know what the West Wing actually looks like, but if it doesn’t look like this, it should.

·       Helen Santos was a wonderful character to show how an everywoman would react to being thrust into the spotlight, especially after she becomes First Lady-elect and sees the staff arrayed for her.

·       It was refreshing to see a character (Bartlet) faced with so many “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” scenarios and how he pulled his advisers together to find some sort of resolution, however imperfect or unpleasant.

·       In general, the show does a great job of not wasting time on conversations when the result is obvious. On the other hand, there were occasions where it looked like the missing scene would have been a bastard to write so the writer allowed your imagination to fill the gap.

·       It’s one of the most depressing shows I’ve ever seen.

o   So many things that were hot topics then still haven’t changed: gun control, abortion, magically curative tax cuts, etc.

o   Much of what has changed went the wrong direction: polarization, January 6, politics as blood sport.

o   Even the good guys, notably Josh and Toby, are less interested in doing good than they are in winning. Their arrogance can be stultifying. Sure, they’re fictional characters serving a dramatic narrative, but a lot of people with intimate knowledge of such things vouched for the show’s insider authenticity.

·       Jed Bartlet’s heart may be in the right place, but he’s a pedantic, often condescending know-it-all who doesn’t think rules should apply to him, and I don’t mean because he’s president; because he’s Josiah Bartlet.

·       The character that Abby Bartlet reminds me most of is Carmela Soprano. In Abby’s defense, she has led a remarkable life of her own with a sterling reputation as a doctor. On the other hand, no one elected her to anything. The level of fealty she expects from the White House staff is unbecoming, and she, too, doesn’t see why the rules everyone else lives by should apply to her.

·       The shows wander during the Santos-Vinick election campaign. The debate episode is a wasted hour that would have been far more interesting if we saw how the campaign staffs reacted off-stage in real time.

 

In the end, many of my complaints are quibbles, but the compliments are wholehearted and sincere. As we neared the end, part of me was ready to get to it, but another part couldn’t wait to see what happened and how they’d show it.

 

It’s too bad streaming services weren’t a big deal then. The Santos presidency and the problems faced by the first minority president would have made a great series, especially as it would have preceded the Obama Administration. (The final episode aired May 14, 2006.)

1883

 The Paramount+ series 1883 is the story of how the Dutton family came to found the ranch that is the cornerstone of the popular series Yellowstone. 1883 does a good job of showing why the Duttons have such love and devotion for the land. How the show does it leaves a lot to be desired.

 

The set-up has the Duttons (Confederate veteran James, wife Margaret, daughter Elsa, and son John) hooking up with a party of German immigrants on their way from Fort Worth to Oregon under the direction of Shea Brennan (Sam Elliott). Mishaps and drama ensue.

 

The first few episodes of 1883 are grabbers. Unfortunately, the show can’t maintain that pace and each successive episode loses a little in both quality and interest until by the end we were talking back to the screen as though filming an episode of Mystery Western Theater 1883. We stuck with it more from a sense of duty to see how things came out than for entertainment.

 

Writer Taylor Sheridan makes his points through the eyes of Elsa (Isabel May), through frequent, and often tedious, voice-overs. Emily Dickenson had nothing on this seventeen-year-old in the areas of eloquence, profundity, and melancholy. (More on Elsa’s age later.) The voice-overs are textbook examples of why the technique has fallen into ill-repute. They’re telling instead of showing, and oh my god are they preachy.

 

That doesn’t make Elsa special. Characters will stop whatever they’re doing to utter profundities at the drop of a hat. While much of the acting is quite good (Sam Elliott is always solid, and Tim McGraw as James Dutton is surprisingly so) they too often give recitations rather than explore character.

 

Plotting and pacing are problems. Sheridan earned great acclaim for the screenplays Hell or High Water, Wind River, and Sicario. He appears to function better when he needs to wrap things up in two hours. Given ten episodes to work with, the pacing is often too slow, while at others the action jumps ahead in ways that were not only unprepared, but inexplicable.

 

This expansiveness affects the storytelling in several ways. (Mild spoiler alert.) During a treacherous river crossing, Elsa plays Beethoven’s “Moonlight” sonata for the cowboys on a piano the setlers must leave behind, as it was too heavy to cross the river. (The piano is in perfect tune and repair, and none of those in charge noticed how much needless ballast the settlers were carrying until it became a crisis.) The scene goes on forever, cut with flashes of a wagon foundering and a woman drowning. I understand the desire to be artistic, but, like truth, artifice should never get in the way of a good story. The drama of the river crossing dies aborning, after quite a bit of time setting it up.

 

There are also sloppiness issues with the continuity. Two episodes have an almost identical scene where James and Margaret discuss exactly the same thing, with exactly the same resolution. It’s near the end of one episode and the beginning of the next, so when binging it smacks you over the head. There’s also the matter of a western-moving wagon train approaching the camera, with the mountains in the background.

 

Then there’s Elsa’s age. Elsa notes in a voiceover that the train left Fort Worth on April 9, 1883, which is her seventeenth birthday, as she was born exactly one year after Lee surrendered at Appomattox.  Later, in an argument with her mother, she notes that now that she’s eighteen, the law says she can do what she wants. If this isn’t enough, in another scene where Margaret talks of being pregnant with Elsa while working for a sharecropper, with James in a Yankee prison camp. I’ll let you do the math on that one.

 

The series is beautifully photographed and reminded both The Beloved Spouse™ and me why we love our trips out west so much. Conditions on the trail appear to be as authentic as anything I’ve seen, and many action scenes are shot panoramically to give a sense of context.  Beautiful as they are, such images too often serve as padding, along with overlong shots of people’s faces to make sure we know strong emotion going on here. Sheridan would have done well to heed the advice of Reverend McLean in A River Runs Through It: “Half as long.” If you reall6y want the feel of moving across the prairies of the western frontier, check out Lonesome Dove. 1883 has many similarities, but provides no real competition is either story or character development.

Cheers

 The Beloved Spouse™ and I recently completed viewing every episode of Cheers. For those who weren’t around to enjoy the original broadcasts, here’s an idea of why we watched at least two episodes almost every night.

 

First, and most important for a comedy, the show is hilarious. Some of the humor may seem dated – and, to some, bits of it may seem inappropriate – but it’s always clever, and, for a show that builds much of its humor on the cluelessness of the characters, much more intelligent than most comedies, with the possible exception of its spin-off, Frasier. (By this I don’t mean droll, or something high-brow that inspires conspiratorial smiles from the viewer. I mean laugh out loud funny.)

 

The characters are well-drawn, and provide enough variety to help keep the writing fresh for eleven years. Each has his or her own well-defined persona, and they stick to it, though there are still some surprises, just as with the people we know.

 

This works because the producers cast actors suit their roles and are good at their jobs. I’ve always been a Ted Danson fan, but watching the show now made me appreciate how good he really is. Even his background reactions were always in character and complemented the punch line or situation.

 

There are a couple of examples of how well the producers chose their actors. Kelsey Grammar (Frasier Crane) and his eventual wife, Lilith (Bebe Neuwirth) came in to fill short term needs. Frazier became a regular and eventually got his own show, which ran as long as Cheers; Lilith became regular enough to get a credit.

 

Necessary replacements provide even better examples. Nicholas Colasanto (Coach), beloved of cast and audience, died after season three, to be replaced by a young Woody Harrelson as Woody Boyd, a character that filled the same role in the repertory company as Coach, but in a much different manner.

 

The big change, of course, came when Shelley Long (Diane Chambers) left the show. Kirstie Alley came in and picked right up. The writers changed the premise mid-stream and never missed a beat. There has never been a better comedic crier then Mary Tyler Moore, but Kirstie Alley is in her league.

 

What makes all this work? The writing, of course. No actor can be better than the material, and Cheers is as well-written a show as has ever been on television. It could have fallen into the trap of being a typical workplace sitcom, but the bar setting allowed the writers to leverage one of the core strengths of Barney Miller by providing opportunity for truly eccentric characters to pass through. I can’t remember any examples in the 272 episodes where I thought, “Well, that was wasted.”

 

Cheers debuted forty years ago. It holds up well despite society’s changing attitudes about such core parts of the show as Sam’s womanizing and Norm’s drinking because, like all classic sitcoms, at its core it’s about people, and these are people for whom the writers have genuine affection. If you’ve never seen Cheers, do yourself a favor and check it out. If you saw it during its original run, stop by again and remember what it’s like to spend time where everyone knows your name.

Reacher

 The first thing the creators of the Amazon Prime series Reacher did right was to cast Alan Richson as Reacher. Not that Richson is the second coming of Laurence Olivier. He doesn’t need to be. He looks like Jack Reacher, facially and physically. No offense to Tom Cruise, who is a fine actor, but Lee Child’s books work because Jack Reacher carries an obvious level of physical intimidation with him. That requires someone who is at least close to Reacher’s description of 6’ 5” and 250 pounds. Wikipedia has Cruise as 5-7, and he's obviously not a millimeter taller. That nearly a foot is hard to make up.

 

I don’t mean to dismiss Richson as an actor. I’ve never seen him in anything else, and Reacher doesn’t stretch his range. He does the low-key banter well, as well as the deadpan humor. His speeches are a little robotic, but anyone who’d read the books knows Reacher doesn’t let out any more emotion than he has to. This may be how they’ve chosen to portray that.

 

What all Reacher Creatures want to know is how well the series captures the tone of the books. Rest easy. They nailed it. I’ve read several Reacher books and tend to look upon them as guilty pleasures. I don’t mean that as a pejorative, but let’s face it: Reacher is a superhero. You can’t read the books – or watch the show - and believe any of this could actually happen. That’s all right. We need a little escapism once in a while, and Child was smart enough to provide enough depth to Reacher’s character that one is never sorry to have spent time with him. He’s just not going to provoke existential discussions afterward.

 

The supporting cast is okay. The primary villain is a bit over the top, but for the most part everyone carries their water faithfully. The standout is Willa Fitzgerald as officer Roscoe Conklin. To paraphrase The Beloved Spouse™, Fitzgerald can be cute as a button and hard as nails almost simultaneously.

 

There are some iffy parts. Margrave, Georgia seems to have forensic capabilities Gil Grissom would be proud of. There is also a disconnect as to who Reacher should have trouble beating up, and who is a worthy adversary.

 

Those are quibbles. The producers didn’t set out to reinvent Deadwood or Braking Bad. It’s a 21^st Century Western, where the lone stranger rides into town (albeit on a bus), get sweet on a local girl, kicks serious ass, sets things right, and rides off into the sunset. No one is going to teach college-level classes on the social relevancy of Reacher like those inspired by The Wire. That’s okay. The show knows what it is, and it does that very well. The world could use more of that attitude. I’m looking forward to Season 2.

Movies and TV Since the Last Time

 The Courier (2020) Benedict Cumberbatch in an excellent retelling of the Penkovsky spy situation that took place around the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Cumberbatch plays a British businessman recruited my M.I.6 to act as the go-between with Penkovsky. A perfect example of how to build and sustain tension and suspense without blowing shit up.

 

Green Zone (2010) Based on another true story, this time set in the early days of the Iraq War. Matt Damon plays a warrant officer caught between politics, the media, and the CIA agent (Brendan Gleeson) who’s trying to make things come out right. Lots of shit blows up here, but never gratuitously. Well worth your time.

 

Galaxy Quest (1999) I forget how many times I’ve seen this*, and it’s always fun. If you haven’t seen it, you should, especially if you’re a Trekkie and have a sense of humor. (* - Note to Mike Dennis: Not as many times as L.A. Confidential.)

 

Never Surrender: A Galaxy Quest Documentary (2019) First time for this one and it changed my attitude about cosplay. The film not only tells much of how Galaxy Quest was made, it explores the word of cosplayers with a humorous, yet sympathetic light. Galaxy Quest devotees will probably enjoy it more, but, then again, shouldn’t everyone be a Galaxy Quest fan?

 

Bad Santa 2 (2016) I didn’t even know there was a Bad Santa 2 until I stumbled onto this while searching streaming services for the original. The rare sequel that’s as much fun as the original, with humor at least as outrageous.

 

We Were Soldiers (2002) Maybe the best film I’ve seen about what it’s like to be a conscientious military commander. Closely based on a true story, the movie shows the Vietnam War battle for Ia Drang, the first time helicopters were used to ferry infantry to and from a battlefield, and all the plusses and fuck-ups that entails. Mel Gibson and Sam Elliott are excellent as the commander and his sergeant major; Greg Kinnear shines in one of his first dramatic roles as a chopper pilot. Fair warning: this is not the easiest movie to watch, as it’s horribly gruesome in places.

 

Don’t Look Up (2021) Don’t look at this piece of shit at all. I lived through the eras of such brilliant satires As Dr, Strangelove, Catch-22, M*A*S*H, Wag the Dog, and Primary Colors, and have unfortunately lived long enough to see this ham-handed effort to point out what’s wrong with the world today. It’s been a while since I saw so much acting talent wasted like this. I suppose everyone felt good about coming down on the right side of this discussion. If only they’d decided to make a good movie while they were at it.

 

Gladiator (2000) Made when Russell Crowe was arguably the biggest star in Hollywood, Gladiator is among the reasons he earned the spot. Joaquin Phoenix is repulsively squishy as the new emperor and Connie Nielsen as his equally scheming sister, but everything in the movie revolves around what to do about Maximus (Crowe). A damn near perfect example of telling a compelling story in a compelling manner. Was I not entertained? Damn right I was.

 

The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window (2022) Not a movie, but a short (3 ½ hours) streaming series from Netflix. IMDB lists the genres as “Comedy Crime Drama Mystery Thriller.” If you think that combo equates to a mess, you’re not far off. It’s presented as a comedy, but much of the early “humor” derives from a woman who is going insane from grief, which has about as much comedy potential as AIDS. (Things get rolling at 30 seconds into the video.) The comedy picks up as the show goes along, but even then it’s too more clever than laugh-out-loud funny.

 

Striking Distance (1993) Never watch a movie because you learned a fifteen-second scene took place a mile from where you grew up. This one’s a stinker from the get-go, despite the formidable supporting cast of Dennis farina, Sarah Jessica Parker, Tom Sizemore, John Mahoney, Andre Braugher, and Robert Pastorelli. The film gets the Pittsburgh look well, but not much else. The plot is a mess, the dialog is typical of the renegade cop genre, and the excellent cast is given little to work with.

 

Gorky Park (1983) William Hurt plays Arkady Renko in this adaptation of Martin Cruz Smith’s novel. I saw it in a theater during its original release and thought it would be a nice palate cleanser after the disaster that was Striking Distance. Alas, it did not hold up well, despite the best efforts of Lee Marvin and Brian Dennehy. The film leaves too many plot particulars to the imagination, especially the key reveal of the plot behind everything else, which Dennehy hands to Renko on a platter with us having no idea how an American detective operating as a tourist in the USSR could have discovered it. These back-to-back failures got me suspended from picking movies for a while.

 

 

 

 

 

 

City on a Hill

 I have been less than flattering about my recent crime show experiences on both HBO and Showtime. (How American Rust keeps showing up on lists as Showtimes best crime show is beyond me.) Just as I was beginning to wonder if I’d reached the age where nothing new appealed to me, a friend told me to check out City on a Hill.

 

Now, this is a good show. Better than good, even.

 

The show is set in Boston, right after the Charles Stuart controversy. (Stuart was a white man who killed his pregnant wife, then called the police to say a Black carjacker shot her. Mayhem ensued when Boston police started rounding up Black males with inappropriate enthusiasm. More details here.) City on a Hill focuses on the racial tensions that flared after the Stuart case fell apart.

 

CoaH leaves this in the background, telling its stories through two main characters. Jackie Rohr (Kevin Bacon, in a stunning performance) is a corrupt FBI agent living off the reputation he built for taking down a Mafia crime family. It’s never made clear, but the implication is he was the beneficiary of information provided by Whitey Bulger as part of Bulger’s plan to take over Boston organized crime by working as a federal informant. Jackie is a detestable human being, but he’s also charming as hell, and Bacon plays him with a likeability that will often make you feel uncomfortable.

 

Jackie’s foil/partner/antagonist is DeCourcy Ward (Aldis Hodge), a Black state’s attorney despised by most of the Boston police for having worked on the federal task force charged with finding justice for BPD’s racist handling of the Stuart case.

 

Season One focuses on Jackie’s efforts to muscle in on an investigation of an armored car robbery that led to the execution-style killing of three guards. That leads us to the criminal side of things, where Frankie Ryan (Jonathan Tucker) runs a small crew with his wife (Amanda Clayton) as the money manager and his brother Jimmy (Mark O’Brien) as the fuck up. The dynamic there is fraught with tension, as is the relationship among the branches of law enforcement.

 

This could deteriorate into a sensationalistic soap opera pretty quickly, but the people in charge know what they’re doing. City on a Hill is a Tom Fontana/Barry Levinson production (Homicide: Life on the Street) created by Chuck Maclean that has all the elements one needs in a well-told story. Unlike the other shows I have recently been critical of, City on a Hill, for all its bleakness, is laugh out loud funny in places, just like real life. Jackie in particular has a sardonic, often inappropriate sense of humor that lends a feel of realism to the events. (Easter egg: Fontana got his start writing for St. Elsewhere. The primary hospital used in City on a Hill is St. Eligius.)

 

I could go on for a while, but I don’t want to inadvertently spread any spoilers. City on a Hill gets my highest recommendation. If you subscribe to Showtime, watch it. If you don’t subscribe to Showtime, look for a deal, get it, watch City on a Hill, then opt out if you want. That’s what we did. At least till Season 3 releases, when it’ll be time to start looking for another special.

American Rust

 American Rust is a Showtime series set in Western Pennsylvania. Being a Western Pennsylvania native myself, I thought I’d take a look. The series starts slow, but it can’t keep that up long; things go downhill from there.

 

First, the good. They filmed the series in Western Pennsylvania, and it shows. All the exteriors look authentic, including the weather. (Assuming this takes place in late fall. They never really say. The only hint is one scene of a football practice. More on that later.)

 

The acting is solid, let by Jeff Daniels and Maura Tierney. I might have more to say about that, too, if the actors had more to work with. (More on that below, too.) For now suffice to say the more streaming shows and movies I watch, the more I’m impressed by the depth and breadth of acting talent available. There’s no excuse for miscasting a role anymore.

 

There’s a standard complaint: people do too many things any rational person would know not to do. These are decisions calculated to complicate the plot or increase personal conflict, imposed on characters regardless of whether they make sense. It’s always better to think of characters as real people, not widgets used to complicate the plot.

 

The economy is shitty; we get that. The show does a nice job of depicting it. Things have been that way since I grew up there. (Actually, I grew up about an hour from where the show takes place, in Westmoreland County. The only major difference is Westmoreland isn’t adjacent to West Virginia.) I stay in touch with the area, having made three trips there last year, after years of returning to visit my parents. The people know how to have fun. They know how to take a break from whatever shitty thing is going on in their lives. They’re not defeated, though virtually everyone in American Rust is. There are so few smiles they’re not worth mentioning. Conversation ranges from “I’m sad” to “I’m so sad.”

 

I’m assuming the show takes place in the fall, as everyone wears jackets and there’s a high school football practice. This was a golden opportunity to show the local culture is not entirely downtrodden: set a scene at a high school football game. Half the town will be there. You can set up any interactions you want.

 

A scene that sticks in my mind (and craw) is a wedding reception. It’s a good opportunity to show various groups of people together, and to set up some conflicts and explain other dynamics. What bothered me about it was the venue. Whatever the purpose of the building when not hosting a function, it lacked indoor facilities; portable toilets were in the parking lot.

 

Honest to God? Things are so bad in Buell Township people can’t afford to send their daughters into married life without the spectacle of the bride going into a Port-a-John? I found it insulting as a Western Pennsylvania native, not to mention this was the perfect place to use a football game. All the same things could have been accomplished, and the viewers would have seen one of the things that still ties such communities together. Not to mention no one would think twice about using a portable toilet at a football game. (Though every town I can think of actually has real toilets at the football stadium. We have priorities, you know.)

 

This next may seem trivial, but it’s not, at least not if one is trying to convey a sense of community. At no time did I see any gear for any of the Pittsburgh sports teams. I forgive not mentioning of the Pirates. They stink and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Where are the Steelers jerseys or tee shirts or ball caps? There are no Steelers bumper stickers, no Terrible Towels, no posters in houses nor flags outside. I had my issues with Mare of Easttown, but at least they acknowledged their proximity to Philadelphia with background references to the Phillies, Eagles, and Flyers.

 

Two reasons for these omissions come to mind. Either the producers just didn’t think about them – which is bad enough – or deliberately omitted them so as not to interfere with the intended narrative, which is these people have no light in their lives, and no hope of getting any. It’s unfair to the people who live there, and is a facile way to “honor” their suffering by minimizing their efforts and accomplishments. I keep up with local events in the towns that make up Penns River and, while I don’t agree with everything they do, they have not given up. They still work hard to make things better, and if a plan falls through, as many do, they lick their wounds and start over. I wonder how many improvement plans fail because too many people with the money and juice to make them work view the locals as the producers of American Rust seem to, as schlubs born to fuck up their lives and opportunities.

 

Do some give up? Sure. Just as some rich people never work a day in their lives and whine about how hard they have it. Is it fair to portray some characters in that manner? Absolutely. Accuracy is always a defense. Context matters, too.

 

American Rust’s tries to evoke empathy by taking the viewer on a journey as drab and joyless as the lives lived by the people the characters represent. It’s not effective because it’s not true. The audience will feel more for well-rounded characters, not a cast of whipping boys.

 

 

The Inexorable Decline in the Quality of Home Entertainment

 As my father aged, he was prone to say “I’m glad I won’t be around to see…” and then complain about some aspect of the decline of civilization. I made a conscious decision never to do that. Keeping this promise is harder some days than others, especially during the covid era, but I’ve done well in general.

 

That’s not to say I ignore things I don’t like. I’ve mentioned today’s topic before, but events have conspired to prompt a re-visitation. I understand this is all trivial, entertainment-related stuff. Still, with all the other things going on, entertainment fills a greater role than it might otherwise.

 

Let’s start with home entertainment, by which I mean television, by which I mean streaming services, as what’s shown over the air (read: cable) is rarely worth the time to read the program guide. Streaming services are pay to play, but that’s not stopping them from starting to sneak in commercials.

 

Here's the thing, boys: HBO and Showtime set the standard for pay TV, and the standard is we already paid, so give it to us straight. Hulu’s old TV shows don’t bother me as much; the creators built in commercial breaks, making the ads less obtrusive.

 

The other night we watched an Australian Western, The Proposition, using Amazon Prime as a portal to IMDB TV, which was “free with ads.” We can live with Hulu’s ads, so we gave it a try.

 

I’d like to give the movie a thumbs up or thumbs down, but I can’t. The ads appeared seemingly at random, and so disrupted the continuity I can’t make a fair assessment. The movie is mostly atmosphere and tone. Random breaks for dog food, makeup, and, worst of all, promos for what a fine service IMDB TV is, killed any mood we might have built. Some were timed so badly we wondered if they’d just let the movie run behind the ads. They hadn’t, but some of the cuts were so dramatic it was a valid concern.

 

This is yet another example of the inexorable creep of advertising into our entertainment. The compact used to be that the viewer had to put up with commercials as the cost of the entertainment. Now it feels like the providers only have programming because they don’t think we’ll tune in just to watch commercials. (Yes, I know this was always true. They just weren’t as obvious about it.)

 

Take sports. Baseball has long had the green screen ads behind home plate. Now the fields have ads along the baselines and TV superimposes corporate logos onto the backs of the pitcher’s mounds. I saw a game last season with a large ad superimposed on the Green Monster at Fenway Park, and another where a TV-only ad covered the hitters’ background.

 

Hockey is even worse. There have been ads between the blue lines for years. Now they are also in the corners. Some TV outlets started superimposing ads on the glass several years ago. Now everyone does it near the blue lines in both offensive zones. Corporate logos started appearing on helmets a couple of years ago. This year the Washington Capitals have logos on the uniform jerseys. Soon everyone will.

 

Why does this bother me so much? Probably because I used to be able to use sports as my refuge away from the outside world. Now they not only have ads everywhere, TNT runs the odds for proposition bets on the screen during the game. The event has become an excuse for advertising in the spirit of too much money is never enough.

 

Which brings to mind another point. Everywhere we look, some business is complaining about how there isn’t enough money. We can’t afford to pay minimum wage / hire new workers / provide benefits / improve customer service / you name it. Then where does all this advertising money come from? The cart is no longer before the horse. It’s rolling down the road on its own

 

I have no solution. I’m old and cranky. Next week I’ll still be old, but I’ll have reading recommendations.

 

For now, get off my lawn.

Mare of Easttown

 A friend suggested I watch Mare of Easttown because the setting and atmosphere resemble my Penns River books, though from the other side of Pennsylvania. The show and my books have many similarities, though there are also crucial differences.

 

The parallels are easy to see. Easttown is hilly and mostly semi-rural, with a small downtown. The winter weather is cold and damp; the sun shines about as often as Tucker Carlson makes a lucid statement. Those who live there are predominantly working class, though a few are doing better.

 

The primary difference is that no one in Easttown – no one – is having any fun. Their lives are a daily trudge from one unfortunate occurrence to another. Even good news comes with tragedy attached. Penns River is much the same, but its residents take their misfortune with a healthy dose of ironic humor, and every so often something funny happens. Life is like that, and Mare could use more of it.

 

The show in general is good, not great. All HBO shows have excellent production values; Mare is no exception. It’s filmed on location in and near Drexel Hill PA, and the visuals take full advantage. The acting is uniformly excellent, led by Kate Winslet as Mare. Kudos to her for having the courage to age naturally. I know her mostly from Titanic (which I didn’t care for), and her performance here is a revelation.

 

The plotting falls prey to a couple of TV quirks. When confronted with choices, characters too often take the one more likely to cause the most, and greatest, complications. I know it’s good for conflict and drama, but most people are smarter than that. Let them show it.

 

The second annoyance is that each episode has a different favored suspect until they finally get it right. It’s one thing to work through possible candidates, but cops prefer not to arrest people, or make serious accusations, until they’re pretty damn sure they have the right person. It reminds me of watching a House marathon with the then Sole Heir (now Dr. Sole Heir) many years ago. She was already thinking of medical school and was trying to guess if House had the diagnosis right. It was his second or third try of the show, so I was confident in saying he’s still wrong. When she asked how I knew – aware I never watched House except with her – I pointed to the clock. “He’ll get it wrong at least once more before they miraculously save this guy as the first two wheels of the gurney cross the threshold of death’s door.”

 

My overall feelings about Mare are positive. I’ll watch a second season, if there is one. The main story line is intriguing, though some of the police procedure is questionable. I’m willing to forgive that because

A. They’re matters of omission. It’s not like they have a bunch of CSIs running around with guns or car explosions.

B. It’s not really a cop show. It’s a family drama where the lead character happens to be a cop. While not outstanding at either – no one will confuse Mare with The Wire or Little House on the Prairie* - it’s better than competent. I’d give it 3.5 out of 5.

 

(* - As you probably guessed, I don’t watch a lot of family dramas.)

NYPD Blue

 

The Beloved Spouse™ and I rarely leap into the hot thing du jour. We let things breathe and gauge the reception over time before devoting any of our precious remaining hours to something. Ergo, we recently binge-watched NYPD Blue fifteen years after it went off the air. All 261 episodes. In a row. We didn’t watch anything else.

 

We don’t fuck around.

 

What a great show. Like any property that runs twelve years, it slows down a little toward the end, but not a lot. The entire cast turns over except for Sipowicz (Dennis Franz) and the producers use that turnover to shift the squad’s internal dynamics so you’re never quite sure what’s going to happen, but you have an idea how events will affect the characters.

 

If I had to pick one thing that stands out, it’s how the rest of the squad, including the bosses, come to respect and gain affection for Sipowicz. He’s a racist asshole when the show starts, and he’s never cuddly. He struggles with multiple demons and keeps them at bay while understanding they are never defeated. He learns when and how to ask for help, never more touchingly as when he calls his wife to come get him in a bar. “No, I’m not drinking. But if you don’t come for me I know I will.” Not an order; a plea. Early in the show the only person who has the time of day for him is his partner, John Kelly (David Caruso.) By the end the entire squad will do anything for him.

 

All of the characters’ histories have their places, but not in a manner that the show becomes about their flaws; it’s still about the whole person. What turned me off of Rescue Me was that every episode became a test of whether Denis Leary would drink. After a while I didn’t care anymore, and there wasn’t much else to him. That’s never true of NYPD Blue. Everyone is a well-rounded person and personality. The characters never become stale because there’s always fertile ground to be worked, between New York situations (“Everything’s a situation,” said Sipowicz’s second partner, Bobby Simone) and the depth of the characterizations.

 

Since I brought him up, let’s talk about Bobby (Jimmy Smits). He’s only in a third of the episodes, but he leaves his mark on the rest of the show. His replacements, Sorenson (Rick Schroder) and Clark (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) are well-developed, well-acted characters, but they’re not Bobby. It’s Simone’s understanding and empathy for Sipowicz that turns the rest of the squad around. Not because Simone says or does anything, but everyone loves Bobby, and if Bobby feels this way about Sipowicz, then he can’t be all bad. The show is still good, but not so often transcendent after Simone leaves..

 

It’s a cop show and I haven’t said a word about the crimes. There’s no big deal made of stories “ripped from the headlines,” but former NYPD detective Bill Clark had a hand in breaking the overwhelming majority of stories. It shows. The weird crimes all have a “no one could make this up” feel, and the painful stories are never melodramatic. They just tell the story. Make of it what you will.

 

No show has better exemplified Joe Wambaugh’s mantra that a good cop story is more about how the cases work on the cops than about how the cops work on the cases. NYPD Blue is a procedural without much procedure. Only what you need to understand what’s going on. Nothing easy about that, and it’s more than worth your time when executed this well.

 

(I also recommend David Milch’s book, True Blue, about the first two seasons of the show, including the transition from Caruso to Smits. As good a behind the scenes book as I have read.)

 

Terriers or The Nice Guys?

A discussion on Facebook last week asked if, given the choice, we’d rather see two sequels to The Nice Guys or two more seasons of Terriers. I voted for Terriers, not because I liked it better than The Nice Guys, but because I’ve become such a fan of serialized limited run television. 

I find I watch a lot fewer movies since I got into serialized limited run TV starting with The Sopranos. The Wire, Deadwood, The Shield, Justified all showed what can be done when an able showrunner has the time to really examine a universe and the characters who populate it. The best of these series also seem to get less interference from the suits and marketing people that has led to so much timidity in movies, where everything has to be a blockbuster and the entire industry’s sphincters are in knots for fear their $200 million superhero/comic book/Star Wars/Star Trek/TV show reboot is the one that lays the egg that brings down the studio and makes moviegoers everywhere wonder, “Why have we been watching so much of the same shit for so long?”

I digress.

A series has an ability to become part of your life much more than a movie, where you go to the theater (or stream it; doesn’t matter) and know you’re coming out two hours later. We spent over eighty hours with Tony Soprano. We were invested in that motherfucker, which was why so many people were so upset at how the series ended. The end of The Wire left The Beloved Spouse™ and me feeling these people’s lives would continue; we just wouldn’t get to watch them anymore. The Deadwood movie really brought that feeling home, as did Justified with its skipping ahead a few years at the end. Movies are finite. Series become too much like real people to just walk away.

Obviously that’s not true of all series. The showrunner is critical. Should he or she lose their vigor, so will the show. It’s not that the showrunner is irreplaceable, but damn near. What did all the series I mentioned above, plus Breaking Bad, Mad Men, The Americans, and others we think most highly of have in common? Consistency of vision. I thought Ray Donovan would be such a show until Ann Biderman left after Season 2. It’s still a good show but much more a soap opera where Ray’s family forces ridiculous situations on him for no good reason. (Really, Bunchie? Taking your settlement money—in cash—to a sandwich shop on the way to close a real estate deal across the street? Did you want to get robbed? And wasn’t it convenient that he bumps into hostage-taking robbers at that precise time of day? Who the fuck robs a Subway in broad daylight?)

Again, I digress.

That’s another reason I chose more Terriers over The Nice Guys, the ascendance of the showrunner. Directors don’t get that kind of independence with nine-figure budgets. (Editor’s Note: He knows not all movies have nine-figure budgets. He also knows that those who run Hollywood don’t really give a fuck about the those.) If a director hits it big enough with a movie to warrant a sequel, odds are the studio will want to be more involved, like sharks flocking to a rotting whale carcass. The tendency is always to outdo the original, to make the sequel more of what made the original in the hopes of revving up the audience more, forgetting that what made the original worthy of a sequel was that it didn’t do that. (Jaws 2, anyone? See what I did there with the sharks?) Sequels only work well if you had more material than could be used in the original (The Godfather, The Godfather Part 2) or the viewers are so invested in the franchise they’ll let it run and run and run, essentially making it a large-scale series with fewer, less directly connected episodes.

A movie can be a nice way to spend the evening but I’ll take a series like those we talked about here when I want to invest some time.

Homicide: Life on the Street

My birthday fell during the government shutdown so The Beloved Spouse™ gave me one of my gifts early, seeing as how I’d have time to properly appreciate it: the boxed set of Barry Levinson’s groundbreaking series Homicide: Life on the Streets.

I discovered Homicide late in its run; TBS had never seen it. Only heard

of it because I liked to talk it up based on what I remembered and because I’d read her excerpts from David Simon’s book during my periodic re-readings. I had high hopes and she figured she was along for the ride. We were both pleasantly surprised.

Homicide was a show that exemplified Joseph Wambaugh’s dictum of how a good cop story is less about how the cops work on the case than it is about how the case works on the cops. Each character is unique and each responds differently to the demands of the job. Members of Al Giardello’s squad come and go and not always on the best of circumstances. The egos are large—these are, after all, murder police, the cream of the crop—and so is the pressure.

Fans of The Wire who have not seen Homicide need to. Not only does it capture the essence of the book that so much of The Wire was based on, you’ll see countless characters who later showed up in the later series. You won’t know the names of a lot of them, but you’ll recognize them. “Hey, that’s the medical examiner from The Wire!” “That’s the councilman in the wheelchair!” The vibe is also similar, or at least as similar to HBO as a 90s TV show could get.

As with all great TV, the writing is superb. Showrunner Tom Fontana pulled together a crew of writers (eventually to include David Simon himself, still working at the Baltimore Sun when the show premiered) that looked at the life of a homicide cop from every angle. They not only weren’t afraid to go against the standard car chase and shootout cop show, they became the anti. There are shows early on where almost the entire episode takes place in The Box, where cops take their turns looking to work confessions form people who wouldn’t even talk to them if they had a clue. One episode takes place almost entirely on a subway platform, a commuter crushed between a train and the platform, talking to one of the detectives while the rest of the squad investigates whether this is an accident or a crime and others search for the victim’s girlfriend so they can say good-bye.

As important as the writing is, no scenes so confined could work without superb acting and Homicide had no shortage of talent. The show is at its best when Frank Pembleton (Andre Braugher) and Tim Bayliss (Kyle Secor) are tag-teaming suspects in the box. Early seasons make more of the partnership dynamic than later seasons and the show is better for it. Bolander (Ned Beatty) and Munch (Richard Belzer), Howard (Melissa Leo) and Felton (Stephen Baldwin), Lewis (Clark Johnson) and Crosetti (Jon Polito) all establish and maintain their own rhythms. Yaphet Kotto’s performances are subtle masterpieces as he plays a half-black, half-Italian unit commander who contains bits of Father Knows Best, Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, and Vito Corleone.

The first two or three seasons are consistently the best, but even a relatively weak episode in the later seasons is as good as anything else you’ll see on television. Episodes that take your breath away pop up put of the blue with unnerving regularity. Just as you feel the show is settling into a formula something will happen that leaves you slumped in your chair when it’s over. Not all the major events will be to your liking. None of the characters is completely good, and the rivalries and ego clashes that erupt keep the squad room from being anything but a “business as usual” environment, but that’s part of what makes the show special: you’re never comfortable watching it.

I’ve become much more interested in interviews than forensics over the past couple of years and Homicide came along for me at the perfect time. Crime scene details, fibers, ballistics, and DNA reside in their proper roles of supporting the cops who gathering witness statements and work people in the box. In other words, actual drama.

No show that has to produce 22 episodes a year can be uniformly special, but few, if any, pulled it off as well as Homicide. If you haven’t seen it, you should. And if you have, you should watch it again, if only to catch the really special episodes. They’re masterclasses in pacing, dialog, and suspence.

Nine-Nine!

I haven’t watched a TV sitcom episode-by-episode since 30 Rock but people I trusted wore me down to check out Brooklyn Nine-Nine. It had two strikes against it going in:

1. It was on Fox, so it was likely to be stupid.
2. It was going to get the police stuff wrong and I’m a snob about that, even though I am not, nor was I ever, a cop.

But the word was good and I like Andy Samberg and I was interested to see how Andre Braugher did comedy and I was off work for the shutdown and was eager for anything to distract me and The Beloved Spouse™ had a Hulu subscription so I figured what the hell. It’s been on the air for five years so it wasn’t like I was watching something new and untested (Heaven forfend!) so we gave it a try.

This is one of the funniest shows I have ever seen.

True, it’s not the erudite comedy of a Frazier or the layers seen in Seinfeld. Brooklyn Nine-Nine is out of what I call The Simpsons school of comedy: We’re just here to make you laugh. Don’t worry about the plot or the timeline of the verisimilitude. Just go with it and enjoy yourself.

The show does have more to it than just screwball humor. The cast is uniformly excellent and the writers take care to create real relationships between them, which makes the goofiness more than just a string of jokes without context. It’s a string of jokes that are funny because Peralta said it to Santiago or Charles was intimidated by Diaz. The actors’ timing is spot on. There are a surprising number of stunts for a sitcom, and they unfailingly pull them off.

Those who know me are probably wondering by now how I get past the lack of police procedure verisimilitude when I spent half my waking hours bitching about that topic in other television shows. (And books and movies and short stories and casual conversations and…) Here’s the deal: Brooklyn Nine-Nine doesn’t present itself as anything other than an exercise in getting you to laugh. CSI and NCIS and their ilk present themselves as investigations when they bear as much resemblance to real police work as James Bond does to the CIA.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine gets a pass from me for the same reason I don’t care that Donald Westlake’s Dortmunder books or Carl Hiaasen’s novels sometimes strain credulity. Once you get me laughing, I don’t much care how you keep the laughter going. I’m in. The harder and more often you can get me to laugh, the more you can get away with. (Mel Brooks is the prime example here.)

I mentioned the cast. While no one except Andy Samberg and Andre Braugher were known to me before I started watching, and everyone is excellent (even the guest stars hit every note), it’s Braugher who was the revelation. I’ve been a fan since he was on Homicide and wondering how Frank Pembleton was going to pull off a comedy could have been a subconscious reservation that kept me away from the show. If you, too, have that wonder, wonder no more. The man is hilarious and perfectly cast. The Beloved Spouse™ bought me the full boxed set of all seven seasons of Homicide for my birthday, which let to us watching several Brooklyn Nine-Nines followed by a disk worth of Homicide, which had us switching from Captain Raymond Holt to Detective Frank Pembleton and back every day. Acting studios could use these performances as primers.

Five weeks of bingeing reduced us to watching Brooklyn Nine-Nine the same way as everyone else: a week at a time. Well, not really. We came to enjoy the binge sessions so much we now DVR it and watch four or five episodes once a month, all at once. Once they get us laughing, 22 minutes is too soon to stop.

Binge Watching

Working a day job while writing novels and this blog in my free time doesn’t leave a lot of time to properly binge watch television. My idea of a binge is three in a row, once or twice a month at best, with rare exceptions. The government shutdown allowed me to get my writing and errands out of the way during the day, leaving free my evenings to watch selected television (and some movies) to my heart’s content.

The closest The Beloved Spouse™ and I came consistently to bingeing is when we watched Deadwood or The Wire or Justified once or twice a night over dinner. It was Justified that taught me the lesson, how skipping commercials not only adds to the enjoyment of individual episodes, but also how not having to wait a week helps to hold the plots together. My only complaint with Justified on FX was the plotting in some of the middle seasons, and how it had what I perceived as holes. Watching episodes back to back cleared a lot of that up and I gained a greater appreciation for the show, which was no small feat.

We’ve been bingeing two series during the shutdown: Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Homicide. We caught up on Nine-Nine over the weekend and are about midway through Season Three of Homicide. (Watching Andre Braugher play Ray Holt and Frank Pembleton within minutes of each other is worth a blog post of its own.) While the two shows could hardly be more different in tone, both have story arcs that span multiple episodes and the characters grow as the series continues. Keeping things fresh in the viewer’s mind keeps the tension from dropping week to week.

Season One of Homicide has a great example in the story arc that portrays the murder of eleven-year-old Edena Watson. It’s Bayliss’s (Kyle Secor) first case as the primary and it’s a stone cold whodunit. He’s feeling a lot of pressure because it’s his first case and because the story is getting so much media attention. In true Homicide style, there are plenty of other things going on that prevent the other detectives from giving Bayliss all the help he might want or need, though having Frank Pembleton as his second is a considerable aid. Not waiting a week between episodes keeps all the threads of the Watson case in mind, and the lack of commercials makes Bayliss’s and Pembleton’s final interrogation of the prime suspect (Moses Gunn) almost unbearably intense, stretching as it does through most of the episode. (Editor’s Note: This case is lifted virtually as a piece from David Simon’s book.)

We’re still not hard-core bingers. Even with Nine-Nine and Homicide, we usually limit ourselves to three or four of each in a sitting. Our record came when I rushed home from work on a Friday several years ago and we watched all of the final season of The Shield in a sitting, turning in around 3:30 Saturday morning. We’re too old for that shit now—I’m not sure I’ve fully recovered yet—but the exercise, coupled with our current immersive experiences, shows the artistic merit of streaming services such as Amazon and Netflix releasing the entire season of a show at once. (Not that I for a second think they do it for artistic reasons. They do it because people like it and now expect it when they pay for the service.)

I started back to work today so the bingeing situation will return to more normal levels. (I have thoughts on returning to work and the shutdown but I pledged long ago to keep politics out of this blog as much as possible and I’ll hold to that.) The Beloved Spouse™ has a far better binge situation, as she can keep series she likes and only recently discovered on all day while she works in her craft room. I have to pick my spots, at least for the time being. Once I retire, though…

A Foolish Inconsistency is the Hobgoblin of Small Minds

Yes, I know I got the quote wrong. In the context of today’s post, what I have here is correct.

Thomas Pluck recently posted an excellent blog to Crime Factory about foul language in books. The topic occasionally pops up, is debated for a couple of weeks, then subsides as writers find other things they can’t control to vent about. Pluck’s comments were timed with something that came to notice here.

The Beloved Spouse and I will occasionally watch a bit of stand-up on Comedy Central before turning in. Hop over to Channel 690, see what’s on, and stick around a while if it looks promising. We’re also regular viewers of both The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. With the Supreme Court currently looking into what can, and cannot, be said on television, one thing struck us: there is a strange inconsistency in what network Standards and Practices will allow, and what they won’t.

Let’s take Comedy Central, notably stand-up comics, Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert. They can’t say “fuck” or “shit” and get away with it; either word will be bleeped every time. This is in keeping with the late, great, George Carlin’s definition of the seven words you can never say on television. “Shit” is, however, permissible on FX, which is owned by Fox, which is the Official Network of Family Value Conservatives, as is “piss.” On Comedy Central—near as we can tell—you can be pissed off, but you can’t take a piss. A little weird, but it gets better.

CC allows the word “dick” as a reference to someone, but it can’t be used as a body part. You can be a dick, but you can’t have one, never mind why calling someone a dick is an insult. People act “dickish” all the time. “Balls” is okay, unless in the context of body part, so someone can have balls (“It takes a lot of balls to do that,” “You got some balls on you.”) but he cannot actually have balls. The origin of the phrase is, again, neglected. The secret here may be in the connection to what Archie Bunker so eloquently called “the groinal area.”

"Asshole” is a good one. You can say “ass” and you can say “hole,” but you can’t say “asshole.” Even better, they won’t bleep the whole word; just the “hole.” So “ass” is okay and “hole” is okay, but they are banned when combined, and it’s the “hole” that makes it obscene.

Then there is “goddamnit.” This one is okay for reasons that escape me. The Cultural Wars in this country are generally between the Christian Right (sometimes referred to as The Right) and people who generally want to be left alone and think we have bigger fish to fry (also known as The Wrong). A couple of ministers keep themselves in the public eye—and, not coincidentally, keep those contributions rolling in—by periodically pointing out the road to Perdition is paved with foul language and semi-second glimpses of Janet Jackson’s nipple. How does “goddamnit” get past these sentinels of propriety? I’m no Bible scholar, but isn’t taking the Lord Thy God’s name in vain one of the Ten Commandments? How does that get a pass, and “balls” doesn’t?

A study was recently released that says conservatives and racists are less intelligent. (Than what, we’re not so sure.) I don’t believe this—I’ll have more to say on From the Home Office in a couple of days—though inconsistencies like the above do give me pause. I sincerely don’t want to come across as insensitive—though, as regular readers know, I will if I feel the need—I’m genuinely curious about how this works, especially the “goddamnit” business. Feel free to enlighten me in the comments.

Criminal Minds

I took a little time one night last week to solve the world’s problems with a friend. When I got home, The Beloved Spouse was curled up on the couch watching Criminal Minds on A&E or some other indistinguishable cable channel. I had nothing better to do at that hour, I like Joe Mantegna, so I plopped myself in a chair to see what I’ve been missing on commercial television.

Jesus Christ, is this show bad.

Where to start? The dialog. Half the show consists of FBI profilers telling each other about profiling, like they don’t already know. Expend a few ounces of effort and at least bring in an ignorant guest star if you’re going to explain things to us.

The cast. Once the credits were over, they might as well have run a screen insert in one corner with a head shot for all the more Mantegna does. Thomas Gibson, late of Dharma and Greg, walks around with a furrowed brow looking brooding and tormented. (TBS says she thinks his wife died. I think he’s constantly reminded he used to spend his work days with Jenna Elfman and is now stuck in this piece of shit. He doesn’t even have to act to look brooding and tormented.)

Deirdre Lovejoy (Rhonda Pearlman in The Wire) may be a fed; I’m not sure. TBS said she didn’t think so, which made it okay for them to explain Profiling 101 to her, but later I saw her with an official FBI windbreaker, so I’m not sure.

The rest of the team consists of the obligatory ice bitch female lead profiler/detective, a younger hunky guy, a younger chick who dresses just professionally enough to show how hot she’d be if she wasn’t dressed so professionally, and a black guy. There’s also the goofy-looking chick back at the office who can click a mouse three times and find sealed juvenile and foster home records, complete employment and substance abuse histories (including which meetings an individual attended last week), dental records, shoe size, rings size, and preferred alcoholic beverage. She solves the case for them in a couple of two-minute segments; the rest is padding.

Then there’s the plot. My episode showed a young husband and wife team travelling the northwest killing people for kicks and sexual gratification. When they turn to killing the man’s father because he abused him as a child—which is strictly a he said/he said situation—the master profilers deduce they’re going after the woman’s father next. They’re in Idaho; Dad is in Spokane, Washington. The killers are in a car, so the feds grab the ubiquitous government plane. Do they call the guy to warn him? Do they call local police to warn them? Hell, no. They fly the two youngest members of the team there, who then drive to the guy’s house to hear his wife tell them he’s at work—Duh!—which is where our kill crazed couple thought to go first. Do they call the police , or Dad, then? Fuck no. They hotfoot it over there to arrive—damn!—too late to save Dad, but just in time to create a hostage situation when the bloodthirsty wife’s young half-sister walks into the gas station just before they kill Dad in the back room.

As you might have guessed by now, these profilers are also gifted hostage negotiators. Having figured out wifey killed hubby’s old girlfriend so she could have him, they begin to tell him exactly what she’s going to do to keep him on the string while they make their escape. She then proceeds to do exactly what they predict within thirty seconds of each prediction. It was like watching an old Warner Brothers cartoon where Daffy Duck is thinks he’s been exposed to a germ and shows every possible symptom just as Bugs Bunny reads them to him.

Damn right I watched the whole show. It’s not every night I get to see a primer in how not to tell a story.

Looking Below the Line

The Beloved Spouse and I are working our way through The Sopranos again, finished Season 5 last night. At one point, Tony’s sitting in his office at The Bing and Corky mentions, “I have that tape dispenser.” I immediately looked around him and thought, “Someone dressed that set,” and all the minutiae that are involved.

The whole set dressing thing would not have occurred to me had I not read Below the Line, by John McFetridge and Scott Albert. It’s a pastiche of stories—some related, some not—of the goings-on at a Toronto movie set, where an American movie is being made. The book gets into the friction between the Canadian and American sides (the Americans make films in Canada because it’s cheaper, then look down on the Canadians; the Canadians are happy for the business, but frustrated because the American 800-pound gorilla makes it harder to get good Canadian films made), but mostly it’s about all the stuff that has to happen for a move to get made that the audience never sees. (“Below the Line,” in movie parlance.)

It’s a fun book to read—the scene where the transport captain takes the star to a hockey game is laugh out loud funny---and also educational, without hitting you over the head about it. It’s full of conversations about finding locations, the frustrations of being a Production Assistant, dressing sets, and half a dozen other things that have to occur for you to see even a piece of shit at the local multiplex. (The book is, unfortunately, out of print, and not available on Kindle. I found my copy at an online used bookstore.)

Back to The Sopranos. Once TBS points out the tape dispenser, I’m watching for everything. Tony slides down a snowy hill outside Johnny Sack’s yard to escape the feds, and I think “Location scout. MoGib.” Johnny Sack slips and falls in the snow. “Stunt man.” Watch some of the fine work turned in by people who were under the radar as actors when the show was made, and I'm thinking, "Casting Director."

I even caught a goof. Tony meets Johnny outside his house, a foot of snow on the ground. Johnny said to be there at 6:30 AM, he had a plane to catch, and I’m thinking “No way is there that much sunlight at 6:30 that time of year in New Jersey. (I think that’s Continuity, but I’m not sure.)

I love that kind of thing. Some people would ask how I can enjoy the movie, seeing all the wires and engines that make its illusion work. I say it’s the cost of being a writer and wondering how things work under the hood. When I was a musician, one of my best teachers told a class I was in that we had chosen to devote our lives to music, we no longer had the luxury of listening purely for enjoyment; we had to think, “How did he do that? Why was that choice made?” The same holds true for writers, I think. Certainly so far as writing technique goes, and for cinematic choices, as well, since it’s still storytelling. What I’m noticing now is just another level, and it’s fun.

Also, I’m just curious. I see anything, and I want to know how it works, why it’s made that way. This means I’m rarely bored, and sometimes frustrated. That has “writer” pasted all over it, too.